THE UNIQUE BEAUTIFICATION OF KAYAN WOMEN
The Kayan tribal people live in a remote roadless valley in the Shan Hills of Burma. Kayan women practice their tradition of beauty starting at age five. The young girls have a few brass coils placed around their necks, adding to them progressively as they grow until in older adulthood they are wearing as many as two dozen – becoming what the world knows them as Giraffe women. (The Shan people call them "Padaung" meaning "long-necked," but they call themselves Kayan.)
We are not here to gawk. We are here to make friends, treat them respectfully, and learn about their traditions. It is an intensely memorable experience to meet these ladies. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #58 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
83 MILLION?
Donald Trump, in furor, stormed out of a New York courtroom for a while in the defamation suit brought by author and dating/boyfriend/sex-advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
It was just settled against Trump for $83.3 million! The Carroll suit was largely subsidized by Reid Hoffman the billionaire capitalist, and mega-donor to the Democratic Party and leftwing causes.
The subtext of Trump’s rage, aside from the outrageous monetary size of the defamation ruling, is that he was facing—and angered—a leftwing claimant, a quite hostile leftwing judge, and a leftwing New York jury.
The civil suit serves as a mere preview of four additional leftwing criminal prosecutions, leftwing judges, and leftwing juries to come—all on charges that would never had been filed if Trump either had not run for president or been a liberal progressive.
Yet here we are.
THE GREATEST MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE IN MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY
The awarding of nearly $90 million to the second-rate advice columnist E. Jean Carroll will doubtless be remembered for generations as the greatest miscarriage of justice in contemporary American history.
Jean Carroll’s case was not just ludicrous on the face of it, but between the judge, the “experts” who testified, and the mechanisms by which the case even came to be, it’s impossible for any ordinary person in the West to see this as anything more than the continuation of a series of hoaxes perpetrated on former President Donald J. Trump with the desire to keep him from re-entering the Oval Office in January 2025.
The story itself beggars belief.
THE TOMB OF CYRUS THE GREAT
In the vast valley of Pasargadae there stands this simple tomb with nothing around it for miles and miles. It has been like this for many centuries, for it entombs the founder of Persia, Cyrus the Great (600-530BC). Revered as the liberator of the Jews from their Babylonian captivity in 539 BC, hailed by Herodotus for his humanity and wisdom, this small structure symbolizes the humility of an extraordinary man. Yet the tomb is a structure of engineering genius, the oldest built on principles of base-isolation withstanding the countless earthquakes Persia has suffered for the last 2500 years.
I was first here in 1973 when Persia (renamed Iran in 1933) flourished under the Shah. Here I am in 2014, when everyone I met expressed admiration for America and their contempt for the mullah tyranny they endured. I hope to return once more when the Land of Cyrus will be free again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #146 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SOPHISTICATED STUPIDITY
TTP. June 2, 2004
It is tempting to hurl accusations of treason or something close to it in the face of the State Department’s chronic obsession of coddling America’s enemies. But with rare exceptions, the Pinstripes are far from traitors and look upon themselves as loyal Americans. Conservatives need to resist the urge to question their patriotism, and examine instead their method of diplomatic reasoning – which can be characterized as Sophisticated Stupidity.
The Foggy Bottom Pinstripes are just as tribal as most everyone else, and wage wars against their rivals in competing tribal bureaucracies. They look upon the Pentagon as a rival not an ally. War is always seen by them as a failure – the failure of their diplomacy, not as Tallyrand described war as just another form of diplomacy.
I’m going to give you an example – the critical example – of this, but first a warning. You’re going to say that this is so stupid it can’t be true – yet, sadly, this is actually the clear goal of the Near East Bureau of our State Department. Believe it or not, it is their desperate obsessively argued-for goal to have a strategic alliance with the Ayatollahs of Iran.
DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS, JOE!
THE HIDDEN NORTH FACE OF KANCHENJUNGA
This is one of the truly great mountain sights on earth yet never seen – except for professional mountaineers and those on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions. Kanchenjunga at 28,169 feet (8,586 meters) is the world’s 3rd highest mountain (after Everest and K2), with a drop from summit (the peak on the left in front of the cloud) to the glacier at it base of 12,000 feet straight down.
You can be awed by such a picture, but to actually physically be here, to witness this magnificence personally so that it is forever a part of your life, is to feel a depth of awe that has to be experienced to be understood. Kanchenjunga is part of the Himalayas, now on the border of Nepal and Sikkim, once an independent kingdom now absorbed into India. We fly right up the North Face, and into the Amphitheatre of the Southwest Face as well.
We’ll be here once again next early May. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #31 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/26/24
This is the Black Swan that may give us our America back from those who have stolen it. This is it, folks – the moment determining our country’s destiny has arrived.
This morning (1/26), the Republican Governors Association (rga.org) announced that 25 governors released a joint statement supporting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. There is true irony in how SCOTUS triggered this.
For they issued a procedural ruling, not on the merits of the case. All that’s happened is a lower court ruling is left in place that federalies can cut Texas border wire -- while nothing prevents Texas from putting up more wire to replace it – until SCOTUS rules on the merits.
You can bet your sweet bippy that Barrett in particular had no idea what her deciding vote would unleash the Kraken. So, thank you Amy!!
And I’ll bet you’re going to love this HFR…
THE REMOTEST CHURCH
Baihanluo Catholic Church is the remotest Christian Church on earth. The isolated village is in a roadless region high on a Himalayan mountain ridge deep in “The Great River Trenches of Asia” – one of our planet’s most dramatic geological features where four major rivers – the Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze all spill off the Tibetan Plateau coursing south in tight parallel for 100 miles.
In the late 1800’s, French Catholic missionaries made their way far, far up the Mekong from the French colony of Laos to befriend the Nu and Lisu tribespeople up here. They responded by building this beautiful wooden church that has been lovingly cared for by the local parishioners ever since.
I led an expedition traversing all three of the great trenches twenty years ago (2001). We were welcomed so warmly by the devout villagers. It’s hard to get more remote than this, yet they have retained their faith for at least four generations now. You can imagine how powerful and experience it was to be with them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #138 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 01/25/24
Good news! The GOP is actually trying to do something to prevent vote fraud. “So far in the 2024 election cycle, the RNC has engaged in 75 lawsuits in 21 states to defend election integrity.”
Exclusive: RNC Fights to Protect NH Voter ID Laws Against DNC Lawsuit
Really good news!
Trump Vows To "Never Allow" A Central Bank Digital Currency
Still more good news: WE MAY BE PASSING PEAK CLIMATE PANIC:
Young Audiences Question Climate Alarmism, Prompting Calls To Censor Content
Welcome to another great Skye’s Links! Just jump right on in…