Today's Stories

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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75,000 Young Salmon Die in Experimental Trucking Program

Death on the Salmon Highway

By DAN BACHER

The Sacramento River fall run chinook salmon population, now in a state of unprecedented collapse, encountered another blow when 75,000 juvenile salmon in a truck died en route to acclimation pens in San Pablo Bay 

The fish were part of an experimental program to truck salmon smolts from the federal government's Coleman National Fish Hatchery on Battle Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento, to the pens to maximize salmon survival. The trucking program is designed  to get the fish past obstacles to their survival posed by water diversions, predators and the massive fish-killing state and federal water export pumps on the California Delta.

The salmon smolts perished on Monday, May 19, because of oxygen depletion in the tank of one of the two trucks that traveled to Carquinez Strait that day, according to Scott Hamelburg, hatchery manager “The fish deaths were caused by poor circulation of oxygen in the tank,” he said. “The pump did not appear to be sufficiently mixing the water.”

Of the total load of 100,000 fish in one truck, only 25,000 survived. The other truck delivered 70,000 fish successfully to the pens. 

A total of 1.4 million smolts out of a total of 12.6 million slated for release will be released into the net pens in Carquinez Strait rather than on site into Battle Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River. Fortunately, it appears that the problems with trucking have been corrected, as the rest of the fish put in trucks since then have reached the pens in good and healthy condition. 

The fish are being released into pens operated by the Fishery Foundation of California, rather than directly into the bay, to acclimate them to the bay water. Rather than being stunned and disorented upon release into salt water, where they are subject to predation by birds and predatory fish, the salmon are able to adjust better to their new home.

“Our driver was upset, as was the entire crew here after the fish died on Monday,” emphasized Hamelburg. “We put a lot of time and effort into raising and transporting those fish and we hate seeing fish lost for any reason.” 

To make sure that more fish didn’t die on following trips to the bay, the hatchery staff installed a different pump to provide more oxygen. In addition, they also reduced the truck’s load to 81,000 fish the following day and doubled the amount of ice from 300 to 600 pounds to make sure the fish arrived in healthy condition.

The change in procedures seemed to do the job. “The 150,000 fish arrived at the pens in fine shape without a hitch on Tuesday,” said Hamelburg. “There was no mortality to speak of.”

This is the first time since 1992 that salmon smolts from the hatchery have been trucked downriver rather than released into Battle Creek.

“We only did this for five years in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s during the drought,” said Hamelburg. “The trucking of fish was very much justified because of the low, warm water conditions on the river.”

This year the trucking program was prodded by the collapse of Central Valley  fall chinook salmon, a disaster that has resulted in the closure of ocean salmon fisheries off Oregon and California and a zero bag limit for Sacramento River system salmon until a small stretch of river opens November 1 to allow fishing for late fall chinooks.

A number of organizations, including the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Allied Fishing Groups, Water4Fish, the Coastside Fishing Club, the Golden Gate Fishermen's Association and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations and Representative Wally Herger are supporting Coleman Hatchery's experimental salmon release program.

“This was an unfortunate incident,” said Dick Pool, owner of Pro Troll, who led the charge to get Coleman Hatchery to begin the experimental program. “I feel bad for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because of all of the hard work they’ve done, I feel bad for the fish that died, and I feel bad for the fishermen that are counting heavily on the trucking program to bring back our salmon runs so we can fish for chinooks again in 2010.”

However, he was glad that the problems in trucking fish appear to have been resolved and that the program is proceeding forward.

Trevor Kennedy, executive of the Fishery Foundation of California, said, “It’s too bad that this happened, but this is the risk you take when you move truck fish 300 miles.”

DFG To Release All Salmon Smolts Into Acclimation Pens

The Department of Fish and Game is planning to put all of its 21 million salmon smolts into the acclimation pens in Carquinez Strait this spring. The Department has already trucked 11 million to the pens and plans to truck another 9 to 10 million fish to the pens by June 27.

