RED CROW NEWS

Stop Kony. Stop Us.

Mickey Friedman — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 02:26:50 +0000

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.”

The filmmakers from The Invisible Children with soldiers of Sudan People's Liberation Army - Photo, 2008, Glenna Gordon

The KONY2012 premise is simple. Everyone watches the film. Everyone learns Joseph Kony kidnaps children, and makes them accomplices as he murders the innocent. For $30, KONY2012 helps you spread the word with posters, stickers, and a bracelet. And the email addresses of influential Americans, popstars and politicians. Because up to now this wasn’t an important enough issue to American policymakers. Let’s make Joseph Kony more famous than George Clooney. And pressure the world into catching him.

People smarter than I am, more experienced in doing the day-to-day work of trying to stop the violence of The Lord’s Liberation army, have spoken about how the video simplifies what are clearly complicated political issues. Raising the sticky issues of implied racism. Is this a case of earnest well-to-do white Americans implying that Africans can’t resolve this problem without white American aid?

It could be that some of this may be true. Then the well-respected Nicholas Kristof weighed in at the New York Times, making the point that every humanitarian gesture ought to be respected, and that it can only be positive when young Americans feel the pain of others in the world.

But I’m annoyed by something else entirely. I’m annoyed not that Jason Russell cries for Africa, but that he’s not crying for America and for the innocent civilians, the children killed in the wars we’re fighting. American wars made possible in Iraq and Afghanistan by his taxes, your taxes, and my taxes. Wars encouraged and enabled by our inaction.

What happened to Jacob’s brother and to Jacob and to all the others who have died at the hands of Joseph Kony and his army is a crime. Jason Russell’s promise to Jacob is an honorable promise.

But I would feel a lot better if Jason Russell and all those who are purchasing stickers and bracelets would look closer to home.

After four tours of duty, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales murdered sixteen civilians, including nine children in Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. Bales will probably spend his life in prison and those sixteen people are gone. But really those deaths are on us. Staff Sgt. Bales was our emissary to Afghanistan, sent to defeat the Taliban and make life safe for us and ordinary Afghanis.

U.S. Army Sgt. Ryan Gerber, serving in Naziriah, Afghanistan - Photo 2012, U.S. Defense Department

Deep down we know we have failed our soldiers. Deep down we know we have failed ordinary Afghanis. Sending Staff Sgt. Bales to war time and time again. Unwinnable wars in Iraq and then Afghanistan. To far distant places with different cultures, faiths, and different languages; to places he wasn’t wanted.

And what’s so very depressing are the lies of our leaders. Enough already with the excuses. With the fraudulent call to duty. Below the Reuters headline: “Panetta says massacre must not deter Afghan mission,” we read that Secretary of Defense Panetta told our soldiers in Afghanistan:

“We’ll be challenged by our enemy. We’ll be challenged by ourselves. We’ll be challenged by the hell of war itself. But none of that, none of that, must ever deter us from the mission that we must achieve.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed:

“Like many Americans, I was shocked and saddened by the killings of innocent Afghan villagers this weekend. This is not who we are and the U.S. is committed to seeing that those responsible are held accountable.”

She means Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, not herself, Leon Panetta, President Obama, Congress, and all the rest of us. She added that the incident does not change America’s steadfast dedication to protecting the Afghan people and to help build a strong and stable Afghanistan.

After four tours and the PTSD, shocked?

I don’t have a slogan as succinct as KONY2012 and I’m not sure what to put on the bracelet, but I sure as hell know if it’s time to stop Kony, it’s time to stop us.

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A previous version of “Stop Kony. Stop Us” appeared in the March 23, 2012 issue of The Berkshire Record.

Here is some additional material if you want to learn more about these complicated issues.

Here’s the video produced by The Invisible Children for their KONY2012 campaign
:

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

Here are excerpts from Nicholas Kristof’s column,

My starting point is a “bravo” for filmmakers for galvanizing young Americans to look up from their iPhones and seek to make a difference for villagers in central Africa who continue to be murdered, raped and mutilated by Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. Just in the last two months, the Lord’s Resistance Army has mounted 20 raids in Congo alone.

But nobody fights more wickedly than humanitarians, so there have been a series of attacks on the video. Let me try to address some of the criticisms.

Let Africans resolve their own problems. It’s neocolonialist for Americans to think that they can solve Congolese problems, when they can’t even solve their own. This is just one more example of “white man’s burden” imperialism.
When a warlord continues to kill and torture across a swath of Congo and Central African Republic, that’s not a white man’s burden. It’s a human burden.

To me, it feels repugnant to suggest that compassion should stop at a national boundary or color line. A common humanity binds us all, whatever the color of our skin — or passport.

The issue is complicated, in ways that don’t come through in a misleading video. For example, the video doesn’t make clear that Kony is no longer a threat in Uganda.

The video doesn’t contain errors, but it does simplify things greatly to hold attention. Complexity is, er, complicated: It has been a leading excuse for inaction during atrocities — during the Armenian genocide, during the Holocaust, during Rwanda, during the Bosnian slaughter. Each episode truly was complicated, but, in retrospect, we let nuance paralyze us.

It’s true that Kony’s forces are diminished and no longer a danger in Uganda, but he remains a threat in Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan. Those are tough neighborhoods — I’ve been held at gunpoint in Central African Republic and chased through the Congo jungle by a warlord whose massacres I interrupted — that rarely get attention and are little understood. Yes, the video glosses over details, but it has left the American public more informed. Last year, Rush Limbaugh defended the Lord’s Resistance Army because it sounded godly.

American kids worrying about Kony accomplish nothing. The video promotes feel-good gestures — wear a bracelet! — that enrich a do-nothing aid organization but have no benefit in the jungles of central Africa.

It’s true that indignation among Americans won’t by itself stop Kony. Yet I’ve learned over the years that public attention can create an environment in which solutions are more likely.

Public outrage over Serbian atrocities in the Balkans eventually led the Clinton administration to protect Kosovo and hammer out the Dayton peace accord. The Sudan civil war killed millions over half-a-century on and off, until public outrage — largely among evangelical Christians — led President George W. Bush to push successfully for a peace agreement in 2005.

I asked Anthony Lake, now the executive director of Unicef who was President Clinton’s national security adviser during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, whether a viral video about Rwanda would have made a difference then. “The answer is yes,” he said. He suggested that this kind of public attention would also have helped save more lives in Darfur and in Congo’s warring east.

In 1999, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright paid a brief visit to war-ravaged Sierra Leone and was photographed with a 3-year-old girl whose right arm had been chopped off. The photograph, widely circulated, helped galvanize outside powers to crush the militias. Sierra Leone is now at peace, and that girl is studying in the United States.

