Links / Open Thread

Some Pakistani victims of American drone strikes are going to court requesting that arrest warrants be issued for two former CIA officials thought to have ordered two specific attacks in 2009. A separate case is seeking court action to declare the drone strikes to be illegal acts of war, requiring the government to shoot down the drones hovering over the tribal regions of Waziristan.

One of the plaintiffs is a TV journalist with two masters degrees whose son and brother were killed while the family was eating dinner on New Years Eve. The son was a quiet studious youth who enjoyed playing cricket and hunting partridges. The brother taught English. This does not exactly fit with the American propaganda of drone victims as illiterate militant peasants plotting mayhem in mud huts off the beaten path, does it?

The extended Romney family apparently owns a large stake in an electronic voting machine company, with some co-investors even implicated in a busted Ponzi scheme. And did you hear that the United Nations will actually be monitoring our elections this year? We are now officially a Banana Republic.

Paul Krugman explains for the umpteenth time that Mitt Romney's numbers don't add up. What does add up, however, are the number of Bush-era advisers and debunked economic policies surrounding him. (My comment is first under "oldest".)

The third and final presidential debate will be held in Boca Raton, site of the infamous 47% Romney fundraiser. But tonight, the two preapproved candidates of the plutocracy will be discussing something only 4% of American voters actually care about: foreign policy. Since our imperialistic war machine operates by totally bipartisan consensus, the bickering will no doubt be centered on who knew what when on the Benghazi attack and the various talking point inconsistencies.

Since the Democratic Party is now the party of rich white centrists, rich white guys like David Brooks and Mike Bloomberg should just come out of the closet and admit that Obama is the guy for them.

If you haven't seen the Bill Moyers interview with Chrystia Freeland and Matt Taibbi on "Plutocracy Rising", you can catch it here. The extreme wealth inequality now affecting the entire globe cannot hold. The so-called New World Order is bound to collapse. Globalization is not only economic, it's social. People do revolt, and it's already happening in austerity-torn Europe as well as the middle East.

"He Never Sold His Soul" -- Chris Hedges has written an affecting piece on George McGovern.