Greg Palast's Blog, page 98

"I want my fair share–and that's ALL OF IT." The Kochs & the XL Pipeline

By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine

Activists alert:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his son Connor Kennedy were arrested Wednesday in Washington while protesting against approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

A rally in Washington, DC, protesting the Pipeline, has been called by Forward on Climate for Sunday, February 17.

Bobby Kennedy, my partner in these investigations, is a contributor to Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: Greg Palast investigates Karl Rove, the Koch Gang & their Buck Buddies, the book on which this report is based.

According to the transcript of the secretly recorded tape, Charles Koch was chuckling like a six-year old. Koch was having a hell of a laugh over pilfering a few hundred dollars' worth of oil from a couple of dirt-poor Indians on the Osage Reservation.

Why did Koch, worth about $3 billion at the time (now $20 billion) need to boost a few bucks from some Indian in a trailer home? Koch answered:

"I want my fair share – and that's all of it."

Now "all of it" includes a pipeline, the Keystone XL, which would run the world's filthiest oil, crude made from tar sands, down from Canada to his family's refinery on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

This is Part 2 of "The Koch Brothers, Hugo Chavez and the XL Pipeline." Part 1 explains that the Koch Oil refinery can only "crack" heavy crude from Venezuela—which costs $33 a barrel more than tar sands heavy oil. But Canada's cheap crude cannot get to Texas without a new, giant pipe. XL would save the Kochs nearly $3 billion a year.

Problem: the Keystone XL tar-oil tube would endanger the largest US water sources, vastly increase pollution in the USA and measurably heat the planet.

Solution: Congressman Tim Griffin.

Congressman Griffin is sponsoring the bill to force the Obama Administration to approve the XL Pipeline without the environmental review now required by law.

What's odd is that Griffin represents Arkansas, a state with no stake in the Pipeline.

But the Kochs have a stake in Griffin. In his maiden run for Congress, Griffin was elected with an eye-popping $167,000 donation from the Kochs. For $167,000, any congressman will wash your car – with their tongue.

For the Kochs, $167K is peanuts. Their political action operation, Americans for Prosperity, built a quarter billion dollar fund this past year, a sum never seen even in the US politics cash swamp.

Global Warming Denial as a Profit Center

To answer the concerns about global warming raised by the XL and the Kochs' oil business, the billionaire brothers have bankrolled a gold-plated campaign of global warming denial.

For example, Americans for Prosperity funded "Hot Air Tour" rallies across the US with the slogan, "Global Warming Alarmism: Lost Jobs, Higher Taxes and Less Freedom." More rallies were held by the Koch-funded FreedomWorks, a foundation which has seized control of the Tea Party movement—and redirected populist rage against plutocrats. FreedomWorks transformed the Tea Party into a used tea bag, dangling from the Kochs' string.

Break the Law then Re-make the Law

States on the pipeline's route could block the Keystone XL, but the crucial extension will originate in Oklahoma where the Kochs have cowed all resistance to their needs.

The Kochs' power to terrorize politicians in Oklahoma and the West originates in that case of Osage tribe's missing oil.

FBI agents filmed Koch Oil men pilfering the crude, had witnesses to Koch's directives to siphon the oil, and more. The US Justice Department drafted a criminal indictment of Koch Industries and Defendant "67C" (reportedly Charles Koch himself) for "Crime on an Indian Reservation" and racketeering, big-time jail-time offenses.

That's when Koch Oil drilled down and struck Bob Dole, the nation's most powerful Senator, the Republican Majority Leader.

Dole (representing Kansas), joined by a Koch-funded Senator from Oklahoma, Don Nickles, had the federal prosecutor who brought the case fired. Case closed except for a few million paid to the Osage for some of their stolen oil.

Dole ran for President using Koch money given to Dole's not-for-profit foundation. It was a cheap buy for the Kochs because it was illegal – so Dole, when caught, had to give it back.

But one Senator wouldn't let the oil theft go: Dennis DeConcini, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Investigations whose report concluded, "Koch Oil is the most dramatic example of an oil company stealing by deliberate mismeasurement and fraudulent reporting."

The Kochs didn't like that. And when the Kochs don't like something, or someone, it's notably more serious than a ‘thumbs down' on your Facebook page. In 1996 (yes, I've been investigating the Kochs for that long), DeConcini told me the Kochs warned him that if he published and stood by the Senate's and the FBI's findings, the Kochs would destroy the Senator's political career. They did.

Then there was the matter of the 97-count criminal indictment of Koch Oil for dumping poisonous crude sludge into rivers in six states. The Kochs didn't merely want to beat the rap—they wanted to continue dumping.

That would require buying a whole new Congress. No problemo, Pardner. In 1996, Koch Industries, through a fake front called Coalition for our Children's Future, secretly funded millions of dollars in vicious attack ads against vulnerable Democrats just days before the election.

