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

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
Kimberly D. Miller
Beyond the "Delcyification" of Analysis
19 August 2026
Siege, survival, and the dialectics of Venezuelan sovereignty.
Luis Britto GarcĂ­a
Venezuela Is Not Iran
19 August 2026
Venezuela is not Iran or Cuba, but those nations teach us that sovereignty is not given but is obtained through resistance.

More Stories


  • Joe Biden’s Victory is Still a Loss for Humanity
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Joe Biden’s Victory is Still a Loss for Humanity
    11 Nov 2020
    The Biden-Harris administration is good news for corporations, cops, war profiteers and banks too big to fail, but offers nothing to save the people and planet from multiple rises.
  • Susan Rice, a Butcher of Africans, May Become Secretary of State
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Susan Rice, Scourge of Africa, May Become Secretary of State
    11 Nov 2020
    Rice has been intimately involved in covering up the deaths of moe than six million Congolese, and has cultivated close relations with every US-backed tyrant on the continent.
  • My Wise Country Cousin on  Unca Jim Clyburn an de Sharp Rite Turn
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    My Wise Country Cousin on  Unca Jim Clyburn an de Sharp Rite Turn
    11 Nov 2020
    Son, it look lak Unca Jim say, “Las’ time I chek I’se de whip— an’ got no time fo’ young Negroz wit all dey Blak Life lip…”
  • Black Cops Don’t Make Policing Any Less Anti-Black
     Bree Newsome Bass
    Black Cops Don’t Make Policing Any Less Anti-Black
    11 Nov 2020
    The idea that we can resolve racism by integrating a fundamentally anti-Black institution is the most absurd notion of all.
  • The FBI’s War on the Left: A Short History of COINTELPRO
    Alex Zambito
    The FBI’s War on the Left: A Short History of COINTELPRO
    11 Nov 2020
    The Bureau’s COINTELPRO deployed every trick and crime in the book to crush left dissidents, from disruption to assassination. 
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us