US Special Forces in Afghanistan have started imbedding with " anti-Taliban " militias and providing support via a military fund said to contain 1.3 billion. The special forces troops are reporting directly to the US general leading NATO forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal and details of the plan entitled Community Defense Initiative (CDR) are being kept from non-US Alliance members. Although General McChrystal is head of the international NATO mission in Afghanistan, the newly created special forces group is reportedly outside NATO's authority?

Meanwhile in Fallujah, birth defects and cancer are conspicuosly increasing in children.
A group of Iraqi and British officials, including the former Iraqi minister for women's affairs, Dr Nawal Majeed a-Sammarai, have asked the UN general assembly to task an independent committee to fully investigate the defects and help clean up toxic materials left over from decades of war.

The US Government has admitted to using the chemical weapon White Phospherous during a 2004 battle in retaliation for the deaths of four Blackwater employees in Fallujah.

"We are seeing a very significant increase in central nervous system anomalies," said Falluja general hospital's director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais. "Before 2003 [the start of the war] I was seeing sporadic numbers of deformities in babies. Now the frequency of deformities has increased dramatically."

WAKE UP

silencing tactics

who cares about nigeriens?

here's a two-minute video on why Shell gasoline sucks. hint: extraction in the niger delta is both a health and environmental shitstorm.

where do you buy gas, if you have a car?

ok, pissed.

abortion isn't covered in the new health care bill. there's a huge, huge conversation going on at feministing about viewing abortion as an "elective procedure" and about how a few feminists who claim the pro-choice moniker keep parroting the right-wing idea that only rape and a danger to the life of the woman should mean the big A gets covered.

where do we compromise? i am sure the dems who voted for this bill will say it's the only way they could get it passed. and i agree, the Right has been trying to kill health care by bringing in the abortion debate for YEARS. (see the hyde amendment.)

i want health care reform as much as the next person, but i'm frankly pissed that we still don't see abortion as a human right, and can't agree to the fact that a woman's right to control her own body is the single greatest thing contributing to the movement for gender equality. i won't even go into how much this amendment affects poor women disproportionately. there are so many things wrong with it, and yet i find myself thinking that maybe it was for the best, just to get something passed. but then i remember what this means and i do NOT think it was for the best. i loved obama's attitude of compromise when he was campaigning. i thought it would be good for our country to learn how to cooperate and get along. and since then i have realized that i don't WANT to compromise with people who want to deny rights to me and the people that i love. i am having a very hard time balancing my compassion and my rage.
i definitely understand why people are against abortion. i definitely understand why that means they don't want anyone to have one.

i just don't want to concede to them anymore.

question blog, v1.0

i am interested, dear readers, in what news sources you use and how often you use them. i strive to get news from different places, about a variety of topics, and i try to do this every day. it doesn't always happen. sometimes all i end up with is 10 minutes of democracy now headlines in the morning and maybe a feministing article or two during the day. my email inbox piles up with headlines and pleas from activist organizations and soon i find myself deleting whole messes of emails simply because i know i don't have time to read and respond to all of them. what news sources and/or activist organizations do you prioritize?

other questions:

-how important is it to you to know what's going on in the world? in the country? in your state? in your county?

-does being informed matter to you even if you know you won't use that information?

-what things do you hate or love about the news?

-and, one that has felt particularly relevant of late:
how do you make time for news and politics when emotions run high?

i feel like when i have personal stuff going on i often shut out my regular news sources and find it hard to get fired up about my usual issues because i'm bogged down in a morass of [insert emotion here].

does anyone have any methods? dudes are supposed to be better at compartmentalizing their brains (and yes, i realize this is not true for all dudes), so maybe XY readers of this blog can tell me something about how that works?

anyway, question blog go! answers plz k thx.

in other news...

sweden is STILL awesome. they are going to start putting emissions labels on their foods so that consumers can see what the level of emissions is for each thing they buy. here's a cool graph (you know i love teh graphs):
food science yay

maybe a little annoying, because i know i would be one of those people who is like..."oh shit, which of these candies is best for the planet?!" and then spend 10 minutes stressing over the fact that i really want some chocolate but sour patch kids emit less global warming gases during their production.
ugggghhhhhhhhh privileged choices. :)