Yearly Archives: 2020
HOW AMERICAN MYTHS WERE RAVAGED IN 2020
Thanks in large part to Democrat lockdowns, this year has left vast wreckage in its wake, with ten million jobs lost, more than 100,000 businesses and dozens of national chains bankrupted or closed.
Up to 40 million people could face eviction in the coming months for failing to pay rent, and Americans report that their mental health is at record low levels. But the casualty list for 2020 must also include many of the political myths that shape Americans’ lives.
Perhaps the biggest myth to die this year was that Americans’ constitutional rights are safeguarded by the Bill of Rights. There are many more.
WHY THE DEFEATISM?
Millions of patriots have fight in them as the country confronts the greatest threat to the Republic since the Civil War. Historic elections fraud, centered on the presidential contests, involving gross criminality make it so.
Whereas many patriots are ready to fight to restore the rule of law and our liberties, others express gloom and defeat. The fix is in, they claim. If Trump doesn’t secure a second term, then all is lost, they bemoan. The powerful cabal that Biden fronts will run the board over 48 months. A long, dark night will descend on America.
Here’s a modest proposal: Wars aren’t over until they’re fought.
THE LOST CITY OF DJADO
In the remotest center of the Sahara Desert lies an unknown, unexcavated mysterious lost city known as Djado. No one knows who built it or when. Lying on the ancient Roman trade route from the Saharan salt mines of Fachi and Bilma to the Mediterranean, the Djado oasis flourished for a thousand years (the 1st Millennium AD), but has been forgotten and abandoned for many centuries.
The only people who live near Djado in the vast desert wasteland where Algeria, Libya, Chad, and Niger come together, are the wandering Toubu nomads with no permanent settlements. It is an indescribable experience to explore such a wondrous lost city right out of an Indiana Jones movie that you have all to yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #17, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
A PERFECT STORM SEEKS DESTRUCTION OF THE USA
BLM/Antifa Washington DC Nov 3, 2020
As 2021 dawns, the war on our culture moves into high gear.
The opportunistic intersection of the resistance to the Trump presidency, the rise of the monopolistic tech giants, the spurious panic over the psychologically weaponized Communist Chinese Virus and its concomitant loss of personal freedom, the neo-Marxist hijacking and worsening of race relations, and the legalistic undermining of U.S. laws and institutions have all evolved into a perfect storm of destruction that not only threatens the future of the United States, but actively seeks its destruction.
And they’re just getting started.
A GOP ELECTOR CHALLENGE ON JANUARY 6 COULD BE A CATASTROPHIC MISTAKE
In his December 23 video, Dr. Steve Turley summed up two possible roads to victory for President Trump in Congress on Jan. 6, starting with a congressional challenge to disputed Biden electors:
“First, you have to have an objection filed and endorsed by at least one US senator and one US representative. And once filed and endorsed, both chambers of Congress...have to have a debate – I believe it's stated to be a two-hour debate – over the merits and demerits of the objection, and then a simple majority is enough to overturn the electors.
Or second, you've got Vice President Mike Pence poised to make the final decision as to whether to certify the electors after the debate.”
Note this is an Either/Or. Do the first prevents the second. Here’s why.THE ISLANDS OF SERENITY
Mulafassur waterfall below the village of Gasadalur is only one example of the serenity of the Faroe Islands. They’re a self-governing Danish possession in the North Atlantic halfway between Norway and Iceland. You won’t find a place of more captivating serene and peaceful charm.
Warmed by the Gulf Stream, in the summer it’s so strewn with wildflowers the roads are known as “buttercup highways.” At every turn along them you’re stunned by the incredible scenery. The capital of Torshavn is so laid back the Prime Minister’s Office – the Løgmansskristovan – is a wood cabin with a green grass sod roof. Great beer from the Faroes’ two breweries is always flowing in the pubs, where the Faroese islanders welcome you like an old friend.
You can easily fly here from Edinburgh, London, Copenhagen, or Reykjavik, Iceland . A few days here will do wonders for your soul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #18 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE UNKNOWN SERENGETI
The Serengeti Migration is world famous, when the great herds of wildebeest, zebra, and gazelles are strung out mile after mile migrating from Tanzania’s Serengeti to the Masai Mara of Kenya from May through July. The migration is circular, for starting in October, the herds return.
