Please consider going to the Arlington West Memorial at the Santa
Monica Pier today, Monday, May 30th. The solemnity of the sea of
symbols representing the fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan is profound,
and sharing that among so many will be memorable. The monument
is non-'political', except in the sense of being against war. It is run and
was founded by veterans of WWII, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Veterans For Peace Los Angeles Chapter
http://www.arlingtonwestsantamonica.org
***
This video is wonderfully produced, the song itself, extrordinary. -Ed
The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPFjToKuZQM
***
Published on Friday, February 14, 2003 by the San Francisco
Chronicle
Taking a Stand on Iraq: Speak Out
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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/).
***
Excerpts from Eisenhower speeches:
:Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed... The cost of one modern heavy
bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two
electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two
fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete
pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of
wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed
more than 8,000 people."
"Crises there will continue to be," Eisenhower declared in his farewell
warning. "In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small,
there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly
action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."
***
The War Prayer: by Mark Twain
O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds
with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the
pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the
thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded,
writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes
with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their
unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn
them out roofless with their little children to wander
unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and
hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and
the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail,
imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it--
For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight
their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their
steps, water their way with their tears, strain the white
snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of
Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all
that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and
contrite hearts.
Amen
***
WAR QUOTES
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the
most profitable, surely the most vicious.
~ General Smedley Butler
I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates,
for the undying hatreds it arouses...
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
After every ''victory'' you have more enemies.
~ Jeanette Winterson
Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in
government.
~ Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of
the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
~ Robert Lynd
Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither
liberty nor safety.
~ Benjamin Franklin
War doesn't make boys men, it makes men dead.
~ Ken Gillespie
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies,
I think the soul of America dies with it.
~ Edward R. Murrow
Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent
any part of the government from deceiving the people...
~ Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.
~ George Orwell
In this war - as in others - I am less interested in honoring the dead than
in preventing the dead.
~ Butler Shaffer
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
~ Voltaire
We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's
children.
~ Jimmy Carter
That we are "to stand by the president right or wrong" is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
~ Theodore Roosevelt
War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only
one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
~ General Smedley Butler
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but
as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
~ George Orwell
Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of
democratic government.
~ Sen. Robert Taft, (R) Ohio
The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the
people.
~ Frank Kent
If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American,
it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
~ Thomas Jefferson
I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for
this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
~ James Baldwin
There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we
who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.
~ Robin Cook
All men having power ought to be mistrusted.
~ James Madison
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them
they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism
and exposing the country to danger.
~ Herman Goering
We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.
~ Benjamin Harrison
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own]
government statements.
~ Senator James W. Fulbright
I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in
the name of national security.
~ Jim Garrison
No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent,
rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.
~ Barbara Ehrenreich
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
~ Jeanette Rankin
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to
know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
~ Alexis de Tocqueville
It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is
now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced
psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
~ General Douglas MacArthur
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
~ Howard Zinn
All wars are fought for money. ~ Socrates
As for "the good war", WWII, Hitler would have been nowhere without the
support of billionaires from Europe and America (such as Prescott Bush,
grandfather the the most recent president), who looked to profit from it.
Peace,
Liz
Liz Rich
lizrich151@aol.com
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