<a href=www.sunspot.net>Baltimore Sun By Kimberly A.C. Wilson Sun Staff

June 4, 2003

Thirty-seven cars trailed Beltran Navarro's gray hearse through Baltimore yesterday, wending past settings of the dynamic community leader's professional triumphs and personal delights.

The processional rolled past the northern tip of Fells Point, where Navarro, a Charm City-raised Venezuelan, united members of disparate Latino communities and helped create a business district that reflects the diversity of the city's Hispanic population. It passed the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon, a spot so central to Navarro's childhood in Baltimore that he settled in an apartment with an unobstructed view.

When the memorial ended, city officials, extended family and friends from around the world bid a reluctant farewell to a man Mayor Martin O'Malley eulogized as "a revolutionary spirit."

"He was never afraid to speak truth to power," O'Malley told a standing room-only crowd packed into the Kaczorowski Funeral Home in Dundalk.

Heads nodded. Loved ones willed back tears. And for an hour, in both English and Spanish, mourners from Honolulu, Boston, Korea and all over South and Central America remembered a man so consistently in motion and so inexplicably energized that few imagined a future without him.

"He was like a magnet that attracts small bits of iron," said Oscar Caceres, flanked by two rows of national flags that served as reminders of Navarro's travels and the scope of his relationships. "He attracted people to him, languages, races, nationalities, all that crowded around Beltran."

Navarro's death May 24 - he suffered a heart attack as he and Young-Mi Kim celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary in Paris - stunned the friends around the world who had come to expect his scathing e-mails, whimsical cards and forthright phone messages.

Born in Trinidad in 1945 and raised in Venezuela's capital, Caracas, until the age of 5, Beltran Navarro arrived in Baltimore with an aunt in time for grade school. Educated at universities in Caracas and at Indiana University, he held scores of titles during his 57 years.

Variety of posts

He served on Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski's committee to review applicants for armed services academies in Maryland. He taught diversity courses at the city's police academy. He lobbied support for a capital bond bill for city museums before last fall's election. He ran the small public relations firm of Navarro, Kim & Associates out of a Charles Street apartment house, steps from the flat that he shared with his wife.

Navarro wasn't a big-name newsmaker in Baltimore, but his death was front-page news for readers of El Tiempo Latino, the region's most widely distributed Spanish-language weekly.

When word of his death reached the paper's Arlington, Va., newsroom, discussion swiftly turned to the proper headline for the obituary.

"Someone wrote 'Baltimore loses a Latino leader,'" recalled Alberto Avendano, associate publisher and editor in chief. "I just erased 'Latino.' He was not just about Latinos. He was about justice for America."

Carmen Nieves, executive director of Centro de la Communidad in Baltimore, called Navarro a friend for 13 years.

"If he had a hobby, it would have been people. He was a people watcher and a people connector, and he would sit back and enjoy where the connections would go," she said.

His legacy, said his widow, includes the young people he mentored. More than a dozen of them attended the funeral, each with a Navarro story of guidance and inspiration. Natali Fani was one.

When Fani enrolled at Goucher College four years ago, she filled her schedule with pre-med courses and dreamed of a career in medicine. A chance encounter with Navarro at a Spanish heritage celebration set her dreams onto a different path: She graduated Friday with a double degree in political science and intercultural studies.

"He was an inspiration," she said yesterday, waiting for the funeral procession to form.

He took special pride in the fruits of his labor on Fani's behalf: Last month, she helped organize a legislative summit between local members of Congress and immigrant teens from Patterson High School to discuss state bills that would have permitted undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition at Maryland universities. The measure passed the General Assembly but died when Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. vetoed it three days before Navarro died.

Final wishes

"I basically did [for them] what he did for me," Fani said as she waited for the caravan to leave the funeral home. "That was what he wanted."

There was something more Navarro wanted.

"He used to say when he died he didn't want people to cry, he wanted them to party," said Reinita Riemann.

Riemann, a math instructor and doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whom the childless Navarro proudly considered "daughter," said her mentor was such a force that few had the nerve to tell him no.

So after he was buried at Oak Lawn Cemetery, about 80 people gathered at Tio Pepe, the Mount Vernon haunt where Navarro had dined prodigiously on paella marinara.

