Naked neo-cons: Perjury and the Big, Bad Wolfowitz
Even George Bush couldn’t save Paul Wolfowitz’ job as President of the World Bank after the
Even George Bush couldn’t save Paul Wolfowitz’ job as President of the World Bank after the
A British court has ordered the government of Zambia to pay the โvulture fundโ company Donegal International 15 and a half million dollars. Donegal is owned by the US company Debt Advisory International. But investigative journalist Greg Palast reveals a new development
Greg Palast reports on Vultures for BBC Newsnight — Watch the Report
By Meirion Jones
BBC Newsnight
February 14, 2007 — On Thursday 15 February a high court judge in London will rule whether a vulture fund can extract more than $40m from Zambia for a debt which it bought for less than $4m.
There are concerns that such funds are wiping out the benefits which international debt relief was supposed to bring to poor countries.
Martin Kalunga-Banda, Zambian presidential adviser and a consultant to Oxfam told Newsnight, “That $40m is equal to the value of all the debt relief we received last year.”
By Kavita Puri
Programme producer, BBC Newsnight
VULTURE FUNDS
Remember Make Poverty History that campaigned to cancel third world debt? And the lofty proclamations by politicians at the G8 in Gleneagles to reduce debt?
Tonight, we have a shocking investigation into vulture funds that make a mockery of these pledges.
Not only has Chavez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina. In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer
Tikkun Magazine JULY/AUGUST 2006
Did the Jews do it?
The US Congress will open hearings this week on the War in Iraq — a wee bit late one might think. But one question at the forefront of the minds of many on both the Left and the Right is sure not to be asked: Did the Jews do it? I mean, after killing Jesus, did the Elders of Zion manipulate the government of the United States into invading Babylon as part of a scheme to abet the expansion of Greater Israel?
For BBC Television and the Guardian newspapers of Britain, Greg Palast has conducted two award-winning investigations of both Pat Robertson and Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela. To understand who these guys are — why Robertson would shoot at Chavez, and why Chavez would laugh at Robertson, read on…
WHY DICK CHENEY WON’T PLAY IN HUGO CHAVEZ’ BAND
There’s so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let’s begin with this: 77% of Venezuela’s farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the ‘hacendados.’
Palast was nominated “Business Journalist of the Year by Britain’s Press Association for his investigation of Robertson.
It’s time someone told you the truth. There is an Invisible Cord that can be traced from the European bankers who ordered the assassination of President Lincoln, to Karl Marx, to the British bankers who funded the Soviet KGB. They are members of the ‘tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer’.
“Just Put Down That Law Suit, Pardner, and No One Gets Hurt.”
There are 200 million guns in civilian hands in the United States. That works out at 200 per lawyer. Wade through the foaming websites of the anti-Semites, weekend militiamen and Republicans, and it becomes clear that many among America’s well-armed citizenry have performed the same calculation. Because if there is any hope of the ceasefire that they fear, it will come out of the barrel of a lawsuit.
In case you haven’t the least idea what the heck it means for China to “float” its currency, let me put it in the language we economists use: China’s float don’t mean squat.
Yet our President, a guy whose marks in Economics 101 are too embarrassing to publish here, ran out to hail the fact that buying Chinese money will now cost more dollars.
Vicente Fox got a well-deserved boot in the derriรฉre for saying Mexicans come to America for taking jobs “not even Blacks want to do.”
But Thomas Friedman earns plaudits and Pulitzers for his column which today announces that East Indians are taking jobs the French are too lazy to do. [See, “A Race to the Top,” New York Times.] Friedman’s fit of racial profiling was motivated by his pique over France’s rejection of the globalizers charter for corporate dominance known as the European Constitution.
Globalization and its Discontents
I was getting myself measured for a straitjacket when I received an urgent message from Bolivia.
The jacket was Thomas Friedman’s idea. He’s the New York Times columnist and amateur economist who wrote The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which is kind of a long, deep kiss to globalization. I was in Cleveland to debate Friedman at the Council on World Affairs meeting in May 2001. Globalization, he told the council, is all about the communications revolution. It’s about the Internet. It’s about how you can sit in your bedroom, buy shares in Amazon.com and send e-mails to Eskimos all at the same time, wearing your pajamas.
“The vote in the Enchanted State seems a little too enchanted for my tastes. Basically, the election was not won by the voters in your state, but by the people who got to throw out ballots in the last presidential election.”
An interview with Greg Palast on shoplifting the Presidential election in New Mexico and those stenographers called American reporters
By Tim McGivern
Greg Palast grew up in a Los Angeles house sandwiched between a landfill and power plant. Maybe there was something in the air that made him crazy — in a good way.
Greg Palast meets with Washington’s newest bete noire of Latin America, Ecuador’s President Alfredo Palacio, and discusses the confidential World Bank agreements that shackle his nation.
Watch the exclusive broadcast from Ecuador on Democracy Now!
Greg Palast reports from Center of the World, Ecuador
The equator is far more tacky than I imagined.
I’d taken time out from the state of siege in the capitol to take the twins on a quick holiday further up the Andes (or down, I don’t know which).
Anyway, the Ciudad Centro del Mundo — City at the Center of the World — had loudspeakers on poles scratching out some Inca-cum-New Age Muzak.
It cost a dollar and a half US to stand on the planet’s belly button — that’s a buck fifty in the local currency, too — Ecuador’s been “dollarized,” which is why everyone is flat broke and in a bad mood and why Quechua women in bowler hats were screaming into the cameras, “TODO FUERA! TODO FUERA !” — Everybody out! — in front of the Presidential Palace.
Harper’s Magazine investigation reveals how Big Oil vanquished the neo-cons – and OPEC is the winner.
“For months, the State Department officially denied the existence of this 323-page plan for Iraq’s oil”
Some conspiracy nuts believe the Bush Administration had a secret plan to control Iraq’s oil. In fact, there were TWO plans. In a joint investigation with BBC Television Newsnight, Harper’s Magazine has uncovered a hidden battle over Iraq’s oil. It began right after Mr. Bush took office – with a previously unreported plot to invade Iraq.
Neoconservative Accepts Blame for Intelligence Errors
[Brussels] In an unexpected turn of events, controversial US Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz has turned down the post of President of the World Bank. The Deputy Defense Secretary had won unanimous support of World Bank trustees in a vote Thursday despite widespread objections to the appointment in the European press.