“Don’t use your left hand for contact with others,” advises the U.S. Marine Corps in a new edition of the Iraq Culture Smart Card (very large pdf) which is distributed to military personnel in Iraq. “It is considered unclean.”
It seems late in the day for such niceties. Amid the daily brutality of the Iraq war, there is probably little to be gained by courtesy or to be lost by mere rudeness.
But the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity evidently thinks otherwise.
The MCIA has produced an updated Iraq Culture Smart Card, dated May 2006, which features rudimentary information on Iraqi customs, religion and language. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News and is available here (in a very large 22 MB PDF file).
The goal: help communities approach data center development with stronger negotiating tools and a clearer understanding of what’s possible.
Just as sports fanatics had plenty to celebrate this year, so does the heat policy team at FAS. In response to recent heat events, leaders across the country have taken steps to build heat resilience.
Congress should establish a Modeling, Analysis, and Technical Talent for Energy Regulation Hub (MATTER Hub) within the Department of Energy (DOE).
Western states functionally manage trillions in global climate risk (permafrost, forest carbon, etc.) and can do so in ways that drive state economic development.