HALF-FULL REPORT 09/16/22
Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?
This week we ask the critical question; is the glass half full or half empty? The administration is desperate to control the narrative and remain in power, but they cannot. Success is slipping through their fingers from every direction while a technical revolution is poised to make Big Tech obsolete.
Cornered animals are dangerous, and their narratives are failing.
Jack Wheeler Update: Earlier this month, Jack led a group of TTPers on an exploration of Ireland. Now for the rest of the month, he's doing the same with TTPers exploring Central Asia. He tells me an extraordinary opportunity is now possible thanks to his Marine combat veteran son Brandon: a safe and illuminating exploration of Ukraine.
Brandon has been to Ukraine over a half dozen times in the last few months, inspired by the heroism of the Ukrainian people. Thus, Jack is calling this experience The Inspiration of Ukraine – for eight days in early November to personally witness how Ukrainians are surviving and rebuilding their lives and the country as they win their war with Russia. And very safely, nowhere near any front lines. For details, contact him at [email protected] or [email protected].
Come on in,.and don't forget to add your brilliant insight on the forum. Is the glass half full or half empty?
THE RIGALEIRA INITIATION WELL
Do an internet search for “25 Most Mysterious Places on Earth” or similar listing, and almost always the Regaleira Initiation Well in Sintra, Portugal will be there. Since the photo is almost always looking from the top down, I thought you might like to see one from the bottom up, which is just as dramatic.
The Regaleira is a spectacular Gothic mansion with acres of gorgeous gardens built by a 19th century Portuguese-Brazilian millionaire, Carvalho Monteiro (1848-1920). I love it that his exotic eccentric extravaganza, his Regaleira Palace, was built by private capitalist with his own money – not some feudal king with money extracted from the peasantry.
I took this picture in 2021 with fellow TTPers on our Portugal Exploration. Portugal really is a land of wonders, which I hope you’ll someday experience yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #167 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 09/15/22
Welcome to Skye's Links
World food production is slowing down rapidly, and governments know what happens when people become hungry. Xiden abandoned over $80 billion worth of weapons and ammunition in the eye of the storm of food insufficiency. China reports record harvests, but who knows? Commies always lie. India stopped exporting rice, and California lacks the water to grow it. The fields around Stuttgart, Arkansas, are owned by farmers that cannot afford the diesel to harvest the crop while Louisianna has transport snags.
TTPers know the value of some liquidity on hand. Well, friends, make sure you have a food reserve. Yes, things are tipping this poorly.
What is Xiden doing? He is driving credit card companies to create a defacto gun ownership registry. Never forget that a government is a group of insiders that fleece outsiders, the Constitution be darned.
Join us at Skyes’s links and contribute your insights on the forum. Where do you see the economy headed, both short and long-term?
NASR OL-MOLK
What many consider the world’s most beautiful mosque is in Persia’s most captivating city, Shiraz. Over four millennia older than Islam, over two millennia older than Persia, Shiraz was "Shirrazish," a city of ancient Elam at the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. Even then, Shiraz was famous for wine. A thousand years ago, it was considered the best in the world. Marco Polo praised it. No more. Prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there were over 300 Persian wineries. Now there are none.
Shiraz is still a city of gardens and flowers. At the garden tomb of Persia’s most revered poet Hafez (1315-1390), young couples gather for discrete romance as they have for centuries. The beauty of Nasr ol-Molk – with the sun shining through its stained glass windows covering the floor carpets in color, and the interior a dazzling display of pink tile ornamentation – can be overwhelming. The same for the friendliness of the people – always welcoming with a smile for you.
Especially if you are American. All the people we met love America and despise their rulers. The Land of Persia is still here in today’s Iran, and someday it will be free, America’s ally again. The wine will flow here once more. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #83 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
REPUBLICANS AREN’T GOING TO SAVE AMERICA, IT’S UP TO US
Voters, whatever their political views, should rise up against politicians who want to dilute the Bill of Rights to perpetuate their tenure in office. Ted Olson, former Solicitor General
When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil. Thomas Jefferson
War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself. Benjamin Franklin
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” – James Madison, Federalist 47, 1788
Mark Twain tells us, “The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.” Had an author written what has happened to America just over the last six years, no one would believe it. The yarn would be just too far out to have any credence whatsoever. But we’re living it!
