Charlie Rose

jsup5  07/16/2011 06:43 AM Report

I thought the talk was very informative and interesting.

JohnGelles  06/21/2011 06:29 PM Report

Shalom Freedman posts:

..... "What is hard to really take is the idea that the Nazis might have been stopped much earlier -- had the right people been in power in Britain and France."

----- -----

To have fought a preventive war -- and stopped Hitler when he entered the Rhineland, in violation of the Treaty Of Versailles -- would have been right. But many hoped Hitler would stop Communism from spreading across the world where the depression had weakened the power structure. They (in the West) were willing to gamble on Germany's military revival, because Russia was their greater fear. There were very few voices raised to fight Germany before it got stronger.

I remember those days well.

I was very young, but Germany's Nazi party was well known to my family and friends. We may have wanted the Nazi's stopped -- but there was little of the unity that later developed after Japan attacked America and Germany attacked Russia.

Soon after this missed opportunity to destroy the Nazi grip on Germany, my doctor eldest cousin became a surgeon with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of Americans fighting against fascism in Spain. He was one among a dozen cousins. Eleven of us fought in WWII -- but not to prevent it earlier.

Today we still would like to prevent attacks on America and its democratic allies. Our present asymmetrical wars are engaged in to do just that. But these wars may not be enough. A nuclear or dirty bomb attack is possible. To prevent it may require the wisdom and will that was lacking before 1939. It may be lacking today, as well.

Should we disarm Iran and North Korea? Each is a threat to our ports and cities. One rigged shipping container (or any of a thousand other means) can destroy millions of American lives without warning. To prevent such deaths (or even greater numbers if WW III ever happens) is a task very much like preventing the great tragedies of WW II.

At the end WW II, FDR asked us to end unemployment and poverty if we would protect ourselves from another great war. He called his plan to do this, the Second Bill of Rights.

He died and his plan is not popular here or anywhere else. People think prevention of war and terrorism is nearly a mission impossible. They seem content to let whatever will uunite us happen -- and afterward stop it from getting worse.

Who is right: the PREVENTERS or the COUNTER-PUNCHERS? Or is modern man useless -- and asking to be extinct sooner rather later (like millions/billions of years later)?

My younger son always reminds me that science predicts an end -- not prevention of that end of history.

..... When he says that, I counter with the notion that such thinking is best used to plan to prevent that ending for as long as possible. And we do agree on that.

ShalomFreedman  06/21/2011 09:50 AM Report

Roberts is a class act in the best British modest and understated way. Even in this brief interview he brings a wealth of insight providing new understanding of the Second World War. I believe a good share of Americans will be surprised to know how critical the Russian effort was to the overall victory.

What is hard to really take is the idea that the Nazis might have been stopped much earlier , had the right people been in power in Britain and France.

JohnGelles  06/21/2011 12:26 AM Report

WHAT THE LINK IN MY LAST POST SAYS IF YOU'RE AT THE TARGET:

The acute problems at the moment are too few jobs and too many foreclosures (and under-water home-owners). The fix ought to involve gaining energy independence, educational excellence from birth to retirement, and very heavy spending on federal and state support of high-tech Research and Development.

These gains would sustain prosperity bought with initial injections of debt-free fiat money.

This is Keynes on Steriods, or "Keynes without Debt" (in Ron Morrison's words).

Obama and Bernanke are holding back. If they do not do the above with Quantitative Easing or other tools, we may find American corporations at economic war with their employees and the American people as they were in the 1930's before WW II saved us from the depression.

Very few academics are behind this fix as yet. Yet some are. And more will come -- almost too late -- but I bet just in the nick of time.

JohnGelles  06/21/2011 12:21 AM Report

http://www.amazon.com/forum/economics/ref=cm_cd__ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1K53KZRRALRH&cdTh read=Tx2IAU6HCSPISLZ&displayType=tagsDetail

robdverity  06/19/2011 04:32 PM Report

John - your point about nations wanting what they cannot produce may apply to US. Rare earth metals are needed in the new exotica of innovation; oil until renewables kick in; trust in a foreign exchange rate for the US$. The latter's where inflation storms thru. IF we were totally self-contained (resources, labor, energy) then your points are valid. But alas . . .

