www.reason.com February 2003 By Tim Cavanaugh

When George W. Bush selected mummified diplomat Henry Kissinger to head his investigation into pre-9/11 intelligence failures, he outraged everyone. The left blames Kissinger for extending the Vietnam War and instituting lethal realpolitik; the right blames him for losing the war and turning Nixon red. But there’s a deeper message in seeing a bureaucrat three decades past his sell-by date get a new job -- even one he resigned from almost immediately. All over the world, the keys of government are held by people for whom the world clock stopped sometime around 1973.

This collective nostalgia is widely dispersed. India thrives under the leadership of Atal Behari Vajpayee, a Hindu Mussolini whose militantly anti-Muslim vision seems more suited to the 1971 Indo-Pak war than to the era of high-tech Bangalore. Across the Kashmiri divide, Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, boasts a more venerable legitimacy, having seized power in a military coup identical to the ones that installed Gens. Muhammad Ayub Khan in the ’50s and Mohammed Zia ul-Haq in the ’70s.

A continent away, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe plays such Super Sounds of the ’70s as rigged elections, land seizures, and wholesale nationalization. A more restrained New World version of this rusty iron-man model can be seen in Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez took a case of economic malaise and socialized it into full-blown economic metastasis. The jury’s still out on Brazil’s new leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but if he holds to the moth-eaten socialist nostrums that built his cult of personality, Brazilians can look forward to the kind of financial security not seen since Pelé signed up with the New York Cosmos. It’s surprising that Kissinger didn’t figure out a way during his brief tenure to assassinate all three leaders -- though the Bush administration’s tacit backing of an anti-Chavez coup attempt was an honest start.

The Middle East is a regular Brady Bunch reunion of ’70s characters and policies. Syria and Jordan are both controlled by the idiot sons of Nixon-era dictators. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s application of Yom Kippur War tactics to the age of suicide bombers has helped send record numbers of both Israelis and Palestinians to heaven. By all appearances, Yasir Arafat hasn’t changed his clothes in 30 years. Egypt, Libya, and Iraq are all run along socialist/nationalist models that last seemed viable when Skylab was flyin’ high.

Across Western Europe, calcified labor unions and welfare systems form obstacles Evel Knievel himself would have had trouble clearing. Gerhard Schroeder leads Germany with a stagflationary combination of socialist economics and old-school America baiting. Jacques Chirac, perhaps the West’s most lucid leader, gets nowhere against France’s all-powerful bureaucracies. Tony Blair’s New Labour Party has bogged down, with the United Kingdom engaging in vintage arguments about whether its health and security bureaucracies are prepared to fight terrorism. The only difference between now and the ’70s is that Al Qaeda is providing the terror while the IRA catches its breath.

In such sterling company, President Bush is far from the most objectionable case, but he is certainly the saddest. With a crabbed combination of compulsive secrecy, protective tariffs, erosion of privacy, an expanded federal role in education, and the creation of a new cabinet-level agency, the Bush administration recalls the grimly alienating and ideology-free Nixon administration more than it does the sunny, confident Reagan legacy to which it lays claim.

None of this would matter if it were as easy to ignore government as it was a few years ago. While the free market was busy developing cellular telephony, the consumer Internet, a high-employment global economy, and 24-hour mattress delivery, it was possible to forget for a while that leaders of nations were still working on the political equivalent of the swine flu vaccine. But the ability to keep the government out of your life and plans is yet another casualty of 9/11. Is it a relief or a pity that Spiro Agnew isn’t around to replace Dick Cheney on Bush’s ’04 ticket?

Tim Cavanaugh is Reason’s Web editor.

www.miami.com Posted on Wed, Jan. 22, 2003 BY FRANCES ROBLES frobles@herald.com

CARACAS - Former president Jimmy Carter presented warring sides of Venezuela's political crisis two ways out of the country's 51-day strike Tuesday, for the first time offering a concrete proposal to end a crippling eight-week work stoppage and offer a presidential election.

Carter's two proposals would oblige the opposition trying to oust Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to lift the nationwide strike that has strangled the state-oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., and closed businesses around the nation. In one plan, the government would in turn agree to a binding recall referendum to take place Aug. 19. The other would pave the way for a constitutional amendment to cut the assembly and president's terms from six years to four -- effectively ending them now -- and call for new elections before August. Although faster, this second plan would first require the opposition to collect signatures for a nationwide vote on the constitutional amendment.