Waiters served one final meal in his memory, covering his favorite table with a dish of saffron rice and seafood, a bottle of Carchelo wine and flowers from the funeral home.

A band struck a high note.

"It was a really lively party with a nice orchestra," said owner Miguel Sanz, as the last revelers left. "The only one missing was Beltran."

Asia Times OnLine By Henry C K Liu

* Part 1: Chaos, crime and incredulity

John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale University, recently published an article called "A Grand Strategy of Transformation" in which he described President George W Bush's national-security strategy as representing the most sweeping shift in US grand strategy since the beginning of the Cold War. But Gaddis warned that its success depends on the willingness of the rest of the world to welcome US power with open arms.

The importance of this article by Gaddis is in its analysis of the Bush world view, not that the Bush world view is necessarily valid. In a larger sense, no state can justify waging war on another on the basis of political morals, since no state is perfect. War is always about national interest, not morality, neo-liberal propaganda notwithstanding. The issue is whether the Bush Grand Strategy is in the United States' long-term national interest. There is strong argument that it falls very short on that measure.

Gaddis observes that Bush's report on National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSSUSA), released on September 17, 2002, is framed by the attacks of September 11, 2001. It echoes the president's speech at West Point on June 1, 2002, and sets out three tasks: "We will defend the peace by fighting terrorists and tyrants. We will preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers. We will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent."

Bush's equation of terrorists with tyrants as sources of danger, an obvious outgrowth of September 11, is highly problematic. Anarchists, assassins and saboteurs have always operated without clearly identifiable sponsors. Their actions have rarely shaken the stability of states or societies because the number of victims they targeted and the amount of physical damage they caused had been relatively small. September 11 showed that terrorists can now inflict levels of destruction that only states wielding military power used to be able to accomplish.

Weapons of mass destruction were the last resort for those possessing them during the Cold War, the NSSUSA points out. "Today, our enemies see weapons of mass destruction as weapons of choice." That elevates terrorists to the level of tyrants in Bush's thinking, and that prompts him to insist that preemption must be added to - though not necessarily in all situations replace - the tasks of containment and deterrence: "We cannot let our enemies strike first." That is the rationale for preemptive strikes. The doctrine of unilateralism is spelled out in the NSSUSA: "The United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community." But "we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country".

Preemption in turn requires hegemony. Although Bush speaks, in his letter of transmittal, of creating "a balance of power that favors human freedom" while forsaking "unilateral advantage", the body of the NSSUSA makes it clear that "our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States".

The West Point speech put it more bluntly: "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge." The president had at last approved, therefore, Paul Wolfowitz's controversial recommendation to this effect, made in a 1992 "Defense Planning Guidance" draft subsequently leaked to the press and then disavowed by the first Bush administration. It's no accident that Wolfowitz, now deputy secretary of defense, has been at the center of the new Bush administration's strategic planning, Gaddis wrote.

The qualifying balance-of-power caveat is not at odds with maintaining military strength beyond challenge. Gaddis the historian points out that in practice and in history, other great powers prefer management of the international system by a single hegemon as long as it's a relatively benign one. When there's only one superpower, there's no point for anyone else to try to compete with it in military capability. International conflict shifts to trade rivalries and other relatively minor quarrels, none of them worth fighting a war about. Compared with what great powers have done to one another in the past, this state of affairs is no bad thing. Gaddis also argues that US hegemony is acceptable because it's linked with certain values that all states and cultures - if not all terrorists and tyrants - share.

As the NSSUSA puts it: "No people on Earth yearn to be oppressed, aspire to servitude, or eagerly await the midnight knock of the secret police." It's this association of power with universal principles, Bush argues, that will cause other great powers to go along with whatever the United States has to do to preempt terrorists and tyrants, even if it does so alone. For, as was the case through most of the Cold War, there's something worse out there than US hegemony.

The invasion of Iraq punctured the myth behind this theory. It showed the world that US hegemony spells arbitrary misapplication of moral values and selective US occupation in the name of liberation. The inescapable conclusion is that superpower hegemony breeds terrorism rather than suppresses it.

