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Swivilization, Part 1

Transcript of Radio Essay originally appearing on The Final Straw.

To explain why I am against swivilization, I have to give you a history of the world in five minutes. If it’s ok with you, I’m probably gonna just hit the highlights. Stay with me.
For four million years humans were semi-nomadic and lived in tribes, like bees live in hives and wolves live in packs.They did not have a lot of possessions. People who migrate frequently do not want to lug 75 pairs of shoes. They did not have hierarchies.If a tribe developed a coercive authority, it already jumped the shark because compulsion degrades the social bonds of interdependence that make semi-nomadic hunter gathering successful so only failed hunter gathers would resort to hierarchy. Also we do not find caches of weapons like we always find everywhere hierarchy arises.
Humans were anarchists for four million years. And generally happy. Unhappy people don’t continue doing what makes them unhappy for four million years. Somebody would have said, “Hey lets not do this.” To abandon tribes would make as much sense as bees abandoning hives or wolves abandoning packs.
There came a group of idiots who settled in one place and grew crops, to control the future by controlling their food. They’d never starve again.They grew extra food.They grew extra food, but food availability determines population size,so by the time they harvested extra food it wasn’t extra anymore and their population grew. So they expanded the farm, regimented the natural world and turned it into resources.They took more land, planted more food, experienced population growth and took more land.You see where that’s going.
Colonization. It started right after we settled and grew crops.
Food surpluses needed management, so a social engineer with a big big brain took over. Stratification, Hierarchy, Topdown authority.Right after we settled and grew crops.
To keep people working, the social engineer with a big,big brain locked up the food. Hungry people keep working. So,the social engineer needed guards.Standing military, guards needed weapons,weapon smith specialization Right after we settled and grew.
When the fascist farm with it’s hierarchy, social engineer with a big,big brain and a standing military who locked up the food- and everyone else slaving away in the fields under threat of starvation-expanded into areas occupied by tribal people, the social engineer with a big, big brain said “We are civilized and you’re savages, get the hell out of the way.”
Genocide.Right after we settled and grew crops.Survivors became slaves in the field.More food equals more people and equals a need for more land to grow more food,You see where that is going.

These idiots didn’t solve starvation as they intended; they created an engine for runaway population growth.They weren’t civilized, they were swivelized- they set out to do one thing and got all spun backwards.
After they conquered several tribes they had to develop a universal system for maintaining order. Laws Courts Punishments: Right after we settled and grew crops.Became swivelized.
All the components but one were in place and swivelization kept expanding, colonizing, exterminating, forcibly assimilating everyone in it’s path, obliterating every tribal culture it encountered .After just one generation of the social engineer with the big,big brain who developed this slave plantation dystopia put the last component for swivelzation in a place where he declared: “it has always been this way” And that lie still gets told today when college courses teach you nothing happened until about six to eight thousand years ago, because your swivilized historians share the same delusion as that social engineer with the big,big brain.
Swivelization is distinguished by war and genocide, overpopulation, soil erosion, poverty, economic disparity, authoritarianism, political instability,mass migration, famine,depletion of drinkable, mass destruction of eco-systems, polution, toxification, crime, jails, prisons,proliferation of social deviance, rape culture, predation of children, school shootings, depression, mental illness, property crime, alcoholism,drug abuse, famine, plagues, ghettoes, polgroms, recessions , human rights atrocities, weapons of mass destruction, ozone depletion, global warming, unemployment, suicide, mass extinctions, bankers terrorism,Ponzi schemes, road rage, taxes, dictators, racism,homophobia,homelessness,inflation, and the NSA reading your e-mails
In 1492 the known world got so crowded a group of ass clowns risked falling off the planet and came to a land where they found tribal people and said WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? Before this discovery could make them question the lie passed down from the social engineer with the big,big brain(that it has always been this way)Columbus killed everybody and made kidnapped Africans build a McDonalds on the burial site, then killed them too.
Swivelization is so intolerable we’re all on Prozac or are kids are on Ritalin, we self medicate with pot just to survive the day and still every once in a while someone snaps and shoots a school full of kids.So when a prisoner with a phone and a 165iq abandon mass production, of food live in  yurts and hunt the buffalo like Dances with Wolves, some glassy eyed apologist for swivelization with PSTD living in a van down by the river says “ What?And give up all of this?

