Paul Craig Roberts has written a very insightful piece entitled War On All Fronts. He describes an Empire which is pushing on all fronts, despite a collapsing economy and declining living standards for its own citizens here at home. Yes, the cost of American Empire has outstripped the benefits it once offered to its common citizen.

The world is catching on to the American corporatocracy’s covert use of what are called NGOs [non-governmental agencies] in spreading dissent within other countries and over throwing foreign governments. The latest case is Russia which is now passing a law similar to what the U.S. uses whereby members of NGOs, who are funded by foreign governments, must register with the U.S. Justice Department as ‘foreign agents’ under America’s ‘Foreign Agents Registration Act’(FARA):

…The Washington-funded Russian political opposition masquerades behind “human rights” and says it works to “open Russia.” What the disloyal and treasonous Washington-funded Russian “political opposition” means by “open Russia” is to open Russia for brainwashing by Western propaganda, to open Russia to economic plunder by the West, and to open Russia to having its domestic and foreign policies determined by Washington.

“Non-governmental organizations” are very governmental. They have played pivotal roles in both financing and running the various “color revolutions” that have established American puppet states in former constituent parts of the Soviet Empire. NGOs have been called “coup d’etat machines,” and they have served Washington well in this role. They are currently working in Venezuela against Chavez.

Of course, Washington is infuriated that its plans for achieving hegemony over a country too dangerous to attack militarily have been derailed by Russia’s awakening, after two decades, to the threat of being politically subverted by Washington-financed NGOs. Washington requires foreign-funded organizations to register as foreign agents (unless they are Israeli funded). However, this fact doesn’t stop Washington from denouncing the new Russian law as “anti-democratic,” “police state,” blah-blah. Caught with its hand in subversion, Washington calls Putin names. The pity is that most of the brainwashed West will fall for Washington’s lies, and we will hear more about “gangster state Russia.”…

Considering the revelation earlier this year that corporations were paying “strategic intelligence” firm Stratfor to spy on activists, it would come as no surprise that many NGOs here in the US are also used by multinational corporations to push their corporate agendas. As one commenter notes, the use of domestic NGOs in America by corporations is likely commonplace and key in controlling political dissent and keeping the ideology of neoliberal capitalism dominant over American society:

…How many of our “Tax-Exempt Foundations” and even religious organizations are in fact fronts for Global Corporations? Each state of the union could, if it had citizens with spines, force local do-good groups to register just like the outside agitators they really are. Politics in America would change overnight.

The Russians have been screwed by US “advice” since the Harvard Boys played Joseph to Russia’s Pharaoh after 1989 and destroyed their economy. Everyone should read the old Nation article even if only the cached version…

And on the Asian front we have China which is seen as another threat to be contained:

…per an ABC article from late last year:

…President Obama today was asked about the strategy of containing China by establishing stronger economic and diplomatic ties with countries in the region – such as with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, which excludes China — as well as with today’s military announcement. What does the US fear from China? he was asked.

“The notion that we fear China is mistaken,” he said. “The notion that we are looking to exclude China is mistaken.”

The president insisted that “we haven’t excluded China from the TPP. What we have said is the future of this region depends on robust trade and commerce and the only way we’re going to grow that trade is if we have a high-standards trade agreement where everybody is playing by the same rules. …

Having drained the U.S. economy by offshoring to China in order to take advantage of their cheap labor pool and nonexistent environmental regulation over the last several decades, the American corporatocracy now looks to curtail a creature of its own making. Roberts notes the following:

…China has been cooperative with Washington, because the offshoring of the US economy to China was an important component in China’s unprecedented high rate of economic development. American capitalists got their short-run profits, and China got the capital and technology to build an economy that in another 2 or 3 years will have surpassed the sinking US economy. Jobs offshoring, mistaken for free trade by free market economists, has built China and destroyed America…

…It looks as if an over-confident US government is determined to have a three-front war: Syria, Lebanon, and Iran in the Middle East, China in the Far East, and Russia in Europe. This would appear to be an ambitious agenda for a government whose military was unable to occupy Iraq after nine years or to defeat the lightly-armed Taliban after eleven years, and whose economy and those of its NATO puppets are in trouble and decline with corresponding rising internal unrest and loss of confidence in political leadership:

Pew Study Finds Steep Declines in faith in politicians and capitalism

There is a lot to think about in this latest article by Roberts and it says everything about the chaotic and expansionary nature of capitalism, much more than that of empire. Whether you are pro or anti-capitalist, the facts laid before our eyes do not lie. I found the following comment to Robert’s article a perfect mirror of my own thoughts:

Finally, revelations that Unregulated Capitalism and Democracy can only co-exist for so long. Those who have ignored this fact are now suffering from the ultimate results of this reality. Those who have always known this and are not surprised are likely doing quite well and could care less. Socialism, the Kryptonite to unregulated Capitalism, has reportedly gained increasing favor of late with younger people who can find no benefit associated with an economic philosophy that exists to serve a minority class consisting of the very wealthy as it strives to insure it’s dominance by perpetuating a Plutocracy masquerading as a functioning Democracy. Throughout history, Democracies have existed without a Capitalist economic system but the reverse is rare to find as Capitalism eventually requires total compliance by government to save it from it’s own excesses. Considering the fact that our economy has once again hit the fan, 11 recessions and two depressions in the last eighty years, when are we going to stop buying into the brainwashing and stop our blind acceptance of an unregulated economic system that is perpetually unstable and now requires a constant state of war and suffering by a majority of the planet’s inhabitance to insure a utopia for a wealthy minority at the very top?