Author Archives: Sean Swain

Declaration by Sean Swain

IN THE INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES

SEAN PAUL SWAIN,                                              : CASE NO. P-688-10

Petitioner,                                                                  : DECLARATION OF SEAN PAUL SWAIN

vs.                                                                                  :

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et. al., :

Respondents.                                                            :

 

COMES NOW Sean Paul Swain, being duly sworn, and deposes to state:

  1. I have been held captive by the alleged State of Ohio1 since 1991, wrongfully convicted of crimes for which I am actually innocent. I can objectively demonstrate that I was not provided the protection of Ohio law regarding my criminal proceedings and appeals.
  2. While held captive by the alleged State of Ohio, I was subject to retaliatory and repressive treatment, to include treatment which the United States in highly-classified documents admits to be “torture.” I appropriately attempted to address this treatment through the available administrative remedies (i.e., prison grievance procedure) and I additionally reported my treatment to the Corrections Institution Inspection Committee of the Ohio Assembly. I thereafter wrote a book, FREEDOM: The Insight, Rage and Fury of Political Prisoner Sean Swain. When prison officials discovered that my book had been published, I was subjected to repression and retaliation, including treatment the U.S. admits to be “torture.” I attempted to address this treatment through available administrative remedies and through contacting the Corrections Institution Inspection Committee. This proved futile.
  3. With no other alternative, I filed a civil rights action in federal court, Swain v. Fullenkamp, et. al., U.S. District Court Case Number 3:09-CV-2659. The action was dismissed as frivolous, the court finding that prison officials had an interest in punishing me for my expression of views and beliefs beyond prison walls– contrary to well-settled precedents.2
  4. I appealed, Sixth Circuit Case Number 10-3755. The U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of claims. In so doing, the court has implicitly declared that prison officials can now regulate what information may enter the public forum from prison; prison officials can control what the public can know about the operation of public facilities. Far more troubling to me personally, the U.S. courts have effectively stripped me of all constitutional protections. Potentially, anything I have said or written to anyone can serve as a cause for prison officials to subject me to inhumane and mind-numbing deprivations that the U.S. courts have otherwise found to be unconstitutional.3
  5. I am stripped of all constitutional protections. I am left no recourse to the government of the United States nor to the alleged State of Ohio. My captors have been given free license to subject me to treatment that the United States government has referred to as “torture.” I have been left to my own devices to protect myself against an inimical and all-powerful government entity in order to maintain my own physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual integrity.
  6. I prepare this declaration out of necessity and where under duress, in the absence of recourse to courts for the protection of my rights, in order to secure my own safety. It is my intention to transmit copies of this declaration to proxies. Also transmitted to these proxies will be specific and explicit protocols that will govern the release and distribution of this declaration to media, to foreign governments, to the United Nations, to the Organization of American States, and to internet websites including Wikileaks, if and when protocols are triggered. Depending upon the triggering event, this declaration and other accompanying documents may be released incrementally from multiple sources, or may be released en masse. There will be no warning nor communication to the government or its agents by third parties possessing this declaration. There is no contingency in place for me or for anyone else to prevent transmission of materials once protocols are triggered.
  7. There exist multiple channels by which third parties maintain constant information as to my status. These multiple channels provide a fail-safe, preventing an accidental release of this declaration without legitimate cause.

 

Summary

  1. The United States government has undertaken a number of covert and illegal operations involving the United States Army’s School of the Americas (“SOA”). Those illegal operations include the training of foreign troops in state-sponsored terror operations; a program of compromising military personnel attending SOA training to become intelligence assets for the U.S., engaging in treason against their countries of origin; the maintenance of an illegal network that involves media personnel and State Department officials; the illegal training of drug cartel security personnel at the SOA in order to protect cocaine cartels and their smuggling operations; the smuggling of cocaine and arms by agents of the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) and their proxies; and the covert political assassination of Communist Party Secretary Hu Yaobang of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) on April 15, 1989, contrary to international law. This declaration also demonstrates the existence of a direct link between (1) the CIA, (2) former President George H.W. Bush, (3) former Panamanian President Manuel Noriega, (4) the SOA, (5) the cocaine smuggling pipeline, and (6) the U.S. government’s employment of a known terrorist and mass-murderer to orchestrate arms-smuggling and terror operations in Central America.

 

My Background

  1. In my senior year in high school I scored in the top 5% of those who took the military aptitude battery. After moving to Sandusky, Ohio, in May of 1987, I was thereafter contacted by Orlando Rodriguez, who claimed to be a Cuban national. He worked in a free-lance capacity for the C.I.A. Like many others associated with military and quasi-military U.S. operations, Rodriguez had no formal relationship to the U.S. government. Operatives like Rodriguez floated from one unofficial status to another, sometimes employed by non-governmental organizations that served as fronts for military/intelligence services, sometimes hired as consultants or contractors. GeoMiliTech, DynCorp, and the ubiquitous Blackwater are all examples of ostensibly-private sector organizations that translate operatives and assets to and from the military and intelligence networks, their relationships to the government always plausibly-deniable. These are important facts to bear in mind when attempting to understand how military and intelligence systems operate in the real world.
  2. I entered basic training on November 4, 1987, at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. I attended Advanced Training at the Quartermaster School in Ft. Lee, Virginia. I arrived at my permanent duty station, Ft. Benning, Georgia, in February 1988. I was assigned as a supply clerk and armorer for a basic training unit, D-4-30. In addition I performed editing duties for the School of the Americas, integrating and synthesizing newly-developed information on irregular warfare into the already-existing S.O.A. manuals.

 

Background, SOA

  1. The SOA was made operational during the Kennedy Administration. It was a response to the emergence of Fidel Castro in Cuba, the Bay of Pigs, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The SOA was a component in the shift of U.S. foreign policy, which became largely influenced by anti-Castro Cuban refugees. Many of these Cuban refugees were centered in Miami, and the CIA established its only domestic station there.
  2. Through Miami Station, the CIA secretly funded a number of anti-Castro/anti-Communist organizations that recruited Cuban refugees in large numbers, sometimes training in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. The cadre for the illegal Bay of Pigs invasion would be pulled from these ranks, as would a number of operatives later assembled to conduct the Watergate burglary and Iran-Contra operations. Rolando Martinez and Frank Sturgis, both Watergate burglars, began their intelligence careers in the ranks of these secret CIA operations. Frank Sturgis trained guerilla warfare in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. A number of Iran-Contra operatives including ChiChi Quintero, Manuel Artime, and Felix Rodriguez emerged from these CIA operations. Otto Reich, later the chief of the PLD, emerged from these groups; he would later plant propaganda in the New York Times and the Washington Post in order to generate public support for the Nicaraguan Contras. As all of these secret operations occurred through Miami Station, Miami Station became the central fixture for U.S. intelligence.
  3. It is important to note that, in the cases of the operatives and assets mentioned, most had no official relationship tot he U.S. government. Still, they became deeply-entrenched in the intelligence community, developing informal and personal connections to those who rose through the ranks in the formal intelligence and military services. These operatives, funded by slush-funds set up by the CIA, shared the values, worldviews, and agendas of their friends at Miami Station and often worked as a kind of out-sourced “shadow” operation. These shadow operations often accomplished the goals of U.S. intelligence that were in direct contradiction to the stated official policy of the U.S., and sometimes in contravention of U.S. law.
  4. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, many anti-Castro operatives joined the military or otherwise received military training. Among them Chi-Chi Quintero, Felix Rodriguez, Manuel Artime, and Luis Posado Carriles all had connections to Ft. Benning, Georgia, an Army base in relatively close proximity to Miami Station, the only domestic C.I.A. station.
  5. 1960 saw the formation of the 5412 Group, also known as the 40 Committee , the 303 Committee, and the Special Group, to formulate direct and covert action against Fidel Castro’s Cuba. This secret committee involved Robert F Kennedy, then U.S. Attorney General, and it shaped U.S. covert operations. The planning and organization of activities under the 5412 Group was carried out by many of the same operatives who conducted the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup against Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. The SOA became operational in this context, while the U.S. government orchestrated covert operations against Cuba and Miami Station enlisted anti-Castro Cubans for military operations against Cuba.
  6. Ostensibly, the SOA was to serve as a training facility where American military instructors would instruct visiting military personnel from nations in Central/South America in the strategies and tactics of irregular warfare. The stated purpose of this training was to form a bulwark against Communist destabilization of the hemisphere and to protect democracy throughout Latin America. In this view, the SOA was a component of an anti-Communist framework that included U.S. economic aid, sometimes in the form of military technological hardware, to those nations that opposed Communism (i.e. opposed Fidel Castro). Thus, the larger goal was the isolation of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. From a more realistic view, however, the SOA was part of a larger U.S. strategy to maintain hegemony, propping up dictators in “banana republics” with U.S training, guns, and money, thereby securing U.S. corporate investments. In this regard, the SOA was part of a larger plan to subvert real democracy and suppress human rights in the Americas by assisting undemocratic puppet regimes to maintain power throughout Latin America.

