Yearly Archives: 2022
MANIACS
HALF-FULL REPORT 10/07/22
I just returned back home, jet-lagged and wigged-out from three intense weeks exploring Central Asia with your fellow TTPers.
Frankly, after leading back-to-back explorations of Ireland, then to the Stans of West Turkestan, I’m not at all sure I can come close to Mike Ryan’s mind-blowing tour de force HFRs of 09/02, 09/09, 09/16, 09/23, and 09/30 for all last month. Mike – you raised the bar on me so high it’s out of sight!
So here goes. We’ll start with something that happened to me a few days ago at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Uzbekistan’s capital. Tashkent. I had come down to the lobby bar to get a bottle of mineral water and standing there was a young fellow I guessed to be in his 30s and looked Russian
I said hello to him with a smile, which he returned then held out his hand to shake which I did. He asked in English where I was from, and I replied, “America, I’m American,” then asked where he was from. He put his hand over his eyes and began to cry.
Wiping away the tears, he explained, “I am crying for my country, my Russia, and what is happening to it.” I rested my hand on his shoulder, looked into his eyes with heartfelt sympathy, and simply said, “I understand.” Instantly he embraced me with a bear hug.
Clearly it was something he needed. We nodded to each other in acknowledgement, and went our separate ways. The interaction lasted less than a minute but I’ll never forget it.
SKYE’S LINKS 10/06/22
Who Did It?
Nord Stream 1 and 2
A Tale of Two Pipelines
Was it Biden, Putin, or that Pesky Swedish kid? Somebody must be responsible, and threats of nuclear war are in the air. Let's have a look.
It's funny what can happen under tremendous pressure.
The economy can wreck, law enforcement can become detached from reality, politicians can invent new enemies as a distraction, and the physical chemistry of trapped natural gas under extreme pressure can lead to problems.
Elon Musk did it, he finally bought Twitter, and he plans to change the world. Those January 6 avengers and their henchmen have lost another round.
What if poor operating practices by the same gang that brought us Chernobyl wrecked the pipelines? How can anyone with military experience seriously think that the alleged special forces team decided to hang around for seventeen hours between pipe failures? C'mon, man.
And c'mon over to Skye's Links. You won't read this anywhere else…yet.
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 last week, and will be here again next May. Join us and make Khiva a part of your life.(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #226 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
BURMA’S SACRED GOLDEN ROCK
Some three hours’ drive east of Rangoon brings you to Mount Kyaiktiyo, at the top of which (3,600ft) is a gigantic granite boulder covered in gold leaf perched on the edge about to fall off. But it never does, held in place, legend says, by a strand of the Buddha’s hair put underneath it 2,500 years ago. Ever since, the Golden Rock has been a sacred pilgrimage site for the Burmese people and Buddhists around the world.
There are very few people here other than pilgrims, who devoutly pray, circumambulate the rock, and reverently place small strips of gold leaf upon it. It’s a marvelous experience to be among them. I plan to be here once again in an expedition soon – you might consider joining me. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #112 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE COMING GREEN ELECTRICITY NIGHTMARE
Hundreds of billions in new subsidies will bring expensive, unreliable, eco-destructive power
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) wanted regulatory reform, in part to reverse some of the Biden Administration reversals of Trump era reforms intended to expedite permits for fossil fuel projects.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) needed Manchin’s vote in the 50-50 Senate to enact his latest spending extravaganza, the Inflation Reduction Act, which was primarily a massive climate and “green” energy subsidy arrangement. It gives Schumer allies some $370 billion in wind, solar, battery and other funding, tax credits and subsidies. In exchange, Schumer would offer a path for Manchin’s reform bill.
THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY’S DO-OR-DIE MOMENT
Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 2012, is widely expected to sail into a third five-year term at this month’s 20th Party Congress starting October 16. This will make him the longest-serving party chief since founding leader Mao Tse-tung.
It will also represent a risky departure from a system of collective leadership and orderly succession that had given the Chinese regime an important advantage over its less stable authoritarian peers.
Paradoxically, the party’s renewed commitment to its “core leader” is coming at a time when the Chinese government faces a daunting array of foreign and domestic challenges, most of which have been prodigiously exacerbated by Xi’s own policy choices.
