This record was the peak of my political involvement, obsession, activity - all of it.

I'd spent the winter of 1984 in South Africa meeting with every organization I could and agonizing over what way to go musically. Rock or Dance. I felt international dance music was more appropriate for the international themes I was getting into but I was reluctant to totally leave rock behind.

Meanwhile my personality was going through a radical transformation. I was becoming a soldier in some abstract global war. I was ready to die for it. Although I'd always had anxiety about flying, I lost that completely on the long flight to South Africa. I felt myself grow harder, colder.

I started hanging out with battlefront photo-journalists and getting into that hit-and-run lifestyle. I felt estranged from my family and friends. I was totally obsessed with finding the story, the truth. And nothing was going to stop me from getting it.

It was difficult to get the people on the street to talk about the economic boycott since it was literally illegal for them to do so but I eventually got them to open up. I had three strikes against me as far as the black people were concerned. I was "white," I was American, and I had a Dutch name. My general freaky appearance eventually won the day. They knew the government had spies everywhere but I was a bit much, even for them.

Government troups had occupied the township of Soweto, which was the ghetto where they forced the black people who worked in Johannesburg to live. I slipped by the guards under a blanket in a car to meet with the Azanian People's Organization (AZAPO), the most radical faction of many factions I would meet that wasn't in exile. Their closest American equivalent would have been the Black Panthers if the Panthers had been forced to go totally underground. They were an extremist blacks-only faction and were on the edge because of the military siege among other things.

There were 12 or 15 of the leadership who had gathered for the meeting. The topic of conversation for the first hour was whether or not they should let me live. They considered it a violation of the boycott for me to even be there.

Their threatening attitude didn't move me since I was in total I-don't-give-a-shit-about-anything mode by this time. I calmly explained to them that their concept of revolution was totally antiquated and they were doomed to failure. Revolution wasn't gonna happen from guns and blowing things up anymore. It was gonna happen on TV. And the reason they should let me live was I could get on TV and they couldn't. It took two or three hours but eventually, reluctantly, they bought it.

I visited Capetown, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Boputhuswana to see the famous Sun City resort, and flew to Harare, Zimbabwe to meet with the A.N.C., the main "moderate" faction that Nelson Mandela led from Robben Island prison. I saw the prison but they wouldn't let me in.

I wrote "Freedom," "Sun City," "Pretoria," and a song called "Hunger" which was about people starving in Ethiopia while the government threw a 200 million dollar party celebrating the anniversary of their independence or something. Bob Geldof's thing came out soon after so I dropped it. Out of everything I had been looking at, South Africa hit me the hardest. I had never seen slavery up close and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I decided this issue needed more attention than my own albums could ever bring to it so I pulled "Sun City" off the album, changed the lyrics, added 50 artists, and made it it's own thing.

When I got back I went to Nicaragua with Jackson Browne and visited the Pine Ridge and Six Nations (Onondaga) Reservations, which Jackson helped set up for me.

Nicaragua was at a critical point at that time. The Sandinistas, the rebel group that overthrew the brutal dictator Anastasio Somoza (the U.S. Government's good buddy), had been legitimately elected to run the new government. In response, the Reagan administration's security apparatus and "off the book" friends had organized, funded, and trained the biggest group of terrorists ever assembled by a Western power (around 10,000 at their peak) called the "Contras." The purpose of the contras was to murder, create terror, burn villages, and otherwise create as much havoc as possible against the people of Nicaragua.

I had looked at Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay in South America -- all of which had brutal military dictatorships terrorizing their respective populations and all of which had U.S. government and/or corporate support. But our government's most direct activity had moved to Central America -- Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Nicaragua had been the only country in the area since Cuba to actually free itself of outrageous oppression and now our government was trying to illegally overthrow their internationally-monitored elected government.

I had decided that South Africa was the key to beginning to solve Southern Africa's numerable problems and I felt that same way about Nicaragua being the turning point for Central America. Regardless about what I thought about the Sandinistas, I had to do everything possible to stop the terrorism against the Nicaraguan people by my government and try to head off the increasingly likely prospect of a military invasion. This invasion would be justified under the pretense of trying to prevent Nicaragua from supplying arms to rebels in El Salvador (who by the way were trying to overthrow their own brutal military dictatorship). I also spoke as often as I could about the fact that Reagan and his people were trying to re-militarize Costa Rica, through bribery and threats, to use them as a Southern front in this illegal war. This in spite of the fact that Costa Rica was the only country in Central or South America that was truly peaceful because they had completely disbanded their military years earlier.

We met with the various ministers and central committee members of the Nicaraguan government who would take us around showing us the improvements they were making and plans they had. I immediately pissed off the agriculture guy who was explaining with great pride their land reform plans. He said the land was completely liberated and the people and entrepreneurs were free to do anything they wanted with it. I said anything? It is important that we are very clear about what is going on here because we will be reporting all this stuff back to America. Yes, he said, total freedom. So I can buy this land right now, I said, and put a McDonald's up, right? Well not exactly seņor, he laughed and tried to change the subject. Look, I said, I don't care what you're doing. I'm sure you have a good plan and it's none of my business. But just be straight and accurate with us so we don't look like jerks reporting an inaccurate picture of what is going on here. When we say freedom in America, generally speaking on the subject of land, we mean it literally and you do not mean it literally so let's not allow our cultural communication differences turn us into bullshitters. Now he was pissed. Discussion over.

Like most governments in the world, about half of the committee members were OK and about half were incompetents, ideologues, or idiots. We were told we would meet the President, Daniel Ortega, on our third day or whatever and I said that's fine but I really want to meet his wife. After you spend a little time in politics you learn where the power is and try to get to it as quickly as possible. In politics, as in life, the wife is usually a good place to start.

