Authoritarian, anti-democratic power networks are being re-branded as trendy, philanthropic-style forums

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Infowars.com
May 13, 2013

The secretive Bilderberg Group is currently undergoing a major transformation that will see it and other high profile networks merge under the banner of Google as the elite accelerates its plan to consolidate its technocratic agenda.

This past weekend, Infowars reporters Paul Joseph Watson and Jon Scobie visited the luxury Grove Hotel in Watford, UK, site of the 2013 Bilderberg Group conference set to take place June 6-9, a clandestine annual gathering of over 100 of the world’s most influential power brokers in the fields of politics, academia, technology, business and banking.

The investigation was prompted by our sources, who advised us to visit the Grove in advance of Bilderberg 2013. This is part one of what promises to be a developing story as the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place backed up by years of Bilderberg tracking and research.

What we discovered was groundbreaking and represents one of if not the most important development in Bilderberg’s 59 year history.

Put simply, Bilderberg is merging with Google under the stewardship of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, a regular Bilderberg attendee. Google’s annual Zeitgeist conference, which has been based at the Grove since 2007, immediately precedes the Bilderberg Group conference by a matter of days.Backed up by prior research, we were able to confirm in conversations with hotel managers and others that the Grove is now a central base for Google’s agenda to control the global political and technological landscape.

The talk in the Grove is not of Bilderberg, that is barely a footnote, the real excitement centers around Google Zeitgeist, which was described by the London Independent as, “a cuddlier version of the Bilderberg Group, the supposedly shadowy network of financiers that holds a private annual assembly, recast in the image of our new tech masters.”

Bilderberg is indeed being recast as ‘Google-Berg’ – partly because of efforts on behalf of activists to tear away the veil of Bilderberg’s much cherished secrecy, and partly as a means of re-branding authoritarian, undemocratic secret gatherings of elites as trendy, liberal, feel-good philanthropic-style forums like Google Zeitgeist and TED.

In reality, behind the scenes Google is using such forums as proving grounds on which to form the consensus that shapes the globe. We were told directly that the organizers behind the so-called “Arab Spring,” which began in Tunisia and Egypt, which as we have documented is in fact a series of contrived western-backed color revolutions masquerading as organic uprisings, were recruited by Google and subsequently attended the Zeitgeist conference at the Grove.

It’s also well documented that the man responsible for kick-starting the “revolution” in Egypt, which led to the installation of a Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship which the west can now use as a justification for further intervention, was Google employee Wael Ghonim.

Google’s growing influence within both the British and American governments is also well documented. Eric Schmidt was a campaign advisor and a major donor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. He was also reportedly offered the post of Treasury Secretary within the Obama administration. In Britain, Google representatives have met no less than 23 times with Conservative Party officials since the general election in 2010. David Cameron addressed the inaugural 2006 Zeitgeist conference before going on to become Prime Minister four years later. British Chancellor George Osborne paid a visit to Zeitgeist just weeks before he also attended Bilderberg 2011 in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
The crossover between Zeitgeist and Bilderberg has deepened in recent years, with the London Telegraph comparing the power of the Google confab to the World Economic Forum in Davos, “attracting figures of global significance to talk and to network.”

Former US President Bill Clinton, groomed by the Bilderberg Group, has also given speeches at Zeitgeist, as has fellow Bilderberg attendee Prince Charles. Another Telegraph report described Zeitgeist as, “one of the most high-powered gatherings of business leaders, thinkers and those that are considered to generally shape the global future.”

Google is clearly positioning itself to become a force more powerful than governments in controlling and monitoring people’s behavior across the globe through all manner of different means, from cars that drive themselves (and are constantly tracked by a centralized Google database), to Google Glass which is akin to having a Google microchip in your forehead, to Google’s deep involvement in manipulating mass movements through social media as they did in Egypt and Tunisia.

The Grove Hotel is a perfect staging ground for such machinations given its role in World War 2 as a “secret wartime HQ for the London, Midland & Scottish Railway” named “Project X”.

The direction in which this is all heading can clearly be surmised from remarks made by Eric Schmidt himself, who has repeatedly made it clear that he thinks privacy is a relic of the past and plans to turn Google into the ultimate Big Brother that makes George Orwell’s 1984 look like a children’s fairy tale.

“We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions [...] They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

“We need a [verified] name service for people,” he said. “Governments will demand it.” (Chinese-style Internet control).

“We know everything you’re doing and the government can track you.”

