Yearly Archives: 2023
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHTS OF MALTA
They look real, don’t they? Ready to defend their Christian land with their lives. We are in the Palace Armory Museum of Malta, where you realize there is no nation on earth more proud of their Christian heritage. It was on Malta in 1565 that a few thousand Christian Knights led by 70 year-old Jean de Vallette defeated in utter humiliation a massive horde of Moslem Ottomans led by Suleiman the Magnificent.
In seeking to use Malta as his launchpad to conquer all of Christian Europe, Suleiman was bitter in defeat: “This cursed island is like a barrier interposed between us and our possessions,” believing that Allah ordained all Christian lands need be taken for Islam by the sword.
Vallette knew what he and his Knights faced: “It is the great battle of the Cross and the Koran which is now to be fought. A formidable army of infidels is at the point of invading our island.”
The incredibly heroic saga of the Knights’ victory is told in The Siege of Malta, on TTP since 2009. What’s critical to understand now is that, after 5½ centuries, the Maltese people are just as proud of their history and Christian heritage as ever. So here’s the question:
What would it mean for you to come to Malta and meet such people yourself? How uplifting and spiritually thrilling would it be for you to take a break from the mental illness of the Woke Anti-Christian culture you’re surrounded by, and immerse yourself in the absolute antithesis of it?
That’s the way you’ll feel by joining your fellow TTPers to experience The Magic of Malta with me in October. Trust me, you owe this to yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #264 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE MOSLEM MYTH OF JERUSALEM
Mohammed’s “Night Journey”
[This Monday’s TTP Archives feature was originally published on December 3, 2003. The TTP Team is looking forward to your thoughts on the Forum, especially despite the irrefutable facts therein, nothing has changed in the two decades since.]
It is a commonplace in a story or article about the Arab-Israeli conflict that mentions Jerusalem to repeat the Moslem mantra that “Jerusalem is the third holiest city in all Islam, next to Mecca and Medina.”
You’ve heard this innumerable times — but how come? Just why is Jerusalem so important to not just Jews and Christians but Moslems as well?
The reason is one single line in the Koran. If it can be shown by Islamic scholars that it has been misinterpreted, then Jerusalem ceases to be a holy city to Islam.
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/14/23
Another Animal Feeding Facility Explosion
Feedlot, Food Production, Agricultural Fires
Fires and explosions seem to be breaking out throughout the meat and protein production pipeline. These have been barn burners and not just small fires.The national media is silent, the government is quiet, and the food companies themselves are silent. Heck, even Bill Gates has remained silent.
This week we will look at the Obama-era technology forced upon large controlled animal feeding operations in the name of environmental justice by an incompetent EPA administrator.
Large feeding operations for chickens, hogs, and cows must install water pollution control technologies that produce explosive methane. Yet, the mandated technology lacks a process to dispose of the methane safely.
No air discharge permits are being written to flare off the explosive gas, thanks to an EPA that has repeatedly proven out of control.
Come on over to this week’s HFR, where we will talk about food plant fires. One thing is sure – nobody else is talking about this slow-rolling crisis.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – BRANDON AT LAMAYURU
High in the Himalayas of India in the remote moonscape of Tibetan Ladakh is the gompa (Tibetan monastery) of Lamayuru. It is older than Tibetan Buddhism, for it was originally a gompa for the lama monks of Bön, the ancient animist religion of Tibet. I took my son Brandon here on an expedition through Tibetan India in 1993. Brandon had his 10th birthday here. Behind him is the enormous statue of blue-eyed Sakyamuni Buddha in the central prayer hall.
Brandon has never forgotten Lamayuru as anyone who has been here never does. We’ll be here again this August – and Brandon will be leading the expedition. Join us for the high adventure of Indian Tibet 2023 for a true “experience of a lifetime”! (Glimpses of our breathtaking world #151 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
NOT AGAIN??!!
