Exposing the savagery of the few

December 5

GUEST: Dr. Nancy Murray, former director of education at the ACLU of Massachusetts, author of the book Palestinians: Life Under Occupation, and co-founder of the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine, talks about her over 20 trips to the West Bank and Gaza, and her evolving sense of what justice for Palestinians means. 

Water Justice in Palestine

Dr. Murray gave us the background story. Zionist leaders had long planned to seize and control water resources in the Holy Land. Using the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba, and the various invasions of the West Bank since then, Israel has been able to control all the water, giving it freely to five million Jewish citizens while severely limiting it to five million Palestinians.

Of course, the Palestinians can't really grow crops with their restricted access to water. It's all part of the plan. Palestinians in Gaza hardly get any potable water at all, thanks to Israel's invasions and destruction of infrastructure. Half of the apartheid state is thirsty every day. The other half gets an unlimited supply for their pools and manicured lawns.

How does anyone not recognize the monstrosity such treatment? The occupation of Palestine is really a slow genocide, as are most imperialist colonies. The English colonized India and oversaw four major famines that killed over 50 million. The French colonized Algeria and starved large numbers of its native inhabitants. The Germans did the same in Namibia, and the Dutch had a long history of genocide in Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast and South Africa.

The colony of Israel is not an aberration, but only the latest in a long line of European bloodletting for profit. Someday, the occupation of Palestine will be over and the survivors will explore how Western civilization allowed such barbarism to thrive. As Gandhi suggested, Western civilization  would have been a "good idea."

What is left for the rest of us who are not profiting from butchering people in the Third World? We can expose the savagery of the few and demand change. Palestine will be free.

Vigilantes on a dying planet

November 21

GUEST: Jon Bowermaster, writer, long time National Geographic filmmaker, and host of the Green Radio Hour, talks about the climate crisis and other environmental issues impacting the Hudson Valley and beyond.

Oceans 8 Films

Jon's documentaries are moving and believable. He has a knack for finding the right people with a story to tell.

The stories are about an environment under threat from the monied elite and their oil and gas industries. Then there are the facilitators like Obama who talk about climate disaster but keep their activism to catchy phrases and hype. Both Hillary and Obama were in love with fracked gas, the source of much of their campaign funds. They were both frauds, and both managed to damage the system enough to elect a madman as president.

I say all this because Jon really doesn't. He doesn't look for villains in the destruction of the planet. He shows how it is happening, but doesn't personalize. He moves his viewers to become more active, but not to become hateful.

It is almost impossible to predict if any tactic can stop the crazy elite and their drive to destroy the world for profit. In years to come, will vigilantes on a dying planet seek out and murder the CEOs of Big Oil? I hope someone is left to make the documentary. 

In the hands of a pathological madman

November 14


GUEST: Tom Midgley, long time activist and former president of the Alliance@IBM workers' group, talks about how IBM has dealt with its workers over the past several decades, putting profits over the interests of its American employees.

IBM cuts nearly 700 jobs in Dutchess County

We have all seen the shift from workers being valued to corporate kleptocracy. There was a time when IBM employees felt proud of their company and secure in their plans for healthcare and retirement. In the late 1970s all that changed. Those at the top abandoned their previous "responsibility" to their employees and went for the money. Slashing tens of thousands of jobs during the 1990s soon morphed into sending work overseas. A decade later, foreign IT workers were being given guest visas to work at half the wages here in America.

All this was facilitated by loosening governmental regulations. Congress and the President didn't have to be fooled by the likes of Bill Gates making the bogus case for cheap foreign IT workers. Our elected officials were already on the payroll of Big Tech.

The biggest rewards for destroying US jobs, however, went to the very people who planned the transition. The salaries of IBM CEOs skyrocketed, starting with Louis V. Gerstner, who according to The New York Times, "received $4.8 million in salary and bonus, plus stock options and other incentive pay with a current value of more than $13 million." And that was his first year.

Workers' lives get desperate and CEO's make out like the bandits they have become. Will this type of income disparity eventually bring down our democracy? The fact that our country is now in the hands of a pathological madman should answer that question.  

Only path to survival?

November 7

GUEST: Rick Ufford-Chase, peace activist and Moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, and Susan Smith, a Muslim member of Jewish Voice for Peace, talk about the November 12 International Symposium on Migration and Border Solidarity at the at the Westchester Ethical Culture Society in White Plains, NY.

International Sanctuary Principles Statement

Must we rethink everything to support the concept that all humans deserve a chance to live? Rick and Susan ask us to put away our old way of thinking and consider all people to be our brothers and sisters.

In the coming years, the surge of refugees will only get stronger, until millions are roaming the earth asking to simply survive. The US with our endless and fruitless wars abroad is part of the problem. We have never dared leave the model of military spending after World War II, and have poured our trillions of dollars into Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. No one knows how many wars our country is fighting now, the state of mind of characters in George Orwell's 1984.

And then there is climate change, with floods and fires that make larger and larger areas of our world simply unlivable. Like the weapons industry, the petroleum corporations are driving this mass exodus from lands that once supported hundreds of millions.

Will the earth become a killing field. What will be our part in the die-off of our species? In the die-off of all species?

Rethinking our human experience may emerge as the only path to survival. 

Hyper neoliberalism and unvarnished kleptocracy

October 24

GUEST: S. Shankar, Chair of the English Department at the University of Hawaii, novelist, and translator with an interest in postcolonial literature, talks about the US caste system and how it compares to India's rigid social hierarchy. His most recent book is Ghost In The Tamarind.

Does America have a caste system?

Most people know that the US is a caste system, with ever fewer at the top, and millions at the level of untouchable homeless. The media furnishes the mythology that keeps us from rebelling: work hard enough and you will get rich too.

