Monday, March 24, 2014


News Clips For The Day



Europe Is Not Battleground Between East and West, Obama Says – NBC
AP/Reuters First published March 24 2014


President Barack Obama says that despite Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula away from Ukraine he does not view Europe as a battleground between the East and the West.

In an interview with the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant published before he arrived in Amsterdam Monday, Obama said his message to European leaders is that Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to understand the economic and political consequences of his actions in Ukraine.

Russia's actions have alarmed Europeans, but many European Union leaders worry about actions that would hurt their economic and energy reliance on Russia.

Obama conceded the sanctions he has threatened against Russian economic sectors could have worldwide effect.

"If Russia continues to escalate the situation, we need to be prepared to impose a greater cost," Obama said.

Russia provides almost a third of the EU's gas needs and some 40 percent of the gas is shipped through Ukraine.

"Europeans are committed to do something," Jeffrey Mankoff, a Russian analyst at the Center for Strategic International Studies told Reuters. "I think it'll be difficult to convince them to go anywhere near where the United States would like to go."
Obama's goal in Europe is to lead an effort to isolate Russia and dissuade Putin from moving into southern or eastern Ukraine.

"Our interest is not in seeing the situation escalate and devolve into hot conflict," White House national security adviser Susan Rice told reporters. "Our interest is in a diplomatic resolution, de-escalation, and obviously economic support for Ukraine, and to the extent that it continues to be necessary, further costs imposed on Russia for its actions."

The Netherlands is the first stop on Obama's four-nation trip that will include visits to Belgium, Italy and Saudi Arabia.

On Monday, he will join allies for a nuclear security summit at The Hague and will sit down separately for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, their first face-to-face meeting since a G20 summit in Russia.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.





German Foreign Minister Worries Russia May Open 'Pandora's Box' – NBC
Reuters
First published March 23 2014


BERLIN — Germany's foreign minister said after visiting Ukraine this weekend that he fears Russia may have opened "Pandora's Box" with its attempt to redraw national borders in Europe.

"We can't overlook the fact that Russia, with its action in Crimea, is flouting the central foundations of the peaceful order in Europe," Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.
"I'm very worried the unlawful attempt to alter recognized borders in our European neighborhood, 25 years after the end of the Cold War, will open Pandora's Box," he said.

Steinmeier said his impression from visiting Kiev and the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Saturday was that the situation was "anything but stable."

A planned monitoring mission by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) could help avoid an escalation of the stand-off, he said.

Meanwhile, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Sunday that the European Union was united in its readiness to impose economic sanctions on Russia if the stand-off over Ukraine escalates — and that Moscow had much more to lose than the West.
"I don't think we are divided. None of us wants to escalate, but if Russia changes things unilaterally, then it must know that we won't accept it and that relations will be bad," Schaeuble said on German television in an interview.

"Russia has a lot more to lose in the medium term than the West, than Europe or the United States," he said.




Germany's Foreign Minister said, “Russia is flouting the central foundations of the peaceful order in Europe,” and after his visit to Kiev and Donetsk that “the situation is anything but stable.” He recommends a monitoring mission by the OSCE to avoid an escalation of events. He also said that the EU is “united in its readiness to impose economic sanctions” if the standoff grows worse. He said that Russia has a lot more to lose than the West.

The first article on Obama's visit to The Netherlands was less hopeful, and paints European nations as being hesitant, due to their own economic weakness, to threaten the loss of their source of gas by standing up to Russia. The stringent economic strictures on Russia that the US would like to apply may not be backed by many European nations, so they may not be put in place.

Some sort of stronger measures need to be enforced, though. I think Russia is sitting complacently on the border of Ukraine waiting to see how the Russian speaking people there go forward – can they destabilize the Kiev government? If they do, Russia is too likely to move in with troops “to protect the Russians.” I think if Western Europe stands strongly together to oppose him, Putin will not try to invade. NATO troops stationed in Poland and the other Western-leaning nations surrounding Ukraine would be even better. I think Putin's not stupid or insane, but a game-player, and we need to be playing the same game.




Mood Drug May Prevent Some Cancer, Study Finds
By Maggie Fox
First published March 23 2014

A drug used to treat seizures, migraines and mood disorders may prevent head and neck cancer, researchers reported on Monday.

