The free market economy has pushed the American population to the brink.
A man found unconscious after overdosing on opioids puts his hands over his head in the back of an ambulance in the Boston suburb of Malden, Massachusetts, December 2, 2017 [Brian Snyder/Reuters]
There’s no foreign invasion. No war within its borders. No one to blame but ourselves. How then, is America killing Americans?
Most reports point to three things: drugs and alcohol, guns, and despair.
There is also fat. Statistically, it is more important, but oddly, it is not often included in discussions about the decline in life expectancy.
This last decline is from 78.7 years of life to 78.6. That does not sound terribly frightening. One-tenth of a year. One month and one week less to live. However, it has gone down for three years in a row, which has not happened in more than 100 years. The last time life expectancy went down was during World War I, when apart from deaths at the front, the US suffered an influenza epidemic that killed 675,000 people.
Is it just the US?
An article published on BMJ (previously the British Medical Journal) looked at 18 high-income countries: Japan, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, Italy, Norway, Sweden, France, Canada, Netherlands, Finland, Austria, Portugal, the UK, Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the US.
Over the last quarter of a century, the lifespans in all of those countries have gone up. People are living four to five years longer, except in the US, where it has only increased by 3.7 years. Actually, the US fell into last place in life expectancy in 2001 and the gap has been growing since. The Germans, the next lowest on the list, get to live almost two years longer than the Americans. The Japanese make it to 84 – or almost six more years.
Guns killed nearly 40,000 Americans in 2017, according to official statistics, which only counts cases if guns were “the principal cause” of death but not if they only “contributed” to it; that is 4.43 deaths per 100,000. By contrast, the death rate from gun violence in Japan and the United Kingdom is 0.04 and 0.06 respectively.
About two-thirds of all gun deaths in the US are suicides. This tells us there is plenty of despair. It has gone up by 33 percent in the last two decades while the global suicide rate has declined by 30 percent in roughly the same period.
Then there is fat.
The US is one of the most obese nations in the world, second only to island nations and Kuwait. It is listed as having an obesity rate of 36.2 percent. Most of the Western European countries have a rate of 20 to 25 percent.
Obesity is a relatively new problem and studies of it are even newer. The statistics are rapidly changing and becoming more dire. It started with saying that only severe obesity mattered and that it could shorten a lifespan by about 10 years. Moderate obesity was supposed to be OK, probably, but newer studies have said that it can take up to three years on average from someone’s life.
Do these four elements have anything in common?
Yes. Free market theology is at the root of it all.
America has a profit-driven health care system. Not only is it more expensive than any other system in the world, but it creates special inefficiencies and distortions. Its goal is always to sell an item, usually a drug or a service. How, then, can it address the obvious causes of the obesity epidemic – bad diet, lack of exercise, and a sedentary lifestyle? For the most part, it cannot and it does not.
The more insidious contributor to the American wideness and wallow is the food industry which uses excessive levels of sugar, fat and salt to ensure food is addictive.
The pharmaceutical industry also plays a major role in this. Its protected status allows it to spread addiction to various medications, causing more damage than the Mafia, the Colombian cartels and the Mexicans that Donald Trump accuses of bringing drugs over the border, combined.
Meanwhile, money from the gun industry and the NRA – a profit-seeking enterprise – keep Americans shooting themselves and each other.
Maps of suicide and addiction rates are maps of despair. They largely match the disappearance of American manufacturing. We can date that decline to President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies of the 1980s. They gutted the industrial midlands, destroyed the unions, leaving the traditional working-class poor and powerless. A certain portion of them turned to alcoholism, addiction and suicide.
There are other things that the American health care system cannot address, and that free market theology considers non-existent: self-esteem, supportive communities, positive expectation for the future, especially for children, which clearly affect healthy lifestyles and life expectancy.
Free market theology insists that what we pay for things is the best and only true measure of their value. The higher inequality rises, the more we have the feeling that this must be true.
Teaching was once a highly regarded, even revered profession. Teachers were doing a public service. They had college and advanced degrees. But now their pay has become closer to the poverty line than to the middle class. How valuable can they be?
As the 1 percent continue to amass wealth, we are getting to the point where they are literally sucking the life out of the 99 percent.
That is how America kills Americans.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Many of these low wage workers are not the stereotypical teenagers flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s for some extra spending cash on the weekends. In fact, the majority of people who fall into this category are adults in their “prime working years,” and low paying work is the “primary way they support themselves and their families,” the report revealed.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. Former Editor-in-Chief of The Moscow News, he is author of the book, ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ released in 2013.
As the US stock market continues to set records, and the economy creates millions of new jobs, many Americans are forced to settle for low-paying work and meager benefits. How long can the inequality continue?
The sound of popping champagne bottles will soon echo across Manhattan this holiday season as corporate America is in decidedly high spirits. And for good reason. Wall Street has witnessed one of its most robust earning seasons on record, unemployment is at its lowest rate in 50 years, while many corporations are swimming in cash. But, as so often happens in the shady world of business and markets, all is not as it would appear.
Just below the shiny surface of Wall Street’s epic success story an epic tragedy is unfolding as millions of workers are silently struggling paycheck to paycheck, doing what they can to make ends meet while raising a family. The numbers are sobering.
According to data released by the Brookings Institution, 53 million Americans between the ages of 18 to 64 fall under the category of “low wage.” Their hourly pay comes out to around $10.22, while median annual earnings are $18,000. Most startling thing, however, is that this group of wage-earners accounts for a whopping 44 percent of the entire US workforce.
In other words, it may be a bit too early to start popping the champagne corks just yet. And it gets worse. Many of these low wage workers are not the stereotypical teenagers flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s for some extra spending cash on the weekends. In fact, the majority of people who fall into this category are adults in their “prime working years,” and low paying work is the “primary way they support themselves and their families,” the report revealed.
This was true for the majority of regions across the United States, as the study analyzed data from nearly 400 metropolitan areas. Other research supports the finding of the study.
According to a new economic metric called the Job Quality Index, 63 percent of all jobs that were created since 1990 were low-salary jobs, many of them part-time. Today, the real US average wage, that is, the wage after calculating for inflation, has approximately the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what gains were made inside of companies mostly went to the highest-paid executives.
There are many reasons for this intense inequality, not least of all the collapse of labor unions, which once upon a time gave employees a real democratic voice inside of the workplace. Also to blame is the decades-long exodus of US corporations to foreign shores in their eternal quest for cheap labor and high profits.
Briefly, it was this concern over the hemorrhaging of well-paid manufacturing jobs, many of them to China and Mexico, which largely propelled Donald Trump into the White House in 2016. The US leader has pledged to reverse course on globalization and bring back those high wages of yesteryear. Trump’s particular brand of populism, however, combines a volatile mixture of semi-isolationism and firebrand nationalism that aims to ‘Make America Great Again.’ Judging by the way the current trade war with China is developing, the mogul of Manhattan may only succeed at sinking the US economy, while dragging down the rest of the global economy with it.
With regards to dwindling US paychecks for increasingly unattractive jobs, the danger here – aside from the very real risk of future social upheaval – is that if the number of ‘have-nots’ reaches a certain threshold of the population, then the overall health of the economy will begin to suffer accordingly. After all, workers are not just workers. They are also consumers, an integral part of any modern economy, and if their jobs start paying less they will naturally consume less, thereby appearing as a storm front on the economic horizon.
At the same time, it is important to note that it is not only the health of the economy that is at risk. Judging by recent data, a surplus of low-wage jobs appears to be having a direct impact on the health and wellbeing of the average American.
According to a report released this month by the National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy in the United States fell between 2016 and 2017, fueled by drug overdoses and suicides, continuing a downward trend for the last three years. Today, Americans can expect to live 78.6 years, a decline of three-tenths of a year since 2014.
“We’re living in a developed country with a fairly sophisticated health care system and lots of resources… and now all of the sudden it seems to (have) reversed,” Robert Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, told US News and World Report.
It would be very difficult to argue that there is no connection between the ongoing mental and physical health of people and the amount of money they are earning to support themselves and their families. That expensive burden seems at least partially to blame for the precipitation of drug abuse, domestic violence, and even suicide in the US.
How to reverse the trend of decreasing low-wage labor in the United States is another question. Although Trump seems right in wanting to reinvigorate America’s manufacturing base, that is a massive project that will not occur overnight, if at all. In the meantime, one possible answer is an increase in the minimum wage, or higher taxes on US corporations in order to provide more assistance to those Americans now falling through the cracks of one of the most cutthroat capitalist societies ever created.
If the majority of Americans continue to be treated as economic outcasts in their own country, it is difficult to see how the Wall Street traders and investors will continue to celebrate every holiday with heavy bonuses amid flowing champagne. There is a wolf on Wall Street, and it is called inequality. Wall Street needs to slay it if it wants the good times to continue.
Yesterday, November 19, was International Men’s Day and in 2019, the theme is “Making a Difference for Men and Boys”.
The focus of the day is to “promote the need to value men and boys and help people make practical improvements in men and boy’s health and well-being,” Sadly, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong details in the chart below, suicide rates among men are significantly higher in most countries around the world.
Of the 25 looked at here, the World Health Organization estimates Russia to have by far the highest rate among men, at 48.3 cases per 100,000 population in 2016. For women, India has the highest rate, with 14.5 cases.
There are some exceptions however.
In China, the rate for women is 8.3 while for men it is 7.9.
While the US ranks 7th overall in the world, suicide rates are at their highest since World War II, according to federal data and the opioid crisis, widespread social media use and high rates of stress may be among the myriad contributing factors.
In 2017, 14 out of every 100,000 Americans died by suicide, according to a new analysis released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. That’s a 33% increase since 1999, and the highest age-adjusted suicide rate recorded in the U.S. since 1942.
It would seem that the normies/ sheeple of the world have not batted an eye at the fact that 13 wealthy celebrities and one royal have all died in the same manner in the past few years, under very similar and bizarre circumstances.
Perhaps this is because the mainstream media refuses to report on their connections to elite pedophilia rings which tie directly to powerful people in Washington, Hollywood, and the mainstream media. People on the last presidential ticket in fact.
14 independent and highly successful people with careers and influence hanged themselves on doorknobs. DOORKNOBS!!!
My first question is: How the hell does one hang themselves from a doorknob? Followed by: How common is this? Do people hang themselves from doorknobs regularly and I’m just now finding out about it? Is there a doorknob suicide club the rest of us aren’t aware of?
Well, the answer to that last question is “yes.” One need only substitute the word “suicide” with “murder.” Or simply use the word “suicide” in the past tense while maintaining its usage as a verb.
In order of “Suiciding” they are as follows:
1) Michael Hutchence – 37
INXS frontman Michael Hutchence’s body was found hanging from a doorknob in Room 524 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Double Bay, Sydney. The occupant in the neighboring room heard an unidentified loud male voice and swearing at around 5 AM; the coroner was satisfied that this was Hutchence arguing with another male.
On February 6th, 1998, after an autopsy and coronial inquest, New South Wales State Coroner, Derrick Hand, presented his report ruling that Hutchence’s death was a suicide.
According to reports, Hutchence had information regarding a “VIP pedophile ring” in the UK that was connected to child-killing rapist Jimmy Saville and high-ranking politicians.
It should be noted that this was the first “suicide” of the 12 and began on the same day of the year JFK was assassinated. November, 22. Of course, the reason for this is because 11/22 add up to 33.
A numerical masonic/ occultic calling card to be sure. Hutchence’s age also adds up to 10 or “1”. Visit my numbers study page for more info on this.
2) David Carradine – 72
Perhaps the most occultic murder of them all. Hollywood actor David Carradine was found dead in his room at the Swissôtel Nai Lert Park Hotel on Wireless Road, near Sukhumvit Road, in central Bangkok, Thailand. He was there shooting his latest film, titled Stretch. Really? Stretch?
A police official said that Carradine was found naked, hanging by a rope tied to the doorknob of the room’s closet leading them to believe his death was suicide. However, later reports suggested that his death was accidental, the result of autoerotic asphyxiation.
Two autopsies were conducted, one involving the celebrity pathologist Pornthip Rojanasunan, and both concluded that the death was not a suicide. The cause of death became widely accepted as “accidental asphyxiation.” Carradine’s lawyer Vicki Roberts went on record stating: “I believe there may have been foul play.”
Reports around the time of his death suggest that Carradine may have been involved in child sex tourism; a rampant issue in Thailand where he was found. If he was involved in pedophilia, could he have been connected to a wider network of Hollywood elite pedophiles?
Here we have the almighty “72”. If ever there was a more complete and hermetic number for ritual work this is it. Of course, what better way throw collective common sense out the window than to write a sex scandal into the narrative. “Death by erotic asphyxiation.”
