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Food and Health Food and the Environment Food Politics Future of Food
A Healthy Future for Our Planet Is Possible! See How Your Food Choices Impact the Future of Life on Earth
Published March 6, 2019 ·
Want a healthy world for future generations? Learn the facts & see how you can take action.
Climate change is happening. But what if we could slow or even reverse it? The truth is, you can make a bigger difference for the planet than you probably ever imagined — starting with your knife and fork!
By Ocean Robbins • Adapted from 31-Day Food Revolution: Heal Your Body, Feel Great, & Transform Your World. Get your copy here now.
What we eat impacts our health and the health of our children. But its impact is much bigger than that. It also affects the entire planet.
How Our Climate Is Changing
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The facts are sobering.
Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases are building up and surrounding our planet like a blanket, trapping heat and destabilizing our climate.
Rising global temperatures are causing the polar ice caps to melt and the oceans to rise, threatening the homes and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.
Climate change is bringing desertification and droughts to some areas and floods to others, making it increasingly difficult to reliably grow the food upon which our lives depend.
While some people debate what's causing climate change and how important human activities are in driving it, one thing is clear to just about everyone: It's happening.
And if we can do anything to ameliorate this growing crisis, future generations have every right to expect us to do it.
If you're like me, you may feel overwhelmed by the scope of the problem. Sometimes I feel less like a drop in the bucket and more like a drop in the sea.
How can any one of us measure the impact of our own choices against those wrought by the totality of humanity?
Many companies and political leaders have resisted facing the enormity of the dangers that climate change presents and acknowledging the role that human activities are playing because they fear that serious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could have a devastating impact on the global economy.
And those concerns are real.
The Cost of Improving Our Climate
In 2008, the International Energy Agency issued a report titled "Energy Technology Perspectives: Scenarios and Strategies to 2050."
This meta-analysis explored the economic impact of stabilizing global CO2 levels at 450 parts per million — a level that many scientists say is needed to help prevent devastating droughts and flooding induced by rising sea levels.
The report concluded that this could happen through massive investment in new systems of transportation, energy production, and energy efficiency — at a long-term cost of up to $45 trillion.
I don't know about you, but that sounds like an awful lot of money to me. Sure, it would all feed into the economy, and it would create a lot of jobs. But the cost sounds more than a little daunting.
However, what if we could slow or even reverse climate change without it costing a cent?
What if there were ways we could take action, individually as well as collectively, that might actually save money while improving health and quality of life for humanity?
It turns out, there just might be.
Can We Help Fight Climate Change by Shifting What We Eat?
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In 2009, researchers from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency offered a ray of hope.
They published a study in Climatic Change in which they weighed the costs of large-scale CO2 reduction through changes in energy infrastructure and compared them to what changes in agriculture could accomplish.
The researchers concluded that if the average human shifted to a low-meat diet (which they defined as one serving of beef or three servings of chicken or eggs per week), there would be tremendous savings in greenhouse gas emissions.
This shift would free up approximately 15 million square kilometers of farmland, which could, in turn, be planted with vegetation that would mop up carbon dioxide.
The bottom line? According to this study, scaling back on foods like beef-burgers and bacon could, over the course of decades, wipe $20 trillion off the ultimate cost of fighting climate change — effectively cutting it in half.
The researchers also referenced how substituting beans for burgers could lead to dramatic reductions in rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's, and other chronic, diet-caused illnesses.
And this, in turn, could lead to profound economic savings. Right now, the world spends more than $60 trillion on health care every decade. Much of this goes to treatment of chronic and preventable disease.
If global dietary patterns shifted, we could not only take a massive bite out of climate change, but we could also save untold lives while reaping immense economic benefits and huge improvements in our health.
How Your Food Choices Affect Your Climate
Why does modern animal agriculture have such an enormous effect on greenhouse gas emissions?
It's not as if cows are driving around all day in air-conditioned Hummers or forgetting to turn the lights off when they leave the room.
Remember that most of the world's meat, eggs, and dairy are produced in factory farms — what the livestock industry calls concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
In these establishments, large numbers of cows, pigs, chickens, and other livestock are packed together in extremely close quarters.
Instead of eating grass, leaves, bugs, roots, or anything resembling their natural diet, the animals are fed a diet based heavily on genetically modified corn and soybeans. Instead of their manure fertilizing grasslands, it piles up in massive lagoons that pollute nearby air, rivers, and groundwater.
Most of the pigs and chickens that humans eat spend their entire lives in CAFOs. Many cows start on pasture but are "finished" by being fed corn and soy in feedlots, where they gain much of their weight.
After cows come into the feedlot, they gain enough weight to produce about one new pound of beef for every 12 pounds of feed input. Pigs produce about a pound of flesh for every 7 pounds of feed, while for chickens, it's about a pound of flesh for every 4 pounds of feed.
An Incredible Amount of Food Is Being Wasted
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In all of these cases, the majority of the feed is being, essentially, wasted. CAFOs are like protein factories in reverse.
Most industry publications compare feed to animal weight gain, noting that cattle in feedlots typically gain about a pound of total weight for every six pounds of feed. But keep in mind that less than half of the animal's weight is edible meat — which is why it takes about twelve pounds of feed to produce a pound of beef.
According to Richard Oppenlander in his 2012 book, Comfortably Unaware, 80% of the world's soy crop and 70% of the grain grown in the United States goes to feed livestock raised for human consumption.
Cycling calories from plants through livestock is inherently wasteful. And it takes a lot of land to do it.
In total, livestock systems (including pasture, animal farms, and land growing food for animals) occupy 45% of the total surface area of the planet.
Worldwide, we use about eight times as much land to grow food for animals as we do to grow food directly for humans.
Whether or not you want to go veg, you can eat less meat and move away from industrialized animal agriculture — and make a very real impact.
In a 2018 study reported in Science, researchers analyzed 40,000 farms in 119 countries. They concluded that animal agriculture occupies 83% of total agricultural land.
They also determined that if, theoretically, the entire world's human population went vegan, we would save an area of land as large as the United States, China, the European Union, and Australia combined.
Animal Agriculture Contributes to Deforestation
One of the primary sources of CO2 emissions in the world today is deforestation.
Huge areas of forest, including vast swaths of tropical rainforest, have been cut down or burned in order to create land on which to graze cattle or to grow livestock feed.
Forests that previously absorbed carbon from the atmosphere are now emitting it as vegetation is degraded or incinerated.
And as significant as CO2 emissions are to our global climate, there are a couple of other gases that also play a major part.
In fact, methane is actually up to 100 times more potent at trapping energy than carbon dioxide. And nitrous oxide is 310 times more potent.
Two of the main sources of methane emissions are cow manure and the eructations (belching and flatulence) from cows. And one of the primary sources of nitrous oxide emissions is the fertilizer that's used to grow livestock feed.
What All This Means
Put it all together, and startling truths emerge.
In 2014, researchers at Oxford University surveyed the diets of over 55,000 people and analyzed their net impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
According to this study, published in the journal Climatic Change in 2014, the average meat-eater in the U.S. is responsible for almost twice as much global warming as the average vegetarian, and close to three times that of the average vegan.
Of course, you don't have to go vegetarian, or vegan, to support a stable climate.
Whether or not you want to go veg, you can eat less meat and move away from industrialized animal agriculture — and make a very real impact. Every bite counts.
Water Is Life
Water covers 70% of our planet.
Despite the fact that we live on "the water planet," the reality is that fresh water — the stuff we bathe in, drink, and irrigate our farms with — is remarkably scarce. It makes up only about 3% of the world's total water supply.
And I'm not just concerned because my name is Ocean.
As human populations and our consumption of water have grown, more and more water has been pumped out of the ground at increasingly unsustainable rates. The world's largest current underground water reserves in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas are under stress.
According to a report from National Geographic, two billion people rely on groundwater that is considered finite and threatened.
Some of our water comes from rivers, streams, and lakes. But can you imagine what would happen to humanity if our wells run dry? Billions of people would die of thirst or starve.
Where is our groundwater going? Did you know that more than two-thirds of it is used to irrigate agriculture?
I live in California, a state of 40 million people. And California, like many parts of the world, faces a water shortfall. Up to 65% of the state's water comes from groundwater, which, in most years, is not being replenished as quickly as it's being consumed.
The water we pump out of the ground has been stored up over countless millennia. And in many places, we just don't capture enough rain and snow to keep pace with the amount that we're using.
In response to this growing crisis, many people in water-challenged regions are taking steps to conserve. We're installing low-flow showerheads and taking shorter showers. And we're replacing lawns with shrubs and rock gardens.
These steps help. But to truly solve the water puzzle, we have to look at where the most water is going. Agriculture is at the center of it all.
California's livestock industry alone uses more water than all the homes and businesses in the state combined. And even with all that water, California still imports most of the meat consumed in the state.
And it's not just California. National Geographic reports that in the United States, it takes 1,799 gallons of water to produce a single pound of grain-fed beef.
If you want to save water, reducing industrialized beef consumption could be the most powerful single step you can take.
The Ground Beneath Us
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While many of us think of it as dead, the reality is that healthy soil is teeming with life.
An acre of healthy topsoil can contain 2,400 pounds of fungi, 1,500 pounds of bacteria, 900 pounds of earthworms, 890 pounds of arthropods and algae, and 133 pounds of protozoa.
It takes nature a thousand years to generate three centimeters of precious topsoil. But today, we're losing our topsoil at an alarming rate.
The average rate of soil erosion on U.S. cropland is seven tons per acre per year.
According to Maria-Helena Semedo, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's deputy director general of natural resources, unless new approaches are adopted, the global amount of arable and productive land per person in 2050 will be only a quarter of the level that we had in 1960.
If current rates of degradation continue, all the world's topsoil could be gone within 60 years.
Where Is All the Topsoil Going?
Most of it is being washed away with rains and irrigation, as unsustainable farming practices destabilize the soil and fail to replenish it with an adequate supply of new organic matter.
The sobering reality is that if we don't change course, then climate change, aquifer depletion, and topsoil erosion will mean that the next generation may be on course to witness mass starvation in numbers utterly unprecedented in human history.
For an example of where none of us wants to be headed, take a look at the Sahara Desert, which covers large parts of Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Chad, Morocco, Eritrea, Niger, Mauritania, Mali, and Sudan.
Did you know that this was once a rich agricultural region? It grew abundant millet and other grains, and prehistoric cave drawings depict the region as rich in flora and fauna.
But not anymore. Today, this desert gets average rainfall of less than one inch per year, making it inhospitable to most forms of life.
And it's huge. The Sahara Desert now covers more than 8% of Earth's total land mass — an area larger than the continental United States. And it's growing.
Unsustainable farming practices are combining with climate change to cause the mighty Sahara to expand steadily. In fact, it's grown by more than 3.5 million square miles (an area nearly as large as the United States) in the last 60 years, and its rate of growth appears to be accelerating.
Why We Need to Change the Way We Grow Our Food
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But the good news is, we can address these problems — starting with a change in how we grow our food.
Ronnie Cummins, international director of Regeneration International, tells us: "The solution to global warming and the climate crisis (as well as poverty and deteriorating public health) lies right under our feet, and at the end of our knives and forks."
The key to regenerative agriculture is that it not only does no harm to the land but actually improves it.
It incorporates technologies that lead to healthy soil that becomes capable of producing high-quality, nutrient-dense food while simultaneously improving, rather than degrading, land. Ultimately, regenerative agriculture leads to productive farms, drought-resistant crops, and healthy communities and economies.
Healthy soil can sequester carbon. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide, and when farming is well managed, this carbon can be taken out of the air and captured in the dirt.
How One Farm Changed the Way It Grows Food
Cam and Roxane McKellar run Inveraray Downs, a 1,250-hectare farm in New South Wales, Australia. They grow many crops, including wheat, sorghum, corn, sunflower, barley, chickpeas, mung beans, and soybeans.
In the year 2000, after decades of conventional cultivation, pesticides, and inorganic fertilizer, the quality and the productivity of the soil had been harmed. Pest infestations were on the rise. And the crops the McKellars were growing needed increasing amounts of pesticides and inorganic fertilizers just to keep yields steady.
At the same time, the costs of fertilizers, fuel, insecticides, and herbicides were becoming prohibitive.
Cam recalls, "We were going broke. Everyone but me was making money out of the farm!"
The McKellars investigated alternatives, and started to practice organic composting, crop rotation, high-intensity rotational grazing, and adding abundant recycled green manure. They slowly reduced their reliance on non-organic fertilizers, swapping them for options such as kelp, fish emulsions, and composts.
Over time, the McKellars restored the soil structure. Their soil now holds more water, making it less susceptible to drought and flood and requiring less irrigation.
Today, as a result of all these changes, Inveraray Downs' production costs have decreased, crop yields and quality have improved, and the structure, fertility, and resilience of soils are all being restored. All of this is good for the consumer, good for the planet — and also good for profits.
Cam reflects, "Fundamentally we need to work with nature, not against her… I should have moved to a more natural system of farming a lot earlier in my life. It is not hard. Start small, experiment, then expand."
Putting It Into Action
