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Known in Britain as "the greatest investigative reporter of our time" (Tribune magazine), Palast has broken some of the most infamous stories of the past decade, including:
- How the Bush family stole the election in Florida in 2000
- How Bush killed the FBI's investigation into the financing of terrorist
organizations by Saudi Arabia, and why
- How Enron cheated, lied, and swindled its way into an energy monopoly
- Groundbreaking reports on the World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organization, Wal-Mart and more.Palast reports the news the corporate media won�t cover. Yesterday, Greg took a few moments to talk with SoonerThought.com Editor-in-Chief J. Alex Greenwood about the latest edition of his book.
[SoonerThought] Thanks for being with us, Greg. Tell us what is new in your book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. What new information can we expect to find?
[Greg Palast] Too much. (laughs) It will make you cry, I promise you. It�ll make you laugh. First is the �Why Are We Still In Iraq� question. Turns out I have a little document that danced its way out of the file cabinets at the State Department showing that long before the invasion we had a plan to sell off the assets of Iraq. To divide up--and the words are �especially in the oil and supporting industries.� So, you know, exactly eight minutes into his speech annnouncing we were going to war�our president turned and said �I want to speak to the Iraqi people... and said �Do not burn oil wells.� Now we know why�they were going to be his.
Unfortunately this is what people suspected, and now you see it in black and white. Now I�m not going to say that we went in for the oil, but it�s clear from the documents that we sure as hell were not going to leave without it.
[SoonerThought] Interesting you bring that up right away. Gore Vidal has been one of the most outspoken people about this�saying this is all about Unocal�s interests, though he differs from you�he says straight out we went into Iraq to gain access to the vast pools of oil off the Caspian Sea. But you�re saying that our main intention was not oil, but that we won�t leave without it?
[GP] Well the plan was there. I literally talked to oil people who are on George Bush�s committees within weeks of his inauguration who say it wasn�t Sept. 11 at all�they were just waiting for their moment (to invade Iraq). There�s another agenda here�there is a split in the administration. The Neocons want to break up OPEC and have huge production out of Iraq.
Now, the one thing you�ll find in the book is that George Bush is the biggest puppet and is the wooden knucklehead in the puppet government which was not elected. And now the puppet masters are coming out from behind the screen. James Baker now has an actual physical office in the White House. And he represents the government of Saudi Arabia against the victims of the September 11 attack. He also represents Exxon Oil and he�s got an office right there in the White House. And to make sure that Iraq�s oil stays within the OPEC production quota assigned by Saudi Arabia. That is why by the way we don�t have elections (in Iraq). No elected government of Iraq would ever agree to give up control of assets and its oil.
[SoonerThought] It�s a stunningly arrogant group of people in the White House right now, and it would be terribly na�ve of me to suggest they are the first administration to act this way. Would you characterize them as being the most bald-faced and arrogant administration about their dreams of empire?[GP] Well, the danger is not that they are the most arrogant; the danger is that they are the most self-delusional. Americans are not very good at �Empire.� Americans aren�t imperialists--though the British people are very excited about empire�the Americans believe in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave andd elections and stuff. (Retired General and first Iraq administrator) Jay Garner called for elections within 90 days of the overthrow of Saddam and he was fired by Donald Rumsfeld.
[SoonerThought] After reading Loretta Napoloeoni�s book Modern Jihad�it becomes so evident that terrorism in many ways are a symptom of the chickens coming home to roost.
[GP] Well yeah, I mean basically. I have new stuff on our �war on terror.� A subchapter of the new edition is called �Fear for Sale� in which we are now spending billions of dollars on gimmicks and gizmos to stop the next attack and basically it is a wonderful billion-dollar bonanza for Bush cronies. No-bid contracts. They are not making us safer. What they are doing is putting Big Brother�s eyeballs into our homes.
[SoonerThought] Is the president not today in Pennsylvania touting renewal of the Patriot Act?
[GP] Well, the Hate-triot Act we should call it�and worse. It�s not a question of security versus liberty. There�s no security from this stuff. It�s a joke. The whole Patriot Act�we talk about the restrictions [of rights] but it is also billions and billions of dollars out of our pockets for what is basically the new �Duck and Cover.� �Don�t look at the flash when the bomb drops and you�ll be okay.� This is the new �Don�t look at the flash.�
We are spending billions for example creating listings of �dangerous people� so they won�t get on planes. Because according to Choice Point, the company that is doing this stuff, hijackers are using their own names. So, if we had had this system in place (prior to 9/11) they would not have been allowed on the planes. The problem is that experts point out that Osama no longer checks in (at the airport) as �Mr. Bin Laden.� It may sound funny to put it that way, but that�s five billion right there.
