Our peaceful efforts to keep the nuclear arms race at bay were crushed by Czech military police this week. Peaceland, a newly formed state sits on a site earmarked for a radar station for US anti-missile defence on Czech soil. Dubbed as part of the ‘Son of Star Wars' project, this American anti-missile circuit is apparently intended to destroy enemy rockets headed for the US, and Greenpeace activists responded to this ludicrous plan by inhabiting the proposed site and declaring independence, thus forming the new country.

A Greenpeace volunteer on the boom at Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland

I don’t know if your remember our Trident Tour last year - that five week frenzy of Faslane blockading, crane climbing, arrests, solitary confinement, losing a ship, getting it back again, bearing witness, gigs, press conferences, political events and rallies.

Well, it’s been a long time coming but, over a year after the event, I can give you the final results of the legal wranglings that ensued.

A group of Czech Greenpeace activists are set to begin their third week occupying the site of a proposed US 'Son of Star Wars' base in the Czech republic. About 20 Greenpeace activists broke into the Brdy military zone south of Prague on April 28th. After establishing a base camp in nearby woods, they entered a wooded area inside the military installation and hung a 60 ft banner carrying the message "We don't want to be targets" across a series of tree-platforms.

The US want to build an X band radar at Brdy - like the one the Labour government controversially gave go ahead for at Fylingdales in Yorkshire - as part of the European end of their proposed 'Son of Star Wars' missile defence system.

Four years ago Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was released from jail having served 18 years inside. Yet this month the Israeli government renewed, for the fifth time, an order confining him to Jerusalem, where he is under constant surveillance, banned from talking to foreigners and shunned by Israeli society. He lives with no work, income, home or support. A virtual prisoner.

Welcome to our very first Greenpeace podcast! It's going to be a fortnightly affair, so make sure you subscribe.

In this episode, we head down to Aldermaston's nuclear weapons factory on the 50th anniversary of the first legendary march - and meet a few of the folks who were there the first time around. Greenpeace's James Turner joins hundreds of flash mobbers at Heathrow's Terminal 5 on its opening day to find out why so many people are saying "enough's enough" when it comes to airport expansion. And climate change writer and campaigner Mark Lynas tells Joss Garman what he thinks of new runways, new coal, new mayors and the need for mass action. The podcast is presented by our very own James Turner.

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Aldermaston, 50 years on »
Terminal 5 flash mob »
The new coal rush »
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Thousands joined hands to surround Aldermaston base on Easter Monday

On the Easter weekend of 1958 - a few weeks after the birth of CND - thousands of people braved the icy weather and marched from London to the nuclear weapons factory at Aldermaston in Berkshire to protest the building of nuclear bombs. The march marked the birth of the peace movement in Britain.

Sadly, 50 years on, the peace movement is needed as much as it ever was; last year, our government (which counts many former CND members among its numbers) voted to replace Trident, and to lock the world into at least another 50 years of nuclear bombs. Despite the rhetoric of Brown's recent national security strategy (he wants "to free the world from nuclear weapons", apparently), £5 billion is being poured into building new facilities at Aldermaston to design new nuclear bombs - most likely in contravention of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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With reflections on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace’s past, present, and future, here's Rex Weyler - author, photographer, ecologist, Greenpeace International co-founder and long-time trouble-maker. Read it, share it and, if you enjoy it as much as I do, sign up to get the column by email every month. Over to Rex Weyler:

When the first Greenpeace boat sailed across the Gulf of Alaska in 1971 toward the U.S. nuclear test site in the Aleutian Islands, the crew and their supporters in Canada had no idea that the campaign would launch a global organization. Irving Stowe, Quaker leader of the Don’t Make a Wave Committee that launched the campaign, belonged to a dozen such groups and believed that after a campaign the group should disband. His idea of keeping things simple and grassroots has merit, but as we know, that’s not how things turned out. Read more »

Reported in Scotland's Sunday Herald just before Christmas (but not seen by me until a few days ago, hence the delay in passing it on) was a tale to gladden the hearts of peaceniks everywhere - namely that the latest upgrade to the US designed Trident D5 nuclear missiles may not actually fit into British submarines.

Clearly falling well within the parameters of the "you couldn't make it up" school of classic cock-ups, the Herald reported that tender documents for future underwater-launched nuclear missiles issued by the US Navy last November specify a missile diameter of up to 120 inches. The diameter of Trident's D5 missile tubes is 87 inches.