⚫ [VIDEO] Evidence of Biden’s ❞Act of War❞ ⚫

WARNING! What you’re about to see is extremely controversial. [LOGO OST]( At times, our affiliate partners reach out to the Editors at Open Source Trades with special opportunities for our readers. The message below is one we think you should take a close, serious look at.   The true story behind the US' first federal monuments Share using Email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on Linkedin (Image credit: gregobagel/Getty Images) (Credit: gregobagel/Getty Images) By Barbara Noe Kennedy 7th November 2022 The most famous African American in colonial America is largely forgotten today, but his longest-lasting contributions are hidden in plain sight in Washington DC. "Are you sitting down? I have news for you." Gwen Marable's cousin from the US state of Ohio called her at home in Maryland about 27 years ago. "We are descended from the sister of Benjamin Banneker, Jemima." The Banneker family, which numbers over 5,000 known descendants today, only learned about this astonishing connection to their ground-breaking but little-known ancestor through the wonders of DNA testing. As such, no personal stories about him, no artifacts, were handed down through the generations. "Remember, he was born one year apart from George Washington," said Marable, who went on to help launch and serve as president of the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum in Baltimore County, Maryland. "People were not writing about black people at that time." What we do know is that this self-taught, free African American tobacco planter was, among other things, a mathematician, scientist and astronomer who helped establish the boundaries of Washington DC. To this day, nearly all 40 of those boundary stones – which mark the original 10-mile-by-10-mile diamond shape of the US capital city – remain in plain sight. They are the oldest set of federally placed monuments in the United States. In 1790, the brand-new president George Washington was authorised to delineate the site of the new capital city along the Potomac River. It was swampland overgrown with forests, vines and weeds, sparsely settled with tobacco farms. He needed a survey team to establish its boundaries. The boundary stones mark the original 10-mile-by-10-mile diamond shape of the US capital city (Credit: Zip Lexing/Alamy Stock Photo) The boundary stones mark the original 10-mile-by-10-mile diamond shape of the US capital city (Credit: Zip Lexing/Alamy Stock Photo) Enter the foremost surveyor at the time, Andrew Ellicott, who had made a name for himself charting 11 states (and making the first topographical study of the Niagara River and Niagara Falls). But he needed an assistant who could read the stars, to make the placement of the markers as accurate as possible. His cousin recommended a neighbour friend, Benjamin Banneker, but according to historian Silvio Bedini (who wrote what is considered the definitive biography of Banneker), Ellicott had some concerns. "Andrew Ellicott questioned the potential competence of a black man without schooling or scientific training," Bedini explained in a 1991 article for the magazine of the DC History Center. "The prospect of relying upon an untrained amateur astronomer for the precise astronomical data upon which his survey would be based was not a cheerful one." But with no other prospects, the two set to work. Lying on his back for six nights, 61-year-old Banneker recorded the precise times of the stars' transits. With these calculations, the first stone marker was installed at Jones Point (on the Potomac River just south of modern-day Old Town Alexandria, Virginia) on April 15, 1791, amid great fanfare. Many of the boundary stones are on people's property, and several are in parks (Credit: The Washington Post/Getty Images) Many of the boundary stones are on people's property, and several are in parks (Credit: The Washington Post/Getty Images) Today, that marker is visible through a window in the seawall of the 19th-Century Jones Point Lighthouse. One foot square and three feet high, it – like all of the markers – was made from the same sandstone from Virginia's Aquia Creek that was used to construct the White House, US Capitol and Supreme Court Building. From there, the other markers were placed one mile apart. Each is numbered according to its quadrant and location, starting at the south cornerstone at Jones Point (SW1, for example, is Southwest 1, located in DC's south-west quadrant). Each of the four sides of each marker bears the inscription of either "Virginia" or "Maryland", depending on its border state; the words "Jurisdiction of the United States" and a mile number; the year "1791" or "1792" depending on when the stone was added; and the magnetic compass variance at that place. They reside inside ornate black cages that the Daughters of the American Revolution organisation installed in the early 20th Century. Thirty-six original stones remain in place, in various states of deterioration (sandstone was not the best material, it turns out), while three are replicas and one is a plaque. Most Washingtonians have no idea what these stones are, even though they pass by them every day. But some people make a pilgrimage to visit them, providing a fascinating exploration of DC's varied neighbourhoods. Many are on people's property, and several are in parks. You'll find them in the middle of a roadway median, in a cemetery and at the base of a water tower. (Note that land seized by the Federal government in 1790 was returned to Virginia in 1846, so the stones don't reflect DC's modern, reduced border.) Each marker bears an inscription including "Jurisdiction of the United States" and "1791" or "1792", depending on the year it was added (Credit: Barbara Noe Kennedy) Each marker bears an inscription including "Jurisdiction of the United States" and "1791" or "1792", depending on the year it was added (Credit: Barbara Noe Kennedy) "[Marker] NE4 is pristine with great engraving," said Stephen Powers, a civil engineer and co-chair of the Nation's Capital Boundary Stones Committee. NW4 and NW5 are also pristine. "But they're behind the US Army Corps of Engineers' property line," Powers said. "You have to call to gain access." The most difficult one to reach is SE9. "You have to park on the highway and use GPS coordinates as you make your way through the woods, down by the Potomac River," he explained. "There's no path." It's not known if Banneker attended the Jones Point event in 1791 celebrating the south cornerstone, since his name is not noted in newspaper accounts. Chances are, he was a spectator. Regardless, a few months later, he wrote a letter to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson about his work on the boundary stones. "Jefferson had been saying publicly that he didn't believe black people and enslaved people were of the same standards as white people in terms of brains and physical abilities," said historian Jane Levey, interim editor of the DC History Center's Washington History magazine. "Banneker basically goes on about how he needs to change public opinion about black people's abilities." Banneker was a mathematician, scientist and astronomer who also published six