Russia “Welcomes” Plan to Control Syria’s Chemical Weapons, But That’s About It

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Guess what? It turns out that Russia isn’t really all that excited about forcing Syria to give up its chemical weapons after all:

A last-ditch effort to avert a U.S. military strike by transferring control of Syrian chemical weapons ran into obstacles Tuesday, as Russia balked at a French plan to enforce an international agreement under a binding U.N. Security Council resolution with a military option if necessary.

….A telephone conversation between French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, revealed a deep divide over their visions of the Security Council’s role — and particularly over the prospect of military action to ensure that an agreement would be honored….After a telephone conversation Tuesday with Lavrov, Fabius said Russia is reluctant to agree to a binding U.N. Security Council resolution that would provide a framework to control Syria’s chemical weapons stocks.

….Russia considers Fabius’s proposal unacceptable at least in part because it would imply that the Syrian government is responsible for last month’s chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus. Instead, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said, Russia plans to submit a draft U.N. Security Council presidential statement “welcoming” the initiative to transfer Syrian chemical weapons to international control in order to destroy them. The statement would call for the U.N. secretary general, the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and “interested parties” to implement the plans, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.

There are lots of ways of weaseling the wording on this, of course, and no one is better at that than a bunch of UN diplomats. But this proposal is going to end up in the ash heap pretty quickly if this turns out to be a hard-and-fast position from Russia. Stay tuned.

Also: apologies for the 100 percent focus on Syria so far today. It’s just one of those odd coincidences. Maybe next I’ll write something mean about the new iPhone in order to spark a witty and enlightening conversation about Apple in comments.

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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.

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