60% of the US Govt’s Billion Dollar PR Budget Goes to the Pentagon to Sell You War — And It’s Working

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Well over a half billion dollars is shelled out annually by the Pentagon to propagandize and galvanize public support of its wars based nearly entirely on lies — because, after all, war crafted to prop up the military-industrial machine’s profiteering can indeed be a tough sell. In the latest report on Public Relations Spending from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the United States’ government PR apparatus has been revealed to spend over $1 billion annually — $626 million of which the Department of Defense allots to employ a massive propaganda army constituting roughly 40 percent of the more than 5,000-strong federal public relations workforce.

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Here’s How Cell Phones Have Killed Six Million Africans in the Congo

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The Congo has experienced all five-year’s of the Syrian civil war every year for a ten-year period.

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How To Build Your Own Starter Home in Five Steps for $25,000

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Having a home to call your own is a luxury we often take for granted. Owning your own home is something many people build life goals around, and designing your very own abode a highly sought dream. But the often prohibitive costs make buying a home, never mind creating one, a mere fantasy for many people.

In a day and age where sustainability is becoming increasingly popular and, arguably, essential for our continued survival, it’s inspiring to hear of ways people are changing economic restraints and environmental concerns. Open source advocate and maker Catarina Mota and inventor Marcin Jakubowski are working to turn the dream of accessible and affordable eco-housing into a reality with their Open Building Institute Eco-Building Toolkit.  The duo have built many prototypes thus far, and have also tested their idea via a series of educational builds.

Check out the duo’s Kickstarter page to learn more about their mission and give your support, and learn about the five simple steps to building your own starter home below:

1) Design an open source preservation of modules. 

Every part of the house is meant to be built separately. Each essential piece can then be put together like building blocks. You can start with a 700-square-foot starter home complete with ecological features such as: rainwater catchment and water filtration, solar panels, efficient LED lighting, bricks produced from your own soil, passive solar heating, and biogas. You’ll spend less than $25,000 on these materials, and can then add on things like an aquaponic greenhouse to grow your own food. As your family and bank account grows, you can adjust your home to meet your needs and desires.

2) Educate and train people on this building process. 

Some people want to know how to build their own house, while others would like their own house to be built for them. OBI merges the two by providing intensive training programs that give home owners the chance to learn how to construct the modules and homes. After certification, people can then be contracted to build more homes.

3) Construction is paid for. 

The fees from the training programs allows OBI to remove the cost of construction for the homeowner, as well as turn the immersion learning workshop experience for participants into financial support for OBI.

“All you need is a plot of land connected to a utilities infrastructure and a workshop space. A group of people — around 35 — who have signed up for an OBI immersion course show up to learn,” explains Marcin. “We teach them how to do the build using cordless drills and a number of saws and normal big-box store materials, which would be ordered by the homeowner and delivered. Then we assemble the pieces needed for the house, including modular electric wiring and plumbing, and install them rapidly in place.”

4) Help people become debt free. 

Growing a house in increments makes for housing security without the threat of debt. “We’re creating a bridge between the tiny house and the mansion,” notes Catarina. “The system is designed to grow towards the bigger house that you may need one day down the road. Right now, the housing market only has one offering, which is a really big, expensive house. There’s a lack of starter homes. The incremental build approach offers an alternative.”

5) Incorporate open source hardware and aesthetic design. 

OBI is using the Kickstarter campaign to continue on to the next level of development, which is producing simple instructional diagrams for every module and building, working with architects to construct more design options, and gathering experts to help implement state-of-the-art eco-features and create technologies and processes for developing local materials that will be accessible through an open source license.

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New Emails Reveal "Friends Of Bill" Got Special Access From State For Haiti Recovery Contracts

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Newly released emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by the Republican National Committee, and subsequently shared with ABC News, reveal very open special treatment of "Friends of Bill" ("FOB" for short) by the State Department in granting access to recovery efforts in Haiti, in which $10 billion in emergency aid was spent after the 2010 earthquake. The emails show very close coordination between Caitlin Klevorick, a senior State Department official, and Amitabh Desai, the director of foreign policy for the Clinton Foundation, as they exchanged emails from Foundation donors looking to participate in the Haiti recovery efforts. While many donors likely were just looking to make charitable contributions, others, as evidenced below, were simply looking to capture their "fair share" of $10 billion in emergency aid contracts doled out by the U.S. government.