The final innovation in the Bush strategy deals with the longer-term issue of removing the causes of terrorism and tyranny. Here again, Gaddis observes that the president's thinking parallels an emerging consensus within the neo-conservative intellectual community. For it's becoming clear to neo-cons that poverty wasn't what caused a group of middle-class and reasonably well-educated Middle Easterners to fly three airplanes into buildings and another into the ground. It was, rather, resentments growing out of the absence of representative institutions in their own societies, so that the only outlet for political dissidence was religious fanaticism. Yes, there is oppression, but the oppression comes from the victims' own society and culture, not from the neo-liberal West, goes the argument.

This position of denial is widely held in the United States because of its own experience with domestic terrorism, which evidently had less to do with poverty than issues of liberty, but it is not at all obvious globally. Further, Americans take comfort in believing that poverty is the result of unfree systems, a belief that is verified by their own pride in America's riches. It never occurs to many Americans that their riches might have come from institutionalized and structural exploitation of other economies. Just as the race issue in the US is inseparable from the issue of poverty, the appeal of Islamic religious fundamentalism cannot be separated from poverty.

Hence, Bush insists, the ultimate goal of US strategy must be to spread democracy everywhere, particularly to regions deeply rooted in tribal and theocratic culture. "Democracy", a fashionable word that never appears in the US constitution nor the Declaration of Independence, is now a pretext for preemptive war to effectuate regime change everywhere, notwithstanding that the Declaration of Independence declares: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes ..."

The Bush NSSUSA declares that the United States must finish the job that Woodrow Wilson (president 1913-21) started. The world, quite literally, must be made safe for democracy, even those parts of it, like the Middle East, that have so far resisted that tendency. Terrorism - and by implication the authoritarianism that breeds it - must become as obsolete as slavery, piracy, or genocide: "behavior that no respectable government can condone or support and that all must oppose". And within weeks! But imperialism is exempt from this list of evils.

Still, the record of Wilsonian world order was less than sterling. Wilson's own election was the result of a scandalous split among his Republican opponents over the controversial issue of the creation of the Federal Reserve System, a development strongly opposed by Populists. His Fourteen Points proposal for the post-World War I world order was considered naive by seasoned European diplomats and the Treaty of Versailles was rejected by the US Congress. The League of Nations was violently attacked by Republicans led by senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. Further, Wilsonian ideology was multilateral internationalism, a concept to which the Bush NSSUSA only pays lip service. Wilson's main legacy was the creation of the League of Nations, which was founded on the principle that all nations should settle disputes peacefully.

The Bush NSSUSA differs in several ways from its recent predecessors, according to Gaddis. Its proactive parts mostly interconnect, and Bush's analysis of how hegemony works and what causes terrorism is in tune with current neo-con academic thinking. And the Bush administration, unlike several of its predecessors, sees no contradiction between power and principles. It is, in this sense, thoroughly Wilsonian. Finally, the new strategy is candid. This administration speaks plainly, with no attempt to be polite or diplomatic or "nuanced". What you hear and what you read are pretty much what you can expect to get.

Coercive democracy becomes the justification for military preemption. And superpower hegemony is the means to achieve that end.

Gaddis thinks the Bush NSSUSA has a hidden agenda. It has to do with why the administration regards tyrants, in the post-September 11 world, to be at least as dangerous as terrorists.

Bush tried to explain the connection in his January 2002 State of the Union address when he warned of an "axis of evil" made up of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. The phrase confused more than it clarified, though, since Saddam Hussein, the Iranian mullahs, and Kim Jong-il are hardly the only tyrants around, nor are their ties to one another evident. Nor was it clear why containment and deterrence would not work against these tyrants, since they were all more into survival than suicide.

Both the West Point speech and the NSSUSA are silent on the "axis of evil". Gaddis raises a more important question: Why is Bush still so keen on burying Saddam Hussein? Despite his comment that this is "a guy that tried to kill my daddy", George W Bush is no Hamlet, agonizing over how to meet a tormented parental ghost's demands for revenge. Gaddis the historian suggests that Shakespeare might still help, if you shift the analogy to Henry V. That English monarch understood the psychological value of victory - of defeating an adversary sufficiently thoroughly that you shatter the confidence of others, so that they'll roll over themselves before you have to roll over them.