TANTRIC BHUTAN
The most fabulously exotic country on earth is the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. The Bhutanese religion of Tantric Buddhism is here exemplified by a prayer hall wall painting of Yab-Yum – the physical union of Compassion and Wisdom. Male compassion is personified as the deity Samvara with a blue body, multiple faces and arms. He embraces his consort of female wisdom Vajra-varahi.
It is important to understand that Yab-Yum is considered a sacred act as a path to Enlightenment. It is just one example of how Bhutan may stretch our comfort zone to learn ancient ways and practices, giving us a broader perspective on our humanity. For an in-depth understanding of Bhutan’s extraordinary culture, consider joining our Wheeler-Windsor Expedition to the Land of the Thunder Dragon this November. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #16 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 04/13/23
Scrooge McDuck Moves to Texas
Free! Free at last! Well, not quite yet, but we may be on the way to the most important thing that has happened in America since FDR seized monetary gold nine decades ago. Get ready for a Holy Moses! moment. So calm down, get settled for first things first. Before the link below, read about the Texas Bullion Depository.
See texasbulliondepository.gov for details. Okay, now you’re prepped to read what’s below. Worried or terrified about CBDCs that eliminate cash and give the Deep State control over every dime you spend? Texas is riding to your rescue. Please study this well, and hold on to your hat:
Texas Bill Would Create State-Issued Gold-Backed Digital Currency
And what’s this about?
This Skye’s Links is a real blockbuster, so come on in to learn and enjoy!
GGANTIJA
The small European island country of Malta in the Mediterranean south of Sicily and close to the north coast of Africa is where civilization emerged from the Stone Age.
The story begins over 7,000 years ago, when a handful of Stone Age tribes in Sicily rafted 55 miles south to land on the twin islands of Gozo and Malta. They lived in caves, then huts, fished, hunted, farmed with primitive tools for they had no metal – and over a period of more than a thousand years taught themselves how to construct massive buildings of stone.
This is the Temple of Ggantija (zhee-gan-tee-zha). Built almost 6,000 years ago (around 3600 BC), it is the oldest free-standing structure in the world. It is older than the pyramids in Egypt by a thousand years, older than Stonehenge by 15 centuries. The enormous stones weighing several tons were cut from the limestone bedrock with tools of stone and antler horn for they had no metal, and moved using small round-cut rocks as ball bearings for they had no wheels.
These folks figured out all by themselves how to build this and other massive stone temples to their gods and goddesses so many millennia ago. Nobody taught them. They were the first. Be sure and see it for yourself this October and experience The Magic of Malta with Rebel and me! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #166 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
AIR CELEBRATES THE AMERICAN DREAM
Imagine being able to take your children or grandchildren to a Hollywood blockbuster that tells the story of a great American business success, celebrates entrepreneurial values, isn’t woke, and includes only a little profanity.
Air — the story of how underdog shoe company Nike landed Michael Jordan’s revolutionary endorsement of the “Air Jordan” shoe — is exactly that. The Jordan shoe changed fashion and completely realigned how athletes benefit from products they associate with. It’s still one of the most successful consumer products ever.
Hollywood is fresh from observing how Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick broke box-office records a year ago and grossed over $1 billion worldwide. Though it will still produce many woke films, Hollywood may have decided that it has to pay for its frequent box-office losses by producing entertainment that people actually want to shell out money for.
That’s what Hollywood has done with Air, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. See the Trailer below.
THE NEXT MEDICAL REVOLUTION IS ON THE WAY
Twenty years ago, the idea of putting a live cell in a human, directing it to travel to a specific location, and having it do a specific task would have been considered impossible. Today it’s reality, and hundreds of companies are working on cell-therapy applications.
That’s only the beginning. Advancements arriving at an exponentially increasing rate lie ahead as new discoveries reach the clinic with breathtaking speed. We can now reasonably speculate about therapies that will give us the ability to clean tiny cancers from our bodies as routinely as dentists clean our teeth.
