GET OFF PRES. ELECT DONALD J. TRUMP'S BACK–BUSH-CHENEY PROFITED MUCH FROM HALLBURTAN-PENTAGON COLLUSIO0,THROUH OIL

Sec. of State John Kerry confirmed Bush-Cheney oil resulting from Iraq illegal war as Cheney him self made two $ million that taxpayers shoveled out as bonuses. During the war this corporate government company made Halliburton Corporate oil company gain excessive growth.

This same oil caused billions of suffering, deaths, wounded warriors for life and increased gross deformities among combat soldier parents on all sides–genocide from infant malfunctions generated through heredity.

The Iraq debacle also gave strength to ISIS when the catastrophic administration fired the Iraqi Army that then joined ISIS for world inhumane power, same as futile wars. The downfall of Iraq,  like-wildfire, also caused millions of homeless refugees and orphans.  It also cost trillions of U.S dollars. But who's counting!

Helene, World Enlightened News, W.E.N.
author of Songbird Angels For International Peace and hip hot rapper lyrics Time Upon A Once and Naked Skin line dance, the history of human race in a bomb shell   helenesmith1.blogspot.com 

YOUTHS BE MASTERS OF YOUR OWN SOUL YOUR OWN SHIP–DON'T LET FIGURES IN BLACK MEANING DEATH STEAL YOUR LIFE FROM YOU

These disguised weakling bullies sacrifice your life by demanding violence and terrorism from you for their own selfish power. Be strong and in control of your own destiny. Don't believe their crooked lies. It's your precious life they endanger!

World Enlightened News, W.E.N.
author of hip hot rapper song  Time Upon A One and Naked Skin line dance both history of human race through line dance added to Songbird Angels For International Peace– helenesmith1.blogspot.com 

COMMUNIST SOCIALISTIC DICTATOR CUBA AND ELITIST CORPORATE STATUS QUO AMERICA ARE CHANGING FOR A REFORMATIONAL EVOLUTION

Swamped U.S. "Insiders"-Bush-Clinton warmongers diminishing middle class and the Cuban human rights abusers are going through a metamorphosis of their former caterpillar leaders as they will soon fly as liberated butterflies from their established cocoons–the freed working class, winners at last!

Helene, World Enlightened News, W.E.N.
Songbird Angels For International Peace, global musicians against war, with new addition on history of human race in a gun shell–an anti-race line dance Once Upon A Time and Naked Skin rapper song  helenesmith1.blogspot.com     \

PRESIDENT ELECT DONALD J. TRUMP IS MAGNANIMOUS. HE DOESN'T WANT TO HURT THE CLINTONS. HE IS A GENTLE KIND GIANT.

Besides, this president elect is also wise enough to knows the danger in personal lives addicted to tobacco, a gateway drug, alcohol and illegal drugs.  Surely he gets points for this life-long discipline. Too bad President Grant didn't have this strength since he got cancer from smoking, that was suspect from its start by its unnatural habit.  We all have to eat and drink.

Helene, World Enlightened News W.E.N.

author of Songbird Angels For International Peace, world-wide musical lyrics selected from all historical wars. This book was donated for Veterans Day to the Internet and dedicated to all Wounded Warriors and Veterans Against War.    helenesmith1.blogspot.com  a life career of writing for global peace, besides her other 50 published books all based on history and the arts

WHEN ANARCHISTS SMELL PROTEST THEIR NOSES LEAD THEM TO DESTRUCTION

When Henry Thoreau wrote about civil disobedience he didn't mean destruction of other peoples property.  And it was Mohandas Gandhi the great one followed him.  Both men were peacemakers, not troublemakers.

Today those who hate with violence and aggression by breaking windows and other extremism must be fined heavily with their names and locations published as pariahs. They also must clean up the mess and pay for their thoughtless behavior.  This does not mean peaceful protestors.

Helene, World Enlightened News W.E.N.
author of Songbird Angels For International Peace, global musicians with lyrics expressing anti-war thoughts.  For more information see helenesmith1.blogspot.com and www.macdonaldsward.com  This book essay was donated to the Internet and dedicated to Wounded Warriors and Veterans Against War on this date in honor of Veterans Day

THERE ARE MORE TALKERS THAN THERE ARE LISTENERS–FORTUNATELY DONALD J. TRUMP IS A LISTENER

This United States president elect of law and order is determined to EVICT ONLY ILLEGAL ALIENS who have broken the law–mostly men.  Other illegal immigrants come under a different category.  Perhaps they will only be fined for a "Fine Federal Fund "(F.F.F.) supporting free tuition for community college, vocational tech and other schools for promoting better paying jobs.

Helene, World Enlightened News  W.E.N.
author of Songbird Angels For Peace, world-wide musicians' lyrics  donated to Internet Nov. 8, 2016          helenesmith1.blogspot.com                    www.macdonaldsward.com

HATRED AGAINST PRESIDENT ELECT DONALD TRUMP TRIGGERS PROTESTS AMONG IMMATURE STUDENTS, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ,AND DANGEROS ANARCHISTS

Those who want to destroy the United States are often bused into cities, to smash windows, create havoc and  cause riots.

The media must keep explaining President Elect Donald J.Trump doesn't want to break up families but instead wants to remove criminals to justice in the United States, as President Obama exiled trouble makers who committed crimes. It's important youths know this hey don't  become law breakers themselves in their fear of being shipped back to their parents countries.

Helene, World Enlightened News (W.E.N.)
Author of latest book Songbird Angels For International Peace donated to The Worldwide Web for the inhabitants of Earth to read

THE UNITED STATES LOSES $71,000,000,000 EVERY YEAR FOR TAX EXEMPT RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS

Stopping this extremely excessive loss would lessen the national debt and allow every student to freely attend  community colleges and vocational tech schools.  For centuries this money has gone down the drain as tax payers have to pay the over burden.

Religious entities paying property taxes would become special good will and grace for equality sharing.  Consider such revenue charity, to get America out of serious debt and bring free education for millions of students who wished to have better paying jobs.

The people themselves would take pride in making America a stronger, more powerful nation.  It could be the new patriotic thing to do that would also make the United States greater since it is right now buried in the Middle East chaos and strife over religious civil wars that cost taxpayers trillions of dollars for toxic explosives and weaponry. This environmental pollution also causes sad birth defects to combatant parents–what the government and the media refuse to publish. 

Remember Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.  The new wars also deform infants and often abort them since they have missing arms and legs and sometimes two heads!  How more gross can war get?  No one sees this sinful corruption accept through the world wide web.

Helene, World Enlighten News W.E.N.
author of Songbird Angels For Peace, global musicians and their lyrics for international harmony  helenesmith1.blogspot.com  –the newest of her 51 published books based on history and the arts. Songbird Angels is donated to the Internet for the world to read.

TODAY–VETERNANS DAY–IS A GLORIOUS DAY FOR EARTH OUR MOTHER TO CELEBRATE A NEW BEGINNING FOR WORLD PEACE

The people have spoken for centuries to bring international peace down from the Heavens where the sun of the mythological god Jupiter worshiped his sun of God that brings the dark Earth warmth and brilliance.
'
Today I have historically dedicated my life's work for peace to wounded soldiers and combat troops who are sacrificed and bear the brunt of aggression committed by leaders for greed of other nation's land, resources and power and for their control, such as oil.

After researching and writing over 50 published books all based on history and the arts, my latest essay is Songbird Angels For International Peace (new revised post November 8, 2016–helenesmith1.blogspot.com)

I have also donated my career's work to the Internet for the entire world to realize the extensive scope of global musicians writing and singing lyrics that are sincere and often shocking as to whom the are.


All man's wars have millions of lyrics that plead for peace instead of aggression in countries interfering in foreign civil wars and proxy ones so complex those involved don't realize their allies are also their enemies in arms exchanges.

For years I have marched in veterans parades while playing in a fife and drum band of music to honor all men and women. Over 400 women fought in the U.S. Civil War, disguises as men.  All protective Armed Forces are honored on this day and every day.

But history records that Virgil born in 70 B.C.E. wrote "There is no safety in war."  This wisdom makes us think how necessity it is to make friends instead of foes. Education is the key to inspire youths not to join extremist leaders who hate and destroy all forms of life.

Helene, World Enlightened News W.E.N.

author of Fission Fusion Fission, the Making of the H-Bomb with Los Alamo's nuclear physicist at his request to co-write this book. Bill was the friend and employee of Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller.  Bill Beyer is honored in Los Alamos for believing in international peace. He and and many of his cohorts never embraced the using of the inventions of nuclear bombs on humanity and all forms of life.  They were only doing what POTUS at that time hired them to do.

AMERICA FIRST WITH TRUMP-PENCE COMMENCES NEW CHANGE WITH CLINTONS WEARING PURPLE FOR RED-BLUE SOLIDARITRY

With Donald J. Trump president elect the American voice is at last heard after decade after decade of elitist New World Order climaxing after the Bush-Clinton "Insider" imperialism no longer in power attempt to eliminate the working class out of jobs so the top class will be paid for by the remains of the middle class as the bottom rung of the hierarchical ladder lives in poverty. Big bank Wall Street power must never again be thrust against the rest of the United States.

At last there is a good chance to put America First. But first the dissenting protesters will have to tame their anger and hatred and use their energy in making America great.  Rampant racist chaos began in America ever since colonial England planted bondage of human being from Africa in the United States and surrounding islands in the 1600s.  Unfortunately with the American Revolution the founding fathers decided to protect their inherited lucrative Atlantic trade enslavement of human beings.

This evil history has left its black mark on the victims and their ancestors with them still suffering from the genocidal abuse as American Africans, as did the enslavement of  American Indians that never was successful since they refused to give up their free life style living in nature. As a result many committed suicide.

When we at last stop color-coding one another, there will be peace replacing the black clouds of animosity. We got over pegging human beings as red and yellow.  Now rival black and white must go since different nationalities are at last permitted to marry, thus making each generational DNA eventually a neutral tone with no one in time able to separate humanity by complexion. This nemesis of the world, with Goddess Nemesis still demanding revenge in wars, must go.

This history does not make for a great America. Therefore we all have a calling to get over racism started by a German in 1779 J. F. Blumenbaugh who influenced Hitter to commit the inhumane tragedy of the the Jewish Holocaust, what happened to the American Indigenous people in their Holocaust. Man is his worst enemy.

May we all be humble and bring a new spirit and goal to making America truly great as a model for the rest of the world.  Donald J. Trump adamantly opposed the Bush Iraqi War in 2003 that unleashed extremist Muslim decapitation by Jehadists against the good Muslims and the rest of the world. This illegal  International Law violation against a sovereign nation ushered in the most terrorism and violence that the world has ever seen with genocidal bombs.  We must now work together to defeat this evil, as the inhumane Inquisition and bloody Crusades of the past were at last smothered by ashes of revenge. 

