October 28, 2009

Taking Graft to New Heights

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I’ve never heard of the Italian news agency ADNkronos, but today they report a pretty spectacular statistic:

Kabul, 28 October(AKI) – Anti-corruption officials believe graft is eating up a staggering 75 percent of the Afghan government’s revenues, a news conference heard on Wednesday. A senior official in Afghanistan’s anti-corruption department, Muhammad Yasin Osmani, said most of the revenues were being wasted due to administrative corruption.

….Finance ministry spokesman Aziz Shams admitted government revenues were being squandered but said Osmani had over-dramatised the situation.

But does Aziz Shams mean over-dramatized in the sense of “wrong” or over-dramatized in the sense “making too big a fuss over it”?  Steve Hynd wants to know.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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