FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE CRUSADER FORTRESS IN THE CAUCASUS
This is the fortress town of Shatili in an extremely remote Caucasus region in Georgia called Khevsureti. It was built by the Crusaders 1,000 years ago. The Khevsur people who live here trace their ancestry back to these Crusaders and until the 1930s still wore chain mail in feud-battles with other towns. I took this picture in 1991.
American traveler Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) saw and recorded the customs of the Khevsurs in 1935. The Khevsur men, dressed in chain mail and armed with broadswords, wore garments full of decoration made up of crosses and icons. They don’t do that anymore, but they proudly retain their Crusader Christian heritage – for Georgia adopted Christianity in the 4th century AD. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #85 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/11/21
And Elite Private Schools Too
On today’s (6/11) TTP, Victor Davis Hanson plaintively asks when will “enough be enough” for there to be a public rebellion putting an end to the Commie-Fascist Woke madness engulfing our country.
Such a rebellion never starts across-the-board, but will always start over a specific issue, a concrete target in particular. That’s what happened this week. It’s been building for a while, but now we have liftoff.
And it’s just one example of what a terrible week this has been for America’s domestic enemies. You’re going to enjoy this….
SIXTIES LEFTIES WERE AGAINST “THE MAN” – NOW THEY ARE “THE MAN”
Starry-eyed radicals in the 1960s dreamed that they either were going to take over America or destroy it.
Yet most of these silly revolutionaries were not unhinged Weathermen killers or SDS would-be Communists, but just adolescents along for the good-time ride. The ’60s were at heart a narcissistic free-for-all when “freedom” just meant self-indulgence and avoiding responsibility.
But today, a half-century after the 60s, this time around their offspring’s left-wing assault is different—and vastly more ominous. Let’s itemize the ways they are turning the American Dream into a dystopian Nightmare.
RUSSIA’S WRONG TURN TO CHINA
Good luck, Vlad! You’re going to get rolled…
Known as the “Pivot to Asia” and informally announced by Vladimir Putin in early 2012, Russia’s strategic (re)orientation to the Asian markets and China, in particular, seems to be failing to work as planned (Mn.ru, February 27, 2012).
New evidence, broken down into five categories, points to multiple flaws in Moscow’s strategy.
First, some profoundly negative trends persist in the realm of foreign direct investments (FDI). The most recent data suggest that the Russian economy is experiencing a massive outflow of Chinese investors.
There’re four more to go…
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:
Should you be lucky enough to come here, you’ll fall in love with Samoa as did Tusitala. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #136 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)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.
SKYE’S LINKS 06/10/21
All those arbitrary pseudoscientific CCP virus control rules; they are not about safety, they are to condition learned helplessness:
COVID, Learned Helplessness, And Control
The 'Crats and their MSM minions would rather that you thought about anything other than the means used to "win" the last election. Xiden “won” Georgia by only 12,000 votes, while tens of thousands of mail-in ballots were xeroxed for him all exactly the same.
Why A Judge Has Georgia Vote Fraud On His Mind: "Pristine" Biden Ballots That Looked Xerox'd
The coverup has been much broader, deeper, intense, official, and high level than I had ever realized. Much worse - and the pandemic of revelations is escaping:
The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins:
RECALL D-DAY AND DEFEND THE AMERICAN SPIRIT WITH AUDACITY
On June 6, 1944, the United States and its British and Canadian allies launched a long-awaited invasion of the northern European mainland, landing on five German-held beaches in Normandy. The invasion came just two days after U.S. troops liberated Rome and nearly four years to the day after the British had fled the continent from Dunkirk.
At last, the Allies were on the offensive—and, less than a year later, Adolf Hitler killed himself in his bunker in a Soviet-besieged Berlin and the war in Europe was over.
So in the Spirit of D-Day, it’s time to man up and fight – this time against the enemies inside our gates determined to destroy America.
A TEACHER REBELS AGAINST AN ELITE SCHOOL RUINING HER STUDENTS MINDS
Dana Stangel-Plowe
[Yesterday (6/08), a respected and popular English teacher resigned from the faculty of Dwight-Englewood School, an elite college-prep school in New Jersey, costing from $30,000 for pre-school (ages 3 & 4) to $52,000 from Grade 6-12. This is her letter in rebellion against the school’s poisoning her students’ minds with the anti-white racism of Critical Race Theory. It is a terrifying condemnation of what is being done to an entire generation of America’s youth across America.]
LETTER OF RESIGNATION Englewood, New Jersey June 8, 2021
Dear Joe [Algrant, Upper School Principal] (copies to Head of School, Board Trustees, & English Department Colleagues),
I became a teacher at Dwight-Englewood because, as a parent, I loved how the school both nurtured and challenged my own children. Today, I am resigning from a job I love because D-E has changed in ways that undermine its mission and prevent me from holding true to my conscience as an educator.
THE GRAND PRISMATIC SPRING OF YELLOWSTONE
There are places in our world so staggeringly beautiful to have to see them to believe they exist. Yet those people walking along the foot bridge can’t see what you’re looking at. That has to be in the air, hovering from high above in a helicopter. We live in a world of such beauty it really does take your breath away. And best of all, the beauty of the Grand Prismatic Spring of Yellowstone is right here in America.
On Monday (6/07), we got a Glimpse of Horseshoe Bend in northern Arizona and reflected on how much more there was to experience in just that region of the American West. And that’s just one region, one part of one of the most spectacular places in all Creation.
Here we are at Yellowstone in Wyoming, a wonderland by itself. Just to the south are the Grand Tetons. To the west is the Sawtooth Range and the Middle Fork of the Salmon River – one of the best whitewater runs on the planet. It goes endlessly on and on. America the Beautiful is not just a song – it’s glorious reality. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #135, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WHY I’M VOTING AGAINST HR1 THE “FOR THE PEOPLE ACT”
Senator Joe Manchin D-WV
[The entire Woke Left, Democrat Party elite, and their media lapdogs are today in a collective state of apoplectic rage over this announcement of Democrat Senator Manchin of West Virginia, published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail on Sunday (6/06). Note that HR1 has passed the House with zero GOP votes and is now up for a vote in the Senate.]
The right to vote is fundamental to our American democracy and protecting that right should not be about party or politics. Least of all, protecting this right, which is a value I share, should never be done in a partisan manner.
Throughout my tenure in politics, I have been guided by this simple philosophy — our party labels can’t prevent us from doing what is right.
Unfortunately, we now are witnessing that the fundamental right to vote has itself become overtly politicized.