Replies to post #24395 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[goodluck]

It seems to me that Clark would be much better off if he becomes someone's Sec of Defense or NSC director. If the guy can't come out and say he is a Democrat or a Republican, he shouldn't be thinking about running for president under any party banner.

JMHO.

[goodluck]

Here is an interview with Greg Palast, where he takes apart many things, including the sad state of journalism. It is a wake-up call for sure; hope journalists hear it:
That's a good way to put it which is that you get columnists who read their own front pages and tell you what they just read. Who cares? You don't have reporters, you have repeaters. The worst thing to ever happen in America is journalism school. Thank god they don't have them in Britain. They teach you every sloppy-ass habit. They teach you how to write off of press releases and how to go to press conferences. Basically, how to suck on the propaganda tit. That's what they teach you - cheap and easy. It's an education in obsequiousness, bad writing, thoughtless formulas, and careerist ass-kissing.

http://www.bullymag.com/4.27.03/palast-042703.asp


The Bully Interview: Greg Palast, The Last True Outlaw Journalist

Interview by Ken Wohlrob
While talking to writer Greg Palast he asked me an interesting question. "Where have all the Menckens gone?"

It's an interesting take on the sorry state of American journalism. In the only country with a guaranteed right to free speech, you have major media outlets producing half-assed news stories that shy away from any real coverage. Even worse, you will have supposed well-respected publications such as The New York Times, Salon.com, and The Washington Post censoring or skewing news stories.

Palast ought to know. He's had his run-ins not only with American editors but British ones as well. As an exiled ex-pat writer for the UK's Guardian and Observer newspapers Palast has dug deep into stories that American armchair journalists barely scratch at. While every hack from Tom Brokaw to David Broder were discussing chads and vote counts, Palast had already proven with written documentation and statistical analysis how Bush stole election in Florida long before a single vote was cast. Chads and vote counts were moot when Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris illegally kicked 50,000 voters (mostly black) off the voter roles using a Republican-friendly corporation (Choice Point) to do the deed with a faulty database. When you consider that even if 30% of them would've voted (using standard voting rates) and, by past nature, would've voted Democrat, they could've closed the 537 vote gap Al Gore lost by. Don't believe it? Read Palast's book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Plume, $14.00) and you'll be horrified at the cold hard facts.

This isn't attack journalism of opinion and speculation, Palast actually gathers the evidence to prove what so many other journalists either ignored and didn't bother to find out. What's worse, Salon.com censored part of the story. Read below and you'll find out more. Or you can check out this hilarious video clip of Palast showing the evidence to the head of the Florida election commission, who then runs away. The facts stand for themselves.

For a guy who has a hard time getting published in the United States, Greg Palast has built up a strong group of enemies amongst politicians, corporations, and journalists. It may have something to do with the fact that Palast is not afraid to take on the big boys and dig deep to find the lost memos and documents that prove their guilt. Politicians like Tony Blair and George Bush. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Corporations like Enron, Wackenhutt, and Choice Point. And of course the American journalism establishment.

Bully spoke to Palast recently about The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, the disturbing facts he uncovered, and the why Americans simply don't hear the truth in the most democratic nation on Earth.



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"You get columnists who read their own front pages and tell you what they just read. Who cares? You don't have reporters, you have repeaters."
Buy Greg Palast's New Book
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Bully: Probably the most amazing part about the book is the first chapter where you prove that 50,000 people were kicked off Florida's voter roles.

Greg Palast: Well all of it amazes me. I actually think the World Bank documents would be my most interesting choice. What I like about the World Bank story is that there's all these madmen out there who believe in the black helicopter stories and that the powers that be - the bankers, the politicians, and media people - get together in secret rooms and plan our fate. Of course it turns out - I have the minutes - that it is much worse than they think.

B: It's interesting when you think of the "War on Terrorism," the four-point plan the IMF and the World Bank use to "rehabilitate" third-world nations is quite frightening.

GP: Oh yeah. But you have to begin with an election because if you can shoplift the White House, then nothing is off limits.

B: It's also interesting that all the hub-bub over here in the press was really about chads and the vote count.

GP: Which is baloney. Even the U.S. Civil Rights Commission saw my materials said the real issue is what Greg Palast came up with, which is the "no count" - those who don't count and weren't allowed to vote in the first place. That's the real issue, who couldn't vote. It was a neat little plan.

B: The big question is, obviously you touch on how Choice Point was going out an pitching to other states, and even Senators pushing as well, to make the Florida method the standard.

GP: Yes, well two things have happened. Number one, Choice Point after I outed them announced they were getting out of the voter purge business. But, they picked their president and now their president has picked them. According to Forbes, they are the winners of the War on Terror. They're getting the big contracts that they bid on for the War on Terror. They've moved on.

B: When you talk about the centralized voter database, that really becomes a reality when you consider Total Information Awareness and some of the programs under the US Patriot Act.

GP: You got it. Remember, in Patriot Act the "T" stands for "Tools." And that is all about using databases. The very day that George W. Bush decided that we cannot give medical care to women on Medicaid is the same day that he announced a billion dollar increase to expand the DNA database of the FBI. They want your blood. Who is the biggest supplier to the FBI of the DNA info? Choice Point. There she blows, they picked the president and he picked them. They do the intake on airport profiling. When data is mined, it's their data.

