OutOfIraq
Peace Blimp
What do you think of this project? http://www.PeaceBlimp.com
Imagine...a "Peace Blimp"- defiantly displaying a message of peace across the skies of the nation, unable to be dismissed, ignored or brushed aside. Rallies for peace greet the blimp in every city it visits. Politicians, celebrities, movie stars, athletes, war veterans and peace activists make the call to bring our troops home by boarding the blimp for a ride. Crowds flock to the events and are educated about the war. With each stop along the tour the momentum for peace grows from a dull roar into an undeniable fervor until the seemingly endless wars come to an end.
Do Those Who Oppose Torture Oppose War?
An Appeal on "Closing Gitmo"
Given that human rights organizations and activist groups want rights restored, not abuses moved from one location to another,
Given that said organizations are independent of and not legally bound in subservience to the Democratic Party,
Given that the funding to close Gitmo and move that particular illegal death camp to Illinois will be included in the "emergency war supplemental",
Given that this will likely lead all the Republicans in the House to vote No on $33 billion for wars, wars that involve murder and torture and lawless imprisonment, all on a larger scale than what happens at Gitmo,
Given that we then need only 40 Democrats to vote No to block the war funding,
Given that with the resources of human rights groups for once turned against the supreme international crime of aggressive war we could win over 40 Democrats,
- davidswanson's blog
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Blocking War Funding Just Got Easier
By David Swanson
Last June we were handed an opportunity to block the funding of our illegal, murderous, counterproductive, catastrophic, and hated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president insisted on an off-the-books "emergency supplemental" bill, and the Senate added an IMF bailout to the bill, leading all the Republicans in the House to commit what for years they'd called treason: they all voted No on war money.
So, we only needed 39 Democrats to vote No, and we could have stopped the thing, at least temporarily. We had a week-long knock-down drag-out fight, with the White House telling freshmen Democrats they would be "dead to us" if they didn't vote Yes. And we still persuaded 32 Democrats to vote No.
- davidswanson's blog
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Rep Delahunt Backs War to Please Obama
By David Swanson
Add Congressman Bill Delahunt to the list of misrepresentatives who claim to oppose wars when a Republican is president but agree to support them when a Democrat moves into the White House.
When Bush was president, Delahunt sometimes voted for war funding bills and sometimes voted against them. The inclusion in the bills of lipstick measures, such as relief for hurricane victims, etc., was not a decisive factor. Delahunt appears to have voted No when the Democratic leadership was most accepting of that action. But, with all the Republicans voting Yes, there was never a chance of a No vote actually helping to block funding.
- davidswanson's blog
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Congressman Payne: Obama Makes War OK
Congressman Payne: I Won't Oppose War Money Because Obama's President
By David Swanson
Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) has voted against war funding bills for years. Last summer he was one of 32 heroes to vote No under intense pressure from the White House to vote Yes. When I asked him a couple of years ago to sign onto impeaching Bush he immediately said "Sure!" and he did it.
Today I asked him if he would commit to voting No on the next $33 billion for war. I asked him privately, just after he'd given a long speech to a Progressive Democrats of America conference in New Jersey, a speech about how much he opposes the wars.
Payne told me that he didn't want to commit to voting No on the next "emergency war supplemental" because Obama is president, echoing Jan Schakowsky's comments last June when she made a similar reversal.
- davidswanson's blog
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MLK vs War Funding
Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr.
We do remember that you said this:
"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." -- MLK
- davidswanson's blog
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Soldier Marc Hall's Freedom Rap Song Lands Him in Liberty Jail
By Dave Lindorff
In the ironically named Liberty County Jail since December 11 sits Army Specialist and Iraq War veteran Marc Hall, a rap musician who had the audacity to write a song attacking the Pentagon for subjecting him to a so-called stop-loss order after he had finished his Army tour and had returned from a posting in Iraq.
- dlindorff's blog
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Democrats and the Corporate Media: Looking for Green Shoots in an Economic Desert
By Dave Lindorff
So much for economic “green shoots.”
The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, along with the servile corporate media, have been quick to grasp at and trumpet every little suggestion that things might be improving, as they did when the Labor Dept. announced last week that new unemployment claims had dropped to “just” 434,000, from a high of 684,000 in the week ended March 28 or last year.
Or when the Commerce Dept. reported last month that November housing starts had risen by 8.9% compared to the prior month.
- dlindorff's blog
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FOIA Request Filed for OPR Report on Bush's Lawyers
An organization of attorneys, journalists, and advocates today filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act requesting the long-suppressed report from the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) regarding the conduct of President Bush's top lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel who authored memos purporting to authorize torture and aggressive war.
The request, reproduced below along with a transmittal letter, asks for the OPR report that has long been promised by Attorney General Eric Holder, as well as an earlier OPR report completed during the last months of the Bush administration. The request also seeks the 10 page rebuttal of the 2008 report by then- Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
- davidswanson's blog
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Shooting Handcuffed Children
By David Swanson
The occupied government of Afghanistan and the United Nations have both concluded that U.S.-led troops recently dragged eight sleeping children out of their beds, handcuffed some of them, and shot them all dead. While this apparently constitutes an everyday act of kindness, far less intriguing than the vicious singeing of his pubic hairs by Captain Underpants, it is at least a variation on the ordinary American technique of murdering men, women, and children by the dozens with unmanned drones.