 

My Function at the SOA

  1. There are three (3) operational levels at the SOA, often referred to as “white,” “gray,” and “black” operations. White operations consist of those lawful operations that the government admits. Gray operations are the unlawful and denied operations that are often incorporated into white operations. Black operations are those operations not associated directly to white operations, and their existence is denied by the government. All three (3) levels are present at the SOA.
  2. With my first handler, rigid protocols were followed and I never exchanged any sensitive information with anyone by my handler. However, after his transfer in early 1988, I would become informally incorporated into the SOA intelligence community, exposing me to white, gray, and black operations conducted by those personnel.
  3. In 1988, the U.S. Senate investigated what later became known as the Iran-Contra Affair. Iran-Contra was a complex intelligence and military operation that violated U.S. law and subverted congressional authority. It involved U.S. military and intelligence operatives training and funding illegal proxy death-squads for the purposes of destabilizing the duly-elected government of Nicaragua. While the senate investigated these matters, I was synthesizing reports from the Nicaraguan combat theater into training manuals for use at the SOA. I was incorporating information from the illegal Contra war into SOA training manuals. I received uncensored materials that contained notes, references, and signatures from Colonel James Steele, Lewis Tambs, Jose Fernandez, Max Gomez, and Ramon Medina. All of these personnel were directly involved in supporting Contra death squads.
  4. I would later learn that “Max Gomez” was an alias name for CIA operative Felix Rodriguez. Rodriguez was a central figure in Iran-Contra, linked to (1) George H.W. Bush advisors Sam Watson and Don Gregg, (2) Air America II operations that smuggled cocaine into the U.S., and (3) Columbian drug cartel accountant Ramon Milian Rodriguez. This “Max Gomez” tied together the Contra death squads with the cocaine pipeline, George H.W. Bush, and Columbian drug cartels.
  5. I would also learn later that “Ramon Medina” was the alias of Luis Posada Carriles, an international terrorist and mass-murderer who was trained in the U.S. and employed by the CIA. In his capacity as a CIA operative, he once bombed a Cuban airliner, killing more than a hundred civilians. As “Ramon Medina,” he worked for the CIA coordinating logistics at a Salvadoran air base, supporting illegal Contra death squads in Nicaragua.
  6. My synthesis of death squad reports into SOA training manuals occurred under the supervision of Lieutenant Colonel Lou Rodriguez beginning in 1988. One of the consultants for the CIA involved in illegal SOA activities was Joaquin Powell.

Nature and Character of U.S.-Sponsored Terror Operations Recounted in Reports

  1. Some of the materials I synthesized related to infiltration of civil rights groups, the targeting of union organizers, torture of opposition leaders, and political assassination.
  2. Many reports detailed the successful use of terrorist bombings against both civilian and government targets in Nicaragua. I learned from these reports that the power of explosives is expressed in relation to TNT. If a demolition requires 1200 pounds of explosive, for example, that amount is a reference to the pounds of TNT required, However, C4 is two and a half times as powerful as TNT so that, if a demolition required 1200 pounds of TNT, that would translate to 480 pounds (or 60 blocks) of C4.
  3. As a general rule, demolitions of concrete or brick structures such as schools, courthouses, jails, or embassies require four pounds of explosives per square foot. I learned this by synthesizing reports of U.S.-sponsored death squads involved in terrorist attacks against Nicaragua’s infrastructure.
  4. U.S.-sponsored death squads reported pouring acid from batteries into glass cylinders adhered to the tops of gas lines. The acid would corrode the pipes, releasing natural gas, and causing explosions. This was used against both government and civilian targets.
  5. U.S.-sponsored terrorists used vans as explosives. They would place acetylene and oxygen tanks in the backs of vans, filling the vans with nails, bolts, bearings, and other projectiles. They duct-taped the vents and air-proofed the insides of the doors. They would use the electrical current through the filament of the dome=-light as the detonator. Parking the van in front of their target, they would disconnect the battery and screw in the dome light with a hole drilled through the casing. They would turn on the acetylene and oxygen tanks, then re-connect the battery and report the van as a suspicious vehicle. When authorities would open the van door, the electricity in the filament of the dome light would spark the oxygen and acetylene mixture, causing a tremendously destructive explosion.
  6. U.S.-proxy terrorists increased the explosive power of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel by as much as 60% by adding aluminum or other oxidizers. This is the same kind of explosive used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh attended basic training at Ft. Benning. I synthesized reports regarding these explosives at Ft. Benning. I have often wondered if Timothy McVeigh learned to make explosives by reading the training manuals I edited for the SOA.

 

Interrogations and Torture

  1. Information related to U.S.-sponsored death squad interrogations and torture was synthesized into SOA training manuals. I was also provided portions of The KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual and Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual, both used by the CIA. Those manuals dealt with interrogation and torture, and both manuals used the term, “torture”. I integrated training in techniques of torture into SOA training manuals. The following paragraphs contain direct quotes from those CIA manuals.
  2. “The following are the principal [sic] 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.” According to the manuals, the important objective is to cause three responses: “debility, dependence, and dread.” These “techniques… are in essence methods of inducing regression of the personality to whatever earlier and weaker level is required for the dissolution of resistance and the inculcation of dependence… As the subject slips back from maturity toward a more infantile state, his learned or structured personality traits fall away in reversed chronological order…” These “[c]oercive procedures are designed not only to exploit the resistant source’s internal conflicts and induce him to wrestle with himself but also to bring a superior outside force to bear upon the subject’s resistance.” This process serves to “obliterate the familiar,” so “as the process [of segregation and sensory deprivation] continues, day after day if necessary, the subject begins to try to make sense of the situation, which becomes mentally intolerable. Now he is likely to make significant admissions…” In other words, intolerable conditions break the subject’s will.
  3. At Toledo Correctional Institution, these techniques were used on me in an effort to break my will to complain, grieve, speak out against crimes, and litigate. In my time in segregation, there were suicide attempts on nearly a daily basis due to the intolerable conditions consistent with what is described in CIA manuals.
  4. As the CIA manuals describe, “What we aim to do is to ensure… the maximum amount of discomfort in order to catch the [subject] off balance and deprive him of the initiative. The CIA manuals instruct in techniques to most-effectively subject someone to will-breaking deprivations. These deprivations are employed at Toledo Correctional Institution: “The more completely the place of confinement eliminates sensory stimuli, the more rapidly and deeply will the subject be affected. Results produced after only weeks or months of imprisonment in an ordinary cell can be duplicated in hours or days in a cell which has… weak artificial light which never varies… An early effect of such and environment is anxiety… the [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 that contest is one between the individual and his tormentor…”
  5. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction employs techniques that the United States government refers to as a “simple torture situation.” In addressing this “simple torture situation,” the federal courts have declared that such conditions do not violate the constitution prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.4
  6. The CIA manuals advise to cause the subject serious psychological pain in such a way that the subject begins to identify himself and his resistance as the cause of pain, thereby diminishing the tortured subject’s “motivational strength.”
  7. The SOA training manuals produced through my editing and synthesizing were used to train troops from Central/South America in SOLIC (Special Operations and Low-Intensity Combat), to include state=terror employed against unarmed civilians and the liquidation of entire villages. The manuals instructed in torture, to include “simulated drowning,” now referred to as “water-boarding.” Some of the manuals described the process of out-sourcing state-terror operations to plausibly-deniably government-supported death-squads, a practice I believe to be particularly significant in light of the evolution of this practice: from U.S. use of DynCorp in the invasion of Panama to the CIA’s creation of Al Qaeda to fight a proxy war against the Soviets’ to the use of Blackwater as “consultants” in the U.S. Oil Wars. The implications of this evolving trend to out-source terror operations to non-government entities are vast.

 

SOA Training Drug Cartels

  1. Over the course of approximately eighteen (18) months I learned of the black operations conducted at the SOA under the direction of CIA case officers who were “consultants” and “contractors” who often worked through Miami Station. Many of these case officers had direct experience in the anti-Castro operations, to include the Bay of Pigs, and many had been transferred in and out of the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan theaters during the illegal Contra war. Some were involved in illegal black operations in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos during the Vietnam War.
  2. While the SOA black operations were highly classified and well above my security clearance, a very loose atmosphere prevailed among the intelligence community. They operated very informally on the basis of personal trust rather than following rigid protocols. Many operatives and case officers appeared to snub procedure with bravado as if they resented the imposition by bureaucrats who did not comprehend the reality on the ground. Their cavalier attitude toward security protocols made me party of a great amount of highly sensitive information for which I did not possess the appropriate security clearances.
  3. SOA profilers in a section typically called PSYOPS5 reviewed the personnel files that accompanied all of the SOA trainees upon their arrival. This was done in order to identify possible targets to compromise. Once identified, they would manipulate the subject in an effort to coerce him into betraying his country of origin and work as an intelligence asset for the United States. For these purposes, SOA trainees were highly monitored. The CIA had dancers at local strip clubs on pay-roll for purposes of seducing trainees so that their infidelities could be used for purposes of blackmail. One of the PSYOPS operatives once bragged that a mid-level officer married to the daughter of a general was compromised in this way and became a source for information on everything that the general did. Another operative bragged that another trainee was compromised for the cost of a Cabbage Patch doll for his daughter.
  4. These covert operations were conducted in order to turn trainees into spies against their countries of origin and it must be remembered that all of those countries were allies of the United States. The U.S. was engaged in illegal espionage against its friends.
  5. Files of the compromised SOA trainees were sent up through intelligence hierarchies and then transferred to the State Department so that CIA personnel assigned at various embassies in those countries could be assigned as handlers for the compromised trainee-turned-asset. As a consequence of this covert operation, the U.S. illegally developed the largest and most extensive spy network in the Wester Hemisphere without risking the lives of American assets abroad. The U.S. relies upon soldiers and agents embedded in allied nations’ military and intelligence services to provide a vast array of information.

