Wednesday, March 26, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Secret Service Agents in Obama's Detail Sent Home After Boozy Night
Chuck Todd and Becky Bratu
First published March 25 2014

Three Secret Service agents in charge of protecting President Obama in Amsterdam were sent home Sunday after going out for a night of drinking, sources familiar with the incident told NBC News.

One of the agents was found intoxicated in a hotel hallway Sunday morning by hotel security, who contacted the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands, the sources said.
The embassy then alerted Secret Service managers on the presidential trip.

The agents were put on administrative leave but have not faced any other disciplinary action, the sources said.

Secret Service officials insist that they have raised their standards and toughened the codes of conduct following a scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, in April 2012. That's when a dozen agents and officers had gone out, drank heavily and then brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms prior to the president’s arrival.

Obama landed in the Netherlands on Monday for a week of diplomacy in Europe and Saudi Arabia.

This news article is skimpy. Let's see what the Washington Post brings.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-agents-on-obama-detail-sent-home-from-netherlands-after-night-of-drinking/2014/03/26/86d1a8a6-b4e6-11e3-8020-b2d790b3c9e1_story.html

Secret Service agents on Obama detail sent home from Netherlands after night of drinking
By Carol D. Leonnig and David Nakamura, Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Three Secret Service agents responsible for protecting President Obama in Amsterdam this week were sent home and put on administrative leave Sunday after going out for a night of drinking, according to three people familiar with the incident. One of the agents was found drunk and passed out in a hotel hallway, the people said.
The hotel staff alerted the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands after finding the unconscious agent Sunday morning, a day before Obama arrived in the country, according to two of the people. The embassy then alerted Secret Service managers on the presidential trip, which included the agency’s director, Julia Pierson.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan confirmed Tuesday evening that the agency “did send three employees home for disciplinary reasons” and that they were put on administrative leave pending an investigation. Donovan declined to comment further.
The alleged incident took place in Noordwijk at the Huis Ter Duin Hotel, where the president stayed Monday night, a White House official said Wednesday morning. This is a resort town in the Netherlands about 15 minutes outside The Hague.

According to two people familiar with the Amsterdam incident, the three are members of the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team, known in the agency as CAT.
The alleged behavior would violate Secret Service rules ­adopted in the wake of a damaging scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, in April 2012, when a dozen agents and officers had been drinking heavily and had brought prostitutes back to their hotel rooms before the president’s arrival for an economic summit.

Under the requirements, anyone on an official trip is forbidden to drink alcohol in the 10 hours leading up to an assignment. As members of the advance team for a presidential trip, the CAT members would have been called to duty sometime Sunday for a classified briefing ahead of the president’s arrival on Monday. Drinking late into the night Saturday evening and Sunday morning would have violated that rule.

Obama landed in the Netherlands on Monday for the start of a high-stakes week-long trip to ­Europe and Saudi Arabia in the midst of a tense standoff with Russia over its annexation of Crimea. The agents involved in the misconduct were among hundreds of U.S. personnel from the Secret Service, the military, the State Department and other agencies sent to prepare for his arrival and ensure his safety, including during his attendance at the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague with dozens of world leaders.
The president’s visit started with a brief stop at the Rijksmuseum, a fine-arts museum in Amsterdam, with Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Obama traveled from The Hague to Brussels on Tuesday night.

The three involved in the drinking incident were GS-13-level agents, according to one person familiar with the investigation of the case. One of the three was a “team leader” on counter­assault, but he was not in a supervisory position in the agency, the person said.

All three people familiar with the case requested anonymity in order to discuss details of the ongoing investigation. Pierson traveled on Air Force One with Obama, and she is scheduled to remain on the trip with the president as he continues to Rome and Saudi Arabia, one of the people said.

The Counter Assault Team’s job is to protect the president if he or his motorcade comes under attack and to fight off assailants and draw fire while the protective detail removes the president from the area.

There are also high expectations for personal conduct on the squad, they said. On foreign trips, one former agent recalled, the counterassault team often worked shifts as long as 12 hours, the former agents recalled, and agents were expected to get rest during their time off to be in prime condition.

“They received the best technical training in the service,” said one of the former agents. “They were the only team constantly training — training on assaults, on evacuations, all sorts of things. They were very squared away. It was really difficult to get on CAT.”