Helene, World Enlightened News  W.E.N.

author of two new books Songbird Angels For International Peace, a shocking revelation of global musicians for centuries writing lyrics against war and Where Eagles Fly, a love story about a veteran and his homeless friends living on the streets of Jacksonville, FL,  both books are dedicated to war veterans AND Doctors Without Borders for peace. (helenesmith1.blogspot.com)

Virgil, born in 70 BCE wrote, "There's  No safety in War." Mahatma Gandhi said real peace can only come from the inside of each of us striving to save Earth our Mother from an early death from man-made toxic weaponry swiftly creating the most carbon in the lower atmosphere with wars the grossest gas guzzlers.

Entire Songbird Angels For International Peace post Nov. 8, 2016

The Music Maker

Cover designed by Helene Smith who historically donated this life career work for peace to the Internet for world to read about global-wide musicians from a selection of international songs for peace in all the wars

Powerful Compassion To End Wars

Shocking candid voices of musicians in rage and sorrow over sacrificed youths, burnt offerings of rival ideological revenge in endless ring of fire–with lyrics often banned

HELENE SMITH

MUSIC IS THE SOUL OF THE MIND

On wings that soar into eternity
 
LOVE MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND

 "Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer,
And the battle flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of Man, 
The Federation of the world.
. . . Ah! when shall all men's good

Each man's rule, and universal peace

Lie like a shaft across the land?"

CHORUS 

It's not bullets, it's not bombs, it's not nuclear nose-cones
streaking on land, in air and through the sea,
NO! NO!  NO!

It's the sweet apple blossoms in the spring,
It's the blue birds in the sky,
It's the sunshine behind the clouds,
YES! YES! YES!

The power of Earth is not man made,
It's the smile that makes all people beautiful,
It's precious children that need to be free
From the monsters of death that stain from greed

–words boy Alfred Lord Tennyson, music and chorus by Helene Smith (not included)

REVISED EDITION November 8, 2016

"Wisdom is better than weapons of war."

–Ecclesiastes, Hebrew Bible, developed before the 6th century, B.C.E.

Copyright © Helene Smith, 20014

ISBN 0 945 437 307    

Founder of World Enlightened News W.E.N. and 

helenesmith1.blogspot.com  and www.macdonaldsward.com

IN HONOR OF WOUNDED WARRIORS AND DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

PRELUDE  

At end of Songbirds . . . the author also dedicates her hip hop song Naked Skin and dance about the history of racism to the rapper Kanye West, who wrote among others, hip hop song:

 The glory! 

I got fury in my soul
Fury's gonna' be my goal
In my mind I can't study war no more


"We all are at war with ourselves."
  

Jesus of Nazareth walked along the road to Damascus, but he would never condone bombing  to rubble Syria through bombs of slaughter.  Jesus loved little children. Blessed are the peace makers. Youths are the first to die in futile wars.  Kanye West is not afraid to speak out against warmonger, racist politicians.

British pop star George Michael who died December 25, 2016, bravely took on the issue of war as he sang Don McClean's lyrics for the Grave:

And deep in the trench

He waited for hours

And prayed not to die

But the silence of night

Was battered by fire

As the guns and gren

Blasted sharp through the night  

Another song writer wrote:

Each war grows worse till men redeem it, and wars more evil, ere all wars cease . . . 

For we that fight till the world is free

We take no comfort in victory

We have read each other as Cain his brother

We know each other, these slaves and we

                           –G. K. Chesterton, A Song of Defeat

The irony of  archaic war aggression rains down on all forms of life. The satire is the aftermath "victory" in spoils of war–slaughtering with more boomerang revenge of toxic pollution as humanity desperately seeks wars end.

The eastern world, it is exploding

Violent, bullets loading

You don't believe in war,

But what's that gun you're toting–Barry McGuire

                        

Riley B. King (B.B. King) blues guitarist and song-writer sang antiwar songs with countless others.

But singers and composers of music have had to go underground historically. Banned song lyrics against free speech, especially were prevalent during the WW II Roosevelt-Truman period, the Vietnam War in the Johnson-Nixon time and the Iraq Oil War under the Bush-Cheney reign.  

With every war diligent protesters write songs to overcome the strain of futile, insane aggression. And it is the combat soldier who has inspired the endless cease war music, as well as the strong organization of Veterans Against Wars who continue to suffer.

However, this book is not an anthology that would require millions of pages to make world war protests complete–lock, stock and barrel. All nations in every war have their special music for attempting to end aggression. You'd think by now world leaders would get it.  Negotiation and diplomacy still wait at the gate.

This work is just a smattering of the antiwar song movements provoked by chaotic battlegrounds­_­­­­. Honest courageous voices of the people through music rise up for the unity of universal peace. Music plays a major part in all world cultures.

     

The music world's plea is to permanently end toxic war, raw and primitive. World songbirds so influentially help bring about temporary end of wars and savagery. But now they want to make it permanent. Musicians protesting wars are the most vocal harbingers of peace with many honored in a variety of halls of fame. Bob Dylan virtually changed the course of history with his cease for peace songs, along with the Hudson River singers and Greenwich Village musicians. Past music is still relevant today.

SONGBIRD ANGELS FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

Powerful Music To End Wars

AN ESSAY OF HOPE FOR ALL LIFE ON EARTH. OUR ONLY COMMON HOMELAND

The following lyrics opposing wars–endless serial crimes on Earth and the largest gas guzzler producer of carbon–are the result of the outpouring of sensitive artists for international peace. It is they who recognize youths suffer most by mad aggression from global military corporate industrial economies.

America's French and Indian Wars between Britain and rival France with First Americans on the side of the French at the time, were known in Europe as the Seven Years Wars.  British colonial history, that induced slavery of American Indians and American Africans, has proven it was the first biological warfare of genocide in the western world–all of the Americas–eventually against indigenous people in North, Central and South America.  Bruce Cockburn, who earned awards through his music, was honored in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. He wrote the following lyrics–poignant facts, only the top of the volcano erupting with conquest of rival youth-killing wars:

                      

INDIAN WARS

It's not breech-loading rifles and wholesale slaughter

It's kickback and thugs and diverted water

Treaties get signed and the papers change hands

But they might as well draft the Agreements in sand

Noble Savage on the cinema screen

An Indian's good when he cannot be seen

And the [so-called] white] [so called] race

Digs for itself a pit of disgrace

      Monster lyrics by Steppenwolf band document a history in a gun shell of how first Native Americans and Puerto Ricans were brutalized by genocide.  It was a watermark time when generational corruption again raised up its ugly head.  This is when Senator James Abourezk exposed the corruption of sterilization of these dark complexioned human beings including Puerto Ricans before Congress, generational wicked evil by order of the CIA in the 1970s through targeted extermination.

American Indians could not vote until 1924, and then it was injustice all over again­–Jim Crow "pale face" rules.

      Xiuhtezcati Martinez, a young piano composer began addressing the public about climate change at six years old as an early guardian of Earth. This Aztec-Mexican, age sixteen in 2016, spoke before the United Nations three times.  His hip hop song Be The Change inspires young people and old alike to realize each one of us can save Earth from accumulative war contamination by speaking out–"We are the change."

Fracturing (fracting) Earth our mother for oil to fund industrial military lethal weapons and toxic ammunition exported from nation to nation keeps aggression running to trigger one war after another. Young Martinez has proven war economies are for profit of the corporate elites. Martinez is a likely candidate of the future for the first traditionalist American indigenous president.

      The Iron Maiden, English heavy metal band with Paul Bruce Dickinson quite popular among the lead musicians, wrote songs about American Indians and how European immigrants and their leaders tried to kill them off through the government treating them as eternal enemies.

One song of this band is The Aftermath that always opens Pandora's box of barbarian pandemonium called war.

      For centuries non-"Indians" recorded these unjust times with newcomer Europeans only fixated on themselves and their own cultures. But the oral histories of traditionalist wars against imperial conquest are now just beginning to be published by the indigenous people–intentional extermination yet to be filmed and recording, such as the second century of corruption through Apsaalookas Then and Now, the Second Century of Dishonor, co-authored by the first traditionalist member of his nation to author a history book about his own culture and its songs, together with author of this essay. In 1992, complementary copies were presented to all members of Congress, as it had been done in 1881with The First Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson. 

      In a flame of religious fervor, an excuse to clear the way for British colonial advancement was a movement called the "divine" Manifest Destiny coined by New York City newspaper columnist John O'Sullivan. An additional blow to humanity was the Great Pauline Commission, a call for missionaries sent everywhere in America and in foreign lands, forcing Earth's peoples to convert. Indigenous people often had one choice–death or conversion.  Sabine Barring­-Gould wrote the lyrics to Onward Christian Soldiers Marching on to War, in 1865 at close of the Civil War, music by Arthur Sullivan.

      If only all three branches of the related Abraham persuasions would make peace with one another.  Even today leaders say they hear the voice of "God" telling them to commit wars of aggression like the song War by Charles Jenkins–"God's in control," blaming a deity for war..

      American Indian, Black Hawk, said:

       "There can never be peace between nations unless it is first known that true peace is within the soul of man"–what he sang about in his own traditional language.

      During the American Revolution the song The World Is Turned Upside Down, now famous in the stage musical Hamilton, was sung to a British melody, traditionally at the surrender of Cornwallis. England caused this upside down crisis when she shipped captured human beings from Africa in 1619-1776 to labor as slaves on plantations in the new world. Meanwhile, newcomers to the new world had revolted due to burdens imposed on them by King George III during the European Trans-Atlantic colonial slave system started in America and the sugar islands. This was the origin of racism in the United States, still live and festering today, but for the most part kept down to a roar by the civil rights movement through President Lyndon Johnson and a multitude of civil rights activists in the 1960s.

      However America's indigenous people felt like their world was turned upside down by strange immigrants brutally taking over their land. In paper wrapped twisted gun powder and musket balls, it is the world that First Americans experienced with all its suffering at the hands of federal government still to this by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. (BIA) Their world had changed completely from a world of nature's plenty to abject poverty on reservations, confinement to their last lands, they called prisoner of war camps. But now this property the people cherish since it is their last original territories.

       Commencing with the Revolutionary War and up to the latest aggressions, untold amounts of lyrics deplore war, as did Thomas Jefferson who wrote, "I abhor war . . . it is the greatest scourge of mankind." George Washington advised "Cultivate peace."

      In 1893 Antonin Dvorak wrote the New World Symphony, No 9.  Astronaut Neil Armstrong took a recording of this music with him on Apollo 11 spacecraft in 1969, a symbol to help foster peace for planet Earth 240,000 miles away on the moon.

       Writer David Gerrold (pen name Solomon Short) said with humor,  "Tchaikovsky was the only winner in the War of 1812," an epic tale of relentless blasting aggression. The famous musician wrote The 1812 Overture composed in 1880 featuring loud cannons bursting in air as drums beat thunder in the sky and ovations of approval as cymbals crash loudly.  These percussion dramatics make the music so very breath-taking. Russian composer Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky wrote it vividly, still popular today, as much as fireworks on the Forth of July, with the rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air, as the US ironically celebrates with more of the same gun powder invented in China during the ninth century, what powers incessant gun smoke wars.     

Gerrold's War Against the Chtorr involves animals eating human beings through fantasy. This author wrote, "Only people who have never lived through a war advocate it so eagerly."

