SKYE’S LINKS 04/20/23
The A.I. Apocalypse
Authenticity is rapidly becoming the most valuable attribute as the world spins into a whirlpool of computer-generated fake reality. Covid and the trillions spent on narrative control uncovered the vast potential to manipulate people to believe whatever authorities can imagine. The phrase "Fifth Generation Warfare" summarizes the situation where each person is delivered a customized narrative to overcome biases and values via the smartphone interface.
Just today, April 20, Acting CIA Director Michael Morell told Congress that he organized the 51-security professional letter that called the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation under the order of Anthony Blinken. The letter was not an intelligence service work product but a political move motivated by Xiden's promise to make Blinken Secretary of State and Morell the National Security Advisor. The letter was the ultimate political dirty trick and the ultimate election interference. Morell testified to Jim Jordan that they knew the laptop was actual and that their political careers depended upon Xiden.
We will be looking at how A.I. is used to deflect the narrative away from looting Chicago Wal-Marts, manipulating American foreign policy, selling derivatives, or altering elections in today's links.
Under the U.S. Constitution, voting assumes that individuals hold an understanding of truth that is geographically based. The voter can open the front door, walk outside and see reality. While pamphleteers two centuries ago, yellow journalism a century ago, and mass media altered perceptions during the most recent hundred years, A.I. is raising distortion to the stratosphere.
An example is the recently released collection of Pentagon Papers. While they contain some truth, gamers, and others changed statistics, altered paragraphs, inserted new text, and otherwise generated hundreds of falsified documents.
Why did they do it? For sport? Or to alert the world that everything is now fake. Official documents are no longer trustworthy. Even worse, videos and audio recordings can now be easily faked. This manipulation goes well beyond the Film, Wag the Dog, where a fake war was created to manipulate public opinion.
IF MTG IS RIGHT ABOUT BIDEN, IT’S MIND BLOWING
Hunter Biden’s hard drive, which he’s now conceded is legitimate, proved that Hunter was an exceptionally debauched character. Drugs and prostitutes dominated his life for a long time, and his own family didn’t trust him around teenage girls.
That’s why it’s easy to believe Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s as-yet unsubstantiated claim that the Biden family was benefitting from human trafficking both in the U.S. and Eastern Europe—including Russia and (pre-Zelensky) Ukraine. Just because she says it doesn’t mean it’s true, so the real shock is that we live in a world in which it seems possible, even likely.
According to her, in addition to money coming to the Bidens from various foreign countries,
“I just saw evidence of human trafficking. This involved prostitutes not only from here in the United States, but foreign countries like Russia and Ukraine. This is unbelievable that a President and a former Vice President, not only his son Hunter Biden, but many more family members extending past Hunter Biden and his immediate family.”
FORGET MACRON – US AND EUROPE SEE EYE-TO-EYE ON CHINA
All Show and No Go in China, Emmanuel
In its geopolitical competition with the West, China has long sought to divide the U.S. from Europe. Last week it appeared to score a coup when French President Emmanuel Macron declared Europe wouldn’t follow the U.S.’s approach toward Beijing.
Appearances, though, are deceiving. In fact, the European Union has decisively changed its approach to China in the past year. Europeans use milder language than Americans, saying they wish to “de-risk” their economic relationship with China, not “decouple.”
But in substance, European de-risking and American decoupling look much the same. Indeed, Europe is erecting economic defenses against China that in some cases go further than the U.S.
Which leads to a question: Why do European companies know more about the dangers of doing business with China than Elon Musk?
THE MONSTER OF SEFAR
Charlatans like Erich von Daniken convinced many gullible readers of his books this “monster” was of an alien in a space suit. Real archaeologists know it’s of an ancient tribal shaman, to be found among the greatest profusion of prehistoric rock art on earth over 10,000 years old in a remote plateau of the Algerian Sahara called the Tassili n’Ajjer.
There are no roads – you must climb up here with pack mules carrying your supplies. No one lives up here, it’s uninhabited. You’ll be among spectacularly gigantic rock formations with over 300 huge natural rock arches, so geologically unique it seems unworldly. In the center of Tassili n’Ajjer known as the Tadrart is a vastly deep gorge, like a knife sliced open the mountain. Clamber down to the bottom and you will discover a forest of 2,000 year-old Saharan cypress trees – yes, a forest in the Sahara, remnants of when the Sahara was green millennia ago.
My son Jackson and I explored here in 2003. Perhaps it’s time to be here again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #28 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WITH THE BARBARIANS IN THE GATES, WE MAY NEED OUR OWN BARBARIANS
LeMay, Patton, and Trump, by Andrea Widburg
If you have failed to realize we are living through the most significant social, economic, and political revolution in history, it can only be by a herculean effort in self-deception. So powerful is man’s ability “to thrust aside what they do not desire,” is it any wonder history is replete with catastrophes born of those who would substitute hope for reason?