As a result, Republican Newt Gingrich kept his post as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Gingrich pushed an agenda he called "The Contract with America", which would eliminate criminal sanctions for pollution and slash rules against polluting. The Center for Public Integrity said it "seems to have been drafted and designed for Koch interests."

Wrong. The Contract was drafted by the Kochs and crafted at the Heritage Foundation, a think-tank the Kochs founded.

Bill Clinton's Administration, though nominally Democratic, went easy on Koch interests. Vice-President Al Gore especially, head of the Reinventing Government Commission, attacked regulations with more verve than Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher. Gore's anti-regulation guidebook was the "Mandate for Change" drafted by the Democratic Leadership Council. It was the DLC that had launched the career of the previously unknown Bill Clinton, its first chair, and Al Gore's career as well. The DLC was created with $100,000 of Koch money.

The Kochs use of fronts for corporate donations to politicians was plain illegal—until, in 2010, the US Supreme Court decriminalized this game in the Citizens United case. The lawyer for Citizens United is Ted Olson, whose day job is representing Koch Industries.

Note: The Kochs are bi-partisan employers. They also retain lawyer Bob Strauss, former Chairman of the Democratic Party.

The Themis Machine

As if their billions, their think tanks, lawyers, fronts and political action fund were not enough to scare the bejeezus out of politicians, there is Themis. Themis, created by the Kochs, is the nation's most sophisticated, detailed database on every American living, surpassing the most demonic dreams of the FBI.

Themis, for example, knows the last time you, Jack, downloaded porn.

Given their power and their Themis, is it really possible for a few greenies and some fact-afflicted scientists to stop the Kochs from jamming their pipeline right up our aquifers?

Absolutely. Indeed, that's the only way it will be stopped, because the Kochs have already put the politicians in their pipe and smoked them.

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Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's store or simply make a contribution to keep our work alive!

MEDIA REQUESTS: For interviews contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

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Billionaire Burglar Breaks into Obama's Cabinet Pinch-Penny Pritzker pockets Commerce post

By Greg Palast for Truth-out

A parade of media reports this week name Penny Pritzker as Obama's prime choice for Secretary of Commerce. No longer will criminal bankers have to lobby the administration - because now they'll have one of their own in the Cabinet.

We never heard of this guy Barack Obama until 2004. Less than three years before taking the presidency, he was in the Illinois state senate, a swamp of scammers, backhanders, and party machine tools - not a stellar launch pad for the White House. And then, one day, state Sen. Barack Obama was visited by his fairy godmother. Her name is Penny Pritzker.

Penny's from Heaven?

Pritzger's net worth is listed in Forbes as $1.8 billion, which is one hell of a heavy magic wand in the world of politics. Her wand would have been heavier, and her net worth higher, except that in 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior, the bank-and-loan-shark operation she ran on the South Side of Chicago.

Superior was the first of the deregulated go-go banks to go bust - at the time, the costliest failure ever. US taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Superior's depositors lost millions and poor folk in Sen. Obama's South Side district lost their homes.

Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit. What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators so she could get away with this crap.

Pritzker introduced Obama, the neophyte state senator, to the Ladies Who Lunch (that's really what they call themselves) on Chicago's Gold Coast. Obama got lunch, gold and better - an introduction to Robert Rubin. Rubin is a former Secretary of the Treasury, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and, when Robert met Barry, co-chairman of Citibank. Even atheists recognized Rubin as the Supreme Deity of Wall Street.

Rubin opened the doors to finance industry vaults for Obama. Extraordinarily for a Democrat, Obama in 2008 raised three times as much from bankers as his Republican opponent.

This article is based on the chapter Penny's from Heaven?

From Palast's New York Times Bestseller Billionaires & Ballot Bandits with comics by Ted Rall.

Donate and get a signed copy.

So what did Citibank's Rubin get for showering Obama with gold? Obama agreed to take care of Rubin's poodles, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. They became Obama's first cabinet picks: Summers as Economics Czar and Geithner as his czarina, Secretary of the Treasury.

Geithner and Summers were the gents who, under Treasury Secretary Rubin, designed the deregulation of banking. In effect, they had decriminalized the kind of financial flim-flammery that brought the planet to its knees while bringing Rubin, Pritzker and the banksters loads of lucre.

So, in 2008, Summers and Geithner were put back in the saddle - Obama's horse but Rubin's saddle.

Rubin received more than $100 million from Citigroup, the gargantuan commercial bank/investment bank/casino created by deregulation. It is worth a mention that Rubin's centi-million-dollar payoff went unchallenged by Citi's new owner, the US Treasury, which had put up more than a trillion dollars in loans and guarantees to pull Rubin's creature out of bankruptcy.

Rubin rocked, but Penny was pissed off.

Pritzker had taken this state senator/community organizer from the ghetto, made him a US Senator, then, as Obama's campaign finance chairwoman, raised a mind-blowing three-quarters of a billion dollars to make him president.

