| Although the disparity of wealth in the rest of the world is astronomical, even in America, it is intolerable, as is demonstrated in this great site, www.MichaelParenti.org/HiddenHolocaust.html
Some Grim Statistics :
Conservatives
are fond of telling us what a wonderful, happy, prosperous nation this
is. The only thing that matches their love of country is the remarkable
indifference they show toward the people who live in it. To their ears
the anguished cries of the dispossessed sound like the peevish whines
of malcontents. They denounce as "bleeding hearts" those of us who criticize
existing conditions, who show some concern for our fellow citizens. But
the dirty truth is that there exists a startling amount of hardship, abuse,
affliction, illness, violence, and pathology in this country. The figures
reveal a casualty list that runs into many millions. Consider the following
estimates. In any one year:
- 27,000
Americans commit suicide.
- 5,000
attempt suicide; some estimates are higher.
- 26,000
die from fatal accidents in the home.
- 23,000
are murdered.
- 85,000
are wounded by firearms.
- 38,000
of these die, including 2,600 children.
- 13,000,000
are victims of crimes including assault, rape, armed robbery, burglary,
larceny, and arson.
- 135,000
children take guns to school.
- 5,500,000
people are arrested for all offenses (not including traffic violations).
- 125,000
die prematurely of alcohol abuse.
- 473,000
die prematurely from tobacco-related illnesses; 53,000 of these are
nonsmokers.
- 6,500,000
use heroin, crack, speed, PCP, cocaine or some other hard drug on
a regular basis.
- 5,000+
die from illicit drug use. Thousands suffer serious debilitations.
- 1,000+
die from sniffing household substances found under the kitchen sink.
About 20 percent of all eighth-graders have "huffed" toxic substances.
Thousands suffer permanent neurological damage.
- 31,450,000
use marijuana; 3,000,000 of whom are heavy usuers.
- 37,000,000,
or one out of every six Americans, regularly use emotion controlling
medical drugs. The users are mostly women. The pushers are doctors;
the suppliers are pharmaceutical companies; the profits are stupendous.
- 2,000,000
nonhospitalized persons are given powerful mind-control drugs, sometimes
described as "chemical straitjackets."
- 5,000
die from psychoactive drug treatments.
- 200,000
are subjected to electric shock treatments that are injurious to the
brain and nervous system.
- 600
to 1,000 are lobotomized, mostly women.
- 25,000,000,
or one out of every 10 Americans, seek help from psychiatric, psychotherapeutic,
or medical sources for mental and emotional problems, at a cost of
over $4 billion annually.
- 6,800,000
turn to nonmedical services, such as ministers, welfare agencies,
and social counselors for help with emotional troubles. In all, some
80,000,000 have sought some kind of psychological counseling in their
lifetimes.
- 1,300,000
suffer some kind of injury related to treatment at hospitals.
- 2,000,000
undergo unnecessary surgical operations; 10,000 of whom die from the
surgery.
- 180,000
die from adverse reactions to all medical treatments, more than are
killed by airline and automobile accidents combined.
- 14,000+
die from overdoses of legal prescription drugs.
- 45,000
are killed in auto accidents. Yet more cars and highways are being
built while funding for safer forms of mass transportation is reduced.
- 1,800,000
sustain nonfatal injuries from auto accidents; but 150,000 of these
auto injury victims suffer permanent impairments.
- 126,000
children are born with a major birth defect, mostly due to insufficient
prenatal care, nutritional deficiency, environmental toxicity, or
maternal drug addiction.
- 2,900,000
children are reportedly subjected to serious neglect or abuse, including
physical torture and deliberate starvation.
- 5,000
children are killed by parents or grandparents.
- 30,000
or more children are left permanently physically disabled from abuse
and neglect. Child abuse in the United States afflicts more children
each year than leukemia, automobile accidents, and infectious diseases
combined. With growing unemployment, incidents of abuse by jobless
parents is increasing dramatically.
- 1,000,000
children run away from home, mostly because of abusive treatment,
including sexual abuse, from parents and other adults. Of the many
sexually abused children among runaways, 83 percent come from white
families.
- 150,000
children are reported missing.
- 50,000
of these simply vanish. Their ages range from one year to mid-teens.
According to the New York Times, "Some of these are dead, perhaps
half of the John and Jane Does annually buried in this country are
unidentified kids."
- 900,000
children, some as young as seven years old, are engaged in child labor
in the United States, serving as underpaid farm hands, dishwashers,
laundry workers, and domestics for as long as ten hours a day in violation
of child labor laws.
- 2,000,000
to 4,000,00 women are battered. Domestic violence is the single largest
cause of injury and second largest cause of death to U.S. women.
- 700,000
women are raped, one every 45 seconds.
- 5,000,000
workers are injured on the job; 150,000 of whom suffer permanent work-related
disabilities, including maiming, paralysis, impaired vision, damaged
hearing, and sterility.
- 100,000
become seriously ill from work-related diseases, including black lung,
brown lung, cancer, and tuberculosis.
- 14,000
are killed on the job; about 90 percent are men.
- 100,000
die prematurely from work-related diseases.
- 60,000
are killed by toxic environmental pollutants or contaminants in food,
water, or air.
- 4,000
die from eating contaminated meat.
- 20,000
others suffer from poisoning by E.coli 0157-H7, the mutant bacteria
found in contaminated meat that generally leads to lifelong physical
and mental health problems. A more thorough meat inspection with new
technologies could eliminate most instances of contamination - so would
vegetarianism.
