BEFORE BIDEN: HOW OBAMA SABOTAGED THE AMERICAN MILITARY
Obama fundamentally transformed the military the way that he did the country.
By the time Barack Obama left office, every branch of the military was smaller than it had been on September 11. But the change in size concealed the true impact of America’s most left-wing president in undermining our national security and weakening us in the face of our enemies.
"I've got a pen, and I've got a phone,” Obama famously boasted. He used the pen to unleash a blizzard of executive orders and memorandums. Some led to outraged protests, but some of his most devastating penned assaults on our nation’s military flew under the radar.
THE MOST CHRISTIAN ISLAND
Waitangi Bay, Chatham Island. 530 miles east of New Zealand lies an isolated island of windswept rugged beauty that few people have ever heard of. Yet Chatham Island may be an ultimate Christian example of how to prevail over monstrous evil.
In the early 1400s, a Polynesian people calling themselves Moriori sailed from New Zealand across an unknown empty sea to reach an island they named Rekohu, meaning “misty sky.” For 400 years they lived in peace among themselves – and in utter isolation from the world.
But in 1835, another people arrived, and brought Hell with them. They were a group of 500 Maori cannibals from New Zealand determined to take Rekohu for themselves. The Maori killed them like sheep, men, women, children, and babies, and ate them.
The British Governor of New Zealand ignored the Maori Genocide. There were about 2,000 Moriori on Rekohu (renamed Chatham) when the Maoris arrived in 1835. Only 101 Moriori were still alive by 1862. It was Western Christian missionaries who put an end to Maori killing, eating, and enslaving Moriori. Today on Chatham Island there is a Moriori resurgence – but without rancor. The past is past, they say, what counts is the future. Like few other peoples on earth, the Moriori understand the Christian power of abandoning resentment and grievance.
Come to Chatham to experience a unique place in our world, and a people with their souls at peace. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #176 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
NASR OL-MOLK
What many consider the world’s most beautiful mosque is in Persia’s most captivating city, Shiraz. Over four millennia older than Islam, over two millennia older than Persia, Shiraz was "Shirrazish," a city of ancient Elam at the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. Even then, Shiraz was famous for wine. A thousand years ago, it was considered the best in the world. Marco Polo praised it. No more. Prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there were over 300 Persian wineries. Now there are none.
Shiraz is still a city of gardens and flowers. At the garden tomb of Persia’s most revered poet Hafez (1315-1390), young couples gather for discrete romance as they have for centuries. The beauty of Nasr ol-Molk – with the sun shining through its stained glass windows covering the floor carpets in color, and the interior a dazzling display of pink tile ornamentation – can be overwhelming. The same for the friendliness of the people – always welcoming with a smile for you.
Especially if you are American. All the people we met love America and despise their rulers. The Land of Persia is still here in today’s Iran, and someday it will be free, America’s ally again. The wine will flow here once more. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #83 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE OLD CNN IS DEAD
So, let me give you an advantage in your political discussion group. Here is the headline for January 1, 2022: The old CNN is dead!
The cause of death is not the forced departure of Chris Cuomo or Rachel Maddow’s act becoming so old she is moving to a weekly show. Nor is it that CNN’s jaundiced journalists conspired to be completely wrong about Kyle Rittenhouse, the false Russia collusion claim, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Jessie Smollett, Border Patrol whippings, and countless other “important” news stories.
The real reason is…..
HOW STALIN WON WORLD WAR II AT PEARL HARBOR
Today, December 7, 2021, is the 80th anniversary of the “Day of Infamy” as President Franklin Roosevelt condemned it, Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.
December 7, 1941 should rightly by condemned by history as one of the most infamous in the annals of mankind – but not primarily because of the Japanese.
Rather, it was one of the greatest acts of treason ever committed by citizens of a country against their fellow countrymen, resulting in hundreds of thousands of their deaths. That would be American Communists precipitating the US entering World War II in order to save Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Here’s who they are and how Stalin did it.
INSIDE GIBRALTAR
We’re all familiar with the famed Rock of Gibraltar, huge and imposing from the outside – but inside the Rock itself is the enormous St. Michael’s Cave with fantastical formations colorfully illuminated. For millions of years, rainwater created fissures in the Rock’s limestone widening into huge caves with the steady drip of mineralized water creating massive stalactites hanging from cave ceilings and stalagmites rising up from cave floors. A phantasmagorical experience.
Gibraltar has been a British territory since 1713 when Spain ceded it in the Treaty of Utrecht. Thus also high up inside the Rock are the Great Siege Tunnels the British dug then lined with cannon emplacements to defeat Spain’s attempt to seize Gibraltar in the 1780s. Walking through the tunnels, you peer below looking down where the Spaniards and their French allies were vainly dug in – and where there is now an airplane runway stretching across the isthmus.
That’s just a glimpse of what to discover visiting Gibraltar, as there’s so much more! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #12, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY THROUGH THE QUIET POWER OF KINDNESS
For some, happiness is a word that conjures up visions of selfish people concerned only with their own pleasure; but this sort of hedonistic approach to happiness is a recipe for serial bursts of pleasure at the expense of long-term happiness.
When I speak of happiness, I am describing a much richer concept; more akin to what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia or "success at being human."
One of the central elements for living well is how we relate to other people. In this regard, happiness is literally the opposite of self-centeredness or self-absorption. In fact, contrary to many Las Vegas advertisements or Hollywood-lifestyle fantasies, self-absorption is a key ingredient for depression, and single-minded focus on personal pleasure is a recipe for long-term misery.
So here's the single most effective thing we can do to get an immediate and significant boost to our genuine happiness - and to set the stage for a deeper, long-term happiness as well. It's simple. It's not mysterious. But it is substantial:
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)
75 YEARS LATER
HALF-FULL REPORT 12/03/21
Big Pharma is simply jumping for joy over the entire world losing its mind over the “Omicron variant.” Of course, it’s largely responsible, as with the tens of billions of dollars they’re making with vaccines and boosters, thy can easily afford to put boatloads of politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists all over the world on their payroll.
Funny thing, though, with the deluge of fear porn being spread everywhere, and all the reports of “cases” rising, there’s nary a word about anyone anywhere – from South Africa to any of the 34 countries so far where it’s been found – actually dying of Omicron, or even requiring ICU hospitalization.
With Omicron, covid has evolved into just a common cold, and as such may cause the end of the entire Feardemic –which could mean the end of the Democrat Party, or certainly their grip on political, cultural, educational, and institutional power in America.
Hold on, this HFR is revelatory.