news.mysanantonio.com By Bruce Stanley Associated Press Web Posted : 03/01/2003 12:00 AM   LONDON — A recent surge in Saudi Arabian oil production should help cool sizzling prices when crude shipments from the Persian Gulf reach U.S. ports within a month, industry analysts said Friday.

Prices eased a day after spiking to a 12-year high in the United States on concerns about tight supplies.

Some analysts said OPEC member countries were pumping furiously and argued the market turmoil would ease once these fresh barrels hit the market.

"A lot of the crude produced in January has not yet arrived. The situation may change drastically," said a senior source at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Fears of a war with Iraq are partly to blame for the latest run-up in prices. April contracts of U.S. light, sweet crude climbed as much as $2 on Thursday to peak at $39.99 a barrel in New York, the highest level since October 1990, when Iraq occupied Kuwait.

On Friday, the April contract fell 60 cents to settle at $36.60 in New York.

In London, April contracts of North Sea Brent fell 25 cents to end at $32.79 a barrel.

Fears that a war might create supply shortages have inflated prices by at least $5 a barrel, the OPEC source said, speaking on condition of anonymity from the group's headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

However, analysts said OPEC probably could make up the 2 million barrels a day that Iraq would be unable to export if fighting broke out in the gulf. OPEC supplies about a third of the world's oil.

The cartel's most powerful member, Saudi Arabia, says it can produce up to 10.5 million barrels a day. That is substantially higher than the 8.5 million barrels a day the International Energy Agency, a watchdog for oil-importing countries, said the country was producing in January.

"I think they're well above 10 million barrels, and pumping," said Peter Gignoux, managing director of the petroleum desk at Salomon Smith Barney.

Much of this additional crude is already on its way to the U.S. East Coast, a journey lasting about 45 days.

"There is a considerable amount of oil en route from Saudi Arabia," agreed Lawrence Eagles, head of commodity research for London brokerage GNI Ltd.

Although it was unclear how many barrels actually were in transit, Eagles said the market would be "relatively balanced" if this fresh Saudi Arabian oil was counted as part of the global supply.

The United Arab Emirates and other OPEC members that aren't already producing at full capacity could boost the cartel's output further to help make up for any missing Iraqi barrels.

"Altogether they can cover it — barely," the OPEC source said.

The recent price spike was most pronounced in the United States, the world's biggest importer of crude. While Iraq has been a factor in this surge, analysts said cold weather and the fallout from a strike in Venezuela's oil industry have played a bigger role.

"We've lived without Iraqi oil before. This doesn't bother me," Gignoux said.

Venezuela steadily is ramping up its production in the wake of a crippling strike. It has boosted exports from 700,000 barrels a day a few weeks ago to 1.4 million barrels today, and further increases are expected, Eagles said.

However, U.S. importers were slow to seek alternative sources of crude when the strike first disrupted Venezuelan exports in December.

This slow response, together with the longer time it takes crude to reach North America from Saudi Arabia, has helped cause a temporary squeeze in the U.S. market, analysts said.

On top of the surge in crude prices, heating oil soared to historic highs this week as snow buried large parts of the United States.

www.post-gazette.com Saturday, March 01, 2003 By Gary Rotstein, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The winter of plunging temperatures has turned into the season of soaring heating bills.

Customers reviewing their latest utility statements have been hit flush with the cost of the coldest January in nine years, which is just part of the coldest December-February stretch since 1978-79.

Residential heating systems consume more fuel, whatever the source, when outside temperatures drop. That has affected bills at the same time utilities have passed along to customers their rising supply costs, influenced by a variety of national and world conditions, including the threatened war with Iraq.

The average January cost for Dominion Peoples residential customers was $195.61, compared with $104.93 a year earlier, said Elmore Lockley, the gas company's spokesman.

About $52 of the increase was due solely to the cold weather affecting consumption, Lockley said, and $38 to the gas cost itself.

He said the latter was affected by Middle East supply concerns, a slowdown in drilling new gas wells during mild weather last year, oil supply disruptions in Venezuela and other factors of supply and demand. Some large energy consumers that typically use oil are able to switch to gas when oil supplies dwindle or jump in cost, but that in turn affects gas supplies and costs.

