No man’s passing should be a source of joy. But neither should it be a source of false histories and false tears. Justice Scalia was a right wing warrior who never let the Constitution get in the way of a chance to tear the guts out of Americans’ rights.

His main legacy, knifing the Voting Rights Act and blessing the Jim Crow obstacle course created by bigoted, partisan voting officials. May he rest in peace. In the meantime, here’s a battlefield report about Justice Scalia from the voting rights war. Taken from the number one bestselling single issue adult comic book of all time, Steal Back Your Vote, by Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with cartoons by Ted Rall and this done below, by Lloyd Dangle.

By the way, you can download the entire comic book for free.

Click on the Image to read the whole story from the comic

An excerpt from Billionaires & Ballot Bandits by Greg Palast

Stop me if you heard this one. See, these ten nuns walk into a polling station in Indiana and the guy in charge says, “Whoa, Sisters! What do think you’re doing?”
“Voting,” says Sister Mary.

“Well, not here, ladies; not without your ID!” He demanded their driver’s licenses, but the ten quite elderly Sisters of the Holy Cross, including a 98 year-old, had long ago given up cruising.

“Scram, Sis!” said the man, and kicked their habits right out of the polling station.

I may not have gotten the dialogue exactly right, but I got the gist of it and the facts: the ten nuns who’d been voting at that station for decades were booted out in 2008, just after the state of Indiana’s Republican legislature imposed new voter ID laws.

The reason for nixing the nuns? To stop (Show me more...)

The big boys are confident that Sen. Marco Rubio has locked up the Republican nomination. But who’s locked up Rubio?

I called my bookie in London. The betting professionals were not surprised at Marco Rubio’s big Iowa showing. The smart money has been on Rubio since October 31--despite the fact that Rubio was polling at just 9%.

Paul Krishnamurty, politics odds analyst at Betfair.com, told me that, among professional betters, over just two days, Rubio soared from zero to odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination.

Why would the guys who bet the rent money place it all on Rubio—and what suddenly changed on October 31?

Because, despite the fact that 9 of 10 Republicans rejected him, on Halloween, Rubio won the only vote that counts: The Vulture’s.

It was page one news in the New York Times: Paul Singer, Influential Billionaire, Throws Support to Marco Rubio for President.

I’ve been hunting Singer, AKA The Vulture, for nine years across four continents. And now the carrion-chewing billionaire has decided who will be your next President.

The Vulture, not the Kochs, has become the Number One funder of the Republican Party. The Vulture’s blessing signals to the other billionaires where to place their bets.

Singer doesn’t “donate” to candidates. He invests in them. And he expects a big, dripping return on his money.

But why Rubio? Because Singer’s little hatchling is doing The Vulture’s bidding already. Singer has launched a murderous financial “vulture” attack on Argentina. Singer is shaking down the gaucho nation for $3 billion.

Here’s the story. Decades ago, Argentina’s military dictatorship issued bonds that sucked the nation dry. When democracy returned, 97% of the banks that had funded the dictatorship agreed to take (Show me more...)

The untold story of the sources of the loot controlled by Paul "The Vulture" Singer and why he needs to buy the White House

by Greg Palast 

Greg Palast has been investigating Singer and other finance vultures for BBC Television's Newsnight.

It's out of the closet –– or, more accurately, out of the coven.  The list of the billionaires who have given at least $2.5 million to Conservative Solutions, the pro-Rubio Super PAC, is headed by Paul Singer.  Singer and his hedge fund crew at Elliott Associates, with their donations to the Republican National Committee and other "independent" groups like "Solutions", makes it likely that Singer is now the top funder for the GOP.

For BBC-TV, I've been tracking Singer for nine years.  And this is the key fact you need to know about the man whose cash would pick our President:  Paul Singer likes to breakfast on decayed (Show me more...)

Abby Martin has taken her groundbreaking work to TelesurEnglish, now called The Empire Files. In this episode titled 'The Tyrany of Big Oil,' Abby talks with Greg Palast and Antonia Juhasz. Greg and Antonia delve into Big Oil's grip on Washington DC and how far they will go to make a buck - leaving a wrath of destruction as they do.

Palast begins about 17 minutes into this episode discussing the story behind his investigation into why New Orleans drowned. To see more on this story, watch his film Big Easy to Big Empty and of course read Vultures' Picnic.

Please subscribe to our Youtube channel for exclusive excerpts from Greg's upcoming film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. 

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Meet Lynda Blackmon Lowery.

Late last year we talked with Mrs. Lowery for our new film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy about her first time meeting Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and what his words meant to her.

