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L i k e U s ! ! !

THE GREATEST ONE WEEK ADVENTURE IN THE WORLD

 
k2.jpg

This is K2, the second highest mountain in the world at 28,741 feet (8762 meters), and harder to climb than Everest.  It isn't in the Himalayas, but an even remoter mountain range in Central Asia called the Karakorum.

In the center of the Karakorum range is a confluence of massive glaciers, a legendary uninhabited spot known to mountaineers as Concordia.  Legendary because it is by consensus of professional mountaineers and adventurers to be the single most spectacularly scenic place on planet Earth.

At Concordia there are 41 peaks over 21,000 feet within a radius of nine miles.  The highest mountains in the world are called "eight-thousanders," higher than 8,000 meters or 26,250 feet.  There are 14 such giants, all in either the Himalayas or the Karakorum.  At Concordia you can see four all at once.  It is unique on earth.

It takes ten days of trekking from the last outpost of civilization - called Skardu - to reach Concordia.  Then ten days back.  But this July, I am going to take a dozen adventurers to Concordia in a single day - by helicopter.

And that's not all.

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THE WRATH OF ALLAH



This is Rakaposhi, a 25,000-foot Karakorum giant that towers above the hidden kingdom of Hunza in far northern Pakistan. It is one of the world’s great sights to wake up in the morning and watch the sunrise light up Rakaposhi from the balcony of your room in Karimabad, Hunza’s capital.

Far northern Pakistan is far and away one of the most spectacularly scenic regions of our planet. Today unfortunately, it has become one of the most tragic. Tens of thousands of people lie dead and millions are homeless with their villages and lives turned to rubble by an enormous earthquake.

Having spent quite a bit of time exploring the region over the years, it is heart-breaking for me to think of what has befallen all of the friendly folks I met there. The region, however, had become infested with numbers of decidedly unfriendly folks as well. There are many hidden valleys that were used as Al Qaeda refuges and training camps for Jihadi guerrillas launching attacks into Indian Kashmir.

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RSS

I’m sure you’ve all been reading about RSS, Really Simple Syndication. Some of you are probably using it. Others know it has something to do with getting ‘feeds’ on a subject you’re interested in, but have no idea beyond that.

Let’s quickly discuss RSS and then given an example of an application that I use.

RSS provides a convenient way to syndicate information from a variety of sources, including news stories, updates to a web site or even source code check-ins for a development project.

Regardless of the purpose for which the RSS file is being used, by watching this XML file, you can quickly and easily see whenever an update has occurred. Of course, viewing the RSS feed in Internet Explorer and hitting F5 every few minutes is not the most efficient use of your time, so most people take advantage of some form of client software to read and monitor RSS feeds.

There are many different RSS clients available, but here are a selected few that we tested our feeds with and that you may find useful:

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The Seventh Level

Sorry to say, I haven't reread Dante's "Inferno" for some years, but I still remember his description of a very low and extremely unpleasant level of hell that houses traitors. Surely abject appeasers of evil qualify for the same treatment, and we must note grimly that three prime candidates have recently come forward to swell the ranks of that overheated realm: Senator Joe Biden of Delaware (D.), Senator Arlen Specter (R.), of Pennsylvania, and Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio (R.)

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SHARON’S FINAL ROAD


During his long career, Ariel Sharon built a lot of roads. As housing minister in the early 1990s and as national infrastructures minister in the late 1990s, Sharon played a key role in building everything from the Trans-Israel Highway to access roads to isolated communities.

Since he passed away on Saturday (1/11), his role in building Israel's national infrastructures has been widely noted. But no mention has been made of the final and most important road that he paved.

That is the road to Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.  Here's how it got built.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 07/12/13


While waiting for my flight in the airport lounge in Sofia, Bulgaria yesterday (7/11), it was hard to ignore the big TV monitor tuned to ABC News.  There was Diane Sawyer announcing the "latest development" of the Zimmerman trial, and up flashed the ABC intro graphic to start the story.

On one side of the screen was a picture of Zimmerman in the gray suit and tie he wears to the trial.  On the other side was a picture of Trayvon Martin - not as a six-foot tall 17 year old but as an angelic smiling 12 year-old.  It's the same picture ABC uses to identify him on its website:

Somebody switched the channel to CNN - funny how many American news channels there are in Bulgaria - which was devoted to some lawyers discussing mindless minutiae of the trial.  Not a word about the real "latest development" - the disclosure on Wednesday (7/10) that Eric Holder's Justice Department organized with taxpayer money racial protests and racial unrest against George Zimmerman.  

The best op-ed of the week on this racist farce is in Tuesday's (7/09) IBD.  It's IBD's conclusion that everyone needs to understand  -- that any blood from planned race rioting will be on Obama's hands.

Let's get out of the stuffy air in here and into the world a bit.  There's no resisting, for example this headline of the week:

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OBAMA DENIES ROLE IN GOVERNMENT


WASHINGTON -President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has "played no role whatsoever" in the U.S. government over the past four years.

"Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am," he said. "Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization."

The President's outrage only increased, he said, when he "recently became aware of a part of that government called the Department of Justice."

"The more I learn about the activities of these individuals, the more certain I am that I would not want to be associated with them," he said. "They sound like bad news."

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TAKING MONEY FROM BUSINESS BENEFITS ONLY BIG GOVERNMENT


Can you name the worst tax? In recent weeks, there have been a slew of articles in major publications about how many multinational corporations have found legal ways to reduce their tax burdens by running some of their operations through low-tax jurisdictions. In response, those who love high taxes and big government demand that corporations pay more.

