Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Disturbing the Peace
El Jones
26 Nov 2025
🖨️ Print Article
Colin Powell and Dick Cheney
Colin Powell and Dick Cheney Photo: Jose R. Lopez, New York Times

Written for the protest at the Halifax International Security Forum, November 22, 2025.

Dick Cheney’s finally deceased
He died at home in peace
He lied about WMDs 
And murdered millions of Iraqis

Don’t forget Guantanamo Bay
Where he sanctioned torture night and day
All for the oil that got him paid
He shot his friend right in the face

And if you refuse to mourn these ghouls 
Who brought death, destruction, and abuse 
Who even cut off baby food
They’ll try to get your job removed

Henry Kissinger lived a century 
Outside the penitentiary 
A war criminal incidentally
Who should live on in infamy

Instead, in his obituary
They sung his praises tenderly
His crimes are wiped from memory 
But we’re labelled the enemy

Inside where warmongers sip champagne
They named a prize for John McCain 
Who led civilian bombing campaigns 
Another war criminal who should be shamed

But it’s you and I who face arrest and trial 
Ehud Barak is in the Epstein files 
He raped young girls on Epstein’s isle
Virginia Guiffre died by suicide

Yet he’s invited here to speak 
A rapist genocidal freak 
Exposed like all the other elites
Who sit inside and laugh and feast

On all the wars they dream up next
To keep their boots upon our necks
They know warmongering pays their checks 
They traffic bombs and lies and sex

And they should all be in a cell
As a prelude to their time in hell 
Instead they lounge inside hotels 
And backslap other clientele

Who pledge loyalty to Israel 
And sign their names upon the shells
That land on hospitals and wells 
Eternal war is what they sell

And yet they label us extreme
For protesting their war machine 
And millions of dollars to police 
To stop us opposing their regime

The least we can do is show disgust 
And refuse to keep their horrors hushed 
The babies’ skulls that they have crushed 
They murder everything they touch

And justice never will be served 
Perhaps by God in another world 
But don’t we find it so absurd 
They die in peace and undisturbed!


El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She teaches at Mount Saint Vincent University, where she was named the 15th Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies in 2017.

 

imperialism
US War Crimes
Dick Cheney

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Berthony Dupont
How the OAS Works for Imperialism in Haiti
07 October 2026
The armed groups in Haiti are not a spontaneous wave of banditry, but a scheme orchestrated by imperialist powers in concert with a reactionary
Pambazuka News Editors
TĂĽrkiye, UAE, and the Imperialist Chain: African Ports and War
30 September 2026
Imperialist competition and wars that facilitate extractivism have long shaped the use of seaports for access to resources, markets, and devalu
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
The Ultimate Betrayal of Alex Saab and the Fate of Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan People
16 September 2026
The United States got its hands on Alex Saab a second time in order to use him in its case against Nicolás Maduro. The U.S.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
COMMENTARY: The Shrinking American Empire, Glen Ford, 2009
16 September 2026
“The Iraq invasion greatly accelerated the process of U.S. imperialism’s decline.” 
Gary Wilson
Germany’s war drive feeds the far right in Saxony-Anhalt
16 September 2026
The AfD's landslide in Saxony-Anhalt reflects real working-class anger at the war and the arms buildup, but the party redirects that anger towa
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
In the same boat?
09 September 2026
BOOM goes tuna and swordfish stuffed brown burlap bags aboardboats blown to smithereens. Presto! Fishing is now narco-trafficking.
Dhoruba bin-Wahad
Guardian Foray: All That's Not Real Is Camouflage
09 September 2026
An Open Letter from the American "Left" allegedly on behalf of unnamed persons said to be Iranian political prisoners has provided co
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
A People(s)-Centered Human Rights Critique of “An Open Letter to Iran’s Political Prisoners”
26 August 2026
A People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework rejects the liberal abstraction that makes a false symmetry between Iranian authoritarianism and U.
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
U.S. Liberal Media Literacy Guide: The World Bank and the IMF
26 August 2026
The IMF and World Bank are not subjects the corporate media cover in any real sense.
Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective
AISC Red Paper #2: The Multiple Fronts of Iranian Anti-Imperialism
26 August 2026
The Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective (AISC) offers an analysis of the Ramadan War and the multiple fronts of Iranian anti- imperi

More Stories


  • Child holding a sign abortion rights rally
    Margo Snipe
    As Abortion Bans Loom, Black Families Are Left Vulnerable
    17 Apr 2024
    Florida’s ban takes effect May 1, 2024, and the fate of Arizona’s abortion access is in the throes of legal, political, and legislative battles.
  • Residents looting a warehouse in Nigeria
    Pavan Kulkarni
    Looting of Food Grains Continues in Nigeria as Almost Half its Population Suffers Hunger
    17 Apr 2024
    President Bola Tinubu’s lifting of fuel subsidies and liberalization of currency trade has pleased the IMF and increased hunger in Africa’s most populous country.
  • Texas rally for prisoners
    Kwanetta Harris
    Boiling on the Inside
    17 Apr 2024
    Incarcerated People in Texas Weather Extreme Heat in non-Air Conditioned Prisons.
  • Black Agenda Radio
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio April 12, 2024
    12 Apr 2024
    We revisit BAR’s 2017 analysis of the protection afforded Rwanda’s Paul Kagame by the human rights industrial complex and continue our discussion with BAR’s poet in residence about his upcoming…
  • Ecuador breaking into Mexican embassy
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Ecuador Kidnaps Former Vice President from Mexican Embassy
    12 Apr 2024
    Camila Escalante joins to discuss Ecuador’s intrusion into Mexico’s embassy in Quito and the arrest of Ecuador’s former Vice President who had been given asylum there.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us