Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.
Path Is Sought for States to Escape Debt Burdens

This is an all out attack on public worker pensions. It was launched by Newt Gingrich and some rightwingers at the neocon Weekly Standard.

It is of course completely unnecessary to allow states go bankrupt. States have the power to make their inhabitants pay taxes. Increase state taxes, preferably on the rich, and there is not state debt problem. Simply not allowing states to go bankrupt, like it is today, will take care of that as increasing taxes will soon be the only alternative to them.

The New York Times writers are of course smugly oblivious to that strange concept.

Now guess what Obama's position will be on this.

Is it really necessary for newspapers to induce cognitive dissonance?

Can't they have Fred Hiatt read the Washington Post before writing for it?

And yes, I know all this human rights talk by Obama, Hiatt or The Washington Post is just for show. But even a show needs some consistency.

Friendly fire incidents are somewhat normal for troops in combat. Shit happens. But this incomplete list seems to show two distinct issues. "Western" troops getting killed by Afghan police and military personal in direct confrontation over personal issues while Afghan security personal is getting killed in botched air attacks.

Personal honor issues versus careless brute force application. A difference?

Afghan soldier kills Italian counterpart in Badghis, Jan 19 2011

U.S. marine kills Afghan policeman after dispute, Jan 15 2011

Three Afghan police killed in Nato air strike, Jan 10 2011

NATO air strike kills 4 Afghan soldiers: ministry, Dec 16 2010

Another ‘Afghan Army Soldier’ Kills ISAF Troops, Dec 7 2010

Afghan Policeman Kills 6 NATO Troops, Nov 29 2010

US soldier kills Afghan policeman, Nov 11 2010

Afghan soldier turns weapon on American troops, kills 2, Nov 6 2010

Cont. reading: Blue On Blue In Afghanistan

Max Boot is lauding U.S. Marines in Helmand province, Afghanistan:

It is impossible to offer enough praise or admiration for the grueling, dangerous patrols that these leathernecks are undertaking day in, day out. The Greatest Generation had nothing on them in terms of heroism — especially when one considers that all the Marines in Sangin are volunteers.

One problem with such over the top idolization is that the situation Boot refers to would not have happened if the Marines had not screwed up in the first place.

The NYT piece Boot references says:

Cont. reading: Max Boot Thinks Correcting An Obvious Error is Heroism

Just back from some troubled traveling and no time yet to post.

A question though: Why did Obama allow Baby Doc to come back to Haiti?

Use as open thread …

This is the village Tarok Kolachie in Arghandab River Valley before it was liberated by the U.S. military.

See the same village, now liberated, below the fold.

Cont. reading: The Liberation Of Afghan Villages

With regard to U.S. sanctions on gasoline on Iran:

Obama said the new sanctions were the toughest ever passed by the U.S. Congress and would make it harder for Iran to buy refined petroleum as well as goods and services to modernize its oil and natural gas sector, the mainstay of its economy.
Obama says new U.S. sanctions on Iran toughest ever, Reuters, July2 2010

With regard to Iran’s sanctions on gasoline exports on U.S.-Afghanistan:

QUESTION: Some kind of economic tension is brewing up between Afghanistan and Iran. Iran has blocked the supply of gas to Afghanistan, which has led to increasing gas prices and shortages of gas in Afghanistan. What do you have to say about that – on that?

MR. CROWLEY: I mean, we are watching closely that development. Energy is a critical resource to any country and any economy, and it should be available at whatever the appropriate market price is.
Daily Press Briefing, Department of State, January 12 2011

h/t Ali Gharib

Question: What will the U.S. say when Iran is successful with its current engineering of a democratic(!) regime change in Lebanon?

Via the Angry Arab, a piece in the Belfast Telegraph with a publishing date of Monday, 10 January 2011 and with recent comments is headlined: US forced to import bullets from Israel as troops use 250,000 for every rebel killed

Hmm … I have read such some time ago …

Search, search, … tada! The Independent, Sunday, 25 September 2005(!): US forced to import bullets from Israel as troops use 250,000 for every rebel killed

Same article.

