Author Archives: Mary Turck

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About Mary Turck

News Day, written by Mary Turck, analyzes, summarizes, links to, and comments on reports from news media around the world, with particular attention to immigration, education, and journalism. Fragments, also written by Mary Turck, has fiction, poetry and some creative non-fiction. Mary Turck edited TC Daily Planet, www.tcdailyplanet.net, from 2007-2014, and edited the award-winning Connection to the Americas and AMERICAS.ORG, in its pre-2008 version. She is also a recovering attorney and the author of many books for young people (and a few for adults), mostly focusing on historical and social issues.
January 7, 2009 · 10:10 am

Alice in Soucheray-land

Legal experts say Coleman faces an uphill battle, according to MPR. Coleman lawyer Fritz Knaak says they intend to put local officials under oath and question them about what happened in local polling places in a process that he predicts will take at least two months. Coleman loyalists Joe Soucheray and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, also republished in the PiPress continue beating the drums with attacks on the recount and on Minnesota elections.

As MnIndy reports/repeats, the January 5 WSJ editorial is one “that nearly everyone but Rush Limbaugh has laughed off for its woolly inaccuracies and hidebound misrepresentations.”

Sooch faults SoS Ritchie and anyone else who was “encouraging more voting and making it sound virtuous and noble to do so.” He wants voting left to “the legitimate lot of us who vote correctly and responsibly” — and Republican-ly?

Sooch charges that Ritchie’s “eagle-eyed glare” intimidated two Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices into committing recount fraud as they joined in the unanimous rulings of the State Canvassing Board. Joe’s fans may include a girl named Alice, who proudly proclaimed “I can believe in three impossible things before breakfast.”

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January 7, 2009 · 9:53 am

Pig brains and politicians

An Austin man has sued Hormel over exposure to pig brains, reports the Strib. According to Dale Kinney’s legal filings, Hormel’s “process of using compressed air to harvest pig brains has led to a medical investigation involving the Mayo clinic, the Minnesota Department of Health, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).”

The Washington Post described the illness and its cause last year:

The ailment is characterized by sensations of burning, numbness and weakness in the arms and legs. For most, this is unpleasant but not disabling. For a few, however, the ailment has made walking difficult and work impossible. The symptoms have slowly lessened in severity, but in none of the sufferers has it disappeared completely.

While the illness is similar to some known conditions, it does not match any exactly. Nor is the leading theory of its cause something medical researchers have studied. That is because the illness appears to be caused by inhaling microscopic flecks of pig brain. …

[Investigators’] working hypothesis is that the harvesting technique — known as “blowing brains” on the floor — produces aerosols of brain matter. Once inhaled, the material prompts the immune system to produce antibodies that attack the pig brain compounds, but apparently also attack the body’s own nerve tissue because it is so similar.

Hormel says this plaintiff wasn’t an employee. Maybe he’ll have better luck than actual employees. As MPR previously reported, some immigrant workers have been denied workers’ compensation despite being diagnosed with an auto-immune disease that attacks the neurological system. The worker interviewed by MPR couldn’t get workers’ comp to even pay for the meds prescribed for her condition. And, yes, workers are entitled to workers’ compensation for injuries suffered on the job, regardless of whether they are citizens, permanent residents, or undocumented workers.

Of course, if you listen to Minnesota Employment Commissioner Steve Sviggum, no undocumented workers should get compensation for lost work time or for permanent injuries suffered in the course of their work. He wants to change workers’ compensation insurance laws to deny them coverage of anything but medical bills. Lose a hand? Out of luck. Permanent neurological damage? Go back to Mexico.

