War in Afghanistan

Just Say No, Thanks

April 11, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

Will loves Simon and Garfunkel and Simon without Garfunkel and Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. So when Will opens Fuel at seven, he tells Pandora to sing the 1960s. Which means early mornings at Fuel are all about flashbacks for some of us. Bob B and I hear a song and immediately recall a moment, or an event we lived through. “Happy Together” by The Turtles sends me back in a heartbeat to City College. I can see E walking past the Administration Building. And I loved E.

A bit later, Pandora offers Bob Dylan crooning “Lay Lady Lay” and I’m confronted with memories of M and my boatload of regret. I loved M. At some point, Anthony tells Bob B that he missed the 1960s entirely. Reminding us that if he had his way, Will would be offering us non-stop Frank Sinatra.

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Treason

April 4, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

My “Support The Troops / It’s Time To Come Home” sign has seen better days. I’ve taped and re-taped it; stapled and re-stapled it.

This Saturday a big wind blew it and me several feet, bending us both. But I really don’t want to make a new sign. To acknowledge I’ll be standing out in front of Town Hall long enough to justify the effort it will take to make a new sign.

Google says tin and aluminum are the appropriate gifts for a tenth anniversary. So ten years later, should we send the Iraqi people our tin foil and aluminum cookware? It’s got to be better than shock and awe. The destruction of their middle class, the disintegration of their families, schools, hospitals, neighborhoods.
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Making The World Safe For Whoopee

December 1, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

Ignore the gossip-mongers: the mission remains critical. We’ve invested so much making Afghanistan safe for Hamid Karzai and his drug-running relatives, it would be a crying shame to cut and run. Just because our generals appreciate the enthusiastic support and feminine charms of Paula Broadwell and Jill Kelley.

U.S. Army soldiers conduct a combat patrol in Khowst province, Afghanistan, Jan. 25, 2012. The soldiers are assigned to 2nd Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jason Epperson

Paula Broadwell met Peaches Petraeus at Harvard in 2006. In 2008, he became the subject of her doctoral dissertation on leadership. And they began to jog together. That same year, Peaches assumed leadership of ISAF, the international forces in Afghanistan. The dissertation became a book and Paula went to Afghanistan many times to run, to listen and learn. A “mentee,” she became.

As for the pesky war, General Petraeus testified in March 2011: “The momentum achieved by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of important areas. However, while the security progress achieved over the past year is significant, it is also fragile and reversible.”
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The Small Stuff

July 28, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

I’m trying not to sweat the big stuff. Like the end of the world as we know it. I mean, if God wanted us to have arctic ice and antarctic penguins, he wouldn’t have made coal.

Adelie Penguins - Photo: Heid Geisz

And I’m trying not to let it bother me that it no longer makes sense to see Batman on the silver screen. Although my friend D. says it’s still safer statistically to see Batman than drive. Which he hopes is reassuring, but only makes me want to walk more.

Fact is, I’ve already had one friend murdered by a psychopath who was packing right here in the Best Small Town in America. So statistically my few remaining friends are safer than me.

It seems the Founding Fathers wanted all of us to have AK47s. Even the mentally-ill. If God wanted us to have gun control, he wouldn’t have made the NRA.

It’s time to ignore the big stuff and see the small.

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Going, going, gone

June 7, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

Things are different since Vladimir left. Now when I rant, mutter, or converse in more measured tones, there’s nobody listening.

Vladimir responded in his own unique Quaker Parrot way and most of it went over my head. What I could understand was his laugh.

And I could use more laughter. These are difficult times. Several of my favorite TV shows are going away. And I’m not talking hibernation. The usual end-of-season-fadeway only to reappear in the fall.

Goodbye Jason Isaacs. Thanks for "Awake."

We’re talking going, going, gone. Cancellation. Kaput.

Unfortunately, I’m hooked. Hooked on the characters and hooked on their stories. Like a junkie with no junk and worst of all, no connection.
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Stop Kony. Stop Us.

March 24, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

If 80 million people had seen a short film I made about Joseph Kony, an African madman/dictator who kidnaps kids and makes them slaves and soldiers, sent me $30 bucks for a bracelet, then expected me to help them catch this maniac in some remote section of Sudan, well I, too, would probably run into the street in my underwear. And end up in the hospital.