 

SOA Training of Drug Cartels

  1. As part of its daily operations, the SOA trains in crop detection and eradication. This training is related to the stated objective of fighting a war on drugs. However, the trainees attending these classes are not military personnel but are, instead drug cartel enforcers. The cartel personnel can be identified by the tattoos between their thumbs and forefingers. Their employment for drug cartels is an open secret among SOA cadre.
  2. The U.S. government trains the enforcers of drug cartels in the latest techniques and technology for fighting the war on drugs. The cartels then use this training in order to protect their lucrative businesses. This trend of training drug cartels is linked to the CIA’s direct involvement in smuggling cocaine into the United States.

 

The CIA and the Cocaine Pipeline

  1. When smuggling weapons to the Contras during the Iran-Contra Affair, CIA smugglers established a lucrative business of smuggling cocaine into the country on return trips. Air America I6 pilots in Miami and New Orleans flew cocaine back into the country on return from El Salvador and Nicaragua. Some of the funds from the cocaine smuggling industry were diverted to supporting illegal wars in Afghanistan7 and Central America. CIA operatives Tom Clines, Ed Wilson, and Chi-Chi Quintero engineered the Air America II cocaine pipeline into the U.S., laundering money through a number of companies including GeoMiliTech Consultants, Southern Air Transport, Corporate Air, Energy Resources International, and Lake Resources, Inc. Many of these companies had financial connections to Panama, largely because Panamanian President Manual Noriega was directly involved in the CIA smuggling and laundering operations. Noriega’s side, Jose Blandon, worked as a liaison between “Max Gomez” (Felix Rodriguez) and an accountant for Columbian drug cartels named Ramon Milian Rodriguez. Ramon Milian Rodriguez provided the CIA cocaine smugglers with the blue-print for setting up “dummy” corporations and laundering cocaine money through them. He also assisted in coordinating cocaine shipments between the drug cartels and the CIA.

 

The CIA Cocaine Pipeline and George H.W. Bush

  1. Felix Rodriguez was directly involved in Contra death squad support under the alias name, “Max Gomez.” Felix Rodriguez was also linked to Manuel Noriega through Noriega’s aide, Joe Blandon. Felix Rodriguez also had direct ties to Columbian drug cartel accountant Ramon Milian Rodiguez. In this way, Felix Rodriguez was central to the weapons smuggling operations supporting Nicaraguan death squads and he was also central to the CIA cocaine-smuggling pipeline. In addition, Felix Rodriguez was directly linked to George H.W. Bush advisors Don Gregg and Colonel Sam Watson. Felix Rodriguez, in fact informed Bush advisors prior to the exposure of Iran-Contra, giving then Vice-President Bush the opportunity to destroy documents and conceal any links between himself and the illegal operations conducted in and around Nicaragua.8
  2. Felix Rodriguez’s connection to the White House was established by his own testimony before Congress on July 14, 1988. While Rodriguez testified, I was synthesizing his notes from his Contra death squad experiences into the SOA training manuals.
  3. Former President George H.W. Bush was involved in Iran-Contra, in the CIA cocaine-smuggling pipeline, and was connected with Columbian drug cartels and former Panamanian President Manuel Noriega.9

 

Political Assassination

  1. In late 1988 and through 1989, Anti-Castro CIA case officers who directed black operations at the SOA through Miami Station were consulted in an ongoing operation entitled, “Operation Glass Monkey.” This operation dealt primarily with the social and political de-stabilization of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”). As part of this operation, prior to the involvement of anti-Castro case officers, the CIA had infiltrated the student protests in China, monitoring and manipulating student leaders Han Dongfang, Zhou Fengauo, and Xiang Yan.
  2. A meeting between Soviet and PRC leadership had been announced for May 15, 1989. It was determined to be essential to sabotage this meeting in order to hasten the economic collapse of the Soviet Union. Up to this point, the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan had financially crippled the Soviet Union and the Soviets were seeking an exchange of technology-for-loans from the PRC. If the U.S. could obstruct this exchange, it was believed that it would be possible to hasten the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.
  3. Anti-Castro case officers were consulted to review a possible plan for political assassination to disrupt the May 15, 1989 summit. On the short-list of possible assassination targets was Premier Li Peng. This U.S. intended to use operatives it had placed in the inner circle of Zhou Ziyang, some of whom were later arrested and interrogated.
  4. The plan developed by anti-Castro case officers was to use a topical solution that had been developed for the intended assassination of Fedel Castro. As part of “Operation Mongoose,” and under the authority of the 5412 Group, a number of so-called “designer toxins” had been developed. Of specific interest were topical solutions that could be applied to a target’s skin and thereafter remain dormant for an extended period of time. These toxins could be activated by any number of triggers, to include the target’s body temperature or changes in the target’s Ph levels in the blood stream. Once activated, the toxins would simulate the symptoms of any number of fatal conditions such as a heart attack, a stroke, an aneurysm, or an epileptic seizure.
  5. One month prior to the Sino-Soviet summit, on April 15, 1989, Communist Party Secretary Hu Yaobang of the People’s Republic of China was assassinated by appearance of death by natural causes. In his absence, other PRC leaders took a hard-line approach to student protesters, leading to the Tienenman Square Massacre. In the midst of this social and political upheaval, the Sino-Soviet summit was derailed. That upheaval, during the summit and afterward, was largely facilitated by direct efforts to create international outcry over the Tienenman Square crack-down and foster a toppling of the ruling regime in the PRC. To this end, the CIA transmitted film from the CNN offices on the 14th floor of the Beigjing Hotel to New York on June 3, 1989. During these events the CIA relied heavily upon assets embeeded in the news media, including Nick Kristoff (New York Times), TD Allman (Vanity Fair), and Jim Sterba (Wall Street Journal). Since that time, the CIA has made a practice of using media personnel as spies, some of whom have been arrested and detained in foreign countries.
  6. In the absence of a technology-for-loans exchange, the Soviet Union economically collapsed shortly thereafter. The assassination of the PRC Communist Party Secretary Hu Yaobang by the United States government greatly contributed to this collapse.
  7. The CIA’s training manual for assassinations, A Study in Assassination, lists six (6) general categories of assassination: (1) manual, (2) accidents, (3) drugs, (4) edge weapons, (5) blunt weapons, and (6) firearms.

 

Conclusion

 

  1. I prepare this declaration out of necessity and under duress, as I possess no other means to protect myself from the crimes of my captors. I am willing to sign a release for anyone receiving this declaration to review my medical and psychological files currently held by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. I believe myself to be of sound mind and body. I currently take medications for high blood pressure and for low thyroid.
  2. I believe that within a year of the release of this declaration that I may die quickly from a quickly-metastasizing form of cancer.10 If the United States government kills me, my death will constitute a triggering event.
  3. I sign this declaration pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1746.

DECLARANT FURTHER SAYETH NAUGHT.

 

 

Sean Swain, Declarant

Prison Reg. A243-205

ManCI, P.O. Box 788

Mansfield, Indian Territory 44901

 

July 4, 2011

End Notes

1 The majority of Ohio was established as “Indian Territory” by the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. That treaty was never superceded. As a consequence, Ohio’s incorporation as an alleged state conflicts with U.S. treaty obligations and violates the U.S. Constitution. Ohio’s statehood is currently under challenge in the Inter-American Court for Human Rights, Organization of American States, Sean Paul Swain v. The United States of America, Case No. P-688-10.

2 See U.S. Supreme Court cases Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 94 S.Ct. 1800 (1974), and Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 109 S.Ct. 1874 (1989). See also, Abu Jamal v. Price, 154 F3d 128 (3rd Cir., 1998).

3 Filthy environs and pest infestations, Gates v. Cook, 376 F3d 323 (5th Cir., 2004), Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678, 687, 98 S.Ct. 2565, 2571 (1978); lack of adequate sanitation and laundry, Green v. Ferrell, 801 F2d 765, 771 (5th Cir,. 1986), Ramos v. Lamm, 639 F2d 974, 978 (2nd Cir., 1972) all constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment– unless you’re Sean Swain.

4 See, Swain v. Fellenkamp, et. al., U.S. District Court Case No. 3:09-CV-2659, Sixth Circuit Case No. 10-3755.

5 “PSYOPS”: Short for “Psychological Operations,” more commonly applied to departments of phsychological operations conducting hostilities against enemies during war but, at the SOA, it was commonly (if not inaccurately) used to refer to the psychological section.

6 CIA pilots who flew covert and illegal missions into Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War were called “Air America.” They established a lucrative opium pipeline into the U.S., creating the heroin boom of the 1970s. Pilots flying into El Salvador and Nicaragua, some of whom had experience in Air America, were dubbed “Air America II.”

7 At the time of the U.S. invasion, Afghanistan was the largest opium producer in the world.

8 Felix Rodriguez was a CIA operative during George H.W. Bush’s tenure as CIA Director.

9 Within this context, it is much easier to imagine the actual motive for President George H.W. Bush to order the invasion Panama and the arrest of Panamanian President Manuel Noriega– an invasion and arrest unprecedented in American history and not rationally related to any security interests whatsoever.

10 The U.S. government has long developed a weaponized cancer conspicuously like that which killed Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald served as a military intelligence asset at the time of the Kennedy assassination (HIDELL, Alex J., SSN: 433-54-3937; DOB: 18OCT39; EYE: Gray; HAIR: Brown; HT: 71”; WT: 145 lbs.; SERVICE NO. 1653230). It is also suspiciously like the cancer that killed Idaho Observer Editor Don Harkins in 2008.