The drug, called valproic acid, is already being tested as a possible treatment for several cancers. But a new study shows that veterans who were taking the drug to treat headaches, seizures, PTSD or other ailments had a 34 percent lower-than-average risk of developing head and neck cancer.

The effects were clearest in smokers, a finding that suggests the drug may reverse some of the damage caused by cigarette smoke.

“A 34 percent risk reduction for the development of head and neck cancer with valproic acid use could result in the prevention of up to approximately 16,000 new cases and 3,000 to 4,000 annual deaths in the U.S. alone,” said Dr. Johann Christoph Brandes of the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Emory University in Atlanta.

“Head and neck cancer is an important global health crisis, and low cost and low-toxicity prevention strategies like valproic acid use have a high potential impact on pain, suffering, costs, and mortality associated with this disease,” added Brandes, who led the study.

The team at the VA studied the records of 439,628 patients. About 27,000 of them had taken valproic acid — sold under brand names such as Depakote, Epilim and Valpro — for at least a year. They were followed for an average of four years.

Researchers were looking at valproic acid because other studies have shown it can affect tumors, by acting on the changes in the DNA that drive some cancers. The drug is being studied as a possible treatment for some cancers, including head and neck cancer.

There were no effects on the rates of lung cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer or several other cancers. But the veterans who took valproic acid for three years or more were very much less likely to be diagnosed with head and neck cancer. The more valproic acid was in their system, the lower their risk of the cancer.

Head and neck cancer can be caused by smoking and alcohol use and by the human papillomavirus, also known as HPV. But rates of the types of head and neck cancers most commonly caused by HPV did not seem to be affected by the drug.

About 40,000 Americans are diagnosed with head and neck cancer — which includes cancer of the mouth, throat and tongue — every year, and about 10,000 die from it.




This article, http://www.webmd.com/drugs/drug-1788-Depakote+Oral.aspx?drugid=1788&drugname=Depakote+Oral&pagenumber=6, gives a long list of side effects from taking oral Depakote, some of which are alarming. Those were under the headings “infrequent” and “rare,” but trouble with voluntary movements, involuntary eye movements or involuntary quivering are problems which would make me stop taking that drug. If it only prevents cancer rather than curing it, I would have to ask what my chance of getting the cancer was in the first place.




Pro-Palestinian Students Charge Universities With Censorship – NBC
By Nona Willis Aronowitz

BOSTON — “Free, free Palestine!” protesters shouted, carrying a 30-foot-long Palestinian flag through the streets.

At first glance, the 150 people gathered just outside Northeastern University on March 18 seemed to be staging a typical rally criticizing Israeli policies—an increasingly common sight on left-leaning American campuses. But upon closer inspection, the mix of NEU students and local Boston activists were calling for another thing to be freed: their speech.

Eleven days before the protest, the NEU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine had been suspended, meaning they could no longer meet as a group on NEU property or receive university funds. The administration cited several violations of campus policies and procedures, most recently when SJP failed to get university approval to distribute 600 fliers on February 23.

The fliers were designed as mock eviction notices to symbolize the Palestinian experience in occupied territory, where homes have been razed for Israeli settlements. It warned the reader that their dorm was “scheduled for demolition in three days,” followed by statistics on displaced Palestinian families. The flier was punctuated by a disclaimer at the bottom: “This is not a real eviction notice. #BostonMockEviction.”

requirement to obtain pre-approval before distributing fliers is in the student resource handbook at Northeastern. But according to SJP members, the university doesn’t consistently enforce the policy.

“There are hundreds of fliers in different places around campus, and almost none of them have the university’s stamp of approval,” said Max Geller, an SJP spokesman.
Charles Flewelling, a third-year law student who's part of several Northeastern student groups, including the National Lawyers Guild and Queers United in Radical Rethinking, agreed with that assessment. "It is common practice for student groups to put up fliers around school," he said. "None of [our] fliers had university approval," but neither he nor any of his group members "have received any form of discipline or warning."

Tori Porell, the president of SJP, said this “double standard” is part of a concerted effort to censor the pro-Palestinian group. The result, she said, is that “our free speech is suppressed.”

Renata Nyul, director of communications at Northeastern, said SJP was "sanctioned based on a series of violations of university policy. Every student organization is viewed the same way. [SJP] is not being singled out." Northeastern also wrote in an earlier statement that “the issue at hand is not one of free speech."