I’m calling Bullshit on that. Was Carradine into the Pedo scene? It sure seems like there are more than a few connections. Unlike other people on this list, he wasn’t in the process of attempting to out anyone at the time of his death.
3) Alexander McQueen – 40
The first of 3 fashion designers on this list, McQueen was found in the AM, hanging from a doorknob by his housekeeper at his home in Green Street, London where paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. Metropolitan Police stated that the note McQueen left was not suspicious, however, they did not confirm that his death was a suicide.
Alexander McQueen with his muse, Annabelle Neilson the wife of ex-wife of Nathaniel Rothschild
Photos of McQueen’s fashion shows. It’s obvious that McQueen was in the thick of it and made a regular habit of signaling his allegiance. As an occultist, I can tell you that the attention to detail and themes portrayed in his shows were beyond that of casual decor. They ran deep.
4) Annabelle Neilson, 49
Muse of Alexander McQueen and the ex-wife of elite banker Nataniel Rothschild has been found dead at her home in Chelsea, London.
(She died in July 2018, but I thought it’s important to include her right after Alexander McQueen).
49-year-old Annabelle Neilson’s body was discovered hanging from a doorknob in the bathroom of her $4.1 million mansion on Thursday, but news of her sudden and tragic death has only just been made public.
Police have yet to confirm the cause of her death, and haven’t ruled out drug or alcohol use, but say they are “not treating it as suspicious.”
Neilson was previously married to Nathaniel Rothschild – son of Lord Jacob Rothschild and heir to his family’s fortune – for three years after a six-year relationship.
After divorcing Rothschild she was reportedly forced to sign a confidentiality agreement and rescind the dynastic name.
Since splitting with the banking heir, she was in an extremely close relationship with fashion designer Alexander McQueen who also died in eerily similar circumstances to Neilson.
McQueen’s death was announced on the afternoon of 11 February 2010.
In the morning, his housekeeper found him hanging from a doorknob at his home in Green Street, London W1.
Annabelle Neilson was supposedly the last person to see McQueen alive and she was left devastated by his death.
Originally, we were told she was found hanging by a red scarf from a doorknob in her bedroom, but later we were told that she died from a cerebrovascular accident or a heart attack.
5) Aaron Swartz – 26
Tech pioneer, and Reddit co-founder, Aaron Swartz was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment by his partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. A spokeswoman for New York’s Medical Examiner reported that he had hanged himself from a doorknob. No suicide note was found.
According to former-CIA agent Robert Steele, Swartz hacked into MIT Computers and found a huge stash of Child Pornography shortly before his death.
Another numerologically significant date. Jan, 11th is “1/11” and this number has a few meanings. first, 111 is 3 “1’s” or 3. Master Mason is the 3rd degree. It is also the first 11 of the year. 11 symbolizes the pillars of Boaz and Jachin which sat at the entrance to King Solomon’s Temple.
11 is also the first number after “10” which is the most perfect number and represents ILLUMINATION.”
“11” represents imperfection in government because it is one number short of 12, which symbolizes a perfect theocratic government.
Satanists love to utilize this dystopian number in their ritual work. Of course, the triple and quadruple “1’s” holds extreme significance in pop culture as a number everyone seems to notice regularly.
At first, the numerology surrounding this murder seems a little overkill, no pun intended. 11 is quite a powerful and significant number to utilize when weaving into a ritual. But upon a closer examination of Aaron’s life, we realize that his death was most certainly to be used as an example to other budding geniuses.
Although Aaron no doubt more than likely had incriminating files of the elite pertaining to pedophilia he was also the spearhead of a movement to bring and maintain freedom of speech and presence on the Internet.
The internet HAS replaced TV and IS the default platform for the human species at this point. Aaron posed a real threat to this.
6) L’Wren Scott – 49
Our second fashion designer on the list is L’Wren Scott, long-time lover of Mick Jagger and (former girlfriend of Nate Rothschild) was found dead by her assistant at her apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan on March 17, 2014.
The police reported that no note was found and there was no sign of foul play. The New York City Chief Medical Examiner determined Scott’s manner and cause of death to be “suicide by hanging.”
I wonder what sort information concerning the underbelly of sex, privilege, and decadence the ex-girlfriend of a Rothschild and mega rockstar would be privy to which would either put her at jeopardy for elimination or make her want to kill herself? And the fact that I’m not buying the whole “death by doorknob suicide” Bullshit, I’m guessing she was silenced.
7) Robin Williams – 63
Williams died at his home in Paradise Cay, California. The initial report released on August 12, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office deputy coroner stated Williams had hanged himself after he was found hanging from a doorknob with a necktie.
The final autopsy report, released on November 2014, ruled that Williams had committed suicide by hanging himself from the doorknob. Neither alcohol nor illegal drugs were involved, while all prescription drugs present in his body were at “therapeutic” levels, the coroner declared.
Williams had been a part of the Hollywood scene for so long, nearly anything one can imagine could possibly be true. There’s a 100% chance Williams rubbed elbows with everyone in the Hollywood scene at one time or another and was exposed to everything Hollywood had to offer.
The question is: How deep was he into the scene? Decades of cocaine and partying can lead to some pretty dark places. He most certainly knew the dirty secrets of Henry Weinstein and his ilk, but what most people forget is that these celebrities cross over into politics quite often and support the agendas of democrat candidates regularly. This is where we get into “brownstonin.”
Hollywood insider and whistleblower Jon Robberson has chimed in on the Hollywood pedophile sex rings. He recently made statements in an interview regarding his belief that Robin Williams was most likely blackmailed into making the film Patch Adams.
And would do we make the Family Guy predictive programming which transpired shortly before Robin’s death? It’s obvious that Seth McFarlane has a hand in the mechanics of these rituals.
8) Chris Cornell – 52
Cornell was found unconscious by his bodyguard, hanging from the doorknob in the bathroom of his hotel room at the MGM Grand in Detroit, after performing at a show with Soundgarden at the Fox Theatre on May 17. He was lying on the floor with an exercise band around his neck and blood in his mouth.
An MGM medic and EMS personnel were unable to revive Cornell. Cornell was pronounced dead by a doctor at 1:30 a.m. Police ruled out homicide by reviewing a hotel surveillance video, which showed nobody entering or exiting the suite after his bodyguard left at around 11:35 p.m. The cause of death was determined to be “suicide by hanging.”
Cornell’s death is surrounded by rumors that he was about to expose key players in the DC pedophile ring known as pizza gate.
It’s no secret that Cornell and Chester Bennington, (Next on this list) died two months later the exact same way, had begun an organization to help at-risk children. Chester Bennington as you will learn is the son of John Podesta. You can’t make this stuff up.
Several have questioned what they say are gaps in the timeline. The police report says the bodyguard was in Cornell’s hotel room at 11:30 p.m. to help the star with the victim’s “computer, which was not working at that time.”
It says Vicky Cornell talked to her husband at 11:35 p.m., and, alarmed by what she heard, she phoned the bodyguard to ask him to check on her husband. He told police he went to Cornell’s room at 12:15 a.m. Some question the apparent 40-minute gap between the start of Vicky’s conversation with her husband and the bodyguard’s welfare check at his room.
Assistant Wayne County Medical Examiner Theodore Brown said that upon a visual examination, “no pills were found in the stomach,” according to his report. But there’s no indication in the toxicology report that Cornell’s stomach was tested to determine the level of drugs there since only the blood sample is cited.
Cornell also had nine broken ribs discovered at his autopsy. The official explanation was that the medics broke his ribs trying to resuscitate him using CPR. An in-depth article on the investigation can be found here.
9) Chester Bennington – 41
Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington was found dead at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, California; his housekeeper discovered his body hanging from a doorknob around 9:00 a.m. His death was officially ruled as suicide.
Was Chest Bennington the bastard son of John Podesta?
On July 21, Brian Elias, the chief of operations for the office of the medical examiner-coroner, confirmed that a half-empty bottle of alcohol was found at the scene, but no other drugs were present.
Believing himself to be a victim of child abuse, Chester Bennington was working with his best friend Cornell to expose a high-reaching child trafficking network.
But to say that Bennington believed himself to be a victim of child abuse is like stating that Adolf Hitler was simply a charismatic politician. Good lord this rabbit hole runs deep.
The band’s logo was a broken version of the triangle used in pedophile networks. There is no doubt that Bennington’s entire existence was consumed by the ritualistic sexual abuse he sustained at the hands of John Podesta, who is rumoured to have been his biological father.
What are the odds that two best friends who are about to expose a DC pedophile ring of which one of the friend’s father was at the heart of died in the exact same bizarre manner and that the second want to die did so two months later on his best friend’s birthday?
There is no doubt that Bennington would’ve struck at the heart of this DC pedophile ring more than likely bringing down Podesta, Hillary Clinton, and their networks. After all, he had the DNA to corroborate his claim. I don’t think Bennington knew just how much danger he was in.
10) Avicii – 28
Swedish DJ Avicii, real name Tim Bergling, died on 20 April 2018 near Muscat, Oman, at the age of 28. No cause of death was immediately given. On 21 April, the Omani police stated that there was “no criminal suspicion” or evidence of foul play in Bergling’s death.
On 26 April, his family released an open letter stating that Bergling “really struggled with thoughts about meaning, life, happiness. He could not go on any longer.” On 1 May, TMZ reported that the cause of death was a suicide due to self-inflicted injuries.
Although full details of his death were not released, TMZ reports that he suffered cuts from broken glass along with neck injuries. Although it is unclear what the injuries to his neck were, it could have been caused by asphyxiation and hanging has not been ruled out.
After his death, it emerged that Avicii was working to expose an elite pedophile ring. One of his videos began to recirculate in which he attempts to expose child trafficking.
In 2015 Avicii did release a video for his song “For a Better Day” where he shows child sex tracking taking place and two girls that escape from a man trying to capture them. The video later reveals that the two girls seek revenge on the ‘elite’ that were running this pedophile operation:
Did Avicii have the clout and influence to help wake up an entire generation to the horrors of institutionalized and ritualistic pedophilia and our global governments and institutions? Or was he simply ritual fodder?
11) Kate Spade – 55
Our third fashion designer on this list is Kate Spade. Also linked to the Clintons Spade was found dead hanging by the neck from a doorknob in her Manhattan apartment. It is been said that “buying a Kate Spade handbag was a coming-of-age ritual for a generation of American women.” It’s obvious that’s not the only ritual going on here.
A note found at the scene was addressed in the Spade’s 13-year-old daughter indicating that what happened was not the child’s fault. Miss Spade’s entrance into the dark world of privilege and decadence was when she met her husband to be, the brother of actor and comedian David Spade.
According to a Clinton Foundation DOCUMENT, Kate Spade was among a group that traveled to Haiti on behalf of the Clinton Foundation. She was part of the foundation’s initiative to foster “economic growth, support small businesses, and empower girls and women.”
There’s no doubt that Spade, who seems like a generally good person came across the same information regarding the Clinton foundation Haitian child sex trafficking network that got Monica Peterson killed (by the Clintons?).
ALSO RELATED. Most believe that Klaus Eberwein, a former Haitian government official was also “SUICIDED” in his Miami motel one day prior to testifying in court. Eberwein was scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Haitian Senate’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission.
No doubt the topic of child sex trafficking and the Clintons was on the agenda. As a side note. Klaus was also a partner in a popular pizza restaurant in Haiti, Muncheez, and has a pizza — the Klaus Special — named after him.
Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, paid tribute to the fashion designer via Twitter. “My grandmother gave me my first Kate Spade bag when I was in college. I still have it. Holding Kate’s family, friends and loved ones in my heart.”
SICK!!!
Equally as strange as Kate Spade hanging herself with a red scarf from a doorknob was the reaction of her husband shortly after the incident. Two days after Kate hanged herself from a doorknob with a red scarf Andy Spade was videotaped walking around in public wearing a mouse mask with a red scarf and newspaper hat.
It was actually the mask of one of the characters from the classic Disney cartoon The Avengers. This is some strange behavior which doesn’t fit into any box. Who the hell just happens to have an Avengers mouse mask laying around the house? NO!!!
In my opinion, this was a public self-humiliation ritual. A nod, a message, signaling of subservience to the Clintons or whoever had Kate killed that he understands and will be playing ball.
There is defiantly a much deeper story here which will never be told.
12) Queen Maxima’s sister Ines Zorreguieta – 33
Do we even need to mention she was killed at 33? Dutch Queen Maxima’s sister Ines Zorreguieta (The only royalty on this list) was found dead in Argentina last year.
