WILL THE BRUNSON BROTHERS SAVE AMERICA?
This is going to blow your mind. Please be sitting down in your most comfortable chair, relax, breathe deeply, and have your favorite adult beverage at the ready – just sip between paragraphs or you might lose it.
The four Brunson Brothers all play the trumpet, and have a recording studio, Rock Canyon Studios, in Provo, Utah. Deron, however, is also a lawyer, a very smart lawyer who has cases heard in the Supreme Court. He recently initiated a lawsuit now stuck in Federal Court, with his brother Loy as the Claimant.
So Deron filed the suit again with Raland as the Claimant, filing it as Brunson v. Alma S. Adams; et al. in Utah 2nd District Federal Court on June 21, 2021.
And who are the Defendants in addition to Alma Adams? 385 Members of Congress (of whom Adams is one), plus Mike Pence, Kamala Harris, and Joseph Robinette Biden.
On what grounds?
THE SCENT OF ANTI-CHICOM REVOLUTION IN THE AIR
This photo report from the Sunday Mail (11/27) is quite extraordinary. Protests have engulfed at least seven major Chinese cities -- Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Urumqi, Zhengzhou, and others, all against COVID lockdowns, with the big one going on in Shanghai, where the locals are openly demanding the ouster of China's supreme leader, Xi Jinping.
When a billion-strong nation rises up on a cause that has unified them such as this, there's clearly the scent of revolution in the air.
HELP STOP A GENOCIDE
The First Holodomor, the genocidal starvation by Josef Stalin of millions of Ukrainians 90 years ago, was kept hidden from the world for many decades. The Second Holodomor, now being attempted by Vladimir Putin, is in the open for all the world to see.
The notion that Ukraine does not exist, that its state is artificial and its national consciousness a confusion -- this Putinist rhetoric is genocidal. Moscow’s claims that Ukrainians are all Nazis or gays or Jews or Satanists (the current line) is nothing more than a fascist politics of us-and-them: the enemy is defined via hate speech as subhuman, as beyond any ethical concern, existing only to be destroyed.
The Russian intention in Ukraine has been genocidal from the beginning.
THE DONGBA SPIRIT OF NATURE
Originally nomads from the Tibetan Plateau, the Nashi people settled in the fertile Himalayan foothills of Yunnan over 2,000 years ago. From the ancient Tibetan religion of Bön, they developed a unique religion of nature-worship called Dongba. The progenitors of humanity and nature were two half-brothers, two mothers with the same father. Nature is controlled by a human-snake chimera called Shv – a statue of whom you see here.
The Nashi are a peaceful gentle people whose ideal is living in accordance with nature. They dress very colorfully, women have equal respect with men, they write with the world’s only still-functioning pictographic script, and are proud of preserving their culture for millennia. It is an enchanting experience to be among them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #163 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY WITH THE ANTIDOTE TO THE HEDONIC TREADMILL
One of the often unspoken expectations when we buy something is that it will, to some degree, make us happy. And when we become used to the availability of good things, when we come to expect them as a regular experience of a good life, we enter what’s called the “Hedonic Treadmill.”
Needing more and more good things in order to feel what we’ve come to expect as a baseline of happiness can be exhausting. It can undermine the sense of happiness we enjoy with each positive experience.
And in that way we can undermine our sense of being happy about our life.
But there is an antidote; something we can deliberately practice and gets easier over time, and that can significantly affect our happiness. Here it is.
THE AMAZIGH
They call themselves Amazigh – meaning “the unconquered” – who are the original people of Morocco having lived there for over 12,000 years. You’ve heard of them as Berbers, a name they find offensive. Another people you’ve heard of are the Lapps, the reindeer-herders of far northern Scandinavia, who call themselves Saami.
Astoundingly, they are directly related, for both are descended from the same stock of Cro-Magnon Ice Age hunters in Western Europe that split in two 15,000 years ago – one moving thousands of miles far north, the other thousands of mile south crossing the Gibraltar Strait to North Africa. Geneticists know this because the Amazigh and Saami share the same mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U5b1b. (See Saami and Berbers – An Unexpected Mitochondrial DNA Link, American Journal of Human Genetics, March 2005.)
So when you visit Morocco and meet a gentleman like that pictured above amidst a display of spectacular Amazigh artwork, you’ll know what incredible history resides within him. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #242 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WHAT IF…?
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: HAJJAR QIM
The megalithic temple of Hajjar Qim (hah-jar seem) on the island of Malta in the center of the Mediterranean, was built a thousand years before the pyramids in Egypt. The Stone Age people there made their temples of enormous stones weighing several tons cut from the limestone bedrock with tools of stone and antler horn for they had no metal, and moved them using small round-cut rocks as ball bearings for they had no wheels.
The massive stone I’m in front of weighs over 20 tons. These folks figured out all by themselves how to build these extraordinary temples to their gods and goddesses close to six thousand years ago. Nobody taught them. They were the first.
These ancient temples are only one of the so many things that entrance the visitor to Malta. Medieval walled cities, sea caves of day-glo blue water, sunset dining in fabulous restaurants with great food, great beer, and great wine, luxury hotels made from palaces or palazzos – all at reasonable cost.
90% of Maltese are devoutly Christian, having been so since converted by St. Paul himself in 60 AD. They are warm and welcoming, eager to have you join in the fun of their village festivals. I had such a wonderful time with them when I was first here in 2009 (when the photo you see was taken). I’ve been back twice now and can’t wait to be there again. So much so I’ll be leading an exploration of Malta over next Memorial Day (May 25-June 2). Let me know on the Forum if you’d like to join me. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #241 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 11/25/22
Electrical Power is the Elephant in the Room.
Russian missiles knocked out the Ukrainian power grid this past week, with much of the nation in darkness.
Lviv, in Western Ukraine, and part of Kyiv appear to be back online as of publishing time. Western nations are scrambling to source every available gasoline and diesel-powered generator for local use while larger military-grade systems are being mobilized.
Electrical grid failure is a severe possibility over much of the world as recent trends in cloud-based computing will drive global demand to 100%, then 200%, then 400% higher within a decade. The most significant driver is cryptocurrency mining.
It has been said that what cannot happen won’t happen. Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but the move to replace national currencies with Bitcoin and similar devices is crashing headlong into the electricity problem. Windmills and solar are toys compared to thermal and nuclear power station output. And these real power plants are being closed.
The result? The US Dollar will fend off the attack from cryptos. It is almost as if the government planned things out this way.
Come on over to the HFR. Let’s talk about the Elephant in the room.
THE EIFFEL AT NIGHT
The Eiffel Tower is especially impressive at night. Taking the elevators to the first, second, and finally the third platform on top with the girders lit up against the black of night makes you gape at the herculean engineering achievement of Gustav Eiffel. It’s overwhelming that it took only 26 months to build – from the start on January 28, 1887 to the celebration of its completion on March 31, 1889.
The Eiffel was built for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the 1789 French Revolution, and of the century of scientific progress and the Industrial Revolution since. It may seem bizarre that it was bitterly opposed by hundreds of Paris’ artistic and intellectual elite, who publicly condemned it as “a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack… stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal.”
Too bad for them, for The Eiffel was quickly embraced by Parisians as a beloved symbol of their city, while it has gone on to be one of the world’s most epically famous monuments.
Rebel and I are here in Paris with our son Brandon for Thanksgiving. I took this picture last night. Should you ever be in Paris, be sure to visit the Eiffel – all the way to the top! – at night. The experience is simply glorious. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #240 photo ©Jack Wheeler)