This Week with David Rovics

What does it feel like to be canceled by a thousand cuts?

By delaying what they then deny
By defending their actions as they watch us die
Well, you know
There are so many ways to kill a CEO

It's #SpotifyWrapped time again, and this year's summary of my presence on the platform is especially Kafka Orwell.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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