In the Cartagena scandal, the Secret Service employees’ actions were discovered when one prostitute got into a noisy dispute with agents in a hotel hallway about an agent’s refusal to pay her fee. Colombian police reported the incident to the U.S. Embassy there.

Obama said at the time that the agents’ behavior was unacceptable. “We’re representing the people of the United States, and when we travel to another country I expect us to observe the highest standards, because we’re not just representing ourselves,” he said in Cartagena.

The revelations in Cartagena led to the removal of 10 agents from their jobs, multiple federal and congressional investigations, and the rules aimed at preventing similar activity in the future. Mark Sullivan, the Secret Service director at the time, apologized for his employees’ conduct. Sullivan retired in February 2013 after 30 years in the agency.




The director of the Secret Service, Julia Pierson, was hired partly to change the macho atmosphere of “work hard, play hard” that had caused a similar scandal in 2012. One television news caster blamed the high level of pressure on the job, and according to this Washington Post article the agents do work 12 hour shifts. My last job was as the office assistant of a small security guard agency, and we had the guards on 12 hour shifts. Hospital personnel, airline workers and air traffic controllers also pull long hours. It isn't natural to have to be alert for such long hours, especially if there is limited time for sleep. Some workers do better than others, but the fact that at least two of our guards were fired for sleeping on the job tends to prove that an 8 hour shift with 40 hours per week is much better. The employees on these jobs often get many hours of overtime and become addicted to the extra pay they receive. I don't know if the Secret Service has long weekly hours as well or not, but if they do I think that should be stopped.

About the carousing, I would say supervisors should make themselves aware of what goes on with their employees on a regular basis, so that the unreliable employees would be thinned from the ranks constantly, and when the President is on a world trip this kind of thing would be very unlikely to happen. Also, instead of some light punishment for misbehavior, the agents should be fired.

Finally, the requirements for membership in the Secret Service should include squeaky clean personal behavior standards, not just shooting expertise and good physical condition. I looked up the requirements for membership in the Secret Service and they have to be at least GS 5 level employees, which doesn't sound high enough to me for such an important job. However these three who were sent home from Amsterdam were GS13, and that is good enough pay to draw in good quality employees.

There is a tendency on jobs in general in the US for drinking on personal time not to be a firing offense. Drinking is a strongly entrenched habit in this country, and in fact for a person to abstain from all drinking may cause him to be isolated from many of his coworkers. You're supposed to drink enough to be social, but refrain from getting really drunk. This is part of the problem in these cases when “partying” and even the hiring of prostitutes occurs – the powers that be don't want to crack down on the behavior. That, after all, would limit their own personal actions. I am thinking of the Tail Hook scandal in the Air Force of a decade or two ago. Their behavior was really shocking, and the officers were participating in it along with the lower ranks.

While I am in some cases a moral relativist – I don't look down on women or men having sexual liasons without marriage unless there is a case of adultery involved – but when a position of high personal responsibility is involved, I am very concerned. Excessive drinking, drugging and the hiring of prostitutes are across the line. And, of course, drinking within 10 hours of their work shift is totally against the rules and should be punished by firing, even when the President is not on a high level world trip in a potentially dangerous situation.

Not only was this case scandalous, it was a threat to the President's safety. I am very sorry to hear about it and I wonder what Ms. Pierson will have to say. I'm sure Congress will be investigating again. In 2012 they supposedly enacted measures to prevent its happening again. Policing people's private life is hard to do, but those workers with an inability to control their alcohol use should be relieved of their duties permanently, or taken off their high visibility jobs. This is not only shameful, it is unsafe. I will look for articles about the punishment of those three agents.




Pope Accepts Resignation of 'Bishop of Bling,' New Job Looms – NBC
- Reuters
First published March 26 2014, 6:22 AM

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican on Wednesday said it had accepted the resignation of a German Roman Catholic prelate known as the "bishop of bling" because he spent 31 million euros ($43 million) of Church funds on his residence.

Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Limburg was ordered to leave his diocese last October while an investigation and audit into cost over-runs was made. He offered his resignation at the time.

The Vatican said the investigation was completed and that an apostolic administrator, Mons. Manfred Grothe, had been appointed to run the diocese for the time being. Another position would be found for Tebartz-van Elst eventually.

A statement said Pope Francis was asking the faithful of the diocese of Limburg to accept the decision "with docility" and to work to restore what it called a "climate of charity and reconciliation".

