AMERICA: Here's a Wake-up Call --"If you're not paranoid, you're not paying attention."
Sylvester80,
There has been an intentional dimming down of our educational system since the 1960's. You are correct that the elites don't have any interest in training possible competition.
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But, they can't keep us all down, all the time. Occasionally the truth just squirts out, like here:
usatoday.com
Or, more importantly, here:
americas.org
Wake-Up Call
Investigative reporter Greg Palast exposes the truth about corporate cons, globalization and high-finance fraudsters.
"The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" By Greg Palast.
Review by Mark Gemmell
There's an old expression: Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you. Since reading the new, expanded edition of Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, I would amend that to: If you're not paranoid, you're not paying attention.
Palast is an investigative journalist and U.S. citizen who regularly shows up on the front page of British newspapers. His coverage of the stolen 2000 presidential election was front-page news there too, though it didn’t surface in the U.S. press for several months, and then only minorly. The tragedy of Florida's political mugging is doubled by continued stateside ignorance of it—and though the truth is out there, it’s doubtful anything will change without a conscious, sustained public uproar. This book may help pave the way.
You've probably heard something about convicted felons being purged from the voter rolls in Florida, and how mistakes were made resulting in innocent people being denied their vote. George W. won that Florida election by 537 votes. Some of the 90,000 purged “felons” would certainly have voted for Gore—being mostly African American and Democrat. And the voter purge error rate of 95 percent was no secret. Tens of thousands of legally registered voters were refused the right to vote. So while mainstream U.S. media covered hanging chads and butterfly ballots, the real crime was hardly mentioned.
This is just the beginning. Greg Palast spells out who knew, what they knew, and when they knew it. One of the major players was the database management company hired to purge the voter rolls. Presumably, the list of felons would be checked against the addresses and social security numbers of voters to minimize the possibility of error. But in reality, the firm was told not to worry about addresses or pesky social security numbers. Eventually, the firm was asked to match only the first four letters of first and last names. Jodi Williams would not have been allowed to vote if there were a convicted felon on the list named Jodine Willis, as these two names would have matched. There was one small safeguard: they would not have matched if Jodi Williams were white and Jodine Willis were black. Oh, did I mention that, according to Florida law, convicted felons can vote? Who knew? Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, among others.
Angry yet? It gets much worse. Palast also explores the myth of American free-market economics as it was applied in Chile under dictator Augusto Pinochet. What Ronald Reagan's State Department called “a casebook study in sound economic management,” and what Milton Friedman called “The Miracle of Chile,” was in truth a disaster. After 10 years of “free-market modernization,” unemployment went from 4.3 to 22 percent, real wages dropped by 40 percent and the number of citizens living in poverty doubled. You also will read about the attempted ousting of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In addition to his crime of mandating food and housing for the poor, he doubled the royalty taxes paid by Exxon/Mobil. I thought I smelled oil. Worse for Chavez, his anti-corporate, anti-global economics plan seemed to be working.
These are all stories the mainstream U.S. press rarely cover until they can no longer be avoided. Even then, what we get in most cases is a corporate-ordered whitewash. (Who do you suppose owns the media?) Palast is eyes-wide-open journalism. I find myself thinking it’s more information than I really wanted, even though it's what I’ve always suspected. Reader beware. |
