PANDEMONIUM EARLY
MORNING STAR
No. 540
ENGLISH
(VOICE)
** Transcript of Interview of Greg Palast, Journalist for BBC and Observer, London, by Alex Jones
** View Greg Palast’s BBC
report on the Venezuelan Coup
in RealPlayer format..
27/02/03.
************************************************************
Transcript of Interview of Greg Palast, Journalist for BBC and Observer, London, by Alex Jones
(Courtesy of A Great Listener)
Alex Jones Radio
Show, Monday (PM), March 4, 2002
_______________________________
AJ: This is
earth shattering. Can you break it down for us and tell
us what the economists have done?
GP: Well, I'll
tell you two things. One, I spoke to the former chief economist,
Joe Stiglitz who was fired by the (World) Bank. So I, on BBC and
with Guardian, basically spent some time debriefing him. It
was like one of the scenes out of Mission Impossible, you
know where the guy comes over from the other side and you
spend hours debriefing him. So I got the insight of what was
happening at the World Bank. In addition, he did not brief
me but I got some other sources. He would not give me
inside documents but other people handed me a giant stash
of secret documents from the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund.
AJ: So to insulate himself, somebody else did it.
GP: No, I'm telling you. He wouldn't touch it but I really did get from completely independent sources a big stack of documents.
AJ: Just like you got W199I, from the same folks we got it from.
GP: And so one
of the things that is happening is that, in fact, I was supposed
to be on CNN with the head of the World Bank Jim Wolfensen and he
said he would not appear on CNN ever if they put me on. And
so CNN
did the craziest thing and pulled me off.
AJ: So now they are threatening total boycott.
GP: Yea right.
So what we found was this. We found inside these documents that
basically they required nations to sign secret agreements, in which
they agreed to sell off their key assets, in which they agreed
to take economic steps which are really devastating to the
nations involved and if they didn't agree to these steps,
there was an average for each nation that signed one-hundred
and eleven items that they are required to sign on to. If
they didn't follow those steps they would be cut-off from
all international borrowing. You can't borrow any money in
the international marketplace. No one can survive without
borrowing, whether you are people or corporations or countries
- without borrowing some money and having some credit and
...
AJ: Because of the debt inflation pit they've created.
GP: Yea, well,
see one of the things that happened is that - we've got examples
from, I've got inside documents recently from Argentina, the secret
Argentine plan. This is signed by Jim Wolfensen, the president
of the World Bank. By the way, just so you know, they are
really upset
with me that I've got the documents, but they have not challenged
the authenticity of the documents. First, they did. First
they said those documents don't exist. I actually showed them
on television. And cite some on the web, I actually have copies
of some...
AJ: Greg Palast dot com?
GP: Yea, gregpalast.com. So then they backed off and said yea those documents are authentic but we are not going to discuss them with you and we are going to keep you off the air anyway. So, that's that. But what they were saying is look, you take a country like Argentina, which is, you know, in flames now. And it has had five presidents in five weeks because their economy is completely destroyed.
AJ: Isn't it six now?
GP: Yea, it's
like the weekly president because they can't hold the nation
together. And this happened because they started out in the end
of the 80s with orders from the IMF and World Bank to sell-off all
their assets, public assets. I mean, things we wouldn't think
of doing in the
US, like selling off their water system.
AJ: So they
tax the people. They create big government and big government hands
it off to the private IMF/World Bank. And when we get back, I want
to get to the four-parts that you elegantly lay out here
where they actually pay off the politicians billions to their
Swiss bank accounts to do this transfer.
GP: That's right.
AJ: This is like one of the biggest stories ever, Sir. I'm sorry, please continue.
GP: So what's
happening is - this is just one of them. And by the way, it's not
just anyone who gets a piece of the action. The water system of
Buenos Aires was sold off for a song to a company called Enron.
A pipeline was sold off, that runs between Argentina and Chile,
was sold
off to a company called Enron.
