People have accused me of being unpatriotic. Having read “In Support of the Troops…Who Frag,” or, more recently, “Against Helping (Bombing) Syria,” some people have questioned my loyalty to the United States of America.

They should. I have none. And neither should they.

What is “patriotism”? At base, it is a belief in loving, supporting, and defending one’s country. That’s what the dictionary tells us.

Now, accepting that definition, what does it mean? Well, first and foremost, to believe in loving, supporting and defending your country, you have to have one. Someone who is country-less cannot very well love a country they don’t have .

So, before I can be patriotic, I have to ask: Do I have a country?

I suppose if I had some sort of “ownership” over a country, that would make it mine. In the U.S., we have this pervasive mythology, almost a civil religion of sorts, the idea that all of us jointly “own” this country. Of the people, by the people, for the people. But I can’t imagine that anyone except the most unthinking rube could still be buying into that faerie tale when everything we see and hear and experience directly contradicts that mythology.

Is there anyone in the U.S. who is not part of the ruling elite who says, “This is running exactly the way I think it should…”? Or are there millions of people deeply disturbed by the conduct of a government that has long ago stopped consulting them and has, for some time, dictated the terms to them?

I am reminded of a protest sign I saw prior to the invasion of Iraq. It featured a picture of George Dubya with a voice bubble that said, “I don’t care what the American people think…They didn’t vote for me anyway.”

The U.S. government long ago stopped caring what we think. In that sense, it has “gone rogue,” has assumed the right to operate without consent of the ruled. That being the case, the United States is no longer out country—it is a country under the control of complete strangers who reserve the right to act like your enemy if it suits them, and reserves the right to treat you like their enemy if it suits them.

Can you feel like an “owner” of a country where you wake up every day with a shotgun in your face? Where the Apache attack helicopter (you paid for) has its cannons pointed at you?

I can’t. All mythology aside, I have to face the reality that the entity declaring itself my government is not “my” country. My relationship to that entity is not voluntary, not consentual, but is one of forced obedience.

We are reduced to slaves.

I don’t believe that slaves owe any allegiance to a master. I believe slaves owe allegiance to themselves and to their own liberation, by whatever means necessary. But that’s me.

At any rate, if we do not “own” a country, if we are, for all practical purposes, excluded from the joint ownership of the United States, then it is no more “our” country than is Bolivia or Iran or Belgium. It’s just geographically closer to us and excercises its power over us in a more direct way—which, reasonably, is all the more reason to hate it rather than love it, if you think about it objectively. Yes, Bolivia and Iran and Belgium do exist, but they aren’t in your face and in your wallet if you’re in the U.S.

But the U.S. is.

Important to point out, I think: We’re not working with “What I believe,” and, therefore, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and all beliefs are equal; what I’m describing is a factual truism. I’m not declaring that the United States is not my country; the United States, through its actions, declared that a long time ago.

It makes no real effort to hide its animosity and distrust of its subjects. We are enemies to be spied on, controlled, manipulated and neutralized.

I cannot “love,” nor “support,” nor “defend” anything that spies on me, controls me, manipulates me, and neutralizes me. Anyone reasonable could only despise such a creature as that, not pledge allegiance to it.

One can make the false argument, I suppose, that the U.S. government isn’t “so bad”–that is to say, that a lot of other governments treat people worse than the U.S. generally treats us. This is a kind of relativity argument—that the U.S. looks good relative to other governments. But, this is a false argument. First, we have no way of knowing for certain what it’s like to live in any other country under any other regime because we don’t live there and we don’t know. Second, it’s really irrelevant anyway, because to say the U.S. is not treating us terribly is to say the U.S. is not treating us terribly yet. But if we accept that the U.S. operates without our consent, and we are subjects in a ruler-and-subject relationship, then any argument that the U.S. treats its citizens better than some other regime treats its citizens is nothing more than an observation that we haven’t yet provoked a really serious atrocity—not that a serious atrocity isn’t possible. And we know that in any situation where the government operates without the consent of the people, not only are serious atrocities possible, not only are they probable, but on a long enough time line, they are inevitable.

It’s probably worth pointing out that of all the millions and millions of Germans who lived under the Third Reich, only a small percentage were jailed, killed, or tossed into concentration camps. So, the same argument that “the government’s not so bad” could be (and probably was) used by the vast majority of Germans, just as it is now used by the vast majority of Americans.

