This Week with David Rovics

A History of the World According to David Rovics EPISODE 8

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

1980’s and 1990’s

• The exposure of Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal and the abduction of Mordechai Vanunu
• The Anti-Highway Movement and victory in Massachusetts
• Sanctions on Iraq and the deaths of 500,000 children there, according to UNICEF
• Industrial disaster in Hamlet, North Carolina and the failure of OSHA
• Gun violence in America and the death of my dear friend Eric Mark in San Francisco
• Riots and police shootings in Copenhagen after passage of the Maastricht Treaty
• The blockade of Prince William Sound in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez oil spill
• The arrest and imprisonment of Alvaro Luna Hernandez for the crime of self-defense
• The rise of School of the Americas Watch and annual protests in Columbus, Georgia
• The Minnehaha Free State in Minneapolis, and resistance to highway expansion there
• The Timber Wars on the west coast of North America and the death of David “Gypsy” Chain
• The environmental crisis is found to be profoundly affecting the male anatomy

Four Things That Happened on January 1st

2025 began with several massacres, the demonetization of my YouTube channel, and other notable developments.

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.