BALLOONS OVER BURMA
From the 900s to the 1200s, the Pagan Empire built over 10,000 Buddhist temples. 2,200 remain on the plains of Pagan today, one of the world’s most wondrous sights – especially if you see them from above in a hot air balloon. It is truly astounding how much there is to explore and experience in Burma. We’ll be there once more for it all next February. I hope you will be one of your fellow TTPers to join us. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #33 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 02/04/21
“Think of the Trump era as a prison riot. In any maximum security prison, the prisoners know they can’t escape, but they can definitely raise a little hell now and then, which they tend to do when they get really tired of being abused and neglected by the prison guards.” The Nov 3 Great Election Theft and subsequent FPX Dictatorship is to remind us who is actually running things.
But in the real world there is always another show:
THE INSIDER’S GAME
As the apex predators of capitalism, hedge funds are accustomed to raking in billions by driving companies into the ground and feasting on the carcasses.
So there was widespread satisfaction last week when members of an online discussion group called WallStreetBets started beating the Wall Street bully boys at their own game. “The only way to beat a rigged game,” one WallStreetBets leader said, “is to rig it even harder.”
All this outsider army needed to win was the continued ability to communicate with each other online, and their collective ability to keep piling into the “Buy” side of the trade. Within hours, they would be hobbled on the first front and crippled on the second. Welcome to the Insider’s Game – but reality is, the insiders are terrified by the outsiders.
WHY ARE PROGRESSIVES REGRESSIVE?
One common theme in the abject madness and tragedies of the past 12 months is that “progressive” ideology now permeates almost all of our major institutions—even as the majority of Americans resist the leftist agenda.
Its domination resembles the manner in which the pre-Renaissance church had absorbed the economic, cultural, social, artistic, and political life of Europe, or perhaps how Islamic doctrine was the foundation for all public and private life under the Ottoman Sultanate—or even how all Russian institutions of the 1930s exuded tenets of Soviet Marxism.
To be a Silicon Valley executive, a prominent Wall Street player, the head of a prestigious publishing house, a university president, a network or PBS anchor, a major Hollywood actress, a retired general or admiral on a corporate board, or a NBA superstar requires either progressive fides or careful suppression of all political affinities. Why?
THE HIDDEN NORTH FACE OF KANCHENJUNGA
This is one of the truly great mountain sights on earth yet never seen – except for professional mountaineers and those on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions. Kanchenjunga at 28,169 feet (8,586 meters) is the world’s 3rd highest mountain (after Everest and K2), with a drop from summit (the peak on the left in front of the cloud) to the glacier at it base of 12,000 feet straight down.
You can be awed by such a picture, but to actually physically be here, to witness this magnificence personally so that it is forever a part of your life, is to feel a depth of awe that has to be experienced to be understood. Kanchenjunga is part of the Himalayas, now on the border of Nepal and Sikkim, once an independent kingdom now absorbed into India. We fly right up the North Face, and into the Amphitheatre of the Southwest Face as well.
We hope to be here again in early November if Nepal opens up by then; we’ll be here for sure next April. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #31 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
OUR 2021 TO THE POINT SURVEY
Once again, it’s time to ask you for your feedback on how we’re doing, how we can improve, what you’d like more of or less.
As you well know, 2020 was the weirdest year of our lives, and 2021 is promising to be weirder and worse. TTP will be here to help you understand it, cope with it, overcome it, to “survive and thrive.”
You can really help all of us in this goal by taking just a few moments giving your responses in our 2021 To The Point Survey. This is for TTP Members only. Please do not give it to anyone not a fellow TTPer. It can be anonymous, but we hope you’ll let us know your name and email at the end where we ask. – or if we have a question for you regarding your answers.
This is in case you have a comment we should respond to – or if we have a question for you regarding your answers.
So just click on the link -- 2021 To The Point Survey – answer away, and make whatever comments you’d like. There is a place at the end where you can send any message for me or our TTP team.
With thanks and appreciation,
- Jack
WHY IS THE LEFT HAVING NIGHTMARES EVERY NIGHT?
“Mindlessness and moral idiocy are not characteristically human attributes; they are symptoms of herd-poisoning” - Aldous HuxleyHas there ever been a situation throughout all of American history where the Democrat party is so terrified of one man and his supporters that they set out to destroy him unrelentingly from the moment he won an election, throughout his four-year term in office and after he has Left office?
No. Never. But the Left is so frightened of Donald Trump that they mean to literally erase evidence of his existence. Here are seven examples.
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE
Those who deal in feelings rather than facts often justify their calls for censorship and repression by arguing that those who do not “feel” in the same way they do, must be bad people and hence have no rights.
Take the term “social justice.” The word “justice” has had a rather specific meaning for several hundred years. Adding the word “social” as a modifier negates the word “justice,” since social justice is totally subjective where every person can have their own definition.
Last week, [FPX] cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline which was to primarily carry Canadian crude oil to U.S. refineries. Certain “environmentalists” argued for the cancellation on the basis of “saving the environment” and “social justice.” There was no justice in it at all.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY III
Ever hear the story of a fellow who went for a walk around his neighborhood one day and saw a man doing this really weird dance on his porch? The fellow calls out, “What’s the dance for?” The man calls back, “It keeps the tigers away.” Puzzled, the fellow says, “What tigers? There are no tigers around here.” The man happily responds, “You see, it’s working!”
Easy to laugh at one nutty neighbor – but not when almost the entire world is engaged in the Lockdown Tiger Dance.
Here’s the NYTimes’ (1/29) List of Countries Americans Can Travel To. It’s not many out of the world’s 198 countries, and most of those left with onerous restrictions. This Global Feardemic for a flu bug survivability from which is over 99%.
This is a prime example of how critically important Keeping Your Sanity is amidst the whole planet going off its rocker. It’s not just America.
OAMU – A FIELD MANUAL ON ORGANIZING A MASS UPRISING III
Chapter Three: Meetings
An activist group is not likely to be successful unless a sufficient number of members are able to work together to plan, discuss problems, and make decisions about solutions. These activities are difficult and it’s easy to go wrong.
SNCC had a way of conducting meetings that they valued very highly, championed for the local activists, and guarded zealously against change. It came to be called “participatory democracy,” although they did not use the term themselves.
Here are the main principles of SNCC’s participatory democracy.