FLASHBACK FRIDAY – SLEEPING IN AN IGLOO
April 1990. When our oldest son Brandon was six years old, I took him with me to the North Pole. It was my 14th expedition there, and as always, we stopped to visit friends at Canada’s northernmost community, the Inuit hunting village of Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island. Brandon thought it would be cool to sleep in an igloo, which the Inuit do only when they’re hunting seals or walrus far out on the ice.
So the villagers happily complied, showing him how they built one, carving out blocks of wind-blown snow, shaping and placing them in an inward-sloped spiral with one block on top, and packing snow as mortar between the blocks. When it was bedtime – still daylight with 24-hour sunshine by April – they lined the inside with caribou skins, which shed like crazy with hairs everywhere but sure are warm. Snuggled into our arctic down sleeping bags, we slept like stones.
It was an experience both of us will never forget. Never pass up an opportunity to have an adventure with your kids they’ll always remember. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #50 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 06/22/23
Trump Against the Narrative
Merrick Garland’s DoJ continues to throw everything imaginable at Trump, including some very sketchy interpretations of the Insurrection Act. The stink of Desperation is everywhere as the government unites against Meritocracy. Trump must run the table in the courtroom, but the likely outcome is the SCOTUS eventually finding the Insurrection Act unconstitutional.
The Narrative is collapsing everywhere. It turns out that Fauci fabricated false studies and used his influence to place them in leading journals at the very start of Covid-19. This was a cover-up of epic magnitude, and the healthcare industry slurped it up wholesale. Even if the peer-review process had not been falsified, data was not fabricated from thin air, and major medical journals were not corrupted, the scientific establishment should have detected the fraud.
But the fraud went undetected by the majority. The few doctors and scientists calling it bunkum were attacked like injured fish in a shark-feeding frenzy.
Our government lies, and so do most institutions. Dishonesty might be a feature of bureaucracy.
So how is the world responding to highly credible whistleblowers through highly credible attorneys, disclosing that the United States government has alien technology? And has been studying it for more than 80 years? Is this yet another psyop? Or is it true?
Unless they slap the evidence down on the proverbial pickle barrel, the alien technology is just another narrative. A.I. can make anything appear real, even if the evidence is presented openly. Hollywood is throwing out the green screens made obsolete by A.I.
But then again, it might be true…
ESG, on the other hand, is falling like a lead balloon. Fifteen Trillion Dollars has been pulled from ESG funds since the start of the Bud Light protest. That is a Trillion with a T.
Larry Fink of BlackRock might not be the Gnostic immortal and enlightened divine being that he fancies himself. ESG is not over, but the smart money is bailing out before Woke goes full broke.
China is failing too. A handful of U.S. Navy destroyers in the Indian Ocean can stop their fuel imports from Iran and Saudi Arabia. A Ukrainian drone can blow their pipeline from Russia.
China lacks food, fuel, water, and labor. Like Japan during the 1980s or BlackRock gorging itself on cheap credit, economic bubbles are eventually exposed as foolish and destructive.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET TOO CLOSE TO A 6,000 POUND ELEPHANT SEAL
The Antarctic island of South Georgia is one of the most extraordinary places on earth. Square miles of king penguin rookeries, thousands of fur seals, hundreds of gigantic elephant seals amidst a backdrop of massive glaciers and snow-capped mountains.
All of the animals here have no fear of you whatever and ignore your presence – except if you make the mistake of getting too close to a bull elephant seal for his comfort. It’s a mistake I made as you can see. Luckily, with several tons of blubber to carry, this fellow can’t move as fast as me, so I hightailed it quickly. That satisfied him, and all was soon back to placidly normal again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #62 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
CAN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SOLVE THE SOCIALIST CALCULATION PROBLEM?
I was recently told that humanity is “rapidly advancing” toward solving the socialist calculation problem. I wasn’t told why, but around the same time, economist Daron Acemoglu suggested that artificial intelligence could be the solution.
To get literary, perhaps we are on the verge of creating the Machines, the artificial intelligences that plan the global economy in Isaac Asimov’s short story, “The Evitable Conflict” (which became the last chapter of his book, I, Robot.)
The Machines perfectly calculate the needs of humanity and organize the economic order to best provide for them, in keeping with the first law of robotics, that “a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.”
Given Asimov’s insistence that the Machines were mere calculators of unimaginable speed, not “super-brains,” artificial intelligence could be a further step beyond Asimov’s robotic brains. So could artificially intelligent Machines, at last, prove the central planners right?
No, they could not, and I’ll answer the question in three ways.
RUSSIAN ECONOMIC DELUSION AND MILITARY ATTRITION
The summer economic forum in St. Petersburg used to be a vanity fair of Russian opulence and corruption as “Russia’s Davos.” But last week’s (6/14-17) modest, if not frugal, event was rather an exercise in self-reassurance of sustainable stagnation.
