#thomasfriedman — Public Fediverse posts

Uplifting Sunday thoughts from @rbreich and #ThomasFriedman. A lesson from the Winter People of Minneapolis or how to fight fascism effectively.
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/sunday-thought-2-the-legacy-of-these

Did Israel drag Trump and the US to war with Iran?

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/did-israel-drag-trump-and-us-war-iran

NYTimes: On Republican Neo-Nazism, Hamas and Israel: An Epidemic of Moral Cowardice
On Republican Neo-Nazism, Hamas and Israel: An Epidemic of Moral Cowardice https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/opinion/israel-hamas-antisemitism-republicans.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
#ThomasFriedman

NYTimes: If Only We’d Fight as Hard to Save Our Democracy as Ukrainians Are Fighting to Save Theirs
If Only We’d Fight as Hard to Save Our Democracy as Ukrainians Are Fighting to Save Theirs https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/opinion/ukraine-israel-russia-gaza-trump-america.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
#ThomasFriedman

NYTimes: Venezuela, Trump Came to Liberate Your Oil, Not Your People
Venezuela, Trump Came to Liberate Your Oil, Not Your People https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/opinion/venezuela-trump-oil-democracy.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
#thomasfriedman

Thomas Pain | Belén Fernández

https://thebaffler.com/latest/thomas-pain-fernandez
#ThomasFriedman

PATRICK LAWRENCE: What? Peace in Our Time?
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/24/patrick-lawrence-what-peace-in-our-time/
The Trump regime’s 28–point Ukraine peace plan accepts Moscow’s core concerns as legitimate. That’s essential for any possible settlement of the war, or the broader crisis between Russia and the West. By Patrick Lawrence Special to Consortium News There are any…
#Politics #Column #Commentary #Germany #Media #Militarism #Nato #Russia #TrumpAdministration #U.s. #Ukraine #AustriaStateTreaty #ChasFreeman #Crimea #Donbas #Donetsk #Kherson #KirillDmitriev #Luhansk #PatrickLawrence #PresidentVladimirPutin #SteveWitkoff #ThomasFriedman #U.s.SecretaryOfStateMarcoRubio #Zaporizhzhia

#US / Thomas Friedman: "They are as indigenous to their biblical homeland as the Palestinians, no matter what ‘anticolonial’ nonsense they teach at elite universities"

There are so many silly things in Thomas Friedman’s column it’s difficult to choose a highlight. Maybe one indication he’s delusional in an old-fashioned colonial way would be this particular advice he dispenses to the #Trump administration, right after suggesting gifting Israel with even more bombs, now adding B-2s: “Recognize Palestinian right to self-determination while requiring them to develop credible, corruption-free leadership.” Thomas Friedman, clearly a genius, is asking the most corrupt regime in U.S. history to demand corruption-free leadership from the Palestinians.

Disregarding the colonial arrogance (the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is not dependent on Trump’s goodwill), but what about looking in the mirror first? When Friedman indulges in ideas like “coercive diplomacy,” he basically admits he’s an imperialist, or rather an imperialist wannabe. It’s a euphemism for imperialism, not a philosophy and not diplomacy. It’s the opposite of diplomacy, in fact. He says the U.S. has the right to dictate terms to sovereign nations, that American interests should drive regional solutions, and that military threats are legitimate diplomatic tools when used by the dominant power.

But the cherry on top is this:

[…] “But the Israeli Jews have no Belgium. They are as indigenous to their biblical homeland as the Palestinians, no matter what ‘anticolonial’ nonsense they teach at elite universities. Therefore, you will never out-crazy the Israeli Jews. If push comes to shove, they will out-crazy you.”

Never mind Friedman’s evangelical orientalism mixed with a familiar populist tone—I believe he was always an opportunistic coward—but maybe someone should remind him that Romania (where his grandfather was born) was never part of Palestine. Most of the Russian Jews who started exploring colonization in Palestine in the second half of the 19th century barely survived the first year, and most ran back home. So much for indigeneity, I guess.

