Rating: 
Summary: Republicans, Democrats, everyone else should read this book
Review: Read this book as a civic duty. Even if you don't want to know, you need to know how utterly corrupt our government, corporations and media are. Greg Palast is the muckraker of our times, and he's virtually exiled from America because no one will print his work. PBS won't even show the documentary illustrating how the voter rolls in Florida were tampered with before the 2000 election. Don't dismiss Palast for being partisan in the sense of Republicans and Democrats; he dishes the dirt on the Clintons and Gore, as well as Bushes Jr. and Sr. and Tony Blair. He is, however, biased towards social justice. If you are more concerned with corporate profits than corporate responsibility, you will find this book to be rather obnoxious. Greg Palast was at a book signing in Chicago on May 4, which this reviewer attended. He said that the centralized Florida voter database is being held up as a model for every other state to follow. Republicans take heed: Palast pretty much said that Democrats in Democratic-controlled states were just as happy to have the opportunity to monkey with their voter rolls, as Republicans are. Meanwhile we are switching to ballotless voting booths and doing away with exit polls, with no way of knowing if our votes were counted as we cast them. Draw your own conclusions folks - how long before our vaunted democracy becomes another banana republic?
Rating:
Summary: The Truth Hurts
Review: Greg Palast is not your typical journalist. He doesn't varnish the truth based upon ideology, political leaning or who's paying his salary. His background as an investigator shines through in his writing. Unlike a vast majority of so-called investigative reporters, Greg does his homework by scouring sources and providing evidence, not by rewording what's already been dictated to the media. Greg reveals what really happened in Florida. Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris fixed the election. Plain and simple. The proof is in the book....This book doesn't spare the Clintons or Gore. If you've wondered why the Democrats didn't jump on the Palast bandwagon during the election fiasco and publicize the voter purge of primarily black Democratic voters, Greg's got the answers. You may not like them. The chapters on the WTO and IMF may bring tears to your eyes when you stop and think about what they've done in the name of progress. The wholesale destruction of economies and people seems to be the new definition of progress, with the US leading the pack. Ever really wonder why America is so despised? Here's one answer. Media myths are destroyed in this book. Read about Walmart, Tony Blair, Pat Robertson, the Exxon/Valdez coverup, Volvo, etc. This is the most explosive and accurate portrayal of our new globalized society that you can find in America. No fluff, only substance. If you care about civilization, read the book.
Rating:
Summary: So very sad.
Review: I don't know what I find more disheartening, the facts that are revealed in this book or the poor sheep who have made feeble attempts to shoot down Greg Palast's efforts. There are, by far, more facts used to substantiate claims in this book than I have seen used by any journalist in America. Yet a handful of hardcore, conservative automatons will try to persuade you, without any factual support, that Greg Palast is some sort of tabloid journalist who simply pulls his "crazy" theories out of thin air. It's obvious that these folks didn't bother to actually read the book, or they are ignoring the copies of actual memos, letters, and e-mails gathered by Mr. Palast to verify his stories. I am going to assume that they did not read the book, as most of the critics focus only on the content of the first chapter, the Florida election debacle. That is just a fraction of the shameful activities that are illuminated in the book. Oh, and just so you know, Greg is not just another journalist rehashing the Florida scandal. He is regarded in the field of journalism as the man who broke the story. Like his critics, most American journalists do not possess the fortitude to break such a story. Do yourself a favor and buy this book. Read it very carefully. Decide for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: AN ALL-STAR READING
Review: It was a New York Times bestseller, now it's destined to be an audiobook bestseller due in large part to the stellar group of actors who are giving it voice. Kind readers, please do note that whether thou leanest to the left or the right these comments are confined to the quality of the audio editions, and have absolutely nothing to do with political agendas. Both editions from Penguin, the CD version and the cassette edition, are read by the author and an outstanding group of performers, including (in alphabetical order) Ed Asner, Jello Biafra, Al Franken, Janeane Garofolo, Amy Goodman, Jim Hightower, Cynthia McKinney, Alexander Paul, and Shiva Rose. An outstanding group of experienced and gifted artists. For those unfamiliar with the author, Greg Palast is an investigative reporter for BBC Newsnight and Britain's Guardian papers. Once based on these shores we understand that he relocated to Britain where he found greater freedom of expression. In these updated editions of his previously published hardcover book he revisits some of his more groundbreaking exposes. Among these revelations are the author's take on how the Bush family stole the election in Florida, Pat Robertson, how Bush nixed the FBI's investigation of bin Laden before 9/11, how Enron lied, cheated, and wriggled its way into becoming a monopoly, plus much more. Surely no one could give voice to these stories as eloquently, passionately, and animatedly as this stellar cast. - Gail Cooke
