WODAABE MEN MUST LOOK BEAUTIFUL TO ATTRACT THE LADIES
The Wodaabe are cattle-herding nomads in Niger, West Africa. Their Gerewol festival features Yaake dances by the men to impress marriageable ladies with how ideally handsome they are. Those ideals include being tall and athletic, having white eyes and white teeth, decorating themselves colorfully, and having a winning smile.
The Wodaabe are a fun-loving, friendly, and hospitable people. You’ll meet them on our Trans-Sahara Expedition when we’re next able to operate one. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #57 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYES LINKS 03/25/21
"The End Of America" - wisdom on biofascism from the American Institute For Economic Research. “We have reached Step Ten of the Ten Steps to Fascism.”
The new thought police; North Korea’s Kim must be green with envy:
The New Normal "Reality" Police
Here is a penetrating analysis of why the woke journalist world is really so full of hate:
It's All Just Displacement: Freddie deBoer
Here is what is really inside of the 'Crats' American Rescue Plan:
CHINA’S VIRUS HAS MADE CHINA’S DEBT PROBLEM WORSE
China’s ongoing battle with debt continues, as the government attempts to reduce leverage in the wake of its China Virus fiscal spending.
Guo Shuqing, chairman of China Banking Regulatory Commission, stated recently that high financial leverage may threaten Chinese firms with bankruptcy. Guo noted that China’s debt has soared 30 percent since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.
High debt levels have presented an ongoing challenge to China’s economic health. Here are the details on why.
DRACULA’S CASTLE
Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” described Count Dracula’s home as a castle located high above a gorge perched on a rock in Transylvania’s Carpathian Mountains. And here you are, Bran Castle, built in the late 1300s near the town of Brasov in Romania, and traditionally associated with Vlad Dracula (1428-1477).
His father, Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Dragon), as the ruler of Wallachia (southern Romania), led Christian knights fighting Ottoman Turks called the Order of the Dragon, or “Dracul” in Romanian. His son succeeded him as Dracula – “son of the dragon” – waging war upon the Moslem Ottomans so brutally he became known as “Vlad the Impaler” for impaling his enemies. They began spreading rumors of his being literally bloodthirsty, drinking his enemies’ blood.
Over the centuries since, Vlad Dracula has been celebrated by Romanians as their national hero in his liberation struggle from the Ottomans. But was Bran Castle his home? He had many homes, and was here many times during his campaigns. Visiting Dracula’s Castle is always a highlight of our explorations of Eastern Europe. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #56 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HOW CHINA WAGED A COVERT WAR AGAINST THE US WITH THE CHINA VIRUS
The President of China, Xi Jingping, has made his intentions extremely clear: to overtake the United States as the major global superpower. In domestic speeches for Chinese audiences, he hammers the table about dominating the US.
“The biggest source of chaos in the present-day world is the United States,” President Xi said recently, “The United States is the biggest threat to our country’s development and security.”
Some people are afraid that this means a hot war with tanks and guns is on the horizon. But that would be counterproductive for China. They don’t need to go to war. They already won. Just look at how much China has accomplished over the past year.
DEFEATING WOKE TYRANTS
David Beheading Goliath, Guillaume Courtois 1660
“A small but determined and vicious minority is bullying people,” observes Instapundit Glenn H. Reynolds in the New York Post. “Woke tyrants are riding high” and “62 percent of Americans self-censor their political expression.”
The question for me, as a scholar and citizen, is why this minority has been able to gain such control, not only here but throughout the Anglosphere and in Western Europe. This group’s ideas seem weird and entail the debasement of the West’s core population, who are being urged or forced to submit to their own degradation and the canceling of their inherited culture and morality.
Why do we, who are in the majority, allow this?
HOW TRUMP CAN BUILD A TRUE LIBERTY-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA EMPIRE
President Trump jump-started his presidential campaign because of his outsized presence on Twitter. Once he became president, he used Twitter to bypass a hostile media. He also used his tweets to capture the media's attention while he got the real work done in the Oval Office.
No wonder Twitter has deplatformed him. Now, though, a Trump insider is reporting that POTUS has social media plans for his own: he's got a new platform planned and wants to redefine social media.
For those people around Trump or any of the people he's been meeting with who read TTP, I have a few suggestions. It's not enough to create a social media site. Trump needs to create a communication, finance, and platform empire. Anything he builds should include:
YOUR NEIGHBORS IN BORNEO
Live on a private houseboat exploring the jungles of Borneo by river and families of Orang Utans will be your neighbors.
To get here, you fly from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta to a small town in southern Borneo, Pangkalan Bun, on the Sekonyer River. You hire your own houseboat called a klotok (shower, nice bed, good warm food and cold beer) and English-speaking guide to take you up river through the jungles of the Tanjung Putting Orang Utan reserve. You’ll see proboscis monkeys, hornbills – and more wild orang utans than any other place on earth.
Spend time among them and you’ll understand how smart and human-like these gentle giants are. It’s an endearing experience never to be forgotten. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #72 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY X
It’s especially important now when the feardemic results in so many of us cocooning ourselves. Yet one of the absolute best ways to lose your sanity is isolation.
So is there a mother or father, son or daughter, brother or sister or close relative that you once talked with a lot and haven’t in a long time? It happens. We get busy, the days and weeks and months keep passing by – and that’s your life passing by.
Human beings are social animals. We need steady regular meaningful contact with friends and family to keep us mentally healthy and alive.
THE TOMB OF THE FRAGRANT CONCUBINE
Princess Iparhan, granddaughter of the ruler of the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar, was so famous for her beauty and the intoxicating natural aroma of her body that the Manchu Emperor far to the east called for her. She was 22, the year was 1756. The Emperor became completely infatuated with her, making Iparhan his Imperial Noble Consort, loving her deeply until her death 33 years later in 1789.
In mourning, the Emperor kept his promise to her that her body would be returned to Kashgar and buried in the mausoleum of Apak Hoja, built in 1640 by her Apaki family. And there she rests today. Everyone in Kashgar and beyond, however, knows the mausoleum as The Tomb of the Fragrant Concubine.
It’s a wonderfully romantic legend, and even though there are several conflicting versions, let’s hope this one is true. Regardless, a visit to this peaceful shrine is certainly memorable. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #54 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)