     

      During the War of 1812 Francis Scott Key wrote lyrics to John Stafford Smith’s music composed for a London social club or pub that became the U.S. national anthem under President Woodrow Wilson. It was later arranged by John Phillip Sousa. The Star Spangled Banner graphically reflects war. Originally it was called Defense of Fort Henry in Baltimore. Some of its words now left out are:

And where is that band so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion

A home and a Country should leave us no more

Their blood has washed out the foul footsteps of pollution

No refuse could save the hireling and slave

From terror of fright or gloom of the grave

     

      When a singer years ago publicly sang these lyrics for the first time he was brutally thrown out of the ballpark by a jeering "patriotic" screaming crowd gone berserk. Ironically the United States didn't win the War of 1812 since the British Navy was much stronger.  With the American flag still there in WW II at Iwo Jima Japanese volcanic island makes more sense for the inspiration of patriotism than the 1812 war.

      Orchestras and their leaders create an optimistic view through melodic meditation, a time to relax helps us all cope from the tragedies of life though the fringe benefit of music. Their music reassures we are not alone in global strife. Musicians understand war, a constant theme song of terrorism.

     

      Beethoven's Ninth Symphony reflects universal harmony and peace that the audience takes with them as they leave the great halls of music.

     

      Based on Friedrich Schiller's poem Ode to Joy originally titled Ode to Freedom, Beethoven especially related it to the U.S. Civil War fought on behalf of human rights.

      Franz Peter Schubert's symphony Singspiele echoes centuries-long plots involving females.  In bursts of sorrow women and their children cry out. Other classical composers also got involved in distaff music such as Wagner and Berlioz. The original Athenian females realized the worldwide theme that "women do not have to bear burden of war."  So their gender decided to forbid sex as long as the men went to war. The story brings to mind memories of the Greek opera Lysistrada by Aristophanes. It involves a woman disrobing in public from despair of endless warfare.

     

      Eventually the basic drama inspired the stage musical HAIR, "the most antiwar musical of all time." all of which was controversial with nudes choreographed in dim light on public stages. This familiar story of war-torn conditions women and youths witness throughout all ages as we live between formidable, fuming wars.

"Peace and justice for all."

      Jona Lewie wrote Stop The Cavalry based on the Swedish Rhapsody and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  The lyrics start out as "Hey Mr. Churchill:

Wish I was home for Christmas

Bang!  That's another bomb' on another town

If I get home, live to tell the tale

I'd run for all presidencies

If I'd get elected,  I'll stop–I will stop the cavalry

     

      Max Carl Sandberg Martin, Sweden's King of Pop, was born in Stockholm. He has recorded 54 songs as a record-producer. Brittany Spears and Celine Dion along with himself sang The Common Thread from the album Same Rain inspired by songwriter troubadour Anders Fugelstad:

In the cold of fear and hatred

Clothed in dignity we stand

We have pieced this quilt together

Linking hearts to stitching hands.

.  . . .

We will rise like the sun

. . . . We are spirits drawn together

By the common thread

Together we will stand

     

      Bandleader composer Gilmore, with the rest of his musicians, joined the Union Army attached to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.  Gilmore also was a stretcher-bearer during such horrendous battles as Bull Run, First and Second.  In 1869 he organized a National Peace Jubilee, followed by one in which composer Johann Strauss featured his orchestra.  Gilmore rigged up an electric cannon. Later, during the performance of Verde's Anvil Chorus, 100 Boston firemen pounded out rhythmic booms on real anvils. Untold numbers of more Civil War songs joined a national protest army of its own.

      Patrick Gilmore (pseudonym Louis Lambert) during the Civil War wrote the timeless When Johnny Comes Marching  Home :

The men will cheer and the boys will shout as the ladies they will all turn out as we all feel gay when Johnny Comes Marching Home" –similar to an old Irish song in which lyrics included, "Where are the legs you used to have when you first carried a gun?"     

     

      Peter Murphy's Creme de la Creme lyrics include:

Now, we're laying on new waves

Our guns have lost their victim's names .  . . Out of ourselves, out of ourselves . . .

The secret soul, the secret soul

      Roberta Flack sang Compared to What, a song Eugene MacDaniels wrote:

The president he's got his war

Folks don't know what it's for

Nobody gives us rhyme or reason

We're chicken feathers, all without one gut

Trying to make it real

      The Police, a British band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 2008 had world's highest-earned musicians. Their Invisible Sun includes following lyrics of war-weary Ireland, ancestral homeland of  many Americans:

I don't want to spend the rest of my days

Looking at the barrel of Amalite

Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say

I don't even want to play the part

Of a statement on a government chart

      Disposable Heroes by Al Wilson played by the Metallica band has lyrics that describe war with all the stops pulled out:

Why am I dying

Killing, have no fear

Lie, living off lying

Hell, hell is here!

As General William T. Sherman deduced during the US Civil War. "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell."

      Freddie Mercury, Farrokh Bulsara, in the Queen's Band, wrote There Must Be More to Life Than This:

There must be more to life than killing

A better life for us to survive.

Non-combatants can only imagine the horror in the minds of soldiers in active flaming combat.

George Jones lyrics to The Door are gripping:

I've heard the sound of my dear mamma crying

And the sound of the train took me off to war

The awful sound of a thousand bombs exploding

And I wonder how I can take it any more.

      One of the tunes by Guns N' Roses, a Los Angeles rock band with lead singer Axl Rose, expresses severe anguish in their song Civil War:

Look at young men fighting

Look at your women crying

Look at young men dying

The way they always have done before

Look at the hate we're breeding

Look at the fear we're feeding

Look at the lives we've been living

The way we always have done before

      Sophie Kerr, a writer born in 1880, wrote, "If peace only had the music and pageant of war, there'd be no wars."

      WW I prompted more cease war music as its sequel did, WW II. During the latter war Gene Autry and Vaughn Monroe recorded wishful compassion for When the Lights Go On Again All Over the World. During the same war Harold Adamson and Jimmie McHugh wrote  “Coming Home on a Wing and a Prayer,” with the hope of wars to end as youths work for a better world free from bloodbaths of revenge on steroids.

     

      Other war sensitive albums were recorded by Country Joe McDonald and the Fish (Lydia), such as War, War, War.  Their dark humor protest song I feel Like I'm Fixin to Die Rag is included in a long, ongoing, growing antiwar list of songs that go like this:

And its one, two, three, four

What are we fighting for?

Don't ask me I don't give a damn

Next it's Vietnam

And it's five, six, seven eight

Open up the Pearly Gate

Whoopee we're all going to die

       Belleau Wood lyrics that Garth Brooks sang were written by Joe Henry.  It was Christmas Eve on a WW 1 battlefield when a truce was called. Then in the calm of the evening after the storm of battle some American soldiers noticed a German soldier at a distance.  In the shadows of the night he had stood up with snow lightly falling on his shoulders. Suddenly he began to sing with the voice of an angel, Stille Nacht as his enemy soldiers joined in with Silent Night.

But Celtic Thunder Legacy choral orchestra of young Irish men and women sing of the same peaceful spirit in more detail. The lyrics of 1915 Christmas Day in part: 

They left their trenches and we left ours

Beneath tin hats our smiles bloomed like wild flowers

We begged him for another song before the dawn

Their singer was a lad of 21

He sang the song again all solders long

To hear,  amid the mud and blood and fear

Silent Night, no cannons roar . . .

Their voices blended together in bitter-sweet harmony as the song rang out the lyrics. But suddenly they stopped singing:

Then the devil's clock struck midnight

And the sky was lit up again

And the battlefield where heaven was

Was blown to hell again

      Singer, musician, Anohhi seeks a more feminine social structure in lyrics as a transvestite.  Her Hopelessness is among many other songs with the Johnsons. One tune, Violent Men, talks about, "Never, never will we give birth to violent men," a reprise sung over and over again.

     

      Cat Stevens wrote lyrics to Peace Train:

'Cause out on the edge of darkness

There rides a peace train

Oh, peace train take this country

Take me home again

With over ten Grammy awards and a multitude of other honors, hip hop gospel singer and composer, Kirk Franklin, wrote Why We Sing along with many other melodies. His lyrics include:

And when we cross that river to study war no more.

Tiny Tim sang Irving Berlin's song Stay Down Here Where You Belong, "to please the king they've all gone to war, and no one knows what they're fighting for."  Irving Berlin among his many popular songs wrote about international peace, as Hans Eisler, too, composed songs of justice and tranquility.

      Irving Berlin, born in 1888, wrote this WW 1 song in 1819 -They Were All Out of Step, But Jim–what adds comic relief to the tense war movement. The son's mother watching Jim march off to war thought he was the only one in step, as Jim's father before him had marched in the same manner off to war.  The lyrics are:

Away he went

To live in a tent

Over in France with his regiment

Were you there, and did you notice

They were all out of step, but Jim?

      Mother's Prayer recorded by Eddy Arnold and written by Wally Fowler has only one plea–to bring her boy home safe and sound.

     

      Today, September 16,  2016 musician, actor Meatloaf (Marvin [Michael] Lee Aday,  released Braver Than We Are, by Julie Bell. It was worth waiting for. It's a real winner. Lyrics include:

Say a prayer to be better than we are

A better life to come

For a future to come

      The video is drama personified, realistic action throwing away the downfalls of a former life that includes violence and terrorism.  With the eyes of a father looking into the eyes of his infant for the first time he sees the sweet, smiling reality of a vision as we are braver than we think, especially in ending wars..

      A very familiar song that Irving Berlin composed is I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas with the lyrics "I'll be home for Christmas–if only in my dreams."  In modern times singer Leon Redbone wrote in parody. a song of sarcasm:

A soldier sits in a foxhole eating cold beans and dodging enemy fire.  Chances are the soldier died a lonely death far away from roasting chestnuts and figgy pudding.

      Frank Loesser wrote Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition. James Kern "Kay Kyser" recorded this hit song for his musicians during the big band years. During WW II this was propaganda music to prop up the government and encourage patriotism to support the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Today this song is a dichotomy. Divided in two it's title mocks religion as if a compassionate god could praise combatants killing his own creations.

      Akala from London founded the Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company to help young people discover their talent and get the fullest potential for a good life.  The word, Akala, is a Buddhist term meaning "immovable." And Akala is well named. His lyrics to Bells of War refers to the history of American Africans who have gone through war on U.S. city streets, with rhetoric that is graphic and real.  This hatred toward dark or color-coded complexion is still carried over today in governmental race wars, such as Japanese soldiers and their families demeaningly called "yellow men" and "Japs" during WW II.

      Ronnie Dunn wrote Bleed Red, perhaps forgiveness, and that there are "no winners in wars, so give peace a chance" since:

If we're fighting, we're both losing

We're just wasting our time

Because my scars, they are your scars

Any your world is mine

      Dead Kennedys punk band played a number of antiwar songs with straight forward lyrics, such as Bleed For Me. The lyrics are raw and tell of political deals to "create" wars.

