NIKKI HALEY SQUISHING AROUND
As you may have guessed from the title of this post, I’m not a Nikki Haley fan. She’s a sort of conservative, which makes her way better than a Democrat, but she’s also a squish, which puts her low on my list. I also really dislike her playing the woman card to run. That’s such a Democrat thing to do. Now, my concern is that she’s attacking Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) because he’s holding the Pentagon’s feet to the fire over its illegal abortion policies.
The Hyde Amendment isn’t complicated: It says that federal funds cannot be used to pay for abortions unless the abortion will save the woman’s life or the pregnancy results from rape or incest.
In 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court held that abortion is not a constitutional right, returning the matter to the states. (To make abortion a federal right or ban it nationwide requires a constitutional amendment.) Several states have since banned or severely limited abortion. There are military bases in many of the states that have placed full or partial bans on abortion.
The Pentagon is currently a leftist institution, from the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down. Obama started a purge of conservatives, and Biden has been finishing it.
THE WORLD’S BIGGEST MONEY
We’re on the island of Yap in Micronesia – some 500 miles southwest of Guam and 1,200 miles east of Manila in the Western Pacific. The Yapese have lived here for over 2,000 years, and have maintained their culture and traditions to this day.
Phenomenal navigators in their outrigger canoes, in ancient times they began sailing to Palau over 250 miles south to quarry large sections of limestone and return to stone-chisel them into circles with a hole in the middle (through which world put a long pole for carrying them.
Called Rai, they have been Yap’s currency for two millennia. The ones you see here are typical size but many are much larger, weighing as much as a car. Rai are the world’s biggest money – used not for day-to-day transactions but large ones like a bride’s dowry and wedding party, or a real estate deal.
The Yapese are a proud and peaceful people who live by their code of Respect and Responsibility. They are warm and welcoming to visitors. A 90-minute flight from Guam makes it easy to get here. Spending time with these special people will be life-memorable. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #216 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE FEARFUL LEFT’S IMPEACHMENT PLOT
Weaponizing impeachment is just one of many precedents that Leftists now would not wish to have applied to themselves
An impeachment inquiry looms and the shrieks of outrage are beginning.
The Left is now suddenly voicing warnings that those who recently undermined the system could be targeted by their own legacies.
So, for example, now we read why impeachment is suddenly a dangerous gambit.
True, the Founders did not envision impeaching a first-term president the moment he lost his House majority. Nor did they imagine impeaching a president twice. And they certainly did not anticipate trying an ex-president in the Senate as a private citizen.In modern times, the nation has not rushed to impeach a president without a special counsel investigation to determine whether the chief executive was guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
But thanks to the Democrats, recent impeachments now have destroyed all those guardrails.
FREEDOM WINS IF RFK JR CAMPAIGNS FOR TRUMP IN 2024
The real end goal of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy campaigns is a leadership position in the Trump administration. How much criticism of Trump have we heard from these two Trump political opponents?
The key for Trump and for our country to win could be a powerful coalition with RFK Jr. and his millions of Democrat and Independent supporters. With that coalition, freedom will win and evil will lose.
Many of RFK Jr.’s positions make him more Trumpian than the average Republican politician. RFK Jr. is a DINO (Democrat in Name Only) but actually more appealing to Republicans than to Democrats according to recent polling.
An angry American electorate is desperately hungry for truth and radical counterrevolutionary reforms that only Trump, RFK Jr., and a like-minded administration and Congress can provide. The GOP and our country cannot afford to experience another close election loss.
SPITUK GOMPA
The Tibetan Monastery or “Gompa” of Spituk overlooks the Upper Indus as it flows out of Chinese Tibet and towards Baltistan in Pakistan. The Indus here is the geological dividing line between the ancient Karakorum mountains and the younger Himalayas (40+ million years old and growing: Mount Everest rises 2 inches every ten years).
We’re in Indian Tibet here, a region called Ladakh where Tibetan culture flourishes freely. Wheeler Expeditions first explored Indian Tibet – including running the remote Zanskar River tributary of the Upper Indus, one the world’s most thrilling whitewater experiences – in 1992. We’ll explore it once more next year. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #128 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE RELIGION OF PEACE
[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on September 11, 2003. It is still relevant today]
TTP, September 11, 2003
Earlier this week I had lunch with one of the most extraordinary human beings gracing our planet — His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
In the 102-year history of the Nobel Peace Prize, no one has deserved it more than Lhamo Dhondrub, the 14th Dalai Lama. As a man of true peace and compassion, he is unsurpassed. This is due both to his qualities as an individual and to the religion which enables him to optimize them.
From the President of the United States on down, we are subjected to claims that Islam is a “religion of peace.” To understand how absurd this claim is, just compare Islam to a real religion of peace: Buddhism.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/08/23
Don't Banana My Republic!
