Thomas Friedman

From SourceWatch

Thomas L. Friedman is a columnist for the New York Times and has authored a number of books, including From Beirut to Jerusalem, recounting his years a reporter in Lebanon and Israel, as well as The Lexus and the Olive Tree, a defense of globalization and free trade.

His work has been critized for being a defense of neo-liberal and free trade policies and deriding those challenging these policies. [1]

He is also a supporter of the war in Iraq. [2]

He is married to Ann Friedman. "In England, he met Ann Bucksbaum, a Phi Beta Kappa Stanford graduate studying at the London School of Economics. She came from a wealthy Iowa real-estate family. They courted and married in 1978 during a small ceremony in London’s Hyde Park Synagogue." The article adds that "One irony is that Friedman married into one of the 100 richest families in the country a quarter century ago and now is far more famous than it is. The Bucksbaums, widely recognized as benevolent leaders in the real-estate industry and pioneers in the development of shopping malls, are worth about $2.7 billion. Friedman says his father-in-law, patriarch Matthew Bucksbaum, is his best friend." ^[1]

• Board Member, Pulitzer Prize ^[2]

Published works

• "From Beirut to Jerusalem," Anchor Books; Updated edition August 1990. ISBN 0385413726.
• The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization," Anchor Books; May 2000. ISBN 0385499345.
• "Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism," Anchor Books, August 2003. ISBN 1400031257.
• "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century", Farrar, Straus & Giroux, April 2005. ISBN 0739461621
• "The World Is Flat: Expanded Edition A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century", Farrar, Straus & Giroux, April 2006. ISBN 0374292795 ISBN 978-0374292799
• "The World Is Flat 3.0 A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century", Picador, July 2007. ISBN 0312425074

Resources and articles

Related SourceWatch articles

• Friedman (Iraq War time unit)
• Friedman (Iraq War time unit)/all examples

External articles

• Mark Rupert, "The Anti-Thomas Friedman page", April 2002.
• Shahid Alam, Answering Thomas Friedman, CounterPunch, April 3, 2002.
• John Paul Jones "Manufacturing the News: a report on Thomas Friedman", Opinion Editorials, Al-Jazeerah.info, December 4, 2002. (Note: Aljazeerah.info is a different entity from Aljazeerah.com. This column was originally published on Yellow Times but the site is now defunct).
• Kathleen Christison, There He Goes Again: Friedman Bashes Palestinians, CounterPunch, September 3, 2002.
• Shahid Alam, "Illuminating Thomas Friedman," CounterPunch, June 18, 2003. Discusses Friedman's Zionist compatible re-interpretaion in his column, and how these obfuscate the issues discussed. SA: "In a recent television interview with Charlie Rose-published in the Forward of June 6, 2003-Friedman confesses that "Israel was central to my life as it was to all my friends." He was reminiscing about his years in high school. ‘Today,’ he laments, 'I'm probably the only one of my friends who is still emotionally involved in Israel.' Now, I would not have mentioned this if Friedman were not America's journalistic sage on Arabs and Muslims. However, since he is, isn't this confession pertinent to his sermons on the Middle East: and isn't it illuminating?".
• Kathleen Christison, "Why I Liked Thomas Friedman's Latest Column Before I Didn't," CounterPunch, October 26, 2004. Discusses a specific Friedman article. KC: "I read two articles on Sunday that made quite an impact. The first was a Thomas Friedman column. Reading Friedman is always an interesting, usually an angering, experience. This one didn't anger me right off the bat, but his thesis disturbed me".
• Greg Palast, "French Fried Friedman", ZNet, June 5, 2005.
• M. Shahid Alam, Did Thomas Friedman Flunk History?, Counterpunch, July 18, 2005
• Matt Taibbi, "Flathead: The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman" New York Press, Volume 18, Issue 16, April 27, 2005.
• Evan Derkacz, "Tom Friedman's Faith-based Free Trade-ism. He can't be bothered to actually 'read' what he writes about," AlterNet, July 24, 2006.
• Matt Taibbi, "NYT's Tom Friedman and the Pundits Will Blame Us for Iraq," Rolling Stone (AlterNet), March 7, 2007.
• John Amato, "Friedman for War Czar: …we’re on our very, very, very, very last legs…," Crooks and Liars, April 22, 2007. Video link/transcript: Friedman with Wolf Blitzer.
• Satyam Khanna, "Friedman: ‘I Don’t Apologize’ For Believing Iraqi Democracy Could Come From U.S. Occupation," Think Progress, August 17, 2007.

External resources

• Friedman (unit) in the Wikipedia. Note: one F.U. equals six months.
• "Columnist Biography: Thomas L. Friedman", New York Times, accessed November 2004.
• "Thomas L. Friedman: Columns", New York Times, accessed November 2004. (This archive only displays the first paragraph of each column and requires payment to view the full article).
• See how you compare to Thomas Friedman