If we are to have a stable climate for future generations, as well as water and soil our grandchildren can use to grow food — and if we care about food sustainability — there are a few things that we know we must do.
We need to leave fossil fuels in the ground, to move as rapidly as possible toward renewable energy, to implement regenerative agricultural principles that sequester carbon, to eat mostly plants, and to remember that our actions always have an impact.
Every dollar you spend, and every bite you take, is a vote. And in the food revolution, every vote counts. You and I aren't only drops in the bucket. We're the tide of history, changing.
A better future isn't only possible — it's something you can help to create every single day.
Editor's note: Adapted from chapter 28 of 31-Day Food Revolution: Heal Your Body, Feel Great, & Transform Your World. Get the whole book here.
Does this make you feel more hopeful about the future of food and our world?
How do you eat for food sustainability and a healthier world?
What changes will you make to support a healthy future?
Featured Image: iStock.com/ThomasVogel
What's the best diet for humans? Surprisingly, most experts agree
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Clinical Impact of Periodontal Research: The Legacy of Anne Haffajee
Prior to the Forsyth HSDM Reception at IADR, please join colleagues at the Clinical Impact of Periodontal Research: The Legacy of Anne Haffajee. This Symposium will take place on Friday, March 13 from 3:30 p.m. – 545 p.m. in meeting room 302, Hynes Convention Center.
In recent decades, the field of clinical periodontology has seen many advances in the understanding of the different factors that influence the development and presentation of periodontal diseases as well as the outcomes of different therapies and long-term periodontal stability. Many of these advances were led by the seminal contributions of the late Anne Haffajee. In the more than 30 years of her extremely prolific career at The Forsyth Institute, Anne emphasized the importance of clinical and translational periodontology in the improvement of oral health. Throughout her career, Anne focused on the clinical and microbial aspects of progression of periodontal diseases, including the development of statistical methods to analyze the complex resulting data. She also studied the characteristics of refractory and chronic periodontitis and periodontal diseases in cigarette smokers. Finally, she examined the short and long term clinical and microbiological effects of non-surgical and surgical treatment modalities and the use of adjunctive antimicrobials. Anne's many groundbreaking findings still serve as a conceptual framework for the treatment and maintenance of periodontal patients. Besides her scientific contributions to periodontology, Anne's successful trajectory in research and academia inspired and paved the way for the next generation of women pursuing a career in periodontal research.
This 130 minute symposium will begin with an overview of Anne's trajectory and major scientific accomplishments, given by the symposium's chair. It will then proceed with 15 minute talks by a select group of colleagues and former students of hers, as well as experts in the field of periodontology who were influenced by her work. The presenters will discuss Anne's many contributions to the field of clinical and translational periodontology and will present new data related to Anne's work. The relevance of Dr. Haffajee's work in clinical research will be emphasized. The last 30 minutes of the symposium will be dedicated to an open discussion of the work presented.
Following the Symposium, there will be a Joint Reception of The Forsyth Institute and Harvard School of Dental Medicine from 5:45-7:30PM Friday, March 13th in the Sheraton (39 Dalton Street, Boston, Mass.) Republic Ballroom.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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HomeSports News Extra
NFF Commends Sports Minister, Submits Report On National Teams' Outings
Adeboye Amosu 6	November 19, 2019 8:12 pm
The Nigeria Football Federation has hailed the decision of the Honourable Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Sunday Dare to request for a report on the performances of the various national football teams in recent weeks, and football governing body has duly complied on Monday.
"It was a good move by the Honourable Minister to request for the report. As he said, there has to be stock taking and after that, accountability. The NFF is enamoured by the move, and we have submitted the requested report," President of NFF, Mr. Amaju Melvin Pinnick, said on Tuesday.
"For us, there is nothing to hide. We have detailed all the issues and the forces at play, and explained that in so much as these tournaments are important, they are mainly and strategically developmental.
"Even at that, we approach every match/tournament with the intention of winning, but it is practically and absolutely impossible based on indices, records and scientific laws of probability."
In a 15 –page letter signed by Pinnick, the NFF detailed issues of funding (inadequacy and late release of same) and the toxic and disruptive environment in which it has had to operate for the past 18 months (with the Federation's leadership and brand falsely and maliciously dragged from one investigative agency to the other and from one court to the other on same baseless allegations) as core reasons for the poor outings of the Super Falcons, CHAN Eagles, Golden Eaglets and Olympic Eagles in recent international matches/tournaments.
While acknowledging the importance of the qualifying matches/tournaments in which these teams participated and fell short, the Federation defended the technical crews of the teams and justified why they are the best for the positions as at the time they were hired by highlighting their track records.
Pinnick also stated that the best performance indicator for any country in international football is the A team, in this case Super Eagles, which in recent times drew with five –time world champions Brazil and Ukraine in friendlies, and defeated Benin Republic and Lesotho in 2021 AFCON qualifying matches. These, after finishing third at the first –ever 24 –team AFCON in Egypt this year summer. Moreover, a high number of the players in the present Super Eagles squad passed through the various developmental teams, showing that Nigeria is moving in the right direction.
The NFF went ahead to map out strategies for better results going forward, including but not limited to a revamp of the NFF Technical Department; improved supervision of the teams by the NFF Technical Committee; open and transparent process to select new head coaches for the teams affected; early preparation and prioritization of tournaments; synergy between the Ministry and the NFF to get approved funds released early enough for adequate preparation of teams participating in major matches and competitions and; to work even harder at securing partners and sponsors to support the programmes of the National Teams.
On the issue of the nominal roll, which has also been submitted, the NFF clarified that there is no person on its payroll whose contract has expired, and that every individual on the nominal roll has specified schedule of duty as prescribed by the Federal Civil Service or in line with his/her contract.
Sports News Extra 1181 Amaju Pinnick 190 NFF 747 Sports Minister 8 Sunday Dare 51
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Simon 2 months ago
Pinnick Amadu is good for Nff post he think third place is good for Nigeria he should go back his Delta state this is Nigeria football we talking about the currents boys playing in the super eagles now are all hand work of Samson Siasia three years ago Olympic and Ammunike gold winning under 17 boys, that's why nigeria have what is called super eagles today, anytime Nigeria failed at the cadets level theirs always problem to assemble senior national teams 2019 under 17 world cup was won by brazil that means and Mexico came second this two countries came with talented young lads to the competition that means the future of their national teams are bright and also Holland. Amadu open your eyes is not about talking since you've been in that post Nigeria has won less .
Presh 2 months ago
And why is Manu Garba still the coach of under 17? Why?
David 2 months ago
Pls enough of this name calling. I believe that we have the best results and active response to tournaments especially under Amaju Pinnicks tenure. Football administration is not Mathematics but developmental and can be altered once we start allowing uneccessary distractions. Allow him to concentrate and finish the good works he has started.
Larry 2 months ago
And why is Alloy Agu, Imama still handling our national teams..
Oliseh, Finidi, Rufai, Emenalo, Garba Lawal, Amokachi, Mutiu Adepoju and Amuneke should be considered for our next national teams set up.
Dr. Drey 2 months ago
Vote Ibrahim Said's goal for FIFA U17 WC GOTT https://www.fifa.com/u17worldcup/videos/goal-of-the-tournament/#
The curtains were drawn on the 18th edition of the FIFA U-17 World Cup, Brazil 2019 over the weekend.
But the performance of five-time champions, the Golden Eaglets of Nigeria still leaves a sour taste in the buds of their teeming fans.
Brazil secured its 4th U-17 title, to place second behind Nigeria who have five on the overall FIFA U-17 winners medal table.
The Manu Garba led team was unceremoniously sent packing in the second round and Nigerians could not hide their displeasure.
With Brazil needing just one win to equal the most priced bragging right Nigerians hold in world football, coupled with the early ouster of the Golden Eaglets in Goiânia, Brazil, is it time to raise a red flag for the Eaglets?
Nigerians could not hid their displeasues over the performances of the team as they poured out venoms on Twitter.
@HeartofStJohn1 : "No Nation's cup for home based Eagles, Super Falcons failed to qualify for the Olympics, U17 failed.. now they will say they want to go back to the drawing board.. instead of always going back to the drawing board, I suggest you stay permanently at the drawing board."
@99thbishop : "What's happened here is that we fielded the youngest set of u17s ever, and it became very glaring how much technical essence the nation's football lacks."
@I_am_Ifedayo : @thenff Discouraging these guys will not help our football grow. To face the fact, this is one of the youngest U-17 team the country has ever produced. It's time we started encouraging the real U-17s over the U-40s that we thought were the best. That's why they disappear with no time."
@Okey2blac "I strongly disagree, these guys can go ahead and have successful careers in football. Uzoho who was a 'bench wormer' at #U17WC is a mainstay in the @NGSuperEagles today while Iheanacho who shone like a million stars in same #U17WC is currently struggling to make the team."
It is worthy of note that though Nigeria is five-time winners and three times runners up at the U-17 world cup, this has not directly translated to success for the senior national team, the Super Eagles.
Despite Nigeria's enviable records at the youth level, the Super Eagles are yet to go beyond the second round of FIFA Senior World Cup.
Nigeria have consistently churned out super stars at youth football level, but consistently shown the world it lacked the know-how to make them achieve at the senior level.
What happened with Stanley Okoro (little Messi), Rabiu Ibrahim (the next Jay-Jay Okocha), Philip Osondu (Best Player Canada 87), Macauley Chrisantus (Golden Boot winner Korea 2007), Sani Emmanuel (Best Player Nigeria 2009), Femi Opabunmi( Silver Shoe winner Trinidad and Tobago 2001).
They all have one thing in common, celebrated junior players who never made their marks at the senior level.
The question is why has it been difficult to translate success at the junior level to winner's medals at the senior level?
This should be the focus of genuine football lovers. That the Eaglets won or lost should be of little importance compared to what became of them after the world cup.
"Experience is the most important thing in life. Whether you play in a final as a teenager, at school or the highest level, you must be able to take the essence of tomorrow's success from these unique moments," said Johan Cruyff.
Win or lose, conscious efforts must be made by the NFF to graduate the players to the next level (U20) and finding a core that can be nurtured for bigger and better things with the senior national team.
Such concept above is easier said than done as can be seen in the numbers of high-profile U17 players who failed to make their mark at the senior levels.
According to http://www.ftbl.com, only two members of the Mexican team that won in 2011 have gone on to play for Mexico's senior national side eight years later, Alfonso González and Marco Bueno.
Another good reminder is Nii Odartey Lamptey, once described by ESPN.com as perhaps the most high-profile African wonderkind who never realized the potential he demonstrated at the youth level.
Brazil's 2005 U17 world cup wonderkind Kerlon Moura Souza also comes to mind. The attacking midfielder scored eight goals in seven matches to lead Brazil to the 2005 South American Under 17 Football Championship title. He was the top scorer and also won the best player award, but later went under the radar.
First, it must be agreed that for most of these players to get a look in from the Super Eagles handlers in the future, they should be playing regularly at least for modest clubs in Europe.
It is well known today that teams that win the FIFA Senior World Cup have majority of its squad members plying their trades in top clubs in Europe.
The organization and standard of football played in Europe is far better than what is unavailable in other continents.
It is also of great importance for the players to consider the style of play, chances of regular playing time, youth development profile and culture similarities when choosing their European destinations.
The NFF also have an advisory role to play. Player's guardians should be educated on why the long-term future of their kids should be prioritized ahead of the lure to make more money.
The NFF should also keep records of these players, help them get good local clubs for those who might not be lucky to make it to Europe and make sure the players form the core of the next U-20 team.
Another important part of this development is for the Football Federation to continue with its policy of graduating the youth players alongside their coaches to the next level.
This seems to be paying off for Nigeria. John Obuh, who led the U-17s to the final of the world cup in 2009 was promoted to the U-20s. He took the majority of his U-17 boys to the U-20 World Cup and 10 years later at least seven (Ramon Azeez, Uche Nwofor, Emmanuel Anyanwu, Olarenwaju Kayode, Ahmed Musa, Kenneth Omeruo and Terna Suswam) of the 21 man team have either made their debut for the Super Eagles or are currently a mainstay in the team.
The same was done with the victorious 2013 U-17 team. Though the Manu Garba led side failed to reenact its U-17 form as they lost 1-0 to Germany in the U20 World Cup round of 16 in 2015.
Four years later, at least eight (Moses Simon, Dele Alampasu, Ifeanyi Ifeanyi, Kelechi Iheanacho, Isaac Success, Kingsley Sokari, Wilfred Ndidi and Musa Muhammed) members of the 21 man squad have either made their debut or are regulars for the Super Eagles.
Emmanuel Amunike also had the privilege of leading the Nigeria U-20 team having achieved the ultimate at the U-17 level.
Though the team failed to qualify for the FIFA U-20 world cup, some of the players from the team ( Victor Osimhen and Samuel Chukwueze) are now key players in the Super Eagles just two years down the line.
Though the Super Eagles are yet to hit the expected height, the team seems to be on the right part as could be seen in its composition.
13 of the current 21 man squad (Ikechukwu Ezenwa, Francis Uzoho, Kenneth Omeruo, Shehu Abdullahi, Oghenekaro Etebo, Samuel Chukwueze, Moses Simon, Wilfred Ndidi, Ramon Azeez, Emmanuel Dennis, Victor Osimhen, Daniel Akpeyi, Chidozie Awaziem, Kelechi Iheanacho, Ahmed Musa) led by Coach Gernot Rohr, are players who have played for Nigeria at youth levels. This is a dream composition for even top European countries.
While the NFF need to make a solid plan for their future stars, it must be said that the players themselves hold perhaps the larger part of the key to success.
One good example could be drawn from the comment of Cristiano Ronaldo on one certain Fabio Paim as documented by sportskeeda.com.
Cristiano Ronaldo said: "If you think I'm good, just wait until you see Fabio Paim."
Like Ronaldo, Paim is the youth product of Sporting Lisbon. He had 42 caps for various Portugal youth sides but never made it to the senior team. He hasn't even played for any Portuguese top-flight clubs for nearly ten years.
So what went wrong? Why does one have five Ballon d'Or wins to his name while the other has ended up as an amateur player?
Paim himself recently admitted that while he had more talent than Cristiano, he lacked the work ethic needed to make it as a professional footballer.
Bunmi Blair
BSc Microbiology, PGD Journalism, CAF B Coaching License.


