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An Interview with Award Winning Muck Raker Journalist Greg Palast; The
media sources and journalists he respects and trusts, the people that make
up his idea of an “Evil Empire,” and his latest take on threats to
honest voting and elections.
By
Rob Kall, editor, OpEdNews.com
Greg Palast is the Author
of the NY Times Best-seller, Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Subscribe to
his writings for Britain’s Observer and Guardian Newspapers and view his
investigative reports for BBC television newsnight at WWW.GregPalast.com
(Interviewer Rob Kall is in bold Times
Roman. Greg Palast is
in Italics)
You’ve characterized most US News like
Pravda. What, if any US media, do you respect?
There’s only one print today that I
would read, and that’s the Wall Street Journal, and that’s because
they follow the money and that’s the number one rule for information.
For example one document I got which was
vitally important news was the state department’s secret plan to steal
all the assets of Iraq, which was long before the war. The Wall Street
Journal also got that document and printed it. Long before the war they
decided to sell off , TO SELL OFF, Iraq’s oil field. We were told that.
We were told by our president in his speech, "Don’t burn the oil
wells," he told the Iraqis "because your oil is for you."
And yet he literally had in his pocket the secret plans to take it.
At least the Wall Street Journal reported
on that. They could have gone further. I will go further and investigate
it deeper. Of course in the New York Times, dead fucking silence.
Where do you go to get your news besides
the Wall Street Journal?
I actually don’t spend a lot of time
reading the news that’s processed-- the outlets-- newspapers and
television. I don’t have a television. I produce television. I
wouldn’t watch it. And I read original documents. I like reading state
department material. I read things like the bulletin of public service
international, which is the newsletter of public service unions.
And then there are specialized journals,
like Lobster: (Journal
of parapolitics, intelligence and State Research,), out of Britain,
like I’ll read a lot of foreign material-- United nations Human
Development reports, World Bank reports, material about US manipulation of
the government of the island of Palau.
I’ll spend 140 or 150 seconds on the NY
Times just to know what I’m "supposed" to be thinking. But
it’s rare that I actually read it. The internet is useful. There are
tremendous sites for information. Buzzflash,
Guerilla News ... *(see a more
comprehensive list of web links at Greg's site www.gregpalast.com
)
How about journalists? Any particular
journalists you appreciate, value, respect?
Ron Ridenhour was the greatest journalist
of our generation. He’s the one who uncovered the My Lai Massacre.
Seymour Hirsch, who I also have great
respect for.
Bob Parry has a site Consortiumnews.com.
He was an AP reporter, fired for uncovering the Iran Contra scandal.
Ron Ridenhour, who uncovered the Mai Lai
Massacre could not get a job in American newspapers, Seymour Hirsch who
has done extraordinary work was fired by the NY Times. (He now
writes for the New Yorker.)
Ed Rampell an extraordinary investigative
journalist relegated to the so-called alternative press,
John Nichols, a great writer, on trade
issues, Washington. It’s hard to find anyone mainstream, outside of the
Wall Street Journal, that I would bother to urinate on.
How about the US-- other News Sources or
Writers?
Especially outside the US is where
you’re going to get your news.
I am in exile journalistically. I moved
back to America this year, but journalistically I have to report from
England. I just did a one hour special on the Bush Family which you
won’t be shown in America.
Can we get videos of it?
I’m arranging something. Look at my
website. I just spoke to BBC. We’ll show it in basements or show it
behind the barbed wire.
We’ll do it one way or another.
Churchill says we’ll show it on the beaches. We’ll show it in the
kitchen. Whatever it takes to get it right.
Is there a concerted effort to block this?
No. (laughing) It doesn’t take any
effort at all. Are you kidding? The whole nation,our national media has
been Foxified. It’s all Fox-proof at this point. And that’s true
whether it’s CBS or NBC or the New York Times. Look at their new
columnist David Brook. He’s somewhat to the right of the Republican
party. It’s just fuckin’ awful. No one has to make a decision because
it’s very simple. There ain’t no Goddam chance that anything showing
up on BBC about George Bush will be shown in the United States of America.
Bush has his evil empires list. Do you
have your list of evil empires or people or businesses?
They’re an evil empire. There’s kind
of what I call an evil circus. We have a government in Washington and an
international government of financiers which they aren’t so much...