We can look for the possibility of gaining immunity from dozens of viruses with a single vaccine and editing genes to eliminate many birth defects. We can picture growing new organs from patients’ own cells and even slowing the aging process. Here’s why and how.
OUR FRENCH REVOLUTION
The Dying Lion of Lucerne*
We are in a Jacobin Revolution of the sort that in 1793-94 nearly destroyed France. And things are getting scary.
The Democrat Party vanished completely sometime in 2020.
It was absorbed by hard-left ideologues. They were bent on radically altering, or hijacking, existing institutions to force radical, equality-of-result agendas that otherwise do not earn majority support.
What triggered the collective madness and this Jacobin takeover? The catalysts are many.
America now has three potential futures and two are bad.
PUTIN’S BUBBLE
Decision-making in the Kremlin had been so erratic—even before the re-invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022—that the proposition of President Vladimir Putin inhabiting a bubble of servile courtiers and carefully doctored information appeared perfectly plausible.
Early April 2023 has brought even more evidence supporting this assumption of detachment from reality typical for mature autocratic regimes but aggravated by an unhealthy ambition for determining the course of global affairs.
Bubbles, however, are diaphanously short-lived by their nature. Is Putin’s approaching the bursting point?
MAKING FRIENDS IN ANTARCTICA
This is my wife Rebel relaxing with a native of Antarctica while on a visit to the Palmer Science Station there. Getting up close and personal with Antarctic wildlife is so easy as they have no fear of us at all, be they seals, elephant seals, or penguins.
Better not get too close to male elephant seals in domination combat, however, as they can weigh up to 7,000 pounds. And steer clear of full grown leopard seals, which are apex predators weighing over 1,000 pounds. No worries, though, for Rebel with this young fellow. Experiencing Antarctica is always a memorable adventure. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #94 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
INFANTILIZOMANIA
Giant statute of Lenin in Tiraspol, Transnistria
[We’re starting an Archives feature for Mondays in celebration of TTP’s 20th Anniversary – to reprise a TTP article of years ago and to ask what you think how it applies to today on the Forum. “Infantilizomania” was first published on September 23, 2005. The TTP Team is looking forward to your thoughts!]
Yes, I invented this term. You won’t find it in Webster’s, the OED, or Google. At least not now. Hopefully soon you will, as it becomes the accepted term for the neurosis with which all those on the Left are afflicted.
Just as a pyromaniac is driven by a compulsion to set fires, a kleptomaniac by a compulsion to steal, and – everyone’s favorite example – a nymphomaniac by a compulsion to have sex, an infantilizomaniac is driven by a compulsion to treat adult human beings as children.
The compulsion to infantilize people is the neurotic compulsion of liberals.
Liberals of course do not call it infantilizomania. They call it compassion.
WHERE THE SOVIET UNION STILL EXISTS
Welcome to Transnistria, where Lenin still lives. The strangest country in Europe is a narrow sliver of landlocked land along the east side of the Dnieper River sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine. When both declared independence as the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, the people here decided they were still part of the USSR even though it had ceased to exist.
The half-million Transnistrians are still pretending their country is a Soviet Socialist Republic. Lenin statues abound, the hammer & sickle is on their flag, the state media broadcasts stories about “glorious Soviet history.” Meanwhile, Transnistria’s economy is doing well thanks to bountiful Kremlin subsidies and as a haven for the Russian mob. In the capital of Tiraspol I saw Beemers, Bentleys, and even a Corvette Sting Ray cruising the streets. Restaurants and bars are packed. Kids are well-dressed. That’s a gaggle of them you see above happily playing on a Russian tank in a park.
Maybe it’s all kind of a funny game to everyone here. As an American I was welcomed with smiles. You will be too if you visit – it’s a truly unique experience! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #69 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE POTALA
Lhasa, Tibet, 1986. Built in the mid-1600s, the Potala in Lhasa, Tibet was the home of the Dalai Lama as the incarnation of Avalokiteśvara, the Buddhist deity of compassion, until the Communist Chinese colonized Tibet in 1959.