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Every time an exception is caught, the exception stack is stored and can be retrieved using the builtin $excstack(). It contains the filenames and positions of the different calls between the try and the place the exception was raised.
In some cases, you want to filter exceptions and catch only some of them. You then need to catch all the exceptions, check if the exception is filtered, and raise it again if not. However, in order to lose the exception stack by throwing a new exception, you can use the $rethrow builtin which will add the two stacks together (the current one and the one to the next catch).
Please note that you can rethrow another exception, so it's easier to rewrap some Neko libraries exceptions with your own format.
It is also possible to get the current call stack at any point of a Neko program using the $callstack() builtin.


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Civil Candor
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Will American Values Defeat a Woke Progressive Reckoning?
Last update December 7, 2020Leave a Comment
After four years of warnings about attacks to our democracy we finally know where the real threat comes from. It's not the allegedly fraud-riddled 2020 Election. That was only a preview. American values face a vicious progressive reckoning they can't possibly survive if Democrats make good on their vows to create a just, equitable, and ultimately valueless society.
Democrats are greedy but they aren't stupid. They know what will happen if their destructive legislative agenda succeeds. They have no reason to care. This is about power, elitism, and lucrative political careers that depend on the subservience of the middle and working classes. The politicians who do the damage will prosper no matter what happens to the America people.
The liberal social engineering espoused by contemporary radicals won't create a more equitable society. It will create resentment. Those at the bottom will stay at the bottom, albeit a new bottom dictated by politicians who blame America's supposedly stacked economic deck. It's not that Democrats don't understand this. They don't care. The gap between Capitol Hill and the working class is simply too vast. Lawmakers have their own masters to answer to who have more power, more money, and more influence than the poor schmucks begging Congress for their next pandemic relief check can possibly imagine.
Woke is a liberal buzzword, not a value
In a year where kids sit at home instead of the classroom the liberal left decided on a grammatically incorrect buzzword to pat itself on the back for understanding why America is such a terrible place.
Instead of "woke" how about "awake?" Children don't need any more help becoming illiterate than Democrats, labor unions, and Rep. Maxine Waters have already offered:
"Stay woke. Stay energized. Stay on point. Understand what's going on around you." – Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA-43).1
Martin Luther King understood this. He spoke about "remaining awake."3
Dr. King and contemporary liberal politics don't have much in common. Racial inequities are just an excuse for Democrats and the white guilt set to leverage the fear of being judged racist by an unforgiving woke yardstick that envelops everything about us:
In the middle of a national reckoning on racial injustice, the Trump administration is trying to sweep our nation's history of racism under the rug.2
The solution? Take down monuments, rename buildings, sweep history under the rug, and invent an entirely new set of American values.
American values say no to a phony, engineered society
Simple, commonsense American values say no to a phony engineered society that uses racism as an excuse for a socialist agenda.
There's a reason for this. Our values work. They made us the greatest economic and humanitarian superpower on earth. Generations were willing to work hard for a chance at success with no guarantee of reward. Now radical liberals want to hand out the rewards with no guarantee of effort as if everything that preceded this election was flat out wrong:
Any responsible parent knows what happens when you give kids everything they want. They grow up spoiled and irresponsible because they learn that life owes them. Whatever they get is never enough because when everything is free and easy it has no value.
This is the simplistic approach Democrats chose for representing the American people. Lacing their messaging with blame about racism, climate change, and economic inequality doesn't change the fact that all they are doing is promoting a giveaway culture with values determined by whatever it takes to get elected.
Enter the pandemic. The booming economy during the Trump presidency is ignored and forgotten. Democrats seized their advantage and a chance to put the American people on the government dole. "Guaranteed income" became a pre-election rallying cry.
New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman backed a test program for 12,000 lucky recipients just to get things started:
The Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Act of 2020 would establish a three-year nationwide pilot program that gives a monthly support payment to individual taxpayers implemented by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).4
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) proposed the "The Reinvestment to Ensure a Livable Income for Every Family (RELIEF) Act." The bill threw in an appeal to the climate change set by demanding that we:
prohibit the Trump Administration from giving away billions of dollars to fossil fuel corporations.5
The real purpose of Omar's bill is to open the door to a socialist welfare state. She proposes that we:
Universally guarantee a monthly payment of $1,000 for every adult over the age of 18 and $500 for every child residing in the United States through the end of the pandemic.6
If they really wanted to help, Democrats would have negotiated a relief bill months ago. Instead, they dragged their feet so they could use suffering as an election issue. With the election over they passed sweeping legislation for what really matters: marijuana.
The socialist society promoted by radicals in Nancy Pelosi's House of Representatives is a blatant demand for a much larger share of America's wealth to do with as they please. Money is power. It's that simple. That's why their claim of shunning corporate America is such a ridiculous lie:
The multiple crises we are facing are deeply intertwined. We need a bold, holistic solution to revive and rebuild our economy in an equitable way that prioritizes people and our environment over corporate interests.7
"Corporate interests" doesn't mean what it sounds like, so don't expect liberal House members to give back the money contributed to ousting Trump in 2020. Their corporate interests and especially media conglomerates that do the Democratic Party's rhetorical dirty work are more than acceptable and a vital part of our new, equitable society.
American values vs. Democrats' socialist values
It's impossible to create an equitable society with values moderated by a political party because those values will vanish as soon as the party falls out of favor and power shifts to the other side.
The Biden administration will do its best to destroy every vestige of the last four years. If Democrats win the Senate he will succeed until the 2022 election threatens to stop him in his tracks after two years of woke-moderated foolishness.
Sadly, many Americans are willing to ditch our values for the party's proffered handouts.
31% of Americans don't know what fair and generous means
A Pew Research poll that questions our opinions on socialism showed that 31% believe it leads to a "fairer, more generous society" while only 19% felt that socialism "undermines work ethic" and "increases reliance on government." 8
Gallup reports that only 51% of Americans would not vote for a presidential candidate because they are a socialist.9
These are disturbing numbers, especially when you consider the crushing menu of socialist programs that targeted voters this year: free college, loan forgiveness, free health care, and income maintenance. Did Americans buy the argument that racism justifies socialism?
An old argument reinvented for the wrong reasons
Sixteen years of Democrats in the White House haven't done much to fix the number one problem the party counts on to push through their radical agenda next year:
Evidence abounds in other ways of the persistence of the kind of bigotry that can affect the way we think even if we're not conscious of it, in hiring and promotion and business and educational decisions.
Crimes and violence based on hate against Asians, Hispanics, African Americans and other minorities are still with us.10
That didn't come from Joe Biden or even Barack Obama. This was from Bill Clinton in July 1995. Twenty-five years later Obama is still lecturing us about the same thing because his two terms in the White House did not create the kind of racially equitable society his party still promises to anyone naïve enough to still be paying attention.
Make no mistake. Equality is an American value, but threatening to use the racist label against anyone who doesn't submit to your political beliefs has nothing to do with equality, America, or democracy. It has everything to do with being a contemporary woke liberal intent on a punishing progressive reckoning.
While Democrats blamed Donald Trump for his virus response and threatened Americans with an overwhelmed health care system, Kamala Harris proposed the COVID-19 Bias and Anti-Racism Training Act because of "persistent bias" in the health care system her party created:
COVID-19 is disproportionately infecting and killing minorities across the nation.11
Cosponsor Alma Adams (D-NC) blamed the problem on "systemic racism in our health care systems"12 which are, of course, the same systems Democrats promised us they fixed. Neither mentioned the Obama Affordable Care Act that helped this alleged race-based health care inequity to flourish. Both lawmakers co-sponsored Medicare for All bills and the Green New Deal which are socialist panaceas to address the House racial justice laundry list:
However, the racial injustices that permeate our country aren't limited to issues of police brutality. Systemic racism has perpetuated longstanding disparities in education, employment, housing, health care, the justice system, environmental issues, and more.13
God Won't Bless America Created by politicians instead of values
God Bless America was conspicuously absent from Joe Biden's Thanksgiving address. Our president-elect did bless the American people. That's only fair for the eighty million who were duped into precipitating the end of America. They did a tremendous service to Biden, Harris, and the destructive political machine that will batter America's values beyond salvation if they get their way.
The truth is that no one wants an equitable society moderated by politicians. American values don't support it. Democrats don't want it. There is nothing fair or equitable about the society they plan to engineer, including protecting their own pensions from climate change while they play games with relief for the unemployed. Does anyone believe that a Democratic House that can't even pass a relief bill will be able to enact a barrage of socialist policies that will make America a better place? In the end what Democrats profess to hate the most will make destroying America possible. This is what their angry new progressive reckoning will deliver.
1"Engagement." Congressional Black Caucus. https://cbc.house.gov/staywoke/, retrieved December 5, 2020.
2"Tri-Caucus Chairs' Statement on Trump Administration Prohibiting Federal Agencies from Conducting Anti-Racism Training." Congressional Hispanic Caucus. September 8, 2020. https://chc.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/tri-caucus-chairs-statement-on-trump-administration-prohibiting-federal, retrieved December 6, 2020.
3"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution." Stanford University. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/publications/knock-midnight-inspiration-great-sermons-reverend-martin-luther-king-jr-10, retrieved December 5, 2020.
4"Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Act of 2020." WatsonColeman.house.gov. https://watsoncoleman.house.gov/uploadedfiles/
one_pager-fact_sheet_guaranteed_income_ubi.pdf, retrieved December 6, 2020.
5"Rep. Omar Introduces Bold Package to Address Coronavirus Crisis: $1,000 for Every Adult Monthly, $500 for Every Child, Compensation for Small Businesses, No Bailout for Oil Executives." Omar.house.gov. March 19, 2020. https://omar.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-omar-introduces-bold-package-address-coronavirus-crisis-1000-every-adult, retrieved December 6, 2002.
6Ibid.
7Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct) in "Rep. Omar Co-Leads Comprehensive "THRIVE Agenda" to Address COVID-19, Climate Change, Racial Injustice, and Economic Crises." Ilhan Omar. September 10, 2020. https://omar.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-omar-co-leads-comprehensive-thrive-agenda-address-covid-19-climate-change, retrieved December 3, 2020.
8"Americans' View of 'Socialism' and 'Capitalism.' Pew Research. October 7, 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/
10/07/in-their-own-words-behind-americans-views-of-socialism-and-capitalism/, retrieved December 1, 2020.
9Newport, Frank. "Public Opinion Review: Americans' Reaction to the Word 'Socialism.'" March 6, 2020. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/287459/public-opinion-review-americans-word-socialism.aspx, retrieved December 4, 2020.
10"Remarks By William Jefferson Clinton On Affirmative Action." National Archives. July 19, 1995. https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/textonly/
Initiatives/OneAmerica/19970610-1444.html, retrieved December 3, 2020.
11"Harris, Adams Announce Legislation to Support Bias and Anti-Racism Training in COVID-19 Response." Kamala D. Harris. July 15, 2020. https://www.harris.senate.gov/news/press-releases/harris-adams-announce-legislation-to-support-bias-and-anti-racism-training-in-covid-19-response_, retrieved December 2, 2020.
12Ibid.
13"Racial Justice." Pingree.house.gov. https://pingree.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=14915, retrieved December 6, 2020.
Author's note: content revised after original publish date of December 6, 2020.
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LIFE AS IT UNFOLDS… BY COUNTRY MUSIC SONG WRITER BEN KRAHNE
Country Quiz
A Little Beer with Your Country Music?
News / By Ben
It's been rumored that famous author Earnest Hemingway never wrote a single word unless he was sufficiently buzzed up off alcohol. A lot of artists drink, some of whom even suffer with alcohol abuse and addiction, such as Keith Whitley. Many hit country songwriters have had their fair share of alcohol, and hopefully they're able to keep it under control and drink responsibly. But why is alcohol such a go-to staple for country music songwriting?
It's not as if they're teaching you about it in songwriting classes, and most songwriting tips aren't going to tell you to buy a 12 pack of Silver Bullets to hone your craft. But from "It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere" and "Whiskey River" to "Friends in Low Places" and "Drinkin' Beer and Wastin' Bullets," there are tons of songwriters out there writing about alcohol. Hell, one of Brad Paisley's most famous songs ever is simply called "Alcohol." That pretty much sums it up.
A lot of amateur country music songwriters on the cusp of breaking into the industry also write fantastic songs about alcohol. In fact, out of all the world's musical genres, country music might hold the distinction of having the most songs written about alcohol than any other genre. And it's far more than just a phase or a fad. Back in the days of Hank Williams, there were plenty of songs about it. In today's atmosphere of short, snappy country radio hits, there are still songs about it. The simple fact of the matter is that writing about drinking, whether it's beer, whiskey, or tequila making some woman's clothes fall off, someone is always going to be writing about it and singing it.
Why So Much Hit Country Radio Music is About Drinking
Put yourself into the shoes of a hit country songwriter, if you can. Or, if you prefer, just any songwriter. Or, if you are a songwriter yourself, you may understand this, even if you don't have any country music radio hits to your name… yet! People write love songs because love is a great thing. It makes you feel good. It impacts your life. The same thing with a broken heart. You don't need to sign up with a service and take songwriting classes to understand that impactful things bring on the inspiration to write. Well, this is the effect alcohol has on millions of people. It helps us wash our blues away. It helps us feel better. It helps us blend in and mingle socially. It can quell our anxiety. You can take a load off and just enjoy things.
This is going to come through in hit country songwriting a lot more than other things in life. All except for love and sorrow, alcohol is on the list as a top topic and always will be. So, if you're asking why so many country music songwriters are writing about alcohol, the real question you should be asking is: Why aren't you?