But the odds are just too overwhelming, and most citizens have simply lost faith. It doesn't help that the very rich now take everything, and only spend their billions on buying politicians. Both parties have the same monkey on their backs, the need to spend hundreds of millions to get elected. Politicians and lobbyists are really the same class. Both work to fashion laws benefitting the very richest.

Can a democracy really be a caste system? Most people know the answer to that as well. Democracy is the corporate narrative rather than the reality in these united states. The election of Trump is one sign that the public's faith is gone. He was going to drain the swamp, but was only capable of a cruder version of the status quo. There are those who miss the Obama era. But is a well groomed and articulate lier preferable to a vicious, neurotic clown? Both are products of an unravelling system of hyper neoliberalism and unvarnished kleptocracy. 

Keeping those contractors happy

October 17

GUEST: Andy Pragacz, community radio producer (WBDY), teacher at SUNY Cortland, and a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST), talks about changing the criminal justice system and ending mass incarceration.

No New Jails in New York State!

I wonder if this movement is all across the country. We know of many locations already, where taxpayers are tired of all the money spent on jails. Here in Dutchess County, the legislature gets unlimited campaign contributions from outside contractors, and guess what, they are building a 200 million dollar new jail.

It doesn't matter that hundreds are in jail because they can't afford bail, are addicted to drugs, need mental health services, or are simply people of color. All the services that could keep people out of join have been cut back or eliminated. Even after serving their time, ex prisoners have to navigate a complex probation maze that often sends them right back to jail. The system is set up to generate convicts. Is it any surprise that the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world?

It is well past time to question the prison industrial complex, that mixture of racism and barbarism that ends up calling for endless new jails. Politicians have to keep those contractors happy. 

Free expression of ideas

October 10

GUEST: Seth Donnelly, educator, activist with the Haiti Action Committee, and author of the recently published book, The Lie of Global Prosperity: How Neoliberals Distort Data to Mask Poverty and Exploitation, talks about how rich countries rob the poor of the world.

The Lie of Global Prosperity - Monthly Review

Seth Donnelly is a busy man. He teaches at a local high school. He takes his students to places like Haiti for a look at poverty in the Third World. He researches and writes a book on global poverty and exploitation. In short, he is the Social Studies teacher that I wish I had. Maybe learning about US foreign policy would have saved me from being drafted in 1967.

His book explodes a lot of theories we have accepted without much question. Is the IMF trying to reduce poverty? Are the big banks criminal entities when it comes to Third World dept. Treat yourself to Donnelly's essays and book. This is really the free expression of ideas, especially when it comes to the hidden costs of empire.

Hit man for the empire

October 3

GUEST: Talal Jabari is a Palestinian journalist and documentary filmmaker who has made a career of covering his people's plight. Talal is the managing director of Radio Alam, an Arabic-language talk radio station. He directed Enemies of the South, co-produced the critically acclaimed film, Speed Sisters and is the cinematographer of Naela and the Uprising. He is currently producing the feature documentary One Night in Tantura.

Naila and the Uprising: Official Trailer

Talal is unabashedly pro Palestinian. We had a good talk about how art can bring out stories that have been ignored by the popular culture. And if any story has been ignored in our mainstream media, it is the plight of the Palestinians.

Their history has been erased, like their towns and cities. The diaspora has been overlooked. The suffering of five million who remain in Palestine has been reduced to arguing about Israel's right to exist. Do apartheid states have a right to exist? Israel insists on being a Jewish state, in spite of the fact that 20% of its population is not. When Israel takes over the rest of the West Bank, than over  half of its population will be Muslim. Will Israel still have a right to exist as a Jewish state?

These really aren't complicated questions. Only the Zionists say that the occupation is too complicated to draw conclusions from. And let's not even call it a "conflict." Was the Holocaust a conflict between the Third Reich and its Jewish population?

Only Americans are confused. Like the viewers of Fox News, we learn less and less about the truth each day. And the genocide directed against the Palestinians will only stop when a sizable number of US citizens demand that our country end it. If there is a holocaust of the Palestinians, it will belong primarily to America. Israel is merely our murderous and misdirected colony, content to be the hit man for the empire. 

We could not be moved

September 26

GUEST: Helene Byrne, author, publisher, and public speaker, talks about her latest campaign to bring the nation together against gun violence, the Requiem and Remembrance Day.

National Sing-In Against Gun Violence on March 8, 2020

Can you have a revolution without art and music? Can gun violence be controlled by millions of people singing about the need to value life over death in our society?

Helene Byrne thinks that people singing together have a unique power. It is not an unusual idea. I remember singing against the Vietnam War in 1969, led by Pete Seeger. It seemed like a whole city block of protesters were suddenly joined together, and that anything was possible. We could sing down the war machine because we were emotionally and spiritually united.

Maybe social change comes when facts and figures are made to rhyme and put to banjo music. We did end the Vietnam War. The mindless militarism and brutality I had experienced in my two years of military "service" had suddenly been put in perspective. People didn't have to act that way. And if we sang together, we could not be moved. 

Teaching us how

September 19

GUEST: Lisa Fithian, nonviolent trainer for the Battle of Seattle, the resistance after Hurricane Katrina, Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, and Ferguson, explores her fascinating career, and explains why Mother Jones describes her as “the nation’s best-known protest consultant." 

Oct 4 at 6:30 pm. Talk and Book Signing by Lisa Fithian
Oct 5 at 6:00 pm. Talk and Book Signing by Lisa Fithian
Shut It Down: Stories From a Fierce, Loving Resistance

Lisa is an idealist with a mind like a general. She knows her troops for justice and shares their suffering as well as their occasional sweet taste of victory. She is a details person, and recounts her many campaigns in this moving book, Shut It Down.

There is more than a little Abbie Hoffman in her outrageous plans and her sly sense of humor. She has never been afraid to try for the big one, to shut down entire events in the very fortresses of the rich and powerful.