JohnGelles  06/19/2011 06:30 AM Report

Rob~

We agree on rescue of home-owners. This being a WWII book discussion, we had better quit while we're ahead.

To finance WWII we had to tie our money supply and related interest, taxes spending to the logistics that victory required. We could do pretty much the same thing now. Define our purpose, design our production strategy, go to work, use money not barter to facilitate accounting as necessary.

In WWII it was conceded by those in power that a nation can afford whatever it can physically produce. This may sound obvious. But many nations want what they cannot produce and have to learn this the hard way. Even more could have produced what they needed had they solved the engineering and task requirements at hand -- and created money afterward for the convenience it may have furnished.

robdverity  06/19/2011 12:11 AM Report

Well John, you dissemble adroitly. OK. But ecs. and Israel are linked possibly closer than anyone would want. Total the cumulative costs of our support for Israel (even limited from 9/11 on) is over $3.0 trillion (PBS Need to Know).

The UMo/KC may have all the answers, but if Bernanke et al doesn't believe it, it's wasted eh?

The inability for the admin. to relate the too big to fail banks (their bailout) with the real estate implosion in the hinterlands is pathetic. Declaring the first to be a success at the expense of the second. Totally disingenuous. And no imprisonments yet.

robdverity  06/19/2011 12:11 AM Report

Well John, you dissemble adroitly. OK. But ecs. and Israel are linked possibly closer than anyone would want. Total the cumulative costs of our support for Israel (even limited from 9/11 on) is over $3.0 trillion (PBS Need to Know).

The UMo/KC may have all the answers, but if Bernanke et al doesn't believe it, it's wasted eh?

The inability for the admin. to relate the too big to fail banks (their bailout) with the real estate implosion in the hinterlands is pathetic. Declaring the first to be a success at the expense of the second. Totally disingenuous. And no imprisonments yet.

robdverity  06/19/2011 12:11 AM Report

Well John, you dissemble adroitly. OK. But ecs. and Israel are linked possibly closer than anyone would want. Total the cumulative costs of our support for Israel (even limited from 9/11 on) is over $3.0 trillion (PBS Need to Know).

The UMo/KC may have all the answers, but if Bernanke et al doesn't believe it, it's wasted eh?

The inability for the admin. to relate the too big to fail banks (their bailout) with the real estate implosion in the hinterlands is pathetic. Declaring the first to be a success at the expense of the second. Totally disingenuous. And no imprisonments yet.

JohnGelles  06/18/2011 10:40 PM Report

Rob -- we have opposite views on these issues. We will not agree of the facts. I suggest we try to find agreement on completely different choices -- like how to reach full fair wage employment in America (and elsewhere at you option).

If we have no areas of agreement, we have to accept it. Each of us has a brain and all that's in it. We probably do share some respect for Charlie Rose and his staff -- else we ought to stop watching their show. Why be the skunk at the birthday party?

Admittedly, the show is pro-America and generally optimistic. That is why I watch it. I wish it were more insistent on forcing prosperity on our system -- knowing that accepting poverty and failure is a loser.

I have asked their staff to get educated at the Univ.of Missouri, Kansas City, where some in the Economics faculty can bring them up to speed on functional finance as the sure cure for unemployment and the paradox of thrift when money to buy output is less than needed output and the minimum standard of living is less than technology and business can readily achieve.

How do I know we could avoid inflation AND deflation -- if we viewed money as a weapons system to protect democracy from suicide?

Because I have studied the nature of deflation and know that it is as much the result of too little money on the demand side of capitalism's fundamental formula as inflation is the result of too much money there.

Whenever money is too cheap or too dear, economic performance drops below par. Our Congress and its central bank owe us their determined application of the information revolution now in progress to create money where it's needed to completely avoid poverty and contraction.

The notion that optimum performance of a free economy is arrived at without current information on which to take corrective action is outmoded. If we need the best information possible to protect us from our enemies, we also need the best information available to protect us from deflation, hyper-inflation, economic contraction, corruption, inequity, immorality, illegality, and stupidity.