The young members of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army - Photo 2006, AP

To be absolutely clear, I hate African madmen/dictators who enslave kids and turn them into killing machines.

I watched the KONY2012 video at Fuel surrounded by people, so I didn’t openly weep. It’s difficult not to cry when you hear Jacob’s story, what happened to his family, his friends, to Uganda: “We worry the rebels when they arrest us again then they will kill us. My brother tried to escape. Then they killed him using a panga. They cut his neck … I saw.”

Jason Russell, the filmmaker, made Jacob a promise: “We are also going to do everything that we can to stop them … we’re going to stop them.”

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The War’s Not Over

Mickey Friedman
January 7. 2012

Few Americans know about David Emanuel Hickman. The media jabbers about Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum and neglects David Emanuel Hickman.

After attack in Ramadi, Iraq 2006, U.S. Army photo: SFC David D. Isakson

For all their rhetoric about standing tall and tough and fighting the fight against Islamic extremism, the politicians do their talking surrounded by the trappings of wealth and power. They are the 1%. They are safe. David Emanuel Hickman went out to do their work and died. The Defense Department says he died in Baghdad on November 18, 2011 “of injuries suffered after encountering an improvised explosive device.”

The Army Times called Hickman “the last American fighter killed in combat” in Iraq. To our ever-lasting shame, Hickman will be remembered by his family and friends in North Carolina and by those who watched him playing outside linebacker for Northeast Guilford High School, but will never be known by the American people. There will be no parade past Wall Street for David Emanuel Hickman nor for Marine Pvt. Jonathan Lee Gifford, our first casualty.

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A Million Faces

By Mickey Friedman
November 7, 2011

This Sunday morning, after an hour of serious shoveling, I was able to get my car to Fuel for my Sunday latte.

My deepest sympathies to our Great Barrington pear trees which fell overnight, victim of our premature nor’easter. And an apology to those who said the trees needed to be replaced. Nature voted with you. And it’s time to pick more wisely. Maybe trees with no leaves and no limbs.

Great Barrington Pear Trees vs October Snow Storm - Photo: Hayley Weller © 2011

Anyway, this was one of those deadline-approaching-mornings when I had absolutely no idea what to write about. But lucky for me, the Berkshire Eagle was handy. I began reading in the Entertainment Section about my friend, local potter Daniel Bellow. According to Eagle writer Jeremy Goodwin, Bellow’s decision to replace writing editorials for the Eagle for making beautiful porcelain pottery, was motivated “by a sense of the newspaper industry’s decline.”

Jeremy’s words made sense. So naturally I turned to the Opinion page to read the morning’s editorial for an up-to-date status report on Daniel’s replacement. For some reason, the Eagle never credits its editorial writers so I don’t know who’s responsible for some of this silliness.
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Local/Schmocal – Debt/Schmebt

By Mickey Friedman and the Red Crow Economic News Team™
July 27, 2011

Our crack Red Crow Economic News Team™ has been busily at work trying to come up with a new definition of “local.”

Do your eggs come from here or there?

The local debate has been raging for more than a week now as Berkshirites try their best to come to terms with the news that despite displaying a “Berkshire Grown” sticker, the Otis Poultry Farm has been selling eggs that come from a farm in Schuylerville, N.Y., 50 miles away.

As far as Andrew Pyenson, co-owner of the Otis Poultry Farm is concerned, that is local enough. According to a story by Ned Oliver of the Berkshire Eagle, Pyenson has an answer for people who ask to see the birds: “I say, ‘No, they’re on another farm.’”

So the question is, are people being truthful when they claim to selling or serving locally grown food? Or put another way, how local is local?

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US of A: 466.666 times safer than Canada?

Well we should be. According to a report in The Economist we spend that much more than the Canadians on defense.

In fact we spend more than the next 17 countries on the list combined.

We spend 6 times more than the Chinese, and they’re next on the list.

According to the Swedish International Peace Research Institute:

the share of US GDP devoted to the military—the ‘military burden’—has increased sharply, from 3.1 per cent in 2001 to an estimated 4.8 per cent in 2010

As for the real wars we’re fighting, we’ve spent about $783,074,577,031 in Iraq and $423,157,514,489 in Afghanistan. Of course, these figures have increased in the time it’s taken me to post this and for you to read it.

Click here for the most up-to-date estimates.

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