Their Arsenal album,  Creature. within The Ruins contain lyric of destruction:

"The battle has been fought, but the war has just begun."

It's all about the largest arsenal, with a new reign of terror to get back in revenge, another theme song of war.

      Bob Seger composed 2+2=?:

I'm no statesman. I'm no general. I'm no kid I'll ever be, the rules not the soldier that I find the real enemy. I just want to be. It's a simple answer. Why it is I've got to die –2+2=?

     A group of modern day musicians, combat veterans, wrote War Song, simply stated, harsh lyrics amount to "war is stupid.  Poet musician Malvina Reynolds wrote Playing War in response to increasing war toys and war video games for kids:

But I say No and the kids say No 
We're not going to play war no more.

      Composer Janis Joplin's contribution to the antiwar movement was to encourage people through song to stand up for their beliefs and not be afraid to be different, as others just follow the crowd over the cliff, the established that never changes.

    

      Bet Midler and other singers made famous Julie Gold's song From A Distance:

From a distance we all have enough, and no one is in need, and there are no guns, and no bombs and no disease.

      Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote the song Universal Soldier as Donovan Leitch sang it:

But his orders come far away no more.

They come from him and you and me

And brothers don't you see.

This is not the way we put an end to war

      The song Harry Patch (in Memory of) consists of his clairvoyant experience as an English combat soldier during WW I­I–the last Tommy, British common soldier, to survive the war:

I'm the only one who got away

The others died when they fell to the ground . . . .

I've seen devils come up from the ground

I've see hell

The next one will be with chemicals

When will we ever learn?

     

      The latest Bush 2003 Iraqi antiwar songs is more demonstrative than ever before. The Last Straw by R.E.M. tells us why:

There's a hurt down deep

That has not been cured

There's a voice within me

Says you will not win

      Another song written the same year is March of Death, lyrics by Zack de la Rocha and music of DJ Slides that is a caustic accusation against the Bush War, too–the administration that lied to commit war for oil control. Heartfelt images of the worst result of futile aggression are manifest in the lyrics:

Outside my window a cowering child

Just took her last breath

One last snare in The March of Death

Perhaps the most blistering lyrics against the Iraqi War is by Eninem, in album Encore, a "Mosh" rapper hiphop protest song:

Power to the people cuz the people want peace
We don't want our souls to military beasts

 Canadian-born Neil Young’s Flags of Freedom and Living with War, part of his War album, reflect the brotherhood of man and sisterhood, too, since over 400 women fought in the Civil War disguised as men with comrades often not knowing it. Women have actively taken part in combat and espionage in all wars. But Joan of Arc blatantly came out with sword and armor during the Hundred Years War.          

      Through uplifting lyrics Neil Young makes sure no one forgets combat troops who never make it home as children also die by the thousands. With him, "War is not the last resort. It is no resort."

    

      Terry Britten and Graham Lyle wrote We Don't Need Another Hero. It was the hit song from Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. In 1985 it received the Novello award for the best song musically and lyrically. Singer Tina Turner helped made the song receive several Golden Globe nominations.  And the lyrics are:

Out of the ruins, out from the wreckage

And I wonder when we're ever gonna' change it

We are the children, the last generation

We are the ones they left behind

Can't make the same mistake again

Living the fear they left behind

      Jimmie Rodgers recorded The Soldier's Sweetheart who was sent to war in France:     

Once i had a sweetheart

Brave and true

His hair was dark and curly

.          .          .          .         

I'll keep his letter

I'll keep his gold ring, too

And I'll live a single life

For a soldier who was so true 

      Global Citizen, a rap singer, talks about another war between police and American Africans being tazzed and sentenced to prison.

      Country singer Merle Haggard wrote lyrics about Iraqi War, " No one is a winner and every one must lose."

      Neil Diamond sang He's Not Heavy, He's My Brother by Bobby Scott and Bob Russell. The Hollies also performed this song, as well as many others.

      When Paul Simon and Art Garfunkle sang this melody, Simon cried during the public performance. Many war songs are quite emotional since they involve the suffering of the entire world:

If I'm laden at all

I'm laden with sadness

That's in every one's heart

Isn't filled with gladness

Of love for every one

      Rock and roll songwriter Simon & singer Garfunkle made it to the Hall of Fame. In Paul Simon's War Time Prayer he sings about conflict-ravished families as a mother prays in wartime. His ballad The Side of the Hill is a Vietnam protest song.  Simon was very much against wars.  His lyrics are quite transparent. In essence they portray:

On the side of a hill in the land of Somewhere

A little boy lives asleep buried under earth

While down in the valley, a war rages on

As generals ordered men to kill

And to fight for a cause they long ago have forgotten.  While a little child weeps on the side of the hill.

     

      Flamboyant pianist rock and roll singer Elton John wrote lyrics to a similar antiwar song. All's Quiet on the Western Front, also title to a novel by Erich Remarque, and a movie:

A youth asleep in the foreign soil

Planted by a war

Feel the pulse of human blood driving forth

See the stems of Europe bending

From the force

      Another lyricist mourning wretched war is songwriter Eric Bogle in his Wilderness album. He sings out for "Earth, trees, sky and peace.”  Dr. Jane Goodall said we must stop fighting each other and stop destroying the natural world.

      The natural world also is reminiscent of the popular voice of John Denver, anti-war protestor having produced 300 recordings of his music, that continues to be sung about peace and saving the environment, wetlands and wild life. Remember his song, Let This Be a Voice:

There is a vision that shines in the darkness

That voice is all of our dreams

      The dual island of Trinidad and Tobago, populated by people of original European and African inheritance, is known for its national instrument, the streel drum, that represents the islands in the Caribbean. Their song We Are by RemBunction, contains lyrics:

 Keep my heart full of what burns so bright

Dedicated to everything good

Keep unity and equality . . . .

      The people there are also known for their love of nature and humanity. And it doesn't get any better than that.

      Graham Nash told Rolling Stones "Bernie Sanders is one of us."  Nash said "peace and love are stronger than hatred," with young soldiers trained to kill young soldiers in foreign lands. He recalls a childhood seeing his homeland, England, in flames and smoking ruins. Nash wrote about teaching your children well “their father’s hell,” and co-wrote other songs for international tranquility.

     

      There are scores of albums featuring musicians crying out against torturous, aggression from all ages. In 2008 for the Democratic National Convention Graham Nash, who wrote Chicago, traveled with Stephen Stills and David Crosby to perform in Colorado. For the occasion Nash changed the word Chicago to Denver for this protest song with untold numbers showing up to change the world:

Rearrange the world, it's dying

If you believe in justice

In freedom

       Other musicians such as rapper Killer Mike and Red Hot Chile Peppers have the same goal. 

      Muslim  Lupe Fiasco's (Wasalu Muhammad Jaco) song, Words I Never Said, is candidly honest in his way of speaking, "war on terrorism is an excuse to use up bullets."  When he sang this song in recent years the producers "kicked him off the stage" after singing, what he thought was free speech.  His lyrics also pronounces, "I'm part of the problem. My problem is I'm peaceful and I'm for the people, yeah."

      Rapper, hip-hop musician, Killer Mike, stage name for Michael Render, is an outstanding social activist for peace, human rights and justice. He supports Bernie Sanders and helps men out of work. His song Monster reflects his negative life experiences:

The beast is on the loose, if you treasure life then destroy it

For it is too realistic for you to simply ignore it .  .  . A new terror walks on Earth and now its up to you

If all hope shall fail then you should sit and ponder

Your faith has decided by one dangerous "monstah"

      Nat King Cole was against racism that often provokes wars. He sang

 I Ain't Going to Fight, Fight Wars No More . . Then going to get rid of the atom bomb

Something else we're going to do

We're going to get rid of the missiles, too

No more starving in the nation

Everybody gets an education . . .

But the above song was stifled.

      Scottish Bob Leslie, Jimmy Rogers, Hank Williams and Ray Charles have been antiwar musicians.

       P. J. Proby song Today I Killed A Man is  sad reminiscence of the U.S. Civil War:

Today my Sergeant told me I've done good

That I've sent another Southern soldier boy to hell

But I can't help wondering about the loss of life

And if the rebel had a wife

      Hank Williams wrote I'm Praying For The Day When Peace Will Come:

When the black clouds roll away and the sky is bright blue all day

When the guns are silent and the bombs no longer fly-from the planes

Oh, I'm praying for the day when peace will come

      Soloist songwriter David Robert Jones, stage name, David Bowie, made an antiwar track that includes his song I'd Rather Be High by his own sentiment.

I'd rather be flying

I'd rather be dead

I'd rather be out of my head

Than training guns on the men in the sand

      Beyonce Knowles song 1+1 is a love song with words of togetherness seeking security and safety in a world of gun smoke and violence. Her lyrics are for all of us: 

Pull me close and don't let me go

Make love to me

So when the world is at war

Let our love heal us all

      Paul McCartney and actor George Clooney, nephew of singer Rosemary Clooney, were appointed in different years as United Nations messengers of peace. Paul McCarthy wrote The Pipes of Peace, "will some one save the planet we're playing on?"

      George Clooney speaks out against genocide.

      Rolling Stones song by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Paint it Black also is in protest against war:

I look inside myself and see my heart is black

I see my red door I must have it painted black

Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts

It's not easy to face up to when your whole world is black

      Rolling Stone music also includes Mick Jagger’s War Baby–“children strong and pure heed not the gods of war.”

      Bobby Darin’s The Simple Song of Freedom– “Tell the people everywhere, we the people here don’t want war."

In his Blow'n in the Wind, the question is "How many times the cannon balls fly before they are banned?"

      The song Billy Don't Be A Hero tells the same old sad story of a soldier who was killed in action. Mitch Murray and Peter Callander wrote the lyrics:

Billy, don't be a fool with your life. .  . . I heard his fiancée got a letter that told how Billy died that day, the letter said he was a hero who she should be proud he died that way. I heard she threw the letter away.

      Paper Lace, Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods were some of the musicians who sang the above familiar words.

       Fats Domino wrote about a friend killed on Hamburger Hill, "the day the sun stood still–gun fire spilled blood–as he sees through their masks of war–"a sad high price to pay for politics and war.” Hamburger Hill is a parody song linked to Blueberry Hill–what Russian President Vladimir Putin sang on TV in English with passion. In 1940 Vincent Rose wrote the original music and Larry Stock as well as Al Lewis composed the lyrics. Many musicians have had their hands on this popular song that Gene Autry sang. Gene Krupa rearranged the music, as well as others.

      Oscar Wilde's poem about "Killing what we love the most" is a familiar phrase repeated in a number of songs against heinous war.

      Bruce Springsteen's Mrs. McGrath, is an Irish ballad about foreign wars, and “living on blood and a mother’s pain.” This musician wrote, "Blind faith in your leaders will get you killed."  He also told about an old truth:

Pressure from government and big business for conformity of thought goes against everything this country is about–freedom."

