The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast
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Book Reviews of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Book Review: The New Privatized World Order: Privatization Equals Briberization
Summary: 4 Stars
Although dense and difficult to follow at times, this author has plunged deep into the underbelly of America's Vampire Capitalists ruling circles. And what he comes up with, is not pretty: Interlocking networks of greed and corruption have successfully conspired to undermine our democracy and has created a new illicit engine of corruption that now replaces the "New Deal" structure created by FDR to defeat the "Robber Barons" of the 1920's.
This new octopus of evil and corruption has metastasized and "gone global" ("Wallmartization"). It has spread its tentacles across the globe, and like a boa constrictor continues to strangle the life-blood out of our democracy, re-colonizes much of the Third World through the IMF, and is destroying our middle class way of life. According to this author, at the front of the line, and with some of the longest tentacles, is the Bush family. Although to his credit, he is an "equal opportunity" skewer: The Clintons and the press, like the Congress as a whole, appear here equally as enablers of the crimes of the vampire elite. The coordinated stealing by the Bush family of the 2000 Presidential election via Katherine Harris in Florida, was just the opening act of a scary drama that is still being played out even though both Bushes are no longer in office.
It goes almost without saying that the machinery of the "new Privatized World Order" has deadly, often criminal and always devastating consequences on the environment, on our democratic way of life, and on the common man more generally; and a logic that this author reveals here as being transparent to the point of being obvious: The new formula for establishing a "Privatized World Order" by re-colonizing the globe, one country and one industry at a time is one that works like a virus. And as of today 2010, is well on its way of accomplishing its goal. That formula, which is easily found in the subtext of this book is novel in the sense that it precludes the need for breaking the law:
The formula is to use the payola of the lobbyists to change the laws, so that what once was a crime, is no longer criminal but is then rendered legal! Once laws are changed, restrictions and regulations are relaxed (all under the false banner of attaining "more freedom for small businesses"), and then industries are consolidated, or, are "run over" "leveraged out," and then "reformed" (a euphemism for firing its workers). The same is done for countries that received IMF funds.
Once re-colonized, the monopoly power of these cabals is then used to make the industries (or countries) "heel." They become so pliant and vulnerable to price and stock manipulations, manipulation of resource needs, and phony bookkeeping, and other operational manipulations, that the companies and countries can then be easily "busted out." The book shows how this generic formula that leads down the road to self-destruction of even the healthiest of economies and societies has been used over and over: Today in the U.S. medical industry, the oil industry, the power industries, etc.
In this sense, this author thus is telling us nothing that we did not already know or suspected, but he has tons of investigative files to back up his assertions. Four Stars
Book Review: Democracy for sale.
Summary: 4 Stars
Mr Palast's book is more a collection of articles. His writing style is somewhat sarcastic, but effective at getting his point across to the reader.
Some of the subjects in this book are:
The voter fraud in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. Mr Palast has done a lot of research on the issue and he has documentation. This whole scandal revolved around felons with voting rights restored by other states and the Florida Secretary of State not recognizing those restored rights and the related votes that were cast.
The profiteering by pharmaceutical companies and the method sometimes used in securing patents for drugs.
The exploitive side of illegal immigration-low wages for longer hours.
"Secret trade treaty documents reveal the shark hidden in the free trade swimming pool..."-page 67. That shark is revealed to be "the neccessity test" of Global Trade as decided by the World Trade Organization.
Pat Robertson and his connection to George W. Bush's rebound in the 2000 election in the South Carolina and Virgina primaries. The author also examines some of the Reverend's financial dealings.
Monsanto's influence in securing FDA approval of BST(bovine growth hormone)despite dubious results in lab tests conducted on rats.
There is a strange parallel between the Clinton and second Bush administration's connections to energy companies like Enron and in the Clintons' case,Entergy International.
The true "wisdom" of deregulated electricity is this...profits are privatized while losses are socialized.
WalMart and the dubious connection to Chinese labor. Hillary Clinton's involvement with the corporation is addressed also.
An interesting quote from Johnny Chung about the Clinton White House-"I see the White House is like a subway-you have to put in coins to open the gates."
Greg Palast has written a very good,thoroughly-researched book about corruption in both Democrat and Republican administrations. I recommend this book and will be looking for more of his work.
Book Review: Palast does a good job at digging up the dirt on some real scumbags here!
Summary: 4 Stars
Among other things you get great stuff from Palast as he exposes the election fraud during the 2000 Presidential election that ultimately decided the outcome of the race, the attached strings that come with IMF "bailouts", Pat Robertsons hypocritical money making scams, the CIA/Kissinger/Corporate engineered coup in Chile, Wal-Mart using Chinese prison slave labor while at the same time promoting themselves as a squeaky clean all American entity, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and clean up, the horror of Wackenhut privatized prisons, Pfizer knowingly selling defective heart valves, etc. He also is like Michael Moore in that he does a good job at using humor in his journalistic work even while exposing some very nasty things.
Palast is Jewish and comes from the left so while you get good exposures of corporate shenanigans you also have to put up with the typical hypocritical anti-white snipes that comes from that demographic. Like at one point Palast mocks a cab driver that is worried about too many immigrants coming into England and says he wants to preserve his English culture and heritage. Palast then equates English culture with drunken football hoologanism and says that the English should be begging to add new material to their gene pool! So for all the good work he has done Palast can't seem to shake the Jewish leftist tendency to hate working class whites. If it wasn't for that I may have given this book five stars.
Book Review: Good view of the Globalization Greedsters
Summary: 4 Stars
Palast gives many examples of how the ravages of globalization affect industries and whole countries. He provides true stories that are both long and short to support his assertion that "democracies" are being destroyed by corporate greed. He further shows how government not only looks the other way, but also has insiders at the very top who profit by it. Some of his longer stories tended to be a tedious read. But then, Palast is a reporter that is careful about facts and timelines. I wish his TV program could be seen in the US. My only complaint about Palast and others like him is: Where was he in the eight years of Clinton? Maybe he wasn't writing books. The phenomenom that there is often an unholy coalition between corporate pirates and people in high places in government is nothing new.
Book Review: Bold and Persistent Journalism
Summary: 4 Stars
The claims made by Greg Palast in this controversial book appear at first to be so over the top that no one could believe them. Then, as time and investigations continued, much of his early reporting about the Florida election fraud turned out to be right on the money. The result was another black eye for the mainstream media who was so afraid of being wrong that they said nothing at all. Greg's notes were so revealing that I took them to heart when writing my own novel about the six year long Florida election scandal. After a year of study I was unable to disprove a single thing he wrote. If only America had an atmosphere that rewarded his kind of bold and persistent journalism.