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ON THE PATH OF THE IMMORTALS — DO PETROGLYPHS TELL THE STORY? Part No 3

Six-Toed Giants, Fallen Angels, And The Portals They Came Through

COMING IN MAY!

After a week on the road, having covered hundreds of miles of reservations to walk amidst their multiple ruins including hogans, temples, and kivas, to follow guides and visit with a medicine man, not to mention tracking down and photographing petroglyphs, we were finally on our way to the last site we would visit—one that our Cherokee guide had told us not to miss. 

We’d already collected enough pictogram and logogram images from ancient rock engravings throughout the Four Corners area to make our case and to calculate for our purposes a recurring theme, which definitely seemed to match the Middle Eastern and biblical stories of portals, reptilians, fallen angels, giants, and the havoc these played on the old world. But this final petroglyph was important, our guide had said, and one we could drive right up to. So, we decided to make one final excursion, this time into Utah, fifty miles north of Moab, where one of the largest known collections of petroglyphs is located in San Juan County. The “storyboard” we would visit there etched in sandstone began as early as one thousand years before Christ, and it records practically every element contained in the upcoming SkyWatchTV Special Investigative Report and the new book On The Path Of The Immortals—from spiral vortices and those who come through them to human-animal chimeras and even giant, six-fingered and six-toed footprints in pursuit of much smaller five-fingered and five-toed humans. Even that reptilian with his halo is drawn here, just a couple feet away from alien-looking, bug-eyed creatures. This location is also (again, a great thing for any reader) easier to get to than most of the ones we trekked to, yet it’s as important if not more so than other petroglyphs you could spend days hiking over miles of rough terrain to reach. (But again, if you can, I recommend that you do visit the Four Corners, get a hiking permit or a guide, and see as much as you can of what I started calling the “Anasazi Trail,” as much of this area includes evidence of a former time, in my opinion, an era when civilizations worldwide were suddenly and dramatically interrupted by those beings depicted on the Anasazi’s Utah wall.)

The Newspaper Rock Petroglyph, as this one is known, is somewhat decipherable as to which images are older due to the fading and darkness of the earliest depictions (which are certainly the most mysterious, with their alien-looking heads, suits, and what might be some type of craft), and archaeologists believe the writing on this great wall continued from 1000 BC or earlier up until about AD 1300—the same time the Anasazi suddenly disappeared.

Allie Anderson gathers commentary on ancient petroglyphs for upcoming SkyWatch TV Special Report.

But the National Parks sign admits:

There are no known methods of dating rock art. In interpreting the figures on the rock, scholars are undecided as to their meaning or have yet to decipher them. Unfortunately, we do not know if the figures represent story-telling, doodling, hunting magic, clan symbols, ancient graffiti or something else.

I suggest “something else” is exactly what they tell us based on redundancy of the same story told all around the world. The Anasazi, who disappeared when the habit of writing on this tablet also suddenly ceased, used images and symbols similar to those found globally that connect to a first, and second, incursion of giants and the mountainous gateways their creators came through.

And it wasn’t just me who immediately saw this story on the wall as a biblical one told through ancient American eyes. I could see it on Carl Olafsen and Allie Anderson’s faces too—my chief investigators—after we finished filming, packed up our drone (which we had been using to gather aerial film), and started the long drive back to our hotel. As I drove, I glanced at Carl in the rearview mirror, and I could see that he especially was deep in thought. Soon, he got a notepad out and began writing something, which later he gave me at the hotel. It said:

Looking on that last petroglyph I could see a multitude of antique memos: the spiral that Dr. Mose had explained, the reptile with the halo at its head, footprints of animals, footprints of people…suddenly I stopped. There was a path of human footprints, each holding exactly five toes, alongside a path of giant human footprints…the larger sets carrying six toes! I was reminded of 1 Chronicles 20:6:

And there was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number, and he also was descended from the giants.

Why would Native Americans concoct the same anomalous physiology as the ancient Hebrews on the other side of the world? While polydactylism certainly does not indicate someone is a Nephilim, accounts of giants with an extra digit on both sides of the Atlantic suggests a genetic relationship. On other places within the ancient figures was a more mystifying anomaly: There were strange, reptilian, humanoid shapes with bulbous heads and large, almond-shaped eyes. The oldest and most desert-varnished of them was a humanoid shape with what appeared to be an antennae coming off the head or helmet. Other humanoid shapes had horn-like features coming off their distorted human heads. One—the oldest appearing outline—appeared to be holding a disc-like object or a weapon of some kind and stood near a shape that had a square object affixed to the top of a shoulder-high post.