Economists dislike the corporate income tax because it reduces productive labor and capital and is an additional tax on income that has already been (or will be) taxed. Politicians love the tax because it is largely invisible to most voters. Because of tax competition among countries, corporate tax rates have been dropping globally, resulting in the United States having the world's highest rate.

Now the high-taxers are fighting back.  They need to be stopped.

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OBAMA’S TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA


"It's unbelievable," said an unemployed waitress. "How can Obama be leading in the polls and likely to win enough electoral votes for a second term despite the worst economic performance by any President in the past 100 years?"

"It's downright frightening," said A small business owner. "What is the real plan that Obama and the Democrats have for their ‘transformation of America' and, more importantly, how are they going to achieve that plan and how will it affect my business and my family?"

The answers to these critical questions is clear. There is enough evidence, both direct and circumstantial, to provide reasonable answers. Yet, the reasons for Obama's showing in the polls and his transforming plan are kept masked by a media and a public who is seduced by the silver-tongued politician.

Obama's ability to mask his intentions produces an almost opium-like effect. That mask, however, will be removed once re-elected and America will, more clearly than ever, see and feel the impacts of the ‘plan'.  Here is that unbelievable, frightening plan to transform America.

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MOOCHERS IN PARADISE


Repeatedly, TTPers at the Seascape Rendezvous last weekend raved about how ravishing the setting was, on a flower-filled bluff overlooking the Pacific with gentle waves rolling onto a beach that went on for miles.

It was captivating, as was the sunny, blue-sky weather.  After the Rendezvous, Rebel and I drove down the California coast through the Big Sur - one of the world's most breathtaking coastlines - past towns and farms, cities and countryside on the way to see her folks in San Diego. 

The beauty and bounty of California was simply overwhelming.  It's called the Golden State for good reason. Not just for the 1849 Gold Rush, but for how the sunlight magically transforms the landscape into a Renaissance painting of ethereal light. 

Yesterday (6/06), flying back to the East Coast, I was transfixed looking out the window at America The Beautiful as it passed in boundless variety beneath me.  And again, it hit me.  No place on earth has been more blessed by Providence, in both natural resources and in the moral values and political principles that make freedom and prosperity possible. 

How could it be that so many Americans would choose to trash both their freedom and their prosperity?

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BAJA DEMOCRATS


Cabo San Lucas, Baja California.  The balcony view from a suite at the Marquis Los Cabos overlooking the Sea of Cortez is breathtaking.  My wife Rebel and I are here attending a business conference - but at the moment, we are enjoying a margarita and a spectacular sunset in the ocean.

Ever-observant, Rebel notices that my eyes have become unfocused, and asks what I'm thinking about.  "Nicholas Trist," I answer.  "Who's he?" she asks.  "One of the great jerks of American history," I respond.  She takes a sip of her margarita, gazes out upon the shimmering sheet of sunlit blue in front of us, and waits for the rest of the story.

So here it is.  Starting almost 500 years ago, it's ultimately about the negative value of Baja Democrats.

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THE PILLAR GANG

Today's (2/17) Wall Street Journal has an op-ed by a CIA intelligence officer, Guillermo Christensen, entitled Un-Intelligence.  The article exposes the self-serving attack on President Bush and the War in Iraq by a fellow CIA officer named Paul Pillar in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.

Pillar is now being lionized by the left for his anti-Bush screed - but you first learned about him here at To The Point in October 2004.

Porter At The Pass revealed that Paul Pillar and his left wing cabal at the CIA, which I named The Pillar Gang, was conducting a covert campaign of leaks and disclosures to damage George Bush's chances of re-election and help John Kerry's.

As explained in "Porter At The Pass":

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IS PARIS BURNING?

Hitler’s infamous question is being asked anew by Moslem immigrants, characterized by French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy as “thugs” and “scum,” now into their eighth day of violence in Parisian slum suburbs.

French President Jacques Chirac promptly condemned Sarkozy rather than the Moslem rioters. Such talk by Sarkozy – Chirac’s main political rival – showed a “lack of respect” for the rioters, which “could lead to a dangerous situation.”

Further confirmation that France is doomed.


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FAKE WINDOWS PATCH IS A WINDOWS KILLER

We had a genuine worm outbreak two weeks ago, but this week's top threat is a fake patch for it called a phish (pronounced ‘fish.’)

What is a phish? Here’s a short definition:

Phishing is a type of a social engineering scam, which attempts to gain your bank details, usually by presenting you with a form that looks identical to a popular bank's website.

Most phishing attacks are quick hacks, but some put some effort into their programming. One such example is a phony “Windows update” known as Downloader.EJD. It's a Trojan horse program that uses an updated version of an old trick,a false Microsoft security patch. Here's how to protect yourself from it.

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The Jihadis’ Primal Scream

Unless you depend on CNN for information - CNN totally and stunningly transformed the story, as Instapundit informed us yesterday - by now you have heard of the New York Times story about the discovery of a 17-page letter from Abu Musab al Zarqawi, written from Iraq in the middle of last month to the leaders of al Qaeda. It's an extremely explosive story.

According to the Times - whose correspondent, Dexter Filkins, saw both the Arabic original and a military translation, and "wrote down large parts of the translation" - the letter is a sort of jihadist primal scream.

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