Yearly Archives: 2023
CALAMITY ISLAND
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE CRUSADER FORTRESS IN THE CAUCASUS
This is the fortress town of Shatili in an extremely remote Caucasus region in Georgia called Khevsureti. It was built by the Crusaders 1,000 years ago. The Khevsur people who live here trace their ancestry back to these Crusaders and until the 1930s still wore chain mail in feud-battles with other towns. I took this picture in 1991.
American traveler Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) saw and recorded the customs of the Khevsurs in 1935. The Khevsur men, dressed in chain mail and armed with broadswords, wore garments full of decoration made up of crosses and icons. They don’t do that anymore, but they proudly retain their Crusader Christian heritage – for Georgia adopted Christianity in the 4th century AD. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #85 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/24/23
For Aristotle 2,360 years ago and many philosophers since, courage is the most important moral virtue over all the rest, such as honesty, integrity, empathy, fairness and so on – because courage is what enables a person to act virtuously in any way like being honest.
A Courageous America wouldn’t stand for the Presidency of the United States to be stolen in broad daylight. A Courageous America would get rid of Woke CRT, DEI, Tranny Tyranny, and Climate Fascism in a heartbeat. Nor would it tolerate for a moment our city streets to be sewers of homelessness, with DA’s refusing to prosecute criminals and no one safe to walk the streets.
We have become, on the whole, a Nation of Learned Helplessness – the Left’s goal for America as people who feel helpless to fight or get rid of what’s ruining their lives and their country are so easy to control. Just look at how meekly so many millions accepted the lockdowns and other fascist restrictions on their freedom over a Chinese flu bug.
How bad is it? How about the Pentagon arguing for child-sex changes among our military’s children?
THE HIDDEN NORTH FACE OF KANCHENJUNGA
This is one of the truly great mountain sights on earth yet never seen – except for professional mountaineers and those on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions. Kanchenjunga at 28,169 feet (8,586 meters) is the world’s 3rd highest mountain (after Everest and K2), with a drop from summit (the peak on the left in front of the cloud) to the glacier at it base of 12,000 feet straight down.
You can be awed by such a picture, but to actually physically be here, to witness this magnificence personally so that it is forever a part of your life, is to feel a depth of awe that has to be experienced to be understood. Kanchenjunga is part of the Himalayas, now on the border of Nepal and Sikkim, once an independent kingdom now absorbed into India. We fly right up the North Face, and into the Amphitheatre of the Southwest Face as well.
We’ll be here once again next late October. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #31 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 03/23/23
The Dawning of the Age of AI
It's Not the Age of Aquarius
Not at All
___________________________________We were warned that today would come, and TTP members are well prepared for a government that rapidly falsifies information for the sake of power. Truth to our utilitarian career climbers is just another story. Now they have AI tools that are quickly growing and evolving and not evolving at a biological rate but at the rate of Moore's Law.
Bill Gates is warning that this affects everything as the machines can now spoof real-time events and records, make videos, and possibly (likely) alter official documents. If you own a Kindle device with downloaded books, you have probably noticed that the books on your machine are edited and changed without notifying you.
If the AI systems in healthcare deem your life not worth the effort, your treatment will be denied, and no reason will be given.
They tried to arrest Trump on bogus charges to create a demonstration that the Left's rent thugs could turn into a riot. They put the wrong guy in charge, and everything Alvin Bragg touched became a big problem for the Lefties. It seems that Alvin hid a lot of evidence from the grand jury.
Money is no longer leaving ESG investments. It is a full-on stampede to get out of the type of investments that crashed three banks this month, forcing the merger of UBS and Credit Suisse.
Just like that. Five hundred years of Swiss Banking integrity have been flushed away. Remind me again where the Davos gang meets.
EXPLAINING THE LINK BETWEEN LIBERALISM AND MENTAL ILLNESS
Why are conservatives happier than liberals? Why do leftists report more anxiety, depression, and neuroses compared to those on the right?
Social scientists are perplexed — as well they should be, considering that for every one conservative social scientist, there are 10 liberals. But across all age groups, all incomes, all races, and both sexes — in every single measurable way — conservatives are happier than liberals.
Musa al-Gharbi, writing in the quarterly journal American Affairs, details the phenomenon and offers some insight into possible reasons for the “well-being gap.” “Why is it,” she asks, “that maladjusted, anti-social children gravitate toward left-wing parties as adults? Why is it that liberals are far more likely to be depressed, anxious, or otherwise neurotic compared to conservatives?
