|
| Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild | 
 enlarge | Author: Greg Palast
Publisher: Plume
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $1.72
You Save: $13.28 (89%)
New (50) Used (42) Collectible (1) from $1.72
Avg. Customer Rating:  58 reviews
Sales Rank: 55048
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 0452288312
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931
EAN: 9780452288317
ASIN: 0452288312
Publication Date: April 24, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In his most provocative and caustically funny book yet, Greg Palast, author of the national bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, once again gives us the straight scoop on the stories that Big Media wont report. Digging up reams of documents marked secret and confidential, Palast provides the latest lowdown on Bushs secret plans to seize Iraqs oil, the fix planned for the 2008 election, who drowned New Orleans, and the horror and the humor of the War on Terror. With diligent detective work, moral outrage, and a keen sense of the absurd, Palast takes on the armed and dangerous clowns that rule us as only he can.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 53 more reviews...
 Tough truths April 24, 2007
44 out of 45 found this review helpful
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
WOW!! May 30, 2007
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
"Ok, what is it? Read it to me." Apparently, I had just uttered one of my rather frequent expletives as I was reading Armed Madhouse, and my wife wanted to know what it was THIS time that I found so incredulous.
And that's what it is like to read Greg Palast's new book. I mean, I'm someone who basically keeps up with Palast's reporting via his emails online, but this book is just chock full of "Holy Mackerel!!" moments. It is a revelation. It is great investigative journalism.
Palast aims his investigative team like a spotlight onto the dark corners of our times: whether it is the Iraq war and how we really got there and why it looks like nobody knows what they're doing and why Ahmad Chalabi is sitting next to the first lady at the state of the union one moment, and the next thing you know he's being arrested and charged with being a spy for Iran; or the 2000 election results, and how the touch screen machines are the least of our problems in 2008; or the Katrina debacle, or the real goal of No Child Left Behind, or why Harriet Miers got the Supreme Court nomination, or why we co-sponsored a coup against Hugo Chavez.
This truly is essential reading for an informed electorate. I can't endorse it highly enough.
 Dangerously misleading on the oil situation July 31, 2007
13 out of 23 found this review helpful
I've been a fan of some of his reporting in the past. I think the world lacks insightful investigative reporting and the more the better. Even when, as inevitably happens from time to time, they get it wrong. But to dismiss the current crisis in fossil fuel liquids production is to foster a dangerous fiction.
Yes, this is one argument in the book but it is a very important one. It is wrong. It misses a very simple and relatively easy-to-understand situation:
There is only so much oil in the ground. Less and less new oil is being discovered every year. We are using what is there at an increasingly fast rate. When you tap oil you get the easy stuff out first. What is left becomes harder and more expensive - and most importantly less energy efficient - to extract, and this happens at an ever increasing rate...
...the production rate achieves a maximum and falls. Once on the downward curve it can never rise again. This pattern has repeated in field after field, region after region. Until it is effectively gone. It isn't rocket science - it is basic common sense (test it with a pint of beer - drink it and see if at some point if you keep drinking faster and faster it eventually runs out!).
Why do I think this flaw in the book is so serious as to give it a 1 star rating?
Well, it isn't the oil eventually running out (like the beer) that is our biggest threat - it is the point at which production starts to decline - and the gap between production and demand increases. Once that starts the world becomes a very different place. Oil doesn't get places its needed. People start to die.
Face it: 95% of the world's food production is based on fossil fuels - largely in the form of petrochemical based fertilizers and pesticides. We cannot feed the world without them. Once they are gone... well we just cannot feed the world. I'll say it again. People start to die. Lots of them. And not well.
So, while I have read in a positive light much of Palast's previous work, and defended him against detractors on more than one occasion... this is just very worrying work. The danger of pushing this "Peak Oil is a conspiracy" nonsense is that society not working RIGHT NOW to do everything we can to mitigate the effects of the oil production peak will cause a lot of people to die. The people doing the most to resist Peak Oil education are the very oil companies he accuses of pushing the theory (no! they want to avoid any awareness or mitigation efforts might reduce oil demand and hence profits!).
No point complaining about how we got here - we are here. It is a crisis of a magnitude only Global Warming approaches in seriousness. We need to deal with it. Immediately. And even that may be too late. Denial is not a good direction to go in - regardless for how much sympathy one may or may not have for Palast's arguments about the danger, incompetence and corruption of the current regime in Washington.
Very disappointing.
Check out:
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
A Crude Awakening - The Oil Crash
Or at least Google/Wikipedia Peak Oil and spend a few days reading up on this, and on the communities discussing it like The Oil Drum and Energy Bulletin, before taking it at face value
 How Gore and Kerry Won, Squabbling Over Iraq's Oil, Taking Away the Social Safety Net, and Enriching the Richest June 7, 2007
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Armed Madhouse is a Jon Stewart-like take on the George W. Bush administration. These are the political stories that you didn't see on the nightly news, the morning news, or the talk shows. If you want to know more about the causes and effects of American politics, this book is essential reading.
The best part of the book is the detailed description of how you can get rid of over 3 million votes, over 80 percent of which were cast for Kerry, and deny millions of others from voting . . . with a little help from your friends. In the new book, Brothers, there's the observation that there's so much voting fraud that goes on that you have to plan to indulge in the same if you want to be elected. After reading Armed Madhouse, I'm convinced.
My mother and sister have been telling me for years about how their electoral supervisors seem to be organized to create a lack of voting rather than voting in their rock-rib Democratic area. Now, I can see the hand behind their many tales of electoral incompetence . . . which I can now see as perhaps simply electoral competence in a partisan cause.
Based on this book, you can assume the next president will be a Republican. The Democrats are over ten years behind in dealing with election fraud . . . and falling further behind. Why? The Republican manipulations often help local Democratic officials get rid of their rivals within the party of the people.
The next most interesting part of the book comes in the behind-the-scenes battles between neo-cons and the oil industry to reap an economic windfall from Iraq, the true agenda behind the invasion in 2003.
Those who care about equal opportunity will be shocked by the section on class warfare. Most people haven't been paying attention since 2001 and don't realize how many of the basic safety net features for the poor and hurting have been permanently dismantled.
The section on the so-called war on terror is at its funniest where President Bush is quoted: In the final warning to Saddam Hussein on March 17, 2003, we are reminded that the president sternly said, "Do not destroy oil wells." At the time, I thought that statement was very puzzling. But now, I can see it was just a very interesting clue.
Those who don't know that political influence can be up for sale will be shocked by the reports of corruption in the book, but to me it wasn't anything new. The names just change, but politics by donation is a well established policy in the United States. It's an inevitable, and undesirable, feature of having two parties rather than people who primarily look out for the public interest.
A lot of the "economic" arguments in the book aren't well developed and will probably strike you as demagogic. That's too bad. Good arguments are available about how a different approach is more desirable for everyone, but you won't find those arguments in this book.
 Read rhe fine print. April 25, 2007
10 out of 48 found this review helpful
This is not a new book! This is the old book with just two new chapters added as a sales gimmick. The "new" chapters are hardly exciting. Boring might be a better word.
My suggestion...save your money until something new comes along. The fine print is correct, it does have two new chapters but they are hardly worth the price being being charged.Palast should have simply written the "new' chapters and sold them off at $0.75 each.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
