Tag Archives: the final straw

Burning Down the Statehouse

Originally aired on The Final Straw Radio.

See also- Sean’s open letter to the Judge.

On March 13, my attorney Richard Kerger appeared in federal court for arguments before U.S. District Judge Benita Y. Pearson. The hearing related to an injunction request my attorney filed in part to stop state terrorists from blocking my protected communication– specifically, prison fascists’ blocking my video visits to stop me from posting video online.
State terrorists have lied to justify the repression. They claim that I “threatened” to “burn down” the Ohio Statehouse, which is something I’ve never done. What I really did, I promised to legalize burning down the Statehouse if and when elected Ohio Governor.

Threatening to burn down the Statehouse and promising to legalize its burning are two very different things, just like it’s two very different things if you threaten to fly a plane into someone else’s building or if you plan to demolish your own.
Still, I was informed that Judge Pearson took issue with my position and that she was not happy to hear that I wouldn’t apologize for my statements. [After Sean wrote this, the Judge filed her decision which effectively nullifies Sean’s freedom of speech]. All due deference to Judge Pearson, I would suggest she disagrees with my position, and if she lives in Ohio, she should probably not vote for me. Instead, she should vote for one of two deluded hierarchs who really ought to apologize for all of their campaign promises. Continue reading →

International Day Against Police Violence

Originally aired on The Final Straw

[Please view Sean’s open letter discussing possible legal issues with this post.]

March 15, the international day against police violence. In the U.S., you’ll see people marching and protesting, maybe even getting really radical and being arrested for nonviolent resistance, laying in front of cop cars or chaining themselves to the doors of the local cop shops. In places that are already ground zero for a lot of police hostility, like Ferguson perhaps, you might see sporadic attacks on police that are more than symbolic. Maybe not.
It’s interesting, I think, that there is such a thing as an International Day Against Police Violence. I’m not aware of an International Day Against Electrician Violence, for instance. And I’ve also never heard of an International Day Against Plumber Violence. To my knowledge there’s no International Day Against Teacher Violence. Continue reading →

U.S. Military

PULL QUOTE: “Consider, for decades the U.S. has spent more than the next 16 competing nations combined, to build the most obscene military stockpile in human history. Convert that spending into something else that resembles sanity for just a few years, and the U.S. might become a nice place to live.”

From The Final Straw

We are all vigorously trained to think we need government. The principle argument for the necessity of government is that it keeps us safe. Curiously, it’s the greatest threat to our safety. In the U.S., we would be safer if the military didn’t exist.

On September 11, people flew planes into buildings. They didn’t do that in Canada or Belgium, Finland or Luxembourg. Those countries don’t have hundreds of military based around the world. Only the United States.

The people who took responsibility for the attacks cited the injustices of U.S. military incursions and occupations as their primary motivations. Absent a military, those attackers would have had no motive and the U.S. would have been as safe as Finland or Luxembourg. Continue reading →

Freedom or Death (sigh…)

This originally aired on The Final Straw. Who also did some interviews with Sean in this week’s episode.

Audio here.

(Sigh.) I could really use a pizza right now. I’m on a hungerstrike. You know, those useless, stupid, reformist actions that never result in anything good? Right. You can go back to segments on Reformism to figure out just what kind of hypocrite I am.

My last meal was Superbowl Sunday, and it kinda sucked.

Anyway, here’s what happened:

My good friend Ben Turk scheduled 2 hours of video visits with me. It works like Skype and it’s a feature that JPay offers for twenty bucks an hour. To arrange it, Ben has to be on my visiting list and JPay email list– which he is. I see prisoners on my security level having these video visits routinely and nobody has ever had one cancelled by the Ohio Department of Retribution and Corruption… Until now.

Yep. We got the plug pulled on us. Ben is allowed to see me here in the visiting room, face to face, over and over, where there are thousands of safety and security concerns involved, but he can’t see me over a computer where there are ZERO security and safety concerns.

Does that make any rational sense?
Continue reading →

Rave Reviews for Sean Swain’s First Year of Radio Commentary

“This type of misconduct will be met with swift and significant consequences which may include criminal charges, administrative charges, security and privilege level adjustments, and/or out-of-state placement.”
–ODRC Chief Counsel Spanky Gray
(614) 752-1765

“This guy ought to be criminally charged, promoting violence against police. I don’t even know how this filth got on the radio.”
–Spokesperson, Fraternal Order of Police

“If they don’t pull the plug on this lunatic, he’s going to ruin free speech in America.”
–Corporate Radio Executive Continue reading →

Luke O’Donovan

First aired on The Final Straw.

