i heard tony blair and george bush giving a press conference last week on their commitment to establish democracy round the world. all sounded fair enough at one level but it also reminded me of these lyrics by bruce cockburn to call it democracy
Padded with power here they come International loan sharks backed by
the guns Of market hungry military profiteers Whose word is a swamp and
whose brow is smeared With the blood of the poor
Who rob life of its quality Who render rage a necessity By turning
countries into labour camps Modern slavers in drag as champions of
freedom
Sinister cynical instrument Who makes the gun into a sacrament -- The
only response to the deification Of tyranny by so-called "developed"
nations' Idolatry of ideology
North South East West Kill the best and buy the rest It's just spend a
buck to make a buck You don't really give a flying f**k About the
people in misery
IMF dirty MF Takes away everything it can get Always making certain
that there's one thing left Keep them on the hook with insupportable
debt
See the paid-off local bottom feeders Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows Open for business like a
cheap bordello
And they call it democracy And they call it democracy And they call it democracy And they call it democracy
See the loaded eyes of the children too Trying to make the best of it
the way kids do One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast They call the
revolution
IMF dirty MF Takes away everything it can get Always making certain
that there's one thing left Keep them on the hook with insupportable
debt
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Reminds me of some of Dave Rovics lyrics (http://www.davidrovics.com) - especially his song "Miami".
Posted by: StephenG | November 15, 2004 at 09:40 AM
Great lyric, great song - remember the 'controversy' over his use of the f word at the time - talk about missing the point!
Posted by: mark | November 15, 2004 at 04:12 PM
Those who've seen Bruce perform this one live will know the emphasis he places on the "FFFlying FFFuck"
There's a great live recording of this on the EP `You Pay your money and you take your chance'.
The bit about `Dirty MF' could be seen as equally `controversial' given that he probably didn't mean `Dirty Monetary Fund'.
Posted by: Alex | November 17, 2004 at 01:30 AM
nothing like intelligent song writing
Posted by: ray | November 17, 2004 at 01:18 PM
absolutely, this marriage between faith and politics that holds power in the US is destroying biblical concepts of justice. props to all musicians named Bruce
Posted by: tim | November 18, 2004 at 04:36 PM
When I have heeard Bruce do this song, he tells of being asked if he thought it odd to write a pop song about economics, to which he replied "aren't all of them?"
Posted by: Bill | October 12, 2005 at 09:00 PM
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