As Australia’s capital, Canberra may have a high proportion of public servants and politicians, but when it comes to food and wine, it is anything but boring. Thanks to top class Australian wineries as Clonakilla (Shiraz Viognier) and Helm (Premium Riesling), our nation’s capital has justifiably taken its place alongside Australia’s best growing regions for wine. But two wineries does not a region make, as the Wine Wankers recently discovered when we visited Australia’s Capital of Wine.

Wine has been produced in Canberra for more than 160 years, but it’s only in the past 40 years the region has truly shined. If cool climate, food friendly styles are what you crave, you’ve come to the right place. Riesling, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and of course Shiraz Viognier blends all shine.

Yes – Canberra wine is exciting.

By Eric Margolis

November 15, 2014 “ICH” – A full century after World War I we still cannot understand how generals sent so many soldiers to be slaughtered. Ten million soldiers died on all sides; millions more were left maimed or shell shocked. Seven million civilians died. 20 million horses died.

The image we have of hapless soldiers being forced to climb out of their sodden trenches and attack across a hellish no-man’s land pock-marked by water-filled shell holes, deep mud, thickets of barbed wire and rotten bodies is quite accurate for the Western Front. Waiting for them were quick-firing guns, heavy artillery, the greatest killer or all – machine guns – and, later, poison or burning gases, and flamethrowers.

How could the generals of that era have been stupid enough to send waves and waves of their soldiers to almost certain death? Trench warfare in the West…

MF Photography/ “The Journey of Life” 2014©AmyRose

Thank you Jim Fisher

Kendrick Johnson attended Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia. The thin, muscular 17-year-old played on the football and basketball teams. After attending his fourth period class on Thursday, January 10, 2013, Kendrick went missing. The next morning someone discovered the student’s body stuffed upside-down inside a rolled-up wrestling mat that stood on its end in the school gymnasium. He was dead.

Lowndes County Sheriff Chris Prine, in charge of the death scene investigation, quickly concluded that the high school student’s death had been accidental. According to Sheriff Prine, Kendrick must have gone into the mat head-first to retrieve a shoe or some other item. The sheriff theorized that Kendrick got stuck inside the mat and suffocated.

On January 25, 2013, the head of the Valdosta-Lowndes Regional Crime Laboratory where a forensic pathologist had performed the autopsy ten days earlier, informed members of the media that Johnson’s…

Walking along the trail I noticed this community garden, so I thought I would check it out.It is Medlock Park Garden. So cute that a community has come together to plant a garden. So is this Kitchie or just creepy?

I will be interested in what will go in the garden in the spring.

This video is called Hitler’s Women – Leni Riefenstahl – Part 1.

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

Clip of 1936 Berlin Olympics in new Greek tourism film ‘an oversight’

Critics deplore Leni Riefenstahl footage of Hitler games in promotional video – as ministry stresses mistake should not detract from Greek tourism success

Helena Smith in Athens

Thursday 6 November 2014 18.24 GMT

The Greek government has been forced to withdraw a tourism video unveiled in London this week because it contained footage of the infamous 1936 Olympics held in Berlin under Hitler.

The offending clip, which depicted the torch lighting ceremony at the controversial pre-war games, would be “removed immediately” officials said, after being alerted to the gaffe by the Guardian. By last night the video had been taken down from YouTube.

“This was a commemorative video marking 100 years of the Greek tourism organisation, that was…

John Stewart comments on Koch Bros. sponsors.

Oppression   (Listen while you read) 

Don’t lean to oppression, my friends; else it have its sorry way with you.

Don’t lean to oppression, my friends; it will cause you much harm.

It will take away your soul, your love. Indeed it will take away your life.

For what is oppression but a double edged sword.

_____

It shall rip you shreds to shreds. It will do with you as it will.

It has no fear of consequences, only its lust and needs to fulfil.

_____

Yes, my dear friends; oppression has, at its heart, one desire only; that is to fulfil its own desires, with no thought for you.

I hope you look after you; I hope you see through oppression. I hope you can tear yourself away, should oppression have its hold.

Carolyn Page  ABC of Spirit Talk

Image Credit:  swprod / Shutterstock.com