Heard this on the radio today. Ironic how appropriate it is in today's world.


Fortunate Son
by J. C. Fogarty, (Credence Clearwater Revival)
Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they're red, white and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail to the chief",
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord,
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no,
Yeah!

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no.

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more! yoh,
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no military son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, one.
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, no no no,
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son, no no no,

They just don't have any great anti-war songs anymore . . . maybe the R&B and rap charts have them now?

Fixin' to Lie Rag
by Randall Bart

Come on all you Americans.
Bush is President again.
He found a guy who's really bad.
The name's Saddam. He's in Baghdad.
So show some ID, take off your shoes.
What have you got to lose?

And it's one, two, three,
What are we searching for?
George said it, it must be true.
I believe in W.
And it's five, six, seven,
Tell me who I should hate.
There's no need to wonder why,
'Cause Presidents never lie.

The USA's the worldwide cop,
And evildoers must be stopped.
Saddam's got nukes and poison gas.
Let's go kick him in the ass.
Conquer the land, sell off the oil.
To the victor goes the spoil.

And it's one, two, three,
What are we searching for?
George said it, it must be true.
I believe in W.
And it's five, six, seven,
Tell me who I should hate.
There's no need to wonder why,
'Cause Presidents never lie.

Now there's rebuilding to be done.
Halliburton is the one.
Cheney says they have the skills.
We're the ones who pay the bills.
So give up your rights. Write me a check.
We'll make the whole world a wreck.

And it's one, two, three,
What are we paying for?
Dick said it, it must be spent.
He's our Vice President.
And it's five, six, seven,
Tell me who I should hate.
There's no need to wonder why.
Vice Presidents never lie.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and yet another, but let's start with the Fish Cheer!


well, c'mon kids and family men
Uncle Scam needs your help again
Got his-self in a terrible jam
with Osama and Saddam
So leave your job and pick up a gun
we're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
and it's 2 thousand 3, what are we fightin' 4
Don't ask me I'm a sheep and a lamb
Let's git that damn Saddam
every mom, sis, bro, let's bomb ol' Bagdad
Well, there ain't no time to wonder why
whoopee, we're all gonna die


well c'mon senators, don't hold back
jingo George wants to bomb Iraq
c'mon congress don't refrain
give the nod to get Hussein
Now's the time to back the prez
Never mind what the UN says
(chorus)

Well now c'mon networks, CNN
The ratings war is about to begin
Get those satellites in gear
cos a pulitzer prize is looming near
Just hope and pray when they drop the bomb
They drop it on ol' Saddam
(chorus)

Try the band "Rage Against The Machine" for modern anti-war songs.

For my taste, I will take Toby Keith or Darrel Worley PRO-American songs.

I grew up at the end of the sixties and got sick and tired of the wining and carping of the anti-war crowd. Vietnam might have been the wrong war at the wrong time, but most protestors were unwittingly helping the North Vietnamese and the Chinese Communists spread genocide through southeast Asia (see Cambodia, H'mong tribesmen and Laos)

For what it's worth, BMG Music has a couple of CDs you might want: "Protest Songs of the Sixties" & "Peacemakers and Potheads" (I'm not joking about the title) I have both, like the music, just not the message...........

On CD? Some of us still have the LP's with the glorious cover art!

and don't forget that Walter Cronkite . . . what a whiner he was.

Garcia and the boys............the best band eternal!

saw them twice and it was one of the more significant events of my life.





regarding Croncite, we didn't watch that network...............

Fortunate Son is most appropriate.

Here's the rock anthem that played at the end of Fahrenheit 9/11, which, based on the lyrics, must have been composed in the era of Daddy Bush:

"Keep on Rockin in the Free World"

There's colors on the street
Red, white, and blue
People shufflin their feet
People sleepin in their shoes
But there's a warning sign
On the road ahead
There's a lot of people sayin'
We'd be better off dead
Don't feel like Satan,
But I am to them
So I try to forget it,
Any way I can. . . .

Keep on rockin' in the free world
Keep on rockin' in the free world
Keep on rockin' in the free world
Keep on rockin' in the free world

I see a woman in the night;
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away,
And she's gonna get a hit
She hates her life
And what she's done to it
There's one more kid
That will never go to school
Never get to fall in love
Never get to be cool.

Keep on rockin in the free world. . . .

We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
For the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
Says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn
Got roads to drive. . . .

Keep on rockin' in the free world. . . .

Neil Young

--------------------------

Joe B.

