1) Can you tell ZNet, please, what your new book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, is about? What is it trying to communicate?
It’s about the Bushes and the billionaires that love them. It’s about a War Hero President who got the ‘top gun’ job in the Texas Toy Airforce with a call from his congressman daddy who was so quick to send other men’s sons to take the bullets. It’s about a coup d’etat by computer – the details of how we at BBC TV uncovered the nasty little purge list of 57,700 voters that Kate Harris flushed from the voter roles on grounds they were felons – when they were only guilty of voting while Black.
There’s nine chapters in the new US edition of this book – all my reports from BBC and The Guardian updated – blocked from the US airwaves by the electronic Berlin Wall. It includes the latest installment of the story that won the Project Censored award for my Guardian/BBC team: “Did Bush Spike the Investigation of Bin Laden?” And then there’s the story of Poppy Bush’s blood-soaked little gold-mining operation – founded by Adnan Khasshoggi.
In other words, it’s a very funny book. If you’ve read Stupid White Men, these are the reports behind many of Moore’s killer essays. And now it’s in paperback so you can easily carry around occupied Baghdad.
2) Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the content come from? What went into making the book what it is?
What it’s based on is old-fashioned investigative reporting – a mixture of Edward R. Murrow and Lt. Columbo. There’s the photos of Harris’ elections chief fleeing from my camera crew (Chapter 1: ‘Jim Crow in Cyberspace.’) I used disguises and false business fronts to find out how Enron and other American power pirates bought out the governments of Texas, California, Brazil and England (Chapter 3: California Reamin’).
My chapter on globalization (“Sell the Lexus, Burn the Olive Tree.”) my book take a wee bit different view than found in Thomas Friedman’s hand job for the New World Order. In this chapter, you’ll see documents marked “Secret” and “Confidential” from the locked file cabinets of the World Bank and IMF – the detailed plans for financially disembowling Argentina, Tanzania and Bolivia.
And there’s my undercover investigation of the crazed cleric of the Christian Coalition (Chapter 5, “Pat Robertson, General Pinochet, Pepsi Cola and the Anti-Christ”). And just for the hell of it, I take a journalistic leak on Heartland America (Chapter 7: “Small Towns, Small Minds.”)
3) What are your hopes for The Best Democracy Money Can Buy? What do you hope it will contribute or achieve, politically? Given the effort and aspirations you have for the book, what will you deem to be a success? What would leave you happy about the whole undertaking? What would leave you wondering if it was worth all the time and effort?
The book’s on the New York Times bestseller list, so my deeply hidden craven capitalist urges have been satisfied. But, as a pinhead potentate C-student from Yale once said, “I will not stop until the people are liberated from the tyrant.”
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