So why is the Belfast Telegraph republishing as 'news' a five plus year old Independent piece???

A new crisis has grown up in Lebanon and is about to explode. To understand what is going on we will have to recap some recent history.

In 2005 the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, a Saudi-Lebanese building magnate and politician who plundered the Lebanese while rebuilding Beirut at their cost and to his benefit, was assassinated with a car bomb explosion. Following that the Bush administration managed to install a UN tribunal to investigate the assassination.

The German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who earlier had been handy in manipulating other issues the empire was interested in, was installed as commissioner to investigate the case. His organization leaked a lot of rumors and false details. Eventually Mehlis accused Syria on the basis of now retracted false and bought witnesses and imprisoned for several years four Syria-friendly Lebanese officers. For lack of any evidence against them and Syria Mehlis successor Bramerz later set the officers free.

By that time there was less interest in Washington and Tel Aviv to accuse Syria and more interest to somehow get Hizbullah, the Shia resistance and political movement which had kicked the Israeli occupation out of South Lebanon and won a short war against it in 2006. In May 2009 a, likely Israeli, source leaked a rumor to the German news weekly Der Spiegel that the tribunal will implicate high ranking Hizbullah members in the Hariri assassination.

Hizbullah's chief Nasrallah is keen to not have is movement accused. After rumors of a tribunal indictment grew, he convened a big rally and provided some evidence, including captured Israeli drone videos, that pointed to an Israeli involvement in the Hariri killing.

Lebanon is ruled by a unity government which includes all major religious sects within two blocks. Hariri's son Saad, a Sunni, is the prime minister and with some Christian and other groups makes up the Saudi and U.S. supported "March 14" alliance. The Shia Hezbollah and the Christian group of former general Aoun are the Syrian supported "March 8" block which also holds cabinet seats.

A tribunal indictment of Hizbullah could lead to a new civil war in Lebanon. While the U.S. and Israel would probably favor such a war, the Lebanese, the Syrians and the Saudis, who have invested heavily in Lebanon, would rather prefer peace. Accordingly there have been talks between Syria and the Saudis to avoid a conflict.

The mechanism to do so would be a Lebanese cabinet decision to stop to pay for the tribunal and to preemptively reject its findings.

Yesterday the March 8 block announced that it would leave the cabinet, and thereby illegitimize the Lebanese government, if Hariri junior does not agree to that solution. But it seems that USisrael vetoed this outcome and Washington pressed Hariri junior, who was in Washington today, not to agree to any move against the tribunal.

After Hariri's meeting with Obama 11 ministers in the Lebanese cabinet have resigned and the government is no longer able to make any decision.

So how will this end?

The well informed Friday Lunch Club guesses:

After some tractions, we are headed to a government of 'One Color' headed by a Sunni 'hardliner' from the shelved ranks of the Opposition! We do not foresee any trouble on the ground, because all indications do point to a state of 'panic within the ranks of March 14'. However, we are told by Senior Opposition figure &(regional representatives) that should they 'squirm', the riposte is ready.

I'd like that outcome, but there are some possible violent spoilers the U.S. and/or Israel could use to prevent it.

In an MIT lecture on The Financial Crisis, the Recession, and the American Political Economy, Charles Ferguson, author of the documentary Inside Job, describes the U.S. political system as follows:

• The two parties have formed a duopoly in which both parties have agreed to agree on money issues and to disagree on social issues.
• Both parties serve the financial sector and the wealthy. Thus they agree on (de-regulation) / (non-)enforcement / (no )criminal prosecution for the financial sector, as well as on antitrust, campaign financing and tax policies.
• Both parties agree to retain their base through conflict over social policy: Religion, education, evolution/creationism, gay rights, abortion, environment, war, terrorism.
• The sustainability of the duopoly depends upon barriers to entry against newcomers via ballot qualification,  redistricting/gerrymendering, campaign and advertisement costs, lack of parliamentary system and lack of ranked-order voting.