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Is our world a simulation? Why some scientists say it's more likely than not

What About Eating Just a Little Meat?

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As you can see in my video, Plant-Based Diets and Diabetes, we’ve known for decades that a plant-based diet may be protective against diabetes. Studies going back half a century found that those eating meat one or more days a week had significantly higher rates of diabetes, and the more frequently meat was eaten, the more frequent the disease. And this is after controlling for weight, so even at the same weight, those eating more plant-based had but a fraction of the diabetes rates. If anything, vegetarians should have had more diabetes just because they appear to live so much longer, so they had more time to develop these kinds of chronic diseases; but no, apparently lower rates of death and disease.

Fast forward 50 years to the Adventist-2 study, looking at 89,000 people, and we see a stepwise drop in the rates of diabetes as one eats more and more plant-based, down to a 78% lower prevalence among those eating strictly plant-based. Protection building incrementally as one moved from eating meat daily, to eating meat weekly, to just fish, to no meat, and then to no eggs and dairy either. Followed over time, vegetarian diets were associated with a substantially lower incidence of diabetes, indicating the potential of these diets to stem the current diabetes epidemic.

We see the same step-wise drop in rates of another leading killer, high blood pressure. The greater the proportion of plant foods, the lower the rates of hypertension, and the same with excess body fat. The only dietary group not on average overweight were those eating diets composed exclusively of plant foods, but again there was the same incremental drop with fewer and fewer animal products. This suggests that it’s not black and white, not all or nothing, any steps we can make along this spectrum of eating healthier may accrue significant benefits.

What about eating a really healthy diet with just a little meat? Is it better to eat none at all? We have new insight last year from Taiwan. Asian diets in general tend to be lower in meat and higher in plant foods compared with Western diet, but whether a diet completely avoiding meat and fish would further extend the protective effect of a plant-based diet wasn’t known, until now.

Traditionally, Asian populations have had low rates of diabetes, but a diabetes epidemic has since emerged, and appears to coincide with increased meat, animal protein, and animal fat consumption, but the Westernization of Asian diets also brought along a lot of fast food and junk, and so these researchers at the national university didn’t want to just compare those eating vegetarian to typical meateaters. So, they compared Bhuddist vegetarians to Bhuddist non-vegetarians, eating traditional Asian diets. Even the omnivores were eating a predominantly plant-based diet, consuming little meat and fish, with the women eating the equivalent of about a single serving a week, and men eating a serving every few days. That’s just 8% of the meat intake in the U.S., 3% for the women. The question: is it better to eat 3% or 0%?

Again, both groups were eating healthy; zero soda consumption, for example, in any group. Despite the similarities in their diet, and after controlling for weight, family history, exercise, and smoking, the men eating vegetarian had just half the rates of diabetes, and the vegetarian women just a quarter of the rates. So even in a population consuming a really plant-based diet with little meat and fish, true vegetarians who completely avoided animal flesh, while eating more healthy plant foods, have lower odds for prediabetes and diabetes after accounting for other risk factors. They wanted to break it up into vegan versus ovo-lacto like in the Adventist-2 study, but they couldn’t because there were no cases at all of diabetes found within the vegan group. 

More on preventing and treating this terrible disease:

• Preventing Prediabetes By Eating More
• Diabetics Should Take Their Pulses
• How to Prevent Prediabetes from Turning into Diabetes
• How to Prevent Prediabetes in Children
• Eggs and Diabetes
• Fish and Diabetes
• Flaxseed vs. Diabetes
• When Drugs & Diets Don’t Lower Diabetes Deaths
• Diabetes Reversal: Is it the Calories or the Food? 
• Reversing Diabetes with Food

The reason I keep going back to that Adventist-2 study is that it’s not only the biggest study of those eating plant based diets in North America, but the largest such study anywhere anytime. We owe those investigators a great debt (not to mention the 96,741 participants!). One thing I’m happy my tax dollars are going towards (via the National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health). More from the Adventists in Caloric Restriction vs. Animal Protein Restriction.

In health,

Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my free videos here and watch my live, year-in-review presentations—2013: Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death, More Than an Apple a Day, 2014: From Table to Able: Combating Disabling Diseases with Food, 2015: Food as Medicine: Preventing and Treating the Most Dreaded Diseases with Diet, and my latest, 2016: How Not To Die: The Role of Diet in Preventing, Arresting, and Reversing Our Top 15 Killers.

