Natives Hope Obama Will Be Their President, Too.

By Haider Rizvi from IPS

NEW YORK, Nov 24 (IPS) - During his election campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly said that he cared about the issues facing Native American communities and insisted that they could trust him — pledges that Native leaders are now watching closely as the president-elect appoints a new cabinet and fills other key federal posts.

So far, Obama has named six native political figures to his transition team — half of them assigned to assist in Interior Department policy, budget and personnel changes.

“We’re lucky to have such stellar representatives with people with whom Indian Country has really good relationships,” said Jacqueline Johnson-Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, a nonprofit organisation that represents more than 250 tribes.

Native advocates Mary Smith, Mary McNeil and Yvette Robideaux have been assigned to work on justice, agriculture and health issues, while three current and former attorneys with the Native American Rights Fund — John Echohawk, Keith Harper and Robert Anderson — will advise Obama on changes proposed within the Interior Department.

The Natives, also known as “American Indians”, have their own sovereign governments, which the United States recognises in accordance with its constitution and under treaty obligations. However, as the Native leaders observe, their communities have always suffered from inattention during the transition and early years of past U.S. administrations.

“If appointments and major policy decisions are delayed for extended periods, the long-term issues in Indian Country are left unaddressed and handed on to the next administration,” said Johnson-Pata. .

In her view, “any significant reform efforts must be planned during the transition and start at the beginning of an administration if they are to succeed.”

As he continued to reach out to new voting blocs past summer, Obama made a campaign stop at an Indian reservation in Montana, where he told the audience that, as an African-American, he identified with their struggles.

“I know what it’s like to not always have been respected or to have been ignored and I know what it’s like to struggle and that’s how I think many of you understand what’s happened here on the reservation,” Obama said.

In his speech, Obama added: “A lot of times you have been forgotten, just like African-Americans have been forgotten or other groups in this country have been forgotten.”

Statistics show that the indigenous communities, which constitute about one percent of the U.S. population, are among the most marginalised sections of society with regard to health care, education and employment.

In March 2006 and again in March 2008, a panel of U.N. experts analysed the U.S. government’s treatment of indigenous Americans and ruled that it was guilty of racial discrimination.

In its 2008 report, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) also urged the U.S. to sign onto the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the current administration has continued to reject despite the fact it has been approved by a vast majority of the U.N. member states.

“Obama has stood with us and it is now time that we stand with him,” he said in a statement, describing the Natives’ interest in the political process as unprecedented. “Indian country has responded to the Democratic message of change and the need for urgency.”

“We have many who go without because our leaders have failed us. This election means much to them. Obama understands this while others remain oblivious. Let us, as Native people, help him.”

On the campaign trail in Montana, Obama was adopted as an honourary member of the Crow tribe, a ceremony that native activists say is reserved for special dignitaries. On that occasion, he was given a new name, “Barack Black Eagle”.

Many activists fighting for the rights of indigenous people say they are hoping that the Obama administration would also re-examine the case of Leonard Peltier, the legendary hero of the American Indian Movement who has been behind bars for nearly four decades.

“Until the law is harnessed to protect the victims of state violence and racism, it will serve as an instrument of repression, just as the slave codes functioned to sustain and legitimise an inhuman institution,” Peltier wrote in the letter.

***

Still, Obama has reached out more to the Native community than most others with presidential aspirations.

“That’s the commitment that I’m making to you, and since now I’m a member of the family, you know that I won’t break my commitment.” he said. The question many Natives are now asking is: Will he? 

FDR vs. Reagan
By David Sirota, AlterNet. Posted October 31, 2008.

The final stretch of the Presidential race has become an ideological proxy war between Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt. So it has all come down to this.

After two years and a quarter-billion dollars worth of ads, the pulverizing election has become a steel-cage match pitting rivals against each other — and not Immigrants versus Natives, Americans versus Foreigners or Whites versus Blacks.

