Monday, June 19, 2006

Six Conspiracies of Separation: Greg Palast, Janeane Garofalo, Larry David, Amy Goodman, Randi Rhodes, and Alex Jones... ("Live on Infowars.com!")

[Ed note: Sorry, I had some cool pix but they won't publish, ugh. I may have to give the blog up soon as it hardly works anymore, but enjoy as you'd like, and please understand that the "Big Tent" approach is the only sensible approach to tackling the powerful forces of the military-industrial complex and corporate-fascism. Palast appears in Alex Jones' best film so far - "Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State", and as an American investigative journalist who's done TV for the BBC News and articles for The Guardian UK, among others - while being locked out the U.S. mainstream media, I'm sure he agrees that anyone who's got the balls'n'brains to scrap is most welcome...]



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"For those of you that don't know me, I do investigative reporting for BBC television..."

- Greg Palast, just now (19/Jun/06 - 1:12 pm EST) on the Alex Jones Show



"The less oil, the higher the price!"

- Greg Palast, just now (19/Jun/06 - 2:01 pm EST) on the Alex Jones Show



- FYI, the oil companies are restricting supply so they can jack up the prices.

- There is no shortage due to Middle-East instability, New Orleans drowning, the Brangelina Babywatch, the Olsen Twin eating-disorder, or any other stupid reasons.

- To Wit: in 2002 the 5 largest oil companies made $30 billion in profits; in 2005 they made $113 billion in profits; so, if there's no supply-chain issue that's affecting everyone relatively equally - i.e. no supply "shortages" across the board that would prevent oil companies from profiting while the consumer is screwed, then why aren't we all taking the same percentage hit on gas prices equally?

- To Wit: why are the Big Oil companies MAKING 400% more in profits while we're PAYING 100% more for gas???

- http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=483




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Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools

THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCOMPLISHED

The Guardian
Monday, March 20, 2006

E-Mail Article
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by Greg Palast

Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.


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Palast returns to the pages of the Guardian today with this column. Catch his commentaries weekly at CommentIsFree.Guardian.co.uk

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But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,

"Operation

Iraqi

Liberation."

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.

"It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude.

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC."

Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get more of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing too much of it.

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping less of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.

It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just love it.

Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.

Not so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.

As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.

In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'. It was a Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil.

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On June 6, Penguin Dutton will release Greg Palast's new book, Armed Madhouse: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War. Order it here today. View his investigative reports for Harper's Magazine and BBC television's Newsnight at www.GregPalast.com.

http://www.commentisfree.guardian.co.uk


SOURCE - http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=483



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Armed Madhouse Audio Book, read by Greg Palast with special guests:


Ed Asner, Brod Bagert, Medea Benjamin, Jello Biafra, Randy Credico, Kevin Danaher, Larry David, Brad Friedman, Janeane Garofalo, Amy Goodman, Jim Hightower, Mark Crispin Miller, Greg Proops, Jerry Quickley, Randi Rhodes, and Shiva Rose



SOURCE - http://www.gregpalast.com/premiums.htm



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Palast and Rushdie at PEN World Voices Conference

Monday, March 13, 2006

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"There are all kinds of ways to muzzle reporters. Electroshocks to the genitals is pretty good, but stuffing journalists mouths with money is the way it's done in the USA. They can't talk but THEY LOVE IT."

At the invitation of Salmon Rushdie, Greg Palast will appear on a panel, "Exiles in America," on April 27th at the PEN World Voices conference to discuss the money poisoning of American journalism, the jailing of his sources in Africa, censorship by lawsuit in England's police state, the lynching of Dan Rather, and why Amnesty International sucks.


The second annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature will be held Tuesday, April 25th, through Sunday, April 30, 2006 in New York City. Last year's festival included over 100 writers from 43 countries and drew an audience in excess of 8,000 people.

For more info, go to www.Pen.org

Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and ARMED MADHOUSE which will be released by Penguin US and UK in June. View his BBC Newsnight television reports and sign up for his investigative writings at www.GregPalast.com


SOURCE - http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=482&row=1




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CHECK OUT - http://www.gregpalast.com/section/articles




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African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List

Published by Greg Palast June 16th, 2006

Massacre of the Buffalo Soldiers
by Greg Palast

As reported for Democracy Now!

