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November 9, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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8 American Indians in race |
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Usual voters, unusual voting sites Money & media control key to victory Humble TV proves
reliable in Net age They voted for Bush’s honesty &
Gore’s experience Gunbattles rage
in Gaza Strip Barak offers Palestinian state if clashes end Arafat’s plane ‘used’
to smuggle arms Scotland Yard
cops foil diamond heist
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Indians gave $ 10m to poll fund WASHINGTON, Nov 8 — Indian Americans are believed to have contributed a record $ 10 million in the presidential and Congressional races in the USA this year, indicating increasing participation of their 1.5 million strong community in the politics of their adopted land. Mr Mukund Modi, founder of “Overseas Friends of BJP,” a pro-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) group of non-resident Indians, says their contribution was about $ 5 million in the last election and his estimate is that the figure is more than double this time. He says a major part of the amount has gone to the kitty of the Democratic Party, primarily favoured by new immigrants, the category to which most NRIs belong. Mr Modi, a New York-based community activist, has been quoted as saying that the community’s contribution to First Lady Hillary Clinton alone was in the vicinity of about a million dollars. She successfully ran on Democratic ticket for a Senate seat in New York vacated by former US Ambassador to India Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The Indo-American Democratic Committee held a fundraiser for Mrs Clinton at the prestigious Trump Tower. Mr Modi said the community was able to play a little bit more positive role this time because both parties — Democratic and Republican — had begun to appreciate the importance of its members, particularly their money power. He says President Bill Clinton’s visit to India, the first by a US head of state in more than two decades, and the return visit by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, growing trade between the two countries and the ongoing arrival here of software professionals from India had generated new fervour in the community and it was amply reflected in the election. Moreover, the dialogue between the two countries had broadened and the USA had become India’s largest investor. Indian exports to the USA rose sharply and American companies urgently sought Indian high technology workers, he said. The California, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington, DC, metropolitan areas have a sizeable concentration of people of Indian origin but nowhere are they in a position to affect the outcome of Congressional races. Their strength is no match to other ethnic groups, especially Hispanics, currently estimated at 30 million. Democratic Party activist in Virginia Dinesh Sastry emerged as the leading fundraiser in the community, bringing in about $ 3 million to the Gore campaign. Democratic White House hopeful A1 Gore and President Clinton attended several of the events. The community, with some 35,000 doctors, up to 17,000 nurses and 11-12,000 pharmacists and a growing number of software professionals, has increased its political visibility in the USA.
— IANS |
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8 American Indians in race WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (UNI) — Eight American Indians are among those in the race for seats in state legislatures across the USA, according to a survey by a leading website. Mr Satveer Chaudhary (31), in the fray for Minnesota State Senate seat, was the first Asian American to make a bid for the state legislature and hardly 27 when first elected to the state Assembly. History would be made if he gets the voters’ nod for his Senate bid. A wealthy cardiologist, Mr Rajiv Chandra, is in the race for the state legislature seat in Melbourne, Florida. He is fighting for better management of healthcare systems and improved health facilities for the elderly, a rediff.com survey said. Two decades have passed since a sari-clad history teacher made a serious bid for a seat in the New Jersey state Assembly. Though Ms Kanak Dutta, a Democrat, lost out to the Reagan avalanche, her spirited fight has inspired about a dozen American Indians to seek seats in state Assemblies and in Washington. Except engineer-turned-entrepreneur Narendra Gunaji from New Mexico, the seven other American Indian candidates are Democrats. Five Pakistanis are also contesting the elections to the state legislatures. Mr Chaudhary said Indians tried their luck for the Congress in the past but most were defeated at the primary stage itself. “You need a lot of clout and big money for a Congress contest,’’ he said. Other American Indian candidates are Mr Laxman Sundae (Minnesota), Mr Jody W. Wadhwa (Illinois), Mr Kumar Barve (Maryland), Mr Rajiv Chandra (Florida) and Mr Gangadharappa Nanjundappa (California). |
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Usual voters, unusual voting sites LOS ANGELES, Nov 8 (Reuters) — Americans make democracy work in all the unexpected places: mortuaries, ice cream parlours, bowling alleys and lifeguard stations. Voting in a US election can and does take place in the most unusual places. For example, Republican representative Rick Lazio, battling First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for a US Senate seat in New York, cast his ballot for himself at a Ford dealership in Bay Shore, Long Island. “County registrars must find voting sites that meet certain standards; they have to be wheelchair accessible ... centrally located in a precinct,” said H. Eric Schockman, a political science Professor at University of Southern California. “They throw the net out as wide as possible and people usually come forward to say, ‘yeah, you can use my garage for the day.” Which is why, for instance, while some Los Angeles area voters cast ballots in schools and community centres, others were directed to places like Brothers Mortuary in Long Beach, California, where funerals were suspended for the day to accommodate the elections. “This is a great space for voting,’’ said Kathie Bryant, a Brothers spokeswoman. “We have rest rooms, a water fountain, a nice big patio area in back that’s got flowers and real pretty.” It is also very quiet.” She added that nervous volunteers got preview tours of the facilities. “We show you around so you won’t have to be nervous about where you are walking. We’re a friendly good place with a casket showroom, a beautiful chapel, a really warm slumber room. People aren’t going to see anything they shouldn’t be seeing.’’ Elsewhere, voters visited poll at a Venice Beach, Calif. Lifeguard Station, a Sherman Oaks, Calif, ice cream parlour and the Hollywood home of 83-year-old Joyce Klement, who has hosted election balloting in her dining room since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Ms Klement turned her home into a polling place back in the 1940s so she could keep an eye on her children. She sets up chairs in her living room and booths in her dining room and serves breakfast to voters who say they are hungry.