The Potala is one of the world’s great architectural wonders, thirteen stories high with molten copper poured into the foundation to stabilize it from earthquakes, 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines, 200,000 statues. I’ve been here several times since 1986, and it’s always such a powerful experience. Yet to Tibetans, this is a “dead” building as the Dalai Lama is gone. It is my hope that someday, the Dalai Lama will live here in a Free Tibet once again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #114 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
BEVERAGE PRETENDING TO BE BEER FEATURES MAN PRETENDING TO BE WOMAN
U.S. — In a match made in heaven, a beverage that tries to pass itself as beer has hired as its spokesperson a man trying to pass himself off as a woman.
"For decades, we've been putting carbonated backwash in a beer can and pretending it's beer," said Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth. "Who better to represent our brand than a guy throwing on a dress and pretending he's a woman?"
Long a staple drink of people who hate actual beer, Bud Light felt putting Dylan Mulvaney's face on a can would also attract people who hate actual women.
"As a man acting out the most horrendously offensive stereotypes of women, Mulvaney taps into the soul of people who despise real women," said Mr. Whitworth. "As a company dedicated to serving those who detest real beer, the partnership made perfect sense. The new beer can just shouts, 'Come, enjoy this atrocious substitute for the real thing'."
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/07/23
It’s Good Friday! Welcome to the Easter HFR! And to TTP’s 20th Anniversary (see more about this at the end).
This Sunday, Christians celebrate The Resurrection. As the holiest day of the year, Easter has sacred significance far above Easter eggs and bunnies. As TTP is a political and geopolitical discussion site, what binds TTPers together is the profound significance of the moral foundation of Christendom, or Western Civilization.
What worries, ever terrifies, many of us, is the seeming disintegration of that moral foundation. Dare then, at this Eastertime, we hope for a moral Resurrection of America and Western Civilization? We can always hope, yes, but are there any signs that such a future could actually be on the way?
Let’s talk about one such sign that clearly emerged this week. And a good many others as well.
MOROCCO’S DADES GORGE
This astounding road is how you traverse the Dades Gorge on the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs in Morocco. Kasbahs are fortified villages of the Berbers, who have lived here since the end of the Ice Ages 12,000 years ago (related to the Lapps of the Scandinavian Arctic, both descending from Cro-Magnon hunters in Cantabria of northern Spain).
The road is rated as one of the most scenic drives in the world. It is in the High Atlas Mountains (once higher than the Himalayas and joined to the Appalachians in the northeast US before splitting apart to form the Atlantic Ocean 200 million years ago). Here you go from the sand dunes of the Sahara to the fabulous kasbahs of Skoura, Ouarzazate, and Ait Benhaddou. The drive is one of the many life-memorable experiences we have in our exploration of Moroccan Magic. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #110 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 04/06/23
Institutional Loss of Faith
___________________________________
Loss of faith in American – and global – institutions is accelerating. Whether the institutions are public or private, religious or secular, tangible or financial, the credibility gap is becoming a giant fissure.
People long for authenticity, the real deal, but are served up a diet of fake university outrage, indictments, and impeachments on counterfeit charges, fake science, and fake news.
Lately, we are being hammered with fake women. There was a day when it was more straightforward. Remember the advertising jingle for coconut/chocolate candy bars? “Almond Joy got nuts – Mounds don’t?” Once upon a time it only upset Miss Prissy, the fourth-grade English teacher. Singing that old ditty in the wrong place today will get a guy arrested.
Underlying all this is the realization that about half of the profit made in the United States from all sources is from finance. This means creating and servicing debt, and those that pull the biggest financial levers dominate the economy and American policy.
Marginal borrowers are being wiped out as interest rate increases force the repricing of underlying assets, yet the financial industry has no risk. They can always count on a bailout.
A rage is brewing, and each new insult and fake promise is like more gasoline on the fire. The government wants us to focus on fake eyelashes on fake women, but actual bankruptcies and business failures command attention.
