Belén Fernández
Belén’s new book The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work was released by Verso in November 2011 and is available for purchase at Amazon and elsewhere.
Click here to read David Cronin’s book review at The Electronic Intifada: “Fernández skewers empire’s messenger Tom Friedman”, and here to read Anatole Ashraf’s review in the Columbia Spectator.
Click here to read the introduction to the book excerpted at Guernica Magazine and here to read another excerpt at Al Jazeera.
A few blurbs of praise for the book:
From Alexander Cockburn, editor of CounterPunch:
Filleting the silliest man on the planet needs a sure scalpel, and Belén Fernández wields hers with deadly finesse.”
From Nir Rosen, author of Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World:
A long overdue takedown of a dangerous fraud. Fernández deserves great credit for having the stomach to digest all of Friedman’s oeuvre and for her witty, fact-based and ruthless deconstruction of all his contradictions, incoherence, jingoism and inane aphorisms. You read it and you are amazed how a clown could rise to such dominance in American culture and how such drivel could pass for insight, and what that implies about us. The book is a vaccination that should be given to all college freshmen lest they too get infected, an antidote for those suffering from admiration of Friedman and a palliative remedy for those of us who have had aneurysms in reaction to his every latest bloviation.”
From Dahr Jamail, journalist and author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq:
Via razor sharp analysis and meticulous research, Fernández reveals the consistently disastrous effects of the neoliberal policies Friedman cheerleads. The hubris, fallacy, consistent hypocrisy, and buffoonery of theNew York Times‘ most widely read columnist is systematically deconstructed and laid bare. A must read.”
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Belén was born in Washington, D.C. After graduating from Columbia University in 2003, she spent many years hitchhiking in various parts of the world with photographer Amelia Opalinska. This resulted in–among other things–the publication of Belén’s political travelogue Coffee with Hezbollah, which chronicles the pair’s hitchhiking travels in Lebanon and Syria following the July War in 2006. The book has received the following praise from Norman Finkelstein:
It’s hard to pull off a book that’s simultaneously serious and silly but Fernández managed to do it. A delightful read.”
Click on the links provided to read reviews of the book by Robin Yassin-Kassab, Tom Chartier and Mary Rizzo. Coffee with Hezbollah can be purchased here.
Belén has lived in Italy, Turkey, and Mexico, and spent 4 months reporting from Honduras following the coup d’etat of 2009, where she interviewed Honduran President Mel Zelaya–confined to the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa–as well as coup general Romeo Vasquez Velasquez. Her writings have appeared in Al Jazeera English, Guernica Magazine, CounterPunch, Palestine Chronicle, The Electronic Intifada, Al Akhbar English, Upside Down World, Venezuelanalysis.com, and others.
She began writing for PULSE in May of 2009. Her PULSE archive is accessible here.
It seems to me that you write so well Belén
Thanks Fernandez,
The Imperial messenger took the mask off an ugly face of ” a pretended knowledgeable profit ” !!
Every time I read an article for Friedman,in NY times , Al-hayt or Middle east ( both saoudi Media ),
I felt the (nausee) , the need to vomit !!
Belén you are fantastic. Will you be my girlfriend? I will make you cookies everyday. Promise ;)
I am glad finally someone has exposed the pseudo public intellectuals like Friedman, who so blatantly push a specific (less respectable) agenda.
Estimada Belén Fernández, gracias por sus contribuciones. Tengo un podcast que esta disponible en iTunes etc sobre ‘culturalstudies’. Me gustaria hacer una entrevista sobre el nuevo libro.
Saludos
Toby Miller
tobymiller.org