But return to where? And from where do the great herds start the cycle anew? The answer is the Short Grass Plains of the Serengeti’s far south. It is here where, from January through March, over a million wildebeest congregate en masse as you see in the photo above, not strung out over a hundred miles. For this is their Birthing Season when the herds are replenished with new life.
THE UNSPEAKABLY DUPLICITOUS COWARDICE OF THE REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS
Majority Leader Turtle – Chief Coward of the Senate
While there are a few exceptions who need to be celebrated — Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan, to name the most prominent of the heroes — the rest of the Republicans in Congress are abject cowards.
So anxious to go along to get along with the establishment they were oh, so comfortable with, they have been and are willing to betray their constituents to regain their access to power and money. Forget representing the people; they represent themselves.
President Trump is the best man for the party to come along since Reagan, and they are nearly all ready to throw him under the bus. It is disgusting. No conservative should ever again donate a dime to any of the traitors who claim to hold conservative values.
WHERE DID THE DEMOCRATS’ MARXIST MADNESS COME FROM?
Bouts of extreme Leftism are frequent in history. Plato’s Apology, Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Vladimir Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? — all offer us insight into the mind and methods of the hard Left.
America has experienced surges of mainstream anarchism, socialism, and communism, most profoundly during the late 19th century, amid the Great Depression, during the Soviet-American alliance of World War II and afterward, and in the 1960s.
But rarely have these radical movements openly and without apologies made such inroads into and inside government and the establishment as during the past decade
Where and how did radical ideas such as the non-enforcement of laws, the Green New Deal, open borders, the -studies curricula of the university, or the political weaponization of professional sports come from?
THIS IS NOT THE SPEECH OF A MAN WHO WILL BETRAY US ON JANUARY 6
Last Wednesday December 23), Vice-President Mike Pence spoke to the Turning Point USA conference in Palm Beach. On Wednesday January 6, as President of the Senate, the presiding officer of the Joint Session of Congress with plenary authority to count the electoral votes determining the victor in the November 3 presidential election, he will choose to count the legal votes only or not.
If the former, the victor will be President Trump. If the latter, the presidency will be stolen from him. Watching this speech will give you hope for the former:
INSIDE GIBRALTAR
We’re all familiar with the famed Rock of Gibraltar, huge and imposing from the outside – but inside the Rock itself is the enormous St. Michael’s Cave with fantastical formations colorfully illuminated. For millions of years, rainwater created fissures in the Rock’s limestone widening into huge caves with the steady drip of mineralized water creating massive stalactites hanging from cave ceilings and stalagmites rising up from cave floors. A phantasmagorical experience.
Gibraltar has been a British territory since 1713 when Spain ceded it in the Treaty of Utrecht. Thus also high up inside the Rock are the Great Siege Tunnels the British dug then lined with cannon emplacements to defeat Spain’s attempt to seize Gibraltar in the 1780s. Walking through the tunnels, you peer below looking down where the Spaniards and their French allies were vainly dug in – and where there is now an airplane runway stretching across the isthmus.
That’s just a glimpse of what to discover visiting Gibraltar, as there’s so much more! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #12, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 12/25/20
And yes, for us as Andy Williams immortalized it in 1963, this is The Most Wonderful Time of the Year – which we get to and will celebrate despite any attempt to stop us.
So before we go any farther, let’s take a moment to appreciate the joyousness in our hearts on this Christmas Day. Feels glorious, doesn’t it?
It’s a sorrowful tragedy that many of our fellow Americans are suffused with such a depth of fear and anger that they resent our joy – to the grotesque extent of wanting government guns pointed at us to stifle it.
That fear and anger causes the abyss between us and them – we are pro-freedom, they are anti-freedom; pro-America, they are hate-America; pro-honesty, integrity, and moral decency while they have contempt for all three.
Given that, here is the most critical distinction between us and those of the Left:
WHERE JESUS WAS BORN
The exact spot where Jesus was born is marked by this 14-pointed silver star with the Latin inscription Hic De Virgine Maria Jesus Christus Natus Est- "Here Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin Mary."