“We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time…Your car will drive itself, it’s a bug that cars were invented before computers…you’re never lonely…you’re never bored…you’re never out of ideas.”

In numerous speeches, including those made at Google Zeitgeist, Schmidt has outlined his vision for a collectivist, permanently networked world in which individuality and privacy are ostracized and those who refuse to sign up to the new religion of transhumanism are shunned as sub-human savages.

That is the primary agenda now being formulated by Google Zeitgeist luminaries in concert with the Bilderberg Group, which shares many of the same members.

A Busy Time at the Grove

Our source told us that there were “four or five big conferences” coming up at the Grove in May, June and July, but intimated that Google Zeitgeist was clearly considered the biggest, with the 227 room hotel not even large enough to accommodate all the guests and administrative staff required to be in attendance, adding that they had to be put up in London hotels.


Huge temporary structures, watched by security guards, were also being constructed on grounds near to the hotel when we visited. These are set to be used for Google’s ‘Big Tent’ event, which is a more public showcase than their private ‘Zeitgeist’ confab. Whether the facilities will also be used by the Bilderberg Group remains to be seen.

The source emphasized that Grove staff had been told not to disclose any information about the Zeitgeist conference and that Google only released information they wanted the public to know. However, the upcoming confab was the talk of the bar and both employees and guests were clearly excited about it.

The source said that security for the event was the same as when heads of state would visit and that the hotel was coordinating with “state security” to run the conference, which inevitably means that taxpayer money will be used to fund the operation, as it is admittedly being used to provide security for Bilderberg. He added that the likes of Google and Bilderberg chose the Grove as a venue because security was far easier to provide compared to hotels in London which are surrounded by high-traffic streets.

Bilderberg’s 2013 Agenda

In terms of Bilderberg’s agenda for the 2013 confab, early indications from our inside source have thrown up a number of different issues that will be up for discussion before Bilderberg instructs its members to implement the agreed upon consensus in each of their fields of influence.

Bear in mind that the motivation behind Bilderberg’s scheming can probably best be encapsulated by remarks made by Bilderberg luminary Henry Kissinger which recently came to light thanks to Wikileaks.

“Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that,” said Kissinger.




READ MORE..........
http://www.infowars.com/google-berg-global-elite-transforms-itself-for-technocratic-revolution/
 
 
 
 
Infowars.com
March 20, 2013

We’re at the midpoint of the Operation Paul Revere Contest. There’s still about 6 weeks left. Here’s a sampling of some of the entries we’ve received.

We want to offer a broad view of your take on liberty so we’ve posted a wide range of topics, approaches and production quality.

We have dramatic fictional short films, music videos with original music, documentaries, panel discussions — a lot of variety in topics and formats. You are Paul Revere. Tell us what you see.

Read the contest rules @ infowars.com/contest.
Send entries to: PaulRevere@infowars.com.

 
 
By Gregory Gwyn-Williams, Jr.
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Including Sheriff John Cooke of Weld County, Colorado, 340 sheriffs have publicly stated they will not enforce gun laws they believe are unconstitutional.

In response to the passage of two new gun control bills in Colorado last week, Sheriff John Cooke told the Greeley Tribune that he "won't bother enforcing the laws."

One bill requires gun buyers to pay for their own background checks, a service that was previously free and now estimated to cost the buyer $10-$12 per purchase.  The second bill puts a 15-round limit on magazines.

Cooke says of the new laws: "They're feel-good, knee-jerk reactions that are unenforceable."

Governor John Hickenlooper is expected to sign each bill into law this week.

Cooke is part of a growing list of sheriffs that have vowed to uphold the Constitution against gun control measures.

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) has a running tally of all the sheriffs across the nation that have joined together to defend the Constitution.

At the time of this post, there are 15 sheriffs associations, 340 sheriffs, one police chief and one deputy sheriff who have stated they will not enforce any new gun laws.

As the "Right Views" previously reported, the number of sheriffs taking action continues to climb as the gun control debate heats up.




CNSNews.com is not funded by the government like NPR. CNSNews.com is not funded by the government like PBS. 





 
 
J. D. Heyes
NaturalNews
March 13, 2013

We’ve seen it in the movies and perhaps even witnessed it in person, but most of us never realized it was an offense punishable with lots of prison time.

When Anthony Brasfield released a dozen heart-shaped balloons into the sky over Dania Beach, Fla., for his his sweetheart, all he wanted was to create the perfect atmosphere of romance. What he created instead was a court date.

According to the Sun-Sentinel newspaper, Brasfield’s act of love was witnessed by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper. What he saw was not an act of love but a felony.