Is mental illness involved?
WHAT HAPPENED TO STANFORD?
Stanford was once one of the world’s great universities. It birthed Silicon Valley in its prime. And along with its nearby twin and rival, UC Berkeley, its brilliant researchers, and teachers helped fuel the mid-20th-century California miracle.
That was then. But like the descent of California, now something has gone terribly wrong with the university.
Students at Stanford Law School recently shouted down visiting Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan. He had been invited to give a lecture by the school’s Federalist Society.
The judge never even got the chance. The law school students drowned him out. They flashed obscene placards. They screamed that he was “scum.” One yelled he hoped the judge’s own daughters would be raped.
The debacle revealed three disturbing characteristics about the Stanford law students. The list of serial embarrassments reads like the suicides of Greek tragedy, where divine nemesis follows hubris.
ROME IN AFRICA
The best place to see Roman ruins is not in Rome or anywhere in Italy. It’s in Africa – specifically on the Mediterranean coast of Libya. This is the Roman theatre at Sabratha built in the 1st century BC. Over 2,000 years old, it’s still mostly intact. Starting as a Berber village, the Phoenicians founded the city as Sabrat by 500 BC. Then came the Greeks, then the Carthaginians, and after the Punic Wars came Rome.
The Libyan coast was a lush fertile place back then. So much so that Sabratha and the other major Roman city nearby, Leptis Magna, produced several million pounds of olive oil per year – sale of which to Rome enabled them to achieve great wealth. It’s a shame that Libya remains today in chaotic civil war. Hopefully the day is not off when experiencing Rome’s most magnificent remains will be possible here again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #79 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HAPPY NOWRUZ!
Faravahar symbol of Zoroaster, Fire Temple, Yazd, Iran
It is March 21 – the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring, the Persian New Year, and the Persian Christmas too, for all over Iran today people are celebrating the birthday of the founder of the Persian religion Zoroaster.
What’s that? Isn’t the religion of Iran Islam -- certainly not Zoroastrianism? Well, times are changing.
Nowruz (“new day” in Persian) is an official government holiday now in mullah-run Iran. Note today (3/21) how the Tasnim News Agency of the Revolutionary Guard or Pasdaran pretends it is just Persian New Years only: Nowruz: The New Year Festivity Celebrated in Iran.
Not a word or hint of Zoroaster – or as the Iranians call him, Zardosht. The truth is, thanks to Mullah Islamofascism, millions of Persians and others in Iran from Kurds to Azeris are turning away from Islam and towards their ancient original religion that predates Mohammed by over two thousand years.
MY STRUGGLE SESSION AT STANFORD LAW SCHOOL
Stanford Law School’s website touts its “collegial culture” in which “collaboration and the open exchange of ideas are essential to life and learning.” Then there’s the culture I experienced when I visited Stanford last week.
I had been invited by the student chapter of the Federalist Society to discuss the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on which I’ve served since 2018. I’ve spoken at law schools across the country, and I was glad to accept this invitation. One of my first clerks graduated from Stanford. I have friends on the faculty. I gave a talk there a few years ago and found it a warm and engaging place.
But not this time.
THE CHURCH OF SAINT JOSEPH OF ARIMETHEA IN IRAN
In the early 1600s, some 150,000 Armenians fled persecution from the Ottoman Empire to settle in Isfahan, Persia under the protection of Shah Abbas. There they created an extraordinary trading network that stretched from Amsterdam to Manila, becoming prosperous in the process. This enabled them to build extraordinary Armenian Apostolic Church cathedrals – Armenian Christianity being one of the oldest Christian denominations originating in the 1st century AD.
Here you see the Armenian Apostolic Church in Isfahan, built in 1606 and dedicated to Saint Joseph of Arimathea, the disciple who took Jesus’ body off the Cross. The Armenian Quarter of Isfahan remains populated by thousands of Armenian Christians today who may freely practice their faith, albeit strictly within the confines of their neighborhood and never beyond. Nonetheless, it comes as a shock to see this in present-day Mullah Iran. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #262 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY MASTERING YOUR EMOTIONS, MOODS, AND REACTIONS
Mastering our emotions, moods and reactions begins with understanding our fundamental nature as living, growing organisms. Our biological processes are full of rhythms, pulsations, flowing liquid and moving breath.
