THE SNAKE WALLS OF KHIVA
The inner city of the ancient Silk Road oasis of Khiva has been unchanged for centuries. Surrounding 40ft-high snake walls that writhe around the city have protected it for centuries, enabling defenders to shoot, spear, and pour burning hot oil on attackers from three sides.
Khiva’s labyrinth of narrow lanes adorned with blue and aquamarine tile mosaics is a living museum for you to explore. On the Oxus or Amu Darya River in deepest Central Asia, Khiva was ancient when Alexander the Great seized it in 329 BC.
It survived the depredations of Arabs in the 8th century, Mongols in the 13th, Tamerlane in the 14th. The Khanate of Khiva continued to flourish on the Silk Road until conquered by the Russians in the 19th. Today in Uzbekistan, it remains as the best-preserved of the ancient oases of the Silk Road, yet unknown to the outside world.
It need not remain unknown to you, however. We were just here two years ago, and will be here again soon. Join us and make Khiva a part of your life.(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #226 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE RUSSIAN ARMY IS PUTTING ON A FASCINATING ANTIQUE SHOW IN UKRAINE
Russian T-55 blown up by Afghan Mujahaddin 1984 photo ©Jack Wheeler
The Ukrainian intelligence service has reported the destruction of a Russian D-74 artillery piece on the battlefield. The destruction of a single howitzer on its own is fairly unremarkable against the scale of the fighting there until you realize that this gun was made in the 1950s and phased out by the Soviet Red Army in the 1970s.
We can put this together with reports that, having lost more than 6000 tanks, Russia is once again fielding T-55s. The T-55 was a great tank but its design dates from the end of World War 2. I last saw one being blown to smithereens by a British Challenger 1 during the first Gulf War in 1991.
Quite apart from the one million casualties Russia has suffered – and two million more will be required to take the remaining 25 per cent of the Donbass, according to a recent British intelligence update – even the most fervent and optimistic supporter of the tyrannical Russian regime must realize its army is at its last gasp.
EUROPE IN THE BALANCE
Almost weekly in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Sweden a sensational assault committed by an illegal migrant -- often enjoying some sort of state support or with prior arrests for the same crime -- surfaces.
Until recently, European politicians and the media sought to either ignore such news or accuse those who clamored for tighter borders, more police protection, and stiffer penalties of being "racists" or "xenophobes."
Until recently, that is.
Mass protests are now common in Britain against the Labour Party's open borders policies and generous welfare entitlements for immigrants who arrive illegally and without authentic "political refugee" status.
Greek officials, also swamped by illegal immigration, now cite President Donald Trump's secure border policies as new models for their own.
The majority of European immigrants now come from majority-Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet many arrivals seem angrier at their newfound liberal hosts than at the dictatorships they fled back home.
Europe's immigration policies will not work in a multi-ethnic democracy.
THE WORLD’S BIGGEST MONEY
We’re on the island of Yap in Micronesia – some 500 miles southwest of Guam and 1,200 miles east of Manila in the Western Pacific. The Yapese have lived here for over 2,000 years, and have maintained their culture and traditions to this day.
Phenomenal navigators in their outrigger canoes, in ancient times they began sailing to Palau over 250 miles south to quarry large sections of limestone and return to stone-chisel them into circles with a hole in the middle (through which world put a long pole for carrying them.
Called Rai, they have been Yap’s currency for two millennia. The ones you see here are typical size but many are much larger, weighing as much as a car. Rai are the world’s biggest money – used not for day-to-day transactions but large ones like a bride’s dowry and wedding party, or a real estate deal.
The Yapese are a proud and peaceful people who live by their code of Respect and Responsibility. They are warm and welcoming to visitors. A 90-minute flight from Guam makes it easy to get here. Spending time with these special people will be life-memorable. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #216 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
VOLTAIRE AND MOHAMMED
One of dozens of patriot protests across Australia yesterday (8/31)
[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on March 10, 2006. For context, log on to @elonmusk to learn what Britain’s Labor Government under Keir Starmer is doing to protect Moslem rape gangs and mass Moslem illegal migration, and on to @MarchFor Australia to see hundreds of thousands of Aussie patriots in every major city protest yesterday (8/31) what the Aussie Labor Government under Anthony Albanese is doing to promote mass Moslem immigration and smear anyone who disagrees as “racist” – just as does Starmer. Given this, I thought it timely to know about Voltaire and Mohammed.]