New Update on Sean’s Condition and Coordinated Rebellion at Mansfield Correctional

We have just received confirmation that between the night of Wednesday, September 19th and Monday, September 24th, Sean was held in a suicide cell in the medical wing of the prison, despite the fact that he is not in any way a suicide risk. Apparently the prison maintains a special cell behind the medical department to be used as punishment for inmates: “torture cell number 112.”

This cell does not have a bed, just a concrete floor that Sean was forced to sleep on. The cell had no heat and Sean did not shower, have access to incoming mail, pen, paper or any of his belongings. He also did not eat for two days.

Please take a few moments to call the prison (see numbers below) and ask them about their treatment of Sean and the prison’s use of suicide cells as a form of punishment for inmates who are not suicidal. These calls and the resulting pressure really does help Sean, if you were wondering. They are most likely the reason Sean was moved from the suicide cell.

Sean is now being held in “normal” segregation pending an investigation that now involves the Ohio State Patrol (which has jurisdiction over criminal investigations within the ODRC).

Apparently, these trumped up charges are somehow related to the recent uprising at Mansfield Correctional on Wednesday, September 19th in which guards used fire hoses to quell the rebellion. Inmates calling themselves “The Army of the Twelve Monkeys,” powered by anger sweeping through the prison over the negative impact of the recent privatization of the prison commissary, have created mayhem throughout the institution.

Despite the fact that Sean does not seem to have been involved in the riot, it seems like the prison is attempting to pin Sean as the “leader” of this movement. This is most likely based solely on the fact that Sean, as a prolific writer and harsh critic of prisons, recently penned a critique of the new privatization plan.

Called JPay, the new system requires friends, families and supporters to send money orders to a private corporation in Hollywood, Florida, rather than directly to the ODRC as in the past. In addition, JPay takes a chunk of the money as a “service fee.” The only people allowed to put money on an inmate’s books are those on their visitation list.

Please take a minute to send a letter, article, some paper (up to 5 blank sheets per envelope) or a couple embossed envelopes to Sean. He could really use our encouragement and support right now, as well as the impact it has on the prison to see a targeted inmate receiving a ton of mail.

 

 

 

JPay, Sock Puppets and Our Reduction to Slavery

At the end of August, ManCI 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 directly 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 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 only for purposes of getting on my visiting list?
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 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 legal counsel and made clear that my concern was to address the legalities and privacy concerns of my visitors. You would think prison administrators, as officials in the criminal justice process, would want to ensure the legalities 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 out-sourced 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 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 proceedure 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 out-source 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 tax-payers, 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 down-sized so Gary Mohr’s coke-snorting golf friends could turn Ohio 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.

 

Dear Sir or Madam Re: Being Placed on a Security Threat Group List

Dear Sir or Madam:

To preface this, I would like to turn your attention to 3 United States Supreme Court cases. If you need copies of these, we can print them off in the law library:

Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners Labor Union, Inc.,433 U.S. 119, 97 S.Ct. 2532 (1977)

Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 107 S.Ct. 2245 (1987)

Thornburg v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 109 S.Ct. 1874 (1989)

These 3 cases establish the First Amendment rights that prisoners retain. One principle theme that runs through all of those cases is that the prison officials—you–have a valid concern about what prisoners do in prison; you have a right and even a duty to address our conduct in prison; but you have no business at all digging into what we believe or think or feel.

What I do in prison can effect safety and security and prison functions. What I think or believe or even express to people outside of prison is, with all due respect, none of your business at all. According to the third case listed above, Thornburgh v. Abbott, I even have the right to expres to free-world people “inflammatory” racial, political, and religious views. And the cases make clear that, in affirming my right to hold and express even inflammatory views, you, as prison officials, cannot subject me to punishment or any other disincentive; in other words, you cannot treat me differently.

To be clear, this is not my concept of what my rights ought to be. This isn’t my idea of what the law should say. I’m only relating to you what your highest court has said your law is.

I would like you to abide by your law. I am, after all, in your custody because your government has said that I do not respect your law, and it is your job to engender in me a respect for it; I cannot foresee how that could feasibly happen if you have no regard for your own government nor your own laws.

Now, having said that, the problem I would like to address to you i smy placement on the SECURITY THREAT GROUP list simply because of my beliefs. My situation is this:

I believe the hierarchical organization of society is wrong. I think it doesn’t work. I think plenty of anthropologists and archaeologist and all kinds of other “-ologists” who are smarter than you and me have effectively demonstrated that people lived without hierarchy for nearly 4 million years; and I believe the evidence is clear that their way of living made sense and they willingly maintained that way of living for a long, long time. I also believe that people will return to living without hierarchy because this way of living is UNSUSTAINABLE, which means it cannot keep going.

Hierarchy is unsustainable.

The absence of hierarchy is sustainable.

Because I believe this, that makes me and “Anarchist.” The etymology of the word “Anarchy” is “Ana-,” which means “against” or “opposed,” and “-archy,” which means structure.” So, an An-archist is someone who opposes hierarchical structure. Because I believe we are better off without imposed, top-down structures in society—structures that have proven not to work, have proven UNSUSTAINABLE—I am called an Anarchist.

For me, Anarchy is not so much a belief as it is a simple statement of fact: Your hierarchical system has never worked and it is not the way humans were designed to live; life is much better in non-hierarchic social structures.

Not only do I think that Anarchy (that is, social organization without hierarchy) is better than hierarchy, but I can prove it: By all available data, your hierarchy is cranking out idiots at a record pace and destroying the world, thereby bringing about its own inevitable doom. We would all be better off if we stopped dragging stones up the side of this pyramid.

Hunter-gatherers worked for about 3 hours a day to meet all of their human needs. That means they had 21 hours of free time every day. You work 8 hours a day, maybe 16, plus time driving through tangled traffic, plus time shopping and cooking and taking care of family members and paying bills and putting gas in the car, and on and on and on. That’s why all the kids are on Ritalin and all the adults are on Prozac. We all need drugs just to maintain because this way of living is killing us. It drives us insane. Hierarchy turns society into one big booby-hatch. A nut farm. A loony-bin.

I’m saying that if you and me and others had better imaginations, we would find a way to scrap all this and go back to working 3 hours a day. I’m saying you would be better off without this system.

Your life would be much more rewarding if you could turn your back on this pyramid scheme.

So, having demonstrated the rationality of my position, that hierarchy does not work and that it is in the midst of its own inevitable collapse, I have to ask: Why does my reasonable acceptance of irrefutable and objective facts about our unsustainable social system warrant placing me on the SECURITY THREAT GROUP list? I ask this because there are hundreds of Hierarchs here at the prison whose beliefs do not apparently warrant placing them on the SECURITY THREAT GROUP list.

There are democrats here who have an irrational belief that hierarchy works even though it never has, and they think if the maniacs at the top of the pyramid scheme simply geared the program to better help the little guy at the bottom, everything would be okay. No matter how many efforts prove to be an abysmal failure, they just keep recycling the same ideas.

There are also republicans. They think hierarchy works just fine, despite all available evidence to the contrary. They think if they just trim down the number of chairs on the deck of the Titanic, this thing can keep on floating. They seem not to notice that, no matter what they tinker with, the thing just keeps on sinking.

Then you have communists and socialists who think if you just exchange the maniac at the top with a maniac who has a better program, the donkey will plow the field for the good of the people, or some such nonsense that history has disproven time and time again.

All of these people are Hierarchs. All of their beliefs fly in the face of historical experience. Their 6,000 year-old program of hierarchy has driven all life on the planet to the brink of extinction. No matter how badly their ideas keep failing, they keep implementing them again and again, toxifying our world and leading to eventual disaster for everyone.

These idiots are dangerous. Perhaps they need to be placed upon a SECURITY THREAT GROUP list.

Hierarchs have started every war in the last 6,000 years.

Hierarchs have imposed domestication and mass-production, causing human over-population by a margin of about 6.8 billion people, eroding topsoil,, fresh water, and oceanic plant life; leading to the spread of disease, drought, resource depletion, famine, political instability, terrorism, stratification, and wide-spread human suffering.

Hierarchs are a real problem. Their ideas drive us to the brink of extinction.

And while we’re in the realm of strange ideas that warrant your attention, there are a number of religions that promote this hierarchical madness. Chief among them is Christianity. I used to be a Christian myself. They think that two millenia ago, a special superman walked on water and magically pulled fish out of his hat and put lepers’ fingers back on, then he was killed by the local Hierarch and came back to life, bodily flying up into space but promising to return someday to punish everyone who doesn’t believe this wild story of incomprehensible mish-mash. He told his followers to sell whatever goods they possess and to buy a sword (Luke 22:36). Clearly a militant. Followers of this militant Jesus of Nazereth here at MANCI all possess the same book of instructions, that they should sell their Little Debbie snack-cakes and buy a shank. You should probably identify these militants and put them on the SECURITY THREAT GROUP list and take away their books.

My point is, every organized religion out there has a set of irrational, goofy ideas, and they all fit very nicely into supporting this hierarchical madness driving us to extinction. If anyone should be on a SECURITY THREAT GROUP list on the basis of their ideas, it should be goofballs with irrational ideas leading to death and destruction. But if you’re going to put people on the SECURITY THREAT GROUP list because of crazy ideas, you’re going to need some chips and beer—this undertaking is going to require a lot of time.

