Stephen Lendman

Click on this image. Notice the smile on this soldier's face. -Says it all.

Iraq today is a grim reflection of America's ruthless imperial agenda. It includes mass slaughter, destruction, devastation, deprivation, human misery and unending violence.

On August 31, 2010, Obama displayed criminal contempt. He's done it many times. He declared an end to America's combat mission in Iraq, saying: "Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility."

Ignored was America's genocidal legacy. Iraq was ravaged and destroyed. Pre-1990 Iraq no longer exists. Charnel house conditions replaced it. So did plunder on the grandest of grand scales, millions of internal and external refugees, ongoing violence, dozens of daily deaths, a plague of preventable diseases, ecocide, and overall conditions too horrific to ignore.

Remember Fallujah! In September 2004, the UN Human Rights Council issued a report titled "Testimonies of Crimes Against Humanity in Fallujah: Towards a Fair International Criminal Trial." It discussed horrific conditions, saying:

"From the (2003) outset and at the start of the indiscriminate and merciless campaign of collective punishment and willful destruction, undertaken by the occupational troops of the United States of America," innocent civilians endured an "inhumane siege and indiscriminate killing" during April and May 2004. "(G)enocidal massacres" included "sustained and targeted bombing(s), aimed directly at the homes of defenseless civilians."

A November/December massacre followed. Thousands more Iraqis were slaughtered, wounded and maimed. Depleted and enriched uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorous and other terror weapons were used.

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Stephen Lendman

Israel gets away with murder and much more. Crimes against humanity repeat multiple times daily. Palestinians are defenseless. Who can contest Israel's military might? It's other security forces are ruthless. So are extremist settlers.

Yesh Din Volunteers for Human Rights addresses them. "Acts of violence are being committed by Israeli civilians against Palestinians in the West Bank on a daily basis," it says. They repeat in many forms. They include violence and vandalism.

They're not isolated incidences. They reflect more than hate or anger. They're "part of a sophisticated wider strategy," says Yesh Din. They're "designed to assert territorial domination of Palestinians in the West Bank. They include settler-imposed "no go zones." Palestinians face armed militants. They come from nearby settlements and outposts. They "create effective 'no go zones.' " They're on privately owned Palestinian land. Doing so gets them to abandon it. The do it in fear for their lives.

Israeli soldiers, police and other security forces provide no protection. They support lawless settlers. They commit so-called "price tag" attacks. Settlers use the term to describe retaliations relating to Israeli government actions limiting their political goals.

Palestinians bear their brunt. From September 2004 through 2011 alone, around 3,700 incidents occurred. They're documented by time, type, location, number of injuries and/or deaths, and settlements of origin. Every West Bank governorate is affected. Key is that Israeli and collaborating Palestinian security forces do little to stop them. Ordinary Palestinians are left vulnerable on their own. They live in a virtual war zone.

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James Petras

Image: During the disturbances following Nero's deposition, Vitellius was a military commander proclaimed emperor in 69 by his troops. He gained Rome, but was challenged by Vespasian, who defeated Vitellius' forces. Vitellius was either cut to pieces by his own troops or thrown at the Roman mob, as in this painting.

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Introduction: In ancient Rome, especially during the late Republic, oligarchs resorted to mob violence to block, intimidate, assassinate or drive from power the dominant faction in the Senate.

While neither the ruling or opposing factions represented the interests of the plebeians, wage workers, small farmers or slaves, the use of the ‘mob’ against the elected Senate, the principle of representative government and the republican form of government laid the groundwork for the rise of authoritarian “Caesars” (military rulers) and the transformation of the Roman republic into an imperial state.

Demagogues, in the pay of aspiring emperors, aroused the passions of a motley array of disaffected slum dwellers, loafers and petty thieves (ladrones) with promises, pay-offs and positions in a New Order. Professional mob organizers cultivated their ties with the oligarchs ‘above’ and with professional demonstrators ‘below’. They voiced ‘popular grievances’ and articulated demands questioning the legitimacy of the incumbent rulers, while laying the groundwork for the rule by the few. Usually, when the pay-master oligarchs came to power on a wave of demagogue-led mob violence, they quickly suppressed the demonstrations, paid off the demagogues with patronage jobs in the new regime or resorted to a discrete assassination for ‘street leaders’ unwilling to recognize the new order’. The new rulers purged the old Senators into exile, expulsion and dispossession, rigged new elections and proclaimed themselves ‘saviors of the republic’. They proceeded to drive peasants from their land, renounce social obligations and stop food subsidies for poor urban families and funds for public works.

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