If the business of America is business, the purpose of business is the highest possible minimum and median standards of living. These will be achieved by supplying output not by taxing income. The best taxes are those that encourage and facilitate necessary output -- not illicit profit. Legitimate profit pays fair wages and sustains green investment and operations.

Yes reform will always be in order. Especially do we need language and legal reform so that the people who do the work fully understand the rules -- and have a voice in their formulation.

The day after we achieve economic security for all of us, we will be able to streamline government to the point where it really works. If such security remains rare, corruption will win as honest habits disappear.

robdverity  06/18/2011 06:44 PM Report

Gelles says, "I have not noticed any editing on the Show's bulletin board comments. If there is some, I imagine there is not enough."

John, my post was deleted. It was first (REMant opted out apparently).

Your "...I imagine there is not enough." screams tons about Zionism and Zionists. YOU and all Zionists have resorted to Nazi tactics - you wanting only pro-Jewish posts a la Nazism propaganda - and the inhumanity perpetrated on the Pals (kill ratio of 100:1), forced to live in their own excrement, embargoed building mat'l, non-contiguous farms, yadda, yadda.

You conjecture I may be 'sick.' Indeed, I'm sick of the narcissism that enables Zionism to imperil world safety for a homeland created by fiat. What's done is done. No getting the genii back in the bottle. But it's a flawed concept. Like I'll take your backyard, then parcel a little back to you. The Arab reaction should have been foreseen. The Zionists sent them on an Arab diaspora. And every chance they get they whine that those damn Arabs don't want to live in peace (under the heel of our jack-boot left unsaid).

All on a Western hemisphere guilt complex.

JohnGelles  06/18/2011 05:43 PM Report

robdverity 06/18/2011 05:09 PM writes:

..... "Flattered yet puzzled and dismayed by the undemocratic monitoring of this forum. Mine was the first post which read, 'Was Hitler the cause of Israel? Think about it.'"

I have not noticed any editing on the Show's bulletin board comments. If there is some, I imagine there is not enough.

Rob D. may have a point -- I just don't know. Certainly, the Nazi atrocities were instrumental in post-WW II world in the formation of Israel as Jewish-majority nation. The atrocities are an unforgivable stain on the whole human race -- and especially on the perpetrators.

The reaction of Israel's neighbors has yet to be what it should have been from the start. They should have helped both Israel and the Palestinians to develop into happy democratic nations. The American nation has helped in this regard. Eventually America and Israel and their neighbors may "get it".

I'm not up on all of Rob D.'s advice on this matter. If he is for something closer to what the Arab Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had in mind for Jews when he joined with the Nazis in killing Jews, he would be sick. Perhaps he wants a decent outcome I am not aware of. I hope so.

robdverity  06/18/2011 05:15 PM Report

Think Bloomberg News.

JohnGelles  06/18/2011 05:15 PM Report

The CR Show competed with Oprah to sell books we need in between TV shows. (Oprah will probably continue -- but at the moment I'M not sure -- so used the past tense in this sentence.)

Andrew Roberts on his book 'The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War'. That is what the conversation is called. And I think I HAVE TO BUY the book.

Experiencing the story Roberts tells at the time has colored my whole life. What he said in this conversation confirmed what I have always thought. But a 20 minute conversation is far too short to substitute for what that 20 minutes brings to mind.

For countless reasons I never thought America could lose that war. Our allies were far too much a force, it seemed to me; and our own fighting forces and supply for allied forces made it impossible (in my mind) to imagine an outcome different from what happened.

Later, as I went from my teens to twenties, and learned more of the history of that war, I could see that Germany and Japan made mistakes -- and that the cost of war in blood of soldiers and civilians is horrific, for winners and losers.

With WW I, WW II and the Cold War, over, the potential for avoiding WW III exists. Can we do it? If we can, how?

In my view, only a smaller war can prevent a larger war. Only the police can prevent injustice. Sometimes they don't But without a just force to prevent as much criminal use of force as possible, I see nothing but otherwise worse outcomes.