At present:
- 5,100,000
are behind bars or on probation or parole; 2,700,000 of these are
either locked up in county, state or federal prisons or under legal
supervision. Each week 1,600 more people go to jail than leave. The
prison population has skyrocketed over 200 percent since 1980. Over
40 percent of inmates are jailed on nonviolent drug related crimes.
African Americans constitute 13 percent of drug users but 35 percent
of drug arrests, 55 percent of drug convictions and 74 percent of
prison sentences. For nondrug offenses, African Americans get prison
terms that average about 10 percent longer than Caucasians for similar
crimes.
- 15,000+
have tuberculosis, with the numbers growing rapidly; 10,000,000 or
more carry the tuberculosis bacilli, with large numbers among the
economically deprived or addicted.
- 10,000,000
people have serious drinking problems; alcoholism is on the rise.
- 16,000,000
have diabetes, up from 11,000,000 in 1983 as Americans get more sedentary
and sugar addicted. Left untreated, diabetes can lead to blindness,
kidney failure and nerve damage.
- 160,000
will die from diabetes this year.
- 280,000
are institutionalized for mental illness or mental retardation. Many
of these are forced into taking heavy doses of mind control drugs.
- 255,000
mentally ill or retarded have been summarily released in recent years.
Many of the "deinstitutionalized" are now in flophouses or wandering
the streets.
- 3,000,000
or more suffer cerebral and physical handicaps including paralysis,
deafness, blindness, and lesser disabilities. A disproportionate number
of them are poor. Many of these disabilities could have been corrected
with early treatment or prevented with better living conditions.
- 2,400,000
million suffer from some variety of seriously incapacitating chronic
fatigue syndrome.
- 10,000,000+
suffer from symptomatic asthma, an increase of 145 percent from 1990
to 1995, largely due to the increasingly polluted quality of the air
we breathe.
- 40,000,000
or more are without health insurance or protection from catastrophic
illness.
- 1,800,000
elderly who live with their families are subjected to serious abuse
such as forced confinement, underfeeding, and beatings. The mistreatment
of elderly people by their children and other close relatives grows
dramatically as economic conditions worsen.
- 1,126,000
of the elderly live in nursing homes. A large but undetermined number
endure conditions of extreme neglect, filth, and abuse in homes that
are run with an eye to extracting the highest possible profit.
- 1,000,000
or more children are kept in orphanages, reformatories, and adult
prisons. Most have been arrested for minor transgressions or have
committed no crime at all and are jailed without due process. Most
are from impoverished backgrounds. Many are subjected to beatings,
sexual assault, prolonged solitary confinement, mind control drugs,
and in some cases psychosurgery.
- 1,000,000
are estimated to have AIDS as of 1996; over 250,000 have died of that
disease.
- 950,000
school children are treated with powerful mind control drugs for "hyperactivity"
every year - with side effects like weight loss, growth retardation
and acute psychosis.
- 4,000,000
children are growing up with unattended learning disabilities.
- 4,500,000+
children, or more than half of the 9,000,000 children on welfare,
suffer from malnutrition. Many of these suffer brain damage caused
by prenatal and infant malnourishment.
- 40,000,000
persons, or one of every four women and more than one of every ten
men, are estimated to have been sexually molested as children, most
often between the ages of 9 and 12, usually by close relatives or
family acquaintances. Such abuse almost always extends into their
early teens and is a part of their continual memory and not a product
of memory retrieval in therapy.
- 7,000,000
to 12,000,000 are unemployed; numbers vary with the business cycle.
Increasing numbers of the chronically unemployed show signs of stress
and emotional depression.
- 6,000,000
are in "contingent" jobs, or jobs structured to last only temporarily.
About 60 percent of these would prefer permanent employment.
- 15,000,000
or more are part-time or reduced-time "contract" workers who need
full-time jobs and who work without benefits.
- 3,000,000
additional workers are unemployed but uncounted because their unemployment
benefits have run out, or they never qualified for benefits, or they
have given up looking for work, or they joined the armed forces because
they were unable to find work.
- 80,000,000
live on incomes estimated by the U.S. Department of Labor as below
a "comfortable adequacy"; 35,000,000 of these live below the poverty
level.
- 12,000,000
of those at poverty's rock bottom suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition.
The majority of the people living at or below the poverty level experience
hunger during some portion of the year.
- 2,000,000
or more are homeless, forced to live on the streets or in makeshift
shelters.
- 160,000,000+
are members of households that are in debt, a sharp increase from
the 100 million of less than a decade ago. A majority indicate they
have borrowed money not for luxuries but for necessities. Mounting
debts threaten a financial crack-up in more and more families.
A Happy Nation?
Obviously these estimates include massive duplications. Many of the 20 million unemployed
are among the 35 million below the poverty level. Many of the malnourished
children are also among those listed as growing up with untreated learning
disabilities and almost all are among the 35 million poor. Many of the
37 million regular users of mind-control drugs also number among the 25
million who seek psychiatric help.
Some of these deprivations and afflictions are not as serious as others. The
80 million living below the "comfortably adequate" income level may
compose too vague and inclusive a category for some observers (who themselves
enjoy a greater distance from the poverty line). The 40 million who
are without health insurance are not afflicted by an actual catastrophe
but face only a potential one (though the absence of health insurance
often leads to a lack of care and eventually a serious health crisis).
"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation,
and I care not who makes its laws."
Banker Amschel Mayer Rothschild (1743-1812)
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