But honestly, when I see him gushing over ideas Dennis Ross came up with, I’m thinking maybe it’s time the White House should hire fewer Jewish “special advisers,” negotiators, and envoys to the Middle East and add a couple of Palestinians to the mix? It’s becoming absurd.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Actually, I’m not sure why he’s using #Belgium and the #Congo as his reference point. Why not stick with #Britain? After all, they eventually left Palestine too. They also refused to implement the partition plan—or any plan, for that matter—that wasn’t acceptable to both communities: the Arab majority and the Jewish minority, which consisted mostly of non-indigenous people who had arrived in Palestine illegally.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/opinion/trump-israel-iran-war.html or https://archive.is/mS8Wv

@palestine
@israel
#Palestine #Israel
#ThomasFriedman

From Thomas Friedman in the NYT today:
#Israel #Gaza #FreePalestine #ThomasFriedman #NYT #Netanyahu

@GaryRLundberg When I read The Lexus and the Olive Tree, I thought it was about how people in undeveloped areas irrationally resisted development because they were unsophisticated. I didn't see the obvious, that people irrationally, at least from my point of view, clinging to their olive tree are everywhere, not just in developing countries.
#ThomasFriedman

🎁 Bibi Is Choosing Stefanik and Trump. President Biden, Don’t Be Fooled. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/opinion/netanyahu-gaza-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.t00.nIui.bveL5EVMdNrG
#Israel #NetanyahuIsAWarCriminal #Hamas #Palestine #IranNuclearProgram #ThomasFriedman #NYTOpinion

"imperialistic blather straight out of the 19th century, except horribly written — imagine Rudyard Kipling after an anvil fell on his head." Maybe the best description of #ThomasFriedman's writing ever. #Mideast #journalism https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/israel-palestine-journalism-nyt-thomas-friedman/

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman had a piece that compared the targets of US bombs to vermin. It’s the sort of metaphor that propagandists have historically used to justify genocide.
#FAIR: https://fair.org/home/action-alert-friedmans-vermin-analogies-echo-ugly-pro-genocide-propaganda/ via @FAIR

#raceMaking #NYT #media #racism #ThomasFriedman #columnist #NewYorkTimes #manipulation #warCrimes #USWars #coloniality #propaganda #genocide #callToGenocide #reputation #whiteSupremacy #manufacturingConsent

"Netanyahu Is Turning Against Biden"
#ThomasFriedman makes peace in #Gaza sound almost easy. I'm not knowledgeable about it, but I'm glad there are smart people in the US Department of State and elsewhere working on the problem.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/opinion/israel-war-netanyahu.html?unlocked_article_code=1.PE0.itbx.iVfAHCIiU3FE&smid=url-share

"È difficile scegliere se piangere o ridere leggendo i punti salienti della conversazione di un'ora che Joe #Biden ha avuto con #ThomasFriedman del New York Times martedì scorso, dopo aver incontrato il presidente #IsaacHerzog.

Si può piangere per l'impotenza e l'inutilità della più grande superpotenza del mondo quando si tratta del suo protetto, #Israele.
E si può ridere dell'inversione dei ruoli della formica e dell'elefante.

Si può gridare che l'America non ha imparato nulla e non ha dimenticato l'unico modo in cui si può affrontare Israele, se si vuole davvero influenzarlo, e si può ridere di come Israele continui a prendersi gioco degli Stati Uniti. ⬇2

.> In his book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman says, and I quote, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas…and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.” Perhaps this was written in a moment of vulnerability, but it’s certainly the most succinct, accurate description of the project of corporate globalization that I have read.

'More than 200 contributors skewer the New York Times' coverage of trans people': https://www.alternet.org/200-contributors-skewer-nyt-trans/

'Numerous, eye-opening examples of how the "Old Gray Lady," as the paper is often called, positions and frames transgender people and the issues they and their families face are packed into the letter, which compares the paper's coverage to "far-right hate groups." Perhaps one of its most consequential call-outs is how The Times' reporting is used by anti-LGBTQ state lawmakers and other officials to support anti-transgender legislation and policies.'

Every person who seriously reads The New York Times and considers their political output knows they mainly pander to advertisers and press releases from the White House.

From Chomsky/Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent':

'New York Times editor Max Frankel, who said in an interview that “we’re an establishment institution, and whenever your natural constituency changes, then naturally you will too.”'

Noam Chomsky :chomsky: in his book '9/11':

'To quote the lead analysis in the New York Times (September 16): “the perpetrators acted out of hatred for the values cherished in the West as freedom, tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage.” U.S. actions are irrelevant, and therefore need not even be mentioned.'

Via William Blum's 'America's Deadliest Export: Democracy':

'This war [in Iraq] is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan … it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad. (Thomas Friedman, much-acclaimed New York Times foreign affairs analyst, November 2003)'

Chomsky again, in https://dev.lareviewofbooks.org/article/dismantle-all-of-this-stuff-a-conversation-with-noam-chomsky:

'A couple of days ago I had a talk with a group of Latin American activists. They were from all over Latin America. Well, just for fun, I read for them a column that appeared in The New York Times that day by one of their top foreign affairs specialists. It was about how the United States has been committed to the rule of law, human rights, and democracy. They just burst out laughing. They’re living in the real world, not the world of US intellectual culture.'

