BEING YOUNG AT HEART
You can be young at heart in your 80s and old at heart in your 20s. One of the greatest crimes the Left perpetrates upon humanity is to destroy the joy, optimism, and enthusiasm that comes naturally to the young people of America.
The Left fills them with hate, anger, despondency, hopelessness, embarrassment and guilt for their country -- and personal existence if they are white.
The result is so many young Americans are old – scared, timid, cynical, apathetic, pessimistic, and joyless. Anyone who inculcates this in America’s children, teenagers, and young adults are enemies of mankind and should be treated as such.
So how about you? How much of your soul is filled with joie de vie, the joy of life, the ecstasy and thrill of being alive?
PUTIN IS A DEAD MAN WALKING
Russian despot Vladimir Putin is a “dead man walking” who rarely steps foot outside the Kremlin, British military experts have claimed. Little wonder Putin A No-Show At Ukraine War Talks In Turkey Today (5/15).putin is afraid to fly to Istanbul – the SBU knows exactly why. pic.twitter.com/lYDkaCit9f
— Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@jurgen_nauditt) May 15, 2025
The health of Putin, 72, has long been suspected to be deteriorating with his increasing age, and now experts have said that his brutal invasion of Ukraine has sapped much of his remaining energy.
Former commander of the UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, told the Mirror:
“There are analysts, people who know better than I, who believe Putin is now a dead man walking, a spent force whose war in Ukraine will cause his end.”
Bruce Jones, one of the UK’s leading analysts of Russia, added:
“Things never end democratically in Russia and the situation is bad for Putin. He has had people killed for years and some in his military have already been dealt with in such a way - he knows the way this goes for a leader in Moscow who is not making good decisions. So he is probably right to be paranoid.”
And Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan, added:
MAYA RUINS AND STAR WARS
This is Temple IV at the ancient Mayan capital of Tikal, now in northern Guatemala. It was from the top of Temple IV that the shot in the original 1977 Star Wars movie was filmed of the Millennium Falcon landing (at 44 seconds) near jungle temples (Temples II and III) at the Rebel Base on the moon of Yavin 4.
Built in 740 AD, at 230 feet it is the tallest pre-Columbian structure in all the Americas. While Tikal’s earliest buildings date to the 4th century BC, it was from 300 to 800 AD that Tikal flourished as one of the Mayan Empires most powerful kingdoms.
Then decline set in, with drought, deforestation, overpopulation, and constant warfare with rival kingdoms. With Tikal abandoned by the end of the 900s, it remained covered by rainforest jungle for over a thousand years. American archaeologists began excavations in the 1950s. Today with its major temples restored, Tikal is the most impressive example you can visit of Mayan civilization. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #118 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SUPREME COURT SET TO END ERA OF NATIONWIDE JUDICIAL INJUNCTIONS?
On Thursday (5/15), the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in a consolidated case, Trump v. CASA, which challenges lower court rulings that blocked President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants.
Despite the constitutional authority granted to the executive branch on immigration matters, three district judges issued sweeping nationwide injunctions halting the order. Now, the highest court may have the chance to rein in judicial overreach and restore balance between the branches of government.
Even Newsweek seems to believe that the court will side with the Trump administration. Further, in recent years, some justices have expressed criticism of universal injunctions.
WEAPONS WE WISH WE HAD THAT WE DON’T – BROWN NOTE
One might say that there is a special place in the souls of men for “super weapons.”
Often novel, thought of by someone other than an engineer, chemist, or other scientist, and either made of or powered by the elusive element “Unobtainium”, it is these items that make us enjoy Saturday afternoons at the theater and fuel revenge fantasies involving our ex-paramours or the people holding up the checkout line or ahead of us in traffic.
Of course, some of them are decidedly grim—such as the Death Star’s super laser or The Flying Guillotine. Then there are the others… such as “Brown Note.”
This elusive device, rumored to exist somewhere yet repeatedly debunked by various scientists and reporters (which further confirms it’s real, of course) has plopped—er, popped, in and out of the public discourse for several years now. Recently, it got a tremendous Charmin-squeeze thanks to the Internet doing what it always does best; promoting half truths and conspiracy theories.
It takes the three-year old’s nightmare (or at least, the nightmare of the parent of the three-year-old) and extends it across all domains of the battlespace to leverage asymmetric victory in conflicts ranging from all-out war to the West’s current favorite— “high intensity peace”.
THE NDIKI DRUM
We are in Famboun, Cameroon, West Africa, capital of the Bamoun people. The ruling Bamoun Dynasty was founded by Sultan Nshare in 1394. The current Sultan resides in the Palace Royale here. Nearby is a thatched structure that houses what you see in the photo above.
This is a Ndiki Drum. It is used by the Sultan of Bamoun to call his subjects to their end-of the-year Nguon festival over which he presides. It can be heard for miles.
