Today, the last Monday of May, is Memorial Day in the United States whose defense spending accounts for nearly 40 percent of military expenditures by countries around the world in 2023, bigger than the Next 9 Countries Combined (FYI: See the recently released figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI).
And In his nationally televised address last year, President Joe Biden described the American arms industry in Remarkably GlOWING TERMS, noting that, “just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.” (FYI: Salon, "Commentary," Nov. 15, 2023: "Good times for the military-industrial complex": American arms makers cashing in on conflict: But is it truly the arsenal of democracy?)
Selected Poems for your reflections
Memorial Day
"the first death of war" banner
dripping red
Chen-ou Liu
FYI: In war, truth is the first casualty, a military maxim attributed to Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy
Memorial Day
a layer of dust
covers the urn
H. Gene Murtha
a dark side
to the memorial
fading light
renders all
soldiers unknown
Tim Gardiner
war dead
exit out of a blue mathematics
Sumimura Seirinshi
memorial day
the parade lengthens
by a new war
Gail Oare
Gaza's night sky
a ghastly shade of red ...
at the screen's bottom
the news ticker announces
Raytheon stock soars
Chen-ou Liu
FYI: The Raytheon Company was a major U.S. defense contractor, and it supplies the Israeli government with a wide variety of weapons, including various missiles and bombs.
Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, LXIV: "campus protests"
put your bodies
upon the gears, upon the wheels
upon the levers,
stop the War Machine now ...
keffiyeh-draped students chant nonstop
FYI: Reuters, May 27: Israeli attack on Rafah tent camp kills 45, prompts international outcry
"There was nothing unusual, then we heard a very loud noise, and fire erupted around us, All the children started screaming... The sound was terrifying; we felt like the metal was about to collapse on us, and shrapnel fell into the rooms."
And ABC News, May 29: Second strike on tent camp kills 21 people and injures more than 60 near Rafah, Israel denies involvement
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