OBAMA’S AIDES DEPART, WHERE BLOWS PUBLIC POLICY?

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang gabi! Good evening!

Obama’s aides—who have been with him all the way since electoral campaign days—are departing. We do hope to get to the bottom of the real reason behind the departures, such as those of his ideologue chief-of-staff, but it seems the answer will be confined to the White House as classified information.

What we ought to reflect on is, after the departures, where does the wind of public policy—domestic and international—blow for Obama’s government? Will the oversight/regulatory powers be reinforced somehow, to checkmate the intrusive manipulations of financiers in America’s economy? Will the Wilsonian inclination for democracy cum civil rights be sustained in foreign policy?

The North’s economists have already pronounced their evaluation of America’s and Europe’s economies, with pessimistic-to-gloomy forecasts of both continental economies over the next two (2) years. The stimulus package has clearly backfired, unemployment has ballooned to past 9% (may hit 10% by 2011), and poverty incidence has gone up to 15% (from the pre-crisis 12% level).

Meantime, Clinton is entrenched as foreign policy executor, and her presence bodes well for the Wilsonians who have always held sway in the state department. How much can Wilsonian clout remain till the rest of Obama’s term will be up for observation, more so that the midterm election is bound to erode the Democrats’ congressional seats.

To get straight to the point, with Republicans forecast to re-dominate both houses of legislature, both domestic and foreign policy directions are bound to alter. On the foreign policy front, the isolationism of traditional Republicans may come back, thus undermining the ‘engagement policy’ of the Obama regime in the short run.

How many Obama aides are bound to depart soon we can only surmise for now. But it seems that as a forecast fallout of Democrats increases by the day, so shall the Obama aides get to have some quantitative reductions too.

The quantitative reductions in aides could tip the balance inside the White House in favor of a certain policy initiative. So we observers have no choice but to stay glued to the changes right within Obama’s headquarters. We can only hope that a resurgence of the neo-conservatives, who hold sway in Pentagon & Defense, won’t be in the offing.

With the USA’s possible spiral down a 2^nd recessionary dip, a return of the hawkish neo-cons to power (they’d be dictating terms for Obama behind closed doors) would spell the doom to America’s prestige worldwide. A neo-cons return would coincide with Israel’s unilateral plan to strike down Iran in hot warfare, an act that could take Obama down the global esteem ratings if he will resonate with the hawks.

The electoral campaigns are now heating up as the polls near, so let us monitor the events very closely in the USA. Just exactly who those Republican additions are in both houses will galvanize very soon, bringing along with them the Jurassic solutions of Reaganomics cum Bush tax cuts, along with Federal Reserve antique tool of interest rate intervention.

[Philippines, 06 October 2010]

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,

UNLADTAU: https://unladtau.wordpress.com,

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PUNISH BUSH & NEO-CONS FOR WAR CRIMES!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

A global Establishment has already galvanized before us, just as the global order had been established by the capitalist oligarchy that constitutes this Establishment. The same Establishment has been defining for us who should be punished for war crimes and who should not, and this is truly bothersome for us global citizens.

The likes of Bush, both father and son, who espoused hawkish policies of war and attrition in the guise of America’s role as global policeman, are indubitably war criminals. Yet they roam the world so freely like the wildest monsters that call the shots in a jungle.

I will never forget the Bush father & son, as the war policies they hatched emboldened the hawkish policies of the army of my own country, an army that is a compliant clone of the Pentagon up North. Not only did the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and countries affected by their war policies suffer miserably, my very own Muslim compatriots and countryside folks suffer from the war policies of the neo-cons clone army here.

With displeasure I regard those actuations of Western liberals who condemn the war crimes of the leaders of Sudan and Serbia but who are blind to the very war crimes of the hawkish leaders of their hegemonic countries. For if they indeed are sincere with condemning such war crimes of their leaders, they should by now be prospering in the cases they file at the International Criminal Court versus such criminals.

One would say, “hey the ICC is funded by Soros & cronies, so how can the ICC ever punish the likes of Bush father & son and crony neo-cons who are their colleagues in the global Establishment?” True indeed, the Establishment funds the ICC, and it may prove futile to file cases against their members.