Palast, who first reported this story for BBC Television Newsnight (UK) and Democracy Now! (USA), is author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse.

The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote.


A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts.
Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website.

Continue reading ‘African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List’


CHECK OUT - http://www.gregpalast.com/section/articles




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No Child’s Behind Left

Published by Greg Palast June 12th, 2006

By Greg Palast
Excerpt from Armed Madhouse

They take away your overtime, your 40-hour week, your regulatory protection against corporate marauders, your right to courtroom justice, your protection against unfair trade, even the right to get your ballot counted. But there’s always hope. Hope is the last thing to go. And your hope is your kids, that they’ll have an opportunity you didn’t have. On January 21, 2004, the President told you they’d have to take that away too.
On that night, deep into his State of the Union sermon to Congress, when sensible adults had turned off the tube or kicked in the screen, our President opened a new front in the class war. And like the one in Iraq, it began with a lie. “By passing the No Child Left Behind Act,” our President told us, “We are regularly testing every child…and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing.”

“And at Daddy’s Polo Club, the Waiter Is Called A…”

The core of No Child Left Behind is the early-age test. And here’s what they’re testing. The following is taken from the actual practice test given eight-year-olds in the State of New York in 2006. The test determined which children should advance, which should be left behind in the third grade.

Continue reading ‘No Child’s Behind Left’


CHECK OUT - http://www.gregpalast.com/section/articles




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UNREPORTED: THE ZARQAWI INVITATION

Published by Matt June 9th, 2006

by Greg Palast

They got him — the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq. But, something’s gone unreported in all the glee over getting Zarqawi … who invited him into Iraq in the first place?


If you prefer your fairy tales unsoiled by facts, read no further. If you want the uncomfortable truth, begin with this: A phone call to Baghdad to Saddam’s Palace on the night of April 21, 2003. It was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on a secure line from Washington to General Jay Garner.

The General arrived in Baghdad just hours before to take charge of the newly occupied nation. The message from Rumsfeld was not a heartwarming welcome. Rummy told Garner, Don’t unpack, Jack — you’re fired.

Continue reading ‘UNREPORTED: THE ZARQAWI INVITATION’


CHECK OUT - http://www.gregpalast.com/section/articles




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Eminem’s Mosh Music Video Inspired by Palast Team Investigation

Published by Greg Palast December 11th, 2005

*** View This Video on You Tube ***

Most Americans are well aware that in 2000, the presidential election was decided by 537 votes. From hanging chads to the hourly updates of the manual recount, this story was obsessively covered by the mainstream press. However, what wasn’t covered was what journalist Greg Palast discovered that thousands of primarily minority voters were scrubbed from the voter registry in Florida and prevented from potentially changing the course of Americans turbulent last four years.


By the spring of 2004 all around the country, groups from both sides of the aisle were organizing and activating plans to impact the coming presidential election from MoveOn to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Here at GNN we were finishing our book, True Lies, two related documentary projects and barely had enough time for our own attempt of an online voter registration campaign. Through Palast’s reporting and our own investigations into electronic voting machines and the crossover campaign that defeated Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, we became increasingly aware of the fallibility of elections and the fragile state of America’s most fundamental democratic process. We also knew the potential power of the youth vote. With more than 55 million voters between the ages of 18 and 35, this demographic group accounts for 36% of the total eligible voters in the U.S. And as witnessed in 2000 it all comes down to who shows up to vote on election day.

Continue reading ‘Eminem’s Mosh Music Video Inspired by Palast Team Investigation’


CHECK OUT - http://www.gregpalast.com/section/articles




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How They Stole Ohio

Published by Greg Palast June 2nd, 2006

And the GOP 4-step Recipe to ‘Blackwell’ the USA in 2008

Abracadabra: Three million votes vanish

A Buzzflash Exclusive


[Heads up! Catch Robert Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Greg Palast this next Saturday, June 10th, on Air America’s ‘Ring of Fire’ on the shoplifting of the last election & and the next one.]

Continue reading ‘How They Stole Ohio’


CHECK OUT - http://www.gregpalast.com/section/articles




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The Spies Who Shag Us

Published by Greg Palast May 15th, 2006

I know you’re shocked — SHOCKED! — that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That’s nothing. And it’s not news. This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration’s Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI — though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.


Listen to Greg Palast, reading Double Cheese With Fear.