What makes today’s revolution different is the unholy coalescence of inconceivable powerful, yet wholly corrupt institutions; unimaginable technological capability; and the systematic indoctrination of the most depraved ideology the world has ever known.
What is to be done? One key: You cannot fight barbarians by Marquess of Queensberry rules. As with all decent men, to both their credit and their demise, they are unable to bring themselves to fight any other way.
But we have experience fighting barbarians. We had them in WWII, like Iron Pants LeMay and Blood & Guts Patton. We need such a man now.
MOSCOW ENGULFED BY ANXIETY OVER IMPENDING UKRAINE OFFENSIVE
Getting anxious, Vlad?
Combat operations in the Donbas trenches remain deadlocked, but their diminishing intensity does not signify an impasse in the course of the Russo-Ukrainian war, which continues to evolve on the ground.
Most likely, the Russian command has tried to stockpile long-range missiles for a new series of strikes, perhaps aimed at disrupting supply routes for the expected Ukrainian offensive, possibly by hitting key bridges on the Dnipro River (Topwar.ru, April 13).
The mounting anxiety in Russia about the much-anticipated Ukrainian offensive operation constitutes the most significant change in the political context of the war, and it goes in parallel with the realization that the long-promised Russian winter-spring offensive did in fact happen — and spectacularly failing to yield any gains at enormous costs (Topwar.ru, April 10).
THE SISTINE CHAPEL OF THE EAST
The Painted Monastery of Voronet was built by Romania’s national hero Stefan the Great in 1488. A UN World Heritage Site, Voronet lies in a remote Carpathian mountain valley in the northeast corner of Romania. The entire church is covered in brilliantly painted scenes of Christian reverence.
The frescoes, with the famous “Voronet blue” made of crushed lapis lazuli, have withstood over 500 winters of wind, snow, and rain. The extraordinary back panel of the Last Judgment is renowned as the East’s Sistine Chapel (as in Eastern or Orthodox Christianity). It’s one of Romania’s many wonders. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #98 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHTS OF MALTA
They look real, don’t they? Ready to defend their Christian land with their lives. We are in the Palace Armory Museum of Malta, where you realize there is no nation on earth more proud of their Christian heritage. It was on Malta in 1565 that a few thousand Christian Knights led by 70 year-old Jean de Vallette defeated in utter humiliation a massive horde of Moslem Ottomans led by Suleiman the Magnificent.
In seeking to use Malta as his launchpad to conquer all of Christian Europe, Suleiman was bitter in defeat: “This cursed island is like a barrier interposed between us and our possessions,” believing that Allah ordained all Christian lands need be taken for Islam by the sword.
Vallette knew what he and his Knights faced: “It is the great battle of the Cross and the Koran which is now to be fought. A formidable army of infidels is at the point of invading our island.”
The incredibly heroic saga of the Knights’ victory is told in The Siege of Malta, on TTP since 2009. What’s critical to understand now is that, after 5½ centuries, the Maltese people are just as proud of their history and Christian heritage as ever. So here’s the question:
What would it mean for you to come to Malta and meet such people yourself? How uplifting and spiritually thrilling would it be for you to take a break from the mental illness of the Woke Anti-Christian culture you’re surrounded by, and immerse yourself in the absolute antithesis of it?
That’s the way you’ll feel by joining your fellow TTPers to experience The Magic of Malta with me in October. Trust me, you owe this to yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #264 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE MOSLEM MYTH OF JERUSALEM
Mohammed’s “Night Journey”
[This Monday’s TTP Archives feature was originally published on December 3, 2003. The TTP Team is looking forward to your thoughts on the Forum, especially despite the irrefutable facts therein, nothing has changed in the two decades since.]
It is a commonplace in a story or article about the Arab-Israeli conflict that mentions Jerusalem to repeat the Moslem mantra that “Jerusalem is the third holiest city in all Islam, next to Mecca and Medina.”
You’ve heard this innumerable times — but how come? Just why is Jerusalem so important to not just Jews and Christians but Moslems as well?
The reason is one single line in the Koran. If it can be shown by Islamic scholars that it has been misinterpreted, then Jerusalem ceases to be a holy city to Islam.
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/14/23
Another Animal Feeding Facility Explosion
Feedlot, Food Production, Agricultural Fires
Fires and explosions seem to be breaking out throughout the meat and protein production pipeline. These have been barn burners and not just small fires.The national media is silent, the government is quiet, and the food companies themselves are silent. Heck, even Bill Gates has remained silent.
This week we will look at the Obama-era technology forced upon large controlled animal feeding operations in the name of environmental justice by an incompetent EPA administrator.
Large feeding operations for chickens, hogs, and cows must install water pollution control technologies that produce explosive methane. Yet, the mandated technology lacks a process to dispose of the methane safely.
No air discharge permits are being written to flare off the explosive gas, thanks to an EPA that has repeatedly proven out of control.
Come on over to this week’s HFR, where we will talk about food plant fires. One thing is sure – nobody else is talking about this slow-rolling crisis.