farmers' almanacs (Credit: Fotosearch/Getty Images) Deforestation, changing land use and climate change is putting humans into increasing contact with new viruses. Zoonotic diseases – diseases which can be transmitted between humans and animal species – comprise the majority of new and existing diseases which affect human populations. Most researchers believe that KFD was endemic for centuries in the forests of the Western Ghats in India, circulating silently among primate, bird and rodent populations, and the ticks they carry. But as forest land was fragmented by human activity, and changing rainfall patterns affected tick development cycles, the delicate balance of disease cycles was disrupted – triggering new outbreaks. "New hotspots are probably where the forest landscape has changed, or people's use of the forest has changed, say in the preceding five to 10 years, and that's what's driving the spillover," says Bethan Purse, an ecologist and vector-borne disease specialist at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), who is currently leading an interdisciplinary research project to better understand the dynamics of KFD. The pursuit of areca nuts Consumption of addictive areca nuts, also known as betel nuts, is itself a major health concern, with risk factors for many oral and oesophageal cancers. It is consumed by hundreds of thousands of people across the Asia-Pacific region as well as in the US, making it one of the most widely used psychoactive substances worldwide alongside tobacco, alcohol and caffeine. However, unlike tobacco, no global policy exists for the control of its use, with researchers labelling it a "neglected global public health emergency". The Western Ghats, a mountain range in southern India, is home to huge stretches of largely undisturbed forest. But the area is undergoing deforestation at unprecedented rates, in part due to a boom in commercial agroforestry. Deforestation in the Shivamogga region has been driven by growing demand for areca nuts, which come from the areca palm tree. Areca nuts are a popular stimulant drug when ground up and chewed. Areca palm plantations like the one where Suresh worked are hotspots for KFD, because they break up dense, undisturbed forest, creating "transition zones" where forests – and the diseases which lurk within – meet plantations and human habitats. "What the degradation does is really bring people into contact with the ticks," explains Purse. The next pandemic With deforestation accelerating across the globe, experts fear that the increased contact between human, animal and vector populations risks triggering the next pandemic. One study published in the journal Nature in 2020 found that habitat disturbance led to lower biodiversity and an increase in animal vectors – such as rodents and bats – known to harbour diseases shared by humans. "Global changes in the mode and the intensity of land use are creating expanding hazardous interfaces between people, livestock and wildlife reservoirs of zoonotic disease," the study authors warn. Prema Jain, 52, found a dead monkey in her garden in 2019, and her family were infected with the KFD virus, resulting in Prema being hospitalised (Credit: Catherine Davison) Prema Jain, 52, found a dead monkey in her garden in 2019, and her family were infected with the KFD virus, resulting in Prema being hospitalised (Credit: Catherine Davison) Climate change also plays a role in increasing the risk of zoonotic disease spill-overs, causing shifts in rainfall patterns and affecting biodiversity. Another study published in Nature last year found that climate change would lead to an increase in cross-species transmission of viral diseases, with a predicted 4000 new spillover events in the next half century. When it comes to KFD, says Purse, climate change will speed up the development cycles and mortality rates of the ticks, leading to a more rapid turnover of ticks and increasing the amount of time they need to spend feeding on a host. The distribution of the ticks’ hosts, and their overlap with people, will also be affected, she adds – meaning that humans are increasingly likely to come into contact with infected ticks, and in an increasing number of places. The spread of Lyme disease Lyme disease is the most common kind of tick-borne infection globally, found across Asia, Europe, Canada as well as the US, where it is the most common vector-borne disease. It is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria which can be spread to humans when they are bitten by infected ticks. It can cause fever, fatigue, joint pain and skin rash, as well as more serious complications. A 2022 study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) estimated that an astonishing 14.5% of the global population has had, or has, Lyme disease. Research has found climate change is increasing the range and activity of ticks carrying Lyme disease. Prema Jain, a 52-year-old grandmother in Aralagodu, contracted KFD during the 2019 outbreak after finding a dead monkey in the family’s banana plantation. Although she reported the animal to the forest department, it was too late: the ticks it had been carrying had already crawled off into the surrounding areas, eventually infecting her entire family. Jain says that living in the forest, it is not unusual to find dead animals, but that the threat of KFD is new. "We have always had ticks, but only recently disease," she says. Globally, tick-borne diseases are an increasing menace, with research showing that they are on the rise in countries such as the US. And yet the dangers are often little known to the public, especially for tick-borne diseases other than Lyme disease. There are also fewer surveillance systems in place for tick-borne diseases than exist for similar diseases spread by other vectors, such as mosquitoes. Purse and her team hope to change that. Monkey Fever Risk project is an Indo-UK partnership between UKCEH, the Karnataka state government, and various interdisciplinary research institutes in India, which aims to map historical patterns of KFD in order to determine the main risk factors for new outbreaks. By looking at various environmental factors, such as the level of forest cover and rainfall patterns, and social factors like livelihood activities and proximity to healthcare centres, the team make models of the main drivers of the disease. An areca nut picker in a plantation in Aralagodu, Karnataka. Some areca nut plantations occur in what was previously undisturbed forest or grassland (Credit: Catherine Davison) An areca nut picker in a plantation in Aralagodu, Karnataka. Some areca nut plantations occur in what was previously undisturbed forest or grassland (Credit: Catherine Davison) This data is fed into an interactive tool to predict new areas at risk of disease emergence, allowing public health officials, the forest department and animal husbandry experts to proactively tackle outbreaks. "When plotted for the entire country, it shows that yes, there are other places which have a favourable condition [for disease emergence]," says Darshan Narayan, a research associate on the KFD project specialising in epidemiological modelling. He believes that as surveillance increases in these areas, more