Ted Rudow III
Member since May 31, 2012
Currently
Recent Comments
Re: “Letters to the Editor: May 22, 2013”
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is heading to Capitol Hill , where he’s expected to be grilled over the Justice Department’s decision to secretly seize the work, home and cellphone records used by almost a hundred reporters and editors at the Associated Press. On Tuesday, Holder defended the move as a necessary step in a criminal probe of leaks of classified information.
The use of the Espionage Act, to essentially silence whistleblowers within the government—Kiriakou, Drake and others, although Kiriakou went to jail on—pled out on another charge—the FISA Amendment Act, which allows for warrantless wiretapping, the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for the stripping of American citizens of due process and indefinite detention. And it is one more assault in a long series of assault against freedom of information and freedom of the press.
And I would also, of course, throw in the persecution of Julian Assange at WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning as part of that process all of these measures to essentially shut down the freedom of information, as symptomatic of a reconfiguration of our society into a totalitarian security and surveillance state. One where anyone who challenges the official narrative, who digs out cases of torture, war crimes—which is, of course, what Manning and Assange presented to the American public—is going to be ruthlessly silenced.
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: January 23, 2013”
The Pentagon has officially removed the longstanding military ban on women in combat. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta formally announced the move on Thursday in Washington
"It’s clear to all of us that women are contributing in unprecedented ways to the military’s mission of defending the nation. Women represent 15 percent of the force: over 200,000. They’re serving in a growing number of critical roles on and off the battlefield. The fact is that they have become an integral part of our ability to perform our mission."
In being officially allowed to serve in combat roles, women will be afforded opportunities for medals of recognition as well as for advancement to positions they have been unable to pursue.
It illustrate the blatantly hypocritical policies of the U.S. and its allies. I don't believe in war. I don't believe in killing my fellowman. Violence breeds violence, and he or she that lives by the sword shall die by the sword. The true God is a good God who is kind and loving, concerned. God hates war and its rich perpetrators. In some ways, I'm a pacifist, because I believe that God can settle all wars.
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor:October 10, 2012”
Rep. Paul Ryan as Romney' his vice presidential running mate. At an Atlas Society meeting celebrating Ayn Rand's life in 2005, Ryan said that "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand", and "I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff."
Greenspan was born and educated in New York City, where he earned a BA, MA and, 27 years later in 1977, a PhD in economics. After earning his MA in 1950, Greenspan became a 20-year associate of famed philosopher Ayn Rand, author of books "The Virtue of Selfishness,""Atlas Shrugged" and more. Greenspan wrote for Rand’s newsletters and authored a chapter for a Rand book. As legend has it, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan was once a member of Ayn Rand's 1960's salon. He was invited guest at Rand's apartment and apparently was close enough to have read her epic Atlas Shrugged as it came off her typewriter.
With his selection of Representative Paul Ryan as a running mate, Mitt Romney has told us exactly who he would be as President: a selfish capitalist. A Romney-Ryan White House would elevate selfishness above all else. To understand the values of Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan, it is necessary to understand their intellectual forebear, Ayn Rand. Ms. Rand was one of the most extreme public intellectuals of the twentieth century. As her central creed, she rejected the idea that people in a community should approach each other with charity, compassion, and altruism.
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: Aug. 29, 2012”
Tuesday Sep 4th, 2012
At age 33, Ralph Reed was the Christian Right’s wonder boy.
He was anointed in a 1995 Time Magazine cover story as the “right hand of God” for spinning the trust of conservative Christians into political gold. It was Reed who built the Christian Coalition of televangelist Pat Robertson into a powerful arm of the Republican Party.
But Reed fell from grace in 2006 after he was implicated in the biggest Washington scandal since Watergate. His pal and colleague, the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pleaded guilty to defrauding clients of millions of dollars, some of which had landed in Reed’s pockets as well. The money spigot was now wide open. Abramoff was being paid millions as a lobbyist. Reed was being paid millions to dupe his fellow Christians.
