More Fake Cell Towers Reported

The stories about fake cell towers around the United States have been going on since early August.  Popular Science had written the first article I saw concerning the discovery of these towers showing up.  As a recap, these towers push you off of your network provider’s network and pull you down to their own radio towers.

By doing this your phone is lowered from a 4g/3g network to a 2g/extended network.  While on these networks you can still take calls, make calls and send and receive text messages.  The danger is that encryption of your call data is much easier to break.  In other words your texts and your phone calls can be observed by a third party.
The original series of stories is reporting that the bulk of these towers were identified near military bases.  Today, local Fox News in DC reported an story on an additional 15 identified fake towers within our nation’s capital.  http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/26610194/tech-company-finds-mysterious-fake-cell-towers-in-dc-area
The original stories I have read all speculated on our own government agencies (NSA/Police/FBI/CIA…) being the culprit behind the scenes.  Of course as I pointed out in a previous post, these towers only cost $1500 to build.  
This is low tech espionage.  With the bulk showing up around our military and now also in our capital, it seems ever more likely our enemies are trying to gauge our resources and professional military resolve as well as our plans.
Let us not forget, Washington D.C. is home to the Pentagon, as well as the central hub of all of our branches of government.  Congressional staffers, NSA, White House and Presidential staff all operate within D.C.  These people are all on the phone regularly, if they are being forced off their networks even with just their personal phones there is plenty of risk of spillage and important information being picked up by our enemies.
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A loss of privacy, or something more ominous?

Update: I wrote this originally from my phone and apparently some of the links were broken.  All links have been corrected.

My wife recently showed me the following article concerning the rise of fake cell phone towers around the United States. 
http://www.moneytalksnews.com/2014/09/11/your-calls-and-texts-could-be-intercepted-by-fake-cell-towers/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dori

There are numerous stories about this floating around the net.  Despite last year’s stories concerning the NSA, in much more inclined to believe this is not s U.S. government sanctioned surveillance.
For starters there are laws that expressly prohibit this.  While the military has certain capabilities and probably tests them, they do so on enclosed networks like the one at Ft. Irwin’s NTC box, or the box at Ft. Polk. 

In fact one could build their own fake tower for as little as $1500 in 2010, meaning it could be even cheaper today.  In fact this was reported by Forbes earlier this month.    http://www.forbes.com/sites/davelewis/2014/09/03/rogue-cell-towers-could-be-intercepting-your-call/  The technology was demonstrated at a defense conference in Las Vegas, we’ve known about it for a while.

The question we should be asking is not is the government setting these towers up, but who has to gain from doing so.  As it is, the government has much to lose from setting up these towers.  To begin with, there are the laws that expressly prohibit it from spying on our own citizens.  Then we have the massive wave of distrust caused by such actions.  As it is, we are still suffering the aftermath of last year’s NSA scandal.  It is hard to believe anybody in the Federal Government would have such awful judgment as to do something so overtly illegal in comparison to the legal actions that got the NSA in hot water only a year ago.


Next consider that many of these towers have been discovered near military bases.  Why would they be there who has anything to gain by spying on our military?
Well for starters:  the Chinese, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Al Queda, and ISIL.  And that’s just the short list.   Even staunch allies like Israel and Great Britain could gain valuable information by spying on us.  In short just about everybody.

See despite what Soldiers are told concerning loose lips and deployments they typically still tell their loved ones little details like where they going and when.  These loved ones will often text or call other tell other relatives the same information.  Quite frankly there are no secrets.  Scanning calls around a post can snag all sorts all sorts of information concerning troop movements and upcoming deployments. 

The fact is this is a very cheap means of espionage.  Meaning that it could be anybody.  But the locations and apparent coordination at least indicates a structured attack by one of our enemies. 
If I had to place an educated guess I would assume it is the work of ISIL or one of its cousins.  Though China and Russia would not be too much of a stretch either. 
We know there are sleeper cells within the United States.  We especially know terror groups like ISIL have been recruiting from within the states for a while, in fact at least three killed terrorists are from Minnesota.  http://www.cbsnews.com/news/minneapolis-has-become-recruiting-ground-for-islamic-extremists/

Could this be the work of our own government?  Maybe, but the fact that the FCC is launching an investigation on the matter seems to indicate contrary to this conspiracy.  The much more likely scenario is the enemy is here and meticulously preparing for a prolonged campaign against us. 
Let us not be war weary but rather engaged in the defense of freedom, vigilant in our daily encounters and guarded in our dealings. 
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The Problem of The Purge

I arrived in Louisville from Ft. Knox today completely unaware of the “Purge” threats the city is currently under.  For those of you who do not know what the “Purge” is, it is a night where essentially all consequences have been removed and crime is legal.  Murder is legal, you can do what you can get away with.  The idea was spawned from a movie that came out a few years ago by the same name.  A sequel was released just a few weeks ago.  

