Handout for WNC Veterans for Peace Chapter 099 vigil on February 21, 2023

Veterans Challenge Islamophobia
 

Veterans Challenge Islamophobia is a broad based call to all veterans to defend the values of religious freedom, equality and individual rights. These are the very same values embedded in our Constitution that many of us believed we were defending when serving in the military. The campaign is initiated and coordinated by Veterans For Peace.

A promise of diversity, openness, and compassion for people of all faiths are the fundamental values we risked our lives to serve. These values for which so many of our sisters and brothers rendered the ultimate sacrifice, must be the foundation of our nation's future. Fear-mongering in the form of politicized and weaponized rhetoric has been used to cultivate a culture of fear, hatred, and animosity, allowing for a state of violence and perpetual warfare to persist at home and abroad.

Our values, as a nation, cannot abide and will not long endure amidst the divisiveness of hate speech and Islamophobia. Therefore, we call upon all in the United States and around the world to let their voices be heard and to stand up for the values of tolerance, respect, and love for all people and all faiths.


To join Veterans for Peace, or to sign up for VFP e-News, go to: https://www.veteransforpeace.org
Western North Carolina Website: www.vfp099.org /  Facebook: Veterans for Peace
Western North Carolina Chapter 099                   Email: president@vfp099.org
Mailing address: VFP Chapter 099, PO Box 1024, Asheville NC 28802

Handout for WNC Veterans for Peace Chapter 099 vigil on February 14, 2023

 The Doomsday Clock is Still Ticking

 The Doomsday Clock that the atomic scientists came up with in the late 1940s and still use today provides us with a fascinating way to look at our world in 2023.

If the stroke of midnight represents the end of civilization as we know it, then the closer the minute hand creeps to that moment, the worse off we are.

What’s moving that mechanism?  Our propensity to assemble nuclear weapons and our willingness to use them.

We should immediately sign on to international treaties that ban the creation and testing of nuclear weapons; we should denounce first-use policies; we should take the decision to use nuclear weapons out of the hands of one individual; and we should divert our tax dollars from the military’s inflated treasury into domestic infrastructure projects.

To join Veterans for Peace, or to sign up for VFP e-News, go to: https://www.veteransforpeace.org
Western North Carolina Website: www.vfp099.org /  Facebook: Veterans for Peace
Western North Carolina Chapter 099                      Email: president@vfp099.org
Mailing address: VFP Chapter 099, PO Box 1024, Asheville NC 28802

Handout for WNC Veterans for Peace Chapter 099 vigil on February 7, 2023

 VFP Iraq Water Project

     Clean water is an essential for any nation pretending to care about its people. Iraq at one time was well along the road to providing this necessity, but a whirlwind of conflict sucking up Iraq, Iran and the United States swept all this progress away in a matter of a few years. Politics is murky, but the consequences upon people are not: life for most Iraqis went to hell. Safe drinkable water became a luxury, and the poor, the aged and infants suffered the worst.  These many years later precious few can even now count on something so simple as a safe cup of tap water.

     VFP's Iraq Water Project has supplied small water purification units, ultraviolet and reverse osmosis, to various public institutions throughout Iraq, primarily hospitals, clinics and schools. These devices, pricing out somewhere between $1000 and $1500, are affordable for us so long as contributions keep coming in. 

    All the same, Iraq is still a war zone---of our country's making, to a large degree. IWP can only look forward to the day when a more stable Iraq will once again provide for its own water needs without us.

To join Veterans for Peace, or to sign up for VFP e-News, go to: https://www.veteransforpeace.org
Western North Carolina Website: www.vfp099.org /  Facebook: Veterans for Peace
Western North Carolina Chapter 099        Email: president@vfp099.org
Mailing address: VFP Chapter 099, PO Box 1024, Asheville NC 28802