Polling place with a view The Venetian Pool in Coral Gables, Florida, a landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is possibly one of the most scenic voting locations in the USA, several voters have said. In order to get to the booths, voters must stroll through an octagon shaped tower, past grottoes and waterfalls and a natural coral pool where Esther Williams once swam, through a palm-fringed loggia dotted with brightly coloured orchids, and bursts of bougainvillea. It’s a treat for the eyes and the senses, spokeswoman Jeaneen Bell said. “Most of my neighbours vote here but I am assigned to a cub scout station in the middle of the golf course. It doesn’t seem fair,” she added. On California’s famed Venice Beach the wind was blowing cool. Surfers and bodybuilders donned shorts to head to the lifeguard station to cast their votes, said Jinx Wible. ‘’There seem to be lots of dog owners,’’ who drag their pooches to the poll, she added. In a scene that would have pleased Norman Rockwell, some 150 persons voted in an abandoned wood-framed town hall in rural Ruby, Neb., that hasn’t been used for anything much except cemetery committee meetings for decades. |
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Money & media control key to victory THERE is an iron law of American campaign politics. It says that the only way to win is to have higher numbers than the other guy. The only way to improve your numbers is by television advertising. The only way to get the advertising slots that reach the voters is by paying for them. And the only way to pay for them is to raise millions and millions of dollars. Nothing that has happened in the 2000 election will have dented the US political class’s faith in this iron law. This was an election won and lost by the most intensive television advertising campaign ever in the key states. Political campaigners, like generals, always prepare for the next campaign on the basis of the endlessly re-examined lessons of the last one. So the big lesson that the American professionals will draw from the 2000 campaign is not that the political money mountains need to be brought under control. It is that campaign funding will have to increase more than ever in 2004. Campaign finance reform - the one great populist cause to emerge in the 2000 campaign — can simply go hang. The second great lesson the professionals will learn is just as cynical. They will conclude that a winning campaign is all about better organisation, stricter discipline and never being knocked off course by the media, events, or voters. This closest of modern US elections was also one of the least participative elections of modern times. It was won by professionals deploying professional thinking, techniques and resources to ensure that voters did the one thing required of them — vote. It was ruthless and controlling, and the outcome will only confirm the professionals’ belief that their way is the only way. It was a campaign in which the messages were crafted by strategists and pollsters working with focus groups comprised of middle-of-the-road people who were not interested in politics. It was a campaign in which the internet became not the transforming participative democratic forum that many had hoped but a superbly effective weapon to add to the armoury of those who are directly involved — organisers, lobbyists, pollsters, journalists and activists. The main candidates, Al Gore and George W Bush, worked from a campaign playbook which kept them away from unvetted crowds, avoided unscripted events and — above all — insulated them from a probing media. The candidates promoted their families and their relatives as surrogate campaigners as never before. They sought the company and endorsement of celebrities as never before. And they avoided the press. For the modern candidate, the political press is an enemy every bit as dangerous as the opposing candidate. Gore in particular pursued a strategy of avoiding contact with journalists, especially those travelling with him on the campaign trail. Gore gave not a single press conference from the day he left the Democratic convention in Los Angeles in August until polling day. Bush, having initially made himself available to his own travelling press, abruptly ended that approach after he mangled the word “subliminable” as he struggled to explain the use of the word “rats” in a subliminal frame of a campaign advertisement in early September. After that, he was off limits too. Not that the candidates did not want to get their message out. They did, but on their own terms. So they went on comedy programmes and children’s television, on late night talk shows such as Letterman and Leno, and soft-focus daytime interview shows such as those of Oprah Winfrey and Regis Philbin. But they never went on the political programmes and they never took questions from political reporters. Their focus was unerring and unsleeping. They wanted to control the media agenda. When they succeeded they were happy. When they failed they came close to panic, as both sides did at various times. But this was not some new discovery. It is the essential condition of the modern political campaign — the “permanent campaign” as Sidney Blumenthal, then a journalist but now a White House aide, dubbed it in a 1980s book. In all things, the