AMERICAN PRISON SYSTEM

Say hello to our newest addition: The Dossier.

We at OFA are pleased to introduce a brand new expansion of our blog:

The Dossier, our open-source intelligence hub for the activist community.

It’s a kind of mini-wiki, if you will. An index of places all over the web that we think activists should be familiar with.

Here you’ll find over 200 sources of info on:

White supremacists and other Hate Groups,

Antifa,

Cyber Security Research,

Dank Web (our term for clearnet sites like 4chan. not darknet. but stll shady)

Dark Web and Deep Web,

Fake News / Propaganda,

Real News / Not-Propaganda,

Governance and Policy,

Gun Culture (especially in the US),

Human Rights,

Internet Freedom,

Information Security News,

Notable Hackers and Technologists,

Tech News,

Law Enforcement and Police,

Government Transparancy,

Military Affairs,

“Patriot” Militia Groups,

Private Intelligence Companies,

and a smattering of US Intelligence Agencies.

We hope we’ve given your bookmarks menu and twitter feed a boost. And maybe on one of those far-right hate sites you’ll find something you can use against them.

We make no claims to completeness. In fact, you can help us make it better. Message us and let us know what we missed.

“Know your enemy. Know yourself. One hundred battles; one hundred victories.” - Sun Tzu

Yours in solidarity,

OFA

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Using Historical Reference Points to Raise Your Consciousness

I still remember learning about the Coliseum and Circus Maximus in middle school social studies. I found it amazing that a society 2,000 years ago could build stadiums that were just as big as the ones in use today. My teacher also explained that, just like modern professional athletes, top chariot racers and gladiators often became household names whom young boys idolized while growing up. This aspect of Ancient Rome fascinated me, since it seemed so similar to the 21st century.

I can still recall a question about Roman culture on a test during the Coliseum unit. We were asked to write an essay regarding the role of “Bread and Circuses” in Roman society. If your memories of Middle School history are a bit foggy, here’s Wikipedia’s summary of the term:

“Bread and circuses” … is metonymic (figure of speech) for a superficial means of appeasement. In the case of politics, the phrase is used to describe the generation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public service or public policy, but through diversion; distraction; or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace, as an offered “palliative.” (1)

Basically, my teacher explained that the Roman games were used to distract the common people, while those in government worked on projects outside of public notice. After finishing the test something struck me. If so many parallels exist between modern-day sports and the Roman games (both feature large stadiums, high stakes competition, masculine idols, etc.), then isn’t it likely that American sports also have a “Bread and Circuses” element?

This question seemed especially relevant since the United States was in the process of invading Iraq at the time. There were widespread protests against U.S. imperialism, but of course professional sports were as popular as ever. In fact, my favorite teams would often honor veterans and ask the crowd to Salute our troops. Our whole culture was starting to seem quite Roman….

Body

So I brought this question up during the next class. “Aren’t the NFL and NBA a modern day version of ‘bread and circuses?’ I mean they’re similar to the Roman games in every other respect.” I don’t remember the exact conversation that resulted, but I know it was inconclusive. People seemed unwilling to even entertain this idea, and would use simple phrases (like “No, America is a free country”) to try and disprove it.But this idea kept coming back to me throughout high school. The US was fighting battles in Iraq, and there I was watching a baseball game. Was I living in Rome 2.0?

Comparing modern-day sports to the Roman circus is a great intellectual exercise. Personally, it forced me to begin thinking critically and to reassess what I consider “normal” in every day life. Synthesizing historical facts with modern day trends also helps you become more objective (and less biased) about the era you happen to be born into.

For example, no one would disagree that Rome was an Empire between 27 BC and 395 AD. This nation was called the “Roman Empire” because it:

Had a massive military.

Conquered foreign lands.

Maintained a strong central government with little input from the public.

Amassed great wealth.-

 Etc….

If all these factors made Rome an Empire, why wouldn’t they also make the United States an Empire? We do all the exact same things as Rome, but use different words to describe our actions. Let’s compare the two:

“Had a massive military”

- We spend more on our military than the next 9 countries combined. (2)

“Conquered foreign lands”:

- The US has 800 military bases in 80+ foreign countries. This is thought to be the most bases a nation has ever possessed in history. Many of these bases are clustered in countries we conquered on the battlefield (especially Japan and Germany.) (3)

“A strong central government with little input from the public”

- A Princeton/Northwestern University study of 20 years worth of data states point blank: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.“ (4)

“Amassed great wealth”

- The United States is the richest country in History.

The point here is that the United States more than fulfills the traits of Empire we attribute to Rome. How, then, can we call Rome an Empire and not the United States? To do so is to live in a paradox, and to be trapped in illusion..

