Date: Tue Jan 30, 1996 1:23 am CST From: gathering EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414 MBX: gathering@cygnus.com TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762 Subject: Fwd: American Gulgags (fwd) jerry garcia decals made in slave labour camps? yup, free labourers don't have money to spend, but, the guards and infrastructure to maintain such does, and they are mostly white male heads of households. could it be a racialist thang? (Better Living Thru Better Living) ************************************************************************** X SNAIL ME + GABRIELLI'S (Mendocino,CA, USA) 0 X YER ROSEHIPS + 0 X IF YOU LIKED THIS POST! + *Pinot Noir* & *ASCENZA* (WHITE-BLEND)-YUMMY!0 ************************************************************************** [Ask Fer "Mendocino,Ca. -- *Gabrielli Wine*" at yer local wine shop if'n ya want to tend yer rugosa] http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/anna_yamada ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 29 Jan 96 03:07 EST From: PawlRevere@aol.com To: news@aen.org Cc: caji@pobox.com Subject: Fwd: American Gulgags AEN News from Michael Williams --------------------- Forwarded message: From: 100705.1252@compuserve.com (Michael Williams) To: PawlRevere@aol.com (PawlRevere) Date: 96-01-24 12:47:49 EST Subject: The American Gulag Despite America's rising crime and the frequency of felons released only to commit other crimes, there is a seamy underbelly to our justice system. Namely, that people are profiting from others being incarcerated. The more that are incarcerated, the greater the profits. And this is not the first time in history such a situation has arisen... It is building an American Gulag, one that threatens to assume the mantle of The New Evil Empire. The conception of an American Gulag did not start with Stalin. It harks back to the Nazi era. Aside from its assault on humanity, the idea of slave labor always has been a blunder. It will be viewed as no less a blunder when the American Gulag finally emerges from its nightmare -- if it ever emerges. For now, it must be stated that our historical memories are short, indeed. THE GULAG By the time Josef Stalin took command of the U.S.S.R., the inner circles knew communism to be a failure. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn related this intelligence in volume two of his Gulag Archipeligo. He also explained that Stalin closeted himself for several days with a Turkish businessman named Naftaly A. Frenkel, an old friend. Frenkel reasoned, as do most businessmen, that values and profits are predatory, always achieved at the expense of others. He told Stalin that in order for Communism to succeed, it would be necessary to get free labor. This conclusion achieved, the two then proceeded to construct their syllogism. Frenkel pointed out that not just any labor would do. This free labor had to know how to do things -- and thus the judgement was made to draw up a list of engineers. "Now," said Frenkel, "arrest every seventh one!" These workers would bring their own energy into the system. And the system would harvest this energy, giving all those who confessed to choreographed crimes only thin cabbage soup and minimal support for life. Most would be dead in a year or two. This free labor built and staffed the Gulag. As the Gulag expanded, coal, minerals, gold -- especially gold -- and timber met the raw materials requirements of what the pundits called "the future now." There was a problem with this business equation. It did not answer the requirements of economics. Because free labor was used, raw materials failed to generate the base income that could -- via the multiplier -- hoist up the national income. As a consequence, the Soviet economy always operated without an adequate social surplus, or a proper profit for the system. Cheap labor in fact sounded the death knell for communism that far back. It was only a decade or two before the Stalin era that Henry Ford reasoned, "If we do not raise the industrial wage to 50 cents an hour, the worker will never be able to own a Model T car." Accordingly, Ford took the lead in raising the American industrial wage to 50 cents an hour. Others accepted this reasoning and joined the effort. On this basis the United States built the biggest steel industry, the biggest auto industry, the biggest just-about-everything. There were depressions called panics, and then there came that engineered depression of the 1930's, which was crafted by business people who wanted the disparity required by free trade. There were also periods of structural balance. These were created by stabilization measures, by raw material prices in line with wages and capital costs, and by an understanding that free labor was a delusion of maximum dimension because the absence of income short-circuits the exchange equation. Today, half the world is coming apart because the act of production is not creating and distributing the credits needed for consumption. It took over seven decades for Stalin's economic error to undo communism. And yet the United States is following Frenkel's advice in its own dumb way. Blunders and folly are the stuff history is made of, and there are enough of both to bend over almost anyone except for the tragedy involved. A case in point. Just 50 years ago, millions of human beings were mined for everything from their gold wedding rings to their human flesh, which was turned into lamp shades, after their bodies were worked to death by a slave labor system that grew