Image Credit: Reisek / Flickr

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University Disinvites Sheriff David Clarke for Disagreeing with Black Lives Matter, Lies About It

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Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke—a frequent Fox News guest and vociferous critic of the Black Lives Matter movement—was slated to give the keynote address at a symposium at the University of New Haven. But he was disinvited because administrators deemed him "potentially politically polarizing."

UNH then attempted to mislead the public about why it had rescinded the invitiation to Clarke.

The symposium is sponsored by the university's Forensic Science department. This year's topic is officer-involved shootings—something Clarke is no doubt highly qualified to discuss. That's why a senior lecturer at the university, Patrick Malloy, picked him in the first place. UNH arranged his accommodations, and confirmed that his speech was "a go," according to Campus Reform.

Then Malloy cancelled:

On August 3, my assistant had a conversation with Mr. Malloy, who was extremely apologetic and embarrassed to have to rescind the offer. Apparently, the higher-ups did not want me to speak on campus due to my remarks about #BlackLivesMatter.

When challenged, the university simply chose to lie about why it had disinvited Clarke. UNH initially released a statement claiming that Clarke had never been formally invited, and his travel and accommodation demands were too difficult to satisfy. After Clarke called UNH out on the lie, the administration backtracked, finally conceding to Campus Reform, "we decided not to finalize his arrangements to visit campus when it was determined his appearance could potentially become politically polarizing in light of the imminent presidential election."

Make no mistake: Clarke is vehemently opposed to BLM. He has accused the movement of terrorizing police and sympathizing with cop killers. He describes it as an anarchist movement. So yes, he is a "potentially politically polarizing" person. But so what? Everyone with an opinion worth hearing is "potentially politically polarizing," including pro-BLM speakers. Would the university disinvite Shaun King if some students didn't like his message?

UNH is a private university, and, I presume a fairly liberal place. It seems likely that most of the campus already has a fairly positive view of BLM. The university has nothing to lose in permitting a contrary view to be heard. Indeed, the university should seek out contrary opinions, in order to provide a sense of balance and perspective on important public policy issues. Clarke might not change anyone's mind, but perhaps members of campus who support BLM will have a better idea of what motivates people who disagree with them.

As someone who agrees with much (though not all) of BLM's message, I certainly wouldn't turn down the opportunity to hear Clarke speak. I think he's very, very wrong, but how can anyone argue against him if they don't let him speak in the first place?

I reached out to UNH's president for comment. He did not immediately respond.

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Pre-Dawn No-Knock SWAT Raid for Minor Drug Charge Ruled Unconstitutional

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A Hennepin County (Minn.) drug squad — known as the Emergency Services Unit (ESU) — conducted a pre-dawn no-knock raid on a house in North Minneapolis one morning in November 2015. They were looking for Walter Power, who they suspected of being a marijuana dealer. To search the home they believed Power to be sleeping in, they brought a force of between 28-32 officers, most clad in riot gear and carrying rifles, accompanied by a sniper seated atop a Ballistic Engineered Armored Response (BEAR) vehicle.

Why did law enforcement officials feel they needed to display a show of overwhelming force that would be intense even in a foreign occupied city? Because the primary resident of the house, Michael Delgado, was a registered gun-owner with a license to carry.

Convinced of the potential danger posed to officers when raiding a house with an armed occupant, Hennepin County District Judge Tanya Bransford signed off on the no-knock raid, but later told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that she did not know a platoon of up to 32 officers would be deployed to search the house, or that they'd throw flash bang grenades through the windows in addition to knocking down doors.

The raid resulted in the arrest of Power — the suspected marijuana dealer — for "fifth-degree drug possession," the lowest possible drug charges on the books. Even this modest charge would be dropped after Judge Bransford declared the raid unconstitutional in a ruling last summer, arguing that Delgado and Power had been subject to unreasonable search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Bransford wrote in her ruling "that the types of militarized actions used in this case seem to be a matter of customary business practice," which she found troubling.

Like most of the U.S., Hennepin County has increasingly relied on SWAT teams to serve warrants. According to the Star-Tribune, its ESU deployed 71 times last year, which is more than double its annual usage from a decade prior. A 2014 study by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found that on a national basis, SWAT teams were only used "for hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios" in seven percent of all deployments, while 62 percent of SWAT raids were to search for drugs.