What could these figures have been left to communicate to future travelers? What were the motives behind the painstaking, time-consuming efforts of these messages? And where did the Anasazi go? Archaeologists theorize that the Anasazi were just absorbed into the Navajo and Hopi Tribes. But we were told in the Hogan [by Dr. Mose] that the tribes looked for them and could not find them. They tracked them to the Chaco valley but they were gone. The tribes mourned them and cried. Chaco means “to cry.” The oral history knows they just disappeared.

The question is…where, and why?

Carl Olafsen with Allie Anderson and Tom Horn at the entrance to an Anasazi ruins.

Carl Olafsen’s quizzical response to all we had seen—this final petroglyph included—is the same head-scratching response that generations who have stood where we did during our investigation must have felt. Yet I, for one, believe the answer was right in front of their and my team’s eyes that day (they do, too, after contemplating the evidence).The ancient ruins of the Anasazi date to megalithic ruins elsewhere in the world, and all seem to have the same fingerprints (and six-toed footprints!) of the giants all over them. That being true, if you take only the images that the Anasazi left behind and compare them to similar (and in some cases, identical) universal symbols found elsewhere around the world where the stories and meanings of the images have been made clear, and keeping in mind that these legends materialized globally at approximately the same time, it is more likely than not in my opinion that the universal story agrees with the record of every major culture of the ancient world in which the astonishingly consistent legends of “gods” were recorded as descending from Heaven and/or coming through spiral vortices to materialize in bodies of flesh.

From Rome to Greece—and before that, to Egypt, Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumer—the earliest records of civilization tell of the era when powerful beings known to the Hebrews as Watchers and in the book of Genesis as the benei ha-elohim (sons of God) mingled themselves with humans, giving birth to part-celestial, part-terrestrial hybrids known as nephilim. The Bible says this happened when men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them. When the sons of God saw the women’s beauty, they took wives from among them to sire their unusual offspring.[i]

I believe a record of this first incursion of hybrid humans and six-toed giants is recorded in Genesis 6:4, which says:

There were giants in the earth in those days [the first incursion before the Flood]; and also after that [after the Flood, the second incursion], when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (emphasis added)

Note that when the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible) was written around BC 1300, this would have been the same time when archaeologists believe the Anasazi, across the world from those Bible lands, were drawing giant, six-toed footprints on a slab wall in Utah and facing “an alien enemy” as the name “Anasazi” implies. When the writings in the Torah are compared with other ancient texts, including Enoch, Jubilees, Baruch, Genesis Apocryphon, Philo, Josephus, Jasher, Jubilees, and many others (not counting the accounts of the American Indian tribes on this side of the world), it is clear that this is more than a legend—it is history, a chronicle told through different peoples’ methods and worldviews involving giants suddenly infesting the entire world, being wiped out in a flood, then somehow returning in a second incursion. This story was written down globally, from Hebrew scrolls to Indian petroglyphs, to provide the oldest recorded testament of part-human, part-angelic creatures, who were in turn the offspring of hideous reptilian entities (or what the apocryphal book of Enoch calls fallen Watchers). In the upcoming book On The Path Of The Immortals, you will read Cris Putnam’s extensive research into this area including analysis of documents found in Cave 4 among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which describe a Watcher named Melkiresha in the form of a terrifying reptilian whose looks “were frightening like those of a viper, and…he was extremely dark…and his face was like that of an adder.” Is Melkiresha or his fallen cohorts the same as those halo-bearing reptiles that led the Anasazi to destruction? There is reason to believe they were, and, after much comparison, I propose as reasonably justified the translation of the traditional Indian creation stories told to us by the Navajo Nation’s medicine man and that was repeated from our Cherokee guide and Apache representative, which the Anasazi’s petroglyphs confirm:

1. In the beginning, the great creator made everything.
2. Powerful reptilians then came down from Heaven through portals (the spiral, halo, and reptilian symbols) to deceive the world, and the world fell into darkness. This is also hinted in one of the meanings of the word Anasazi (“an alien enemy”).
3. Portals (represented in ancient spiral symbolism beside giant, six-toed footprints and horned, humanoid figures) opened at this time and alien “gods,” monsters, and giants came through them. Some of these giants had six fingers and six toes (just as described in the Old Testament).
4. The creator destroyed the monsters and giants in a great flood.
5. Yet the giants and reptilian deceivers returned, though not in the same numbers as had been before the flood. They turned the people to sorcery, cannibalism, and human sacrifice (as did the plumed serpents of the Mesoamerican Maya and Aztec).