For Henry V, the demonstration was Agincourt, the famous victory over the French in 1415. The Bush administration got a taste of Agincourt with its victory over the Taliban at the end of 2001. Suddenly, it seemed, American values were transportable, even to the remotest and most alien parts of the world. The vision that opened up was not one of the clash among civilizations, but rather, as the NSSUSA puts it, a clash "inside a civilization, a battle for the future of the Muslim world". In that battle, it is curious that it should start with Iraq, the most secular and modernized state in the region, and by far not the poorest, at least until US sanctions began a decade ago.

Yet, lest we forget, Agincourt was part of the Hundred Years' War. The battle demonstrated the effectiveness of longbow archers over heavily armored French knights. It marked the end of warfare appropriate for the age of chivalry. Prior to the battle, King Henry spoke to his troops from a little gray horse. French accounts state that in his speech he told his men that he and the dukes, earls and other nobles had little to worry about if the French won because they would be captured and ransomed for a good price. The common soldier, on the other hand, was worth little and so he told them that they had better fight hard.

Gaddis is right that historians view the Agincourt victory as having overshadowed English political and economic unrest. Yet for Bush, the overshadowing may turn out to be as short-lived as the war itself.

But Agincourt was a real battle and the victory was earned. The Iraq war was a no-show by the enemy. The victory is as bogus is the pretext for the war.

This bogus victory is in fact built on a pile of political defeats. This war did serious damage to multilateral internationalism, weakened the United Nations, and soiled the credibility of US values. US hegemony is built on economic power, which in turn is based on globalization, which in turn requires multilateral internationalism. Abandoning multilateral internationalism is to jeopardize US hegemony.

Far from providing conclusive demonstration of US invincibility and political resolve, the non-war leaves the vulnerability of US political will to sustain heavy war casualties untested, and turned a much-heralded holy war to spread democracy into a dirty scheme of petty bribery. It has won the United States a reputation of being as capable and eager to use the same evil devices as its condemned enemy. This war has not eliminated the axis of evil, it merely added the US to the axis. The war between good and evil is won by good turning evil.

How, Gaddis asks, to maintain the momentum, given that the Taliban are no more and that al-Qaeda isn't likely to present itself as a conspicuous target? Gaddis thinks this is where Saddam Hussein came in: Iraq was the most feasible place where the US could strike the next blow. If we can topple this tyrant, went the reasoning, if we can repeat the Afghan Agincourt on the banks of the Euphrates, then we can accomplish a great deal. We can complete the task the Gulf War left unfinished. We can destroy whatever weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein may have accumulated since. We can end whatever support he's providing for terrorists elsewhere, notably those who act against Israel. We can liberate the Iraqi people. We can ensure an ample supply of inexpensive oil. We can set in motion a process that could undermine and ultimately remove reactionary regimes elsewhere in the Middle East, thereby eliminating the principal breeding ground for terrorism. And, as Bush did say publicly in a powerful speech to the United Nations on September 12, 2002, we can save that organization from the irrelevance into which it will otherwise descend if its resolutions continue to be contemptuously disregarded.

Gaddis views this as a truly grand strategy for transforming the entire Muslim Middle East: for bringing it, once and for all, into the modern world. There's been nothing like this in boldness, sweep, and vision since Americans took it upon themselves, more than half a century ago, to democratize Germany and Japan, thus setting in motion processes that stopped short of only a few places on Earth, one of which was the Muslim Middle East.

Gaddis acknowledges that these plans depend critically, however, on Americans' being welcomed in Baghdad if they invaded, as they were in Kabul. If they aren't, the whole strategy collapses, because it's premised on the belief that ordinary Iraqis will prefer a US occupation over the current conditions in which they live. There's no evidence that the Bush administration is planning the kind of military commitments the United States made in either of the two world wars, or even in Korea and Vietnam. This strategy relies on getting cheered, not shot at.

The trouble with Agincourts - even those that happen in Afghanistan - is the arrogance they can encourage, along with the illusion that victory itself is enough and that no follow-up is required. It's worth remembering that, despite Henry V, the French never became English. And the war went on for a hundred years. The United States has already lost the moral high ground by resorting to a coalition of the willing. Gaddis makes a perfect point: A nation that sets itself up as an example to the world in most things will not achieve that purpose by telling the rest of the world, in some things, to shove it.

