Poker Information Guide

Legend has it that "Saucy Jack" Stoney lost the Braddock's Point Plantation to William Eddings Baynard in a late-night poker game at Hilton Head SC.  The year was 1838.

The 1000-acre plantation had been in the Stoney family since the American Revolution when Captain John Stoney, Saucy Jack's grandfather, had purchased it.  It was a 4th generation inheritance by the time Saucy Jack got it from his father Dr. George Mosse Stoney.

The winner of the poker game was William Eddings Baynard.  That explains the name by which it is known today:  Stoney-Baynard Plantation.  Some records indicate Saucy Jack simply went bankrupt and Baynard got the property at a fire sale.  But that version obviously has much less dramatic appeal.  Baynard died here at the "Big House" in 1849 after He and his wife Catherine had raised four children.


During the Civil War the Baynard's and other plantation owners on Hilton Head SC were driven off the Island.  The Big House became headquarters for Union officers.  That made it the target of a Confederate raiding party, which torched and destroyed it.

The Baynard's never returned to the Island after the War, although they did legally reclaim the land.  Thus, the property was left in its present state of disrepair, another sad monument to the devastation of the American Civil War.


The front of the house is easily located by large square holes which once housed the posts supporting an expansive porch.  To the rear stand the remains of a fireplace and outer wall.

In their beautiful setting on the highest point of the Island, these haunted places conjure happy family scenes of children and household servants playing together.  A cloud blots out the sun and these are swept away by a violent conflagration.  If you are very still the imagination can pick up the echo of the jack-boot invader pacing the large wrap-around porch of this haunted house.

Sometimes the haunting scenes of this idyllic setting are more evident to the senses.  In life and in death luck deserted Baynard and the shades of his mournful funeral procession may still be seen filing past his tomb.

Legend has it that the rumor of jewelry, gold and riches motivated union soldiers to break into the family mausoleum.  Ever since, on drizzly gray days Baynard's ghost has been wandering the scene of his earthly existence.  This is one of the true scary stories associated with paranormal activity at Hilton Head SC.

Would you like to learn more about the Stoney-Baynard ruins and the "7 Greatest Mysteries" of Savannah-Hilton Head Island?  Follow the links below for an expose of the real ghosts on Hilton Head Island, the No. 1 vacation destination in the Continental United States.

If you are a sports enthusiast, then there is nothing more exciting to you than watching the performances of your favorite teams or players in ongoing matches. What if alongside the team or the player of your choice, you also stand a chance of winning a few reward points? It will definitely add some elements of extra thrill to your life and will let you earn some quick riches. The presence of various online gambling arenas has now made sure that you make quick profit without facing any hassle during the favorite matches of yours.

Trying luck on the turnout of a sport event or a gambling match has been present in this world for many centuries, but since the progression of satellite communication a significant change has been added to it. Of late, with the existence of various gaming sites over the internet the bettors have been given the liberty to wedge money without actually being present at any event. If you love to place stakes, then this has opened up a whole new platform in front of you with the availability of a number of favorable options.


With a number of different matches being accessible through online gambling sites, you are given a vast field to try your luck on. You are no longer required to put your asset on a single game at a time. Instead, you can acquire the taste of different types of games being played in different corners of the world and can multiply your financial gains while enjoying such a variety.

The existence of online gaming zones have definitely changed the vista of sports betting by providing you with more options and more opportunities to profit from.

In order to gain strong footholds in a tough competitive environment, these online wagering sites have become very vigilant about the legitimacy. So, there is a very poor chance of you getting swindled out of your money by such establishments.


Some of these sites even work as an intermediary source between you and various other legitimate gaming platforms and allow you to play with different authentic sites, such as IBCBET or others. With the help of such websites you stand a chance of winning a large number of prize money while playing different games on different sites using a single username.

Safety

You may have the strong urge of testing your luck on the performances of your favorite teams or players, but are suppressing that urge because of the security matters, as with the offline gambling you are supposed to be present in person while placing the bet. The presence of numerous online gambling sites let you try your luck to your heart's content without compromising with your safety.

You can play these games while sitting in front of your personal computer or just by using your Smartphone, any time of the day. So, you can let go of all the fears of unknown surroundings and put all your attentions on how to make better scores and acquire more reward points. This aforementioned feature of online gambling certainly makes the game of luck more enticing and sweetening.

The world's largest retailer is under fire for releasing a device that, according to some experts, is little more than a spying tool for government surveillance. The "Amazon Echo" device, a constantly-listening Bluetooth speaker that connects to music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify at the sound of a person's voice, can be easily hacked and used by government agencies like the FBI to listen in on conversations.

