David Rovics

If you have stated publicly online that you agree with all the holocaust scholars that a genocide is taking place against the Palestinians, then you have surely been called a “useful idiot” by the Hasbara trolls at least a few thousand times by now.

Vote for Sam Husseini! (Especially if you live in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District.)

Ever since the US invaded Russia in 1918, with the brief exception of World War 2, US policy has been to get other people to fight Russia for us, while claiming it's all about support for democracy.

One of the many ingenious ways the corporate press manufactures consent is by using terms like "moderate" to describe genocidal killers and "socialist" to describe the ones opposed to genocide.

I know Azaliia through school circles, as a fellow, loving parent of little kids. The story of what is happening with her and her youngest child is one I’d like to share as widely as possible. This is a very short synopsis of a longer interview.

I know Azaliia through school circles, as a fellow, loving parent of little kids. The story of what is happening with her and her youngest child is one I’d like to share as widely as possible.

People who listen to my music or read my essays are used to hearing from me about injustices of the grand scale — imperial wars, crimes against humanity, climate chaos, etc. I’d like to tell you about a more local injustice.

One thing Azaliia and I have in common is we each are parents of three children. Other things we have in common is we love our kids very much, and we’re very good parents. Two of her kids and two of my kids go to the same elementary school.

She had her third child much more recently than the other two, with a different dad. It was an abusive relationship that finally ended. When Azaliia got him to move out of her house, he took custody of their baby, Lily, while Lily was still breastfeeding.

By now it’s a year or so later, and Lily is two. Azaliia is being considered an abuser by Lily’s father and by the court. She is required to pay massive amounts of money for paid supervisors to be present if she ever wants to see Lily. She also has to pay child support to her child’s abductor. As a young, self-employed immigrant from Russia trying also to support her other two children, she can hardly afford any of it.

What is especially wild about Azaliia being considered an abuser is that she is the one who is the survivor of an abusive relationship, and the abuser was self-evidently her ex, her baby’s father. I think she tells this story in her own words very convincingly.

I’m trying to present a condensed version of events, but it’s all much more complicated by the dynamics of the abusive relationship Azaliia was in, which was full of meticulously-recorded forms of provocation on the part of her ex, that could be later used to entrap Azaliia, to thus far successfully convince the legal system that up is down and down is up.

I wanted to help Azaliia raise money for the legal support she obviously desperately needs, and I wanted to help her explain her predicament. I interviewed her for 1-1/2 hours. Given all she’s been through, we barely scratched the surface with that interview. But I understand the importance of brevity, so I distilled our interview into a 27-minute-long video (this one), and then still further into one that’s less than 3 minutes long.

The QR code for Azaliia’s fundraiser is at the end of the video.

Have you seen the news about the phone booth-sized cages DHS is holding people in, as a form of punishment/torture?

Jewish settlers that call themselves the Hilltop Boys are some of the most violent pogromists in the Occupied West Bank of Palestine.