Still, the campus has become the latest battleground for pro-Palestinian student activists who claim they have been marginalized or unfairly punished by university higher-ups. Earlier this month, a banner reading “Stand for Justice, Stand for Palestine” was taken down at Barnard College following complaints by pro-Israel student groups. Last year, five Florida Atlantic University students were put on indefinite probation and ordered to take a civility training course after briefly protesting and walking out of a talk by a member of the Israel Defense Forces. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been tracking this issue, has documented more than 80 complaints of campus intimidation against advocates for Palestinian human rights.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is a perennial campus issue, but the debate has particularly intensified in academia in the past few years. The American Studies Association announced in December that it would boycott collaborations with Israeli scholars and academic institutions, sparking heated debate on both sides (and counter-boycotts of the ASA). Criticism of Israel has become more mainstream in the United States since 2005, when the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) began—including among Jewish young people. An October 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that 74 percent of 18-to-30-year-old American Jews now doubt that Israel’s leaders are sincerely interested in making peace with Palestinians.

Maria LaHood, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said her organization has seen an increase of censorship complaints by pro-Palestinian campus groups in the past couple of years. “As activism is growing, the campaign to suppress that activism is also escalating.” she said. “Universities are punishing what they should be encouraging: open debate.”

Pro-Israel groups like Hillel, the Zionist Organization of America, and the Anti-Defamation League have accused BDS groups of harassment at best and anti-Semitism at worst. In 2012, a Boston-based group, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, released a series of videos characterizing Northeastern University as having “a general anti-Semitic climate” and as a haven for Islamist extremism.

“SJP creates a hostile environment for Jewish pro-Israel students,” said Ilya Feoktistov, director of research for Americans for Peace and Tolerance, in an email. Their suspension is valid because “they broke the rules—vandalism, disruption of campus events, dorm room leafleting—while promoting anti-Semitism on campus.”
In a few cases, the complaints have been on the other side: In February 2013, Brooklyn College safety officers removed four pro-Israel Jewish students from an SJP event, and pro-Israel organizations responded in kind. (Brooklyn College’s president, Karen Gould, later apologized.)

But universities don’t usually take a position on Israel or Palestine in the wake of these incidents. Instead, they often slap student groups with conduct violations.
“I don’t believe these universities think [SJP’s activity] is harassment or racism,” said LaHood. “Or else they would say so. I think they’re looking for a way to stop them in order to alleviate pressure” from pro-Israel groups and donors.

Tuesday’s protesters, who delivered almost 6,000 petition signatures to Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun demanding that SJP be re-instated, were politically and ethnically diverse. Many were Jewish; Rabbi Joseph Berman, who wore a yarmulke, shouted through a megaphone that “standing up for the human rights of all people is not anti-Semitic.” The group was made up of both ardent pro-Palestinian activists and apolitical marchers who cared more about the First Amendment than the Middle East.

Jeff Melnick, an American Studies professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, attended the protest because, “as an American Jew,” he thinks it’s “important to be able to say what’s on your mind.” Likening this incident to the civil rights movement, he said the students “are using standard, time-tested strategies of civil disobedience that old folks like me are very familiar with.” Compared with what he did in the 60s, he said, “this is nothing.”

Laura Benedict, a NEU sophomore, mainly attended the rally because “the university always sides with the money,” she said. “People here are saying an unpopular opinion, and it’s conflicting with the monetary interests of the university.”

Benedict was referring to one donor in particular: Robert J. Shillman, who has given millions of dollars to Northeastern, his alma mater, according to data compiled by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and a Northeastern press release, and has sat on its Board of Trustees. He is also a public supporter of the Zionist Organization of America, which wrote a letter to Northeastern’s president in July 2013 expressing concern about SJP and anti-Semitism (Shillman was copied on the letter).

Porell and other SJP members suspect he and other pro-Israel university donors have factored into the administration’s decision to suppress anti-Israel sentiment.
“There’s a building named after the guy,” Porell said. “There’s a statue of him on campus. The university is obviously concerned about their funding stream.”
Shillman's office did not respond to requests for comment.