Other local utilities say their customers also have experienced increases, although direct January-to-January comparisons weren't available. Even without the impact of cold weather on an individual household's consumption, supply costs would be about $41 more in January than a year ago for Columbia Gas Co. customers, said spokesman Rob Boulware.

The higher bills mean many customers may fall behind in their payments shortly before April 1, the date when the Public Utility Commission ends its annual cold-season moratorium. Utilities are barred from terminating service from December through March of households unwilling or unable to pay debts.

Utilities typically start sending out notices in March threatening termination in April of customers who are far behind with bills.

The harsh winter conditions won't change that, said Equitable Gas Co. spokeswoman Cindy Jergan, but she said low-income households and others with financial problems can often avoid shutoff by explaining their situation and making special arrangements.

"We're willing to work with customers to get them set up on a payment plan," she said. "We encourage customers to contact us in advance" of encountering huge debts.

Recognizing this winter's strain on household costs, government officials have boosted the amount of aid available to low-income families to maintain their heat supply. Both the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare and Dollar Energy Fund, sponsored by a consortium of utilities, are receiving applications from needy consumers.

"We definitely want families across the state to know there is still time to get help," said Stephanie Suran, spokeswoman for the welfare department, which administers the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

LIHEAP makes payments averaging several hundred dollars to utilities on behalf of households within 135 percent of the federal poverty level. That puts the qualifying ceiling at $11,961 for a single person and $24,435 for a family of four.

As of a week ago, the state had approved 244,425 LIHEAP cash grants totaling $57.7 million and 75,566 of the program's "crisis" grants, totaling $12.7 million. The crisis grants are for people with emergencies in which they may lose their home heat -- due to utility shutoffs, broken equipment, difficulty paying for deliverable fuel like oil or other problems.

An emergency federal appropriation announced Feb. 18 provided $16.4 million in new LIHEAP funds to the state, which Suran said is being used to bump a household's potential crisis grant from $300 to $600.

In another bonus for the program, the new budget bill passed by Congress is expected to filter an additional $26.5 million in LIHEAP funds to Pennsylvania, on top of the original projection of $93.6 million. Suran said officials will determine soon how to make use of the additional money, including possible extension of the March 27 deadline to apply for aid.

The Dollar Energy Fund, supported by contributions from 13 utilities and their customers, provides separate grants of up to $400 to help people within 200 percent of the poverty limit. The eligibility limit is $17,184 for an individual and $35,304 for a family of four.

Through the winter, the program only accepts applications from those who have lost heat. Starting today, it begins helping anyone who is income eligible and needs help.

"Many of the people we're serving now are the new working-class poor, not people who have been on welfare for years," said Cindy Datig, Dollar Energy Fund executive director. "We're also seeing a new class of professionals who lost their jobs and need help."

The program relies on a network of 150 agencies that screen clients and process applications. Janet Kirik, a coordinator for the Elder-Ado senior services center in Mount Oliver, said people have begun contacting her about new heating bills $150 to $200 higher than what they've been accustomed to.

"I'm going to be swamped" next week with Dollar Energy Fund applications, she said.

Applicants for Dollar Energy Fund assistance should ask their utility to recommend an agency near them to contact and apply through.

Applicants for LIHEAP grants should contact their welfare assistance office or call the state's toll-free phone line: 1-866-857-7095.

Gary Rotstein can be reached at grotstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1255.

www.republicons.org by: Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki African National Congress 3/1/2003   The XIII Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the 24-25th February, 2003. Attended by almost 110 member countries, the Summit Meeting represented about two-thirds of the world's population and the membership of the United Nations. Made up essentially of the developing countries of the South, NAM is an important voice for the poor of the world, whose lives are defined by exclusion from many of the benefits of the process of globalisation.

As our readers will remember, the XII NAM Summit was held in Durban in 1998. It adopted the Durban Declaration, which, among other things, said: "We are the ones who have endured centuries of colonialism, oppression, exploitation and neglect. We have been the invisible people of the world. In recent times, spurred by our Movement and progressive forces, we see our rapid emergence from that condition. Indeed, our time has come."

However, our optimism with regard to the new epoch was moderated by the fact that a unipolar and rapidly globalising world had emerged.

Accordingly, we further observed in the same Durban Declaration that: "We now stand on the threshold of a new era, an era that offers great opportunity, yet poses special dangers for the developing world."

