"I raise my hand in peace ... I never bow to the laws of the thought police ... I take a holy vow ... to never kill again ...
"In the big hotels ... in the mosques and the doors of the old museum ... I take a holy vow ... to never kill again." Neil Young from new album LIVING WITH WAR
Posted by Picasa
Finally there is a positive sign for all of us who are against the dirty war in Iraq & who have lamented that so few seem willing to take on the Bush Regime . Neil Young has somewhat reluctantly taken up the challenge in his new album “ Living With War “. Hopefully this will send a message to other Rock & Pop musicians & song writers especially those of the younger generation to express their anger & dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs in the United States & around the world. By our continued silence the shameful atrocities in Iraq & elsewhere will continue . With our continued silence Death Squads & torturers will continue their immoral & illegal activities with impunity all in the name of protecting our freedom & preserving our Democratic way of life but at such an awful & horrendous costs. Finally Neil Young for one is saying “ Enough is Enough ".
Neil Young is expressing our collective outrage & anger & feelings of helplessness & frustration that the world has gone mad & there is nothing we can do about it . By speaking out Neil Young is helping to renew our hope that maybe it is possible for us to have an impact on how our society is to be shaped.
Neil Young - Living With War
I'm living with war everyday
I'm living with war in my heart everyday
I'm living with war right now
And when the dawn breaks I see my fellow man
And on the flat-screen we kill and we're killed again
And when the night falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace (visualize)
I join the multitudes
I raise my hand in peace
I never bow to the laws of the thought police
I take a holy vow
To never kill again
To never kill again
I'm living with war in my heart
I'm living with war in my heart in my mind
I'm living with war right now
Don't take no tidal wave
Don't take no mass grave
Don't take no smokin' gun
To show how the west was won
But when the curtain falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace (visualize)
In the crowded streets
In the big hotels
In the mosques and the doors of the old museum
I take a holy vow
To never kill again
Try to remember peace
The rocket's red glare
Bombs bursting in air
Give proof through the night,
That our flag is still there
I'm living with war everyday
I'm living with war in my heart everyday
I'm living with war right now
Neil Young
As Jan Frel comments in his article “ NEIL YOUNG’S SONGS OF IMPEACHMENT”
“ With Neil Young and Pearl Jam releasing devastating anti-Bush albums in the coming weeks, it looks like rock has rejuvenated its protest past.” And goes on to add:
“ Where have lyrics like that been the past five years? Young himself wondered the same question. "I was waiting for someone to come along, some young singer 18 to 22 years old, to write these songs and stand up," Young told the L.A. Times. "I waited a long time. Then I decided that maybe the generation that has to do this is still the ’60s generation. We’re still here." All 10 of the songs on Living with War directly address the issues of our political era...
May Monday 1st 2006 (02h12) :
Neil Young’s Songs of Impeachment
http://bellaciao.org
And John Strauber in his article “ NEIL YOUNG CLOBBERS THE THOUGHT POLICE “ gives an enthusiastic review of “ Living With War “ and explains :
“ I'm listening to Neil Young's new album, Living With War. It's not my first time; I was lucky enough to be at a private listening last week in California. But now, along with millions of others connected to the Internet, I'm hearing it free of charge through my computer speakers, courtesy of Mr. Young and his absolutely brilliant bunch of guerrilla marketers and movement builders.
Shock and Awe is one the best rock anthems Neil has ever penned or played: "Back in the days of shock and awe.... history was a cruel judge of overconfidence ... Back in the days of mission accomplished our chief was landing on the deck. The sun was setting on the golden photo op. Thousands of bodies in the ground brought home in boxes to a trumpet sound. No one sees them coming home that way.... We had a chance to change our mind, but somehow wisdom was hard to find..."
As he ends his article:
“ Living With War closes appropriately with America the Beautiful, the hundred-voice choir providing the perfect closure to one of the strongest and certainly the most-brilliantly released calls for peace and justice ever from a musician of Young's stature. In releasing Living With War as he has, Young is clearly challenging his artistic peers, fellow patriots and all of us. The challenge is to amp it up and take the movements for peace and justice to a new level, riding again the wave of unity and love of country that went up in toxic smoke after Bush and Cheney hijacked post-9/11 sentiment and flew America into the lies, damned lies and mess of Iraq.”
AlterNet: blog
www.alternet.org/bloggers/frel/archive/
Neil Young Clobbers the Thought Police
John Stauber on Fri, 04/28/2006
And here from Rolling Stone is a sampling from a review of “ Living With War” by David Fricke:
http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/
“ In a time of crisis, subtlety is not an option, and speed is essential. Neil Young recorded the nine original songs on this album in six days, just a month ago. He wrote four of those songs on the day he cut them. And in all nine, Young charges the current president and his administration with, among other things, lying, spying, waging war with no right or reason and dereliction of duty to the nation's founding ideals. He then calls for the most extreme judgment available to the American people in "Let's Impeach the President," with rusty-fuzz guitar, the righteous muscle of a hundred-strong choir, a trumpet playing "Taps" and the self-incriminating voice of Bush himself.
