Pirates

This is a people as pirates, a people as pirates, a people as pirates...

What's the matter with the brains of the big boys with the big money

Are they bruised are they battered, are they swollen are they bloody

With the wounds and the scars of the people they've mistreated

With the scabs and the heals of the movements they've defeated

Are they bloody, are they bloody, are they bloody, are they bloody?

See, i was taught to believe in a scale of justice

But the people with the power in their pockets, they outweigh us

And now the executive class buys executive branch status

By purchasing supreme court time

And white collar crime in this country becomes a comedy

While the drug war drama gets a bigger, better review

And now it's all lit up in big lights and coming to a town near you.

Meanwhile, enron gives millions to the taliban

To build a pipeline through afghanistan

And the corporate scam of evil is buried deep beneath the sand

Transporting the blood of children in palestine, iraq, and iran

And somehow the rage flows through the pipelines to the pipebombs

Of little white boys in wisconsin

Somehow the rage flows to the suicides in jerusalem cafes

The rage flows to the terror in the new york city subways

The rage flows to the stones flung in algiers,

It flows with nuclear waste down the path of yucca mountain's years,

The rage flows, the rage flows, the rage flows

And the t.v. newscasters say, "repeat after me, rage flows for no reason.

Now stick these antennaes on your forehead, freedom of thought may channel treason,

Freedom of thought may channel treason"

Well, give me one reason, one reason to defy my global people

Cause we got ninety years, if we're lucky, on this planet

And i refuse to eat mine sandwiched between commercials for fake butter and cheese

Caffeine and saccharine food us up and the hypodermic media shoots us up

Until our brains are entombed, petrified, lying side by side next to our 401 k's and our suv's,

Encased in caskets, plastered with compliance,

Chainstored in the chamber of a walmart mummy freeze

And outside this sarcophagus of american flags and god bless's,

Our collective conscience is brought right down to its knees

Brought right down to its knees

Praying forgiveness for this nation exporting numbness

For treasure-looting the oil, the ozone, the airwaves, and the grain,

These are our true colors running

And they are running away with everything.

Cause the big boys have smelled our protests as potent as their poison in our water

That's why they've squashed down our squawking like the chickens in their trucks

I guess we just taste better all cagey and blindfolded

All freaked out and huddled up.

So yeah, i say, no atlas is scary

And yes, i confess, resistance is chilling

But the roadblocks are killing us

And the deadends keep building.

This is a battle of burdens, it's a collision of moral proofs

This is a people as pirates and we are stealing back the truth

We are stealing back the truth

From the brains of the big boys with the big money

Are they bruised, are they swollen, are they battered, are they bloody

Are they bloody, are they bloody, are they bloody?

You gotta steal back the truth, you gotta steal back the truth

You gotta steal back the truth from abc and cbs and cnn

You gotta steal back the truth from disney and hbo

You gotta steal back the truth from npr even, these days,

This is a people as pirates, a people as pirates.

This is a people