Special to the Arkansas Times
by Greg Palast (New York, London)
Illustration from Steal Back Your Vote Comic book voterguide.
To learn more click on the image.Greg Palast, the journalist who blew the whistle on Republican vote suppression activities in Florida ("caging"), has communicated with me further following an e-mail I passed along this morning. He has a theory on Republican congressional candidate Tim Griffin's involvement in the scheme
Palast's report:
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by Greg Palast for Truthout/Buzzflash
"What he [Griffin] did was absolutely illegal and he should be in jail."
That's hardly the kind of endorsement a candidate for Congress expects. But that is the conclusion of voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after digging into the evidence of Congressional candidate Tim Griffin's role in directing the Republican National Committee's racially biased attack on voters known as "caging."
A brutal mano-a-mano race in Arkansas' Second District has become a showdown between Sarah Palin's banner carrier Griffin (funded by SarahPAC) and Democrat Joyce Elliott who has drawn homeboy Bill Clinton back to Little Rock.
The ex-President, in Arkansas this week, was especially worked up about Griffin's caging list vote suppression scheme. (Our Good Ol' Boy in Chief told me back in 2008 he would bust out the story, and it only took him two years to do the right thing, a personal best for Bill.)
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Tim Griffin, Congressional candidate, exposed
NBC Arkansas television anchor and investigative reporter Melissa Simas confronted Griffin, a candidate for a Little Rock congressional seat, with the latest information Palast has uncovered on the "Tim Crow" caging scheme.
Watch the Report
It's not Tim Griffin's day. In 2004, BBC Television exposed Karl Rove's crony Tim Griffin, for running an operation to challenge the right to vote of active duty soldiers, especially those of color. (Show me more...)
Reported by: Melissa Simas, KARK 4 NBC News
After two years, and several resignations among Department of Justice staffers, in July, a special prosecutor wrapped up her investigation of the nine U.S. Attorneys fired in 2006. Bud Cummins, a Republican from Arkansas, was one of the U.S. Attorneys fired. Tim Griffin, another Republican, and the current candidate for Congress in Arkansas was named as his replacement.
Though no criminal charges were filed, the report indicates, "the process used to remove the nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006 was fundamentally flawed."
The report itself makes reference to Mr. Griffin's alleged involvement with voter caging. Because of Mr. Griffin's candidacy, we sat down with him to discuss the allegations. He told KARK he was not concerned about the Department of Justice report when he decided to run for Congress.
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Ecuador's president promises punishment
after day of chaos.
Rafael Correa promises 'no forgiveness' for those involved in uprising, as opposition politicians are accused of staging a coup.
Ecuador remains in a state of siege with the military in charge of public order.
President Rafael Correa is promising to punish his enemies a day after a police rebellion triggered mayhem.
In February 2008 Greg Palast met with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. They discussed the Lawsuit against Chevron, Eradicating Foreign Debt and Why He Says "Ecuador is No Longer for Sale"
Watch part of the interview.
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By Tim Damos, News Republic
Greg Palast doesn't pull any punches.
His investigative stories are written in classic muckraker style; hard-hitting in both the juiciness they uncover and the language they use.
Author of the New York Times best sellers "Armed Madhouse" and "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," Palast has become a familiar face at Fighting Bob Fest, the annual gathering devoted to carrying on the progressive spirit of the late Wisconsin Congressman and Gov. Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette.
WATCH Palast's keynote speech at the Barrymore Theater on September 10, 2010.
WATCH Palast's talk at the outdoor 2010 Fighting Bob Festival in Baraboo, WI on September 11, 2010.
Brian D. Bridgeford / News Republic File photo
(hover cursor to enlarge)For Palast, serious investigative journalism is not about projecting an image of objectivity by presenting both sides of an argument in a "he said, she said" story. It's about getting down in the trenches, relentlessly seeking truth and relaying it to readers untainted by any "spin."
"Impartial is not failing to say it like it is or to provide the information," Palast said in a phone interview Thursday, adding that many American mainstream reporters are afraid to pursue stories that are "threatening to (the elite's) agreed upon view of the world.
"If you're out of that channel, if you're out of their stream, they say, you're out of the mainstream."
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by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post
Five years ago this week, a beast drowned New Orleans. Don't blame Katrina: the lady never, in fact, touched the city. The hurricane swept east of it.