Nature’s forces are powerful and enduring. If we try to fight against a powerful wind, we can be quickly overcome by it. But if we can accept, study, and harness those same forces, we can power a sailboat or a windmill.
By stepping back and looking at the bigger picture of our own internal nature, we can more easily understand our own patterns and rhythms; and if we begin by accepting these as they are, we can use their power and direct them in ways that work better for us, rather than fighting against ourselves; against our own nature.
We begin with orienting to our biological nature. From this perspective we can begin to make sense of our flowing emotions, our changing moods, and our sudden and intense reactions.
MAGIC MOUNTAINS
In a remote valley between the northern escarpment of the Tibetan Plateau and the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia, you find these magic painted mountains of red sandstone created by Himalayan uplift and millions of years of erosion. It’s at the sunrise light of early dawn that the colors are most apparent before they get sunwashed in the bright of day. It takes quite a hike in pre-dawn darkness to get to the right viewpoints at the right time, but certainly worth it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #261 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/17/23
The Saint Patrick’s Day Report
Today is Saint Patrick's Day celebrating the passing of Ireland's patron saint. Rather than talk about the festivities and libations enjoyed worldwide, we explore the schism between the Irish and Roman Catholic Church. The divide has been there since the fifth century. However, it grows wider as the Vatican goes ever more woke, and the Irish refuse to follow.
American cardinals of substantially Irish descent have been meeting in Houston for some time to discuss a possible church synod. A Houston Synod will replace Vatican II if Rome chooses to follow along. Otherwise, it would form the foundation of a New World Catholic Church based mainly on the unique features of the Irish Church as established by Saint Patrick.
These things only happen a few times every thousand years. As expected, the possibility has drawn spooky attention from organizations such as ROCOR, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, which is doing backflips to support a schism in the Western Church. Would Saint Patrick approve? He was the guy that converted the pagans and Druids to Christianity, and he did it with a particular style and masculine swagger.
The bank failures last week might be the tip of the iceberg. Other banks are showing stress as their bond portfolios are incinerated by inflation. The world's power players are alert and taking radical inflationary steps. But hmmm, won't more inflation create a feedback loop that hurts more banks?
The Biden family has been taking money from China through shell companies. This appears to be a severe crime. So far, no congressional investigators have vanished or thrown a wrench into the investigation.
Meta is laying off another 10,000 employees. Their core technology did not turn out to be what they desired. The problem with hiring for woke instead of merit is that companies end up with dysfunctional systems and poor products. Meta is in trouble.
Ukraine is maintaining a robust demand for artillery shells. The United States is drawing down prepositioned stocks worldwide, but the numbers are not good. We currently need at least four new production lines for 155 mm artillery shells. But we lack the industrial infrastructure to build those new production systems. From personal experience this week, I can attest that DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are DIE. The natation's schools have created a compliant workforce, not a critically thinking workforce. This must be solved immediately.
OMG! The O'Keefe Media Group is online. We see throughout this week's HFR the growing obsolescence of big media. The production base of entire companies can be replaced with one or a few iPhones. This massive change to the 100-year narrative coincidentally aligns with the Frankfurt School march through the institutions. The Fourth Turning grinds on…
Finally, we come to J6. Much of this was covered in yesterday's Skye's Links. What was not said was the utter and total destruction of the credibility of the Federal Government will not fade away. Narrative control is lost, and the government's crimes are truly shocking.
Power will devolve to the states.
IT’S MARCH 17TH!
FLASHBACK FRIDAY THE BAMIAN BUDDHA
Bamian, Afghanistan 1973. I spent some time in the Bamian Valley north of Kabul 50 years ago. What you see is the largest of the Bamian Buddhas carved into to sandstone cliffs in 600 AD by a Central Asian people who revered Buddha and called themselves Ebodai. It stands 180 feet tall. The Bamian Valley was a Buddhist pilgrimage site, with thousands of monks in monasteries and temples from roughly 100 AD until 800 AD, the time of the Moslem conquest of Afghanistan.
It was left untouched until the Moslem Emperor of India, Aurangzeb (son of Shah Jehan, builder of the Taj Mahal), blew off the statue’s legs with artillery in 1700. Then in 1890, the Moslem Afghan King of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan, ordered the Buddha’s face above the nose sliced off. The same Islamic practice of literal de-facing conducted upon ancient Egyptian statues including the Sphinx.
It was in 2001 that the Afghan Taliban blew up the entire statue you see here along with others as anti-Islamic “idols.” I consider myself immensely fortunate to witness this extraordinary work of historic art while it still existed.