OPERATION ‘FASCIST MAGA’ GAINS MOMENTUM
After nearly two years of lies related to the events of January 6, 2021, the regime finally has admitted the truth: The widening legal dragnet to scoop up Donald Trump, his associates, and his voters has nothing to do with the four-hour disturbance on Capitol Hill that afternoon. It is, rather, a thus-far successful crusade to criminalize wrong thinking about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
A barrage of subpoenas issued recently by the Department of Justice—U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves’ office specifically—against Trump aides is not seeking information about the Capitol protest but personal communications discussing what happened with the election and plans to fight the results.
THE LESSON OF RABAUL
The small black mountain in front of you is a volcano called Tavurvur on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea. In 1994, Tavurvur erupted, covering New Britain’s beautiful capital Rabaul in ash. The entire area is volcanic, including the hot springs where I’m standing to take this picture. Tavurvur is very much alive and smoking today – starkly beautiful and dangerous.
History can be like this – beautiful and peaceful, then without warning it explodes in violent destruction. The lesson then is how to overcome, rebuild, and avert its repetition.
It’s an obvious lesson to learn right now, with the destruction of our economy by the Chinese Communists unleashing their virus, and the current attempted theft of the presidency and our entire electoral system by the Democrats. We must overcome these twin evils, and we must make extremely sure that we never allow such travesties to threaten our country ever again.
You can climb to the rocky rim of Tavurvur to stare down into its smoking caldera. There’s fabulous scuba-diving along the coral reefs offshore of Rabaul, and upon sunken Japanese battleships from World War II. It’s a worthwhile experience to come here as you learn the Lesson of Rabaul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #97 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WOW! TWITTER GREEN LIGHTS ANTI-TRANS MOVEMENT
In the history of American social movements, September 11 may take on new significance. September 11, 2022, is the day the powers that be allowed LGBWithoutTheT to trend on Twitter.
In broad daylight, lesbians and gays disassociated themselves from the transgender movement, and Twitter gave them a platform. This is a major turnaround. Just a month earlier Twitter had banned “Gays Against Groomers” for “hateful conduct.”
If Twitter chose to let #LGBWithoutTheT trend for me, it trended for everyone. I suspect someone above the Twitter brass encouraged them to do just that. With the elections just two months away, the increasingly noisy and oppressive trans movement was becoming too much of a political liability.
The resistance among LGBs to the Ts has been brewing for some time. Sunday, it percolated to the surface.
THE WILD COLONIAL BOY
As you can hear, I sure can’t sing so well, but last week being in Pat Cohan’s Pub in the County Mayo village of Cong where the beloved John Wayne-Maureen O’Hara move The Quiet Man was filmed… well, after a pint or two of Guinness, I was persuaded by your fellow TTPers with me to give the movie’s theme song a try.
The Wild Colonial Boy is a ballad of an Irish lad from Castlemaine in County Kerry who sailed off to colonial Australia in the 1820s to become a “bushranger” or outlaw fighting the oppressive local authorities. It’s been sung by famous artists from Burl Ives to Mick Jagger because it’s the same romantic-heroic saga as Robin Hood and Jesse James.
It’s particularly poignant now, for now we Americans are being called upon to fight against tyranny and oppression.
For all our lives, the tyranny we had to fight hot or cold was foreign, from Nazi Germany to Communist Russia. Today is different – the enemy is domestic, inside our gates.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY WITH AN ACCURATE ASSESSMENT OF YOURSELF
If you know that who you are, what you do, and how you think about things are all changeable and accessible to your own intervention and effort—What Carol Dweck, author of Mindset calls a “growth” mindset—your assessment of yourself will also tend to be very accurate.
In order to make accurate assessments, we have to have accurate data. If we are faced with a poor assessment, and our belief is that we are powerless to change, then the only way to salvage any emotional hope is to skew the data, to trick ourselves into discounting it.
In this case, the necessary self-reflection will feel threatening to us, containing blows to our self-concept, rather than feeling like useful information. This can lead to incredible suffering and bad results, and can lead us to avoid challenges or difficult feedback—the very things we need in order to grow.
Here’s the challenge: