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By Greg Palast

By the age of fifteen, Rick Rowley was doomed��—��born in the middle of Nowhere, Michigan, a wasteland of rust and snow so awful we let autoworkers have it.

As a kid, Rick would put his head down on the railroad track and wait for the rare vibration of a train on the move far away. He was fifteen years old on the day he got up and followed the hum down the track. He walked for over two hundred miles, surviving on peanut butter and Wonder Bread all the way to Motor City: Detroit.

Rick wasn't running away; his parents were OK. He was running to something; who knows what the hell it was.

Rick never made it back to Nowhere. He listened. He looked. And he found that other people's stories were more important than his own. Along the way, he picked up a small camera that listened and looked with him.

He found more stories in Argentina documenting the IMF riots followed by six months in the Yucatan jungle, learning Spanish with the Zapatista guerrillas, who named him Ricardo.�� Somewhere along the way, there was a stretch at Princeton University, then several stints with his tiny camera in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in Lebanon, with Hezbollah.

He held the little thing, that digital camera, weirdly, cradled like an infant. The first time he filmed for BBC News, at my insistence, that bastard Jones said, “What's that? Some kind of toy camera?��

No, it's my gun.

Ricardo doesn't like to talk about himself. It took three deadly potent drinks at a bar in West Africa to find out about the railroad track, Hezbollah, Princeton.

He's off now, un-embedded.

Ignoring Jones's advice, he made it back to Iraq to catch warlord Abu Musa's last arrogant words before Abu was blown into small wet pieces. Rick's a lucky guy.

So far.* �� ����* �� �� *

This Sunday, March 2, unless God is a scoundrel, Rick Rowley will win the Academy Award for Best Documentary, as Director and Cinematographer of��Dirty Wars,��his stunning collaboration with investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill.

Rowley �� the Ricardo of , excerpted above �� is not part of the Palast Investigative Team: he is the team.�� All I do is step in front of his savvy lens.

This week, to celebrate Rowley's long-overdue Academy Award, the Palast Investigative Fund is offering the filled with Rowley's global-spanning reports for BBC Television, Democracy Now and Al Jazeera.�� For a tax-deductible donation of $90, you get...

�� Vultures and��Vote Rustlers ��(just released)

Rowley and Palast from Bosnia to the Congo to darkest New York, going after billionaires who would buy and burn our planet.

❏��The Assassination of Hugo Chavez

Rowley and Palast in Caracas with Hugo��and under the volcano in Mexico City.�� The no-BS story of Latin America you won't get on CNN.

❏��Dispatches #06 ��

From Rowley's own production company, Big Noise Films, a compendium of his best stuff, including his jaw-dropping short, White Power, from inside a skinhead organization.�� And there's the footage of our dawn stake-out of a financier that would make a vampire blush.

Or, just pick up a signed copy of the DVD����for a minimum donation of $40. Available only from the Palast Investigative��Fund.

Congratulations, Ricardo.�� And to the Hollywood moguls in the Academy who did not vote for Rowley's and Scahill's Oscar, let me remind you: we know where you lunch.

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Greg Palast’s new film, , based on his reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now, is available on and as a .

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ,��The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed .

HELP US FOLLOW THE MONEY. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's or simply make a tax-deductible�� to keep our work alive!

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By Ted Asregadoo, ��| Video Interview

Since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that money essentially equals speech in Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission in 2010, and later in the US Court of Appeals Speechnow.org v. the Federal Election Commission decision, unregulated "expenditures" have flowed to so-called Super PACs.

Both conservative and liberal groups have rushed to create these organizations that supposedly exist to work on "social welfare" causes.

However, they are often sham non-profits whose sole purpose is to support or attack a candidate or a political issue. The political advantage of being a 501(c)(4) organization centers on two things: they are not limited in how much money they can take in for their so-called social welfare work, and they do not have to disclose who their donors are.

