Huge Victory! Thundering Spring OBAMANIA Brings Change in America. Mc Never Comes Back as Third term for the WAR Machinery Preempted! But the Question

Huge Victory! Thundering Spring OBAMANIA Brings Change in America. Mc Never Comes Back as Third term for the WAR Machinery Preempted! But the Question Remains Unanswered Whether Obama is BLACK Enough for the Dream of Martin Luther King! Would the American President Overcome AMERICANISM as well as Zionist Corporate Imperialism Unipolar! Indian FREEsenSEX Stumbles with NEWS Breaks form Washington as Ruling Hegemony is Uneasy with the BLACKLASH Ahead! Indian People Defy Brahminism worshipping SUN in CHHATHPUJA Welcoming the SPRING! How Long We Black Untouchable Indigenous and Minority Communities would Remain ENSLAVED with Inherent Inequality Injustice! Global Ruling Hegemony Could Not Digest the SHOCK so Easily as Markets Tumbled!



Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 101

Palash Biswas

India greets Obama on extraordinary win


New Delhi, Nov 5 (PTI) India today greeted Barack Obama on his election as the 44th US President with the government and political parties hoping to further strengthen relations with the world's oldest democracy.
President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sent congratulatory messages to the 47-year-old Obama and invited him to visit India "as soon as possible".

Students, professionals and politicians welcomed the election of the US' first African-American President as "historic" and said they looked forward to heralding of an era of a "less confrontational" America.

The Indian industry, particularly the software sector, hailed the victory of the first-time Illinois Senator and played down fears of an adverse impact on the flourishing outsourcing business.

"Your extraordinary journey to the White House will inspire people not only in your country but also around the world," Singh said in his message to Obama, who rose from a small-time community worker to become the most powerful man in the world.

"We look forward to strengthening the partnership between India and the US and continuing the close engagement that we have developed in recent years both in bilateral cooperation and in addressing global issues of common concern," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.

Obama's extraordinary journey to the White House drew cheers from political parties of all hue, including the Left and the Right.

Congress, BJP and Left parties termed Obama's victory as historic. PTI

Markets tank, Sensex closes 511 pts down

Mumbai, November 5: Snapping its five-session winning streak, the benchmark Sensex on Wednesday dropped over 500 points in a volatile trading which saw brisk selling on oil & gas counter.
The barometer on the Bombay Stock Exchange opened higher by over 300 points, later came under selling pressure and closed the day lower by 511.11 points, or 4.81 per cent, at 10,120.01 points.

Brokers said profit selling at existing levels brought the bellwether index down.

During the day, the 30-share index just fell short of 11K level at 10,945.41 but it also dipped to almost below 10K level at 10,051.52 points, mirroring the high volatility.

The wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty also tanked 147.15 points, or 4.68 per cent, at 2,994.95 points.

Reliance Industries, the heaviest among the Sensex club, tumbled by 12.76 per cent to Rs 1,269.45 on reports that the firm has shut five of its polyester units. With RIL losing , the sectoral index suffered the most among all indices by shedding 637.40 points, or 9.44 per cent at 6112.11 points.


Markets retreat on day after Obama victory
Bizjournals.com - 35 minutes ago
US stock markets dipped Wednesday morning, only hours after Barack Obama made history by becoming the first African-American to be elected president of the United States.
Reaction to Obama elected 1st black US president The Associated Press
Obama victory signals new push for unity Christian Science Monitor
Washington Post - BBC News - Chicago Defender - San Diego Union Tribune
all 177 news articles »

Reuters Insight: Obama and India
(01:20) Analysis
Nov. 5 - India will look to Barack Obama, the newly elected President of the United States on issues of regional stability and more importantly the health of the US economy which directly affects India.


Greg Beitchman, Editor for Reuters Media gives us an analysis.






How do you address being "black enough" or "woman enough"?
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=TfFUVK_OA-s



YouTube Debate: Is Obama Black Enough? Hillary Woman Enough?

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=utf4-LPhUz0



OBAMA CONVENTION SPEECH: Offers Policy Specifics, Goes on Offense v. McCain
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ0gxF869NE



Sen. Barack Obama's Full Speech to the DNC
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=ato7BtisXzE


Chhath Puja Festival of Bihar India
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=mkfpIXpJAjY



Ho Dinanath~ Chathh Geet, Sharda Sinha
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=Sec5JeaDywg



Chhath puja 2007

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=pXMhGfzVeaA



The question remains unanswered whetehr Barrack Obama Hussein Obama is BLACK enough for the dream of Martin luther King! Smashing through the country's "colour line," Barack Hussein Obama was on Wednesday elected 44th president of the United States, a position that will vest unparalleled global power in the son of a Kenyan father and a white American mother. As the world watched in awe and admiration, Obama got an overwhelming mandate in the electoral college - 338 votes to Republican John McCain's 158 - exorcising the lingering ghosts of racism 145 years after the US abolished slavery.


Thundering OBAMANIA Spring brings Change in America and Mc would never return to fuel the Zionist facist Corporate Imperialist War machenry! The Pepole Of America, the heritage of Democracy ensured the Final KILL for the Racial Ruling Hegemony. It is rhetorically a Win against Apartheid and Manusmriti!Barack Obama swept to an historic election victory that made him America's first black president but pleaded for time to heal and transform the global superpower.Obama, 47, will be inaugurated as the 44th US president on January 20, and inherit an economy mired in financial crisis, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a nuclear showdown with Iran.

Despite all the things he's not, despite all the positions he will take that we will have to fight against, despite all the people he will bring to his administration who oppose all we stand for (along with some who will have open ears and be on the right side of many issues), this really is an historic victory that most of us never thought would happen in our lifetime. And it opens many doors for us, a space we haven't had in a very long time. Now we have to work to undo as much as possible all the horrors that the neo-cons have perpetrated and the ones Bush-Cheney will enact before they leave office...no easy task. Not to mention that this victory occurs when the economic structure of capitalism is falling apart, which may make this a pyrrhic victory in the end. We all have a lot of work cut out for us.While the country took a huge step forward in electing Barack Obama, Florida stayed mired in the muck with the reelection of all three of the most reactionary Cuban-American members of Congress, Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers, who all faced the first serious challenge to their careers. And in California, at bedtime, prospects did not look encouraging on some of the local elections and the state-wide measures regarding gay marriage, abortion rights for teens, and a few other local issues.

Gloab Ruling Hegemony could not digest the SHOCK so easily as markets Tumbed! Stocks are down in early trading, as Wall Street focuses on the troubled economy following Barack Obama's election to the White House. Although the
Analysts claimed the market expected an Obama victory, and Wednesday's selling was part of a trading pattern known as "buy on the rumor, sell on the news."

World leaders hailed Obama's historic triumph but there were also calls for the global superpower to change the way it does business.

Celebrations erupted in capitals around the world. A national holiday was declared in Kenya - where Obama's father was born - to welcome the first black US president.

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso called for the election to usher in a "new deal" between the United States and the rest of the world to tackle the global financial crisis and other troubles.


Investors were also cashing in some of their gains from Tuesday's big rally, which sent the Dow Jones industrials up more than 300 points on expectations that battered stocks would enjoy a traditional yearend rally. Analysts say investors are focused on the economy rather than the election. They're awaiting a report that's expected to show that the service sector, like the manufacturing sector, shrank in October.

The Dow is down about 152 points, or 1.59 percent, to the 9,472 level. Broader market indexes are also down more than 1.5 percent.

European stock markets endured heavy falls in early trading on Wednesday while Asian shares closed sharply higher after Democrat Barack Obama
was elected US president.

Less than an hour after the start of European trade, London was down 1.62 per cent, Frankfurt lost 1.29 per cent and Paris shed 1.69 per cent. Madrid fell 1.27 per cent and Zurich slipped 1.54 per cent.

"There is an element of 'buy the rumour, sell the news' that is driving some profit-taking to kick in," said Martin Slaney, head of derivatives at financial spread betting group GFT in London.

Earlier the Tokyo stock market ended the day up 4.46 per cent, Hong Kong jumped 3.2 per cent and Sydney won 2.9 per cent following an overnight Wall Street rally and on hopes that Obama's policies would help to overcome a global financial crisis, dealers said.


Forty-five years after civil rights icon Martin Luther King laid out his "dream" of racial equality, Obama's election broke new barriers and may have helped heal some of the moral wounds left by slavery and the US civil war.

When he launched his campaign on a chilly day in Illinois in February 2007, Obama forged a mantra of change which powered him throughout the longest, most costly US presidential campaign in history.

Senator Obama solidified traditional Democratic states and cut deep into the Republican territory which his rival needed to control to win the White House .

Obama's win was greeted with euphoria across the United States and reverberated around the world.

New York's Times Square exploded in joy at a moment of healing for America's racial scars and a crowd gathered outside the White House. In Kenya, where Obama's father was born, President Mwai Kibaki declared a national holiday.

Democrats also made huge strides in Congress, and will hold an unshakeable monopoly in power in Washington.

After a bilious campaign, McCain was gracious in defeat, and noted that his election was a moment to cherish for African Americans.




Would the American President Overcome AMERICANISM as well as Zionist Corporate Imperialism Unipolar! Indian FREEsenSEX Stumbles with NEWS Breaks form Washington as Ruling Hegemony is Uneasy with the BLACKLASH Ahead! Indian People Defy Brahminism worshipping SUN in CHHATHPUJA welcoming the SPRING! How Long We Black Untouchable Indigenous and Minority Communities would remain ENSLAVED with Inherent Inequality Injustice!

It is quite a Coincidence that United states of America smashed the racial Barriers created by age old apartheid. Barrack Obama left behind the History of Civil War and Assasinations while Indians worshipped the SUN GOD in Folk Rituals without any Priest. Sun the source of Energy and Life. Indigenous People worldwide worship Sun God!

Barrack Obama seems to be an Incarnation of SUN God! The Black Untouchables , Racial groups and generation Next consisted of the US People who brought the Change!Obama's inauguration will complete a stunning ascent to the pinnacle of US and global politics from national obscurity just four years ago and close an eight year era of turbulence under Bush.

Obama is promising to renew bruised ties with US allies, and to engage some of the most fierce US foes like Iran and North Korea. He has vowed to tackle climate change and provide health care to all Americans.

His presidency also marks a stunning social shift, with Obama, the son of Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas, the first African American president of a nation still riven by racial divides.


Is it the beginning of the much wanted CHANGE in Galaxy order!

Young and charismatic but with little experience on the national level, Obama smashed through racial barriers and easily defeated Republican John McCain to become the first African-American destined to sit in the Oval Office, America's 44th president. He was the first Democrat to receive more than 50 percent of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

"It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America," Obama told a victory rally of 125,000 people jammed into Chicago's Grant Park.

President-elect Barack Obama told ecstatic supporters on Tuesday that "change has come to America" and called on all Americans to unite and meet pressing challenges.Taking the stage in his home city of Chicago after defeating his Republican rival John McCain following a bitter election campaign, Obama told an enormous outdoor victory rally that the road ahead would be tough.

"Our climb will be steep," Obama said to the crowd of more than 200,000 supporters who crammed into the rally at Grant Park in his home city of Chicago.

"We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there."

On the other hand, in Pune of India, Fearing backlash from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), North Indians in the city have cancelled the Chhath Puja celebrations on Tuesday, and are now going to Mumbai to attend the rituals.

The Supreme Court had some strong words for governments on the failure to tackle violence arising out of the anti-north Indian campaign of Raj Thackeray saying political will was needed to combat it.

“Can it be done through an order of this court? It is a political question not a court issue. If there is a political will it can be tackled,” a bench of Justices B N Aggrawal and G S Singhvi observed on a petition seeking action against those indulging in the hate campaign.

Meanwhile, in line with RJD president and Union railway minister Mr Lalu Prasad's call for resignation of elected representatives from Bihar against the anti-north Indian violence by MNS in Maharashtra, the party legislators and parliamentarians have started submitting their resignation letters to the party leadership.

“75 per cent” of the RJD’s MPs, and 35 of its 55 MLAs and eight of 15 MLCs have submitted their letters of resignation, Mr Shyam Rajak, party spokesman, told .
He said that all RJD MPs and state legislators would submit their resignation by 15 November. Union ministers Mr Premchand Gupta and Mr Akhilesh Singh were among those who have put in their papers.

Meanwhile,Anger and ecstasy during Chhath Puja, devotees across the country offered puja and simultaneously the Marathi vs non Marathi debate got more and more violent.


A day after the Maharashtra Sadan was attacked in the national capital allegedly by Rashtrawadi sena, the Shiv Sainiks have now hit back. The office of the Rashtravadi Sena burnt down by angry Sainiks


“Some people came here and vandalised our office. Now we are going to show them what we can do,” says president, Rastrawadi Sena, Jai Bhagwan Goyal.


Concerned with the increasing rhetoric and lack of action by the political class, public interest litigation had been filed in the Supreme Court. The judiciary had some advice for the politicians.


``If there is political will then attacks can be stopped',” said the Supreme Court.


“Delhi, Mauritius and everywhere Chhath is celebrated and no body can stop it. Even in Mumbai people are celebrating Chhath,” says Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav.


On ground zero in Mumbai, where Raj Thackeray's shadow looms large during Chhath Puja, North Indians came out in large numbers in celebration. At all major venues there was heavy police presence.


The fact that a festival associated with North India has passed peacefully in Mumbai brings some hope to all those who are concerned about the change in the city's cosmopolitan character.

A Solar Deity (also Sun God(dess)), is a deity who represents the sun, or an aspect of it. People have worshiped these for all of recorded history. Hence, many beliefs have formed around this worship, such as the "missing sun" found in many cultures . Sun worship is a possible origin of henotheism and ultimately monotheism.

I was quite unaware of the Fol Tradition in Uttarakhand. In 1980, while I bagen my career as a professional journalist and based myself in the Coalfields of Jharkhand , I came to know all about Chhath Puja. But it was only after my marriage, when Sabita came into my life, I got a real opportunity to participate in the pure Indian folk festival. We stayed in the house of shrivasatvas in Water Board colony, Hirapur Dhanbad. The family had a Deaf and dumb teenager named Madhu. He used to be very close to us and cared very much for Sabita. The mother of the house convinced us to participate in Chhath Puja. We accompanied the family to Bekar Bandh Pond. We gave ARGHYA, the offerings to the setting Sun. Then again the we worshipped the rising SUN!

It was the first Ritual we completed without a Brahmin and there was no caste or class divide. It was free of untouchability. I got the gist that the Chhath puja is the best expression of our indigenous aborinal energy and life!

We witnessed the same thing in United states of America.
We may feel the warmth of DEMOCRACY and citizen`s empowerment which Enabled a Black Man with middle muslim name with a Black family entering the most Powerful House of this Universe. African americanism is the best thing emerged on the Election day which heralded a new age for the Black Untouchbles worldwide.

I still reside amongst a slum inhibited by the discarded labour Community belonging to a local Locked out factory Kanch Kal in Sodepur. The entire population belongs to either Eastern UP or Bihar. Every year, they celebrate Chhath puja and we may not remain aloof! it begins with lauki Bhat and Kharna.

Today we had a gret inflow of THEKUA and fruits at home from every home of the locality!


Chhath Pooja" a family festival for every Bihar born Hindus has its unique religious importance and reminds us of high cultural heritage of Bihar. It is a worship to "Sun God", who is a source of light to life of entire living being and abundance of energy to nature, The recompense of prayer to "Sun-God" has many profits in, human life and even Muslims and Christians are not left uninfluenced of the same. They also equally participate in this holy celebration in Bihar. This festival is celebrated with great austerity and penance. The people of Bihar and Eastern Utter Pradesh offer their prayer to "Sun-God" with highest devotion. It is no denying fact that not only this world but the entire universe has importance of existence of "Sun-God".

Chhath or Dala Chhath is a Hindu festival, unique to Bihar, Jharkhand state, India and Terai, Nepal. This festival is also celebrated in the northeast region of India, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and some parts of Chhattisgarh. Songs for Chhath festival sung by Padma Shri Bihar Kokila Prof. (Smt) Sharda Sinha are very popular.The word chhath denotes the number 6 in Hindi and the festival begins on the sixth day of the Hindu lunar month of Kartik, which corresponds to months of October-November in the Gregorian calendar. The festival of Chhath begins a week after Diwali. Chhath is the holiest Hindu festival of Bihar and extends to four days. This festival has particular significance in Bihar, but it is also celebrated in Uttar Pradesh and nearby areas. Even in Tamilnadu, the migrants from the north celebrate Chhath beside the sea beach.



The study of "Rigved" "Atherved" and reference of "Ayurved" enlighten us of importance of worship to "Sun-God". The worship to "Sun-God" brings all desired fruits in life of the devotees. It relieves from many pains & grief of.the life* The leprosy and white spots on skin, i.e. "Charaka" are cured by worship of "Sun-God". Womens desirous of geting a "Son" is blessed with such expectation. Mother Kunti on worship of "Sun-God" was blessed with powerful son "Karna".

The prayer to "Sun-God" is a historical phenomenon in whole country. The famous temples of "Sun-God" in Multan, Kashmir, Chittod, Moghera & Konark are the evidence of the same. "Chhath Pooja" has very strict rules and procedures. The devotees cook their "Foods" and "Prasad" with dry wood on new oven made of brick and soil. Garlic & Onions are kept away from reach. Rock Salts, Pure Ghee, Sugar etc. are used. The devotees sing folk songs in groups. The observing fast for complete 3 days and strict rules of worship demonstrate innocence religious sentiment high faith and discipline in people of the region. The festivity, excitement & happiness are worth seeing and enjoyed by people of all walk of life

This celebration is made compulsorily at bank of river, pond, lake, canals etc* with great rejoicement. The whole family participates in carrying various materials to the above site. The women devotees stand in mid-water with oblation of Takua "Khaboni" Kasara-"Laddu of rice powder", Sugarcanes, Radish, Sprouted Gram, Kidney bean, Turmeric, Coconut, Orange, Sweet lime, Banana and other fruits in winnowing bamboo basket and relatives & visitors offer "Ist Libation" of raw Milk/Water to "Sinking Sun" and again at next morning at the same site the devotees and visitors offer prasad and "2nd Lidation" to "Rising Sun". Visitors touch the feet of devotees and get prasad. No one hesitate in demanding prasad from even a strangler.

Chhath is a festival dedicated to the Sun God, considered to be a means to thank the sun for bestowing the bounties of life in earth and fulfilling particular wishes. Worship of the sun has been practiced in different parts of India, and the world from time immemorial. Worship of sun has been described in the Rig Veda, the oldest Hindu scriptures, and hymns praying to the sun in the Vedas are found.

In the ancient epic Mahabharata, references to worshipping of the sun by Draupadi, wife of the Pandavas, are found. It was believed that worshipping of the sun would help cure a variety of diseases, including leprosy, and also ensure longevity and prosperity of the family members, friends, and elders. It is also believed that Chhath was started by the great Danveer (alms giver) Karna, sired by the Sun God, who became a great warrior and fought against the Pandavas in the Mahabharata war.


The Morning Worship Dala Chhath, Jamshedpur-JharkhandAlso called Dala Chhath - it is an ancient and major festival. It is celebrated twice a year: once in the summers (May-July), called the Chaiti Chhath, and once in the winters (September-November)around a week after Deepawali, called the Kartik Chhath. The latter is more popular because winters are the usual festive season in North India, and Chhath being an arduous observance, requiring the worshippers to fast without water for more than 24 hours, is easier to undertake in the Indian winters.

Chhath being mainly a Bihari festival, wherever people from Bihar have migrated, they have taken with them the tradition of Chhath. This is a ritual bathing festival that follows a period of abstinence and ritual segregation of the worshiper from the main household for four days. During this period, the worshiper observes ritual purity, and sleeps on the floor on a single blanket. The main worshipers, called Parvaitin (from Sanskrit parv, meaning 'occasion' or 'festival'), are usually women. However, a large number of men also are the main worshiper. The parvaitin pray for the well-being of their family, for prosperity and offspring. They usually can perform Chhath only if it is passed on to them from their older generation. However, once they decide to do it, it becomes their duty to perform it every year, the festival being skipped only if there happens to be a death in the family that year.


Watercolour drawing showing theChhath festival being celebrated on the banks of the Ganges at Patna, by an anonymous artist working in the Patna style, c.1795-1800On the eve of Chhath, houses are scrupulously cleaned and so are the surroundings. One the first day of the festival, the worshiper cooks a traditional vegetarian meal and offers it to the Sun God. This day is called Naha-Kha (literally, 'Bathe and eat'!). The worshiper allows herself/himself only one meal on this day from the preparation.

On the second day, a special ritual, called Kharna, is performed in the evening after Sun down. On this day also, the worshiper eats his/her only meal from the offerings(Prashad)made to the Sun God in this ritual. Friends and family are invited to the household on this day to share the prashad of the ritual. From this day onwards, for the next 36 hours, the worshiper goes on a fast without water.


A Typical View of the Chhatt Ghat in a village in Bihar(Jagannathpur:Muzaffarpur).The evening of the next day, the entire household accompanies the worshiper to a ritual bathing and worship of the Sun God, usually on the bank of a river or a common large water body. The occasion is almost a carnival. Besides the main worshiper, there are friends and family, and numerous participants and onlookers, all willing to help and receive the blessings of the worshipper. Ritual rendition of regional folk songs, carried on through oral transmission from mothers and mothers-in-law to daughters and daughters-in-law, are sung on this occasion. The same bathing ritual is repeated on the following day at the crack of dawn. This is when the worshipper breaks his/her fast and finishes the ritual.Chhath being celebrated at the crack of the dawn on a river bank is a beautiful, elating spiritual experience connecting the modern Indian to his ancient cultural roots.

The folk songs sung on the eve of Chhath mirror the culture, social structure, mythology and history of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Nowadays, modern Chhath songs, largely Bollywood filmy remixes have caught on, but the old tradition still goes strong with a great degree of sanctity. The three main linguistic regions of Bihar: the Maithili, the Magadhi, and the Bhojpuri, and all the various dialects associated with these, have different folk songs; but all dedicated to Chhath, they have an underlying unity. The minor nuances of the Chhath rituals, such as in the Kharna ritual, vary from region to region, and also across families, but still there is a fundamental similarity.


Unlike last year when North Indians in the city got together to celebrate the occasion, this year, about 200 of them, all members of the Maharashtrian Uttar Bharatiya Ekta Manch, are travelling to Mumbai. There are about 4 lakh North Indians in the city.

"We decided not to celebrate the puja in the city this year solely because we wanted to avoid any kind of tensions of problems. Last year, the occasion was something not many were aware about. This year, however, it has become a subject of constant discussions. So, we do not want to take any risks," Sangeeta Tiwari, president of the ekta manch, said. The association has about 3,000 active members.

Tiwari’s views are echoed by another member, Ravi Tiwari. "We want to keep the puja low profile. It’s a religious festival and we don’t want to politicise the issue. Hence, we are going to Mumbai," he says. The authorities have promised protection during the puja in Mumbai, where the occasion is celebrated on a larger scale.

Calling himself a Maharashtrian at heart, Tiwari said his great grandfather had moved to Pune before Independence. "This association is only to bring Hindi speaking people together. We are all Maharashtrians since we have been living here for a long time. The name of the association only proves that," he says.

Tiwari added that most members have travelled to their native places in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to celebrate the puja. Chhath Puja is a festival celebrated about six days after the Diwali mainly in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal. "According to legends, Karna of the Mahabharata, who was sired by the sun god, first started the tradition of the puja. Performed mainly by women, the puja involves worshipping the sun god while standing in running water, a river or a lake, either during sunrise or sunset," explained Sangeeta.

Nowadays, the ritual is observed chiefly in the evenings, as it is a convenient time for people to get together.
"Earlier this year, the association had organised a programme at the Shaniwarwada on the occasion of Holi.

But, the event was disrupted. It was attended mainly by the poor people, especially hawkers, who had to bear the brunt, as they were beaten up," Sangeeta. "Therefore, this time we did not want to take any risks. Comparatively, going to Mumbai is a safer bet."

Another member of the association, on condition of anonymity, said, "We are absolutely clueless about why Raj Thackeray would oppose something like Chhath Puja, which is a religious festival like other. all At heart, we are all Maharashtrians having lived here for so long. Doesn’t this matter?"

Sanjay Nirupam a journalist by profession, a man of vision not less then any way from "Sanjay" of Mahabharata who can foresee every thing that would take place in times to come, an energetic youth with self built credibility in social and political arena. The entire world is self centered and only interested to recognize the importance of "Rising Sun" but it is the people of Bihar, who equally offer respect and homage to "Sinking Sun". It depicts-high cultural heritage of state to offer respect and service without any selfish motive. Shri Nirupam a Bihar Putra has proved this by his honest, selfless, sincere, tireless and dedicated service. I also have some duty for :people of Bihar and whole Nation at large. There are over 10 Lakhs people of Bihar in Mumbai. They are unorganised, their deteriorating living condition and employment position mostly worry him. In order to reduce the gap between each other and promote sense of co-operation at the hour of the need amongst them selves under the banner of "Bihar Front" he organised 1st "Chhath Pooja"a very popular festival in Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh for joint celebratation at "JUHU BEACH". The sanctity of worship to "Sun-God"i.e. "Chhath Pooja" is imported within him from his "Janma Bhoomi" which is also celeberated in own family with full righteous and devotion. It is a prayer to "Sun-God"for prosperity of man kind and blessings to the nature. The over whelming response and appreciation lead him to move further in his mission and celeberated Pooja since. The gathering Of over Two Lakhs people in the "Chhath Pooja" celeberation in the millenium year with several dignified non-resident Behari visitors from Russia, Holland, Malaysia, Mauritius and many other countries gives him hearty satisfaction and high encouragement to do more and more such activities, The sucesseful cultural progra. mme and folk songs by renowned singer a Lata Mangeshker of' Bhojpuri songs in Bihar, Smt. Sharada Sinha Smt. Vijaya Bharti, Dr. Neeta Singh and attendance of Cine-lion-Bihari Babu Shri. Shatrughan Sinha and several Bihar born dignitaries ftom educational cultural, social, constructive and political field, bureaucracy & judiciary etc. and food distribution to over 2 Lakhs people were the item of attraction at the occassion. This was a unique religious celeberation of people of Bihar participated and enjoyed by the people of various regions, Shri. Nirupam admits that this was possible only with help and support of functioneries of "Chhath Pooja"., Samanbaya Samity. Their past experience, tireless work, dedications and desire to do better, brought this eye catching success.

Shri. Nirupam an enthusiatic person by nature says he has million miles to travel in his mission and has desires to celeberate "Chhath Pooja" 2003 in still better manner and appeal all Bihar born devotees to register their names and Address with suggestions on short-comings in festivity and arrangements, which shall receive positive attentions and welcome participation of all in making the holy function of "Chhath Pooja" all success. The arrangement are also being made to make "Chhath Pooja"-Samagri" available in stalls of "Bihar Mela" demonstrating various products of Bihar proposed to be organised for Two days on the occasion. Those interested to send their contribution for the "Pooja" may send their cheque/P.O. /D.D. in the name of Bihar Front A/c. "Chhath Pooja"


Barack Obama captures the imagination of the world


5 Nov, 2008, 2235 hrs IST, ECONOMICTIMES.COM



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Obama elected the US President
Americans elected Obama as their first black president, in a transformational election which will reshape US history.
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Almost every black voter backed Barack Obama. George Bush got about one tenth of the black vote last time.
Help at the polls
The economy weighed heavily on the minds of the people of America as they went to the polls.
A republican ballot
The premier race between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama is also the most competitive on the ballot.
Obama mourns grandmother
Obama recently traveled to Hawaii to visit his sick grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. Obama's grandmother died of cancer.
Long lines, big votes
Many voters around the country were waiting in lines dozens- or even hundreds-deep. They were determined to cast ballots.
The Overseas Vote
A research paper from a leading university stated that the overseas vote will make a big difference to the outcome of US elections
Playing Politics
Obama's victory marks the culmination of one of the most spectacular ascendancies in US political history.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Barack_Obama_captures_the_imagination_of_the_world/articleshow/3678640.cms


Obama, whose campaign was marked by moments of soaring rhetoric, took stock of what it meant to be elected the first black U.S. president.

