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A White House spokesman said, “We hate that sonovabitch.” They're not alone: From corporate suites to Osama's cave, they fear what Britain's Guardian calls “investigations up there with Woodward and Bernstein—and a lot funnier.” But Greg Palast's fanatic following (nearly two million readers of his Web column) has made him “a cult fave among progressives” (Village Voice) who can't wait for his next release.
Palast's old-style gum-shoe detective work to dig out the info on the War on Terror, greed- dripping schemes to seize little nations with lots of oil, the hidden program to steal the 2008 election, and the media biases that keep it unreported are the meat and bones of this BBC television reporter's new book. Armed Madhouse is illustrated with dozens of documents marked “secret” and “confidential” that have walked out of file cabinets and fallen into Palast's hands.
You won't find Palast in The New York Times (except its bestseller list), but you will read his reports on the hottest Web sites worldwide, hear him regularly on Air America and the Pacifica radio networks, and see his stories reappearing as the basis for Eminem's hit video “Mosh,” Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and sampled by a dozen of today's top platinum rock artists. BACKCOVER: “The greatest investigative journalist in America.”
—ALAN CHARTOCK, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
“The type of investigative reporter you don't see anymore—a cross between Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes.”
—JIM HIGHTOWER
“Courageous reporting.”
—MICHAEL MOORE
“Upsets all the right people!”
—NOAM CHOMSKY
| The beginning : "like the cowardly dog he was" | 1 | |
| 1 | The fear : who's afraid of Osama Wolf? | 9 |
| 2 | The flow : trillion dollar babies | 51 |
| 3 | The network : the world as a company town | 143 |
| 4 | The con : Kerry won - now get over it ... | 187 |
| 5 | The class war : hope I die before my next refill | 277 |
| 6 | The end : the house I live in | 329 |
| App | Return to Hubbert's Peak : why Palast is wrong | 336 |
Anonymous
Posted December 15, 2006
This is a superb book, the product of deep research into the realities of our strange world. If you want a reference for the author Greg Palast, Blair called him a liar, which is a bit like Hitler calling you an anti-Semite. Palast investigates the oil business. In 1956, oil was $2.77 a barrel, far too cheap, in the oil companies¿ view. Enter M. King Hubbert, a consultant for Shell, who said that the Middle East had only 375 billion barrels. Today, 50 years of production later, there are 734 billion barrels of reserves. Hubbert said in 1956 that world reserves were 1.25 trillion barrels. We have used this much since then and reserves are still 1.2 trillion. The neo-cons wanted to privatise Iraq¿s oil and raise output to break OPEC and Saudi Arabia. But the oil firms wanted ¿A single state-owned company ¿ [which] enhances a government¿s relationship with OPEC¿ and less output to raise prices and profits, keep OPEC and save Saudi Arabia. Just before the invasion of Iraq (which was originally called `Operation Iraqi Liberation¿ - too truthful an acronym), Saudi Arabia produced flat out, cutting the price. After the invasion, it withheld a million barrels a day, helping to force the price of crude up from $30 to $60 a barrel. Later, just before the 2004 US election, it again produced flat out, to help Bush win. Iraq¿s oil output since the invasion is less than in the 1990s ¿ that¿s OK with the oil companies ¿ it helps to keep the price up. The oil price quadrupled between 2001 and 2005. The profits of the big five US oil companies tripled from $34 billion in 2002 to $113 billion in 2005. Palast also examines the state of the US economy. NAFTA ¿ North America¿s equivalent to the EU - turned a $5.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico in 1992 into a $45 billion deficit in 2004, costing half a million US jobs, and turned an $8 billion deficit with Canada into a $73 billion deficit in 2005. NAFTA hammered wages down in Mexico (40% in seven years), Canada and the USA. 60% of the US people are poorer, but their productivity is up, lifting the value of stockowners¿ equity by trillions of dollars, so the richest 1% of US households, who own more than half all shares, gets more than half all capital income. Finally, Palast looks at the EU. He notes, ¿The euro wasn¿t invented in Europe ¿ it was created in the good old USA, in New York, by Robert Mundell. Mundell, called the Godfather of the Euro, won a Nobel Prize for it. Who is this Mundell? ¿ The inventor of Reaganomics, Thatcher-nomics and `supply-side¿ economics. ¿ The euro is designed to be the battering ram to break down the entire edifice of worker protection rules and taxes on business that support the welfare state.¿
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Posted June 30, 2006
