On Thursday, 6 July we tracked the highest number of commercial flights ever, following more than 134,000. We posted the map below the following day to illustrate the busy skies and we received numerous questions about the blank areas on the map. Why are there big holes in places around the world? //

Ukraine... //

On the map above, blue pins represent airports while the white and yellow lines represent available airways that aircraft can use to transit an area. Nearly all of Tibet is airway-free, but not because the terrain is too high to fly over. Even the tallest mountains in the world just to the southwest are easily traversed, however, safety is again the prime consideration. Aircraft operating at a normal cruising altitude of 35-40,000 feet are flying through air that is less dense and contains less oxygen than air lower in the atmosphere.

At cruising altitude there is only about a minute of useful oxygen available before Hypoxia can begin affecting the brain. This is why airplanes are equipped with oxygen masks and why aircraft descend to 10,000 feet or lower in the event of a depressurization. The problem in Tibet is that much of the plateau is at or above 10,000 feet above mean sea level, making it impossible to descend to a safe altitude. Aircraft that do operate in this area follow special procedures and carry extra equipment to mitigate an emergency situation. For nearly all others, flying around is the easiest thing to do.

Hollywood isn’t known as a breeding ground for healthy marriages, so it comes as a surprise when Hollywood films have anything good to say about marriage, especially as sexual degeneracy in films keeps increasing exponentially and marriage and monogamy become more and more marginalized. This is why it may come as a shock to filmgoers to see the blockbuster “Oppenheimer” portraying and lauding the strengths of marriage, as well as warning against the threats to it, though in unnecessarily graphic detail.

A brief caveat spectator: “Oppenheimer” contains three R-rated sex scenes, which mar the otherwise masterful film. The graphic nature of these scenes is wholly unnecessary and even uncharacteristic of writer-director Christopher Nolan, who has famously not featured sex in any of his prior films. The film would be a magnum opus were it not for the inclusion of these scenes.

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The Angel Studios thriller Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, continues to draw crowds at the theater. The film was made on a relatively low budget of $14.5 million when the industry spent $60-$100 million on movies in a comparable genre. Sound of Freedom, an apolitical film opposing something civilization should be against, that is, the sexual trafficking of children, has turned out to be a Rorschach test for where people, particularly the media, actually stand on the subject. //

If we look at France on the eve of the Revolution, we have a good explanation for the reception of Sound of Freedom.

Marquis de Sade did not exist in a vacuum. If you think of his more lurid writings as a DIY manual for deviant sexual practices, I think you are missing the point. He chronicled in literary form a debauched world nearly schizophrenic in its contradictions. //

This parallel society was possible because the upper crust was immensely rich, untouchable by the law, and bored because their roles in governing and war-making had been farmed out to social inferiors. With nearly unlimited power and wealth at their disposal but with nothing useful to do, the elites searched for ways to amuse themselves. But they weren’t in search of just any amusement. They wanted amusements that the commoners couldn’t enjoy. In the case of de Sade, this was a kind of sexual acting-out that might have resulted in a commoner getting a one-way trip to the Mediterranean galleys or a tumbril ride to the guillotine.

Power, as they say, corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The corruption that comes with absolute power is not confined to the public acts of government; it become a part of man’s nature.

The lifestyle lived by the elite could have been what Charles Baudelaire described as “An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.” The desert is the monotony and boredom of everyday life, while the oasis is that rare moment of excitement or pleasure. But the excitement and pleasure quickly become boring, and that leads to the search for new stimulation.

I would argue that while the visible excesses of the ancien régime were held in check by public morality, we have advanced beyond that stage. We are at the stage that Friedrich Nietzsche called the “transvaluation of values” and “the will to power.” Christian morality is dead as a restrictive force. Freed of that restriction, you can pursue whatever pleases you. There’s a catch, though. When commoners are engaged in activities that would have drawn stiff prison sentences only a decade ago, you have to find something else to scratch that itch. Enter child sex trafficking.

Child sex trafficking is despised in most of the civilized world, so our elites tart it up with private islands and resorts only reachable by private jets. The clothing, food, and setting give the tawdry purpose a patina of elegance.

From the whole Jeffrey Epstein saga, we know there is a market for child sex trafficking. I think Epstein is only the tip of the iceberg. If commoners can take a trip to Thailand or Cambodia, then there are more Lolita Expresses and “recruiters” like Ghislaine Maxwell catering to the needs of the superwealthy and the politically powerful. //

I think when you view the attacks on Sound of Freedom as a reaction to the lower social orders stigmatizing something the elites believe to be perfectly fine, much of the media reporting starts to make sense. After all, who are these unwashed cretins to tell the Masters of the Universe what is right and wrong. Once you stir into that the non-trivial number of people in the media who use child pornography and who think “intergenerational love” is natural, it is easy to see the trashing of a film as being less an exercise in journalism than an attack on what is perceived as an outmoded sexual ethic.

What we should learn from this movie and the reaction to it is that child sex trafficking is a big deal. It is bigger than Chester the Molester in the pedo-van or the little Honduran boy being rented online. It is an activity favored by the upper crust of Western society, such as one might find on the passenger list of the Lolita Express. The QAnon focus is a smokescreen. It is a way of discrediting the film without defending child sex trafficking and pedophilia. By extension, that discredits any investigation into child sex trafficking. Most of America has never heard of QAnon, and the fact that so many media outlets grabbed the same angle shows there was some coordination on the theme. While law enforcement is not looking at this entertainment for the superwealthy right now, with enough of a public outcry, they might. That would be bad for a lot of very wealthy men.