Tag Archives: the final straw

Gentrification

coffee-board-smFrom The Final Straw

There’s a trend that’s been happening for a long, long time, where comparably wealthy people chase around poor people and kick them out of their living spaces. We now use the term “gentrification” to describe this social and economic phenomenon.

Back in the old days, before FDR had the sprawling U.S. highway system built on the cheap by desperate folks who lost their jobs in the Great Depression, people wanted to live close to their work. And since factories were built largely in the major cities – or else major cities popped up around the factories – that’s where workers lived. People with money were drawn to city centers and the poor were left in shanty-towns and hovels on the fringes of the urban metropolises.

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The Ohio Adult Parole Authority

From The Final Straw.

The Ohio Adult Parole Authority. It was started in the early twentieth century after the Ohio Penitentiary caught fire and a lot of prisoners died. At its inception, the parole board was to act as a mechanism to reduce the prison population responsibly.

It never seemed to do that.

In its modern incarnation, the parole board has been rife with abuses and scandal. In its hey-day in the 1990s, when every prisoner had to appear before the board due to indeterminate sentencing schemes, the parole board was at its worst. Then Board Chair Margaret Ghee would routinely issue a prisoner a five-year continuance of his sentence, then make him an offer: he could keep the five years or trade them in for the Penny Trick. For however many of the ten pennies she dropped hit the floor when she let go of them, the prisoner would do a year. If the prisoner opted for the pennies and caught all ten, he could go home. If he missed all ten, he’d end up with ten years.

If he opted for the Penny Trick, Margaret Ghee would chuck the ten pennies over her shoulder and as they hit the floor, she’d say, “Ten years. Get out.” Continue reading

Paul and Nancy’s Kid…

paulandnancyFrom The Final Straw Radio.

My parents are old. Old enough that this past Friday, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. My mom is 70 and my dad is 69. He likes to tell everyone he is a decade younger than my mom. He thinks that’s funny. My mom, not so much.

My mom and dad do not know me as Anarchist prisoner Sean Swain. They know me as the idiot they embarrassed all through high school by showing every one of his girlfriends the photograph of him as a kid sitting on the toilet reading a comic book. See, when someone has a picture of you reading a comic book on the toilet , there is really no way later on in life to persuade them as to what an influential thinker you are.

Needless to say, my parents are not anarchists. My dad worked for Ford and retired from the factory after 30 years on the job. My mom was a stay at home mom. They have always paid their taxes and have never been late on a bill. Though they are neither Democrat nor Republican but register independents. They are patriotic. They have an American flag flying from their awning. Their 50th wedding anniversary was undoubtedly to them a landmark moment indicating they have lived their lives the right way, following the rules. Their allegiance to the larger systems to them is central to their values, to their sense of themselves. Their identities as good people, good parents, and good citizens.

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On Being “Good Danes”

During World War II John Steinbeck, one of my favorite fiction writers, wrote “The Moon is Down.” This work was so accurate to real life that real veterans of the resistance later asked Steinbeck how he, an American writer, had snuck into Denmark and snuck back out– his account so true that real veterans thought Steinbeck really witnessed it.

Steinbeck and others have argued that the Danish resistance to the Nazis hasn’t gotten the credit it deserves. Some go so far as to say the Danish Resistance was the pivotal factor that crippled the Nazi war machine, diverting resources and turning the tide in the war.

The Danes practiced sabotage, from the word “sabo” for shoe, referring to the widespread practice of throwing shoes into the machinery. At the onset of the occupation, the Nazis overestimated Danish support for the Nazi war effort and set up critical munitions factories in occupied Denmark. Big mistake.

The Danes resisted. One key component to popularizing the resistance was one particular handbill that was printed on a mimeograph machine. A nationalist appeal, the handbill was produced by the thousands and it was everywhere in occupied Denmark. Continue reading

Prisons, Drones and BlastBlog

dronebroFrom The Final Straw Radio.

Two major events happened to the Ohio Department of Retribution and Corruption this past week, both representing serious challenges that confront the prison industrial complex long into the future. One of the events caught the attention of mainstream media while the other did not.
The first major event occurred at Mansfield Correctional Institution. A drone dropped a load of drugs onto the prison yard, which, really, is an event all in itself; and then prisoners who witnessed the drug drop caused a riot, fighting over the dope. Yeah. Dropping a load of drugs onto a prison yard has the same disruptive effect as throwing dollar bills from the balcony out over the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
This is the first time, to my knowledge, that authorities have documented a drone making a delivery to a prison. That’s NOT the same as saying it was the first drone delivery. Very possibly, drones have been employed in this fashion for quite some time and, quite frankly, with the proliferation of drones everywhere– even to deliver pizza –drone deliveries of all kinds to prisons are simply the new normal. Continue reading

To Our Friends

From The Final Straw Radio

The Invisible Committee published “The Coming Insurrection” in 2007, right before the entire planet erupted in insurrections– from Greece to the Arab Spring, South America to Occupy. It would seem that The Invisible Committee saw something coming that the rest of us didn’t see.

