Welcome to ClassWars, the home of Activist Radio, a program for all Americans who are not in the wealthiest one percent of the US population.

Class wars have been going on since the beginning of recorded history. As societies become more powerful and wealthy, they often become more corrupt. At the end of each cycle, a few rich families own practically everything and rule with an iron fist. Military over expansion with its endless wars, another trademark of an undemocratic and corrupt society, often brings about great poverty and suffering.

Class wars is a dirty term in our media, which always implies that America is above such crudeness. But the very rich are not above that at all. They have been waging an especially intense attack on working people since the 1970's, and have accumulated immense wealth and power at the expense of the rest of us.

Of course, class wars are not fought with tanks and bombs, but with crooked politicians, right wing think tanks and corporate owned media. For the very rich to maintain and increase their share of the national wealth, they have to fool you. How else could one percent of our population call the shots for ninety-nine percent?

Activist Radio will attempt to show you how the few richest of our citizens lie to the rest of us to expand their power and wealth. They are sick with greed, of course. But so far, the rest of us are what might be worse, and that is stupid. None of information presented is particularly new or really very hard to find, although you won't read it in the mainstream press or see it on TV. If that is what you are relying on for news, you are being suckered, my friend. I don't know how to put it any nicer.

So sit back, relax, and listen to Activist Radio every Thursday from 5:00 to 6:00 PM on WVKR in Poughkeepsie (91.3 FM). And if the word spreads that the emperor has no clothes, and you want to be entertained from another part of the globe, point your browser to:

Recent stories on Activist Radio may have you thinking about some important issues. Put another way, you could be wondering if most of what we say is totally made up, since you probably haven't heard it on TV. But here are some links on stories we have done:


Dahr Jamail and Gary


Fred and Gary with Pete Seeger


Kathy Kelly and Gary

Listen to recent shows
streamed for the Internet:

Guest: Gail Miller, local human rights activist, who is working on an amazing plan to bleak the blockade of Gaza by boat.

International Solidarity Movement
Birthright Unplugged: Knowledge into action
Free Gaza: Break the blockade

Guest: Margo Lee Sherman, actor and creator of the new one-woman show "What Do I Know About War?" opening this Sunday in Woodstock.

Middle East Crisis Response

Guest: Andrew Courtney, filmmaker and peace activist, who has recently completed a documentary on Iraq refugees.

Iraqi Student Project
Red Hill Films

Guest: Pim Ligtvoet, peace and gay rights activist who spent many years as a Roman Catholic pastor in East and West Berlin. Pim visited the US in 1983 and helped plant a cherry tree in Poughkeepsie (with Cathy Deppe and the Dutchess County Peace Center) in commemoration of Hiroshima Day.

Pim at Florida Heritage Site Marker

Guest: Melissa Van, Development Director for Peace Action New York, an umbrella group that coordinates political actions for many peace groups from Buffalo to NYC.

Peace Action New York

Guest: Joanna Mae Souers, a healthcare and human rights activist who has been working in the mountains surrounding the city of Lima, Peru. Joanna attends medical school in Cuba and has been a guest on Activist Radio before.

Free Medical Education! - In Cuba?
Medical School Scholarship Program

Click below to bring up Activist Radio in iTunes:

Fantasyland Media

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

Some Favorite Lies
of the Very Rich

  1. Class wars don't exist in America, the land of the free. (The very rich have taken the rest of us to the cleaners, especially since the mid 1970's)
  2. Campaign finance reform can't work. Money always finds its way back into the process. (Most other first world democracies have strict controls that work quite well.)
  3. Multinational Corporations encourage free enterprise. (They spend most of their time getting handouts from governments while trying to eliminate workers' rights and environmental regulations through "free" trade.)
  4. The billions spent on defense contracts make Americans safer. (Most defense contracts are no-bid, billion dollar scams. Of the first world countries, only America spends so much on weaponry that there is nothing left over for the poor and middle class: no education, no health care, and no housing.)
  5. High drug costs are necessary to pay for research. (Most drug profits go towards advertising and CEO stock options. Other first world countries, like Canada, control drug prices.)
  6. Voucher systems benefit public education. (Vouchers is a way to give rich people money for private schools, while draining dollars from public schools.)
  7. Environmental destruction is necessary for growth. (It is only necessary for huge profits, earned mostly by putting the health of the poor and middle class at risk.)
  8. US Foreign policy is used to spread democracy and to make the world a safer place. (Most US policy is military action aimed at countries that threaten corporate profits. In America, the poor fight the wars, the middle class pays for them, and the very rich make out like the bandits they are.)
  9. Health care can't include everyone in our country. (Every other developed country in the world has universal health care. And it cost them a lot less to do a much better job.)
  10. Social Security needs reform to save it. (Social Security is good for another 40 years, and with a little more paid by top earners, good forever. That is if we can keep Wall Street thieves from getting their hands on it.)


We are part of the Progressive Podcast Network
(www.progressivepodcastnetwork.org)

Crony capitalists have always been with us.
Here is Boss Tweed of New York's
Tammany Hall sometime in the 1860's.

Was a high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property,
But on the back side it didn't say nothing --
This land was made for you and me.

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people --
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
This land was made for you and me.

WOODY G. (Feb. 23, 1940)

I see in the future a crisis approaching that fills me with anxiety. As a result of the war, corporations have become enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. The money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its rule by preying upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is concentrated in a few hands and the Republic destroyed.

Abraham Lincoln

And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society.

Benito Mussolini

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism — ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the biggest lie. In the history of secrets, withheld from the American people, this is the biggest secret: that there are classes with different interests in this country. To ignore that--not to know that the history of our country is a history of slaveowner against slave, landlord against tenant, corporation against worker, rich against poor--is to render us helpless before all the lesser lies told to us by people in power.

Howard Zinn

The clinical definition of “fascism” is when private concentrated economic power takes government away from the people, turns government into a guarantor, a subsidizer, a covering of corporate power.

Ralph Nader


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