Saturday, December 03, 2011

Radio Free Kansas, "Secular Sunday" - Greg Palast - @ 3pm (Central, U.S.A.)


Who is Greg Palast?

Author of the New York Times and international bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse, Palast is Patron of the Trinity College Philosophical Society, an honor previously held by Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde.

"A cross between Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes" (Jim Hightower, The Nation), Greg Palast turned his skills to journalism after two decades as a top investigator of corporate fraud and racketeering. Palast's reports appear on BBC's Newsnight and in Britain's Guardian, Rolling Stone and Harper's.

Palast directed the US' government's largest racketeering case in history (that garnered a $4.3 billion jury award) and the investigation of the Exxon Valdez.

Palast is recipient of the George Orwell Courage in Journalism Prize for his BBC television documentary, Bush Family Fortunes.

Book Synopsis
Vultures' Picnic

In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Predators. A tale of oil, sex, shoes, radiation and investigative reporting.

From the Arctic Circle to the Islamic Republic of BP, from a burnt nuclear reactor in Japan to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Palast uncovers a story you won't get on CNN.

Greg Palast's crew of journalist-detectives chase down British Petroleum bag men, CIA operatives, nuclear power con men—and "The Vultures," billionaire financial speculators who, through bribery, flim-flam and political muscle, take entire nations hostage for mega-profits.

The action begins when the Deepwater Horizon explodes in the Gulf of Mexico and a confidential cable arrives on Miss Badpenny's desk from a terrified insider. He has the real, hushed-up facts of the disaster—which can only be found hidden in the files of a Central Asian dictatorship.

Palast sets off for Baku to investigate the sexiest Muslim woman on Earth and the whereabouts of millions of dollars in a brown valise. Then he jumps the globe to an Alaska Eskimo village after receiving an extraordinary note from the Chief of Intelligence of the Free Republic of the Arctic.

Along the way, Palast gets drunk, gets sober, gets laid, gets arrested—and ultimately defeats one Vulture—only to watch twenty more hatch in his place.

It's a tale of oil company hit men, nuclear con-men and financial jackals.

But more, it's the story of an investigator on the hunt, not quite sure why he's doing it—and failing as often as he succeeds.

It's pulp non-fiction. Columbo with marital issues and a dying father.

"Reads like a spy thriller. The last of the great investigative reporters."
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"Jack Kerouac meets Seymour Hersh."
- Buzzflash

"Up there with Woodward and Bernstein."
- The Guardian

"America's best investigative reporter—and the funniest."
- Randi Rhode

Palast gives a teaser away:
After some tense discussion (Penguin was partly owned by Gaddafi, so you can imagine...), my publisher has given me the unusual right to give all my readers, for no charge, the entire first chapter of my new book Vultures’ Picnic.

Even if you don't get the book, I really want you to read the first chapter.

Read it or Download it.


This Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011
Radio Free Kansas
3pm (Central Standard).

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