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NASA satellites find Texas groundwater at record low, will take months or years to replenish

Amplify’d from www.washingtonpost.com

NASA satellites find Texas groundwater at record low, will take months or years to replenish

Associated Press

HOUSTON — A historic drought has depleted Texas aquifers to lows rarely seen since 1948, and it could take months — or even years — for the groundwater supplies to fully recharge, scientists who study NASA satellite data said Wednesday.

Climatologists, hydrologists and even local residents had suspected the drought that has parched Texas for 14 months was significantly hurting the precious aquifers that course beneath the Lone Star State. Data compiled by NASA satellites combined with information from the University of Nebraska’s National Drought Mitigation Center confirm those fears.

“We can say with more confidence that yes, the groundwater storage is being reduced,” said drought center climatologist Brian Fuchs.

Texas has received a little more than 12 inches of rain this year, which is 15.5 inches below normal, said Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon. He noted that despite some recent rain, the deficit has actually grown since last month by about an inch.

NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, satellites are unique because rather than measuring light on wavelengths, they measure gravity based on mass variations, making them sensitive to changes in water on or below the Earth’s surface, no matter how deep, explained NASA hydrologist Matthew Rodell. Scientists took that data and combined it with other information to create a numerical model that simulates the water redistribution after it rains. They were then able to conclude that the aquifers are at lows seen only 2 percent of the time since 1948, when mapping began.

“People rely on groundwater, especially in times like this when it’s dry, because groundwater provides a reserve of water when it doesn’t rain,” Rodell said. “But we’re in a deficit now. We’re drawing down our bank account.”

It doesn’t look like those supplies will be replenished by rain in the coming months, Fuchs said. The La Nina weather pattern currently cooling the Pacific Ocean typically causes warmer, drier weather in Texas and other parts of the South. The best hope for rain, he believes, will be in the spring.

“The likelihood of recovery or any substantial improvements is probably not going to be there,” Fuchs said.

The longer the drought persists, the more the groundwater is depleted — not only because rain is not recharging the aquifers, but also because more people are using that water. As the aquifers are depleted, some people may have to drill deeper wells, Rodell said. Others may not have that luxury; the wells may already be as deep as possible.

Some recent rains appear to have improved the soil quality in parts of Texas, Rodell said, but it will take much more to recharge the aquifers. A few days of constant rain could help, he added, but typically most of that rain runs off. Really, Texas needs a few rainy months — or a wet year — to replenish its groundwater supply.

“Typically, it’s going to take months to years of above average rainfalls to bring aquifers back up,” he said.

You can follow Ramit Plushnick-Masti at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP

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Obama Issues Ron Paul “Kill Order” As Russia Prepares For War

Amplify’d from www.eutimes.net

The Federal Security Service (FSB) is reporting today that the “secret letter” sent to Prime Minister Putin by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda contains a warning that United States President Barack Obama has issued an executive-level “kill order” against US Congressman Ron Paul over fears this charismatic politician, who many believe could capture the Republican Presidential 2012 nomination, is about to expose to all Americans what can only be described as the largest mass theft in human history.

According to this report, Prime Minister Noda first became aware of this “kill order” after a private meeting with Obama at last weeks ASEAN Summit meeting in Indonesia when the American President expressed his “unconstrained joy” over the toppling of the Greek and Italian governments in bloodless coups by EU banksters who installed to run these countries unelected former Goldman Sachs executives.

Not known to many Americans is that the giant global investment firm Goldman Sachs put Obama into office by being its top donor and after winning the Presidency put so many of its former executives into the US government it is known as the “Wall Street Cabinet.”

The reason for Goldman Sachs, and other top American and European banksters, putting Obama into office, this report continues, was to loot the Americans taxpayers of an estimated $100 Trillion…nearly $30 Trillion of which went directly into the pockets of international banksters around the world and another $70 Trillion in lost home values, stock portfolios and pensions funds.

The main conduit of this massive theft was the US Federal Reserve System which during the 2008 Financial Crisis secretly doled out, without the American peoples knowledge, over $16 Trillion to European banks and companies and another nearly $8 Trillion in “secret loans” to the largest banks in the United States.

Causing Obama and his bankster allies to fear Ron Paul, this report continues, is the Congressman’s ability to hold US Congressional hearings on the $8 Trillion in secret loans to the largest banks in America without the public’s knowledge exposing this largest theft in human history and laying bare for all to see the total criminality of their entire elite political, financial and corporate class.

