Listen to the report on the Air America Radio's Thom Hartmann

In swing-state Colorado, the Republican Secretary of State conducted the biggest purge of voters in history, dumping a fifth of all registrations. Guess their color.

In swing-state Florida, the state is refusing to accept about 85,000 new registrations from voter drives – overwhelming Black voters.

In swing state New Mexico, HALF of the Democrats of Mora, a dirt poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic county, found their registrations disappeared this year, courtesy of a Republican voting contractor.

In swing states Ohio and Nevada, new federal law is knocking out tens of thousands of voters who lost their homes to foreclosure.

My investigations partner spoke directly to Barack Obama about it. (When your partner is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., candidates take your phone call.) The cool, cool Senator Obama told Kennedy he was “concerned” about the integrity of the vote in the Southwest in particular.

He’s concerned. I’m sweating.

It’s time SOMEBODY raised the alarm about these missing voters; not to save Obama’s candidacy – journalists should stay the heck away from partisan endorsements - but raise the alarm to save our sick democracy.

And that somebody is YOU. Joining with US, the Palast investigative team. Here’s how:

We have been offered an astonishing opportunity to place the Kennedy-Palast investigative findings on a national, prime-time, major-network television broadcast. Plus, separately, we have an extraordinary offer to create a series of reports for national network radio.

But guess what? The networks will NOT PAY for our public service reports. We have to raise the start-up funds in the next two weeks to film it, record it and get it on the airwaves.

WE need YOU to fund the reports, DISSEMINATE the findings as we post the print, audio and video on the web– and ACT on it.

So, for only the second time this year, I am asking each one of you to make a tax deductible donation to the non-profit, non-partisan Palast Investigative Fund of $500, $150 or $100.

Progressives have complained for years of no opportunity to get the hard, cold sweaty truth on the air. Well, put your money where your heart and soul is.

Donate at least $500, I’ll send you every book I’ve written and every film, signed.

Send $150 and I’ll send you as a gift, a copy of John Ennis' film Free For All, the brilliant and funny film about the Theft of Ohio. AND I'll send you, signed, a copy of my book, Armed Madhouse, plus a copy of the BBC/Democracy Now film investigations, The Election Files and a copy of the spoken word CD Live from the Armed Madhouse all signed.

Donate $100, and I’ll send you 3 copies, one signed to you, of “The Elections Files, “ the best of our BBC/Democracy Now films – including special never-broadcast interviews with Kennedy and fired prosecutor David Iglesias.

I know you’re ponying up for your favorite candidates. But what’s the point of winning folks' votes IF NO ONE COUNTS THEM?

Please make your donation – today. No corporation, no big foundation, is going to take on this emergency in our democracy. The election’s about to be stolen – for a third time. SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Donate today (for $1,000 minimum, we’ll list you as a Producer of our next DVD, in gratitude). Why? Because the only way to get the vote-chewing cockroaches out of the voting machinery is to turn on the lights – tell the truth on them. On prime time.

After our team busted the story of Katherine Harris’ attack on innocent Black voters as “felons,” the NAACP sued and won back their rights. The truth CAN make the difference. Yes, we can. Indeed, we HAVE.

Think all votes should be counted in America? Then YOU stand up and be counted. Don’t expect networks or commercial sponsors to pay for your democracy. Feed the truth, donate $100 right now and pass on a copy of the Elections Files to your dippy cousin who thinks Kerry lost fair and square.

Donations from our prior and only request already paid for some of our filming in the Southwest. Don’t let this story be swept under the border.

If you want more information, go to GregPalast.com, or write me directly at GregPalast.com – and hit the button, “contact Greg.”

Pass this on!

**************************

Greg Palast is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for Investigative Reporting at the Nation Institute, New York. Read and view his investigations for BBC Television at www.GregPalast.com. Support the investigation at www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org

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"Timothy Griffin," said Kennedy,"who is the new US attorney in Arkansas, was actually the mastermind behind the voter fraud efforts by the Bush Administration to disenfranchise over a million voters through 'caging' techniques - which are illegal."

[Hear Kennedy on Griffin, Rove and 'caging lists' below or here]

Kennedy based his demand on the revelations by BBC reporter Greg Palast in the new edition of his book, "Armed Madhouse." On one page of the book, Palast reproduces a copy of a confidential Bush-Cheney campaign email, dated August 26, 2004, in which Griffin directs Republican operatives to use the 'caging' lists.

This is one of the emails subpoenaed by Congress but supposedly "lost" by Rove's office. Palast obtained 500 of these, fifty with 'caging' lists attached.

'Caging' lists are "absolutely illegal" under the Voting Rights Act, noted Kennedy on his Air America program, Ring of Fire. The 1965 law makes it a felony crime to challenge voters when race is a factor in the targeting. African-American voters comprised the bulk of the 70,000 voters 'caged' in a single state, Florida.

Palast wrote in his book, "Here's how the scheme worked. The Bush campaign mailed out letters," particularly targeting African-American soldiers sent overseas. When the letters sent to the home addresses of the soldiers came back "undeliverable" because the servicemen were in Baghdad or elsewhere, the Republican Party would, "challenge the voter's registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted."

The Republicans successfully challenged "at least one million" votes of minority voters in the 2004 election.

Kennedy, a voting rights attorney, fumed, "What he [Griffin] did was absolutely illegal and he should be in jail. Instead [Griffin] was rewarded with the US Attorney's office."

"They [Griffin, Rove and their confederates at the RNC] knew it was illegal."

Kennedy has called on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees to expand their investigations of the firing of US Attorneys to include a probe of their replacements, especially Griffin, as well as Rove's knowledge of the caging operation.

In preparation for just such an investigation, Kyle Sampson, former aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, wrote a confidential email, dated December 19, 2006 outlining a strategy to stall Congress' from questioning the propriety of the Griffin appointment. “We should gum this to death," wrote Sampson, "Ask the senators to give Tim a chance . . . then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in 'good faith,' of course."

Sampson has since resigned.

Palast said, "Just as Rove is known as 'Bush's brain,' Griffin is 'Rove's Brain.' I'm flattered by his 'review.'"

Palast first reported on the caging list operation for BBC Television's premier current affairs show, Newsnight, in 2004. In a February 7, 2007 email obtained by subpoena from Rove's office, Griffin boasted that, "No [US] national media picked up" the BBC story. Griffin attached an excerpt of Armed Madhouse.

Griffin sent his remarks to Monica Goodling, Senior Counsel to Attorney General Gonzales, who has since resigned and invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer Congressional questions.

