Opposing Torture

For Anthony, Abigail and Ryan, Ben, Bursts, Nadja and Stephanie, Leona, AdamBomb, Lauren Swain, and everyone else who kept—and continue to keep—me alive.

Preface

Sean Swain doesn’t play by the rules. The rules for somebody convicted of a serious crime dictate that you do your time quietly, you don’t make waves, and you hope that the parole board, if there is such a thing in your case, finally decides that you’ve been “rehabilitated” and lets you go home. That’s not how Sean Swain has handled his situation since he was arrested and charged with a murder he didn’t commit in 1991. He has steadfastly maintained his innocence like so many other people do. But he has also fought for the rights of every other prisoner in a system that allows and defends torture, that perpetuates a system of solitary confinement that the rest of the world has condemned, and that warehouses the most vulnerable people in society. That’s the definition of selflessness.

Sean has done all of this on his own. He doesn’t have access to high-priced big-city lawyers. Indeed, he has largely defended himself in his appeals. And despite that burden, he has spent decades trying to help others.

I became aware of Sean Swain when I was incarcerated after blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture program. I had spent 15 years with the CIA, working mostly in counterterrorism, before leaving to become the chief investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I was responsible for the capture of an al- Qaeda official by the name of Abu Zubaydah. The CIA believed at the time that Abu Zubaydah was the third-ranking person in that notorious terrorist group that was responsible for the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans. We captured Abu Zubaydah on March 22, 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan and we sent him to a secret prison, the first of an archipelago of secret sites where he and other al- Qaeda leaders would be tortured mercilessly.

I am a believer of the rule of law. Either the United States is a shining city on a hill or it’s not. Either it respects human rights or it doesn’t. Either it leads the world in respect for the person or it doesn’t. I realized that my country didn’t and I went public with the CIA’s torture program.

It was only when I got to prison at the Federal Correctional Institution at Loretto, Pennsylvania that I realized just how little regard for human rights the US has. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture and Demeaning Treatment has castigated the United States repeatedly for its use of solitary confinement in US prisons. The United Nations demanded that countries not use solitary as a form of punishment. But if they did, solitary should be limited to only 15 days. The United States has ignored that guideline. There are American prisoners who have spent more than 40 years in solitary. Think about where you were 40 years ago and imagine having had no human contact for that entire period. It’s not possible to remain sane.

Nongovernment organizations, think tanks, academic institutions, and the media have all warned over the past several years of the dangers of solitary confinement. The New York Times in 2015, told the public, for example, about conditions in one of California’s prisons, where prisoners in solitary confinement went so far as to eat broken glass just to be able to have human contact with medical personnel. It is not unusual for a prisoner in solitary to go months at a time without exchanging a single word with another human being. It would make anybody crazy. And it’s certainly a form of torture.

Sean Swain has been talking about solitary confinement since before it was even on the UN’s radar. Why? Because he was living it.

And there is another thing that Sean has lived through in prison. That’s the illegal restriction of his Constitutional rights. There is nothing in the lawbooks or in the federal code that says a prisoner loses his freedom of speech, his freedom to petition his elected officials, or his freedom of assembly. And as Sean has shown over the years, he also has stood up against slavery, which is what forced prison labor actually is.

Prison administrators don’t like that. They demand compliance. They demand servitude. And at great personal cost, Sean has stood up for his fellow prisoners. He has led work stoppages for better pay and better working conditions. He has gone on hunger strikes to ensure his Constitutional rights. And he has so consistently stood up for his own rights and for the rights of others that he has repeatedly been moved from prison to prison. That’s called “diesel therapy” and it’s how a prison system silences a prisoner.

Think of it. Prison administrators know that people like Sean have rights and intend to exercise them. They can’t stop them. So what do they do? They put them into “transportation status.” One outspoken friend of mine was put on a prison bus from Loretto to the federal regional transportation hub in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. From Harrisburg, he went to the regional maximum security prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He spent six weeks there before being flown to the US Penitentiary in Atlanta. After a month in Atlanta, he went to the national federal prison transportation hub in Oklahoma City. From there, it was a long prison bus ride to FCI Englewood, outside of Denver. And after a couple months in Denver, it was on to a federal prison in Lompoc, California.

Why would prison administrators do this? They do it for several reasons. First, when a prisoner is in “transportation status,” he is not allowed access to the prison email system, to pens and paper, or to stamps and envelopes. There’s no way for him to let his family know where he is. Second, being in constant “transportation status” essentially silences a prisoner. If there’s no access to paper, there’s no access to the media. And there’s no way to get a message out. Third, and perhaps more importantly, “transportation status” is meant to move a prisoner as far away from his family and his support system as possible. Prison is tough enough. It’s far worse when a prisoner has to go it alone. And worse yet, the authorities can keep a prisoner in “transportation status” for up to 18 months.

That’s what has happened to Sean over the years. He’s been in prisons in Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, and elsewhere. But the authorities have not silenced him. Indeed, if anything, they’ve energized him. He is a voice against torture. He is a voice in support of the oppressed. He is a spokesman for those prisoners who do not otherwise have a voice. His experience is this book.

John Kiriakou

CIA whistleblower who exposed the US torture program in Iraq

Introduction

At midnight all the agents and superhuman crew

Go out and round up everyone who knows more than they do And take them to the factory where the heart attack machine is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go make sure that no one is escaping to Desolation Row...

—from “Desolation Row,” Bob Dylan

I remember when former SEAL Jesse Ventura declared that if he were given just an hour alone with then-Vice President Dick Cheney, he would have Cheney confessing to the Sharon Tate murders. Ventura vehemently opposed U.S. torture policy in the so- called “War on Terror.” Torture, it had been revealed, had occurred in Iraq and at a number of other black sites, conducted under the euphemism, “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

While public debate continued over the question of torturing foreign nationals and non-state combatants overseas, silently, without fanfare, U.S. intelligence agencies imported the practice of torture.

Not to torture enemies of the United States; to torture citizens of the United States.

I know. The reason I know is, the government employed torture on me.

September 19, 2012, is a critical disjuncture in my life; there exists my life before that date, and my life after. That date marks the beginning of the torture regimen to which I was subjected in Mansfield, Ohio, for roughly a year. It included all of the components employed in the foreign torture program.

As the torture continued, day after day, week after week, month after month, it did not avoid exposure. Far from it. Through other prisoners, I was able to communicate what I experienced to the outside world. I sent regular updates to friends who posted them at seanswain.org... I regularly wrote to a lawyer who agreed to assist me... I even wrote senators and representatives, and later spoke to the director of the civilian staff who oversaw the prison complex for the Ohio legislature, spoke to her through the plexiglass window of the cell where I was tortured.

Nothing happened. Friends and family, a lawyer, a website. Mainstream media refused to look; nonprofits refused to act; government agencies refused to respond. There existed no bewilderment, no public debate, no collective soul-searching that had followed the revelation of foreign torture.

Torture, it seems, had become normalized.

To my thinking, that is, perhaps, more bewildering than the torture itself.

So, long after I had exposed domestic torture from within the midst of the torture machine, in real time, the program continued. The lack of any response from any sector of American society served as implied consent, permission, passive acceptance of the grisly reality that, sometimes, torture is necessary.

So, who am I that torturing me was necessary?

My parents have been married more than fifty years, a Ford worker and stay-home mom. I was a Cub Scout and then a Boy Scout, and I still remember all twelve points of the Boy Scout code. I pitched and played first base in Little League. In high school, I wrote for the school paper and was disciplined only once in my entire school career, given detention once for being chronically late to class.

After I graduated, I enlisted in the Army and received an honorable discharge after an unremarkable stint. I went on to college, receiving a writing scholarship.

On April 20, 1991, the former boyfriend of my then live-in girlfriend broke into my apartment after he had spent the early afternoon binge-drinking. He reached for what I believed was a gun and, in a panic, I stabbed him several times in self-defense, killing him.

Because he was the nephew of the Clerk of Courts, police and prosecutors concealed evidence of the break-in, and the polygraph I passed was inadmissible. I was falsely convicted of murder. Even after official corruption was exposed and I was granted a re-trial, the same corrupt officials denied me justice in the second trial in order to save their own careers.

So, even though I came to prison, I’m not a criminal.

In prison, I earned a college degree, graduating with honors. I logged thousands of hours of community service. I advocated for justice and prison reform with a number of nonprofits, and I was recognized by Rosa Parks personally in 2003 for my peace work in prison. The parole board repeatedly denied me parole despite the fact that I had never so much as been accused of any serious misconduct such as drugs or alcohol or any violence of any kind in the decades of my captivity.

I continued writing for publication. Beginning in 2005, South Chicago Zine Distro began publishing collections of my writings. In 2008, a published story I co-wrote was found in the possession of a member of the Earth Liberation Front during an FBI raid. The FBI contacted the prison and prison officials—some of whom would later be instrumental in my torture—overreacted and, for the first time, explicitly punished me for my writing, equating my constitutionally protected speech with “encouraging a work stoppage.”

Fast-forward to 2012, and my writings were posted at se- answain.org, a site managed by friends. I didn’t know, but prison officials, concerned more about their public reputation than about carrying out their professional duties, had been secretly monitoring the site for any cause to implicate me in misconduct and silence me. The site embarrassed and angered prison officials. In August 2012, Director Gary Mohr instituted a new policy, outsourcing services to a private corporation, JPay. I wrote an article opposed to JPay, entitled, “JPay, Sock Puppets, and Our Reduction to Slavery.” In it, I criticized prison policy and the role of predatory profiteers like JPay. I suggested that Director Mohr’s approval to give JPay access to private information of prisoners’ families and friends could constitute identity theft. So, by having exposed what could be crimes committed by public officials, I had performed what was, really, a public service, exposing corruption and mismanagement.

Objectively, that made me a good citizen. In the eyes of prison officials, that made me an enemy to be crushed.

Also, I didn’t know it at the time, but JPay was a metadata collection tool for the FBI. By outsourcing email and financial transactions to JPay, prison officials gave access in real time to communications and financial transactions for the whole prisoner population. This is invaluable for connecting known felons to networks of support and then expanding investigations to the free world.

Likely, my critique was not enthusiastically received by the FBI either.

On September 19, 2012, security staff were sent to search my cell. After hours tearing apart a space the size of a small bathroom, they emerged with a rough draft of my JPay article and my typewriter. An hour later, I was cuffed and escorted to Torture Cell Row.

My offense was that I told the truth about an illegal policy that made the prisons director’s friends very wealthy and gave the FBI a trove of data for “phoning in” investigations. How prison officials characterized it was vastly different. By their story I had violated prison rules. From the conduct report eventually issued: “Rules Violated: 17. Engaging in unauthorized group activities... “15. Rioting or encouraging others to riot...

“56. Use of telephone or mail in furtherance of any criminal activity...”

Prison officials somewhat reinvented events in order to justify disciplinary action. They attempted, rather inartfully, to link my opposition to JPay with activities of a prison gang that did not oppose JPay; thus, my opposition to JPay policy proved my membership in a group that didn’t care at all about JPay. The conduct report described, in part:

“Beginning in September 2012 MANCI staff began reporting unauthorized flyers being posted in pods, and lying[sic] in large piles for inmates to pick up and review. After conducting an investigation it was determined that the inmates responsible for these pamphlets that were distributed as ‘resistance manuals’ to all inmates and other institutions across the state. The pamphlet incites other inmates to unite against prison administration...

“Found in possession of Swain 243-205 was[sic] anarchist articles he authored that had wording and ideologies that matched... Swain was in the process of sending these articles... to be published on his website. In the article he calls for militant tactics... Swain closes the article by stating, ‘We have to burn the JPays[sic] to the ground.’”

No explanation was provided for concluding that my article “matched” the “ideologies” of others engaged in misconduct, or how “thinking like them,” in prison officials’ inexpert opinion, somehow made me responsible for their actions.

Further, prison officials engaged in a flagrant fabrication when asserting my published article contained incitement for “burn[ing] the JPays[sic] to the ground.’” That never appeared in the article, which had already been published online before the conduct report was ever written.

And, in any regard, the article and beliefs notwithstanding, having beliefs and writing an article, whatever it may have said, could never justify subjecting someone to torture. Consider, I was never so much as charged in criminal court, which reveals that, whatever I wrote or thought to offend prison officials, I didn’t break any laws. Whatever I did, and whatever they claimed I did, was still less serious, legally speaking, than J-walking or spitting on the sidewalk.

So, even accepting prison officials’ provably untrue account as true, just for the sake of argument, I was tortured for roughly a year for breaking prison rules.

However one might feel about using torture to extract information from a foreign combatant for intended purposes of preventing a future terrorist attack, I should hope torture inflicted to break a U.S. citizen who, at most, violated some administrative policy less serious than traffic laws, or, more likely, reported public corruption, would be obviously unjustified.

But it happened.

And even though it was publicly exposed, it wasn’t stopped.

The story doesn’t end there. It didn’t end when the regimen of torture finally abated.

After the year of torture, I was sent to Ohio’s super-max prison where I received an invitation to be interviewed on the Final Straw radio show, related to ideological repression and torture. My weekly fifteen-minute phone call led to a regular weekly segment on the show, which is globally syndicated.

That prompted years of subsequent targeting of my communications mediums, the application of pressure to silence my continued exposure of torture and repression. When I obtained counsel, my communications were so obstructed as to force me to dismiss the lawsuit. And in each instance, prison officials made pretextual use of their internal disciplinary processes, a pattern that not only subjected me to retaliation and harassment in the course of my life, but created justifications for the parole board to deny me parole.

So, it started with torture to silence my criticism of policy, and continued with a campaign of state terror for exposing the torture; it eventually escalated to a plot by prison officials to fake my suicide and silence me permanently at the end of a bed sheet. When that was exposed, I was illegally exiled to an out-of-state prison, without warning or process.

But, in the mean time, others in the free world came to my defense. As the state terror escalated, so did responses of people in the free world. Prison officials responsible for torture had their home addresses posted online and, when that did not end the torment, the response escalated further.

This, then, is the story not just of domestic torture by government officials in the United States.

(3)

destroying critics and opponents for corrupt, personal reasons, but a story of ongoing torment and retaliation against the survivor of torture, and the direct action of courageous and nameless people of conscience who struggled to make them stop.

Part I includes the original article that resulted in my torture and writings about torture. Part II presents writings during the repression and retaliation for my exposure of torture. Part III relates writings from the period when others, on my behalf, began fighting back in a very direct way.

I have long said the officials of the Ohio prison system and their FBI handlers made two critical mistakes. Their first mistake was torturing me.

The second mistake was dumber than the first; their second mistake was letting me live.

Just an observation, but if you don’t have the moral sense to refrain from torture, you should at least have the practical sense not to allow your torture victim to live. Living torture victims often prove to become dangerous and uncomfortable lifelong enemies.

I think I have to amend my analysis. I no longer believe they made two mistakes. I believe they made three.

They tortured me... they let me live... and they let me get the story to you.

I hope they regret it.

Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain in exile from Ohio, in Dillwyn, Virginia 16 November 2019

Part One: Torture

Introduction to Torture

Part I begins where the torture began, with my article, “JPay, Sock Puppets, and Our Reduction to Slavery.” Following that article are three selections that ostensibly address the social science professions.

The first is a radio segment transcription, “Shrinks and Torture,” which was written later in 2014, but is included here for historical context.

The second of the three selections that address the social science professions is an open letter to a mental health worker at the super-max. This open letter reveals something of my ideological viewpoint but also addresses directly the false diagnosis placed on me as part of prison officials’ campaign to destroy me.

The third selection that addresses the social science professions reveals the components of the torture program and explores the question, a legitimate one, I think, as to whether prison officials’ recourse to torture makes them sociopaths.

“Colonizer’s Corpse” was written as my response to an invitation from Joanna Saul, Director of the legislative oversight committee. Saul requested advice for other prisoners in long-term isolation. Important to note, I had already directly spoken with Saul, disclosing to her that I had been subjected to months of torture, and Saul had done nothing. Her inaction contributed to the tone and content of my advice in “Colonizer’s Corpse.” Saul would later be one of several state officials to resign when hacktivists and free- world rebels rallied to my support and began actively targeting torturers and their accomplices.

“JPay, Fuckweasels Target Sean Swain to Prevent Truth from Reaching the Public... Again,” describes the efforts of prison officials to continue repression in the face of a federal civil rights action that would, if prosecuted, expose government targeting beliefs and employing domestic torture. ODRC Counsel Trevor Clark, the FBI agency liaison, orchestrated their campaign.

The final selection presented here is, “Violence!, Violence!, Violence!,” an open letter to Trevor Clark on the topic of political violence, addressing prison officials’ disingenuous justifications for subjecting me to torture which, ironically enough, is itself an act of political violence. This selection was written earlier, during the year of torture.

“Shrinks and Torture” was previously broadcast on the Final Straw radio show. “Colonizer’s Corpse” was published as a zine, and, “Violence!, Violence!, Violence!,” was previously included in a zine entitled, “Fugitive Thoughts: Essays on Political Violence by Sean Swain.”

Jpay, Sock Puppets, and Our Reduction to Slavery

At the end of August, ManCI [Mansfield Correctional Institution] administrators posted a notice related to a change in money order transfer procedures to be implemented here at the prison. By the old procedure, anyone could send money orders to prisoners directly at the prison and those funds would be posted to the prisoner’s account by the cashier’s office. There also existed electronic transfer options for a service fee, but money orders could be sent without any fee at all. By the new procedure, only approved visitors may send funds to prisoners and rather than sending them to the prisoner directly, the funds are sent to JPay, a company in Hollywood, Florida—the prescription-pill addiction capital of the world. With each transaction, approved visitors must send a copy of their photo identification and a portion of the money order they send is kept by JPay as a “service fee,” otherwise known as a tax.

As I’ve already written, all of this struck me as patently illegal, as none of my visitors consented to having the private information they turned over to the State for visiting purposes suddenly compiled into a database and turned over to a company hiring an inordinate number of pill addicts who can upload the information and sell it to identity pirates in order to support their pill habits.

Bewildered that the prison system would betray the trust of 750,000 prisoner-visitors, I sent kite communications to a number of ManCI administrators, asking specific questions about this money-transfer boondoggle. This is what I wrote: Sir or Madam:

These are questions I need answered before I get back to my attorney:

1. When did my visitors consent to having JPay get access to their private information, which was given to the ODRC [Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction] only for purposes of getting on my visiting list?</em>

2. . What kind of electronic security does JPay have to make sure the sensitive information of 750,000 visitors isn’t hacked for identity theft?

3. .Since data entry employees for JPay can access a database to confirm visitor status, what protocols prevent those workers from stealing the identities of 750,000 visitors who never consented to their information being accessed by JPay in the first place?

4. What statute provides for a tax to be levied upon prisoner visitors when they transfer funds to prisoners?

5. When did the Ohio General Assembly approve this tax?

My attorney would like to arrange a conference call with the custodian of records to insure that my visitors’ sensitive information is not transferred, transmitted, nor accessed by JPay or any other private company. Who should my attorney contact?

Thank you.

Note, I opened and closed the kites with references to counsel and made clear that my concern was to address the illegalities and privacy concerns of my visitors. You would think that prison administrators, as officials in the criminal justice process, would want to ensure the legality of their procedures. Because their job is to instill a respect for the law in all of their wayward captives, they would certainly want to make sure their own conduct is well beyond reproach, right?

Well, no.

Ms. Wainwright is the Deputy Warden of Special Services. Among her duties, she’s the supervisor of Ms. Allen, the Unit Management Administrator. Deputy Warden Wainwright did not answer a single one of my questions. She wrote, “All the information we have re: JPay is posted by Ms. Allen. She is sending all updates. Refer to those. This is a statewide initiative.”

That’s all she said.

So, when did visitors consent to having private information handed over to pill-poppers in Florida? When did the legislature approve of this tax? What stops pill-poppers from selling my elderly parents’ identities and trashing their credit? No idea.

I sent an identical kite to Sharon Berry, the Institutional Inspector, the zealous advocate who protects us captives from the abuses of our captors. She didn’t answer any of my questions. She referred me to Ms. Allen, the Unit Management Administrator.

Fortunately, I had already sent an identical kite to Ms. Allen. I received her kite back, stapled to the kite I had sent to the Deputy Warden of Operations. Their joint response was, “Please direct your questions to JPay for guidance.” They answered none of my questions.

No shit. Ms. Allen really told me to direct my questions to JPay. Think of the implications: ‘Mr. Swain, you’re ostensibly in the custody of the alleged State of Ohio, but our authority is now outsourced to our corporate masters whose profit margins dictate government policies. They make the rules. Please consult the corporate dictators who give us our marching orders.’

That’s pretty fucking disturbing.

How long is it before ODRC Director Gary Mohr moves ODRC Central Office from Columbus, Ohio, to Hollywood, Florida, so he can be useful to his corporate golf buddies, help them count their money between sniffing lines in the clubhouse, and maybe give them hand-jobs over drinks? How long before [Ohio Governor] John Kasich joins him?

Like I said, pretty fucking disturbing. I’m in the custody of corporations who have their hands up the asses of prison officials, making them walk and talk like they’re real humans. Prison officials are now sock puppets on the hands of corporations.

The last of the kites I sent to Warden Terry Tibbals. He is, after all, in charge of the prison. At least, by all appearances. Since he is the warden, you’d expect him to be concerned about the legality of this new policy. You’d expect him to answer all of my questions. His answer: “Contact: Steven Young, Legal Counsel, 770 W. Broad St., Cols. Ohio 43222.”

I’m not making this up. I asked specific questions about the legality of this dubious procedure that profits corporations at the expense of Ohioans and I got the John Gotti response from the warden: I have no comment; ask my attorney.

This too is quite revealing. It lets us know that when these administrative sock puppets fail at union-busting, they outsource Ohio jobs to corporate masters out-of-state, whether it’s legal or not, whether it violates the privacy rights of Ohio citizens or not, whether it leads to identity theft of 750,000 Ohioans or not. It’s all done without the consent of the taxpayers, who end up footing the bill. Oh, yeah—when the lawsuits happen, JPay won’t have to hire counsel. Oh, no. Steve Young, ODRC counsel, will head the dream-team for an out-of-state corporation, at the expense of the very Ohioans whose jobs were downsized so Gary Mohr’s coke-snorting golf friends could turn Ohio’s prisoners into a cash cow.

Yeah, I know. You probably think this is only about prisoners and how funds get to us, and nobody cares about prisoners. But it isn’t. This is about a system-wide approach that Naomi Klein documented in her book, The Shock Doctrine, where government, reduced to sock puppets for the corporate elite, hollow out government and reduce the majority of us to slaves, while those who control the “commanding heights” of the economy end up with all the cash. It’s about our so-called “public” officials bending over so the wealthy elite can cram a fist in their asses, voluntarily becoming sock-puppets for the Enrons and Halliburtons and Banks of America and JPays and AccessSecurePaks and Global Tel*Links. You can’t stop it by voting the bums out because the bums are just disposable gloves worn on the hands of our true enemies.

* * * *

Did the FBI Order Sexual Abuse?

Scandalous Resignation of Prison Official Proxy Raises Questions About Torture Tactics Employed to Neutralize Anarchist Prisoner

I first popped up on their radar in May 2008, at the height of the “Green Scare.” I had, by then, been locked up in the custody of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for seventeen years, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation had raided suspected members of the Earth Liberation Front—the ELF—and they had found dog-eared copies of zines that I had written, including Last Act of the Circus Animals. The FBI also allegedly found what they believed were personal, handwritten letters from ELF prisoner Daniel McGowan.

So, on the same day that Daniel McGowan was transferred to the Communications Management Unit at Marion, Illinois—on orders of the FBI—Ohio prison officials, also alerted by the FBI as to my ostensible connection to terrorists, dragged me off to isolation and a planned emergency transfer to the super-max unit in Youngstown, Ohio. The transfer was eventually cancelled, as no real connection existed between the ELF and me, but I was on the FBI’s radar.

At the time, I knew nothing of any FBI investigation or the ELF’s impeccable tastes in reading material. I knew only that there was crime tape—crime tape!—across my segregation cell door and that some top prison administrators were acting incredibly sketchy. No one would so much as stop at my cell door to answer questions. I would not make the connection until years later when a prison employee confidentially revealed to me the real, covert reason I had been apprehended and tossed in the hole in May 2008.

The FBI, it seems, did not want me to know I was being investigated and monitored. They worked behind the scenes, directing prison officials to fabricate a disciplinary pretext that would serve as a smokescreen for why I was taken to segregation. For fabricating that ruse, the FBI enlisted the assistance of the ODRC’s “agency liaison” to the FBI, an attorney named Trevor Clark. It became Clark’s job to manufacture a disciplinary pretext as the cover story for my segregation. What he wrote up was an accusation that a published work of mine “encouraged a work stoppage.”

From that time forward, Clark became the FBI’s man on the ground, their proxy, their outsourced agent for administering the FBI program for monitoring and neutralizing me, and eventually for silencing me. Thus, whenever my name came across an FBI desk, the FBI called Clark and Clark carried out the plan. The plan came to include disciplinary frame-ups that would make me appear to be a behavior problem, extending my imprisonment and causing me to get passed over for parole. The “plan” would eventually include torture. And, very possibly, it came to include sexual abuse.

× × × ×

In 2012, I wrote a critique of ODRC policy that outsourced services to the JPay corporation—a policy I asserted to be illegal. I did not know at the time that JPay was itself a front for the FBI, a massive metadata collection tool for domestic spying, where the FBI could monitor financial transactions and email communications to and from prisoners... in real time. This permitted the FBI to generate new hubs of investigation among those who communicated with prisoners, and then, in turn, generate new hubs of investigation revolving around those subjects’ other contacts.

At the same time my article was published to seanswain.org,

the Army of the 12 Monkeys disrupted Mansfield Correctional where I was housed, inspiring an insurrection, and they sent letters to Ohio lawmakers at their home addresses, listing demands.

The FBI and Clark resumed their collaboration. While the FBI could not legally retaliate against me for exposure of their da- ta-collection tool, and while the ODRC could not retaliate against me for the website they found to undermine their public image, they could frame me for the 12 Monkey uprising. They could kill two birds with one stone, accusing me of the 12 Monkey uprising and sending me off to the super-max.

Clark, of course, wrote the conduct report, accusing me of a whole host of disciplinary charges, all without any actual misconduct. The charges were based solely on my “ideology”—claiming that my opposition to JPay proved I was the leader of a group that did not oppose JPay.

As Clark mounted the disciplinary frame-up, he simultaneously transmitted to the FBI what he claimed to be evidence of my involvement in the 12 Monkeys, hoping that he could benefit himself by being instrumental in getting me charged with federal crimes. That evidence included an address list that Clark falsely told the FBI was found in my property. That address list that included lawmakers’ home addresses, Clark argued, proved I had mailed the 12 Monkey letters to lawmakers. The FBI, however, in their own declassified files, noted that only three addresses of the eight lawmakers who received letters had their addresses in that list; the FBI concluded that the 12 Monkeys had used some other list.

The FBI undoubtedly shared this conclusion with Clark, but Clark never shared that conclusion with the ODRC. While Clark knew the list to be debunked and irrelevant, he continued, for years, to misinform his superiors and others, alleging that address list to be a “smoking gun” that proved my 12 Monkey involvement.

This demonstrates a curious dynamic: Clark essentially monopolized all communication between the FBI and the Ohio prison system. He was the exclusive channel of information. When Clark spoke to the FBI, he spoke on behalf of the prison complex and no one questioned his integrity or veracity; likewise, when Clark shared with prison officials what the FBI had said to him, it seems no one questioned his integrity or veracity. Everyone accepted Clark’s word.

Thus, when Clark told officials what “the FBI wanted,” no one sought independent confirmation from the FBI. Consequently, everything Clark attributed to the FBI may or may not have originated with the FBI. It may have simply been Clark invoking the FBI in order to accomplish his own sick and twisted desires. It is impossible to know, as the FBI has continued to withhold its files in these matters, from February 2013 onward.

At any rate, when Clark ordered Mansfield Correctional administrators to cut food rations in half and then cut them in half again, my cellmate and I suffered malnutrition and then starvation, but everybody knew that was “what the FBI wanted.” We lost roughly thirty-five percent of our body weight. We left Mansfield as walking skeletons. We were dying. Literally.

When Clark ordered us moved to a cell where the outer window was not attached to the wall, we froze all winter long in intolerable cold—and everyone knew that was “what the FBI wanted.” Or when we were denied laundry... or when soap rations were halved and then quartered... or when our outgoing and incoming mail was ordered seized... or when staff were ordered to rattle our cell door every fifteen minutes for days or weeks to prevent us from sleeping... or when Investigator Angela Hunsinger developed and employed a new “staff training” program to indoctrinate staff and convince them that my cellmate and I were “terrorists,” provoking the staff to unconscionable and brutal reprisals against us... everyone knew that was “what the FBI wanted.”

× × × ×

On March 27, 2013, six months into the domestic torture regimen, Trevor Clark came to Mansfield Correctional to inspect his handiwork up close and personal. He called each of the three of us charged in the 12 Monkey uprising into an office, one at a time, to be interrogated. I went last. I was taken in, handcuffed, belly-chained and shackled, placed into a plastic bucket chair. Clark sat behind the desk, bloated, pasty, and sweating profusely. A double-chin protruded from below his poorly-manscaped beard.

Vinko Kucinic, the chief investigator for the ODRC, sat over in the corner of the room. He said little, if anything at all. Clark made an elaborate show of leaving his phone on the desk face-up, so “the FBI” could listen in. He announced self-impor- tantly that he was there because “the FBI” wanted him to interrogate each of us and that “the FBI” would soon be bringing federal charges.

I knew better. I knew the FBI was not bringing charges.

During the interrogation, Clark frequently sniffed and wiped at his nose. He had facial ticks twitching constantly. My cellmate, interrogated before me, was far more familiar with drug subcultures than I am. He later commented, “Oh, yeah. That dude was seriously coked up.”

At some point, Clark slammed the infamous address list on the desk and ordered me to pick it up. He asked me if I knew what it was. When I said I did not, he informed me that it was a list of the home addresses of senators and representatives. He told me he found it in my property. I said, “No. You didn’t.”

And, really, they didn’t. One day before my cell was searched, a snitch for Investigator Hunsinger, Richard D., warned me that a cell search was coming, and as a consequence, I had thoroughly cleaned out my cell. Even if I had owned that address list—and I most certainly did not—I would have disposed of it long before the cell shakedown team showed up.

When the officers had completed the cell search, they showed me what they were taking: my typewriter and a draft of my JPay article. Nothing more.

But while Clark rambled about this so-called evidence, I memorized lawmakers’ home addresses. I memorized at least five of them and wrote to them after this peculiar encounter, asking why a coked-up prison system lawyer was handing out lawmaker home addresses to felons he claimed were home-grown terrorists.

As the interrogation wound down, Clark motioned to a stack of paper on the desk that stood a few feet high. He revealed that he had copied and read every piece of my incoming and outgoing mail for the last six months. That felt more than intrusive; it felt... obsessive. Clark then put away his phone and Kucinic went out into the hallway to find a security escort to take me back to my cell. Clark watched Kucinic depart down the hall, then asked me, “Do you really want to make this go away?” I said that I did. Clark set some papers on the desk to his right and pointed to them. I stood and walked around the desk. I looked down at the pages and—

That’s when it happened. That was when Clark slid his right hand under my crotch and raised it, cupping my genitals in his hand. He told me to drop my pants and to spin around.

I froze, bewildered. After he removed his hand, I remember thinking, “Did that really just happen? Did it?” But, it did.

When I did not drop my pants, Clark shrugged and pointed at the chair in which I had been sitting. Dazed, I walked back to the chair and sat. I said nothing. Clark continued doing paperwork as if nothing had happened.

When Mr. Kucinic returned, I said nothing. In fact, for almost a year, I never brought it up. I was at the super-max for several months when I first mentioned the incident in an email to a friend. Within days, all of my outgoing communications were suspended by Trevor Clark.

That is, months after all so-called investigations ended, I made mention of Clark’s sexual touching, and Clark shut down all of my outgoing communications within forty-eight hours.

How closely was Clark still paying attention to my communications? Exactly.

The prison investigator informed me that my communications were suspended because of the comment I had made in an email about Trevor Clark’s sexual impropriety, essentially pressuring me to sign a statement that Clark had not engaged in sexual abuse in order to get my communications restored. Later, Chief Counsel Stephen Gray, Clark’s supervisor, would admit in writing to attorney Richard Kerger that the ODRC had suspended my communications for (1) reporting Clark’s sexual abuse of me, and (2) reporting Clark disseminating lawmakers’ home addresses.

This means the highest echelons of the ODRC were admittedly complicit to Trevor Clark’s sexual abuse.

Since then, seemingly in fear that I may again attempt to report him, Clark tormented me in a campaign of state terror, targeting my communications again and again, and using proxies to bring pretextual disciplinary charges, turning me into a terrorist on paper, sabotaging my chance of ever obtaining parole and going home.

For years, I convinced myself that all of this was solely a response to my expression, my writings; but, in the back of my mind, I had to wonder: would all of this have continued if, in 2013, I had simply dropped my pants and spun around? Perhaps if I had given Clark what he wanted, he would not have relentlessly and obsessively monitored my every word, would not have continued to repeatedly seek FBI validation for his effort to silence me, to prevent exposure of his dirty secret.

But I also have to wonder: Did Clark exclusively act out of his own personal, predatory sickness, or was Clark carrying out FBI marching orders? While it may, at a superficial value, sound ludicrous to suggest that the FBI would direct its proxies to sexually abuse or objectify political undesirables, consider: The FBI, according to Clark, ran the domestic torture program to which my cellmate and I were subjected for a year. That torture program came directly out of the CIA’s KUBARK Counterintelligence and Interrogation Manual. So that means the FBI, the domestic arm of the US spy complex, was using the playbook compiled by the CIA, the foreign arm of the U.S. spy complex.

Consider also: at Abu Ghraib, under CIA direction, US torturers kept captives balancing on wooden boxes, black bags on their heads, convinced the electrodes attached to their genitals would electrocute them. US torturers took demeaning photos of female staff posing next to their male captives’ naked sex organs; forced naked captives to form “ass pyramids,” and demanded a whole host of sexually degrading acts. At least one torture victim, tortured by the US died of exposure—found chained and, of course, naked.

In this context, then, is it completely inconceivable that the FBI, following in the CIA’s footsteps, would not incorporate a sexual component into the domestic torture program? Is it outside the realm of possibility to think that perhaps in light of the effect of sexual abuse on foreign torture subjects, the FBI sought to learn whether sexual degradation would have any impact, whether it would neutralize my will to speak out, as sexual abuse often does?

Those questions remain unanswered.

On November 7, 2018, I signed a sworn affidavit describing in detail the sexual abuse to which Trevor Clark subjected me. Within weeks of my delivering that affidavit, Clark resigned and the ODRC has not revealed the reason for his resignation. I sent a copy of that affidavit to the FBI, requesting their response. Clark and the FBI hold the key to unlocking the secrets of the FBI domestic torture program and whether or not the FBI ordered sexual abuse.

So far, Clark remains silent.

So does the FBI.

I do not.

* * * *

Shrinks and Torture

The social sciences suck.

I was watching Democracy Now this morning [26 November 2014] and saw a news blurb that the American Psychological Association has been linked in some way to US torture practices. Some leaked memos implicate the American Psychological Association in collusion with waterboarding and other forms of torture. I guess if we see the social sciences—psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and so on—as benevolent paradigms of study and practice, sciences designed to help people and cure them of mental illness, then I suppose we’d all be shocked and bewildered that prestigious institutions of those sciences were dabbling in torture. But the social sciences are not benevolent paradigms designed to help people. Consider: when cops and courts impose social norms on you, they call you a criminal. When priests and rabbis impose social norms on you, they call you a sinner. When shrinks impose social norms on you, they call you mentally ill. The shrinkhood is a tool of the established order, and a powerful one. When cops put a label on you, you can still get past that because you’ve done your time and people change. When priests and rabbis label you, that’s just superstitious hokum. But when the thought police shrinkhood labels you, you’re nuts. The social sciences have the illusion of being “scientific” and “objective” when they brand you for life. But their criteria for branding you is far from scientific. Keep in mind, unwed pregnant girls used to be diagnosed with a mental illness. Until very recently, the shrinkhood’s diagnostic manual considered homosexuality a mental illness.

In other words, in the history of the shrinkhood, the social sciences have been used in a way to malign and socially alienate segments of the population, to apply a kind of pressure in order to get those segments to alter their behavior and conform to the social norms of the majority. Shrinks are mind cops. Deviate from the so-called norms and you’re a nut.

The shrinkhood is a subtle kind of coercion that in ways seems even more legitimate than priests and cops. So, given the mind-cop character of the shrinkhood, should we be surprised that the American Psychological Association is dabbling in torture? Some context here: It’s been decades since the Central Intelligence Agency developed its KUBARK Counterintelligence and Interrogation Manual and its Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual. Look those up online. Disturbing. They should be called, How to Torture People. What the CIA did, it developed the perfect program for torturing people, for completely disassembling a human personality. I won’t quote them too extensively. For a more thorough treatment of these manuals, check out, “Another Open Letter to the Delusional Hierarch Mental Health Worker,” soon to be posted at seanswain.org.

What the CIA manual presents is, in their own words, the simple torture situation.” They describe what conditions most quickly break the wills of human beings... which means the CIA had to have done experiments... some that succeeded... some that failed... in order to map the limits of tolerance to psychological pain.

What do you think the professions were of those conducting such experiments to develop the science of torture? Exactly. The CIA employed a veritable army of shrinks to subject human beings to a variety of regimens of deprivation. A veritable army. And the program went on for years and years, decade after decade, as your government developed a playbook for destroying our minds most efficiently.

So, given this history, this long partnership between fascist war criminals and the professionals of the social sciences, should we be all that surprised that Dick Cheney’s shadow government has an information-sharing deal with the American Psychological Association? These are the same shrinks who created the torture program in the first place... The same shrinkhood that socially exiles you if you don’t toe the line of their prescribed norms... The same shrinkhood that pushes Prozac and Ritalin at all of us and creates diagnoses such as attention deficit disorder—which means if your teacher is boring, you’re crazy—so we can all experience better living through chemistry... And if that doesn’t work, there’s always waterboarding, brought to you by the American Psychological Association.

If your enemy colonizes your world, you resist.

If your enemy colonizes your mind, you don’t know to resist.

This is Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain from Ohio’s supermax facility. If you’re listening, you ARE the resistance...

* * * *

An Open Letter to the Delusional Hierarch Mental Health Worker in the Employ of the Prison Industrial Complex on the Morality of Taking Bread

“Ask for work. If they won’t give you work,

ask for bread. If they won’t you bread, take bread.”

—Emma Goldman

Dear Mental Health Therapist(?),

Sorry. I’m terrible with names. We spoke this morning and thinking about something you said prompted me to consider writing an article for publication, and I also wanted to respond more fully to what you said—so, two birds with one stone, as it were. I’m writing an open letter that serves both purposes. YOU get stuck with the barely-legible handwritten version. Again, sorry.

We were discussing the designation of anti-social personality disorder that has been placed on me despite the provable absence of a “pervasive pattern” of “violating the rights of others” via evidence of three or more specifically-defined behaviors that are NOT indicative of me.[1] So, at one point, seemingly giving up on

the idea of rationalizing the diagnosis by pointing to behaviors that would justify it, you asked me, “If you saw another inmate steal an extra tray, would you report it?”

And to be clear here, at this disjuncture, you began exploring my beliefs and thoughts rather than behavior, which is very odd when we consider that the diagnostic definition of ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER exclusively relies on behaviors as indicators of disorder rather than beliefs. But, okay. We’re inquiring into my thinking.

I responded, “Absolutely not.”

And you said that was why I am labeled ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER[2], because I demonstrate a nonconformity to social norms.

As a quick side note, I should also point out that disorders are diagnosed based on behaviors a subject has performed, not based on potential behaviors a subject might perform in a theoretical future scenario. So, your attempt to justify a false diagnosis still fails.

But, all of that aside, let’s deal with the scenario of the stolen tray. In what you presented to me, you said that it is a social norm that someone should report another stealing an extra tray of food and that my refusal to do so demonstrates a nonconformity to that norm.

Let’s deal first with your unstated assumptions, because those are really interesting:

The obvious assumption is that it is a “social norm” in all circumstances to report the theft of an extra tray. I think I would have to take issue with this. For instance, I do not happen to believe that it is a “social norm” to report someone who is hungry and poor for stealing food from a wealthy system that keeps that person hungry and poor. I think that in such a scenario, the “social norm” is to cheer for the hungry and the poor, which somewhat goes to explain why characters such as Robin Hood, who exemplify such a social norm, are folk heroes and archetypes.

I look around, and I see a lot of poor and hungry people. I see poor and hungry people exploited by the Aramark Corporation that generates profit by skimming food from all of us, as demonstrated by numerous investigations into corrupt practices. So, in such a context, I can imagine that the only people who would perceive a “social norm” to report a poor, hungry person would be someone attempting to rationalize their own role in a draconian, oppressive system that causes more harm to the common good than benefit.

Someone like yourself. No offense.

The other assumptions to your question to me are that someone, such as a guard, has a right to withhold and dole out food to others in the first place, and that the “someone” who has the right to withhold and dole out food is not the poor, hungry person who is “stealing” it.Those two assumptions are central to your conclusion. Consider: if the state has no right to withhold or to dole out food, the prisoner has not stolen the food but has simply appropriated it. Likewise, if the prisoner is vested with the authority to dole out food, his appropriation of a second tray is simply an exercise of his own authority. So, in order to properly answer your question regarding the morality of a prisoner taking extra food from the State, we must first determine who has valid, legitimate authority to decide where the food is supposed to go. Right?

Let’s consider the question of authority.

Authority

For four million years, humans lived in tribes generally free of oppression, absent hierarchy, and maintained through consensus. Don’t take my word for it. Read cultural anthropologists and archaeologists—like Marshall Sahlins or Riane Eisler, for instance.

Somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 years ago, a militant faction forced others to plant crops as a matter of “food control,” settling in one place. We call this the Agricultural Revolution, where an armed minority subjected a vast, unarmed majority to impose tyranny and a new way of life.

Those founders of civilization demonstrated a “pervasive pattern” of violating “the rights of others” with their “failure to conform to social norms,” using others for “personal profit,” demonstrating “aggressiveness” and a “lack of remorse.” This means the founders of civilization had ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER.

As this new way of life spread, the population boomed and brought about global exploration. According to Bartolome de las Casas, who traveled with Columbus, the founding of The New World was marked by the wanton and ruthless slaughter of the indigenous people. They ripped babies from their mothers’ arms and hacked them to pieces for use as dogfood. I refer you again to the definition of ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER.