"It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day," Obama said.

"It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America," said the 47-year-old Illinois senator.

The atmosphere at the victory celebration was electric, as the crowd chanted Obama's election slogan"Yes, we can" and elated supporters and campaign staff hugged one another.

Obama paid tribute to his defeated rival as a patriot, hailing McCain's status as a former prisoner of war in Vietnam and saying he hoped to work with him.

"He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader," Obama said.

People in the crowd put their cameras up high to get a shot of Obama, or called friends and family on cell phones to share the moment.

"It is incredible that this is happening in my lifetime," said Julie Mierwa.

Some, however, voiced concern that maybe Obama had promised too much.

"I don't know whether he has over-extended himself and if he will be able to live up to the expectations of him. But today is his day. It was incredible," said Jass Hylton.

Outside the rally, there was bumper to bumper traffic and locals cranked up their radios to hear Obama's address.

Chicago officials put the crowd at the rally at more than 200,000.

His name etched in history as America's first black president-elect, Barack Obama turned Wednesday from the jubilation of victory to the sobering challenge of leading a nation worried about economic crisis, two unfinished wars and global uncertainty.

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep," Obama cautioned.

After an acrimonious campaign, Obama and McCain were gracious in their moments of victory and defeat. "He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine," Obama said of the Vietnam war veteran McCain and called him "brave and selfless."

McCain, in turn, praised his rival's inspirational and precedent-shattering campaign. "We have come to the end of a long journey," he told supporters in Phoenix, Arizona. "I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but offering our next President our goodwill."



The disenchantment with Bush gave the Democrats a majority in the Senate and the party has picked up almost a score of seats in the House of Representatives, boosting Obama's capacity to promote his agenda.

Obama's extraordinary feat a mere 43 years after the blacks won full civil rights - and a long 138 years after they got the vote - in a large measure stemmed from what the New York Times called his "improbable, unshakable conviction that America was ready to step across the colour line".

It was a realisation of the dream of the assassinated civil rights leader, Martin Luther King. Forty-five years ago, he had declared his dream that one day people would be "judged not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character".

Images: Obama`s leap of faith fired by Mahatma

Obama acknowledged Mahatma Gandhi's inspiration just as King had done. "In my life, I have always looked to Mahatma Gandhi as an inspiration, because he embodied the kind of transformational change that can be made when ordinary people come together to do extraordinary things," Obama wrote in an article. "That is why his portrait hangs in my Senate office; to remind me that real results will not just come from Washington, they will come from the people."

India and Obama - in a nutshell

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday congratulated Obama and said: "Your extraordinary journey to the White House will inspire people not only in your country but also around the world."

Column: Dangers of Indo-Pak re-hyphenation

News of Obama's win set off celebrations by supporters around the country and the world, from Times Square in New York to the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, civil rights leader Martin Luther King's home church, and to New Delhi.

"Most Americans here that I spoke with expressed a sigh of relief," Sharon Lowen, an American danseuse who lives in India and practises Indian classical dance, said in New Delhi, where Indians joined Americans in celebration. "They were earlier shy to be branded as Americans - with Obama's victory we are proud now to be Americans."

African-Americans in the US wept and danced in the streets Tuesday night, declaring that a once-reluctant nation had finally lived up to its democratic promise.

The Rev Jesse Jackson, a civil rights leader and onetime presidential contender, joined the celebrations in Chicago, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Polls special

"This is a great night. This is an unbelievable night," said US Representaive John Lewis of Georgia, who was brutally beaten by police in Selma, Alabama, during a voting rights march in the 1960s.

Others exulted in small towns and big cities. And white voters marvelled at what they had wrought in turning a page on the country's bitter racial history, the Times said.

President Bush, whose long shadow loomed heavily on the McCain campaign with the election becoming a kind of referendum on his eight-year rule, too called Obama to congratulate him on his victory.

"I promise to make this a smooth transition," the President said to Obama. "You are about to go on one of the great journeys of life. Congratulations, and go enjoy yourself."

Obama became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to receive more than 50 percent of the popular vote, and made good on his pledge to transform the electoral map.

He overpowered McCain in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania - four states that the campaign had spent months courting as the keys to victory.

The Democrat easily won most of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states that normally back Democrats, including New Hampshire, and ran strong in states that are normally solid for Republicans, such as Virginia, Indiana and Florida

After an improbable journey that started for Obama 21 months ago and drew a record-shattering $700 million to his campaign account alone, Obama scored an Electoral College landslide that redrew America's political map. He won states that reliably voted Republican in presidential elections, like Indiana and Virginia, which hadn't supported the Democratic candidate in 44 years. Ohio and Florida, key to President Bush's twin victories, also went for Obama, as did Pennsylvania, which McCain had deemed crucial for his election hopes.

With most U.S. precincts tallied, the popular vote was 52.3 percent for Obama and 46.4 percent for McCain. But the count in the Electoral College was lopsided — 349 to 147 in Obama's favor as of early Wednesday, with three states still to be decided. Those were North Carolina, Georgia and Missouri.

With just 76 days until the inauguration, Obama is expected to move quickly to begin assembling a White House staff and selecting Cabinet nominees. Campaign officials said Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel was the front-runner to be Obama's chief of staff. The advisers spoke on a condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made.

With these moves and many others to come upon him quickly, Obama planned a low-key, everyman day-after in his hometown of Chicago. The president-elect was taking his two young daughters to school, and then heading to the gym, with little else on his schedule.

The nation awakened to the new reality at daybreak, a short night after millions witnessed Obama's election — an event so rare it could not be called a once-in-a-century happening. Prominent black leaders wept unabashedly in public, rejoicing in the elevation of one of their own — at long last.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had made two White House bids himself, said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that the tears streaming down his face upon Obama's victory were about his father and grandmother and "those who paved the fights. And then that Barack's so majestic."

"He's going to call on us, I believe, to sacrifice. We all must give up something," Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and leading player in the civil rights movement with Jackson, said on NBC's "Today" show.

Speaking from Hong Kong, retired Gen. Colin Powell, the black Republican whose endorsement of Obama symbolized the candidate's bipartisan reach and bolstered him against charges of inexperience, called the senator's victory "a very very historic occasion." But he also predicted that Obama would be "a president for all America."

Bush, whose public approval ratings have plummeted in the waning days of his presidency, was mostly behind the scenes in the last weeks of the historic campaign. He called Obama to congratulate him late Tuesday and scheduled a midmorning statement in the White House Rose Garden.

Democrats expanded their majority in both houses of Congress.

In the Senate, Democrats ousted Republicans Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and John Sununu of New Hampshire and captured seats held by retiring GOP senators in Virginia, New Mexico and Colorado. Still, the GOP blocked a complete rout, holding the Kentucky seat of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Minnesota seat of Norm Coleman, who had been challenged by Democrat Al Franken, and a Mississippi seat once held by Trent Lott — three top Democratic targets.

In the House, with fewer than a dozen races still undecided, Democrats captured Republican-held seats in the Northeast, South and West and were on a path to pick up as many as 20 seats.

When Obama and running mate Joe Biden take their oath of office on Jan. 20, Democrats will control both the White House and Congress for the first time since 1994.

"It is not a mandate for a party or ideology but a mandate for change," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said the American people "have called for a new direction. They have called for change in America." She scheduled a midday news conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday to elaborate.

After the longest and costliest campaign in U.S. history, Obama was propelled to victory by voters dismayed by eight years of Bush's presidency and deeply anxious about rising unemployment and home foreclosures and a battered stock market that has erased trillions of dollars of savings for Americans.

Six in 10 voters picked the economy as the most important issue facing the nation in an Associated Press exit poll. None of the other top issues — energy, Iraq, terrorism and health care — was selected by more than one in 10. Obama has promised to cut taxes for most Americans, get the United States out of Iraq and expand health care, including mandatory coverage for children.

Obama acknowledged that repairing the economy and dealing with problems at home and overseas will not happen quickly — alluding even in the first blush of victory to the possibility of a second term. "We may not get there in one year or even in one term," he said. "But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there."

McCain conceded defeat shortly after 11 p.m. EST, telling supporters outside the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, "The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly."

"This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and the special pride that must be theirs tonight," McCain said. "These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face."

Obama faces a staggering list of problems, that he called "the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century." He spoke of parents who worry about paying their mortgages and medical bills.

"There will be setbacks and false starts," Obama said. "There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem."

The son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, the 47-year-old Obama has had a startlingly rapid rise, from lawyer and community organizer to state legislator and U.S. senator, now just four years into his first term. He is the first senator elected to the White House since John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Bush called Obama with congratulations at 11:12 p.m. EST. "I promise to make this a smooth transition," the president said. "You are about to go on one of the great journeys of life. Congratulations and go enjoy yourself." He invited Obama and his family to visit the White House soon.

Obama won California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

McCain had Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. He also won at least 3 of Nebraska's five electoral votes, with the other two in doubt.

Almost six in 10 women supported Obama nationwide, while men leaned his way by a narrow margin, according to interviews with voters. Just over half of whites supported McCain, giving him a slim advantage in a group that Bush carried overwhelmingly in 2004.

The results of the AP survey were based on a preliminary partial sample of nearly 10,000 voters in Election Day polls and in telephone interviews over the past week for early voters.

In terms of turnout, America voted in record numbers. It looks like 136.6 million Americans will have voted for president this election, based on 88 percent of the country's precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots, said Michael McDonald of George Mason University. Using his methods, that would give 2008 a 64.1 percent turnout rate.

"That would be the highest turnout rate that we've seen since 1908," which was 65.7 percent, McDonald said early Wednesday.



Is Obama Black Enough?
By Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates Thursday, Feb. 01, 2007

For all the predictable outrage Joe Biden's recent comments about Barack Obama elicited, the gaffe put a spotlight on one of the more unfortunate forces fueling Obamania. Ever since Barack Obama first ascended the national stage at the 2004 Democratic convention, pundits have been tripping over themselves to point out the difference between him and the average Joe from the South Side. Obama is biracial, and has a direct connection with Africa. He is articulate, young and handsome. He does not feel the need to yell "Reparations now!" into any available microphone.

But this is a double-edged sword. As much as his biracial identity has helped Obama build a sizable following in middle America, it's also opened a gap for others to question his authenticity as a black man. In calling Obama the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," the implication was that the black people who are regularly seen by whites — or at least those who aspire to the highest office in the land — are none of these things. But give Biden credit — at least he acknowledged Obama's identity.

The same can't be said for others. "Obama's mother is of white U.S. stock. His father is a black Kenyan," Stanley Crouch recently sniffed in a New York Daily News column entitled "What Obama Isn't: Black Like Me." "Black, in our political and social vocabulary, means those descended from West African slaves," wrote Debra Dickerson on the liberal website Salon. Writers like TIME and New Republic columnist Peter Beinart have argued that Obama is seen as a "good black," and thus has less of following among black people. Meanwhile, agitators like Al Sharpton are seen as the authentic "bad blacks." Obama's trouble, asserted Beinart, is that he will have to prove his loyalty to The People in a way that "bad blacks" never have to. Obama, for his part, settled this debate some time ago. "If I'm outside your building trying to catch a cab," he told Charlie Rose, "they're not saying, 'Oh, there's a mixed race guy.'" Obama understands what all blacks, including myself, know all too well — that Amadou Diallo's foreign ancestry could not prevent his wallet from morphing into a gun in the eyes of the police.

For years pundits excoriated young black kids for attacking other smart successful black kids by questioning their blackness. But this is suddenly permissible for presidential candidates. Beinart's good black/bad black dynamic is the sort of armchair logic that comes from not spending much time around actual black people. As the New Republic points out, Sharpton has an overstated following among black people. In 2004, when Sharpton ran for President, his traction among his alleged base was underwhelming. In South Carolina, where almost half of all registered Dems were black, both John Kerry and John Edwards received twice as many black votes as Sharpton. But this hasn't stopped media outlets from phoning Sharpton whenever something even remotely racial goes down. And it hasn't stopped writers from touting Sharpton's presumed popularity among black people, as opposed to "palatable" black people like Obama.

The black-on-black argument seemed to be bolstered by recent polls showing Obama significantly trailing Hillary Clinton among black voters. But reading into poll numbers that way is a clever device, hatched by mainstream (primarily white) journalists who are shocked — shocked! — to discover that black people aren't as dumbstruck by Obama as they are.

What they fail to understand is that African-Americans meet other intelligent, articulate African-Americans all the time. In almost every cycle since 1984, at least one of these brave chaps has run for President. Forgive us if we don't automatically pledge our votes to Obama and instead make judgments based on things besides skin color — like, heaven forbid, issues. Joe Biden may have misspoken — and in the process probably destroyed any remote hopes of winning the nomination — but he spoke truthfully for a lot of his ilk; Obamania is rooted in the belief that 50 Cent, not Barack Obama, represents the real black America.

Back in the real world, Obama is married to a black woman. He goes to a black church. He's worked with poor people on the South Side of Chicago, and still lives there. That someone given the escape valve of biraciality would choose to be black, would see some beauty in his darker self and still care more about health care and public education than reparations and Confederate flags is just too much for many small-minded racists, both black and white, to comprehend.

Barack Obama's real problem isn't that he's too white — it's that he's too black
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1584736,00.html

The New Black Nativism
To the surprise of many whites and dismay of his supporters, Barack Obama trailed Hillary Clinton among black Americans by a 40-point margin in a recent Washington Post-ABC poll. It is possible to read this as a positive development: black Americans have transcended racial politics and may now vote for the person they consider the better candidate, regardless of race. The sad truth, however, is that Obama is being rejected because many black Americans don't consider him one of their own and may even feel threatened by what he embodies.
So just what is the nature of black American identity today? Historically, the defining characteristic has been any person born in America who is of African ancestry, however remote. This is the infamous one-drop rule, invented and imposed by white racists until the middle of the 20th century. As with so many other areas of ethno-racial relations, African Americans turned this racist doctrine to their own ends. What to racist whites was a stain of impurity became a badge of pride. More significantly, what for whites was a means of exclusion was transformed by blacks into a glorious principle of inclusion. The absurdity of defining someone as black who to all appearances was white was turned on its head by blacks who used the one-drop rule to enlarge both the black group and its leadership with light-skinned persons who, elsewhere in the Americas, would never dream of identifying with blacks.
Black identity was historically progressive in another important respect: from very early in the 19th century through the civil rights movement, it was strikingly cosmopolitan. Black leaders took a deep interest in oppressed peoples throughout the world. The Pan-African movement and early black nationalism were part of emerging notions of black solidarity. Blacks took deep pride in the Haitian revolution, and black American missionaries played an important role in the Christianization of Jamaican and other West Indian blacks. Black Americans were also open to the inspiration of black immigrants: W.E.B. DuBois's father was Haitian; James Weldon Johnson's mother, Bahamian. One of the first mass movements of African Americans was led by a Jamaican, Marcus Garvey, in the '20s. An impressive number of black leaders and civil rights icons--Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Shirley Chisholm, Louis Farrakhan, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, to list a few--were all first- or second-generation immigrants. Before them, West Indian leaders paved the way toward involvement with city politics, especially in New York. And this cosmopolitanism extended also to non-African peoples; Martin Luther King's engagement with Mahatma Gandhi is the most famous example. Like so many other West Indians, I have personally experienced this remarkable inclusiveness in the traditional practice of black identity. Becoming a black American meant simply declaring oneself to be one and engaging in their public and private life, into which I was always welcomed.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1587276,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar
Obama’s Indian hand
From Hindi to Malayalam, no poll stone left unturned
K.P. NAYAR

Obama sheds a tear in North Carolina as he talks about his grandmother Madelyn Dunham who died on the eve of the election. (AP)
Washington, Nov. 4: Barack Obama’s decision during the presidential campaign to appeal to the native instincts of Indian Americans may have played a big role in the outcome of Tuesday’s election to the White House.
Determined not to leave anything to chance, Obama began a unique appeal to Indian Americans in Hindi and Malayalam to vote for him soon after he was formally nominated as his party’s presidential candidate at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August.
On his hugely popular website, barackobama.com, the frontrunner to be the next President put out a one-page manifesto in Hindi and in Malayalam that listed his positions on key issues that affect Indian immigrants to the US.
Using his personal organisational strengths as a community organiser in his youth in Chicago’s poor suburbs, Obama then directed his aides to print this statement in the two Indian languages as leaflets and widely distribute those through Indian community organisations across America.
Motivated by this special appeal to native sensitivities, several Indians in the US campaigned for Obama in this election.
Obama’s strategy was to particularly target young Indian Americans, many of whom have moved away from the traditional support given by their well-to-do parents for Republican candidates in previous elections.

Such support proved crucial in states like Virginia where Obama hoped to benefit from changing demographics.
Catherine Pallivathuckal, 23, comes from a family of Democratic supporters. Catherine, who works in an actuary in Connecticut, took a week’s leave from her work, flew to Ohio at her expense, checked into a hotel, rented a car and campaigned for Obama in Cleveland.
Catherine, whose parents come from Kerala, had voted in the last presidential election in 2004 as an absentee voter from Bangalore where she was then studying.
This year, she plunged headlong into Obama’s campaign after returning to the US and taking up her first job in Connecticut. The Obama campaign readily accepted her offer to campaign as a volunteer in Ohio where the Democrats were in need of campaigners.
Anita Palathingal of New York also similarly flew to Ohio and campaigned for Obama. Anita has been involved in progressive causes in New York for several years.
She works for a magazine in Manhattan that deals with labour issues, but she found that while New York will overwhelmingly vote for Obama, Ohio was in the balance and Obama’s campaign needed people for the get-out-to-vote efforts.

John McCain at Nevada on his way to his home state Arizona where he declared ‘I am going to be the President of the United States’. (AFP)
Last Sunday, the two Indian American girls were rewarded by Obama with standing room right behind him at a rally in Cleveland that was watched nationally on television because singer-song-writer-guitarist Bruce Springsteen and his wife sang at the event.
The rally was so huge that Catherine and Anita were told by the organisers to arrive at the venue at 10am for the programme that began at about 4pm.
Ohio is a key battleground state which catapulted George W. Bush to the White House in 2004. This year Obama is trying to wrest the state from the Republicans.
No Republican has won the presidency in the history of American elections without winning Ohio, which has 20 crucial members in the electoral college which will choose the next President.
Obama’s manifesto in Hindi and Malayalam told Indians in America that he has a record of demanding comprehensive laws that allow easier immigration to the US. It said he views with sympathy the plight of those who are in the US without proper immigration documentation.
The Hindi and Malayalam manifesto promised that if elected president, Obama will strengthen the H-1B visa scheme under which tens of thousands of Indians are in the US as nurses, teachers and computer programmers, among other similar jobs.
The manifesto also assures Indian Americans that as President, Obama will work for a balance between guarding the security of America’s national borders and ensuring that immigrant families are not divided on account of US laws, leaving wives and children in India while the husband is allowed to work in the US or vice versa.
The manifesto also talked about health care for immigrants, communalism, education and small business, all issues of interest for Indian immigrants to America.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081105/jsp/frontpage/story_10065382.jsp
Barack Obama’s true colours
As a mixed-race child growing up in Hawaii, Barack Obama stood out from an early age. Toby Harnden goes there to meet the family friends and schoolmates of the man who would be America’s first black President

WONDER YEARS: (down from below) With mother Ann Dunham; playing with grandfather Stanley Dunham on a Hawaii beach; a young Barack with his grandparents on graduation day



As the sun sank over the Pacific Ocean behind him, Frank Marshall Davis looked up from his rickety front porch and saw his friend Stanley Dunham approaching. The grizzled old black man could see that Dunham was bringing along his grandson, whom he had been waiting to meet — a caramel-skinned boy of nine called Barry Obama. It was the autumn of 1970.
In a couple of days, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois may become the first black man to be President of the United States. Central to his appeal is his message of racial reconciliation, drawn largely from his own remarkable life story and extended family spread across the globe.
His quest to come to terms with his identity as an African-American essentially began with Davis that day in Honolulu nearly 38 years ago.
Hawaii imbued Obama with the laid back, almost preternatural calm that has underpinned his political career. It insulated him from the racial tensions of inner cities on the American mainland while also posing a conundrum about his blackness that would take him back there in search of an answer.
Frank Marshall Davis had been a noted poet, journalist and radical activist who had once been investigated by the congressional House Un-American Activities Committee. By 1970 Davis, then 65, was living in obscurity but he was a familiar sight on Kuhio Avenue, just off Honolulu’s teeming Waikiki Beach. Dunham was one of many frequent visitors to Davis’s house. Dawna Weatherly-Williams, then 22 now 60, from California, had recently moved to Hawaii with her black husband. She had struck up a friendship with Davis and was chatting with him that late autumn afternoon as Dunham and Barry approached.
Although Dunham was white, he and Davis were in many ways kindred spirits. Both were originally from Kansas. At the age of five Davis had survived an attempted lynching at the hands of a group of older white boys. Dunham, eight years Davis’s junior, insisted that the racism he had witnessed on the mainland was one of the reasons why he had headed west. Both men had eventually arrived in Hawaii in search of a happiness and success that somehow always just eluded them, ending up as salesmen struggling to make a decent living.
The grandson Dunham had brought along to meet Davis represented something else that they shared. The boy was the product of an unlikely union between Dunham’s only daughter, Ann, and Barack Obama Sr, a brilliant and charismatic Kenyan economics student by whom she had become pregnant at the age of 18. Within three years of their hastily arranged wedding (Barack was born less than six months later) the couple had parted, when Obama Sr — who, it emerged, already had a wife and two children back in Kenya — chose a scholarship to Harvard over his new family.
Obama would visit El Dorado, Kansas, the oil boom town where his grandfather was born, at the height of his Democratic primary battle with Hillary Clinton. He told me and other reporters crammed into the aisle of his “-Force One” campaign plane that he was returning to “the roots of my life that connect to the broader story of the country”, adding, “Those values of hard work and some of those small town virtues are ones I think we need to rediscover.”
The candidate’s ability to move easily in both black and white milieus — and everything in between — has been a central part of his magnetism. In Chicago, Obama married a strong black woman called Michelle Robinson, a descendant of slaves whose family had lived through the civil rights era.
For both Davis and Obama, Hawaii provided a breathing space at the end and the start, respectively, of their adult lives. The fact that Hawaii, which became the 50th and newest American state in 1959, had never banned interracial marriage — unlike 16 other states as late as 1967 — was one of the things that drew Davis to the island paradise in 1948. He had just married a white Chicago socialite; only in what he was to describe as a “rainbow land of beautiful colour mixtures” would their union be considered unremarkable.
Sitting on a wooden bench in Honolulu’s Makiki District Park this summer, Weatherly-Williams chain-smoked as she recalled Davis meeting Obama for the first time that day in 1970.
“Stan had been promising to bring Barry by because we all had that in common — Frank’s kids were half-white, Stan’s grandson was half-black and my son was half-black,” she said.
Dunham and his grandson were on their way home from Punahou, the private school that Obama was to describe in his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father as an “incubator for island elites”. He had just taken entrance tests in English and mathematics.
“Barry was well-dressed, in a blazer I think,” Weatherly-Williams said. “He was tired and he was hungry. He had a full face — it wasn’t pointed like it is now.”
Obama had spent the previous three years in Indonesia with his mother, Ann, an anthropologist who specialised in rural development, and her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. He had returned to Hawaii shortly after his mother gave birth to her second child, Maya, in 1970, and was living with his white grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, whom he knew as Gramps and Toot or Tutu (Hawaiian for grandma). Ann returned to Hawaii in 1972 after her marriage broke up; when she resumed her field work in 1974, Obama moved back in with his grandparents.
For Dunham (who had so wanted his daughter to be a boy that he had named her Stanley Ann), Barry was the son he never had. Ann Dunham believed her son could do anything, while his absent father, via letters, made clear that greatness was expected of him. Obama remarked to his biographer David Mendell, the author of Obama: from Promise to Power (2008) that “there was no shortage of self-esteem”.
While his strong sense of his own worth has led to accusations of arrogance and aloofness, it also underpins Barack Obama’s star political persona. “Sure Barry’s got a bit of an ego,” said Mark Heflin, a Punahou friend. “To be President of the United States you’ve got to have some ego.”
Obama stood out at Punahou. Most fellow pupils were white, and although there were significant numbers of Oriental, Polynesian, Samoan and native Hawaiian children there was only a tiny handful of African-Americans. In his memoir, Obama recalled an initial “sense that I didn’t belong” that continued to grow. A visit from his father when he was 10 — the first time he had seen him since he was two and the last before Barack Sr was killed in a car crash in Kenya in 1982 — served only to unsettle him further.
On one level, Punahou was an idyllic setting for any child. His grandfather saw that entry to Punahou would give Obama a leg-up in society. After school, his grandmother would watch him from their cramped 10th-floor apartment as he practised basketball until dark.
The Dunhams were of modest means, Madelyn, a bank manager, being the main breadwinner. They scrimped and saved to help pay the Punahou fees. At Punahou, Obama was pitched in with the offspring of the wealthy but could see how his grandparents struggled. The ease with which he mixes with people at either end of the social spectrum reflects this.
In the old school yearbooks, the young Obama is always grinning. There’s Barry flashing a peace sign beside seven other pupils of varying hues beneath a blackboard with the words “Mixed Races of America” scrawled on it and a picture caption that reads, “Whether you’re a Tamura, a Ching, or an Obama, we share the same world.”
Later on, he looks composed and self-assured. There he is wearing a white Saturday Night Fever outfit with a carefully tended afro. The basketball team photos show that the puppy fat fell off and his physique was transformed into a lean, athletic frame. “He was a happy-go-lucky guy,” Kelli Furushima told me outside the Chowder House restaurant near Waikiki Beach that Obama frequents on his annual holiday in Hawaii, during which he always takes time out to play Scrabble with his sister Maya. “I was one of the cheerleaders that would watch the guys play ball after school. I never really saw him with a steady girlfriend but a lot of girls liked him because he was fun and athletic and tall and dark and handsome in a really cute way.”

By Orlando Patterson Thursday, Feb. 08, 2007
But Obama’s memoir records a string of racial slights at Punahou, some minor and unintended, others more serious: a ruddy-faced boy who asked if his father was a cannibal; a 12-year-old whom he rewarded with a bloody nose after he had called him a coon; a tennis pro who warned him his colour might rub off if he touched the match schedule.
When he was 14, Obama and two other black pupils, Rik Smith (a year older and now a California doctor who specialises in geriatrics) and Tony Peterson (two years older and now working in Tennessee for the United Methodist Church), would meet weekly on the steps of the Cooke Library to discuss things that were on their minds. “We talked about race as a social issue,” Peterson said.

