tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49108332224745076032012-02-01T16:42:02.538-08:00This is where I post my occasional essays and other things, which are often also published in <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/">CounterPunch</a> and elsewhere.David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.comBlogger401100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-45165287734868412472011-12-27T17:33:00.001-08:002011-12-28T14:05:41.974-08:00

Within the first few weeks of 2011 it was abundantly clear that this was already a year of world-historic proportions, right up there with 1968 or 1848. The entire Arab world was in revolt, and here at the end of 2011, it still is. And the Arab Awakening has just been part of the global excitement.I'm a bit slow when it comes to new technologies, so the beginning of 2011 also marked the first

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-90352641466283097732011-12-07T10:00:00.000-08:002011-12-07T10:06:44.322-08:00

Note: This essay exists in audio form for free download as well.Amy Goodman and many others have referred to the corporate media as an "echo chamber," which is a very accurate metaphor. Mostly privileged, overpaid white men who fall within a narrowly-constrained political spectrum pretend to have debates, while failing to even discuss most of the most pressing issues of the day. When they need

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-23964467087428993122011-12-01T22:36:00.000-08:002011-12-01T22:38:11.339-08:00

John Timoney, until recently chief of police of Miami and before that Philadelphia, formerly of New York City, where he also was a high-ranking cop, is heading to Bahrain to train the cops there, according to the Associated Press. If you happen to know anybody from Bahrain who might be thinking that hiring this New Yorker could be a step in the direction of less massacre-oriented policing

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-35269862176397679442011-11-24T13:54:00.000-08:002011-11-24T13:58:30.575-08:00

Note: You can also listen to me reading this essay, all 52 minutes of it!The tour began during the first few days of August, a bit ominously with consecutive events in New Orleans, Waco and Oslo. Someone said I should call it the Unnatural Disasters Tour. In New Orleans I was there, for the first time in several years, to protest the meeting of the Koch Brothers' rightwing thinktank, the

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-35226747790442085512011-07-25T13:38:00.000-07:002011-07-25T13:47:28.496-07:00

I'm as shocked as most other people are at the fact that there are people in our midst who could be so socially alienated that they could justify the killing of scores of young people on the basis that they are politically progressive. Equally shocking is the scale of this slaughter.The nature of this event reminds me both of Oklahoma City and Columbine, which have their similarities in nature

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-39721577225606128852011-07-14T00:09:00.000-07:002011-07-25T13:46:54.631-07:00

It is often said of topical songwriters that we are just using music as a vehicle for our political rantings. Well here's the proof -- actual slogans set to music that you can wear on your website or post on your Facebook page! Kind of like a button you'd wear on your shirt (blouse, hat, etc.) to make a statement, but it's digital and it sings...Some samples are below. Click "play" on any

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-54371161067909108272010-08-10T01:12:00.000-07:002010-08-10T01:24:44.328-07:00

Dear friends and fellow misfits,What you're looking at here is the digital version of my new release, Troubador: People's History in Song. The physical version includes a booklet with the notes below plus lyrics for each song along with spiffy graphics, and a remastered CD with the eighteen songs on it. Six of the songs have never appeared on a CD, and the other twelve are from several

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-6835633404249564732010-05-11T05:21:00.000-07:002011-07-25T13:46:02.554-07:00

When only a few people show up or the band sucks, a benefit concert can be demoralizing. But when done right it can accomplish a number of important goals. It can raise much-needed money for activist groups, energize and inspire your community, help your group do more outreach and networking with the broader community, and they can even help support artists! By my informal accounting, at least

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-70110958860260152092010-04-14T09:42:00.000-07:002010-04-14T09:43:09.429-07:00

I can't stand talk radio of any political persuasion, it's all too repetitive and emotional. But I like to keep tabs on the media landscape out there, and in terms of who's talking on the radio in much of the USA here are your choices, in order of prevalence: football, Jesus, Rush Limbaugh and, late at night when folks are apparently good and ready for it, shows about the government hiding the

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-71933609831242304312010-04-01T16:28:00.000-07:002010-04-01T16:31:11.025-07:00