In the area of gay rights, the United States feels like it’s made great strides. As a nation, the U.S. is pretty self-congratulatory. In the last Olympics, you had a whole contingent of gay former athletes dispatched to Russia in order to send a “message” to Vladimir Putin about his homophobic laws. On the heals of that, gay marriage is now legal, allowing people of all sexual orientations to promise lifelong commitments that will make them as miserable as heterosexuals have historically been. And, of course, you’ve got Mitch and Cam on the sitcom “Modern Family” to remind us how far we have come from the Stonewall Riots. So, the U.S. is engaged in one big, happy group hug to celebrate our inclusiveness.
Okay. So, what about Luke O’Donovan? Continue reading →

Los Zapatistas

Originally aired on The Final Straw

This past January 1st marked the 21st anniversary of the Zapatistas’ emergence. On New Year’s Day, 1994, masked guerrillas, some carrying wooden rifles, descended from the foggy mist of the Lacandon Jungle in southern Mexico. They called themselves, pardon the accent, El Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion de Nacional– the Zapatista National Liberation Army.
They took their name from Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, who was betrayed and assassinated in the Revolution of 1914– his assassination marking a pivotal turning point. The ruling elite recuperated the revolution, and for 80 years continued to push the poor and indigenous off of their lands– all in the name of progress and profit.
Then, the same day that NAFTA came into effect, Zapatista rebels swept down out of the mountains, seized 12 towns, shot the corrupt officials, and chased off the predatory landlords. And then, in a masterful strategy, they held a press conference. Continue reading →

BODY CAMS

First aired on The Final Straw.

In the wake of the murders of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, which occurred in the wake of the murders of Oscar Grant and Amadou Diallo, which occurred in the wake of thousands of other murders committed by law enforcement going all the way back to the lynchings of escaped slaves– there’s now a national call to equip all law enforcement with body cams. Body cams… The idea, of course, is that we can use the technology of the digital surveillance state to spy on police and keep them honest. If we compel all law enforcement to wear body cameras they cannot turn off, the argument goes, the police will behave better and, even when they don’t, the video evidence will expose them and we can then weed out the bad apples.
If I remember right, that was the argument for installing cruiser cameras. Those are ubiquitous now. Police cruisers routinely have dash-cams. And yet, on November 29, 2012, over 60 Cleveland police cruisers took part in a car chase that ended with 13 officers firing 137 shots into the unarmed bodies of Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell. Even though, conceivably, we have 60 different angles to watch the grisly slaughter, that didn’t stop Cleveland Police Officer Michael Brelo from jumping on the hood of the bullet-riddled vehicle and unloading on unarmed civilians right through the windshield. Continue reading →

BAT-ISHT CRAZY

This first appeared on The Final Straw

I’m nuts. Totally bonkers.

I just found out last month. And, quite frankly, I was relieved. Up until the mental health people brought my file for my review and I saw the diagnosis, I thought everything I was seeing in the world was really happening… And I mistakenly thought I had a good grasp of what it all meant.

Turns out, I’m just a fruitloop. I can sleep much better now. It’s not the WORLD that’s gone mad, it’s just ME. I’m as mad as an 18th century glue sniffer in a hat factory. The mental health professionals of the Ohio Department of Retribution and Correction said so. So, I can stop worrying about the state of our world and the evil designs of the privileged few, the reign of terror we all face under a global tech-surveillance police state. I can better spend my time skipping naked around my cell or sculpting busts of dead presidents out of piles of my own harvested boogers. In fact, that’s probably what’s expected of me. Continue reading →

Thoughts on Ferguson.

Originally appeared on The Final Straw

Let’s go back to Ferguson. As I speak protesters in Ferguson MO await the Grand Jury decision in the case of a police officer who killed Mike Brown, and I really don’t know why. This is the same criminal justice system that has justified the genocide of Black people by White government agents for centuries, the same system that hired this pig, handed him a loaded gun and sent him goose stepping into a predominantly Black community in the first place. So now thousands are poised, insisting that the same system somehow validate the life of Mike Brown by prosecuting the very same killer who killed Mike while on the same payroll.

Why?

Why are people appealing to an obviously racist control system for validation? To me this is an extremely sad scenario. It’s like thousands of abused children, traumatized and neglected by a vicious drunken father and even after they realize what a brutal monster he is, they still seek his approval and validation. I don’t get it.

Why does anyone care what a Grand jury thinks? Or the prosecutor? Or a judge? Mike Brown is dead, and to speak of justice for Mike Brown is ridiculous if you’re talking about some stupid piece of paper with a rubber stamp on it telling us what we already know issued by the same institutions that took his life. Justice for Mike Brown would be giving him his life back, something Grand Juries, prosecutors and judges can’t do. So, in terms of justice all of them are irrelevant. Mike Mike is gone, but there’s plenty that can be done to prevent the next police shooting before it happens. Continue reading →