- The life of a private military contractor is a strenuous
one. An existence filled with bribes, bloated salaries and the assuming of
authority normally reserved for actual military personnel can be taxing, so
much so that these brave people may experience post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) as frequently or more often than their military counterparts when sent
to war and conflict zones. That’s according to an online study of 660
contractors released Tuesday by the RAND Corporation. Most of those surveyed
(shocker) were from the United States and United Kingdom and the study is
interesting if only because so little is known about the overall mental health
and impacts felt by contractors sent to places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. According
to the results of the study, many of these hired guns are affected by serious
mental health problems and may not feel comfortable seeking medical treatment.
Nearly 25 percent of participants met the survey’s criteria for “probable” PTSD.
That number is notably higher than most estimates of the rate of PTSD for U.S.
service members, which range between 4-20 percent. An additional 18 percent of
the contractors also screened positive for depression and 10 percent reported
high-risk drinking. The study also attempted
to measure how much actual combat contractors experienced and found that nearly
75 percent said that they or their colleagues were the target of incoming fire
from small arms, artillery, rockets and bombs. Fifty percent of respondents
claimed that terrorists or civilians attacked them or their team members or
that they encountered improvised explosive devices and the threat of
kidnappings. The longer the deployment, the higher the rates of PTSD and
depression were among respondents. However, only 10 percent of the survey’s
respondents had received mental health treatment in the previous year,
including 28 percent of those with symptoms of PTSD and 34 percent of those
with symptoms of depression……….
- Canada, are you ready for the Russian rage? It’s a
question that bears asking now that Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird has proclaimed
his nation’s intentions to lay claim to the North Pole as part of a bid to
assert control over a large part of the resource-rich Arctic. Baird announced
that Canada had filed a preliminary submission to a special United Nations
commission collecting competing claims, to be followed by additional data to
back up its claims. That isn't likely to sit well with the communist hellhole
that is Russia, nor with the world’s perennial happiest nation, Denmark, both
of which also look set to lay claim to the North Pole on the grounds it lies on
a continental shelf they control. "We have asked our officials and
scientists to do additional and necessary work to ensure that a submission for
the full extent of the continental shelf in the Arctic includes Canada's claim
to the North Pole," Baird said. Canada, Russia, Denmark, Norway and the
United States are all vying for control of the region, which is believed to
contain as much as 30 percent of the world's undiscovered natural gas and 15
percent of its oil. Russia struck an early blow in the battle when one of its
submarines planted a flag on the North Pole seabed in 2007. In staking its own
claim, Canada struck a truly Canadian, good-neighborly tone. "Obtaining
international recognition for the outer limits of our continental shelf ...
will be vital to the future development of Canada's offshore resources,"
Baird added. "Canada is going to fight to assert its sovereignty in the
north but I think we will be good neighbors in doing so." In addition to
the fight over oil and natural gas, Russia, Canada and Denmark all say an
underwater mountain range known as the Lomonosov Ridge, which stretches 1,120
miles across the pole under the Arctic Sea, is part of their own landmass.
Baird said Canada needs more time to fully map the area around the ridge before
finalizing its submission to the U.N……….
- Hollywood still doesn’t give a damn what critics or angry
fans on Yelp say about a movie, in case anyone was wondering. As long as a film
makes a ton of money, it will get a sequel or five. It could have a ridiculous
premise, terrible acting and horrible casting, but a large profit margin trumps
all. The impending “Jack Reacher” sequel is the latest proof of this phenomenon
and yes, this sure-to-be-awful train wreck of a movie is all but guaranteed
despite multiple reports earlier this year that it was highly unlikely that Tom
Cruise would reprise his role as the title character or that anyone else would
replace him. Cruise drew scathing reviews for his casting as the former military
police officer turned vigilante who wanders across America as a drifter,
largely because he’s a robust 5-foot-6 and in the series of novels by British
author Lee Child that inspired the movie, Reacher stands 6-foot-5 and boasts a
50-inch chest that makes him part action hero, part case study on the power of
steroids. Fans of the book ripped the selection of the diminutive Cruise for
the role and once the movie hit theaters, critics weren't much kinder. However,
the film has done what a few random projects do, namely find enough success on
a global scale to convince the studio that a sequel is a worthwhile investment.
