Gideon Polya, "State-sanctioned corporate terrorism kills over 30 million people annually and threatens humanity through entrenched deception", Stop state terrorism:
https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/state-sanctioned-corporate .
Terrorism involves the terrorising and terrifying killing of people to further strategic, political or ideological objectives and includes (a) the non-state terrorism by non-state parties, and (b) the vastly more deadly state terrorism by nation state parties directed against their own citizens or the citizens of other countries. Terrorism, whether state terrorism or non-state terrorism, is evil and must be stopped – hence this website "State crime and non-state terrorism": https://sites.google.com/site/statecrimeandnonstateterrorism/ and the similarly alphabetically-organized compendium website . “Stop state terrorism” : https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/ .
Corporate terrorism is state-sanctioned non-state terrorism that involves huge numbers of deaths in the pursuit of corporate profits, but a conspiracy of silence involving ordinary people, corporations and the state largely softens the impact of horrendous untimely deaths - many very violent and many involving great pain - linked to corporate malfeasance.
Now it may be argued that state-sanctioned corporations do not “intend” to kill the 1.7 million Americans who die preventably each year in an annual carnage that is inescapably linked to endlessly greedy corporation and One Percenter domination of the socio-economic system. However the state-sanctioned corporations are well aware of the consequences of their actions as clearly exampled by the gun, tobacco, junk food, soft drink, alcohol, guns, health insurance, pharmaceutical, fossil fuel, energy, transport, motor vehicle corporations, the war-making Military Industrial Complex and the lobbyists acting for these corporate terrorists in American-killing Plutocracy, Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy, Corporatocracy, Dollaracracy and Demonocracy America in which Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, public perception of reality and political power. By way of comparison, an average of about 3 Americans were killed by violent terrorists each year in the 10 years after 9-11 [1].
While the evil of violent non-state terrorism has been largely successfully countered in Western countries by top-down state action involving education, high technology intelligence, intranational and international intelligence sharing, and skilled counter-terrorism forces, countering the vastly more deadly evil of state terrorism-backed corporate terrorism state terrorism requires peaceful, bottom-up action by billions of ordinary people world-wide:
(a) to expose and oppose corporate terrorism by informing everyone they can;
(b) to demand rigorous application of the law in relation to culpability for and depraved indifference towards avoidable mass mortality;
(c) to urge and apply the peaceful approach of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, politicians, parties, companies, corporations and countries disproportionately involved or complicit in corporate terrorism.
As detailed below, an estimated total of about 1.67 million Americans die preventably each year out of a population of 319 million (2014). Accordingly, the “empirical annual probability of an American dying preventably in the US ” (P) is 1.67 million x 1,000/319 million = 5.2 in 1000 or 1 in 192.
With respect to an upwardly revised estimate of 1.67 million Americans who die preventably each year [1] (previous estimates being of 1 million and 1.5 million ) [2, 3-5] , the breakdown and annual P values ( “empirical annual probability of death”) are as follows (note gun, homicide and suicide overlaps). [Corporate complicity in this American Holocaust of preventable deaths is summarized after each item in square brackets].
1. 443,000 Americans die from smoking-related causes annually (P = 443,000 /31 9,000,000 = 1.39 in 1,000 = 1 in 719) [state-permitted tobacco companies make a huge profit out of this carnage and the deaths are slow and unpleasant].
2. 440,000 Americans die from adverse events in hospitals each year (P = 1 in 725) [6, 7] [health, pharmaceutical and health insurance corporate profit-making eats into hospital budgets for minimizing adverse events].
3. 300,000 Americans die from obesity-related causes annually (P = 1 in 1,063) [state-permitted corporate exploitation of addiction to food, especially sweet-tasting food, yields a huge corporate profit ].
4. 200,000 Americans die annually from air pollution (e.g. from coal burning, vehicle exhaust, carbon burning in general) (P = 1 in 1,595) [8, 9] [state-permitted fossil fuel corporations make huge profits at the cost of American lives ].
5. 75,000 American alcohol-related deaths annually (P = 1 in 4,253) [alcohol-producing and alcohol-selling companies and corporations profit at the expense of scores of thousands of American lives taken each year].
6. 45,000 US deaths annually from lack of medical insurance (P = 1 in 7,089) [corporations profit from high medical insurance premiums excluding and ultimately killing the poor] .
7. 38,000 US drug-related deaths annually (P = 1 in 8,395) , this including 21,000 US opiate drug-related deaths annually from US restoration and protection of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry (P = 1 in 15,190) [the state War on Drugs has led to huge profits for criminal cartels] .
8. 33,000 Americans killed by motor vehicles each year (P = 1 in 9,667) [state-sanctioned private motor vehicles continue to give huge profits to motor vehicle corporations at an enormous human cost]..
9. 31,000 gun-related US deaths annually (P = 1 in 10,290) [the gun companies and the gun lobby disingenuously declare that guns don’t kill people, people do].
10. 30,000 Americans suicide annually (P = 1 in 10,633) with 7,000 being US veterans (P = 1 in 45,571) [this is linked to lobbyist-determined insufficient corporate and private taxation for health care, and immense war profits for the Military Industrial Complex corporations].