up in the middle of the greatest civilization in the history of the human race -- in Western Europe. How this happened will never really be understood until we come to grips with why it is happening again today, right here in America. Auschwitz was a private prison. Like many Nazi concentration camps, it began as a detention center for prisoners of war and political opponents of the Nazi regime. As the number of prisoners began to grow exponentially, the camps were turned into slave labor operations, modeled on Quaker, American Friends Service Committee-run work camps in pre-war germany, whose philosophy was that hard work is the best rehabilitation. The official Nazi policy for Auschwitz and other camps, enunciated by Fritz Saukel, who was hanged at Nurenberg as the head of the Nazi slave labor program, was "All the inmates must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent, at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure." If this sounds like the Contract with America, well that's the way it is. Beginning July 6, 1940, I.G. Farben Company, the world's largest chemical company, set up a giant factory near the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Prison labor produced artificial rubber and oil from coal to supply Hitler's war machine with tires and motor fuel. Two and a half million laborers died or were killed at Auschwitz. But I.G. Farben wasn't just a German company. In 1925, I.G. Farben was merged with Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The DuPont company also adopted numerous cartel arrangements with the main partners. As documented in great detail in The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush, it was George Bush's father and the Barrimans who helped the Nazis' rise to power. These same interests, which are tightly allied with the British Crown, are behind the so-called Conservative Revolution in America today. Today, the United States leads the world -- or at least those parts of the world that keep reliable statistics -- in the rate at which it incarcerates its citizens. The accompanying graph, from 1992, shows that the United States has a higher rate of incarceration per 100,000 population than even South Africa before the end of apartheid. In June 1994, the U.S. prison population broke through the one million mark. Today, nearly one and quarter million people are in our prisons and jails. You can see that the rate has basically grown by 6 to 8% a year since 1980, with the two biggest growth years being 1980-81 -- Ronald Regan's first year in office -- and 1988-89 -- George Bush's first year in office. The racial victims are black in the American Gulag. And it borders, if does not reach, genocide. THE RATIONALES As icing on the cake, and to provide a rationale for free labor, the death penalty became re-established, perhaps not so much to punish killers, but to get people use to the iron-hard clout of the judiciary. A 1993 report by the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights lists 48 known cases in which innocent people were sentenced to death since 1973 -- and escaped execution. Those were the ones that we found out about before it was too late. Dr. Death -- Jack Kevorkian -- has proposed that death row inmates donate their organs for transplants as part of the newest form of recycling to hit post-industrial America. The death house, however, is mere window dressing for the real purpose of this new Gulag. MODEL FACTORY The model private prison or "factory within walls" -- as Supreme Court head Justice Earl Warren called them in 1972, after he visited Communist China and learned how it was done -- is Federal Prison Industries, Inc., better known by its trade name, Unicor. There are 46 U.S. locations where Unicor operates its 97 factories, employing over 15,000 inmates. This is a for-profit corporation run by the Department of Justice, with $405 million annual income. inmates earn minimum wage, but their average net income, after deducting room, board, clothing, victim restitution, family support, and fines, is $1 per hour. Established in 1934 by an act of Congress, which already aped the Nazi model, Unicor today produces metal products, clothing, and textile products, graphics and services, electronics, plastics, and optics. It produces every stick of furniture used by the government. If it weren't for prison labor, Newt Gingrich wouldn't have a chair to sit on! Private prison companies, from 1983-1994 represent one of the biggest growth industries in America. The growth curve for the American Gulag looks remarkably like the graph for the growth of derivatives, and not without reason. There are nearly 50,000 private prison beds in America as of June 1994, most of them in Texas. In Virginia, Governor Allen has proposed to build 10,000 new prison beds through private companies. They're used by state and Federal governments. The advantage is clear: Private companies don't have to pay their guards union wages, they don't have to offer pensions, and they can cut whatever corners they like on the prisoners. They can also build prisons in localities where the population opposes them as long as there is no zoning ordinance against it. PRIVATE PRISONS Financing for the private prisons is coming from the top levels of Wall Street: Goldman Sachs, Prudential Insurance, Smith Barney, Shearson Lehman and Merrill Lynch are among those competing to underwrite prison construction with private tax- exempt bonds. Some of the big defense contractors, including Westinghouse, are