ploughshare-activist Barbara Smedema courtcase

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday March 27, 2003 17:40 by fiebel peace at infocentrumwageningen dot nl

ploughshare-activist Barbara Smedema courtcase

Dutch Ploughshare-activist to court

On Friday, the 28th of March, Barbara Smedema’s courtcase takes place.
On Sunday morning, the nineth of February, Barbara Smedema knocked down three American communication-dishes.
The action was a protest against the possible attack on Iraq.
Barbara was arrested and is in prison since her action.

The dishes were on top of an American-communication bunker. In the bunker the communication with the US about the nuclear bombs, that are stored on the militairy airbase Volkel, takes place.
For thirty years the militairy base sercetly has been preparing for massdestruction.

The US have the biggest arsenal of weapons of massdestruction and have no intention to disarm. On the contrary, the US arms dictators all over the world, and helps them to stay in power, Saddam Hussein is only one of them..
There is no country that is a serious threat to the US. The reasons for the US to attack Iraq lie in the political economical line, the acces to the oil fields is an important interest.
The consequences of a war against Iraq are not foreseeable. The war will be a disaster for the weakened people of Iraq.The interest of the US is not to set up democracy in Iraq, the country must be a safe place for business, the US are not interested in human rights for the people of Iraq.

The US warmachine, the iron fist behind the American economical policy must be broken down.
At this moment thousands of children die of poverty every day. To give all the people in the world food, shelter, drinking-water, health-care and a clean environment we need 0,7 bilion a day. Worldwide two bilion a day is spent on weaponry. This crazy situation must come to an end.
To make a start with this I did my action in Volkel today. I don’t have the illusion that I can stop the warmachine by doing what I did today, but I want to show something of hope and trust that things can be different in this world.

No war in Iraq!

We all have the power to disarm!