Some have called this "dark money," because the funds donated to these Super PACs can't be traced to individuals or groups. If this smells of money laundering and the creation of an elaborate shell game with front organizations to hide who the political puppet masters are, that's because it is.

By law, candidates and elected officials cannot coordinate with these Super PACs during an election or to shape policy. It's a crime to do so, but that hasn't stopped the Koch brothers from helping politicians of both parties get elected - and then calling in political favors.

Investigative reporter and Truthout contributor, Greg Palast, has spent most of his career exposing the corrupting effects of money and politics in many hard-hitting pieces. Greg is gifted in his ability to connect the dots between billionaires and politicians by following the money.

In the Citizens United era, it can be more difficult to follow the money because of the anonymity 501(c)(4) Super PACs afford their donors. But that hasn't stopped Greg, who shares with me some of what he has uncovered in his Truthout article, "."

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Greg Palast has just released his new film . Donate and get a !

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed .

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By Greg Palast

But that's impossible, isn't it?

Like the restless Jewish prophets before you, you are an outcast in your own land. And like the prophets before you, you are trouble, Aaron, a lot of trouble.

Thank you for troubling us, Aaron. You are trouble, but very good trouble.

Socrates' suicide, like yours, was a state-sponsored execution. And like Socrates in death, you've conferred an immortal obligation on the living to resist the temptation to let the rulers attach their strings, the strings that turn us from people with hearts into puppets with property.

Rest in peace, Aaron Swartz. And I promise you, I won't.

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On Tuesday, a coalition of civil liberties organizations joined under the banner, "The Day We Fight Back," will commemorate the death of Aaron Swartz with a push to limit a national security surveillance apparatus gone berserk.

To honor Swartz, the Robin Hood of the Information Liberation Front, I am publishing again the story I wrote about him for Vice Magazine one year ago, shortly after his death, "."

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Greg Palast's new film Vultures and Vote Rustlers was just released last month.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed .

HELP US FOLLOW THE MONEY. Visit thePalast InvestigativeFund's or simply make a tax-deductible to keep our work alive!

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by Greg Palast

update of story from Truthout

On Thursday, a federal jury found Mathew Martoma guilty of insider trading. Martoma, who's only worth a hundred million or so, is small potatoes. He's taking a fall for his boss–and his boss' mommy–and her monkey.

Martoma's boss is Steven A. Cohen, worth about $9 billion, who directs a criminal enterprise masquerading as a hedge fund called SAC Capital. The description of SAC as a crime scene is drawn from the findings of the jury, Securities and Exchange Commission charges and Cohen's own confessions. While eight of Cohen's partners-in-crime have been convicted and Martoma is about to join them in the Big House, Cohen has performed enough ju-ju on the system to keep charges filed against him personally to civil, not criminal, counts. So far.

Why would a guy who's stuffed billions of dollars of tainted money in his pocket risk SEC charges just to get another billion? The answer: Steve needs to make his mommy's monkey jump.

The story's a lot of fun–and extraordinarily important, as Congress decides between tax breaks for "job creators" like Cohen and extending unemployment benefits for their victims.

Read more on this, the SAC and his mom, in the just a couple months ago.

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Greg Palast's new film was released recently.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse��.

HELP US FOLLOW THE MONEY. Visit thePalast InvestigativeFund's ��or simply make a tax-deductible�� to keep our work alive!

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By Greg Palast for

Far more insidious, more corrosive and dangerous than the Governor of New Jersey playing traffic warden is the story of Gov. Chris Christie's secret meetings with a gaggle of billionaires ––and the legality of the spending by the front organization set up following these hidden hugger-muggers.In 2012, a tax-exempt “social welfare organization�� called Committee for Our Children's Future, CCF, ran a series of TV ads telling America that Governor Christie has performed more miracles in New Jersey than Jesus did with loaves and fish. The New York Times found some old college chums who said they set up the “Children's�� crusade for Christie. But the ads cost about $6 million. The Times didn't ask how Christie's buddies, not wealthy guys, found the six big ones.

