Greg Palast

[Oct 25, 2021: Charlottesville, VA] Jury selection began today for the civil trial of the organizers of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. The rally ended with the murder of Heather Heyer and injuries to dozens of other activists. The case was brought by a group of individuals that were attacked during the tiki torch march across the University of Virginia’s Charlottesville campus on August 11, 2017 and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville the next day.
If successful, the lawsuit, which seeks large monetary damages, could have wide-reaching repercussions. The plaintiffs hope that it will ultimately bankrupt the hate groups behind the far-right events and bring their activities to a halt.
Zach D. Roberts, who filmed the 2017 Charlottesville violence for the Palast Investigative Fund, joins Greg Palast and FlashPoints host Dennis J. Bernstein to talk about the case.
Read Roberts' exclusive report: https://www.gregpalast.com/hate-goes-on-trial-in-charlottesville/

Right now, the darkness is falling on Afghanistan, and we are responsible.

Human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who led a $9.5 billion suit against chevron, sentenced to six months for contempt.
Learn more about this extraordinary case: https://www.gregpalast.com/facing-prison-for-fighting-chevron/
Stand with Steven at: https://FreeDonziger.com.
#FreeDonziger #BigOil #Pollution #Environment #Amazon #HumanRights #StevenDonziger

On this week's Reality Check, Greg Palast stands in for regular host Cary Harrison and interviews human rights lawyer Steven Donziger and "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" author John Perkins.
Learn more: https://www.gregpalast.com/fact-injection-donziger-v-chevron/

Should we pass laws against bank robbery by asking the bank robbers? Manchin's talking about asking the vote thieves to agree to end their crime wave — that ain't going to happen! #FreedomToVoteAct

Listen to The Network soliloquy that Ed Asner gamely voiced for Greg Palast's bestselling book Armed Madhouse

Take a listen to learn why Asner was recognized as the best voice actor on the planet. This is his reading of Greg Palast's investigation of Walmart, “What Price a Storegasm?” from the 2002 edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

On Monday, a state Superior Court in Raleigh, North Carolina ruled to allow ex-cons to vote — even if they haven’t paid old fines. The GOP is freaking. Here’s why: a University of Minnesota study found 89% of ex-cons vote Democratic, no matter their color. Too bad the Democrats are MIA on registering ex-cons. I’ve calculated that over 9 million ex-cons are ELIGIBLE to vote — but need help and guidance getting through the berzerko rules for ex-cons to register — which ain’t so easy for non-cons either. Learn more: https://www.gregpalast.com/the-ex-con-con-job/

Chevron set out to destroy Steven Donziger, to make an example of a human rights lawyer that dares take on the petroleum pirates. But the oil giant also went after journalists, in one case, filing a complaint against the BBC Television reporter that broke the story that Chevron had destroyed key evidence in the case. I was that reporter — and survived with my job after a year of hearings. But Chevron’s prosecution did a good job of scaring off other journalists.
Some were scared off; some bought off. PBS News Hour wouldn’t touch the death-by-oil story. The official chief sponsor of the PBS News Hour? Chevron.
Here’s the story, broadcast by BBC (https://youtu.be/W1FIXwtfvBs) and, in the US, by Democracy Now!, the story you won’t find on the Petroleum Broadcast System.
I’ve gone way out of my way to get ChevronTexaco’s side of the story. I finally chased them down in Ecuador’s capital, Quito. I showed them a study of the epidemic of childhood leukemia centered on where their company dumped oil sludge. (https://chevroninecuador.org/assets/docs/childhood-leukemia.pdf)
Here’s their reply:
“And it’s the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States?”
Texaco’s lawyer, Rodrigo Perez, was chuckling and snorting.
“Scientifically, nobody has proved that crude causes cancer.”
OK, then. But what about the epidemiological study about children with cancer in the Amazon traced to hydrocarbons?
The parents of the dead kids, he said, would have some big hurdles in court:
“If there is somebody with cancer there, they must prove it is caused by crude or by the petroleum industry. And, second, they have to prove that it is OUR crude.”
Perez leaned over with a huge grin.
“Which is absolutely impossible.”
He grinned even harder.
Maybe some guy eating monkeys in the jungle can’t prove it. And maybe that’s because the evidence of oil dumping was destroyed.
Deliberately, by Chevron.
I passed the ChevronTexaco legal duo a document from their files labeled “Personal y confidential.” They read in silence. They stayed silent quite a while. Jaime Varela, Chevron’s lawyer, was wearing his tan golf pants and white shoes, an open shirt and bespoke blue blazer. He had a blow-dried bouffant hairdo much favored by the ruling elite of Latin America and skin whiter than mine, a color also favored by the elite.
Jaime had been grinning too. He read the memo. He stopped grinning. The key part says,
“Todos los informes previos deben ser sacados de las oficinas principales y las del campo, y ser destruidos.”
“. . . Reports . . . are to be removed from the division and field offices and be destroyed.”
It came from the company boss in the States, “R. C. Shields, Presidente de la Junta.”
Removed and destroyed. That smells an awful lot like an order to destroy evidence, which in this case means evidence of abandoned pits of deadly drilling residue. Destroying evidence that is part of a court action constitutes fraud.
In the United States, that would be a crime, a jail-time crime. OK, gents, you want to tell me about this document?
“Can we have a copy of this?” Varela asked me, pretending he’d never seen it before in his life.
I’ll pretend with them, if that gets me information. “Sure. You’ve never seen this?”
The ritual of innocence continued as they asked a secretary to make copies. “We’re sure there’s an explanation,” Varela said. I’m sure there is. “We’ll get back to you as soon as we find out what it is.”
I’m still waiting.
Learn more about #StevenDonziger and why he's facing prison for fighting Chevron: https://www.gregpalast.com/facing-prison-for-fighting-chevron/
#StevenDonziger #FreeDonziger #BigOil #Pollution #Environment #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Activism

Calling in to the FlashPoints News studio from his new New York home, where he is currently under house arrest, rights attorney Steven Donziger talks about his Kafkaesque case with host Dennis J. Bernstein and investigative reporter Greg Palast.
Palast has been reporting on this outrageous tale of oil, power, corruption, corporate murder and ecocide since 2007, when he first met one of Donziger’s clients, Emergildo Criollo, Chief of the Cofan people, deep in the Amazon rainforest. With the help of Donziger, Criollo had launched a David v. Goliath lawsuit against Chevron for poisoning the rainforest and the people who lived in it — the Chief’s two sons being among the many victims of the oil giant’s murderous sludge.
The Ecuadorian courts ruled in Criollo’s favor, finding that Chevron’s Texaco operation had illegally dumped 16 billion gallons of deadly oil waste, but that was just the beginning of Donziger’s battle.
Chevron were ordered to pay Criollo and the other indigenous co-plaintiffs $9.5 billion. Rather than pay up, and to distract attention from their own mass industrial poisoning, Chevron set out to destroy Donziger, to make an example of a human rights lawyer that dares take on the petroleum pirates.
Learn more: https://www.gregpalast.com/facing-prison-for-fighting-chevron/
Support Donziger and join the fight: https://www.donzigerdefense.com
Transcript of interview: https://www.gregpalast.com/why-am-i-the-one-locked-up-and-not-chevron