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American Thinker – by Daren Jonescu
See also Part One: Total Destruction of the U.S.: An Interview with Larry Grathwohl and Part Two: American Education: Rotting the Country from the Inside
In Part 1 of this interview with former FBI operative Larry Grathwohl, we addressed the goals and methods of the Weatherman organization and debunked recent attempts to dismiss their words and activities as "youthful folly" or "typical of those days." In Part 2, we discussed the continuity of purpose connecting the murderous radicalism of the Weather Underground leadership with theprogressive education and social justice advocacy of the "mature," "respectable" Ayers, Dohrn, Machtinger, Boudin, and others.
Here in the final installment, I ask Grathwohl about the alarming cognitive dissonance of today's Middle America in the throes of the "fundamental transformation" promised by Barack Obama, facilitated by the progressive education and legal establishments, and put into practice by federal agency appointees, colleges of education, union leaders, and bureaucrats with established leftist pedigrees.
As an example of this dissonance, consider an American colleague of mine here in Korea: a friendly, down-to-earth, educated family man in his early thirties, and a teacher by profession. On the eve of the 2012 election, I asked him whether it bothered him that Barack Obama had been so strongly endorsed by the Communist Party. He said he had never heard of that. When I explained that the Party's official endorsement cited Obama's signature policy initiatives as the surest means to achieving socialism in America, and that CPUSA leaders were actively campaigning for Obama in swing states, my colleague fell silent for a moment, and then said, matter-of-factly, "It doesn't really bother me; I guess it might bother me if Obama were endorsing the Communist Party, but ifthey're endorsing him, it doesn't matter."
I leave you with that thought, by way of introduction to Part 3 of my conversation with Larry Grathwohl.
DJ: The Communist Party USA has officially endorsed and vocally supported President Obama, and his administration has included several people with well-known Marxist or Maoist views and affiliations. And yet most people, including many so-called conservatives, shy away from this entire subject area, and they practically run for the hills when anyone mentions Bill Ayers, re-education camps, or communism in connection with current political events.
Why do you think there is such discomfort among Americans, including supposed conservatives, when confronted with this issue?
LG: To answer this question in a word, I would say "political correctness." Today we live in a world where people are afraid to discuss issues of importance due to a concern that they might say something wrong. We have a society where people can be condemned for being on the wrong side of an issue, especially if you're in a position where you could be labeled as a racist or an individual who has no sensitivity towards those who are in some way in need. Today, [concern about] Marxism is out of vogue, and the Chinese are our friends and are lending us money in order for our government to continue to exist. How can you question this? Conservatives are afraid of being labeled as mean or uncaring and want to maintain a civil image in the midst of this chaos and confusion. Senator McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign refused to confront Barack Obama regarding his ties to Bill Ayers the unrepentant terrorist. When others brought up the possibility of Obama's connection to the Muslim world, McCain became angry and turned away. By doing so, he negated any possibility of forcing the two-year member of the Senate to explain his sympathetic positions towards Islamic terrorism and the domestic terrorism that his friend Bill Ayers had participated in [during] the '70s and the '80s.
Basically, this is the problem we face today. If you criticize the president for any of his policies, you are racist, and your argument ends. There aren't defenses for these kinds of accusations, and it completely eliminates any possibility of discussion and compromise. This works wonderfully for the Democrats and their policies, and it puts the Republicans and conservatives in very un-defensible positions. The bravery or whatever you care to call it simply no longer exists [when] people who are involved in the political process are more concerned with the next election than they are with what's best and right for America. I often wonder what would've happened during the Revolutionary War if people of this stature were to be the ones we were dependent upon to defeat the British. I wonder if this tendency can be overcome or eliminated.
DJ: How frustrating is it for you, having seen what you have seen, to encounter this kind of reluctance from people who should be your allies?
LG: While I do have some allies, which includes those who have the courage to speak the truth and to stand up for what's right, the fact is that it is extremely frustrating that people are simply unable to recognize the truth when it is presented to them along with the evidence which exists in the WU's activities, writings, and continued attack on our institutions. As for me, the frustration is simply a greater motivation to accomplish my mission of enlightening people as to the true goals and objectives of the WU and the means that they used in their attempt to achieve the destruction of the United States.
DJ: Many people dispute President Obama's claim that Bill Ayers was just "a guy in my neighborhood." And Ayers himself has spoken of being ecstatic when Obama was elected in 2008. What connection or consistency do you see between the goals and/or methods pursued or promoted by the WU and those pursued and promoted by the Obama administration?
LG: The goals and objectives of these two individuals are the same. Bill Ayers tried first to destroy this country through violence. Having failed, the WU determined to accomplish this through the system and in my opinion Barack Obama was recruited as a means to accomplish this goal. …
The connections between Barack and Bill include having shared an office for at least three years in Chicago, being co-members on two boards in which Barack was the chairman, and one of which was called the Annenberg Challenge[, which] was charged with the dissemination of approximately $100 million to educational institutions in the Chicago area. Bill Ayers has been associatedwith the writing of Barack's book, Dreams from My Father, through content analysis, and on three occasions Bill has admitted that he wrote this book and then later retracted his comments. It would seem apparent to me that individuals who have been this closely associated through many years have a common knowledge [of] one another's political aims and goals. This can only mean that they are in agreement, and while Bill has utilized the educational system to further his objective, Barack Obama has chosen politics. Keep in mind that Barack Obama's first political fundraiser was held at Bill's and Bernardine's home while Barack was running for the Illinois state legislature. This is his first fundraiser, and Bill and Bernardine are involved — can there be any doubt as to the extent of the relationship that exists between these individuals?
Obama is in the process of attacking all institutions of our society and government, [including] the First Amendment by stating that it's the conservative media that keeps the Republicans from negotiating with him; the Second Amendment [through] his attempts to impose restrictions on gun ownership, procurement of ammunition, and whatever other means he can devise; and lastly, there is his attack on the freedom of religion by trying to impose birth control and abortion under the Obama health care act on churches who run such institutions as hospitals, schools, rests homes, and other services.
DJ: You have spent a good portion of your life trying to warn Americans about the specific intentions of the young leftist radicals of the late 1960s. How do you answer people who might say that those leftists are older now, their radical days are in the past, and there is no longer anything to worry about from them?
LG: The fact is, Bill Ayers and many of his comrades from those days of strategic sabotage in the underground movement have not changed their goal or their purpose. Bill has made this very clear in his book, Fugitive Days, in which he makes no apology for the death and destruction the WU were responsible for and even seems to revel in what he perceives as the glory of the revolution. In his book Underground, Mark Rudd also makes no apologies for his activities and even admits prior knowledge to the bomb factory in Greenwich Village in which three members of the WU were killed. He states that Terry Robbins had told him of the purpose of their bomb creations and that they were to be used at Fort Dix, New Jersey during an enlisted men's dance and at the officers' club. These bombs were adulterated with fence staples and roofing nails, whose purpose can only be to inflict as much death and injury as possible. There are many other individuals from the WU who have written books and also regret only that they did not succeed or that they didn't do enough. Some individuals were involved in a Brinks armored car robbery during which two policemen and a Brinks guard were killed. Kathy Boudin is no longer behind bars, but her husband, accomplice David Gilbert, is still in jail and writing books about love and the revolution and has many supporters [who are] trying to get him released to this very day.
