2009’s alternative global thinkers similar to our hegemonic ones

The online magazine Pulse takes a shot at FP’s Global Thinkers list:

We were naturally skeptical since the selection included Dick Cheney, General Petraeus, Larry Summers, Thomas Friedman, Bernard-Henri Lévy, David Kilcullen, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salam Fayyad, The Kagan Family (yes, all of them) and Ahmed Rashid among others.  We don’t consider any of these people thinkers, let alone having global significance, and we couldn’t help but notice that the main thrust of all their work aligns with the global military and economic agenda of the US government. 

So Pulse polled their writers and came up with own list, including left-of-center writers like Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein, Eduardo Galleano, and Tariq Ali. Their Top 20 also happened to include two thinkers — Amartya Sen and Tariq Ramadan — who were also on our list as well as another guy who writes for us from time to time.

Pulse’s honorable mentions featured even more doubles with our list, including Bill McKibben, James Hansen, Joseph Stiglitz, and Karen Armstrong. Despite our hegemonic capitalist agenda, we’ve even featured

Could it be that FP’s thinkers actually espouse a fairly wide diversity of opinions and not just "the global military and economic agenda of the US government"?

In the end, the whole point of the list — and all the many, many lists we run — is to start discussion. And to that end, Pulse’s list is very welcome addition to the conversation.