Greg Palast

Insurrectionist Disqualification: Marjorie Taylor Greene v. 14th Amendment

In this week's episode of The FlashPoints' Election Crimes Bulletin, John C. Bonifaz of Free Speech for People talks to hosts Greg Palast and Dennis J. Bernstein about his group’s lawsuit, which challenges Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s candidacy for re-election under the 14th Amendment’s Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause

West Virginia protest calls out Joe Manchin’s dirty coal profits

More than 50 activists convened on a power plant in West Virginia last weekend, calling for its closure. By the end of the day, 16 people were arrested. The plant the protesters targeted in Grant Town is one where Sen. Joe Manchin makes nearly $500,000 per year selling a dirty coal waste called “gob.” Gob is short for “garbage of bituminous,” which Sen. Manchin sells to the power plant for a tidy profit via Enersystems, the company he founded and that his son now runs.
The protesters, a mix of local and national activists, call themselves West Virginia Rising. One of them was Michael Whitten, a retired miner from Boone County, West Virginia. “When I worked on strip mines, we threw that [gob] away,” Whitten told DeSmogBlog. “We covered it up, it’s like if you had a wood-burning stove at your home and you wanted to put wet wood in it — it’s just not economical.”
He’s right. The West Virginia customers served by the Grant Town Power Plant, run by American Bituminous Power Partners (AMBit), are being charged more because of the gob. In the last six years burning this waste coal has cost the local power utility an additional $117 million. All of this — even though regulators initially fought the plant’s transition to burning gob — was pushed through thanks to Sen. Manchin.
Manchin, who has a blind trust set up for his investments, has continually been a one-man blockade for climate legislation. That came to a head this year when he essentially killed the Build Back Better bill, Biden’s signature climate and social policy legislation, by dropping his (some might argue never serious) support of it.
Full report by Zach D. Roberts: https://www.gregpalast.com/west-virginia-protest-calls-out-manchins-coal-profits/
#JoeManchin #GrantTown #WestVirginia #WVRising #CoalBaronBlockade #StopGOB #WestVirginiaRising #Pollution #Environment

We have to cutoff Putin’s ability to make money off oil

Russia got 45% of its national budget — that’s all its social programs, everything — from oil and gas royalties, and the price of gas hit the floor during COVID. Russia was broke. Russia was bankrupt before Putin’s war in the Ukraine. Thanks to this invasion, the price of oil has completely reversed the bankruptcy of the Russian state, and now they're making money off this war. So, we have to cutoff Putin’s ability to make money off the oil.

Election Crimes Bulletin: How an axis of awful is blocking oil from Venezuela

Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet. If you look at OPEC, they put Saudi Arabia as number two. Venezuela's producing very little oil, not even enough for its own needs at this moment, when it was producing 3.2 million barrels of oil a day — 2 million barrels a day for export. If we unleash oil from Venezuela, then Putin's profit from the invasion evaporates.
Putin is earning roughly, by my calculation, a billion dollars a day windfall from the sales of oil and gas, at prices which today hit about $118 a barrel, with natural gas going up an equal amount. So, Venezuela is the way to stop Putin's tanks, it's that simple. Chevron say that within three months they could bring 800,000 barrels of oil a day to the US from Venezuela, all they need is Biden to lift the Trump embargo. That 800,000 barrels a day, by the way, equals the maximum amount of oil that the US gets from Russia.
This deadly embargo of Venezuela was imposed by Donald Trump. Why is Biden continuing with Trump's policies, which right now are enriching Putin, by keeping 2 million barrels of oil a day off the market? Keep in mind, Venezuela has invaded no one, attacked no one, and they’ve got a president that was elected, even if our State Department isn’t exactly a fan of Nicolás Maduro.
And while Biden is celebrating the fact he got Europe to cancel the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which wasn’t in operation anyway, they’re still taking 1.9 trillion cubic feet of gas a year from Nord Stream 1. That 1.9 trillion cubic feet a year, which Russia provides through Nord Stream 1, can be replaced 100% by Venezuela, which according to the US Energy Information Administration is capable of over 2 trillion cubic feet of gas production a year for export. They could send this as liquid natural gas to Europe, and completely replace what they get from Nord Stream 1. But we're not doing it, and here's why… It’s being blocked by an axis of awful, which includes two powerful Democrats.
One is Bob Menendez, the Senator from New Jersey who's the only sitting senator who's ever had unanimous censure by the Senate Ethics Committee for corruption. And the other is Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was deeply involved in an illegal scheme to move Democratic National Committee money to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Meanwhile Charles Koch is refusing to shutter his operations in Russia, and is using his power and influence to stop any oil flowing out of Venezuela. And, by the way, the Kochs also funded the Clinton administration, which helped put Putin in power. Here’s the thing; when you corrode and corrupt democracy, it has consequences.

As long as the tanks roll, Koch Industries will be rolling in it

As long as the tanks roll, Koch Industries will be rolling in it — in this edition of the FlashPoints, Election Crimes Bulletin, Greg Palast explains why.

The Fight for Democracy in Ukraine and the United States

Journalist Larisa Alexandrovna gives us a report on the war on democracy currently being waged in Ukraine and Russia, and Major Gamaliel Turner Sr., a victim of Georgia’s new vigilante voter law, tells us about the legal battle to make his vote count in the United States.

The Price of Russian Oil with Josh Fox & Ben Judah

Greg Palast hosts this week's Reality Check on KPFK. His guests are filmmaker, playwright and activist Josh Fox (Gasland), and journalist and author Ben Judah (Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin).

How to Stop Putin’s War Windfall by Ending Our Embargo of Venezuelan Oil

The mayhem in Ukraine is a profit center for Putin. 43% of the federal Russian budget was provided by oil and gas revenues and royalties. Russia lives and dies, literally, on its oil revenues, and this mayhem has caused the price of oil to rise to over $100 a barrel, so he has a war-windfall of a half billion dollars a day. So the question is, what can we do to bring down the price of oil? Putin's a powerful man at a hundred bucks a barrel, but he's pretty weak at thirty bucks. So how do we do this? Well, we’ve been embargoing the nation with the largest supply of oil on the planet — Venezuela.
Watch the full 30-minute TMI interview with Aldous Tyler: https://youtu.be/aVTl-t1cRqU
Learn more: https://www.gregpalast.com/venezuela-can-bring-putin-to-his-knees/

Fact Injection [2:22:22] — Ukraine Hysteria & CRT

Putin claims he is attacking to eliminate Ukraine’s ““ government… headed by a Jewish president! sanctions, Putin only cares about the price of oil. If Biden would end the insane embargo of Venezuela, oil prices would collapse and so would Putin‘s killing spree.

Fact Injection: 7 Facts About Ukraine

Whatever peace there is in Ukraine is the result of the Minsk agreements of 2015 signed by Ukraine, Ukrainian Separatists, France and Germany and endorsed by Russia. The Minsk accords gave the eastern region protection from attack and some measure of autonomy — but not independence. On the basis of the agreement, Russia moved out of the Donbas.
However, the Ukrainian government has never implemented the agreements under which Russian troops left the border area. From Putin’s view, by breaching these agreements, the Ukrainian Parliament (notably, over the objection of President Zelenski) is clearly daring Russia to go back into the Donbas.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian separatists have never implemented the Minsk accords either. Even now, the separatists are holding Ukrainian hostages.
So, the problem is every side gives lip service to the Minsk agreements, but it’s all lip, no service.
Learn more, read "7 Facts about Ukraine" at: https://www.gregpalast.com/7-facts-about-ukraine/