Pope Francis has been urging Church officials around the world to be more austere and live simple lives in order to be closer to the poor.




$43 million of church funds for a dwelling is a shocker. “Another position would be found for Tebartz-van Elst eventually” – apparently he hasn't been fired. I know removing priests from the priesthood isn't done lightly, but I do think this kind of extravagance on a personal home is about as bad as mollesting children, though in another way. Priests are supposed to be humble in their life habits. I didn't really know that officials in the Catholic Church were allowed to live so lavishly. If there are others in the church hierarchy who are doing this, I hope they will all be replaced as well. Again, this is a good move by the Pope. He seems to be a real reformer.




Bin Laden Son-in-Law Convicted of Conspiring to Kill Americans – NBC
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
First published March 26 2014

A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who warned the United States after Sept. 11 that “the storm of airplanes will not stop” was convicted Wednesday of conspiring to kill Americans.

A federal jury in Manhattan deliberated five hours before returning the verdict against the son-in-law, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti imam and al Qaeda spokesman who was captured in Jordan last year.

He could face life in prison. Sentencing is Sept. 8.
“We hope this verdict brings some small measure of comfort to the families of the victims of al Qaeda’s murderous designs,” Preet Bharara, the Manhattan U.S. attorney, said in a statement.

Abu Ghaith, 48, is the top-ranking al Qaeda figure to be tried in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks. His lawyer promised an appeal.
In a closing argument, a federal prosecutor told jurors that bin Laden turned to Abu Ghaith on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, to make videos that would help replenish al Qaeda’s ranks of suicide terrorists and bring in young men from around the world to help with a “war with America.”

Abu Ghaith said that bin Laden told him that night: “Did you learn what happened? We are the ones who did it.”

Prosecutors showed the jury al Qaeda propaganda videos and transcripts in which Abu Ghaith praised the suicide hijackers. His warning about further airplanes was delivered in October 2001.

Abu Ghaith took the stand in his own defense and cast himself as a mere mouthpiece for bin Laden. He denied that he recruited for al Qaeda, but he conceded on cross-examination that he believed in the terror leader’s message.

“I didn’t go to meet with him to bless if he had killed hundreds of Americans or not,” Abu Ghaith said. “I went to meet with him to know what he wanted.”
He was convicted of conspiracy to kill Americans, conspiring to provide support to al Qaeda and providing support to al Qaeda.




Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti imam and al Qaeda spokesman, was commissioned by Bin Laden to make videos of the 9/11 damage in order to recruit more terrorists. He was captured in Jordan and is likely to be sentenced to life in prison. Sentencing will be in September of 2014. He appeared in his videos praising the suicide attackers and predicting more such events. He acknowledged that though he didn't – he says – recruit for alQaeda, he does believe in Bin Laden's message. I will look for later articles on this.





Obama tries to put Putin in his place -- again
By Major Garrett CBS News March 26, 2014
Originally from National Journal

Moments after deflecting a question about his diminished influence on the world stage, President Obama described Russia as a "regional power" operating in Crimea out of weakness, not strength.

Noting Russia's long-standing influence in all of Ukraine, Obama said Russian President Vladimir Putin's illegal annexation of Crimea "indicates less influence, not more."

I guess that's why Ukraine's defense minister resigned and Ukrainian troops bugged out of Crimea, leaving it to Russian forces. This is the only "off ramp" that matters in Crimea. Ukraine and its rhetorically florid Western allies took it. Not Putin.
Even as the White House insists Crimea is not "lost" (Putin can find it without satellite imagery, after all), the grudging language of concession seeps from every corridor of Ukrainian talks here.

"It's not a done deal in the sense that the international community by and large isn't recognizing the annexation of Crimea," Obama said, before acknowledging the "facts on the ground" favored Russia. "It would be dishonest to say there is a simple solution to resolving what has already taken place in Crimea."

Obama and European leaders are rattled and resentful, thunderstruck that the wispy bonds of international "norms" could be so easily shredded. Fearful of the precedent they appear incapable of reversing, and desperate to limit Putin's ambitions to Crimea, the G-7 nations have effectively conceded Crimea. They threatened "sectoral sanctions" if Putin further bulldozed international law by gobbling up more of Ukraine or plowing into Moldova. Weak or strong, Putin enforces the new Crimean status quo. All he's lost is Russia's G-8 membership pin and decoder ring.

