FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE MAN-EATER OF DALAT
Dalat, South Viet Nam, 1961. I was 17 years old. A friend of my father’s, Herb Klein, came by our house. He was a prominent businessman whose passion was big-game hunting. He had just returned from the mountain jungle highlands of South Viet Nam and regaled us with stories of the Montagnard tribespeople who were plagued by tigers with a taste for human flesh. He told me that after climbing the Matterhorn, living with Amazon headhunters, and swimming the Hellespont, hunting a man-eating tiger should be my next adventure.
“You’d be saving so many lives, Jack,” he told me. “There’s one I heard about from the Co Ho Montagnards that’s killed and eaten almost 20 of them in the forests outside the town of Dalat. I know who can guide you, he was mine, his name is Ngo Van Chi.”
Somehow, I talked my parents into letting me do this. I had saved up the money from giving tennis and judo lessons. So there I was, in pitch dark in a “mirador” of branches and leaves, holding a .300 Weatherby with a flashlight wired to the barrel, waiting for this man-eating tiger to come for the rotting water buffalo we set out as bait. Chi and I heard the tiger, I put the rifle barrel out, Chi clicked on the flashlight, I saw these two enormous red eyes, and fired.
And there he is, the Man-Eater of Dalat, who would never kill another human being ever again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #175 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 11/10/23
The famous Grateful Dead song is apropos today, having just returned from ten full weeks of non-stop travel with my life partner Rebel, through all fives Stans of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan – racing to Lisbon for prostate cancer radiation therapy, all the way to Bali to meet and adore our new grandson Theo, sojourns to Christmas and Cocos-Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean, then leading my 9th Himalaya Helicopter Expedition to all eight of the highest mountains in the Himalayas including Everest.
Got back home just in time to celebrate turning 80. Now that’s a long strange trip! Further, being 80 makes me reflect on what a long magically strange trip my entire life has been. I’m in such awe of it I can scarcely believe it happened but it really did.
And then with a heavy sigh, GD’s song makes me reflect also what a long nightmarishly strange trip America has been on, especially since it had the bottomless naïveté to elect a man who wanted God to damn America, simply because he had half-black skin – twice! – and the bottomless cowardice to allow his puppet to steal the presidency in broad daylight.
So now I’m home to patch my bones and gear up to keep on truckin’ – as America must do to save itself from its self-inflicted wounds before they become fully lethal. For as Miracle Max (Billy Crystal) explains in The Princess Bride, there is a very big difference between mostly dead and all dead:
SKYE’S LINKS 11/09/23
The Fall of the Wall, Berlin, November 9, 1989
Today (11/09) is World Freedom Day! A celebration of what Wikipedia calls “a pivotal event in world history,” commemorated by the President issuing on this day, as in years before, A Proclamation on World Freedom Day, 2023.
It has special significance for TTPers, as TTP’s founder Jack Wheeler, as the creator of the Reagan Doctrine, played such an instrumental role in bringing the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union about. (November 9th also has quite personal significance to Jack, for it’s his birthday. He’s 80 years old today!)
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Jack’s Reagan Doctrine and Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative drove the USSR over the economic cliff onto the ash heap of history. Today, our Deep States Federalies (America’s equivalent of Hobbes’ Leviathan), with enthusiastic help from China and Russia, are returning the favor with unsustainable debt and deficits. The current situation cannot go on forever, and so we can be sure that it won't.
Dr. Robert Malone is wise in ways that go beyond medicine and biology. Here he discusses the big picture and the inescapable problems that we must solve to rebuild a free society. Please consider this a must-read:
THE PERITO MORENO GLACIER
One of the most spectacular glaciers on earth, the Perito Moreno spills off the gigantic Southern Patagonia Ice Field constantly calving into Lago Argentino at the bottom of South America. It is almost 100 square miles of ice some 600 feet thick, and is an embarrassment to climate alarmists because it’s growing, not retreating. Every day, huge chunks of ice on the glacier’s front (which you see in the photo) break off or “calve” into the lake, equal to the glacier’s forward advance of two meters or over six feet a day.
Thunderous cracks and booms accompany the plunge of the calved sections with huge splashes of water. You never know when or where they’ll occur along the mile wide front, but when they do, everyone watching exclaims and applauds. We were lucky to have perfectly gorgeous weather. You can take a boat along the front, view it from several boardwalks for marvelous vantage points, or even hike on it with crampons with an ice-trekking guide. Being here is one of Patagonia’s most thrilling experiences.
(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #253 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE PRESIDENT OF ISRAEL’S OPEN LETTER TO US UNIVERSITIES
American University and College Presidents,
As President of Israel, I have spent the past month traveling among devastated Israeli communities, more than 1,400 grieving families, and the relatives of more than 240 hostages. I've been trying to comfort survivors of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, a sadistic atrocity that included rape and torture.
And while doing so, I hear of Jewish students harassed at Harvard University. A Jewish student assaulted at Tulane, Jewish students locked in a library at the Cooper Union as a mob shouts outside, signs accusing Israel of genocide, swastikas painted on dorm-room doors, hateful and intimidating demonstrations - too many examples to list.
