[lit-ideas] Re: 3 SUICIDES AT GUANTANAMO (long-ish)
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2006 19:03:43 EDT
_www.buzzflash.com_ (http://www.buzzflash.com/)
Greg Palast Uncovers the 'Armed Madhouse' of the Bush Reign of Greed, Fear
and Stolen Elections
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
We were screaming in the streets: no blood for oil, which, of course, you
know, most Americans consider a bargain â blood for oil, as long as itâs
not
their blood, right? But in fact, it wasnât blood for oil. It was blood for
no
oil. It was blood to make sure that not too much oil would flow and bust the
market. Oil had been down under Bill Clinton to eighteen bucks a barrel. Now
itâs over $70 a barrel. -- Greg Palast
* * *
Greg Palast is such a good investigative reporter, he canât get a job with a
mainstream media outlet in the United States. Thatâs right, Palast is good
enough for the BBC and the London Guardian and Observer, but he is too good
for any paper or television station in the United States.
You see, the mainstream press in America sees a big boulder blocking the road
and thereâs all sorts of arms and legs sticking out from underneath. The
White House tells the media that their eyes are deceiving them and there is
nothing under the boulder. They warn them not to try and move it, otherwise
they
might be aiding terrorists and revealing classified information. The
corporate-owned big media then reports that a big boulder fell from the sky
and
caused no injuries. Greg Palast, however, hires an earth mover, has an iron
claw
pick up the boulder â and then he reports what he finds underneath.
This makes him a pariah to the corporate barons who run the American media.
They donât want inquiring minds as journalists; they want stenographers.
Thereâ
s a reason BuzzFlash has interviewed Greg Palast more than any other person.
Heâs not afraid to look under rocks and boulders and tell us what he sees,
as he does in his new book, _Armed Madhouse_
(http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/237) .
* * *
BuzzFlash: You donât waste a page of this book, Greg. You open it up and
youâ
ve got an illustrated explanation of the two plans for oil in invading Iraq.
Greg Palast: Bush had a secret plan for Iraqâs oil. Make that, he had two,
and I got them. It was not easy, let me tell you. The first plan that I found
was crafted by the Neo-cons â Wolfowitz and the whole Rumsfeld gang. Their
program for oil in Iraq was to sell off the oil fields. We have it in black
and white. They called this privatization, which means slice, dice and sell.
Of
course, since Iraqis only have Iraqi currency, it wouldnât go to Iraqis,
right?
That plan was handed to General Jay Garner, our first vice counsel there. I
showed him the secret plan and he said, âYes, thatâs it.â I said, âWhy
didnâ
t you implement it?â He said basically that he told Rumsfeld to take the
plan
and stick it where the desert sun doesnât rise.
BuzzFlash: And then Garner got relieved of duty.
Greg Palast: That night, Rumsfeld said, well, donât unpack. Youâre fired.
BuzzFlash: Then they sent Paul Bremer.
Greg Palast: They sent in Paul Bremer, whose sole qualification for the job
was that he was managing director of Kissinger Associates. But the plan to
sell off Iraqâs oil fields was blocked by something I didnât expect â
big oil,
the big oil companies. They said: Listen guys, this isnât how itâs done in
the Mideast. You let the Iraqis pretend that they own the oil, and what we do
is we have no-bid production sharing agreements. The key thing is to make
sure â and hereâs the kicker â make sure we donât get too much oil.
I have the actual 323-page document drafted by big oil executives in Houston,
working with James Bakerâs people. Remember, James Baker represents Exxon
Oil Company. He also represents the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. These are the
guys
drafting the plans â our plans for Iraqâs oil. By the way, why arenât
the
Iraqis drawing up their own plan? Thatâs another issue. But the plan was
that
we donât sell off Iraqâs oilfields. Rather they have lock-up agreements
with
U.S. oil companies.
And most importantly, this plan would guarantee that Iraq does not produce
beyond its OPEC quota. In other words, we want the oil, but not too much,
because that would bring down the price of oil.
In the book, I actually show the pages from these plans for Iraq, and one
says the purpose is to enhance the Iraq governmentâs relationship with OPEC.
