Mother Jones has the article This Group Is Starting the Elizabeth-Warren-for-President Campaign.

A group of progressive activists have unveiled Ready for Warren, a new outfit aimed at convincing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for president. Ready for Warren’s website asks supporters to sign a petition urging Warren to get in the 2016 race. “It’s time that the American people had a lobbyist of our own, and that lobbyist is Elizabeth Warren,” the petition reads. “By standing up to Wall Street to defend Main Street, Warren has proven herself to be the spine that the Democratic Party forgot it had.”

Go to the Ready For Warren web site to join.

This group has a Facebook page and a Twitter page.

You can either be a nay sayer or a yeah sayer. Which one do you want to be?

My thanks to Cedric Flower for posting this on his Facebook page.

YouTube has the video Steve Liesman Embarrasses Rick Santelli On CNBC.

Ironically, sometime in the future the things that Santelli predicts will actually happen. I can predict what the circumstances will be and what he will be saying.

Somehow, the economy finally gets turned around and we go into a boom phase. The federal budget will be running a surplus, we will be at full employment, inflation might even start rising. Santelli will say, look at how well the economy is doing. Imagine how much better it could do if we cut taxes. We don’t need no stinkin’ surplus. You know how to spend your money better than the government does. The surplus is so big we might end up paying off all of our debts, and their won’t be any need for treasury securities. If the government stops selling bonds the world will come to an end.

Somehow, the voters buy into this nonsense just as they did in the Bush years. We get the Bush tax-cuts, we get the hyperinflation that Santelli is no longer warning about, and then the market crashes. At this point Santelli has to change his advice on what to do, or else he will fall into the trap of being right for once in his life.

The New York Times has the book review titled The State of Israel ‘My Promised Land,’ by Ari Shavit.  Thanks to Jacques Benkoski  for bringing this review to my attention in relation to a discussion we have been having on Facebook.

The reviewer states:

There is love in “My Promised Land,” but there is no propaganda. Shavit knows how to express solidarity and criticism simultaneously. He proposes that Zionism was historically miraculous and he proposes that Zionism was historically culpable.
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The fact that liberty and sovereignty are often won with violence cannot justify anything that any state or any movement might do in the name of liberty and sovereignty. But surely there is also no justice in dying with clean hands instead of living with dirty hands. Palestinians should be able to understand this. Israelis should be able to understand this about Palestinians.

While extolling the “miraculous history”and mentioning the historical culpability, I don’t  think the reviewer (and I assume the book) give enough weight to the issue of the present day culpability for  present day actions.  It is one thing to talk about the dirty hands that brought about the history, but what I focus on is what steps need to be taken now to stop continuing to dirty the hands. Is it too much to ask Israeli Jews to contemplate trying to even try to clean-up some of the dirt from the past?

In my utopian view of the recent history of South Africa, I like to think that the Afrikaners came to understand that they just could not keep going and continuing to dirty their hands.  I realize neither the Israeli situation nor the South African one is a simple story.  Please forgive me if what I am trying to write succinctly in this post gives the impression that I think any of this will be simple.  I know it won’t.  (That is one reason for admitting that my description above of South Africa is utopian.)

Yes, I know that even though there are similarities between the South African situation and the situation in Israel, there are differences, too.  The point is not that Israel should follow the South African solution.  What I want Israel to do is to come to the realization that they just cannot in good conscience continue to subjugate their Palestinian neighbors, citizens, and colonies.

Instead of trying to beat people into submission, they have to start thinking of how they are going to transform their behavior into treating everyone with humanity, equality, and without racism.  Rather than just insisting the other side change its behavior, they have to give serious consideration on how they are going to change their own behavior.

There is no way to guarantee that a solution is possible that will allow Israeli Jews to live in peace with their neighbors.  I certainly  hope there is.  However, it could turn out that the only way to bring peace is for the Jews to leave after they return power to everyone equally.  That will be an individual choice for each person to make.

I don’t expect a person to ever choose to commit suicide.  However a country is not a person, just as a corporation is not a person.  Disbanding a government (or a corporation) is not the same thing as a person committing suicide.

I know that there are some Israeli Jews that feel that having a homeland of their own is the only safe way to preserve their religion, their culture, and themselves. They feel that having an influential population of Jews living a good life in another country is not enough of a guarantee. However, this is a delusion.  If that influential population in another country is not enough, then having Israel is not enough either. If Israel didn’t have the backing of a huge foreign power, be it the USA or some other power that may come into being, then there is little safety in Israel.  At some point you have to face facts no matter what miracles you want to believe in if you truly don’t want individual people to have to commit to a policy that leads to suicide.

