Charlie Rose

winter  09/09/2011 12:52 AM Report

So Khadaffy is defeated. As is said of the mafia, what mucky muck is going to be installed into that power grab? Wait'll they find out that it doesn't necessarily follow that Freedom will lead right to a Benz in every garage like their Saudi counterparts. Its a start though, give it another thousand years.

bonacker  02/14/2011 04:25 AM Report

Look, I think Tom Friedman is a really smart guy, okay? I mean I've read him in The Times for decades. And still do, okay? But he's got to stop punctuating his bullet points with, "Okay?" It's not okay. It's really annoying.

hagopb  02/12/2011 05:05 PM Report

Thomas Friedman talks (and writes) so passionately and enthusiastically about the unfolding events in Egypt and the dawn of a new era, and it would't be difficult to guess what the subject of his next bestseller is going to be, which we hope and pray will have a happy ending, or rather the beginning of a new prosperous and successful Egypt.

sugar  02/11/2011 08:05 PM Report

I have been merely skimming the news re Egypt as a skeptic who thinks the world never really changes, yet Friedman's sincere enthusiasm for what is happening there -- and this prior to Mubarack's resignation -- I found contagious. (I watch from Ireland where telecasts are a day late.) I admire Friedman for his intellect and his reasoned judgement and I'm so hoping he is correct in his feeling that a new Egypt is on the way. Programs like this make every penny spent on CRose worthwhile!

robdverity  02/11/2011 05:10 PM Report

From REMant below: " Hasn't, in fact, global banking created all of the messes, dictatorships and revolutions we've seen in the past half-century?"

Indeed, global banking (aka NYC) are prime movers in every ill extant, from financing arms merchants, drug cartels, money laundering, subprime mtgs, winking at ponzi schemes (Madoff) etc.

If the Egyptian army leaves the V. Pres. (read secret intel.) in power they will have taken two steps backward. BTW where will the lilly-white USA CIA rendition their GITMO detainees now?

A country without resources a la Egypt may need a restrictive tinge to any govt as unemployment increases at a pace with population. Dissatisfaction and unrest is a natural. Suppression of dissidents (minority?) for benefit of balance (majority?) may be natural knee-jerk (future) response.

REMant  02/11/2011 11:32 AM Report

Friedman is maybe the arch-"Chalibi." He is intoxicated by this, almost foaming at the mouth. But I think he should think again if he expects it will do Israel any good. I am not going to exculpate the present regime, but let's be clear, Friedman wants to replace patriarchy, if you will, with matriarchy. He calls it pharaoh vs the children. No doubt he thinks the Old Testament is a tale of freedom and progress, the children perfect little angels. In fact, despite persistent attempts at revisionism, it is quite the opposite: a tale of corruption and, yes, the worship of a female god. Islam, Shia or Sunni, is, hopefully, not going to go in that direction. The kids in the square are Friedman's type of people. But it doesn't mean they are the majority, are right, or that they can bring about what they expect. I would argue that they are far from the majority, they are wrong, as Friedman is wrong, about globalization, and that it won't work anyway, which is why the world economy is in the shape it is in. We might call that "the hard bigotry of high expectations."

If Egypt, Jordan, Syria, no doubt Iran, etc, are the same as South Africa, where are the Afrikaners in this? Where, indeed, is South African "democracy"? What good, in fact, has "emancipation" done the African continent? In Indonesia, was it not "globalization," pushed by the so-called "dictator," that went belly up in the '90s? Hasn't, in fact, global banking created all of the messes, dictatorships and revolutions we've seen in the past half-century? These are not revolutions of rising expectations, but of unsustainable expectations, all of them, measures of desperation of ppl, not of their real confidence. (The American being the exception that proves the rule, because it was clearly a war of independence from Britain, as the British call it, not to be independent.) If he thinks, too, that there is no repression in the globalized world, I would submit he, himself, has never been a part of it. And now he wants American missionaries involved and foreign aid increased 700% for Egyptian R & D. R & D seems the new mantra. Or is manna more like it? The Egyptians, et al, would be well advised IMHO to steer clear of the Ponzi scheme this country is running.