As
you can imagine, OPEC is the oil cartel which basically has its foot on the
worldâs economic windpipe at the moment - $70 a barrel gasoline. Three bucks
a
gallon at the pump is what it comes out to. We are literally in there right
now to make sure that Iraq remains good members of OPEC. They were afraid
that Saddam was going renegade, and he could not be trusted to play ball with
OPEC, which is basically an illegal cartel controlled by Saudi Arabia and big
oil.
That was the winning plan for the oil. In other words, if you wonder why your
cousin is shivering under a tank in Fallujah, it is to enhance Iraqâs
relationship with OPEC. There it is, guys â black and white.
BuzzFlash: To ensure a controlled flow of oil at a good profitable price for
the oil industry.
Greg Palast: Letâs put it this way. Iraq can pump 6 million barrels a day.
As long as they are members of OPEC under Saudi control, they can only pump 3
million a day. With the oil for food program â we put a clamp on Saddam â
it
was 2 million a day. People misunderstand this one. We were screaming in the
streets: no blood for oil, which, of course, you know, most Americans
consider a bargain â blood for oil, as long as itâs not their blood,
right? But in
fact, it wasnât blood for oil. It was blood for no oil. It was blood to make
sure that not too much oil would flow and bust the market. Oil had been down
under Bill Clinton to eighteen bucks a barrel. Now itâs over $70 a barrel.
BuzzFlash: I think it was $73 on Friday. And with the Iranians saying that
if the U.S. continues to put pressure on them, theyâre going to lower their
output, the price of oil may go up even more.
Greg Palast: Right. They are playing a nice little game. The next war isnât
with Iran â itâs with Venezuela, as I explain the book.
BuzzFlash: Because theyâre the second-largest exporter to the U.S. â
isnât
that right?
Greg Palast: Let me explain. I was able to obtain a document. Thatâs why we
have all these illustrations in the book â because I want people to actually
see these things. I got a document from inside the Department of Energy,
which says that Venezuela â in other words, Hugo Chavez - has more oil than
Saudi
Arabia, and thatâs a real shake-up.
BuzzFlash: You mean according to geological surveys?
Greg Palast: Yes, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, a lot more oil
than Saudi Arabia. Thatâs a disaster for George Bush because â and
thatâs
why I have that chapter called âThe Assassination of Hugo Chavez.â
I showed the chart to Chavez himself last month in Caracas, and he said, â
Thatâs absolutely right. And weâre going to demand that OPEC recognize
Venezuela, not Saudi Arabia, as the leader.â Thatâs big, bad news for the
Bush
House of Saud cartel because you have to understand that King Abdullah will
always sell us his oil. Heâll never cut it off.
But thatâs not the most important point here. Abdullah sends back his oil
earnings. After he takes his slice and gives his slice to Exxon, the remainder
goes back to the United States in the form of Treasury Bill purchases. They
would never lend a dime to their Muslim brothers. They just lend it back to
George to fund his oil wars and his tax cuts. And thatâs the game. Abdullah
lends us back the petro-dollars, and we lend him the 82nd Airborne to stay in
business.
BuzzFlash: Okay, so we donât expect to see Hugo Chavez on Bushâs ranch
with
him, with their pinkies intertwined, as weâve seen Bush with the Saudi royal
family.
Greg Palast: The reason George Bush was chauffeuring King Abdullah around
the Crawford ranch in his golf cart â well, first of all, because George is
afraid of horses â no kidding. The second reason, though, is to make sure
that
he keeps giving us those petro-dollars back as loans or purchases.
And Chavez told me, âIâm just not going to do it.â In fact, knowing that
Iâ
d be reporting on BBC International News, Chavez said, âIâll drop the
price
of oil to fifty bucks - knock off a third â a buck a gallon off your gas
tank
charges. But I've got to have a deal with George Bush.â He wants no more
assassination plots and a stabilization of the oil market, which the Saudis
absolutely hate, because the Saudis crank up the price so that we choke, and
then
about every six to eight years, they dump the price to wipe out any
alternatives, whether itâs solar power or Chavezâs oil, which is heavy
crude, which
is expensive to get at.
In other words, Abdullah plays his game of jerking the market way up and way
down. Thatâs how the Saudis keep control of the oil market. Chavez says,
Iâm
not playing that game. Iâm not giving George Venezuelaâs oil money. In
fact, Chavez withdrew $20 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve and lent it to
Argentina, Ecuador and other Latin American countries. When you start
withdrawing your money from the Federal Reserve and giving it out, instead, to
Latin
America, you basically are getting a date with a bullet.