LIKE A STAR: Obama meets supporters on the campaign trail
‘We talked about the effects of race... Not out of a deep sense of pain — you know. In Hawaii, we were in a smaller minority but we weren’t a hated minority. There was a respect for black people because the Hawaiians felt a sense of kinship with us.”
Mark Heflin played on the Punahou basketball team with Obama (nicknamed Barry ’Bomber on account of his impressive double-pump drop shot). He said, “Barry had a good style, he was charismatic even back then, and he seemed to flow between lots of groups.”
Peterson explained: “For Barry, this was the beginning of asking what it means to be a black man in America. His experience had been mainly with his white grandparents and his white mom. In Hawaii, there’s lots of cultures around but he didn’t have a strong connecting point to anyone in black culture. I was a safe link to that. Rik and Barry were bi-racial. I was from a military family but I’m thoroughly black. Like most kids trying to discover who they are, for him that was a big issue.”
Basketball was another route into black culture for Obama. This was the era of Julius Erving, better know as Doctor J, a dazzling star who played the game with both ferocity and grace. In his memoir, Obama remarked that half his white basketball friends ‘wanted to be black themselves — or at least Doctor J’.
Unfortunately for Obama, the Punahou coach, Chris McLachlin, was a traditionalist who emphasised the fundamentals of the game, rather than Obama’s flamboyant ‘street’ style. Obama, who protested that this was a ‘white’ method of play, was kept on the bench by McLachlin much of the time.
“He was on a real stacked team, one of the best teams I have ever had,” McLachlin, currently recovering from a stroke, told me as we sat in his living-room, a stone’s throw from Punahou. “He would have started on any other team in the state. He was that good. He just loved the game, would play it 24/7 if he could. First to arrive at practice, last one to leave.”
Obama has continued to play basketball regularly. His wife’s brother was a college basketball star, and during the 2008 campaign it has been a ritual each voting day for Obama to shoot hoops with a close group of aides.
Obama found he could meet other blacks by playing at the Hawaii university courts where, he would write in his memoir, “a handful of black men, mostly gym-rats and has-beens, would teach me an attitude that didn’t just have to do with the sport”. He continued: “That respect came from what you did and not who your daddy was... I was living out a caricature of black male adolescence, itself a caricature of swaggering American manhood.”
At the same time, Obama was also going around with his non-black friends from Punahou, several of them from the basketball team and sometimes accompanied by his grandfather. “Gramps was my buddy,” said Joe Hansen, who was one of the five or six friends who would “‘pile into the apartment and just hang out and watch basketball or do whatever” at weekends. “He was never that authority guy, you know: ‘Don’t do that, don’t do this’ type of thing. He was more like one of the guys, easygoing, and he kind of ran around with us. Tutu was much quieter. I’d say she was the disciplinarian.”
Obama was to write that he “learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds”, but occasionally the two would collide. Once Obama invited Hansen and another friend, Tom, who was half-white and half-Chinese, to come along with him to a party. “We stuck out like a sore thumb because we were white and still in high school and this was a college party. People came up to us saying, “Who are you. Why are you here?” and we were saying, “Er, we came with Barry.” It was awkward.”
In his memoir, Obama writes of taking two white friends, “Jeff and Scott”, to a black party and recalls their asking to leave early because they felt uncomfortable: “In the car, Jeff put an arm on my shoulder, looking at once contrite and relieved. “You know, man, that really taught me something. I mean, I can see how it must be tough for you… being the only black guys and all.” I snorted. “Yeah. Right.” A part of me wanted to punch him right there.”
Obama also wrote of becoming involved with drugs: “Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young, would-be black man.” His 1979 yearbook entry depicts a pack of Zig-Zag cigarette papers and a matchbook and offers thanks to “Tut, Gramps, Choom Gang” — choom being Hawaiian slang for marijuana.
But former Punahou pupils doubt that Obama was ever seriously involved in drugs. “He was so not a druggie,” Bernice Glenn Bowers laughed. “There’s no way he could be what he was on the court and be a druggie.”
Obama’s grandfather had identified Frank Marshall Davis as someone who could help the boy solve the puzzle of how he, brought up by white people, could relate to a future as a black man. In his memoir, Obama portrays Davis — he never identifies him by his full name — as living “his old Black Power dashiki self” in “the same Sixties time warp that Hawaii had created” and which his mother, spiritually at least, had never left.
His visits to Davis were irregular, but he nevertheless gravitated there at moments of doubt: when he was departing for university; when his grandmother, to her husband’s dismay, had expressed a fear that a black youth might mug her. Frank’s verdict was: “Your grandma’s right to be scared. She’s at least as right as Stanley is. She understands that black people have a reason to hate.” An American university, he told Barry, who was about to go to the small liberal arts college, Occidental College in Los Angeles (where he began to call himself Barack), was a place where the price of admission was “leaving your race at the door” in order to become a “well-trained, well-paid nigger” but “a nigger just the same”.
Obama seems to have taken most of this with a pinch of salt. If the totality of Davis’s writings is anything to go by, he probably also received more sober counsel. In 1944 Davis railed against racism in all its forms, the persecution of Jews and the internment of the Japanese in Hawaii. “It is my contention that whoever is born and reared in America or becomes naturalised should be known only as an American,” he wrote. “Forget whether he has blue eyes or red hair or thick lips or a chocolate complexion. He is an American.”
Kathryn Waddell Takara, a University of Hawaii professor writing a book about Davis called The Fire and the Phoenix, believes that the old poet helped Obama to begin reflecting on his ethnicity and nurtured a sense of possibility in him. “Just the way that Barack Obama carries himself, walks and talks shows he is one of the rare Americans who has this kind of acceptance not only of himself but of others. He’s not weighed down by the shackles of history.”
Tony Peterson said he had “heard echoes of the conversations we used to have” in Obama’s soaring 2004 Democratic convention speech, which launched his national political career. “In particular, the bit about eradicating the slander of a black kid with a book acting white. That’s the kind of thing we used to talk about. I remember we talked about whether we would see a black President in our lifetime. I don’t think any of us thought we would.”
In late January, on his campaign plane as we flew from Kansas after the El Dorado visit, I asked the senator about the wanderlust in his family that he had chosen to reject. “Part of me settling in Chicago and marrying Michelle was a conscious decision to root myself,” he told me. “There’s a glamour, there’s a romance to that kind of life and there’s a part of that still in me. But there’s a curse to it as well. You need a frame for the canvas, because too much freedom’s not freedom.” He laughed and added, “I’m waxing too poetic here.”
Dawna Weatherly-Williams recalled how she had watched the 1974 film The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, in which an old lady and former slave describes how blacks searching for the person who would lead their people to freedom and equality would hold up babies and ask, “Is you the one?”
In 2007 the talk show queen Oprah Winfrey would allude to Miss Jane Pittman and hail Obama as “the one”, later prompting John McCain’s campaign to mock him for having a messiah complex.
Weatherly-Williams pointed towards the horizon to the north, where Stanley Dunham, who had been a US Army sergeant in the Second World War, was buried in the Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, which overlooks Pearl Harbour, in 1992. Then she gazed to the south, towards St Louis Heights, from which Davis’s ashes had been spread five years earlier. The house on Kuhio Avenue has long since been razed and is now occupied by a multi-storey car-park. “I can still see it there, like a ghost,” she said. “Stan felt a similar way about Barry being the one and that’s why it would be so darn cool for him to see what’s happening now. Look what you produced, Stan. I think he and Frank are up there now, cracking jokes and toasting Barack.”

The Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081102/jsp/7days/story_10050758.jsp

Solar barge / Sun chariot

Ra in his solar bargeA "solar barge" (also "solar bark", "solar barque", "solar boat", "sun boat") is a mythological representation of the sun riding in a boat. The "Khufu ship", a 43.6-meter-long vessel that was sealed into a pit in the Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza around 2500 BC, is a full-size surviving example which may have fulfilled the symbolic function of a solar barque. This boat was rediscovered in May of 1954 when archeologist Kamal el-Mallakh and inspector Zaki Nur found two ditches sealed off by about 40 blocks weighing 17 to 20 tonnes each. This boat was disassembled into 1,224 pieces and took over 10 years to reassemble. A nearby museum was built to house this boat. [1]
Other sun boats were found in Egypt dating to different pharonic dynasties.[2]
Examples include:
Neolithic petroglyphs which (it has been speculated) show solar barges
The many early Egyptian goddesses who are related as sun deities and the later gods Ra and Horus depicted as riding in a solar barge. In Egyptian myths of the afterlife, Ra rides in an underground channel from west to east every night so that he can rise in the east the next morning.
The Nebra sky disk, which (it has been speculated) features a depiction of a solar barge.
Nordic Bronze Age petroglyphs, including those found in Tanumshede often contains barges and sun crosses in different constellations.
A "sun chariot" is a mythological representation of the sun riding in a chariot. The concept is younger than that of the solar barge, and typically Indo-European, corresponding with the Indo-European expansion after the invention of the chariot in the 2nd millennium BC.
Examples include:
Trundholm sun chariot of the Nordic deity, Sól, drawn by Arvak and Alsvid
Greek Helios riding in a chariot,[3] (see also Phaëton[4])
Sol Invictus depicted riding a quadriga on the reverse of a Roman coin.[5]
Vedic Surya riding in a chariot drawn by seven horses
The sun itself also was compared to a wheel, possibly in Proto-Indo-European, Greek heliou kuklos, Sanskrit suryasya cakram, Anglo-Saxon sunnan hweogul (PIE *swelyosyo kukwelos).

[edit] Female and male

The warrior goddess Sekhmet, shown with her sun disk and cobra crownSolar deities are popularly[who?] thought of as male counterparts of the lunar deity (usually female); however, sun goddesses are found on every continent (e.g. Amaterasu in Japanese belief) paired with male lunar deities. Among the earliest records of human beliefs, the early goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon carried a sun above their head as a symbol of dignity. The sun was a major aspect of Egyptian symbols and hieroglyphs, all the lunar deities of that pantheon were male deities. The cobra, the lioness, the cow, the dominant symbols of the most ancient Egyptian deities, carried their relationship to the sun atop their heads; they were female and their cults remained active throughout the history of the culture. Later a sun god was established in the eighteenth dynasty on top of the other solar deities, before the "aberration" was stamped out and the old pantheon re-established. When male deities became associated with the sun in that culture, they began as the offspring of a mother. Feminist examination of some of the earliest religions of Western cultures concluded that a sun goddess, often, driving her chariot bearing it across the sky daily. Sól is the goddess after whom the sun and Sunday are named in English.
Some mythologists, such as Brian Branston, contend that sun goddesses are more common worldwide than their male counterparts. They also claim that the belief that solar deities are primarily male is linked to the fact that a few better known mythologies (such as those of late classical Greece and late Roman mythology) rarely break from this rule, although closer examination of the earlier myths of those cultures reveal a very different distribution than the contemporary popular belief. The dualism of sun/male/light and moon/female/darkness is found in many (but not all) late southern traditions in Europe that derive from Orphic and Gnostic philosophies.
In Germanic mythology the Sun is female and the Moon is male. The corresponding Old English name is Si?el (/'s? jel/), continuing Proto-Germanic *Sôwilô or *Saewelô. The Old High German Sun goddess is Sunna. In the Norse traditions, every day, Sól rode through the sky on her chariot, pulled by two horses named Arvak and Alsvid. Sól also was called Sunna, Sunne, and Frau Sunne, from which are derived the words, sun and Sunday.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's mythology, the sun is the last fruit of Laurelin, the golden tree of Yavanna; set within a vessel crafted by Aule her spouse; and guided by Arien a female Maia. Among the names for the sun are Anar, the Fire-golden, and Vása, the Heart of Fire. In Tolkien's mythology the moon is guided by a male Maia named Tilion[6]

[edit] Missing sun motif

Amaterasu finally emerges from the caveThe missing sun is a theme in the myths of many cultures, sometimes including the themes of imprisonment, exile, or death. The missing sun is often used to explain various natural phenomena, including the disappearance of the sun at night, shorter days during the winter, and solar eclipses. Even the Greek myth of Gaia as Demeter and her daughter, Persephone or Kore, imply that the latter was a sun goddess who went missing, bringing on winter when her mother failed to keep the earth bountiful as she searched for her missing daughter.
Some other tales are similar, such as the Sumerian story of the goddess, Inanna's descent into the underworld. These may have parallel themes, but do not fit in this motif unless they concern a solar deity.
In late Egyptian mythology, Ra passes through Duat (the underworld) every night. Apep has to be defeated in the darkness hours for Ra and his solar barge to emerge in the east each morning.
In Japanese mythology, the sun goddess Amaterasu is angered by the behavior of her brother, Susanoo, and hides in a cave, plunging the world into darkness until she is willing to emerge.
In Norse mythology, the gods Odin and Tyr both have attributes of a sky father, and they are doomed to be devoured by wolves (Fenrir and Garm, respectively) at Ragnarok. Sól, the Norse sun goddess, will be devoured by the wolf Skoll.

[edit] Solar deities throughout cultures

The winged sun was an ancient (3rd millennium BC) symbol of Horus, later identified with RaIn different religions solarised supreme deities carry different names and are associated with different aspects of the cultural universe of the society, but for the most part its raw image remains identical.
The Neolithic concept of a solar barge, the sun as traversing the sky in a boat, is found in the later myths of ancient Egypt, with Ra and Horus. Earlier Egyptian myths imply that the sun is within the lioness, Sekhmet, at night and can be seen reflected in her eyes or that it is within the cow, Hathor during the night, being reborn each morning as her son (bull). Proto-Indo-European religion has a solar chariot, the sun as traversing the sky in a chariot.
During the Roman Empire, a festival of the birth of the Unconquered Sun (or Dies Natalis Solis Invicti) was celebrated when the duration of daylight first begins to increase after the winter solstice, — the "rebirth" of the sun. In Germanic mythology this is Sol, in Vedic Surya, and in Greek Helios (occasionally referred to as Titan) and (sometimes) as Apollo. Mesopotamian Shamash plays an important role during the Bronze Age, and "my Sun" is eventually used as an address to royalty. Similarly, South American cultures have emphatic Sun worship, see Inti. See also Sol Invictus. Svarog is the Slavic god sun and spirit of fire.

[edit] Africa
The Munsh tribe considers the Sun to be the son of the supreme being Awondo and the Moon is Awondo's daughter. The Barotse tribe believes that the Sun is inhabited by the sky god Nyambi and the Moon is his wife. Even where the sun god is equated with the supreme being, in some African mythologies he or she does not have any special functions or privileges as compared to other deities.

[edit] Ancient Egypt

Isis, bearing her solar disk and horns nurses her infant, HorusSun worship was exceptionally prevalent in ancient Egyptian religion. The earliest deities associated with the sun are Wadjet, Sekhmet, Hathor, Nut, Bast, Bat, and Menhit. First Hathor, and then Isis, give birth to and nurse Horus and Ra.
The Sun's movement across the sky represents a struggle between the Pharaoh's soul and an avatar of Osiris. The "solarisation" of several local gods (Hnum-Re, Min-Re, Amon-Re) reaches its peak in the period of the fifth dynasty.
In the eighteenth dynasty, Akhenaten changed the polytheistic religion of Egypt to a pseudo-monotheistic one, Atenism. All other deities were replaced by the Aten, including, Amun, the reigning sun god of Akhenaten's own region. Unlike other deities, the Aten did not have multiple forms. His only image was a disk—a symbol of the sun.
Soon after Akhenaten's death, worship of the traditional deities was reestablished by the religious leaders who had adopted the Aten during the reign of Akhenaten.

[edit] Aztec Mythology
This article is about the god. For the conquistador, see Pedro de Alvarado.
This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)

Tonatiuh as depicted in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis.In Aztec mythology, Tonatiuh (Nahuatl: Ollin Tonatiuh "Movement of the Sun") was the sun god. The Aztec people considered him the leader of Tollan, heaven. He was also known as the fifth sun, because the Aztecs believed that he was the sun that took over when the fourth sun was expelled from the sky. According to their cosmology, each sun was a god with its own cosmic era. According to the Aztecs, they were still in Tonatiuh's era. According to the Aztec creation myth, the god demanded human sacrifice as tribute and without it would refuse to move through the sky. It is said that 20,000 people were sacrificed each year to Tonatiuh and other gods, though this number is thought to be inflated either by the Aztecs, who wanted to inspire fear in their enemies, or the Spaniards, who wanted to vilify the Aztecs. The Aztecs were fascinated by the sun and carefully observed it, and had a solar calendar second only in accuracy to the Mayans'. Many of today's remaining Aztec monuments have structures aligned with the sun.
In the Aztec calendar, Tonatiuh is the lord of the thirteen days from 1 Death to 13 Flint. The preceding thirteen days are ruled over by Chalchiuhtlicue, and the following thirteen by Tlaloc.

[edit] Chinese mythology
In Chinese mythology (cosmology), there were originally ten suns in the sky, and the world was so hot that nothing grew. A hero called Hou Yi shot down nine of them with bow and arrows. In another myth, the solar eclipse was caused by the dog of heaven biting off a piece of the sun. There was a tradition in China to hit pots and pans during a solar eclipse to drive away the "dog".

[edit] Hinduism

Surya at Konark TempleIn the Vedas, numerous hymns are dedicated to Surya deva, the Sun personified, and Savitr, "the impeller", a solar deity either identified with or associated with Surya. Even the Gayatri mantra, which is regarded as one of the most sacred of the Hindu hymns is dedicated to the Sun. The Adityas are a group of solar deities, from the Brahmana period numbering twelve. The ritual of sandhyavandanam, performed by some Hindus, is meant to worship the sun.


The Mahabharata describes its warrior hero Karna as being the son of Kunti and the Sun. The Ramayana has its protagonist Rama as being from the Surya Vansham or the clan of kings as bright as the Sun. The charioteer of Surya is Arun, who is also personified as the redness that accompanies the sunlight in dawn and dusk.

At Konark, a town in Orissa, a temple is dedicated to Surya. The Konark temple has also been declared a UNESCO world heritage site. Surya is the most prominent of the navagrahas or nine celestial objects of the Hindus. Navagrahas can be found in almost all Hindu temples.


[edit] Indonesia
The same swapping process is seen in Indonesia. The solar gods have a stronger presence in Indonesia's religious life and myth.

In some cases the Sun is revered as a "father" or "founder" of the tribe. This may apply for the whole tribe or only for the royal and ruling families. This practise is more common in Australia and on the island of Timor, where the tribal leaders are seen as direct heirs to the Sun god.

Some of the initiation rites include the second reincarnation of the rite's subject as a "son of the Sun", through a symbolic death and a rebirth in the form of a Sun. These rituals hint that the Sun may have an important role in the sphere of funerary beliefs. Watching the Sun's path has given birth to the idea in some societies that the deity of the Sun descends in to the underworld without dying and is capable of returning afterward. This is the reason for the Sun being associated with functions such as guide of the deceased tribe members to the underworld, as well as with revival of perished. The Sun is a mediator between the planes of the living and the dead.


[edit] Folklore
In folklore traditions there are many preserved archaic Sun cults which incorporate themselves into newer religions. For example, the burning wheels rolled down hills during sun equinox days, the ban on using jiggers on certain days of the year or the custom of tying a man to a wheel. The "sun-fertility-hero/representative of the underworld" cult complex is also evident in Japan where there is a custom that young people representing the Sun's ancestors (i.e. the dead) should paint their faces red and visit village homes, guaranteeing the land's fertility through this magical ritual.

Another important mythological complex is that of the "Sun Hero", typical of the nomad-herders. Such heroes are encountered among the African nomad tribes, the tribes from Central Asia (Gesen Khan), and among all Indo-European peoples. The Sun Hero always has a "dark" side - he has some sort of connection with the underworld, with the initiation ritual and with fertility. The Sun Hero myth contains many elements that link the Hero with the Demiurge. The Hero often saves the world, renews the world, opens a new epoch, and generally brings about some major renewal to the established cosmical order. These functions of the Sun Hero represent the demiurgical "legacy" left from the supreme celestial being. A typical example for such evolution is the god Mithras.


[edit] Solar myth
Three theories exercised great influence on nineteenth and early twentieth century mythography, beside the Tree worship of Mannhardt and the Totemism of J.F. McLennan, the "Sun myth" of Alvin Boyd Kuhn and Max Müller.

R.F. Littledale criticized the Sun myth theory when he illustrated that Max Müller on his own principles was himself only a Solar myth, whilst Alfred Lyall delivered a still stronger attack on the same theory and its assumption that tribal gods and heroes, such as those of Homer, were mere reflections of the Sun myth by proving that the gods of certain Rajput clans were really warriors who founded the clans not many centuries ago, and were the ancestors of the present chieftains.[7]


[edit] See also
Aditya
Belenos
Fire worship
Helios
Horus
Jesus Christ
July Morning
Konark Sun Temple
List of solar deities
Order of the Solar Temple
Phoenix
Ra
Sol Invictus
Solar symbol
Stonehenge
Surya
Thelema
Trundholm Sun Chariot
Winged sun

[edit] References
^ Siliotti, Alberto, Zahi Hawass, 1997 "Guide to the Pyramids of Egypt" p. 54-55
^ Egypt solar boats
^ theoi.com Helios
^ thanasis.com Helios & Phaethon
^ Probus Coin
^ The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
^ William Ridgeway , Solar Myths, Tree Spirits, and Totems, The Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915. pp. 11-19.[1]

[edit] Bibliography
Azize, Joseph (2005) The Phoenician Solar Theology. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. ISBN 1-59333-210-6.
Olcott, William Tyler (1914/2003) Sun Lore of All Ages: A Collection of Myths and Legends Concerning the Sun and Its Worship Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 0543960277.

[edit] External links
The Worship of the Sun Among the Aryan Peoples of Antiquity by Sir James G. Frazer
"The Sun, A Universal Deity" from The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly Palmer Hall
The Sun God Ra and Ancient Egypt
The Great Myth of the Sun Gods by Alvin Boyd Kuhn
The Sun God and the Wind Deity at Kizil by Tianshu Zhu, in Transoxiana Eran ud Aneran, Webfestschrift Marshak 2003.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_deity"


Asian shares higher after Obama win ends uncertainty


5 Nov, 2008, 1111 hrs IST, REUTERS

HONG KONG: Asian shares hit a three-week high and the dollar extended gains after Barack Obama became the next U.S. president, ending uncertainty ab
out who will lead the world's largest economy in the midst of great financial peril.

U.S. Treasuries fell as investors became bolder in taking risk, though U.S. stock futures remained little changed and oil succumbed to profit-taking after signs of global production cuts had sent crude prices up 10 percent on Tuesday.

The new Obama administration, which takes office in January, will face the world's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and a potentially steep slowdown in the global economy that has pounded markets from Tokyo to Frankfurt to New York.

Unprecedented measures to rescue banks across the world, aggressive rate cuts by central banks, and the improvements in credit markets have in the last week given global markets a respite from a thrashing, but some still urged caution.

"The knee-jerk complacency rally in Asia to an Obama win is likely creating an opportunity to sell," said Kirby Daley, a senior strategist for Newedge Group in Hong Kong. "The bottom line is economic fundamentals in the U.S. are deteriorating faster than the market can keep up with.

And there is very little an Obama administration can do to shield Asia from the effects of this downturn." The MSCI index of Asian stocks outside Japan rose for a seventh consecutive session on Wednesday, with its 3.2 percent gain as of 0450 GMT placing the index at the highest since Oct. 16. The gains came after U.S. stocks on Tuesday enjoyed their biggest election day rally ever.

Tokyo's Nikkei rose 2.6 percent, led by exporters such as Honda Motor Co that were bolstered by a softer yen, while energy-linked firms such as Mitsubishi Corp gained on the oil price rally. Markets in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore rose more han 4 percent each, while stocks in Australia gained more than 2 percent. South Korea, India and Taiwan saw more muted gains.

DOLLAR ADVANCES In a measure that investors may be more willing to add risk, U.S. Treasury prices fell after Obama's win. The 2-year note's price traded down 3/32 for a yield of 1.44 percent. The dollar advanced following Obama's election, recovering some of the prior days losses that saw the currency suffer its biggest one-day slide in 13 years when investors went searching for higher yielding currencies.

"(Obama's win) is arguably likely to prove more positive for foreign markets given the perception that he will be stronger in terms of dealing with US economic problems, is seen more favourably by foreigners generally, and is less likely to follow the policies of President Bush," Calyon said in a report. The dollar rose 0.7 percent against a basket of major currencies to 85.187.

The euro hit the day's low of $1.2830 after the projection of a win for Obama, and was down 0.9 percent from late U.S. trade at $1.2868 at 0423 GMT. The dollar dipped 0.1 percent to 99.66 yen Oil remained lower after the U.S. presidential election, with crude down $1.50 to $69.05 a barrel as investors took profits after a spike the previous session following signs that Saudia Arabia and other OPEC members had made promised cuts in crude production.


China's shares open higher on Wall Street surge


5 Nov, 2008, 0821 hrs IST, AGENCIES

BEIJING: China's share prices opened 0.56 percent higher on Wednesday, echoing the largest overnight Wall Street rally on a US presidential election
day since 1984.

The Shanghai Composite Index opened at 1,716.22 points, up 0.56 percent, or 9.52 points from the previous closing.

The smaller Shenzhen Component Index opened at 5,721.52 points, up 0.93 percent, or 52.71 points.

World hopes for a less arrogant America


4 Nov, 2008, 2050 hrs IST, AGENCIES

BERLIN: A world weary of eight years of George W. Bush was riveted Tuesday by the drama unfolding in the United States. Many were inspired by BarackProfile: Barack Obama
Obama's focus on hope, or simply relieved that - whoever wins - the current administration is coming to an end.

From Berlin's Brandenburg Gate to the small town of Obama, Japan, the world gears up to celebrate a fresh start for America.

In Germany, where more than 200,000 flocked to see Obama this summer as he moved to burnish his foreign policy credentials during a trip to the Middle East and Europe, the election dominated television ticker crawls, newspaper headlines and Web sites.

Hundreds of thousands prepared to party through the night to watch the outcome of an election having an impact far beyond America's shores. Among the more irreverent festivities planned in Paris: a "Goodbye George" party to bid farewell to Bush.

"Like many French people, I would like Obama to win because it would really be a sign of change," said Vanessa Doubine, shopping Tuesday on the Champs-Elysees. "I deeply hope for America's image that it will be Obama."


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Obama-mania was evident not only across Europe, where millions geared up for all-night vigils, but even in much of the Islamic world, where Muslims expressed hope that the Democrat would seek compromise rather than confrontation.

The Bush administration alienated Muslims by mistreating prisoners at its detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and inmates at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison - human rights violations also condemned worldwide.

"I hope Obama wins (because) of the need of the world to see the U.S. represent a more cosmopolitan or universal political attitude," said Rais Yatim, the foreign minister of mostly Muslim Malaysia.

"The new president will have an impact on the economic and political situation in my country," said Muhammad al-Thaheri, 48, a civil servant in Saudi Arabia. Like so many around the world, he was rooting for Obama "because he will change the path the U.S. is on under Bush."

Nizar al-Kortas, a columnist for Kuwait's Al-Anbaa newspaper, saw an Obama victory as "a historic step to change the image of the arrogant American administration to one that is more acceptable in the world."

Yet John McCain was backed by some in countries such as Israel, where he is perceived as tougher on Iran.

US voted for compassionate capitalism: Infosys


5 Nov, 2008, 1956 hrs IST, IANS

NEW DELHI: Software major Infosys Technology has hailed Barak Obama's victory in the US presidential election, calling it a victory of "compassionatJoys and woes of US Elections
e capitalism" over laissez faire capitalism.

"Today is an extraordinary day. The US has voted for compassionate capitalism over laissez faire capitalism. Besides, this election has shown that meritocracy matters most," Infosys chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy said in a statement.

Laissez faire is an ecnomic theory which advocates for minimum government interference in market.

Earlier in the day, the company's shares slipped 0.91 percent at the Bombay Stock Exchange over fears of the president-elect's protectionist policies. The industry fears the Obama administration may offer tax breaks to companies which do not outsource.

"We believe President-elect Obama to be a pragmatic leader who understands that American industry needs to be competitive not just in America but in third (world) countries as well. This election has also proved that the internet is a powerful medium for raising funds," Murthy added.

Tata Consultancy Services' (TCS) scrip also dipped by half a percent during the day's trading.


Also Read
? Indian techies abroad may soon head home
? British law firms outsource to India in a big way
? NASSCOM congratulates Senator Barack Obama
? Indian IT sector welcomes Obama as US president


The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), the industry trade body, expressed optimism over his victory victory in the elections.

"The Nasscom looks forward to this opportunity of working with the president-elect and his administration on mutually beneficial policies that will boost the economies in both nations, enhance bilateral national security matters between India and the US," the body said in a statement.

The Nasscom said with the global economy stressed, it is more important than ever that India and the US find ways to partner together to spur innovation, foster economic growth, develop an educated and skilled workforce and create jobs for the modern global marketplace.