cases will be discovered. You might also like: Stopping the next one: What could the next pandemic be? Leprosy: the ancient disease scientists can't solve How vaccinating monkeys could stop a pandemic The collaboration has provided vital lessons on the importance of predictive disease modelling for diseases where the drivers of emergence are less well understood. The Indian government now aims to replicate the project for other diseases such as scrub typhus, which is spread by mites, and leptospirosis, spread by infected animals. "Right now in India, I don't think there are many people who are working on these kind of predictive maps," says Narayan. Globally, predictive diseases modelling is often used for high-focus diseases like Covid-19, but many neglected diseases which lack funding can fall under the radar of such tools. Bringing together experts in human, animal and environmental health is known as One Health, a framework recommended by the WHO as the best approach for tackling zoonotic diseases. The Monkey Fever Risk project is a model of how One Health collaboration can happen, says Purse. The modelling tool has also proven to be an important visual aid for local healthcare workers, says Narayan. "For visualisation, this tool is wonderful," he says. "[If] I show them this, they understand the dynamics of the disease very fast." Ticks can be tested for KFD, with the different species, seasons and the percentage recorded to help model transmission (Credit: Catherine Davison) Ticks can be tested for KFD, with the different species, seasons and the percentage recorded to help model transmission (Credit: Catherine Davison) There are lessons to be learnt for the UK team, too – especially when it comes to tick-borne diseases, says Purse. "Quite often we don't have good vaccines against tick-borne diseases, so it's really important to look across the different tick-borne diseases globally and understand what the risk factors are leading to spillovers," she says. "We’re actually extending these approaches now into the UK, looking at Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis virus." A KFD vaccine previously in use recently had its license revoked due to low efficacy, so understanding the risk factors for the disease is even more important. One element of the Monkey Fever Risk project has been to increase awareness of the dangers posed by ticks and help healthcare workers to push for behavioural changes. I hadn’t heard of KFD before. If I had known, I might have been able to act more quickly – Gayatri However, lack of economic opportunity means that locals often have little choice but to continue entering plantations and forests for work. "I only know how to do this sort of work – I don't have any other skills," says Govindha, a 56-year-old plantation worker who fell into a week-long coma after contracting the disease. His wife, Laxmi, was also hospitalised. "I thought we were both going to die," she remembers. "I told my son to give our cows to someone else." Despite their ordeal, the couple both returned to work in the plantation. After Suresh died, Gayatri, now the family's sole breadwinner, also felt that she had no choice but to return to her job collecting areca nuts inside the plantation. Still, she believes that better awareness of the disease is important; if she had taken Suresh to the hospital immediately, she says, he might still be alive. "I hadn't heard of KFD before," she says. "If I had known, I might have been able to act more quickly." Banneker was a mathematician, scientist and astronomer who also published six farmers' almanacs (Credit: Fotosearch/Getty Images) "He writes to Jefferson saying he freely and clearly acknowledges he's of the African race," said Audrey Davis, director of the Alexandria Black History Museum. "He had a pride in his race and of his colour. He was a mathematical genius, a clockmaker, and he was interested in riddles." He also published six farmers' almanacs, using scientific methods. "He was a renaissance man." Jefferson replied: "Nobody wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colours of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa and America." Whether the exchange altered Jefferson's stance on his views of African Americans and slavery, Banneker was the only black man to challenge the future president's suspicion of inequality during his lifetime. Banneker died not long after, at the age of 74 in 1806. He never married and had no children. Even though personal connections were lost until the recent shock to Banneker family descendants delivered by DNA testing, his scientific contributions to the US are remarkable and steadfast. But it's the crumbling boundary stones still gracing the Capital City that provide a daily reminder of Banneker's contributions to anyone paying attention as they walk by. A museum 2,300 years in the making Share using Email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on Linkedin (Image credit: Bonnie Cameron/Getty Images) A museum 2,300 years in the making (Credit: Bonnie Cameron/Getty Images) By Tracey Teo 21st November 2022 When the International African American Museum opens in January in Charleston, South Carolina, it will tell the story of slavery in the US – going all the way back to 300 BCE. M Michael Boulware Moore grew up listening to his grandmother's story about a 23-year-old enslaved man named Robert Smalls, who seized a Confederate ship in the Charleston harbour during the US Civil War and sailed to freedom. He rescued other enslaved people, including his young family. Later, he became a statesman, serving five non-consecutive terms in the US House of Representatives. This war hero-cum-politician was Moore's great-great-grandfather. So when Moore was hired in 2016 as the founding CEO of the widely heralded International African American Museum (slated to open in Charleston, South Carolina, in January 2023), he felt especially connected to its mission to honour the stories of African American journey. Charleston was once one of the most prolific slave-trading ports in the US (Credit: TMarantette/Getty Images) Charleston was once one of the most prolific slave-trading ports in the US (Credit: TMarantette/Getty Images) Smalls' experience is one of many that will be shared in the $100m museum built on the site of Gadsden's Wharf on the Cooper River, once one of the most prolific slave-trading ports in the US. Historians estimate that of the approximately 388,000 Africans brought to America as enslaved people, 40% of them entered through Charleston between 1783 and 1808. (In 1808, the United States banned the international importation of slaves, but the trade continued domestically until 1865.) Africans who survived the gruelling Atlantic crossing awaited their fate in the warehouses surrounding the wharf before being sold on the auction block. Sometimes they were held for months, and hundreds froze to death. This site is ground zero for the experience of Africans in America. In the soon-to-open museum, their history will unfold across nine galleries and a memorial garden. "The mission of the International African American Museum is to elevate the voices, contributions and history of the enslaved people who – more than any