Transcript of Interview of Greg Palast, Journalist for BBC
and Observer, London, by Alex Jones


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.

 http://www.infowars.com/palast.htm

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