NASSCOM congratulates Senator Barack Obama


5 Nov, 2008, 1321 hrs IST, ECONOMICTIMES.COM

NEW DELHI: NASSCOM congratulated Senator Barack Obama on his historic victory and said that it looked forward to the opportunity of working with the
President-elect and his administration on mutually beneficial policies that will boost the economies in both nations and enhance bilateral national security matters between India and the United States.

"With the global economy stressed, it is more important than ever that India and the US find ways to partner together to spur innovation, foster economic growth, develop an educated and skilled workforce and create jobs for the modern global marketplace" , a press statement said.

NASSCOM said that it shared many of the same economic and diplomatic goals outlined by President-elect Obama during the course of his campaign and it supports expanding the H1B visa program aimed at highly skilled workers.

British law firms outsource to India in a big way


5 Nov, 2008, 0625 hrs IST, PTI

LONDON: Britain's biggest law firms are outsourcing jobs related to conveyancing, accident claims and due diligence investigations to India to cut co
sts.

Thousands of Indian lawyers and fresh law graduates have reportedly been employed by British firms for a fraction of the cost if the work were done in Britain.

Clifford Chance, reputed to be world's largest law firm, has set up its own offshore centre in New Delhi. Eversheds, another leading UK law firm, has confirmed it was making use of India-based legal resource centres.

Several other legal companies have expressed an interest in outsourcing hundreds of millions of pounds worth of high-volume work, a report in 'The Independent' said.

"The often negative image of call-centres is increasingly being replaced by more accurate perceptions of the quality of legal work available from professionals in India," it said.

Nearly 80,000 English-speaking law graudates pass out from Indian institutions every year. Young Indian lawyers are considered very competent and also Indian legal system is largely based on English law.

CPA Global, a legal process outsourcing company (LPO), said that more than 30 law firms and company legal departments were in talks to use its legal support base in India, which employs 450 graduates and lawyers.

CPA is one of the biggest providers of LPO services in India and counts Microsoft among its clients.

The downward pressure on legal costs in the economic downturn had forced the once-conservative legal profession to consider radical means for delivering legal services to clients who wanted fees to be fixed, rather than billed at an hourly rate, the LPO company said.

Indian firms have responded by offering US and UK law firms litigation support and compliance work at around 100 different legal outsourcing centres, the report said.

Obama Nama: Outsourcing firms may feel the jitters


2 Nov, 2008, 1624 hrs IST,Neha Dewan, ET Bureau

He might be the great American change agent. But US presidential candidate Barack Obama’s win could dash the career hopes of many Indians. His fierce antioutsourcing stance — the subject of many a debate in the past — could spell bad news for the BPO firms and the IT industry.

But strangely enough, the results of a recent poll by consulting and market research firm Tecnova shows that 82% of the respondents in India expect Obama to win. In fact, most respondents in India feel that Obama is the right representative for political stability , world peace and financial strength.

With the US going to polls next week, the last leg of the battle is currently on between Democrat presidential candidate Obama and Republican rival John McCain. And it’s not just India that is showing confidence in an Obama presidency, the sentiment is similar in other countries as well.

Market research network GlobalNR’s findings across 21 countries including India surveyed by Tecnova, indicates that Obama has more positive perceptions as compared to McCain. The recent survey conducted globally among 10,392 people found that on an average 73% were in favour of Obama.

Clearly, India Inc at present has other considerations on mind. The possible negative consequences of an Obama victory on the Indian subcontinent does not seem to be influencing their expectations.

Sujay Sen Gupta, president (global market research) at Tecnova India, says: “Obama has strong reservations on outsourcing and has made many statements during his election speeches that he would discourage this when he comes into power.

This is definitely not good news for the burgeoning Indian IT and ITeS sector. However, the research results still show very high support for Obama amongst the Indian respondents, which clearly indicates that common people are thinking of other aspects.”
Sure enough, Indian observers feel that Obama is more likely to improve international issues such as world peace, global poverty, environment, human rights and the economy. And the survey findings bear testimony to that.

According to the Tecnova research, 54% of the Indian respondents strongly feel that world peace will improve if Obama is elected as the president of the US. And 43% believe that financial stability in the world will improve if Obama comes to power as against only 24% who think the same if Republican presidential candidate McCain comes to power.

More than 49% feel that the environment will improve if Obama wins and more than 51% believe that overall economic condition will improve in the US in the coming 12 months.
The race is on. But positive perceptions and mass public support may have already made the battle easier for Democrat Obama. Another indication, perhaps, of an elusive win for McCain?
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/ITeS/Obama_Nama_Outsourcing_firms_may_feel_the_jitters/articleshow/3665316.cms

US economy has dragged down planet's markets: Medvedev

5 Nov, 2008, 1514 hrs IST, AGENCIES
MOSCOW: The US economy has dragged towards collapse the financial markets of the "whole planet," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in his state-of-the-nation address on Wednesday.
Foreign investment inflows increase 259 per cent in September

5 Nov, 2008, 1357 hrs IST, IANS
NEW DELHI: Foreign direct investment (FDI) in India increased 259 percent in September to $2.56 billion, compared to the same month last year, with M
auritius being the largest investor.
FDI for the same month last year stood at $713 million.
The FDI inflows during April-September stood at $17.21 billion, a growth of 137 percent over $7.25 billion witnessed in the same period last year, an official statement said.
The services sector attracted the highest foreign investment at $2.34 billion.
Construction activities including roads and highways attracted $1.64 billion, followed by housing and real estate at $1.62 billion, and computer hardware and software at $1.36 billion.
The top investing countries in terms of FDI during April to August have been Mauritius having invested $5.27 billion, Singapore at $1.72 billion, the US at $1.15 billion and the Netherlands at $580 million.
Govt weighs cut in fuel prices as crude retreats, polls loom

5 Nov, 2008, 0205 hrs IST,Rajeev Jayaswal, ET Bureau

NEW DELHI: Fuel users may soon get to pay less at the pump, as the government looks to cut petrol prices by up to around Rs 2 a litre to drum up supp
ort with voters ahead of key state elections later this month.
The countdown for a cut in petrol and diesel prices has begun with the average price of India’s crude oil basket easing below $60 a barrel on Tuesday, bringing it within sight of the $59-trigger cited by petroleum minister Murli Deora in Parliament last month to cut prices. Official sources said the petroleum ministry was considering a cut in petrol price by up to Rs 2 per litre and by up to Re 1 per litre of diesel. “A review of the retail prices is being done,” one source, who asked not to be identified, told ET.
Officials said the government would wait for the right time to announce the cut in prices. With Assembly elections notified, it may have to obtain permission from the Election Commission for the move. Resistance to price cuts may come from other government departments that would want the economy to stabilise before prices are lowered.
Besides the steep fall in international crude prices from an all-time peak of $147 a barrel in July, the government has also been helped by a strengthening rupee. The rupee has gained around Rs 2 against the US dollar since Mr Deora indicated his $59/barrel trigger price to Parliament on October 23.
A firmer rupee helps lower the cost of oil imports, and could also provide a cushion to the government to go ahead with its plan to cut administered fuel prices even if crude prices bounce back a little.
London Brent crude recovered to above $62 a barrel, after hitting a 20-month low of $58.38 earlier in the session on Tuesday. The US benchmark WTI crude hovered above $66 a barrel.
The price of the Indian crude basket — the average price of the mix of various crude oil varieties imported into the country — went down to $57.94/barrel last Friday. The benchmark price of Indian basket is the limit set by the government to review retail prices of four sensitive petroleum products — petrol, diesel, kerosene and cooking gas.
The breakeven price of $59 a barrel was announced when the rupee was around 49.81 against a dollar. It has since appreciated to around 47.72 a dollar.
India operates a complex system of subsidies which has shielded customers from the steep rise in international oil prices. The country imports nearly 75% of its oil requirements.
State-run oil marketing companies have for some time had to sell refined fuels such as petrol, diesel and liquified petroleum gas (LPG) at below cost, with their losses compensated by oil bonds issued by the government. The steep slide in global oil prices has cut the total “under-recovery” or losses from selling oil products below cost of the oil marketing companies to Rs 128,135 crore from Rs 147,486 crore estimated as on October 23. Initially, it was estimated that total under-recovery for fiscal year 2008-09 would be Rs 2,45,000 crore.
Interestingly, for the first time in four years, public sector oil companies have started making a profit on the retail sale of petrol.
“Our profit in petrol is positive by Rs 4.12/litre. But we are still losing Rs 0.96/litre on diesel,” an official at state-run refiner Indian Oil Corp (IOC) said.
The official added that IOC’s under-recoveries were still high on kerosene at around Rs 22.40/litre and for cooking gas at around Rs 343.49 a cylinder).
Oil companies, however, say that retail prices of four fuels should not be reduced till losses on diesel are wiped out and under-recoveries on cooking gas (LPG) and kerosene are reduced substantially.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/Economy/Indicators/Govt_weighs_cut_in_fuel_prices_as_crude_retreats_polls_loom/articleshow/3674450.cms
Liquidity crunch likely to delay lifeboat for central PSUs

5 Nov, 2008, 0102 hrs IST,Dheeraj Tiwari & Subhash Narayan, ET Bureau
NEW DELHI: The revival process of 83 central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) is likely to be delayed due to the liquidity crunch. Public sector ban
ks have said they would not be in position to participate in bailing them out by waiving interests and infusing fresh capital.
The government has approved Rs 9192.69 crore bailout package to revive 32 CPSEs. The package has cash assistance of Rs 2,013 crore and non-cash assistance of Rs 7,179.69 crore. The package has been extended to the sick firms on recommendation of the Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprise (BRPSE).
The latest setback has come for Mining & Allied Machinery Corp (MAMC), which owes Rs 520.68 crore to State Bank of India (SBI). The bank has rejected its application for interest waiver.
“Traditionally, PSU banks have been lenient with sick PSUs and have been offering loans at considerably lower interest rates. They also waived off interests in case companies went sick. However, due to the financial crisis, banks are facing liquidity crunch,” an official in the ministry of heavy industries said. Currently, there are 29 PSUs under the ministry that have been declared sick.
The refusal to bail out ailing PSUs forced the government to divest up to 74% stake in HMT Bearings. “It’s not that the banks are asking for higher interest rates from PSUs. Already, we take into account that the company is sick and under financial strain. However, given the current situation, it is not possible to offer freebies like full waiver of interest charges or repayment of principal amount only after the company has turned profit making,” an SBI official said.
The government had recommended that the revival of sick PSUs should be taken by the concerned administrative ministry and it should prepare a financial and business restructuring plan. The revival scheme includes waiver of loan and interest, conversion of loan into equity, fresh cash infusion and change of management. Some companies such as Easter Coalfields, Praga Tools and Hindustan Antibiotics for which the revival scheme was approved have started making profit since the last financial year.
The PSUs are planning to request banks to spread their loan period over a longer term and allow part-payment of the interest if the full outstanding amount cannot be waived off.
Investors ride roller-coaster across markets

5 Nov, 2008, 0443 hrs IST,Madan Sabnavis,
The financial markets had gone berserk in the last two months following the financial crisis which erupted in the US with the fall of Lehman Brothers
and Merrill Lynch. The Indian markets went into a spin and all segments got affected, which culminated with RBI stepping in to lower the CRR and repo rates as there was a liquidity crunch with repo subscriptions touching Rs 90,000 crore on a regular basis.
The domestic stock markets felt the repercussions of the US crisis as the FIIs started selling. This, combined with the rising trade balance, caused the rupee to fall. Meanwhile, the Fed’s assurance and the US treasury’s resuscitation measures brought cheer to the US markets with the dollar strengthening, which in turn put pressure on the rupee again.
The RBI intervened to supply dollars which depleted the reserves further by nearly $40 billion in these two months. The squeezing of liquidity on this score combined with news of a possible scare on a bank, led to panic that raised interest rates as liquidity dried up with mutual funds also queuing up for redemptions.
Relief came in the form of RBI intervention in several quick steps which have sort of restored some order. Meanwhile, with the dollar strengthening, the price of gold and silver fell in the global market and the signs of a recession in the US led to crude oil rapidly lose ground. In this set-up, all markets exhibited some crazy levels of volatility.
The call market witnessed the highest annualised volatility of 349% as the Mibor ranged between 6.07% and 20.3% during these 2 months. The continuous speculation of RBI action and a tepid response followed up by a series of CRR and repo rate cuts created this volatility in end-September and first half of October.
This really means that a bank which had enough liquidity could have made a lot of money by trading this volatility. The second most volatile market was the stock market, with the Nifty exhibiting a level of 63%, as the index slid from 4504 to a low of 2524 and then recovered.
The continuous FII withdrawal of $7 billion added to this slide as other players took similar steps. The third volatile market was quite unrelated to the crisis per se directly, as crude oil continued its descent from above $120 to the region of $ 60/barrel. With volatility of 52% in these 2 months, it was a very hot investment option though it would have been more of a bear market.
The fourth most volatile market was the market for bullion with gold displaying a volatility level of 35% and silver with 43%. This was a direct consequence of the strengthening of the dollar as bullion is considered to be a substitute for the dollar and investors switch from one to the other easily.
A stronger dollar made more sense resulting in silver showing a min-max variation of Rs 4400/kg while silver had a range of Rs 2800/10 gms. The government security market (as shown by the NSE GSec total returns index) was relatively less volatile, but thanks to the interest rate gyrations, had a volatility of 21% which is over twice of its historical average of 8-10%.
Lastly, the rupee-dollar rates was relatively subdued at 13.5% mainly due to RBI intervention which ensured that the daily variations were kept under check and while the RBI reference rate did cross Rs 50/dollar, it has been kept within a range of Rs 48-50 most of the time.
The revelation really is that this is probably one of the rare occasions when all sections of the financial markets have been volatile, and there were really opportunities for investors who were willing to take the risk.
However, as the gyrations were in both directions, it would have been difficult to guess the direction and magnitude of change with the RBI actually controlling the strings - the fact that it has intervened in the market when least expected in both the money and forex market, means that game, set and match really goes to the monetary authority.
(The author is NCDEX chief economist. Views are personal)
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Investors_ride__roller-coaster_across_markets/articleshow/3674676.cms
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HOW HE DID IT 2008
The Age of Obama
Obama will need the spirits of Kennedy, FDR and Lincoln, and also a patient public.
PHOTOS
The Path to Victory
Obama's breathless race to the finish
Video: Election Confessions
By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 5, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Nov 17, 2008
From the Editors (2) Highlights: Newsweek's Special Election Project Quindlen: What Obama Means to This Nation See All Recommended (6) Spread The Wealth? What’s New? Obama Leads Dem Takeover of National Politics Opinion: Lessons from the Election on U.S. Power Fineman: Obama's Supporters Must Be Reckoned With Ex-Bush Official: We Should Talk to Iran 'Wal-Mart Women' Won't Save McCain—Or the GOP See All Topics (3) Ronald Reagan Barack Obama The White House See All
He was, once, the consummate outsider. The first time Barack Obama saw the White House was a quarter century ago, in 1984, when he was working as a community organizer based at the Harlem campus of the City College of New York. President Reagan was proposing reductions in student aid. The young Obama, just out of Columbia, got together with student leaders—"most of them black, Puerto Rican, or of Eastern European descent, almost all of them the first in their families to attend college"—to take petitions protesting the cuts to the New York delegation on Capitol Hill. Afterward, Obama wrote in "The Audacity of Hope," the group wandered down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington Monument and then to the White House, where they stood outside the gates, looking in.
The glib literary move at this point would be to note how Obama, who will become the 44th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2009, will now return to that house to undo the work that was unfolding inside all those years ago—the work of the Republican Party of Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush. But the story, like Obama himself, is more complicated than one might think. The Democratic Party's success in 2008 is not a straightforward revenge-of-the-left drama. Many true believers say this is the dawn of a new progressive era, a time of resurgent (and in many ways rethought) liberalism. The highly caffeinated have high hopes. At the same time, many conservatives—most, it seems, with a show on Fox News—see things the same way, and believe an Age of Obama will be a grim hour of redistribution at home and weakness abroad.
But if Obama governs as he ran—from the center—then there will be disappointed liberals and conservatives. The left may feel somehow cheated, and the right, eager to launch perpetual assaults on the new administration, could well find Obama as elusive and frustrating as the opposition found Reagan.
Parallels from the past risk seeming irrelevant and antique given the enormity of the historical moment. A nation whose Constitution enshrined slavery has elected an African-American president within living memory of days when blacks were denied fundamental human rights—including the right to vote. Hyperbole around elections comes easy and cheap, but this is a moment—a year—when even superlatives cannot capture the magnitude of the change that the country voted for last Tuesday. "If there is anyone out there who doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our Founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer," Obama told an adoring yet serious throng in Chicago's Grant Park. He alluded to the historic nature of the victory only indirectly. "This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations," he said. He did not need, really, to add anything to that: that he was saying the words was testament enough.
Obama ran, in part, by arguing that his candidacy transcended race. Perhaps it did; many of us believed that his skin color, unusual name and unfamiliar background might well cost him the election. As it turned out, he won decisively, a rare feat for a Democratic presidential nominee. Does this mean that America is now beyond black and white? No, but we are much further ahead than we were a week ago. Obama's victory, no matter what one's politics, is a redemptive moment in the life of a nation for which race has been called, simply and starkly, "the American dilemma."
John McCain is a man of honor, a patriot who has lived a life of service and devotion to country. He was, however, on the wrong side of history in 2008. Like Hillary Clinton, also a formidable American and public servant, he had the great personal misfortune to be standing in the path of an unstoppable political force. (One of the riddles of the age will be what might have happened had he survived the South Carolina primary in 2000 and defeated Bush for the Republican nomination eight years ago.) External forces, chiefly the economic collapse in the autumn and President Bush's stubbornly low approval ratings, created an environment that made a GOP victory virtually impossible. With a man of Obama's undeniable political gifts on the other side, the task became actually impossible.
Like Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and Reagan in 1980, the Obama win of 2008 marks a real shift in real time. It is early yet, but it is not difficult to imagine that we will, for years to come, think of American politics in terms of Before Obama and After Obama. Certainly many of his voters already see the world this way. Exit polls suggest that one of every 10 voters was casting a ballot for the first time, and they were overwhelmingly minority or young. Eighteen- to 24-year-olds accounted for roughly the same percentage of the electorate—17 percent—as they did in 2004, but while the split four years ago was 54-40 percent for John Kerry, it was 68-30 percent for Obama, a net swing of 24 points in Obama's favor, which was by far the biggest shift in any age group.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/167598

Obama Is Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Senator Barack Obama with his wife, Michelle, and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. with his wife, Jill, in Chicago on Tuesday night.

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: November 5, 2008
Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.
"Now comes the tough part, of course. But the symbolism of this magnificent choice by the American people cannot but illuminate the world."
Steve S, New York
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The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country.
But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago.
Mr. Obama, 47, a first-term senator from Illinois, defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona, 72, a former prisoner of war who was making his second bid for the presidency.
To the very end, Mr. McCain’s campaign was eclipsed by an opponent who was nothing short of a phenomenon, drawing huge crowds epitomized by the tens of thousands of people who turned out to hear Mr. Obama’s victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago.
Mr. McCain also fought the headwinds of a relentlessly hostile political environment, weighted down with the baggage left to him by President Bush and an economic collapse that took place in the middle of the general election campaign.
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” said Mr. Obama, standing before a huge wooden lectern with a row of American flags at his back, casting his eyes to a crowd that stretched far into the Chicago night.
“It’s been a long time coming,” the president-elect added, “but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.”
The focus shifted quickly on Wednesday to the daunting challenges facing the president-elect, with his supporters offering sober reflections of what lies ahead.
“We’re in deep trouble,” said Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and leader in the civil rights movement, on the Today show on NBC.
“We’ve got to get our economy out of the ditch, end the war in Iraq and bring our young men and women home, provide health care for all our citizens,” Mr. Lewis said. “And he’s going to call on us, I believe, to sacrifice. We all must give up something.”
Mr. McCain delivered his concession speech under clear skies on the lush lawn of the Arizona Biltmore, in Phoenix, where he and his wife had held their wedding reception. The crowd reacted with scattered boos as he offered his congratulations to Mr. Obama and saluted the historical significance of the moment.
“This is a historic election, and I recognize the significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight,” Mr. McCain said, adding, “We both realize that we have come a long way from the injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation.”
Not only did Mr. Obama capture the presidency, but he led his party to sharp gains in Congress. This puts Democrats in control of the House, the Senate and the White House for the first time since 1995, when Bill Clinton was in office.
The day shimmered with history as voters began lining up before dawn, hours before polls opened, to take part in the culmination of a campaign that over the course of two years commanded an extraordinary amount of attention from the American public.
As the returns became known, and Mr. Obama passed milestone after milestone —Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa and New Mexico — people rolled spontaneously into the streets to celebrate what many described, with perhaps overstated if understandable exhilaration, a new era in a country where just 143 years ago, Mr. Obama, as a black man, could have been owned as a slave.
For Republicans, especially the conservatives who have dominated the party for nearly three decades, the night represented a bitter setback and left them contemplating where they now stand in American politics.
Republican leaders began on Wednesday what will likely be a lengthy re-examination of their brand, as Democrats hope to shape a long-term realignment of the electoral map.
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Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Phoenix, Michael Luo and Marjorie Connelly from New York and Jeff Zeleny from Chicago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/us/politics/06elect.html?hp



PM Manmohan Singh hails Obama's 'extraordinary' win
5 Nov 2008, 1304 hrs IST, AFP

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh congratulated US president-elect Barack Obama on his "extraordinary" victory on Wednesday and invited him
to visit India at the earliest opportunity.

Singh said the people of India and the United States were bound by a shared commitment to freedom, justice, pluralism, individual rights and democracy.

"These ideals provide a solid bedrock for friendship and strategic partnership between our two nations," he said, hailing Obama's "extraordinary journey to the White House."

Future India-US cooperation would be an "important factor for world peace, stability and progress," the prime minister added.

Mahatma Gandhi inspires Obama
5 Nov 2008, 1644 hrs IST, PTI

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama, who has scripted history by getting elected as the first black President of the United States, has always seen Mahatma
Gandhi as an inspiration who reminds him about the "real message of life".

Obama also flaunts his love for the apostle of peace by having a portrait of Mahatma at his Senate Office.

The Democrat, who favours US having close links with India, has told an Indian magazine that he was "fortunate" to have close Indian-American friends and recalled the rural development work his mother did in the country.

Through the power of his example and his own unshakable spirit, Gandhi inspired a people to resist oppression, sparking a revolution that freed a nation from colonial rule, the Democratic Presidential-elect had said.

"Gandhi's significance is universal. Countless people around the world have been touched by his spirit and example. His victory in turn inspired a generation of young Americans to peacefully wipe out a system of overt oppression that had endured for a century.

"And more recently led to velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe and extinguished apartheid in South Africa," the 47-year-old Senator from Illinois had said in his message on October 2, birth anniversary of Gandhi

Obama had said that he always looked to Mahatma Gandhi as an inspiration, because he embodies the kind of transformational change that can be made when ordinary people come together to do extraordinary things.

"That is why his portrait hangs in my Senate office; to remind me that real results will not just come from Washington, they will come from the people," Obama, who won the historic presidential poll, had said.

He had said that while formulating his strategy to free India from the clutches of the then British rulers, Gandhi had a choice.

"He (Gandhi) chose courage over fear." Through the power of his example and his own unshakable spirit, he inspired a people to resist oppression, sparking a revolution that freed a nation from colonial rule.

Top Takes from the epicenter of the global crisis


5 Nov, 2008, 2037 hrs IST,Sudeshna Sen, ECONOMICTIMES.COM

Even as America's first black president took centre stage in all discussions, pressure mounted on the BoE to drop interest rates by a full percentage point as recent data pointed to further recessionary pressures in the UK. In a key survey, the UK services sector shrank to its lowest level since 1996 in October, while official figures show that manufacturing fell for the seventh month run. Experian, a leading credit information company showed that in the first 9 months of this year, business failures and insolvencies rose 22% annually, to 16,591 companies going bust.

In Q3 alone, the figure rose to 5,957, a 28.2 % increase over last year. Experian warned that now more than ever, businesses need to safeguard the supply of their goods and services ad ensure that their customers and suppliers have the means to pay. Key sectors hit include business services, building and construction, and property. The City of London, predictably, led the bankruptciesbut Northern Ireland and East Anglia beat the trend.

Arcelor Mittal to double production cuts

Arcelor Mittal, the world's biggest steekmakers, announced it would double production cuts to 30% of its production this year, even as it announced less than expected profits to report a 29% rise in Q3 profits to $ 3.8 bn. The Luxembourg based company joins its peers around the world as steel prices weaken, and also forecast earnings will drop almost 48% in the Q4. "Things have worsened in the last three weeks. We have had to accelerate" our cuts, the company's chief financial officer, Aditya Mittal, said in a conference call with reporters. Earlier the company had denied it was shutting down its Ukraine plant. It predicted. Arcelor Mittal also said that it was aiming to cut its debt burden by $10bn by the end of 2009.

Some UK companies to increase retirement age

As UK companies struggle with pension schemes under pressure, some companies are planning to increase their retirement age to 65, like BT and HSBC, and overhauling some elements of their usually generous pension schemes. Neither have yet finalized the changes with pension trustees or unions. The idea is that raising the retirement age will ease pressure on meeting shortfalls in the pension funds, and also give employees breathing time for them to recover.

One rising concern here, is that while the expected round of lay offs will be absorbed over time, employees who are on the verge of retirement will be hit the worst – EU regulations that allow companies to lay off people over a certain age, and those over 60 will be left holding pensions that are highly reduced in value, leaving them with much less to tide over the recession years.

US private sector cuts 157,000 jobs in Oct


5 Nov, 2008, 1918 hrs IST, AGENCIES

NEW YORK: US private employers cut a larger-than-expected 157,000 jobs in October, a report by a private employment service said on Wednesday.


ADP Employer Services also said it revised the number of jobs lost in September to 26,000 from the originally reported loss of 8,000. ADP said the private sector job losses in October were the highest since November 2002. The report comes ahead of Friday's key payrolls by the government, which is more comprehensive than the ADP data and is expected to show a drop of 200,000 in non-farm payrolls. Some are expecting an even bigger drop.

"The payroll number has been consistently weaker than ADP. We have a 250,000 decline for October payroll," said James O'Sullivan, economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. "Hopefully the absolute decline should bottom in the second quarter but there are a lot uncertainties."

On Wall Street, stock index futures added slightly to earlier losses. U.S. government bonds, which generally benefit from weak economic conditions, pared their earlier losses. Economists had expected the ADP report to show 100,000 private-sector jobs were lost in October, according to the median of forecasts in a Reuters poll. The 29 forecasts ranged from a drop of 210,000 to a decline of 50,000. The ADP Employer Services report was jointly developed with Macroeconomic Advisers LLC.




'Obama-Biden team will take India-US relationship to next level'


5 Nov, 2008, 1401 hrs IST, IANS

NEW YORK: An influential Democratic Indian American leader has asserted that the Obama-Biden team in the White House would take the India-US relatio
nship to the next level. Swadesh Chhatterjee has also discounted a recent Obama statement that he would help resolve the Kashmir dispute, which some in India saw as interference.

"Though there is a perception that the India-US relationship would go backwards (under Obama presidency), there is no reason to think that way," Chatterjee, national financial chair of Asian Americans for Obama, told IANS after the Illinois Senator was declared winner of the presidential election.

Chatterjee, who was bestowed with a Padmashri by the Indian Government in 2001 for playing a key role in rebuilding India-US relationship post-Pokhran II, is known to be a close friend of the Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

"I think, Obama-Biden team would look at India as one of the strongest allies of the United State in the 21st century," said Chatterjee, who played a lead role in galvanising the Indian American community to get the India-US nuclear deal passed by the US Congress.