Massive jail time for – balloons?

The 40-year-old Brasfield was with his girlfriend, Shaquina Baxter, in the parking lot of a Motel 6 on Dania Beach Boulevard when he released the 12 shiny, red and silver mylar balloons into the sky and watched them float away in the Sunday morning breeze.

But the trooper saw nothing more than probable cause for a crime against the environment. Apparently, lawmakers in the Sunshine State think it’s appropriate to treat what should have been, at most, simple littering (to which courts would have issued a fine, maybe?), into a major crime against Mother Nature. As if Florida jails weren’t full enough.

The trooper arrested Brasfield and charged him with polluting to harm humans, animals, plants and everything else living under the Florida Air and Water Pollution Control Act.


“Endangered marine turtle species and birds, such as wood storks and brown pelicans, seek refuge in John U. Lloyd State Park, about 1.5 miles east of the motel,” said the paper.

As you might imagine, the law is rarely used. According to the Sun-Sentinel, just 21 arrests were made under the environmental statute between 2008 and 2012.

What is amazing, however, is the severity of the crime – it is a third-degree felony that is punishable by up to five years in prison. Just as one example, in other parts of the country, people who intentionally or actively work to harm the environment get about the same jail time. (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com)

Granted, it was a violation of the law, but…

It’s too early to tell if a Florida court will actually sentence Brasfield to that much time but the fact that someone could be thrown in prison for five years for such a low-level environmental crime is difficult to fathom, especially given what seems to be an obvious fact: That Brasfield was not purposefully demonstrating malice or contempt for the law.

And while ignorance of the law is no excuse, we have a little provision of superseding law in American known as the Eight Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Environmental preservation is important, of course, but there are real criminals committing real crimes in America that have dramatically more far-reaching and harmful effects on society than do individuals releasing balloons as a gesture of romance. Shouldn’t we save our harshest punishment for the really serious environmental polluters?



This article was posted: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 6:42 am

Tags: domestic newspolice state

 
 
ammoland.com
March 12, 2013

Last week, Senate Bill 150 passed in the Kentucky House of Representatives by an overwhelming 90-6 vote.

Sponsored by state Senator Brandon Smith (R-30), SB 150 is critical to your inherent right to self-defense as it eliminates several discriminatory and arbitrary provisions in Kentucky’s currentconcealed carry laws that may prevent you from obtaining a Concealed Deadly Weapons License (CDWL).

Specifically, SB 150 would make the following changes to Kentucky concealed carry laws:

–Repeals the residency requirement for CDWL applicants.  Currently, one must be a Kentucky resident for at least six months before filing an application to obtain a CDWL.
–Removes the residency requirement for members of the Armed Forces of the United States who are assigned to a military post in Kentucky.  Currently, a member of the Armed Forces must be assigned a post for six months or longer in order to file a CDWL application.
–Reduces the length of time from 90 days to 60 days the Kentucky Department of State Police has to approve or deny an application for a CDWL.

Since SB 150 already passed in the Senate by a 36-1 votethis bill will now go to Governor Steve Beshear (D) for his signature.  Please call AND e-mail Governor Beshear TODAY and politely urge him to sign SB 150 into law.  Please use the contact information provided below:

Read more at Ammoland.com: http://www.ammoland.com/2013/03/kentucky-right-to-carry-reform-bill-passes-house-heads-to-governor-for-signature/#ixzz2NLXzaIly


This article was posted: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 12:14 pm

Tags: constitutiondomestic newsgun rights

 
 
Anthony Gucciardi
Infowars.com
March 13, 2013

We know that over 20 studies, many of which come from prestigious organizations like Harvard and are published in federal government journals, have told us how sodium fluoride is crushing our IQ. We know that a major head at the National Cancer Institute revealed decades ago that fluoride was causing ‘cancer waves’ in the United States.

So, remind me again, why are we still drinking fluoride in our ‘clean’ tap water around the entire world?

As it turns out, it’s because Harvard and federal government journalists must all be wackjob conspiracy theorists! The peer-reviewed research warning that fluoride can cause permanent damage to unborn babies by affecting their neurological development is all a big conspiracy theory to the mainstream media. The sodium fluoride that is literally assaulting the brain in mega-high doses of 5,000 PPM in ‘prescription fluoride’ toothpaste being dished out by dentists who say their childhood patients are ‘deficient’ in the IQ-destroyer is perfectly safe in their eyes.