B: The big tie-in of your book is that across all things - your discussion of Tony Blair, the International Monetary Fund - you always have this invisible hand playing a role in everything that's happening.

GP: There's an invisible hand, but I find it's more like the hidden fist.

B: Monsanto pushing for the approval of BST. Choice Point pushing for their database services. All of this is tied into politicians who become board members or executives when they leave office, or vice versa. Even with campaign finance reform, do you really think that cronyism will go away?

GP: What we've done is outlaw soft money donations which went mainly to the Democratic party. We've doubled the amount of hard donations which mainly went to the Republican party. Basically so-called campaign finance reform is actually campaign finance porn. We've just taken soft money and changed it to hard money. Kind of campaign Viagra. It's not what I call reform.

B: Even though it's so weak in its actual written law, they're still beating up on campaign finance reform.

GP: Well, yeah…of course they are. What else did you expect? Obviously the powers that be are still there. The money hasn't slowed down a bit. In fact the Republican Party just collected nearly $60 million for the first part of this year. The Democrats have only collected about $20 million. Given the fact that the guy who is in the White House lost the election, but spent the most money, it's very clear that we've stopped having elections and started having auctions.

B: Another main point of your book is that along with this marriage of corporations and government, you still have, what used to be the watchdog, the lazy press.

GP: Right, you have the sheep. Silence of the Lambs.

B: In your impression, why does this "Well, that story is over" mentality pervade the American media.

GP: Well, it's the election. I am unfortunately a constant winner of the Project Censored Awards for stories that you can't print in the United States. Deeply sick and deeply disturbing. I have the story of how Bush quashed the investigation of Bin Laden family before September 11th. It was top of the BBC Nightly News, award winning report, couldn't get it into the U.S. Theft of the election, scrubbing out the black voters. Yeah it got into The Washington Post, seven months after I wrote it. Plus it was watered down and had its nuts cut off. The story of the World Bank, God forbid you should get a story that has numbers in it into an American newspaper. Not because the people are stupid but because the editors are illiterate.

B: Too many Maureen Dowds and not enough actual journalists.

GP: I think that's correct. That's a good way to put it which is that you get columnists who read their own front pages and tell you what they just read. Who cares? You don't have reporters, you have repeaters. The worst thing to ever happen in America is journalism school. Thank god they don't have them in Britain. They teach you every sloppy-ass habit. They teach you how to write off of press releases and how to go to press conferences. Basically, how to suck on the propaganda tit. That's what they teach you - cheap and easy. It's an education in obsequiousness, bad writing, thoughtless formulas, and careerist ass-kissing.

B: It's what we like to call "arm-chair journalism." Which is you don't have to actually do any work, you can write it based off the news wires.

GP: Exactly. What else is there these days? Take a look at this goddamn stuff. Look at our reports from Venezuela. It's like Stalinism. You'll see a picture of me in the book in front of a demonstration in Venezuela. The New York Times has run now four articles showing four giant photo shots of Venezuelans protesting for the ousting of President Hugo Chavez. Every single one of those days - every single one, no exception - the anti-Chavez marchers did their little thing and often they would have 100,000 or even 200,000 people, but you would have march that is easily twice as big by those who support Chavez. But they're brown people and they're not in the photo, they've disappeared. God forbid you should tell The Times that they've slanted the news. God forbid you should tell them that it's racist that brown people have disappeared out of photos. It's the worst type of racism. I'll take the guys in the hoods, we know where they're at. What's worse are the patronizing little pricks who actually don't admit what they did wrong. Even Salon.com won't run an excerpt from my book.

B: We actually gave the editor from Salon our Horseshit in Journalism award because he ran his editorial basically saying keep Salon alive and if we die, the mighty fist of the right will have crushed another free speech champion.

GP: Yeah right. Well they censored my stuff. Salon.com made my story their politics story of the year. The biggest political story they've ever had - the purge of the black voters. They only ran part one. Every day they were announcing that they were going to run part two and the gutless little weenies never ran it. Part two was the part that ultimately appeared in The Nation and also Harper's magazine. The sniveling little Washington editor for Salon told me he wouldn't run it because "I work for The Washington Post and this story would never run in there." Which first of all, that's a hell of a standard, what run's in The Washington Post. Ironically, I did put it in The Post after he turned it down. It was bout the removal of voters who had felony records but were allowed to vote in Florida. I put that into Harper's and it's been nominated for the Pulitzer for magazines, the National Magazine Award for Public Service. But Salon wouldn't run it. I wrote the new introduction to Mark Hatfield's Fortunate Son - he killed himself after St. Martin's Press pulled the book upon a threat from the Bush family - and I said there's a special place in hell for editors and publishers who love to collect the cash when controversy generates sales but runaway the moment the going gets rough. The second that there's any questions or problems with a story they - Salon ran like the chicken hawks that they are. Salon as far as I'm concerned is just a gutless piece of shit. I do want to thank them though for publishing my stuff and paying me record amounts for it.

