SPITUK GOMPA
The Tibetan Monastery or “Gompa” of Spituk overlooks the Upper Indus as it flows out of Chinese Tibet and towards Baltistan in Pakistan. The Indus here is the geological dividing line between the ancient Karakorum mountains and the younger Himalayas (40+ million years old and growing: Mount Everest rises 2 inches every ten years).
We’re in Indian Tibet here, a region called Ladakh where Tibetan culture flourishes freely. Wheeler Expeditions first explored Indian Tibet – including running the remote Zanskar River tributary of the Upper Indus, one the world’s most thrilling whitewater experiences – in 1992. We’ll explore it once more in the summer of 2022. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #128 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
DIGITAL LETTERS OF MARQUE – THE SOLUTION TO CYBER PIRACY
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Goodyear blimp Resolute was put into service spotting enemy submarines. There’s a lesson for 21st-century cyberwarfare.
Among the specific Enumerated Powers of Article 1 Section 8 the Constitution gives Congress is Clause 11: "to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal”—essentially licenses authorizing private parties to wage war on the government’s behalf.
The Resolute was a privately owned U.S. craft, flown by a civilian crew out of Los Angeles. If letters of marque could be adapted for flying machines, why not computing machines? Why can’t letters of marque be used to blow hackers out of the digital water?
THE TIBETAN KINGDOM OF LO
This is one of the magical places we experience on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions. An independent kingdom for 650 years in the remote Mustang region of Nepal, it is one of the last places of traditional Tibetan culture on earth, unchanged for centuries. There are sky-caves here – apartment complexes carved out of vertical cliffs 2,000 years ago – Drok-pa nomads in the high pastures, spectacular sacred ceremonies, all in a mysteriously beautiful setting where the Himalayas meet the Tibetan Plateau. We’ll be here again next April. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #86 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 05/13/21
The biggest gasoline pipeline in the US has been shut down by a cyberattack. This is a perfect example about how much of the SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems that run our infrastructure are tied to the public internet rather than to private intranets that is not connected to the public internet, thereby making them relatively easy to attack.
Cyberattack Forces Shutdown Of Largest Gasoline Pipeline In United States
THE FASCISM THE LEFT PLANS FOR US NEXT
With GoogTwitFace having upped its bias and dropped its mask, and corporate America joining academia, the media and entertainment on the Dark Side, these entities act as a malevolent monolith silencing dissident voices from Maine to Maui.
But it would be naïve to think the Left, which craves power and wants total control, will be satisfied with its current soft authoritarianism.
This brings us to two developments that could cause the raising of eyebrows if not militias.
WHY THE DEMS ARE IN PANIC OVER THE ARIZONA AUDIT
This might be the understatement of the year:
“Democrats are really worried about the Arizona audit because Democrats know what they did.
— Emerald Robinson ✝️ (@EmeraldRobinson) May 5, 2021”
And here is why.The inimitable Ray Blehar, a retired senior DoD analyst, has just completed a top-level analysis of the Maricopa County results. His findings are earth-shattering.
WAKHAN SURPRISE
Our Glimpse 77 yesterday (11/03) was of the Wakhan Corridor – a skinny finger of northeast Afghanistan separating Tajikistan and Pakistan extending all the way to China. Click on the link to get the photo. Note the large alluvial fan in the center on the Afghan side of the Amu Darya. Now look closely and you’ll see a tiny white dot on the edge of the fan next to the green of the river bank.
What could that be? Well, here’s my photo of it close up. Certainly no Afghan village. It’s a modern windowless compound completely isolated with no roads, trails, or any other habitation for many miles in any direction, reachable only by helicopter. Any guesses? It’s a CIA interrogation center, where captured Taliban are brought for rather intense debriefings. That’s the Wakhan Surprise. I’ll bet many of you canny old TTPers, however, aren’t surprised at all. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #78 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT WOKENESS HAS JUST DIED?
White Leftist politicians and hipsters have already killed wokeness in American culture. They just don’t know it yet.
There’s been this repeating cultural joke occurring throughout my lifetime that, for some reason, never seems to be recognized by those who are ridiculed by its many iterations.
That is, when liberal white hipsters adopt any cultural fad, they manage to end the fad by making it spectacularly unpopular in no time flat.
TUNING OUT WOKEISM
If wokeness should continue and “win,” by now we all know where it will end up. After all, this is not a prairie-fire, peasants-with-pitchforks, spontaneous bottom-up revolution.
The woke Left seeks a top-down erasure of America, engineered by the likes of LeBron James from his $40 million estate talking revolution to Oprah at her $90 million castle, and as the top executives of Coke, Target, and Delta Airlines believe their $17 million-a-year salaries make them experts on the crimes of non-diversity, exclusion, and inequity.
Anytime revolutionaries at the outset of their enterprises seek exemption from the consequences of their own ideology, we know their plans will end badly for everyone else. Or just end.
ONE PICTURE, FOUR COUNTRIES, AND A SURPRISE
This is the Wakhan Corridor traversed by Marco Polo on his way to China in 1273. The river is the Amu Darya, known to Alexander the Great and the ancient Greeks as the Oxus. The Wakhan is the finger of northeast Afghanistan designed in the late 19th century to prevent the Russian Empire in Central Asia from touching the British Empire in India. It now separates Tajikistan from Pakistan with its fingertip the only border Afghanistan has with China.
Thus you’re looking at four countries. The river forms the Tajik-Afghan border – Tajikistan is on the left, Afghanistan on the right, in the center distance are the Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan, while in the far distance are the Karakorum mountains of China. This is a fabulously exotic remote part of our world with people living here tracing their ancestry to the troops of Alexander. Oh – and the surprise? I’ll tell you tomorrow. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #77 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)