NC Peace Action News

 

Announcing:

 

Afghanistan: What’s Next? will also feature video and information about the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and the Afghan Women’s Fund.

Payment. Make your check out to NC Peace Action Education Fund, and mail to P.O. Box 10384, Raleigh, NC 27605.  Include your name, address, phone #, and email address and the number of reservations you are making. You may call (919) 381-5969 for reservations by phone if you wish to pay at the door.

Tickets are not issued.  Your reservation will be held at the door.  Sorry we can’t take credit card payments. 

 

 

CONGRESSIONAL PEACE RECORD

How Does Your Congress Representative Score on Peace?

We have now made it easy for you to review your Congressional representative’s peace voting records. Please visit our widget for more information on the peace geography in your area. You can then click on your representative’s name to see a more detailed analysis of their voting record and peace score. 

 

 

Announcing

THE PEACEFUL MEANS FILM SERIES

 running until May 2013

A Film Series about ordinary people making a world of difference through peaceful means. Hayti Heritage Center, 804 Old Fayetteville St., Durham. Parking available on site. All showings Sundays at 3 pm. Please see the Durham Chapter page for film and date details. 

The next film is ….  May 5: The Take (2005). In Buenos Aires, 30 laid-off workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head. What shines through is the workers’ simple demand for dignity and the injustice of dignity denied.

 

 

MOVE THE MONEY SPREADS

Orange County Peace Coalition launches campaign to Move the Money, Fund our Communities, Not War. Read more here. 

 

 

Recent Articles

 

Submit your letters and articles to director@ncpeaceaction.org.

 

March 21, 2013, Durham Herald Sun

Joan Walsh

Fund housing rather than military bases

                  The March 21 letter by G.E. Woodlief states that, “due to the nature of warfare today, we could close at least a couple of large military bases in the country without jeopardizing our national security.” 

I would agree, and add that we could also close just about all, if not all, of the approximately 1,000 military bases our taxes maintain outside our country. Why are they there, if we are not trying to control other countries, i.e., function as an empire? What other country has even one military base on U.S. soil? 

                  An article dated March 13 discussed the sequester’s effects on the Durham Housing Authority, which must now take Section 8 rental vouchers out of circulation after former clients turn them in, denying housing assistance to about 187 Durham families, reducing by 7 percent the number of vouchers in circulation and refusing them to people on its waiting list. The sequester is expected to cost DHA about $3.5 million.

                  So we have money for 1,000 military bases in other lands, but we don’t have money to help our neighbors keep roofs over their heads. Does this make sense? Sen. Hagel, Sen. Burr, Congress members Price and Butterfield, are you doing all you can to change this bizarre distribution of our tax dollars? 

                  We are still the wealthiest country in the world. Why can’t we curb our insanely voracious “defense” budget, and instead house, feed, and provide health care – including mental health care – for everyone who lives here?

      

March 8, 2013, News & Observer

Ole R. Holsti

Flush the Fighter
The deadlock between Congress and the White House has resulted in sequestration. The Department of Defense budget will share in the cuts, but that need not harm national security.  The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program has seen constant delays and overruns that have driven the cost per aircraft up by more than 50 percent, with a lifetime projected cost of $1.5 trillion. A Pentagon study in 2011 revealed 11 major problems. If the F-35 were vital to national security, cost considerations should take a back seat, but a 2012 Foreign Policy magazine survey of 76 top military experts rated the F-35 as the best candidate for immediate elimination.  It won’t be easy to do so as prime contractor Lockheed Martin has contributed vast campaign funds to a bipartisan congressional caucus to protect the F-35. Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the “military-industrial complex” were very prescient.

  

February 25, 2013, News & Observer

Joe Burton, Raleigh

Terror of Drone Attacks

The U.S wants an “enduring presence” of up to 12,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan after 2014 to keep the Taliban in check (“Troops many stay in Afghanistan,” Feb. 23). This would prop up an admittedly corrupt government until its forces are “strong enough to hold off the Taliban.”

Meanwhile, we are using drones to assassinate suspected Taliban leaders (“U.S. drone strikes increase sharply in Afghanistan,” Feb. 23) in the belief they can be stopped if enough of them can be killed.

An analysis by the Brookings Institution, of drone attacks in Pakistan, has shown that for every militant leader killed, 10 civilians have died. What could be a better recruiting tool for the Taliban than a foreign nation that invades your country and then begins killing innocent people?

Imagine what it would be like to live in a land where you or a family member might be killed at any time of the day or night, by a drone missile aimed at a suspected Taliban leader. That is terrorism by any definition.

One thing known for certain, violence begets more violence. Using drone warfare, in an attempt to pacify Afghanistan, will be self-defeating. And keeping NATO troops in the country will not prevent that.