B: Getting off the press because we could go on for hours about that. You do a good job of pointing out that not only Bush, but Clinton as well, kept a very public "we're hunting down terrorists" persona while behind the scenes basically binding intelligence agents, not letting them go after the sources of money. Most notably the Bin Laden family and all for the sake of business interests.

GP: I don't want to make too many connections now. I give you the dots and you can draw the lines. All we know is this: we have written documented proof that Bush would not permit an investigation of the Bin Laden family. We also know that agents, this includes those characters from the Clinton administration, were hindered and ultimately in the Bush administration stopped from looking at Saudi Arabian financing of Al Qaeda. In fact, you have the President in his High Noon speech, "Get out of town Saddam!", say, "we're going in after those that have harbored, aided, and trained Al Qaeda." I'm thinking, "Shit! That's his daddy." There was a meeting in 1996 in Paris where we had Saudi billionaires allegedly opening their checkbooks to Al Qaeda. Mainly to pay them off to get them the hell away from their Rolls Royces. There was no follow up on that meeting. You have to follow the money if you are going to find Al Qaeda. So who's in the meeting? Well, two names came up to me from intelligence agencies in Europe and someone involved in the meeting. Adnan Khashoggi and Abdullah Baksh, Sheik Baksh. That's an interesting shakedown right there.

B: Khashoggi is interesting because of his past history in the Iran-Contra scandal.

GP: Well that and in my book, which you'll find nowhere in America, is that Daddy Bush went work for the company Khashoggi founded for gold mining in Canada after he left office. Which means Richard Perle had to resign from the Defense Advisory Board because of his relationship with Khashoggi, what about Poppy Bush? Does he have to resign as First Daddy? Then you have Abdullah Baksh who is the guy who funded Harken Oil. The same money that funded Bush's oil patch misadventures. You have to be careful here. As far as I can tell, Baksh doesn't like Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is anti-Saudi, it opposes the royals. But these are payoff schemes. It doesn't matter whether they like them or not, that's where the money went, and that couldn't be investigated because it's too embarrassing. You talk about funding and harboring Al Qaeda, I also ran a story on the BBC News with a former State Department official saying "I was forced to issue visas to guys who say they were engineers. When I asked them, 'where did you go to engineering school' they said, 'we can't remember.'" He denied their visas to come to the United States for engineering conferences but he was told by his superiors that you have to issue those visas and he finds out that they worked with that great hero Osama Bin Laden. This was before Al Qaeda when he was leading the jihad in Afghanistan and he was our boy. God forbid you should say this.


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[CoalTrain]

Clark, who led the alliance during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, has been increasingly critical of the Iraq war. His criticism could be a prelude to an announcement that he will run for president.

I am all in favour of people speaking out against the naked aggression against the Iraqi's however the war in Kosovo was every bit as injust as the war in Iraq. Perhaps Clark would care to explain the strategic significance of bombing maternity wards in Belgrade?

CT

[Rick Faurot]

Top Blair Aide Reveals Debate Over Iraq Threat

Mon August 18, 2003 01:01 PM ET
By Dominic Evans

LONDON (Reuters) - The dossier on which British Prime Minister Tony Blair justified war against Iraq contained no proof of any threat from Baghdad, according to an e-mail from a top Blair aide released on Monday.

The e-mail is the first public sign of debate within Blair's inner circle about the strength of intelligence used to justify a war that most Britons opposed.

"The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from (Iraqi President) Saddam (Hussein)," Blair's chief of staff and long-time confidant Jonathan Powell wrote to a senior intelligence official.

"It shows he has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbors, let alone the West," Powell wrote in an e-mail one week before the controversial dossier was published on September 24, 2002, six months ahead of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq.

Powell's comments, revealed in an inquiry into the suicide of weapons expert David Kelly, cast further doubt on Blair's own claim in the foreword to the dossier that Iraq's biological and chemical weapons program posed a "serious and current threat."

It made clear that the evidence alone would not turn skeptical public opinion, saying: "The dossier is good and convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced."

TRUST PLUNGES

Senior judge Lord Hutton's inquiry is a key test for Blair, whose public trust ratings have plunged over the government's handling of the Kelly affair and the failure to find any banned weapons in Iraq four months after Saddam's overthrow.

Kelly slashed his wrist after being named as the source for a BBC reporter who accused Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell of "sexing up" the dossier by inserting claims that Saddam could deploy banned weapons at 45 minutes' notice.

A poll last week showed 41 percent of the British public blame the government for Kelly's death and 68 percent think the government was dishonest over the Iraq war.

Powell, in his note to Joint Intelligence Committee chief John Scarlett, said the government should make clear "we do not claim that we have evidence that (Saddam) is an imminent threat." Many of Blair's own Labor Party parliamentarians, who only reluctantly backed military action, say the government did exactly that by playing up the 45-minute claims in the dossier.

Blair, currently on holiday in Barbados, is due to return to give evidence to Hutton's inquiry. Campbell is expected to take the stand on Tuesday and along with Powell, will be the closest of Blair's advisers to be questioned about the most damaging crisis of the Labor leader's six-year rule.