Yearly Archives: 2022
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/16/22
Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?
This week we ask the critical question; is the glass half full or half empty? The administration is desperate to control the narrative and remain in power, but they cannot. Success is slipping through their fingers from every direction while a technical revolution is poised to make Big Tech obsolete.
Cornered animals are dangerous, and their narratives are failing.
Jack Wheeler Update: Earlier this month, Jack led a group of TTPers on an exploration of Ireland. Now for the rest of the month, he's doing the same with TTPers exploring Central Asia. He tells me an extraordinary opportunity is now possible thanks to his Marine combat veteran son Brandon: a safe and illuminating exploration of Ukraine.
Brandon has been to Ukraine over a half dozen times in the last few months, inspired by the heroism of the Ukrainian people. Thus, Jack is calling this experience The Inspiration of Ukraine – for eight days in early November to personally witness how Ukrainians are surviving and rebuilding their lives and the country as they win their war with Russia. And very safely, nowhere near any front lines. For details, contact him at [email protected] or [email protected].
Come on in,.and don't forget to add your brilliant insight on the forum. Is the glass half full or half empty?
THE RIGALEIRA INITIATION WELL
Do an internet search for “25 Most Mysterious Places on Earth” or similar listing, and almost always the Regaleira Initiation Well in Sintra, Portugal will be there. Since the photo is almost always looking from the top down, I thought you might like to see one from the bottom up, which is just as dramatic.
The Regaleira is a spectacular Gothic mansion with acres of gorgeous gardens built by a 19th century Portuguese-Brazilian millionaire, Carvalho Monteiro (1848-1920). I love it that his exotic eccentric extravaganza, his Regaleira Palace, was built by private capitalist with his own money – not some feudal king with money extracted from the peasantry.
I took this picture in 2021 with fellow TTPers on our Portugal Exploration. Portugal really is a land of wonders, which I hope you’ll someday experience yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #167 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 09/15/22
Welcome to Skye's Links
World food production is slowing down rapidly, and governments know what happens when people become hungry. Xiden abandoned over $80 billion worth of weapons and ammunition in the eye of the storm of food insufficiency. China reports record harvests, but who knows? Commies always lie. India stopped exporting rice, and California lacks the water to grow it. The fields around Stuttgart, Arkansas, are owned by farmers that cannot afford the diesel to harvest the crop while Louisianna has transport snags.
TTPers know the value of some liquidity on hand. Well, friends, make sure you have a food reserve. Yes, things are tipping this poorly.
What is Xiden doing? He is driving credit card companies to create a defacto gun ownership registry. Never forget that a government is a group of insiders that fleece outsiders, the Constitution be darned.
Join us at Skyes’s links and contribute your insights on the forum. Where do you see the economy headed, both short and long-term?
NASR OL-MOLK
What many consider the world’s most beautiful mosque is in Persia’s most captivating city, Shiraz. Over four millennia older than Islam, over two millennia older than Persia, Shiraz was "Shirrazish," a city of ancient Elam at the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. Even then, Shiraz was famous for wine. A thousand years ago, it was considered the best in the world. Marco Polo praised it. No more. Prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there were over 300 Persian wineries. Now there are none.
Shiraz is still a city of gardens and flowers. At the garden tomb of Persia’s most revered poet Hafez (1315-1390), young couples gather for discrete romance as they have for centuries. The beauty of Nasr ol-Molk – with the sun shining through its stained glass windows covering the floor carpets in color, and the interior a dazzling display of pink tile ornamentation – can be overwhelming. The same for the friendliness of the people – always welcoming with a smile for you.
Especially if you are American. All the people we met love America and despise their rulers. The Land of Persia is still here in today’s Iran, and someday it will be free, America’s ally again. The wine will flow here once more. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #83 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
REPUBLICANS AREN’T GOING TO SAVE AMERICA, IT’S UP TO US
Voters, whatever their political views, should rise up against politicians who want to dilute the Bill of Rights to perpetuate their tenure in office. Ted Olson, former Solicitor General
When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil. Thomas Jefferson
War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself. Benjamin Franklin
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” – James Madison, Federalist 47, 1788
Mark Twain tells us, “The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.” Had an author written what has happened to America just over the last six years, no one would believe it. The yarn would be just too far out to have any credence whatsoever. But we’re living it!