I asked Albright, who later led a task force on preventing genocide, what she thinks of the Kony video.
“Shining a light makes a lot of difference,” she said, adding that Kony’s prospects are probably less good now than before the video came out.

The bottom line is: A young man devotes nine years of his life to fight murder, rape and mutilation, he produces a video that goes viral and galvanizes mostly young Americans to show concern for needy villagers abroad — and he’s vilified?

I don’t know if this initiative will make a difference. But if I were a Congolese villager, I would welcome these uncertain efforts over the sneering scorn of do-nothing armchair cynics.

And finally some excerpts from a response from Teju Cole, “The White Savior Industrial Complex” in The Atlantic

If we are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is a minimum requirement.

A week and a half ago, I watched the Kony2012 video. Afterward, I wrote a brief seven-part response, which I posted in sequence on my Twitter account:
1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.
2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.
3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.
5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.
6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.
7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

These tweets were retweeted, forwarded, and widely shared by readers. They migrated beyond Twitter to blogs, Tumblr, Facebook, and other sites; I’m told they generated fierce arguments. As the days went by, the tweets were reproduced in their entirety on the websites of the Atlantic and the New York Times, and they showed up on German, Spanish, and Portuguese sites. A friend emailed to tell me that the fourth tweet, which cheekily name-checks Oprah, was mentioned on Fox television.
What Africa needs more pressingly than Kony’s indictment is more equitable civil society, more robust democracy, and a fairer system of justice.

These sentences of mine, written without much premeditation, had touched a nerve. I heard back from many people who were grateful to have read them. I heard back from many others who were disappointed or furious. Many people, too many to count, called me a racist. One person likened me to the Mau Mau. The Atlantic writer who’d reproduced them, while agreeing with my broader points, described the language in which they were expressed as “resentment.”

This weekend, I listened to a radio interview given by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof. Kristof is best known for his regular column in the New York Times in which he often gives accounts of his activism or that of other Westerners. When I saw the Kony 2012 video, I found it tonally similar to Kristof’s approach, and that was why I mentioned him in the first of my seven tweets.

Those tweets, though unpremeditated, were intentional in their irony and seriousness. I did not write them to score cheap points, much less to hurt anyone’s feelings. I believed that a certain kind of language is too infrequently seen in our public discourse. I am a novelist. I traffic in subtleties, and my goal in writing a novel is to leave the reader not knowing what to think. A good novel shouldn’t have a point.

But there’s a place in the political sphere for direct speech and, in the past few years in the U.S., there has been a chilling effect on a certain kind of direct speech pertaining to rights. The president is wary of being seen as the “angry black man.” People of color, women, and gays — who now have greater access to the centers of influence that ever before — are under pressure to be well-behaved when talking about their struggles. There is an expectation that we can talk about sins but no one must be identified as a sinner: newspapers love to describe words or deeds as “racially charged” even in those cases when it would be more honest to say “racist”; we agree that there is rampant misogyny, but misogynists are nowhere to be found; homophobia is a problem but no one is homophobic. One cumulative effect of this policed language is that when someone dares to point out something as obvious as white privilege, it is seen as unduly provocative. Marginalized voices in America have fewer and fewer avenues to speak plainly about what they suffer; the effect of this enforced civility is that those voices are falsified or blocked entirely from the discourse.

It’s only in the context of this neutered language that my rather tame tweets can be seen as extreme. The interviewer on the radio show I listened to asked Kristof if he had heard of me. “Of course,” he said. She asked him what he made of my criticisms. His answer was considered and genial, but what he said worried me more than an angry outburst would have:
There has been a real discomfort and backlash among middle-class educated Africans, Ugandans in particular in this case, but people more broadly, about having Africa as they see it defined by a warlord who does particularly brutal things, and about the perception that Americans are going to ride in on a white horse and resolve it. To me though, it seems even more uncomfortable to think that we as white Americans should not intervene in a humanitarian disaster because the victims are of a different skin color.

Here are some of the “middle-class educated Africans” Kristof, whether he is familiar with all of them and their work or not, chose to take issue with: Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire, who covered the Lord’s Resistance Army in 2005 and made an eloquent video response to Kony 2012; Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani, one of the world’s leading specialists on Uganda and the author of a thorough riposte to the political wrong-headedness of Invisible Children; and Ethiopian-American novelist Dinaw Mengestu, who sought out Joseph Kony, met his lieutenants, and recently wrote a brilliant essay about how Kony 2012 gets the issues wrong. They have a different take on what Kristof calls a “humanitarian disaster,” and this may be because they see the larger disasters behind it: militarization of poorer countries, short-sighted agricultural policies, resource extraction, the propping up of corrupt governments, and the astonishing complexity of long-running violent conflicts over a wide and varied terrain.

GE Brought A Good Thing To Life

Mickey Friedman — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:58:34 +0000

March 10, 2011
By Mickey Friedman

Having grown up on city streets, I wouldn’t have known a vernal pool if I had fallen into one.

Today I’m writing about vernal pools because they are central to the battle about how best to clean toxic PCBs from the Housatonic River.

The Vernal Pool

Vernal pools are “ephemeral fresh-water wetlands which do not hold water permanently and are free of breeding populations of fish.” (MA Fisheries and Wildlife). Fresh water pools formed by rain and snow during the autumn and winter, but dry at other times of the year. Because there are no predator fish, many important species are born in vernal pools. These species cannot live without these critically important vernal pools. (2011 Phase 4C Floodplain Property Vernal Pool Monitoring Summary, p.1: (http://www.epa.gov/region1/ge/thesite/floodplain/reports/phase4/501650.pdf)

We’re talking about invertebrates like fairy shrimp (don’t tell Rick Santorum), daphnia, fingernail clams, water striders, and caddishflies. These inveterbrates don’t have backbones and make up 97% of all animal species. Then there are amphibians like green frogs, wood frogs, and salamanders. These “indicator species” are easy to collect and tell us what’s in the water and how it is effecting animal life.

GE and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Berkshire County League of Sportsmen believe a rigorous cleanup of PCBs – with the kind of systematic dredging that took place in the Pittsfield section of the river – will hurt the river more than help it.

GE wrote: “when it comes to the Rest of River, less really is more. The least intrusive approaches to cleaning up river sediment and floodplain soil … are far more likely to achieve that goal without “destroying a river to clean it.” (CMS, Executive Summary, 1-2, (http://www.epa.gov/region1/ge/thesite/restofriver/reports/cms/472605.pdf)

Kenneth Kimmell, The Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), declared that the Rest of the River “has a remarkable profusion of rare species, plants and animals, vernal pools, unique soils, unique habitats … And so, one simply has to be very carefully about doing more harm than good and destroying a river in order to save it.” (http://www.wbur.org/2011/07/08/housatonic-river)

The Sportsmen told the EPA: “Don’t destroy the river to fix it.”

