SKYE’S LINKS 06/13/24
The media this week has mostly been all twiddlepoop about the ridiculous Trump verdict, the surprising (but appropriate) Hunter Biden verdict, and Israel’s fantastic rescue of four hostages in Gaza, so the Links list is short, but it’s portentous with no less than five important SCOTUS decisions coming up this month.
And Elon Musk is asking them to add a review of Jack Smith’s methods to get data on President Trump by a sneaky back door, too. More and more info is leaking out about the China Virus leaking out of a lab (not a bat), further vindicating all of us conspiracy whackos who knew that in spring of 2020; and more and more Texans are calling for a Texit.
Then we’ve got some very interesting charts about gold, the Euro, and the dollar, and we’ll wind up with the possibility that the Navy may have learned something helpful from Ukraine (!) and a little schadenfreudelight for dessert. Love those liberal tears!
There are five SCOTUS decisions coming in the next couple of weeks, and they are likely to include some hugely consequential ones, especially regarding the possible overturning of Chevron deference:
Five Supreme Court issues set to reshape America’s political landscape
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)
CAN DEMENTED JOE SURVIVE HUNTER BEING THE FIRST FELON?
Well, well, well — how the tables have turned.
Hunter Biden's swift conviction on three felony gun charges, in the Biden family's home state of Delaware, changes everything. No longer can the Dems, and their enablers in the left-wing media, shout 'convicted felon' at Trump without suffering serious blowback.
The party line from President Biden, no doubt, will be that he is not a convicted felon — only his son. Really, Joe's 'only living son', as CNN and MSNBC immediately began repeating moments after the verdict.
You see, Joe Biden is, per his liberal media lackeys, the only guy who can beat Trump: a bastion of family unity, decency, and a warrior against corruption. And hey — if the media must almost entirely ignore every one of this family's glaring depravities to get him elected, just as they disavowed Hunter's laptop, so be it.
Here's the thing with Hunter's case: All roads lead back to President Biden. Here’s why
WIPEOUT IN EUROPE – CONSERVATIVE PARTIES GET BIG WINS
When Geert Wilders's party won in the Netherlands election a few months ago, after many years of trying, some thought it was just an anomaly.
Actually, it was a warning shot.
Europe's EU parliamentary elections since yielded big gains for conservatives in major countries, dubbed "the far right" by the leftist press -- in France, Germany, Belgium and beyond.
According to Fox News:
“Germany's conservatives finished first in the European Union's elections, as far-right momentum within the bloc has sent France's leadership scrambling.
THE TO SUA SWIMMING HOLE OF SAMOA
“To Sua” means “giant swimming hole” in Samoan. It’s a collapsed lava tube hole on the south coast of Upolu in Samoa. On top of lava cliffs overlooking the South Pacific, you clamber down the ladder for a memorable swim. To Sua is but one of the attractions of Samoa: gorgeous waterfalls, marvelously friendly people, and the historic home named “Valima,” of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), where he and his wife Fanny spent his last years.
On a hilltop rising above Valima is the gravesite of “Tusitala” – Stevenson’s Samoan name, meaning “Telling of Tales.” Engraved on the side of his tomb is his famous epitaph he wrote himself:
Should you be lucky enough to come here, you’ll fall in love with Samoa as did Tusitala. ( Photo ©Jack Wheeler)Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Jack Wheeler is Escape Artist’s World Exploration Expert. He is the founder of Wheeler Expeditions at WheelerExpeditions.com.
FOUR LIVING HOSTAGES ARE RESCUED, AND HAMAS LOVERS ARE FURIOUS
Since October 7, Hamas has had the choice to return the hostages and end the war. It refused, and now its supporters are horrified that Hamas members, both in uniform and civilians. are paying a price.
In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, leaving the region Judenrein (“Jew free,” as the Nazis liked to say) and without an Israeli military presence. There was no occupation.
Gazans promptly—and overwhelmingly—elected Hamas, a designated terrorist group that Iran funds, to govern them. Hamas’s repeatedly stated goal is to erase the Nation of Israel. Gaza residents continue to love their terrorist government.
