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By Li Hai, Dec 30, 2020 | The Epoch Times article here

Patrick Byrne, founder and former CEO of Overstock, said that China is “taking us out from within” during an interview with Dr. Jerome Corsi on Monday.

“The greatest way to fight a war, in the Chinese way of thinking, is not to have to fight at all. That’s what they’ve done here,” Byrne said.

Byrne studied Chinese history at Beijing Normal University from 1983 to 1984. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese studies from Dartmouth College.

Patrick Byrne:

“Though we spend a trillion dollars a year between our military and our intelligence, national security circles … that trillion dollars we have and we’ve built, you know, things that can stop all their planes and their missiles and all kinds of things. But we missed the one they use, which is not a fight at all, not firing a bullet or missile at all, but taking us out from within. And that’s what’s going on.”

Byrne pointed out that the Chinese regime is engaged in “a slow coup.”

“It’s a revolution. The stages of such a revolution are very well mapped out. We understand this. It’s demoralization, disorientation, crisis, then normalization: those four steps.”

Continue reading “Patrick Byrne: China Is Taking Us Out From Within”

Adapted from an article by Joan McCarter for Daily Kos Dec 28, 2020 | Original Daily Kos article here.

Two more major cities gave the finger to big telecom and embraced community broadband.

The voters in Chicago and Denver overwhelmingly voted for community broadband in a referendum in Chicago that directs the city to "ensure that all the city’s community areas have access to broadband Internet." It’s a nonbinding resolution, but it gives the city the authority to consider broadband as a utility, potentially allowing for community-run networks. The voters in Denver—83.5% of them—declared the city should be exempt from a 2005 law passed by Colorado that restricts towns and cities from building their own networks. That ALEC-inspired law had a loophole in the case of Colorado, one that lets cities and towns opt out of those restricts if the residents demand it by vote. There are now 140 communities in Colorado that have spurned the law and championed citizen-built broadband.

Continue reading “Municipal Broadband is Expanding in the US”

By Rich Welsh, Dec 28, 2020 | Original DJHJ Media article here.

The Pennsylvania House has revealed that Pennsylvania, after nearly two months, actually certified votes in error. The results that were certified in Pennsylvania for President are in error by over 200,000 votes. This is more than double the amount of difference between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Pa Lawmakers: Numbers Don’t Add Up,
Certification Of Presidential Results Premature and In Error pic.twitter.com/0DvmOldx1u

— Russ Diamond (@russdiamond)

December 28, 2020

This is unbelievable.

Russ Diamond, a Republican State Representative discovered and then reported Monday that the results for the Presidential race are off in Pennsylvania. How bad was it that he discovered? Well, there were more ballots that were cast than there were people who voted by more than 200,000 votes.

The group of Republican Representatives released this message:

Continue reading “PA House Republicans Discovered Error: 200,000 More Votes Counted Than People Who Voted”

By Karl Bode, Dec 28, 2020 | Original Techdirt article here.

While unveiling its shiny new 5G-enabled iPhones back in October, Apple brought Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg to the stage to declare that Verizon had launched an updated, "nationwide" 5G network that shores up the company’s 5G coverage. Until now, Verizon has largely embraced "high band" or millimeter wave 5G, which provides amazing speeds if you’re near an antenna, but suffers from limited range and the inability to penetrate buildings. As a result, the company has been routinely criticized for comically overstating not only what 5G is capable of, but where 5G is available.

To attack this credibility problem, and drive some hype for the new iPhones, Verizon announced that it was dramatically expanding its 5G network to 200 million more people. To do so, Verizon announced Verizon would be using "dynamic spectrum sharing" (DSS) that helps utilize some existing 4G channels to offer 5G.

Continue reading “Verizon 5G DSS Network is Slower Than 4G”

Issued on December 28, 2020 | Original Presidential proclamation here.

Today is the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket on December 29, 1170. Thomas Becket was a statesman, a scholar, a chancellor, a priest, an archbishop, and a lion of religious liberty.

Before the Magna Carta was drafted, before the right to free exercise of religion was enshrined as America’s first freedom in our glorious Constitution, Thomas gave his life so that, as he said, “the Church will attain liberty and peace.”

The son of a London sheriff and once described as “a low‑born clerk” by the King who had him killed, Thomas Becket rose to become the leader of the church in England. When the crown attempted to encroach upon the affairs of the house of God through the Constitutions of Clarendon, Thomas refused to sign the offending document. When the furious King Henry II threatened to hold him in contempt of royal authority and questioned why this “poor and humble” priest would dare defy him, Archbishop Becket responded “God is the supreme ruler, above Kings” and “we ought to obey God rather than men.”