Chatterjee said the Biden-Obama team feels India has a lot to offer to resolve the issues in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "I think the US needs the help of India, and no other country can help the US better than India," he said.

When asked about the recent statement of Obama that he would facilitate resolving the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, Chatterjee said people are reading much more into it than they should.

"Because Obama made the comment that Kashmir issue should be resolved does not mean that the US is going to interfere," he observed.

"I really believe that Obama would take exactly the same position as was told before by the Democratic Party, that Kashmir is an issue between India and Pakistan and they should resolve within themselves. No way is the US going to interfere on the Kashmir issue," Chatterjee said.

Referring to his close association with Biden, Chatterjee said the Vice President-elect would play the most influential role in shaping the foreign policy of the US in the Obama administration. Biden currently is chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"Biden is a friend of India. He would play a very important role when it comes to having relationship with India," he said, adding: "You would see the relationship grow much deeper."

Full text of Barack Obama's victory speech


5 Nov, 2008, 1133 hrs IST, AGENCIES

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders
is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled ? Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he's fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation's next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House. And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics ? you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to ? It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington ? it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy, who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime ? two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America ? I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you ? we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years ? block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

continued. pl see:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/US_POLL/Full_text_of_Barack_Obamas_victory_speech/articleshow/3676016.cms

Analysis: Next up after Obama win, governing


5 Nov, 2008, 1008 hrs IST, AGENCIES

WASHINGTON: Now comes the hard part for Barack Obama Obama essentially came out of nowhere, beat the Democratic establishment, conquered doubts abou
t his experience and overcame questions about his race to be elected the first black U.S. president after a grueling campaign that lasted nearly two years.

As president-elect, he faces three immediate challenges: confronting the worst economic conditions since the 1930s Great Depression, determining the next steps in two lingering wars, and leading his Democrats, including liberals expecting that the change he promises will come instantly. It won't.

On the heels of a campaign in which cash wasn't a concern, Obama must tackle all of those tasks with no room in the budget as the nation heads for a painful, perhaps long-lasting, recession.

No new president has faced so much since Franklin Delano Roosevelt _ and even he didn't have two wars on his plate.

Roosevelt had four months to come up with programs to address the Great Depression before he took office on March 4, 1933.

Obama gets just 2 1/2 to put together his government; inauguration is Jan. 20.

He will chart the country's course against this dreary backdrop: Unemployment is at 6.1 percent and predicted to rise as high as 7.5 percent next year; pessimistic consumers have curtailed borrowing and spending; home foreclosures are rampant; government health insurance and pension programs face huge financial problems; and, 152,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq more than five years after the initial invasion, while 32,000 are in Afghanistan in the sixth year of the war against terrorism.

With Democrats expanding their majorities in both the House and Senate, Obama will have to figure out how to lead a country that's more conservative than liberal while trying to satisfy the left wing of his party. He will face demands for a quick withdrawal from Iraq. He's promised withdrawal, but carefully.

From the outset, how Obama acts to deal with these conditions will set the tone for his presidency.

Voters got an early glimpse of his style last month when Wall Street collapsed, stocks fluctuated and the government intervened. He struck a cautious stance and deferred to lawmakers dealing directly with the problems. He was deliberative and careful in his response _ perhaps just the approach voters were seeking after eight years of what critics call President George W. Bush's cowboy approach.

Yet, Obama may be blamed for recession woes despite the fact that he inherited the mess from Bush. The troubles are on Obama's watch now even if there's little he can do about them. The president in power always suffers when the economy tanks. Just ask the first President George Bush in 1992.

Indeed, coming in with a big victory doesn't guarantee success. Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson won with 61 percent of the vote in 1964. He won his Great Society programs in his first two years but his administration essentially collapsed in the final two with the escalation of the Vietnam War.

In choosing Obama as the 44th president, the nation took a historic leap beyond its legacy of slavery and toward healing racial tensions just four decades after the tumultuous Civil Rights movement.

Politically, Obama's election amounted to a wholesale rejection of the status quo after eight years of Bush and Republican rule.

Obama -- From a low-paid community worker to President


5 Nov, 2008, 1006 hrs IST, PTI

WASHINGTON: From a small-time community worker to the most powerful man in the world, Barack Obama's victory in the US Presidential polls marks a hu
ge political transformation in a country with a racist past that will have a Black occupy the top post for the first time.

A votary of strong ties with India, the 47-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer and a Democrat reached the White House exactly 45 years after the Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King challenged Americans to embrace his "dream" of equality.

Barack Hussein Obama, whose father was a Kenyan and mother a White American, himself has had no misgivings on the herculean task he faced in getting elected as President because of his race and name. This was reflected by his recent comment that getting elected to the White House would be a "leap".

Undertaking his campaign with a catchy slogan -- 'The Change We Need' -- Obama presented himself to America as a fresh face with the knowledge and mettle needed for the White House.

He emerged victorious after a gruelling and bitter 21-month-long campaign in which he overcame the challenge from high-profile fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton and Vietnam War veteran Republican nominee John McCain.

Born on August 4, 1961, in Hawaii, Obama will be the first Black President, a development that demonstrates a major change in America, which has witnessed bitter racism for centuries before the social evil was abolished about 200 years ago.


ABC News
Russia Warns of New Missile Deployment
New York Times - 31 minutes ago
By ELLEN BARRY and SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY MOSCOW - In a wide-ranging attack on the United States as it elected a new president, the Russian leader Dmitri A. Medvedev warned on Wednesday that Moscow might deploy short-range missiles in the Baltic region to ...
Russian president Dmitri Medvedev orders missiles deployed in Europe Times Online



Russia sets tough tone with new White House Reuters
Hindu - RIA Novosti - Financial Times - Telegraph.co.uk
all 863 news articles »


BBC News
Press Review | 05.11.2008 European Press Review: Welcome, Barack Obama
Deutsche Welle - 1 hour ago
Most international newspapers seemed happily surprised by Barack Obama's victory. The election was a lesson in democracy, one Paris commentator wrote while others said disappointment may be on the road ahead.
How Obama made it to the US President-elect IBNLive.com
A Moment in Time Washington Post
CIOL - Spiegel Online - New York Times - guardian.co.uk
all 1,076 news articles » ?????? ??? »


Malaysia Star
Democrats Increase Their Strength in the House
New York Times - 34 minutes ago
By CARL HULSE House Democrats expanded their numbers on Tuesday, giving Speaker Nancy Pelosi more maneuvering room as she seeks to forge ahead with the agenda of President-elect Barack Obama.
Democrats strengthen hold on congress after key victories guardian.co.uk
New Congress turns more -- much more -- Democratic The Associated Press
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MTV UK
Obama campaign blazes to victory
BBC News - 8 hours ago
By Kevin Connolly Chicago offered us its own spectacular countdown to the end of the longest presidential campaign in history. The setting sun sliding down the glass faces of the great downtown skyscrapers marked the ebbing of the final hours.
Obama owns election night in Chicago Xinhua
Obama says change has come to America Reuters India
Aljazeera.net - guardian.co.uk - The Associated Press - Voice of America
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Washington Post
Asian leaders voice hopes over Obama
AFP - 37 minutes ago
BEIJING (AFP) - Asian leaders spoke of their desire for closer ties with the United States and voiced hope that America will play a positive international role after Barack Obama's historic election triumph Wednesday.
Afghan president demands Obama end civilian deaths The Associated Press
US Military Investigates Reports of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan Voice of America
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all 569 news articles »


BBC News
Hope washes across Africa after Obama triumph
Reuters South Africa - 34 minutes ago
By Daniel Wallis KOGELO, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenyans in Barack Obama's ancestral homeland danced with joy on Wednesday and the election of America's first black president sparked hope that he would tackle poverty and disease in Africa.
Obama's Kenyan relatives elated, holiday declared The Associated Press
Africans elated by first black US president CNN International
Voice of America - BBC News - Press Trust of India - AllAfrica.com
all 1,299 news articles » ?????? ??? »

House Dems win their biggest majority in 15 years
CNN - 32 minutes ago
(CNN) -- House Democrats are on track to gain at least 17 seats in the next Congress, according to CNN projections, giving Speaker Nancy Pelosi her party's most powerful majority since 1993.
Democrats Increase Their Strength in the House New York Times
Democrats Earn Larger Majority in Congress ABC News
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all 2,910 news articles »


The State of Black America
Annual Report on Socio-economic Conditions in Black America


The State of Black America is the annual Urban League report that addresses the issues central to Black America in the current year. The publication is a barometer of the conditions, experiences and opinions of Black America. It examines black progress in education, homeownership, entrepreneurship, health and other areas. The publication forecasts certain social and political trends and proposes solutions to the community's and America's most pressing challenges.

Published since 1976, The State of Black America is released each year during a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., at the Legislative Policy Conference.

March 2008
In the Black Woman's Voice

The 2008 edition of the State of Black America report is subtitled "In the Black Woman's Voice." As the subtitle suggests, the report provides the black female perspective of the challenges that currently confront women of color in America.

The 2008 State of Black America also presents the National Urban League's groundbreaking Opportunity Compact, a comprehensive set of principles and policy economic and social mainstream of this nation. The Compact is not only detailed The Opportunity Compact provides the framework for the 2008 edition, with several essays addressing the recommendations set out in the Compact.

"By uplifting black women, especially those struggling hardest to keep their families together and their dreams on track, we lift up every American community. I encourage you to read this year's edition of the State of Black America: In the Black Woman's Voice with special attention to the Opportunity Compact. Our country urgently needs a new vision to close the gaps between black and white Americans. The State of Black America and the Opportunity Compact will help guide the way."

-Marc H. Morial, National Urban League President & CEO




March 2007
Portrait Of The Black Male

According to the 2007 National Urban League Equality Index, although many black men are doing well, glaring gaps continue to exist between black men and their white counterparts. These gaps are caused and aggravated, in large measure, by the underperformance of a disproportionate number of black men in a variety of areas and for a variety of reasons.

Because of its devastating and far-reaching ramifications, this underperformance of the black male is the most serious economic and civil rights challenge we face today.

The 2007 State of Black America report takes up this challenge with a fresh and in-depth look at the current conditions affecting the black male. Based on this research and analysis by some of America's best minds, the National Urban League presents several targeted and comprehensive recommendations designed to eliminate the equality gaps and empower all black Americans, male and female.

The price of this issue is reduced substantially from $29.95 to $14.95. To order in advance, call Rose Jefferson at 212 558-5316.



Opportunity Compact



This year's report on The State of Black America continues to examine the equality gaps, as researched in the Equality Index, that remain virtually unchanged at 0.73 from last year (2005) between Black and White Americans.

To combat this gap in equality, the National Urban League Opportunity Compact addresses the scourge of poverty and lays the groundwork for economic empowerment of African Americans and others in four areas: homeownership, jobs, economic development and our children.

The State of Black America 2006 report opens with four essays addressing these four components. While each essay stands on its own as an independent policy analysis, together they present a cohesive and systematic approach for closing the nation's equality gaps. Also, included in this year's report are essays on Hurricane Katrina and poverty, race and healthcare disparities, racial disparity and prison boom, and the state of civil rights.


April 2005

Prescriptions for Change

The 2005 edition of the National Urban League's The State of Black America: Prescriptions for Change examines the equality gaps that continue to undermine African Americans' quest for parity in the American mainstream and, equally important, propose specific remedies to help eliminate disparities in particular areas. Once again, the National Urban League Equality Index included in the volume provides a statistical foundation for the wide-ranging discussion that must occur; and the essays, opinion articles, and reports on Urban League programs it contains will underscore the League's goal of stimulating progress for African Americans in its five areas of major effort: economics, education, health, civil rights and social justice, and civic engagement. Thus, the 2005 edition of The State of Black America joins its predecessors in making an important contribution to the campaign for justice and equality in America.

MARCH 2004

The Complexity of Black Progress

How much closer is America to achieving equality between blacks and whites since the Civil Rights Movement? Not close enough: black progress is precarious at best, according to the finding of The State of Black America 2004.

The 2004 Report also unveils the League's first "Equality Index,' a statistical measurement of the disparities that exist between blacks and whites in economics, housing, education, health, social justice and civic engagement. The report also includes a national survey of the attitudes of blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans regarding quality of life, education, finances, discrimination and other issues.


The Black Movement in the USA
Home / Articles / Entertainment
by Herminne Tonita -

Abolishing slavery in the USA started a new period in American life: a solution to the problem of black-white co-existence within the country had to be found. It’s interesting to see how the attitude of the blacks towards the situation and social status has been changing throughout the twentieth century.

At the turn of the century Charles W. Chesnutt, one of the major representatives of the Black literary stage, voiced the theory of amalgamation of races. A mulatto himself, Chesnutt used to say that if the white and black races mixed, the problem would vanish entirely. He advocated mutual acceptance of the white and black races mostly by means of Negro assimilation, in reality, his theory was condemned to fail on the white-dominated anti-Negro policy world.

Assimilationist attitudes of the fist decade of the twentieth century were replaced by the Marcus Garvey back to Africa movement, which initiated the emigration of American Negroes to Africa and the colonization of Liberia. However, under the existing circumstances this venture also proved inadequate.

The 1920s developed the concept of the New Negro. It can be traced back to Booker T. Washington, who stressed the need for self-help and self-improvement. The more radical view rejected an inferior position in favor of self- respect and ambition. Bruce insisted upon organized resistance in Negro fights for equal rights. The New Negro was to be race-proud, independent, economically advancing and politically advanced.

The victory of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s liberalism in the 1940s meant more progressive social-which was, however, curbed under Eisenhower administration.

It was only in 1955, after the successful anti-segregation city buses boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, that Martin Luther King summed up the objectives for the civil rights movement. He stressed that Negroes in America should stick together and believe in themselves; that they should not be afraid of threats and should oppose violence with a new and powerful weapon they had just discovered: non violent resistance. His mass movement of non-violence and passive resistance by means of demonstrations, boycotts, economic pressures-was aimed at integration and assimilation of the Blacks into American society. King’s assassination in 1969 closed this chapter of the Negroes’ long and tiresome fight for acknowledgement of their civil rights.
The Black Movement in the USA written by Herminne Tonita for FamousWhy.com
FamousWhy.com - Famous People ... Famous Regions, a Lot Of Articles and Free Software Downloads
The Black Movement in the USA Image Search: newsimg.bbc.co.uk

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Civil Rights Timeline

Separate drinking fountains for whites and blacks. "Colored balconies" in movie theaters. Seats in the back of the bus. Soldiers called out to protect little children who were trying to go to school.

It may be difficult to believe these were examples of conditions in America less than 40 years ago. The struggle to change these conditions, and to win equal protection under the law for citizens of all races, formed the backdrop of Martin Luther King's short life.
1954 Brown vs. Board of Education: U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation in public schools.

1955 Bus boycott launched in Montgomery, Ala., after an African-American woman, Rosa Parks, is arrested December 1 for refusing to give up her seat to a white person .

1956 December 21. After more than a year of boycotting the buses and a legal fight, the Montgomery buses desegregate.

1957 Garfield High School becomes first Seattle high school with more than 50 percent nonwhite student body. At previously all-white Central High in Little Rock, Ark., 1,000 paratroopers are called by President Eisenhower to restore order and escort nine black students.

1960 The sit-in protest movement begins in February at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. and spreads across the nation.

1961 Freedom rides begin from Washington, D.C: Groups of black and white people ride buses through the South to challenge segregation. King makes his only visit to Seattle. He visits numerous places, including two morning assemblies at Garfield High School.

1962 Blacks become the majority at Garfield High, 51 percent of the student population - a first for Seattle. The school district average is 5.3 percent. Two killed, many injured in riots as James Meredith is enrolled as the first black at the University of Mississippi.

1963 Police arrest King and other ministers demonstrating in Birmingham, Ala., then turn fire hoses and police dogs on the marchers.

Medgar Evers, NAACP leader, is murdered June 12 as he enters his home in Jackson, Miss. About 1,300 people march from the Central Area to downtown Seattle, demanding greater job opportunities for blacks in department stores.The Bon Marche promises 30 new jobs for blacks.

About 400 people rally at Seattle City Hall to protest delays in passing an open-housing law. In response, the city forms a 12-member Human Rights Commission but only two blacks are included, prompting a sit-in at City Hall and Seattle's first civil-rights arrests. 250,000 people attend the March on Washington, D.C. urging support for pending civil-rights legislation. The event was highlighted by King's "I have a dream" speech.

The Seattle School District implements a voluntary racial transfer program, mainly aimed at busing black students to mostly white schools.

Four girls killed Sept. 15 in bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

1964 Seattle City Council agrees to put together an open-housing ordinance but insists on putting it on the ballot. Voters defeat it by a 2-to-1 ratio. It will be four more years before an open-housing ordinance becomes law.

Three civil-rights workers are murdered in Mississippi.

July 2 - President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Out of 955 people employed by the Seattle Fire Department, just two were African American, and only one was Asian --- 0.2 and 0.1 percent of the force, respectively. By the end of 1993, the department was 12.2 percent African American and 5.6 percent Asian

1965 Malcolm X is murdered Feb. 21, 1965. Three men are convicted of his murder.

August 6. President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act, which King sought, authorized federal examiners to register qualified voters and suspended devices such as literacy tests that aimed to prevent African Americans from voting.

August 11-16: Watts riots leave 34 dead in Los Angeles.

1967 Sam Smith elected Seattle's first black city councilman.

1968 Aaron Dixon becomes first leader of Black Panther Party branch in Seattle.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., unleashing violence in more than 100 cities.

In response to King's death, Seattle residents hurled firebombs, broke windows, and pelted motorists with rocks. Ten thousand people also marched to Seattle Center for a rally in his memory.

Rally at Garfield High in support of Dixon, Larry Gossett, and Carl Miller, sentenced to six months in the King County Jail for unlawful assembly in an earlier demonstration. Before the speakers were finished, firebombs and rocks were flying toward cars coming down 23rd Avenue. Sporadic riots in Seattle's Central Area during the summer.

1969 Edwin Pratt, executive director of the Seattle Urban League and a moderate and respected African American leader, is shot to death while standing in the doorway of his home. The murder has never been solved.

1977 Seattle School Board adopts a plan designed to eliminate racial imblance in schools by fall 1979.

1978 Seattle becomes the largest city in the United States to desegregate its schools without a court order; nearly one-quarter of the school district's students are bused as part of the "Seattle Plan." Two months later, voters pass an anti-busing initiative. It is later ruled unconstitutional

In a blow to efforts to diversify university enrollment, the U.S. Supreme Court outlaws racial quotas in a suit brought by Allan Bakke, a white man who had been turned down by the medical school at University of California, Davis.

1989 Douglas Wilder of Virginia becomes the nation's first African American to be elected state governor.

1992 The first racially based riots in years erupt in Los Angeles and other cities after a jury acquits L.A. police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, an African American.


Source and Copyright 2003 Seattle Times Company
http://www.africanaonline.com/civil_rights_timeline.htm


Political Opportunities and the US Black Movement
Time Line
o 1860-1865 US Civil War
- Slavery Abolished
o 1865 - 1876 Reconstruction
- Civil Rights Amendments
- Union Army occupies the South
- Some progress for Blacks
o 1877-1920 White Counter-Revolution
- White racial superiority recreated under new rules
o 1920-1954 Building Resources and Capacity
o 1954 - 1965 Civil Rights Era
o 1966 - 2000 Post Civil Rights Era
Constitutional Amendments 1865
o 13th: abolishes slavery "except as punishment for a crime"
o 14th: all persons born or naturalized in the US have rights of citizenship regardless of race, religion, national origin, or previous condition of servitude
o 15th: right of men to vote regardless of race etc.

1865-1876 Reconstruction
o Union army occupies the south.
o Blacks vote. Whites who have been in Rebel army cannot. Black elected officials.
o Some reforms. Some improvement for Blacks. Some land reform (has future effects)
o Much turmoil, resistance. Attempts by Whites to re-create racial domination
o Conflicts around 15th amendment disrupt the previous coalition between feminists and supporters of African-American rights.
The End of Reconstruction
o Compromise of 1876 ends Reconstruction to break election deadlock, elect Hayes.
o Union army leaves the south, agreement to let southerners do what they will about race. White southerners can vote again.
o "Healing" White nation by sacrificing Blacks
o Denials that the war was about slavery
o [Later, Confederate soldiers are even made eligible for US veterans' pensions with the same standing as Union soldiers]
1877 - 1920 Era of Explicit Racism
o Slavery was over, but a new racial order was created
o It was created by using proxies for race, circumventing the strictures of the 14th amendment
o Origins teach you how a system was built, once in place hard to see why things are as they are
1870s-1890s
o 90% of all Blacks live in rural areas, 90% in south
- most in cotton farming, dependent on landowners, subject to violent repression.
o Lynchings and KKK terrorism increase
- KKK = local White authorities in sheets
o Blacks demand reparations for slavery immediately after the war. (Whites ignore.)
o Some emigrationism, 500+ actually emigrate to Liberia. Most want to stay.
Creating the New Racial Order
o 1880s - 1890s Southern states pass Jim Crow segregation laws.
o 1893 Plessey vs Furgeson, "Separate but Equal," US Supreme Court effectively guts the 14th amendment.
o Failure of land reform. White elites reconsolidate class privilege
Politics & Race
o Democratic Party = alliance of southern White planters and northern industrialists and working class.
o Republican Party anti-slavery in 1850s (Lincoln).
- 1876-1891 debate whether to support Black rights
- after 1891 abandon Black rights entirely
o Populist movement threatens trans-racial alliance among southern working class
- elite Whites work to disenfranchise Blacks (and working class) to eliminate threat.
Black Disenfranchisement
o No disguise, overt White efforts to disenfranchise Blacks, but accomplish racial goals without explicitly using race (which is illegal)
o Example: Louisiana, 130,344 Blacks registered in 1895, after constitution rewritten, only 5,000 in 1898 and 1,772 in 1916.
o Poll taxes, literacy requirements, personal and periodic registration at difficult-to-reach places, White primaries. "Grandfather clause" protects Whites.
o Same tools in the north disenfranchise White workers especially immigrants.
o Blacks lose all political power.
1895-1920 Virulent Racism
o Presidents Taft and Wilson are explicit racists
o US Supreme Court decisions gut the 14th amendment
o Hundreds of African Americans are lynched (murdered) in the south.
o "Scientific racism" is taught in college science classrooms. This ideology distinguishes northern Aryan from southern Europeans, as well as what we now understand as "races."
o Explicit opposition to any form of mixing of "races." Intermarriage illegal
Black Resistance 1880-1920
o There is resistance to Jim Crow.
o Bus boycotts & consumer boycotts against segregation in the cities.
o Petitions, speeches. Rhetoric of citizenship, equality.
o Northern, educated Blacks speak out for equality, citizenship.
o But lose 1880-1920
Counter-Trends
o Pockets of Black development
o Black migration (cowboys; movements into cities)
o Black schools, colleges
o Black political movements
o Too weak in this era to win, but set up the future (we will return to these)
1910s-1920s
o 1916-1925 Marcus Garvey. Back to Africa. Militant separatist, Black capitalist. Black religious icons.
o 1919 Bloody race riots in many cities, Whites attacking and killing Blacks.
o 1920s NAACP under James Weldon Johnson begins the concerted campaign of lawsuits to chip away at segregation,
- begin the path towards Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).
- Early victories provide resources that increase Black education.
1920s-1930s
o 1920s - 1940s. A. Philip Randolph. Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Strong Black union, political platform.
o 1920s - 1930s Blacks shift voting patterns, become potential swing voters.
- From "knee-jerk Republicans" (holdover from 19th century, Republicans anti-slavery, Lincoln freed the slaves) to willing to vote for whomever supports them and their issues.
o 1936 Blacks play a key role in Roosevelt's New Deal Coalition. Become significant political players.
1940-1960
o 1941 threatened March on Washington, led by Randolph. Called off when FDR agrees to ban racial discrimination in war industries.
o 1942-1945 World War II. Political watershed
o 1945-1960. Post-war politics. Communism and anti-Communism. "Hearts and Minds" Anti-colonialism, independence for African nations. US racial policies become international embarrassment.
What Changed between 1880 and 1960?
Major source:
Doug McAdam. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency. University of Chicago Press, 1982.