The carved wooden forearms and hands propped up at the drum’s end are not the original drumsticks. They are symbolic for what the real drumsticks used to be. Until the British and French put an end to the custom in the 1920s, the Ndiki drumsticks were human arms, amputated at the elbow off captured slaves. Four drummers were needed to properly pound the drum, each requiring two drumsticks: eight amputated human arms in total.
While in Famboun, I met one of the wives of the Sultan. It was she who told me the history of the Ndiki Drum.
The horror of slavery in Africa was ended by Western colonialists. In its place they introduced roads, railroads, electricity, an impartial rule of law instead of law favoring one tribe over another, and other benefits of civilization. They did a lot of stupid damage to African cultures, true.
But that is vastly outweighed by getting rid of slavery – exemplified by how this drum was pounded until less than 100 years ago. If you have a child or grandchild in school with woke teachers, you might have them bring this picture to class, and explain how the benefits of Western Civilization so greatly outweighs its liabilities.
THE DEMOCRATS’ DEMONIC HATRED OF THEIR FELLOW AMERICANS
Somewhere between 10 million and 12 million illegal aliens were invited into the United States by the Biden administration.
As far as logistics go, former President Joe Biden could not flee Afghanistan without getting 13 Marines killed and abandoning to the terrorist Taliban $50 billion in munitions, a billion-dollar embassy and a $300 million retrofitted huge airbase.
But Biden and his handlers proved far more logistically capable when their target was fellow Americans.
After all, they somehow managed to stop the congressionally approved continuance of the border wall, subvert federal immigration law, emasculate the border patrol and ensure that millions of people around the world could simply walk into the US illegally, unaudited and with impunity.
Why did Biden or his puppeteers do something so anarchic, so injurious to their fellow Americans?
WILL TRUMP SUSPEND HABEAS CORPUS FOR ILLEGALS?
Will Americans soon witness President Trump’s issuance of an executive order suspending habeas corpus for criminal aliens and American enemies who have participated in an invasion against the United States, and who have chosen to remain in our country against the rule of law?
The writ of habeas corpus goes back to 500 B.C. and is a legal action which allows a prisoner to challenge the authority of the jailer to continue holding him. The legal term habeas corpus literally means “you should have the body” in Latin.
This legal privilege allows incarcerated citizens to seek relief from unlawful confinement as outlined in the Suspension Clause of the U.S. Constitution: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
The privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus has been suspended four times: in areas that were in rebellion during the American Civil War; in eleven South Carolina counties that were under threat by the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction; in two provinces of the Philippines during an insurrection in 1905 when the Philippines were a U.S. territory; and in Hawaii subsequent to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan.
In suspending the writ, Trump would be following in the footsteps of Abe Lincoln, who suspended habeas corpus as a war power to protect the Union when the public safety required it.
THE TO SUA SWIMMING HOLE OF SAMOA
“To Sua” means “giant swimming hole” in Samoan. It’s a collapsed lava tube hole on the south coast of Upolu in Samoa. On top of lava cliffs overlooking the South Pacific, you clamber down the ladder for a memorable swim. To Sua is but one of the attractions of Samoa: gorgeous waterfalls, marvelously friendly people, and the historic home named “Valima,” of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), where he and his wife Fanny spent his last years.
On a hilltop rising above Valima is the gravesite of “Tusitala” – Stevenson’s Samoan name, meaning “Telling of Tales.” Engraved on the side of his tomb is his famous epitaph he wrote himself:
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Should you be lucky enough to come here, you’ll fall in love with Samoa as did Tusitala. ( Photo ©Jack Wheeler)Jack Wheeler is Escape Artist’s World Exploration Expert. He is the founder of Wheeler Expeditions at WheelerExpeditions.com.
THE LUNACY OF A BRITISH LEGACY
[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on July 28, 2006. Now in May of 2025, India and Pakistan are risking nuclear war between them once again. So it’s timely to refresh ourselves with an understanding of how this came about.]
The border between Pakistan and India is one thousand eight hundred miles long, running from the Karakorum-Himalaya mountains next to China all the way to the Indian Ocean. Along its entire length, there is one land crossing for foreigners, between Lahore, Pakistan and Amritsar, India, called Wagha.
To make the crossing, you take a taxi to the Pak side of Wagha, where porters are waiting to carry your bags. After going through passport and customs control, you walk a thousand yards over bare ground to the Indian side, where your Pak porters turn over your bags to a swarm of Indian porters who fight amongst themselves to carry them.
When the porters start grabbing your bags from each other, you have to physically intervene to keep your bags from being torn apart. It is over 100 degrees in the shade.
Then you walk another thousand yards across bare "no man’s land" to Indian passport and customs control. The Indian customs guy writes your passport number by hand in an ancient logbook.
I first did this in 1963. When I described the ordeal to my son Jackson, he found it hard to believe. He believes it now, for we just did this – and the process is exactly the same, unchanged in 43 years.
It’s one more example of the lunacy of the legacy of the British in India.