All of this is happening not on the fringes of society but in the very temples of scholarship, in halls meant to be beacons of humanism, progress and rigorous inquiry. And it is happening not in Europe a century ago, but in the United States in 2023.
Debate is welcome on any topic, including Israel's actions. But the events on campus are not debate but a defilement of the university and its principles.
How can anyone endorsing, excusing, or glorifying the Hama atrocities have a place in any college, or in the civilized world?
THE FOURTEEN FACTS ABOUT US AID TO UKRAINE
Since Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time in eight years, Russian troops have ravaged Ukraine’s cities, raped its women, and stolen its children. Russian missiles and Iranian drones strike Ukrainian cities daily, often hitting civilian targets. Russia is the aggressor. Ukraine is the victim.
For Americans who believe in respect for national borders, the primacy of national sovereignty, and the right to self-defense, support for Ukraine is natural. Ukrainians are not asking for, nor do they want, US troops to help them fight Russia. All they ask for is the resources required to give them a fighting chance.
Meanwhile, Russia is among America’s top geopolitical adversaries. As former Secretary of State and Hudson Distinguished Fellow Mike Pompeo said last week, a Russian victory “would be felt well beyond Ukraine’s borders, including by strengthening a Russia-China-Iran alliance that aims to weaken the US and our allies across the globe.”
As Congress debates additional support for Ukraine, detractors will spread false and misleading information. It is important to understand the facts. Here are fourteen to be aware of.
THE LAND OF NOAH
We all know the story of Noah and the Ark told in Genesis (chapters 6-9). But do you know where Noah’s grave is? You’re looking at it. There is a tradition thousands of years old that he died and is buried here in the Land of Noah – Nakhchivan.
Known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as “Nakhsuana,” today Nakhchivan is an isolated enclave of Azerbaijan, cut off from the rest of the country by a strip of Armenia reaching Iran. You never heard of it because it’s unknown with a strange name – but the name literally means the Land of Noah. “Noah” is the Anglicization of Hebrew Noakh, or “Nakh” (“van” means “land,” “chi” means “of”).
Noah’s tomb has been built, destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again repeatedly over the millennia. It’s now been built yet again on the original site. Looming near is Haça Dag, the Notched Mountain – where Noah’s Ark they say ran aground as the Flood waters receded, carving a notch on the summit before coming to rest on Mount Ararat about 50 miles to the north (in present-day Turkey).
The people here are wonderfully friendly. I was always told “welcome” everywhere. I was even spontaneously invited to a wedding party in a remote village. You’ll find it easy to make friends here too. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #3, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE NASHVILLE SCHOOL SHOOTER’S MANIFESTO REVEALS THE LEFT’S FAVORITE MESSAGE
On March 27, 2023, a woman named Audrey Hale entered The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, and slaughtered three nine-year-old children and three adults. It was only because police were nearby that she was stopped.
The woman, who claimed to be a so-called “trans man,” left behind a manifesto. However, while police departments and media outlets are usually quick to release statements from mass murderers, government officials in this Democrat-run city refused to do so in this case.
Steve Crowder, though, obtained the first three pages of the manifesto, which he released today. In addition to showing an obsessive level of preparation (this was no spur-of-the-moment killing), the manifesto shows that the killer was motivated by one of the left’s favorite mantras: “white privilege.”
So know we know why the woke establishment made this enormous effort to hide the manifesto.
HOW TO DEFEAT HAMAS FAST, CHEAP, AND EASY
There are 300 miles of Hamas tunnels underneath Gaza
As the war rages on, Gaza is getting destroyed, people are getting killed on both sides, and a resolution of the conflict seems as elusive as ever. On the contrary, the war is escalating and spreading to other theaters. The main problem is the Hamas tunnels.
The massive spiderweb of 300 miles of tunnels boast an impressive level of engineering, constructed from reinforced concrete, divided into separate self-contained sections by steel doors, and reaching depths up to 100 feet. The tunnels are also equipped with modern ventilation systems powered by generators.
They were built under buildings, hospitals, schools, and other civilian projects. The terrorists currently hold more than 200 hostages somewhere in their tunnel maze. With the tunnels, time is on Hamas’s side.
So, what is to be done? This:
THE DONGBA SPIRIT OF NATURE
Originally nomads from the Tibetan Plateau, the Nashi people settled in the fertile Himalayan foothills of Yunnan over 2,000 years ago. From the ancient Tibetan religion of Bön, they developed a unique religion of nature-worship called Dongba. The progenitors of humanity and nature were two half-brothers, two mothers with the same father. Nature is controlled by a human-snake chimera called Shv – a statue of whom you see here.
The Nashi are a peaceful gentle people whose ideal is living in accordance with nature. They dress very colorfully, women have equal respect with men, they write with the world’s only still-functioning pictographic script, and are proud of preserving their culture for millennia. It is an enchanting experience to be among them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #163 photo ©Jack Wheeler)