Though the US mainstream media has virtually ignored Ron Paul’s candidacy the American people themselves appear to have broken through this deliberate government ordered blackout of his Presidential run as evidenced by his rise in the polls in the first campaign States of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which should he win them all would assure him the Republican nomination.

The fears Ron Paul is causing among Americas elite classes appear to be justified as he recently likened the US Federal Reserve System to “drug addiction” warning that the deception it has foisted upon the public will lead to the destruction of the United States.

Ron Paul further warned the American people this year that their nation was becoming a “police state,” called for the impeachment of Obama for ordering the assassination of an American citizen without charges or trial, and stated that Obama had violated the War Powers Act over his actions against Libya.

Ron Paul’s fears of a police state America being ruled by a dictatorial tyrant were confirmed yesterday when the US Senate, in a 61-37 vote gave, for the first time in history, the power to the US Military to hold citizens without charges or trial indefinitely by passing a bill that was written in secret and never openly debated.

So frightening is this new law that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the days prior to its passing warned: “The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.”

Most ominous in this FSB report is its stating that the “assassination regime” ordered against Ron Paul by Obama may already be underway as one of the US foreclosure fraud whistleblowers subpoenaed by Ron Paul to testify before the US Congress named Tracey Lawrence was found “suicided” yesterday in Las Vegas.

The destruction of anyone found opposing the Obama regime and its bankster backers was, also, brought into sharp relief this week by the smearing by mental illness allegations of one of America’s top heroes US Marine Sergeant Dakota Meyer, who in September received the Congressional Medal of Honor from Obama (who called him one of the most “down-to-earth guys that you will ever meet”) for saving the lives of 36 of his comrades, but after he alerted the press that his employer defense contractor BAE Systems was selling high-tech sniper rifles to Pakistan that are being used to kill America Soldiers was labeled as a “drunk and mentally ill.”

So concerned has the Kremlin become about the growing American fascist police state it caused General Nikolai Makarov, Russia’s top military commander, to issue a warning to the West last week that the Motherland was fully prepared for a nuclear World War III and which prompted the Obama regime to state that it would immediately cease observing their arms treaty with Russia.

To if the American people will be able to rally around Ron Paul before he is assassinated by the Obama regime it is not in our knowing, other than to note that in a country where every public demonstration – however peaceful and orderly it might be – is ordered by their authorities to be treated as the equivalent of a prison riot, where the former police chief of Seattle blamed the militarization of local US police forces on Obama’s Homeland Security Department, and where the media is described as being nothing more than a “lapdog” for Obama and his bankster allies, the likelihood of these people escaping the worst horrors to come do, indeed, seem inescapable.

Read more at www.eutimes.net
 

Obama Legalizes Horse Slaughter for Human Consumption

Amplify’d from www.westernjournalism.com

Obama Legalizes Horse Slaughter for Human Consumption

On the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, Barack Obama broke a campaign pledge and signed a bill legalizing the slaughter of American horses for human consumption.

Congress banned the slaughter of horses in 2006 by withholding funding for inspectors. A handful of Congressmen removed the amendment from a mandatory spending bill that arrived on the president’s desk just before Thanksgiving.

Obama quietly signed the bill on November 18, despite having promised to maintain the ban at all costs during the 2008 campaign. Asked in a questionnaire, “Will you support legislation…to institute a permanent ban on horse slaughter and exports of horses for human consumption,” Obama simply responded, “Yes.”

Horse slaughter plants are now planned in at least eight states, including Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Georgia.

Already more than 100,000 American horses are slaughtered each year, including 10,000 Thoroughbreds.

Horses are regularly administered drugs that are unsafe for human consumption. For example, equine pain is often treated with Phenylbutazone (or “bute”), a carcinogen the FDA banned for human use after observing regular “toxic reactions,” such as “blood dyscrasias, including aplastic anemia, leukopenia, agranulocytosis, thrombocytopenia, and deaths.”

Nonetheless, horse meat is considered a delicacy in France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

Vickery Eckhoff of Forbes documented the suffering horses endure during the transportation process alone:

The livestock trucks were not designed to accommodate horses’ longer necks and legs and higher center of gravity. Put a horse in a cattle car, and it can’t stand upright. Imagine stallions packed in next to mares (in foal or with foals at their sides), the sick next to the healthy, all off balance, banging their heads, slipping and falling as they become more agitated, exhausted, dehydrated. Much of the resulting suffering—gouged-out eyes and gruesome head injuries, open fractures, broken legs and severed hooves, trampling and bleeding to death—has been documented by USDA photos obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.


