The Real News Network has the interview Deputy Speaker of Israeli Knesset Calls for Expulsion and Jewish Reoccupation of Gaza.

Here is an excerpt of the more palatable part of the interview.  I leave it to your imagination as to whether or not you want to see and hear the rest.

But beyond that is there’s the genocidal aspect of Feiglin’s remarks. And genocide, incitement to genocide, is incredibly common right now in Israeli political discourse. It’s not just Feiglin. There’s Giora Eiland, who was one of the heads of the Institute for National Security Studies, which consults for the Israeli military. He’s a former national security adviser, someone who’s deeply embedded in the military intelligence apparatus. And today he published a piece in Yedioth Ahronoth, which is the main newspaper in Israel, pretty much calling for genocide in the Gaza Strip, or at least justifying it. He’s basically making the case that there are no civilians in the Gaza Strip because they elected Hamas as Germans elected Hitler. This is the same rationale that Osama bin Laden used to justify the 9/11 attacks and the indiscriminate slaughter of Americans, because they had elected governments which had attacked the Middle East, which had attacked Muslim nations. So you’re hearing this from mainstream figures, not just from crazy old Feiglin, who’s willing winning lots of fans and followers with this kind of rhetoric, who’s really keeping up a public profile

This video is what I was aware of, but did not even want to see when I responded to my cousin Rachel’s Facebook post.

My response to the article she posted was the following:

Rachel,

I could give you a list of Israeli behavior similar to the Gazans, and we could discuss whether or not there was any moral equivalence. However, the answers wouldn’t matter because we would be asking the wrong question.

I am not looking for ways to stoke or justify the hate between the two sides.

I am trying to find ways to bring a just peace.

As sure as it seems that neither side can trust the other to be peaceful, I think about South Africa. I am sure the Afrikaners felt the same way about the black Africans that they suppressed as the Israelis feel against the Palestinians and the retribution that would result if the other side ever got power. The world was amazed when this expected outcome did not happen in South Africa. Perhaps the same good result could be brought about in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We should be looking for ways to make this happen instead of wallowing in our mutual hate.

I often think of your Grandfather (and my uncle) Sam. If he could survive and rise above what he suffered in WW II, then the least we can do in honor of his memory is to try to be as good as he was in how he handled his feelings and showed in his behavior.

I guess my only justification for this post is to urge all sides to stop and think before you go any further down this road.

If Israel succeeds in the goals discussed in this video, it will be impossible for me to be “proud” of that accomplishment, to put it mildly.

Sharon reminded me that one of her brothers essentially committed suicide over what he saw and did in Viet Nam, the details of which we can’t even imagine. It is crazy to even contemplate the effect on our own soldiers of what they were asked to do ahead of contemplating the effect on the people they did it to. However, if that’s what it takes to make the public wake up, then maybe that is what has to be said.

Maura Healey’s campaign website has the article Healey Unveils Comprehensive Housing Plan

Healey’s plan has received widespread support from some of the state’s top housing experts, including Elyse Cherry, CEO of Boston Community Capital.

“Maura Healey has helped lead the fight to combat predatory lending and protect Massachusetts homeowners facing foreclosure and housing discrimination,” said Cherry. “She’s also the experienced consumer advocate in the race. So it’s no surprise that Maura has such a comprehensive plan to promote housing opportunities in Massachusetts. She has my enthusiastic support.”

This is the kind of proactive leadership I am looking for in the Candidates I support and will vote for.  I wonder how many people in Massachusetts realize what far reaching impact an Attorney general can have.

Thanks to Jacob Ryan for posting this on his Facebook page.

You may have seen the headlines about corporate inversions.  I think The New York Times article, White House Weighs Actions to Deter Overseas Tax Flight, clarifies what this is all about.

The Obama administration is weighing plans to circumvent Congress and act on its own to curtail tax benefits for United States companies that relocate overseas to lower their tax bills, seeking to stanch a recent wave of so-called corporate inversions, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said on Tuesday.