Living With War is one man's opinion: Young reports, you decide. But it is an indictment of the sorry state of open debate in this country -- and its rock & roll -- that the most direct, public and inspiring challenge to the Bush presidency this year has been made by a sixty-year-old Canadian-born singer-songwriter who, even at his most apoplectic, can't resist a line like "trippin' down the old hippie highway" ("Roger and Out"). It is also an impressive measure of Young's refusal to burn out or fade away that he states his case with clarity as well as dirty garage-trio momentum. For me, the most damning lines in "Let's Impeach the President" have nothing to do with Iraq and everything to do with Washington's shameful delinquency at home: "What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees?/Would New Orleans have been safer that way/Sheltered by our government's protection?" “
to listen to “ Living With War” check out Neil Young’s Homepage NEIL’s GARAGE at http://www.neilyoung.com/
And : http://livingwithwar.blogspot.com/
the purpose of which is as Neil says:
NEIL YOUNG - Living With War
"...this is about exchanging ideas... it's about getting a message out. It's about empowering people by giving them a voice. I know not everyone believes what I say is what they think. But like I said before.. ya know.. red and blue is not black and white. We're all together. It's a record about unification." -Neil Young (4/18/06)
This Blog contains links & hundreds of comments positive & negative. It is worth some serious attention.
But as expected the Neocons & the militant supporters of the Bush Regime are not pleased by Neil Young’s songs of protest & are up in arms that a Canadian would have the audacity to criticize the Bush Regime’s War in Iraq & challenge its attempt to create a “ Police State” . Here is an example of the Neocons opinion from The National Review:
LIVING WITH WAR
National Review
May 5, 2006
The Week
by the Editors
“ -- You can't get away from the topic of immigration nowadays. Here comes aging falsetto folk-rock singer Neil Young with a ditty in which he urges us to impeach President Bush. Sample: "Let's impeach the president for lying, / And leading our country into war; / Abusing all the power that we gave him, / And shipping all our money out the door . . ." You get the idea.
What's this got to do with immigration? Well, Neil Young is not a U.S. citizen. He's Canadian. He can't even vote. He's been in America for 40 years, and has never bothered to take out citizenship. And this interloper from the land of moose and Mounties is telling us to impeach our president! For goodness' sake. If it's not Mexican fence-jumpers trying to dictate legislation to us, it's fur trappers from the wilds of Ontario insulting our head of state. America's business is everyone's business, it seems.
Here, perhaps, at last, is useful work for some enterprising American leftist to do: record a song calling for the impeachment of Neil Young's head of state, which would be Her Britannic Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second. Britain's fighting in Iraq too, after all. “
It is true that Neil young is a Canadian but what has that got to do with anything. Americas internal politics & its international policies have an affect on much of the world - America is the only remaining Superpower & has one of the largest militaries in the world & has some tens of thousands nuclear weapons enough that is to turn the whole world into rubble. Neoconservatives believing that their country has the duty & the right to decide what is best for the world & to take whatever actions necessary to interfere with the internal politics of countries whose policies & Regimes are not to their liking.
Since the Bush Regime believes its role is to create a “ New World Order ” & thereby increasing its influence around the world; it is therefore the duty of not just Americans but also people from other countries to speak out if they disagree with the policies of the present regime in the United States.
It is somewhat disturbing how the Editors of The National Review have such disdain for Canada describing our country as a “ land of moose & Mounties “ & describes our citizens as “ fur-trappers from the wilds of Ontario” & a lot worse such as being a leftist country ruled by Marxists or as a third rate country etc. if you care to read the comments posted on various websites & blogs .
This also shows the ignorance of the so called educated Neoconservatives who seem to believe Canada is still ruled by the Queen of England.
Anyway this could be a good thing if at the very least this controversy would be a “ Wake-Up Call “ to Stephen Harper & his band of Neocons who seem to resent the fact that they themselves are not real Americans. They are American wannabes who want to make over our country into a carbon-copy of the United States as it has been & is being transformed by the Current Bush Regime which slavishly puts into practice the Political Philosophy of Leo Strauss & Neocon True Believers & their allies in the Christian Right movement.
Maybe the tide is finally turning in our favor...one can only hope ?
Anyway that’s all for now
GOOD NIGHT & GOOD LUCK
GORD.
Also see:
conservativeblogtherapy.blogspot.com/2006/04
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Neil Young and Pink are wrong...
And see:
CENSORSHIP
Ten-year-Old Forbidden from Singing Pink’s Anti-Bush Song at School Talent Show
By Matthew Rothschild
May 9, 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment