WALT DISNEY’S REAL CASTLE
This is the ruins of the Castle of St. Hilarion in Northern Cyprus. In 1191, the Byzantine ruler of Cyprus made the mistake of capturing a ship carrying Princess Berengaria of Navarre and held her hostage. She was the fiancée of England’s King Richard the Lion-Heart. You don’t do that to a guy nicknamed Lion-Heart.
Richard proceeded to conquer the whole island and turned it over to a group of French Catholic knights led by Guy de Lusignan. The knights built a series of fortified castles around the island to ward off the Moslem "Saracens." The most spectacular was atop a vertiginous crag high above the port of Kyrenia named after a crazy hermit who lived near there whom the knights dubbed St. Hilarion.
When Walt Disney was making his classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, he chanced upon pictures of St. Hilarion’s Castle, which his imagination transformed into the fairy tale castle of the movie. Can you see how he got the idea?
In the castle museum, there’s an explanation with some of Disney’s original sketches based on St. Hilarion’s. Disney was an imaginative genius. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #139 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HOW TRUMP IS BURSTING THE BUREAUCRATS’ DC BUBBLE ONE AGENCY AT A TIME
A hallmark of President Donald Trump’s second term is that he’s not just promoting his own policies — he’s looking to shake up the American power structure from top to bottom.
Step by step, he is undermining or destroying the left’s decades-old program to achieve total dominance of government and politics through its control of money and institutions.
That’s what Trump is up to with his plan to move much of the federal bureaucracy out of the Washington, DC, area and into the rest of the country.
In doing so, he’s infuriating federal bureaucrats leading cushy lives in DC and its suburbs, close to the centers of power — and close to the various contractors and lobby groups that can be expected to offer them well-padded post-retirement jobs.
Here’s a host of good things this will achieve.
WILL NEW DOGE AI BREAK DEEP STATE POWER?
The Deep State is a budget-busting, bureaucratic tyranny, crushing capitalist meritocracy and social values. It is a self-directed, out-of-control monster that fights MAGA tooth and claw.
However, the brilliant computer “nerds” of Elon Musk’s Department Of Governmental Efficiency are already using the first version of their Artificial Intelligence software tool with the goal of eliminating at least 50% of federal regulation -- swift, massive deregulation across the federal government.
DOGE has developed this initial, primitive, tool to evaluate what we can think of as the internal rationality of federal regulations. If half of them can be eliminated because they are out of date, redundant, or mutually conflictive, that suggests that half of what bureaucrats do is useless waste.
This is huge. A main source of Deep State’s bureaucratic power is writing the federal regulations that describe how to apply and implement laws passed by Congress.
Note that this scale of information is beyond the ability of a single mind, or team of minds, to read, absorb, and comprehend. Only AI level software can hope to deal with this massive blob of unrationalized data.
An AI software program that identifies redundant and conflicting regulations, and maybe justifies eliminating half of them, is, effectively, a regulation weed-whacker against a leftist bureaucracy.
IS TAIWAN A POSSESSION OF THE UNITED STATES?
Flag of the Republic of Formosa 1895
[This Monday’s Archive was first in TTP on August 11, 2005. Twenty years later, the question remains. Wikipedia’s article on the Political Status of Taiwan is completely unaware of it. The argument that under international law the treaty that ended World War II resulting in the United States Military Government having jurisdiction over Taiwan and certainly not China remains valid today. This is perhaps one of the most significant geopolitical facts in the world yet remains unknown and unacknowledged.]
Communist China, the People’s Republic of China or PRC, never tires of denouncing Taiwan as a “renegade province” that belongs to it, and bitterly complaining that any attempt by any country anywhere in the world to treat Taiwan as a sovereign independent nation is a gross interference in China’s “internal affairs.”
This claim should be publicly exposed as baseless – for it turns out that as a matter of international law, Taiwan is legally an overseas possession of the United States of America.
THE DUNES OF SOSSUSVLEI
The colossal red-orange dunes of Sossusvlei in Namibia are the world’s highest, largest, and oldest sand dunes. The one you see here is nicknamed Big Daddy at over 1,000 feet high. You climb it barefoot in early morning – and take plenty of water! The sand of Big Daddy is five million years old, filled with iron oxide giving its color.
Sossusvlei is in the middle of the Namib Sand Sea, which is the oldest desert on Earth, over 60 million years old. Plants, small animals and insects live here on the water from fog than often blankets the desert near the Atlantic Ocean. The Namib coastline is known as the Skeleton Coast for all the shipwrecks along it due to the impenetrable fog. Along it you’ll also find vast breeding colonies of fur seals numbering in the thousands. This is one of our planet’s most fascinating yet little known places waiting for you to explore. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #274 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FLASHBACK FRIDAY JACKSON AT NAMCHE BARWA
In the summer of 2001, I led an overland expedition of 2,500 kilometers across Eastern Tibet, traversing by foot the “Great River Trenches of Asia,” over the 15,000’ Si-la pass between the Salween and Mekong Rivers, thence to the Upper Yangtze by 4WD following it to near its source, onto Lhasa, capital of Tibet.
Enroute we stopped at incredibly remote and rarely seen Namche Barwa (7,782m/25,531ft), the eastern terminus of the Himalayas, which run in a 1,600 mile-long arc from here in Tibet through Nepal, Northwest India, to end at the western terminus of Nanga Parbat in Pakistan.
At nine years old, Jackson handled this like a trooper. What a rewarding thrill it is to have a great adventure with your children. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #277 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HULK HOGAN MAKES SURPRISE ENTRANCE IN HEAVEN TO CHALLENGE JACOB TO WRESTLING MATCH
HEAVEN — What began as a regular day in Heaven was quickly turned upside-down, as legendary sports entertainment icon Hulk Hogan made a surprise entrance to challenge Jacob to a wrestling match.
Jacob, long regarded as the most experienced and intimidating wrestler in the Bible, was reportedly standing in the heavenly ring and speaking to a large crowd of his fans when Hogan's "Real American" theme music blared over the speakers, heralding the arrival of the Hulkster.
"Oh my! What's this? Can it be? It is! It's Hulk Hogan!" an angelic commentator said as Hogan walked to the ring. "What's he doing here? Is he here to issue a challenge to Jacob? Hold on to your hats, folks!"
Hogan made his way through the smoke, lights, and pyro before stepping into the ring, ripping off his shirt, and staring down Jacob. "Lemme tell ya somethin', brother!" the Hulkster said to the roar of the crowd. "All my life, I've been hearing about what a bad dude you were back in the day, man. They said you wrestled with God, brother. Well, now that the Hulkster has arrived, it's time to step up to the challenge. Let's do it, Jacob! You and me, right here, tonight, brother!"
The crowd roared in excitement as Jacob paused to look out into the crowd before slowly shaking Hogan's hand. "You want some, Hogan? You got it!" the patriarch replied.
Over the deafening cheers of the crowd, Hogan promised to give Jacob a fight he'd never forget. "Whatcha gonna do, brother," he asked, "when Hulk Hogan, these 24-inch pythons, and all my heavenly Hulkamaniacs run wild on you?!"
At publishing time, fans and commentators were speculating that while Hogan may have a size and weight advantage in the matchup, Jacob was likely to try to use his patented ladder as a weapon to gain the upper hand.
~ Babylon Bee reporting.
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/25/25
Welcome to the Stupefaction HFR. We’re six months into Trump’s Second Presidency as of last Sunday (7/20/25) and it’s nothing short of outright stupefying. POTUS and his entire White House have every right to strut, preen, and engage in hyperbolic pride.
And it’s all so scrumptiously Schadenfreudelicious how the Democrats and Woke Left are in a dark abyss of hopeless bitterness over it.
So let’s enjoy being stupefied as we recount how the winning has continued this week. We’ll start with Tulsi and a deeper dive into Obama’s Russia Collusion Hoax. You’ll have a reminder of who enabled the hoax, a name not mentioned yet but soon to be for his cowardly betrayal. And another of a Democrat murderer who played a key role in the hoax.
We have a lot of ground to cover, so get comfortable with your favorite adult beverage at the ready. Here we go.
NAPOLEON’S DEATH BED
Longwood House, Saint Helena Island, Atlantic Ocean. On May 5, 1821, Napolean died in this bed. He was surrounded by some 15 of his companions with their wives and children, doctors, servants, a priest, and a British Officer. There has been much speculation of the cause, but arsenic – either poisoning or in the wallpaper – has now been ruled out, and the original diagnosis of stomach cancer seems now confirmed. He was 51.
After his escape from exile on Elba, an island a few miles off the northwest coast of Italy, Napoleon suffered his final defeat at Waterloo on June 18, 1815 by the British-led army of the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian army of Field Marshal von Blücher. The Brits were taking no chances, exiling him to their outpost of 10-square mile Saint Helena, one of the remotest islands on earth, 1,200 miles west of Africa and 2,500 miles east of Brazil in the South Atlantic.
You can visit the hilltop Longwood House where he spent his last years, immaculately maintained with his elegant furnishings, surrounded by carefully attended flower gardens where he strolled – all under the care of the French Foreign Ministry. Nearby in a landscaped forest glen, the Valley of Willows, is his original burial place – far more idyllic and peaceful than his mammoth sarcophagus of ostentatious pomposity at Les Invalides in Paris. Come here yourself and I think you’ll agree. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #275 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE ENEMY WITHIN: THE BILLION DOLLAR CHINESE GROW HOUSE INDUSTRY
It’s a billion-dollar industry, illegal and controlled by Chinese mafia networks in quiet rural and suburban neighborhoods across America.
If that weren’t concerning enough, it also involves drugs, money laundering, illegal immigration, slave labor, and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) extensive influence in the American heartland.
Earlier this month, a major FBI bust of a grow house network in New England was reported with details of the massive scale of marijuana production used to generate profits routed back to China. Boston Herald (7/09): Feds Take Down Chinese-Operated Grow Home Network In Massachusetts, Maine
It’s frankly shocking to read the July 8 DOJ Indictment of seven Chinese nationals for conspiracy to produce and distribute illegal marijuana through a network of grow houses. They were also charged with money laundering and smuggling illegal aliens for cheap labor at the grow operations.
Note: Definition of a Marijuana Grow House is appended below.