politics

No matter what your political or religious affiliations may be, the information in "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" affects everyone in the United States and elsewhere or possibly will sometime in the future. It certainly appears that the global elite and those who control the monetary standard of life leave no stone unturned in their wicked pursuits and show no remorse from its adverse effects on the common populace.

Early on in the book, the presidential election of 2000 (focusing on Florida) is put under the microscope with some dramatic revelations. Thousands of registered U.S. voters were denied their right to vote, many of them African-Americans. A thorough explanation is well detailed to show the reader how this occurred. Obstruction of civil rights and bias immediately come to mind coupled with the fact that statistically, African-Americans in Florida predominantly vote democratic. Coincidence? Not likely.

Farther along, the book describes how the Bush family has indeed been linked with the Bin-Laden family (not Osama himself) in Saudi Arabia regarding business ventures. Not for public knowledge of course, the presidential administration ordered the Department of Justice (FBI) to steer clear of any revealing investigations concerning this match not made in heaven. The sum total, to a point, is that the United States may have missed out on critically valuable information regarding terrorism.

Rounding out this review, chapter 4 of the book gives you a taste of the heinous activities of the IMF (International Monetary Fund). Here's a group that likes to throw third world and even developed countries into chaos with outrageous financial policies and procedures. One example is privatizing water and power structures and then financially bleeding consumers to death with exaggerated fees. Another that I found most distasteful was in Tanzania. A relatively poor African country with a rampant AIDS epidemic now charges fees for hospital appointments and charges fees for school attendance, all courtesy of the IMF.

These above summations are just the tip of the iceberg. The book has many more disturbing and revealing chapters that readers will find very interesting. Finishing off, Greg Palast sends a clear message that the mainstream media is not your friend and they love to expose critical news stories long after public sentiment has elapsed and damage control has been completed. As a former governor of Minnesota once said, the media is no longer in the business of reporting the news, they are in the business of creating the news.

Greg Palast has written an outstanding, although disturbing book of who actually controls power and money and their machinations to sweep aside the little people regardless of consequences. This is a highly recommended read for those that are fed up and those looking for answers.

Read this book as a civic duty. Even if you don't want to know, you need to know how utterly corrupt our government, corporations and media are.

Greg Palast is the muckraker of our times, and he's virtually exiled from America because no one will print his work. PBS won't even show the documentary illustrating how the voter rolls in Florida were tampered with before the 2000 election.

Don't dismiss Palast for being partisan in the sense of Republicans and Democrats; he dishes the dirt on the Clintons and Gore, as well as Bushes Jr. and Sr. and Tony Blair. He is, however, biased towards social justice. If you are more concerned with corporate profits than corporate responsibility, you will find this book to be rather obnoxious.

Greg Palast was at a book signing in Chicago on May 4, which this reviewer attended. He said that the centralized Florida voter database is being held up as a model for every other state to follow. Republicans take heed: Palast pretty much said that Democrats in Democratic-controlled states were just as happy to have the opportunity to monkey with their voter rolls, as Republicans are. Meanwhile we are switching to ballotless voting booths and doing away with exit polls, with no way of knowing if our votes were counted as we cast them. Draw your own conclusions folks - how long before our vaunted democracy becomes another banana republic?

Palast provides a factual blast of secret corporate and government liasons that have been created to rip all of us off! He's done an excellent job of tying together the names and dates of suspicious events, and the guts to spell it all out.

Turns out the U.S. government has been financing corporations, and giving those corporations lucrative contracts, as we all know. However, according to Palast these contracts are specifically for the building new utility companies, or the taking over old utility companies and deregulating them. They are trying to gain control of all utilities such as water, natural gas, cooking oil, fuel oil, waste treatment, and electricity.

Once they take control, these companies can then generate profits forever. They can also generate fake energy crisis, fake oil shortages etc, whenever they feel like it. It is obvious after reading this book that we probably went to war in IRAQ so that this fat-cat Oligarchy could build their utility companies and then get paid back whenever the Iraquis sell their oil. And this profit stream will continue forever, as long as they keep all of us driving oil burning or fuel-cell powered vehicles. What we all kind of knew was true, but couldn't really prove, Palast has now provided the facts to make it so obviously real.

This is a must-read for any aspiring republican or democrat that really wants to learn about what is going on in the world today. There is a thin line being drawn in the sand between good and evil.