WHISPER IT, BUT THE TIDE JUST MIGHT BE TURNING AGAINST PUTIN
The American president has lost patience with the Russian leader – so have his own people.
The Kremlin is nervous.
On Saturday night, a limousine caught fire north of the headquarters of the Russian security services.
Last week, footage showed servicemen being frisked by special protection officers.
Those same officers were later seen opening up sewer hatches in a hunt for bombs near where the Russian leader was speaking.
To Western intelligence agencies, the situation is becoming clear: within Russia’s top brass, the knives are out for their leader.
Western analysts are often accused of wishful thinking. Rightly so.
In March 2022, an op-ed in the New York Times described Russia as a “Potemkin superpower,” naively suggesting that just the faintest push would cause the whole regime to suddenly collapse.
Such a projection has not come to pass.
But there is one thing the rising paranoia does certainly reveal: Putin does think he’s vulnerable.
You can understand why. Let’s first consider the feeling within Russian society at large.
250,000 soldiers have died – grieving mothers are now starting to write to president Putin demanding explanations, with one telling Sky News, “It’s impossible to live like this.”
When Moscow was at war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it was the mothers of soldiers that formed the frontline of the anti-war movement.
Then there’s the key demand made by Putin in negotiations with the US…
ANYONE SEEN WHAT’S HAPPENING AT DIEGO GARCIA LATELY?
DC is abuzz with a ton of Trump-hating journalists and politicians all of a sudden learning that national security is a thing about which to be concerned.
The Beltway has been seizing and pouncing on a story that they believe is an opening to attack Donald Trump, or at least slow down his pace of progress in the first couple of months by slinging mud at his cabinet and senior advisors.
The story doesn't interest me in the slightest. It's not hard to see the motivation of those now calling for resignations and firings. They're exploiting a mistake in order to scandal the new administration into a standstill.
What I do find of extraordinary importance is what is taking place on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean that happens to contain a very long 12,000-foot runway.
Diego Garcia Air Force Base is a joint U.S. and U.K. base on the largest of the Chagos Islands.
The Brits have controlled much of the region as part of their British Indian Ocean Territories, but in 2024, they negotiated transfer of the island to Mauritania, with the exception of a 99-year lease for the Air Base, which is now operated and used by both the Brits and the Americans.
It also happens to be due south of Iran.
In the last week, a pretty significant buildup of U.S. aerial assets have been arriving on the archipelago, and the amount of open source information thus far is something that very well might be of great consequence to the greater Middle East very soon.
THE SULTAN ASTRONOMER
You’re looking at something historically and scientifically astonishing. It is what remains of an astronomical observatory built 600 years ago – in 1420 – by a Sultan in Central Asia who loved science and mathematics more than war and conquest.
It was in Samarkand, the most fabled oasis of the Silk Road, that Sultan Ulugh Beg built his circular observatory, three stories high of white marble. All that’s left today is part of the underground sextant that you see in the photo.
For the full story of what he achieved, with many more photos, click on The Sultan Astronomer in TTP I wrote in 2020.
This Glimpse is to whet your appetite to learn about this amazing Sultan and his scientific achievements.
It’s also to whet your appetite for joining your fellow TTPers on our Heart of Central Asia expedition this September. The story of The Sultan Astronomer is but one example of what awaits you in exploring Central Asia, an enrichment of your life beyond description. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #212 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE ALLAH THAT FAILED
[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on January 6, 2004. Facts are slippery things, especially when they are inconvenient. Ibn Warraq continues to speak out and publish the inconvenient truths of Islam under his pen name (which means “son of a papermaker”). It is a name that dissident authors have used throughout the history of Islam, who hide in fear for their lives. In 2007 Douglas Murray described Ibn Warraq as one who “refuses to accept the idea that all cultures are equal. Were Ibn Warraq to live in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, he would not be able to write. Or if he did, he would not be allowed to live.” The culture of Allah is a culture of death.]
Let’s say there’s this fellow named Moe. He makes a living as a highway bandit robbing travelers. Any victim who gives him any trouble he kills. Moe has a special hatred for Jews. “Kill Jews wherever you find them,” he tells the members of his gang.
At age fifty, Moe tells his best friend that he’s fallen in love with his daughter and wants to marry her. She is six years old. They are “married” and Moe starts having sex with the little girl when she is nine years old.
Moe tells his gang that God talks to him. As the Messenger of God, every word of Moe’s is the Word of God. Moe has his gang members kill anyone who refuses to believe this.
Here’s the question: Is Moe a criminally insane pervert and moral monster, or is he worshipped by hundreds of millions of devout followers who deeply believe that he is the most moral human being who ever lived?
The answer is: he is both.
INVISIBILITY CLOAK FOR YOUR CAR
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE CRUSADER FORTRESS IN THE CAUCASUS
This is the fortress town of Shatili in an extremely remote Caucasus region in Georgia called Khevsureti. It was built by the Crusaders 1,000 years ago. The Khevsur people who live here trace their ancestry back to these Crusaders and until the 1930s still wore chain mail in feud-battles with other towns. I took this picture in 1991.