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and local environmental organizations believe a comprehensive remediation can remove almost all of the toxic PCBs. With a committed restoration process, the River can be cleaned and healed. The Housatonic River Initiative believes the Housatonic can once again be “a fishable, swimmable river.”

The don’t-destroy-the-river folks believe the GE/EPA cleanup of the first two miles of the river in Pittsfield caused ecological devastation. Mark Jester of the Berkshire County League of Sportsmen says the first two mile cleanup “exacted a heavy price and the river as we knew it no longer exists there.” (http://www.berkshireoutdoors.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/CountyLeagueLetter.pdf)

And they all have spent time and energy talking about vernal pools. About the vernal pools that were destroyed in the two mile cleanup and the vernal pools that will be destroyed if the EPA starts messing up the Rest of the River. As the vernal pools go, so goes the River.

In GE’s film, “The Housatonic: The Fate of a River,” Professor Robert Brooks of Pennsylvania State University, declares EPA’s restoration of a vernal pool a failure: “Basically we’ve replaced the kinds of amphibians that should be here. This summer we had an undesirable amphibian, green frogs, completely lining the shoreline, and they’re a predator on the larvae, the tadpoles, of the amphibians we like to see, which are the spotted salamander and wood frog. So the nature of the pond is completely changed through the excavation and cutting of the trees along the edges.” (http://www.thebeatnews.org/transcription-ge-video/)

Because of the two mile cleanup, more bad green frogs, fewer good wood frogs.

An Aforementioned Green Frog - Photo MA DEP 06-08-11

Because the Commonwealth doesn’t believe the EPA can restore vernal pools, it doesn’t want to clean large sections of the Rest of the River: “The Commonwealth does not propose to remediate the amphibian areas, because this would cause more ecological harm than benefit. We believe that restoration of these vernal pools will not result in the actual replication of the vernal pools and associated amphibian communities that existed prior to the removal of the pools.” (Commonwealth of Massachusetts, CMS Comments, p. 11. (http://www.epa.gov/region1/ge/thesite/restofriver/reports/cms/477441.pdf)

GE went even further in its comments to EPA National Remedy Review Board on June 30, 2011. All of the scenarios that called for substantial removal of PCBs would irreparably damage the vernal pools: “These activities would cause an immediate loss, in all or parts of these pools, of the amphibian and other species that depend on vernal pools for breeding. They would also cause alterations in the hydrology, vegetation, and soil conditions of these vernal pools. Where these characteristics are disturbed, efforts to reproduce them, especially their hydrology, are highly susceptible to failure. As a result, there would probably be a permanent change in the hydrology and soil of the affected pools.” (http://www.epa.gov/region1/ge/thesite/restofriver/reports/cms/487369.pdf)

But wait, thanks to a new document, we now know with certainty that we can dredge PCBs from the Housatonic, then carefully restore a vernal pool in the floodplain. We know this because GE performed extensive tests between April and June 2011 on a restored vernal pool in the remediated section of the first two miles.

The Restored Vernal Pool - July 28, 2011

GE “documented the presence of fairy shrimp, a full breeding chorus of wood frogs, approximately 100 wood frog egg masses, wood frog tadpoles estimated to number into the thousands, and transforming juveniles in the pool with tail remnants, any one of which satisfies the biological criteria for vernal pool certification …” (http://www.epa.gov/region1/ge/thesite/floodplain/reports/phase4/501650.pdf)

Juvenile Wood Frogs (The Good Frogs) After Remediation and Restoration

Forget the rhetoric and deception. This vernal pool is alive and well. With the help of the EPA, GE brought a good thing back to life. Now it’s time to clean the Rest of the River.

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An earlier version of “GE Brought A Good Thing To Life” appeared in the Berkshire Record, March 8, 2011.

The EPA has prepared several documents you may find interesting. You can download them here:

Exploring Alternatives for Cleanup: Remediation, Restoration, Alternatives, and Environmentally Sensible Remediation Concepts

Ecological Restoration: Keith Bowers

Environmentally Sensitive Restoration Concepts

The Rick Sanitorium

Mickey Friedman — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:10:20 +0000

February 26, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

I’ve been spending time at the Rick Sanitorium. There, I learned it’s the values. It’s all about the values. You won’t last long at the Sanitorium if you don’t have the right values. Granted, values are a tricky thing, so you’ve got to listen carefully to what Rick is really saying, not just to what he seems to be saying.

Photo: Rick Santorum Campaign Website

Take Christianity. Rick is a Catholic and he knows that a lot of people go to church and a lot of people think they’re Christians. And a lot of the time, Rick, especially when he’s speaking to the larger public, will act like all Christians are Christians. Like Protestants. But those of us who have spent time in the Rick Sanitorium know what Rick really thinks. There are Christians and then they are Christians. Christian Christians. In 2008, Rick said it straight up: “mainline protestantism” is “gone from the world of Christianity.” That’s right. Done. Gone. Because there are Christians and then there are Christians. Protestants just don’t have what it takes when it comes to the Gospel.

Take for instance the current president, Barack Obama. Yeah, he goes to church. And I bet if you ask him, he’ll say he’s a Christian. Now most of the time in public Rick will give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt; because the fact is Rick is a nice guy. But really Rick knows Barack Obama is just plain out of luck on this Christian thing. Why? Because Barack Obama is just too much like the French and like the earth-worshipping radical environmentalists and if push came to shove and Barack was surrounded by a mob of angry Koran-loving Muslim-extremist-terrorist-mujahadeen threatening to kick his ass, Obama would give up his Christianity in a heartbeat and convert to Islam.

But worst of all, and Rick probably won’t bring this up in public because it’s not polite to pry, there’s a very good chance this Obama fellow and his wife use birth control. You heard it, birth control. Otherwise they’d have more than two kids.

At the Rick Sanitorium, birth control is really really bad. Because at the Rick Sanitorium, sex is all about having the babies. Because without babies, there’s no home-schooling. Home schooling is very important, because while Rick is too polite to say it in public, he really wants women at home. Where they won’t get into trouble and where they can home-school all the God-sanctioned children. Not like the government-influenced public-school-educated kids who end up on food stamps and screwing around because of birth control.

The Santorums

It’s all about learning the right values. So Barack Obama, if you really cared about home-schooling, if you truly cared about the right values, you’d abolish public education and throw away your condoms. And have more kids. A lot more. Like Rick.

This is where it gets a bit tricky and where you need to pay attention.Values are connected to rights. A lot of people like the black people, the atheists and the illegals, the shameless hussies sleeping around with their birth control pills, and those godless gay people looking to mess up our military and the sacrament of marriage, they’re always going on about rights. But Rick wants you to know they’re your man-made rights. Remember the French Revolution. Your liberty and equality and your fraternity. Those are not the real rights our Founding Fathers were talking about. Your basic God-given American Rights.