But CCF was not started in 2012. When I heard “Children's Future,�� my nose started twitching. I smelled Koch.

Get the full story of Chris Christie and his Koch addiction in the book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: Greg Palast investigative Karl Rove, the Koch Gang and their Buck Buddies and the film of the investigation on the DVD Vultures & Vote Rustlers.

The whiff of sulfur took me back to seven thick investigation binders nearly two decades old �� each one marked “KOCH.��

Just days before the 1996 election, “Campaign for our Children's Future,�� previously unheard of, paid for some of the most vicious smear ads ever run. The nasty blast, disseminated in coordination with a mysterious operation called “Citizens United,�� accused one Democrat of associating with a child molester (false), one of beating his wife (true), another of being “a Jewess�� (true) and so on.

Most of the twenty-nine targeted Democrats, blindsided and unable to swing at the phantom “Children�� and “Citizens,�� were creamed. The result, to everyone's surprise, was that the Republicans kept control of Congress.

Everyone's surprise but Charles and David Koch. The money-laundering operation was traced back to a funding source called “Triad Inc.�� �� named after the Chinese mobsters. Triad's front man, facing hard time, swore that all the hidden loot came from Koch Industries, owned by Charles and David Koch.

And that was a crime, one of the two times the Kochs came within kissing distance of prison cells �� because, in 1996, before the Citizens United ruling, America still had a democracy, and it was a felony for corporations to slip cash to political campaigns.

And Citizens United? It was, in practice, just one citizen, right-wing-nut billionaire Foster Friess. In 1996, he and rich friends would put cash into Citizens United which then made campaign contributions, for the exact same amount, on the very same day, to one of their favored politicians. The sums and timing were a “coincidence�� said the “Citizens�� lawyers. But it looked an awful lot like a crime: an illegal way around campaign contribution limits.

(How the Kochs and Friess avoided hard time ––with Bill Clinton's help ––is a story for another time and place. The place is my book, .)

It wasn't just me who thought that Children's Future and the Kochs had committed felonies. Then-Senator Fred Thompson, who's played a lawman so many times on TV he thinks he is one, accused the Koch operatives of creating illegal “sham non-profit corporations.��

That was Thompson's mistake. The Senator was stripped of his powers as Chairman of the Government Affairs Committee, denied his demand to subpoena anyone around the Kochs, and his investigation was shut down.

In a parting shot, Thompson wrote: “Triad is important not just for the ways it bent or broke existing laws, but for the pattern it has established for future groups.��

And now we know: the “future group�� would be, apparently, the re-formulated CCF, now as Committee for Our Children's Future. And apparently, our children want Chris Christie.

But this time around, dumping hidden money into a campaign to boost a politician has been de-criminalized by the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling that threw out charges against the old Friess front, Citizens United.

So who are the men who care so much about our children's future?

There's still one law left to break

Despite the Supreme Court stripping naked almost all restrictions on political expenditures, the Justices did firmly secure a critically-placed fig leaf: “Independent�� organizations may not, in any way whatsoever, plan with, secretly coordinate with, make or take suggestions from, nor consult with, a candidate.

The question is, did the Kochs and Christie drop the fig-leaf? The answers are a hell of a lot more important than Sopranos-style score-settling like backing up a bridge.

Let's look at the evidence. The hidden funnel of funds into Our Children's Future followed undisclosed meetings, the first, a two-hour rendezvous between Governor Christie and David Koch in New York in January of 2011. Just the two of them, no one allowed in.

This concealed chat with Christie was unwittingly disclosed by David Koch himself: He blabbed about it to his billionaire buddies at a closed gathering he organized with his brother Charles. Koch did not know he was being (Thanks to investigative reporter par excellence Brad Friedman for making the recording public.)

