Greg Palast

Here is another compendium of political and corporate con men who would sell your future and your children's future to the highest bidder (or give it away to their political friends).

Everyone thinks that George Bush had a secret plan to seize Iraq's oil. Actually, there were 2 secret plans. The neo-con/Pentagon plan involved privatizing, or selling off, Iraq's vast oil reserves to foreign companies. When all those oil wells start pumping, ignoring their OPEC quota (insurgency? what show more insurgency?), the world market would be flooded with oil, causing the price to plummet. OPEC would be forced out of business, and, coincidentally, Saudi Arabia, the real target, would be forced to its financial knees. A problem with this is the assumption that the oil fields would remain undamaged in an American invasion. Also, it would be silly to think that Saudi Arabia would sit back and let this happen. Whenever other OPEC countries have ignored their quota, the Saudis have opened their oil spigots, flooding the market and causing the price to drop, forcing the offending country into bankruptcy. Also, the major oil companies made it very clear that privatizing Iraqi oil would not be acceptable. But they had no problem with the privatizing of the rest of Iraq, including the sale of banks and water companies, big tax cuts for wealthy Iraqis, a complete elimination of tariffs and new copyright laws protecting American companies.

The State Department/Council on Foreign Relations plan involved keeping the Iraqi government as is, especially the state oil monopoly. It also envisioned the removal of Saddam Hussein as taking no more than THREE DAYS. Hussein would be overthrown, some Iraqi general dismissed by Hussein in the 1980s (it didn't matter who) would come in by parachute, he would be given the keys to Iraq's political and security apparatus, and snap elections would be held in 90 days to legitimize everything. Simple, no? Once the Pentagon got wind of it, the three-day part didn't last very long.

Saddam Hussein's "crime," the reason he was removed from power, had nothing to do with being a tyrant, or WMD, or gassing the Kurds of Halabja. When it came to oil production, one week he would suddenly decide to support the Palestinian cause, and not pump any oil at all. The next week, he would forget about the Palestinians, and pump right up to the Oil for Food limit. Singlehandedly turning the world oil market into a yo-yo upset Big Oil and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others. It's all about control of the oil market, and Hussein was not cooperating.

This book is about much more than just Iraq. Palast goes into great detail about how the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen by the Republicans. Any number of methods have come to life, from using supposed lists of felons, to sending not enough machines to black districts, to machines in those same districts that miscount or don't count votes at a much greater rate than in white districts, to uncounted paper ballots in the tens of thousands. In Native American districts in the Southwest, if one accepts the "official" results, many Native Americans would drive miles and miles to the polling place, and specifically NOT vote for President. What are Democrats doing about this, if only to be sure that it never happens again? Little or nothing. This book also covers subjects like globalization, New Orleans, No Child Left Behind and Enron.

By themselves, any of the chapters in this book are worth the price of the book. Put them together, and this book easily reaches the level of Wow. It's an extraordinary piece of journalism, and is extremely highly recommended. show less

Palast is an American journalist with an annoying wiseass sense of humor, but better defined by his hardass devotion to journalistic investigation with a left wing agenda. This book collects and connects his articles exposing the crimes of globalization, corporate corruption, and sell-outs in the United States and British governments. The book – assuming that what he writes is true or even partially true – inspires depression over the sad state of affairs while at the same time an show more enduring hope in that there are those that are willing to fight.

“It is estimated that one in eight American adults have worked at McDonald’s. This acts as kind of moral instruction for the working class, as jail time does for ghetto residents. It is one reason behind America’s low unemployment rate. As my old professor Milton Friedman taught me, unemployment falls when workers give up hope of higher pay.” (p. 78)

“It would be a mistake to view the politics of emptiness – in which ideals and beliefs are suspect – as a New Labour invention. Blair, Cardoso of Brazil, Frei of Chile, are all products of the factory that manufactured Bill Clinton, all bionic election machines who, in Medelsohn’s words, are ‘not ideologically constrained.’ LLM’s manifesto dismisses ‘leaders who lead’ as antique creatures of The Passing World. Today, markets lead. Industry CEOs lead. In the Emerging World, prime ministers and presidents LISTEN. Without the restraints of conviction, they are free to respond to requests of the powerful while shifting their media images as the public mood demands.” (p. 170) show less

I started this book somewhat sceptical about both its tone (snarky attempts at humour can often be plain irritating) and its content (was there really going to be anything substantially new here or just rehashing well known info with a good dollop of outrage?) But ultimately I was blown away by both the quality of research and the writing. First off Palast has finally made sense of the cause and conduct of the Iraq war from a U.S. policy point of view. It was such an absurd war, and so badly show more managed that despite reading a mass of insider books about it one could never quiet figure it out. Palast offers an explanation that finally fits the pieces together. Secondly his look at the ever-growing practice of manipulating voting in U.S. elections by using various methods to essentially deny voters the right to vote in the 2000 and 2004 elections are prophetic as they seem to have really come in to their own in recent months in the lead up to the 2012 elections. show less

Palast is a fairly amazing representative of a nearly dead breed; in fact he may well be the last real investigative reporter with a USA beat working today. Read with your sense of humor cranked way up, though, or the depressing implication of Palast's research will make you cry.