OPERATION ‘FASCIST MAGA’ GAINS MOMENTUM
After nearly two years of lies related to the events of January 6, 2021, the regime finally has admitted the truth: The widening legal dragnet to scoop up Donald Trump, his associates, and his voters has nothing to do with the four-hour disturbance on Capitol Hill that afternoon. It is, rather, a thus-far successful crusade to criminalize wrong thinking about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
A barrage of subpoenas issued recently by the Department of Justice—U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves’ office specifically—against Trump aides is not seeking information about the Capitol protest but personal communications discussing what happened with the election and plans to fight the results.
THE LESSON OF RABAUL
The small black mountain in front of you is a volcano called Tavurvur on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea. In 1994, Tavurvur erupted, covering New Britain’s beautiful capital Rabaul in ash. The entire area is volcanic, including the hot springs where I’m standing to take this picture. Tavurvur is very much alive and smoking today – starkly beautiful and dangerous.
History can be like this – beautiful and peaceful, then without warning it explodes in violent destruction. The lesson then is how to overcome, rebuild, and avert its repetition.
It’s an obvious lesson to learn right now, with the destruction of our economy by the Chinese Communists unleashing their virus, and the current attempted theft of the presidency and our entire electoral system by the Democrats. We must overcome these twin evils, and we must make extremely sure that we never allow such travesties to threaten our country ever again.
You can climb to the rocky rim of Tavurvur to stare down into its smoking caldera. There’s fabulous scuba-diving along the coral reefs offshore of Rabaul, and upon sunken Japanese battleships from World War II. It’s a worthwhile experience to come here as you learn the Lesson of Rabaul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #97 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WOW! TWITTER GREEN LIGHTS ANTI-TRANS MOVEMENT
In the history of American social movements, September 11 may take on new significance. September 11, 2022, is the day the powers that be allowed LGBWithoutTheT to trend on Twitter.
In broad daylight, lesbians and gays disassociated themselves from the transgender movement, and Twitter gave them a platform. This is a major turnaround. Just a month earlier Twitter had banned “Gays Against Groomers” for “hateful conduct.”
If Twitter chose to let #LGBWithoutTheT trend for me, it trended for everyone. I suspect someone above the Twitter brass encouraged them to do just that. With the elections just two months away, the increasingly noisy and oppressive trans movement was becoming too much of a political liability.
The resistance among LGBs to the Ts has been brewing for some time. Sunday, it percolated to the surface.
THE WILD COLONIAL BOY
As you can hear, I sure can’t sing so well, but last week being in Pat Cohan’s Pub in the County Mayo village of Cong where the beloved John Wayne-Maureen O’Hara move The Quiet Man was filmed… well, after a pint or two of Guinness, I was persuaded by your fellow TTPers with me to give the movie’s theme song a try.
The Wild Colonial Boy is a ballad of an Irish lad from Castlemaine in County Kerry who sailed off to colonial Australia in the 1820s to become a “bushranger” or outlaw fighting the oppressive local authorities. It’s been sung by famous artists from Burl Ives to Mick Jagger because it’s the same romantic-heroic saga as Robin Hood and Jesse James.
It’s particularly poignant now, for now we Americans are being called upon to fight against tyranny and oppression.
For all our lives, the tyranny we had to fight hot or cold was foreign, from Nazi Germany to Communist Russia. Today is different – the enemy is domestic, inside our gates.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY WITH AN ACCURATE ASSESSMENT OF YOURSELF
If you know that who you are, what you do, and how you think about things are all changeable and accessible to your own intervention and effort—What Carol Dweck, author of Mindset calls a “growth” mindset—your assessment of yourself will also tend to be very accurate.
In order to make accurate assessments, we have to have accurate data. If we are faced with a poor assessment, and our belief is that we are powerless to change, then the only way to salvage any emotional hope is to skew the data, to trick ourselves into discounting it.
In this case, the necessary self-reflection will feel threatening to us, containing blows to our self-concept, rather than feeling like useful information. This can lead to incredible suffering and bad results, and can lead us to avoid challenges or difficult feedback—the very things we need in order to grow.
