![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.gregpalast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rick-on-Plane-in-Louisiana.jpg\" "\\"Richard-Rowley\\"")
<\/a><\/center>By Greg Palast<\/em><\/p>\nBy the age of fifteen, Rick Rowley was doomed\u00a0\u2013\u00a0born in the middle of Nowhere, Michigan, a wasteland of rust and snow so awful we let autoworkers have it.<\/p>\n
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 <\/span>Motor City: Detroit.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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, \u201cWhat’s that? Some kind of toy camera?\u201d<\/p>\n No, it’s my gun.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n He’s off now, un-embedded.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n So far. Rowley \u2013 the Ricardo of Vultures’ Picnic<\/a><\/em>, excerpted above \u2013 is not part of the Palast Investigative Team: he is<\/em> the team. All I do is step in front of his savvy lens.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u009d\u008f Vultures and\u00a0Vote Rustlers \u00a0<\/strong>(just released) \u00e2\u009d\u008f\u00a0The Assassination of Hugo Chavez<\/strong> \u00e2\u009d\u008f\u00a0Dispatches #06 \u2014 <\/strong> Or, just pick up a signed copy of the DVD\u00a0Vultures and\u00a0Vote Rustlers<\/a>\u00a0for a minimum donation of $40. Available only<\/em> from the Palast Investigative\u00a0Fund.<\/p>\n 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.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n * * * * * *<\/p>\n Greg Palast\u2019s new film, Vultures and Vote Rustlers<\/a>, based on his reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now, is available on DVD<\/a> and as a download<\/a>.<\/p>\n Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times<\/em> bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0The Best Democracy Money Can Buy<\/em>, Armed Madhouse<\/em> and the highly acclaimed Vultures’ Picnic<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n HELP US FOLLOW THE MONEY. Visit the Palast Investigative Fund’s store<\/a> or simply make a tax-deductible\u00a0contribution<\/a> to keep our work alive!<\/p>\n Subscribe to Palast’s\u00a0Newsletter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0podcasts<\/a>.Rick wasn’t running away; his parents were OK. He was running to<\/em> something; who knows what the hell it was.<\/p>\n<\/a>* \u00a0\u00a0* *
\nThis Sunday, March 2, unless God is a scoundrel, Rick Rowley will win the Academy Award for Best Documentary, as Director and Cinematographer of\u00a0Dirty Wars,<\/em>\u00a0his stunning collaboration with investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill.<\/p>\n<\/a>This week, to celebrate Rowley’s long-overdue Academy Award, the Palast Investigative Fund is offering the Rick-o-rama Pack: three DVDs<\/a> filled with Rowley’s global-spanning reports for BBC Television, Democracy Now and Al Jazeera. For a tax-deductible donation of $90, you get…<\/p>\n\n
\nRowley and Palast from Bosnia to the Congo to darkest New York, going after billionaires who would buy and burn our planet.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nRowley and Palast in Caracas with Hugo\u00a0and under the volcano in Mexico City. The no-BS story of Latin America you won’t get on CNN.<\/p>\n
\nFrom Rowley’s own production company, Big Noise Films, a compendium of his best stuff, including his jaw-dropping short, White Power<\/em>, from inside a skinhead organization. And there’s the footage of our dawn stake-out of a financier that would make a vampire blush.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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