2017: Trident Ploughshares sends a strong solidarity message

Trident Ploughshares sends a strong solidarity message to the people of Germany organising a twenty weeks long peace camp at Buchel airbase. It is extremely important that the remaining 20 US H-Bombs there are permanently withdrawn and dismantled. We are glad to hear that a delegation of US citizens will be present to lend their support and to show by their presence that there are many US citizens who do not support their government's nuclear brinkmanship. We send you strength and love to enable your protests to be such a successful nonviolent civil resistance that you will persuade the US government that it is just not worth their while continuing to keep these immoral, illegal and unwanted weapons in Germany any longer.

Unfortunately we in Trident Ploughshares cannot be present as we are in the midst of a nuclear disarmament camp at Coulport and Faslane, which runs from the 8th to 16th July. It is here in Scotland that the UK's 4 nuclear powered and armed Trident submarines are based against the will of the majority of the Scottish people and we need to be here at this time.

For those of you who do not know the UK's nuclear weapons system is made up of four nuclear submarines. Each sub carries up to eight missiles on board, and each missile carries up to five nuclear warheads. Each of these bombs is around eight times as destructive as the bomb which flattened Hiroshima in 1945, killing over 140,000 civilians. One Trident submarine patrols the seas at all times.

We are glad to support you and whilst engaged in our own civil resistance will be linked in solidarity with you as global citizens.

All of us campaigners from nuclear weapon states and NATO countries need to keep our civil resistance strong in order to support the Nuclear Ban Treaty that will soon be signed by the vast majority of the non-nuclear nations. It is only with our continuing resistance that we can keep the focus on real multi-lateral nuclear disarmament.

Love and peace Angie Zelter, Trident Ploughshares.
E-mail: reforest@gn.apc.org