Chomsky in his book 'Global Discontents':

'If you look at polls, plenty of people are opposed to surveillance. The ones who support surveillance are the ones who are as deluded as people like Thomas Friedman or Bill Keller at the New York Times, who think that we have to have surveillance for the sake of security—not noticing that the very administration that is calling for defense against terrorism is maximizing terrorism and the threats against us.'

From Chomsky's book 'The Responsibility of Intellectuals':

'Others are missing from the list of honored dissidents, for example, the six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, who were brutally murdered by Salvadoran forces fresh from renewed training by U.S. forces, acting on the specific orders of the U.S. client government. In fact, they are scarcely known at all. Few even know their names, or recall the events. The official orders to murder them have yet to appear in the United States anywhere near the mainstream, not because they are secret: they were published prominently in the mainstream Spanish press. This is not an exception. It is the rule. The facts are not in the least obscure. They are well-known to activists who protested the horrendous U.S. crimes in Central America, and to scholarship. In the Cambridge History of the Cold War, John Coatsworth writes that from 1960 to “the Soviet collapse in 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of nonviolent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites.” When we turn to coverage in media and intellectual journals, we find that the picture is reversed. To take one of many striking illustrations, Edward Herman and I compared the New York Times coverage of the murder of a Polish priest—whose assassins were quickly found and punished—with the murder of one hundred religious martyrs in El Salvador, including Archbishop Óscar Romero and four American churchwomen, whose assassins were long concealed, while the crimes were denied by U.S. officials and the victims subjected to official contempt. The coverage of the murdered priest in an enemy state vastly exceeded that of one hundred religious martyrs in the U.S. client state, and was radically different in style in the way predicted by a propaganda model of the media. This is only one illustration of a highly consistent pattern over many years.'

From Rebecca Solnit's book 'Whose Story is This?':

'One way we know whose story it is has been demonstrated by who gets excused for hatred and attacks, literal or physical. Early in 2018, the Atlantic tried out hiring a writer, Kevin Williamson, who said women who have abortions should be hanged, and then unhired him under public pressure from people who don’t like the idea that a quarter of American women should be executed for exercising jurisdiction over their own bodies. The New York Times has hired a few conservatives akin to Williamson, including climate waffler Bret Stephens. Stephens devoted a column to sympathy on Williamson’s behalf and indignation that anyone might oppose him.'

...and:

'This misdistribution of sympathy is epidemic. The New York Times called the man with a domestic-violence history who, in 2015, shot up the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, killing three parents of young children, “a gentle loner.” And then when the serial bomber who had been terrorizing Austin, Texas, was finally caught in March 2018, too many journalists interviewed his family and friends and let their positive descriptions of the man stand, as though they were more valid than what we already knew: he was an extremist and a terrorist who set out to kill and terrorize  Black people in a particularly vicious and cowardly way. He was a “quiet, ‘nerdy’ young man who came from ‘a tight-knit, godly family,” the Times let us know in a tweet, while the Washington Post’s headline noted that he was “frustrated with his life,” which is true of millions of young people around the world who don’t get a pity party and also don’t become terrorists. The Daily Beast got it right with a subhead about a recent right-wing terrorist, the one who blew himself up in his home full of bomb-making materials: “Friends and family say Ben Morrow was a Bible-toting lab worker. Investigators say he was a bomb-building white supremacist.”'

#TheNewYorkTimes #TransRights #Trans #NoamChomsky #WilliamBlum #RebeccaSolnit #MaxFrankel #ThomasFriedman #BillKeller #EqualRights #propaganda

Netanyahu’s Judicial Coup Could Destroy His Start-Up Nation

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/opinion/bibi-netanyahu-israel.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

#ThomasFriedman #israel

#ThomasFriedman's analysis of #Netanyahu's proposed #judiciary reform: America has supported #Israel militarily, diplomatically, and financially since its foundation, not because it shares US interests but because America believes Israel shares its values. If Israel were to fundamentally depart from those shared values by doing away with an independent judiciary, shared interests will no longer be enough. That’s why #Biden’s 46 words are so crucial.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/12/opinion/joe-biden-bibi-netanyahu-israel.html

#NYTimes #democracy

Canada’s True North conference is not your typical tech event - From the venue and the flashy event website, Waterloo, Ontario’s True North conference (in its secon... more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/YWd8Bcgl_Cs/ #artificialintelligence #universityofwaterloo #sustainableenergy #markzuckerberg #new-york-times #thomasfriedman #northamerica #boardmember #communitech #karaswisher #blackberry #encryption #healthcare #smartphone #executive #truenorth #startups #articles