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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (78857)	1/19/2009 9:42:43 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 89467

Let's all wait for the international outcry, shall we? 'Hamas torturing Fatah members in Gaza' By KHALED ABU TOAMEH Hamas militiamen have rounded up hundreds of Fatah activists on suspicion of "collaboration" with Israel during Operation Cast Lead, Fatah members in the Gaza Strip told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. They said the Hamas crackdown on Fatah intensified after the cease-fire went into effect early Sunday morning. The Fatah members and eyewitnesses said the detainees were being held in school buildings and hospitals that Hamas had turned into make-shift interrogation centers. Hamas has also renewed house arrest orders that were issued against thousands of Fatah officials and activists in the Gaza Strip shortly after the military operation started. A Fatah official in Ramallah told the Post that at least 100 of his men had been killed or wounded as a result of the massive Hamas crackdown. Some had been brutally tortured, he added. The official said that the perpetrators belonged to Hamas's armed wing, Izaddin Kassam, and to the movement's Internal Security Force. According to the official, at least three of the detainees had their eyes put out by their interrogators, who accused them of providing Israel with wartime information about the location of Hamas militiamen and officials. A number of Hamas leaders and spokesmen have claimed in the past few days that Fatah members in the Gaza Strip had been spying on their movement and passing the information to Israel. Two Hamas officials, Salah Bardaweel and Fawzi Barhoum, accused Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his "spies" in the Gaza Strip of tipping off the Israelis about the movements of slain Hamas interior minister Said Siam, who was killed in an IAF strike on his brother's home in Gaza City last week. The Fatah official in Ramallah said that, apart from being baseless, the allegations were aimed at paving the way for a ruthless Hamas attack on Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip. "They were afraid to confront the Israeli army and many Hamas militiamen even ran away during the fighting," he said. "Hamas is now venting its anger and frustration against our Fatah members there." Eyewitnesses said that Hamas militiamen had turned a number of hospitals and schools into temporary detention centers where dozens of Fatah members and supporters were being held on suspicion of helping Israel during the war. The eyewitnesses said that a children's hospital and a mental health center in Gaza City, as well as a number of school buildings in Khan Yunis and Rafah, were among the places that Hamas had turned into "torture centers." A Fatah activist in Gaza City claimed that as many as 80 members of his faction were either shot in the legs or had their hands broken for allegedly defying Hamas's house-arrest orders. "What's happening in the Gaza Strip is a new massacre that is being carried out by Hamas against Fatah," he said. "Where were these [Hamas] cowards when the Israeli army was here?" The activist said that Hamas's security forces had also confiscated cellular phones and computers belonging to thousands of local Fatah members and supporters. Relatives of Abed al-Gharabli, a former Fatah security officer who spent 12 years in Israeli prisons, said he was kidnapped by a group of Hamas militiamen who shot him in both legs after severely torturing him. Ziad Abu Hayeh, one of the commanders of Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, is reported to have lost his sight after Hamas gunmen put out his eyes. According to Fatah activists, Abu Hayeh was kidnapped from his home in Khan Yunis by Hamas militiamen. The Fatah men said that in a number of incidents, Hamas militiamen had kidnapped Fatah activists while they were attending the funerals of people killed during the war. In other cases, activists were detained and shot in the legs after they were spotted smiling in public - an act interpreted by Hamas as an expression of joy over Israel's military offensive. On Saturday night, three brothers from the Subuh family were abducted by Hamas militiamen and taken to the Abdel Aziz Rantisi Mosque in Khan Yunis, where they were shot in the legs, a local journalist told the Post. In a more recent incident, Hamas gunmen shot and killed 80-year-old Hisham Tawfik Najjar after storming his home and beating his four sons - all Fatah activists. Fahmi Za'areer, a Fatah spokesman in the West Bank, revealed that at least 16 Fatah activists had been executed by Hamas in the past few days. He strongly condemned the Hamas clampdown on Fatah and warned against a bloodbath in the Gaza Strip. A leaflet distributed by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in various parts of the Gaza Strip called on Hamas to "respect the blood of the Palestinian martyrs" and stop pursuing Fatah members. The leaflet said that Hamas had placed hundreds of Fatah men under house arrest in the past 48 hours and was warning that anyone who failed to comply with these orders would be shot. jpost.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (78857)	1/19/2009 10:17:02 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 89467

Where are all the Bush's pardons??? I guess he has honor and class unlike that scumball Clinton

To: stockman_scott who wrote (78857)	1/21/2009 12:58:22 PM
From: geode00	1 Recommendation Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 89467

The Role of Government: Keeping the Wealthy Rich Dean Baker Huffington Post For some reason most of the discussion in Washington and the media of the bank bailouts is overlooking their central feature: taxpayer dollars are being used to sustain the income of incredibly rich bankers. The public should be furious over this upward redistribution of income. The basic story here is very simple. If we got the government out and left things to the market, virtually the entire banking sector would be bankrupt. Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and almost all the other big banks, and thousands of smaller ones, would be out of business. (My bet is that even "healthy" banks like Wells Fargo would be in bankruptcy before too long. They hold plenty of bad debts, too.) Most of the top executives of these banks would likely be sent packing, while those remaining would have their compensation (including "golden parachutes" and bonuses) set by bankruptcy judges who would be running the companies in the interest of the creditors, not the shareholders. The shareholders themselves would be out of luck for the most part. Many bank stocks have already lost 80-90 percent of their value over the last 18 months. Bankruptcy would likely eliminate what little remains. However the banks are not in bankruptcy because the confused state of affairs and potential lost of creditors' wealth created by large-scale bankruptcies in the financial sector would be a devastating hit to the economy. This is the rationale for the TARP, the various special lending facilities created by the Fed, and other measures to ensure the survival of the banking system. The government has intervened in a huge way to keep the market from taking its course. But the key issue that has been buried in the debate in the media and political circles is the separation of the interest of the public in a functional financial system and the interests of bank executives in high salaries and shareholders in getting returns on their capital. At this point, the banks are desperate -- they would be dead without government handouts. This means that the government can set whatever terms it wants. And, for both economic and moral reasons, it has an obligation to set terms that do not reward the bank executives and shareholders. The bank executives and shareholders took big risks that went bad. If they are rewarded with taxpayer handouts, then the message this sends to the financial sector is to keep taking irresponsible risks. The game becomes heads they win, tails we lose. If the bets pay off, then they are incredibly rich. When the bets go bad, the taxpayer gets the tab. The moral reason for not rewarding executives and shareholders is that these rewards require the taxation of middle income people, like truck drivers and nurses, to transfer money to some of the richest people in country. This sort of upward redistribution is difficult to justify. Usually people in the United States like to believe that the market determines the distribution of income. Many get outraged over the idea that a mother on TANF can get a check for a few hundred dollars a month from the government. In this case, the government is effectively handing checks of millions of dollars to bank executives who would be out of work if the market was left to run its course. We have to keep the financial system functioning, but we can do this without transferring hundreds of billions of dollars from middle class taxpayers to the wealthiest people in the country. If the bailout conditions imposed by the Obama administration and Congress don't effectively eliminate shareholder wealth in the bankrupt banks and bring compensation (in whatever form) of bank executives back down to main street levels then it is can only be explained by corruption. There is no excuse for this massive intervention to redistribute income upward. ==================== What would have happened if we had let them fail as the vast majority of Americans demanded before the stock market took a massive dive? At least we would have cleaned the decks and could start again with our trillions of borrowing still available. Just how badly are the corporations run?