heuer's blog

Dear Blue NC:

A highly innovative North Carolina project is creating accountability for our state’s role in the Bush Administration’s cruel experiment with “disappearance” and torture. We are asking for your help to make this project succeed.

On Friday, Oct. 23, the “Peace Mom and the Patriot Tour” was launched at the 1st Congregational Church in Asheville, featuring Nobel Peace nominee Cindy Sheehan and Dr. Robert Bowman (USAF Lt. Col. Ret.) After our program at the civic center in Statesville on 10/24, Dr. Bowman’s cancer flared up. Agent Orange, “the gift that keeps on giving.” He is now hospitalized in Statesville, with terminal cancer, a long way from his south Florida home.

Cindy Sheehan spoke at the Piedmont Unitarian Universalist Church in Charlotte Sunday night. She resumes her tour at the Odell Williamson Auditorium in Brunswick County on Monday, and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh at 7:00pm, 3313 Wade Avenue, Tuesday evening, sponsored by NC Peace Action, CodePink Women for Peace, Triangle Veterans for Peace, and the Women’s Int’l League for Peace and Freedom.

As George Orwell cautioned us a half century ago, in an age of universal deceit, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act.

On Saturday, Oct. 17, Fayetteville's Quaker House celebrated "40 years of frontline peace witness--and just getting started." Fayetteville (aka FayetteNam and FayetteStan) is also the major launching pad for US imperial misadventures.

Retired Us Army Ranger officer Stan Goff spoke about the catastrophic prospects of US escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

10 year veterans of the GI Rights Hotline, Steve Woolford and Lenore Yarger spoke about the varieties of miltary experiences that persuade service members to inquire about conscientious objection to war.

Winston-Salem attorney Hoppy Elliot spoke about defending Guantanamo detainees who had confessions tortured out of them.

Finally, War Resistor League organizers Coleman Smith and Clare Hanrahan spoke about their recent travels from Tennessee to Alabama, Georgia, Viginia, and the Carolinas, working to galvanize the peace movement in the South.

Moazzam Begg was arrested by US and Pakistani agents in Islamabad in February, 2002. His crimes included drilling wells for drinking water and building girls’ schools in Afghanistan. For these crimes he was classified an enemy combatant. He was tortured and detained in Kandahar, Bagram and Guantanamo. During this time, his “three piece suit” consisted of leg, arm, and connecting shackles.

What is surprising in Mr. Begg’s story, is his humor. At one point, the excruciating volume of western music is turned to a Country Western review, at which the detainees express willingness to confess, with wailing and shouts, to any crime their captors imagine, if they will just stop the music.

My 2nd NC NAACP State Convention as a member of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Branch had many highlights today in Hickory.

The line for our luncheon featured an opportunity to talk with William J. Barber III, the son of the NC NAACP President, and a freshman physics major at NCCU. William’s focus is on opportunities to create jobs in local, alternative energy generation and transmission.

Caitlin Swain McSurley, daughter of NAACP legal redress chair, Al McSurley, is a 1L at Duke Law School, and shared ideas of defending US service personnel accused of violating interrogation standards while Bush administration officials are shielded, whose tortured standards were in clear violation of US law and treaty obligations.

Our luncheon speaker was Prof. Timothy Tyson, author of the award winning “Blood Done Sign My Name.”

The Triangle Chapter of Veterans for Peace
Code Pink Women for Peace & NC Peace Action
Invite Activists and Organizations
To Support the October 23-27 NC Speaking Tour of

Peace Mom and the Patriot

In 2005, “Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan ignited the US peace movement by camping out next to President George Bush’s Crawford Ranch in Texas. Mr. Bush refused to meet with Cindy to answer her question: “For what noble purpose was my son, Casey, sent to die in Iraq?” Since that summer, Cindy has traveled the US and abroad exposing the myths that continue to send thousands of US servicemen and women to their deaths, as well as countless Iraqi civilians. During her travels, Cindy was regularly vilified in the press, received countless death threats, and was hounded by false patriots claiming that she was a traitor who betrayed the honorable sacrifice of her son, Casey.

Our senior senator came to Fearrington Village today to speak to Chatham County Republicans. He spoke about the disastrous deficits, without a word about wars. He took questions submitted in writing, but not mine. So I sent him my questions, and I'll be interested to see if he responds.

Senator Burr,

You joined 8 Republican senators in a letter to AG Eric Holder opposing the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate coercive interrogation of detainees in US custody by US service members, agents and contractors.

On what moral or legal grounds could you possibly object to mistreatment of US servicemen and women detained by foreign agents?

2nd question:

Do you support the repeal of the constitutional amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, US anti-torture legislation, and US ratified treaties prohibiting cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment of detainees?

Ray McGovern, author of 'Christians' Wink at Torture (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/01-4) joined our conference call tonight to promote David Ippolito's new song and 60 second ad adaptation (www.thatguitarman.com). You can help. In any case, the song is worth a listen.

John Heuer

Fr. Louie Vitale Completes his ’09 NC Circle of Peace Speaking Tour at the Church of Reconciliation, 110 N. Elliot Rd. Chapel Hill at 7:00p on Thursday, June 25.

“Love Your Enemies: Transforming Us versus Them Thinking”

Following his visit to Iran earlier this year, Fr. Louie brings his Pace e Bene speaking tour to Asheville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Stoneville, Durham, and will complete the Circle of Peace in Chapel Hill.

How do we relate with individuals and countries that believe differently than we do? How do we deal with our so-called enemies? Is torture morally acceptable? How do we respond to terrorism?
Father Louie Vitale has been grappling with these and other related questions for nearly half a century since he began his journey as a young man when he had a conversion to nonviolence after he left the air force.

(Submitted to the CHH 6/4)

In “Islamists live by the sword” (Other Opinions, Chapel Hill Herald 6/2) Cliff May puts words in the mouths of Iranian leaders who, he claims, call for world domination and the murder of infidels. May continues: “The terrible conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries caused most Westerners to treasure peace and regard war as a hellish, last resort.”

Oh really!

The only “resort” to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq was the Genghis Khan impulse toward world domination and the murder of infidels. This, amid cries to “Remember the Maine” siren call of 9-11. In regard to 9-11, the Bush administration was either criminally negligent or criminally complicit. In either case, 9-11 was most convenient for launching their war plans.