Charlie Rose

Ann_V  07/09/2012 02:38 PM Report

An incredible man, Elie Wiesel. I especially, loved his expression of hope in, "And, yet." So, amazing. Thank you.

Humanity  12/21/2010 12:23 PM Report

Suffering in Europe during the holocaust, yes, Darfur, yes, Rwanda, yes. But notice when the topic of Palestine and Palestinians comes up - there is no suffering there. You can't compare the oppression of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation as or equate it to the madness afflicted on Jews during the holocaust. A woeful double standard!

dreamlucid  06/14/2009 04:47 PM Report

"this book is called a mad desire to dance... we underline the word mad..."

tartufe  06/11/2009 01:41 AM Report

Same subject; pilfered from NYT blog re Ryan Report:

A writer in the above columns makes the point that many of the survivors are in the age group 50-60 years old. However abuse did not occur only in institutions, it occurred in many day schools, holiday camps and religious training schools and other religious facilities in the recent past.

As a child growing up in rural Ireland in the seventies, I recall rumours from a very early age given to me by another child at age perhaps 5 years old about the notorious Letterfrack Industrial School for children. He described how the Christian Brothers would rape young boys in graphic detail. A relation of his has been in that institution. A summer earlier in the school yard, I witnessed what I now realize was a rape on a boy in broad day light. The Christian Brother behaved as though it was routine, no concealment necessary.

A few years later, while at a catholic boarding school, I too had the experience of being raped. It took place over a particular week, involving suffocation, administration of pills, methods similar to ‘waterboarding’ with the addition of blindfolding. The perpetrator used to chuckle to himself with the depravity of what he was doing. On one night, I witnessed several children beaten unconscious before being dragged along floors naked to be lined up for violation like white sardines. I was first in the line and had remained conscious.

Following that particular night, I was literally dumped and left as good as dead on a wooden dormitory floor. The following day I was found by a ‘good’ priest wandering in shock in a forest nearby looking for help from outside. He returned me to the dormitory. The perpetrator was ousted by the school, the coverup machine kicked in. This included death threats of a deeply physchological and religious nature followed up by a campaign to discredit me, age 9. It worked with total effect moving deeply into the minds of my sibling who today continue to treat me with malevolence and yet they are educated sophisticated people themselves.

The striking thing about these events and the behaviour of the pedophiles at that time was that whole routine seemed to roll out so seamlessly. The pedophile seemed to be ‘trained’ in physical, physiological and cover up management aided by his church colleagues. It seemed it was a routine as old as time itself. Sadism and malevolence are qualities which often beleaguer belief until one encounters it personally. At that point, we enter the world known only to the victim. The outside will never know the experience. It is something that you feel as you are on the final sliding pathway into death. In that realm, the events that form reality become stranger than any fictional images can bring. For the outside, no amount of telling of such abominable acts can bring a sane person to total belief that they could be true.

About 35 years later after recovery of memory, I reported these events in vivid detail to police. By and large, the police were good enough about it and remained polite. The facts became indisputable. One culprit was a known time served pedophile, arrested and then released without charge in my case. There was a great noise from Government in Ireland at that time about all that would be done for victims. The reality is that the whole media show and Government rant is just a front for ‘wishes and expression of shock’ in front of the gargantuan power of church organization with time honoured methods for dealing with crises of this nature and right wing state collusion.

In more recent times, the police brought me back to the scene of the crime. On the visit, I was jeered at by an old priest openly and knowingly. The same headmaster was still in place, the building pretty much unpainted since I left. The same smells. It worked like clockwork, the headmaster denied all, documents long since discarded, a one line letter of denial issued with some tacky mistakes by the orders lawyer, scrubbed through with pen for correction.

