The Patriots

by Chris Campbell 

“Americans are some of the most soulful, creative and brilliant humans on this planet. That’s why the machine needs to propagandize them so aggressively.”  – Caitlin Johnstone

There are a couple of idiots, the propagandists, calling for blood on TV.  And a couple others, the pawns, spilling it. Yes. The world is full of crazies. But crazy is not the absolute norm. Most just want to be left alone.

by Allen Williams

A few weeks ago, I decided to have a look at one of the web visitor data recording companies out there to see what kind of information they could collect.. Motherboard reports that a Princeton study revealed that over 400 companies (so far) record your every keystroke and them transmit it to a third party website.  

Typical companies providing this service are FullStory, SessionCam, SmartLook, UserReplay, etc.  I opted to try SmartLook simply because the ’geniuses’ at Webnode provided a convenient widget to insert their tracking code.

It just isn’t enough today that American Intelligence agencies are spying on everyone with their Prism software, but they are partnering with major business and social media like the CIA’s 600 million contract with Amazon .com  for cloud access.  We already know that Facebook and until recently Twitter provide information to the CIA.  The bad news here is that all purchases through Amazon are retained on their cloud servers and the CIA will have access.  You can be certain that any cloud service that your application communicates with will be available to the intelligence services as well as a host of unknown third parties because the data is NOT encrypted.

It’s far better to get the ‘mark’ to provide personalized data on him or herself to the tracking recorder thinking that he’s browsing anonymously or at least ignored  but “…many of these companies have dashboards where clients can playback the recordings they collect.   Yandex, Hotjar, and Smartlook’s dashboards run non-encrypted HTTP pages, rather than much more secure, encrypted HTTPS pages.”  The biggest liability is that once the data is removed from your site all control is lost, virtually anyone could have access to this data and you’d never know.

I was curious to find out just what could be collected by SmartLook.  However, I was surprised to find that the actual service is quite haphazard.  Either SmartLook is developing their recording software ‘on the fly’ as the saying goes or you really don’t get much on the ‘free’ side.  But upgrading the service means you’re paying to have your readers spied on.

Fortunately, the SmartLook collected data is not totally accurate or reliable.  Primarily because the staff is not well organized, knowledgeable or well versed in English.  After adding their code to The Patriot’s header and getting nothing, I contacted SmartLook support where a woman named Sofie informed me by email that  “In one case Only in webnode premium you can add code directly to the HTML header of the whole website.  In webnode free, you need to install the code in all pages you wish to track.”   Anyone, who is remotely conscious or understands the language, knows that free websites don’t have custom registered URLs as we do, ergo, we are a premium user!   So this individual is likely responding with canned phrases from the company’s data forum without any understanding of what was conveyed because they can’t communicate beyond an elementary level in English.

In another case, two different users known to me personally, one residing in Kansas and the other in Ohio accessed our site but showed the same IP address in the data collection set.  Upon questioning one of the support staff as to how this could happen, I was told that “The only explanation is that it was the same person and the two different names appeared because you have wrong code settings.”  The company’s help link indicates that if you want to track a particular user, you have to type their email address directly into the tracking code and they give an example case. The SmarLook tracking code is ‘paste-in’ and Webnode provides the widget access so unless you can’t type an address within the two apostrophe markers, you can’t have wrong code settings unless either SmartLook or Webnode made them.  

Individual email identification is no better as I have seen a whole day of data collection of 6 or more people with the same email but different IP addresses. Guess the user has multiple identities so he or she switches every couple of hours throughout the day.  The responses I’ve received from their support staff are disingenuous and you can’t really trust their assessments.

After some dickering back and forth with their support personnel to get things working the way SmartLook advertised,  I indeed found that I could watch a visitor enter our site and view virtually everything he or she clicked on.  This kind of information can and will be abused down the road and It's already happening as "The CBS report suggests in no uncertain terms that the personal information pertaining to millions of Americans collected by one of the World’s largest ad agencies is sold to the CIA." 