Anyway it has been reported all over the place, I’ll provide one additional link covering it http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/881100-detroit-purge-rumors-circulate-about-real-life-purge-in-michigan-and-bay-area-california/.  Apparently there are “Purges” scheduled for all over the country.  

Now do I think this is a deliberately planned night of violence?  No, it was probably a prank by a stupid punk teenager you thought  it was a funny idea.  But here is the deal, even if it was a simple joke it immediately needs to be taken seriously.  We have already seen violence break out all over the city of St. Louis, and we have various so called “Leaders” who are undermining the authority of police all over the country.  

We have been watching for roughly 4 years now the advent of the flash mob.  And new recent trends on social media websites like Facebook/Twitter/Instagram have resulted in teens literally setting themselves one fire as part of a “Fire Challenge”.

Now even if nothing does happen, we are allocating additional resources to prevent mass violence.  This costs money, that is your tax dollars.  This is the difference in what could be spent on roads or schools to because a bunch of Thugs thought it would be funny to scare whole cities and indeed the whole country.

You thugs out there, you childish little punks who think this is funny deserve some jail time for simply robbing society of their resources.  

But here is the kicker.  The real issue at hand.  Whoever put the first flier together initially probably did it as a joke.  But you see other people picked up on it.  If people do get together and conduct massive acts of random violence, you have now incited violence.  I don’t care if you are a child, actions have consequences and you should be made to pay for them.  And of course those of you out there who do take this as a real thing and conduct violence, the law will catch up to you.

Hollywood you need to stop making movies like this.  This is on the hands of the producers of this filth.  Every city that is under threat right now should sue the producers for the cost of additional emergency support required because these producers are culpable for putting a very violent idea out there for these punks to pick up on.

I am so frustrated with this complete break down in our social order, the continued loss of belief in consequences and meaning.  

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Hillsdale Dialogs the Outline

Beginning in January of 2013 Hugh Hewitt, http://www.hughhewitt.com began a life changing weekly broadcast discussing great works and great ideas.  In truth this discussion began over a decade ago with a New Years eve broadcast with Dr. Larry Arnn the President of Hillsdale College, http://www.hillsdale.edu.

Over the course of the past now year and a half our guide our sherpa Dr. Larry Arnn and his staff have been flogged with questions and discussion on many of the great works and specifically the great works that made Western Civilization what it is today.

If you are a serious individual who truly cares about civil liberties, who cares about civilization, who cares about politics, who cares about ideas, this is a wonderful roadmap regardless of your political or religious beliefs it is important to understand not just your own ideas, but just how we arrived at where we are today.  This is a cliffs notes edition of it all, it is taught by some of the most knowledgeable and wise teachers in our nation.  It is worth your attention.

If you are interested in listening to the broadcast you are in luck.  The entire series has been made available as a podcast, and there are transcripts provided by Hugh Hewitt’s producer as well.  

Official Page:  https://online.hillsdale.edu/hillsdaledialogues

Podcast Link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/hillsdaledialogues also available via https://soundcloud.com/hillsdale-college/sets/hillsdale-dialogues 

Transcripts are also available via Hugh Hewitt’s Blog, but note they are intermingled with many other interviews he has conducted.  http://www.hughhewitt.com/category/transcripts/

 

The outline to date:

Homer

The Bible

Herodotus

Thucydides

Margaret Thatcher (out of order)

Thucydides

Socrates

Plato

Aristotle

Lincoln (out of order)

Plutarch

Lysander

Sulla

Cicero

Marcus Aurelius

Early Christianity

Jewish History

Churchill and American Presidency (again out of order)

 The Two broadcasts that started it all “The History of Ideas” Parts 1-6

Religious Liberty

Augustine

Medieval Europe

Thomas Aquinas

Dante

The Renaissance

Machiavelli

The Reformation

 

 

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Education and Aspirations

A while ago I found myself with an opportunity to begin graduate school.  I was supposed to start this fall at the University of Nevada, Reno (my number one choice).  Sadly while I was preparing for this endeavor to begin my MBA, I found out I will be moving to attend yet another school that will interrupt this process and cause me to lose my faculty tuition grant as well as forcing me to leave class for at least six months.  Because of this I will be returning to my Alma Mater, Liberty University, as they work so hard to support the military and have one of the best military support programs I have ever encountered in education.