(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #260 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE WORLD’S REMOTEST INHABITED ISLAND
That would be Tristan da Cunha in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. Some 260 Tristanians live here, all British citizens as the island is a UK Territory, in the island’s only community of Edinburgh-of-the-Seven-Seas. There’s no way to fly here – you have to take a boat for at least a week from Cape Town (and then a week back).
Tristanians are among the world’s most special people. Since the island was first settled in 1810, there has never been a single murder, abortion, or divorce among them. They are at peace with themselves, unfailingly cheerful, hospitable, and contented. If you are lucky enough to reach here, you may not want to ever leave. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #42 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 03/16/23
Breaking News! Kim Jong Un Attends Ivy League University To Learn New Brainwashing Techniques
Actually, Kim now wants to change schools. “Columbia students are pretty woke-washed,” he notes, “but the kids at Stanford leave them in the dust, so I’m transferring immediately.” This, after a woke gang of Stanford Law School students, led by an associate Dean of DEI shouted down a 5th Court of Appeals Judge who came to speak before the student Federalist Society:
The lesson:
Wisdom from the Mises Institute on the new Puritanism. The fear of North Korea defector Yeomani Park as she visited Columbia University—“I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying”—is a grave warning to our country.
DESANTIS IS FLAT-OUT WRONG ON UKRAINE
DON’T LOOK AWAY, GOV. DESANTIS! NYPost today (3/15)
Last month (2/23), the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel told us that Ukraine War Is Ron DeSantis’s Security Test.
Now, after months of near-silence and innuendo, Florida Gov. and GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis decided to speak about Ukraine, removing all doubt about his position. He flunked the test, and badly – joining what Strassel calls “the GOP surrender caucus.”
While his statement on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on Monday (3/13) makes a handful of valid points, it is ridden with a fundamental misunderstanding of the war and US geopolitical interests. Most fundamentally, he fails to understand the stakes of the conflict, calling it a “territorial dispute” in his words. In this, DeSantis could not possibly be more flat-out wrong.
TRAD-WIFE TREND MAKING FEMINISTS FURIOUS
It started with young women half-joking about being angry with the feminist movement for “liberating” women so they now have to get up to go to work to pay their own bills.
Then a trend on TikTok began emerging that gained traction very quickly. It was women simply posting their daily lives as traditional housewives. They cooked, they cleaned, they looked nice for their breadwinning husband, and they took care of the children during the day.
It’s a trend being called “tradwife.” And, wow, is it making woke women just oh so mad…
THE ROCK-HEWN CHURCHES OF LALIBELA, ETHIOPIA
900 years ago, the Church of Saint George (Bete Giyorgis in Amharic) was not built – it was hand carved downwards from a horizontal rock ledge. There is nothing like the rock-hewn churches in Lalibela anywhere else in the world.
Christianity was established in Ethiopia in 330 AD and has flourished ever since. Experiencing the devotion still so very much alive in one of the oldest Christian countries on earth is inspiring. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #26 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WOKESTER APOCALYPSE AT SILICON VALLEY BANK
On the left, they're claiming President Trump triggered the meltdown of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday (3/10) through signing off on deregulation. On the right, they're saying it was wokester priorities that drove the bank bust.
First, here's their wokesterly profile: Their corporate governance charter was full-speed ESG; Their corporate code of conduct went big on diversity, inclusion, and equity; they had a woke boss for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, who was busy organizing a month-long Pride campaign and a "Lesbian Visibility Day."
Second is economist Steve Hanke assessment: “SVB was a poorly run bank, a disaster waiting to happen. Any regulator worth his salt should have seen this coming long ago.”
Once again, the Dems’ one-size-fits-all excuse for anything they screw up – that it’s Trump’s fault – doesn’t wash.
THE BEST SOLUTION TO BIDEN’S GUT-BUSTING BUDGET
Senator Good Ole Boy, John Kennedy of Louisiana
Crazy Joe Biden released a new budget recently, and it’s absolutely gut-busting. With the topline total hitting an eye-watering $6.9 trillion, it would be the most expensive budget in American history, and it’s not even close. It’s so bad that it makes Barack Obama look conservative.
Luckily, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who is famous for his dry sense of humor, has the perfect solution for what to do with it.
“Sen. John Kennedy: ‘The only way I know how to improve the President’s budget is with a shredder.’