The Great Migration:
Rural South to Urban North & South
o 1890 Blacks are 90% rural, 90% southern. No political leverage. Economically dependent. Illiterate. Threat of numbers in southern areas leads to extreme measures to keep them suppressed.
o Between 1900 and 1960 Blacks Move:
- South to North. From 90% southern in 1900 to 60% in 1960.
- Rural to Urban. Southern Blacks: from 9% urban in 1890 and 34% in 1930 to 58% in 1960. The 40% of Blacks in the north are virtually all urban.
Consequences of Urbanization
o Voting in North. Swing votes, parts of political machines. Black Congressmen elected.
o Less daily domination. More able to gather, talk politically without White oversight. Positive consequence of physical segregation.
o Able to support independent Black professionals (ministers, morticians, barbers & hairdressers). Economic independence=political independence.
o Rising education, rising incomes, rising political awareness
o Black newspapers, magazines, news sources.
Organizational Infrastructure Grows
o Black Churches. Larger, can support full-time ministers. Autonomous Organizations, meeting places they control themselves. Social gospel movement = role of church in society.
o Black Colleges. Lawsuits force the equal part of separate but equal. Obtain White money. Massive growth in educated youth. Students economically independent of Whites
o NAACP is a White-dominated organization at the national level, but a Black grassroots organization at the local level mobilized to support & defend Blacks.
Rising Political Influence
o 1865-1920 those Blacks who could vote were staunchly Republican (the anti-slavery party, Lincoln freed the slaves). But after 1880, Republicans do nothing for Black rights
o In 1920s, NAACP and others urge Blacks to vote for whatever party will support Black rights, proportion voting Democrat goes up
o In 1930s, Blacks are part of Roosevelt's New Deal coalition, get some benefits; Eleanor Roosevelt supports more strongly
Rising Education
o Growth in Black education & Black colleges a direct result of NAACP litigation in the 1920s and 1930s
o Court cases forced the "equal" in "separate but equal"
o Southern states had to pay for Black education to defend segregation (but Blacks still lagged way behind Whites)
o These lawsuits also laid the groundwork for 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education
Hope
o Major basis of mobilization is the belief that change is possible "cognitive liberation" (McAdam)
o Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 gave Black people hope that change was possible, that the government would intervene.
o Blacks more positive about Whites in the Civil Rights era, believed Whites were ready to change
o Blacks more integrationist when Whites seem willing to change & are open to integration and power sharing, are more separatist when Whites are more racist and conservative
Politics 1930-1960
o After 1930, Blacks become increasingly important "swing vote" in some northern areas, part of the New Deal coalition
o Blacks voting predominantly but not uniformly Democrat 1930-1960
o 1960 both Republicans and Democrats are backing Civil Rights AND trying to gain White southern votes.
o 1960 Close election, Kennedy vs. Nixon. Kennedy wins, Blacks seen as swing vote. Kennedy gives support to civil rights, while trying to keep White southern vote.
The Civil Rights Era 1954-1969
Events & Themes
1950s
o 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education. Bans segregation, but allows graduate implementation.
o 1954 Emmett Till murdered. Widespread publicity among Blacks.
o 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott, rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. Nation-wide publicity.
o 1950s Malcolm X preaching on the streets of Harlem.
o 1957 King founds Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
White Resistance 1950s
o 1954-1970 (and continuing?) White resistance. Violence against Blacks, close public schools, mobilize organizations
o 1957. White riots at Little Rock High (Arkansas) to block small-scale integration. US Troops protect integration.
o 1954-1960s NAACP persecuted in south. Banned as "Communist." Teachers, others fired for being members. (Same people who were members of NAACP involved in other Black organizations, involved in Black churches.)
The Civil Rights Advance 1960s
o 1960- Sit-ins start (SNCC = Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee)
o 1961 Freedom Rides (CORE=Congress of Racial Equality)
o 1963-65 major civil rights marches, major civil rights legislation
o 1963 March on Washington
o 1963 Kenney killed. President Johnson (a southerner) vows to be the "civil rights president."
o 1964 Public Accommodations Act
Drama of Civil Rights
o Movement uses nonviolence, claims moral high ground
o Segregationists respond violently
o Confrontation leads to disruption
o Federal government, economic elites want peace, less committed to segregation.
o Disruption + moral high ground of non-violence leads "bystanders" to support the Black movement.
o However, many blame the movement for "causing" the violence by challenging people known to be violent
Separatism 1960s
o Nation of Islam (Black Muslims) Elijah Muhammad.
o 1960 TV show: "The Hate that Hate Produced." Expose, controversy
o Malcolm X: most visible. Charismatic, articulate. Rejected non-violence, said Blacks should defend themselves if attacked
o Controversial among Blacks as well as Whites
1964
o Freedom Summer. White college students go south. Civil rights workers killed.
o Battle over the Mississippi delegation to national convention. Fanny Lou Hamer "Is this America?"
o Johnson re-elected. The shift of the White racist vote to the Republican Party.
o Malcolm X travels to Mecca, embraces nonracial Islam, changes his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
1965-6
o Watts riot 1965.
o 1963-1968 Black urban riots. Militancy. Northern/ western. Policing, poverty - not just "rights." White fears.
o 1965 Malcolm X assassinated
o 1965 Selma, the last big civil rights march. Voting Rights Act
o 1966 "Black power" Stokeley Charmichael and SNCC. Marginalization of Whites in the movement. Power rhetoric frightens Whites.
The End of the Civil Rights Era
o 1966-1967 King takes the movement north. Much less success. "Where Do We Go From Here?" Stresses need to address economic issues
o 1968 ML King assassinated. Huge wave of riots.
o 1966-1971 White students increasing involved in anti-war movement. White campus riots over the Vietnam war.
o 1969 Nixon. "Law and order." The beginning of the decline of Black political influence.
Timing of Black Protests, Riots

Anger and Polarization
o White segregationists resisted even moderate reforms
o Non-violence as tactic (vs religious principle for MLK)
o Growing Black activist anger at White reactions
o Segregation laws a narrow goal: cannot address the economic, political, cultural deprivation of a people
o Riots 1963-1970: Eruptions of the Black lower classes. White responsiveness + White fear
o Belief in possibility of race war by late 1960s
o Black turn to separatism, "Black power," "Black pride" magnifies themes long present in the culture
o White flight. Race-coded "law and order" & "anti-crime" rhetoric.
Black prison admissions & disparity rise 1940-1980
Black Movement Since 1970
Politics 1964-2000
o 1964 election pits strong Civil Rights activist LB Johnson against far right conservative Goldwater. Self-conscious racists shift to Republicans, Democrats come to be viewed as the party of Blacks & civil rights.
o 1968 - 2000 Blacks vote Democratic 95%+. Republicans ignore the Black vote, seek to shore up the White vote with "race coded" appeals. Democrats take Black vote for granted, chase White votes.
1970s Part 1
o Implementation struggles. White resistance changes form.
o Black political organizations become part of the "system."
o Affirmative action policies are initiated
o Cultural nationalism grows: Black (Afro-American) studies departments; Kwanza invented
o Black progress: reduced poverty, increased education, increased college enrollment.
Mobilization precedes external funding
1970s Part 2
o "White backlash." Anti-busing riots oppose school integration: Boston, Louisville. Rhetoric of "neighborhood schools" & racial attacks.
o Generally difficult economic times: stagflation, gas lines. Political left declines, White activists involved in environmentalism, anti-nuclear.
o "War on drugs" begins, Black imprisonment climbs.
o White working class, not Blacks, are the swing votes.
o Split in Nation of Islam 1975: most follow W. Deen Muhammad into mainstream non-racial Islam; Louis Farrakhan leads separatist splinter)

1980s Part 1
o Reaganism. Conservatives strike back. Huge cuts in welfare, college scholarship programs, low-income housing, other social programs. Large tax cuts, S&L bailout create deficits.
o The effective end of federal support for affirmative action in employment. Whites even use MLK's equality rhetoric against Blacks.
o Recessions. "When White America has a cold, Black America has pneumonia." Economic disaster in segregated Black urban areas: unemployment, poverty, hunger, infant mortality, segregation, crime all rise.
1980s part 2
o Black high school graduation continues to rise, but Black college enrollments drop.
o White flight. Limited progress in school integration begins to reverse. By end of the decade, schools are as segregated in 1990 as in 1960. (Trend continues into the 2000s.)
o Race coded use of crime as a political issue: "Willie Horton" 1988.
o Politicized "drug war" leads to massive incarceration of African Americans.
Black Prison admissions & disparity 1983-1999
1990s Economics
o Early 1990s recession followed by long period of boom.
o Late 1990s low unemployment, growing wealth of the top 20% (especially top 1%) of the population.
o Declining real incomes since the 1970s of the bottom 60%, especially the bottom 40%, with only a slight rise at the end of the decade, decline with 2000s recession. Rise in homelessness of families, particularly of Black families.
o Dismantling of the last vestiges of a social welfare system. There is no "safety net" for the poor, few supports for the "working poor."
o Growing self-segregation of the affluent: well-off people rarely even see non-affluent people. More economic segregation than in any prior period.
1990s Race
o Growing Black middle class, college educated. Largely segregated in Black middle class areas, as Whites flee even non-poor Blacks.
o Declining economic well-being of Black lower class.
o Simultaneous growth of integrated, non-racist consciousness among Whites AND of renewed "respectability" of overtly racist images, jokes, language.
o Explicit White racist movements growing.
1990s Events
o 1992 Rodney King beating & trial. Major shift in the anger of the Black middle class.
o 1992 Clinton elected.
o 1995 Million Man March. Louis Farrakahn and the Black masses.
o Growing Afrocentrism, separatism among middle class Black families. Kwanza celebrations spread. (Note: Most Blacks are Christian; Kwanza is a cultural celebration, not religious.)
o 1995 OJ Simpson trial.
o 1995. Oklahoma City bombing by White right-wing anti-government terrorist.
Some Themes of the late 1990s & early 2000s
o Continuing increases in anti-crime rhetoric, building more prisons
o Declining high school graduation for Blacks after gains of the 1970s
o Growing segregation
o Lack of political unity among Black movement organizations
o Debates about affirmative action
The 2000s
o Close election dramatizes problems of voter registration, unequal voting procedures, disenfranchisement of felons.
o WTC attack of 9/11/2001 - "war." Implications for African Americans unclear.
o Economic downturn - consequences for African Americans?
o Attacks on Affirmative Action in college admissions (the last place where it still exists)
- Supreme Court rules strict "formulas" cannot be used, but race may be considered qualitatively
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~oliver/Soc626/Lectures/Political%20Opportunities%20and%20the%20US%20Black%20Movement.doc

Chávez felicita a Obama por "histórica" victoria
miércoles 5 de noviembre de 2008 10:08 GYT
CARACAS (Reuters) - El mandatario venezolano, Hugo Chávez, felicitó el miércoles al demócrata Barack Obama por su "importante victoria" en la elección presidencial de Estados Unidos y el Gobierno del país sudamericano dijo estar dispuesto a restablecer las golpeadas relaciones.
A través de un comunicado de la cancillería, Chávez, un fiero crítico del Gobierno de George W. Bush, igualmente expresó su felicitación a los estadounidenses por el resultado electoral.
"La elección histórica de un afrodescendiente a la cabeza de la nación más poderosa del mundo es el síntoma de que el cambio de época que se ha gestado desde el Sur de la América podría estar tocando a las puertas de los Estados Unidos", dijo la cancillería en la nota oficial.
Las relaciones entre Caracas y Washington han sido tensas desde que el gobernante venezolano asumió el poder en 1999, pese a que el país sudamericano es uno de los principales suplidores de crudo y derivados al mercado estadounidense.
"El Gobierno de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela ratifica su voluntad y su determinación de edificar, sobre la base del respeto absoluto de la soberanía, una agenda bilateral constructiva para el bienestar de los pueblos venezolano y estadounidense", agregó la cancillería.
Chávez, quien afirma liderar una revolución socialista a favor de los pobres, expulsó en septiembre al embajador de Estados Unidos en Venezuela al tiempo que ordenó retirar su delegación diplomática de Washington como apoyo al Gobierno de Bolivia, que había tomado una decisión similar.
"Desde la Patria de Simón Bolívar, estamos convencidos que ha llegado la hora de establecer nuevas relaciones entre nuestros países y con nuestra región, sobre la base de los principios del respeto a la soberanía, la igualdad y la cooperación verdadera", agregó Venezuela en la nota oficial.
Chávez, que esperaba el triunfo de Barack Obama, a quien ha llamado el "hombre negro", le pidió que levantara el embargo a Cuba, sacara las tropas estadounidenses de Irak y cesara en lo que califica los ataques de Washington a Irán y Venezuela.
El gobernante venezolano agregó que está dispuesto a renovar el diálogo con el nuevo presidente de Estados Unidos para reanimar las lastimadas relaciones diplomáticas entre ambos países.
Obama, que se convirtió en el primer presidente negro de Estados Unidos, lideró a los demócratas hacia una victoria aplastante que también expandió las mayorías en ambas cámaras del Congreso, en una señal de que los votantes rechazaron enfáticamente los ocho años de gestión del presidente Bush.
(Por Deisy Buitrago, Editado por Silene Ramírez)

Obama presidency likely to bring changes to U.S.-Cuba policy
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@MiamiHerald.com

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/breaking-news/story/757149.html

Washington State National Guard Sgt. Carlos Lazo -- the Iraq veteran who gained fame when he couldn't visit his kids in Cuba -- last traveled to the island in January 2007. As things stand now, he can't go back until 2010.

But with Barack Obama's White House win, Lazo is hopeful that will change -- soon.

''If Obama lifts family travel restrictions on the 22nd of January, I'm sure that in February I will be in Cuba visiting my family -- and celebrating the new Cuba policies,'' Lazo said.

Lazo, 43, became a cause celebre for some when the stricter family reunification travel restrictions put in place by President Bush in 2004 kept Lazo from visiting his children in Cuba. The kids eventually settled in Washington, and Lazo became an Obama campaign volunteer. He personifies one of the clearest examples of how U.S. Cuba policy could change under an Obama presidency.

On the campaign trail, Obama vowed not just to lift family travel restrictions that force Cuban-Americans to wait three years to visit immediate relatives on the island, but also said he would lift the cap on how much money Cuban-Americans can send to the island. He also indicated he would be willing to meet with Cuban leader Raúl Castro, drawing fire from critics who accused Obama of being naive and weak on foreign policy issues.

''Obama will take away restrictions and establish low-level contacts with Cuba, extending a peace branch,'' Lazo said. ``It will be a change from policies that have given the worst results for 50 years.''

People on both sides of the Cuba policy issue wonder if those measured moves will become the first steps to bigger changes, including the eventual lifting of the U.S. trade embargo. Obama has said he supports the embargo, and lifting it would require an act of Congress.

''Obama is willing to sit down with Castro without preconditions -- that will lead to the lifting sanctions and the embargo,'' said conservative Cuban-American commentator Ninoska Pérez, who supported McCain, referring to a position Obama has since slightly modified. He now says there would be preparations for any meeting.

''Obama says he supports the embargo, but obviously he doesn't. He said he supported it to get a certain number of Cuban votes,'' Pérez added. She predicts Obama will lift all travel restrictions, handing a ''victory to the Cuban regime,'' and boosting its government-run travel industry.

''Obama thinks he can sit down with a dictator and convince him to be a democrat,'' she said.

Obama's Latin America foreign policy advisor, Frank Sanchez, said as president the candidate will move quickly ''within [the] possible and practical bounds of his authority'' to lift the family travel and remittances restrictions. Anything more than that, Sanchez told The Miami Herald, will have to wait.
''Just like Barack has said, it took us 50 years to get where we are, we're not going to undo that in five days,'' Sanchez said. ``We want to see some concrete steps from the Cuban government. If we saw all the political prisoners freed, if we saw something like that, a strong sign, we could begin considering other things.''
Vicki Huddleston, a former chief of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, said Obama's moves would lead to brisk business in Miami, creating jobs in the travel industry as more flights take off for the island and businesses pop up to handle the flow of care packages.
More importantly, she said, the stream of Cuban-Americans and their cash in their relatives' pockets will boost the independence of people on the island who are now heavily dependent on the Cuban government for their livelihood.
''They will be able to buy TVs, computers, medicine and food. They'll be able to read The Miami Herald online,'' she said. ''Allowing families to travel between Miami and Cuba begins to give Cubans a voice, because right now the Cuban government holds all the strings.'' The University of Miami's Andy Gomez, of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said a migration crisis could be triggered when more Cuban Americans begin to see for themselves the reality their relatives are living in, and start trying to help their families get out.
The Cuban government, Huddleston said, might have preferred Sen. John McCain.
''They might fear Obama more. The Cuban government is not dumb,'' she said. ``More people and more openness is a bigger threat than isolating them.''
November 5, 2008
Dear Friend,
"Today we become the nation we dream of being, a place where everyone can rise to the level of their true worth, with no false barriers. Today truth triumphs over lies, hope over fear. Today we become the people who can do the great things that are needed to restore health and balance and abundance for all. Today we take the dream and make it real." --Starhawk
An Obama victory is a victory for the peace movement. It sends a message to the political establishment that being against war is the winning position. War is SO Over. American voters have recognized the costs-lives lost, international cooperation thwarted, and tax dollars squandered-and chosen the candidate who promised to end the Iraq war and to use diplomacy first.
We should all take a moment-or a few days or even a week-to relish a job well done. We worked hard for this victory and should celebrate. But we can't stop now: an Obama administration will need our help to live up to its promises.
What do we want from an Obama Administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress? We want an end to the occupation of Iraq and reparations for its people. We don't want the troops from Iraq shipped straight to another losing war in Afghanistan. We want a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan. We want a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Iran. We want the restoration of our civil liberties and the protection of our environment. We want money to bail out homeowners who are in foreclosure because of predatory lenders. We want a NEW New Deal for America: jobs, housing, universal health care, education, roads, public transportation….We want a government that puts the needs of people ahead of the profits of banks and corporations.
Will we get all these things? Not without continuing our feisty, vibrant and sometimes LOUD agitation. We thank you for all the phone calls you made, the doors you knocked on, the money you donated, and the letters your wrote. So breathe a sigh of relief, kick back for a few days, and then let's get back to work.
Special Congratulations to our pledge winners Kelli, Buddy and Noelle- our grand prize winner and 2 runners up! Thank you to everyone who worked so hard, in so many ways, to truly embody being a Voter for Peace this election!
Thank you for giving peace a vote and a voice!
Dana, Deidra, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jean, Jodie, Liz, Lori, Medea, Nancy, and Rae

P.S. Read our new Call to Action: Time for a 21st Century Green America! If you'd like to work with us on this campaign contact info[at]codepinkalert.org
The English version below had several small errors in the original translation which I corrected and take responsibility for. klw

GRANMA
November 4, 2008
ENGLISH:
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/ing/f031108i.html
SPANISH ORIGINAL:
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/esp/f031108e.html
Reflections by comrade Fidel
THE NOVEMBER 4TH ELECTIONS
Tomorrow will be a significant day. The world public will be following the
United States elections there. It is the most powerful nation on Earth.
Actually, with less than 5% of the world population it swallows every year
great amounts of oil and gas, minerals, raw materials, consumer goods and
sophisticated products brought from overseas. Many of these, particularly
the fuels and those extracted from mines, are non renewable.
It is the largest arms producer and exporter. Its industrial military
complex also has an insatiable domestic market. Its naval and air forces are
deployed in scores of military basis located in the territory of other
nations. The United States strategic warhead-carrying missiles can reach any
place in the world with absolute precision.
A great number of the cleverest minds in the world are uprooted from their
original countries and placed at the service of the system. It is a
parasitical and plundering empire.
It is a known fact that the black population introduced into the US territory
throughout centuries of slavery is the victim of a marked racial
discrimination.
The Democratic candidate Obama is partly black; the dark skin and features
of that race are predominant in him. He was able to study at a higher
education center where he graduated with outstanding results. He is surely
more clever, better educated and calm than his Republican adversary.
I’m analyzing tomorrow’s elections when the world is enduring a serious
financial crisis –the worst since the 1930s— among many others which have
seriously affected the economy of many nations in the course of over three
fourths of a century.
The international media, the political analysts and commentators are using
part of their time to discuss the issue. Obama is considered the best
political speaker of the United States in the past decades. His compatriot
Toni Morrison, a 1993 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, and the first one
from her ethnic group born in the United States who has been awarded such
prize --an excellent author-- has called him the future President and poet
of that nation.
I have been watching the struggle between the contenders. The black
candidate caused much amazement with his nomination in the face of strong
adversaries. He has well articulated ideas which he hammers once and again
into the voters’ minds. He does not hesitate to claim that more than
Republicans or Democrats they are all Americans, the citizens he characterizes
as the most productive in the world. He says he will reduce taxes for the
middle class, where he includes practically everybody, while he will
completely remove them for the poorest and raise them for the wealthiest.
The revenues, he claims, will not be used to bailout banks.
He insists repeatedly that the ruinous spending on Bush’s war in Iraq will
not be paid by the American taxpayers. He will put an end to it and bring
the US troops back home. Perhaps he is mindful of the fact that that country
had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
However, the blood has been shed of thousands of US troops, injured or
killed in battle, and the lives taken of over a million people in that
Muslim nation. It was a war of conquest imposed by the empire seeking oil.
In light of the current financial crisis and its consequences, the American
people are more concerned over the economy than the war in Iraq. They are
anguishing over their jobs, the safety of their bank deposits and their
retirement funds, and the fear of loosing the purchasing power of their
money and the houses where they live with their families. They wish to have
the certainty that whatever the circumstances they will receive adequate
medical care and that their children will accede to higher education.
Obama is challenging and I think he has taken and will still take great
risks in a country where any extremist can legally purchase a sophisticated
modern weapon anywhere, as was the case in the first half of the 18th
century in the west of the United States. He supports his system and he will
get support from it. The pressing problems of the world are not really a
major source of concern to Obama, much less to the candidate who as a war
pilot dropped tens of tons of bombs on Hanoi City, that is, more than 9,375
miles away from Washington, and this with no remorse.
When last Thursday I addressed a letter to Lula, in addition to what I
already mentioned in my Reflections of October 31, I literally wrote:
“Racism and discrimination have been present in the American society ever
since its birth, over two centuries ago. Latin Americans and blacks have
always been discriminated against there. Its citizens have been brought up
under consumerism. Humanity is objectively threatened by its mass
extermination weapons.”
“The American people are more concerned over the economy that the Iraq war.
McCain is an old, bellicose and uneducated man; he is not very smart and he
is in poor health.”
Finally, I said: “If my estimates were wrong and racism prevailed: if the
Republican candidate won the Presidency, the danger of a war would increase
and the peoples’ opportunities to progress would be reduced. Nevertheless,
we need to fight and to build awareness about this, whoever it is who wins
this election.”
When these views that I sustain are published tomorrow, nobody will have
time to say that I wrote something that could be used by any candidate to
advance his campaign. I had to be, and I have been, neutral in this
electoral competition. It is not “interference in the internal affairs of
the United States”, as the State Department would put it, as respectful as
it is of other countries’ sovereignty.
Fidel Castro Ruz
November 3, 2008
4:10 p.m.
Reflexiones del compañero Fidel
Las elecciones del 4 de noviembre
Mañana será un día de gran importancia. La opinión mundial estará atenta de
lo que en Estados Unidos ocurra con las elecciones. Se trata de la nación
más poderosa del planeta. Con menos del 5 por ciento de la población del
mundo succiona cada año enormes cantidades de petróleo y gas, minerales,
materias primas, bienes de consumo y productos sofisticados procedentes del
exterior; muchos de ellos, en especial los combustibles y los extraídos de
las minas, que no son renovables.
Es el mayor productor y exportador de armas. El complejo militar industrial
cuenta, además, con un insaciable mercado en el propio país. Sus fuerzas
aéreas y navales se concentran en decenas de bases militares ubicadas en el
territorio de otras naciones. Los cohetes estratégicos de Estados Unidos,
portadores de cabezas nucleares, pueden alcanzar con total precisión
cualquier punto del mundo.
Muchas de las mejores inteligencias del planeta son sustraídas de sus países
de origen y puestas al servicio del sistema. Es un imperio parasitario y
saqueador.
Como se conoce, la población negra introducida a través de la esclavitud en
el territorio de Estados Unidos a lo largo de siglos, es víctima de una
fuerte discriminació
n racial.
Obama, candidato demócrata, es en parte de origen negro, y en él predominan
el color oscuro y otros rasgos físicos de dicha raza. Pudo estudiar en un
centro de educación superior donde se graduó con notas brillantes. Es sin
duda más inteligente, culto y ecuánime que su adversario republicano.
Analizo las elecciones de mañana cuando el mundo sufre una grave crisis
financiera, la peor desde los años 30, entre otras muchas que a lo largo de
más de tres cuartos de siglo han afectado seriamente la economía de
numerosos países.
Los órganos internacionales de prensa, los analistas y comentaristas
políticos, emplean parte del tiempo en el tema. Se considera a Obama como el
mejor orador político de Estados Unidos en las últimas décadas. Su
compatriota Toni Morrison, Premio Nobel de Literatura del año 1993, la
primera de su etnia nacida en Estados Unidos que obtiene ese laureado
título, y excelente escritora, lo califica de futuro Presidente y poeta de
esa nación.

He observado la lucha entre ambos contendientes. El candidato negro, que
tanto asombró al obtener su nominación en la pugna frente a fuertes
adversarios, tiene bien articuladas sus ideas y golpea una y otra vez con
ellas en la mente de los votantes. No vacila en afirmar que por encima de
todo, más que republicanos y demócratas, son estadounidenses, ciudadanos que
califica como los más productivos del mundo; que reducirá los impuestos a la
clase media, en la que incluye a casi todos; los eliminará a los más pobres,
y los elevará a los más ricos. Los ingresos no estarán destinados a salvar a
los bancos.
Reitera una y otra vez que los gastos ruinosos de la guerra de Bush en Iraq
no deben ser costeados por los contribuyentes norteamericanos. Le pondrá fin
y traerá de regreso a los soldados de Estados Unidos. Tal vez tuvo presente
que ese país nada tuvo que ver con los atentados terroristas del 11 de
septiembre de 2001. Ha costado la sangre de miles de soldados de Estados
Unidos, muertos o heridos en los combates, y más de un millón de vidas a esa
nación musulmana. Fue una guerra de conquista impuesta por el imperio en
busca de petróleo.
Ante la crisis financiera desatada y sus consecuencias, a los ciudadanos
norteamericanos les preocupa más en estos instantes la economía que la
guerra de Iraq. Los atormenta la preocupación por sus puestos de trabajo, la
seguridad de los ahorros depositados en los bancos, los fondos de
jubilación; el temor de perder el poder adquisitivo de su dinero y las
viviendas donde residen con sus familiares. Desean la seguridad de recibir
en cualquier circunstancia los servicios médicos adecuados y la garantía del
derecho a que sus hijos reciban educación superior.
Obama es desafiante, pienso que ha corrido y correrá crecientes riesgos en
el país donde un extremista puede adquirir por ley un arma sofisticada
moderna en cualquier esquina como en la primera mitad del siglo XVIII al
Oeste del territorio de Estados Unidos. Apoya su sistema y se apoyará en él.
La preocupación por los agobiantes problemas del mundo no ocupan realmente
un lugar importante en la mente de Obama, y mucho menos en la del candidato
que, como piloto de guerra, descargó decenas de toneladas de bombas sobre la
ciudad de Hanoi, a más de 15 mil kilómetros de Washington, sin remordimiento
alguno de conciencia.
Cuando el pasado jueves 30 le escribí a Lula, además de lo que conté en la
reflexión del 31 de octubre, le expresé textualmente en mi carta: "El
racismo y la discriminación existen en la sociedad estadounidense desde que
nació, hace más de dos siglos. Negros y latinoamericanos han sido allí
siempre discriminados. Sus ciudadanos fueron educados en el consumismo. La
humanidad está objetivamente amenazada por sus armas de exterminio masivo."
"Al pueblo de Estados Unidos le preocupa más la economía que la guerra de
Iraq. McCain es viejo, belicoso, inculto, poco inteligente y sin salud."
Finalmente le añadí: "Si mis cálculos estuvieran equivocados, el racismo de
todas formas se impusiera y el candidato republicano obtuviese la
Presidencia, el peligro de guerra se incrementaría y las oportunidades de
los pueblos para salir adelante se reducirían. A pesar de todo, hay que
luchar y crear conciencia sobre esto, gane quien gane esas elecciones."
Cuando esta opinión que sostengo se publique mañana, nadie tendrá ya tiempo
para decir que escribí algo que pueda ser utilizado por alguno de los
candidatos en favor de su campaña. Debía ser, y he sido, neutral en la
contienda electoral. No es "una injerencia en los asuntos internos de
Estados Unidos", como diría el Departamento de Estado, tan respetuoso de la
soberanía de los demás países.
Fidel Castro Ruz
Noviembre 3 de 2008
4 y 10 p.m.
WHAT A CROCK! I would rather give Obama a chance then suffer thorugh 4 more years of Bush failed policies courtesy of McCaine. Thank God McCaine did not win!

As much prejudice as there still exisits in this country toward people of other colors it's a miracle. This should show once and for all how much digust the people of America had toward Presdient Bush and his policies,

Look at the huge difference in electorial votes cast. Don't ever forget that it was the Bush policies of de-regulation which McCaine, Barney Frank and the majority of Congress supported that caused the banks collapse. And the credit card Industry will soon be needing bailout because this will continue to escallate as more people who have lost their jobs will be unable to make their payments.

Let me remind you of some of the illegal things that Bush
did while President. We went to war with Iraq based on lies. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died because of this. President Bush stepped all over our Constitution and overstepped his powers as President in the process. He is a traitor to the American people and the world.

The Patriot Act which we were told would be temporary is Constitutional and illegal. We lost many of our rights throught this including the right to be secure in our homes from illegal search and seizure and our right to privacy and being spied upon. But that wasn't enough for Bush he then implimented the "Military Comission Act" which is also Constitutionally illegal. That law took away the right to a jury trial, the right to bail, the right to confront your accuser, the right to a speedy trial, the right to be told why you are being held. It eliminated Habias Corpus rights. All they need to do is label you an "enemy combatent" and you lose all rights and can be held indefinately in a prison and tortured.

Now for those who do not know this, our Constitution is the SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND". It is the highest law. This means that no law can legally overpower it. This makes the Patirot Act, Military Comission Act and the Presidential signing statements that Bush implimented criminal laws because they attempt to overpower our Constitution. The office of the President doesn't have that power!

President Bush attempted to overthrow our Constitution. Yet it was our Constitution although tattered and torn by Bush attacks on our Liberty that defeated him. For the maximum term any President can assume is 2- 4 year terms. No more! This was placed in our Constitution to keep from having someone stay in power forever. It assured the United States that they would never have a King like King George..

For 8 years Bush policies have been rewarding the rich and Corporate America and leaving the crumbs leftover for the poor and middle class. Now finally the rich can pay the taxes they have avoided and we can have some fairness in this country.
John
Good Morning!

I will make this short; I salute Senator Obama and his campaign, and I am proud to be an American!

No question, Senator Obama was not my choice for President, but this election is but one example, of why our Nation still remains the greatest Nation on earth! We all have reason to be proud, I am cognizant of what this election means to all Americans but especially to African Americans, and last night, as President elect Obama so eloquently emphasized, so much better than I could even attempt, this election demostrates that our Nation is strong, and our democracy is a model for all Nation-States.

Congratulations to President elect Obama, Vice President elect Biden, and the Democrat Party.


Respectfully,

Keith In Tampa

This was a LANDSLIDE watershed moment for America.