Terrorists fully anticipated a hardening of reaction from the US to the horrors they perpetrated on September 11, 2001, as embodied in the NSSUSA, for it is this hardening of reaction that will produce more terrorists.

As Charles Clover of the Financial Times reported from Baghdad: "Over the next few months in Baghdad I will get to see 'nation-building': the curious process of international intervention I have witnessed throughout Eurasia in the past decade that seems to enrich about 10 percent of the population while the rest get 'civil society'. Iraq will be transformed from a pariah dictatorship into a normal dysfunctional, underdeveloped country with ethnic violence, IMF [International Monetary Fund] programs, and satellite dishes. Charlie Company patrolling the streets of Baghdad will give way to a weak and politicized local police force, then a rickety power-sharing arrangement, and finally a 'national army'. Will it be worth it?"

If a democratic election, reflecting the honest and freely expressed wishes of the Iraqi people, produces a leader deemed insufficiently committed to the goals set out by the NSSUSA, the Bush administration will be forced to affirm or reject its alleged attachment to the principle of democracy. Worse yet, if such a democratically elected leader should decide that Iraq need weapons of mass destruction for its own defense in response to WMD already present in the region, would the NSSUSA call for a re-invasion of Iraq, this time against a democratically elected government, or a Central Intelligence Agency-induced coup, as in Venezuela?

This was not a war. It was a spectacular reality-TV production that caused the death of thousands of extras. The only real war had been the verbal duel between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the inquisitive Pentagon press corps.

Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, April 24, 2003 By: Matthew Riemer

PINR commentarist Matthew Riemer writes: The current crisis gripping Venezuela is essentially one of socio-economic dimensions. It is social because of the class nature of many of the "ideological" lines that have been drawn between the various "camps"; this is true both in a rhetorical/propagandistic sense and in a more demonstrable sense -- one that examines the different outcomes for the status of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) following the resolution of the crisis. It is economic in that almost all of the controversy surrounds the economic themes of nationalization, privatization, free-markets, and globalization.

Of course, even to divide the two descriptions -- economic and social -- is sometimes hard to do as they are largely interwoven. Such is the case in the Venezuela of January, 2003.

On the one side there is the government of President Hugo Chavez Frias, former paratrooper and coup conspirer himself. He's supported by a handful of remaining bureaucrats and most of the military, as well as about 30% of the general populace.

Chavez was democratically elected in 1998, but since has lost much of that support due to the unchanged status of Venezuela's overwhelming poor majority and economic reforms that the business sector sees as "risky" if not foolhardy. Some of this lost support may come from those who once voted and backed Chavez but now have become disillusioned with his apparent inability to finally overcome the sizeable opposition movement.

The economy is also in recession, and, as the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports, "With both the oil and non-oil sectors of Venezuela's economy contracting in 2002, the country's real gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to fall by 6.7%, to $96 billion, for the year."

The opposition is generally recognized to be an amalgam of the Employers' Federation Fedecamaras, Confederation of Trade Unions (CTV) and the bureaucracy of  PDVSA ... this largely business-led opposition coalition currently enjoys popular support from among the middle class and oil industry, especially from PDVSA workers.

Previously, Chavez was removed from power by these very same elements in a coup on April 11, 2002. His ouster lasted less than 48 hours as widespread protests and loyalists in the military overwhelmed the new government and reinstalled Chavez as president.

The chaos fomenting since this past December is a sign that the same social and political elements are still active in the country. However, when compared with the events of April, this time the efforts and protests have been marked by increased popular support and greater duration.

What do they want?

Chavez' tenure is one marked by inappropriate foreign policy gestures in the eyes of Washington and Venezuela's business community. He's friends with US arch-nemesis Fidel Castro and has visited both Libya and Iraq while publicly opposing both globalization and the US "war on terrorism."

He even tried to have Cuba admitted to the San Jose Accord in 2001, established in 1980 to help struggling Caribbean nations with oil imports. Under the accord, Venezuela and Mexico export oil at a discount to 11 regional nations -- Barbados, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic. Mexico's President Vicente Fox rejected Chavez' expansion of the accord.

