FLASHBACK FRIDAY — A FIRST CONTACT WITH THE NAKED AUCAS
July, 1972. That’s what these people were known as back in 1972 who lived in the Amazon forests south of the Napo River in Ecuador killing anyone foolish enough to enter their territory. The Quechuas living along the north bank of the Napo were terrified of them, calling them “Aucas” – naked savages. I found them, as you can see, naked but not savage.
This was a true first contact. A helicopter pilot friend, Tony Stuart, and I chanced upon them, landing in their clearing. We were literally space aliens in a space ship from outer space, for all they knew was the jungle. They had nothing from the outside world. I gave them a box of matches which was the most exciting thing they had ever seen. Despite their fearsome reputation for killing outsiders including missionaries, they smiled and laughed like anyone else.
They also understood trade and exchanging gifts. Beside the matches, we gave them some rope and a small machete (first metal they had ever seen). They gave (without our asking) Tony a hand stone axe, and me a blowgun. After a few hours it was time to go. Our goodbyes to each other were with huge smiles. I will never ever forget them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #113 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 08/04/23
Yesterday (8/03) in Skye’s Links you saw 12th-Grade Boys Becoming More Conservative As Girls Trend Overwhelmingly Liberal. Little wonder, then, why 12-grade guys ask themselves, “Why bother to go to college? Who needs classrooms full of Woke Barbie Shrews egged on by their woke misandrous professors?”
So it is that misandry – hatred of men (as misogyny is hatred of women) -- is on a par with white auto-racism as the worst social problems in America. As I wrote seven years ago, August 5, 2016, in White Trash and Black Gimmidats.
I have to say, I am really earning my keep in this HFR. There is a lot here to think about. Plus, there’s a lot of good news and fun news. Let’s go!
WALT DISNEY’S REAL CASTLE
This is the ruins of the Castle of St. Hilarion in Northern Cyprus. In 1191, the Byzantine ruler of Cyprus made the mistake of capturing a ship carrying Princess Berengaria of Navarre and held her hostage. She was the fiancée of England’s King Richard the Lion-Heart. You don’t do that to a guy nicknamed Lion-Heart.
Richard proceeded to conquer the whole island and turned it over to a group of French Catholic knights led by Guy de Lusignan. The knights built a series of fortified castles around the island to ward off the Moslem "Saracens." The most spectacular was atop a vertiginous crag high above the port of Kyrenia named after a crazy hermit who lived near there whom the knights dubbed St. Hilarion.
When Walt Disney was making his classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, he chanced upon pictures of St. Hilarion’s Castle, which his imagination transformed into the fairy tale castle of the movie. Can you see how he got the idea?
In the castle museum, there’s an explanation with some of Disney’s original sketches based on St. Hilarion’s. Disney was an imaginative genius. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #139 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 08/03/23
Turley on the Trump J6 disinformation indictment: he has been indicted for speech that is clearly protected by the First Amendment. Of course, the MSM trumpets conspiracy and obstruction charges, but says nothing about the First Amendment protection of Trump's speech; the MSM is splitting Americans into two radically different and inconsistent realities.
This is actually an amazingly weak case. All it has going for it is an Obama donor/appointed J6 hanging judge and an all-Dem DC jury. In my opinion, Trump is likely to be convicted, and the conviction reversed on appeal - after the next election. The 'Crats and the Fourth Turning are building up to an extremely ugly crisis:
Turley: 'Disinformation Indictment' Is Charging Trump for Free Speech
And here’s amazingly great news! The following letter wasn't written by Donald Trump; it was written by the liberal black woman head of the Oakland CA NAACP! She bitterly condemns “the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life-threatening serious crimes, the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric and progressive policies and failed leadership” for creating crime and harming economic opportunity.
TRUMP CANNOT BE TRIED FOR JANUARY 6 UNDER DOUBLE JEOPARDY CLAUSE
Special Counsel Jack Smith accuses former President Donald Trump of causing the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot through his “lies” about the 2020 presidential election. To that end, he indicted Trump yesterday (8/01) on four federal counts — one of which carries a potential death penalty.
But Smith’s indictment itself offers nothing new. It carries same criminal charge of the second impeachment resolution against Trump, namely “incitement of insurrection,” and for which he was acquitted by the Senate. It is barred, therefore, by the Constitution’s Double Jeopardy Clause.
