AN ENTICEMENT FOR A MARVELOUS ADVENTURE
There is a paradise of islands of staggering beauty and idyllic weather year round, that’s a tax haven and the cost of living is low, that’s self-sufficient in food and everything grows in abundance, that’s so peaceful and serene crime is virtually unknown and there’s a total absence of wokeism.
What’s more, the people who live here love liberty so much they’ve had this motto emblazoned on their coat of arms for centuries: Antes morrer livres que em paz sujeitos – Rather die free than live in peaceful subjugation.
Oh, you can fly there non-stop from the east coast in a few hours as it’s closer than Europe.
Where and what are we talking about? The Azores of Portugal. They, along with the other Atlantic Portugal island of Madeira, are what Rebel and I call Atlantic Paradises.
So what’s the enticement? I’ll give you $1,000 off if you’ll join Rebel and me on our Atlantic Paradises Adventure this June. The catch? We’re extending our deadline of January 20 to February 3, so you have a week to make up your mind.
Atlantic Paradises Adventure is for anyone in normal health. We stay in great hotels, enjoy fabulous food and wine, and have a marvelous fun time. Click on the link to enjoy all the photos – realize you’ll soon be there. Write to me at [email protected] and I’ll explain how you get your $1K discount.
Carpe diem – life is short – the time for a life-memorable adventure is now!
SKYE’S LINKS 01/26/23
Covid and the War in Ukraine
OR
The Loss of Faith in the System
Readers old enough to remember the Hoover Administration between 1920 and 1930 probably recognize the systemic collapse of faith in the system we experience today. It is truly epic and worth additional study, continuing with this week's Skye's Links. Covid and the war in Ukraine bring to light so much fraud, dishonesty, and institutional incompetence that no one can deny that it's time to clean out the entire system. It's happening.
The life of the United States can be divided into 80-90 year epochs, each about the length of human life, that repeat as the last memories of the previous epoch fade from popular memory. Each of these epochs is divided into four 20-year or so turnings that can be thought of as the seasons. We are in the fourth, in the coldest days of winter yet past the Winter Solstice, and the days are getting longer.
As we continue along the trajectory of the Fourth Turning's final phase, we find faith in institutions collapsing throughout the United States. Internationally, confidence in the WEF and New World Order has dropped so much that only one head of state from a Western country attended the Davos event. They sent many deputies instead. The theme this year was about developing new propaganda methods and tools to restore confidence lost by yesterday's propaganda and means. The people have had enough.
ESG is over. There will be inertia due to the number of positions staffed according to the paradigm, but people will be fired, and normalcy will return.
The war in Ukraine is making energy so expensive and life so uncomfortable in Europe that the entire climate change hoax is being ditched. It's okay for limousine liberals to tell the rest of us to go and die, but now things are getting expensive, even for them.
Nancy Pelosi allegedly invited a few priests for tea and called it an exorcism. What type of priests were these? The local Catholic diocese has no record, and no Catholic priests have reported as participants. If such an event had happened, it would have been a significant event involving at least the local Bishop and regional Arch Bishop. The story is linked because of its pathos; an old drunken Nancy is failing at life after decades of corruption.
So much about Covid appears to have been a psyop. Propagandists leveraged generalized anxiety in society through social isolation and by giving meaningless orders. The general discontent was cranked up and focused on Trump and rationalists for political power and access to the U.S. Treasury.
Come over to Skye's links and let's look at a series of links that discuss this most unusual of times. Perhaps your youngest children or grandchildren will experience the end of the next epoch, but for most, this is a once and a lifetime period of significant consequence. But just as with the end of a frozen winter, the birds are returning, and there are signs of new life.
THE YEZIDI BLACK SNAKE SACRED SPRING
At the Temple of the Peacock Angel in the Yezidi holy city of Lalish, you find this entrance to a Sacred Spring with a carved black snake, revered by Yezidis as they believe a black snake stuck itself into a hole in Noah’s Ark and saved humanity.
The Yezidis are among the most ancient of all peoples in the Middle East. Their heartland is in what is now Northern Iraq, or Iraqi Kurdistan. You may know of them through the horrific butchery perpetrated upon them by the medieval terrorists of ISIS which gained worldwide notoriety.
They are a fascinating people whose syncretic beliefs are a mélange of Zoroastrianism, Syriac Christianity, Sufi Islam spiced with their own interpretation of all three. In other words, they are their own people, no one else like them – peaceful, at ease with themselves, and immensely likeable.
Their protectors are the Kurds – an extraordinary people in their own right. We’ll be visiting Iraqi Kurdistan and the Yezidis once more next year. ((Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #89 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WHAT THE HELL IS THE WEST WAITING FOR?
[Note by Jack Wheeler: Early yesterday morning (1/24), the London Daily Mail ran this cover story by British former (and quite possibly the future) Prime Minister Boris Johnson. By early this morning (1/25), Germany got the message, Der Spiegal announcing: Ukraine Will Receive 80 Leopard Tanks from Germany and Other European Countries, and the Wall Street Journal reporting: White House Approves Sending Abrams Tanks to Ukraine. Thanks, Boris!]
