Lawrence Ferlinghetti:, in The San Francisco Chronicle February 14, 2003 And a vast paranoia sweeps across the land And America turns the attack on its Twin Towers Into the beginning of the Third World War The war with the Third World And the terrorists in Washington Are drafting all the young men And no one speaks And they are rousting out All the ones with turbans And they are flushing out All the strange immigrants And they are shipping all the young men To the killing fields again And no one speaks And when they come to round up All the great writers and poets and painters The National Endowment of the Arts of Complacency Will not speak While all the young men Will be killing all the young men In the killing fields again So now is the time for you to speak All you lovers of liberty All you lovers of the pursuit of happiness All you lovers and sleepers Deep in your private dreams Now is the time for you to speak O silent majority Before they come for you
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is San Francisco's first poet laureate (1998) and the owner and founder of City Lights Bookstore. This poem first appeared on the City Lights Web site ( <http://www.citylights.com/> http://www.citylights.com/). * * * Hi. The basis of this article is the Memorial Day Special on today's Democracy Now; the testimonies, the mother of the suicide victim, the vet who almost lost his life in Occupy Oakland, and the song, especially the song which has had over 3 million hits on the internet. It's as close to a perfect memorial as could be. You know where and when to listen/watch. Ed http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/memorial_day_honor_the_dead_heal_the_wou nded_stop_the_wars_20120523/ Memorial Day: Honor the Dead, Heal the Wounded, Stop the Wars Amy Goodman Truthdig: May 23, 2012 Gen. John Allen, commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, spoke Wednesday at the Pentagon, four stars on each shoulder, his chest bedecked with medals. Allen said the NATO summit in Chicago, which left him feeling "heartened," "was a powerful signal of international support for the Afghan-led process of reconciliation." Unlike Allen, many decorated U.S. military veterans left the streets of Chicago after the NATO summit without their medals. They marched on the paramilitarized convention center where the generals and heads of state had gathered and threw their medals at the high fence surrounding the summit. They were joined by women from Afghans for Peace, and an American mother whose son killed himself after his second deployment to Iraq. Leading thousands of protesters in a peaceful march against NATO's wars, each veteran climbed to the makeshift stage outside the fenced summit, made a brief statement and threw his or her medals at the gate. As taps was played, veterans folded an American flag that had flown over NATO military operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, Afghanistan and Libya and handed it to Mary Kirkland. Her son, Derrick, joined the Army in January 2007, since he was not earning enough to support his wife and child as a cook at an IHOP restaurant. During his second deployment, Mary told me, "he ended up putting a shotgun in his mouth over there in Iraq, and one of his buddies stopped him." He was transferred to Germany then back to his home base of Fort Lewis, Wash. "He came back on a Monday after two failed suicide attempts in a three-week period. They kept him overnight at Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis. He met with a psychiatrist the next day who deemed him to be low to moderate risk for suicide." Five days later, on Friday, March 19, 2010, he hanged himself. Said his mother, "Derrick was not killed in action; he was killed because of failed mental health care at Fort Lewis." On stage, Lance Cpl. Scott Olsen declared: "Today I have with me my Global War on Terror Medal, Operation Iraqi Freedom Medal, National Defense Medal and Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal. These medals, once upon a time, made me feel good about what I was doing. ... I came back to reality, and I don't want these anymore." Like the riot police flanking the stage, many on horseback, Olsen also wore a helmet. He is recovering from a fractured skull after being shot in the head at close range by a beanbag projectile. He wasn't shot in Iraq, but by Oakland, Calif., police at Occupy Oakland last fall, where he was protesting. On stage with the veterans were three Afghan women, holding the flag of Afghanistan. Just before they marched, I asked one of them, Suraia Sahar, why she was there: "I'm representing Afghans for Peace. And we're here to protest NATO and call on all NATO representatives to end this inhumane, illegal, barbaric war against our home country and our people. ... It's the first time an Afghan-led peace movement is now working side by side with a veteran-led peace movement. And so, this is the beginning of something new, something better: reconciliation and peace." The night before the protest and the summit, Allen threw out the first pitch at the "Crosstown Classic" baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs. Members of the teams joked that Allen could join them in the dugout, if he would only quit his day job. I dare say, the members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War wish he would. After the march and the return of the medals, I caught up with Kirkland's mourning mother as she embraced her new family: those who were protesting the wars that had taken the life of her son. I asked if she had any message for President Obama and the NATO generals. This quiet, soft-spoken woman from Indiana didn't hesitate: "Honor the dead, heal the wounded, stop the wars." Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. C 2012 Amy Goodman <http://www.commondreams.org/amy-goodman> Amy Goodman Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now! <http://www.democracynow.org/> ," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 900 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the "Alternative Nobel" prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December * * * http://www.nationofchange.org/memorial-day-thoughts-national-defense-1338127 207 Memorial Day Thought on National Defense Robert Reidh RR;s Blog: May 27, 2012 We can best honor those who have given their lives for this nation in combat by making sure our military might is proportional to what America needs. The United States spends more on our military than do China, Russia, Britain, France, Japan, and Germany put together. With the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the cost of fighting wars is projected to drop - but the "base" defense budget (the annual cost of paying troops and buying planes, ships, and tanks - not including the costs of actually fighting wars) is scheduled to rise. The base budget is already about 25 percent higher than it was a decade ago, adjusted for inflation. One big reason: It's almost impossible to terminate large defense contracts. Defense contractors have cultivated sponsors on Capitol Hill and located their plants and facilities in politically important congressional districts. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and others have made spending on national defense into America's biggest jobs program. NationofChange is a 501(c)3 <https://secure.nationofchange.org/?em=1> nonprofit funded directly by our readers. Please make a small donation to support our work. So we keep spending billions on Cold War weapons systems like nuclear attack submarines, aircraft carriers, and manned combat fighters that pump up the bottom lines of defense contractors but have nothing to do with 21st-century combat. For example, the Pentagon says it wants to buy fewer F-35 joint strike fighter planes than had been planned - the single-engine fighter has been plagued by cost overruns and technical glitches - but the contractors and their friends on Capitol Hill promise a fight. Article image <http://www.nationofchange.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_main_i mage/memorial52712.jpg> The absence of a budget deal on Capitol Hill is supposed to trigger an automatic across-the-board ten-year cut in the defense budget of nearly $500 billion, starting January. But Republicans have vowed to restore the cuts. The House Republican budget cuts everything else - yet brings defense spending back up. Mitt Romney's proposed budget does the same. Yet even if the scheduled cuts occur, the Pentagon is still projected to spend over $2.7 trillion over the next ten years. At the very least, hundreds of billions could be saved without jeopardizing the nation's security by ending weapons systems designed for an age of conventional warfare. We should shrink the F-35 fleet of stealth fighters. Cut the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons, ballistic missile submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. And take a cleaver to the Navy and Air Force budgets. (Most of the action is with the Army, Marines, and Special Forces.) At a time when Medicare, Medicaid, and non-defense discretionary spending (including most programs for the poor, as well as infrastructure and basic R&D) are in serious jeopardy, Obama and the Democrats should be calling for even more defense cuts. A reasonable and rational defense budget would be a fitting memorial to those who have given their lives so we may remain free. This article was originally posted on Robert Reich's blog <http://robertreich.org/> . _____ No virus found in this message. 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