{"id":242709,"date":"2023-08-28T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=242709"},"modified":"2023-08-21T06:01:41","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T05:01:41","slug":"neoliberalism-kills-people-music-video-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/08\/neoliberalism-kills-people-music-video-of-the-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Neoliberalism Kills People (Music Video of the Week)"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><strong>Featuring Mai Khalil and Valeria Kurbatova (Lyrics below)<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the <\/em>Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique <em>and<\/em> Akala<em>. He is a patron of <\/em>Stop The War Coalition, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network <em>and<\/em> The Peace and Justice Project<em>, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, <\/em>Soundtrack to the Struggle 2<em>, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lowkey | Neoliberalism Kills People (Acoustic) | featuring Mai Khalil and Valeria Kurbatova\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-NMVIEjysPI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3>Lyrics<\/h3>\n<p>How can I do a fire in the booth, when I&#8217;m trying just to maintain<br \/>\nAnd since June don&#8217;t hear the word fire in the same way<br \/>\nHeard screams, splutters and them gasping for air<br \/>\nThat\u2019s not bars in a booth it\u2019s so hard to compare<br \/>\nIf I use fire as metaphor<br \/>\nDoes that disrespect the people that are never more?<br \/>\nHow does that bomb sound sound to those that bled in war that we never saw?<br \/>\nRemember when they settled scores with metal swords like Skeletor<br \/>\nChinese made gunpowder, Nobel invented dynamite<br \/>\nThey say the guilt in his mind compelled him to design the prize<br \/>\nWe know what Einstein&#8217;s mind was like<br \/>\nHow many geniuses we never knew that were deprived of life?<br \/>\nI can&#8217;t philosophise on horrifying flames<br \/>\nWe don\u2019t have to apologise or qualify our pain<br \/>\nDegrenfellise our loved ones of the colonisers name<br \/>\nShould we let the corporate media lobotomise our brains<br \/>\nYou are beautiful, no matter how this life disfigures you<br \/>\nYou\u2019re beautiful even if that image you emulate isn&#8217;t you<br \/>\nI don\u2019t know if history is linear or cyclical<br \/>\nBut know I\u2019m ridiculed for making invisibles visible<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s why Plato said banish poets from the republic<br \/>\n\u2018Cause they know that we can shake the social system and disrupt it<br \/>\nThe land of liberty, they tell us leave it or lump it<br \/>\nWhen Trump comes to the country we hope he chokes on his crumpet<br \/>\nBefore we sink in the ocean, consider this as an omen<br \/>\nNatures blessings aren&#8217;t ours just \u2018cause we think that we own them<br \/>\nNever think that you&#8217;re broken, or think that you&#8217;re no-one<br \/>\nRemember a rope is strong because of strings interwoven<\/p>\n<p>Would they love you more if you mock the people that you&#8217;re from<br \/>\nSelf-orientalise and believe that you belong<br \/>\nOvercompensate and propagate the image of the imbecile<br \/>\nNot uninvolved though you&#8217;re further from the killing field<br \/>\nTake solace in the fact there&#8217;s always cracks in the monolith<br \/>\nNow we&#8217;re practically lobbing bricks like Asterix and Obelix<br \/>\nDistracted with gossip it&#8217;s twisted news an interlude to adverts no hidden truths to listen to it&#8217;s pitiful<br \/>\nRosa Luxemburg gave us this simple truth<br \/>\nYou won&#8217;t feel your chains till the day you begin to move<br \/>\nHe photographed a corpse and they flung him in the cage<br \/>\nThose that signed off on the cladding are still receiving their wage<br \/>\nHelicopters hovered close, pictures for the front page<br \/>\nTried to speak all I really felt deep was numb rage<br \/>\nHow could they see this pain at such a young age<br \/>\nLeaning out the window, screaming for help but none came<br \/>\nIf it bleeds it leads, trauma tourists they gravitate<br \/>\nShock doctrine in effect, disaster capitalists salivate<br \/>\nPrivatisation, deregulation and austerity<br \/>\nTo zero hour contracts, exploitation and precarity<br \/>\nAdults didn&#8217;t make it, children to be fostered<br \/>\nSaved pennies on the block, dropped 20 million on the opera<br \/>\nWe see through your cold plans, your programme is done<br \/>\nWe don&#8217;t want a Prime Minister that holds hands with Trump<br \/>\nWe don&#8217;t want DJs doing shows on military compounds<br \/>\nCan&#8217;t trivialise fire or hear any more bomb sounds<br \/>\nHow can I smile when I know the remains are still not found<br \/>\nAnd echoing in my mind is exactly how the sobs sound<\/p>\n<p>They say we&#8217;re criminals for the syllables and stanzas<br \/>\nWhen they subsidise the killers tools, the pillagers and bankers<br \/>\nWho are the engines of history, people like me and you<br \/>\nWho got massacred for the right to vote at Peterloo<br \/>\nIt was imagineers, the poets and the artists<br \/>\nThe miners, Tolpuddle Martyrs, William Cuffay and the chartists<br \/>\nRebel and resist even through something small<br \/>\nCreate windows with words and mirrors where once were walls<br \/>\nManure contributes to the beauty of a rose<br \/>\nWhy can&#8217;t we accept our pain as something that helps us grow<br \/>\nThey wonder why songs that make you cry are more moving<br \/>\n\u2018Cause crying&#8217;s the only thing that we were born doing<br \/>\nThey tell us tea is tradition to the English<br \/>\nWhen I look around this island not a tea plantation in it<br \/>\nEarl Gray gave 20 million to the slave traders<br \/>\nMulti-polar world now the Indians are space raiders<br \/>\nFreedom to be even or merely alienate labour<br \/>\nFreedom for fossil fuellers to desecrate and invade nature<br \/>\nAlbert was an immigrant, Prince Phillip is an immigrant<br \/>\nWere the Celts, Normans and the Anglo-Saxons English, then?<br \/>\nThe words Sugar, Cotton and Rice come from Arabic<br \/>\nNow we import democracy to civilise the Saracens<br \/>\nAnalysing planets when this back water was wilderness<br \/>\nIt seems we&#8217;re still obsessed with immortality like Gilgamesh<br \/>\nPessimism of intellect, optimism of will<br \/>\nWear the skin of their victims its syndrome buffalo bill<br \/>\nIn times of permanent war there is always someone to kill<br \/>\nBut when life and death are virtual almost nothing is real<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Featuring Mai Khalil and Valeria Kurbatova (Lyrics below)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[229,871,545],"class_list":["post-242709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-video-of-the-week","tag-activism","tag-music-video","tag-neoliberalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242709"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242714,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242709\/revisions\/242714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}