The song Born in the USA by soloist and  songwriter Bruce Springsteen is not patriotic but instead contains bitter words against politicians who sent an army to Vietnam during the draft­.  It is not against young US soldiers who died there or were wounded carrying out nefarious orders of death:

Got in a little hometown jam

So they put a rifle in my hand

Sent me off to a foreign land

To go and kill the yellow man

      David Hewson and Irish singer Bob Geldof sing It's A Beautiful Day.  Their fine mood songs are considered saintly, in America and in Hong Kong. Such music is replacing traditional hymns placed in US church pews. The lyrics inspire the feeling of good will on a planet where gun powder is more frequent than peace power in a war economy. The lyrics include:

 . . . See the bird with a leaf in her mouth

After the flood all the colors come out

It was a beautiful day

Don't let it get away

      Called “the messenger of peace,” Stevie Wonder’s songs reflect his conviction, “I always have been against war, and always will be against war, any war, anytime.” Under his stage name for Stevland Hardaway Morris, Stevie wrote lyrics to Front Line. It's about the trauma of solders that includes the words:

They gave me a uniform and a little salty pill to stop the big urge I might have for the wrong kind of thrill. They put a gun in my hand and said "shoot him until he's dead."

      Song Front Line, from the American Civil War, reveals how the US Army intentionally placed American Africans in the front row­–human beings as shields. Today other extremist biased thinking leads to evil when hostages are placed first for the same reason.

      The Notorious Byrd Brothers, David Crosby, C. Hillman and R. McGuinn during the Vietnam War sang about a soldier trying to avoid the draft, but finds himself on the home front. The song starts out peacefully but ends up with sound "bullets" flashing  and cracking violence and terrorism of war.

     

      The rock band Escape the Fate has Craig Mabbit singing This War is Ours:

Through the fire and the flames

A sea of dead drives men insane

This is as far as I will go . . .

The front line of war we have to find another way

      Johnny Mendel wrote Suicide Is Painless that became the TV theme song for M*A*S*H, still popular from its true portrayal of war, with a twist:

The sword of time that pierces our skin

It doesn't often hurt when it goes in

But as it works its way on in

The pain grows stronger

. . . Watch it grin.

      Combat soldiers fighting in wars live under the shadow of death, pain and suicide. Many homeless veterans barely survive on city streets. Combat shock causes nightly nightmares. Vietnam War and the Iraqi war of 2003 increased suicide rates to rise among veteran soldiers, now 22 a day.

Pearl Jam's rock band song World Wide Suicide reflects:

It’s a shame to a world of pain, what does it mean when a war takes over, it’s the same everyday hell man made.

     

      Eddie Vedder, singer and leader of Pearl Jam rock band, sounds off with anger over destructive, terrorizing war revenge on stages, in England, Israel and other places. Vedder spared no words when he cried out:

I swear there are people out there looking for others to kill! Stop, stop this fuckin' shit now, now, now. We don't want taxes going to kill children. War hurts people no matter which side the bombs are dropped.

Wars often provoke the tongue to profanity.

      All is not fair in love or war.  International Peace and its Law Court are supposed to enforce these illegal evils. As ancient Aesop said, "Any excuse would serve a tyrant."  It is still a "white  supremacist world, " (the term in numerous antiwar songs) although the wisdom of humanity is getting better at civil and human rights enforcement and the importance of unbiased secular education versus rival biased sectarianism. 

      Joseph Lardner, stage name Vents, Australian hip hop artist, wrote lyrics of Vents History of the World, to "get off his chest" class wars, refugees and Afghanistan War:

If you can't pay your bills–getting repossessed

And the Bank takes your house–you can keep the rest

It's politics and crime, world war in demand

So, every thing's  going to plan, history of the world

Round and round, round we go

      The Irish song Danny Boy that brings tears to the eyes is traditionally about a father lamenting his son going to war and never returning. Joan Baez said it is the greatest antiwar song ever written, with six verses.

      Other beloved artists who sang or recorded the melody put to this Air of Londonderry were Danny Kay, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Glen Miller, Johnny Cash, Elvis Pressley, Patti LaBelle and countless other musicians.

     

       Folk singer Lead Belly, whose real name was Huddle William Ledbetter, wrote Bourgeuse Blues a protest song against Jim Crow laws that suppressed and lynched people with more protective pigment and vitamin D than so called "white" folks."

Song Jump, Jim Crow, music by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Rida Johnson Young, published in 1917, followed the Thomas Dartmouth Daddy "Rice" black face minstrel shows produced on high school stages for decades into the 20th century. The interlocutor, always non-African, ridiculed the dancing end men not African, with cork grease faces, dressed in gaudy colors with excessively large white bows. They provided the racist humor and southern plantation mockery, negative parody and stereotype lyrics:

It's a dance that's rather shocking, to a spinster or a frump, for it's apt to show your stocking [prudish] when you make the little jump. They tell me that Victoria who's rather strict, you know, bars everybody from the court, who Jumps Jim Crow; Jump, jump Jim Crow, take a little twirl and around you go!  Slide, slide and point your toe, you're as naughty as a devil when you jump Jim Crow!

      Lead Belly and other people at the time didn't know African ancestors lived near the equator for thousands of years. It takes 20,000 years for complexion to change from dark to light and the reverse. It requires this long time for pigment to become a generational part of human DNA, otherwise human skin is merely tanned by sun rays each summer. Lead Belly and his wife went to Washington, D.C. where they couldn't get a room in the hotel since their ancestors came from the continent of Africa. After he was incarcerated for attempted murder twice, two wardens in two different prisons released him after hearing his compelling, melodic voice as he sang:

Me and my wife went all over town

And every where we went

People turned us down.

This was the origin of Goodnight Irene Good Night.  But composer Lead Belly died before getting substantial compensation and no royalties for his anti race, antiwar album.

       Nashville’s blue grass country musically-talented Dixie Chicks spoke out on stage against the Iraqi War and it's instigators G. W.Bush and Dick Cheney, because they objected to the illegal aggression. Their black-balling boycott from radio with their CD's gathered up and destroyed by a steamroller, was the worst suppression of speech in the history of American music.  One song they sang was Travelin' Soldier, a sad love song written by Bruce Robison.  These sisters of the band members were Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie MacGuire.  Laura Lynch and Robin Macy were founders of the Dixie Chick Band.

     

      Madonna wrote the song American Life within a video showing scenes of a war of madness. She was ostracizes as much as the Dixie Chicks even though their main message was international peace.

     

      Today Barry Manilow who has performed for the Norwegian-Swedish Nobel Peace awards in Oslo brings the world together in song and compassion–world friendship.  "I write the songs that make the whole world sing, I write the songs that make girls cry"_­–as many of their lovers never return from war.

     

      Barry sang Porter Robinson's song, Years of War:

Two hundred years of war

Fight till we are no more

A curse on the streets of gold

It's war hawks to the core who killed for gold in Africa during the Boer War. From spoils of war to the greed for oil, it's time to take the power from the thrown.

Bob Marley composed the song WAR:

Until the philosophers who hold one race

superior and another inferior finally and permanently discredit and abandon it–

everywhere is war.

From Bob to Bob, Bob Dylon gave Bob Marley a song book of these lyrics throughout the world that drip with sadness and regret.

      P. F. Sloan wrote Eve of Destruction that Barry McGuire sang, recorded and made a hit:

Don't you understand what I'm trying to say?

Can't you feel the fear I'm feelin' today?

If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away

There's no one to save the world in a grave

Mick Terry, Jo Stafford and Gordon McCrae sang The Nuke's a Hazard.

_–

      Eric Clapton, with his blues/ rock songs of his blue guitar yacht is the son of a Canadian WWII father and an English mother. Luciano Pavarotti sang an emotionally soul-rending duet with Clapton, a concert on behalf of war children left behind.

      And lest we forget (a phrase in one of Rudyard Kipling’s poems) the “Cranberries” sang War Child lyrics.

        Courageous Debbie Reynolds protested the Vietnam War and was arrested with others after the tragedy of  Ohio Kent University students killed by national guard stopping antiwar voices.


      Pavarotti was impressed by pianist singer Andre Bocelli's voice and talent as he sang A Ray of Hope by Shimon Peres, Nobel Peace Laureate and president of Israel–a plea for international peace.

    

      Rock band Blondie also sang War Child. It tells about a homeless veteran living on the street in New York City. He said "I fought in Vietnam":

Behind his shirt he wore the mark

He bore the mark with pride

A two-inch deep incision carved

into his side

War child, victim of political pride

.     .     .     .

Mind the war child

There's no victory in war.  Other Blondie War Child lyrics written by Debbie Harry and Nigel Harrison tell about the Cambodia War and the war in the Middle East.

      The band sang Blonde Concrete–God Is a Bullet:

Shoot straight, shoot to kill, yeah

Blame each other, let's blame ourselves

You know, God is a bullet

Have mercy on us everyone

       Jim Hendrix wrote Machine Gun, civil wars, the violence in civil war gun battles:

Machine Gun tearin' my body apart

Evil men make me kill . . .

Evil men make me kill you

While we're only families apart

Well, I pick up my axe and fight like a farmer

But your bullets knock me down to the ground.

      Dolly Parton’s heartfelt song Daddy Won’t Be Home Anymore, is as moving as “The Despairs” singing Burnt Out Souls:

A burnt out life sold to war, a wasted youth searching for a lost childhood.

      Musician activist Holly Near asked,:

Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?

    

       “We can chase down all our enemies, bring them to their knees.  We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can’t bomb it into peace,”–said musician Michael Franti from San Francisco, leader of  “Spearhead” band. Knowing children often have no shoes, for years he's protested war poverty by going barefoot even on TV shows and on the stage. His ancestry and culture of American Indian, American African and Irish suffering, makes him sensitive to the hardships of others.

      One song in the musical by Harold Rome, Pins and Needles, includes Sing Me A Song of Social Significance:

Sing me of war and sing me of breadlines" that are part of the aftermath of aggression that also causes lines of millions of refugees without homes.

      Fun loving-actor Jack Nicholson and Robert Rafelson wrote the “War Chant” for Head movie originally titled Headquarters performed by pop-rockers Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and British singer Davy Jones. These Monkees sang–"Give me a W, give me an A and give me an R."   It is said this film failed.  Monkee fans couldn't see it, even though the band was at the height of their short careers that made them kin to the Beatles. Mike Nesmith song Circle the Sky brings up images of the horrors of war. Peace is always the underdog when it comes to chaotic warlords exposed by captivating and realistic images in musicians lyrics.

    

       Vaugn Monroe was the composer of the song Old Soldiers Never Die, "They just fade away" was what General Douglas McArthur originally said. He promised to return to the Philippines after WW II. The lyrics include "Until one day he did return, and once more there was peace again." His father Arthur McArthur was a soldier in the Civil War. When Douglas went to West Point his mother moved there to help him with his studies.

    

      Frank Sinatra early in his life was averse to hatred and racism as he raised funds for veteran housing while singing songs of love. He and Sammy Davis, Jr. were adamantly against war. Davis’s lyrics for peace are still memorable and go straight to the heart. Sinatra spoke of “the revered Prince of Peace and how more blood has been spilled in his name than any other figure in history."

