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BOOK REVIEW:
The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy
An Investigative
Reporter Exposes the Truth
about Globalization, Corporate Cons,
and High Finance Fraudsters
by
Greg Palast
Publisher: Pluto Press
Reviewed by
bobby jennings
Investigative journalist Greg Palast is
winner of the Financial Times David Thomas Prize and was
Nominated Business Journalist of the Year (UK) for his exposing
“Reverend” Pat Robertson’s legally dodgy business scams; he has
appeared in Salon.com (“Politics Story of the Year” 2000),
Harper’s and The Washington Post ... yet he remains to most
Americans, ”The
world’s greatest investigative reporter you’ve never heard of.”
(Cleveland Free Times)
Greg Palast is an American,
raised in the inner city of Los Angeles, who writes for the British
Observer and Guardian. In this book, he writes about the things he has
personally investigated as a reporter. Some of the topics covered are
Jim Crow in Cyberspace (the unreported story on how they fixed the vote
in Florida), Globalization, Inside Corporate America, Small Towns -
Small Minds, the Pat Robertson Empire, Cash for Access in Britain ("Lobbygate"
- the story of Blair and the sale of Britain), and Kissing The Whip
(that beats you)
This book is not, nor was
meant to be an overview of topics it covers but mere pieces to the
puzzle. While reading this book I could not help but put it into context
of growing up in the "old south" with its rallying cry "the South will
rise again". You, the reader will have to put it into your own context.
Greg Palast's book
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is a shocking exposé of the
current American and British political climate. He says that if you
think politics is dominated by greedy corporate interests, it's worse
than you think.
If only a portion of this
book proves to be true then it is still a must read for all those who
object to singing the equivalent of "Dixie" out of habit.
What others are saying
about this book:
“Greg Palast is
investigative journalism at its best. No one has exposed more truth
about the Bush Cartel and lived to tell the story.”
Baltimore Chronicle
"His
stories about Bush's election theft, about intelligence agency
cover-ups, and globalization -- backed up with smoking gun documents,
inside sources and on-the-record interviews -- will shock even the
most informed readers." Guerrilla News Network, naming Palast
‘Reporter of the Year.’
"Should
be read all over America." Andrew Tobias, author, The Invisible
Bankers
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 Before
taking up the pen for the The Observer
and Guardian newspapers, Los
Angeles-born Greg Palast traveled the globe
as expert investigator of corporate fraud
and racketeering. For the Chugach Natives
of Alaska, he unearthed the doctored safety
records that proved the Exxon Valdez
disaster was an inevitability, not an
accident. In Chicago, he bargained
contracts for the United Steelworkers Union
in Chicago, in Peru he helped found a
consumer rights organization. Years ago, he
guided the formation of an alliance linking
Enron workers in Brazil and India. In 1988,
Palast directed the government’s
investigation of a US nuclear plant builder
in which the jury awarded the largest
racketeering penalty in US history.
Greg Palast won Britain’s highest journalism
honors for his 1998 undercover investigation
of influence peddling within Tony Blair’s
cabinet – by Enron and other US
corporations. He then turned his sleuthing
skills on to the Bush money trail:
uncovering for BBC and The Observer
the uncomfortable truths of how the Bush
Administration quashed investigations of
Saudi financing of terror -- and Poppy
Bush’s extraordinary methods for stuffing
his bank account and his son’s campaign
coffers. Visit his website at
www.gregpalast.com |
Click
here
for more info
or to
order
this book. |
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