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[cblj_backup]

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Ways To Give:

redstapler linked me to editrx, who just can't get a break -- she was featured last week for assistance with a medical dental emergency, and now is facing foreclosure on her home. She's looking for advice on fighting the foreclosure and help finding a lawyer in New Hampshire.

adelheide is raising $500 to get her past-due car insurance restored. She's selling jewelry to raise the funds, and has a post up here with links to her LJ sales posts and Etsy shop.

pocketmouse linked to a fundraiser for Daniel, a freelance artist who has just undergone surgery for a brain tumor. He's without insurance and facing bills in the range of $450K. The fundraiser has reached its goal, but every little bit helps.

v_mures and Paganaidd are raising money for security deposit and first month's rent on a small house to help their friend Heather get into health-safe housing. The donation page is here and there's more information on Heather's predicament and the difficulties of multiple chemical sensitivities here.

Stephanie linked me to a fundraiser for Chloe, a Rottweiler who needs surgery for a torn ACL & CCL.

Fans Helping Fans:

happi_feet is in the process of purchasing a piece of property in Tennessee, and is looking for someone to occupy the house on the property on the cheap, in return for cleaning up the land around it and repairing some aspects of the house.

adsartha is setting up shop as am editor and translator, with particular interest in helping self-publishers, at Word Alchemist, and is looking for advice on advertising her services -- places to post, ways to advertise, et cetera.

ljgeoff is looking at purchasing and renovating a house in Charlotte, Michigan, to turn it into a low-cost, accessible housing cooperative. There's an indiegogo fundraiser in the works, but first she needs help making a video for the fundraiser. There's more information on the process of fundraising and the kind of help she needs here.

News To Know:

tealin brought to my attention that there was a dreadful anti-Islam film made that has led to protests and deaths over its depiction of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Now actors are coming forward to tell their side of the story -- specifically that they filmed an entirely different script, and were dubbed over without their knowledge or consent.

brainwane let me know that the entire 91-episode run of Little Mosque On The Prairie, a light-hearted sitcom about a community of Muslims living in a small Canadian town, is now available free for viewing on Hulu.com. I've heard awesome things about the show, check it out!

Just For Fun:

goseaward linked me to a fascinating article on the Faces of CMU. Startling, but awesome.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can always post items for my attention in comments here (or on any post) or email me at copperbadge at gmail dot com. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help (or ask for help!). Remember, brevity is the soul of RFM.

Comments

[bare-bear.livejournal.com]

That's incredible, I didn't know any of that. It's disgusting and scary, because while I know to take the news with a grain of salt and know that there's another side of the story out there, too many people take it as Truth, and don't consider that the media isn't reporting everything. And when other stories come out contradicting that Truth, it's dismissed as untrue. I've seen it in my own family, where I've had to explain why a lot of the news coming out of this is misrepresenting, and I like to think that my family are decent people (if unfortunately a bit ignorant).

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

When I came back from Iraq and told my family flatly there were no WMDs, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 (and rattled his saber principally to keep Iran away, because of the disastrous eight-year Iran-Iraq war) and Iraqis were pretty nice and friendly, I more or less got disowned. I mean, what would I know about WMDs or terrorists, despite having talked to the latter? (Oh, and torture. A bunch of conservative scumbags tried to get me court-martialed for speaking out against it while on active duty.)

We could have won Iraq if we had kept the Iraqi Army intact, not disbanded the Ba'ath Party, and given a lot of Halliburton's jobs to Iraqis. They wanted jobs, electricity, clean water-----instead, we spent millions of dollars on Halliburton and Blackwater----and don't get me started on Blackwater.

As far as WMDs.....let's see, a WMD attack would have required every soldier downrange to don a protective suit over their uniform. This suit was like a duvet. Then a rubber gas mask. This on top of body armor, full uniform, and sometimes rubber boots over your combat boots. I lost forty pounds in a couple of months there, and if I'd have had to put on one of those and walk around in it, I would have died of heat stroke, along with a lot of other soldiers. This is what we call a 'force-multiplying' weapon. If you had such a weapon, and knew---as bin Laden did, after watching the US's response to the disastrous Battle of Mogadishu in the nineties------that the US would not stand for sudden large groups of casualties----you would use it. But I guess the US is okay with the day-by-day trickle of dead soldiers by the one or two, while dead and injured civilians outnumber the soldiers by about a factor of high single digits, maybe as much as ten times higher than the rate for soldiers.

Nah, not bitter at all. Needless to say, I came back from Iraq with a completely different attitude toward Muslims, which is so shameful. The stuff you see on TV....it's lies.