Swivelization as we know it was established by sociopaths... And the Americas were “discovered” by sociopaths. Then George Washington and company decided to rebel against the established government of the thirteen colonies and employ political violence, shooting and killing those who defended the “legitimate” government.[3]

They attacked their own government, abandoning traditional warfare for shooting others in the back, and rationalized all of this mayhem by establishing a separate nation, all to avoid the financial obligation of paying taxes to the crown.

I refer you back to the definition of ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER. George Washington... Thomas Jefferson... Ben Franklin... John Adams... Thomas Paine... Patrick Henry...

To sum it up, genocidal maniacs reduced tribal people to slavery and spread their hierarchical model; then another generation exterminated people of the Americas to take their land; and then another generation betrayed their own government and resorted to political violence and rebellion to establish themselves in place of their government.

So, we get to Ohio[4], where traitors against the British Crown invaded an area they did not own, using smallpox-infected blankets to murder women, children, and the elderly, decimating a peaceful population. This was the first documented instance of biological warfare, and Adolf Hitler later praised this expansion in his book, Mein Kampf.

In 1802, Thomas Worthington wrote the Ohio Constitution as a justification to exterminate the remaining owners of the land he wanted to steal. He then established the State of Ohio in an area set aside in 1795 by the Treaty of Greensville as “Indian Territory.” The State of Ohio was established contrary to US treaty and is therefore illegal by US law.[5]

So, again, to sum up history, we have maniacs who committed genocide and imposed hierarchy; followed by sociopaths who obliterated the people of the Americas to steal it; followed by murderous opportunists who established their own ponzi scheme through treason; followed by mass murderers praised by Hitler for their brutal takeover of “Ohio.”

Where, in this accurate history of violence, theft, and sociopathy do we find the “legitimate” basis for the authority of the State of Ohio?

And if we cannot locate the origin of the State of Ohio’s legitimacy, by what authority does a corrections officer, an inheritor of fraudulent authority, exercise the power to withhold food from a poor, hungry human in a cage being exploited by Aramark corporate profiteering?

I would also suggest to you that it is a clear pathology in your thinking and the thinking of that corrections officer that we owe allegiance to genocide, colonization, atrocities, and extermination committed by immoral butchers, or that we should assign any kind of “legitimacy” to their claims of authority.

Also, to fully appreciate the depth and scope of this mental sickness you hierarch state-worshippers suffer, I think we have to at least briefly consider the idea of “authority” itself, the idea of the “right to rule.”[6] I would assert that this “right to rule” is as real as unicorns, faerie dust, and magical beans.[7]

Where does the “right to rule” come from? How does one human assume the right to rule not just himself, but to rule another, while the human he rules is assumed to have lost even the right to rule himself?

We know this “right to rule” is not eternal. It only came about in the last 6,000 years or so, coinciding with domestication. That means for four million years humans lived without the myth that some humans have the right to rule other humans. This means this “right to rule” mythology has governed for less than a quarter of one percent of human existence.

So, either (A) 6,000 years ago we figured out something unknown to thousands of generations who lived peacefully and happily, or (B) 6,000 years ago we fell under a delusion that served an exploitive few while subjecting the many to slavery.

You hierarchs assert we experienced “progress.”

I assert we fucked up.[8]

As I pointed out when we spoke, there is only one specie of human being. Not two. There are not those “with the right to rule

others” and those “without the right to even rule self.” As such, no human can ever assume the right to command another, to compel, to demand, to punish another human being for not bending to the will of the first.

Now, to be fair, hierarchs often raise arguments to support the idea of “implied consent” to be ruled, and for the legitimacy of elected rulers assuming the “right to rule.” To avoid repetition of things I already wrote, I’ll simply refer you to Ohio, Part II and to the excellent arguments of jurist Lysander Spooner, who wrote Constitution of No Authority, and debunks “implied consent” based upon principles of contract law.

But, to sum it up succinctly, just because you might vote for [Ohio Governor] John Kasich, that does not create a contractual obligation for me to obey him or to recognize any authority over myself, that I may otherwise have, as being transferred to him. you can no more waive my right to self rule than you can sign my name to a contract.

So, apart from the undeniable historical fact that so-called human authority has been passed down through bewildering and irremediable acts of genocide, oppression, and butchery that are inexcusable and illegitimate, from one generation of the worst sociopaths to the next, the very institution of human authority itself is provably based upon a myth, a falsity, a premise as unreal as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. No human being has the “right to rule” another human being.[9]

Back to the Question of the Food Tray

No human being has the right to rule and thus no right to withhold food from another human being locked in a cage and exploited for the profits of the privileged few. No human being can reference the “legitimacy” of their authority inherited from murderers, rapists, sociopaths, and war criminals.

Objectively, that corrections employee doling out the food is contributing to the continuation of a vast lie of “authority,” perpetuating an atrocity, against freedom and against life, that began 6,000 years ago at sword-point. It’s a vast lie and crime against humanity that you also perpetuate.

Never forget, the Nazis had shrinks at their concentration camps too. And the butchers who founded Ohio were Hitler’s personal heroes. Keep that in mind also.[10]

So, in this context, we now return to the question of whether a human being held in a cage by other human beings with no legitimate authority, inheriting their false mythology of legitimacy from sociopathic criminals, should be reported when he takes extra food from those who do not have authority to withhold it in the first place. To me, the question is not whether we should side with the poor, hungry human locked in a cage, but whether or not our solidarity and empathy and dedication to the cause of true freedom demands an even more active commitment.

Against the Hierarch Pathology

Consider what the hierarch pathology and its myth of the “right to rule” has brought us: overpopulation, ozone depletion, school shootings, rape culture, racism, hate crimes, terrorism, war, weapons of mass destruction, famine, poverty, road rage, suicide, toxification of the water, toxification of the soil, toxification of the air, species extinction at a rate of 124 species per day, depletion of the rain forests, recourse to torture, riots, pandemic diseases, alcoholism, drug abuse, unemployment, economic instability, and on and on.

Tecumseh didn’t experience that.

Crazy Horse didn’t experience that.

Geronimo didn’t experience that.

Humans who lived for 4 million years as hunter gatherers in consensus-based social settings didn’t experience that.

In 6,000 years, the hierarch pathology with its myth of the “right to rule” has taken us to the brink of omnicide. So, the question is not whether we should look the other way while a hungry victim of this pathology manages to eak out a few extra calories[11], the question is whether we have an obligation to work actively to take down this murder machine once and for all before it makes the planet a lifeless rock, using our forced cooperation to do it. The question is whether we’re going to stop being veritable “good Germans,” the system’s “little Eichmanns,” marching in lockstep to our collective doom for the miopic benefits of the delusional hierarchs who turn our world into a concentration camp; the question is whether we are going to drag stones up the side of the pyramid or actively oppose this vast crime.[12]

I’m not proposing you merely have a moral responsibility to quit your job[13] and to convince your coworkers to quit their jobs, but a larger duty to commit yourself to a meaningful struggle for the liberation of all of us, to include recourse to strategies and tactics of political violence.

As Emma Goldman said it emphatically: “Take bread.”

Feel free to come talk to me again next week. Who knows? If you truly commit yourself, we may be able to get past your pathological delusions so you can experience a healthy, rewarding, productive, and well-adjusted future.

And, perhaps, burn down the Statehouse. We can hope anyway. The truth is dangerous. Get dangerous.

Freedom, Sean Swain[14]

P.S.: In light of this comprehensive deconstruction, please stop using this false “stolen tray” scenario to convince people to think of themselves as somehow maladjusted because they don’t share your delusion.

* * * *

Another Open Letter to the Delusional Hierarch Mental Health Worker... Blah, Blah, Blah

“The more completely the place of confinement eliminates sensory stimuli, the more deeply will the [subject] be affected. Results produced after weeks or months of imprisonment in an ordinary cell may be duplicated in hours or days... An early effect of such an environment is anxiety... [Captors] can benefit from the subject’s anxiety... The deprivation of stimuli induces regression by depriving the subject’s mind of contact with an outer world and thus forcing it in on itself... in the simple torture situation the contest is one between the individual and his tormentor...”

—The KUBARK Counterintelligence and Interrogation Manual, Central Intelligence Agency, emphasis added

Dear Mental Health Therapist (?),

In early October, I sent you a kite communication with a lengthy “Open Letter” that was also posted at seanswain.org. I looked forward to your response but still haven’t received it. Also, since the open letter’s publication, you have stopped calling me out of the cellblock to speak with you, and during rounds you say, “Mental health rounds, how are you doing?,” but by the time I respond, you are already down the range, out of earshot.

If I didn’t know better, I would almost think you are trying to avoid me.

Since our last communication, I have had time to think about this diagnosis, ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER. For everyone too lazy to click back to my last letter, I’ll reproduce the definition from the DSM V: A) There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and the violation of rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three or more of the following: failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; impulsivity or failure to plan ahead; irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations; lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another...

Now, before we go any further, I think it important to point out that none of these criteria actually apply to me whatsoever, and provably so. In fact, I have devoted the vast majority of my life in the defense of the rights of others, not their violation—though, of course, in defense of the rights of those your employer seeks to exploit and subjugate, NOT the defense of the rights of the privileged few.

But that’s a whole other letter.

Looking at this definition of ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER, it occurs to me that officials who are in charge of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction are accurately described.[15] What I mean to say is, ODRC officials have engaged in a “pervasive pattern” of “disregard for and the violation of rights,”[16] as indicated by a “failure to conform to social norms,” “acts that are grounds for arrest,” and “aggressiveness,” along with a “lack of remorse,” demonstrated by officials “being indifferent” or “rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another...”

I won’t even argue that the maintenance of the ODRC generally is mistreatment of more than 50,000 victims—although I could reasonably make that argument.

Instead, I would like to specifically present that (A) torture constitutes a “violation” of the “rights of others”; (B) ODRC officials subjected me to torture; and (C) torturers, by virtue of torturing others (and thereby violating the rights of those they torture), have to meet the definition of ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER, if not more serious diagnoses, i.e., full-blown sociopathy. Torture

My dictionary defines torture as, “infliction of severe pain as a means of punishment or coercion.” By this definition it would seem pretty self evident that someone inflicting “severe pain as a means of punishment or coercion” would be violating the rights of the subject that he or she is seeking to punish or coerce. Whatever we conceive “rights” to be, torture necessarily violates them, and deliberately so.

But, in the US, the legal right that most closely corresponds to a right not to be tortured—the right to protection against “cruel and unusual punishment”—does not categorically denounce torture.[17] By rulings of the US Supreme Court, a captive who has been tortured needs to demonstrate a physical injury in order to prove a violation of rights and collect monetary damages. This means that US courts only recognize a violation of rights where torture causes physical injury.

This extremely narrow understanding of only physically-injurious torture constituting a violation of rights is curious when we consider that the U.S. government has been perfecting psychological torture—termed “bloodless” torture—for several decades. The extremely narrow definition of rights violations essentially legalizes bloodless torture that the US government has scientifically perfected. Thus, the American legal system has normalized some forms of torture—bloodless, non-physically-injurious torture.

Bloodless Torture Perfected by the United States

I don’t want to dwell on this point too long, as I have written about this in previous works[18] and the materials I reference are available in their entirety online.[19]

Some choice quotes from Central Intelligence Agency manuals demonstrate that the US government has developed bloodless

torture. Recall, torture is “infliction of severe pain as a means of punishment or coercion.” What the CIA manuals describe: The following are the principle coercive techniques of interrogation: arrest, detention, deprivation of sensory stimuli through solitary confinement or similar methods, threats and fear, debility, pain, heightened suggestibility and hypnosis, narcosis, and induced regression.

The stated objective is to produce “debility, dependence, and dread.”

Note that these are “coercive” techniques that induce “pain,” and yet all of these techniques are exclusively bloodless: arrest, detention, solitary confinement. These are the principle means to induce pain rather than techniques that create physical injury.

This coercive process of inflicting pain through detention and isolation serves to “obliterate the familiar,” and “as the process continues, day after day, if necessary, the subject begins to try to make sense of the situation which becomes mentally intolerable...” (emphasis added). This “coercive” situation that inflicts “pain” is “mentally intolerable.” These words, “mentally intolerable,” are synonymous with “psychologically painful.” Torture: “The infliction of severe pain as a means of punishment or coercion.”

This CIA manual recommends inflicting the “maximum amount of discomfort,” which “is required for the dissolution of resistance and the inculcation of dependence...,” so that the subject’s “structured personality traits fall away...” In other words, psychological pain, bloodless torture, does not physically disassemble a subject or even leave a mark; but it effectively disassembles the human personality.

This is, in the US government’s own words, the “simple torture situation,” one between “an individual” and his or her “tormentor.” But, because this form of torture does not leave a mark, the US courts do not view torture as a violation of rights.[20] The courts exempt the scientifically-perfected torture that US torturers employ.[21]

I, personally, reject that narrow view. Torture is torture. “Pain” does not exclusively result in physical injury. Instead, I suggest that we defer to the international standard that recognizes that “all acts of torture” are “an offense against human dignity.” This proposition is affirmed in “The Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture,” an international treaty that the US has the distinction of opposing.

Torture is a violation of rights. And, as torture constitutes a violation of rights, the question before us is whether prison of- ficials—specifically, ODRC Director Gary Mohr, ODRC Counsel Trevor Clark, former Mansfield Warden Terry Tibbals, and Mansfield Investigator Angela Hunsinger—participated in a pattern of violating my rights, whether they tortured me. And if I demonstrate that Mohr, Clark, Tibbals, and Hunsinger did participate in my torture, does that prove that they are diagnosable with ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER?

That is, after all, the principle question before us—whether prison officials are provable sociopaths. I contend that they are.

Torture, Again.

We turn, then, to the question of whether the (mis)treatment endured in the custody of Mohr & Company constitutes “torture,” which is “The infliction of severe pain as a means of punishment or coercion.” For that purpose, I direct you to my sworn statement, 36 pages, 160 enumerated paragraphs, notarized. It is attached as Exhibit A to the civil action that my attorney, Richard Kerger, filed on my behalf. That action is posted at seanswain.org.[22]

In regard to torture, I refer you first to paragraph 20 of my sworn statement where I recount how I was removed from population and held on “Torture Cell Row.” Please note that staff and prisoners both described the area with the word “torture.” On Torture Cell Row, I was held in freezing conditions with no outside communications, no shower, no recreation, no bed. I was given starvation rations. I was subjected to sleep deprivation for a duration that left me hallucinating.

Now, a few points to make here about my placement on Torture Cell Row: first, it is inconceivable to me that ODRC Director Gary Mohr was not involved in the decision to have me tortured. I say that because I was removed from population and placed on Torture Cell Row, admittedly, for having written an article where I referred to Mohr as a “sock puppet” for corporate profiteers.[23] No one had more of an interest in torturing me into silence than Mohr, particularly since my article laid out a well-reasoned argument that Mohr had committed federal crimes. It is also inconceivable that this decision did not involve then-Warden Terry Tibbals, who also signed off on the illegal opening of my outgoing federal mail. The record shows a pattern of his hands-on involvement in the state terror regimen waged against me. The order to put me on Torture Cell Row came directly from Investigator Angela Hunsinger.

Admittedly, I do not yet have any evidence of ODRC Counsel Trevor Clark’s direct involvement in my placement on Torture Cell Row, but I did personally notify him of these events after their occurrence and I am aware of no action he undertook to report this criminal misconduct.

I was only removed from Torture Cell Row when a friend attempted to visit, learned of my situation, and created outside pressure to have me removed to segregation, where conditions changed over time to reflect the conditions on Torture Cell Row.[24] Less than 90 days after my transfer off of Torture Cell Row, two prisoners died there. I have no doubt that, if not for friends creating outside pressure, I would have likely remained on Torture Cell Row indefinitely until I too died.

I was tortured by Gary Mohr, Terry Tibbals, and Angela Hunsinger, with an assist after-the-fact from counsel Trevor Clark. That torture involved freezing conditions, total isolation from the outside world, sleep deprivation, and many other components specifically itemized in the CIA manuals describing the “simple torture situation.”

But that was not where the torture program ended. As I recount in my sworn statement, in segregation, my cellmate James Dzelajlia and I were subjected to slow starvation (paragraphs #135- 136 of sworn statement), freezing conditions (#137), sleep deprivation (#138-9), denial of adequate laundry (#141), denial of recreation and sunlight (#142), denial of mail services (#144-49), denial of sensory and intellectual stimuli through withholding of reading material (#143), denial of commissary to include personal hygiene products and writing materials (#153), and other irregular tortures—to include being subjected to hours of dirty toilet water drenching us and everything we owned (#154), having our food slid under a dirty, rusty door (#155), and threats of staff placing their genitals in our food (#156). All of this, of course, can be found in the CIA recipe for the “simple torture situation.” All of these components of the torture regimen continued while Investigator Hunsinger and then-Warden Tibbals maintained a “training program” (#133-34) that included my photo and references to writings at seanswain.org designed to indoctrinate staff into thinking of me as a terrorist, provoking them to hostility, leading to foreseeable, outrageous retaliation—like toilet water showers and testicles in food.

It is again inconceivable that these conditions existed and continued for the entirety of a year, requiring the repeal of 14 policies that had been in place for decades, without the assent of Director Mohr, ODRC Counsel Clark, then-Warden Tibbals, and Investigator Hunsinger. I personally notified these officials (excepting Mohr) of torturous conditions.[25]

Two men died where I was initially subjected to torture. I entered segregation at 215 pounds and left at 165 pounds, passing out if I stood up too quickly. Dzelajlia and I were dying of malnutrition.

I assert these conditions constituted the “simple torture situation,” and that such a regimen of torture constitutes a “violation” of “rights” presented in the definition of ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER. So, I turn now to the question of whether Gary Mohr, Trevor Clark, Terry Tibbals, and Angela Hunsinger—the prison officials who tortured me[26]—are full-blown sociopaths. Sociopathy

Rather than asking whether Mohr, Clark, Tibbals, and Hunsinger must be sociopaths in order to torture another human being for a year, let us approach the question from the opposite direction: Is it possible for someone psychologically normal in every respect, someone mentally unremarkable in terms of dysfunction, to carry out a regimen of brutal torture continuously for a year? Is it possible for officials like Mohr, Clark, Tibbals, and Hunsinger to be normal psychological specimens and yet participate in crimes against humanity?

The implications of the answer to our question are vast. Consider: If we conclude that the tormentor in the “simple torture situation” can be quote-unquote normal, then is it possible to accept that Nazi concentration camp guards, for example, involved in the mass killings of human beings on a daily basis may also be normal? Those who represent the most reprehensible deviance for human social order, then, would not be an abnormality?

To draw such a conclusion is to condemn the totality of the social sciences to complete irrelevance. Anything asserting a mass murderer is not seriously fucked up is, itself, seriously fucked up.[27]

So, it is in that context that I present that the torture regimen maintained with full knowledge and direct participation by Mohr, Clark, Tibbals, and Hunsinger meets the specific criteria of an ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY diagnosis.[28] They participated in a “pervasive pattern” of “disregard for” my rights, indicated by “failure to conform to social norms,” “deception,” “impulsivity,” “aggressiveness,” “lack of remorse,” and “being indifferent to or rationalizing having... mistreated... another...”

The case for Director Mohr, Counsel Clark, former Warden Tibbals, and Investigator Hunsinger being sociopaths is pretty conclusive.

Uncomfortable Conclusions That Confront Us

Let’s think about what this means.

We have a multi-billion dollar government program under the control of people who are mentally disturbed, but not just disturbed in some benign, harmless way—we’re talking about people who are in the top five percent of the most insidiously dangerous human beings to ever step foot on the planet. Sociopaths. They are in the same class with serial killers and power-mad dictators. The worst of the worst.

To put a sociopath in charge of “reforming” Ohio’s “offenders” is like hiring a known child-rapist to babysit your kids on bowling night... if you have fifty thousand kids... and if bowling night lasts several years.[29] In terms of public policy, this cannot be very effective.

In terms of human trauma, this has to be devastating to the social order. In a very real sense, we are allowing sociopaths to mangle a considerable population who then become the manglers of others.

But let’s also consider the implications for someone like you, an employee who works for sociopaths. Even assuming you to have the most benevolent motives, what are the chances that you can conceivably have any kind of lasting, pro-social impact when your boss is a sociopath and this larger system is in the service of his vision, his agenda? I should think that the demands of a sociopathic agenda, even in the best of conditions, and with the best of intentions, sooner or later imposes its pathological demands upon you, forces you to participate in the digging of the proverbial “mass grave.” It would be a virtual inevitability.

I would suggest that no one can work for a sociopath and meet demands imposed by a sociopath’s agenda without becoming a sociopath, any more than a butcher can go home at night without smelling of blood and death. The difference between a butcher and an employee of the ODRC, of course, is that an ODRC employee is maintaining a system that tortures and kills human beings. Need I remind you that your job requires making mental health rounds on Death Row, asking condemned prisoners whether they are okay, right up until the day the State straps them down to a table and murders them?[30]

I’m curious—when you worked for your social science degree, did you contemplate that you would serve sociopaths who torture and kill people?[31] I also wonder how security staff, who also serve sociopaths that torture and kill, consider their own positions as they meet the demands of this system under threat of sleeping in their cars with their children going hungry if they do not meet the system’s demands? I wonder if, during the course of their lives, they foresaw themselves employed on the side of the “tormentor” in the “simple torture situation”?[32]

That is, after all, the side they are on.

As are you.

I hope for your sake you find the courage to leave this letter on your desk for coworkers to read, then walk calmly to the parking lot, start your car, drive away, and never look back. I hope other ODRC employees do the same before rationalizing the “mistreatment” to which all of you are accomplices.

It is also my hope that this open letter will get posted and re-posted, becoming ubiquitous so that the families and friends and neighbors of torturers—ODRC Director Gary Mohr, ODRC Counsel Trevor Clark, former ManCI Warden Terry Tibbals, and ManCI Investigator Angela Hunsinger—will know the true, monstrous characters of these sociopaths.

In 2010, during a Community Service art presentation, I met Terry Tibbals’ parents. They seemed like nice people who would

be bewildered if they knew the atrocities their son committed. I think they ought to know. Likewise, according to his Fit Club pro- file[33], Trevor Clark hails originally from Moundsville, West Virginia, and has children. I believe those children should know the kinds of horrors their father commits.

There are people out there who know the families and friends of these sociopaths. I hope this letter reaches them.

At any rate, if the speed with which you have run past my cell is any indication of what I can expect this week, I look forward to not talking to you during rounds.

Freedom, Sean Swain

* * * *

The Colonizer’s Corpse: A Liberatory Approach to Maintaining Mental Health While Subject to Isolation in Prison

Introduction

I received a letter from Joanna Saul, Director of the Corrections Institution Inspection Committee (CIIC), which oversees the prison complex for the Ohio General Assembly. She wrote, in part, “... CIIC is currently working on a resource for inmates in segregation or maximum security. We would very much appreciate hearing from you and other inmates regarding your segregation experience and, in particular, how you stayed emotionally and mentally strong in segregation? Our hope is to provide suggestions to inmates in segregation for how to cope with being locked down 23 hours a day. What advice would you give an inmate who is going to segregation?”

My Response to This Invitation

“...For the colonized, liberation springs

only from the corpse of the colonizer.”

—Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth

Segregation is a traumatic experience. To stay sane, to stay mentally organized, you have to first be sane and mentally organized. That is, a crazy person can’t stay sane because a crazy person isn’t sane to begin with. So this is key: You have to think in a way that makes sense; you have to care about yourself and you have to be committed to acting in such a way that serves you best. That’s kind of a working definition of sanity—thinking, and then, as a result, acting, in a way that makes sense.

Thinking is key. You have to use your head for something other than a hat rack. Especially if you are spending a long time in segregation or isolation, since you’ll be spending a lot of time in your own head. Any place you spend that much time you have to pay attention to the furniture, so to speak, the stuff that fills up your space, what you’re putting in it. What do you put in your head space? This is important because what goes on inside your head is more critical than what’s going on in the world around you.

People caring about themselves have to make sure they are seeing the world clearly. You can’t react in a way that makes sense if you don’t understand what’s really happening to you. So sane people—people who think and act in ways that serve their interests best—have to first face the reality that confronts them.This means not running away from painful truths. This means being honest with yourself. If you want to stay sane you can’t run away from your experience or try to hide from it. You have to face it. But you face it with clear understanding. You use your mind and you look deeply at the experience so you can understand what it is that is happening and why it is happening, and then you can develop for yourself a plan or an approach for acting sane, for acting in your own best interests, and maybe even using this experience to gain some wisdom, an opportunity to grow.

The place to start is understanding the situation you are facing, how you got there, and why it is happening to you.

“Rehabilitation never offered mental health, just the reverse. It involves communication only with staff who are not worth any contact at all. To listen to their philosophy, or accept their outlook will destroy you...”

—Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide

Segregation and isolation are trauma. It hurts. This is the reality of it. What you are experiencing is designed to be painful. The State, the authorities, the ones who keep you locked up, have designed a system, and have perfected that system, for causing you trauma. In fact, the government has written books and manuals on it. These manuals were written in order to teach the people who keep you locked up so they can use “the principle coercive techniques”* of “arrest, detention, deprivation of sensory stimuli through solitary confinement..., threats and fear...” What this means is, the ones who keep you locked up will use a combination of these things in order to cause a response from you. The response they want to cause is “debility, dependence, and dread.” “Debilit y” means the opposite of “ability.” Debility is, in a sense, making someone worse, breaking them in some way. “Dependence” is the opposite of “independence.” Dependence is where you can’t do for yourself anymore, and you must count on someone else to do for you. “Dread” is like fear, only it also means to lose hope.

So the reality of your situation is, the people in charge have figured out the method for turning you into someone less able, broken, and hopeless, all by putting you through conditions that are very painful. As the process continues, “day after day if necessary, the subject tries to make sense of the situation, which becomes mentally intolerable.” “Intolerable” means you can’t stand it. Your situation is designed to cause “the maximum amount of discomfort...” In this “mentally intolerable” situation you face, a situation designed to cause “the maximum amount of discomfort,” it deprives your mind of “contact with an outer world and thus forcing it in on itself...” The trauma you experience “after weeks or months of imprisonment in an ordinary cell can be duplicated in hours or days” in isolation. As the CIA manual concludes, describing the conditions of confinement you will experience in segregation and maximum security, “...in the simple torture situation, the contest is one between the individual and his tormentor...”

This is not presented to shock you or to scare you. It is presented so that you can have a clear idea of what you face. Only by seeing reality as it is can you react to it in a way that makes the most sense for you. You have to see what you face and what it is designed to do to you, and when you know that, when you can see it for what it is, you are better equipped to respond to it.

Whatever you did to come to prison (or didn’t do), and whatever you did to go to segregation or Level 4 (or didn’t do), you are in the custody of people who want to make your life “mentally intolerable,” and they are putting you through “the simple torture situation.”

They know that what they are doing to you will not make you a better person. They are not doing this to you to “help” you or to “reform” you. This is designed to destroy you. This is very important to know, because it can guide your approach to this trauma, this “simple torture situation,” if you recognize that you are not being “corrected,” i.e., made better, but you are being debilitated, i.e., made worse.

It is a necessary and healthy thing to call something what it really is. The words we use have an influence on how we see things. When you use words, even in your head, like “corrections officer,” and “inmate,” you create a picture of “correcting,” a picture of an offender who has offended; but when you use the same words, even if just in your head, that are used by the very same people who wrote the manuals and designed this system, you see a “tormentor” and a “subject,” you see a “simple torture situation” that involves a torturer and a victim.

Why is this important? Because you can’t expect ice cream to come out of a toaster. A toaster is designed to do one thing. So if you hold your cone under the toaster and expect ice cream to come out, you are going to be very disappointed. The same is true for the prison’s isolation unit. This is a machine to do one thing. Don’t expect this machine to do anything else. You are in the “simple torture situation.” It is a simple fact that you cannot expect those who subject you to this “simple torture situation” to offer you any real assistance. People who torture are not nice people. If you expect them to be kind and caring and good, you are expecting ice cream to fall out of a toaster.

It may be that you have met staff who seem like they are shocked and saddened by the conditions they witness. They may talk about how things are unfair and how the situation needs to change. They may even try to address some conditions that they think are too much. They take no personal joy from the suffering they see and they make it clear that they are “only doing their jobs.”

And that is the point, isn’t it? They do their jobs. They work, they keep it going, and they receive their paychecks for doing “their jobs.” Their jobs include keeping you in “debility, dependence, and dread.” So “their jobs” are to serve the “tormentor” and they do those jobs, despite the harm it will cause you.

We must also consider that everyone working for this machine knows what it does to you. Hundreds of studies have shown again and again how isolation causes mental illness in humans. But more than that, by the manuals that were written, we know that’s what it’s designed to do. This is no mistake. This is no accidental result that happens again and again and again, any more than a Toyota Camry “accidentally” comes off the end of the assembly line at the factory over and over and over again.

The factory makes cars. It’s designed to. The isolation unit makes broken minds. It’s designed to.

And beyond that, think about it: Why is this being written? It’s being written because staff at the CIIC recognize that the brutal, harsh conditions of isolation are causing prisoners to become mentally ill so, rather than end the practice of driving prisoners insane, they opt to give you advice from prisoners who have survived a process designed to drive them insane. That speaks loudly. Would “kind,” “caring,” “concerned,” “nice” people work with every ounce of their beings to shut down a torture machine, or would they hand its victims a well-produced brochure?

So, for our purposes of staying sane and seeing the situation as it is, recognizing reality so we can act in our own best interests, we have to set aside false ideas that really do not fit, that do not serve us honestly. We have to use words that paint an accurate picture.

You have an enemy. Your enemy is evil—evil personified, and it takes someone evil to engage in torture. Your evil enemy intends to torture you for a long, long time, until your mind is broken. The most you can hope for, is for the most sympathetic people to hand you advice on how to survive their “simple torture situation.” You can only count on you at this point.

“The State has never any object but to limit the individual, to tame him, to subordinate him, to subject him to something general; it lasts only so long as the individual is not all in all, and is only the clearcut limitation of me, my limitedness, my slavery.”

—Max Stirner

You may ask, “Why do I want to face this? It feels so hopeless.”

What we’ve done so far is simply an inventory of your reality. You have some serious forces stacked against you. But you aren’t better off if you don’t see it or if you ignore it. You aren’t better off if you convince yourself of some faerie tale, some myth that your enemy feeds to you to keep you asleep and under control. If you buy into those lies and let them guide you, the damage you experience will be the same; the only difference will be that your actions will be more predictable and more of a benefit for the torture machine to keep going and going and going.

If you buy into the false idea that your tormentors (the government’s word, remember) are the “good guys,” and you “put yourself here,” and you “deserve” this (whatever “this” is), and this trauma is to “correct” you or make you “better” or “teach you a (pro-social) lesson,” you will experience the same trauma as everyone who has the courage to face the truth. The only differences will be (1) you won’t know why this is happening, (2) you won’t be able to figure out how to prevent your enemy from succeeding because you won’t see what your enemy is really trying to do to you, and (3) you won’t be able to act in your own best interests because you misunderstand your reality.

So, by facing this reality, you will be establishing a principle that’s absolutely crucial for maintaining your sanity. It’s this: Always seek the truth, no matter how bad it is.

One way to think of this is a scene from the movie, “The Matrix.” The main character, Neo, meets Morpheus, who offers Neo the chance to know the truth. If Neo chooses the red pill, he wakes up to reality. If he chooses the blue pill, he remains asleep.

If you want to get through the “simple torture situation” and survive what your tormentor does to you, choose the red pill.

Always choose the red pill.

Once your eyes are open, it gives you things to think about. You can look at every experience, every single element of your situation, and you can ask yourself, “Why is the enemy doing this to me? How is this supposed to make me feel? How is this supposed to impact my mind and my health and my struggle? How can I respond to this in a way that serves my survival and my long-term success?”

For instance: Have you ever noticed that most segregation units are cold all year around? Why is that? Why does the enemy

keep you intolerably cold? First, there’s the discomfort so, on the most basic level, your enemy simply wants you to suffer. But second, cold people will seek to get warm and the only feasible strategy for that in segregation is to get under your covers; you remain inactive in bed. This serves the enemy in several ways:

1. Inactive people burn fewer calories, so the enemy can cut your food portions and you won’t lose weight. Your enemy saves money on food.

2. If you’re laying in bed, you’re not doing something else. You’re not writing letters or building muscles or sharing ideas or building unity or writing an inspiring poem.

3. People laying in bed will sleep, and sleeping people’s behavior is predictable.

4. Constant cold has a psychological impact, as it wears on your morale and makes you feel hopeless. It contributes to the assault on your mind.

Once you recognize this and see the truth of it, what can you do? Well, for a start, simply knowing what is being done to you (and knowing why) makes the intolerable a bit more tolerable. The cold is a tactic being used on you. And when you know your enemies’ designs, you can use your head to prevent his success.

How? Two ways. There are actions you can take to “adjust to the conditions,” and actions you can take to “change the conditions.”

Actions you can take to adjust to the conditions would be to find alternatives for staying warm. If you have 3 pairs of socks, wear 2 of them and use the third pair as mittens so you can stay up, stay awake, read and write. You can wrap blankets around you while you pace the floor. You can write a poem or a rap and between verses you do push-ups—this keeps you in shape and keeps you warm. You can pace and think and get a good understanding of the situation you face, and then share your insight with other prisoners so they too have the tools to effectively struggle and maintain. You can read literature from others who share your perspective and write to them, finding ways to cooperate and build relationships and start projects.

Which leads to actions that “change the conditions.” You may decide that adjusting to the conditions isn’t good enough; you want the conditions to change. Rather than wrapping yourself in blankets, you want the enemy’s torture machine to turn the heat up. This is a very different approach from “adjusting.”

What can you do to make the torture machine turn up the heat? Within that question is another question: What can you do to stand up for your dignity and affirm your human value and combat the forces that work toward your destruction? And still another question: What can you do to take a healthy and affirmative approach to exercise your own personal power in order to change the world for the better and give yourself something to feel a sense of accomplishment?

There exists a prison grievance process, but this is an open joke among prisoners and staff alike. The grievance process serves to misdirect prisoners from engaging in any effective response to wrongs and serves as a kind of gauntlet where prison officials can identify future potential lawsuits and employ a harassment campaign to coerce potential prisoner litigants to give up. At its best, the grievance process represents an effort to get a career prisoncrat to declare that other career prisoncrats wronged a convicted felon no one cares about.

Being able to see the grievance process as a tool of your enemy’s program liberates you to think of other ways to exercise your personal power to change conditions. What else can you do?

Individual actions are very limited. The enemy has a vast machine. So, it is a good idea to build a working group, a collective of prisoners who cooperate in struggle. The larger the number of prisoners willing to struggle, the more collective power you can bring against the enemy.

Mention must be made here that your enemy may appeal to rules that the enemy imposes in order to keep you powerless while trapped in the torture machine. In reality, these rules do not exist. The enemy appeals to rules as part of a false mythology that he is “the good guy” and you are “the bad guy,” that he is “correcting” you because you are “maladjusted,” that all of this is “for your own good” and you “did this to yourself” and these “rules are necessary.”

Reality is quite the opposite. Your enemy tortures human beings. Your enemy is evil personified. Anyone who tortures has no respect for laws or rules or morals or the basic foundations of human relations, so any appeals to “rules” is really a trick, a manipulation to get you to abandon any strategy that would be effective for forcing real, substantive change. In reality, it is not “moral” or “right” to abide by the enemy’s “rules” and abandon efforts to stop his evil agenda. In fact, it can easily be argued that you have a moral duty, an ethical responsibility to stop torturers by what Malcolm X referred to as “any means necessary.” Your inaction, your following the “rules,” guarantees that others will be tortured and destroyed, perhaps generation after generation, their minds mangled by a machine designed to tear apart human beings from the inside out.

It is both immoral and psychologically unhealthy not to resist evil.

So, from this view, it becomes necessary to engage the enemy in the most effective way to save the most lives. To do that, you must bring pressure upon your enemy. To borrow from his own playbook, you must make his situation “intolerable,” and create the situation where torturing you (or continuing those conditions you most wish to change) becomes more costly, more painful, and more troublesome than meeting your demands.

From a lockdown isolation unit there is little that can be done. However, those tactics that can be engaged can be very effective.

For instance, prisoners can simultaneously flush toilets and break pipes. Plumbing is designed to hold only a certain amount of water flow. Repeatedly breaking the pipes becomes costly, timeconsuming, and disruptive to the enemy.

Also, prisoners can block cell door windows and barricade cells, requiring the enemy to summon cell-extraction teams. This becomes costly, time-consuming, and disruptive.

These kinds of tactics are most effective if sustained by large numbers of prisoners over a duration of time.

From a superficial analysis, this kind of approach could be seen as “self-defeating” or “maladjusted,” particularly if someone sees the torturer’s system as legitimate. Persons under this kind of a delusion would be horrified by this advice and would instead urge prisoners to go along with the program, to be the proverbial “good Germans,” little Adolf Eichmanns following orders and keeping the program going. Their position is built upon the false belief that “good behavior,” i.e., conduct that does not disrupt the torture machine’s efficiency, is rewarded, while “bad behavior,” i.e., conduct that disrupts the torture machine’s efficiency, is punished. This myth is so provably absurd it does not even merit a response.

However, it needs to be pointed out that there seems to be a contradiction—since resistance will provoke a state response, is it not fair to say that engaging in struggle is not acting in one’s own best interests? This is a valid question, and the answer depends upon whether you look at your immediate interests or at your longterm, larger interests. Do you care more about your immediate situation, your immediate personal comfort? If so, then you serve those interests better by going along with the enemy’s torture program and helping his evil agenda continue. But if you care about your sanity—which is really the important priority, the true topic of all of this—then you must act in a way that preserves your dignity, your principles, and your sense of justice by exercising your personal power and contributing to a greater good, even at the expense of your immediate well being.

To give an example of this conflict of interests, consider a hunger striker who suffers hunger and diminished health in order to force the enemy to meet important demands related to human dignity. One may argue that it is insane for the hunger strikers to harm themselves, that long-term sanity cannot be served if the hunger strikers starve to death. But from another view, the hunger striker sees the harm of hunger and health effects far outweighed by the greater harm caused by the conditions that the hunger striker struggles to change.

This is far more valid from a mental health perspective, though uncomfortable for apologists of state power since, by this conception, suicide bombers can be understood as engaging in a perfectly healthy response, from a psychological perspective, if the so-called suicide bombers are acting under a firm belief that their actions will result in changes that will benefit their children or future generations. In that way, a suicide bomber, psychologically speaking, would be no different from a soldier jumping onto a grenade to save his platoon, except one is a bit more assertive and proactive. Conclusion: Psychological Necessity of Revolutionary Violence As a final note, those who defend the torture machine may object that the approach advocated here “promotes violence.” Again, this analysis proceeds from the delusion that the torturers are “good” and “valid” and “right.” A more accurate assessment is to say that the state itself is violence. Its every component is violence, from its means for maintaining itself to every project the state undertakes.

The state maintains itself through taxation: Pay, or else. It compels obedience: Obey the laws, or else. It defends the economic status quo and the ruling elite: Work, or else. It has now intruded into our mental lives, dictating what we can think and believe (or else). So, in this context, even the state’s most “benevolent” “service,” at best, rests upon a billy-club, a shotgun, or an Apache attack helicopter.

In light of this, there is never an absence of violence so long as the state exists. The state makes violence inevitable. The only question is whether the state will be unilaterally punching the subjects in the face, as it has for centuries, or whether the subjects will be punching the state back.

If peace, the absence of violence, can only be achieved in the absence of the state, which is itself violence, then with any action undertaken to limit or diminish the state, no matter how “violent” the action, the cause of peace is better served. This is not really an opinion, but is an objective observation of fact that really isn’t disputable.

If someone wants peace and not violence, it’s necessary to tear down the state’s torture machine. This is not just a matter of social justice, morality, or political theory, but is an indispensable approach for the maintenance of individual mental health for those trapped in the “simple torture situation.”

* * * *

JPay, Fuckweasels Target Sean Swain to Prevent Truth from Reaching the Public... Again

They’re at it again.

While getting sued for targeting Sean Swain’s protected expression, the fascist fuckweasels have again targeted Sean, canceling the video visits scheduled by Ben Turk, just another effort to silence the critique of an anarchist prisoner in a long train of stateterror fuckweaselry.

Here’s the pattern: First, Sean Swain wrote Freedom, highly critical of the fuckweasels who mismanage the Ohio prison system and, in response, the fuckweasels used their disciplinary process to say Sean encouraged a work stoppage.

Sean didn’t shut up.

Then, seanswain.org went online and they put Sean on a gang list as a gang of one. He stayed up nights, teaching himself secret handshakes. It’s lonely to be a gang of one.

But Sean didn’t shut up.

Then, in 2012, fuckweasels admitted targetting Sean for his “ideology,” torturing him for a year and nearly starving him, then sending him to the super-duper-uber-mega-hyper-turbo-ultra-max.

Sean didn’t shut up.

At the super-duper-blah-blah-blah-max, Sean was invited to contribute a weekly segment on The Final Straw radio show. Fuck- weasels kept him off the phone, and thereby removed him from the radio, for eight weeks (for false justifications NOT involving phone use).

Sean didn’t shut up.

Then, JPay and the fuckweasels conspired to obstruct Sean’s electronic communications on several occasions—locking him out of his handheld device a couple of times, blocking the upload of his emails intended for posting, and then simply stealing his outgoing communication... until they got caught by Sean’s attorney...

Sean didn’t show up.

Now, after Ben Turk scheduled video visits (like Skype), which would allow Sean the chance to present the case for his innocence in his criminal conviction and explain the civil action that his counsel, Richard Kerger, filed, JPay and the Department of Retribution and Corruption again pulled the plug on Sean Swain.

What do you think the odds are that he will shut up? Exactly.

So, what it appears we’re dealing with here is a cabal of delusional hierarchs who are obsessed with Sean Swain, with his ideas, with his articulation of those ideas. They lay awake at night, in cold sweat, dreading Sean’s next public expression, certain that Sean will utter words that will make the sky fall, the world end, dogs and cats hump each other.

At Gestapo Headquarters, they run in circles, shrieking and yanking at their hair, and at each other’s, in total hysterics, each time Sean puts nouns and verbs together. They employ an entire team to monitor Sean’s mail, email, phone communication, and postings online, headed by Trevor Clark—Trainwreck Trevor— who serves as agency liaison to the Fuckweasel Bozos of Ineptitude and the Ohio State Highway Patrol (just in case Sean’s communication backfires and gives them the chance to shoot him 137 times through his windshield). Trainwreck is the grand poo-bah of the ODRC Unintelligence Bureau. And “Sean Swain” is the only name on their Most Wanted list.

