Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them

Sauron

Anyone read Al Franken's great new book here? Its a pretty damn funny assault on right wing America......Is got a lot of great examples of blatent lies by Bush and some other conservative nuts.. Kinda like Michael Moore but a better version...He really gets his facts right and organised countering almost all of the main arguments presented....I recomend it anyway. Any thoughts, anyone who has read it?

Electric Mole

I read it, and I much preferred it to anything Moore has ever done. I liked the way he took that woman's book to bits and Rush Limbaugh (the guy who heckles Quimby in the mayoral election debate in the Simpsons FYI) and stuff but it was a bit American. Too many jokes about people I've never heard of. I just imagined Enda Kenny instead but it didn't quite work. You can see it was written to embarass and piss people off over there and maybe shake up some support for the Dem nominee in the elections as opposed to Moore who just likes to sell books.

Robbo

I found this far superior to any of Moore's offerings in the "Chomsky For Children" genre.

Unfortunately, a lot of the gags don't travel well outside the states.

milltown

I was about to start a thread about the book I'm reading at the moment, and finding hard to put down, but here seems an apt place for it instead.
In HMV t'other day they had a books section with a two for €16 offer going on and a few classics, Catch 22 being the only one I remember at this time of night, and some other interesting looking reads.

I picked up Michael Moore's Stupid White Men, which I had been meaning to read for a while. But the pick of the two is definitely Greg Palast's book, The best democracy money can buy. I heard this guy talk on Today FM's Sunday business show over a year ago about his book and the subjects it covers and it sounded very interesting, but promptly forgot his and the book's names. Only when I saw it on the shelf did it come back to me.

Very much in the vein of Franken and Moore with more of an investigative report feel to it than the humourous biting commentary of the other two. Covers (so far at least) the presidential election theft, the link between the Bush and Bin Laden families, the political and economic crooks behind the Californian power crisis and how Worldbank and the IMF are in cahoots with the more easily recognisable faces of globalisation. I thoroughly recommend it to any conspiracy theorists or anti-globalisation hippies who want to say I told you so, or just as an eye opener for anyone who doesn't watch the news and thinks living in a democracy is all thats required to save them from evil.

Bibliofemme

For a non-American view of the depressing political stuff that goes on in the world try John Pilger's 'The New Rulers of the World'. I'm reading it at the moment and it's a fascinating look at power structures and juntas .anipulated by the West and the US. It also looks at Iraq, the real reasons between the war on terror and he examines how the Aborigines have been treated in his native Australia. Definitely recommended