Raphaelle and I had a delightful time reading her book and then getting a chance to interview her. In the end, the hope of Occupy lingers in her writing. We can change the world if we think we can, and are willing to take some risks. Lisa teaches us how. 

Our own place in the American Empire

September 12

GUEST: Ramatu Ahmed, Executive Director of the African Life Center, Bronx, committee member of the U.S. National Council of Women and the Harlem Hospital’s Medina Clinic, talks about the Ghanaian community in New York City and the need for higher education for girls and adult women.

A Celebration of African Women

Ramatu is a very good spokesperson for her people. She is Muslim, an immigrant from Africa and a woman, making her the target of America's new wave of xenophobic, racist and misogynist poison. Trump didn't invent this poison; it has been here since we wiped out the land's indigenous peoples, brought in slaves to make us rich, and then relentlessly oppressed them once they were technically "free."

Ramatu doesn't really want to talk about America this way. Like so many immigrants to our land, she just wants a chance for a better life. We learn courage from Ramatu's advocacy for her people. We don't learn too much about our own place in the American Empire. 

We Thank You

September 5

Once a year our host station, WVKR, has its fund drive. We aired a previous interview while we asked listeners to call 845 437-7178 and make a donation. Our guest was Krystal Two Bulls talking about Standing Rock and her experiences in the US military. I am glad we got to air it again; she is that good. So thanks to Krystal Two Bulls and to all the listeners who called in to support Activist Radio. 

Krystal Two Bulls
WVKR 91.3 FM

More dangerous than either nuclear war or climate change

August 29

GUEST: Jasmine Banks, civil rights activist and Executive Director of the UnKoch My Campus campaign, talks about how the Koch brothers buy their way into college campuses to spread their right wing, racist ideology.

Why the Koch Brothers find higher education worth their money

Jasmin talked about how a country with such potential let it all slip away. It was money from the very top that did it. Millions poured into Congressional elections. Millions more into colleges and think tanks. All to promote a value system much like the Koch Brother's father, one of the founders of the John Birch Society.

In the Neoliberal age, everything is for sale. That is the John Birch Society's vision of freedom: the freedom of the very rich to run our country for their own immense profits. As it turns out, the very rich hate immigrants, Blacks, women and gays. Many of them are singleminded misanthropes, eager to turn our world into a system of slaves and overmasters. As citizens of the late empire, we know what such a world has brought to vulnerable populations in our own country. We don't yet fully realize the devastation that such ideas have produced in the Third World.

Brazil is such a nation. Bolsonaro was funded by the Kochs, and we see what a murderer can do on the streets of Brasília and in the rainforests of the Amazon. The destruction of the Amazon brings us to consider what to do with our nation's filthy rich misanthropes. They are more dangerous than either nuclear war or climate change. They are the embodiment of the death of our species. 

Achieving the will of the people

August 22

GUEST: David Heap, peace activist, teacher at University of Western Ontario, and co-founder of the Canadian Boat to Gaza campaign, talks about his visit to Gaza with Noam Chomsky, and about the continuing efforts to bring the suffering of two million Palestinians to a world audience.

Be Part Of The 2019 Freedom Flotilla For Gaza

David and I come from a similar background in the 1980s. We both went to Nicaragua to thwart US imperialism. And we both came back more determined then ever to spread the sweet freedom of the Sandinista revolution.

We both saw the Contras as part of the US killing machine, determined to annihilate anything in its way. And we felt responsible. We paid the taxes used to manufacture bullets for Nicaraguan hearts. We stood by while yet another country succumbed to torture and death squads.

In the end, we both realized that our country's leaders have no mercy or morality. The forty years that have passed since the Sandinista revolution show a similar criminality when it comes to the Third World. I held onto the hope during the 1980s that US imperialism was an aberration. By 1990, I was convinced that my country had always been that way. I started reading all the history I could get about Native Americans, African Americans, and the Vietnamese. If I was going to make a difference, I had to know my facts.

So David Heap and I share a common message: don't give up, resist and educate. That's is what this blog tries to do, by the way. And the fact that you have read this posting to the last line is a good sign for you. And maybe even for our democracy. We must reject our empire if we hope to achieve the will of the people. 

Leading us into climate extinction

August 15

GUEST: Chuck Kaufman, long time activist and editor of NicaNotes, a blog for those interested in Nicaragua, published by the Nicaragua Network/Alliance for Global Justice, talks about how the US suppresses popular movements for democracy in Latin America.

NicaNotes is a blog for Nicaragua activists

Chuck and I have a lot in common. We both spent time in Nicaragua during the Contra War, and will never forgive our government for what it did to the Sandinista revolution. In those days, the US media was captured by the Pentagon, much the same as it is today. The New York Times shuffled its reporters until each and every one of them parroted government talking points: that the Sandinistas were Communists and a danger to democracy.

Those years helped both of us in understanding how a false narrative is created and then sold to the American public. If a Latin American leader supports US big business interests, why anything goes no matter how many are tortured and killed. If a leader supports equality and true democracy, why it is time for the CIA assassins.

We both knew about the School of the Americas, even though our government has changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. That is where dictators and death squad assassins have been learning their trade for the last 40 years. Of course, that truth is not part of the accepted story being so skillfully fed to us.

When it comes to empire, the truth never dares raise its head in the nation's schoolbooks or newspapers. Like a nation of sheep, millions of Americans don't really want to spend time researching a different narrative. And there is always a price to pay for truth telling that runs counter to what is red, white and blue.

Maybe that is how empires have always been. The Germans cheered while a racist madman led them into a disastrous and unwinnable war. Our own madman president is leading us into climate extinction, another unwinnable conflict with our life supporting mother earth. Isn't it time we created a new narrative of what our country is, and what is should be?


