Track 6 on the new album Purgatory by Chicago celtic-punk group The Tossers. The band is known for being unafraid to air their political views, and usually have one or two straight out political rants on every album. “The Squall” fits the bill perfectly for Purgatory.
The song is very up tempo, with jumping guitars and a playful tin whistle part. Of all the songs about September 11 and America that have come out, I think this one is the best, not only musically, but also because it actually tries to say something instead of just focusing on boring platitudes about grief and loss.
This song will never get played on the radio.
I often walk down to the pub in springtime
To take the summer breeze and drink with friends
But on the 12th day of September I went down there
To find the derision of all Muslims and Afghans
Being assaulted in the neighborhoods around me
Personally, and in their jobs and schools and homes
And the barflies said we should send them all back overseas
Well, will you be the one to pay for their plane fare home?
Well their women must come over here for sanctuary’s sake
Being victims of honor killings still permissible in numerous states
By fanatical law a shamed husband can gun ‘em down you see
When it’s affirmed by family and state then they have nowhere to flee
Well we should wipe them off the fucking map they tell me
Cause we don’t know when or where they’ll strike next
But I say we don’t know about their mother custom there
Being Americans, we’ve been veiled from that text
Well it’s easier to manipulate a leader who needs food and guns
So we’ve promoted chaos over there all along
To not have to deal with an independent stable oil power
Who don’t need us or could tell us so long
And every time there’s a faction with potential to outsell
We profiteer ‘em full of guns and missiles and say go out and kill
We supported Iran and Iraq and Afghanistan, oh dread!
Kids starving to death, if they get near you you’re dead
Oh take me away o’er the countryside
With no natural resource or bombs or peering eyes
Away from double standards practiced on both sides
Oh please my noble statesman make this over
We’ve empowered leaders who’ve industrialized and overpopulated the towns
Who steal their tax money as now most jobs are taken by machines
Our sale of food and aid gets sanctioned if they don’t sell oil cheap
We starve ‘em for their resource, yeah we have ‘em on their knees
Well Israel is a source that does keep Arabs fighting
So we’ve consistently vetoed their division in U.N. plans
And we never sanction or exclude Israel outright
Despite atrocities performed by their own hands
And SUV’s keeps CEO’s happy ‘cause they’re a status symbol and everyone buys
And they burn a lot more fuel so the oil industries happy as flies
On shit that pollutes the air much worse than regular autos will
And they’ll keep this industry funded no matter who must be killed
Oh take me away o’er the countryside
With no natural resources or bombs or peering eyes
Away from double standards practiced on both sides
Oh please my noble statesman make this over
We sent soldiers and weapons to the Afghanis to fight the occupying Russians
To insure an alliance and insure their trade for oil
And the communists fell anyway and we split, breaking promises
Of aid and rebuilding and governance and left them fighting off warlords in turmoil
And they watched as we incinerated their brothers and sisters in Iraq
Now they think our policies unfair
And that we condescend and meddle in their governments and destroy them
They think oil’s the only reason why we’re there
Instead of having a foreign policy for policing others and in defense
We should define it with what we are for rather than what we’re against
What the perpetrators did is punishable and clearly shows to us
That you can’t subjugate others to your will by violence and mistrust
Oh take me away o’er the countryside
With no natural resources or bombs or peering eyes
Away from double standards practiced on both sides
Oh please my noble statesman make this over
Yay for pipelinks
The Tossers have been contacted in order to secure copyright permission for this song.