WALT DISNEY’S REAL CASTLE
This is the ruins of the Castle of St. Hilarion in Northern Cyprus. In 1191, the Byzantine ruler of Cyprus made the mistake of capturing a ship carrying Princess Berengaria of Navarre and held her hostage. She was the fiancée of England’s King Richard the Lion-Heart. You don’t do that to a guy nicknamed Lion-Heart.
Richard proceeded to conquer the whole island and turned it over to a group of French Catholic knights led by Guy de Lusignan. The knights built a series of fortified castles around the island to ward off the Moslem "Saracens." The most spectacular was atop a vertiginous crag high above the port of Kyrenia named after a crazy hermit who lived near there whom the knights dubbed St. Hilarion.
When Walt Disney was making his classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, he chanced upon pictures of St. Hilarion’s Castle, which his imagination transformed into the fairy tale castle of the movie. Can you see how he got the idea?
In the castle museum, there’s an explanation with some of Disney’s original sketches based on St. Hilarion’s. Disney was an imaginative genius. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #139 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HOW TO RID OUR SCHOOLS OF THE EVIL OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY
As a candidate, Joe Biden’s number one promise was to “unite” America. Yet in his first months as president, his number one priority has been to divide our country by race and gender at every turn.
There is no clearer example than the Biden administration’s new effort aimed at indoctrinating America’s schoolchildren with some of the most toxic and anti-American theories ever conceived.
It is vital for Americans to understand what this initiative would do, what drives it and, most importantly, how we can stop it. Below is my 7-step plan to rid our schools of what is psychological abuse of our children.
THE SCIENTISTS WHO DESTROYED AMERICA IN ORDER TO SPITE TRUMP
Sailing off the edge of sanity
For the past year and a half of COVID, we have been told by those supposedly in the know, to “follow the science.” Those who question the science are at best called names, like “deniers” or “racists”, and at worst, lose their jobs and reputations, and are banned from social media.
Last year’s outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus allowed the world to travel back in time to an age where sailors feared sailing off the edge of the world into a pit of monsters or nothingness.
How did we get to such a place where science can’t be questioned, at least science deemed incontrovertible by the government and media?
THE FATHER-SON ADVENTURE: BRANDON IN AFRICA
Brandon in Africa
August 1988
The Masai guide quietly stopped our Land Rover at the edge of a line of acacia trees. We cautiously stuck our heads out of the roof to watch the scene in front of us unfold.
A draw of dry grass about a hundred feet wide with another line of acacia trees on the other side. A trio of tawny lionesses crouching so deep in the grass you could barely see them. To the left, a small herd of wildebeest were warily making their way up the draw, being herded by a male lion behind them. All you could see of him was the end of his tail with a black tuft of fur sticking straight up above the grass.
The wind was right, a slight breeze wafting up the draw, so in addition to their seeing the tip of the male’s tail, the wildebeest could smell him – but not his female partners in the hunt waiting for them to get closer. A half dozen wildebeest slowly and cautiously moved ahead of the rest until they were less than 20 yards away. The lionesses charged in unison.
THE SACRED MONKEY FOREST OF BALI
Near the town of Ubud on Indonesia’s paradise island of Bali there is a Hindu sanctuary of spectacularly luxuriant rain forest providing a haven for over 1,000 Balinese long-tailed monkeys. Here’s one communing with a group of moss-covered monkey statues that dot the sanctuary.
This is a sacred place for the Balinese people, as it contains three temples over 600 years old, and is devoted to the Hindu principle of Tri Hata Karana – “three ways to reach spiritual and physical well-being” -- harmony between people, harmony between people and nature, harmony between people and the Supreme God.
There is perhaps no place on earth in which to better experience the blissful harmony of Tri Hata Karana than Bali. It is a marvelous privilege to be here and experience it for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #106 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FLASHBACK FRIDAY — AFGHANISTAN 1984
I showed this picture to my mother after my latest sojourn with the Afghan Mujahaddin fighting the Soviet Union and she didn’t see anything unusual. She didn’t recognize her own son standing in the middle. Good thing – if I had been caught by the KGB or Spetsnaz, it would have been, ahh… unpleasant. I was there with the “Muj” at least a dozen times until they defeated the Soviet Red Army in early 1989 – which led to the Fall of the Berlin Wall eight months later and the extinction of the Soviet Union itself by the end of 1991. It was one of the most thrilling – and consequential – adventures of modern times. ( Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #80 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
AMERICA’S NUMBER ONE DOMESTIC TERRORIST
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/18/21
You may have to listen to what Tucker is saying on Tuesday evening (6/15) more than once to grasp its enormity.
Namely, that our corrupt FBI didn’t just have an “intelligence failure” in not being aware of a “ terrorist insurrection” being planned to seize Capitol Hill last January 6, just didn’t warn the Capitol Hill police to take preventative measures once its agents found out about it – but that the FBI organized the “insurrection” with its agents in place with the express purpose of demonizing Trump supporters, patriots and conservatives as “domestic terrorists.”
Yet this, and so much more this week, is actually good news for us.
THE THREE-WAY SQUEEZE THAT SCREWS ZHOU XIDEN
Here is why the “Joe Biden” regime only has a few months to live: it is caught in a squeeze between some of the greatest lies in world history, and they’re all unraveling now.
Anyway, “Joe Biden” is not really functioning as president of the US; he’s just the doddering, photo-op front-man for a kind of politburo centered around Barack Obama, and that group lives in terror of being found-out, which it will be, despite its capture of the traditional news and social media.
Big Lie No. 1 is actually a whole bundle of lies surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic.
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)