BuzzFlash: Two more quick questions about the oil situation, and then weâve
got to get to the stolen elections issue. There is also speculation that Iran
or Chavez might shift to the Euro instead of the dollar as being the
currency for oil.
Greg Palast: That one I checked out. It doesnât float, because it was George
Bush himself who is trying to push the Euro up. Bush has been trying to push
the Euro big time.
BuzzFlash: Why is that?
Greg Palast: Because heâs trying to devalue the dollar. When we talk about
revaluing the Chinese currency, you mean devaluing the dollar. Very, very
important to Bush to dump the dollar. His cronies are trying to evacuate the
United States financially, and thatâs what privatization of Social Security
is
about as well. Itâs about getting dollars out of this country, and so we
devalue the dollar. That devalues the debt held by these guys. It raises our
interest. It kills our pension funds and our economy is slowly dying off.
BuzzFlash: Why do they want to do that?
Greg Palast: There are a few reasons. One, higher interest rates as well as
high oil rates have completely demolished the auto industry. General Motors
is heading right into bankruptcy. High oil rates have also demolished the
airline industry while enriching the oil companies, and the high interest
rates
have enriched the banks.
That means basically the Democratic stronghold industries - the last
unionized industries in America, which are auto and airlines â are going
down. In
other words, "Mission Accomplished." Money is flowing into Houston. We pay
three bucks a gallon for gas, and they collect it. Mission accomplished.
Oilâs at
$70 a barrel. Mission accomplished. The dollarâs down, and we are exporting a
quarter trillion dollars a year to China in cash, so we could import their
manufactured goods. Thatâs mission accomplished. The idea is that American
capital is fleeing this country.
BuzzFlash: And thatâs good for Bush supporters like Wal-Mart, who basically
are the largest U.S. business employing workers in China.
Greg Palast: In fact, one thing youâll find in the book is that Wal-Mart has
700 factories that they effectively control in China â at least â and zero
in the United States.
BuzzFlash: One more question on oil. In essence, we look at the war in Iraq,
and saber-rattling in Iran, and see it as a Bush failure. Our soldiers are
dying in a macabre fiasco. Itâs a civil war there. From the perspective of
the
oil companies, however, itâs been a big success. Theyâre making out
literally like bandits.
Greg Palast: Exactly. If you thought that we went into Iraq to get that oil,
then we failed. But the oil companies are not in the business of finding
oil. Theyâre in the business of finding profits, and they make profits by
not
finding oil â by locking up these fields.
The history of Iraq is a history of locking up their fields so they donât
produce. So it is mission accomplished. You have to understand - Exxon-Mobil
Corporation, the number one, lifetime, career giver to George W. Bush after
Enron - is making $10 billion clear profit every three months. We havenât
seen
cash like that since the pharaohs. This is mission accomplished.
You can read the documents. Remember, I actually talked to the oil company
executives, the CEO of Shell Oil, and I talked to the inside people working
with Baker and his Exxon crew in drafting the oilfield plans for Iraq. If you
go
through the plans, if you talk to these guys - this is mission accomplished.
Yes, kids are dying. But itâs not George Bushâs kids, who are of military
age. A "war president" got himself a war. They didnât screw up, okay? And he
got re-elected â that is, close enough to swipe it. And by the way, I did
that
wired, just so you know. They said that I never spoke to them, and then I
said, âWhat part of the audiotape is fabricated?â Just so you know how I
get
this stuff.
BuzzFlash: Now letâs quickly move to the scheme to steal â08. We first met
you, Greg, in 2002 when BuzzFlash and MakeThemAccountable.com sponsored an
event here in Chicago that you spoke at. It was absolutely jammed, and this
was
when you issued the first edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
You were the first to zero in on the role of the infamous ChoicePoint data
collection firm in purging the Florida voting rolls in 2000 of eligible and
ineligible Democratic voters alike. You had a fantastic slide presentation,
very
detailed, about how they accomplished this violation of voting rights.
Greg Palast: Here's what happened, in a nutshell, for those who donât
remember. For BBC Television, I discovered that before the election, Jeb Bush
and
Katherine Harris scrubbed tens of thousands of black voters off the voter
rolls. They called them felons when their only crime was voting while black.
