(or, why Thomas Friedman is an asshole, 1st ed.)

I first learned about Thomas Friedman from working with college students in an ethical leadership program. There was a guest speaker for an upper tiered part of the program that lectured on Friedman's book, The World is Flat. Most of the students were a part of a broad program and then individually selected for this piloted presidential leadership program. I just accepted this as part of the curriculum and did not really think critically about this or question what was being taught at the time.

The idea is that there is now a level playing field for commerce and there needs to be some shifting among countries and corporations to maintain relevance in the coming century. An example from the lecturer was that now you could be a kid from India and had not been offered certain opportunities, especially compared to some kid from the US, but now cell phones and the web changed all that. So the kid with brown skin in a country not as powerful as the US now has just as much opportunity and relevance because the world is now flat.

I think I began to understand some problems with teaching this sort of shit to students, and student leaders mind you, when I began befriending another group of students on campus. Through my friendship with them I came to attend the first US Social Forum, in Atlanta. After that I began to talk about how these ideas may not be ethical and in fact, may really be harmful to teach to what we were calling campus leaders. Well my example is this kid from India, and how he can now make more opportunities for himself because he has a cell phone and access to the internet. The apparent flattening of the world is still really stratified, because the global competition, systems of power, and maintaining of privilege and oppression hasn't really changed. A black kid in LA with a cell phone is still more likely to get pulled over by the police than his white counterpart. The ways in which communities of color are more likely to live near waste sites hasn't changed because of cell phones, and if anything the preaching of new ways to do commerce and consumerism is worse for these same communities. What Friedman is really saying is that the world is flat still for a few people and corporations and poverty or systemic oppression are never a factor in this new model of capitalistic relevance.

So I would get into conversations with some staff members, and more than often my friend who after we spoke we really started agreeing and challenging some of these ideas of what students were being taught, and just like more often than not, things really didn't change except that we got burnt and left.

I had not been thinking of this until the last couple of months when I have seen Thomas Friedman on various news broadcasts, even the Daily Show, read some of his continued articles in the NY Times, etc. Between my time coordinating the leadership program and now I have changed a good deal and I think it is important to say that before proceeding. I joined Iraq Veterans Against the War, I have attended a week long workshop at the Highlander Center, began reading and discussing anti-racist work, and more. I say it is important to say that because it is not just that I have developed, coordinated, and facilitated ethical leadership programs, but that I am actively pursuing social justice and learning a lot in that realm I should say flat out that Thomas Friedman; through his opinions, speech, and writing, is an enemy of social justice and many ethical standards on this round earth.

Just after the announcement of the troop surge in Afghanistan Friedman was on the Daily Show for an interview. He was asked about his initial support of invading Iraq and how he has changed his mind. He said he was wrong and offered a mild apology. By means of his expert status on globalization and foreign affairs he is still a war provocateur, just now in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So now the kid that had just as much chance to get into some Ivy League school because he had a cell phone is getting blown up at his cousins wedding. Great.

His promotion of the war in Afghanistan will cost a number of lives at home and abroad, and result in countless deaths and injuries by innocent civilians. With the majority of those affected by war being women and children we might even say that Friedman, via his expert opinion, is sanctioning global spousal and child abuse. What he will never say is that he came into importance because he was justifying US hegemony of the middle east through military operations and sanctioning countries we have been interfering with for decades. What he will probably never do is offer an apology to the innocent Iraqi's and Afghani's he has helped kill through his pious opinions, because he is only interested in maintaining the status quo, and for that it means he keeps making money off our backs. But because folks read his shit, because he made money off of his own privilege, he now advises our own foreign relations.

Thomas Friedman is a war provocateur who serves us by using his own power and privilege to maintain oppressive global systems.

I am writing this because it is upsetting, but also because it could be different. We don't have to listen to him, buy his books, support programs he is on, or support policies which he is behind.

In 1935 a booklet entitled War is a Racket was published, which was from the writing and some combined speeches of retired Marine Corps general Smedley Butler. In it Butler discusses how corporations are profiting from war, and that war profiteers are the ones promoting wars while it's the American people and soldiers who pay for it. Not 75 years later and Butler's words are still true, but because of this new globalization, new commerce, new rules for the 21st century you don't have to be a wall street banker to be behind a war, you can simply be a best selling author.

I am writing this because I have power and privilege too, and I am not going to simply expect the Iraqi or Afghani people to pick up or speak out against these wars because I have the fortune of sitting back here in the US. I am not against Thomas Friedman and saying all these things because of liberalism or guilt, either. It is more a matter of responsibility. When we acknowledge the power we have through our own privilege we must make a choice - to act one way or another, or to even to anything at all. When people listen and believe Thomas Friedman and the horseshit spewing from his mouth they are making a decision: "this guy is called an expert, he must know about this topic, and even though it is harmful, based on some global gentrification, and the military actions he supports are based on race and ethnocentrism, I am okay with it and will continue to support his columns, books, the news shows he appears on and on and on." We should not be alright with fools like him and his ilk.

Thomas Friedman is just as bad as the politicians if not worse, he is just as bad as war profiteers if not worse, he has the ability to learn from those given his access to history yet he continues to support old ideas that promote white supremacy which are simply repackaged to the 21st century brand of hegemony, racism, and war profiteering.