For the full story, see “Double Cheese With Fear,” in Armed Madhouse: Who’s Afraid of Osama Wolf and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War.”
The leader in the field of what is called “data mining,” is a company called, “ChoicePoint, Inc,” which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts. Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain’t nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans — and I know they’ve expanded their ops at an explosive rate. They are paid to keep an eye on you — because the FBI can’t. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you’re suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect it for “commercial” purchases — and under the Bush Administration’s suspect reading of the Patriot Act — our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint. Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you?

Continue reading ‘The Spies Who Shag Us’


CHECK OUT - http://www.gregpalast.com/section/articles




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World Bank Secret Documents Consumes Argentina

Alex Jones Interviews Reporter Greg Palast

Infowars.com
Monday, March 4, 2002


E-Mail Article
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TRANSLATIONS - Spanish »
(Courtesy of A Great Listener)

AJ: This is earth shattering. Can you break it down for us and tell us what the economists have done?

GP: Well, I'll tell you two things. One, I spoke to the former chief economist, Joe Stiglitz who was fired by the (World) Bank. So I, on BBC and with Guardian, basically spent some time debriefing him. It was like one of the scenes out of Mission Impossible, you know where the guy comes over from the other side and you spend hours debriefing him. So I got the insight of what was happening at the World Bank. In addition, he did not brief me but I got some other sources. He would not give me inside documents but other people handed me a giant stash of secret documents from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.


AJ: So to insulate himself, somebody else did it.

GP: No, I'm telling you. He wouldn't touch it but I really did get from completely independent sources a big stack of documents.

AJ: Just like you got W199I, from the same folks we got it from.

GP: And so one of the things that is happening is that, in fact, I was supposed to be on CNN with the head of the World Bank Jim Wolfensen and he said he would not appear on CNN ever if they put me on. And so CNN did the craziest thing and pulled me off.

AJ: So now they are threatening total boycott.

GP: Yea right. So what we found was this. We found inside these documents that basically they required nations to sign secret agreements, in which they agreed to sell off their key assets, in which they agreed to take economic steps which are really devastating to the nations involved and if they didn't agree to these steps, there was an average for each nation that signed one-hundred and eleven items that they are required to sign on to. If they didn't follow those steps they would be cut-off from all international borrowing. You can't borrow any money in the international marketplace. No one can survive without borrowing, whether you are people or corporations or countries - without borrowing some money and having some credit and ...

AJ: Because of the debt inflation pit they've created.

GP: Yea, well, see one of the things that happened is that - we've got examples from, I've got inside documents recently from Argentina, the secret Argentine plan. This is signed by Jim Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank. By the way, just so you know, they are really upset with me that I've got the documents, but they have not challenged the authenticity of the documents. First, they did. First they said those documents don't exist. I actually showed them on television. And cite some on the web, I actually have copies of some...

AJ: Greg Palast dot com?


GP: Yea, gregpalast.com. So then they backed off and said yea those documents are authentic but we are not going to discuss them with you and we are going to keep you off the air anyway. So, that's that. But what they were saying is look, you take a country like Argentina, which is, you know, in flames now. And it has had five presidents in five weeks because their economy is completely destroyed.

AJ: Isn't it six now?

GP: Yea, it's like the weekly president because they can't hold the nation together. And this happened because they started out in the end of the 80s with orders from the IMF and World Bank to sell-off all their assets, public assets. I mean, things we wouldn't think of doing in the US, like selling off their water system.

AJ: So they tax the people. They create big government and big government hands it off to the private IMF/World Bank. And when we get back, I want to get to the four-parts that you elegantly lay out here where they actually pay off the politicians billions to their Swiss bank accounts to do this transfer.

GP: That's right.

AJ: This is like one of the biggest stories ever, Sir. I'm sorry, please continue.


CHECK OUT - http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=125



Peace by proving that real recognize real...
BK

_____________________

...

Black Krishna Brand

Philosophy - http://blackkrishna.blogspot.com/

Music - http://www.soundclick.com/bands/0/blackkrishna.htm

...

P.S. Watch "Loose Change - 2nd Edition" on Google Video!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5137581991288263801

P.P.S. Check this out too while you still can!

Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the Internet's First Amendment -- a principle called Network Neutrality that prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you -- based on what site pays them the most. If the public doesn't speak up now, our elected officials will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

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