Rep. Carlos Mariani responded to Sviggum’s outrageous proposal:

If one follows this thinking to its logical conclusion, denying work comp to undocumented would encourage employers to hire undocumented workers because doing so would shield them from the expense incurred for making the worker whole when injured on the job. It would also reward the employer for having unsafe work conditions since they would not incur the cost that follows from those conditions. The savings in expenses: from full work comp costs, and from the expense of maintaining a safe work place could be substantive and could alter the societal balance that exists between protecting workers while running efficient industries. What is posed as an issue that only affects undocumented workers becomes a sector-altering dynamic that undermines organized labor, not to mention that it creates two competing social value systems operating in our economy. … It seems to me that if you want to end the employment of undocumented workers in our society, then making it easier for employers to not bear the work comp costs of injured workers achieves the opposite.

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January 6, 2009 · 10:41 pm

News Day: January 6

Norm Coleman will sue to overturn the election results, despite calls from distinguished Minnesotans, including Democratic former V.P. Walter Mondale and Republican former governor Arne Carlson.

Twittering? Watch out for phishers, who have been trying to get e-mail contacts from Twitter users. Someone also hacked 33 Twitter accounts over the weekend, including Barack Obama and Britney Spears. According to BBC, the hackers promised free petrol from Mr. Obama and ” some very personal statistics from Ms Spears.”

Snow, ice, sledding and broken backs – that’s winter in Minnesota, according to the Hennepin County Medical Center. Docs say they’ve seen twice as many back injuries this year as last year. Icy hills made sledding more dangerous.

And the beat goes on — Alcoa cutting 115,200 employees, Toyota shutting down its Japanese plants for 11 days.

Here in MN, the PiPress reports that social services are seeing more need. In Sherburne County, “14 people called the county every day in 2008 for information about financial assistance. That’s up from an average of three calls a day in 2006.” December 1 saw an all-time one-day record of 625 calls for help.

NPR’s Planet Money asks “Where would we be if FDR had done nothing?” And over at NYT, Paul Krugman warns that Congress and the incoming Obama administration have to act quickly. “The fact is,” writes Krugman, “that recent economic numbers have been terrifying, not just in the United States but around the world. Manufacturing, in particular, is plunging everywhere. Banks aren’t lending; businesses and consumers aren’t spending. Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.”

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January 5, 2009 · 4:00 pm

Deficit looms over legislative session

“The deficit is so overwhelming that it’s hard to even think about what the other issues would be,” said Senator Sandy Pappas (D-St. Paul), expressing what might be the only easy consensus about the legislative session that begins January 6. From higher education to green jobs to child care to roads and bridges, the deficit looms over all other issues.

Pappas said that an emergency bonding bill for infrastructure will be on the agenda, either to provide a match for federal economic stimulus dollars, if that is requried, or to do infrastructure repair and replacement. As chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, Pappas noted that both the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MNSCU) and the University of Minnesota have “a huge backlog” for infrastructure projects such as energy-efficient HVAC systems and new roofs. Other bonding may provide for highways, transit and schools. “If we do our own economic stimulus package,” Pappas said, “it would include bonding for capital investment.”

“Investments in infrastructure and renewable energy that stimulate the economy, provide living wage jobs, and protect the environment,” should be a priority, according to Russ Adams, director of the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability. “We have a battle to prioritize the spending of federal dollars.”

Adams explained that the emphasis on the federal level seems to be on funding “shovel-ready” projects, such as roads and bridges. That de-emphasizes projects such as mass transit, which may need more planning, studies and fiscal analysis before start-up. He says the Obama administration “is doing a balancing act between ready-to-go work and work to shift to a new, greener economy.”

Top priority, according to Adams, should go to green jobs for low income people and people of color, such as building retrofitting for energy efficiency.

“There’s a shortage of workers to do it,” he said. “We know how to create job training programs to teach people how to do the retrofitting. It pays for itself in about three years. This could be a green pathway out of poverty.”

Job training for unemployed workers is a key concern for higher education, too, according to Pappas, who expressed concern that cuts in funding would mean higher tuition. “In an economic downturn,” she said, “a lot of people go back to school to upgrade skills, learn a new profession, or go to graduate school. If tuition rises, people could be squeezed out.”