This is in a cave known as The Grotto of Nativity, enshrining the traditional site of the manger in Bethlehem, over which the Church of the Nativity was built, originally by Constantine the Great after his mother St. Helena visited the Holy Land and confirmed the site in 326.
It is only appropriate to commemorate what happened here over 2,000 years ago on this Christmas Day, 2020. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #107 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
IS SANTA LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE?
SKYE’S LINKS 12/24/20
Delingpole: Eric Clapton Sings Anti-Lockdown Song; Trolls Mock His Dead Kid
The compliant response of state and local officials to Antifa and BLM violence and threats of violence has taught a dangerous lesson. Since politically motivated violence by the left has generally been rewarded by 'Crat politicians and elites, we can expect to see more of it, and not just from the left.
Anti-Lockdown Protesters Force Way into Oregon Capitol, Some Armed
When seven Supreme Court Justices decided to wash their hands of ruling on clearly unconstitutional state and local voting processes in Texas v. Pennsylvania, they unleashed the most obvious and immediate alternative: escalating political violence.
Here we go for the best Skye’s Links ever.
THE PENCE CARD
Y
esterday (12/23), President Trump played “The Pence Card” with this tweet. Attached to it is a memorandum appended below.
For the most part, Americans assume that the Vice President lacks power. The President may assign him responsibilities, but the Constitution does not. Instead, he’s the understudy, there just in case something happens to the president.
Except that, in this strange year of 2020, we may learn that the Vice President is the most powerful man in America. Ivan Raiklin, a constitutional lawyer, claims that the Constitution grants Mike Pence the power to overturn a manifestly fraudulent election.
Here is what POTUS is asking Pence to do.
WHY I WILL NOT ACCEPT A CHEAT AS PRESIDENT
[Newt speaks for me, and every patriot in America – JW]
A smart friend of mine who is a moderate liberal asked why I was not recognizing Joe Biden’s alleged victory.
The friend made the case that Mr. Biden had gotten more (electoral) votes, and historically we recognize the person with the most. Normally, we accept the outcome of elections just as we accept the outcomes of sporting events.
So, my friend asked why was 2020 different?
HAWAII IN EUROPE
Equivalent to the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific are the Azores in the European Atlantic. You’re looking at Lagoa das Sete Cidades (Lagoon of the Seven Cities), an example of the Azores’ astounding beauty. As Hawaii is a part of the US, the Azores are a part of Portugal – since the 1430s first discovered uninhabited.
Everything grows here, cedar forest to giant tropical tree ferns, fruit from citrus to tropical, plants from corn to taro. Flowers are riotously everywhere. The sea swarms with fish being on the main Atlantic migration route for whales and dolphins. The islands are immaculately cared for by Azoreans, no pollution, air sparkling clear, weather in the 60s in winter, 70s in summer, so peaceful they are virtually crime-free.
Azoreans love drinking parties, cheerful festivals, and bright colors – with their charming homes painted the color of key lime pie, raspberry mousse, or oceanic blue. They love liberty so much they’ve had this motto emblazoned on their coat of arms for centuries: “Antes morrer livres que em paz sujeitos”—" Rather die free than live in peaceful subjugation.”
This is one of our planet’s truly magical places. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #11 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE MOST IMPORTANT MAN IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW
Yes, he’s Mike Pence. Here’s why and how.
As we all know, the President of the United States isn’t actually elected by the popular vote. He’s elected by the college of presidential electors from each US state. The important question then is: Who counts the votes cast by the presidential electors?
That is clearly specified by the 12th Amendment of the Constitution:
“The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.”
And who, then, is the President of the Senate? Article 1, Section 3, Clause 4 of the Constitution answers it clearly:
DOES HISTORY SAY AMERICA WILL SPLIT INTO SEPARATE NATIONS?
The nation’s current divide is partly geographic but mostly cultural and juridical.
The Texas-led states now stand for the rule of law and the civil rights protections of the 1868 14th Amendment. The California-led states now seek to undo over 150 years of human rights laws so that they can override the suffrage and petitions of a “suspect class” (Republicans).
Half the country believes the Nov. 3 election was illegitimate because they share Texas’s understanding of what citizen rights are and what constitutes evidence.
Half the country believes the election was legitimate because they share California’s understanding of citizen rights as framed by context and by goals, with any means being justified by the right goals, depending on the group involved.