      But the modern-day Prince Rogers Nelson–songwriter, singer, dancer and actor–who died in 2016–was also well known worldwide. He won Grammy and Golden Globe awards and was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He and Jesus a Hebrew from Nazareth both had dark complexions­­­–what Caucasians have fought against for centuries. The Prince in modern times was the most consistent antiwar activist of his era. His song Resolution tells the truth, "No one ever wins in war."

     Mavis Staples, civil rights activist for African Americans influenced by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. collaborated with Prince and sang with Bob Dylon on TV.  Mavis and the Staple Singer Sisters sing an emotionally inspiring song titled MLK; according to Mavis "And in the march for peace tell them I played the drum." As the author of this book Songbird Angels For International Peace also marched for peace in Washington, D.C,  and played the fife for Peace Hymn of the Republic, her alternative lyrics for Battle Hymn of the Republic.

     Getting back to Sinatra he said, “It’s all one world, pal. We’re all neighbors.”  "Amen, my friend, amen." The author of this essay stood alone by his grave at Cathedral City near Palm Springs in California. At his headstone she looked up and saw a swaying branch with leaves fluttering in the wind. In her mind she could hear the breezes whisper,  "I did it my way!" On his grave she noticed a cardboard sign made by a fan who wrote, 'He may be dead but his music lives on."

      In the ancient Hebrew Bible it is written, "Seek peace and pursue it." Archaic Pangaea, Earth, was literally pulled, pushed and twisted into continents and islands on tectonic rock plates from asteroids or other outer space  celestial bodies crashing into Earth and pushing up mountains. Today the world is politically torn apart, as much as the old song World is Turned Upside Down, but we the people are noq divided by toxic, fanatic religious wars going on from ancient times­­, as we're afraid to say religion is to blame.  Neighbors among the seas, we must be friends instead of enemies, just what Sinatra believed.

    

      John Mayer wrote Waiting for the World to Change:

Now if we had the power to bring back our neighbors from war . . . . there'd be no more ribbons on the door.­

-­–not even a yellow one around a tree. But Earth's musicians and artists are making the change, at last, as the 45th U.S. elected president, Donald J. Trump who opposed the the Bush Iraqi War of 2003, has pledged to change America from the old established government elitist stagnant swamp. He also is reluctent to send any soldier into harm's way through uniting the nation to end endless wars.

      Songwriter Don McClean, in his album Headroom, wrote a song about my pal Joe in Saigon at the time of the Vietnam War. Some  fans say McClean's song contains the saddest lyrics ever written–1967 Ninety Sixty Seven:

. . . the draft caught up with me

Me and my pal Joe went off to war

We might find heroe's heaven

We surely will win of course

But we'll keep the country free

When the battle war is done

They brought Joe back in plastic on the plane

But I can't forget my friend or ease the pain

His picture may grow faded

But I'll never forget my buddy

Joe . . . . Why did we go, because

they sent us 

      Billy Joel sang Good Night Saigon (Vietnam War town renamed Ho Chi Minh City for the trail going through these slaughtered lands) as fighting started in Laos and Cambodia prior to Vietnam War. A drama was produced about Saigon. These arcane wars remained a dual secret in which soldiers fighting in it were not permitted to tell anyone about the inhumane agaression. But now some of the veterans are speaking about the hushed up aggression years ago.  U.S. planes carpet bombed the people Laos, especialy, to smithereens, a nuclear-coined word. Main industry to this day is scrap metal from the missiles, bombs and bullets, with un-detonated ones are going off in fields still to this day why President Obama visited Ho Chi Minh to help them with funding of most bombed area. Since it was kept top secret there are few or no lyrics against these wars, the most bombed small area on Earth. Billy Joel's Saigon lyrics inclusw:

We came in as spastic

Like tameless horses

We left in plastic 

Like numbered corpses . . .

And we all would go down together

Yes we all would go down together 

The lyrics also include, "After the last war is over, science and poetry will rule in the new world to come."

     

Billy Joel wrote and sang Shades of Gray. too:

Fight 'till the other man falls down, kill him before he kills you . . . I'm old and I'm tired of war.  Wars are not worth the price, but as Judy Garland and Joel Gray sang Cabaret,  music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb– Money, Money. Money Makes the World Go Around so we all are dizzy from the conatant heat and beat of the rape of war.

     

      According to singer Tony Bennett, peacemaker (along with his son, Danny), “War is the lowest form of human behavior.”–echoing Albert Einstein's words, "War is murder." Bennett found glorified war to be a complete paradox after fighting in WW II Battle of the Bulge.

   

      The English rock band whose theme song is the Crimson Court of the Crimson King has graphic antiwar lyrics through bloody wild maddening sounds and images that reach a crescendo of "innocents raped by napalm" in the Vietnam War and concludes "war is bad."

    

      Christiana Aguilera sang Cease Fire, the forlorn voice of a war-torn combat soldier.

This fighting is hopeless as told by the lyrics:

We need this to end

It's going too far

I don't know how it began

We're hurting each other

I can't pretend.

      Marvin Gaye sang:

"War is not the answer; only love can 

conquer hate."

      The first musician to entertain troops overseas was Al Jolson. When he returned he sang War Babies, the first war song by this name. Eddie Fisher with a voice of an angel, sang Goodbye G.I. Al, by David Gates. Jolson paid his own way to war-torn lands to help relieve combat soldiers heartlessly dubbed "Government Issues," during the Korean War and ever after. 

      Jolson promised America would take care of all the orphaned Belgian babies before he left. Lyrics to War Babies were written by Ballard MacDonald with music by Edward Madden and James Hanley.

Little war babies, our hearts ache for you

Where will you go and what will you do"

Gone is your dear daddy too

But you'll share in the joy

Of our own boys and girls

War babies. we'll take care of you

Who knows if the government followed through with Jolson's promise.

During and after the Korean War, WW I and II songs were revived. But one song written between 1950 and 1953 is titled God Please Protect America by Jimmie Osbourne:

:

How can we stand another war

To take our loved ones dear

And leave our homes so lonesome

With dread and fear?

     

      Bob Hope entertained and sang for GI's in foreign wars for fifty years.

The song Brother, Can You Spare a Dime by lyricist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg and composer Jay Gorney written in 1930 was during the US Depression. Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee sang these lyrics:

Once in khaki suit, ah, gee we looked swell

Full of that Yankee doodly dum

Half a million boots went sluggin'

through the hell

And I was that kid with the drum.

"We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior than the disorder of war"

–said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who addressed issues of the Vietnam War and civil disobedience.  He also observed "We have guided missiles and misguided men."

     

      Peace activist, radio host David Swanson from Cleveland, Ohio, wrote books End War and War Is A Lie.  This author might want to write lyrics for antiwar songs.  He wrote, "Wars are the refutation of every major argument used against wars, with a focus on those wars that have been mostly defended as just and good."

     

      Ted Turner, founder of CNN and Turner Broadcasting Company, said "Music has a great power for bringing people together." He compared sports to wars that do not kill.  

     

      Greek singer Nana Mouskouri's Song of Liberty appropriately became popular in America where the great icon is the Statue of Liberty. Nana's lyrics include:

When you cry I cry with you in sorrow . .

I believe you are the symbol of our humanity, lighting up the world to eternity.

      Sadly, women in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iran (from the first Persian Gulf when war crimes were first committed (for oil in the Middle East and duting the Itaqi War), women and children especially have suffered atrocities by carpet bombing of Fallujah, now again in 2016. The women still fear pregnancy of deformed babies, as well as combat mothers in America and in other nations–all victims of militants sucking on nuclear missile pacifiers for false safety.

      Combat soldier parents of modern wars know toxic chemical, radioactive warfare grossly deforms infants what also happened in Vietnam with Agent Orange. Knowing this fact, warmongers suppress the truth. Is the world going to end with all humanity deformed by man himself through his obsession to commit futile faith wars?

       Sodom County, German band wrote lyrics of Sodom for their song Agent Orange that talks about pain to the end of life­–a burning sensation of fire with no flame. The cry of combat veterans still rise up  in circling winds from its use and illegal dumping in Korea, as well as Vietnam.  The song Agent Orange! Agent Orange! is now the title by this heavy metal thrasher Sodom band using their instruments to imitate horrible explosions and sounds of war as herbicides flooded foreign vegetation bringing death to all forms of life.

       Dreadful miscarriage of justice through genocide affects all soldiers–friend and foe alike–an evil committed by their masters of war.

    

      Bob Dylan wrote and sang profound lyrics for his song Masters of War, words that are heart wrenching–sung and recorded by so many other artists, too:

You've thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled, to bring children into the world, for fear threatening my baby unborn and unnamed, you ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins. 

His rallying cry for protesters to end wars is aimed at the promoters of war:

You fasten on the triggers

For others to fire

Then you sit back and watch

As the death count gets higher

You hide in your mansion

While the young people's blood

Flows from their bodies

And are buried in mud.     

Dylan's Chimes of Freedom ring out with:

For the warriors whose strength is not to fight, refugees on unarmed roads of flight.

The Times They Are Changing by Bob Dylan tells writers and critics to beware that losers in the game of war may later win, the fickle truth about the fate of one battle after another.  No wonder Bob Dylan was the 2016 Nobel Peace Laureate for his literature that is so candi about wars.

      Funk, punk, hip hop rapper Raymond Lawrence (Boots) Riley’s band, The Coup, sings about malfeasance of G.W. Bush leading up to the Iraqi War. Their song, The Head, is on behalf of the working class, but stands for his father, head of the CIA:

War isn't about one land over the next

It's about people dying so the rich can cash checks

      Conor Oberst of the Bright Eye's Band wrote about how[G.W. Bush talks to God:

Does he ask to rape our women's rights

And send poor farm kids off to die?

Does god suggest an oil hike

When the president talks to god?     

      One song of the Iraqi War angry soldiers wrote, America the Brutal, by Six Feet Under:

Mr. President I'm not here to do your dirty work, although it's a losing cause, dying for oil. NO WAR. NO WAR NO WAR. Listen to a fuckin' joke that made you believe it was true.

War frustrates global people so badly. War rhetoric is as barbaric as war itself.

      Historically Sheryl Crow's album includes folk song Detours, concerning the Iraqi War that destabilized Iraq and led to Syrian war empowering ISIS, that was dormant. But after the Iraqi army was fired, it joined with ISIS and its terrorism threatened the world. At this time songs with Bush quotations were springing up like weeds. Cheryl Crow lyrics include:

"The president spoke with words of comfort with a teardrop in his eye. Then he led us into war."

She sang and played music with Kid Rock. But when they were told at the Grammy awards not to mention antiwar statements, she displayed a peace sign around her neck and "No War" words written on her guitar strap.

      Those presenting the awards, Bonnie Raitt and Fred Durst, "slipped into their script extra words as India.Arie (Arie Simpson) getting her awards before the telecast urged her fellow song writers to add their war statements too.  All this happened as war mongers were preparing to attack Iraq for no good reason. Simpson sang the song There's Got To Be A Better Way.