Griffin and Rove refused several requests from Palast and BBC to respond to charges of illegal, racial 'caging' of voters. However, a Republican spokeswoman, while admitting the lists could be used to challenge soldiers' votes, said that was 'not the purpose' for gathering the lists.

**********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE: From Baghdad to New Orleans -- Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House GONE WILD.

To see Palast's reports for BBC, obtain more information on Armed Madhouse or the prosecutor firing scandal, or to request an interview with Palast, go to www.GregPalast.com

Hear Kennedy on Griffin, Rove and on Palast's book -- "a masterpiece," says RFK: download this recent segment of "Ring of Fire" at www.GregPalast.com Palast will return to speak with Kennedy and his Air America co-host, attorney Mike Papantonio, this weekend. Check Air America listings.

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"Governments don't keep secrets to protect the public, but to deceive the public."

Greg Palast happens to be talking about a certain Big Oil-friendly blueprint for the future of the Iraqi oil industry when he makes this point, almost in passing, in his just-released book, Armed Madhouse (Dutton), but he could be stating the general premise of the whole book, or of his career as a journo-sleuth in the Jack Anderson mold and stand-in for the little guy in the global economy. His raison d'être is to ferret out those secrets and those deceptions and present them in all their cynical glory to the people for whom such knowledge is vital: you and me.

In my humble opinion, Palast, an American investigator better known beyond our borders, through his BBC current-affairs show "Newsnight," than here at home, is exactly what a journalist is supposed to be - a truth hound, doggedly independent, undaunted by power. His stories bite. They're so relevant they threaten to alter history - simply by letting the hoodwinked public in on the game while it's happening, which is precisely the role America's mainstream media have abdicated.

"The irony is that, in the U.S. we have something precious," he told me. "The First Amendment. The problem is, we don't use it."

On second thought, you might want to avoid reading Armed Madhouse - it's too infuriating, too heart-breaking. If you don't think ordinary citizens should be players in the high-stakes games of governments and big corporations, stick with the feel-good, celebrity-fawning media that keep us preoccupied with trivia and assured that America is on track and so is the war in Iraq and we're still the world's greatest democracy.

What I'm saying is, enter these pages at your own risk. The First Amendment isn't for sissies. A guy like Palast, who wears secret wires in high-level interviews and winds up mysteriously in possession of classified and otherwise shrouded documents and doesn't blow-dry his hair (or even have much hair), wields freedom of speech, at times, like a rapier: "Reverend Pat Robertson has a tough time with the separation of church and hate."

And, at times, like a grenade-launcher: "The Reagan-Bush Frankenstein Factory is still producing new models. (Pakistan President) Pervez Musharraf, personal protector of the atomic bomb salesman, Dr. Khan, can be seen in photos arm in arm with our president as if they were going together to the senior prom. Given our experiences with Saddam and Osama, our monsters tend to get out of control after about eleven years."

Or: "A whole list of corporate gimmes sought by lobbyists before Sept. 11 are now marketed to Congress as protection from Al-Qaeda. To cover this extreme greedismo, we've been sold a new Red Scare, and that is certain to bring us the new McCarthyism. Get ready...
"From his bunker, Mr. Cheney has created a government that is little more than a Wal-Mart of Fear: midnight snatchings of citizens for uncharged crimes, wars to hunt imaginary weapons aimed at Los Angeles, DNA data banks of kids and grandmas, even the Chicken Little sky-is-falling Social Security spook show.

"In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt calmed a nation when he said, 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.'

"Today, George Bush says, 'We have nothing to sell but fear itself.'"

Palast's book defies simple description. It takes on a range of contemporary horrors, and I'm serious in issuing a warning about it. Like his 2003 book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, which, among other things, exposed the "Jeb Crow" purges of the Florida voter rolls that kept so many African-Americans from voting in the 2000 election, Armed Madhouse will leave you shaking with anger - particularly about Big Oil and pervasive GOP-instigated election fraud - and crying, "Where the hell is the New York Times?"

Why indeed are the media failing to protect us and our democracy? This is the fundamental question Palast raises, simply by asking impolite questions, combing through reports, hunting down secret documents with whatever-it-takes persistence and ignoring every tacit agreement on what constitutes "acceptable discourse."

"What's most frustrating," he said to me, "is that my reports will get picked up - years later." The Times, for instance, finally got around to acknowledging the Florida voter purges in 2004, in the larger context of assuring us that everything's OK now. "The story (only) comes out when it can't bite."

Ouch, I say. It's excruciatingly painful to watch a crime unfold and be helpless to stop it. The crime, as always, is against the American promise. Yet the book is not without hope.

"Damn right America is exceptional," Palast says at the end of Armed Madhouse. "It is America that defiantly walked out of the first 'world trade organization,' known as the British Empire, announcing: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...'"

Remember that spirit, that audacity? Palast, bless his heart, is goading us to break the glass case in which the ideal of citizenship lies embalmed and re-embody it by demanding accountability from the fear salesmen and war profiteers who seem to show up whenever our backs are turned.

- - -
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor
at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can
respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at
commonwonders.com.

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Monday, May 15, 2006 -- Investigative journalist Greg Palast joins us in the Firehouse Studio to discuss the follow-up to his best-selling book “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” [includes rush transcript ]

Telecom giant Verizon has been sued for giving the National Security Agency the phone records of millions of Americans.

The lawsuit was filed on Saturday just days after USA Today reported Verizon, Bell South and AT&T handed over millions of phone call records to help the government build the world’s largest database.While the NSA spy story continues to make headline news, BBC Investigative reporter Greg Palast says that the corporate media is missing the real story.

He writes "The snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration’s Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB."Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain’t nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration."

* Greg Palast, investigative reporter with the BBC and author of the books "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and "Democracy and Regulation." His latest book is "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."

RUSH TRANSCRIPTThis transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...AMY GOODMAN: Investigative reporter Greg Palast joins us in the studio right now. He has a brand new book. It's called Armed Madhouse, and the subtitle is 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 Frontlines of the Class War. Welcome to Democracy Now!GREG PALAST: Thanks, Amy, for getting the entire subtitle without choking. There's a lot of ground to cover in the book.

AMY GOODMAN: There certainly is. And right now, Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, who you recently met with and interviewed and we broadcast on Democracy Now!, was in Vienna, offering to the poor of Europe cheap oil. Of course, the deaths continue in Iraq, both U.S. soldiers and Iraqis. We have the spy scandal that is unfolding here in the United States. Link them.