The whole show now emerging through the Ryan Report (May 2009) now issued in Dublin is a reaction to abominable crimes, crimes against humanity, it could be rightly said. What I experienced in a week, perhaps tens of thousands of children experienced every week of their childhood. The Government response to this report is to politely exchange outrage with victims and support groups while tactically protecting the church dismissal for proper compensation for the long tem Institutional Victims. It is wholly predictable, huff and puff, outrage and then tricky dealing and finally today I feel that that deadening realization that nothing will be done for most victims on the most part. Compensation is little more than a illusion of hope for most victims. Ireland is different from the US, the culture is one of wholly embedded conflicts of interest between church and state. Almost one and the same. Mostly one cannot name or prosecute a known pedophile, especially a church pedophile. As the former prime minister Bertie Ahern said, “The Catholic Church has 3000 educational institutions in Ireland, if they were to pull out, it would be devastating.” (That is one conflict)

America to an outsider, is a paradise of example and freedom against the cold, silent repressiveness of the recent past and ongoing ignorance and indifference of the ruling party Fianna Fail in Ireland. If there is anything I would wish that might come of good from my letter here, it is that good Americans would lobby the American Presidency to pressure the Irish Government to take strong and powerful immediate actions against the abominable culture of pedophilia that has so damaged this country and has been so devastatingly been exported to the USA and continues to be glossed over today. Perhaps somebody will read this. Thank you if you do.

— Redmond Barry

tartufe  06/10/2009 07:09 PM Report

This is off-topic somewhat (anti-religious so not totally). Catholics surpass Islam and Jewry for blatant, insidious affronts against humanity. Below is a small excerpt from reports re "The Ryan Report," re child abuse in Ireland.

"St Vincent’s Industrial School, Goldenbridge featured in two broadcasts, “Dear Daughter” and “States of Fear”, which undermined the official silence on the schools. Run by the Sisters of Mercy, young girls were held in conditions of neglect and near starvation, subject to repeated beatings. One victim summed up the lasting impact of their experience. Their comments could apply to the entire system.

“The screaming of children, the screaming of children will stay with me for the rest of my life about Goldenbridge. I still hear it, I still haven’t recovered from that. Children crying and screaming, it was just endless, it never never stopped for years in that place.”

The report is available from here: http://www.childabusecommission.com/rpt/

Religions make Armageddon desirable - even justified. Sicko!

Apologize if this is deemed an intrusion. Too important!

clarapaulino  06/10/2009 05:16 PM Report

I am an admirer of this program and I have to say I am disappointed with the Wiesel interview. There was so much to talk about with a man who has gone through a depth of experience Mr. Rose often seems to be trying to get to with other guests. Here, there was an opportunity, yet also a shortness and, at the end, almost hostility towards the guest. I am puzzled.

tartufe  06/09/2009 04:23 PM Report

Sardonically blaming the babies is spot on. Chris has it right. The Mexicans agree. They're sending their offspring to their own kind of settlements in Arizona, California, Maine and 47 others. Palestinians please move over. Accommodations for your oppressors is a very Christian concept. Oops forgot. Well, suggest you have babies as well and see if yours will be received with the same level of expected tolerance. lol May the best copulator win!

REMant  06/09/2009 02:55 PM Report

It should be remembered that the US govt knew about the camps and their activities for some time without saying a word about them, and I suspect they knew about the Soviet ones, too. As well as that both sides killed a lot more non-combatants than just Jews. The Soviets may have even killed more of their own soldiers. Churchill we were reminded on public broadcasting just a few hrs earlier was ready to drop anthrax on them, and the US made it for him. And that was before Pearl Harbor.

Christopher  06/09/2009 01:16 PM Report

What a serene guy. He is so graceful when he talks. I loved his comment about if Auschwitz doesn't destroy anti-Semitism, what will?

However, towards the end, you saw how even a smart, sensitive guy like him does not get it for the settlement expansion. I loved his explanation, "the settlers are having babies" natural growth is occurring. That's a good idea Elie. When a nation has natural growth, it should expand its borders! That is the solution. Obama has his work cut out for him. How's that for racism. I think that this racism towards the Palestinians is often very present and often not even realized.

I like that, people have babies, and we have to naturally expand the border! What is wrong with the rest of the world, why don’t they understand Israel is having babies, it's the babies! LOL