Rating:
Summary: The Last Reporter
Review: Greg Palast won't shut up. He won't shut up about how Jeb Bush and his lieutenant stole the election from Gore through a vicious manipulation of the voter rolls. He won't shut up about how cheaply Tony Blair's government can be bought. He won't shut up about how mainstream journalism is in thrall to the prevailing free market corporate ethos. He won't shut up about the Big Lie perpertreated by Milton Friedman and his gang that markets promote democracy, that markets are engines of viture. He shows with unshakable research that instead that instead of breeding virture and freedom, markets breed corruption, inequality, and through a politically moribund media, moral complacency. The opening chapter on the high-tech mechanism that the Bush camp in Florida put in place before the elections in 2000 to expunge African-Americans from voter rolls is worth the price of the book. Palast tells us how Jeb's gang reinstated Jim Crow laws in the New South by hiring a database firm with strong ties to the Texas Republican party to compare lists of voters with lists of felons and purge names from the rolls that "matched" in only the most tenous ways. Roughly 60,000 voters, most of them Black (because the prison archipelago in the United States imprisons mostly Blacks) were stripped of the fundamental right of voting. Why take blacks off the rolls? Because, as Palast notes, better than 9 in 10 Blacks vote for Democrats. He personalizes these facts in the person of a Black minister who had met and broken bread with Jeb Bush on numerous occasions. The minister showed up to vote at his local precinct where he had been voting for over 20 years and discovered that his name had vanished from rolls. Palast goes into stunning detail on how the scam was perpertrated and shows conclusively that the Bush camp stacked the deck well before the election. Further, he proves even under these circumstances that Gore actually won in Florida. Palast reported this high-tech lynching of Black voters rights in the Guardian (funded by public monies) before the actual election. No mainstream American media picked up on the story. When the Washington Post finally reported it, they did so months later under the cover of the Federal Election Commisions investigation into the manipulation of the election. Slate, to its credit, picked up on the story and helped with hard work of investigating the chicanery in Florida in the immediate aftermath of the elections, but as Palast notes, Slate is not the New York Times, or the Washington Post. He shows in lurid detail how the Republican power structure, including of course, the Supreme Court, swung into action under the guidance of James Baker and ended the counting on the basis of the flimsiest of legalistic doctrine. He depicts the almost comical ineptitude of a Democratic Party as it tries to take on the Repulicans. While the Democrats play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules, the Republicans play to win. Anti-nausea medicine is strongly recommended for this chapter. Palast as a young activist attended lectures by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago to better understand this radical restatement of Adam Smith's 18th century economic laws. In this regard Palast undoubtedly agrees with media historian Robert McChesney's analysis of Milton Friedman's faulty understand of democracy: "As Milton Friedman puts it in his seminal "Capitalism and Freedom," because profit-making is the essence of democracy (!), any government that puruses antimarket policies is being anit-democratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy. [Under this logic] Therefore it is best to restrict governments to the job of protecting private property and enforcing contracts, and to limit polictical debate to minor issues." Palast is particularly angry at his peers in the media. At the same time he understands that they have very little freedom to report on anything that would pose a challenge to the values of the marketplace. He notes that it is only because the Guardian and the BBC is publicly funded can he explore venality and corruption in government and business. And by the way, he takes on the left as well as the right. His chapter on Tony Blair's government and how cheaply it can be bought demonstrates that the influence of corporate money has become so pervasive that even so-called Liberals must feed at the trough in order to fund their expensive media campaigns. The Clintonites hated him, too. But Palast's work is invigorating, not demobilizing. The news he reports doesn't invite fatalistic acceptance of a corrupt system, rather it invites activism. This is probably why he is feared on both sides of the aisle. Someday, he just might get people mad enough to do more than just stand up and say I'm not going to take it anymore, but to take the next step and take back their governments from the cynical oligarchy which equates speech with money, which believes that suffrage should be defined as one dollar, one vote instead of one person, one vote.
Rating:
Summary: Should be mandatory reading for all Americans.
Review: Ok, all Britons too. Not only is Palast an excellent investigative reporter, he is a good writer as well. As you travel the backwaters of corporate shell-games, globalization disasters, and politicians that seemingly have never known shame...you find yourself asking, "Why didn't the mainstream press cover this?" And that is one of the most important reasons to read this tightly-knit, well-crafted collection of exposés. Good work, Greg.
Rating:
Summary: The most IMPORTANT book you'll ever read...