In return, in 2008, Obama decided to make his patron Penny the Secretary of Commerce. But then, in November 2008, just as Obama was about to submit her nomination to Congress, a bunch of Pritzker's victims marched on Washington. They were not from her busted bank, but unhappy workers from the lucrative nursing homes that her family owns through a string of complex offshore trusts. Obama slammed the door on Penny pronto.

In the 2012 campaign, Obama, to his credit, kept the door shut on Pritzker, reducing her to hosting an election fundraiser at her Gold Coast digs, which she had to bill as a Goldman Sachs PAC event. This marks possibly the first time anyone has used Goldman Sachs as a PR cover.

The Pritzker family made its billions mostly from Hyatt Hotels and Hyatt nursing homes. Penny, on the Hyatt board of directors, is an infamously combative anti-union apostle. UNITE HERE, the union that represents Hyatt workers, has called for an international boycott of Hyatt hotels. In 2012, UNITE HERE and its parent, the AFL-CIO, were crucial to Obama's winning Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. So, in this last campaign, Obama had to keep his billionairess heiress on the down-low.

But today, with the unions' money and votes already pocketed and counted, Obama can give working folks The Finger and give Penny her pound of flesh: the Commerce post.

The New York Times says that, "At Commerce, Ms. Pritzker could provide the president with a new way to reach out to the business community." The last time Pritzker reached out to the business community was to sell them sub-prime mortgage securities, worthless bags of financial feces manufactured by Superior Bank.

If Penny the Piggy Banker gets Commerce, we'll have to drop Obama's rating to sub-prime.

So what are you going to do about it?

Join with the union maids at:

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Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's store or simply make a contribution to keep our work alive!

MEDIA REQUESTS: For interviews contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

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The Koch Brothers, Hugo Chavez and the XL Pipeline

By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine and The Other 98%

I’ve been tracking a tube of black putrid ooze, a toxic viper slowly slithering 2000 miles across the belly of America, swallowing all water aquifers, politicians and reason in its path.

The XL Keystone Pipeline.

As Nagini, the murderous snake in the Harry Potter tales, had its master Voldemort, I figured the Keystone XL Pipeline much also have its own dark lords.

I smelled Koch.

David and Charles Koch are each worth $20 billion--and they’re quite certain that’s not enough.  And so they need the XL Keystone Pipeline.

The XL Keystone will take Canadian tar-sands oil, the filthiest crude on the planet and suck it down to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. Alberta’s oil-glop reserve, if it can get to the US market, will warm the planet by nearly .4°C all by itself.

Why in the world would America pistol-whip Mother Nature to bring oil to Texas? I mean, it’s just plain weird to suck heavy tar oil out of Canada, drag it across the entire middle of the USA to import it into the oil-exporting Lone Star State.

Here’s where a little lesson in oil chemistry comes in.  You can’t just throw any old crude oil into an oil refinery.  These giant filth factories are actually quite sensitive.  The refineries of the Texas Gulf Coast are optimized for heavy crude.

It would cost billions of dollars to rebuild the giant Flint Hills Corpus Christi Refinery, owned by Koch Industries, to use the less-polluting Texas oil drilled nearby.

The Kochs need heavy crude. But the Brothers Koch have a problem.  Heavy crude is controlled by a heavy dude – President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

In case you haven’t heard, the US Department of Energy now says Venezuela, not Saudi Arabia, has the world’s largest petroleum reserve--including the overwhelming majority of the planet’s heavy crude.

And Chavez is not giving it away.  “We are no longer an oil colony, Mr. Palast,” Chavez told me in one of our meet-ups in Caracas.

He wasn’t kidding.  Venezuela’s export price now averages around $100 a barrel.

Read the full article at Vice Magazine. This week, readers may download, without charge, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, the film based on Greg Palast’s investigations for BBC Television, The Guardian and Harper’s.

So the Kochs have turned their gaze upward--to Canada, where Alberta oil men are selling their tar-sands gunk for a whopping $33 a barrel less Chavez Heavy.  Do the math:  With 289,000 barrels a day refined at Corpus Christi, switching to Canadian Tar from Venezuela Heavy could put $3 billion a year extra into the pockets of the Kochs.

Koch Brothers, sample card from Palast’s 2004 Tarot-size playing cards. (Yes, the Kochs really were worth only $6 billion then).

However, there’s a problem.  Between Canada and Houston is the United States.  At the moment, there’s no pipeline that can take all that cheap crude south.  The southbound pipeline network now chokes at Cushing, Oklahoma, which is already blocked with 47 million barrels of crude sitting in storage tanks with nowhere to go.

The XL Pipeline would act as an oil enema, releasing the impacted inventory, enriching the Gulf refineries.

Cheap crude oil will then flow south, but as Canadian economist Robyn Allan writes, “It's the refining sector that sees the benefit of lower priced WCS [West Canadian Sands oil] in the form of windfall profits from low feedstock costs.”

The gusher of cheap crude from a new pipeline will enrich the refiners … none more so than refiners named Koch.