In effect, the CCP appears to be succumbing to the authoritarian curse of one-man rule, binding itself to the flawed judgment of a single personality and potentially dragging the entire country down with it.
THE THINNEST VENEER OF CIVILIZATION REMAINS
The great achievement of Western civilization—consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit—was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature.
But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright.
As a result, the once prosperous Greek city-states, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded—as civilization went headlong in reverse.
We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis.
RUSSIA’S MILITARY MUTINY AND THE FALL OF TSAR PUTIN
Indeed, it was on the basis of a tendentious tract about the historic 'unity' of Russians and Ukrainians that President Putin justified his invasion of an independent neighboring state.
But another word, also with great resonance in Russian history, now hangs over the Kremlin's flailing military campaign. And that word is: Mutiny. Myatezh – мятеж – in Russian.
Remarkably, it was raised on Moscow's main TV channel last week by the woman described as Putin's propagandist-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, during the nightly discussion program on the state of the 'special military operation.'
The striking-looking Simonyan is the head of RT, the Kremlin's English-language broadcasting network, but here she was speaking to a Russian audience.
THE MOST ANCIENT SYMBOL OF REVERENCE FOR EXISTENCE
Yesterday, I found this religious decoration on the outer wall of an old mosque in the three-thousand year-old Silk Road oasis city of Bukhara. I’ve seen it in many places throughout the world, such as ancient ruins of India and Rome. Yet this is far older – it was carved onto mammoth ivory by Ice Age hunters in Ukraine 12,000 years ago.
From time immemorial has it represented eternity, prosperity, the centeredness of all that is. Why? Look up into the sky on a clear dark night. All people have studied the heavens for eons. You could always know where you were by finding North, for the two front stars of what we call the Big Dipper point to it – always.
The Greeks called it Mega Arktikos, the Great Bear – why we call Far North the Arctic today. The ancients saw the Bear every year rotating around Celestial North – now occupied by Polaris, the North Star – through all four seasons, while all the stars in the sky circled around it every night. What do you see in this depiction of that seasonal rotation?
Yes, a Swastika -- Sanskrit for “the goodness of existence.” The most heinous perversion of symbolic art in world history was to take the symbol for the goodness of existence used by people for a dozen millennia – and still revered by Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems and many others to this day – and twist it into a symbol of horrific evil. It’s an informative lesson of history. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #225 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE REGISTAN
The public square of The Registan, the center of the ancient Silk Road city oasis of Samarkand, is arguably the most magnificent sight in all Central Asia. The Ulugh Beg Madrasa (college or school) on the left was built in 1420 by The Sultan Astronomer, the Sher-Dor Madrasa (1636) on the right you learned about in The Tigers of Samarkand, and most recently, last Friday’s Glimpse was about the Golden Madrasa (1660) in the center.
Here are all three in the splendor of entire Registan illuminated at night. It took my breath away yet again to be here once more – and will do the same for you once you stand here to make this sight a part of your life. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #224 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY WITH A SIMPLE TOOL FOR MANAGING EMOTIONS
Getting overwhelmed or misled by our emotions is one of the primary sources of financial trouble, whether spending, earning, saving, or investing. Emotions are not simple, but sometimes there are simple actions we can take to manage complex things. Today’s column will show you a simple way to avoid getting overwhelmed by your emotions.
- When people were treated for phobias, practicing this simple skill lowered their fear by over 18%, and their psychological reactivity by over 27%. They also were less constricted generally, shifting from feeling a sense of threat to a sense of opportunity.
- When feeling stress, using this technique led to people having 40% fewer alcoholic drinks when they went to a bar or party than those who did not use this technique.
- When feeling angry with someone, those using this technique were 40% less verbally and physically aggressive than those who did not.
- Rejection brings with it actual pain. When feeling rejected those using this technique showed less activity in the parts of the brain connected to physical and emotional pain.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/30/22
Florida Gets Blasted, and it's Go Time!
We are going to sort the leaders from the phonies down in Florida.
000000000Hurricane Ian walloped South Central Florida at just two mph below Cat 5 winds. The devastation is massive and widespread. Even before the storm, the Whitehouse tried to make access to FEMA political. That's it. America is done with these leftist rats.
