... hot off the presses....

Scoop Interviews"Armed Madhouse" Author Greg Palast

Interview By Alastair Thompson


Greg Palast – image MotherJones.com]

Over the past decade best-selling author Greg Palast has put the word "investigation" back into US journalism (while working mainly for publications in the United Kingdom). And even if much of the US media steadfastly continue to ignore his remarkable investigations – the fruit of his work is more than apparent in numerous aspects of US political life – most obviously in the growing awareness within the United States of the decay of its democratic processes and massive efforts in recent elections by the GOP to disenfranchise black voters. Scoop's Alastair Thompson caught up with him today for a wide ranging interview.

INTERVIEW PART 1 (19 Mins)

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0704/S00338.htm#part1

Including…
Greg Palast's New Version Of "Armed Madhouse"
What Karl Rove Thinks Of It
Rove's Hitman Tim Griffin's Role In A Black Voter (Including Armed Servicemen) Purge
Who Really Won the 2004 Election?
What This Means For US Democracy – Criminals Become Prosecutors
Non-existent "Voter Fraud" vs Massive "Vote Fraud"
Florida's New Governor & Changes To Felon Voting Laws
Is There Any Hope For US Democracy? – Ohio Wakes Up
Theft Of Africa's AIDs Money Raised With Bush – Some Signs Of Congressional Oversight.
Is Gonzales Toast? (Lessons From Watergate)
Who Are The Real Culprits In The USAs Scandal?

INTERVIEW PART 2 (15 Mins)

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0704/S00338.htm#part2

Including…
Busted In New Orleans (See also… Buzzflash Greg Palast IV: New Orleans - One Year Later)
NOLA's Guantanamo On Wheels In Cancer Alley
How The White House Let 1500 New Orleans Residents Drown
The Privatised Hurricane Evacuation Plans Of Bush's Crony Contractors
How The "Dead" US Media Missed The Above
The Greg Palast Investigative Journalism Fund
Getting The Message Out
A Weapon Of Mass Instruction (NYT Bestseller "Armed Madhouse" is not Copyright)
Michael Moore – The Fat Guy In The Chicken Suit
ABC Television Tells Palast To "Forget it"
Keith Olberman & Bob Woodward
Is This Corporate Fascism? Not Yet
See You In The Scoop Wing At Gitmo Next Year…

... fresh as a daisy....

I watched the Big Empty documentary on Lintv last night.

Sick. Just sick.

At any rate, it's great to hear your voice. You sound like another lucid, intelligent DU'er.

I didn't follow the email thing that Greg pulled off. Thanks for helping to answer that.

Thanks althecat. This is a great interview. Palast is on point.

I recommend this to all who love investigative journalism exposing the truth!

at Navy Pier on the Main Stage. I hope all of DU's Chi-towners will go out to hear Palast. He's guaranteed to make your blood boil!

event?

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=zach%40gregpalast.com&mode=AGENDA&dates=20070415%2F20070515

unless it's been changed and he hasn't updated the site. His scheduler used to post on DU, I'm pm her and ask if she'll update this link :hi:

gettin ready for a listen.

When will the Admiral speak again :evilgrin:

Greg's take on the Gonzales scapegoating is similar to how I see this. But I disagree that that will be the end of it. It's different this time.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0704/S00338.htm#transcript1

Scoop:
One last question I was going to ask was: We've now got, obviously, to the point with the US Attorney scandal and these lost emails, lost all these emails, that there is, in fact, some progress being made at the White House level by the Democrats. Do you expect it to go further? Do you expect Gonzales to fall and then possibly Rove thereafter?

Palast:
To me, throwing Gonzales to the wolves is a joke. When Nixon as President was being nailed for Watergate, he put his Attorney General out there, and the tapes have a wonderful... the White House tapes that they found have a great line. They sent out the Attorney General to "twist slowly in the wind".

Cheney loves watching Gonzales hang and dangle. He loves it. Karl Rove loves it. This guy's taking all the bullets, all the heat. And then they're just gonna cut him down. They're gonna tell him to resign, that he's finished. And that'll be the end of that. But he had nothing to do with it. He was just the shill. When he says he didn't know anything, he didn't know anything. By the way, that doesn't make him not culpable. I used to bring racketeering cases in the United States for something called "willful failure to know", that crime bosses use: "Don't tell me what you're doing but make sure you get it done!" Same with Gonzales.

When it came out that there was some discussion with him about the US Attorneys, and he says he doesn't remember, I know what he said. He said, "Don't tell me. Get out of the office. I don't want to know." He didn't say "Stop it." He was just, "I don't want to know." But Karl Rove was the guy that did this. Harriet Miers, probably someone you don't know, but she's a real fixer for George Bush, going back to Texas days.