While both ideas have been publicly debated here for weeks, it was the first time that striking business, oil and labor leaders have been offered a deal in exchange for ending the strike. Carter, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, characterized Chávez's reaction to the proposals as ''positive.'' However, Chávez was expected to meet with his Cabinet before formally accepting.

Opposition leaders had no immediate comment.

''Without being presumptuous, I don't see any alternative,'' Carter said in an interview with four U.S. newspapers. ``The alternative is continued chaos.''

An alliance of business, labor and oil interests went on strike here Dec. 2 in a mission to topple Chávez, a former army officer whose consolidation of power and leftist policies have convinced a majority of the nation that he plans a quasi-communist regime. But the strike lasted much longer than anyone anticipated -- and so did Chávez's grasp on the presidency.

Despite talks that have dragged on for months, the president has adamantly refused to offer early elections, arguing that doing so would violate the nation's constitution. The only legal answer, he has said, is a recall referendum in August. But opposition leaders -- and the millions of Venezuelans who support them -- reject the idea of an August referendum, because they are deeply skeptical that Chávez would allow it to take place.

Carter said the proposal would guarantee international oversight by the recently formed ''Group of Friends'' that joined in on peace talks here.

The group -- Brazil, Chile, the United States, Portugal, Spain and Mexico -- would assure that there would be ''no trickery,'' Carter said.

The plans were presented separately Tuesday evening to the six negotiators on each side. Written responses are expected this week.

POSITIVE OUTLOOK

''It was constructive,'' said the Carter Center's vice president for conflict resolution, Matthew Hodes, a former Miami-Dade County prosecutor who presented the proposals. ``They are seriously considering these options. The idea was to move things forward.''

The proposals drafted by the Atlanta-based Carter Center would represent important concessions for both sides: Chávez would have to offer himself up to the public's will at the ballot box, and the opposition would have to accept a delay.

''In the end, the voters will decide,'' Chávez said after his breakfast meeting with Carter. ``I have even said that instead of blocking pipelines, sabotaging gasoline or milk for the children, they should put themselves to work on these ideas.''

The plans also involve amnesty for striking oil workers and criminal charges for oil workers accused of sabotage.

The government has accused striking workers of damaging oil systems to make it harder for strike-breakers to work.

''My opinion is both sides want to reach an agreement and an end to the impasse which has destroyed the nation's economy and social structure,'' Carter said after meeting with Chávez for two hours. ``I don't think anyone imagined the strike would last 50 days, and no one wants to see it last 70 days or 100 days.''

Meanwhile, getting gas here often takes days, and food staples such as milk and flour are beginning to run out. One protester was killed at a rally outside Caracas on Monday, making him the sixth to die since the strike began.

NO OTHER WAY OUT

''Why would Chávez accept? Because the situation is very serious,'' said Eduardo Fernández, president of a leading political party who met with Chávez this week. ``He can't govern.''

And while the strike has slowly eased on a commercial level, transportation workers said Tuesday that they planned to join the work stoppage this week.

''We consider that the way out has to be constitutional, democratic and peaceful,'' said labor leader Carlos Ortega, a key strike figure. ``Let's wait to see what that way out will be.''

washingtontimes.com Thor Halvorssen

     With every passing day, life for Venezuelans becomes more dangerous. Since his election four years ago, President Hugo Chavez has presided over the most dramatic decline in the nation's fortunes: Analysts predict that in the first quarter of 2003 the economy will contract by 40 percent; more than 1 million jobs have been lost; approximately 900,000 people have gone into voluntary exile (most of them middle-class professionals); unemployment is at a staggering 17 percent; Almost 70 percent of the country's industries have gone bankrupt; 70 percent of Venezuelans live in a state of poverty (up from 60 percent when Mr. Chavez began his rule); and the income of more than 15 percent of Venezuelans has dropped below the poverty line.

     Mr. Chavez's policies have left the nation in shambles. Stratospheric levels of corruption, collectivist central planning, mismanagement, and incompetence during the greatest oil boom have squandered a historic opportunity to cultivate a stable middle class. But stability is hardly the goal of Lt. Col. Chavez, who uses the nation's wealth to fund and supply weapons to the FARC and ELN drug-trafficking guerrilla terrorists in Colombia and the ETA Basque terrorist organization in Spain.