One of the many petroglyphs that depict the reptilian with a halo, an ancient alien enemy that misled the Anasazi through some type of mind control.

The Anasazi depicted various six-toed giant footprints among regular five-toed hand- and footprints in the petroglyphs.

Of course, one has to wonder what happened to the remains of the giants in America and whether the Smithsonian Institution actually participated in a cover-up (as some have alleged) in making a deliberate effort to hide the giants’ remains (which would inconvenience the theory of evolution, which they celebrate) as they were discovered in early American archaeological digs. Vine Deloria, a Native American author and professor of law, sounds suspicious that this conspiracy theory may be true. He says:

Modern day archaeology and anthropology have nearly sealed the door on our imaginations, broadly interpreting the North American past as devoid of anything unusual in the way of great cultures characterized by a people of unusual demeanor [giants].

The great interloper of ancient burial grounds, the nineteenth century Smithsonian Institution, created a one-way portal, through which uncounted bones have been spirited.

This door and the contents of its vault are virtually sealed off to anyone, but government officials. Among these bones may lay answers not even sought by these officials concerning the deep past.[ii]

Does the Smithsonian Institution have an Indiana Jones-like large warehouse somewhere with aisles of American giants’ remains locked away? It’s possible. I personally have dozens and dozens of old newspaper clippings published when skeletons of unusual size—ten feet tall and more—were being dug up across the United States. I have so many of these, it could be a book all by itself, and these articles lend support to the legends of when vicious giants were worldwide. While David was fighting them on one side of the world, the Anasazi may have been building cliff dwellings in America to avoid them, and their petroglyphs also harmonize with that story. But the Anasazi evidence is not alone. Locations around the world that seem to connect to what I have called the “second incursion” of giants that came after the great Flood are prevalent.

But what about evidence that points to the presence of portals-interloping reptilian entities and their giant offspring from the first incursion before the Flood? It exists and is global. Cris Putnam and I look into this evidence in the upcoming book On The Path Of The Immortals that even includes information connected to the portals/stargates “technology” records, raising the bigger question: Should the cliff dwellings of the Anazasi, the ruins of Göbekli Tepe, the gigantic stones of Baalbek and hundreds of other such locations around the world be understood as remnants of a first and second incursion of earth by portals-traversing reptilian immortals and their gigantic offspring? I believe the answer in many instances is yes. There is physical proof they were here, and by the time you reach the end of our upcoming book, you will most likely believe they are also set to return in force.

In the next entry, we move to the southwestern corner of Anasazi portal territory, to Sedona, Arizona, where Cris Putnam and his team ran into a few odd “things” they didn’t expect, even filming what might be one of them just before being buzzed by a gigantic v-shaped craft, which we also caught on exclusive footage.

Credit to Skywatch.com

Jade Helm 15 and the Coming False Flag Attack Upon the Banks

It has always been my contention that the following paradigm would be adhered to with regard to the full establishment of the New World Order in conjunction with the planned demise of the United States:

1. Pre-emptive removal of political dissident leadership and this is what underlies Jade Helm 15 drills at the moment.
2. False flag attack(s) to justify the roll-out of martial law. 
3. The roll-out of martial law accompanied by UN gun confiscation forces. This would lead to resistance on the part of a portion of the population and by treaty, this would lead to the use of foreign troops, under the UN flag to carry out martial law.
4. Once the country is firmly under martial law, the world would become embroiled in World War III which would be a war of political and economic revision and consolidation and the tenets of the New World Order would be at last, be fully realized.

Purpose of the Article

This article is about new information which clearly points in the direction of being able to identify the type of false flag event which will lead to implementation of martial law due to an economic collapse which is both devastating and contrived as mentioned in point number two of the globalist plan to unify the planet under their direct control.

The fact that this emerging false flag event is surfacing in conjunction with Jade Helm 15 exercises is noteworthy because there is now a strong likelihood that we are going to see Jade Helm 15 go live.

