This Week with David Rovics

A History of the World According to David Rovics EPISODE 7

Listen to everything from the beginning at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld or just start with this one!

1970’s and 1980’s

• The blowing up of a dam and the birth of the Icelandic environmental movement
• The discovery of the FBI’s Cointelpro by the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI
• The imprisonment and escape from prison of Assata Shakur
• The CIA-backed coup in Chile, and solidarity from East Kilbride, Scotland
• The struggle for land and freedom at Big Mountain and the Navajo/Hopi dispute
• The collective construction of the world’s biggest windmill in Denmark
• The CIA-backed coup in Australia that overthrew Gough Whitlam’s government
• The Iranian Revolution and the seizure of the US Embassy by students
• Armed Republican resistance in Ireland, and the 1981 prison hunger strikes
• Civil war in El Salvador

New song: "The Siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital" #FreeDrHussamAbuSafiya

In what has been standard operating procedure since the Palestinian Holocaust began in October, 2023, during the last few days of 2024 the Israeli occupation forces systematically destroyed and then burned every inch of a massive hospital complex that used to serve the needs of the population. Once destroying the building, the standard procedure is they arrest and torture the staff, which is what everyone is certain is now happening to the hospital director, as happened to hospital directors, doctors, and other staff at every other hospital in Gaza that the Israelis have systematically eliminated in the course of their genocidal war against the people, which the western media misrepresents (when they mention it at all) as a "war between Israel and Hamas."

"Canceled" REMIX

Happy New Year to all my fellow canceled people -- you know who you are, whether or not anybody else does! Remix from the brilliant Chet Gardiner.

A History of the World According to David Rovics EPISODE 6

Listen to everything from the beginning at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld or just start with this one!

1950-1970

• US/UN invasion of Korea and war with China

• The Red Scare and the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

• The Cuban Revolution

• The Cuban Missile Crisis

• Texaco/Chevron’s destruction of the Ecuadorian Amazon

• The Six Day War and the Israeli attack on the NSA spy ship, the USS Liberty

• The My Lai Massacre in Vietnam

• The antiwar movement in the US and around the world

• Martin Luther King, Jr assassination and the Poor People’s March on Washington

• Anti-Catholic pogroms and refugee crisis in Ireland

• Columbia Eagle Mutiny

• Kent State Massacre

A History of the World According to David Rovics EPISODE 5

Listen to everything from the beginning at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld or just start with this one!

1943-1949

• The arrests and executions of German communists such as Hamburg city councilor, Franz Jacob

• The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

• The boatlift of the Danish Jews to Sweden

• The Dutch resistance and the killing of Henk Streefkerk

• The Normandy landings

• The liberation of Katharina Jacob and other Ravensbruck prisoners by the Red Army

• The US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

• The expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from Palestine, the Naqba

• The Berlin Airlift of 1948-49

A Year of Music, a Year of Genocide, a Year of Cancelations

My year in review.

A History of the World According to David Rovics EPISODE 4

1933-1941. Listen to everything from the beginning at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld or just start with this one!

• The rise to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler
• The International Brigades and the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War
• Anti-immigration laws and sentiment in the west and the turning back of Jewish refugees
• The kindertransports — rescuing Jewish children while leaving their parents to die
• The SS Winnipeg and Pablo Neruda’s rescue of the Spanish refugees in France in 1939
• Henry Ford and the popularity of fascism in the US
• Ram Mohamed Singh Azad and resistance to colonialism in India
• The US-imposed oil blockade on the Japanese Empire
• The internment of Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans in the western US
• Chiune Sugihara and the rescue of thousands of European Jews by “the Japanese Schindler”

 

New song: "Canceled"

Merry Christmas to all my fellow canceled people. If you're in the club, you'll probably identify with most of the lines in this song, I'll wager -- if you get a chance to hear the song in the first place, that is.

A History of the World According to David Rovics EPISODE 3

This episode covers events that took place from 1917-1921.

• The rise and fall of the Working Class Union in Oklahoma
• Danish syndicalism and the Battle of the Borso
• World War 1 and the Pandemic of 1918
• The Russian Revolution and US invasion of Russia
• The Winnipeg General Strike
• The Industrial Workers of the World and the lynching of Wesley Everest
• The Palmer Raids
• Kelly Butte and the use of prison labor in Oregon
• The Tulsa Race Massacre
• The Battle of Blair Mountain

There's no need to start at the beginning, necessarily, but all the episodes out so far can be found at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld, along with notes on each of them.

A History of the World According to David Rovics EPISODE 2

Here's the second episode of A History of the World According to David Rovics. This one covers events from 1846-1916.

The first two podcasts are up now at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld, and the rest will all be up there eventually, free for anyone to download. I would venture to say it's a really good bunch of podcasts, that could be especially good to share with folks who may just discovering people's history or radical politics.

For paid subscribers, 16 episodes are already up. They can be found in the Everything folder -- if you're a CSA member, whether you signed up through Substack, Patreon, Bandcamp, or at davidrovics.com/subscribe, you should have gotten a welcome email with the link to the Everything folder, but feel free to contact me if you need that again!