McCain promises to “follow in [Reagan’s] tradition and in his footsteps” while vilifying Obama as a 1930s-era “socialist” looking to “redistribute wealth.” Obama counters by invoking Roosevelt’s speeches and depicting the financial meltdown as “the final verdict” on McCain’s “failed philosophy” (i.e., Reaganism).

***

Mind you, neither personifies these predecessors. Obama’s moderate record is not FDR’s quasi-socialism, and McCain has renounced some of his Reagan-inspired dogma.

Both also ignore inconsistencies. Obama criticizes the “failed philosophy” of Reagan conservatism while infusing some of his own prescriptions with such conservatism. McCain attacks Obama’s “socialism” after voting for the bank bailout bill — the most aggressive stroke of socialism in contemporary American history.

But all that is less important right now than the duo’s binary framing. They both effectively say a vote for McCain is a vote to continue Reagan’s trickle-down tax cuts and free-market fundamentalism, and a vote for Obama is a vote to resurrect Roosevelt’s regulations and redistributions. And because this choice has been made so clear — because we know what we’re voting on — whoever wins will have a huge mandate to implement the ideology he thematically represented.

That’s why conservatives are so worried.

They see the cause and effect: As McCain doubles down on the right’s economic catechism, Obama is surging. Even in traditional Gipper territory like Colorado and Virginia, the Rooseveltian Socialist is running ahead of Reagan Reincarnate.

Conservatives’ response is a preemptive “nah, nah, can’t hear you!” They contend that no matter how big progressives may win on Election Day, this is nonetheless a center-right nation. Indeed, a LexisNexis search shows this poll-tested term — “center-right nation” — is lately among the Punditburo’s most ubiquitous Orwellian buzzwords. From a Newsweek cover story by conservative dittohead Jon Meacham to a Wall Street Journal screed by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan to a Politico.com diatribe by former Rudy Giuliani aide John Avlon, the “center-right nation” phrase is being parroted with the propagandistic discipline of Cuba’s Ministry of Information.

The proof of this center-right nation? Republicans cite polls showing more Americans call themselves conservative than liberal. While that data point certainly measures brand name, those same surveys undermine the right’s larger argument because they show majorities support progressive positions on most economic issues.

Nevertheless, if Obama wins, expect more frantic talk from the fringe about how electing a black man billed as an Islamic Karl Marx obviously means our country is more conservative than ever. We’ll also be treated to hysterical assertions like those from former Bush aide Peter Wehner, who this week told the Washington Post that “it is a mistake to assume that significant GOP losses, should they occur, are a referendum on conservatism.”

But with the Bush era finely tuning America’s BS detector, repetition and revisionism can no longer cloak reality.

“As the Republican ticket continues to run against the very idea of progressive politics, they are sowing the seeds of the post-election realignment narrative,” writes The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, adding that a McCain loss in such an ideologically polarized contest means “Democrats can justifiably claim that conservatism itself has been rejected.”

That would be the very mandate for “direct, vigorous action” Roosevelt described in his 1933 inaugural address. Should a President Obama try to capitalize on it, he will have nothing to fear but fear itself.

———————

David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, “The Uprising,” was just released this month. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network — both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com

Evangelicals and Rural Americans Are Breaking Big for Obama: A mass defection from the Republican Party may be underway in counties that were once GOP strongholds. Call it the reverse Bradley Effect.

By Robert S. Eshelman, Tomdispatch.com. Posted October 30, 2008.

There’s clearly a new political landscape forming in the U.S. That’s what the polls are telling us. It’s not just that the first major-party black candidate for President is leading by significant margins in the national polls; it’s not just that North Dakota, a state George W. Bush won in 2004 by 64%, is believed to be “in play”; it’s not just that Virginia which, like North Dakota, was last carried by a Democrat in the sweep year of 1964, is, according to the most recent Washington Post poll and others, in the Obama camp by at least 8 points, or that he’s leading in a remarkable number of states Bush took in 2004, or even that Democratic Senate and House candidates are making a run of it in previously ridiculous places.