While I agree on this 'duopoly' description, Ferguson has a few points wrong.

War and terrorism are no longer social issues but are about money making as well as about keeping potential competitors away from the system. Therefore both parties agree on keeping the wars going and on keeping the terrorism bogeyman alive.

That a parliamentary system instead of a presidential one is better in keeping the overwhelming influence of the financial sector and the wealthy away is disproved by the United Kingdom. In economic matters it works just the same way as the United States with the same catastrophic results. Even a parliamentary system like Germany's, which allows new parties to grow and to catch decent shares of votes (the Greens, the Left), is not that much different. After a few years the new parties simply get cooped by the system be that by bribes or other inducement.

A solution could come from a constitution and the judiciary. But at least in the case of the U.S., the judiciary has been bought too.

A widely known and successful alternative system in a different country or bloc of countries could create public demand to adjust the duopoly system and the reign of money. The existence of the example of the Soviet bloc was the reason for some decent social-democratic policies in Western Europe after WWII. The elimination of that example and competition moved the "western" systems to the right.

There are currently three areas where a new better system could grow and set an example which would necessitate the "western" model to be adjusted to better care for its people. One is the bloc of social-democracies in South America. One is the Confucian system in China and potential third candidate could  be a system based on Islam.

How much the-powers-that-be of the current "western" systems fear the competition of these other social-system can probably be evaluated by measuring the amount of energy they put into fighting each of them.

A few links and open thread …

The Myth of Talqaeda – Alex Strick van Linschoten/Current Intelligence

An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban / Al-Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010 – A new book out in April by Alex and Felix, the editors of Zaeef's 'My Life with the Taliban'

The Way Out of Afghanistan – Ahmed Rashid/NYRB

Karzai’s view of the world has undergone a dramatic change and he is bitterly critical of the West and everything it has failed to do in the past nine years. He no longer supports the “war on terror” as defined by Washington, and he sees Petraeus’s surge as unhelpful because it relies too much on body counts of dead Taliban, often killed by US drones with civilian casualties that are resented deeply, and on nighttime raids by US special forces. The alternative, says Karzai, is to seek help from nearby countries like Pakistan and Iran, which he thinks could help him talk to the Taliban and end the war.

Aftermath: Lebanon, May 2008 – Nir Rosen/Current Intelligence

Israel and the Iranian Nuclear Timetable – Paul Pillar/National Interest

Apocalypse Now? Will The Massachusetts Ibanez Case Unravel Widespread Irregularities In The Residential Securitized Mortgage Market? – The Big Picture

Since July 2010 the U.S. is sanctioning companies which sell gasoline to Iran. Iran responded to the long announced sanctions by increasing its gasoline production capacity by some 50% and by lowering end user subsidies. Iran's production capacity will soon be 75 million liters per day while consumption has fallen by 13% and is now about 55 million liters per day. That leaves plenty of reserves and capacity for exports.

In May 2010 Iran still imported some 14 million liters per day. That fell to some 8 million liters per day in July after the U.S. sanction were activated, now Iran is a gasoline exporter. The U.S. gasoline sanctions against Iran failed!

As an exporter of gasoline Iran can now itself play the sanctions game and put pressure on the U.S. via its client state Afghanistan:

The price of fuel has risen sharply in parts of Afghanistan as an Iranian-imposed slowdown on tanker traffic at key border crossings has stretched into its second month, Afghan officials say.
…
Hundreds of fuel tankers are stranded at the country’s main border crossings with Iran, stopped by Iranian border agents, and the number making it across has slowed to a trickle. About 40 tankers a day are crossing the border at Herat, Farah and Nimruz Provinces, compared with 250 to 330 a day before, according to commerce and customs officials.