Smartlook claimed their software only retained three days worth of data but that’s because I wasn’t paying them to collect it.  Data was collected from approximately Nov 3^rd to Nov 24^th obviously more than 3 days. There was no data collected beyond Nov 24th, 2017 by their system even though I still had their code installed on the site for several more days.  At first, I thought it was yet another glitch but when nothing more was recorded, I removed the code.  On Nov. 27^th, all archived data subsequently disappeared from the SmartLook control panel or at least was interred somewhere where I couldn’t access it.  You can be reasonably certain that it’s still archived there even if I no longer have access to it.

UPDATE  12/12/17 Why Have you Stopped Using SmartLook?

A) Smartlook doesn't record my website properly
B) I don’t have time to watch the recordings / I find no added value in Smartlook
C) I just removed Smartlook temporarily - plan to use it again
D) I am missing feature X (please fill in)
E) Neither of those, let me tell you why...

I will be glad for any feedback, even if it's negative.

Best regards,

Vladimir Sandera
cofounder, optimist
Smartlook

I received this correspondence from one of the SmartLook co-founders in early December after removing their code from our header.  Why was this an issue? Could it be that they wanted me to leave the code installed to keep recording visitor data whether or not I chose to use it?

Update 1/24/2018

 “We're excited to tell you we're migrating all our data to more powerful cloud service (AWS)! Your account included. The process is time-intensive, but we're working hard to complete the migration by the end of next week.

While the long-term benefits will be great, we wanted to let you know you might experience a few bumps and minor interruptions along the way. (Might.)

The good news:

• AWS provides us with more safety, stability, and speed
• Your data will be better serviced and stored securely
• Smartlook features will run faster
• This migration is a lot of work, and we appreciate your patience during the next few days while we finish up”

Your Smartlook Team

Long term benefits for whom? This move simply presents more opportunities for data to be accessed by more persons unknown as it’s unlikely that Smarlook’s new AWS storage is any more secure than Yahoo who experienced a major hack. 

I recommend readers give serious consideration to a good AD blocker:  “If you want to block session replay scripts, popular ad-blocking tool AdBlock Plus will now protect you against all of the ones documented in the Princeton study.”

by Chris Campbell


“There is something which unites magic and applied science (technology) while separating them from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.”  – C.S. Lewis

Slowly but surely, we here at LFT are making our lives as untethered to the fragility of modernity as possible. 

Modern life, after all, is defined by its lack of interest and, oftentimes, belief in a *true* nature of things — in its disconnection to the source. (Of production, of history, of creation, of truth, of biology, of any semblance of an objective essence of beauty, and on.)  And all of this, to be sure, has happened in the name of liberation.

Come. Liberate yourself from reality. From the harshness of life itself. Pain is unnatural. Take these pills. Watch these people sing and dance. Here. Have some bread. Watch this! Over here! Yoo hoo! Hollyweird has all the answers. Feeling sleepy? Don’t worry. The politician will tuck you in now. There’s almost certainly not a monster under your bed.

But let us check for you.

One day, as many Singulistas sincerely hope, a la Ray Kurzweil, you’ll be able to hook yourself up to an IV of tiny nanorobotic computronium that will connect you to a virtual reality utopia (in the name of “uploading your consciousness”) and you’ll feel infinite bliss and never have to confront anything you don’t like ever again.  It’s like having a direct link to God, they’ll say.

It’ll all be artificial, synthetic, fake… but it will be your special delusion and nobody else’s. You’ll likely eventually become essentially a human battery for some A.I. program — but it will love you for who you are and not for what you were.

Ignorance and darkness are natural allies. Darkness play a pivotal role in the world. And when it is ignored, it is more often than not weaponized.

Jung called it the “Shadow Self.” And your unwillingness to see reality as it is and not as your projections wish it were, can and will almost certainly be used against you. Power comes from a connection to the true nature of things. Absolute power comes from making those around you believe there is no true nature of things — that reality is programmable. That reality is as the cult leaders say.

The greatest science fiction example I’ve found is seen in the exceptional and terrifying short film Uncanny Valley at this link.

