Missed this one. A month ago, Mother Jones reported something I've always heard talk about, that Tom Friedman is married into one of the richest families in America, the shopping-mall Bucksbaums, whose company has taken a huge hit in the recession.
despite his connection to one of America's richest families, Friedman has always portrayed himself as a champion for the common man...
Friedman has always kept quiet about his relationship to GGP. This is understandable; he's a journalist, after all, and plays no role in the management of the company. But GGP's bankruptcy says something about the way the global economy really works. Friedman's often accused of ignoring that there are both losers and winners in globalization, but now it looks like even his rich in-laws are hurting.
I wish Friedman would talk about his in-laws too (as I do mine), in order to understand the amazing sociology of Jews and WASPs in the late 20th century. And for the sake of transparency/authenticity. Besides, I hear that Friedman's house has a huge carbon footprint. (Oh, missed this too: Matt Taibi's takedown of Friedman, who he says has a 11,400 square foot house. Ouch, says mother earth.)
In another time and place, Friedman would have been a Jewish commissar, hitting Christian peasants upside the head with a 2×4 for the Soviet government on behalf of Communism and Jewish opportunism. Instead today, he's a New York Times apparatchik, urging the US government to hit Muslim peasants upside the head with a 2×4 on behalf of his wealthy family's globalization agenda. Some things never change.
oh … the mall Bucksbaums …
Check out the picture of Friedman's mansion at http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.htm... Besides the Taibbi [two b-s] smackdown you cite, which is truly a classic of the genre, he did an almost-as-good one a few years ago – http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.htm...
Interesting article on Jewish identity from Gilad Atzmon on another Tom Friedman-like propagandist, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, on how “hatred turned him [from a left-winger] into a Jew." (It seems opportunistic and ambitious Jews' politics are incredibly fluid simply depending on what is in their best interests at any given epoch or even moment in time.) Atzmon: "While Muslims believe in Allah and Christians believe that Jesus is God, the Jew can believe in almost everything without ceasing to be a Jew. A Jew could believe in Marx, Bolshevism, Holocaust, secularism, democracy and even Lizards. Consequently, what makes a Jew into a Jew is the belief in ‘the Jew’, in Jewish suffering and in Jewish uniqueness…[Cohen]: “My great grandparents fled from the Tsarist Empire at the time of the pogroms.” Not only did they flee, they even became communists. Indeed a common Jewish political choice at the turn of the 20th Century. [cont'd]
[cont’d] One may wonder at this stage what lead Cohen the ‘pro-war secularist atheist’, to admit that he had become a ‘Kosher’ subject after so many years of relentless denial. “My sole interest in Jewish concerns came from being a left-wing opponent of the far Right and the blood-soaked antisemitic superstitions which turned Europe into a graveyard.” Certainly, Cohen starts to come up with the goods. We now learn that when Cohen was a ‘leftist’, so to say, it was because the left was serving the Jewish tribal interests fighting ‘far right antisemitic superstitions’. But these days seem to have passed. According to Cohen, the Left fails to do its job, it does not work for the Jews anymore. “Today the old certainties have gone because there are two far-right movements: the white neo-Nazi parties that the Left still opposes; and the clerical fascists of radical Islam which, extraordinarily, the modern left succours and indulges.” Seemingly, according to Cohen, the Leftists have shunned the Jews and support the clerical fascists of radical Islam. http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/03/07/hatred-h...
Tom Friedman may not have written about his family's wealth but it is an open secret that he flaunted it all over the streets of DC. In fact, the first NYT report on the effect of the GGP bankruptcy on the Bucksbaum wealth said, in print, I kid you not, "[t]his will humble the Bucksbaums." Whoa.
"In another time and place, Friedman would have been a Jewish commissar, hitting Christian peasants upside the head with a 2×4 for the Soviet government on behalf of Communism and Jewish opportunism." Gosh, Ed, why don't you tell us what time and place that was, and how the religion of the "Jewish commissars" enters unto it. Where they Jewish because they were Communist, or were they Communist because they were Jewish? "In another time and place" doesn't include the spaces between you ears. Please, tell us about this system which makes those guy beating on the Christian peasants "Jewish commissars" You, do not even have the distinction of assualting a moribund equine, buddy. You are beating a stuffed horse. You're the kind of guy who wouldn't know if his blow-up doll is faking orgasm.
"Interesting article on Jewish identity from Gilad Atzmon" Yeah, another guy who claims that Jews have an evil "essence". Yup, that's the word he uses. Not a good source on Jewish identity. It's best to regard Atzmon's writings as jazz solos, set to words.
The clear and obvious implication of all of this is that dedicated Jewish Tribalists don’t have any core political principles beyond “Is it good for the Jews” and “How can it be made to serve my own and Jewish interests?” Consequently, before entering into a political alliance with any Jew, or believing any political position that a Jewish media presence has taken on any important political issue, every gentile should ask himself: “Is this person a dedicated Jewish Tribalists?“ And if the answer is yes, then the conclusion should be: “Then he (or she) probably will never put the interests of the gentile society over the interests of Jewish Trabalists, and should thus be distrusted.”