The coming insurrection arrived, and by all indications, it isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

June 2015, the Invisible Committee follows up “The Coming Insurrection” with the release of their latest: “To Our Friends.” It appears on 4 continents, translated into 8 languages. MIT Press is putting it out at a probable price of just $13.95 wherever quality books are stolen.

Someone was kind enough to forward to me an uncorrected page proof while I’m on complete communications blacksite status at a maximum security prison– again demonstrating why I don’t feel safe with these jack-wagons protecting the public. And since it’s totally impossible for me to get any communication out to the outside world, you know, like this radio segment you’re listening to RIGHT NOW, I decided to lay around for a couple of days and read this advance copy of The Invisible Committee’s latest.

Having read it, I have a prediction to make: If just half of the people who read “The Coming Insurrection” read “To Our Friends,” the entire control system that exploits us right now will collapse within 5 days. We have to give it 5 days, you know. Some people read slower than others.

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Cops, Guards and the 99%

billiejoeOriginally aired on The Final Straw.

A corrections officer who listens to the Final Straw broadcast religiously once told me that correctional officers are part of the 99%. You know, the 99%, that broad majority that Occupy brilliantly claimed to represent in contrast to the privileged 1%. This corrections officer made a very similar argument to the one presented by Ass-Clown, lead singer of the poser band, Green Douche. Billy Joe class traitor said police are part of the 99%.

In one sense, this is seemingly true. Cops and guards are union members. They make a wage for their labor. They live on the same streets as teachers and plumbers and sanitation workers. None of them live in lavish homes in gated communities along with the world’s ruling elite. Cops and guards, by this standard are working stiffs like everyone else.

Except they’re not.

Look, to some greater or lesser degree, we all keep the slavery system running. All of us. I get that. We’re all plugged in, forced to drag stones up the side of the pyramid for food rewards. We all work and shop and die. The system, in that sense, has all of us hugging our own chains and digging our own graves, whether we like it or not. There’s just no getting around it. Continue reading

Hierarchs Are Crazy

koolOriginally aired on The Final Straw.

Poor deluded hierarchs. I think a real case can be made that hierarchs are really crazy, that hierarchy constitutes a mental illness. To prove that, all we have to do is tie together some of the things I talked about in previous segments, like pieces in the Hierarch Crazy puzzle.
Let’s start with “The Right to Rule.” This “Right to Rule” is a necessary component to hierarchy. If rulers do not possess some claimed right to rule, the rest of us have no duty to obey. But as we all know, this imaginary “Right to Rule” has no rational basis, and so the very corner stone at the foundation of hierarchy is as real as magical beans and faerie dust.
That means there’s a big fat delusion that’s the basis of the hierarch myth. Hierarchs are operating under a belief system that’s contradictory to reality, as real as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or compassionate conservatives. Delusion, a symptom of mental illness.
So, there’s that.
More recently, I talked about freedom, “the absence of external regulation.” Since freedom and external regulation are opposites, and since governments are external regulators, freedom and government are opposites. Where there’s freedom, there’s an absence of government; and where there’s government, there’s an absence of freedom. This is a simple, irrefutable truism.
And yet, hierarchs, who we already established are delusional, operate from a false belief that government does the exact opposite of what government does. They believe that government, the opposing force to freedom, PROTECTS freedom. To believe government protects and defends freedom is to believe the coyotes protect and defend the henhouse.
So, we put these things together, and hierarchs are delusional people who believe that rulers have a right to rule, which is as real as magical beans and faerie dust, and that they exercise that right to rule to do the exact opposite of what governments really do. And that means that we’re dealing with a complex delusional construct.
But there’s more to it. Hierarchs also believe the existence of rulers to be necessary, since humans are stupid and selfish and foolish. They irrationally believe that life is better if we submit ourselves to be ruled by stupid, selfish, foolish people. That’s more than utopian. It’s delusional.
So, taken all together, the delusion we call hierarchy holds that we are better off being ruled by stupid, selfish, foolish people wh right to rule that doesn’t really exist, so that government can do the exact opposite of what government provably exists to do. And the mentally-ill people who accept this pathology really believe that there’s no better way to live.
These folks really drank the Kool Aid.
They defend the supremacy of their delusional construct despite the thousands of years of hierarchy’s consistent failure to ever live up to its promises, to ever work as advertised. In the realm of social and political organization, hierarchy is the equivalent to the sea monkey ad you see in the back of a comic. Hierarchy is such a powerful delusion, hierarchs are completely unable to see the world as it is. They view everything through the lens of this irrational construct, hierarchy. That ‘s why they look at 8,000 years of greater and greater devastation and calamity as “progress.” For the delusional and irrational, hierarchy’s abysmal failures everywhere, leading to toxic air, toxic water, toxic land, acceleration of mass extinction, and the demonstrable INCREASE of human immiseration and suffering somehow proves the SUCCESS of hierarchy. Yes, to the loony tunes, FAILURE is an indication of SUCCESS. Hierarchs are so mentally ill that they cannot so much as entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, the worst possible thing that has happened in the HISTORY of EVER just might not be all that and a bag of chips. Despite the catalog of misery in front of their noses, these Kool Aid drinkers are still convinced that the solution to the problem is MORE Kool Aid.
Taken together, this is a pathology. A mental illness. And not only are hierarchs crazy, but they are the most brutal and intolerant crazies in the whole history of irrationality. If you so much as question any component of their pathology, if you present a rational objection to their collection of magical beans, these whack jobs will DESTROY you. They will criminalize you, toss you into a gang, diagnose you with mental illnesses, put you on no-fly lists, and maybe even kill you. They will apply all the pressures that their delusional construct brings to bear in order to force you to drink their Kool Aid.
Their blind and militant adherence to the irrational program at all costs, even at the price of complete omnicide, reminds me of their prior treatment of a couple of famous dead guys. Galileo and Copernicus had the audacity to challenge long-held assumptions that were integral to the hierarchs’ mythology. These two intellectual rebels claimed that the earth was round and that the earth revolved around the sun.
Implications of their rebel ideas called into question the reality of the Hierarch God that the hierarch high priests had manufactured.
They were both criminalized, labeled as gang members, diagnosed as demon possessed, and put no the no-wagon list. Facing the very real possibility of being burned at the stake, they recanted their offensive claims, rejoining the flat-earthers at sword-point.
Delusional hierarchs don’t burn you at the stake anymore. They now extend the torture out over a longer duration of time. But the same irrational madmen still run the asylum, and the asylum has gone global.
Well, the flat-earth variety of global, anyway.
This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. If you’re listening… DON’T DRINK THE KOOL AID…