The XIII Summit Meeting adopted the Kuala Lumpur Declaration, which returned to this issue. Among other things it said: "With the end of the Cold War, the emergence of unipolarity, the trend towards unilateralism and the rise of new challenges and threats, such as international terrorism, it is imperative for the Movement to promote multilateralism, the better to defend the interests of developing countries and prevent their marginalisation.

"With increased globalisation and the rapid advance of science and technology, the world has changed dramatically. The rich and powerful countries exercise an inordinate influence in determining the nature and direction of international relations, including economic and trade relations, as well as the rules governing these relations, many of which are at the expense of the developing countries. It is imperative, therefore, that the Movement respond in ways that will ensure its continued relevance and usefulness to its members.Globalisation should lead to the prospering and empowering of the developing countries, not their continued impoverishment and dependence on the wealthy and developed world."

The XIII Summit Meeting took place at the time when the dark clouds of war are gathering over Iraq, a long-standing member of the Movement. Almost all the speakers at the Meeting addressed this burning question, on which the Summit Meeting issued a special Statement, which, among other things, said:

"We are fully cognisant of the concerns expressed by millions in our countries, as well as in other parts of the world, who reject war and believe, like we do, that war against Iraq will be a destabilising factor for the whole region, and that it would have far reaching political, economic and humanitarian consequences for all countries of the world, particularly the States in the region.

"We reiterate our commitment to the fundamental principles of the non-use of force and respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and security of all Member States of the United Nations. We reaffirm our commitment to exert our efforts to achieve a peaceful solution to the current situation."

It went on to "call on Iraq to continue to actively comply with Security Council resolution 1441 and all other relevant Security Council resolutions and to remain engaged in the process."

The concluding paragraph of the Statement Concerning Iraq said: "We believe that the peaceful resolution of the Iraqi crisis would ensure that the Security Council will also be in a position to ensure Iraq's sovereignty and the inviolability of its territorial integrity, political independence and security, and compliance with Paragraph 14 of its Resolution 687 on the establishment in the Middle East of a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free-zone, which includes Israel."

We should here note that 12 Middle East countries participated in the XIII NAM Summit Meeting.

As we met in Kuala Lumpur, our Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aziz Pahad, was in Baghdad leading the group of experts we had sent to Iraq, to share with their counterparts our experience relating to South Africa's elimination of weapons of mass destruction under international supervision.

We took this step to help Iraq realise precisely the objective sought by NAM and the UN Security Council, "actively to comply with Security Council resolution 1441 and all other relevant Security Council resolutions and to remain engaged in the process", to ensure the peaceful and speedy resolution of the issue of Iraq.

In the meantime, the continued deployment of troops in the Middle East by the US and the UK suggested that these two countries are determined to go to war against Iraq, at all costs.

A new draft resolution they, together with Spain, presented to the Security Council, even as the XIII NAM Summit Meeting was in session, sought to get the Security Council to agree that Iraq was in material breach of Resolution 1441 and that it had "failed to take the final opportunity afforded to it in resolution 1441 (2002)."

The draft resolution also requires the Security Council to recall that "it has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations". Of course, the phrase, "serious consequences", has been interpreted by some members of the Security Council as meaning resort to war.

The current situation therefore suggests that even as the representatives of two-thirds of humanity, including those in the immediate neighbourhood of Iraq, were urging a peaceful resolution of the Iraq question, a few countries were determined to make the statement that war against Iraq is inevitable.

This indicates that the XIII NAM Summit Meeting was justified to draw attention to the global imbalance of power, when it said "the rich and powerful countries exercise an inordinate influence in determining the nature and direction of international relations".

The international media has played an important role in keeping the world informed about the developments on Iraq. This has included live television transmissions of the proceedings of the UN Security Council.

Nevertheless, the "inordinate influence" mentioned by NAM, showed up even in these transmissions.

For example, repeatedly, the television broadcasts cut off the African members of the Security Council as they were about to speak, so that the world never got to know what Africa, and the developing world, think. Even as the Iraq debate among the countries of the North rages on, there is hardly any mention of what the countries of the South feel and think.

In practice the point has been made that this issue will be resolved solely and exclusively on the basis of what the countries of the North decide, regardless of what more than two-thirds of the world's population, the citizens of the countries of the South, think or feel. The fact that some of these countries serve as members of the Security Council is little more than a small and irritating distraction.

