April 29, 2009

Spanish Judge Gives Go-Ahead on Torture Investigation

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This just came over the AP wire:

Spain’s top investigative magistrate has opened an investigation into the Bush administration over alleged torture of terror suspects at the Guantanamo prison.

The new investigation by Judge Baltasar Garzon (whom Mother Jones profiled in 2004 and discussed again this January) comes after he was instructed earlier not to open an inquiry into six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Garzon’s latest ruling does not name specific individuals, but will “investigate both those who carried out torture and those who ordered or cooperated with it,” according to Reuters. When David Corn, Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief, asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs about Garzon’s plans two weeks ago, Gibbs joked about it. David pointed out that “If an investigation proceeds, Obama could well have to decide whether or not to comply with Spanish requests for US government documents–that is, to help or hinder the investigation.” Now that Garzon is going forward with an investigation—this time without the names—will the Obama administration take it seriously, or keep kidding around?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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