Those 300 tankers per day would carry about 6 million liters per day. About 40% of Afghanistan's total civil fuel imports comes from Iran and it is mostly consumed in the south. Officially Iran is concerned that part of that fuel is going to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It may indeed well be that some of that fuel is going to the U.S. military, but that amount would be too small an amount to be relevant.

Cont. reading: Iran’s Gasoline Sanctions On U.S.-Afghanistan

My attempt of Verfremdung in the last post was a not-so-good try to communicate my thoughts. So please let me try to express more clearly the relation I see between the assassination attempt against "liberal" U.S. Rep. Giffords and the successful one against the Pakistani "liberal" Salmaan Taseer.

Londonstani, blogging at Abu Muqawawa, knows Pakistan and the area quite well. I think his analysis of the attack on Taseer somewhat fits to the attack on Giffords:

The rich – the ones who were able to afford the opportunity – often do not share any public space with the poor. The chai khaane (tea houses) are similar to Arab qahwas in that they both serve hot caffeinated beverages. The local area's wealthy and not-so wealthy do not sit in corner cafes reading the same newspaper. In fact, often, the wealthy and poor read newspapers in different languages; the English ones being much more balanced and sophisticated than the Urdu ones. With very few reference points in common; to the wealthy, the poor are to be mistrusted. To the poor, the wealthy (the "elites") are practically aliens.
…
Those "elites" who don't reflect "real" Pakistani/Muslim values are portrayed in the argument as sellouts and traitors. A much cleverer person than I (Ms Henley-on-Thames) suggested this was economic resentment manifesting itself as cultural resentment. The wealthy in Pakistan, it seems, drew up the drawbridge on the rest of the country many years ago, but in the process left themselves outnumbered and at risk of being overwhelmed.

Doesn't that analysis of the Pakistani society also fit to the United States? Is Lloyd C, Blankfein watching Fox News or does he goes to a local bar? I don't think so.

Add to that commentator Omar at Sepoy's Chapati Mystery blog who says about Pakistan:

There are three sources of violence: one is the element of violence seen in every third world country where a small corrupt elite lords it over the mass of the people. Second is the added layer of violence caused by Islamist fanatics in many different Muslim countries because their ideal society is incompatible with current worldwide trends. The third is absolutely unique to our nation: it is the army’s own arming and training and financing and ideologically supporting the most fanatical and vicious elements in the country in some insane scheme to wrest Kashmir from India and project power into Afghanistan and beyond.

Just replace Islamist fanatics with Evangelical fanatics and the Pakistani army with the U.S. military industrial complex and you end up with just the same.

Two countries where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Two countries where the economic elite only cares for itself, where religious fanatics have free realm and where the military is out of bounce and defines its own lunatic purpose. Such countries seem to breed violence, externally but also internally.

Where is the difference between Pakistan and the United States in that? Is there any?

Editorial published in Dawn, Jan. 11, 2011

IT'S EASY to blame America's deepening crisis on its feckless civilian government. President Barack Hussein Obama and his Democratic Party have been ineffectual in managing the country's economy, slow in responding to disasters like last summer's oil spill and unable to attack extremist sanctuaries as the United States has been seeking for years. Having lost its majority in parliament, the Obama government looks as if it may be beyond rescue.

Yet the assassination last week of one of Mr. Obama's allies, Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was a reminder that America is engaged in a fateful civil war between democratic moderates and extremists – and that the current government is the most reliably liberal force. Mrs. Giffords was an outspoken defender of secular values who had been campaigning to reform America's most odious laws against health care.

There are many good reasons for frustration with Mr. Obama, both among Americans and among foreign allies. But this week's events make plain – if it were not clear enough already – that there is little choice other than to try to support and strengthen his government. Mr. Obama's government needs to implement economic reforms, sponsor development in areas where extremism breeds, and push the Army to go after them. But for now, the priority should be its survival.