Here’s the challenge:
A STUNNING EXAMPLE OF THE VALUE OF TTP
The photo you see is captioned “Armoured fighting vehicles abandoned by Russian soldiers who changed into civilian clothing” from the London Telegraph story this morning (9/12): Russian Soldiers 'Literally Running' For Their Lives As Chain Of Command Collapses.
Reuters this morning: Ukraine Troops Sweep Ahead After Russian Collapse In Northeast. In the last six days, Russia has abandoned at least 500 tanks and APCs, countless amounts of ammo and war materiel. The entire Kharkiv Oblast has been retaken to the Russian border. By late this afternoon, half of northern Luhansk has as well.
This news may come as a surprise to a lot of TTPers and conservatives in general, as it’s being ignored or briefly mentioned in passing by Fox, Breitbart, Gateway, Zero Hedge or other news sources conservatives use. The one glaring exception is right here at TTP – where you are most likely getting this news first.
So what happens now?
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: THE HOLE OF SORROWS
Let’s flashback 2.2 million Fridays to 4,000 BC, six thousand years ago, when the original inhabitants of post-Ice Age Ireland erected this megalithic “dolmen” or portal tomb. It consists of three standing portal stones suspending a massive horizontal capstone, the limestone entrance to a tomb originally covered with an earthen mound.
Eventually the mound weathered away revealing the stone “skeleton” which was a sacred shrine for the Megalithic Irish all the way to the medieval Celts even though in a remote barren rocky region of far western Ireland found now in County Clare.
When it was finally excavated in 1986, the remains of 33 humans were found in the burial chamber below who lived between 3,800 and 3,200 BC. Thus it became known as “The Hole of Sorrows.”
When you come to gaze upon The Hole of Sorrows, you realize that this massive stone structure, one thousand four hundred years older than Egypt’s Great Pyramid, has stood here for all of recorded human history and beyond. All the kings and empires of all history have come and gone, while it still stands. It’s megalithic creators of millennia ago would be proud. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #219 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE FLAME THROWER
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/09/22
Welcome to the 9/11 HFR.
A lot has changed since 9/11, especially the world’s faith in institutions.
As the world mourns the passing of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, it brings to light her efforts to maintain the institution of the Monarchy against the modern decentralizing forces. She worked tirelessly for seven decades, but as time passed, the very efforts to expand the Commonwealth set the stage for the unraveling of British culture.
But was this the Queen’s fault, or is the same effect happening all over, to institutions big and small?
They lied to us during Covid about renewable energy and the environment. They lied about education.
The lies have a pattern in the shift from the centralized to the dispersed.
Join the HFR; your insight and comments are crucial and welcome on the Forum.
For readers in California, join us when the electricity is restored.
A MONUMENT TO CHRISTIANITY IN THE CONGO
There are two Congos in Africa. The better known is the former Belgian Congo, once known as Zaire, now DR Congo (for Democratic Republic), also called Kinshasa Congo after its capital.
The lesser known is the former French Congo, now Republic of Congo, or Brazzaville Congo after its capital. Brazzaville is on the north side of a widening of the Congo River known as the Stanley Pool, while right across from it on the south side is Kinshasa.
It is in Brazzaville that you will find this magnificent monument to Christianity, the Cathedral of Sainte-Anne, with its roof covered in gleaming green-turquoise tiles, huge copper doors, and soaring arched interior bathed in sunlight. The people of Brazzaville are joyously Christian, attending 5pm Mass dressed in their most colorful finery. You’ll see Christianity truly come to life here. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #174 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 09/08/22
Xiden goes full Leni Riefenstahl for the Fourth Reich...
'Crat propaganda; Xiden looks so extreme that even the MSM can't stomach it...
As Mike Ryan pointed out in the latest Half-Full Report, propaganda stops working when people realize that it is propaganda. A critical mass now understands that Biden is using propaganda, not leadership competency. #PedoHitler jumped the shark...
THE MOST BEAUTIFULLY PEACEFUL PLACE IN IRELAND
St. Finnbarr’s Oratory, Gougane Barra, County Cork. St. Finnbarr (550-623) is the patron saint of the city of Cork, now Ireland’s second largest city, on the south coast of the Emerald Isle. He established this tiny church in the late 500s, and has been built and rebuilt on a small island on Lake Gougane, with the one you see finished some 150 years ago.