November 5, 2008
Sean Lewis

THIS WAS A MANDATE BUSH REPUBLICANS!

Democrats will show you how you USE a mandate for
the benefit of the COUNTRY not your PARTY!

It is a time for REAL change and a REAL chance
for unity!

The hatred, anger and division of the country is about to end.

The rule of law will return. Accountability will return.
America's Preeminence will return.
Once again when an American President says 'Trust
Me I am telling you the TRUTH' the world will believe him!

If Republicans do not get on board, then kiss your asses goodbye.

It will not be easy, there are some HARD TIMES AHEAD, and
sacrifice will be asked for from EVERYONE, not just a few.

But for now, it is a time for the COUNTRY to celebrate
and the world to breath easy again!

Troops hope Obama brings them home responsibly
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4A441P20081105?feedType...
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Watching election results that showed Barack
Obama
would be their new commander-in-chief, U.S. soldiers in Iraq said
they
hoped he would fulfill his promise to bring them home quickly and
responsibly.

Breakfast was already being served in Baghdad on Wednesday morning
when Tuesday's polls closed back home, and at Forward Operating Base
Prosperity all eyes in the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st
Airborne were on the dining hall's giant TVs.


Someone whooped when NBC called the election, but mostly the troops
sat in rapt silence, eyeing their new president while eating their
eggs.


"What soldier's going to say they don't want to go home? I have a
wife
and four kids. I want to go home. But one thing we all want is to
make
sure the friends we lost over here weren't for nothing," said Captain
Ryan Morrison, from Colorado Springs.


"We have to pull out responsibly. I have the feeling he wants to do
it
responsibly," he said.


Obama has pledged to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraq within 16
months of taking office, a promise that seemed bold when he first
made
it last year but now coincides roughly with the timetable favored by
Iraq's government.


"I'm excited. He's going to be president and he's going to pull us
from over here," said Sergeant First Class Norman Brown.


"If McCain had won we'd be over here for years, and I mean years and
years. I reckon even people here don't want us here."


With levels of violence falling -- last month saw the fewest violent
deaths among both Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops since the war began
-- Iraqis increasingly express their hope that the force of more than
150,000 U.S. troops can leave soon.


"I as an Iraqi am asking Obama to keep his promises about the
withdrawal of the U.S. security forces from our land," said Baqi
Naqid, a Baghdad journalist. "We don't need an occupation."


IRAQI GOVERNMENT NEGOTIATES WITHDRAWAL


The Iraqi government is negotiating a security pact with the outgoing
administration of President George W. Bush that would require U.S.
troops to exit by the end of 2011. But some Iraqis still fear
violence
may return if U.S. troops leave too rapidly.


"They came on a mission. They should complete it. There should be 100
percent security before they leave," said Baghdad housewife Um Saba,
58. She said she preferred the Republicans for supporting an increase
of troops last year that she credited with helping to curb violence.


Among U.S. troops, political loyalties were divided and debate
spirited during the long campaign. African American soldiers
described
Obama's victory as inspirational.


"It gives me hope that anybody can accomplish anything no matter what
your race, color or creed," said Los Angeles native Staff Sergeant
Andre Frazier, adding he hoped it would improve the U.S. image
abroad. Continued...

'Big conspiracy' going on to destabilise India: Centre
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Agencies
Posted: Nov 05, 2008 at 1417 hrs IST

New Delhi, November 5: As the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad arrested a Lieutenant Colonel in connection with the Malegaon blasts, the Centre on Wednesday said it was a matter of ‘grave concern’ that an Army officer was found to be involved in terror acts.
"It is a matter of grave concern that such a person (Lt Colonel) is found to be involved there. The investigating agencies arrest any person only after gathering sufficient evidence," Union Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal said.

Jaiswal said a ‘big conspiracy’ was going on to destabilise the country by destroying country's communal harmony but thankfully the investigating agencies have busted the module and arrested the persons involved in it.

Asked whether the Centre was contemplating to impose a ban on Bajrang Dal, the Minister said investigations into various incidents were yet to be completed.

"Let the investigations complete, then we will see," he said.

The ATS on Wednesday arrested Lieutenant Colonel Srikant Purohit in connection with the September 29 Malegaon blasts. He will be produced before a Nashik court later in the day.

Purohit was interrogated two days back by the ATS in connection with the blasts in the powerloom town.

The army officer, who came under the scanner for his alleged role in the blasts, was stationed at the Army Education Corps Training College and Centre at Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh and was picked up by the ATS for questioning last week.

Karuna does it again, flays Hindus for sporting tilaks
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Agencies
Posted: Nov 05, 2008 at 1640 hrs IST

Chennai, November 5: Flaying the Hindu practice of smearing ash or saffron or sporting a 'tilak' on the forehead for yet another time, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi questioned the need for ‘such things in a country which preached equality of all religions’.
Karunanidhi also questioned the rationale behind Brahmins wearing sacred thread.

"What is the need for these things in a country that has accepted all religions and preached equality of the same," he asked in a poem penned by him in the wake of caste-related violence in Madurai on Tuesday in which one person was killed in police firing.

He had on earlier occasions also ridiculed the practice of smearing ash or saffron on the forehead.

The DMK chief had made similar remarks on certain other Hindu customs earlier and described Hindus as ‘robbers’.

But later he clarified that he meant Hindus were robbers ‘who stole hearts’.

In the height of the Sethusamudram controversy, he had described Lord Ram as a ‘drunkard’ and wondered whether he was a qualified engineer to have built the Ramasethu.

In the poem, Karunanidhi described truth as God, adding that all people were equal before God and described as ‘ignorance’ those who were not aware of it.

"Caste differences are the offshoot of the branches called differences based on religion. Let’s chop off not only the branches but also uproot the tree to witness the emergence of a beautiful concept called equality," he said.

He also described as useless the face-off between believers and non-believers on the concept of God and said there was no point fighting over which faith was supreme.


Barack Obama already hard at work building his team
BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK, KENNETH R. BAZINET and MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Wednesday, November 5th 2008, 8:24 AM


Raedle/Getty/Getty Images

There is plenty of hard work ahead for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

President-elect Barack Obama is wasting no time getting ready to take over the White House 76 days from today - with two wars raging and an economic crisis clogging his in-box.

Fresh off his historic triumph, he may quickly unveil the leaders of his transition team - all of whom have been working anonymously for weeks - and announce his White House chief of staff by week's end. A new treasury secretary may follow soon thereafter.

RELATED: JOB 1: PICK THE RIGHT TEAM
"Change has come to America," the nation's soon-to-be 44th President proclaimed in his victory speech to an adoring Chicago crowd estimated at 240,000.

The Daily News reported last week that Obama will run a turbocharged transition. The FBI has vetted scores of job candidates, but Team Obama has signaled Tuesday it wants to be careful.

RELATED: OBAMA, OUR FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT, IS AN INSPIRATION
"Sen. Obama has thought this through," said top adviser David Axelrod on MSNBC last night. "I think he will move as quickly as he can, but I think he's also going to be deliberative about it and make sure that he gets the right people in the right slots.

"These folks are going to have an enormous task in front of them. You want to make sure you get it right. So speed has its virtues, but getting it right is also important, and I think he will strike a balance moving forward."

RELATED: READ FULL TEXT OF OBAMA'S SPEECH
The biggest name on the President-elect's transition depth chart is John Podesta, Bill Clinton's last chief of staff.

His transition operation will begin moving today into 120,000 square feet on three floors of a federal office building near the District of Columbia courthouse in Northwest Washington.

Obama, a rookie senator from Illinois cloaked in a mantle of hope and change, trounced John McCain decisively to bring down the curtain on eight years of Republican rule.

The Democrat, whose eloquence inspired legions to his side, rode overwhelming disenchantment with the Bush-Cheney brand and the collapse of financial markets toward a historic victory. On Jan. 20, he will take the oath to become the first African-American in the Oval Office.

A beaming Obama, who strode on stage with his wife, Michelle, and two young daughters, spoke to a sea of cheering, weeping and hugging supporters at Chicago's Grant Park.

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer," Obama added, drawing raucous applause from the multitude gathered on a crisp autumn night.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/11/05/2008-11-05_barack_obama_already_hard_at_work_buildi.html

South Asia Leaders Congratulate Obama, Point to Challenges
By Barry Newhouse
Kabul
05 November 2008



Leaders from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan praised Barack Obama's presidential election win, calling it an inspiration to people within the United States and around the world. VOA's Barry Newhouse reports from Kabul on the reaction in a region that holds critical challenges for the future U.S. president.


Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during press conference at presidential palace in Kabul, 05 Nov 2008
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he hoped Barack Obama's election will take the United States and the world into a new era where race and ethnicity will disappear as a factor in politics.

He said he has high hopes for what Mr. Obama's leadership will mean to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

"I hope that this election and President Obama's coming into office will bring peace to Afghanistan, life to Afghanistan and prosperity to the Afghan people and the rest of the world," he said.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India and the United States are bound by shared commitments to common ideals. In a statement that was read by spokesman Shahbaz Hasibi, the prime minister said he looked forward to boosting cooperation.

"Our two countries working together to address global issues and challenges will be an important factor for world peace, stability and progress," he said.


President-elect Barack Obama smiles during his acceptance speech at Grant Park in Chicago, 4 Nov. 2008
Debates over U.S. strategy in the war in Afghanistan and the struggle against terrorist networks in Pakistan dominated the presidential campaign. Last week, Mr. Obama suggested that helping to resolve the dispute between Pakistan and India over Kashmir would allow Pakistan to better focus on threats from al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

Pakistan's former foreign minister Humayun Khan said the striking image of Mr. Obama's election could help alleviate some of the anti-American sentiment among Pakistanis who feel the U.S. war against terrorism has been misguided.

"Obama seems to be the sort of person who will try to examine all aspects of our problem and will understand all the complexities of our problems which will mean he will not approach it with a one track mind. So the chances of him listening to Pakistan I think are probably going to be better," said Humayun Khan.

Seven years after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, there are growing signs of tension between Washington and the U.S. friendly governments in Kabul and Islamabad.


U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, left, talks with Pakistan's Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar during a meeting in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, 03 Nov 2008
This week, Pakistani leaders urged visiting U.S. commander General David Petraeus to stop missile strikes against militant targets in Pakistan's tribal regions.

In Kabul, while Mr. Karzai praised Mr. Obama's election in English, he was more critical when he addressed Afghans while speaking in Dari.

He said the first demand from the president elect, when he gets into office, will be to stop the civilian casualties in Afghanistan and to bring the war to those areas where the terrorists have hideouts, which are not in Afghanistan.

Mr. Karzai said mounting civilian casualties are tarnishing the image of the foreign troops in Afghanistan.

http://voanews.com/english/2008-11-05-voa36.cfm

Much Of Arab World Rejoices Over Obama Election
By Edward Yeranian
Cairo
05 November 2008

Yeranian report - Download (MP3)
Yeranian report - Listen (MP3)


Much of the Arab press, as well as ordinary people in the street, are rejoicing over the election of Democrat Barak Obama as the next president of the United States. Nevertheless, as Edward Yeranian reports from Cairo, there are misgivings in certain quarters.


A man reads al-Akhbar newspaper covering Barack Obama's victory in the U.S. Presidential election in Beirut, Lebanon, 05 Nov 2008
People on the streets here in Cairo, and across much of the Arab world, appear elated by the election of Democrat Barak Obama as the next president of the United States, despite some apprehension in the Gulf and in Lebanon.

Commentators on Al-Jazeera TV, which has consistently criticized the outgoing Bush administration for its policies towards the Arab world, appeared almost jubilant over Mr. Obama's election, with many hailing the results of the election as a "positive for the Arab world."

The Syrian daily Techrine writes in Wednesday's editorial that "any president will be better than George W. Bush, and any administration will be better than his administration." Damascus is the subject of U.S. sanctions for its behavior towards both Lebanon and Iraq.

Egyptian Ahmed Fathi, from the city of Dakalia, writes on Al-Arabiya TV's Web site "God bless Obama. He's good for the world and will solve its problems, Inshallah."

Leyla, a Lebanese Christian, however, says that she and those around her are "not very enthusiastic about Mr. Obama's victory," but that she hopes "he'll turn out OK, just the same."

Mustapha Ghalayini, a Lebanese man who works in Kuwait, thinks that many Kuwait's are pleased by Mr. Obama's election, even if they don't think he'll be especially good for the interests of the Arab world.

"The Kuwaiti people don't believe that Obama will be a real help to the Arabs, but they believe he will be a new experience for the Arabs and the world, and they are happy at his winning the elections of the United States," he said.

Uraib Rantawi, director of the Al-Quds Center for Political Studies in Amman, Jordan, says that many Arabs and many Arab governments are pleased by the Obama victory, but not all.

"It was a great win for Mr. Obama in yesterday's elections, for some Arab countries and people, especially the Palestinians, the Syrians, even the Jordanians," he said. "I think they have welcomed this great victory from the democrats and Obama."

"But, for some Arab Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia and those who deal really with the Bush family and with the Republicans in particular, I think it is not a good moment for them; they prefer to deal with the Republicans and not with the democrats, since the democrats emphasize democracy and human rights and those issues are not welcomed in such countries as Egypt, and Saudi Arabia," he added.

Essam El Aryan, who is a leader of Egypt's banned Muslim Brotherhood was mostly optimistic about Mr. Obama's election and thought it was good for both the Arab and Islamic worlds.

"I've listened to the address made by Obama this morning and I was highly impressed by his charisma and his ideas," he said. "I compliment Mr. Obama and this was a very big victory for himself and also for the American people and I think it will be a great victory for the whole world if he can change America and go to change the world."

"I think after the massacres done by the previous administration of Mr. Bush Jr., I think this will be a new era for the Arabs and the Muslim world for their relations with the USA. We hope that Mr. Obama can change the strategy of America towards the Arabs and the Islamic world, and mainly to be committed to his promise to withdraw from Iraq and to look to the Palestinian issue by another view … thirdly to stop the support for the previous administration, since more than 60 years, to the tyrants of the Arab and Islamic world and to stop support to dictatorship," he continued.

Despite the general tone of optimism in the Arab press over President-elect Barak Obama's victory, the Arab daily Al-Hayat ran a caricature showing an Israeli wielding a gun at an Arab man, joking "heads, Obama, and we win; tails McCain, and you lose," suggesting that the paper thinks neither candidate will really be beneficial to the Arab world.
http://voanews.com/english/2008-11-05-voa42.cfm

Africa Stays Up All Night to Hear US Election Results
By Peter Heinlein
Addis Ababa
05 November 2008

Heinlein report - Download (MP3)
Heinlein report - Listen (MP3)


Millions of Africans are exhausted after staying up all night watching expectantly to see whether a man of African descent will elected to the America's highest office. VOA's Peter Heinlein attended an all-night party of journalists and political enthusiasts in Addis Ababa where everybody was talking about being American for a day to share in this historic election.

It's a long night here in front of the television at this upscale Ethiopian home. Half a dozen anxious viewers drift in and out, trying to control the nervous energy. It's well after midnight, but the TV screen shows long lines of voters standing in the rain waiting for their turn in the voting booth. TV commentators kill time until the first polls close.

"There is a good deal of confidence in the Obama campaign that he's going to win this evening," they said. "So far, there's also the unknown. As one strategist put it, 'I'm a nervous wreck."

That comment sends a thrill through this audience. This is Africa and there are no McCain supporters in the room.

Deresse Kassa, a professor at Addis Ababa University, says he has never stayed up late for any elections results. But this is a moment he says he doesn't want to miss.

"America has history whereby the African-American community has to struggle to be considered citizens themselves and be a franchise in order to cast their votes," said Kassa. "Coming from this segregation and inequality, to be able to see Democratic candidates running for the presidency, the highest office, by itself is big achievement."


The televisions are on as the first results come in during the wee hours of the morning. The news is encouraging for viewers here.

Journalist Lulit Amdamariam says she is energized by the possibility of witnessing, what she calls, a great moment. "We're going to be here all night," she said. "Thirty-two hours, if we have to."

Lulit is not an American, but she lived in the States for several years and attended Howard University in Washington.

"I attended a black college, so I understand what this means to the black community in the United States," said Lulit. "This is a candidate the entire world can relate to."

Lulit's colleague Tamrat Negera, editor of at the Amharic-language newspaper Addis Neger, has not been to the United States, but he says he can understand what this election must mean to African-Americans.

"Africa shared the pain of being black, or the pain of status, or colonization, which you understand there was a limitation for a black in this world," he said. "But Obama is breaking that through."

Journalist Lulit Amdamariam calls it an American moment.

"I think this is the only time the entire world wishes they were American," she said. "So they could vote. Seriously, I think the entire world would go out and vote if they had the opportunity tonight."

This is a moment to remember. Although some Africans may have a hangover on Wednesday, the prospect of the first black U.S. president has enthralled a continent.

http://voanews.com/english/2008-11-05-voa13.cfm

Kenyans, Unsurprisingly, Favor Obama
By Mil Arcega
Washington, D.C.
04 November 2008

Kenya-US election - Download (WM)
Kenya-US election - Watch (WM)


Although citizens of the world cannot vote in the U.S. presidential election, a new Gallup poll shows if they could, Democrat Barack Obama would win by a landslide over his opponent Republican John McCain. Nowhere is the interest more intense than in Kenya, where the African American senator is considered the hometown favorite. VOA's Mil Arcega reports.



Residents of Nairobi, Kenya are closely watching the US presidential election
In the streets of Nairobi, a photograph of the Democratic candidate is almost as good as money. At a music store in the Kenyan capital, customers line up to buy Barack Obama-inspired music.

At a nearby print shop, T-shirt designer Tony Ndolo says shirts with the candidate's image sell out almost as quickly as they are printed. "Barack is a blessing for Kenya and for my wallet in particular," he says. At most newsstands, the biggest headlines are reserved for stories about the U.S. presidential contest.

One Nairobi resident said the election may be thousands of miles away. But if Kenyans could vote, she says the 47-year-old senator would already be president. "We hope that Obama wins because we believe he is going to bring change into Africa and the whole world."


Tee shirts with Obama designs are selling as fast as vendors can make them
For many, the idea that the son of a Kenyan professor could become the first black president of the United States is powerful inspiration.

Milka Akinyi even named her son after the Illinois politician. "I named the kid Obama because long time ago Obama was also like this, a baby, and now he is intending to be a president in the U.S.A." says the proud mother.

At a small village in western Kenya, where Obama's paternal family lives, Kenyan police are already posted, ahead of festivities expected here when U.S. polling stations close.

That's how confident Malik Obama is that his American half-brother will win. He says, "Everybody is extremely happy and excited and looking forward to celebrating the day after the elections."


This mother named her son after Barack Obama
Most national polls put Obama ahead of his Republican opponent by a few percentage points. But some Kenyans believe the only way Obama can lose is if the election is stolen from him. "Because he has been leading in the polls all along and I will not understand why Obama have lost, if they tell us Obama has lost,” says one Kenyan. “That will definitely show that they have rigged Obama out because of racism and color."

Despite the Democratic candidate's popularity in Africa and Europe, a recent Gallup poll shows Republican candidate John McCain is preferred in some countries -- but by much smaller margins.

http://voanews.com/english/2008-11-04-voa69.cfm

Bush Pledges Complete Cooperation With Obama

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2008; 11:23 AM

President Bush today called President-elect Barack Obama's victory a "triumph of the American story," and pledged "complete cooperation" with him during the upcoming transition.

Bush said he had a "warm conversation" on Tuesday night with the man who will replace him in the White House, congratulating him on what the president called an "impressive victory."

"All Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday," Bush said, focusing on the broader implications of a vote that swept his own Republican Party from power. "Across the country, citizens voted in large numbers. They showed a watching world the vitality of America's democracy and strides we have made toward a more perfect union."

"They chose a president whose journey represents a triumph of the American story -- a testament to hard work, optimism, and faith in the enduring promise of our nation."

Pointedly referring to Obama as the country's next commander-in-chief, Bush said he would brief the Illinois senator on any significant decisions he makes in coming weeks, as Obama's transition team begins the new president's ascension to the White House.


"We're embarking on a period of change in Washington, yet some things will not change" Bush said, including the country's commitment to its own security. "The world can be certain that this commitment will remain steady under our next commander in chief."

Bush congratulated Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) on what he referred to as a "determined campaign," but made no mention of the strong Democratic gains in the Senate and House.

Instead, he harkened back to the civil rights movement that, just a generation ago, helped ensure all Americans could exercise their right to vote -- a franchise used on Tuesday to usher in not just a change of administration, but the election of the country's first black president.

"Many of our citizens thought that they would never live see that day," Bush said, and called it "especially uplifting" for those who participated in the early civil rights struggles to "four decades later see a dream fulfilled."

"It will be a stirring sight to watch President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their beautiful girls step through the doors of the White House," Bush said. "I know millions of Americans will be overcome with pride at this inspiring moment that so many have awaited so long."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/05/AR2008110502458.html?hpid=topnews

Obama's Win A "Nonviolent Revolution"
The Early Show: African-American Icons Rep. John Lewis, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Maya Angelou Reflect On His Victory
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Nov. 5, 2008
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President-elect Obama in Chicago's Grant Park late Tuesday night (AP Photo/Morry Gash)



Supporters cheer victorious candidate at huge Chicago gathering.





(CBS) Rep. John Lewis says the nation "witnessed a nonviolent revolution" when Barack Obama was elected president.

The longtime Democratic congressman from Georgia and civil rights leader -- who was brutally beaten at the hands of segregationists in the Deep South in the early 1960s -- described it to Early Show co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez Wednesday as "a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. I've been saying over and over again -- that the vote is the most nonviolent instrument that we have in a democratic society. And the American people used that vote ... to make Barack Obama the next president of the United States of America."

Asked if Obama is up to taking on the enormous problems facing the U.S. as he gets set to enter the Oval Office, Lewis responded, "This man, young, smart, gifted, leader, is prepared to lead the American people and be a leader among the men and women of the community of nations. He has a vision -- he is the right man. He is so gifted. He is so decent. And he's so calm and deliberate. I think he will be a great president. He personifies the best of a John F. Kennedy, a Robert Kennedy, a Martin Luther King Jr., a Lyndon Johnson."

Lewis marched with Dr. King, as did the Rev. Jesse Jackson, another veteran leader of the civil rights movement. Jackson observed to Rodriguez that Obama "stood (giving his victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park before a throng of more than 100,000) overcoming so much. ... I thought about those who suffered to make it possible -- the marchers, the murdered, the martyrs (seeking civil rights and the right to vote), many of whom are nameless and faceless. But in some sense, their suffering was redeemed last night with that victory.

" ... America is a work in progress. And last night, we saw that work in a more magnificent way expressed. ... (We're in) a crisis in trust. We don't trust a president. We don't trust a Congress we see as complicitous. We don't trust Wall Street. Barack emerges as this larger-than-life figure who can be trusted, who brings about hope and who now helps redeem America from our sordid past about race. Here's the guy who has the capacity ... to take America to the next level."

A sentiment echoed by Maya Angelou, the famous, best-selling poet and author.

She was bursting with pride when she told co-anchor Harry Smith Wednesday she was thinking of "all of us" as she watch Obama's speech late Tuesday night, "all of those who went before, who paid dearly. And all of us today. All of us.

"I'm so proud. I'm filled-- I can hardly talk without weeping. I'm so filled with pride for my country. What do you say? We are growing up! My God, I'm so grateful.

I believe in the heart of every American there's the desire to belong to a great country. And look at it -- not just powerful, not just might, not just things, not consumer goods. I mean, look at our souls, look at our hearts. We have elected a black man to talk for us, to speak for us. We, blacks, whites, Asians, Spanish-speaking, Native Americans, we have done it. Fat, thin, pretty, plain, gay, straight. We have done it! My Lord -- I am an American, baby!"

Why this man?

"Because he's intelligent, Harry. I don't mean intellectually clever, I mean intelligent. I mean what used to be called 'mother wit.' He has common sense that is, I'm sorry to say, most uncommon. Because he knows that, together, we can be somebody. And he is inclusive, as opposed to exclusive. I know that he knows he is the president of every black person, every white person -- he's the president of the bigots, and he must remember that."

Smith commented that Obama "said in his acceptance speech, 'For those of you who voted against me, I hear you, too.' "

"Exactly!" Angelou said. "That's what I mean."

Does she really believe it happened?

"Yes! Yes! Sitting in the waiting room to come on and talk to you -- Yes! This morning, I have not slept, really. I can't pull my nose out of the television. And I go from one channel to the next to the next. And I want to embrace everybody. I'm just so proud. And grateful."

Smith said Obama's victory reminds him most of Angelou's poem, "Still I Rise," and she agreed to recite some of it:

"It begins," Angeou said:

"You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise

Up from a past rooted in pain
I rise

A black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling, bearing in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise

Into a daybreak miraculously clear
I rise

Bringing the hopes that my ancestors gave,
I am the hope and the dream of the slave.

And so, Harry Smith, we all rise."

"And I rise," Smith recited the third-to-last line of the poem, in a poignant moment.

"Yes, we do," an emotional Angelou said.

"I rise," Smith recited the second-to-last line.

"Yes, we do," Angelou repeated.

"And I rise," Smith concluded.


Copyright MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/05/earlyshow/main4574642.shtml

Gates says crisis could last 2-3 years
Wed Nov 5, 2008 6:41pm IST Email | Print | Share| Single Page[-] Text [+]
1 of 1Full SizeBy Matthias Williams

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Microsoft founder Bill Gates on Wednesday said he was worried the global financial crisis could last two to three years might drive rich countries to cut back spending on health aid for the developing world.

Echoing comments made last week by U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon, the billionaire philanthropist said the world's poorest people will suffer the most during the economic slowdown, and said a "strong voice" was needed to keep them a global priority.

"We certainly are concerned that some of the rich world governments could either reduce their increase or even cut back the amount they spend on these issues," Gates said in New Delhi.

"We have to admit that getting that generosity gets even more challenging when there's tough economic times".

Gates said he expected the United States to undergo a period of “economic contraction” as a result of a meltdown in the housing market and heavy consumer debt, after nearly two decades of strong growth.

“Now it looks like the US will have a little bit of a economic setback. Will it be two years, three years, how deep will it be?”

Gates was optimistic about the newly elected American president Barack Obama's efforts to tackle global health issues, saying Obama has "shown a lot of interest" and would "drive improvements in those areas".

Gates is on a visit to India on behalf of his charitable foundation to tackle health issues, focusing on polio eradication and fighting HIV/AIDS. Continued...

The Future of Indo-US Trade
Shivnath Thukral
Monday, November 03, 2008 (New Delhi)
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Over the last few days we have been talking about various issues, be it business, be it IT outsourcing or the way the American campaign is looking at India an the rising power of Indian voters. But as we go into the period post the election verdict the big questions will be who takes the bold steps on the multilateral trade talks, the WTO aspect, and the Form subsidy aspect.

Our focus today is the future of Indo-US trade when it comes to WTO and the trade treaties.

Joining us now from the US in Washington DC is Susan Esserman, a former Deputy USTR in the Clinton administration. She is a well-known attorney and a friend of India, just like Ron Somers. Back home in India we have G K Pillai, Commerce Secretary, to give his perspective on the issue.

The issues that we are going to touch upon are what is the future of the WTO talks stalemate? Can the controversial farm subsidy issue be resolved and who is better for trade relations?

NDTV: In your assessment, it seems like it’s quite a deadlock. We haven’t really moved much in terms of trade talks. That is all that will confront the new president.

Susan Esserman: I believe there’ll be a great opportunity to move forward under WTO in the future. The WTO round, the conclusion of the WTO round will be an important trade priority, no matter who is elected president. But I think it is important to understand that the first focus immediately with the new administration in place, no matter who is elected, Obama or McCain, will be economic recovery and financial stability and the WTO round will be looked at. But I do believe, no matter what has happened in the past, that there would be an opportunity for India and the US to work together in the future. India is a very important player in the international arena and I think they can play a leader ship role.