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) March 12, 2023”
Hammer, meet nail. Biden’s budget would be an abject disaster, both from the standpoint of fiscal sanity and from a policy perspective as well.HOW HAPPY CAN A YOUNG BOY BE?
And his father too. I started taking my son Brandon on expeditions with me at age five. Here we are in the Serengeti during the Great Migration. He saw three lion kills happen yards away, a baby born in a Masai hut – he’s never forgotten his first great adventure to this day, over 30 years later.
I encourage you in every way to take your children, grandchildren, nephews or nieces on an exploration of one of our planet’s many wondrous places when they are young. It will be formational for them, a founding experience of awe for what a magically extraordinary world they are privileged to live in. And your seeing it through their eyes will be a shot of youth elixir in your veins. It will be a life-memorable bonding experience for you both. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #92 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY WITH THE VIRTUE OF HAPPINESS
Happiness is not a smiley face, and a happy life is not a perfect Facebook profile of blissful moments and beaming selfies building on a continual upward trajectory.
We are biological, not mechanical; our minds are not computers - though some functions of our brains are similar. Our lives are full of rhythms, cycles of expansion and contraction, ebb and flow.
So a human life that is happy is not a trivial matter of being lucky, of getting what we want; of pleasant pastimes or the absence of responsibilities or pain. A human life that is happy is an accomplishment; a triumphant, sometimes even a heroic creation.
Some of the most deeply and genuinely happy people I’ve known have overcome tremendous physical or psychological hardships to get there. As with any big, long term project, it takes work; it’s complicated and time consuming - more like a great symphony of harmony and counterpoint than a simple catchy jingle. To create a life that is truly happy over time takes discipline, passion, and courage.
A happy moment can be a matter of luck; a happy life requires virtue.
THE BLUE CITY OF CHEFCHAOUEN
My wife Rebel and I love this uniquely picturesque ancient Berber village in Morocco where everything is painted in shades of blue. Suffused in soothing blue, there’s no more relaxed place than just about anywhere. Everyone is welcome from the wealthy staying in sumptuous boutique hotels to backpackers in hostels. There are no “tourist spots,” for every café and bar is where the locals go themselves. (It’s pronounced shef-shah-win, by the way.)
Berbers – “Amazigh” (Unconquered) in their language, are the original people of Morocco having lived there for over 12,000 years. They are directly related to the reindeer-herding Lapps of Lapland in northern Scandinavia (they share the same mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U5b1b). Both are descended from the same stock of Cro-Magnon Ice Age hunters in Western Europe that split in two 15,000 years ago – one moving far north, the other south crossing the Gibraltar Strait to Africa.
One more reason why Morocco is so magical. Would you like to experience the Magic of Morocco with us next year? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #21 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
ON INTERNATIONAL WOMENS DAY WHAT REAL WOMEN KNOW ABOUT REAL MEN
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: THE TOMB OF CYRUS THE GREAT
In the vast valley of Pasargadae there stands this simple tomb with nothing around it for miles and miles. It has been like this for many centuries, for it entombs the founder of Persia, Cyrus the Great (600-530BC). Revered as the liberator of the Jews from their Babylonian captivity in 539 BC, hailed by Herodotus for his humanity and wisdom, this small structure symbolizes the humility of an extraordinary man. Yet the tomb is a structure of engineering genius, the oldest built on principles of base-isolation withstanding the countless earthquakes Persia has suffered for the last 2500 years.
I was first here in 1973 when Persia (renamed Iran in 1933) flourished under the Shah. Here I am in 2014, when everyone I met expressed admiration for America and their contempt for the mullah tyranny they endured. I hope to return once more when the Land of Cyrus will be free again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #146 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/10/23
TTP honors and celebrates International Women’s Day this week! Where to start, Step One:
Step Two would be to honor and celebrate actual real female XX-chromosome women – and not mentally-ill gender-dysphoric actual real male XY-chromosome men pretending to be women.
Step Three is to ridicule and laugh at woke idiocy claiming that such men are XX-chromosome women.
Such as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders did regarding a man winning an International Women of Courage Award at the White House on Wednesday (3/08):
Step Four would be to denounce tranny-worship as misogyny, hatred and disrespect for real women; define the term “woman” in state and federal law (such as Title IX) as “a person with an XX and not an XY chromosome”; and publicly label anyone who claims a man with a Y chromosome can be a woman as a “biology denier.”