The relentless focus on Putin's land grab and the West's gradualist economic response misses some relevant history. Some analysts contend the seeds were first planted when Russia attacked Georgia in 2008 and the West--led by a war-depleted, lame-duck George W. Bush--didn't even impose low-level sanctions and visa bans in play now. That signaled acquiescence to aggression and probably whetted Putin's appetite.

But I would argue Putin drew more conclusions about the West's take on his undisguised territorial ambitions in 2010. That's when France agreed "in principle" to sell Russia four Mistral class amphibious landing ships. The $1.7 billion arms deal, the first between Europe and Russia since 1945, promised Russia four vessels that would revive its aging Black Sea fleet and transform its ability to project power there and the Baltics. The vessels are like small aircraft carriers, able to move 16 helicopters, four landing barges, 70 vehicles (including armored tanks), and a battalion of soldiers. It's worth noting that when this sale was first hatched, Russia's new military doctrine identified NATO as Russia's top strategic threat.

The deal was formalized in 2011. Comments from the interested parties are, well, illuminating.

First, then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "The Cold War is finished. We have to consider Russia a friend and have to work with her to build a vast area of security and prosperity together."

Then Putin: "I can assure you that if we purchase this armament we will use it wherever deemed necessary."

The Obama administration, through then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, lodged a formulaic protest. But NATO didn't make a fuss, and a new world order of European arms sales to Russia--even in light of Putin's militarism in Georgia--was born. More Europe-Russian arms deals followed. James Corum, a well-traveled American military historian, compared the arms deal to European attempts to appease Adolf Hitler from 1937 to 1939, ignoring menace at the continent's peril.

Corum wrote: "Yet, as appallingly incompetent as the Western leaders such as [Britain's Neville] Chamberlain and [France's Edouard] Daladier were when confronted with a threat to democratic nations--at least they were not so stupid as to sell Nazi Germany their latest weapons in order to guarantee German success."

Even after Putin moved into Crimea, France's first inclination was to uphold the Mistral deal, calling any move to kill it an "extreme measure" best avoided. Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian implausibly described the warships as little more than freighters. "We will deliver civilian hulls. The client can then arm the two ships. We will deliver, under the signed contract, a package which is unarmed."

How comforting this must have been to Ukraine's transitional government and nervous leaders in the Baltics and Moldova. By the way, the first French-made vessel, the Vladivostok, is already undergoing sea trials. The second ship, appropriately named the Sevastopol, is due for delivery at the end of 2015. The Mistral deal could be revoked if--and only if--Russia flexes more military muscle in the region. So, if Russia only violates international law in Crimea it can keep its contract for four amphibious vessels, thereby shifting naval power through the region in its favor for decades. Talk about playing the long game.

Obama's curdled disdain for Putin notwithstanding, this doesn't sound like a position of weakness or diminished influence. But it does sound like the West is now suddenly uncomfortable with the cold realities spawned by the arms deals it wrought.




“... the grudging language of concession seeps from every corridor of Ukrainian talks here.” Garrett is scathing in his report on the last six years of Western moves toward Russia, all of which seem to indicate naivete and lack of strategic forethought. Said French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "The Cold War is finished. We have to consider Russia a friend and have to work with her to build a vast area of security and prosperity together." I have to agree with Garrett. I wasn't reading and paying attention to the news so much then in 2010, so I didn't know of the 2010 sale of four amphibious ships capable of carrying both aircraft and troops by France. It is unsettling to read about it now. I, too, like Sarkozy, had come to see Russia as being a “reformed sinner,” and reaching toward the West in friendship. We have, after all, shared the space program with them and other scientific and cultural collaborations.

The more I see of present-day Russia in the light of the Ukraine events, the less I want us to “trust” them, and the more I think we need to be prepared mentally and physically to do some limited fighting if necessary. The fact that many of the population in Russia seem to be approving Putin's moves in Crimea appalls me. They are not peace loving people with a warlike leader, but an aggressive nation. Hitler, the great villain, wouldn't have been able to conquer so much territory had he not had the approval of most Germans. The proud Germans who had been through depression and defeat in WWI and the years after, and relished threatening others, along with their scapegoating of the Jewish people and other “inferior” groups.

