From the recording Some Countries
This song paints a brutal picture of places where state violence, disappearances and slaughter are everyday realities, from mutilated bodies in the streets to erased villages and children born to replace the nameless dead. It contrasts this horror with the distant comfort of those who simply “change the channel,” showing how some countries are left to carry all the pain while others look away.
Lyrics
The air is thick with threat and fear
Where doubt shows up, murder’s near
Mutilated bodies scattered in the street
Amputated limbs where children meet
“Amnesty” only means corpses in the trees
Forget morality and shoot anything that breathes
Brutally beaten, then the body disappears
While mothers count the vanishing years
Subversives, pacifists, all on the list
Villages erased, they cease to exist
Old lessons from Vietnam in play
Every day can be a last goodbye day
In some countries, where the sky turns black
No one’s coming back
We change the channel, wash our hands again
While they carry all the pain
The rich grow richer on the backs of the poor
While cows and horses starve outside their door
The truth looks staged like a movie on a screen
But dragonfly drones explode above the green
Children are born to replace the nameless dead
Their lives just names in ledgers stained with red
In some countries, where the sky turns black
No one’s coming back
We change the channel, wash our hands again
While they carry all the pain
Carry all the pain
Some countries carry all the pain