Independent UK: Obama: A breathtaking beginning

[marmar]

Obama: A breathtaking beginning
Never mind 100 days, Barack Obama has used his first 100 hours to set the pace and scale of change. Rupert Cornwell reports from Washington

Sunday, 25 January 2009



Torture and CIA "ghost" prisons will be no more. Guantanamo Bay will be closed. Lo and behold, the leader of communist Cuba has called the 44th President of the United States "an honest man". The latter will, after all, have a BlackBerry, while the White House boasts a slick new website where news releases are repackaged as the Blog. Truly, in the first 100 hours of Barack Obama, change has come to America.

In fact, change arrived in his first 100 minutes – before even the olive-green presidential helicopter carrying George W Bush into retirement had lifted off from the east plaza of the US Capitol, to the relief and joy of the two-thirds of Americans long sick of the sight of him. In these first four days in office Obama has made many decisions, some symbolic, some of substance. But nothing signalled a new era more powerfully than the inaugural address itself, his first official act after taking (incorrectly, as it transpired) the Oath of Office.

More explicitly than almost any inaugural in history, the 21-minute speech repudiated the attitudes and policies of a departing president. The Bush administration's scorn for internationally stipulated rights of prisoners, its disregard for science, its high-handed foreign policy, and its blind veneration of the market – Obama disowned them all. So much so, indeed, that some Bush staffers went public with their fury when they learnt of the speech's contents. And though much, much more will be done in the weeks and months to come, Obama has made a real start in turning words into deeds.

On foreign policy, Guantanamo Bay is only a part of it. Quickly focusing on the Middle East, where every gesture of a US president is minutely parsed, Obama chose to make his first foreign call to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President. Only then did he speak to the leaders of Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Obama, as he must, says America's support for Israel is unswerving. But few other presidents have spoken as forthrightly as he did at the State Department last week about the human suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, or insisted as strongly that the border must be opened. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-a-breathtaking-beginning-1515177.html

[dipsydoodle]

1. Is it my imagination

that such worthy articles only seem to appear in our UK press as opposed to your US press ?

[marmar]

2. Sadly, it's not your imagination.....Our press isn't fit to line a birdcage.

..... It's one of the many joys of visiting London.

[LeftishBrit]

8. Unfortunately, neither is most of ours!

The Independent and the Guardian are OK. The Times and Daily Telegraph (Torygraph) are very RW, but mostly OK for actual news - though I would always bear in mind that the Times is owned by Murdoch. But the various tabloids - Daily (Hate-) Mail, Daily Express, Sun, etc. - are absolutely disgusting, sensational, unreliable rags, and love to whip up xenophobic mob-spirit and other forms of right-wing sentiment. And these are read by far more people than the broadsheets. In a way, they are our equivalent to the American RW talk-shows.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. We have no press save for the internet tubes

What used to pass as the fourth estate in this country is now a wholly owned subsidiary of our corporate masters.

[Frustratedlady]

4. Not only the positive articles, but subjects we aren't aware of.

I always read the UK press, as they seem to know more about us than we do.

[acmavm]

7. What the song that says 'the same as it ever was'? Well that phrase

describes the American media (or however you would describe it).

[CitizenPatriot]

5. perhaps the * admin wasn't spying on the UK Press

and hence, they were free to actually report....

But it seems even larger than that; it's embarrassingly transparent that the press is trying to look tough now by being negative. It is a mind of medium capability that replaces objectivity with cynicism, thinking the dash of disdain makes them appear smarter. It takes true intelligence to remain fully objective, report the truth, without adjusting for attack or spin or trying to make oneself stand out by chasing the New Now.

Our press is a dying beast.

"cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre"

[MasonJar]

6. Go to th link and read the entire article. It is excellent.