Wednesday, March 27, 2013

10 years into the Iraq war

Thursday, March 28, 2013

01:57

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Wednesday, March 27, 2013







10 years into the Iraq war

Ted Rudow III, MA, Encina Ave, Palo Alto, CA


The U.S. seems to have a hard time figuring out reasons for its wars, especially the ones it wages on Iraq, so it keeps changing them until it finds something that will stick and sound reasonable and justifiable. Wars require creative marketing, you know. For this second Gulf War, the U.S. started off trying their best to tie Saddam to Osama bin Laden’s outfit so they could pin part of the blame for 9/11 on him.

Something like two-thirds of Americans believe Iraq either staged the 9/11 attacks or played some sort of role in the attack behind the scenes, or that some of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis! That’s not the case at all, but it just goes to show that if you keep repeating a lie often enough, people will eventually believe it!

Words have power, both for good and bad, especially when spoken by the president. Teddy Roosevelt used to call the presidency a “bully pulpit,” a place where a good leader could preach moral values and principles. Of course, it can also be a place where an unscrupulous or immoral leader can promote bad values, ungodly principles, and war, which has also been the case.





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Saturday, March 23, 2013

10 years after




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Peninsula readers' letters: March 19



From Daily News Group readers



mercurynews.com

Posted:   03/18/2013 06:30:36 PM PDT

March 19, 2013 6:21 AM GMT

Updated:   03/18/2013 11:21:21 PM PDT


10 years after



Dear Editor: The U.S. seems to have a hard time figuring out reasons for its wars, especially the ones it wages on Iraq, so it keeps changing them until it finds something that will stick and sound reasonable and justifiable. Wars require creative marketing, you know. For this second Gulf war, the U.S. started off trying its best to tie Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden's outfit so it could pin part of the blame for 9/11 on him.



Something like two-thirds of Americans believe Iraq either staged the 9/11 attacks or played some sort of role in the attack behind the scenes, or that some of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis. That's not the case at all, but it just goes to show that if you keep repeating a lie often enough, people will eventually believe it.



Words have power, both for good and bad, especially when spoken by the president. Teddy Roosevelt used to call the presidency a "bully pulpit," a place where a good leader could preach moral values and principles. Of course, it can also be a place where an unscrupulous or immoral leader can promote bad values, ungodly principles and war, which has also been the case.



Ted Rudow III,



Palo Alto, CA









Copyright 2012 San Jose Mercury News. All rights reserved.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Prospect of Palestinian settlement diminishing

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/03/21/18734024.php






Prospect of Palestinian settlement diminishing

by Ted Rudow III, MA ( Tedr77 [at] aol.com )

Thursday Mar 21st, 2013







Ted Rudow III, MA

While America’s need to forge Israeli-Palestinian peace has never been lower, the obstacles have never been higher: Israel has now implanted 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, and the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza have seriously eroded the appetite of the Israeli silent majority to withdraw from the West Bank.

While there may be fewer reasons for the U.S. to take risks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is still a powerful reason for Israel to do so.

The status quo today may be tolerable for Israel, but it is not healthy. And more status quo means continued Israeli settlements in, and tacit annexation of the West Bank. That’s why I think the most important thing Obama could do on his trip is to publicly and privately ask every Israeli official he meets these questions: Please tell me how your relentless settlement drive in the West Bank does not end up with Israel embedded thereforever ruling over 2.5 million Palestinians with a colonial-like administration that can only undermine Israel as a Jewish democracy and de-legitimise Israel in the world community? I understand why Palestinian dysfunction and the Arab awakening make you wary, but still. Shouldn’t you be constantly testing and testing whether there is a Palestinian partner for a secure peace?









Prospect of Palestinian settlement diminishing

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

22:20

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Wednesday, March 20, 2013






Prospect of Palestinian settlement diminishing


Ted Rudow III, MA, Encina Ave, Palo Alto, CA



photo: Reuters





While America’s need to forge Israeli-Palestinian peace has never been lower, the obstacles have never been higher: Israel has now implanted 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, and the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza have seriously eroded the appetite of the Israeli silent majority to withdraw from the West Bank. While there may be fewer reasons for the U.S. to take risks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is still a powerful reason for Israel to do so.