Queen Maxima (left) and her sister, Ines Zorreguieta (right)
Zorreguieta, 33, was found dead by a friend who discovered her body hanging from a doorknob in her apartment in the Almagro district of Buenos Aires. Police said the autopsy report would be available in a week but did not suspect foul play.
According to reports, Zorreguieta was connected to high-level elites involved in child trafficking. Queen Maxima stepped down after allegations of her involvement in “hunts” where children were raped and massacred by her dinner guests. Some speculators believe she may have been “silenced” before she could go public about a cabal-connected pedophile ring.
David Icke has been screaming from the rooftops about this for over three decades and it’s just now starting to get attention. Do your research, then share:
13) Anthony Bourdain – 61
At the height of his career, chef, TV personality, world traveler and armchair philosopher Anthony Bourdain decided to commit suicide by hanging himself from a doorknob. Because apparently, that’s just what you do when you’re successful and have a great life.
“know what Hillary Clinton is NOT? She’s not stupid. Or unsophisticated about the world. The Weinstein stories had been out there for years.”
“Mindless Hillary hate aside, this was a terrible response to questions about a “friend” who’s been tormenting women for decades.”
“I have met Hillary Clinton. I liked her. I admired much about her. This interview was a real disappointment.”
“Hillary is CLEARLY not responsible for anything Weinstein. That’s screamingly obvious. Her response to questions though has been uninspiring.”
“..and I am in no way an HRC fan. I’ve been on the receiving end of her operatives’ wrath. And it ain’t fun,”
“It’s no secret that people who cross the Clintons wind up dead…mostly from suicide,”
Occultic and ritualistic mechanics surrounding his death include: the show he was working on was in its 11th season. He died in France which is the birthplace of the Scottish Rite within Freemasonry.
Interestingly, Bourdain participated in an ancient death ritual at the season finale of his TV show. It aired two weeks after he was suicided. If this isn’t predictive programming I don’t know what is.
Bonus:
14) Amschel Mayor James Rothschild – 41
Amschel Mayor James Rothschild, a billionaire investment banker and a noted sportsman in excellent health, was discovered lifeless on the floor of the bathroom of his suite at the luxurious Bristol Hotel in Paris on July 8, 1996, at 7:32 pm.
Police found that he had been strangled with the heavy cord of his own bathrobe. One end of the cord was attached to a towel rack as if to suggest that Rothschild’s violent death was self-inflicted.
“The [French] crime scene investigators never called it ‘suicide,'” reporter Theirry de Segonzac told *The Spotlight* in a telephone interview from Paris. “After photographing the body, one of the detectives gave the towel rack tied to the body a strong tug. It came right out of the wall.”
Had Rothschild really attempted to hang himself from that rack, he would have ended up with nothing worse than a couple of holes in the wall, de Segonzac said.
There was no suicide note, no discernible cause or reason for a finding of suicide, knowledgeable sources say.
Rothschild, an athletic and imperious figure in early middle age, was a renowned race car driver and the husband of Anita Guinness, herself one of the world’s wealthiest heiresses. The couple had three children who spent most of their time on the family’s baronial estate in Suffolk, England.
Rothschild had arrived in Paris to take over one of the many family consortium’s French assets — anagement operations which were to be merged with N.M. Rothschild’s London-based investment banking center.
“Far from being ‘troubled,’ Amschel Rothschild’s star was on the rise and he relished his success,” says an executive at Keefe, Bruyetter and Co., a respected Wall Street monitor of the financial services industry. “I don’t believe for a moment he suddenly went and killed himself. There’s much more to this story.”
But with frantic speed — within an hour after the body’s discovery — authorities and news executives in both France and Britain launched an unusual joint offensive to preempt a public inquiry or a press investigation into the circumstances of Rothschild’s death.
“Murdoch sent a hotline fax to his 600-odd editors and news managers around the world, ordering them to report Amschel’s death as a heart attack, if at all,” said British broadcast reporter Ian Gooding.
“No one around here has ever seen such pressure to kill a front-page story. But in the end, the cover-up was complete.”
By the way, this story was buried, it is obvious that Amschel was murdered. Apparently, the Illuminati are not immune to lethal attack, when they administer it themselves. If an enemy of the Rothschilds had done it, believe me, you’d know.
Obviously, Amschel Mayor James Rothschild did not have “the killer instinct.” We don’t know the details but he became an obstruction.
Amschel’s story is a great tragedy. A sensitive, intelligent and good man is born into a megalomaniacal family of generational satanists. He discovers he must be a ruthless predator. It’s not in his character. He has a soul. He resists and is murdered. (Source)
With pharmaceutical and even robotic “cures” in the works for loneliness – a condition once considered part of the normal human emotional range but now framed as a health risk – we risk losing the ability to be alone at all.
The pathologization of emotion has been on the march for decades, especially in the US, where fully one sixth of the adult population takes an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug. Now the mental-health industry has a new target – loneliness.
Nearly half of Americans polled last year by health insurer Cigna said they lacked meaningful relationships or companionship. A solutions-based society might examine why so many people feel alienated from their peers despite the constant connectivity of smartphones and internet. A symptom-focused model, however, simply looks to stop them from feeling that way by any means necessary.
Loneliness is “worse than obesity,” according to a raft of studies that have emerged linking the emotion to increased risk of premature death, and even rivals smoking. And like obesity – big business for Big Pharma, gastric bypass surgeons and weight-loss gurus – it requires medical intervention.
THERE’S A PILL FOR THAT
The University of Chicago’s Brain Dynamics Laboratory recently began an eight-week trial of the hormone pregnenolone, rounding up volunteers with “off-the-chart” scores on a psychological loneliness scale. Based on animal studies suggesting the chemical can reduce the exaggerated threat reactions that researchers say characterize loneliness, they hope to normalize the lonely person’s self-centered hyper-vigilance that drives them to both desire human connection and deal poorly with it.
Researchers insist the intention is not to cure loneliness with a pill, but the trial sets a precedent for doing just that – with another psychiatric drug, if pregnenolone doesn’t work out. Antidepressants, for example, have for years been used (and abused) to treat conditions other than depression, with the largest pharmaceutical industry lawsuits targeting overprescribing and off-label prescribing.
And unlike most regular medical patients, individuals deemed mentally ill tend to remain on medication for years, if not for life.
Mental health professionals writing about the loneliness epidemic discuss behavioral interventions, community programs, and therapy, but the introduction of a pharmaceutical solution may prove too tempting for a profession that has learned to love the quick fix a pill provides. Like depression, loneliness has an infinite number of possible causes, some of which are natural and healthy reactions to major life changes. Other types of loneliness have clear behavioral causes that would (before the magic pill, at least) necessitate clear behavioral solutions. Would a psychiatrist reach to medicate the loneliness of a person who only socializes through Facebook with a pill rather than encourage them to talk to real people?
Studies have shown that just a week away from the platform can bring “significant” improvements in well-being, suggesting that in this case, at least, correlation may indeed equal causation. But why force the patient to change his life when a pill will do the trick?
In a quick-fix society that prefers to treat the symptoms while ignoring the disease, a pill for loneliness may be embraced with all the fervor with which antidepressants were greeted before people began to realize that they cause suicidal and homicidal behavior, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, and a host of other problems – and that they don’t actually cure depression.
A loneliness pill will also not address Americans’ emotionally unhealthy digitally-addicted lifestyles. After all, human contact, including real-life socializing, has become a luxury – so says the New York Times, explaining that humans are expensive, screens and robots are cheap, and expecting the unwashed masses to be able to afford access to living, breathing humans like themselves is simply unrealistic.
BRIDGING THE UNCANNY VALLEY
Because if the “loneliness pill” doesn’t work out, AI is waiting in the wings. Already seen as the future of at-home healthcare for aging populations under the care of cash-strapped governments, friendly, helpful robots could find their way into the homes of the lonely. And while snooping AI “digital assistants” like Amazon’s Alexa tend to creep people out, this new wave of robo-buddies would be framed as medical help. As lonely humans become accustomed to conversing with their robot pals, their expectation for real human contact may diminish, and their sense of loneliness with it. After all, you can’t miss what you never had. Already, given the stunted level of discourse on social media, many of us have found ourselves tricked into talking to bots, sometimes exchanging several messages before realizing our interlocutor is not human.
As the bar for “meaningful relationships” is lowered to the point where chatting with an AI can qualify, the loneliness epidemic vanishes – on paper, at least, and in US public health policy, sometimes that’s all that matters.
LONELY OR JUST ALONE?
The pathologization of loneliness will inevitably elide the difference between being alone and being lonely, as the mental health industry runs out of lonely people to treat with whatever therapeutic weapon wins this particular arms race and is forced to seek more patients. “Loners” – those dangerous types who actually enjoy solitude – are stigmatized as unpredictable weirdos who need to be brought into the fold. The man who shot up a Walmart in El Paso earlier this month was an “extreme loner,” according to media reports. Would we be reading about it if he was an “extreme extrovert”? The myth of the “introvert killer” pops up every time, even though it has been thoroughly debunked.
With no anti-loneliness pill on the market – yet – it is impossible to predict what’s next for the creeping pathologization of the human emotional experience. But Amazon’s Alexa has moved one step closer to the companion-robot model, rolling out a medical feature earlier this year which could conceivably be deployed to “check on” individuals at risk for loneliness.
And with implantable devices like Elon Musk’s Neuralink on the horizon, bringing that AI directly in contact with your mind, you’ll never be able to feel lonely again. Solitude – like privacy and human contact before it – thus becomes the ultimate luxury good.
Helen Buyniski
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator, working at RT since 2018
After posting a video of a young recruit talking to the camera about how service allows him to better himself “as a man and a warrior”, the US Army tweeted, “How has serving impacted you?”
As of this writing, the post has over 5,300 responses. Most of them are heartbreaking.
“My daughter was raped while in the army,” said one responder. “They took her to the hospital where an all male staff tried to convince her to give the guy a break because it would ruin his life. She persisted. Wouldn’t back down. Did a tour in Iraq. Now suffers from PTSD.”
“I’ve had the same nightmare almost every night for the past 15 years,”said another.
Tweet after tweet after tweet, people used the opportunity that the Army had inadvertently given them to describe how they or their loved one had been chewed up and spit out by a war machine that never cared about them. This article exists solely to document a few of the things that have been posted in that space, partly to help spread public awareness and partly in case the thread gets deleted in the interests of “national security”. Here’s a sampling in no particular order:
“Someone I loved joined right out of high school even though I begged him not to. Few months after his deployment ended, we reconnected. One night, he told me he loved me and then shot himself in the head. If you’re gonna prey on kids for imperialism, at least treat their PTSD.”
~
“After I came back from overseas I couldn’t go into large crowds without a few beers in me. I have nerve damage in my right ear that since I didn’t want to look weak after I came back I lied to the VA rep. My dad was exposed to agent orange which destroyed his lungs, heart, liver and pancreas and eventually killing him five years ago. He was 49, exposed at a post not Vietnam, and will never meet my daughter my nephew. I still drink to much and I crowds are ok most days but I have to grocery shop at night and can’t work days because there is to many ppl.”
~
“The dad of my best friend when I was in high school had served in the army. He struggled with untreated PTSD & severe depression for 30 years, never told his family. Christmas eve of 2010, he went to their shed to grab the presents & shot himself in the head. That was the first funeral I attended where I was actually told the cause of death & the reasons surrounding it. I went home from the service, did some asking around, & found that most of the funerals I’ve attended before have been caused by untreated health issues from serving.”
~
“My dad was drafted into war and was exposed to agent orange. I was born w multiple physical/neurological disabilities that are linked back to that chemical. And my dad became an alcoholic with ptsd and a side of bipolar disorder.”
~
“i met this guy named christian who served in iraq. he was cool, had his own place with a pole in the living room. always had lit parties. my best friend at the time started dating him so we spent a weekend at his crib. after a party, 6am, he took out his laptop. he started showing us some pics of his time in the army. pics with a bunch of dudes. smiling, laughing. it was cool. i was drunk and didn’t care. he started showing us pics of some little kids. after a while, his eyes went completely fucking dark. i was like man, dude’s high af. he very calmly explained to us that all of those kids were dead ‘but that’s what war was. dead kids and nothing to show for it but a military discount’. christian killed himself 2 months later.”
~
“I didn’t serve but my dad did. In Vietnam. It eventually killed him, slowly, over a couple of decades. When the doctors were trying to put in a pacemaker to maybe extend his life a couple of years, his organs were so fucked from the Agent Orange, they disintegrated to the touch. He died when I was ten. He never saw me graduate high school. He never saw me get my first job or buy my first car. He wasn’t there. But hey! Y’all finally paid out 30k after another vet took the VA to the Supreme Court, so. You know. It was cool for him.”
