EMPIRE

So the empire uses its state power to gather private wealth for its investor class. And it uses its public wealth to shore up its state power and prevent other nations from self-developing.

When Michael Parenti's Against Empire was written in 1995, It was believed that U.S. rulers intervened abroad only out of self-defense or for humanitarian rescue operations or to restore order in a troubled region or overthrow tyranny, fight terrorism, and propagate democracy

But by the year 2000, everyone started talking about the United States as an empire and writing books with titles like Sorrows of Empire, Follies of Empire, Twilight of Empire, or Empire of Illusions--- all referring to the United States when they spoke of empire.

imperialism is where the dominant investor interests in one country bring to bear their economic and military power upon another nation or region in order to expropriate its land, labor, natural resources, capital, and markets

Empires are enormously profitable for the dominant economic interests of the imperial nation but enormously costly to the people of the colonized country.

Obama and the national security state for which he works are waging two and a half wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, and northern Pakistan) with military threats against Yemen, Iran, and, on a slow day, North Korea.

(The graph is misleading. When everything is added up, including all the black budget items, it easily tops 1 trillion)