Read the text and for questions 1 to 7 say if the sentences are true or false.
My name is Mike, and I was born in a very poor neighbourhood in Los Angeles. When I was little my mother took care of my brother and me, because my father left before I came to this world, and he wasn't too interested in being a part of our lives. My mother had to work two jobs, which didn't pay much; she had to work very hard so that we could have food, clothes and a place to live. She was great; we really loved her and appreciated her efforts.
Every day, she usually arrived home very late and she was very tired, but she always cooked nice meals for us, and played with us, and she made sure that we did our homework. She always insisted on how important it was to get a good education. She couldn't finish school because she got pregnant with me when she was just a teenager. "I couldn't finish school, and that's why I must work so hard now, and I earn so little money," she often said.
Children were very violent in my neighbourhood. The truth is that you needed to be violent if you wanted to survive, and there were lots of crime and vandalism, and drugs. It was difficult to be a good student for children who lived in our neighbourhood. The other children at school hated you if you got good grades, so I wasn't very popular. The only positive thing about living in that place is that you needed to be very clever to survive, and that helped me later in life.
Finally, my brother and I could finish high school, and I went to university because I was a very good basketball player, and basketball paid for my university degree. The day of my graduation my mother was in tears. And she was in tears again the day I showed her our new apartment, away from the neighbourhood. Do you know how difficult it is to get out of a poor neighbourhood? It's very, very hard, but I did it, and it was thanks to my mum. Now she doesn't have to work two jobs any more, and I take care of her.
1Mike didn't know his father.
2His mother didn't have enough money to buy food.
3She didn't finish school because she had Mike.
5He got good grades at school.
6He thinks living in his neighbourhood was very positive.
7He isn't living with his mother at the moment.