It simply cannot be said that these people have allowed the last three or four decades to change their political beliefs or political goals. Instead, they have been involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement and the encouragement of young people to defy authority and to create as much chaos and turmoil as possible. Bill has actually attended Occupy meetings during which he instructed individuals on how to accomplish the most destruction of property and confrontation with authority and in a way that makes it appear as if they are the victims. This I know for a fact, as people who are friendly to me and have attended some of these meetings have reported these facts.
Van Jones, who was appointed as the green jobs czar by President Obama, is very active [in the] political movement in the Bay Area, particularly in Oakland and Berkeley. He has associations with Bill Ayers and has attended Occupy meetings in which they were both in attendance.
It is simply impossible to conclude that any of these people have in any way, shape, or form been influenced to change their political beliefs or their goal and objectives by the passage of time. They still believe that the United States is the root of all evil and must be destroyed, whatever it takes. Innocent lives or genuine disagreement is not a qualification for being spared, and it is my belief that Bill and people who follow Bill are consumed with this hatred for this country and a desire to be in control of life and death, and this may be the underlying reason for the personality disorders they obviously suffer from.
Author's concluding note: Larry Grathwohl provides powerful witness to the hatred the Weathermen bear for the United States as founded, and their utter disregard for human life in pursuing their transformative agenda. I do not believe that Grathwohl's perspective is infallible any more than I believe that of anyone else. I do believe, however, that he speaks sincerely, and from a deep understanding of the minds and hearts of the Weather Underground radicals.
Rational observers know that Ayers's relationship with Obama is much more developed than either man has publicly acknowledged. And it is undeniable that these two progressive "reformers" have achieved a degree of mainstream success and influence in their respective fields of endeavor, education, and politics that would have been inconceivable a hundred years ago, when Ayers's educational role model, John Dewey, was beginning progressivism's long march through the souls of America's children. A century of progressive schooling made Barack Obama's presidency possible. In turn, with a president openly bent on transforming America according to a collectivist "social justice" agenda, public education itself, under the leadership of Ayers and his colleagues, may reveal itself ever more fully as the socialist indoctrination center Dewey could only dream and scheme of.
As Grathwohl warns, Ayers is urging followers to see that they are "very close to accomplishing their mission of changing America forever." The circle envisioned by early Western progressive intellectuals such as Antonio Gramsci is almost complete: government schools prepare the souls of men for subservience and dependency, and the progressive intelligentsia churn out attractive demagogues to appeal to this forcibly debased population's need for a provider. Eventually, all that is preserved of the history of modern liberty will be the veneer of democracy masking the tyrannical structure beneath, as an emasculated humanity "freely chooses" its own slave masters.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/the_endgame_for_the_destruction_of_the_united_states.html#ixzz2LXl0iXZ0
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Tired of smiling and nodding along while your electrical engineering buddies debate the finer points of electromagnetic theory? If you're taking a critical eye to the definitive guide to batteries, you've got to understand what electricity is to begin with. Here's a crash course on the fundamental force that's driving our digital revolution.
Electricity is a manifestation of the electromagnetic force...
For the countless permutations of matter and the infinite variety of ways it can behave, all of creation is governed by a quartet of fundamental forces. We hardly notice the Strong Nuclear force, which binds quarks together into neutrons, or the Weak Nuclear force, which accounts for many forms of radioactive decay, because they operate on the subatomic level. On the macro scale, conversely, we can easily appreciate the effects of Gravity every time we step out of doors and are not flung off the surface of the Earth, but other than keeping us grounded, it doesn't do a whole lot. Electromagnetism, also known as quantum electrodynamics, is the driving force of the world as we know it. Responsible for the bonds that weld individual atoms together into molecules, virtually every physical phenomenon we can sense without technological aids, be it from heat from a fire or light from the sun—not to mention all of chemistry—can be attributed to the Electromagnetic force.
...that results from the movement of charged particles through a conductive material.
Electromagnetism exists as either a magnetic or an electrical field and relies on another intrinsic property of atoms—their electrical charge. Charge, both the positive and the negative varieties, is a property of subatomic particles such as protons and electrons. It exists in discrete units, like photons, and is measured in Coulombs (that's the amount of charge moved by one ampere in once second).
The property of electromagnetism also determines whether particles exhibit electrostatic attraction or repulsion—similar charges repel one another, opposite charges attract one another. The strength of this attraction is governed by Coulomb's Law, which states that electrostatic force between two particles is proportional to the product of their charges, and inversely proportional to the square of their distance from one another.
The volume of electrical current is measured in Couloumbs...
Normally, an atom contains the same number of positively-charged protons in its nucleus as has negatively-charged electrons orbiting it. This results in a stable and neutral net charge of 0. However, if a few electrons were to be dislodged from their respective atoms via chemical reactions, these subatomic particles will drift a short distance and resettle on nearby atoms that are themselves short an electron. Now if a large contingency of electrons happen to flow through, say, a metal wire, well you've got yourself an electric current.
...its magnitude is measured in Amperes...
An electric current is a movement of electric charge. The magnitude of flowing current is measured in amperes, and amperes are calculated by timing how long it takes one coulomb of electrons to pass a set point in an electric circuit. One coulomb of electrons (6.241 × 1018) per second makes one ampere.
Now, the direction of this flow is a little tricky to understand, since an electric circuit technically has two currents—negative charge moving in one direction and an equal, positive charge moving in the other. For simplicity, scientific tradition arbitrarily dictates that a "conventional" current flows in the same direction as the positive charge—opposite that of the electrons—towards the most negative part of the circuit, the ground. However, since the flow of positive charge in one direction forces negative charge to flow in the other direction, the circuit just operates normally.
...and its pressure is measured in Volts.
There are two types of current. Direct current, borne from Thomas Edison's workshop, always flows unidirectionally from the power source to the ground. Alternating current, the brainchild of Nikola Tesla, regularly reverses the direction of its flow over time. While DC currents can be transformed into AC using an inverter and the process can be reversed with the help of a rectifier, their unique flow properties make AC and DC currents useful on very different scales.
DC's steady unidirectional current is very handy over the short distances of circuits, electric vehicles, and renewable resources such as solar cells. But it cannot easily step its voltage up or down like AC can. In a DC power transmission system, the 100V created by a distant power plant and distributed across the power grid will be the same 100V coursing through your house. This is massively inefficient over any appreciable difference because resistance grows within great lengths of transmission wires. That means much of the electrical load is lost as waste heat. As such, DC power plants would need to be built close to the communities they serve in order to be economically feasible.
In an AC power transmission system, however, the high-voltage current passing through transmission lines is stepped down to as little as a tenth of the original with the help of transformers and then rectified to DC for use in the home. This allows customers to run devices on much smaller, safer voltages and allows power plants to be located further away from customers while transmitting power without nearly as much of it lost to waste heat.
The shortcomings of DC power over long distances is due to a pair of electrical forces—voltage and resistance. Voltage, measured in volts, is defined as "the practical meter-kilogram-second unit of electrical potential difference and electromotive force equal to the difference of potential between two points in a conducting wire carrying a constant current of one ampere when the power dissipated between these two points is equal to one watt and equivalent to the potential difference across a resistance of one ohm when one ampere is flowing through it." In English, that means voltage measures the electric potential difference between two points—essentially, the amount of work or total energy needed to push one ampere of power between between them, divided by the magnitude of the charge. It can be thought of as the amount of electrical pressure, or tension, on the transmission line.
