Arms, Africa, and America's Inmate Industry

By Ezrah Aharone

What do Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms have in common? Well, to start with,
they have a clear connection to crime and violence, which is why the U.S.
government ATF bureau exists. Beyond that, all three were primary
commodities of the Triangular Trade for slaves. In addition, all three have
since remained chief factors that inordinately affect the health and lives
of Black people across the globe.

No other metal product of the Triangular Trade was more significant, cruel,
and lasting in impact than guns. Firearms were mass-produced in America
according to standards of that day, and Africa was the primary export
destination. What began as modest tinkering in small metal shops, with
enslaved African expert-blacksmiths, was fused with Euro-American greed and
aggressiveness. The end product evolved into what is today's high-tech
multitrillion-dollar U.S. arms industry.

The heavy export of guns to Africa during the slave era, shares commercial
and strategic commonalities with the current saturation of illegal guns in
Black communities and the escalation of arms in Africa used in cycles of
coups and countercoups. Since political independence, Africans have been
fighting and killing each other in revolutions, as though shooting and
hacking off limbs are sports.

No one knows the exact number of millions killed and swallowed whole in
these wars where even infants and grandmothers are expendable. Three things
however are certain. One, the wake has produced over 8 million refugees who
live in abject poverty. Two, American arms suppliers account for over 60
percent of weapons used, where assault rifles have sold on African streets
for as little as $6. Three, African conflicts typically involve energy and
mineral resources, of which the majority of financiers, distributors, and
consumers are located in America, Western Europe, and Israel.

Oil, diamonds, gold, cobalt, and chromium are some of the choice resources
sought, which the West often uses as bartering mediums to arm self-styled
African revolutionaries. The American public then becomes aghast in
open-mouth astonishment when watching the evening news and seeing dead,
decomposed bodies scattered about African streets, while skinny 11-year old
boys walk around with assault weapons, smoking Marlboros.

The question of who is behind the sale of these arms is too often
overlooked. But whenever scenes from the next African conflict appear on
your television, look closely, because you just may see the "Made in
America" label on the trigger.

Meanwhile back on the Black American front, gun slayings continue, with
Black women and children likewise being left unprotected from the fray. But
there's a major difference . These killings don't concern sovereignty or
political struggles or natural resources. Brothers in America shoot our own
people over narcotics and "beefs." As long as these "street wars" remain
self-destructive and confined to this level, there's no cause for alarm from
the government. Besides, the Iran-Contra Scandal was factually connected to
killings, gunrunning, and drug dealings in Black communities - And nobody
was ever held accountable.

Due to known business interests, the U.S. government seems nearly as
apathetic about firearm deaths of Blacks today, as during the slave trade.
This is because Black homicides and handguns are linked to an economic
environment conducive to ever-elaborate schemes of White profiteering. Just
as guns and murders were central to the success of the multitrillion-dollar
"slave industry," they now are central to the success of the
multitrillion-dollar "inmate industry."

Federal inmates work for $1.15 an hour at 106 prison factories under the
Justice Department entity called UNICOR (Unique Corporation). In 2005,
UNICOR supplied goods worth over $750 million to the federal government.
What's notable is that more than 60 percent of its work is contracted by the
military. Proponents say UNICOR fulfills Pentagon and defense needs quicker
and more efficiently than any private enterprise could. According to the
Encyclopedia of Prisons and Correctional Facilities (EPCF), UNICOR produces
everything from military uniforms, to Kevlar helmets, to wires for weapons,
to cables for missiles and helicopters.

EPCF reports that the U.S. military profits from selling some of these same
prison-made products overseas, where they "fall into the hands of violent
regimes," of which African insurrectionists are among. Like enslaved
blacksmiths who made guns that were shipped to Africa in a revolving door
process to capture more slaves, inmates now manufacture components for
weapons that are shipped to Africa to destabilize governments in a revolving
door process to acquire more resources.

Our 17th century ancestors probably never imaged that their initial
tinkering of gun making would spawn into a multitrillion-dollar arms
industry with a subsidiary inmate industry. And, it definitely was even
more inconceivable to them that, we would degenerate in the 21st century to
the point where Black-on-Black handgun homicide is the leading cause of
death for young Black males, while death tolls from African revolutions are
too vast to accurately count.
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Copyright © 2007 Ezrah Aharone
Ezrah Aharone is a Scholar of Sovereign Studies and the author of "Pawned
Sovereignty: Sharpened Black Perspectives on Americanization, Africa,
War and Reparations" EzrahAharone@juno.com-

I’ve never read a more concise and retrospective historic-parallel written that way….it puts a tear to my eye because I know that the average person can do very little, and that increasingly narcotics have a bigger role to play in more and more African countries now.

I’ve never read a more concise and retrospective historic-parallel written that way….it puts a tear to my eye because I know that the average person can do very little, and that increasingly narcotics have a bigger role to play in more and more African countries now.