My ideas, in contrast, make far more reasonable, rational sense than the ideas of democrats, republicans, socialists, communists, or Christians. My ideas, by any objective measure, are far less dangerous than any of theirs.

Yet, you have me on what is essentially a “gang” list for my reasonable ideas, where I am grouped with nineteen year-old gang-bangers who form gaggles because they are cowards who cannot stand by themselves.

They are the opposite of me.

They rob and extort and drink and do drugs because they do not respect themselves or others.

They are the opposite of me.

They have no sense of principles, no philosophical foundation, no thoughtful approach to the way they live, no purpose.

They are the opposite of me.

They form groups to let others think for them rather than thinking for themselves.

They are the opposite of me.

They have no desire to have a positive impact on the world, to help others, to form healthy, functional, honest relationships for their own betterment and the betterment of others, resolved instead to form relationships based upon manipulation and force.

They are the opposite of me.

I would go so far as to propose that if you objectively look at my conduct over the course of the last 20 years, you will not find another prisoner who is more reasonable, more well-behaved, more conformed to the rules—even the really stupid rules—than me. In fact, by objective measures, I might be the best-behaved Ohio prisoner in penal history.

Why am I on a list with gang-bangers? Because I have a principled, thoughtful, reasoned, irrefutable critique of our fundamentally-disorganized social disorder?

Really???

I should think that if you are not a stark-mad, raving lunatic, you should want more prisoners who think and act the way I do. But you won’t get more prisoners to think and act the way I do if I get targeted and placed on a SECURITY THREAT GROUP list for it.

I should think you would want more people in the outside community who think and act the way I do. I should think that someone who thinks about how the community can be improved to benefit all of us is certainly better than the vast number of chuckleheads who would rather watch internet porn and eat potato chips.

I’m suggesting to you that you probably shouldn’t target me for wanting to be a good person and share ideas about how we can halt the death and destruction we see in the world, about how we can make the world better. I can’t think of a single good reason why you are doing this to me. I can only suspect that if you are not a stark-raving lunatic, you simply took issue with the word “Anarchy,” and you imagined the thousands of slanders that have been hoisted upon the word so that you thought Anarchists to be angry, thoughtless bomb-throwers. But if that is your idea of Anarchists, I’m not one.

Neolithic tribal people were Anarchists. They were organized without hierarchy. Almost the entirety of Native American cultures were Anarchist. Henry David Thoreau, the great American essayist whose renown is possibly second only to Thomas Jefferson, was an Anarchist. So were Jean-Pierre Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Leo tolstoy, and Max Sterner. Intellectual luminaries, none other than Emma Goldman, Voltairine DeCleyre, and Alexander Berkman were Anarchists. Errico Maletesta and Luigi Fabbri were internationally-revered Italian Anarchists. Buenaventura Durruti of Spain led the opposition to Fascism in the Spanish Civil War and died for the cause of human freedom, his funeral attended by literally millions. He was an Anarchist, and was the single figure in Spain who contributed more than any other to the defeat of Fascism and , by extension, the defeat of Hitler. The first Red Cross was established by Anarchists in Russia to provide support to political prisoners who were persecuted for their beliefs. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Noam Chomsky, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is a well-published Anarchist writer and philospher. The Wachowski Brothers, whose movie productions include “V for Vendetta,” and “The Matrix,” both movies that have been screened here at MANCI and shown repeatedly, are partners and founders of Anarcho Producitons; they are both Anarchists who films depict and promote their Anarchist ideals. The members of Green Day are Anarchists and their album, “Twenty-First Century Breakdown,” one of the best selling albums of 2011, is an Anarchist critique of modern society.

I imagine that, by extension, since my reasoned disbelief in the wonders of hierarchy places me on the SECURITY THREAT GROUP list, all of these other Anarchists are my fellow “gang” members. I suspect I will have to contact M.I.T. Professor Noam Chomsky in order to come up with some secret handshakes, or whatever it is that real gangs do.

If Anarchists are “gang” members, then so are Democrats and Republicans. Barack Obama is the leader of a “gang.” so is Speaker of the House John Boehner. You need to put them on your SECURITY THREAT GROUP list.

If you don’t feel absolutely ridiculous yet, you should check to see if you have a pulse.

The principle tenets of Anarchism are voluntary cooperation, direct action, and mutual aid. The idea is that working together is better than having a boss crack the whip. Solidarity rather than fear is the glue that holds the community together. Quite frankly, if given a fair choice between Anarchy and Hierarchy, I think only a psychological train-wreck could conceivable choose the kick-in-the-pants that hierarchy represents.

Why am I on the “gang” list again? Oh, yeah: Because I dream of a better way to live that would benefit you and me.

I saw the parole board in September. They gave me 5 years, in part, because of my “institutional conduct.” I didn’t know what they could possibly be referring to, given my stellar conduct record. I have something like 3 conduct reports in the last decade, none of them for violence of any kind.

Now I know: I am such a dangerous “bomb thrower” that my crazy conduct got me placed on a list with extortionists, robbers, and serial jackers. Because the parole board obviously assumed you were perfectly rational when designating me a member of a SECURITY THREAT GROUP, they simply deferred to your sound judgment of how dangerous I must be.

Thank you for the 5 years, but I would prefer to go home.

Since I have never done anything that could conceivably concern you, and your only problem with me is the ideas that I espouse which are, objectively, probably much better than the ideas that you espouse—no offense), can we take me off of the SECURITY THREAT GROUP list now so that I won’t die in prison for believing a better world is possible?

If not, and you require me to change my beliefs—like some strange “Inquisition” scenario—then I will attempt to write a renunciation of Anarchism that will satisfy you. And I’ll try to keep a straight face. Here is my renunciation of Anarchism so you can take me off of the SECURITY THREAT GROUP list now:

 ON second thought, I think Hierarchy is phantasmorific. All those tribal people who rejected it for 4 million years just didn’t know what they were missing. The Native American tribes who would rather fight and die than have to live this way clearly never tried the cheese puffs.

I whole-heartedly support the complete toxification of the world and can’t wait to do my part to chew up the planet in order to produce useless junk for fellow zombies to buy. Yes! I want to drag stones up the side of a pyramid to support a ruling class of frat bankers and corporate greed barons who can drive by me at the bus stop in their limousines and splash me with mud, who can laugh and drink champagne and eat caviar while taking turns kicking me in the testicles just for sport.

All I aspire to do is live, work, shop, and die.

I want my kids forced to take heavy pharmaceuticals so the pressure of educational concentration camps don’t drive them to suicide. I want to teach them to play Monopoly so they learn that the sacred purpose of life is to swindle everyone else out of their money.

I want to work all week, get hammered on the weekends, and occasionally punch my wife in the face. If there’s time, maybe I’ll kick my dog…Surf the net for footage of a woman performing oral sex on a donkey…watch “Celebrity Apprentice” and admire Donald Trump’s hair…

I don’t know what I was thinking when I had those silly notions that Anarchy was objectively better than hierarchy. There could be nothing better in the world than being a mindless worshiper of hierarchy and getting my pizza in 30 minutes or less.

Hot diggity-dog.

Please take me off of the SECURITY THREAT GROUP list now. I have foresworn being an Anarchist. I am a completely-thoughtless, drooling, masturbating, hierarchy-worshipping ass-clown of the highest order.

Long live the bankers and executives who have their fists crammed deep into our rectums, and praise Jesus, our Lord and CEO. Amen.

I think that renunciation should do it. Please advise.

Sincerely,

Except When It Isn’t,

Sean Swain

Rehabilitated SECURITY THREAT

c: Andrea Reino, Legal Counsel

seanswain.org

Director Gary Mohr, O.D.R.C.

File

How A Comic Book Almost Took Down The Ohio Prison System

On May 8, 2012, Mansfield Correctional Mailroom Supervisor Lieutenant Reese and the moral, upstanding mailroom staff under his confident command saved the world from certain and devastating cataclysm. They prevented the comic book, V for Vendetta, from entering the prison.

You may say, “but Swain (if you really wrote this, and no is saying you did), a comic book is no danger,” and you may roll your eyes in disbelief. But that’s exactly what I would want you to think.

The U.S. defeated Japan with nuclear bombs and the Viet Cong used guerrilla warfare to defeat their colonizers. The Trojans employed a wooden horse to conquer their foes. Al Queda attacked the U.S., using planes as deadly projectiles.

I intended to bring down the entire Ohio Prison system with a comic book. Yes, a comic book. But I didn’t count on Lt. Reese recognizing the clear and present danger that this cartoon fiction represented. As former Fraudulent Bush would put it, I clearly misunderestimated him.

According to the Notice of Witholding, signed by Warden’s Assistant Scott Basquin, who also did his part to save the world from my nefarious plot, the comic book violated criteria ©(2): “Depicts, encourages, incites, or describes activities which may lead to, the use of physical violence against others.” Mr. Basquin cites an example from page 271 of the comic: “VIOLENCE AGAINST ANOTHER: ‘If you don’t tell us you won’t leave here alive.’”

From what I gather, Mr. Basquin is asserting that this quote (“If you don’t tell us you won’t leave here alive”) would provoke other prisoners and me to engage in physical violence against others.” By his reasoning, that quote is so provocative, I cannot read it.