rest of the world looks to America for what is coming downstream towards it. Election campaigners in Britain have been glued to the 2000 election as they were to earlier contests, to learn new tricks, techniques and lessons. The Labour Party sent its General Secretary, Margaret McDonagh, to view the campaign. Conservative central office sent several officials to study the campaign, and William Hague himself paid a brief visit to the Republican convention. They will all have learned what the American professionals have learned. That modern elections are won by money — which can only come from rich people. That modern elections are won by control — which can only be achieved by defeating the media. And that modern elections are won by organisation — which ensures that voters do the one thing that fewer and fewer of them seem interested in doing. As democracy withered again, the campaigners celebrated another triumph.
— By arrangement with The Guardian |
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Humble TV proves reliable in Net age PALO ALTO (California), Nov 8 (Reuters) — It was the first US Presidential election since the Internet became a mainstream source of breaking news, but many people seeking the latest results in the nail-biting contest had more luck with an old-fashioned source of information — the television. Election Day 2000 started with the website for the Republican National Committee (http://www.rnc.org) featuring a tirade again the party’s presidential contender George W. Bush, thanks to a hacker, apparently a Democrat, who had broken in. The day drew to a close with voters being blocked from accessing some of the most popular news destinations. “You’re seeing this page because MSNBC is experiencing high site traffic,” was the message that greeted many visitors to (http://www.MSNBC.com) late in the day, as volumes of people logged on to see the latest tally. MSNBC, operated jointly by Microsoft Corp. and General Electric Co.’s NBC television network, had promised full election news and more analysis than it could provide on its affiliate television stations. But it showed an uneven performance for much of the evening. People also complained about delays getting onto other popular news sites like (http://www.CNN.com), (http://www.ABCNews.com) and various political sites like (http://www.voter.com), and said that some of the big Internet portals were slower than usual. “It has been worse than I anticipated,” said Dan Todd, spokesman for Keynote Systems Inc, which monitors website performance and found a long list of sites from (http://www.votenader.com) to (http://www.Usatoday.com) that were taking over 20 seconds to update webpages at peak usage times. “There was clearly some degradation in the site performances,’’ said Todd. “They are certainly not meeting all their visitor expectations.” Websites have frequently shown strain as key events from the death of Princess Diana to the virtual Victoria’s Secret fashion show drew unusually large audiences. ABCNews.com said it broke its prior single-day site traffic record by midday on Tuesday. (The old record had been set in 1998 when it posted the Starr Report detailing President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky). But many Internet users said they were surprised the Web continued to be so unreliable after years of investment in the best technology. |
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They voted for
Bush’s honesty & Gore’s experience WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (AP)— George W. Bush got strong backing from voters who sought honesty and strong leadership in a candidate, exit polls said, while Al Gore drew solid support from those who wanted experience and understanding of complex issues. The voters’ split priorities reflected the tug-of-war between personality and experience that has been at the core of this campaign, exit surveys suggested. Voters were interviewed as they left the polls by Voter News Service, a consortium of the Associated Press and US Television networks. The poll results were based on interviews with 6,944 voters after they voted yesterday and have an error margin of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points. |
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Gunbattles rage in Gaza Strip GAZA, Nov 8 (Reuters) — Israeli tanks fired shells during a heavy gunbattle with Palestinian policemen at the Karni commercial crossing area in the Gaza Strip today after two Palestinians and an Israeli were killed, a witness said. A Reuters photographer at the scene said three tanks and three armoured personnel carriers arrived at the scene of clashes between Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli soldiers during which there was also an exchange of gunfire. He said at least four shells were fired at a building used as cover by the policemen during the shootout. The Israeli army said, “We have a couple of tanks at Karni because fire was opened on a civilian convoy. We don’t know about any shell fire, but live fire was used". Gunmen also exchanged fire with Israeli soldiers near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, witnesses said. The army spokesman said Palestinian snipers opened fire at Israeli soldiers patrolling a road in Israel near the Gaza Strip