Because it is way past time for this post! I have made plenty of music posts, but for some reason I've not posted anything about the band and music that I listen to most. Sometimes it's like that, the things that are TRULY important to us are the things that we keep private. Well it's time to change that. Going all the way back to Toxicity, from 2001. It is the one CD that I can't live without. It really is how I start (and usually end) my day. I'm not saying that the other music I listen to isn't important and meaningful, it's just that in the end it all tends to come back to these songs.
SOAD Toxicity ~ Science
Making two possibilities a reality
prediting the future of things we all know
fighting off the diseased programming
of centuries, centuries, centuries, centuries
Science fails to recognise the single most
potent element of human existence
letting the reigns go to the unfolding
is faith, faith, faith, faith
Science has failed our world
science has failed our mother earth
Spirit-moves-through-all-things x6
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding
is faith, faith, faith, faith
letting the reigns go to the unfolding
is faith, faith, faith, faith
Science has failed our world
Science has failed our mother earth
Spirit-moves-through-all-things x12
Science has failed our mother earth
(I'm ALL for science, but it certainly isn't everything. If you look at everything with just the eyes of science you are missing the point! Faith does not and should not exclude science either. Science is an amazing and important tool. They are not mutually exclusive, you can have both ;)
SOAD Toxicity ~ Prison Song
They're trying to build a prison x2
Following the rights movement
You clamped on with your iron fists
Drugs became conveniently
Available for all the kids
Following the rights movement
You clamped on with your iron fists
Drugs became conveniently
Available for all the kids
I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch right here in hollywood
(nearly 2 million americans are
incarcerated in the prison system
prison system of the US)
They're trying to build a prison x3
(For you and me to live in!)
Another prison system x3
(For you and me!)
Minor drug offenders fill your prisons
you don't even flinch
all our taxes paying for your wars
against the new non-rich
Minor drug offenders fill your prisons
you don't even flinch
all our taxes paying for your wars
against the new non-rich
I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch right here in hollywood
The percentage of americans in the prison system
prison system, has doubled since 1985
They're trying to build a prison x3
(For you and me to live in!)
Another prison system x3
For you and I, For you and I, For you and I.
They're trying to build a prison x3
For you and me
Oh baby, you and me.
All research and successful drug policy show
that treatment should be increased
And law enforcement decreased
While abolishing mandatory minimun sentences
All research and successful drug policy show
that treatment should be increased
And law enforcement decreased
While abolishing mandatory minimun sentences
Utilising drugs to pay for secret wars around the world
drugs are now your global policy now you police the globe
I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch right here in hollywood
Drug money is used to rig elections
and train brutal corporate sponsored dictators
around the world
They're trying to build a prison x4
(For you and me to live in!)
Another prison system x3
(For you and me!)
For you and I, for you and I, for you and I
For you and I
They're trying to build a prison x3
for you and me
oh baby, you and me
(It's scary but it's true, land of the free, has more people in prison per head of population than anywhere else in the world, By FAR! It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)
The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England’s rate is 151; Germany’s is 88; and Japan’s is 63.
The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.
Citizens and Residents of the United States are more likely to be incarcerated than people anywhere else in the world, including China, Russia and the Middle East. American prisons and jails are notoriously unsafe, overcrowded and underfunded.
Myths have a way of hiding what we don't want to see.
Americans, for example, are quick to charge Third World dictators with abusive prison policies. But prison incarceration rates tell a different story.
Recent reports show that 45 of the 50 democratically elected state governments in the U.S., including Florida, imprison their citizens at a faster pace than any of the foreign governments headed by dictators.
Rulers in Libya, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, China and Pakistan made Parade magazine's 2005 world's worst dictators list. And the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, located in Oakland, Calif., has issued a report titled, "U.S. Rates of Incarceration: A Global Perspective," showing the incarceration rates for these five dictatorships - the number of persons in prison for every 100,000 population - ranging from a low of 57 in Pakistan to a high of 207 in Libya.
By comparison, prison policies made in Tallahassee locked up 499 state citizens for every 100,000 population in 2005. In other words, Florida imprisons its people at a rate more than two times faster than Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya and eight times faster than Pakistan under Gen. Pervez Musharraf. If inmates held in local jails in Florida were added, the spread would be even wider.
Only five states - Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Minnesota and North Dakota - have prison incarceration rates less harsh than Libya's. All other states enforce prison policies that put dictators around the world to shame, including more than 600 inmates per 100,000 population in Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas.
Read here, here here, here and here for more information.