Resistance, on the other hand, determines how hard a current will have to work to move through a line—think of it as electrical friction—and is measured in ohms. One ohm is equivalent to the resistance generated within a circuit where one volt of potential difference produces one ampere of current. Every material known to science has some degree of resistance—save of course for super-conducting materials. Longer lines exhibit higher resistance while wider ones are less resistive—just as water flows more easily through wider pipes, so does electricity.
[Wikipedia - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 - l'Académie royale des Sciences (Institut de France) - Merriam Webster 1, 2 - NIST - Wolfram - Britannica 1, 2 - Image: Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock]

subset: commoncrawl


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DOWAGIAC, Mich — Cardboard cutout wedding guests will make for a not-so-cookie-cutter wedding as a Michigan couple prepares to tie the knot during the coronavirus pandemic.
After Amy Simonson and Dan Stuglik's wedding plans were disrupted amid the outbreak, a packaging company donated more than 100 cardboard cutouts to pose as stand-ins for the family and friends who couldn't attend the wedding this Saturday because of Michigan's stay-at-home order.
RELATED: 'Our friends thought it was an April Fool's joke' | Illinois couple marries despite pandemic
Menasha Packaging Co. in Coloma made cutouts to resemble guests tall and short, young and old, with long hair, short hair and ponytails.
"(Stuglik) was just looking for a general person shape, but I was able to make a little bit more realistic audience for them," Ted Harris, customer service and design manager at Menasha, told The Herald-Palladium.
Stuglik, a Coloma Township police officer, said he'll forever be thankful to Menasha for helping him do something special for his fiancée.
"I wanted to do something (creative) so she wouldn't walk down the aisle to an empty church," he said. "That was a painful part, that her wedding was being stripped away from her, but Menasha helped bring a little back."


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Goatleaf Family
From Tolkien Gateway
The Goatleaf Family was a family of the Men of Bree.[1] As was typical among the Men of that region, the name comes from a plant.
Harry Goatleaf at one time watched the West-gate of Bree, but threw in his lot with Bill Ferny and Saruman's thugs during the War of the Ring.[2]
Etymology[edit | edit source]
It is linked to honeysuckle or woodbine. Its French name, chèvrefeuille is also a medieval lay, and would therefore presumably have been familiar to Tolkien.[3]
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, "Homeward Bound"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, "Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings" in Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, p. 758


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Earth's continents are constantly changing, moving and rearranging themselves over millions of years - affecting Earth's climate and biology. Every few hundred million years, the continents combine to create massive, world-spanning supercontinents. Here's the past and future of Earth's supercontinets.
The Basics of Plate Tectonics
If we're going to discuss past and future supercontinents, we first need to understand how landmasses can move around and the continents can take on new configurations. Let's start with the basics - rocky planets like Earth have five interior levels: heading outwards, these are the inner core, outer core, mantle, upper mantle, and the crust.
The crust and the part of the upper mantle form the lithosphere, a portion of our planet that is basically rigid, solid rock and runs to about 100 kilometers below the planet's surface. Below that is the asthenosphere, which is hot enough that its rocks are more flexible and ductile than those above it. The lithosphere is divided into roughly two dozen major and minor plates, and these plates move very slowly over the almost fluid-like asthenosphere.
There are two types of crust: oceanic crust and continental crust. Predictably enough, oceanic crust makes up the ocean beds and are much thinner than their continental counterparts. Plates can be made up of either oceanic or continental crust, or just as often some combination of the two. There are a variety of forces pushing and pulling the plates in various directions, and indeed that's what keeps Earth's crust from being one solid landmass - the interaction of lithosphere and asthenosphere keeps tearing landmasses apart, albeit very, very slowly.
When Plates Meet
The diagram below gives you a good idea of the different ways that plates can interact at the boundaries between them. There are convergent boundaries, in which two plates smash into each other. Two possible things can happen here - either one plate slips underneath the other and is subsumed and destroyed in the furnace of Earth's mantle, or the two plates collide and force up huge mountain ranges. These collisions are also often responsible for volcanism.
There can also be transform boundaries, where the two plates move in parallel, glancing off of each other with not much more than some scrapes. Of course, those scrapes become something much more severe when translated to human terms - one of the most famous examples of a transform boundary is California's San Andreas fault, responsible for some of the most devastating earthquakes in American history.
Finally, there are divergent boundaries, in which two plates slide away from each other. These are far more mild in their effects, and such boundaries have created places like Africa's Great Rift Valley and various giant ocean ridges like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
It's absolutely crucial to remember that all of this happens incredibly slowly, and that it takes many millions of years for any effects to be actually observable. At their absolute quickest, plates only move about 160 millimeters per year, and most only go about 10 to 40 millimeters per year. To get some idea of how slow that really is, let your hair and fingernails grow uncut for an entire year. Your fingernail growth represents the slower pace of plate movement, while your hair growth is the same as the absolute greatest distance any plate has traveled in the last year.
Defining a Supercontinent
There are only so many directions in which the various plates can move, and it's only a matter of time before the continents smash together to form a single supercontinent. Right now, we're probably a little past halfway through the current supercontinent cycle, with the last supercontinent Pangaea having formed about 300 million years ago and the next supercontinent due in (very) roughly 250 million years.
We need to be careful with our terminology here. Continent itself isn't a well-defined term - just look at how nobody knows whether the continent in the south Pacific Ocean should be called Australia or Oceania to see how tricky these things are to define - and the term supercontinent can be applied to any unusually large landmass.
Indeed, the landmass consisting of Europe, Asia, and Africa is definitely a supercontinent, the Americas arguably count as well, and we're one submerged land bridge in the Bering Strait away from linking up all five anyway. So, for the sake of simplicity, we'll restrict the term "supercontinent" to only those that pretty much comprised all the landmasses on Earth at a given period.
The Current Cycle
The most recent supercontinent, and the only one most people are familiar with, is Pangaea, which dominated Earth from about 300 to 150 million years ago. There are a few ways we know of its existence. There's the fact that species from this time showed relatively little diversity, no matter how far apart they were geographically, which indicates they weren't isolated from one another by oceans.
The geology of various modern continents also indicate how they used to be connected to each other. You only have to glance at a map to see how eastern South America and western Africa fit rather neatly together, and geological research has revealed these areas still share some key features that prove their one-time connection.
Pangaea gets remembered because it's the most recent supercontinent, and because its later days overlap with the birth of the dinosaurs in the late Triassic and early Jurassic. Geologically speaking, it's easy to look at Pangaea as a counterpart of sorts to the seven continents we live on today, with the twin giant continents of Gondwanaland and Laurasia as a transitional stage between these two extremes. But it's generally forgotten that Pangaea is just the latest in a line of about half a dozen supercontinents, and Earth will see quite a few more over its final five billion years of life.
Back To The Beginning: Ur and Valbaara
Earth's earliest days remain somewhat mysterious - indeed, much of what we're discussing here is still being worked out by geologists, and so we have to make a lot of best guesses in tackling these topics. A complete accounting of how our planet formed from clumps of space rock into something even theoretically capable of supporting life is really worth its own separate post. For our purposes, we can start around four billion years ago, when Earth's oceans were already in place and the first proto-continents began to form. During this period, plate building blocks known as cratons, which are essentially giant rock cores, started to come together and rise to the surface.