Gougane Barra is a remote valley distant from Cork, almost uninhabited, of legendary beauty. The oratory or chapel has been a holy place of pilgrimage for Christians for fifteen centuries, revered for its complete serenity and peacefulness. Rarely visited due to its remoteness, you may have this holy place all to yourself. Here is where you come to rest and reinvigorate your soul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #218 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE “GREEN REVOLUTION” IS IMPOSSIBLE
Liberals tell us that we are in the midst of a transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. The reality is that no such transition is taking place, nor will it. This video by Professor Simon Michaux, who doesn’t take issue with global warming hype, explains one of several reasons why this is true: the mineral requirements of a wind- and solar-based energy system can’t possibly be met.
This description accompanies the YouTube video:
The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels, is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls.
THE TWO MOST DESTRUCTIVE FRAUDS IN HISTORY
Through deliberate and easily reversed policies, the cost-of-living in America is being elevated to empower the wealthy and impoverish everyone else in the name of equity and fighting climate change.
It’s getting harder and harder not to abandon faith in the institutions we once regarded as respectable and relied on to keep the country moving. It is harder still to avoid rejecting unequivocally what has become their core governing premises, which seem to be entirely different from what we once believed them to be.
So here goes: the entire “climate crisis” is an opportunistic hoax; the entire “equity” (along with “diversity” and “inclusion”) movement is a corrupt fraud. This hoax and this fraud have permeated and overwhelmed every formerly respectable sector of American life, with disastrous consequences we’ve only just begun to feel.
HOLY TOLEDO!
Toledo, Spain. As you drive up the hill upon which this ancient city sits, at the city’s entrance you are greeted by this statue. It is of King Alfonso VI of León and Castile (1040-1109) holding his sword as the Christian cross symbolizing his liberating Toledo from Moslem rule.
The sword has been the symbol of Toledo for over two millennia. In 193 BC, Romans founded the city as Toletum, where their blacksmiths developed a process of making swords of layered steel with different carbon contents, known to history as “Toledo steel,” the finest in the world for millennia until the hi-tech methods of today.
With Fall of Rome, Christian Visigoths ruled Spain from their capital here at Toledo – known as “Holy Toledo,” the center of a flourishing Christian civilization for 300 years until it was overrun by Moslems spreading Islam from Africa in the early 700s.
It was Alfonso VI who liberated Toledo from the Moslems in 1085. It was his great-grandson, Alfonso VIII (1155-1214) who led 30,000 knights in a surprise attack on 200,000 Moslems at the Plains of Tolosa in 1212 to destroy Moslem rule in Spain.
Today, Toledo is a small town of some 50,000, charming, historic, and peaceful. It’s one of the special places we hope to visit soon in one of our expeditions. Hope you’ll be with us. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #170 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
JUST LIKE 2020, TRUMP SPEAKS TO TENS OF THOUSANDS AND BIDEN SPEAKS TO TENS
In 2016, Trump spoke to tens of thousands, and Hillary spoke to hundreds...and Trump won. In 2020, despite COVID, Trump spoke to tens of thousands, and Biden spoke to...well, not even tens. Maybe to fives, all of whom sat in little marked circles far away from each other. And yet it's Biden who's in the White House.
Now it's 2022, and once again, Trump is speaking to tens of thousands, and Biden is speaking to tens. What can and should we take away from that?
The head-to-head comparison comes from Benny Johnson, who put together a video showing Trump's and Biden's appearances in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It's important to note that Wilkes-Barre is part of Luzerne County, a Republican-majority county. However, that majority is not equal to, say, San Francisco County, where Biden claimed 85.26% of the votes to Trump's 12.72% — something that's a totally believable result if one knows that San Francisco is self-destructing because of its unopposed leftism.
JOE BIDEN WAS BEHIND THE FBI’S MAR-A-LAGO RAID ALL ALONG
Joe Biden has made his obsession with President Trump known, most recently through his hellishly lit Mussolini-meltdown speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia last week, manically painting Trump and all his voters as "threats to the republic."
He may be doddering and insentient, but he still burns bright against his potential opponent in the 2024 presidential race, which even Democrats don't want him to get involved with. On Trump, Biden's as obsessed with Trump as Stalin was with Trotsky.