LaPorte, Colorado

My friend and colleague, Paul Martin contacted me with urgent information on April 8, 2015. Paul Martin has firsthand knowledge related to members of Jade Helm 15 (i.e. U.S. Special Forces) who are recruiting young adults to “hack into banks”.

There is a similar report coming out of Central Arizona (Casa Grande) in which I received an email message that stated that “our son who is a computer genius was recruited to do some computer work for various banks”. After signing nondisclosure agreements, it turned out that “the computer work for the banks actually involved hacking into the banks” and that “our son backed away but was threatened with being charged as an accomplice in the aftermath” if the person did not do what they were told.

On the evening of April 8, 2015, Paul Martin also stated that similar reports are coming out of Baily, CO., Goliad, TX., and Bastrop, TX!

One such report, even from a trusted source who has been proven to possess high level sources, is little more than a rumor. However, when the report matches similar reports in terms of time frame and the coincidence of goals, the reports are deserving of a closer look. And when the alleged events are related to recently held drills, we should all be looking under our collective beds.

The U.S. Government, the UK, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC Have Rehearsed Similar Scenarios

The theft of the people’s money has already been rehearsed by the powers that be in the banking industry. Regulators from the United States and the United Kingdom got together in a war room to see how they will cope when the next big bank fails.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, on November 10, 2014, ran a joint exercise simulating how they would prop up a large bank (e.g. Bank of America) with operations in both countries that has landed itself in trouble. Also taking part in the “bank failure drill”, which included a cyber attack upon several banks, was Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, and the heads of a large number of other regulators, in a meeting hosted by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

A False Flag Banking Cyber Attack Would Wipe Out Records of the Credit Swap Derivatives Debt

Interestingly, the November 10th drill, according to Reuters, represents a second measure would “force a change in derivative contracts, which in their current form protects investors (Editor’s Note: Yours and my bank account deposits) and complicate the winding down of a bank across borders”.

Credit swap derivatives were forced upon the central banks by the big boys in the banking industry at Basel. The elite bankers are counting on the fact that desperate economic times will lead to an economic collapse forcing nation states, on behalf of their crumbling central banks to go to war. Emerging from this devastating war would consist of a set of circumstances involving the wiping out of nation states and their economies and the elite would have the opportunity to create “order out of chaos” and they would subsequently unify the planet under one economic and political system once and for all.

The derivatives debt, for the United States alone is estimated to be about $1.3 quadrillion dollars. This is staggering considering the fact the entire GDP of the planet is only estimated to be about $69 trillion dollars. Derivatives in their present form will crush the central banks and bring about their downfall along with the death of their respective national economies The bankers from Basel are counting on this demise. However, if the banking system could be collapsed to such a degree that many records are eviscerated, it would be difficult for the central banks such as the Federal Reserve to be held accountable for the entire derivatives debt owed by banks in their system (e.g. Wells Fargo, Bank of America). Also, if the central banks cannot rid themselves of the derivatives debt, they could at least manipulate the system to pay down the derivatives debt with “other people’s money (OPM)”. Other people’s money would include your bank account and my bank account which will be seized and used to pay down a sizable portion of the derivatives debt.

There is now a strong likelihood that the “hackers” being recruited are the manifestation of this drill. And before on can dismiss this as only a theory, it is important to look at what transpired at the recent G20 conference in Brisbane, Australia.

Your Bank Account Was Stolen by Stealth

As of November 16, 2014, your bank account has been collateralized against the derivatives debt. Hence, you had, in 2008, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and the Secretary of Treasury, Hank Paulson, telling a closed session of Congress that if they did not authorize the bailouts, there would be tanks in the street in an ultimately, REVOLUTION! This was necessitated by the credit swap derivatives Ponzi scheme and the debacle that followed.

Further, the bankruptcy reform laws stemming from the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, the credit swap derivatives counter-parties are given preference over all other creditors and customers of the bankrupt financial institution, including FDIC insured depositors.  This is why the G20 effectively stole your money on the morning of November 16th! On this action taken by the G20 nations, your bank account is no longer considered to be money. The bankers holding the bag on the credit swap derivatives will move to the head of the FDIC compensation line. In other words, if the banks are collapsed, your money will be used to pay down the derivatives debt. Therefore, the regulations requiring that your money be insured by the FDIC are no longer in effect! This devaluation of “money to something other than money gives what the experts call “super priority” in terms of the line of succession from which to collect bankruptcy monies.