Adopted from: Death of a liberal in Pakistan, Editorial, WaPo, Jan. 6, 2011

On December 21 General Petraeus launched a trial balloon via the New York Times. As his campaign in Afghanistan is failing he presented the great idea to extend the ground war into neighboring Pakistan.

From today's Washington Post we learn that this plan, for now, has thankfully been rejected in favor of more political engagement:

The strategy, determined in last month's White House Afghanistan war review, amounts to an intensifying of existing efforts to overcome widespread suspicion and anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, and build trust and stability.

President Obama and his top national security aides rejected proposals, made by some military commanders and intelligence officials who have lost patience with Pakistan, to allow U.S. ground forces to conduct targeted raids against insurgent safe havens, officials said. They concluded that the United States can ill afford to threaten or further alienate a precarious, nuclear-armed country whose cooperation is essential to the administration on several fronts.

It is unclear from the article what the actual strategy is supposed to be. Biden is flying to Pakistan but what he is supposed to deliver is unclear. It sounds a bit like muddling through like before until something happens or not:

Beginning with Biden's visit, the time may be ripe for a frank exchange of views and priorities between the two sides, another administration official said. The Pakistanis "understand that Afghanistan-Pakistan has become the single most important foreign policy issue to the United States, and their cachet has gone up." But they also realize that they may have reached the point of maximum leverage, this official said, "and things about their region are going to change one way or the other" in the near future, as Congress and the American public grow increasingly disillusioned with the war and a timeline for military withdrawal is set.

"Something is going to give," he said. "There is going to be an end-game scenario and they're trying to guess where we're heading."

There have already been many "frank exchanges" and yes, the Pakistanis, especially General Kiyani, have been asking for a end-game scenario:

"Kayani wants to talk about the end state in South Asia," said one of several Obama administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive relationship. U.S. generals, the official said, "want to talk about the next drone attacks."

The problem is that the U.S. still does not have a strategy and has no idea what it wants. Waiting until "something is going to give" is neither a strategy nor an end-game.

Repeating what was done before, talking tough with Pakistan, they look at the U.S. logistic lines and laugh about it, and tinkering at the edges of the economic aid policies will change nothing. While it has rejected Petraeus lunatic plans, the White House seems still to be under influence of military operational thinking instead of developing some sane and realistic policy to end the Afghanistan conflict.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court had a great day today. It confirmed that a bank which wants to foreclose on a house has to have proper documentation that shows it has the right to do so. What a novel concept!

During the housing boom mortgages were sold, sold again, bundled up and put in some trust and then sold piecemeal to some dumb investors. Along the chain the proper handling of the ownership documentation was often not done or done in ways that are not legally binding.

Now when the investors, or the servicer of the trust in the name of the investors, want to foreclose on a property because the mortgage is not getting paid back, they find that they are lacking the documentation that they own the borrowers IOU paper, the note, and the deed, the mortgage, on the house.

Some kangaroo foreclosure courts, especially in Florida, have carelessly allowed foreclosures to proceed despite such improper behavior and despite doubts of who actually owns the loan. The Massachusetts Supreme Court today set the old new standard. Unless you prove that you have the proper documentation and you can not foreclose.

The inproper documentation issue may be curable in cases where a chain of ownership can be reconstructed and documented. But many of the original originators of those mortgages do no longer exist. Others have changed ownership. There is also the small issue that the relevant New York trust law does not allow for late assignements or transfers of the relvant papers to the trusts.

This will create a shit-storm in the banking system. Many investors will now try to put the loans back to the banks that sold them. They likely have a right to do so as the contracts assured them that the loans were correctly owned, which seems not to be the case.

This is a several hundred billion must-buy-back problem the banks who bundled and sold the mortgages have. There is likely more money to pay for the buy-backs than the capital of the banks involved in this.

Get ready for the big bank rescue part II, or if the Republicans prevent that, the big banking bust that may actually be needed to clean up the banking system.

For more details check Yves Smith's blog. She has been all over the issues for month and years and now has a copy of the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision.