How Do Believers Complete the Reformation?
It was the same vision again and again, and Derek Frank was getting more than a little frustrated by it. Frank was on staff at a large charismatic church in England.
It was the late 1980s at the height of the charismatic renewal movement when visions and interpretations were common. Yet "no one could interpret mine," Frank says.
Each time he saw the same thing: a large building with an imposing Greek-style entrance with pillars, steps and a cobblestone courtyard. The people going in and out were dressed in medieval clothing. The scene changed to the 21st century with people wearing headsets while attending a conference.
"The vision always ended with the command to 'complete the Reformation,'" Frank says.
Finally, Frank asked God to either explain the recurring vision and command, or stop showing it to him. God answered—by stopping the vision.
Fast forward a few years. Frank was in Geneva, Switzerland, walking in the old part of the city when he saw something that shocked him. "In front of me, precise to the last detail, was the very building I had seen so often in my vision," he says. It was the Cathedral of St. Pierre, seat of John Calvin's Reformation.
That Calvin, Frank knew, was a contemporary of another great reformer, Martin Luther. Could God be saying, Frank wondered, that the reformers of the 16th century had left something unfinished, something that remains to this day—and that He wanted Frank to help complete it? But what?
Frank began a journey studying the Reformation, what it accomplished and what it might possibly have left incomplete. He knew that the reformers—Luther, Calvin and many others—reversed many of the abuses, sinful practices and erroneous beliefs of the medieval church. Luther, for example, revolutionized what had been accepted church theology by insisting that the Bible says we are saved not by works but by grace alone. He was imprisoned because he fought for the right of people to read the Bible in their own language.
Likewise, Calvin contributed greatly to the Reformation. As "supreme governor" of Geneva, he used scriptural principles to transform a city filled with crime and corruption into a model city. Isaiah 33:22, for example, became the basis for developing Geneva's legislative, executive and judicial branches of government.
In that respect, Frank knew that these and other reformers were to be commended. Yet he found another alarming belief that the reformers not only didn't stop but actually perpetrated: anti-Semitism. Frank found shocking evidence that Luther, Calvin and other reformers disliked Jews.
Luther, for example, who once fought the papacy because of its oppression against the Jews, eventually turned against the Jews himself. He wrote a 65,000-word book called The Jews and Their Lies in which he called Jews "stupid fools," "miserable," "blind," "senseless" and "thieves and robbers." In the book, he urged the authorities to "eject them forever from this country ... do not grant them protection (or) safe conduct."
In the same book, Luther openly urged Christians "first to set fire to (Jews') synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord ... so that God might see that we are Christians.... Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed."
Frank learned that Calvin was anti-Semitic too. While he purposely designed Geneva to be a city of refuge, there was no refuge there for Jews, who at the time were persecuted throughout Europe.
Calvin wrote the Jews' "rotten and unbending stiff-neckedness deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without the pity of anyone." He also wrote that Scriptures such as "and so all Israel shall be saved" (Rom. 11:26) do not refer to Israel itself. Instead he said, "The Israel of God is what Paul calls the church."
Today, this belief is known as "replacement theology," meaning that God broke His covenant with the Jews and instead gave it to the church.
As Frank read these and other instances of open anti-Semitism among the reformers, he could not forget God's command to him to "complete the Reformation." In 2014, he and his wife, Francoise, and their filmmaker daughter, Vanessa, produced a docudrama called Let the Lion Roar (letthelionroar.com). The film exposes the anti-Semitism of the early church reformers, shows how it still affects the church today and urges believers to "complete the Reformation" by reversing the anti-Semitism and replacement theology that still exist in the church.
The title comes from Amos 3:8. "The lion has roared—who will not fear? The Sovereign Lord has spoken—who can but prophesy?"
The film includes cameo appearances by Sid Roth, Chuck Pierce, Robert Stearns, Jim Goll, Jaci Velasquez, Paul Wilbur, Boede Thoene, Mark Biltz, Stephen Baldwin, Don Finto, Rabbi Jonathan Bernis, Kevin Sorbo and others. The film has been shown in 49 nations and will be in Christian bookstores in early 2016.
"We actually toned down a lot of what we could have said," says the film's director, Vanessa Frank, "and used only 10 percent of what we could have used. The list of leaders goes on and on. We depict a little of what they said, but it doesn't do justice to the volume of sermons telling people (to commit) full-on anti-Semitic hate crimes—telling them to set fire to synagogues and worse."
Adds actor Brad Stine, who plays Ambrose of Milan: "This film deals with some very well-known, famous and important founders and fathers of church history who also had these incredibly anti-Semitic moments. Frankly, it's shocking. (But) if you're a Christian, you should know what you believe. You've committed your life to this thing; you need to know all of its flaws. These were brilliant men who could also be brilliantly wrong."
"Centuries later," says Vanessa Frank, "Hitler said he was only continuing what the church had been doing for 1,500 years. Most historians recognize that what went on in World War II would not have happened if people had not been indoctrinated that one of the most influential people of their nation—Luther—taught the persecution of Jews. That's the culture in which World War II was able to take place."
Earlier this year the Franks were at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville, Tennessee. While waiting for breakfast one morning, they talked with Jani Salokangas, the marketing and young adults director of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ). They told him about Derek's visions and the resulting film.
Now it was Salokangas' turn to be stunned. He'd recently had three vivid dreams in which a man sat at a desk writing fervently for days at a time, which turned to months and years.
"His ink is writing history," Salokangas remembers. "This message is about to transform nations." Finally, the man rises from his desk and leaves the room with his masterpiece, "yet the air is suddenly filled with a heavy dread of a work unfinished. Something must have been forgotten."
As the man leaves, Salokangas sees what is left behind on the desk: a small, solitary star of David. Salokangas knew the man in his dream was Luther.
"Luther's anti-Semitism would blind him to one of the great truths (that) remain buried by the Reformation: that God still has reserved a central place for the Jews in His redemptive plan for the world," Salokangas says. "Israel's restoration simply lay forgotten on Luther's desk. This left a crack in the Reformation's foundation, which has hindered many Christians from seeing the full scope of God's redemptive purpose."
At the same time God was highlighting to the Franks the necessity of reformation, He was also speaking it to ICEJ. In fact, ICEJ had already planned that "reformation" would be the theme of its annual Feast of Tabernacles celebration and conference in Jerusalem this fall, which thousands of believers attend from all over the world. There are many areas where the church desperately needs reform, says ICEJ Executive Director Dr. Jürgen Bühler, and one of them is that "the early church's understanding of God's enduring purposes for Israel and our connection to the Jewish people must be brought back to mainstream Christianity today."
How in the world did anti-Semitism infiltrate the church?
After all, when the church was born on Pentecost in Acts 2, it was almost 100 percent Jewish. The 2,000 new believers who were swept up by the power of the Holy Spirit that day were nearly all Jews. They realized that Jesus (Yeshua to them) was the Messiah, and they didn't give up their Jewishness or become Christians. They remained Jewish, as believers in Jesus, and kept their customs, feasts and their Jewishness. They were not "converted" to Christianity. In fact, unbelievers were converted to Judaism—Messianic Judaism.
The church continued this way for 300 years. "When Constantine came to power, however, all this began to change," says Dr. Robert Heidler, author of The Messianic Church Arising. "Like many Romans, Constantine hated the Jewish people. ... (He) determined to establish the paganized Christianity of Rome and Alexandria as the standard for the entire church. Every church in the empire was commanded to conform to this non-Messianic standard. Those who would not conform were severely persecuted."
The shift intensified as the church began to twist Scriptures like Genesis 12; Jeremiah 31:36; Isaiah 60:3, 61:6 and 62:1-2; Hosea 2:14-16; Zephaniah 3:14-17, 8:14-15 and dozens more where God promised He would never break His covenant with the Jews.
Instead, church leaders preached that God was angry with Jews for "rejecting" Jesus, saying He not only withdrew His covenant from them, but gave it to the church instead. They "replaced" Jews with the church—and replacement theology was born. Frank calls it the "great deception."
Well into the 21st century, many mainline denominations and even some charismatic churches still believe the lie of replacement theology and actively preach it from the pulpit.
Let the Lion Roar director Vanessa Frank once attended a church that taught replacement theology, and she just assumed it was true. Then she went to a conference where a speaker laid out the fallacy of that belief.
"He said if God would renege on that promise, what does that say about His character?" she remembers. "If He reneges on His promises to the Jews, what does that mean for His promises to Gentiles?"
Frank hopes the film will stimulate debate and cause believers to ask questions about things they've assumed to be true. Responses to the film have been "polarizing," she says.
The message the film shares is "a very, very, very hard message to swallow," she says.
"It's a very offensive message—the message of God choosing Israel and His eternal love for Israel. It's offending today (just) as it was 2,000 years ago and even further back in the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For many people, it's not what they want to hear."
Many well-meaning Christians who respect Israel nonetheless feel that focusing on Israel and replacement theology is not a critical issue when there are so many other more immediate crises facing the church. They argue it is a minor issue and a distraction.
Three reasons point to why this theological view is significant.
First, "replacement theology always leads to anti-Semitism," says Ron Cantor, author of Identity Theft. "(It) means we get the promises, (but) Jews keep the curses. ... While (some) claim that you can be replacement and not anti-Semitic, history would testify that eventually it always leads to the death of Jews."
Many Christians today "are absolutely not anti-Semites, and they would never sanction the persecution of the Jewish people in Jesus' name," adds Dr. Michael Brown, author of Our Hands Are Stained With Blood. "But the sad fact of history is that it is this very theology that opened up the door to centuries of 'Christian' anti-Semitism in the past, and it is threatening to open up that ugly door once again in the present."
Second, replacement theology disempowers the church by disconnecting it from its roots.
"The devil can't reverse the fact that the Jewish Messiah has come," says Derek Frank. "He can't reverse the resurrection, that the church is the light of the world and has inside them the light of the world, or that they are a people who turn the world upside down. The devil couldn't reverse that, but he could disconnect believers from their roots. A tree whose roots are damaged doesn't pull up what it is supposed to. Therefore the fruit is damaged and the tree can't stand when the storms come. This is the devil's strategy of replacement theology. Once you buy that lie, you disempower the church."
Third, if replacement theology is true, then God is not a covenant keeper but a covenant breaker. If He broke His word in this instance, then everything else He said eventually can be discounted.
A rising movement within the church says it is time to complete the work of the Reformation by exposing the lie of replacement theology and ending the sin of anti-Semitism in the church.
Exactly two years from now—in October 2017—the church will celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. It is time, this movement says, to complete the work that the reformers left unfinished.
Diana Scimone is a journalist who has written extensively for Charisma for more than 25 years, particularly on issues of justice, global missions and the move of Holy Spirit among persecuted Christians. She is founder and president of the Born2Fly Project to stop child trafficking and author of Audacious and numerous children's books including Born to Fly and the Adventures With PawPaw series.
Sid Roth discusses how acting in Let the Lion Roar stirred up a deeper compassion for his Jewish people at lionroar.charismamag.com.