~
“Chronic pain with a 0% disability rating (despite medical discharge) so no benefits, and anger issues that I cope with by picking fistfights with strangers.”
~
“My parents both served in the US Army and what they got was PTSD for both of them along with anxiety issues. Whenever we go out in public and sit down somewhere my dad has to have his back up against the wall just to feel a measure of comfort that no one is going to sneak up on him and kill him and and walking up behind either of them without announcing that you’re there is most likely going to either get you punch in the face or choked out.”
~
“Many of my friends served. All are on heavy antidepressant/anxiety meds, can’t make it through 4th of July or NYE, and have all dealt with heavy substance abuse problems before and after discharge. And that’s on top of one crippled left hand, crushed vertebra, and GSWs.”
~
“Left my talented and young brother a broken and disabled man who barely leaves the house. Left my mother hypervigilant & terrified due to the amount of sexual assault & rape covered up and looked over by COs. Friend joined right out if HS, bullet left him paralyzed neck down.”
~
“My cousin went to war twice and came back with a drug addiction that killed him. My other cousin could never get paid on time and when he left they tried to withhold his pay.”
~
“It’s given me a fractured spine, TBI, combat PTSD, burn pit exposure, and a broken body with no hope of getting better. Not even medically retired for a fractured spine. WTF.”
~
“Y’all killed my father by failing to provide proper treatments after multiple tours.”
~
“Everyone I know got free PTSD and chemical exposure and a long engagement in their efforts to have the US pay up for college tuition. Several lives ruined. No one came out better. Thank god my recruiter got a DUI on his way to get me or I would be dead or worse right now.”
~
“I have ptsd and still wake up crying at night. Also have a messed up leg that I probably will have to deal with the rest of my life. Depression. Anger issues.”
~
“My grandfather came back from Vietnam with severe PTSD, tried to drown it in alcohol, beat my father so badly and so often he still flinches when touched 50 years later. And I grew up with an emotionally scarred father with PTSD issues of his own because of it. Good times.”
~
“Hmmm. Let’s see. I lost friends, have 38 inches of scars, PTSD and a janky arm and hand that don’t work.”
~
“my grandpa served in vietnam from when he was 18–25. he’s 70 now and every night he still has nightmares where he stands up tugging at the curtains or banging on the walls screaming at the top of his lungs for someone to help him. he refuses to talk about his time and when you mention anything about the war to him his face goes white and he has a panic attack. he cries almost every day and night and had to spend 10 years in a psychiatric facility for suicidal ideations from what he saw there.”
~
“My best friend joined the Army straight out of high school because his family was poor & he wanted a college education. He served his time & then some. Just as he was ready to retire he was sent to Iraq. You guys sent him back in a box. It destroyed his children.”
~
“Well, my father got deployed to Iraq and came back a completely different person. Couldn’t even work the same job he had been working 20 years before that because of his anxiety and PTSD. He had nightmares, got easily violent and has terrible depression. But the army just handed him pills, now he is 100% disabled and is on a shit ton of medication. He has nightmares every night, paces the house barely sleeping, checking every room just to make sure everyone’s safe. He’s had multiple friends commit suicide.”
~
“Father’s a disabled Vietnam veteran who came home with severe PTSD and raging alcoholism. VA has continuously ignored him throughout the years and his medical needs and he receives very little compensation for all he’s gone through. Thanks so much!!”
~
“I was #USNavy, my husband was #USArmy, he served in Bosnia and Iraq and that nice, shy, funny guy was gone, replaced with a withdrawn, angry man…he committed suicide a few years later…when I’m thanked for my service, I just nod.”
~
“I’m permanently disabled because I trained through severe pain after being rejected from the clinic for ‘malingering.’ Turns out my pelvis was cracked and I ended up having to have hip surgery when I was 20 years old.”
~
“My brother went into the Army a fairly normal person, became a Ranger (Ft. Ord) & came out a sociopath. He spent the 1st 3 wks home in his room in the dark, only coming out at night when he thought we were asleep. He started doing crazy stuff. Haven’t seen him since 1993.”
~
“Recently attended the funeral for a west point grad with a 4yr old and a 7yr old daughter because he blew his face off to escape his ptsd but thats nothing new.”
~
“I don’t know anyone in my family who doesn’t suffer from ptsd due to serving. One is signed off sick due to it & thinks violence is ok. Another (navy) turned into a psycho & thought domestic violence was the answer to his wife disobeying his orders.”
~
“My dad served during vietnam, but after losing close friends and witnessing the killing of innocents by the U.S., he refused to redeploy. He has suffered from PTSD ever since. The bravest thing he did in the army was refuse to fight any longer, and I’m so proud of him for that.”
~
“My best friend from high school was denied his mental health treatment and forced to return to a third tour in Iraq, despite having such deep trauma that he could barely function. He took a handful of sleeping pills and shot himself in the head two weeks before deploying.”
~
“Bad back, hips, and knees. Lack of trust, especially when coming forward about sexual harassment. Detachment, out of fear of losing friends. Missed birthdays, weddings, graduations, and funerals. I get a special license plate tho.”
~
“My son died 10 months ago. He did 3 overseas tours. He came back with severe mental illness.”
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“I’m still in and I’m in constant pain and they recommended a spinal fusion when I was 19. Y’all also won’t update my ERB so I can’t use the education benefits I messed myself up for.”
~
“My dad served two tours in middle east and his personality changes have affected my family forever. VA ‘counseling’ has a session limit and doesn’t send you to actual psychologists. Military service creates a mental health epidemic it is then woefully unequipped to deal with.”
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“My best childhood friend lost his mind after his time in the marines and now he lives in a closet in his mons house and can barely hold a conversation with anyone. He only smokes weed and drinks cough syrup that he steals since he can’t hold a job.”
~
“After coming back from Afghanistan…..Matter fact I don’t even want to talk about it. Just knw that my PTSD, bad back, headaches, chronic pain, knee pain, and other things wishes I would have NEVER signed that contract. It was NOT worth the pain I’ll endure for the rest of life.”
~
“My cousin served and came back only to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and ptsd. There were nights that he would lock himself in the bathroom and stay in the corner because he saw bodies in the bathtub. While driving down the highway, he had another episode and drove himself into a cement barrier, engulfing his Jeep in flames and burning alive. My father served as well and would never once speak of what he witnessed and had to do. He said it’s not something that any one person should ever be proud of.”
~
“I was sexually assaulted by a service member at 17 when I visited my sister on her base, then again at 18. My friend got hooked on k2 and died after the va turned him away for mental health help. Another friend serving was exploited sexually by her co and she was blamed for it.”
~
“I spent ten years in the military. I worked 15 hour days to make sure my troops were taken care of. In return for my hard work I was rewarded with three military members raping me. I was never promoted to a rank that made a difference. And I have an attempt at suicide. Fuck you!”
~
“I actually didn’t get around to serving because I was sexually assaulted by three of my classmates during a military academy prep program. They went to the academies and are still active duty officers. I flamed out of the program and have PTSD.”
~
“My father’s successful military career taught him that he’s allowed to use violence to make people do what he wants because America gave him that power.”
~
“While I was busy framing ‘soliders and families first’ (lol) propaganda posters, my best friend went to ‘Iraqistan’ but he didn’t come back. He returned alive, to be sure, but he was no longer the fun, carefree, upbeat person he’d previously been.”
~
“My husband is a paraplegic and can’t control 3/4 of his body now. Me, I’ve got PTSD, an anxiety disorder, two messed up knees, depression, a bad back, tinnitus, and chronic insomnia. I wish both had never served.”
~
“This is one of the most heartbreaking threads I’ve ever read.”
~
“I am so sorry. The way we fail our service members hurts my heart. My grandfather served in the Korean War and had nightmares until his death at 91 years old. We must do better.”
~
“My Army story is that when I was in high school, recruiters were there ALL the time- at lunch, clubs, etc.- targeting the poor kids at school. I didn’t understand it until now. You chew people who have nothing at home up and spit them out.”
~
“I was thinking about enlisting until I saw this thread. Hard pass.”
~
“I hope to god that the Army has enough guts to read these and realize how badly our servicepeople are being treated. Thank you and god bless you to all of you in this thread, and your loved ones who are suffering too.”
This is a poem I wrote a while back called “Naughty Little Boys”:
That little boy’s mum is going to be so upset. He hasn’t combed his hair, and his clothes are filthy. And what’s he gone and done with his legs? Where are your legs, little boy? Better go and find them before your mum sees you. Those legs are very important to her.
They sent the little boys up into the sky and over the ocean to go play soldiers. They gave them toy guns full of toy bullets, and they screamed toy screams, and bled toy blood, and cried toy tears, and had toy nightmares, and called out for their mums in the desert.
The man on the TV keeps calling them heroes. Don’t call them that, TV man, you’ll only encourage them. These are little boys, and they’re being very naughty. They are worrying their mums sick and it’s time for them to go home.
Find your legs, little boy, and go be with your mum. Find your hands and your face too; she’ll miss those as well. Find your mind and bring it back from that dark, scary place. You’re not there anymore. You are home. Stop screaming toy screams and crying toy tears and go tell your mum that you’ve had a bad dream.
Chris Hedges, author and host of RT America’s “On Contact” joins Rick Sanchez to discuss the skyrocketing problem of suicide and self-destructive behavior and why we should only expect it to get worse.
A powerful clinical study shows that pennies worth of magnesium a day provides an effective, safe, affordable alternative to dangerous and relatively ineffective pharmaceutical antidepressants.
A powerful clinical study shows that pennies worth of magnesium a day provides an effective, safe, affordable alternative to dangerous and relatively ineffective pharmaceutical antidepressants.
Depression is one of the most widely diagnosed conditions of our time, with over 3 million cases in the U.S. every year, and 350 million believed affected worldwide.1 Conventional medicine considers antidepressant drugs first-line treatments, including the newly approved injected postpartum drug costing $34,000 a treatment, to the tune of a 16 billion dollars in global sales by 2023. Despite their widespread use, these drugs are fraught with a battery of serious side effects, including suicidal ideation and completion — the last two things you would hope to see in a condition that already has suicidality as a co-morbidity. For this reason alone, natural, safe, and effective alternatives are needed more than ever before.
While research into natural alternatives for depression is growing daily — GreenMedInfo.com’s Depression database contains 647 studies on over 100 natural substances that have been studied to prevent or treat depression — it is rare to find quality human clinical research on the topic published in well-respected journals. That’s why a powerful study published in PLOS One titled, “Role of magnesium supplementation in the treatment of depression: A randomized clinical trial,” is so promising. Not only is magnesium safe, affordable, and easily accessible, but according to this recent study, effective in treating mild-to moderate symptoms of depression.
While previous studies have looked at the association between magnesium and depression,2-7 this is the first placebo-controlled clinical study to evaluate whether the use of over-the-counter magnesium chloride (248 mg elemental magnesium a day for 6 weeks) improves symptoms of depression.
The study design was a follows:
“ An open-label, blocked, randomized, cross-over trial was carried out in outpatient primary care clinics on 126 adults (mean age 52; 38% male) diagnosed with and currently experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms with Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) scores of 5–19. The intervention was 6 weeks of active treatment (248 mg of elemental magnesium per day) compared to 6 weeks of control (no treatment). Assessments of depression symptoms were completed at bi-weekly phone calls. The primary outcome was the net difference in the change in depression symptoms from baseline to the end of each treatment period. Secondary outcomes included changes in anxiety symptoms as well as adherence to the supplement regimen, appearance of adverse effects, and intention to use magnesium supplements in the future. Between June 2015 and May 2016, 112 participants provided analyzable data.”
The study results were as follows:
“Consumption of magnesium chloride for 6 weeks resulted in a clinically significant net improvement in PHQ-9 scores of -6.0 points (CI -7.9, -4.2; P<0.001) and net improvement in Generalized Anxiety Disorders-7 scores of -4.5 points (CI -6.6, -2.4; P<0.001). Average adherence was 83% by pill count. The supplements were well tolerated and 61% of participants reported they would use magnesium in the future. Similar effects were observed regardless of age, gender, baseline severity of depression, baseline magnesium level, or use of antidepressant treatments. Effects were observed within two weeks. Magnesium is effective for mild-to-moderate depression in adults. It works quickly and is well tolerated without the need for close monitoring for toxicity.”