For the first time in anyone’s living memory, we have to contend with the real possibility that the United States will split into separate nations. Looking at history, I’ve come upon the following possible precedents in history that may help us understand the potential outcomes.
RUNWAY ABLE
It is a profoundly somber experience to stand here on this abandoned weed-strewn airstrip. For this is Runway Able on Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas, where 75 years ago today, on August 6, 1945, a B-29 nicknamed Enola Gay piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets took off with Little Boy in its bomb bay bound for Hiroshima – and three days later on August 9, a B-29 nicknamed Bockscar piloted by Maj. Charles Sweeney flew off with Fat Boy in its bomb bay headed for Nagasaki.
This lost bit of tarmac is the most consequential airstrip on earth. Be prepared for a deep complex of swirling emotions if you ever stand here yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #14 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
STICKING WITH TRUMP TO EITHER THE BITTER OR GLORIOUS END
“To defeat Trump,” writes Victor Davis Hanson, “many of our institutions were deformed.”
Indeed, we have witnessed a flagrant burlesque of electoral procedure, including the specter of foreign interference by China, Iran and Russia via Dominion Voting Systems in gerrymandering electoral results, as Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has confirmed.
And there will be lasting consequences. The effect of installing a parodic figure like Joe Biden, straight out of the Commedia dell’Arte, as the next president of the United States will result in three extremely destabilizing factors. They are:
THE BIGGEST POLITICAL BLUNDER IN AMERICAN HISTORY
“It was worse than a crime, it was a blunder” Talleyrand on Napoleon’s ordering the murder of the Duke of Enghein, 1804
If the courts refuse to award the presidency to the rightful victor, the anti-Trump cabal, driven by a four-year single-minded obsession to defeat President Trump, will have committed the greatest political blunder in American history -- the unabashed and overt theft of the 2020 presidential election.
These conspirators smugly believed that they had successfully set up a scenario wherein Donald Trump would be defeated in such a massive landslide that a vast majority of the citizenry would never question the results. Instead, the worst-case scenario played out.
Thus, this cabal, which consists of the Democrat party establishment, Tech and Wall Street billionaires, the mainstream media and left-wing elitists, will find itself in a quagmire of being unable to govern.
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)
FIGHT FOR TRUMP
I must have watched this 98-second video at least two dozen times. Every time I’m emotionally overcome, bringing tears to my eyes. Wherever you are, fight for Trump however you can. Save America. Save the World. Fight for Trump – now.
As you cannot trust YouTube, here it is additionally on Vimeo and Bitchute. Send it to everyone you know.
Here it is additionally on Vimeo and Bitchute. Send it to everyone you know.
https://vimeo.com/492770825THE SACRED MONKEY FOREST OF BALI
Near the town of Ubud on Indonesia’s paradise island of Bali there is a Hindu sanctuary of spectacularly luxuriant rain forest providing a haven for over 1,000 Balinese long-tailed monkeys. Here’s one communing with a group of moss-covered monkey statues that dot the sanctuary.
This is a sacred place for the Balinese people, as it contains three temples over 600 years old, and is devoted to the Hindu principle of Tri Hata Karana – “three ways to reach spiritual and physical well-being” -- harmony between people, harmony between people and nature, harmony between people and the Supreme God.
There is perhaps no place on earth in which to better experience the blissful harmony of Tri Hata Karana than Bali. It is a marvelous privilege to be here and experience it for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #106 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE COVID VACCINE WIN-WIN
HALF-FULL REPORT 12/18/20
There is one fundamental fact of political reality: everything the Left is allowed to touch, it ruins and destroys.
At the end of 2020, it becomes difficult to avoid hyperventilating over the ubiquitous scope of unadulterated Satanic Evil the Left has been allowed to perpetrate upon America this year.
All the tens of thousands dying with life-saving drug denial, all the hundreds of thousands of businesses and millions of jobs destroyed with fascist lockdowns, all the never-ending tsunami of lies and deceit by Big Media and Big Tech, all the treason allowing China to subvert and control America from the Oval Office --- ALL OF IT just to prevent the reelection of President Donald Trump.