To many, the eviction notice incident is simply the nail in the coffin for SJP’s relationship with the university, which has been souring since 2012. The group was put on probation when they staged a walkout in the beginning of an event with an Israel Defense Forces soldier during Holocaust Remembrance Day. (The event was not part of the university’s official programming.) Offended by the “conflation of the Israeli armed forces with the memory of the Holocaust,” Geller and several other students walked out in protest. The group was charged with failure to secure a permit for a walkout.

Tuesday’s protest coincided with the hearing of two female undergrads, both members of SJP, who were sanctioned for “endangering” fellow students when they allowed the eviction-notice distributors into their dorms.

On the night the fliers were distributed, campus police came to the room of one of the students, Kendall Bousquet, 20, and questioned her about the eviction notices, according to the incident report. “I find [the presence of the police in dorms] to be a really inappropriate response to a nonviolent student action,” she said. ”I believe in the tradition of university protest, and now things have to be sanitized in order for a donor to not feel uncomfortable.”

Of course, it’s not only a matter of whether donors complain; several pro-Israel student groups, like Hillel and Huskies for Israel, have long denounced SJP’s actions on campus as harassing and intimidating. When news of the eviction notices hit campus, Hillel sent out a letter to its mailing list calling the mock eviction notices “a campaign of intimidation and fear,” and writing that the flier “runs counter to the values of community and civil discourse upon which we pride ourselves at Northeastern.”

Adam Stark, a junior business major involved with Hillel, is “glad that the school finally did the right thing” in suspending SJP. When SJP distributed the eviction notices, “I was really upset because they’re kind of using fear tactics...If they’re storming through [the Israel Defense Forces event] or rallying outside, I definitely feel threatened.”

Stark recalled past incidents of vandalism—stickers reading “Zionism = racism” placed on a statue of Robert Shillman, a toppled menorah—and said “it was hard to call those [incidents] freedom of speech.”

Geller says SJP had nothing to do with either incident; two students unaffiliated with SJP later confessed to the menorah incident after campus police uncovered surveillance footage. For Hillel to “conflate real instances of anti-Semitism with criticism of Israeli policy is really dangerous, and demonizes our point of view without having to actually debate it,” Geller said. As a Jew, he said, charges of anti-Semitism are “deeply hurtful.”

Critics of SJP chapters across the country have echoed Stark, claiming there’s a thin line between anti-Semitism and free speech. But Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney at the Massachusetts ACLU, said whenever the Department of Education has investigated formal complaints of Title VI violations—discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin—related to Israel and Palestine in the past few years, they’ve come up empty-handed.

“In every case, [the department] has determined they do not constitute civil rights violations,” said Wunsch, citing unsuccessful complaints lodged at Rutgers University and Brooklyn College in the past couple of years.

What it really comes down to, she said, is whether people feel annoyed, upset, or offended.

“Freedom of expression isn’t always nice,” said Wunsch. “It may be upsetting, but that’s the point of it. That doesn’t mean it should be unprotected.”




NEU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was … “suspended, meaning they could no longer meet as a group on NEU property or receive university funds.” SJP had failed to meet university requirements, including distributing 600 leaflets without permission. The pro-Islamic students claim it to be an attempt to foreclose on their freedom of speech. The Center for Constitutional Rights at Florida Atlantic University … “has documented more than 80 complaints of campus intimidation against advocates for Palestinian human rights.” Even some Jewish students are in sympathy with them. According to this article, 74% of American Jews under the age of 30 believe that the leaders of Israel are not truly seeking peace with Palestine.

Pro-Israel groups accuse the pro-Palestinians of harassment and anti-Semitism, and claim that Northeastern University has “a general anti-Semitic climate” and is a haven for Islamist extremism. I realize it probably means nothing as to his fairness in the issue, but the article states that the President of the University is named “Aoun,” which is an Islamic “primarily Lebanese” name. One student there, Laura Benedict, states that the University “always sides with the money,” and that a wealthy Zionist Robert J. Shillman has co-authored a letter to the University complaining about the influence of SJP and the anti-Sematism on the campus.

One female student questioned by the police for distributing the fliers in the dormitories is quoted as saying “I believe in the tradition of university protest,” which many will not be glad to hear. Protesting as opposed to voting in elections and writing your congressman is not really a universally sanctioned US tradition, and there may be a lack of scholarly effort involved for University campuses to be embroiled in conflict in that way. Of course, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Movement, and good old labor union activities depend on the “demonstration” of power in addition to writing your congressmen. I have no doubt that demonstrations are necessary to make political change on unpopular issues.

Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney at the Massachusetts ACLU stated that the Department of Education has investigated claims of discrimination and has found none that involve discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin. I did notice in reading through this article that both sides are accusing the other of discrimination. This article has done a very good job of making clear the various parties and viewpoints. I enjoyed it.

My only response is that I don't agree with the idea of “university protest” for its own sake. It's too disruptive and is not a contemplative decision-making process. It's not just that I've grown too old to enjoy it, but that I think most causes are better represented by voting, writing your congressman, debate in a decorous way, and even better writing letters to your newspaper. I consider myself a liberal Democrat and I have sympathy with both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because they both have so much at stake, but I rarely feel so strongly on an issue that I want to fight about it. Therefore the mock show of force that a demonstration amounts to is only appropriate when the powers that be are weighing in heavily and unfairly on one side or the other, or there is a deep moral issue involved. The Civil Rights Movement was such an issue.

In most cases I reserve judgment as I think issues through, and see some good on both sides. Maybe everybody should get a blog and express themselves there. It's a harmless activity unless the nation or society believes it to be an assault on the government, which in some cases would be warranted when the government is actively evil. Thank goodness in this country I can get away with saying what my opinions and beliefs are without fear of being arrested or put to death.




­ Kids Benefit From Counseling At The Pediatrician's Office – NPR
by Nancy Shute
March 24, 2014
­
Pediatricians often recommend some mental health counseling for children who have behavior problems like defiance and tantrums. But counseling can be hard to find. Children are much more likely to get help if the counselor is right there in the doctor's office, a study finds.

The children in the study had behavior problems, and many also had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or anxiety. They were 8 years old, on average, and two-thirds were boys.

Half of the 321 children were referred to outside counselors who took the family's insurance. The other half had six to 12 individual or family counseling sessions with social workers placed in pediatricians' offices as part of the study, which was conducted by the University of Pittsburgh School of the Health Sciences.

The in-house counseling was much better at getting the children to start and continue treatment. Slightly more than half of the children referred to outside counselors started treatment, compared with 99 percent of those offered in-house counseling. And 77 percent of those children completed the recommended treatment, compared with 12 percent given referrals.

"It's not only convenience, but easy access to a familiar setting," says David Kolko, a professor of psychiatry, psychology and pediatrics who led the study. And "parent and children don't feel the stigma of going for counseling, since it's in a pediatrics setting."

Children in both groups showed improvements in behavior, but the families who had counseling at the doctor's office had more improvements in behavior and hyperactivity, less parental stress and more satisfaction overall.
But most pediatricians' offices don't offer mental health services. So what's the typical family to do?

"Now I'm trying to promote this on a larger scale in a way that's practical, efficient and low-cost," Kolko told Shots. He's talked to insurers and health care systems to figure out how to make that happen.

Some of the clinics who participated in the study have hired the social workers on their own, and are billing insurance to pay for them, Kolko says.

Last October, NPR reported on efforts to provide mental health services through primary care offices in Oregon.

"This doesn't come easily," Kolko adds. "But before you can ask for reimbursement you have to have evidence to show that it has some level of benefit." He says this study, which was published Monday in Pediatrics, helps make the case.




I've never heard of this before. I wouldn't think that social workers would be the ideal professional to use for the counseling. It sometimes seems to me that every time I turn around somebody is being classified as having ADHD and given Ritalin. Shouldn't a psychiatrist be involved? If it's just counseling and not medication, probably any benign and alert professional could be helpful.

The point of the article, though, is that a study has found there are better results when the counseling is held in the Pediatrician's office. I would suggest that simply a mentor, such as the Big Brothers organization provides, especially on a long term basis would be of great help in addition. I think kids need to be close to more adults than just their parents. That's where 4-H, Girl or Boy Scouts, school clubs and activities, or little league sports come in.

Kids just mouthing off at their parents are frequently going through a phase. Kids do grow up, after all, and as they become more independent of their parents they will probably become contentious part of the time. Parents have to manage to control them up to a point, while letting them branch out on their own at the same time. Of course, if they are violent, bullying, starting to steal, using drugs, joining a street gang or other really adverse behavior, they need mental health counseling and possibly drugs. That may be more than they can get from a social worker.