These types of rages have happened before. In 1776, 1861, 1933, and now today. They bring change through violence as the ballot box is compromised.
TTPers will note the consistency of warnings of the growing rage and distrust of intuitions. With every car repossessed, every home foreclosed upon, and every vacation canceled, middle America is waking up to the calamity of being overleveraged. They thought they were following the path toward prosperity.
BRAGG’S COMPLETELY MORONIC NON-INDICTMENT INDICTMENT
Alvin Bragg turns NYC into a Banana Republic
[Dispensing with all the hysteria, Andy McCarthy cuts right to the bottom line so clearly that anyone can understand: this is literally no indictment at all. The absurdity of Trump’s persecution is bottomless—JW]
It’s always possible to be surprised. The indictment brought by Manhattan’s elected Democrat district attorney Alvin Bragg against Donald Trump is even worse than I’d imagined.
Bragg’s indictment fails to state a crime. Not once . . . but 34 times. On that ground alone, the case should be dismissed — before one ever gets to the facts that the statute of limitations has lapsed and that Bragg has no jurisdiction to enforce federal law. At his press conference, he blathered about federal campaign-finance law, but he knows he lacks jurisdiction to enforce federal law. He has no crime.
HOW TO PUT ALVIN BRAGG IN PRISON
Arrest Alvin Bragg T-shirt on sale here
On Monday night (4/03), it was leaked that Donald Trump will be charged with 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records. The details of the indictment were not supposed to be released, and Trump quickly called out District Attorney Alvin Bragg for illegally leaking the details of the indictment.
“Wow! District Attorney Bragg just illegally LEAKED the various points, and complete information, on the pathetic Indictment against me,” Trump wrote in a post shared on Truth Social. “I know the reporter and so, unfortunately, does he. This means that he MUST BE IMMEDIATELY INDICTED. Now, if he wants to really clean up his reputation, he will do the honorable thing and, as District Attorney, INDICT HIMSELF.”
Bragg certainly won’t indict himself, but, as Tucker Carlson noted, leaking details from Trump’s sealed indictment is bigger than the crimes for which Trump has been indicted. The act of leaking grand jury testimony is considered a Class E felony under New York state law.
SLOVENIA’S VINTGAR GORGE
In a hidden corner of Europe, the Radovna River pours off the Julian Alps to carve out the Vintgar Gorge with crystal clear water. A mile-long walkway with towering limestone cliffs on either side is your access.
Nearby is the gorgeous Lake Bled, with Bled Castle suspended atop a shoreline cliff. The medieval village of Piran, built on a spit of land projecting into the Adriatic Sea and encircled by a white sand beach is a short drive away. Ljubljana is one of Europe’s most utterly charming capital cities.
Most people have only heard of Slovenia as the birthplace of First Lady Melania Trump, but those who have been here understand it is one of the most entrancing countries on the European continent – pristine beauty, spotless environment, friendly and hospitable people, safe and very well-run. Whenever your next visit to Europe may be, try to include a few days or week or so here. You’ll never run out of fascinating things to do. A stroll through the Vintgar Gorge is an example out of so many. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #19 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE WORLD’S MOST INTERESTING ISLAND
People from Europe have been living here for 8,000 years. They taught themselves how to build the world’s oldest free-standing structures, carving out gigantic stone blocks with antler horn 1,000 years before Egyptians built the pyramids.
The ancient Greeks thought the island so enchanting that Homer’s Odyssey sang of Odysseus (Ulysses) being under the spell of the nymph Calypso here for 7 years.
Medieval fortresses and walled cities, spectacular baroque architecture, stunning scenery with hidden sea coves in crystal clear cobalt blue water, and of course, the gigantic megalithic temples built so many thousands of years ago – for here is where Western Civilization began. And here, a few centuries ago, is where Western Civilization was saved from extinction.
Come here and you’ll be enchanted too.
PUTIN’S SHAKESPEAREAN DEMONS
Geopolitics will take you only so far in explaining foreign affairs. The more important element is Shakespearean. Ukraine is a perfect example.