Here in the USA, millions of people are continuously losing their jobs and not finding new ones, millions more are losing their homes, still more millions are in prison for nothing more than self-medicating with drugs that arbitrarily happen to be illegal and will be discriminated against as felons for years to come. Tens of thousands are being shot to death every year, there are massacres

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-38238494832232105442010-02-24T09:16:00.000-08:002010-02-24T09:17:59.378-08:00

Some Thoughts on Vancouver and the Black BlocI love a good riot. The distant sound of things breaking, the smoke billowing from whatever is burning, the young men and women busily smashing whatever they can find into fist-sized pieces, launching the objects over the heads of their fellow rioters (if all goes well) and into the ranks of the black-clad police with their Ninja Turtle armor,

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-43015700965161649922010-02-16T00:55:00.000-08:002010-02-16T00:58:40.693-08:00

In a country with the kind of tumultuous history that Ireland has it's not surprising that a man being arrested and jailed for seven months would escape the notice of the media, at least outside of Ireland. What should hopefully pique some interest is that this is a man with a long history of being bullied, intimidated, arrested and treated roughly by the authorities for his nonviolent

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-26711335099119927322010-01-30T21:22:00.000-08:002010-01-30T21:26:26.255-08:00

“Violent Clashes” and the Arrest of Abdullah Abu RahmaHe's a Palestinian man, and he has one of those very Muslim-sounding names with “Abu” in it (it means “father of”). Any time his name is mentioned in the media it tends to be quickly lined up with phrases like “violent clashes.” If the article is more than one paragraph long then somehow or other the topic of suicide bombing will make its

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-65998807246300795532010-01-28T21:15:00.000-08:002010-01-28T21:18:12.130-08:00

Icon of Scottish folk music, international socialism, and Australian punk rock dead at 57Today is my daughter Leila's fourth birthday, and while this occasion brings my thoughts back to the day she was born, the past 24 hours have otherwise been full of fairly devastating news.If the left can admit to having icons, then two of them have just died. Yesterday it was the great historian and

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-70732047039536552602009-12-14T18:07:00.000-08:002009-12-14T18:09:10.465-08:00

The signs up all over the airport and various places elsewhere in town are calling it Hopenhagen, but everybody I know is calling it Cop-enhagen, which seems far more appropriate. The international media has been giving this lots of coverage, and rightly so. Of course much of the media is unable to walk and chew gum at the same time, so other things, such as the reason the protests are

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-44936034894486930692009-09-27T19:16:00.000-07:002009-09-27T19:21:41.219-07:00

Reflections From PittsburghIf any elements of the corporate media have been paying any attention to what's been happening on the streets of Pittsburgh over the past few days I haven't noticed, so I thought I'd write my own account.There is a popular assumption asserted ad nauseum by our leaders in government, by our school text books and by our “mainstream” media that although many other

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-85929937662986489362009-03-19T00:44:00.000-07:002009-03-19T00:50:37.095-07:00

I was in Olympia, Washington driving towards Evergreen State College when I got a phone call from someone in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. An Evergreen graduate named Rachel Corrie had been killed a few days before by an Israeli soldier in an armored bulldozer, and someone with an Australian accent on my cell phone named Tom was wondering whether it was OK for the International Solidarity

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-73271723074871263022008-11-07T10:04:00.000-08:002008-11-07T10:12:03.203-08:00

Friends around the world keep asking me questions. Are you excited? What do you think of Obama? Others are simply congratulating me. And I must say, it was a thrilling moment.As a teenager, in 1984, I volunteered for the Mondale/Ferraro campaign, mostly pushing bumper stickers. An anti-nuclear group was doing this, in the belief that Mondale would be less likely to cause Armageddon. I grew

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-27243443767234570462008-05-25T03:40:00.000-07:002008-05-28T23:04:59.880-07:00

I was watching my baby daughter sleep in her carseat outside of the Sacramento airport about ten hours ago when I noticed a missed call from Brendan Phillips. He's in a band called Fast Rattler with several friends of mine, two of whom live in my new hometown of Portland, Oregon, one of whom needed a ride home from the Greyhound station. I called back, and soon thereafter heard the news from

