www.newsok.com 2003-01-25 By Joseph B. Frazier Associated Press Writer

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela's opposition leaders took their case against President Hugo Chavez to Washington on Friday, joining six nations to discuss ending the country's strike.

Chavez's opponents were to meet with delegates of six nations that support negotiations mediated by the Organization of American States. Among the proposals is one offered by former President Carter to end the 54-day-old strike in exchange for early elections.

Venezuela's opposition called the strike Dec. 2 to demand that Chavez resign or call early elections. Opposition leaders contend Chavez's leftist policies have damaged business and scared away foreign investment.

"As long as this group supports an electoral and peaceful solution to Venezuela's crisis, our efforts will coincide with theirs," Alejandro Armas, an opposition negotiator, told local Union Radio from Washington on Friday. "We need to be sympathetic, optimistic and supportive of this initiative." The six nations are the United States, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Portugal and Spain.

Chavez has said he welcomed international help but warned against outside intervention. He urged the six nations to recognize that he was elected democratically and warned them not to give equal weight to an "undemocratic" opposition.

Adding to the tension, a pipe bomb exploded in Caracas on Thursday, killing one and wounding at least 14 as about 300,000 rallied to support Chavez.

The rally went on with Chavez insisting that his left-wing, populist regime would outlast the strike.

indymedia.ie by Johnny - Anarchist Prisoner Support Sat, Jan 25 2003, 1:02pm address: c/o Po Box 3355, Dublin 7. Ireland soberagain@imapunk.com

On January 1 some 15,000–20,000 indigenous supporters of Mexico’s rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) marched in San Cristóbal de las Casas in the southeastern state of Chiapas to mark the ninth anniversary of their 1994 uprising. The huge nighttime march was a symbolic, peaceful “retaking” of the city, which the rebels seized with a surprise armed attack on January 1, 1994. Carrying machetes and torches, the demonstrators listened as seven masked EZLN commanders denounced Mexico’s main political parties, the government of President Vicente Fox Quesada and neoliberal “globalization,” and expressed support for the struggles of Mexican campesinos, “the political struggle of the Basque people,” self-determination for Venezuela and “the rebel Argentine people.” “No to the terrorism of [U.S. President George W.] Bush and [Saudi millionaire Osama] bin Laden,” chanted the crowd, which had come from indigenous communities through much of the state.

The mobilization was the EZLN’s largest since 2001, when the rebels mounted a large campaign for indigenous rights legislation, and it also marked the official end of the year and a half of silence the rebels maintained after Congress passed legislation that was unacceptable to the EZLN and most indigenous groups. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/2/03; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 1/3/03 from AP)

On December 30 the EZLN’s main spokesperson, “Insurgent Sub-Commander Marcos,” set a new, more aggressive tone with a letter published in the Mexican daily La Jornada. The letter dealt with the government’s efforts to remove indigenous communities set up over the past few years in the Montes Azules ecological reserve in southeastern Chiapas. The EZLN talked to representatives of the communities, who said they would not leave until all the EZLN’s demands had been met. “We told them we support them totally,” Marcos wrote. “So it is good for everyone to know this, and in time: in the case of Zapatista villages, there will be no `peaceful removals.’” (LJ 12/30/03)

Marcos was referring to the “peaceful removal” on December 19 of one community, Lucio Cabañas, named after a rebel leader in Guerrero in the 1970s. Faced with the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) and arrest orders for environmental crimes, the small community’s members agreed to accept the government’s offer to provide them with 20 hectares of land, medical care and temporary shelter, to pay for the corn they lost in moving and to drop the criminal charges. (LJ 12/20/02) On December 29 the army announced “overflights” of other communities in the Montes Azules region, suggesting that the military was planning operations for further removals. (LJ 12/31/02)

For more info, see: www.americas.org

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COMMENTS

nice one johnny. by iosaf Sat, Jan 25 2003, 1:15pm

but Osama (ex yemeni citizen) is no longer a millionaire. He was worth 300million in 1995. They have since frozen his accounts (approx 160million$). The residue is caught up in commidites and illegal gems. The source was Jordanian inteligence. the security forces of an emergent middle class. They want the palestinians to return to Israel. They are an Unpleasant bunch of people. But they do take the credit for announcing Osama. Pity that Virginia Langley didn?t listen to them. But Virignia Langley is so busy listening to everyone that they can?t get anything right.

www.therecord.com Saturday January 25, 2003 AL COATES RECORD STAFF

The Earth is warming (although you'd never know it). The polar ice cap is melting. The price of oil has spiked to the mid-$30s. War with Iraq is on the horizon. Venezuela, both the nation and its oil pipeline, is in turmoil.

And now, just when the consumers and investors of North America are most desperately in need of common sense and level heads, our good friends at General Motors have gone out, put on their thinking caps, and built . . . wait for it . . . three brand spankin' new models -- the Chevy SS, the Chevy Cheyenne and the Buick Centieme -- all of them great, walloping gas guzzlers and all of them with between 400 and 500 horses under the hood.

