Global Network - GN Board Member Bob Anderson arrested at University of New Mexico

30 September 2006
GN Board Member Bob Anderson arrested at University of New Mexico

From: Luis A. Martin

Albuquerque - Bob Anderson, leading anti-war activist for Stop the War Machine (SWM) http://www.stopthewarmachine.org in Albuquerque was tackled, handcuffed, dragged and led away to Bernalillo County Detention Center West by University of New Mexico (UNM) police today at approximately 2:00 pm. The incident occurred at a campus meeting sponsored by UNM in which a panel of speakers for think tank Sandia National Laboratories were promoting the building of a new generation of nuclear weapons.

According to one witness, Anderson objected to the exclusion of anti-war views from the makeup of the panel. As someone next to him raised an anti-war placard, one member of the panel asked that it be lowered saying signs were prohibited at the meeting. As campus police entered the room, the panel member pointed to Anderson asking them to remove him from the room. Throughout the entire incident, some bystanders shouted at police to refrain from manhandling the dissenter. No other details are immediately available.

At approximately 5:30 pm, Jean Pahls, Anderson's wife, told Boletin Latino that Bob had been released from detention on his own recognizance.

UNM ranks in the top 15 universities in the country for war profiteering.

From: Greg Mello

Yesterday a panel "discussion" of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) organized by the University of New Mexico's (UNM's) Office of Policy, Security, and Technology (OPST) took place.

It was a difficult but productive event -- although not in the way the organizers intended, thanks in no small part to Bob Anderson's arrest (see below) as well as to the many citizens who packed the meeting room.

Bob's arraignment is TOMORROW morning (10/1/06) at Metro Court, 4th and Lomas NW in Albuquerque and he could use our support there.

The event began with what I would say was an obsequious (to Sandia National Labs) and unlearned introduction by Interim Dean of Arts and Sciences Vera Norwood, who disparaged nuclear disarmament along with those who work for it, saying that "nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented" and "cannot be wished away." Other platitudes followed. Ms. Norwood apparently wasn't thinking of the many formal ways in which a great majority of the world's states (not just citizens) have testified to the practicality of nuclear disarmament, including permanently constraining their own nuclear activities, in effect staking their security on the practicality of the linked ideals of disarmament and nonproliferation.

The six presentations which followed this were very one-sided, in my view amounting to little more than a sales pitch for the RRW from 5 out of the 6 speakers. Even pro-nuclear-weapons, but anti-RRW, views were entirely suppressed, as were of course all perspectives which gave full credence to U.S. nuclear disarmament obligations under law.

One of the speakers did offer international perspectives which cast doubt on the wisdom of pursuing the RRW, but these were couched as political matters which might be finessed by diplomatic initiatives taken to placate aggrieved allies and others. There was no mention of the 1996 International Court of Justice opinion, even by this relatively liberal speaker, and Article VI of the NPT (full text here) was somewhat mischaracterized in the typical foreign-policy-establishment manner, with "cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament" rendered as a commitment to "eventually" achieve these ends. This, to repeat, was the only presentation that did not lie entirely within the NNSA/laboratory complex promotional perspective.

All Q&A were deferred until the end of the discussion, a good way to marginalize all views other than those of the panel itself.

From the outset, this was a very difficult event for all concerned. It was difficult to sit through almost two hours that involved very few facts (and those mostly decontextualized, even from the technical perspective, let alone any other) but did involve a lot of carefully-crafted slogans, followed by a sort of learned "analysis" based on and limited by those slogans and the ideology behind them, with the partial exception of the last speaker.

Bob Anderson of Albuquerque's Stop the War Machine (SWM) heard the bullshit barrage and spoke up, saying "You are talking about genocide!" and "Put Greg Mello on that panel, to give some balance!" and more. Bob was forcibly removed, handcuffed, and dragged away by police to the Bernalillo County Detention Center.

Bob spent the night in lock-up, with interim attorney Larry Kronen, his wife Jeanne, and others holding vigil outside all night. He has been released, not on his own recognizance as we had thought, but after posting $5,000 in bail, which cost $500.
In Bob's words today:

"I was kept in the lock up until 6 am this morning, awake the whole time, no food… Larry, Jeanne and Maria, Victor and Al did a lot of work on the bond and providing outside assistance in the long hours. They were out at the inhumane social torture center called Metro Detention Center so far out of town no one can easily support their loved ones in jail.

I am trying to get back to all who called in the last day. If I miss you please realize a lot has happened and I need to a respond to some of it quickly and will get to you.

Bob Anderson being violently arrested after requesting a fair makeup of a panel sponsored by UNM to promote building nuclear weapons.
Photos: Luis Martin, Boletin Latino

I see Luis has posted some photos and I am getting back to the many people who witnessed the arrest and called afterwards. Thanks to all you wonderful comrades! This is what we need to build an organization and movement in this era when we are going to not only have to fight the imperial wars aboard but the disappearing laws at home, as was just passed in Congress turning over law to the military agenda.

