Rating: 
Summary: A Must-Read!
Review: It's true that most of the material here is previously published, but how many people actually read these stories when they were printed? This is an invaluable collection of incredible journalistic integrity and fact-finding.
From the truth about the 2000 Election, to the story behind Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, to the deceit of the IMF and World Bank, this book is absolutely eye opening and jaw dropping. Few reporters would have the strength, interest, and know-how to conduct the sort of investigations that Palast has achieved."The Best Democracy.." should be required reading for any even somewhat open-minded individuals. I assume that conservatives and the right-wing ilk would not believe the reports in this book anyway, so why bother?
Finally, the criticisms of this book written by the "Editorial Review" leads one to believe that that writer may have had their own agenda to fulfill. Don't believe it..this is the real deal. If there were more Greg Palasts in the world, it would be a better place.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Reporting from a Unique Patriot
Review: Greg Palast is a superb reporter with the courage and instincts to open many doors that were hermetically sealed, uncovering answers that interested citizens should welcome in the manner of unearthing hidden treasures. As Vincent Bugliosi wrote concerning Palast, "Astonishing -- gets the real evidence no one else has the guts to dig up." Jim Hightower notes with awe, "The type of investigative reporter you don't see anymore --a cross between Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes." Mesmerized readers learn early that it is incomprehensible to speed read or partially digest Palast's reportorial classic, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." The danger is that the very information glossed over could prove to be the most significant of the book as Palast piles facts upon facts, providing the kind of illuminating insights into the real workings of American and global governments available only through reading alternative journalistic sources. As Palast points out, the major media is interlocked with the corporate establishment. As a result a "don't rock the boat" mentality prevails. Palast begins rocking the boat with a brilliant opening chapter in which he nails Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and his Secretary of State Catherine Harris for blatant violations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. As a BBC correspondent Palast personally confronted Florida's Director of Elections, Clayton Roberts, with his smoking gun, a list verifying that no cross checking was done on the basis of raw data commissioned by Bush and Harris with the ostensible purpose of preventing felons from voting in the 2000 election. Despite having paid for a cross check, which would have reduced a list of almost sixty thousand voters made ineligible to a mere fraction, Bush and Harris chose to accept the raw data list, which was preliminary and failed to even verify that names on it correlated with affected citizens in Florida. When Roberts was confronted with the smoking gun by Palast he ended the interview, darted into his office, and bolted the door shut. It was all captured on camera, which Palast invites interested citizens to view on the Internet. Having unmasked the Florida vote theft and subsequent triumph of an unelected president in the first chapter, one wonders where Palast can possibly go from there. He does not disappoint, taking dead aim on the World Trade Organization and its Siamese twin, the World Bank. Palast points out why President Bush is so insistent on obtaining "fast track" authority regarding agreements not subject to amendment by Congress, which conflicts with the U.S. Constitution. Fast track authority is needed since the WTO's authority overrides that of national legislatures. Palast reveals how the WTO in concert with the World Bank left nations such as Russia, Brazil and Argentina destitute in the wake of ponderous obligations, which through the ripple effect resulted in crushing poverty and unemployment. He also details the provision of WTO in which nations with less pollution, such as Russia in the post-Communist era with sharply diminished factory production, can provide points to a nation such as the U.S., which then has purchased rights for the corporate establishment to produce more gases and toxic fumes for its citizens to breathe. Palast, a one time student of Dr. Milton Friedman at Chicago University, exposes the charlatan economics of a man who, in the midst of taking credit for economic success in Chile, produced cataclysmic disaster. He exposes British Prime Minister Tony Blair as "the toy boy of globalization" and looks into the charlatan economic endeavors of Pat Robertson. Greg Palast is one of America's great patriots, someone who looks after the rights of citizens who are being trampled upon by the Bushie march into the New World Order, which he notes has a decided Orwellian 1984 character. Palast is one of the patriotic contingent of the information super highway exposing the corruption of the powers that be, along with others such as Mike Ruppert of the "From the Wilderness" website and Michael Moore. These courageous Americans dare to speak out! May their tribe increase!
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: 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!
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