News Rundown 2

Drilling for Earthquakes

Pumping water into the ground after extracting oil and gas has been linked with an outbreak of earthquakes in the middle of the US, clustered around Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Geological Survey says that the practice is very likely the main cause of the dramatic increase in seismic activity.

Drilling for oil and gas produces waste water, and this water has to go somewhere, so wells are dug and the water is pumped into the ground between impermeable layers of rock to avoid contaminating the groundwater supply. While the water table may be safe, all that water forced between the rocks appears to have caused nearly ten thousand earthquakes in the past four years, half of them in 2014 alone.

Russia Evacuates Americans from Yemen

The US government doesn't care enough about its citizens to evacuate them from a war zone, unlike every other country on the planet. Thankfully Russia stepped up to become the unlikely hero of dozens of Americans stranded in Yemen. While official US policy is to bankrupt Russia and start a nuclear world war by installing a puppet regime in Ukraine, Russia holds no animus toward innocent Americans caught behind enemy lines and brought them to safety.

CIA Murders Americans, President Apologizes

CIA drone strikes against an al Qaeda compound in Pakistan (or "Pok-E-Ston") in January has resulted in the deaths of kidnapped aid workers American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto. Despite surveilling the site for "hundreds of hours," the CIA was unaware that the two men were kept inside the building.

The President says he takes "full responsibility for all counterterrorism operations." Since the US is not technically at war with anyone, and these covert actions are of highly questionable legality, does that make the President responsible for negligent homicide? After all, these are not inadvertent casualties of war, collateral damage, this is the US government going around murdering people (very bad people, mind you) and civilians getting caught in the crossfire, including US citizens who are being denied their lives without due process of law.

At the very least there should be proper civilian oversight of these drone operations, instead of the cloak and dagger dealings of the CIA. Why are these operations not being carried out by the Department of Defense like military actions? Instead they are being carried out by the CIA like mafia contract killings with no say or restraint from Congress.