And that was the second secret meeting: the Kochs' closed confab in Vail, Colorado, on June 26, 2011. The guest of honor at the bash: Governor Chris Christie.

But you're not supposed to know that.

Now you may think it's pretty hard for Christie to conceal himself, but the Governor did his best. This was some time after Governor Mark Sanford was excoriated for disappearing for a few days, in Sanford's case to meet his girlfriend. Similarly, Christie left off his schedule any mention of his travel to Colorado for the tryst with the Kochs.

Christie was feted at the billionaires' bacchanal �� and he returned the favor. The hidden recorder captured the Governor saying, "We must cut Social Security, cut Medicare, cut Medicaid." It was Christie tough-guy talk that, notably, he was too cowardly to repeat in New Jersey. He told the awed ultra-rich that, by cutting teacher pensions, he could stop Democrats' attempts to tax millionaires.

Dance of the $70 million in Vail

Christie told the billionaires that The Lord Himself had anointed them to rule America —if only the moochers would stop torturing them with stupid environmental rules and taxes.

"All they do is layer regulation and taxes and burdens on all those people who just wanted opportunities to use their God-given gifts and their ambition and their vision to try to improve their lives and through that, improve the lives of other people."

For the record, the Kochs' billions were not God-given, but Dad given. And Daddy Koch got his loot from deals made with Joe Stalin. (No kidding.)

That night, the billionaires whom Christie cast as the victims of the government's cruelty ponied up $70 million for the Kochs' political campaign war chest. And, after Christie spoke, Charles Koch said, acknowledging the million-dollar checks from Foster Friess and others: “We will invest this money wisely and get the best possible pay-off for you....��

Fighting the tax on “extortion��

The Kochs had already received their pay-off from Christie �� that is, Christie saved America's future. The brothers Koch stand to profit by approximately one billion each per year if the XL Pipeline is built. Therefore, defeating laws to cut greenhouse emissions is crucial. On May 27, 2011, after his secret meeting with David Koch and just before sneaking off to Vail, Christie stunned New Jersey by pulling the state out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Not that there's a connection.��

After the Vail meeting, there were reports that a gaggle of billionaires had launched a campaign to draft Christie as the most-electable alternative for the Republican Party's presidential nomination �� about the same time as Chris Christie's college roomies decided to chip in $6 million for old time's sake.

David Koch was on the We♥Christie bandwagon, of course �� joined by the one billionaire more influential, more cunning and more forbidding than any Koch: Paul “The Vulture�� Singer. Note: You're not called a “vulture�� by Wall Street for your philanthropic work.

In an investigation for The Nation, I found that from the US Treasury in a scheme involving the auto bail-out. A treasury official called it “extortion.�� Call it extortion or cotton candy, the loot would be nearly tax-free to Singer via a loophole called “carried interest.�� Obama was threatening to close this billionaire's tax goodie �� while Christie crowed that he opposed any "millionaire tax.��

And that suited one of Singer's co-investors, on the alleged “extortion�� from the Treasury �� and did not want to pay tax on it. His fellow hedge-fund billionaire and Christie fan Stephen Schwarzman likened Obama's questioning the carried interest loophole to

Then, billionaire Ken Langone also joined the Christie parade. Langone, I disclosed in Salon, was the money behind the company that, in 2000, purged thousands of Black voters from voter rolls in Florida. Later, he was charged with insider trading by Elliott Spitzer and, after charges were dropped, announced that Spitzer Langone implied, true or not, that he's the one who busted Spitzer's career. Langone is not warm to business regulation.

Singer the Vulture is Chairman of the Manhattan Institute, a think tank that generates anti-regulation propaganda. , Governor Christie made a pilgrimage there.

Why? Singer is the brain in Restore Our Future, the super-PAC The Vulture funded with billionaire Harold “Ice-Man�� Simmons (who died in December), and notably, the third Koch brother, billionaire Billy Koch.

