September, 16 2014, 03:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Eve Tetaz (202) 332-0599
Ed Kinane (315) 478-4571
Eve Tetaz, 83, found NOT GUILTY last night in De Witt town court for Opposing Reaper
Drone War Crime at 174th Attack Wing at Hancock Air Base near Syracuse, NY
WASHINGTON
Immediately after Onondaga County prosecutor Jordan McNamara rested his case against DC peace and justice activist Eve Tetaz, DeWitt town judge David Gideon granted Ms Tetaz' motion to dismiss.
Ms Tetaz represented herself pro se with the support of DC attorney Mark Goldstone. Ms. Tetaz had been arrested on April 28, 2013, along with 30 others as she stood reading aloud Preamble to the UN Charter and the First Amendment of the Constitution on the edge of the driveway leading into the Hancock Reaper drone base on East Molloy Rd., Town of De Witt. The prosecution's video of Ms Tetaz' arrest showed the arresting officer grabbing those documents from her hands and tossing them aside.
When police ordered her to stop, Ms Tetaz continued her reading aloud, facing the base, thereby expressing her First Amendment right to peacefully "petition my government for redress of grievances" - i.e. the war crimes being committed by the weaponized Reaper drone robots piloted over Afghanistan by the Hancock Attack Wing.
Ms. Tetaz' trial is one of the ongoing series of trials of those arrested on April 28, 2013 scheduled through spring of 2015. Many will be jury trials due to the misdemeanor charge of obstruction of government administration. The next jury trial -- that of Bronx Catholic Worker Mark Colville -- will begin at 8:30 a.m. this Thursday, Sept 18.
The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars is made up of antiwar organizations and formed around resistance to the MQ-9 Reaper Drone program at Hancock Field Air Force Base.
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"There is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons," an expert said.
Jul 08, 2024
More than 700 scientists on Monday called for an end to the United States' land-based nuclear weapons program that's set to be replaced, following a Pentagon decision to approve the program despite soaring costs.
In an open letter to President Joe Biden and Congress, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argued that the new intercontinental-range ballistic missile system, known as Sentinel, was "expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary."
The Department of Defense on Monday certified the continuation of the project, releasing the results of a review that was legally required when the cost estimate ballooned to "at least" $131 billion earlier this year, which drew the scrutiny of some Democrats in Congress, according toThe Hill.
The Defense review found that Sentinel was "essential to national security," but the scientists disagreed with the assessment.
"There is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons," Tara Drozdenko, director of UCS' global security program, said in a statement.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Barry Barish, a signatory to the letter, was also harshly critical of the Pentagon's approach.
"It is unconscionable to continue to develop nuclear weapons, like the Sentinel program," he said.
700+ scientists & experts are calling on President Biden & Congress to cancel the Sentinel program and retire the US land-based missile force. Doing so would save Americans more than $100 billion and make the world safer.
Learn more: https://t.co/5dQCOUKnQ3Â pic.twitter.com/UxtHV9TSod
— Union of Concerned Scientists (@UCSUSA) July 8, 2024
The soaring costs of Sentinel, which is overseen by the defense contractor Northrup Grumman, have been the subject of media attention. The program will cost an estimated $214 million per missile, far more than originally expected, Bloombergreported on Friday.
However, the cost is hardly the only reason to cancel the program, UCS scientists argue. The silos that house the nuclear missiles, which are found in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, are vulnerable to attack—in fact, they are designed to draw enemy weapons away other U.S. targets, according toScientific American. Such an attack would expose huge swaths of the American population to radioactive fallout.
Because they are a likely target, the siloed missiles are kept on "hair-trigger" alert so the U.S. president can launch them within minutes. This "increases the risk of nuclear war" that could start from false alarms, miscalculations, or misunderstandings, the UCS letter states.
The scientists further argue that there's no need for a land-based nuclear weapons system given the effectiveness of nuclear-armed submarines—one of the other parts of the nuclear triad, along with bomber jets. Such submarines are "hidden at sea" and "essentially invulnerable to attack," according to the letter. Moreover, the submarine missiles are just as accurate as land-based missiles, and already have "destructive capability than could ever be employed effectively," it states.