south of Karni. There were no reports of casualties. An Israeli woman and two Palestinian teenagers were killed earlier in the day in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian gunmen ambushed an Israeli car driving to the Rafah crossing in the Gaza Strip, killing a woman and seriously wounding a passenger, an Israeli army spokesman said. He said the Israelis were travelling to work at the Rafah international terminal which connects Gaza to Egypt and handles security steps for Palestinians arriving at the Gaza international airport. The spokesman said three Palestinian gunmen opened fire from the direction of the airport, which Israel closed shortly after the shooting, citing security concerns. Shifa hospital officials said 14-year-old and 16-year-old Palestinian teenagers were killed in clashes with soldiers at the Karni crossing and at Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Two other Palestinians died of wounds in earlier clashes and a 14-year-old died from a gunshot wound in his pelvis during clashes in Hares, a small village in the West Bank. |
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Barak offers Palestinian state if clashes end JERUSALEM, Nov 8 (AP) — With clashes appearing to wind down after more than a month of bloodshed, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made the clearest offer yet of an independent state for the Palestinians but said it must be the result of negotiations and that the negotiations can only resume once the violence abates. Mr Barak’s pledge of a “viable Palestinian state” came in a long letter to the heads of all the world’s governments, meant to explain Israel’s policy in its conflict with the Palestinians. The unrest continued yesterday, following a pattern set in the week since the two sides arrived at their latest truce agreement. There were a few riots during the daytime hours, in which one Palestinian was killed and 50 wounded. At night, exchanges of gunfire erupted, as Palestinians opened fire on Israeli army posts, the Jewish neighbourhood of Gilo in east Jerusalem and two West Bank settlements. Israeli soldiers returned the fire. A 7-year-old Palestinian boy was killed in a hit-and-run incident in the West Bank, Palestinians said. The boy’s brother said a Jewish settler swerved his car and ran over the boy on purpose. Israeli police said they were checking, but no complaint had been filed. WASHINGTON (PTI): The US President, Mr Bill Clinton, today announced the setting up of a committee to conduct an inquiry into the recent spate of clashes between Israelis and Palestinians which derailed the Middle-East peace efforts. The Sharam-el Sheikh Committee will be led by former US Senator George Mitchell and has in its panel former Turkish President Suleyman Demiral, European Union representative Javier Solana and Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorbjorn Jagland among others, White House Press Secretary Jake Siewert said. Mr Clinton, who is scheduled to meet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on November 9 and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak three days later, said immediate priority would be the implementation of all provisions of the agreement arrived at the summit at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt three weeks ago. |
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Arafat’s plane ‘used’
to smuggle arms JERUSALEM, Nov 8 (AFP) — Israel has accused the Palestinian Authority of smuggling arms for the Intifadah, or uprising, aboard Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s plane, army chief Shaul Mofaz was quoted by Israeli media as saying. “The Palestinians are using Mr Arafat’s plane to smuggle arms for the use of rioters”, Mofaz was quoted yesterday, by Israeli public radio and television as telling the parliament’s foreign defence committee. |
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Scotland Yard
cops foil diamond heist LONDON, Nov 8 (DPA) — Scotland Yard officers dressed as cleaners, a huge diamond, a getaway powerboat, an internationally famous setting and an audacious modus operandi — it had all ingredients of a far-fetched film, but this time it was real. Disguised as workmen, armed robbers drove an earthmoving machine past security guards and then used it to crash their way through the perimeter fence of London’s Millennium Dome, through the Dome itself and into the leisure attraction’s Money Zone. Their target was a collection of 12 diamonds - chief among them the 203-carat Millennium Star, the pride of De Beers’ collection. The getaway, in the shape of a powerboat moored on the south bank of the Thames, was in place. Police radios were being monitored by an accomplice on the north bank. Other accomplices were waiting in Kent to assist with the disposal of the loot. |
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Canadian novelist wins Booker Prize Volcano devours German tourist Man to stand trial
for biting dog Two beheaded in
Saudi Arabia Jimmy Carter closes
human rights office Girl reunited with
family after 15 yrs Harrison Ford,
wife separated Provide access to
Lama, China urged Woman extremist
held after 30 yrs Amnesty on “child”
soldiers in UK army Mummy found in Pak
of Egyptian origin
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