by Greg Palast
Friday, June 12, 2009

For Air America Radio's Ring of Fire

There's an easy way to find oil.  Go to some remote and gorgeous natural sanctuary, say Alaska or the Amazon, find some Indians, then drill down under them. 

If the indigenous folk complain, well, just shoo-them away.  Shoo-ing methods include:  bulldozers, bullets, crooked politicians and fake land sales.

But be aware.  Lately the Natives are shoo-ing back.  Last week, indigenous Peruvians seized an oil pumping station, grabbed the nine policemen guarding it and, say reports, executed them.  This followed the government's murder of more than a dozen rainforest residents who had protested the seizure of their property for oil drilling.

Again and again I see it in my line of work of investigating fraud.  Here are a few pit-stops on the oily trail of tears:

In the 1980s, Charles Koch was found to have pilfered about $3 worth of crude from Stanlee Ann Mattingly's oil tank in Oklahoma. (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast
Monday, June 1, 2009

Screw the autoworkers.
They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today.  But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day.

Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank.  While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders – led by  Morgan and Citibank – expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6  billion.

The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.

I smell a rat.

Stevie the Rat, to be precise.  Steven Rattner, Barack  Obama's 'Car Czar' - the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.

When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit:  fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what's left.  That's the law.  What workers don't lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.

But not this time.  Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.

(Show me more...)

by Marta Steele

www.opednews.com

It is possible to eradicate hunger. How can we live and sleep comfortably knowing that millions of our sisters and brothers go to bed hungry?
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Having viewed Greg Palast's set of short films Palast Investigates, I was, as usual, greatly impressed with his dedication to exposing those elements of our "civilization" we try to forget about. I find it miraculous, given these odious realities, that we survive each day and wake up to the next. Reality reeks, in so many ways, and few have the sang froid that Palast does to chase it down and publicize what we need to know.

In The Vultures, we meet a despicable "Goldfinger" who has no trouble robbing the poor--destitute Africans--to feed the rich-a few of them anyway, and mainly himself, through the usual mechanisms taught in Rove 101. Golden Guy intercepts millions in foreign funds targeted toward AIDS medication. The designer wardrobe the president of Zambia gets out of it is a nice boutique aside--shirts, suits, and high heels in quantities Imelda Marcos would envy. The good news is that somehow much of the material in all three films is innocuous enough to have attracted the mainstream media--Sixty Minutes, that is. Now if only they would listen to the rest. The world is crawling with "Rovism."
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Last week, you may have caught the story on "60 Minutes" about Chevron crapping all over the Amazon in Ecuador, poisoning the Indians who live there.

The Palast team is thrilled that a big commercial US Network is picking up our reports from BBC Television and Democracy Now!But if you watched the CBS report, you haven't seen the WHOLE story.

If you want the real thing, the original reports — uncut, uncensored — pick up our new film, Palast Investigates: From 8-Mile to the Amazon — On the Trail of the Financial Marauders.

Check out the trailer here.

Donate $40 or more to the Palast Investigative Fund (tax deductible) and I'll send you, with gratitude, a signed copy of the DVD.

The Chicago Tribune says, "these stories bite."  Here's what we've sunk our teeth into for this DVD — our 3 latest, biggest stories, for BBC Newsnight:
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Catch Amy Goodman, John Perkins and Greg Palast in Chicago this Saturday, May 16 at Greenfestival, Navy Pier.
Greg Palast will be speaking at 2pm - Topic: Burn the Banks.

Palast will also attend Netroots Nation Salon at No Exit Cafe, (6970 North Glenwood) Chicago at 8pm.

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By Meirion Jones
BBC Newsnight

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March 23, 2009

For SuicideGirls.com

"Gail, Please! Stick your hand in it!"

The petite Eskimo-Chugach woman gave me that you-dumb-ass-white-boy look.

"Gail, Gail. STICK YOUR GOODDAMN HAND IN IT!"