GREG PALAST: Yeah, that's why I wrote a book, because it does link the whole thing together. I mean, I just got back from meeting with Chavez, as you know, and you showed our interview a few weeks ago. He's offered the U.S. $50-a-barrel oil. That’s a third off of what we're paying right now. Now, you would think our president would be down in Caracas kissing Hugo Chavez's behind and saying, “Thank you, thank you for dropping the price of oil by a third, and let's make a deal,” because Chavez wants a deal.

But he's not doing that, our president, even though the high prices are costing about a million jobs right now. And the reason he's not is that what Chavez will not do is that Chavez will not return the money. It's not about petroleum, it's about petrodollars, as I explain in the book. In other words, when George Bush rides around King Abdullah in his little golf cart on the Crawford ranch, he's not trying to get Abdullah's oil. Abdullah can't drink the stuff. He’s got to sell it to us and Japan. But Abdullah takes the money back from the -- when you fill up your SUV, you give your money to Saudi Arabia, the big oil companies, Saudi Arabia. But then he returns it the form of petrodollars, and that is what is funding George Bush’s mad spending spree.

We have a president who has racked up $2 trillion in extra debt, you know, stone sober, apparently. And someone’s got to pay for that. And basically we're paying for it by effectively an oil tax, which is returned to us, because the Gulf states and our other trading partners are now buying up $2 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds and debt. So, in other words, they're recycling the money back and paying for George Bush's spending spree on ending inheritance taxes, you know, several wars, etc.

Now, Hugo Chavez says, “I'll give you cheap oil, not only to the poor, but to everyone. But I'm not giving you back the money. That money is going to stay in Latin America to build our nations.” And he just withdrew $20 billion out of the U.S. Federal Reserve. You have to understand, this is a punch in the face of the U.S. administration, far more than withholding oil, withholding and withdrawing petrodollars, as I explain in the book, and that's why you have that little nice floater from -- balloon thrown out by Reverend Robertson, Pat Robertson, saying “Hugo Chavez thinks we're trying to assassinate him, and I think we ought to just go and do it,” because they have got to get that -- it’s not that they need that oil, they need that oil money. And if they can't get it, they have to eliminate Hugo Chavez.

AMY GOODMAN: Is the war in Iraq a war for oil?

GREG PALAST: Is the war in Iraq for oil? Yes, it's about the oil, but not for the oil. In my investigations for Armed Madhouse, I ended up with a story far more fascinating and difficult than I imagined. We didn't go in to grab the oil. Just the opposite. We went in to control the oil and make sure we didn't get it. It goes back to 1920, when the oil companies sat in a room in Brussels in a hotel room, drew a red line around Iraq and said, “There'll be no oil coming out of that nation.” They have to suppress oil coming out of Iraq. Otherwise, the price of oil will collapse, and OPEC and Saudi Arabia will collapse.

And so, what I found, what I discovered that they’re very unhappy about is a 323-page plan, which was written by big oil, which is the secret but official plan of the United States for Iraq's oil, written by the big oil companies out of the James Baker Institute in coordination with a secret committee of the Council on Foreign Relations. I know it sounds very conspiratorial, but this is exactly how they do it. It's quite wild. And it's all about a plan to control Iraq's oil and make sure that Iraq has a system, which, quote, “enhances its relationship with OPEC.” In other words, the whole idea is to maintain the power of OPEC, which means maintain the power of Saudi Arabia.

And this is one of the reasons they absolutely hate Hugo Chavez. As you’ll see in next week's Harper's coming out, which is basically an excerpt from the book, Hugo Chavez on June 1st is going to ask OPEC to officially recognize that he has more oil than Saudi Arabia. This is a geopolitical earthquake. And the inside documents from the U.S. Department of Energy, which we have in the book and in Harper's, say, yeah, he's got more oil than Saudi Arabia.

AMY GOODMAN: And is it accessible?

GREG PALAST: That's the trick. It’s accessible, but the price of oil -- it's heavy oil, which means it costs about -- you need oil to be about $30 a barrel, less than half of what it is now. Chavez says, “Cut a deal with me. Oil will never drop below a minimum price, but we’ll get off this insane world-destroying $75 a barrel. I’ll give you cheap oil, but you just put a floor under it.” He shook hands with Bill Clinton on the deal. And Bush came in and spit on his hand, to say the least. He had the guy kidnapped back in 2002. Bush does not -- you have to remember, he doesn't like cheap oil. When we talk about paying $3-a-gallon gasoline, Bush’s benefactors, donors and his own family collects the $3 a gallon.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?

GREG PALAST: Well, we're paying three bucks a gallon. ExxonMobil is collecting $3 a gallon. There's a chapter called “Trillion-Dollar Babies.” When Bush came in, we had oil as low as $18 a barrel. It was like water. Bush has successfully built up the price of oil from 18 bucks a barrel to over $70 a barrel. That's the “mission accomplished.” He didn't make a mistake here. That's the “mission accomplished.”

ExxonMobil, which after Enron is the biggest lifetime donor to the Bush campaigns, its value of its reserves, of its oil reserves, because of the Bush wars and Bush actions, has gone up by almost exactly $1 trillion in value. Just one company. A trillion-dollar windfall to a single company. That's the Bush benefactors. And you have to look at where’s Bush make his money.

So, the problem that they have now is that Chavez is trying to supplant the Saudis running OPEC, and we've got a president who basically is caught up in, you know, these guys in bathrobes and crowns, these dictators of Saudi Arabia in the Gulf. And that's what the Bush family is linked up to, and they are not going to let them be supplanted by Chavez.

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Palast, when you open your book, Armed Madhouse -- most people have a white space there, but you use every inch, and you have a secret history of the war over oil in Iraq.

GREG PALAST: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You have a chronology.

GREG PALAST: Yes. I had a big fight with my capitalist pig publisher to put in this very fancy colorful front page to give you a chronology, the complexity of these secret deals between the administration and big oil. We actually got our hands on two different plans for Iraq's oil, a 101-page plan and a 323-page plan, which is all about, in great detail, what we are going do with Iraq's oil, and the number of Iraqis involved in writing this thing is exactly zero. You know, and of course, the number of Americans who know that that's why we're in Iraq, and we even know from -- in my research for Armed Madhouse, going through this and getting this document, I now know what was in the discussions between the oil companies, Ken Lay and Dick Cheney, in his bunker.

AMY GOODMAN: All right, what?

GREG PALAST: Well, and you’ll see there, they were going over the oil maps of Iraq, and the question was why was Ken Lay, you know, the kind of Al Capone of electricity --

AMY GOODMAN: He’s on trial right now, of course, in Houston.