Ukraine is engulfed by Russia on the north and east, its history and language entwined with its neighbor’s. But the greater part of the story concerns the personality of Vladimir Putin. The geopolitical argument that Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was expanding completely disregards the Russian leader’s Shakespearean demons.
Mr. Putin’s decision to invade represented not the collective thinking of the Russian elite but his own thoughts. Given Mr. Putin’s paranoia, isolation and delusions of grandeur, the question arises: Would Europe today be at peace with Mr. Putin’s Russia had NATO not expanded east after the Cold War and had there been a Western guarantee of recognizing Russian interests in Ukraine? Certainly not.
BEST OF THE FORUM
Last Monday (3/27), Joel Wade wrote his temporarily last Keeping Your Sanity column for us, as he focuses on completing his next book, Mastering The Emotional Side of Money. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Joel for his words of wisdom for the recent years now, as coping with them has not been easy and he has helping so many of us do so.
Thanks so much, Joel! And keep us posted on your book’s progress – hopefully you can post excerpts on TTP?
Meanwhile, to take Joel’s place, I thought what could be better than to share what your fellow TTPers are giving us on the Forum? You know I’ve always thought the Forum was one of the most valuable parts of TTP given TTPers’ extraordinary knowledge and insight.
So here are two examples of the Best of the Forum – not the best to imply others are less so, but certainly examples of what your fellow TTPers can contribute to the TTP membership. Here are Mark Deuce and Mellie responding on the HFR 03/24/23 Forum. Thanks to you both! Blue skies… Jack
THE EYELASH AT DAWN
The first of The Seven Pearls of Shing is called Mijnon 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 mesmerizing 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.
Yet Tajikistan is only one of the “Stans” of Central Asia, an ultimate of the world’s mysterious, remote, and wondrous places. There are four others: Kazakhstan, Kyrghistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. A number of your fellow TTPers have been there with me and can tell you what a fabulously life-memorable adventure it is to explore all five.
We’ll be there again this September: The Heart of Central Asia: September 2-21, 2023. Be with us with your loved one, your children, or grandchildren and you’ll all have an experience to treasure for all of your lives. Click on the link to see for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #263 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/31/23
It is All Fake, and Gay
Tomorrow is April Fool’s Day.
Globalists showed signs of panic this week as they rushed to regain narrative control. Another absolute scumbag shot up yet another school, this time in Nashville. The garbage, whose name should be erased from history, left an anti-Christian manifesto. As globalists insist, transitioning is not the path to joy. Instead, it is the path to rage and profound misery for everyone involved.
Who might have predicted that pumping hormones into the mentally ill and then cramming propaganda into their skulls might lead to problems?
Well, problems there are, and they will be with us for decades as it is the policy of the United States to promote homosexuality and transgenderism as a substitute for free trade. It is not working, will never work, and cannot be made to work. Just as LBJ’s policies remain a millstone around America’s neck, so will Obama’s policy of promoting an intersectional coalition of minority groups rotating about a gay pride axis e with us for decades.
Sure, we are experiencing misdirections. The Trump indictment is an attempt to salvage the transexual cultural meme. The banking crisis is growing as the Fed appears to abandon the dollar to inflation to save Biden in 2024.
But these are chump changes for the actual cover-up. Let’s see what those behind the curtain are desperate to hide from the masses.
Bolsonaro returned to Brazil, which reminds the world that the thread weaves through Brasilia as the second republic after the United States to fall to election fraud this decade. In Brazil, however, the world has learned the identity of the Pale Horse—the bringer of death to constitutional governments of free men.
THE PROBLEM
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – WITH MBUTI PYGMIES IN THE CONGO
August, 1971. The gentle Mbuti people live in the Ituri rainforest, one of the world’s densest jungles, in northeastern DR Congo. They are among the most ancient of all human populations, with their ancestors having hunted in these forests for over 60,000 years. The tallest among them is under five feet.