Governor DeSantis is up to bat and demonstrating to the world why we are a Republic and where the real power lies when things get bad. All hands need to be on deck in support of DeSantis and the people of Florida. FJB for playing these games! Not now, pal, not now.
Russia is discovering the same lessons, both within Russia and in Ukraine, as over 200,000 have already fled Russia to avoid Putin's mobilization.
Russian soldiers are surrendering by the squad in Donbas as Ukraine has mastered the combination of maneuver warfare and the lethality of the HIMAS missile system. Russians don't seem to have must trust in their leaders.
How does a country escape $11 Billion worth of undersea pipeline construction loans? They blow the darn thing up and blame it on others. Sorry, Vlad, you tried this trick before. Nobody trusts you.
Mama Mia! We have a new Prime Minister in Italy, and the globalists hate her. The smart money is on Giorgia Meloni. She is smart as a whip, hard-working, qualified, and driven by her devotion to the Italian people. The only thing better might be Giorgia in the Whitehouse; the world desperately needs leaders with fire in the belly. Things are happening.
All this and more is in this week's HFR; come on in!
MAKE THIS MAP GREAT AGAIN
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: THE GOLDEN MADRASA
The Golden Madrasa or College of Tilla-Kori was built by Samarkand ruler Yalangtush Bakhadur in the 1650s to house and teach the best and brightest students of his realm. It stands at the center of the wondrous Registan public square complex of the Silk Road oasis city of Samarkand, known to the ancient Greeks as Marakanda.
It was centuries old when Alexander conquered it in 329 BC. For a thousand years as Central Asia’s great entrepot on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, it was a cosmopolitan center for Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity. Incorporated into the Islamic world in the 700s, sacked by Genghiz Khan in 1220, rebuilt by the time Marco Polo in 1272 described it as “a large and splendid city,” Tamerlane made it his capital in 1370.
I was first in Samarkand to stand astonished at the Registan in 1963. Seeing it now, far more impressively preserved than in the Soviet days, made me gasp – especially how Tilla-Kori is once again lavishly decorated with gold. You’ll gasp too should you ever be fortunate enough to come here. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #223 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 09/29/22
They Blew That Baby Up!
Somebody blew big holes in the Nordstream undersea pipelines. Who did it? The commie scum press blames it on the United States military. But not so fast, folks…
Spooky things took place below the Baltic Sea, and everybody was talking. Blowing up a pipeline is an act of war against Germany and Russia. Who stands to gain by creating anti-war refuseniks in the USA after getting two scoops of problems from Russian refuseniks?
Our soldiers were let down. The top brass was so hyped up about a false threat to readiness that they discharged the best and the brightest – dishonorably. The tide is turning in favor of the troops that maintained their critical thinking skills when everyone else was bending to the media campaign.
Are you an investor? There is more trouble afoot. Even if the greenie weenies suddenly came to their senses, Germany is shutting down its nuclear power plant tomorrow. A lot of maintenance was deferred ahead of the decommissioning. Oh, yeah, they want nuclear power now…
Skye’s links are pretty intense this week, including great insight from TTP’s dear friend, Victor David Hanson.
Welcome aboard.
THE EYELASH AT DAWN
The first of The Seven Pearls of Shing is called Mijgon or The Eyelash. It’s at 5,300 ft in the Fann Mountains of Western Tajikistan. At dawn, the air is still and crystal clear as is the water. The surface of the lake becomes a mesmerising mirror with the early light reflecting the vertical cliffs above while penetrating to the translucent lake bed below. It is an epic example of the boundless beauty of our world. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #222 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE EMPRESS WHO LOVED ACHILLES
On a mountain top on the island of Corfu in 1890, Empress Elizabeth of Austria built a magnificent marble palace called the Achilleion, dedicated to her hero, the legendary Achilles of Homer’s Iliad. Here she retreated from the world, amidst the palace’s gorgeous gardens overlooking the Mediterranean abundant with larger-than-life statues of her ideal man, “who despised all mortals and did not fear even the gods."
All of Europe knew her as Sisi. Adored by her husband Emperor Franz Joseph I, renowned as the most beautiful – and most beloved -- woman of her time, she was Austria’s Empress for 44 years. Her life ended tragically, murdered at random by an anarchist who wanted to “kill a royal.”
