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 by Greg Palast

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  • Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
  • Pub. Date: June 2006
  • ISBN-13: 9780641873393
  • Sales Rank: 7,068
  • 384pp
  • Edition Description: Bargain

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Synopsis

The "top journalist in America and the funniest" (Randi Rhodes, Air America), takes his previous New York Times bestseller a step further with hot undercover dispatches-hanging out the dirty underpants of the "armed and dangerous clowns that rule us."

A White House spokesman said, "We hate that sonovabitch." They're not alone: From corporate suites to Osama's cave, they fear what Britain's Guardian calls "investigations up there with Woodward and Bernstein-and a lot funnier." But Greg Palast's fanatic following (nearly two million readers of his Web column) has made him "a cult fave among progressives" (Village Voice) who can't wait for his next release.

Palast's old-style gum-shoe detective work to dig out the info on the War on Terror, greed-dripping schemes to seize little nations with lots of oil, the hidden program to steal the 2008 election, and the media biases that keep it unreported are the meat and bones of this BBC television reporter's new book. Armed Madhouse is illustrated with dozens of documents marked "secret" and "confidential" that have walked out of file cabinets and fallen into Palast's hands.

You won't find Palast in The New York Times (except its bestseller list), but you will read his reports on the hottest Web sites worldwide, hear him regularly on Air America and the Pacifica radio networks, and see his stories reappearing as the basis for Eminem's hit video "Mosh," Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and sampled by a dozen of today's top platinum rock artists.

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Biography

GREG PALAST’s undercover reports appear regularly on BBC Television’s Newsnight, Harper’s Magazine, and Pacifica’s Democracy Now!, carried on more than 350 stations. Winner of a record six Project Censored Awards for his investigations, Palast, formerly a columnist for Britain’s prestigious Guardian, produced and starred in the hit BBC documentary Bush Family Fortunes (music by Moby). Though known for his Sam Spade–style television reports complete with trench coat and fedora, Palast has another side—as "America’s leading expert on government regulation" (Guardian) and author of the academic bestseller Democracy and Regulation, who has lectured at Oxford and Cambridge University and the London School of Economics.

He was named 2004 Fellow of the Philosophical Society of Trinity College, whose previous honorees include Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde; was recipient of the ACLU’s Freedom of Expression Award; and was inducted into the Non-Whore Journalists Hall of Fame.

Customer Reviews

Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf? China Floats, Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal '08, No Chby Anonymous

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December 15, 2006: This is a superb book, the product of deep research into the realities of our strange world. If you want a reference for the author Greg Palast, Blair called him a liar, which is a bit like Hitler calling you an anti-Semite. Palast investigates the oil business. In 1956, oil was $2.77 a barrel, far too cheap, in the oil companies? view. Enter M. King Hubbert, a consultant for Shell, who said that the Middle East had only 375 billion barrels. Today, 50 years of production later, there are 734 billion barrels of reserves. Hubbert said in 1956 that world reserves were 1.25 trillion barrels. We have used this much since then and reserves are still 1.2 trillion. The neo-cons wanted to privatise Iraq?s oil and raise output to break OPEC and Saudi Arabia. But the oil firms wanted ?A single state-owned company ? [which] enhances a government?s relationship with OPEC? and less output to raise prices and profits, keep OPEC and save Saudi Arabia. Just before the invasion of Iraq (which was originally called `Operation Iraqi Liberation? - too truthful an acronym), Saudi Arabia produced flat out, cutting the price. After the invasion, it withheld a million barrels a day, helping to force the price of crude up from $30 to $60 a barrel. Later, just before the 2004 US election, it again produced flat out, to help Bush win. Iraq?s oil output since the invasion is less than in the 1990s ? that?s OK with the oil companies ? it helps to keep the price up. The oil price quadrupled between 2001 and 2005. The profits of the big five US oil companies tripled from $34 billion in 2002 to $113 billion in 2005. Palast also examines the state of the US economy. NAFTA ? North America?s equivalent to the EU - turned a $5.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico in 1992 into a $45 billion deficit in 2004, costing half a million US jobs, and turned an $8 billion deficit with Canada into a $73 billion deficit in 2005. NAFTA hammered wages down in Mexico (40% in seven years), Canada and the USA. 60% of the US people are poorer, but their productivity is up, lifting the value of stockowners? equity by trillions of dollars, so the richest 1% of US households, who own more than half all shares, gets more than half all capital income. Finally, Palast looks at the EU. He notes, ?The euro wasn?t invented in Europe ? it was created in the good old USA, in New York, by Robert Mundell. Mundell, called the Godfather of the Euro, won a Nobel Prize for it. Who is this Mundell? ? The inventor of Reaganomics, Thatcher-nomics and `supply-side? economics. ? The euro is designed to be the battering ram to break down the entire edifice of worker protection rules and taxes on business that support the welfare state.?

Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf? China Floats, Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal '08, No Chby Anonymous

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July 15, 2006: I am aparently a part of a microscopic minority when I say how deeply disappointed I am by this book and those who are so quickly willing to take its claims at face-value. I'm not saying not to read it, but keep an open mind if you do. This book is so loaded with impeachable material to have Dubyah and friends slingshot into the cold vacuum of space, yet it has done NOTHING. Why? This book is so steeped in a lack of context and tracable source material that it has all the bark and bite of a toothless poodle yelping through a stadium-quality sound system. I don't refer to the 'secret' documents, or legions of Deepthroats who have confided in Palast to blow the lid off this. Instead, look at the rest of the material, such as the histories and chain of events leading to his conclusions. Hardly ever a citation, but there are a few. Of course, the vagueness of the acknowledgements section does nothing more than raise more questions...Nothing more than a list of fellow renegade journalists and lawyers who have taken up camp with their illustrious leader. I recommend borrowing it from a friend, or taking it out of your library. Don't be fooled into buying it, like me.


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