OMG
Everyone, read this if you can get it.
http://www.gregpalast.com/
Bio
5Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "Armed Madhouse" (Penguin 2006). When Palast, an investigator of corporate fraud and racketeering, turned his skills to journalism, he was quickly recognized as, "The most important investigative reporter of our time" [Tribune Magazine] in Britain, where his first reports appeared on BBC television and in the Guardian newspapers.
Author of another New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast is best known in his native USA as the journalist who, for the Observer (UK), broke the story of how Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black Florida citizens from voter rolls before the 2000 election, thereby handing the White House to his brother George. His reports on the theft of election 2004, the spike of the FBI investigations of the bin Ladens before September 11, the secret State Department documents planning the seizure of Iraq's oil fields have won him a record six "Project Censored" for reporting the news American media doesn't want you to hear. "The top investigative journalist in the United States is persona non grata in his own country's media." [Asia Times.] He returned to America to report for Harper's Magazine.
Palast's Sam Spade style television and print expos'es about elections manipulations, War on Terror and globalization, as seen on BBC 's Newsnight and Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!
Palast, who has led investigations for government on three continents, has an academic side: the author of Democracy and Regulation, a seminal treatise on energy corporations and government control commissioned by the United Nations based on his lectures at Cambridge University and the University of Sao Paulo.
Beginning in the 1970s, having earned his degree in finance studying under Milton Friedman and free-trade luminaries, Palast went on to challenge their vision of a New Global Order, working for the United Steelworkers of America, the Enron workers' coalition in Latin America and consumer and environmental groups worldwide. As an investigator for the Chugach Natives of Alaska, he uncovered the oil company frauds which led to the grounding of the Exxon Valdez. His racketeering probe of a nuclear plant operator led to one of the largest jury judgments in US history
In 1998 Palast went undercover for Britain's Observer, worked his way inside the prime minister's inner circle and busted open Tony Blair's biggest scandal, "Lobbygate," chosen by Palast's press colleagues in the UK as "Story of the Year." As the Chicago Tribune said, became a "fanatic about documents-especially those marked "secret and confidential" from the locked file cabinets of the FBI, the World Bank, the US State Department and other closed-door operations of government and industry-which regularly find their way into Palast's hands. The inside information he obtained on Rev. Pat Robertson won him a nomination as Britain's top business journalist.
Palast, Guerrilla News Network's Guerrilla of the Year, is Patron of the Trinity College Philosophical Society, an honor previously held by Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde. His writings have won the Financial Times David Thomas Prize-and inspired the Eminem video, Mosh. "An American hero," said Martin Luther King III. In the BBC documentary, Bush Family Fortunes, Palast exposed George Bush Jr.'s dodging the Vietnam War draft. Greg Palast, says Noam Chomsky, "Upsets all the right people."
Palast won the George Orwell Courage in Journalism Award for his BBC documentary, Bush Family Fortunes.
What they're saying
"The greatest investigative reporter of our time" -Tribune magazine
"Twisted" -Katherine Harris
"We hate that sonuvabitch." -The White House
Michael Moore says Palast's reporting for BBC Television is "courageous."
In England, Tribune Magazine calls him, "The most important investigative reporter of our time."
"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
"To Americans who cannot read his stories printed in Britain's Observer, he is America's journalist hero of the Internet." - Alan Colmes, Fox Television
After exposing on BBC TV the contents of a stack of documents from inside The World Bank and the World Trade Organization, the WTO called his report, "Rubbish rubbish rubbish," and CNN reported, "The World Bank hates Greg Palast" for stories the Wall Street Journal's Jude Wanniski called, "Extraordinary reporting on the IMF," and Nobel Laureate Joesph Stiglitz called, "Excellent on the WTO."
"The information is a hand grenade." - John Pilger, New Statesman
"What does a multi-award winning reporting investigator do when he has a huge story to break? If it's Greg Palast, one of America's foremost journalists, he goes to England! Greg Palast has repeatedly scooped the U.S. networks, and newspaper elites, reporting for London's Guardian newspaper, and BBC television's current affairs flagship program, Newsnight. He's reported on the truth behind George W. Bush's theft of the 2000 presidential election, the attempted theft of Venezuelan democracy, the World Bank's willful destruction of Argentina, Enron's looting of California, and the cozy relationship between the Bush and Bin Laden dynasties. The problem is: The men behind the curtain of America's media don't want you to know about these, or any of the other stories he has to tell. Undeterred by the sucking vacuum of America's mainstream media, Greg put together a few of his greatest journalistic hits in the book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: the Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters." Ironically, the stories the New York Times didn't find fit to print have become a New York Times best-seller. Now Greg Palast is releasing a DVD, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," and featuring some of his reports from Britain." - Chris Cook, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
"The world's greatest investigative reporter you've never heard of." -Cleveland Free Times
Awards
Patron of the Philosophical Society, Trinity College (an award previously given to Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Swift)
The Upton Sinclair Freedom of Expression AwardThe American Civil Liberties Union
George Orwell Courage in Journalism Award: Freedom Cinema Fest at The Sundance Film Festival
The Financial Times David Thomas Prize
Nominated for Business Journalist of the Year 1998 (UK)
Politics Story of the Year on Salon.com 2001
Guerilla News Network's Reporter of the Year
The Peace and Justice Award -Office of the Americas
Path Breaking Investigative Journalism Award-Long Island Progressive Coalition
National Press Club's Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism, Book Category, First Place.
http://www.gregpalast.com/about-greg/
******************************************************
FALLUJA ARITHMETIC LESSON
Sunday Dec 11, 2005
by Prof. Greg Palast
New York Times, page 1:
"American commanders said 38 service members had been killed and 275 wounded in the Falluja assault."
New York Times, page 11:
"The American military hospital here reported that it had treated 419 American soldiers since the siege of Falluja began."
Questions for the class:
1. If 275 soldiers were wounded in Falluja and 419 are treated for wounds, how many were shot on the plane ride to Germany?
2. We're told only 275 soldiers were wounded but 419 treated for wounds; and we're told that 38 soldiers died. So how many will be buried?
3. How long have these Times reporters been embedded with with military? Bonus question: When will they get out of bed with the military?
New York Times, page 1:
"The commanders estimated that 1,200 to 1,600 insurgents had been killed."
New York Times, page 11:
"Nowhere to be found: the remains of the insurgents that the tanks had been sent in to destroy. ...The absence of insurgent bodies in Falluja has remained an enduring mystery."
"Every time I hear the news
That old feeling comes back on;
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the Big Fool says to push on."
- Pete Seeger, 1967 Happy New Year.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace