Update: The Middleman

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Back in April, as part of a joint investigation by Mother Jones, Frontline/World and the Center for Investigative Reporting, Mark Schapiro reported on Asher Karni, a “genius” in South Africa’s military electronics trade, now in jail in Brooklyn awaiting sentence for orchestrating a nuclear black market deal. (See The Middleman.)

Schapiro recently spoke by phone with Karni’s collaborator, Humayun Khan, an Islamabad businessman with close ties to the Pakistani military. In the interview, Khan, who has been indicted by the U.S. Justice Department but remains at large in Pakistan, protests his innocence but eventually admits that all the evidence “is pointing right at me.” Listen to the phone interview at Frontline/World (where you can also read email exchanges between Karni and Khan in which the Pakistani, known as “the Guru,” asks Karni to purchase items prohibited under nonproliferation laws.) This story is developing by the week, so stay tuned.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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