Charlie Rose

Saultxyca  03/29/2011 07:36 AM Report

Mr. Brahimi's daughter, a journalist, is married to a son of the late King Hussein of Jordan, Prince Ali; disclosing that would have been better journalism, if that's what this is, given his stance.

TodSpence  03/07/2011 03:02 PM Report

REMant~

Every comment you make on here seems to point out how the guest "missed something fundamental" and "how could they possibly have missed this". You come off as extremely 'intellectually' insecure. I would bet your "writings" are published in your own private journal. Everything you write on here is retarded.

JohnGelles  03/03/2011 03:59 PM Report

Ellen ~

I believe the CR Show (CRS) offers some of the best original topics and talk OTAT) for middlebrows on TV. But it does not yet build a corpus of content like Wikipedia (with a far more concentrated scope).

It does not do this because it can't be done, shouldn't be done, or hasn't been tried.

Would you be interested in trying -- with an original scope limited to issues of political economy or similar scope in your own words?

I think this would be fun to try by initially linking our own comments here, as developed over time by whomever might join with us, both here in CRS comment pages AND on a linked to here fully edited forum like Amazon's author and product forums, or another free forum -- even one of our own that we would make free to all others?

http://ustaxreform.us

(all its pages link to email -- many to other forums)

JohnGelles  03/03/2011 03:32 PM Report

Ellen Dibble ~

Dictatorship (by an individual tyrant or very small clique of tyrannical types) and oligarchy (where wealth and power have congealed to form a pyramidal social structure where the great mass of people below the top triangle serve the interest of the oligarchs -- as they sacrifice their own out of personal and institutional habit), seem to be more popular than the forms of government you and I prefer.

The visions of a better future that you, myself, and young rebels in Arabia and Iran, may wish for, are (as you may believe) not yet well endowed with the wealth of skills that it may take to develop political economy in ways that will advance equality, prosperity, ingenuity and humanitarian purpose necessary to reduce the risk you fear for which our efforts may already be too late.

All of this said, post the thoughts of Lakdar Brahimi, we will be treated today to the optimism of Ray Kurzweil. He is an inventor and futurist who sees science as our savior. I have always agreed with him in the past on the potential of hard science methodology to master the secrets of technological know-how that will in the end conquer nature's scarcity of food and over-abundance of narcissism.

This is not to put down self-respect -- only selfishness in the extreme that it persists. Trying harder to be kinder is OK. Trying harder to be harder is not. It can only lead to becoming stone long before we enter the fossil record.

The end of history discussed on 1989 that accepted the mindless market as adequate enough, which Kurzweil did not accept or reject to my knowledge -- which is very slight -- must today be radically altered. The end of history needs a mind -- perhaps a hybrid mind made up of people and their inventions. That mind must calculate the logistical requirements (that markets have thus far only distorted) for said equality, prosperity, ingenuity and humanitarian purpose. We need as little narcissism as possible. And we need as much humanitarian desire as we can stand. It can be alloyed with a few jokes -- but it does not need to add greed to every glory. Glory earned but rarely mentioned will do until the end of history arrives without notice in advance.

Ellen_Dibble  03/02/2011 02:35 PM Report

Thank you, JohnGelles, for setting that out. "We define progress" -- perhaps we define it as "stable" (and ever increasing) consumption of petroleum products, which is apparently close to suicidal in terms of sustaining planetary habitability. So is oil part of a foreign policy that favors dictatorship and oligarchy? Maybe the equivalent is happening among the nations that are oil giants, equivalent to having all Americans invest their Social Security deposits on Wall Street: there are plenty of oil profits; and they are invested on Wall Street, or at least in Western interests. I don't think any new regimes are going to want to jeopardize the international economy and their share of the profits.

But I am scanning the internet to get a picture of the vision of the future that the young people who are rising up might bring. New modes of interdependence and of independence are needed, modes not really modeled anywhere yet. As you say, the crystal ball is murky. And I don't really think pulling back and waiting is the proper stance. I'm thinking as a young person I witness a lot of foreign policy and domestic policy and pretty much just "suffered" it. I thought in many cases protesting was inadequately informed to be effective. I think young people are often in this position. The young people have not learned cynicism, and have less to lose than their elders. But the older people are going to have to participate too. If we wait, it will be too late.

JohnGelles  03/02/2011 06:21 AM Report

Lakhdar Brahimi, as an elder statesmen with United Nations perspectives as well as an Islamic identity, is witness with us to historical change that may bring progress or not.

We define progress as peace and democracy in Arabian and Islamic territories from Morocco to Pakistan. The younger generation now in revolt against local tyrannies and global under-performance (compared to the giants in India and China and tiny regimes in Singapore and Israel) has yet to establish goals and reverse the direction of trends that created great wealth on top of oil and great hatred and wars over Jerusalem.

Lakhdar Brahimi speaks for the established order, such as it is, that has nowhere brought unalloyed progress but everywhere has ushered in a new century of progress in technology but not in political economy. And, of course, his crystal ball is as murky as Charlie Rose's and ours.

We want the young people in the streets of Arabia and facing death in Iran to triumph and hold on the victory over tyranny and terror.

But we fear the worst: the experience of India, China, Singapore and Israel over recent decades has deep roots -- and it may yet prove to be unique in a century that could see age old failures persist for no good reason.

We are tempted to see American accomplishment and hide from our own under-performance -- whenever we look at deprivation abroad. As we prepare to rescue Libyans from slaughter by their former leader we tell our own victims of unemployment the price of gas at the pump is stronger than the American government.

We celebrate the King of England in WW II and suffer a Congress of fools seventy years later -- after turning our back on the human economic rights that war made possible.

Ellen_Dibble  03/01/2011 03:19 PM Report

The optimism of Brahimi seemed to me hard to square with what he set forth about Algeria's experience, with 100,000 killed in the aftermath of its late 20th century revolution, or, he said, maybe even 200,000. The screen subtitle shows he is a former Algerian foreign minister. If you add to that diplomatic experience in Afghanistan, with the United Nations, with the Elders team put together by Nelson Mandela, there is a breadth of experience that couldn't be encapsulated in the time allowed. So it's notable that this website has an internet extra of another 30 minutes with Brahimi. I find myself overflowing with questions. A local publisher, Interlink, associated with a local bookstore, has numerous translations of emerging voices from the regions in question on offer, and lots of nonfiction as well, and a proprietor knowledgeable, although at this point only a headache expresses for me the situation. "How lucky we are to be alive right now," one person will say. Oh, really?

REMant  03/01/2011 11:43 AM Report

I've written, on many occasions in the past 2-3 yrs, of the progressive impoverishment of the 3d world by the financial finagling of the 1st, and what must be its consequence, and prior to Tunisia and Egypt of what could be expected by current Fed actions. Also that China and Asia were old news, and the emergence of the Arab world would be the present story. And I have frequently written about the gratuitousness and hypocrisy of the West's advice. But I've said, too, that religion must have played some kind of role in these uprisings, simply because the Muslim world has quite different values from the West, and especially the US. And, as well, that this is not likely to have a happy ending, because, corrupt as these regimes may be or have been, getting rid of them will not solve the underlying economic problem, and I don't see the West doing anything to ameliorate it. This may well open the door to fundamentalism and/or a return to autocracy. BTW, dignity is not the consequence of institutions. It relies on the fundamental economic and political status that forms them. "Civil society" rests on this, not vice versa. Only a "progressive" could think about it backwards like this.