(a) Consider, instead, three recent polls in the context of the Bush years. Obama and McCain are now in a “statistical dead heat” among born-again evangelicals, those Rovian foot soldiers of two successful Bush elections, according to a recent survey; and the same seems to be true in Sarah Palin’s “real America,” those rural and small town areas she’s praised to the skies.

(b) According to a poll commissioned by the Center for Rural Strategies, in those areas which Bush won in 2004 by 53%-41%, Obama now holds a statistically insignificant one point lead.

(c) To complete this little trifecta, Gallup has just released a poll showing that Jews are now likely to vote for Obama by a more than 3 to 1 majority (74% to 22%).

If present projections come close to holding, this could prove to be a rare reconfiguring or turning-point election — as Wall Street expert Steve Fraser first suggested might be possible at TomDispatch way back in February 2007. If so, the Republican Party, only recently besotted by dreams of a generational Pax Republicana, might find itself driven back into the deep South and deep West for who knows how long, “an extremist rump, reduced to a few stronghold states and obsessed with causes that seem not to matter to the general public.”

Among the remaining unknowns in this election, of course, are the intertwined issues of class and race. In this regard, few places have been more closely examined than parts of Pennsylvania, a battleground state in which polls show John McCain significantly behind, but which he must capture if he hopes to win this election, and a place where working-class, as well as possibly racist, “Hillary voters” were supposed to be especially strong. Ever since the primaries, reporters have been tromping the state in search of them. Today, TomDispatch has an interesting twist on such articles. We’ve sent a home-town boy back to Pennsylvania to offer a more personal view of the race there — and the news isn’t good for the future of the Republican Party. — Introduction by TomDispatch editor, Tom Engelhardt.

 http://www.alternet.org/election08/10526…

Environment on AlterNet.
October 21st, 2008
 http://www.alternet.org/environment
___________________________________________________________

From the editors:
AlterNet has now rolled out voter guides for all our issue areas to help you make informed decisions in the upcoming election — just two weeks to go. Below is our enviro guide and you can also find a guide specifically for water issues in our Water section. Where do the candidates stand on different strains of energy policy? How about clean water? Green jobs? Check out the voter guides.

We’ve also got some great election and economy related content this week — the big topics of the day, including some words that Michael Pollan has for the next president.

Thanks for reading,

Tara Lohan, Managing Editor
___________________________________________________________

SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT MAY BE OUR BEST HOPE FOR THE ECONOMY — ELECTION GUIDE
AlterNet
From climate change to energy independence, a look at where
the candidates stand on this year’s top 10 environmental
issues.
 http://www.alternet.org/environment/1019…

ENVIRONMENTAL FAILURE: A RUINED PLANET IS CLOSER TO REALITY
By James Gustave Speth, Yale Environment 360
Environmental groups have grown in strength and
sophistication, but the environment has continued to go
downhill. Why?
 http://www.alternet.org/environment/1038…

HOW THE ECONOMIC CRISIS WILL AFFECT THE ENVIRONMENT
By Michael T. Klare, Huffington Post
Will the crisis be good or bad for the environment,
especially with respect to global warming?
 http://www.alternet.org/environment/1038…

CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS TO DRY UP THE SOUTHWEST’S FUTURE
By Jason Mark, Earth Island Journal
The abundant water and cheap energy that have fueled the
Southwest’s transformation are starting to dry up.
 http://www.alternet.org/environment/1033…

DEAR MR. NEXT PRESIDENT — FOOD, FOOD, FOOD
By Michael Pollan, The New York Times
We must move into the post-oil era to improve the health of
the American people and to mitigate climate change.
 http://www.alternet.org/environment/1026…

THE MELTDOWN WE REALLY CAN’T AFFORD
By Kerry Trueman, AlterNet
We are in danger of passing an extremely dangerous tipping
point, with the frightening discovery of massive deposits of
sub-sea methane in the Arctic.
 http://www.alternet.org/water/102351/

India’s humble rickshaw goes solar.
by Elizabeth Roche Mon Oct 13, 2008.  NEW DELHI (AFP) - It’s been touted as a solution to urban India’s traffic woes, chronic pollution and fossil fuel dependence, as well as an escape from backbreaking human toil. A state-of-the-art, solar powered version of the humble cycle-rickshaw promises to deliver on all this and more.