I have an arraignment tomorrow morning SUNDAY, Oct. 1, at 10 am at the Metro court downtown, corner of Lomas and 4th. If you want to, come on down and we can talk more there. But there will be a trial later, which will need more support. The university cop who took me down, whispering like almost in my ear that charging me with battery would ban me from campus, plus cost me jobs and work too, which is what they want, to silence any voices of opposition to the war industry and the new generation of nuclear weapons UNM and the war profiteers are after. They don't mind smashing liberty here or anywhere.

We need to build a large fund too for bail for times like this, I figure if we are effective in our work we will be needing to bail out many more quickly.

What I need at this time is if any one has photos or saw the event to let me know the details. I need people who saw Andrew and Robb there too also getting pushed around. Robb, Andrew can you write up what you saw…

Wanted to let everyone know to remember that this was a political act and the university's response was a political act to silence dissent. I just learned that Andrew and Robb were escorted out of the building to prevent them from speaking out at the meeting. Andrew had held up a cloth banner and Robb had spoken out when they tried to take his banner and arrest him.

I don't know how many more people were denied entry or taken out of the meeting like this.

I do know that Vera Norwood the interim dean of Arts and Sciences came over before the meeting to tell me, I guess to tell everyone else to shut up and get in line, that the university space had been rented to Lockheed Martin and Sandia National Lab for this propaganda event - which was to sell to the public the idea that a new generation of nuclear weapons was what the country was demanding. If they can keep up this kind of high level, academic certified need for new bombs then they can move faster to using them on places like Iran. It is this kind of mass action which has prevented the state from already using the mega bombs, this is a new stage of that same campaign only around a trick called the RRW.

Of course LM and SNL and UNM stand to make billions off a new generation of weapons and millions of people stand the risk of genocide from their use - it is important to remember that the RRW, Reliable Replacement Warhead, as Greg Mello of Los Alamos Study Group has pointed out can also be used as a tactical WMD which means they can use them in low yield mode in more places.

This crosses the threshold of WMDs in the wrong direction, opening up a new arms race and the potential for nukes to be used like cluster bombs, as Israel did in Lebanon. That is why we must speak out on these weapons, much as Germans should have done when the Nazis were developing their new advanced technologies and gas ovens for their global empire. I see the RRW as a form of global gas oven.

What would help us all is if people write letters to the Lobo and the Journal and Tribune (and editorials for KUNM) about all that has happened and what is going on. Be sure to call for justice at these charges against me which are intended to intimidate students on campus and other activists, and call for more mass actions and demonstrations at UNM over their war profiteering.

Tribune <letters@abqtrib.com>; Opinion Journal <opinion@abqjournal.com>; Lobo <opinion@dailylobo.com>; KUNM News <news@kunm.org>

Many thanks to all who were there yesterday -- Bob"

Trish handed out quite a lot of literature to the 100 or more attendees and at the end many of those present asked cogent questions, mostly without satisfactory answers. I personally did not hear any positive remarks about the RRW whatsoever. Some of the speakers expressed a sincere interest in learning more about the international law relating to nuclear weapons. I don't think anybody left the room thinking the RRW was not very controversial, at a minimum. Overall, I think we held the line.

One problem is that in the absence of substantial print media attendance NNSA and SNL may be able to privately spin what happened as an "academic" discussion of the merits of the RRW (a kind of discussion which didn't happen) to unaccountable audiences elsewhere, to people who weren't there yesterday. Some of these audiences might be in the Pentagon, for example, which has not yet given its support to RRW.

What did happen is that NNSA, Sandia, LANL, and their one invited guest (a former military intelligence officer teaching at Georgetown who is a Sandia laboratories national security advisor) had a discussion about the RRW using UNM facilities, like a stage play. An official photographer captured images of the "discussion" for these other uses. The rest of us watched most of the time and were thrown out and arrested if we protested this format. For reasons given yesterday, there was no balanced intellectual discussion, let alone a discussion that began with the civilization-upholding premise that we must not and cannot threaten to use weapons of mass destruction and therefore cannot keep them, exactly as the NPT requires.

The struggle over whether the U.S. will resume manufacturing nuclear weapons, and build a brand-new nuclear arsenal in the coming decades, has come to us.

Right now, it would be very helpful to build on yesterday's events in a number of ways, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach to doing so.

First off, donations for bond are very important. You can send a donation to SWM in care of the Peace and Justice Center at 202 Harvard SE, Albuq NM 87106 with the word BOND written in the subject line.

You an write the UNM regents and UNM President David Harris about the way this event was planned and conducted (for possible talking points, see yesterday's action alert). Or about the OPST itself.

Letter to the editors (see the links above for some places to send them) are very important.

This just begins the list, and the hour is late for us here. Contact us, and contact Stop the War Machine http://www.stopthewarmachine.org.