Do we stop with GM? Of course not, for at the same time the General was rolling out its new creations in Detroit, so was rival Ford, proudly showing off its new 427 concept sedan, a giant V-10 with 590 horsepower.

DaimlerChrysler? Well, let's see. How about the Dodge Magnum SRT-8 unveiled out in L.A. This one is the baby of the bunch, a piddling 430-horsie V-8 wagon on a rear-drive platform.

Oops! Almost forgot Cadillac. You'll love this one -- a concept car called Cadillac Sixteen. The Sixteen, as you might imagine, stands for 16 cylinders. Horsepower? A honkin' 1,000, just the ticket for getting a quart of milk down at the 7-11.

Ain't irony grand? Here's our good friend George W. cranking up the ol' Gutenberg, printing money to finance a war and an economic expansion, hoping like the devil to secure a steady gusher of oil, only to give us the opportunity to waste it again, gob-smacking the atmosphere with the emissions pouring from the exhaust of our new V-10, 590-horse Ford 427. Excellent.

And all of this at a time when the North American Big 3 car-makers are steadily and rapidly losing market share to the imports.

And when Ford has just decided to extend its 0-per-cent financing incentives to 60 months on many models, including the popular Windstar minivan. Even the Explorer SUV can now be had at 0-per-cent financing.

Can anyone in charge at the Big 3 spell cannibalization? Or charges against future earnings?

And, geez, not to be outright petty, but exactly how are the guys in Detroit going to deal with the pension under-funding issue? You know, the kind of thing big companies need to consider when their pension investments turn sour, as they have these past two years, and when they have to up the ante to avoid being in violation of Washington statute.

Yes, yes, I know. The stock prices of the Big 3 carmakers are way down from their highs. GM may even hit $5 US in earnings this year and with a stock price in the neighbourhood of $40, there might actually exist some value in a car company with a P/E ratio of 8:1. Especially given that GM is gaining market share in the U.S., even if it is only against Ford.

But consider the pressure the Big 3 are under from the imports, where the Hondas and Toyotas, the Nissans and the Mazdas, even the Bimmers and Beetles, have been able to undercut the domestics on price and value, all thanks to a U.S. dollar that, until recently, had been riding too high in the saddle.

Those imports, broadly speaking, also have better reliability numbers. And higher resale values, etc. These days, if you buy shares in the Big 3, you're taking a leap of faith that I, for one, would prefer not to contemplate.

But the boys in Detroit dream big dreams, firm in the belief that gas at $1.40 a gallon somehow makes a 500-horsepower, V-10 interstate hog a worthwhile, necessary creation.

Big dreams, for certain. And in technicolour, too.

acoates@therecord.com

Saturday January 25, 2003 AL COATES RECORD STAFF

The Earth is warming (although you'd never know it). The polar ice cap is melting. The price of oil has spiked to the mid-$30s. War with Iraq is on the horizon. Venezuela, both the nation and its oil pipeline, is in turmoil.

And now, just when the consumers and investors of North America are most desperately in need of common sense and level heads, our good friends at General Motors have gone out, put on their thinking caps, and built . . . wait for it . . . three brand spankin' new models -- the Chevy SS, the Chevy Cheyenne and the Buick Centieme -- all of them great, walloping gas guzzlers and all of them with between 400 and 500 horses under the hood.

Do we stop with GM? Of course not, for at the same time the General was rolling out its new creations in Detroit, so was rival Ford, proudly showing off its new 427 concept sedan, a giant V-10 with 590 horsepower.

DaimlerChrysler? Well, let's see. How about the Dodge Magnum SRT-8 unveiled out in L.A. This one is the baby of the bunch, a piddling 430-horsie V-8 wagon on a rear-drive platform.

Oops! Almost forgot Cadillac. You'll love this one -- a concept car called Cadillac Sixteen. The Sixteen, as you might imagine, stands for 16 cylinders. Horsepower? A honkin' 1,000, just the ticket for getting a quart of milk down at the 7-11.

Ain't irony grand? Here's our good friend George W. cranking up the ol' Gutenberg, printing money to finance a war and an economic expansion, hoping like the devil to secure a steady gusher of oil, only to give us the opportunity to waste it again, gob-smacking the atmosphere with the emissions pouring from the exhaust of our new V-10, 590-horse Ford 427. Excellent.

And all of this at a time when the North American Big 3 car-makers are steadily and rapidly losing market share to the imports.

And when Ford has just decided to extend its 0-per-cent financing incentives to 60 months on many models, including the popular Windstar minivan. Even the Explorer SUV can now be had at 0-per-cent financing.

Can anyone in charge at the Big 3 spell cannibalization? Or charges against future earnings?

And, geez, not to be outright petty, but exactly how are the guys in Detroit going to deal with the pension under-funding issue? You know, the kind of thing big companies need to consider when their pension investments turn sour, as they have these past two years, and when they have to up the ante to avoid being in violation of Washington statute.

Yes, yes, I know. The stock prices of the Big 3 carmakers are way down from their highs. GM may even hit $5 US in earnings this year and with a stock price in the neighbourhood of $40, there might actually exist some value in a car company with a P/E ratio of 8:1. Especially given that GM is gaining market share in the U.S., even if it is only against Ford.

But consider the pressure the Big 3 are under from the imports, where the Hondas and Toyotas, the Nissans and the Mazdas, even the Bimmers and Beetles, have been able to undercut the domestics on price and value, all thanks to a U.S. dollar that, until recently, had been riding too high in the saddle.

Those imports, broadly speaking, also have better reliability numbers. And higher resale values, etc. These days, if you buy shares in the Big 3, you're taking a leap of faith that I, for one, would prefer not to contemplate.

But the boys in Detroit dream big dreams, firm in the belief that gas at $1.40 a gallon somehow makes a 500-horsepower, V-10 interstate hog a worthwhile, necessary creation.

Big dreams, for certain. And in technicolour, too.

acoates@therecord.com

www.abs-cbnnews.com Newsday By JAMES P. PINKERTON a Newsday columnist.

George W. Bush may well choose to repeat the phrase “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address Tuesday. He’s a proud man, after all, who hates to admit a mistake.

But the policy that grew out of those ringing words has already been negated. Unfortunately, the backlash from that phrase can’t be negated so readily.

In creating that memorable sound bite, Bush was mostly wrapping rhetoric around a policy that key advisers had long supported -- ”regime change” in Iraq.

On January 26, 1998, a core cadre of 18 neoconservative policy thinkers signed an open letter to President Bill Clinton, arguing for “the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.” No fewer than nine of those signatories --including Donald Rumsfeld, now secretary of Defense -- currently hold top national-security posts in the government.

Yet for all their enthusiasm, these war hawks lacked a “smoking gun.” That smokelessness changed, at least in their eyes, after 9/11. In the months that followed, after the Afghanistan mission, the administration lost interest in al-Qaeda, shifting instead to a war on Iraq.

Indeed, some in the administration wanted to target even more enemies. For that story, we can turn to a new memoir by ex-Bush speechwriter David Frum, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush. As Frum records, his then-boss, chief speechwriter Mike Gerson, came to him in December 2001 and asked, “Can you sum up in a sentence or two our best case for going after Iraq?” Frum went to work, but National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice “wanted to take on Iran as well.” And at the last minute, North Korea was added. Bush gave the “axis of evil” address on January 29, 2002.

Today, Frum’s place in history -- and in bookstores -- is secure, but the country must live with the consequences of “axis of evil.”

The first consequence is that the United States looks guilty of inconsistency, if not hypocrisy. By lumping those three countries together so tightly, Bush gave the world no reason to think any of them would be treated differently. Yet the differentiation in treatment became glaring in October, when the North Koreans admitted -- ”bragged” might be a better word -- that they had nuclear weapons. In other words, North Korea is today what Iraq might be tomorrow. But our priorities are backward. As we pile up forces to remove Saddam, we pile up promises to Kim Jong Il -- resumption of talks, food aid, other kinds of aid -- if only he’ll be nice.

As for Iran, it’s still regarded by the United States as a sponsor of terrorism, but it’s mostly ignored by the administration.

Which is to say, after all the speechifying has fallen silent, US policy today looks a lot like what Rumsfeld & Co. had in mind five years ago: the removal of Saddam.

A second consequence of white-hat-vs.-black-hat thinking is that the rhetoric has spread -- to other Americans, to the world. In May, Undersecretary of State John Bolton delivered a speech, “Beyond the Axis of Evil,” in which he listed three more countries -- Cuba, Libya and Syria -- as serious threats to America. And in October, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Illinois, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, declared that Cuba, Venezuela and Brazil were emerging as yet another “axis of evil.”

How does such tough talk affect the countries in question? Are other nations fearful they might be labeled next? And what about yet other nations -- such as France, now threatening to veto US war plans in the UN Security Council -- that bridle at American “arrogance”? To answer such questions, one must ask: Does human nature matter? If the answer is yes, then other countries, and their leaders, also have interests, emotions, pride. Maybe that’s one reason the Brazilian government is making noises about developing its own nuclear weapons. After all, as the North Koreans have demonstrated, possessing an atomic arsenal is a sure-fire way to avoid being fired upon.

So Bush’s words to the world, and his policy toward Iraq, are boomeranging, provoking other countries to think about developing their own weapons of mass destruction for self-respect, for self-defense. But don’t expect Bush to get into that Tuesday. He’ll say whatever he wishes, confident that most Americans will cheer.

Please send your comments or feedback to newsfeedback@abs-cbn.com JAMES P. PINKERTON / TODAY