GREG PALAST: -- who's on trial right now. The verdict is about to come down. Why was he in the meeting with oil companies, looking over the maps of Iraq? The answer is he was on this committee, drafting up the program for what to do about Iraq. And they had to get rid of Saddam, because he was jerking the oil markets up and down. I was very interested in why did we go into Iraq suddenly, and the answer was he was destabilizing the oil markets. He was making it jump up, making it jump down. And he had to go. And that's right in the documentation.

AMY GOODMAN: Plan B?

GREG PALAST: Plan B -- there are two plans. There was a neo-con plan, which was 101 pages long. Now, they actually did want to break up OPEC and destroy Saudi Arabia, but the Bush family wasn't going to let that happen, nor was big oil. And you will see behind this all: James Baker and, of course, Dick Cheney. You know, actually the interesting thing -- I was just realizing this morning -- four years of investigation, Amy, you’ll find in the book. You’ll see all the stuff about the hugger muggers between Cheney, big oil, Rumsfeld, Jim Baker. Nowhere is there any discussion of George Bush. He was not in the picture. He was not in the frame. Basically, there was no decision made or even discussed with George Bush. He’s the president who’s not there.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Greg Palast. He has written a new book. It is called Armed Madhouse, short title, extremely long subtitle, 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. Why “Armed Madhouse"?

GREG PALAST: That’s back to the Allen Ginsberg's Howl, my old teacher. He said, “The soul should not die ungodly in an armed madhouse.” It's like we have a circus of -- it’s like we have the asylum taken over by the inmates, and they're quite dangerous. And so, we have to get out of it. So, in a way, the idea is to kind of arm you with the information.

AMY GOODMAN: The scheme to steal ‘08?

GREG PALAST: Yeah. Well, for those who, you know, know my background, I came to the U.S. attention when I broke a story that before the 2000 election, Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris knocked off tens of thousands of black voters off the voter rolls of Florida, and this is what gave the election to George Bush in 2000. It was fixed by knocking off of these black voters. There’s a chapter in the new book --

AMY GOODMAN: You broke this on BBC.

GREG PALAST: Yeah, I broke this on BBC, and to get in the United States, we got Michael Moore to put on a chicken suit and report it here as a joke. And then, thank you very much, Amy, for bringing it across the water and breaking through the electronic Berlin Wall. By the way, all of these stories are stories developed out of BBC and Guardian that basically are blacked out, except for here on Democracy Now! That's very important, because these are the stories that they don't want you to have for good reason. And they don't want you to have it, because -- I then followed up with 2004. Now, it’s accepted 2000 pretty much was fixed. Well, there’s a chapter, “Kerry won.” 2004 was fixed. And the way it was done is that 3.6 million votes were cast and never counted in the United States. That's very important to know. This isn’t Greg Palast conspiracy nut stuff.

AMY GOODMAN: Say the number again.

GREG PALAST: 3.6 million ballots cast, never counted. And that's because they call these spoiled votes or rejected provisional ballots, 1.9 million so-called provisional ballots, and then, most of those don't get counted. And so, whose votes don't get counted? If it was random, it wouldn’t matter. In other words, if these were votes where the machine doesn't record it properly, hanging chads, extra marks on a paper ballot, you had the wrong address on your absentee ballot, etc.

Three million ballots. Whose ballots? If you're a black person, the chance your ballot will be technically invalidated is 900% higher than if you're a white voter. Hispanic voter, 500% higher than if you're a white voter. Native Americans, it’s like 2,000% higher than if you're a white voter. The overwhelming majority -- and I went to the state of New Mexico, which supposedly Bush won by 5,000 votes, 89% of the ballots were cast out of minority precincts that were thrown away. Kerry won New Mexico. You go into the dumpster, and it’s black votes, 155,000 black votes that were chucked away in Ohio. Kerry won those votes. He won Ohio.

AMY GOODMAN: ’08?

GREG PALAST: And ‘08, so what's happening is there is no fix of the system. In other words, just like black folk get bad schools and bad hospitals, they get the bad voting machines, which are going to kill those votes. But they're not satisfied with just letting the ballots be thrown away. They're going to move it along. And one of the things I discovered is the Republican Party has something called “caging lists,” which came to our -- you know, just like you had Friday, the way the Yes Men capture material by using false websites, so through a false website we were able to capture Republican Party internal missives, through georgebush.org.

And so, what happened was is that they sent us a bunch of lists of literally tens of thousands of names of voters and addresses. We were wondering what the heck this was. It turns out these were almost all African American voters, who they were prepared to challenge in 2004, and they did, to say that these people shouldn't vote, because their addresses are suspect. And you'll see in the book that in the lists of thousands of black voters that they were challenging over their address were thousands of black soldiers who were sent to Iraq; go to Baghdad, and the Republican Party challenges your vote.

And that’s the beginning, and because there's been really no action taken, they're accelerating the system now. And the next thing that they’re going after is the Hispanic vote. So when we saw two million votes cast/not counted in 2000, nearly four million votes cast/not counted in 2004, you're going see that number massively increase in challenges to voters in 2008. And that's what's going back to this database story with the National Security Agency.

AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.

GREG PALAST: So, you have to say, “Why are they collecting this data?” The answer is 2008. It's ultimately all about the elections.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, this is part one. Greg Palast, I want to thank you for being with us. You'll be traveling around the country, and you can go to our website at democracynow.org. We will link to Greg's website, gregpalast.com. Greg Palast’s book is called 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.

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Not everyone gets to be Woodward and Bernstein, cracking the big story and coming out a hero. BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast is getting the Southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union's 2004 Upton Sinclair Freedom of Expression Award this weekend - but he was also recently sued for $15 million by former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, a Democrat. Investigative journalism, the pride of the reporting profession, can be an exercise in pure masochism these days: As a big story takes one closer and closer to power, the costs and consequences mount.

Palast has emerged as a Grand Inquisitor of corporate wrongdoers and their political lackeys, from Baghdad to Sacramento to Washington. Britain's Tribune Magazine called him: "The most important journalist of our time dominating journalism in two continents." About 1,000 people turned up for his appearance at Immanuel Presbyterian church in L.A. last week. But ruffling feathers right and left has its price, earning Palast powerful enemies. Born in Los Angeles and raised in the San Fernando Valley, he was recently inducted as a "patron of the Philosophical Society" of Trinity College in Dublin, but Palast called it "one of the great and bitter ironies for me. I'm part of the European letters establishment, but in America, I'm the 'kook,' the 'conspiracy nut,' which is pretty disconcerting, because I want to be American." Previous patrons include Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, and Salman Rushdie.