It was right after the rogues' gallery of billionaires made their secretive push for Christie that CCF spent $6 million to praise the Governor. Notably, the spokesman for both Restore Our Future and Committee for Our Children's Future, and the only identifiable operator for CCF, is an outfit called .

Also, Politico reports that something called , a recipient of at least $670,973 from Restore Our Future, is virtually the sole donor and operator of the mysterious and short-lived Draft Christie for President Inc.

Question: If Governor Christie is such a straight shooter, then how come he left the Vail and Koch meetings off his schedule? What did he say to The Vulture in Manhattan that got the billionaire bird all excited? And do you want us to believe that in none of these secret gatherings that preceded the million-dollar ads, that there was no coordination, no consultation, no discussion whatsoever of the Governor's campaign needs?

While my files are thick and the Vail tapes invaluable, I'm not going to pretend that I know the words they whispered in their chit-chats. That's what subpoenas are for: and these would have to be served on the Governor himself, The Vulture and the Kochs.

It's said that Christie's failure to question his staff about the GW Bridge jam-up makes him an oddly uncurious fellow. And Mr. Christie is steadfastly un-curious about how his old college friends found $6 million to spend �� and, coincidentally, turned their operation over to the outfit that handles CCF's funds. How many coincidences do we need before we can conclude that the legal line was crossed?

While we need to know what the dipwits appointed by Christie did to our bridge, more important is what the Governor said to the billionaires in secret that opened their otherwise tight wallets�� and whether that loot found it's way to CCF.

Singer the Vulture once tried to bully my network, BBC Television, into backing off our investigations.

But I'm not worried —though I would like to know why the Governor of New Jersey and the Kochs are putting traffic cones across my driveway.

* * * * * *

Greg Palast's new film was just released last month.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed .

HELP US FOLLOW THE MONEY. Visit thePalast InvestigativeFund's or simply make a tax-deductible to keep our work alive!

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....for donations to our foundation, so you can take my word for it when I say, we need it.

The Theft of the 2016 race is under way ––��and the vote rustlers expect to grab Congress in 2014 as an appetizer.�� Plus, the billionaire boys club is sucking our financial blood as if the world economy is their vampire blood bank

Donate at least $80 right now, and I'll send you, as thanks, the��:��our new film on DVD, Vultures and Vote Rustlers AND a hardbound copy of Vultures Picnic, and I'll sign both.�� Check out the .���� And it's tax-deductible.

Major national and international media outlets are waiting for our story on the Kochs and the XL Pipeline ––��because NO ONE but the Palast Investigations team has the ability to go undercover, get into the locked files or dig out the inside witnesses.

But, we need to buy the tickets to Florida and Argentina (yep, that's in the story).�� And we must feed the crew at least once a week. ��We need six more folks to of the broadcast edition of Vultures and Vote Rustlers so we can put this killer set of BBC reports on the US boob tube.�� (You get screen credit ––��and copies to spread the word.) A $500 donation earns you a credit.

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The basic investigation, the initial spade-work, that is the hallmark of our expert detective operation, is funded solely by our not-for-profit foundation.

Already have all our stuff?�� Then make a , and get our thanks ––��and, in a special offer limited to Palast Fund donors, you go straight to Heaven upon your demise.

Our next project will include production of the take-no-prisoners broadcast of��, based on my bestselling book.�� Check out ����––��and become an angel.

And a happy and healthy New Year to you and yours,

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Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed .

HELP US FOLLOW THE MONEY. Visit the��Palast Investigative��Fund's ��or simply make a tax-deductible�� to keep our work alive!

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A personal note from Greg Palast

This is the best 95 seconds you can have with your clothes on.

Watch this now! And pass it on:

Now, get yourself a copy of this film, —��an hour-long real-life detective story, released just this week.

- Get .

For a ,��I’ll sign and send you the DVD ��—��and you’ll get another hour an a half of me and Amy Goodman, me and Eskimo leader Etok and his whale (and whale meat) and more.