It was on my first visit to Africa that I was able to spend time with them. They live in scattered bands of a few dozen each, always on the move in search of game, sleeping in small makeshift huts of branches and leaves, and far away from villages of Bantus who always try to enslave them.
Their music is hypnotic. To the beat of drums of hollowed-out logs, they sing with a polyphonic complexity that is extraordinary. I’ll never forget the performance they gave for me. Alas, no tape recorder – much less videocam back then! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #65 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE HYPOGEUM OF MALTA
The extraordinary rock-cut necropolis known as the Hypogeum (hi-po-gee-um) is the only prehistoric underground temple in the world. For over a thousand years (3500-2500 BC), the temple and burial complex (eventually housing 7,000 skeletons) was carved out and down – dozens of chambers, with rock-cut replicas of above-ground temples including simulated corbelled roofs. (A corbelled roof uses stone slabs that progressively overlap each other until the room is roofed over.)
The Megalthic Maltese learned to cut from the limestone bedrock with tools of stone and antler horn for they had no metal. These folks figured out all by themselves how to build extraordinary temples to their gods and goddesses close to six thousand years ago. Nobody taught them. They were the first. Only one reason Malta is one of our planet’s most fascinating places. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #109 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 03/30/23
Death Threat, White Powder Mailed to Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg's Office.
Late today (3/30), Alvin conned the grand jury into perpetuating the maskirovka farce, which will be eventually laughed out of court, and explode Trump’s ratings in the polls to Jupiter. The headlines of the moment are huge, but actually, this is hilarious.
Trump Indicted After Manhattan DA Probe For Hush Money Payments
What did the ‘Crats and the MSM want to distract you from noticing? How about…
This is such a terrific Skye’s Links – all the way to the voice of optimism must-read at the end. Welcome and enjoy!
IT WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH FOR THE TRANSVESTITE CROWD
[Note: edited to make it clear that “trans” actually means “transvestite”]
I try to bring humor to everything. I’m a comedian. Comics try to find humor in the worst of conditions. Yet not only can I not see the “funny” in the Nashville shooting, I don’t want to seek it.
The “trans” [more accurately the transvestite] movement asked for tolerance, then acceptance. Then they just wanted to use the restroom of their preference for their safety, despite a lack of violence against trans people and a bushel full of trans attacks on kids. We allowed it. We should regret it. A lot.
People have lost their jobs for refusing to play make-believe with the small portion of the country plagued by a mental malady called “gender dysphoria.”
Despite all the ass-kissing the trans [transvestite] crowd has enjoyed, they feel they are being “genocided” out of existence. So much so that they are planning a “day of trans vengeance.” This just days after one of them slaughtered little children in cold blood in Nashville.
SCANDAL IN MOSCOW OVER THE ELITE RIDICULING PUTIN
Moscow's high society has been rocked by a scandal after a pair of prominent Vladimir Putin cronies were heard insulting the Russian despot.
Billionaire oligarch and former Russian senator Farkhad Akhmedov and high-profile Moscow music producer Iosif Prigozhin, both public supporters of Putin, have been accused of calling him 'Satan' and a 'dwarf'.
An audio recording of what is a 35-minute phone call between the wealthy pair was posted on Telegram Messenger, then shared by Ukraine's Channel Five and quickly jumped on by other outlets - as well as Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).
In the audio clip, the pair are heard eviscerating Putin's invasion of Ukraine, slamming his Kremlin entourage over their failings, and even insulting his height.
WHAT A REAL CANNIBAL LOOKS LIKE
On the remote north side of the island of Malekula in Vanuatu, there lives a cannibal tribe called the Big Nambas. The men wear a penis gourd wrapped in pandamus fibers, and eat “man long pig,” cooked human enemies. You have to trek over mountains of thick jungle to reach them. When I was able to years ago, there were a few men who continued the practice. This gentleman is one of them. I was in no danger as they were very kind and gracious to me.
