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HOLY TOLEDO!

king-alfonso-vi-of-leon-and-castileToledo, Spain. As you drive up the hill upon which this ancient city sits, at the city’s entrance you are greeted by this statue. It is of King Alfonso VI of León and Castile (1040-1109) holding his sword as the Christian cross symbolizing his liberating Toledo from Moslem rule.

The sword has been the symbol of Toledo for over two millennia. In 193 BC, Romans founded the city as Toletum, where their blacksmiths developed a process of making swords of layered steel with different carbon contents, known to history as “Toledo steel,” the finest in the world for millennia until the hi-tech methods of today.

With Fall of Rome, Christian Visigoths ruled Spain from their capital here at Toledo – known as “Holy Toledo,” the center of a flourishing Christian civilization for 300 years until it was overrun by Moslems spreading Islam from Africa in the early 700s.

It was Alfonso VI who liberated Toledo from the Moslems in 1085. It was his great-grandson, Alfonso VIII (1155-1214) who led 30,000 knights in a surprise attack on 200,000 Moslems at the Plains of Tolosa in 1212 to destroy Moslem rule in Spain.

Today, Toledo is a small town of some 50,000, charming, historic, and peaceful. It’s one of the special places we hope to visit soon in one of our expeditions. Hope you’ll be with us. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #170 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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THE MOTHER LEATHERBACK

leatheback-turtle-jwThe leatherneck sea turtle is the world’s largest turtle, weighing up to 1500 pounds. This female was about half that. They have an enormous range, all the way from the North Sea to South Africa in the Atlantic, spending their lives at sea eating jellyfish – except when a female comes ashore to her hatching beach and bury her clutch of eggs in the sand above high tide.

Dropping several dozen glistening white golfball-size eggs into a depression scooped out with her flippers, she covers them up with sand, and heads back to sea, never to see them again. More than two months later, the born hatchlings dig out of the sand and wiggle their way into the sea, where the lucky ones survive.

I was able to watch this mommy’s entire egg-birthing process at dawn on a remote beach in the West African country of Gabon. It was such a privilege to witness an act of elemental nature by such an extraordinary creature. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #127 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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HALF-FULL REPORT 09/02/22

darthbidenWelcome to the Labor Day HFR!

Joe Biden gave a terrible speech last night as he went full Hugo Chavez on the nation.

Let’s look at what he did and why through the eye of the propagandist. Yup, that’s right. Uncle Joe went by the book in his appeal to The Chinese Communist party!

But just when the forces of evil seem overwhelming, a little dog named Doge appears to save the world.

Don’t be a Vatnik because you are liable to get Doged.

Artemis will make another launch attempt tomorrow and why the scrubbed launch on Monday was a win for MAGA. Government elites hate the idea of a quality culture but NASA is showing the way.

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WOKEISM ISN’T A LATINO VALUE

Language is important and words do matter. Through language we learn, we communicate our intentions, we develop plans, and we express our feelings. Through language we convey our affections and transmit our displeasures.

It is language that binds a family, a community, a region, or a culture together. Today, however, this fundamental cultural glue is purposefully being watered down and dissolved in order to break the bonds of our nation.

Wokeism in its purest forms breaks down clarity, and replaces truth with new grievance norms that masquerade as justice. Wokeists try to negate centuries of tradition, culture and science (!) by socially shaming opposing views and using coercive tactics on young children to adopt concepts that go against every grain of common sense and human understanding of the world around us.

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THE STRANGEST THING ABOUT ‘SEMI-FASCIST TRUMP’

semifascistusaFor the Left, Donald Trump is synonymous with “fascism” (or “semi-fascism,” as Joe Biden put it the other day). And for Liz Cheney and most of the NeverTrumpers, he remains an existential threat to democracy.

But to quantify those charges, what exactly has Trump done extralegally—as opposed to his bombast and braggadocio about what he might have wished to have done?

And what are the standards by which to judge this supposed menace? Did Trump illegally and with a mere signature nullify over $300 billion of contracted student loans—to firm up his college-student and college-graduate base nine weeks before the midterm elections?

Did Donald Trump weaponize the feared IRS, the logical place to find fascistic tendencies of any president bent on using government to punish his enemies? Did he push through a plan to add 87,000 new IRS investigative agents at a time of national discord?

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FAILED STATE: A GUIDE TO RUSSIA’S RUPTURE

russ-ruptureAttempts to transform the Russian Federation into a nation state, a civic state or a stable imperial state have failed.

The current structure is based on brittle historical foundations, possesses no unified national identity, whether civic or ethnic, and exhibits persistent struggles between nationalists, imperialists, centralists, liberals and federalists.

Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the imposition of stifling international economic sanctions will intensify and accelerate the process of state rupture.

Paradoxically, while Vladimir Putin assumed power to prevent Russia’s disintegration, he may be remembered as precipitating the country’s demise.  New territorial entities will surface as Moscow’s credibility crisis deepens amidst spreading ungovernability, elite power struggles, political polarization, nationalist radicalism, and regional and ethnic revivals.

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JOE’S HITS KEEP ROLLING IN: LOAN DEBT AMNESTY CHAOS, HIS LATEST SINGLE

joe-loan-forgiverAs President Obama used to say of his clownish vice president: "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f--- things up."

That brings us to Joe Biden's student loan debt forgiveness rollout, announced this week.

