David Swanson: All 178 House Republicans plan to vote against the $100 billion Iraq/AfPak War Supplemental to protest $5 billion for the International Monetary Fund. That means 39 Democratic opponents could defeat the bill. Thirty-six Democrats on the right promised to vote no, so we only need three more.
BioDavid Swanson is the creator of ImpeachCheney.org, the Washington Director of Democrats.com and co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition; a board member of Progressive Democrats of America; of the Backbone Campaign; and of Voters for Peace. He serves on a working group of United for Peace and Justice. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign. Comments from Registered Members | (Register or log in to make your comment.) | JenniferB2 2009-06-17
The Pirate Bay has now changed their own startpage to say :
The Persian Bay.
Click here to help Iran!
They are offering a service targeting Iranian to be able to communicate through unstoppable domains using new technology. The site has already gain momentum and many Iranians are inserting messages about demonstrations, times and locations and cannot be censured by the Iranian Government.
Check the site out for more information
http://thepiratebay.com
or
http://thepersianbay.com
This is your gateway to free communication since the Iranian Government has blocked all other ways of communication! If you are in Iran, this is the place for you!!
No more censure from the Iranian Government! The is your portal! Lets organize! | Babylonbybust 2009-06-16
I propose a change..a popular vote on all bills..Even directly following 2001 ,public support for the war was incredibly LOW,some polls showing up tp 80% of those polled being AGAINST the invasion..Even most of our high ranking military officials were on the record and privately OPPOSED to the invasion..Yet extremists within our own government led us once again into disaster..When the foreign and domestic policy of this country is reflective of the people,we can say we live in a democratic society..Until that day ,the masses will remain victimized shadows of human beings,blissful in their collective ignorance and consumed within their consumption..Meanwhile the military industrial machine will continue to steamroll the world.. | Jeff Tundis 2009-06-16
Doc, the bill # is H.R. 2346/S. 1054
rpc.senate.gov/public/_files/L13S1054FY2009WarSupplementalMSJL.pdf | sunrise 2009-06-16
First step comes first, let’s stop the funding, financing and engineering pro-west affluent Iranian to over throw the democratic elected president, jus because he is working for his people not for the US and the west. And refused to let the west to plunder his oil and bomb Iran for oil. Stop the 24/7/365 around the globe to overthrow the third world countries for their resources. Google: Dean Loren" and Leuren Moret - population control.
Amazon.com "Tiny rowand: The ugly face of neocolonizalism in Africa."
Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA by Richard C. Hoagland. William Cooper "behold a pale horse"; and Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer
| runiter 2009-06-16
Excellent interview. We should do whatever we can to stop this bill. | LiberalChiroDoc 2009-06-16
Grea piece, Paul. Very, very important in that it not only highlights Republicans voting against a war funding bill (a sign of the apocalypse?) but also what Pelosi is doing behind the scenes to freshmen representatives to get this passed. Sounds like what Tom DeLay used to do.
