BUZKASHI
Song Kul. Kyrgyzstan. Here, 10,000 feet high along the shores of Lake Song Kul, Kyrgyz nomads play buzkashi, where men on horseback fight with whips, fists, elbows over a goat carcass (simulated for us in a heavy canvas bag) weighing some 40 pounds. There are no rules. Whoever gets the carcass to the goal line and drops it into the circle there, scores. This ancient game has been played for thousands of years by the nomads of Mongolia, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. The nomads who encamp at Song Kul are playing fiercely but actually having a lot of fun – laughter abounds. After the game, we had a cup of kumiss, slightly alcoholic fermented mare’s milk, with them. An experience never to be forgotten. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #281 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
BIDEN’S WEAKNESS AND INCOMPETENCE STRENGTHENED IRAN AND HAMAS
The barbaric and evil terrorist attacks on Israel are a horrific reminder that the world is safe when America is strong—but when we have a weak president in the White House, the costs can be greater than our worst nightmares.
If we hope to prevent further shedding of innocent blood, the United States must learn the painful lessons of these savage atrocities.
As we pray for the Israeli people in this hour of anguish and give them our complete and total support, we must also confront the absolute failure of the Biden administration, whose incompetence and ignorance invited this heinous and deadly assault on civilization itself.
The only thing Biden is good at is the weaponization of the justice system against his political opponents. Every step of the way, Joe Biden has empowered and emboldened America's enemies the world over—and clearly none more so than the terrorist group Hamas, and their bloodthirsty sponsor, the villainous regime in Iran.
THE PHYSICS OF WHY CARBON DIOXIDE DOES NOT CAUSE WARMING
The climate-change scheme and net-zero carbon policy are based upon a false notion that carbon dioxide and other gases cause global warming. They do not. We don’t have to guess about this. We have empirical and scientific proof.
I owned a Weights and Measures gas-physics test-and-repair facility and conducted tests. We learned gas physics from engineers at factories that manufacture gas-physics instruments. They must understand gas physics, or their instruments won’t work.
Here’s why gas physics shows that carbon dioxide cannot cause global warming – because carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas.
THE MOST ANCIENT SYMBOL OF REVERENCE FOR EXISTENCE
Yesterday, I found this religious decoration on the outer wall of an old mosque in the three-thousand year-old Silk Road oasis city of Bukhara. I’ve seen it in many places throughout the world, such as ancient ruins of India and Rome. Yet this is far older – it was carved onto mammoth ivory by Ice Age hunters in Ukraine 12,000 years ago.
From time immemorial has it represented eternity, prosperity, the centeredness of all that is. Why? Look up into the sky on a clear dark night. All people have studied the heavens for eons. You could always know where you were by finding North, for the two front stars of what we call the Big Dipper point to it – always.
The Greeks called it Mega Arktikos, the Great Bear – why we call Far North the Arctic today. The ancients saw the Bear every year rotating around Celestial North – now occupied by Polaris, the North Star – through all four seasons, while all the stars in the sky circled around it every night. What do you see in this depiction of that seasonal rotation?
Yes, a Swastika -- Sanskrit for “the goodness of existence.” The most heinous perversion of symbolic art in world history was to take the symbol for the goodness of existence used by people for a dozen millennia – and still revered by Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems and many others to this day – and twist it into a symbol of horrific evil. It’s an informative lesson of history. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #225 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
IT’S ‘1984’ ALL OVER AGAIN IN BIDEN’S ‘POLICE STATE’
But if it had, it’s doubtful that the FBI would have been much use, since it’s so distracted with an exaggerated domestic terrorism crisis in which conservatives are the bad guys and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a terrorist attack worse than 9/11.
This is the “ultra-MAGA-semi-fascist” threat Joe Biden likes to rail against and that he needs for his election campaign to divide the country further, and to justify indicting his main political rival, locking up Donald Trump supporters, and imposing an Orwellian level of mass surveillance, censorship and ideological indoctrination on Americans.
The “Police State” being created by this president, or those pulling his strings, is the title of a chilling new documentary by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, which opens next week in New York and theaters across the country (trailer above).