When analyzing the Harvard research, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, a component of the  United States National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, we find quite a few concerning details. The study makes it explicitly clear how damaging sodium fluoride can be, with writers explaining:

“The children in high fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ than those who lived in low fluoride areas.”

The EPA had similar statements, demonstrating how fluoride displays ”evidence of developmental neurotoxicity” and can damage unborn babies. We read:

”Fluoride readily crosses the placenta. Fluoride exposure to the developing brain, which is much more susceptible to injury caused by toxicants than is the mature brain, may possibly lead to damage of a permanent nature.

Let’s go even further back to the research of Dr. Dean Burke, head scientist at the National Cancer Institute and author of over 250 scientific articles. Back in 1977, the decorated scientist spoke out against fluoride and brought it to the attention of the National Cancer Institute. At that time, Burke found that sodium fluoride was fueling the development of cancer cells and tumor growth — at the average level of 1 PPM. He estimated that around 10,000 had died from the fluoride-induced cancer from that level.

As I detail in the video below, now we see levels as high as 5,000 PPM in toothpaste, 500,000% higher than the water fluoridation levels Burke was examining:
I guess no one told the media that even the United States government called for lower fluoride levels after a mountain of research accumulated regarding these links. They must be conspiracy theorists too.

The fact is that the fluoride debate hits a brick wall thanks to the rhetoric the mainstream media and laughable ‘skeptics’ use by throwing around terms like ‘conspiracy theory’ to discredit any real debate. In fact, it’s actually working against them. Right now we have so many conscious citizens realizing that they don’t want to consume the tainted tap that it’s really considered outlandish in many areas to drink from the tap without at least a fluoride-removing filter of some kind. A lot has changed as more information comes out.

We’ve seen a push for fluoride bans around the world, from Australia’s Queensland to regions withinFlorida. And the movement has been heating up.

But still, how could we possibly allow this fluoridation to go on for as long as it has? Even if there was only some research indicating an issue, isn’t it enough to begin withdrawing it from the water — or at least enough to conduct more independent research? I think any reasonable person would agree the answer is yes.

It’s time to accelerate this issue from a tired debate of ‘conspiracy’ theory name-calling to a topical issue we can generate a victory for. We’ve done it for GMOs; we’ve done it for high-fructose corn syrup; we’ve done it for BPA. It’s time to blast this information into the stratosphere and demand action.

This post originally appeared at Natural Society



This article was posted: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 6:44 am

Tags: healthnatural healthwater

 
 
Picture
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
March 13, 2013






Police in Clayton, New Jersey, confiscated two guns from a woman after she complained about county government moving to raise her property taxes and inspect her property without a search warrant.

Eileen Hart of Franklin Township was arrested and charged with making terroristic threats, disorderly conduct and harassing officials from the Gloucester County Office of Assessment and Appraisal Systems, Inc.

A county tax assessor told police Hart attended a meeting held with Franklin Township residents to discuss a property revaluation program the county instituted to “bring all home values up to the current market value,” according to the South Jersey Times.

Assessment and Appraisal Systems told the Gloucester County Times last August the pilot revaluation program is not about raising taxes. “A revaluation is not necessary to raise taxes,”Ernest DelGuercio, CEO of the assessment company, told the newspaper. “It ensures everyone is paying their fair share – no more and no less.”

Residents have complained the assessment program violates the Fourth Amendment. In order to make revaluation assessments and determine the tax value of a property, company inspectors must enter homes and inspect them. If not allowed to do so, the company often assesses higher values on homes, leading to increased taxes.

Eileen Hart said she did not allow the Assessment and Appraisal Systems to inspect her home because her husband was not present at the time. She also cited religious reasons. Because it was denied access, the company revalued her property at a higher rate. Hart attended the meeting last weekend to complain about the revaluation and the arbitrary move by the county to assess the value of her property.

After she began reciting the Constitution to support her argument, an Appraisal Systems employee escorted her from the public building.

“I didn’t scream, I didn’t yell,” she told the Examiner. “I have the right to air my grievances against the government in a public setting. I’ve never threatened anyone a day in my life.”

“She also wouldn’t let me speak and told me to sit down and shut up and listen as well,” she explained. “That’s when the young man came toward me. I knew he was going to put his hands on me. I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I said to him ‘Don’t you dare touch me.’ Then they threw us out of the auditorium. The young man from Appraisal Systems, Inc. was the one going postal, and I believe if he had a gun, he would have shot me (and my family) on the spot. I was calm the entire time.”