­Japan To Turn Over Nuclear Stockpile To U.S. For Safe Keeping – NPR
by Scott Neuman
March 24, 2014

Japan has agreed to hand over to the U.S. a decades-old stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium that is said to be large enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons.

The 700-pound cache, which had been maintained by Japan for research purposes, would be turned over to the U.S. for safe keeping, according to an agreement announced Monday at the G7 nuclear security summit in The Hague, Netherlands. It's part of an Obama administration push to prevent the nuclear material from being stolen by potential terrorists.

"This is a very significant nuclear security pledge and activity," U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told reporters. "The material will be transferred to the United States for transformation into proliferation-resistant forms."
Yosuke Isozaki, a senior national security adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said through an interpreter that "Japan shares a vision of a world without nuclear weapons."

The New York Times reports:
"The Japanese agreement to transfer the material has both practical and political significance. For years these stores of weapons-grade material were not a secret, but they were lightly guarded at best; a reporter for The New York Times who visited the main storage site at Tokaimura in the early 1990s found unarmed guards and a site less-well protected than many banks. While security has improved, the stores have long been considered vulnerable.

"Iran has cited Japan's large stockpiles of bomb-ready material as evidence of a double standard about which nations can be trusted. And last month China began publicly denouncing Japan's supply, in an apparent warning that a rightward, nationalistic turn in Japanese politics could result in the country seeking its own weapons.

"At various moments right-wing politicians in Japan have referred to the stockpile as a deterrent, suggesting that it was useful to have material so that the world knows Japan, with its advanced technological acumen, could easily fashion it into weapons."




"Japan shares a vision of a world without nuclear weapons." In 1990 a New York Times reporter “found unarmed guards and a site less-well protected than many banks. While security has improved, the stores have long been considered vulnerable.” Also, China has voiced concern that Japan's politics could turn toward nationalistic aims again, causing them to try to make nuclear weapons. To me, there simply is no real need for all countries to have nuclear weapons. A small nation with nukes could start a war, especially since there is so rarely a time in the modern world without active conflicts going on. I'm glad to see this move. It's a little bit of progress.




­ 25 Years After Spill, Alaska Town Struggles Back From 'Dead Zone' – NPR
by Marisa Peñaloza and Debbie Elliott
March 24, 2014

­ On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine water. At the time, it was the single biggest spill in U.S. history. In a series of stories, NPR is examining the lasting social and economic impacts of the disaster, as well as the policy, regulation and scientific research that came out of it.

It's a blustery, snowy March day when Michelle Hahn O'Leary offers a tour of Cordova, Alaska, situated on the eastern shore of Prince William Sound.

Starting at the fishing harbor on Orca Inlet, she passes a row of canneries. Commercial fishing is the lifeblood of this town of 2,200.

'We're Leaking Some Oil'
An excerpt from Exxon Valdez Capt. Joseph Hazelwood's radio call to the U.S. Coast Guard after striking Bligh Reef.

O'Leary and her late husband were preparing for the spring herring season in March 1989, when the giant oil tanker Exxon Valdez took a very wrong turn.

The ship ran aground on Bligh Reef in the early morning hours of March 24, leaking oil into the sound's frigid waters. When the ship's captain, Joseph Hazelwood, made a call to the Coast Guard just after midnight, he said the ship was "evidently leaking some oil."

The ruptured tanker subsequently oozed 11 million gallons of crude into Prince William Sound.

"It just felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach," says O'Leary. "This was one of those turning points in life, where you measure things before and after."
O'Leary hasn't fished since.

Native Alaskan Tom Andersen, once a commercial fisherman, no longer makes his living from the sea, either. "You can't fix it. Once you break that egg, sometimes that's it," he says.

Andersen, 71, says the waters here have sustained his people, the Chugach, for generations. He now picks up odd construction jobs hanging drywall. A whole way of living has changed, he says, making a wiping motion with his arm.

"You pretty much lived there — you got your clams and crabs and fish," he says. "And then somebody come and dumped oil all over it, you know? That's really hitting home."
­
'The Dead Zone'
Because the oil company and government agencies were ill-prepared to respond, oil from the Exxon Valdez stretched for 11,000 square miles. It fouled beaches, destroyed fisheries and killed hundreds of thousands of birds and all kinds of sea life, including whales and sea otters.