Rick knows his rights and he wants Obama and the courts to keep their French fingers off of his and your endowed-by-our-Creator rights. Check the Constitution. Check the Bible.

Rick knows it’s important to believe what’s taught in your Bible, even more now when Obama and the courts “are taking faith and crushing it.” You got that? Obama and the courts want you to think that if you believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, and if you believe what’s taught in Genesis, you are irrational.

I didn’t really understand the importance of the French thing until my time at the Rick Sanitorium. I gave Obama the benefit of the doubt. But Rick set me straight. Just like the Christian Christian thing, there’s theology and theology. Obama is practicing some phony theology. Because as Rick explained it’s “not a theology based on the Bible!” Which makes it “a different theology.”

Real important. “When you marginalize faith in America,” Rick says, “when you remove the pillar of God-given rights then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.”

As Rick says, “Now is the time for America to rise up and say enough!”

It’s pretty darn simple: Unalienable rights, yes. Guillotine, no.

Repeat after me: “Enough.”

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“The Rick Sanitorium” appeared in the Thursday February 23, 2012 issue of The Berkshire Record. I forgot to mention Rick’s groundbreaking proclamation about the great dangers of a college education.

According to February 18, 2012 issue of the New York Times:

For the first 150 years, most presidents home-schooled their children at the White House, he said. “Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America? Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.”

“Yes the government can help,” Mr. Santorum added. “But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools. And while those factories as we all know in Ohio and Pennsylvania have fundamentally changed, the factory school has not.”

I’m sure I’ve just scratched the surface of the Phenomenon Sanitorium. Here’s a chance to hear from the man himself:

Rick on Income Inequality:

Rick on Rape & Abortion:

Rick on the Guillotine:

Rick on Protestantism:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It’s Not Me; It’s My Wife

admin — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:48:23 +0000

February 12, 2012
By David Scribner

HOUSATONIC, MA – Like everyone else, I was surprised to learn that Sandra Muss, a painter and wife of Stephen Muss, the Florida-based developer and would-be savior of Housatonic, was buying the Barbieri mill building — and even more startled and dismayed that a condition of the sale was that the Berkshire Pulse Center for the Creative Arts would have to move out by the end of February.

Hip Hop Class at Berkshire Pulse, Barbieri Mill, Housatonic MA

After all, although Sandra Muss had a studio in the building, surely she didn’t need the whole building, at least right away, and besides she and her husband had once told me how much they valued Pulse as a component of the cultural life of Housatonic and South Berkshire.

I suppose, if she owned the real estate, she would do what she wanted.

So I called up Stephen Muss to find out what was going on.

“Stephen,” I said, “you said you’d never buy a building in Housatonic. You said you’d just pay for a plan for the mills. You told me that story about how your wife, Sandra, a painter, had a studio in the Barbieri building, where Pulse is, and how she said to you one day, ‘Honey, can you buy me a building?’ and you said, ‘I won’t buy you a building; I’ll give you a village.’

Sandra and Stephen Muss Receiving 2012 Greater Miami Jewish Federation Friend of Israel Humanitarian Award

“Then, Stephen, you went to the Town Manager and the selectmen with a ‘concept’ for the redevelopment of all the mill buildings, and you said that while you’d pay for the master plan, neither you nor any member of your family would ever have any interest in any property in Housatonic. So what’s up with you buying the Barbieri building and kicking Pulse out?”

And Muss said: “I don’t know anything about Pulse. It’s not me. It’s my wife.”

Will anyone else make that distinction, even if Sandra Muss’s name is on the deed?

I certainly don’t.

For the past three years, I’ve been acquainted with the Pulse Center for the Creative Arts. Two of my kids have taken dance classes there, along with 450 other students — adults as well as youth — and I’ve witnessed first hand the talent those classes have developed and the vitality that the creative arts center has brought to that cluster of mill buildings mouldering along the banks of the Housatonic.

Like Muss, I also saw the potential in this underutilized mill district, and could envision a rejuvenated Housatonic, the cultural and artistic center of South County.

And that’s why Muss’s proposal — a seemingly philanthropic offer to get the revitalization off the ground — at first appeared so attractive.

But when push came to shove, it didn’t matter what happened to one of Housatonic’s premier cultural assets. It only mattered what the Muss contingent wanted — and could afford.

That’s how it seemed.

It is a shame, of course, that Pulse should have ever become entangled in the mill machinations.

In 2005, Jolly Roger Realty, a partnership of Dale Culleton, Sarah Stiner and Linda Shafiroff, purchased the former three-story Barbieri lumber yard office building for $850,000, in hopes of either finding tenants for its 12,000 square feet of floor space, or upgrading the building and selling it.

Dale Culleton, one of the principals of Jolly Roger Realty, at Great Barrington Selectmen's Meeting

For the past six years, Pulse has occupied the first two floors, but it had become so popular that it had been searching for larger quarters. And it had found a suitable space on the third floor of an adjacent building, with an owner willing to offer the stability of a long-term lease at a reasonable rate. Furthermore, local architect Stephan Green volunteered his expertise in designing the studio space. But Pulse needed time to raise money and to get the new studios ready.

Then, in December, the unexpected happened. Jolly Roger suddenly had a buyer: Sandra Muss, who had been renting studio space in the building. She insisted that Pulse vacate the premises by February 29 as a condition of the sale, and Jolly Roger, eager to complete the purchase, had Pulse served with an eviction notice.

Believing — mistakenly, it turned out — that her organization would be given an extension to a lease that had expired on December 31, 2011, Pulse founder and artistic director Bettina Montano appealed to Muss and to the Jolly Roger partners to grant more time — another six months.

Bettina Miontano - Berkshire Pulse

Last week, the organization issued a widely circulated statement to its community of students and families explaining its plight and appealing for community support. Among those who responded with an offer of assistance,Montano disclosed, was Nick Kelley, owner of five of the mill buildings and, ironically, the one mill owner who had refused to participate in crucial aspects of Stephen Muss’s development concept and thus brought the realization of the plan to a halt. He invited Pulse a temporary home — rent free — in one of his buildings, if it could be made compliant with building codes.

Pulse’s declaration to the community, however, had incorrectly named Stephen Muss as the buyer, an error, among other assertions, that incensed the Jolly Roger partners as did its implication that they were crassly forcing Pulse to leave.

“My kids went to classes at Pulse,” declared an exasperated Shapiroff. “They knew the building was for sale.”

Shafiroff pointed out that Jolly Roger had offered to have Pulse temporarily occupy the entire the second floor of the Barbieri mill, so that Sandra Muss could expand her studio into the first floor.

But Montano noted that such temporary quarters could require an additional investment of up to $20,000 to install a heating system and to satisfy building code requirements. Pulse would also still have to have access to the first floor dressing rooms and bathrooms, to meet code regulations.