AJ: And then the globalists blow out the Enron after transferring the assets to another dummy corporation and then they just roll the theft items off.
GP: You've got it. And by the way, you know why they moved the pipeline to Enron is that they got a call from somebody named George W. Bush in 1988.
AJ: Unbelievable, Sir. Stay right there. We are talking to Greg Palast.
BREAK
AJ: We are talking
to Greg Palast. He is an award-winning journalist, an American
who has worked for the BBC, London Guardian, you name it, who has
dropped just a massive bomb-shell on the Globalists and their
criminal activity. There is no other word for it. You link
through at inforwars.com, you can link to his web site - gregpalast.com,
or any of the other great reports he has been putting out.
He now has the secret documents. We have seen the activity
of the IMF/World Bank for years.
They come in, pay off politicians to transfer the water systems,
the railways, the telephone companies, the nationalized oil
companies, gas stations - they then hand it over to them for
nothing. The Globalists pay them off individually, billions
a piece in Swiss bank accounts. And
the plan is total slavery for the entire population. Of course,
Enron, as we told you was a dummy corporation for money laundering,
drug money, you name it, from the other reporters we have
had on. It's just incredibly massive and hard to believe.
But it is actually happening.
Greg Palast has now broken the story world-wide. He has actually
interviewed the former top World Bank economist. Continuing
Sir with all these points.
I mean for the average person out there, in a nutshell, what
is the system you are exposing?
GP: We are exposing
that they are systematically tearing nations apart, whether
it's Ecuador or Argentina. The problem is some of these bad ideas
are drifting back into the U.S. In other words, they have run out
of places to bleed. And the problem is, this is the chief
economist,
this is not some minor guy. By the way, a couple of months
ago, after he was fired, he was given the Nobel Prize in Economics.
So he is no fool. He told me, he went into countries where
they were talking about privatizing and selling off these
assets. And basically, they knew,
they literally knew and turned the other way when it was understood
that leaders of these countries and the chief ministers would
salt away hundreds of millions of dollars.
AJ: But it's not even privatization. They just steal it from the people and hand it over to the IMF/World Bank.
GP: They hand
it over, generally to the cronies, like Citibank was very big
and grabbed half the Argentine banks. You've got British Petroleum
grabbing pipelines in Ecuador. I mentioned Enron grabbing water
systems
all over the place. And the problem is that they are destroying
these systems as well. You can't even get drinking water in
Buenos Aires. I mean it is not just a question of the theft.
You can't turn on the tap. It is more than someone getting
rich at the
public expense.
AJ: And the IMF just got handed the Great Lakes. They have the sole control over the water supply now. That's been in the Chicago Tribune.
GP: Well the
problem that we have is - look, the IMF and the World Bank is
51% owned by the United States Treasury. So the question becomes,
what are we getting for the money that we put into there? And
it looks
like we are getting mayhem in several nations. Indonesia is
in flames. He was telling me, the Chief Economist, Stiglitz,
was telling me that he started questioning what was happening.
You know, everywhere we go, every country we end up meddling
in, we destroy their economy and they end up in flames. And
he was saying that he questioned this and he got fired for
it. But he was saying that they even kind of plan in the riots.
They know that when they squeeze a country and destroy its
economy, you are going to get riots in the streets. And they
say, well that's the IMF riot. In other words, because you
have riot, you lose. All the capital runs away from your country
and that gives the opportunity for the IMF to then add more
conditions.
AJ: And that makes them even more desperate. So it is really an imperial economy war to implode countries and now they are doing it here with Enron. They are getting so greedy - they are preparing it for this country.
GP: I've just
been talking to, out in California just yesterday, from here
in Paris, the chief investigators of Enron for the State of California.
They are telling me some of the games these guys are playing.
No one is watching that. It's not just the stockholders that
got ripped off. They sucked millions, billions of dollars
out of the public pocket in Texas and California in particular.
