SKYE’S LINKS 06/17/21
County Sheriff pushback against the 2nd Amendment's death by a thousand cuts proponents:
Utah's 29 Sheriffs Vow to Protect 2A Rights from Federal Gun Controls
“This is the peaceful and effective solution millions of Americans have been praying for to take back America county by county and state by state.” A peaceful revolt in support of the Bill of Rights, and it has just started:
#UNRIG: Two Nevada Counties Go Constitutional, Reject COVID-Fueled Government Tyranny
“Touch the ballots, go to jail,” Arizona AG warns Federalies attempting to intimidate Arizona election auditors:
'Touch The Ballots, Go To Jail': AZ Lawmaker Warns Biden AG As Audit Showdown Brews
SPEAKER TRUMP?
This could be the most genius political idea of our lifetimes. Who thought of it first is unclear. It wasn’t POTUS, as he was caught by surprise when passed by him.
There are five stages to follow in sequence. Here they are in outline. Be ready – to call this genius is no hyperbole.
HOW CAN THIS EVIL BE HAPPENING IN AMERICA?
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”
Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution
Last week, five Republican senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding his office’s handling of January 6 protesters.
The letter revealed the senators are aware that several Capitol defendants charged with mostly nonviolent crimes are being held in solitary confinement conditions in a D.C. jail used exclusively to house Capitol detainees.
It is important to emphasize that the accused have languished for months in prison before their trials even have begun, in obvious blatant violation of the 6th Amendment. I have been receiving letters from them or their families. Here are some. They will break your heart. This is America??
MOROCCO’S DADES GORGE
This astounding road is how you traverse the Dades Gorge on the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs in Morocco. Kasbahs are fortified villages of the Berbers, who have lived here since the end of the Ice Ages 12,000 years ago (related to the Lapps of the Scandinavian Arctic, both descending from Cro-Magnon hunters in Cantabria of northern Spain).
The road is rated as one of the most scenic drives in the world. It is in the High Atlas Mountains (once higher than the Himalayas and joined to the Appalachians in the northeast US before splitting apart to form the Atlantic Ocean 200 million years ago). Here you go from the sand dunes of the Sahara to the fabulous kasbahs of Skoura, Ouarzazate, and Ait Benhaddou. The drive is one of the many life-memorable experiences we have in our exploration of Moroccan Magic. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #110 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE GIRL EVERYONE HATES
Kamala Harris' problem isn't race or gender.
True, those are the two excuses that she and her supporters have brought out to explain everything from her humiliating failure in the primaries to her humiliating failure on the world stage during her big international trip.
But no one is buying either of them. The fact is, aside from her self-inflicted problems, and there are many of those, Kamala has no constituency. She’s the girl everyone hates.
DON’T BE TERRIFIED BY HOW MUCH TROUBLE WE’RE IN
A basic premise of the American system, going all the way back to the Founding Fathers, was an educated population.
People weren't expected to be scholars. However, the Founders required a literate and moral population to make their great government experiment work. And that is what they got – while that is what we haven’t.
THE REMOTEST CHURCH
Baihanluo Catholic Church is the remotest Christian Church on earth. The isolated village is in a roadless region high on a Himalayan mountain ridge deep in “The Great River Trenches of Asia” – one of our planet’s most dramatic geological features where four major rivers – the Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze all spill off the Tibetan Plateau coursing south in tight parallel for 100 miles.
In the late 1800’s, French Catholic missionaries made their way far, far up the Mekong from the French colony of Laos to befriend the Nu and Lisu tribespeople up here. They responded by building this beautiful wooden church that has been lovingly cared for by the local parishioners ever since.
I led an expedition traversing all three of the great trenches twenty years ago (2001). We were welcomed so warmly by the devout villagers. It’s hard to get more remote than this, yet they have retained their faith for at least four generations now. You can imagine how powerful and experience it was to be with them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #138 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE FATHER-SON ADVENTURE: FOUR WORDS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE
Brandon Holiday Wheeler – Age 4
Four Words That Changed My Life November 1987
Leading two lives had kept me away from home a long time.
At last I was back home. That was in La Jolla, California back then. In our den we had a two-person wide chaise lounge, upon which I was regaling our first son, Brandon with stories about where I had been. He had just turned four years old. Brandon sat next to me quietly, not saying a word as I carried on and on… and on.
Then, in a break of silence from my monologue, he spoke, his voice barely above a whisper. He said just four words.
THE PILLARS OF HERCULES
On either side of the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar there are two small mountains known since great antiquity as the Pillars of Hercules. The pillar on the northern, European side is the famous Rock of Gibraltar. That on the southern, African side is Mount Abyla, Phoenician for “lofty mountain.”
The legend for the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans was that Hercules pushed the two pillars apart to join the Mediterranean with the Atlantic. We think today of Hercules as a comic-book bodybuilder, while the truth is opposite. The entire ancient Mediterranean world very seriously worshipped him. For the Phoenicians, he was Melqart, King of the Earth. For the Greeks, he was Heracles, Divine Protector of Mankind. He was the same for the Romans, who pronounced his name as Hercules.
The Phoenician trading port of Abyla has a history of 3,000 years, from Phoenician to Carthaginian to Roman to Byzantine to Christian Visigoths to Islamic Berbers to Portuguese – and since 1668 to Spain, which continues to govern it today as the Spanish Autonomous City of Ceuta on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.
Ceuta is a charming European city with beautiful beaches, open air cafés with great sangria, very relaxed and pleasant. It is here you find the statue of Hercules separating his Pillars commemorating the legend pictured above. Easy to get to with high-speed ferries from Algeciras near Gibraltar, Ceuta is definitely worth your while to experience. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #137 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE MAN OF DA MENTIA
News headline: Joe Biden: ‘Terrorism from White Supremacy Is the Most Lethal Threat to the Homeland Today’
