One in Three Military Women Raped

In Asheville the Veterans for Peace Chapter 099 and the War Resisters League Asheville and Women in Black are standing at Vance Monument to issue a dire WARNING: One in three U.S. Military women are raped by their collegues.

The study is clear. The statistics dramatic. The truth horrifying. Where is the outcry? Do the recruiters inform women enlisting for service in war-time America that they are at risk of rape from their own colleagues, even in a war zone?

Veterans for Peace National has posted the alert. Raise your voice to support these women soldiers.

All Aboard! The Torture Accountability Train is Coming!

North Carolina is such a military-friendly state that so-called "extraordinary rendition" flights have regularly flown out of North Carolina airports in clandestine CIA operations that support the "kidnap, detention and torture of individuals alleged to be enemies of the United States, including those guilty of nothing other than being misidentified," according to the human rights group NC Stop Torture Now! They have been working since 2005 to expose and end North Carolina's central role in the ongoing U.S. torture program.

Labor Day week-end in Asheville, folks gathered for an organizing meeting for WNC Stop Torture Now! Activists attended from many human rights efforts, including WNC ACLU, WNC SOA Watch, War Resisters League-Asheville, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Buncombe Greens, NC Stop Torture Now! Women in Black, Quaker House and Veterans for Peace, Chapter 99. Folks came from Brevard, Mars Hill, Arden, Asheville, Fayetteville, and Cary, NC.

Frank Goldsmith, a cooperating attorney with the ACLU, spoke of the many financial and legislative barriers to his defense of Guantanamo prisoners and his work for their release. "We have to keep our government accountable to the law," he told us. "We have not seen any discernable difference between this administration (President Obama) and Bush. Despite the campaign rhetoric, there is zero difference."

"The torture system in America has corrupted many professions," said Chuck Fager of Quaker House in Fayetteville, N.C. He spoke of the importance of holding accountable those responsible for U.S. torture policies. "A great many roads to torture lead right to my neighborhood," he told us. "It's like waking up and finding out you live next to SS headquarters."

The WNC Stop Torture Now! group will be meeting regularly in Asheville. "The accountability train is coming," Chuck Fager notes. All Aboard!

Photo: Foreground: Author/Organizer Connie Nash and NC Stop Torture Now! representative Andy Silver. Background from left: David Ireland, Frank Goldsmith, Lyle Petersen, Dale Nash, Chuck Fager and Linda Mashburn. Photo: Clare Hanrahan, pictured at left as meeting Scribe.

Church and State

The juxtaposition of this armored police vehicle and the historic Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Asheville caught my eye. I snapped the photo last summer.

I'm not sure just what Asheville emergency will set this sinister looking vehicle in motion.

It reminds me of the British Army vehicles I saw patrolling the working class streets of Belfast when I visited in Ireland over a decade ago.

Eminent Domain at Woodlawn Wilds

The garden space I tend across from my house catches most of the sun lost to tree cover in my backyard. The land was used for years as a waste place where kudzu and garden clippings held forth while it flipped for profit from hand to hand. Over the years, I've worked to make it home to a community of healing herbs. The folks who now hold title to the land are building a "Green" home up the bank, but tell me they will let the garden stay. So the Lemon balm and chocolate mint, calendula and valarian, St. John's Wort and celendine, sage and lavendar, feverfew and comfrey, pokeweed and red clover, taragon and parsley, and all the other common and not so common sunshine loving healing herbs I can find, will continue to have a place to be where their unique beauty and healing properties can be demonstrated to all passersby.

Julyan Davis, my neighbor, appreciates the garden also. Last month I looked out to find him there, easel set up and brush in hand, capturing the garden on canvas. The scene reminded me of one of my favorite paintings by Renoir.

Julyan has come by with his easel at all hours, and from time to time throughout the month, catching the sun and shadow play in the garden, and the plants in various stages of opening and growth.

Julayan honors the garden, a place I call my "eminent domain," and one that has offered hours of contemplative time as I learn the ways of my herbal companions.

Cliffside Cakalak

The Cliffside Climate Action in Charlotte was a rousing show of resistance to King Coal and the devastation of mountain-top removal coal mining.

I helped out as a legal observer and in jailhouse support. Asheville was well represented at this remarkably well organized event, both inside and outside of the jail.

The rally and march through downtown Charlotte, energized by the drummers of Cakalak Thunder, and inspired by a diverse line up of speakers, made for a powerful showing of people power against the Earth killing practices of Duke Energy Corporation.

I watched as Avram Friedman of the Canary Coalition was loaded into the police wagon, and I waited outside the jailhouse until after 11 p.m. until all 44 line crossers were released.

Laura and Ole Sorensen were among the last to be set free. They were in high spirits, as was Richard Fireman. It was a long drive back to Asheville, but we all felt the time was well spent.

I've posted a full account of the day on the War Resisters League-Asheville blog.

I was inspired and educated and encouraged by the event. I reconnected with friends from throughout the Southeast who understand that this is a front line of action that cuts across issues. It is a war on Nature. A war on the Earth. A war on the people of these Appalachian mountains.