So all the Kochs have to do is get the US government to agree to pop a pipe through Cushing to Houston—the Keystone XL.  But that would require that the US government go stark raving mad, commit environmental suicide, reverse all policy to slow global warming -- all to bring in foreign oil while the US itself is suffering from a major oil and gas glut.

How will the Kochs pull that off?  Easy. They only need a diplomatic war with Venezuela, and their “Themis” machine, a unique tool which can drill deep into huge reserves of heavily-oiled politicians.

– Read the full article at Vice.com.

More on that next week...

Activists alert:

All major environmental groups will hold the Forward on Climate Rally against the XL Pipeline in Washington, DC on February 17.

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Get the real skinny on the Brothers Koch in “Petroleum Porn: the XXXL Pipeline,” in the New York Times bestseller, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: Greg Palast investigates Karl Rove, the Koch Gang and their Buck Buddies.

Palast is also the author of the New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's store or simply make a contribution to keep our work alive!

MEDIA REQUESTS: For interviews contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

www.GregPalast.com

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Aaron Swartz Died for Piers Morgan's Sins

By Greg Palast for Vice.com

This is the tale of two geniuses.

Aaron Swartz

In 2000, Aaron Swartz, aged 14, had just released his astonishing invention, RSS, to ease the flow of information and news around the Internet. Around the same time, one of Piers Morgan’s stringers hacked into the phone of Sir Paul McCartney’s wife and stole some highly personal, and highly valuable, information – the type of gossip used to sell Morgan’s grotty little scandal sheet, The Daily Mirror, the cornerstone of a $20 million fortune based on tittle and titties.

Electronic burglary for profit is a crime in the UK and USA both. But Piers is serving time on prime time, on CNN.

Aaron Swartz was charged for the crime of attempting to liberate documents from JSTOR computers.  JSTOR holds a monopoly on university research papers, sequestering information crucial to the public which paid for it.  For his selfless act of civil disobedience, Aaron faced 35 years in prison.  Instead, only 26 years old, Aaron chose suicide.

And Piers? There was the little matter of him using restricted information to defraud the stock market. Two of Morgan’s influential financial columnists would make recommendations to the rubes reading The Mirror. Piers bought the stocks just before they were boosted in his paper. Morgan pocketed tens of thousands of pounds. His co-conspirators, the reporters, got jail time. Not Piers. He admitted to the profiteering and walked away with a fine.

So how did Piers get through US immigration when surrounded by a cloud of criminality? Easy: Morgan’s a “genius.”

Piers Morgan, Ed Victor and Louis B. Susman at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel

The US embassy gave him a rare O-1 work permit, known as the “Genius Visa” for “the individual who possesses extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts…”.

Odd that, genius or not. US laws, especially the mellifluously titled, “Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act” of 1996, bar work visas to those who have admitted to “the essential elements of a crime” including fraud and white collar felonies.

How?

The US Embassy can exercise its discretion on visas. And no one is more discrete than the US Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Mr. Louis Susman, whose credentials are listed as former Vice-Chairman of Citibank and “prolific fundraiser for [the] Democratic Party”. Susman’s embassy did a thorough review of Piers’ visa. (Here is a photo of Ambassador Susman with Piers at the CNN launch party of Morgan’s show.)



What does “genius” Morgan have to do with the horror of the arrest and death of Aaron Swartz?

Read the full story at Vice.com.

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Piers Morgan And My Pee Pee

By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine

Now, if this were a movie, you would hear the audience scream, "DON’T TAKE THE KEY! DON’T GO UP THOSE STAIRS!"

The reporter part of my brain was screaming, too: 'THIS SMELLS BAD.' But I couldn’t  hear a thing because, while I was out for the story, the memory of Ms Jamaica’s hand in my pocket had drained the blood from my cerebellum. I went up those stairs. Unlocked the door.

BUT FOR GOD’S SAKE, DON’T TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS!

I took off my pants.

When the door opened and Ms Jamaica’s husband walked in (this scamp has a husband?!), I thought, 'No problem.'

But there was a problem: the photographer and reporter from The Mirror.

Touché, Piers.

The Mirror’s page one splash, in letters bigger than they used for "Hitler defeated": SEX SCANDAL ROCKS LABOUR CONFERENCE.

* * * * 

This is the third of Palast's weekly columns for VICE – beginning with a bang: a four-part series on Alex Jones, guns, Piers Morgan and Palast's penis.  If you read the full version of part 3 of these reports right now at Vice Magazine, y ou get a bonus:  a free download copy of Palast's latest book, the bestseller, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.

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Page two headline: UNDERCOVER MAN’S SNEAKY NIGHT AT LABOUR HOTEL.

Page three headline: FROM THE LIAR TO THE LURKER.

And mucho photos of me and the Distraught Damsel.