There are a couple candidates for the very first continents. There's some evidence that two cratons date back to as much as 3.5 billion years ago, forming the tiny continent of Vaalbara. It's a supercontinent simply because it was all alone on our planet - any explorers visiting Earth would have seen a single brownish dot against all the blue. Today, Vaalbara is spread between two cratons - the Kaapvaal craton in southern Africa and the Pilbara craton in northwestern Australia. We suspect Vaalbara's existence because rocks ejected from these cratons are some of the oldest in the world, and there are a number of geological clues that the two cratons were once together.
Still, Vaalbara's existence is still rather speculative, and so the more certain candidate for oldest supercontinent is Ur. Like its possible predecessor, Ur was smaller than any of today's continents, but it may well have spent many millions of years as the only continent on our planet, with nothing but some tiny islands to keep it company. Today, Ur lives on as part of India, Madagascar, and Australia.
While Vaalbara likely existed from about 3.6 to 2.8 billion years ago, at which point is cratons were broken apart, Ur formed roughly 3 billion years ago and actually survived in tact as part of larger supercontinents until the break-up of Pangaea only 200 million years ago. At just under 3 billion years, Ur is almost certainly the longest-lived landmass this planet will ever see, and yet now it remains hopelessly obscure.
Kenorland and the first Snowball Earth
Of course, continents that were just half the size of Australia can't really be considered supercontinents by today's standards, but that was the world in which they existed. The planet was almost entirely ocean at this phase in its history, and cratons weren't pushed up from the mantle all at once. We start to get a little closer with the emergence of Kenorland and Columbia, the next two supercontinents.
Kenorland formed roughly 2.7 billion years ago, and it was considerably larger than Ur or Vaalbara, although still not gigantic. It comprised most of the modern US and Canada, Greenland, the Scandinavian countries, western Australia, and what is now the Kalahari Desert, which stretches over much of southern Africa. Kenorland likely existed around the equator, and probably had about a hundred million years as the Earth's dominant landmass.
Geologists are still working out the complete story, and I offer just one interpretation of how we got to this point. Here's another look at the process from this rather rocking video by National Geographic:
It appears that Kenorland broke up around 2.6 billion years ago, creating a massive spike in rainfall. This in turn caused a decrease of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which wasn't helped by the fact that the Sun itself was weaker then than it is now, at only about 85% its present power. This created the first Snowball Earth, as the entire planet spent millions of years at below freezing temperatures. It wouldn't be the last time a breakup of a supercontinent wreaked massive environmental consequences.
Columbia, Rodinia and Panottia
The first "proper" supercontinent was probably Columbia, which formed around 1.8 billion years ago. Columbia had a land mass of roughly 50 million square kilometers - still quite a bit less than our modern total of about 150 million, but still pretty immense. From this point on, the picture stars to get a lot clearer, as we reach the first supercontinent that geologists are absolutely certain about.
Rodinia formed about a billion years ago out of the long-dispersed remnants of Columbia, along with additional cratons and pieces of crust that had risen up in the hundreds of millions of years. We don't know a lot about exactly what Rodinia looked like, but it was big, was probably located almost entirely south of the equator, and began to break apart roughly 550 million years ago.
This breakup was one of the most important and cataclysmic events in our planet's history. Like the breakup of Kenorland, Rodinia's destruction created a Snowball Earth, but that wasn't all. Rodinia, like all the supercontinents before it, had been completely devoid of life, as all organisms still lived in the oceans. The breakup of Rodinia opened up new oceans and caused the sea beds to rise, creating shallower seas that offered the much-needed stepping stone for animals and plants to make their way onto land.
There were also more subtle effects. The breakup of Rodinia created massive volcanic explosions, which likely shot rich nutrients from beneath the Earth into the oceans. This made life considerably easier for organisms, first helping them weather the extremes of the Snowball Earth and then giving them the energy boost needed to colonize land. Without Rodinia, and certainly without plate tectonics, none of would be here today.
Three Possible Futures
Between Rodinia and Pangaea, there may have been one other supercontinent, which is known as Pannotia. Assuming it existed - and there's still disagreement on that point - Pannotia was something of an accidental supercontinent, created by glancing collisions between tectonic plates instead of any real couplings. The Pannotia supercontinent configuration was one born of coincidence and didn't last long, breaking up just 60 million years later and giving way to Pangaea, last of Earth's supercontinents.
For the time being, at least. Continents are still on the move, and they'll almost certainly continue to move until the Sun vaporizes our planet in five billion years' time. In all likelihood, the continents will merge again to form a new supercontinent within in the next 250 million years, completing the latest turn of the supercontinent cycle. This absolutely amazing video traces the movement of the continents through the end of Rodinia to the formation of Pangaea, and then on another 250 million years into our future:
As you can see, enjoy the Atlantic Ocean while you can, because it won't be around forever. Africa and North America will crash into each other, while South America is going to get cozy with Antarctica. Australia will crash into China and southeast Asia, which really just sounds like the premise for a mildly offensive sit-com. And Europe? Poor Europe looks like it's headed for significantly colder climes, getting dangerously close to becoming the new North Pole.
This is one potential configuration, although there are at least three scenarios that geologists consider realistic. All of them have pretty awesome names: Novopangaea, Amasia, and my personal favorite, Pangaea Ultima. The version we see up top, with the closure of the Atlantic, is Pangaea Ultima, whereas the Novopangaea and Amasia model holds that it's the Pacific that will close, making the Atlantic far bigger than any of today's oceans. Here are some artist's conceptions of all three:
Pangaea Ultima is probably the somewhat preferred theory of geologists, but there the Pacific plate does seem to be sliding underneath North America and Eurasia, which would mean the ocean itself with close if it continues on this present course. But that's the problem - we're trying to predict millions of years worth of of incremental movement based on a pitifully incomplete dataset. A best guess is about the most we can really expect.
The Ever-Changing World
Plate tectonics has driven the story of our planet. When all the continents were one, organisms moved freely and spread out across the planet - dinosaurs might not have become the dominant species if they hadn't had Pangaea to give them absolute control of all land. When the continents dispersed, the isolation of different populations caused a spike in genetic diversity that drove crucial periods of evolution. It's unlikely that humanity could have ever made it if our ancestors (and I'm going back to our pre-primate ancestors here) had lived exclusively on a supercontinent or isolated landmasses.
And, of course, climate is shaped by the Earth's shifting geology. Twice supercontinents have split apart to create devastating chain reactions resulting in the Snowball Earth. Continents opening up and coming together has both cooled and warmed the planet in complex interactions that we're still puzzling out. Indeed, the saga of the supercontinents is still incomplete, and not just because we don't where it's headed. There's a lot about our own past that we still have to work out.
But we already probably know the coolest part about plate tectonics - it's the idea that the past and future of our planet don't necessarily look anything like the Earth we live on right now. If you got in a time machine and headed 250 million years in either direction, you'd think you were looking at an alien planet, and our world is only going to look stranger and more unrecognizable the further into the past and future we go. So here's to the Pangaeas, both Classic and Ultima, the once and future supercontinents.
For more on this topic, check out Plate Tectonics: An Insider's History of the Modern Theory of the Earth by Naomi Oreskes and Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet by Ted Nield.


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Movies We Like
The Birds
Isn't it funny that few people have not heard of The Birds, and yet fewer would vote it one of Hitchcock's best? Perhaps the reason is that more than any other Hitchcock film, The Birds leaves the viewer with the very unsettling feeling of a nightmare without end.