Consider the company. Socialist author Upton Sinclair was savaged by Hollywood moguls when he ran for governor of California during the Depression on a radical anti-poverty program. And Rushdie lives still under the threat of a Muslim fatwa, a death sentence, for his book, The Satanic Verses. So maybe they're not doing him any favors with all these awards, even if a lot of folks want to laud the author of the bestselling The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters.

Florida's ex-Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, called Palast's exposé of alleged electoral tampering during the 2000 election "twisted and maniacal." Prime Minister Tony Blair denounced Palast in Parliament. And Palast says his reporting about Washington's purported role in an attempted coup against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has earned him death threats, while gold-mining associates of George Bush Sr. sued Palast over charges that African miners were buried alive during land disputes in Tanzania.

The nonpartisan Palast also pulls no punches when it comes to Democrats. Cuomo's suit came on the heels of Palast's allegations regarding a Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant court case. "I enjoy being sued by both parties, it gives me a sense of balance," quipped Palast, although he added, "a very costly balance," estimating legal fees for winning libel suits cost $1 million.

Palast rose to prominence as a journalist for the BBC and the UK's Guardian and Observer newspapers. Best Democracy exposes scams such as "California Reamin': Deregulation and the Power Pirates," but revelations regarding the Bushes' alleged fixing of Florida's vote probably put Palast on the map more than anything else. His charges about the purging of Florida blacks from voter rolls also appear in the hard-hitting documentary film, Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election.

Best Democracy spent six months-plus on The New York Times' bestseller list peaking at number four, selling 250,000-plus copies. A book tour for the just-released "expanded election edition" is returning Palast to L.A., where Britain's journalistic enfant terrible attended John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley. "We were Vietnam cannon fodder and working class lubricant for Chevy and Lockheed plants ... My mother worked in a school cafeteria, my father sold furniture," Palast told CityBeat. Through scholarships, Palast attended UCLA and the University of Chicago, "where I studied under [free marketeer] Milton Friedman, which gave me a real view of how the ruling class ruled."

The 50-ish writer recounted: "Before I was an investigative reporter, I was an investigator, which is why I can do it with a totally different spin. I did some of the really big racketeering investigations for labor unions, government, and consumer groups ... I also worked on the Exxon Valdez investigation - uncovering frauds committed by Exxon and the oil companies up in Alaska."

Along the way, he discovered that this information is a hard sell to America's papers. Because of the litigious climate, no one wants to be first with any hard news. "I realized editors didn't want original muckraking," he said. "So I said 'I'm going to write it myself.' I immediately figured out the only way to survive doing real muckraking was by leaving the country. Europe's most influential newspaper, The Guardian, and top television network, BBC, said: 'We're thrilled to have a real investigator.'"

Best Democracy's new chapter notes Florida's "changeover to touchscreen voting was made on orders of [then-]Secretary of State Katherine Harris." Palast warns "Digital Klansmen" are conspiring to undercount "one million black ballots" in November. "We're running apartheid elections in America, and they're going to make it worse in 2004. That's the point of computer voting ... to make sure [Democratic-leaning black votes are] technically voided," Palast contends.

The latest edition of the book also includes "inside administration documents written two years before the invasion of Iraq, in which the Bush boys targeted the oil fields for sale and divided all of Iraq's state-owned assets," added Palast. On BBC's March 22 Newsnight, he interviewed General Jay Garner, the first Bush-appointed "viceroy" of Baghdad, about the "armed corporate takeover of Iraq," and Garner's firing for apparently placing Iraqi interests ahead of this privatization scheme.

While Palast is championed by the non-Cuomo left, he is vilified by the right. Neocon David Horowitz, editor of frontpagemag.com and author of Left Illusions, sparred with Palast on Dennis Miller's February 25 CNBC show, and told CityBeat, "I don't think very much of him. It's not just because Palast has obnoxious politics, but he's obnoxious himself." Horowitz claimed that Palast slighted him in the greenroom. During Miller's show, Horowitz and Palast (both Jewish) argued over whether Mel Gibson's The Passion was anti-Semitic. Horowitz praised the film, while Palast wisecracked he hadn't seen The Passion yet because his TV didn't get Al-Jazeera. At the end of their heated exchange, Palast mock choked Horowitz - which was not shown when the show aired. Palast said he pretended to strangle the ex-radical-turned-reactionary because "it's illegal under California law to asphyxiate him for real."

Horowitz said the title The Best Democracy Money Can Buy made him "nauseous ... it's such a stupid, left-wing cliché. Politics is expensive. What people like Palast want is communism, where the state runs elections. He's a neocommunist [and] has the same political outlook as Pravda and The Daily Worker had in the 1930s."

In his typically jaunty way, Palast laughed: "Am I going to be tried soon? Is he talking to Tom Ridge about my homeland security trial in a dungeon? If I go to Guantanamo, will Horowitz pick out my orange suit?"

©2003 Southland Publishing, All Rights Reserved
Designed and Developed by R7 Media.

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You can purchase Greg's new book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" on BuzzFlash.com.

Excerpts:

"In the days following the presidential election, there were so many stories of African-Americans erased from voter rolls you might think they were targeted by some kind of racial computer program. They were."

"New Mexico's privately operated prisons are filled with America's impoverished, violent outcasts -- and those are the guards. That's the warning I took away from confidential documents and from guards who spoke nervously and only on condition their names never appear in print."

Praise for Greg Palast

"The journalist I admire most. I'm an avid reader of everything Palast writes -- can never get enough of it." -- George Monbiot, Guardian

"The type of investigative reporter you don't see anymore -- a cross between Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes." -- Jim Hightower

"Astonishing -- gets the real evidence no one else has the guts to dig up." -- Vincent Bugliosi

"George Bush's nightmare." -- Laura Flanders, Working for Change Radio

*****

BUZZFLASH: Is there any doubt in your mind that Gov. Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, removed 57,000 African-American voters from the registries because they knew that George W. Bush needed to carry Florida to "win" the presidency?

GREG PALAST: Well, golly gee, are you telling me a politician doesn't know what happens in a state where every vote is fought over, and they were wondering what would happen when they could just erase 57,708 votes with the flick of a computer button. Did that happen by accident? My God, politicians look at every single vote. 57,000 votes is not just something that they lost track of. It's not like a laundry list that they put at the bottom of a file cabinet and forgot about it. The Republicans spent almost their entire budget in the Department of Elections on conducting this computer hunt for black voters. And that was almost the entire budget for that office. They knew what they were doing and they knew why they were doing it. We have plenty of evidence of the intent.