Oh, and demand that Justice Ketanji Brown recuse herself from any SCOTUS case regarding Title IX, as she testified she doesn’t know what a woman is.
There is so much more in this HFR!! Jump right on in… this is going to blow you away!
THE MYSTERY OF THE REEF OF HEAVEN
In a remote corner of the Pacific Ocean, off the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia lies one of the world’s great archaeological mysteries: the only ancient stone city built on a coral reef. No one knows who built it or how.
Micronesians say their ancestors called it Soun Nan-leng, The Reef of Heaven. Their name for it today is Nan Madol, the City of Ghosts.
On artificial islets connected by a series of canals are massive walls up to 25 feet high enclosing temples, tombs, ritual centers, and platforms for thatch homes – all made of giant columnar basalt stone. Eons ago, lava flows on Pohnpei cooled into vertical pillars. Over a thousand years ago, ancient Micronesians began hauling these basalt logs miles away to build this stone city. With an average weight of 5 tons, 10,000 pounds – and some up to 25 tons, 50,000 pounds each – how they did this remains unexplained. It lies deserted today, abandoned and lost for centuries.
Paddling a kayak through the canal maze of Nan Madol to clamber over these monumental stone complexes in solitary silence – for visitors are rarely here – leaves you in a state of unforgettable awe. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #6 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 03/09/23
It's All Fake
The Crisis of Inauthenticity
____________________________________________________________________________Here is a thought exercise:
How fake and inauthentic must information be to be manufactured and inauthentic?]
Everything is fake, from musical performances to Congressional committees and elections to national policies and the science of war.
The English language is poorly equipped to differentiate the degree and direction of inauthenticity, and this is a growing problem.
Tucker Carlson is unleashing the J6 videos on Fox, and the ratings are more significant than for all other television in the same timeslot combined. We are talking about landing on the moon levels of viewership, and the left is in a total freak out.
No doubt, something big will be done to bump the narrative. But now, it's pretty clear that government is as fake as the news.
It is ever more crucial to discern the difference between the real and the fake, to have the courage to state it, and the culture not to tolerate punishment for that courage.
This, my friends, is why you are a TTP member. Come over to Skye's Links and talk about the inauthenticity problem.
THE VIDEOS SHOWING THE TRUTH ABOUT JAN 6 HAVE THE DEMS IN PANIC
Now, the Justice Department also kept a lid on that video footage and in fact, in some cases, DOJ did not share it with criminal defendants who had been charged on January 6 in violation of their constitutional rights.
We felt it was a public service to bring what we could to you. There was no justification for keeping the secret any longer and a powerful argument to be made that sunlight is always and everywhere the best disinfectant and in fact, because it was video evidence, it is to some extent self-explanatory.
Democrats like Chuck Schumer reacted with hysteria, overstatement, crazed hyperbole, red-in-the-face anger. What is that? Well, it's not outrage, of course. It's fear. It's panic. Here’s why – and why the McConnell-Romney GOP is in panic as well.
DOES THE GREATER IDAHO MOVEMENT PRESAGE A NATIONAL DIVORCE FROM THE POLITICAL LEFT?
They said it was an absurd waste of time, but now, the progressive coastal regions of Oregon and Democrats in Idaho are getting a little worried about the “Greater Idaho Movement,” with at least 11 eastern Oregon counties officially voting to leave the state and join their more conservative neighbors in Idaho.
Democrats were saying that the move was impossible, but with momentum growing they are now suggesting that the break-up is “bad for the country.”
Yet it makes perfect sense for red counties to want to break away from blue states after the kinds of chaos leftists have created within our nation in the past few years alone. When Dems say this would be “bad for the country” what they really mean is that it will be bad for them.
If people have the ability to choose and take their county and their land with them, why would they stay under the governance of a leftist dominated place?
THE FLATTEST PLACE ON EARTH
The Salar de Uyuni, 12,000 feet high in the Altiplano of Bolivia, is a 4,000 square mile expanse of salt so flat it is used to calibrate the altimeters of NASA observation satellites of the earth. After a rain, it becomes the world’s largest mirror, 80 miles across. The incredible reflective surface extends to the horizon in every direction – it is both hallucinatingly disorienting and makes for amazing mirror-to-horizon photos (especially at sunrise/sunset).
The brine underneath the salt crust contains 70% of the world’s lithium – critical to our battery-fueled global economy – produced in evaporation pools that are a kaleidoscope of colors.