A spokeswoman for Gloucester County said the assessor “has never experienced this type of extreme behavior from a taxpayer” and the police were notified, apparently because reading the Constitution is considered extremist and a threat.

Although Hart exercised her Fourth Amendment right by not allowing an inspection by government without a court-issued warrant, it did manage to violate her Second Amendment right by confiscating her firearms.

After police arrested her, they demanded she hand over her two guns, a .357-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver and a .40-caliber Glock for “safekeeping.” If she had refused, a judge would have set bail too high for her family to pay.

“I have permits for each of them. I applied legally, I got them legally,” she said. “Now I can’t defend myself. I never said the word ‘gun’ at the meeting. None of those people would have even known I was a gun owner.”



This article was posted: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 9:22 am


Tags: constitutiondomestic newsgun rights



 
 
Picture
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
March 4, 2013


On February 20, 2013, the Tucson, Arizona City Council passed a resolution allowing the U.S. Air Force to “make appropriate decisions when balancing National Security and community needs when it comes to their existing and future military mission and assignments.”

Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona. Photo: U.S. Air Force.


In other words, the resolution allows the military to reject decisions made by the people of Tucson.

The resolution is posted on the Tucson government website (as of this writing) and further states that it “is necessary for the preservation of the peace, health and safety of the City of Tucson that this Resolution become immediately effective, an emergency is hereby declared to exist and this Resolution shall be effective immediately upon its passage and adoption.”

In short, the Council has imposed what for all practical purposes is a declaration of martial law on the residents of Tucson.

According to the Military Law Dictionary, “Martial law is defined as the imposition of military rule over a particular region on an emergency basis” and the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus is routinely denied during its tenure.

The resolution does not, however, implement full-blown martial law but rather a limited version that permits the Pentagon to decide what municipal laws it will obey when dealing with civilians.

The public was not allowed to voice its opposition and Council members were not permitted to discuss the resolution, as noted by the meeting notice and agenda posted on the city government website.

“Matters listed under the Consent Agenda are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion and one vote,” the agenda states. “There will be no separate discussion of these items. If discussion is desired by members of the governing body, that item will be removed from the Consent Agenda and will be considered separately.”

The Department of Defense initially made the power grab in response to civilian complaints about military flights over the city.

“This resolution will allow DM to increase by at least two-fold or more, the number of overflights of the very densely populated midtown Tucson, and allow round-the-clock overflights, and the introduction of whatever aircraft they wish, in whatever numbers they wish…. including the hearing-damaging accident-waiting-to-happen-experimental F-35!” Occupied Tucson Citizen reported.

“The use of the term ‘emergency’ is particularly despicable! In this case, it is not even stated what constitutes the so-called “emergency”, but is obviously being used to get around the fact that it was passed in great haste and secrecy, so as not to alert citizens of how they are being shafted!”

Infowars.com has moved copies of the above linked PDFs to its server due to past instances where government has removed documents:

Resolution 22006

Mayor and Council Regular Meeting Notice & Agenda




This article was posted: Monday, March 4, 2013 at 6:35 pm


 
 
Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
March 5, 2013

The world is rapidly running out of clean water. Some of the largest lakes and rivers on the globe are being depleted at a very frightening pace, and many of the most important underground aquifers that we depend on to irrigate our crops will soon be gone. At this point, approximately 40 percent of the entire population of the planet has little or no access to clean water, and it is being projected that by 2025 two-thirds of humanity will live in “water-stressed” areas. But most Americans are not too concerned about all of this because they assume that North America has more fresh water than anyone else does. And actually they would be right about that, but the truth is that even North America is rapidly running out of water and it is going to change all of our lives. Today, the most important underground water source in America, the Ogallala Aquifer, is rapidly running dry. The most important lake in the western United States, Lake Mead, is rapidly running dry. The most important river in the western United States, the Colorado River, is rapidly running dry. Putting our heads in the sand and pretending that we are not on the verge of an absolutely horrific water crisis is not going to make it go away. Without water, you cannot grow crops, you cannot raise livestock and you cannot support modern cities. As this global water crisis gets worse, it is going to affect every single man, woman and child on the planet. I encourage you to keep reading and learn more.

The U.S. intelligence community understands what is happening. According to one shocking government report that was released last year, the global need for water will exceed the global supply of water by 40 percent by the year 2030…

This sobering message emerges from the first U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment of Global Water Security. The document predicts that by 2030 humanity’s “annual global water requirements” will exceed “current sustainable water supplies” by forty percent.