You want to know the name of the S.O.B. who attacked New Orleans? Locals call him "Mr. Go" - the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MR-GO).
MR-GO was undoubtedly the most bone-headed, deadly insane project ever built by the Army Corps of Engineers. It's a 76-mile long canal, straight as a gun barrel, running right up from the Gulf of Mexico to the heart of New Orleans.
In effect, MR-GO was a welcome mat to the city for Katrina. Experts call it "the Hurricane Highway."
Until the Army Corps made this crazy gash in the Mississippi Delta fifty years ago, Mother Nature protected the Crescent City with a green wreath of cypress and mangrove. The environmental slash-job caused the government's own hydrologist to raise alarms from Day One of construction.
Unless MR-GO was fixed or plugged, the Corps was inviting, "the possibility of catastrophic damage to urban areas by a hurricane surge coming up this waterway." (I'm quoting from a report issued 17 years before The Flood.)
A forensic analysis by Dr. John W. Day calculated that if the Corps had left just 6 miles of wetlands in place of the open canal, the surge caused by Katrina's wind would have been reduced by 4.5 feet and a lot of New Orleaneans would be alive today.
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Matt Pascarella and I encountered Patricia Thomas while she was breaking into a home at the Lafitte Housing Project in New Orleans. It was her own home. Nevertheless, if caught, she'd end up in the slammer. So would we. Matt was my producer for the film, Big Easy to Big Empty, and he encouraged my worst habits. I'd worked for the New Orleans Housing Authority years back and knew they wanted the poor black folk out of these pretty townhouses near the French Quarter. Katrina was an excuse for ethnic cleansing, American style. Matt and I skipped cuffs on this shoot, but were charged later by Homeland Security (see below). While I recorded the story of hidden evils on film, Matt gathered a story which no camera can capture. Here it is. — Greg Palast
by Matt Pascarella
Four years ago, on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I sat with Patricia Thomas. Greg Palast and I had just helped her break into her home in the Lafitte Projects. She had been locked out for a year. She showed us her former home, her belongings scattered everywhere, and wrestled out endless stories of post-Katrina life: how she struggled to find shelter over the last year, how they came and put bars on her doors and windows and locked her out, how it was “man made.”
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It's been five years already. In New Orleans, more than half the original residents have not, cannot, return.
"They don't want no poor niggers back in - that's the bottom line."
And that's Malik Rahim, Director of Common Ground, who led the survivors who rebuilt their homes in the teeth of official resistance in "The City That Care Forgot."
You'll meet Malik and the people that everyone forgot in Big Easy to Big Empty: the Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans, chosen this week as Moviefone's top pick of Katrina documentaries.
Donate and get the signed DVD with added material, including Palast with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman.
Meet Patricia Thomas who was locked out of her home in the Lafitte housing project near the French Quarter. We go with her as she breaks into her blockaded apartment.
"Katrina didn't do this. Man did this."
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by Greg Palast Special to BuzzFlash
Since everyone seems to have an opinion about the mosque near Ground Zero (and President Obama has two), I'd like to ask you all a couple of questions:
Given that white Christian supremacist Tim McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building, shouldn't we ban white churches from Oklahoma?
As New York City's indigenous Lenape Natives died at Ground Zero by the thousands when overrun by Christian colonists, shouldn't we ban Christian churches from their sacred ground?
If a mosque near Ground Zero is bad, then why not ban all Muslims from downtown New York? For this to work, should we require all Muslims in the city to wear yellow crescents?
My office was in the WTC towers, which will now be rebuilt with all the upscale shops I remember. So, Mrs. Palin, are you saying it's OK for Muslims to shop at Ground Zero as long as they don't pray there?
The new tower will have the old one's Off-Track Betting windows and bars with after-work "happy hours." So here's a solution to make everyone happy: Why not camouflage the mosque as a place to gamble and get into your secretary's panties?
How about disguising it as a discount fashion shop: Kate Mosque? Or as a Disney retail outlet: Mickey Mosque?
Jamie Kilstein has suggested to me that we ban Burger Kings from Ground Zero in honor of the victims of heart disease. But Jamie, the BKs are memorials to remind us that in the eyes of God, all of us — no matter what religion — are just hamburger meat.
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