Armed Madhouse

Greg Palast

Average Rating 10/10 (1 Review)

The ‘top journalist in America and the funniest’ (Randi Rhodes, Air America), takes his previous New York Times bestseller a step further with hot undercover dispatches— hanging out the dirty underpants of the “armed and dangerous clowns that rule us.”
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 filing 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.

Review by Paul Lappen (130706) Rating (10/10)

Review by Paul Lappen
Rating 10/10
Here is another compendium of political and corporate con men who would sell your future and your children's future to the highest bidder (or give it away to their political friends).

Everyone thinks that George Bush had a secret plan to seize Iraq's oil. Actually, there were 2 secret plans. The neo-con/Pentagon plan involved privatizing, or selling off, Iraq's vast oil reserves to foreign companies. When all those oil wells start pumping, ignoring their OPEC quota (insurgency? What insurgency?), the world market would be flooded with oil, causing the price to plummet. OPEC would be forced out of business, and, coincidentally, Saudi Arabia, the real target, would be forced to its financial knees. A problem with this is the assumption that the oil fields would remain undamaged in an American invasion. Also, it would be silly to think that Saudi Arabia would sit back and let this happen. Whenever other OPEC countries have ignored their quota, the Saudis have opened their oil spigots, flooding the market and causing the price to drop, forcing the offending country into bankruptcy. Also, the major oil companies made it very clear that privatizing Iraqi oil would not be acceptable. But they had no problem with the privatizing of the rest of Iraq, including the sale of banks and water companies, big tax cuts for wealthy Iraqis, a complete elimination of tariffs and new copyright laws protecting American companies.

The State Department/Council on Foreign Relations plan involved keeping the Iraqi government as is, especially the state oil monopoly. It also envisioned the removal of Saddam Hussein as taking no more than THREE DAYS. Hussein would be overthrown, some Iraqi general dismissed by Hussein in the 1980s (it didn't matter who) would come in by parachute, he would be given the keys to Iraq's political and security apparatus, and snap elections would be held in 90 days to legitimize everything. Simple, no? Once the Pentagon got wind of it, the three-day part didn't last very long.

Saddam Hussein's "crime," the reason he was removed from power, had nothing to do with being a tyrant, or WMD, or gassing the Kurds of Halabja. When it came to oil production, one week he would suddenly decide to support the Palestinian cause, and not pump any oil at all. The next week, he would forget about the Palestinians, and pump right up to the Oil for Food limit. Single-handedly turning the world oil market into a yo-yo upset Big Oil and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others. It's all about control of the oil market, and Hussein was not cooperating.

This book is about much more than just Iraq. Palast goes into great detail about how the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen by the Republicans. Any number of methods have come to life, from using supposed lists of felons, to sending not enough machines to black districts, to machines in those same districts that miscount or don't count votes at a much greater rate than in white districts, to uncounted paper ballots in the tens of thousands. In Native American districts in the Southwest, if one accepts the "official" results, many Native Americans would drive miles and miles to the polling place, and specifically NOT vote for President. What are Democrats doing about this, if only to be sure that it never happens again? Little or nothing. This book also covers subjects like globalization, New Orleans, No Child Left Behind and Enron.

By themselves, any of the chapters in this book are worth the price of the book. Put them together, and this book easily reaches the level of Wow. It's an extraordinary piece of journalism, and is extremely highly recommended.
Paul Lappen (13th July 2006)