One of the things you'll read in the book for example, is that this law was written by Katherine Harris, and her crony Clayton Roberts, of the Florida Department of Elections. He's a kind of bullneck, red-faced, chubby character that helped her draft the law. Roberts took over the agency when Harris grabbed the Secretary of State's office and put this law that targeted African Americans into effect. And when the U.S. Department of Justice questioned whether this was gonna have a racial effect -- 'cause remember this is a Jim Crow state that's under the Voting Rights Act. Roberts wrote back and said, "Aw, shucks, ain't nothin' but some administrative changes," when he knew that this was a cruise missile aimed at innocent black voters. And I want to emphasize that -- innocent black voters. Just for those who don't know the story, it's 57,700 people targeted as supposed felons, purged from the voter rolls. Most of them are black. Almost all of them were Democrats. And almost all of them -- about 90% plus -- were innocent of any crime and have the right to vote. Their crime is being black or being Democratic.

BUZZFLASH: Was this Jeb's decision?

GREG PALAST: What you'll see in the book, in fact, are letters out of Jeb Bush's office in which they are directing county supervisors not to register legal voters if they had clemency from other states and were allowed to vote. Now, that's against the law; that's against the United States Constitution. Bush's operatives knew it was wrong, and it was evil and corroded, because when I asked Jeb's office for the letters, they said, "We never sent such a letter. It doesn't exist. It's not in our files. It's not in our computers." I have the letter. I quote it in the book.

BUZZFLASH: You actually broke the story while the recount was going on in Florida, and before the Supreme Court appointed Bush. Not one American newspaper picked up the story.

GREG PALAST: I caught them in the act, and Al Gore was still hanging in the race by his thumbs. And we figured out, working with the BBC and the Observer in London, exactly how the Bush's fixed the vote. We did get it in the Washington Post under my byline, seven months after the fact, when Bush was reading it from the White House and grinning. And that was the big problem was that some of this information came out in the American media, but so much later and only in little teeny bits. Finally this month, I got a story in Harper's in which I actually show you the computer purge list.

In Harper's, I point out one guy, Thomas Cooper, whose conviction date was 2007. In other words, Harris had removed this guy from the voter rolls because of the crime he'll commit in seven years. And there were hundreds and thousands like that. What they were very careful about doing was making sure that they got down the race of the voters. But whether they were actually convicted or not didn't mean a hell of a lot to Harris, Jeb Bush, and the Republican Party.

BUZZFLASH: You cover a lot of topics in Best Democracy Money Can Buy besides the Florida purge of African American voters. In chapter 3, which is titled, "Small Towns, Small Minds," you coin the phrase "the Americanization of America," and go on to open the chapter by saying, "The United States is ugly." Can you explain that?

GREG PALAST: That's in the chapter about how my Mom was a hypnotist for McDonald's, and so the question is, do we break out of the trance? We sing America the Beautiful, and if you're in Britain, the images of America are the Grand Canyon and the Rockies. I've been all over this planet on every continent, and America is the most gorgeous place. The problem is, to get to the gorgeous, you have to get around the Jiffy Lubes and the Wendy's Burgers and you've got to get around the billboards. When I say ugly, I'm not talking about some moral sense, I'm talking about "you look out the window and you just see Wal-Mart." If you drive in Britain a hundred miles out of London, it's rolling green hills. And yet the population's really dense. They just don't junk it up. It's all a metaphor, which is that a guy like George Bush being the image of America hides what's beautiful about America.

I say that the "uglification," or the "Americanization," of America is tragic. What that means is that places with character, like New Orleans, like the Texas panhandle, New England, are images and looks and flavors of America, and we iron them out into one plastic golden arch? That's my complaint, and it goes with numbing America through hypnotism.

What my Mom did was actually teach the managers at McDonald's how to hypnotize themselves so that they wouldn't go berserk and start machine-gunning people down. And I'm not kidding, because they were working, fourteen to twenty hours a day from several jobs and not making any money, and they started going berserk. So McDonald's, one of the biggest franchises hired my mother to teach people how to hypnotize themselves. When you get those people grinning at you saying, "And would you like fries with that Happy Meal?" just remember they may not know that they're actually there.

BUZZFLASH: To an investigative reporter, the devil is in the details. You write in your book that the Exxon Valdez had failed to repair its radar system and computer system. Of any detail, that completely flips that story upside down, it's got to be that single fact that you uncovered, which I haven't seen in any other media outlet.

GREG PALAST: The entire point of the book is to tell you what you don't read anywhere else in the United States of America. And one of the things you're not going to read is that the Exxon Valdez and its sophisticated radar was shut off because it was too expensive to repair.

In addition, Exxon said they would put oil spill equipment near the reef in Prince William Sound. That way, if a ship ever ran aground they could put some rubber booms around it and that would be that. You would have never heard of the Exxon Valdez. It would have been a two-inch item at the back of a business section. But they lied. They lied about the radar. They lied about the equipment and being prepared to contain an oil spill.

The story went to hell and they said, "Oh, the captain was drunk. The captain wasn't at the helm." Yeah, he was drunk. He was drunk as a skunk and down below deck sleeping it off. That's not why the ship hit the rocks. And the reason they gave you this fairy tale story about the Exxon Valdez is that they want you to think it's not corporate America, or it's not corporate Britain -- 'cause I got to tell you, most oil out of Alaska is controlled by Britain. They want to tell you it's just some drunken skipper. It's a human error, frailty. It won't happen again. It happens all the time. They were just trying to save some money. That's why they didn't put the oil spill equipment out on those rocks.

I worked for the natives of Alaska -- the Chugach Natives, in doing this investigation. They're the ones that were covered with oil. It was their property, their lands and their food. The seals that died -- that's what they ate. And I was trying to tell that story. No one talked about the human victims. You saw so many pictures of oily otters but you didn't see the fact that this oil was dropped on someone's home. It was all over the beaches. It's still there, by the way. Corporations like Exxon say nature takes care of everything. Well nature forgot about Alaska and left the oil there. But the media never looked into the story.

BUZZFLASH: Greg, you state in the book that Bush spiked investigations into Bin Laden and Al Qaeda before September 11th and that Bush directed any probe to not target the Saudi government and Saudi businessmen.

GREG PALAST: That's right. With BBC television and the Guardian newspapers, I led an investigation which uncovered a really ill-making, sad, horrid fact that George W. Bush put an absolute block on investigations of Saudi financing of terrorism. Where do you think Al Qaeda gets their money from?