Trainwreck really wants Sean. Wants him so badly, Trainwreck can taste him. Stays up nights, obsessively thinking about nothing but Sean. Sean, Sean, Sean.

So, what can be done?...

Contact JPay, demanding that they stop collaborating with state terrorists.

Contact Trainwreck’s boss, Chief Counsel Spanky Gray, and tell Spanky to put his silly chimp on a leash.

Contact fuckweasels’ counsel, Beer-Bong Tommy Miller, Chief, State Terror Defense Bureau, and let him know that his stupid clients are taking a big, fat shit all over his case... not that he really has one.

Let’s make this illegal repression as painful for the oppressor as we can!

Fuck JPay! Fuck JPay! Fuck JPay!

Fuck ODRC! Fuck ODRC! Fuck ODRC!

* * * *

VIOLENCE!, VIOLENCE!, VIOLENCE!

An open letter to ODRC Legal Counsel Trevor Matthew Clark, Esquire, on his favorite topic—my unapologetic advocacy for political violence (written in the hopes of inspiring others to adopt my position and engage in revolutionary action).

Dear Trevor:

In the interests of full transparency, I’d like to begin this letter

by making my aims clear. I advocate political violence. I contend that political violence is absolutely necessary for the success of a revolutionary project, and I defend its morality as well as its practicality. I write this in the admitted hope that my reasonable and articulate arguments will reach rational people who will embrace the position I advocate, and that they will take back the future from oppressors and tyrants by engaging in effective revolutionary action.

I present all of this as a letter to you for a few reasons. First, your written positions related to my prison disciplinary situation provide a pretty good representation of the State’s position, or at least can be used for extrapolating authority’s position on political violence. Second, you are an attorney, which makes you an expert at law and at argument, so if and when I can dispose of your stated positions and reduce your claims to nonsense, that will then demonstrate the superiority of my position to yours, and will prove pretty conclusively that political violence makes sense. And third, I know that once this is posted, given your emotional instability, the presence of this letter online will drive you completely bonkers for the rest of your life—which I will find personally satisfying, given your role in the State’s efforts to destroy my life; as listening to my disciplinary proceedings made you feel like “shooting [your] self in the face,” I imagine this will too. By all means, do not let me dissuade you.

I think that takes care of the disclosure and transparency, so we should proceed to the topic of political violence. Typically, I will predicate a work like this with a few relevant quotes. I think that approach appropriate here.

So we begin.

“We are anarchists specifically because we do not water down our critique of social ills. We seek to strike the system at its roots.” —Crimethinc, “After the Crest III: Barcelona at Low Tide”

“The revolutionary project of anarchists is to struggle along with the exploited and push them to rebel against all abuse and repression, so also against prison. What moves them is a desire for a better world, a better life with dignity and ethic, where economy and politics have been destroyed. There can be no place for prison in that world.

“That is why anarchists scare power.

“That is why they are locked up in prison.”

—Alfredo Bonanno, Introductory Note, Locked Up

“Men[sic] will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last pope.”

—Denis Diderot

Defining “Political Violence”

What is violence? No one can reasonably adopt a position on something before we define what it is. My dictionary gives five definitions, but the first one, I think, is more than adequate for our purposes here: “physical force exerted so as to cause damage, abuse, or injury.” By this definition, “violence” would include property damage and sabotage, though most purists would object to this definition and assert that “violence” is only “violence” when directed at living beings. I’m inclined to accept the definition that property damage is also violence because that’s more consistent with the position that you’ve put forward on behalf of the State when you argued that I advocate violence against “people,” “destruction of property,” and “harassment,” and I would prefer not to quibble over the smaller details. So, for our purposes, we can accept that property damage is violence.

I think it’s important, though, that we point out that the definition of violence doesn’t include any qualifiers. What I mean is, by our definition, it matters not whether I’m punching you in the face or whether you are punching me in the face: A punch in the face is “physical force exerted so as to cause damage, abuse, or injury,” no matter who the actor is. Violence is violence.

I know, that’s kind of obvious as far as observations go. Kind of a no-brainer. I just wanted to point it out though, for future reference, for when we get to the point where you want to shoot yourself in the face.

But we don’t want to talk about just any violence. Interpersonal violence isn’t our topic. I don’t think either one of us is, for instance, advocating “domestic violence.” The question before us is whether or not we advocate political violence. Again we consult a dictionary and the first definition for “political” is, “of or relating to the affairs of government, politics, or the state.” I think that’s workable for the definition of “political.” If we put that together with our definition of violence, we create our working definition of political violence: “Physical force exerted so as to cause damage, abuse, or injury... of or relating to the affairs of government, politics, or the state.”

I suppose we could go further and ask what the State is, particularly in this age where the State is so inextricably linked with the management of the economy and in the affairs of large corporations, but that’s really a whole other discussion unto itself, isn’t it? Our topic here is already ambitious enough, I think. So we can forego the question of, “What is the State?,” at least for purposes of identity, and we’ll suffice to say that the State is “the government,” the incorporated entity that exercises its assumed powers and authority, by and through its agents—like you. You qualify as an agent of the State.

Belief in Political Violence, Part I

Having defined political violence, we now address the question of whether or not I “believe in it.” If by “believe in it” we mean, “Do I believe that political violence is real? then I would have to say, no, I do not believe in political violence. I know that political violence is real.

Political violence—”Physical force exerted so as to cause damage, abuse, or injury... of or relating to the affairs of government, politics, or the state”—is a fact of reality. It is happening at all times. It is ubiquitous.

The reality of political violence cannot be questioned.

Belief in Political Violence, Part II

If by “belief in political violence” you mean to ask, “Do I believe political violence is practical?,” I would again have to answer, no. I do not believe political violence is practical. I know that it is.

The reason I know political violence is practical is, I took a sociology class with Ashland University. I read the textbook. In it, the writers pointed out that movements like the Irish Republican Army that employed violence achieved at least partial success an overwhelming majority of the time, as opposed to strictly nonviolent movements where just the opposite held true.

So, we can say objectively and without a doubt that, as a practical matter, political violence works.

And, I think I need to point out here, I’m not yet making an argument for political violence. Nothing so far relates to how I “feel” about political violence or whether I “like” political violence or not. Political violence is real and it works, however we “feel” about it, the same way that the planet is round, gravity persists, and the earth goes around the sun, all independent of the question of whether we “believe” in the planet’s roundness, or gravity’s legitimacy, or the earth’s trajectory.

Gravity does not seek our consent. Neither does the efficacy of political violence.

Belief in Political Violence, Part III

If you ask, “Do you believe in political violence?,” and by “believe in” you mean, “Do you think political violence should be employed?,” I would answer with an emphatic, yes. But if you were being honest, Trevor, you would also answer with an emphatic, yes. You accept political violence as moral and legitimate, and I can prove it to you.

You work as ODRC Counsel—as an attorney for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The ODRC is an agency of the State of Ohio, established by the Ohio Constitution of 1803. Ohio is the seventeenth state of the United States; the United States gained its independence from the British crown with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1787.

By calling yourself “ODRC Counsel,” you are implicitly stipulating to the truth of all of those facts. You have to be. If any one of those statements above are untrue, you aren’t ODRC Counsel. You’re just a dude in skinny jeans with a lot of college debt and the FBI on speed-dial. If the ODRC is not an agency of the State of Ohio, then you have no claim to exercise authority on behalf of the State. If the Treaty of Paris did not provide the United States independence from the British crown, then the United States is not a sovereign nation, Ohio isn’t part of its confederation, and Ohio is not a state. Again, that leaves you in your skinny jeans chatting with the fascists and wondering how you’ll pay off all that college debt since you don’t have a job.

So, in Trevor Clark’s world, the Treaty of Paris is valid. The revolutionaries in the colonies who engaged in open, violent rebellion against the rightful authorities—rightful authorities under existing international law—were not criminals, traitors, offenders against the peace and dignity of the British crown, but were instead signatories to a treaty, the proper representatives of a nation whose independence was gained through the means of political violence.

You’re an attorney, Trevor. Do you practice British law in British courts? Are you a member of the British bar? When you introduced yourself to me on 27 March 2013, did you refer to yourself as Counsel for the British Crown?

I guess that means you accept the legitimacy of the political violence employed by Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and the rest. I guess that means that you, like every other U.S. citizen, have to concede and stipulate to the acceptance of political violence and its validity.

So much for your categorical rejection of political violence, huh?

This is an important point because it proves that you and I have more in common in our thinking than we have uncommon. We both know that political violence exists. We both know that, as a practical matter, it works. And we both accept that recourse to political violence is legitimate. We only argue, potentially, over the question of when political violence should be employed, by whom, to what end, and against whom.

So let’s shift gears for a moment. Let’s stop talking about my advocacy for political violence and start talking about yours.

Back to Our Definition of “Political Violence”

You’ll recall that earlier I made the point that “violence,” as it is defined, has no qualifiers, that it matters not whether I’m punching you in the face or whether you are punching me in the face. A punch in the face is violence no matter who the actor is. Violence is violence. And so we get to the point I foreshadowed, where you want to shoot yourself in the face.

On 19 September 2012, without any justification at all—and admittedly so, because everything I was accused of, related to my apprehension, was dismissed—you, the State, removed me from the prison population. You put me in cuffs. You “exerted” “physical force... so as to cause damage, abuse, or injury...,” forcibly taking me into custody and putting me in a torture cell for days. That’s violence. And it’s violence “of or related to the affairs of... the state,” as it’s violence employed by the State in the (miss)management of its affairs. I was then subjected to conditions that the CIA described as “the simple torture situation” in its KUBARK Counterintelligence and Interrogation Manual, an insidious how-to manual for torturers and state-terrorists like yourself.

It was also on 19 September 2012 that you, the State, “seized” my typewriter and then destroyed it in retaliation for me calling the ODRC director a “sock puppet” for the JPay corporation. You’ll recall, by our definition, when you “exert” “physical force... so as to cause damage...,” that’s violence. And in this case, the violence, destroying my typewriter, is directly “related to the affairs of... the State,” as “the State” is the entity destroying my typewriter for its own political agenda.

See the problem you have here, Trevor? It’s very, very difficult to hear your indignant and self-righteous condemnations of “political violence” because every time you try to speak, more and more corpses fall out of the mass grave we know as your mouth.

But while we’re on the topic, let’s also analyze the larger context of your political violence. In my own case, I’ve been held without a legitimate legal justification, according to your own laws, for twenty- three years. That means I’m not a prisoner; I’m a kidnap victim.[34]

Kidnapping is a violent crime, Trevor. Violence. State violence. And State violence is, de facto, political violence. When you continually employ political violence against someone, it seems more than a little bit irrational and hypocritical for you to assert that the victims of your political violence do not so much as have a right to “advocate” its use against you.

And, of course, the ultimate irony is, if you had not abducted me and tortured me and mounted an all-out assault on every aspect of my life in flagrant violation of your own written laws (not that anyone, particularly you, pays any attention to those), I never would have been provoked to “advocate” a politically-violent response.

You will recall that you wrote to my attorneys, “The types of violence and intimidation that are advocated for [sic] in his writings fall clearly within the legal exceptions to that right [of free speech].[35] ODRC will not tolerate threats, harassment and attempts at intimidation.” That’s what you wrote.

See your problem? If the State will not tolerate “threats,” perhaps the State should get out of the “threat” business. If the State won’t tolerate “harassment,” whatever that means, perhaps it should cease its torture and state-terror operations. If the State won’t tolerate “intimidation,” maybe it should stop using its machinery of violence to silence, neutralize, and destroy its critics, whistleblowers, and political opponents.

Just an idea. Otherwise, if the State is going to be in the threat, harassment and intimidation business, as it clearly is now, then the State is going to be turning a lot of people into enemies, the same way you have made a lifelong enemy of me, and you will soon have to confront thousands of Sean Swains... all of us recognizing that we have no other recourse but political violence. Not all of us can easily be tucked away at super-duper-uber-mega-ultra-max.

You’ve got something like twelve million people in Ohio. And lots and lots of guns.

I read somewhere that estimated gun ownership in the U.S. is more than two hundred million. That’s a lot of guns. If you divide that evenly among all fifty states, which is unrealistic since only twelve people live in Montana, the people of Ohio alone have four million guns. That’s a gun for every third person.

I suppose for the remainder of this, I can address my arguments directly to those people. The literary device of addressing my arguments to you has served its purpose. So, by all means, don’t let me hold you from any important business. Feel free to shoot yourself in the face at any time.

12 Million People, 4 Million Guns, and 1 Common Enemy Subjecting Everyone to Political Violence... Arrogantly Assuming We Won’t Do Something About It

The Trevor Clarks who run the State of Ohio will not tolerate your “threats” or “harassment” or “intimidation.” They will, however take your money without your consent to pay for their own salaries. They tax you, supposedly for your own good. Supposedly

to provide you “services,” like roads, schools, and protection.

But you’re reasonable. You’d voluntarily pay for services. You voluntarily pay for services every day. If the State really offered services, you would gladly pay for the value of those services.

The State doesn’t give you that option. Instead, the State “exerts” “force” to fund “the affairs of government,” to your loss, to your “injury.” The State engages in political violence in your every transaction. The State knows that reasonable people like you would never pay outrageous sums for shoddy services, and so it resorts to political violence to keep itself going, not for your own good, but at your expense.

The Trevor Clarks who steal your money from you make a good salary. You pay them generously, not for roads, schools, and protections, but for chuck holes, illiteracy, and political repression. You pay for the government hacks who are reading your emails and listening in on your phone calls. You pay for the miseducation system that convinces a new generation that they cannot possibly handle ruling themselves, that they need the government’s “services” of chuck holes, illiteracy, and political repression. You pay for the Apache attack helicopters the government buys to “protect” you... and then points the helicopter at you.

The State will not tolerate your “threats” or “harassment” or “intimidation.” The Trevor Clarks have spoken. You twelve million people with at least four million guns will do what you are told and you will pay the bill... or else.

Does that sound like “freedom”? I could be wrong, but I think real freedom doesn’t involve your government constantly employing political violence against you and intimidating you if you start talking about freedom.

Not that it matters because we have no duty to defer to the documents of the Trevor Clarks who are sticking it to us, but the Ohio Constitution expressly provides that we have the “right” to “abolish” the government. Article I, Section 2. We can do it whenever we “deem it necessary.”

I don’t know about you, but I deem it necessary. I don’t want to die at super-duper-uber-mega-ultra-max because I defended my own life and then told the truth about the prison director’s crimes. And, more importantly, I don’t want others to die for what they believe, locked away or shot by agents of an irrational State.[36] So, that means the State has to go.

We deserve better.

Something to consider: There’s us... There’s them... We have twelve million people and at least four million guns.

Any questions?

Just a quick reminder to any remaining pacifists out there— your choice is not between violence or peace. If it were, we would all choose peace. But if we do not engage in violence, that does not create a situation of peace; that creates a situation of unilateral violence where the State continues to “exert” its “force” to your “injury.” So, an absence of action, on your part, facilitates State violence. In fact, the longer you refrain from acting, the more lives are devastated. Objectively, anyone who is really, truly for peace will struggle—by any means necessary—to destroy the State completely and as quickly as possible so that the principle cause of State violence will cease and we will then finally have the option of choosing peace.[37]

And personally, I cannot wait to choose peace...

Freedom or Death, Sean Swain

Part Two: Repression

Introduction to Repression

After the year of torture, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction sent me to the Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) in Youngstown, Ohio—the state’s supermax. It would seem that the ODRC believed that it had taught me a valuable lesson about keeping my mouth shut, and expected me to go silent and endure solitary confinement.

Within months of my transfer, Ben Turk, who then managed seanswain.org and worked tirelessly to promote my cause, persuaded lawyer Richard Kerger to represent me in a civil action against the ODRC for ideological targeting and torture. He also brought me to the attention of the Final Straw radio show, where the producer soon offered me the opportunity to contribute a weekly segment, recorded during my once-a-week calls from the supermax. In addition, Ben scheduled video visits through the JPay kiosk that would ostensibly permit me to talk on video we could then have posted to the site, another medium for exposing torture.

Irony of ironies, we sought to use JPay... to expose the torture... that was intended to protect JPay.

When prison officials discovered my involvement in a globally-syndicated radio show, they immediately suspended my phone access without explanation. Chief Counsel Stephen Gray, never to admit the ODRC silenced my radio segments, later wrote to Kerger that the suspension was an official response to my reporting Trevor Clark’s sexual misconduct and my reporting him to the Ohio Disciplinary Counsel. So, the official story was, they admittedly retaliated against me for reporting misconduct.

Like that’s legal.

My visiting list was suspended and Trevor Clark terrorized my loved ones, sending them unsigned notices that they were being investigated by the FBI—including Ben Turk.

In January 2014, prison officials suspended video visits without explanation. Later, they would provably lie to a federal court, asserting video suspension was a response to me revealing former MANCI Warden Terry Tibbals’ license plate number (that I didn’t know and didn’t reveal), and my plot to burn down the Ohio Statehouse, that they claimed I had shared during a (nonexistent) press conference at the prison (that didn’t happen). Richard Kerger did nothing to correct the record and let the court keep me out of the hearing, preventing me from correcting the record. Federal Judge Benita Y. Pearson then accepted prison officials’ laughable defense and designated me a “unique security threat,” foreclosing on any chance to proceed and succeed in exposing torture. Kerger, despite promises, never challenged Judge Pearson’s decision.

So, Part Two begins at the inception of the ODRC’s repression campaign, with my hunger strike and medication strike to protest communication suspensions; followed by more torture and another transfer. I include the article I wrote about Tibbals, who was himself a torturer. Judge Pearson’s decision is presented in its entirety along with my response, a segment recorded for the Final Straw.

It would seem that torturers believed that if they conspired with a corrupt judge to foreclose on my chance for vindication in court that I would somehow go silent and that the court’s decision would discredit me. Little did they know but, to the most important segment of the population paying attention, the court’s decision didn’t discredit me; just the opposite, it discredited the court.

And the court became a legitimate target too.

Lying to the court and foreclosing on my chance for legal vindication was not the end. It was the beginning...

* * * *

Anarchist Prisoner Begins Dumb Hungerstrike (Sigh)

In response to cancellation of video visits with Ben Turk, Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain announced a hunger strike, commencing Monday, February 2, continuing until fuckweasels and JPay profiteers end their ideological harassment and repression of his video communication.

As soon as he made the announcement, he admittedly regretted it because, in his words, “Hunger strikes are stupid and reformist, but it’s the only leverage I have, so fuck it.” He added that he can stand to lose a few pounds anyway, especially given the unhealthy pile of food he has planned on Superbowl Sunday.

He has vowed to refuse solid foods until state terrorists and corporate profiteers refrain from the ongoing, childish attacks on his communication, even though “hunger strikes are dumb. Fuck Gandhi. But I’m unarmed and vastly outnumbered (sigh). It’s not like I have other options.”

* * * *

Anarchist Prisoner Vows to Refuse Blood Pressure Medication, Beginning Friday

With fascist fuckweasels ignoring his hunger strike, Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain has vowed to refuse blood pressure medication, beginning February 6. This medication keeps his blood pressure regulated. To stop taking this medication “cold turkey” is extremely dangerous, as it could cause a spike in blood pressure which can lead to heart attack, stroke, or aneurysm.

“Freedom or death,” Sean said. “I’m not fucking around.”

Fuckweasels have engaged in a concerted, provable pattern of harassing every element of Sean’s communication, waging a war against anarchist expression.

Within 48 hours of suspending his medication, Sean will be in serious danger of medical problems and anticipates he will soon be held incommunicado in a torture cell, in a fuckweasel effort to break his will and cut him off from the outside world. But, as he pointed out, that will not stop his blood pressure from spiking.

“Clock is ticking,” Sean said. “To quote Emiliano Zapata, ‘Major morir en pie que vivir en rodillas.’ (‘Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees’). If my choice is to surrender to tyrants or risk my health or even my life, then my choices are to live for the wrong thing or die for the right one. In that situation, dig my grave.”

* * * *

OSP Starvation Travel-Log: Tuesday, Day Two

Policy circus continues. I could use a pizza.

You recall, 10:30 to 11:30 am on Saturday, policy changed regarding [JPay] kiosk access. We could no longer use the kiosk twice per day, but only once. Somebody typed up a notice posted next to the machines that was used as justification for obstructing my communication to you [Ben Turk, who then managed seanswain.org] and to [then-counsel] Rick Kerger.

Here it is, Tuesday morning. I asked when we are scheduled a kiosk visit for the day. The policy, which I am mailing to you, since I took one of the copies taped to the wall, says, “Each inmate is allowed one 20 minute session per day on the JPay kiosk.”

Pretty clear. Unambiguous.

So, today, block officers told me we “aren’t going by that,” which means that this policy was only policy long enough to prevent me from communicating with you and with legal counsel about fascist illegalities. Now, on Tuesday, when I invoke that same policy, they tell me this policy wasn’t written by ANYONE. The warden knew nothing about it. Deputy Warden McDonough knew nothing about it. Unit Manager Jackson, Case Manager Franklin—everyone working here has complete amnesia. And yet, I’m holding this piece of paper in my fuckin’ hand.

It’s a cosmic mystery.

The NEW policy, the third in four days, the “NEW new policy,” is that we get access EVERY OTHER day... And surprise, surprise, today is NOT my day.

So, essentially, policies change every couple of days right before I communicate with you and legal counsel Rick Kerger, and each new policy prevents my communication. No idea when you might get this, as I anticipate they will create a “NEW new new policy” before tomorrow evening.

Also, I have been consistently asking to speak to someone who knows something about this, since Saturday. Nobody has spoken to me apart from a brief conversation with a lieutenant who didn’t even listen before essentially telling me to fuck off. I don’t know if everyone is AVOIDING me, or if someone who knows anything has failed to talk to me simply because there IS nobody who knows anything.

Quite a circus.

Meanwhile, two kiosks remain empty half the day on OUR

day, but prisoners using it on the opposite day get to continue using it twice... since none of them are Swain. Apparently, “new” policies don’t extend 20 feet across the hallway. Or NEW new policies. Or NEW new new policies.

Also, I have been on a hunger strike two days, with notices posted at my cell door, and not one staff member has asked me why. No effort to resolve it, no effort to even inquire as to the reasons I’m doing it. This is the most bizarre NONreaction I have EVER seen. And given that security staff—the guards—haven’t even asked me what’s up, I have to think that they have been DIRECTED not to engage me.

Again, bizarre.

I’m held by the clueless who are supervised by the hapless, and all of them are lawless.

And there IS no other explanation except that they know they illegally violated free speech in targeting and canceling your video visits with me and now have to continue modifying “policy” to stall, obstruct, prevent, and limit my outgoing communication that exposes their bumbling illegalities... which makes a bunch of them accomplices to the initial repression. To be clear, this isn’t really just about the privilege of using a machine to send emails, or how often: It’s about a concerted and undeniable effort to abuse authority and manipulate “policy” to shut down my communication while they illegally ban your access and mine to video technologies because THEY FEAR WE WILL TELL THE PUBLIC THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE OPPRESSORS... VIA A POWERFUL, PERSUASIVE MEDIUM... video.

Welcome to Nazi Germany, 1936.

Welcome to Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia, 1982.

I am held by declared enemies of freedom... as if the cages and fences didn’t already give that away.

And, meanwhile, JPay refuses to accept any emails from me. When I attempt to inform them that the fuckweasels are continually modifying access policies to JPay’s kiosks, they block out all of my communication to them. They are working really, really hard to NOT KNOW what’s going on, that way they aren’t responsible for NOT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT, despite a contractual obligation to provide us kiosk access TWICE per day EVERY day.

And now, since you’ve gotten this, and the whole world has seen this, the cat is out of the bag. Sometime around 2017, I suspect.

So, to sum it up, I’m here making lots and lots of friends.

× × × ×

Update, Tuesday after lunch... Unit Manager Jackson and Case Manager Franklin came up to the unit, avoided coming to the pod where I am, and then left. So, after four days of trying to talk to someone who knows something, I’m still waiting... While dozens of people are calling continuously... While I’m hunger striking. The word COWARDICE comes to mind.

Let’s keep in mind, I was a gas station attendant when I got arrested. I had a 2.2 grade point average in high school. If they’re afraid of ME, just imagine the epileptic fits someone like Nelson Mandela or George Jackson could put them in.

I guess they don’t make fuckweasels like they used to.

× × × ×

Had a dream last night. Fried chicken. Woke up chewing on my arm.

In a call this afternoon, I found out Paul Shoemaker, some idiot at Gestapo Headquarters, is “investigating” our planned video visits. Not sure how long it takes to investigate events that didn’t happen, given that the visits were cancelled. Hopefully Paulie SuperGenius has figured out through four days of strenuous investigation, that the visits he cancelled didn’t happen... which makes it impossible to determine what would have happened... since nothing happened.

Hey, Paulie SuperGenius, there’s nothing to investigate. You could gain more insight if you dropped a few hits of screwy squirrel acid, went out in the woods, and stared at your own hand for a few hours.

Mind blowing. Even for someone as ill-equipped as you are.

I can imagine the final report: “All indications are that the subjects of this official government investigation have conspired to use the video visit feature on the JPay kiosk for purposes of saying words to each other, principally in English, although with subject SWAIN, an altered, semi-comprehensible version, which frequently makes reference to an exotic creature called a ‘fascist [expletive deleted]weasel.’ No such animal is defined on Wikipedia. More investigation into this weasel is required. Evidence indicates that subject SWAIN intends to appear human and personable. This nefarious plot involves a joint conspiracy to comply with all rules and laws, and to engage in protected speech in a public forum that this agency may find unflattering. We must therefore employ all resources to prevent this perfectly legal and perfectly transparent behavior from occurring, while a federal lawsuit is pending against us for targeting previous, protected speech. End of report. Signed, Paulie SuperGenius.”

Hey Paulie... Do they issue you a detective bag and one of those two-billed Sherlock hats? I bet your mom thinks you look handsome in it, though she makes you take it off at the dinner table. Does she still help you tie your shoes, or have you taken up wearing loafers?

Anyway, Ben, when “Sherlock” Paulie SuperGenius gets done putting all the clues into his detective bag and he puts all the DNA fibers into ziplock baggies, I hope he let’s us resume visits that implicate less security than the dozens of FACE TO FACE visits we already had without incident.

In other words, I call bullshit.

× × × ×

(Ring... ring... ring...)

“Hello?”

“May I speak to Investigator Paul Shoemaker, please?”

“This is.”

“Hey, Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius, I know who did it.” (Click.)

× × × ×

Roughly 6:00 pm Ms. Franklin, Case Manager, is back in the unit. I’m locked in my cell, but two prisoners in the block told Ms. Franklin that I have been asking for four days to talk to her ever since Officer Wade said Ms. Franklin authored the “new” kiosk policy, not to be confused with the NEW new kiosk policy. She said they are now discussing a more-liberal new new new policy.

Apparently, anyone can write a policy.

I’m going to ask them if I can give it a shot.

× × × ×

I have to postpone med refusal. The Final Straw airs on Sunday, so

I’m going to wait to refuse blood pressure meds until Sunday. That gives Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius, at most, until Tuesday.

× × × ×

(Ring... ring... ring...)

“Hello?”

“Investigator Paul Shoemaker?”

“Yes?”

“ Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius... Is it true that senior staff—Gestapo Gary, Trainwreck Trevor, and the rest of you comic book villains—play naked Twister on Thursday nights?” (Click.)

× × × ×

TO: SHERLOCK PAULIE SUPERGENIUS

FROM: ANONYMOUS

PLEASE VIEW ATTACHED PHOTO. DO YOU THINK THESE TESTICLES ARE TOO BIG FOR MY BODY?

× × × ×

Dear Investigator:

Now that you are holding this letter in your hands, let’s play what body part touched this...

* * * *

OSP Starvation Travel-Log: Wednesday, Day Three

I’m burning glucose. When burning glucose, you get a “runner’s high.” That’s the sensation that fasting mystics associate with being “in the spirit world.”

I’m under no such illusions. I’m in the material world under the oppressive rule of fascist police-state fuckweasels.

Oppression, such as that employed by Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius, is unilateral. It is the assumed right of those who rule. They believe they can impose terrors and inflict abuse and do as they please without their victims responding in any way but submission and compliance and obedience.

Condemned prisoners in China actually dig their own graves before taking a bullet to the head. They facilitate the ultimate oppression, their own murder.

But WAR is bilateral. In WAR, the oppressed fight back. In

WAR, the victims of the oppressors who assume the right to rule seek to inflict injury upon the oppressive rulers. The victims organize, plan, and strike back with the means available to them and they mobilize others to join. They attack the oppressors’ prestige and privilege and mythology; they attack the oppressors’ systems of control.

I think the Oppressive Department of Retribution and Corruption is kinda slow on the uptake.

This situation is not unilateral anymore.

Pause here for the oh-shit moment.

× × × ×

Here’s how it normally goes: After nine consecutive meals refused, someone in the middle of the prison administration food chain comes to talk to you, employing Interpersonal Communications Skills. For me, that should be tonight after dinner, unless some lazy asshole didn’t document refusal of a tray. If a refusal wasn’t documented, then that means it didn’t happen. That’s why, at Richland in 2003 when I went 44 days, no hunger strike happened: every ninth meal, they claimed I accepted a tray.

You know how fuckweasels are.

Anyway, tonight (maybe), I’ll get the Interpersonal Communications Skills treatment, trying to get me to eat out of concern for my health and the avoidance of more paperwork. More the latter than the former. Way.

If you don’t surrender the resistance, they toss you naked in a torture cell, sensory deprivation, the KUBARK “simple torture situation,” cutting off communications to the outside world and attempting to break your will. It’s the most complete and draconian deprivation they can impose.

They torture you for your own good.

I would like to avoid that. So, whenever the Interpersonal Communications Skills operative speaks to me, I will agree to accept a food tray, thereby officially ending my hunger strike according to their definition, and then I’ll hand back an empty tray. That way, I stay where I am and have outside communication. Next meal, you guessed it—refused.

That’ll get me through Saturday.

Then Sunday, I refuse blood pressure meds and we find out

just how serious these hierarch criminals are about preventing my expression on video. We’ll see if they are willing to kill me in order to silence me.

Let’s hope they’re THAT stupid.

× × × ×

(Ring... ring... ring...)

“Hello?”

“Investigator Shoemaker?”

“(Sigh.) What now?”

“Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius, does your mom still REALLY tie your shoes for you?” (Click.)

× × × ×

One of the problems, the reason the Oppressive Department of Retribution and Corruption and I can never see eye to eye, is that we are working from divergent sets of assumptions. The principle divergence is authority versus power.

The fuckweasels are under the false delusion that they have authority over me. That is, that their use of power is legitimate and valid and appropriate. All hierarchs who rule make this assumption.

Hitler believed it was a legitimate and valid use of his authority to exterminate millions in death camps. Pol Pot believed it was a legitimate and valid use of his authority to commit genocide in Cambodia. Trainwreck Trevor believed it was a legitimate and valid use of his authority as pom-pom squad-leader for the Fascist Bozos of Ineptitude to subject me to torture, while Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius feels it is appropriate use of authority to silence protected speech and put duct tape on my face to keep their fascist agenda from being exposed.

Every mass grave dug by Authority is valid and legitimate to Authority. They don’t perceive a difference between Power and Authority.

The Oppressive Department of Retribution and Corruption has no authority to hold me; they have POWER. They have no legitimacy or validity; they have fences and sensors, shotguns and perimeter trucks. They have no legitimacy because the very laws and principles they point to in order to claim legitimacy are the very laws and principles they’ve crumpled and tossed over their shoulders in order to maintain POWER.

It is their superior capacity for violence that maintains their POWER over us.

We can change that.

We can increase our capacity for violence.

× × × ×

(Ring... ring... ring...)

“What.”

“Shoemaker?”

“Yeah.”

“I suspect I’m being molested in my sleep. If I pop a bunch of Viagra, can you come over and dust my dick for fingerprints?” (Click.)

× × × ×

CONTINUED...

* * * *

Anarchist Prisoner Angry, Stupid, and Turning Purple

Monday, 9 February. Today was Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain’s first day without blood pressure medication. He is forced to continue his hunger strike without the fuckweasels’ official recognition because Sean was informed that he would be placed in segregation and therefore cut off from communicating with the outside world if he did not accept trays. Sean now accepts the trays and the State denies his hunger strike is happening since he refuses to jump through their flaming hoops and conduct his hunger strike in a fashion that allows the fuckweasels to kick Sean in the face for it.

You know how fuckweasels are.

Sean intended to refuse blood pressure medication today when his medications were renewed, but medical staff forgot to renew his meds, so he went without them due to a simple glitch. He has to postpone his refusal of meds, accompanied by a waving fist and a statement way too serious for the occasion, for when his meds are offered to him.

When asked how he felt without food and blood pressure medication, Sean claimed he was “angry, stupid, and turning purple.” He proposed that his coloration was due to higher blood pressure and then suggested that his coloration was, more accurately, “somewhere between fuscia and mauve,” somewhat darker than his typical beige.

What Can We Do?

Contact Beerbong Tommy at the state-terror defense bureau and demand that he stop the fuckweasel bullshit before Sean blows a gasket! EMAIL: thomas.miller@ohioattorneygeneral.gov

PHONE: (614) 644-0735

OFFICE: 150 East Gay St., 16th Floor, Columbus, Ohio 43215

For anyone wishing to send the appropriate gift, Beerbong Tommy loves ham and mushrooms on his pizza!

* * * *

Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain Disappeared by Prison Fascists, State of Health and Well-Being Unknown

Ohio State Penitentiary administrators removed Sean Swain from population, according to a prisoner housed on Sean’s security level. He is now held incommunicado, without phone or email access, and likely without writing materials. When prison officials last removed Sean from population at Mansfield Corruptional, he was placed in a torture cell with no heat, no bed, no shower, forced to pace 24 hours a day to stay warm. He left there sleep-deprived and hallucinating. Less than 90 days later, two other prisoners died on Torture Cell Row.

Sean initiated a hunger strike on Monday, 2 February, and refused blood pressure medication beginning Tuesday, 10 February. His health is likely already compromised, so placement in a torture cell, isolated from all other prisoners and cut off from the outside world, could only be initiated by prison officials for the obvious motive of eliminating Sean once and for all.

Sean, anticipating this possibility, explained, “The only thing to gain by isolating me is the opportunity to continue refusing me medications after I have agreed to start taking them again. In other words, isolating me gives them the chance to murder me without witnesses, something they can’t do while I’m in population.”

Prison officials would benefit greatly from the death of Sean Swain. Currently, Sean has a lawsuit filed through his counsel... 78

This lawsuit threatens to expose the illegality of ODRC Director Gary Mohr’s JPay policy, that enriches a prison profiteer corporation; it threatens to expose the State’s recourse to torture, and a connection between the FBI and torture engineer Trevor Clark, who was disclosed as “agency liaison” to the FBI; it threatens to expose a not-so-secret dirty war waged by government against dissidents and critics, particularly of an anarchist perspective.

It very well may be that ODRC Director Gary Mohr, his corporate sponsors, and his FBI puppeteers have decided that they are better off with Sean Swain dead than alive.

Sean’s supporters and legal counsel await any kind of communication from Sean, who has previously proven resourceful at smuggling communiques out of prison, even from supermax.

Prior to his being “disappeared,” he was asked pointedly about prison officials murdering him to silence him permanently. He said, “Somewhere, some time, some government official decided nobody would care if Muhammad Bouazizi lived or died. Then, three governments in the region were swept out of power by the force of popular resistance. Somewhere, some time, some government official decided nothing would happen if Mike Brown died. Then, popular resistance burned down Ferguson.

“I don’t know. Maybe they can get away with killing me, maybe they can’t. But if they think they need to kill a former gas station attendant who had a 2.2 grade point average in high school in order to defend their fascist program from the truth, they’ve already lost; they’re in far deeper shit than they realize.”

Demand Sean’s immediate release back to general population and reinstatement of all of his communication!

OSP Warden Jay For hay: [phone number]

Investigator Paul Shoemaker: [phone number]

* * * *

An Open Letter of Immense Gratitude to Everyone Who Has Extended My Life in Resistance

Heard a singer on the radio late last night

Said he’s gonna kick the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight...

I... I believe in love...

—excerpt from, “God, Part II,” by U2 from the album, Rattle and Him

Dear Everybody,

Most of you, I don’t know your names. I have never seen your faces, and so long as my captors continue this selective video ban, you may never see mine. We are separated, you and me, by fences covered in concertina wire, by steel bars and concrete walls, by a patrol truck with a loaded shotgun designed to keep me in... and to keep you out.

In fact, if everything had gone as planned, the way my captors designed it, you would never have even been aware of my existence. I would have remained a population statistic in official government reports, for decades and decades, until some guard making union-scale wages tossed me in a hole and buried me.

Something happened.

Despite the fences and bars and walls, despite the perimeter truck, my captors lost control of the situation. They lost control of you.

Something happened. You happened.

Those who erect the fences, who insert steel bars, who conduct the grisly business of disassembling captives behind concrete walls, have always dictated what you are allowed to know, and how to feel. They impose limits on the experiences of your world AND mine. Those experiences are never permitted to converge.

There’s a perimeter truck between us.

They trained you for years and years not to trust the voices from inside the fences, not to listen to the echoes from the inside of the concrete tombs. They spent a lot of money making sure this never happened.

But it happened. You happened.

In that instant that you let me be real to you, and you became real to me, those fences dissolved... the bars rusted... the walls fell... the perimeter truck stalled... and the powerful who spent all that money on programs to mismanage your thinking became utterly powerless.

They no longer mediate your experiences. They no longer dictate what you and I are allowed to mean to each other, or how we choose to collaborate together, or how we imagine the future will manifest.

In fact, there’s a serious question as to whether you will continue to let them run it...

Or, more accurately, whether you will allow them to maintain the delusion that they run anything.

You have done something. Something very, very dangerous. You have rendered the fences and bars and walls and perimeter trucks irrelevant. You have rendered those who rely on those tools to keep all of us—you and me—under control, just as irrelevant.

They are afraid. I can feel it. Their fear is seeping out of everything in their dying domain.

You did this. You took the power away from those who misdefine our world, who misdefine who we are, and what we are, and how significant we may be.

There is an incredible darkness they represent, and that darkness, fueled by hate and fear and mistrust, by division and anger, is under assault. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of dedicated and determined rebels are kicking that darkness.

It’s bleeding.

On my side, I can see it. This darkness that I have been kicking for decades, never knowing anyone else was kicking too... It’s bleeding daylight. It might be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. The dying of their darkness.

Thank you for this image, painted in the blood of their dying darkness.

No matter what, no matter how this ends for you or for me, the world... this world... Our world will never be the same. Those who rely on fences and bars, concrete walls and perimeter trucks, who rely on this infernal darkness to continue murdering the future, our future, the future we know can be... They will never sleep as sound in their beds, or sit as relaxed behind their desks.

They know what you did to them...

What you CAN do to them...

And they know YOU own the future.

We kicked their darkness...

We made it bleed...

And we outnumber them.

Freedom or Death, Sean

* * * *

OSP Physician Dr. James Kline is a Fuckweasel: How a Quack Illegally Disappeared Me to the Supermax Dungeon to Break Me for the Repressive Gestapo High Command</strong>

Part I: “...Like Clowns Taking Pies to the Face...”

This past Friday, 13 February, Ohio State Penitentiary physician, Dr. James Kline, got bored. He already sharpened and polished the pointed spike on top of the German World War I helmet he wore when marching around his basement, blasting Wagner from his stereo. He had run out of live frogs to staple to the rubber matting, and putting hamsters into the blender feet-first had lost all of its excitement. So, he did what any upstanding doctor employed at a super-duper-max would do. He phoned in a regimen of state terror to silence protected protest, like Israel calling in a drone strike on the Gaza Strip.

Lucky me.

But let’s hit the rewind. It started when the Oppressive Department of Retribution and Corruption pulled the plug on the Skype rip-off video visits that Ben Turk scheduled with me to generate video at seanswain.org. Since Gestapo Gary and Trainwreck Trevor are already getting sued for past shenanigans, they couldn’t block content to the site and stick it to me directly, so they got a hapless dipshit named Paul Shoemaker—Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius—to investigate the video that never happened.

I started a stupid hunger strike. Stupid. My last meal was Superbowl Sunday and if you ever saw this Aramark Corporation slop-vomit, you know I’m not missing anything. Likely, my exposure to radioactive isotopes went down.

After nine meals, I got called to the Hanibal Lecter cage to talk to Deputy Warden Bracie (sp?) and Major Somebody-or-Oth- er. Ms. Bracie did all the talking. Major Somebody-or-Other spent the time staring at Ms. Bracie, undressing her in his mind and drooling on himself.

Whatever you do, don’t tell his wife.

Ms. Bracie, using interpersonal communications skills training that Major Somebody-or-Other’s erection clearly did not know, told me that if I did not accept a tray, they would toss me in the hole. This is because the ODRC fuckweasels demand that you protest exactly as they demand, and then punish you for it. With a straight face, Ms. Bracie repeated the official position written by some sociopath at Gestapo Headquarters (probably Trainwreck Trevor), that tossing me in the hole was not punishment, even though everyone else in the hole is being punished.

When you’re protesting and they chain you naked to the wall upside-down and pull out your fingernails with rusty pliers before throwing darts at your penis (or vagina), they are not punishing you like the naked, upside-down guy with bloody fingers hanging next to you with dart holes in his dick. Thank you Deputy Warden Bracie and Major Drooling Boner for that insightful clarification that punishment is not punishment.

Torture is not torture. It is “enhanced interrogation.”

Execution is not murder. It is “protein recycling.”

Tyranny is not tyranny. It is “aggressive management.” Genocide is not genocide. It is “selective population pruning.” State-terrorists are so cute with vocabulary.

So, I accepted a tray and therefore, according to the fuckweasels OFFICIAL DECREE, my hunger strike was no longer a hunger strike, though I knew it was and the REST OF THE WORLD knew it was. That made the State irrelevant to the protest process.

The State is an irrelevant moron. Fuck the State. Twice.

That robbed them of the chance to isolate me and cut off my communication to the outside world while throwing darts at my penis, which is what they were eager to do, almost as eager as Major Drooling Boner was to get a peek down Deputy Warden Bra- cie’s blouse.

So the hunger strike continued and after a week of the fuck- weasels unable to do anything about it (my counsel... has a lawsuit filed), I also refused blood pressure meds.

A med strike.

Quitting the meds could cause my blood pressure to spike, which could cause a heart attack, aneurysm, or a stroke. That meant without those meds, I could quickly fall over dead.

Of course, I didn’t really want to die. I refused the med refill, but I still had a few pills stashed away from the previous refill, and I could get by on those for weeks.