The status quo today may be tolerable for Israel, but it is not healthy. And more status quo means continued Israeli settlements in, and tacit annexation of the West Bank. That’s why I think the most important thing Obama could do on his trip is to publicly and privately ask every Israeli official he meets these questions: Please tell me how your relentless settlement drive in the West Bank does not end up with Israel embedded thereforever ruling over 2.5 million Palestinians with a colonial-like administration that can only undermine Israel as a Jewish democracy and de-legitimise Israel in the world community? I understand why Palestinian dysfunction and the Arab awakening make you wary, but still. Shouldn’t you be constantly testing and testing whether there is a Palestinian partner for a secure peace?











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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

10 years after

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Peninsula readers' letters: March 19



From Daily News Group readers



mercurynews.com

Posted:   03/18/2013 06:30:36 PM PDT

March 19, 2013 6:21 AM GMTUpdated:   03/18/2013 11:21:21 PM PDT






10 years after



Dear Editor: The U.S. seems to have a hard time figuring out reasons for its wars, especially the ones it wages on Iraq, so it keeps changing them until it finds something that will stick and sound reasonable and justifiable. Wars require creative marketing, you know. For this second Gulf war, the U.S. started off trying its best to tie Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden's outfit so it could pin part of the blame for 9/11 on him.



Something like two-thirds of Americans believe Iraq either staged the 9/11 attacks or played some sort of role in the attack behind the scenes, or that some of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis. That's not the case at all, but it just goes to show that if you keep repeating a lie often enough, people will eventually believe it.



Words have power, both for good and bad, especially when spoken by the president. Teddy Roosevelt used to call the presidency a "bully pulpit," a place where a good leader could preach moral values and principles. Of course, it can also be a place where an unscrupulous or immoral leader can promote bad values, ungodly principles and war, which has also been the case.



Ted Rudow III,



Palo Alto, CA









Copyright 2012 San Jose Mercury News. All rights reserved.




Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Pope Francis

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/03/13/18733558.php






Pope Francis

by Ted Rudow III, MA ( Tedr77 [at] aol.com )


Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires has been elected to be the 266th pope of the Catholic Church, taking the name Pope Francis.

When the disillusioned idealistic young son of a wealthy Florentine merchant decided to follow God, evade the draft, leave home and family and live communally in an old deserted chapel in poverty as beggars, he was cursed and beaten by his father, wept over by his mother, rebuked by his friends and condemned by his own church, despised by the despicable, disdained by the vain and spurned by society.



But his humble love, truth and honesty and passion for peace, poverty and the poor soon won his pitiful people the approval of the Pope and the permanent antipathy of the pompous, yet this flower unfolded the far-flung Franciscan Fathers of the future!



The frail forms of St. Francis and St. Clare, also experienced some of the same bitter criticism and even suffered some of the same violent and retaliatory reaction and persecution, denunciation and condemnation that was suffered by their Franciscan predecessors, yet their truth and sample, too, cannot be quenched by tyranny!



While St. Francis was going through the cellar of his father's fabric factory, appalled by the pitiful condition of the poor creatures slaving there to whom his smile and his hand and his love and compassion pierced their darkness with a ray of God's hope. While his poverty-stricken and ragged little band of beggars were wandering through the streets of Assisi singing and praising God in the rain.



Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

when there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand,

to be loved as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying [to ourselves] that we are born to eternal life.





Ted Rudow III, MA

Monday, March 11, 2013

Lessons from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

Monday, March 11, 2013

23:43

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Monday, March 11, 2013







Lessons from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’







Ted Rudow III, MA, Encina Ave, Palo Alto, CA



   







‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is a 1946 American drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, that was based on the short story “The Greatest Gift”, written by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1939, and privately published by the author in 1945. This is director Frank Capra’s classic bittersweet comedy/drama about George Bailey (James Stewart), the eternally-in-debt guiding force of a bank in the typical American small town of Bedford Falls.

A desperate George appeals to Potter for a loan. Potter mockingly and coldly turns George down, and then swears out a warrant for his arrest for bank fraud. A flood of townspeople arrive with more than enough donations to save George and the Building and Loan.