Thanks to Elizabeth Warren for urging President Obama to take action and for highlighting this issue on her Facebook page.

It is very important to get this issue before the public in a way that is easy to understand.  I think this article does it for me.  I hope people understand that the countries that are making these deals are stealing our tax money.  All these companies will have to do is to establish a mail drop in the receiving country.  The companies pay a substantial fee to the receiving country and the receiving country has to provide absolutely no costly benefits in return.  Of course it is a good deal for everyone except the true home country that provides the infrastructure, legal system, and security that these companies depend on, but would rather not pay for.  What are they going to do when they suck their home country dry? They’ll probably do the same thing that bankers do who suck their companies dry with bad loans while feathering their own nests with fat bonuses.  They’ either retire quite comfortably, thank you very much, or they will go on to pull the same stunt at a new company or country.

Once guys like Mitt Romney figured out how to use debt to strip assets out of a company, it was probably only a matter of time until someone figured out how to use debt to avoid taxes in the way mentioned in the article.

By the way, corporations don’t only use money from their customers and employees to pay corporate taxes.  Competition for business, if anti-trust laws were enforced, would put limits on this behavior with respect to cutomers.  Corporations can get money from their stock holders by reducing dividends and using the money saved to pay the corporate taxes.  As far as getting money from their employees, they could get it from the excessive executive pay rather than from the minimum wage workers if only our personal and corporate income tax structure was fairer.

The Intercept has the article Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack.

Over the last decade, the NSA has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians. In many cases, the NSA and ISNU work cooperatively with the British and Canadian spy agencies, the GCHQ and CSEC.

Make of this what you will.  One thing I do wonder is whether the President has control over NSA or the NSA has control over our President.

The Maura Healy campaign asked me to share this with you.

I am a sucker for this kind of politician who wants the people to participate and knows how to use modern technology to make it happen.

Then of course there are all those good things her interns say about her.

The Examiner has the story Report: Kennedy family urging Elizabeth Warren to run for president.

The family seems split because Warren is the one who most resembles the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, a staunch liberal, who stands apart from Clinton, who often appears too close to Wall Street and the Washington establishment.

“Joe thinks Hillary has too many ties with Wall Street,” this source added. “He loves Liz because she’s a full-throated liberal like his Uncle Ted. She has Ted’s voice — loud and angry and triumphant.”

Thanks to Rebecca Deans-Rowe for posting this on her Facebook page.

See my previous post Run, Warren, Run! Draft Elizabeth Warren for President in 2016 for a link to the petition you might want to sign.

Naked Capitalism has the article Krugman v. Morgenson on Too Big to Fail by David Dayen.

The bottom line is that this exhibits pure party-based tribalism. Take whatever half-truth you can turn into a talking point and parade it. And because it comes from an anointed spokesman of the Left in the mainstream circles, the hedged conclusions get spun into iron laws. The Reuters daily roundup Counterparties puts Krugman atop a summary they call “Farewell to Too Big to Fail.” (On the other hand, I was glad to see Bob Kuttner call Krugman out for this, however gently.)

If Krugman wants to become the President’s mouthpiece in the second term, that’s his business. But doing so by fudging the data is pretty weak.

This is the first I have read about this topic.  I have a feeling that when I read more news, I am going to hear about Krugman and the GAO report in highly favorable terms.  I thought I would post this article on my blog so I would have a record of it as a counterpoint to what is in the MSM.

Democracy Now has a two part interview that begins with Henry Siegman, Leading Voice of U.S. Jewry, on Gaza: “A Slaughter of Innocents”

I previously blogged about a book that is mentioned in this interview – The State of Israel ‘My Promised Land,’ by Ari Shavit.

The second part of the interview is U.S. Jewish Leader Henry Siegman to Israel: Stop Killing Palestinians and End the Occupation.

The segment ends with an exchange that I was hoping someone would state.