I mean, I’m not stupid.

But fuckweasels had to assume I had no meds, which gave them the choice of either killing me or surrendering and giving me video access. A catch-22. Both options are bad for them. If they relent, they face the proposition that soon, just like Oprah, I would have my own channel.

All Swain... all day... all night...

But killing me to silence me could be seriously problematic. Fuckweasels know who follows my work; it’s not the hold-hands- and-sing-Cumbayah crowd. That’s why state terrorists at ODRC Gestapo High Command at 770 West Broad Street in Columbus, when they leave work in the evening, sprint from the door, through a protective security line in the parking lot, and to their cars—to avoid getting snatched by swainiacs in the shadows. Fuckweasels know the savage lunatics who regularly peruse my site are hiding in the bushes with lug wrenches, ready to pounce and drag these stateterrorists behind the building... to eat them alive. They believe that.

For good reason. The Government Accounting Office survey confirms that approximately 33% of frequent visitors to seanswain. org are likely full-fledged cannibals.

Fuckweasels are certain that if they kill me, bomb-throwing cannibal swainiacs across the globe will converge on their parking lot and no security known to humanity will save them from the flurry of bloodlust, a maelstrom of raw meat, blood-splatter, discarded shoes and unanswered car alarms.

As it should be.

All of us savage maniacs have to stick together, you know.

But, that being the case, prison fuckweasels really don’t want to kill me... even though they really, REALLY want to kill me. With the hunger strike they can’t recognize and the med strike they can’t control, their phones rang off the hook and their email in boxes boiled over with angry protest, and I was closer and closer to blowing a gasket and falling over dead (or so they thought), and they sat there perfectly powerless, like clowns taking pies to the face.

Since it was out of the question to conform to their own laws and policies and provide me the same video access as every other prisoner on my level (all SWAIN... all DAY... all NIGHT...) they had to find some contrived justification for chaining me to the wall and throwing darts at my penis until I break and give up on the med strike. They would have to develop an excuse for doing that, especially since U.S. District Judge Benita Y. Pearson is already looking, and she’s no dummy (unlike Judge Jack Zouhary, who fucks dogs behind the Masonic Lodge on bowling night).

Part II: “...A Game of Chicken with No Good Way Out...”

First came the shrinks, asking questions in hopes of turning my med strike in defense of anarchist expression into a “suicidal gesture.” But, I can articulate my zealous love for life and my political motivations, and they already know about the lawsuit; so while they were previously willing to put false diagnoses in my file to fuck around my chance of release, they are hesitant to continue the reindeer games... not due to any newfound integrity, but due to cowardice and self-interest.

Next came the nurses, the male ones to threaten “admitting” me “downstairs,” and the female ones to sweet-talk me into taking the meds. The threat to admit me downstairs is a reference to taking me down to the medical isolation cells in the basement—in many ways, far worse than the hole. At MANCI, a lower level security prison, prisoners dropped like flies in the area where I left sleep-deprived and hallucinating.

If prisoners died like flies in MANCI’s medical dungeon, imagine the one at the super-duper-max. They would chain me to the wall and shoot cannonballs at my penis.

“Medical admission” was the very last option for the fuckwea- sels to take me out of commission and mindfuck me into silent submission, breaking my med strike and my will to resist their illegal repression. Without medical admission, without this last resort to force me back on my meds, the fuckweasels were in a game of chicken with no good way out.

The fascists would have to surrender and allow me on video. In so doing, They’d implicitly be admitting that they were harassing my communication for no good reason in the first place— while getting sued for harassing my communication. So, Thursday, Day Four of my med strike, Gestapo Gary, Trainwreck Trevor, and Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius had a game of naked Twister in the conference room. They wiped off the baby oil and sent Investigator Wylie to my cell. Trainwreck went back to his office so agitated, he ripped the heads off of three unsuspecting puppies beyond his normal daily quota.

Investigator Wylie (not to be confused with the coyote of the same name who chases the Roadrunner, though there is an uncanny physical resemblance) told me I had to get my blood pressure checked at the A-block nurse’s station or else I would be admitted to medical. I had no problem allowing an assessment anyway— with my secret stash of blood pressure pills, I could keep my blood pressure below the “admission” threshold forever.

Wylie told me the warden had been ordered to send him to get me but would say nothing further for fear I may quote him. He then returned to the task of assembling a ridiculous, giant mousetrap that came in an ACME box. No idea what that’s about.

Nurse Practitioner Nicole Carter took my blood pressure under the scrutiny of Investigator Wylie, a deputy warden, and a whole entourage of desk-monkeys who were forced to pretend they cared about my medical status, when really they hoped for an excuse to toss me in the dungeon.

My blood pressure was 150 over 82, below the 160-over-90 threshold for medical admission. Nurse Carter said that so long as I submitted to two assessments per day and I stayed below the threshold, I was fine and administrators could do nothing to end my med strike.

That night I participated in a live radio interview with a very cool radio show in Montreal. Then, I emailed Ben a thirty-second short video, heckling Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius, the fascist banning my video access.

Given their reaction, I can only guess that the Gestapo High Command did not share my sense of irony.

Part III: “...One More Pile of Swirling Hamster Chunks in His Blender...”

Friday morning, nobody asked to take my blood pressure. Something was amiss. Late in the morning, a male nurse asked if I would be admitted into medical. My answer was an emphatic NO, that I refused medical care. An hour later a guard told me medical called for me to be admitted. I declined.

My blood pressure, supposedly their medical concern, was climbing.

An hour later, a lieutenant told me I had to go and get admitted in medical whether I wanted to or not. I told him that, legally, they cannot override my medical decisions and coerce me to accept “care” that I refused. After that argument, my blood pressure was really thumping.

Not that fuckweasels ever follow their own laws, but I have a right to refuse meds whether James Kline likes it or not, for whatever reason I refuse, whether James Kline likes it or not. Nobody has any legal authority to override my medical decision, take me hostage, and hold me until I stop my med strike.

Lieutenant King came to my door at about 4:00 on Friday, after courts are closed and the warden had gone home, telling me I would be admitted to medical (i.e., dragged to the dungeon and held indefinitely without phone, email, or snail mail). I was being disappeared like a Chilean leftist labor organizer under the Pinochet regime.

While Lt. King stood there, I yelled to the prisoners who could hear that I was being taken hostage and isolated from prisoner witnesses, that the only conceivable motive was to hold me where they could deny my meds even after I agreed to start taking them again; that isolating me was part of a plan to kill me.

Lt. King left. By this time, my blood pressure, supposedly their principle concern, was soaring. I didn’t know if they intended to kill me, but they were doing a damn good job of it. If not for the meds I had squirreled away...

I took one last pill and prepared to get dragged away—maybe to die... But for my own good, of course. A hostile standoff was brewing, possibly a repeat of the close-quarters blind-fighting recounted in “Days of Teargas, Blood and Vomit,” and I could use the same tactics again since we all know fuckweasels can’t read. This time it would be seven-on-one. But I would be wearing a pair of hi top black Chucks, which makes it almost unfair.

Lucky for them, the nurse came to talk to me. She asked me

to let her take my blood pressure at the A-block nurse’s station. I agreed. Out of the cell, Lt. King and his fuckweasels sidekicks walked me out to the hallway. As I turned, I saw fuckweasels circling around behind, others at strategic points. The whole prison was on lockdown and the entirety of available security staff was there.

Fuckweasels Team Six was escorting me to the nurse’s station and intending to toss me in the dungeon indefinitely. My blood pressure, which was supposedly their principle concern, was off the fucking charts. Worse, once in the dungeon, I had no access to the stash of blood pressure pills.

I considered, this medical intervention might really kill me. At the nurse’s station...

NURSE: Doctor Kline ordered you admitted and no one can override until Monday.

ME: I’m not going. I did what Nurse Practitioner Carter said I had to do and I refuse this medical care; this is illegal.

NURSE: They WANT you to resist. Just walk down there. I’ll call Dr. Kline.

ME: Let him know, if I’m up here, I’ll let you take my blood pressure. Once I’m down there, that’s it. You won’t know what my blood pressure is until I’m back up here. So, if his concern is really medical, he can monitor me up here, or he’s flying blind all weekend while I’m in the dungeon.

Fuckweasels Team Six moved in with rolling video and cuffed me behind my back, then put leg irons on me. The whole time, I yelled, “I refuse medical treatment. I do not consent. I am being taken hostage. I am being silenced. This is illegal...” And down the elevator we went, on the called-in orders of James Kline, resident fuckweasel. I became just one more swirling pile of hamster chunks in his blender.

I prepared for a weekend of state terror.

The Long Delayed Conclusion: Medical “Observation” in the Dark Welcome to hell.

Of the four “medical observation” cells, I was placed in the one where the other prisoners could not see me. The other three, prisoners can strain their necks to look at one another. The cell I was in, the entrance was set back behind a sink and counter area, isolating me completely even from other prisoners.

The cell door is plexiglass. Inside, the full array of luxuries that compliment the standard torture suite: a fiberglass box where prior occupants were strapped down in five-point restraints... a ragged, bare mattress (perhaps with stuffing, perhaps not)... A steel sink- and-toilet combo (perhaps with remnants of prior occupants’ DNA smeared on it, perhaps not)... A half of a roll of toilet paper... A light blasting from the ceiling, all hours of the day and night... A four-inch window that looks out onto an obstruction, allowing no sunlight... A steel shower compartment the size of a phone booth carved into one wall... a camera, high up on the back wall, behind a reflective bubble that looks like a giant insect eye staring back at you...

That’s it. The environment in which you will live until further notice. Do not tip the bellhop.

The temperature is usually ten degrees below “human normal,” but that’s adjustable, depending on how much they really hate you. In September 2012, at MANCI, I could see my breath. So, entering a torture cell, the first indicator of the enemy’s true purpose is temperature. If it’s really cold, they merely want to torture you. If it’s unbearable, hypothermia cold, they really want you dead.

At the supermax, as soon as I stepped in the cell, I relaxed a bit. Fuckweasels physician Dr. James Kline didn’t want me dead; he merely wanted to torture me.

Here’s a part of the PROCESS: You enter the torture suite and the enemy gives you a few minutes to take in the ambience, which, really, takes milliseconds. A mattress and a half a roll of toilet paper require little inspection. But the point of doing this to you is to let it sink in—the cold, the emptiness, the filth. Then, after a short time, someone with interpersonal communication skills trainning, provided at fascist workshops wherever humans get crammed feet-first into blenders like Dr. Kline’s hamsters, will come to the plexiglass cell door to engage you in a relatively empathetic way, designed to provide you a glimmer of hope to balance the overwhelming dread you feel. This staffer with interpersonal communication skills trainning, typically a female staffer, will listen to your pleas and sobs and begging and special requests, but it will do no good.

You’re fucked. You You’re gonna be tortured.

You are in the torture suite for psychological disassembly, to be taken apart like a soldier breaks down his rifle for cleaning. It begins, of course, as they introduce you to an environment where you have zero control over anything and they have complete control over every aspect of your existence. Their exertion of control is key, designed to reduce you to the role of a helpless dependent, fearful and deprived.

I deliberately fuck up their process right from the start. When the empathetic nurse arrived to engage me through the plexiglass, I made no pleas or requests, no begging or sobbing. My first words were, “These are my nonnegotiable demands...”

The point, for me, is to not just project power but to exercise power over all of the things I have the power to control. So I said, “You can relate to Dr. Kline that I will let you check my blood pressure one time. If it’s below 160 over 90, which is what Nurse Practitioner Carter said it had to be for me to remain in population, you release me back to A-block and I will continue to cooperate with you. You can check my blood pressure as often as you like—in A-block.

“But if you do not release me back to population, this will be the last time you check my blood pressure until I am released back to A-block and given access to phone, mail, and email. That means that if you hold me down here against my will, you will have LESS information about my medical situation than if I were in population. So, if Dr. Kline’s real concern is my health, he’ll immediately release me to population where he can monitor my blood pressure rather than holding me down here where he cannot.”

The nurse left to relay my nonnegotiable demands to Dr. Kline. When she returned, she said Dr. Kline insisted that I get my blood pressure checked on two different shifts and if it remained under 160 over 90, he would release me to population the following day.

I had two problems. First, if I agreed, I would be into Saturday, having cooperated, and had no guarantee they would keep their word and release me. These were the same fuckweasels who said I would stay in population in the first place. Second, I didn’t have my stash of extra meds. I had no guarantee that by the time the second blood pressure check happened, that my numbers wouldn’t be too high and justify further extending my isolation.

So, I said no. I reiterated that she could check my blood pressure once. After that, the State and I would have no relationship until I returned to A-block.

Sure, they could hold my physical body in a cage and make demands of me, using their torture suite as leverage; but I had information they needed. Without blood pressure readings, their “medical observation” rationale was unsustainable; Dr. Kline with his hamsters whipping around in his blender could not justify his “medical” pretext if he was holding me in isolation where he got less medical information on me.

I controlled that information.

I held leverage.

Leverage is power.

They brought me out of the cell in shackles and chains, on video, and took my blood pressure. 150 over 70. Below the threshold for remaining in population.

PROCESS: Over the course of the next couple of hours, security staff bring an assortment of things to the cell and deliver them through the food slot. They could bring it all and drop it off when you first enter the torture suite—but that would defeat the purpose. With a delivery first of bedding, then hygiene products like soap, then food, they reinforce your dependent role and reinforce their position of power. In each exchange, they decide what to give you and when, and they set the terms of the relationship, reinforcing your powerlessness.

The guard came to ask me if I have a regular diet or a special diet. I continued pacing around the fiberglass box with the ragged mattress on it. I made no eye contact. I didn’t so much as acknowledge his existence. He repeated his question. He waited. He tapped the plexiglass door with his big, brass key.

I gave him nothing.

He walked away.

Next, two guards came with bedding. They announced, “We have some bedding here for you...”

I kept pacing. I didn’t look up, didn’t acknowledge them. They opened the food slot. Tapped on the door. After a moment they closed the food slot and left with the bedding.

Note that, if they really wanted me to have the bedding, they could have simply dropped it into my cell. The food slot was open; the bedding was right there. But, they left with it. They left with it because the bedding was a tool to establish interaction to reinforce my dependence. Since I did not participate in the desired power dynamics, they took the tool with them.

After bedding came chow. They opened the food slot and shoved the Styrofoam container in it. When I didn’t acknowledge them, they withdrew the meal and left. I kept pacing.

Next came hygiene. In a super-friendly voice, the guard said, “Hey Swain, we got some hygiene articles here for you! We have soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, towel, wash cloth...” It was like he was trying to sell me a new car. I kept pacing.

They left the meal and hygiene on the counter next to the sink just outside my cell where I could see it. They left it as a temptation. I smiled. Then I paced.

By the non-interaction when they brought the hygiene, I was driving them bonkers. The psychological element of enforcing a specific power dynamic was out the window. Far from being rendered dependent and helpless, reduced to the position of a child, I exercised my own unilateral power to terminate the relationship between myself and the State. We were in a state of nonrecognition, a state that I had dictated.

I had sacrificed creature comforts—bedding, hygiene, food— but I wasn’t willing to pay the price for them: relinquishing power to the enemy.

I paced, knowing prisoners had alerted Ben as to where I was and that a battle plan was already going into effect. The State would be under full assault by thousands of angry anarchists within hours, and then the fuckweasels would be asking themselves a difficult question to answer: Now that they had me where they wanted me, how could they get me out of there and make the conflict end?

As I paced, I spelled out messages into the video camera up on the back wall under the bug eye. I knew that camera feed went to an office where an overpaid asshole wasn’t paying attention. And, even if he was, he likely didn’t know what I was spelling out. So, my messages would be digitally stored until my attorney subpoenaed the video footage[38].

I paced.

I AM HERE AGAINST MY CONSENT. I REFUSED MEDICAL CARE.

I paced.

HI, BEN.

And paced.

IHSAN IS MY HERO.

A few more laps.

DR. KLINE DID THIS TO ME. IF I DIE, GET HIM.

At what I guessed was sundown, the cell got considerably colder. I laid down on the mat to get some sleep, knowing I’d be up during the coldest part of the night, pacing to get warm.

At breakfast, I would have 48 empty hours to endure. And I had to survive it without access to my stash of blood pressure meds. The irony, of course, is that if fuckweasel physician Dr. Kline left me alone, I’d have been fine; but his “medical intervention” for provably nonmedical reasons could possibly kill me.

As I lay down, the phone in the hall rang. I heard the guard speaking in hushed tones. He mentioned the “security camera” and asked, “What is it that he’s saying?” He was obviously speaking to someone who had noticed my sign language communications.

The guard came to the cell, knowing I wouldn’t acknowledge him, and asked me, “Do you want this light on or off?”

He then shut off the light, plunging me into total darkness for the next twenty-four hours. The camera could no longer pick up my messages, and I would be under “observation” in complete darkness, unseen by anyone. I would be in an “observation cell” in pitch black conditions.

I awoke shivering in the cold and tucked my arms inside the t-shirt. I crossed them and clutched at the inside of the sleeves to hold them shut. I then breathed exhaust down the front of my shirt. I drifted off to sleep again on that bare mattress, only to wake up shivering again.

Time to pace. Hours shivering, breathing into my t-shirt, lap after lap in the darkness. Then breakfast came. Again, I didn’t acknowledge the guard. Another victory.

When going without food, you have to monitor hydration by paying attention to your urine. You want it clear and virtually odorless. The darker and more pungent, the more dehydrated you are.

My strategy was to drink every time I took a piss. I had to drink water from the sink out of my hand, slurping it one palmful at a time. Then pace and shiver.

With no light, signing messages was out of the question. So, I imagined everyone who was with me in that cell. Family, friends, people from across the country and around the world. The cell was quite crowded.

Every half an hour, the guard came to the plexiglass door and peered into the cell, squinting, unable to see me, and then walked away. Every so often, the nurse did the same.

As far as they knew, I was several days without blood pressure meds. I was subject to spikes in blood pressure that could cause heart attacks, strokes, or aneurysms at any minute. And I was held in the medical dungeon for my own good, contrary to my own medical wishes, in order to save me from those heart attacks, strokes, and aneurysms.

But they didn’t know my vitals, and therefore didn’t know how likely some serious medical emergency was, and they had to assume that it was imminent. They also couldn’t see me and therefore couldn’t see whether or not I was exhibiting symptoms of serious medical emergencies—the same emergencies that being in the dungeon was to save me from.

So that’s when I decided to fake the signs of a stroke.

I think I did an awesome job of it too, but we won’t know for certain until my attorney gets the digital recordings. With the lights off, you’ll only be able to see my silhouette as I pass the cell door. At first, I limped a bit and appeared to lose my balance, disoriented. Then, as I continued pacing, the drag of the left foot became more pronounced. My left arm began to dangle, the hand atrophied, the thumb between the curled up fingers. As I continued, the left arm swung limp and I had to hold it with the right. My left eye was almost completely closed, the muscles of my face contracted into a grimace on that side. Then, I stumbled and fell slumped across the end of the bed closest to the door. I sat, arm dangling, face twisted, as the guard came for rounds.

He couldn’t see me having a stroke and left. The shift captain came. He couldn’t see me having a stroke either.

Then the male nurse came. I leaned into the light, arm dangling, face drawn down on one side, and I muttered incoherently out of the corner of the right side of my mouth. He left. He could see nothing.

Why was I in that cell again? Clearly not for “medical observation.” So, just in case the camera could pick me up, I faked symptoms of a stroke for about two hours until I got bored. Obviously, the asshole on the other end of that camera feed was more concerned about sign language messages I had sent to my counsel than he was about whether I survived.

My survival chances would be better if I were selected as a candidate for the hunger games than being under “medical observation.” I sure felt safe in the hands of fuckweasel Dr. James Kline and friends.

When I got tired of having a fake stroke, I paced until lunch. I sang my own lyrics to an ‘80s hit by Springsteen. “...Even if we’re just dying in the dark...”

Empty time is slow, torturous, seemingly moving in reverse, and I wondered what James Kline was up to, with his German helmet and his hamster chunks and his frogs pinned to the basement wall. Perhaps he had even hooked electrodes to the brains of cute little puppies. His experiments on humans certainly weren’t very exciting. What a fuckweasel.

I contemplated, as I paced, how James Kline would feel if people handed out flyers at the hospital where he bumbled around, or at his practice, or at the local synagogue... flyers that announced, “dr. James kline is a monster,” and then described how he abused his medical authority on behalf of the Nazis to try to break my med strike and thereby silence my video postings forever.

That picked up my spirits.

I also thought about how insurance companies raise malpractice rates if a doctor gets sued, regardless of whether he loses the lawsuit or not. I considered how I could fashion a fill-in-theblanks civil action and post it, and people who wanted to file it could print it and get it filed, and with the magic of the interweb, we could locate his insurance provider and notify them of yet another lawsuit, and another, and another...

Fuckweasel Dr. James Kline’s insurance payments would get more and more expensive. There goes the kids’ college. There goes cable. Before you know it, he’d have to even pawn the helmet and the blender. He’d be sporting a stocking cap, hacking up piles of earth worms with a Ginsu knife. Without funds for lubricant, he’d have to dry stroke just like in his intern days.

I paced, I plotted, I refused to acknowledge lunch. I refused to acknowledge dinner.

I was 24 hours without meds and my blood pressure was really creeping on me. I could feel it. I drank water, breathed deeply. It was only Saturday night and I had to make it to Monday morning. Monday morning was the goal. Kline would be in, as would the warden, getting bombarded with calls and emails about this most recent illegality. The attorney, Richard Kerger, would undoubtedly be pounding his shoe on the table and demanding access to me.[39]

Just 36 more hours.

But that’s also the window for the blood pressure spike, one that could cause a real stroke, and then I’d really be dying in the dark. Just 36 hours, but that empty time extended outward in front of me to an unseen horizon, seemingly forever. Every hour was a lifetime. As I paced, I heard the guard and the nurse talking. The nurse mentioned that Monday was a holiday. I stopped in my tracks. Sixty hours. Sixty hours without meds, with blood pressure already creeping up. Sixty hours without the med stash I had squirreled away in my cell in A-block. And I would be incommunicado, possibly until I fell over dead and no one would know it, including the clowns who were “observing” me.

I paced. Drank water. Tried to find some way around the math. If only I had stashed a few blood pressure pills in my sock. If I had done that, I could get through. But I hadn’t. I had expected to get stripped out before getting tossed in the dungeon, and hadn’t wanted them to find the blood pressure pills.

Sixty hours. Sixty.

I had to change plans. I was better off getting back to population and getting to the phone and getting the story out to the rest of the world, and to the attorney. The usefulness of a med strike or a hunger strike was no greater if I extended them to Monday than if I quit them on Saturday night.

I had already gotten all the mileage I would get, and had provoked them to obvious and illegal repression, and the remaining question was whether I would suffer real harm and even death, and for what? To go an extra, unnecessary 60 hours?

So, as I paced, I decided I would go as long as I could, but if my blood pressure kept climbing, I’d have to take a pill and give up the med strike. And that’s when the lieutenant came in.

He and the guard were talking. The guard voiced concern about my nonresponses. I heard the lieutenant say something about transfer. Transfer?

He then said, “Monday, he’s somebody else’s problem,” in hushed tones. Where was I going on Monday?

I recalled at Toledo they had packed me up and put me in the hole before sending me to the nuthouse. They had done that to isolate me and prevent my communication. It was possible that OSP planned to transfer me from the facility. If that was the case, they would keep me locked in the dungeon until the day of the transfer, no matter what.

I had a plan. I had to get out to the hospital. If I were hospitalized, that would delay the transfer. So, when the lieutenant came to the cell, I spoke with him about my ordeal. He responded cordially, as dictated by his interpersonal communications skills training. He told me that my situation would be addressed on Monday. Monday.

A captain came through next and I engaged him. His responses were almost word-for-word what the lieutenant had said. Fishy. Something was up. So, I called for the guard, had the light turned on. Asked for the bedding and the hygiene and the meal sitting on the counter.

I made the bed, never intending to sleep in it. I ate the food, including the salt, knowing that my blood pressure would go up drastically when digesting my first meal in weeks. I then took a hot shower with the hygiene amenities they had provided, knowing that a hot shower would raise my blood pressure even higher.

The plan was to elevate my blood pressure to a serious level for a short window of time when the nurse was checking it. It would be so high that, along with my complaint of chest pains, they would send me out to the hospital. From there, I would have communication with counsel and no transfer could occur until I was released.

I would postpone “diesel therapy.”

When the third shift nurse came in, I submitted to a medical assessment. My heart rate was 121 beats per minute. Jack-rabbit fast. My blood pressure was 130 over 100. So, on the back end, I was ten points OVER the standard of 160 over 90.

The nurse called Dr. Kline.

He gave me the blood pressure pill and told me that if I took it, Dr. Kline would release me back to population in just a few hours. I took it.

Having eaten and taken the pill, my hunger and med strikes were over. Central Office fuckweasels could continue banning my video visits indefinitely. So, even though my blood pressure numbers were far and away worse than when Dr. Kline had dragged me away, his real mission had been achieved and I could return to population. So, provably, nothing that had occurred was related to my health but was, instead, related to crushing my protected protest activities.

Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius could pull the plug on my video forever. That was the outcome that Dr. Kline had really served.

What a fuckweasel.

I returned to population, wrote up the narrative of my misadventures, contacted counsel, and breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t being transferred on Monday after all.

Turns out, the transfer would begin Tuesday night... Fuckweasels.

****

PRISON BUS TO SHITVILLE: THE EMERGENCY, UNPLANNED TRANSFER FROM OSP TO SOCF THAT WASN’T DESIGNED IN ANY WAY TO FUCK MY LIFE

Words, filtered through a couple weeks of low-intensity trauma:

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I awoke at 3:45, disoriented, pulling ear plugs out of my ears. Dazed, I staggered to the door. Warden Jay Lowdown was there, speaking: “Words words words, something something words.” When I said, “Huh?,” he repeated:

“Today you’re being transferred to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.”

Me: “Uh, why am I being selectively punished?”

“You’re not,” answered Jay Lowdown. He looked a lot taller in his pictures. I also noticed he had the beginnings of a moustache. I remember thinking he needs to quit it. “You’re going from one Level Four institution to another one.”

Me: “Yeah. Okay. But it still sucks. And it feels pretty selective.”

“We thought you might say that,” Jay replied. “That’s why thirty-seven others are going with you.”

Behind him, I saw deputy wardens, unit staff, and Special Response Teams (SRTs). The SRTs wear black fatigues and hats, paramilitary style. They are also sometimes called STAR, “Special Tactical something Response.” I think the “A” stands for “Asshole.” They typically prefer STAR to SRT, because it feels more glamorous when they have STAR on their hats. They go shopping or walk into bars or wait for pedicures at their favorite beauty shops and their hats announce them as STARs.

A couple of them came to my cell and within moments, everything I owned was crammed in boxes, the last time I would ever see half of my property. Within minutes, I was standing in my cell with a half a roll of toilet paper and a lot of empty space. The STAR assholes moved on to the next cell like a biblical swarm of locusts dispatched by a loving, murderous god. I stood there, confused.

I was going to Lucasville.

Lucasville, home of the 1993 prisoner uprising, still an open wound in the warped, malformed psyche of Ohio’s torture industrial complex. It’s also the location where Danny Grimm was beaten half to death at intake, and ended up getting the largest jury award in U.S. history for a prisoner assaulted by prison staff. It’s the place where prison officials attempted to send Timothy “Little Rock” Reed, a published prisoner writer, so they could have him murdered. In a case like no other in history, Little Rock was granted asylum in New Mexico.

Lucasville is still the place they’d send a prisoner writer like Little Rock if they wanted him dead.

Sucks to be me.

STARs came behind the packing crew and looped orange transport clothes through our door handles. Thirty-eight of us. I had never seen any shit like this. Unit managers and case managers hefted our boxed property onto carts and hauled them away.

Transfers work like this: There are long periods of intolerable waiting punctuated by flurries of ridiculous and very stressful activity. And then back to mind-numbing waiting again. So, once my property was packed and whisked away to get damaged and destroyed and torn to pieces by baggage consultants moonlighting from the local airport and a pack of chimpanzees from the local zoo, there was at least a lifetime for imagining the interminable terrors that would follow before the next flurry of nonsense.

STARs came cell to cell, stripping us out. They take your blues and watch you get naked, open your mouth... fingers through hair... lift nuts... wiggle fingers... turn, show bottoms of feet... squat and cough while spreading your butt cheeks. Then they toss you orange transport clothing and orange slippers. If you’re lucky, you get a left and a right and at least one of them fits.

They herded everyone from my range who was transferring into a plexiglass fishbowl, recreation cage A. The upper range transfers got herded into recreation cage B. There were twelve of us from pod 7, out of sixteen prisoners. Doing calculations, they’d be taking prisoners from other Security Level 4A pods—from 4, 6, and 8.

Umar and Klown from my range are nearly blind, but the STAR fuckweasels claim they are not allowed eyeglasses on transports. Some unidentified asshole claimed to be a supervisor and said glasses are never permitted on transports, despite my own experience of a dozen transports with guys wearing glasses.

Breakfast: peanut butter, grits, two slices of bread. Nobody drinks the milk. That’s a transport protocol: no breakfast fluids. We would be on a prison bus all day. In years past, I’ve been on transfers where piss was sloshing forward and back on the floorboards... or where a prisoner with the shits left a steaming, stinking pile under a bus seat... or where a death row prisoner sick from anaesthesia puked everywhere.

So, words of wisdom, if you’re getting on a prison bus:

1. Don’t drink the fluids at breakfast.

2. Evacuate all bodily wastes at the last available opportunity.

3. Hope everyone else does too.

Next, we went out one at a time to get shackled up. First, cuffs in front. Then, the “black box” on the cuffs, put on wrong to make the cuffs dig in. Then, belly chain looped through the box. Finally, shackles, also known as ankle-biters, put on tight to make the ankles bleed.

We then stood facing a wall for a couple of centuries.

Eventually, the STARs escorted us to the elevator. As soon as it opened, the bewildering cold from below rattled through us. With a straight face I asked one of the STAR goons if we were going to have to wear those big, bulky transport coats just because it was cold. He really didn’t know I was being sarcastic. When he answered, “No,” several prisoners laughed.

In the garage, arctic air blasted us. We shuffled to the bus in shackles. Major Drooling Erection was standing there next to Deputy Warden Bracie, as usual. He said, “Hey Swain, that piece you wrote was really funny.” He was speaking of the article where I described him drooling over Ms. Bracie (and don’t tell his wife). As I got on the prison bus to Shitville, I yelled back, “Yeah, I can see how much you enjoyed it.”

We sat one to a seat since the seats were only wide enough to seat one and a half adults. The STARs provided each of us a plastic container to piss in. Some prisoners complained that their containers already smelled of piss. Someone else’s piss. Nothing but the best on a prison bus.

Internally, a prison bus is not the school bus of your youth. There are crash gates welded into place, every five or ten seats, dividing the passenger space into different sections, each of those gates locked before the bus gets rolling. There’s metal grating welded to the windows. There’s even a metal bar welded over the safety hatch in the ceiling. The passenger compartment is separated from the driver’s space by another metal gate welded in and locked. The front of the bus can hold up to four guards including the driver.

So, we get to the question: what if something happens during a prison bus ride? Well, the short answer is, you’re fucked. The longer answer is, you’re really fucked.

The bus isn’t stopping for a medical emergency. No one is going to administer medical care. The only people who might care about your welfare are chained, cuffed, and shackled. You’ll have to hold on until you reach your destination—in an hour... or five...

And that goes even for an emergency created by the geniuses driving the prison bus. Consider, with twenty-four prisoners on board and four guards, any emergency response to a serious accident would focus on the guards first. That means you won’t get help until at least five ambulances show up. But if another vehicle is involved, and if one person in that vehicle is hurt, that pushes your assistance back to the sixth ambulance.

Now consider: there may be twenty-four prisoners. You may not get the first ambulance devoted to helping prisoners. If you’re in the back of the prison bus with a full load, you get the thirtieth ambulance. How many ambulances do you think they have in Podunk, Shitville, and the surrounding community? Exactly.

If the bus crashes on Wednesday, you may get extracted from the wreckage by Saturday, weather permitting. Chances are better that you’ll get eaten by wolves. We sat on a cold bus, shivering.

Out the window to our right, all of our property was stacked up in packing boxes. Next to those sat our televisions, stacked neatly.

We waited for about three decades on that cold bus while STARs loaded the remainder of the transfer prisoners into vans. For reference, if given the choice between a prison bus or the prison van, take the bus. It’s more drafty and you get rattled around, but you have more space. Typically, you’re crammed shoulder to shoulder in the prison van, with knees grinding against the seat or cage in front of you. Sucks.

The garage door rattled up, the bus fired up, and we were immediately fooled into thinking the trip had begun. We rolled out of the garage and waved goodbye to our property still sitting on the concrete. We didn’t know it then, but it would be a long, long time before we saw any of our stuff again.

The bus rolled out of the garage and stopped.

The sun was up—somewhere. Snow flurries blew everywhere, creating white-out conditions. Guards got out of the lead vehicle and strolled importantly around the bus, holding AR 15 rifles with laser scopes. Some of them had combat webbing with flash-bang grenades and an array of other nonsense.

If you are ever confronting live fire from assholes who work for the prison complex, the safest place to be is in the middle of their laser sights. You want that laser dot right in the center of your forehead. The reason being, none of these lazy fucks actually sight in their rifles to their own eyes, so odds are that where they are aiming is not where they are actually shooting. Probability is, they’ll lock on you as a target, pull the trigger, and blow my brains out; not that I use them.

Conversation on the bus turned to the fate of our personal property. The fantastical optimists among us insisted that our property was already loaded in the undercarriage of the bus. But there hopes were dashed when Steve, in the seat in front of me, described how he had written “1 of 3,” “2 of 3,” and “3 of 3” on his boxes, and he distinctly saw those boxes sitting on the curb when we rolled away. I had also seen my green Zenith television, a veritable dinosaur even in prison, a singular oddity, sitting on the curb.

We sat quietly, contemplating the implications... how long we might end up wearing the socks and underwear that we had on, before we could expect access to the rest of our stuff...

Another fantastical optimist claimed to have seen a box truck, and he theorized that they had moved us out of the garage to load our property into the box truck. So, by that theory, we were only waiting to embark due to concerns by prison super-fascists (who just fucked us sideways) over our future creature comforts.

Optimists. They really do march into the “shower,” and they really believe the stormtroopers handed out soap for us to use it. And they think that Zyklon B gas seeping out of the vents is just steam... Optimists.

A guard with a rifle and way too much equipment climbed onto the bus. He was immediately peppered with marginallyrelevant questions, even though he clearly knew nothing. He had grenades and web gear and canteens. His name immediately became “Boom Beach.” Boom Beach didn’t know how long the trip was. Boom Beach didn’t know what was happening with our property. Boom Beach didn’t know the name of the Los Angeles Dodger in the 1970s who broke the career pinch hit record.

The correct answers were: Forever, wood-chipper, and Manny Mota.

After Boom Beach left, the topic turned to how long the trip takes from Youngstown to Lucasville. A variety of imprisoned travel experts weighed in. Some said it takes three and a half hours. Someone else said five. Some said six.

The determinative question was, were we going “straight shot” or “hub.” Straight shot, we’d go from Youngstown to Lucasville without stopping to pick up other prisoners. Hub, we would pick up others and then lay over at the corrections medical center for several hours, then board the bus to Lucasville.

I had experienced way too many hubs. I took the hub from Toledo to Mansfield. We drove from Toledo, passed Mansfield, and arrived in Columbus. I then waited for Mansfield prisoners to experience medical neglect before we loaded up on the Mansfield bus and drove back in the same direction I just came from.

I awoke in Toledo before 4:00 am. I arrived in Mansfield just before midnight. I had spent that entire time cuffed, chained, and shackled. Hubs suck.

I listened to prisoners debate whether we’d take the straight shot to Lucasville, or take the hub. For all anyone knew, we would be driven to a local landfill and shot. So, I yelled to the driver and asked him if we were taking the straight shot or hub. The driver turned his head slightly to the right and said, “Straight shot.”

I believed him. I believed him not because guards are honest or have integrity, but because this guy was morbidly obese and he had turned his head the minimal amount while yelling the minimum number of words at the lowest possible decible level to be heard. This confirmed for me that this specimen was NOT ambitious. Whatever else liars are, they have ambitions. This guy was too lazy to lie about the bus ride.

I gave it an 80% chance we’d go straight shot. The debate resumed as to whether a straight shot to Lucasville would take three and a half hours or five hours. Nobody predicted nine.

I predicted that we would get there some time around Saturday. Lots of prisoners laughed. Those with the most prison bus experience only grinned, without humor.

We finally embarked with a lead vehicle, three vans following us, and a trail vehicle. The convoy was more militarized than the Ferguson Police Department. When we hit stop-and-go city traffic, a bank sign announced the time as 9:34 am. I had been awake for roughly six hours and we had traveled a grand total of about two miles. At that rate, we would arrive in Lucasville, not on Saturday as I had predicted, but in late June.

Youngstown, as far as industrial northern cities go, looks like a rape victim. At one time a thriving steel town, it’s been slapped around and forcibly penetrated by a predatory economic order that left Youngstown listless in the corner, its clothes torn apart, its face bleeding.

If you don’t look closely, everything appears okay. But the houses... roofs are missing shingles. Porches lack paint. Flags are faded and ragged. We’re talking about properties desperately trying to hang onto their value for dear life—but slipping. There’s an incredible sucking sound as the population evacuates, the downtown area with darkened, empty storefronts like molars knocked out of the city’s mouth.

Swivelization has unraveled here, but the people of Youngstown, swivelized to the end, have committed to going down shopping and working, even if the only job prospects are at the super-duper-max.

Outside of Youngstown we saw an empty interstate for a minute before we got to Akron. Housing developments, shopping malls, stores, the standard Americana—but somehow it felt... desperate. Just one breath beyond Akron and the landscape changed: smatterings of ranch-style homes littering the countryside between hills and forests, the yards surrounded with broken fences, tire swings with the ropes dry-rotted and the tires left like homicide victims under the trees, basketball backboards over garage doors with the rusty hoops slumping with time and disuse. Swivel- ization, like an alarm clock unwinding... slowly... ticking... down...

Hills, forests, beautiful open fields under blown snow, then we would encounter another Shitville, one after another, Shitville after Shitville, Fucksburg after Fucksburg, half-abandoned towns huddled against the wind and snowfall and arctic freeze, shitholes on the verge of extinction.

I thought about these abandoned homes in disrepair, thousands of squats in the middle of nowhere, Paper Street Soap Companies waiting on Tyler Durdens and Marla Singers to arrive, under the radar, off the grid, no law enforcement for miles and miles. I thought about how these half-abandoned spots could be centers for hastening the collapse of swivelization. Bring lots of guns.

I estimated our average highway travel speed to be about 35 miles per hour. We crept along at a speed just fast enough that the speed of the planet’s rotation, being what it is, didn’t roll us backward, causing us to arrive back in Youngstown before lunch.

Even fantastical optimists adjusted their estimates to five hours. I stuck with my prediction that we would arrive on Saturday. Fewer prisoners laughed.

By the time my stomach was groaning for lunch, my feet were numb. The only thing the prison bus could outrun was its heater.

Another bit of advice: Don’t bother trying to sleep on a prison bus. You have a greater chance of harnessing the latent powers of your mind to bend a steel spoon than you do sleeping on a prison bus. Prison buses have the identical make and model of shock absorbers to those used by covered wagons in the westward settlement of America. And there is not a single chuckhole on a single highway anywhere on the continent that the driver of a prison bus won’t swerve in order to hit.

Passengers on a prison bus are reduced to bobbleheads, bouncing around, chains jangling like Dickens ghosts. To get the full experience, you’d have to sit in a doctor’s waiting room, wrapped in chains with the heat off, during a nine-hour 6.4 magnitude earthquake.

We arrived in Caldwell, Ohio, about two hours after my stomach started screaming for food. Caldwell is a former coal town gone ghost, now home to Noble Correctional. Noble is built just like other Level 2 shitholes—Belmont, Richland, Lake Erie—packing hundreds of prisoners into pre-fab barns with rows of bunk beds. All those prisons were built along the same general blueprint, slapped together by the same inept profiteers with insider contracts. We stopped at Noble for gas. No shit.

The bus ride was so ill-conceived, so last-minute, they scrambled the prison bus from Mansfield in the middle of the night, in a snowstorm, to haul ass to Youngstown. It arrived with a quarter tank. So, instead of heading straight toward Lucasville, we had to travel due south down to the eastern border of Ohio in order to get gas in Caldwell.

After the bus got gas, we backed away from the pump to allow the rest of the fuckweasel convoy to top off. As we sat, prisoners asked about lunch. One of the guards, stuffing his own face, told us we’d be taken inside the prison and given lunch. A short time later, another guard, also stuffing his face, assured us that the bag lunches were prepared and would be passed out to us.

Of course, we rolled away without lunch. The assholes at Noble Correctional didn’t have lunches made. The transfer was so ill- conceived in the middle of the night that no one had time to slap together some sandwiches for us. No lunch for us.

If you’re diabetic, make a mental note that on any given prison transfer, you may just arrive in a coma. But, on the bright side, you’ll miss out on hours and hours of slow-roasted suffering experienced by everyone else.

So, we rolled out of Caldwell at the death-defying speed of 35 miles an hour, headed away from Shitville, passing through Shit- ville, with our final destination: Shitville. But we weren’t driving straight toward that destination. To travel southwest at an angle was just too many watts for the bus driver’s tiny little speakers. So, instead we headed due south and, at some point before driving into Kentucky, we would head west. Fuck “the-shortest-distance- between-two-points” and all that shit.

We were in uncharted territory. We would travel south until we smelled it, then turn right until we stepped in it. My estimate of arriving on Saturday was looking more and more realistic.

Outside of Caldwell, we picked up a police escort. Two Highway Patrol cars with lights flashing led us through several counties. There may have even been a helicopter. You would have thought they were transporting the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin, Cat Woman, and Mr. Freeze—all on one bus. Ridiculous. Nobody had seen anything like it in prison bus history.

We passed the time listening to the stories of the veterans of the Lucasville experience. Several prisoners had been there before. So, we heard tales across the decades, from the ‘80s, ‘90s, and since the turn of the century. They told us who the assholes among the staff are. Or, more accurately, who the assholes are not.

We rolled up to the prison about sundown—cold, exhausted, hungry, and sore from the restraints digging in everywhere. We got escorted in to sit on benches as winter winds screamed through the hallway and snapped at our clothes. Staff left the door open just out of general spite. We waited. Had restraints removed. Waited. Stripped out and got a set of blues to change into. Waited. Received a net bag with blankets and sheets, a towel and a wash cloth. Waited. Spoke to a nurse. Waited. Somewhere in the middle of that, I think I slept with my eyes open. Someone told me I was heading to L5. I got a Styrofoam container that held a leather meat patty of the dead variety, a few spoons of cardboard potato flakes, two slices of white bread, and frozen apple chunks.