Relating all this back to the question of patriotism, do I—or, of any of us– “have” a “country” to “love,” “support,” or “defend”? At the very least, I would have to say that if this is “my” country, it certainly doesn’t seem to know it.

Having said all that, all of the traits that should define a “good American”–honesty, integirty, courage, loyalty, kindness, responsibility—all these virtues militate against “loving” and “supporting” and “defending” the United States. Given the conduct of the United States, it is not possible for freedom-loving, honest, life-affirming, conscientious people to love, support or defend the United States. Good, decent people cannot support things such as genocide or the purposeful and deliberate murder of children.

After the bombing of Iraq, U.S. government documents were declassified, detailing a well-thought-out plan to bomb water-treatment facilities (a crime under international law) because the resultant lack of water would cause dehydration, which kills children much faster than adults; all the dead children would then provoke the Iraqi people to ruse up against the ruling regime.

The U.S. government deliberately murdered children. All tolled, the U.S. murdered more than 500,000 children in a 10-year period, a death toll that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said was acceptable.

To love and support and defend the United States is to love and support and defend child murder, wholesale child murder. And that’s just one event. If you look at the conduct of the U.S. in world affairs, that atrocity is not an exception to the rule. (In fact, the language and perception is so utterly twisted that, in 2008, in the presidential elections, candidate John McCain, who participated as a cog in the U.S. death machine in Southeast Asia, disparaged opposing candidate Barack Obama for Obama’s “associations” with Bill Ayers—a man who sacrificed in order to end the illegal war. The American conception of things is so upside-down that a mass murderer candidate questioned the integrity of someone who opposed wanton violence by calling him a terrorist.)

No one with vaulted American virtues can love or support or defend the indefensible. No one can love or support or defend a ruling elite that has highjacked our world imposed an agenda to the benefit of a few and to the injury of many—all maintained through forced and the treat of force.

Allegiance to tyrants is never patriotism. It is treason against conscience.

Update! Bob talked to Sean, they clarified some things and Bob is back on board. This means Sean’s got a lawyer who’s working pro-bono, but needs to pay his assistants and cover filing and travel costs.  The more money we can raise, the more help Bob can afford to provide. There’s lots to do so don’t hesitate to chip in.

Fitrakis and Gadell Newton are no longer representing Sean Swain. We are seeking new legal counsel to help with a variety of legal struggles Sean has been facing. The most important and most recent case is a pretty clear first amendment issue, where ODRC officials fumbled terribly, described their own conduct reports as inappropriately targeting ideology and speech and then attempted to “re-do” the process coming up with new conduct reports that were just as poor and ideologically targeted, and then transferred Sean to supermax on the basis of the first conduct report, which even they had admitted was inappropriate.

Sean needs lawyers who will follow through. We have raised some money (less than $1000) but hope to raise more. Experience in post-conviction or civil rights would be great, but really the most important thing is communication, and working with Sean (he and his outside supporters can do a lot of the work) and reliability. Half the battle in these politicized cases is media attention, embarrassing or shaming the ODRC and the State of Ohio into doing the right thing, so we need a lawyer who is comfortable with us using the case to generate media attention, about both Sean’s situation and the general state of abuse and downright bizarre practices in US prisons.

by *

As of June 10, the U.S. Congress was deep into heated debate over immigration policy. Lawmakers are considering spending billions of dollars of your money to tighten down on illegal immigration. The debate seems to be over how much money and how much crack down we can expect.

I note that in all the debate, the only immigration discussed is human immigration—that is, the perceived “problem” of humans crossing borders. No one seems to have a problem with money crossing orders, for instance. Money moves electronically and transcends all geographical borders. In this sense, money has more rights than humans do.

No one is protesting corporations crossing borders either. Corporations are global citizens, residing in numerous nations simultaneously, never stopped nor questioned at any border crossing. It would seem that corporations have more rights than humans too.

Then you’ve got jobs. Jobs travel across borders on a regular basis without any protest. U.S. Jobs go to Mexico; Mexican jobs go to China; Chinese jobs go to India; Indian jobs go to Cambodia. Thousands of former manufacturing jobs that started in the U.S. Have more frequent flier miles than the unemployed workers who used to have those jobs.

Jobs have more rights than humans.

In fact, it would appear that nothing gets regulated at borders except human beings. If only humans had the rights that money, corporations, and jobs possess, humans could cross borders unmolested also.