      John Melloto ncamp revised Woody Guthrie's Vietman lyrics of turmoil From Baltimore to Washington to new words:

So a new man came to the White House

But it's worse now than when he came

From Texas to Washington

      Tom Russell sang his antiwar songs, such as The Wounded Heart of America. What concerns Leonardo De Caprio and Susan Sarandon  and other Hollywood stars, is poisoned war environment in the aftermath of Earth's endless wars.

   

       Mohandas Gandhi said "worst wars are in the minds of man." And it is these battles that first must be won with love, respect and justice for others instead of malicious war. One of Great Mahatma's favorite songs is When Hearts Are Hard by Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali sung by Jagit Singh:

When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of music 
 . . come to me with thy peace and rest.

    Hard-Times Come No More in wars, are the words of Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864) of Pittsburgh. This  "Father of American Folk Music," included in his song:

It's a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,

It's a wail that is heard upon the shore

It's a dirge that is murmured across the lonely plains

Oh, hard times come no more 

Foster's song Better Times are Coming obviousy has a more positive tone, .even though he wrote the music in 1862 during the Civil War:

Hurrah! Hurrah!  Hurrah!

Sound the news from din of the booming

Tell the people far and wide

That better times are coming!

      What every combat soldier knows is more than that of any civilian.  The aftermath of wars cause poverty and all troubles within Pandora's box of evil.  Foster's lyrics were about "nations quarreling who is the stronger," and "slaughtering men for glory's sake," and "let us aid it all we can, ev'ry women, ev'ry man, even the smallest help, if rightly giv'n, makes the impulse stronger'–but " 'twill be strong enough some day, wait a little longer."

     Bobby Burns' many songs reflect the goodness in life in place of war.  "We'll take o cup of kindness now for Auld Lang Syne." The progressive constant rally cry has always been for all wars to cease since even traditional weapons are illicit by their genocidal nature itself.     

     

       Arlo Guthrie, musician Woody Guthrie's son, wrote Alice's Restaurant Massacre, a true story about the army refusing to draft a soldier for being immoral. He was arrested for littering with a bag of garbage, a twisted affair. In the songwriter's own words, the ironic note is:

"I'm sittin' here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough to join the army–[that] is burning women, houses and villages."

The story at the time of the Vietnam War became inspiration for youths to resist the US draft and end war. As a result this free speech was banned in America's established war economy. Yet fundamentalist preachers often open Congress with encouragement to pray for international peace, within a hell-bent corporate industrial war economy.     

     

      English heavy metal band Black Sabbath wrote the song War Pigs, the evil that rich men commit wars and the poor youths have to fight them as they are brain washed to kill or be killed for survival, strangers whom they never met. This brings to mind Napoleon who wrote, "Religion keeps the poor from killing off the rich."

           

      Crass band wrote Fight War, Not Wars by Jeremy Ratter and Peter Coomber.

   

       Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter composed the cease war song One Tin Soldier Rode Away for Cher. Environmentalist Sonny Bono, her partner, sang protester war songs, too.

      

      Laurel Nyro, Joni Mitchell with fellow songwriters protested wars for years. Canadian musician and composing artist Joni Mitchell said, "They won't give peace a chance."

      Gordon Lightfoot's Little Play Soldiers lyrics are also symbolic:

Soon they will lie on the battlefield, 'stead of tucked away safe in their bed. Kingston Trio sang this song.

      Artist Martkita's song album Toy Soldiers tells the same story–"Bit by bit torn apart we never win, but the battles wage on for little toy soldiers."

       Never forget Michael Jackson’s Earth Song:

All the children dead from war–Did you ever stop to notice the crying Earth, the weeping shore?”  His song We've Had Enough has a similar ring:

In the middle of a village

Way in a distant land

Was a poor boy with a broken toy

Too young to understand

Why his mother had to die

What did the soldiers come here for?

If they're for peace

Why is there war?

      The Tom Paxton album states "Will Come and let it begin with me."

       Peter Yarrow, songwriter musician, as a peace activist said his "prayer and hope is for global peace" instead of hot endless wars and constant military interference into foreign nations.

"Blood, Sweat and Tears" jazz rock band includes lyrics to this theme song:

Something inside me said I was a victim of a war. I was a victim of madness, that should be stopped before the war.

Ben Harper's antiwar song Gather 'Round the Stone expresses true morose:

Old men who send children off to die in vain, they will hear death's constant whisper call, remember my name.

The Kinks wrote Some Mother's Son:

Some one has killed some mother's son today.

Head blown off by some soldier's gun. While all the mothers stand and wait

      Fanatic religionists aren't the only ones who commit vicious crimes through hatred. Is war no less a crime using youths as fodder and fish bait on land and in seas asunder with war?  Cries on behalf of the armed forces continue to rise up with no more wars. They're needed more at home to help people caught in nature's catastrophes of war climate change. And "no more bombs dropped on any man's land!'–what triggers revenge going around in blazing circles and pools of blood in the name of rival faiths.

      Bushy One-String guitarist wrote the song of his life:

War and Crime can never be friends

 (No, No)

War and crime will never end, no

      David Broza reflects regrets in his lyrics,. "Children wear wings and fly off to the army for two years and return without the answers." But his words also reveal a bright star of hope. He helps heal the divide between Israel and Palestine by playing his guitar and singing uplifting words for all to get along in friendship.

      Molly Hatchets's lyrics tell war as it is through the eyes of a combat soldier:

The devil's laughing hard and loud deep in hell tonight

My feet are bleeding right through my shoes Ground is cold as ice

Sing no killer angels, can you hear my cry? It seems like a sin when nobody wins and so many have to die

      Lyrics to Angels Punished by Lacuna Coil  conjures up despair:

The bitter blood of a children's cry inside the truth far from my sky, war destruction­–war destruction–can't you take me away from your lies?

      Doron Levinson wrote Lay Down Your Arms, after being wounded in a religious war. Many youths have sung this song in numerous choirs globally.

      Fashion designer Jean-Paul Sartre said, "When the rich wage wars, it's the poor who pay for it."  This quote is also on an early signboard now included in a museum in two volumes­–Tavern Sign's of America, the most comprehensive book of its kind written by this essay's author, showing a man making his troubled way across Earth.

      Among other angels for peace are musicians so influential their voices helped bring about the end of the uncivil, civil war in Vietnam. Phil Ochs, folksinger on behalf of civil rights, said "one good song with a message can move people more deeply than a thousand rallies." He wrote:

Ain't Marching Any More. It's the old men who lead us to war, and it's the young who fall. 

      Lucian Green's Antiwar Song, includes words, "War, war, war, no more war, move on." Gordon Baxter said it all in his question Why Must the Brave Die Young?, a compassionate song.

 

      Added to old time greats are Willie Nelson and Woody Guthrie. They kept strumming along the Hudson River with their soul music for a greener Earth in boats the Woody  and the Clear Water with these activists leading the clean up of the river believed to have been impossible. The last trickle of pollution came from the General Electric Company, after much singing and persuasion for this company to help the environment. For years these musicians were ostracized for objecting to the Vietnam War and war contamination

     

      The Weavers Family singers, a folksong quartette from the 1940s that Pete Seeger and others founded, wrote and sang cease from war and increase nuclear disarmament. During the paranoid Senator Joe McCarthy era "witch hunts," there was an intense dragnet that affected the Weavers and other musicians. The Vietnam war was fought to defeat the ideology of communism, but never succeeded since ideology can't be bombed away. The end of wars must come from the inside, not the outside.     

       There was an entire album called The Vietnam Songbook reminiscent of that unpopular war, as it is with the Iraqi War.

     

      Along the same Hudson River Bob Lusk reflects a bold social conscience as he became a peace activist, a member of Veterans for Peace and the ”Kings Mall Seven” musicians–all arrested for reading names of soldiers who died in the 2003 Middle East invasion, attack, and occupy war. In Lusk's song Read Me the Dead, and he did, despite the president's abolition of free speech. The chorus lyrics are:

           

Cursed be the leaders who shamed memories of foot soldiers, veterans, each one a hero. "These are their names, their battles have ended, we stand in their honor, and we stand here for peace"

–all victims of US military “shock and awe” strategy, as he bravely revealed who died.

      Peter, Paul and Mary were other peace advocates "wondering where all the flowers have gone and where have all the soldiers gone, too."  One of the members, (Noel) Paul Stookey, wrote El Salvador with lyrics "Has there ever been a just war? You can't defeat evil with evil."

So many musicians lived in Bohemian Greenwich Village, mecca for songwriters and musicians, Manhattan. New York City. There they sang their hearts out against aggression during antiwar movements.  Eric Andersen's CD revitalizes the musicians of those days.

The 1960s were war-torn times. Eartha Kitt patriot for tranquility, sang for a group of Washingtonian ladies:

While there she spoke out against war, "You send the best of the country off to be killed and maimed." Lady Bird Johnson a guest at the luncheon. suddenly  "burst into tears."  President Lyndon Johnson gave Eartha a bad time and his follower President Richard Nixon wanted her to be incarcerated in jail.

      Other musicians against the Vietnam War were Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hayes, Fred Hellerman, Erik Darling, Bernie Kras and Frank Hamilton.

     

      At Kent State student protesters had to combat the National Guard called in with some of them tragically dying from guns aimed at them as they cried out against the aggression  with their songs.

  

       Mary Travers was another singer at that time for social change that moved people more than any militant corporate patriotic sham to beef up futile foreign civil wars not worth their Pyrrhic costs in lives and tax payer funds.

     

      Elvis Presley sang If I Can Dream, by Walter Earl Brown who wrote the lyrics:

There must be peace and understanding, strong winds that blow away doubt and fear.

Elvis was willing to sing these words that made him sympathetic for peace and since he supported students against the Vietnam War that he fought in.

      John Fogerty wrote and sang Favorite Son  inspired at the wedding of David Eisenhower (grandson of Ike) and Julie Nixon, daughter of President Richard Nixon.  The composer explained to Rolling Stone how angry and upset he was over the Vietnam War.  The theme was based on elitist supremacy regarding who fights the war and why.

     President David Dwight Eisenhower (birth name) said:

There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security. But it can bankrupt itself, morally and economically in attempting to reach that illusory goal with arms alone.

He condemned the incorporate industrial military for causing endless wars. His maturity inspired many songbirds for peace. 

Soldier's Poem by Muse gives the side of the soldiers:

Throw it all away,

Let's lose ourselves,

'Cause there's no one left for us to blame,

And do you deserve your freedom? 

     Judy Collins sang Amy Speace's compassionate song The Weight of the World.

      The Levellers English rock band, with Mark Chadwick singer and guitarist, sang Another Man's Cause. These words are the quintessential sorrowful lyrics of a woman whose husband was killed in the Falkland War in Australia. Five years later her son died in another man's war:

How many more are going to answer the call

To fight and die for another's man cause?

To die for religion he [husband] never believed at all

To die in a place they should never be at all

No, never've been at all

      The Eagles were playing when Jihadist Muslims attacked Paris in 2016. Their songs rose up in ire of war in "I wish you peace" and "Another Man's War" a true story of a brave preacher saving children in the Sudan fighting where the kids were being killed because they were in the way of mad, insane men.

