JANINE DI GIOVANNI – What does it feel like when a war begins? When does life as you know it implode? How do you know when it is time to pack up your home and your family and leave your country? Or if you decide not to, why? For ordinary people, war starts with a jolt: one day you are busy with dentist appointments or arranging ballet lessons for your daughter, and then the curtain drops. One moment the daily routine grinds on; A.T.M.’s work and cellphones function. Then, suddenly, everything stops.
Sanity Scores a Modest Victory on Military Budget Vote
REBECCA GRIFFIN – Last week, the House of Representatives took a small but important step toward reining in Pentagon spending. Thank you to all of you who responded to our call to tell your representative to support amendments to cut the military budget and end the war in Afghanistan.
Unlike Mitt Romney, Most Americans Want to Cut U.S. Military Spending
LAWRENCE WITTNER – On some issues, there is a serious disconnect between candidates for public office and the public they are hoping to represent. Take the case of Mitt Romney and military spending.
The Shredding of Our Fundamental Rights and the Common Good
NOAM CHOMSKY – Recent events trace a threatening trajectory, sufficiently so that it may be worthwhile to look ahead a few generations to the millennium anniversary of one of the great events in the establishment of civil and human rights: the issuance of Magna Carta, the charter of English liberties imposed on King John in 1215.
On Facts, Lies and Sarah Palin
LEONARD PITTS, JR. – The death panels are back. Sarah Palin’s vision of a dystopian society in which the elderly and infirm would be required to justify their continued existence before a jury of federal functionaries has been widely ridiculed since she first posted it on Facebook three years ago. It was designated “Lie of the Year” by Politifact, the nonpartisan fact-checking website, something that would have mortified and humiliated anyone who was capable of those feelings.
‘Black Hole’ Hides Trillions in Ill-Gotten Gains
F. BRINLEY BRUTON – Thanks to lax international tax rules the world’s super rich have siphoned at least $21 trillion — more than 50 percent larger than the entire U.S. economy — into secretive tax-free havens, according to a study by UK campaign group Tax Justice Network. According to the study, the world’s top 50 private banks managed more than $12.3 trillion in 2010 in off-shore financial assets, up from $7.5 trillion five years earlier.