     Mr. Chavez has cozy relationships with the dictators of Cuba, Libya, Iran, and Iraq (Mr. Chavez praised Saddam Hussein as his "brother" and "partner"), and earlier this month Mr. Chavez was accused by his personal pilot of funneling $900,000 to Osama bin Laden. Mr. Chavez has publicly described the U.S. military response to bin Laden as "terrorism" claiming he saw no difference between the invasion of Afghanistan and the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

     Readers of the New York Times, The Washington Post and of the Associated Press, and viewers of CNN, are fed a dramatically different story. There is an enormous divide between what the world is hearing about Venezuela and what is really happening there. Reporters have so controlled the flow of information and disfigured the truth that their coverage of Venezuela is a caricature of what conservative critics call the "liberal media bias." What we are seeing in media coverage of Venezuela is not liberal bias, but totalitarian bias.

     A recent example is Christopher Toothaker of the Associated Press. Mr. Toothaker has spent considerable time in Venezuela, he speaks Spanish, and he has access to government and opposition sources. In a Jan. 4 report, he minimized the importance of the upcoming constitutional referendum, stating that the opposition presented "over 150,000 signatures" to election authorities calling for a vote on whether Mr. Chavez should resign. This is a dramatic and deliberate understatement. The Venezuelan Constitution, approved by Mr. Chavez himself, provides for a referendum if 10 percent of the electorate petitions in writing. The opposition presented 2,057,000 signatures — some 15 percent of the voting rolls — a startling error that any fact-checker should catch. The smaller figure appears in dozens of other Associated Press reports, CBS, CNN and even in a story bylined by Ginger Thompson of the New York Times that was carried in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

     Miss Thompson is no fan of objectivity. On Jan. 3, the opposition organized a march to protest Chavez. Hundreds of thousands of nonviolent demonstrators carried flags, posters and signs calling for a peaceful resolution. The protesters were ambushed by members of Mr. Chavez's armed militia who dispersed the march with a hail of bullets and rocks. The Chavez police blithely watched the armed thugs shoot at the defenseless crowd. I was there. To our incredulity, the Chavez police then supplied the criminals with tear gas grenades. In her Times story, Miss Thompson characterized the violence as a "clash" and a "street fight" — moral equivalency at its worst. American readers would never know it was an ambush.

     The sympathies of Miss Thompson's colleague, Juan Forero, are revealed by Larry Birns, director of the Council for Hemispheric Affairs. In late December, Mr. Birns, a refreshingly sincere D.C. activist who acts as a Chavez cheerleader and apologist, told a Venezuelan government official the names of the four reporters he believed were most amicable to the Chavez government. This Times scribe made the top of his list: "He is committed to the revolution," Mr. Birns said of Mr. Forero. Reuters and the Associated Press were also praised for their "strong support" of Mr. Chavez.

     The Washington Post's reporting is just as cant-laden as the New York Times', and its editorial page is utterly one-sided. Last Sunday, Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research penned a column calling the Chavez government, responsible for dozens of political deaths, "one of the least repressive in Latin America." He should travel more.

     Mr. Weisbrot states that "no one has been arrested for political activities." This is nonsense. Some of these arrests are so public Mr. Weisbrot cannot credibly claim ignorance. For example, Carlos Alfonso Martinez, an outspoken political opponent of Mr. Chavez and one of the most respected officers in the armed forces, was arbitrarily arrested on Dec. 30 by the secret police. The act caused public furor both because it was a further indication of government repression and also because Mr. Martinez was arrested without a warrant and remains under arrest even though a judge ordered his immediate release. How did this fact slip by the editors at The Post?

     Mr. Weisbrot ends his column in The Post by saying that Chavez is Venezuela's best hope for democracy and social and economic "betterment." And yet Mr. Weisbrot does not support the referendum that would let the voters declare whether Mr. Chavez rules with the consent of the governed. Mr. Chavez told voters in a television broadcast: "Don't waste time. Not even if we suppose that they hold that referendum and get 90 percent of the votes, I will not leave. Forget it. I will not go."

     Putting aside Mr. Chavez's track record on economics, does this really sound like the best hope for democracy?

     Meanwhile, members of the U.S. government, business, and diplomatic communities make their decisions based on the "knowledge" they acquire from the media. Venezuelans are suffering unnecessarily because of the arrogance and favoritism of a handful of journalists. It is wicked. Yet what is worse is that, no matter what happens, the media will never be held accountable.            Thor Halvorssen is a human-rights activist who was a political adviser and consultant in two Venezuelan presidential elections. He lives in Philadelphia.

www.usatoday.com Posted 1/21/2003 8:17 PM

Much of the world and some of the American public already believe that the Bush administration's plan to drive Saddam Hussein from power is a thinly disguised grab for Iraq's rich oil reserves. Little wonder, then, that the White House ignited a furor by proposing more generous tax breaks for certain businesses that buy the biggest gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles. Talk about sending the wrong message at the wrong time.