American traveler Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) saw and recorded the customs of the Khevsurs in 1935. The Khevsur men, dressed in chain mail and armed with broadswords, wore garments full of decoration made up of crosses and icons. They don’t do that anymore, but they proudly retain their Crusader Christian heritage – for Georgia adopted Christianity in the 4th century AD. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #85 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/28/25
Paradigm Shifts
Alfred Brown posed a thought-provoking question on the TTP forum following last week's HFR, which merits further discussion. The question revolves around the idea that "the work of almost every member of the laptop computer class is quickly becoming redundant." This notion is supported by the rapid advancement of AI, which seems to be progressing at a rate similar to Moore's Law during the early days of the PC computer revolution.
However, it is essential to recognize that AI relies on the probability of specific words or pieces of computer code following one another based on their occurrence in billions of lines of text or code. Consequently, AI inherently drives everything towards the status quo due to its design, which is rooted in the concept of logical induction. This introduces a problem worth examining.
The increasing replacement of licensed professionals by artificial intelligence signifies a shift in the job market and the skills necessary for success. Additionally, the decline of state propaganda organs suggests a weakening of government-controlled media and the emergence of alternative information sources. Furthermore, major powers face significant challenges as they navigate the complexities of the current geopolitical landscape. Amidst these changes, a small, determined state that invested heavily in decentralization and innovation continues to persevere and succeed.
These are indeed revolutionary times. Join us for this week's Half Full Report as we delve deeper into these topics and explore their implications.
THE REGISTAN OF SAMARKAND
The magnificent Sher-Dor Madrassa, built in the early 1600s, is part of the Registan public square complex of the ancient Silk Road oasis of Samarkand. What’s fascinating is the mosaic depiction of living beings on either side of the arch – a tiger and on its back a rising sun deity with a human face. This is honoring the pre-Islamic history of Samarkand that goes back almost 3,000 years.
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.
Colonized by Czar Alexander II in the 1860s within the Russian Imperial Empire, and by the Soviets in the 1920s within the Uzbek SSR, Samarkand is flourishing today in independent Uzbekistan. There is so much to learn and contemplate upon when you are here. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #67 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
IS THE SIGNAL ‘SCANDAL’ AN ATTEMPT TO HIDE TRUMP’S SUCCESS?
We’re three days into what the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the mainstream press are trying to turn into a “scandal” — the accidental inclusion of Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg in a chat about the Trump administration’s operations against the Houthis on the texting app Signal.
The more we learn, the more we know that the whole affair is a massive nothingburger with everything on it and a big ol’ side of fake news fries.
Key members of the administration’s intelligence apparatus testified that the Signal messaging thread didn’t divulge any classified information.
And for all the commendation of Goldberg for not spilling too many beans, we have a better idea that there weren’t many beans to spill.
It's hard not to speculate on why the left is so desperate to blow this thing out of proportion and make it more than it should be.
Obviously, the left wants nothing more than to slap the scarlet letter S for “scandal” on this administration because it has been so effective and popular with the American people.
But a White House press release from Tuesday reveals the most plausible reason why the left wants to discredit the administration when it comes to action against the Houthis.
“Democrats and their media allies have seemingly forgotten that President Donald J. Trump and his National Security team successfully killed terrorists who have targeted U.S. troops and disrupted one of the most consequential shipping routes in the world. “This is a coordinated effort to distract from the successful actions taken by President Trump and his administration to make America’s enemies pay and keep Americans safe. The Biden Administration sat back as a band of pirates — with precision-guided, Iran-provided weaponry — exacted a toll in one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.”
UPDATING YOUR ANCIENT PAST
There are (at least) two major qualities from our ancient past that cause us considerable trouble.
Taking conscious control of them and training and updating ourselves for our present environment can make a big difference in our quality of life.
One of these is our attraction to high calorie foods. Starvation and famine were dire threats for our hunter gatherer forebears. Finding enough food was always the mission - and discovering a trove of high calorie foods was generally a cause for celebration and feasting.
When our ancestors came across the wilderness equivalent of a bakery, the best option for their survival was to eat as much as they possibly could.
So today, when high-calorie/low-nutrition snacks are everywhere and inexpensive, our inner hunter gatherer leads us to want to eat as much as we can.
That our rate of obesity and corresponding health hazards such as heart disease and diabetes are through the roof is one consequence of our incredible prosperity.
This is not some moral failing or lack of character; we’re doing what our successful forebears selected for us. What worked well for our ancestors is killing us today.
Our challenge is to adapt to our abundance by consciously and purposefully resetting our habits from hunter-gatherer auto-pilot eating, and toward deliberate habits that include knowledge of how our current meals will affect our future health and well-being.
The other leftover from our ancient past is our strong bias toward….