Saturday, April 16, 2005

Corpwatch and War Profiteers

Corpwatch, an Oakland, California, based non-profit hosts the brand new version of the popular War Profiteers website to track military contractors on a regular basis. The website is intended to be the one-stop shop for communities, citizens, taxpayers, policy makers, media, students and activists to learn about the new merchants of global conflict.

"Profiting from killing is wrong. What makes it even more outrageous is that taxpayers have to foot the bill. We intend to investigate these abuses and inform the public about what these companies are doing. This new website will be the premier place for the pubic to find out what is happening behind the scenes of the so-called war on terrorism," said Pratap Chatterjee, program director at Corpwatch.

... one in ten personnel in the 2003 invasion of Iraq come from private industry, a dramatic ten-fold increase over the previous Gulf War in 1991. Not only were most of these employees drawn from the biggest military contractors in the United States: the company that won the most new work was the company that the Vice-President Dick Cheney headed up before he took office: Halliburton Corporation and its subsidiaries (e.g., Kellogg, Brown, and Root) have won over $8 billion in contracts. Their military revenue in 2003 of $3.9 billion was a staggering 700% higher than the
previous year!

...

The War Profiteers web site was originally created to distribute the popular War Profiteer deck of cards, which has sold over 10,000 sets to date. This deck will is available for a donation to the Ruckus Society, one of the original creators of this popular game.

Corpwatch mission: CorpWatch counters corporate-led globalization through education, network-building and activism. We work to foster democratic control over corporations by building a diverse movement for human rights and dignity, labor rights and environmental justice.

GO TO: War Profiteers

CorpWatch
1611 Telegraph Avenue., #702
Oakland, CA 94612 USA
Tel: + 1 510-271-8080

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