The Achilleion today is maintained immaculately in all its original glory as a museum you can visit. Don’t pass the chance to see it for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #76 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
IRANIAN WOMEN CAST OFF THEIR HIJABS
The death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, has ignited nationwide protests across Iran. Amini was beaten to death by the mullahs’ morality police after she was detained in Tehran on 13 September, after failing to comply with the regime’s strict hijab (headscarf) rules.
Women in Iran have been treated as second-class citizens by the mullahs for more than four decades. The misogynist lunacy of the clerical regime has even extended to a demand by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that cartoon character women must wear the hijab. Now, in Iran, even animated female characters in cartoons cannot reveal their hair!
Women’s dress codes are under constant scrutiny. They must wear the hijab and ‘morality police’ are on relentless patrol to enforce the law.
REPUBLICANS MAKE THEIR CASE TO MIDDLE AMERICA
MONONGAHELA, Pennsylvania — Whether by design or necessity, the decision by House Republican leaders to kick off their Commitment to America in this river town on the edge of Allegheny County was quite apt.
There is no easy way to get here from Pittsburgh, or from the airport, or from our nation’s capital. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana laughed, saying the very point of the Commitment to America is to reach the people and places Congress neglects to the point that it needs a GPS to find them and a dictionary to spell them.
The Republicans' goal, he said, is to show up and hear the concerns of people in places just like this one and to commit as a party to finding solutions.
ADAM AND EVE AND AMANITA
Glimpse (#98) was the back panel of the Painted Monastery of Voronet. Here you see a side panel fresco of Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Startlingly, however, the couple is not eating an apple at the serpent’s behest but a hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom – recognizable as the classic Disney cartoon mushroom with the red cap and white spots. Sounds hard to believe but there it is, 532 years old. It’s the center panel of a triptych, the left panel has Adam and Eve each grasping an Amanita stalk, the right panel knowing they are naked covering themselves with fig leaves.
In all three panels, the Garden of Eden is an Amanita garden. This is devotional art by deeply devout Christians over 500 years ago. What’s going on? Amanita muscaria is commonly found in the Carpathian forests to this day. Did the Voronet painters engage in Amanita ceremonies giving them visions they used to paint their churches? Did those visions make them decide it was Amanita and not an apple that Eve ate?
From time immemorial, people have used hallucinogenic plants to commune with the spirit world. Researchers have shown that Soma, the god instantiated on earth in the earliest Hindu texts, is Amanita muscaria. And they’ve made another connection. Google Amanita muscaria + Santa Claus to find out. Better be sitting down. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #99 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN CHINA??
Something weird is taking place in China but, as of this writing, nobody is quite sure what’s happening. Social media has lit up with information, some of which is verifiable and some of which is pure speculation.
The most widely spread rumor is that there is a coup being carried out against Xi Jinping, but that’s also the least likely thing to be taking place according to experienced China watchers.
We know that, on Saturday, there were fewer commercial flights over Beijing than usual. There’ve also been rumors that trains and buses into and out of Beijing have been canceled, and claims that military vehicles have been seen heading for Beijing, although there’s no reliable provenance for that particular short video.
According to Newsweek, the most prominent source for the story is an Indian politician:
CONTRACT TO DEFEAT BIG GOVERNMENT SOCIALISM
The goal of every American should be to defeat Big Government Socialism. Republicans specifically must develop a contract for 2024 built around restoring the America that works by defeating and replacing Big Government Socialism.
It is not enough to just defeat individual personalities. President Joe Biden might lose or retire because he is at times incoherent and cognitively challenged. Vice President Kamala Harris might lose because of her laugh and her failures at the border (and at every other assignment she has been given).
But failed Democrat personalities will simply lead to new Democrat personalities’ being lifted by party kingmakers. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, or some other favored Democrat will run, arguing that predecessors’ failures were due to personality and not to philosophy.
And modest reforms that simply slow the growth of Big Government Socialism are not enough. We must...
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY DISTINGUISHING WANTING FROM LIKING
What we want, and what we end up liking when we get it are two different things. They each involve different parts of our brain, and different states of mind.