Recently, we came across an article from Buzzfeed called 24 Reasons You Should Stop Messing Around and Just Marry a Brit. Now, we know that these articles are designed to draw discussion – capitalising on existing stereotypes and packaging them into fun, easy-to-read lists.
Of course, there is no doubt that some people want to marry a Brit – but many others, like myself, just so happened to. It was never my intention to find a British husband, but on a trip to the UK – I met Chris, and (for lack of a better term) we hit it off. So, while I may be married to a Brit, I did not come with any pre-conceived expectations of what that meant.
That's why, as a British & American couple, we wanted to test the claims (or stereotypes) made in the post. Were these things we had noticed in our relationship? Were they valid points, or unrealistic fantasies of British culture?
In this video we go through each of the 24 points and discuss whether we think they really are benefits of marrying a Brit, true outside of Britain or just plain wishful thinking.
We did not look through the list prior to filming this vlog, so all reactions are genuine! From the attitude towards sporting events to traditions such as Guy Fawkes night, this is a whirlwind tour of British culture – separating fact from fiction.
If you're in a relationship (or married to) a Brit – we'd love to hear from you. Did you agree with the points made in Buzzfeed's list, or is the reality a little different? We know that everyone will have different experiences, and we're curious about what those are.


I'm a big fan of non-famous places. (Okay, I don't mind New York or Paris either, but if I had to choose from one type or the other … give me the unknowns.) The town I lived in while working in German, Heilbronn, is pretty low on the fame factor itself, so if you head a little bit north to the village of Bad Wimpfen, then you're really not anywhere famous.
And that is great! Bad Wimpfen is one of the prettiest German towns I've ever seen. It's full of fairytale Fachwerk houses, skinny winding alleyways and cobblestone streets and is basically as German as you'll get. It's home to the Blauer Turm (Blue Tower), a great spot for views looking over the town (and the place where both of these pictures were taken, in opposite seasons, obviously!).
There are several excellent German-style restaurants in Bad Wimpfen – one with an entire menu consisting of Maultaschen, one of the local foods – and places for a good local beer or glass of local wine, and at Christmas time the place crowds up with German out-of-towners as they hang out at the Christmas markets there – my all-time favourite version, in fact.
The truth is, I was so besotted with Bad Wimpfen that we spent the night of our wedding in a hotel here. And stayed again last year when we returned to Germany (bigger hotel this time with less creaking, winding stairs – great for atmosphere but no good for prams!). I have no doubt I will return there again and again, just as I did when I was still living in Germany.
You know, I'm not sure I should actually be telling you all about Bad Wimpfen. I don't want a wave of foreign tourists to destroy my German paradise! Perhaps you could pretend you haven't read this post? Danke!!
We lived in Germany for a few years in the 1980's. The first five months I didn't have a job so finances kept us close to our city. We saw so many amazing places that were completely off the beaten track. We traveled quite a bit after I got a job to bigger and "better" places but those first few months were the best!
Inspiring photos! I could just imagine staying here in December eagerly looking forward to the German Christmas Markets!
A good small town in Italy is Vicenza!
@ Walking to China – I didn't realise you'd live in Germany too – and those first few months do sound lovely – there are so many little surprises in Germany if you're not following a guide book.
@ Murissa, thank you! Oh yes the Christmas markets are really divine. Thanks for the Italian tip, will have to look into that!


Located in the beautiful Santa Rosa Plaza in Camarillo, CA.
The Manhattan of Camarillo opened in November 2014 in beautiful Camarillo, CA. An Italian inspired restaurant that truly offers something for everyone. Live entertainment and a fine dining Italian steakhouse environment on the inside create a beautiful date destination.
Nestled just outside is our Madison Beer Garden, host to over 60 different beers on draft and bottle, with a comfortable group vibe. Enjoy the latest sports game with a nice cold brew. A perfect place to find gourmet cuisine at happy hour prices.


text:
"""
Django settings for courseclass project.