Some of those graphic images may be seen here.

Eckhoff notes, due to the difficulties of knocking them out, many horses are slaughtered while still fully conscious.

Approximately 125,000 of the nation’s nine million horses are slaughtered every year. Wyoming state representative Sue Wallis expects the number to increase to perhaps 200,000 annually.

Proponents of legalizing horse slaughter say the practice never died; it simply went abroad. The GAO released a report in June estimating 137,984 U.S. horses were shipped to Canada or Mexico, nations that still permit horse slaughter, up by more than 50,000 since the domestic shutdown in 2007. They contend abandonment cases have increased, and the prices of less desirable horses have fallen as much as 20 percent due to the slaughter ban.

Critics say not to expect the new plants to translate into new jobs or tax revenue. According to The Desert Independent, horse slaughter “never created more than a total of 178 jobs.” Paula Bacon, the former mayor of Kaufman, Texas, has experience in communities with horse slaughter plants. “This so-called business brought in virtually no tax revenues,” Bacon said, “and local governments incurred substantial enforcement costs in trying to regulate these facilities.” (Bacon’s detailed list of the facility’s faults may be read here.)

Read more at www.westernjournalism.com
 

G20 case reveals ‘largest ever’ police spy operation

RCMP collaborated with provincial and local police to monitor activists

Amplify’d from thesovereigntyreport.org

G20 case reveals ‘largest ever’ police spy operation

RCMP collaborated with provincial and local police to monitor activists

Tim Groves, special to CBC News, and Zach Dubinsky, CBC News
Police in riot gear stand guard in front of activists during a protest ahead of the G20 summit in downtown Toronto on June 25, 2010.
Police in riot gear stand guard in front of activists during a protest ahead of the G20 summit in downtown Toronto on June 25, 2010. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)

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Police organizations across the country co-operated to spy on community organizations and activists in what the RCMP called one of the largest domestic intelligence operations in Canadian history, documents reveal.

Information about the extensive police surveillance in advance of last year’s G8 and G20 meetings in southern Ontario comes from evidence presented in the case of 17 people accused of orchestrating street turmoil during the summits.

The court case ended Tuesday before it went to trial. Six of the defendants pleaded guilty to counselling mischief and two of those to an additional count of counselling to obstruct police, while 11 people had their criminal charges dropped.

Testimony previously under a publication ban describes how two undercover police officers — one male, one female — spent 18 months infiltrating southern Ontario community groups ahead of the June 26-27, 2010, gathering of world leaders.

They were part of a much larger so-called joint intelligence group (JIG) operation that the RCMP, in its internal post-summit review, called “likely the largest JIG ever assembled in Canada.”

Undercover operatives

The Crown built its case against the 17 around the work of the two officers, Ontario Provincial Police members Bindo Showan and Brenda Carey. It was a massive case: 59 criminal charges in all, more than 70,000 pages of Crown evidence disclosed to the defence, and months of scheduled testimony.


Read the files


Documents obtained under freedom of information legislation reveal the extensive police surveillance operation against political groups and activists.



Earlier this fall, Showan told the court about how he attended a meeting prior to the Toronto summit. There, a protest-planning group that included several of the 17 main G20 defendants was discussing whether to lend their support to a First Nations rally.

Adam Lewis, one of the 17 accused conspirators in the G20 case, interjected, “Kill whitey!” The group chuckled. Lewis, like all but one of his co-accused, is white.

When a Crown lawyer asked the officer what he thought Lewis meant, Showan said in complete seriousness, to “kill white people.”

“Deliberately or accidentally, the undercover officers misinterpreted hyperbolic jokes as literal statements of belief,” said Kalin Stacey, a community organizer, friend and supporter of the defendants. “This undercover case highlights the incentive for undercovers to ensure that charges are laid.”

Canada-wide surveillance

The two undercover officers at the core of the Crown’s case were just a small part of a Canada-wide operation to spy on activist groups in the lead-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the G20 summit in Toronto and the G8 meeting in Huntsville, Ont.

P.O.V.:

Are you satisfied with the result of the investigation? Take our survey.

