FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE MAGIC OF TASSILI
February, 2003. In the deepest hidden heart of the Sahara Desert where Algeria, Libya, and Niger come together, there is a high uninhabited plateau called the Tassili n’Ajjer. It is one of the most magical places on the planet – gigantic rock pillars and arches in spectacular abstract shapes, a forest of 2,000 year-old trees from when the Sahara was once green, the greatest profusion of prehistoric rock art on earth many thousand years old.
This is my son Jackson when we trekked and camped here at age 10. He’ll be guiding our next expedition here with me next January, for it is now safe and secure again. Come with us to have one of the most magically unforgettable experiences of your life. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #122 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FEAR OF VIRUS MUTATIONS LATEST RUSE TO DESTROY OUR FREEDOM
While COVID-19 can hardly be called a major public health threat anymore, having now reached endemic status (like the seasonal flu), the fearmongerers who need this crisis to continue in order to complete the implementation of a Great Reset of the global economy and social structure aren’t letting up.
So they fearmongering a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 that is, allegedly, now “causing so many problems” in Europe. But is it really? To be clear, there will be many new variants of this virus, just as the seasonal flu changes and evolves from year to year. The thing is, as viruses mutate within a population over time, they tend to become more benign.
Aren’t you tired of chasing their moving goal posts yet?
THE DEATH OF PAN
At the foot of Mount Hermon in northern Israel you find the Grotto of Pan, the Greek God of Nature, where pilgrims came from all over the ancient world to worship. Remnants of the huge Temple of Pan are here, together with the cave grotto where he lived when not at Olympus. The spring that gushes forth from the grotto is one of the sources of the Jordan River.
If Pan was ever disturbed, he would groan so loudly it would cause anyone who heard it to “panic” (panikos in Greek) – the origin of the term. Loudest of all was his last. The legend is that with the advent of Christianity replacing belief in the Olympian Gods, Pan died for lack of worshippers, emitting a death groan of agony from the mouth of the cave you see here so loud and terrifying it was heard throughout the Mediterranean. It’s a beautiful and peaceful place today. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #51 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 04/08/21
VERY IMPORTANT! The Great Clarence Thomas concurrence on tech censorship and legal frameworks for dealing with it:
Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Will Soon Have to Address Tech Censorship
You want bombshell? Big Tech/Big Media is doing everything to suppress the fact that JoeBama’s nominee for US Associate Attorney General and her family sold acetic anhydride to Mexican drug cartels, which is used to make high-grade ‘china white’ heroin and methamphetamine.
Indiana AG Begins Probe into Five Big Tech Corporations & Vanita Gupta
THE DOOM OF NEW YORK CITY
“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”
That’s how Gideon Tucker — a New Yorker who knew Albany as a former legislator, secretary of state and judge — put it back in 1866.
His wisdom, as demonstrated repeatedly over the ages, is timeless.
Yet there is something different, and especially troubling, about this time. The possibility of permanent decline and the ultimate destruction of the New York we know is unmatched in modern memory.
EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM IS ON THE MOVE
Just a few weeks ago, COVID-related lockdowns were leading many states to implement or advance already existing school choice measures. Now it is happening at breakneck speed.
Legislators and parents have become fed up, and are doing what they can to regain control of the educational lives of children. They have watched as private schools flourish, while many of the government-run variety—typically at the behest of the teachers’ unions—have been shuttered.
Also, because of forced online learning, parents have been given a Zoom-view as to just what teachers are—and are not—teaching. Quite an eye-opener.
TAKING YOUR KIDS ON A GREAT ADVENTURE
When he was 10 years old, I took my son Brandon to Indian Tibet for one of the great whitewater experiences on the planet, running the Zanskar River through the crest of the Himalayas. That was 27 years ago and he’s never forgotten it to this day.
Taking your kids on a great adventure not only bonds you with them in a deep and unique way, it opens the world to them as a place of magic, excitement, and wonder that stays with them for the rest of their lives. And for the rest of your life too.
In the summer of 2021, we’ll explore Indian Tibet again – the remote Himalayan regions of Lahaul, Spiti, Ladakh, and Zanskar – where traditional Tibetan culture still flourishes as it no longer does across the border in Chinese Tibet. I am proud to say that Brandon will be leading the expedition. I’ll just be along for the ride. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #64 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE VIRUS OF FEAR
[Preface by Jack Wheeler. This essay by Simon Black hit a personal note for me. As you know, I make a living running expeditions, and thanks to this Feardemic have not been able to since January 2020. This is global paranoia on a scale never seen before in world history. Yet there are countries coming to their senses. Portugal is opening up so that we’ll be able to explore it in June. Zambia in July. Colombia in August. Central Asia in September. Our famed Himalaya Helicopter Expedition in Nepal in October. Ireland? It’s on again-off again in Dublin – we’ll be there once it’s on again dependably. We hope that’s soon.]
Cancun, Mexico. Two days ago, in its infinite wisdom, the government of Chile announced that they were once again closing the national borders and putting the country back into lockdown.
It’s not just Chile; these same sorts of restrictions are happening all over the world. We should call this flu bug not Covid-19, but Covid-1984.
BIDEN KILLS TRUMP’S GOLDEN GOOSE
The Pavlovian “Trump did it!” sums up Joe Biden’s fallback excuse when faced with any embarrassment and failure.
The truth is that Trump’s policies at home and abroad were neither neoconservative and interventionist nation-building nor RINO Republican country-club economics, but instead realist abroad and populist at home.
More importantly, Trump’s record was not so much ideological as practical, and led not to chaos but to achievement. Biden is daily discarding that gift and blaming Trump for his own growing self-created miseries.
THE REMOTEST SWIMMING POOL
This is St. Paul’s Natural Pool on Pitcairn Island, where in 1790 Fletcher Christian and his mutineers of the Mutiny on the Bounty settled, and where their descendants live to this day. They were awed by the uninhabited island’s lush beauty, with huge banyan trees rising above them like giant cathedrals, and thought it a Garden of Eden where anything grew, coconuts, bananas, taro, breadfruit, mangoes, guavas, passion fruit, yams and sweet potatoes in the rich volcanic soil.
Pitcairn has no beaches, though, so this was their swimming hole – and still is for Pitcairners today. They are happy to take you here, and to the island’s colorfully named spots, like Where Dick Fall, Oh Dear, Break Im Hip, Down the Hole – and to Fletcher Christian’s Cave, his lookout for British warships hunting them (they failed for 25 years) .
It’s not easy to get here – fly to Tahiti, then remote Mangareva from where you sail for two days on a supply ship. But you’ll be so welcome upon arrival. You stay in one of their homes in Adamstown and be treated like family. It’s a travel experience like none other. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #63 photo ©Jack Wheeler)