A MONSTER’S CASTLE
Cap Haitien, Haiti. On a steep mountain top three thousand feet high above the north coast of Haiti, stands this staggeringly gigantic fortress.
It is the Citadelle Laferrière, revered by professional distortionists of history as "the greatest monument to black freedom in the Americas." What it really is instead is a monument to totalitarian insanity.
In 1807, the leader of a victorious slave army against the French named Henri Christophe (1767-1820) seized Haiti and proceeded to re-enslave his people. With their slave labor, he built La Citadelle – 20,000 slaves died under the lash or from utter exhaustion building it, hauling hundreds of cannons, tens of thousands of cannon balls, and millions of bricks and rocks 3,000 feet up the steep slopes to the site.
Finally, in 1820, Christophe’s slaves rebelled, his body dissolved in a huge vat of liquid lime, the mortar for the fortress’ bricks. The Citadelle has been a deserted ruins ever since. I was the only visitor there. So much for "the monument to black freedom." Haiti has never experienced a single day of freedom in its entire existence to this very day.
Haiti, in other words, is not only a failed state – for over 200 years, it has always been a failed state. Tragically, the odds are high it always will be. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #265 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 05/02/24
I find myself feeling very grateful for the SCOTUS that we have right now. The majority seems to be working hard to conserve the Constitution-as-intended. They have more, and harder, cases coming up, so prayer is appropriate. The Lawfare against Trump and the lawfare against the J6 patriots seem to be forming a vortex that may blow the Leftist Luftwaffe into a tailspin. Woot! Meanwhile, the Left seem to be setting up fearmongering for the next Pandemic (but who’s really afraid of bird flu?) Still, take note and prepare yourself.
There is rational concern about the preparedness of the Military when a Navy Captain doesn’t know which way a scope should be aimed, and Liberal Courts are putting on their own circuses; but Israel has shown bully Iran – and the whole world – that Iran is all hat and no saddle, while Israel can shoot their b***s off when and where they want to, so that’s always good. And though the economy isn’t looking good, it’s not like we’re not prepared for it, and knowledge is power, right? And you’ll be grateful to know that a banana will protect you (or your kids) against the anarchists trying to take over our country’s universities! Let’s get to it!
SCOTUS will be making a decision for the ages:
Justice Kavanaugh Warns Of Vicious Cycle Of Malicious Prosecutions That Could End Presidency
THE SACRED LAKE OF PHOKSUNDO
West of the Himalayan giants of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri in Nepal lies a roadless high wilderness inhabited only by Tibetan nomads called Dolpa. The region is named after them, Dolpo. The Dolpa practice the ancient pre-Buddhist animist religion of Tibet called Bön. They worship sites of nature they consider holy. And holiest of all is the Sacred Lake of Phoksundo.
The Dolpa consider the blue of Phoksundo an act of magic by the gods. Once you see it, you can only agree. This picture is not photoshopped – it is real. We visit it in late October when it is ice free on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #41 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
COMMIE DAY 2024
It’s May 1st, May Day, so it’s appropriate that we revisit “Commie Day,” first published on May 4, 2018. It provides an epic, albeit revolting, example of how the American Left has always been immorally deranged, from 138 years ago (at least) to today.
For millennia, especially in Europe, the First of May was a happy, joyful celebration of life after winter, with dancing around a Maypole and crowning a pretty girl with flowers as Queen of May.
I grew up in California. When we were kids, my sisters would always get up early to pick flowers, and leave them in a basket at the front door for Mom, our family’s Queen of May.
Today is a national holiday in Germany, as it is in over 30 other countries in Europe and dozens of other countries around the world. But not as May Day.
Instead, it’s called International Workers Day. Since it was the invention of Communists in 1889, it should be called Commie Day. Only Communists could take an innocent celebration of springtime and turn it into celebration of murder, terrorism, hate, and envy.
Here’s the story. For it begins not in Europe but in America.
A SHOCKING SIGN OF PUTIN’S RUSSIA IN DEEP DECLINE
Last week was full of shocks for Moscow. The United States finally approved $61 billion of aid to Ukraine, the European Parliament passed a resolution rejecting the legitimacy of Russia’s March presidential elections, and Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was arrested in Moscow on accusations of bribery.
The last event was the most astounding, as there have been practically no significant corruption cases in Russia since the war in Ukraine began (The Moscow Times, April 25). Ivanov has been a prominent figure in Moscow’s high society and has ties to Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, and Sergei Kiriyenko, the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration (The Moscow Times, April 25).