Furthermore, Chavez wants to retain control of PDVSA and sees its nationalization as vital to that control.

PDVSA, one of the world's largest oil companies, is Venezuela's largest business and employer ... the company was created in the mid-70s when the country's oil industry was nationalized. Again, it is this nationalization that is one of the major concerns of the opposition who desire the privatization of the company and the opening up to investment fueled by such a transition.

Chavez represents the largest hurdle in the attainment of that goal ... this is perhaps the greatest gripe of the opposition forces: Chavez' meddling in the affairs of the oil oligarchy and the threat to free-market expansion within the industry.

The EIA comments on some of this tension: "Over the past few years under President Chavez, cuts in PDVSA's budget (down 28% in 2002), combined with a lack of adequate foreign investment and a policy of strict adherence to OPEC quotas, has crimped the company's ambitious long-term expansion plans."

Chavez' adherence to OPEC quotas helps keep the price of oil advantageous for exporters while limiting the profit of foreign investment in PDVSA, whose investments already cannot exceed 49% of any given PDVSA venture.

If PDVSA were to become fully privatized, OPEC quotas may very well become a thing of the past with foreign investors then providing a majority of the company's capital. This scenario would allow for more Venezuelan oil to be controlled by outsiders and a climate more favorable to importers.

Whatever the workers who are involved with the various strikes and lockouts believe, this is the real heart of the matter. In fact, many see the business elite and union bosses as simply using the workers, who are willing to join them in hopes of higher pay or a better work environment, for temporary gain. Considering that the bulk of Venezuelan workers have remained in relative poverty for decades with little upward growth, even in the oil boom years of the '70s, such claims seem to be at least worth considering.

In a recent Washington Post editorial, Mark Weisbrot, having just returned from Venezuela, said "this is clearly an oil strike, not a general strike, as it is often described. At the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, which controls the industry, management is leading the strike because it is at odds with the Chavez government."

The opposition is also calling for Chavez' immediate resignation, which would be ideal, or a more convincing referendum to expel him from office. A referendum as laid down by the constitution on Chavez' Presidency is due in August

The role of the US

Washington's approval of the original coup in April, along with their current silence now, is not being interpreted as a sign of disinterest but instead as support for the opposition forces. Enough so that in mid-December, several US Representatives sent a letter to President George W. Bush asking that the administration become more vocal in support of the democratic process in Venezuela ... a process they feel the US is undermining by not becoming more directly involved in the endorsement of the protocol set forth by the Venezuelan constitution.

The letter also obliquely references the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), who many believe ... and not without some considerable documentation ... played an indirect yet supportive role in the April coup: "The role of the United States government in the April 11 coup is not clear. We know that some United States officials met with the coup leaders in the months before the coup. Groups involved with the coup also received financing from the United States government. At the same time, the Bush administration openly expressed its hostility toward the government of President Chavez."

Moreover, considering the aforementioned penchant of Chavez to do things that rub Washington the wrong way, it's generally assumed that there's no love lost for his government in the corridors of the White House and State Department. Those sentiments are unlikely to change anytime soon given the fact that Venezuela is an important exporter of oil to the US, that those exports are now dwindling to a trickle, and the fact of the war with Iraq.

Conclusion

As the economic situation continues to deteriorate and tensions build, both sides face the accusation of ruining Venezuela by absolutely resisting the demands of the other, yet the battle has grown so bitter neither side can now dream of capitulation.

Chavez argues that the weight of his country's woes are on the opposition's shoulders because they are the ones who have instigated the lockouts and shut down the oil industry bringing the economy to its knees. He says they'll just have to wait until the time set forth by the Constitution for a referendum vote on his Presidency. In this respect, Chavez has the advantage of showing an outward display of respect for the rule of law ... a sign that surprisingly has gained him little praise in the democracies of the world.

The opposition blames Chavez for current ills by not giving into their demands. For them, a few months are too long to wait for the referendum -- they want it now.

In the end, both sides may lose, causing a considerably destabilized Venezuela -- an outcome the US and Europe are eager to avoid -- one where social and racial lines are distinctly drawn as an increasingly polarized society is unable to peacefully solve its problems. Such an environment will become extremely vulnerable to authoritarian rule.