I know about meetings that were held in Paris, in which the billionaires of Saudi Arabia divided up who had to pay what to Al Qaeda and to Osama Bin Laden. The problem is that no one wanted to tell that story for fear of being unpatriotic. I'm trying to protect the flag. My God, I worked in the World Trade Center. My office was on the 52nd floor. These were my friends there. And I was trying to find out how the intelligence apparatus of the United States, on which we spent a trillion bucks in the last decade, missed any information on the biggest attack on America since Pearl Harbor? And the answer is that they were told to shut their eyes.

I don't want to get my report confused with stories alleging that Bush knew all about the September 11 attack before it happened. I've found no evidence he knew anything at all. In fact, the point is that we knew nothing because we were blindfolded by our own guys. Now, why they did it is that Bush is very close, financially, politically, socially, to the Bin Laden family. They're partners in the Carlyle Group and others. And basically you don't investigate buddies who are your friends. They invest in the same deals. It's the same social group.

I can tell you one particular investigation they killed off, which was the investigation into how Pakistan was able to build an atomic bomb, because it was done with Saudi money. The problem with killing these investigations is that we don't know who else got their hands on this atomic bomb information. So we're still trying to find that out. I'm still investigating. Let's put it this way: if I knew about the money to Al Qaeda, and I knew about the Saudi involvement in the Pakistan bomb program, you're telling me the CIA didn't know this? They were told not to know this.

BUZZFLASH: Greg, it's always a pleasure. Your book is a stellar work of investigative reporting. We wish you all the best.

GREG PALAST: Thanks Buzz for all you do.

* * *
At http://www.GregPalast.com you can read and subscribe to Greg Palast's London Observer columns and view his reports for BBC Television's Newsnight.

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[Bob] Thank you all for joining us for our chat with Greg Palast! Greg has just published an outstanding book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" You can buy it on Amazon.

[GP] Have you read it, Bob, or are you just pulling my...

[Bob] As an Enron executive, I take the 5th!

[GP] It's a hit in Dublin!

[David] Europeans have an endless appetite for American foibles.

[GP] They ARE an American foible. In truth, I do get very defensive - very PATRIOTIC - when I'm over here All this bitching and moaning by the English snots about the USA. Hey, that's OUR job.

[Bob] Here is an absurd question, but humor me. Are you the ONLY investigative journalist covering Republican political crimes?

[GP] The only one still alive.

[Bob] Seriously Greg, where all the rest of the investigative journalists in the US? You seem to be the ONLY one we have.

[GP] Seriously, Bob, they want to keep their jobs. That's no joke. I was with Sy Hersch at the Columbia School of Journalism in September. He pointed out the guy from the NY Times who pushed him out. If Hersh can't get keep a job by telling the truth, who can?

[Bob] Greg, You broke the Florida felon purge scandal. The knowing disenfranchisement of non-felons by Katherine Harris, Clay Roberts, and Bucky Mitchell would appear to be a criminal act.

Why has there been no investigation, no prosecution?

[GP] Is theft of a democracy a crime? Well, there was an investigation - US Civil Rights Commission - effectively endorsed my findings. But that would require Mr. Ashcroft to act on the criminal aspects? Any bets there?

[Bob] So that's it, the crime was covered up by the Attorney General? End of story?

[GP] I've directed US government racketeering cases. There's just no chance. The new evidence shows intent - it's grim. We'll see what the NAACP can do in their civil action. Don't hold your breath.

[Bob] OK, let's switch to Enron. What is Cheney hiding in the Energy Task Force?

[GP] I have one of Lay's memos to Cheney He asked for, among other gifts from Dubya, a lifting of the caps on electricity sold to Calif. Within two days of the inauguration, Dubya gave KennyBoy what he wanted. I reported that back in May when no one knew who Enron was. They still don't really know.

[Bob] When the Enron scandal exploded in January, the Bush administration cut a firewall, saying it was purely a business scandal, not a political one. The corporate media bought this story completely. If Bill Clinton's biggest lifetime donors had brought about the largest bankruptcy in history, republicans would have burned Clinton at the Congressional stake. What will it take to expose Bush's involvement with the massive corruption of Enron and Ken Lay?

[gregpalast] Yes, the corporate media swallowed the big one on Enron. The Bush family and Enron grew each other, like honey on a petri dish.

[GP] I just interviewed on camera the Argentine Public Works ministers, a friend of Neil Bush, who swears W called him in 1998 to push him to give away a pipeline to Enron. Oops, 1988  6 years before W said he 'really got to know 'Dubya

[Bob] The Argentine is that Terragno?

[GP] Terragno, yes. But he added something he's never said before which I must hold as a BBC TV exclusive. Deeply disturbing stuff. sorry to be mysterious.

[Bob] In 1994, David Corn wrote in the Nation that GWB called Terragno. Corn asked Karen Hughes to confirm. She denied it adamantly, Corn quoted her. Can you prove Hughes is a liar?

[GP] Yes, Corn's a friend gave me his documents this is follow-up. Bush's dogsbodies seem to have pulled a fast one: providing Bush's diary showing he was not in Argentina. It was a call, not a meeting.

[Bob] Also, Corn says Terragno met with GWB in Texas in 1988. Is that confirmable?

[GP] No, that story is wrong and that's how Bush is covering himself. Terragno never reported a meeting. That was an erroneous report in the Argentine press. Enough confusion though, to let Dubya sneak out the back door of the truth.

[Bob] OK, but a phone call is good enough if Terragno will confirm it. So you can prove that GWB lobbied Terragno for Enron in 1988?

[GP] Yes. But back to 2002.

[Bob] I'm listening

[GP] It looks like Enron pulled two cute stunts in California: 'false congestion' and 'kilowatt laundering.' Wanna translation?

[Bob] Sure!

[GP] Kilowatt laundering: Enron apparently sold power (price capped) from California to a related entity across the border, then sold it back at the federal higher or uncapped price. In truth the electricity never left the state, but like hot cash, was 'laundered' to appear as if it did, allowing higher charges. It's pennies that add up: PGE listed owing Enron half a billion on the date of PGE's bankruptcy.

[GP] Then there's 'false congestion.' Enron apparently practiced that in Britain five years ago before they took the game to California.

[Bob] Are you publishing this, or doing a TV story?

[GP] I'm trying to, but I've got a nervous network. They have more guts than the US media chiefs, but the supply of courage is not unlimited. Courage is expensive.

[Bob] I don't think Enron can sue anyone, given its financial and credibility problems

[GP] Not Enron, but Lord Wakeham, Enron Board of Directors AND head of the UK Press Complaints Commission which regulates what I say. Nice, eh?

[Bob] So how do we get you a job with a US media outlet???

[GP] Take hostages.

[Bob] Careful! Ashcroft is watching

[GP] Actually, MSNBC asked me to host an Enron show, but I was out of London that day. A crack in the Great Media Wall.