other place in America – landed on the very spot of the museum," Moore said. "It is to create a more truthful and honest articulation of American history – of what happened in Charleston, in America and in the world." In recent years, Charleston has made efforts to reckon with its past: the Charleston City Council formally apologised for its role in the slave trade in 2018; the Confederate flag, the most divisive symbol of the Old South, was removed from the South Carolina State House in 2015 following the shooting of nine black churchgoers at Charleston's Emanuel A.M.E Church; and a monument to slavery supporter and former vice president John C Calhoun was removed from a public square in 2020. The museum is a symbol of that progress, and, Moore hopes, a catalyst for further change. A mile south from the new museum, the Old Slave Mart hosted human auctions until the 1860s (Credit: Joanne Dale/Alamy) A mile south from the new museum, the Old Slave Mart hosted human auctions until the 1860s (Credit: Joanne Dale/Alamy) "[The mission] is to create an experience that will be historically and emotionally important for all, but to particularly inspire those young people who may have never seen someone on the walls of a museum that looks like them, and who, as a result of seeing many, many examples of black achievement, will be inspired to think more expansively about the arc of their aspirations," he said. According to Tonya Matthews, who succeeded Moore as president and CEO in 2021, the museum provides a broad context for the African American experience, a narrative that starts with ancient African civilisations and goes through modern times. "Slavery is not the beginning or the end of the African American journey," Matthews said. "It's in the middle. The museum goes back to 300 BCE, the earliest documentation of rice cultivation on the African continent. Africans were enslaved specifically for that knowledge." Cotton was king in most of the South, but Carolina Gold rice (a variety of rice, also known as golden seed) was the cash crop that made Charleston one of the richest cities in the world before the Civil War (1861-1865). The museum's Carolina Gold Gallery will examine the roots of the plantation system in the Lowcountry, the region along the South Carolina coast, and illustrate how Charleston's wealth was facilitated by the knowledge and labour of enslaved people from West Africa where wetland rice farming was common. Black labour and rice production made Charleston one of the richest cities in the world (Credit: North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy) Black labour and rice production made Charleston one of the richest cities in the world (Credit: North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy) Today, Charleston's economic engine is tourism, not rice. Visitors come to walk through antebellum mansions, enjoy horse-and-carriage rides along cobblestone streets, and marvel at the historical churches that give Charleston its nickname, the Holy City. If the museum inspires visitors to go even further, Charleston has many African American history tours to choose from. One is Frankly Charleston, which hits landmarks like the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, but also takes a deep dive into lesser-known neighbourhoods off the usual tourist track. Another option is Slavery to Civil Rights, a private walking tour led by Charleston historian and author Ruth Miller, which includes stops at the Blake-Grimke House, home of 19th-Century abolitionist sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and the former Kress & Co. department store where, in 1960, students from a local all-black high school staged a sit-in at the lunch counter that barred black customers. However, tourism can be a double-edged sword for African Americans, said Michael Allen, a civic activist who recently won South Carolina's Order of the Palmetto honour for his African-American heritage work, and is a founding board member of the International African American Museum. "The impact of tourism and the challenges of the 21st Century have disproportionately affected the lives of African American families and businesses in downtown Charleston," Allen said. "Gentrification, along with new business investment, has resulted in the near erosion of the African American presence on the historic peninsula city." Tourism and gentrification has disproportionately affected African Americans in Charleston (Credit: Katie Dobies/Getty) Tourism and gentrification has disproportionately affected African Americans in Charleston (Credit: Katie Dobies/Getty) A retired National Park Service professional, Allen started his career in 1980 as a park ranger at Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. He noticed there was virtually no representation of African Americans in the exhibits, and he spent much of his career striving for the inclusion of black history in historic sites run by the park service. Allen is Gullah, a descendant of a community of West African enslaved people who lived on South Carolina's sea islands for generations after the Civil War. Because of this cloistered existence, they retained many of their indigenous African traditions and language, more than any other group of African Americans. (In Georgia and Florida, they are called Geechee). Through the National Park Service, Allen helped develop the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a four-state National Heritage Area that extends from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida. The goal is to shine a light on the music, crafts, food and religious practices that comprise this vibrant culture. The historical Charleston City Market is one of many Charleston sites that offer a glimpse of Gullah traditions. Visitors can observe Gullah artisans sewing sweetgrass baskets, objects that are now one of the most recognised icons of their culture. The Charleston City Market offers visitors a glimpse of Gullah Geechee traditions (Credit: Emerson Pate and Charleston Area CVB) The Charleston City Market offers visitors a glimpse of Gullah Geechee traditions (Credit: Emerson Pate and Charleston Area CVB) Allen is pleased the International African American Museum will feature a Gullah Geechee Gallery dedicated to their language and cultural practices. "I have seen and experienced first-hand the challenges and struggles to bring inclusion and respect to the Gullah Geechee community," Allen said. He calls the museum "a beacon of hope and a vehicle of change in the lives of Gullah Geechee people throughout the Low Country and this nation." While Allen has concerns about tourism and other issues that predominantly affect African Americans, he acknowledges the city has taken vital steps toward inclusivity. "The greater Charleston area, in my opinion, has made great strides to tell a more inclusive, diverse and holistic African American narrative," he said. For one thing, antebellum mansions have eschewed what Allen calls "the hoop skirt experience," tours that focused solely on the white homeowners and largely ignored the enslaved. "This glorification and romanticism of the past was due in part to the desire to honour the slaveholding past," Allen said. In the 