That
gave little George the White House.
I reported that for BBC, and I couldnât get that on the air in America for
anything. It was completely blacked out until basically Michael Moore brought
it up later. You couldnât talk about the theft of the 2000 election. It was
a
lockup fest. In 2004, they did it again, and it was bigger and wider and
sneakier and stinkier and nastier.
Again, itâs very important to me that I show you the documents, show you the
goods, show you the information, so you can see the actual data and proof.
And it wasnât, by the way, just Ohio. Donât kid yourself. Iâm glad that
Bobby
Kennedy â terrific guy â has now endorsed the idea that it was stolen in
Ohio, but it wasnât just Ohio.
It was Ohio, New Mexico, Iowa, and on and on. 3.6 million votes were cast and
never counted in the 2004 election â 3.6 million. This isnât Greg Palast
getting the info from a black helicopter. This is Greg Palast and our team
going through the computer files of the election information agency â and,
by the
way, the computer files of the Republican National Committee, which is one
of the most enjoyable parts of the investigation because some schmuck at the
RNC wrote some e-mails, in which they were discussing exactly how to jigger
the election. We were able to suck that down through a fake web site.
BuzzFlash: As we saw in New Hampshire â this is in a way a big âgotchaâ
-
people went to jail for it. In the 2002 election, there was a phone-jamming
case in New Hampshire where they jammed the lines of a union to prevent them
from getting out the vote for the Democratic candidate for the senate. And
people have gone to jail for this, including the person who was the former
head
of the Bush campaign for the northeast. The RNC paid his legal defense, which
was well over a million dollars. You couldnât get any more proof â and
here
you had a litigated case â of the Republican Party being involved in the â
in felony suppression of vote by legal verdict. There were direct connections
through phone calls to the RNC, and some indication even to Rove.
Greg Palast: Right.
BuzzFlash: So itâs a wide swath of voter suppression, theft, and illegal
disenfranchisement that the Republicans have been engaged in. You were the
first
to really detail the ChoicePoint role and all the varied ways they stole the
Florida vote â not just ChoicePoint, but that was the key. If it werenât
for ChoicePoint, Gore would have run away with it.
Greg Palast: Thatâs right.
BuzzFlash: Then we have the 2004 election, and we have a more subtle
combination of suppression of the vote, use of electronic voting machines to
miscalculate the vote and so forth. Now in your book upi say, âWatch out for
2008.â
Why do Americans not understand the threat here? It's only after Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr. brings it up in Rolling Stone that some people suddenly say,
whoa, someone whoâs really got credibility brought it up. Hey, maybe it is
serious.
Greg Palast: Remember that I wrote a story for the British Guardian paper,
actually in the column. I took over George Orwellâs column. And I put on the
top of the BBC Nightly News â âKerry Wonâ - okay? Then I had to explain
to a
European, Asian and Latin American audience that Kerry won. He got the most
votes. But theyâre going to inaugurate George Bush again. This is in 2004.
But how do I know Kerry won? The whole BBC team did an incredible
investigation, and we found 3.6 million votes cast but not counted. It was
called
"spoilage" - and thatâs everything from hanging chads to paper ballots that
have
extra marks, and are junked and thrown away â you name it.
But itâs not just anyoneâs ballot that doesnât count. Whose votes are
they?
We did a precinct-by-precinct analysis of whose votes were thrown away. If
you are in a black majority precinct, the chance that your vote will be thrown
in the electoral dumpster is 900% higher than if youâre in a white precinct.
If you are Hispanic - 500% higher than if youâre in a white precinct. This
also includes something called "rejected provisional ballots," a whole new
gimmick. A million people were shunted to back-of-the-bus ballots called
provisional ballots. And over half a million of those were never counted â
never
counted. And who made the decision not to count them? The Secretaries of
State,
like the Secretary of State of Ohio, who is also the head of the Bush
reelection campaign.
