Today is Memorial Day. One would think that with all of the advances (admittedly more technological than social) that the human race has made we would have found a better way to settle our differences than killing each other. Sadly this is still not the case, and people continue to die. Our governments are quite adept at rolling out tired old justifications for the ongoing violence, but it really boils down to squabbling over the basic animal needs of food, water, shelter, and space. Everything is linked to these four little needs. People will continue to die for them, especially now as the global population continues to rise and resources are squandered and just plain used up. That said, we're all in this together and my heart goes out to anybody who has lost a loved one through the impersonal violence of war, no matter what cause or country they think they are fighting for. Here are the lyrics to a song by a now defunct band called Amebix that I think appropriate for the occasion:

Coming Home

I just buried a friend
He had come to an end
But I can't help feeling that it needn't have been
Caught in the flak
There was no turning back
So he gave up his life for some psychopath's dream

So we're leaving the front
Having taken the brunt
Now we're tired of the slaughter in some foreign land
So the leaders of war
They fight alone on the shore
Our mutiny over they are left on the sand

We stand as one
We are an army now of many thousand strong
They stand alone
To fight for ravaged land to gain their worthless throne

[Chorus]
The boys are coming home

[Voiceover}
I see within my mind
A vast and lonely plain
Great armies meet in no man's land
To clench their hands in friendship
For the first time
The dark tide is ebbing
A mass of tired humanity drifting toward the dawn

We are coming home