The CIA is not a consequence

August 8

GUEST: Moss Robeson, activist, political researcher and recent panelist at the Left Forum, talks about the CIA's legacy in Ukraine, and about the 5th anniversary of the House of Trade Unions Massacre.The World Banderite Council

Looking into any complex political movement can be disorienting. And in fact, most movements contain many often contradictory forces. Added to this complexity is the censorship of our nation's media, ever willing to present coups and uprisings through the prism of the Pentagon.

Ukraine is a perfect example: a US inspired coup involved thugs from various far right nationalist groups including the Nazi Party. The CIA working with Neo-Nazis? That is where the empire's media is at its weakest. Why most Americans don't know that the CIA has been working with such groups since the end of World War II.

Moss takes us down the rabbit hole of Neo-Nazi groups and the CIA. Yes, the CIA has a history of favoring Nazi sympathizers in Greece, Italy and other countries. After the war, the CIA immediately sided with the Nazi collaborators in hunting down and killing thousands of Greek patriots who had resisted the German occupation. If you do find that in our nation's history books, it will be categorized as one of the unfortunate consequences of the Cold War.

The CIA is not a consequence. It is the tool of empire, ever willing to torture and kill in the service of our nation's disastrous ambition to control the world. Empires have always behaved in that way, and we the people will ultimately pay the price for ours.

Further victims of our nation's imperialism

August 1


GUEST: Ellie Bernstein, human rights activist and film producer whose credits include “Closing the Open Door – The Fight for Higher Education,” “Waiting for Mercy- The Case Against Mohammed Hossain and Yassin Aref," and “We Are Still Standing: Stories of Women in Black,” will talk about her latest documentary, “The ISIS Trial” which will be showing Friday, Aug 9 (7 pm) at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Catskills, 320 Sawkill Rd, Kingston.

FBI Entrapment and Targeting of Muslims

This story is compelling. At a recent movie showing, the audience discussed racism, FBI entrapment, and empire. Almost all the victims of the FBI stings are poor, uneducated, and Black. They are also young Muslims looking for a father figure. Father figures get paid especially well for their skills in leading vulnerable teenagers to the bait. In the documentary The Isis Trial, the provocateur was paid over $119,000.

The long term effect on Muslim communities is incalculable. Teens face 35 years in prison for bragging about joining ISIS and playing paintball. The trials were tainted by endless videos showing Muslim atrocities. Some of the teenagers were tried for murder, simply because the provocateur was able to convince them to travel to LA to buy a fake passport.

In years to come, this will be part of the shame of US racism, FBI abuse and yes, empire. By provoking wars in Somalia, millions of its citizens are on the move and desperate. Some end up in the "land of the free," only to end up as further victims of our nation's imperialism. 

Crossing the border of acceptable thought

July 25


GUEST: Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party USA and the African Socialist International, the leading force to unify Africa and African people everywhere, talks about the intersection of racism and imperialism.

Chairman Omali Yeshitela

Chairman Yeshitela was never dependent on leftist rhetoric. He know the facts about Apartheid South Africa as well as he know the life of Blacks under America's Jim Crow. His gift is not being afraid of pointing out links between racism, violence and our current version of neoliberal capitalism.

That's one of the advantages Activist Radio has. We don't have to rely on some advertiser somewhere thinking our ideas are off the wall, or worse bad for business. Most of our nation's media is filled with journalists who have internalized the barriers to free thought. They know when to stop exploring if they want to be successful as a writer or reporter. There are things one can't say.

To link imperialism to our nation's racism is clearly beyond that acceptable barrier. Even to talk about US militarism is unacceptable. You don't love America?

Having Chairman Yeshitela on the air feels like we are in foreign territory, expressing thoughts that our society has warned us about time and time again. These are radical thoughts to have, much less say over the air.

Are we a free society, or only a society that has been taught that we are free? Are we a country that spreads democracy in the rest of the world, or are we a country that uses the concept of democracy to invade and conquer other lands for our own advantage?

Thank you, Chairman Yeshitela, for helping us cross the border of acceptable thought.

The devil's bargain


July 18


GUEST: Jessicah Pierre, founder of Queens Company (dedicated to empowering women of color), and Media Specialist for the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, talks about what must happen next to give Blacks in America an equal share in our nation's prosperity.Institute for Policy Studies

I am torn about what needs to happen if we are ever to achieve racial and social justice. Is it our military empire and economic system of exploitation that has to be changed? Or should a progressive movement bring us incrementally closer to our goal of justice for Blacks and other oppressed minorities?

The interview with Jessicah Pierre was in some ways influenced by my own search for a way out of militarism, colonialism and "savage" capitalism. The closest other societies have come to a perfect system can be seen in the Scandinavian democracies. Not perfect, but these countries do offer a tolerable mix of economic freedom and social responsibility.

Or maybe the perfect system can be seen in countries that our gigantic military machine tries to destroy, like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Maybe capitalism itself is the enemy, since it encourages selfishness, ruthlessness and exploitation.

Jessicah Pierre wanted to talk about concrete steps to diminish the gross unfairness of our economic system, especially when it comes to minorities. Part of this effort involves creating an awareness of white history in the "land of the free." Maybe we can't really go anywhere unless we understand the history of slavery and Jim Crow. Or the ethnic cleansing of native Americans and the slow genocide of their reservations. Maybe we are still on the first step, understanding how we got here. The racist brew that Trump stirs up for his own political power has been there for the last several centuries. It is in our DNA as much as it is in his. Perhaps a new world can only begin when we acknowledge the devil's bargain that has always been part of America's Manifest Destiny.  

Not ready to jump ship just yet

July 11

GUESTS: Maria and Michael Quackenbush, activists and cofounders of the Dutchess County Progressive Action Alliance, talk about the origin and present day goals for this grassroots progressive organization.

