The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Greg Palast, Pluto Press, 2002

Greg Palast is a nationally known investigative reporter. Unfortunately, the nation in which he is known is England, not America (Palast is an American). This book consists of  mostly previously published pieces on a variety of subjects.

The state of Florida threw over 57,000 people off its voting rolls, the official reason being that they were convicted felons. For many, their only crime was being black and/or Democratic. The lists to be used by county election officials were found to be full of flaws, and just happened to come from a company with strong Republican ties. Some counties tried to send letters to the people on the list, to give them a chance to appeal the deletion; other counties didn't bother. There are a number of instances where Florida officials didn't make even the minimum effort to be sure of the names on the list.

When a country is in financial trouble, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are supposed to be there to help. In many cases, they are part of the problem. Countries are given a list of over 100 economic conditions that must be met before any loan money starts flowing. They include things like removing trade barriers to let in cheaper (usually American) goods and disrupt the local economy, privatizing state assets, cutting social spending and crushing labor unions. It's a recipe for disaster, which is usually what happens. The current economic problems in Argentina and Brazil, for example, can be partially blamed on the IMF/WB. It is possible to thrive without them; the country of Botswana said No to their conditions, and they are economically quite healthy.

Conventional wisdom says that the Exxon Valdez oil spill was the fault of one drunk captain. There is plenty of evidence of lack of proper equipment, doctored safety records, and cheating of the local natives. That's only the beginning.

Wow. Investigative reporting like this hasn't been seen in America in many years. No major media outlet is willing to expend the time and effort needed, and that's a shame. This book is brilliant, it's incredible, it shows just how wimpy most of the American news media really is, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Armed Madhouse

Armed Madhouse, Greg Palast, E.P. Dutton, 2006

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 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.