also entering the prison business. The way inmates are typically handled in private prisons is not what the average American might expect. They are degraded and often forced to undergo intense brainwashing sessions which are designed to pacify and detoxify the inmates and make them suitable for labor. In addition to private companies which profit from building prisons and running them for the state or county -- charging per diem for each prisoner they keep -- there is a booming business inside state prisons akin to what Unicor is for federal prisons. Here you see some examples of what is being produced in privately-run industries inside state prisons. California -- logos for Jerry Garcia band and Lexus autos. Hawaii -- Macadamia nuts; Spaulding golf balls. Maryland -- Modular houses, processed hot dogs. New Mexico -- Hotel chain reservations. Oregon -- Designer blue jeans called "Prison Blues." South Carolina -- Electronic cables. Utah -- AT&T telemarketing. This was stopped by the Communications Workers of America union in 1993. Washington -- Eddie Bauer garments (for all you yuppies). Thirty states have legalized privately-run industries in their prisons. In most cases, the inmates are paid minimum wage simply because the labor unions haven't yet been totally smashed. Like Unicor, however, the average net income to the prisoner is a dollar an hour. This, of course, is still significantly higher than the ten cents an hour that prison maintenance workers routinely earn. As a result, like the house servants under Southern slavery, those who can get a job working in private industry are considered the lucky ones. THE STING Now lets turn to the legislation that has created this potential American Auschwitz. A look at the effect of the so-called War on Drugs conducted by the Regan and Bush administrations, and their counterparts in the various states, reveals that between 1980 and 1992, convictions for drug offenses grew from near zero to 100,000 per year. Drug-related convictions now account for more than 30% of all incarcerations, and, for the most part, affect only the low-level street peddlers and users. With mandatory sentencing laws, the rate of incarceration zoomed from 1980, when only 19 out of 1,000 drug convictions actually resulted in incarceration, to 1992, when the rate shot up to 104 per 1,000. Despite this, the drug plague continues to grow. Maybe that's because the institutions that profit from the drug trade are the same ones that finance the prison-building industry. It's also undeniably true that incarceration breeds crime, and large-scale incarceration, as we have in America today, breeds large-scale crime. The newest prison-stuffing legislation is called "three strikes and you're out." Since the baseball teams are on strike, are Americans amusing themselves by imprisoning their fellow citizens? As of December 31, 1994, Three Strikes legislation had been enacted in 14 states and was pending in seven. And these are the most populous states. Under this legislation, anyone convicted of three violent felonies (two in Georgia -- Gingrich's home state) goes to prison for life. And, finally, here are the key provisions of the Taking Back Our Streets Act of 1995, the criminal justice part of the Contract with America. This list, with some exceptions, is what was passed by Congress. 1. No parole; mandatory, lengthier sentences (actually these were passed at a federal level in the 1980s by an earlier crowd of conservative revolutionaries). They are listed here because the Contract with America wants them extended to state law. 2. Increased funds for prison building will be made available only to those states which eliminate parole and cut amenities for prisoners. 3. It will no longer be unconstitutional to overcrowd prisons. Prisoners may only sue on the grounds that overcrowding violates their Constitutional rights. 4. The Effective Death Penalty bill drastically limits habeas corpus appeals (Art. I, sect. 9 of the U.S. Constitution) and reduces jury discretion in giving the death penalty. 5. The Exclusionary Rule, which precludes illegally obtained evidence from being introduced at trial, will be eliminated. 6. Felons will be forced to make full restitution to victims, despite their personal circumstances. The Gingrich/Gramm/Armey consortium has taken out a Contract on America that will guarantee a ready source of profit and slave labor for their pals on Wall Street. The only thing that is needed now, to make this potential Auschwitz into the real thing, is what led to it the last time -- a global financial collapse and a population tolerant of fascism. Judge for yourself how far we are from that. That the above could be unfolding without a totally corrupt judiciary is a delusion of the simple minded. As View from the Country, in this issue, explains, there is no Bill of Rights, and very little Constitution. The "despotic branch" has the nation functioning under a new type of judicial tyranny. This erosion of the great society could still be stopped -- if Congress has the sand to act. Joe Stalin tried to rescue a failing economy with free labor. Now the United States is trying to rescue a failing economy with cheap labor -- either dollar an hour prison labor or equally cheap foreign labor. Before this blunder is laid to rest, there will be sorrow no tears can symbolize. === This report was prepared by Charles Walters. Additional material was provided by Fred Huenefeld and Mary Anne Wertz. END-ARTICLE  [ This URL: http://www.pdxnorml.org/GULAG ]