TRUMP BOMBED IRAN – HERE’S HOW 12 MEDIA OUTLETS COVERED THE STORY
[It’s Wednesday – let’s have some fun….]
Okay, Trump bombed Iran. The Babylon Bee has assembled headlines from various media outlets here in one place so you can pick a little bit of the truth out of each to learn the whole story.
Here's how different media outlets are covering the historic news:
TEENAGERS OF BUKHARA
Bukhara is the oldest city on the fabled Silk Road. You’ve seen Glimpses of The Well of Job, where legend says Job of the Old Testament struck the ground with his staff, creating a well bubbling with fresh pure water that still flows today.
And of The Ark of Bukhara, the palace-fortress of Bukhara rulers since 500 BC. The ancient Silk Road oasis has a history of 5,000 years. I was first here in 1963, a 19 year-old teenager with a summer job of filming fabulously exotic places in Central Asia unknown to the West for a Hollywood stock film company.
I was not much older than these teenage ladies back then. I took this picture of them when I was last in Bukhara in 2019. It was so extraordinarily lucky of me to experience such magical places as Bukhara when young. It’s enabled me to stay young at heart so many decades later.
If you remain young at heart, please consider joining me on my next exploration of Central Asia. And perhaps you have a teenage child or grandchild with whom you could experience its wonders together. It will be a life-long treasured memory for you both. Carpe diem! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #214 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
ISRAEL GOES ALL IN FOR REGIME CHANGE IN IRAN
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put Israel all in to try to help facilitate regime change in Iran.
He is not saying it 100% explicitly, and the IDF is very carefully avoiding saying it, but on Monday (6/23), for the first time, the IDF attacks on Iran seemed to be overwhelmingly against the regime’s internal political power versus its nuclear or external military power.
Israel is now doing almost everything it can to remove the obstacles preventing the Iranian people to rise up and remove the mullahs from power. Here’s how.
PRESIDENT BADASS
The word “badass” was bandied about a lot after the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump last year. Famously, the bloodied Republican candidate raised his fist in defiance.
In a different context, the same pungent word applies to his 2 a.m. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Trump the TV star has a knack for the theatrical and grand gesture. That obviously matters in domestic politics, but in international affairs, too, where projecting strength and command are just as important.
Bombing Fordow and the other sites was also quite focused, but the operation came as a strategic thunderclap.
One way to put it is that the “shock and awe” bombing campaign before the second Iraq war was much less awesome than advertised, and a prelude to a grinding, drawn-out conflict. Trump’s operations tend, in contrast, to be all shock and awe, and for real.
The Trump method is to simplify everything and apply blunt-force solutions, undergirded by a very human psychology of dominance. That’s what makes him a presidential badass.
HOW CLOSE CAN YOU GET TO A BABY SPERM WHALE?
This close – if you’re at the right place at the right time in the right boat. That would be the Canal do Faial channel between the islands of Faial and Pico in the Azores, populated by more spawning sperm whales that just about anywhere else. It’s also a haven for many other whale and dolphin species on their migratory route between the North and South Atlantic.
This is one of the world’s best whale-watching sites each year in June—and we plan to be there again on our exploration of Atlantic Paradises next year.
You won’t believe how truly paradisical Madeira and the Azores are. Not just the weather and the beauty, but how safe, calm, and serene they are, how friendly everyone is – so friendly because everyone here is at peace with themselves. You’ll discover your inner peace here too. While never being bored as there’s always something exciting to see and do. Like being this close to a baby sperm whale.
You owe it to yourself to make these Atlantic Paradises a part of your life. (Glimpses of our breathtaking world #195).
TRUMP’S GENIUS HEAD FAKE
In Friday’s HFR, I had been totally suckered by POTUS’ head fake that morning (6/20): Trump To Decide ‘Within Next Two Weeks’ Whether To Join Iran Strikes — White House. Along with just about everyone else including every government leader on the planet save for Bibi, I thought this was yet another feckless Trump delay – never dreaming that the B-2 war plan was already underway at the time of the “Two Weeks” announcement.
Perhaps most astonishing was it caught everyone in the media by surprise. Trump’s B-2 attack took enormous execution by a large number of people – yet it was never leaked to WaPo, AP. or the NY Times. Their editors’ lifeblood is the spider web of contacts throughout any administration – especially inside the Pentagon or Foggy Bottom which are riddled with folks infected with TDS eager to leak and ruin a Trump triumph.
Keeping the secrecy lid on airtight is seriously impressive operational security on the part of POTUS. Must be achingly depressing to the media.
What happened on Saturday night June 21 was historical. The world is now living in the Age of Trump. There is only one superpower on earth now and that’s America. No other country could come remotely close to what our B2s did that night. Or have the will to do it.
All of a sudden, Russia and China seem irrelevant.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – YOUNGEST PERSON EVER AT THE NORTH POLE
April 22, 1990. This is my son Brandon, age six, happily atop a small pressure ridge of sea-ice at 90 North Latitude, the geographic North Pole. I started leading expeditions to 90N in 1978. This was my 12th, and the best weather there we’d ever had. A glorious day at the very top of our planet, and a glorious memory for both father and son.
If fortune favors you with the opportunity, have grand adventures with your children or grandchildren when they are young. They will treasure the memories so much they will someday tell their grandchildren about them. Life is short, carpe diem. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #104 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
I HAVE A DREAM
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/20/25
Flaming Cliffs of the Gobi photo ©Jack Wheeler
These are the Flaming Cliffs of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, made famous by American paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews’ discovery of dinosaur eggs here in 1923. I took this picture just a few days ago on my Explore Mongolia expedition with your fellow TTPers. Now I’m back home. Yet a part of me is still there in Mongolia’s vastness.
There’s no Internet out there so for weeks I was blissfully unaware of the outside world’s shenanigans. Only when I got back to Mongolia’s capital of Ulan Bator was I able to get online – and the first thing I did was read Mike Ryan’s HFRs of the last three weeks. They are beyond brilliant. Frankly, they are genius like no other website is graced with. Do yourself a favor this weekend by savoring them. Thanks yet again, Mike…
So here we go. Welcome to the Summer Solstice HFR. What say we start with what everyone in Israel is watching this morning:
MANICHEAN MOMENTS
Most often, there are valid perspectives on either side of a dispute, not a simple divide between good and evil with no gray areas in between. That was not the case in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Mujahaddin you see here were fighting a morally just war against immoral atrocity. The war waged by the Afghan Mujahaddin to liberate their country from Soviet Russian conquest was a Manichean Moment.
There is another Manichean Moment taking place right now in Ukraine. Once again, Russia is attempting to subjugate an innocent country with bombs and immoral atrocity. This is good vs. evil once more. There is no gray area. Those on the side of Ukraine and Zelensky fighting for freedom are on the side of moral decency. Those on the side of Russia and Putin are not. They are on the side of irredeemable evil.
That’s why, when I see photos of Ukrainian freedom fighters atop Russian tanks they captured, it reminds me of those I took of Afghan freedom fighters atop Russian tanks they captured. The Mujahaddin defeated Russia a third of a century ago. The Ukrainians will defeat Russia now. Good will triumph over evil once more. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #191 Afghanistan photo ©Jack Wheeler)