(Order by Wednesday 2pm ET and get it well in time for Christmas.)

- Or����($20 minimum��donation).

It’s a one hour chase scene �� hunting the bad guys from the Congo to Bosnia to darkest Brooklyn.�� Inside the secret files of the State Department, MI6, BP, Chevron, Larry Summers (!), the WTO, the IMF, the Koch Brothers (no kidding) and more.

You liked Billionaires & Ballot Bandits?�� Vultures�� Picnic? Best Democracy Money Can Buy? ��Here are the films of the reports in those bestsellers.

Then get one of these film and��book��combos �� both signed, in time for Christmas:

-The :�� Vultures & Vote Rustlers, the film PLUS Vultures�� Picnic,��hardbound, both signed, for a .

�� - Or for a minimum donation of $70.

Or get the deal:�� Donate at least $70 and I’ll send you , one signed to you �� plus another to give to your dumb brother-in-law who calls you a conspiracy nut.�� (Give me a name, and I’ll personalize it to your frenemy �� or loved one.)

And please, please:�� if you are thinking of deserving charitable groups for a , the , a 501c3 foundation project, will make lots of trouble for your tax-deductible donation.

Truly, we appreciate your support —��and please pass the word —��and the information.

And just to annoy Bill O’Reilly, I would like to wish you Happy Holidays!

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Greg Palast's new film Vultures and Vote Rustlers was released this week.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed .

HELP US FOLLOW THE MONEY. Visit the��Palast Investigative��Fund's ��or simply make a tax-deductible�� to keep our work alive!

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��

Now get the film!

Shipped within 24 hours first class: The of my new film, . Includes an hour and a half of extras.

Or just the film right now.

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What’s in this rocking hour of non-fiction detective tales?

"Great fun" (New Yorker).

BBC's gonzo investigative reporter Greg Palast busts the billionaires and ballot bandits who would pick our next President �� in his new 1-hour (or ): Vultures and Vote Rustlers. (Get it at ) The no-BS reports for BBC and Democracy Now--undercover, under arrest, under the skin of the ultra-rich. "Courageous reporting" (Michael Moore).

From underneath the Deepwater Horizon to the bogus ballot boxes of Ohio, in disguise and in hot water, Palast and his detective crew will make you laugh as hard as you scream in anger. Animation by Ted Rall.

Get the which includes extras or ��the film only from the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund.

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And your minimum for the DVD keeps the Palast team alive. We’ve already begun our new investigation of billionaires and ballot bandits—but there’s no way to do it except with your help. We DONATE all of our film to Democracy Now! and other not-for-profit samizdat broadcasts—but that don’t make it any cheaper to fly to Africa to get to the real stories you won’t get on the Petroleum Broadcast System or from the Fox hole.

So, whether you get the film or not, please make a for this simple gift: just the facts, ma’am.

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Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed .

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By Greg Palast for

I can't take it anymore. All week, I've watched Nelson Mandela reduced to a Barbie doll. From Fox News to the Bush family, the politicians and media mavens who body-blocked the anti-Apartheid Movement and were happy to keep Mandela behind bars, now get to dress his image up in any silly outfit they choose.

Poor Mandela. When he's not a doll, he's a statue. He joins Martin Luther King as another bronzed monument whose use is to tell us that apartheid is now "defeated" - to quote the ridiculous headline in the Times.

It's more nauseating than hypocrisy and ignorance. The Mandela Barbie is dressed to serve a new version of racism, Apartheid 2.0, worsening both in South Africa - and in the USA.

The ruling class creates commemorative dolls and statues of revolutionary leaders as a way to tell us their cause is won, so go home. For example, just months ago, the US Supreme Court overturned the Voting Rights Act, Dr. King's greatest accomplishment, on the specious claim that, "Blatantly discriminatory evasions are rare," and Jim Crow voting practices are now "eradicated."

