THE MARBLE MOSAIC FLOOR OF SIENA CATHEDRAL
Italy’s Siena Cathedral, built from 1215 to 1263 is one of the great masterpieces of medieval architecture. It contains works of art by Renaissance greats from Donatello, Bernini, and Michelangelo. Most stunning of all, however, is the cathedral floor, entirely covered with marble mosaics depicting scenes from the Old Testament, Greek and Roman myths and history. No one photo does it justice, it’s so immense. Here you see Crates of Thebes (265-285 BC) atop the Mount of Wisdom casting riches into the sea for a life of tranquil simplicity.
The floor is covered over for most of the year and is only unveiled during (plus a few days before and after) September. So plan to be there then to witness a truly magnificent artistic creation of Western Civilization. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #282 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
AUTO-RACIST AMERICA
[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on December 4, 2014. Above, we’re running the same photo as that of the Get Whitey! Article last week (12/13). That’s because it so perfectly exemplifies the cause of the Get Whitey! problem: the people holding the two signs in front are white themselves! They personify America’s greatest and most damaging racial problem: whites being racist towards themselves, what I call auto-racism. And it’s worse now than it was 9 years ago. Here’s the analysis and the cure.]
TTP, December 4, 2014
The “narrative” or meme of Racist America is all that counts for the white media-academia establishment. Everything must be twisted into it or ignored.
What is clear is that the white media-academia establishment is determined to aggravate racial tension and hatred of blacks against whites in America – they want violence and riots and protests against whites.
Why? It’s too facile to simply answer, “white guilt.” For that begs the question, “What is the cause of white guilt?” Why should whites feel guilty? Guilty for what?
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – TRANS-SAHARA EXPEDITION
January 2003. Our campsite at dawn in the center of the Sahara called the Téneré in Niger. We found hand stone axes here 8,000 years old when the Sahara was green. Crossing the world’s greatest desert is a true expedition, one of the most astounding adventures to be had on earth, geographically, culturally, and historically. Unfortunately, it is too dangerous with lawless and ideological banditry today. I can hardly wait to do it once more when it is safe again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #70 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
EMBARRASSING
HALF-FULL REPORT 12/15/23
Looks like, as Skye noted yesterday, even the ACLU is figuring this out: “Beyond Shocking”: ACLU Will Represent NRA In Free Speech Supreme Court Case.
More likely, though, is the ACLU libs are worried that DemWoke attacks on the 1st A will be used against them if the GOP gains control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in 2024 – so they are being preemptive. Smart, not woketard. They may be “woke” and go back to attacking guns as Cain’s rock, but they’re not “tard”.
Moving right along… Now let’s talk about an empty room. An empty courtroom. That’s what famed constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley surmises Special Counsel Jack Smith may be facing in his kangaroo prosecution of Donald Trump: What If Jack Smith Held A Trial And No One Came?
We’re going to have a great time in this HFR. Dive right in !
CERRO CAMPANARIO
This is the view of the lakes of Bariloche in Argentine Patagonia. It was taken in January of this year from a viewpoint called Cerro Campanario. This really is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. I was here exploring Patagonia with your fellow TTPers. Hope to visit this place again sometime soon! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #251 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 12/14/23
All the shock and headlines over presidents of three of our most prestigious universities – Harvard, UPenn, and MIT – turning out to be woke fascisti comes as no surprise to famed conservative historian, Niall Ferguson. He explains how academics helped to destroy Western Civilization nearly a century ago, and the lessons that we can learn from this as a very similar racist academic treason unfolds again today.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme with a period of about 90 years. A must-read of the week!
Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals
And if you’re an investor: from Rabobank; why the tolerance of rabid antisemitism on campus is a challenge to future investment strategies:
Western Academia Is Just As Morally And Intellectually Corrupt As Congress, If Not Worse
Here we go – another mind-grabbing edition of Skye’s Links. Jump on in!
NEGOTIABLE AFFECTION IN SKAGWAY
When gold was discovered in the Klondike of Canada’s Yukon in 1896, the fastest way to get there was a tiny hamlet at the end of a long inlet of Alaska’s Inland Passage coast called Skagway. By 1898, Skagway was a lawless Wild West boom town flooded with prospectors who needed entertainment and release from the arduous travails of gold searching – and ladies who would provide it for a price.
The Brass Pic (as in a miner’s pic & shovel) was one of many Houses of Negotiable Affection in Skagway that flourished until the gold panned out in 1900. It’s preserved as a museum today in fond memory of those days of commercially consensual delight. Skagway is a terrific place to experience, drawing over a million visitors a year. Come here to see what draws them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #198 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
GET WHITEY!
In the calculus of blame, whites are the new Jews.
Racebaiting superstar Ibram X. Kendi made this clear when he remarked on a panel recently that white people—globally—have failed to “reckon with how much their own personal identity is shaped by constructions of whiteness.” He went on to explain how “that construction of whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity.”
The discourse about “whiteness” comes in whole-cloth from the rhetoric of classical antisemitism. Ever wonder why Kendi-style racial debate sounds so familiar? You just have to substitute “white” for “Jew” and it all falls into place.
Antisemitism still exists, of course, but it is the sharp and narrow end of the anti-whiteness spear. The realignment of Leftist animosity has brought all struggle under the banner of anti-whiteness, or as Ibram X. Kendi would probably put it offstage, “Get Whitey.”
WHY CHINA WON’T INVADE TAIWAN…. FOR NOW
On the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leader’s Meeting in San Francisco last month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping told U.S. President Joe Biden that Taiwan is the “biggest” and “most dangerous issue” between the United States and China.
In response, Biden asserted the U.S. commitment to defending “Indo-Pacific allies.” Should the U.S. worry about an impending invasion in the Taiwan Strait?
In contrast to the constant bombardment of warnings on Taiwan’s perilous future, the Biden-Xi summit, and evolving China-Taiwan-U.S. dynamics suggest a slim probability of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the short-term. While China’s long-term intention for Taiwan remains unchanged, there are reasons to believe that peace will hold in the Taiwan Strait, for now. Here are the reasons why.