“I am really hoping to move away from recriminations, and get on with the challenge of keeping Pulse the vital community resource that it has been, and will continue to be,” Montano said. “I have no issues with Sandy Muss. She’s a good person, and an artist. A lot of people are standing up for us, so we are going to survive this.”

On this score, Shapiroff agrees.

“We didn’t want to get into a shouting match with Pulse, and at no point did we tell them we weren’t willing to work it out with them,” she said. “I get how hard it is to raise money for a nonprofit in this economy. It’s just too bad. Pulse is awesome. It has brought life to the town, but it’s unfair, untrue and unprofessional to blame us.”

Maybe so, but it’s also true — and both sides ought to keep in mind — that the other losers in this standoff are the hundreds of Pulse students – currently enrolled and those who could be taking classes in the future. For many of them, there are no other available and affordable opportunities for creative expression and personal, artistic development. It seems to me that this level of cultural enrichment for the community is worth whatever compromises and accommodations can be negotiated to keep Pulse alive and thriving, while at the same time maintaining the financial integrity of the current and future owners of the Barbieri mill.

Housatonic Has A Pulse

Mickey Friedman — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:15:54 +0000

February 10, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

With all the horrendous things adults do to children, from forcing them to fight and kill in Sierra Leone, making them make soccer balls for pennies in Pakistan, abusing them physically and emotionally, there are still many adults who love and care for, teach and nurture their own kids and the kids of others.

The Housatonic Mills - Photo: Berkshire Property Agents

In our town, I’ve heard from several parents about the great work Bettina Montano does at Berkshire Pulse in Housatonic.

In the old Barbieri Mill in Housatonic, Massachusetts, Bettina has been teaching hundreds of kids about music and dance and movement.

That’s the same Housatonic, Massachusetts you’ve been reading about in the local newspapers.

For a while now, the papers have been filled with articles about the man from Miami. Stephen Muss, we were told, was willing, no anxious, to spend hundreds of thousands on a master plan to reconfigure the old and ailing mills, the mills he didn’t own, to bring renewed hope to Housatonic. No ulterior motive, just a rare, pure and heartfelt gift from a man who had a galvanizing vision of new jobs, happy artists, and new tenants. A revitalization, a renovation, and a renewal. And, to prove his purity and silence the skeptics, Mr. Muss assured us he wasn’t interested in buying property in Housatonic.

But Mr. Muss’ grand and glorious hope for Housatonic, we were told again and again by journalists and local politicians and a bevy of interested parties, was dashed by the oh-so-unreasonable and recalcitrant Nick Kelley who just couldn’t melt his stubborn, selfish heart enough to trust Mr. Muss with his own eyesore of a mill. Mr. Kelley just wouldn’t work together for the benefit of us all.

Mr. Muss, oh so good; Mr. Kelley, well you get the idea.

So now I’m waiting to see who’s going to be the first journalist, politician, or interested party to declare that we were snookered. Fooled. Deceived. Misled. And/or emotionally scammed.

Because just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water …

Excerpts from February 1, 2012 Statement from Berkshire Pulse

It turns out Mr. Muss has just bought the former Barbieri Mill building from Dale Culleton, Linda Shafiroff, and Sarah Stiner (Jolly Roger Realty) for his artist wife, Sandra Muss. No doubt her name will appear on the bill of sale so that technically Mr. Muss may claim to have kept his promise. Though I imagine everyone in the know knows it’s his money. But one way or another, Berkshire Pulse will have to leave Mrs. Muss’ mill several months before its new space is available.

Memorandum from the Lawyer for Mr. Muss

To be clear, all this is perfectly legal. And, believe me, I can well imagine it hasn’t always been easy for the Jolly Rogers to have to deal with a mostly unprofitable and quite possibly business-challenged nonprofit arts organization. It never is. Many of us artists don’t understand money. And there’s not a lot of money to be made providing arts education for the children of the middle class. Not like buying and selling real estate. So I’m certainly not suggesting a good guy/bad guy or good tenant/bad landlord scenario.

But I’m also guessing that even though they had to occasionally cope with late rent checks, the owners gained much by the extraordinary energy and life — not to mention the renovation — Berkshire Pulse brought to the building.

Berkshire Pulse Studio - Photo: Berkshire Property Agents

I’m also aware that when push comes to shove, this is America and money talks, and artists and dancers who teach our kids to dance invariably have to dance off into the distance. The Musses have the money. This, of course, is a very old story.

But what’s interesting to me about all this is how many people wanted to believe so very much that Mr. Muss was telling us a new story. A happy story. The out-of-town multimillionaire with a heart of gold. Giving us something we hadn’t been able to give ourselves.

I do not know Mr. Muss. And I can easily imagine that he is a generous man. And I have no problem believing he has given away parts of his fortune to many deserving people and to many deserving causes and concerns. But from the very beginning I felt his offer was misplaced. Too much, too soon, offering without asking. Because this was always about his idea of Housatonic.

The largest fault lies with ourselves. Because fixing up the present Housatonic and crafting a better Housatonic is about community. It’s not about magic. It’s never easy.

And the answer, more clearly than ever, is that outsiders have little to offer unless they’re willing to do the hard work of first becoming insiders. You know: live and learn. Ask. Listen. Someone smart once said patience is a virtue.

Meanwhile, it’s important to be reminded that Berkshire Pulse already offers community. By taking care of our kids today, Berkshire Pulse is creating a better tomorrow.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Stephan Green of Clark & Green Architects has a vision of a new home and perhaps a happy ending for Berkshire Pulse:

Plans: Stephan Green of Clark and Green, Architects

Small Schools

Mickey Friedman — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:00:00 +0000

By Mickey Friedman
February 4, 2012

No kids, a different district, so I am just an interested bystander in the raging debate about the small schools of Monterey, Egremont and New Marlborough.

Having taught I have a continuing interest in how education happens; as a citizen and taxpayer, I care about how much education costs and whether those dollars are spent wisely.

I’ve tried to teach seventh, eighth, and ninth graders in New York City. I’ve taught and counseled college students in both New York and Massachusetts. While being a student is hard, being a good teacher is even more difficult.

It’s hard to separate the issue of small schools and rising school budgets from the larger money mess we find ourselves in. More and more, because of a radically unfair tax structure that favors the wealthy, the middle class is ask to pay a disproportionate share for government services. And the middle class has less to offer up. Here, in the South Berkshires, struggling taxpayer/voters are asked each year for an up/down vote for a rising school budget they can barely understand.

I believe in the critical importance of our schools but at town meeting I am shown a school budget for millions and millions of dollars without clear line-item expenditures. If anyone protests, we’re told if we really care about the budget we should be attending the open meetings of the finance committee. While that might serve to satisfy the legal definition of transparency, it certainly doesn’t work for busy people trying to survive and who just want to see where their money is going.