For decades, Hamas has killed Israelis whenever possible, making clear that it desires another Holocaust. On October 7, Hamas upped the ante, entering Israel and slaughtering 1,200 people with horrific sadism, especially sexual sadism, as well as kidnapping 252 people, regardless of sex and age.
Israel’s response was war. It has had two goals: to destroy Hamas’s operation effectiveness and to recover the hostages.
THEY WANT A CIVIL WAR. DON’T GIVE IT TO THEM
[TTP: This article had been abridged for space. You can read the entire article here.]
Throughout time, there has always been a small group of people who ruled over the masses. They used their power to subjugate, suppress, dominate, and enslave the multitudes.
But the Founding Fathers of the United States disrupted this. They declared that we are not a nation of subjects. That our representatives are our servants, not our rulers. And that, because our rights come from God alone, governments do not have the authority to take those rights away from us.
They made it clear that we the people, not the government or the ruling elite, own this country.
But today, the ruling class seems more determined than ever to dominate us. And, unlike the days of yore, the potentates now have advanced technological tools at their disposal to do just that.
Governments around the world are putting in place a technological infrastructure that will give them and their corporate cohorts total surveillance and absolute control over the global population.
THE NATURAL INFINITY POOL OF SOCOTRA
National Geographic calls the remote island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen in the Indian Ocean “the most alien-looking place on our planet,” because of its incredibly weird and bizarre plant life like the Dragon’s Blood Tree.
Yet it is safely far away from anarchic Yemen, peaceful and serene in its isolation. And it contains places of mesmerizing beauty – like this natural infinity pool on a cliff edge high above the ocean in full view. Socotra is spectacularly exotic, like nowhere else in our world. It is truly life-memorable to experience it. Wheeler Expeditions was there in the Spring of 2014 – and we’ll be there again soon. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #129 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
COMMENCEMENT
[This Monday’s Archive was originally published in 2005. We rerun it annually at college graduation time. Feel quite free to send this to any recent college graduate you may know.]
Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Board of Regents, Members of the Faculty, Honored Graduates, Families and Friends:
It's funny that they call this ceremony a Commencement, for you've all reached the finish line: college, goodbye, we're outta here. Yet of course, "commencement" means a beginning, not an end.
But one is supposed to at least start - commence - a talk such as this by saying funny things. So I'll start by talking about Clark Gable movies. If you've heard of Clark Gable at all, you know he was the biggest movie star in Hollywood a long time ago. His most famous movie was Gone With The Wind.
He made a movie in 1955 called The Tall Men with Jane Russell as his girlfriend and Robert Ryan as the heavy. It's a pretty ordinary Western flick with outlaws and cowboys and Indians - and at the end, Ryan, the bad guy, and his henchmen get the drop on Gable, the good guy, and all seems lost. Suddenly, surprise, Gable outfoxes Ryan and triumphs. Gable makes his exit, and after he does, Ryan delivers a line that I want you to never forget.
Serendipity is funny, a very funny thing, finding something where you least expect it. Out of the blue, out of a movie awash with pedestrian dialogue, comes a line so profound it detonates inside your brain. Ryan turns to his men and says:
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: ASTRIDE WHERE AFRICA IS SPLITTING APART
It looks like a crack in a road, but this is in the Afar Triangle of Djibouti, where a triple junction of tectonic plates is tearing Africa in pieces. Plates spreading apart is called a Rift. I’m standing over where three gigantic rifts – the Red Sea that has split Arabia and northern Africa in two, the Gulf of Aden that will split off Somalia from the rest of Africa, and the Great Rift Valley of East Africa currently ripping Africa itself asunder – originate. Here the once intact Africa Plate began to tear in three directions.
Ironically, here is where humanity did the same. Genetic scientists have determined that some 60,000 years ago a small band of Africans (less than 200) rafted from what is now Djibouti to what is now Yemen in Arabia – and that incredibly, every human on earth today except for those who stayed, is descended from them. That means, e.g., all Europeans, Chinese and Asians, Australian Aborigines, North and South Native Americans, descended from those 200 people long ago.
Two amazing facts from this tiny country. There’s a third – it’s the best place in the world to swim with whale sharks, an unforgettable experience. All in Djibouti! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #238 photo ©Jack Wheeler)