by Stephen Lendman

Populism isn't a Beltway attribute. Or good faith. Or supporting government of, by and for everyone equitably and fairly.

Monied interests run America. Republicans and Democrats serve at their discretion. They constitute duopoly power. They're two sides of the same coin. On major issues mattering most, not a dime's worth of difference separates them.

In September 2010, Obama appointed then Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren as interim Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (BCFP) head until a permanent director was named.

Appointing her let the agency begin operating without going through a potentially contentious Senate confirmation battle.

She became an assistant to the president and advisor to then Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

In July 2011, former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray replaced her. It didn't matter. BCFP is largely toothless.

It's nominally charged with overseeing banking practices with regard to credit cards, mortgages, payday loans, student loans, and other consumer financial products.

It provides consumer-friendly cover for ineffective Dodd-Frank legislation. Enactment did nothing to curtail practices responsible for 2008 financial crisis conditions.

Warren is no consumer rights champion. She did nothing to urge prosecution of Wall Street crooks. She's part of the problem, not the solution.

She's no threat to business as usual. Her so-called progressive credentials are fake.

They're based on occasional weak-kneed banking industry criticisms. They're too tepid to matter. Toothless best describes them.

She avoids criticizing appalling administration policies. Its war on humanity doesn't bother her.

Nor protracted Main Street Depression conditions. Nor Obama's homeland police state apparatus.

Nor Israel's genocidal Operation Protective Edge. More on this below.

She "came up the hard way," she says. She claims her life's work is fighting for middle class families. Her position on key issues belies her high-minded rhetoric.

At age 16, she was an Oklahoma state champion debater. She's a University of Houston and Rutgers Law School graduate. She was editor of its Law Review.

She taught law at Rutgers, the University of Michigan, the University of Houston Law Center, the University of Texas School of Law, and University of Pennsylvania's School of Law.

In 1992, she became Harvard Law School's Gottlieb Professor of Law.

She's a former FDIC Committee on Economic Inclusion and Executive Council of the National Bankruptcy Conference member.

She served as an American Law Institute vice-president. She was chief advisor to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission.

She chaired the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Her writings include dozens of articles, six academic books and several best-selling ones.

In September 2011, she announced her senatorial candidacy. She challenged Republican incumbent Scott Brown.

On November 6, 2012, she became Massachusetts' first female senator. She holds Ted Kennedy's former seat.

She serves on the Committee on Aging, the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

She's touted as a potential 2016 presidential candidate. She says she has no plan to run.

During a late August town hall meeting, she defended the indefensible. She supports Israel's right bomb and shell hospitals, schools, mosques and residential neighborhoods.

She did so based on its spurious claim about targeting Hamas rockets inside or nearby.

"(W)hen Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they're using their civilian population to protect their military assets," she claimed.

"And I believe Israel has a right, at that point, to defend itself," she added.

She's mindless of well-planned preemptive Israeli aggression. She ludicrously claimed the "last thing Israel wants" is civilian casualties.

Targeting them is official Israeli policy. It's called Dahiya or the Dahiya Doctrine.

It's named after a Beirut suburb. Israeli forces attacked and destroyed it during their 2006 Lebanon war of aggression.

General Gadi Eizenkot is the most prominent Dahiya exponent. He explained it as follows, saying:

"We will apply disproportionate force at the heart of the enemy's weak spot (civilians) and cause great damage and destruction."

"From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages (towns or cities), they are military bases."

"This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved."

War without mercy is official Israeli policy. Civilians are targeted like combatants. Children are treated like adults. Women like men.

All Israeli wars are dirty ones. Rules of war don't matter. Or core international laws, norms and standards.

Warren defended the indefensible. Over 2,100 dead Palestinians don't matter.

The vast majority were civilians. They included over 550 children and hundreds of women.

Israel murdered 89 entire families in cold blood. Warren irresponsibly blames Hamas for Israeli crimes.

She justified premeditated aggression based on America's "very special relationship with Israel." It supports its killing machine.

Both nations partner in high crimes against peace. According to Warren:

"Israel lives in a very dangerous part of the world, and a part of the world where there aren't many liberal democracies and democracies that are controlled by the rule of law."

"And we very much need an ally in that part of the world."

Israel is no democracy. It never was. For sure not now under Netanyahu-led extremists.

Fascists best describes them. Palestinian lives don't matter. Or rule of law inviolability.

Or Israel murdering Palestinian journalists and medical workers. And killing children while they sleep.

And displacing almost one-third of Gaza's 1.7 million people. And leaving thousands of Palestinians homeless.

And hundreds of Gazan children orphaned. Who'll care for them with parents and for many extended families gone?

Who'll provide love and nurturing? Who'll comfort them in times of need?

Eleven-year-old Amir Hamad perhaps spoke for others saying he'd "rather be dead than without my mother and father."

They were home drinking coffee after breaking their Ramadan fast. An Israeli missile struck their house in northern Gaza.

"I saw them lying on the ground and knew immediately they were dead," said Amir.

He's the oldest of five children. "I'll look after my brothers and sisters," he said.

"But I'm scared because my parents are no longer here." Surviving family members include their grandmother and grandfather.

They'll cope best they can, they said. Eight-year-old Bisan Daher lost both parents and several brothers.

"We were all at home," she said. "We don't have anything to hide. No rockets. But they hit our house while we were all inside."

Bandaged from injuries she sustained, she said "(n)ow mum and dad and my brothers are in heaven."

"I really want to see (them) again." She's lucky to be alive. She was trapped under rubble for six hours.

Paramedics found her in time. She's traumatized by what happened. She can't sleep. She cries for what she misses most.

Gaza has only one orphanage. War left it overwhelmed. It hasn't the capacity or resources to cope.

Over 200 schools Israel damaged or destroyed can't open. Eight hospitals it targeted operate at below normal capacity.

Warren is like virtually all other Democrats and Republicans. Her Senate campaign web site called it "a moral duty imperative to support and defend Israel."

"(A)s a United States Senator, I will work to ensure Israel's security and success," she added. Washington's special relationship alone matters.

Both countries threaten world peace. Together they menace humanity.

James Petras once said "(t)he US-Israeli relationship is the first in modern history in which the imperial country covers up a deliberate major military assault by a supposed ally."

He referred to the 1967 USS Liberty attack. Israel bombed and strafed it. Dozens of US seamen were killed.

Around 170 were wounded. The vessel was heavily damaged. Israel got away with murder. It wasn't the first time or last.

Washington supports its worst crimes. Operation Protective Edge is the latest example. Bernie Sanders is another faux liberal.

He supports Israel's killing machine. He defends funding and arming it. On the one hand, he deplores targeting civilians.

On the other, It's OK "in a situation where Hamas is sending missiles into Israel (from) populated areas."

Except for farmland, Gaza is practically bereft of open spaces. It's heavily congested.

Hamas rockets are pinpricks compared to Israeli firepower. They respond to Israeli aggression. They're not launched preemptively.

Sanders claims he has no magic solution to end decades of conflict. He ignores the obvious.

Isolate Israel. Impose stiff sanctions. End America's special relationship once and for all.

End all US funding. arming and other support. Boycott all Israeli products. Cut off all Western investments.

What better way to target its killing machine. It's guilty of every high crime imaginable and then some.

It's high time that changed. It's time its culpable officials were held accountable.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

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