Exxon eventually set up a voluntary program to compensate oil spill victims, and hired local fishermen for the cleanup – including Andersen, who worked a sea otter rescue crew.

"You could smell [the oil] before you ever saw it," he recalls. Prince William Sound, he says, was silenced. "There was no fish, no birds chasing fish. You could sit there and it'd just be dead quiet. So everybody called it the dead zone."

The disaster upended life in Cordova for years. Fishermen were docked. Businesses went bankrupt. Drug and alcohol abuse went up, along with reports of domestic violence and depression. The mayor committed suicide. Those paid by Exxon to work the cleanup were jealously labeled "spillionaires."

This once close-knit community changed, says Patience Andersen Faulkner, Andersen's sister. "You couldn't look at your neighbor to help you. You didn't trust your neighbor, you didn't trust your brother. It was very, very sad."

Faulkner is now part of a citizens' advisory council put in place to monitor the recovery and readiness for potential future oil spills. The panel is still tracking lingering oil from the Exxon Valdez.

Dave Janka captains the Auklet, a 58-foot wooden boat he uses for private charters. Most of his clients are scientists studying the oil spill's impact. Along the way, Janka has collected his own samples.

He opens a jar labeled "February 19, 2014." Janka collected the dark black oily-water mixture from Eleanor Island in Prince William Sound, digging down about 6 inches beneath the rocky shoreline. It smells like your hand after pumping gas at a service station.

"Looks like oil, smells like oil. It's oil," Janka says. "If you or I, in our backyard or at our mom and pop gas station, had a fuel tank leak, we would be held to the point of bankruptcy to clean that up."

Exxon, now Exxon Mobil Corp., spent a total of $4.3 billion in cleanup costs, legal damages, settlements and fines.

Exxon Mobil spokesman Richard Keil says the company regrets that the incident took place. "Without doubt, it was a tragic event. But it's something we have learned from, and we live those lessons each and every day."

A class-action lawsuit wasn't resolved until 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court slashed an initial jury award of $5 billion to $507 million, plus $470 million in interest.

Jim Kallander, a fisherman and former mayor of Cordova, does not blame Exxon for mounting a defense. "We all need oil; accidents are going to happen," he says.
But after 19 years of drawn-out litigation, he continues, the final Supreme Court verdict was the hardest blow.

"Justice was not served," he says. "All my life, I'd been brought up to think that, you know, you get to the Supreme Court and everything is made right. People are made whole. Issues are corrected. And I'm still disappointed. I'll never get over it."
Now, 25 years later, Kallander says the town of Cordova has nearly come full circle, even if the environmental recovery is incomplete.

An orca pod in Prince William Sound is near extinction and the local herring fishery isn't back. But the harbor is bustling again with a fishing fleet getting ready to harvest salmon, halibut and cod.

Kallander's boat, the Miss Emily, is now part of a stand-by fleet ready to respond to oil spills.

"We have to be fueled up, and watered up, and have groceries on board; be ready to go 24/7," he says.

Back out at Orca Inlet, Michelle O'Leary warns that, even with the new readiness, the lesson from Exxon Valdez is that there's no way to put the oil back once it spills.
"Right now, we've got one of the safest ports in the world, and we've got one of the best oil spill response plans," she says. "But the weather we're having today — nothing could be done, absolutely nothing."

She's talking about the winds that are gusting to 60 miles an hour — winds that just canceled a planned oil spill response drill. Dispersants don't work in these conditions, O'Leary says, and the oil would be nearly impossible to contain.
Here in Alaska, the best-laid plans are still at the mercy of Mother Nature.




11 million gallons of oil in the water is truly catastrophic. “Says fisherman's wife Michelle Hahn O'Leary, 'This was one of those turning points in life, where you measure things before and after.' " It's like 9/11, or the sinking of the naval fleet in Pearl Harbor. According to fisherman Andersen, all commerce in the town stopped. The article says that there is still oil lingering in the area. It can be found in the soil about 6 inches down. Some fishing has come back, but the herring are gone. The town now has a very good standby fleet to respond to future oil spills. Of course, there probably won't be any. They'll occur in other locations. I notice the people still live there, though. Andersen got some work for Exxon Valdez on the cleanup and does some “odd jobs” in construction. Representatives of Exxon express great regret, but as Andersen said, "You can't fix it. Once you break that egg, sometimes that's it."