They act more like armed and dangerous clowns than like Lex Luthor. There
are no professor Moriaritys (Sherlock Holme's brilliant criminal
antagonist) out there. They’re buffoons, but they are dangerous. From
the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization I got these
documents that we’re not supposed see. These guys sit around and figure
out how to tear apart nations, to steal what they have... and to destroy
and grab. Slash and grab is the hidden motto of the World Bank. Destroy a
nation, take its assets and cart it off for British Petroleum.
The argument is that we need to have some
sort of global trade arrangement.
Karl Marx didn’t say "workers of
the world disperse." We should all be working together. These guys
aren’t talking about global trade. They’re anti-trade.
Do you really want me to include that Karl
Marx mention. Do you want to be called a Communist?
I’ll be called anything. Since the
Marxists (laughter) don’t like me, I’m allowed to steal (quote) their
guy.
Are you a Marxist, a Communist?
I’m definitely not a communist. What a
pathetic and sorry group they are at this point. I think there’s a lot
to be learned from Karl Marx and Adam Smith. As an economist I pull lots
from all these writers.
You’re one of the good guys. I’m just
trying to prevent someone from using a quote out of context. Any
particular people in this "evil Empire"
Peter Munk. He’s the guy who set up
George Bush’s gold mines. They are looters and killers and this guy puts
it together.
Is he connected with Liberia too?
No. That’s Pat Robertson. He’s a much
bigger player than you think. There’s Pat Robertson, the Elmer Gantry of
Television, and Pat Robertson, in the same body, who’s one of the most
devious and brilliant businessmen in the hemisphere. And he DOES have gold
mines in Liberia, and believe me, we ain’t going in there until that
interest is protected. He owns other things that don’t get the light
they should be getting.
The Koch brothers-- these are the guys who
illegally funded the Republican takeover of the congress. They financed
and funded the "contract with America," Newt Gingrich’s
plan.
What did they do that was illegal?
Well they pumped about $25 million dollars
into the campaign for the Republican party. No-one’s supposed to
give more than $1000 to a campaign. They committed $25 million.
They went after McCain, didn’t they? (I
was thinking of the attack ads that were used when McCain was running
against Bush in the southern 2000 primaries.)
No. They elected McCain. They put him in
over Dennis DiConcini of Arizona who was investigating the Koch brothers
who were stealing oil from the Indians off the Indian reservation-- maybe
$100 million dollars (worth..) So they spent whatever money it would take
to boot him, And they put in McCain in his place. But then, McCain’s
gotten kind of out of line...
You talk about Bill Gates as the richest
man in America, but I would bet that these Koch brothers are very close,
but unlike Gates, Koch’s industries is a private company, and we don’t
know how much they’re worth. But I would bet they are close to or more
than Gates.
They are the guys who funded some of the
big think tanks, George Mason University, Citizens for a Sound Economy,
Cato Institute, all these fronts which created the huge intellectual
Right.
They’re the number one funders of the
right wing.
And by the way, their father founded the
John Birch Society.
What’s smart about the Kochs is they
work their way through fronts.
My whole purpose is to tell you the stuff
that you can’t see, that requires some extra digging. While the internet
is an extraordinary research tool, I find that people are dependent upon
it and it’s not the question that you get bad information. But you still
don’t get enough information. You still have to go digging, making those
phone calls. In my case, I go under cover even.
Computerized voting machines...
What you really have to look at is what’s
in front of your face-- the touch screen voting machine-- which needless
to say, you don’t have to be a fucking Rhodes scholar to figure out that
..... they’re refusing to come up with some kind of paper ballot to
print out back-up.
They’re saying that one of the reasons they
don’t want a paper back up is there are all these glitches doing that,
as opposed to the machine itself. So, you’re telling me that we can
trust the machine to chose the next president but can’t trust it to
print out a copy of what someone votes. So I have a big concern.
What I’ve looking at is beyond the touch
screen voting machines, which are a nightmare.
But the requirement.. there’s something
called the Help America Vote Act, which you’ve probably never
heard of, which was signed by our president. And as soon as George Bush
tells you he’s going to help you vote, you better fucking look out.
He’s not only pushing computerized voting
but he also pushing computerization of voting rolls. And that was the key
to the theft of the election before. Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush removed
tens of thousands of black people from the voting rolls just before the
election. They called them criminals and they weren’t. That’s what I
uncovered with BBC television. And that’s how the president was elected.