NDTV: In India as well, starting early next year, there might be a new administration. In your experience, the way the politics of the both the countries have played out, do you really think we are very close to a resolution or would we have to begin all over again because there would be a new president in the White house and there could be a new Prime Minister back home?

Susan Esserman: I believe that we can build on the work that is done before, but of course, any new administration will make a fresh assessment and look at trade not only in the WTO context but also in a broader context as I mentioned before, like the economic recovery issues. Yes, we will build on the past, we’ll learn from the past and but the new administration will come in and take soundings, work with all the different key international players, of which India is such a leader, and try to move forward.

NDTV: We have seen beyond the stalemates, the deadlocks and the roadblocks. There have been movements forward. There have been positives at the far end of the Bush term, when it comes to bilateral talks, investments, and businesses. You could shed some light on what groundwork has been done with respect to the benefits of the bilateral trade talks that we have had in the past few months?

Susan Esserman: There has been progress on the bilateral side. First the Bush administration, building on work done by the Clinton administration, made relations with India a very important priority and I think this has business ramifications. Second, the Bush administration, working with the Indian government has decided to move ahead to launch bilateral investment treaty negotiations. I think it is a very positive step for both the nations. It comes at a time when both countries are investing in the other country and it is an important foundational trade step that has mutual benefit. An investment really provides great benefits to both sides because foreign investment provides legal protection against arbitrary and discriminatory government actions. So this is a positive step. I hope these negotiations move forward, both on the Indian and the US side and this is very important to our business community.

NDTV: As we look forward to hearing from the Indian side as well, in your experience what would be the major roadblocks right now, when it comes to the Indian businesses wanting to enter the US? In your recession where are the roadblocks today, where you have to intervene, whether there are clauses in terms of job loss aspect of it or the kinds of recessionary trends that we are going to witness in the US?

Susan Esserman: First of all, there has been great progress in terms of investment and trade, but there remain certain issues and trade is not as robust as it could be. There are a variety of issues. In some cases there are high tariffs. There is a great deal of concern about aggressive, arbitrary and inconsistent tax enforcement. Of course there are concerns about labour restrictions. These are some of the critical issues that the companies face.

But it is important to keep in mind the broader context of optimism by the business communities about the prospects of business in India.

NDTV: Let's come to the Doha deadlock, since you have worked in the area extensively. I read in an article in the American Press that said that Kamal Nath assumed the mantle of taking forward the developing economies’ agenda. Talking about the Doha deadlock whether it is the sharp differences in the safeguards limits, the differences of the approach, of what you see the new president’s, could be on the farm subsidy because there would be a huge lobby in the US as well and the entire assumption that India has a protectionist approach. On all those three counts, why do think that all of a sudden India and the US are, especially in trade and the WTO, on such adverse positions?

Susan Esserman: It is always difficult to conclude the WTO trade negotiations since there are so many issues at stake. I would just say, most broadly, I believe there has to be broad benefits on all parties’ side in order for there to be a conclusion for an agreement. We have to be sensitive to India’s sensitivity on the farm issues and I think India too needs to be sensitive to some of our constituent needs. But having said that the US government, whoever is in power, will view the WTO negotiations as very important. I think if the government sees there are significant, sufficient concessions made by other trading partners then they will make meaningful concessions and get a conclusion of the round.

I feel far too much time is spent pointing fingers at one party or the other. That would not help any party to move forward. I think you need to get down, look at the details, look at the policy and work in a sphere of compromise, then perhaps there could be a conclusion to the agreement. It is a very difficult thing to do, as there are so many parties now involved. But I do think that India plays a very big role and should play a big role. Today they are an international powerbroker and as an international powerbroker they have a very big responsibility in playing a leadership role and bringing the stocks to a conclusion.

NDTV: We have Mr G K Pillai, Commerce Secretary of India with us to give us the Indian perspective; as to how strong is India’s position on the entire negotiating table when it comes to WTO. Mr Pillai, in your assessment, as we head into the new presidency in the United States, do we have to go back to base one, from where we started, or will the new president have an action plan to engage with India right now?

G K Pillai: I don’t think we’ll ever go back to base one. I think we already have about 70 per cent of the work on the agricultural and NAMA negotiation. It should be possible for us to work forward. In Geneva, the negotiators are at work trying to narrow the differences. I expect the new President would have quite a lot of a agreed modalities and then would take off from there.

NDTV: We had talked about the issues of the safeguard clauses. Why is that suddenly India and the US, the so-called great economic allies, are in such opposite directions on so crucial issues?

G K Pillai: I think, primarily it's because in one sense the US looks upon itself as a major agricultural exporter, whereas here in India we have quite a large number of small and subsistence farmers. Their protection and their concerns have to be met for us to get a development the deal.
NDTV: Ambassador Esserman let me ask you to identify the issues of the future talks or the kind of priority items that the new president will have to look at when it comes to India. In your assessment, how should the new president approach this entire thing?
Susan Esserman: The new administration will build on the already very strong political strategic partnership that the Bush administration has championed and which the Clinton administration initiated. So we start on a very strong political base and it is really heart warming to see the extent of the broad bipartisan support behind this new relationship with India. I think it would be very productive if the new government built on this political partnership by seeking to strengthen the economic partnership. There are various steps that the government can take. First is moving forward rapidly to proceed with the bilateral investment negotiations that the two countries have just launched only a month ago. Our business community sees this as a very important step. First of all, it's foundational, it will build confidence in the economy and will help to deal with arbitrary and discriminatory actions that investors might face. That is the first and foundational step. Second, our countries share so much in terms of values and now so much common interest in the other’s economy. I think we need to look hard and how the governments can help to facilitate, in the broadest possible way, investment in trade that is going on between the two countries.
NDTV: Mr Pillai, how would you put forward India’s cause? We have seen the entire rupee-dollar factor helping our exporters. But in terms of policies and roadblocks, which are the key areas you would want to be addressed by the US administration that would help boost India’s potential?
G K Pillai: I think between India and the United states, currently if you look and last year’s figures, there is clearly a trade balance of around $20-$21 billion exports and imports. For the US there was a surge in exports to India, by almost 70 per cent during the year 2007-08. I think where the US businessmen are lacking is that they are not willing to take the risk and come into the Indian market and invest. We have seen so many businessmen from Europe, Japan, Korea, to name a few, who have come to India and made lots of money. I think, the US businessmen must not be shy and come forward and invest in India.
NDTV: Why do you think there is a holding back on the part of the investments that you’d say are not coming in hoards like the other countries?
G K Pillai: One reason, I think, is that the US businessmen are very unfamiliar with the Indian business environment. Now that the Indo-US bilateral investment promotion treaty is also being negotiated, and we hope that it will be conclude in the next few months, I’m hopeful that they will get the confidence to invest. We have found that those foreign countries that have come to India and invested have all done well, including the American companies.
NDTV: Ambassador Esserman, you too have pointed out the unfamiliarity angle, many a time in the past. In your assessment, what kind of initiatives would you want to see, both sides, especially the new administration, to take for these unfamiliarity issues to be resolved?
Susan Esserman: I think we must try build on the good things that have already been started. I think giving investors greater confidence in the rule of law and the hope that the decisions that the government takes will be consistent and will remain, would be very, very helpful. I feel that it would be very beneficial if the two governments took a look at the tax policies and worked together to give investors greater confidence in the tax policies that the governments are adopting. This would really help to stimulate greater American investment in the Indian economy.
NDTV: Do you see expect some surprise positive decisions or any major announcements coming through from the American side immediately after, or in the back drop of the November 15, G-20 meeting. Or do you feel that nothing can really happen before January in the US?
Susan Esserman: As far as trade is concerned, I don’t think there will be any immediate announcement. Of course, the big attention immediately will be on how to bring an economic recovery to the United States and how to stabilise the financial situation, both in United States and abroad. I think that will be the critical focus, as I said at the outside and trade, I feel, will be a part of it. I do not expect there to be a big announcement on trade between now and the start of the new administration. That would be highly unlikely. The trade issue will take time to resolve. We must do it in the right way, in a way that brings the support of the key countries in the WTO and I think that is not going to happen overnight.
NDTV: Now let me conclude by asking Mr Pillai how do you look at the next six months, because we are going to live in politically uncertain environment when it comes to India. US will have its clarity by next week. What do you see emerging between the two countries in the talking table?
G K Pillai: As far as bilateral trade is concerned, we have the institutional framework already there, we have the trade policy forum, we have the private sector advisory group, we have the US-India CEO forum, we have the commercial dialogue going on. I think these would enable industries on both sides to understand each other better and to move forward. So I’m quite optimistic on the trade front. There are a lot of programs under way and I’m sure that the trade between India and the United States would possibly double in the next three years.
NDTV: All right double. It’s a very optimistic note that we end on.
http://profit.ndtv.com/2008/11/02205038/The-Future-of-IndoUS-Trade.html

Obama, McCain back strong Indo-US relations
Press Trust of India / Washington November 05, 2008, 8:25 IST


Barack Obama and John McCain, heading for a showdown in the US presidential polls today, support the growing Indo-US partnership and favour strong ties with the world's largest democracy, but differ on critical issues like outsourcing.
The 47-year-old Illinois Senator who is aspiring to become the first black-American President, is said to have a close affinity with things Indian. He carries a small figure of Lord Hanuman for luck, was familiar with the Ramayana during his days in Indonesia and had a picture of Mahatma Gandhi placed in his Senate office.
However, his strong-anti-outsourcing stance, which came to fore repeatedly during the campaign trail, is creating unease among Indians.
"When I am President I will give tax credits to companies that hire in the United States and end tax breaks for companies that ship US jobs overseas," he has said.
Obama also introduced a 'killer amendment' during debate on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal in the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, though he voted for the agreement later and asserted that he backs the landmark accord.
His recent remarks that the US should try to help resolve the Kashmir problem so that Pakistan can focus on hunting down militants on its restive north-west border have also been seen in some quarters as suggesting outside interference in the issue.
Despite this, an informal opinion poll has suggested that an overwhelming 81 per cent of Indian-Americans will vote for Obama while merely 19 per cent will support McCain.
The African-American Senator is being seen by many as a symbol of the aspirations of the immigrant community.
There is also the factor that Indians had traditionally been Democrats and, like any other community in the US, are worried about the economic policies of the Bush Administration amid the financial turmoil.
"Barack Obama's vision for America is our vision, and his story is our story. As the son of a foreign-born father, he has personally experienced the challenges of race and identity that affect our community... We support Senator Obama's candidacy because of the promise it holds for our future," South Asians for Obama, a lobby group, says on its website.
Still, many Indian-Americans oppose Obama for President, arguing that if McCain wins, he would continue the Bush Administration policies of bulilding a startegic partnership with India and keep the commitments made in the nuclear deal.
The 72-year-old Republican Senator "understands we have a global economy and realises that if we raise taxes on small businesses here, many will simply relocate abroad and America will lose out," 'Indians for McCain' says.
McCain is seen as a supporter of outsourcing and globalised economy and raising the cap on H-1B visas for highly-skilled professionals, which are sought by a large number of Indians every year.
Both the candidates have all along maintained they want strong ties with India and ackonowledged the contribution of the Indian-Americans, saying their knowledge, skills and entrepreneurial spirit have benefited both the countries.
Observing that India's recent economic achievements remain a "great source of admiration" in the US, McCain had said in a message on the country's Independence Day that it is one of America's "closest democratic partners".
"It is only natural that the world's oldest and the world's largest constitutional democracies should enjoy strong relations...With India, America has one of its most important relationships in an uncertain world," Obama had said on the same day.
South Asia Analysis Group
Papers
INDO-US RELATIONS
An Update

It would be unfair and ungenerous even on the part of the critics of the present Government in New Delhi to deny that in its handling of the process of re-adjustment of Indo-US relations after the Pokhran-II nuclear tests, it has succeeded, to some extent, in imparting to the relations a certain dignity and equality which were previously lacking.
This should be obvious to anyone, whose sense of fairness and objectivity had not been weakened by prejudices against the present Government, after the recently-concluded eighth round of talks at New Delhi between Jaswant Singh, India’s Minister for External Affairs, and Strobe Talbott, the US Deputy Secretary of State.
There has been some confusion in New Delhi and Washington after the talks on the nature and timing of what a member of the US delegation has described as the mutually-reinforcing (he avoided using the phrase quid pro quo in view of its negative connotation in India) steps on which the two delegations reportedly agreed in order to give the bilateral relations a forward-looking momentum instead of continuing to remain mired in Pokhran of May,1998.
In their non-attributable-by-name briefings for journalists in New Delhi, members of the US delegation have conveyed the impression that these steps would consist of a definitive commitment by India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) on a date earlier than September,1999, and US support for the World Bank funding of a power project in Andhra Pradesh.
While this impression is yet to be categorically confirmed by spokesmen of the Government of India, spokesmen of the State Department and the White House in Washington seem to have gone out of their way in dampening any undue expectations from India that a lifting of the economic sanctions was round the corner.
They have been underlining in their open briefings of journalists in Washington that while the recent round in New Delhi was more positive than the preceding ones, it would be premature to talk of a consequent break-through in Indo-US relations.

In a presentation on “ Pokhran II : International Response” at the Centre For South-East Asian Studies of the University of Madras in August, 1998, (subsequently published in full by the “Indian Defence Review” of Lancer Publications,July-Sept,1998, Vol 13-3), this writer had drawn attention to the three voices with which Washington seemed to be talking to India—a voice of moderation and reasonableness emanating from Talbott and his deputy Karl Inderfurth, a voice of impatience and even virulence from Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State, and her spokesman James Rubin, and the voice of the White House, which was reflecting sometimes the moderation of Talbott and sometimes the virulence of Albright.
This cacophony of reactions and assessments from Washington has since weakened, but not yet substantially. The virulence has disappeared from the remarks of Albright and Rubin, but not yet the rigidity of approach. The ambiguity of the White House is seemingly less, but its stand is not yet as predictable as India would have liked it to be. The only consistency in a forward-looking approach has been that of Talbott and Inderfurth.
Whether all this is part of a pre-agreed negotiating strategy at Washington or whether this is the way Washington always works is not clear.
Whatever it may be, Indian diplomacy, while apparently showing tactical flexibility on the CTBT issue, has remained firm on certain other issues, which are of greater consequence for India’s future security and autonomy in decision-making on national security matters. These issues relate to the threat perception which impelled India to go nuclear and Indian requirements, conventional as well as nuclear, to enable an adequate response to future threats.
Through its firm and dignified refusal to indicate to the US what, in Indian perception, would constitute an adequate, minimum nuclear deterrence and to agree to any steps, such as the freezing of fissile material production and a moratorium on missile tests and development, which could amount to a freezing of India’s nuclear and delivery capability at the May,1998, level, the present Government, instead of letting itself be overawed by US badgering on such issues like its predecessor Governments had done, has made it clear that Indian decisions on India’s future security would be based on Indian perceptions and assessments, past experience in dealing with potential adversaries and continuing concerns with regard to the future and not on US perceptions.
While India would listen to US views in the matter, the determining factor in policy-making would be Indian perceptions and concerns. The importance of a flexibility in determining the nature and extent of the minimum nuclear deterrence in order to continuously adjust it to the evolving regional situation in future has been underlined in no uncertain terms.
That is what the US itself does in national security policy-making as would be evident from its recent decision to step up funding on theatre missile defence after reports of the upgradation of North Korea’s missile capability. It is unreasonable on the part of the US to try to refuse to India a flexibility in national security policy-making which it allows to itself.
A close study of the eight rounds of Indo-US talks held so far would indicate two important gains for Indian diplomacy – an acceptance by the US of the inevitability and the irreversibility of India’s de facto status as a nuclear power even though it is disinclined to accord to India the de jure status and of the legitimacy of India’s concerns relating to China.
However, it needs to be noted that while there is now a greater recognition of the legitimacy of India’s concerns vis-à-vis China, there is still a reluctance to express this recognition in categorical terms in public, in deference to China’s sensitivities. A similar deference to India’s sensitivities has been lacking in US policies which is partly responsible for the relations between India and the US, the two greatest democracies of the world, failing to blossom to their full potential despite the best of intentions on both sides.
Another point which needs to be underlined in any analysis is that the US Administration, while now accepting the legitimacy of India’s concerns regarding China, continues to give the impression that in its belief these concerns, while legitimate, are still overstated in order for India to justify having a nuclear and delivery capability much larger than warranted by ground reality.

At the same time, there is still an attempt to keep the focus narrowly on Indo-Pakistan relations while closing the eyes to the broader picture of China’s continuing upgradation of its nuclear and missile capability, its close military relations with Myanmar which legitimately add to India’s nervousness despite assurances from China and Myanmar and China’s assertion by stealth of its territorial claims in the Spratly group of Islands.

The experience of the Philippines proves, if further proof was needed, as to what could happen to a country if it accepts Chinese professions of friendship and good intentions and neglects its defence.
While there has been a lot of spotlight on the so-called benchmarks approved by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the Group of 8 Countries and which the US has been using as a yardstick for measuring the progress of the talks, little notice has been taken in the American press and by US analysts of the two benchmarks which the present Government in New Delhi has been using for measuring the seriousness of the US desire for improving its relations with India and for according to India the importance which it merits.
The first benchmark relates to India’s autonomy of decision-making in national security matters and the second to the removal of the unfair and discriminatory denial of advanced technology to India in various fields on the baseless ground that such technology could enable India upgrade its nuclear and missile capability.

The denial is unfair because there is no previous evidence of India misusing dual-purpose technology for military purposes and discriminatory in relation to the USA’s kid-glove approach to China.

On paper, similar technological disabilities have been imposed on China too since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, but exemptions have been given to Beijing on a case by case basis as in the case of nuclear power stations and China’s flouting of these restrictions to acquire sensitive technologies with the connivance of US companies, which has been well-documented by Congressional committees, has been overlooked in the long-term interests of Sino-US relations.

India’s praiseworthy record of refraining from misuse of technologies acquired from the US and of adhering to US restrictions however unfair they might be without trying to clandestinely circumvent them as China has been repeatedly doing, has remained unrecognised and unreflected in US policies.

The eight rounds of Jaswant Singh-Talbott talks have shown that given the required vision and understanding, the two countries could be on the threshold of a new era of bilateral relations devoid of the complexes and mindsets of the past, but to what extent such relations would mature and flourish would depend, amongst other factors, on the US giving up using two yardsticks in policy-making in nuclear matters—one for India and the other for China— and on its showing the same deference to the sensitivities of India as it does to those of China.

B.RAMAN 7-2-99
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and presently Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.E-Mail Address:corde@md3.vsnl.net.in )

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers/paper33.html

India–United States relations
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Indo-American relations

India United States
Indo-American relations refers to the bilateral relations between the United States of America and the Republic of India.
India, though being one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement, developed a closer relationship with the Soviet Union than with the US due to the nations' regional proximity, which setback Indo-American relations throughout the Cold War. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, relations between the two countries have warmed, especially under the current Bush Administration seeing India as a strategic partner in Asia and the world's largest functioning democracy.[1]
John McCain and Barack Obama, the nominees for the 2008 US presidential election, both have bright visions of the future of Indo-American relations, though with some differences. McCain appears to see India as a counterweight to China's ever-growing influence over the world; he would like to see India become a permanent member of the annual Group of 8 meetings and would warmly accept India's bid for a permanent seat on the UN security council. Alongside this a McCain presidency would develop closer strategic and military ties with India. Obama offers a different, though not opposing, relationship that would be marked by closer economic ties.[2]
Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Military relations
3 Economic relations
3.1 Trade relations
4 See also
5 Notes
6 Sources


[edit] History

Swami Vivekananda in Chicago, 1893.The historic relationship between India and the United states was very strong. One event is the visit of Swami Vivekananda who introduced Yoga and Vedanta to America. Vivekananda was the first known Hindu Sage to come to the West, where he introduced Eastern thought at the World's Parliament of Religions, in connection with the World's Fair in Chicago, in 1893. Here, his first lecture, which started with this line "Sisters and Brothers of America," [2] made the audience clap for two minutes just to the address, for prior to this seminal speech, the audience was always used to this opening address: "Ladies and Gentlemen". It was this speech that catapulted him to fame by his wide audiences in Chicago and then later everywhere else in America, including far-flung places such as Memphis, Boston, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and St. Louis.
After Indian independence until the end of the cold war, the relationship between the two nations has often been thorny. From 1961 to 1963 there was a promise to help set up a large steel mill in Bokaro that was withdrawn by the U.S. The 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistani wars did not help their relations. During the Cold War, the US asked for Pakistan’s help because India was seen to lean towards the Soviet Union. Later, when India would not agree to support the anti-Soviet operation in Afghanistan, it was left with few allies. Not until 1997 was there any effort to improve relations with the United States.
Soon after Atal Bihari Vajpayee became Indian Prime Minister, he authorized a nuclear weapons test in Pokhran, which got the immediate attention of the US. The Clinton administration and Vajpayee exchanged representatives to help build relations. In March 2000, President Bill Clinton visited India. He had bilateral and economic discussions with Prime Minster Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Over the course of improved diplomatic relations with the Bush administration, India has agreed to allow close international monitoring of its nuclear weapons development while refusing to give up its current nuclear arsenal. India and the US have also greatly enhanced their economic ties.

During the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., President George W. Bush chose India as the country to control and police the Indian Ocean sea-lanes from the Suez to Singapore. The tsunami that occurred in December 2004 saw the U.S. and Indian navies to work together in search and rescue operations and to reconstruct the damaged lives and land. An Open Skies Agreement was made in April 2005. This helped enhance trade, tourism, and business by the increased number of flights. Air India purchased 68 US Boeing aircraft, which cost $8 billion.
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have made recent visits to India as well. After Hurricane Katrina, India donated $5 million to the American Red Cross and sent 2 plane loads of relief supplies and materials to help. And on 1 March 2006, President Bush made another diplomatic visit to expand relations between India and the United States.

[edit] Military relations

Naval ships from India, the U.S., Japan, Australia, and Singapore during a naval exercise in Malabar 2007.The U.S.-India defense relationship derives from a common belief in freedom, democracy, and the rule of law, and seeks to advance shared security interests. These interests include maintaining security and stability, defeating terrorism and violent religious extremism, preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and associated materials, data, and technologies and protecting the free flow of commerce via land, air and sea lanes.
In recent years India has conducted joint military excercises with the U.S. in the Indian Ocean. Despite this the Indian government sees the sole U.S. base in the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia, and the permanent presence of the U.S. military there, as a potential escalation point in a future war, especially because of the current U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[edit] Economic relations
The United States is India's largest exporting market and second largest trading partner after China. India’s exports to the United States in 2003 totalled nearly USD $13.1 billion, led by export of apparel and household goods, diamonds, and jewellery. American exports to India were valued at USD $5 billion.[3]
The United States is also one of India’s largest direct investors. From the year 1991 to 2004, the stock of FDI inflow has increased from USD $11.3 million to $344.4 million, totaling $4.13 billion. This is a compound rate increase of 57.5% annually. Indian direct investments abroad were started in 1992. Indian corporations and registered partnership firms are allowed to invest in businesses up to 100% of their net worth. India’s largest outgoing investments are manufacturing, which account for 54.8% of the country’s foreign investments. The second largest are non-financial services (software development), which accounts for 35.4% of investments.

[edit] Trade relations

U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a meeting with Indian and American business leaders in New Delhi.The United States is India's largest trading partner. In 2007, the United States exported $17.24 billion worth goods to India and imported $24.02 billion worth of Indian goods.[4] Major items exported by India to the U.S. include Information Technology Services, textiles, machinery, ITeS, gems and diamonds, chemicals, iron and steel products, coffee, tea, and other edible food products. Major American items imported by India include aircraft, fertilizers, computer hardware, scrap metal and medical equipment.[5][6]
The United States is also India's largest investment partner, with American direct investment of $9 billion accounting for 9% of total foreign investment into India. Americans have made notable foreign investment in India's power generation, telecommunications, ports, roads, petroleum exploration/processing, and mining industries.[6]
In July 2005, President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh created a new program called the Trade Policy Forum. It is run by a representative from each nation. The United States Trade Representative is Rob Portman and the Indian Commerce Secretary is Minister of Commerce Kamal Nath. The goal of the program is to increase bilateral trade which is a two-way trade deal and the flow of investments.
There are five main sub-divisions of the Trade Policy Forum which include: Agricultural Trade group- This group has three main objectives: agreeing on terms that will allow India to export mangoes to the United States, permitting India’s APEDA (Agricultural and Process Food Products Export Development Authority) to certify Indian products to the standards of the USDA, and executing regulation procedures for approving edible wax on fruit. Tariff and Non-Tariff Barriers group- Goals of the group include: agreeing that insecticides that are manufactures by United States companies can be sold throughout India. India had agreed to cut special regulations on trading carbonated drinks, many medicinal drugs, and lowering regulations on many imports that are not of agricultural nature. Both nations have agreed to discuss improved facets on the trade of Indian regulation requirements, jewelry, computer parts, motorcycles, fertilizer, and those tariffs that affect the American process of exporting boric acid.
The two nations have discussed matters such as those who wish to break into the accounting market, Indian companies gaining licenses for the telecommunications industry, and setting polices by the interaction of companies from both countries regarding new policies related to Indian media and broadcasting. This group has strived to exchange valuable information on recognizing different professional services offered by the two countries, discussing the movement and positioning of people in developing industries and assigning jobs to those people, continuation of talks in how India’s citizens can gain access into the market for financial servicing, and discussing the limitation of equities.
The two countries have had talks about the restriction of investments in industries such as financial services, insurance, and retail. Also, to take advantage of any initiatives in joint investments such as agricultural processing and the transportation industries. Both countries have decided to promote small business initiatives in both countries by allowing trade between them.
The majority of exports from the United States to India include: aviation equipment, engineering materials and machinery, instruments used in optical and medical sectors, fertilizers, and stones and metals.
Below are the percentages of traded items India to US increased by 21.12% to $6.94 billion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-American_relations
Indo-US relationship is very important for Obama: Saran

5 Nov, 2008, 2237 hrs IST, PTI
NEW DELHI: Describing the US election outcome as "a generation change", Former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran on Wednesday said the Indo-US relationsh
ip is very important to US president-elect Barack Obama.
"He had written a very nice letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in September saying he would vote in favour of the Indo-US nuclear agreement and assured his full support to it," the PM's special envoy Saran said today in an interview to NDTV.
Attaching great importance to the Indo-US relationship Obama said he would like to work together with India on various other shared interests as the President of the US, Saran said.
Obama talked about not only shared values but also about shared interests, he added.
"At least the sentiments expressed in that letter make me believe that infact this presidency would be another interesting and a very positive chapter in Indo-US relations," Saran said.
Indian-Americans hope for record appointments in Obama admin

5 Nov, 2008, 2222 hrs IST, PTI
WASHINGTON: With Indian Americans having played a vital role in Barack Obama's successful Presidential campaign, the community is expecting to surpass the number of appointments it received during the Clinton and Bush administrations.
The Indian American community has been seen as a strong force of support for the Democrat within the larger Asian American population, with one estimate being that they voted for Obama by more than a two to one margin.
"The presence and appointment of Indian Americans in leadership roles should go beyond the records set by Presidents Clinton and Bush," said Kamala Edwards, President of the Indian American Leadership Council, a non-partisan group.
"While we do not know how Obama is going to govern, an Obama administration will need to heed Indian Americans' voices in light of their growing political clout in divided electorates in many swing states," Edwards added.
Predicting a less favourable foreign policy for India as compared to the outgoing Bush administration, Edwards said Obama will have to focus more on domestic issues as discontent with Bush's regime was a major reason for Obama's thumping victory.
"The shift in foreign policy is not likely to be as favourable for India as President Bush on environmental issues, nuclear proliferation, outsourcing and the IT sector. Since Obama's victory is due to discontent with Bush's Iraq policy and the economic meltdown, he will have to focus more on domestic issues," Edwards said.








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