His judgment is uncanny. It was my intention to pass around this comic book and share that quote from page 271 with 50,000 Ohio prisoners and provoke them all to go absolutely ape-shit crazy. The whole system would collapse, the fences would fall, and our unmitigated chaos would spill into the street. Global capital would collapse, civilization would burn, and dogs and cats would hump each other. Now, with the comic book withheld, I only have this quote written in Mr. Basquin’s handwriting to pass around and use as a potential weapon of mass destruction.

Foiled. Foiled again.

I never suspected the mailroom would catch on. After all, the movie V for Vendetta, which contains the exact same quote as appears on page 271 of the comic, has not only been played here on the MANCI movie channel again and again, but MANCI used prisoners’ own recreation money—my money—to purchase the movie. It is now in the video library and played on a regular rotation to the entire population. Moreover, the movie was shown on network television and potentially every Ohio prisoner saw it, along with the dangerous and provocative quote that Basquin cited (“If you don’t tell us you won’t leave here alive”).

You’re probably thinking, “But Swain (if you really wrote this, and no is saying you did), why not use the movie to provoke the system crash, rather than the comic—especially since the prison plays the movie over and over again? And I would, except you know how reading dialogue from a comic and looking at the cartoon images is far more emotionally stirring than seeing actors speaking the lines in flesh and blood. Comics are so much more realistic than portrayals on film.

So, I will have to go back to the drawing board. My archnemesis Lieutenant Reese has saved the Ohio prison system from impending doom, and has possibly saved the world. I think perhaps he should have a street named after him somewhere. Not all mailroom supervisors would have the wherewithal to seize a comic book.

But the Lieutenant Reeses and Scott Basquins of the world cannot rest on their laurels. There are millions of comic books out there, and if just one of them slips past the vigilant and courageous gate-keepers of the MANCI mailroom, it could be curtains for the entire Ohio prison system, and possibly civilization as we know it.2

 

                              * * *

2  I appealed this withholding to the Central Office Screening Committee, a group of fascist fuckweasels who used to keep the population of the Eastern Bloc from reading comic books until after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the appeal I argued, “If a comic book can bring down the entire prison system, pack it up and call it quits.” It appears that if they will not give me this copy of the comic, I will just have to read the copy I already have.

Sean Swain: In Defense of Cece McDonald

I have read about the case of Cece McDonald, who was attacked because she is a transgendered woman of color. She is now charged with two counts of murder because she survived and her attackers didn’t. I don’t know, but I suspect no police were present to protect Cece when she was attacked. No prosecutors. No judges.

Cece was left to protect herself, so she did. She protected herself in the absence of police, prosecutors, and judges.
Now the same police who left Cece to protect herself have no problem with arresting her. The prosecutors– who also weren’t there– couldn’t protect Cece, but they can prosecute her. And the judge who failed to preside over Cece’s protection will undoubtedly preside over her trial without blinking an eye. They will all refer to the almighty “law” as their reason for attempting to take the rest of Cece’s life away from her, for succeeding where her previous attackers failed.

If the “law” they worship says Cece must go to prison, then I say the community is better off with Cece than with the law, and the law should be abolished. And while we’re at it, if Cece isn’t valued any more than that by these worshipers of the law, then we need to abolish the police, abolish the prosecutors, and abolish the judge. We’re better off getting rid of all of them and keeping Cece in the community.

Cece is not the problem.

But I suspect if we set out to solve the problem and we come up with effective strategies for abolishing cops, prosecutors, and judges, they will not go quietly. I suspect they will fight like their lives depend on it. I bet they will exhibit a particular ferocity and employ all means at their disposal, however brutal, to prevent us from achieving our aims.

Just imagine how they will fight if we try to abolish them.

Now, let’s use that as our example of how we need to fight to defend Cece. Let’s exhibit a particular ferocity and employ all means at our disposal, however brutal, to prevent them from achieving their aims. Let’s show them with our actions what if it comes down to it, we would rather keep her and get rid of them.

Let’s make that message so clear, the cops and prosecutors and judges don’t have the option of not listening.

Freedom,

Sean Swain
Mansfield Correctional
Mansfield, OH
February 8, 2012

On Being a SECURITY THREAT

By ____ _____1The letter that follows was written to the investigator at Mansfield Corruptional Institution, the prison official with the responsibility of maintaining what is called the “Security Threat Group” list. I wrote this letter to her because I have been included on this list, which is essentially a “gang” list, even though I have been been involved in any gang or any organization that warrants placement on such a list.

So, if I have never been in a group or organization that has been designated a security threat group, why am I on the list?

There appears to be a pattern of Ohio’s government going out of its way to bend or break its own rules, and to even ignore its own laws, in order to do weird things to me that the government doesn’t do to anyone else. That’s really my principle concern with being placed upon a Security Threat Group list; the government says the list is for one thing, but uses the list for something else entirely.

This may come as a huge shocker, but I have to be the one to say it: The government lies. It lies constantly. And it lies about lying.

So, I wrote the accompanying letter for purposes of trying to persuade the investigator with reason and logic, and sent copies of the letter to the director of the Ohio Department of Retribution and Corruption, and to Governor John Kasich. Given the governor’s recent statements about the government needing to reform its practices and conduct itself in good faith, one might think the governor would have a problem with the prison system using the gang list in order to profile people for their deeply=held beliefs. As a man espousing his own deeply -held beliefs, one might think he would feel some real trepidation about government agencies creating lists of believers.

We will see if he shares my bewilderment.

I’m fairly certain that he won’t.

To put his in a larger context, just in case you don’t care, every police state begins by creating lists of people the government doesn’t like. It usually begins with Anarchists, Jews, and maybe Communists. And as some famous dead guy who was taken to a Nazi concentration camp once said, “When they came to take the others, he didn’t care; when they came to take him, there was no one left to care.

It all starts with a list.

I’m on it.

You’re next.

***1The U.S. courts have stripped Sean Swain of all constitutional protections on the stated basis that Swain “promotes anarchy.” Sean Paul Swain vs. William Fullenkamp, et. al., U.S. District Court Case No. 3:09-CV-02659-JZ; Circuit Court Case No. 10-3755, cert. Denied, Supreme Court Case No. 11-5704. As a consequence, Swain is the only U.S. citizen without free speech rights and cannot have his name associated with published work for fear of reprisals from the fascist police state. So if he wrote this, and no one is saying he did, his name cannot appear in the by-line.
In a free country, this footnote would not be necessary.

I Am a Political Prisoner

By ____ _____1

Nelson Mandela is perhaps the best-known and most-revered political prisoner in history. His imprisonment in the Union of South Africa began in 1961 and spanned 3 decades, his struggle for freedom inextricably tied to the fight against Apartheid. Nelson Mandela’s personal prestige undermined the credibility of the South African regime in the eyes of the world and 4 years after his release from prison in 1990, he became South Africa’s first Black president.

No one disputes that Nelson Mandela was a political prisoner. But now let me present the story with a different emphasis:

The Union of South Africa was a member in good standing in the United Nations with government officials elected through popular vote. Like all civilized governments, South Africa had laws against bombings and terrorist activities, and it had close diplomatic relations with the U.S.

In 1961, Nelson Mandela was the leader of the African National Congress (ANC). The U.S. State Department regarded the ANC as a specially-designated global terrorist group. Nelson Mandela was charged in his role in bombings that killed people and he was provided the opportunity to defend himself in a criminal justice process not unlike the one established in the U.S. Convicted, Nelson Mandela was provided a series of appeals where his conviction was upheld and his trial ruled to be fair. The government of South Africa considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist whose imprisonment was necessary for the protection of the public. He remained in prison for 30 years.

These are the facts. The same Nelson Mandela befriended by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who became a poster-child for racial justice around the world, who appeared on Oprah Winfrey to a standing ovation and tears of joy from a U.S. Audience is the very same Nelson Mandela convicted of treason in 1961 and imprisoned as a terrorist who planned bombings that killed people.

He was the same Nelson Mandela recognized the world over as a political prisoner.

Is this confusing? Are you scratching your head and wondering how someone can be convicted of terrorist acts and then not only gain political prisoner recognition, but become the most-prominent political prisoner in modern history, and one of the most-beloved figures in the world? If this troubles you, let me attempt to clear things up for you:

Governments lie. Governments lie in order to further their agendas and to benefit the careers of the individual officials who make up the government. They corrupt and abuse official processes like trials and appeals in order to produce the predetermined outcomes they want– if the system is not already rigged to produce such outcomes in the first place. No government ever admits to abusing power and imprisoning to serve ulterior ends, but they all do it.

Nelson Mandela’s universal popularity is premised on the universal knowledge that governments lie. Since everybody knows that governments lie and that all government systems are designed for selective repression, the world never accepted the validity of the official proceedings against Nelson Mandela. In the eyes of the world, the zeal to prosecute Mandela only demonstrated the government’s serious desire to silence and neutralize him. Whether or not Nelson Mandela ever actually participated in planning ANC bombings, government officials undoubtedly had an ulterior motive for saying he did– an ulterior motive wholly unrelated to any legitimate government interest (if such a thing even exists). So even if the government had a valid belief that Mandela ordered bombings, and even if the government had real proof of Mandela’s guilt, it did not matter. His guilt or innocence aside, the question of Nelson Mandela’s political prisoner status did not hinge upon what Mandela had done or had not done, it hinged upon what the government did to him and why the government did it.