That state has usually dumped roughly 14 million smolts directly in the bay, while towing another 9 million in net pens, according to Nels Johson, outdoor columnist for the Marin Independent Journal, who spurred an investigation by Assemblyman Jared Huffman into the DFG’s salmon smolt release practices.

The placement of all of the smolts into the pens this year is largely a result of the investigation and increasing political pressure by angling groups to increase salmon smolt survival.

“The survival rate of fish released into the pens increases significantly by anywhere from 200 to 500 percent,” said Trevor Kennedy. “This is the largest acclimation program we’ve ever handled – our previous largest amount of fish released into the pens was 14 million. Last year we released 10 million salmon smolts into the strait.”

Kennedy predicts that both the federal and state program will help to restore the salmon fishery. “This program has been a huge success – it should be phenomenal – you just do the math and it’s a pretty big boost to our fishery,” he stated.

One difference this year is that the DFG is switching back and forth between several release sites. By doing this, they are preventing predatory birds and fish, such as striped bass, from keying in on the release of salmon smolts from the pens.

“We will release at one site for a only few days, because if we don’t, the fish will get smart to the fact that we’re releasing fish at that location,” said Kennedy.

“The DFG has responded real well, with the drivers delivering fish at different times every day,” he added. “They realized how important this is considering that the fishery is in collapse.”

The Foundation this year is using a new system for acclimating the fish, a big aluminum pontoon boat on loan from the Bodega Bay Fish Marketing Association that was used for kelp and herring fishing. The boat can fit five nets, including six truckloads of salmon from the DFG or Coleman Hatchery. The boat is also a much more stable work platform than the previous operation

Nels Johnson was cautiously optimistic about the program.

“The current program is a mega leap ahead of last year’s,” said Johnson. “Although a predator problem still plagues the program, it’s better than last year when the state was essentially feeding striped bass with direct bay dumps of smolts.”

He quipped, “There are much cheaper ways to feed stripers that spending $3.2 million on releasing salmon smolts. The $3.2 million was not supposed to be used as a dinner bell for the stripers. It’s supposed to maximize salmon survival.”

Johnson believes that much more needs to be done - such as using more release sites at different times of the day, consideration of a night release program if crew safety concerns can be resolved, and enacting new regulations making it illegal to fish nearby when fingerlings are being released.  

Like Johnson, I’m encouraged by the fact the federal government has embraced an experimental program to release smolts into the bay, while the DFG will be releasing smolts into the pens, rather than directly into the bay this year. However, anglers and fishing groups need to keep intense pressure on the DFG and NOAA Fisheries to make sure that they do everything to maximize salmon survival. 

The pen acclimation program originated from the striped bass pen-rearing program, a program of the foundation conceived by United Anglers of California in 1991. The program successfully raised wild striped bass salvaged from the state and federal Delta pumps to a larger size that could evade birds and other predatory fish.

The program was an overwhelming success, as evidenced by the increase in the striped bass population to over 1.5 million by 1997-98. Unfortunately, NOAA Fisheries decided that the pen rearing program was ‘too successful” and refused to grant the foundation the needed “Section 10” permit under the Endangered Species Act because the stripers, event though they had successfully coexisted with winter run chinook salmon for over a hundred years, were supposedly ravaging the protected salmon.

Tom Hampson, who designed and constructed the original pens for the striper project, then contracted with the DFG to acclimate the salmon released from DFG. Unfortunately, the DFG apparently dropped the ball and didn’t release the salmon into the pens in 2005 and 2006 – years where poor ocean conditions for salmon prevailed and state and federal water exports from the California reached record levels.

The combination of record water exports, poor ocean conditions and the lack of the pen rearing program in 2005 and 2006, along with other freshwater factors such as water pollution, combined to produce the salmon collapse that has resulted in ocean and river closures to salmon fishing.

Dan Bacher can be reached at: Danielbacher@fishsniffer.com

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