Counterpoint

A common rebuttal to my argument is to point out the differences on paper between each form of government. Rome had a single emperor, whereas the United States has a president who (in theory) is checked by the court system and Congress. When you analyze governments, though, all that really matters are their actions. Everything else tends to be official-sounding hot air. As the Bible says, “By their fruit you will recognize them. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?” Do peace-loving democracies bomb 32 countries in 55 years? (5)

In retrospect we can confidently say that Rome became an "Empire” in 27 BC. However, from the average Roman’s point of view, things wouldn’t have appeared so cut-and-dry. It took centuries for the Emperor to consolidate power, and the Senate never formally disbanded. The Emperor was also checked by various sources - without support from the Praetorian Guard (the elite military unit that provided protection for Roman emperors), rulers had no chance of maintaining power. Throughout much of the Empire’s history, the Senate also “technically” had the power to appoint new Emperors. I’m sure there were “Blue Pill” Romans who would’ve scoffed at the notion that they lived in an Empire. In a funny parallel to today’s pronouncements that we need to “make the world safe for democracy,” Roman leaders often talked about using their massive military to maintain Pax Romana (or Roman peace.)

Yet, historians can confidently say: 

“No, Rome was definitely an empire. The Senate was mostly symbolic, and the military really ran the country.”

In other words, we look past the biases that may have clouded the average Roman’s view of his own government at the time, and make an objective statement about how the country really functioned. This is easy to do when the events and people in question expired thousands of years ago. The question is: can we bring this same discernment and objective attitude to the modern day?

Conclusion

By comparing modern day trends that seem “normal” (for example, sports and U.S. foreign policy) to established historical reference points, you can start to see your own time period with more objectivity. This can be very hard to do, since it calls into question much of what we are taught from a young age. For those courageous enough to take the leap – I absolutely guarantee it’s worth it. In time you start to see all of the parallels between modern societies and those of the past. You stop blindly falling for propaganda and distractions, and look out at the world with a much clearer perspective. Best of luck.

SOURCES:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

2. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/us-military-spending-vs-world/

3. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-united-states-probably-has-more-foreign-military-bases-than-any-other-people-nation-or-empire-in-history/

4. http://www.upworthy.com/20-years-of-data-reveals-that-congress-doesnt-care-what-you-think

5. https://wikispooks.com/wiki/US_Bombing_campaigns_since_1945

Spiritual Alchemy : The Ego

…Excerpt from The Book of Lambspring…

“A savage Dragon lives in the forest,  Most venomous he is, yet lacking nothing:  When he sees the rays of the Sun and its bright fire,  He scatters abroad his poison,  And flies upward so fiercely  That no living creature can stand before him,  Nor is even the Basilisk equal to him.  He who hath skill to slay him, wisely  Hath escaped from all dangers.  Yet all venom, and colours, are multiplied  In the hour of his death.  His venom becomes the great Medicine.  He quickly consumes his venom,  For he devours his poisonous tail.  All this is performed on his own body,  From which flows forth glorious Balm,  With all its miraculous virtues.  Here at all the Sages do loudly rejoice. “

~~Another long post but please bare with me. This applies to all of us.~~

The Ouroboros is the Dragon biting its own tail. This is a representation of the power of the ego mind and the dissolution of this part of yourself. I find the alchemical viewpoint on the ego flawed to a certain extent.

Ego: is the part of all of us that has been programmed by our subconsciousness/ our upbringing/ our environment. It is the part of us that is in essence who we think we are. This is also the part of us that lives in the lower 3 chakra of survival. These are also where the animal instinct lives.

Alchemical Process: Is to break down the ego. In the explanation above it states “ in the hour of his death” is speaking of the ego. We are told that it is the process of destroying the ego into its base form of spirit. Via working with the elements you impart your spirit into it and in the process of working with the physical you will effect the spiritual. One can also do this via mediation on the Tree of Life. It can be done via the practice of Yoga, also the cleansing and working of chakra. 

Now that we see where the ego comes from and the process of destroying it. Lets dive into what that means for us as a collective. The ego is a part of you as much as your hand is. It has learned from its surroundings to make you who you think you are. It is the part of you that wants to be validated. To be right all the time. To feel like it “belongs” to something bigger than itself. It will be the 1st part of you likely to feel slighted or start an argument even though in hindsight it really wasn’t a big deal. It is the animal you that will fight if cornered.

As you can see I am explaining the ego as “IT”, a thing but this is how gurus and sages want you to see it. Although IT is a part of you you can’t just “destroy” the ego, just like you can’t cut off your hand. What happens when you corner an animal? The creature fights back..correct? It’s the same thing with the ego. We can’t destroy it for IT is at the moment YOU. I was under the impression (self taught of course) from spiritual books/youtube that the ego needed to be dissolved. In some cases many teachers mention the destruction of the ego mind. Well what do you think happens when one tries to kill anything with consciousness? It fights back.