If you would, TRNN, please include the bill number in the intro so we can look up the information on the Thomas.gov site. What is the bill # for this? |
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm coming to you today from Washington, DC. And joining me is David Swanson from Charlottesville, Virginia. Thanks for joining us, David. DAVID SWANSON, DIRECTOR, DEMOCRATS.COM: Thanks for having me.JAY: David is the Washington representative of Democrats.com. He's the cofounder of the popular blog afterdowningstreet.org. And he's also been following a piece of legislation that's working its way through Congress, a war supplemental bill which is supposed to help fund two wars but within it has some other interesting twists and turns of legislation, including some funding for the IMF. So, David, tell us what this bill's about and why you think it should not be passed.SWANSON: Well, this is yet another—and supposedly the last if it passes, which we are very hopeful it will not—supplemental emergency spending bill. So, you know, these wars that have been going on for the better part of a decade, this is off-budget, we are pretending it's an emergency, funding the occupations and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's $80-some billion. Plus extra pork and airplanes that the Pentagon doesn't even want and so on gets it up almost to $100 billion. Then there is $8 billion for the IMF, plus $100 billion in loans to, probably, bankers in East European countries through the IMF. There was this measure attached in the Senate to ban the release of torture photos, and that has been taken out, and that is a victory. But the fact that we successfully got something bad taken out is not a reason to now support the bill. We should support the bill if it's good, or not. And the overwhelming thing that it does is it gives $97 billion more to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to expand them, to expand these bombings with unmanned drones. And here we are, less than a month away from these deadlines in Iraq, when by the end of June there should be the removal of all US troops from localities in Iraq (let's see if that's going to happen) and by the end of July a chance for the Iraqi people to vote.JAY: There's an interesting convergence of forces here trying to vote against this bill. You have a certain number of Democrats—and you should give us the numbers in a minute—that are opposed to this on the basis of opposing the war. There are some Democrats that are opposed to the funding for the IMF. There's Republicans who are for funding the war, I assume, but who are against funding the IMF. So there's this whole convergence of forces all trying to kill this bill. So explain what these different forces are, first of all. Let's dig into that.SWANSON: Well, this is a bill that passed in the House initially, and 51 Democrats and nine Republicans voted no. And these were 51 Democrats voting no to the war funding to please their constituents who want these wars ended. It then went to the Senate, where the IMF measure was added. And now we're back at the house for a vote that includes the IMF. And so you have a prediction by the Democratic leaders that they will be able to bring it to a vote on Tuesday. You have a prediction that the Republicans as a bloc will oppose it. It's entirely possible that every single Republican will oppose it, not just the one or two like Ron Paul who oppose funding the wars, but will oppose it because of the IMF money.JAY: [If] the IMF piece was taken out of it, the Republicans probably would vote for it. Is that not correct?SWANSON: That's absolutely right. And they did before, which is why 51 Democrats were able to vote no and claim they had voted no knowing full well that it would pass. And so now we are here in a unique situation where we don't even need 51, we only need about 38, 39 Democrats to vote no, and it actually matters. They might actually vote no on more money and block war monies.JAY: Where do you think the voting is at the moment?SWANSON: Well, we've got a whip list at afterdowningstreet.org and democrats.com and firedoglake.com. All of the blogs are working this, and we've got about 34, we think, solid no votes among Democrats, many of those because of the IMF or because of both, some of them strictly because of the war. And we've got about 15 or so leaning strongly toward no but not fully committed. And we've got about 20 that are just undecided, not telling us anything one way or another. So the chances of getting to 39 is entirely possible, but these people are being hammered hard by Nancy Pelosi, by Rahm Emanuel.JAY: "These people" meaning the Democrats that are there to vote.SWANSON: I mean the Democrats who might vote no or they're being pushed to vote present if they won't vote yes. They are being threatened with a cutoff of any funding for their next campaign. They may be being threatened with challengers in primaries. They are under intense pressure, the freshmen in particular among the Democrats in Congress this year, from the White House and from the Democratic leadership in the House.JAY: What sort of things are people—the blogs you're talking about and people you're talking to, what kind of things are they doing to try to influence this vote?SWANSON: Well, there are all sorts of creative protests and demonstrations going on. I mean, we've talked about health care not warfare, and we've seen peace groups pushing for single-payer health care endlessly. Today was the first time I saw a group of doctors go to a Congress member's office with a giant blank check made out to the IMF and say, "We actually need money for health care, not for the IMF, which forces nations to strip people of health care." So that's helpful. We've seen all sorts of creative on-the-ground protests and postcard signature collections and so on. But what we're doing online is mostly generating phone calls. And you can go to democrats.com or afterdowningstreet.org or firedoglake.com and type in your phone number, and a little machine will call your phone and connect you to one office after another of the dozen or so key members who were borderline. And you can do this after hours and leave messages. You can do it during the daytime and talk to them, and report back what they tell you. You can take 10 minutes and call all of the key members who might vote no. And it's encouraging that a number of organizations are really pushing this when we might actually get it. It's not just for show. It might, at least temporarily, stop this bill.JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, David.SWANSON: Thank you.JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.DISCLAIMER:Please note that TRNN transcripts are typed from a recording of the program; The Real News Network cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. |
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