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KEEPING POWER IN IRAQ….Matt Yglesias comments on the news that “elite” forces working for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki have arrested several dozen officials in the Ministry of the Interior:

Maybe I’m just cynical, but this “elite counterterrorism force” sounds to me like a security organization whose primary purpose has more to do with bolstering Maliki vis-à-vis internal enemies than with counterterrorism as such. Not that I blame him, all kinds of other factions have their own armed wings and no loyalty to Maliki or the Iraqi state, so to stay in office he’ll need friends with guns of his own.

That’s a coincidence, isn’t it? That’s pretty much what it sounded like to me too. And who knows? Maybe these Interior officials really were trying to reconstitute the Baath Party. Seems pretty stupid to me, but stranger things have happened. The big question is, does “Baath Party” in this context really mean “Baath Party,” or does it just mean “Sunni guys I don’t like much”? Juan Cole is wondering too:

This cover story makes no sense, and it seems more likely that al-Maliki is continuing to clean house and is purging Interior of people placed there by previous governments or by the US CIA and Department of Defense. The Interior Ministry was set up by Naqib al-Falah, an ex-Baathist Sunni whose father had been a Baathist general who defected in the 1970s.

….When the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance won the 2005 elections, PM Ibrahim Jaafari gave interior to Bayan Jabr, a Turkmen member of the pro-Iran Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Jabr reconfigured the special police commandos as a hard line Shiite unit. But neither Jaafari nor al-Maliki has had complete control of the bureaucracy, and many of Falah’s ex-Baathists, whether Sunni or Shiite, managed to hold on to their jobs. Until now. Anyway, that is my guess.

Otherwise, it is not plausible at this late date that 28 people in Interior could make a neo-Baath coup.

Agreed. If this was a coup attempt, it was a pretty half-assed effort.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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