Come with me into the ochre mud of the churchyard in Bucha, past the bullet-riddled church of St Andrew. Stand over the graves of some of the 416 inhabitants of this town – 9 of them children – who were shot by the Russians in an attempt to terrify the rest.
Look at the photos of their corpses, their hands tied behind their backs, left in the street to rot or to be eaten by dogs.
Stand with me by the blackened remains of an apartment block in Borodyanka, the twisted plumbing and smashed children's toys. Look at what just one of Putin's 500kg airborne bombs can do to an eight-story building.
Try to meet the pleading eyes of the people who pulled 162 corpses from the rubble, and who searched for the 28 whose remains were never found.
Look at those brave Ukrainians and answer me this question: just what the hell are we waiting for?
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS A UKRAINIAN VICTORY
Why does the world need a Ukrainian victory? The answer is inarguable.
Because the world must help Ukraine to stop Russia’s genocidal war before the latter’s fascism and aggression spread and are copied by other nations.
Let’s unpack that with 14 specific reasons:
- To halt atrocity. Russia's occupation is genocidal. Wherever the Ukrainians recover territory, they save lives, and re-establish the principle that people have a right not to be tortured, deported, and murdered.
- To preserve the international legal order. Its basis is that one country may not invade another and annex its territory, as Russia seeks to do. Russia's war of aggression is obviously illegal, but the legal order does not defend itself.
- To end an era of empire. This could be the last war fought on the colonial logic that another state and people do not exist. But this turning point is reached only if Russia loses.
INDIAN TIBET
There is a part of Tibet the British kept from China and is now a part of India. The region is called Ladakh and this is its capital of Leh. It’s the Upper Indus river valley after it flows out of Chinese Tibet and before it reaches the Line of Control with Pakistan.
Ladakh is geographically and culturally Tibetan, where Tibetan culture still flourishes. Here the great gompas (monasteries) of Thikse and Hemis are active, and where you are welcome in hidden mysterious gompas like Lamayuru over a thousand years old.
There is an ultra-remote part of Ladakh called Zanskar where the Zanskar River flows through the crest of the Himalayas to reach the Upper Indus. Running the Zanskar is one of the world’s greatest whitewater experiences. We’ll see and do all of this next August on our Indian Tibet 2023 Expedition. Click on it and, trust me, the photos will blow you away. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #120 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
CLASSIFIED DOCS SCANDAL IS UNBOXING THE BIDEN FAMILY BUSINESS
Courtesy of Fox News, here’s a headline for the ages: “Biden, Hunter Make Presidential History As First Father-Son Duo Under Separate Investigations.”
Yet beyond the history noted by Fox, its headline also spotlights unfinished business when it cites the “separate” Biden investigations. If there is any honest justice left in Justice, sooner rather than later there will be a single investigation involving both father and son.
That is also something they’ve earned. Joe and Hunter clearly were in cahoots on the influence-peddling scam that netted the family tens of millions of dollars. In fact, the more we learn, the more convincing it is that Joe’s role has been underestimated.
The full truth, if we ever get it, will show that Joe was the mastermind and Hunter was the frontman and conduit for the payoffs.
THE FESTERING ROT AT THE FBI — BIGGER AND DEEPER THAN WE EVER GUESSED
Today’s NY Post 1/24/23
Charles McGonigal, a retired counterintelligence investigator from the FBI’s New York Field Office, was just arrested because he allegedly took substantial sums of money from Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire, to get the latter off a U.S. sanctions list.
Where this goes beyond the ordinary corruption that periodically crops up among people with too much power, too few morals, and too little accountability is that McGonigal was one of the people investigating Trump over the Russia Hoax, while Deripaska employed Christopher Steele, whose false dossier seeded the Russia Hoax.
So now the obvious question: was McGonigal on Deripaska’s payroll to invent the Russia Hoax?
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY KNOWING HOW MONEY CAN BUY HAPPINESS
I think the Beatles were mostly right about money and love. But there are ways of spending our money that can actually make us happier.
George Washington once said, “Government is like fire, a useful servant but a dangerous master.”
Money can be like that, too. Money can be a tool in the service of our good life, but for that to happen, we need to be conscious and in charge of how we make and spend our money.
It can also be a dangerous master, when we allow our spending to follow from our impulses and habits, and when we allow debt to pile up.
How we spend our money has the potential to enhance our lives or ruin our lives. The difference comes down to how we choose what we spend our money on.
THE WORLD’S MOST UNUSUAL VINEYARD
The grape vines of Pico Island, one of nine islands of the Azores in the Atlantic, are enclosed within walls of black basalt rocks called currais (corrals). For over 500 years, the Portuguese villagers have been constructing thousands of miles of these currais walled enclosures to protect the vines from wind and sea spray.
The vineyards of Pico are so extraordinary that they are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And the wine is uniquely good! You can order a bottle here. Best, though, is to experience Pico and its viticulture yourself. That’s what we did last June on our Atlantic Paradises adventure with your fellow TTPers.
We had a wonderful time – and you will too this coming June. You won’t believe how much adventurous fun you’ll have on our Atlantic Paradises 2023! Click to join us… (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #213 photo ©Jack Wheeler)