Clearly, the prisoners’ demand from the 1993 uprising that the prison officials improve the food quality had been extremely slow in being implemented. 2015, the food still sucks.

L5. Where the 1993 uprising started. I’m in cell 37, which has scorch marks inadequately painted over. The bars of my cell are the ugliest color green you’ve ever seen.

For prisoners, there are three periods of Lucasville history: pre-Uprising, Uprising, and post-Uprising. For us, the Uprising was a period of weeks in April and May of 1993. But for ODRC employees and, in particular, Lucasville employees, there are two periods of Lucasville history: pre-riot and now. For them, the Lucasville Uprising never ended. Prisoners are in an enemy camp just waiting to pounce and kill them all, and staff make sure that when the spillage of human fluids finally and inevitably resumes, prisoners will not so much as break even. They have resolved to make enough prisoners bleed and suffer that the next outbreak of prisoner violence will be nothing more than paying it forward. The fascists are keeping score.

Employees who came to work here after the riot and have no direct experience of the uprising are indoctrinated into the collective memory. They are traumatized vicariously, by proxy, the mythology passed down, ensuring that the revenge kick will never cease.

It’s all very over-the-top when you consider that only one prison guard died, and he wasn’t likely to find a cure for cancer in the first place. His name was Vallendingham. If he had died in a swimming pool drain accident, which is a much greater odds-on chance than dying in a prison riot, pools today may be considerably safer due to the outrage of all of his coworkers, and the prison at Lucasville would be far less brutal. But, he had the dumb luck of sputtering out in the midst of a prison riot. And so it goes.

Now his former coworkers and the genius who replaced him commemorate the life and death of this one organism out of seven billion by turning the prison at Lucasville into a seething hate-hole.

I spent the first three nights curled up with my mattress on the floor next to the radiator. Third night, the heat cut off. After a week in the same underwear, I gave up on getting my property. I stripped naked and ran around on all fours, feeding on raw meat and wiping my ass by scooting on the floor like a dog. That’s just the natural response to the reductive programming administered at the end of a billyclub. Turning humans wild.

Lucasville may well be one of those experiences where even those who survive it don’t make it out alive.

Wish me luck...

* * * *

Beerbong Tommy Throws JPay Under the Bus, Reveals Algorithm Used by JPay to Snitch Out Prisoner Communication

In a ridiculous “Opposition” filed by Beerbong Tommy, Chief of the State Terror Defense Bureau on behalf of the dozen fuckweasels who had Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain tortured and terrorized, Beerbong threw the JPay corporation under the bus. In Exhibits 5(A), 5(E), 5(F), 5(G), 5(H), and 5(K), Beerbong attaches the actual communications that JPay sent to prison fascists, alerting fascists to “key” words appearing in Sean’s outgoing communication.

Based on this disclosure, it is clear that JPay Corporation employs a kind of “spyware” in an effort to “catch” prisoner communication that may interest the prison’s Gestapo High Command. After “sifting” prisoner communications for key words, JPay then forwards the copies of prisoners’ private communications to the Gestapo.

As shown by JPay’s own documents, made public by BeerBong Tommy, the key words that were searched and found in Sean’s communication included: escape, fence, murder, straw, fight, death, blood, police, kill, investigator, gang, assault, boss.

In this way, JPay’s snitchware serves to red-flag content of prisoners’ communication.

The identifier at the bottom of the page reads:

https://facility.jpay.com/MailViewerLetter.aspx?1id=126177050&mailType=1&IsArchive=F...

The implications are vast. Sean has theorized all along that JPay was information sharing with the FBI to monitor prisoner communication and financial transactions, providing access to giant pools of metadata for use to identify, target, and spy on prisoner supporters, tracking conversations and money movements. The revelation of this complex and broadly-applied JPay snitchware further supports Sean’s theory.

“Now we know why the FBI was on site and why I was tortured right after I revealed the illegality of JPay, the FBI’s snitchware partner,” Sean said. “Stay tuned to see how much Beerbong Tommy reveals about FBI complicity in the torture of domestic prisoner-whistleblowers. If the case goes on long enough, we may solve the mystery of who shot JFK and what’s hidden in Area 51.”

The FBI is still unavailable for comment.

JPay, applying snitchware to assist the fascist fuckweasels, at their website, brags that their information systems have never been compromised.

Never.

* * * *

Black Lightning Algorithm Prompts Investigation of Ben Turk and Seanswain.Org by Fuckweasel Bozos of Ineptitude: At Issue, Anarchist Prisoner’s Super Power, Shooting Fire Out of his Ass

In 2010, then Mansfield Warden Terry Tibbals, during a community service shindig, told Sean Swain, a skilled painter for Community Service, all about Tibbals’ black Lexus. He was pretty proud of his car. In fact, it was all he talked about.

Conventional wisdom says that men often use cars as phallic symbols to compensate for the size of their penises. This could not be the case for Tibbals, however, since, at roughly 400 pounds, he has likely never seen his own penis.

So, whatever his motives for getting the car, he also acquired the personalized license plate, BLACK LIGHTNING, his second favorite topic of banal conversation.

It would appear that Tibbals has blabbed his personalized plates to so many people that the Ohio Department of Retribution and Corruption has included BLACK LIGHTNING into the algorithm they use to scan all prisoners’ outgoing emails. According to BeerBong Tommy Miller, the assistant attorney general defending the ODRC against Sean Swain’s lawsuit, it was Swain’s most recent mention of BLACK LIGHTNING in an outgoing email that drew red flags and led to the investigation of Swain... requiring them to cancel Swain’s completely unrelated video visits. Those video visits would have given Swain the chance to explain the 12 Monkey frame-up and other topics, a nightmare to deluded hierarch fuckweasels who have sought to silence Swain since 2012.

“Good thing they have that BLACK LIGHTNING algorithm to catch me repeating what that asshole Tibbals told me,” Swain said. “Of course, they could have just read ‘Days of Teargas, Blood and Vomit,’ which has been posted at the site for about two years.”

ODRC officials and their lawyer, BeerBong Tommy, are making a big deal of this revelation regarding Tibbals’ plate number, as if people who wanted to know Tibbals’ plate number couldn’t go to the parking lot of London Corruptional, the prison he is currently destroying, and look at the car in the space marked WARDEN.

“The last I heard, the Lexus doesn’t come standard with a cloaking device,” Swain said. “This is provably a non-issue to justify silencing the video that would expose their crimes. They’re really grasping at straws.”

But, according to BeerBong Tommy, it doesn’t end there. The FBI was called in to investigate Sean Swain’s “threats to burn down the Statehouse.”

Swain [was] housed at a supermax facility in Youngstown, Ohio, hundreds of miles from Columbus, where the Statehouse exists. He has no access to fire or fire making materials, i.e., accelerants. He also has no way to get out of the facility or to travel to Columbus in order to cause a fire there.

In a recent communique, Sean Swain admitted to entering into secret talks with Drew Barrymore who, as a child actor, played the lead character in the movie, Firestarter, lighting fires with her mind. Swain claims to have developed this ability also, under Barrymore’s guidance, though his super power is not as evolved.

“I can’t cause spontaneous combustion like Drew (Barrymore), but I can shoot fire out of my ass,” Swain said.

His ability is inconsistent but he finds it to be stronger when he eats spicy foods. He contends that the flames he shoots from his ass are actually more terrifying than Barrymore’s spontaneous combustion:

“Not only can I turn you into a crispy critter just like she can, but in your last moments you’re thinking, ‘Eww, this came out of his lower intestines.’ So, it’s like being consumed by a deadly fart.”

Swain’s recent statement to the FBI ended with a demand to leave Ben Turk and seanswain.org alone or they would “feel the wrath of blazing super farts.”

It is possible that Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain’s newly developed super power could upset the balance of power in the world. “If Drew Barrymore and I joined forces,” Swain said, “we could liberate the world...”

Drew Barrymore was unavailable for comment.

THE FBI NEEDS YOUR HELP WITH THIS INVESTIGATION Contact the Fuckweasels Bozos of Ineptitude in Cleveland (216) 522-1400 and Columbus (614) 224-1183 and talk to them for hours. Tell them everything you know about Sean Swain, seanswain.org, spontaneous combustion, and Sean’s blazing super-farts. Do all that you can to help the FBI solve this cosmic mystery and restore Sean’s video visits. Record those calls and send audio for posting at seanswain.org today!

SHERLOCK PAULIE SUPERGENIUS LAWYERS UP, URGES CALLERS TO CONTACT BEERBONG TOMMY REGARDING INVESTIGATION INTO ANARCHIST PRISONER’S SUPER-POWERS

In recent phone interviews regarding the “investigation” into Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain’s video visits (that did not happen), Ohio Department of Retribution and Corruption Investigator Paul Shoemaker, a.k.a., “Sherlock Paulie SuperGenius,” referred callers to legal counsel defending prison fuckweasels in the civil action filed by Sean’s attorney... Paulie SuperGenius, having reviewed the white noise of the four video visits he did not allow Ben Turk to have with Sean, reached the undeniable conclusion that he really, really fucked up by targeting Sean for no legitimate reason at all, and rather than give callers the same ridiculous answer that tasted bad in his own mouth (a contrivance about BLACK LIGHTNING and burning down the Statehouse—as if anyone would miss it) Paulie SuperGenius referred callers to a lawyer.

That lawyer is BeerBong Tommy Miller, Chief of the StateTerror Defense Bureau at the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. BeerBong Tommy, who is almost just like a real attorney, has defended the ODRC’s list of hapless villains who tortured Sean for being an anarchist (“anarchist: someone who recognizes we’re better off on our own rather than being oppressed by these hapless clowns”) and for telling the truth in public (“the truth: we’re better off on our own rather than being oppressed by these hapless clowns”).

BeerBong Tommy, who is almost just like a real attorney, already threw Trainwreck Trevor, ODRC counsel, under the bus, revealing that Trainwreck had a hand in every aspect of the terror

program designed to break Sean for being an anarchist (“anarchist: someone who realizes that hierarch torture-creeps like Trainwreck are sociopaths”). So, BeerBong Tommy ( who is almost just like a real attorney) becoming the point man for this fiasco proves he’s an idiot (idiot: someone who doesn’t realize that hierarch torturecreeps like Trainwreck are sociopaths).

Meanwhile, anticipating that Sean may face federal charges for his admission that he has actively cultivated the super power of shooting flames out of his ass and therefore plotted the imminent destruction of the Statehouse (as if anyone would miss it), supporters questioned an expert who may eventually be called in Swain’s defense. This expert affirmed “to a reasonable degree of medical certainty” that, generally, “all farts are flammable” and “Sean Swain’s ass” is “wholly unremarkable.” Also, Sean’s counsel... prepares to file for an injunction in federal court that, if granted, would put the smack down on these state-terrorists and would forbid them from blocking Sean’s communications mediums based on made up nonsense (like BLACK LIGHTNING and burning down the Statehouse, as if anyone would miss it).

* * * *

An Open Letter to a Federal Judge on Burning Down the Statehouse

Dear Judge,

I write this with the intent to persuade you with reasoned arguments to burn down the Ohio Statehouse. It seems to me that if someone from some other profession were to light that building aflame—a teacher or a sales representative—the act would not have the same impact as it would if a federal judge, someone with the highest legal acumen, spoke clearly about the legal and moral offense that is the Ohio Statehouse, using gasoline for nouns and matches for verbs.

I do not believe that persuading you to such a free-will act will be any easy exercise. I anticipate that it will be quite a difficult task. Not only are you steeped in the false narrative of the hierarchs, which is a very powerful tool to keep all of us from clearly seeing

our objective reality, but, in addition, you have a pretty good gig going on. You’re a federal judge. That’s no small amount of clout and prestige and power, beyond what’s probably better than a decent pay check. And, steeped in the hierarch narrative, your bench is the perfect platform for you to change the world. Or so it would seem, Your Honor.

So, for you to march into the Ohio Statehouse with a can of gasoline and a book of matches to make a bold and shocking statement about the illegitimacy of power would be for you to essentially chuck that whole trajectory of your life in the trashcan. Quite a personal sacrifice.

While it may be unlikely that I will inspire you to torch the Ohio Statehouse, in keeping with my optimistic approach to things, I’d like to thank you, Your Honor, just in case you really do it. And if you do it, I recommend you get a good lawyer...

And, to be clear, I direct these arguments to you as a kind of literary device, but also to put the arguments to the ultimate test. If anyone can exploit a flaw or fracture in my reasoning, it would be a federal judge. But if, at the end of it, you have no counterargument, then I think we have to confidently conclude that the arguments I present are perfectly sound—however it is we may feel about them.

I submit to you that the Ohio Statehouse does not legally ex- ist—according to your law—and that it is constructed in the midst of a territory that is not legally the property of the so-called “State of Ohio,” nor the United States, and that, further, the “State of Ohio” does not legally exist—according to your law. Further still, it would appear from the historical evidence that this rogue state calling itself Ohio constructed the Ohio Statehouse only through deliberate abuse of its own system of justice, enslaving skilled laborers in order to exploit them in the construction of this monument to oppression, erected upon the corpses of thousands of innocents.

And so my argument starts:

The Treaty of Greenville in 1795 set aside the area we call Ohio as “unceded Indian Territory,” and forbid “white people” from entering. As the U.S. Constitution regards treaties as the highest law of the land and demands that no enactment of state law may even abrogate a US treaty, I believe I need not attempt to impress you,

Your Honor, regarding this treaty’s legal authority.

No subsequent treaty between these parties was ever ratified.

Legally speaking, the Treaty of Greenville remains law.

Legally speaking, you are currently located in unceded Indian Territory.

In 1803, a guy named Thomas Worthington, a white guy forbidden by U.S. treaty from entering this unceded Indian Territory, got together with thirty-some friends, all white guys, and wrote the Ohio Constitution, claiming, in contravention of US treaty, to turn unceded Indian Territory into a state.

Legally speaking, Tom and his pals were trespassing.

The theft of this Indian Territory was facilitated by the first documented use of biological warfare on an innocent, civilian population. I describe this more fully in Ohio, Part I... The tribes of Ohio were given smallpox-infected blankets, exterminating them. Hundreds of thousands died, including the elderly, women, and children. It was an act so reprehensible that Adolf Hitler, in his book Mein Kampf, made references to this racial cleansing as an inspiration for a project he hoped to undertake in the future.

The illegal conquest of Ohio gave Hitler his grand ideas about racial cleansing.

So the illegal violation of US treaty was accomplished through well-documented crimes against humanity, through deliberate biological warfare, through genocide. War criminals without any legal legitimacy occupied and colonized the area called Ohio.

Since, there has been no intervening act that could in any way legitimize or validate murder, theft, and abrogation of a treaty that remains your law. In fact, in the 1950s, at the close of the Indian Claims Commission, US Attorney General Francis Biddle admitted to the US Senate that there existed not a single piece of paper to justify US possession of more than one third of the continental US, to include, in his diagrams, the area called Ohio.

So, in the twentieth century, the highest law enforcement official in the US, on record and under oath, testified that Ohio is, legally speaking, Indian Territory.

After 1803, thieves and murderers, in an effort to make their illegal project seem legitimate and legal, established themselves a central “government,” where they intended to exercise authority they did not legitimately possess. They needed a building as a testament to their swindle’s validity, and they sought to construct their monument cheaply. According to a documentary aired on the Ohio Channel, on public broadcasting, the rogue state called Ohio undertook to acquire labor; it used its justice system to frame skilled workers in the trades that the State required for the Statehouse’s construction. The State then used those prisoners as slave labor.

People believing themselves to be citizens of a state were framed for crimes and exploited, their lives destroyed, in furtherance of an illegal project undertaken by rogue statists to legitimize their swindle. Innocent people were enslaved to build the Statehouse. Because the so-called State cut corners on worker safety, many of those workers, framed by the courts and exploited for their skills, plummeted to their deaths. They were essentially human sacrifices to the construction of a blood-soaked idol erected on blood-soaked soil.

So, objectively, when we view the Ohio Statehouse through this lens, we see that, legally speaking, the State of Ohio does not exist; the nonexistent State of Ohio has no authority over the territory it controls by virtue of the genocide it committed on the owners of the land (who still legally own it); the nonexistent State of Ohio possessed no legal authority to erect a structure upon land it did not own; and the nonexistent State of Ohio undertook the construction of the structure through a criminal conspiracy to enslave and exploit law-abiding citizens, some of whom lost their lives.

Welcome to “The Heart of It All.” For a more developed treatment of all of this, with references, I recommend that you read Ohio, Parts I-III, available at seanswain.org.

Irrefutably and undeniably, this illegal rogue state calling itself Ohio has perpetrated a centuries-long, complex, vast criminal conspiracy under the auspices of legitimate authority, and their base of operations, the “den” of this den of thieves, is called The Ohio Statehouse. From there, the vast crime against humanity continues. To not burn it down is to become an accomplice, a collaborator, not merely in perpetuating a false history, but in maintaining a continued mythology, a false one, a false mythology that allows for the exercise of illegitimate authority in the present and into the future. Not burning down the Ohio Statehouse equates with being a “good German,” one of millions of deluded “little Eichmanns,” marching to the drum of this false mythology.

It is more than denial; it is complicity to the ongoing, centuries-old atrocity. In this context, burning down the Statehouse is an act of conscience, a noble and heroic statement in opposition to an illegitimate exercise of power and authority. And if a federal judge burned it down, that would not only get the world’s attention and create a global “teachable moment,” but it would be an act consistent with the oath to uphold the US Constitution and its holdings regarding the primacy of US treaties. Not to mention the public space it would open by eliminating a phallic eyesore.

And, while I believe these arguments are irrefutable, I would like to point out that, even if you do not accept these arguments and you instead conclude, Your Honor, that the Ohio Constitution (written by thirty-some trespassing white guys in Indian Territory) is valid, then torching the Ohio Statehouse still makes perfect legal and moral sense.

Article I, Section 2, of the Ohio Constitution provides that the people have the right to “abolish the government,” and that we may abolish it “whenever (we) may deem it necessary.” This word “abolish” implies force. To abolish something is to force it to cease to exist, without consulting it.

As, in the course of human affairs, no government has ever peaceably yielded to its own abolition, we can easily conclude that Tom and Friends, the white guys trespassing on Indian Territory, anticipated that, for people to “abolish” a government, the people would invariably have recourse to employ political violence.

So, if you are a resident of this so-called State of Ohio, Your Honor, I would urge you to put an end to this blood-soaked monster called the “State of Ohio.” I would urge you to exercise your recognized rights under Article I, Section 2, of the Ohio Constitution, and torch the central headquarters of this violent, murderous, thieving rogue-state before it shakes down its unwary victims for one more dollar in protection money, i.e., “taxes.”

I am an unwavering and militant advocate for the exercise of our rights under Article I, Section 2, of the Ohio Constitution, and I deem the abolition of the government “necessary.” I hope, given the information I have presented, that you too become an unwavering and militant advocate for the abolition of this rogue state.

I know the abolition of oppressive systems for dominating and exploiting humans is our only hope.

Having said all that, what does any of this have to do with whether I am permitted video visits and the same venues for speech as other prisoners who are dumber than me, who are less informed, who do not yet recognize the undeniable and irrefutable truths that are at the foundation of my system of thinking—a system of thinking that makes more sense, and provably so, than the deluded and false mythology of hierarchy and the senseless silliness of mindless state-worship? In order to address the human race on video and present my thoughtful views, my video access is dependent upon my theoretical and philosophical acceptance that states, including the rogue state holding me hostage, are legitimate and have a right to exist? From where does a precondition on the exercise of a protected right under your laws derive?

Only state-worshipping prisoners under the delusion of hierarchy’s false mythology may participate in the video visitation service? Does that sound right?

The fact that rogue-state apologists would propose such nonsense only reinforces my position. I believe the solution is obvious.

And gas prices are really low.

Thank you for your time and kind consideration of what I have presented, and if you see some error in my reasoning, I hope you immediately bring it to my attention and, also, to the attention of everyone who has been misled by my error. But, if not, I invite you, Your Honor, to collaborate with myself and others in bringing about the future we all deserve.

One free of oppression and exploitation.

Freedom, Sean Swain Anarchist Prisoner * * * *

Memorandum of Opinion and Order, March 17, 2015

[The following is the text of the order issued by U.S. District Judge

Benita Y. Pearson, denying Sean Swain’s request for a temporary restraining order against prison officials suspending his video visitation without any stated justification. Endnotes to the text are Sean’s.]

The within matter came on for hearing upon Plaintiff’s Motion for Temporary Restraining Order...

After notice to the parties, the Court held a hearing on the motion.[40] The Court has been advised, having reviewed the record, the parties’ briefs, and the applicable law. The Court has also considered the oral arguments of counsel.

Four factors are important in determining whether a temporary restraining order is appropriate: (1) the likelihood of plaintiff’s success on the merits, (2) whether the injunction will save the plaintiff from irreparable injury, (3) whether the injunction would harm others, and (4) whether the public interest would be served by the injunction. In Re DeLorean Motor Co., 755 F2d 1223, 1228 (6th Cir., 1985). The consideration given these factors is a flexible one and the factors are not prerequisites to be met, but must be balanced. Id. at 1229. In balancing the four considerations applicable to temporary restraining order decisions, the Court holds that equitable relief is not appropriate.

Plaintiff is unlikely to succeed on the merits of his claim that Defendants retaliated against his exercise of free speech by restricting his access to Video Visitations. To successfully state a First Amendment retaliation claim under 42 USC [Section] 1983, a plaintiff must show that (1) he engaged in protected conduct, (2) an adverse action was taken against the plaintiff that would deter a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in that conduct, and (3) there is a causal connection between the protected conduct and the adverse action. King v. Zamaira, 680 F3d 686, 694 (6th Cir., 2012) (quoting Thaddeus-X v. Blatter, 175 F3d 378, 394 (6th Cir., 1999). In order to show causation, a plaintiff must show both (1) that the adverse action was proximately caused by an individual defendant’s conduct, and (2) the conduct was “motivated in substantial part by a desire to punish an individual for exercise of a constitutional right.” Id. at 695 (quoting Thaddeus-X, 175 F3d at 386).

Neither Plaintiff’s identification of Defendant Tibbals’ license plate in his website nor his “campaign pledge” to burn down the Ohio Statehouse are protected conduct.[41] Contrary to Plaintiff’s assertions, neither comment is the type of political speech for which the First Amendment offers protection, robust or otherwise. See McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 US 334, 346-47, 115 SCt 1511, 131 L.Ed 2d 426 (1995) (discussing the longstanding principle that political speech is at the core of First Amendment protection).[42]

Amplifying sensitive identifying information[43] of an Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction official, or promising destructive action of a government facility, is different from the right to criticize public officials. See Glasson v. City of Louisville, 518 F2d 899, 904 (6th Cir., 1975) (“The right of an American citizen to criticize public officials and policies and to advocate peacefully ideas for change is ‘the central meaning of the First Amendment.’” (quoting New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 US 254, 273, 84 SCt 710, 11 LEd 2d 686 (1964)))(emphasis added).[44] Regardless of how Plaintiff has expressed himself, be it through emails, inperson conversation, or Video Visitations, his incendiary speech does not fall within the ambit of the First Amendment’s protec- tion.[45] Nor can Plaintiff show causation. Plaintiff argues the fact that he is the only inmate in the Ohio prison system without access to Video Visitations is indicative of retaliatory motive.[46] Uniqueness, without more, is not evidence of retaliation. The singular treatment Plaintiff complains of is equally reflective of the unique security threat he poses to ODRC.[47] Without a showing of protected conduct or causation, Plaintiff cannot demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits of his First Amendment retaliation claim.

Plaintiff has also failed to demonstrate irreparable harm caused by Defendants’ decision to limit Plaintiff’s access to Video Visitation.[48]

Plaintiff concedes the restriction on his use of Video Visitations is the only restriction that Defendants had imposed on his ability to communicate with people outside of prison. ECF No. 30 at 3. Plaintiff may still receive visitors, place phone calls through JPay, and use mail privileges unhindered by Defendants’ current restriction. Id. Inmates do not have a constitutional right to any specific manner of communication. See Washington v. Reno, 35 F3d 1093, 1100 (6th Cir., 1994) (stating that inmates do not have a right to unlimited phone use). Bristow v. Amber, 2012 US Dist. LEXIS 6190, 2011 WL 204891, at *2 (S.D. Ohio, May 16, 2012), report and recommendation adopted, 2012 US Dist. LEXIS (46) 75989, 2012 WL 1963577 (S.D. Ohio, May 31, 2012) (collecting cases in which courts rejected the argument that the First Amendment requires prison officials to provide inmates with access to email communication); see also Holloway v. Magness, 2011 US Dist. LEXIS 6190, 2011 WL 204891, at *7 (E.D. Ark., Jan 21, 2011), aff’d, 666 F3d 1076 (8th Cir., 2012) (holding that the First Amendment does not require “that the government provide telephones, videoconferencing, email, or any of the other marvelous forms of technology that allow instantaneous communication across geographical distances”). Plaintiff may have been restricted from using a desirable method of communication, but the law does not require Defendants to provide inmates with their preferred mode of com- munication.[49] Irreparable injury has not been shown.

An injunction would harm others in this case. The relief sought by Plaintiff hampers Defendants’ day-to-day operation of correctional facilities. Prison officials monitor other forms of inmate communication, including regular mail, in-person visits, phone calls, and electronic mail. An injunction would undermine Defendants’ ability to perform a similar screening for Plaintiff’s Video Visitations,[50] which could in turn pose a threat to the security of the correctional institutions, inmates, or correctional employees. See Bell v. Wolfish, 441 US 520, 547-48, 99 SCt 1861, 60 LEd 2d 447 (1979)(recognizing that courts should give deference to a prison administrator’s judgment that a regulation is “to preserve internal order and discipline and to maintain institutional security”). The injunction’s consequence could also create a “ripple effect” harming other inmates. Plaintiff is not the only inmate who benefits from Video Visitations. If ODRC determines that the injunction hinders its ability to provide Video Visitations while performing an adequate screen for security threats, and eliminates Video Visitations as a result, the other inmates who would utilize Video Visitations would be harmed[51] by its elimination. See Turner v. Safley, 482 US 78, 92, 107 SCt 2254, 96 LEd 2d 64 (1987)(defer- ring to correctional officials’ expertise in matters which involve a tradeoff between an inmate’s asserted right and the liberty and safety cost to others). In either event, the injunction would cause harm to another party.

The public interest would not be served by the injunction. Plaintiff’s argument that the public has an interest in hearing his speech is significantly outweighed by the public’s interest in maintaining operational state correctional facilities. See Blair v. Loomis, 1 F.Supp 2d 769, 773 (N.D. Ohio, 1998)(holding that the public’s interest “in a safe and orderly prison system” outweighs an inmate’s interest in spousal visitation rights when corrections officials denied plaintiff’s wife visitation privileges when she falsified information on her visitor application). What little informational value the public derives from the dissemination of a warden’s license plate—a dubious proposition at best—is severely offset by the potential ramifications of the dissemination.[52] Widely disseminating identifying information of an ODRC employee aids those of a mind to perform badly and threatens the ability of the state to provide safety to its employees operating correctional facilities.

Taken together, the factors weigh against imposing a temporary restraining order against Defendants. Plaintiff’s Motion for Temporary Restraining Order (ECF No. 19) is denied.

IT IS SO ORDERED.[53]

March 17, 2015

Benita Y. Pearson

U.S. District Judge

****

Changing the World... Through Violence

[as recorded for the Final Straw radio show]

I have some incredible and exciting news to share. Historic, worldchanging. I suspect at any moment, people all over the planet will be singing and dancing in the streets. We have finally attained that yet-only-figurative Cumbayah Moment.

Reading through a U.S. court decision that upholds my lifetime ban imposed by prison fascists, I note that Judge Benita Y. Pearson has declared that Americans may only advocate change through peaceful means. Yes, this is a watershed moment worth celebrating: the United States of America has renounced violence!

Do you know what this means?

Holy shit!

Up until now, every single year, a cabal of white-haired wealthy old geezers gathered together to hatch plans for changing the world through violence. These geezers funded the violence industries with billions of dollars.

I’m talking, of course, of the United States Senate. Good to know, their days of changing the world through violence are over. No more appropriating battleships and tanks, Apache attack helicopters and aircraft carriers. Until this landmark decision, the United States spent more than the next fifteen militaries combined on changing the world through violence.

No more of that.

The days of advocating violence are over. If those senators and representatives continue their violence nonsense, you can expect Judge Pearson to march right into the capitol with U.S. marshalls and have those violent conspirators arrested.

Brave new world.

And President Obama better watch out too. Keep in mind, he’s been obliterating hundreds of wedding parties all over the third world, blasting them with drones. Occasionally, he accidentally kills a so-called terrorist or two. But he’s gonna have to knock that off and start living up to his Nobel Peace Prize and his campaign t-shirts—at least while Judge Pearson is watching.

No more changing the world through violence.

Imagine all the good we can do when we auction off all that military hardware and all those nukes. With the money we take in, we’ll have the best educational system, best infrastructure, and the best healthcare in the world. Our standard of living will skyrocket.

Three cheers for Judge Pearson.

Three cheers for the United States of America renouncing violence.

This is awesome news for the Occupy folks too. Recall, they peacefully occupied public spaces that, really, their tax money paid for. And the police came with billyclubs, rubber bullets, and tear gas to change the world through violence.

They won’t be doing that anymore. I imagine Judge Pearson will soon be developing a program for collecting all those guns from the cops.

And that means black folks won’t have to have that talk with their kids. No more Fergusons. No more Amadou Diallos, shot forty-one times... no more unarmed kids shot 137 times by Cleveland cops... no more Oscar Grants shot while cuffed and prone... no more Michael Pipkens with broken necks in jail cells... no more Malice Greens shot dead on Detroit streets... no more Trayvon Martins. No more changing the world through violence.

Fantastic news.

It’s particularly good news for me too. I have to imagine that this new, nonviolent United States of America will be coming through the prison soon to collect up the billyclubs and the pepper spray. I mean, I can’t think of ANY nonviolent use for pepper spray.

And they’ll have to take that shotgun out of that perimeter truck. That means the only people who will be staying here are the people who stay voluntarily, who believe there’s some benefit to their imprisonment. The rest of us can just climb the fence and go home.

Prison fascists won’t be changing the world through violence anymore. I can’t wait to get home and finally hug my parents.

The implications of this are so vast, I don’t even know if we can contemplate how different the world is going to be. There will be a generation born this year who will grow up never knowing violence. I don’t even know what that would be like. I was born during the Vietnam War, when millions of people were bombed and napalmed into oblivion. Then Afghanistan and Panama, Nicaragua, Beirut... And the Oil Wars. Constantly and continuously changing the world through violence.

This is the new normal, a world where the United States of America has renounced violence. Judge Benita Y. Pearson may have singlehandedly saved the world.

This is Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain from the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio. If you’re listening, you are the resistance...

Part Three: War

Introduction to War

By the Spring of 2015, I had been tortured for exposing corruption and for having an “ideology,” perhaps under FBI orders; I had been silenced at supermax, had faced torment and further transfer. With a federal court designating me a “unique security threat” without formal accusation of crimes or even prison misconduct, based on a false narrative I never had a chance to challenge, those who tortured me could double down.

For my part, the decision proved to me that every level of government shared a desire to conceal the uncomfortable truth of domestic torture that, if exposed, would diminish U.S. prestige; but, also, it convinced me that even federal courts harbored resentment, animosity and suspicion for anyone with the audacity to confront those in power.

Truth was terrorism.

I concluded that only direct action could effectively confront torture... and then blastblog happened.

Torturers purged my visiting list and told loved ones the FBI was investigating them; they suspended my communications and criminalized my existence, chased away supporters who had managed my web presence. Counsel effectively quit. Ed Voorhies, second in command of the ODRC, told me in a face-to-face meeting that he would make my life “a living hell.” By the Spring of 2018, prison officials had recreated me as a gang leader, an extortionist, and a terrorist.

But the eyes of the world were watching. Everyone participating in this repression got exposed on blastblog, their encroachments fueling a growing resentment, a righteous indignation.

I suspect if torturers knew then what was coming next, they would have renounced torture, would have restored the rule of law and normalized my situation. But they didn’t.

This section begins with the conduct report targeting “Ubiquitous Security Threats,” my June 11 article that foreshadowed blastblog. My exchange with Joanna Saul of the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, the committee that allowed prison officials to torture me, preceded her abrupt and untimely resignation. As updates recount, the torturers’ escalations put them on a collision course—not with me, but with a growing army of faceless and nameless witnesses on the other side of the fence, witnesses increasingly willing to go to further extremes to stop the state terror.

* * * *

Conduct Report

Charging Official: Paul Shoemaker

Rules Violated:

08 (threatening bodily harm to another...)

59 (Any act not otherwise set forth herein, knowingly done which constitutes a threat to the security of the institution, its staff, other inmates, or to the acting inmate)

Supporting Facts...

On May 4, 2015, at approximately 11:00 am, the Chief Inspector’s Office was presented with JPay emails from inmate Swain #243- 205. These emails communicated threats towards staff and family members of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. A few comments stated that, “if you torture us we’ll light your cars and houses on fire” and “let cans of gasoline be your verbs, and matches be your nouns.” The attached three (3) JPay emails are deemed by the Chief Inspector’s Office as a direct threat to all ODRC staff. End of report

* * * *

Ubiquitous Security Threats

My name is Sean Swain and I’m speaking to you from a pay phone at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, the site of the longest prisoner uprising in US history. I currently reside in the block where that uprising began, L5, and my cell still has the scorch marks on the walls from more than twenty years ago. I think authorities leave the burn marks to remind the prisoners that they won. But when I see those burn marks on their walls, I only think of the possibilities.

I have to warn you before we go any further that I’m a “unique

security threat.” It was a federal court that recently gave me that designation, using those exact words. So, I’m not just your run- of-the-mill maximum security prisoner. I’m a special category of prisoner who may be subjected to a regimen of restrictions without so much as being accused of violating prison rules. I’m such a unique threat that my communications can be subject to a lifelong ban in anticipation of what I might say about the state terrorists who hold me hostage and occasionally torture me.

Also, you should know that the Fascist Bozos of Ineptitude have generated 1,297 pages of investigative files on me during the course of my imprisonment. I’m one of my favorite topics and I write about myself quite frequently but even I can’t think of 1,297 pages to write about myself. So that means the FBI knows more about me than I do.

My file is available from the FBI as a 3-disc set that costs $40. That’s roughly the same as the Sex Pistols Box Set. If you ever have a choice between the two, I would suggest that you can’t go wrong with the Sex Pistols.

But I digress. My point, of course, is that I’m a “unique security threat,” and I’m a “unique security threat” not for what I do with my fists and feet—because the fascist police state has easy methods for containing those—but for what I do with my head. My thoughts, my ideas, the things I articulate—those are the things that make me a “unique security threat,” and the fascist police state has found thoughts and ideas harder to contain than fists and feet.

Also, it’s important to point out, I think, that the fascist police state isn’t concerned so much with my communication of ideas to fellow prisoners. I don’t use these monitored communications systems to communicate to prisoners: I use them to communicate with you.

So, look. Here’s my agenda. I have to find a way to stop being a “unique security threat” in order to lessen my odds of getting tortured again. I have to stop being a “unique security threat” in order to someday get home and hug my elderly parents.

Being a “unique security threat” makes me vulnerable to repression by state terrorists. My uniqueness makes me a singular target. They can focus the full force of their terror operation on me.

My fear and dread in facing potential torture in the future compels me to find some way to stop being “unique” in the present. If only I can find a way to inspire and persuade others (like you, perhaps) to become security threats—either equal or superior to the threat that I pose—I would stop being a “unique security threat.” I would just be one of hundreds, or one of thousands of “ubiquitous security threats.”

So, that’s my agenda: to create “ubiquitous security threats,” thousands with thoughts and ideas just as dangerous as my own. That’s what I have to do to avoid getting tortured again. That’s quite a daunting mission, isn’t it? I hope I’m up to it.

If I succeed, at the very least, state terrorists will have their hands so full dealing with all of you “security threats” that they’ll forget about me and leave me alone; best case scenario, the entire power structure will collapse, the nightmare will end, and we can all go back to living in ways that make sense, absent the oppressor.

So, if the state terror asshole with the headphones monitoring this communication is distracted by his donuts and coffee and doesn’t hit the kill-switch, I’m going to share some ideas and thoughts to hopefully create “ubiquitous security threats” out of you. I hope you’re down with that.

I think the process of creating “ubiquitous security threats” should begin with an observation: Information is power. Kind of a no-brainer as far as observations go, huh? Yeah. Information is power.

That’s why the fascist police state has satellites. That’s why they have security cameras everywhere. That’s why they click through all of your emails.That’s why a dozen government agencies have a digital recording of this call before you ever hear it. Information is power and your enemy... my enemy... our enemy is constantly collecting information.

So what do we know about them?

Information is power. Now, I’m going to talk about the prison industrial complex specifically and the state terrorists who run it, but what I’m saying really applies universally to all the institutions of the fascist police state and, really, to the corporate profiteers who pull the strings. So, really, what I’m proposing has a vast array of broad applications.

But back to our question: What do we know about them? If you’re a prison abolitionist or if you’re a prisoner rights advocate— wherever you’re from, do you know where the prisons are physically located? That’s pretty easy to find out. Public information.

Now, those prisons have parking lots. Those parking lots contain the vehicles of prison workers—guards, staff, administrators. Often, the warden’s spot is marked with a sign that says, “warden.” All of those cars are located in a public parking lot. Whoever you are, you can drive right in. At shift change, for instance, you witness two shifts of prison workers coming and going.

Do you have a cellphone camera? Almost everyone these days has a cellphone camera. Faces, license plates. With the plate numbers and a friend at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, you can obtain home addresses and all kinds of information. If you don’t have a friend at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, you can wait in a lot down the street, pull into traffic, and follow people home.

Information is power.

The same goes for administrators at Central Office for any state prison system. Their parking lots are not located in some alternate universe. These people who employ torture are parked right there. They drive home to spouses and kids and family dogs.

They work for a terror state that collects information on you. What are you doing to collect information on them?

I can tell you right now, for an absolute fact, that what I’m proposing to you is the state terrorists’ worst nightmare. They torture their captives—they tortured me—knowing they would never be held accountable by their fascist supervisors, or by the oversight committees, or by media investigations, or by federal courts. All of the institutions of the fascist police state are accomplices in these crimes against humanity.

In fact, the instance of torture and the continuation of state terror occur in the confidence that no one will do anything about it. Their arrogance, so far, is well-founded.

I recall during the year of prolonged torture at Mansfield Correctional, the day that my cellmate Blackjack stood up... And passed out. He hit the floor. We had each suffered starvation rations for months, had each lost roughly 30% of our body weight, and Blackjack passed out due to malnutrition. That was the day I became convinced that we might actually die. Our captors might actually kill us.

I had a website with updates. I had written letters to the legislative oversight committee. I had a lawyer protesting my treatment. I had hundreds writing letters and making calls. And I was convinced that none of that would change conditions, that Blackjack and I might die despite all of that.

Now, to contrast, just as a matter of practicality, I urge you to imagine what would have happened to our conditions, instead of letters and calls and lawyers and online updates, if one—just one—of the state terrorists involved in the torture program would have gotten up for work one morning and stepped out of his or her tasteful suburban home to find his or her car ablaze with se- answain.org spray-painted across the cracked windshield. I’m not sure, but I bet that single event would have gotten Blackjack and me an extra scoop of potatoes at lunch.

If not, there are always other nights and other cars.

Now, sure, there’s a degree of risk for those involved. And that risk varies according to the planning and execution. Also keep in mind, we’re not talking about a risk taken to rectify one instance of mistreatment; we’re talking about an action that would alter the operation of the torture complex completely.

Now, if something like that had happened in response to Blackjack’s and my torture—but it didn’t, so this is just a theoretical pondering—but IF something like that HAD happened, the State could only put squad cars at the residences of state terrorists for a short time. In Ohio, for example, there are something like thirty prisons. That equals thirty wardens, thirty majors, ninety deputy wardens, hundreds of captains and lieutenants and sergeants and guards. Too many to dedicate squad cars for protection of their homes, night after night, indefinitely.

They couldn’t possibly be protected from a “ubiquitous security threat.” So, chances are, they would change their lowdown ways. State terrorists would realize that there will be direct and serious consequences for torturing their captives.

As there should be.

It really boils down to a kind of operant conditioning: If you torture us, we’ll light your cars and houses on fire. If you stop, we’ll stop.

As a consequence of the operant conditioning, you get the behavior you’re looking for. Whether its an end to torture... or an end to the prison complex entirely.

It would be preferable, of course, if you could simply ask ra- tionally—perhaps through a grievance process, or through correspondence to a legislative committee, or through civil litigation in federal court... but nonviolent appeals to reason and fairness are a completely foreign language to hierarchs. You may as well be speaking Portuguese. So, to change anything, you have to let cans of gasoline be your verbs, and let matches be your nouns. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true.

Soon, there will be a website online that posts profiles of state terrorists, along with message boards where visitors to the site can leave anonymous comments... including, perhaps, information about each of the profiled state terrorists.

Information is power. I think I’ll stop there. When this monitored call is over I’ll go back to my cell with the scorch marks on the walls, and I’ll think of the possibilities.

This is Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain from the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. If you’re listening, you are the resistance...

* * * *

ODRC Fuckweasels Snub Anarchist Prisoner’s Peace Plan, Claim No Concern for Escalation of Conflict

Ohio Assistant Attorney General Thomas C. Miller, legal counsel for the ODRC fuckweasels in Sean Swain’s civil rights action, did an about face. In a phone conference with Sean’s lawyer, Richard Kerger, Miller has rejected Sean’s proposed terms for resolution of this ongoing conflict.

Not long ago, Judge Benita Y. Pearson’s home address was posted online at blastblog.noblogs.org. Prison officials waged a dirty war against Sean, suspending all of his communications mediums and purging his visiting list. The conflict, it seemed, was escalating.

In the midst of this, fuckweasel counsel Tom Miller expressed an urgent desire to resolve the lawsuit, and thereby resolve the ongoing conflict from which the lawsuit arises. Sean’s attorney, Richard Kerger, agreed to set up a telephone conference to negotiate a resolution.