This can be said of any political prisoner: Bobby Sands of the Irish Republican Army was detained by occupation forces in Ireland because he rode in a car with illegal firearms, not because he was skilled in polemics. Mohandas Gandhi was detained many times for deliberate violations of British law. Mandela, Sands, and Gandhi were all political prisoners not because their conduct was legal; in most cases– if not all –their conduct was illegal. They were all political prisoners because the government motive to imprison them was not legitimate. Recognition of political prisoner status is not a referendum on the prisoner’s conduct, but a referendum on the government’s conduct toward the prisoner.

This is important to bear in mind. Without such an analysis, particularly when considering cases from our own country or state (where we have been indoctrinated to accept the integrity of the government system), as opposed to cases from other nations (where we naturally hold a suspicion of the government’s integrity), it becomes very easy to muddle the idea of what a political prisoner is. If we universally apply the standard for political prisoner status as it applied to Nelson Mandela– that it is the government‘s motive, not the prisoner’s conduct – then Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, and a whole host of others have unquestionably been held as U.S. Political prisoners. The question is never what the prisoner did or did not do; the question is whether the government’s motive was pure and legitimate.

It is on the same basis that Nelson Mandela was recognized as a political prisoner that I claim to be a political prisoner of the alleged “State of Ohio.”2

My Case

In 1991, I shared an apartment with Diane Chiow and her 2 young sons. Both children were from previous relationships. The younger child was fathered by Andrew Crouch who, during their time together, had beaten Diane, attempted to light her hair on fire, and kicked her down a flight of steps– all while she was pregnant with this child. He then fought responding police until stunned several times with a stun gun. He never served a single day in prison because his aunt, Collette Crouch, was the Clerk of Courts and a high-ranking official in Erie County’s Democratic Party establishment.

In April 1991, Diane and Crouch had a phone dispute and Diane denied Crouch visitation until after the holding of a domestic relations hearing scheduled in less than two weeks. Crouch became irate and threatened Diane, who told Crouch she was leaving the apartment and would not be there if he chose to show up.

Later that afternoon, Crouch broke into the second-story apartment while I was there alone. He had been drinking. He pushed me, saying he would blow my head off, and he reached behind his back. In a panic, I stabbed him several times and immediately called 911.

Under Ohio law, I had killed Crouch in self-defense in my own home and had committed no crime. While Crouch had a lengthy record of drunken violence, I had not even a record of minor traffic tickets. Still I was charged with pre-meditated murder, largely because police and prosecutors withheld photographs of the break-in damage and then falsely presented that no break-in had occurred. They also claimed no gun was found at the scene, that Crouch was unarmed.

Photographs of the break-in damage surfaced 4 years after I was falsely convicted.

The withheld evidence of the break-in damage speaks not only to my actual innocence, but also demonstrates that police and prosecutors knew me to be innocent, and knew it was necessary to conceal vital evidence in order to convict me of a crime I did not commit. This demonstrates that government officials operated from an ulterior agenda to convict an innocent man. Whatever the government’s motive, it was not a legitimate motive in service to the public.

The government lied. It lied and corrupted official processes, acting from a motive wholly unrelated to any legitimate government interest (if such a thing actually exists.)

I am a political prisoner.

At trial, jury foreman Richard Ehbar falsely claimed to be unemployed, concealing the fact that he was a manager at Periodical Publishers, a local business that I had been attempting to unionize as a volunteer organizer. He lied, concealing that he supervised several witnesses for the prosecution, some of whom were proven to have lied in their testimony. It is unclear whether Ehbar lied of his own volition so he could stick it to the union organizer, or if he was directed by court officials to lie so that the verdict would be predetermined. It is also unclear what influence his placement on the jury had on the witnesses he supervised, and what coercion Periodical Publishers used to solicit false testimony against me.

It should also be kept in mind that the jury pool list was formulated by the Clerk of Courts office– the very position previously held by Collette Crouch, the aunt of the man I killed– the same aunt who previously used her influence to keep Crouch out of prison during his drunken, violent escapades. That jury pool list from the Clerk of Court’s office was compiled from tens of thousands of registered voters, ostensibly at random. It should also be kept in mind that there were only 5 managers at Periodical Publishers, the firm I was unionizing. The odds of Richard Ehbar, a Periodical Publishers’ manager, getting called for jury duty, then being placed in the pool for my trial, then appearing in the first twelve called, are too astronomical to figure by using a standard calculator.

Returning to the standard applied to Mandela: Government officials corrupted the judicial process in order to imprison, for motives wholly unrelated to my legitimate government interest (if such a thing actually exists).

I am a political prisoner.

After I was falsely convicted, I appealed. The appeals court reversed my conviction, ruling that my rights were violated, and the appeals court sent me back to the same trial court, to the same government officials who had conspired to falsely convict me.

They refused to follow the higher court mandate. Instead, I returned to prison with a void conviction and sentence. When I again brought my case before the court of appeals, the judge who had ruled my initial trial unfair was inexplicably removed from the appellate panel hearing my case. He was replaced by a friend of Collette Crouch, the aunt of the name I killed in self-defense, the former Clerk of Courts. All of this was unprecedented under Ohio law.

I remain imprisoned now for twenty years without a valid conviction or sentence. I still await the trial that was ordered by the appeals court. My numerous attempts to compel the courts to apply their own laws and afford me the process afforded to all other citizens have been denied or, in some cases, simply ignored.

Returning to the definition as applied to Mandela: The government lied. It acted under motives wholly unrelated to any legitimate government interest (if such a thing actually exists).

I am a political prisoner, I am an innocent man, known to be innocent by my captors (as demonstrated by their concealment of evidence), and held contrary to the government’s own laws. As the government has abandoned even the pretense of law, I am the victim of what amounts to a simple kidnapping, all without the standard process of law or the application of fundamental principles of justice.

Parole

I became eligible for parole in 2005. At my first hearing, I was continued until 2011 without explanation.

When I appeared before the board in 2011, board members were more interested in my political beliefs, writings, and activities than they were in my guilt or innocence. Questions related to my political writings and beliefs took the majority of the hearing time. Board member Jose Torres in particular grilled me in a hostile and combative manner about my public claim to political prisoner status. Several other questions related to the content of my published work in print and on-line, which includes scathing and justified criticism of this fascist police state. It was clear that my parole hearing was a referendum on my politics, not a referendum on twenty years of false and unlawful imprisonment and whether it should continue or not.

After referring me to a full board hearing where, by statute, the board would have to notify my counsel Andrea Reino and permit her to present my case, the board held my hearing in secret, contrary to law. So, while my counsel was preparing for the full board hearing, the board had already made a decision and a month later, it was slid under my cell door: my case was continued for 5 years.

At my every encounter with the alleged State of Ohio, the government has violated its own law in order to punish me for laws I never violated. The government is, if nothing else, consistent.

In its decision, the parole board continued my sentence for three stated reasons: 1 the facts of the case, 2 a lack of relevant programming, and 3 my institutional record. All 3 stated reasons are provably false justifications that conceal the government’s true motive for keeping me falsely and unlawfully imprisoned.

As to the stated reason of the facts of the case, these same facts were considered by the trial court that sentenced me to twenty years to life, rather than twenty give years to life. As such, those same facts could never conceivably be a justification for making me serve twenty-five years rather than twenty. Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that the parole board, with those same facts before the, previously asserted that those same facts warranted a continuance from 2005 to only 2011. How could facts that only warranted a six-year continuance now warrant an eleven-year continuance, when those facts did not change?

Whatever the government’s real reason for continuing my imprisonment, it is not that stated reason of “facts of the case.” The government is a liar.

As to my relevant programming, the second reason that the government gave for my continuance, I have taken all of the programs made available to me. In addition to taking all available programs, I took the maximum amount of education permitted, to include obtaining my Associate of Arts (and then continuing education through the G.I. Bill when my grants ran out), and the administrative office technologies vocational computer course. In addition to taking all available programs and educational opportunities, I worked as a tutor and also logged thousands of hours of community service volunteer work.

Whatever the government’s real reason for continuing my imprisonment, it is not the stated reason of my “lack of relevant programming.” The government is a liar.

Having eliminated the stated reasons the government gave for continuing my false and unlawful captivity, we can only conclude that 1 the government has lied about why it is really holding me captive, and 2 the real reason for my captivity must be an illegitimate one, which is why the government keeps it concealed.

If we recall that I am the only Ohio prisoner who has been placed upon the prison system’s “Security Threat Group” list, not for gang activity and not for involvement in a “security threat group,” but based solely upon my political and social beliefs; and if we recall that the parole board’s questions dealt largely with my political and social beliefs, it is easy to conclude what the government’s true focus really is. In fact, the government dose not really work very hard to conceal the undeniable reality that the government lied and gave 3 false justifications to continue my captivity, and it is an open secret that I am actually being held captive for strictly political reasons.3

The government lied. It selectively engaged official processes to punish me for an ulterior motive wholly unrelated to any legitimate government interest (if such a thing actually exists). The government lied to keep me captive because of my political and social beliefs, because of my published views.

I am a political prisoner.

To sum up my experience, the government employed the court system to convict me of a crime I did not commit– a crime the government knew I did not commit, as evidenced by the government’s illegal conduct in concealing determinative photographs that prove my innocence. When higher courts found the process used against me to be unfair, I was still denied the fair process required by law, and I am singularly and selectively still imprisoned for more than two decades awaiting the “fair” process afforded to everyone else. When eligible for parole, the government focused upon my political and social beliefs and my published views, ignored the statutory law governing full board hearings, and continued my false and unlawful captivity on the basis of 3 reasons which are provably untrue.