Instead school administrators and teachers and former teachers get up to tell us how hard they are working to keep the budget in line and the larger message is clear: if you care about our kids you’ll vote yes to pass the budget.

I suspect a similar process has been at work in the Southern Berkshire Regional School District.

US Education Spending vs Rest of World

People question how we spend money on education because many feel we do a lousy job of it. According to 2009 statistics compiled in the CIA Fact Book, the United States spends $809 billion a year on education; that’s $7,743 per school-aged child. Finland spends $10 billion a year, or $5,653 per child. Canada spends $65.4 billion or $5,749 per child. As our politicians, Democratic and Republican, remind us, we’re the greatest, smartest nation on earth. Which means neither Finland nor Canada is. But somehow, spending far less money, their students do much better than ours learning math and science.

Math and Science Test Scores

With a top score of 600, United States students finished tenth out of the top twelve nations in math with average scores of 474; the kids from Finland scored first with an average of 548; and the Canadians came in third with 527.

In science, we came in ninth with a score of 489. Finland was first with a score of 563, and the Canadians moved up to second with a score of 534.

By the way, according to MA DOE, per pupil costs for the year of 2010 were $14,546 for Berkshire Hill Regional and $13,804 for South Berkshire Regional.

Administrators committed to closing the small schools are talking about $282,500 in staff costs (two teaching staff members, one teacher assistant, one part time nurse, one secretary and one custodian) plus $52,225 in utilities. Then there’s the cost of fixing and maintaining the three buildings: Monterey ($300,000) and South Egremont ($290,000) and New Marlborough ($800,000) for a total of $1,390,000.

Jan. 04, 2012 Report to SBRSD Finance Sub-Committee -School Supt. Michael J. Singleton

Parents are particularly upset because while money has been allocated over the years to fix these buildings, that money hasn’t been spent. Ironically, they’re being told by the same administration that chose not to make timely repairs that these capital costs are just too large to justify continuing to use these buildings.

The Case for Closure

Administrators make the case that everything is better at the centralized Undermountain Elementary School: the playground, the after school programs in Robotics and Theater, the gymnasium, the school nurse, the computers and the cafeteria. All of that is probably true. But why then are parents fighting so hard, if sometimes impolitely, for their local schools?

As we’ve seen from the statistics, you can throw money at schools and students but that doesn’t mean anyone will learn.You have to want to learn. You have to trust your teachers. You have to feel comfortable in school and feel connected to your fellow students.

I see and feel the difference in Great Barrington and Housatonic now that we have lost our neighborhood schools. Maybe you don’t. But I remember the kids walking to school in the morning and remember three o’clock when the kids filled the local stores in Great Barrington. The town was alive.

If we’re going to pay for education I want to pay for a system where the parents care. Let’s find a way to save our small local schools.

_________________________________________________________________________________

An earlier version of “Small Schools” was published in The Berkshire Record on February 2, 2012. After I finished I went to the website of the Southern Berkshire Regional School District where I found this description of the small, local South Egremont School:

The South Egremont School - Southern Berkshire Regional School District

Perhaps it’s time for the board and administration of the Southern Berkshire Regional School District to read and trust what they say about their small, local school.

A More Mickey America

Mickey Friedman — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:54:04 +0000

Mickey Friedman
January 25, 2012

I’ve tried to convince Bill Shein not to run for Congress. But my friend hasn’t listened to me. Don’t get me wrong, Bill would make a fine Congressman. And I’ll vote for him.

It’s just that I no longer believe in Congress. And don’t think it’s worth Bill’s time to try and get there. Or the time, energy and money his supporters will spend in the effort.

I was surprised by my response. I hadn’t realized I had gotten that cynical. But as I debated Bill, my anger and annoyance at what government has become was impossible to deny.

I think of it as playing in a crooked card game. Richard Neal, who many will tell you is as good a Congressman as you will find, has raised millions of dollars from lobbyists near and far. If you search the Federal Election Commission for Richard E. Neal you can get a list of all those who over the years have given him big money. Try this: http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/can_give/H8MA02041. Don’t try printing it. It comes to 221 pages.

The Top 20 Industries Contributing to Congressman Neal's Campaign & Leadership PAC

I imagine local Democratic Party leaders and the high muckety-muck who have embraced Congressman Neal and already bestowed him with Berkshire County haven’t read this list or don’t really care about it. Because, as they will tell us again and again, he is the best we can get. And because he has $2.3 million to spend on his campaign.

Source of Funds for Congressman Neal's Recent Campaigns

But I don’t want to complain again about Congresspeople who have sold themselves to corporate lobbyists. I want instead to suggest some positive changes. Ways to reinvigorate a government of, and for and by the people. Or more accurately, a few ways to create a More Mickey America. Here goes:

1 – It will be the law of Mickey America that no Congressperson shall vote to go to war or pay in any way for war unless he or she and every member of his or her family over the age of eighteen goes to the front lines to fight that war.

2 – It will be the law of Mickey America that no Congressperson shall make no more than the median income of the people who live in his or her district.

A look at how the wealth of members of the U.S. House of Representatives has grown.

3 – It will be the law of Mickey America that every Congressperson send his or her children to the local public or parochial school in his or district with the lowest average test scores.

4 – It will be the law of Mickey America that every Congressperson do his or her own shopping at supermarkets and local stores in his or her district; and in that spirit of continuing interaction with his or her constituents, do his or her’s family laundry at a local laundromat.

5 – It will be the law of Mickey America that every Congressperson spend no less than 10 months of the year living full-time in the district he or she represents.

6 – It will be the law of Mickey America that no law proposed by any Congressperson, or voted upon by any Congressperson, be longer than three pages long and be written in English so clear that seventh graders in the local public schools will understand them. And to keep Congresspeople from filling the air with false promises and platitudes, all but the most important debates will take place via email.

7 – It will be the law of Mickey America that all campaign contributions be made only by those who live within the district; all campaign contributions shall be limited to no more than one dollar, and all campaign contributions shall be pooled into an Election Fund and divided equally among all the candidates. No candidate shall spend more than ten thousand dollars on his or her campaign. And excess monies in the Election Fund after the election will be distributed equally to the local school districts.

8 – It will be the law of Mickey America that all candidates sign a legally-binding pledge making them subject to substantial fines and community service that they will not go to work for, become lobbyists for, or be financially compensated in any way by any private company or enterprise that benefits financially from any law they propose or support. A popularly elected Community Ethics Board will be granted the power to make exceptions for laws or votes that benefit local non-profits or community organizations like schools and hospitals the Community Ethics Board believe serves the larger public.

