The untold story of the sources of the loot controlled by Paul "The Vulture" Singer, Ken Langone and the Kochs—and why they need to buy the White House

by Greg Palast for TruthOut/Buzzflash

Greg Palast's investigative reports are broadcast by BBC Television's Newsnight. His new book, Vultures' Picnic: a Tale of Oil, Sex, Radiation and Investigative Reporting will be released by Penguin USA on November 14.

[October 5, 2011] Paul Singer likes to breakfast on decayed carcasses. What he chews down is sickening, but just as nausea-inducing are his new table mates: Ken Langone and the Koch Brothers, Charles and David.

Singer has called together the billionaire boys club for the purpose of picking our next president for us. The old fashioned way of choosing presidents—democracy and counting ballots and all that—has never been a favorite of this pack. I can tell you that from my investigations of each of these gentlemen for The Guardian. When the Statue of Liberty has nightmares, she dreams that these guys will combine to seize America via a cash-and-carry coup d'état. (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast

That was nuthin': In 2000, the Palast investigations team uncovered the purge of 58,000 legal Florida voters, most of them African-Americans, by Katherine Harris.

In 2004, we uncovered the "caging lists" which 're-elected' George Bush.

That was nuthin' too ... compared to the theft of 2012 that is now in the making.

Major TV and print outlets are finally recognizing that the Palast team has the expertise, the cojones and the nose to sniff out mass vote bending.

We are planning our strategy right now for the hard-core, dig deep, multi-state research that we need to get the details, the documents and the proof of the fix of 2012.

So, for the first time in this entire year, I am asking—frankly, I'm pleading—for your financial support to get this investigation going right now.

First, I'm looking for 24 donors to commit to provide $2,000 each, at minimum, to launch the Missing Ballot Investigation. It's tax deductible, it's non-partisan, it's hard-core journalism, "so relevant it threatens to alter history," says the Chicago Tribune. Donate and I'll proudly list you as a producer of our Election year prime-time broadcast.

And I am counting on 200 generous souls to donate at least $150. You'll receive a signed hardbound copy of my new book, Vultures' Picnic, which will be sent to you the week of its release on November 15. In the meantime, I'll send you 5 signed copies of Steal Back Your Vote, the world's first investigative comic book, co-authored by Bobby Kennedy with full color ink work of genius cartoonists Ted Rall and Lloyd Dangle.

You can also support our cause by making a simple no-gift donation of any amount.

Our work for BBC TV and the Guardian, once ignored by the US

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NationofChange

Don't worry:  the bankers are safe.  The sub-prime sharks, derivatives divas, media mavens and their hairdressers, their trophy wives and their trophies' personal trainers, the movers and shakers and money-makers, are all out of danger. Despite the warning that in a couple of days Hurricane Irene could well hit The Hamptons, the beach of the best of the ruling class will not lose a tan line.

I made sure they're safe.  A couple decades ago, I worked on an emergency evacuation plan for the county of Suffolk, New York, home of the Hamptons.  It's the wealthiest county in the United States.

The Hamptons' hurricane plan is six volumes thick.  The police and the politicians, the fire department and the first responders have their copies, their orders, their equipment and they are ready to roll before a single fake-blonde curl is ruffled by untoward weather.

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by Greg Palast
exclusive for Truthout.org/Buzzflash

I am not surprised that Piers Morgan has been outed for hacking phones (listening, in one case, to personal messages between Heather Mills and Paul McCartney). I learned about the creepy antics of this one-man TV-host crime spree the hard way: as a victim of his crime-and-slime form of "journalism."

On September 29, 1998, Piers Morgan's Mirror ran a screaming full page headline:  SEX SCANDAL ROCKS LABOUR CONFERENCE.  His paper

had caught a rival paper's reporter who'd broken into the hotel room of a comely young rising star of the Labour Party.  The reporter was caught there half undressed.

I was that reporter.

And the story was a complete load of crap.  But Piers Morgan, "editor" of the Mirror, ran the report on Page One, and pages 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6—even though he knew it was fabricated.  He knew because he had fabricated it.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's press chief personally thanked Morgan for running the bogus story. (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast

It was quite upsetting to find our President blindfolded and tied to a chair at the GOP Tea Party headquarters, but I'm sure the $2.2 trillion ransom we paid to the hostage-takers is worth it.

Well, now that the Obama presidency is over, we can move on to more serious matters.

Look out your window.  What you'll see is that, while the debt-ceiling hostage crisis played out on cable TV, the planet has been burning down.

You haven't heard a lot from me this year—because the normally-noisy Palast investigations team has chosen to spend these months quietly digging into unreported cases of economic and environmental arson.  It will all hit the presses and TV when we launch a new book and films later this year.

But the investigations continue at full tilt:

#1. Too Far Beyond Petroleum. (Show me more...)