It may be that this is the sign of an early renaissance, a rebirth, of the rule of law. That would be nice. It has been thouroughly missed.

Secretary of Defense Gates is pulling a major stunt by selling a smaller growth in the defense budget as a spending cut. The U.S. media are all too willing to further such propaganda. Headlines the New York Times: Pentagon Seeks Biggest Military Cuts Since Before 9/11.

Please notice that there has not been any cut at all in the defense budget "since before 9/11". The "biggest cut since" rhetoric is thereby nonsense. But its is even worse. There is no cut at all.

The White House ordered the Pentagon to squeeze almost all growth from its spending over the next five years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.

To lower the rate of growth is not a cut at all. Still, the article uses "cut" ten times. But instead of cutting Gates will increase defense spending:

The Pentagon’s proposed operating budget for 2012 is expected to be about $553 billion, which would still reflect real growth, even though it is $13 billion less than expected. The Pentagon budget will then begin a decline in its rate of growth for two years, and stay flat — growing only to match inflation — for the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years. (The Pentagon operating budget is separate from a fund that finances the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.)

Additionally to this growth in the defense budget, the separate budgets for veteran care, nuclear weapons and the ongoing wars will also increase.

The whole thing is thereby just the dumbest of propaganda stunt. But predictably the voters will fall for it. The Republican majority in the House will protest against these "cuts" and eliminate some of them. The rhetoric will thereby be used to further grow the budget. And the media by propagandizing Gates moves will again have failed in their basic duty.

An intercession, a request to one's god to do something, is certainly not direct action. Asking one's god for another persons health is different from performing open heart surgery on that person. Intercessions are done daily, all over the world, without harming anyone. They are, by definition, spiritual.

But that is something U.S. diplomats in Erbil do not understand. In an embassy cable the diplomats write:

For a four-week period after the Israeli actions against Gaza commenced, certain religious leaders in the Kurdistan Region used their Friday sermons to exhort their congregations to acts of violence against Jews, Israel and the supporters of Israel.

What acts of violence were requested by these religious leaders?

Did they ask their congregations to bomb Israel like Israel bombed Gaza? Did they incite them to personally fight any Jew? Did they ask for suicide bomber volunteers? No. They did nothing like that.

On December 5 an Imam prayed for the Palestinian people and asked God to rain his anger at the Jewish people and destroy them. On December 5, at another mosque, the congregation was prompted to pray that God would destroy Israel and kill all the Jewish people. On January 16 an Imam told his followers "we should pray that God will destroy all the Jewish people." During his prayer, he asked God to kill the Jews one by one until none of them was left alive. He also prayed that God would "kill those who support the country of Israel as well."

An evangelical prayer leader asking his congregation to pray for the soon arrival of the end of times is not exhorting to acts of violence. A shia prayer leader asking his congregation to pray for the soon arrival of the Mahdi is not exhorting to acts of violence. A catholic priest asking to pray to god for the punishment of sinners is not exhorting acts of violence.

But the requests of the Kurdish Imams to pray for god to do something about Israel were taken as dangerous and the U.S. diplomats immediately contacted three different Kurdish ministries to have the Imams silenced. The puppets followed through and the Imams were forbidden to preach.

Such suppression of quite moderate expression of outrage, by requesting prayers for god to act rather than to call for direct action, will likely further more extreme positions and will push the more enraged believers into the political underground.

It is stupid and a mistake. That U.S. diplomats, especially in the Middle East, are unable to understand the  basic concept of intercession which is used in most religions is a disgrace. Or maybe not. Maybe they need to do so to keep the "war of terror" alive.

The Columbia Journalism Review has a recommendable piece about journalism in Afghanistan. Crossfire in Kandahar. Part of it is a tale of a journalist, Mohammad Nader, captured and interrogated by the U.S. military seemingly for talking on the phone to a Taliban spokesperson. The journalist is raided from his home at night, brought into a prison and gets interrogate every few hours.