Her mother died when she was only 7 years old, from that point forward she became committed to making sure that not another child would lose her mother because the color of her skin. So when she heard Dr. King speak the words of "Steady loving confrontation" she became committed to the Civil Rights movement. At 14 years old she marched with King across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965.

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  …not because you’re for or against Bernie Sanders the candidate, but because you are against the trivial idiocy of boob-tube media that won’t give you real information about the candidates who would rule our nation.

As a journalist, I don’t support candidates — but I do support the journalism of Ted Rall, a fellow of the Palast Investigative Fund, whose reports in graphic form are entertaining antidotes to news as chit-chat.

I need you to get the book now!   Your brain will feel better for it.

Read my review.

Ted Rall’s 200-page “comic book” is reporting at its best — fascinating, factual, no bias, no BS.  (And, no sin, it’s fun.)

Most important, your tax-deductible donation for the signed Bernie book will support our investigation of the latest in vote theft shenanigans.

Today’s New York Times’ story on Sanders?  A profile of the staffer who plays pretend-Hillary in preparing Sen. Sanders for the debates.  How cute.  How trivial.  And that’s the ‘Paper of Record,’ Lord help us.

But if you want those rare things called (Show me more...)

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A personal note from Greg Palast

I am asking you… watch these 2 minutes from the film that can stop the billionaires from burgling the 2016 election.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits (out in 2016) is my biggest and most important full feature investigative film yet.

"An American hero." - Martin Luther King III

We need funds to finish this film. Join me with a tax-deductible donation and earn an on-screen credit.

Read my report from Selma, Alabama, "Will you walk with me?" to learn more about the film.

With your invaluable help we can stop the billionaire bandits from stealing 2016.

On behaIf of the the entire Palast investigative team I want to thank you all for your support this year.

We wish you a very happy Holiday Season and a great New Year!

Greg Palast, Reporting

*  *  *  *  *  *   *

Support this film with a tax-deductible Donation

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How did North Korea get The Bomb in the first place?  As I disclosed on BBC Television Newsnight, the ugly answer is that George W. Bush turned a blind eye to Pakistan's secret sale of the technology to the North Korean regime.

Read the original story from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy:

On November 7, 2001, BBC Television's Newsnight reported that the Bush administration thwarted investigations of Dr. A.Q. Khan, known as the "father" of Pakistan's atomic bomb. This week, Khan confessed to selling atomic secrets to Libya, North Korea, and Iran.

The Bush Administration has expressed shock at disclosures that Pakistan (Show me more...)

The Governor of Alabama has decided that instead of using BP's cleanup money for restoring the lives of those affected by one of the worst man-made disasters in history, he's using it to rebuild a mansion.

Owned by the State of Alabama the million dollar beach residence of the Governor has been closed for 18 years since Hurricane Danny damaged it. The fix-up is "estimated at $1.5 million to $1.8 million" and will be done by May according to the Associated Press.

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A personal note from Greg Palast

We’re close, so very close to finishing our new movie The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits (out in 2016) but I urgently need your help to get us over the finish line.

You can truly make a difference by making a tax-deductible contribution to The Palast Investigative Fund and lend your vitally needed support for any amount, large or small.

You can also donate to get a Screen Credit as a Producer ($1,000), Co-Producer ($500) or Supporter ($100), or how about getting the name of one of your loved ones up on the screen as a Christmas Gift?

Can you help me make this film an event, a cause, and weapon for the new civil rights movement?

So what’s the story causing me to beg you to come to our aid?

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The fact that the party of the late Hugo Chavez lost two-thirds of the seats in Venezuela’s congress puts a lie to the canard that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as created by Chavez is some kind of dictatorship, a nasty bit of propaganda long pushed by the US mainstream press.

For BBC, I covered Venezuela elections. There, they count the votes—unlike in the Third World dictatorships of Florida and Ohio.

I know the leader of the opposition, Julio Borges, just as I knew Chavez and the current President Nicolas Maduro.

Borges is no right-wing fascist. It’s important to note that the opposition did not run against Chavez or his legacies and policies. Rather they ran against a sclerotic government, too long in office, petty corruption—and the crushing reality of oil income cut by more than half.

Chavez' revolution is permanent. The redistribution of wealth and power to the Black and Indian population from the white "Spaniards" is irreversible.

Chavez is gone but Chavismo lives despite the crying and moaning of the world financial elite.

Ironically, Chavez’ socialist party is the victim of the success of its policies: young people, who did not know the crushing poverty and hopelessness that reigned before Chavez, are now college grads, clamoring to maintain the middle-class lives they’ve come to expect.