For more information on this file, see
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/topics/settings/

For the full list of settings and their values, see
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/ref/settings/
"""

# Build paths inside the project like this: os.path.join(BASE_DIR, ...)
import os
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__))

# Quick-start development settings - unsuitable for production
# See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/howto/deployment/checklist/

# SECURITY WARNING: keep the secret key used in production secret!
SECRET_KEY = os.environ['DJANGO_SECRET']

# SECURITY WARNING: don't run with debug turned on in production!
DEBUG = True

TEMPLATE_DEBUG = True

ALLOWED_HOSTS = []

# Application definition

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

    'south',
    'registration',
    'easy_thumbnails',
    'xadmin',
    'crispy_forms',
    'attachments',

    'classes',
)

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
)

ROOT_URLCONF = 'courseclass.urls'

WSGI_APPLICATION = 'courseclass.wsgi.application'

# Database
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/ref/settings/#databases

DATABASES = { 'default': '' }

# Internationalization
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/topics/i18n/

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-us'
TIME_ZONE = 'UTC'
USE_I18N = True
USE_L10N = True
USE_TZ = True

# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/howto/static-files/

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
STATICFILES_DIRS = ('assets',)
TEMPLATE_DIRS = ('templates',)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Construction of all types relies on strong, moisture-controlled concrete that can stand up to harsh environments. With our full line of concrete enhancement technology (CET) products, you have the power to completely control the properties of the concrete used on the jobsite.
Our flagship product is the industry standard porosity inhibiting admixture (PIA) designed to reduce moisture movement while making concrete stronger and denser, mitigating slab shrinkage, warping, alkali silica reactivity (ASR) and chloride ion penetration. Barrier One is integral to the concrete and will render the concrete impermeable, eliminating the need for surface sealers and coatings.
CSXtreme is a porosity inhibiting admixture specially formulated for exterior applications. In addition to moisture impermeability, CSXtreme provides corrosion, shrink and ASR inhibiting properties and increased strength.
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BOCA is the government and military contracting and distributor of Barrier One and CSXtreme admixtures. We can partner with local concrete suppliers and construction materials testing services to provide the products and information you need to deliver a quality structure.
Barrier One, CSXtreme and CPS have been independently tested by leading laboratories and have been scientifically proven to inhibit the porosity of concrete and increase strength while reducing ASR, shrinkage and corrosion.
Each batch of our concrete admixtures have been extensively tested. Our rigorous quality control standards ensure that every tote you receive performs as promised.
Our products are proven in the field and are warranted to perform as stated on your project. Our flagship product, Barrier One, is warranted against damaging moisture vapor emission for the life of the concrete.
Our products are proven in the field and are warranted to perform as stated on your project. Our flagship product, Barrier One, is warranted against moisture vapor emission for the life of the concrete.
Our admixtures contribute to LEED performance in a variety of ways, including enhancing the insulative qualities of the slab, increasing the useful life-cycle of the concrete substrate, contributing to healthy indoor air quality, and reducing vapor emissions.
All of our products contain no volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Barrier One has set and maintained the standard in concrete enhancement technology.
Concrete Moisture Solutions is the premier concrete admixture provider in the United States. Because moisture easily travels through untreated concrete, the costs of adhesion failure and topically applied moisture mitigation can quickly eat into the profits of even the largest construction firms.
Concrete takes on moisture 100x faster than it releases it back into the atmosphere, so exposure to water becomes a significant problem. With outdoor applications, the problems can escalate with freeze-thaw cycles and exposure to acids and chemicals such as deicing agents. Moisture moving within untreated concrete can cause embedded metals to corrode and the concrete to become compromised, dramatically reducing the strength and life expectancy of the slab.
Our flagship product, Barrier One, was developed to solve the problems inherent in concrete applications on construction sites around the globe. With the addition of CSXtreme and CPS, our robust product line continues to deliver real-world results. Barrier One and CSXtreme remain the only scientifically-proven porosity inhibiting admixtures (PIA) on the market.
We understand the critical role that time plays in all construction projects, and are dedicated to getting our admixtures to you quickly, when and where they are needed. With Concrete Moisture Solutions' state-of-the-art production facility and sophisticated order tracking and delivery system, our United States clients typically receive admixtures within 1-5 days. Contact us today to talk with one of our experts and discuss how our concrete admixtures can help you achieve your goals.
Concrete Moisture Solutions, Inc. sets the standard for concrete enhancement, with a full range of admixtures designed to inhibit porosity, reduce moisture vapor, and inhibit porosity. All of our concrete admixtures are extensively tested in independent laboratories to ensure quality, repeatable performance in every application.


Does that line from John Masefield's poem ring any bells in your memory?
My education was lacking in the memorization of poetry. But I do remember this poem from Grade 5 or 6. The lines captivated me. I never imagined that I would ever live near the sea, but here I am.
On Saturday night, after a day of work in the yard, and a hearty dinner, Tim and I walked to the marina, about 20 minutes from our home. The moon is almost full and the sky clear. The water - smooth as glass, reflecting the boats tied to their moorings.
It was also very cold, and a cup of steaming tea was just the thing when we got home. And yet, today, beguiled by the sunshine, we were at the beach again. It was a lonely sea - no boats, just a handle of people. Cold and windy. Tim climbed a big rock ... just because he could.
Here is the poem - maybe it will trigger memories for you, too.
I'm linking once again to Mosaic Monday, hosted by Mary at the Little Red House.
My dad used to recite this poem to me when I was a little girl and he was headed off to work. He had a tugboat company that towed log booms from the Fraser River to Ladysmith sawmill.
I have never heard the poem before, Lorrie, but I have heard the call to the sea on countless occasions. Love the pictures . . . how do you do that mosaic thing? I love the way it looks.
I loved that poem as a girl, maybe because we lived by the sea, and I was never happier than when I was in a small boat!
This poem is a favorite of mine Lorrie and your post is beautiful. I grew up just half a block from the ocean in Victoria and I miss the wind, the waves and the beauty of the beach this many years later. I would be at the beach every day if I lived where you do. I love the beach collages you make. Thanks for sharing them!
You have some of the most beautiful posts--poetic on their own! I love these pics!
Love that Tim climbed the rock just because he could. Good idea to keep reminding ourselves of the possibilities.
This was my Nan's favorite poem and, being from that certain era when poetry memorization was common, she remembered much of it by heart. My grandfather was an amazing source of remembered poetry always quoting great long snatches of this poem and that...lots of Longfellow.
I just listened to this read by Masefield himself (I think) and it was very stirring.
So glad that you are enjoying the sea and that it calls you to itself over and over. I think that is what happens when one lives as close as you do.
Perfect poem for the beautiful pictures. What a stunning place at that hour, it's so calm and tranquil!
A lovely poem and such a beautiful moasic. Very elegant and evocative.
20 minutes for you to walk here?! Oh my! I've seen the ocean and ships only a handful of times and each one was moving to me. Thanks for sharing.
Stunning mosaic, love the poem. I have never read it before. Have a wonderful week.
I remember his poem..it always strikes a cord in my heart..glad you had a lovely time at the sea..enjoy your week..
I had to memorize this poem in seventh grade, but I had forgotten all about it. Thanks for the stroll down memory lane!
I always enjoy that poem! And the mosaic...beautiful.
Beautiful photos and such tranquil scenery.
One of my favourite poems since being at sea with hubby in 1960.