Dutchess County Progressive Action Alliance -Facebook

I welcomed the chance to look at some local progressive activism that emerged after the last presidential campaign. Maria and Michael were part of the Bernie campaign, and they wanted to bring his ideas as well as organizing techniques to the Hudson Valley.

The Dutchess County Progressive Action Alliance was only one of many such organizations that sprung up to resist Trump. But the group has not only lasted but prospered. The DCPAA has action committees that meet regularly on women's rights, on climate activism, on gun control, and universal healthcare. As the marching chant says, "This is what democracy looks like."

Can grassroots activism be effective in wresting back our democracy form corporate ownership? That is the real question. Can people get together in the inner cities and the suburbs and create change? All by themselves?

We will soon see if the Democratic Party can be taken back. Pelosi, that corporate hack, is more fearful of her own party's new leftist representatives than she is of Trump. Will the people stand up and demand an end to corporatism, militarism and racism?

As a member of the Green Party, I am happy to see so many of our priorities adapted by the Dems. I am not ready to jump ship just yet. It would take the overthrow of Pelosi to get me to change my registration.

Exceptionalism must be rejected

July 4

GUEST: Rabab Abdulhadi, founding Director/Senior Scholar in Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies and Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, talks about her widely published anthologies and how the Israel Lobby has attempted to destroy her freedom of speech on Palestinian rights. 

“Do not be silent,” says professor Rabab Abdulhadi

In the decades long fight for Palestinian rights, there are those who have never given up. In fact, giving up is not an option for them, since doing so would weaken the whole. Palestinian rights is based on the hope that one day Israel will end its imperialist theocracy and replace it by a democratic system that transcends racism and violence. Those working for a just peace have to believe it is possible.

Dr. Abdulhadi has sacrificed so much to keep focusing on Palestine. She could have explored human rights violations in other parts of the world. She could have made peace with the Israeli Lobby by talking about enemies coming together to understand each other. She could have given up on equality in the Holy Land.

Dr. Abdulhadi describes the fascist mechanisms of the Israeli Lobby, as well as its tendency to use distortions and threats of violence. We must understand that Zionism is a threat to our Constitutional rights. Laws criminalizing the boycott of Israel are no different than what went on during the McCarthy Era. Careers were destroyed and people were put in jail, all for expressing a political point of view not favored by the state. Dr. Abdulhadi knows her U.S. history, and makes the connections between Jim Crow America and apartheid Israel. The fight for human rights is universal, and any exceptionalism must be rejected.

We can't in good conscience be for Black Lives Matter and not for Palestinian rights. There is no chosen people when it comes to human rights.

Julian Assange is their nemesis

June 27

GUEST: Joe Emersberger is a Canadain based commentator who writes primarily for FAIR.org, the Canary, and Counterpunch, and previously for Telesur English, talks about Julian Assange, Venezuela and our government's attempts to limit freedom of the press.

President Moreno's betrayal of Assange

What a twisted tale the state tells about its war crimes abroad. In fact, U.S. exceptionalism has risen so high as to become our state religion. We invade other countries all in the name of "freedom," and are ever willing to drop bombs on them to "protect" their human rights. We killed over two million Vietnamese just to free them from the scourge of Communism.

For a state religion to work, all the writers, commentators and political leaders have to be on the same page. Those intellectuals who refuse to go along have to pay a heavy price, like Danial Ellsberg, Chelsie Manning and Julian Assange. The truths they reveal are just too damaging to the carefully constructed narrative.

In fact, how else would the U.S. population go along with invading dozens of countries and killing tens of thousands of people in the rest of the world? Now that the American Empire is in full battle mode, using its vast economic as well as military superiority to punish other nations, its distortion of reality becomes even more important. That is why people like Assange and Manning face long prison terms and torture for their crimes against the empire.

Julian Assange comes closest to the ideal of a completely free society. He has spent his career reporting on what the rich and powerful have really done to the rest of us. And he has proof in their emails and secret papers. The kleptocracies of the Western world are built on subterfuge and deceit; Julian Assange is their nemesis and has to be destroyed.

Joe Emersberger uses his writing skills to pierce the narrative of the aggressor states. In a world of conspiracy theories, he carefully documents the lies and treachery of the empire's leaders. As our freedom of the press is eroded, his position becomes more tenuous. Truth tellers will all have a price on their heads.

Defending Julian Assange is defending everyone's right to speak truth to power.


Not completely controlled by the major corporations

June 20

GUEST: Howie Hawkins, long time organizer for peace, justice, labor, the environment, and former Green Party candidate for NY Governor, talks about imperialism and why all the Democratic presidential hopefuls mostly avoid US militarism.

Green Party 2020

Howie is always a breath of fresh air. For years, th Green Party has been advocating for all the issues that the insurgent progressives have just now put front and center. And that is a good thing. In fact third parties have always influenced US politics in the same way.

There are still differences. The Democratic Party can't really get to Medicare for all because of the money it accepts from Big Pharma and the insurance companies. The party never gets around to challenging the "defense" budget because the defense contractors are so generous. And reforming Wall Street and the big banks? Or implementing a Green New Deal that will cut greenhouse gasses by enough to avert catastrophic global warming?

The existence of a Green Party keeps real reform alive. The flourishing of a Green Party exerts more and more pressure to reform the corporate bound Democrats. The party also sets the vision for a democracy not completely controlled by the major corporations. 

What savage capitalism has done to our species

June 13

GUEST: Susan Smith, former talk show host for "From Ferguson to Palestine," Director of Operations for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, member of the Muslim Peace Fellowship, and of the Community of Living Traditions, a residential community of Muslims, Jews, and Christians at the Stony Point Center, talks about the importance of the International Sanctuary Declaration.

Another Way to Keep Families Together

I was slow to see the value of the sanctuary movement. Strange, because I had worked very hard for the sanctuary of Central American refugees in the 1980's. The difference? I think I was using the movement during the Reagan years to highlight the suffering of Latin America at the hands of the giant military colossus to the north. The U.S. funded and trained the death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala, and refugees were able to tell these stories.