And, in The Guardian – my paper – Simon Hoggart reported overhearing The Mirror’s editor, one Piers Morgan, receiving his “thank you” from the Prime Minister’s press spokesman, Alastair Campbell, for “what you did for us” – for “Tony”. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, the Dark Prince and for those even more powerful in the darkness behind The Prince.

When the ruling class needs to screw us, they hire a screwdriver. And one of their favourite tools is Piers Morgan.

My story began in 1998. A consultant for a Texan company named Enron was shopping to buy influence with the Blair Government, obtained the icky details of how huge US and UK corporations (Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, Tesco, the Texas lottery operator and Enron) used cash and political favours to rewrite laws and obtain inside information worth its weight in gold.

But the Enron man was really Guardian-Observer reporter Greg Palast wearing a wire and taking notes in meetings in “Enron’s suite" at the Tower Hotel, in the ruling-class watering hole of The Reform Club and sipping Lambert Brut in the Banqueting Room at Westminster where King James lost his head.

And at the centre of the Casbah of Corruption was the man known as The Prince of Darkness – one Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair’s Karl Rove – his Rasputin – and his boy protégé, Derek Draper, better known as “Dolly” (don’t ask), one of my unwitting and witless sources.

My investigative report, “Lobby-gate: Cash for Access,” took over television news and all the front pages. But Piers Morgan, Blair’s vassal, covered The Mirror’s front page with a not too pretty photo of me under four-inch high letters: "THE LIAR."

Of course I lied. That’s my job. To get the tapes and documents. But the tapes and documents didn’t lie.

That was 1998. Fast forward a year to 1999 and I’m walking into Ms Jamaica’s room. I won’t repeat her name (even infamy is currency in our world), but will mention that she was Prince Mandelson’s newest toy: his and Blair’s candidate for the Labour Party executive.

Weirdly, it had been me who’d suggested she hook up with Mandelson. She was trying to get into politics and into my pants. I didn’t object to either. I told her she was what Mandelson desperately needed: a “two-fer” – black and female – his perfect cat's-paw candidate.

(If this is all getting a bit complex, welcome to my life and my somewhat distinctive methods of investigation. For the full story, check out my book Vultures’ Picnic.)

A year later, after breaking my Lobby-gate story, I remembered Ms Jamaica and hoped, correctly, that Mandy’s latest political beard was still interested in “dancing”. Oh, she was, but now the Labour Party minders had kept her under lock and key at the party conference where she was running for the top post. When they found out that their nemesis, Greg Palast, was escorting her to the New Statesmen ball, they whisked the foolish little lady safely away from her hotel room – after having her leave a key.

Once me and my penis grabbed the key and fell into the honey trap, they called the master truth-twister, Piers, who ran the story as me sneaking my way into her room. (That’s a crime, by the way, and Labour demanded that Jamaica and her hubby file a police complaint. I only avoided arrest and getting dumped to the curb by The Guardian because a hotel clerk blew the whistle. He signed an affidavit revealing that Ms Jamaica had given him the key with a request I go into her room and wait for her.)

And Ms Jamaica? Labour slandered her, dumped her, let the press savage her. Boo hoo. Except for The Mirror, which continued the fantasy story. In May 2004, The Mirror finally fired Piers for yet another fake story that Morgan refused – in the face of photo evidence – to retract.

So do I have it in for Piers Moron (as Private Eye calls him)? Naw. The Blairs, the Mandelsons and the corporate powers that fund them will always find their stooges, fluffers, enforcers, reputation hit-men, liars-for-hire and goons.

Moron’s just more craven, more malleable, more enthusiastically scumbag-ish than most, and so paid more than most – in both cash and, it seems, legal protection.

I’ve said that Morgan must be deported from the USA; a fugitive from justice. No joke. We’ll get to that in the next column.

But Morgan’s moral crime is more serious than visa violations and even the felonies of which he boasts. Piers Morgan rents himself as the punisher for the powerful, assault weapon for the privileged.

After all, I can’t believe that Piers, personally, gives a damn about Greg Palast’s pleasure pickle. It’s only that by agreeing to smear those who expose corporate corruption, that Piers Morgan – and too many like him – can curry favour with their corporate media masters and their politician toy boys.

Missed Part One? – Read it HERE. 

Missed Part Two?  –  Read it HERE. 

Coming up:

Part Three –  Deport Piers Morgan: In Chains

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Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's store or simply make a contribution to keep our work alive!

MEDIA REQUESTS: For interviews contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

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Assault Gun Ban - Weapon of Mass Distraction

By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine

George Bush told America he'd keep us safe from terrorists by having us take off our shoes at the airport.

Yesterday, Barack Obama again took the Oath of Office. And this Obama 2.0 is also going to save America from insane killers – by limiting ammo clips to ten bullets instead of 30.

At a television press conference about the Newtown school massacre last Wednesday, a tearful President called this, "meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this".

It won't.

But, once again, we get to pretend that our presidents protect us and save us from what is murdering us and destroying us.

But The Great Assault Rifle Debate, like the War on Terror, is just another Weapon of Mass Distraction.