Sean, for his part, conceived of a kind of peace plan, which supporters posted online. By that plan, ODRC fuckweasels would undo the frame up and thereby put Sean in a position where parole would be possible next July; in exchange, prison officials would have unfavorable references purged from seanswain.org, would have Sean held at a location where incentives would guarantee his continued rule compliance, and would essentially have full control over Sean’s public pronouncements until his parole hearing in 2016. But, most importantly, Sean would attempt to persuade those who anonymously posted Judge Pearson’s home address to delete that posting and refrain from future such postings of ODRC fuckweasels’ home addresses.

“We were essentially willing to give away the farm and even submit to a stringent regimen of restricting my protected speech,” Sean said. “It was something I was willing to do, given the circumstances. It was a situation where there was a real danger that people could start getting hurt. It would be irresponsible if I didn’t do everything in my power to end the whole situation. So, that’s what I proposed, and that’s what I attempted to do.”

Sean, in good faith, effectively persuaded others to delete Judge Pearson’s sensitive information from online posting... And then came Thomas Miller’s about face; as soon as Judge Pearson’s address was removed, ODRC fuckweasels resumed a hard line approach and voiced an unwillingness to negotiate.

“It makes me regret using whatever influence I might have to get Judge Pearson’s information removed,” Sean lamented.

As the case drags on, Sean quickly approaches a point of no return. He appears before the Ohio Adult Parole Authority in July of next year [July 2016], and Sean will be expected to have been at Level 2 security for a year and to have taken programming only available at Level 2. So, by refusing to negotiate a resolution to the 12 Monkey frame-up lawsuit, ODRC fuckweasels make Sean’s parole impossible and doom Sean to spend five more years in prison—for a crime he provably didn’t commit, based on misconduct

that prison officials fabricated.

“Essentially, by refusing to resolve this case and put me where I was supposed to be, if not for their shenanigans, they are inevitably giving me five more years in prison. I’ll be serving five years for having pissed off prison officials by telling the truth about their crimes online,” Sean said.

With the removal of Judge Pearson’s personal information online, ODRC fuckweasels’ counsel no longer seeks to negotiate a resolution, asserting that prison officials have no concern about how the situation may escalate. They do not believe, for instance, that Sean’s supporters out in the free world can obtain prison officials’ home addresses, or that they can post them anonymously. And, if such addresses get posted, there is no evidence that anyone may act on that information.

“Prison officials have no fear of what might happen next,” Sean said. “They’re confident that nothing will happen to them. Until that confidence is proven to be misplaced, prison officials will resist reasonable resolution.”

* * * *

Trainwreck Trevor Promoted by ODRC, Blocks Negotiations to Settle Anarchist Prisoner’s Lawsuit... JPay CEO’s Home Address Posted at Blastblog

On 10 August, Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain’s counsel, Richard Kerger, informed Sean that a teleconference to negotiate a settlement in Sean’s civil action was being arranged. To that point, Ohio Assistant Attorney General Tom Miller and ODRC Counsel Austin Stout were slated to participate on behalf of the fascist state. Unfortunately, Stout got a job as a real lawyer and Trevor Clark, a.k.a., Trainwreck Trevor, the sociopath whose infantile and senseless obsession with crushing Sean Swain led to this lawsuit in the first place, has taken Stout’s place. Trainwreck has an ulterior motive in letting this case drag on, not meeting Sean’s reasonable terms for resolution—that way Sean stays at higher security, misses out on necessary programs, and ends up getting five more years at the parole board... all because of Trainwreck’s orchestrated shenanigans.

Predictably, with inclusion of Trainwreck into the scenario, negotiations have completely stalled and Sean gets closer and closer to that point of no return where eventual transfer to lower security does no good because he has no time to complete necessary programming.

“If this case is not resolved, with the lies removed from my file and my transfer to Level 2 in the next thirty days or so, I have no choice but to abandon all hope of parole in 2016 and instead shift gears,” Sean said. “I’ll instead begin working the five-year plan I have developed for the next phase of this ongoing conflict.”

In the first phase, Sean collaborated with allies to get works published and distributed in zine format. In the second phase, allies developed a website, seanswain.org, which also led to his weekly segments on the Final Straw radio show; plans for a regular YouTube series were scrapped when the ODRC banned Sean’s video visits for life.

Now, blastblog, a feature Sean proposed in 2013, is online at blastblog.noblogs.org, and many of the state terrorists who participated in the 12 Monkey frame-up and tortured Sean for his anarchist principles have their home addresses posted there, along with photos of their homes and Google maps for everyone in the world to learn how to get there.

“There’s a really enlightening photo of Trainwreck lifting weights. What a narcissistic douchebag,” Sean said. “That’s an old photo. He’s gained a lot of weight since then.”

Most recently, JPay CEO Ryan J. Shapiro’s home addresses were posted at blastblog. Sean’s writings about JPay and that company’s contract with the ODRC led to Sean’s targeting in the first place. JPay’s profits, and Shapiro’s financial ability to maintain two homes, were facilitated by the ODRC torturing Sean. “The torture program that Trainwreck orchestrated got Shapiro those luxury homes,” Sean observed. “So, it’s only fitting, I think, that in the next five years, my plans should involve an expanding strategy to also completely bankrupt JPay Corporation and its parent company, Securus.”

Sean promises that his five-year plan will be ambitious, far more devastating to the lawless, brutal forces of the fascist terror state than what has been undertaken in the last few years.

“If Trainwreck wants to be stubborn and renew my contract with the ODRC until 2021, I have to live up to the hype and give these fuckweasels everything they’re looking for,” Sean said. “There are thousands of savage maniacs out there ready to take it to the next level. This shit is going to be historic.”

* * * *

Ohio Prison Officials’ Home Addresses Remain at Blastblog, JPay Corporate Officers Identified

While Trainwreck Trevor refuses to allow a reasonable settlement to Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain’s lawsuit, one that could potentially get Swain to post a statement asking for the voluntary removal of state terrorists’ home addresses from blastblog.noblogs. org, the Ohio prison officials, including Trainwreck Trevor (who participated in torturing Sean for his anarchist principles) continue to have their addresses posted there. Further, major insurance providers have been notified so that they may increase premiums for insurance policy holders at those addresses.

The longer the addresses remain online, the greater the chances that someone will act upon that information—both because the likelihood increases of someone with a motive encountering the information, and also because the longer duration of the posting increases the likely pool of suspects and therefore makes any criminal act undertaken against those residences virtually unsolvable. The greater the chances of “getting away with it,” the more likely that people will act on the information.

Beyond prison officials, JPay CEO Ryan J. Shapiro’s home addresses are now posted at blastblog and JPay’s corporate officers are now identified (see listing below).

It would seem to be in the best interests of all of those whose addresses are already posted, and all of those whose addresses could potentially get posted (like those on the list below), to get Sean Swain’s civil action settled, to get the terms met, so that Sean can then urge others to redact those postings.

Previously, when Sean requested the removal of a posting that featured the home address of US District Court Judge Benita Y. Pearson, it was deleted almost immediately. This indicates that there is a good chance that if Sean requests the removal of ODRC and JPay addresses, those who have them posted would respond.

Unfortunately, to get the settlement Sean needs, everyone whose address is posted will have to get ODRC Counsel Trevor Clark out of the way.

If your address is posted or could soon be posted, these are some things you can do to get Trainwreck Trevor out of the way and guarantee a quick resolution to this situation before Trainwreck’s childish and irresponsible stubbornness gets someone’s property destroyed or worse.

—Call Director Richard Dove of the Board of Professional Conduct at (614) 387-9370, and urge him to review CBA File Number 2015-08-106 and have Trevor Clark disbarred...

—Call ODRC Director Gary Mohr (614) 752-1164 and demand that ODRC Counsel Trevor Clark get fired for continuing to endanger so many people...

and,

—Call Assistant Attorney General Tom Miller at (614) 644-0735 or email him at thomas.miller@ohioattorneygeneral.gov and demand that Miller stop listening to Trevor Clark, and that Miller do the responsible thing, reasonably settling Swain v. Mohr right now!

List of JPay Corporate Officers

The following JPay corporate officers were not yet posted at blast- blog.noblogs.org at the time of this posting. Together, if they work quickly, they can get Trainwreck Trevor disbarred and fired, and get Swain’s lawsuit settled before they have anything to worry about:

Josh Shapiro, VP Sales

Gregory Levine, Exec. VP of Sales

Mark S. Silverman, CFO

Dan Shapiro, COO

Errol Feldman, Chief Admin. Officer

Aman Junaid, CIO

Hezi Ben Moshe, Director, IT Operations

Nicola A. Rowe, Human Resources

David Lovitt, Director, PMO

Jacob Katz, VP, Product

Van Anh Nguyen, Development Manager

Kamil A. Konopka, IT Project Mgr.

Gregory Campbell, Director, Customer Service

Sam Burritt, Senior Marketing Mgr.

Gabe Shapiro, Project Mgr.

Yehuda Goldenberg, Software Architect

Fabricio Tober, Software Developer

Justin Jimenez, Software Developer

Sanjay Kanteti, Developer

Coming soon! Securus corporate officers identified! Securus is a predatory profiteer competitor to Global Tel*Link. Securus recently purchased JPay Corporation for a quarter of a billion dollars and, with it, they purchased JPay’s partnership with state terrorists like ODRC Counsel Trevor Clark (now famous on blastblog.noblogs.org!).

So, Securus corporate officers could soon be revealed and their addresses potentially posted at blastblog! An early preview...

Russell Roberts, VP, Marketing and Strategy

Luke Keiser, Director, Strategic Marketing and New Business Matthew Smith, Product Mgt.

And many more to come, unless they can get Trainwreck Trevor out of the way and settle Sean Swain’s lawsuit!

* * * *

Letter to Joanna E. Saul, CIIC Director

[Joanna Saul was the Director of the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, which provided oversight for the Ohio General Assembly, the Ohio legislature, and ostensibly served as a check on prison abuses, ED.]

April 1, 2016

Dear Director Saul:

My communications mediums have been suspended since September 1 of last year without explanation, warning, notice, or justification. The ODRC is essentially murdering my social existence beyond prison fences. I have violated no prison rules to justify this suspension and no disciplinary action taken against me has imposed a communications restriction to justify what I experience.

I have contacted the parole board because I have a parole hearing scheduled for July that I cannot attend. I have not had communication with my attorney because of this communications suspension and he has been unable to prepare for my hearing. I am unaware if he still intends to represent me, and if he is, what he needs from me. If he is not going to represent me, I need to contact other attorneys. I currently have a legal fund for gaining counsel if only I could communicate with the outside world. But, I cannot.

I have had to voluntarily dismiss my federal civil rights action against prison authorities because prison authorities cut off all of my communication with legal counsel and made prosecution of the case impossible. I have a year to hire new counsel and re-file, but I am running out of time and have no way to hire counsel with my communications suspended.[54]

In December, ODRC Counsel Trevor Clark, who has been orchestrating this regimen of state terror, came to the prison to negotiate a settlement to my pending civil actions in the court of claims.[55] He began by accusing me of violating Rule 17, unauthorized group activity, for using outgoing mail that the ODRC had no legal right to search and read.[56] When that issue was disposed, he then offered, in settlement of pending cases, to (1) expunge my disciplinary record, (2) adjust my security downward, (3) restore loved-ones to my visiting list who had been purged maliciously and without cause, and (4) resume all of my communications mediums. A week later, Clark withdrew the settlement offer.

Thereafter, on January 20, 2016, the same date he received communication from the Ohio Disciplinary Counsel informing him that I had attempted to get his law license suspended, Clark ordered a lieutenant here at the prison to write me up for the Rule 17 that he and I had already discussed and resolved.[57] Clearly, Clark did this to satisfy a personal vendetta because I attempted to get his law license suspended.

I now have a new Rule 17 conviction to take to the parole board, a new justification for five more years in prison, and a new cause to file more litigation for the court of claims to judicially filibuster as they have my currently-filed cases.

In the meantime, prison officials including Clark and Director Gary Mohr have their home addresses posted at blastblog.no blogs.org and have pledged to continue terrorizing me until the operators of that site pull the plug. I do not operate the site, as I have no internet access even when my communications are restored. So, de facto, I am not responsible for that site or its content.

Until recently, I have had a statement that I had sent to some of my supporters placed on listservs for a broader network of supporters to know that I did not want anyone associated with me to use those posted addresses to attack prison officials’ homes or property or to assault prison officials or their family members. Since the state terror regimen has not ended despite my every effort to achieve a reasonable understanding with prison officials, I have recently asked supporters to delete that message from list- servs. I am no longer interested in persuading others to refrain from actions they might otherwise take.

I write this letter in the hopes that you can get prison officials to end this illegal terror campaign. I sent a copy of this letter with an explanation of your office’s role to supporters at seanswain. org. I have also sent a commentary that describes the implications of your office’s failure to get prison officials to resume legality, for posting at seanswain.org in the eventuality that my communications are not promptly restored. That commentary will include the names of everyone at the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee so that a broader base of supporters, including hack- tivists, will have an update on who is complicit, actively or inactively, in the terror regimen that I experience.

I hope we get my communications restored, my disciplinary file expunged, my visitor list restored, and my security level adjusted.[58]

Thank you for your time and kind consideration,

Freedom or Death,

Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain

* * * *

Response From Joanna E. Saul

April 8, 2016

Dear Mr. Swain:

I have received your letter, dated April 1, 2016. In your letter, you relay further details regarding your ongoing issues with DRC Assistant Chief Counsel Trevor Clark, including the fact that your communications have been suspended and that you will not be able to appear at your parole hearing. Of primary concern to me, you make a not-so-veiled threat to my safety on the envelope and make a veiled threat to CIIC Members.

Please be aware that I forwarded your communication to Chae Harris, Deputy Warden at WCI, and asked that he speak with you and tell you not to threaten me. My understanding from DRC staff is that you have the ability to write to attorneys or request a phone call with attorneys at any time, as well as call your parents and your girlfriend. It also appears that you are able to send mail to this office, and possibly to others.

For the future, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from threatening me or CIIC members. I understand that you are angry about the circumstances in which you have found yourself. I understand that you feel that the prison system has worked against you. I spoke with you at several points while you were in the MANCI segregation unit and my personal belief is that your extended time in that segregation unit significantly and detrimentally impacted you.

However, this office does not have any authority over the DRC’s restriction of your communications, nor do we have the authority to change DRC’s disciplinary decisions. Our authority is to make inspections of prisons and provide public reporting to the legislature and the state.

You are currently at Level 3A. Making threats to people will not help you in maintaining a lower security level or in getting parole. In fact, the prison staff would have the right at this point to again recommend you for an increase based on the threats, or to forward the threat to a local prosecutor; I am sure that you would see this as retaliation, but you are choosing your actions.

I remember a different Sean Swain who used to write to this office long letters with ideas for new prison programs to help people. I remember someone who talked about rehabilitation. Making threats is not rehabilitation. Being at Level 3A, you should have access to programs and positive activities that could help others around you. Eventually, turning your life around may even help you get parole. But not on your current path.

You are a good writer and a good cartoonist. There are many positive experiences that you could have, including writing about your time in prison, making a graphic novel, and engaging in art therapy programs. But I sincerely hope that you work on your anger and come to a place of peace. Best wishes for your future and perhaps I will see you when we are next at WCI.

Sincerely, Joanna E. Saul CIIC DIRECTOR

* * * *

“Threats! Threats! Threats!”

An Open Letter to the Delusional Hierarchs of the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, in Reply to Their Communication Demonstrating Far More Concern Over the Tone of a Torture Victim’s Expression (Which, Really, is Irrelevant) Than Concern for Stopping the Ongoing State Terror (Which, Really, is Their Job)

“Persons in power should be very careful how they deal with a man [sic] who cares nothing for sensual pleasures, nothing for riches, nothing for comfort or praise or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous and uncomfortable enemy, because his body, which you can always conquer, gives you so little purchase on his soul...”

—Professor Gilbert Murray Oxford University, Hibbert Journal “The Soul as It Is, and How to Deal with It”

Dear Director Saul:

I received today your 8 April 2016 response to my correspondence of 1 April, where you use the word “threat” or some derivation of it eight times. That is pretty astounding for a letter comprised of only seven paragraphs. But before addressing what you mischaracterize as “threats,” I would like to bring to your attention that I have noticed, in your last letter, a conspicuous absence of any reasonable concern for the ongoing and completely unjustified state terror that continues to be employed against me without so much as an accusation of misconduct. As I previously related, contrary to administrative rules the ODRC has subjected me to an irregular regimen of silence not even experienced by death row prisoners at Level 5 security.

In your letter, I see no reference to an inquiry into this harass-

ment, no sense of bewilderment that prison officials are abusing their power and abusing my basic, fundamental rights in order to stifle legitimate criticism of their criminal agenda. I read nowhere in your letter where you seek to advocate on my behalf to cause these irrational despots to end their cruel abuses that everyone else in the world (beyond state terrorists, that is—present company possibly included) recognizes for what they are.

You did, however, do a masterful job in mischaracterizing and misrepresenting my circumstances and their actual causes, all while failing to lift a finger to do anything about them.

Clearly, your chief concern in having received my reasonable letter presenting sensible expectations was to take issue with the tone of my expression rather than the crimes to which I was sub- jected—crimes that your inaction permits to continue, crimes for which you and your staff are now unapologetically complicit. So I believe your letter, which I hope to be scanned and posted for others to reference when they read this, provides an excellent vehicle for us to examine the hierarch delusion and one of its irrational, self-justifying, and false premises.

First, to recount what it is I actually expressed to you: In my previous letter I related that I am subject to an illegal and ulterior regimen of harassment by prison officials and that I expect your office to appropriately take action. I believe that is what your office was designed to do. It is your office’s very raison d’etre. I also expressed that I would be sending a copy of my letter to you along with a roster of everyone in your office to supporters at seanswain. org for posting there, in the event that you did absolutely nothing to curb the ODRC’s crimes against me.

Almost makes you think I am psychic, does it not? It almost makes you think that I somehow knew in advance that you would do nothing at all.

Just a quick note, as I do not want to lose this train of thought, but I think it is important to explain that the reason I knew in advance that your office would do nothing at all is that you have a long and uninterrupted history of cowardly inaction that defends prison administrators who are sociopaths. You collect pay checks for handing out the soap to the trembling wretches herded into the gas chamber.

More on that later. Back to the issue of my “threats!, threats!, threats!”

So, having reviewed what I wrote to you, and to stick to your terminology, just to demonstrate the utter ridiculousness of what you wrote, I “threatened” to share my writings with supporters in the free world; I “threatened” to expose your office as absolutely useless and apathetic to crimes against victims locked in cages; I “threatened” to let the rest of the world see and recognize how your office’s inaction plays a vital role in the continuation of the state terror program. I “threatened” to let the world know that you run the pom-pom squad for irremediable monsters like Trevor Clark who torture. What you present in your letter to constitute some kind of implied crime, I see as a necessary public service.

You are welcome.

Just a personal observation here but I find it more than a little ironic and amusing that you equate my explanation as to how there are consequences for your shameful actions with “threats.” It is my hope that everyone reading my correspondence and your response will readily recognize the pathology in your thinking, this obviously delusional belief based on the premise that somehow you are exempt from the consequences of your actions, that you are immune from them the same way that prison officials assert immunity and count on you to keep them exempt, no matter how loathsome their atrocities.

The fact that I assert that you are not immune, that you are not exempt, and that you are instead accountable somehow makes me guilty of criminal “threats.”

In a world where government holds people accountable and responsible—sometimes for things that we did not even do—it is a threat to suggest that someone in that government should be held accountable and responsible for their actions. It is a sickness. A pathology in thinking. You poor, deluded hierarchs really are twisted. I hope for your sake that you somehow get the help that you really need.

But, in the meantime, please know that I have directed a copy of my letter and a copy of your office’s roster to supporters in hopes that they will post that at seanswain.org along with your response and this letter. When that is posted, the whole world will have access to those materials forever. And they should. And I am not the least bit sorry.

Please know that while I have no direct knowledge, if the past is any indication of what to expect in the future, the hacktivists who run blastblog.noblogs.org will likely come across the roster of your office and read my valid arguments that indict you as accomplices to the abuses against me. If the past is any indication of the future, we can likely expect that blastbloggers will end up posting some or all of your personal, private information at their site and that it will remain there indefinitely.

I say all of that merely as an observation, not as advocacy for or against such actions.

In your correspondence you relate that you believe that my extended time in segregation has “significantly and detrimentally impacted” me. Imagine that—someone being “significantly and detrimentally impacted” by deliberate torture undertaken by monsters... on the basis of the subject’s ideology. Based on his beliefs. His thoughts. The content of his mind.

I agree with you. I believe I was “significantly and detrimentally impacted” by deliberate torture, but I also know that I am being “significantly and detrimentally impacted” by the ideologically- motivated state terror that continues without any legitimate basis, so, unlike you, I am doing everything in my power to stop this “significant and detrimental impact.” I suspect others out there will do everything in their power too, unlike your office which sits on the sidelines with burgers and beer to idly watch the struggle.

However, if your observation of the “significant and detrimental impact” is intended to imply that I am somehow psychologically unstable and that my current response to tyranny is somehow irrational, and that this all implies that everyone should ignore my arguments, then I could not disagree more. My current response and the possible future responses of others with courage you do not possess, although desperate and radical, are made necessary by my captors’ crimes and your office’s unabashed complicity in allowing them to continue.

I am struck by your reminiscences about a “different Sean Swain,” one who wrote long and thoughtful letters, with bunny rabbits and rainbows pouring out of his ears. That Sean Swain was denied parole twice despite being the best-behaved prisoner in Ohio penal history; despite not having committed a crime in the first place; despite being confined without a legal conviction or sentence.

Your colleagues tortured that Sean Swain.

Your colleagues turned that Sean Swain into this Sean Swain.

Take that up with them.

In the meantime, you are stuck with me as I am, and my non- negotiable demands remain: I need the frame-ups expunged from my record. I need my security adjusted downward. I need to be transferred to Level Two security where I can take the programs the parole board expects of me when I see them in July. I need my communications to resume and my visitation list restored.

I do not believe it to be irrational or unreasonable to expect my captors to abide by the very rules that they write for themselves, nor do I think it irrational or unreasonable to expect my captors to conform to the norms of civilized society and the rule of law that respects diversity of views in the open marketplace of ideas, without State censorship or State violence. You clearly disagree. Your inaction speaks volumes.

You will find enclosed the next roster [59] that has already been conveyed to friends and supporters in the hopes that they have a respect for human rights that your office lacks.

And, again, so that we establish the proper context here and we do not end up running in circles, screaming about how Sean Swain is making the sky fall, I am not responsible for the ongoing crimes of my captors that were, and still remain, so reprehensible and so shocking to the conscience that a veritable army of free-world people have rallied to my defense, recognizing the inherent evil that Gestapo Gary Mohr’s regime represents. Through their (the regime’s) hubris and apathy and childish pride, they have created this uncomfortable dynamic while all that I have done is tell the truth.

The truth, it seems, really is dangerous.

Probably, that is a good reason not to torture people.

Now, to address your threat against me: You wrote that unless I abandon my “current path,” I will not get paroled. That sounds very much like a threat that unless I resume perfect silence and stop speaking out in an effective way that may foreseeably inspire others to engage in perfectly-understandable resistance to tyrants and criminals, this illegitimate rogue-state holding me hostage will continue to abuse me long into the future in an effort to leverage courageous others to pull the plug on their resistance efforts. News flash, Director Saul: For the alleged State of Ohio, it does not get any better from here. You threaten to keep me in custody where I will continue to effectively inspire others to deeper levels of resistance in response to my captors’ escalating encroachments. So, if the parole board wants to renew my lease for five or ten more years, and they wish then, by extension, to renew the lease for the website and the radio segments and the continuing resistance of others online, my only two questions are (1) whether those who exercise authority will continue to have the stomach to publicly do the deplorable and awful things that will become necessary to do to me over the next decade of what may prove to be all-out cyber- and real-world warfare launched against their tyrannical rule, and (2) whether the alleged State of Ohio will last that long.

You threaten to turn me into Ohio’s Nelson Mandela. Or worse.

I remind you that on December 13, 2015, Greek rebels burned down a military building in Greece as part of a global Black December proposed by Greek Prisoners, and when that rebel group issued its statement of responsibility, those rebels did not quote any of the articulate and inspiring Greek prisoners, but instead quoted me. I say that not to brag but simply to demonstrate to you the global reach of ideas and my perceived global credibility, not as something I have necessarily earned, but as a consequence of my captors’ bumbling and blundering repression of me just since 2012.

We have reached this point of discomfort for the State in just three and a half years since prison officials declared war on me for having thoughts. Do you want to see where this goes in five more years? Or ten?

As I have responded to state terrorists a dozen times before: “Okay... don’t get mad.”[60]

Freedom or Death, Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain

* * * *

Conduct Report

Charging Official: Lt. Kevin Chamblin

Rules Violated: Rule 51 (Possession of contraband...) Supporting Facts...

On September 8th at approximately 12:30 pm Officer Spencer conducted a search of inmate Swain 243-205. During the search some documents were retrieved. One of them was a letter[sic] which included language that indicates possible (57) terrorist type activities... There was also a self authored booklet confiscated which includes anti government material.

* * * *

September 9

You know I had every intention of using this segment in order to promote the nation work stoppage that has been undertaken by US prisoners beginning on September 9th.

For all of you five people out there who read the claptrap that I wrote you might recall that in 2007, I responded to a question in the Anthony Rasen interview and said that if Ohio prisoners just laid on their bunks for thirty days the entire states economy would collapse and wouldn’t recover for a decade. So you think a national call out joined by the industrial workers of the world a union to which I belong would be right up my alley. Prisoners across the country driving the police state into bankruptcy and ruin. I sure wish I could endorse the national strike but, can’t you see, not long ago Sedeik Abdullah Hasan, a fellow Ohio prisoner, was tossed in the hole for his support of the September 9th national strike. To make it worse, it was the FBI that gave the orders to separate Seidike. They called it into Jay Lowdown, the warden at OSP.

So anyway since the FBI’s entire security apparatus is listening in, I have to refrain from saying anything that will get me into trouble. I’ve had enough trouble with the fascist bozos and the ineptitude. I’m going to carefully go down this checklist of stuff I wanted to talk about and see if I can say any of these things.

So, first it occurred to me that I could discuss solidarity action that you guys out there could take in support of the September 9th strike, but that’s out. If I discuss those actions you might do them and then I’d get tossed in the hole for talking about them.

Discussions about prison parking lots are definitely out. You know, because all prisons have parking lots attached where workers’ cars are located. I’m not going to say anything about nails being dumped at the entrances or the keying of cars that are parked in the warden’s spot; that’s out, sorry, way too provocative with the FBI listening in especially because the FBI offices have parking lots outside their buildings where they park their cars. They wouldn’t appreciated my advocacy of such actions, so scratch that.

Also leaving junker cars blocking the entrances, the tires slashed, and the parking break broken off, and the doors locked so no one can get in or out during shift change, scratch that too. Or talking about sneaking up on perimeter vehicles when they’re parked and cramming potatoes in the tail pipes, that’s out.

The FBI would call Trainwreck Trevor, who would shove his hand up the ass of Warden Che Harris, using him as a sock puppet to toss me straight in the hole so I’m not saying any of that. Sorry, not me.

The cyber communications are out too. I sent out lists of ODR and facts lists for posting so folks out there can rapidly send photocopies of black construction paper and burn up the ODR’s toner and paper. Of course, if I talk about that folks would go online and get fax numbers of prisons everywhere and fax bomb the fascists, The FBI has fax machines too. They’d go bonkers if I shared that so that’s scrapped, same with tying up phones and glitching emails, or groups like Anonymous hacking their systems and making them crash, advocating that might even be illegal.

Fun with drones, I won’t even talk about that; folks could create havoc from a mile away, and I’d never get out of the super-duper max. I have to think about my parole hearing in October you know. So, I won’t even talk about having dance parties on the sidewalk in front of prison officials’ homes or canvasing their neighbourhoods to inform their elderly neighbours that they have a state terrorist in their community. If I mention stuff like that you might think it’s funny but, FBI agents who put Sedeik in the hole wouldn’t think it’s funny at all. They have home addresses too.

At any rate, I should just apologize and not record anything at all. I know a lot of you savage cannibals out there would be disappointed because you expect me to take the most radical militant sectarian position and scream it from the rooftops but, for once I have to be careful, I have to think of myself.

I can’t even mention that prisoners might be organized on September 9th or that I support it; I’m sorry about that. I’ve got the FBI listening and I have to be careful especially because my segments can be uploaded from I-tunes where I hang out with Madonna and Justin Bieber. You might think I’m a sellout but the slightest hint that I’m starting or endorsing a strike or anything, could get me in a whole mess of trouble.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from Warren Correctional in Lebanon Ohio. If you are listening you are the resistance.

* * * *

Possible Threats…?

When Nat Turner and a band of rebel slaves rose in 1831 killing sixty of the slave-owning aristocracy, the legal proceedings that followed focused on determining the motives of the slaves.

In fact, court officials went to great lengths to interview all the condemned rebels in order to ask why they rose up and why they resorted to violence. You see, they were so deluded by their own mythology—that slaves were perfectly happy in servitude—that they could not conceive of slaves who desired something more. So, distorted by the slavery program, apologists for the status quo could not imagine slaves unsatisfied with slavery. Really, it must have been that white accomplices put the slaves up to it or that Nat Turner was a fanatical wacko—the equivalent of the modern-day cult leader bamboozling his fellow slaves into drinking the proverbial koolaid. Some held that the real motive of Nat Turner and his fellow one hundred four rebels, was to rob the victims, and the wholesale slaughter—including leaving a headless infant in a fire place—was just incidental to their looting.

So confused and baffled were they that they dispatched one man—a local lawyer—to meet with Nat Turner himself and get the story straight from him. They needed to hear Turner explain his desire for freedom and absolute revolution for the crimes of slavery before they could believe it. Then they hung him, dismembered him, and sent his skull as a trophy to an Ohio University.

That’ll teach him for telling the truth.

Since that time right up until the modern day, rebels who seek to oppose slavery and hold Nat Turner and his fellow rebels as role models, often gloss over the savage butchery that Turner and others committed. They have a really hard time with the violence. They take the position that slavery was evil and they think Nat Turner was a hero but they mitigate their endorsement of him by pointing out that the violence was way too much. Now, I purposely described in great detail in the last segment how slave rebels hacked people with hatchets and axes and farm tools, and by “people” I mean men, women, children, and the elderly.

The violence the rebels unleashed was ruthless and brutal and perfectly justified. I would suggest to you that all of the blood shed during that slave rebellion falls squarely on the hands of every slave owner, every slave trader, and every single American who benefited materially from slavery, both in 1831 and in 2016. I would suggest to you that the decapitation of the infant Joseph Travis was perfectly justified given that the infant was the inheritor of the plantation and all the slaves on it.

Nat Turner and others were not free until baby Joseph Travis’ tiny body landed in that fire place, and that’s the reality cooked up by the slave owners, not the slaves.

So, if they didn’t want their infant to be beheaded, they should have thought of that before undertaking to own other human beings. They should have thought of that before passing down humans as property to their children. What I am suggesting is that there is a kind of math to oppression and to counterviolence.

We can properly judge the depth and breadth of the atrocities committed by oppressors when we take the full measure of the counterviolence that’s unleashed in the eventual response. When you find bodies of headless babies in your fireplace you’ve done a bad, bad thing and you’ve done it for a long long time. The simple fact of the matter is liberation cannot occur without violence and the more entrenched a system is, the more ruthless it is, the more intense the counterviolence must be in order to achieve liberation, plain and simple.

In 1831 Nat Turner and his companions sought liberation of an entire slave class from the tyranny of an entire slave owning class that had butchered babies for centuries. You don’t achieve that kind of liberation from that kind of tyranny through marches or petitions or votes for lefty liberals. For Nat Turner and the slaves of 1831, just as for us, the slaves of 2016, liberation comes from the blade of a hatchet. Those who mitigate their endorsement of the courageous rebels who travelled beside Nat Turner—and the carnage they left in their wake—still don’t get it. If you’re a slave, there is only one way to get free. For the slave, freedom springs only from the corpse of the slave master, the sooner and more swiftly undertaken the better.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from Warren Correctional in Lebanon Ohio. If you’re a fellow slave you are the resistance.

* * * *

Conduct Report

Charging Official: Janet Smith

Rules Violated: Rule 26 (Disrespect to an officer, staff member, visitor or other inmate)

Rule 10 (Extortion by threat of violence or other means) Supporting Facts...

Be advised, on the above date and time, Inmate Swain A243205 was placed in TPU under investigation for posting and self-admitting to posting the attached sign on the inmate phones in 2A. The sign... orders the administration to submit to his demands or he will retaliate. His form of retaliation would include posting his grievance on the internet...

* * * *

Hunger Strike

An update from January/February 2017

I got a post card from a friend in rebellion the other day after I had gone more than 40 days without a meal. The postcard showed an image of an Islamic women in a head covering, holding up two signs. One said “love for all,” the other said “hatred for none.” Behind and around her were people with their arms locked together, forming a human wall.

My friend in rebellion described the scene two years prior: Muslims attempting to speak at Capital Hill had their microphones snatched away from them and they were cursed at and denigrated but, at this scene in 2017, more than 3,000 people (many of them looking very anarchist or maybe, anarchist-esque) defended the Muslims’ right to speak. My friend in rebellion described the unforgettable moment as one of the Muslim women cried and said, “So many people. Who knew this was in so many hearts?”

It would appear from this that nothing can unify us like, well, Donald Trump. He is a unifier. But this scene speaks in a particular way to me because I stand at the convergence of both frames of reference. I’ve been an anarchist for decades and what a lot of people don’t know is that I also converted to Islam in 2014.

A lot of my anarchist friends, when they learn I am both anarchist and Muslim, are curious as to how those two strains go together. They go together quite nicely for me but that is probably a topic for another segment or five.

As an anarchist and as a Muslim I am currently on a hunger strike, and haven’t accepted a meal since breakfast on the 26th of December. For anyone keeping score at home that means I haven’t eaten this year. I am recording this on day 46.

Up until now the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) has effectively met almost all of my terms (the ones related to constraints on my communication). The only remaining issue for quite some time has been my Halal diet.

Halal diets are the equivalent of the Jewish Kosher diet. As a Muslim, I have insisted on being provided a Halal diet. So far, the ODRC has refused and three weeks ago according to medical staff, I went from the Malnutrition designation to the Starvation one.

Kosher diets are permitted to Jewish prisoners as a matter of policy, it is an automatic thing. But Muslims are not provided the same respect. In fact, as a matter of practice, the ODRC never allows Muslim prisoners to access our permitted diet.

To make matters worse, the prepared Halal meals are currently in a freezer just a few hundred feet away from me right now. All it would take to end my slow death by starvation is for an ODRC bureaucrat to sign a piece of paper allowing the chow hall cooks to grab those meals, heat them up, and hand them to me. The problem it seems is that the ODRC director himself is a fundamentalist Christian who discriminates against Muslims and refuses to budge on the issue of religious freedom even if it means killing someone by forcing him to go a month and a half without food.

This is apparently what this prison director thinks Jesus would do. This is very curious when we consider that the governor of Ohio, the guy who appointed this prisons director to his cabinet is John Kasich. If you followed the fiasco of the last election cycle you remember that John Kasich was the one guy on the entire Republican team who attempted to be the adult in the room. To his credit, then and now, Kasich did everything he could to distance himself from Donald Trump, and to condemn Trump’s anti-Muslim policies. Kasich remains an extremely vocal Trump critic. So now we have now this great irony; Kasich, who criticizes Trump’s anti-Muslim discrimination, doesn’t permit Muslims their religious diet in his prisons. Trump, the Islamophobe, is the executive over the federal bureau of prisons and does permit Muslims’ religious diets.

It’s my hope that this glaring inconsistency can be brought to Governor Kasich’s attention before, you know, I sputter out. Anyone wanting to get involved in that can call Governor Kasich at 614-466-3555, that’s 614-466-3555. You can bring to his attention that his prison’s director is an Islamophobic Trump Republican who discriminates against Muslims and refuses to provide our religious diet, and urge him to fire that prison’s director. Feel free to

demand that Kasich intervene, to make sure Muslim prisoners get their Halal diets, which will permit me to come off of this hunger strike by eating said diet. Like that Muslim women with the sign at The Capital so simply put it: “love for all, hatred for none.”

Here’s to Donald Trump bringing out the best in all of us on day 46 of the hunger strike.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from Warren Correctional in Lebanon Ohio. If you’re listening, you are the resistance.

* * * *

Trainwreck Resumes Dirty War, Subject to 264 Lawsuits Soon to be Filed by 12 Monkey Unincorporated Association

The following is a communication sent by Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain to WCI prison officials related to the theft of his mail and the new definition of “conducting business” used as a pretext to justify mail theft.

Based upon my conversation with Warden Harris this morning, I must provide an update in this electronic record. It is now my understanding that the “conducting business” pretext used for stealing mail originates with Trainwreck at Legal Services.

Be advised that Trainwreck has arranged the theft of mail from a state agency to the Authorized Agent of an unincorporated association. You already know the criminal violations. But, these are the civil implications: The unincorporated association has legal existence. That means it can sue people. The individual who stole mail also has individual legal existence. That is, he can be sued in his personal capacity. And since he was not present here in Warren County when he arranged for proxies to conduct the theft on his behalf, we can only assume that electronic communication of his order traveled through other counties. No way to know which ones. So, the civil actions for theft of mail and request for monetary damages for compensation for each piece of mail will have to be filed on behalf of the unincorporated association against the individual who arranged the theft, and they will have to be filed in all 88 counties. Three pieces of mail times 88 counties…

That’s 264 civil actions against the thief who ordered the theft of my mail. Warden Harris confirmed that Trainwreck is the guy who made the arrangement to steal my mail.

I have already sent out the paperwork I need to send from here. I imagine the 264 lawsuits will be pumped out and mailed from somewhere in the free world in the next couple of weeks. It is my understanding that since he is being sued in his personal capacity, he cannot avail himself of representation by the Ohio Attorney General. Since my conversation with Warden Harris, he will have to be removed from the action and replaced by Trainwreck.

I imagine if Trainwreck has malpractice insurance or if he’s bonded, being the defendant in 264 civil actions may impact those matters, particularly when the major insurance companies are notified directly of the filing of those civil actions naming him.

Meanwhile, I am complying completely with the new interpretation of the “conducting business” rule and have not so much as swiped my identification for food trays. Warden Harris has not answered my kites requesting prior approval for mundane things I used to not need to get prior approval to conduct, so I have begun filing original grievances for each instance of his failure to respond in a timely manner.

It is my hope the Institutional Inspector will ban me from filing grievances, so I can proceed directly to court with every single claim and bypass the grievance process.

I am fairly certain that Trainwreck didn’t think this through.

Keep listening to him. Don’t make him commit his own crimes. Whatever you do, don’t stop messing with my mail and just hand me what you’ve stolen and make all of this go away. That would be way too rational and reasonable, and would be absolutely contrary to the nature of that Munchausen Syndrome sociopath who lit fires and killed small animals and wet the bed as a child, before graduating to terrorizing me.

* * * *

12 Monkeys Unincorporated

We are through the looking glass. Down the rabbit hole.

In 2012, prison fascists and the Federal Bozos of Intimidation decided that I was Monkey #4 of the Army of the 12 Monkeys. They didn’t consult me. Didn’t get my consent for turning me into a monkey. They just did it. And it was pretty painful.

Since then, prison fascists have repeatedly attributed “gang activity” to me, making it clear that I’ll be Monkey #4 for the rest of my life. No matter what I do, they’ll never let me out of this gang. Despite my every effort to extricate myself, prison fascists drag me back into it, kicking and screaming. It appears the job of prison gang coordinators and investigators is to keep folks in gangs no matter how hard folks try to get out. Curious.

Recently, I’ve had to question the practicality of trying to get out of the Army of the 12 Monkeys when clearly prison fascists all the way up the food chain demand that I run the Army of the 12 Monkeys. Their refusal to allow me to resign and just be a human again has led me to ponder some other approach.

So, I got to looking at my situation. My problem isn’t really that they demand that I remain Monkey #4 for the rest of my life… The problem is that the Army of the 12 Monkeys is designated as a Security Threat Group. If the 12 Monkeys were not a Security Threat Group, prison officials’ identification of me as Monkey #4 wouldn’t mean anything.

So, what I did, I looked at the groups that are Security Threat Groups… and I looked at the groups that are not. And I saw a pattern. Bloods, Crips, Aryan Brotherhood—all Security Threat Groups. The Masonic Order, the Democratic Party, the Moose Lodge—not Security Threat Groups.

What do the Masonic Order, Democratic Party, and Moose Lodge all have in common that the Bloods, Crips, and ABs do not? They have official recognition. They have registered their organizations with some official government office… and that official recognition precludes prison fascists from including on the gang list those masons, democrats, or moose—Moose? Meese? Mooses? Whatever.

And that means, if I want off the silly gang list, I have to find a way to make the Army of the 12 Monkeys official. So, I did.

I contacted the Ohio Secretary of State’s office in order to get the forms for registering the trade name of the Army of the 12 Monkeys, and the forms for registering the Army of the 12 Monkeys as an unincorporated association.

According to my research, the only two differences between registering a corporation and an unincorporated association are (1) with a corporation, if you get sued, your personal assets can’t get touched, and (2) with a corporation, the filing fee is more. Since I have no personal assets, I went with the cheaper filing fee.

I filled out the proper forms and enclosed a request for the fees to be taken from my account. The warden’s designee approved the transaction and sent everything off to the Ohio Secretary of State. Keep in mind, this is the Ohio Secretary of State. I’m not sending funds to ISIS.

The Secretary of State cashed the check and filed everything and registered the Army of the 12 Monkeys. I now own the trade name and I’m officially the “Authorized Agent” of the Army of the 12 Monkeys, which is as official as the Moose Lodge or the Masons. The Secretary of State mailed the completed forms back to me. And that’s when prison fascists decided to steal the mail.

Yep. They stole it. They will not serve the official state agency mail to me.

Now, here’s the deal: prison fascists can withhold certain materials like graphic porn or escape plans… but nobody even alleges that the Secretary of State sent me anything like that. Further, this isn’t a personal letter—it’s state agency mail. There are laws against obstructing state agency mail.

The rationale that has been provided is that my access to a quasi-legal process to register an organization somehow violates the prison rule against “conducting a business.” But registering a business is not conducting a business… and violating prison rules results in a conduct report, not in mail theft. If they want to accuse me of conducting business, there’s a disciplinary process for that.

It appears that these prison fascists are so bonkers, they think if they steal my documents, it somehow un-registers the registration that already happened. But it doesn’t. I can proceed without the forms.

In the meantime, I contacted state and federal agencies to report prison fascists’ criminal activity. Beyond federal mail theft— a crime; and beyond obstruction of state agency mail—a crime; prison fascists have interfered with an animal enterprise.

