Armed Madhouse
By Greg Palast
Dutton Books $23.95
ISBN: 9-780525-959688

Reviewed by Michael G. Matejka
Grand Prairie Union News, Bloomington Illinois

Do current politics and economic policy leave you so frustrated, you aren’t sure whether to laugh or to cry?

Is there a connection between high gas prices, the Iraqi war, spoiled presidential election ballots and mounting trade deficits?

Then hang on tight and get ready for a wild ride, through Greg Palast’s newest book: Armed Madness. Perhaps the book’s subhead gives a better sense of its true direction: Who’s Afraid of Osama Wolf? China Floats, Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal ’08, No Child Left Behind and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War.

Palast is an American-born, award-winning British Broadcasting (BBC) investigative reporter, whose sharp, satiric pen lays waste to the world’s political figures, as he draws a tight spider web of intrigue connecting Saudi and Texas oil money, Chinese factory slave labor and America’s lost jobs and soon to be “left behind” lost children.

This is more than conspiracy theory. Palast, through years of hard and solid news reporting, is the favored recipient of unmarked brown envelopes from disgruntled government employees, which become the proverbial smoking gun to indict the high and mighty. In a day of lapdog journalism, where every D.C. pronouncement is taken without challenge, Palast is the rare reporter who actually will ask a hard question and dig beneath the surface.

Conspiracy theorists love to draw guilt by association rings. Palast moves beyond that, simply following an age-old trail – the money – and seeing where it leads.

Remember the outrage over the 2000 Bush-Gore election? Palast, before that election, exposed the on-going Florida purges of African-American voters. Even more unsettling, he scrupulously follows 2004 lost ballots in Ohio and New Mexico, finding thousands of uncounted African-American votes in Cleveland, and a mysterious “no choice” in the Presidential race on ballots from Hispanic and Native American districts in New Mexico. Yes, according to Palast, Al Gore and the John Kerry both won their races.

All of this comes after his thorough expose on the oil industry and its plans for Iraqi oil. American taxpayers were promised that the Iraq war would “pay for itself” through the sale of Iraqi oil. As the trillions in war deficits mount, little black gold is flowing from Basra. As Palast wisely points out, Exxon-Mobil, riding the crest of high profits, doesn’t want OPEC disrupted or Iraqi oil flowing, as more crude might mean lower prices and thus, less profit.

After running the Republicans through his sharpened pen shredder, Palast gives equal time to the Democratic Party. It was Clinton-Gore that brought us NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and initiated that “great sucking sound” of job loss. Why shouldn’t white working class voters march to the ballot box concerned about gun rights, men kissing men or abortion, because it was the Democrats who threw their jobs away? He marks the Clinton year as a watershed when the “New Democrats” shed their traditional roots and abandoned the people.

There’s a strong jolt of powerful juice running through this tight little volume. Palast brings a stinging, palatable scream to every outrage, laced with biting, satiric humor. More importantly, this is more than a tirade. Thanks to those brown envelopes and e-mails mysteriously coming his way, he has solid facts to back up his jeremiads.

If you are incredibly frustrated, angry or demoralized by American politics, this little volume will light your soul, give you new ammunition and perhaps, just maybe give you that little light of hope. After his testament of outrages, Palast, a working class kid from Los Angeles, reminds us that we do have rights, we do have power and we are still the world’s great home for human democracy.

(If you want a little sneak preview, go to www.GregPalast.com. Palast is widely read in Europe, but it’s hard to find a U.S. media outlet that will follow his leads.)