Are We Safe Yet?
Vijay Prashad has a review of the new book by Mike Davis. Excerpt:
After 911, a shocking incident in each of its meanings, the US government pledged not only to go after those who had conducted the event (endless war), but also to better protect the American people. The government now spends tens of billions of dollars on homeland security (the National Priorities Project shows that whereas the Department of Homeland Security spends $43 billion, the government-wide homeland security expenditure is $58 billion, with some overlap between the two). Some of it on senseless projects. The two thousand residents of Dillingham, Alaska, for instance, should now feel safer with eighty surveillance cameras (cost: $202,200), and the good people at the Kentucky Office of Charitable Gaming should feel better for the $36,000 slated to “prevent terrorists from trying to raise money for their plots at the state’s bingo halls.” These are easy to pick out from the thousands of disbursements. It is harder to figure out which targets are more plausible.