This is my experience.

The soul will make attempt after attempt to teach the mind. The mind can’t comprehend spirit since it can’t be explained by the senses. These experiences are seen, by the ego, as being done to us instead of for us. The ego is quick to pass the blame onto another never seeing itself as the cause of the effect.

Here is the main point…. the ego can’t be destroyed but it can be joined. This is the case of the previous emblems of polarity. Joining the heart and mind. The heart can understand spirit and what it is showing, but one needs to watch how one is acting and reflect often on the previous experience.

I never really knew what that meant till spirit showed me. Time after time I was given experience to show me my actions were affecting others. I said to myself “that’s not me” and “I’ve grown” and truth is it was only an excuse. I actually had to agree to myself that it was in fact…ME! I had to take responsibility for my own actions on how I make others feel. You can’t imagine how hard that was. To admit that all my reading and learning was for the edification of my ego. The male power of learning “occult knowledge” did not put into a tangible format something I could understand.

I had to stop and review the past. See how I talk to others. See my reaction and how it was handled. Know that in the moment I used “well I’m being funny” as an excuse to put others down. This was in no way intentional, but the end result was not putting anothers feeling before my own. To turn the other cheek and not make that off color comment. I let the ego run me instead of the other way. I saw it happening but it was like a train wreck. I couldn’t stop it or so I thought.

So the Ego can’t and does not want to die anymore than you want to step in front of a train. We can train the ego through self reflection on how to act. Use the mind at what its good at. Remember how in the past certain bad experiences made you feel. Think about yesterday and how you interacted with others. Tell your mind this is not how we want to act. I know it sounds crazy but your ego and spirit are separated.  

The apply the heart. Do unto others as you would have done to you. See that your feelings are an indicator of how others are projecting. Watching every moment now in the present and making the right decision. Even if you feel slighted, it truly is only words and feelings. Now I’m not saying to let abuse happen, but the small things which truly are small in the grand scheme of our daily lives.

One can merge the ego with the spirit. Let what you learn filter into your heart. Let the feeling flow but redirect the anger through the heart and not let the ego answer for you. Be more forgiving, even though you really don’t want to. That resistance is your ego. Don’t destroy/kill/dissolve your ego but let it pass your physical knowledge of your world around into the feeling of love.

The ego does not want to die. So why “kill’ it? Let it work for you and with you. Train it to see the emotion and not react. Let the reaction come from the heart. I found out that we are not supposed to be connected to the universal mind….but be connected to the universal heart! Humans are heart based. We are letting our environment keep us in the animal instinct of survival.

Last year in my introductory course to health sciences, Determinants of Health (HSS 1101) I’ve learned that besides physical wellness, health encompasses 6 other dimensions: (1) social health, (2) emotional health, (3) spiritual health,(4) environmental health, (5) occupational health, and (6) intellectual health.

Taking this class and learning about the 7 dimensions of health made me realized that wellness is much more than merely physical health, exercise or nutrition. It is the full integration of states of physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Each of these seven dimensions act and interact in a way that contributes to our own quality of life.

Wellness is achieving one’s full potential. It is self-directed and an ever-evolving process that follows a lifestyle of balance in health that ultimately decreases the likelihood of becoming ill physically, mentally, and spiritually. Comprised of seven dimensions and characteristics, wellness is achieved when a person’s life includes all seven elements in combination and in whole.

Take Occupational Wellness Assessment Take Emotional Wellness Assessment Take Spiritual Wellness Assessment Take Environment Wellness Assessment Take Physical Wellness Assessment Take Social Wellness Assessment Take Intellectual Wellness Assessment

The bad behavior of the richest: what I learned from wealth managers

While those in poverty are called lazy, the idle rich are dubbed bon vivants

If nearly a decade interviewing the wealth managers for the 1% taught me anything, it is that the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor have a lot more in common than stereotypes might lead you to believe.

In conversation, wealth managers kept coming back to the flamboyant vices of their clients. It was quite unexpected, in the course of discussing tax avoidance, to hear professional service providers say things like:

“I’ve told my colleagues: ‘If I ever become like some of our clients, shoot me.’ Because they are really immoral people – too much time on their hands, and all the money means they have no limits. I was actually told by one client not to bring my wife on a trip to Monaco unless I wanted to see her get hit on by 10 guys. The local sport, he said, was picking up other men’s wives.”

The clients of this Geneva-based wealth manager also “believe that they are descended from the pharaohs, and that they were destined to inherit the earth”.

