THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE: Just like mom, apple pie and Chevrolet...

By William PLEASANT

The Atlanta-based Center for Disease Control (CDC} "does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms),” agency spokesperson David Daigle declared last Friday. Zombie-mania has seized US pop consciousness. It all began May 26 in Florida after 31-year-old Miami resident Rudy Eugene stripped off all his clothes, attacked a homeless man and attempted to chew off his face. Eugene, naked and growling, only ceased his attack after police shot him several times, according to eyewitnesses. A day later, a New Jersey man stabbed himself 50 times, cut out his own intestines and threw them at police. By the end of the week a Seattle man had killed six people, including himself, in a shooting spree that started in a local cafe.

Meanwhile in Baltimore, .Alexander Kinyua, a 21-year-old Morgan State University student, allegedly confessed to killing and dismembering his housemate, fellow Morgan State student. Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie. Kinyua , a son aof a Morgan State physics professor, also claimed that he ate his victim's heart and portions of his brain. Baltimore police found the remainder of Agyei-Kodie's body in the dumpster of a neighborhood church.

Luka Rocco Magnotta, the Canadian porn actor accused of killing and dismembering a man and mailing body parts to politicians and several schools, will not fight extradition following his arrest in Germany, a Berlin police official said Tuesday. Magnotta told a Berlin magistrate that he will return voluntarily to stand trial for the ritual murder of Jun Lin, a Chinese student at Canada's Concordia University. Canadian authorities accuse Magnotta of dismembering Lin, mailing one of his hands and one of his feet to Canadian politicians and posting a video of the grisly act on the Internet...A Florida couple allegedly kills a young girl,then goes on Facebook to brag about partying and argue about disposal of the body....A 14-year-old boy has been charged with murder in the death of his 9-year-old half-sister, whose body was found attached to a rope hanging from a tree, Alabama authorities said Friday....T.J. Lane, a 17-year-old has been charged with three counts of aggravated murder in the school shooting deaths of three students and the wounding of three others, according to an indictment released Tuesday. A psychiatrist who examined Lane testified earlier that that Lane sometimes loses touch with reality and suffers from hallucinations, psychosis and fantasies. Lane has admitted taking a .22-caliber pistol and a knife to the high school and firing 10 shots at a group of students sitting at a cafeteria table at the start of the school day....Police say a Nebraska mom who disappeared last month with her son strangled the 10-year-old boy before strangling herself in the woods of an Iowa state park. Council Bluffs police said Monday that Charlotte Schilling, 41, of Plattsmouth, Neb. and her son, Owen, both died with plastic zip ties around their necks in a murder-suicide. The Schillings were missing from May 10 until their bodies were found May 20 in Lake Manawa State Park, south of Council Bluffs in western Iowa, about 20 miles north of Plattsmouth. Council Bluff's police say Charlotte Schilling tried to commit suicide with a plastic zip tie in November, but a family member intervened then. Once a zip tie is tightened, the only way to loosen it is to cut it off, so police said after Schilling tightened one around her own neck enough to restrict breathing it would have been difficult for her to remove it......And the litany of bizarre murders and gratuitous violence grows day by day, it seems.

America is terrified. Is the ZOMBIE APPOCALYPSE UPON US?

The internet conspiracy mill has kicked into full gear over the last three weeks. There must be some hidden hand behind this string of atrocities. Is, as the fundamentalist Christians readily assert, THE END TIME at hand? Has Satan loosed his minions on a an unrepentent USA? Some internauts have even called the CDC dismissal of a zombie epidemic a massive government cover-up that denies the real cause of zombification, namely cat feces. As one theory goes, the US is experiencing an outbreak of taxoplasmosis, a disease caused by the single-cell parasite Taxoplasma gondii that can be found in the poop of the average American house cat. "The Toxoplasma, when living inside humans, is linked to causing significant changes in behavior, including neuroticism, increased aggression and schizophrenia. Mamalian studies of Toxoplasma infections have demonstrated that this organism affects levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and other neurotransmitters, which are well known to be affected in persons with schizophrenia,” according to a 2003 article in the CDC’s “Emerging Infectious Diseases” publication. Is the kitty litter industry behind the CDC cover-up? It would have the most to lose if the truth got out. Right?