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE

Dear Ukrainian People,

I want to thank you for your inspirational resistance to tyranny. Here in the United States, we made a show of resistance a while back, but in the face of police violence we surrendered and went back to our assigned seats; we lacked the courage, drive and determination of Ukrainians. Where you met state violence with rocks and gas bombs and ski masks, we met state violence with delusions of nonviolence and beatitudic dreams that permitted state violence to prevail and continue.

I saw news clips of your occupation of the Presidential Palace and our media’s scorn at the oppulence found there. Of course, our Presidential Palace – called the Whitehouse in our country – still stands, much larger and far more luxurious, complete with helicopter pads and movie theaters and bowling alleys and a basement bunker complex commonly called “Cheneyville.” The corruption and decadence of your tyrants cannot compete with the corruption and decadence of ours. Yet we do nothing.

We can’t do anything because our cops have guns while your cops only have…guns.

So, it is my hope that you will recognize that deferring now to your parliament to resolve the problem is the same mistake that the people made in Cairo, and what you have to do is oust your parliament also.

Rid yourself of the whole troublesome hierarchy.

Then, if possible, I would ask you to help us. We in the United States need you to send us some Ukrainians to topple _our_ tyranny. We’re paralyzed and incapable where you have proven to be mobilized and effective. We need you to sweat and fight and bleed for our liberation. We’ll do _our_ part of course. We’ll hold signs and sing songs and come up with snappy rhymes, things like, “1-2-3-4…,” and “Hell no, we won’t go…,” and so on. We have 200 million firearms we can put at your disposal.

Just don’t expect us to _use_ them. We exercise the right to bear arms, not _fire_ them. We’re like the world’s largest drill-and-ceremony color-guard. We don’t want to get dirt on our clothes or blood on our hands or soot on our faces.

We need _you_ to accomplish a noble and necessary struggle that we cannot undertake for ourselves.

Please respond quickly. This sprawling police state is really intolerable.

Freedom or Death,

Sean Swain

The Statehouse

When I first arrived here at the super duper uber mega ultramax, we could watch the Ohio channel. It was a PBS station that broadcast the legislative sessions of the Ohio general assembly’ and the hearings of the Ohio Supreme Court.It’s probably not as fun as the monkeys at the zoo when you can throw peanuts to them, but you can’t really expect Ohio
government to compete with monkeys.
A documentary that aired on the Ohio channel presented the history of the Ohio Statehouse and how it was constructed. According to the documentary, construction was started, and restarted several times. Finally, it was constructed by prisoners, who were used as slave labor, In one of the more interesting interviews, one of the historians described how, when the state required prisoners with certain experiences like brick laying or carpentry or other professions, citizens with that needed experience would get arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned at an inordinate rate.
The historians who discussed this thought it humerus and chuckled at the the idea that governmental officials used the justice system to harvest free labor for purposes of building the state house. It was funny that Ohio citizens were railroaded and their lives were ruined so the the government could save money building its capital.
They also revealed that some workers died in the construction of the statehouse. They were, after all prisoners- and that meant they were slaves, so they worked long hours in substandard conditions and safety did not matter. So, sometimes prisoners slipped and fell to their deaths.
Since it was amusing that innocent people got shafted in the courts and sent to prison to fulfill the construction needs of the state, wouldn’t it be knee-slapping pee in your pants hilarious if some of those innocent people ended up plummeting to their deaths, during the building of the
of the Statehouse?Yeah, it does not get any funnier than a tyrannical state enslaving and killing its citizens.
Just in case I’m unclear, that’s sarcasm
It seems to me that this accepted, documented history of the Ohio statehouses construction points to a universal truth:
Mind over matter. The State doesn’t mind and you don’t matter.
The State of Ohio has a Constitution that describes a laundry list of rights that all Ohio citizens have.That Constitution was written by a guy named Thomas Worthington and his pals, who violated a U.S.treaty to steal peoples land who owned it so they could declare the sacred rights of those who stole it. I describe in detail that whole illegitimate process in a series of zines called Ohio.The are posted on the website. But what value is a constitution and declared rights when you have state that reserves the right to enslave you on a whim and hijack your life? All those so called rights and rules and laws are just fiction when the state decides it wants something.
And if it’s fiction some of the time, that means it’s always fiction all of the time for all of us.
The State doesn’t mind and you don’t matter.
That’s probably the reason the State of Ohio includes so many lofty ideas in its Constitution. It knows it will never be compelled to live up to them. It knows it will never be compelled to live up to them.For instance, not that it matters, but Article 1 Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution says we have the right to “abolish the
government.”Consider that Abolishing the government isn’t asking it to leave or petitioning it to leave. Abolishing the government implies telling it to leave. Making it leave.And that implies force.Violence.
We know that it must because no government would peacefully accept eviction, especially, one that has a long history of employing its troops to gun down its critics, like Ohio did at Kent State.
So that means the Ohio Constitution-not that it matters, invites the people of Ohio to use violence and overthrow the government “whenever they may deem it necessary.”I don’t know but that sounds like an invitation written by those who know they will never have to worry about it, an invitation written by a government who has Apache Attack helicopters and isn’t afraid to use them….a government who recognizes rights and breaks them at will.
The Ohio State House still stands, centuries after Ohio prison slaves built it.Isn’t that a tragedy?
This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from Ohio’s supermax facility.If you are listening…You Are The Resistance