9 – It will be the law of Mickey America that any public contribution to any private enterprise, be it a direct expenditure of public monies for any purpose whatsoever, or any reduction in taxes or fees shall result in ownership shares for the public in direct proportion to that contribution.

If you don’t want to live in Mickey America, I suggest you make your own America. It’s free to play and this game is safe for children twelve and over.

________________________________________________________________________________

For more information about Bill’s campaign: Bill Shein For Congress 2012

Something to think about: “In the 10 years ending in 2009, factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs—about 6 million in total—disappeared. About as many people work in manufacturing now as did at the end of the Depression, even though the American population is more than twice as large today.”
“Making It in America,” Adam Davidson, January/February 2011, The Atlantic Magazine:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/8844/

An earlier version of “A More Mickey America” appeared on January 19, 2012 in the Berkshire Record.

The War’s Not Over

admin — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 14:08:42 +0000

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.

The politicos and generals ended the war with the same kind of lies they began it. It’s been one lie after another. Vice-President Cheney told “Meet The Press” in December 2001 that “the evidence is pretty conclusive that the Iraqis have indeed harbored terrorists.” He said 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met an Iraqi agent in Prague. Then on March 24, 2002 Cheney told CNN that Saddam Hussein “is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time.” Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld on ABC’s “This Week” on March 30, 2003, announced: “We know where [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”

So a war began because of 9/11 and a nuclear threat to America, became what exactly? A delusional exercise touted as nation building but became nation killing. Occupy Iraq. Once a secular nation, albeit a dictatorship, Iraq was transformed into a battleground for religious purity. Sunnis killing Shiites and Shiites killing Sunnis and both of them ready to go after Christians and Kurds. Insane to think that men as intellectually-limited and dishonest as Bush, Cheney, and Rumseld could help anyone achieve democracy.

So rather than apologize to the Iraqis for our mistakes; rather than acknowledge our deep shame, we kept sending our men and women to fight a lie. And rather than acknowledge the truth of our folly, we continue today to lie.

And unless you take a moment to read “The Army Times” or seek out one of those we sent to do Bush and Cheney and Obama’s bidding, you won’t really know the true story of this war.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is only the latest purveyor of the lie, telling our soldiers: “Your nation is deeply indebted to you. You have done everything your nation asked your to do, and more… you will leave with lasting pride, secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people begin a new chapter in history, free from tyranny and full of hope for prosperity and peace.”

We have left a nation in shambles: interfaith families who once lived in peace now split apart, women so much worse off, new legions of zealots. The one thing Iraqis can agree upon is getting rid of us.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Zachary Fisher & Afghan National Army Sgt. Shah Baaz use metal detector in Helmand province, Afghanistan, Dec. 30, 2011 - U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Reece Lodder

Just as they lied about our purpose, they have lied about what it has cost. Cost the Iraqi people and cost us. The Pentagon tells us we suffered 4,487 dead, and 32,226 wounded. But that doesn’t include all those who came home to suffer some more. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a fancy way of saying that the war continues to live within them: the imagined IEDs that could be around the next bend in the road; the dreams of lost limbs; dreams of those killed and almost killed; soldiers who look like civilians and civilians who look like soldiers; signs written in a language you can’t decipher; people screaming words you can’t understand. Hundreds of thousands who served, maybe as many as half a million suffer from PTSD. For them, the war’s not over.

U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Steven Baumer scans Afghan man at Safar Bazaar, Helmand province, Afghanistan - U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Reece Lodder

The casualty figures don’t include those who were so seriously shaken by what they saw and what they did that they took their own lives. Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington saw more suicides in 2011 than any previous year. It just so happens that more than 18,000 soldiers from the base served in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009-10.

But Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking for all the generals who helped make this nightmare happen, hastens to assure us all “It has been a price worth paying.”

Someone asked me if I am going to continue to demonstrate against the war now that it’s over. But those who would have been going to Iraq will be sent to Afghanistan. The war’s not over.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Here are a few articles from The Army Times. They tell some of the stories most of us never read:

NC soldier is last combat casualty in Iraq.
Don Babwin and Tom Breen of The Associated Press write:

GREENSBORO, N.C. — As the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq on Sunday, friends and family of the first and last American fighters killed in combat cherished their memories rather than dwelling on whether the war and their sacrifice was worth it.

Nearly 4,500 American fighters died before the last U.S. troops crossed the border into Kuwait. David Hickman, 23, of Greensboro was the last of those war casualties, killed in November by the kind of improvised bomb that was a signature weapon of this war.

“David Emanuel Hickman. Doesn’t that name just bring out a smile to your face?” said Logan Trainum, one of Hickman’s closest friends, at the funeral where the soldier was laid to rest after a ceremony in a Greensboro church packed with friends and family.

From Vets to Moms Iraq War leaves mark on town.
Sharon Cohen of The Associated Press writes:

KOKOMO, Ind. — In a quiet park on the eastern edge of this auto manufacturing town, a gleaming ring of black granite walls and monuments stands in tribute to the war dead. Hundreds of names are etched in stone; many of them are long forgotten to history.

Not so the six newest additions: Brian M. Clemens. Robert L. McKinley. James E. Swain. Rickey E. Jones. Nathan J. Frigo. David N. Simmons.

Their smiles, their voices, their Little League games, their yearbook photos are fresh memories here to friends and family. Now the six — all of whom died in the Iraq war — are honored next to the walls on a granite monument inscribed with the words “Global War on Terror.”

Record year for suicides at Lewis-McChord.
The Associated Press writes:

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — Joint Base Lewis-McChord saw more suicides in 2011 than any previous year.
Twelve suicides were recorded at the base this past year. That’s up from nine in 2010 and nine in 2009, The Tacoma News Tribune reported.

Army I Corps spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield says the total could grow as the Army completes investigations ahead of its annual suicide report next month.

“We take suicide very seriously,” Dangerfield said. “We’re going to continue to push the envelope to make sure soldiers get the resiliency training they need.” The toll at Lewis-McChord rose despite new efforts to counsel soldiers when they come home from war, including the creation of a suicide-prevention office.

Ex-POW Lynch: ‘New perspective’ on Iraq wounds
Vicki Smith of The Associated Press writes:

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Jessica Lynch was just 19 when the world first saw her — a broken, blond soldier caught on combat video in Iraq, her face wearing something between a grimace and a grin.

The Army supply clerk was being carried on a stretcher after nine days as a prisoner of war. She had been captured along with five others after the 507th Maintenance Company took a wrong turn and came under attack in Nasiriyah on March 23, 2003. Eleven of her fellow soldiers died.

Lynch had joined the Army at 18 to earn money for college and become a school teacher. This Friday, at 28, she completes that mission.