Borders. What are “borders” anyway? What we’re talking about is an artificial line that some asshole drew on a map, right? I mean, there’s a line around the so-called State of Ohio, but that line doesn’t exist in real life. There’s no chalk-line traced around any geographic or political territory; the lines are only on maps. If we chose, really, we could adjust a border a foot this way or a foot that way and chances are, nobody would know. Or, on the U.S. southern border, we could unilaterally adjust the border hundreds and hundreds of miles in one direction.

That’s what the U.S. did when it invaded and stole several states’ worth of territory from Mexico—the arable land, and left the hungry people on the other side of the border. A line on a map drawn by some asshole. In the case of Mexico, it’s a line to separate the hungry people from the arable land and produce stolen from them a couple centuries ago.

Hungry people trying to get where the surplus of food exists—that’s a problem. So we’re going to spend, as a nation, more money to keep the hungry people on the Mexican side than it would cost to give those hungry people a bowl of soup and a blanket and a gift basket.

So, considering that, what would happen if we simply erased all the lines that some asshole drew on the map? If we did that, all humans would be as free as money and corporations and jobs. Everybody could go wherever they wanted to go.

Holy fuck.

*This may or may not have been written by Sean Swain, but since September 2012, the Fascist Buffoons of Intimidation have used the Ohio Department of Retribution and Corruption as a sock-puppet to orchestrate a terror campaign against Sean Swain for his beliefs and his writings. So, until Anonymous melts down the government’s databases or until the oppressed and enslaved rise up to topple the international system of capital, Sean Swain cannot have his name associated with any published work whether he wrote it or not. In a free country, this footnote would not be necessary.

Dear Edward,

Welcome back to the human race.

Exposing the monster that keeps us all in its insidious clutches will likely serve to awaken at least a small number of people who slumbered while this beast put the whole planet on information lockdown. That’s very cool. You’ve done your part to remove the mask of our true enemy, the enemy of freedom everywhere. But while the USA Today ponders the question of whether you’re a hero or traitor—an absolutely insane question—what’s on my mind is that there are thousands of operatives just lie yourself who have engaged in highly illegal spying on others, including Americans whose tax money sponsored the vast spying program—and yet you’re the only one to step forward? You’re the only one with the character and sense of integrity to warn humanity that the hierarchical monster has gone way too far?

Think of that, Edward. Thousands of Americans on the U.S. payroll where involved in vast conspiracies to absolutely eliminate the last vestiges of freedom any of us have…and you’re the only one to break ranks, to stop goose-stepping.

Think about that. Think about the pure Nazis that this control system has turned all those people into.

All but one. You.

So look, if you read this, stay out of their clutches. These are the most terrible, ruthless, rotten creatures to ever walk on two feet and if they get ahold of you, they will do everything in their power to scientifically destroy your mind and personhood. Trust me on this. The United States is the torture and human-rights abuse capital of the world. Nobody does it better.

Stay alive. Stay free.

If these words constitute treason, then make the most of them.

The truth is dangerous.Stay dangerous.

Freedom,

*

*This may or may not have been written by Sean Swain, but because the Fascist Buffoons of Intimidation wage a proxy terror campaign against him, Sean cannot have his name associated with anything in print. If Sean wrote this, and no one is saying he did, his own declaration exposing the U.S. Army’s School of the America’s can be viewed here.

In a free country, Edward Snowden would have nothing to expose.

I’m an anarchist. Through and through, all the way down to my bones, an anarchist. No one alive could be more thoroughly opposed to this dysfunctional system of hierarchy, and no one will cheer louder when swivilization finally sputters out once and for all. I’m secure in my anarchism-ness.

But have said all that, every once in a great while, a hierarch will do something not so terrible.

Take Captain McGuire, here at MANCI.

Now, I know. Captain McGuire works for the prison industrial complex. I know, she would shoot me off the fence and leave me dangling in the concertina wire if I tried to go home to my elderly parents who need me. I get it. But check it out: Captain McGuire was making her rounds at the same time that chow was being delivered. She watched a tray being passed into a tray slot and reportedly told the porter to give the tray to her. Captain McGuire then took the tray, with what little food was on it, and marched straight out of the block to the food service fascists and confronted them on the size of the portions.

For some background here, I’ve been in segregation since September. I’ve lost 55 pounds. Blackjack too is down from 220 pounds to under 160. Dillon at 6’4” most recently weighed in at a whopping 145 pounds and the alleged dietitian, some ass-clown named Elswick who doesn’t know nutrition from ice-sculpture took Dillon off of his high-calorie diet.