De-Mystifying Political Violence: Toward a Rational Framework for Analyzing Violent Armed Struggle in the U.S.

In Pacifists Suck, I attempted to point out the fundamentally delusional worldview and the internal inconsistency of exclusivist nonviolence proponents. I hope this provides a useful framework for analysis and leads to an effective rejection of exclusivist nonviolence from any future, revolutionary effort. However, this is only part of the intellectual process that needs to be undertaken before a real and effective revolution could be sustained.
We also need to de-mystify violence.
If we consider the question of what violence is, and by that I mean what it really is and not what it has been conveniently re-defined to mean by those who wish to keep us in our assigned seats, we have to recognize that violence is pervasive in life.
Lions eat gazelles. That’s violence. It’s ultimately violence of a non-moral quality because we don’t ascribe concepts of “right” or “wrong” to life in the wild, but violence is violence. Likewise, we eat organic things.
The burger we eat wasn’t delivered by the burger-stork. Somebody hit a living creature in the head and killed it and harvested its meat as a resource to meet your demand for physiological re-fueling. Those carrots and potatoes were living and, if we believe the fascinating research recounted in Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen, plant life is also sentient.
Your stomach is a graveyard. Continue reading →

A Vision of the Future: Where All the Roberto Adinolfis Walk With a Limp

Originally published at 325nostate.net and reprinted in Dark Nights issue #39.

By Sean Swain, anarchist prisoner

Back in May 2012, Roberto Adinolfi managed Ansaldo Nucleare, constructing nuclear power plants all over Europe, including the one in Kroko, Slovenia, and Cernadova, Romania. Adinolfi had power, money, prestige, and influence. To him, the suffering and death in Fukushima, Japan wasn’t nearly as real as his spacious, air-conditioned office or his luxurious Genoa home or his expensive suits.

Sometimes, you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. And besides, none of his death-traps had melted down yet.

Yet. Key word. Yet.

Roberto Adinolfi with his power, money, prestige, and influence never noticed that vehicle following him home. He suspected arrogantly that he would spend an entire career raking in money hand over fist by rolling the radioactive dice and betting millions of other people’s lives, and he would never have to answer to anyone at any time, anywhere. Continue reading →

On Mumia

Transcription of audio essay that originally appeared on The Final Straw.

For anyone who hasn’t heard of the case of Mumia Abu Jamal, he was convicted in the early 1980‘s of killing a cop in Philadelphia and not too long ago his death sentence was reduced to life. Mumia has maintained all along that he did not shoot that cop; and there is plenty evidence to support his claims, but you know what? If I am going to be completely honest, part of me kinda hopes Mumia did shoot him.

I’ve always had a different take on this case than most people. Remember Mumia was found at the scene shot in the chest. He almost died. We can presume the cop shot Mumia before he died, which means he was not shot yet, which means he shot Mumia before getting shot. It’s safe to assume the cop fired first, whoever it is that shot him in response.

And so what if Mumia shot him. What? Are we gonna run out of cops?