And the problem is that what is actually happening is that those who show up at (anti-war) demonstrations show up on those lists. My wife was just pulled in by Homeland Security at two in the morning returning from out of the country with our tiny children. That�s who�s getting nailed. They want to make sure that you know that they know who you are. And that�s what the story is about.
Will it prevent another attack? Who are we kidding? The real things we need to be careful about are making our chemical plants more secure�which will cost the Bush donors a great deal of money. And that ain�t gonna happen. They�d rather pick your pocket to pay off Bush cronies and contractors.
[SoonerThought] Would you say that in Bob Woodward�s book where Powell calls the Neocons �the Gestapo��it would seem we are not too far off?
[GP] (Laughs) Let me say about Woodward�s book�why you need mine to explain his. Woodward wrote a book last year called Bush at War. He billed it as the inside story of what happened at the White House (at that time). He never mentioned Iraq. Now he�s written a second book saying �oh by the way, they were completely absorbed with Iraq.� Well, that wasn�t in the first book, so what we have now is the real story that wasn�t in the first book, and next year we�ll hear the real story that wasn�t in the second book. So that�s why they should just skip it and go to my new chapter.
[SoonerThought] Woodward�I�m not calling him a sellout, but to some he is perilously close.
[GP] Embedded. He�s embedded.
Yesterday, we began our two-part interview with investigatve journalist Greg Palast.
Today, SoonerThought Editor-in-Chief J. Alex Greenwood wraps up the interview and discusses Chinese prison labor making Wal-Mart "bargains" and Americans who have had enough.
[SoonerThought] You are justifiably hard on Wal-Mart. Here on the Great Plains we know about Wal-Mart�s dark side firsthand. Besides the union problems and obfuscation about where their �American� products are actually made, we have seen some scary stuff�for example: In Iowa, ten years after Wal-Mart came to the state, nearly half of the men's' and boy's clothing stores, and grocery stores...closed. That's an enormous impact on a state in only ten years. Wal-Mart now has more sales than the Gross Domestic Product of Israel, Greece, Ireland and Egypt. Wal-Mart is such a catch-22 for lower-income Americans. Sam Walton has made them beggars to their own demise. What do you say to Americans who, by virtue of the Bush economy must save pennies wherever they can�even if in the long run it is killing them? Inglewood, California recently told Wal-Mart to take a hike�is there hope?
[GP] Americans are very good at saying �don�t tread on me,' that�s why I moved back. I mean, God Bless America. I moved back because I want my kids to be Americans. Despite the temporary weasels, and the fact that we don�t have an elected government for the moment, eventually the coup de etat will come to an end because Americans have a limited capacity to eat shit. At a certain point rural communities will say �I�m sorry, take your Chinese prison toys and sell them somewhere else. We don�t need you to destroy our lives and our communities. And people do say that. Yeah, they do want things hot, quick and cheap, but at a point they say �What are our lives worth to us? What is it we want in the end? Do we want twelve dollar disposable toaster--which is the crap you get�for cheap, or do we want to have a special place called America which is different and unique in eevery state and every place?�
[SoonerThought] In this month�s Esquire, Ken Kurson says that Wal-Mart is an American success story and wrote: �It�s despicable for elites� --I think that�s you, Greg��to decide that their cultural values are more meaningful than Wal-Mart�s diaper values.� Then he ttells readers that Wal Mart is the shrewdest stock buy they could make.
[GP] Is it an American success story? Wal-Mart has 700 hundred, count �em 700 hundred factories in China and exactly none in the U.S. So, I think Wal-Mart as far as I can tell is a Chinese success story.
[SoonerThought] Wait, Greg, are these factories owned by Wal-Mart?
[GP] No Wal-Mart doesn�t bother owning�at this moment at least it doesn�t own things like prisons�(laughs) they say they don�t take (and sell in America) prison-made goods, but they, like George Bush, are on a �don�t ask, don�t tell policy� and that�s the problem. They have contracts operating 700 factories in China. And that�s the thing, they don�t own them. They operate at arm�s length where they don�t have to know exactly what happens behind those (factory) walls. Or exactly where the products come from or how they are made. The Tibetan blood is wiped off before the product is delivered to Wal- Mart. So it is not an American success story, it�s a American tragedy when you consider how many jobs were lost�they are the biggest retailer in America and they sell about 17% American goods. So whose success is it?