The Double Jeopardy Clause, contained within the Fifth Amendment, prevents any person from being tried twice in a federal court for the same crime. Here’s how Trump is protected by it.
WILL CHEVRON FINALLY RUN OUT OF GAS?
The Chevron Doctrine is a rule adopted by the Supreme Court in 1984. It says that when the language of a statute is ambiguous, a court must defer to the regulatory agency's interpretation and may not substitute its own judgment. That is why it is also known as Chevron Deference.
Chevron has come under mounting attack in recent years as agencies have learned to game the system and to leverage any scintilla of ambiguity into a wholesale assertion of authority.
The Supreme Court has begun saying "enough" and has developed some caveats to check this game. For example, the newly articulated "major questions doctrine" is essentially the anti-Chevron: if an issue is big enough, then ambiguity dictates that the agency not receive deference.
But the Court has been ambivalent, sometimes applying the doctrine, sometimes finding that the relevant law is not ambiguous, and sometimes not mentioning it. (See here, pp. 24-26.)
Now the Supreme Court has agreed to address directly the issue of whether Chevron should be overruled – much like Roe v Wade. Here’s the story.
MYSTERY LAKES OF THE GOBI
The southernmost portion of the Gobi Desert is called the Alashan in Inner Mongolia. Traversed by Marco Polo in 1273 on his way to meet the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, he said it contained a “mystery.”
For in the hidden center of the Alashan is an area known as Badain Jaran, “Mystery Lakes” in Mongolian. There are some 140 of these small lakes surrounded by enormous sand dunes. The photo you see is of one of these lakes, taken in late afternoon on a windless day, with the giant dunes above reflected on the water.
We explored the Badain Jaran on our 2017 Inner Mongolia Expedition. It is just as magically and mysteriously entrancing now as it was for Polo. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #32 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
CLIMATE CHANGE OBSESSION IS A REAL MENTAL DISORDER
The media wants you to know it’s hot outside. “‘Heat health emergency’: Nearly half the US at risk,” CNN proclaimed last week as temperatures climbed above 90 degrees in much of the country.
If heat waves were as deadly as the press proclaims, Homo sapiens couldn’t have survived thousands of years without air conditioning. Yet here we are. Humans have shown remarkable resilience and adaptation—at least until modern times, when half of society lost its cool over climate change.
“Extreme Temperatures Are Hurting Our Mental Health,” a recent Bloomberg headline warns. Apparently, every social problem under the sun is now attributable to climate change. However, these anxieties are no more rational than the threats from climate change are existential.
A more apt term for such fear is climate hypochondria.
HUNGA TONGA – GLOBAL WARMING LIKE YOU NEVER IMAGINED
Surely you’ve seen all the climate hysteria lately, such as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres: “The era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived.”
But there are some things they haven’t been telling us, that are in themselves complete explanations for any increased world temperatures we might be living through this summer. It’s not carbon dioxide as the eco-crazies (or the head of the UN) think. Let’s meet the historic, record-shattering Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption of 2022, which you may well have never heard of.
You never heard about it since it was underwater and nobody died. But the erupting lava instantly vaporized fantastic, unimaginable amounts of sea water, which billowed into the atmosphere, changing the water composition of Earth’s atmosphere and heating it up for years. In only a few days, the superheated water from the Hunga Tonga eruption blanketed the globe, Pole to Pole, East to West. Here’s the story.
IMPRESSIONISM’S ISLAND
Bangaram Atoll, Laccadive Islands, India. The “Lacquered” islands or Laccadives are legendary for the glossiness of the Indian Ocean surrounding them. There are three dozen of these coral atolls over 150 miles off the coast of southwest India – but moorkh Indian bureaucrats insist on calling them “Lakshadweep,” Sanskrit for “100,000. Go figure.
Paintings of the French Impressionists of the 19th century merged dreams and reality. Here that is for real. The beauty in the Laccadives can be so astonishing that it seems surreal – like when the ocean and sky merge into one in a palette of pastels straight from the brush of Monet. Come to Bangaram and you’ll find yourself living inside a painting. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #172 photo ©Jack Wheeler)