RCMP records obtained under freedom of information legislation reveal that at least 12 undercover officers infiltrated groups. Organizations in Vancouver, the southern Ontario cities of Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto and Montreal were scrutinized.

In all, the RCMP-led joint intelligence group — a conglomeration of federal, provincial and municipal police tasked with G8/G20 reconnaissance — employed more than 500 people at its peak, the records show. The group ran undercover operations, recruited confidential informants and liaised with domestic and foreign governments, law enforcement agencies and even corporations.

The JIG’s targets included activists protesting the Olympics, the migrant-justice group No One Is Illegal, Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance and Greenpeace.

“The 2010 G8 summit in Huntsville … will likely be subject to actions taken by criminal extremists motivated by a variety of radical ideologies,” reads a JIG report from June 2009, before the G20 summit was scheduled, that sets out the intelligence group’s mission. “These ideologies may include variants of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, nihilism, socialism and/or communism.

‘We’re always concerned about public safety. That’s our number 1 concern.’—Sgt. Pierre Chamberland, OPP spokesperson

“The important commonality is that these ideologies … place these individuals and/or organizations at odds with the status quo and the current distribution of power in society.”

The surveillance was widespread. Campers at Rattlesnake Provincial Park west of Toronto were monitored, while another document indicates that police had a process in place “to obtain information on registered campers” who stayed at Algonquin Provincial Park and Arrowhead Provinical Park, both of which are within driving distance of Hunstville.

And RCMP records suggest that the reconnaissance continues. Report logs indicate at least 29 incidents of police surveillance between the end of the G20 summit and April 2011 — more than nine months after world leaders departed Toronto.

The same document indicates that the RCMP-led intelligence team made a series of presentations to private-sector corporations, including one to “energy sector stakeholders” in November 2011.

Other corporations that received intelligence from police included Canada’s major banks, telecom firms, airlines, downtown property companies and other businesses seen to be vulnerable to the effects of summit protests.

Public safety

Spokesperson Sgt. Pierre Chamberland acknowledged the OPP had undercover officers involved in the G20 but declined to speak about specifics, saying the force can’t comment on operational matters.

But he said generally, undercover agents are constrained in what they can say and do by strict policies.

“So it’s not a matter of like you would see on television where they can do or say whatever they want. They’re not authorized to break the law unless they have special permissions,” he said.

Chamberland affirmed that the main motivation for using undercover officers is, like most police work, to protect the public.

“We’re always concerned about public safety. That’s our number 1 concern,” he said.

Stacey sees it differently, arguing that undercover agents create a chill effect on activism.

“The practice of infiltration and undercover policing of political protest is legally about making a case for conviction, but politically about creating a culture of fear about dissent.”

Read more at thesovereigntyreport.org
 

Police Infiltration Of Canadian Activist Groups

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S99-1-SERVICE

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Amplify’d from www.ycdes.org
Active Fire Incidents
Incident No.
Time Dispatched
11-30-2011 18:14
Box No.
89-104
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FIRE STRUCT HR
Street Name
MARKET
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Please, Santa, Let This Be the Last Christmas in America

Amplify’d from www.ritholtz.com
Please, Santa, Let This Be the Last Christmas in America
(that’s supposed to “save” the U.S. economy)
Charles Hugh Smith

Santa, please, please, please strangle the idiotic fantasy that Americans buying a bunch of junk (or gift cards for after-Christmas purchases of junk) will “save” the imploding U.S. economy. My Christmas wish to Santa: please let this be the last Christmas in America that is dominated by the propaganda that holiday retail sales have any more impact on the $14.7 trillion U.S. economy than a moldy, half-eaten fruitcake left over from 2007.

Fact: the 2010 GDP of the U.S. is projected to be about $14.7 trillion. (CBO estimate) The Federal Budget Primer.

Fact: total holiday retail sales were $504 billion in 2009. Holiday sales–National Retail Federation.

That means holiday retail sales are a mere 3.4% of the U.S. GDP.

