SKYE’S LINKS 05/16/24
Happy Thursday, folks. This week is a short list starting with grave warnings from two of the Supreme Justices about the First Amendment; then a witch-trial witness testifying about visions in the courtroom, followed by a pathological liar – so, business as usual in Biden’s justice system. Biden, himself, stabs an ally in the back and protects our mutual enemy in an attempt to win votes in Michigan. Again, the new normal. But there’s good news about institutions backing off of DEI; and RFK Jr. has clearly proven himself other than moderate, making him Biden’s problem, not Trump’s. Then there’s some gloomy economic news; some common sense from an alleged alien; and we end with a laugh. Jump in!
Justices Thomas and Alito on the state of America:
Supreme Court Justices Thomas And Alito Issue Warnings About State Of America
THE CAMEL MEAT MARKET IN THE FEZ BAZAAR
Sometimes you run across something that no matter how it grosses you out, you have to take a picture of it. The thousand year-old medina or walled city of Fez is a World Heritage Site as the spiritual and cultural capital of Morocco. Uniquely epitomizing this is the stall of the camel butcher in the medina’s vast bazaar. To garner the attention of ladies shopping for their family’s dinner, he proudly displays the head of the camel whose fresh meat is on sale. Traveling in Morocco is always an adventure. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #188 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
PROFIT IS NOT PLUNDER
Frédéric Bastiat in his book The Law distinguishes between profit and plunder.
Profit is financial gain earned through industrious behavior. Business owners make a profit by selling products at a greater amount than what it costs to produce that product.
Plunder, by contrast, is the theft of property through nonvoluntary means, such as theft, coercion, or fraud.
Bastiat noted that while most plunder is illegal, there remains one major exception: the state.
All plunder is an act of aggression against someone else’s natural rights, hence why it is morally wrong.
Regular plunder is a tough business, even for delinquent thieves. There is risk involved in robbing or defrauding someone, leading to no return on the effort of the thief.
There is also the issue of the victim or potential victims of plunder being more aware of and resistant to future attempts at plunder.
Despite the inclinations of a few thieves toward high-risk, high-reward plunder, most thieves prey upon the vulnerable.
ONCE AGAIN, MOTHER NATURE THUMBS HER NOSE AT THE CLIMATE CHANGISTAS
I was in Barbados earlier this year. During our tour, the guide proudly boasted that Barbados’s all-female government had mandated that the whole island will go completely solar by 2035 or something.
I commented to my companion that this seemed like an idiotic idea for a nation that lives in a hurricane zone.
Well, my prediction about combining wind zones and solar panels came true, although not in Barbados (yet) but in India.
The Lokmat Times has the story: “A summer storm on Tuesday….
THE SHRINE OF A SILK ROAD SUFI SAINT
In hidden dunes of the Takla Makan Desert of Chinese Turkestan, you find pilgrimage sites such as this devoted to Sufi saints revered by the Uighur (wee-ger) people who live in oases on the great desert’s edges. The trade route connecting the oases is the Southern Silk Road traversed by Marco Polo in 1273.
Sufism is the ancient peaceful interpretation of Islam. Just as Jesus advised the Pharisees to seek God in their hearts, not through the robotic repetition of religious laws and rules, so do the Sufis. Just as Jesus preached a philosophy of non-violence and benevolence, so do the Sufis. Sufism teaches that the path to Islamic enlightenment is not through compulsion of any kind, but through a personal ecstatic experience of the Divine.
Thus these ramshackle shrines in an uninhabited roadless wilderness – you get to them by donkey cart – are havens of serenity in a chaotic world. This is one of the remotest places on earth, but if you ever manage to get here, you will feel serenity in your heart. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #183 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THAT LITTLE LESSON FROM PANAMA’S ELECTION FOR LAWFARE-OBSESSED DEMOCRATS
Do any of the Democrats engaged in lawfare against President Trump read the news about leftists south of the border who do the same things they are doing?
Maybe Panama's election a week ago would be useful for them to know.