So it comes to light that not only has Biden tried to smear Trump as a danger to democracy and "threat to the republic," in a sorry public relations campaign that isn't working, he's also trying to eliminate President Trump from the entire 2024 presidential race by probably the gamiest maneuvers ever played by a politician in U.S. history.
It turns out that Biden was behind the raid on Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago on August 4.
THE MOTHER LEATHERBACK
The leatherneck sea turtle is the world’s largest turtle, weighing up to 1500 pounds. This female was about half that. They have an enormous range, all the way from the North Sea to South Africa in the Atlantic, spending their lives at sea eating jellyfish – except when a female comes ashore to her hatching beach and bury her clutch of eggs in the sand above high tide.
Dropping several dozen glistening white golfball-size eggs into a depression scooped out with her flippers, she covers them up with sand, and heads back to sea, never to see them again. More than two months later, the born hatchlings dig out of the sand and wiggle their way into the sea, where the lucky ones survive.
I was able to watch this mommy’s entire egg-birthing process at dawn on a remote beach in the West African country of Gabon. It was such a privilege to witness an act of elemental nature by such an extraordinary creature. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #127 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY THROUGH SELF-REFLECTION
In Greek and Roman Mythology, Narcissus stared at his own reflection, so absorbed in his own image he was oblivious to anybody else. The idealized image that he saw withdrew him from the world. He was in an emotional vacuum, devoid of anything but what he wanted to see.
But aside from Narcissus, and those suffering from the psychological condition of narcissism, our own self-reflection can provide us the kind of useful assessment that allows us to live up to our own standards.
Researchers Robert Wicklund and Shelley Duval discovered back in the 1970s that when people were in front of a mirror and told they were being filmed, those people changed their behavior in very positive ways. They worked harder, gave more accurate answers to questions, were more consistent in their actions, and acted more consistently with their values.
About a decade later, Charles Carver and Michael Scheier looked at this in more depth, and within their larger explorations of self-awareness and self-regulation, found something fascinating.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE BLACK MANED LION OF ANGOLA
August, 1983. It was pitch-black dark as I and a couple dozen heavily-armed UNITA guerrillas were rumbling over the roadless Angolan bush in a huge captured Russian truck. Suddenly there was an entire pride of lions running in front of the truck’s headlights. As they scattered, without warning a massive black-maned male jumped in front of us. The driver didn’t have time to swerve – we crashed into him full on, killing him instantly.
The UNITA fellows had me pose with him the next morning – obviously with no rifle as I was not hunting. It was to memorialize a tragic ending to a magnificent animal. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #125 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WALLS CLOSING IN
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/02/22
Welcome to the Labor Day HFR!
Joe Biden gave a terrible speech last night as he went full Hugo Chavez on the nation.
Let’s look at what he did and why through the eye of the propagandist. Yup, that’s right. Uncle Joe went by the book in his appeal to The Chinese Communist party!
But just when the forces of evil seem overwhelming, a little dog named Doge appears to save the world.
Don’t be a Vatnik because you are liable to get Doged.
Artemis will make another launch attempt tomorrow and why the scrubbed launch on Monday was a win for MAGA. Government elites hate the idea of a quality culture but NASA is showing the way.
SKYE’S LINKS 09/02/22
The propaganda war to promote vaccinations for the... Fauci/CCP virus grinds on and on and on and...
Xiden has no legal basis for his proposed student debt transfer, but Congress does have a legal remedy against his usurpation...
a Federal Judge has stated her likely intent to appoint a Special Master to review what from the FBI's Mar-A-Large raid the DOJ can keep...
San Francisco business owners are on the verge of a massive civil resistance revolt against the city government that won't protect their property...
Virginia is seceding from California green mania auto regulations...
All these in This Week's Edition of Skye's Links!!!
HORSESHOE BEND
Looking down 1,000 feet above world-famous Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River at sunset is one of most iconic views our planet offers us. It is to be found near Page, Arizona near the border with Utah. Yet in truth, the number of different mind-blowing iconic views is uncountable in this part of the American West.
Close by are the Vermillion Cliffs, and the simply psychedelic Antelope Canyon. Just a bit further is the Grand Escalante Staircase, a little bit further Zion and Bryce Canyons and Monument Valley. And of course, right next door is something called The Grand Canyon.
