Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

May 26, 2010 By Fausta

Which one is it, Tom?

After hitting us with the idiot shtick on China, Friedman says he hates dictators:

Turkey and Brazil are both nascent democracies that have overcome their own histories of military rule. For their leaders to embrace and strengthen an Iranian president who uses his army and police to crush and kill Iranian democrats — people seeking the same freedom of speech and political choice that Turks and Brazilians now enjoy — is shameful.

As frequent readers of this blog know, I don’t post rumors; this time, however, I’ll post on a rumor.

The rumor is that the Obama administration gave a wink-wink nod-nod to Lula’s trip in the hope that Lula and Erdogan would come back convincing the Iranians to end the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Friedman article hints at this,

Sure, had Brazil and Turkey actually persuaded the Iranians to verifiably end their whole suspected nuclear weapons program, America would have endorsed it. But that is not what happened.

Iran today has about 4,850 pounds of low-enriched uranium. Under the May 17 deal, it has supposedly agreed to send some 2,640 pounds from its stockpile to Turkey for conversion into the type of nuclear fuel needed to power Tehran’s medical reactor — a fuel that cannot be used for a bomb. But that would still leave Iran with a roughly 2,200-pound uranium stockpile, which it still refuses to put under international inspection and is free to augment and continue to reprocess to the higher levels needed for a bomb. Experts say it would only take months for Iran to again amass sufficient quantity for a nuclear weapon.

Instead, Lula and Erdogan played right into the mullahs’ hands:

So what this deal really does is what Iran wanted it to do: weaken the global coalition to pressure Iran to open its nuclear facilities to U.N. inspectors, and, as a special bonus, legitimize Ahmadinejad on the anniversary of his crushing the Iranian democracy movement that was demanding a recount of Iran’s tainted June 2009 elections.

Friedman says he wants Iran to be a democracy. Good. But he also says, hey, let’s have the USA be China for a day!

Which one is it, Tom?

———————————-

This will be the subject of today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern

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Filed Under: Brazil, Iran, Lula, NYT, Turkey Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Thomas Friedman

May 25, 2010 By Fausta

Hey, Tom, be thankful you were born before 1979*

Thomas Friedman hits us with the idiot shtick on a periodic basis:

I have fantasized—don’t get me wrong—but that what if we could just be China for a day? I mean, just, just, just one day. You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment. I don’t want to be China for a second, OK, I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness. But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions.

Matt Welch notices that

If know anything about America’s worst successful columnist, it’s that he won’t rest until he’s flogged a terrible idea again and again and again.

Over to you, Ed:

Hmmm… if Tom lived in China, would he be able to access the New York Times on the internet?

* According to Friedman’s bio,

He has two older sisters, Shelley and Jane.

Had any of them been conceived in China after 1979, two of them would not be alive now. China instituted its lethal one-child policy in 1979.

How’s that for a suboptimal solution, Tom?

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Filed Under: China, Communism, idiocy, NYT Tagged With: Fausta's blog, one-child policy, Thomas Friedman

September 9, 2009 By Fausta

The vision of the annointed, Thomas Friedman version

In an Orwellian and disturbingly candid vision of “what’s good for you”, Thomas Friedman lays out his belief that China’s one-party autocracy is superior to the US’s political system because it has “great advantages.”

Well, yes, a totalitarian regime has the “great advantage” of totally crushing dissent and killing anyone who dares think otherwise. It can, for instance, kill millions of people during Mao’s Great March, Great Leap Forward, and Cultural Revolution. It can run mines that have the highest death rate in the world. It can tear down – overnight – historic districts to put up new high-rise buildings. It can open new coal electrical power plants without an iota of air pollution controls. Indeed, as Ed Morrissey points out,

Oh, those enlightened Chinese government officials! When they’re not executing people to harvest their organs, and when they’re not forcing women to have abortions to satisfy their one-child policy, and when they’re not tossing people in prison for political dissent, they have a great energy policy … even though they reject Kyoto and any attempt to hamstring themselves on economically-suicidal cap-and-trade policies.

If you are to believe Friedman, you would think China is the greenest country on earth, too:

It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

Anyone who has visited China will tell you that it is one of the most poisonously polluted countries in the world.

But Friedman tells you because he knows better than you. His self-anointed vision enables him to tell you that whatever the Republicans may object to is a function of “ideological naysaying,” not of any well-reasoned objection, or, in Paul Mirengoff‘s words, “Political discourse is flat, or would be if autocrats would only impose Thomas Friedman’s way.” Indeed, a monstruous column.

Bill Whittle (via Instapundit eloquently describes A Tale of Two Revolutions: The War of Ideas & the Tragedy of the Unconstrained Vision. Listen to the entire video.

The fundamental difference between right and left — right including libertarians, left including everyone from Marxists to mainstream liberals — is how we see such problems being addressed, i.e. the role of government. For the Thomas Friedman types paralysis is proof of the need for more, stronger, bigger, better government. For most on the right, the paralysis is proof that we have too much government. Lawyers and bureaucrats aren’t the problem for the left. They think the problem are the citizens and businesses that resist progressive change.

Friedman’s vision comes from a complete disregard for the individual and for liberty. And there lies his blindness.

————————————

Also via Instapundit, Cato healthcare experts are liveblogging Obama’s healthcare speech.

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Filed Under: capitalism, China, government, health care, healthcare Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Thomas Friedman

November 23, 2008 By Fausta

Heaven can’t wait, II

The staff at the NYT is antsy.

Yesterday Gail Collins wanted Bush & Cheney to quit so Nancy could take over until Obama’s January inaguration.

Today Thomas Friedman can’t wait, either, only that he skips Nancy altogether in his wishful thinking,

If I had my druthers right now we would convene a special session of Congress, amend the Constitution and move up the inauguration from Jan. 20 to Thanksgiving Day.

For Thanksgiving Day at the grey lady, whiiiine and cheese: “What do we want? Change! When do we want it? Now!”

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, NYT Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Thanksgiving Day, Thomas Friedman

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