Rootsie
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« on: December 26, 2004, 01:47:11 AM » |
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Gil Scott-Heron wrote “Work for Peace” in response to Desert Storm in 1991. Praying for peace is not enough. Feliz Navidad.
Back when Eisenhower was president Golf courses were where most of his time was spent. So I never paid much attention to what the President said Because in general, I believed the President was politically dead, But he always seemed to know how the muscles were going to be flexed: He kept mumbling something about a military-industrial complex.
The military and monetary
The military and the monetary Get together whenever they think it’s necessary They have turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries, They are turning the planet into a cemetery.
The military and the monetary Use the media as intermediaries. They are determined to keep the citizens secondary They make so many decisions that seem arbitrary.
We’ve been standing behind the ‘Commander-in-Chief’ Who was under a spotlight, shaking like a leaf Because the ship of state had landed on an economic reef So we knew he’d be bringing us messages of grief.
The military and the monetary Were ‘Shielded’ by January and went ‘Storming’ into February. They brought us pot-bellied generals as luminaries. Two weeks ago I hadn’t heard of the sons of bitches And then all of a sudden they were legendary.
They took the honor from the honorary They took the dignitary from the dignitaries They took the secrets from the secretaries, But they left the ‘bitch’ in ‘obituary.’
Yeah they had some smart bombs, But they had some dumb ones as well, Scared the hell outta CNN in that Baghdad Hotel.
The military and the monetary
The military and monetary Get together whenever they think it’s necessary, War in the desert sure could seem scary But they beamed out the war to all of their subsidiaries Tried making ‘so damn insane’ a worthy adversary.
Keeping all the citizens secondary Scaring old folks into coronaries Making us wonder if all of this was really, truly necessary.
We’ve got to work for peace. We’ve got to work for peace. If we all believed in peace we would have peace. The only thing wrong with peace Is that you can’t make no money from it.
The military and the monetary Get together whenever they think it’s necessary They have turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries They are turning parts of the planet into a cemetery.
We hounded the Ayatollah religiously Bombed Libya and killed Qadafi’s son hideously. We turned our backs on our allies, the Panamanians Watched Ollie North sell guns to the Iranians Witnessed Gorbachev slaughtering Lithuanians So we better warn the Amish, they may bomb the Pennsylvanians.
We’ve got to work for peace. Peace ain’t coming this way. We’ve got to work for peace.
Peace is not merely the absence of war, It is the absence of the rumors of war and the threats of war And the preparation for war. Peace is not merely the absence of war We will have all touched the power of peace within ourselves. Because we will have all come to peace within our selves.
Peace ain’t gonna be easy. Peace ain’t gonna be free. We’ve got to work for peace.
from the album ‘Spirits’ (1994)
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