Subsequently, on the morning of November 16, 2014, the G20 fulfilled the mandates of a new investment program. This new program creates a whole new paradigm and set of rules whereby banks will no longer recognize your deposits as money.

Russell Napier is declaring November 16th as “the day money died,” and this constitutes today’s  Zero Hedge’s headline. According to Zero Hedge, Napier says the G-20 will announce “that bank deposits are just part of commercial banks’capital structure, and also that they are far from the most senior portion of that structure.” Pay close attention America this means that following a bank failure, “a bank deposit is no longer money in the way a banknote is.”

I saw this coming over 18 months ago. This is why for the past 18 months I have been telling the nation to not deposit your paycheck into the bank. The prudent thing to do is to only put enough money in the bank to pay your basic bills and do other things with the remainder of the money, such as pay off your mortgage or pay off your car loans. If you have not been doing this, then you are almost out of time for the banksters have recently practiced how to steal your bank account.

TAKE THE MAJORITY OF YOUR MONEY OUT OF THE BANK! But do not do so until you read my next article because you could go to jail if you make a mistake.

Connecting Dots

Jade Helm 15 is being run by Joint Special Operation Forces. the stories of Special Forces recruiting hackers to perpetrate cyber attacks upon the banks speaks to the fact that JH 15 is, in part, designed to collapse the banks, create an economic crisis from which martial law could be justified.

Back in October of 2013, FEMA and DHS conducted a pair of cyber attack drills upon the banks in a drill called “Quantum Dawn 2″.  More Than 1,000 Banks participated in the National Cyber-Attack Drill Oct. 16-17, Oct. 23-24, 2013.

Conclusion

My sources tell me that only 1-2% of the banks have to fail in this country in order to set off a domino effect of catastrophic economic effects. Therefore, the number needed hackers needed to collapse the system is not a staggering number.

Among the first effects that would be experienced would be the transporting of our food supply which operates on a razor thin margin supported by “Just in Time” deliveries to grocery stores. Any disruption the ability to monetize the process of food transport could be prove catastrophic. If this scenario resulted in food shortages and ensuing food riots, then surely, Jade Helm 15 would go live along with the martial law aspect of its mandate. In this light, Paul Martin’s report is completely believable and the longer you leave the bulk of your money in the bank, the greater the likelihood that you will lose everything you have worked for.

Credit to Common Sense

Alien DNA and Government Programs

NATO Conducts First Test Of "Russia Rapid Response Force"

As Russia decries Washington’s “anti-Russian” foreign policy and alleged efforts by the US to undermine the global nuclear power balance — and as Congress and NATO do their best to confirm Moscow’s fears by voting to provide lethal aid to Kiev and by conducting military exercises along the Russian border, respectively —NATO is now set to test a new “Very High Readiness Joint Task Force,” which will see soldiers from the Czech army ready for deployment within two days. The latest NATO sabre rattling also involves German and Dutch forces and, as AP reports, is set to ramp up in the coming months:

NATO is completing a first testing of its new force created to face new challenges from Russia.

Some 150 soldiers from the Czech army's 43rd airborne battalion have been training to be ready for deployment within 48 hours "as NATO reevaluates the risks," Maj. Gen. Jiri Baloun said Thursday. The previous NATO standard times for that were between 10 and 80 days, Baloun said.

In the Netherlands, 900 German and 200 Dutch soldiers have been doing the same. The units will be moved for further trials to Poland in June while some 25,000 NATO troops will complete the exercise of the new force in Italy, Portugal and Spain in October and November.

The units belong to NATO's new Very High Readiness Joint Task Force.

And here’s what NATO itself has to say about the endeavor:

NATO completed the first military drills for its new rapid reaction force, on Thursday (9 April 2015). From Tuesday (7 April 2015) through Thursday, more than 1,500 troops took part in exercise “Noble Jump,” designed to test whether troops assigned to NATO’s new Spearhead Force, or Very High Joint Readiness Task Force, could be ready to deploy 48 hours after receiving an order-to-move.

Across Europe, headquarters personnel from Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Norway, Slovenia, Poland and Portugal tested their responses to NATO alert orders.  In the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, troops and equipment were assembled quickly at airfields and railway stations as if they were about to depart.  The units involved in this week’s exercise will also be involved in further trials in Poland in June.