I asked my daughter if she would like to add her own recollections about JK Rowling and the "alternative" Harry Potter endings Jo Rowling told us when we were hanging out in the Green Room at BBC Television Centre. (I provide investigative stories for the BBC current affairs program Newsnight.) My daughter and her oblivious twin brother don't remember much, but what did leave an impression were my speculations about the untimely and suspicious death of my fellow investigative reporter, Karl Larsson--whom you would know as the fiction writer "Stieg" Larsson.

My daughter interviewed me about Larsson's work and wrote this report for school. Her mother is allowing me to post it only on condition her by-line gives her nickname only. (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast
exclusive for Truthout/Buzzflash.com

Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist gave debtors' prison a bad rap. Too bad. I'd say that locking away GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a penitentiary for deadbeats seems like a darn good idea.

Bush reads from My Pet Budget

Let's talk about how we ended up in this pickle, bucking up against the "debt ceiling." From 2001 to 2008, a Republican President took an annual surplus of $86 billion left for him by Bill Clinton and ran up the budget deficit to over half a trillion a year ($642 billion in 2008). Altogether, George W. Bush blew up the national debt by over $3 TRILLION--then left the bills to Barack Obama. (Show me more...)

By Jo (J.K.) Rowling as told to Greg Palast and the Palast twins

The Week [TheWeek.com 18 July 2011]

Some of you may recall that, years ago, when I lived in England, writing for The Guardian, when I shared the bestseller list with Jo Rowling (she at the pinnacle, me in the valley), we became buds through my twins’ love for her astonishing work.

But Jo knows that I found the conclusion of her series a sorry let-down, a second-rate “Show Down at the OK Corral” for Wizards.  In my opinion (and she does not at all agree), Jo was too distracted by a concern for how the ending would play on film.

I bugged her about it until she told me the “other” endings.  Every author has them – and we all look over our old drafts, after publication, and say, “Damn!  I should have used that version” – then we lock it away before someone sees it and agrees.

No, Jo wouldn’t show me typed copies, but she told me a couple of “I could have done this” endings.

One of them knocked me over, and I have to share it. (Sorry Jo, that’s the danger of befriending an investigative reporter – if you forget to use the magical words, “This is off the record.”)  I can understand, though, why she would put aside this quieter, yet far more harrowing, conclusion.

I wrote it down that night in October 2007.  I don’t claim that this is exactly word-for-word as she told it to me (Jo: please edit!) and I left out all the side stuff about me telling my oblivious kids, “You really should listen to this; years from now you’ll want to say you heard this,” and the minor mishap with my coffee.

But I just have to put it out here and hope that Jo and her publisher don’t slam me with an Avada Kedavra curse.

I’ll assume you’ve read the books – and if you haven’t, for shame! – so I won’t introduce this at all except to say that this alternative (and quite troubling) ending veers away from the printed and film versions just before Harry’s final confrontation with The Dark Lord, Voldemort.

And please:  If you want to say that I didn’t get her voice and story details exactly, keep in mind that I’m working from mental notes – and that I’m no J.K. Rowling.  But then, no one is.

To the Forbidden Forest

Harry marched toward the field where Voldemort waited with his pack of Dementors.  Harry’s scar burned brutally, saving him the pain of thinking too deeply about his decision, likely to bring him nothing but death.

What special evil, what deadly and devious spell had the Dark Lord prepared for Harry’s destruction? Voldemort had hunted after Harry for more than a decade; doubtless Voldemort would arm himself with a special curse far more powerful and final than the Avada Kedavra which had failed to kill Harry as a child.

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by Greg Palast
June 30th, 2011

July 3 would have been my parents' 67th Anniversary. 67 years. Maybe it was the triumph of Hope over Reality (still have that Obama 2008 poster?). Or maybe something else, something that those of us who haven't walked that far down the path can't imagine.

My Dad's last wish the night before he died last November was to dedicate some of his small savings to the Palast Investigative Fund.

It's the only time I wished he'd been an investment banker. He wasn't, so the Gil Palast Memorial Fund is small. And therefore, I appreciate deeply the donations many of you added to it.

My mom asked me to wait until my parents' would-have-been anniversary to announce the recipient of the Gil Palast Really Tiny Memorial Fellowship in Investigative Reporting.

And the winner is: Rob Roberts, fish biologist. (Show me more...)

I just wanted to send a thanks to all those who have donated to the Gil Palast Memorial fund over the past couple of months. I know Gil would have been happy to see that so many people still believe in the power of journalism.

Back in 2008 I got to meet Greg's Dad — he was crotchety and using a walker but that didn't stop him from getting into a heated fight with me over politics. I told him that I didn't like who won the 2008 primaries, and that opened up the can of worms that I didn't vote for his candidates in previous elections. It wasn't that Gil was a partisan (though he had his leanings), it was that he liked a good fight or maybe he was testing me - I'm not sure.

Eventually Gladys Palast settled us both down like any good Jewish mother by yelling louder than both of us. "Leave the boy alone! Let him vote for who he wants!" Gil grumbled and we agreed to let past elections be forgotten. I love a good verbal brawl and Gil was always up for one of those (I think it's in the Palast genes).

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