"TWISTED AND MANIACAL" GREG PALAST

Greg Palast, one of my super-favorite journalists. Read the latest on the man whom Katharine Harris called "twisted and maniacal."

His tour into the heart of American darkness began with the regime’s most pressing current debacle: Iraq. Holding a copy of a thick document pinched from the U.S. State Department (he’s a magician at appropriating important papers), Palast detailed the U.S. plan for the post-conflict re-building of Iraq—one that was written “about a year before we were told there was going to be a conflict.” The plan—privatization of six of the top state banks, zero tariffs, flat taxes and 100-percent foreign ownership of industry—amounts to a democratic nightmare, he said.

“Not only a free-fire zone, but a free-trade zone as well,” Palast quipped.
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We talked about the conservative climate of post 9/11 America—of the pendulum that’s swung to the right with nationalistic fervor. Despite the chilled climate of censorship in the country and all the dishonesty and sleaze he’s uncovered, Palast remains upbeat. “It swings back,” he says. “You can only land on the aircraft carrier so many times. You can only go ‘Boo’ so many times [and] ‘they’re coming to get you,’ so many times, before you say, ‘How come they’re still coming to get us, asshole, I thought you’re supposed to prevent that instead of foment it.’”