“NATO military planners have been working tirelessly to enhance NATO’s Response Force and implement the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, and today our progress is manifested in the rapid deployments we see happening in locations across the Alliance,” said General Philip Breedlove, Supreme Allied Commander Europe.  “These measures are defensive, but are a clear indication that our Alliance has the capability and will to respond to emerging security challenges on our southern and eastern flanks,” he said.

In response to the changed security environment in Europe, NATO leaders at the Wales Summit decided to create a new quick reaction military force designed to respond swiftly to new challenges on the Alliance’s southern and eastern borders. The high readiness force will include about 5,000 land troops, with supporting maritime, special operations and air units. Lead elements of the new force will be able to move in as little as 48 hours. The Spearhead Force is part of the Alliance’s larger NATO Response Force, which is being increased to a force level of around 30,000 troops.

So ultimately, this is an effort to show the Kremlin just how quickly NATO can have soldiers at the ready should Russia decide to demonstrate an intolerable amount of “aggression” in the Baltics. It turns out the answer is “in about 48 hours,” proving yet again that today’s geopolitical landscape is becoming ever more perilous on an almost daily basis. 

Meanwhile, the Kremlin is warning NATO against efforts to train the Ukrainian national guard. From RT:

Moscow is urging the removal of all foreign military formations from Ukraine, including the instructors from the United States and NATO, Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said in an interview with the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily.

“We know that hundreds of US and NATO servicemen are planning to come to Ukraine to train the National Guard. The training camps are being set up not only in western Ukraine, but also in other parts of the country. This is a dangerous process. We would push for all foreign and illegal military units to be removed from Ukraine,” Karasin said.

More color from NewsWeek on NATO's rapid deployment exercises:

"We are able to get everybody processed and supplied to be on the airplane within 48 hours," said Captain Rob Morsink, from the Dutch 11th Air Manoeuvre Brigade. "We basically confirmed that that's not an issue at all."

"We have 900 German troops being recalled to four garrisons right now and checking their ability to deploy," said Polish Colonel Mariusz Lewicki, a top NATO military planner.

After being given notice to deploy on Tuesday, the Dutch and Czech units recalled their soldiers to base and had the lead troops ready to move in as little as eight hours, Lewicki said.

Surprised by the speed of Russia's military intervention in Crimea last year, NATO leaders have approved wide-ranging plans to boost the alliance's defenses in eastern Europe and create a new "spearhead" rapid reaction force with 5,000 soldiers.

Credit to Zero Hedge

"Blood Rain" Expected In Britain...

California's historic thousand-year drought

On a warm March afternoon, farmer Cannon Michael walks alongside wheat fields adjacent to his house in Los Banos, in California's Central Valley. Most of these fields won't be watered again this year.

"Wheat's not a glamorous crop, but it makes a lot of bread," Michael quips.

This wheat, though, won't return much money, Michael says. So it will be harvested for his sister's two bakeries in San Francisco and the land fallowed, along with some fields formerly planted in alfalfa and cotton. They are among more than 1,000 acres Michael left unplanted this season to try and conserve water, amounting to about 10 percent of the 10,500 irrigated acres that make up his farm, Bowles Farming Company.

Walking past the fields with his wife, Heidi, and their three young sons to a nearby barn with goats and sheep, Michael jokes about an imaginary Taylor Swift song called, "Sheep It Off," much to his kids' dismay.

Michael has a humorous side, but laughter can't mask the rough reality of farming today in the Central Valley, a place famed for its abundant bounty of fruits and vegetables.

By the spring of 2014, the region's farmers had gone into survival mode. They hoped to secure enough water for a decent harvest, but last summer about 15,000 farmers on San Joaquin Valley's east side received zero allocations of water from the Central Valley Project, the federal project in charge of storing and managing much of California's water. The state's worst drought in 1,200 years ravaged the region.

The drought, in combination with this long-established government system for deciding who gets water and who does not, has split the valley. Now Michael's life, it seems, is almost exclusively focused on finding ways to conserve water and helping his neighbors who lack the precious resource.

There's no time to waste. If Michael and his peers can't figure out a way to conserve and share the water that remains, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions will be jeopardized. California agriculture is a $46 billion industry, and the Central Valley alone produces nearly half of the United States' vegetables, fruits and nuts in its Class 1 soil — the highest quality.