She stuck it in, under the gravel of the beach at Sleepy Bay, her village's fishing ground. Gail's hand came up dripping with black, sickening goo. It could make you vomit. Oil from the Exxon Valdez.

Native dancers, Nanwalek, Prince William Sound, Alaska, center of spill damage.

It was already two years after the spill and Exxon had crowed that Mother Nature had happily cleaned up their stinking oil mess for them. It was a lie. But the media wouldn't question the bald-faced bullshit. And who the hell was going to investigate Exxon's claim way out in some godforsaken Native village in the Prince William Sound?

So I convinced the Natives to fly the lazy-ass reporters out to Sleepy Bay on rented float planes to see the oil that Exxon said wasn't there.

The reporters looked, but didn't see it, because it was three inches under their feet, under the shingle rock of the icy beach. Gail pulled out her hand and now the whole place smelled like a gas station. The network crews wanted to puke. And now, with their eyes open, they saw the oil, the vile feces-colored smear across the glaciated ridge faces, the poisonous "bathtub ring" that ran for miles and miles at the high tide level. (Show me more...)

Barbie's not the only thing that's 50 this year.

This month it will be 50 years Tibetans have been fighting their occupation by China. In May of 1993 I visited the Dalai Lama's homeland to bring messages from him to his people - he would return.

By Greg Palast

For Originally for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

March 15, 2008

Lhasa, Tibet - China's secret police are just terrible at keeping themselves secret.

The detective, dressed in her business suit and pumps appropriate to urban Lhasa, did not expect to be trailing my wife and me up the steep hillside to a monastery 15,000 feet up an ice-crusted ridge. Even at 200 yards behind us, I could see her shivering in the thin, frozen air, trying, absurdly, to look like just another hiker on the barren slope.

But then, she really wasn't trying to hide. Her presence was meant to send a message of fear and intimidation.

I got the point earlier when a photographer we'd helped sneak into Tibet was arrested, her film of protesting Tibetans seized and her camera smashed as she was hustled onto the first plane leaving the country.

When my police shadow looked away, I snapped a photo of the long boxes below me, roofs of the prison complex. It housed more Buddhist monks than any monastery.

At a hermitage carved into the summit rock I found my host sitting cross-legged under an ancient tapestry depicting a monster ready to devour quiet souls.

The holy man had questions for us:

Does Christianity have a god? (Answer: "Sometimes.")

What is a ‘President'?

It was 1993. I told the monk the new President, (Show me more...)

Barbie's not the only one celebrating 50 years this month - Tibet's uprising against their Chinese occupiers began 5o years ago.

I thought I'd share with you one of the weirdest memos I've unearthed in my years of investigating corporate maledictions. Passed to me from inside Mattel, the toy company, with an August 12, 1997 time stamp. "TAR" stands for Tibet Autonomous Region.

- Greg Palast

Proprietary Content Confidential - Mktng only

To: Jongyol Rimpoche, JRimp@BarbieMttl.cn.TAR
From: BRab@M.IntlMkt.MttlCrp.com

Barbie Doll v Dalai Lama

JR,
Marketing greenlights your conclusion: Barbie can't play Tibet until she replaces current culture idol. Research Div did tab on competitor; looks like he's history:

Barbie: Over 2,000 outfits
The Dalai Lama: One outfit (orange bathrobe!)

Barbie: Sixteen hair-dos, including "growing ponytail"
The Dalai Lama: Shaved head (Yuck!)

Barbie: Two dozen pre-programmed and market-tested phrases. Changed annually.
The Dalai Lama: "Om Mane Padme Om" ("Hail the Fire in the Lotus" -- whatever that means.) Never changes.

Barbie: Worshiped by 600 million Barbie owners.

The Dalai Lama: Worshipped by only 6 million Tibetans.

Barbie: Creator of cultural revolution.
The Dalai Lama: Victim of cultural revolution.

Barbie: Accessories- Shoes, handbags, battery-operated cars -- you name it!
The Dalai Lama: Accessories- ZEE-RO! (Show me more...)