Take a minute—well, 1:28—and watch this video:
With new readers coming every day, it seems like a good time to explain what I’m doing here.
War Is Business is still very new, but the site is steadily building an audience of people from around the world—some activists, some contractors, some soliders, some journalists, some simply curious.
I began posting here eight weeks ago, and promoting the site a month ago. In that time, War Is Business has:
• Exposed a former US general’s ties to a company whose shoddy subcontracting practices may have helped sustain the Taliban
• Revealed the names of dozens of front companies owned by the mercenary firm Blackwater or its founder, Erik Prince
• Made news with a report on a special fundraiser for a US Senate candidate, hosted by Pentagon contractors
• Detailed the items in a record-breaking $60 billion US-Saudi arms deal—many hours before the information made international newswires and daily newspaper websites
The mission of this site is not merely to break news, but to bring light to a dark, neglected corner where money and violence intersect—and hopefully, create some accountability. Here’s how I described the overarching problem in an article for the Santa Fe Reporter:
Who cares how these companies make their money? Whether or not one supports the reasons behind today’s conflicts, it’s clear that profits for military contract[or]s are consuming funds that could be spent elsewhere.
Obama’s budget plans for this fiscal year call for a 7.4 percent increase to spending for defense, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for a combined total of $752 billion. At the same time, Obama wants to cut every department that isn’t related to national security by a collective 1.5 percent, or $6 billion.
As the wider economy suffers, the war business continues to grow.
Accountability begins with identification. That’s why war War Is Business puts names and faces on those who are profiting from war. This basic element of journalism—the “who” of the five Ws—is absent from some otherwise admirable efforts to investigate the privatization of national security and intelligence.
The research and reporting involved is time-consuming, and more costly than you might think.
Court records, for instance, don’t come cheap. Another example I’ve mentioned before: The Delaware Secretary of State’s office demands $20 for information on a company’s history of filings, whereas many states offer such information for free. This is part of the reason why Delaware is corporate headquarters of choice for all sorts of shady outfits—including Blackwater/Xe and its long list of front companies. That means War Is Business has to fork over $20 simply to take the first step of the investigative process—and we don’t get our money back if the trail leads to a dead end.
If this site is going to reach its potential as a fully searchable, constantly updated and freely accessible online directory of private military companies, arms merchants and their political allies, I need help.
Specifically, I need your help.
I want to raise $2,000 from readers by the end of the year. That’s less than one-thirtieth of my first-year’s fundraising target.
Can you spare 10 bucks toward this goal? Twenty? Fifty?
It’s easy to donate if you have a credit or debit card—you don’t even need a PayPal account. Just click the button:
You can’t claim a tax write-off, for reasons explained here (hopefully, that will change soon).
But you can be confident that your donation has gone directly to support investigative reporting on a subject that, for whatever reason, doesn’t seem to come up that often on shows like Meet The Press.
Maybe this is the reason:
