In anticipation of the release today of new Abu Ghraib photos and videos, I was searching around, and found this speech:

It is interesting that the nation which boasts the most about freedom and democracy is one of the world’s most rabid incarcerators. It is also interesting that the nation that deigns to serve as the world’s teacher on human rights brought you the vile indignities, tortures and terror of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq!

For many of us who dwell in these manmade hells, Abu Ghraib was no surprise; we have seen or heard the same things in the gulags where we are. Is it mere coincidence that many of the most notorious tyrants and slimy torturers at Abu Ghraib were, in their private lives, state prison guards? Or that the very ringleader, the man shown in most of those vicious photos, worked here, at this very prison, for over six years?

Where do you think he learned what he shared with his Iraqi captives? From a book? America has a long and distinguished career as cager, shackler, handcuffer and torturer. It has had over three centuries of practice against Africans and Indians.

By Mumia Abu-Jamal, "one of over 2 million men, women and children encaged in America’s gulags, the fastest growing public housing development in the United States."