I will still be pursuing my MBA, though I have a number of other educational goals that I would like to pursue in the long term beyond this.  These goals include a Masters in Operations Research, a Masters in Public Policy, a J.D. or PHD in Philosophy.

Lofty Goals no doubt, and no doubt I will not pursue all of these in my short life span.  I will however hit at least one if not two of these additional goals.  As my life continues I’ve set a plan in motion.  This plan has specific guide posts along the way, and if certain junctures intersect I will move on from one of those goals to another.  It isn’t just a set of goals, they are strategically mapped out to fit my future as that future unfolds.

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As Promised. The Climate Change Lie Propagated by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson

 
Just watched “Cosmos” hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.  While I am generally interested today I was grossly disappointed with him.  Specifically for his deliberate deception and lie concerning climate change.  Let me be clear I don’t believe the climate hasn’t changed over the time period he discusses, but the human involvement is still rather spurious.

Deception number one occurred with a data graph of temperatures from the late 1800s to now.  To start off we need to understand history in its full context.  From roughly 1350-to the mid 1800’s there was what Geo-Scientists have come to call a little ice age.  This is well documented so I will merely cite the Wikipedia page, you can dig deeper from within.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Stating that temperatures have gone up since the end of a mini ice age is like stating it gets cooler if you stand in the shade instead of direct sunlight.  It doesn’t mean anything by itself.

Deception number two came when Dr. Tyson talked about the melting polar ice caps.  Yes the polar caps were declining for a portion of the last 100 years.  We have evidence of this.  We also however can see a general trend of the ice caps expanding over the last decade.  In fact from 2007-2010 the ice caps expanded by roughly 26 %, it declined from 2010-2012, but then that expansion continued again by 60% from 2012-2013 which is our most recent data available.  http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2010/jan/10/inconvenient-truth-ice-cap-growing/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/09/12/remember-all-those-breathy-predictions-about-an-ice-free-arctic-by-2015-nevermind/

Then of course there is the real unfortunate claim about the trend of temperatures rising continuing by Dr. Tyson.  See while he is correct temperatures have risen over the past 100 years they have remained constant for the past 17 years.  This is problematic for a number of reasons.  First it does not correlate with his claim of the increased CO2 production.  I don’t dispute the increased CO2, we clearly are burning more coal, using more fossil fuels and producing more green house gasses, but the numbers he is purporting do not result in the very thing he says it should, mainly higher temperatures.  http://www.newsnet5.com/weather/weather-news/united-kingdom-meteorology-office-declares-earth-hasnt-warmed-in-15-years http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/03/04/updated-global-temperature-no-global-warming-for-17-years-6-months-no-warming-for-210-months/

Now of course the good Dr. tried to diffuse some of this by stating there is a difference between climate and weather predictions.  Fine, I can agree to that.  Except one minor problem, the weather predictions in dispute are those concerning long term (decades).  Predictions concerning global warming and as pointed out have not increased in almost 2 decades (both surface and high altitude temperatures).

Now I wouldn’t be upset with Mr. Tyson if he was simply putting forward a theory, but instead he is directly called for action based on his deception.  He is called for action specifically based on a narrative of his own creation that is in bold opposition of what the data both shows as well as being skewed by blatant omission of World History.  His call is neither scientific nor is it in keeping with the truth.  While there may be some truth in what he has to say, there is much more that remains hidden and needs exploration.  Blatant deception and obfuscation of history is not in keeping with your usual high standards.  Shame on you Dr. Tyson. 

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Slowly Building the Case Against a False Teacher

