BEST IDEA OF THE YEAR
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – AT THE NORTH POLE WITH MY 10 YEAR-OLD SON
April, 2003. On my 21st expedition to 90 North, the geographic North Pole, I took my son Jackson. He was nine, but handled it like a trooper. And no wonder – it was his third time! The first was when he was just six, following his brother Brandon whom I had taken to the Pole back in 1990.
We landed our ski-equipped Twin Otter on the sea ice – and as it’s featureless with the ice slowly moving on the Arctic Ocean surface, nothing stays there for long. So if you want a physical candy-stripe North Pole, you have to bring your own! It is so indescribable to actually be on the very top of our planet that it has to be experienced to be understood. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #95 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/16/21
It is noon Friday (7/16) here in the South Luangwa region of Zambia. Late Wednesday afternoon a pride of lions took down a young male Cape buffalo. You can see the lioness on the right smothering the buffalo to death with her jaws clamped upon its mouth. It struggled in vain, and the entire pride of five adults and four cubs began feasting upon it while still in its death throes.
The scene I am now gazing upon as I write this is the opposite of what is pictured above. It is deeply peaceful and quietly serene. Two hippos are lazing in a lily-covered pond. Impala antelope and a half-dozen zebra are calmly grazing in the tree-dotted grassland beyond, accompanied by a few warthogs and a small troop of baboons.
Yet they all must be alert, for danger can instantly arise. At the slightest warning, the impala and zebra will freeze to stare in the direction of the warning, ready to do whatever needed to save their lives from predators. That’s life’s lesson in Africa.
It’s a lesson that is easily lost in the domesticated safety of civilized society, resulting in unawareness of the grisly lethality of human predators always lurking within it. Societies, cultures, and nations then don’t realize the danger until it is too late, and end up like the buffalo.
SKYE’S LINKS 07/15/21
There’s now a name for what we are suffering: BIDENFLATION. #bidenflation is now a trending hashtag on Twitter.
ARE TEACHERS’ UNIONS EVIL?
America has faced great challenges during the past year and a half: the CCP virus, deep political division, and the aggression of communist China. How have our teachers’ unions responded to these challenges?
So dismally, so anti-American and anti-children, that to ask if they have become evil is rhetorical. Here is a brief summary of why.
THE ROCK PALACE OF YEMEN
Dar al-Hajar, the Rock Palace, was built by Yemen’s ruler, Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamiddin (1869-1948), atop a rock pinnacle as his summer residence. It lies in a valley about 10 miles outside Yemen’s capital of Sana’a. While an iconic example of Yemeni architecture, it’s impossible to visit now with civil war raging in the country. Someday we’ll be able to safely return to Yemen again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #143 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WHY BIDEN WILL NOT HELP CUBA
Why can’t the Biden Administration support oppressed people taking enormous risks for their freedom from socialism?
The reason is simple. The Cubans are protesting against socialism and not in favor of it.
What honest Biden Administration official or compliant D.C. bureaucrat would risk antagonizing a broad swath of the Democrat Party by suggesting that socialism is a source of, rather than a solution to, any form of oppression, let alone the immense oppression Cubans suffer with scant sympathy from Washington?
Demanding “liberty” and telling their government “We are not afraid,” angry protestors in at least 32 Cuban cities and many smaller municipalities have marched to demand an end to the island nation’s six-decade old communist regime.
THE MICHIGAN RINO WHITEWASH
The Michigan Senate Oversight Committee’s recent report on the 2020 election is a classic whitewash – a feel-good exercise designed to sweep problems under the rug so politicians can shift their attentions to other issues.
The report purports to be the by-product of an exhaustive investigation, but the committee is counting on the public – and credulous journalists – to skim through it uncritically, if they read it at all during our Pure Michigan summer.
For example, the committee is remarkably uncurious about the sudden delivery of tens of thousands of absentee ballots to the TCF Center around 3:30 a.m. on November 4 – all with no chain of custody.
THE LESSON OF RABAUL
The small black mountain in front of you is a volcano called Tavurvur on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea. In 1994, Tavurvur erupted, covering New Britain’s beautiful capital Rabaul in ash. The entire area is volcanic, including the hot springs where I’m standing to take this picture. Tavurvur is very much alive and smoking today – starkly beautiful and dangerous.
History can be like this – beautiful and peaceful, then without warning it explodes in violent destruction. The lesson then is how to overcome, rebuild, and avert its repetition.
It’s an obvious lesson to learn right now, with the destruction of our economy by the Chinese Communists unleashing their virus, and the current attempted theft of the presidency and our entire electoral system by the Democrats. We must overcome these twin evils, and we must make extremely sure that we never allow such travesties to threaten our country ever again.
You can climb to the rocky rim of Tavurvur to stare down into its smoking caldera. There’s fabulous scuba-diving along the coral reefs offshore of Rabaul, and upon sunken Japanese battleships from World War II. It’s a worthwhile experience to come here as you learn the Lesson of Rabaul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #97 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF OUR APOCALYPSE: SOROS, XI, GATES, AND BIDEN
The New Testament's Book of Revelation has long puzzled and inspired biblical scholars as to the meaning of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Most agree that they represent four catastrophes that will befall humanity during the "end times."
The White Horse's rider carries a bow and wears a crown. He is generally thought to symbolize Conquest. Fast-forward to today, and consider the work of George Soros.
The Red Horse is, appropriately, the general secretary of China, Xi Jinping, leader of the Chinese Communist Party. The Red Horse is said to represent War, with its bloodshed, murder, and revolution.
Bill Gates and his acolytes like Anthony Fauci could very well be riders of the Black Horse of Famine. The rider of the last horse, the Pale Horse, is Death. Joe Biden represents Death in two ways; his own mental and physical deterioration and the death of America.