THE CALL OF THE WORLD
JW’s world travel map up 2013, needs updating to the present
As you may know, I’ve had memorable experiences in every country in the world. Ever since I was a young teenager, the world has been calling me to explore it – and I’ve been responding deeply to that call for well over sixty years now.
And yet… and yet… I must confess to you that I’ve barely begun, barely scratched the surface of the wondrousness of our Earth.
There is a literal endlessness to what there is to learn, witness and infuse your soul about the history, culture, people, and sheer magical beauty that surrounds our planet.
Can you feel it – the world calling you to experience and explore it? The call may be loud and persistent. It may be faint, drowned out by the daily humdrum of life – or under the illusion that you’re too old or somehow unable. But however loud or faint, it’s there in most of us – for how else did we humans populate the entire globe? To seek, to know, to experience, to explore is a very deep part of what it is to be a human being.
The Call of the World is part of the glory of being human – of using our unique, unique of all life on earth, capacity for self-consciousness, of our human ability to appreciate and live in gratitude for being a part of this glorious Earth and Universe.
You know that for almost a half-century now that I’ve made a living enabling people to respond to the Call of the World. This year, with the two year-long Dark Covid Winter ending, that response will be in the Himalayas, Central Asia, Atlantic Paradise Islands, and so much more.
I am hoping, of course, that you will be joining me on at least one of these explorations. More than that, however, I want you to answer the Call of the World that most resonates within you.
Is there a forest, a scenic wonder, a historical town or place near you that you haven’t been to and wondered about? Bet there is. What about somewhere nearby that your kids or grandkids don’t know about and would think is very cool?
Whether the Call of the World in you is to the back of beyond or around the corner, life-memorable experiences await once you answer. In all history that’s been or will be, our earthly existence happens only once for a tiny moment in time. I urge you to answer the Call of the World while you still have that time. Carpe diem. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #187 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
REGAINING YOUR SANITY IN A TIME OF MORAL INVERSION
Afghan Mujahaddin with destroyed Russian T-62 tank, 1983 ©Jack Wheeler
This week, Joel and his family are on a well-deserved vacation in Hawaii. So my turn today.
Every week on TTP Joel Wade gifts us with his wisdom on how to keep your sanity amidst the stresses of life we all experience.
Yet such is the bizarre moral inversion that has been occurring for over eight months now that it has caused some of us to lose their sanity. You cannot keep what you have lost. It must first be found, then you can keep it once more. This is a discussion, then, on how to regain one’s sanity that has been lost.
When one has suddenly become morally demented, factually delusional, and spiritually grotesque; when one suddenly lives in an Orwellian world where slavery is freedom, lies are truth, and evil is good, then one’s sanity has been lost.
Now what if this happens regarding one issue, one set of circumstances in the world – and regarding everything else, one retains their normal moral, factual, and spiritual good sense? What’s going on here?
And what if this happens to people in reverse? To those who on so many issues are morally demented, factually delusional, and spiritually grotesque suddenly become paragons of sanity fully on the side of freedom, truth, and moral decency on one single issue and that alone?
This is the puzzle of moral inversion that needs to be recognized and dealt with, for the issue that is causing it happens to be one of the most dangerous and critically consequential the entire world faces at this very moment. And what is that issue?
HALF-FULL REPORT 11/04/22
Mitch announced that he plans to retire if MAGA wins the election. So long, Mitcheroo… it's time for you to go. We have a country to save, and there is heavy lifting ahead.
Elon is firing about half of Twitter employees and canceling the famous Twitter rest days just before the midterm elections.
Brazil is telling the world that everyone is tired of rigged voting machines. It turns out that the thefts are so simple that even a child can steal an election. Voting machine tampering projects at school science fairs have students demonstrating the problems with SQL Injection. A type of database manipulation.
Pfizer is rerunning their political script while a new epidemic is created to justify its recently patented vaccine. This time for the kids.
Russia and China seem to be showing a high-level interest in DNA warfare, as in perhaps Manhattan Project levels of interest. War is changing fast, but the Russian Officer Corps is bugging out. Nobody is quite sure why.
DEMS’ CLOSING ARGUMENT TO THE MIDTERMS
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – SERA GOMPA, LHASA TIBET
July 12, 2001. I took my son Jackson when he was nine years old on an overland expedition across Tibet this summer. Here he is at the Sera Gompa, a Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) Tibetan Buddhist Monastery just outside Lhasa, Tibet’s capital.
Several hundred monks live here, teaching young acolytes and conducting prayer ceremonies for villagers in the area – albeit under the watchful eye of Chinese Communist government agents. Being here was a very educational experience for Jackson, which he still remembers. Always try to take your kids or grandkids on travel adventures when they are young – they’ll never forget them either.
Another benefit of doing this – particularly with grandchildren – is the exceptional bonding that happens on such adventures. They cement an emotional closeness in a powerful and lasting way. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #236 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE POLISH SAVIOR OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
On September 12, 1683, Ottoman Sultan Mehmet IV as the Caliph of all Islam was on the verge of realizing the great Moslem dream of conquering all of Christian Europe for the glory of Allah. The great obstacle in his way – the city of Vienna – was about to be overwhelmed by the Sultan’s gigantic army of 140,000 Islamic Taliban of their day.
On the Kahlenberg hilltop above Vienna, the commander of the Christian forces, King Jan III Sobieski of Poland, gave the order to attack. Twenty thousand armed horsemen galloped down the slopes of Kahlenberg, the largest cavalry charge in history, with the Polish King and his Winged Hussars in the lead. The cavalry trampled the Ottomans and made straight for their camps.
Ottoman commander Kara Mustafa fled out of his tent and barely escaped with his life (it didn’t last long – the Sultan ordered him strangled). With the Christian victory at The Battle of Vienna, the Moslem threat to Europe was over. Sobieski wrote a letter to Pope Innocent XI, paraphrasing Julius Caesar:
“Venimus, Vidimus, Deus vincit” – “We came, We saw, God conquered.”
In turn, the Pope hailed Sobieski as “The Savior of Western Christendom.” Indeed he was, and still is so revered by the Polish people to this day – with no apology.
For the people of Poland stand out among those of all Europe for their pride in being part of Western Civilization – symbolized for them by this statue of their Hero King trampling the Ottomans in the beautiful Royal Baths Park in Warsaw. They will make sure visitors to the statue note that underneath the right forearm of the fallen Turkish soldier is a book – the Koran.
You owe it to yourself to visit Poland and meet the Polish champions of Christian liberty, having freed themselves from the Ottomans, the Russians, and the Soviets. We need more like them today. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #159 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 11/03/22
Nice place for a clean modern nuclear power plant?
How about a bit of good news to start the links today? Sanity is returning to energy plans in Poland. Westinghouse has been tapped for Poland’s first production of nuclear energy, built on the Pomeranian Coast of the Baltic Sea. It’s a beautiful place as you can see, where it will be supplying beautifully clean energy for the Polish people. All part of Poland’s plans to have 0% dependence on energy from Russia.
Poland chooses US to build its first nuclear power plant
And sanity may be returning to Germany, too. “It would be rather irresponsible to avoid fracking for ideological reasons,” Christian Lindner, Germany’s Federal Finance Minister says. Meaning, “Screw your climate change agenda, we need to stay warm in the winter!”
Govt Minister Demands Fracking Legalized to Boost German Gas Supply
Remember the First Amendment case that I urged you to follow in Skye’s Links last week? To jog your memory, I attached this unforgettable photo to it:
Now you remember, right? Well, there’s more breaking good new this week. Here we go – jump right on in to Skye’s Links!
THE PAINTED CHURCHES OF THE TROODOS MOUNTAINS
For 500 years, from Ca. 1000 to 1500 AD, the Byzantine Christians on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus labored with love to decorate the interior of their humble churches tucked away in hidden valleys of the Troodos Mountains.
There are a total of 10 such churches which are today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The one you see here is the church of the Kykkos Monastery, with its extravagantly painted vaulted ceiling preserved immaculately for centuries. Christianity remains very much alive in these mountains. Come here to be awed yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #235 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
DEMOCRATS FACE CRUSHING DEFEAT EVEN IN SENATE
This is today’s (11/02) RCP Senate projection. Note projected victories for Laxalt in Nevada, Masters in Arizona, Walker in Georgia, Johnson in Wisconsin, Vance in Ohio, Oz in Pennsylvania, and Bolduc in New Hampshire.
With the most accurate pollster, Trafalgar, reporting Tiffany Smiley is only 1% behand and gaining on Dem Sen. Patty Murray in Washington, we just might end up with a 55-seat GOP majority.
Thus it is with infinite reluctance and lingering disbelief, what calls itself the progressive media is starting to concede the outlines of the overwhelming rejection the Democrats, the Biden administration, and Congress have earned and are likely to sustain next week.
Here’s why this crushing defeat is so well deserved.
12,000 RUSSIAN TROOPS DEFENDING KALININGRAD WENT TO UKRAINE TO DIE
Six years ago, the Russian navy formed a new army corps whose job it would be to defend Kaliningrad, Russia’s geographically separate outpost on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania.
This year, when the war in Ukraine began to go badly for Russia, the Kremlin yanked the entire 11th Army Corps from Kaliningrad and sent it into Ukraine. Where the Ukrainian army quickly destroyed it.
The formation, deployment and destruction of the 11th Army Corps tell a story that’s bigger than the tragic tale of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The corps, sandwiched between two NATO countries along a strategic sea, was supposed to give Russian forces an advantage in a global war.
Instead, it became cannon fodder for a Ukrainian army that, on paper, was weaker than the Russian army was. Now Kaliningrad is all but defenseless, and the threat the oblast’s troops once posed to NATO … has evaporated.