THE BAY OF PIGS 60TH ANNIVERSARY
[Intro by Jack Wheeler. This is my friend Felix Rodriguez, legendary Cuban-born CIA agent who was key to organizing the Bay of Pigs invasion to liberate Communist Cuba 60 years ago this week, April 17-20, 1961. In 2015, I took Felix to Iwo Jima, where he hoisted the flag of the Brigade 2506 liberation force up the flagpole on Mount Suribachi (you can see the Marine’s 1945 black sand invasion beach below).
Felix’s most famous CIA exploit was capturing Che Guevara in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967. Here he is with Che who had only an hour to live when the photo was taken. The Bolivian military ordered him killed while Felix wanted him to live as Che was pleading to tell everything he knew about Castro.
What follows is historian Humberto Fontova’s account of John Kennedy’s betrayal of the aborted attempt to bring freedom to Cuba. Cuba could have been free and flourishing for the last 60 years had it not been for JFK’s cowardice. Here is the story of magnificent heroism and spineless tragedy.]
AFRICA’S CLUB OBAMA
The ramshackle Club Obama is a shed on stilts above a garbage dump of a beach in Conakry, the capital of the West African country of Guinea. It doesn’t get much business anymore because Obama is no longer popular here. Guineans thought he would flood them with US taxpayer dollars but he didn’t. “Obama did nothing for us,” they’ll tell you.
The sad truth is that Guineans have done nothing for themselves. Independence from France came in 1958, and the place has been run by one party dictatorships, military juntas, and ridiculously corrupt leaders ever since. It’s the size of Oregon, with 12 million people who have a per capita GDP of $800 a year. Yet is has up to half the world’s reserves of bauxite (source of aluminum) and is #3 in world production, has diamonds, gold, and many other resources – which all goes into the bottomless pockets of whoever the ruling elite are at the moment.
It’s the tragedy of so much of Africa writ large. In 1974, after Cassius Clay had his “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire with George Foreman, he was asked by a reporter upon his return to America, “Champ, what did you think of Africa?” With wit and wisdom he replied, “Thank God my Granddaddy got on that boat!” (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #84 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
AWE AT RILA
In a hidden remote mountain valley there is a Christian monastery built over a thousand years ago by the students of a hermit who became the patron saint of Bulgaria, St. John of Rila. The colonnade you see leaves you awe-struck. Earthquakes, fire, pillaging by Ottoman raiders, all through the centuries the Rila monks would build it back ever-better and care for it immaculately.
It is little wonder that the Rila Monastery is a World Heritage Site. The picture you see is only one small section of the magnificent frescoes of the exterior archways – and the interior is equally extraordinary. There are nine more World Heritage sites in this Virginia-size country, like the 3,000 year-old (and still flourishing) city of Nessebar on the Black Sea. Bulgaria is one of Europe’s true undiscovered gems. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #74 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY XIV
This is a “first contact” – where I and those with me were the first to reach this small band of San Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana-Namibia. This took place in August 1988.
My purpose here is not to relate an adventure story, but to explain how they survive. We evolved as hunters. These Bushmen still practice the original method of human hunting – it’s called persistence hunting. They don’t need massive strength, speed, claws and fangs to kill animals much bigger and stronger like an eland or giraffe. They just walk them into the ground.
It turns out, this is a real key to keeping your sanity.
ZHOU XIDEN
The Three Puppeteers
The Chicoms insist their words and names in Chinese be transliterated into Roman letters with a plethora of X’s and Z’s for no reason. Any word with “sh” they want be an “x” – thus Chinese President Xi is pronounced “She.” As the fraudulent inhabitant of the White House is Xi’s puppet, TTP prefers to spell his last name “Xiden.”
“Zhou” is a common first name in China. Since their “zh” is pronounced as “j,” Zhou is pronounced as “Joe.” For TTP, then, this FOTUS – Fraud Of The United States – will henceforth be named Zhou Xiden.
For your enjoyment, here are three more of Branco’s latest depictions of him (click Read More for them):
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/16/21
When Vice-President Calvin Coolidge became President upon the death of Warren Harding in August of 1923, he succeeded in giving to America what Harding had promised: “A Return to Normalcy.”
It is typical of the pathological liar fraudulently occupying the White House today that he stole Coolidge’s motto, vowing during his basement campaign last year he would bring a “return to normalcy” after the "divisiveness of the Trump years.”
As we all are so painfully aware after less than three months in power, he lied as he always does – inflicting upon us what Harding and Coolidge pledged a return from: the fascist dictatorship of Woodrow Wilson. Except that he’s worse.
Which is actually better in one sense. The bad news we need to accept: life in America is going to get a lot worse fast now under the rule of Woke Abnormals. The good news we need to hold on to: the faster life gets worse, the faster life can return to normalcy.
Thus, we’ll start with examples of woke lunacies of the week, then examples how us Normals can triumph over them.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – WITH THE KHAMPAS IN TIBET
October 1987, on an overland expedition across the entire Chang Tang Tibetan Plateau. Here is where you find the warrior nomads of Tibet, the Khampas. Renowned and feared for fierceness, they couldn’t have been friendlier to me when I gave them each what they treasured most in the world – a photo of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, far more valuable to them than gold.
Before, they were suspicious and angry at a stranger intruding upon them. Instantly with gifting the photos, they were joyous and smiling. They had no idea who I was, all they knew was that I was their friend, insisting I sit down and have a cup of yak-butter tea with them. It was the most memorable cup of tea in my life. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #55 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE NDIKI DRUM
Famboun, Cameroon. This is a Ndiki Drum. It is used by the Sultan of Bamoun to call his subjects to their end-of the-year Nguon festival over which he presides. It can be heard for miles.
The carved wooden forearms and hands propped up at the drum’s end are not the original drumsticks. They are symbolic for what the real drumsticks used to be. Until the British and French put an end to the custom in the 1920s, the Ndiki drumsticks were human arms, amputated at the elbow off captured slaves. Four drummers were needed to properly pound the drum, each requiring two drumsticks: eight amputated human arms in total.
The horror of slavery in Africa was ended by Western colonialists. In its place they introduced roads, railroads, electricity, an impartial rule of law instead of law favoring one tribe over another, and other benefits of civilization. They did a lot of stupid damage to African cultures, true.
But that is vastly outweighed by getting rid of slavery – exemplified by how this drum was pounded until less than 100 years ago. If you have a child or grandchild in school with woke teachers, you might have them bring this picture to class, and explain how the benefits of Western Civilization so greatly outweighs its liabilities. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #124 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE STRANGE DEATH OF THE DEMOCRATS
The
Democrat party is dying. That may be hard to believe since Democrats control both houses of Congress and won the last presidential election with millions of fraudulent votes.
But the exiguous margins of their hold on the House and Senate, with fewer than 51 percent of the seats in either chamber, tell another story, as does the desperation of their struggle to abolish the filibuster and Voter ID election laws, plus packing the Supreme Court
Simply put, Democrats know they can no longer win by the old agreed-upon rules, constitutional or otherwise. Joe Biden may still be alive, but the party is dead.
SKYE’S LINKS 04/15/21
Will this be the fate of Deep State elites in the US?
Potentially very important; the greatest danger to the 'Crat elite may not be from Trump populists, but rather from an emergent explosion of the ongoing American Woke Cultural Revolution:
Is A Cultural Revolution Brewing In America?
Obamas blacklisted for not being Woke enough:
Never Woke Enough: Obamas Blacklisted from Having School Named After Them
There is so much food for thought in this edition of Skye’s Links!