For perspective, conventional antidepressant drugs are considering to generate an “adequate or complete treatment response” with a PHQ-9 score “decrease of 5 points or more from baseline.” At this level of efficacy, their recommended action is: “Do not change treatment; conduct periodic follow-up.” The magnesium’s score of -6.0 therefore represents the height of success within conventional expectations for a complete response, which is sometimes termed “remission.” In contradistinction, conventional antidepressant drugs result in nearly half of patients discontinuing treatment during the first month, usually due to their powerful and sometimes debilitating side effects.8
To summarize the main study outcomes:
There was a clinically significant improvement in both Depression and Anxiety scores.
61% of patients reported they would use magnesium in the future.
Similar effects occurred across age, gender, severity of depression, baseline magnesium levels, or use of antidepressant treatments.
Effects were observed within two weeks.
The study authors concluded:
“Magnesium is effective for mild-to-moderate depression in adults. It works quickly and is well tolerated without the need for close monitoring for toxicity.”
Beyond Depression: Magnesium’s Many Health Benefits & Where To Source It
Magnesium is a central player in your body’s energy production, as its found within 300 enzymes in the human body, including within the biologically active form of ATP known as MG-ATP. In fact, there have been over 3,751 magnesium binding sites identified within human proteins, indicating that it’s central nutritional importance has been greatly underappreciated.
Research relevant to magnesium has been accumulating for the past 40 years at a steady rate of approximately 2,000 new studies a year. Our database project has indexed well over 100 health benefits of magnesium thus far. For the sake of brevity, we will address seven key therapeutic applications for magnesium as follows:
Fibromyalgia: Not only is magnesium deficiency common in those diagnosed with fibromyalgia, 9,10 but relatively low doses of magnesium (50 mg), combined with malic acid in the form of magnesium malate, has been clinically demonstrated to improve pain and tenderness in those to which it was administered.11
Atrial Fibrillation: A number of studies now exist showing that magnesium supplementation reduce atrial fibrillation, either by itself, or in combination with conventional drug agents.12
Diabetes, Type 2: Magnesium deficiency is common in type 2 diabetics, at an incidence of 13.5 to 47.7% according to a 2007 study. 13 Research has also shown that type 2 diabetics with peripheral neuropathy and coronary artery disease have lower intracellular magnesium levels. 14 Oral magnesium supplementation has been shown to reduce plasma fasting glucose and raising HDL cholesterol in patients with type 2 diabetes.15 It has also been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and metabolic control in type 2 diabetic subjects.16
Premenstrual Syndrome: Magnesium deficiency has been observed in women affected by premenstrual syndrome.17 It is no surprise therefore that it has been found to alleviate premenstrual symptoms of fluid retention, 18 as well as broadly reducing associated symptoms by approximately 34% in women, aged 18-45, given 250 mg tablets for a 3-month observational period.20 When combined with B6, magnesium supplementation has been found to improve anxiety-related premenstrual symptoms.19
Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality: Low serum magnesium concentrations predict cardiovascular and all-cause mortality.21There are a wide range of ways that magnesium may confer its protective effects. It may act like a calcium channel blocker,22it is hypotensive,23 it is antispasmodic (which may protect against coronary artery spasm),24 and anti-thrombotic.25 Also, the heart muscle cells are exceedingly dense in mitochondria (as high as 100 times more per cell than skeletal muscle), the “powerhouses” of the cell,” which require adequate magnesium to produce ATP via the citric acid cycle.
Migraine Disorders: Blood magnesium levels have been found to be significantly lower in those who suffer from migraine attacks.26,27 A recent Journal of Neural Transmission article titled, “Why all migraine patients should be treated with magnesium,” pointed out that routine blood tests do not accurately convey the true body magnesium stores since less than 2% is in the measurable, extracellular space, “67% is in the bone and 31% is located intracellularly.”28The authors argued that since “routine blood tests are not indicative of magnesium status, empiric treatment with at least oral magnesium is warranted in all migraine sufferers.” Indeed, oral magnesium supplementation has been found to reduce the number of headache days in children experiencing frequent migranous headaches,29and when combined with l-carnitine, is effective at reducing migraine frequency in adults, as well.30
Aging: While natural aging is a healthy process, accelerated aging has been noted to be a feature of magnesium deficiency,31especially evident in the context of long space-flight missions where low magnesium levels are associated with cardiovascular aging over 10 times faster than occurs on earth.32 Magnesium supplementation has been shown to reverse age-related neuroendocrine and sleep EEG changes in humans.33 One of the possible mechanisms behind magnesium deficiency associated aging is that magnesium is needed to stabilize DNA and promotes DNA replication. It is also involved in healing up of the ends of the chromosomes after they are divided in mitosis.34
It is quite amazing to consider the aforementioned side benefits of magnesium consumption or supplementation within the context of the well-known side effects of pharmaceutical approaches to symptom management of disease. On average, conventional drugs have 75 side effects associated with their use, including lethal ones (albeit sometimes rare). When considering magnesium’s many side benefits and extremely low toxicity, clearly this fundamental mineral intervention (and dietary requirement) puts pharmaceutical approaches to depression to shame.
Best Sources of Magnesium In The Diet
The best source of magnesium is from food, and one way to identify magnesium-containing foods are those which are green, i.e. chlorophyll rich. Chlorophyll, which enable plants to capture solar energy and convert it into metabolic energy, has a magnesium atom at its center. Without magnesium, in fact, plants could not utilize the sun’s light energy.
Magnesium, however, in its elemental form is colorless, and many foods that are not green contain it as well. The point is that when found complexed with food cofactors, it is absorbed and utilized more efficiently than in its elemental form, say, extracted from limestone in the form of magnesium oxide.
The following foods contain exceptionally high amounts of magnesium. The portions described are 100 grams, or a little over three ounces.
Fortunately, for those who need higher doses, or are not inclined to consume magnesium rich foods, there are supplemental forms commonly available on the market. Keep in mind, for those who wish to take advantage of the side benefit of magnesium therapy, namely, its stool softening and laxative properties, magnesium citrate or oxide will provide this additional feature.
For those looking to maximize absorption and bioavailability magnesium glycinate is ideal, as glycine is the smallest amino acid commonly found chelated to magnesium, and therefore highly absorbable.
2) Jacka FN, Overland S, Stewart R, Tell GS, Bjelland I, Mykletun A. Association between magnesium intake and depression and anxiety in community-dwelling adults: the Hordaland Health Study. Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2009;43(1):45–52. Pmid:19085527.
3) Huang JH, Lu YF, Cheng FC, Lee JN, Tsai LC. Correlation of magnesium intake with metabolic parameters, depression and physical activity in elderly type 2 diabetes patients: a cross-sectional study. Nutrition J. 2012;11(1):41. pmid:22695027; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3439347.
4) Tarleton EK, Littenberg B. Magnesium intake and depression in adults. J Am Board Fam Med. 2015;28(2):249–56. Pmid:25748766
5) Yary T, Lehto SM, Tolmunen T, Tuomainen T-P, Kauhanen J, Voutilainen S, et al. Dietary magnesium intake and the incidence of depression: a 20-year follow-up study. J Affect Disord. 2016;193:94–8. Pmid:26771950
6) Eby GA, Eby KL. Rapid recovery from major depression using magnesium treatment. Med Hypotheses. 2006;67(2):362–70. pmid:16542786
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.
In November 2015 two Princeton economists, Anne Case and Angus Deaton (a Nobel Prize winner), released a revealing study, “Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among whitenon-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century.” It was published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The economists’ findings were scary: “Over the 15-y[ear] period, midlife all-cause mortality fell by more than 200 per 100,000 for black non-Hispanics, and by more than 60 per 100,000 for Hispanics. By contrast, white non-Hispanic mortality rose by 34 per 100,000.”
In one of their few non-technical digressions, the scholars acknowledge: “After the productivity slowdown in the early 1970s, and with widening income inequality, many of the baby-boom generation are the first to find, in midlife, that they will not be better off than were their parents. Growth in real median earnings has been slow for this group, especially those with only a high school education.”
We find that mortality and morbidity among white non-Hispanic [WNH] Americans in midlife since the turn of the century continued to climb through 2015. Additional increases in drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related liver mortality — particularly among those with a high school degree or less — are responsible for an overall increase in all-cause mortality among whites.
They persuasively argue that this developed is “triggered by progressively worsening labor market opportunities at the time of entry for whites with low levels of education.”
While most Americans are ever-fearful of cancer and heart disease, the scholars note that declines in these conditions has been offset by “increases in drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related liver mortality in this period.” They identify this growing condition as “deaths of despair” and it is leading to increased mortality among middle-aged NWH men and women. Sadly, many of these people are Trump supporters.
***
In their rigorous study, Case and Deaton argue, “deaths of despair are a large and growing component of midlife all-cause mortality.” They repeated stress that this is very much a U.S. phenomenon and is in marked contrast to the mortality rates of “other wealthy countries” (i.e., Europe and Japan).
They show that between 1998 and 2015, the mortality rate for men age 50–54 with less than a bachelor’s degree increased by 14 percent (from 762 to 867 per 100,000) while the rate for men with a bachelor’s degree or more it fell by 30 percent (349 to 243.)
Equally significant, one of their observations challenges widely held conventions about race in the U.S. “Mortality rates of BNHs [Black Non-Hispanics] age 50–54 have been and remain higher than those of WNHs age 50–54 as a whole, but the rate for BNHs have fallen rapidly, by about 25 percent from 1999 to 2015.” They add, “as a result of this, and of the rise in white mortality, the black/white mortality gap in this (and other) age group(s) has been closing.”
Going further, they are pessimistic about the state of the nation: “Traditional structures of social and economic support slowly weakened … . Marriage was no longer the only socially acceptable way to form intimate partnerships, or to rear children.” They point out that “these changes left people with less structure when they came to choose their careers, their religion, and the nature of their family lives.”
Stepping back, they warn, “when such choices succeed, they are liberating; when they fail, the individual can only hold himself or herself responsible.” They add, “In the worst cases of failure, this is a Durkheim-like recipe for suicide.”
They also address a common assumption promoted by Joseph Stiglitz and embraced my many “progressives” – that the rise in suicides, overdoses and alcohol abuse is due to rising income inequality. “Our preliminary conclusion is that, as in previous historical episodes, the changes in mortality and morbidity are only coincidentally correlated with changes in income.” Going further they add, “We suspect that more likely causes are various slowly moving social trends — such as the declining ratio of employment to population, or the decline in marriage rates.”
Even more pessimistic, they conclude:“Ultimately, we see our story as about the collapse of the white working class after its heyday in the early 1970s, and the pathologies that accompany this decline.”
***
Case and Deaton are not alone in examining the growing concern of “deaths of despair.” Shortly after the 2016 election, Shannon Monnat published a revealing study, “Deaths of Despair and Support for Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election.” Her analysis is pretty straight forward: “Much of the relationship between mortality and Trump’s performance is explained by economic factors; counties with higher economic distress and larger working-class presence also have higher mortality rates and came out strongly for Trump.” She adds, “In many of the counties where Trump did the best, economic precarity has been building and social and family networks have been breaking down for several decade.”
Equally telling, she details the toll the “deaths of despair” phenomenon is taking on the American public:
Over the past decade, nearly 400,000 people in the U.S. died from accidental drug overdoses and drug-induced diseases. Nearly 400,000 more committed suicide, and over 250,000 died from alcohol-induced diseases like cirrhosis of the liver. Approximately a fifth of these drug, alcohol and suicide deaths involved opiates (prescription pain relievers or heroin), suggesting that opiates are part of a larger problem.
One needs to add the nearly half-a-million deaths over the last decade caused by cigarette smoking to the list.
Monnat details how Trump over-performed the most in counties with the highest drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates. And that he performed best in counties with high economic distress and a large working class. She notes that “many of the counties with high mortality rates where Trump did the best have experienced significant employment losses in manufacturing over the past several decades.”
Monnat concludes on a cautionary note: “Clearly there is an association between drug, alcohol and suicide mortality and Trump’s election performance.” But she warns, “However, this relationship should not be interpreted as causal. No single factor (including race, education, income, rurality, or health) can explain this election outcome.”
***
That was 2016 – it’s now 2019 and the 2020 elections are beginning to heat up.
The overlapping problems of drugs, alcohol, suicide and despair kills thousands of Americans every year. Last year, the CDC reported that between 2006 and 2016 life expectancy in the U.S. rose from 77.8 to 78.6 years. However, it warned that the death rates for Americans aged 15 to 44 years rose by around 5 percent each year between 2013 and 2016.
It identified drugs, alcohol and suicide as the principle culprits and reported the following:
+ Drug overdoses killed more than 63,600 people in 2016; women saw the largest increase with those aged 45 to 54 having the most overdoses overall, but those aged 15 to 24 saw a 19 percent jump per year between 2014 and 2016.
+ Alcohol is a major public health concern with liver disease replacing HIV as the sixth-leading killer of adults ages 25 to 44 in 2016.
