Mumia Abu-jamal's Radio Essays

With excitement and barely suppressed glee, the media announced the death sentence returned against Iraqi strongman, Saddam Hussein, for crimes against humanity during the 1982 Dujail massacre. In the face of the deadly horror that is Iraq, Hussein has become little more than a bad, but distant memory. Indeed, in both print and audio interviews I've read and heard in the last few weeks, Iraqis looked to life under the Hussein regime as the good old days. That is a measure, not of how 'good' the old days were, but of how anguished is the present. While Shi'as groaned under the repression of the secret police, and the Kurds lived in terror of the central government, the day-to-day life of Iraqis was one that was among the most envied of the Arab world. Its populace was among the most educated, certainly one of the highest among women in that region. With the very serious exception of the omnipresent threat of government security forces, Iraqis lived lives of relative safety and security. Today,