1990s, these historical sites started taking a more inclusive and balanced approach. Gloria Barr Ford has been a part of the change. A Gullah interpreter of enslaved life at Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens, she tells stories and sings spirituals outside of the nine brick cabins that used to be slave quarters. It's fitting because she's also a reverend at the Dickerson AME Church in Georgetown, the seaport town north of Charleston where she was born and raised. Historical interpreters tell stories outside the nine cabins that were once the slave quarters at Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens (Credit: Planetpix/Alamy) Historical interpreters tell stories outside the nine cabins that were once the slave quarters at Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens (Credit: Planetpix/Alamy) Ford's ancestors were enslaved on Hilton Head Island, about 150km south of Charleston. Over the years, her family experienced Jim Crow laws (state and local statutes that enforced racial segregation in the American South after the end of the Civil War) and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. "You can never forget slavery or Jim Crow," Ford said, "but [the museum] can bring people together on a higher level, a moral level." She hopes visitors will come from all over the world "to see what was". And, as Matthews noted, to see what else could be. "The museum is a launching pad for folks' courageous curiosity," the museum's CEO said. "I'm a fan of raised eyebrows. I don't want people to visit and think they've completed their black history journey in a single museum visit. What success looks like is people thinking, 'there's a lot I don't know, so I'm going to grab a book and learn more'." Dear Reader, Did Biden just get caught in the BIGGEST lie of his presidency? [This presentation]( contains video evidence that incriminates him in a shocking “act of war”… And that could have a deadly impact on millions of American citizens. WARNING! What you’re about to see is extremely controversial. In fact, the White House has flat out DENIED what you’re about to see. But it’s important that you and EVERY American patriot sees it right away. Smuggled out of Japan, he became the US' first permanent Japanese resident and helped birth California's wine industry. A An hour's drive north of San Francisco, rows of gnarled and twisted vines terrace up the slopes of gently rolling hills in Sonoma County, California – which, alongside its neighbour, Napa, has been one of the world's premier wine-growing regions for more than a century. Many of the region's first commercial vines were planted in the mid-1850s by European settlers who experimented with varietals from Bordeaux and other popular wine regions in France and Germany, curious to see whether they would flourish in the sun-splashed, temperate climate and rocky soil. But California might never have earned such viticultural acclaim if it weren't for the little-known story of a Japanese immigrant named Kanaye Nagasawa. Born into a samurai family and smuggled out of Shogunate Japan, only to become a founding member of a utopian cult and eventually known as the "Wine King of California", Nagasawa led a life that was stranger than fiction. At the peak of his influence at the turn of the 20th Century, Nagasawa was operating one of the largest wineries in California, producing more than 200,000 gallons of wine a year from the vineyards of the 2,000-acre Fountaingrove estate in Santa Rosa. Nagasawa's Fountaingrove estate was once one of the largest wineries in California (Credit: Museum of Sonoma County) Nagasawa's Fountaingrove estate was once one of the largest wineries in California (Credit: Museum of Sonoma County) The "Wine King" helped famed American botanist Luther Burbank teach horticulture; consulted with international Japanese dignitaries; and hosted Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John Muir and other notable figures at his lavish Sonoma estate. Yet, Nagasawa had been all but forgotten when local vintners Walter and Marijke Byck purchased land adjacent to the original Fountaingrove estate to plant vineyards. As they began researching the history of the area, they discovered a complicated legacy of triumph, prejudice and loss. "My mother wanted to bring back the heritage of our land, and when she learned about Nagasawa, she wanted to tell this amazing story about an important historical figure in Sonoma County that a lot of people are unfamiliar with," said Rene Byck, Marijke's son and the owner of Paradise Ridge winery. I was standing with Rene in the small, family-run winery, looking at an exhibit the Bycks first unveiled in 1996 with the help of the Museum of Sonoma County and Nagasawa's descendants, Kosuke Ijichi, Amy Mori and their children. Photographs of Nagasawa and his family in front of his vineyards, entertaining at his ornate Fountaingrove mansion and overseeing winery operations were displayed across the walls. There were also copies of the winery's early labels; bottles of Fountaingrove Champagne, burgundy, riesling and pinot blanc; and a large metal can of the "Pure Wine Grape Juice" Nagasawa sold during Prohibition in the 1920s. Local vintners Walter and Marijke Byck have worked to honour the memory of Nagasawa and his family (Credit: Museum of Sonoma County) Local vintners Walter and Marijke Byck have worked to honour the memory of Nagasawa and his family (Credit: Museum of Sonoma County) The centrepiece of the exhibit was a long, curved samurai sword that Nagasawa brought back from Japan when he returned to visit as an adult. "That sword was important to Nagasawa because when they left for America, they had to cut their hair and give up their swords," said Mary Ijichi, Nagasawa's great-grandniece. "But my father told me his uncle said, 'Our education will be our sword'." Now blackened and dented, the sword became a symbol of resilience after the 36,800-acre Tubbs wildfire swept through the area in 2017, causing $8.7bn in damage and destroying 5,682 structures – among them Paradise Ridge. "When we saw where the fire had gone, we knew that everything was lost," said Mary's sister, Karen Ijichi Perkins. Also gone was the last remaining structure from the original Fountaingrove estate: an eight-sided barn that Nagasawa built in 1899, which had become a local landmark affectionately dubbed the Round Barn. He played a significant role in the growth of the California wine industry, being the first to market our wine to England and Europe It certainly seemed like the end of the exhibit until a team of searchers sifted through the ruins, pulling the sword triumphantly from the ashes. That was inspiration enough for the Bycks and Nagasawa's descendants to recreate the exhibit as fully as possible from copies of photos and artefacts. The sword was back on the walls almost as soon as Paradise Ridge reopened to the public in December 2019, with Nagasawa family members in attendance at the dedication. Nagasawa's extraordinary story goes back to 1864, when 19 young samurai from the Satsuma peninsula of Kagoshima were smuggled out of fiercely isolationist Edo-era Japan on a secret mission to study science and technology in the West. The youngest