He says he intends to build the 21st century version of the Christian Coalition, with an annual budget of $ 100 million, five million members, full-time lobbyists in all 50 state capitols, and an enormous database. The pharisaical ultra-conservative, hard-Right support he receives comes largely from a hard-core of misled, fanatically anti-Communist, fundamentalist, evangelical, bigoted, self-righteous religious minority, as well as from the vast silent majority, of the indifferent, couldn't-care-less, self-indulgent, self-satisfied. That fact is these fanatical religionists also consider themselves above the law and the courts and the freedoms of the people and willing to commit any crime in the name of national, religious or so-called family security!
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: Aug. 15, 2012”
Actually, the Philistines were not what is today. The Palestinians today, Palestinians are Arabs who moved in later. The Philistines were more closely related to what used to be the Lebanese, which were the Phoenicians, the to be the Lebanese, which were the Phoenicians, the ancient Phoenician Empire of traders, and they were actually more closely related to Hiram, King of Tyre, and some of them, although Hiram was more of a friend of Israel at that time, the time of David.
So the Philistines and their five famous cities used to occupy the coastal plain of Israel. Gaza was one of the major cities--the Arabs still live there-- of course Israel has now incorporated the Gaza Strip into Israel. It's now a part of the occupied territories, and they've just stolen away the whole country! It was called Palestine by the Romans, in Latin, & came from "Philistia," which was the name of the country way back under the Philistines. It was the name of the country for thousands of years till the Jews came along.
Ted Rudow III
Re: “Letters to the Editor: Aug. 8, 2012”
Vultures
But a small group of vulture funds have been trying to divert that money into their own pocket. How Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s former firm, Bain Capital, and others have used private equity to raise money to conduct corporate raids. "It’s just a scheme to take a cash-rich company and move all that cash to a few actors — typically it’s the executives of the target company and the executives in the private equity firm — and then you force everybody else to pay."
Wall Street scandals — including a decade-long Wall Street scandal that drained money from every county and state in the United States — and notes not a single bank executive has faced individual consequences. In Libor, it was 16 banks acting in concert to rig the international interest rates. What this one was was a number of the world’s biggest banks colluding to artificially suppress the amount of money that cities and towns earned on their municipal bond service.
The Libor, scandals trillions of dollars, and not a single person has had to have any individual consequence. So you talk about all those settlements. Those are all paid by the company and by the shareholders. Not a single person since 2008 has gone to—has been indicted, has gone to jail, has spent a day in jail, or has paid any kind of money out of his own pocket. And until there’s any individual consequence, it’s really a license to steal. If you can’t go to jail for rigging an $800 trillion market, what can you go to jail for? This is the result of a selfish, greed-driven society. They've hardened their hearts for so long and are so blinded by greed and hypocrisy that they don't even hear the pitiful pleas of these poor suffering ones.
Ted Rudow III, MA
Re: “Letters to the Editor: July 25, 2012”
Called Libor, which that stands for London Interbank Offered Rate and it involves a group of bankers who set a daily interest rate affecting trillions of dollars of transactions around the world. Your home mortgage, your college debt, your credit card fees - these could have been affected by Libor.
20 other megabanks are now under investigation, including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. Open collusion with other banks to lowball or highball the rates to profit. "The New York Times" reporting, "As unemployment climbed and tax revenue fell the city of Baltimore laid off employees and cut services in the midst of the financial crisis. Its leaders now say the city's troubles were aggravated by bankers' manipulation of this key interest rate linked to hundreds of millions of dollars the city had borrowed."
What you’ve just seen is a cartel in operation, which -- not maybe -- did distort Libor for the benefits of the largest banks in the cartel. It is the largest rigging of prices in the history of the world, by many orders of magnitude. Libor is one example where we left it to banks to themselves to set important benchmarks. Many in the West are naïve about the real plight of the world. There are many who live a life of ease‚ unaware of the hurt that ravishes the world on a daily basis through man's bad choices.
Ted Rudow III
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