And now the Supreme Court of the United States – including the Justices we were so very sure would protect us, Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh – have acquiesced to this murderous, thieving, traitorous cabal to achieve its criminally insane and satanic goal.
So – as TTPer Paul Rosenberg asks, What now? Here is my answer.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – EVEREST NORTH FACE
My first Everest expedition was in October, 1987. I took this photo climbing above the Rongbuk Monastery. The enormous North Face of Mount Everest is entirely in Tibet. The summit at 8,848 meters/29,029 feet is in the jet stream with the plume flowing left along the Northeast Ridge, the climbing route of Mallory and Irvine in 1924.
On the back side of the ridge is the Kangshung Face, also in Tibet. On the right side is the West Ridge, the border between Tibet and Nepal. At the right time of year, the setting sun turns the whole North Face bright pink. At any time of year on a clear day like this, you are witnessing one of the most magnificent sights our planet has to offer. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #105 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WHAT NOW?
Some eighty million Trump voters (plus ten or twenty million likeminded others) have slowly woken up to a dystopic situation: People who want to raise families, do meaningful work and be left alone, have found themselves to be the playthings of lunatics.
The system they expected to support them had seen better days, to be sure, but in one short year they saw it become something they never would have imagined.
What, then, are such people – you, me, us – to do? The support system they were committed to has not only let them down but stabbed them in the back, and repeatedly.
What to do is the question of the moment. And so, having some small experience with such things, I’ll give you several points to consider. What you do will be your choice, of course, but please do something. Do not sit and hope that things will work themselves out. If that worked, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
SKYE’S LINKS 12/17/20
For investors; I hope that the wheels will stay on long enough for Biden/Harris to become the next Herbert Hoover:
BofA: Central Banks Are Buying $1.3 Billion In Assets Every Hour, Creating A "Frankenbull" Market
Biden has not been sworn in, yet the overproduced elite predators are already fighting over access to power in his administration. Expect a great deal more of such discord:
Did BLM Leak Compromising Biden Comments After Being Shunned From Race Debate?
I think that it is all too likely that China will invade Taiwan during the next 4 years. Jack Wheeler thinks it could be as soon as next year “if Cadaver cheats his way into the Oval Office”:
A 2021 Gray Swan: Could The US And China Go To War Over Taiwan?
Next up: "A Biden win is the most befitting ‘punishment’ of the anti-Trump cocktail." Read on!
COVID HYSTERIA IS NOT ABOUT HEALTH – IT’S ABOUT FASCIST POWER
We finally reached the latest peak COVID-19 madness last week, when a family was ejected from a United Airlines flight because their two-year-old girl could not tolerate a muzzle. So, on the apparent theory that you can’t be too safe or too careful, even from a two-year-old, the airline enforced its zero-tolerance policy and booted the girl and her family from the plane.
None of this is about health, of course. It’s about power- fascist power. All it takes is a manufactured hysteria, fueled by a hysterical media, and aimed at a trusting, even gullible public, and tradition dissolves in the face of fear.
As those who lived under communism and other forms of fascism know from bitter experience, the point of 2+2 = 5 is not to get you to believe it, it’s to make you afraid to say it’s not true. Rubbing our noses in our own impotence is the very hallmark of tyranny.
WHAT WOULD HE THINK OF US?
This Xikrin-Kayapo tribesman and his people live in the deepest heart of the Brazilian Amazon on tributaries of the Xingu River. You wonder what he would think of us as panic, fear, and madness engulfs our civilization. Having spent time in his village not long ago, I’m confident he would simply shake his head in bewilderment and say, “Please just let us live our lives in our forest, that’s all we want.”
True indigenous tribes who keep to their traditional way of life are so rare now in the Amazon or anywhere else where they once flourished. Each one is a precious living cultural heritage of humanity. It is such a privilege when they share their way of life with you. They deserve to have their wish granted, as my tribesman friend would express it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #4 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
DETAILS ON GIGANTIC DEM VOTE FRAUD IN JUST ONE COUNTY
County officials quickly backtracked, calling it "human error," but it was too late. The computer fraud cat was out of the bag. Now, thanks to a judge pushing past the Michigan secretary of state's effort to suppress information, we can finally see the preliminary forensics report on Antrim County's Dominion systems. This post summarizes the highlights.