The basic story of a beautiful, spoiled socialite chasing after her beau to small-town (and fictitious) Bodega Bay seems insignificant to the film. Even the underlying message of the mass revolt of nature, as symbolized by birds against man, seems insignificant. In the end, it is the experience of going through the nightmarish bird attacks that will haunt us forever. Hitchcock unceremoniously throws the audience in with the unfortunate lot of the characters. We were scratched, bitten, terrorized right alongside Tippi Hedren.
With this anamorphic widescreen DVD which included a most educational "Making Of," we are finally in a position to give this cinematic masterpiece its dues. The church and schoolhouse of idyllic Bodega stills looks the same today as in the film, but everything else was sheer fabrication from post-production magic in the studio. Matte painting and other pre-CGI special effects, from Tippi Hedren sailing across Bodega Bay to the horrendous attack outside the schoolhouse, withstood the test of time magnificently. But of course the true star was the birds, seemingly thousands of them, real, mechanical, or just dummies. The electronic sound effects - among the most terrifying on film - were a giant step forward from the pioneering efforts in Forbidden Planets. The 2000 DVD mastering has a slightly grainy picture. Ease off your sharpness control and you'll be rewarded with gorgeous 60s imagery, and a film for all seasons! Highest recommendation.
The Birds was nominated for an Oscar for Best Visual Effects.


text:
by M. W. Kaminski
Translated by Rachel Fassler
Donated by Erin Einhorn
The Jewish professional movement in Będzin, all told, is some 30 years old. The first inklings of a plan to organize a movement began in 1905-1906. Until then, there had not been any sort of corporate body, which dealt with various divisions of opinion between workers and owners (bosses). In most cases, the master craftsman used to make decisions by himself in disputes between the master craftsman and his apprentinces. He was not only the employer at that time but also the educator and master over the personal life of his boys. There wasn't, by the way, a great class difference between the Jewish master craftsmen and the apprentinces at that time. They led the same life style, had the same cultural needs and, mostly, the apprentinces became members of the master craftsmens' families.
The work itself used to begin on Shabbat on the sighting of the first three stars and ended Friday evening just before the lighting of the candles. There was a short intermission to quickly eat a meal, to go to evening prayers and a break late at night, for a few hours of sleep.
The apprentices mainly those that came from outside looking for work had severe problems dealing with the voyle yingen [decent boys] of Będzin, who extorted payment out of the poor apprentices seeking work with local master craftsmen. The shtarke [strong people] also used to act as arbitrators in disputes between master craftsmen and the apprentice. Only with the rise of the socialist parties and the professional trade movement was the domination of the strong abolished.
Surprisingly, the first to be organized in Będzin was the professional union for painters, coachmen and mercantile clerks. Later they also organized additional unions for the carpenters, mill workers (metal) and the Poale Zion and other associations. During the years 1905/6, the Bund, as an active party, was not yet operating in our city.
It is clear that the unions did not have the foresight and character that the professional unions have today. The leadership, as well as their activity, were chaotic; strikes took place sporadically; agreed salaries weren't adhered to because the Tsarist regime didn't tolerate free discussions even in the completely professional field. Due to this, in later years, with the rising tide of reaction and the simultaneous banishment of the most important social activists, the unions quickly fell apart and up till 1915 there was no evidence of any kind that there a professional organization in Zagłębie.
To begin with, as the German occupation began, so did the professional movement in Zagłębie begin to rapidly take hold. As such, the Labor-Zionists were the first to begin to organize workers in the private sector, who in a short time numbered 300 members. This union did not exist for long, due to the fact that the type of members in those times were not yet prepared to value the interests of a professional union.
The same happened to the painters union, which for the most part consisted of young members. They initially had a difficult time establishing a professional union. At the time, the leather workers were the best organized. Almost 100% of this union's members fully upheld their organization's discipline. Since they were well organized they were able to win their demands. They exist up until the present day.
The carriers (porters) union had a completely different character and a different sense of collective organization. They did not interest themselves in social matters. They remained strong and amalgamated and active in the political organization with which they were connected.
Around the same time, the private men's and women's tailors also became organized. The first activity that the union undertook partly ended the organization itself. The demands, which they sought, met with an impasse on the part of the employers, who declared a lockout and the action was lost. A result of this breakdown was the establishment of the first cooperative of women's tailors, which soon became private, however, because of this the organization fell apart.
The previously mentioned organizations were, in spite of everything, a favorable and creative factor in the building of the professional party.
In 1917, the needle workers had reorganized under the influence of the
Bund. Within two years of activity, the Bund in Będzin
managed to absorb almost all the workers associated with the clothing trade, as
members. Apart from tailors, members of the needle workers were also milliners,
fashion designers, furriers, girdle-makers, underwear seamstresses and so on.
The organization had more than 350 members, amongst them, a certain number of
|The Carriers [Porters] Union
by J. Wygodzki
Translated by Gloria Berkenstat Freund
In the tragic year 1916, at the time when the World War raged with its entire fiendish force and shook the foundation of the old world, a small group of idealists, a sort of ten idle men, gathered, consisting of the following people: Berysz Preger, Jeszaja Hendl Erlich, Salomon Gutman, Mosze Szajn, M. Aronowicz, Eliezer Rubinlicht, Jicchak Wygodzki, Mosze Kalman Erlich, Majer Potasz, Engineer Szymon Zmudzki, Mosze Grundman and others who after a comprehensive deliberation decided to create a Jewish national gymnazie [high school] in Będzin.
After much effort and intervention with the occupying regime of the time, a written concession to open a gymnazie under the historic name of Yavne [religious Zionists], was successfully received. The founders generated a large sum among themselves and the next year, 1917, three extensions and two normal classes were opened at Kołłątaja Street, no. 45 with the yearly right to continue to open additional classes up to the eighth grade. A supervisory council was created of the above mentioned men with Salomon Gutman as chairman and new members also worked together with Jeszaja Rotner as vice chairman and Mosze Kronental. Dr. Noach Braun (now an instructor at the Jerusalem University) was engaged as the director of the gymnazie. In the first year, the teaching institution went along a difficult, torturous road because of the small number of students. This happened as a consequence of the ignorance about the gymnazie on the part of the rich assimilated classes who sent their children to non-Jewish schools that had public rights.
The dismal situation constantly worsened and because of the difficult material condition, the best pedagogic powers, such as Dr. Sztajnberg, Dr. Barasz, Dr. Metalman, Dr. Infeld, and others, left the school. As a consequence of the intensely mournful situation, the supervisory council came together for a meeting in the office of the brothers Szajn in 1925 in order to consider the question of liquidating the school. The supervisory council gave an account of the seriousness of the problem and after long, passionate debates it was decided not to permit a liquidation that would throw an eternal stigma on the residents of Jewish Będzin.
With renewed strength the supervisory council set about to make the situation financially sound and first of all the members assessed themselves with large sums for that purpose. The chairman, Saloman Gutman, and the brothers Szajn particularly distinguished themselves. Gutman pledged to pay 3,000 zlotys yearly in addition to supporting 10 students with tuition and the brothers, Chaim and Jicchak Szajn, in addition to frequent large donations, obligated themselves to support several students. At the social events that took place twice a year for the benefit of the school, the wives, Cesia Szajn and the wives of Szlomo Frenkl and of Henrik Inwald, particularly excelled in their self sacrificing participation.