She’ll spend Thursday finishing her training as a student teacher at the same elementary school she attended in sparsely populated Wirt County. Then, on badly damaged legs and a right foot that still pains her, she’ll walk across a stage Friday night and get her education degree from West Virginia University at Parkersburg.

“It’s tough to walk, but I look at it as, ‘At least I’m walking,’ ” she says. “At least I have my legs. They may not work. I have no feeling in the left one. But it’s attached, at least. … At least I’m alive.”

A previous version of “The War’s Not Over” appeared in The Berkshire Record on Thursday, January 5, 2012

Occupy Christmas

admin — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:19:24 +0000

Mickey Friedman
December 25, 2011

As 2011 comes to a close, it’s fair to say Occupy has occupied the land.

Graphic Image: Alexandra Clotfelter

Far from the opening and closing bells of Wall Street, and its powerful bull, here in the southern Berkshires, Occupy Berkshires demonstrates each Sunday (excepting this Sunday) from 1 PM to 2:45 PM in front of Great Barrington’s Town Hall on Main Street. It then holds its General Assembly at 3 PM at the Quaker Meeting House on 280 Main Road (Route 23 towards Monterey.) There are similar groups in Pittsfield and North Adams.

It’s easy to get rhetorical about the extent and impact of Occupy but a recent study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) found occupy movements in 143 small towns and cities in California alone.

“Big cities got the movement early. The spatial depth of the movement to small towns is not well-known,” said Christopher Chase-Dunn, a distinguished professor of sociology who is known internationally for his research of social movements.

People in medium and small-sized towns are occupying space, organizing events, and lending their voices to the movement in their own towns, graduate student Michaela Curran-Strange added. “They are focusing on local issues as well as national and regional ones.”

Many have asked what Occupy stands for. And there have been answers artistic and political:

Graphic Image: Adbusters

UCR discovered a movement of many interests:

• A Yreka man who lost his home to foreclosure organized an Occupy group in the small Northern California town.

• Occupy Riverside activists helped an ex-Marine reoccupy the home that he and his family were evicted from as a result of foreclosure.

• Occupy Petaluma protestors successfully petitioned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to suspend evictions during the holidays.

• Ojai organizers urged participants to move their savings from accounts from large banks such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America to local banks and credit unions.

• Occupy Davis protested tactics of police who pepper-sprayed students protesting tuition increases at UC Davis.

• Occupy Redding is supporting postal workers who are protesting job cuts.

Graphic Image: Edd Baldry

Today is Christmas. I wish you a Red Crow Christmas. In the very best sense of the word, I hope you and yours Occupy Christmas.

And while this is not traditional Christmas song, in my mind, it best expresses what Christmas 2011 is all about:

Let’s Buy A Farm

Mickey Friedman — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:30:24 +0000

Mickey Friedman
December 17, 2011

If there’s one thing I learned from hearing “Oklahoma” eight million times it’s that the cowboys and the farmers should be friends. We’re short of cowboys and growing short of farmers around these parts. Which is all the more reason to help those farmers we’ve got left.

Shaw Farm From Seekonk Road - Photo: David Scribner

It’s really not the fault of our farmers that they’re forced to consider selling or leasing their land to others. For solar farms or real estate developments. We’ve allowed the corporatization of farming to overtake the small farms that for so many years were a critical part of life in New England. In the 40 years I’ve been here I’ve seen one small dairy farm after another disappear.

My conservative friends never tire of proclaiming the evils of government, and the army of corrupt bureaucrats who over- and incompetently regulate us. Yet they have remained silent as corporations gained one unfair advantage after another with lower taxes, taxes they don’t pay, and enormous government subsidies. Real and fair competition, the bedrock of Adam Smith’s theory of capitalism, has long disappeared.

Which brings me to a suggestion, which may well send my dear conservative comrade Anthony to the emergency room: let’s buy a farm. Or two. Town-owned farmland. Now I’m not an attorney so I might be distorting our ability to pull this off. But I’m suggesting something like this. The Town of Great Barrington levies a very small excise tax on the sale of milk, cheese, and egg products within our borders. We’ll probably have a political fight on our hands to get the state to allow it but they certainly have no problem taxing our electric use to subsidize corporate wind power.

These taxes will be used to purchase farmland and create local small-scale community farms. We know from the success of Community-Supported Agriculture that consumers will gladly buy locally grown organic produce and support paying a living wage to the farmers who produce food for them.

We can use some of our excise fee to purchase food shares for the hungry. We know that the numbers of local residents taking advantage of food pantries is growing at alarming rates. We know there is a serious hunger problem in Massachusetts. And we have all seen farming families forced to give up farming.

Washington won’t solve these problems. The financial market has only made them worse by rampant speculation and Goldman Sachs-induced gambling on commodity food prices. Small-scale farmers can’t compete against mega-large corporate agribusiness. We need new small-scale community solutions.

Now how about you do me a favor. If I’m completely off-base about this funding scheme, try to turn your criticism into a constructive model that works for Great Barrington. It’s easy to tell a farmer he shouldn’t lease his land for solar panels; how about we help him make a living using farmland for farming.

Since this conversation was prompted by the prospect of a large industrial-scale solar installation on a former dairy farm, how about we think about another way of using energy. Instead of all of us contributing to the overly generous salaries of utility executives, and their glorious pension plans, why not siphon off all the profit and give it back to ourselves. How about a municipal utility? Great Barrington Power & Light. We know the utility companies hate municipal utilities. Because they do a better job than they do. Munis reestablished service much faster after tropical storm Irene than NStar and National Grid. When it comes to customer satisfaction, JD Power says residential customers rated NStar 74th out of 76 utilities; business customers rated them last of 51 utilities.

J.D. Power and Associates 2006 Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study

As for National Grid, residential customers rated them 55th out of 76; business customers, 26th out of 51.

J.D. Power and Associates 2006 Electric Utility Business Customer Satisfaction Study

The utilities hate municipal utilities so much they take our money and hire lobbyists who distribute it to our state representatives and state senators to vote against bills that would enable Massachusetts towns to create their own utilities. Today investor-owned utilities can prevent us from forming municipal utilities. There are 41 municipal utilities that exist; none have been established since 1926. So much for competition.

By the way, municipal utilities charge anywhere between 4% and 36% less than investor owned utilities.

Groton Electric's Comparison of Residential Rates for Electricity, MA 2009-2010

The Muni Choice Bill, H869, would give us the right to create our own utility. Senator Ben Downing (D-Pittsfield) is the Senate Chair for the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy and could help make that happen.

Anthony reminds me there is risk in allowing government to run things. So I’m proposing we create powerful boards for civilian oversight to help prevent favoritism, incompetence, and corruption. We have suspicious and highly talented skeptics in our midst with experience in finance and organization. We’ve got former farmers and former executives and maybe even a cowboy or two. How about we try something new? Let’s buy a farm.