Thomas Friedman, why don't you break up?

The mistreatment of Arab Israelis has always gone on, but it's gotten much worse since the recent intifada. Which has had the effect of radicalizing the Arab Israeli population. I believe we saw the first such suicide bomber a few months ago.

(Answer: James K. Polk)

(But Mr. Stencil, he has a salad named after him!)

Could you explain what that means? I'm not sure I get it.

The government condoning, as well as paying for, Jewish Israelis building settlements on the land of non-Jewish Israelis or even technically non-Israelis (i.e. those in the "Occupied Territories") seems to be a pretty blatant action based around being non-secular.

(So how does Polk Salad Annie figure into all this?)

The sad problem with the impulse Laura points out is that even then there's so much work to be done: even if we imagine both leaderships at the table in full good faith, it still has to be decided what really constitutes a valid and workable compromise. And it's daunting to think this can even be done, because it's impossible to think of the situation as really having two equal "sides." You have (a) a Palestinian leadership that doesn't even have much authority to make agreements on behalf of its people, as plenty of them are in open opposition to it, and (b) an slanted bargaining table, on which Israel holds 54 cards to begin with, and the only one Palestine holds are the really sad joker of terrorism (which everyone frowns on and affords Israel a "legitimate" right to exercise more of their might) and international sympathy, which is about as helpful as a 2 of spades.

Here's the relevant definition of "secular," from the OED:

Belonging to the world and its affairs as distinguished from the church and religion; civil, lay, temporal. Chiefly used as a negative term, with the meaning non-ecclesiastical, non-religious, or non-sacred.

There is no official church in Israel, the laws aren't based on religious law, religious practice is not mandated in schools, etc. There was always a tension between religious and secular Zionism (see my note on Zionisms upthread) and it was secular Zionism that largely won out in Israel, although there's the possibility that recent events will establish a different course.

By your formulation any chauvinist state, from Zimbabwe to Japan, could be considered non-secular.

Nabisco: don't mean to ignore your post. I wrote mine before it posted.

This doesn't make Israel any less of a secular state but it does make it hard for non-jews, secular jew and any non-orthodox jews with the conviction not to want to be married by an Orthodox Rabbi.

I don't see how def of Jewishness can be construed as national, and not as religious or ethnic (although the latter has probs too - there's obv. big differences between, say, Eastern European Jews and Ethiopian Jews).

what do Muslim and Christian Israelis do if they want to get married?

Legal system: mixture of English common law,
British Mandate regulations, and,
in personal matters, Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim legal
systems; in December 1985, Israel
informed the UN Secretariat that it
would no longer accept compulsory
ICJ jurisdiction

It would appear that muslims and christians can sort that one out for themselves, but it does suggest that for personal matters the Torah takes precedence to a certain extent.

in December 1985, Israel informed the UN Secretariat that it would no longer accept compulsory ICJ jurisdiction.

?

It's code for "Fuck you, we'll invade who we like"

I believe that Jews are not solely a religious grouping, and the first Zionists (first self-identified Zionists, not the messianic return-to-Palestine groups that have always existed no matter how small) believed this as well. In fact it was many religious Jews in E. Europe that were most opposed to Zionism--to the politicization or secularization of Jewish identity.

"Nation" per the OED:

An extensive aggregate of persons, so closely associated with each other by common descent, language, or history, as to form a distinct race or people, usually organized as a separate political state and occupying a definite territory.

Note the "usually." Jews are an instance of a nation without a state.

I'm not trying to assert this as common sense, although I think I may have given that impression. It's a contentious issue.

Zionism \Zi"on*ism\, n. [Zion + -ism.]
Among the Jews, a theory, plan, or movement for colonizing
their own race in Palestine, the land of Zion, or, if that is
impracticable, elsewhere, either for religious or
nationalizing purposes; -- called also {Zion movement}. --
{Zi"on*ist}, n. -- {Zi`on*is"tic}, a.

It's possible to argue that the early Zionists, savvy assimilated Western Europeans as they were, realized that to win adherents to the cause and to get support from modern European democracies, they had to frame Jewishness as a national and not a religious identity--by contrast Jews in Iran post-Shah have had to frame it as a religious identity lest they be perceived as an Israeli satellite community. A question is whether there is a Jewish identity which remains--relatively--constant despite these shifts in "approach."

I still honestly believe in the idea -- which has had a rough time in practice so far -- that the only way Israel can be free from terrorism is by working as hard as possible to help transform Palestine as an organized entity, something that has so far been given only the most tentative and half-assed efforts. (And sadly, the lack of success in those attempts has led Israel to decide to put less, and not more, effort into them.)

i just had to read a chapter from "the world is flat" for an economics class and gooooooooddaaaaaaaamn is friedman a pandering brainless blowhard. endless fluff about how "globalization" is making the world safe for democracy followed by a stern reminder that americans are "falling behind in the global work force."

friedman's biggest problem is imagining that everyone wants to work hard for money. the man has apparently never observed a successful crime in his life.