Much like Apple's iPhone, which contains a listening apparatus via "Siri" that can be activated in a room simply by speaking out loud, the Amazon Echo is programmed to listen for certain verbal commands telling it to turn on, for instance, or to connect to a certain app. Amazon says the device contains "far-field voice recognition" that can hear a person's voice across the room, even while music is playing.

Not only does the Amazon Echo respond to commands, but it can even answer questions and read audiobooks aloud, as well as providing other on-demand services at a user's verbal prompting. One can even control lighting in a house or adjust a programmable, WiFi-enabled thermostat like the Nest via an Amazon Echo, which for many people who are too lazy to perform these tasks using human cognition is a dream come true.

But this dream comes at a price, warn skeptics who've investigated the capability of the Amazon Echo to spy on people and deliver information to hackers or even government officials. Writing for ZD Net, Zack Whittaker explains that Amazon Echo's transparency reports fail to outline everywhere where data from the device is sent, listing only Amazon's cloud services as a source of data storage.

Is Amazon selling your family's privacy to the federal government?

And yet, Amazon's transparency reports admit that the company is routinely handed subpoenas, search warrants and court orders demanding information about users from government agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Amazon has yet to indicate how many of these requests have actually been fulfilled, and those seeking answers have yet to find them.

"In many ways the Echo is a law enforcement dream," writes Matt Novak for Paleo Future, a division of Gizmodo. Novak filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI back in March to find out if the federal agency had ever wiretapped an Amazon Echo, to which the agency responded that it could "neither confirm nor deny" – essentially an admission of guilt.

"Years ago agencies like the FBI would need to wiretap a phone conversation or place bugs inside homes, practices that can be cost prohibitive and labor intensive. Today, you just need some software to tap into a device's microphone. And if that device is 'always listening' for a command, all the better for someone who wants to hear what's going on."

As of this writing, Amazon has reportedly sold some 3 million Amazon Echo speakers to unsuspecting consumers who apparently don't mind that they're basically paying a multinational corporation to spy on them, and possibly hand over private conversations and other information, including purchase information, music preferences and more to marketers and government infiltrators.

Smartphones and laptop computers really aren't much better, as most of these devices these days contain both microphones and cameras that we know are capable of recording when they aren't activated – and in some cases, when they're not even on.

Just as important as knowing what might be hiding in our electronic devices is knowing what's hiding in our food. The new book Food Forensics by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, tackles this subject by exploring the additives, preservatives and other toxins hiding in food and destroying our collective health – and how to avoid them!

An explosive new film detailing how Bill and Hillary Clinton used their positions of power and influence to raise millions for themselves and billions for their "charitable" foundation details, among other things, a deal that helped to enrich a friend and donor at the expense of invaluable, irreplaceable rainforest.

The film, "Clinton Cash," which you can view online in its entirety here, thoroughly explains the nexus between Hillary Clinton's State Department, her ex-president husband, the Clinton Foundation, and foreign governments and business interests all conspiring to raise money at the expense of ordinary people and the environment.

Here is one of the most egregious examples.

In June 2010, Bill Clinton, along with friend and mining billionaire Frank Guistra, a Canadian, flew into Bogota, Colombia, where, coincidentally, they arrive at about the same time as Secretary Clinton, who flew in on a government plane. In her memoirs, which she wrote after leaving the State Department, she claimed that the meeting between her, her husband and Guistra was just happenstance – as if the two of them had no idea they would both be in Bogota, Colombia at the same time.

Follow the money

But of course, the meeting wasn't just happenstance.

The following morning, after the Clintons dined together at a restaurant in the capital city, Bill Clinton has an early morning meeting with outgoing President Alvaro Uribe; Secretary Clinton had a noon lunch meeting with Uribe as well. During the meeting with Mrs. Clinton, the U.S. government grants Colombia a number of technical agreements the Uribe administration had been seeking.

In the days that followed, three companies belonging to Guistra received major concessions from the Colombian government. One of the companies, Prima Colombia Hardwood Inc., received permission to cut timber from a rainforest along the Pacific coast.

One more thing: The rainforest timber was not bound for the United States or even Canada; it was exported to China.

Environmentalists, as well as many of the Colombian people, figured out what was going on eventually and were outraged. Eventually, the permit to cut timber was pulled by a new Colombian government, but not before Giustra's company was able to massively profit from cutting down acres upon acres of irreplaceable rainforest.

For their part, the Clintons have come out in public in support of "sustainable forests" and other environmental causes, but after receiving millions in donations to their foundation – and after Bill Clinton raked in nearly $2 million in speaking fees – their environmentalism took a back seat to their desire for payola.