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-28483997870164036002008-03-31T17:42:00.000-07:002008-03-31T17:46:08.156-07:00

Or, who are these people and why do they keep yelling at me?I found myself once again singing at an antiwar rally two weeks ago, and once again being confronted by a red-faced white man with an ominous hand-written sign reading, "9/11 was a lie." Most of the crowd was filing off for the post-rally march, aside from a few of my loyal fans who were sticking around for the rest of my set. Among

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-37913472231151318772008-03-23T21:11:00.000-07:002008-03-23T21:22:48.305-07:00

An Open Letter to the US Left on the Relevance of CultureBeing an activist is a hard, relatively thankless, generally unpaid job. There are some really wonderful people who are going to be offended by this essay, and I apologize in advance if you’re one of them, but what I say here had to be said. We’re all hopefully trying to make the world a better place, and sometimes that means having open

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-5602324372990923492007-12-21T04:08:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:08:52.211-08:00

Idle ramblings on raising babies and children (and burning down the schools). I’ve been spending most of my time lately hanging out with a baby – my daughter, Leila. She’ll be two at the end of next month. I’m often with her from dawn to dusk, five or six days a week, while her mother attends medical school. Spending all this time with her, naturally she starts to rub off on me in a big way,

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-51510550379928268802007-10-09T06:18:00.000-07:002008-02-21T12:12:49.352-08:00

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing massive multinational corporations with tentacles in every corner of the global economy including the music business, has just won a lawsuit against a mother of two who refused to be pushed around. Jamie Thomas’ pockets were not nearly deep enough to mount the kind of legal defense for the occasion, but she rightly thought

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-74111267240564217322007-09-10T17:40:00.000-07:002008-02-21T12:17:03.891-08:00

My friend Robert woke me up from my slumber at his cabin next to the Hoosier National Forest. “They’re saying we’re under attack.” I came inside and listened to NPR with him. At this point they weren’t sure whether it was military or commercial planes involved. My immediate thought was, there’s no country’s leadership in the world who’d do this, no leader wants to attack the US on US

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-12304055234884244502007-08-12T07:50:00.000-07:002008-02-21T12:21:56.479-08:00

Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-24037062918732928452007-06-08T03:28:00.001-07:002008-02-21T12:23:27.749-08:00

The riots in Rostock, Germany began around 3 pm last Saturday. In European riots outside of G8 meetings and such, generally all sides refrain from using lethal weapons. (If anybody breaks with this tradition – such as Genoa in 2000 or Gothenberg in 2001 – it is always the police.) The riots on Saturday were part of a long series of such confrontations around Germany, around Europe, around the

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-66424595365640524172007-05-13T01:46:00.000-07:002008-02-21T12:24:32.833-08:00

Bill Rodgers died in a jail cell in Flagstaff, Arizona, fist raised above him, plastic bag over his head, of an apparent suicide, on the 2005 winter solstice. Two weeks before in Prescott, Bill’s baby, the Catalyst Infoshop had been raided by fifteen federal officers and he was taken away.Bill was essentially accused of destroying corporate property. If he had been arrested for these crimes in,

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-23729492782448271992007-03-09T14:11:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:25:32.965-08:00

I was awoken before dawn last Thursday by the ringing of my cell phone. On the line was a friend from Copenhagen. “I’m sorry to call so early. It’s happened.” Having very recently spent a lot of time in Denmark, I knew right away what this meant. Denmark’s flagship anarchist squat, one of Europe’s oldest squatted social centers, had been attacked by the police. “They landed helicopters on

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-32776137985847321782007-02-13T03:47:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:26:55.435-08:00

Among other events in recent history, the formation of the group Independent Jewish Voices in the UK has once again pushed the debate on Israel and Palestine into the spotlight. Along with this, the usual, tired and outrageously misplaced allegations of “self-hatred” are made by the more shrill voices among the “Israel can do no wrong” lobby. Here are some of my ruminations on this

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-22468040169810192007-01-29T08:25:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:28:32.258-08:00

The organizers with United for Peace and Justice and all of those participating have once again pulled off a giant protest march and rally. As has happened once or twice a year since the invasion of Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of people have converged for a national protest, this time in Washington, DC.The major media outlets decided this time that the protest was worth covering. This time

