I’ve cried these tears before and know the rage, it was about Central America then…

cd editor – note to Bahrain: I know hurts and I know its tough to keep up the good fight at times, so whats the alternative, what else is there but to make them relent. …it does makes me wonder if they, my government, are ever going to learn, are they every going to get it – that there is a better way than brutality. ..that Human Rights are foundational, they have to come first, before all other actions. I know at times it feels hopeless, but there are still a lot of us here in the US – still fighting, still trying to help them see the horrible things that come from the way they operate. I’m not stopping, no way. Phlipn

anyway, one of my favorites for the people of Bahrain…

If I had a Rocket Launcher
by Bruce Cockburn – 1983

Here comes the helicopter — second time today
Everybody scatters and hopes it goes away
How many kids they’ve murdered only God can say
If I had a rocket launcher…I’d make somebody pay

I don’t believe in guarded borders and I don’t believe in hate
I don’t believe in generals or their stinking torture states
And when I talk with the survivors of things too sickening to relate
If I had a rocket launcher…I would retaliate

On the Rio Lacantun, one hundred thousand wait
To fall down from starvation — or some less humane fate
Cry for guatemala, with a corpse in every gate
If I had a rocket launcher…I would not hesitate

I want to raise every voice — at least I’ve got to try
Every time I think about it water rises to my eyes.
Situation desperate, echoes of the victims cry
If I had a rocket launcher…Some son of a bitch would die

November 1984 (Bruce Cockburn speaking at a Concert by)

“If one needed a reason to; needed an example of why there wasn’t a Nicaraguan revolution, you can look at the situation in Guatemala, because the situation is, if anything, worse than what was happening in Nicaragua under Somosa, has been for the last 30 years.

Since the military government presently in power was installed with a little help from your neighborhood agents…. the Washington boys. They ran the country on behalf of themselves and a small land owning elite, using everybody else in the country as their personal servants; and with a cheap labor force. The way they do that is they make sure that the people don’t have enough land to support themselves on. Aside from keeping them from any access to medical care or education, they make sure that they don’t have enough land to grow enough food for a family. Which means that people have to go work for them if they want to survive.This doesn’t necessarily guarantee survival either, of course , because if people object in anyway to that kind of situation…..or maybe if they just sort of go about peacefully trying to rectify things on their own.

Getting together with their neighbours to pool resources. Getting together…. Those attempts are met with acts of incredible ferocity in order to prevent it from spreading. You never knew when one [helicopter] was gonna swing in from the north and start shooting. That situation — thats the first time I’d even seen anything like that. First hand, you know, you watch it on TV, and it doesn’t look the same somehow when you’re there. Partly because of the incredible spirit of the people. Because of that spirit and the sense of that spirit and the stories that they told of what they had survived and what they witnessed, it was impossible not to feel great sympathy for and with them. And the ease at which that sympathy slid over to a willingness to kill those who were inflicting that agony on them was a little bit shocking. It’s not an answer, especially for us, you know, to go down there and start shooting Guatemalans…. maybe for them…”

” Yeah,well, there are people in them [helicopters], you know? Which is something that – the thing is, the weird thing about it is they stop looking like people because of what they’re doing. I guess that’s what makes it so easy to want to shoot them down because they make- – -they make you feel like they forfeited their humanity somehow. But they’re pawns in it. Anyway, this song is all about that. The one thing I must stress in case anybody’s under any delusion that this is so, is that this is not a call to arms. This is, this is a cry…”