TTP March 10, 2006
This Monday (3/6), the Wall Street Journal had a front page article about Moslems rioting in France over the staging of a play in a small village in the French Alps called Saint-Genis-Pouilly. The play was written in 1741 by Voltaire (1694-1778), and hasn't been staged for centuries. The title of the play is Mahomet, which is an older way to spell Mohammed.The article provided very little information about the play's content. The author of the WSJ article clearly did not see the performance himself. An internet search turns up a French edition of the play but none in English. It's far out of print, so to actually read the play, you'd have to go a large public or university library.
It just so happens, however, that I have the English translation of the complete works of Voltaire - all 42 volumes - in my personal library. So I immediately sat down and read the entire play. It is a drop dead, stone cold, mind blow. It is fantastic. And it couldn't be more perfectly written for our day than if Voltaire was a clairvoyant.
Here is the play's synopsis.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – A GLACIER IN THE GOBI
June 2002, the Vulture’s Mouth Glacier. In the deepest heart of the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, south of the Flaming Cliffs where Roy Chapman Andrews discovered dinosaur eggs in the 1920s, there is a naked spine of mountains called the Gurvan Saihan. In the Gurvan Saihan there is a deep gorge called Yol Alyn, the Vulture’s Mouth. And in the Vulture’s Mouth, there is a glacier.
It is not a big glacier, the continual ice buildup of a stream that never melts even in the heat of the Gobi summer. Yet it is a glacier nonetheless, thick enough for my son Jackson and I to walk on for more than a mile. The Vulture’s Mouth Glacier is just one of a multitude of extraordinary experiences Mongolia has to offer the explorer. Are you up for exploring it with me next June of 2026? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #90 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
YOU’RE FIRED!
Breaking news! TRUMP UNVEILS GIANT CANNON FOR FASTER, MORE ENTERTAING DEPORTATIONS
HALF-FULL REPORT 08/29/25
Elon’s original post of the Flag of St. George – the national Flag of England – received 82 million views. Adopted by Richard the Lionheart as the symbol of the Christian Crusades to recapture the Holy Land of Jesus from its seizure by Islamic invaders, it has been the flag of England since 1190.Revolution is coming , nothing can stop it, the silent majority will be silent no longer, join us in our stand against tyranny on September 13th https://t.co/LRRF9neMEK
— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) August 26, 2025
Why did Elon post it? Here’s Fox explaining (8/23): England Flag Displays Powerful Symbol In Immigration Fight As Trump-Style Populism Sweeps Through UK.
TTP has been reporting this since last January in HFR 01/03/25. There is so much more – this HFR is locked and loaded. Yours to learn more and revel in. Let’s go!
THE HANGING MONASTERY
The architectural wonder of the Hanging Monastery was built on a vertical cliff face by the Tuoba people of Inner Mongolia over 1,500 years ago (in the 490s). Devout Buddhists and brilliant engineers, they defied gravity by inserting huge wooden crossbeams deep into the cliff to suspend the monastery’s temples, shrines, and monks’ living quarters, connected with bridges, corridors, and boardwalks, out into space.
Liao Mongols in the 900s rebuilt and sustained it, and it has been carefully refurbished and restored in the centuries since. While it remains primarily Buddhist with statues and depictions of Sakyamuni (the historical Buddha of 5th century BC) and Maitreya (the future Buddha), the monks welcome reverence to Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu (4th century BC), as well as Confucius (551-479 BC). Thus you also see shrines and statues of them like nowhere else.
It is a unique and inspiring experience to be here. We’ll be here again in our exploration of Inner Mongolia. ((Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #116 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
DEALING WITH THE DEMONIC
Yes, everything in the NY Post cover story today (8/28), everything in Westman’s Manifesto, shows he was psychotically evil, truly demonic.
But what about his enablers, those who made such a deranged monster possible? That would specifically be Leigh Finke, the openly transgender member of the Minnesota House who authored HF146 to establish Minnesota as a “Trans Refuge State” – and those voted to pass the bill 68-62; Erin Maye Quade, the openly lesbian member of the Minnesota Senate who cosponsored the bill – and those who voted to pass it 34-30; and the ever-execrable Gov. Tim Walz who signed it into state law.
The purpose of the bill is to legally guarantee a child under the age of 18, even if the child is a resident from another state, the right to receive “gender-affirming care” in Minnesota. Yes, the bill’s purpose is to provide child mutilation by state law. This law is demonic.