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Top 10 August 28 2001 (for Jack Layton)
If you are American, you could be unaware that we up here in Kanada just lost our “Obama”. Jack Layton the real, down-to-earth, leftist, fatherly and compassionate New Democratic Party leader that contrasted so intensely the dead-eyed robotic crypto-fascist ass-hat who took the last election Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Further, my fine Southern neighbors, let the scales fall from your eyes about our cold little country up here, we’re seemingly regressing from our former reputation as your liberal, chilled-out younger brother. We’re not as chill, politically speaking, as we used to be. (Harper is busy axing social programs, environmental standards, imposing tough and repressive drug laws and basically setting fire to and pissing upon everything that has lent Kanada the reputation as the most cute and cuddly, polite, friendly and progressive Western nation.) Jack was the perfect opposition leader, as wise and wholesome as Stephen Harper is cold, awkward and sour. He was the kind of politician that even a ‘core anarcho-syndicalist like me could respect. While his passing feels like a huge blow to the already underdogged Left of Kanada, his parting words, already spreading memetically over the globe should give us all strength to keep fighting for a just and charitable world.
“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”
Also let us be totally shriekingly loud and critical, there’s always room for and a need for music that locks horns with opression, in a small and personal way, in the unique way the sheer energy of punk’s essential drive lends you power and maybe catharsis. There’s a bit of a lack of “political” song in Kanada in my opinion, though maybe a thorough Googling could prove otherwise. These are a couple fave Canuck songs of dissent, feel free to comment back with some others.
Bruce Cockburn – Call It Democracy
Propaghandi – Fuck The Border
Bob Wiseman – Travel Agent
D.O.A. – Police Brutality
Billy Childish – Louis Riel
(Yes, I know Billy Childish is a Brit not a Kanuck, but the song is a great paean to the great-ancestor hero of the Métis nation Louis Riel.)
The Forgotten Rebels – I’m In Love With the System
Devil Eyes – 18 Flights
Yes it’s my wife and I’s band. Emily wrote and sang the lyrics which deal the out of control police brutality in the M.U.C..
Find more artists like devil eyes at Myspace Music
Rheostatics – Bad Time To Be Poor
Geoff Berner – The Official Theme Song of the Vancouver Whistler 2010 Olympic Games (The Dead Children Were Worth It!)
Sweatshop Union – The Humans’ Race