Oh, yeah. Forgot to tell you—I registered the Army of the 12 Monkeys as an animal enterprise, with protections under federal law. Interference with an Animal Enterprise—like stealing state agency mail to its Authorized Agent—is a federal felony. Further, it carries a terrorism specification. That means prison fascists who stole my mail face a minimum of 20 years in prison if convicted.

I’ll hopefully be sending out for posting the contact info for state and federal agencies so that you can urge them to charge these mail-stealing criminals, and you can also email the warden’s assistant here, greg.craft@odrc.state.oh.us and urge him to desist from this criminal activity.

I suspect they’ll hold onto these forms for dear life, even if it does them no good. They don’t care about “conducting business,” which is a red herring. What they care about is the potential for me getting the 12 Monkeys removed from their security threat group database, and the possibility that I will then share my method with all the other groups, which would make their list shrink and make their federal funds dry up.

They are defending their federal bloc-grant swindle, even by committing federal crimes with terrorism specifications.

This is Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain, Authorized Agent of the Army of the 12 Monkeys Unincorporated Association. If you’re burning down the enemy’s federal bloc-grant funding schemes, you are the resistance…

Addresses

U.S. Attorney General’s Office

221 East 4th St., Suite 400

Cincinnati, OH 45202

Write and urge them to charge Warren Correctional mail officials with theft of US mail and Interference with an Animal Enterprise for stealing mail from the Ohio Secretary of State to Sean Swain, the Authorized Agent of the Army of the 12 Monkeys Unincorporated Association.

Warren County Prosecutor’s Office

520 Justice Drive

Lebanon, Ohio 45036

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine

150 E. Gay St.

Columbus, Ohio 43215

Write these offices and urge them to charge Warren Correctional mail officials with Obstruction of State Agency Mail for stealing mail from the Ohio Secretary of State to Sean Swain, the Authorized Agent of the Army of the 12 Monkeys unincorporated association.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted

P.O. Box 670

Columbus, Ohio 43216

busserv@OhioSecretaryofState.gov

Write this office and urge them to pursue legal action against Warren Correctional Institution and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for stealing mail from their office to Sean Swain, the Authorized Agent of the Army of the 12 Monkeys unincorporated association. Share the above addresses and urge them to puruse federal charges: Theft of US Mail and Interference with an Animal Enterprise, and state charges: Obstruction of State Agency Mail.

Then contact warden’s assistant Greg Craft to inform him how you feel about the criminal clown show he’s currently operating: greg.craft@ odrc.state.oh.us

* * *

Conduct Report

Charging Official: Investigator Brian Baker

Rules Violated: Rule 26 (Disrespect to an officer, staff member, visitor or other inmate)

Supporting Facts...

On March 28, 2018 at approximately 8:05 pm this investigator received a JPay email from inmate Swain A243205. Inmate Swain used the JPay communication system... to intimidate, disrespect and harass staff members—including directing people to the “blast blog” where staff members’ home addresses are posted...

Fuckweasels Ryan Applegate, Ryan Dolan, and Antonio Lee Continue to Terrorize Sean’s Mail

It just never ends.

On February 16, Mailroom fartgoblin Ryan Applegate— whose personal war against all anarchist literature made him globally famous—sent me another notice of withholding. This notice indicated that what was being withheld is a CD.

The notice does not indicate who sent the CD, or where it came from, or what is on it, or why it was sent. It also does not indicate any criteria for withholding which is required on the form.

The notice was signed by Ryan Applegate, the same guy who has made it his full-time job to fuck with my mail.

As of the writing of that notice, 60% of the mail that has been withheld at WCI, from 31 October to the present, belongs to me. In a prison of 1500 captives, 60% of withheld mail belongs to one of them… ever since the prison found out I got Last Act of the Circus Animals published.

Vengeance of small-minded, shitty people who cannot read a book, let alone write one.

Having received the notice, I sent kites to fartgoblin Applegate in an effort to find out some information about the CD. It is not possible for me to decide what to do—either send it out or challenge the withholding—unless I know what the CD is and where it came from. So, I sent kites to the fart goblin to find out.

No answer.

Keep in mind, there is a 15-day limit before the CD gets tossed in the trash. It says so right on the form.

As the 15-day deadline got closer and I received no answers from the fart goblins in the mailroom, I sent the form in a kite to Institutional Inspector Cynthia “Notorious” Hill. As the prisoners’ chief advocate, she is supposed to be able to get me answers.

She sent the form back without any answers at all, simply stating that ODRC Central Office ordered the withholding of the CD.

That still does not tell me anything. I still have no idea what is on the CD. For all I know, it was sent by prior counsel and my whole case file is on there. Or, it was sent from the parole board in answer to my public records request, and it has the photos of my apartment door and door frame that police had withheld—photos that prove there was a break-in and that I acted in self defense.

Could be the greatest hits of the Go-Gos.

No way for me to know. All I know is that the ODRC’s obsession with my mail continues for the sixth straight year as does their absolute lack of regard for their own laws and rules.

As best as I can tell, these are the fascist fuckweasels and fartgoblins[61] responsible for trying to fuck my life right now:

ODRC Chief Inspector Antonio Lee (614) 752-1677
ODRC Counsel Ryan Dolan (614) 752-1765
Mailroom Fart Goblin Ryan Applegate (513) 932-3388,
extension 84252

When contacting these assholes, there is no commentary too rude, too inflammatory, or too incendiary for you to express. The aim is to provide the necessary level of discomfort that will make them stop their current, illegal terror campaign so feel free to say whatever it is you think will achieve that level of discomfort for them. The more overwhelming the response, the better my chances of getting these petty idiots to stop fucking with me. For anyone interested, more information on one or all of these fine specimens may also be located at blastblog.noblogs.org.

(For clarification, “fuckweasels” are distinguished from “fart goblins” in that fuckweasels are generally in charge and give the orders, while fart goblins take the orders and blindly, stupidly carry them out, no matter how mind-numbingly reprehensible. In this instance, both Ryan Dolan and Antonio Lee are fuckweasels, while Ryan Applegate is a mere fart goblin.)

Part Four: Escalation

Unfinished Song

Introduction to Escalation

During my time at Warren Correctional (beginning in 2015), prison officials criminalized my very existence. I sought to make them renounce their first mistake, which was torturing me, but it appears they came instead to regret their second mistake, which was letting me live.

This section begins with the conduct report written to again elevate my security rating, and to justify my transfer back to Lucasville, where staff already had a plan in place to kill me and stage my death as a suicide. The online article, for which the conduct report was written, follows.

As the articles—including Final Straw radio segments—re- count, after the assassination plot was exposed I would end up transferred back to the supermax, and then transferred yet again. Thanks to faceless and nameless rebels in the free world, I outlived the careers of some of the principle architects of the domestic torture program.

And now this account has made it beyond the walls and bars and fences of the prison complex. The domestic torture program is no longer concealed.

* * * *

Conduct Report

Charging Official: Lt. Kevin Chamblin

Rules Violated: Rule 10 (Extortion by threat of violence or other means)

Rule 15 (Rioting or encouraging others to riot)

Rule 17 (Engaging in unauthorized group activities as set forth in paragraph (B) of rule 5120-9-37 of the Administrative Code Supporting Facts...

On May 18th 2018 an article written by inmate Swain 243-205 was released and published to the internet by supporters at Inmate Swain’s specific direction. Inmate Swain is a self-proclaimed anarchist and a profiled member of the Army of the 12 Monkeys...

****

John Brown, Nat Turner and Slave Rebellions: Drones and Guns

In previous years, I have used the occasion of June 111 to roll out what I thought were pretty big ideas. In 2015, for example, I described how blastblog.noblogs.org had posted the home addresses of Ohio prison officials, including those who orchestrated the torture regimen I endured at Mansfield. In that statement I suggested that we collectively adopt a policy of self defense against state terrorists, that when they torture us, we burn their cars and houses down; when they stop the torture, we stop the burning.

The ODRC claimed that what I said constituted a threat to every single employee of the ODRC and their families. As what I wrote was a statement opposing torture, to me, claiming that every single employee of the ODRC was threatened seems like something of an admission. This means that even the ODRC recognizes that all of its employees participate in torture.

At any rate, as fate would have it, in 2017 when I undertook a fifty-day hunger strike, those home addresses were still posted. I have it on good authority that prison officials received death threats at their homes, at all hours of the night and day, phoned in from “exotic area codes.” I have also heard a rumor that, at one of those state terrorists’ residences, an item of property of significant value somehow ended up getting torched. I don’t know whose home, and I don’t know whether the significantly-valued property was a house or a car or even a barbecue grill, but I know this: after that piece of property got torched, state terrorists began negotiating an end to my hunger strike and I got all of my communications restored.

As a side note, I have also heard a rumor—no telling how true this is—that blood evidence was found at the state terrorist’s residence where the property was torched; the state tested it and discovered the DNA was mine. Not sure how something like that could happen, as I clearly have an alibi. I think it would take a pretty elaborate and complicated plan for anyone to have gotten my blood out of a maximum security prison to smear it around at a crime scene.

But that’s the rumor.

Every year, state terrorists retaliate against me for the content of my June 11 statements, usually through their kangaroo disciplinary process. I have come to think of my June 11 statements as a kind of heart attack delivery system, a weaponized form of communication designed to cause cardiac distress for state terrorists who ponder all the doom and disaster that confronts them if what I’m saying inspires you. Please let this inspire you.

This year, there’s virtually nothing the state terrorists can do to me. I already have all of my communications suspended[62] and I have essentially been kicked out of every single prison of higher security than this one.

I have to wonder what will get torched next... and where authorities will find my blood smeared. With my mail monitored by federal authorities, this statement still made it to its destination. I think we can all agree that we really don’t feel safe with these geniuses protecting the public, right? I know I don’t.

So, at any rate, to the topic of this year’s statement...

When pondering what I might be able to do for the cause of freedom—true freedom, what anarchy really represents—I often ask myself, “What would Nat Turner do? What would John Brown do?” These are the questions that come to mind because we are all facing a system of slavery.

My enslavement is maybe a bit more obvious than yours, but yours is just as real as mine. Perhaps my experience is more analogous to the struggle of field hands during the plantation days and perhaps your experience is more akin to the house servants. You have slightly more amenities than I do, a bigger pile of toys, but ask yourself: what would happen if you didn’t smile at your boss’ stale jokes? What would happen if you told that cop what you really thought of him and his authority? Never mind overt behaviors like waving fists, let’s just consider things as harmless as facial expressions. We live in a society so unfree that a boss can fire you or a cop can kill you, not for violent behavior or aggressive gestures, but for the look on your face. Cops in Nevada had an intoxicated man sobbing and crawling around on the carpet in a hotel hallway for twenty minutes, playing some demented version of “Simon Says,” before pumping him full of slugs and killing him... for adjusting his pants that were falling down. The difference between that guy and you? You happened to not be in that hotel hallway. That’s all.

So, if you really think you’re free, you’re not paying attention.

And anyone who is not free is a slave. I’m a slave. So are you. Our common enemy enslaves us.

So, I look to Nat Turner and John Brown as role models. They both sought to instigate slave rebellions. And just to demonstrate to you that I have no illusions about what those two figures really represent... After Nat Turner killed his slave-owner, and after he likewise killed that slave-owner’s wife and older children, Nat Turner left that plantation and permitted the slave-owner’s infant son to live. But, later on, he sent two rebels back to kill the child, as he came to realize that as long as that child was left alive, that child was his owner. That baby would inherit Nat Turner as a piece of property.

To be free, Nat Turner had to kill that infant. In the aftermath of that slave rebellion, that infant child was found headless in the fireplace. Its skull had been dashed repeatedly against the bricks. So, just to be clear, I am fully aware of the unmitigated violence unleashed by Nat Turner in that famous slave rebellion, and I still consider Nat Turner a role model. If you enslave me, and if you have an infant son who will inherit me, and if you have a tasteful brick fireplace, then you will probably want to make sure my fellow slaves and I never get our hands on some hatchets.

You really won’t like the outcome.

In the case of John Brown, he intended to raid the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry and distribute the firearms and ammunition to slaves, arming them in full knowledge that those slaves would utterly slaughter the plantation aristocracy of the South. Rather than fomenting rebellion with hatchets, leaving rebel slaves to dash infant brains against stone fireplaces, John Brown sought to provide guns that would make the bloodbath more efficient and much quicker.

You might outrun rebel slaves with hatchets.

You won’t outrun bullets.

At any rate, when I say I’m a big fan of Nat Turner and John Brown, just to be clear, I’m not talking about the polished portraits that the government may place on commemorative postage stamps. No, I’m referring to the enemies of the state who struggled for the wholesale destruction of the slave-owning class as a means for liberation, the rebels who were hung with nooses placed around their necks by that very same government that now issues commemorative postage stamps.

Most of my role models have been executed. Go figure.

So, as I said, I often ask myself: What would Nat Turner do? What would John Brown do? Often, I find my mind drifting to technological advances like drones. It seems to me that if John Brown were alive today, he would likely be amassing a fleet of drones—for delivery of weapons and bolt cutters into prisons. If Nat Turner were alive today, he would be conspiring with underground resistance to arrange delivery of guns and ammunition, machetes and hatchets.

Consider this: The larger system reducing all of us to slavery relies on a few essential components to maintain control. One of those central components is the criminal justice complex, the courts and prisons, the capacity of the state to punish. This capacity to punish not only neutralizes those who rebel, like Marius Mason or Jeremy Hammond, the Cleveland 4 and the NATO 5, but the threat that this complex represents keeps the rest of us in our assigned seats, obeying, complying, following orders, maintaining the program.

If that capacity to punish suddenly got suspended or greatly impeded, not only would you have angry savages spilling out into the world, creating a real mess of things, but you would have a population emboldened, more and more, to wild out. So, the destruction of the prison complex is also the destruction of the hierarchical disorder, the unraveling of the existent system, the collapse of the global slavocracy.

Drone deliveries of weapons and ammunition into the prison complex would be a great contribution to that collapse.

Consider, in Ohio prisons for example, on the inside of the prison fences, there are two operable firearms. One pistol remains in a safe in the warden’s office while the other remains in a safe in the office of the chief of security, the major. No one else inside the perimeter is armed with anything more than pepper spray or a billy club, which can easily be appropriated by rebel prisoners with rifles. In such a scenario, agents of control would attempt to re-take the prison, but the same conditions that keep the prisoners from getting out would also work to keep those agents from easily getting in. There exists no contingency plan for attempting to re-take a prison complex from rebels armed with assault rifles, and with perhaps hundreds of captured government forces. None.

So, imagine how the government might respond to two or three or a dozen slave rebellions occurring at the same time, all involving armed rebels holding the prison hostage... and thereby holding the government hostage... and thereby holding the hierarch model hostage. A dozen Attica or Lucasville Uprisings where prisoners are locked and loaded.

We’re not just talking about spectacle—although it would certainly be a spectacle—we’re talking about a critical disjuncture, an event so cataclysmic and so utterly devastating to both the reality and the myth of hierarchy that generations would understand existence in such a way that there was the “world before” and the “world after” these rebellions. It would be the Titanic, the Hindenburg, 911, and Columbine, all wrapped up into one event.

So, given this great potential, we have to ask: Why hasn’t this happened yet? As far as I can tell, there are two reasons. First, the cost of drones and weapons. Second, the penalties for getting caught. I’d like to address these issues in that order.

The cost of a drone that can carry a decent payload might be a few grand. I remember a few years back, the top-of-the-line drone was $2,500. No doubt, drones have advanced and costs have increased.

But, I would point out that after the initial payout in purchasing a drone, this is a project that can more than pay for itself. With a drone, you can generate a great deal of revenue. Here at Warren Correctional, for instance, five pounds of tobacco can get you roughly $4,000, and if the prisoner on the receiving end is willing to go to the troubles of breaking up that bulk amount into packages for sale to the consumers, it could get you up to as much as $10,000.

We’re talking tobacco here, not cocaine or meth. One delivery per month of five pounds of tobacco would generate a minimum of $48,000 per year—just from this prison.

But, consider. There are a number of other prisons with cell blocks where drone deliveries of tobacco can be effectively made. So, with one drone, someone could conceivably generate more than half a million dollars per year in drone deliveries of tobacco just to Ohio prisons with cell blocks. That doesn’t include deliveries of cell phones, which can go for as much as $500 a piece, or pot, or hard drugs, or specialty items like bottles of vodka or cigars or Penthouse magazines; rope ladders, explosives, or bolt cutters.

Half a million dollars a year from twelve deliveries across Ohio per month. That could fund a lot of radical activity. We’re talking about becoming the “professional anarchists” that Donald Trump predicted right after his inauguration.

Now, if anyone feels badly about delivering over-priced lung cancer to prisoners, you should know that five pounds of tobacco will flow into this prison and guards will pocket the profits unless you cut them out and monopolize the tobacco deliveries. Somebody will deliver high-priced lung cancer to prisoners. The question is whose pockets will get filled. Will it be opportunists who hate prisoners, or will it be rebels who use that money to liberate prisoners?

I think that probably covers the economic aspect. As to the penalties for getting caught, when you move from tobacco to dropping off dufflebags full of AR-15 rifles, you’re facing some really serious penalties. If you get caught, state terrorists are going to bury you. I would suggest not getting caught.

There are folks who have already gotten caught making drone deliveries into prisons. You can probably look at the mistakes they made in order to avoid repeating them. Things I would suggest in order to avoid getting caught:

—Do not have drones registered in your name. Buy a used drone from before registration was mandatory, or send in someone to buy the drone for you and then report it stolen.

—Do not deliver during daylight hours. As all deliveries are done at night during limited visibility, you will need more planning and advance coordination.

—Do not deliver to dormitories. In prisons with dorms, you have hundreds of witnesses. You want to deliver to cell blocks so that you can deliver to a specific cell window where a maximum of two occupants are aware of what happened.

—Do not attach the payload to the drone itself. You want a few hundred feet of high-test fishing line that you use to connect the payload to the drone, or some metal cable spray-painted black. That way, the drone can remain at a much higher altitude where it cannot be seen or heard while the payload arrives at the proper cell window.

—Fly the drone at maximum altitude until it is directly over the delivery point. Once you make the first delivery and establish the drone’s position, you can program the drone to stop at that exact point every single time.

—Coordinate deliveries in advance. That means the prisoner receiving the delivery should have a cell phone or some other method of communicating so that monitored phones and emails aren’t used. Coordinated deliveries guarantee that the drone will be present over the prison for the shortest amount of time. In and out. Zoom, zoom. Then, gone.

If anarchists and prison abolitionists across the country begin drone deliveries in state prisons, collectives in all fifty states could generate millions of dollars that provide anarchists the luxury of making rebellion their full-time jobs. It would also provide massive funds for proxies to take to gun shows for purchasing stockpiles of weapons and ammunition. Then, whenever prison riots or disturbances begin, or whenever prison rebels are planning on getting started, a drone delivery of weapons could be on the way.

Advances in drone technology have already evolved so that drones can now carry a payload of hundreds of pounds, making it possible to transport a human being by drone. It could be that, by this time next year, I will be writing about how rebels can use the commercially-available high-end drones to conduct selective extractions from prisons. And, perhaps, by then, prison abolitionists will have already generated millions of dollars and will already have the drone-delivery experience to start those extractions.

What would Nat Turner and John Brown think about our current era and the possibilities of slave uprisings?

Interesting times.

* * * *

A Letter from Sean Swain

[As previously published in Earth First! Journal, Yule 2018-19]

Dear Friends,

I heard about the change of address, so I wanted to get hopped up on coffee and send you a rant-slash-update from the concrete tombs that represent the model for our collective future— one where they will teach us about trees and coral and seaweed in history books.

My world, our every move is on video; our every communication monitored and analyzed and archived; our associations documented.

Sorta like your world. A lot like your world. Just like your world.

I write to you from the seg unit at Warren Correctional, pending transfer. [EF!J Editor’s Note: Sean has been in a segregation unit or solitary confinement since allegedly writing an article, referenced below, that was later posted to the internet. Ed#2: see previous segment in this book.] The Ohio Department of Retribution and Corruption wants to send me out of state, having found me guilty of rioting, gang activity, and extortion. The ODRC fartgoblins claim I wrote an article, one that describes how to use drones to drop guns into prisons, an article that was posted online.

Apparently, I’m responsible for everything that exists on the internet. I run the whole web from my cell, with my tinfoil hat.

I’m a Jedi. Well, not really. I think we all know that if I were a

Jedi, there’s a hundred percent chance I would use the Force inappropriately.

When the fartgoblins came down on me, activist attorney Pam Starsia came to my rescue, and it appears she is persuading the National Lawyers Guild[63] to get involved also. So, in the midst of all this, facing more than a year in seg, I began a hunger strike.

Have I ever mentioned that hunger strikes are stupid? I once undertook a 50 day hunger strike wherein the fartgoblins agreed in writing to restore my communications... and then suspended them 14 months later without so much as an excuse. So, you can always count on the fascists to keep their end of the deal... until they don’t feel like it. And then they don’t.

So, even when you succeed with a hunger strike, it’s a failure. It’s a failure because, at any time, the fascists in power can revoke the deal, unilaterally.

Feeling like I should do something, even something stupid and useless, I did something stupid and useless: I undertook another hunger strike. After a little more than a week, I was subjected to “forced medical care”—and we must always be skeptical of any phrase that has the word “force” and “care” in it, as no real “care” is ever “forced”—and I was poked ten times before someone found a vein and loaded me up with fluids. I went 29 days. I got nothing. Nothing. The Fartgoblin High Command would rather let me starve than give me anything at all. So, after 29 days, I quit. I ate two peanut butter sandwiches and accepted that my hunger strike was an abysmal failure.

I will never undertake another hunger strike. Ever. And here’s why...

First, let’s dispose of the “pacifist” and “nonviolent” mythology. Hunger strikes are violent. Don’t believe me? Snatch up a city council member in a black van and then duct tape him in your basement, depriving him of food for 29 days. Then, hand him a survey and ask him the worst part of his experience—the punch to the face, the duct tape, or the hunger. I know what his answer will be.

Subjecting someone to starvation is violence. Subjecting yourself to starvation is self-inflicted violence.

Me, I’m no pacifist. I believe in violence. But, from here on out, I have resolved to always direct my violence toward those I don’t like, not toward those I do.

I like me. It’s my sparkling personality.

The second thing about a hunger strike is, it’s useless. The hunger strike as an effective method of resistance died in 1980, along with more than a dozen Irish Republican Army prisoners in Britain. Margaret Thatcher’s brutal occupation regime simply refused to budge, letting IRA prisoners die one after the other.

We now live in an era where governments do whatever they want and however they want. Marches of a million people? So what. Protests? So what. Hunger strikes? So what.

That’s all part of a language that the fascist fartgoblins no longer speak. They don’t understand that language. They can’t hear you.

Tip their cop cars and burn them, and they can hear you. Shoot their cops, their enforcers, and blow their limbs off with roadside bombs, and they can hear you. They know that language.

Violence is a language, the only language that the fascist police state speaks. No other language registers with them.

No doubt, someone at ODRC high command will read my advocacy of political violence and say, “There he goes again...,” to which I can only respond, “No—there you go again.”

Some famous dead guy once said that those who make nonviolent change impossible, make violent change inevitable. That being the case, the fartgoblins have made violence inevitable. Not me. I’m just the guy saying, “Let’s give them ‘the inevitable’ and get it over with. The sooner, the better.”

We need to get to it before the only trees and coral and seaweed are the ones in history books. Before the only humans are the ones in history books.

The truth is dangerous. Stay dangerous.

Freedom,

Sean

****

My Return

[As recorded for the Final Straw, January 2019]

I’m back. And I’m also back at the super-duper-max where my radio career first began, where Bursts [Final Straw producer] discovered me and realized I had a face for radio. I’ve been on vacation for a few months, but not the kind that Bursts went on, gallivanting across Europe with that ridiculous, duct-taped Sean Swain blow-up doll he was lugging around at soccer games. No, my vacation occurred in the Warren Corruptional seg unit after haters of the fartgoblin variety found an article at june11.org that advocated using drones to drop guns into prisons.

I don’t know, but if it got me six months in seg followed by transfer to the super-duper-max, it must be worth reading.

I know you guys missed me. Without me on the Final Straw, there’s no designated time for a bathroom break.

So... while I was locked away in seg, I tried to keep up with what was going on with you dumpster-burning cop-car-tipping molotov-throwing ski-mask-wearing machete-wielding savagecannibal maniacs, and I must say that some of the reportbacks were discouraging. I’m somewhat disappointed if the information is true. I heard some of you started a stamp club. A stamp club? A few of you began playing cribbage. Who plays cribbage? And this is unconfirmed, but someone told me that in my extended absence, one Final Straw listener went out and obtained gainful employment. A job. A paying one. That’s totally unacceptable. I don’t know; if this were a reality show, I think you could get voted off the island for that.

Anyway, I’m back. So, trash the stamps, burn the cards, quit the job—we’ve got important work to do. The hierarch delusion is not going to topple itself. There are fire alarms to pull, banks to rob, computer systems to hack, highways to block, corporate managers to knee-cap, and bowling balls to launch from potato guns... not because it’s effective; just because it’s fun. Remember, almost only counts in horse shoes, hand grenades, jarts, darts, nuclear bombs... and bowling balls launched from potato guns.

I tell you what, it feels good to have my “insurrectionary street cred” back, having the fartgoblin high command recognizing my incredible dangerousness and influence among the dumpster-fire demographic. It appears as though the Oppressive Dimwits of Retribution and Corruption, the ODRC, hold me responsible for the entire internet. Yeah. I’m bigger than Al Gore. Suck it, Al.

According to the conduct report issued against me, the fartgoblins found the guns-and-drones article at june11.org and automatically blamed your favorite anarchist prisoner. The conduct report points out that I’m an anarchist, as it is apparently okay these days in America to imply guilt based on ideology, and it said I “directed” my “instructions” to my “followers,” you know, because anarchists are famous for our “leaders” and “followers.” Yeah. I know.

The conduct report was written by Trevor Clark, an ODRC lawyer who has terrorized and tormented me for years. He claimed to be doing it for the FBI, though the FBI won’t write me back when I ask them if it’s true. I think when they get mail from me they hide under their desks and close their eyes and try to summon their spirit animals. So, I don’t know. I may have to find a way to take them down too.

Anyway, Trevor Clark, the architect of this goofiness... I wrote an affidavit on November 7 describing how Clark groped me and made humiliating sexual demands of me in 2013... and within two weeks of my affidavit, Clark no longer worked at the ODRC. You can read about his predatory behavior at itsgoingdown.org.

But that’s not the only turd that got flushed. Director Gary Mohr, the monster who introduced domestic torture into Ohio prisons, resigned. He has now moved to North Carolina. I guess human rights criminals move to North Carolina, sorta like Nazi war criminals left Germany and snuck off to Bolivia. Maybe Gary can pick up the Final Straw from wherever he lives. Hey, Gary. I haven’t forgotten about you.

So, based on a conduct report about internet postings, I went to the Serious Misconduct Panel where a jackass deputy warden named Doug Luneke called me an arnachist. Yeah. Arnachist. Then he and Deputy Warden Marva Allen found me guilty of rioting, gang activity, and extortion, making me probably the single most dangerous prisoner in Ohio penal history.

Based on that, Gary Mohr tried to get me transferred out of state, before he fled to North Carolina to avoid my arnachist wrath. He asked the feds to place me at Guantanamo Bay but they refused. They said they don’t need my kind of disruption there. The ODRC vigorously shopped for some other state to take me, but I was categorically refused by all 58 other states and the District of Columbia... twice. I went on a 29 day hunger strike back in September. Lost almost seventy pounds. I got nothing.

Until early January, I was slated for transfer to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville—until I exposed the plot hatched by Lucasville employees to murder me in a staged suicide. No kidding. The information came from prisoners inside the prison who wrote to warn me of my imminent assassination. So, I arrived here. The super-duper-max. Where my radio career began. I’m still breathing. Still got a pulse. And I’m still fighting mad.

Here’s the thing: postings online are regulated by the FBI and the FCC. Not the Ohio prison system. So, in a sneaky, underhanded way, fartgoblin prison officials have used their prison rules and disciplinary process to essentially regulate the internet, to control the public forum, to stifle political discourse, holding me responsible for anything that appears online that they don’t like. That means I can never get out of prison until I can find a way to make the four billion internet users refrain from bad behavior. It also means that whenever an arnachist posts anything out there, the fartgoblins might just “kick the hostage” in here... a strategy to silence not just me, but all arnachists. This is selective and invidious. No other Ohio prisoner has been treated like this.

Activist attorney Pam Starsia[64] is attempting to help me out, and anyone with big piles of loot can donate with the paypal button at seanswain.org. It will likely take ten to twenty grand to get rolling. Also, there’s a petition you can find through itsgoingdown.org and elsewhere, pledging to boycott Ohio until I get justice. This is very important because tourism and academics and transport are three of Ohio’s top five industries. Be sure to sign on and share that petition with ten thousand of your closest friends. I think a few million people already signed. Well, at least six people, including my mom.

I gotta get home someday and that may require fostering Ohio’s economic collapse. So, help me out here.

Cribbage? Stamp clubs? Really?

This is ARNachist prisoner Sean Swain from Ohio’s super- duper-max in Youngstown, Ohio. If you’re listening, you are the resistance...

emdnotes

* * * *

Terrorist

[as recorded for the Final Straw radio show]

I’m a full-blown terrorist now. I’m here at the super-duper-max for rioting and gang activity and extortion, and according to one of the security threat group coordinators, the United States has me listed as a “home-grown terrorist.”

Funny, I don’t feel like a terrorist. I haven’t hurt anyone. Whenever it rains, I deliberately walk around the worms on the sidewalk.

But, I’m a terrorist. The United States says so.

I guess it’s pretty easy to become a terrorist these days. You don’t have to shoot anyone or blow them up. You just have to have thoughts. If you have thoughts, and someone who works for the government of the US doesn’t like your thoughts, you’re probably a terrorist. So, it would seem, the standard for becoming a terrorist is the same as for getting un-friended on Facebook. When the US un-friends you, it puts you on a terror watchlist.

In my case, the offending thought is my adherence to anarchism. I’m an anarchist. That means I agree with all kinds of cultural anthropologists and sociologists and environmental experts, folks who say that this current social program is unsustainable; folks who can prove this hierarchy thing has never worked as advertised.

For me, this isn’t a belief. I don’t believe that hierarchy never worked as advertised; I know it didn’t. I don’t believe hierarchy is broken. I know it is, the same way I know that a toaster is broken if it keeps popping up cold bread. I’m an anarchist because I know this hierarchy thing doesn’t work. And I also know that non-hierarchical social systems did work; they worked for four million years of evolution. That’s what the experts say, anyhow.

Again, just to be clear, we’re not talking about beliefs. We’re talking about knowledge. I know things. And what I know makes me an anarchist, someone who rationally and thoughtfully rejects hierarchy.

If being an anarchist makes me a terrorist... I’m a terrorist because I’m an anarchist... and I’m an anarchist because I know stuff... so that means I’m a terrorist because I know stuff. This is really disturbing for me.

I would think that I shouldn’t be put on a terror watchlist just for being smarter than the fartgoblins who manage that list. I don’t think I should be a terrorist just because I know things they don’t know. By virtue of knowing things they don’t know, I would think that should qualify me to be a consultant rather than a terrorist. I would think they should be shoveling obscene piles of cash at me in order to solicit my advice. I know things that they don’t.

Rather than put me on a terror watchlist and burn my life down, the fartgoblins ought to schedule me to give lectures so I can explain to them how they’re getting swindled, and then, once they know what I know, they can all quit their jobs, live in squats, dumpsterdive for food, grow dreadlocks, and throw molotov cocktails through the front picture windows of the homes of the fartgoblins who replace them.

It just doesn’t make sense to me that we live in a world where we label as “terrorists,” people who know things that are provably true. I know, for instance, that the earth is round. At least, I think I do. I never saw earth from space, but I accept the accounts of those who have.

I wouldn’t know how to respond if the fartgoblins gave me an ultimatum, to either renounce my belief in the world being round, or else get labeled a terrorist.

I also know that gravity is real. I experience gravity. If the authorities demanded that I issue a statement opposing gravity in order to avoid placement on a terror watchlist, I would be dumbfounded.

That’s how I feel when I’m told I’m on a terror watchlist because I know hierarchy doesn’t work. Only, really, this situation is far, far worse than the previous scenarios. If I say the planet is flat or if I claim gravity is dead, nobody gets hurt. But, if I endorse hierarchy, I’m essentially asserting that this social system works, that it’s all good... when it’s really not. So, to give hierarchy my stamp of approval is to say that this mass-production program that keeps expanding and destroying our world is a good thing, that this death machine driving us to omnicide is okay... and that, then, makes me an accomplice.

In that sense, it’s far more harmless and makes more rational sense to be a flat-earther and to deny gravity than it does to endorse hierarchy and join the hierarch’s global Kool Aid cult. Denouncing the truth and embracing flat-earthism won’t get people killed. Denouncing the truth and embracing hierarchy gets everyone killed.

Consider the irony in all of this: in order to avoid being labeled as terrorists, we must reject social structures that make rational sense, and we must embrace a death program that will toxify our world and kill us all... To avoid being labeled terrorists, we must pledge ourselves to a program that wipes out everything, including those who demand we take the pledge. So, if being a terrorist means standing up for the truth no matter the consequences, and if it means being intellectually and morally honest, and if it means advocating for life against systems that kill and destroy and exploit butcher, then perhaps there’s nothing more noble in this life than to get labeled as a terrorist.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from the super-duper- max in Youngstown, Ohio. If you’re on the terror watchlist, you are the resistance...

* * * *

Courts Suck

[as recorded for the Final Straw radio show]

Courts suck. I’m growing to believe that the last person who ever did anything meaningful in a US court was Timothy McVeigh. Remember him? Cow poop and diesel fuel.

Courts haven’t always sucked like this. I remember a time when courts at least attempted to appear to live up to the hype. There was a time that courts pretended to be independent from the rest of government, a place where you could go if you were wronged. Back then, tyrannical government oppressors would really shake in their jackboots when you filed a civil rights action against them.

I know the prisoner who received the largest jury award in US history for prison guard brutality. He filed his complaint without a lawyer, written in pencil. But that was the early ‘90s.

Since then, everything has changed. Not only has injustice become an industry to support this ridiculously huge population of lawyers, which it is, but additionally there has been a concentration and consolidation of power and information. Since 9/11, there has been the creepy development that all levels of government—federal, state, local—and all branches—executive, legislative, and even judicial—seem to be plugged in together. What I mean is, state prison systems are information-sharing with the US Department of Justice, which shares with the FBI, who advises local police departments, like in Ferguson.

So, no matter who you are talking to, whether it’s the President of the United States or the service desk at the DMV, everyone is part of the same vast machine, all linked up. And the courts are no different.

Here’s how they operate... If you file something that alleges wrongdoing by the fascist fartgoblins, the government’s lawyers will defend them. In Ohio, that’s the Ohio Attorney General’s office— which has a skyscraper full of attorneys, a veritable giant can of lawyers. Those lawyers will file a motion to dismiss your lawsuit. The motion to dismiss won’t be based on any claim that the fartgoblins did nothing wrong; it will be based on some technical filing requirement you probably didn’t even know about. Ha ha, lawyer tricks.

But the fartgoblins do more than hide behind legal technicalities; the motion to dismiss totally freezes your case until the court rules on the dismissal motion. That means, until the issue of dismissal gets resolved, everything you file will get tabled for later.

So, once the motion to dismiss is filed, the fartgoblins you are attempting to sue will unleash a campaign of state terror to break you down like a ‘76 Ford Pinto. We’re talking about unmitigated torment that is designed to make you surrender.

It used to be that when things like that happened you filed for temporary restraining orders and injunctions. It used to be the courts would intervene to protect you. Not anymore. Instead, with the motion to dismiss pending, the courts do nothing at all. Nothing. And by doing nothing, the courts make clear that they are passive accomplices to the state terror that the fartgoblins employ against you. The courts essentially give permission by their inaction.

I learned this the hard way. Back in May [2018], I filed a civil action against prison fartgoblins who stole my legal mail, and I filed it in the Warren County court here in Ohio. Shortly after, I was tossed in the hole on the basis of the guns-and-drones article online... by the very same people I was suing. So, I filed successive actions to challenge each instance of misconduct committed by the fartgoblins. Last count, I had something like eight lawsuits filed. All solid claims against state terrorists. The attorney general’s office filed motions to dismiss in each case.

Know what happened next? Nothing. In every single case, the courts simply did nothing. In all eight cases, I’m suspended in a kind of judicial limbo, left vulnerable to constant attacks by the fartgoblins who seek to torment me until I kill myself due to the intolerable conditions.

Implicitly, the Warren County courts are making it clear that they are on the fartgoblins’ team; that there is nowhere to turn; that screaming for help from the courts will not only reap no good results, but will really leave you worse off than if you had done nothing at all.

To add insult to injury, while I’m stuck in this limbo and subjected to court-consented state terror, the attorney general has requested an order to essentially ban me for life from court for being a nuisance. So, if the fartgoblins subject you to a long pattern of state terror and you attempt to call them on it, the sheer volume of incidents makes you a nuisance.

At any rate, the message is clear: mind over matter. They don’t mind; we don’t matter. Efforts to approach courts for protection of your rights from all other agencies of government are worse than useless. The courts are just as much the enemy as the folks who torture you directly. In fact, the torturers and state terrorists are proceeding as they are because they know the courts won’t hold them accountable.

The answer, of course, is direct action.

For information on Judges Tepe, Peeler, and Oda, the fascist fartgoblins who have permitted the ODRC to crush me, go to co.warren.oh.us where you can get their emails and phone numbers. To my knowledge, their home addresses have not yet circulated among the prisoners they sent to prison. Yet.

The courthouse is located at 500 Justice Drive in Lebanon, Ohio. I imagine they park there.

At any rate, the larger point is, if you really want to make things change, you can’t approach the courts with lawsuits and motions. You need a Ryder truck. And lots of cow poop.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from the super-duper-max in Youngstown, Ohio. If you’re listening, you are the resistance...

* * * *

Irresponsible Advocacy for Political Violence

[as recorded for the Final Straw radio show]

I have been told that it is irresponsible of me to advocate political violence. I have advocated political violence quite frequently. I have often suggested that gun violence is not a problem, and that the real problem is that we’re shooting the wrong people. I’ve also said several times, beginning right after Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, that “guns don’t kill people; cops do. Save lives, kill cops.”

Prison officials have held me responsible for the creation of a website where their home addresses were posted, for an article advocating arson and the use of explosives on the homes and property of those who torture, and for an article online that details how to use drones to drop guns into prisons. In each of those instances, the State has subjected me to punishments for what it claims is my advocacy for political violence. In one instance, responding to my “ideological” expression, prison officials subjected me to torture. It was in the midst of that year-long torture regimen that the prison system’s lawyer grabbed my crotch. I don’t know if grabbing my crotch was politically-motivated or not. I think maybe it was just creepy.

It seems that prison officials—and, likely, most delusional zombies of the hierarch variety—view my advocacy for political violence as intellectual deviancy, as immoral, irresponsible, un- swivelized. My partisan militancy sets me beyond the boundaries of laws and rules and the wholesome values that they themselves represent.

That’s really how they see it. I even had a federal judge declare me a “unique security threat” on the basis of my advocacy for political violence.

From their perspective, political extremism and, particularly, the kind of political extremism that advocates violence cannot be tolerated. And they make that argument with great conviction. They are certain that they themselves are moderate and objective and apolitical and, above all else, nonviolent.

I would suggest that they are sincere. But, I would also propose, their sincerity notwithstanding, that their renunications of my ideological extremism and advocacy for political violence are not a consequence of their objectivity and nonviolence, as they may claim, but are, instead, a consequence of their absolute lack of self awareness, a result of their inability to see the world as it really is.

Here’s the thing—I can’t very well condemn you for your violence while I’m pounding you in the face with my fist. If I’m simultaneously condemning violence while punching your teeth out, I have no credibility whatsoever. None. I cannot reasonably condemn violence while I’m employing it or else I’m just a laughable hypocrite. I’m not a pacifist; I’m not an example of nonviolence; I’m just a jerk who doesn’t want you to act like me.

In the case of the State and its apologists, I find that those who waggle their fingers at me and denounce my advocacy for violence don’t realize that they themselves are not exactly nonviolent.

What I mean is, the State is violence. Cops carry guns. Government imposes itself with guns and billy clubs and attack helicopters. The very people tsk-tsking me to my face for my extremism and violence are the same ones who will strap someone down on a table and push deadly chemicals into that person’s veins. They patrol the perimeter of my world with a shotgun. They surround me with fences and razor wire to prevent me from running away from the trauma they inflict. Hell, they starved me out for a year, causing me to lose a third of my body weight; when I left Mansfield you would have thought I just arrived from Auschwitz.

Isn’t it violence to poison and kill someone? To kidnap and hold someone at gunpoint? To starve someone almost to death? How is it they can subject me to violence—and not just violence, but ruthless, mind-numbing violence—while telling me that I cannot so much as advocate violence?

The answer of course is that State violence is not “violence.”

Back to our analogy, I can’t punch you in the face while denouncing you for your violence unless I can find some way to redefine violence. If I can redefine violence and make it something only that you do, and NOT what I do, then I can punch you in the face continuously while pontificating about the importance of nonviolence. You see? I redefine punching you in the face as “an official response,” not as “violence.” Then, in my own mind, I’m only engaged in an official, government-approved “facial reconstruction,” not violence.

By this delusion, my violence is not violence... but yours is.

So, in my situation, being held at gunpoint is not violence; being tortured for my beliefs is not violence; getting groped by a coked-up lawyer who tortured me is not violence. The State’s violence is not violence.

Now, they arrive at this conclusion unthinkingly. To them, State violence not constituting “violence” is not the result of some subjective and flawed reasoning, and it has nothing to do with their political or ideological orientation. They aren’t aware that they have one.

They know that I have one; they know that rejecting hierarchy is an ideological position... but they don’t consider that accepting hierarchy is also a political orientation. To them, being a hierarch and being an agent of the State is apolitical, non-ideological. The State’s legitimacy and virtue are simply truisms, as is the fact that the State’s violence is not violence. They can’t see their own ideological and political subjectivity, the way a fish cannot see the water it swims in, and so the reality escapes them—that they are hierarch extremists engaged in torture, carrying out political violence. They serve a political and ideological agenda, a violent one, and they are blind to it because their politics are not politics, and because their violence is not violence.

So, having demonstrated just how crazy these people are, is there any question whether we can reason with them and somehow obtain liberation through nonviolence? I think it’s pretty clear that we’re going to have to shoot them and blow them up, not because we’re irrational and violent and extreme, but because they are. And they really are nuts.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from the super-duper-max in Youngstown, Ohio. If you’re listening, you are the resistance...

