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CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
Guernica
by DAVID KRIEGER
Picasso's passion for peace
Symbol of war's horrors
Screams of death and agony
Fallen man, fallen horse
Nazi Luftwaffe bombs falling
On small Basque village
It was market day, market day
The streets were jammed
Nazis bombed and strafed
Planes diving, machine guns firing
The young Luftwaffe pilots
Found the marketplace
Screaming villagers and peasants
Running for their lives
As death blurted from the sky that day
Seventeen hundred murdered and maimed
Picasso shared his human outrage
In his unforgettable Guernica
The Guernica of screams and death
Of fallen man, fallen horse
Cowardly diplomats and generals
Try to hide Guernica but they cannot;
Cover Guernica and it emerges
Starker, stronger, truer
Guernica was painted for you
Watch the ones who avert their eyes
As they slink by in shame
Planning new wars, new sorrow.
A Note on Guernica.
Guernica is a small Basque
village that was brutally attacked by the Nazi Luftwaffe on April
27, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The attack on the unarmed
inhabitants of Guernica left 1,700 villagers and peasants dead
or maimed. It was the first time that an air force had deliberately
attacked a civilian population.
The tragedy and brutality that
occurred at Guernica was immortalized by Pablo Picasso in his
impassioned mural expressing his outrage at the murderous attack.
It is one of Picasso's masterpieces that is known throughout
the world. It depicts the horrors of war, the silent screams
of men and beasts.
Of late, Picasso's Guernica
has been in the news. The tapestry reproduction of the famous
mural that hangs outside the entrance to the United Nations Security
Council was covered with a blue curtain on the occasion of US
Secretary of State Colin Powell presenting his evidence to the
Council for war against Saddam Hussein. UN officials said that
the blue curtain was to provide a better background for the television
cameras. Certainly it is a more comfortable background, far
easier on the eyes and minds of those who plead for war than
the twisted, tormented figures portrayed in Picasso's Guernica.
No leader should be protected
from Picasso's Guernica. The tapestry of Guernica hanging outside
the Security Council is a reminder to leaders of the brutality
of war. To cover such art is to hide from the truth, and is
made all the worse when it is done to protect the sensibilities
of leaders who would wage war.
Those leaders who would promote
war for any reason should at a minimum have the courage to look
straight at Picasso's Guernica. War should never be sanitized
or made to appear heroic. There is nothing heroic about middle
aged war hawks sending young men and women off to kill and die.
It was not heroic at Guernica, and it is no more so today.
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation. He is the editor of The
Poetry of Peace (Capra Press, 2002). He can be reached at:
dkrieger@napf.org
Lick
the Spoon
by
BEN TRIPP
These are desperate
times
Our fondest dreams
A month-old gallon of cheap ice cream
A couple of pounds of sugarfoam
Shot into a cardboard carton
Tossed in the cart with the
Luncheon meat
And orange juice
Ten cans of coupon soup
And the latest issue of People Magazine.
Even our dreams
aren't rich any more
Heaven is a planned community
Where Kenny Rogers sings forever
In the absence of black people.
There's always a little Rocky Road
Or Almond Ripple
A few scrapes of French Vanilla
In the bottom of the carton
In the freezer of our kitchenette
In the poolside condo
By the 18th hole
In a Kingdom of Heaven
That looks like paradise in the postcards
But requires irrigation
To keep the golf course green.
These are desperate
times
Our fondest dreams
Are sold to us in cardboard cartons
And eaten with a spoon
Standing by the fridge
On a guilty midnight
The only difference between my dreams
And the dreams of a Jesus Lover
Is I buy my dreams off the rack by the register
And they get theirs in the mail.
Ben Tripp is a screenwriter
and cartoonist. He can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
Axis
of Assholes:
a Backside Ballad
By CHARLES M. ASHLEY
Those who shit in White House
walls
Roll their shit in great big balls.
Those who love the Limbaugh
wit
Eat those great big balls of shit.
Those of us who live with them
Are forced to eat and sigh, "A-hem!"
Stop and stand and shout, "Not
me!"
Sling some back and laugh, Tee hee!"
Charles M. Ashley lives in Tollhouse, CA.
Yesterday's
Features
Jeffrey St. Clair
In
a Land Where Justice is a Game: Killing Amos King
Anne Gwynne
Raid
on Nablus: a Hero in the Midst of Horror
Nelson P. Valdés
Why Americans Can't Travel to Cuba
Jason Leopold
Martin Peretz to Bush: Bomb Iraq
Alan Maass
"A Revolutionary Spirit in a Hostile World":
The Real Martin Luther King, Jr
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens and Booze
Sonia Ebron
Why
Black Americans Should Oppose Bush's War
Russell Mokiber and Robert
Weissman
12
Reasons to Oppose Bush's War on Iraq
Abu Spinoza
Chomsky's Power and Terror
Website of the Day
Bush
AWOL
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February 15
/ 16, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Colin
Powell and the Great "Intelligence Fraud"
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
The Whole World is Watching
Edward Said
A Monumental Hypocrisy
Wouter Hijink
Report from Amsterdam
"War: Do Not Feed!"
Linda Heard
At Last! Proud to be British
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Taking a Stand on Iraq
Robert Fisk
The Case Against War
Lev Grinberg
Lessons from Israel
A War Without Legitimacy
Chris Floyd
Cold Fronts:
Bush War Profits
Ahmad Faruqui
Stepping Back from the Brink of War
Norman Madarasz
French Kisses from the Citizens of France
Adam Lebowitz
Scott Ritter in Tokyo
Kurt Nimmo
Bring Us the Head of Osama bin Laden
Forrest Hylton
The Revolt in Bolivia
Col. Dan Smith
Irrelevance and Credibility:
Bush, NATO and the UN
Wayne Madsen
The Lies of Tom Lantos
Ranjit Hoskote
The Invisible Modernities of the Islamic World
Emily Zitter-Smith
Who's Safe Now?
An American in Cairo
Rich Procter
Anybody Remember the Powell Doctrine?
Poets Basement:
Eliot
Katz, Scott Handleman, and Bruce Tomczak
Website of the Weekend
Anti-War
Posters
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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