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Artist: Immortal Technique
Album:  The Martyr
Song:   The Martyr
Typed by: OHHLA Webmaster DJ Flash

[dialogue from "Elizabeth"]
I'm content to die for my beliefs.
So cut off my head, and make me a martyr.
The people will allways remember it.
  No, they will forget.

[Immortal Technique]
A man who walks with God... can walk anywhere
Hence, I fear nothing (yeah!)

The point of Guerrilla war is not to succeed
It's always been just to make the enemy bleed
Depriving the soldiers of the peace of mind that they need
Bullets are hard to telegraph, when they bob and they weave
(Watch~!) The only way a guerrilla war can ever be over
is when the occupation can't afford more soldiers
Until they have to draft the last of you, into the service
And you refuse cause you don't see the purpose
The only way to counter the insurgents that are well equipped (how?)
is to paint the people fighting for freedom as terrorists
Then find a faction looking for foreign investment
Install them in power and murder any objections
You can't stop a revolution from breathing
So to beat 'em they offer people the illusion of freedom
But when you're done dreaming and wake up tortured for treason
then you can see them hiding behind the God they believe in!

[Chorus]
Deep in the trenches in the heart of a war
that's the place a martyr is born (motherfucker it's on!)
During the night before the start of the dawn
that's the place a martyr is born (motherfucker it's on!)
When gunshots are raining in the heart of a storm
that's the place a martyr is born (motherfucker it's on!)
Guerrilla war when the army is gone
That's the place a martyr is born (motherfucker it's on!)

[Immortal Technique]
The purpose of life is a life with a purpose
So I'd rather die for a cause than live a life that is worthless
I don't need the circus or the day of national observance
I need you to think for you and stop being a servant
Pawns only move a square in the game that they're used to
And realize it too late, like the shooting of Huey Newton
or Patrice Lumumba and Salvador Allender
Slaughtered by the power hungry branches of their own gente
Ghandi wasn't killed, by Pakistani nationals
He was assassinated by a Hindu radical
And Che Guevara rebel to a U.S. continent
was sold to the C.I.A. by Bolivian communists
Wasn't Itzhak Rabin murdered by a Zionist
and Anwar Sadat a victim of the same violence?
Malcolm X was seen as a threat to the FBI
but to blast him they used Muslims from the NOI
Even the 35th President of the Republic
was murdered by factions of his own government
So now that it's proven that a soldier of revolution
or head of an empire disguised in the constitution
cannot escape the retribution or manipulation
of the self-appointed rulers of the planets corporations
So I'ma need every generation to put your hands up
Cause you can only get 'em off your back when you stand up!

[Chorus]

[Immortal Technique]
I was a man, blessed by God
to survive... some of the worst circumstances
I had many things: a beautiful woman I loved
a home, money... and I gave it all up
to bleed and to die free
Sometimes I look back on that life and I wonder
what it would have been like
In the moments of weakness I think about trading it
But then I snap the fuck out of it and I get back to my reality
and I realize.. that I've been the heart of a war
And that's the place a martyr is born