Those who, in practice, uphold and perpetuate this practice globally are democratic countries, justly proud of the democratic rights their peoples enjoy. Regularly, because of their own experience, they find it necessary to make judgements about political practice in the countries of the South.

A great number of the most contentious issues in world politics relate to the countries of the South and members of NAM. These include Iraq, Palestine, North Korea, Cuba, Cote d'Ivoire, India and Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and so on.

A great number of the biggest challenges facing humanity have their epicentre in the countries of the South. These include poverty, underdevelopment, AIDS and other health challenges, famine, violent conflicts, and so on.

Those most affected by all these generic matters as well as those issues affecting individual countries, are members of NAM. They have repeatedly made the simple statement, as they did in Kuala Lumpur, that they have a right and duty to help find answers to these challenges.

They have repeatedly made the simple statement, as they did again in Kuala Lumpur, that they are ready to work with the countries of the North, in a partnership of equals, constructively to respond to these challenges.

A few years ago, they felt that, at last, their voice was beginning to be heard. That is why at the XII NAM Summit Meeting in Durban in 1998, they said "we have been the invisible people of the world. In recent times, spurred by our Movement and progressive forces, we see our rapid emergence from that condition. Indeed, our time has come."

However, developments since then have made the practical statement that this dream had to be deferred. Accordingly, at Kuala Lumpur in 2003, the countries of the South were constrained to state that "with the end of the Cold War, the emergence of unipolarity, the trend towards unilateralism and the rise of new challenges and threats, such as international terrorism, it is imperative for the Movement to promote multilateralism, the better to defend the interests of developing countries and prevent their marginalisation."

"Unipolarity" and "unilateralism" mean that one power, with a little help from its friends, takes decisions about what happens in the world, including our countries, without our participation. This represents an undemocratic "new" world order that turns us, once more, into "the invisible people of the world", living in fear of the consequences of responding to our consciences, because of our dependence on the wealthy and developed world.

"Multilateralism" and an effective United Nations mean that we would have the possibility to contribute to the solution of the problems facing humanity, including ourselves. This would mark the emergence of a new world order, characterised by the democratisation of the system of international relations and the availability of the space for the poor and powerless freely to speak their minds, in a world that is being integrated and made more interdependent by the unstoppable process of globalisation.

The processes relating to the question of Iraq confirm the disturbing reality that unilateralism, rather than multilateralism, has become the dominant tendency in world politics. They confirm the painful truth that economic, military, technological and other power constitutes the political engine that determines the fate of all humanity.

They make the statement, practically, that the voice of the people is not the voice of God. They tell the billions whose representatives gathered in Kuala Lumpur at the XIII NAM Summit Meeting, that their dream that they would cease to be "the invisible people of the world" must, perforce, be deferred.

Sooner or later, those who have the power to defer the dreams of billions of human beings will have to answer the question that Langston Hughes, the outstanding African-American poet, posed when he asked - "What happens to a dream deferred?"

"Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore -. Does it stink like rotten meat?. Or does it explode?"

Thabo Mbeki is the President of The Republic of South Africa   For more information visit: www.anc.org.za

frontpagemag.com By Lowell Ponte FrontPageMagazine.com | February 28, 2003

PONTEFICATIONS

GORGED ON CAVIAR, FRENCH CHAMPAGNE and Havana cigars, the Hollywood revelers turned in recent days to the serious business of picking the Democratic puppet they aim to make President via the political war culminating in November 2004.

These Leftist powerbrokers have been basking on the sunny beaches not of California but of Hollywood, Florida. They are not thin, beautiful celebrities but greasy-palmed fat cat bosses of organized labor accustomed to throwing their weight around. They flew their aristocratic private jets to this luxury beach junket that few unionized workers (whose coerced dues fund the labor boss lifestyle and union power) could afford.

One by one, presidential hopefuls of the Democratic Party have come to pledge that they would do the bidding of these guilded Godfathers. Senators Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and John Edwards of North Carolina came on their knees as humble supplicants to kiss the rings of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and his operatives.

So too did the rising star of the far Left, the snarky former Governor Howard Dean from the state whose only congressman is a self-proclaimed socialist – Vermont. Dean says he speaks for "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." This claptrap phrase, shamelessly stolen from the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D.-Minn.), shows Dean to be a graduate of the Joe Biden School of Political Plagiarism. It also shows how brain-dead and short of memory his fans are.

