Buzz Blog

California regulators have issued an emergency shut-down of operations injecting fracking waste into groundwater aquifers in the drought-ridden state.

Top of the Alty World

“CA Halts Injection of Fracking Waste, Warning it May Be Contaminating Aquifers”—ProPublica

Mother Jones offers a photo essay on the carnage in Gaza.—Mother Jones

Convicted hacker Stephen Watt and technologist Ladar Levison have teamed up to attempt to create an NSA-proof email.—Wired

A federal lawsuit describes FedEx as a major durg distribution network.—Quartz

Top of Alty Utah

Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams has called for an investigation into the county health system.—Utah Political Capitol

Weston Clark, a gay, married ex-teacher and now stay-at-home dad wants to represent Salt Lake City diverse populations on the Salt Lake City School Board.—Salt Lake City Weekly

Former AG Mark Shurtleff has called his arrest an election-year stunt.—Salt Lake City Weekly

A study has found Utah fails at helping new mothers.—Utah Political Capitol

Rantosphere

Utah Politico Hub looks at what true free-market lovers should do in regards to the immigration crisis.

“The first and most obvious thing we need to do is eliminate farm subsidies so that we aren’t driving farmers in other countries out of business. Most of them go toward crops that are making us very unhealthy, go to people with plenty of money of their own, and distort the true price of food.

We must also reform our system of treating a public health problem, drug abuse, as a criminal matter. If we focus on reducing demand, the profits from manufacture and distribution shrink and the cartels lose power. This will make for safer environments in immigrants’ home countries and reduce immigration demand.”—Utah Politico Hub

The Long View

An Iraq-war veteran returns to the conflict-zone he helped liberate as it now is on the verge of falling to a new threat.

“I'd always been ambivalent about being a veteran. On the one hand, I was proud of my service. I'd done something difficult that few Americans show the courage or wherewithal to do, and I'd come out stronger for it. My year in Iraq with the 1st Armored Division was spent mainly on two kinds of missions: For the first six months of our tour, in 2003, we picked up artillery rounds all over Baghdad. We kept Iraqi kids from blowing themselves up and denied insurgents weapons. For the next six months, I drove a Humvee around a Sunni neighborhood in south Baghdad called Dora, and then down the highway to Karbala and Najaf, looking for roadside bombs and snipers.

On the other hand, the war was the most dehumanizing experience of my life. Inside the wire, we lived like prisoners, staring at the same walls and the same faces, lifting weights, watching DVDs, killing time until we got to go back home. Outside the wire, we moved in an alien, hostile world luminous with adrenaline and danger. Over time, as we were shot at, mortared and sometimes blown up, fear and rage built up in us like toxins, until we were praying for reasons to shoot – not people, mind you, just fucking hajjis. We harassed and intimidated hajjis on the street. We humiliated hajjis in their homes. We ran hajji cars off the road when they got in our way. We locked hajjis up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some of us did worse. Some of us did a lot worse.”—Rolling Stone