Oh, but our scientists will find a solution to our problems long before then, won’t they?

But what if they don’t?

Most Americans tend to think of a “water crisis” as something that happens in very dry places such as Africa or the Middle East, but the truth is that almost the entire western half of the United States is historically a very dry place. The western U.S. has been hit very hard by drought in recent years, and many communities are on the verge of having to make some very hard decisions. For example, just look at what is happening to Lake Mead. Scientists are projecting that Lake Mead has a 50 percent chance of running dry by the year 2025. If that happens, it will mean the end of Las Vegas as we know it. But the problems will not be limited just to Las Vegas. The truth is that if Lake Mead runs dry, it will be a major disaster for that entire region of the country. This was explained in a recent article by Alex Daley

Way before people run out of drinking water, something else happens: When Lake Mead falls below 1,050 feet, the Hoover Dam’s turbines shut down – less than four years from now, if the current trend holds – and in Vegas the lights start going out.

Ominously, these water woes are not confined to Las Vegas. Under contracts signed by President Obama in December 2011, Nevada gets only 23.37% of the electricity generated by the Hoover Dam. The other top recipients: Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (28.53%); state of Arizona (18.95%); city of Los Angeles (15.42%); and Southern California Edison (5.54%).

You can always build more power plants, but you can’t build more rivers, and the mighty Colorado carries the lifeblood of the Southwest. It services the water needs of an area the size of France, in which live 40 million people. In its natural state, the river poured 15.7 million acre-feet of water into the Gulf of California each year. Today, twelve years of drought have reduced the flow to about 12 million acre-feet, and human demand siphons off every bit of it; at its mouth, the riverbed is nothing but dust.

Nor is the decline in the water supply important only to the citizens of Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. It’s critical to the whole country. The Colorado is the sole source of water for southeastern California’s Imperial Valley, which has been made into one of the most productive agricultural areas in the US despite receiving an average of three inches of rain per year.

Are you starting to get an idea of just how serious this all is?

But it is not just our lakes and our rivers that are going dry.

We are also depleting our groundwater at a very frightening pace as a recent Science Daily articlediscussed…

Three results of the new study are particularly striking: First, during the most recent drought in California’s Central Valley, from 2006 to 2009, farmers in the south depleted enough groundwater to fill the nation’s largest human-made reservoir, Lake Mead near Las Vegas — a level of groundwater depletion that is unsustainable at current recharge rates.

Second, a third of the groundwater depletion in the High Plains occurs in just 4% of the land area. And third, the researchers project that if current trends continue some parts of the southern High Plains that currently support irrigated agriculture, mostly in the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas, will be unable to do so within a few decades.

In the United States we have massive underground aquifers that have allowed our nation to be the breadbasket of the world. But once the water from those aquifers is gone, it is gone for good. That is why what is happening to the Ogallala Aquifer is so alarming. The Ogallala Aquifer is one of the largest sources of fresh water in the world, and U.S. farmers use water from it to irrigate more than 15 million acres of crops each year. The Ogallala Aquifer covers more than 100,000 square miles and it sits underneath the states of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and South Dakota. Most Americans have never even heard of it, but it is absolutely crucial to our way of life. Sadly, it is being drained at a rate that is almost unimaginable.

The following are some facts about the Ogallala Aquifer and the growing water crisis that we are facing in the United States. A number of these facts were taken from one of my previous articles. I think that you will agree that many of these facts are quite alarming…

1. The Ogallala Aquifer is being drained at a rate of approximately 800 gallons per minute.

2. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, “a volume equivalent to two-thirds of the water in Lake Erie” has been permanently drained from the Ogallala Aquifer since 1940.

3. Decades ago, the Ogallala Aquifer had an average depth of approximately 240 feet, but today the average depth is just 80 feet. In some areas of Texas, the water is gone completely.

4. Scientists are warning that nothing can be done to stop the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. The ominous words of David Brauer of the Ogallala Research Service should alarm us all…

“Our goal now is to engineer a soft landing. That’s all we can do.”

5. According to a recent National Geographic article, the average depletion rate of the Ogallala Aquifer is picking up speed….

Even more worrisome, the draining of the High Plains water account has picked up speed. The average annual depletion rate between 2000 and 2007 was more than twice that during the previous fifty years. The depletion is most severe in the southern portion of the aquifer, especially in Texas, where the water table beneath sizeable areas has dropped 100-150 feet; in smaller pockets, it has dropped more than 150 feet.

6. According to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. interior west is now the driest that it has been in 500 years.

 

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