Singing CIA agent, speaker here this week

By The Standard Staff - 10/01/2005

Iraq and Palestine are the topics of both a speaker and a singer visiting Butte Tuesday on a Montana tour of the anti-war and occupation Wheels of Justice bus.

People are invited to hear them speak on the hour from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and from 7 to 10 p.m. in the Montana Tech Student Union Building.

The tour is part of the Citizens Education Project of the Montana Tech Peace Seekers Club and Butte's Taking Action for Peaceful Solutions.

The tour last visited Butte in 2004 and brings first-hand witness accounts from the Middle East to challenge and educate Americans on the repercussions of war and occupation both on people abroad and Americans at home.

Speakers in Butte this year include Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian American and former professor of genetics, Yale University School of Medicine. He is author of "Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle." "The Singing CIA Agent," Dave Lippman, is billed as one of America's foremost non-corporate comedians, who "takes the air out of the windbags of the week, de-distorts history and rewrites the classics with parody and thrust," according to a news release.

On the bus tour, Lippman presents singing CIA agent George Shrub, who "travels throughout his globalized domain sharing his Point of View (the Right One) so that people won't need their own." Lippman employs "anti-folk songs and interventionary anthems." He traveled in Palestine and Israel in summer 2004 and presents his impressions through a song and comedy.

The events are free to the public. For details on the tour, see http://justicewheels.org, or for details about the Butte event, call 723-3851.