For those of us who've long suspected that our democracy is up for sale to the highest bidder, award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast has uncovered disturbing evidence confirming as much. Palast's exposés of the theft of the 2000 election, the financial ties between the Bush and the Bin Laden families, and how these connections kept the FBI from perhaps preventing the horrific events of 9/11 have thrown fear into the hearts of media pundits. There has been a near-complete news blackout of the explosive findings documented in Palast's book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. First released in England, where he reports for the BBC and The Guardian, Palast's collection of writings is finally being published in America by Penguin/Plume books with 40% new material. In an exclusive HUSTLER interview, the author discloses the truth on high crimes in high places that the mainstream media is afraid to touch.
HUSTLER: Tell us about your new book. I know you've been able to get your groundbreaking exposés published in England and Europe, but, up until now, your stuff has been too controversial for the American media to touch.
PALAST: Not a chance in America, until now, thanks to the book.
HUSTLER: What kind of material do you have in the book?
PALAST: How about this for an example: After Daddy Bush left the White House, he went to work for a company called Barrick Gold Corporation in Canada, something you haven't read in the United States. The first thing he does is pick up a big, fat check and stock options from Barrick Gold Corporation for, essentially, selling them the presidential seal and the presidential Rolodex. And he writes letters to dictators like [former president of Indonesia] Suharto, saying, "Give these nice guys gold-mining concessions."
HUSTLER: What is Barrick Gold?
PALAST: It was founded with money from Adnan Khashoggi, the arms dealer. You may remember that Adnan was the bagman in the guns-for-hostages, Iran-Contra scandal. The sheikh got out, then Bush got in. You have to ask yourself a question: What would a Canadian gold-mining company do with a used president? Well, it turns out that before he left office, Daddy Bush put in motion an expedited process for laying claims to gold in the United States. It allowed Barrick Gold Corporation and a couple of other operators to lay claim to the largest gold mines in America. To stake a claim on $10 billion worth of gold ore, Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury less than $10,000.
...HUSTLER: Did Barrick get anything else from Bush Sr.?
PALAST: He helped Barrick secure a gold-mining concession in Tanzania. Now the gold-mining concession was owned by another Canadian company, named Sutton, which Barrick hoped to get the rights from. But there was a problem: The land was worthless, because there were Tanzanian miners already on it who had the rights to the mine. That's why, in the first week of August 1996, Sutton bulldozers ran across that property with military police firing guns to chase off the miners. In the process, they sealed up the mine pits and, unfortunately, there were 50 miners still in the mines, buried alive, say witnesses. That's information that has not been reported in the United States. You can't get that word out for nothing, because Bush's gold-mining company terrorizes journalists who dare breathe a word about it. They terrorize newspapers; they've been terrorizing wire services, and so you don't get the story.
HUSTLER: They threaten legal action?
PALAST: They threaten legal action, and they bring legal action. They sued my paper, The Guardian; they said it's all a lie. That's the most prestigious newspaper in the world. They tried to get me to back up and say that no one died. I held firm, and there was nothing that they could do. I wasn't in Tanzania, and I didn't dig out the corpses myself, so maybe Barrick's right, but I have videotapes of the corpses....
[The full interview is available at <http://www.gregpalast.com/printerfriendly.cfm?artid=181>.] *****
"What Really Happened at the Barrick Gold Mine in Tanzania?": <http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press37.htm>
Probe International's Mining Campaign -- Bulyanhulu, Tanzania: <http://www.probeinternational.org/pi/mining/index.cfm?DSP=subcontent&AreaID=198> -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>