If a poor person voiced such beliefs, he or she might well be institutionalized; for those who work with the wealthy, however, such “eccentricities” are all in a day’s work. Indeed, an underappreciated irony of accelerating economic inequality has been the way it has exposed behaviors among the ultra-rich that mirror the supposed “pathologies” of the ultra-poor.

In fact, one of the London-based wealth managers I interviewed said that a willingness to accept with equanimity behavior that would be considered outrageous in others was an informal job requirement. Clients, he said, specifically chose wealth managers not just on technical competence, but on their ability to remain unscandalized by the private lives of the ultra-rich: “They [the clients] have to pick someone they want to know everything about them: about Mother’s lesbian affairs, Brother’s drug addiction, the spurned lovers bursting into the room.” Many of these clients are not employed and live off family largesse, but no one calls them lazy.

As Lane and Harburg put it in the libretto of the musical Finian’s Rainbow:

When a rich man doesn’t want to work

He’s a bon vivant, yes, he’s a bon vivant

But when a poor man doesn’t want to work

He’s a loafer, he’s a lounger

He’s a lazy good for nothing, he’s a jerk

When the wealthy are revealed to be drug addicts, philanderers, or work-shy, the response is – at most – a frisson of tabloid-level curiosity, followed by a collective shrug.

Behaviors indulged in the rich are not just condemned in the poor, but used as a justification to punish them, denying them access to resources that keep them alive, such as healthcare and food assistance. Discussion of poverty has become almost impossible without moral outrage directed at lazy “welfare queens”, “crackheads” and other drug addicts, and the “promiscuous poor” (a phrase that has cropped up again and again in discussions of public benefits over more than a century).

These disparate perceptions aren’t just evidence of hypocrisy; they are literally a matter of life and death. In the US, the widespread belief that the poor are simply lazy has led many states to impose work requirements on aid recipients –even those who have been medically classified as disabled. Limiting aid programs in this way has been shown to shorten recipients’ lives: rather than the intended consequence of pushing recipients into paid employment, the restrictions have simply left them without access to medical care or a sufficient food supply. Thus, in one of the richest counties in America, a boy living in poverty died of a toothache; there were no protests, and nothing changed.

Meanwhile, the “billionaire” in the White House starts his days at 11am – the rest of the morning is coyly termed “executive time” – and is known for his frequent holidays. “Nice work if you can get it,” quipped an opinion piece in the Washington Post.

We don’t hear much about laziness, drug addiction or promiscuity among the wealthiest members of society because – unlike Trump – most billionaires are not public figures and go to great lengths to seek privacy. Thus the motto of one London-based wealth management firm: “I want to be invisible.” This company, like many other service providers to the ultra-rich, specializes in preserving secrecy for clients. The wealthy people I studied not only had wealth managers but often dedicated staff members who killed negative stories about them in the media and kept their names off the Forbes “rich list”.

Many even present themselves as homeless – for tax purposes – despite owning multiple residences. For the ultra-rich, having no fixed residence provides major legal and financial advantages; this is exemplified by the case of the wealthy businessman who acquired eight different nationalities in order to avoid taxes on his fortune, and by the UK native I interviewed in his Dubai apartment building:

“I am not tax resident anywhere. The tax man says ‘show me a utility bill’, and the only utility bill I can present is for the house I own in Thailand, and it’s in a language that the European authorities aren’t familiar with. With all the mobility going on in the world, international marriages, governments can’t keep up with people.”

Meanwhile, the poor can end up being “resident nowhere” because no one will allow them to stay in one place for very long; as the sociologist Cristobal Young has shown, the majority of migrants are poor people. In addition, the poor are routinely evicted from housing on the slightest pretext, frequently driving them into homeless shelters – which are in turn forced to move when local homeowners engage in nimby (not in my back yard) protests. Even the design of public spaces is increasingly organized to deny the poor a place to alight, however temporarily.

It is as if the right to move around, to take up space, and to direct your own life as you see fit have become luxury goods, available to those who can pay instead of being human rights. For the rich, deviance from social norms is nearly consequence-free, to the point where outright criminality is tolerated: witness the collective shrug that greeted revelations of massive intergenerational tax fraud in the Trump family.

For the poor, however, even the most minor deviance from others’ expectations – like buying ice cream or soft drinks with food stamps – results in stigmatization, limits on their autonomy, and deprivation of basic human needs. This makes life far more nasty, brutish and short for those on the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder, creating a chasm of more than 20 years in life expectancy between rich and poor. This appears to some as a fully justified consequence of “personal responsibility” – the poor deserve to die because of their moral failings.

So while the behavior of the ultra-rich gets an ever-widening scope of social leeway, the lives of the poor are foreshortened in every sense. Once upon a time, they were urged to eat cake; now the cake earns them a public scolding.