The “soleckshaw,” unveiled this month in New Delhi, is a motorised cycle rickshaw that can be pedalled normally or run on a 36-volt solar battery.

Developed by the state-run Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), prototypes are receiving a baptism of fire by being road-tested in Old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk area.

One of the city’s oldest and busiest markets, dating back to the Moghul era, Chandni Chowk comprises a byzantine maze of narrow, winding streets, choked with buses, cars, scooters, cyclists and brave pedestrians.

“The most important achievement will be improving the lot of rickshaw drivers,” said Pradip Kumar Sarmah, head of the non-profit Centre for Rural Development.

“It will dignify the job and reduce the labour of pedalling. From rickshaw pullers, they will become rickshaw drivers,” Sarmah said.

India has an estimated eight million cycle-rickshaws.

The makeover includes FM radios and powerpoints for charging mobile phones during rides.

Gone are the flimsy metal and wooden frames that give the regular Delhi rickshaws a tacky, sometimes dubious look.

The “soleckshaw,” which has a top speed of 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) per hour, has a sturdier frame and sprung, foam seats for up to three people.

The fully-charged solar battery will power the rickshaw for 50 to 70 kilometres (30 to 42 miles). Used batteries can be deposited at a centralised solar-powered charging station and replaced for a nominal fee.

If the tests go well, the “soleckshaw” will be a key transport link between sporting venues at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

“Rickshaws were always environment friendly. Now this gives a totally new image that would be more acceptable to the middle-classes,” said Anumita Roychoudhary of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.

“Rickshaws have to be seen as a part of the solution for modern traffic woes and pollution. They have never been the problem. The problem is the proliferation of automobiles using fossil fuels,” she said.

Initial public reaction to the “soleckshaw” has been generally favourable, and the rickshaw pullers have few doubts about its benefits.

“Pedalling the rickshaw was very difficult for me,” said Bappa Chatterjee, 25, who migrated to the capital from West Bengal and is one of the 500,000 pullers in Delhi.

“I used to suffer chest pains and shortage of breath going up inclines. This is so much easier.

“Earlier, when people hailed us it was like, ‘Hey you rickshaw puller!’ Police used to harass us, slapping fines even abusing us for what they called wrong parking. Now people look at me with respect,” Chatterjee said.

Mohammed Matin Ansari, another migrant from eastern Bihar state, said the new model offered parity with car, bus and scooter drivers.

“Now we are as good as them,” he said.

Indian authorities have big dreams for the “soleckshaw.”

India’s Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal who hailed the invention for its “zero carbon foot print” said it should be used beyond the confines of Delhi.

“Soleckshaws would be ideal for small families visiting the Taj Mahal,” he told AFP.

At present battery-operated buses ferry people to the iconic monument in Agra — but their limited numbers cannot cope with the heavy tourist rush.

CSIR director Sinha said he hoped an advanced version of the “soleckshaw” with a car-like body would become a viable alternative to the “small car” favoured by Indian middle class families.

“Greenhouse gas emissions are showing an increasing trend year on year and 60 percent of this comes from the global transport sector.

“In the age of global warming, the soleckshaw, with improvements, can be successfully developed as competition for all the petrol and diesel run small cars,” Sinha said.