11. 21,000 avoidable under-5 year old US infant deaths annually (P= 1 in 15,190) [this is linked to lobbyist-determined insufficient corporate and private taxation for health care, maternal education and preventive medicine].
12. 15,000 Americans are violently murdered annually (P= 1 in 21,267) but, as this list shows, 1.67 million Americans are passively murdered each year by One Percenter-subverted politician inaction and fiscal perversion (P = 1 in 192 ) [this is linked to the highly profitable gun industry backed by the Gun Lobby ] .
About 30 American residents were killed in America by “terrorists” in the 10 years since 9/11 [10] and the average US population in this period was about 298 million (UN Population Division data). Accordingly, the “empirical annual probability of an American dying in the US from terrorism” is 30/(10 years x 298 million) = 1 in 100 million per year. Thus it is 100 million/ 21,267 = 4,700 times more likely for an American to be murdered by a non-terrorist killer than to be killed by a terrorist; 100 million/1,595 = 63,000 times more likely for an American to die from air pollution than to be killed by a terrorist; 100 million/719 = 139,000 times more likely for an American to die from smoking than to be killed by a terrorist; and, overall, it is 100 million/192 = 0.521 million or 521,000 times more likely for an American to die preventably (from smoking, alcohol, obesity, guns etc) than to die from a terrorist attack within the US.
One notes by way of comparison that the empirical annual probability of a terrorism death is 1 in 16 million per year in the UK [11] and 1 in 109 million per year in Australia. Indeed for all the terror hysteria and consequent draconian curtailing of civil liberties by successive US lackey and Zionist-perverted Coalition or Labor Governments in Australia, there have been zero (0) Australian deaths ever in Australia by a terrorist belonging to a Muslim-origin terrorist organization [12].
US state terrorism and the active and passive killing of 35 million Muslims to date in the Zionist-backed US War on Terror have been associated with a long-term accrual cost of $7 trillion and accordingly this gross fiscal perversion is inescapably linked to about 1.7 million preventable American deaths each year and 23 million preventable American deaths since 9-11. 6,900 American military personnel have been killed in post-9-11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan [13]. Over 100,000 US military personnel have suicided since 9-11 [2, 14, 15]. This huge asymmetry between 3,000 deaths on 9-11 and the subsequent 23 million American preventable deaths inescapably fiscally linked to horrendously expensive US military responses to 9-11 should elicit outrage and resolute political action from ordinary Americans.
The long-term accrual cost of the US War on Terror overseas is about $6 trillion and the Domestic cost of security arrangements since 2001 is about $1 trillion [2] . Given a $9 million risk avoidance-linked Value of a Statistical Life (VOSL), this $7 trillion cost of the War on Terror corresponds to the cost of keeping $7 million million /($ 9 million per person) = 0.8 million Americans safe and alive. The American Neocon and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) One Percenters have committed the US to spending $7 trillion since 9-11 on killing 32 million Muslims abroad (half of them children) [16] instead of on seriously trying to keep 23 million Americans alive at home.
Of course corporate terrorism is not confined to the US. Globalization and US military-backed spread of US corporate power mean that neoliberal, neo-fascist corporatism and corporate terrorism are now world-wide. Thus, for example, WHO reports that 7 million people die each year from air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass, and that pollutants from the burning of coal exported from Australia alone by major mining companies kills 75,000 people annually [9]. While “only” about 0.5 million people presently die from climate change each year, it is estimated that unaddressed man-made climate change will kill all but 0.5 billion of Humanity this century, an already worsening climate genocide that will kill about 10 billion people this century or a century average of about 100 million people per year [17]. Already about 17 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year on a Spaceship Earth with corporate criminals, carbon criminals, climate criminals, corporate terrorists, carbon terrorists and climate terrorists in charge of the flight deck [18]. To this we can add about 8 million preventable deaths from corporate fostered tobacco, alcohol and drugs and 7 million air pollution deaths for a body count of over 30 million deaths annually linked to state-sanctioned corporate terrorism.
Why have Americans and indeed people in general not wised up to the horrendous realities US state terrorism-sanctioned corporate terrorism? The horrible reality is that in America, the land of the First Amendment and freedom of speech, Democracy America has been replaced by an American-killing Plutocracy America , Murdochracy America, Lobbyocracy America, Corporatocracy America, Dollaracracy America and Demonocracy America in which Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, public perception of reality and political power. Pro-One Percenter censorship, lying by omission and lying by commission by Mainstream journalist , politician, academic and lobbyist presstitutes are the realities of a world dominated by corporate terrorists [19].
Of course censorship and lying are disastrous for rational risk management that is crucial for societal safety, and successively involves (a) accurate data, (b) scientific analysis, this involving the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses, and (c) informed systemic change to minimize risk. Unfortunately, this rational risk management protocol is typically perverted at the individual, family or local level, or at the level of the family of nations by (a) lying, self-deception, spin, obfuscation, intimidation and censorship, (b) anti-science spin, this involving the selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position, and (c) blame and shame that is counterproductive because it blocks reportage crucial for rational risk management and in the worst cases leads to war [20-32].
