Rock the Vote releases new song by Lenny Kravitz “We want Peace”

Rock the Vote and Lenny Kravitz announced a new song by Kravitz called “We Want Peace,” which is available exclusively at Rock the Vote’s website, http://www.rockthevote.org.

The song, which says, “There won’t be peace if we don’t try” is an urgent call from Kravitz for America to be a peaceful leader in the world. Kravitz wrote the song and performed it with Kazem Al Sahir, Iraq’s #1 pop music artist, who is better known as Iraq’s Diplomatic Ambassador to the world and hailed as a true legend of Arabic Music. In addition, the song features Palestinian musician Simon Shaheen on the ‘oud and violins and Lebanese artist Jamey Haddad’s on djembe and tambourines.
[song download available on the main page of Rock The Vote]

Nice gesture, don’t you think? And yeah, the song’s not bad either!!

Who armed Iraq? [link via Metafilter]

Iraq’s Weapons Declaration underscores a tragic irony: The United States, the world’s leading arms supplier, is taking the world to war to stop arms proliferation in the very country to which it shipped chemicals, biological seed stock and weapons for more than 10 years.

According to the December declaration, treated with much derision from the Bush administration, U.S. and Western companies played a key role in building Hussein’s war machine. The 1,200-page document contains a list of Western corporations and countries — as well as individuals — that exported chemical and biological materials to Iraq in the past two decades.

Embarrassed, no doubt, by revelations of their own complicity in Mideast arms proliferation, the U.S.-led Security Council censored the entire dossier, deleting more than 100 names of companies and groups that profited from Iraq’s crimes and aggression. The censorship came too late, however. The long list — including names of large U.S. corporations — Dupont, Hewlett-Packard, and Honeywell — was leaked to a German daily, Die Tageszeitung. Despite the Security Council coverup, the truth came out.

A German company, for example, exported 1,000 ignition systems for Styx and Scud missiles capable of carrying biological and nuclear warheads.

Why were Bush and Powell so sure that Iraq possessed WMDs, even despite failing to produce hard evidence to corroborate their claims? Well… they knew, because they sold those weapons and launching capabilities to Saddam.

George Orwell’s brilliant essay on empire and nationalism applies directly to the mendacity of the Bush administration:

“Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage — torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral color when it is committed by ‘our’ side. . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

Almost prophetic, aren’t those Orwellian words?!

The Bharatiya Blog Mela # 5 is up at Ashwini’s place. Click here to go and check out some of the choicest of this week’s blogs from the Indian Blogosphere!!

And if you did not already know what a Bharatiya Blog Mela is, then well, its weekly affair that showcases a collection of the best Indian blog updates of the week. It does not aim to rate the blogs, but instead it is a collection of recommendations from various people of what they think are the better posts in the week from the Indian Blogland. To check out all the Blog Melas, you can go here.