This Week with David Rovics

Every day since the US/Israeli mercenaries set up their fake aid distribution killing field, they have committed a massacre of starving children -- children who have been starved by those very same governments who are putting food parcels in their hands and bullets in their backs.  Was there something else in the news?

The Israeli regime has been telling us all along what's coming next: mass expulsion or death for everyone in Gaza. Do you believe them yet?

Israel has one company that makes the sorts of bunker-busting missiles that have been annihilating the population of Gaza for so many years (Elbit Systems).  The US has the rest of them, which provide Israel with most of its missiles, fighter jets, etc.  Otherwise known as the American war machine -- without which the genocide would not be possible.

The girl in the flames the world has been seeing over Memorial Day weekend actually survived the bombing of the classroom she was sleeping in, unlike the many other children and women and men who were burned alive, in that and other Israeli air strikes targeting children throughout Gaza, throughout the weekend.

I spoke at length with folks from Atlanta, Georgia for the What the Folk? show on WRFG Community Radio. Here's the whole show -- the interview segments as well as all the excellent song selections from various artists that comprise the rest of this wonderful two-hour radio show.

I'm very excited to announce that the brilliant Laura Love is contributing vocal harmony parts to tracks on my upcoming album, such as this one.  What these harmonies are adding to the impact of the songs is immeasurable, in my humble opinion.

In the Israeli military there is a popular expression.  They say the soldiers of the world's most moral army, as they call themselves, care so much about humanity -- even Palestinian humanity -- that they are all crying while they're shooting.  I'm quite certain the same is true for Elias Rodriguez as he shot the Israeli diplomats.

On my recent trip to BC I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Brian Charlton & Stephen Harvey for their Labour Beat radio show. We had a wide-ranging and downright fascinating conversation. The first 40 minutes of this episode represents Part 1.

When I was in BC recently I was interviewed at some length by Cornelius Lundsgaard for Hornby Island Community Radio.

When all is lost, all that's left is our dreams.

Another powerful and timely remix to the latest song I've recorded, from Chet Gardiner.

While EuroVision was getting the headlines, FalastinVision was where you could find the most relevant music.

Some thoughts on the silent majority.

There is a mythology so many of us grew up with, that because of the experience of the Nazi holocaust, Jews were generally a more moral people, as a whole, and no state run almost entirely by Jews could possibly do something like genocide another people. This mythology was wrong, and Gaza is the evidence.  

Chet added some musical touches to serve the song and turn up the intensity a notch.

Chet Gardiner has made some powerful improvements to the song, with various instruments.  The genocide of the people of Gaza is happening now, via famine and disease.  One thing you can do right now is share this song.  Songs can reach places the news stories don't.

The Israeli plan is to kill everyone in Gaza -- "to holocaust them," as Netanyahu's advisors say live on national TV, in Hebrew.

I had a good time chatting the other day with the hosts of the podcast, Unfinished Business with Paul & Rob. We talked about Gaza and music and other things.  The interview with me begins 12 minutes in.

A few thoughts from my recent travels in Canada and Denmark.

Entering the third month of Israel's total embargo on Gaza, the starvation has begun.

Americans Who Tell the Truth -- americanswhotellthetruth.org -- is a brilliant project that's been going for decades now, which involves portraits painted by Robert Shetterley of many wonderful people.  I was interviewed recently for the website by Constance Carter, AWTT's Director of Education, and the interview was so nicely edited that I thought I'd share it with you.

Do it well, and you might just grow a movement. Do it badly, and you can kill it in the bud.

Here's a little Earth Day preview of the sort of concert folks have in store coming right up in BC and Denmark...

Some of us were just going for the bread and circus, but when we went there, we found neither.

After our visit to Mexico, we spent several days in southern California and three weeks between England and Scotland.

Almost a month into Israel's complete blockade of food, water, medicine or anything else getting into the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli military orders mass evacuations of Palestinians to an unknown destination, here is Chet Gardiner's chilling remix of my most recent song about all of that.

The only groups that are actually trying to enforce international law when it comes to Israel's war crimes are organizations that are illegal in many western countries to say anything nice about, or you risk being considered a terrorist.

Normally the ruling elite is supposed to be able to distinguish between reality and their own propaganda, even if most of the commoners believe it. With the new administration, it appears that these people actually believe their own lies, and are actively setting up a whole regime based on them being true.

A song about what Kamala and I have been doing for the past several days in Mexico City.

As we wait to hear whether Mahmoud Khalil will be given a trial, be deported without one, sent to Guantanamo, or who knows what, here's Chet Gardiner's powerful remix of the song I just wrote.

ICE agents taking orders directly from the top and disappearing a student activist with no warrant, no due process, canceling his green card and holding him incommunicado in an unknown location, this is what's happening in the USA right now.

Some thoughts on that majority element of top-quintile US society that persistently refers to itself as "the middle class."

Another fab remix from Chet Gardiner, of a song that's at least as relevant as it was a few days ago, when I wrote it, after that meeting in the Oval Office.

The Ministry of Culture is thrilled to be kicking off our 2025 bout of touring with the St. Patrick's Weekend events in Mexico City! We're also looking forward to LA, London, Glasgow and elsewhere after that! More info: davidrovics.com/tour

I'm constantly unable to decide whether they're brilliantly theatrical, Machiavellian coup-plotters or just bumbling billionaires whose emotional development stalled out a long time ago.

The Israeli government has shut off the Gaza Ghetto completely, so no food can get in.  After a brief message from our sponsors, this holocaust now continues.

I have some free advice to anyone trying to organize a memorable protest or a successful social movement.

I don't know what came over me, but this time when I got the summons for jury duty, I didn't make up a reason why I couldn't do it.  Next time I get such a summons, I'll make sure I'm out of town, or have a sick child to care for.

Somehow I have a lot to say about a movie I haven't seen yet. Sort of a non-review here.

OK, now they're firing all the military lawyers who are supposed to be responsible for determining whether a command is legal or not.  Folks, this is definitely a coup, in case there was any question.  This is not a corruption cleanup operation, it is a dictatorship installation operation.  Here's Chet Gardiner's hopping remix of the song I wrote about it earlier this month.

To the list of allegedly democratic, free countries where the police arrest journalists for writing in opposition to Israeli fascism, we may now add Canada.

A really lively remix of this song I wrote earlier this month (that Elon Musk earned every penny of), with an especially counterpunctual bass line, from Chet Gardiner's studio in Hawai'i.

"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."  Albert Einstein 

I learned belatedly that the wonderful and brilliant woman on the left of this photo, Joan S. Livingston, died last month, at the age of 70. This photo is from December 1st, 2024, last time I was in Boston, playing at the Community Church of Boston, where I had seen her so many times before.

Another song for the ongoing DOGE coup d'etat.

In a special episode of This Week with David Rovics, I had a discussion earlier today with Peter Phillips about his new book, Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity. 

With Trump's new round of immigration raids, detention centers, and protests against them, I'm remembering two decades ago.

Finally, Elon gets his own song.

Will the real populist please stand up?

A dreamy rendition of a song which is itself a dream.

After the worldwide revolution, when the people united, we looked back at our accomplishments.