Corporate lying is a crucial feature of state-sanctioned corporate terrorism. Thus Polya's 3 Laws of Economics mirror the 3 Laws of Thermodynamics of science and are (1) Price minus COP (Cost of Production) equals profit; (2) Deception about COP strives to a maximum; and (3) No work, price or profit on a dead planet. These fundamental laws help expose the failure of neoliberal capitalism in relation to wealth inequality, massive tax evasion by multinational corporations, and horrendous avoidable deaths from poverty and pollution culminating in general ecocide, speciescide, climate genocide, omnicide and terracide . Polya’s Second Law of Economics explains why we are doomed by neoliberal economics – deceit, lying by omission, lying by commission, and disinformation subvert rational risk management but are remorselessly increasing and thereby dooming the world [33].
[1]. Gideon Polya, “West Ignores 11 Million Muslim War Deaths & 23 Million Preventable American Deaths Since US Government's False-flag 9-11 Atrocity”, Countercurrents, 9 September, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090915.htm
[2]. Gideon Polya, “American Holocaust, Millions Of Untimely American Deaths And $40 Trillion Cost Of Israel To Americans”, Countercurrents, 27 August, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270813.htm .
[3]. Gideon Polya, “Fundamentalist America Has Trashed Secular Governance, Modernity, Democracy, Women's Rights And Children's Rights In The Muslim World”, Countercurrents, 21 May, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya210515.htm .
[4]. Gideon Polya, “One million Americans die preventably annually in USA ”, Countercurrents, 18 February 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya180212.htm .
[5]. Gideon Polya, “One Percenter Greed & War Means Over 1.5 Million Americans Die Preventably Each Year”, Countercurrents, 19 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190914.htm .
[6]. Marshall Allen, “How many die from medical mistakes in U.S. Hospitals?”, Pro-Publica, 10 September 2013: http://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-die-from-medical-mistakes-in-us-hospitals .
[7]. John T. James, “A new , evidence-based estimate if patient harms associated with hospitals”, Journal of Patient Safety, September 2013 - Volume 9 - Issue 3 - p 122–128: http://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_
New,_Evidence_based_Estimate_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx .
[8]. “Air pollution causes 200,000 early death s each year in the U.S.”, MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment, 29 August 2013: http://lae.mit.edu/air-pollution-causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-u-s/ .
[9]. “Stop air pollution deaths”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/stop-air-pollution-deaths .
[10]. Ronald Bailey, “How scared of terrorism should you be?”, Reason.com, 6 September 2011: http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terrorism-should .
[11]. Gideon Polya, “UK Terror Hysteria exposed – Empirical Annual Probability of UK Terrorism Death 1 in 16 million”, Countercurrents, 16 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya160914.htm .
[12]. Gideon Polya, “Australian State Terrorism - Zero Australian Terrorism Deaths, 1 Million Preventable Australian Deaths & 10 Million Muslims Killed By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 23 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230914.htm .
[13]. I-casualties.org: http://icasualties.org/ .
[14]. Rob Hotakainen, “Concern grows over “epidemic” veteran suicide rate”, The Tribune, 26 May 2011: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/05/26/1680716/concern-grows-over-epidemic-veteran.html .
[15]. Dr Janet Kemp and Dr Robert Bossarte, “Suicide data report, 2012”, Department of Veterans Affairs, Mental Health Services, Suicide Prevention Program, especially Figure 3: http://www.va.gov/opa/docs/Suicide-Data-Report-2012-final.pdf .
[16]. Gideon Polya, “West Ignores 11 Million Muslim War Deaths & 23 Million Preventable American Deaths Since US Government's False-flag 9-11 Atrocity”, Countercurrents, 9 September, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090915.htm .
[17]. “Climate genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .
[18]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes a succinct history of every country and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ .
[19]. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, “Manufacturing Consent. The political economy of the mass media”, Pantheon, 2002 (first edition 1988).
[20]. “Gideon Polya Writing”: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ .
[21]. “Boycott Murdoch media”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottmurdochmedia/ .
[22]. “Censorship by the BBC”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbythebbc/ .
[23]. “Censorship by The Conversation”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by .
[24]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home .
[25]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ .
[26]. “Censorship by The Age”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-age .
[27]. “Censorship by ABC Late Night Live”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbyabclatenightlive/
[28]. "Censorship by ABC Saturday Extra": https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbyabclatenightlive/censorship-by-abc-sat .
[29]. “ABC fact-checking unit & incorrect reportage by the ABC (Australia’s BBC)”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/abc-fact-checking-unit .
[30]. "Censorship by The Guardian UK": https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-guardian-uk .
[31]. "Censorship by The Guardian Australia": https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home/censorship-by-the-guardian-a .
[32]. “Censorship by Crikey (Australia)”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-crikey .
[33]. Gideon Polya, “Polya's 3 Laws Of Economics Expose Deadly, Dishonest And Terminal Neoliberal Capitalism”, Countercurrents, 17 October, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya171015.htm .