By any measure, I am a political prisoner of the alleged “State of Ohio.”

***

1The U.S. Courts stripped Sean Swain of all constitutional protections on the stated basis that Swain “promotes anarchy.” Sean Paul Swain v. William Fullenkamp, et. al., U.S. District Court Case No. 3:09-CV-02659-JZ, Circuit Court Case No. 10-3755, cert. Denied, Supreme Court Case No. 11-5704. As a consequence, Swain is the only U.S. citizen without free speech rights and cannot have his name assoicated with his published work for fear of reprisals from the fascist police state. So if he wrote this, and no one is saying he did, his name cannot appear in the by-line.

In a free country, this footnote would not be necessary.

2Ohio is not legally a state in union. The U.S. set aside most of Ohio as “Indian Territory” in the Treaty of Greenville, 1795. By Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, this treaty trumps any act undertaken by any state and renders any contrary state action void. Just 6 years later, Ohio included that Indian Territory as part of the incorporated “State of Ohio.” Because states are not permitted to abrogate federal treaty and take Indian Territory, the ratification of the Ohio Constitution and the establishment of Ohio as a state are void acts. See Worcester v. Georgia (1832), 31 U.S. 515, 6 Pet. 515, 6 Pet. 515, 1832 WL 3389, 8 L.Ed 483, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot violate U.S. treaty and assume authority over Indian Territory.

U.S Attorney General Francis Biddle admitted that the U.S. has no claim to the area now called the State of Ohio. See, U.S. Senate, Terminating the Existence of the Indian Claims Commission, Washington, DE: 84th Congress, 2d Session, Report 1727, April 11 1956. The legal existence of the alleged “State of Ohio” is currently challenged in the Inter-American Court of the Organization of American States, Sean Paul Swain vs. The United States of America and the Alleged “State of Ohio”, Case No. P-688-10. If successful, an international treaty organization will declare that Ohio has never legally been incorporated as a state of the United States.

3For anyone who doubts that this rogue state would engage in political repression against prisoners, see: Timothy Reed vs. State of New Mexico, ex. Rel. Manuel Ortiz, 947 P.2d 86, 124 NM 129, 1997 NMSC 055 (September 9, 1997(. Former Ohio prisoner-writer Timothy “Little Rock” Reed was granted asylum by New Mexico’s Supreme Court after proving the Ohio Adults Parole Authority conspired to have his parole revoked in retaliation for Reed’s published criticism, so that Reed could be returned to prison and killed. Reed was granted asylum because he proved the parole board had plotted his murder to silence his free speech.

Reed died in a single-car crash on an empty New Mexico highway not long after he proved Ohio government authorities planned to murder him.

On Katy

“Keep the Faith, Brother/Kin– the system is sinking fast, though not fast enough. Soon things will be very, very different. You’ll see and so will I. XO Katy.” That’s how Katy closed her last letter to me, only days before she died of an aortic aneurysm at the age of 62.

Katy had worked as a nurse and had taken other jobs, but identified specifically as a midwife, one who assists bringing life into the world. Katy served as a midwife in many ways, some more obvious than others. She certainly brought life into the world.

Katy and I corresponded for many years but we had never met face to face. We had the depth of friendship that occurs between people when they slowly and deliberately reveal themselves through words on paper. Katy had planned to visit though. She had filled out the paperwork to be added to my visiting list. In her next to last letter she wrote, “I plan on coming there real soon. I’ll spend the whole day– we can talk– I don’t know about what or how it’s going to look– I HATE PRISONS!!!!!!! but I’m coming anyway– I’m so excited about meeting you in person– we will have a face to face visit– Coyotes was behind glass– please tell me a little bit about it to prepare me…”

But as things went, Katy couldn’t visit. In her last letter to me, she explained, “I had misunderstood the visiting thing and thought you could tell them I was coming on 5/25 so I didn’t call myself… So I called the visiting office to begin with to check on the reservation status, and the guy there said everything was booked up til the 29th…” The problem was, Katy planned to leave Michigan for California before the 29th.

I felt bad that we had missed an opportunity, but I knew she could always come to visit whenever she was back int his area again. There was no rush. We always have next week and next month and even next year.

Katy was a midwife.

She brought life into the world.

I will miss her.

***

A Brief History of The Sean Swain Corporation®

By The Sean Swain Corporation®***

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that so-called “super PACs” or “political action committees” can spend unlimited money on television ads promoting political candidates, acting as a kind of out-sourced hatchet-man for the candidates themselves. As a consequence, while mere humans are limited by campaign contribution limits and the size of their wallets, corporations can infuse unlimited amounts of money into the political process. The Supreme Court’s rationale is that corporations have a right to free speech.

Funny, but that’s the same court that ruled that Black people didn’t even have the right to get their votes counted in 2000.

Corporations have far more rights than people. Corporations don’t need passports to cross borders. They don’t have to pay taxes. They can conceal information that leads to the preventable deaths of mere humans– just like the Ford Pinto scandal and the concealment of the link between tobacco and lung cancer. They can’t be arrested. Now, they have the right to free speech while mere humans across this country are blasted with rubber bullets and tear gas canisters, bludgeoned by billy-clubs, and herded into “free speech zones” called jails, all for speaking truth to power.

Being a mere human isn’t what it used to be.

When I got locked up, I was unionizing mere humans who worked for a corporation. As a mere human, I was told I did not have the right to defend my own life. I was denied the same benefit of the law enjoyed by the incorporated entity known as “The State of Ohio.” As a mere human, the State could destroy my property, assault me, torture me, punitively transfer me, and engage in repression that violates the government’s own laws in order to prevent my access to courts. When as a mere human I proceeded to court, federal Judge Jack Zouhary said I have no rights because I “promote anarchy and rebellion against authority.” No kidding. If you are a mere human and the government doesn’t like your views, you have no right to express them.

State courts are no better. I can’t get Judge Buron Duhart to issue a ruling to make a sociopath named Tracey Thomas, who claimed to be a paralegal, give me back my case file, my own property. As a mere human, you aren’t entitled to property. Government agents can lie to stick it to you.

Once my free speech rights were stripped, I couldn’t risk having my name associated with any printed article, so I had to attach this footnote to everything I wrote:

“The U.S. Courts stripped Sean Swain of all constitutional protections on the stated basis that Swain ‘promotes anarchy.’ Sean Paul Swain v. William Fellenkamp, et. al., Case No. 3:09-CV-02659. As a consequence, Swain is without free speech rights and cannot have his name associated with his published work for fear of reprisals from the fascist police state. So if he wrote this, and no one is saying he did, his name cannot appear in the by-line.
“In a free country, this footnote would not be necessary.”

As a writer, I lived in constant fear that by telling the truth, I would be dragged away and again subjected to tortures that federal judge Jack Zouhary had now given his stamp of approval. It was the same fear felt by writers in Nazi Germany and under the Stalin regime.

But that was back in my human days.

Back before I became a corporation.

Once I realized corporations have all the rights I would like to have, I decided to incorporate myself. I know, that sounds very painful. But trust me, it isn’t nearly as painful as having the prison complex’s thugs grinding your face on the concrete because you told the truth about their nefarious agenda.

To incorporate yourself, you just have to draw up incomprehensible legal papers with a Crayon. I used Burnt Sienna, but you can choose whatever color you like. Then you file that stuff with a government office who will never read it. You can even make your corporation name a registered trademark. Maybe tattoo it on yourself.

I’m a corporation now. A political action committee promoting anarchy and rebellion against authority. As a corporation, I can spend millions of dollars making campaign ads.

To be successful, I think I’m going to need a billion-dollar bail-out. I think I should write the government and tell them I’m too big to fail.

I’ve also thought about going public, getting traded on the stock market. You would be able to invest in me. Buy stock. If I made myself into several subsidiaries, you would be able to buy specific parts of me.

I probably shouldn’t tell you, but some parts of me might be over-valued. Consult your broker.

I need a board of directors. They can sit around a mahogany table, smoking cigars, and discussing my quarterly whoozee—whatsits.

I have to remember to stop referring to myself as “I.” I’m no longer “me.” I’m not “we” because I speak for the corporation. That’s a minor annoyance when you consider all the rights “we” have now: We can’t be arrested or held accountable for our actions in any way, and we can say anything without repercussions, and we’re eligible for a bail-out. I’d be happy with $50 and a large pizza.

“We” have lots of rights you mere humans only wish you had.

A lot of you out there who used to respect what “Sean Swain” stood for (if there are a lot of you) probably think I sold out and went over to the dark side when “we” stopped being a human and became a corporation. You probably think that corporations run the world and now “we” are siding with the enemy.

“We” get it. “We” used to think that way too, back when “we” were mere humans…

*** The Sean Swain Corporation® is not the mere human formerly known as Sean Swain, and is not responsible in any way for actions, expressed views, or debts incurred by the mere human formerly known as Sean Swain. The Sean Swain Corporation®, incorporated in an off-shore tax haven, as a political action committee, promotes “anarchy and rebellion against authority,” exercising the right to free speech that mere humans, like the one formerly known as Sean Swain, do not possess.
The Sean Swain Corporation® is soon to be a registered trademark of The Sean Swain Corporation®.
The Sean Swain Corporation® promotes the Occupy Movement, arming the homeless, and burning down courthouses. None of these ideas can be attributed to the mere human formerly known as Sean Swain.