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Ear to the Ground

White House Restores Diplomatic Relations With Burma

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Posted on Jan 14, 2012
totaloutnow (CC-BY)

Exiled Burmese in the Czech Republic demand the release of their country’s political prisoners.

Washington is pleased with Burma. The military-backed government instituted a series of human rights reforms, including a cease-fire with ethnic rebels and the release of allegedly hundreds of political prisoners, that allows the U.S. to do business with the strategically situated Asian country with reduced criticism. Restored relations also gives the U.S. a foothold from which to reduce Chinese influence in the region.

The particulars on how far the reforms go are unclear, however. A State Department official said that the U.S. still lacked details on the number of prisoners released and whether the Burmese government had ended its violent campaign against insurgents. —ARK

Los Angeles Times:

The White House was eager for rapprochement partly to pull the resource-rich country out of China’s political and economic orbit. Clinton flew to the capital, Naypyidaw, shortly after President Obama announced a “pivot” in U.S. military and diplomatic policy to reassure allies in the Asia-Pacific region who are nervous about China’s increasing assertiveness.

… A senior State Department official said U.S. officials still lacked details on the prisoners who were released and that it wasn’t clear that the fighting between the government and the minorities had actually stopped.

“Unacceptable violence continues,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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By gerard, January 15, 2012 at 6:36 pm Link to this comment

A lot of us would feel a lot safer and happier if this was U.S. improving diplomateic relations with Iran right now!

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By Steve, January 15, 2012 at 8:01 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

It would probably go a long way if the US referred to it as Myanmar instead of Burma.

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blogdog's avatar

By blogdog, January 14, 2012 at 11:24 pm Link to this comment

oh for sweetness and light - look for the released political prisoners to join the
rebels - for their rearming - for a color revolution - for an armed insurgency -
for a Libya Redux - for the fall of the first domino in the region - Q: will China
stand by quietly as the empire tosses the table and starts destabilizing its
region as per the ME model? e.g.

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/12/2011-year-of-dupe.html

[...]

Hillary Clinton, in Foreign Policy Magazine would pen, “America’s Pacific
Century,” a Hitlerian declaration of imperial intent for American “leadership” in
Asia for the next 100 years. From “Hillary Clinton and the New American
(Pacific) Century:

“Upon reading Clinton’s declaration of intent for American leadership into the
next century, readers may recall the similarly named, ranting “Project for a New
American Century” signed off on by some of America’s most notorious Neo-
Conservatives, which almost verbatim made the same case now made by
Clinton. In fact, America’s evolving confrontation with China, marked acutely by
Obama’s announcement of a permanent US military presence in Australia just
this week, is torn directly from the pages of decades old blueprints drawn up by
corporate-financier funded think-tanks that truly rule America and its destiny.

As reported in June, 2011’s “Collapsing China,” as far back as 1997 there was
talk about developing an effective containment strategy coupled with the baited
hook of luring China into its place amongst the “international order.” Just as in
these 1997 talking-points where author and notorious Neo-Con policy maker
Robert Kagan described the necessity of using America’s Asian “allies” as part of
this containment strategy, Clinton goes through a list of regional relationships
the US is trying to cultivate to maintain “American leadership” in Asia.

For example, the recently reinstalled Wall Street proxy regime in Thailand led
by Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck, has received reassurances by
Clinton herself just this week stating that, “it is in the national security and
political interest of the United States to have this government succeed.” As
reported in-depth in “CONFIRMED: Thailand’s “Pro-Democracy” Movement
Working for US,” Thaksin Shinawatra and his political regime have had long
standing, well documented ties to Wall Street and London. The US backing of
puppet-regimes like Thaksin, installing them into power, and keeping them
there is central to projecting power throughout Asia and keeping China
subordinate, or as Kagan put it in his 1997 report, these proxy regimes will
have China “play Gulliver to Southeast Asia’s Lilliputians, with the United States
supplying the rope and stakes.”“

[...]

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