This sanctuary movement is different. It is the beginning of huge waves of desperate people trying to survive global warming and militarization, both caused by of U.S. policies. In fact the industrialized countries of the world will be filled with desperate refugees, all because there is no place else to go.

This sanctuary movement erases boarders and challenges the neoliberal practices that creates such chaos. We are all one people now, trying to survive what savage capitalism has done to our species. 

To the Editor:

To the Editor:

Israel is a rogue nation which repeatedly violates international law,  UN resolutions, and the human rights of Palestinians and Bedouins.   This outlaw and criminal  behavior  would not be possible without the  support of the United States and our taxpayer dollars ( $3.8 billion per year).  Since 1967 Israel has demolished 55,000 Palestinian homes - in 1948 Israel demolished 60,000 homes and terrorized  850,000 Palestinians into abandoning their land and homes.  Since 1967 the Israeli army (IDF) has militarily occupied  Gaza and the West Bank, and imposed a brutal blockade on Gaza,  intentionally causing shortages of food, water, electricity, and medical supplies.  This  year peaceful, non-violent  border protests by desperate Palestinians  were met with Israeli army sniper fire that killed over 200 Palestinians  including journalists,  medics, and  disabled demonstrators  in wheelchairs - IDF snipers  severely wounded  more than 20,000 protesters! 

With the relentless, violent and illegal theft of occupied Palestinian lands, homes, and farms  to build apartheid, Jewish only settlements  there are now over 500,000 Jewish settlers occupying over 200 settlements, outposts, and neighborhoods.   Israel has been condemned widely by the international community for it’s brutal ethnic cleansing and creation of an apartheid state where only Jews have full citizenship and rights.  

The non-violent BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions)  movement is attempting to pressure Israel to end it’s military occupation, secure equal rights for all (Jews and Arabs), and to allow Palestinians to return to their  stolen lands.  A boycott ended South African apartheid - hopefully, BDS will end Israeli apartheid. 


Eli Kassirer


Sorry, kids

June 6

GUEST: Andi Novick, political activist, lawyer, and local farmer, answers all the questions we might have about legally growing and using cannabis, this once forbidden product.

Ask your legislators to support small cannabis farmers

Andi, like most thinking people, has always been skeptical of the government's assertions about cannabis. It was said in the 1960's that some day big business would realize that it could make a killing selling weed and it would be made legal. That day has come.

The battle now is to make sure that local growers and small farmers make up the majority of suppliers. Organizing and speaking out is a way to make that happen.

I funny thing happened on the way to legalization. We discovered our nation's racism. We became more away of the evils of big business. And we took a hard look at whether cannabis is actually good for us. Andi made a good point. Like any potent drug, kids should not be using it to get high. Sorry, kids.

Last night I had the strangest dream.

Last night I had the strangest dream. My country had turned into a Christian nation, and everybody who wasn't part of the church, lost most of their rights. 

Suddenly, only Christians could drive on our nation's major highways. Only Christians could buy property. Our legal system had split into two forms of justice, one for Christians and one for the nonbelievers. In fact, nonbelievers were put under military justice, with few rights and long prison terms for being another religion. Even their children were routinely rounded up and sent to jail.

Some of the prisons for the nonbelievers were immense open air camps behind barbed wire. Christians could shoot into such camps at will, often killing men, women and children. Their fields were destroyed and we cut their food supply to keep them all at the brink of starvation. We didn't let them fish in international waters and routinely shot at their boats. Life for millions of non-Christians was made short and brutish, a sort of punishment for not being of the right faith. 

A funny thing had happened to my Christianity. I knew my religion was full of wise teachings, but I couldn't remember any of them. Now my beliefs were nothing but love for my country and hatred for all non-Christians. I didn't allow anyone to challenge my beliefs either. To me, anyone who questioned what my country had become were simply anti-Christians. 

Last night I dreamed my country had turned into Israel. 


Fred Nagel

Ashamed that we haven't done more

May 30

GUEST: Alan Davis, President of The Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund, Director of the WhyNot Initiative supporting social change, and founder of Conservatree Paper Company, the leading distributor of recycled paper, talks about the Patriotic Millionaires and their plan to create economic fairness instead of worker exploitation.

Patriotic Millionaires 

Some millionaires don't run out to fund rightwing candidates to give them bigger tax cuts. Some don't create charter schools to defund the nation's public education. Some don't try to privatize mail delivery to wreck the US Postal Service.

Alan Davis is a multimillionaire who talks about our tax system, exposing its role in grinding the rest of us into perpetual poverty. It is not a story you will hear in most of the U.S. media, or on NPR. We like to think of our country as the land of opportunity. Yet, a look at the divide between the rich and poor, we find that the U.S. has the worst record of all the industrialized countries.

Alan makes us ashamed that we haven't done more to fight for economic justice. 

Listening from six time zones away

I took a few weeks off and Eli and Raphaelle did the show. I was six times zones away, but really enjoyed the programs they did. I hope you did too. Let them know what you thought:
Eli@classwars.org 
Raphaelle@classwars.org

That's where I'm a-gonna be, Ma

May 9

GUEST: Zachariah Barghouti, organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement USA, talks about his experiences as an immigrant, queer Palestinian man and about his speaking tours at universities teaching about queer led BDS campaigns targeting the Israeli government's pinkwashing efforts.