There is a great debate that still rages on today concerning
our origins.  Scientists great ones on
both side argue along with philosophers, thinkers, and theologians.  The question will not be answered in our
lifetime, and it probably won’t in the short span of humanities existence.
Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson makes the charge that intelligent
design is an old theory, one that goes back to when people still believed in
Zeus.  He continued that trend with Sir
Isaac Newton, and takes it forward to today. 
Though if you ask Dr. Tyson he will tell you simply “Intelligent Design, is a
philosophy of ignorance.  It is you get
to something you that don’t understand and you stop.  You say god did it, and you no longer
progress beyond that point.”
I would argue that it is deeper than simple ignorance.  Ignorance led to those things like the
sciences of old like alchemy.  Alchemy of
course not being a science but one that was explored by Sir Isaac Newton along
the way.  Not a knock against Newton, he
figured out more in his lifetime than most ever will in two. 
Tyson’s claim about on ignorance can be applied of course to
the so-called “god of the gaps” but it does not take away from the very simple
question.  What started everything?  If we buy into the Big Bang Theory, which
really is about the only credible scientific explanation as to how our universe
formed we are still left with the ever important question of.  But where did all that mass come from?  According to quantum physics, time itself
didn’t begin until the big bang, meaning that the mass didn’t exist before the
big bang, because in fact there was no “before”.  So where did the mass come from?
If it came from another Universe, we must ask the same
questions back over and over and over again. 
And this of course only drives the next question.  Even with mass and the gigantic eruption of
everything at once starting the great cosmic experiment we have watched
unfold.  What of life?  How does life start without a spark?  What spark could possibly have initiated this
process.
Sir Isaac Newton was not a Christian man in the traditional
sense.  Yet like many he believed there
must be a god at work.  A creator behind
the scenes, who molds the Universe to his rules and set it in motion.  So when Dr. Tyson reaches out through history
to discus the solution to Newton’s problem of god by pointing to Pierre-Simon
Laplace’s apparent quote “I
had no need for that hypothesis”
it seems a closed question.
There are of course a few points of contention.  There is no reason there cannot be both a “god”
in the background and an ability to dissect the rules created in our ordered
universe.  In fact the very existence of
order implies a god, and indeed quite possibly only 1 god behind the entire
workings.  This isn’t saying that we
cannot eventually scientifically figure out every mystery of the universe.  It is to say, that just because a mystery has
been unwoven it doesn’t mean that god wasn’t behind it to begin with.
The next however is even more interesting.  There is no proof that Laplace ever had that
conversation at all.  There are no actual
records of this conversation; it is an apocryphal account at best.  Laplace apparently wanted this account
stripped from his biography or explained neither was done.  There is an entire section on Wikipedia
devoted to this fabled account.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace#I_had_no_need_of_that_hypothesis  It is something that has simply continued
throughout history without ever being recorded outside of the two individuals
in question; Napoleon and Laplace.  Even renown
physicist Steven Hawking said in 1999 “I don’t think that Laplace was claiming
God does not exist.  It’s just that he
doesn’t intervene, to break the laws of Science.” 
I had for a time thought greatly of Dr. Tyson.  He is an eloquent speaker, he is clearly
intelligent, and has made some interesting contributions to astrophysics such
as the controversial Pluto is not a planet decision.  I do not question his intelligence.  I do however question his integrity.
In his discussion over Intelligent Design Dr. Tyson built a
straw man argument, and backhandedly insults anyone who would insert god as
simply being ignorant.  He does it with
great aplomb, and speaks with authority. 
Yet he attempts to misuse history to meet his ends. 
This isn’t the first time I have seen him try this trick
either.  On Cosmos he did this concerning
man influenced Climate Change.  I wrote a
synopsis of this elsewhere and I will post it again here later.  The point is, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is a
fraud of sorts.  He is simply a
con-man.  He has a habit of deliberately
misrepresenting the truth to fit his needs and whatever agenda he might
have.  He does this the best way
possible, by throwing around very true things and then veiling his lies
carefully only when the suit that agenda. 
It makes him dangerous, and it diffuses the learning process along the
way. 
If much of what a person of authority says is true, but a
portion is a deliberate lie, then what portion of what the person says should
be taken as truth?  Dr. Tyson not only
hurts the process of finding truth, he hurts Atheists and Skeptics along the
way, because by abusing his own authority he discredits those who would quote
him without question.
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Ivy League Lectures for the Price of Free, You Just Can’t Beat It

This year I have had the privilege to attend a guest lecture with General Abizaid as the guest as well as attend a Commissioning Ceremony where Brigadier General Hanifan was the guest speaker.  Each of them had important things to say, interestingly enough one of these common notes was “study world events”.

Of course this is incredibly important, you cannot effectively prepare for the future if you are not watching the present.  At the same time you cannot truly understand the present if you do not have a grasp on the past.

If you are like me, you probably didn’t really like history very much in school.  Dry facts and regurgitation were not always my best subject in elementary school, and for whatever reason I could never determine just what dry facts to remember on test day which always just made it worse.

Over the years though I have come to enjoy history, and there are several great guides along the way. In his book “In But Not Of“, Hugh Hewitt outlined a very decent reading list to understand just how civilization progressed to the modern “West”.  I highly recommend you pick up both a copy of his book as well as you read that reading list.

For those of you who have limited time however there is another option.  For the past few years on every single Friday, Hugh Hewitt has had Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College (sometimes other Professors are guests as well) on as a guest speaker in what is known as the Hillsdale Dialogues.  These are broadcast every week and are available for free as a podcast here, they can also be listened to on the web via sound cloud.   These discussions make learning more enjoyable, they are done by some of the greatest intellectuals of our time, and of course they are free.  Yes you get one of the best educations available and it is free.