Apparently, 145 pounds at 6’4” is way too heavy.

He looks like a survivor from Dachau. You know, the walking skeletons with eyes the size of saucers peering out from deep in their skulls.

That’s what we’re dealing with here. MANCI is under the directon of the Gestapo High Command. And nobody had the courage nor the integrity to break ranks and insist that captives back here in segregation should get a standard-sized serving of food…except Captain McGuire.

So, last night we had spaghetti. The previous spaghetti dinner to last night, I received exactly four spoonfuls of spaghetti. That’s it. But since Captain McGuire confronted food service? Last night, I got fourteen spoonfuls of spaghetti. I mean, we’re not talking mafia-don servings here, but it was a standard-sized serving.

We’re getting fed now.

Blackjack stays awake for more than 3 hours a day. We both have energy and I think I’ve put on a few pounds in the last week. I know I’ve stopped losing weight now.

Keep in mind, there was a time when I was writing to friends and asking, “They can’t starve us to death. I mean, they can’t kill us, can they?

Captain McGuire answered that question. She said, “No.”

I’m almost hesitant to write this for posting because MANCI is such an insidious shithole and its administration is so utterly bankrupt of morality, I can only imagine that by recognizing Captain McGuire’s fairness and professionalism, I’m very possibly ruining her career. At MANCI, if I were instead to say she duct-taped mentally ill prisoners to a table and shoved a plunger up their asses, she’d probably get promoted. So, I hope this recognition doesn’t hurt Captain McGuire. Empathy is such a rare thing from corrections officials, you don’t want to punish anyone for it.

To stand up for the right thing is never a small act of courage. Anyone wanting to have Captain McGuire recognized for her integrity and professionalism should contact:

Ohio Governor Kasich (614) 466-3555

ODRC Director Gary C. Mohr (614) 752-1150

MANCI Warden Terry A. Tibbals (419) 526-2000 then dial 806-2000 for a direct line to his office.

We need prisons to collapse. We need systems of control to crumble. But in the meantime, we benefit from more Captain McGuires and fewer shitbags.

We might not starve to death back here after all.

Thanks, Captain McGuire.

After many months of waiting in awful conditions in the segregation unit at Mansfield, Sean has been transferred to the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, Ohio.

Please take a minute to write to Sean, or to send him a book or zine. Getting transferred is really hard on people in prison, even if we hope that his conditions will be slightly better at O.S.P. than in the segregation unit at MANCI. He would love to hear from friends and supporters to boost his spirits while he adjusts to new conditions of confinement.

Also, Sean has not been allowed access to books for the last year, and receiving books right now would be a real relief.

Seriously, fuck the State and every person who makes a penny off keeping the people we love in cages.

Sean’s new address is:

Sean Swain 243-205

Ohio State Penitentiary

878 Coitsville-Hubbard Rd.

Youngstown, OH 44505

The following letter was written to Rashid upon learning of his torturous conditions at the Snake River facility in Oregon. Rashid has since been transferred to Texas. For an update on his condition, check out his support site. Rashid is a gifted artist and Marxist political theorist who serves as the Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party Prison Chapter. I urge anyone reading the letter he sent to Anthony and feeling bewildered to write to Rashid and check out his support site for ways you can help.

Dear Rashid,

I just received from Anthony a letter he published of yours from 4 March describing your intolerable situation at Snake River. I’m sending a copy of that and this letter to friends at seanswain.org for publishing along with your contact information.

I hope your situation I better now and I want to urge you, despite how the fascist pigs may work to destroy you, that you treat Rashid Johnson according to his true worth and value. I cannot imagine that you would give Huey P. Newton a possible overdose of pills; or that you would force razorblades down the throat of George Jackson; or that you would dehydrate Malcolm X to the brink of death. I remind you that this revolutionary named Rashid Johnson is the only one of those four to so far survive the deliberate genocide that has take the lives of the other three.

Many people are depending on you. They have placed faith and trust in you. You are not alone because thousands stand with you. The eyes of the world are watching.

The future belongs to us. As Che Guevara said, we are walking on pure history—and we know it.

Your torturers know it too. They feel their system unravelling. They smell the smoke. They sense the colonial death machine grinding down.

They feel fear.
Stay alive. We’re getting to the good part.
I promise, we are.
Stay dangerous.

Freedom,
Sean