Obama to roll back some oppressive force?

Scott Ritsema
CIVICS NEWS.com
January 22, 2009

AFP reports that Obama might do something good out of the gates:

President Barack Obama was to sign Thursday a series of executive orders to close the Guantanamo “war on terror” prison, end harsh interrogation tactics and shutter secret prisons, marking a dramatic reversal of policy from his predecessor.

I still fully expect for imperialism and fascism to advance under Obama, but we have to give credit where credit is due. If they follow through with ending the practice of torturing people, that's something to applaud. (UPDATE 2/2/09: THEY ARE NOT FOLLOWING THROUGH with ending this practics: see recent post, Can we torture? "Yes we can!" )

Forgive me for not trusting in politicians, but the danger remains that certain positive acts will be taken to get some good PR and a lot of political capital out of it--political capital that will no doubt be used to advance the rest of the political program that the elite have prepared for the Obama presidency. They will get a lot of mileage out of Obama, given how popular he is domestically and abroad. And this act of ending the torture will no doubt only add to that image of "change."