Likewise, the empire called The Soviet Union went through economic reversals and under Gorbachev released some of its captive states, supposedly giving up their empirical status. I think at least a large minority of the people of Russia today hope for a return to that power, and see Putin as leading them toward it. Though I am not a “hawk,” I don't want to see the country of which I am proud simply knuckle under to Russia's pressure. I certainly don't want to see them go back to the Cold War years of military takeovers and very repressive government. Have we forgotten the wall that divided Germany for some 20 years and the reason behind it? I think if NATO sends troops into Poland, Moldavia and other states which Russia formerly held, on a standby basis, they will howl mightily protesting our “aggression,” but back down. If Europe and the US don't stand up against them, I dread to see the result.





Air France plane diverted by Russia for “military exercise”
CBS/AP March 26, 2014

BERLIN - Air France says a plane carrying 495 passengers and 22 crew was diverted on its way from Shanghai to Paris after Russia announced at short notice that part of its airspace was closed for a military exercise.

The company said flight AF111 was forced to land in Hamburg, Germany, early Wednesday to refuel because the plane had too little fuel on board to complete the flight following its detour.

Hamburg Airport confirmed that the plane landed shortly after 6 a.m. (0500 GMT) and was able to take off for Paris again after an hour and a half.

It wasn't immediately clear if Russia's military exercise was linked to the increased troop activity on its western border with Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the World Bank warned Wednesday that Russia's economy could contract this year if the country is hit with more serious sanctions following its annexation of Crimea.

The organization said in its annual report that it expects the Russian economy to grow 1.1 percent this year if the fall-out from the Crimean crisis is short-lived, but warned of a 1.8 percent fall if Russia is hit with more serious sanctions than those already specified.

So far, the sanctions have been fairly limited and haven't touched on Russia's vital economic interests. The United States and the European Union have imposed travel bans and asset freezes on two dozen Russians who are believed to be close to Putin.
The World Bank said Russia's economic problems are not just to do with the recent events in Ukraine. Last year, Russia grew 1.3 percent, its lowest growth in the past 13 years barring the downturn-hit 2009.
The bank blamed the lack of structural reforms for the downturn. In the past, it said the economy's structural deficiencies were "masked by a growth model based on large investment projects ... fueled by sizeable oil revenues."

The developments in Crimea, it added, "compounded the lingering confidence problem into a confidence crisis and more clearly exposed the economy weakness of this growth model."

Investors have certainly grown jittery of late - recent figures suggest that Russia suffered roughly $70 billion of capital outflow in the first three months of the year, which is more than in all of 2013. Russian monetary officials, however, insisted that they would not be introducing capital controls to stem the flight.
Mikhail Dmitriev, of the Moscow-based Centre for Strategic Research think tank said the annexation of Crimea will only temporarily distract Russians from worrying about the economy, according to Reuters.

"If there is no economic growth it is likely that the influence of Crimea and other foreign policy events on political ratings won't be long-lasting," Dmitriev, who predicted mass protests against Putin in 2011-2012, told Reuters. "The population will start to look at politics from the point of growing economic struggles."
Dmitriev was beaten and had his laptop stolen by unidentified people last week. It is unclear whether the attack was related to his work and sometimes forthright views.




According to this article, “... the World Bank warned Wednesday that Russia's economy could contract this year if the country is hit with more serious sanctions following its annexation of Crimea.” It stated the Russia's economy only grew 1.3% in 2013, due to a lack of “structural reforms.” The article didn't say what those reforms would be. The bank announced that Russia spent $70 Billion in the first three months of this year. Presumably that was due to its involvement in Crimea.

Mikhail Dmitriev of the Centre For Strategic Research stated that the annexation of Crimea “If there is no economic growth it is likely that the reviving influence of Crimea and other foreign policy events on political ratings won't be long-lasting," He predicted mass protests against Putin in 2011 and 2012, and possibly because of his outspoken views, was attacked last week. So maybe Obama's claim that Russia is operating from a position of weakness rather than strength is borne up by this information. Also it may indicate that if the EU and the US would get together and impose some really harsh economic sanctions on Russia it would be effective as a form of pressure.




­
Truckin': Salmon Take A Long, Strange Trip To The Pacific Ocean – NPR
by Richard Gonzales
March 26, 2014 3:21 AM

­ In California, severe drought has imperiled millions of juvenile salmon who now face waterways too dry to let them make their usual migration to the Pacific Ocean. So state and federal officials are giving millions of salmon a lift — in tanker trucks.

