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Dear CorpWatch subscriber,

I just got off the phone with our investigative journalist Fariba Nawa who has been traveling across Afghanistan digging up an explosive series of articles and a report on where reconstruction dollars have been going. As an Afghan-American, who has spent most of the last four years in the country of her birth, she has a unique understanding of what is really happening on the ground. The mainstream media may have forgotten about that war, but we have not. And with your help, we plan to remind them!

I spoke to her last month where she was hand-writing her notes by lamplight. “In my home and most of the capital where three million Afghans now live, there’s still no running water nor reliable electricity,” she told me. The only way she can get electricity during the day is to visit the one place that has 24 hour power and hot water – the United States embassy! Yet $4 billion has been released by governments to Afghanistan in the last four years. Where is it all going?

Fariba says the need for basic services for ordinary people, such as power, water and sanitation, is being ignored. Instead contracts are given to companies to build new roads and buildings. Yet this new construction may not last, she says, because the companies don’t know the local terrain or conditions. “In Kabul, one hospital was built without a sewage system or running water, another hospital collapsed during renovation and 13 people were killed,” she told me.

You made it possible for Fariba to tell the stories of her country and now we need your help to publish these stories, so that they can be read by the more than 150,000 people who visit our websites every month, from mainstream journalists and members of Congress, to activists and concerned citizens.

A few hours before I spoke to Fariba, an old friend with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade was updating me on how the Murphy Oil plant and Bass Enterprises in Louisiana, spilled vast quantities of toxic chemicals duringHurricane Katrina. The community is worried how the debris and toxics are being cleaned up and whether these companies had adequate environmental protections in place before the hurricane.

CorpWatch will be working with groups like the Louisiana Bucket Brigade to expose the governmental and corporate response to these spills, the clean-up contracts and how that money is spent. We are also investigating reports of the widespread abuse of immigrant labor, overbilling, political favors and shoddy workmanship by major government contractors on the Gulf Coast, many of whom – DynCorp, Halliburton, Blackwater, and others – are reprising the samekinds of sweetheart reconstruction deals they enjoyed in Iraq.

In fact, our Katrina coverage has already made people take notice. After our article “Big Easy Iraqi-Style Contracts Flood New Orleans” and CorpWatch founder Josh Karliner’s opinion piece slamming GW, the “Global Warming President”;, the New York Times Editorial Board asked us to brief them about our research. The fact we are being sought out by the likes of the Times is yet more evidence that we are becoming regarded as a premier reliable source for the truth about corporate corruption and profiteering, as evidenced by the years of research and reporting on our website CorpWatch.org and in our new book”Iraq, Inc.”

Indeed Corpwatch has become a key resource to activists, the alte native media, mainstream media and policymakers alike. You probably know that CorpWatch’s reports helped shape two congressional hearings on Iraq’s reconstruction contracts earlier this year. And just a few weeks ago, staffers in the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), which has been leading government investigations into the war scandals, informed us that its director Stuart Bowen (a former Republican fundraiser for George W. Bush) “borrowed” the office’s copy of ÒIraq, Inc.” SIGIR has been in the front pages recently with charges they are filing against war profiteers. How often have you seen yourdollars convert someone from the inside?

In the last month alone, we have provided information to Democracy Now!, correspondents at the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, PBS and radio stations around the country. You see some of these articles for yourself by clicking on this link: www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=171 <>But we can’t do it without your help. Your contributions help us investigate the ongoing corruption, human rights and environmental abuses! Support us clicking on this link now! https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=169

Please dig deep into your pockets. Whatever you can afford will be greatly appreciated – in return we’d like to send you a copy of Fariba’s new report on Afghanistan when it is published in January.

Pratap Chatterjee
Executive Director

P.S. We are also planning on launching a journalist training program on corporate reporting and we’ll use our ties with Democracy Now!, Free Speech Radio, and other radio programmers to do more radio production. So keep your eyes and ears open.

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