Review: OK, we have all seen the "Save the Children" commercials on TV, we see the dire poverty people all over the world live in, and we say to ourselves "gosh, I wish there was something I could do..." And we try to reason why the people in these countries live in such poverty, "Well, their government must be corrupt" or "People over there just don't know how to run things". What if I told you that the United States and a handful of industrialized European Nations set up these countries for failure just to earn huge profits (think IMF and World Bank). What if I told you that from 1960-1980 per capita income grew 73% in South America and 34% in Africa when their governments were running things, and that since 1980 (because of the IMF/World Bank/the Reagan model and so many other reasons explained in depth in this book) South America has experienced no growth and African incomes have declined by 23%. Excerpt from book:
"Take Tanzania. Today in that African state, 1.3 million people are getting ready to die of AIDS. The IMF and World Bank have come to the rescue... require Tanzania to charge for what were previously free hospital appointments. Since the bank imposed this requirement, the number of patients treated in Dar es Salaam's three big public hospitals have dropped by 53 percent. The Bank's cure is working!" (p. 149)
The IMF and World Bank condemn people and countries to death, and not just abroad... You have to read this book... It will make you so sick to your stomach that you'll want to kill all the guys in the IMF/World bank with your bare hands, and... Remember all those young activists you saw on TV protesting outside of all IMF/World Bank meetings held in posh hotels? Well, after reading this book I guarantee you'll want to join those guys. Save the world and its people, BAN THE IMF/WORLD BANK (and tell everyone to pick up this book, it's the truth).
Rating:
Summary: New election-year edition coming out 4-26-04 with added
Review: chapters; for more info, see the author's website www.gregpalast.com
Rating:
Summary: In response to "Manuel from New York, NY"
Review: Manuel, perhaps the problem is that since you only flipped through a couple of pages of the book, you did not catch on to one of the main traits of Palast's writing style: sarcasm.
Anyway, I don't think he was trying to say what you think he was. In fact I think he was trying to say the exact opposite. The section on Chile is basically about the period from 1973 to 1983, during which Pinochet adhered to the "neoliberal" economic theories of Milton Friedman & the "Chicago Boys", and about how Pinochet decided to abandon those theories in the end, due to the disastrous results they produced, and returned to policies that were more like Allende-style socialism. Well, here are some excerpts from the section, so people can judge for themselves: **** But unblinking study discloses that the original claim to "success" - that General Pinochet begot an economic powerhouse - is one of those utterances, like "we are winning the war on terror," whose truth rests entirely on its repetition. Chile can claim success. But that is the work of President Salvador Allende, who saved his nation, miraculously, a decade after Pinochet had him murdered. These are the facts. In 1973, the year the general seized the government, Chile's unemployment rate was 4.3 percent. In 1983, after ten years of free market modernization, unemployment reached 22 percent. Real wages declined by 40 percent under military rule. In 1970, before Pinochet seized power, 20 percent of Chile's population lived in poverty. By the year "President" Pinochet left office, the number of destitute had doubled to 40 percent. Quite a miracle. Pinochet did not destroy Chile's economy all alone. It took nine years (1973-1982) of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, that gaggle of Milton Friedman's trainees, the Chicago Boys. [snip] But what really happened in Chile ? Freed from the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and union rules, the country took a giant leap forward...into bankruptcy. After nine years of economics Chicago-style, Chile's industry keeled over and died. In 1982 and 1983, gross domestic output dropped 10 percent. That's a depression. The free market experiment was kaput, the test tubes shattered. Blood and glass littered the laboratory floor. [snip] By 1982, the Chilean pyramid finance game was up. The Vial and Cruzat groups defaulted. Industry shut down, private pensions were worthless, the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too hungry and desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to reverse course. He booted his beloved Chicago experimentalists. [snip] New Deal tactics rescued Chile from the Panic of 1983, but the nation's long-term recovery and growth since then is the result of - cover the children's ears - a large does of socialism. Pinochet nationalized banks and industry in a scale unimagined by the socialist Allende. The general exprorpriated at will, offering little or no compensation. While most these businesses were eventually reprivatized, the state retained ownership of one industry: copper. [snip] Copper has provided 30 to 70 percent of the nation's export earnings. This is the hard currency that has built today's Chile, the proceeds from the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973 - Allende's posthumous gift to his nation. [snip] Agribusiness is the second locomotive of Chile's economic growth. This is a legacy of the Allende years as well. According to Professor Arturo Vasquez of Georgetown University, Allende's land reform, that is, the breakup of feudal estates (which Pinochet could not fully reverse), created a new class of productive tiller-owners, along with corporate and cooperative operators, who now bring in a stream of export earnings to rival copper. etc. **** I loved this book. Reading it made me really furious about the state of things in this country (and how that affects the rest of the world), which motivated me to really get actively involved in politics.
Rating:
Summary: Priceless
Review: Get it. It's priceless. I just started reading for a Social Change class. Get it!
| 
