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CounterPunch

February 15, 2003

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

Yesterday's Features

CounterPunch News Service
Slow Lerner: It May Not Help Kids in Iraq, But It Sure Got Michael Lerner Airtime

Andrew Murray
Tony Blair Versus the British People

Ben Tripp
President A**hole

Peggy Thomson
My Close Encounter with Saddam

Gary Leupp
Meet Mr. Blowback:
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, CIA Op and Homicidal Thug

Saul Landau
Bush and Corporate Fraud

Adam Engel
A Civilian Occupation:
The Politics of Israeli Architecture

Anthony Gancarski
Jacksonville in Crisis

Rick Giombetti
Specific Threats to Democracy

Jean-David Levitte
A Warning on Iraq from France:
Make War the Last Option

Ian Gurney
Whose Side is Bush On?

Maria Engqvist
Did the FARC Shoot Down a US Military Plane in Colombia?

Ron Jacobs
This Madness Must Cease

Josh Frank
Call to Washington:
Stonewall Bush

Website of the Day
Rock Out Against War


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February 8 / 9, 2003

Bill Christison
The US Gameplan for Iraq

Intelligence Officers for Sanity
Memo to Bush on Iraq

Olive Lowell
Homeland Insecurity
Champaign-Urbana Shaken by New INS Rules

Michael Neumann
Nonviolence: Its Histories and Myths

Alison Weir
A Thousand Professors

David Krieger
On the Brink of War

Muqtedar Khan
The Logic of the Hawks

Anthony Gancarski
Pakistan on the Brink?

Jason Leopold
GAO Surrenders to Cheney

Anis Shivani
A Post-Liberal Theory of Consciousness for the Starbucks Habitué

David Vest
Dive Bomber

Norman Madarasz
The New Brazilian Cinema

Poets' Basement
Handleman, Smith, Engel

Website of the Weekend
Cities for Peace

 

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