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THE NAGAS OF LUANG PRABANG

nagas-of-luang-prabangNagas are multi-headed dragons who rise up to protect the former royal capital of Laos, Luang Prabang. The city along the Mekong River has been the center of Lao culture since the 600s. The Kingdom of Laos, “Land of a Million Elephants,” had to struggle for centuries to avoid being absorbed by the empires of Siam and Khmer (Cambodia). It was the French who wrested Laos from Siam (Thailand) in the 1890s, giving it independence in 1953.

For centuries, devout Buddhists have been building beautifully ornate shrines and temples called Wats here in Luang Prabang. Every day at dawn, hundreds of red-robed monks living in the Wats parade through the city streets for donations. Since the Pathet Lao seizure of power in 1975, moving the capital to Vientiane, Luang Prabang is free of politics, preserved as a religious haven and treasure house of Laotian culture.

A few days here is not to be missed. As you enjoy a glass of good French wine at a riverbank café watching the sunset over the Mekong, give thanks to the Nagas who are still protecting this sanctuary city. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #24, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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MYSTERY LAKES OF THE GOBI

mystery-lakes-of-gobiThe 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 were there in October 2017. We will explore Inner Mongolia and the Gobi again in October 2021. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #32 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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JUST PLAIN FUN

Forty years ago in 1981, there was a celebrity gala for President Ronald Reagan at Fords Theatre. Who brought down the house was Rodney Dangerfield, whose 10-jokes-a-minute – good clean fun, no bad words whatever – brought tears of laughter to the entire audience.

“My wife's cooking is so bad, the flies got together in the back yard and fixed the screen door.”

“I tell ya, I don’t get no respect. Last week my house was on fire, my wife told the kids ‘Be quiet, you’ll wake up daddy’.”

Enjoy!

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HALF-FULL REPORT 02/05/21

marjorie-taylor-greeneNo doubt who is the HFR Hero of the Week, is there?  Here she is, glowering at Pelosi in the House Chamber.  The Dems have their lightning rod, AOC.  Now we have ours, MTG – Marjorie Taylor-Greene, every patriot’s heroine.

We’ll be talking about MTG further, but first, I need to thank all of you who took the time to take our 2021 To The Point Survey.

Your answers and comments are really being helpful in enabling us to make TTP better than ever – especially now as our country becomes an American Dictatorship in broad daylight.  TTP is needed as never before, and it’s my job to make sure it is.  So please help me by taking our 2021 To The Point Survey if you haven’t already – just click on the link and answer/comment away.  Thanks!

Okay – here we go with the absolute best HFR of 2021… so far!

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OUR 2021 TO THE POINT SURVEY

Once again, it’s time to ask you for your feedback on how we’re doing, how we can improve, what you’d like more of or less.

As you well know, 2020 was the weirdest year of our lives, and 2021 is promising to be weirder and worse.  TTP will be here to help you understand it, cope with it, overcome it, to “survive and thrive.”

You can really help all of us in this goal by taking just a few moments giving your responses in our 2021 To The Point Survey.  This is for TTP Members only.  Please do not give it to anyone not a fellow TTPer.  It can be anonymous, but we hope you’ll let us know your name and email at the end where we ask. – or if we have a question for you regarding your answers.

This is in case you have a comment we should respond to – or if we have a question for you regarding your answers.

So just click on the link -- 2021 To The Point Survey – answer away, and make whatever comments you’d like. There is a place at the end where you can send any message for me or our TTP team.

With thanks and appreciation,

- Jack

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KEEPING YOUR SANITY III

feardemicEver hear the story of a fellow who went for a walk around his neighborhood one day and saw a man doing this really weird dance on his porch?  The fellow calls out, “What’s the dance for?”  The man calls back, “It keeps the tigers away.”  Puzzled, the fellow says, “What tigers? There are no tigers around here.” The man happily responds, “You see, it’s working!”

Easy to laugh at one nutty neighbor – but not when almost the entire world is engaged in the Lockdown Tiger Dance.

Here’s the NYTimes’ (1/29) List of Countries Americans Can Travel To.  It’s not many out of the world’s 198 countries, and most of those left with onerous restrictions.  This Global Feardemic for a flu bug survivability from which is over 99%.

This is a prime example of how critically important Keeping Your Sanity is amidst the whole planet going off its rocker.  It’s not just America.

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WHY IS THE LEFT HAVING NIGHTMARES EVERY NIGHT?

Mindlessness and moral idiocy are not characteristically human attributes; they are symptoms of herd-poisoning” - Aldous Huxley
Has there ever been a situation throughout all of American history where the Democrat party is so terrified of one man and his supporters that they set out to destroy him unrelentingly from the moment he won an election, throughout his four-year term in office and after he has Left office?

No. Never.  But the Left is so frightened of Donald Trump that they mean to literally erase evidence of his existence.  Here are seven examples.