Chavez would be pleased with the triumph of the real democracy he created.

In honor of this affirmation of democracy, our foundation will offer a free download of "The Assassination of Hugo Chavez."

And next year, may democracy return to the USA.

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Fear is the sales pitch for many products: from war on the Euphrates to billion-dollar submarines. Better than toothpaste that makes your teeth whiter than white, this stuff will make us safer than safe. It’s political junk food, the cheap filling in the flashy tube.

True security for life’s dangers—from a real national health insurance program to protecting teachers' jobs, would take a slice of the profits of the owning classes, the Lockheeds, the JP Morgans. The War on Terror has become class war by other means.

And who will get us next? Don’t assume they’ll be clutching Korans. Until September 11, 2001, the deadliest terror attack in American history was carried out by (Show me more...)

This week on Democracy Now, 350.org's Bill McKibben was on the program to discuss Exxon's "thuggish" attempt to threaten Columbia journalism students after they published an investigation into Exxon's climate lies.

It's not news to anyone who follows my work that big oil likes to use their financial sway in higher education. Back in 2009 I wrote about the Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, Ivor Van Heerden who was pushed out of his job when he started talking too much about how Big Oil helped drown New Orleans.

I don't get to use the word "heroic" very often. Van Heerden is heroic. It was van Heerden who told me, on camera, something so horrible, so frightening, that, (Show me more...)

It’s been 60 years since Rosa Parks took a stand here in Montgomery. The journey has been long—and we still haven’t arrived. I stopped by the State Capitol, with Jefferson Davis in front, while investigating the latest Alabama outrage against Black voters.

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The news media was abuzz when Marco Rubio received what likely is the most important endorsement of the 2016 political season. Courted by Bush, Christie, and even 'The Donald,' the man known by his colleagues as "The Vulture" was circled by many, but eventually he swooped in on Rubio.

So who is this... Vulture?

He was the man behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the man behind Mitt Romney, and the man that chose Paul Ryan for Vice President.

The Vulture is well known for all of this, but the real reason why Paul Singer is important can be found here on GregPalast.com.

Watch our first ever investigation into this financial bird of prey below, and read more on how Singer has built his empire on the ruins of nations, the Congolese, and union workers.

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Yesterday TransCanada called for the State Department to pause its review of the Keystone XL Pipeline until after the 2016 election. Of course, with every Democratic candidate against the filthy crude tube, and every Republican for it, the delay is a gamble on the race.

But who’s behind the pipe — that is, who benefits? And why in the world are we sending oil all the way down from Canada…Texas? Texas, I hear, already has a little oil.

The answer is a four letter word: Koch. Read the story we broke in Vice Magazine, "I want my fair share – and that's ALL OF IT."

There's a new movie out about the supposed heroics of Dan Rather called 'Truth.' Unfortunately, the title is a lie, there's little truth to be found in Rather's story.

[For the real story of Bush and the Texas Air Guard, download Palast's BBC film Bush Family Fortunes for free.

Just three months before the 2004 election, Dan Rather had a story that might have changed the outcome of that razor-close race. Despite his self-glorifying fantasy in his film Truth,  the fact is that Dan cut a back-room deal to shut his mouth, grab his ankles, and let his network retract a story he knew to be absolutely true.

It began on September 8, 2004, when Rather, on CBS, ran a story that Daddy Bush Senior had, in 1968, put in the fix to get his baby George out of the Vietnam War and into the Texas Air National Guard. Little George then rode out the war defending Houston from Viet Cong attack.

The story about the Family Bush is stone-cold solid. I know, because we ran it on BBC Television a year before CBS (see that broadcast here). Neither I or BBC have ever retracted a word of it.

You can download that film - Bush Family Fortunes -  for free here.

Read the rest of Dan's tall tale here.

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By Greg Palast

To celebrate Education Secretary Arne Duncan's exit, I am re-publishing this investigation. - GP

Excerpt from Armed Madhouse

They take away your overtime, your 40-hour week, your regulatory protection against corporate marauders, your right to courtroom justice, your protection against unfair trade, even the right to get your ballot counted.

But there's always hope.

Hope is the last thing to go. And your hope is your kids, that they'll have an opportunity you didn't have. On January 21, 2004, the President told you they'd have to take that away too. On that night, deep into his State of the Union sermon to Congress, when sensible adults had turned off the tube or kicked in the screen, our President opened a new front in the class war. And like the one in Iraq, it began with a lie. "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act," our President told us, "We are regularly testing every child...and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing." (Show me more...)