[SoonerThought] Greg, I know you have many more things to work on, and SoonerThought�s readers appreciate your time.
[GP] Fantastic. Thanks very much.
EXCERPT on WAL-MART from "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" can be read below.
At Wal-Mart's 1992 general meeting, founder Sam Walton asked shareholders to sing God Bless America. The 15,000 Wal-Martians responded to Sam's call - even though Walton had been dead for two months.
Walton's request to the shareholder-cum-revival meeting in rural Arkansas - channelled through a spotlit executive crouching on bended knee to speak to the departed Deity of Retail - was scarcely surprising. Wal-Mart is America's most patriotic, flag-waving company.
But look under the flags. Stores are decked out like a war rally. Stars and Stripes hang from the ceiling. Cardboard eagles shriek 'Buy America!' But one independent group sampled 105,000 store items and found only 17 per cent of them made in the USA. Indeed some items in trolleys marked Made in America came from elsewhere. So just where does all this stuff come from? Ask avid Wal-Mart shopper Wu Hongda.
'Harry' Wu is famous in the States. He escaped from China after 19 years in a prison camp for holding 'counter-revolutionary' views, then conned his way back into the prisons to document the misery of forced labour. In 1995, Wu was jailed once more, but not before he had reported the appalling tale of slave labour.
Naturally, Wal-Mart has contracts with suppliers that say none of its merchandise should be made by slaves, prisoners or little children. But among its suppliers is Shantou Garment Trading Company, based in Guandong Province. The Trading Company uses factories in Shantou town: nothing wrong with that. But some of the Trading Company's manufacturing is also carried out in nearby Jia Yang prison.
Do any of Wal-Mart's goods come from the prison? The company says it would refuse to handle anything made in a prison, and no one suggests that it knowingly connives in supporting prison labour. Wal-Mart repeats the mantra that its contracts forbid it.
But there is a clear problem here. An associate of Wu helping to investigate the Trading Company was told that Chinese authorities explicitly prohibit the monitoring of production inside the prison. Hence it is virtually impossible for any buyer to establish for certain whether goods from the Trading Company have been made by prisoners or 'free' labour.
According to Wal-Mart, it has to rely on the word of suppliers when they say that goods have been made only by 'free' workers.
And outside China? Who makes the dirt-cheap clothes that fill Wal-Mart's shelves? Are the factories that supply the company staffed by properly rewarded adults? This has long been a sensitive topic for Wal-Mart. In 1994, former Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Ortega, author of the fearsome expose, In Sam We Trust, was taken round Guatemalan factories which supplied Wal-Mart. They were filled with smiling adult workers.
But Ortega had arrived secretly two weeks earlier, and managed to speak to the child seamstresses hidden from the official tour. (When the scandal was exposed, Wal-Mart cancelled its contract with the plant.) Furthermore, in 1996, Wendy Diaz of Honduras testified before Congress about the sweatshop where, as a 13-year-old, she earned 18p an hour making Wal-Mart label clothes.
Wal-Mart has been decidedly touchy when questioned about the use of child labour. Do children make its goods? The answer depends on how you define children. When reporters confronted chief executive David Glass in 1992 with photographs of 14-year-old children locked in Bangladeshi factories that supply the company, he replied: 'Your definition of children may be different from mine.'
But this was in the bad old days, before Wal-Mart published its Code of Conduct, which was meant to end abuses. Since then, the supply chain has been cleaned up.
Or maybe not. The National Labour Committee of New York has given The Observer an advance copy of a yet-unpublished report on manufacturing in Bangladesh. It lists Wal-Mart contractor Beximco as paying teenage seamstresses an hourly rate of 12p and their helpers 5p, both for an 80-hour week - half Bangladesh's minimum wage and way beyond the country's maximum 60-hour working week.
Wal-Mart told me this could not happen if contractors stuck to their word.
The Observer last week sought the views of Wal-Mart's former lawyer, Hillary Clinton, the 'little lady' Sam appointed to his board of directors. She did not return our calls to Washington.
Despite the bothersome gripes of a few skinny children from Guatemala - and, as the company is fond of pointing out, this all happened years ago - Wal-Mart maintains a folksy image based on Walton's aw-shucks Joe Bloke manner. Joyous clerks chant pledges of customer service that end with shouts of: 'So help me, Sam!'
The multi-billionaire took time to go into his shops and warehouses and chat with employees over doughnuts. In 1982, on his way to becoming America's richest man, he dropped into an Arkansas distribution centre and told the loaders, as one regular guy to another, that if they voted to join a union in a representation ballot, he would fire them all and shut down the centre.
