Israel’s currency, the shekel, has appreciated nearly 30 percent against the dollar since the start of 2007.

Against the rock-solid dollar? No way!!!1! Nothing else appreciated significantly against the dollar, especially in the last year or two.

Israel is a country that is hard-wired to compete in a flat world.

Too bad the world's actually round. Only someone as privileged as "flathead" looks around and sees equalization around the globe. I see some people, traditionally oppressed, gaining ground while many others are losing ground. I see more division and more hierarchy growing--just not respecting national boundaries as much anymore. I think that last little bit may be the source of much of Friedman's confusion.

while Iran maintains a welfare state — with more than 10 percent unemployment.

Wait... Iran has a universal health care system? And, according to Wikipedia, health care is guaranteed in their constitution? Wow. I had no idea. That's really good. 10% unemployment? Our unemployment rate is currently 5.5% and you can bet that is an undercount... we've been screwing with our economic stats for a very long time. 10%? They could definitely be better, but that's not terrible.

And that quote you put in the main post is priceless... so, Iran's civil society, universities, technological advancement, and huge economy (15th in the world, by GDP) apparently are not "renewable power" according to Friedman. That doesn't count toward intelligence, but Israel's equivalents do.

Something else interesting: Iran's income inequality levels are almost the same as those of the US and are pretty close to Israel's as well. Once again, that's very interesting. I don't know exactly what conclusions you can draw from that, but its interesting.

Edit: Forgot to add-- I think his age is showing... too many FUs under his belt and his mind has started to go. Ok, it went a long time ago. But its just not getting better :).

Ever since about 9 years ago I read an account of 4 killings in Israel and the occupied territories in the NY Times - 3 Palestinians at least two of whom were just going about their daily lives without threatening anybody or anything shot by Israeli troops, and one Israeli colonist (my words not theirs) of the occupied territories - for which the headline was "Jewish (sic) Settler Killed" and which only mentioned the Palestinian deaths in the last paragraph of a full column article, I have ceased to regard the NY Times as a source of unbiased news or opinion about the Middle East.

Brains, braiiins.

Take that, zombie Tom Friedman.

To begin with? From the US, I'm afraid... And, yes, I think our friends would go down the drain fast without US subsidies and guaranteed loans... Perhaps there should be specific rules that no foreign aid can be permitted until all domestic poverty and related issues are taken care of.

What an incredibly good idea it was to create AIPAC to extract billions of dollars per year from American taxpayers! Genius!

Oh, by the way...Those are LOANS, right?
.
Good times for Smiley! :-D

I've pretty much stopped reading the op-ed page of the NYTimes. It's become Republican bullshit at the most primitive level. Anyone that writes "suck on this" has the intellect of a five year old that's spent his life watching John Wayne movies (replace with Chuck Norris or Die Hard flicks if you like). What ever happened to Bonanza morality? Now our "heroes" are self centered thugs.

My guess is that Friedman is a Jew. The brains line just goes with a self serving ethnic attitude. One that fits with the AIPAC mentality but not with a traditional Jewish one. It's another form of "suck on this" but instead of projecting the theme "I'm tougher than you" it's saying "I'm smarter than you." Simple minded. But then that's Friedman.

But there's also a truth in it in that every nation derives its "power" from the intelligence of its people. That's the tragedy of the class war the Republicans have been fighting against Americans for the last forty plus years. With their making college education more and more costly and more and more the sole domain of a select few, the ability to extract - no, that's a Republican attitude - the ability to grow and strengthen from an abundance of ever reborn national intelligence, a fundamental for every nation, is disappearing in America. Auto manufacturers build their plants in other countries because America doesn't have enough workers that can read and understand relatively simple techniques and methods.

The Republicans are extracting the value that's in America. But just as they gut a company that earns 15% a year profit because they can get 25-30% in two years and move on to the next company to gut, they are gutting America and will move on when they're done. Bahrain and the Cayman Islands anyone? McCain talks about "pork" and balancing the budget by reducing the outlays from Social Security and Medicare yet at the same time he arrogantly and "in your face" talks about war for the next "maybe a hundred" years. He doesn't mention the pork and corruption that is fundamental to the American military. Of course he doesn't mention the pork that is the recent Republican welfare for billion dollar companies medicare drug bill.

I'm getting too much into the details and my mind could probably fill dozens of pages with Republican malevolence towards average Americans. The fundamental is that Republicans are carpet baggers, looking to bleed every dollar from every situation they can. Since they've taken control of the public dialog through the consolidated corporate press and media they've been able to define those actions as patriotic, Godly and heroic when they are none of those things.

Thomas Friedman is one of their flunky boys. No that's being too kind. He's one of their whores.

In quotes: Not Foreign Affairs, but "Foreign Affairs"...

Hot, Flat, and Crowded

Why We Need a Green Revolution - And How it Can Renew America (because renewing America is where it's at!)

Thomas L. Friedman's no. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to all of us who are concerned about the state of America in the global future.

Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy—which he calls "Geo-Greenism"—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure. [Because that's what is most important right now!].

As in The World Is Flat, he explains a new era—the Energy-Climate era—through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street. But they have not gone very far down Main Street; the much-touted "green revolution" has hardly begun. With all that in mind, Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need; he shows that the ET (Please, phone home) (Energy Technology) revolution will be both transformative and disruptive [Isn't disruption transforming?]; and he explains why America must lead this revolution—with the first Green President and a Green New Deal, spurred by the Greenest Generation [Oh please can I be a member!].

Hot, Flat, and Crowded (sounds dystopian to me!) is classic Thomas L. Friedman—fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense [Common sense is always surprising!] about the world we live in today.

on TV, which for me is a rarity, of Palestinians using "small" bottles of cooking oil to put in their taxis. The rest of the population, from what I could gather, use donkey's or their backs to carry their goods. Apparently using cooking oil for their vehicles causes respiratory problems...but I highly doubt Israel gives a shit!

Donkeys of late are fetching very high prices--squeezing Palestinians just a 'little' bit more!