Because Thomas would not assent to rendering the church subservient to the state, he was forced to forfeit all his property and flee his own country. Years later, after the intervention of the Pope, Becket was allowed to return — and continued to resist the King’s oppressive interferences into the life of the church. Finally, the King had enough of Thomas Becket’s stalwart defense of religious faith and reportedly exclaimed in consternation: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

The King’s knights responded and rode to Canterbury Cathedral to deliver Thomas Becket an ultimatum: give in to the King’s demands or die. Thomas’s reply echoes around the world and across the ages. His last words on this earth were these: “For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.” Dressed in holy robes, Thomas was cut down where he stood inside the walls of his own church.

Thomas Becket’s martyrdom changed the course of history. It eventually brought about numerous constitutional limitations on the power of the state over the Church across the West. In England, Becket’s murder led to the Magna Carta’s declaration 45 years later that: “[T]he English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.”

When the Archbishop refused to allow the King to interfere in the affairs of the Church, Thomas Becket stood at the intersection of church and state. That stand, after centuries of state-sponsored religious oppression and religious wars throughout Europe, eventually led to the establishment of religious liberty in the New World. It is because of great men like Thomas Becket that the first American President George Washington could proclaim more than 600 years later that, in the United States, “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship” and that “it is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”

Continue reading “Proclamation on 850th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket”

By Bruce Kushnick, Dec 23, 2020 | Original Medium article here.

Forget Big Tech: Break Up Big Telecom, then Big Cable.

While the “FTC” (“Federal Trade Commission”) and Attorney General offices around the US are actively going after Facebook, and there are other cases against Amazon or Google, claiming they are “Big Tech” and harming America, all of these services ride on the wires or airwaves that are mostly controlled by just a few companies: “Big Telecom" — AT&T, Verizon & CenturyLink, and “Big Cable” — Comcast & Charter.

Going after Big Telecom is a challenge because industry lawyers and lobbyists have rewritten history and blanketed the place with fiction. Truth be told, there is a disconnect between myth and reality about their telecommunications and cable services.

Many people are calling to make the Telcom’s broadband infrastructure a utility. It already is and has been hiding there in plain sight.

1. Every state still has a primary regulated State Public Telecom Utility (SPTU).

2. The copper and fiber optic wires, for the most part, are owned and operated by these SPTUs, yet few are aware of these key facts.

3. These wires and the SPTU laws/regulations were not just about ‘voice’ calls but also about broadband, internet, data, video and gaming.

4. Since the early 1990’s, SPTU landline customers have paid (and continue to pay) additional charges ($5-7 per month) on their SPTU phone bills to fund fiber optic for wired broadband which was supposed to have replaced the aging copper wires.

5. The SPTU utilities never completed these network upgrades.

6. Most Wireless service is 95% wired — only the last 5% is Wireless.

7. Wireless broadband and Wireline broadband are NOT "functionally equivalent services," per the 1996 Telecommunications Act (1996-Act) and Conference Report.

1996-Act Conference Report:

"When utilizing the term ‘‘functionally equivalent services’’ the conferees are referring only to personal wireless services as defined in this section that directly compete against one another."

Continue reading “AT&T, Verizon & CenturyLink are State Public Telecom Utilities”

By Karl Bode, Dec 23, 2020 | Original Techdirt article here.

In 2017, hackers and security researchers highlighted long-standing vulnerabilities in Signaling System 7 (SS7, or Common Channel Signalling System 7 in the US), a series of protocols first built in 1975 to help connect phone carriers around the world. While the problem isn’t new, a 2016 60 Minutes report brought wider attention to the fact that the flaw can allow a hacker to track user location, dodge encryption, and even record private conversations. All while the intrusion looks like ordinary carrier to carrier chatter among a sea of other, "privileged peering relationships."

Telecom carriers and lobbyists have routinely downplayed the flaw and their multi-year failure to do much about it. In 2018, the CBC noted how Canadian wireless providers Bell and Rogers weren’t even willing to talk about the flaw after the news outlet published an investigation showing how (using only a mobile phone number) it was possible to intercept the calls and movements of Quebec NDP MP Matthew Dubé.

Now there’s yet another wake up call: a new report from the Guardian indicates that Rayzone, an Israeli corporate spy agency that provides its government clients with “geolocation tools," has been exploiting the flaw for some time to provide clients access to user location information and, potentially, the contents of communications. Apparently, the company first leased an access point in the network of Sure Guernsey, a mobile operator in the Channel Islands. From there, it appears to have exploited the SS7 flaw to track users in numerous additional countries:

Continue reading “A Major Wireless Network Flaw Is Still Being Exploited To Track User Locations”

By Doug Dawson, Dec 17, 2020 | Post and Pans article here

AT&T’s CFO John Stephens described AT&T’s fiber philosophy on a recent investor call. He described fiber as a “three-for-one opportunity” for AT&T.