There are people who have explored this region for years and will tell you there’s so much they’ve yet to see. You can explore the world over – what I’ve done my whole life – and yet there is so much of Creation to be soul-thrilled by just in this one region of northern Arizona and southern Utah – and I haven’t mentioned Moab which is a total mind-blow all by itself.
Take a break from all the worries of the world to come to here. Pick a place that will thrill your soul for a few days. That’s what’s needed now. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #134 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
JOE’S HITS KEEP ROLLING IN: LOAN DEBT AMNESTY CHAOS, HIS LATEST SINGLE
As President Obama used to say of his clownish vice president: "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f--- things up."
That brings us to Joe Biden's student loan debt forgiveness rollout, announced this week.
Let's set aside the issue of the legality of the matter. The actual execution of the matter is Joe in Action.
According to Axios:
The implementation of President Biden's widespread, income-targeted student loan forgiveness is shaping up to be a bureaucratic challenge for the Department of Education.
Why it matters:
UNSCIENTIFIC NONSENSE OF MULTIPLE GENDERS
A Nobel Prize-winning German developmental biologist called the transgender movement’s claims “unscientific” and “nonsense,” and their plans to let teenagers determine their own gender “madness.”
In an interview published last week by the German feminist magazine EMMA, Dr. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard cited hard scientific facts to counter the trendy notion that there are multiple genders.
“All mammals have two sexes, and man is a mammal,” she explained. “There’s the one sex that produces the eggs, has two X chromosomes. That’s called female. And there’s the other one that makes the sperm, has an X and a Y chromosome. That’s called male.”
THE JADE ROAD
The oldest part of the Silk Road was originally called the Jade Road along the string of oases watered by runoff from the Kunlun mountains of northern Tibet on the southern edge of the Takla Makan desert in Chinese Turkestan. This is where the finest jade was to be found, washed down from Tibet. This is the route that Marco Polo took with his father and uncle in 1272 to reach the court of the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan.
This is what the Jade Road looks like today, near the fabled oasis of Khotan. Save for the road being asphalted and the farmer’s cart being towed by a small tractor instead of a donkey, Polo would recognize it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #179 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WOKEISM ISN’T A LATINO VALUE
Language is important and words do matter. Through language we learn, we communicate our intentions, we develop plans, and we express our feelings. Through language we convey our affections and transmit our displeasures.
It is language that binds a family, a community, a region, or a culture together. Today, however, this fundamental cultural glue is purposefully being watered down and dissolved in order to break the bonds of our nation.
Wokeism in its purest forms breaks down clarity, and replaces truth with new grievance norms that masquerade as justice. Wokeists try to negate centuries of tradition, culture and science (!) by socially shaming opposing views and using coercive tactics on young children to adopt concepts that go against every grain of common sense and human understanding of the world around us.
TAIWAN VOWS TO COUNTER AFTER CHINA’S DRONE INCIDENT
Taiwan is warning that its military won't hesitate to exercise right of self-defense and to counter-attack in the event of Chinese forces entering its territory, following an unprecedented event on Tuesday wherein live ammunition was fired as 'warning shots' against a cluster of drones that appeared near the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands. Flares had initially been deployed to warn off the drones, but per Taiwan's defense ministry live ammo was then used to force the drones' departure.
Taipei followed Wednesday with this warning:
"We will continue defending our national security, firmly holding on to the median line, and doing whatever it takes to protect our homes, our families, and our sovereignty," according to the words of defense ministry spokesperson Li-Fang Sun.
Within hours after issuing the warning, another drone incident has been reported, with Taiwan's military saying it detected "three civilian drones" in the area of its offshore island possessions on Wednesday. It further confirmed that warning shots were again fired to fend off the unidentified drones, believed to have been dispatched from China's mainland.
THE STRANGEST THING ABOUT ‘SEMI-FASCIST TRUMP’
For the Left, Donald Trump is synonymous with “fascism” (or “semi-fascism,” as Joe Biden put it the other day). And for Liz Cheney and most of the NeverTrumpers, he remains an existential threat to democracy.