of the group, 13-year-old Hikosuke Isonaga went to Scotland, changing his name to Kanaye Nagasawa to protect his family, since at the time it was illegal to travel outside Japan. There, he came into the orbit of a charismatic religious leader named Thomas Lake Harris, who was recruiting followers to his version of ecstatic transcendentalism called The Brotherhood of the New Life. Nagasawa's Round Barn, the last remaining structure from the Fountaingrove estate, was destroyed by the 2017 wildfire (Credit: Kenishirotie/Getty Images) Nagasawa's Round Barn, the last remaining structure from the Fountaingrove estate, was destroyed by the 2017 wildfire (Credit: Kenishirotie/Getty Images) Harris brought Nagasawa and several of his fellow samurai to upstate New York, where he had founded a commune on the shores of Lake Erie. When Harris elected to move the community to a rural, 600-acre swath in western Sonoma County in 1875, the then-25-year-old Nagasawa came along. "I think Harris was like a father to him," said Perkins. "He had left Japan so young, and didn't have any family in America, so Harris was all he had." Naming the estate Fountaingrove after a year-round spring on the property, Harris set out to grow grapes, putting Nagasawa in charge of the operation. The winery soon prospered, but the "Eden of the West", as the commune described itself, became ever more wild, making headlines in San Francisco for its bacchanalian parties that eventually led to Harris' ignominious departure. With Harris gone, Nagasawa took ownership of the estate and rose rapidly to become a respected and seminal figure in the state's nascent wine industry. He also became the first Japanese national to live permanently in the US. Nagasawa travelled across the region, teaching other vintners how to grow grapes (Credit: Museum of Sonoma County) Nagasawa travelled across the region, teaching other vintners how to grow grapes (Credit: Museum of Sonoma County) "He and Luther Burbank used to ride together to all the vineyards and ranches giving advice on growing grapes and other crops," said Gaye LeBaron, co-author of the book The Wonder Seekers of Fountaingrove. "The townspeople here admired the heck out of him, as you can see from all the photographs of these huge dinners he would have on his front lawn." "He played a significant role in the growth of the California wine industry, being the first to market our wine to England and Europe, and he became an international figure as well," LeBaron added, noting that Nagasawa was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the Japanese emperor in 1915. All this came to an end during one of the darkest chapters of California's history, when Fountaingrove was seized by the government as part of the state's discriminatory Alien Land Laws, which were instituted in 1913, expanded in the 1920s and forbade Asian nationals from owning land or businesses. The childless Nagasawa, who never married, attempted to keep the estate in the family by willing it to his grand-nephew Kosuke Ijichi, born on the estate and thus an American citizen, and his Japanese-born father Tomoki Ijichi. But upon Nagasawa's death in 1934, Kosuke was not of age and the trustee took control of the estate and quickly sold off the land. In 1942, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered the forced removal of Japanese American "enemy aliens". The Nagasawa heirs, who were still fighting the estate's seizure in court, were incarcerated in internment camps. Like the approximately 125,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned until after the end of World War Two, they lost any chance of reclaiming the property. The Nagasawa's, and 125,000 other Japanese Americans, were imprisoned in internment camps during WW2 (Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) The Nagasawa's, and 125,000 other Japanese Americans, were imprisoned in internment camps during WW2 (Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) "He suffered twice at the hands of the government, so it would be understandable if he had some bitterness," said Perkins of her and Mary's father, Kosuke. "But I don't think he wanted to impart that to us." In fact, during their childhood, the Ijichi and Mori children had little knowledge of Fountaingrove or the family legacy. "I think my father suppressed his true feelings about it," Mary said. "We all knew this was where my father and my aunt grew up and we drove up to see it a couple of times, but we didn't really know the story." It wasn't until the late 1970s and early '80s that the story began to resurface, at least locally, when LeBaron began covering it for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat newspaper. At the same time, Japanese media came to film documentaries on the collective legacy of the 19 Kagoshima samurai students, many of whom had gone on to become prominent figures in government and industry after returning to Japan. But it was the Paradise Ridge exhibit that most helped Nagasawa's heirs begin to tell their story again. "It was a positive thing for my father to go through and contribute photos, it helped him to know that the Bycks were sincere and that preserving the history meant something to them," said Mary. Paradise Ridge displays images and a few of the original artefacts from Nagasawa's Fountaingrove estate (Credit: Melanie Haiken) Paradise Ridge displays images and a few of the original artefacts from Nagasawa's Fountaingrove estate (Credit: Melanie Haiken) While the exhibit at Paradise Ridge is considerably smaller than the one before the fire, it is the only permanent exhibit in the US dedicated to Nagasawa (the Museum of Sonoma County, which maintains an extensive Kanagawa and Fountaingrove collection, has curated temporary exhibits). The largest Nagasawa collection resides in Japan, where a museum preserving the legacy of all 19 samurai students, the Satsuma Students Museum, opened in Kagoshima in 2014. Ten Nagasawa descendants attended the opening, joined there by Rene. Just above Paradise Ridge, the city of Santa Rosa established the 33-acre Nagasawa Community Park in 2007, dedicated in a ceremony attended by numerous Nagasawa family members. And at Paradise Ridge, just behind the plot of chardonnay grapes designated as Nagasawa Vineyard, a small fenced-in area encloses a newly planted tea plantation, the result of efforts to connect Nagasawa's legacy with that of Wakamatsu Tea, which employed some of California's first Japanese immigrants in silk and tea production. "A lot of California agriculture owes its start to Japanese immigrants. Like the 'Potato King' and the 'Garlic King', as well as the 'Wine King'," said tea plantation founder Nao Magami, referring to Japanese immigrants George Shima, whose vast potato harvests led him to become the first Japanese American millionaire, and Kiyoshi Hirasaki, who became the country's biggest garlic producer. "But when the Japanese were sent to camps in World War Two, all of those stories got lost. Now we are trying to tie together those legacies of these earliest California pioneers." In 2021, the Wakamatsu group held its first tea ceremony at Paradise Ridge with Nagasawa family members in attendance. But perhaps the best and simplest epitaph for this remarkable man is the one added by his family to the plaque in Nagasawa Park, which outlines his life in just four words: "Samurai Spirit in California". [>> Click here to view it now, before they make us take it down.]