SOAD TOxicity ~ Forest
Walk with me my little child
To the forest of denial
speak with me my only mind
walk with me until the time
and make the forest turn to wine
you take the legend for a fall
you saw the product
why can't you see that you are my child
why don't you know that you are my mind
tell everyone in the world, that I'm you
take this promise to the end of you
walk with me my little friend
Take this promise to the end
Speak with me my only mind
Walk with me until the end
And make the forest turn to sand
you take the legend for a fall
you saw the product
why can't you see that you are my child
why don't you know that you are my mind
tell everyone in the world, that I'm you
take this promise to the end of you
Take this promise for a ride
you saw the forest, now come inside
You took the legend for it's fall
you saw the product of it all
no televisions in the air
no circumcisions on the chair
You made the weapons for us all
just look at us now
why can't you see that you are my child
why don't you know that you are my mind
tell everyone in the world, that I'm you
take this promise to the end of you
(God is trying to explain to us that we are not just people but that we are created in his image, we are His children (pieces of Him). Why is that so hard to see? In other words, we are all ONE, everything is connected, it's that simple.)
SOAD Toxicity ~ Deer Dance
Round, round
Circumventing circuses
lamenting in protest
to visible police
prescence sponsored fear
batallions of riot police
with rubber bullet kisses
baton courtesy
service with a smile
Beyond the staples center you can see america
with it's tired poor avenging disgrace
peaceful loving youth against the brutality
of plastic existence
(chrous)
pushing little children
with their fully automatics
they like to push the weak around
pushing little children
with their fully automatics
they like to push the weak around
round, round
A rush of words
pleading to disperse
upon your naked walls, alive
A political call
the fall guy accord
we can't afford to be neutral on a moving train
Beyond the staples center you can see america
with it's tired poor avenging disgrace
peaceful loving youth against the brutality
of plastic existence
(chrous)
A deer dance, invitation to peace
war staring you in the face, dressed in black
with a helmet, fierce
trained and appropriate for the malcontents
for the disproportioned malcontents.
The little boy smiled, it'll all be well
The little boy smiled, it'll all be well
(chrous)
Push the weak around(3x)
They like to push the weak around.
It's about peaceful protests and ordinary citizens that are violently treated by police/riot police/military, etc. Not so amazingly, it's another direct consequence of the 'war on drugs'.
The only terrorist most Americans will ever encounter is a policeman with a badge, nightstick, mace and Taser. A Google search for "police brutality videos" turns up 2,210,000 entries. Some entries are foreign and some are probably duplications, but the number is so large that a person could do nothing but watch police brutality videos for the rest of his life. A search on "You Tube" alone turned up 2,280 police brutality videos. PrisonPlanet has a selection of the most outrageous recent cases.
Police brutality has crossed the line from using excessive force against a resisting Rodney King to unprovoked gratuitous violence against persons offering no resistance, such as the elderly, women, students, and elected officials. Americans are not safe anywhere from police. Police attack Americans in university libraries, in public meetings, and in their own homes.
"In recent years American police forces have called out SWAT teams 40,000 or more times annually.
Last year, did you read in your newspaper or hear on TV news of 110 hostage or terrorist events each day? No. What then were the SWAT teams doing? They were serving routine warrants to people who posed no danger to the police or to the public.
Occasionally Washington think tanks produce reports that are not special pleading for donors. One such report is Radley Balko’s "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" (Cato Institute, 2006).
This 100-page report is extremely important and should have been published as a book. SWAT teams (Special Weapons and Tactics) were once rare and used only for very dangerous situations, often involving hostages held by armed criminals. Today SWAT teams are deployed for routine police duties. In the US today, 75-80% of SWAT deployments are for warrant service.
In a high percentage of the cases, the SWAT teams forcefully enter the wrong address, resulting in death, injury, and trauma to perfectly innocent people. Occasionally, highly keyed-up police kill one another in the confusion caused by their stun grenades."
It is also in a bigger picture sort of way about how the USA pushes the rest of the world around. {Bush’s "war on terror" quickly became Bush’s war on Iraqi civilians. So far over one million Iraqi civilians have lost their lives because of Bush’s invasion, and four million have been displaced. Iraq’s infrastructure is in ruins. Disease is rampart. Normal life has disappeared.} It is saying that law enforcement and the goverment would not be able to get away with the brutality if we all spoke out against it. What we're doing instead(sitting back and complaning a bit, while shopping and maintaining our plastic existence) isn't helping anything. "We can't afford to be neutral on a moving train".
It really is music with an important message. You may not like how it's done, you might not be able to listen to it, but you can't deny how important these messages are. Spread the word!