But to quantify those charges, what exactly has Trump done extralegally—as opposed to his bombast and braggadocio about what he might have wished to have done?
And what are the standards by which to judge this supposed menace? Did Trump illegally and with a mere signature nullify over $300 billion of contracted student loans—to firm up his college-student and college-graduate base nine weeks before the midterm elections?
Did Donald Trump weaponize the feared IRS, the logical place to find fascistic tendencies of any president bent on using government to punish his enemies? Did he push through a plan to add 87,000 new IRS investigative agents at a time of national discord?
THE INSPIRATION OF AMERICA
Next to the entrance of The Red House, the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago in the capital of Port of Spain, there is this marble inscription. It is clear that it is inspired by our 1776 Declaration of Independence and America’s founding principles. Trinidad’s population is 99% either Indian (from India), African, or a mix of the two. 64% are Christian, 21% Hindu, 6% Moslem, others undeclared – and all have these principles as a common bond between them.
Here in the Caribbean’s Trinidad is such a clear example of how America’s founding moral principles are such an inspiration to all humanity, of all cultures, creeds, and ethnicities. They are universal, America’s heritage as a gift to the world. This is the heritage of all Americans – something we need to hold on to and hold dear as we persevere during this current period of our country’s cultural, moral, and political lunacy. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #152, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FAILED STATE: A GUIDE TO RUSSIA’S RUPTURE
Attempts to transform the Russian Federation into a nation state, a civic state or a stable imperial state have failed.
The current structure is based on brittle historical foundations, possesses no unified national identity, whether civic or ethnic, and exhibits persistent struggles between nationalists, imperialists, centralists, liberals and federalists.
Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the imposition of stifling international economic sanctions will intensify and accelerate the process of state rupture.
Paradoxically, while Vladimir Putin assumed power to prevent Russia’s disintegration, he may be remembered as precipitating the country’s demise. New territorial entities will surface as Moscow’s credibility crisis deepens amidst spreading ungovernability, elite power struggles, political polarization, nationalist radicalism, and regional and ethnic revivals.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY: THE GREAT ENRICHMENT
We are in the midst of remarkable times, and our relationship to money is very different because of it. Appreciating this can open up possibilities for how you think, feel and act with your money.
We all see the world through the lens of the culture and the times in which we live. People living during the Renaissance didn’t know they were living during the Renaissance and didn’t call it that. It’s often only in hindsight that we can see the pattern.
Today it’s hard to fully appreciate the truly remarkable conditions in which we live. For us it’s just life. For our ancestors, it would be breathtaking. How did this “Great Enrichment” happen to our world, when it never did for all the centuries before?
WODAABE MEN MUST LOOK BEAUTIFUL TO ATTRACT THE LADIES
The Wodaabe are cattle-herding nomads in Niger, West Africa. Their Gerewol festival features Yaake dances by the men to impress marriageable ladies with how ideally handsome they are. Those ideals include being tall and athletic, having white eyes and white teeth, decorating themselves colorfully, and having a winning smile.
The Wodaabe are a fun-loving, friendly, and hospitable people. You’ll meet them on our Trans-Sahara Expedition when we’re next able to operate one. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #57 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – CLIMBING MOUNT OLYMPUS
August, 1971. Here is where the Ancient Greeks believed their 12 Olympian Gods lived, on the summit of the highest peak of Olympus – Mytikas at 9,571ft/2,918m. There are 52 jagged prominences of Olympus, but if you want to commune with Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, Athena and the rest, this is where you go.
It takes just two days: morning drive from Athens (4 hrs) to Litochoro, then the roadhead at Priona (2,500ft). Afternoon hike of some 3 hours through pretty pine forests to the comfortable Spilios Agapitos refuge (6,700ft) for dinner and a bunk bed overnight. You’re up at dawn for a strenuous but not technical climb up to Skala peak at 9,400ft. In my photo, you’re looking at Mytikas from Skala. It’s a Class B rock scramble – no ropes or gear, but this shouldn’t be your first mountain rodeo. Be careful!
I was by myself at the Mytikas summit and no selfies in those days, so I said my greetings to the gods, and I was back down at the refuge by lunchtime. You’ll be back at the Plaka below the Acropolis in Athens for ouzo and dinner. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #45 photo ©Jack Wheeler)