This Week with David Rovics

New song: "35 Children A Day"

UNICEF says 35 children per day on average have been killed by Israeli bombs, snipers, or other such means since October 2023. Now the numbers will grow exponentially in the ongoing famine Israeli forces are imposing.

Being the Media, and Being the Publicist

Kamala Emanuel and I -- aka the Ministry of Culture -- are off on another tour of parts of Europe and the US.  Details about all the gigs can be found at davidrovics.com/tour.

Songs for Jabaliya concert recording

With our spiffy new home internet connection, today's broadcast was not a disaster, for a change! I sang songs from the new album, Jabaliya, and other songs as well, mostly from the past year.

It was streamed live, this is what Streamyard calls the "Cloud recording," as opposed to the "Local recording," which is a WAV file that you can find on the Substack version of this podcast.  For tech geeks out there, I'm singing through a Shure SM7B, and playing a Collings guitar with a K&K pickup, plugged into a Focusrite box, which then is connected to the laptop.

"Jabaliya" REMIX

On Day 21 in the genocidal siege of Jabaliya, as the hospital is being destroyed by tank fire and the children inside burned alive, here's a haunting, powerful remix of the song I just wrote, from Chet Gardiner's studio in Hawai'i.

America Throws A Tantrum Again

Another election, time to turn up the volume and shout at each other even more than usual again.

"Jill Stein" REMIX

Chet Gardiner in Hawai'i has provided a gorgeous backup band for "Jill Stein." Complete with drums -- appropriately enough, since Jill herself is a fine percussionist!

So now if the song is so catchy that it causes a landslide vote for the Green Party, you can take your pick as to whether you want to blame me, Chet, or both of us.

New song: "Jabaliya"

Everything is burning as I watch the video

She crawls out of the ruins, venturing to go

Out in search of water, the final human need

Although the consequences are almost guaranteed

As she goes out in the open, beneath the killer drones

Which aims its sights on her, then shreds her to her bones

Then waits for any people who might be fool enough to try

Come to fetch her body, beneath the smoke-filled sky

 

Two million people behind the ghetto wall

Wait for two-ton bombs to fall

To crush and burn the schools and tents

Where your whole extended family went

Scores more murdered with each passing day

With so many more on the edge of being taken away

Surrounded by tanks that fire at will

And the rest of the world stands by still

 

Completely surrounded with no food getting in

Ghost-like faces, impossibly thin

Kids that look like babies, babies born

Thirsty, starving, and forlorn

Men are being taken to who knows where

The elderly, the babies, the wounded in wheelchairs

With donkey carts and wagons, south on cue

As the drones above the rubble ordered them to do

 

They’re carrying out the Generals’ Plan

Which means kill all the kids that you possibly can

Anyone moving, soldiers take aim

Who they are doesn’t matter, they’re all the same

Make no distinctions, orders decree

Killing them all is just how it must be

And right now in New Jersey you can buy shares

In the resort Jared Kushner plans to build there

How Liberalism and Fascism Are Flip Sides of the Same Coin

From top to bottom, Americans can virtue-signal like nobody's business.  But material conditions of most of society in the US indicate a total failure of governance.

"The Generals' Plan"

Bombing daily for well over a year
A death sentence for everyone here
The Lancet said it's 200K killed
Body parts strewn, mass graves filled
Shooting at families, then when medics arrive
Shoot again, leave no child alive

They announced their intentions, to clear the north
And they rolled in the tanks, firing forth

How many months now with nothing to eat
A twenty-mile strip of rubble-strewn streets
With no power, no water, schools destroyed
An occupying army completely devoid
Of one little trace of morality
After totally demolishing Gaza City
Beit Hanoun, Zeitoun, Jabaliya
Khan Yunis, Deir al Bala and Beit Lahia

Destroying everything everywhere
Producing their own footage as if to dare
Anyone else to do anything
To stop the destruction of everything
To stop them from killing everyone
Every daughter and every son
A zone of carnage, ruins and drones
That won’t even leave a living child alone

To starve them out is just what they say
As the air strikes are called in day after day
As the disembodied heads and hands
Scattered across this forsaken land
Get bulldozed into the ground to hide
The holocaust where everyone died
Killed by Biden, by Netanyahu
To colonize for the chosen few

The western media equivocates
Along with the leaders of the western states
Are they really aiming to kill them all?
Maybe we should do something to try to forestall
The end of this ancient civilization

But they just stand alongside the genocide nation
Who knew Jabaliya would end like this
The ghost of another apocalypse

They’re calling it the Generals’ Plan
Laying waste to whatever they can
Mechanized warfare run by AI
Where anyone living is subject to die

Higher-tech killing than ever before
Across the Atlantic, plans being made for
Condos on the Mediterranean sea
Where the people of Gaza used to be

How the Left Shrank

The decline of the left in the US that I've been witnessing now for decades has been a process of exclusion that bears trying to describe.