Matthew Riemer drafted this report; Erich Marquardt contributed. Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an analysis-based publication that seeks to, as objectively as possible, provide insight into various conflicts, regions and points of interest around the globe. Email him at: content@pinr.com

Our editorial statement reads: VHeadline.com Venezuela is a wholly independent e-publication promoting democracy in its fullest expression and the inalienable right of all Venezuelans to self-determination and the pursuit of sovereign independence without interference. We seek to shed light on nefarious practices and the corruption which for decades has strangled this South American nation's development and progress. Our declared editorial bias is pro-democracy and pro-Venezuela ... which some may wrongly interpret as anti-American. Roy S. Carson, Editor/Publisher Editor@VHeadline.com

<a href=www.el-nacional.com>El Nacional

Los estudiantes de la Universidad Simón Bolívar escucharon con la boca abierta a los investigadores que intervinieron para presentarles el Acuerdo Social para el Desarrollo y la Superación de la Pobreza. Muchos de los jóvenes desconocían, por ejemplo, que mientras ellos se forman en esa casa de estudios, 40% de la población venezolana entre 15 y 25 años de edad ni estudia ni trabaja. Este es sólo uno de los muchos datos que proporcionaron los miembros del equipo que trabaja en el acuerdo social. En este momento, representantes de tres centros de educación superior —la universidad Católica Andrés Bello, la Universidad Simón Bolívar y el Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración— integran el grupo de investigación, al que se añaden miembros de algunas organizaciones no gubernamentales y de sectores como el sindical y el petrolero. Luis Pedro España, investigador del equipo del Proyecto Pobreza de la UCAB, explicó que el acuerdo ha sido elaborado por un equipo de aproximadamente 25 investigadores que están diseñando un plan de Políticas Públicas para la superación de la pobreza; no sólo se han dedicado a detectar las causas del aumento de la pobreza y a actualizar las cifras, sino a plantear las soluciones, entre las que se destaca la necesidad de implementar programas que acaben con la exclusión de los servicios sociales y logre la igualdad de oportunidades, la equidad. España explicó que en 1978 la pobreza alcanzaba a 23% de la población; en 1998 el número subió a 60,1% ; sin embargo, en 2002 los niveles se incrementaron aún más: se alcanzó la cifra récord de 69,1% . Hay más datos que preocupan a los expertos: 50% de los nacimientos no se registran el mismo año; hay 1.154.000 analfabetas; de cada 10 personas en edad productiva, 5 son trabajadores informales, 2 están desempleados, 2 trabajan en sector privado y 1 en sector público. Marino González, investigador de la USB, presentó números del área de salud: la mortalidad infantil en Venezuela es de 17,7 por cada 1.000 nacidos vivos, el doble que en Chile y Costa Rica y el cuádruple que en Canadá. Destaca además que 560 niños murieron en el año 2000 por desnutrición. Mariano Herrera, director del Centro de Investigaciones Culturales y Educativas, añadió que el promedio de escolaridad de la población más pobre es de apenas 4,6 grados. Sólo 32% de los infantes que entran a primer grado llega a noveno, y 16% se inscribe en 5º año de bachillerato. El economista del IESA, Gustavo García, añadió algunas cifras que explican los altos niveles de pobreza: el ingreso real per cápita actual es igual al de 1958. 45 años perdidos en la vida de un país. 490.875 personas quedaron desempleadas en 4 meses La más reciente encuesta de Datanálisis revela que en 4 meses 490.875 personas ingresaron a la lista de desempleados. La tasa de desocupación pasó de 18,6% en noviembre de 2002 a 22,3% en marzo de este año. Actualmente, 2,6 millones de venezolanos no tienen trabajo y tratan de conseguir un empleo sin ningún resultado. Luis Vicente León, director de la empresa encuestadora, afirma que estos datos son el reflejo directo de la estrategia errada del Gobierno que, al imponer controles de cambio y de precios y extender una inamovilidad laboral que cierra todos los espacios al sector privado, se ve imposibilitado de manejar la crisis económica. Al contrario, “estas medidas fueron el detonante para que explotara el desempleo”, agrega. Señala que el alza en la tasa de desempleo se registró no sólo en el sector formal, sino también en el informal. “Hasta los buhoneros se quedaron sin trabajo. Los mata tigres están desempleados y los vendedores de tostones no tienen clientes”, destaca. El mayor incremento se registró en el género femenino. 257.550 mujeres perdieron sus empleos entre noviembre y marzo, con lo cual el total de desocupadas asciende a 1,2 millones. Sin embargo, el número de hombres sin trabajo continúa siendo más elevado. Datanálisis calcula que 1,4 millones de venezolanos no están empleados en este momento. El reporte por edades refleja que se incrementó el desempleo en personas que oscilan entre 15 años y 24 años, al pasar de 879.094 a más de 1 millón. En el último cuatrimestre, 194.254 jóvenes perdieron sus trabajos. Por sectores, la pérdida de empleo más elevada se registró en la actividad comercial. De 604.436 desempleados en noviembre del año pasado, la cifra se elevó a 678.238; es decir, 73.802 personas perdieron sus puestos de trabajo en el comercio. Del total de desocupados en el país, 36% pertenece al sector construcción, 23% a la industria manufacturera y 25% quedaron desempleados en el sector financiero, de seguros y de bienes inmuebles. Con relación al oficio o especialidad, el mayor número de desocupados se ubica en el área de artesanos y operarios de fábricas. Seguido de los trabajadores en la actividad de servicios, deportes y diversión, así como de vendedores y empleados de oficina. En el área de profesionales y técnicos se registran 183.207 desocupados. León señala que los sectores con mayor número de desempleados son los que están afectados drásticamente por las medidas económicas equivocadas del Gobierno, como industria y comercio. “Todo el proceso de este Gobierno está diseñado para destruir el empleo en los sectores clave de la economía. Y será difícil resolver este problema en el corto plazo”, apunta. Destaca que actualmente, el primer problema para el venezolano, por encima de la crisis política, de Chávez o de la oposición, e incluso más allá de la inseguridad, es el desempleo. “34% de los venezolanos dice que el problema más importante es la falta de trabajo”, puntualiza. Explica que este indicador, al margen de la controversia política, representa un verdadero drama para los hogares venezolanos. Señala que actualmente 1 de cada 4 familias tiene un desempleado entre sus miembros. El resto está afectado indirectamente por este flagelo. De no revertirse esta situación, el especialista advierte que al cierre del primer semestre el desempleo llegará a 24%, es decir, 250.000 personas se agregarán a la lista de desocupados. Explica que esto ocurrirá como consecuencia de que se definirá la situación laboral de 3% de la población ocupada que actualmente se encuentra en condición irregular, es decir, está suspendida temporalmente, le rebajaron el sueldo, o está trabajado la mitad del tiempo.

