This Week in National Insecurity: Extreme Sports Edition

Flickr Commons/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/expertinfantry/5417168174/">Expert Infantry</a>

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We know you’re riding high over the women’s World Cup soccer team, America. But how does our military measure up to its own league rivals? Let’s check the weekly scorecard! In this installment: gays get shafted, kids (may) get drafted, the ACLU gets lucky, hackers stay plucky, and Afghans play with a headless goat carcass. Yeah, nothing rhymes with that.

The sitrep:

  • A British-born UN worker in Afghanistan believes he can save the wartorn country by teaching everyone how to play rugby. “The national sport, Buzkashi—a game of unwritten rules that nobody follows in which horsemen battle over a headless goat carcass—has much in common with rugby, he said.” Okay, but how long before Vince McMahon brings Buzkashi to America? (Stripes)
  • Hackers 90,000, Pentagon 0. If you’re keeping score with stolen email accounts, that is. (Mother Jones/New York Times)

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We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

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If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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