The parallels here are quite striking. A former president who brought prosperity to his country through conservative and free market values from 2009 to 2014, Ricardo Martinelli, was running for a non-consecutive term as president.
The left, which took power after him, made a hash of the economy, and turned Panama into an illegal alien superhighway, leaving voters with only the memory of how good things were during Martinelli's administration.
The Associated Press seemed to think the voters remembered….
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF PRESIDENTIAL PERSECUTIONS
None of the five civil and criminal cases currently lodged against former President Donald Trump have ever had merit. They were all predicated on using the law to injure his re-election candidacy—given a widespread derangement syndrome among the left and a fear they cannot entrust a Trump/Biden election to the people.
These criminal and civil trials are merely the continuation of extra-legal efforts of the last eight years to destroy a presidential candidate in lieu of opposing him in transparent elections.
As such, the current lawfare joins the Mueller investigation of the Russian-collusion hoax. It is a continuation of the laptop disinformation caper and the “51 intelligence authorities” who lied about its Russian origins.
It logically follows from the two impeachments, the Senate trial of Trump as a private citizen, and states’ efforts to remove him from their ballots.
The E. Jean Carroll case, the Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and Fani Willis local and state trials, and the Smith federal indictment share various embarrassments.
THE SACRED MONKEY FOREST OF BALI
Near the town of Ubud on Indonesia’s paradise island of Bali there is a sanctuary of spectacularly luxuriant rain forest providing a haven for over 1,000 Balinese long-tailed monkeys. Here’s one communing with a group of moss-covered monkey statues that dot the sanctuary.
This is a sacred place for the Balinese people, as it contains three temples over 600 years old, and is devoted to the Hindu principle of Tri Hata Karana – “three ways to reach spiritual and physical well-being” -- harmony between people, harmony between people and nature, harmony between people and God.
There is perhaps no place on earth in which to better experience the blissful harmony of Tri Hata Karana than Bali. It is a marvelous privilege to be here and experience it for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #106 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE NAZI LEFT AND THE SOURCE OF TRUMP HATRED
[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on June 9, 2017. It’s prescience of obvious with the explosion of flat-out anti-Semitic Nazism sweeping through college campuses today. Let us know your thoughts on this in the Forum!]
TTP, June 9, 2017
This is no hyperbole. Calling someone a “Nazi” is, along with “Fascist” the most ignorantly over-used hyperbolic insult the Left can hurl at anyone they hate.
Like the insult “Racist,” the Left has divested these insults of meaning, as are schoolyards taunts, “You stink!” or yelling “Boo!” and hissing at a referee’s bad call at a football game.
To call someone a Nazi for real is serious business. It’s accusing them of wanting to commit racial slaughter of fellow human beings on a massive scale. It’s accusing them of advocating a politics of criminal insanity, of being irretrievably evil and criminally insane themselves.
Yet that is what the Left in America is becoming before our eyes in broad daylight. You want to know how Germans, one of the most intelligent, accomplished, and cultured people on the planet became Nazis in the 1930s – look at what is happening to the Left, to the Democrat Party, to the Fake News Media right now.
The circumstances and proximate causes are different. History does not repeat itself. Here is what is happening now.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – WITH MBUTI PYGMIES IN THE CONGO
August, 1971. The gentle Mbuti people live in the Ituri rainforest, one of the world’s densest jungles, in northeastern DR Congo. They are among the most ancient of all human populations, with their ancestors having hunted in these forests for over 60,000 years. The tallest among them is under five feet.
It was on my first visit to Africa that I was able to spend time with them. They live in scattered bands of a few dozen each, always on the move in search of game, sleeping in small makeshift huts of branches and leaves, and far away from villages of Bantus who always try to enslave them.
Their music is hypnotic. To the beat of drums of hollowed-out logs, they sing with a polyphonic complexity that is extraordinary. I’ll never forget the performance they gave for me. Alas, no tape recorder – much less videocam back then! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #65 photo ©Jack Wheeler)