“Jack Reacher” has reached nearly $220 million in earnings globally and now,
Paramount and Cruise are hoping to fast-track a sequel with original director
Christopher McQuarrie. The sequel world reportedly be based on Child's 2013
novel “Never Go Back,” in which
one of Reacher’s former girlfriends is arrested and he launches in
investigation to clear her name………
- The sh*t is getting real with the Winter Olympics just two
months away. With the world preparing to gather in Sochi, Russia for the
redheaded stepchild of the Olympic world, nations are scrambling to get
everything lined up for the other Olympics, the one folks care about a lot less
than they care about the Summer Games. For example, the Indian Olympic Association had
to tackle a small issue involving officials charged with a crime being allowed
to run for election. The IOA had to amend its constitution to ban such
officials in order to avoid expulsion from the Olympics, clearing the way for
the nation to win the zeroes and zeroes of gold medals it is sure to rack up in
Sochi. The decision came just two days before a deadline set by the
International Olympic Committee and came as a reversal of thinking for India,
which y wanted to bar only those convicted for two or more years and leave the
lesser cases to be judged by an internal committee. Had the IOA not made the
change, it faced the prospect of ''de-recognition'' after being suspended last
December for not following its constitution and electing tainted officials. Its
secretary-general, Lalit Bhanot, spent 10 months in jail on corruption charges
related to the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. He and his pal IOA
president Abhay Chautala, charged in a recruitment scam not related to sports,
are not eligible for elections on Feb. 9. ''The IOA has unanimously decided to
amend the relevant clause in its constitution which would bar charge-framed
persons from contesting elections,'' said IOA official S. Raghunathan. ''Both
Chautala and Bhanot said they will not contest the upcoming elections.'” All of
this is ironic because there is not a more historically corrupt governing body
in all of sports than the International Olympic Committee, which is famous for
accepting bribes and profiting off its power to award the Games. With this
somewhat hypocritical mess resolved, India hopes to avoid becoming the first
country to be kicked out of the Olympic movement since South Africa was
expelled for its racial segregation policies more than 40 years ago………
- Blaming Big Oil for your problems is an easy crutch to
lean on in life. Oil spills, price gouging and the like make oil companies a
convenient target, so much so that people can actually sue them for random
developments like dozens of alligators allegedly ruining a couple’s use of a property
they own in rural Mississippi. Meet Tom and Consandra Christmas, who claim in a
lawsuit that they didn’t know about all the 84 alligators living next to the 35
acres of land they bought in December 2003 in Wilkinson County. According to
court documents, the gators are from a refinery waste disposal site owned by
ExxonMobil. The site, called the Centreville Landfarm, contains 19 rainwater
retention ponds with about 85 surface acres of water. It has existed for
decades, but the operators stopped accepting new refinery waste in the 1990s.
The lawsuit alleges that the gators “were….introduced to the site as ‘canaries’
to warn of hazardous contamination in the retention ponds.” In response to the
suit, ExxonMobil is not arguing that it is not culpable, but rather that the
couple waited too long to file their lawsuit. Last week the Mississippi Supreme
Court agreed to hear the case, which has dragged on since the Christmases filed
suit in 2008, alleging that runoff from the site contaminated their property
and that the ExxonMobil site was infested with alligators. The case appeared to
end in 2011 when a trial court granted summary judgment in ExxonMobil’s favor.
The Christmases dropped the contamination angle of the suit on appeal, but
pressed on with their complaint about the alligators. They argued that they
knew gators lived in the area because the state has a reputation for being the
home to large ones, but that they had no idea how many were on the ExxonMobil
land until 2007 when they were allowed on it to search for a lost dog. A state
appeals court ruled in May that the couple’s case focusing on the alligators
could proceed and with several neighbors backing their story, they just might
get the justice they’re seeking………
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