The Maui fire last month took many lives and destroyed considerable property. Since then, governments at multiple levels have demonstrated a stilted communication response that increasingly appears inauthentic and politically motivated.
Many children are missing and presumed burned to death. How many? Nobody seems to know. Electronic geofencing prevents private drones from looking at the scene; a tall, opaque fence has been erected around the site. Official government spokespersons do not appear competent or even in the loop.
Censorship has returned to social media with a vengeance as the government demands posts mentioning or discussing the fires be shut down. The immediate question is, why? Why do government agents believe aggressive, centralized narrative control is their best option? Perhaps because we are in election season? Perhaps another reason?
Public relations experts, ministers of propaganda, or whatever they shall be called, did not conceptualize the cause and progression of events effectively. They used poor graphics and messaging filled with blanks and gaps that shredded their credibility.
The official cause of the fire was downed electrical lines into fields of bone-dry grass. Videos of the fire's ignition exist.
But…Many know that directed energy weapons are being researched and that a Chinese satellite operating a LIDAR unit, a laser version of radar, overflew the site. Rumors have expanded to fill the gap without effective official messaging and in light of aggressive censorship.
The fire was a crisis, yet the mismanagement of official communication continues. This begs the question, when faced with crisis communication, why is the first impulse of government to hide, block, and censor? Are government communication teams so thoroughly woke that they cannot perform their jobs? No wonder faith in institutions is collapsing.
Much is being written about expanding the economic zone called the BRICS. Are we supposed to be afraid? And afraid of what exactly? A collection of global extraction-based economies has joined a geographic and political zone centered on China. Most are middle to low-income, low-productivity, low-innovation economies with a collectivist bent. Sure, they can engineer a famine or crisis to promote the debtor/creditor international perspective. At best, they are trying to build a cargo-cult version of the old USSR. In the end, economics are more powerful than political systems. It has been thus throughout all of history,
If the United States stops patrolling the trade routes between the BRICS, pirates and scoundrels will prey on the ships. Even with China as a central member, the BRICS do not have an effective blue-water navy.
We return to the second part of the discussion of Beautiful Trouble, the left's new playbook for revolution in light of modern social media and mobile phones. Today's conversation covers the conceptual framework behind leftist dogma. We will wrap up the conceptual framework next week before moving on to their tactics and logistics, training, and organization over the following weeks.
Troublemakers, as they call themselves, want to remove individuals' right to think and discuss important topics. What is most annoying is the government action in Maui is in synch with the philosophy behind Beautiful Trouble.
Please click over to this week's HFR and join the forum conversation. They want to silence your voice. Don't let them.
OF COURSE SHE CAN
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – SWIMMING THE HELLESPONT
July, 1973. The Hellespont is the famous strait separating Europe from Asia, where the Black Sea after flowing through the Bosphorus at Istanbul and a widening called Marmara empties into the Aegean Sea of the Mediterranean. One of the great stories of Greek Mythology is Leander swimming the Hellespont to tryst with Hero, the woman he loved but was forbidden to see.
Thus he swam at night, and she lit a torch for him to swim to. One night a storm blew out the torch and the strong currents swept Leander onto the rocks to drown. So I first swam the Hellespont at night in 1960 and almost drowned myself (LIFE Magazine, Dec. 12, 1960, pp 91-94).
This was the second time, swimming from Leander’s village site of Abydos on the Asia side to Sestos, Hero’s village site on Europe’s. Here I am having reached the Sestos shore.
The Hellespont is where the Trojan War was fought, where the Persians crossed to lose against the Greeks at Marathon and Salamis, where Alexander crossed to conquer the Persian Empire. Lord Byron swam the Hellespont in 1803 to make all the legends and history a part of his life. I was determined to do the same, twice to make sure. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #100 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE HANGING MONASTERY
The architectural wonder of the Hanging Monastery was built on a vertical cliff face by the Tuoba people of Inner Mongolia over 1,500 years ago (in the 490s). Devout Buddhists and brilliant engineers, they defied gravity by inserting huge wooden crossbeams deep into the cliff to suspend the monastery’s temples, shrines, and monks’ living quarters, connected with bridges, corridors, and boardwalks, out into space.
Liao Mongols in the 900s rebuilt and sustained it, and it has been carefully refurbished and restored in the centuries since. While it remains primarily Buddhist with statues and depictions of Sakyamuni (the historical Buddha of 5th century BC) and Maitreya (the future Buddha), the monks welcome reverence to Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu (4th century BC), as well as Confucius (551-479 BC). Thus you also see shrines and statues of them like nowhere else.
It is a unique and inspiring experience to be here. We’ll be here again in our next exploration of Inner Mongolia sometime soon. ((Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #116 photo ©Jack Wheeler)