Well, let's blame US social debauchery on Puss 'n Boots.

Half-baked biological theories and religion-driven superstitions just won't do for marxists. Far from spook-show fixtures, ZOMBIES in America are real and actually symptomatic of decadent material conditions coupled with bi-partisan ruling class policy.

A quick review of the cases of wilding cited above will reveal one common factor. Each of the alleged perpetrators had a history of mental health problems. They exhibited anti-social behaviors days, weeks or even years before their alleged acts of violence. They were sick. In the case of Baltimore's Alexander Kunya, the student was well known for eccentric behavior. Par ex: He regularly walked through the Morgan State campus sporting camouflage face paint and brandishing a machete!!!!

Nobody paid attention. Nobody intervened. All the signs of impending horror were present. But as monopoly capitalism goes through its terminal decay, it is no longer capable of monitoring nor treating mental illness. The institutions in American society charged with mental health maintenance have always been weak, to say the least. Today, in the wake of growing social and economic destabilization and displacement experienced by vast sectors of society, they are literally disintegrating—as a matter of deliberate policy..

Poor people are much more likely to experience mental illness and to stay crazy for longer periods than those who are not sociologically defined as poor. That is a well known fact. Sociologists who look at inequality as an issue in mental health/psychiatric research are divided in their views as to whether people become poor because they are mentally ill and thus unable to function (social selection) or they become mentally ill because of being poor (social causation). In 2012, no theorizing is required. People are becoming increasingly pauperized and increasingly insane in the USA. On a daily basis, the legion of Zombies grows.

According to a 2011 National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) report: “One in 17 people in America lives with a serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression, or bipolar disorder. About one in 10 children live with a serious mental disorder. In recent years, the worst recession in the U.S. since the Great Depression has dramatically impacted an already inadequate public mental health system.

“From 2009 to 2011, massive cuts to

non-Medicaid state mental health spending totaled nearly $1.6 billion dollars. And, deeper cuts are projected in 2011 and 2012. States have cut vital services for tens of thousands of youth and adults living with the most serious mental illness. These services include community and hospital based psychiatric care, housing and access to medications. To make matters worse, Medicaid funding of mental health services is also potentially on the chopping block in 2011. The temporary increase in federal funding of Medicaid through the stimulus package will end on June 30, 2011. Medicaid is the most important source of funding of public mental health services for youth and adults, leaving people with mental illness facing the real threat of being cut off from life-saving services. Communities pay a high price for cuts of this magnitude. Rather than saving states and communities money, these cuts to services simply shift financial responsibility to emergency rooms, community hospitals, law enforcement agencies, correctional facilities and homeless shelters.”

Moreover, “As most people know, mental health care services are not covered by health insurance packages and health plans to the same degree as physical health care services. Not only are there usually more services excluded as covered benefits, but those services that are covered are often subject to higher co-pays and are capped at a maximum number of covered treatments."

That is the best that working people with insurance can expect.

"Less well known is the fact that those with severe mental illness (SMI) are less likely to have health insurance coverage of any kind. McAlpine and Mechanic (1999) estimate that while 11.4% of those with no measured mental disorders lack health insurance coverage, 20.4% of those with SMI and 18.2% with less severe mental disorders lack coverage.” Delays in Treatment for Mental Disorders and Health Insurance Coverage

by Catherine G McLaughlin, Ph.D, Senior Associate Editor (2004)

SAMHSA= Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration

Recent state and federal austerity measures are the real breeders of American Zombies.

"The two largest sources of state support for mental health services are Medicaid (46 percent in 2007), a joint federal-state program, and state general funds administered by state mental health authorities, (40 percent in 2007.), reports NAMI, the largest mental health advocacy group in the US.