"Eradicated?" On what planet? The latest move by Florida Republicans to purge 181,000 voters of color - like the stench from the shantytowns of Cape Town - makes clear that neither Jim Crow nor Apartheid has been defeated. They're just in temporary retreat.

Nevertheless, our betters in the USA and Europe have declared that King slew segregation, Mandela defeated apartheid; and therefore, the new victims of racial injustice should just shut the f$#! up and stop whining.

The Man Who Walked Beside Mandela

To replace the plastic and metal Mandelas with flesh and blood, I spoke to Danny Schechter. Schechter knew Mandela personally, and more deeply, than any other American journalist. "One of the great reporters of our generation, Schechter produced South Africa Now, a weekly program for PBS Television stations, from 1988-91, bringing Mandela's case to Americans dumbed and numbed on by Ronald Reagan's red-baiting.

Schechter has just completed the difficult job of making the official documentary companion to the Hollywood version of Mandela's life, Long Walk to Freedom.

The fictional movie is about triumph and forgiveness. Schechter's documentary, Inside Mandela, has this aplenty, but knowing Mandela, Schechter includes Mandela's anger, despair and his pained legacy: a corroded South Africa still ruled by a brutal economic apartheid. Today, the average white family has five times the income of a black family. Welcome to "freedom."

The US and European press have focused on Mandela's saintly ability to abjure bitterness and all desire for revenge, and for his Christ-like forgiveness of his captors. This is to reassure us all that "good" revolutionaries are ones who don't hold anyone to account for murder, plunder and blood-drenched horror - or demand compensation. That's Mandela in his Mahatma Gandhi doll outfit - turning the other cheek, kissing his prison wardens.

Schechter doesn't play with dolls. He knew Mandela the man - and Mandela as one among a group of revolutionary leaders.

Mandela's circle knew this: You can't forgive those you defeat until you defeat them.

And, despite the hoo-hah, Mandela didn't defeat apartheid with "nice" alone. In the 1980s, says Schechter, South African whites faced this reality: The Cubans who defeated South African troops in neighboring Angola were ready to move into South Africa. The Vietnamese who had defeated the mighty USA were advising Mandela's military force.

And so, while Mandela held out a hand in forgiveness - in his other hand he held Umkhonto we Sizwe, a spear to apartheid's heart. And Mandela's comrades tied a noose: an international embargo, leaky though it was, that lay siege to South Africa's economy.

Seeing the writing on the wall (and envisioning their blood on the floor), the white-owned gold and diamond cartels, Anglo-American and DeBeers, backed by the World Bank, came to Mandela with a bargain: black Africans could have voting power . . . but not economic power.

Mandela chose to shake hands with this devil and accept the continuation of economic apartheid. In return for safeguarding the diamond and gold interests and protecting white ownership of land, mines and businesses, he was allowed the presidency, or at least the office and title.

It is a bargain that ate at Mandela's heart. He was faced with the direct threat of an embargo of capital, and taking note of the beating endured by his Cuban allies over resource nationalization, Mandela swallowed the poison with a forced grin. Yes, a new South African black middle class has been handed a slice of the mineral pie, but that just changes the color of the hand holding the whip.

The 1% Rainbow

In the end, all revolutions are about one thing: the 99% versus the 1%. Time and history can change the hue of the aristocrat, but not their greed, against which Mandela appeared nearly powerless.

So was Mandela's life a waste, his bio-pic a fraud? Not at all. No man is a revolution.

We have much to learn from Mandela's long view of history, his much-lauded pacific warm-heartedness as well as his much-concealed cold and cruel resolve. The crack in the prison wall of apartheid, the end of racial warfare, if not yet racial peace, is a real accomplishment of Mandela - and his comrade revolutionaries - most of whose names will never be cast in bronze.

Reading Schechter's new book (as Mandela is known to Black South Africans) and seeing Schechter's un-Hollywood film, you can take away one strong impression: From Moses to Martin to Mandela, our prophets never reach the Promised Land.

