American Gulag In the early 1970's a Russian author that had been interned in the soviet prison camps of Siberia, wrote a book called The Gulag Archipelago. His writings described the events of a prison camp where Russian dissidents were sent for crimes against the state. In the gulags their government had the prisoners perform functions as slave labor, thus ensuring the work to be done at a cheap rate to the government. The American people who read this book were taken back that this type of action could be done by a civilized government of the modern day world. What few people know is that the government of the "United States of America" has their own gulag system in operation. This system is known as Federal Prison Camps, or Minimum Security Prisons. These facilities house the so-called political prisoners of our government. Crimes that rate internment in these camps rage from tax evasion to anti-tax activity, or government dissidents. Most of the prisoners in these facilities are there because they were offered and accepted plea bargains by the Federal Justice Department. Like their Russian counter parts the federal lawyers make so many accusations against the party that they are lead to believe it is better to accept their offer, than to spend all their time and money defending themselves, and by accepting the government's offer they are guaranteed to be sent to Federal Prison Camp. This is advantageous to the government. Again we see a similarity between the Russian Gulags and the Federal Prison Camps, as the Russians required a slave labor work force, so does the United States Government. Unknown to most Americans is an entity known as UNICOR. UNICOR is the American version of slave labor. However in defense of the United States, workers in UNICOR are paid for their labor, though the wage is about 20% of the federal minimum wage. This puts UNICOR workers in the category of slave labor. Most people would say, "Why does the prisoner do it then?" There are a number of reasons why this is so. The main reason being the wage itself, even though it is so low, it is about ten times the amount a regular prisoner is paid, and UNICOR workers are accorded privileges not given to regular prisoners. It is like the proverbial carrot in front of the ass. UNICOR performs jobs that have been set aside for them and them alone by the government. These jobs are not put out for open bidding as required by the Federal Acquisition Regulations (F.A.R.), on top of that, UNICOR charges the government twice what a private contractor would for the same job. Since they are getting their labor at such a substandard rate there is quite a bit of money made on each job. This means someone is getting this money, who is it, the prison system and the prison officials. The more persons they can get into this system the more money someone is making. There has to be a conspiracy at all levels i.e. The federal attorneys (offering the plea-bargains), the federal judges (sentencing the offenders to the Federal Prison Camps), Federal Contracting Office (awarding the jobs to UNICOR), and UNICOR for collecting the moneys. As we move towards a "World Order" the number of political prisoners will do nothing but increase as people refuse to give up their God given rights. This will increase the number of plea bargains made and continue to provide the system with an unending supply of slave labor for UNICOR. In closing I would like to leave you with this thought. What right does the United States have in putting sanctions against other countries for their use of slave labor, when they themselves practice it on a daily basis?

Rev. Michael J McKeown PhD

Church of Religious Freedom