That wasn’t the case a century ago when the first explorers, Martin & Osa Johnson, reached them. Their 1918 film, “Cannibals of the South Seas,” made the Johnsons famous, and you can see it on YouTube. Today they are far more benign. It is an extraordinary experience to meet a culture of fearsome reputation and realize they are people like you and me. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #103 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
NASHVILLE AND TRANSVESTITES
[Note by JW: Andrea Widburg is understandably confused by the refusal of the media to call the Nashville child-murderer pictured above a “transman” – a female who “identifies” as a male, when any and all men who so identify themselves as female are automatically labeled a “transwoman.” Audrey Hale in every news story is called by her born name, never her male name of Aiden, always referred to a “female,” “her, “she”, never “male,” “her/him”.
The solution is to abandon any woke-trans terms at all, use people’s pronouns according to their birth identity, and use the trans term that actually applies to them: transvestites: men dressing and pretending to be women and women dressing and pretending to be men. This will henceforth be the terminology in TTP regarding any “trans” issue.]
When newspapers publish stories using the phrase “her testicles,” it’s easy to add laughter to the tears that always accompany reports demonstrating the complete breakdown of reality in modern America.
There is no laughter, though, when trying to decipher the biological sex of the school shooter who killed three children and three adults in Nashville, before the police appropriately terminated the killer’s existence.
THE COMING CONSERVATIVE COMEBACK IN BOTH AMERICA AND CANADA
Biden and Trudeau in Ottawa on March 24 Headed for the dustbin of history?
However the contemptible national political media of the United States try to disguise the fact, the Biden administration is a disaster. Canada is a close second.
As a result, in America, either Mr. Trump or Governor DeSantis will win, and as of now, Mr. Trump has the advantage. Most people finally see the proportions of the perversion of the intelligence agencies, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the prosecution service in the psychopathic frenzy to destroy Mr. Trump.
As for Canada, Quebec has effectively begun the formal extirpation of the English language and the prime minister has taken it upon himself to make to the world on behalf of all of us the confession that our forbears attempted some form of genocide on Indigenous people.
No government that has acquiesced in the first and proclaimed the second is fit to be re-elected.
THE MONEY THAT MADE US HUMAN
[Joel Wade’s Keeping Your Sanity Through the Virtue of Trade and Money today (7/25) bears directly upon this. Money and trade are what have made us human for 90 millennia.]
On display in the National Museum of Congo in Brazzaville: “Ancient Money.” I took the picture because this is the money that made us human 90,000 years ago. They are tiny Nassarius gibbosulus estuarine snail shells too small for food, perforated with small holes to string on a necklace, used as money “before the establishment of the CFA” as the sign says, the Central Africa Franc in 1945.
These are the same species of shell that was the first jewelry in history unearthed at seashore sites in Morocco and hundreds of miles inland in Algeria some 90kya (thousand years ago) – meaning they were traded. For the first time in history, a species began to exchange things between unrelated unmarried individuals to share, swap, barter and trade, and over great distances.
Other animals do not barter. This, maintains science author Matt Ridley, is what made us distinctly human, enabling us to cooperate with other groups or tribes, to innovate, to evolve ever more complex cultures. This little shell, used as money, is the founding of human culture. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #61 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY WITH A COMPELLING VISION
(This will be my last column for a while, while I dive in fully to finish writing my next book, Mastering The Emotional Side of Money. In the meantime to continue keeping your sanity I recommend my most recent: the Mastering Emotions, Moods and Reactions Workbook)
When we think of what we'll be like ten years from now, most of us imagine that we'll be just like we are now. Yet when we look back ten years, we’re usually different than we were then.
Of course we are different today than we were ten years ago - unless we've removed ourselves from any experience of living. Life is a continual anti-entropy endeavor. If we don't expend energy to create order, the natural tendency of things to move toward disorder takes over.
We will be different than we are now in ten years. That's a fact of life. The question is, how will we be different; and will we be different mostly as a result of events, or through conscious choice?
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)