Russell Ramsland, of Allied Security Operations Group, LLC (ASOG), wrote the report. You may be familiar with him from videos like above. If you haven't watched the video, I recommend it, because it's a great overview of how computer systems can be used for fraudulent elections.
THE TRAGIC FAILURE OF BILL BARR
I used to be a big fan of Attorney General William Barr. No more.
Now, as of Dec. 14, 2020, he’s gone, effective Dec. 23, almost a month before the actual end of a Trump administration, assuming that happens.
Technically, Barr resigned, accompanied by the usual complimentary letter to the president, but something obviously went wrong in his relationship with Donald Trump. What was it?
THE GRAND PRISMATIC SPRING OF YELLOWSTONE
There are places in our world so staggeringly beautiful you have to see them to believe they exist. Yet those people walking along the foot bridge can’t see what you’re looking at. That has to be in the air, hovering from high above in a helicopter. We live in a world of such beauty it really does take your breath away. And best of all, the beauty of the Grand Prismatic Spring is right here in America. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #2 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE ABJECT COWARDICE OF AMERICA’S JUDICIARY
”Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty.” General George S. PattonSeveral weeks ago, we worried that the judges and justices, state and federal, may not have the courage to take up the cases before them addressing the massive election fraud that took place November 3. Now we know they are all cowards, the Constitution be damned.
Even the three SCOTUS justices Trump fought for were too terrified to do the right thing.
The intimidation tactics of the left — Antifa, BLM, and the campus fascists — have worked. They have frightened each and every judge and justice, with the not surprising exceptions of Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, into disregarding Articles II and III of the Constitution. They are all scaredy-cats, like little children running from bullies.
SEVEN STATE LEGISLATURES CHOOSE COMPETING ELECTORS TO ILLEGAL DEM ONES
GOP legislators blocked by police, Lansing MI 12/14/20
Yesterday (12/14), Republicans in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and Nevada entered competing slates of electors for President Donald Trump on Monday as Electoral College members in six contested battleground states officially cast their ballots for Democrat Joe Biden.
And please add Michigan. Although initially blocked by state authorities, a delegation of 16 Michigan Republican Electors were eventually able to convene and cast their ballots for President Trump, bringing the tally to seven states entering competing slates.
By casting conditional votes for Trump, the GOP electors have set up an epic showdown in a joint session of Congress next month on January 6 when lawmakers convene to count the electoral votes and officially declare the winner.
ELEPHANTS IN THE SAHARA
10,000 years ago, the Sahara was green, with lakes, rivers, and such an abundance of animals it was a hunting paradise for people who lived here. You’ll find their petroglyphs carved on to rock outcroppings like this that my son Jackson and I found on a Trans-Sahara Expedition in 2003.
The Milankovitch astronomical cycles that drive Earth’s climate produced a West African monsoon that greened the Sahara back then. When the cycles shifted ending the monsoon, the Sahara turned dry desert as it remains today. Political cycles that permitted a peaceful crossing of the world’s greatest desert have also shifted, making this too dangerous now.
A Trans-Sahara Expedition is one of the world’s great adventures. Hopefully, one will be possible again in the not-too-distant future. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #7 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE MYSTERY OF THE REEF OF HEAVEN
In a remote corner of the Pacific Ocean, off the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia lies one of the world’s great archaeological mysteries: the only ancient stone city built on a coral reef. No one knows who built it or how.
Micronesians say their ancestors called it Soun Nan-leng, The Reef of Heaven. Their name for it today is Nan Madol, the City of Ghosts.
On artificial islets connected by a series of canals are massive walls up to 25 feet high enclosing temples, tombs, ritual centers, and platforms for thatch homes – all made of giant columnar basalt stone. Eons ago, lava flows on Pohnpei cooled into vertical pillars. Over a thousand years ago, ancient Micronesians began hauling these basalt logs miles away to build this stone city. With an average weight of 5 tons, 10,000 pounds – and some up to 25 tons, 50,000 pounds each – how they did this remains unexplained. It lies deserted today, abandoned and lost for centuries.
Paddling a kayak through the canal maze of Nan Madol to clamber over these monumental stone complexes in solitary silence – for visitors are rarely here – leaves you in a state of unforgettable awe. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #6 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)