Congressman Dick Gephardt (D.-Mo.), former House Minority Leader, arrived with his begging bowl in hand, desperate for union support. He has certainly paid his dues, the bosses agreed. Gephardt throughout his 26 years in Congress has been a labor sock puppet, ready to mouth or do anything the unions commanded. If any lawmaker should be called a "wholly owned subsidiary" of the AFL-CIO, Gephardt is that guy.

Trouble is, the formerly freckled Eagle Scout even today looks too much like the love child of Howdy Doody, minus this woody parent’s charisma and charm. Dick Gephardt is experienced and adept at legislative compromise, but he is also dull as dirt. A quarter-century of political prostitution has left him as pliable and spineless as Silly Putty.

Gephardt, the son of a Teamster Union member, no longer believes in anything except his own ambition. It is therefore hard for voters to believe passionately in him.

"Candidates have to connect with voters…stand for some issues and look people in the eye and convince them," said Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union. Stern, like many other union bosses, believes that Gephardt has yet to persuade his members that he can win the Presidency in 2004.

Unless organized labor steps forward soon with its millions of dollars and foot soldiers to play primaries king-maker in his behalf, it seems increasingly clear that Dick Gephardt will not become king.

But gaining such endorsement this year is hard. It requires two-thirds of the 65 AFL-CIO unions’ support. And AFL-CIO President Sweeney has barred his state federations and central labor councils from making endorsements ahead of the whole federation. Sweeney, with a wetted ring finger in shifting political winds, is urging all national unions to bide their time.

Another presidential aspirant eager for labor support is Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio) from the half-rustbelt, half-Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame City of Cleveland. He appears to patronize the same unionized toupee maker as Gephardt. Also like Gephardt, Roman Catholic Kucinich used to oppose abortion.

But on the eve of his running for the nomination of the pro-abortion Democratic Party, Kucinich like Gephardt had a revelation. Kucinich came to see that he had a choice: he could oppose the killing of 1.5 million unborn babies a year, or he could approve all abortion and thereby save the world by becoming President.

Both these politicians, demonstrating the depth of their moral character, instantly jettisoned their former religious beliefs against abortion and chose instead to turn these 1.5 million aborted babies each year into their stepping stones to the White House and political power.

But where Gephardt seems too bland and moderate to excite the Leftist Democratic base voter, Kucinich at least on paper offers these faithful lots of red meat. Where Gephardt and all other congressional Presidential hopefuls voted to grant Iraq war powers to President George W. Bush, Kucinich bucked public opinion to vote against this resolution.

While other lawmakers might cut funding for the Department of Defense, Rep. Kucinich on his surreal congressional web site boasts that he wants to replace it altogether with a "Department of Peace" the goal of which is "to make war archaic." He was one of six Democratic members of Congress who sued President Bush, asking a judge to declare war with Iraq illegal and unconstitutional, a lawsuit quickly slapped down.

Kucinich here proudly declares his efforts "to close the School of the Americas" where anti-Communist soldiers from the Hemisphere have received training. Here he also prates about how he "marched with workers through the streets of Seattle protesting the WTO’s [World Trade Organization’s] policies" in what turned into window-smashing, anti-capitalism riots.

Kucinich, we here discover, is co-chair of Congress’s "Progressive Caucus." You will recall that this coalition of Leftist Democrat lawmakers has been formally affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, a fact both groups now move heaven and earth to conceal.

But Kucinich does little to hide his own political agenda. If elected President, he says, he would bring about "universal health care" (i.e., socialized medicine) and repeal all of President George W. Bush's tax cuts.

Repealing those tax cuts is vital to Big Labor. Blue collar union membership is in steep decline, down to only about 8.5 percent of America’s workforce. The one bright spot is among government workers, upwards of 30 percent of whom are unionized. (No wonder President Bush is pressing for Federal job "outsourcing" to the private sector to reduce the need for government employees!)

If Big Government is to get bigger, taxes must not be cut but raised, even if blue collar union workers are the victims of such tax increases. Hey, this is where fat cats like John Sweeney get their money now. Ever-Bigger Government is one of organized labor’s two New Frontiers, its future – if it has any at all.