That is for us still to accomplish. The journey is long. Start walking.

* * * * * *

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed .

HELP US FOLLOW THE MONEY. Visit the��Palast Investigative��Fund's ��or simply make a tax-deductible�� to keep our work alive!

Subscribe to Palast's�������Ի���podcasts.

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Call me crazy, but I’ve couldn’t stop myself: ��I’ve made a film about the scoundrels, scalawags, scumbags and bankers just in time to roast their chestnuts on an open fire.

Vultures and Vote Rustlers combines my favorite eight investigations for BBC-TV ��and Democracy Now into a one hour film that will make you howl with laughter �� and with anger—or your money back.

Hey, I made Amy Goodman laugh. ��I also made a bunch of billionaire speculators, oil company CEOs and Larry Summers scream, cry and threaten law suits.

of the DVD��right now by making a tax-deductible donation of at least $40 to the Palast Investigative Fund �� and I’ll sign it personally to you with my thanks.

Donate now��(or no later than Monday) and you’ll have it in your hands by December 20.

I’m donating all the film and 100% of the proceeds to the . ��Help me feed our team of incomparable investigators, researchers and filmmakers so they don’t pass out from hunger during our grueling schedule of investigations set for the coming year. ��I’ve already stuffed into my files and hidden recorders info on the Theft of the 2014 elections, the XL Pipeline and the billionaire bad-boys funding these games…but I can’t write it up, film it, or get it out without your help.

Make your donation at least $65 and get 2 DVDs:��.

Make it $80 or more and I’ll send you both my book��.

Here’s just some of what you’ll get in Vultures and Vote Rustlers, filmed on four continents��

- Me and my crew under arrest in Azerbaijan while investigating the Deepwater Horizon explosion. ��(The film will explain this weird turn of events.)

- The billionaires behind Governor Chris Christie’s rise and how they enriched their previous puppet, Mitt Romney, with a $115 million payoff.

- The discovery of Karl Rove’s latest scam for swiping votes from Black folk.

- The stake-outs in the snow and the hunt in the heat in the Congo to catch the vulture financiers who would choose your next president.

�� and "Goldman Sachs attacks!" �� with painfully live footage of our cameraman Zach getting clonked on the noggin by cops at Occupy Wall Street. ��(And thanks to our donors who replaced the camera.)

It’s all here: ��Stake-outs at dawn, nudnicks at noon, night in the Congo…old-fashioned investigative reporting like you don’t see on US TV.

This is my best stuff, both fun and unbelievably important to understanding the games the 1% plays.

The DVD also includes an hour and a half of extras including my take-downs on the stories in interviews with Amy Goodman, Abbie Martin and Max Keiser �� plus an Eskimo chief telling me to f�� myself after eating whale meat. ��(You have to see it to believe it.)

Or the one-hour film right now. ��(Minimum donation $20—tax deductible and much needed.)

Filmed by cameraman extraordinaire Rick Rowley (Dirty Wars) and a team of out-of-control filmmakers (and my cool little Austin Powers camera-in-a-pen).

Get this film, get a laugh, get an education��—��get a tax-deduction and help get our team back on the trail.

(And if you’ve got a grand, on our next��film, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.)

Want to send your loved ones the gift of truth? ��Just tell me who to sign it for after you make your��.

Or consider the for your list of��,��charitable contributions.

I can’t thank you enough for all your support for the past ten years of investigations that make front-page revelations �� and more important, have changed laws, changed lives and made a difference.

And even though Bill O’Reilly will hate me for saying it: ��Happy Holidays,

Greg Palast

* * * * * *

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers ,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed .

HELP US FOLLOW THE MONEY. Visit the��Palast Investigative��Fund's ��or simply make a tax-deductible�� to keep our work alive!

Subscribe to Palast's�������Ի���podcasts.

Follow Palast on�������Ի���.