+ Suicide is on the rise, now the second-leading cause of death among people ages 15 to 24 between 2014 and 2016 as well as third-leading cause of death among people ages 25 to 44 killing almost 17 of every 100,000 people in 2016.
The concept of “deaths of despair” has not entered the political debate among any of the announced candidates, whether Trump or the Democrats, but the issues associated with it likely will play a critical role.
Earlier this year, Trump drew attention to the issue of drug overdoses. “Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90 percent of which floods across from our southern border. More Americans will die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War,” he noted. However, his concern about drug overdoses was driven not by the humanitarian issue but by the campaign promise to build “the Wall.” “Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl,” he said.
One can only wonder when the Democratic candidates will discover “deaths of despair” and, hopefully, begin to meaningfully speak to Trump base, thus further eroding his support and likely ending his efforts for reelection in 2020.
David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New York’s Forbidden into America’s New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com.
Since the United States government began tracking the cause of death in 1999, suicides, alcohol, and drug-related deaths have skyrocketed to record levels. The new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Americans are dying younger as life expectancy continues to drop.
Feelings of hopelessness and despair are overwhelming many in the U.S. So much so, that people are turning to alcohol, drugs, and suicide to numb the pain of their lives. Government enslavement and the stranglehold on the economy are making life even more difficult on those already struggling to get by. And this is seen in new death numbers released.
The national rate for deaths from alcohol, drugs, and suicide rose from 43.9 to 46.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 2017, a 6 percent increase, the Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust reported Tuesday. That was a slower increase than in the previous two years, but it was greater than the 4 percent average annual increase since 1999, reported USA Today.
Perhaps most disturbing, is that the deaths from suicides rose from 13.9 to 14.5 per 100,000, which amounted to a 4 percent increase. That was double the average annual pace over the previous decade. Psychologist Benjamin Miller, chief strategy officer of the Well Being Trust, says broader efforts are needed to address the underlying causes of alcohol and drug use and suicide. “It’s almost a joke how simple we’re trying to make these issues,” he says. “We’re not changing direction and it’s getting worse.”
That’s because people have no control over their lives anymore. The government controls every aspect of everyone’s lives and social media helps to compound the issue by often making people feel like they don’t have enough or can’t “keep up with the Joneses.” Human beings need to and deserve to be free; it’s a basic human right. Once that right and free will are taken away, there’s not much left for anyone to live for. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to be a popular vein of thought, but it needs to be said. And problems caused by government control cannot be fixed by more government control.
The truth is that big government is not going to save us. People don’t need more government bureaucrats telling them how to run their lives. Instead, what people really need is to find meaning and purpose in life, and that is not something that big government is going to provide. –Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse
Psychology Today wrote that in 1755, in Of Suicide, David Hume argues that, though only “one step” could put an end to his misery, and that’s to truly be free. If one cannot be free in life, they will be free in death. Hume proposes to “restore men to their native liberty” by examining all the common arguments against suicide and demonstrating that suicide is “free from every imputation of guilt or blame.”
Loss of control over one’s life (such as forced sexual abuse) appears to be a common cause even in the article written by USA Today. However, Miller admits that while overdose antidotes and treatment for opioid use disorder are definitely needed in today’s world, he says, “it’s not going to fix” the underlying problems that lead people to end their lives, whether or not it’s intentional.”
“A government study has found that 1 in 3 U.S. adults eat fast food on any given day. That’s about 85 million people.
After reading the information contained in this article, you will probably find yourself questioning if America is going to be able to survive for much longer, because our young people are a complete and total mess. Yes, all generations of Americans have had their problems, but this generation appears to be particularly screwed up. Obesity rates are at all-time highs, a third of all American teens have not read a single book within the past year, and the average high school senior spends six hours a day on the Internet. On top of all that, we are seeing unprecedented levels of suicide, drug overdoses and liver disease (due to heavy drinking) among our young people.
Like other empires throughout world history, will we be undone by our own excesses?
Let’s start by talking about obesity. At this point, so many of our young people are overweight that military recruiters are having a very difficult time finding enough “suitable candidates for military service”…
The study, featuring roughly 18,000 randomly selected participants across each of the service branches, showed that almost 66 percent of service members are considered to be either overweight or obese, based on the military’s use of body mass index as a measuring standard.
While the number of overweight service members is a cause for concern, it correlates with the obesity epidemic plaguing the United States, where, as of 2015, one in three young adults are considered too fat to enlist, creating a difficult environment for recruiters to find suitable candidates for military service.
Right now, obesity among U.S. adults is at an all-time high, and one of the big reasons for this is because about a third of us are stuffing our faces with fast food on a daily basis.
A government study has found that 1 in 3 U.S. adults eat fast food on any given day. That’s about 85 million people.
It’s the first federal study to look at how often adults eat fast food. An earlier study found a similar proportion of children and adolescents ate it on any given day.
A new study of American teenagers and their reading habits finds that a third haven’t read a book — in hardcopy or on a device like a Kindle — in the past year.
Researchers from San Diego State University took a look at data from four decades of a “nationally-based lifestyle survey studying teens,” StudyFinds.com reports. In total, more than a million teens provided information.
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To me, this is a tremendous indictment of our system of education.
Even if these kids are not reading on their own, our schools should be forcing them to read books.
This really hits home for me, because I love to read. In fact, I don’t know where I would be today if I had not spent enormous amounts of time reading books on my own while I was growing up.
“The meteoric rise of internet-based activities cannot be understated: between social media, texting, gaming, and surfing the web, the average high school senior spent six hours a day online in 2016 — double the time from a decade earlier. Eighth graders (4 hours a day) and tenth graders (5 hours a day) didn’t lag far behind,” the report finds.
Six hours a day?
That is almost a full-time job.
This is one of the reasons why the Internet is the focus of my work. Yes, I have written a few books, but if we are going to reach the next generation with the truth we have got to reach them where they are.
And where they are is on the Internet.
In addition to everything that you have read so far, let me also share with you some numbers from a recent CDC study.
Among men ages 24 to 35, overdose rates rose by more than 25% each year between 2014 and 2016; nearly 50 out of every 100,000 people in this population died of overdose-related causes by 2016. Women ages 45 to 54 had the most overdoses overall, but those ages 15 to 24 saw the highest rate of increase: about a 19% jump per year between 2014 and 2016.
And the CDC also found that liver disease (due to heavy drinking) is rapidly rising among young adults…
Liver disease replaced HIV as the sixth-leading killer of adults ages 25 to 44 in 2016. Among men and women ages 25 to 34, deaths from liver disease and cirrhosis increased by about 11% and 8% per year, respectively, between 2006 and 2016. Older adults, however, still die of liver disease at much higher rates than young adults.
Suicide is now the second-leading cause of death among people ages 15 to 24, increasing by 7% in this group each year between 2014 and 2016. It’s also the third-leading cause of death among people ages 25 to 44, killing almost 17 of every 100,000 people in this population in 2016.
Whether you like it or not, young people are the future of our country.
Yes, our country is a huge mess today, but what is it going to look like when they become the “leaders of tomorrow”?
In order for a nation to be great, it needs to be made up of great people, and at this moment it is very difficult to be optimistic about the future of our nation…
In the last 15 years, antidepressant use has increased over 65%, while the suicide prevention industry has also grown to have a major cultural presence.
Prozac and other antidepressants increase the risk of “suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents, and young adults” suffering from major depression. It says so in the package insert for Prozac. Take a look for yourself, as it helps to see it to actually believe it.
Prozac has long since gone off patent and in the last twenty or so years we’ve seen the development of a host of new antidepressant drugs, all of which carry similar warnings of an increased risk in suicidal thinking. Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro, Luvox, Paxil, Sarafem, and more.
In the same time frame suicide prevention has become a booming business, one which is primarily organized and led by pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical executives, and is largely funded with taxpayer money.
“Indeed, at this time, [1999] the Foundation regularly began collaborating with pharmaceutical companies to produce “educational” materials for the public and for medical professionals. In 1997, for example, the Foundation and Wyeth-Ayerst, the manufacturer of the antidepressant Effexor, jointly produced an educational video titled “The Suicidal Patient: Assessment and Care.” The video was designed to help “primary care physicians, mental health professionals, guidance counselors, employee assistance professionals, and clergy” recognize the warning signs of suicide, and help the suicidal person get the appropriate “treatment.” Shaffer was one of the experts featured in the film.
In subsequent years, pharmaceutical companies provided funding for the Foundation to conduct surveys, run screening projects, and support research. For example, in 2009, the Foundation reported that a new screening project had been made possible by “funding from Eli Lilly and Company, Janssen, Solvay, and Wyeth.” While most of the Foundation’s revenues today comes from its Out of the Darkness Community Awareness Walks, the Foundation’s leadership continues to feature a mix of academic psychiatrists and pharmaceutical executives.
The president of the board is Jerrold Rosenbaum, chair of the psychiatry department at Massachusetts General Hospital. In the early 1990s, while being paid as an advisor to Eli Lilly, Rosenbaum defended Prozac against claims that it could induce suicidal impulses in some patients. Other members of the board today include Mann, Nemeroff, and executives from Pfizer, Allergan, and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. Allergan executive Jonathan Kellerman chaired the Foundation’s 2018 Lifesavers fundraiser, and the organizing committee included representatives from Lundbeck, Otsuka, Janssen, Pfizer, and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals.” [Source]
The suicide prevention industry has worked its way into every level of society. Federal, state and local government agencies, trade organizations such as in the construction and railway sectors, where suicide rates are markedly high, as well as public schools, universities and church organizations are trained and encouraged to look for signs of depression and mental illness in their members.
But is the introduction of suicide prevention actually associated with lower rates of suicide? In 2004 Australian researcher Philip Burgess looked at this issue, ultimately finding that suicide rates have increased with the rollout of a bureaucratic and institutional approach to preventing suicide.
However, in their study of 100 countries, they found that, “contrary to the hypothesized relation,” the “introduction of a mental health policy and mental health legislation was associated with an increase in male and total suicide rates.” They even quantified the negative impact of specific initiatives:
The adoption of mental health legislation was associated with a 10.6% increase in suicides.
The adoption of a national mental health policy was associated with an 8.3% increase in suicides.
The adoption of a therapeutic drugs policy designed to improve access to psychiatric medications was association with a 7% increase in suicides.
The adoption of a national mental health program was associated with a 4.9% increase. [Source]
Furthermore, researchers have found that mental health initiatives in many countries is actually linked with a rise in suicide rates.
Ajit Shah and a team of UK researchers studied elderly suicide rates in multiple countries, and once again, the results confounded expectations. They found “higher rates (of suicide) in countries with greater provision of mental health services, including the number of psychiatric beds, psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses, and the availability of training mental health (programs) for primary care professionals.”
In 2010, Shah and colleagues reported on an expanded study of suicide rates, this time for people of all ages in 76 countries. They found that suicide rates were higher in countries with mental health legislation, just as Burgess had found. They also reported that there was a correlation between higher suicide rates and a higher number of psychiatric beds, psychiatrists, and psychiatric nurses; more training in mental health for primary care professionals; and greater spending on mental health as a percentage of total spending on health in the country.
Finally, in 2013, A.P. Rajkumar and colleagues in Denmark assessed the level of psychiatric services in 191 countries, with a “combined population” of more than 6 billion people. This was a comprehensive global study, and, once again, they found that “countries with better psychiatric services experience higher suicide rates.” Both the “number of mental health beds and the number of psychiatrists per 100,000 population were significantly associated with higher national suicide rates (after adjusting for economic factors),” they wrote.” [Source]
If mental health screenings of patients, students or employees raise concern for an individual, that person is encouraged to seek out professional mental health, meaning doctors and psychiatrists who are qualified to prescribe antidepressants, which is the go-to treatment for mental illness today.
But just as with suicide prevention, psychiatric medications and ‘other’ mental health treatments are also linked to a rise in suicide rates.
In 2014, Danish investigators, led by Carsten Hjorthoj, determined that the risk of suicide increases dramatically with each increase in the “level of treatment.”
They found that, in comparison to age- and sex-matched controls who had no involvement with psychiatric care during the previous year, the risk of suicide was:
5.8 times higher for people receiving psychiatric medication (but no other care)
8.2 times higher for people having outpatient contact with a mental health professional
27.9 times higher for people having contact with a psychiatric emergency room
44.3 times higher for people admitted to a psychiatric hospital [Source]
Final Thoughts
The pharmaceutical, psychiatric and suicide prevention industries have grown so much in the last couple of decades, which is indicative of a ‘war on suicide,’ in much of a similar vein as the war on drugs or the war on poverty. We have the information to prove that when the government declares ‘war’ on a social issue, the end result is an exacerbation of that issue.