Be that as it may, why don’t the West’s liberals and New Left advocates push through with the filing of war crimes just the same? Whether they file it at the ICC or in their own home countries, the challenge of the day is for such cases to be filed most urgently.

Monsters that were responsible for the destruction of nations and genocidal deaths to millions of people, such as what the Bush & crony neo-cons have factually committed, shouldn’t be allowed to roam freely around the planet.

Failure to file such cases can be misconstrued by us Eastern observers as an attempt of White liberals and their colored humanoid clones to cover up for their Establishment sponsors. So to speak, an instance of White intellectual prostitutes paid to kowtow to their own kind, or paid dogs of Establishment masters who can rock the boats provided that they don’t touch their masters who feed them lusciously.

The cycle of mass terminations by the likes of Bush & neo-cons have to cease soon enough. And the Establishment war criminals should be made to pay dearly for their crimes. Just exactly when will such a payment of crime happen, if in case it would happen at all?

[Philippines, 13 July 2010]

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,

UNLADTAU: https://unladtau.wordpress.com,

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]

POPE HONORED UNPRECEDENTLY IN USA: WHY SO?

Erle Frayne  Argonza

 

U.S. President George Bush seems to have honored the Vatican’s chief prelate with an unusual pomp. The news were all revelatory of the unprecedented treatment the Pope received in his recent visit, a behavior that quite baffles many observers most especially the foreign relations experts.

 

Not even chiefs-of-state from other countries normally receive such a treatment accorded on the Pope, a fact that the state officials themselves pronounced. Yet here is the Vatican’s chief-of-state receiving precisely that ‘most preferred status’ among the various chief executives of the planet.

 

The most obvious answer that can be advanced by unthinking observers is that the Pope is a pious figure. This being so, he deserves the accolades and respect that any eminently pious personage deserves to have. This reasoning is old hat, simplistic or simpleton reasoning and has nothing to do with the reality of the moment.

 

That reality has a great deal to do with economic malaise that America and its northern allies are currently experiencing. Growth has all but flattened in most OECD nations, including Japan and Canada. The USA is coming off as worst, given that it already experienced a recession at the inception of this new decade (2001-02), and here it comes off again with a 2^nd recession within the same decade.

 

The recession is surely bad news for America. For an economy of a size so large it contributes to 22% of the World Gross Product or WDP, a 2^nd recession within a decade spells enormous disasters bordering catastrophe and total collapse. The collapse could lead to a depression, and the depression could lead to massive capital flight by both portfolio and strategic corporate investors.

 

Americans surely don’t know the gravity that the economic malaise had befallen their super-nation, don’t know the consequences of faulty actions and old solutions that hardly work anymore. Among those old tools are the interest rate intervention, fiscal incentives (tax cuts) and further liberalization of the economy. A faulty action would be the rescue of bankrupt banks such as that done on the Bear & Stearns, which was copied from Japan’s experience in the 1990s of ‘crisis management’.

 

The Vatican is watching all of these events, on top of its keen observation of the political aggressions of the USA from 2001 onwards. The aggressions have angered Moslems no end, and the political volcano of the Islamic world could very well spill over into Europe which is the Vatican’s home sweet home. Likewise does the Vatican, which is so awash with money, watching the unusual cross-border financial flows occurring as the Northern economies, led by the USA, are in panic response over their respective shocks and crisis.

 

The world has to admit this: the Catholic Church is the largest global corporation. There resides the power of the Vatican: in the power of its purse. So huge is the Church organization-wise, so vast its financial and estate assets, that no one single corporate group can ever match its resources at hand.

 

It would surely be stupid and suicidal for any corporate group or nation to ever challenge the might of the Vatican head on. Instead of clashing with the Vatican, the appropriate foreign relations template must be that of cooperation and dialogue.

 

And this is what the inner circles of Bush surely have in mind during the Pope’s visit to America lately. Show some semblance of infatuation with the Church, for it can potentially help the USA solve its cash starvation to pay $50 Trillion worth of debts, balance its perennially deficit budget, put some plugs on capital flight, and loan out gold bullions to shore up the pathetically low gross international reserves.

 

That, fellows, is the true reason behind the unprecedented reverence and most honorable treatment on the head of the Catholic Church by the state officialdom of America lately. And that show of respect must have paid off well in the short run.

 

[Writ 28 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]