* * * *

PREA Hotline Phone Call Transcript

[The following is a transcription of the call Sean made in February 2019 to the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) hotline to report the continued retaliation undertaken by prison officials who conspired with torturer and rapist Trevor Clark, who ostensibly ran the domestic torture program in the ODRC for the FBI. Contrary to law, no investigation was ever undertaken in response to this call.]

I am calling to report continued retaliation by Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction officials that is prohibited by the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and I request investigation by an outside agency. The retaliation is ongoing and occurring right now.

The inception of this was in 2013 when ODRC Counsel Trevor Clark groped me and made humiliating and degrading sexual demands that I refused. He thereafter undertook retaliatory disciplinary action for manufactured rule violations, to punish me for my refusal to meet his sexual demands.

Almost a year later, in 2014, when I sent an email that mentioned this sexual abuse, all of my communications mediums were suspended by prison officials. To be clear, the communications suspension occurred prior to any investigation into my claims. The suspension had to have been ordered by Trevor Clark’s colleagues at the Office of Chief Inspector, which would have involved Chief Inspector Roger Wilson and his assistant, Paul Shoemaker.

Roger Wilson and Paul Shoemaker subjected me to punishment for reporting Trevor Clark’s PREA violations, and that pun-

ishment targeted my communications mediums. This silenced me. Further, by suspending my communications, my personal relationships were severed. This had the foreseeable result of causing me intolerable psychological pain, and it dissuaded me from pursuing the PREA claim against their colleague.

Thereafter, Roger Wilson, Paul Shoemaker, and Antonio Lee would frequently suspend my communications mediums in a campaign of torment, both as retaliation and to impose upon me a sense of terror, preventing me from coming forward with the PREA claim against Trevor Clark. These suspensions occurred contrary to policies and regulations, as I was most often not even so much as accused of pretextual misconduct. That is, unlike every other Ohio prisoner not sexually abused by their colleague Trevor Clark, my communications were often suspended and those suspensions occurred without any disciplinary action at all, without even the allegation of misconduct. I was simply punished for no given reason, contrary to all rules and policies. When I would inquire as to the reasons, I would get no response. I would not be informed as to the cause of the suspensions and I would not be told the intended duration or what I would need to do to avoid further suspensions in the future.

It is clear that, in the context of when the first suspension was imposed, these suspensions were, and remain, an effort by Roger Wilson, Paul Shoemaker, and Antonio Lee to silence me and my reportage of Trevor Clark’s sexual abuse and to essentially punish me for refusing to meet Trevor Clark’s sexual demands. To put it another way—had I simply met Trevor Clark’s sexual demands in 2013, this campaign of harassment, retaliation, intimidation, and torment would not have occurred.

And, just to remove all doubt, it should be noted that in 2014, Chief Counsel Stephen Gray communicated in writing to my then-counsel Richard Kerger that the suspensions of my communications were the ODRC’s response to my reportage of Trevor Clark’s sexual misconduct. This means the ODRC’s chief legal counsel admitted in writing that the ODRC had deliberately engaged in PREA retaliation.

So, the chief counsel and chief inspector, those with the legal duty to investigate and prevent PREA violations and to punish

PREA violators instead knowingly and deliberately colluded and conspired to retaliate against a PREA victim and to literally silence a PREA victim on behalf of their sexual-predator colleague.

Most recently, in response to litigation against sexual predator Trevor Clark where questions of his sexual misconduct could come out in discovery, the Chief Inspector’s Office again suspended my communications punitively and retaliatorily, without cause, without notice, and without so much as communicating any alleged justification. This is a repeat of the same PREA retaliation tactic first employed in 2014. My communications have been suspended since March 2018 without so much as an accusation of misconduct, a suspension again undertaken by Roger Wilson, Paul Shoemaker, and Antonio Lee, as intimidation and retaliation. As a consequence of this current suspension, now almost ten months without explanation, I have been deprived of JPay access—this involves being deprived of thousands of dollars in religious material and music that I purchased in good faith; it involves deprivation of email communication with loved ones that is afforded to all other prisoners; it involves suspension of my access to the grievance process entirely; it involves suspension of my access to routine information like parole hearing dates and commissary account activity; it involves deprivation of access to an electronic archive of my own communications and my intellectual property stored in my device.

And, again, this cause-less campaign of retaliation and intimidation that first began after I reported Trevor Clark’s sexual abuse would not be continuing and I would not be targeted for torment if I had only complied with Trevor Clark’s sexual demands in 2013, if I had only not sent an email in 2014 reporting that abuse.

I now suffer intolerable psychological pain from this PREA retaliation and intimidation that has continued for years, undertaken by Roger Wilson, Paul Shoemaker, and Antonio Lee. My loved ones also have suffered intolerable pain as a consequence of these suspensions, and this torment has had a deleterious effect on my social relationships. I believe it is a covert agenda by these officials to make my life intolerable and to make me pay for reporting their colleague, Trevor Clark.

Because this involves the Chief Inspector’s Office directly and because Chief Counsel Stephen Gray has already given at least passive consent for the Chief Inspector’s Office to continue PREA retaliation and intimidation, I request investigation by an outside agency and I request protection from this continued and ongoing retaliation, harassment, and intimidation.

I have read this from a pre-written script, a copy of which I have already mailed to legal counsel for future reference and for online posting if no outside agency is responsive. Counsel is likewise notified that I have contacted an outside line and have made this recording, which I request to be preserved for future discovery purposes.

I have signed a sworn affidavit and will cooperate fully with any investigation.

Thank you.

* * * *

Too Dangerous for Ohio

[as recorded for the Final Straw radio show]

I’m officially too dangerous for Ohio, folks. On April 15 [2019] at four in the morning, the fartgoblins raced to my cell at the super- duper-max and dragged me away. I didn’t even get to take my property, just a handful of legal papers. I got dressed out in orange transports, got handcuffed and shackled and belly-chained—the only thing missing was the Hanibal Lecter hockey mask—and then the Special Response Team stormtroopers tossed me in a van.

I bounced around in the back of the van for nine hours, accompanied by two urinal pitchers, which I managed to fill. I wasn’t told where I was going. In fact, I was left clueless until I got out of the van at a prison I didn’t recognize and asked the receiving officers where I was. They told me I’m in Virginia.

Just to be clear, I was sent out of state without any process, without any explanation; I wasn’t told where I was going, and I still don’t know why I’m here. I’ve been assured by knowledgeable legal minds that absolutely none of this has even the appearance of legality.

Irony of ironies, I’m only a few miles away from the very spot where Nat Turner led that bloody slave rebellion I wrote about— allegedly—in that article about using drones to drop guns into prisons. You know, the one online, according to Earth First! Journal’s latest issue. Check out my piece about hunger strikes along with the envelope art.

Anyway, here I am in Virginia. Of course I’m not really here; the Ohio Dimwits of Retribution and Corruption insist that I’m still at the Corrections Reception Center, just south of Columbus. Even prison officials at that prison are maintaining that lie to anyone who calls, insisting I am not here in Virginia.

I’ve been disappeared like a Bolivian union organizer standing up to Coca Cola. Only the banana republic in question isn’t in Central America, it’s in Ohio... and it’s run by ODRC Director Annette Chambers-Smith.

For anyone keeping score at home, you’ll remember me ranting about corporate sock-puppet Gary C. Mohr, the former ODRC director, and his torturing sexual-predator-creep hatchet-man lawyer, Trevor Clark. With the changing of the guard and a new governor, I had hoped the new prisons director would take a new approach to The Swain Question, that perhaps she would renounce torture and sexual abuse, that she would stop the trend of equating journalism with terrorism, stop criminalizing the legitimate criticism of devastating public policy. Guess I was overly optimistic. Turns out Annette Chambers-Smith is the former head of JPay, the corporatepredator-profiteer that serves as a metadata collection front for the FBI. Turns out Annette has no more regard for human rights or free speech or legality and propriety than Gestapo Gary had.

Turns out Annette is a real sociopath. She decided I’m too dangerous for Ohio. My 28 years of perfect rule compliance while telling truth to the public was just too much. She came into office, climbing out of that little red car with a dozen of her closest friends, kicking each other in the pants with their big red shoes and squirting each other in the face with their big, plastic lapel flowers, then got to the grisly business of disappearing me for hurting her predecessor’s feelings.

For folks who tortured me for a year, they sure do snivel a lot. They’re very sensitive, these state terrorists who plotted my murder, and have, so far, failed...

So, I arrived here without even my address book or phone numbers. My JPay email list is wiped. If you were in contact with me previously, please drop me a line at my new address as posted at seanswain.org and at itsgoingdown.org, and if you previously emailed me, please jump on my email list so we can kick it. You have to find me by my Virginia prison number, 2015638.

I have no property. No TV, no fan, no mobile device, no CD player—all my clothes, my property collected over 28 years of false imprisonment, is gone. No explanation. Even Virginia doesn’t know what I’m doing here. One unnamed staffer here divulged to me in confidence that Ohio officials claim I had “too much influence.”

Too much influence. Donald Trump has too much influence. Lobbyists in Washington have too much influence. Lawyers have too much influence. Henry Kissinger, anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, Jerrod Kushner, and Kim Kardashian all have too much influence. But me? I think if I had any significant influence at all, I could use my clout to get out of prison, or persuade someone in power to stop state terrorists who embrace domestic torture. I have to think that if I had any influence at all, Annette Chambers- Smith and her entourage of fartgoblin lackeys would be afraid to disappear me out-of-state and steal everything I own, for fear of serious retribution. I look around here at Nottoway Corruptional and I don’t see Donald Trump or lobbyists or lawyers or Henry Kissinger or Jerrod Kushner or Kim Kardashian. So much for “disappearing” those with “influence,” huh?

Simultaneous to my out-of-state transfer that they deny ever happened, the fartgoblins initiated an investigation of my good friend, AdamBomb. AdamBomb is a disabled vet of the Oil Wars, confined to a wheelchair due to his sacrifices for what he believed was freedom, and now the FBI and JPay are bullying him and blocking his communications—because they know they can hurt me by hurting him. It’s the same ruthless tactics they used to chase off former support folks.

That’s the kind of relentless and unscrupulous monsters we’re up against. They beat up on disabled vets in wheelchairs for trying to make the world a better place.

If the FBI has a problem, I wish they’d just send someone down here to handle it the old fashioned way. I’m sure there’s a room around here somewhere with no security cameras. If I leave that room with my nose bleeding and my back dirty, perhaps they can persuade me to think I said something wrong. But if that special agent leaves with his or her nose bloody and back dirty, maybe the FBI cowards can leave my friends alone.

Just an invitation. I’m at my optimum fighting weight.

The good news, if there is any, is that the ODRC is out of bullets. There’s nothing more they can do to me. Their decadeslong Dirty War has failed and they’ve got no ammunition left.

My turn. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

For now, I’m going to give the Virginia prisons the benefit of the doubt and assume they just want the paycheck for holding me, that they don’t intend on taking up the ODRC’s Dirty War by proxy. I’ve got bigger fish to fry. And to their credit, they’ve been fair with me so far. I’d like to remind them that Ohioans frequently shot Virginians in the Civil War. Virginia owes Ohio no allegiance.

I have to take down the whole State of Ohio before August 2021, my next scheduled parole hearing. A pretty daunting undertaking, I think. I might need some friends. And some plans. And some duct tape.

So, I plan on leaving Virginia alone so long as they leave me alone. That seems fair. Besides, the governor’s busy scrubbing that shoe polish off of his face and moonwalking through press conferences while his lieutenant governor tries to grab his butt.

Sorry. That was a cheap shot. Forget I said that.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain disappeared by Ohio in a plausibly-deniable black site in Burkeville, Virginia. If you’re listening, you are the resistance...

* * * *

Call Out for Your Most Radical Writings

Do you have ideas you are afraid to share because the fartgoblins might torment and terrorize you if your name is on them? Well, those ideas need to be shared. Send those writing to adambomb@ riseup.net for posting at seanswain.org, and have them posted as if written by Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain.

“Chances are, sooner or later, they are going to kill me anyway, and they already planned to have me killed by staff at Lucasville, so I have to make plans to keep churning out radical, militant, inspiring writings—even long after I’m dead,” Sean said. “So, why not start now, collecting the best ideas that folks can’t publish in their own names? I’m responsible for everything on the internet anyway, if you ask the fartgoblins...”

Send your best work to adambomb@riseup.net with the attention line, “by Sean Swain for posting.”

* * * *

Ohio State University Medical Center Hires Torturer-Rapist Trevor Matthew Clark as Legal Counsel, Puts Patients and Students in Danger

In October 2018, Trevor Matthew Clark left his position as Assistant Chief Counsel with the ODRC, becoming legal counsel for the Ohio State University Medical Center. In his prior employment, Clark supervised a domestic torture program for the Ohio prison system. The torture he oversaw was, as he admitted, a response to “ideological offenses,” to punish and break political undesirables for their beliefs. Clark alleged that he tortured prisoners on orders of the FBI.

I was one of those prisoners. For a year, I was subjected to a program of sleep deprivation, filthy environs without adequate soap or laundry, and starvation rations that caused me to go from 220 pounds to 155 pounds. As part of the torture regimen, during the winter, I was held in a cell where the outer window was unattached, causing me to endure intolerable cold, continually, for months. Clark intercepted mail and then provably lied to the FBI to provoke investigation after investigation. His theft of my mail severed my human relationships and totally isolated me from the outside world. Clark created a “training program” to indoctrinate staff to think of me as a terrorist and then unleashed them to torment me while I was locked away and incommunicado. Clark’s domestic torture program took pages right out of the CIA KUBARK manual, replicating the program for torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

In the middle of this year-long torture program, on March 27, 2012, Clark personally interrogated me and, when alone with me, grabbed my crotch and solicited humiliating sex acts as quid 200 pro quo to make the frame-up that he had engineered “go away.” When I did not acquiesce, he spent several years tormenting me and burning my life down, creating pretexts for my continued punishment, designed to discredit me and make me die in prison.

My sworn testimony relating details of torture and sexual abuse, related to human rights claims in international court, will soon be online at seanswain.org and @swainrocks.

In October 2018, Ohio State University Medical Center (OS- UMC) hired this sexual predator and criminal against humanity. Clark now has direct access to young, vulnerable, impressionable students, and to defenseless, unsuspecting patients.

Anyone troubled by this should contact OSUMC’s board of directors to demand they fire Trevor Matthew Clark. If you know students or staff, forward this article to them and encourage them to take immediate action to protect themselves and others. Urge them to circulate his photograph and to demand his termination.

Nonstudents can begin a petition drive at change.org, boycotting OSU until this sexual predator is removed. OSUMC is no place for a rapist and torturer to wander the halls, seeking victims and using ruthless lawyer tricks to silence anyone coming forward. #metoo. #trevormatthewclark.

* * * *

JPay in North Carolina

[as recorded for the Final Straw radio show]

The North Carolina prison system is outsourcing prisoner financial transactions to the JPay corporation. This should probably come as little surprise. Last year, the North Carolina prison system hired on Gary C. Mohr as a consultant. Gestapo Gary, as director of the Ohio prison system, never saw a public service he didn’t want to privatize. He gave everything to the for-profit predatory prison companies—from GTL for the phones to JPay for the finances and emails; from Aramark for the food to Union Supply, Walkenhorst, and AccessSecurePak for the food and sundry box monopolies. As a sock puppet for the radical-right privateer crowd, Gary Mohr destroyed the Ohio prison system, which is now reeling from the perfect storm of violence, rampant drugs, and exponential increases in gang activity that have clogged the highest security levels. All of that went together.

He did such a phantasmorific job of destroying the Ohio prison system that North Carolina took on this clown as a consultant so he can catastrophically ruin their prison system. Which he is.

Within months of his touching down, JPay has the contract to exclusively manage all prisoner financial transactions. So, what prison cashiers once did for free, JPay now does for profit. Also, just like in Ohio, not just anybody can add money to prisoners’ accounts anymore—only the select few that are on prisoners’ approved visiting lists.

That means that, in order to do this vetting process, JPay employees must have access to prisoners’ visiting lists and to the private information that those visitors shared with the North Carolina prison system: information that is now turned over without prisoners’ consent to a third-party corporation for profit.

Can you say, “identity theft?”

Prisoners—and rebels in Durham who do prisoner support— are objecting to the damage this new policy does to prisoner finances. In many cases, prisoners have until now received funds from folks not on their visiting lists—and folks who can’t get on visiting lists due to felony conviction or probation. So now we have a situation where funds are dried up and desperate prisoners have no means to maintain themselves. This has led to a whole host of problems and is reportedly leading to an upswing in violence and drugs as well—as prisoners resort to black market means to obtain funds.

Sound familiar? A repeat of Ohio. Already there’s been something of a riot, as I understand it, at Piedmont Correctional, as a consequence of tensions created by this new policy—and yet, it appears there’s no consideration for rescinding the policy and returning to the system that worked better for centuries.

On a deeper level, we’re dealing with a kind of ideological delusion. Radical right econo-Nazis like Gary Mohr are following in the footsteps of monsters like Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Pinochet came to power in a CIA-sponsored military coup, ousting and killing duly-elected President Salvador Allende. Pinochet set himself up as dictator and immediately employed the dubious economic policies of radical rightists from the University of Chicago. A tenet of that economic theory was the privatization of the public sector, disassembling government programs and services and turning them over to for-profit corporations.

Everywhere this was employed, it created nothing but devastation for the poor and marginalized, while putting mega-profits and concentrating wealth into the hands of the select few. With the upheaval that results, troops must crack skulls to maintain order. Human and civil rights get rolled back.

Fast forward, and Gary Mohr is a disciple of this failed ideology, an agent for privatization, which, in the prison setting, leads to more drugs, more violence, more gangs, and a rollback of civil rights.

It is no coincidence that in Ohio the introduction of JPay was accompanied by recourse to “ideologically” neutralizing prisoners who questioned the legality and the practicality of JPay policy.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that JPay has an informationsharing process with the FBI, making it a secret, metadata collection tool for intelligence services engaged that do domestic spying.

This steady takeover of our world by corporations that turn the public sector into the private sector, on both sides of the fences, is a real and imminent threat to the last vestiges of freedom that still exist. This corporate takeover of government means that, more and more, we become ruled directly by corporations hijacking government that, at least ostensibly, used to belong to us. And this steady takeover also operates according to a kind of new law underlying the operation of our world: mind over matter. They don’t mind; we don’t matter. So, no matter the damage and devastation, the outcry and protest and resistance, the corporate takeover continues ahead, grinding everything in its path.

What we face in the example of JPay is a kind of war, the dismantling of even the remaining illusions of democracy, and the imposition of direct dictatorship by CEOs and chairmen of the board, self-appointed rulers answerable to no one. They decide who to torture and who to silence. Gary Mohr had me tortured for JPay profits. And here we go again.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain in exile at Nottoway Correctional in Burkeville, Virginia. If you’re listening, you are the resistance...

****

Torture Testimony

[as recorded for the Final Straw radio show]

Just recently, I submitted my testimony to an international court that is considering my human rights claims against the United States. That case, Sean Paul Swain v the United States of America, was filed in the interAmerican Commission on Human Rights back in 2013. In that case, I described how Ohio prison officials subjected me to domestic torture.

I hadn’t much expected anything to happen in the international court because I knew the US never recognizes the international courts’ authority. That is, if the US doesn’t recognize the court’s jurisdiction, then it has no binding powers and the case dies.

And since I was accusing the US of employing a domestic torture program for ideological suppression, I was pretty certain the US wouldn’t answer and would just let the case die.

For years, I didn’t know the US had filed an answer. Secretary of State John Kerry had handed the case to Ohio, and Ohio handed it to the ODRC, and the ODRC assigned the response to none other than Trevor Matthew Clark. Trainwreck Trevor. The torture mastermind of the prison system.

John Kerry then submitted the response that Trainwreck authored and that became the US response. As a consequence of that, by filing a response, the US was accepting the jurisdiction of the human rights court in my case.

But, like I said, I didn’t know any of this. Trainwreck had his mailroom minions stealing all of my mail from the international court, so I would never have a chance to discover what he wrote for an answer, and I would never have a chance to refute it.

Trainwreck’s plan was to get the case dismissed and to brush the domestic torture program under the rug by stealing mail.

Fast forward to 2019, some six years after I filed my action, and Ohio exiled me to Virginia. Here, Virginia prison officials don’t care about my mail from international courts. They let me have it. When I read it, I discovered that not only had the US filed an answer, and had accepted the international court’s jurisdiction over my torture claims, but in the answer, they provably lied.

So I recorded my own testimony as a rebuttal to the Trainwreck Trevor response that the US submitted. In it, I detailed the specifics of the domestic torture program to which I was subject- ed—the starvation, the sleep deprivation, the freezing temperatures for months, the deprivation of soap and laundry. The torture program supervised by ODRC counsel Trevor Clark mirrored the CIA’s torture program detailed in their declassified KUBARK manuals. And Clark himself admitted that all of it was under the orders of the FBI, making it very likely that this torture program was initiated by the US government, a strategy for the FBI to outsource or subordinate torture to responsive state agencies.

So, my recorded testimony in international court details how the US employed a domestic torture program that was used to target political undesirables. But my sworn testimony also describes the sexual abuse component. I recounted how, on March 27, 2013, during an interrogation conducted by Trevor Clark, claiming to be acting on behalf of the FBI, he groped me and made promises to drop the disciplinary frame-ups he had initiated if only I performed humiliating sex acts.

I think it should come as no surprise that a domestic torture program would have a sex abuse component. Recall the photos from Abu Ghraib of prisoners with electrodes on their genitals, or naked prisoners forced to form so-called “ass pyramids” on film. In those acts of torture, sexual abuse was a key component. So, it seems quite believable that the sexual abuse committed by Trevor Clark was possibly conceived by his FBI handlers as a means to humiliate and demoralize me. Or perhaps Trevor Clark was merely operating under the claimed authority of the FBI to further his own sexual creeptitude.

At any rate, my testimony recounts all of it. To my knowledge, this will be the first time the US is taken to trial in international court for crimes against humanity: Sean Paul Swain versus the United States of America.

As an interesting sidenote, accused torturer and sex abuser Trevor Clark no longer works for the ODRC. Seemingly as a reward for crimes against humanity, Clark now works as legal counsel for the Ohio State University’s medical center. Someone thought it would be a great idea to let this monster have free access to the hallways of a university hospital where he can potentially prey on unsuspecting students and defenseless patients. Not sure if the home address listed for Trevor Clark at blastblog.noblogs. org is his current one or not. If you want face time, you’ll have to ring the doorbell and see who answers. If you’re on Twitter, #trevormatthewclark.

Anyhow, if you ever have a loved one at OSU medical center, don’t let their lawyer get his hands anywhere near your loved one’s crotch. He’s a creep.

Through the magic of the interweb, I suspect audio of my testimony is posted, either at seanswain.org or somewhere that this broadcast is posted, so you can check it out and share it and repost it. I have asked, as part of the relief in international court, for that court to arrange for my political asylum outside the US. Not sure how much faith I have in that judicial process, but that’s not really the point. The point, of course, is that the US employed a domestic torture program, one that targeted its own citizens.

I was subjected to torture.

It happened. And I’ll never shut up until we make sure it can never happen to anyone else, ever again. Part of that is making sure this story is everywhere. And if it also means we gotta scrap the US, well, I’m down.

In fact, I’ve got a plan.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain in exile from Ohio at Buckingham Correctional in Dillwyn, Virginia. If you’re listening, you are the resistance...

Afterword

“No One Blinked...”

“Gasoline is cheap. Matches are free.”

— Sean Swain,

“Ubiquitous Security Threats”

The account of domestic torture is in your hands. That’s somewhat significant, given efforts by several government agencies to prevent it, and given the sacrifices that people endured to make this happen. But if this is where the story ends, all of this was for nothing.

This isn’t a situation where a few bad apples did a regretful, misguided thing. It’s not. What confronts us is a concerted, deliberate use of government authority and resources to subject American citizens to domestic torture—a coordinated and carefully-orchestrated program that involved hundreds of staff and administrators, none of whom objected... or refused... or broke ranks... or reported the activities to higher authority to make it stop.

Government employees in the United States, many of whom had spouses and children, mortgages and car payments, would arrive at their jobs, punch the clock, and perform an integral role in domestic torture... before returning home to maybe eat dinner with their families. They were normal, average Americans you may pass with a cart in the frozen foods at the grocery store, or you might sit next to one of them in the same pew at church on Sunday.

One can argue that Gary C. Mohr is gone. So is Trevor Clark. But neither of them has officially been held accountable in any way, and what of their replacements? Gary Mohr earns six figures as a consultant to the North Carolina prison system and Trevor Clark serves as counsel for the Wexner Medical Center at the prestigious Ohio State University. Torture has been quite lucrative for both of them and, by all accounts, they are not sorry.

To date, Annette Chambers-Smith has done nothing to investigate the crimes and excesses of her predecessor, or to restore Sean Swain and other torture victims their prior privileges and status, or to expunge the retaliatory frame ups for exposing the truth.

Which brings us to a much larger and far more discomforting realization: this domestic torture program was facilitated, justified and approved, protected and sometimes legitimized, not just

by supervisory personnel within the torture complex directly, but by lawmakers and their civilian oversight committee staff, by apathetic media, by insensitive lawyers, and by both federal and state court judges. As crimes against humanity occurred, all of these components of our civil society used their power and prestige, not to stop those crimes, but to allow them to continue. Some even actively worked to silence the prisoner seeking to expose torture. To the degree that these elements acted as accomplices to torture, our entire civil society is a vast torture industrial complex.

Everyone participated in normalizing torture.

No one blinked.

So, in that context, the release of this work is no cause for a collective feel-good moment. Certainly, exposure of the truth is a necessary first step, but need I point out that the prisons where torture occurred are still standing... the cells are still occupied... most of the usual suspects still collect pay checks... the courts, committees, lawyers, and news media are still conducting the same business... the same way... and nothing changes just because you read this.

Nothing has changed.

So, if we oppose torture, where does that leave us? Clearly, we cannot rely upon the torturers to clean up their own act, as we also cannot rely on courts or lawmakers or committees or lawyers or journalists. There is, it would seem, only one power in the universe that can hold those accountable and stop torture. That power is us. We can take action directly to make the torture stop.

Until we do, the American torture complex remains.

What are we going to do about it?

B.A. Wickensimer

Prison Abolitionist

****

[1] ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER, as defined in the DSM V: A) There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and the violation of rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three or more of the following: failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; impulsivity or failure to plan ahead; irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations; lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another; B) The individual is at least 18 years of age; C) There is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years; D) The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or a manic episode.

[2] You will recall that you told me that ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER is on Axis II and is therefore nothing serious to worry about. This is not true. In the DSM V, ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER still falls under the dramatic/erratic cluster of personality disorders but is no longer on a separate axis from the other mental disorders. Please do not hesitate to ask me if you need me to help you with any other matters related to your field of expertise.

[3] I have quotations around “legitimate” because the government was legitimate by your way of thinking.

[4] For more exhaustive treatment of this, read my four-part series, Ohio, available through seanswain.org.

[5] As I point out in Ohio, Part I, this was conceded by US Attorney General Francis Biddle during the Indian Claims Commission.

[6] This is more thoroughly treated in Ohio, Part III.

[7] I have also addressed this topic in a radio broadcast, “The Right to Rule,” available in archive at ashevillefm.org/the-final-straw.

[8] So do all of the people who know what they’re talking about: Eisler, Sahlins, Daniel Quinn, John Zerzan, and the dozens of writers who contributed to Against Civilization, as well as traditional anarchist critics of the State such as Proudhon, Bakunin, Goldman, Berkman, Fabri, Malatesta, Kropotkin, Rayson, Shef, DeCleyre, Parsons, etc. We’re not reinventing the wheel here. This is only news to hierarch state-worshippers who don’t know anything.

[9] Just for fun, consider the implications of this for most major religions— as, in most, the God they present is too dumb to know that human authority is a fallacy. You would think the Creator of the Universe would know that.

[10] In all this context... A delusion at the base of your worldview and deference to sociopaths and maniacs praised by Hitler... What’s your diagnosis?

[11] Ironic that the initial act of the sociopaths who constructed this social disorder was to lock up the food in order to control other humans. Also ironic, your assessment as to whether I suffer ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER hinges on whether or not I defer to those sociopaths and their legitimacy. I think this says more about your pathology than it does mine.

[12] Elsewhere, I have written that any relevant mental health model must recognize that someone who is oppressed has an inherent right and intrinsic drive to defend self and self-worth, via recourse to resistance. One of those articles I named from a quote by Algerian psychiatrist and guerrilla fighter Frantz Fanon, who wrote in Wretched of the Earth that the liberation of the colonized springs forth from “the corpse of the colonizer.” Check out my work, “The Colonizer’s Corpse,” available for free at seanswain.org.

[13] Henry David Thoreau, who demonstrated nonconformity to societal norms by refusing to pay his taxes in protest of the Mexican-American War and in protest of slavery, obviously demonstrating ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER, also persuaded the tax collector to quit his job... and succeeded.

[14] Please note that, according to your file, which says I have ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER, I have a 107 I.Q. That means I’m 3 points below adjusted average. Fifty-one and a half percent of the human population is smarter than me, which translates to roughly 3.65 billion people who should be better able to perceive the reality that I have presented and should be better able to articulate it. I’m in the back half of the brains bell-curve, according to my file. So, given that there are billions of you vastly smarter than I am, why is it that the world is so fucked up? Either I’m a dimwit exceeding expectations with this level of articulation, or else, perhaps, we should suspect the IQ designation to be somewhat erroneous. Your call. You’re the expert.

[15] Consider, this would mean you are a mental health professional in the employ of a sociopath... which is as ironic as, say, an exorcist employed by the devil... or a shepherd employed by wolves...

[16] I am unable to establish whether prison officials have exhibited behaviors back to age 15. That would have to be established through mental health interviews. But, I bet you find that Director Gary Mohr, ODRC Counsel Trevor Clark, former ManCI Warden Terry Tibbals, and ManCI Investigator Angela Hunsinger not only meet the criteria for an ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER diagnosis, but that, at a young age, they also lit fires, killed small animals, and wet the bed—all indications that they are full-blown sociopaths. Let me know what you find out.

[17] For case research into Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Shepardize Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 114 SCt. 1970 (1994).

[18] See specifically my declaration in Sean Paul Swain v. the United States of America, Case No. P-688-10, in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States, posted at seanswain. org. See also, “Colonizer’s Corpse.”

[19] Specifically search for, The KUBARK Counterintelligence and Interrogation Manual, and, Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual, both produced by the Central Intelligence Agency.

[20] Referring back to the ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER definition, note that “rationalizing” mistreatment of others, i.e., excusing or justifying torture, is an element of the diagnosis. Thus, the U.S. Supreme Court evinces sociopathic behavior. It would be interesting to learn how many sitting justices, as children, lit fires, killed small animals, and wet the bed, wouldn’t it?

[21] When considering the KUBARK manual, imagine the amount of funding spent in numerous “research” projects that perfected the science of torture, the number of victims subjected to both the U.S. government’s successes and failures, as well as the veritable army of social scientists who participated, year after year, mapping out the limits of human tolerance to psychological pain. As reprehensible as your current employment is, you can say, “At least I don’t work for the CIA.”

[22] Sean Swain v. Gary Mohr, et al., U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, Case No. 4:14-cv-02074 (17 September 2014).

[23] This was the initial, admitted reason for my removal from population, for my recommended placement at Level 5, and for my eventual placement at Level 4.

[24] James Dzelajlia was my cellmate for the duration of our time in ManCI’s Special Management Unit and was subjected to the same general conditions.

[25] I also reported these conditions personally to Joanna E. Saul, Director of the Corrections Institution Inspection Committee, the oversight committee of the Ohio General Assembly. Saul said that if Trevor Clark was involved in the torture program, there was “nothing [she] could do.” After reporting these conditions, the torture regimen continued. Perhaps Joanna Saul lit fires, killed small animals, and wet the bed as a child?

[26] Since this action was filed on 17 September [2014], none of the named defendants have yet to deny any of the facts I have sworn to. These facts are so far undisputed.

[27] One argument I do NOT make is that torture is inconsistent with being “civilized.” Others have made such an argument. See, e.g., the arguments of former SEAL Jesse Ventura. Ventura asserted that, if left alone with torture apologist Dick Cheney for just an hour, Ventura would have Cheney confessing to “the Sharon Tate murders.” From my perspective, torture and civilization are synonymous, and the development of “civilization” has always been accompanied by attroci- ties—from Columbus to Abu Ghraib.

[28] And yet, I’m the one with the diagnosis. Go figure.

[29] Or hiring a cannibal as a caterer... or hiring John Wayne Gayce as a Scout Master... You get the idea.

[30] Some of them are provably innocent and framed. Go to prisonerresis- tance.net for links to Lucasville 5 support sites.

[31] All the more insidious when you consider the State has no legitimate, lawful authority, as I established in my last letter to you.

[32] Do any children raise their hands to share with their teachers their dreams of growing up to be Nazi prison camp guards digging mass graves?

[33] The first rule of Fit Club is, you do not talk about Fit Club. Anyone saturating Moundsville, West Virginia, with details of Trevor Clark’s crimes against humanity is performing a public service in deterring future torture. Sociopaths hate public exposure.

[34] I was kidnapped by the State in 1991 after defending my own life in my own home. Erie County Case No. 91-CR-253. My false conviction was reversed. Sixth Dist. Case No. E-91-80. On remand, the trial court refused to follow the mandate of the court of appeals. I remain imprisoned for 23 years, still awaiting the fair trial ordered in 1993. To avoid having to recognize my innocence and the illegality of my captivity, the Erie County Court of Common Pleas simply refuses to file anything I present.

[35] You have asserted that the First Amendment does not protect speech that “advocates violence.” If that’s the case, it was illegal to support the bombing of Iraq or the invasion of Afghanistan. Bombs are violence. It would also be illegal to advocate the executions of the Lucasville Uprising leaders. Killing people is violence, Trevor.

[36] The Cleveland Police reserve the right to shoot unarmed people 137 times. “To Protect and to Serve” looks a lot like “To Oppress and Enslave.”

[37] Some excellent resources: Computer security: crypto.com; anonymizer. com; colt.org/crypto; c4m.net; FBI.gov/hq/lab/carnivore/carnivore. htm; netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois...
Special training: nasta.ws; operationaltactics.org; bad-boys.net; swat- training.com; specialoperations.com...
Ohio militia: oomaac.com.
I have no idea about the politics of any of these groups, but I suspect they are armed. That’s a start. Whatever your politics, they can teach you how to shoot...

[38] Attorney Richard Kerger never subpoenaed the video footage and never challenged this obviously repressive conduct by prison officials already named in the pending civil action. Unfortunately, despite the faith I placed in him, Kerger continued the pattern of previous counsel, Robert Fitrakis, whose inaction in challenging civil and human rights abuses provided prison officials permission to continue and escalate those violations. In light of his peculiar and inexplicable conduct later in the case, permitting prison officials to silence me absolutely, including my legal communication to him, I reasonably wondered if Kerger was operating on behalf of the FBI to sabotage the civil action and provide further pretext for equating protected speech with terrorism and treating me as a “unique security threat.” If he weren’t working for the FBI, he did such a fantastic job of not working for them that he should recount for them what he did and didn’t do, and they will probably even now draft him a sizeable check.

[39] Nope.

[40] Despite my explicit and emphatic insistence that I be present at every court hearing, counsel Richard Kerger consented to this hearing being held in my absence; I still do not know what occurred.

[41] Note that the suspension of my video visitation is here somehow related to two instances of misconduct. However, prison officials never so much as accused me of such misconduct; they first cooked up this misconduct excuse when addressing the court. For whatever reason, Judge Pearson accepted the misconduct excuse and even attributed postings to “his (my) website.” Point of fact, I do not own a website.

[42] Note that Judge Pearson asserts that neither Tibbals’ plate number nor advocating the burning of the Statehouse are protected speech, and a case citation follows that conclusion. Normally, citations that follow are included to support the conclusion. In this case, the citation does not.

[43] With regard to the issue of the license plate, consider: in Ohio plate numbers are seven-digit sequences. Whatever Tibbals’ plate number is, it is not the fourteen digit sequence, “BLACK LIGHTNING.” So, the (45) Ohio Attorney General lied to a federal court when claiming I revealed Tibbals’ plate number.
Also, case law as long as my arm, with some of those decisions written by Judge Pearson herself, explicitly says that no one has any expectation of privacy related to content of license plates; “Black Lightning” Tibbals broadcast his plate number every time he pulled out of his garage. So, with regard to the fabricated “plate” claims, Judge Pearson responded to the made-up assertion that I revealed a plate number (I did not know) by creating a right to privacy related to plate numbers (that did not exist).

[44] Again, these cases do not support the conclusion Judge Pearson presented. Nowhere is the First Amendment restricted only to advocating “peacefully” for change. “Mere advocacy of the use of force or violence does not remove speech from the protection of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.” NAACP vs. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 US 886, at hn7 (1982). “The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Id., at hn16. So, the question arises: if a prisoner knows what the First Amendment protects, shouldn’t Richard Kerger and Judge Pearson have known?

[45] What I wrote and said does fall within the ambit of First Amendment protection. Prisoners have a right to communicate to the outside world inflammatory and inciteful political views and unflattering commentary about prison officials. Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 US 401, 404 (1989). Prisoners may communicate to the outside world “inflammatory political, racial, religious or other views.” Procunier v. Martinez, 416 US 396, 416 (1974). Shouldn’t Richard Kerger and Judge Pearson have known?

[46] This is not the argument and it never was. The argument was that (1) prison officials tortured me, (2) they admitted they did it because of my beliefs and criticism of policy, then (3) after getting sued for it, they suspended communications without any accusation of misconduct, and (4) after getting caught, they fabricated the license-plate- and-Statehouse excuse to trick the court.

[47] To be clear, I was a “unique security threat” for never being accused of the misconduct Judge Pearson already decided I had committed.
I was a unique security threat for, de facto, perfect compliance with the rules. I do not know Richard Kerger’s response, as I was excluded from the hearing. He did not file for a permanent injunction that would allow us to produce evidence and testimony to counter the court’s misunderstanding of both the facts and the law, as he said he would. He did not appeal as he said he would. It appears his active participation ended as soon as the court declared me a “unique security threat,” giving the ODRC every excuse to terrorize me forever.
It would almost seem that this was the intended goal of everyone involved. I do not know if Richard Kerger was secretly working for the FBI, but if he was not, I suspect he could explain to them how effectively he sabotaged me and, even now, they may write him a check.

[48] Note here that I suffer no “harm” from having video visitation suspended.

[49] This is true but irrelevant. I did not seek an order to compel the ODRC to institute video visits. The ODRC already provided them. I only sought the same access as everyone else not charged with rule violations.

[50] This is not true. I did not request an order stopping officials from monitoring video visits. The issuance of the order would in no way impact the ODRC’s monitoring and regulating. It would only compel them to allow access to everyone equally.

[51] Refer to footnote 9. I would suffer no harm from permanent and causeless suspension of video visits... but everyone else would?

[52] Here, Judge Pearson again distorts the facts. I never sought video visitation for purposes of broadcasting a license plate number I didn’t even know. Further, the presentation of these “facts” is so far afield from the actual facts that I must wonder if Judge Benita Pearson was put up to this by the FBI, hoping to thwart my exposure of their domestic torture program.

[53] The implications of this decision were that I became essentially a nonperson. As a “unique security threat,” my very existence was criminalized and the ODRC had free license to suspend my entire social existence. Others in the free world drew those same conclusions and, in response, developed blastblog.noblogs.org, where Judge Benita Y. Pearson’s home address was posted, as was torturer Terry Tibbals and others. A Google map feature gave visitors to the site the quickest routes to those officials’ homes.
Lesson: Don’t torture.
Lesson: Don’t act corruptly to defend and protect torturers.

[54] When Richard Kerger failed to challenge ODRC retaliation, his inaction served as implicit permission, so that prison officials suspended my phone, email, and regular mail, cutting me off from direct communication with counsel and preventing me from potentially hiring new counsel. During a year-long suspension, in order to let Mr. Kerger know the extent to which I was silenced, I would direct, through others’ mail, declarations for filing in federal court, knowing copies of those declarations would be sent to Mr. Kerger. In those, I begged for help to get the regimen of silence lifted. Mr. Kerger responded by threatening to quit, as my declarations made him look deficient in representing me. I had to drop the civil action challenging torture, as I could not trust Mr. Kerger to meet discovery deadlines. I was fairly convinced he was working for the FBI.

[55] Not to be confused with the federal civil action, I had filed a number of actions in the Ohio Court of Claims, each time the ODRC engaged in retaliation. That court judicially filibustered me and dismissed all of my actions, asserting that the ODRC had no obligation to follow established laws, even in stealing mail and legal materials from other courts.

[56] The “gang activity” was that I wrote an article for publication in Fifth Estate that described the Army of the 12 Monkey rebellion that occurred at MANCI in 2012. Clark would even admit that writing an article about past events was not really gang activity, but this would not stop him from later pursuing disciplinary action.

[57] I reported Clark to the Ohio Disciplinary Counsel for giving me home addresses of Ohio senators and representatives during interrogations on March 27, 2013. I knew of no valid basis for him to share private information of lawmakers with a convicted felon in custody.

[58] These demands were necessary to undo the ODRC’s true agenda—to continue creating disciplinary pretexts (exposing torture equals threats, extortion, gang activity, etc.) that would then be used to elevate my security and to deny me parole.

[59] The roster I reference here is the complete roster of the Ohio Senate and House of Representatives, for posting at seanswain.org.

[60] Shortly after this reply was written, my letter along with Saul’s response and my reply were posted at seanswain.org with a roster of the staff in the CIIC office. I do not know if blastbloggers posted their home addresses or not. After this letter was posted, Joanna Saul resigned.

[61] June 11 is celebrated as a day of solidarity with anarchist prisoners.

[62] At the time this article was posted, all of my communications mediums had been suspended without cause for a year and a half on orders of Trevor Clark, forcing me to communicate only through others’ mail; even my legal mail was intercepted and permanently seized on orders of Trevor Clark for about six months, and the Ohio courts took no action to prevent the ODRC’s judicial blockade. When I sued the ODRC for intercepting legal mail, ODRC intercepted it. When I sued them for intercepting it, ODRC intercepted that as well.

[63] Nope. National Lawyers Guild didn’t care anymore than the American Civil Liberties Union or any other lawyer licensed to practice in Ohio.

[64] Not a single attorney licensed in Ohio has been willing to challenge domestic torture or defend me from continued retaliation for exposing it.