More than that, Ivanov was the prime protégé of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. That he was arrested for bribery corruption when corruption is the organizing principle of Putin’s rigid autocracy is being seen by Russia’s elites that Putin’s rule is in decline.
THE IDEAL ESCAPE HATCH
What would be an ideal place to escape from all the lunacy washing over our country – for a few days to a second home?
Let’s see… it would have to be a First World country with all the civilized amenities of modern life, and a cultured, educated, and welcoming people many, many of whom speak English.
A First World country that brushes aside all Woke nuttiness engulfing the US as silly rubbish to be ignored, and traditional Christian family values revered instead. That is not much farther away than a US cross-country flight. That has Goldilocks weather, not too hot, not too cold. That has sunsets in the ocean, fabulous food and wine, incredible castles in the sky, history that’s thousands of years old yet so hip and current it’s the cultural capital of its continent.
We’ve had Glimpses of this place before: The Europe That’s Still There, and The Portuguese Riviera. Yes, the Ideal Escape Hatch for us is Portugal – a quick overnight flight getting there, a morning flight return.
For 10 days in October of 2022, Rebel and I conducted a Portugal Exploration for TTPers. Rebel and I and your fellow TTPers will be doing it again in a few days from now. Just click on Portugal Exploration – May 3 -12, 2024 -- you owe it to yourself to be entranced by the photos, for a glimpse of this ideal place. (Glimpses of our Breathtaking World #157 ©photo Jack Wheeler)
CHINA’S MILITARY DEVELOPING SPACE ASSETS AT “BREATHTAKING SPEED”
Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, recently warned about China’s “breathtakingly fast” development of space military capabilities following his trips to South Korea and Japan.
“We are seriously focused at U.S. Space Command on our pacing challenge, which is the People’s Republic of China,” Gen. Whiting told reporters during a call from Japan on April 24.
“The People’s Republic of China is moving at breathtaking speed in space, and they are rapidly developing a range of counter-space weapons to hold at risk our space capabilities.
They’re also using space to make their terrestrial forces—their army, their navy, their marine corps, their air force—more precise, more lethal, and more far-ranging.”
WHERE DID ALL THE STOCKS GO?
The number of public companies has fallen fast.
Since the late 1990s, the number of US publicly traded companies has plunged from about 8K in 1996 to about 4.6K in 2022. (It’s bounced back a bit more recently.)
How come?
There’s no shortage of theories about why this has occurred.
A favorite, among American executives, is that new regulations that followed fraud and accounting scandals of the early 2000s (best embodied by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) simply made going public too costly, especially for smaller companies.
The self-serving conclusion that such inconveniences ought to be done away with is heavily implied.
This doesn’t make much sense, as the number of public companies had been tumbling for years before those new rules came into existence, much less went into force.
ALBANIA’S BLUE EYE
This is not a Monet painting. It is a real photograph looking straight down upon the swirling clear blue water of the Syri i Kaltër – Blue Eye – Spring burbling up from a deep karst hole of the Bistricë River in the mountains of southern Albania.
The water surges up with such force that scuba divers trying to determine the spring’s depth could only get down to 50 meters (164ft) and no more, thus the depth of the underwater source is unknown. The water is cristal clear, drinkably pure, and very cold. Found between the World Heritage mountain town of Gjirokaster and the Adriatic beach resort town of Saranda, it’s a hypnotic, mesmerizing experience. The Blue Eye is the beauty of nature at its most entrancing. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #293, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FIXING THE BLUE STATES
[This Monday’s Archive was written on November 24, 2004, reflecting thinking of conservative think-tanks of how to expand the red-blue state divide in the former’s favor. Now, 20 years later, this coming November will likely increase the divide, perhaps even substantially, so their plan to fix blue state Dems may well be made real by a Trump White House. Read on to learn how hilarious is what they mean by “fix.” It’s a great plan!]
TTP, November 24, 2004
We’ve all had a good laugh at the moonbat barking of Blue State Liberals about seceding from Red State America. To keep the fun going, let’s flip the secession meme around and talk about red counties seceding from the blue states in which they are politically imprisoned.
An inspection of the map above shows that Blue States like California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan are mostly colored red – that is, a substantial majority of the counties in those states voted for Bush. How could they secede to join a red state?
Red counties in blue states could tell their neighbor blue counties they don’t have to put up with bible-thumping racist redneck homophobe ignoramuses too dense not to understand that liberals are a superior form of human evolution with the moral authority to demand blind obedience.