Over the next two-and-a-half months, some 30 million Chinook salmon will be trucked from five hatcheries in the state's Central Valley to waters where they can make their way to the ocean.

The trucking experiment formally kicked off Tuesday, when some 400,000 smolt — juvenile salmon about 3 to 4 inches long — hitched a ride on climate-controlled tankers from the Coleman National hatchery near Red Bluff to the Sacramento River, in the delta town of Rio Vista. A roughly 100-foot-long pipe then funneled the fish from the truck into a series of floating holding pens in the water.

The salmon usually make the 270-mile trip on their own. But they wouldn't have been able to survive the swim in this drought, says Bob Clarke, fisheries program supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"If we don't get any rain, later in the year the river may become too low, too slow and too clear," Clarke says, "so that the fish would face too warm temperatures and too much predation, and would ... all perish."

These are certainly extreme measures, says Stafford Lehr, the chief of fisheries for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, but drought has left officials with little choice.

"We are not necessarily in favor of trucking 100 percent of our fish," he says. "So we would prefer to find other means to release these [salmon], to improve their homing ability to get back to their natal streams."

Officials worry that this hitchhike for the fish will disrupt their ability to "imprint." That refers to the process by which the fish learn the location of their home waters so they can return there from the ocean in three or four years in order to spawn.

But Lehr says that's a risk worth taking. And the trucking operation could be a boon to researchers.
"Twenty-five percent of these fish have a small tag in their nose that identifies the hatchery and the river they belong to and the release strategy," he explains. "So we'll be able to track those fish in four years, or three years. As they come back, we take those tags and we read them."

There's more than a little history here. In 1991 the state trucked salmon to the delta. But the trucks simply dumped the fish near the river banks, where they were easy pickings for predators.

In 2008, poor river conditions and a low supply of food in the ocean caused few salmon to return home for spawning. The result: The commercial salmon fishing industry was virtually shut down for a couple of years.

That's why state and federal officials are taking painstaking steps to make sure every juvenile salmon is flushed properly out of the tanker trucks. The holding pens are operated by staff from a group called the Fishery Foundation of California. Kari Burr, a senior biologist with the group, says the pens allow the fish to get accustomed to the water temperature.

One tell-tale sign that smolts are ready to make the transition to salt water? The fish assume a shiny silver color, she says. "They're looking good and healthy," she says of the current batch of fish.

After the pens are full, a boat slowly tugs them at about the speed of the tide to the middle of the Sacramento River, where the fish will be released.
The salmon are the root stock of an industry estimated at about $1.5 billion in these parts. On the dock, the executive director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, John McManus, is beaming.

"For us in the sport and commercial salmon fishery industry, it means that we should see much better returns of adults in 2016, when these fish are fully grown," he says. "We'll have something to harvest."

And that means lovers of salmon will find fish on the market.




I'm glad to see this bold attempt to save the young salmon in spite of the drought. I do hope this long drought is not going to be a frequently repeated event due to Climate Change. It is interesting, though, to see the techniques they use to ensure that the fish “imprint” to their home waters, and the care they take to place them in the center of the Sacramento River rather than at the banks, where the last such effort in 1991 ended in the young fish being eaten by predators.

The salmon runs when they come back to their home rivers to spawn are majestic and mysterious. Like the migrations of birds and monarch butterflies, instinct has developed to create an amazing feat accomplished by basically unintelligent creatures. It is thought that the chemical composition of the river water is used by the returning salmon to identify their home waters. Then the male salmon develop a formidable hooked beak with which they fight other males for the females. After mating, like many insects, they die. I'm sure the bears and smaller predators gorge on the dying salmon so they can put on fat for their hibernation period.

There are pictures on the news each year of grizzly bears standing over the river rapids catching the jumping salmon as they struggle upstream to breed. Bears, in spite of being probably the most dangerous family of predators that humans ever face, are incredibly cuddly-looking and cute – when they are not standing up to their full 9 feet tall and snarling, that is. Seeing the bears fishing is one of the markers of the changing of the season each year, and I always enjoy it. It helps give me a bond to nature which I have always had since I was a young girl taking my dog down into the woods to walk. I feel whole when I can be a part of the flow of life.