I think history shows that no society or culture will survive forever without change.  People have to be wise on how to manage change, but change will come no matter what you do.  Sometimes you have a choice, and sometimes you don’t.  Managing change is the process of preserving as much choice as you can.

I don’t see Israel’s behavior as doing as good a job as possible in managing its change.

The Real News Network has the final segment of the interview with Sher Hever, An Occupier’s Peace or a Just Peace – Shir Hever on Reality Asserts Itself (4/4).

HEVER: Exactly. Yeah. It cannot be a Jewish state. It’s going to be–I mean, even if there will be a separate Palestinian state according to what we call the two-state solution, then the battle will continue. The struggle for equal rights in Israel will continue, because Israel cannot be a Jewish state; it has to be a state for all its citizens, one way or another. And the way that this defeat comes, it comes very suddenly. And, of course, the model is South Africa, where one week before apartheid collapsed, 90 percent of white people in South Africa supported apartheid. One week after apartheid collapsed, they all say we were always against it. And the Israeli minister of justice, Tzipi Livni, just said a couple of weeks ago, in response to the BDS movement, she said, I went to South Africa and spoke to some Jewish people there about their experiences from this era of the fall of apartheid, and the main thing they told me is it came unexpectedly, it came suddenly. There is a moment in which you lose courage, you lose your faith that you can continue to repress other people forever. And that moment may not be as far as we believe. I’m hopeful.

JAY: I think you would–personally, you’d have to see some pretty serious revolutions in the Arab world, which is not out of the question. But if Israel was then looking at revolutionary progressive governments actually willing to do more than lip service in support of the Palestinians, that might change the equation. But right now I can’t see it. With the current Arab regimes, Israel does not have much to fear

This interview is very valuable to watch, so I don’t want my following comments to dissuade you from watching it. I make these comments only because I think that The Real News Network has the opportunity to do a much better job than it is doing with these kinds of interviews.

Once again, we have an interviewee desperately trying to answer the deeper question, but Paul Jay seems to be more interested in convincing the interviewee of Paul Jay’s point. Paul should get himself interviewed so he can make the points he wants to make. Then, when an interviewee is about to make some profound statement Paul won’t have to try to switch the topic back to what he wants said in the interview.

There were so many times when Paul could have asked follow up questions on Sher’s train of thought that might have led to some profound insights for Paul, but more importantly, for the rest of us. It is such a shame that he missed giving us those opportunities.

I hope that people at The Real News Network will review this last segment to see all the missed opportunities that I saw. If the people there cannot see the missed opportunities, they need to keep looking for someone who is able to see what I saw.

The Moyers & Company web site has the article An Iraqi Perspective: How America’s Destruction of Iraqi Society Led to Today’s Chaos.  I have Elizabeth St John to thank for posting this on her Facebook page.  Below is a short excerpt to give you the gist.  You have to read the interview to see the justification for this.

Sect wasn’t really a part of the national consciousness. I was born in Iraq and I’d never in my life been asked if I was a Sunni or a Shiite. And I didn’t know who among my relatives or neighbors or co-workers or colleagues at school were Sunnis or Shiites, because it wasn’t an issue. It’s not that people were tolerant toward each other — they weren’t aware of sectarian backgrounds. It’s similar to some areas in the US where you don’t necessarily know what Christian sect your friends belong to. You might know, or you might not know.

That was before the US intervention. The US destroyed that Iraqi national identity and replaced it with sectarian and ethnic identities after 2003. I don’t think this is something that many Iraqis argue about, because you can trace the beginning of this sectarian strife that is destroying the country, and it clearly began with the US invasion and occupation.

Wow, this is mind-boggling.  I didn’t realize how much of this sectarian strife originated from US prejudices that we foisted on the Iraqis.  Separating the country into regions for each part of Iraq society seemed to me to be an adaptation to their situation, when in fact it was an adaptation to fit our prejudices.

Here I thought I was being understanding of the situation by thinking that I could understand why the Shiites were taking such a hard stance against the Sunnis because of what the Sunni minority did under Saddam Husein.  According to the Iraqi native in the in the interview, this “understanding” is a figment of my imagination (or the propaganda I have been fed).