This is the most wonderful life in the world– thankfulness and being content. It’s full of lessons on fighting, on perseverance, on pouring time into others, on inspiring confidence, not giving up, on following your dreams, on bitterness and forgiveness, on trust and faith and love. It is a sweet, touching story of the struggles in life and brings out the need to fight to rise above your circumstances. That’s what we can learn from the drama.





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Thursday, March 07, 2013

Obama's drones




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Peninsula readers' letters: March 02



From Daily News Group readers



mercurynews.com

Posted:   03/01/2013 06:23:02 PM PST

March 2, 2013 6:44 AM GMTUpdated:   03/01/2013 10:44:31 PM PST





Obama's drones



Dear Editor: Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs recently revealed he was initially instructed to deny the existence of the Obama

administration's targeted killing program overseas. Even though the administration has since backed down from that stance, it continues to stonewall members on releasing the Justice Department memos explaining the program's legal rationale.



The administration's position was initially that it couldn't even acknowledge there was in fact a targeted killing program. Now its position has shifted slightly and it is saying it can't acknowledge that the CIA has a role in the targeted killing program.



That kind of argument is really beneath our system. And it's certainly true that the Obama administration has continued many of the Bush administration's most controversial and problematic national security policies and, in some instances, expanded those policies.



Said U.S. Sen. Rand Paul: "We're talking about someone eating at a cafe in Boston or in New York, and a Hellfire missile comes raining in on them. There should be an easy answer from the administration on this. They should say, 'Absolutely no, we will not kill Americans in America without an accusation, a trial and a jury.' "



Ted Rudow III,



Palo Alto

















Copyright 2012 San Jose Mercury News. All rights reserved.

Children


http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/03/07/18733269.php





Children

by Ted Rudow III, MA ( Tedr77 [at] aol.com )

Thursday Mar 7th, 2013

The United Nations Children Fund, or UNICEF, is accusing Israel of systematically abusing Palestinian children in military custody. In a new report, UNICEF says Israeli forces have subjected detained Palestinian youths to "to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" as defined by the U.N. Convention Against Torture. UNICEF special representative Jean Gough unveiled the report’s findings.





"We identified a pattern of ill-treatment when children are in military custody, and what we see is that this happens in the first 48 hours. Imagine a child sitting in front of an interrogator without sleeping. So that’s very hard on the child, and that’s difficult for him. So this is where we want to make the changes to make sure that that doesn’t happen."

Life in the occupied territories has mentally damaged Palestinian children, with 90 percent having experienced several traumatic events. The experiences include imprisonment, inhaling tear gas, nighttime attacks on their homes, Israeli soldiers brutalizing their parents in their presence and Israeli authorities demolishing their homes. So the vicious cycle goes on, and it's one the Palestinians are losing, as they're being ground down, humiliated, and destroyed in every way possible.

Pray for the poor, pray for the peacemakers, pray for protection for the innocent, pray for a solution. According to UNICEF figures, Israel arrests and interrogates around 700 Palestinian children aged 12 to 17 each year.

Ted Rudow III, MA



Saturday, March 02, 2013

Obama's drones



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Peninsula readers' letters: March 02



From Daily News Group readers



mercurynews.com

Posted:   03/01/2013 06:23:02 PM PST

March 2, 2013 6:44 AM GMTUpdated:   03/01/2013 10:44:31 PM PST

Obama's drones



Dear Editor: Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs recently revealed he was initially instructed to deny the existence of the Obama administration's targeted killing program overseas. Even though the administration has since backed down from that stance, it continues to stonewall members on releasing the Justice Department memos explaining the program's legal rationale.



The administration's position was initially that it couldn't even acknowledge there was in fact a targeted killing program. Now its position has shifted slightly and it is saying it can't acknowledge that the CIA has a role in the targeted killing program.



That kind of argument is really beneath our system. And it's certainly true that the Obama administration has continued many of the Bush administration's most controversial and problematic national security policies and, in some instances, expanded those policies.



Said U.S. Sen. Rand Paul: "We're talking about someone eating at a cafe in Boston or in New York, and a Hellfire missile comes raining in on them. There should be an easy answer from the administration on this. They should say, 'Absolutely no, we will not kill Americans in America without an accusation, a trial and a jury.' "



Ted Rudow III,



Palo Alto



















Copyright 2012 San Jose Mercury News. All rights reserved.