* * * * 

This is the second of Palast's weekly columns for VICE – beginning with a bang: a four-part series on Alex Jones, guns, Piers Morgan and Palast's penis.  If you read the full version of part 2 of these reports right now at Vice Magazine,

You get a bonus:  a free download copy of Palast's latest book, the bestseller, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.

* * * *

In all fairness to Obama, he also called – as Bush did – for a massive increase in the number of FBI files kept on Americans. I feel safer already, don't you?

Here's the facts, ma'am: There are about 4.5 million assault rifles in American civilian hands. That's around the same number as in tiny Switzerland (population: eight million). Tens of thousands of Swiss keep a 9mm Sig Sauer, like the one used by the Newtown killer. But we don't see the Swiss sweeping dead kids out of their schoolyards.

The weapon of America's deadliest mass killer, Timmy McVeigh, was fertiliser. Maybe we should ban bullshit, but that would shut down Washington and all five major TV networks.

At his assault-gun dog-and-pony show on Wednesday, Obama shed tears for the murdered victims, as well he should. But where are his tears for the victims of the MACT?

Let me explain. Last month, Obama bullied his own Environmental Protection Agency into watering down the "MACT" standards – the limits on industrial boiler pollution.

Under this loosened "MACT" rule, industry will get to triple the hydrogen chloride and triple the particulate filth they may dump into the air. The White House crows that Obama's bending over on this rule will save corporate polluters $1.5 billion (£945 million) a year. Yippee!

Last year, the White House proudly posted the statement of EPA's Administrator Lisa Jackson that her proposed boiler pollution rules would help "prevent 17,000 premature deaths [and] 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms."

Then, last month, the White House posted the REVISED EPA death count. The weakened boiler rule will now, "avoid up to 8,100 premature deaths and 52,000 asthma attacks."

Do the arithmetic.  Obama's climb-down on the rules will kill at least 8,900 people, and permit at least 68,000 asthma attacks compared to the original rule.

The deadly assault on unarmed Americans followed an Executive Order issued by Obama, after lobbyists stormed the White House, to cut costs to lung-choker industries.

If children die from gunfire, Obama has tears for TV. But if your child suffocates in industrial goo, neither Obama nor the news give a flying fart if your kid chokes or croaks.

So, rather than take away assault rifles, we'd save far more children by taking away the President's easy access to executive orders.

And the Republicans? Obama killing 9,000 more asthmatics annually is just not enough for them. So, to placate these GOP industry stooges, Obama threw them the severed head of his EPA chief, Lisa Jackson, pushing her to resign.

Here's a real life-saving proposal: Rather than spy on gun buyers, the FBI should do background checks on Congressmen – and if they have a history of taking donations from polluters, ban them from voting on life-and-death laws. – Read the full Article at Vice.com

Missed Part One? – Read it at Vice.com 

Coming up:

Part Three –  Deport Piers Morgan: In Chains

Part Four – Piers and my Penis

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Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.

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Alex Jones, Guns, Piers Morgan – and My Penis

By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine

This is the first of Palast's weekly columns for VICE – beginning with a bang: a four-part series on Alex Jones, guns, Piers Morgan and Palast's penis.

PART ONE: ALEX JONES VERSUS DOWNTON ABBEY

Alex Jones is right. Deport Piers Morgan. NOW. Send him back. In chains.

But not because Piers doesn’t believe in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. (I mean, really, who gives a shit what Piers Morgan believes?) Piers Morgan should be turned over to Scotland Yard forthwith because he’s a criminal. And because of what he said about my penis, which we'll get to later.

This year's big YouTube hit so far – excluding the video of the guy sucking an umbrella out of his dog's anus – is the footage of Alex Jones stuffing a figurative umbrella up Piers Morgan.

It shows Alex Jones – the host of one of the only intellectually substantive, fact-heavy forums on American radio – going nuclear on prime time. In notably high decibels, Alex was trying to explain to Piers why America has a Bill of Rights while England has David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Paul McCartney.

Before I enumerate the charges against Morgan, we need to ask two questions. Why did Alex Jones seem to lose it on air? And why is it so important to the media elite to ridicule him and dismiss him as a fruitcake and a buffoon – just another scary, Texan gun-nut – while they venerate Pus Moron – the scoundrel, the faker, the wanker – like he's Thomas Jefferson?

What was really behind Alex's freak-out?

The yell from Alex's throat was not his own voice alone – it was the choric cry of his millions of listeners in the forgotten heartland of America. It was the scream of the screwed.

It's not about guns. The shoot-out between Jones, rough-voiced and real, versus Morgan, faux journalist with the snooty accent, is a metaphoric battle. The movers and shakers on Morgan's guest list versus the moved and shaken across the Great Plains who listen to Jones; the privileged 1 Percent versus Jones' 99 Percenters; those who got the gold mine versus those who got the shaft.