And rather than end that system-- Florida was the only state that did
that--- the new law requires that every state imitate Florida. Martin
Luther King III and I have written an op-ed on this and we call it the
Floridation of the nation. It is requiring every state to imitate the evil
system that disenfranchised thousands of black voters. They’re
computerizing it so one single hack or "hacket," like Katherine
Harris, in a state can determine who gets removed from those rolls.
I saw that there’s some new kind of an
organization of state voting chairs, or something like that.
Oh yes. One of the problems is that there
will be an oversight panel to make sure that no-one abuses this. It will
be appointed by George Bush. Which I think is good, I think that therefor,
in consequence, why limit it to just the voting. As long as you’re going
to have George Bush in charge of making sure that we have an honest vote,
shouldn’t we let the mafia have an oversight panel over the FBI? It’s
only fair.
Yesteday Moveon.org sent out their
newsletter that was all about the vote. It had your piece, Thom
Hartmann’s piece, a couple others.
I think that that’s important. I wish
they would have the petition. You can sign the Martin Luther King III /
Greg Palast petition to stop the Floridation of the 2004 election at http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=228&row=1
It’s very nice that Moveon is doing
something to make people aware of this, but we’ve got to actually get
people to do something to sign on and show that people are upset about
this.
Do you know about Rush Holt’s paper
trail ballot legislation?
That’s putting a condom on the rapist.
It’s your basic protection. Which is to have computerized voting you got
to have a paper trail and have to have other safeguards. But we aren't at
that point yet. The number one problem is that we cannot have anything on
the computer and be safe. In fact, you can get a paper receipt and that
can still be a con. Hell, you don’t know what the machine’s recording
even though they print it on the paper.
At least, if we don’t have those basic
protections that Holt is talking about-- the
fact that they don’t want Holt’s corrections means that they
absolutely intend to steal.
When someone says, don’t close the door
to the safe, they’re probably trying to steal what’s inside it. Like I
say, I back Holt’s legislation. I think it’s a positive step but
it’s really just a condom on the rapist. It helps but it doesn’t solve
the problem.
So how do you solve the problem?
You prevent the rape. Every single expert
that I’ve spoken to, bar none, worldwide, says there’s nothing safer
than a paper ballot. You mark it and it can be read by all competing
factions in public, period! That’s the best, most practical, cheapest,
safest method for voting anywhere that anyone’s ever conceived of
period-- the paper ballot.
That’s the Gold Standard.
That’s the Gold Standard. And they’re
spending an awful lot of money for something that’s much more expensive,
much more difficult and has a complete history of utter failure. Well.. I
can’t call it utter failure,, because people like Chuck Hagel of
Nebraska probably wouldn’t be in the senate. So I geuss you could view
it as not a failure if it weren’t for computerized voting.
And Sonny Perdue...
There are counties in Texas that have gone
Republican with an astonishing number of black votes., which occurred
after they computerized. So to me, it’s quite interesting that the
changeover in government that occur when you change over the voting
methodology.
The same people that say there is nothing
to worry about don’t want any type of testing-- don’t
want open codes, don’t want
paper receipts. Then
what’s the problem here? We have to inform people. But then we have to
inform them about what they can do.
Any Updates on Voting Cull Lists in other
states besides Florida?
Well now it’s going to be required in
every state of the union. I’m particularly worried about the states of
Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
Why?
Because that’s where we’ve seen some
real mischief already and there have been purges already that have been
questionable. I’m very concerned because I worry that one of the
questions is the push for Californians to get rid of Grey Davis-- aiming
really openly at getting control of the election mechanism in 2004.
And Gerrymandering
There are lots of reasons why they need
California.
At this point, 15 minutes past the time
allotted for the interview, Greg got a call from a radio station he was
scheduled to do a phone interview with.
Here's what Greg said about OpEdNews.com
....
it looks like you’re becoming the center of centers.
....
you’re doing really great stuff. I’m very impressed with it.
Rob Kall rob@opednews.com is publisher of
progressive news and opinion website www.opednews.com
and organizer of cutting edge meetings that bring together world leaders,
such as the Winter
Brain Meeting and the StoryCon
Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story. This article
is copyright by Rob Kall, but permission is granted for reprint in print,
email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
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