 The Previous posting was September 30, 2008. Now, after the weekend that saw Washington “Get To Its Senses”thanks to an infusion of ideas from G7 Finance Ministers, Central Bank Officials, and other European leaders, who came to the WB/IMF yearly enclave in Washington, and actually told the Americans that things have to be run for the sake of the people, rather then for the sake of the stock-holders and managers. It is only when the people’s interests are cared for, that the health of the banks will return - finally the US was ready to move on the re-capitalization of the banks.  Call it what you want - but this is a guarantee that the National interest is now at stake - not just the jobs of the managers - so, at these depressed prices, the Spaniards, who did not lose from the Americanization of the global useless paper market because their regulations did not allow such deals, and who already expanded two weeks earlier into the UK, are now buying into the US. Simple enough - they say that the US is seen as a higher growth market than Western Europe, despite the possibility of a US recession. Obviously, that is only so if you do not try short cuts, and earn rather your gains from work, not gimmicks. The US needs this money inflow and the Bush Adminstration is guaranteeing these investments.

So, Santander Bank is now buying up Sovereign Bancorp Inc, and their competitors from BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, got already two Texas Banks  and now get Compass Bancshares Inc, of Birmingham Alabama with 400 branches from Florida to Arizona.

The Big Question: Why are Spanish banks in such “rude” health when ours (that is the UK) are ailing?
By Elizabeth Nash, The Independent,
Tuesday,  September 30, 2008.

Why are we asking this now?

Spain’s biggest banking group, Santander, yesterday galloped to the rescue of Bradford and Bingley, the latest British bank to hit the skids, saving it from bankruptcy and probably further economic meltdown.

Why is a Spanish bank so keen to expand into Britain?

It’s part of Santander’s grand plan to become the world’s top bank. It is already the leading bank in the Eurozone, No1 in Latin America, and seventh in the world by market share. Once it’s consolidated its presence in the British market, it plans to conquer the US. Growth is its watchword. “The aim is to be second to none,” the bank says in its characteristically immodest way.

Hasn’t Santander already established quite a presence in Britain?

Yes, it chummed up with the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1988 and got a seat on the board, which gave Santander a window on the world that was invaluable when it developed ambitions of international expansion.

Four years ago it acquired Abbey National, and it is still digesting Alliance & Leicester which it bought for a song in July. You have to remember that the Banco Santander began as a local family-run operation in the northern Spanish city whose name it bears. There’s not much it doesn’t know about how small regional banks work.

So who is the guiding hand behind this grand invasion?

Santander is run by the charismatic Emilio Botin, 73, the latest patriarch of this great Spanish banking dynasty, an astute predator steeped in the business to his fingertips. At the pinnacle of the most powerful business operation in Spain, he is arguably the country’s most influential man. When Botin endorsed Spain’s incoming socialist prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in 2004, a jittery stock market calmed down instantly.

How has Santander got this far?

The bank has a record of homing in on distressed banks, even lumbering shareholders with apparently hopeless liabilities, as when it scooped up Spain’s Banesto bank in 1995, when it was a multimillion pound black hole ruined by a reckless fraudster. Botin put his daughter Ana Patricia – who will probably succeed when the old man eventually retires – in charge of the operation and she turned it round within five years.

Santander then swallowed Banco Central Hispano in 1995, which enabled it enter the turbulent Latin American market, to the alarm of more cautious operators. Within 10 years Santander consolidated itself as the top bank in the region, and turned its attention to Europe.

How has Santander avoided being savaged by the banking crisis?

Not only has Santander weathered the storm, it has spectacularly benefited from it, announcing 9bn euros profit this year, a staggering 19.3 per cent improvement on last year.

Two reasons, really: first the Spanish banking system is very strictly regulated, largely as a result of a devastating crisis that shook the country’s banking industry in the 1970s, and sent many regional and family banks to the wall. The Bank of Spain imposes iron controls in assuming high-risk assets, and insists that ordinary customers be protected from their vagaries. Second, Santander concentrates on retail banking – the unsexy stuff of high-street branches, current accounts and savings deposits – rather than investment banking, or anything fancier. The bank reckons its business is therefore largely immune from market swings.

