Plowshares vs. Depleted Uranium
"I am 76 years old, a married Catholic priest, with 35 years of resistance to the empire's wars, nine years of imprisonment, numberless arrests, surveillance and "dirty tricks" from the FBI... Enter my friends, sometimes brusquely: 'Hey Dads!! Give it up to the young pups. It's rocking chair time...' "But, but, but...I cannot forget the dying children of Iraq, and the two million Iraqis dead from our war, sanctions and depleted uranium. I cannot forget what 78 days of NATO bombing did to Kosovo and Serbia. I cannot forget my shame and sorrow over the second American nuclear war in Iraq, and the third in Yugoslavia. (Despite the spin doctors who control damage, depleted uranium shells and bombs are nuclear weapons). I cannot forget my country's war psychosis-its obsession with better tools for killing, its mammoth war chest, its think tanks and war labs." -Philip Berrigan
(Excerpted from Phil. Inq. 3/24/00- by David O'Reilly)-TOWSON, Md. - The judge in the tumultuous trial of four Roman Catholic peace activists charged with vandalizing two A-10 Warthog bombers at a nearby military base stunned the courtroom yesterday by imposing long prison sentences.
The four, who turned their backs on the judge on Wednesday and refused to cooperate with their own defense, chose not to enter the courtroom yesterday after instructing their lawyers to make no closing arguments or sentencing pleas for them. The lawyers, who included Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. attorney general, followed their instructions.
Judge James T. Smith of Baltimore County Circuit Court then sentenced Elizabeth Walz, 33, of Philadelphia, to 15 more months in the county detention center, where she has resided since her arrest Dec. 19. ...Smith also sentenced Philip Berrigan, 77, of Baltimore, to 30 months in state prison and Susan Crane, 56, also of Baltimore, and the Rev. Steven Kelly, 50, of New York, to 27 months, less the three months already served in jail awaiting trial.
All had been charged with malicious destruction of property and conspiracy for cutting a fence at the Air National Guard Base in Essex, Md., on Dec. 19, and afterward pouring blood, hanging a rosary and a banner, and hammering on two A-10 Warthog bombers.
..."They were prepared for the worst," Berrigan's wife, Elizabeth McCallister, told a crowd of about 40 supporters outside the courthouse afterward, "and they got it."
Smith, who angrily cleared his courtroom Wednesday when the supporters burst into a spontaneous hymn of protest against his rulings, yesterday justified his long sentences: The $88,622 in estimated damage to the airplanes "takes it out of the normal range of property damage cases."
He also ordered each of the four - who call themselves "Plowshares vs. Depleted Uranium" and say they live residentially in near poverty - to reimburse the government for the full amount of the damage.
...The mounting tension in the courtroom came to a head Wednesday when Smith refused to allow the defense to present witnesses to testify about the hazards of the use of depleted uranium. Crane then read a statement asserting: "We cannot put on a defense about the dangers of depleted uranium.. . ." The judge ordered her to stop, but she continued reading: "We will not participate in what amounts to a legal gag order."
Berrigan, Walz, Crane and Father Kelly then turned their backs on the judge. 