Let's set aside the issue of the legality of the matter.  The actual execution of the matter is Joe in Action.

According to Axios:

The implementation of President Biden's widespread, income-targeted student loan forgiveness is shaping up to be a bureaucratic challenge for the Department of Education.

Why it matters:

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UNSCIENTIFIC NONSENSE OF MULTIPLE GENDERS

Vector outlines icons of gender symbols. Male, female and transgender symbols.A Nobel Prize-winning German developmental biologist called the transgender movement’s claims “unscientific” and “nonsense,” and their plans to let teenagers determine their own gender “madness.”

In an interview published last week by the German feminist magazine EMMA, Dr. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard cited hard scientific facts to counter the trendy notion that there are multiple genders.

“All mammals have two sexes, and man is a mammal,” she explained. “There’s the one sex that produces the eggs, has two X chromosomes. That’s called female. And there’s the other one that makes the sperm, has an X and a Y chromosome. That’s called male.”

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TAIWAN VOWS TO COUNTER AFTER CHINA’S DRONE INCIDENT

taiwansentriesTaiwan is warning that its military won't hesitate to exercise right of self-defense and to counter-attack in the event of Chinese forces entering its territory, following an unprecedented event on Tuesday wherein live ammunition was fired as 'warning shots' against a cluster of drones that appeared near the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands. Flares had initially been deployed to warn off the drones, but per Taiwan's defense ministry live ammo was then used to force the drones' departure.

Taipei followed Wednesday with this warning:

"We will continue defending our national security, firmly holding on to the median line, and doing whatever it takes to protect our homes, our families, and our sovereignty," according to the words of defense ministry spokesperson Li-Fang Sun.

Within hours after issuing the warning, another drone incident has been reported, with Taiwan's military saying it detected "three civilian drones" in the area of its offshore island possessions on Wednesday. It further confirmed that warning shots were again fired to fend off the unidentified drones, believed to have been dispatched from China's mainland.

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SKYE’S LINKS 09/02/22

skyelinks_090222The propaganda war to promote vaccinations for the... Fauci/CCP virus grinds on and on and on and...

Xiden has no legal basis for his proposed student debt transfer, but Congress does have a legal remedy against his usurpation...

a Federal Judge has stated her likely intent to appoint a Special Master to review what from the FBI's Mar-A-Large raid the DOJ can keep...

San Francisco business owners are on the verge of a massive civil resistance revolt against the city government that won't protect their property...

Virginia is seceding from California green mania auto regulations...

All these in This Week's Edition of Skye's Links!!!

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KEEPING YOUR SANITY: THE GREAT ENRICHMENT

bourgeois-equalityWe are in the midst of remarkable times, and our relationship to money is very different because of it. Appreciating this can open up possibilities for how you think, feel and act with your money.

We all see the world through the lens of the culture and the times in which we live. People living during the Renaissance didn’t know they were living during the Renaissance and didn’t call it that. It’s often only in hindsight that we can see the pattern.

Today it’s hard to fully appreciate the truly remarkable conditions in which we live. For us it’s just life. For our ancestors, it would be breathtaking.  How did this “Great Enrichment” happen to our world, when it never did for all the centuries before?

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FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE BLACK MANED LION OF ANGOLA

jw-the-lion-of-angola August, 1983. It was pitch-black dark as I and a couple dozen heavily-armed UNITA guerrillas were rumbling over the roadless Angolan bush in a huge captured Russian truck. Suddenly there was an entire pride of lions running in front of the truck’s headlights. As they scattered, without warning a massive black-maned male jumped in front of us. The driver didn’t have time to swerve – we crashed into him full on, killing him instantly.

The UNITA fellows had me pose with him the next morning – obviously with no rifle as I was not hunting. It was to memorialize a tragic ending to a magnificent animal. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #125 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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HORSESHOE BEND

horseshoe-bendLooking down 1,000 feet above world-famous Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River at sunset is one of most iconic views our planet offers us. It is to be found near Page, Arizona near the border with Utah. Yet in truth, the number of different mind-blowing iconic views is uncountable in this part of the American West.

Close by are the Vermillion Cliffs, and the simply psychedelic Antelope Canyon. Just a bit further is the Grand Escalante Staircase, a little bit further Zion and Bryce Canyons and Monument Valley. And of course, right next door is something called The Grand Canyon.

There are people who have explored this region for years and will tell you there’s so much they’ve yet to see. You can explore the world over – what I’ve done my whole life – and yet there is so much of Creation to be soul-thrilled by just in this one region of northern Arizona and southern Utah – and I haven’t mentioned Moab which is a total mind-blow all by itself.

Take a break from all the worries of the world to come to here. Pick a place that will thrill your soul for a few days. That’s what’s needed now. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #134 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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THE JADE ROAD

the-jade-road

The oldest part of the Silk Road was originally called the Jade Road along the string of oases watered by runoff from the Kunlun mountains of northern Tibet on the southern edge of the Takla Makan desert in Chinese Turkestan. This is where the finest jade was to be found, washed down from Tibet. This is the route that Marco Polo took with his father and uncle in 1272 to reach the court of the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan.

This is what the Jade Road looks like today, near the fabled oasis of Khotan. Save for the road being asphalted and the farmer’s cart being towed by a small tractor instead of a donkey, Polo would recognize it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #179 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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