( Regards, Jim Rickards, Editor, Paradigm Press Have we found a new way to beat diseases like Ebola? Share using Email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on Linkedin (Image credit: Getty Images) (Credit: Getty Images) By Robert Cottrell 24th March 2015 The best of the week's science and technology long reads, including a new idea for fighting communicable diseases, the pitfalls of modern parenting and TripAdvisor’s secret weapon. E Economics | Moore’s curse Moore’s Law is a dangerous rule of thumb. It leads to exaggerated expectations. “The doubling time for transistor density is no guide to technical progress generally. Modern life depends on many processes that improve rather slowly, not least the production of food and energy and the transportation of people and goods.” Established technologies typically produce gains in performance of 1.5% to 3% a year. (Vaclav Smil, IEEE Spectrum, 612 words) Death | The science of near-death experiences People who come very close to clinical death often remember it as a spiritual adventure. They report voices, euphoria, floating outside the body, being in a magical realm. Either they glimpsed the next world, or their brains were doing something weird. Go with the first explanation and you have a best-selling book. Go with the second and you have a neurological problem: What causes the near-death experience? (Gordon Lichfield, The Atlantic, 7,800 words) Disease | Darpa has a solution to Ebola The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has a fix for Ebola and all communicable diseases. You isolate antibodies from survivors of a given disease, encode the plans for making those antibodies in RNA, and inject the RNA into people who might encounter the disease. Their bodies start manufacturing more of the antibodies. It’s fast and cheap. It scales. It sounds too good to be true. But these are the people who brought us the internet. (Alexis Madrigal, Fusion, 3,588 words) Science | Pseudoscience Philosopher Stephen Law discusses “dodgy” systems of belief, including the church of Christian Science and homeopathy, which falsely claim to be scientific. “There remain many mysteries. Many may be beyond our ability to solve. That’s all fine. I don’t say that you should only ever believe something if you’ve got really good evidence for it. But I do say you shouldn’t pretend that you’ve got good evidence when you haven’t.” (Nigel Warburton, Five Books, 3,690 words) We often find ourselves laughing at the strangest of moments. As psychologists are discovering, those helpless giggles might be one of our most important and profound behaviours, says David Robson. M My conversation with Sophie Scott is nearly over when she spins round in her chair to show me a video of a near-naked man cannonballing into a frozen swimming pool. After a minute of flexing his muscles rather dramatically, he makes the jump – only to smash and tumble across the unbroken ice. The water may have remained solid, but it doesn’t take long for his friends to crack up. “They start laughing as soon as they see there isn’t blood and bones everywhere,” says Scott. “And they are SCREAMING with mirth; it’s absolutely helpless.” (If you want to see the video in question, you can find it here – though it does contain some swearing.) Why do we get such an attack of the giggles – even when someone is in pain? And why is it so contagious? As a neuroscientist at University College London, Scott has spent the last few years trying to answer these questions – and at TED2015 in Vancouver last week, she explained why laughter is one of our most important, and misunderstood, behaviours. (Credit: Thinkstock) (Credit: Thinkstock) Scott’s work has not always met the approval of her straight-laced colleagues. She likes to point out a handwritten note she once found stuck to the top of her printouts. “This pile of paper seems like rubbish (because of the nature of the material) and will be disposed of if not collected,” the note read. “Is this science?” In an ironic nod to the criticisms, Scott is now wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the question, ready for a comedy gig she is hosting later in the evening. She started out her career by examining the voice more generally, and the rich information it offers about our identity. “You can get a good shot at my gender, my age, my socioeconomic status, my geographical origins, my mood, my health, and even things to do with interactions,” she says. One of her experiments involved scanning professional impersonator Duncan Wisbey to explore the way that he comes to adopt the subtle mannerisms of other people’s speech (see video, below). Surprisingly, she found that the brain activity seemed to reflect areas normally associated with bodily motion and visualisation – as he, almost literally, tried to work his way under the skin of a character. More generally, the work on impersonations has helped her pin down the regions involved in things like accent and articulation – important aspects of our vocal identity. This video is no longer available This video is no longer available But it was a study in Namibia that made Scott begin to realise laughter is one of our richest vocal tics. Previous research had shown that we can all recognise six universal emotions across cultures – fear, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness, happiness – based on facial expressions. Scott, however, wanted to see if we encode more subtle information in our voice. So she asked indigenous Namibians and English people to listen to recordings of each other and rate the emotions represented – including the six accepted universals, as well as relief, triumph, or contentment. Laughter was the most easily recognisable emotion across both groups. “Almost immediately, it started to look different from the other positive emotions,” she says. The more she probed, the more she became fascinated by its intricacies. For instance, she soon found out that the vast majority of laughs have nothing to do with humour. “People genuinely think they are mostly laughing at other people’s jokes, but within a conversation, the person who laughs most at any one time is the person who is talking,” she says. Instead, she now sees laughter as a “social emotion” that brings us together and helps us to bond, whether or not something is actually funny. “When you laugh with people, you show them that you like them, you agree with them, or that you are in same group as them,” she says. “Laughter is an index of the strength of a relationship.” Infectious giggles That might explain why couples can roll about laughing at each other’s apparent wit – while onlookers fail to be infected. “You’ll hear someone say ‘he’s got a great sense of humour and I really fancy him because of it’. What you mean is ‘I fancy him and I show him I like him by laughing when I’m around him.’” Indeed, mirth might be the primary way of maintaining relationships; she points to research, for instance, showing that