Our current mission is to prevent nuclear attacks. Can they be prevented without war? Possibly. Should we wage war to prevent them. The history of WW II counsels YES -- in my view.

It may not be possible for me to be around when we go to war to prevent such attack. I'm too old. It is possible to disarm Iran and North Korea -- two potential attackers. It might be done by treaty instead of war. Most people hope so. It can certainly be done without nuclear attack by the peace keeping forces -- with threats and non-nuclear force.

Anyone who wants to be President of the United States will have this fact in his or her face every day they serve -- if they are elected.

robdverity  06/18/2011 05:09 PM Report

Flattered yet puzzled and dismayed by the undemocratic monitoring of this forum. Mine was the first post which read, "Was Hitler the cause of Israel? Think about it."

The fact that it was expunged ipso facto puts more gravitas to it than I imagined. Testing the Zionist influence (AGAIN), I will answer my own query since the monitors squelched the First Amendment chance at it.

The western hemisphere was gripped with a large case of guilt over Hitlers Anti-Semitism that produced the Holocaust, which in turn paved the way for the 1947 UN proclamation (or whatever) creating Israel.

Even if that is totally off the mark as something to think about, Charlie Rose himself is further off the mark to allow his monitors to expunge ANYTHING. The quality of these posts is not all that superior anyway, so losing any of them is a limitation the forum can ill afford.

Shalom Freedman and JohnGelles et al will applaud (both professed Jews BTW), but (back to Hitler) Herman Goehring, or whomever was the press-corp equivalent, doubtless started with selective editing.

Which brings it all around to another query: is the media totally controlled by Jews? Chuckle! They feed the beast, mythical or no, with this sort of pettiness.

jsup5  06/17/2011 06:41 PM Report

please do a show or segment about Operation Paperclip (protection and recruitment of Nazi scientists after the war) and how that angle of or WW2 has never really been explored in as much detail as it deserves. It was truly a deal with the devil and we're all paying for it.

ConstantinePanagiotatos  06/17/2011 03:20 PM Report

Greece entered World War II on 28 October 1940, when the Italian army invaded from Albania, beginning the Greco-Italian War. The Greek army was able to stop the invasion and even push back the Italians into Albania, thereby winning one of the first victories for the Allies. The Greek successes and the inability of the Italians to reverse the situation forced Nazi Germany to intervene in order to protect her main Axis partner's prestige. The Germans invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, and overran both countries within a month, despite British aid to Greece in the form of an expeditionary corps. The conquest of Greece was completed in May with the capture of Crete from the air, although the Fallschirmjäger suffered such extensive casualties in this operation that the Germans abandoned large-scale airborne operations for the remainder of the war. The German diversion of resources in the Balkans is also considered by some historians to have delayed the launch of the invasion of the Soviet Union by a critical month, which proved disastrous when the German army failed to take Moscow.

Why was none of this mentioned regarding the eastern front and a very big reason as to why Hitler had to wait two months to attack Russia, resulting in a loss that turned the whole tide of the war?

"Chief of Nazi Staff Field Marshall Keitel: "The unbelievable strong resistance of the Greeks delayed by two or more vital months the German attack against Russia; if we did not have this long delay ,the outcome of the war would have been different in the eastern front and in the war in general, and others would have been accused and would be occupying this seat as defendants today" Nuremberg Trials

Maybe because its not a new angle on the war? Please someone enlighten me.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  06/17/2011 03:14 AM Report

Loved the interview. I am glad I got past my: "What could possibly be new?"

There has been speculation that Hitler had the syphilis since his personal doctor, Theo Morrell expressed his own suspicion in his private diary.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/74776.php

I'm going with syphilis and speed to explain Hitler.

robdverity  06/16/2011 08:25 PM Report

Address the query, sans the labels. The 'soap opera' started because of WWII, which is the topic.

doodah  06/16/2011 06:52 PM Report

get over it, robd. Your obsession with the whole Israel/Palestine soap opera, will never be enough to bring on the Armageddon destiny that your conflicted, extremist-religious, atheist-fundamentalist, control-freaked-out ego will ever have the power to Fulfill.