Jeff Bauer, director of public policy for Family and Children’s Services, said he is hearing legislators and advocates express concern about identifying areas where people in need are most vulnerable to budget cuts, and trying to make sure that cuts are made in a fair and equitable fashion.

“The other message we are hearing loud and clear,” said Bauer, “is that just saying ‘please don’t make cuts’ isn’t going to cut it this year. The two numbers — $4.8 billion and $5.2 billion — are just a massive amount of money to find somewhere.”

Bauer said that advocates have to wait and see what is in the governor’s budget, when it comes out later in January or in early February.

(Published in

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January 3, 2009 · 10:30 pm

Still paving paradise

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Til it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
(Big Yellow Taxi, by Joni Mitchell)

And they’re still at it, almost 40 years after Joni Mitchell first wrote the song. The Bush administration is poised to give the go-ahead to paving roads that will target mountain forests in Montana, facilitating development of far-flung housing subdivisions. The change would directly benefit Plum Creek Timber, which owns some eight million acres overall and 1.2 million acres in western Montana.

The change would let Plum Creek pave old logging roads. That would open its land to building vacation homes for the wealthy. The scattered sites make provision of county services more expensive.

[Costs include] the costs of firefighting in the wildland-urban interface (already, about a quarter of the Forest Service’s $4 billion annual budget is spent on defending homes from wildfires), the costs of road maintenance and stresses on other public services, and the effects on wildlife habitat in remote woodlands bordering public lands.

You might think that a conservative national administration would uphold local control. Not so. Corporate control trumps local control every time.

The Forest Service and Plum Creek tried to sneak by the change without consultation with local officials, but word leaked out in April, and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) joined Missoula County and Flathead County officials in challenging the plans.

According to the Washington Post, there’s no 30-day waiting period for this change, because it is a modification of existing easements. That means the Forest Service could act at any time, with no legal requirement for consultation or comment. If Plum Creek, “the nation’s largest landholder,” prevails, the change will come before January 20. President-elect Obama spoke out against the change in Montana during the campaign.

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January 3, 2009 · 9:51 pm

Senator Claiborne Pell’s legacy

Former Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell believed in extrasensory perception and attended a seminar on UFO abductions. He also defended the rights of gay and lesbian people to hold government jobs and led the battle for federal Employment Opportunity Grants for needy college students. That program, now called Pell Grants in his honor, may be his greatest legacy. Since its inception in 1972, the program has helped more than 50 million students to attend college. The Washington Poste quoted Senator Harry Reid, who said::

Any student who has ever received federal aid has Senator Pell to thank for his or her education. The Pell Grants he created revolutionized our education system for generations of Americans who might not otherwise be able to pursue higher education.

Claiborne Pell died January 1 at the age of 90. He had represented Rhode Island in the Senate from 1960-1996.

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January 2, 2009 · 11:39 pm

50 years of revolution

New Year’s Day also marked the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. Fifty years after the overthrow of the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro (82) has handed off power to his slightly younger brother Raul Castro (77).

The BBC reports that Cuba’s economy slowed down this year, growing at a rate of only 4.3% instead of the projected 8%. Cuba was hit by three major hurricanes this year, with damages estimated at $10 billion. An AP report in the Miami Herald called the economic growth figure inflated because it includes “state spending on free health care and education, as well as subsides for transportation and food rations.” (Of course, no matter how you slice it, the Cuban GDP looks better than this year’s U.S. GDP, which is likely to show less than 2% growth.)

As the New York Times noted, Cuba “has secured advances in education and health care,” and its life expectancy of 77.3 years is one of the highest in the hemisphere. Its infant mortality rate is lower than that of the United States, according to U.N. reports

U.S. policy toward Cuba continues to be punitive, with stringent limitations on travel and trade. Some change is expected with the new administration. NACLA reports that President-elect Obama has promised to give Cuban-Americans “unrestricted rights” to visit family members in Cuba and to send money to them. However, Obama said he will maintain the trade embargo first imposed by President Eisenhower in 1960, despite continuing international calls for lifting the embargo.