It is our beat to — in all ways we can — revolt against the madness. To get closer to the source of things. To dig out their true nature in the name of self-reliance and true freedom.  If all goes according to plan, we’ll soon be doing some boots-on-the-ground learning and reporting on valuable skills ANYONE can use to build a resilient, sustainable, free-as-can-be lifestyle.

Sometimes, as you’ll see, the only way to move forward is to go back.  Today, as just a taste, we invite Jacob Hunter of Primal Survivor to the show.

Jacob Hunter, a master prepper, is good at getting readers to confront that thing which the lotus peddlers would have you ignore. And how to prepare.

Read on., article continues in lower half here 11:  Unconventional Prepping Tips for Preppers Who Are Tired of the Same Old Advice

by John D'Aloia

Readers know what I think of the UN. Do not think that I have gone over the edge, but I want to give an atta-boy to the World Health Organization for supporting the use of DDT to control the malaria epidemic that claims the lives of millions each year. In September, Arata Kochi, director of the WHO Global Malaria Program, stated that "We must take a position based on the science and the data. One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual house spraying. Of the dozen insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT." Another WHO official said "Indoor residual spraying is useful to quickly reduce the number of [malaria] infections ... and DDT presents no health risk when used properly."

Some eco-fascists still call for the complete ban of DDT, period. For those who inhabit these groups, human life is a cancer on the earth; malaria helps to reduce the number of humans. Banning DDT keeps the process working and saves the lives of countless mosquitoes. The Congress of Racial Equality has been working for years to get the use of DDT reinstated as a means of reducing human suffering and its economic impacts. Paul Driessen, a Senior Fellow at CORE, was quoted in an article in the December "Environmental & Climate News" on the impacts of malaria: "In addition to the needless deaths (100,000 people die of malaria each year in Uganda), countless millions are too sick to go to work or school. Other millions must stay home to care for sick family members. Is it any wonder that Sub-Sahara Africa is, and remains, one of the poorest regions on Earth?"

The U.S. government, which initiated the world-wide ban on the use of DDT in spite of the scientific evidence that it was not the end-of-the-world disaster claimed by Rachel Carlson, is changing its policy. Steven Milloy, in a Fox News article, reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development has endorsed and will fund the use of DDT for indoor spraying in Africa. The European Union is not so enlightened. Milloy also reported that the EU has threatened Uganda with a complete ban on its agricultural exports if it goes ahead with indoor DDT spraying. Milloy ended his article with "Let’s forget the myths about DDT - it’s time to stop malaria now."

"The tragedy of the commons" is a term used to identify a situation that happens all too often when property or goods are owned by everyone for the use by everyone. With no one responsible for the management of the asset to ensure a continuing supply, those using it have no incentive to take care of it or to concern themselves if it will be there tomorrow. Let George do it. The result is that the asset disappears. An example often given is a common pasture land open to all. It is not long before overgrazing destroys the pasture - no one was responsible for managing the number of head on the land to ensure that the asset, the grass, would be there tomorrow. Everyone wanted to ensure that they were able to graze as many head of the free grass as they could.

The antidote for the "tragedy of the commons" is private ownership. A microcosm of the "tragedy of the commons" is littering, seen in roads and parking lots across the country - how often have you seen a pile of cigarette butts on the ground about where the front door of a parked car would have been. It is probably a safe bet that the person who dumped them would not have dumped them in his own driveway. In our town, we spend a significant amount of money each year operating a street sweeper to clear the gutters of litter. I often wonder if the operation of the sweeper, affectionately known as "the slug" to some, could be reduced if people would take care of their own trash and not succumb to validating the "tragedy of the commons" thesis. In this case, "Let George do it" is exactly what happens - George is the slug’s operator.

There is another place in town where George and his machine cannot get, a connecting road between two built-up areas. It appears to be a magnet for trash discarded out car windows. If not for concerned citizens, the trash would accumulate for eternity and spoil what is in fact a pleasant walk along the pathway parallel to the road. Citizens often tell me that the city should do this or that "for the common good." Not littering represents something individuals can do "for the common good" - all it takes is exercising a responsibility for one’s own actions.

See you Trackside.

Republished from the old Eponym site in honor of former editor John D'Aloia