Thoughts on President Obama

After the dust has settled and the pageantry packed away I was delighted to read that one of Obama's first acts is to close that horrid Guantanamo Bay, a truly shameful recent chapter in the West and America's history. The disregarding of law, the degrading treatment of the poor soles locked up not knowing what they are charged with or why they were arrested and denied proper representation, whats repugnant.

The second piece of good news is his lifting of the Global Gag Rule

President Barack Obama today is to make the most contentious move of his young administration with an order overturning a ban on federal funds to foreign family planning organisations that either offer abortions or provide information or counselling about abortion.

The rule change continues the dismantling of George Bush's conservative policies. It is likely to encounter fierce criticism from the still robust anti-abortion movement.

It will allow US aid, usually through the US agency for international development, to flow to HIV/Aids clinics, birth-control providers and other organisations that advocate or provide counselling about abortion across the world. It is known as the "global gag rule" because it denies US taxpayer dollars to clinics that even mention abortion to women with unplanned pregnancies.

The rule was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, overturned by Bill Clinton in 1993, and reinstated by Bush. Critics of the rule say it deprives the world's poor women of desperately needed medical care, while proponents say US tax dollars should not promote abortion.

Family planning groups in America and the UK cheered the rule change. Dr Gill Greer, director general of London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation, estimated the gag rule had cost the group more than $100m for family planning and sexual and reproductive health programmes during the eight years of the Bush administration, which she said amounted to 36 million unplanned pregnancies and 15 million induced abortions.

I don't kid myself that Obama will be anymore radical than his predecessors and I don't like his thoughts on escalating the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan but since the Bush Junta set the bar so low, it can't get any worse (famous last words) and I guess those who elected Obama may push him more leftwards, however minor.

If you got fed up with the pageantry and need sobering up then you can't go wrong with Arthur Silber - Of Desire Unfulfilled, and the Deadly Reality of Power or Lenin's Tomb - To earth with a crash