Look, we live in a capitalist society. It’s governed by capitalist values.One of the central principals of capitalism is the law of supply and demand.The more plentiful a product, the lower it’s value; the more rare a product, the higher it’s value. That’s why coal is cheaper than diamonds. Continue reading →

Idiot Factories

This is a transcript of an audio essay that originally aired on The Final Straw. Imagine the government hired you for a secret program and it turned out you were the manager of an idiot factory. This idiot factory took normal people and mangled their minds. Idiots come off the assembly line. Do you think you’d feel a moral duty to shut down that idiot factory?And if you couldn’t shut it down would you find some way to burn it down?
Okay.Well, if you are a school teacher and you care about the best interests of the students, I urge you to go into the idiot factory that employs you on Monday with a can of gasoline and a book of matches.

Consider: We do more learning from birth to the age of five than we do the rest of our lives. All of us. All humans. And if you think about it, it makes sense the incredible amount of learning we have to do. Learning for instance that we are separate from the rest of the world, that we end at the bottoms of our feet and tops of our heads: object permanence, the idea things still exist when you can’t see them; language- that sounds mean something, and that words are symbolic representations of something, and which words apply to which things. We learn gravity by throwing mashed potatoes. We learn to walk. The most crucial event for any swivilized human: we learn to control our bowels. We learn that it is bad to walk around leaking and then we learn a complex process to dispose of our leakage.

Continue reading →

Distinguishing Freedom From Recognized Rights

rightsSean Swain
Submitted for OSP Writing Contest, Black History Month, 2014

Distinguishing Freedom From Recognized Rights
(500 words or less)

Any discussion of rights must distinguish real freedom—the absence of external regulation—from the concept of “recognized rights” arising as it does from theories of constitutional authority and law. To contrast, real freedom is a condition of existential reality, while “recognized rights” are paper fictions.
To understand real freedom, one must imagine two points at either end of a continuum. The first point, “freedom,” is “the absolute absence of external regulation.” At the opposite end of the continuum is complete external regulation, the absence of freedom. Thus, where freedom exists, there is an absence of external regulation, and vice-versa. The line connecting these two points represents interplay between the two opposing forces, varying degrees of freedom and regulation:

Freedom  —————————————-——— Absolute external regulation
(absence of external regulation)                      (absence of freedom)

Importantly, implicit in this analytical framework, freedom cannot coexist with government, because government’s purpose is to govern.  To govern is to regulate, and where regulation exists, as already established, freedom is absent. Thus, governments by their very character are the antithesis of freedom. Continue reading →

Radio Essay: Little Rock Reed.

From The Final Straw

The world needs to know the truth about Timothy Little Rock Reed, whose criticism of the Ohio prison system made him a target of assassination by Ohio governmental officials.
Little Rock was sent to Lucusville in the early 1980’s for theft of drugs and robberies. A Lakota Sioux, Little Rock began practicing traditional religious beliefs and pushed prison fascists to accommodate Native American practices.
He also learned law and began helping other prisoners, making the prison staff hostile. Then he published The American Indian in the White Mans Prison: A story of Genocide, and other articles.
In 1990, the Ohio Adult Parole Authority granted Little Rock a parole but demanded he sign a “contract” that would allow prisoncrats to control his speech activities. When he refused, his parole was rescinded until 1992.
When finally released, he became director of the Native American Research and Rehabilitation Project and wrote, Today’s Prison Administrators were Trained by Fascists: and What About Tomorrow? He spoke at Ohio State University about suppression of religion by the Ohio Prison System. Shortly after, the Chair of the Ohio Parole Board issued a directive that Little Rock was not to speak again. He was forced to cancel speaking engagements and was prevented from appearing before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs.
And that was when friends of Little Rock still inside Lucusville wrote to him to warn him that they overheard prison officials talking about a plan to murder Little Rock. Continue reading →

Radio Essay #1 transcript

Recorded by The Final Straw.
.
by Sean Swain

I remember reading an interview a decade ago where a taxi driver in Saudi Arabia was talking about Osama bin Laden. In response to a question, he said that it was the humiliation of the Arab world that the one guy willing to tell the truth had to do it from a cave.

My name is Sean Swain. I’m an anarchist prisoner held hostage at Ohio’s supermax facility. I think about what that cab driver said as I sit here in my cell on the top floor–which might be a good measure of how dangerous they think I am.

My cell looks a lot like a cave.

I think about the implications. Back in the old days the whole continental United States was a free speech zone…or, at least, that was the happy narrative. Then came FREE SPEECH ZONES, where you can remain silent where people are, or else you can express yourself where there’s no one to listen. Continue reading →