The international profile of the event was seriously curtailed, and the guest of honor was Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who was eager to agree “with everything Comrade Putin said” and to sign the declaration of an “enhanced strategic partnership” between the two countries (Kremlin.ru, June 15).
Putin’s speech was entirely devoted to amplifying positive news about Russia’s economic performance, which according to his estimates, is still capable of delivering the volume of weapons necessary for sustaining the “special military operation” and providing broad prosperity (Kommersant, June 17).
Unemployment is indeed low, due to extra-high out-migration, but as for the alleged decline of poverty, that has been achieved primarily by doctoring the data (The Insider, June 16).
Economic statistics have indeed become scarce and carefully “improved,” thus enabling Putin to assert the diminishing dependency on oil revenues and the benefits of high war expenditures without any concern for a seeming departure from reality (Moscow Times, June 16).
LAKE BLED
First Lady Melania Trump would instantly recognize Lake Bled, for it is considered the most beautiful place in her home country of Slovenia. It’s a glacial lake up in the Julian Alps near the border with Austria. The small lush island you see has been a pilgrimage site for millennia – first to the Temple of Ziva, the Slovene goddess of love and fertility, then until now to the Church of the Mother of God. For all that time, Slovene couples came here to get married.
There are 99 steps from the rowboat landing to the church, and from ancient times to today, the tradition is that for a happy and long-lasting marriage, the groom must carry his bride up all 99 steps while she must remain silent while he does.
Lake Bled is a place of deep serenity and joyous calm. Come here to experience both. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #178 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WOKENESS IN THE US MILITARY IS PICKING UP STEAM
For centuries, America has had that politically neutral military, but the Biden administration is accelerating a process begun under Obama, which is to weaken military readiness while ensuring that both officers and troops hew to a specific political ideology.
In the first five years of his presidency, Obama fired almost 200 military officers, some of whom felt very strongly that there was an ideological purge taking place. Certainly, the Pentagon class’s willing embrace of leftist ideologies (DEI, CRT and, especially, LGBTQ+++) indicates that those in charge of the military’s strange new destiny are on board with all of this.
As you can see above, the wokeness insanity is getting worse with LtGen DeAnna Burt feeling “compelled” to promote less qualified personnel in her hiring and promotion decisions due to “anti-LGBTQ+” laws in various states.
OUR NEXT PRESIDENT MUST FIX OUR MILITARY FIRST
This has to STOP on January 20, 2025!
The federal bureaucracy is a smoldering smorgasbord of corruption, incompetence, and pride flag-waving wokeness, and the big questions for the next Republican president are where to start fixing it and how.
There are a few things that need to happen day one to begin imposing our iron discipline upon the out-of-control deep state – pardons for every persecuted victim of the two-tiered “justice” system, orders to comply with all GOP investigatory subpoenas immediately, and firing Chris Wray.
But defeating the unofficial fourth branch of government requires focus and intensity. You cannot take it down overnight because it will fight back with support from the regime media. So, you need a quick and critical win.
That’s why the first thing you fix is the military. Here’s what to do.
MAYA RUINS AND STAR WARS
This is Temple IV at the ancient Mayan capital of Tikal, now in northern Guatemala. It was from the top of Temple IV that the shot in the original 1977 Star Wars movie was filmed of the Millennium Falcon landing (at 44 seconds) near jungle temples (Temples II and III) at the Rebel Base on the moon of Yavin 4.
Built in 740 AD, at 230 feet it is the tallest pre-Columbian structure in all the Americas. While Tikal’s earliest buildings date to the 4th century BC, it was from 300 to 800 AD that Tikal flourished as one of the Mayan Empires most powerful kingdoms.
Then decline set in, with drought, deforestation, overpopulation, and constant warfare with rival kingdoms. With Tikal abandoned by the end of the 900s, it remained covered by rainforest jungle for over a thousand years. American archaeologists began excavations in the 1950s. Today with its major temples restored, Tikal is the most impressive example you can visit of Mayan civilization. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #118 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
PLATONIC CONSERVATIVES
Plato 427-347 BC
[This Monday’s Archive, “Platonic Conservatives,” was originally published on October 1, 2003. To what extent do you think it applies to those conservatives today who are rooting for the dollar and the American economy to crash, for Russian barbarism to win and Western Civilization to lose? They were among us twenty years ago – are they among us for the same reasons today? Your thoughts, please!]
TTP, October 1, 2003
There is an organization of conservatives which has met in private thrice annually since 1981. As a member for over 20 years, I am obliged not to mention its name or membership. Suffice it to say that virtually every major conservative figure in America belongs.Its meetings are the only place where all the leaders of the entire conservative movement can get together to socialize and strategize. During the Reagan Presidency, the organization played a principal role in creating popular support for the “Reagan Doctrine” which successfully eliminated the Soviet Union.
My wife and I have formed many close friendships with its members and always look forward to attending its meetings. Having just returned from its latest at the end of September, I regret having to report to you that it was the most disappointing in two decades.