AMY GOODMAN: Henry Siegman, I wanted to ask you about media coverage of the conflict right now in Gaza. In a comment to close the CBS show Face the Nation on Sunday, the host, Bob Schieffer, suggested Hamas forces Israel to kill Palestinian children.

BOB SCHIEFFER: In the Middle East, the Palestinian people find themselves in the grip of a terrorist group that is embarked on a strategy to get its own children killed in order to build sympathy for its cause—a strategy that might actually be working, at least in some quarters. Last week I found a quote of many years ago by Golda Meir, one of Israel’s early leaders, which might have been said yesterday: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children,” she said, “but we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”

AMY GOODMAN: That was the host, the journalist Bob Schieffer, on Face the Nation. You knew Prime Minister Golda Meir.

HENRY SIEGMAN: Yes, I did. I wasn’t a friend of hers, but I knew her, and I heard her when she made that statement. And I thought then, and think now, that it is an embarrassingly hypocritical statement. This statement was made by a woman who also said “Palestinians? There are no Palestinians! I am a Palestinian.” If you don’t want to kill Palestinians, if that’s what pains you so much, you don’t have to kill them. You can give them their rights, and you can end the occupation. And to put the blame for the occupation and for the killing of innocents that we are seeing in Gaza now on the Palestinians—why? Because they want a state of their own? They want what Jews wanted and achieved? I find that, to put it mildly, less than admirable. There is something deeply hypocritical about that original statement and about repeating it on the air over here as a great moral insight.

I am sick and tired of hearing this quote from Golda Meir as if it were a piece of wisdom.

The Real News Network has published the final epsisde Capitalism Will Hit the Wall Again, Hard – Heiner Flassbeck on RAI (5/5).

FLASSBECK: Yeah, but public ownership is politically blocked. And even public spending is blocked politically. So the capitalism are blocking themselves. They’re blocking themselves by blocking everything. They’re not investing themselves. They’re blocking the government from being the big spender and taking on government debt. They’re not giving income to the workers. So the whole system comes to an end. It hits the wall at a certain point.

So what I expect is a bigger crisis than we have seen.

And then again comes the question: do we find the politicians who are able to learn the lesson from this bigger crisis, maybe the big depression or however you may call it, to find a way out into a new system? Which, in my opinion, should not be a totally planned system or a socialist system or something like that, but again a mixed system, where we have a strong government that is regulating the most crucial things. The most crucial things are the financial markets and the labor market. This has to be regulated by the government. Otherwise it cannot work

Paul Jay is looking for the one easy solution, but Flassbeck refuses to buy what Jay is suggesting. If Paul Jay ever finds that easy solution, he would deserve at least a Nobel Prize.

Rather than looking for the one easy solution, it might be easier to come up with a number of things we definitely should not do.

The one thing that comes readily to my mind as something we should not do is to anoint Hillary Clinton as our next President in 2016. She may be the least likely Democrat to understand the issue and really want to take steps to fix it. People who have an inkling of a clue are Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley, Alan Grayson, and I am sure others of whom I am unaware.

In the Massachusetts Governor’s race, I am thinking that in order of awareness it might be Don Berwick, Martha Coakley, and sad to say Steve Grossman in last place. I was a fan of Steve Grossman until his recent turn toward Super PAC funded negative advertising over invented issues.

News.mic has the article The Supreme Court’s Baffling Science Illiteracy Is Becoming a Big Problem for America by Erin Brodwin  July 1, 2014

On Monday, the Supreme Court in their controversial Hobby Lobby ruling equated contraception to abortion. The problem with their decision is this: There’s absolutely zero science to back it up.

“The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients,” Justice Samuel Alito said.

Of the four methods Christian company Hobby Lobby claims cause abortion (Plan B, ella, and two IUDs), exactly zero prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. All four methods work by stopping fertilization from happening in the first place.

This illiteracy has bothered me for a long time.  What are the chances for long term success of a system that has 9 people without a clue making life altering decisions for 350,000,000 people?