In the words of former Trump speechwriter Darren Beattie, who features in the film: “We’re becoming China plus drag queens. [It’s a] hyper-ideological version of the police state that’s animated by wokeness … the worst of all worlds.”
WHAT ISRAELI VICTORY WOULD LOOK LIKE
The Fate of Hamas
“I’m driving south to the Gaza corridor, the place Hamas invaded on Saturday (10/07),” Yonah Jeremy Bob says in our first phone conversation. “But it’s a straight drive, so let’s talk.”
Mr. Bob is an expert on the Israeli shadow war with Iran, the subject of his new book, “Target Tehran,” and he covers the Israeli intelligence agencies and military for the Jerusalem Post. He’s busy tracking down answers to the questions every Israeli wants answered: How could this have happened? What’s the plan? Who will pay?
Saturday’s shock gave way to rage, “and then rage crystallized into a very steely determination,” Mr. Bob says. “It’s the thing Israel’s enemies never fully understand. They think of Israel as a weak Western state, where people care about their looks and money and all the things that will make them flee rather than fight.” Hamas often scoffs that “the Jews love life.” But that’s why they fight for it.
He sees a two-part story here. “Hamas took its best shot and it won big on the first day,” he says. “But it really doesn’t have anything else. It isn’t going to accomplish anything else close to what it has already done. From here on, it’s going to be Israel demolishing them.”
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)
WEST OF THE DEAD SEA
[This week’s Archive was originally published on July 11, 2008. In response to last Friday’s HFR (HFR 10/13/23), TTPer Michael made this request: “Jack - Too many young people believe Israel was stolen from the Palestinians. You wrote an excellent article on the founding of Israel a few years back I wish you would republish with permission to share. It should have an opportunity to go viral as a counterbalance to the lies which have infected the narrative on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.” Here it is, Michael. Note that it contains links to five previous TTP articles for background in greater depth. I’m looking forward to your and other TTPer comments in the Forum.]
TTP, July 11, 2008
All photos by Jack Wheeler
You're lazily swimming in the Mediterranean Sea just off a beautiful beach. The beach goes on for miles, lined with resort hotels, and it's crowded with people. Young fit men playing volleyball, beautiful bikini-clad young women sunbathing, families relaxing under umbrellas, children making sand castles, multitudes of folks peacefully enjoying themselves in the sun, the sand, and the gentle sea.
You swear you're at one of Spain's great beaches, like Valencia, Marbella, or Barcelona. But you've noticed that a small light plane has flown along the shoreline several times. Your son asks, "Dad, why does that plane keep flying by?"
"It's an IDF spotter plane," you tell him. "Watching for a boatload full of Arab terrorists who might land to machine gun to death as many Jews on this beach as they can. Stuff like that can happen here anyplace, anytime. That's life in Israel."
Nope, we're not in Valencia. We're in Tel Aviv.
STRANGLER FIG
Christmas Island, Indian Ocean, Australia. This huge banyan tree no longer exists. It’s been slowly strangled to death for up to a century. Seeds of fig vines were deposited by bird droppings in the upper branches of the tree, which sprouted and began to grow downward along the tree trunk, sucking nutrients from the tree along the way. Slowly year after year, they coil and wrap around the entire trunk to the ground, literally strangling the tree out of existence until all that’s left are the huge enveloping fig vines. It’s hollow inside – look carefully above the ground roots and you’ll see a shaft of vertical light.
I’ve seen a good many Strangler Figs in the rain forests of Central Africa and the Amazon – but the ones here on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean are the most spectacular. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #280 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: THE LOST CITY OF KUELAP
10,000 feet high in the Amazon cloud forests of northern Peru is a mysterious lost city built by an unknown people many centuries before the Incas existed. Known as Kuelap by villagers in the lowlands below, the Incas called the people who built it Chachapoyas, “Cloud Warriors.” I led an expedition here in 1994, climbing high up into the Amazon Andes to come upon gigantic stone walls 60 feet high surrounding hundreds of stone structures. Here you see Rebel among them. We’ll be here again in a year or two in another exploration of Peru. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #153, photo ©Jack Wheeler)