National Drought Mitigation Center and Business InsiderDrought conditions are getting worse and worse in California.


The Headwaters

Water here has always been in relatively short supply. Head west of the 100th meridian in the United States and rainfall becomes less prevalent, making irrigation necessary for cultivating crops. Aridity varies even within California, with most precipitation happening in the north and most agriculture in the south.

To bring the water south, the federal government authorized the Central Valley Project in 1935. The project involved the construction of dams, reservoirs, canals, conduits and tunnels that make it possible to transport water from the state's largest reservoir, the now shrinking Shasta Lake in northern California, south about 450 miles to Bakersfield. There, the water is allocated to customers for various uses, including to irrigate about 3 million acres of farmland — about 38 percent of the state's 7.9 million acres of irrigated farmland.

The Central Valley Project is one of California's two largest water projects. The other, the State Water Project, began in the late 1950s and now supplies water from northern state rivers for 750,000 acres of irrigated farmland and 25 million residents in the south. Most farmers contract to receive a specific amount of water from one of these two projects, but the byzantine system of allocations means that some farmers are at the front of the line for water, while others stand much further back. In a time of drought, a lack of access to this water can be fatal.
A Friendly Deal

When his neighbors on the east side of the valley were struggling last spring, Michael saw frustration and heartbreak all around him. Workers were laid off, land for row crops fallowed and high-profit almond orchards ripped out because they were too water thirsty. Water traded hands on the open market at rates much higher than usual. These were his friends and colleagues, and the men and women responsible for supplying much of the country's tomatoes, carrots, grapes, apricots, and asparagus and 80 percent of the world's almonds.

In response, Michael and some of his peers who had water did something unprecedented: They implemented conservation measures and fallowed land early in last year's season to make 13,500 acre-feet (4.4 billion gallons) of water, from a reservoir known as Millerton Lake, available to east-side farmers who had been cut off. And they did so at an affordable price.

This was the first time in Bowles' history the company — along with other west-side farmers — exercised its rights to take their allotment from Millerton Lake. Michael says he didn't want to put a call on his historic water source, but felt he had no choice. He wanted to find a way to help his east-side neighbors by fallowing land and putting some extra water back on the market for junior users.

"You can't survive on zero allocations," Michael says. "It's not going to work."

ReutersThe bottom of the Almaden Reservoir near San Jose, California, January 2014.

While water sales, or "transfers," occur regularly each year, shifting surface water to farmers in need, the process is not as simple as it might appear due to California's complicated dual water system. Just who gets surface water, how much and in what order is determined by that system, which incorporates both riparian rights (access for those adjacent to waterways) and prior appropriation, which gives senior rights to those who first diverted water for beneficial use. Meanwhile, to get a groundwater right, for the most part a user need only drill a well.

The Water Commission Act of 1914 established today's permit process for surface water and the agency — now the State Water Resources Control Board — to administer it. Farmers with junior rights need a permit; those, like Michael, with pre-1914 rights — senior rights — don't.

What made last year's transfer different from a typical water deal is that the senior appropriators priced water at $250 per acre-foot, while other sales at the time priced water between $1,000 and $2,000 per acre-foot. Had they sold at the higher price, the senior appropriators could have made $27 million, according to a local news report.

"We saw an opportunity to transfer some water to our neighbors who were struggling," Michael says.

Chris Hurd, a fourth-generation farmer with junior rights in the San Joaquin Valley with 1,500 acres — row crops, almonds and pistachios — says he doesn't begrudge senior appropriators for exercising their right last year. Though Hurd wasn't a recipient of last year's transfer, he commends what his fellow farmers did, while acknowledging they were privileged enough to make that move.

"Cannon is a friend and a great farmer, but his world is considerably different than mine because of senior water rights," Hurd says.

While Michael thinks it's too soon to say whether another transfer can happen this year, Hurd says there's not even enough water in the system to move around. The 33-year-veteran farmer doesn't know what will happen to his business in the coming years. But the outlook isn't good. Though he has transitioned his farm to 100 percent drip irrigation, he removed 120 acres of almonds from production last year and may soon fallow another 80 acres.

"[The drought] is not easy," he says. "It's very complex, it's very emotional, and I just say a little prayer for my grandkids that they get to farm one day."