Read the full story at Vice Magazine

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Big Oil, Big Ketchup and The Assassination of Hugo Chavez

By Greg Palast for Truthout

Venezuelan President Chavez once asked me why the US elite wanted to kill him. My dear Hugo: It's the oil. And it's the Koch Brothers – and it's the ketchup.

[As a purgative for the crappola fed to Americans about Chavez, my foundation, The Palast Investigative Fund, is offering the film, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, as a FREE download. Based on my several meetings with Chavez, his kidnappers and his would-be assassins, filmed for BBC Television. DVDs also available.]

Reverend Pat Robertson said,

"Hugo Chavez thinks we're trying to assassinate him. I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it."

It was 2005 and Robertson was channeling the frustration of George Bush's State Department. Despite Bush's providing intelligence, funds and even a note of congratulations to the crew who kidnapped Chavez (we'll get there), Hugo remained in office, reelected and wildly popular.

But why the Bush regime's hate, hate, HATE of the President of Venezuela?

Reverend Pat wasn't coy about the answer: It's the oil.

"This is a dangerous enemy to our South controlling a huge pool of oil."

A really BIG pool of oil. Indeed, according to Guy Caruso, former chief of oil intelligence for the CIA, Venezuela hold a recoverable reserve of 1.36 trillion barrels, that is, a whole lot more than Saudi Arabia.

If we didn't kill Chavez, we'd have to do an "Iraq" on his nation. So the Reverend suggests,

"We don't need another $200 billion war….It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Chavez himself told me he was stunned by Bush's attacks: Chavez had been quite chummy with Bush Senior and with Bill Clinton.

So what made Chavez suddenly "a dangerous enemy"? Here's the answer you won't find in The New York Times:

Just after Bush's inauguration in 2001, Chavez' congress voted in a new "Law of Hydrocarbons." Henceforth, Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell Oil and Chevron would get to keep 70% of the sales revenues from the crude they sucked out of Venezuela. Not bad, considering the price of oil was rising toward $100 a barrel.

But to the oil companies, which had bitch-slapped Venezeula's prior government into giving them 84% of the sales price, a cut to 70% was "no bueno." Worse, Venezuela had been charging a joke of a royalty – just one percent – on "heavy" crude from the Orinoco Basin. Chavez told Exxon and friends they'd now have to pay 16.6%.

Clearly, Chavez had to be taught a lesson about the etiquette of dealings with Big Oil.

On April 11, 2002, President Chavez was kidnapped at gunpoint and flown to an island prison in the Caribbean Sea. On April 12, Pedro Carmona, a business partner of the US oil companies and president of the nation's Chamber of Commerce, declared himself President of Venezuela – giving a whole new meaning to the term, "corporate takeover."

U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro immediately rushed down from his hilltop embassy to have his picture taken grinning with the self-proclaimed "President" and the leaders of the coup d'état.

Bush's White House spokesman admitted that Chavez was, "democratically elected," but, he added, "Legitimacy is something that is conferred not by just the majority of voters." I see.

With an armed and angry citizenry marching on the Presidential Palace in Caracas ready to string up the coup plotters, Carmona, the Pretend President from Exxon returned his captive Chavez back to his desk within 48 hours. (How? Get The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, the film, expanding on my reports for BBC Television. You can download it for free for the next few days.)

Chavez had provoked the coup not just by clawing back some of the bloated royalties of the oil companies. It's what he did with that oil money that drove Venezuela's One Percent to violence.

In Caracas, I ran into the reporter for a TV station whose owner is generally credited with plotting the coup against the president. While doing a publicity photo shoot, leaning back against a tree, showing her wide-open legs nearly up to where they met, the reporter pointed down the hill to the "ranchos," the slums above Caracas, where shacks, once made of cardboard and tin, where quickly transforming into homes of cinder blocks and cement.

"He [Chavez] gives them bread and bricks, so they vote for him, of course." She was disgusted by "them," the 80% of Venezuelans who are negro e indio (Black and Indian)—and poor. Chavez, himself negro e indio, had, for the first time in Venezuela's history, shifted the oil wealth from the privileged class that called themselves "Spanish," to the dark-skinned masses.

While trolling around the poor housing blocks of Caracas, I ran into a local, Arturo Quiran, a merchant seaman and no big fan of Chavez. But over a beer at his kitchen table, he told me,

"Fifteen years ago under [then-President] Carlos Andrés Pérez, there was a lot of oil money in Venezuela. The ‘oil boom' we called it. Here in Venezuela there was a lot of money, but we didn't see it."

But then came Hugo Chavez, and now the poor in his neighborhood, he said, "get medical attention, free operations, x-rays, medicines; education also. People who never knew how to write now know how to sign their own papers."

Chavez' Robin Hood thing, shifting oil money from the rich to the poor, would have been grudgingly tolerated by the US. But Chavez, who told me, "We are no longer an oil colony," went further…too much further, in the eyes of the American corporate elite.