The words, corroborated by eight witnesses, were darn effective. The workers voted down the union, keeping Sam's record perfect. Out of 2,450 stores in America today, not one is unionised.
Who needs a union anyway? Arkansas headquarters would not tell The Observer the company's wage rate for clerks. So our volunteers called Wal-Mart stores nationwide to apply for cashier jobs. Openings averaged $6.10 an hour, equivalent to �3.59. When we inquired at a store near an Indian reservation, we were told the starting rate was only �3.03.
Wal-Mart offers a pension plan and there is profit-sharing. But remember, Sam Walton invented the disposable workforce. About a third of Wal-Mart's workers are temporary; working hours are expanded, shifted, contracted at whim. The workforce turns over like the shoe inventory. And the shorter time someone is with the company, of course, the more difficult it is to build up a full pension or qualify for profit shares.
With 780,000 workers, Wal-Mart has the nation's largest payroll. Many are among the country's worst-paid employees. But it could have been worse: Walton asked for the company to be exempted from US minimum wage legislation. Courts refused.
Wal-Mart doesn't completely ignore workers who plead for an extra bowl of porridge. According to Ortega, when Kathleen Baker, a Wal-Mart employee in Minneapolis, handed her store manager a petition from 80 workers hoping for a rise, she was fired on the spot for using the company typewriter to write the petition. The charge ruined her ability to get another job - until Wal-Mart, under government pressure, agreed to clear her name.
In 1994, Linda Regalado was told she would lose her job if she continued to talk to fellow 'associates' about their right to join a union. She persevered and Wal-Mart made good its threat. Only when the government intervened did Wal-Mart agree to pay compensation.
And shortly afterwards Linda Regalado found herself at loggerheads with the company, her husband Gilbert, working at the same store, was seriously injured at work. Wal-Mart initially refused to pay for surgery, but later agreed after being sued by the family.
Having conquered America, will Wal-Mart's megaliths now chew up England's green belts and bleed high streets dry? A Wal-Marted Britain is not an inevitability. US towns 'are wising up,' says Al Norman, head of Sprawl-Busters, which has helped 88 communities slam the door on the Beast in the Box. Near my home, 60 miles from New York City, Wal-Mart has built a Sam's Club. It is one of the company's smaller outlets. Yet still, it could accommodate three super-Tescos and a football field. Shoppers are offered 70,000 different lines begging to be bought. Sam's Club panders to my nastiest human desire for Cheap and Plenty.
But my store-gasm has a cost. I step out of the Big Box and into the Pine Barrens, the last scrap of woodland left on Long Island's suburban moonscape, which Wal-Mart cut down for its parking lots. So Help Me Sam.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller �The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,� a book Michael Moore has called �courageous reporting.� He has uncovered fraud and corruption in the highest seats of power, exposing the back-room crimes and propaganda lies of the New World Order's robber barons-- from the pirates in the Oval Office to the corporate globalizers steamrolling the world over. Written in a no-holds-barred,, in-your-face style, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (click on the link on the right side of our website for more information or to order) is a must read for anyone who believes that the First Amendment is important enough to use and that democracy cannot be bought.
Greg Palast's writings have appeared in The Washington Post, Harper's, and The Nation. He's been a guest on Politically Incorrect, C-SPAN's Washington Journal, and does regular investigative reports for BBC's Newsnight. Winner of Salon.com's 2001 "Politics Story of the Year," Greg Palast is a legend among his colleagues and his devoted leadership worldwide. Palast earned his MBS from University of Chicago, where he studied under the tutelage of ultraconservative Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman. A native of California, he divides his time between New York and London.
http://www.soonerthought.com/archives/000571.html
http://www.soonerthought.com/archives/000572.html
Read an excerpt from the expanded election edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
http://eserver.org/bs/editors/palast_excerpt.pdf
OIL-SLICK JIM MOVES IN
I avoid the New York Times but lately, it's become a compulsion, though only for the
new daily column titled, "Names of the Dead." Today's listing: "DERVISHI, Ervin, 21,
Pfc, Army. Fort Worth."
I'm not one of those cynical people who thought Bush sent us into to Iraq for the oil. To
me, Saddam Hussein was always a Kurd-killing cockroach with a Hitlerian mustache. I
never liked the guy - not even when he worked for George Bush Sr.
It's worth going over the work the Butcher of Baghdad did for his Texas patrons when he
was their butcher:
1979: Seizes power with US approval; moves allegiance from Soviets to USA in Cold
War.