Didier Lombard stepped down as CEO of the telecom company, now known as Orange, in early 2010 amid criticism of his handling of the workplace crisis involving multiple suicides. (Benoit Tessier/Reuters)
The former head of France Telecom Didier Lombard, six other executives and telecoms operator Orange have been ordered to stand trial over their alleged role in a wave of staff suicides.
They stand accused of engaging in or assisting psychological harassment, according to the court order, obtained by Reuters. Lombard, a former human resources head and a deputy CEO were placed under court supervision until trial.
“As it has always said, Orange rejects the accusations and will make its case during the public hearing which will be scheduled in the coming months,” an Orange spokesman said.
Jean Veil, Lombard’s lawyer, said the move was “absurd.”
The crime of “moral harassment” can be punished with two years in prison and 30,000 euros ($46,000 Cdn) in fines.
France Telecom, which has since become Orange, was hit by a wave of employee suicides beginning in 2008 that took the lives of over 30 workers in two years, including a man who stabbed himself in the stomach during a staff meeting and a woman who threw herself out of a window.
Suicides blamed on workplace stress
Blamed on workplace stress, the suicides continued in 2010, taking the lives of five workers in 10 days in one particularly difficult period.
A 2010 report by labour inspectors said management used “pathogenic” restructuring methods such as forcing people into new jobs and giving unattainable performance objectives.
Many ordinary meds cause depression; public trust in Pharma hits new low
—For years, I’ve been writing about the medical system’s self-feeding mechanism:
Give a patient a drug to treat his symptoms; the drug causes new symptoms, which are diagnosed as a new illness; and then new drugs are given, and those drugs cause still more symptoms, which in turn are diagnosed as a new condition…on and on it goes. Drugged patients suffer tragically and needlessly, and cash piles up in Big Pharma’s coffers.
At one time, this circle of devastation might have been called an accident. But now, all the experts know the truth. Therefore, this is rightly labeled a MARKETING STRATEGY, and, at the highest levels, a covert op to disable the population.
Here is a new revelation:
Suppose your doctor told you this: “I’m prescribing an antidepressant because the other drugs you’ve been taking have a side effect—they cause depression.”
You might say, “Wow, where is my compensation for suffering depression?”
The answer, of course, is: Nowhere.
Yahoo News (6/12) has the story: “One third of Americans are taking prescription and over-the-counter drugs, such as birth control pills, antacids and common heart medications, that may raise the risk of depression, researchers warned on Tuesday.”
“Since the drugs are so common, people may be unaware of their potential depressive effects, said the report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).”
“’Many may be surprised to learn that their medications, despite having nothing to do with mood or anxiety or any other condition normally associated with depression, can increase their risk of experiencing depressive symptoms, and may lead to a depression diagnosis,’ said lead author Dima Qato, assistant professor of pharmacy systems, outcomes and policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.”
Here is the kicker: “The report was released one week after US health authorities said suicides have risen 30 percent in the past two decades, with about half of suicides among people who were not known to suffer from mental illness.”
“Anti-depressants are the only drug class that carries an explicit warning — called a black box warning — of suicide risk.”
“For other common medications — like blood pressure lowering pills, antacids known as proton pump inhibitors, painkillers and hormonal contraceptives — the warnings are harder to find or simply don’t exist in the packaging.”
And who knew this? “Researchers found that more than 200 commonly used prescription drugs have depression or suicidal symptoms listed as potential side effects.”
In the Yahoo article’s comments section, one person writes: “That explains why so many heart patients get diagnosed with clinical depression and PTSD. I went from 0 pills a day to over 20 a day after a heart attack. Several months later after becoming clinically depressed I was [p]ut on antidepressants.”
Quite possibly, the depression wasn’t simply the reaction to having a heart attack. The drugs used to treat the attack were at fault.
Hundreds of meds causing depression have produced a $$ bonanza for the psychiatric drug business: THOSE drugs OVER THERE cause depression; THESE drugs HERE treat it.
Of course, the SSRI antidepressants (e.g., Paxil, Zoloft) contain warnings about suicidal effects—because they, too, cause depression. And my readers know I’ve been presenting evidence for years about the ability of antidepressants to cause people to commit violence, including murder.
This is quite a “situation.” Hundreds of ordinary meds bring on depression. Doctors then prescribe antidepressants, which can deepen depression and push people into suicide and homicide.
Taking this further, the official solution to mass shootings is “earlier intervention with people at risk,” which means more psychiatric clinics, more diagnoses of mental disorders, and more drugging with compounds which induce violent actions.
Here is a new report indicating the public may be waking up to “the brutal pharma game”. From fiercepharma.com (June 13): [Public] Trust has hit a new low for pharma in Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer survey. The 13-point drop from 51% to 38% in the U.S. was the category’s biggest plummet in the five years the public relations and marketing firm has been tracking [public] sentiment…Pharma’s score of 38 puts it firmly in distrusted territory…”
None of this press coverage digs deeper into the tragedy. As I’ve been reporting for several years now, the landmark mainstream report on the effects of pharmaceuticals was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on July 26, 2000.
Written by Dr. Barbara Starfield, a revered researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, the report—“Is US Health Really the Best in the World?”—concluded that, annually, these drugs kill 106,000 Americans. Extrapolating that number out to a decade, the drugs kill a MILLION people.
In 2009, I interviewed Dr. Starfield. She adamantly stated that the US government had never consulted her about fixing the horror; nor had they launched any program to reverse the catastrophic trend.
When I label this overall operation chemical warfare against the population, I’m not exaggerating.
For obvious reasons, the mainstream press refuses to reveal the truth. It’s not only Big Pharma’s advertising revenues that are on the line, it’s the chaos that would be caused by cracking a foundational pillar of modern society.
Reality itself would undergo a vast disruption, as branches of the secular religion called modern medicine collapsed in full view of the public.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, the Emmy-winning host of CNN‘s “Parts Unknown,” has died from suicide, the network said Friday. He was 61. . . .
“We learned this morning about the death by hanging of an American chef at a luxury hotel of Kaysersberg, Le Chambard,” a prosecutor in Kaysersberg-Vignoble told French newspaper Dernière Nouvelle D’alsace. “At this point nothing suggests the intervention of a third party.” . . .
The celebrity chef was dating Italian actress Asia Argento — who has accused movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and has since become one of his most vocal victims.
Bourdain recently gushed over Argento’s explosive speech about Weinstein and sexual harassment in the film industry at Cannes Film Festival, according to Vulture.
In February 2018, New York’s attorney general brought a law suit against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein which included allegations that Weinstein was prone to fits of rage at his employees and told several “I will kill you,” “I will kill your family,” and “You don’t know what I can do,” and said he had Secret Service contacts who could help him out.
Anthony Bourdain’s girlfriend, Italian actress Asia Argento, is one of the dozens of women who accused Weinstein of sexual assault, harassment or rape after he was exposed in an October New Yorker article.
Argento was one of the first women to come forward with allegations of rape. “I am proud and honored to know you,” Bourdain tweeted to Argento in October. “You just did the hardest thing in the world.” He added: “Can we use the word ‘rapist’ now? #Weinstein.”
Bourdain called out other celebrities who remained silent about Weinstein’s alleged behavior. “How many seventeen year olds have you dressed like they are, in your words, ‘asking for it’?” he tweeted at Donna Karan’s fashion brand DKNY.
Doornob Suicides
One of our experts says that cutting off the bloodstream to the brain for 15 seconds causes a loss of consciousness. There are a number of alleged suicides in Europe that appear to be rooted in light strangulation with two fingers first, then hanging of the victim from the doorknob to complete the job. Murder, not suicide. The combination of the doorknob and the scarf appears to be a signature intended to terrorize others who may be thinking about ratting out the elites above them and known to them. I think this trend of hanging oneself on doorknobs with scarves stinks to high heaven. I am having a hard time buying it.
Sounds like some sort of “calling card” from the real killers.
Items
Robin Williams supposedly hanged himself with a tie from his doorknob.
The Queen of the Netherlands sister just “hung herself” from her door knob. That particular Queen stepped down after allegations of having “hunts” where children were raped and massacred by her dinner guests.
Fashion Designer Alexander McQueen hung himself with a scarf on his closet doorknob.
Aaron Schwartz hung himself on his doorknob after he hacked into MIT Computers and found a huge stash of Child Pornography.
Michael Hutchence from the band INXS hung himself from his doorknob
Chester Bennington hanged himself with a belt from his doorknob. Chris Cornell hung himself with an elastic workout band tied to a carabiner from the doorknob in his hotel bathroom (Bennington and Cornell were fighting to save kids from High Level Pedophile Sex Rings).
Kate Spade and L’Ren Scott both hung themselves with red scarves from their doorknobs.
The Rothschild They Murdered
Amschel Mayor James Rothschild in 1994 Anthony Bourdain in 2018
Both men strangled themselves in a French hotel using the belt from their bathrobe.
I did not write this. I put this together from contributions made over email by Dick Eastman, John Kaminski and DC Dave with an assist from Henry Makow.
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Update: America’s Secret Multi-Trillion Dollar Black Ops Slush Fund
Suicide rates are up more than 30% in 25 states across the country.
Suicides increased in every state except Nevada, which already had a very high suicide rate in 1999.
Suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death in the US, and middle-aged adults are especially at risk.
In 2016, almost 45,000 people died by suicide in the US, indicating a staggering rise in the cause of death. It’s widespread across the country, impacting every single age group and demographic in America.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed fresh state-by-state statistics on suicide rates on Thursday showing that more Americans in every age group, from 10 to 75, are committing suicide.
The new data comes just days after 55 year-old designer Kate Spade reportedly hanged herself in her New York City apartment. These findings indicate that her death is part of a much larger and troubling trend.
“Middle-aged adults had the largest number of suicides, and a particularly high increase in rates,” CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat told reporters on a conference call Thursday, calling the new data “disturbing.”
Experts suggest many of those middle-aged deaths could be tied to job and money stresses, as well as broader economic hardship in the country. Historically, the suicide rate tracks with recessions, rising when times are bad and falling when they’re better.
But that’s not always the case. Suicide is now the tenth leading cause of death in the country, and one of only three on the rise, in addition to Alzheimer’s and drug overdoses.
“Patents on seed are illegitimate because putting a toxic gene into a plant cell is not “creating” or “inventing” a plant. These are seeds of deception — the deception that Monsanto is the creator of seeds and life; the deception that while Monsanto sues farmers and traps them in debt, it pretends to be working for farmers’ welfare, and the deception that GMOs feed the world. GMOs are failing to control pests and weeds, and have instead led to the emergence of superpests and superweeds.”
Genetic engineering has never been about saving the world, it’s about controlling the world.
“Control the oil, and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people.” — Henry Kissinger
Monsanto’s talk of ‘technology’ tries to hide its real objectives of control over seed through genetic engineering
“Monsanto is an agricultural company. … We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. … Producing more, Conserving more, Improving farmers lives.” — These are the promises Monsanto India’s website makes, alongside pictures of smiling, prosperous farmers from the state of Maharashtra. This is a desperate attempt by Monsanto and its PR machinery to delink the epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India arising from the company’s growing control over cotton seed supply — 95 per cent of India’s cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto.
Seed is the first link in the food chain because seed is the source of life. When a corporation controls seed, it controls life, especially the life of farmers.
Monsanto’s concentrated control over the seed sector in India as well as across the world is very worrying. This is what connects farmers’ suicides in India to Monsanto vs. Percy Schmeiser in Canada, to Monsanto vs. Bowman in the US, and to farmers in Brazil suing Monsanto for $2.2 billion for unfair collection of royalty.
Through patents on seed, Monsanto has become the “Life Lord” of our planet, collecting rents for life’s renewal from farmers, the original breeders.
Patents on seed are illegitimate because putting a toxic gene into a plant cell is not “creating” or “inventing” a plant. These are seeds of deception — the deception that Monsanto is the creator of seeds and life; the deception that while Monsanto sues farmers and traps them in debt, it pretends to be working for farmers’ welfare, and the deception that GMOs feed the world. GMOs are failing to control pests and weeds, and have instead led to the emergence of superpests and superweeds.