Whose votes are thrown out? Itâs black voters and poor voters. Thatâs why
the _Armed Madhous_ (http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/237) _e_
(http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/237) subtitle says âDispatches from
the Front
Lines of the Class War.â Vote theft is class war by other means. Not
everyoneâs
vote gets thrown out. In fact, do the arithmetic nationwide. 54% of the votes
in the electoral dumpster are cast by black voters. Another third cast by
Hispanic voters? Something like only one in five lost votes is cast by white
voters, and those are the poor white voters. The electoral dumpster is filled
with basically a Democratic pile of uncounted votes. Thatâs how they did it.
And theyâre planning to do a better job of not counting those votes in 2008.
It
âs the non-count of the vote â itâs not the count â that picks our
president.
BuzzFlash: In the meantime, we have midterm elections coming up. What is
going to happen there in 2006?
Greg Palast: It will only get worse, because theyâve added a new gimmick.
Part of the way they knock out voters is using databases. Thatâs how they
did
it in Florida. They manipulated databases to wrongly tag people as unqualified
voters. In 2004, we found something called "caging lists" of tens of
thousands â and we know it had to really be hundreds of thousands â of
voters,
almost every one of them an African-American voter, targeted for challenge by
the
Republican Party â the first mass challenge of voters since the Jim Crow
era. We found these illegal lists â these caging lists.
That pumped up the number of uncounted votes enormously â again, black votes.
In 2006 and 2008, theyâre targeting the Hispanic demographic, because theyâ
re going to steal it in New Mexico, in Utah, in Colorado, in Arizona, and
Nevada. Thatâs where theyâre going to be stealing the votes. And theyâre
targeting the Native American vote as well, which is a big demographic in the
West.
How are they doing it? Theyâre starting this new game of voter ID and
national ID cards. Theyâre creating tremendous databases to come up with
"gotcha
rules" that are going to tag people as ineligible voters â so-called
"suspect"
voters. This is what they did in 2004, completely unreported in the U.S.
press.
BuzzFlash: Is ChoicePoint playing a big role in this?
Greg Palast: You betcha, because where are they getting these databases? The
answer is the war on terror. People keep talking about how they are
attacking our civil liberties by keeping these big databases on Americans.
What are
they for? Theyâre not to keep you safe from al-Qaeda. Thereâs not a war on
terror. Itâs a war on democracy.
ChoicePoint is the biggest data mining outfit â it basically has the biggest
data mine in the United States â at minimum, 16 billion records on Americans.
Itâs illegal for the U.S. government to keep those records, but ChoicePoint
as a private company can. Then the U.S. government simply dips into the data
mine and pulls out the nuggets it wants. We saw this in 2000, with them
falsely attacking people as felons.
In 2004, completely unreported in the U.S. press, but big news from our BBC
investigation -- and itâs in Madhouse -- are the caging lists, in which
again
we know hundreds of thousands of people were tagged as having so-called
suspect addresses. Suspect addresses, in case youâre wondering, causing
people to
lose their vote, included page after page after page of black soldiers sent
overseas, so that their home address was now suspect.
If they've got the databases, theyâve got the election. And theyâre getting
the databases from the war on terror and the war on immigrants. 3.6 million
votes were cast and not counted last time. Look for 5 million in 2008.
BuzzFlash: Is ChoicePoint being subcontracted by the NSA?
Greg Palast: I canât even tell you what they have. Remember, these contracts
are secret. Weâre not supposed to know. I happen to have in the book the
foreign intelligence gathering contract of ChoicePoint. But youâre not even
supposed to know it exists. I know that they have immigration contracts. I
know
that they have foreign intelligence-gathering contracts. I know that they have
U.S. DNA-gathering contracts for the FBI.
BuzzFlash: We have a sinking suspicion that ChoicePoint and other dating
mining firms are doing the NSAâs dirty work. Then the Bush Administration
can
claim that the NSA is not spying on Americans, because technically itâs the
subcontractors who are doing the spying!
Well, Greg, thank you, once again. We wish there were fewer cockroaches under
the rocks you pick up, but it appears with the Bush Administration, the
roaches increase faster than the number of rocks you can look under.
Greg Palast: Thanks, itâs always a pleasure to talk with BuzzFlash.
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Interview conducted by Mark Karlin.
* * *
RESOURCES:
_Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats, Bush Sinks, The
Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from the
Front Lines of the Class War_ (http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/237)
(Hardcover) by Greg Palast, a BuzzFlash Premium.
_GregPalast.com _ (http://www.gregpalast.com/section/articles)
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