J.D. Williams didn't think much about the smoke cloud that often shrouded his air base in Iraq. Not when it covered everything he owned with black soot or when his wheezing and coughing made it difficult to sleep at night.
"We just went about our business because there was a war going on," said Williams, a retired chief warrant officer who was responsible for maintaining some 250 aircraft for the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division.
Health answers sought about burned-off war garbage
Yoko Ono letter on PA fracking: "I was there. I saw it. It made me cry."
A letter from Yoko Ono, written while visiting Pennsylvania communities impacted by fracking:After being invited to visit Pennsylvania by residents who have experienced the impacts of fracking, my son Sean and I decided to go see the harms of fracking up close. Our friend Susan Sarandon came with us, and we had the incredible honor of being joined by Mahatma Ghandi's grandson, Arun Ghandi, as well. We also invited members of the media.
Driving into the quaint town of Montrose, PA, I could hardly have anticipated how upsetting the next stops on our tour would be: a gas pad of four drills and a hissing pressure release, a giant compressor station under construction, large trucks full of sand and toxic chemicals rumbling down narrow dirt roads, and a drilling rig reaching to the sky.
To see such a beautiful landscape ruined was disturbing enough, but not nearly as bad as the heart-break of meeting those whose health, homes and lives have been forever changed because of fracking: Vera Scroggins, Craig Stevens, Rebecca Roter, Frank Finan, Ray Kemble and the Manning family. They welcomed us into their homes with complete hospitality, and Tammy Manning even baked us delicious muffins.
And they told us their stories. How they can no longer drink the water from their own wells because they have been poisoned by fracking pollution. These American families are suffering from suddenly not having clean water for the essentials of healthy living. They are not able to use their well water to drink, cook with, wash dishes, bathe or do laundry. They are buying water every day. Can you believe it?
Sexual assault in crisis US military tempers euphoria over end of combat ban
Victims of sexual assault and their advocates demand reform of culture in which most of thousands of cases are not prosecuted.
As many as one in three servicewomen report having been sexually assaulted, according to the defense department. In 2010, the latest year for which data is available, the Pentagon estimated that some 19,000 assaults occurred.
In the same week that the House armed services committee learned that sexual assault and rape at Lackland Air Base in San Antonio was almost commonplace – 59 victims of sexual assault have been identified and 32 drill sergeants and training inspectors have been charged with crimes or policy violations including rape – Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair, who had served five tours of Afghanistan, was arraigned in Fort Bragg on a series of sexual misconduct charges, including forcible sodomy.
After criticism, Obama officials quietly craft new polygraph policy
The Obama administration is drawing up a new national polygraph policy in the wake of allegations that federal agencies are pushing legal and ethical limits during screenings of job applicants and employees.
The decision by National Intelligence Director James Clapper to draft a new policy comes after his office conducted a review of federal polygraph programs and after McClatchy detailed allegations of polygraph abuses. Clapper’s review found “inconsistencies” across the government that led him to order a new policy, but it also found that “all programs were operating appropriately,” Clapper’s public affairs office said in a statement to McClatchy.
Alex Baer: We're Always Glad You Asked, Even If You Aren't
When there are more years behind than ahead, contemplative stewing and meditative mulling is the operative daily mode. That process clicks into place and idles away unaided. It's sneaky, this mental program, having automatically installed itself at some point or other, perhaps when a certain number of breaths has been taken, or something similar.
It's very much like a perpetual motion machine you never knew you had -- one that kicks into gear suddenly and without warning, slipping any and all restraints, unexpectedly puttering and pottering around all by itself. This latent skill is an intriguing discovery at any age, but especially when you think you've already got yourself fairly well figured out. By now, you've sort of thought of yourself as pretty well knowing how to be -- and being -- you.
How Climate Change Could Wipe Out the Western Forests
If current trends continue, the landscapes of states like New Mexico and Arizona may soon be unrecognizable.
The fire that burned through Forest Canyon, a breathtaking stretch of wilderness ringed by snowy peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, started in October and burned long past the end of the fire season. Trees still smoldered in late December, and the smoke mixed with dry snow blowing in the air.
Known as the Fern Lake Fire, the blaze tore through 3,500 acres of land the federal government set aside a century ago both to provide public enjoyment and protect it from human destruction.
Israel expected to boycott U.N. rights scrutiny session - U.S
Israel is expected to boycott the U.N. Human Rights Council next week despite the United States urging its ally to show up for an examination of its record, the U.S. ambassador said on Thursday.
The Jewish state is scheduled to be in the dock of the Geneva rights forum on Tuesday, January 29 as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, the council's regular scrutiny of all United Nations member states.
BlackBox Voting: Beware of Ting's Thing, Calif bill to force Internet voting
California Assemblyman Phil Ting has proposed AB 19, a bill to require the California Secretary of State to implement an Internet voting pilot project. They tell us Internet voting is secure. It's not. It's not secure, and can't be made secure, but that's not even the point.
The point is it's not transparent. The whole premise in our Constitution is that we self-govern. To do that, the public must be able to see and authenticate essential processes, like who actually voted and the vote count, and that is not possible with Internet voting.
Internet voting transfers all control to whoever runs the server. (The server is just a computer that sits in a room -- and one Internet voting company, Scytl, has its server physically sitting in Spain.)
Prairie 2: Coming to your mailbox, economic recovery?
Remember when the credit card offers came in your mail by the handful? Those days maybe about to return. Credit card debt backed securities (they call them bonds now) are now the hot investment with tens of billions being issued by the big banks.
The reason these new bonds are so popular is that investors are suddenly seeing credit card debt as a safe again. In fact they are so popular that they aren't paying returns all that much better than government bonds that pay hardly anything at all.
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