Altered Genes, Twisted Truth
The entry of Monsanto in the Indian seed sector was made possible with a 1988 Seed Policy imposed by the World Bank, requiring the Government of India to deregulate the seed sector. Five things changed with Monsanto’s entry: First, Indian companies were locked into joint-ventures and licensing arrangements, and concentration over the seed sector increased. Second, seed which had been the farmers’ common resource became the “intellectual property” of Monsanto, for which it started collecting royalties, thus raising the costs of seed. Third, open pollinated cotton seeds were displaced by hybrids, including GMO hybrids. A renewable resource became a non-renewable, patented commodity. Fourth, cotton which had earlier been grown as a mixture with food crops now had to be grown as a monoculture, with higher vulnerability to pests, disease, drought and crop failure. Fifth, Monsanto started to subvert India’s regulatory processes and, in fact, started to use public resources to push its non-renewable hybrids and GMOs through so-called public-private partnerships (PPP).
In 1995, Monsanto introduced its Bt technology in India through a joint-venture with the Indian company Mahyco. In 1997-98, Monsanto started open field trials of its GMO Bt cotton illegally and announced that it would be selling the seeds commercially the following year. India has rules for regulating GMOs since 1989, under the Environment Protection Act. It is mandatory to get approval from the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee under the ministry of environment for GMO trials. The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology sued Monsanto in the Supreme Court of India and Monsanto could not start the commercial sales of its Bt cotton seeds until 2002. And, after the damning report of India’s parliamentary committee on Bt crops in August 2012, the panel of technical experts appointed by the Supreme Court recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials of all GM food and termination of all ongoing trials of transgenic crops.
But it had changed Indian agriculture already.
Monsanto’s seed monopolies, the destruction of alternatives, the collection of superprofits in the form of royalties, and the increasing vulnerability of monocultures has created a context for debt, suicides and agrarian distress which is driving the farmers’ suicide epidemic in India. This systemic control has been intensified with Bt cotton. That is why most suicides are in the cotton belt.
An internal advisory by the agricultural ministry of India in 2012 had this to say to the cotton-growing states in India:
Cotton farmers are in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt cotton. The spate of farmer suicides in 2011-12 has been particularly severe among Bt cotton farmers.
The highest acreage of Bt cotton is in Maharashtra and this is also where the highest farmer suicides are. Suicides increased after Bt cotton was introduced — Monsanto’s royalty extraction, and the high costs of seed and chemicals have created a debt trap. According to Government of India data, nearly 75 per cent rural debt is due to purchase inputs. As Monsanto’s profits grow, farmers’ debt grows. It is in this systemic sense that Monsanto’s seeds are seeds of suicide.
The ultimate seed of suicide is Monsanto’s patented technology to create sterile seeds. Called “terminator technology” by the media, sterile seed technology is a type of Gene Use Restriction Technology, GRUT, in which seed produced by a crop will not grow — crops will not produce viable offspring seeds or will produce viable seeds with specific genes switched off. The Convention on Biological Diversity has banned its use, otherwise Monsanto would be collecting even higher profits from seed.
Monsanto’s talk of “technology” tries to hide its real objectives of ownership and control over seed where genetic engineering is just a means to control seed and the food system through patents and intellectual property rights.
As part of the process, they portrayed the various concerns as merely the ignorant opinions of misinformed individuals – and derided them as not only unscientific, but anti-science. They then set to work to convince the public and government officials, through the dissemination of false information, that there was an overwhelming expert consensus, based on solid evidence, that GMOs were safe. — Jane Goodall, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth
A Monsanto representative admitted that they were “the patient’s diagnostician, and physician all in one” in writing the patents on life-forms, from micro-organisms to plants, in the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Stopping farmers from saving seeds and exercising their seed sovereignty was the main objective. Monsanto is now extending its patents to conventionally bred seed, as in the case of broccoli and capsicum, or the low gluten wheat it had pirated from India — which we challenged as a biopiracy case in the European Patent office.
That is why we have started Fibres of Freedom in the heart of Monsanto’s Bt cotton/suicide belt in Vidharba. We have created community seed banks with indigenous seeds and helped farmers go organic. No GMO seeds, no debt, no suicides.
The beauty of seed is that out of one you can get millions. The beauty of the pollinator is that it turns that one into millions. And that’s an economy of abundance. That’s an economy of sharing. To me that’s the real economics of growth — because life is growing. The economics and technology of hybridization, of genetic modification, is a deliberate creation of scarcity.
Genetic engineering has never been about saving the world, it’s about controlling the world.
Why GMOs are a death knell to biodiversity and farming
Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmental thinker, activist, physicist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer and science policy advocate, is the Director of The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. She serves as an ecology advisor to several organizations including the Third World Network and the Asia Pacific People’s Environment Network.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.
Are you or someone you know experiencing a mental health issue? With one out of every four Americans expected to experience a mental health condition during their lifetime, there is a good chance your life will be touched by mental illness. Why are so many people experiencing serious mental problems these days?
According to Professor Julia Rucklidge of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, poor modern diets could be playing a surprisingly big role in the epidemic. In her research, she has uncovered a number of longitudinal and association studies illustrating the significant impact that diet can have on mental health.
One of the studies she cites is the SUN Project study, which is one of the biggest studies so far to explore the connection between depression and food. The study followed 12,000 participants over the course of six years. None had depression at the start of the study; 657 people had the condition by the study’s close. That study concluded that depression was related to the intake of trans unsaturated fatty acids.
Trans fats have been getting a lot of negative press lately because of their serious adverse health effects. Created when hydrogen is added to liquid vegetable oils to solidify them, it’s used in lots of fast foods and other processed foods. These fats have been everywhere you look in Western grocery stores in recent years, from baked goods and cookies to margarine, donuts, crackers and frozen pizza.
The substances are dangerous for human health in many ways, causing inflammation, obesity, insulin resistance, irrational behavior, and aggression. Dr. Beatrice Golumb, the lead author of a study that linked trans fats to poor memory function in men younger than 45, said: “As I tell patients, while trans fats increase the shelf life of foods, they reduce the shelf life of people.”
An FDA ban on trans fats finally takes effect this year, but the damage to countless Americans has already been done. While natural fats like omega 3 essential fatty acids are actually good for brain health, trans fats destroy brain cells, impact hormone production, and increase inflammation in the brain. They also reduce serotonin production, which is why they cause depression and memory problems.
Antidepressants often do more harm than good
Antidepressants are so commonplace these days that lots of people take them without giving the matter a second thought. While the drug companies sit back and rake in the profits, however, those taking these medications are suffering. Some of the most common side effects reported in a New Zealand study included sexual problems, a feeling of emotional numbness, apathy, and suicidal thoughts.
It’s the latter that’s the scariest side effect of all, with one study showing that antidepressants double a person’s likelihood of becoming violent and suicidal. The effect is particularly dramatic in young people, prompting the FDA to order all antidepressants to carry a “black box warning” informing people of the increased suicidal symptoms risk. With more than ten percent of Americans taking these drugs, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing so many incidents of mass violence like school shootings.
The physical side effects of antidepressants are also serious. They increase your risk of heart disease, breast cancer, and Type 2 diabetes, to name just a few.
The good news is that there are lots of safe ways you can feel better. Everyone’s experience with depression will be different and not all methods work for all cases, but some people have found success with yoga, meditation, regular exercise, and a clean diet heavy in superfoods. Given the connection between trans fats and depression, however, cutting out foods that contain these toxic ingredients should be everyone’s top priority.
The signs are everywhere. If you’re a middle aged man, you probably know a peer who has killed himself in recent years. At least one. If you’re a parent, you may have noticed that your daughter’s friends seem a little more on the ball than your son’s. They get better grades. They smoke less weed. They go to more prestigious colleges. If you’re an employer, you may have noticed that your female employees show up on time, whereas the young men often don’t. And of course if you live in this country, you’ve just seen a horrifying series of mass shootings, far more than we’ve ever had. Women didn’t do that. In every case, the shooter was a man.
Something ominous is happening to men in America. Everyone who pays attention knows that. What’s odd is how rarely you hear it publicly acknowledged. Our leaders pledge to create more opportunities for women and girls, whom they imply are failing. Men don’t need help. They’re the patriarchy. They’re fine. More than fine.
But are they fine? Here are the numbers:
Start with the most basic, life and death. The average American man will die five years before the average American woman. One of the reasons for this is addiction. Men are more than twice as likely as women to become alcoholics. They’re also twice as likely to die of a drug OD. In New Hampshire, one of the states hit hardest by the opioid crisis, 73 percent of overdose deaths were men.
But the saddest reason for shortened life spans is suicide. Seventy-seven percent of all suicides are committed by men. The overall rate is increasing at a dramatic pace. Between 1997 and 2014, there was a 43 percent rise in suicide deaths among middle aged American men. The rates are highest among American Indian and white men, who kill themselves at about ten times the rate of Hispanic and black women.
You often hear of America’s incarceration crisis. That’s almost exclusively a male problem too. Over 90 percent of inmates are male.
These problems are complex, and they start young. Relative to girls, boys are failing in school. More girls than boys graduate high school. Considerably more go to and graduate from college. Boys account for the overwhelming majority of school discipline cases. One study found that fully one in five high school boys had been diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder, compared with just one in 11 girls. Many were medicated for it. The long term health effects of those medications aren’t fully understood, but they appear to include depression in later life.
Women decisively outnumber men in graduate school. They earn the majority of doctoral degrees. They are now the majority of new enrollees in both law and medical schools.
For men, the consequences of failing in school are profound. Between 1979-2010, working age men with only high school degrees saw their real hourly wages drop about 20 percent. Over the same period, high school educated women saw their wages rise. The decline of the industrial economy disproportionately hurt men.
There are now seven million working age American men who are no longer in the labor force. They’ve dropped out. Nearly half of them take pain medication on any given day. That’s the highest rate in the world.
Far fewer young men get married than did just a few decades ago, and fewer stay married. About one in five American children live with only their mothers. That’s double the rate in 1970. Millions more boys are growing up without fathers. Young adult men are now more likely to live with a parent than with a spouse or partner. That is not the case for young women. Single women buy their own homes at more than twice the rate of single men. More women than men now have drivers licenses.
Whenever gender differences come up in public debate, the so-called wage gap dominates the conversation. A woman makes 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That’s the statistic you’ll hear. It’s repeated everywhere. But that number compares all American men to all American women across all professions. No legitimate social scientist would consider that a valid measure. The number is both meaningless and intentionally misleading. It’s a talking point.
Once you compare men and women with similar experience working the same hours in similar jobs for the same period of time – and that’s the only way you can measure it – the gap all but disappears. In fact it may invert. One study using census data found that single women in their 20s living in metropolitan areas now earn eight percent more on average than their male counterparts. By the way, the majority of managers are now women. Women on average are scoring higher on IQ tests than men are.
Men are even falling behind physically. A recent study found that almost half of young men failed the Army’s entry-level physical fitness test during basic training. Fully seventy percent of American men are overweight or obese, as compared to 59 percent of American women.
Perhaps most terrifyingly, men seem to be becoming less male. Sperm counts across the west have plummeted, down almost 60 percent since the early 1970s. Scientists don’t know why. Testosterone levels in men have also fallen precipitously. One study found that the average levels of male testosterone dropped by one percent every year after 1987. This is unrelated to age. The average 40-year-old-man in 2017 would have testosterone levels 30 percent lower than the average 40-year-old man in 1987.
There is no upside to this. Lower testosterone levels in men are associated with depression, lethargy, weight gain and decreased cognitive ability. Nothing like this has ever happened. You’d think we’d want to know what exactly is going on and how to fix it. But the media ignore the story. It’s considered a fringe topic.
Nor is it a priority in the scientific research establishment. We checked and couldn’t find a single NIH-funded study on why testosterone levels are falling. We did find a study on, quote, “Pubic Hair Grooming Prevalence and Motivation Among Women in the United States.”
Those are the numbers. They paint a very clear picture: American men are failing, in body, mind and spirit. This is a crisis. Yet our leaders pretend it’s not happening. They tell us the opposite is true: Women are victims, men are oppressors. To question that assumption is to risk punishment. Even as women far outpace men in higher education, virtually every college campus supports a women’s studies department, whose core goal is to attack male power. Our politicians and business leaders internalize and amplify that message. Men are privileged. Women are oppressed. Hire and promote and reward accordingly.
That would be fine if it were true. But it’s not true. At best, it’s an outdated view of an America that no longer exists. At worst, it’s a pernicious lie.
Either way, ignoring the decline of men doesn’t help anyone. Men and women need each other. One cannot exist without the other. That’s elemental biology, but it’s also the reality each of us has lived, with our parents and siblings and friends. When men fail, all of us suffer.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
![A man found unconscious after overdosing on opioids puts his hands over his head in the back of an ambulance in the Boston suburb of Malden, Massachusetts, December 2, 2017 [Brian Snyder/Reuters]](https://talesfromtheloublog.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/cde83d535747423a804693e61441a15b_18.jpg?w=627 "Drugs, guns, and despair: How America is killing Americans")
