On 20-Jan-09 18:25, Jeremy "UncleHoot" Praay wrote:
> Does this mean that the rest of the world will stop hating us (the USA) now?

Not immediately. In most allied countries (like mine) the great majority 
is happy and anticipating a less short term selfish style of US 
government. But we didn't hate the US to begin with.
The Israeli government is probably not so certain about him or they 
would not have used the last days of GW Bush to attack. My estimate is 
that Obama would not have approved of this attempt to increase the 
violence in the region for the years to come. OTOH they could use the 
change of power in the US as a sign that things are changing.
In Palestine you may partly expect more positive voices, but in the 
great majority of arab countries I expect a more cautious reaction. They 
first will want to see if he is really different. If the number of 
suicide attacks increases over the next few months it'll look good.*
What the asian countries think about him I wouldn't know. The people 
will be just as happy as everybody else, but what do the governments of 
Japan or China think?
Putin will not be happy, because it will complicated his strategies to 
stay in power.

Obama (or actually we) is lucky to be elected during this crisis, 
because it will greatly hamper the irresponsible among the rich to 
frustrate the government.

I particularly like the fact that he said that there is no mismatch 
between moral and safety (or some like that). Before GW Bush the world 
seemed to be heading towards a view that universal human right should 
take precedence over the interest of the happy few. Both within 
countries and among countries. With Bush that changed. American interest 
  seemed to be the only thing he was thinking about. With American 
interest defined by the people and companies with money and an attention 
span of less than a presidential term. With Obama everybody hopes that 
there will be someone in the whitehouse again that understands that 
short term gain may have to be paid back several times over later.

*) Because that would mean that some 'religious' leaders see their 
influence diminishing and will want to correct that by introducing some 
instability

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