Thomas Friedman is an evangelist for Free Traders and Globalization. You do not need any conspiracy theories to know this thing called Free Trade is not trade at all and Globlization has been driven by elite groupings outside of any real democratic process.
It is obvious workers have no voice in the process that is leading to a new "ism" of Globalism where raw Capitalism is practiced even in Communist China.

Thomas Friedman also confuses cause and effect in many of his so called flatteners which supposedly were periods in history that paved the way for Globalization. The Y2k crisis is a prime example. The Y2k crisis was caused by Free Trade and Globalization as more than million workers lost their jobs in the computer industry forcing computer to operate on automatic for years with out any decent housekeeping.

Friedman never gets into things like the Lend Lease Act which was actually real Free Trade and the Marshall Plan that restored local value added economies in Europe and Asia.

Friedman leaves out some other very important periods in history and the year 1956 is one of them.

The Suez Canal was closed down signaling how important the control of the Middle East is. Also, in 1956, the U.S. Federal Government itself sponsored the moving of factories outside the USA . It was supposed to be a temporary program but it never ended. It first evolved into the Maquiladora factories using impoverished workers in Mexico and then it evolved into what is called Free Trade today. It was never evolved in a natural economic flow but it was a forced march steered by elite groupings in government, media, colleges, trans national corporations and international entities like the World Bank . ( All should read The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins for some real flatteners of our times.

You can explore the lost worlds in the Flat World of Thomas Friedman at http://tapsearch.com/flatworld and related articles at http://ezinearticles.com/?expert+Ray_Tapajna