Weapons of Mass Destruction

Plowshares: Boing Boing mentions a Plowshares action by Greg Boertje-Obed, Carl Kabat, and Michael Walli. They hammered on a silo and spread their blood about while dressed as clowns.

If I could Update my comment on Boing Boing, it would read:

. . . hammering on a missile silo is meant to be purely a symbolic act.

The interplay of symbolism and practicality is what makes these sorts of actions tricky to write about.

Tom Lewis points out that this is the third time Carl Kabat has tried to sabotage a missile while dressed as a clown.

Mike: I met Carl Kabat once, for ten seconds.

Scott: You’re doing pretty good—I met him once for ten minutes!

…

Claire: I think I met Carl Kabat once. He’s always in jail.
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Today we had glorious weather here in these isles. Her Majesty graced Oxford with a visit. But for the more politically-inclined, yesterday’s local-election results were announced, with the Greens taking a new seat in the Oxford City Council, up from 7 to 8 out of 48 seats, holding the balance of power in a hung council. Good results elsewhere as well.

Nick Anthis of The Scientific Activist (who broke the George Deutsch dropout story earlier this year) invited Michael Stebbins, Director of Biology Policy at the Federation of American Scientists, author of the new book Sex, Drugs and DNA: Science’s Taboos Confronted to speak in Oxford today on the topic “Biosecurity policy and the scientific community: new challenges in an age of terrorism”. He gave us a lot of Beltway insider stuff (especially after his talk when I bought him a drink at the University Club), and said that whatever craziness goes on in the USA will eventually come across the Atlantic unless we do something about it.

Further on the topic of the “fifty-first state”, Sir Gareth of Wolfson College just published a report on UK–USA research collaboration. To balance the Anglosphericity, here is a link to the “Investing in European Research” website.

This Saturday (29th April) will be the Remembrance Day for All Victims of Chemical Warfare. The IUPAC has a project for raising awareness of the Chemical Weapons Convention, reports the current issue of Chemistry International. Observant readers will notice that a link to the WMD awareness programme already appears on the sidebar here at Pie and Coffee. Last November, Democracy Now! (also sidebar-worthy) and George Monbiot at the Guardian both reported the use of white phosphorus in Iraq. Also see an earlier post here: “Botox: Cosmetic or Chemical Weapon?”

On Saturday 25 February 2006, a few of my friends and I joined about 50 others at St John’s College, Oxford, for the Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament conference ‘Trident Replacement? What does theology say?’. One new development: WMD Awareness Programme. If the gentle readers read one website because of this report, it should be this. Read the rest of this entry »

We are pretty rubbish as a species. We are not very good at passing on our genes or our bits (digital information). The longest-living legacy of ours is likely to be our crap, in the form of radioactive waste.
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St Francis House, the Catholic Worker house of hospitality in Oxford, England, celebrated its first anniversary since their rebirth on Sunday 2nd October: reports Strangers and Pilgrims, their newsletter. Read the rest of this entry »

Oxford peace groups join today to highlight the destruction in Hiroshima 60 years ago; and, at a time when the next generation of Britain’s nuclear weapons is to be discussed in parliament, to say that this must never happen again.

More photographs will eventually appear at Oxford Indymedia.

Last February, I attended a day school on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) here in Oxford, organized by the Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; it was helpful and made me start working with fellow activists.

Today, Dr John Sloboda of the Oxford Research Group gave a short report to the United Nations Association’s Oxford Branch to update us on the 2005 Review Conference of the NPT, taking place this month in New York. The group produced very good briefings on the topic.
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