By David Swanson

At http://defundwar.org citizen activists are constantly updating a spreadsheet tracking the positions of their congress members on voting to fund more war.

Vernon Huffman recently posted this report:
"In his recent town hall, Rep. Schrader (D-OR) said he would vote against funding the war in Afghanistan."

Leah Bolger posted this one:
"I have spoken with Congressman Schrader several times about pledging to defund the wars, HR 3699, etc. He has said repeatedly (most recently during a town hall meeting in Corvallis Oregon on Jan 30th, 2010) that he will not vote for funding to escalate troops in Afghanistan. He has also repeatedly declined to sign on as a co-sponsor of HR 3699, but I think he could still be persuaded. He is on the House Budget Committee."

This makes Schrader the 14th member of the U.S. House of Representatives listed at http://defundwar.org who has publicly committed to voting No on the next $33 billion for wars.

In normal circumstances, we would need to raise that number to 218 for Congress to reflect the will of the public and the expressed "opposition" to the wars by over 100 congress members. If, as reported, the congressional leadership includes the moving of Guantanamo's death camp to Illinois in the same bill, then we will only need 40 Democrats to vote against the war funding, because all of the Republicans will almost certainly vote No.

A group of 14 members could move this forward if any of them would take the additional step of publicly urging their colleagues to join them. We're still waiting for and asking for that leadership.

Find links to join in brownbag vigils and other actions to persuade your representative to join the list of war defunders at http://defundwar.org

Kucinich Right, Greenwald Wrong
By David Swanson

On Democracy Now! on Tuesday, Congressman Dennis Kucinich said he was working on a Constitutional Amendment to address both "Citizen's United" and "Buckley v. Valejo," meaning the Supreme Court decisions giving corporations outrageous and destructive powers of "free speech" and defining the spending of money as "speech."

By David Swanson

Walking through Charlottesville, Va., today I saw a sight that is increasingly common in the United States: men in prison uniforms, watched by guards, out working in public, in this case shoveling snow. I asked them if they were being paid for their work, and they just laughed.

A short while later I ran into a city official who was clearly familiar with the prisoner snow-shoveling program. He told me it was nothing new, part of "work release," gave the prisoners a chance to get outside, and that the prisoners were paid.

I pointed out that when asked if they were paid they laughed at me.

Then this official explained that he meant they were paid about 25 cents an hour.

By David Swanson

Peter Dyer sums up well the sort of conclusions we can draw from the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into Britain's role as sidekick launcher of aggressive war on Iraq:

"On March 18, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Elizabeth Wilmshurst resigned as Deputy Legal Adviser to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the British equivalent of the U.S. State Department.

"'I regarded the invasion of Iraq as illegal, and I therefore did not feel able to continue in my post,' she said later. Ms. Wilmshurst discussed her resignation while appearing before the current British inquiry into the Iraq War — the Chilcot Inquiry.

I've seen a lot of war movies, but this is a great one:
http://thegoodsoldier.com

This is the story of real veterans of U.S. wars, including Michael McPhearson whom many of us know as a leader in Veterans for Peace. These are veterans who have come to an understanding that war is all about training and compelling human beings to become murderous animals, and that the damage is deep even for those least harmed by this project, namely the killers themselves.

Excerpt from an Email promoting an upcoming conference:

Imagine stripping this out of the context of partisan thinking. Imagine supporting Reagan to be a brilliant intellectual. Imagine supporting the military to teach nonviolence. Shall we try supporting Wall Street to solve the housing crisis? We could support thieves to protect our stuff while we're out supporting hurricanes to provide gentle breezes.

Will anyone at this conference perhaps ask whether opposing everything we oppose might make more sense than supporting it? Or would that be too unsupportive?

It's an inspiration, an achievable goal, an organizing tool, and a route around the corporate media cartel: a giant billboard for what we all want but our televisions are afraid to mention.  It's a project worth supporting!

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.

Now, let's make this a reality.

Please join us this March 20th for the largest online monetary
war protest in history. Our goal is to bring together
100,000 people to donate $10 each (minimum),
creating a one day total of millions to fly the
Peace Blimp until we the people
force our government
to end this war.

Please pledge now by entering your email address on the peace blimp site.
Then spread the word to your friends. Thank you!

At 3pm Saturday, June 5, 2010, Humanists for Peace will hold a landmark session on peace and humanism at the 69th Annual Conference of the American Humanist Association. The conference, among the largest gatherings of humanists, atheists, and freethinkers from across the country, runs from June 3-6 at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, California.

Official website:
http://www.americanhumanist.org/What_We_Do/Annual_Conference

Kucinich is right here, and Greenwald wrong, and here's why:

Brownbaggers Not Teabaggers
VIGILS AGAINST WAR FUNDING SPREAD ACROSS NATION

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) organized "brownbag" lunch vigils against war funding at noon on Wednesday, January 20th, at the district offices of 22 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

On February 17th, PDA will be joined by CODEPINK, AfterDowningStreet, Democrats.com, the California Nurses Assn./National Nurses United, and United for Peace and Justice in holding brownbag vigils outside (or inside) at least 36 congress members' offices.

Nothing Lawrence Lessig says here is false exactly. But if Congress is the problem and the problem is the money, how can there never -- in anybody's predictable articles on this topic -- be any mention of the fact that the president takes more money than any congress member, and power to do most things has been handed over by Congress to the president? How can these two points be avoided?

Listen here.

By David Swanson

What it would have cost us to publicly fund independent media that would have prevented the invasion of Iraq wouldn't amount, in a year, to what we spend on a month of occupying that country.

Diverting the cost of a month of war to a year of giving substance to our "freedom of the press" would mean that the last time someone asked you about the Teabaggers' genius in being smart enough to talk dumb enough to persuade everyone to be racists would, in fact, be the LAST time anyone would ask you how a creation of the corporate media manages to get coverage from the corporate media.

By David Swanson

Congresswoman Donna Edwards' bill proposing a Constitutional Amendment to deny corporations the free speech rights of persons in the form of unlimited election bribery spending has now been cosponsored by: John Conyers, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Jim McGovern, Keith Ellison, Chellie Pingree, Barbara Lee, Andre Carson, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Betty Sutton, Raul Grijalva and Ed Markey.

With the exception of Carson, these congress members are also all cosponsors of the Fair Elections Act, which seeks to address the fairness of our elections by providing public financing for campaigns.

By David Swanson

The director of U.S. national intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee the government has the right to kill Americans abroad.

Here are 10 problems with this:

1. Acts that are crimes under national and international law don't cease to be crimes because you cross a border.

2. Acts that are crimes under national and international law don't cease to be crimes because you engage in them frequently. Assassinating non-Americans is just as illegal as assassinating Americans. The leap here is not to victims of a different citizenship but to the legalization of murder.

3. Killing people has nothing whatsoever to do with gathering so-called intelligence.

Listen here: http://jefffariaskxxt.podbean.com