For 17 straight years, the 192-member U.N. General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved a non-binding resolution condemning the U.S. embargo. Only the United States, Israel and Palau voted against the measure in October. …

On December 8, the heads of 15 Caribbean nations called on Obama to rescind the embargo: “The Caribbean community hopes that the transformational change which is under way in the United States will finally relegate that measure to history,” their statement said.

Then on December 17 in Brazil, the leaders of 33 Latin American countries, including conservative allies of Washington like Colombia and Mexico, convened for another gathering and unanimously called on Obama to drop the “unacceptable” embargo. (“End the Embargo,” NACLA)

Cubans know better than to count on big changes from the new administration. The Weekly News Update on the Americas summarized an interview from Mexican daily La Jornada:

Cuban National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcón said that Cuba isn’t counting on a major shift in US policy towards Cuba when Barack Obama becomes US president on Jan. 20. Alarcón, who lived in New York 1966-1978 as Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, noted that “many of my friends…people of what was the American New Left in other times” had wept at Obama’s victory celebration in Chicago on Nov. 4. “I understood their hope,” he told reporter Blanche Petrich, but “I know that we can’t expect a big turning point with respect to Cuba.”

Alarcón told La Jornada, that Obama promises change, but not radical change. For Cuba, that means lifting the restrictions placed by Bush, and a return to some form of dialogue, which had ended during the Bush years.

La verdad es que siempre hubo espacio para el diálogo discreto, la interlocución privada, la diplomacia no pública que se mantuvo, que probó ser útil y que existió hasta que llegó el increíble equipo de George Bush, el pequeño.

The truth is that there was always space for discreet dialogue, for private conversations, for diplomacy maintained out of the public view, which was useful and which existed until the incredible team of George Bush, the small one.

Now, said Alarcón, a changed relationship with Cuba could be an important part of a new U.S. relationship with Latin America.

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January 1, 2009 · 5:43 pm

Helen Suzman: Voice for justice

I first heard of Helen Suzman 40 years ago, when I first learned of the battle against apartheid in South Africa. As a white South African and a member of parliament, she was in a position to speak out against apartheid, and she did. She was a lone voice for justice in the South African parliament. Her opponents insulted her Jewish religion and called her a communist. Undaunted, she continued to speak, write and act against apartheid. She visited Nelson Mandela in prison. She befriended Mandela’s wife. Throughout the long years of struggle, she stood strong for justice.

After the end of apartheid, she continued to speak out for justice. In a 2008 BBC interview, she said:

“I’m extremely disappointed at what’s happening, and I have to put most of the blame on Thabo Mbeki (the former president) for two particularly obnoxious things he’s done – his denialist attitude to Aids, and secondly Zimbabwe and the dreadful backing of Robert Mugabe.”

“But there are other things too – crime, corruption, the failure to deliver on the promise of a better of life for all, the unemployment and the appalling conditions under which millions are still living,” she said.

Suzman died on January 1, 2009, at the age of 91.

She will be missed.

Suzman ‘brave voice’ on apartheid
Anti-apartheid icon Suzman dies
BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour special on Helen Suzman

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December 31, 2008 · 5:57 pm

Gaza

The on-going tragedy in Gaza commands the attention of the world. Both the genesis of the current war and the possible path to an eventual resolution defy simple definition. This article is not an attempt to point to a solution, but only a description of differing positions and some pointers to resources for further information and analysis from a variety of points of view.

One step toward resolution must be understanding what the various parties believe to be true about their situation. Four sources, among many, offer differing points of view from the region, in English:

Al Jazeera, an international on-line media source with a particular focus on events and issues in the Middle East.

