Turkish prison massacres

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In Turkey, recent police and military attacks on inmates have demonstrated to the world that notoriously hellish conditions within Turkish prisons continue to this day.

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According to the SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN, the entire fracas began when Turkish prison authorities announced their intentions to take inmates out of large dormitory-like wards and move each prisoner into his own cell. Fearing that it would allow the guards to go further with their already legendary torture sessions, some inmates began a hunger strike to demonstrate their opposition.

Angered by the protests, military and police forces literally stormed prison wards to get at hiding inmates, at times using bulldozers and tanks to get to some of the fasting prisoners. Official reports acknowledge that some inmates set themselves aflame during the attacks and authorities shot and killed at least one burning protestor. The article goes on to document some of the other almost unbelievable problems running rife in the Turkish “correction” system.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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