The tax break, tucked into the economic stimulus plan that President Bush unveiled earlier this month, would raise from $25,000 to $75,000 the deduction small business owners can claim right away on the purchase of a heavy SUV or pickup.

The loophole could boost SUV sales at the same time a group of anti-SUV crusaders has launched TV ads linking foreign-oil profits to terrorism. And the proposal comes on the heels of warnings last week by the president's own traffic-safety experts about SUV safety problems.

A White House spokesman says the proposal doesn't promote SUVs over other vehicles. Rather, it's designed to help small companies buy equipment and create jobs.

Perhaps. But by proposing special treatment for gas-guzzlers, the administration suggests it is tone deaf to concerns about the nation's seemingly unlimited appetite for oil and its effect on the environment.

Among the worries:

• Oil prices are spiking at two-year highs of $34 a barrel. And the United States continues to be dependent on oil-producing countries with unsavory or unstable regimes, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria. Encouraging Americans to buy more vehicles that get low gas mileage could increase reliance on these foreign suppliers.

• The administration is poised to launch another Gulf War in part because of the danger Iraq poses to the world's largest oil reserves. If Saddam acquired a nuclear weapon, as the U.S. fears, he would be within striking distance of Saudi Arabia's oil fields. Because of the USA's high oil consumption, it can't risk such a threat.

The White House has company on both bad timing and cavalier behavior. At Detroit's annual auto show this month, the automakers unveiled "muscle cars" as a special theme. Anyone in the mood for a 1,000-horsepower Cadillac?

Retreating on the SUV tax break won't prevent war in the gulf, curb global warming or ease U.S. dependence on imported oil. But it could show that the U.S. considers each a real concern.

abcnews.go.com

— NEW YORK (Reuters) - Schlumberger Ltd. <SLB.N>, the world's No. 1 oilfield services company, on Tuesday posted a $2.86 billion loss for the fourth-quarter due to a huge charge to restructure two business units.

New York-based Schlumberger posted a fourth quarter net loss of $4.92 per share, compared to net income of $185 million, or 32 cents per share, in the same period of 2001.

Excluding one-time items, the company reported earnings of 25 cents per share. On that basis, analysts had projected results between 26 cents and 35 cents per share with a mean estimate of 31 cents, according to research firm Thomson First Call.

Schlumberger said operating revenue fell 7 percent to $3.4 billion in the quarter, as oilfield activity continued to slow down.

"Political uncertainty in the Middle East, the strike in Venezuela, and reduced oil company investment in Europe and Africa all contributed to make the business environment in 2002 progressively more difficult," said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Euan Baird.

Reflecting the slow business environment, the number of rigs drilling for oil and gas around the world -- viewed as a reliable indicator of demand for oilfield services -- fell 7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2002 compared with a year ago.

Stronger crude oil and natural gas prices usually lead to a sharp rise in drilling -- and prices for both commodities were indeed stronger in 2002's fourth quarter.

Crude oil prices in the period averaged $28.25 a barrel, up about 38 percent from the quarter a year. Natural gas prices rose by 52 percent to average $3.64 per thousand cubic feet.

But the climb in energy prices meant little for the budgets of companies that explore for oil and gas. Given uncertainty about the economy -- and about whether energy prices can maintain their highs -- exploration and production companies clamped down on capital spending.

Baird said the outlook remains just as clouded.

"Uncertainty over the direction of the economy makes it likely that this lackluster situation will continue through the first half of 2003," he said.

During the fourth quarter, Schlumberger took a $3.2 billion write-off for restructuring of its information technology foray SchlumbergerSema and for continuing losses at its WesternGeco seismic unit.

As part of the restructuring, the company cut 5 percent of SchlumbergerSema's 32,500 jobs in the U.S. and Europe. The company paid $5.2 billion in 2001 for the information technology enterprise.

Western Geco, a joint venture with Baker Hughes Inc., <BHI.N> cost both companies money due the drop off in the North American land seismic market.

Schlumberger's shares on Tuesday closed at $38.75, down 4.8 percent from Friday's closing price, on the New York Stock Exchange. During the fourth quarter, Schlumberger's shares rose 9.4 percent while an index of oilfield service and drilling companies <.OSX> rose 13.6 percent in the same period..