Venezuela had landless citizens by the millions – and unused land by the millions of acres tied up, untilled, on which a tiny elite of plantation owners squatted. Chavez' congress passed in a law in 2001 requiring untilled land to be sold to the landless. It was a program long promised by Venezuela's politicians at the urging of John F. Kennedy as part of his "Alliance for Progress."

Plantation owner Heinz Corporation didn't like that one bit. In retaliation, Heinz closed its ketchup plant in the state of Maturin and fired all the workers. Chavez seized Heinz' plant and put the workers back on the job. Chavez didn't realize that he'd just squeezed the tomatoes of America's powerful Heinz family and Mrs. Heinz' husband, Senator John Kerry (now, Obama's nominee for U.S. Secretary of State).

Or, knowing Chavez as I do, he didn't give a damn.

Chavez could survive the ketchup coup, the Exxon "presidency," even his taking back a piece of the windfall of oil company profits, but he dangerously tried the patience of America's least forgiving billionaires: The Koch Brothers.

How? Well, that's another story for another day. [Watch this space. Or read about it in the book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. Go to BallotBandits.org).

Elected presidents who annoy Big Oil have ended up in exile—or coffins: Mossadegh of Iran after he nationalized BP's fields (1953), Elchibey, President of Azerbaijan, after he refused demands of BP for his Caspian fields (1993), President Alfredo Palacio of Ecuador after he terminated Occidental's drilling concession (2005).

"It's a chess game, Mr. Palast," Chavez told me. He was showing me a very long, and very sharp sword once owned by Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator. "And I am," Chavez said, "a very good chess player."

In the film The Seventh Seal, a medieval knight bets his life on a game of chess with the Grim Reaper. Death cheats, of course, and takes the knight. No mortal can indefinitely outplay Death who, this week, Chavez must know, will checkmate the new Bolivar of Venezuela.

But in one last move, the Bolivarian grandmaster plays a brilliant endgame, naming Vice-President Nicolas Maduro, as good and decent a man as they come, as heir to the fight for those in the "ranchos." The One Percent of Venezuela, planning on Chavez's death to return them the power and riches they couldn't win in an election, are livid with the choice of Maduro.

Chavez sent Maduro to meet me in my downtown New York office back in 2004. In our run-down detective digs on Second Avenue, Maduro and I traded information on assassination plots and oil policy.

Even then, Chavez was carefully preparing for the day when Venezuela's negros e indios would lose their king—but still stay in the game.

Class war on a chessboard. Even in death, I wouldn't bet against Hugo Chavez.

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Investigative reporter Greg Palast covered Venezuela for BBC Television Newsnight and Harper’s Magazine.

Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's store or simply make a contribution to keep our work alive!

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

www.GregPalast.com

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'The Assassination of Hugo Chavez' Download the Film for Free

Over the years many things have been said about Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez but rarely has the true story of the man Pat Robertson called "a dangerous enemy" been told - that's what I've done in The Assassination of Hugo Chavez.

Since the main stream media has decided that Chavez is "a ruinous demagogue" (NYT) - I've decided to release my film, The Assassination of  Hugo Chavez for free. You can download it for free at the link, or leave a small donation so that we can continue making films like this.

Download the Film for FREE

Watch the Trailer

 

Thanks,

Greg Palast

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The Obligatory, End of the Year Top 10 List

Here's the stories the got the most attention in 2012

The Palast Investigative Fund was quite effective this year. Vulture funds were banned, election theft made national headlines, and we outed gov't profiteer posing as a candidate.

Oh, and our little book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits hit the New York Times Bestseller list for 5 weeks.

This was a great year for the Palast Team (other than our photographer getting his head and camera beat) - and we couldn't have done it without your support, financially and though the simple act of sharing our information.

We're ready for 2013 and have already started putting together the plans for our next investigations, films and maybe even another book.

For now though - please re-read our top, breaking stories from 2012 - many of which you can find in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.

While we'll never see David Letterman reading these - you, our readers shared these stories around the world - on Facebook, on Twitter (@Greg_Palast) and by forwarding them to your friends via the old fashioned way… e-mail.

PS: Please remember - a Palast Investigation never ends… all these stories will be returned to - so remember the names, memorize the faces - because you'll be seeing them again in a film and book yet to be named… in 2013. That's why the final, extra story is called "Don't Touch That Snooze Button."

Have a Happy New Year and rest up - because we've only just begun to fight!

-From The Palast Team

1. The Pig in the XL Pipeline

2. Romney's Billionaire Funder Threatens BBC Investigative Reporter

3. UPDATE: Cops beat our cameraman ZD Roberts

4. Fracking: New Dangers

5. The Worst Teacher in Chicago

6. Congo Vultures Bagged

7. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: 2012

8. Mitt Romney's Bailout Bonanza

9. Democracy Now:  Ohio – Wrong Ballots for Black Voters

10. UAW Files Charges Against Romney  on his Auto Bail-out Profiteering

And one more...

Don’t Touch that Snooze Button

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