Friday, March 31, 2017

US government spent over $500m on fake Al-Qaeda propaganda videos that tracked location of viewers/The Independent

The US government spent half a $Billion (yes, with a B) on a UK public relations firm to make fake videos that were supposedly made by al Qaeda (and, I read elsewhere, ISIS.)
A former contractor for a UK-based public relations firm says that the Pentagon paid more than half a billion dollars for the production and dissemination of fake Al-Qaeda videos that portrayed the insurgent group in a negative light...  
And from Zero Hedge we get some more detail: 
According to a Bell Pottinger insider, propaganda films were categorized into three categories with “White" being accurately attributed, “Grey" being unattributed, and "Black" being falsely attributed material.  The media firm created various types ofcontent ranging from TV commercials to news items and "fake Al Qaeda propaganda films..." 
Bell Pottinger’s output was signed off by the commander of coalition forces in Iraq. Wells recalled: “We’d get the two colonels in to look at the things we’d done that day, they’d be fine with it, it would then go to General Petraeus.”

Some of the projects went even higher up the chain of command. “If [Petraeus] couldn’t sign off on it, it would go on up the line to the White House, and it was signed off up there, and the answer would come back down the line.”
Seems that reality is even more interesting than any fiction that Hollywood can conjure up.  

Legalized Marijuana Could Help Curb the Opioid Epidemic, Study Finds/ Reuters, NBC

Finally some good news!  Legalizing pot may have large, unpredicted benefits, according to NBC and this Reuters article:
In states that legalized medical marijuana, U.S. hospitals failed to see a predicted influx of pot smokers, but in an unexpected twist, they treated far fewer opioid users, a new study shows. 
Hospitalization rates for opioid painkiller dependence and abuse dropped on average 23 percent in states after marijuana was permitted for medicinal purposes, the analysis found. Hospitalization rates for opioid overdoses dropped 13 percent on average. 
At the same time, fears that legalization of medical marijuana would lead to an uptick in cannabis-related hospitalizations proved unfounded, according to the report in Drug and Alcohol Dependence...

The Military’s 5 Biggest Procurement Fails Since 9/11 / Task and Purpose



Lt. Douglas Santillo administers an anthrax vaccination in the hangar bay of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68).

The multi-billion dollar vaccination for Anthrax that the DoD has required many of its personnel to receive may be one of the largest scams in recent history. Despite numerous congressional inquiries, the program being shut down on multiple occasions, and scientific peer reviews questioning its ability to protect in an actual anthrax attack, the vaccine — called BioThrax — received another round of funding worth $1.25 billion in 2013. 
The company had a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman among its founders in 1998, and has spent more than $20 million on lobbying efforts — often being accused of strong-arming any emerging competition. Despite the DoD dropping them dolla-dolla bills on the vaccine, and serious side effects suffered by some military personnel who have taken it, there has never been any notable anthrax attacks on any entity in the Department of Defense. 


Monday, March 20, 2017

Maine: Drug Overdose Deaths TEN TIMES higher than in 1997/ Portland Press Herald


By the end of 2016, Maine overdose deaths totaled 378, and the black and green lines were a lot steeper.  The black line was off the chart (literally).

Also note that overdose deaths from prescription (legal) narcotics have actually been stable, and fallen a little, since 2002.  Legal drugs are not a factor in the staggering increase of deaths.  While the use of legal narcotics definitely needs to be minimized, and while legal narcotics continue to be diverted and used illegally, the epidemic of opioid deaths is due to Afghan heroin and (probably Chinese) fentanyl, which are not being prevented from entering the US.

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Heroin deaths skyrocket to 620% of 2002-2006 levels; fentanyl increase steeper than heroin/ NIH, CDC

https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-ratesNational Overdose Deaths—Number of Deaths from Heroin.​National Overdose Deaths—Number of Deaths from Heroin. The figure above is a bar chart showing the total number of U.S. overdose deaths involving heroin from 2002 to 2015. The chart is overlayed by a line graph showing the number of deaths of females and males. From 2002 to 2015 there was a 6.2-fold increase in the total number of deaths.



National Overdose Deaths—Number of Deaths from Heroin and Non-Methadone Synthetics.Above reflects mostly heroin plus fentanyl overdose deaths

 Graph: Number of Reported Law Enforcement Encounters Testing Positive for Fentanyl in the US: 2010 - 2015. 2010: 641; 2011: 650; 2012: 673; 2013: 1015; 2014: 5343; 2015: 13882
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/fentanyl-le-reports.html