Jake, do you honestly feel the Vietnam War would have turned out any different protest or not? The govenments we supported were utterly corrupt, the average guy was utterly pro-communist, and it was simply a better system for them, anyone who has studied Oriental cultures will tell you that. Did you know we rejected the results of the first free election in Vietnam after WWII because Ho Che Minh won? It is so impossible for us to accept the fact that these people wanted us out, and their culture commanded that even if it took a thousand years they would do it, and it is impossible to accept that certain culture perfer communism. The Chinese seem to be doing very well with using it as a starting point from which to evolve into a captalist culture.

The saddest part of the whole thing is that Ho was our ally in WWII, and repeatedly said he wished to form a non-aligned socialist govrnment that tilted to America - it was our McCarthyite far-right wing crowd that put the kabosh on that in 50s.

Anybody attend the 3 day free concet at Watkins Glen New York in the 70s - The Dead, Neil Young, 10 yrs After, forget who else. The Dead played for hours on end. 400,000 people.

One

-Mark Hetfield


I can’t remember anything
Can’t tell if this is true or dream
Deep down inside I feel to scream
This terrible silence stops me

Now that the war is through with me
I’m waking up I can not see
That there is not much left of me
Nothing is real but pain now

Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please god,wake me

Back in the womb it’s much too real
In pumps life that I must feel
But can’t look forward to reveal
Look to the time when I’ll live

Fed through the tube that sticks in me
Just like a wartime novelty
Tied to machines that make me be
Cut this life off from me

Hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please god,wake me
Now the world is gone I’m just one
Oh god,help me hold my breath as I wish for death
Oh please God help me

Darkness imprisoning me
All that I see
Absolute horror
I cannot live
I cannot die
Trapped in myself
Body my holding cell

Landmine has taken my sight
Taken my speech
Taken my hearing
Taken my arms
Taken my legs
Taken my soul
Left me with life in hell

Jimi-Hendrix's Lyrics - Castles Made Of Sand Lyrics


Down the street you can hear her scream "you’re a disgrace"
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries "oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had? "
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green

And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually

A little indian brave who before he was ten,
Played wargames in the woods with his indian friends
And he built up a dream that when he grew up
He would be a fearless warrior indian cheif
Many moons past and more the dream grew strong until
Tomorrow he would sing his first warsong and fight his first battle
But something went wrong, surprise attack killed him in his sleep that night

And so castles made of sand melts into the sea, eventually

There was a young girl, whos heart was a frown
’cause she was crippled for life,
And she couldn’t speak a sound
And she wished and prayed she could stop living,
So she decided to die
She drew her wheelchair to the edge of the shore
And to her legs she smiled "you won’t hurt me no more"
But then a sight she’d never seen made her jump and say
"look a golden winged ship is passing my way"

And it really didn’t have to stop, it just kept on going...

And so castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually

The war would have turned out the same, maybe. We did not commit to win it, LBJ & Company were a bunch of fools.

The tide turned on Ho in the 50's because the French wanted to keep the rubber plantations that were one of the few valuable things left from their empire. We stupidly supported them in that endeavor and it led to disaster.

The US had troops in "French Indochina" during the war helping Ho fight the Japanese. OSS, Marines and ethnic Chinese mercenaries mostly. When the French stepped back in, so did the Chinese & Russians (they both were spreading their influence back then)

We most likely should not have been there at all, my point is LOTS of naive well-meaning folks got behind the communists and that form of rule is abhorent to all that the US is, was and will be.

reference the march cry "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Mihn, the NLF is gonna win!"

WTF? the communist way of life was a totalitarian hell that snuffed out more lives than WWI & II combined. Do some reading of Stalin's (aka "Uncle Joe" as FDR called him) agrarian reforms, forced collectivization and see how many there were snuffed out or starved. Same with Chairman Mao's "reeducation of the peasant class.


basically, the communist elites ruled with terror and the common man got it right up the ass, kind of like in medevial Europe. If you were not landed gentry your life was not anything.

That crowd was a very small part of the anti-war movement. When I look back on the war, I remember that they did not really have as much of an impact as the casualty levels and the money required. I know in my home state of New Hampshire, the whole thing changed overnight. A company of National Guard from Manchester was activated, and on the second or third day of their arrival, fiftenn or twenty of them in a big truck ran over a tank mine, and it killed them all. Like I said, overnight. It just became less and less worth the cost - nobody knew what "winning" was supposed to look like.

Your argument is hard for me to fathom. The common man of Vietnam gave it to us up the ass.

I don't see why veitnam is always being brought up this is a war for oil not against communism.

We need it to keep our cool cars running, and to make more MB tex.

I think the hippy wannabe's are secretly thrilled about Iraq so they can do what their mommys and daddys (if known) did.

Back in the day, we used to a capello "Fortunate Son" and "Felling Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" in the evenings. It was kind of funny singing that stuff while in the military.

Oh yeah, and John Prine's, "Great Compromise". 'Nuther protest song. Great lyrics. Then of cousre, "War".