1980: Invades Iran, then the "Unicycle of Evil," with US encouragement and arms. (In
fairness, credit here goes to Nobel Peace Laureate, James Carter.)
1982: Bush-Reagan regime removes Saddam's regime from official US list of state
sponsors of terrorism.1983: Saddam hosts Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad. Agrees to "go steady" with US
corporate suppliers.
1984: US Commerce Department issues license for export of aflatoxin to Iraq useable in
biological weapons.
1988: Kurds in Halabja, Iraq, gassed.
1987-88: US warships destroy Iranian oil platforms in Gulf and break Iranian blockade
of Iraq shipping lanes, tipping war advantage back to Saddam.
1990: Invades Kuwait with US permission.
US permission? On July 25, 1990, the dashing dictator met in Baghdad with US
Ambassador April Glaspie. When Saddam asked Glaspie if the US would object to an
attack on Kuwait over the small emirate's theft of Iraqi oil, America's Ambassador told
him, "We have no opinion�. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to
emphasize the instruction ... that Kuwait is not associated with America." Saddam taped
her.
Glaspie, in 1991 Congressional testimony, did not deny the authenticity of the recording
which diplomats worldwide took as a Bush Sr's OK to an Iraqi invasion.
So where is Secretary Baker today? On the lam, hiding in deserved shame? Doing
penance by nursing the victims of Gulf War Syndrome? No, Mr. Baker is a successful
lawyer, founder of Baker Botts of Houston, Riyadh, Kazakhstan. Among his glinting
client roster, Exxon-Mobil oil and the defense minister of Saudi Arabia. Baker's firm is
protecting the Saudi royal from a lawsuit by the families of the victims of September 11
over evidence suggesting that Saudi money ended up in the pockets of the terrorists.
And Baker has just opened a new office � at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This is White
House first: the first time a lobbyist for the oil industry will have a desk right next to the
President's. Baker's job, to "restructure" Iraq's debt. How lucky for his clients in Saudi
Arabia. The Kingdom claims $30.7 billion due from Iraq. Apparently this includes their
$7 billion send to Saddam to fund his bomb [see Chapter 2].
If you remember, Henry Kissinger ran away from appointment to the September 11
Commission with his consulting firm tucked between his legs after the US Senate
demanded he reveal his client list. In the case of Jim Baker, our elected Congress will
had no chance to ask him who is paying his firm nor even require him to get off
conflicting payrolls.
To get around the wee issue of conflicts galore, the White House crafted a neat little
subterfuge. The official press release says the President has not appointed Mr. Baker.
Rather Mr. Bush is "responding to a request from the Iraqi Governing Council." That is,Bush is acting on the authority of the puppet government he imposed on Iraqis at
gunpoint.
Why is our President so concerned with the wishes of Mr. Baker's clientele? What does
Bush owe Baker?
It was Baker, as consiglieri to the Bush family, who came up with the strategy of
maneuvering the 2000 Florida vote count into a Supreme Court packed with politicos.
Over the years, Jim Baker has taken responsibility for putting bread on the Bush family
table. As Senior Counsel to Carlyle, the arms-dealing investment group, Baker arranged
for the firm to hire both President Bush 41 after he was booted from the White House and
President Bush 43 while his daddy was still in office.
We know why Jim Baker is in the White House. But what was Private Dervishi doing in
harm's way in Iraq? Saddam was already in the slammer and Iraq "liberated" nearly a
year.
The answer came to me in a confidential document that oozed out of Foggy Bottom, one
hundred pages from the State Departments secret "Iraq Strategy." It's all about the "post-
conflict" economy of Iraq written well before American was told we would have a
conflict there.
There's nothing in the "Iraq Strategy" about democracy or voting. But there's plenty of
detail about creating a free-market Disneyland in Mesopotamia, with "all" state assets -
and that's just about everything in that nation - to be sold off to corporate powers. The
Bush team secret program ordered �
"� asset sales, concessions, leases and management contracts, especially those in
the oil and supporting industries."
The "Strategy" lays out a detailed 270-day schedule for the asset grab. And that's why
PFC Dervishi was kept there: to prevent or forestall elections. Because no
democratically elected government of Iraq could ever sell off its oil. Democracy would
have to wait, at the point of a gun, for the "assets sales, concessions, leases" to Bush's
corporate buck-buddies.
There you have it. The secret "Strategy" tells us that, if Bush didn't go into Iraq for the
oil, he sure as hell ain't leaving without it.
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