Armed Madhouse

Humor is the only way you can take these facts without weeping. In my lifetime, I never expected to be so sad over political facts. The author is actually an American who works for the BBC so he has access to facts not developed in the US, and he does investigative reporting only seen in the historical mainstream news media in the US. These composition techniques, couched in a sardonicly humorous tone, are clearly in evidence in this book. For example, Mr. Palast publishes some of the missing e-mails in the US Attorney scandal being discussed in the news. Sardonically, he develops their content. Political Independents and Democrats will find here that work can be fun. This book isn't likely to be fun for Republican idealogues.

Greg Palast may be the most patriotic American living in England. This book is an expose' of just how corrupt this Republican dominated nation has become. He does the legwork and backs up every fact with proof of the depth of corruption. From stealing the last 2 presidential elections, selling our defense, and infrastructure to the highest bidder, and corrupting the justice department, he shows how steps have already been taken to steal the 2008 election! Read this book now; notify your family and friends, and wake up America. It is almost too late already.

If you really want to know how Bush got to be President, the real reasons we're in Iraq, the details of the infighting that made our occupation such a disaster, and the manifest and nefarious electoral machinations that the right inflicted on the democratic process in 2000 and 2004, and is putting in place for the elections of 2008, READ THIS BOOK. Palast has the interviews, the documents, and the facts that never get reported in the mainstream U.S. press. It's the first thing I've read that makes sense of how the battle for power between the Pentagon, the State Department, the neocons, Big Oil, and the Saudis played out on the ground in Iraq. It's a complex but fascinating sequence of events that explains the revolving-door administrations we put in place there and the flip-flopping approaches we tried to use, especially dealing with Iraq's oil. True, Palast comes across as an arrogant, in-your-face know-it-all. But I'm more than willing to put up with his abrasive style, given that he's willing to track down the real stories behind the most important events of our times and lay them out for us. I learned more per page of this new edition of _Armed Madhouse_ than almost any book I've read. If you're sick of the pap that passes for news, and eager to understand what's really going on, this is a crucial book. Robert Adler, author of Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome and Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation

These superbly vitriolic and combative pamphlets expose the Bush II presidencies as a devilish mixture of `stolen elections, stolen countries, stolen dignity and stolen lives.' Greg Palast punches uppercuts: about New Orleans: `the lower your income, the lower your sea barriers' about Iraq: O(peration) I(raq) L(iberation) = O.I.L. He unmasks the real motive for the Iraq war: control of the oil price. A member of the Bush II staff calculated that the Iraq war would be highly profitable: `The oil revenues of that country could bring between $ 50 and $ 100 billion over the next 2 or 3 years.' For Greg Palast, this is nothing else as saying `bomb them and the wretched nation could pay to rebuild itself.' He shows that the Iraqi nation will be milked to the bottom: e.g., Saudi Arabia claims about $ 42 billion as reparations from the First Gulf War. Its lawyers are members of the Bush clan. Ultimately, the author shows the US as a nation ruled by a tiny oligarchy for which `the issues are too important to be left for the voters.' Real democracy is too dangerous for the interests of its members. Therefore the powerful will always (try to) influence the election results. Greg Palast's explanations of the 2000 and 2004 election frauds are not less than brilliant. This book is a must read for all those interested in the future of mankind.

If you are concerned with America, our way of life, our political process, and there is only one book you can read this year, I recommend you make it this one. Using creative colloqualisms that may annoy or amuse you, you cannot get away from the author's facts, statistics, leaked documents and information that prove why we really went into Iraq, how your vote was stolen or not counted, and how you are producing more today and earning less, and how your rights and security are being taken away from you. In five long chapters, Palast covers a wide range of topics. I began highlighting important portions of the book for this review. In short order there was too much highlighted text to add here. But it's Chapters 4 and 5 that will really scare the hell out of me because I realize that even if all of us vote, it is not enough. Palast shows: *how the republican machine kept minorities from voting in 2000, 2004 and will keep them from voting in 2008. * with statistical evidence how voting machines were too few in minority communities or too far away. Either the lines were too long or the trip back and forth was. * that Kerry's name didn't even show on the ballot in some places. * statistical anomalies where Black, Hispanic and American Indian votes where not even counted, or their machines didn't even register a vote for president. In white neighborhoods, such anomalies were almost nonexistent. * how provisional and absentee ballots were simply discarded, or mailed to the voters too late to be returned and counted. * how voting machine error and evidence were destroyed even after there were calls for an investigation that secretaries of states ignored. * how voter reform is nothing but a blatent attempt to perpetuate this fraud rather than fix it e.g. In New Mexico anyone now challenging a vote must put up a $1,000,000 bond first! * how the Republicans still managed to list thousands of law-abiding, registered voters from voting because they were on felon lists (even in Ohio) where there is no law against that. * how republicans are clamoring for national ID cards (poll tax)costing $30, which will require that you to produce an ID to get the ID! Palast muses how many people are going to risk jail voting twice when you can barely get many of them to vote even once, or how many felons will risk going back to the jail just so they can vote. (In many states, they may.) Palast got wind of some of these vote-destroying practices before the election and published and broadcast them to British and European audiences where they received wide attention, everywhere except the US of A. Now that our networks are owned by conglomerate businesses, the chances of receiving such news is nil. Over three million votes tossed, unrecorded, thrown out, or people kept from voting, and the democrats did nothing! Even I thought more people had voted for Bush, but with Mr. Palast's evidence, Kerry won. His last chapter is equally disturbing. Americans are