The submarine system is also being overhauled, as is the 'air' component of the nuclear triad. In total, the U.S. military plans to spend more than $1 trillion over 30 years on renewing the nuclear arsenal, according to the Arms Control Association.
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The report follows the publication of an analysis by medical experts in The Lancet, who said the death toll in Gaza—officially over 38,000—could be off by roughly 150,000 people due to the deaths of Palestinians who have starved, died of medical conditions that couldn't be treated due to the destruction of the healthcare system, and succumbed to other "indirect" impacts of the war.
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"Israeli soldiers in Gaza are operating under the premise that they can kill anything that moves and that every Palestinian is fair game for slaughter," she said.
The soldiers also described "routinely" executing Palestinian civilians because they had entered an area designated a "no-go zone" by the IDF, and allowing their surroundings to become "littered with civilian corpses, which are left to rot or be eaten by stray animals."
The soldiers were instructed to hide the bodies when international aid groups arrived, to ensure that "images of people in advanced stages of decay don't come out."
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"Every day, at least one or two [civilians] are killed [because] they walked in a no-go area. I don't know who is a terrorist and who is not, but most of them did not carry weapons," they said.
B. told +972 and Local Call that the army suspects any male between the ages of 16 and 50 of being a terrorist, and treats anyone walking around outside or looking at the IDF from a building as suspicious—and a legitimate target.
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The report follows previous revelations from the Israeli news outlets on the IDF's use of artificial intelligence to target Palestinians, with little regard for civilians who might be killed when suspected Hamas members were attacked in their homes.
A soldier identified as A. said that working alongside commanders in an operations room and determining which buildings should be struck "felt like a computer game."
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Yuval Green, who served in the 55th Paratroopers Brigade late last year and signed a letter with 40 other reservists last month refusing to take part in the invasion of Rafah, testified that soldiers were ordered to burn down homes that they had occupied.
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Summer of Heat said McKibben was one of 46 demonstrators arrested Monday, and that "with today's protest, there have now been 305 total arrests in this summer's historic campaign of relentless, disruptive protests to stop Wall Street funding the oil, coal, and gas projects that are making our planet unlivable."
According to Summer of Heat:
Older Americans are worried about growing climate extremes and how Wall Street is using their savings to harm the planet and their grandchildren's future. Third Act supporters are retired teachers, healthcare professionals, lawyers, union members, parents, grandparents, great aunts, uncles, and now activists. They are taking action—together with youth and families—to make a difference! They are calling on banks like Citi to invest in a peaceful and livable world for all.
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Margaret Bullit-Jonas, an Episcopalian priest and author who took part in Monday's protest, said that "Citibank is destroying the world that God loved into being and entrusted to our care."
"At this decisive moment in history, we teeter on the brink of climate chaos," she added. "Now is the time for Citibank to choose life and to stop financing fossil fuels."
Third Act members were joined by activists from various climate, environmental, and social justice groups. Summer of Heat organizer Liv Senghor said that the campaign "is an intergenerational and intersectional movement."
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HipHop Caucus president and CEO Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. asserted that "to limit ongoing damage, and ensure a bright future for the next generations, we need bold action now to curb emissions, transition to clean energy, and to help households and communities mitigate current and future risks."
Gus Speth, a former U.S. Council on Environmental Quality chair, warned that "we are on the cusp of a ruined planet, and the big banks like Citi are funding it, to the tune of trillions."
"It's time for the Citigroup board of directors to wake up to their responsibility," he added. "Citi talks about environmental sustainability but practices environmental destruction."
Citigroup contends that it is "supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy through our net zero commitments and our $1 trillion sustainable finance goal," and that its "approach reflects the need to transition while also continuing to meet global energy needs."
However, since the 2015 signing of the Paris agreement, Citi has provided $204.46 billion in financing for new fossil fuel projects, according to Stop the Money Pipeline, a Summer of Heat co-organizer.
"From the Bronx to the Gulf South, Black, Latine, Asian, Indigenous, and low-income communities living on the frontlines of the climate crisis—and the ones least responsible for it—face the highest asthma rates and staggering cancer rates while an unprecedented number of people are dying from heat waves," Summer of Heat said.
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