AJ: Where are the assets? See, everybody says there are no assets left since Enron was a dummy corporation - from the experts I've had on and they transferred all those assets to other corporations and banks.
GP: Well yea,
this stuff has really gone just like a three-card Monty game.
I mean remember that there is money at the bottom. You did pay California's
electric bills according to the investigations, they are telling
me that they were pumped up unnecessarily by 9 to 12-billion
dollars. And I don't know who they are going to get it back
from now.
AJ: Well they actually caught the Governor buying it for $137 per megawatt and selling it back to Enron for $1 per megawatt and doing it over and over and over again.
GP: Yea, the
system has gotten completely out of control and these guys knew
exactly what was happening. Well, you have to understand that some
of the guys who designed the system in California for deregulation
then
went to work for Enron right after. In fact, here I'm in London
right now and we have, the British has some responsibility
here. The guy who was on the audit committee of Enron, Lord
Wakeham. And this guy is a
real piece of work, there isn't a conflict of interest that
he hasn't been involved in.
AJ: And he is the head of NM Rothschild.
GP: There isn't
anything that he doesn't have his fingers in. He's on something
like fifty Boards. And one of the problems, he was supposed to be
head of the audit committee watching how Enron kept the books.
And in fact, they were paying him consulting fees on the side.
He was in Margaret Thatcher's government and he's the one
who authorized Enron to come into Britain and take over power
plants here in Britain. And
they owned a water system in the middle of England. This is
what this guy approved and then they gave him a job on the
board. And on top of being on the board, they gave him a huge
consulting contract. So you know, this guy was supposed to
be in charge of the audit committee to see how they were handling
their accounts.
AJ: Well, he is also the head of the board to regulate the media.
GP: Yes, he is, because I have run into real problems, because he regulates me.
AJ: They are
also trying to pass laws in England where you've got an 800-year
old well, or in some cases a 2000-year old well that the Romans
built that's on your property and they say we are putting a
meter on
it. You can't have your own water.
GP: Yea, and that's Lord Wakeham. I mean this is the guy from Enron. He is a real piece of work. He can't be touched here because like I say he actually regulates the media. So if you complain, he's got his hand on your pen.
AJ: Burrow into
NM Rothschild, you'll find it all there. Go through these four
points. I mean you've got the documents. The IMF/World Bank implosion,
four points, how they bring down a country and destroy the
resources of the people.
GP: Right. First you open up the capital markets. That is, you sell off your local banks to foreign banks. Then you go to what's called market-based pricing. That's the stuff like in California where everything is free market and you end up with water bills - we can't even imagine selling off water companies in the United States of America. But imagine if a private company like Enron owned your water. So then the prices go through the roof. Then open up your borders to trade - complete free marketeering. And Stiglitz who was the chief economist, remember he was running this system, he was their numbers man and he was saying it was like the opium wars. He said this isn't free trade; this is coercion trade. This is war. They are taking apart economies through this.
AJ: Well look, China has a 40% tariff on us, we have a 2% on them. That's not free and fair trade. It's to force all industry to a country that the globalists fully control.
GP: Well, you know Walmart - I did a story, in fact, if you read my book. Let me just mention that I've got a book out, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" about how, unfortunately, America has been put up for sale. "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" is coming out this week. But I have a story in there about how Walmart has 700 plants in China. There is almost nothing in a Walmart store that comes from the United States of America, despite all the eagles on the wall.
AJ: Exactly, like 1984, then they have big flags saying "Buy American" and there's hardly anything --- it's Orwellian double-think.
GP: What's even worst is they will hire a factory and right next to it will be the sister factory which is inside a prison. You can imagine the conditions of these workers producing this lovely stuff for Walmart. It's really....
AJ: And if an elitist needs a liver, they just call.