couples who laugh with each other find it much easier to dissipate tension after a stressful event – and overall, they are likely to stay together for longer. Other recent studies have shown that people who laugh together at funny videos are also more likely to open up about personal information – paving more common ground between people. Even the hilarity at the German man falling in the frozen swimming pool may have united the friends. “It’s interesting how quickly his friends start laughing – I think it’s to make him feel better,” says Scott. Along these lines, Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford has found that laughter correlates with increased pain threshold, perhaps by encouraging the release of endorphins – chemicals that should also improve social bonding. Scott is now interested in picking apart the differences between the “posed” giggles we might use to pepper our conversation – and the absolutely involuntary fits that can destroy a TV or radio broadcast, like this: This video is no longer available This video is no longer available For instance, she found that the less authentic tones are often more nasal – whereas our helpless, involuntary belly laughs never come through the nose. Her fMRI scans, meanwhile, have looked at the way the brain responds to each kind of laughter. Both seem to tickle the brain’s mirror regions – the areas that tend to mimic other’s actions. These areas will light up whether I see you kicking a ball, or if I kick it myself, for instance – and it could be this neural mimicry that makes laughter so contagious. “You are 30 times more likely to laugh if you’re with someone else,” she says. An important difference, however, is that the less spontaneous, social laughs, tend to trigger greater activity in areas associated with “mentalising” and working out other people’s motives – perhaps because we want to understand why they are faking it. You may think it is easy to tell the difference between involuntary and more artificial laughs, but Scott thinks the skill develops slowly across the lifespan and may not peak until our late 30s. For this reason, she has recently set up an experiment at London’s Science Museum, where her team will be asking visitors of different ages to judge the authenticity of different clips of people laughing and crying. After all, she points out that crying is an infant’s primary way of communicating, whereas laughter gains more importance the older we get. (Credit: Thinkstock) (Credit: Thinkstock) Although we may tend to dislike certain people’s “fake” laughs, Scott thinks it probably says more about us, and the way we are responding to their social signals, than anything particularly irritating about them. She tells me about an acquaintance who had frequently irritated her with a persistent, fluting, laugh. “I always thought that she laughed so inappropriately, but when I paid more attention to it I saw that what was odd was simply the fact I didn’t join in. Her laughter was entirely normal.” If she hadn’t disliked the person already, she says, she would have laughed away and wouldn’t have even noticed. Why not listen to some of Scott's clips and judge your own abilities to read people’s laughter: Beside probing the bonds in our closest relationships, Scott’s curiosity has also taken her to comedy clubs. “What’s interesting about laughter in the situation of stand-up is that it’s still an interaction,” she says. In a way, the audience is having a conversation with the comedian. “I’m interested in what happens when the audience starts laughing and how it dies away – whether are you in sync with people around you or whether you don’t care, because the experience is just between you and the person on the stage.” Paradoxically, she says, comedians often find it easier to work in large venues, perhaps because the contagious nature of laughter means that waves of mirth can catch on more easily when there are more people. She recalls a video of comedian Sean Lock reducing the audience to fits of hysterics simply by saying the word “cummerbund” occasionally, thanks to the infectious laughter spreading through the audience. So far, she has tried to equip audience members watching comedians with sensors to track the outbreak of laughter, with limited success – the audience froze under the attention. But she hopes to continue the work with a high-profile comedian like Rob Delaney, who may be able to break through the awkwardness. Scott occasionally takes up the microphone herself at comedy nights in London, and I ask her if her insights have fed her stage persona? She disagrees that science has offered her a fast track to comic genius, though as I discover at a charity gig the following evening, she is very funny. As her “Is this science?” T-shirt reminds us, her more uptight colleagues might disapprove of her flippant attitude – but then, Scott understands just how powerful a tool that laughter can be to express ourselves, and get people to listen. “Laughter seems trivial, ephemeral, pointless,” she says. “But it is never neutral – there’s always a meaning to it.” Psychology | An age of irrational parenting America’s streets are safer than they have been for decades. So why are parents and police so nervous about children going out on their own? One reason may be the sense that there are “fewer eyes” watching over them: “It can’t entirely be an accident that fears about child safety have risen in tandem with women’s workforce participation”. But mainly, parents are having fewer children later in life, so they value them more highly. (Jennifer Senior, New York Magazine, 1,030 words) Communication | The world of TripAdvisor How TripAdvisor keeps the hotel industry on its toes: Loudsourcing. If the shower-head doesn’t work you can tell the world about it. TripAdvisor has 200 million comments on its website and adds 115 every minute. Customer ratings are mainly indexed to value: “For what I paid, how delighted was I?” Service is the key variable. Branding counts for little. “The number-one hotel in a major market is often not the hotel you would expect.” (Tom Vanderbilt, Outside, 5,020 words) Technology | How Apple makes the watch Geek heaven. Industrial designer scrutinises the metal-working technologies used to make the Apple Watch, and is dazzled. “I see a process that could only have been created by a team looking to execute on a level far beyond what was necessary or what will be noticed. This isn’t a supply chain, it is a ritual Apple is performing to bring themselves up to the standards necessary to compete against companies with centuries of experience.” (Greg Koenig, Atomic Delights, 4,460 words) [divider] From time to time, we send special emails or offers to readers who chose to opt-in. We hope you find them useful. Email sent by Finance and Investing Traffic, LLC, owner, and operator of Open Source Trades To ensure you keep receiving our emails, be sure to [whitelist us.]( This ad is sent on behalf of Paradigm Press, LLC, at 808 St. Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. If you're not interested in this opportunity from Paradigm Press, LLC, please [click here]( to remove your email from these offers. 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