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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Cockburn's 'They 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 fuck

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

* * * * *
Here is another in our series of anti-war and political songs appropriate for the trying times in which we live.

"Call it Democracy" may well be the only song ever writen about the International Money Fund, which Canadian singer-songwriterBruce Cockburn accuses of fostering insupportable debt in Third World countries.

(Painting: "Third World Madonna" by Wayne Forte. More here.)

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