The executive director of the Minnesota Sheriff's Association, Jim Franklin, was quoted by the Star-Tribune as saying of Bransford's ruling, "My question to her is: Are you going to attend the dead cop's funeral?" Franklin's argument is essentially that without the use of such violent and destructive tactics, officers' lives would be at risk. But no-knock raids can and do result in the deaths of officers, because few things will make even reasonable people turn violent like a sudden and shocking attack on their home.

In 2006, former Reasoner Radley Balko wrote about the case of Cory Maye, a Mississippi man who ended up on death row after shooting an officer entering his home during a no-knock raid. Maye would be released from prison on 2011, following a plea agreement to charges of manslaughter.

Watch the Reason TV doc on Maye's case below.

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The Real Battle Is For Your Mind - About That NBC/WSJ Clinton +11 Point Poll

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Submitted via The Conservative Treehouse

The Real Battle, is The Battle For Your Mind.

Researchers and political analysts frequent CTH because we bring you hard, factual, and fully cited research enabling you to make up your own mind about the headlines.

What you are about to read (and see) below is a fully cited example of something we have discussed frequently, but withheld until today, so the oppositional forces cannot change strategies in their attempts to manipulate your mind.

It is now time to lay all media polling naked for you to grasp. Everything below is fully cited so you can fact-check it for yourself. However, we present this with a disclaimer: the entities exposed will industriously work to change their approach from this day forth.

You have probably seen the latest example of the media claiming a released presidential poll from NBC and The Wall Street Journal as an example of Hillary Clinton expanding to an 11 point lead in the weekend following the “controversial” leaked tape of Donald Trump.

The claim is complete and utter nonsense. Here’s the proof.

We begin with a google search showing hundreds of media citations referencing the NBC/WSJ Poll:

 

And here’s the NBC link to the poll, and the NBC Link to the pdf of the poll, and the NBC Poll itself in a scribd pdf:

 

Transparently the poll is manipulated with: a) a small sample (500); and b) the following ideological make-up:

• Republican and Republican leaners 36%
• Democrat and Democrat leaners 43%
• Independents 12%

By itself that ideological snapshot is silly. Nationally the party registration is roughly 27% (R), 32% (D), and 40% (I) – SEE HERE – However, the polling sample is the least of the issues for this deconstruction.

Arguing about the construct or methodology of the poll is typically what most people do when they are refuting a media poll. That aspect alone is not the big story.

Look at the polling organization:

 

Do you see: Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies?

Hart Research Associates is headed up by Peter D Hart (founder), and Geoff Garin (President) – SEE HERE

Now look at what role Geoff Garin, Heart Research Associate President, is currently occupying (link here):

 

OK, so Mr. Geoff Garin, the President of Hart Research and Associates”, is currently working as “a strategic adviser for Priorities USA in support of Hillary Clinton’s election“.  Gee, I wonder why the media never tells us that part?

See the issue?

Wait, we’re not even close to finished.  It gets better.

Let’s take a look at the recent financial connection between, Geoff Garin, Hart Research Associates and Hillary Clinton’s Priorities USA Super-PAC.

For that information we turn to FEC filings -HERE-.  What do they indicate?

 

On Page #118 of the September 2016 (most recent) filing we find a payment for $178,500 (screen grab above)

On Page #92 of the same September 2016 (most recent) filing, we find another payment for $42,000 (screen grab below)

 

• $220,500.00 in the month of September alone paid by Hillary Clinton’s Priorities USA Super-PAC to Hart Research Associates.
• The President of Hart Research Associates, Geoff Garin, is working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
• NBC (S Burke) and The WSJ (Murdoch) contact Geoff Garin (Hart Research Associates) for the post-debate poll data they will use on the day following the debate.
• Hart Research Associates provides a small national poll sample (500) result, with skewed party internals, showing Hillary Clinton +11 points.

Do you see now how “media polling” works, and why we advise to ignore it?

The real battle is for your mind...

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Iceland Jail Top Bankers For 46 Years, Europe ‘Outraged’

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Iceland has found nine top bankers guilty and sentenced them to decades in jail for crimes related to the 2008 economic crash. On Thursday Iceland’s Supreme Court returned a guilty verdict for all nine defendants in the Kaupthing market manipulation case, after a long running court trial which began in April last year. Kaupthing was a big international bank headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland. It expanded internationally for years, but collapsed in 2008 under huge debts, crippling the small nation’s economy.

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