Attempt to shut down Barghouti's panel at Vassar College

What a thrill to be there at Vassar for Barghouti's panel. Like usual, there were threats, pressure from Zionist alums, and the standard non committal response from the college. But the students prevailed and the turnout was staggering. Vassar students are notoriously late, but when I got to the hall a little before the beginning of the program, there was only a few seats left right down in front. Hundreds of students had come out to hear the discussion:
Panel Discussion on the One Year Anniversary of the Great March of Return and the Changing Face of Palestinian Solidarity in the US. Taylor Hall, Room 203, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie. Palestinian American activists and academics Sumaya Awad and Zachariah Barghouti will be joined by Vassar Professor Joshua Schreier. Presented by Students for Justice in Palestine to commemorate Israel Apartheid Week.
At the end, instead of attacking questions, there was a emotional standing ovation for the two Palestinian activist and the Vassar professor who had been brave enough to chair the event.

Barghouti's interview on Activist Radio gave us the opportunity to ask questions about the LGBTQ movement and how it relates to Black Lives Matter in the US and to the fight for a free Palestine. Each oppressed group can clearly understand the racism and violence directed at others of the wrong color, sexual orientation or religion. The basic reason for struggle is to achieve fundamental human rights, and it doesn't matter who the oppressed are. Our choice is to be for that oppression or to resist it in any way we can.
Wherever little children are hungry and cry,
Wherever people ain't free.
Wherever men are fightin' for their rights,
That's where I'm a-gonna be, Ma.
That's where I'm a-gonna be.     
- Tom Joad 

What you and I as citizens do

May 2

GUEST: Seth Donnelly, teacher, labor activist, and human rights delegation member, talks about his work in exposing U.S. racism and colonialism in Haiti.
Hold the US/UN Accountable

The only way the U.S. gets away with colonialism in Latin America is by keeping its own citizens ignorant. Learning the history of Haiti brings awareness not only of this island colony, but of the racism and exploitation the empire brings to the Third World. The nearer an undeveloped country is to the U.S., the more suffering and destruction it experiences.

We all know about Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, embargoed and threatened by coups and military invasions. What we don't know about is the subjugation and suffering that goes on in countries like Haiti, Honduras, and Columbia, all puppet nations under the thumb of U.S. imperialism.

It takes courage to go to Haiti and report back on the corruption and nasty ways of empire. But once we see what our own government is up to, we can understand why countries like Cuba and Venezuela resist. U.S. occupation kills millions. The death squads trained and armed by the U.S. Kill tens of thousands more. Like most occupiers, our country is ruthless and murderous when it comes to suppressing the indigenous populations for the profits U.S. business interests.

The wealth of the empire is built on exploitation, like all world empires before it. That is just the fact. What you and I as citizens do about it is up to us.


Put on your blinders back on

April 25

GUEST: Gloria La Riva, activist with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and twice PSL presidential candidate, talks to us about her month long trip through Venezuela in the midst of growing U.S. aggression.

Eyewitness Venezuela National Speaking Tour

It is an honor and a pleasure to have someone like Gloria La Riva on Activist Radio. Her politics are left and she always speaks and writes the words she believes.

Those words are often in stark contrast to the narratives of empire. Of course, we live in the empire and don't notice that all our media and our politicians are saying pretty much the same things. Although we have some measure of freedom of speech, the spectrum of discourse is always very narrow.

Take Venezuela, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Does our media ever bring up the fact that these four countries are in that rarified group that own most of the planet's oil reserves? Would any U.S. politician dare to suggest that our economic war against Venezuela is to control their oil reserves?

Thankfully for our sanity, we have people like Gloria La Riva to point out our blind spots. She says things that we can't even think, living as we do in the belly of the beast. Yes, our country wants Venezuela's oil. But it also wants to topple Venezuela's socialist model as a warning to other Third World counties that might try to use their natural resources to better the lives of their people.

It may be right here in the empire that this battle of ideas is most important. We live in a racially stratified society, with Black people at the bottom. Whenever they make some progress, the white majority elects a Woodrow Wilson, a Nixon or a Trump to put them back in their ghettos. The U.S. has the largest number of billionaires in the world, yet our infant mortality rate puts us squarely with Honduras or Guatemala. What if Poor, Black mothers were given more healthcare, and some of the billions spent on vast mansions and penthouses were diverted to saving babies?

Put on your blinders back on if you get too uncomfortable. 

Letting their countries turn into empires

April 18

GUEST: Gerry Condon, Vietnam era veteran, war resister, and President of Veterans For Peace, talks about veterans resisting the empire in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Ireland.

Call on US troops to resist invading Venezuela

Gerry and I were in the military at about the same time, in the late 1960's. It wasn't a good time to be "serving" your country.

Gerry was a "Green Beret" and I was just a bewildered English teacher who was drafted after my first year on the job. I went into teaching in part because I didn't believe in the war, and certainly didn't trust our nation's leaders. Yet there I was being trained for Vietnam.

I was a poor and rebellious soldier. I wouldn't yell "kill" at bayonet practice. I snuck out off the base and got my share of Article 15 conduct charges. My biggest thrill was two days before graduation from bootcamp when the master sergeant proclaimed to all the other training sergeants that here was a man who had not been "broken." It was too late for them to do anything about it.

Gerry made a bigger transition, going from volunteering with the Green Beret to escaping from the Army and going to Canada. For the next six years he lived a life that I have often thought about. Why hadn't I done it myself? I guess I didn't want my parents to be ashamed in a small rural community, and I didn't want to lose my teaching license. In addition, I was making plans to marry. Conventional reasons.

Gerry spent six years as a radical, antiwar activist living in Canada and Sweden. I got my orders changed from Vietnam to Korea, where I spent a year on a base near the DMZ.

Both trajectories came to the same place. Gerry and I came to understand the empire and what it does to the people that it occupies and oppresses. Neither of us were part of the two to three million killed in Vietnam. I came to Korea well after the empire had murdered three million in that country, although the history of US war crimes was just below the surface.

And both of us pledged to expose the empire's dirty wars wherever they occurred. We were both in Nicaragua in the 1980's. We have both visited Cuba.