Understanding this difference and bringing more consciousness to what you think you want can save you a huge amount of time, effort… and money.
The difference between what we want, and what we will like when we get it is what researchers Dan Gilbert and Tim Wilson call “Miswanting.” We have a strong bias toward what we want, and we often aren’t very good at predicting how we’ll feel once we get it.
The antidote, as with many things, is to bring awareness to the part of the experience we haven’t been looking at.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/23/22
Quality in Government
We have a Serious Problem
From one end of government to the other, in nearly every country and every system, we face a problem with Quality.
The electric grid is failing; it has already fallen in many places.
Our politics are based on false counts and false data.
As bad as it is in the West, it's much worse in Russia. Ukraine has learned some critical lessons and made much progress.
Can it be fixed? Can the ship be righted?
YES! Yes, by treating poor quality government as we treat propaganda. Expose it. Fix it.
THE PAPER BEAR
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: A REAL RUSSIAN CHURCH
This is the wooden Russian Orthodox Church in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan. I was here years ago and now again today. It was built in the 1890s when Karakol was a garrison town in the furthermost reaches of the Russian Imperial Empire with China just on the other side of Tien Shan Mountains. In the atheist/communist Soviet Union it was used variously as a school, gymnasium, and warehouse, anything but a church.
After Kyrgyzstan gained its independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was lovingly restored by the people of Karakol. All the various ethnicities comprising Karakol are welcome here – Christian Russians and Christian Kyrgyz, Uighur Moslem refugees escaping Chicom China, ethnic Han Chinese Moslems called Dungans escaping for the same reason, Buddhist and pagan Kazakhs. The interior is lavishly decorated with Christian art and paintings of Christian saints – no Islamic or Buddhist or any other religious art, just Christian. Yet all are welcome to pray in this haven of refuge and peace in their own way.
This is a Russian Church very distinct from those controlled by Moscow run by the Kremlin as a propaganda arm of the KGB/FSB. It is a real Russian Christian Church instead. Come here to feel to the spiritual serenity for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #221 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 09/22/22
Russia Calls Up the Reserves
Every Russian between 18 and 65 tries to get out before mobilization.
Finland closed its border, and the airlines were ordered to stop selling tickets to military-age males. Things are getting desperate for those on the list because they know that 9 out of 10 Russians killed in Ukraine are killed by artillery and rockets while they sleep. Not on the battle line. It is a meat grinder for Ivan.
Inflation is building a head of steam, and Xiden must redirect the public before the election. He has ways…
Join the story within Skye’s links before the Fourth Turning takes another chunk out of the country we love.
IRREVERSIBLE MOMENTUM FOR UKRAINE
Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast has changed how the world thinks about the war, according to U.S. Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ben Hodges.
Hodges, who served as commander of U.S. Army Europe from 2014-2017 and has helped train Ukrainian soldiers, said the operation ended “the mythology of Russia’s inevitable victory.”
“Now people around the world, in Europe and U.S., start thinking — wow, Ukraine can win,” he told the Kyiv Independent.
To achieve that victory, however, Ukrainians will need to keep the pressure up and deprive Russia of the chance to regroup. That won’t be easy.
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 next exploration of Inner Mongolia sometime soon. ((Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #116 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WHISTLEBLOWERS REVEAL – JOE SOLD U.S. NATURAL GAS TO CHICOMS
Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee have obtained bombshell documents proving that Joe Biden was deeply involved in the family business of selling American natural gas to the Chinese–while he was planning to run for President. According to multiple whistleblowers, the Biden family made promises to those who worked with them in 2017 and onward that they would “reap the rewards in a future Biden administration.” These explosive revelations “pose national security concerns,” Oversight Republicans proclaimed Tuesday night.
The Biden clan enriched itself by selling the natural resources to a Chinese firm closely affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—just a few years before the cost of gas in the United States hit record highs, the Oversight Republicans stated.
In a letter to United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking Republican on the Oversight Committee, alleged that according to whistleblowers, Joe Biden was heavily involved in this treachery.
EQUAL JUSTICE… FOR THE FEW
What once distinguished the United States from illiberal regimes following the Orwellian mantra “some are more equal than others” was the hallowed American idea of “equal justice under the law.”