Yediot Aharonot, an Israeli mainstream daily newspaper

HaAretz, a left-wing Israeli daily newspaper

The Daily Star, a daily newspaper from Lebanon

Near-universal calls for an end to Israeli air strikes focus on the civilian death toll and the continuing immiseration of the population of Gaza. Democracy Now reports:

Four Israeli citizens, including two Arab Israelis, have been killed by rockets from the Gaza Strip since Israel began its offensive on Saturday. Nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed and at least 1,600 injured. Latest reports indicate Israeli bombs have hit the network of tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border that many have described as a “lifeline for the Palestinian people,” because it’s been a major channel for smuggling in basic supplies from Egypt. Israel maintains the tunnels are used to smuggle weapons in.

Gaza is a small strip of land, thirty miles long and ten miles wide at its widest point. Hamas won elections in Gaza in 2006. Israel responded with economic sanctions and blockades, and military conflicts escalated throughout the year, culminating in an Israeli ground invasion in northern Gaza in November 2006. A ceasefire followed the Israeli withdrawal, but did not last. According to the Guardian:

After Hamas seized full control of Gaza in late June 2007, following a near civil war with its rival Fatah, Israel stepped up its air raids. On a single day in June, 12 Palestinians were killed in what an Israeli minister called “preventive measures” against rocket attacks from Gaza.

At the same time, Israel tightened its economic blockade, reducing the flow of goods into Gaza to a bare minimum, stopping all exports and placing severe limits on those Palestinians it allowed to leave Gaza through Israel. By September it had declared Gaza a “hostile territory” as militant rocket attacks and Israeli military raids continued.

A new round of US-sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians began at a summit in Annapolis, in the US, in November 2007 – but the conflict in Gaza continued.

A ceasefire was reached in June 2008, but broke down in November.

Israel condemns Hamas, which has been shooting more and more powerful missiles deeper inside Israel as the months go by.

Moshe Arens writes in Ha’aretz that there are seven ways to stop the rockets, but only one way that is effective:

Why has it been so difficult for our leaders – civilian and military – to understand this? The prospect of ground forces entering the Gaza Strip is not particularly attractive, especially after we have been told that “we have left the Gaza Strip forever.” But nobody has yet found a way of defeating an enemy without invading their territory. Call it occupation or whatever else you like, but that is how wars have always been won, and if we are going to defeat Hamas and stop the rockets from raining on Israeli civilians that is what we will have to do.

Seth Freedman, writing in the Guardian, defends Israel’s attack:

As Israeli spokesmen have reiterated time and again in the media, there is not a country in the world which would allow such assaults to take place on a daily basis without taking action to defend their citizens. Hamas knew this, and that their barrage of rockets would inevitably bring retaliation on the people of Gaza. Despite the ever-louder sabre-rattling by Israeli politicians during the last week, Hamas continued to use heavily-populated civilian centres as launching pads for their daily attacks on Israel.

On the other side, most of the world condemns the current Israeli war on Gaza, which has killed hundreds, wounded hundreds more, and wreaked death and havoc on the civilian population.

Gideon Levy, writing in HaAretz, eloquently describes the consequences of the bombing:

In four days they killed 375 people. They did not, and could not, distinguish between a Hamas official and his children, between a traffic cop and a Qassam launch operator, between a weapons cache and a health clinic, between the first and second floors of a densely populated apartment building with dozens of children inside. According to reports, about half of the people killed were innocent civilians. …

Do the pilots think about them, the children of refugees whose parents and grandparents have already been driven from their lives? Do they think about the thousands of people they have left permanently disabled in a place without a single hospital worthy of the name and no rehabilitation centers at all? Do they think about the burning hatred they are planting not only in Gaza but in other corners of the world amid the horrific images on television?

David Grossman, also writing in HaAretz, says that, no matter what the provocation of the past, now Israel should simply stop:

After its severe strike on Gaza, Israel would do well to stop, turn to Hamas’ leaders and say: Until Saturday Israel held its fire in the face of thousands of Qassams from the Gaza Strip. Now you know how harsh its response can be. So as not to add to the death and destruction we will now hold our fire unilaterally and completely for the next 48 hours. Even if you fire at Israel, we will not respond with renewed fighting. We will grit our teeth, as we did all through the recent period, and we will not be dragged into replying with force.