These are criminals. This is obstruction of justice. It is a crime in the United States to do this. And they're blaming the Attorney General. It ain't the Attorney General... Yes, he should go because this happened and he let it happen. But he wasn't the mastermind. Once again, Karl Rove engineered the leaks in exposing a CIA agent, which was a criminal act. He was the one orchestrating the illegal removal of voters. He was the one orchestrating the firing of prosecutors. And every time these things go to hearings, someone else's head rolls, not his. Libby goes to jail, not Rove. Gonzales will lose his job, not Rove.

And ultimately there's one other actor in here who's skipping the bullet, which is George Bush. Let us remember he is the guy appointing these prosecutors and removing them. They serve at the request of the President. That's the man. So it's Rove and his nominal boss, even though it's not clear who's the puppet and who's the puppeteer.

There's two h's in the http part of the url.

I listened by pasting it in and deleting the first h.

If that makes any sense.

Pleased you liked it.

al

I didn't send this to the Greatest page with my vote.

I'm Spartacus. Ignore Palast and autorank; it was me.

IMHO. He absolutely is the best.

I love him madly, if I were not so happily married I just might "stalk" him. Intelligence is sexy.

Thank you, althecat! More Palast, at last!

Regarding Bush, though. If your skills could manage to provide less surge, and more purge, all Amerika would be forever grateful!

PART ONE: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0704/S00338.htm#transcript1
PART TWO: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0704/S00338.htm#transcript2

Greg Palast in Chicago, NYC, LA, DC, San Fran, Madison, Eugene & Portland OR, Montpelier

Join Randi Rhodes, Laura Flanders, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Amy Goodman, Greg Proops, Medea Benjamin, Ben Cohen and other dangerous dissenters who will be with me for the Armed Madhouse road show.

Meeting to tell Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild -- from the new edition of Armed Madhouse, out Tuesday, April 24th

On May 1st catch me in New York City with Randi Rhodes and Robert Kennedy Jr. GET YOUR TICKETS AT www.GREGPALAST.com - for WBAI

Greg Palast 2007 Tour Cities/Dates

April 21 — Chicago, IL (With Amy Goodman and Jim Hightower)
April 22 — Madison, WI (With Laura Flanders)
April 24 — Portland, OR (On air with Thom Hartmann)
April 25 — Eugene, OR (With KOPT’s Brian Shaw and Alan Siporin)
April 26 — Berkeley/Oakland, CA – (With Greg Proops and Pat Thurston) 
April 27 — San Jose, CA
April 28 — Los Angeles, CA
April 29 — Santa Fe, NM
May 1 — New York City (With Randi Rhodes and Robert Kennedy Jr.)
May 2 — New York City
May 3 — Washington, DC (With Medea Benjamin and Dr. Wilmer Leon)
May 4 — Montpelier,VT (With Ben Cohen)

And, until Patriot Act III goes into effect, pick up a copy of
ARMED MADHOUSE -- From Baghdad to New Orleans:
Sordid Secrets & Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild

Sponsored by Code Pink, Global Exchange, Pacifica Radio’s KPFK, WPFW, WBAI, WORT, KBOO, WGDR, KOPT Oregon’s Progressive Talk, South Bay Mobilization, Portland Alliance, PDA, Progressive Magazine, Buzzflash, Working Assets, Media Alliance, Vermonters for Voting Integrity and more …


CHICAGO, IL
Saturday, April 21 - 2:00 PM
CHICAGO GREEN FESTIVAL
with Jim Hightower & Amy Goodman
McCormick Place / S. Lake Shore Drive

MADISON, WI
Sunday, April 22 - 7:00pm
WORT-FM RADIO
Barrymore Theatre 2090 Atwood Avenue
LIVE with Air America host Laura Flanders
Get tickets now at http://www.barrymorelive.com/index.html

PORTLAND, OR
Tuesday, April 24 - 7:30pm
KBOO-FM/PORTLAND ALLIANCE
First Unitarian Universalist Church 12th Street at Salmon

EUGENE, OR
Wednesday, April 25
University of Oregon Cultural Forum
6:30pm screening Big Easy to Big Empty | 7:00pm main event
University of Oregon PLC-180 (14th & Kincaid Streets)
KOPT Vocal Majority’s Brian Shaw to host; Radio Host Alan Siporin

OAKLAND, CA
Thursday, April 26
AN EVENING WITH GREG PALAST - FROM BAGHDAD TO NEW ORLEANS
6:30 PM screening of Big Easy to Big Empty | 7:00pm main event
Grand Lake Theater (Grand Ave. at Lake Park Ave. just off I-580) Radio Talk Show Host Pat Thurston to emcee;
with COMEDIAN GREG PROOPS
Get tickets now at http://www.gregpalast.com/palast-in-oakland-ca-with-greg-proops/

SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Friday, April 27 - 3:30pm
NEW LIVING EXPO
Concourse Exhibition Center, Rm 2, 635 8th Street at Brannan

SAN JOSE, CA
Friday, April 27 - 7:30pm
SOUTH BAY MOBILIZATION
First Christian Church 80 South Fifth Street

LOS ANGELES, CA
Saturday, April 28 - 4:00pm
LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS
UCLA Ackerman Ballroom
Panel: “State of the Union” with Amy Goodman
Broadcast by C-SPAN Book TV

LOS ANGELES
Saturday, April 28, 7:00pm
KPFK-FM/PACIFICA RADIO
Immanuel Presbyterian Church 3300 Wilshire Blvd. nr Vermont

SANTA FE, NM
Date: Sunday, April 29
Event: Simple Change, KSFR-FM & Collected Works Book Store
7:00pm; pre-show book signing begins at 6 PM
The Lensic, Santa Fe’s Performing Arts Center
211 West San Francisco Street 
Get tickets now at www.ticketssantafe.com

NEW YORK
Tuesday, May 1 - 7:00pm
with Randi Rhodes and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Emcee’d by Kevin Powell
Community Church of New York, 35th Street at Madison Avenue
For WBAI PACIFICA RADIO
Tickets at http://www.gregpalast.com/palast-in-nyc-with-randi-rhodes-and-robert-kennedy-jr/

NEW YORK
Wednesday, May 2 - 7:00pm
Event: BORDER’S BOOKS & MUSIC
10 Columbus Circle New York

WASHINGTON, DC
with MEDEA BENJAMIN OF CODE PINK
Thursday, May 3
6:30pm Screening | 7:30pm main event
New York Avenue Presbyterian Church
New York Avenue at H Street
Dr. Wilmer Leon to host. Get tickets now at www.WPFW.org

MONTPELIER, VT
Friday, May 4 - 7:00pm
WITH BEN COHEN of TRUE MAJORITY
Unitarian Church of Montpelier 130 Main Street (at School Street)
For Community Radio WGDR & Vermonters for Voting Integrity.  WGDR’s Jim Hogue to host.


Screenings feature:
Palast’s film Big Easy to Big Empty —The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans


MEDIA:  For press passes to events, review copies or to schedule interviews, contact Kat(at)GregPalast.com

Put this notice on your e-lists, on your sites, to your massage circles, to your friends. 

To hear excerpts from Armed Madhouse read by Larry David, Janeane Garofalo, Ed Asner and others and to read Palast's lastest reports, go to http://www.GregPalast.com

(as far as I can tell) Richard Heinburg's "An Open Letter to Greg Palast" http://www.energybulletin.net/17914.html concerning Palast's analysis of "peak oil" and report back to DU what he said?

and I don't understand why Palast has not responded in kind -- or at all. Why should there not be cordial debate concerning this subject? Please understand that I admire most of Palast's courageous investigations, btw. It is important to know whether Palast is correct about "peak oil" -- or way off base.

I don't live near a city visited by Palast on his current book tour, or I would attempt to ask him myself. I'm listening to him now as I type on KPOJ, and in fact he will be appearing at a Unitarian church in Portland, OR 7:30 April 24. I don't care who asks him (just ask him nicely, of course)!

Questioning is good, I'm all for that.

My opinion is, he is right about peak oil.



When he is asked about 911 and "BBC and WTC7" he obviously plays the "I never heard about this card", but hey he can't do everything.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=109x29279

In the face of peak oil the most profitable thing for an unethical oil company to do is to steal all they can before the house burns down.

Enron happened to trip and fall into the fire, but the other energy companies are still in the same burning house grabbing everything they can.

K&R

No worries

links going out to others

Here's something said by robert F Kennedy Jr. that doesn't get said enough, even around here as regards targeting black voters:

"You know, this is a crime. This is a go-to-jail crime in America."

It can also be applied to the fraud surrounding voting machine companies. Instead we're negotiating the terms within which these criminals can continue to operate.