You can stay here in relative luxury at one of the world’s most unique hotels – the Palacio de Sal, built entirely of salt: walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, sculptures. Being here is one of South America’s more astounding experiences. Let me know if you want a Wheeler Expedition to take you there! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #39 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
MCCARTHY AND CARLSON JUST BLEW UP THE JAN 6 INSURRECTION MYTH
When it comes to January 6, 2021, a day cynically cast by Democrats as equivalent to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the depths of the Civil War to smear and target the "deplorable" half of the country, Democrats demand that you believe them, and not your lying eyes.
The reality is that they can't handle your handling of the truth.
That's the dirty secret behind their outrage over House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) decision to fulfill a commitment to release the 44,000 hours of January 6 footage the U.S. Capitol Police had been sitting on—outrage further stoked because the process will begin with reporting on the tapes by the Ruling Class's preeminent bête noire, Tucker Carlson.
LIFE AMONG THE RUINS
American society is facing three existential crises not unlike those that overcame the late Roman, and a millennium later, terminal Byzantine, empires.
Premodern Barbarism
We are suffering an epidemic of premodern barbarism. The signs unfortunately appear everywhere. Over half a million homeless people crowd our big-city downtowns.Most know the result of such Medieval street living is unhealthy, violent, and lethal for all concerned. Yet no one knows—or even seems to worry about—how to stop it.
So public defecation, urination, fornication, and injection continue unabated. Progressive urban pedestrians pass by holding their noses, averting their gazes, and accelerating the pace of their walking. The greenest generation in history allows its sidewalks to become pre-civilizational sewers.
THE ISLANDS OF SERENITY
Mulafassur waterfall below the village of Gasadalur is only one example of the serenity of the Faroe Islands. They’re a self-governing Danish possession in the North Atlantic halfway between Norway and Iceland. You won’t find a place of more captivating serene and peaceful charm.
Warmed by the Gulf Stream, in the summer it’s so strewn with wildflowers the roads are known as “buttercup highways.” At every turn along them you’re stunned by the incredible scenery. The capital of Torshavn is so laid back the Prime Minister’s Office – the Løgmansskristovan – is a wood cabin with a green grass sod roof. Great beer from the Faroes’ two breweries is always flowing in the pubs, where the Faroese islanders welcome you like an old friend.
You can easily fly here from Edinburgh, London, Copenhagen, or Reykjavik, Iceland . A few days here will do wonders for your soul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #18 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY UNDERSTANDING THE FUNCTION OF EMOTIONAL MEMORY
We can spend a lot of time thinking about what was missing when we were little, or what we wished would have happened; our many desires unfulfilled, things we left unsaid, support we longed for that wasn’t available or wasn’t strong enough.
I’ve known people who spend a good percentage of their lives absorbed in such memories. Their self-concept, their sense of “who I am,” becomes wrapped around “how it was,” until the two are nearly indistinguishable. This is not a good way to live.
The way through is to change the ongoing hurtful patterns that were established in the past, and that we are continuing to some degree in the present. Let’s talk about how to do this.
ALL FIVE STANS AGAIN
This is my son Brandon at “The Door of Hell” – the Darvaz Gas Crater in Turkmenistan, one of the “Five Stans” of Central Asia, the ultimate in the remote, the exotic, the unknown full of wonders.
Here you will find the ancient cities of the Silk Road still in all their splendor, and one of the glitziest cities you’ll ever see built yesterday in the middle of nowhere. Here you will find the Mountains of Heaven, the Door of Hell, and the Seven Pearls of Shing.
We explored all five in 2018 and 2019, but then came the Covid Lunacy with the world going wacko over a flu bug. Finally we were able to explore four of the five last September (2022) but Turkmenistan remained closed.
Now we just received word that Turkmenistan is reopening at last – so our Heart of Central Asia 2023 this September will soon be revised – for crossing the Kara Kum Black Sand Desert to spend overnight in a yurt at the Door to Hell, and on to Turkmenistan’s marble capital Ashgabad.
It’s All Five Stans again! Hope you’ll be joining us. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #259 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – LIFE MAGAZINE DECEMBER 12, 1960
Yes, believe it or not, this was a 4 page story in LIFE Magazine more than sixty years ago when I first swam the Hellespont. I repeated the swim twelve years later for my book, The Adventurer’s Guide. You can see the whole LIFE story here. Quite an adventure for a 16 year-old kid. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #121 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)