Moreover, we invite interested countries, neighbors near and far, to mediate between us and you to bring back the cease-fire. …

That is what Israel should do now. Is it possible, or are we too imprisoned in the familiar ceremony of war?

On the last day of 2008, however, neither Israel nor Hamas showed any interest in a cease-fire. Instead, Israel appeared poised for a ground invasion.

Facts on the ground–number of air strikes in Gaza, number of rockets landing in Israel, number of people killed, mosques, schools and jails destroyed–these are not in dispute. The disputes come in assigning meaning and blame, and in the intractable problem of finding a way to peace. Ezra Klein, writing in The American Prospect, describes the depth of the differences:

One important disconnect in Israel/Palestine debate is that Israel’s supporters tend to focus on what the Palestinians want while Palestine’s supporters tend to focus on what the Israelis do. Israel’s defenders, for instance, make a lot of Hamas’s willingness to kill large numbers of civilians. Palestine’s defenders make a lot of the fact that Israel actually kills large numbers of Palestinian civilians.

The Israelis see themselves as threatened innocents, not oppressors. They point to the public statements of Hamas, and they are right. The Palestinians see themselves as an occupied people, not aggressors. They point to their death toll and the settlements, and they are right.

The disaster in Gaza goes beyond the immediate devastation of the current war. In an editorial, Lebanon’s Daily Star points to the longer-term problem:

The international community’s reaction to the crisis in Gaza betrays an ugly truth about the world’s attitude toward the decades-long plight of a dispossessed people: No one cares about the Palestinians unless they are being murdered in their hundreds, and their unjustifiable suffering will in all likelihood be forgotten again whenever the guns fall silent. …

[The] Gaza Strip, where nearly half the population is under the age of 14, has been strangled by various forms of Israeli blockade for nearly three years. During this time, countless reports have emerged detailing horrors such as malnourished children, hospitals lacking electricity and basic medical supplies, and human beings being forced to rummage through garbage bins like animals in search of food. Where was the international outrage then? And where will the scores of flag-waving demonstrators be when the current slaughter comes to an end? …

Nothing of substance will change until the Palestinians have a state to call their own. And neither spontaneous demonstrations nor barrages of rockets will help the Palestinians to reach this objective. What is required is an intelligent, sustained and proactive effort aimed at reaching a peace deal that will result in Palestinian statehood.

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December 26, 2008 · 8:36 pm

Coal ash

Who knew?

“Holly Schean, a waitress whose home, which she shared with her parents, was swept off its foundation when millions of cubic yards of ash breached a retaining wall early Monday morning, said, ‘They’re giving their apologies, which don’t mean very much.'” (New York Times, 12/24/08)

Millions of cubic yards of what? coal ash or fly ash is produced when coal is burned to produce energy. In Tennessee, the Tennessee Valley Authority stored millions of tons of the stuff, enough to spread one foot of coal ash sludge over 3,000 acres. When an earthen retaining wall broke, the nasty stuff swept away homes and spilled into tributaries of the Tennessee River. In addition to the destruction of homes and land, residents worried about the toxicity of the ash.

Coal ash contains heavy metals, including lead, chromium, nickel and arsenic. It may also contain carcinogens. When the sludge dries, its dust further endangers the health of those who breathe it. The New York Times reported, “But a draft report last year by the federal Environmental Protection Agency found that fly ash, a byproduct of the burning of coal to produce electricity, does contain significant amounts of carcinogens and retains the heavy metal present in coal in far higher concentrations. The report found that the concentrations of arsenic to which people might be exposed through drinking water contaminated by fly ash could increase cancer risks several hundredfold.”

Coal ash has not been classified as a hazardous waste, because of strong industry pressure.

Would that be the same industry trying to sell us “clean coal”?

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