SHIFTING PARADIGM

COMMENTARIES

Feb 10, 2009



SHIFTING PARADIGM

February 7, 2009

By Jerry Esguerra

In a sweeping speech to international leaders and security experts on February 6 in Munich, US vice president Biden, prima facie, revealed to an international audience the core of the Obama regime's foreign policy program.

Although emphasizing diplomacy and cooperation as its center piece, he gave a stern warning to the Imperialist allies and client states that they are expected to share the burdens of fighting extremism (whatever that is).

"America will do more, that's the good news," said Biden. "But the bad news is American will ask for more from our partners."

This is a sure sign that the new administration is dismantling the Bush Inc.'s highly centralized "war on terror" program.

The depth of this infrastructure was laid bare by the botched US engineered attack on the reactionary cultist LMA lair in The Congo last December causing the bandits to go on a rampage killing hundreds of ordinary citizens. The uncontrolled mayhem occurred in spite of the professional supervision by American military personnel.

The million operation could have been Bush Inc. last hurrah - well, it was a flop.

Biden's pronouncement will bolster ongoing attacks on legitimate progressive combatants by US allied despots and fascists. The heyday of private armies and purveyors of torture and death the likes of Oliver North, Khashoggi and Lansdale could be coming.

By demassification of the Imperialist machinery of repression worldwide and shifting more responsibility to smaller franchisee will put Obama in a position where he can say: "Don't look at me.......I wash my hands."

Bush Inc. "war on terror" project was a fly-trap.

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February 6, 2009

HOW WE LOOK AT OBAMA

By Jerry Esguerra

The general belief that the Obama regime could be a respite from the aggressive Imperialist stance worldwide could be a premature prognosis. During the Bush "war on terror" era, repression was highly centralized hence Guantanamo and extra-rendition. Corporatist like Cheney demanded the utmost efficiency in executing Imperialist terrorism literally (Triad, Blackwater etc.).

"The new era" in world diplomacy being proclaimed by Obama/Clinton camp could be a code word for the decentralization of this Imperialist Franchise that will surely bring shiver down the spine of the anti-imperialist movement in the Philippines.

GMA recently sent a red herring to the Obama camp thru a speech hoping for a greater autonomy for her government in allocating resources. Although such request was centered on economic issues, it is customary that any aids economic or otherwise are tide to Imperialist political and military scheme in the region, viz., anti-insurgency. Will this mean an intensification of campaign on top of what the fascist regime has done so far against the progressive forces at home?

With Obama playing the role of Pontious Pilate in the world diplomatic arena, fascist like Gloria Macapagal Arroyo could string political activists back home like "dried fish" without directly implicating her master, the US. That will be a win-win for the imperialist if left unchallenged.

We should pay extra attention how this new era is played out. Obama surrounded himself with military advisers who are veterans of Vietnamization, Latinization, Afghanization, Africanization and Balkanization - what's with us not think that we are stepping into a new era of low intensity conflict, hamletting, disappearance, torture and summary execution.

This scenario could be replicated all over the wold where there is conflict, only varying in degree and scope. From the horn of Africa, Mid East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America it would not be a step back or draw-down for the Imperialist.

ESCALATION IN THE HORIZON

In Europe the Putin/Medvedev camp has read the Obama leaf running along this line - worried that NATO will be bestowed with greater flexibility and further threatens its interest in central Asia - Russia pressed Kyrgyzstan to close an air base in Manas, an important supply line for the Imperialist in its escalation of the campaign in Afghanistan by Obama's promise of injecting 30T more American troops into the theatre.

Although it has an ax to grind with the Muslim fundamentalists and generally supports US-NATO invasion in Afghanistan, Russia, is weighing heavily, more than anything else, that such action could also lead Obama to revisit the Poland/Czech/US nuclear defense issue.

What the US has achieved is unprecedented in a non-cold war Europe.

Although the Ossetian-Georgian skirmish is water under the bridge now, the political quagmire that it gave birth to is very much afloat and haunting the stability of the nuclear balance of forces in Europe if not the world today.

If the Obama/Clinton camp pick-up where Bush/Cheney left off and push the establishment of nuclear defense system in Poland and nuclear telemetry base in the Czech Republic, a "cordon sanitaire" will be drawn, cutting the region in half, greatly diminishing Russia's influence in the Balkans, militarily isolating it from the rest of Europe, rendering its first strike capability totally useless and its defense system irrelevant. Russia's witless military victory against Georgia has absolutely no collateral value compared to what the trade off was in hindsight.

When Gen. Norgovitsyn, a senior Russian defense minister, threatened Poland with a retaliatory nuclear strike, military thinkers of the world took it seriously. Comrade Fidel who has been in this road before warned Poland (in gist) that it is leading the entire planet into a nuclear armageddon.

Let us wait and see how the Obama foreign policy team would negotiate the political mine field the previous administration has laid out for them to walk on.

In the next six months we might see the head ambassadress Hilary Clinton tip toeing thru the tulips - but judging on how clumsy the Obama team is shooting from the hip and missing its target at the economic cunundrum arcade - it is not too far fetch to witness in the very near future its much ballyhooed foreign policy program blown into smithereens.

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