GP: (Laughs)
I know, it's grim. In fact, I talked to a guy, Harry Wu, is his
name and, in fact, he broke into, he's been in Chinese prison for
19 years. No one believed his horrible stories. He actually
broke back into prison, took a camera with him and took pictures
of the conditions
and said this is the conditions of factories where Walmart
is getting its stuff made at, it's all....
AJ: I was threatened to be thrown off TV here in Austin when I aired video of little girls 4-years old chained down, skinnier than Jews in concentration camps, to die. And I was threatened, if you ever air that again, you will be arrested.
GP: Well you
know, it is horrifying stuff that, unfortunately, I have been
handed and Stiglitz, was very courageous for him to come out and
make these statements. Like I said, he didn't provide me the
documents. The documents really sealed it because it said
this is what really happened. They really do say sign on the
dotted line agreeing to 111 conditions for each nation. And
the public has no say; they don't
know what the hell is happening to them. All they know....
AJ: Go back into privatization. Go through these four points. That's the key. It sends billions to politicians to hand everything over.
GP: Yea, he
called it briberization, which is you sell off the water company
and that's worth, over ten years, let's say that that's worth about
5 billion bucks, ten percent of that is 500 million, you can
figure out how it works. I actually spoke to a Senator from
Argentina two weeks ago. I got him on camera. He said that
after he got a call
from George W. Bush in 1988 saying give the gas pipeline in
Argentina to Enron, that's our current president. He said
that what he found was really creepy was that Enron was going
to pay one-fifth of the world's
price for their gas and he said how can you make such an offer?
And he was told, not by George W. but by a partner in the
deal, well if we only pay one-fifth that leaves quit a little
bit for you to go in your Swiss
bank account. And that's how it's done.
AJ: This is the ....
GP: I've got
the film. This guy is very conservative. He knows the Bush family
very well. And he was public works administrator in Argentina and
he said, yea, I got this call. I asked him, I said, from George
W. Bush. He said, yea, November 1988, the guy called him up
and
said give a pipeline to Enron. Now this is the same George
W. Bush who said he didn't get to know Ken Lay until 1994.
So, you know.....
AJ: So now they
are having these white-wash hearings. You know I was at Enron
yesterday in Houston because I'm now here in Austin. We were like
30-feet from the door, right on the sidewalk and I have it on
video
- goons came up and said you can't videotape. I said go ahead
and have me arrested. I mean I'm talking on the sidewalk,
Greg.
GP: Well, you
know, I was there in May, telling people in Britain you've never
heard of Enron, but ... And these are the guys who have figured
out how to (garbled) this government. In fact, we saw some interesting
documents, a month before Bush took office, Bill Clinton,
I think to get even with Bush's big donor, cut Enron out of
the California power market. He put a cap on the prices they
could charge. They couldn't charge more than one-hundred times
the normal price for
electricity. That upset Enron. So Ken Lay personally wrote
a note to Dick Cheney saying get rid of Clinton's cap on prices.
Within 48 hours of George W. Bush taking office, his energy
department reversed the clamps on Enron. OK, how much is that
worth for those guys. You know that has got to be worth, that
paid off in a week all the donations.
AJ: Listen at
the bombs you are dropping. You are interviewing these ministers,
former head of IMF/World Bank economist - all of this, you've got
the documents, paying people's Swiss Bank accounts, all this
happening. Then you've got Part 2, what do they do after they
start
imploding?
GP: Well, then
they tell you to start cutting your budgets. A fifth of the
population of Argentina is unemployed, and they said cut the unemployment
benefits drastically, take away pension funds, cut the education
budgets, I mean horrible things. Now if you cut the economy
in the middle of a recession that was created by these guys,
you are
really going to absolutely demolish this nation. After we
were attacked on September 11, Bush ran out and said we got
to spend $50 to $100 billion dollars to save our economy.
We don't start cutting the budget, you start trying to save
this economy. But they tell these countries
you've got to cut, and cut, and cut. And why, according to
the inside documents, it's so you can make payments to foreign
banks - the foreign banks are collecting 21% to 70% interest.
