A Day of Hating Thomas Friedman
“That’s how we got here — a near total breakdown of responsibility at every link in our financial chain, and now we either bail out the people who brought us here or risk a total systemic crash. These are the wages of our sins. I used to say our kids will pay dearly for this. But actually, it’s our problem. For the next few years we’re all going to be working harder for less money and fewer government services — if we’re lucky.”
Thank you, Thomas Friedman, you fucking jackass.
To “get the best” out of the global economy, Friedman advises nations to adopt a one-size-fits-all “Golden Straitjacket,” his shorthand for the neoliberal agenda of shrinking government and social safety nets to balance public budgets, keeping wages low to minimize inflationary pressure, privatizing all public assets and putting them into play in the global securities markets, deregulating commerce to give free reign to market forces, eliminating tariffs and quotas to allow goods to move freely across your borders, giving priority to export production, and opening everything to foreign ownership. Bridling the government like this gives free rein to what Friedman calls the “Electronic Herd,” the high-rolling financial speculators who will run your way and drop billions of highly leveraged dollars into your economy.
http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/capitalists.html
David Korten Book Review of Thomas Friedman’s “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”
Source: www.ratical.org
Reprinted with permission from TIKKUN: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. 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 … .
With all due respect to Silicon Valley, ideas and technology don’t just win and spread on their own. “Good ideas and technologies also need a strong power that promotes those ideas by example and protects those ideas by winning on the battlefield,” says foreign policy historian Robert Kagan.”
Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree
Haiku
How does Friedman shave
without the thought of slicing his throat
before the mob does?
Limerick
There once was a dimwit named Friedman
who wrote like some people squirt semen
he squealed for war
and shilled like whore
And now he blames you for Lehman
Hip Hop
I want to shave off your motherfucking mustache
you can’t stave off, just profit off, this market crash
you can’t pen a metaphor by accident
you have the ethical sense of a plague-bearing rodent
And now the people are remembering your flat earth
and they’re thinking of your bloated body being washed up by the surf
Bjork be sticking a fishhook in your anus
‘cuz your free market bullshit was heinous
And now you be blaming the home-buying proles
who got fucked by your peeps with no souls
you say the people must bail out the capitalist pigs
and forget about health and learn to eat twigs
I’m dreaming of the day you’re dragged though the streets
in Mumbai, or Hanoi, wrapped up in a spreadsheet
You threaten 1389, motherfucker?
We can do SEVENTEEN-89!
Thomas Friedman,
À la manière de Maya Angelou
Warrior Prince of global markets
Testicles swollen by the golden straightjackets you give mother Earth’s children
You discovered Silicon Valley, then declared the world flat
You truly are a visionary!
Your Pottery Barn rule : You Break it you Own it!
How I wish I could break you!
But you are an indomitable spirit
Love and logic cannot contain your loghorrea
Only a pride of lions mauling you could stop your finger from wagging
And your faith in scrappy entrepreneurship from killing trees
Only claw marks could silence your proud and noble invocation of trademarks
You will set us all free
Freedom when the Herd descends
To make us rich
And free
Safe under the Golden Arches
In the shade of the Olive Tree.
A Balkan Curse
I fuck your mother with the Washington Consensus in a Davos conference room while Dominique Strauss Kahn leads the board of directors of the IMF along with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in a stirring ode to Phil Collins and Adam Smith: “Invisible Touch/Invisible Hand”.
Helpful Translation
Jebem ti mater vasingtonskim dogovorom u konferencijskoj sobi u Davosu sve dok Domenik straus Kan diriguje savetom direktora IMF-a skupa sa mormonskim tabarnakle horom zivahnu odu Filu Kolinsu i Adamu Smitu : « Nevidljiv dodir/nevidljiva ruka ».