I was contemplating an alternative to beating and torturing unaccompanied immigrant children as a way to discourage such immigration.  I had the idea that if we could at least stop making their home countries impossible to live in with our forced trade agreements, that might go a long way.

Rather than write my own diatribe, I went looking for an article to make my point.

Counterpunch has the story How Population Growth, “Free Trade,” and Inequality Produced a Calamity on the Border.

Finally, President Obama, instead of seeking to spend $4 billion on additional border security measures, should figure out how that same money can be used to develop and bolster the economies where the migrant kids actually are born. In Central America, a few billion dollars is real money and wisely spend it could actually transform these nations in tangibly beneficial ways. Flourishing economies and reliable sources of employment would reduce local rates of crime and despair and keep families rooted and together. Rather than gawk and squawk over a border crisis, we should all be working to ensure that every child in the hemisphere has a place right at home.

Who could possibly have foreseen that enhancing US corporate profits in Latin America at the expense of the poor in those countries and in ours could possibly have any unintended consequences?  Well, of course, I suppose that it could be these consequences were not unintended.

The Miami Herald has the story Expansion of ‘secret’ facility in Iraq suggests closer U.S.-Kurd ties by Mitchell Prothero McClatchy Foreign Staff.

IRBIL, Iraq — A supposedly secret but locally well-known CIA station on the outskirts of Irbil’s airport is undergoing rapid expansion as the United States considers whether to engage in a war against Islamist militants who’ve seized control of half of Iraq in the past month
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…said one Western logistics contractor who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he’d signed nondisclosure agreements with the U.S. government on the matter

The story is, no doubt, worthwhile to read.  I included the last part of the excerpt for the delicious irony.  At least they did not say that this contractor who violated the nondisclosure agreement that he signed with the US government is highly trustworthy.

If you think that the feelings of the majority of Americans will have anything to do with the decision on whether or not to get into the war in alliance with the Kurds, then you are a real optimist.

The Real News Network has interview Israel, World Capital of Homeland Security Industries – Shir Hever on Reality Asserts Itself (3/4).

So, actually, Israel is now the world capital of homeland security industries. They’re selling security cameras, surveillance equipments, drones, riot gear. That is the sort of technology that governments need in order to control their citizens. And it comes not just with the actual technology; it comes also with an ideology. It comes with the ideology that, look what Israel is doing, how Israel is controlling Palestinians and every aspect of their lives, and decides who can pass and who gets a permit and so on, and uses this technology to leave Palestinians no option to resist, and why don’t we sell that to other governments around the world. For example, Brazil bought a lot of that technology in order to repress the favelas in preparation for the World Cup. We see that in India, not just in the area of Kashmir, but mainly there along the border with Pakistan, and in East Europe. And we also see that with extreme-right governments, like Berlusconi in Italy that was worried about asylum-seekers coming from Africa, and using Israeli drones and Israeli technology to try to block that, but also not just buying the technology, but also buying the legitimacy, saying Israel is a wonderful country. Berlusconi was a big pro-Israeli spokesman. And if Israel is allowed to do it, we can do it too.

How many times has it been said and how many times have you thought that the solution to our airport security problems would be to follow the Israeli example? Surely they know how to enforce security with all the practice they have had.

This interview gives you some insight into the danger of getting our “wish”. How well controlled do you want to be as a citizen in a democracy? At what point does being this controlled put an end to the idea of democracy? I am not suggesting that these are easy questions to answer.

The Institute For New Economic Thinking has published the interesting rant Without fair elections and a viable legislative process at federal and state levels, the republic no longer exists.

Congress: Oligarchy has defeated the very idea of a legislative process. The Republican Party is the blunt tool of Oligarchy in the United States, Oligarchy’s hammer, but not for the purpose of achieving Republican goals. Oligarchy’s goal is to deadlock federal lawmaking bodies into permanent dysfunction and create a power vacuum that only Oligarchy can fill. Its method has proved foolproof: Bankroll the GOP’s extremists and ignoramuses; count on them to freeze the political process. Also, count on Democrats and the media to obsess about the so-called issues and ignore the fundamental shift in the power structure that Oligarchy has, in large part, achieved. Absent a surge of public participation (not likely, but not impossible), the collapse of our national legislative process has probably reached the point of no return: the point at which our national problems can no longer be redressed through traditional politics.

The real reason why I note this item is for the Thomas Pynchon  quote near the end.

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.

Just about every news story in the Lame Stream media is a case of getting you to ask the wrong questions.