text:
President Trump Is Set for Success in 2020
It's 1996 all over again.
With the sad history of the Mueller investigation shelved, and with the Democrats sifting through the ashes, it seems safe to offer some advice to the Democratic Party, since it has become clear that it has no better than a snowball's chance in hell of winning the White House in 2020.
Go with Joe. You still won't win, but at least your party will lose with dignity. Whatever scandals haunt Vice President Biden's past, he is still a recognizable American political animal. You can't say that about the democratic socialists currently vying to be the Democrat standard bearer.
Factor in the power of incumbency and the equation equals sure success for President Donald Trump's reelection bid.
From the standpoint of the power of incumbency, 2020 shapes up as being analogous to 1996, Clinton versus Dole. When nobody, not even Bob Dole himself, believed Clinton could be defeated. Of course, things have greatly changed over the political landscape in the 23 years since Bill Clinton pivoted center-right and saved his presidency from Newt Gingrich's Contract for America.
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But as it was with Clinton, so shall it be with Trump.
In the run-up to Election Day 1996, Clinton just said no to a mid-1990s leftist base that when compared to the current crop of Democrats look like progressive-left moderates. They weren't moderate of course, they were the wool-dyed harbingers of what we see today, hiding in quasi-reasonable vestments that they have now thoroughly thrown off.
Clinton, saying the right things about welfare and immigration, and having jettisoned the potential disaster of Hillary-Care, was able to overshadow his social justice fringe with a shift to moderation that reassured enough voters to ensure that Dole, whose turn it was, never had a chance.
The cable news universe and celebrity journalism are gearing up for a horse race. Everybody will watch, it's fine. There are many entertaining Democratic characters out there. It will be interesting to watch Robert "Beto" O'Rourke implode. If Kamala Harris somehow gets the nod, the Democratic Party may approach the record for most states lost in a presidential election, held by Vice President Walter Mondale versus Ronald Reagan in 1984. Elizabeth Warren is an identity politics thief; should she become the nominee look for Red State hegemony.
Cory Booker using the failed Mueller probe to generate contributions to his campaign — beneath contempt.
Bernie Sanders is the kind of person 1950s-60s era schoolteachers warned us about when instructing us to crawl under our desks for a nuclear drill.
No, it feels like 1996, electorally speaking, and even some intractable Never-Trumpers are quivering their arrows. As the extent of Deep State lawlessness is exposed, even they are reconciled to admit that by defeating the Clinton Machine and all its tentacles, Trump saved America from what might have been the most corrupt administration in our history.
Democrats instinctively understand that their 2020 shot is a long one. They are gearing up for an unprecedented voter fraud/tampering operation, and trying to move the foundational goalposts by ending the Electoral College and lowering the voting age to sixteen. There is no barrel-bottom they're unwilling to scrape to scare up enough votes to improve their chances; felons and illegal immigrants serve as the prime exhibits.
These are not the proposals or strategy of a confident political party. Advice: Mr. Biden, announce and clear this field of candidates ASAP, and help your party lose with a vestige of dignity.
RELATED: Dick Morris: Now that Mueller Won't Verify the Allegations, It's Time To Shoot the Alligators
It feels like 1996 all over again, but in another sense, the state of play as the nation prepares to cast a presidential ballot can be compared to another year, 1969, with a twist. Cue the extended sports metaphor.
That year, New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath famously predicted "We're going to win the game, I guarantee it," and then proceeded to do just that against the favored Baltimore Colts in the first so-designated Super Bowl, Super Bowl III.
It is just after halftime in the run-up to 2020, and Trump is scoring against a party desperately seeking a first-string quarterback.
But Trump is not Namath. He is Baltimore Colts incumbent, the great Johnny Unitas, coming off the bench with a busted-up shoulder to relieve a hapless Earl Morrall and scoring the only Colts touchdown late in a contest the Jets won 16-7.
In this flip of the metaphorical script, Biden is the underdog Namath, but given the team he's taking into the ultimate contest, he can't guarantee anything.
There are no guarantees in sports, politics, or life, no locks. But if ever an incumbent president could make a Namath-style prediction, that president is Donald Trump. He need not get cocky, but it will take some great event or upheaval that inures to the benefit of Joe Biden to unseat him.
The Colts and Johnny Unitas for the win.
Mark Ellis is a contributor at PJ Media and Liberty Island Magazine.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website.
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text:
Best Tile for Kitchen Floor: How to Make the Right Choice
Tuesday, January 31, 2023 12:00 AM Kitchen tiles, Ideas for kitchen floor, tile sizes
According to the National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA), the average single-story home in the US has a kitchen of around 161 square feet. If you're fortunate enough to own a brand new home, it's likely to be even bigger. Whether big or small, your kitchen floor is a great place to stamp your ...
9 Factors to Consider When Choosing New Flooring in a Home with Pets
Friday, January 27, 2023 12:00 AM New Flooring, new flooring for pets, factors in choosing floors for pets
About 85 million American families own at least one pet. That's 68% of all households. We're willing to bet that most of those homeowners are in denial about the current state of their floors! Whether or not your furry friends are to blame, odds are good that you're in the market for new flooring. ...
Easiest Types of Carpets to Clean
Tuesday, January 24, 2023 12:00 AM Carpet Cleaning, cleaning tips
Did you know that the oldest carpet discovered so far is over 6,000 years old? Needless to say, ever since carpets were invented, they remained popular for thousands of years and they still remain popular even today. This is not to mention that today we have more types of carpets than ever before. ...
The Pros and Cons of Dark Hardwood Flooring
Friday, January 20, 2023 12:00 AM Dark Hardwood, Pros and cons of Dark hardwood
Would you like to install new flooring in your home and guarantee that you're able to get a great return on investment? Then hardwood flooring is going to be your best option.Of all the flooring options you can choose from when replacing your floors, hardwood floors will provide you with the ...
Top Flooring Options for Your New Home
Tuesday, January 17, 2023 12:00 AM Durable Flooring, flooring options
There are roughly 450 billion floors sold in the world each year. And it's no surprise why – revamping the flooring is one of the most important aspects of improving the value of a house.If you're in the process of building or renovating a new home, choosing the right modern house floors is an ...
How to Remove a Pet Urine Stain From Carpet
Friday, January 13, 2023 12:00 AM pet urine stain, removing stain from carpet
Even the most well-trained pet will occasionally have a little accident. What's funny is that these accidents always seem to occur on our carpets!As with most blotches, the key to removing a pet urine stain is to act fast. If you're in luck, you'll catch your pet in the act. Even if you come upon a ...
7 Ways to Clean Tile Floors
Friday, January 6, 2023 12:00 AM ways to clean floors, clean tiles
According to one report, the average American spends almost 24 hours worth of time cleaning their home each month. Not everyone has the same cleaning habits or tricks to keep their home clean, and high-traffic flooring areas can be especially difficult to keep looking clean and shiny.Are you tired ...
The Best Flooring for Pets
Tuesday, January 3, 2023 12:00 AM Hardwood Flooring, Luxury Vinyl Flooring, Waterproof Flooring, Tile Flooring, flooring for pets
Are you a frustrated pet owner looking for the right flooring for your home? There are a few things to consider when choosing the best flooring for pets. It comes down to the size of your pet and how much activity they will have on the floor.In this guide, we'll take a look at LifeProof laminate ...
How Long Does Vinyl Plank Flooring Really Last?
Monday, December 19, 2022 3:39 PM vinyl plank, vinyl plank flooring
In 2020, the floor covering sales in the USA came to a grand total of $26.66 billion, and it only looks set to increase as the years go on. It's a lucrative market, but have you ever considered why? Isn't flooring supposed to be something you purchase once, and then it lasts you a lifetime?The ...
Did you know that Americans spend around 6 hours cleaning each week? If you're tackling household chores in your family, you might be looking for ways to improve your approach. And if your home has a variety of flooring types, you'll want to be mindful of how you clean each one.Keep reading to ...
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text:
Meet the winemakers - John and Nicole Bojanowski
Clos du Gravillas is situated in St Jean de Minervois in the Languedoc-Roussillon. Their vineyards, 8.5 hectares on the 270 metre altitude Causses of St Jean and Cazelles, benefit from ample summer sunny days and a cooling breeze blowing down off of the Montagne Noire at night. John and Nicole Bojanowski, long-time favourites of Les Caves (and all round good eggs) make excellent elegant, terroir-driven wines which can be happily sipped by themselves or with a host of delectable dishes.
We asked John some questions about winemaking, his dreams of being Mick Jagger, the couple's growing love of rugby and which grape variety he and Nicole are most like……
What made you want to be a winemaker?
My wife, Nicole, decided she wanted to become a grower, to make her "Grand Vin de Languedoc". She had been working in wine export for seven years and decided to take the next step, when we met in 1994. I was working from Paris, in hi-tech, and mostly in Eastern Europe. I left that and decided to join her. She needed someone to drive the tractors (she did it herself for a few months, but she really prefers hand vineyard work, like pruning and leaf thinning). Nicole thought the life of a vigneron was noble.
How many years have you been making wine?
We've just finished our 18th harvest, the first was in 1999. We started working with you (Les Caves) in 2004 or 2005.
If you hadn't become a winemaker, what would be your dream job?
Nicole would be a dancer, I would be lead singer of the Rolling Stones (or Frank Sinatra if I couldn't be Mick).
What do you like best about your job?
Cleaning up after Real Wine: I really feel useful! After that, I like blending wines. Such small changes in the blends can make such a big difference. Nicole likes most to be out in her vines, in the springtime.
What is your favourite type of wine to drink?
Wine made by good friends. Even better is when we drink it with them.
What is your winemaking philosophy/approach to making wine?
Vin Naïve (me, not Nicole). The hard part is making beautiful, delicious, ripe grapes. Once we've achieved that, then we just try not to mess up the juice. Sometimes people who have too many winemaking toys feel obliged to use them. Like in the animated film, Ratatouille, anybody can make great wine. It's a question of choices (and the willingness to make hard decisions and roll up your sleeves).
What do you do in your free time?
I sing in a vocal ensemble, Les Croq's Mots Notes (https://www.facebook.com/LesCroqMotsNotes/). We're 7 singers, a pianist and often a Chef de Cuisine. Our show ranges from La Traviata to Bohemian Rhapsody and Sinatra's duo, Somethin' Stupid. When we do the full show, our chef cooks a four-course meal, we have a few sommeliers serving (and talking about) wines, and the singers are also the servers.
For the past seven years, I've been more and more interested in rugby. It's our son's fault: we're aiming for a spot on the USA Eagles team; he's in the States and rugby is a spring sport there.
Nicole dances (Sevilliane, Oriental, and currently Zumba). She likes to move. She also likes to read and think about wines.
What's the biggest lesson you've learned during your winemaking career?
Keep it clean.
If you were a grape variety what would you be and why?
Piquepoul Gris. We are both luscious, juicy, unusual and fresh.
And finally, if you had to choose your last meal what would it be?
Amour et eau fraiche! If no love or clean cold water available, then I've got a hankering for a super sauerkraut.
Clos du Gravillas will be showing their wines at The Real Wine Fair 2017, on the 7th and 8th May at Tobacco Dock (http://therealwinefair.com/tickets/). If you can't wait until then to sample their fantastic wines then contact us directly: [email protected]/ 01483 554750


HONG KONG, China (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Live Nation, the world's largest live music company and second largest entertainment venue management company, announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Chinese company Cosmedia Group to manage Hong Kong's brand new multi-purpose outdoor Pop TV Arena (Zhong Tian Di). The 10,000 capacity venue, situated in West Kowloon, will open in January 2008 with a series of concerts by China's superstar artist, Jackie Cheung commencing on January 25th, 2008.
Live Nation also announced it will further strengthen its presence in Hong Kong by appointing Luke Hede in January 2008 to the position of Director of Booking, Asia. Previously with Dainty Consolidated Entertainment, one of the leading promoters in Australia, Mr. Hede was responsible for ticketing and logistics liaising with DCE's touring team.
Live Nation's operations in the Far East currently include offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing and Shanghai that have promoted tours by bands as diverse as Roger Waters, The Cure, Christina Aguilera, Muse and Gwen Stefani. Live Nation also staged this year's Live Earth concert in Shanghai, China.