"Two features mark the current budget crisis:
I. Many states have significantly cut non-Medicaid mental health funding from 2009 to 2011,
with deeper cuts projected in 2012.
II. Enhanced federal funding of Medicaid in response to the recession will expire in June 2011,
causing significant reductions in federal support for this important program. In response,
many states are proposing changes that will further erode vital treatment and support for
mental illness.

"State general funding of mental health care is the 'safety net of last resort' for children and adults living with serious mental illness. Although Medicaid is an extremely important funding source, many people with mental illness do not qualify for Medicaid, either because their income is slightly higher than the Medicaid threshold (which is well below poverty level in most states) or because they are too ill to take the steps necessary to apply and qualify for Medicaid. Additionally, Medicaid does not pay for some vital mental health services, most notably inpatient psychiatric treatment."


Between 2009 and 2011, states cumulatively cut more than $1.8 billion from their budgets for
services for children and adults living with mental illness. The magnitude of these cuts in a number of states is stupendous...
California cut $587.4 million during this period.
New York $132 million
Illinois $113.7 million.

Taking into account variations between state's populations, budget sizes and populations of mental illness patients, the cuts viewed in terms of loss of services represented in cuts to general mental healthcare funding are even more chilling.
Alaska cut 35 percent of its general fund mental health budget.
South Carolina chopped 23 percent.
Arizona slashed 23 percent.

Mental healthcare treatment has traditionally revolved around in-patient services, drug treatments, individual/group therapies and monitoring. In the face of massive austerity measures, the very character of psychiatric practice has changed. For lack of funding, treatment has been supplanted with drug-induced behavioral modification and penal incarceration.

"The struggling economy and record number of layoffs and home foreclosures are some of the most predominant reasons for a notable increase in the use of antidepressant drugs. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Prozac, Paxil, and similar drug prescriptions have increased by 400%, particularly among women," explained Nursing Professor Terri Lipman PhD RN in the journal Nursing Outlook (2011)

"The data for the study comes from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) which includes information on 12,637 individuals. Participants were asked about prescription drug use including antidepressants, length of use, severity of depression symptoms and contact with a mental health professional.

"Antidepressant drugs are now the most frequently used medication in adults between the ages of 18 to 44. Nearly one in four women between 40 and 59 are taking the medications as are one in 25 teens.

"Obviously, financial struggles common in the current economy can have a significant impact on the level of depression symptoms. A separate study, conducted at the University of Pennsylvania, understandably finds that homeowners who are in default or foreclosure exhibit poorer mental health than those with low or no housing strain. Mental health concerns often lead to physical symptoms such as pain, fatigue, headaches, digestive problems, and sleeping difficulties.

"Unfortunately, financial problems often leads to inadequate access to healthcare as well. The CDC study finds that although women are more likely to take antidepressants, they are less likely than men to seek professional help."

Americans with severe mental illnesses are three times more likely to be in jail or prison than in a psychiatric hospital, according to "More Mentally Ill Persons Are in Jails and Prisons Than Hospitals: A Survey of the States," a new report by the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriffs' Association.

"America's jails and prisons have once again become our mental hospitals," said James Pavle, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit dedicated to removing barriers to rational, humane and effective treatment of severe mental illnesses. "With minimal exception, incarceration has replaced hospitalization for thousands of individuals in every single state."

The odds of a seriously mentally ill individual being imprisoned rather than hospitalized are 3.2 to 1, state data shows. The report compares statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Bureau of Justice Statistics collected during 2004 and 2005, respectively. The report also found a very strong correlation between those states that have more mentally ill persons in jails and prisons and those states that are spending less money on mental health services.

Indeed, the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE is upon us. Everyday, as the decline in real living standards accelerates, AMERICAN MADNESS grows, with its appropriately ghoulish paroxysms of violence. Moreover, the institutions that are tasked with combating mental disease are increasingly impotent to protect the public. Make no mistake, there may be monsters in your bed, in your class room and at your work place. And make no mistake, they were all deliberately MADE IN OBAMA'S AMERICA 2012.

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