Santander never got embroiled in dodgy loans or toxic mortgages, which it regarded as too complicated and unacceptably risky. While the world financial system juddered under the fallout of subprime loans, Sanatander declared its exposure to high-risk mortgages as “zero”. Botin loftily told his shareholders, “We don’t have those strange things.”

So how do Spaniards get their mortgages?

Mortgages in Spain are mostly handled by savings banks, which aren’t quoted on the stock exchange. Some of these became over-generous in dishing out loans during the recent long property boom, and since the bubble burst many face liquidity problems.

Spain’s banking supremos are in general an austere, cautious lot, with none of the buccaneering recklessness of many international counterparts. They are rich, of course, but frugal and philanthropic. If the Botins appear in public, it’s probably to endow a university or science park. You will never see them in the pages of Hola!

So how did Santander come out on top?

As well as knowing the market inside out, Santander’s top brass, ie Mr Botin, the indusputed boss, has an astute sense of market timing. Last year the bank conducted the real estate operation of the century by selling off all its 1,200 properties at the peak of the property boom, including wedding cake palaces in the heart of Spain’s major cities. Pulled off just before the market crashed, the deal netted Santander 4bn euros – which neatly funded last year’s purchase, jointly with its affiliate the Royal Bank of Scotland, of the Dutch bank ABN Amro. It cannily held on to all its branches, however – the bits that make money – and even remains tenant of the properties it sold, with an option to buy back in the future.

How will Santander’s increased presence affect Britain’s high-street banks?

We can expect to see more of Santander’s scarlet flame logo as the old names Abbey, Alliance& Leicester and Bradford&Bingley gradually fade away. In acquiring B&B – as in all its acquisitions – the Spanish bank has been careful to peel away and sell off the liabilities it doesn’t want, to home in on the elements of its core business: branches, and bank deposits.

So having lots of branches is the key to banking success?

That’s the Santander way. It may seem like boring stuff to braver bankers, but Santander believes we need more branches – in Spain there’s a bank on every street corner – and that these are the source of steady money, what Mr Botin calls “high-quality, recurrent earnings”. However, Santander is ruthless in stripping out what he doesn’t need, so bank employees may fear for their jobs.

Will Santander be satisfied, or will it want more of the British market?

History suggests Santander will be eager for another good bargain, especially in the current landscape of smouldering wreckage. The predatory Mr Botin, his coffers plumped with cash, must already be on the alert for further acquisitions, if not immediately. But this is the best moment for him. As he put it recently: “In times of crisis, being better than the others is a big advantage.”

So will the B&B takeover benefit British consumers?

Yes

*Santander has saved B&B from ruin, and account holders can feel their savings and deposits are safe.

*Santander’s low risk policy suggests it will be a steadying influence on Britain’s future banking scene.

*Without Santander’s action, the alternative could have been a wider meltdown too awful to contemplate.

No

*Santander’s move reinforces the concentration of Britain’s banks in the hands of a powerful few.

*Santander has a mixed reputation for its service, and it is strong enough to brush off complaints.

*Savings are better handled by local building societies than by banks answerable only to shareholders.

 e.nash at independent.co.uk

===========

Some of our pointers - A Socialist Prime Minister in Spain; A retreat from Iraq; A US Presidential candidate - John McCain who seemingly thought Spain was an enemy of the US for not following Washington’s edicts like many other lemmings.

Mr. Botin will not laugh, he will not even chuckle - he will just go about his solid business and will not eat chuff. His daughter will take over after him - a solid Spanish woman - He backed Zapatero rather then a Sarah Palin.

Further, we know Bank Santander in New York - among its many philanthropies right here - it is also the host for many solid meetings of the New York based “Foreign Policy Association.”  The Bank Manager in the US comes to listen and mingle with the crowd.

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