2003-03-31 10:32 ET - News Release <a href=new.stockwatch.com>Mr. A Richard Marshall reports

CRYSTALLEX ANNOUNCES RESERVE AND RESOURCE ESTIMATES FOR LAS CRISTINAS

Mine Development Associates (MDA) of Reno, Nev., has completed reserve and resource estimates for Crystallex International's Las Cristinas gold deposits located in Bolivar state, Venezuela.

MDA report highlights:

measured and indicated resources: 439 million tonnes at 1.09 grams of gold per tonne (15.3 million ounces);

inferred resources: 208 million tonnes at 0.91 grams of gold per tonne (6.1 million ounces); and

proven and probable reserves: 224 million tonnes at 1.33 grams of gold per tonne (9.5 million ounces).

Mineralization remains open at depth

"The release of the MDA data represents a major milestone for our company, our shareholders and the people of Bolivar state, Venezuela, who will directly benefit from this project," said Marc J. Oppenheimer, president and chief executive officer of Crystallex. He continued, "The data confirm that Las Cristinas is one of the world's largest undeveloped gold deposits with excellent potential to grow in size. More specifically, the report concludes that with additional drilling, at least a portion of inferred resources will likely be upgraded to the measured and indicated categories, which should add to the reserves. These data certainly validate the intensive efforts over the past several years, which resulted in Crystallex securing the exclusive mining rights to this valuable deposit."