Nader looked forward to the interrogations. His questioners seemed like good people, he told me, and the translators they worked with were particularly adept. The sessions also gave him an excuse to leave his cell, a dark room about ten feet long and eight feet wide. The cell disturbed him. Pictures occasionally appeared on the wall. Nader described them as photographs projected from somewhere else by means of a light beam or laser. One image showed a person with two broken legs. Later, a picture of a bloodstain appeared on the wall. Nader wondered if it was the blood of the prisoner who had occupied the cell before him. Another picture showed two dogs fighting. The stomach of one of the dogs was ripped open and puppies spilled out. Nader tried not to look at the images, lest he grow frightened. The doctor gave him sleeping pills, but he spent his three nights in NATO custody wide awake. Unfamiliar music played, and he could hear the voices of children calling, “Baba, baba!”—the Afghan word for father. He was convinced these were the voices of his own children, recorded somehow through his phone or another device the Americans had planted in his house.

Seeing pictures on the wall and hearing voices would be typical for a person who is in solitary confinement for some longer time. But Nader is only there for three days. He is an experienced cameraman and knows about pictures.

Could such things as projected pictures an the prison cell wall be some new method to put people "off balance" before interrogations? This seems like some "simulation" of the effects of solitary confinement in the hope of inducing the same helplessness and mental disturbance that solitary confinement induces. As such I could certainly be defined as torture.

The CJR writer later questions a high ranking U.S. press officer about this.

He declined to comment on Nader’s account of the disturbing pictures projected on the wall of his cell, except to say that NATO forces abide by the Geneva Conventions and by detention rules laid down in a U. S. Army field manual.

As we know the U.S. always says that it abides by the rules, even while it breaks them.

Nader's story sounds quite believable and, as we know, military interrogators have always been creative in their methods. But such methods are unlikely to be secret for long. Such things come home to roost. At latest when their use spills over into the United States as it inevitable will. Therefore, I believe, we will hear much more of this new torture method. Hopefully before someone becomes insane over seeing pictures on a prison wall.

Israeli officials demand bribes to let U.S. products through the Karni crossing into Gaza. A U.S. embassy cable from Tel Aviv, published by the Norwegian paper Aftenposten, explains how the system works:

The normal cost of shipping cargo is USD 600-650 to transport a load from the West Bank or the port of Ashdod to Karni and, according to Israeli Airports Authority (IAA, which manages Karni terminal) Deputy Director General Yoram Shapira, the standard processing fee at Karni is NIS 370 (USD 82) for a full trailer, NIS 350 (USD 78) for a semi-trailer, and NIS 250 (USD 56) for a single trailer. Coca Cola distributor Joerg Hartmann (strictly protect) claimed to econoff that the cost of guaranteeing that one,s shipment will cross into Gaza on a certain day increases sharply after a long closure, while the price goes down after the terminal has experienced a long period without any closures. Hartmann also alleged that he has been asked to pay as much as NIS 13,000-15,000 (USD 2,889-USD 3,333) per truckload, which includes a flat fee plus an additional two shekels per case charge, which is not recorded on the invoice. The AmCit Westinghouse general manager supplied FCS with invoices where he was charged NIS 14,000 and NIS 28,000 (USD 3,111 and USD 6,222) per truckload. Caterpillar alleges that it was asked to pay NIS 12,000 (USD 2,667) to move two small caterpillar generators through the passage, which the company refused to pay.

The usual tribal rules apply and Israeli companies therefore have to pay much lower bribes.

What does one get for $3,000 payment to move cargo? Hartmann said that for that price, your truck is promised the first place in line or a spot near the head of the so-called "Israeli line" which does move. Hartmann said that usually two or three lines at Karni are reserved for Israeli companies/shippers, which he speculated pay a much lower amount to get their products across the border. These lines process transfers much more rapidly than the other lines at Karni.

One really wonders. Is there a limit of embarrassment and disgrace the U.S. is willing to take from its "ally"?