THE GOLDEN MADRASA
The Golden College or Madrasa of Tilla-Kori was built by Samarkand ruler Yalangtush Bakhadur in the 1650s to house and teach the best and brightest students of his realm. It stands at the center of the wondrous Registan public square complex of the Silk Road oasis city of Samarkand, known to the ancient Greeks as Marakanda.
It was centuries old when Alexander conquered it in 329 BC. For a thousand years as Central Asia’s great entrepot on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, it was a cosmopolitan center for Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity. Incorporated into the Islamic world in the 700s, sacked by Genghiz Khan in 1220, rebuilt by the time Marco Polo in 1272 described it as “a large and splendid city,” Tamerlane made it his capital in 1370.
I was first in Samarkand to stand astonished at the Registan in 1963. Seeing it now, far more impressively preserved than in the Soviet days, made me gasp – especially how Tilla-Kori is once again lavishly decorated with gold. You’ll gasp too, for it is only one of the innumerable sights you’ll see and experiences you’ll have with your fellow TTPers by joining our Heart of Central Asia this September. If you dream of having a fabulous adventure of a lifetime, let me know at [email protected] and we’ll talk about it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #223 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
TRUTH IN SIGNS
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – WITH THE ANTI-COMMUNIST GUERILLAS IN CAMBODIA
July, 1984. The KPNLF – Khmer People’s National Liberation Front – was the Anti-Communist guerrilla movement fighting the Soviet-backed Vietnamese Communists in Cambodia. When I was first there in 1961, Cambodia was then a land of serenity, with a gentle and tranquil people who were at peace with themselves and the world. Now it was a land of indescribable Communist horror.
It was such a privilege to be with these brave men willing to wage war against that horror and bring freedom to their country. I told their tale in Turning Back the Terror, the February 1985 cover story for Reason magazine. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #20 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/21/23
Watching this Ukrainian soldier – a double amputee who lost his legs fighting for his country’s freedom – propose to his lady hit me very hard. An emotional tsunami overwhelmed me and washed me out into a limbic sea.
I cried tears of joy for the happiness of this couple, for the courage and beauty of their moment. I cried tears of bitterness for the war that lost his legs, lost the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainians – men, women, children and babies – the war being senselessly waged upon them by the most monstrously evil man on earth and his Kremlin regime.
And I cried tears of deeply painful confusion for the shock of so many conservatives poisoning their souls with Kremlin propaganda, causing them to root for evil to triumph over good, for freedom to succumb to slavery and mass murder. All I could think of for solace through the tears were the words of Luke 23:34: “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
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A lot has been going on this week that’s critical for TTPers to know about and understand – but before we continue, let me thank Mike Ryan for his astounding HFR last Friday (4/14). Mike’s unique skill set enables him to detail precisely why the EPA is such a hugely dangerous national security threat to America. Please consider copy-and-pasting his argument to send to your Congressman, Senator, and local media.
Mike and I are tag-teaming every other week on the HFR, and he keeps raising the bar on me! While Skye keeps raising the bar on himself! See the last two Skye’s Links of yesterday (4/20) and last week (4/13) to see for yourself. The value of TTP has increased immensely thanks to them. I encourage you to take advantage – it’s your TTP!
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Let’s start with the most terrifying event of the week.
THE SANDS OF THE TAKLA MAKAN
When Marco Polo crossed the Tien Shan mountains and reached the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar in 1273, he faced an enormous desert of endless dunes called the Takla Makan, meaning “You go in, you don’t come out.”
To avoid this fate, the Silk Road at Kashgar splits in two – above to the north of the dreaded sand sea via the oases of Aksu and Turfan, and underneath to the south via the oases of Yarkand, Khotan, Charchan and Charklik. The two routes came together beyond Lop Nor, the eastern extension of the Takla Makan, at the oasis of Dunhuang.
His father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo had earlier taken the northern route to first meet Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, but now with Marco they took the southern route. They traveled in caravans of two-humped Bactrian camels, often crossing dunes on the edge – just like the photo you see. In 2008, I retraced Polo’s route along the southern route – part of it by motorized hang glider. He would be fascinated, I’m sure, to see what a camel caravan looks like from the air! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #13 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
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.