So I met her and she was great. Most of the government officials didn't really want any input or criticism, they just wanted a rubber stamp approval from whatever mindless liberal happened to come through. But she seemed different, she gave the impression she really wanted to know what I thought. So, you know me by now, I happened to have a few things on my mind. I suggested three things. First, I said if you want to stop this war you've got to get your husband out of his Fidel Castro fatigues and into a three-piece suit. Television is everything, and image counts more than you can possibly imagine. Second, I had read an early draft of the new Nicaraguan constitution and it had a real big flaw. There was something in there about the Sandinista party being the official party of the country, or their flag being the official flag or something along those lines. I told her the rest of the document looked great but unless they separated party affiliation from national governance they were doomed. Multi-party democracy means no favorites, regardless of how many war heroes or liberators a specific party might have.

I asked her if she considered herself a communist. If she had said yes it wouldn't have thrown me. I'd studied the subject enough to know everybody defined their own brand of communism differently. Some with malevolent results (China), some benevolent (Italy), some a combination of malevolence, corruption, and stupidity (Russia), and some somewhere in between. She said no. Did any government officials, I asked? She mentioned a few and explained how Castro was a big hero to the whole hemisphere because of his success in overthrowing Batista and, in spite of his dubious human rights record when it came to individual freedom, maintained that status. She thought the communists would have their own party eventually and didn't feel they were ideologically extreme enough to be a real factor in the plans her husband had. I said OK well here's the third thing. Get a New York lawyer and the next time The New York Times calls you a Communist country or Communist government, sue them. I explained the word Communist in the U.S. means something different than in any other country in the world. It is an epithet, plain and simple. It is also, literally, a license to kill.

Anyway, we split and eventually Ollie North got caught, the contras disbanded, the war ended, and the Sandinistas were voted out of power, probably by our CIA rigging the election. I couldn't have cared less to tell you the truth. You meet enough of them and you realize most politicians are assholes regardless of party affiliation or revolutionary credentials. As long as innocent people weren't dying or being terrorized with U.S. involvement, I moved on.

I visited the Onondaga Indian Reservation near Syracuse, New York and Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the site of Wounded Knee and two tumultuous events in Indian history 83 years apart. I was getting a crash course in Indian politics, culture, and religion.

The first thing that hit me was how much was going on with absolutely no attention at all from the general non-Indian public. There were (and are) hundreds of land disputes, denial of access to sacred sites, grave robbing and many other issues resulting from the 370 treaties that have been broken by the U.S. government. Not to mention the efforts to store nuclear waste on Indian land, led by Hazel O’Leary, later picked by President Clinton to be Secretary of Energy.

Native American religion, and art, are so integrated into daily life that I had trouble finding those words in any Indian language. The essence of Indian religion is that the Earth is sacred and all living and "non-living" things are equally sacred and respected as separate but equal parts of an integrated universe. Nature and natural law are not the enemy and something to be conquered and controlled but should be understood and lived with in harmony.

Indian people are defined by their bloodline but that should not be the only criteria. They are the original environmentalists and issues like pollution and mining have been major issues since gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874. The "Americanization" of Indian people started pretty much with the Mayflower and continues today. Indian children were brought to American schools and their culture was literally beaten out of them. The most successfully Anglicized and co-opted of the Indian people would be picked to run the U.S. government imposed "Indian" governments on the reservation. These no-longer Indians except in bloodline would sign the agreements allowing corporations to mine Indian land, a direct violation of the most fundamental tenets of Indian religion, creating tension and pollution problems that continue today.

Overall, I found very little communication between the surviving 350 Indian Nations. Like all defeated nations, the divide and conquer strategy of the victorious U.S. government worked beyond the wars of the 19^th century and is still working today. We started Solidarity Foundation in the early 80's to serve as an information gathering and networking service between the Indian Nations, the Indian Nations and the non-Indian public, and the Indian Nations and environmental groups. Our original thought was to give it an international scope, which is why Solidarity became the umbrella under which Artists United Against Apartheid fought the good fight against apartheid in South Africa. But soon after the victory in South Africa, we realized there is too much going on in our country that needed attention to be able to deal effectively with international issues on a regular basis.

One of the most important functions of Solidarity was (and is) the encouragement of economic development in harmony with the Earth. The issue of gambling had become a major internal struggle in Indian country around this time and the controversy continues today. The elders of the National Treaty Council were against it for general reasons of morality but the potential for new revenue to many poverty stricken nations was too good to resist. For the first time I found myself disagreeing with the elders so out of respect Solidarity pretty much stayed away from the subject. Maybe it was my New Jersey-Italian-American-Rat Pack upbringing, but I thought it was a great idea. I figured it's non-polluting, an enormous source of reserve, and it sure beats selling beads by the roadside to backpackers looking for a weekend commune with nature. If it was handled properly - and that's a big if - I thought it could totally turn things around for the whole culture. That meant owning and controlling it and using the money to build and maintain Indian-oriented schools and curing the rampant poverty, unemployment, and devastated infrastructure. Ethnicide has two essential initial components. Take the land and kill the language. The land we pretty much know about but the Indian languages are dying at an alarming rate and unless that is turned around immediately, they will be lost forever.

This album would be about the State, the State of the Nations. I would use the three examples of Native America, Central America, and South Africa. What was going on in those places as a direct result of United States' policies would be the subject and main theme of the record.

Musically I decided I couldn't decide. So I put dance rhythms on the bottom and rock on top. It ended up an interesting hybrid of the two styles and I think the combination of elements made it my most original piece of work. It's also the best production I ever bothered to do for myself so the sound holds up pretty good.