Changing the World through VIOLENCE…

11164771_10152684029591512_3542308530325957117_nI have some incredible and exciting news to share. Historic, world-changing. I suspect at any moment, people all over the planet will be singing and dancing in the streets. We have finally attained that yet-only-figurative Cumbayah Moment.
Reading through a U.S. court decision that upholds my lifetime ban imposed by prison fascists, I note that Judge Benita Y. Pearson has declared that Americans may only advocate change through peaceful means. Yes, this is a watershed moment worth celebrating: the United States of America has RENOUNCED VIOLENCE!
Do you know what this means?
Holy isht!
Up until now, every single year, a cabal of white-haired wealthy old geezers gathered together to hatch plans for changing the world through violence. These geezers funded the violence industries with BILLIONS of dollars.
I’m talking, of course, of the United States Senate. Good to know, their days of changing the world through violence are over. No more appropriating battleships and tanks, Apache attack helicopters and air craft carriers. Until this landmark decision, the United States spent more than THE NEXT 15 MILITARIES COMBINED on changing the world through violence.
No more of that. Continue reading

$86,423.14

Piggy backin on the greatsThis originally aired on The Final Straw Radio.

Evangelist Creflo Dollar has given me a fantastic idea that I really need to share with you… Especially if you have some MONEY.
Creflo Dollar runs a mega-church in Atlanta and recently opened a franchise of his mega-church in New York. For anyone unfamil mega-church is to a regular church what super-size fries are to regular, mundane fries. Reverend Dollar doesn’t preach about Jesus to his mega-church members; he preaches about mega-Jesus. I don’t know much about mega-Jesus, but I imagine if mega-Jesus and boring old son-of-Mary-and-Joseph Jesus got in fight, mega-Jesus would hand mundane Jesus his ass. That’s my guess.
I think Creflo Dollar’s franchise in New York has a drive-thru. Not sure.
“Can I get some Jesus please? And SUPER-SIZE him.”
I said “super-size,” not “circumsize.”
So, anyhow, this Creflo Dollar character with his mega-Jesus recently posted a request to his mega-church’s mega-site. He aims to turn the entire world into his super-duper-uber-mega-ultra-hyper-turb He asked mega-church members to donate $65 million so he can buy a G-650 jet, referenced in popular music as a “G-6.”
Creflo Dollar needs to buy a G-6.
See, mega-Jesus, despite all his super powers, has managed to generate very little revenue all on his own. So, to get out the mega-message, mega-Jesus needs Creflo Dollar to get a $65 million celebrity-jet and go zooming around the globe.
You know, becaus there are such huge areas of the world that haven’t heard of mega-Jesus. And clearly there are billions who have not experienced the prosperity that mega-Jesus and Creflo Dolar have been promising. In fact, if we didn’t know better, we’d almost think this whole Christianity program was a complete swindle keeping the poor of the world under control while the Creflo Dollars burn up their o-zone with designer jets.
You’d almost think. Continue reading