      Cassius Clay, later becoming a Muslim and changing his name to Mohammed Ali, refused to be drafted for the Vietnam War.  He was arrested for five years of incarceration but the Supreme Court exonerated his sentence.  Other wisdom led him to receive the Freedom Award.  His clever rhymes inspired early rappers to the tune, "wars do nothing but kill, kill, kill." Even in training men are put through such severe drills that some of them die as victims from the vicious abuse even before suffering through war combat.

      Pink Floyd wrote The Dogs of War, while John Prine wrote lyrics to "Your flag decals won't get you into heaven any more."

      Robert Waters of Pink Floyd Band said G.W. Bush is deeply frightened dressing in Air Force disguise on the deck of an air force carrier that set the scene in an American port to seem as though it was anchored in a foreign land. All his life he avoided combat duty but he made no bones about invading, attacking and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.  Meanwhile, he danced to Battle Hymn of the Republic at formal memorial service as everyone looked shocked.

     

      Songwriter John Gorka succinctly said, "Wars make wars."

     

      Edwin Starr wrote War (what for) from his War and Peace Album.  George Kirkpatrick wrote the book War What For in 1913.  Words of both men are those of all sane voices. Starr's lyrics sing out:

 

They say we must fight to keep our freedom, but Lord knows there's got to be a better way. 

This composer is one of the many Motown soul singers. His album made him a star shining for peace.

      Likewise, Harry Bellefonte, WWII veteran expressed:

1. "We have to bring corporate war to its knees. Senseless wars steal its nation of its people."

His Cruel War lyrics are soul tormenting:

They call the killing brave

But I'd rather hold my darling son

Than fill a thousand graves

. . . . There's no glory in killing

Just the agony of hell!

      Huey Lewis's lyrics Walking on the Thin Line is quite transparent:

[They] Taught me how to shoot and kill

A specialist with a deadly skill

It's over now–so they say

Cause you're never the same

When you've been under fire

.     .     .    

Walking the line, angry all the time

So many active combat soldiers found this induced hatred to be true as they return home, never the same again.

      Listen to Johnny Cash’s antiwar lyrics about a soldier getting over aggression. His song Last Night I had the Strangest Dream contains lyrics:

I dreamed that all the world agreed to put an end to wars. I dreamed I saw a mighty room that was filled with men and the papers they were signing said they would never fight again.

Johnny Cash sang about the Vietnam war and he among others said "it's the young who fall."   His Apache War antiwar lyrics reflect a soldier attempting to get over aggression.

      Bobby Darin’s The Simple Song of Freedom:

Tell the people everywhere, we the people here don’t want war.

      Composer Paul Robson sees through the propaganda of warmongers:

When the issue of peace or war is put squarely to the American people, they have registered for peace. . . We must join with tears of millions all over the world who see in peace the most sacred responsibility.

      Bret Martin wrote song Who Do We Have to Hate . . .? sung by Tommy

Smothers who shocked Vegas by his antiwar music.

      Barbara  Streisand's song People Who Need People discloses the yearning for happiness in a world of turmoil. When we know this is a fact, war does not bring people together other then for the killing fields. "Barbra" tells humanity it's greatest secret in the most simple way. When we fulfill this need, our eyes open wide as we see war as Russian roulette that never wins. She sang We've Got to Stop Making War With Each Other. When families fight, no wonder there's so many wars!

      

      Perry Como sang, "If we Prayer for Peace, how can we be denied." But some say the gods haven't listened. Perhaps we are the ones who must open our ears to truth and hate no more. Como's prayer goes like this:

Memories of foot soldiers, veterans, each one a hero. These are their names, their battles have ended, we stand in their honor, we stand here for peace.”

We are all victims of US military scorch and burn strategy against Earth's welfare and its people.

      John Lennon wrote Imagine:

Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people living as one in peace. 

     

      He believed "music belongs to everybody." Haunted by war, Lennon died, but his soul lives on through his spirit. His firm belief in reforming the world through Give Peace a Chance which we're all still waiting for. Lennon said "War is over–when you want it." Lennon's lyrics bring out fears of all sacrificed youths trapped in master wars:

I don't want to be a soldier mamma

I don't want to die.  So very sad. What makes all mothers weep.

The Beatles sang for world harmony and helped end the war in Vietnam–John Lennon, Paul McCarthy, George Harrison and Ringo Star. Harrison wrote Bangla Desh  "where so many people are dying so fast"–as the lyrics say. Lennon also wrote:

"When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system game. Because only they've got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know is how to handle non-violence and humor."

The Beatle's song Revolution stirs young people for change in the world, later the wisdom of Bernie Sanders:

Say you want a revolution

We better get on right away

Well you get on your feet

And out on the  Street

      Patti Smith, song writer and poet, part of the punk rock movement, knew the power to dream. She also sang John Lennon's song, Power to the People.  Her own song Ask the Angels has powerful words:

Across the country through the fields

You know I see it written across the sky

People rising from the highway

And war war is the batte cry

And it's wild wild wild wild

. . . Vengeful aspects become suspect. . . .

and the armies  ceased  advancing

because the people had their ear.

. . . .

The shepherds and soldiers,

They lay among the stars exchanging visions

Laid down their arms and wade in their dust.

In simplified terms, these are the words of wisdom yet to come.

      Leon Russell wrote antiwar lyrics to Down on the Base and The Soldier's Ballad, with the latter lyrics:

I had not understood 'til I saw my mother cry when I told her how many babies I had killed that night.

Musician Russell wrote about peace, too.

      British rock band Coldplay wrote Violet Hill, that members Brian Eno, Markus Drays, Jon Hopkins and Rick Simpson wrote:

Priests clutched onto Bibles

Hollowed out to fit their rifles

And a cross was held aloft

Bury me in armor

When I'm dead and hit the ground

My nerves are poles that are frozen

In the Iraqi War Bible verses written on their scope lenses, but many soldiers still died.

        Barry Sadler's The Soldier Has Come Home, is a sorrowful song, the essence of war, "Let me go to sleep now, to march and fight no more."

      Gordon Lightfoot's Protocol asks us:

Who are those who would lead us now to the sound of a thousand guns, storm the gates of hell itself to the tune of a single drum?

     

      Mahalia Jackson sang We Shall Overcome, Stop the War Coalition.  Her words, "We shall live in peace someday, oh, deep in inside me I believe, we shall live in peace. "­-what resounds in all feeling hearts the world over.­­ Charles Albert Tindley wrote the original version of  We Shall Overcome, published in 1901. Joan Baez and Pete Seeger and company brought this old song back to life. Joan went to prison for 11 days for disturbing the peace as a musician and artist.  But Joan said, "I was trying to disturb the war."

      Musician Jill Stein, 2016 U.S candidate for presidency and activist for peace with guitarist Ken Selcer in Somebody's Sister Band wrote The American Dream.  Lyrics to their Circuit To The Sun include, "I'm waiting for the rising sun." 

      Jen Lekman wrote I Saw Her In An Anti War Demonstration, lyrics about Jill Stein.

      Walt Whitman wrote, "Peace is beautiful."  This poet could never kill.  Instead, as a nurse, he helped soldiers who were wounded and gave comfort to the dying. His voice is the true voice of a combat soldier. Whitman wrote the poem Song of Myself:

A song of me in need of a courageous

symphony

A verse of me verse in need of a pure

heart singing for peace . . .

It's the same old dead boy's song

sung in silence . . .

It's the great heart lying still on an angel wing

      Hear Jack Johnson's words of an antiwar  song going on and on and on.  His song Crying Shame tells about the irony of international aggressions:

By now they say it's a war for peace, it's the same old game. . . . It's a growing flame using fear as fuel, burning down our name.

Greed causes war and war causes poverty.

      Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World talks about the other side, "I see friends sayin' "How are you." What Satchmo really meant was, "I love you," instead of terrorism and violence of war. Musicians he influenced were Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Louis Jordan, Cab Calloway, Harry James and Dizzie Gillespie. Richard Marot's song, Mr Dizzy Idol of a Generation of War describes explicitly:

And he became the funny idol of a young Generation full of pain . . .

Of a young generation who knew a big war

When he was playing the drowned notes

That went out of a bent trumpet;

He was called Dizzy in a dizzy world

And he will always be our funny joy!

      Lyrics by Hal David and music by Burt Bacharach echo the fact that –"What the world needs now is love, sweet love–not just for some but for everyone."

      Tommy James and the Shondells sing Sweet Cherry Wine:

Come on everyone we gotta get together now

Oh yeah, love's the only thing that matters now

And the beauty of life can only survive

. . . No we ain't gonna fight

Only God has the right to decide whose to live and whose to die.

POSTLUDE

The Golden Calf is a representative of a god, a symbolic metaphor for modern-day sacrifice of young soldiers often horrified at seeing babies in pools of blood on battlefield now staged war zones, urban streets, violation of International Law and its Court.  The archaic Golden Calf represents superstition and fear, the first form of religious mindset for sacrificing infants and young girls to the gods, in return for hopeless safety from the raging elements of nature. Today these sacrifices have been transformed to brave youths, an abomination that results in unworthy suffering called war, now with genocidal weapons and dangerous government nuclear codes that allow one mortal to enflame Earth.

Again "We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior than the disorder of war," as Dr. Martin Luther King,  Jr. also wrote "When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind."

NAKED SKIN

Helene Smith

 (social dance, all form

 circle to tune of Hokey Pokey)

CHORUS

You put your right palm in

You put your left palm out

You put your right sole in

You put your left sole out

Shake your hands to your right

Shake your hands to your left

Turn yourself around

And that's what it's all about

(please be seated for hip-hop rapper song also by author)

TIME UPON A ONCE

Musician Bruce Springsteen wrote

In his song Born In The USA–which

contains antiwar protest lyrics–reads

"Got in a little hometown jam

So they put a rifle in my hand

Sent me to some foreign land

To go and kill some yellow men."

As people used to color-code Asians

Pearl Buck chided us for pegging Asians yellow

We no longer peg Indians redskins

Indigenous people are not animal mascots

Except for Washingtonian football fellows

Palms and soles dog-fish belly-ocean white

After living 20,000 years at sunny equator

Then dark ancients started moving away

20,000 more for light shade, a new sight

We got over yellow and earthy red

Yet we identify by black & white, instead

They ain't even colors in the prism

Rival divisive sport game decision

How funky name-calling mad can we be

White and black that causes wars and misery

No superiority on top or minority on bottom

We're all human beings from sea to sea

We give respect to Holstein cows with mirth

We don't call them blacks and whites

As we mark Africans with marks so black

While all others go by origin of birth

In 1797 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

A German supremacist invented

Color-coding dividing to conquer

So why keep the same kind of talk

From J. F.B. to A. H. the Fuerer had no clue

Dark complexioned people and gypsies, too

Over six million became flaming ashes

Satanic extremist so cruel over human hue

Men sever by shades of skin and faith

What keeps us all from loving one another

We must save Earth our mother

No time to quibble or berate.

(Stand up in circle again for reprise of chorus and dance)