Hillsdale in fact offers several courses available for free as well.  While these free courses won’t earn you a diploma, they are a great way to get the education you may have missed out on by choice or simply our increasingly unraveling educational system.

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OpenSuse 13.1 on Macbook Pro 13″ 2010 (7,1 )

I have owned a series of Laptops, my current one is an older model.  An Apple Macbook Pro 13″ 2010 to be exact.  If you are looking it up for specs it is the Macbook Pro 7,1.  It is important to note, that for a Mac, even if you are like me and intend on running linux you should still have at least a small partition running OS X if for no other reason than to update firmware.  Apple hardware is a closed system and the firmware is only updated through their OS.

I was running Ubuntu 13.10 along side of OS X, but with the new LTS coming out soon I figured I would take a look at some other distributions.  I’ve personally never been a real big fan of Fedora/Redhat, and while I’ve been an Ubuntu/Debian/Phoenix OS community member for quite some time I thought I would go back to SUSE.

I had purchased Suse 10 a long time ago, but obviously a lot has changed since then.  I also didn’t want to purchase another Linux System.  Not outright anyway.  Why bother with so many great distros offering a free version in the first place.  Instead I looked around to see what OpenSuse had to offer.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the most recent version of OpenSuse (13.1) is a long term support release.
I was still running Snow Leopard on my Mac, and my Ubuntu was slowing down immensely so I figured why not do a full wipe and start from scratch.  I pulled out my OS X USB install disk  and wiped everything clean, then I installed OS X Lion and began the update process.
Once my OS X install was all up to date I went about the process of setting up a dual boot system.  I used the Apple Disk Utility tool to partition the hard drive into 4 Partitions (1 for OS X, 1 for Linux Root, 1 for Linux Home, 1 for Linux Swap).  I then downloaded and installed rEFIT.  
Once rEFIT was installed I restarted the computer, yay, second partition was visible.  I reconciled the two partitions via rEFIT tools.  Then I restarted the computer with the OpenSuse 13.1 disk in the superdrive.  Here is where things got interesting.  For some reason the standard DVD would not work with my graphics card, at least not graphically.  After two failed attempts I figured out I could install via text  mode.
It took two failed attempts to install via text mode before it was complete.  Next point of failure was GRUB was not found, DANG NABBIT!  So I decided to try a new download on a whim.  This time I downloaded the KDE Live install DVD.  Much to my elated surprise the graphical installer worked.  Install was smooth and was complete on the first attempt.  Restart with no issues.  Load into the Linux Partition, and get the following error “No Hard Drive Found”.  Grub apparently didn’t install properly again.
Load back to OS X and look around for instructions installing on a Mac.  Everything says don’t install GRUB in the Master Boot Record (MBR).  Not an issue, I’ve installed GRUB on the Root partition every time.  The only difference between how I installed this and what I saw on the web was my partition scheme.  I personally love to keep / (root) and /home (home) on two separate hard drive partitions.  I do this, so in the event of damage to the root file system I can re-install and not lose my personal data.  Everything I saw on how to set this up on a Macintosh, said to format a single hard drive for Suse.  
So I logged back into OS X.  Reformatted my partitioning scheme.  Restarted the computer and tried one more time.  Success OpenSuse booted up no issues, I’m a bit frustrated by the partition scheme.  Especially since Suse recommends the scheme I desired, but no worries at least it booted up.  
I’m logged in and…”No Wireless”  out of the box.  This is disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.  In fact Ubuntu 13.10 didn’t support my wireless card out of the box either (which was odd by the way as 13.04 and 12.10, and 12.04 all did support out of the box).  Whatever, at least I can boot up, my graphics work, oh and unlike my 13.10 experience the computer doesn’t just lock up for no apparent reason within the first 24 hours of use.  It took another 6 hours to set up my wireless.
Note this six hours was not a lacking on Suse’s part, this was a lack of my understanding Suse.  I’ve been with the Ubuntu family so long, I’ve forgotten some of the fundamentals of Linux usage.  After learning YaST (Yet another Setup Tool), and doing some searching for specific tools I got everything up and running.
I have decided however that the Macbook Pro 13″ 2010 model needs a bit of love when it comes to OpenSuse 13.1.  To that end I will write a step by step instruction to update the installation and set up and link it back to this post.

#OpenSuse #Linux

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Why is Our Culture Broken When it Comes to Morality?

My last three posts concerning life’s meaning (Meaning Part 1, Meaning Part 2, Apathy 3) began to address this question.  I had not read this before, but Dennis Prager wrote a very concise piece concerning the following issue a few years ago.  It is worth a read and deep reflection.

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