One of the most important revelations from the international drama
over Edward Snowden's NSA leaks in May is the exposure of a nearly
lunatic disproportion in threat assessment and spending by the US
government. This disproportion has been spawned by a fear-based politics
of terror that mandates unlimited money and media attention for even
the most tendentious terrorism
threats, while lethal domestic risks such as contaminated food from our
industrialized agribusiness system are all but ignored. A comparison of
federal spending on food safety intelligence versus antiterrorism
intelligence brings the irrationality of the threat assessment process
into stark relief.
In 2011, the year of Osama bin Laden's death, the State Department reported that 17 Americans were killed in all terrorist incidents worldwide. The same year, a single outbreak of listeriosis from tainted cantaloupe killed 33 people in the United States. Foodborne pathogens also sickened 48.7 million, hospitalized 127,839 and caused a total of 3,037 deaths. This is a typical year, not an aberration.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18715-cantaloupe-vs-al-qaeda
In 2011, the year of Osama bin Laden's death, the State Department reported that 17 Americans were killed in all terrorist incidents worldwide. The same year, a single outbreak of listeriosis from tainted cantaloupe killed 33 people in the United States. Foodborne pathogens also sickened 48.7 million, hospitalized 127,839 and caused a total of 3,037 deaths. This is a typical year, not an aberration.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18715-cantaloupe-vs-al-qaeda
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