So much for principles

It wasn't just the Colombian timber deal where the Clintons' ostensible environmental principles were ignored. There was Clinton chicanery when it came to the Keystone XL pipeline as well, one of the touchstones of the so-called "climate change" debate. (See more on that here) The pipeline is designed to carry oil from tar sands fields in Canada to refineries in Texas and Louisiana.

When Hillary Clinton was named as President-Elect Obama's secretary of state in late 2008, there was an issue related to the pipeline waiting for her on her desk. She was to decide whether or not to approve an environmental and economic impact statement and decide whether the pipeline project should be approved; it was a State Department decision (among others) because the pipeline was multinational in scope.

At that exact time, Bill Clinton received an offer of nearly $2 million to give 10 speeches in Canada – from entities that had never before hired him to speak. The company that offered the deal, TD Bank Investment Group, it turns out, is a major shareholder in the Keystone XL project.

Clinton gave the last speech in May 2011; three months later, Secretary Clinton's State Dept. released an environmental impact letter widely seen as favoring the construction of the pipeline. She had in her hands the power to kill the deal but she, mysteriously, signed it – even though she and her boss, Obama, seemed to be opposed to the pipeline as an environmental issue.

Watch the entire Clinton Cash documentary here.

Cancer lawsuits against Monsanto over the company's glyphosate-based weedkiller, Roundup, are gaining steam.

(Article by Lorraine Chow, republished from EcoWatch.com)

On Wednesday, a motion was filed with the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to create a coordinated docket for 21 pending federal cases that involve the exact same product, the same active ingredient and the same injury, the legal news site Harris Martin Publishing writes.

The plaintiffs--represented by personal injury lawyers Aimee H. Wagstaff and David J. Wool of the Colorado law firm Andrus Wagstaff, P.C.--allege that exposure to glyphosate caused them to develop non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

As Harris Martin reported (via Sustainable Pulse), the plaintiffs want to unite the cases in one court either before judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel or judge David R. Herndon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

The Illinois court was chosen for a number of reasons. First, three of the 21 Roundup cancer cases are pending in the state. Second, the midwestern state is the largest producer of soybeans, which were doused with 122,473,987 pounds of glyphosate-based herbicides in 2014 alone, "more than any other crop," the plaintiffs said. Third, the Southern District of Illinois is located within 20 miles of St. Louis-headquartered Monsanto.

"Accordingly, Illinois' factual nexus and interest in the outcome of this litigation is extremely strong," the motion stated.

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"Each Roundup Case requires extensive discovery concerning the safety, development and marketing of Roundup, which has been on the market since the mid 1970s," the motion said.

"Each Plaintiff will need to conduct the same complicated regulatory and scientific discovery (spanning over 40 years) to demonstrate that exposure to Roundup caused their non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. To date, a few of the Roundup Cases have commenced discovery, but that discovery is being conducted under different, and sometimes conflicting, judicial constraints and orders. Centralizing these cases before one [Multidistrict Litigation] Judge to ensure that the discovery is done once for all claimants makes sense."

Glyphosate is the most widely applied pesticide worldwide. About 2.6 billion pounds of it was sprayed on U.S. agricultural land between 1992 and 2012, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans" last year.

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Just last week, an Illinois woman filed a lawsuit against Monsanto in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois alleging Roundup caused her to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to the Madison County Record.

Plaintiff Lynda K. Patterson alleges that she used Roundup on her garden and landscaping for more than a decade before being diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin lymphoma in August 2014, the Madison County Record reported. She underwent aggressive treatment, including chemotherapy.

She claims Monsanto allegedly designed formulated, manufactured and distributed the herbicide and failed to adequately warn consumers of the product's health risks.

The plaintiff is represented by David M. Hundley of Hundley Law Group PC in Chicago and Christopher L. Coffin and Nicholas R. Rockforte of Pendley, Baudin & Coffin LLP in New Orleans. She is seeking a trial by jury and compensatory and punitive damages and attorneys' fees.

EcoWatch has extensively covered the increasing number of cancer lawsuits mounting against Monsanto, with cases springing up all over the country.

Robin Greenwald, the head of environmental protection at personal injury law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, told EcoWatch that people across the U.S. have been contacting her about Roundup lawsuits, raising similar allegations that Monsanto has not adequately warned about Roundup's link to cancer.

She said these people come in three categories: farmers and nursery workers who have been exposed to the compound through agricultural work; people who regularly apply Roundup to their own lawns and property; and landscapers who go from town to town and get exposed to the product.

Greenwald has helped at least 10 plaintiffs file lawsuits against Monsanto. She said all of these cases are focused on exposure to Roundup and diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

The agritech giant has vehemently denied the cancer claims of its blockbuster product and has demanded a retraction of the IARC report.