My first documentary was "The Resisters," a compilation of interviews of those who either went to jail or escaped to Canada to resist the war. I learned a great deal doing the film, and later when George W became president, several of the people I interviewed urged me to "get out while you still can."

Being a veteran at Standing Rock was the first time I really considered that I was "serving" my country. It was an exhilarating feeling, one that Gerry must experience often during his various trips to expose the war crimes of the US military machine. True patriots don't let their countries turn into empires.  

The thrill of being overlords in the Promised Land

It is a bright new day in Dutchess County. Some of our most important leaders are joining forces to link the county and its educational institutions to the "only democracy" in the Middle East, Israel.

Important things happen when great minds get together. The president of Vassar College seems to have discussed plans with the Deputy Consul General during her trip to Israel. Now, many more leaders on on board, including our county executive, and decision makers at the Culinary Institute and IBM. Here are some suggestions for how this visionary group might partner with the apartheid state.

Israel already trains many U.S. police forces in military tactics and weaponry. Maybe the police in Poughkeepsie and Beacon could patrol in armored vehicles rather than on bikes. Checkpoint technology might also benefit these communities. People of the wrong color or religion could be made to wait in long lines and be inspected before they travel out of their areas. Israel's high tech surveillance industry could be used to track goings on within these inner city ghettos.

On a cheerier note, Dutchess County could benefit from all the Israeli products that support the occupation, like Jaffa oranges, Ahava cosmetics, Sabra hummus and Psagot wines. Nothing like the taste and feel of products that come from appropriated territories. The Culinary Institute could even create a "settlement restaurant" where diners could experience the thrill of being overlords in the Promised Land.

You would have to be a real anti-semite not to be enthused.

Remade in the best interests of all the people

April 11

GUEST: Eldad Benary, born in 1937 in Tel-Aviv, Palestine, educated and propagandized in Israel, and conscripted into the Israeli Defense Force (active and reserve for 20 years), talks about his longtime efforts to inform Americans about occupation and apartheid.

+972 Magazine

It was an honor having Eldad as a guest of Activist Radio. Few people come from Israel, settle down in the U.S., and work so hard letting his friends and neighbors know about the realities of apartheid. 

I took him years of reading, because it is not a simple thing to reinterpret a life spent in a propagandized society. Most Americans don't think about how many people the empire killed in Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq. They know that their country always had the very best of intentions. When wars fail and millions of civilians lie dead, we reinterpret these wars as mistakes in logic. The Vietnamese "weren't ready for democracy." We tried to make things better for the women of Iraq, but slaughtered millions; it was a "tragic mistake." 

If the populations of countries could see the truth, there might be an end to wars of aggression. If Americans were like Eldad, we would study our history and not be afraid of where that takes us. Then we would then spend 25 years of our lifes informing others. Its a recipe for the end of the empire, when we the people rise up and demand that our government be remade in the best interests of all the people. 

U.S. citizens hold the key

April 4


GUEST: Elik Elhanan, a soldier in an Israeli Defense Forces combat unit from 1995-98, and current military refuser, talks about the loss of his sister to a Palestinian suicide bomber In 1997 and his subsequent role in the formation of Combatants for Peace.

Combatants for Peace

Elik is a former Combatant for Peace and now lives in the U.S. He was kind enough to fill in at a panel we held in Woodstock when the Palestinian Combatant for Peace was not allowed into the country. In America, we reject the workers for peace and reconciliation at our boarders, lest their ideas about nonviolence infect the citizenry.

Elik is even more moving in person. We had a full house in Woodstock, some 60 people, and he was brutally honest about what his homeland had become. Combatants for Peace operates in Israel as well as the U.S., so their group presentations tend to avoid hot issues like BDS, the right of return, and the one state solution. Combatants would be in a lot of trouble in Israel, even for the mention of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, since individuals and groups can be sued for there for such things. I suspect that their acceptance by our local ministers and rabbis reflect this. Combatants will be relatively safe for their churches and synagogues.

And that is probably a tactic rather than a principle. Combatants can get into communities that other pro-Palestinian human rights groups can't, and that is a big plus. The price paid is that the most important political issues must be muted. Like the role of the U.S. in Israeli apartheid.

Palestinian refugees often hold keys to the houses that they were ethnically cleansed from. U.S. citizens hold the key to ending the suffering and violence in Palestine. End America's support for apartheid Israel, and that includes getting rid of Congress members who are bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby, like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

Jews are an extremely important ally

March 28


GUEST: Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer now serving as the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, talks about his Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests.

Human Rights: White House Concessions to Israel Are Notable

Our guest, Philip Giraldi, is a long time counter-terrorism expert who doesn't much like Israel's power over Congress and the executive branch. The Council for the National Interest maintains that it puts America first by opposing our military adventures in the Middle East that seem invariably traced to Israeli influence and money. That is why Giraldi writes so much for the conservative press. The left and the right often come together in opposing U.S. militarism abroad. God knows, the Democrats and Republicans come together year after year to accept millions from the weapons makers, the big oil companies, and the Israel Lobby. Both parties seem to share the same enthusiasm for endless war for endless profit. If anything is going to challenge the militarization of the world, it will be the left and the right combining to rein in the empire.

What didn't sit well was the use of "Jewish" and "Zionist" as interchangeable words. Yes, a high percentage (over 40%) of American Jews support Israel no matter what heinous crimes it happens to be committing on any given day. But about the same percentage of evangelical Christians hold the same view, that Israel can do no wrong. Do we conflate the term "Christian" with "Zionist"?

In fact, Jewish activists are at the forefront of Palestinian rights in the Middle East and Muslim rights in the U.S. Jews are an extremely important ally in achieving a just peace in the Middle East. I think the Council for the National interest must respect the millions of Jews who refuse to condone and protect what we all can see by now is an apartheid state.

Here is a local example of Jewish Voice For Peace's campaign to fight Islamophobia.