An action on behalf of the gymnazie was also undertaken at the local city
council and at the kehila, which was crowned with appropriate success. New
members were also incorporated into the supervisory council, among whom the
social worker, Szlomo Frenkl and the energetic communal leaders, Abram
Przesznik, Wolf Rechnic and others, particularly distinguished themselves. Also
Majer Potasz, the school worker, voluntarily announced that he would be the
administrator. And from that moment a new epoch for the school began. There
were giant steps in the development and their frequency grew considerably.
There were many effects from receiving the right to coeducation, but a great
hindrance to the further development of the gymnazie was not possessing any
public rights because the students had to attend a non-Jewish school for the
baccalaureate exams and the result was such that of eight students who
approached the exams, only one received a baccalaureate. It was understandable
that the situation undermined the further development of the school and it
could not long endure.
|The front part of the gymnazie named after Fürstenberg
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for verification.
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Our mission is to produce a translation of the original work and we cannot verify the accuracy of statements or alter facts cited.
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Copyright © 1999-2023 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 04 Sep 2010 by OR


text:
Austrian rabbi; born at Lemberg; died there March 21, 1888; son of Mordecai Zeeb Ornstein, and grandson of Jacob Meshullam Ornstein, rabbi of that city. He was educated by his grandfather and father, and while quite young manifested exceptional talent. Responsa of his were published in the "Yeshu'ot Ya'aḳob" of his grandfather, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, and his reputation soon spread far beyond the limits of his own land. He occupied his first rabbinate at Brest-Litovsk, where he succeeded (1855) Jacob Meïr Padua. Even here, where, in opposition to the Galician critical treatment of the Talmud and of rabbinical literature, the Wilna method of instruction prevailed (in which the study of the Talmud consisted in memorizing it), Ornstein's wonderful powers of memory excited admiration. This respect for a foreigner displeased the government, which seized the occasion of a general expulsion of foreigners to remove him from his position. He was obliged toleave the city in 1874. Hard times now befell him. He was no longer rich, and was compelled to seek any vacant rabbinate. The regard felt for him in Galicia was still unbounded; in spite of nine years' absence the community of Rzeszow at once extended to him a call as rabbi, which he accepted, officiating there from 1874 to 1875. In the latter year, after a hard fight for election, he obtained the rabbinate of Lemberg, which had been held by several of his ancestors; and there he remained till his death.
After Ornstein's death his son-in-law—he had no sons of his own—published, with notes, under the title "Milḥamot" (Lemberg, 1889), a collection of responsa which formed a small fragment of Ornstein's Talmudic work "Birkot Rabbi Ẓebi Hirsch" (RaẒaH).
- Buber, Anshe Shem, p. 199.


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text:
My son looks beautiful in a white dress.
In my business, we call that a "hook lead," which is simply a way to grab and retain the readers' attention to encourage them to proceed to the second paragraph and beyond. Hopefully, it worked.
My son's dress was not really that. It was a christening gown my wife had picked out a month or so ago for his baptism last Sunday at Stevenson United Methodist Church in Berlin. Ever since, the running joke around the house was how "pretty" my son was going to be in his new dress, which also featured a matching cap, socks, sweater, shoes and blanket. Oh and how could I forget the adorable post-christening outfit, a less formal and equally precious white ensemble for the after-church gathering.
Dress or gown or whatever you want to call it, there he was in the front pew of the church in all his glory. Whatever the adjective, he fit all of these – pretty, beautiful, angelic, adorable and the list goes on. Of them all, handsome is best from my completely biased perspective, of course, and I never thought I would use that to describe my son in a flowing, silk gown.
We do not go to church every Sunday, but that does not mean Pam and I are not spiritual people. We had a long road, featuring some peaks and valleys, leading to parenthood. One memorable piece of advice, proffered along the way, was, "you just have to give it to God." We struggled with exactly how to do that, but that guidance comforted us because things do happen for a reason, as difficult as that is to accept at times. It's important to understand and realize each of us is following a master plan, one not always of our own accord. I think the sooner we realize we are not alone in charting the course of life the better off we will be. That's why last week's baptism held a particular significance.
A baptism is a monumental day in a little one's life. Of course, Beckett, a week shy of seven months, will not remember the details of the ceremony and all the love and support shown by family and friends in the church congregation on that rainy Sunday morning. That's why we were sure to document the whole thing to show him later in life, courtesy of dozens of photos, 20-plus minutes of video footage and lots of generous gifts.
A little one's baptism is especially important to the parents because it's a day they will never forget. It's just as much about the parents as it is the child. It's an early gathering of friends and family in his honor and fundamentally a commitment the parents make to a Christian upbringing. Baptism, in my view, is a way for parents to publicly acknowledge their baby as a gift and blessing straight from God, and that's an important recognition to make when a child is young.
A unique and particularly memorable part of the baptism ceremony led by Rev. Carol Price was when she walked around the church and introduced our little boy to members of the congregation. We had planned accordingly and tried to ensure he was at his most content, meaning basically he needed to have a full stomach. He smiled and giggled his way through that church, making me, arguably, the proudest I have ever been of him. She carried him through the entire congregation, letting everyone get a close-up view and even a quick rub of a cheek, hand or foot if they dared. All the while he was giggling, oblivious to the fact neither parent was close by, and apparently basking in being the center of attention, leaving two beaming parents in the front row.
Shortly after being showed off in church, Beckett fell asleep in my arms through the rest of the service and the photos afterwards. He woke up just in time for the car ride home. He handled it all so well and better than we could have ever hoped.
The baptism capped off a long weekend of "firsts" for the little guy including Thanksgiving. He had a place at the table, albeit a high chair, for the holiday feasting and ate a traditional meal reserved for the last Thursday of each November. It consisted of turkey, sweet potatoes and applesauce. I actually had a lot of all that myself on Thanksgiving, but the big difference was his meal came in a jar. I felt for the poor guy.
All in all, baby food is really not all that bad in my opinion. All the veggies and fruits are pretty good I think, but the meats are altogether different. The starter helpings of turkey, beef, chicken and ham all leave a lot to be desired. Fortunately, the little guy has nothing to compare it to because he takes it down with reckless abandon and seems to love every bite. As a matter of fact, we are lucky because we have found nothing he will not eat yet. He likes it all. Soon enough that will all change. As we introduce more foods to him, he will wise up at some point and realize there's much more to life than these liquid meats.
The main obstacle with feeding him these days is the mess factor. The occasional raspberries with a full mouth certainly dirty up a bib, high chair and shirt in no time, but the main culprits are the wandering fingers that get into the mouth with most spoonfuls, resulting in some sticky fingers putting food everywhere. Rather than tie his hands down, which seems akin to child abuse, we just do our best to keep them out of his mouth, but it's a futile effort. They always end up in there and the inevitable mess follows. We think this new habit is a result of his teething (he has one completely in on the bottom row and another next to it just breaking through), but we continue to work on it.


text: INSTADEBIT eWallet is an electronic wallet that lets you securely transfer money directly to and from your bank account. The funds in your wallet can be used wherever you see the INSTADEBIT payment option. Using an INSTADEBIT eWallet allows you to transfer funds to merchants without revealing your personal banking information.