As a sign of their desperation, the Laborite bosses in Florida have also allocated $20 million from coerced union dues to a new power grab called "the Partnership for America’s Families." Its goal is to expand get-out-the-vote programs beyond union members to a host of non-union voters – especially women, blacks, and Hispanics.

This circumvents new campaign finance restrictions and lets a shrinking labor movement retain and expand its power within the Democratic Party. (Recent Democratic National Conventions have drawn up to 25 percent of their delegates from public sector teachers’ unions, not to mention other unions.)

Kucinich has already been praised (and almost endorsed) by Ralph Nader, the "progressive" whose 2000 Green Party candidacy drained a decisive 92,000 from Al Gore in Florida and cost Democratic nominee Al Gore the White House. Nader presumably would have little reason to run against his fellow socialist Dennis the Menace.

As to Disorganized Labor’s values, where Dick Gephardt now calls for higher minimum wages in the Third World to reduce foreign competition, Kucinich calls for the outright repeal of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Kucinich would in effect close our borders to foreign competitors and force American consumers to buy the costlier products of unionized factories here.

But when I said Kucinich offered "red meat" to the Looney Left, perhaps I should have said "green flesh." Like that earlier socialist Adolf Hitler, Dennis Kucinich is a vegetarian.

As he describes himself thirdhand on his own web site, Kucinich "is one of the few vegans in Congress, a dietary decision he credits not only with improving his health, but in deepening his belief in the sacredness of all species." But how does he reconcile this with the separation of church and state? And if he refuses to eat meat, why does he want, in P.J. O’Rourke’s pungent phrase, to eat the rich?

This lack of a complete spectrum of proteins in his brain may also explain why Kucinich believes that he "combines a powerful activism with a spiritual sense of the essential interconnectedness of all living things." This guy could win the Northern California vote.

The main problem for Dennis Kucinich is the required leap from hyperspace into concrete reality, as it is for most socialists. In person, Dennis the Vegan is wrinkled and looks much older than his 56 years. He is no poster child for health or animal magnetism. Envision a small mustache beneath his nose, and the straight-black-haired Kucinich looks remarkably like Hitler.

Under questioning he slithers like a snake to avoid answering whether his support for abortion includes late term or "partial birth" abortion. He has cooked up fanciful explanations to blame capitalists for how, as a young 31-year-old Mayor of Cleveland, his wunderkind high-handedness plunged the city into virtual bankrupcy.

And he gets testy when reminded that he called for ending Iraq sanctions in the November 2002 issue of The Progressive Magazine, but on Meet the Press on February 23, 2003, he called for using sanctions – but no violence – to oust Saddam Hussein.

By holding himself out as spokesman for "peace" on the Democratic side, noted Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, this issue "is becoming an emotional battle between ideologues who, as usual, don’t give a damn about the truth. Kucinich seems to be one of those."

"If he and his fellow antiwar candidates are going to turn a complex debate into an ideological brawl, then one outcome of the potential war will not be in doubt," Cohen continued. "The Democratic Party will lose."

Thus far Kucinich attracts only about 2 percent of Democratic supporters in the latest Time-CNN poll. Organized labor is not rushing to embrace him.

Even Richard Cohen, after watching Kucinich on Meet the Press claim that the Iraq war is about oil (and after Cohen found himself applauding fellow guest and former Defense Dept. official Richard Perle for calling Kucinich a "liar") reached a conclusion about this Democratic congressman hard for a liberal to admit: "How did this fool get on ‘Meet the Press?’"

On another chat show Mr. Kucinich proclaimed yet another Leftist rationale for peace – that Saddam Hussein was hanging on to his forbidden missiles, despite chief United Nations inspector Hans Blix’s orders, for a good reason.

George W. Bush was to blame, declared Kucinich, because America’s hawkish President had made Saddam Hussein "feel threatened and insecure." (You can’t make this kind of genuine lunacy up!)

Okay, let’s expand Dennis Kucinich’s reasoning. Why is President Bush behaving this way? Could it be because Democrats like Dennis Kucinich are attacking him verbally and trying to take his job away? They are making President Bush "feel threatened and insecure."

So to get peace with Iraq, Mr. Kucinich, why don’t you and all other Democrat presidential aspirants terminate your campaigns and declare your support for another four-year term for President Bush? This will end his insecurity and allow Mr. Bush to make peace with Saddam Hussein without fear of political consequences from you.

Yes, this is crazy. But that’s the point. This is how Dennis Kucinich and his fellow looney Left peaceniks actually think. They are, in liberal Richard Cohen’s words, "Antiwar and Illogical."

Let’s turn to another serious issue affecting the price of our gasoline for Kucinich, Gephardt, and Disorganized Labor to answer.

Right now in Venezuela the Marxist dictator and friend of Fidel Castro, Presidente for Life Hugo Chavez, has begun jailing the organizers of a national strike against him.

Chavez has said he will jail the leader of the nation’s biggest labor confederation, Carlos Ortega, for having dared to lead work-stopping demands that Chavez face a vote of the people.

The "Progressive Caucus" co-chaired by Kucinich has supported Chavez, their ideological brother. But now Chavez says he will imprison a labor leader, now in hiding, for the "crime" of calling for and leading a strike.

What does it tell us about the nature of today's Left in America that they say nothing louder than a whisper about either Saddam Hussein's or Hugo Chavez's gross violations of human rights? Do America's union bosses nowadays stand up for workers' rights - or only for their own power and privilege?

Mr. Ponte hosts national radio talk show Monday through Friday Noon-2 PM Eastern Time (9-11 AM Pacific Time) as well as on Saturdays 6-9 PM Eastern Time (3-6 PM Pacific Time) and on Sundays 9-11 PM Eastern Time (6-8 PM Pacific Time) on the Talk America network . Internet Audio worldwide is at TalkAmerica.com. The show's live call-in number is (888) 822-8255. A professional speaker, he is a former Roving Editor for Reader's Digest.

www.washingtonpost.com Saturday, March 1, 2003; Page A18 Editorial

U.S. OFFICIALS long sought to play down the danger that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez poses by pointing out that his acts rarely matched his words. Mr. Chavez, who was elected president after promising a socialist revolution for Venezuela's poor majority, might talk about confiscating property, supporting leftist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia or admiring Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein, but in practice he mostly remained within democratic boundaries.

Yet now the gap between Mr. Chavez's inflammatory rhetoric and his actions is narrowing. Having survived a strike by his opposition, Mr. Chavez has proclaimed 2003 the "year of the offensive"; so far he has taken steps to bring the economy under state control, eliminate independent media and decapitate the opposition. One of the strike's three top leaders has been arrested, while another has gone into hiding. Even more disturbing have been the unexplained murder of three dissident soldiers and an anti-Chavez protester and the explosion of bombs outside the Colombian and Spanish embassies. Government officials have denied responsibility, but these acts, too, followed Mr. Chavez's words: his labeling of dissident officers as "traitors" and his attacks on Colombia and Spain for "meddling."

Without more meddling, and soon, Venezuela will likely see the collapse of what was once one of Latin America's richest economies and strongest democracies. Mr. Chavez appears to have tired of his half-baked populism; now he seems prepared to destroy what remains of civil society and the private sector. He placed strict controls on foreign currency and has vowed to take away the licenses of private television stations that supported the opposition. He fired 16,000 employees of Venezuela's state oil company -- the country's economic lifeline -- and moved to bring an institution long known for its professionalism under his personal control. Independent economists are forecasting a catastrophic drop in Venezuela's economic output this year; some foresee the virtual disappearance of the private sector. That would bring Venezuela far closer to Cuba, which maybe shouldn't be a surprise: Mr. Castro, who is Mr. Chavez's closest ally, reportedly has dispatched thousands of officials to Venezuela.

Spain recently joined with the United States, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Portugal to support a negotiated political solution to the crisis through the mediation of Cesar Gaviria, the secretary general of the Organization of American States and a former president of Colombia. The opposition, which at times has supported anti-democratic means of ousting Mr. Chavez, now endorses Mr. Gaviria's proposal for a new presidential election or a referendum on Mr. Chavez's recall. The current constitution would allow for a referendum to be held as early as August; that may be the easiest and best way out. But Mr. Chavez knows he would very likely lose a fair vote, and he will likely do everything possible to prevent it. That's why it is essential that the Bush administration join with the "group of friends" to insist that Mr. Chavez release his political prisoners, stop his revolutionary "offensive" and commit to a decisive vote. It may be democracy's last chance.