Aren't we falling behind in the global workforce, though, with all those Indians suiting up and working all shifts?

I lost all my illusions that Friedman was writing about anything resembling reality a long time ago.

Smooth.

She said, finally, that Friedman gives generously to charity.

This man's career has been a miracle. He and David Brooks should get on their knees every day and thank whatever saint is the patron of mediocrities.

Be a rather bland saint. St. Whatever.

Well then.

"Instead of asking who clogged the toilet, maybe we should be asking why America’s scores on standardized math and science tests are so low." Ha ha.

How is it this thread doesn't contain any mention of Matt Taibbi's infamous takedowns of the mustachioed one.

<a title="http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html"; href="Flathead: The Peculiar Genius of Thomas Friedman">Flathead: The Peculiar Genius of Thomas Friedman</a>

<a title="http://www.nypress.com/article-19271-flat-n-all-that.html"; href="Taibbi on Hot, Flat, & Crowded">Taibbi on Hot, Flat, & Crowded</a>

Doh.

Flathead: The Peculiar Genius of Thomas Friedman

Taibbi on Hot, Flat, & Crowded

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/opinion/the-day-our-leaders-got-unstuck.html?hp

This is a scary economic moment. The response we need is not easy, but it is totally obvious. We need a Grand Bargain between America’s two parties — and we need it right now. Until you read the following news article, we’ll be stuck in a world of hurt.

first time i've clicked on a friedman column in forever and it has to start like THAT??

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/Friedman-a-theory-of-everyting-sort-of.html?src=me&ref=general

This one is just so mind-bogglingly awful and empty.

seriously, did someone drop him on his head when he was a baby?

the existence of his column is far more baffling to me than the quiddities/style aspects of the nyt

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/books/niall-fergusons-empire-traces-wests-decline-review.html?hpw

this has got to be a banner day for ol thomas:

As usual, Mr. Ferguson, who teaches in Harvard’s history department and business school, uses his powerful narrative talents in these pages to give the reader a highly tactile sense of history. But his book as a whole has a hurried, haphazard feel to it that underscores its genesis as a companion volume to a British television series called “Civilization: Is the West History?” Not only do the book’s more cogent arguments owe a decided debt to ones made by the New York Times Op-Ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman and the CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria, but its more original hypotheses also tend to devolve into questionable generalizations (“Europeans today are the idlers of the world”), contradictory assertions and silly Power Point schemas that strain painfully to be relevant and hip.

Friedman shows up in "the Revenge of the electric car" docu for no discernable reason at all

Oh no for Paul Simon fans:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/post/hey-isnt-that-paul-simon-and-thomas-friedman-at-the-bombay-club/2012/02/07/gIQAuvGCxQ_blog.html

Singer Paul Simon and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman dining together at the Bombay Club Monday night with two others. Shrimp, kebab, veggies among their shared dishes. What’s the occasion? Nothing special, the columnist’s office told us, “just a dinner with friends.”

Bombay Club in Washington D.C. I think

idk, i can see friedman and paul simon being friends and shit ... they're both on the same bland "one flat world" wavelength.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_04/taking_one_for_tom_friedman036755.php#

What a knucklehead. He wants Bloomberg to run for Prez as a 3rd party candidate. He whines:

had to catch a train in Washington last week. The paved street in the traffic circle around Union Station was in such poor condition that I felt as though I was on a roller coaster. I traveled on the Amtrak Acela, our sorry excuse for a fast train, on which I had so many dropped calls on my cellphone that you’d have thought I was on a remote desert island, not traveling from Washington to New York City. When I got back to Union Station, the escalator in the parking garage was broken. Maybe you’ve gotten used to all this and have stopped noticing. I haven’t. Our country needs a renewal.

He is right tho about the Acela being a sorry excuse for a fast train.

And only in his fantasy world is he going to get a Congress that will vote for the money needed to have a good fast train

I sometimes think about the time a C-suite exec at my then-employer was speaking at a departmental meeting and went on a tangent about something in Friedman's The World is Flat book and I left thinking... wow, I don't know about this exec

and he was gone from the company within the year

I remember Taibbi's classic take-down of that book. I wonder which of them is worse these days though.

I think Friedman's never tried to be unorthodox and if someone's coming to his work and picking up ideas from it, that's... probably an indictment of how well-informed they are

His writing can be terrible but it's just an articulation of things his readers already believe, but haven't written bad articles about

absolute king shit

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GFbhdU9XAAAUPFv?format=jpg&name=900x900

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GFb_ZW_XUAAndy3?format=jpg&name=small

also says My guess is that the next week or so is likely to be the most important in the Gaza war since Hamas launched it on Oct. 7.

just the least self-aware person in the world

When you have been spewing BS for so long you have no longer have a sense of the stench.

“Is there a better description of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq today?”

I’m no Middle East expert, but I’m gonna go with yes here.