text:
Fostoria railroad history is rich
Pix #1 - The only know photo of a COLDWATER RAILROAD locomotive. While the mansfield, coldwater and Lake Michigan was being built through Fostoria in the 1870', another segment known as "The Montieth to Allegan (Michigan)" sigment of the road was completed in september, 1871 by contractor Joseph Fisk. The eleven and one half miles was the only portion of the coldwater built and operated in MIchigan. the reference indicates that Fisk built and operated in Michigan. The reference indicates that Fisk built more miles of railroad (over one thousand) in the midwest thatn any other contractor. On June 19, 1871, the coldwater officially took over control of this line. (This information from James Winslow: Pennsy Historical Society.)
Pix #2 - Fostoria "away back when," showing its reilraods and its "Town Hall" in corner.
Pix #3 - This is a copy of a very old railroad map showing what railroads existed in Ohio in 1860. While theprint is very small it can be recognized that the "fremont & Indiania" (later the Lake Erie and Estern) was the first railroad to pass through fostoria. Reader will also not that a short segment of Ohio's first Railroad: The Mad River and Lake Erie, came quite close to early Fostoria, but did not pass through., it is shown passing through Carey, with a branch line heading northwest throught Vanlue and into Findlya. The closest it came to Fostoria was Vanlue.
(POTLUCK NOTE: The author of this column and don Kinnaman, a former fostorian, but a resident of Phoenix, Arizona, for many years, have kept up correspondence, don, in his interesting letters often reminisces about his days in Fostoria, and some of the historical data which makes good reading for today's younger generation as well as the older readers.
In one of our exchanges, don "drew-a-bead" on the subject of reilreads, and had some good ideas for an article, even refenences for data. I think don thought we could cooperatively do the article,.
Knowing don's ability in gathering data then putting it together, I suggested he carry the ball and do the whole job. He did an excellent job as readers will see in the first of a series starting today.
My contribution to this reiaroad series will come later, at the end of the series, in which I will reminsce about my personal recollections, having lived int he vicinity of all the various reilrads: LE& W, B&O. JHopcking Valley and New York central aor T&OC as it was often referred to.
At a later peroiod in my life, I travelled extensively via all of the steam lines going north, south, east and west and thoroughtly enjoyed rail service.
Unfortunately those days are gone as far as passenger service is related.)
Mention the owrds: "trains" or "railroads" to today's ovservers and the first thing that may come to their mind is "dirt, noise and unexplained delays at the corssings." BUt more thatn 150 years ago, these words were fast becoming "household words" as communnities everywhere were vying through financial, pittical or double talk means to get this form of quick, smooth trahsportation to their comminity interests. They were beginning to realize more and more the importance of the reilroad bringing industry, commerce and prosperity to their area.
Railroads born in 1820-30's
this brand new idea in moving passengers and freight by rail was beginning to take shape in the ease with the organization and construction of the nations first railroad: The Baltimore and Ohio. The date was the late 1820' and 1830's. At about the same time pioneers and settlers were clearing land in north3estern Ohio for a commyunity soon to be called Risdon. names for col. O.C. Risdon, the community had its town Square a twhat today is know as Summit and Countyline streest. summit with its park0like boulevard setting became Risdon's Main Street. Within a shore distance to the south another community was springin up know as Rome. (This riter does not know if the name came from the city in Italy, or who named it.) both communities beagn to gow toward each other an in 1854 combined in the city of fostoria. fostoria was named after Charles foster, an early Ohio bovernor. It has been said that foster had a general merchandise store: Thus Toster plus store compounded to gether gives the city "part" of its name. since the store was n "Emporium of sotts," I sould surmise the singular of this would be emporia. which woul dcomplete the name.
In those early days, memn in all walks of life were searching and seeking better transportation met;hods to get their goods to market. Turnpike wagon roads, marked trails and gbarges carrying waterwasys, and canalls were being surveyed and built. The coming of the raeilraod would be relatively quicker to survey and build, and get into operation tahn the canal methods, whic it would soon make obsolete.
Fostoria destined to be RR center?
When Rome and Risdon were serveyed by early platting engineers (including my great-great-grandfather: Gideon Jones), I wonder how much thought was given to the "strategic location" of these two communities which would ultimately become Fostoria. Neighte community was destined to become a county seat, no canals were planned for the area and the nearest wagon turnpike was some distance awasy. The only real feature was good agricultural land and the village lay close to the boundaries of Seneca, Hancock and wood counties. It probably could be argued that they man (ior may not) have had information then that Fostoria was really well centrally located. One can take a pair of dividers and set for scale marked 100 would find the outer circle cncompassing larger cities like Detroit, Columbus, Fort Wayne, Cleveland and Akron. Half this distance would include Toledo, Sanducky, Marion, Mansfield and Lima. Perhaps the early Railroad Planners knew something the local curveyors did not know, since this "Center point" would make a great interchange point for their railroad.
The first railroad west of the Appalachians was the Lake Erie and Mad River which was originated through planning in 1832. It was surveyed to operate between Sandusky and an area near Cincinnati. Unfortunately it did not go through Fostoria, but a brance which ran from Carey to Findlay, passed through Vanlue, a few miles southwest of Fostoria. An early map of the Pennsylvania Railroad (1860) shows the Mad River Line, which by this date had changed its name to the Sandusky, Daytonn and Cincinnati Railroad.
(Cintinued next week.)


text:
An MP who was involved in last month's G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.
Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.
Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.
Brake, a member of the influential home affairs select committee, will raise the allegations when he gives evidence before parliament's joint committee on human rights on Tuesday.
"When I was in the middle of the crowd, two people came over to me and said, 'There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,'" Brake said. But when the crowd became suspicious of the men and accused them of being police officers, the pair approached the police line and passed through after showing some form of identification.
Brake has produced a draft report of his experiences for the human rights committee, having received written statements from people in the crowd. These include Tony Amos, a photographer who was standing with protesters in the Royal Exchange between 5pm and 6pm. "He [one of the alleged officers] was egging protesters on. It was very noticeable," Amos said. "Then suddenly a protester seemed to identify him as a policeman and turned on him. He legged it towards the police line, flashed some ID and they just let him through, no questions asked."
Amos added: "He was pretty much inciting the crowd. He could not be called an observer. I don't believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. Hopefully, a review of video evidence will clear this up."
The Independent Police Complaints Commission has received 256 complaints relating to the G20 protests. Of these, 121 have been made about the use of force by police officers, while 75 relate to police tactics. The IPCC said it had no record of complaints involving the use of police agents provocateurs. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "We would never deploy officers in this way or condone such behaviour."
The use of plain-clothes officers in crowd situations is considered a vital tactic for gathering evidence. It has been used effectively to combat football hooliganism in the UK and was employed during the May Day protests in 2001.
Brake said he intends to raise the allegations with the Met's commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, when he next appears before the home affairs select committee. "There is a logic having plain-clothes officers in the crowd, but no logic if the officers are actively encouraging violence, which would be a source of great concern," Brake said.
The MP said that given only a few people were allowed out of the corralled crowd for the five hours he was held inside it, there should be no problem in investigating the allegation by examining video footage.
An aside: notice how Amos, the photographer, must disclaim belief in "conspiracy theories" to bolster his credibility. Any story not fully sanctioned by official government sources is now "conspiracy theory".
Via Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, a true hero of the blogosphere, via James, always keeping me informed.


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Wine Adventure
By RigaNow!. 27.08.2015
Latvia makes surprisingly palatable wines. French connoisseurs might turn their noses up, but as we discovered in the village of Sabile, a degustation of the fruity drinks makes for a memorable trip out of the city.