The phrase is engraved above the entrance to the United States Supreme Court—an ideal that took centuries to achieve. Yet it is an ancient concept—what the Greeks called isonomia that distinguished classical democratic Athens from its anti-democratic rivals. Isonomia later became enshrined as the central criterion of all Western consensual governments.
Does it still exist in Joe Biden’s America?
WOULD YOU BELIEVE THIS IS A CITY IN CENTRAL ASIA?
This is Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan with over one million people. Originally named Alma Ata or Father of Apples, as here in the western foothills of the Tien Shan mountains is where apples were first domesticated and cultivated.
Almaty is a thriving prosperous city as the financial/economic- but not political- capital of independent Kazakhstan. And but a stone’s throw away from the magnificent snow-clad Tien Shan, a trekker’s paradise in the spring, summer, and fall, a skier’s in the winter. It’s a modern, spotlessly clean city with gorgeous parks and flower gardens- and there’s a terrific Irish Pub flowing with Guinness. What more could you want? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #220 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE CITY OF ALMATY
This is Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan with over one million people. Originally named Alma Ata or Father of Apples, as here in the western foothills of the Tien Shan mountains is where apples were first domesticated and cultivated.
Almaty is a thriving prosperous city as the financial/economic- but not political- capital of independent Kazakhstan. And but a stone’s throw away from the magnificent snow-clad Tien Shan, a trekker’s paradise in the spring, summer, and fall, a skier’s in the winter. It’s a modern, spotlessly clean city with gorgeous parks and flower gardens- and there’s a terrific Irish Pub flowing with Guinness. What more could you want? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #220 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE QUEEN AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION
The historical illiteracy of the Queen's critics is impressive, even for a bunch of hate-filled activists. But these professors and historians and activists don’t simply hate a woman who’s passed on: They deeply and viciously hate Queen Elizabeth II — a person they’ve never met and who, to much of the world, symbolized grace, dignity, and poise in the face of dramatic world events.
Where does this level of vitriol come from? It stems from the reality that the queen was one of our final connections to a Western Civilization that believed in itself — a civilization her critics wish to destroy.
THE NY TIMES SUDDENLY FINDS TRUMP CHARMING
Ron DeSantis is scaring the hell out of the Left. This makes me very very happy. As a huge fan of DeSantis I get shivers of delight every time the Leftists attack him.
How scared are they? Scared enough that they are developing a new appreciation for famed Devil, Russian mole, and confederate insurrectionist Donald Trump.
Suddenly Trump is a charming eccentric with soft edges, unlike the meaner and more competent Florida governor. It’s almost as if all those mean things said about Trump weren’t entirely warranted.
THE BORU HARP
The Boru Harp, attributed to the one and only High King of the entire island of Ireland, Brian Boru (941-1014), is the only musical instrument that is the national symbol of a country - the Republic of Ireland. It is also on the label of Guinness beer. Beautifully and exquisitely made, the Boru Harp is on display in the famous Long Room of the Trinity College Library in Dublin. You’ll experience a sense of awe when you see it for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #219 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY: MONEY, TRADE, AND INNOVATION
When we focus too much on money as stacks of paper bills, or numbers on a ledger - or, God help us, trillions (!) of dollars in government spending bills - we can miss the powerful forces that we interact with every day that make those bills and those numbers meaningful.
Wealth is created through innovative ideas that save time and energy, and/or that increase the quality of life for enough people. The less time and energy it takes to do something, the more time and energy is freed up to do something else.
It's the freedom and respect given to regular people with new ideas – with which they could give a try toward making a lot of money - that has led to the greatest expansion of prosperity in history, and the greatest improvement in nearly every facet of life, for nearly all of humanity.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: RIDING A YAK AT RANGDUM
Rangdum Gompa, Zanskar, August 1993. Ever ridden a yak? Brandon did when was 10 at the Rangdum Tibetan Monastery or Gompa atop a small hill at 13,225 feet high in an extremely remote region of the Himalayas in India called Zanskar. It was part of our Indian Tibet expedition which will be repeating soon – and this time Brandon will be leading the expedition. I’ll just be along for the ride. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #161 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
ROOT CAUSES