Greg Palast does it again! He is truly the best investigative journalist on the planet. The facts in this great book will make you ill. The disgraceful acts of the 2000 and 2004 'elections' are indeed a sad commentary on the USA. The theft of the 2008 election is already in the works. Makes me wonder if the US is really a democracy. If you like to live in a dream world and prefer not to know the facts about this country or the world, don't read this book. If you are a concerned citizen, please do yourself a favor and read this important book. Don't wait for the corporate media to inform you, you'll just get the usual brain-dead 'info-tainment'. Wish I had the BBC Newsnight program so I could watch Greg Palast. Guess I'm stuck with Chris Matthews! :(
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Posted June 27, 2006
this book is funny, frightening and disturbing. I have the CD and I can only listen for 15 minutes at a time because I can feel my blood pressure rising!!! This is stuff we need to know. Ignorance is not bliss in these cases. As a politically progressive person this 'ammunition' for arguments with my not so progressive friends and family
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 15, 2006
Greg Palast¿s Armed Madhouse might be read as satire, if only its story were fiction. No, this is not James Frey¿s fictional memoir it¿s one man¿s painstaking investigation into the web of intrigue that connects terrorism, oil, globalization and politics. Many of the webs are as complicated as ¿Syriana,¿ but Palast tells the story with tongue in cheek biting humor that often feels more like an old Woody Alan movie. When the laughter subsides and you realize that it¿s our country, not a banana republic script that he¿s talking about, you want to scream ¿Cut!¿ and rewrite the script. Divided into five sections ¿ roughly summed up as: fear of Osama, oil connections, globalization, election fraud and economics (where the political gets personal), Palast advises that the sections can be read in any order as they are independent of one another. While the sections are not co-dependent, there is a chronological arc in each one. Palast is correct: the order of operations isn¿t so important. But the overall story contains an additive value in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the circle is completed when all sections are included. It is the whole that provides the big picture, exposing the webs in the underlying network and the intrigue and deception that currently pass for the political process. Each section uses humor to spice up what could be dry, and, well, depressing. Palast has clearly done his homework as he takes you through a rather detailed analysis of the issues. The facts speak for themselves, so much so that Palast doesn¿t have to be an original humorist. He just has to string the facts together logically and ask the right questions. The irony becomes self-evident. While the war machine continues to make its bombs, Palast has a number of his own bombshells to contribute. All are explosive. Like the IEDs now randomly going off in Iraq and elsewhere on the Middle East playground, whether or not Palast¿s bombshells detonate depends largely on mainstream media and how much attention they will pay to these details. Palast doesn¿t hold out much hope for that given that they¿ve been asleep at the wheel for at least six years now. Details aren¿t their long-suit and so far, there¿s no sign of a caffeine buzz.
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Posted June 8, 2006
I just received Mr. Palast's book and it is as expected - GREAT! You will get educated and laugh out loud at the same time. Would highly recommend it!
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Posted July 15, 2006
I am aparently a part of a microscopic minority when I say how deeply disappointed I am by this book and those who are so quickly willing to take its claims at face-value. I'm not saying not to read it, but keep an open mind if you do. This book is so loaded with impeachable material to have Dubyah and friends slingshot into the cold vacuum of space, yet it has done NOTHING. Why? This book is so steeped in a lack of context and tracable source material that it has all the bark and bite of a toothless poodle yelping through a stadium-quality sound system. I don't refer to the 'secret' documents, or legions of Deepthroats who have confided in Palast to blow the lid off this. Instead, look at the rest of the material, such as the histories and chain of events leading to his conclusions. Hardly ever a citation, but there are a few. Of course, the vagueness of the acknowledgements section does nothing more than raise more questions...Nothing more than a list of fellow renegade journalists and lawyers who have taken up camp with their illustrious leader. I recommend borrowing it from a friend, or taking it out of your library. Don't be fooled into buying it, like me.
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Overview
A White House spokesman said, “We hate that sonovabitch.” They're not alone: From corporate suites to Osama's cave, they fear what Britain's Guardian calls “investigations up there with Woodward and Bernstein—and a lot funnier.” ...