(From: 2010-01-04 People speaking out. Bill Moyers interview re Wall Street. )
I am reminded of Canadian Buffy St Marie’s “Universal Soldier” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWsGyNsw00&feature=player_embedded.
It is tax-payers who are responsible for illegal war and the deaths and dislocations that accompany it – – they provide the money to make it possible. Lockheed Martin feeds at the public trough. Without tax-payers’ money Lockheed Martin, a destructive force in the World, would not exist. I have criticized the American public for being complicit. I will not now be complicit when Lockheed Martin and the American military worm their way into Canada. I will not pay the portion of my taxes that go to fund what is malevolent, irrational and that displays incapacity to engage in creative problem-solving.
Sometimes it seems that we can never overcome the evils. But in fact we can, because there are so many of us.
THE LYRICS, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (listen to Buffy sing it, includes a short commentary from her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWsGyNsw00&feature=player_embedded)
He’s 5 foot 2 and he’s 6 feet 4
He fights with missiles and with spears
He’s all of 31 and he’s only 17.
He’s been a soldier for a thousand years
He’s a catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain
A Buddhist, and a Baptist and Jew.
And he knows he shouldn’t kill
And he knows he always will kill
You’ll for me my friend and me for you
And He’s fighting for Canada.
He’s fighting for France.
He’s fighting for the USA.
And he’s fighting for the Russians.
And he’s fighting for Japan
And he thinks we’ll put an end to war this way.
And He’s fighting for democracy,
He’s fighting for the reds
He says it’s for the peace of all.
He’s the one, who must decide,
who’s to live and who’s to die.
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
But without him,
how would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He’s the one who gives his body
as a weapon of the war.
And without him all this killing can’t go on
He’s the universal soldier
And he really is the blame
His orders comes from
far away no more.
They come from him.
And you and me.
And brothers can’t you see.
This is not the way we put an end to war