He says we're not at Germany 1933, we're at America 1927. Big difference. And what happened in 1927? The great populist Huey Long arose--out of Louisiana, no less--and said, 'time to kick the rich in the butt.' His populist program of fairness and equity for the poor and for workers became FDR's New Deal. In other words, the rich have ruined us again, but our democracy is still in sufficient working order to restore fairness and good government. It's up to us. We are not Germans 1993--so wretched and vulnerable to propaganda as to start goosestepping to Hitler. We are Americans in 1927, beaten down by the rich but not destroyed by them, and--and this is critical, and it's my opinion (not expressed by Palast)--we are simply not vulnerable to propaganda the way the Germans were. Fact: 75% of Americans oppose the Iraq War and want it ended. Fact: 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, Feb. '03, before the invasion, and before Colin Powell's 100% pack of lies to the UN was fully exposed. So-o-o-o, some combination of native common sense, attachment to our democratic tradition, and alternative avenues of news (including the internet and word-of mouth) is at work here, that was not at work in Germany 1933. It may also have to do with the fact that we are a multi-cultural country and a much bigger one--very difficult to control. No one here marches in lockstep, except a few crazy freepers and brownshirts. We don't see youth in Nazi uniforms marching through the streets! People are disgusted with the Bushites, not following them blindly.

The key here is to figure out the mechanisms of power that this fascist coup is using, and to employ a strong, persistent strategy of recovering those mechanisms. And Palast rightfully focuses on one of them: our right to vote--although I don't think he quite gets that electronic voting run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations--the coup that occurred in the 2002 to 2004 period--is the key to it, not suppression of black voters. The suppression of black voters is occurring BECAUSE these rightwing corporations have secret control of vote counting, thus giving them immunity from prosecution for all other election crimes. They had guaranteed power in 2004, and are using that power--Bush/Cheney's illegitimate reelection--to consolidate control of everything, or to try to. There is an EXISTING law that makes their purges of black voters, etc,. ILLEGAL. They were able to conduct these vote suppressions BECAUSE they knew that there would be no consequences. The machines would be used--given the widespread ignorance about the voting technology in that period--to achieve whatever percentage was needed to keep Bush/Cheney in power, and, among other things, to assure a Bush/Cheney AG.

What happened in '06 is that the people outvoted the machines. That's one of the reasons for the Rove backup plan of purging the honest US Attorneys, and putting Rove toadies in place, and other plans like purging black voters, with new electronically manipulable voter databases and voter ID laws. The machines provide an awesome and nearly undetectable means of vote stealing, but if the people outvote the machines, or get angry enough to throw these machines into 'Boston Harbor,'other means of retaining fascist power and corporate rule are needed. An alternative theory is that the current fascist junta is so unamerican and so unpopular, they need ALL means of control over the vote to maintain their power over us--including a toady AG and US attorneys, purges of black and other Democratic voters, and "trade secret" vote counting.

There is one point on which I completely disagree with Palast: Autorank asks him, have we suffered a CORPORATE coup?, and he says no. I think the evidence that we have is overwhelming. And I will give just one example: The Democratic Party leadership's total, mind-boggling silence, as Bushite corporations took over our election system, and their CONTINUED protection of corporate-controlled "trade secret" vote counting. NOTHING that the Democrats have proposed challenges this utterly bogus "right" of corporations--and, in this case, RIGHTWING BUSHITE corporations--to hold the vote counting formulae as proprietary information. Tell me this isn't a corporate coup: the PRIVATIZATION of voting. Further, the Democrats propose a mere 2% audit of PRIVATE, SECRET, BUSHITE-CORPORATE VOTE COUNTING. That is outrageously inadequate. These systems should NEVER have been put in place without a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT audit. And the reason that these outrageous conditions were permitted, and will continue to be permitted, is that the Democrats themselves are now beholden to Diebold and ES&S for their power. They are either in direct collusion (Christopher Dodd, Terry McAuliffe and others), or they are too afraid to challenge it (they will get Diebolded, or "swift-boated").

The bandaid on this unbelievably obscure vote counting system that the Democrats are proposing tells me that they are unwilling to address the illegitimacy of the 2004 election, and THAT tells me that many of them approve of Bush and his heinous war and his other fascist policies. The further Bush/Cheney/Rove go, the LESS the Democrats have to do in rebalancing power in this country away from the global corporate predators who are the real rulers. They can look like "liberals" and advocates of the people merely by opposing torture, for instance, or unjust war--heinous crimes. They can implement rightwing, pro-corporate policy and call it leftwing, because it isn't naked fascism.

The key is the corporate vote counting and who these global corporate predators will permit us to elect. Add TRADE SECRET vote counting to our filthy campaign contribution system, and war profiteering corporate news monopoly control of news and opinion (the narrative, not the peoples' real views), and you have a near perfect barricade against the will of the people, and not just its will to be rid of the Bush Junta, but its will to elect TRUE representatives of the people. The new Huey Long. The new FDR. Trade secret vote counting is the coup de grace. And it IS a global corporate predator plot. Two of its main architects are convicted Republican felons--Tom Delay and Bob Ney. The third, a 'Bilderberg' corporatist 'Democrat,' Christopher Dodd, is running for president.

:)