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-65592637860692802592007-01-03T18:22:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:29:23.957-08:00

The great butcher has himself been butchered. The timing is auspicious. These symbolic little “victories” in the otherwise bleak occupation of Iraq often seem to be timed for US consumption. If this one was, then it couldn’t have been a coincidence that it comes on the same long holiday weekend as the death of the 3,000th American soldier there.And three thousand is not just a round number --

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-25098827134515761482006-12-25T16:14:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:30:33.644-08:00

Once when I was touring Denmark my friend Jenka was visiting Europe at the same time. I picked her up at the airport and we headed into Copenhagen. As we were approaching the city, she got excited. “Wow,” she said, “it’s like a constant Critical Mass bike ride!”As we wait at traffic lights at major intersections we pass through, the traffic passing by ahead of us generally includes a few cars and

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-42191639482248885182006-12-18T12:11:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:32:04.380-08:00

I was in San Francisco, California a couple months ago, and I saw Klee Benally there. It had been a long time since I’d seen him. I tend to go where the gigs take me, which often means going in and out of certain orbits in unpredictable ways. There at the American Indian Center of San Francisco, Klee was the master of ceremonies for an event that was attended by 200 or so people, mostly

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-6635752410622283642006-12-07T02:15:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:33:42.727-08:00

There are certain things that jump out at you as soon as you arrive in Denmark. One thing you’ll notice, especially if you come from a place within that large mass of the world that is at least a bit closer to the equator, is that there is rarely anything you’d call direct sunlight. It’s twilight most of the time. In the summer it’s only really dark for an hour or so, but it’s never completely

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-27189234056099759272006-11-29T01:05:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:34:54.967-08:00

Our taxi dropped us off at the checkpoint outside Nablus, so we could then walk through the checkpoint and take another taxi into the city. With the travel restrictions and hundreds of checkpoints everywhere, this is the way you have to travel, if you’re lucky enough to be allowed to travel at all.There, on the outskirts of this ancient Palestinian city, as with every other city in the West Bank

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-27409778797330893582006-11-22T06:25:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:35:46.976-08:00

As usual, it was almost completely ignored by the corporate media. But once again, tens of thousands of people of conscience made what has become an annual pilgrimage to Columbus, Georgia, to protest a large terrorist training camp. The camp is located within Fort Benning, and once again, there we were outside one of the entrances to the military base, remembering the dead, hoping to prevent

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-24477251629732650402006-11-22T06:23:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:36:39.367-08:00

I drive off the ferry into the new Dublin. Much of it still looks like the old Dublin, before the EU and Celtic Tigerhood. The Liffey is still there, the foot bridges over it, the majestic buildings, the Winding Stair bookstore. I can still smell the sweat of the men marching to their deaths on the Easter Rising. Somebody on Grafton Street is still playing “The Foggy Dew” on uilean pipes. But the

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-19886411080863495092006-11-22T06:21:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:37:43.375-08:00

It’s all over the news, Pierre Gemayel has been murdered in Beirut. Gemayel was a member of the Phalange party, who’s pro-Israeli militia in 1982 carried out a massacre of thousands of Palestinian women and children in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. A lot of people are upset with the Phalangists since then, and recent developments haven’t helped. Namely the airborne demolition of the

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-75348864187105504322006-11-22T06:18:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:38:30.939-08:00

I arrived in Mexico City just before the Day of the Dead. For many people it’s a Hallowe’en sort of celebration, but typically with far more original and elaborate costumes than you’d find in the US, at least anywhere outside New Orleans. For others the day is a time to remember the martyrs among the dead, especially the dozens killed in the past few months in Oaxaca. I had been planning the

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-67082981583289630212006-11-22T06:08:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:39:53.263-08:00

brad will was a dear friend, and a true revolutionary. he died the way countless and uncounted numbers of beautiful people have died in recent centuries -- he was shot in the chest by rightwing paramilitaries. he was filming the scene around one of thousands of barricades that have shut down oaxaca city since last june, when the governor there tried to ban public expressions of dissent, thus

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1