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)
GAZA – TRUTHS BEHIND ALL THE LIES
Prior to Oct. 7, there were roughly two million Arab citizens of Israel but no Jewish citizens in Gaza. Gazans in 2006 voted in Hamas to rule them.
It summarily executed its Palestinian Authority rivals. Hamas canceled all future scheduled elections.
It established a dictatorship and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid to build a vast underground labyrinth of military installations.
THE THREAT OF ISLAMIC TERRORISM TO PUTIN
The Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) terrorist attack outside of Moscow was an abject failure of the Russian intelligence services, leading officials to push conspiracy theories claiming that Ukraine and the West were involved.
Compounding this, Moscow’s exploitation of Islamic Tajik immigrants, who perform the hardest, lowest-paying jobs in Russia and whom the police regularly mistreat, only exacerbates domestic tensions and creates a potential recruitment pool for ISKP.
Result: Russia’s anti-terrorism policies to isolate and blame the West for the attack block any possibility of restoring counterterrorism cooperation as Moscow’s influence in the Middle East wanes due, in part, to cordial ties with Hamas.
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)
THE UNHOLY LIE OF TRANSGENDER DAY OF VISIBILITY
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” —Genesis 1:27
Whether or not you subscribe to the biblical account of creation, that sentence says something that humanity has understood for all of its history until a few short years ago — that there are two sexes, male and female.
Sunday, March 31, was Easter in 2024, Resurrection Day, the holiest day on the Christian calendar. Christ died to pay for sin, not to celebrate it. To borrow a favorite word of the Left, He came to heal the marginalized, not to leave them unchanged.
That makes Easter Sunday this year also tragic, as people who ungratefully reject God’s created order celebrated “Transgender Visibility Day.” As if this tiny fraction of the population isn’t already the most “visible” — in your face — segment in the country.
JONATHAN DILLER’S MURDER SYMBOLIZES THE LEFT’S WAR ON LAW AND ORDER
Often, massive historic events are triggered by a single iconic moment. People who have put up with chronic repression will seize upon a single iconic moment to push back.
Britain had been heavily taxing the American colonies for quite a while, but it was the tax on tea that got ordinary people, not ideologues, angry.
In 1963, when Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire in Saigon to protest Ngô Đình Diệm’s Roman Catholic-based persecution against Buddhists, the photo of that moment led to a coup against Diệm, triggering the decade-long Vietnam war.
The dislocations of the Arab Spring started the same way, in 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian, self-immolated to protest government harassment.
What may prove to be a turning point in 2024 is the murder of 31-year-old NYPD officer Jonathan Diller. That’s because his tragic death operates at the intersection of so many Democrat party policies and values, exposing the rot behind all of them.
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)
WHY TRUMP WILL LOSE IN 2020
[This Monday’s Archive was written on March 7, 2019. It was a warning and a solution to no avail. All the main people around President Trump had read this, but in the end, the Dems stole the Presidency in broad daylight and got away with it. Today, they have many millions of more illegal aliens voting illegally to enable them to do it again. Today, the situation is vastly more dangerous, as when an armed electorate realizes the ballot box is fixed against them, they have no recourse but the cartridge box. Our nation is in direst peril. Whatever it takes to have an honest election this November 5th, it must be done.]
TTP, March 7, 2019
This is a real picture, taken by famed French nature photographer Laurent Schwebel. I want you to look at this picture long and hard so it burns into your brain. It should give you nightmares preventing a good night’s sleep.
For this is what the Democrat Party is going to do to America in the November 2020 election – eat and swallow it whole. How can all this be so confidently predicted with 100% assurance? Because the awful truth of Stalin’s observation now guarantees it in America:
“It’s not who votes that counts – it’s who counts the votes.”
Look at that picture of the snake and the bird above – and yes, Laurent Schwebel reported that the bird did not fly away in time, the snake engorged and digested the bird whole. This is what the Democrats are going to do you, to me, to Donald Trump and all of America. And now we know just how they are going to do it.IS THE POPE CATHOLIC?
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)