There is a HUGE difference between Bush and Obama.

I can watch and listen to Obama without feeling an inclination to damage my media such as throwing a brick at the telly (I always felt sympatico for the shoe-thrower).

PS

This must mean there is still hope.

OK - not the most rational of arguments, but that's the best I can do ATM.

Obama is just a more sophistocated version of Bush.Bush brought in the Patriot Act and Obama Preventative Dentention.Obama expanded the wars into Pakistan and Libya.He also gave the US Federal Reserve more powers to destroy the US economy.

Obama is far more dangerous than Bush because people trust him.

I suppose I am not disappointed in Obama because I never had great hopes for him or any other politician. Pilger’s rant says more about his faux political naiveté than about Obama.

I use the expression “faux political naiveté” because I don’t for one moment believe that Pilger is really as naïve as he presents himself. He’s just using his supposed disappointment with Obama for one of his usual anti-American tirades.

For those of us undeceived by political theatre I recommend the worlds of Lord Palmerston:

“…We [England] have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

Obama is the president of the United States. He is not the president of the world or of Egypt or Israel or any place else. As such he needs to be judged by how well he has looked after America’s interests. On that score, given the constraints under which he has to work and the situation he inherited, I would say he has done a fair job. I’d give him a B-.

Amazing. In a month in which Osama bin Laden has been neutralised, perhaps Mullah Omar has been killed, and Ratko Mladic has been arrested and will shortly face trial for his war crimes, and at a time when the Arab world is rising up in historic revolution, Pilger has a go at Obama.

What is the common thread in all these events ? Either that the US has come out on top, in some way, its policies have been partly vindicated, and its formal democratic principles are something which people in Arab countries are clearly striving for: right or wrong, good or bad, the Arab countries are having their long-overdue bourgeois revolutions, not waiting for the Euro-white working class to lead them to a socialist utopia. B@stards !

Meanwhile, Obama is contantly under pressure from the Right in the US: his birth certificate is a forgery, they would say. His health scheme is a communist plot, they would say.

But Pilger turns his venom on Obama and reserves his cheap shots for a President who inherited a vast range of diabolical problems from an idiot. Cui bono, Mr Pilger ?

Loudmouth.Obama made the US economy much worse.He should have sacked all the old Bush advisors but kept them.Instead of making Wall St and the bankers pay for their mistakes he let them loose to reek more havoc on the US and world economy.Obama is a total failure for the American people but a great success for the banksters and their war mongerers.

Loudmouth,

The Arab countries are embarking on revolutionary action in part as a response to years of IMF and World Bank reforms, the impact of which increased the hardship endured by ordinary people.
Profits from reform and privatisation were funnelled directly to the controlling elite in these countries and to the corporate elite outside their borders.

I don't believe Obama deserves any credit for the uprising, as he represents a country who has backed the likes of Mubarak in a "you-scratch-our-back, we'll-scratch-yours" arrangement for years.