1. The first opportunity is for cellular backhaul. AT&T has been busy in recent years building fiber to reach traditional cell sites and is now building fiber to reach small cell sites. The company made a deliberate decision to reduce the amount spent on leasing fiber transport from others.

2. The second is building to businesses. AT&T often builds fiber to reach a large business which alone justifies the cost of building fiber. But he says the company now also looks at nearby small businesses. All business customers on fiber are high-margin, and generally steady customers. I’m sure AT&T understands what most fiber overbuilders understand – business customers on fiber are not likely to switch back to cable company broadband as long as they believe they are paying a fair price.

3. The third opportunity is residential. In 2015, AT&T agreed to build fiber to pass 12.5 million homes and businesses. For a few years it didn’t look like the company was working to meet that goal (not untypical for merger conditions that never get fulfilled by big carriers). But in recent years AT&T has been doing exactly what Stephens describes. They have leveraged existing or newly built fiber to add small pockets of residential customers to fiber. All over the country, AT&T has small pockets of 50 or 100 homes that are near to fiber pops that can buy now buy fiber.

Continue reading “AT&T’s View on Fiber Optics”

Sen. Moore Capito: Frontier mismanaged previous funds and shouldn’t get new gigabit money.

By Jon Brodkin, Dec 15, 2020 | Original Ars Technica article here.

Mike Mozart / Flickr

A Republican US senator from West Virginia has asked the government to block broadband funding earmarked for Frontier Communications, saying that the ISP is not capable of delivering gigabit-speed Internet service to all required locations.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) outlined her concerns in a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai last week. Capito told Pai that Frontier has mismanaged previous government funding and seems to lack both the technological capabilities and financial ability to deliver on its new obligations.

Frontier, which filed for bankruptcy in April, is one of 180 ISPs that won funding in the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse-auction results announced last week. Frontier is due to receive $370.9 million over 10 years to bring broadband to 127,188 homes and businesses in eight states. Frontier’s biggest payout is in West Virginia, where it is due to receive $247.6 million over 10 years to expand its broadband network to 79,391 locations.

Frontier won over two-thirds of the funding that the FCC allocated to West Virginia despite failing to hit FCC deadlines for a previous round of subsidized broadband deployment in West Virginia and other states. Under the previous funding allocated in 2015 via the FCC’s Connect America Fund, Frontier was originally required to meet the build deadlines by the end of 2020. Frontier told Ars today that it will now meet that deadline "by the end of 2021."

Continue reading “Senator Tries to Block Frontier’s FCC Funding, Citing ISP’s Various Failures”

Adapted from an article by Chris Teale, Dec 14, 2020 | Original Smart Cities Dive article here.

While Densified 4G/5G deployment continues across the U.S., a growing coalition of groups and leaders are putting the brakes on the densified 4G/5G infrastructure rollout, because it is unnecessary for wireless telecommunications service, which has largely been achieved in the United States — for about 98% of the US population:

Roger Entner at Mar 2, 2017 Senate Hearing on Wireless Technology and Spectrum Policy

"My name is Roger Entner and I am the founder or Recon Analytics, a Telecom research consulting firm with a focus on wireless. Today, I am here to discuss research into the effect that the US Mobile Wireless industry has on the U.S. economy . . .

97.9 percent of Americans can choose from three network base operators and 93.4 percent can choose from four operators plus more than a dozen virtual operators — the mobile industry’s equivalent of over the top competitors."

It is exceedingly unlikely that the US Congress in 1996 intended for the US population to sicken and die in order to allow the Wireless Industry to maximize its profits. The legislative intent of the 1996 Telecommunications Act (1996-TCA) was to establish a nationwide wireless network for making wireless phone calls. In 2020, the US can declare Mission Accomplished.

Therefore, there is no longer any basis for preemption of local authority over the placement, construction and modification of any additional personal wireless service facilities — in any areas already adequately served for making outdoor, wireless phone calls (which requires just -115 to -85 dBm or 0.000002 to 0.002 µW/m² for up to "5-bars" of telecommuncation service).

Retrieved from Flickr user Kim Seng on November 13, 2020

Continue reading “Densified 4G/5G Health Hazards Sow Uncertainty About Its Unnecessary Rollout”