Despite the Financial and Mainstream Media’s pathological obsession with holiday retail sales numbers as proxies for the “health” of the entire U.S. economy, holiday sales don’t really change much:

2007: (pre-recession) Holiday sales: $516 billion

Holiday sales as percentage of annual retail sales: 19.5%


2008: Holiday sales: $495.5 billion

Holiday sales as percentage of annual retail sales: 18.6%


2009: Holiday sales: $504.8 billion

Holiday sales as percentage of annual retail sales: 19.4%

So the start of the 2008-09 recession saw a drop of $21 billion in holiday sales: statistical noise in a $14.7 trillion economy and a modest 4% decline from pre-recession levels. 2009 saw sales rise by about $10 billon (about 2%), so a rise of 2% from 2009 would return holiday sales to pre-recession levels.

Now the propaganda machine is cranking up to announce that a 2% increase in holiday retail sales means the U.S. economy is off and running. Santa, please, please, please order your reindeer to stomp the life out of the idiotic fantasy that Americans buying a few billion dollars more needless junk from China is any sort of evidence that the U.S. economy is “growing at a healthy clip.”

The entire retail sector is 7.9% of the GDP compared to a 21.4% share for the FIRE tranch (finance, insurance and real estate) of the economy.

Does anyone seriously believe that 3.4% of the economy can possibly leverage up the entire GDP with a razor-thin increase of $10 billion in holiday sales?

Santa, you have my deep gratitude if you could jam the propaganda machine so that this is the last Christmas in America where trivial retail sales are hyped as the bellwether for the $14.7 trillion U.S. economy.

Originally published at Of Two Minds

Read more at www.ritholtz.com
 

Tracy Lawrence, Notary Public Who Blew The Whistle On Massive Foreclosure Fraud, Found Dead

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com


Tracy Lawrence, Notary Public Who Blew The Whistle On Massive Foreclosure Fraud, Found Dead


A sign hangs outside a foreclosed home in North Las Vegas, Nevada. (File photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Notary Public Who Blew Whistle On Massive Foreclos

Tracy Lawrence, the notary public who blew the whistle on a massive foreclosure fraud scheme, was found dead in her Las Vegas home on Nov. 28, MSNBC reported.

Cause of death has not yet been determined, but Officer Jacinto Rivera, a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department spokesman, said the case was not being investigated as homicide. She was 43.

Earlier this month, Lawrence came forward and admitted to the Nevada Attorney General's Office that she notarized 25,000 fraudulent documents for Lender Processing Services, a Florida company used by most major banks to process home repossessions. The documents were filed with the Clark County Recorder's Office between 2005 and 2008, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Lawrence also accused two loan officers of allegedly running the massive robo-signing scheme, saying they forged signatures on tens of thousands of default notices. Nevada now alleges that Gary Trafford, 49, of Irvine, Calif., and Gerri Sheppard, 62, of Santa Ana, Calif., directed their employees to forge foreclosure documents, notarize the signatures on the documents they had forged and file the fraudulent paperwork in order to begin foreclosures on homes throughout the county.

Trafford and Sheppard have been indicted on more than 600 counts of offering false instruments for recording, false certification on certain instruments and notarization of the signature of a person not in the presence of a notary public. Authorities are currently negotiating the terms of their surrender, KSNV MyNews 3 reported.

Earlier this month, Lawrence pleaded guilty to one count of notarizing the signature of a person not in her presence, The Associated Press reported. Had Lawrence shown up at her sentencing hearing on Monday, she could have faced a potential sentence of up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,000.

On Nov. 17, Lender Processing Services issued a statement acknowledging that the signing procedures on some of documents were flawed. The company also agreed to fully cooperate with the attorney general's investigation.

"I am deeply committed to ensuring that LPS meets rigorous standards of professional conduct and operating excellence," newly appointed LPS President and CEO Hugh Harris stated. "I have full confidence in the ability of our leadership team and over 8,000 dedicated employees to deliver on that commitment."

According to RealtyTrac, Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 56 straight months.

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Current Events in the Economy

Amplify’d from library.georgegordon.com
George Gordon's School of Law

Current Events in the Economy

2011-10-16 Harrisburg, PA, Bankruptcy, Greek real estate tax, Warren Buffet income tax

2011-10-17 State Street Bank Thefts, Xmas imports point to recession

2011-10-18 Balance the budget, pay off the National debt, gun control the Soros way

2011-10-19 Greek financial crisis, British Columbia HST tax

2011-10-20 Manufacturing decline, Trade gap, Student debt, Unemployment

2011-10-21 Wendy Wilson Health Column, Gold & Silver

2011-10-22 US cattle herd falls to 1973 levels, inflation higher than you think

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Read more at library.georgegordon.com