This is loan-sharking. If fact, it was so bad that they required
Argentina to get rid of the laws
against loan-sharking. because any bank would be a loan-shark
under Argentine law.
AJ: But Greg, you said it yourself and the documents show it. They first implode the economy to create that atmosphere. They institute the entire climate that does this.
GP: Yea, and then they say, well gee, we can't lend you any money except at these loan-shark rates. We don't allow people to charge 75% interest in the United States. That's loan-sharking.
AJ: Part 3 and Part 4. What do they do after they do that?
GP: Like I said,
you open up the borders for trade, that's the new opium wars.
And once you have destroyed an economy that can't produce
anything, one of the terrible things is that they are forcing nations
to pay horrendous amounts for things like drugs - legal drugs.
And by the
way, that's how you end up with an illegal drug trade, what's
there left to survive on except sell us smack and crack and
that's how...
AJ: And the same CIA national security dictatorship has been caught shipping that in.
GP: You know, we are just helping our allies.
AJ: This is just amazing. And so, drive the whole world down, blow out their economies and then buy the rest of it up for pennies on the dollar. What's Part 4 of the IMF/World Bank Plan?
GP: Well, in Part 4, you end up again with the taking apart of the government. And by the way, the real Part 4 is the coup d'etat. That's what they are not telling you. And I'm just finding that out in Venezuela. I just got a call from the President of Venezuela.
AJ: And they install their own corporate government.
GP: What they
said was here you've got an elected president of the government
and the IMF has announced, listen to this, that they would
support a transition government if the president were removed.
They are not saying that they are going to get involved in
politics - they would just support a transition government.
What that effectively is is saying we will pay for the coup
d'etat, if the military overthrows the
current president, because the current president of Venezuela
has said no to the IMF. He told those guys to go packing.
They brought their teams in and said you have to do this and
that. And he said, I don't have to do nothing. He said what
I'm going to do is, I'm going to
double the taxes on oil corporations because we have a whole
lot of oil in Venezuela. And I'm going to double the taxes
on oil corporations and then I will have all the money I need
for social programs and the
government - and we will be a very rich nation. Well, as soon
as they did that, they started fomenting trouble with the
military and I'm telling you watch this space: the President
of Venezuela will be out of office in three months or shot
dead. They are not going to allow him to
raise taxes on the oil companies.
AJ: Greg Palast, here is the problem. You said it when you first came out of the gates. They are getting hungry, they are doing it to the United States now. Enron, from all the evidence that I've seen was a front, another shill, they would steal assets and then transfer it to other older global companies, then they blew that out and stole the pension funds. Now they are telling us that terrorism is coming any day. It's going to happen if you don't give your rights up. Bush did not involve Congress and the others who are supposed to be in the accession if there is a nuclear attack in the secret government, Washington Post -"Congress Not Advised of Shadow Government." We have the Speaker of the House not being told. This looks like coup d'etat here. I'm going to come right out with it. We had better spread the word on this now or these greedy creatures are going to go all the way.
GP: I'm very
sad about one thing. I report this story in the main stream press
of Britian. I'm on the BBC despite Lord Wakeham. I know he doesn't
like me there. I'm in the BBC, I'm in the main daily paper,
which is the equivalent of the New York Times or whatever,
and we do get the information out. And I'm just very sorry
that we have to have an alternative press, an alternative
radio network and everything else to get out the information
that makes any sense. I mean this information should be available
to every American. I mean, after all, it's our government
View Greg Palast’s BBC report on the Venezuelan Coup in RealPlayer format
at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1985000/video/_1985670_ven22_palast_vi.ram
Also, read Alex Jones’ interviews of Greg Palast:
http://www.infowars.com/palast_interview.html
http://sce.m2ktalk.com:8010/listen.pls**************************************************************************************************