the man and his homilies r a horror. this is an excellent analysis of how dangerous and deranged his propaganda can be.
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Friedman’s postulation that “green is the new red, white, and blue, oh yes it is, baby” is meanwhile only subsequently amended to reflect the geographical circumstances: “And it’s the new red and white in Turkey”. No relevant amendment is available, however, when it comes to Friedman’s declaration of political identification not as a Democrat or a Republican but rather as a believer in billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s theory that “everything I got in life was because I was born in this country, America, at this time, with these opportunities and these institutions”. Given that what Friedman got in life includes marrying into one of the 100 richest families in the US, owning a house valued in 2006 at $9.3m, and accruing $75,000 per speaking appearance, non-billionaires and foreign audiences might be excused for failure to sympathise completely with Friedman’s stated aim to pass on a similar climate of opportunity to his own children.
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As author and current congressional candidate Norman Solomon has pointed out:
“It’s reasonable to ask whether Friedman – perhaps the richest journalist in the United States – might be less zealously evangelical for ‘globalisation’ if he hadn’t been so wealthy for the last quarter of a century. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the corporate forces avidly promoting his analysis of economic options are reaping massive profits from the systems of trade and commerce that he champions”.
A simple example of the incestuous relationship fostered by Friedman’s incessant bleating in favour of free-market capitalism and neoliberalism is his receipt of the first annual £30,000 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award for The World Is Flat, itself written under the guidance of CEOs and other corporate officials.
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This feel-good sycophantism vis-a-vis the US war machine, which Friedman incidentally nominates for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 alongside Barack Obama, is compounded by Friedman’s signature portrayal of the armed forces as a bastion of multiethnic teamwork and a pioneer in the realm of racial and gender equality. The cheery cohesion of the military is of course cast into doubt by such phenomena as widespread rape among soldiers and a 2010 army report according to which approximately 18 veterans are committing suicide per day. Friedman’s ecstasy over the possibility of a “Pentagon-led green revolution” via the introduction of aviation biofuel made from pressed mustard seeds meanwhile fails to alter the fact that the US Defense Department presently holds the distinction of being the worst polluter on the planet.
As for Friedman’s explanation of the 2005 execution by US Marines of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha (“occupations that drag on inevitably lead to Hadithas”), this does not stop him from haughtily asserting two years later with regard to the “melting pot” that is the US military: “We don’t deserve such good people – neither do Iraqis if they continue to hate each other more than they love their own kids”.
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More here.