Tim Reed, USGS California Water Science Center Supervisory Hydrologist taken February 4, 2014.Trinity Lake, a major water reservoir.


Credit to Business Insider
Read more: http://ensia.com/features/how-one-california-farmer-is-battling-the-worst-drought-in-1200-years/#ixzz3WrJbHtnL

40 JIHADIS WHO JOINED ISIS RETURN TO U.S.

Dozens of American jihadis who fought in the war in Iraq and Syria have returned to the United States equipped with the training they used fighting either for or against ISIS, according to one federal official.

And their activities are being monitored.

Or not.

“You can’t know everything,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a recent interview.

It was in a televised chat with Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” that he admitted there may not be as much oversight of those who trained and fought with terrorists as some people would like.

Stahl asked: “As I understand it, of the 180 Americans who have gone overseas to fight in Iraq and Syria, 40 have come back. I assume you’re keeping close tabs on those 40?”

Read “ISIS Rising: Prelude to a neo-Ottoman Caliphate” to find out what the terror camp leaders really want to do.

Said Johnson: “We have in fact kept close tabs on those who we believe have left and those who’ve come back. A number have been arrested or investigated and we have systems in place to track these individuals.

“But you can’t know everything.”

See the exchange:

At Right Wing News, Warner Todd Huston commented, “So, Obama has now admitted that he has allowed domestic terrorists to run free inside the U.S., people who have already proved they are foreign fighters who have taken up arms against everything in which we believe!”

He cited Johnson’s comment and added, “In other words, DHS knows nothing and they probably just let 40 more Tsarnaev brothers to roam across the USA free as they please.”

At the Western Journalism Center, James Beattie reported that James Clapper, the U.S. National Intelligence director, referred to the returning jihadis last month.

And Western Journalism reported, “Clapper was not the first U.S. official to make the statement, however. Former Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., confirmed what Stahl asked Johnson about during a speech last September.

“One of the concerns is the number of U.S. citizens who have left our country to go join up with ISIS,” Bishop said. “It is believed there have been some number up to 100 that have done that. It is also believed that some 40 of those who left this country to join up with ISIS have now returned to our country.”

It was reported only weeks ago that a group affiliated with ISIS had released a list of addresses that belong to 100 U.S. military service members.

The list of locations was accompanied by a call for their beheadings.

At about that same time came a report that Egypt was warning it had intelligence that a jihadist group is planning a worldwide offensive this spring or summer that could reach targets within the U.S.

Interrogations of ISIS members captured in recent weeks in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and information collected by Egyptian security forces indicate ISIS is planning ground offensives this spring and summer aimed at taking over more territory across the Middle East and Persian Gulf, a senior Egyptian intelligence official told WND.

Some of the information indicates the new offensive will not be limited to the Arab world. Timed to coincide with its planned surge, ISIS is plotting possible attacks using cells abroad.

ISIS and its jihadist allies could activate cells to carry attacks in Europe and possibly within the U.S., the senior Egyptian official warned.

The official advocated the deployment of significant ground troops acting on multiple fronts to stop ISIS’ progression. He complained the Obama administration and international community has been hesitant to take major action against ISIS advances.

There have been numerous claims of ISIS cells embedded in the U.S.

Recently, Michael Steinbach, head of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, was asked by CNN whether or not there are ISIS cells in the U.S.

Steinbach said there are “individuals that have been in communication with groups like [ISIS] who have a desire to conduct an attack,” and those people are living in the U.S. right now.

He conceded the FBI finds it extremely difficult to track every American traveling abroad who can join ISIS or receive training by foreign terrorist organizations.

“I’m worried about individuals that we don’t know about that have training,” Steinbach said. “We know what we know. But there is a number that’s greater than that that we don’t know.”

“Once you get to Europe, you can easily get down to Turkey and into Syria,” he noted.

WND also reported the FBI is opening up cases of suspects who may be tied to ISIS in 49 states.

“We are focused keenly on who would be looking to travel to join this band of murderers who will have come back from Iraq and Syria and to the United States,” said FBI Director James Comey in a speech to law enforcement officers in Mississippi.

“We have opened cases all over the place focused on this threat, so it is not … a Washington thing – it is something we focus on throughout the FBI,” Comey said.

Credit to WND
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/40-jihadis-who-joined-isis-back-in-u-s/#szQoPTY71tbqrdoL.99