[Bob] Did you get a rain check from MSNBC?

[GP] And what about Global Crossing? A $20 billion company that went under without a whisper. Those are the cats that gave Poppy Bush $13 million in stock for a single speech. A Potemkin village corporation.

[Bob] Save that for next time! Do you need help from activists to get booked on more TV and radio talk shows?

[GP] Yes, though I'm doing nicely in Dublin on the tube today with smiling morning show types? How can they be so happy at 7:30 am?

[Bob] What can we do to help? Should we contact any specific shows?

[GP] Yes, note where I'm going on the tour and hit the local talk hosts, TV especially, but radio fine.

[Bob] How about national shows?

[GP] Yes indeed especially those I've never heard of. I produce television, but I never watch it except "ER".

[Bob] Charlie Rose?

[GP] Yes, I think he's important. By the way, no tears for Koppel please.

[Bob] No tears from us. He covered the 27,000 votes lost in Duval, but blamed the voters never mentioned the 2-page ballot.

[GP] Yeah, Koppel said, in effect, Blacks are too friggin' dumb to figure out the ballot. No mention that in the White counties, machines were set to reject wrongly marked ballots to re-vote; in Black counties, the machines ate the bad ballots and did not count them. See the book, page something or other.

[Bob] Thanks!!! Now Holly will offer some questions from the floor.

[Conestoga11] First off, thanks again Greg for being our guest this evening! And I should remind everyone to visit Greg's website at http://gregpalast.com. Get those emails flying! Write to C-Span, MSNBC, Charlie Rose, Larry King, etc. (even Faux) and demand to hear and see him!

[Conestoga11] OK, first question

[Conestoga11] David Lytel asks: What is your take on the thesis of the Dasquie and Brisard book "Bin Laden Hidden Truth" that the 9/11 attack came only after a breakdown of secret negotiations with the Taliban. They believe that the attacks represent the greatest failure of American diplomacy in history. Do you give their version credence?

[GP] By the way, is there anything in the US press about what is happening in Venezuela right now?

[Bob] Nope. We'll save that for the next time also! How about David's question?

[GP] Brisard and Dasquie raise points, as I discovered separately, about the US, especially Bush, ordering US intelligence agencies not to look at Saudi financing of terror. That I can confirm. As to Bush having any foreknowledge of the attack, or planning it, I have no information.

[Conestoga11] Ok, Irwin asks: Do you think there will be further attempts to block the elections in 2002 or 2004? Do they have more tricks up their sleeve?

[GP] Oh god yes. These boys have chutzpah to spare. They are using 'reform' in the face of Florida to push for MORE computer-aided voter purges. Katherine Harris is already resisting the Florida law banning outside purge consultants from generating the lists to ethnically cleanse the voter roles. Where are the Dems? WHERE ARE THE DEMS????

[GP] Maybe Dem leadership is waiting for Bush to make it illegal to vote Democratic.

[Conestoga11] Let's hope not!

[David] The Democratic Party is "waiting" to be captured once again by an angry mob and used as a vehicle for reform.

[GP] I wrote 'god save us from reform' in the Washington Post in June... hasn't slowed down the Republican voting 'reform' efforts in more than dozen states. Ill-making.

[Bob] That's why we need you here full time!

[Conestoga11] Necco27 asks, Mr. Palast: In your item, "The Great Florida Ex Con Game How the 'Felon' Voter Purge was Itself Felonious," you mention two Florida Secretaries of State who ordered ex-felons to be removed from Florida voter rolls Harris, and Sandra Mortham. From what I understand, Mortham once considered being Jeb Bush's running mate. She was fined by the State of Florida, Commission on Ethics, on April 18, 2000. I haven't...

[GP] I'm liquoring up a producer here tonight in hopes he'll join on to send me back into Florida with cameras.

[LoyalAmerican] :^)

[Conestoga11] LOL

[GP] Mortham was more of Jeb-ster than Harris. Then she got involved in some hanky-panky with public money and the R's had to dump her before she barfed on their parade.

[Conestoga11] Well they've certainly done a good job of hiding her.

[GP] It's after 2 am and the twins will be up in four hours, so I'll have to log off in ten minutes, ok?

[Conestoga11] No problem. On a different topic Nickscrusade asks: I have a situation here in Alabama where home care benefits are totally cut off at age 21 and people with disabilities are relegated to nursing home care that's often deadly and more expensive. Nursing home lobbyists squash attempts to fix the problem. Do you have any advice on how I could get journalists interested in reporting this story? I have a website and petition at http://nickscrusade.com.

[GP] Journalists are chronically uninterested in stories involving reminders that there are losers in this land of winners. So I'd try a press conference, with doctors, victims and photos that you hand out. Can you get, say, one state representative interested?

[Conestoga11] He's done an inspiring job at that so far, and has gotten as far as getting a bill offered, thanks for the advice!

[GP] I will be in San Francisco next Friday giving a talk to raise funds for Pacifica radio then down to LA and San Diego. Come by and say hello. April 1-9 in New York/DC/ Chicago then back to LA to tape Politically Incorrect. At least we can laugh at the end of our democracy.

[Conestoga11] Great!

[Conestoga11] That sort of fits with the last question from sheewolf. Since much of what you do (at least what we North Americans are aware of) is about US politics and the underbelly can you tell us more about the US media reaction to your work? Is there anything else you've got cooking that we should watch for?

[GP] Yes, I really want to explain how globalization works from the inside in Venezuela and Argentina. These are the prizes that Bush's buddies hunger for. Well, watch this space and my website for reports at http://www.gregPalast.com.

[Conestoga11] I want to remind everyone again to visit Greg's site and to join his list and email him with your comments. Thanks for coming Greg!

[Bob] We'll be watching - we never miss a Palast story!

[GP] And now, I have to rescue my wife from the Irish moonshine I can't pronounce it nor drink it.

[Conestoga11] That's half the fun!

[LoyalAmerican] Keep up the good work, Greg, and if you can, please tell the BBC World Service that they need to get some transmitters aimed at the Midwest in the mornings and afternoons again

[David] Thanks Greg, see you in DC!

[gregpalast] You are giants. Thank you I can't tell you how much this support keeps me going. Cheers!

[Bob] Cheers! Get that producer drunk as a skunk!

[Conestoga11] Cheers! (but it's not the same without the Irish Moonshine)

[LoyalAmerican] opens a bottle of Patron Anejo...
*****

At http://www.GregPalast.com you can read and subscribe to Greg Palast's London Observer columns and view his reports for BBC Television's Newsnight.

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