BTW, Ed, that quote from Atzmon, as usual for him, makes no sense at all. It's just word salad and plays on, well, what do you know, anti-Semitism. You know, anti-Semitism, the thing which posits that because they're Jews, Jews cannot be good men or good citizens. And Christians believe "Jesus is God"? So what? And that does what for them, makes them incapable of political evil?
There are 45 Jewish Zionists/Jewish Tribalists in the US Congress, 95% of whom are in the Democratic Party. Jewish Zionist Arlen Specter recently tiptoed from the GOP over to the Dems. This is hardly surprising.
What are you getting so agitated and defensive about, Mooser? You claim to be neither a Jewish Tribalist nor a Jewish Zionists. So you're totally outside the parameter of my critique. Has all that Hasbara conditioning turned you into a reactionary? Metaphorically speaking, they know how to install buttons in average Jews that are easily triggered by any “outsider’s” words that cut to the quick of their Tribal treachery and deceit, and then use guys like you as the first line of defense to protect their evil enterprise…and you don't even realize you’re doing it. Don't be such a dupe.
"Should Tom Friedman write about his family's wealth?" Here, let me fix that for you: "Should Tom Friedman write?" There, that's better.
Yup, that's me Ed, a dupe of the Jews. " Metaphorically speaking, they know how to install buttons in average Jews that are easily triggered by any “outsider’s” words that cut to the quick of their Tribal treachery and deceit" And how did you come by this arcane knowledge, Ed?
I think Ed is sort of admitting that it isn't necessarily all about crypto-Bolshevism after all: It seems opportunistic and ambitious Jews' politics are incredibly fluid simply depending on what is in their best interests at any given epoch or even moment in time … dedicated Jewish Tribalists don’t have any core political principles beyond “Is it good for the Jews” and “How can it be made to serve my own and Jewish interests?” Quite so. Sorry, Mooser; we don't mean you, we mean the "dedicated Jewish Tribalists," and you must admit you aren't one of them.
I readily acknowledge it's not all about crypto-Bolshevism; in fact, its about any theoretical authoritarian mechanism, today the threat of which is primarily comprised of government, but that also could also be comprised of some new authoritarian/totalitarian "Judeo-Christian" Church, which I would dutifully fight as well. I don't think anyone here considers Mooser one of THEM — probably because he's been subjected to a Christian peasant wife. The problem seems to carried fourth primarily within insular, hermetically sealed Jews, either sealed by wealth, by Tribalism, by Zionism, by Hasbara, by Judeophile liberalism, by "Jews are God's chosen" Christian Zionism, or by Jewish-supremacist Judaism. (Atzmon would add by the "belief in ‘the Jew’, in Jewish suffering and in Jewish uniqueness.' I would amend that to say *an unhealthy fixation on and obsession with* Jewish suffering and uniqueness.)
RE: "Check out the picture of Friedman's mansion at http://is.gd/Ac7K " MY COMMENT: What, no tennis courts? That's shameful! He would be run out of Beverly Hills.
RE: Here, let me fix that for you: "Should Tom Friedman write?" MY COMMENT: Once again, lol! You have good sense of humor (in my über humble opinion).
RE: "dedicated Jewish Tribalists don’t have any core political principles beyond “Is it good for the Jews” and “How can it be made to serve my own and Jewish interests?" MY COMMENT: Do dedicated WASP "Tribalists" really behave any differently?
No, and neither do dedicated African American tribalists like the Congressional Black Caucus. But the WASPS and the CBC haven't set up a quasi-fascist foreign state and seen to it that Americans finance it, fight wars for it, and get blamed for its belligerent actions. Jewish Tribalists have done that, though.
RE: "But the WASPS…haven't set up a quasi-fascist foreign state" MY COMMENT: South Africa back during its apartheid era?
Ed, you're being very reasonable in this thread, and i think I agree with you. There is/was an African-American "Tribalist' state, though, namely Liberia — and it is/was a colonialist sham, of course.
(It seems opportunistic and ambitious Jews' politics are incredibly fluid simply depending on what is in their best interests at any given epoch or even moment in time.) I can see, this is a direct threat to your mental scapegoat architecture. Cohen was never a leftist, or only in the sense expressed by the German proverb below. He was a staunch supporter of Bush and the neocon's war on terrorism, and I think he signed the Euston Manifesto. What is left about a "lefists" that is welcomed into the folds of FrontPageMag I'll ask you? Could it be that generally the political positions are much more in progress (im Fluss, fluxionary) than what your claustrophobic mental architecture dictates you? There is a German proverb that says something like: if you weren't a communist in youth, you weren't really young; If you are still one when older you are a fool. I agree with Mooser, I find Gilad Atzmon and his activities not very attractive. And I think you haven't given us a good explanation what makes people born Jewish more opportunistic than the rest of us. Is there a gene after all, or is it a meme connected with reading Jewish scriptures?
If he wouldn't respond to your 19th century style mental acrobatics, I would consider him a vegetable. Honey you can't expect all "ill-guided" Jews to join your "ill-defined" camp colors displayed. What are they by the way? Maybe you could give us your precise Libertarian School one of these days, and tell us how it is connected with your further Christian American outlook?
From what I can tell, Africa could use some outside blood to inject a little social sanity and efficiency onto the continent. If it takes the profit-motive to get that outside blood down there, so be it.