FYI, Y'all!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Greg Palast <[log in to unmask]>
Date: May 11, 2007 1:04 AM
Subject: Amy Goodman & Greg Palast on C-SPAN; "I have Rove's emails"
To: [log in to unmask]

 Amy Goodman and Greg Palast Mom's Day broadcast
This Sunday 7pm (EST) - on C-SPAN's Book TV

Amy and Greg have a couple of neo-cons for lunch - recorded live at the LA
Book Fest.

Want a taste?  Read the Interview with Palast from the Dollars & Sense
magazine spring issue about to hit the streets …

"I have Karl Rove's emails.  No kidding."

*Dollars & Sense: * In the new edition of your book, ARMED MADHOUSE, you
report on the theft of the 2008 election. How do know what they're doing?
Any way to stop them?

*Palast:*  I know because I have Karl Rove's emails.  No kidding.  He and
his team aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.  They sent copies of
their plans to GeorgeWBush.ORG instead of GeorgeWBush.COM addresses -- and,
heh heh, they ended up in my in-box.  Who says this job ain't fun?

*Dollars & Sense: * Bush fired eight prosecutors. You were behind the scenes
on that story long before it broke in the US. What are they still
withholding from us?

*Palast:*  Look, it's all about VOTES.  You'll see that the prosecutor that
Karl Rove insisted in putting in place is a slithery character named Tim
Griffin.  He's the guy I busted as the spider-mind behind the "caging lists"
which purged thousands of Black voters.  The prosecutors fired, as you'll
see in Armed Madhouse, include those, like David Iglesias in New Mexico, who
refused to bring phony cases of fraud against legitimate voters.  It's a
matter of economics:  the Republican party is systematically knocking out
lower-income voters; that makes their purges racially biased -- but my data
show that's just the effect of hunting down and attacking the ballot power
of working class and poor voters.  Disenfranchisement is class war by other
means.

*Dollars & Sense: * Why the hell hasn't the U.S. press covered the story of
Bush's vultures, election's theft, Iraq's oil or any of the other stories
you've put on the front pages in Europe?

*Palast:*  Robert Kennedy Jr. just complained to the head of ABC News about
the blackout on my stories.  (ABC has the right to take my stuff from BBC
for free.)  I'm not holding my breath for an answer.  I call it, The Silence
of the Media Lambs.  We've got loads of terrific investigative reporters in
America, but gutless editors.  So the suck-ups to power get the choice posts
in metropolitan dailies and on the networks.

Think of the punishment inflicted for the crime of investigative reporting.
Seymour Hersh told me he was forced out of the New York Times and Bob Parry,
the guy who busted open the Iran-Contra story, was pushed out of the
Associated Press.  On the other hand, Bob Woodward, who had his journalistic
tongue up George Bush's rectum, who went from writing 'All the President's
Men' to being one of the President's men, is doing just fine.

*Dollars & Sense:*  Many progressives are focused on privatization of the
Iraqi economy, including its oil industry, as Bush's real goal for the
invasion. But you write about two radically different plans within the
administration, the neo-cons' versus Big Oil's—and Big Oil's plan was the
one opposed to privatization. What's going on here?  Plus: any update on how
privatization and the whole neo-liberal reshaping of the Iraqi economy are
going?

*Palast:*  A lot of intelligent folk believe Bush had a secret plan to grab
the oil fields of Iraq before the tanks rolled.  That's wrong.  He had TWO
plans.  In Armed Madhouse, I show you both -- the result of two years
undercover for BBC.  The plans conflict.  There's the neo-con plan:
Privatize -- that is, sell off -- everything, "especially the oil"
industry.  That's a quote from the 101-page document which I learned was
written by the neo-cons.  That didn't happen -- because a Jim Baker team --
he's the lawyer for both Exxon and Saudi Arabia -- secretly wrote a 323-page
plan that called for CONTROLLING the oil flow, not owning it.  The purpose
was to LIMIT the supply of oil from Iraq and keep prices high.  This would,
"enhance [Iraq's] relationship with OPEC" -- the oil cartel.  That's a quote
from the document you're not supposed to see.

So here it is:  the invasion was about LIMITING the flow of oil from Iraq,
keeping prices high, not grabbing the oil to bring prices down for your
SUV.  The secret Baker plan is now the law in Iraq and prices are over $50 a
barrel.  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
*
Dollars & Sense: * We've covered some of the less-told stories of Venezuela
under Chavez—for example, how he's dramatically expanding the co-operative
sector of the economy. Some progressives worry though: is he a populist
demagogue, maybe in the Juan Peron mold, or is he really committed to worker
autonomy, democracy, and all that good stuff?  You've talked with Hugo
Chavez.  What's your take?
*
Palast:*  Chavez recommends that everyone read my book, so obviously I think
he's the greatest statesman since Lincoln.   But seriously, folks, what
makes the guy an astonishing threat to the Bush World Order is that he
insists on keeping the cash from the sale of Venezuela's oil -- shock of
shocks! --  in Venezuela!  With some lent to the rest of Latin America.  Up
until now, Venezuela sold us oil then immediately shifted the funds back to
the US Federal Reserve.  Chavez withdrew the funds from the Fed and, Heaven
help us, spent it on building his own nation's economy.  Is he a
"demogogue"?  The word means, spokesman for the people.  That he is.  Fun
trivia:  RFK Jr. reminded me that Chavez picked up the line, "Whiff of
sulfur" in speaking of Bush from my last book which he had just read.

*Dollars & Sense: * You write about how, depending on the price of oil over
time, Venezuela's oil could turn out to be a pivot point of huge
geopolitical change.  Can you explain?

*Palast:*  Internal US Department of Energy analysis (I got my hands on it
for BBC; it's in the book) shows that Venezuela, not Saudi Arabia, has the
largest reserve of crude.  That's a geo-political earthquake.

*Dollars & Sense:*  Are you really convinced that a big devaluation of the
Chinese currency would be meaningless in terms of saving U.S. manufacturing
jobs by making Chinese exports more expensive?  Then why are U.S.
policymakers across the political spectrum so obsessed with getting China to
devalue its currency?

*Palast:*  You're really asking, Why do politicians feed us bullshit?
That's a whole book right there.  Both parties are winking and nodding and
giggling behind your back that the way to save jobs is to change the value
of China's money.  It's a brilliant cover for the bi-partisan banging the
American worker received with the one-two punch of NAFTA and 'Most Favored
Nation' trade status for China.  There are 700 Wal-Mart plants in China --
zero in the USA.  Hillary Clinton was on the board of Wal-Mart when that
shift went into full swing.  No wonder she's joining George Bush in talking
about baloney like "exchange rates."



*Greg Palast is author of ARMED MADHOUSE:  From Baghdad to New Orleans --
Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild, by Greg Palast,
newly released in an updated, expanded edition; now in paperback.  For more
info go to www.GregPalast.com*

Catch Palast, Randi Rhodes and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - live from New York at
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6C0F65AB2719BDF5







 To Unsubscribe, please click
here<[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http://mailings.gregpalast.com//box.php?funcml=unsub2&nl=1&mi=25&[log in to unmask]>
.



-- 
Peter Parisi, Ph.D.
Dept. of Film & Media Studies
Hunter College
695 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212-772-4949
"People don't change. They just find out who they are." -- Ray Skean