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WELCOME TO FASCIST AMERICA

dark-winter Two weeks into the [FPX] administration and already the prospects of restoring the American spirit, the economy, and the old Constitution look bleak.

In a flurry of executive orders, the new faux-president—superannuated figurehead though he is—has sought immediately to overturn the legacy of the Trump administration on such matters as border security, immigration, and energy self-sufficiency.

And that’s just for starters.

“Make America Great Again” has become “Make America Grovel Again.” Which is, of course, exactly the way the punitive, “progressive” left wants it as it goes about refashioning the country along the lines of its own fascist antecedents.

It seems that the end of the American Experiment now looms—to be replaced by what, remains to be seen, although history offers us a frightening clue.

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WHY ARE PROGRESSIVES REGRESSIVE?

ultimate-progressiveOne common theme in the abject madness and tragedies of the past 12 months is that “progressive” ideology now permeates almost all of our major institutions—even as the majority of Americans resist the leftist agenda.

Its domination resembles the manner in which the pre-Renaissance church had absorbed the economic, cultural, social, artistic, and political life of Europe, or perhaps how Islamic doctrine was the foundation for all public and private life under the Ottoman Sultanate—or even how all Russian institutions of the 1930s exuded tenets of Soviet Marxism.

To be a Silicon Valley executive, a prominent Wall Street player, the head of a prestigious publishing house, a university president, a network or PBS anchor, a major Hollywood actress, a retired general or admiral on a corporate board, or a NBA superstar requires either progressive fides or careful suppression of all political affinities.  Why?

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THE INSIDER’S GAME

wall-st-betsAs the apex predators of capitalism, hedge funds are accustomed to raking in billions by driving companies into the ground and feasting on the carcasses.

So there was widespread satisfaction last week when members of an online discussion group called WallStreetBets started beating the Wall Street bully boys at their own game. “The only way to beat a rigged game,” one WallStreetBets leader said, “is to rig it even harder.”

All this outsider army needed to win was the continued ability to communicate with each other online, and their collective ability to keep piling into the “Buy” side of the trade. Within hours, they would be hobbled on the first front and crippled on the second.  Welcome to the Insider’s Game – but reality is, the insiders are terrified by the outsiders.

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SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE

keystone-firedThose who deal in feelings rather than facts often justify their calls for censorship and repression by arguing that those who do not “feel” in the same way they do, must be bad people and hence have no rights.

Take the term “social justice.” The word “justice” has had a rather specific meaning for several hundred years. Adding the word “social” as a modifier negates the word “justice,” since social justice is totally subjective where every person can have their own definition.

Last week, [FPX] cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline which was to primarily carry Canadian crude oil to U.S. refineries. Certain “environmentalists” argued for the cancellation on the basis of “saving the environment” and “social justice.”  There was no justice in it at all.

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OAMU – A FIELD MANUAL ON ORGANIZING A MASS UPRISING III

harassing-at-a-cafeChapter Three: Meetings

An activist group is not likely to be successful unless a sufficient number of members are able to work together to plan, discuss problems, and make decisions about solutions. These activities are difficult and it’s easy to go wrong.

SNCC had a way of conducting meetings that they valued very highly, championed for the local activists, and guarded zealously against change. It came to be called “participatory democracy,” although they did not use the term themselves.

Here are the main principles of SNCC’s participatory democracy.

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SKYE’S LINKS 02/04/21

It’s worth watching Tucker’s Monday (2/01) monologue entire as he discusses FPX’s attack on America’s basic institutions.

“Think of the Trump era as a prison riot. In any maximum security prison, the prisoners know they can’t escape, but they can definitely raise a little hell now and then, which they tend to do when they get really tired of being abused and neglected by the prison guards.” The Nov 3 Great Election Theft and subsequent FPX Dictatorship is to remind us who is actually running things.

That's All Folks!

But in the real world there is always another show:

Only You Can Beat Big Tech Censorship

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FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE POTALA

the-potalaLhasa, Tibet, 1986. Built in the mid-1600s, the Potala in Lhasa, Tibet was the home of the Dalai Lama as the incarnation of Avalokiteśvara, the Buddhist deity of compassion, until the Communist Chinese colonized Tibet in 1959.

The Potala is one of the world’s great architectural wonders, thirteen stories high with molten copper poured into the foundation to stabilize it from earthquakes, 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines, 200,000 statues.  I’ve been here several times since 1986, and it’s always such a powerful experience.  Yet to Tibetans, this is a “dead” building as the Dalai Lama is gone.  It is my hope that someday, the Dalai Lama will live here in a Free Tibet once again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #114 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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BALLOONS OVER BURMA

burma-balloonsFrom the 900s to the 1200s, the Pagan Empire built over 10,000 Buddhist temples. 2,200 remain on the plains of Pagan today, one of the world’s most wondrous sights – especially if you see them from above in a hot air balloon. It is truly astounding how much there is to explore and experience in Burma. We’ll be there once more for it all next February. I hope you will be one of your fellow TTPers to join us. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #33 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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