If the mention of Baltic wines Hill), easily reached up a footpath from the prompts mental images of center of the village, has a place in the potent homemade concoctions Guinness book of records as the world's laced with potato vodka, a northernmost open-air vineyard.
Grating aroma of spring onion Jacob Kettler, Duke of Courland, grew and aftertaste of beetroot, vines here in the 17th century, circulating you'd be wrong. Latvia makes the wines among friends and sending it to the loveliest wines this side of Paris. In the 1930s, President Kārlis Ulmanis the Tatra mountains. revived the tradition, and in the 70s Latvian the tiny town of Sabile, about 100 scientists experimented with local apples, kilometers west of Riga, has been creating plums, strawberries and other fruits as well wines from locally grown varieties of grape as grapes. more than 20 grape varieties now and fruits for 500 years. Vīna Kalns (Wine grow on the hill, but only a few are suitable for winemaking. They have been harvested now for 18 years straight, yielding 13 or 14 years of wine.
Of course, as the global climate changes, grapes will soon be growing in Tromsø. But a visit to Sabile is something special. This lusciously verdant valley provides an insight into rural Latvia you can't come close to in the capital city.
Visitors flock here one weekend every July for a wine festival, but at other times it's a peaceful backwater. On the other side of the valley is an open-air sculpture park at Pedvāle manor created by artist Ojārs Feldbergs. Its installations are bizarre, its periodic cultural events bohemian.
Through Sabile's energetic one-person tourism information center, we arranged a degustation in advance at Drubazas, a farm beside the Kandava-Sabile road. But beforehand we sheltered from a sudden storm at the friendly Vīna Kalns Krogs, or café-bar, by the village crossroads.
Spotting a few bottles of Latvian wine standing proudly on the bar, we decided to hold our own impromptu tasting, accompanied by some local dishes. We tried two wines with the Sabiles label – a very dark apple-and-aronia (chokeberry) blend, sweet with a slightly bitter aftertaste, and an apple wine that reminded me of experiments my father, a keen amateur winemaker, used to conduct at risk of blowing up the house. His granny's apple wine, or "grapple" for short, was famous within the family but not something you'd consider marketing to the general public. We ended up staying at the Krogs for a full hour, growing to actually quite like the wines and feasting on a delicious boletus mushroom hotpot, "men's salad" (egg, cheese, pickles, dried meat, lots of garlic), and the biggest cheese-covered pork chop we'd ever seen. We also had the pleasure of trying a deliciously crisp and bubbly semi-dry cider, Sabiles Sidrs.
Dark place
Drubazas stands out along the road with its wicker-fenced "botanical garden". The farm has about 40 hectares of land, which owner Smaida Dzērve says is home to many plants listed in the red book of protected species. Driving in, we were confronted by a huge red hound, which we later learned was absolutely harmless. Smaida beckoned us into her cool dark cellar, closing the creaking dungeon-like door behind us.
Once our eyes got used to the dim lighting we could see 15 massive glass carboys gently bubbling away amid the mossy Stone Walls. Our host told us the cellar predated the house, by several hundred years, and it definitely carried that musty ambiance. Wine enthusiasts have come from around the world to taste Sabile's wines. Smaida has welcomed into her cellar groups from Germany, the Nordic countries, Russia, the US, the UK, Greece, even Japan. She's hosted German and Swedish television crews, and travel agencies in Riga arrange winetasting packages. With me she spoke Latvian and Russian through an interpreter I'd brought along.
Smaida works with her daughter on the Wine Hill, tending the grapes. She's not paid for this arduous work, but the municipality allows her to take grapes away for her wines. She also has her own vines growing close to the house, which have yielded two harvests so far. Some years she makes up to a thousand liters of wine, other years far less. Latvian politicians present some of the resulting bottles as official gifts on state visits.
For our own winetasting we shamelessly swallowed rather than spat. We got through about ten wines, the translator gradually getting merrier, and we ended up choosing three or four to buy as bottles to take home.
Only the first was a grape wine, which personally I liked the most. Sweet wines are not for me, so this dry, smooth, subtle, almost scentless wine made from the early-ripening "veldze" grape was a pleasant surprise. There was no bitterness and just the tiniest hint of fizz. The alcohol content was around 14% ABV, Smaida said alcohol is added as she doesn't use copper sulfates.
The further north people live, she commented, the more likely they'll like sweet wines. The further east they live isn't it? I felt inclined to correct her. She replied that actually she didn't enjoy drinking wine at all. But, she said, Latvian tastes in general are changing with every year, from sweeter to drier.
For us, the wines we tasted at Drubazas went steadily from dry to sweet. Those made from local berries – raspberries, blackcurrants – had the strongest aromas. Glasses of wines made from lingonberries, chokeberries, cranberries, redcurrants and honey were also passed around. Many would have gone down nicely with a rich dessert like chocolate cake.
The translator asked for a second helping of the cranberry wine before Smaida sucked at her flexi-pipe and poured our wines-to-buy into bottles, which she then sealed professionally with a portable heater and stuck on tiny labels.
Rhubarb magic
Another producer in Sabile is Abavas. This new vineyard has quickly developed a reputation for reliable wines made from a variety of fruits and recently developed its first successful wines from grapes. The owner, Martiņš Barkāns, is a horticulturist who provides winetasting sessions for groups, usually in summer, if booked in advance. Abavas wines can also be sampled in Riga in restaurants (upscale ones that use local produce) or bought in stores (try gift shops such as Pienene, Kungu 7/9, map-ref g-3).
The family-run farm can be seen from the Kandava-Sabile road. We procured several to try at home. Many come in slender bottles and have elegant labels with the farm's characteristic dragonfly logo. Abavas is a professional outfit, and is perhaps now Latvia's best-known wine producer. Understandably, one of the most popular is a sparkling wine made from the farm's own rhubarb, which is harvested at the start of summer and bottled by year-end. With its lovely rhubarb aroma, dry taste and fresh finish it is definitely, as the label says, one to pleasantly surprise your friends. Served chilled it could be a unique welcome drink on a special occasion.
Aroniju Ports is a semi-sweet chokeberry wine fortified with Abavas' own apple brandy, aged for six months and sold in half-liter bottles. it has an amiable taste of sweet wild berries with a slightly bitter aftertaste. Rondo, meanwhile, is a 2013 rosé wine made from the vineyard's own grapes, with a pinky blush and a playful fizz on the tongue. it also carries a taste of bitter northern berries – and is the finest grape wine you'll find in Latvia.
Of course, in the wake of any degustation where you're actually drinking the wines, it's advisable to find somewhere to stay overnight. Conveniently, it's possible to stay or camp at Drubazas. In the pretty nearby town of Kandavas, a small hospital has been converted into a hostel (www. hostelhospital.lv). Other places to stay in the region can be recommended by the rural tourism association Luku Ceļotājs (www.celotajs.lv).
More upmarket stays can be found at the Imulas guest House (www.imulas.lv) or, most distinctively, at Kukšu manor (www.kuksumuiza.lv) not far from Kandava, with its stunning lakeside setting, excellent restaurant, sparkling chandeliers, antique furniture, gorgeous carpets, paintings and frescos.
9x7HRybN12 26.10.2015 07:29
This is getting a bit more seuvbctije, but I much prefer the Zune Marketplace. The interface is colorful, has more flair, and
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