www.asiacomputerweekly.com Tao Ai Lei, Mar 10 2003

On the Side Combating the slide Singapore: Technology today has fallen behind compared to the scale and spread of security problems, with insufficient action in the areas of R&D and people training.

Yu Chien Siang, IT director, Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore, made this observation at the Security Conference Summit 2003 held in Singapore recently.

He explained that it takes skill to design, create and implement IT systems that are secure and robust, so “we need to go back to the basics, to training and good people”.

This is in the light of the fact that companies today face “newer and quite lethal [security] attacks”, as technology gets increasingly pervasive.

He cited the example of embedded systems, such as high-end photocopiers and colour laser printers that have hard disks, which can be hacked. The GSM SIM cards can also be attacked by cloning kits, and next-generation viruses can attack cell phones.

To tackle these challenges in today’s complex knowledge economy, companies need a sophisticated array of security defences as part of its eco-system, said Yu.

These technologies include: integrity protection, antihacker intrusion detection system, data backup systems, physical access control, network security, and emergency disaster recovery systems.

IT systems that have security problems tend to be poorly designed and cannot scale.

Therefore, they cannot be enhanced, and are “fighting technology obsolescence from the day that they were implemented”, said Yu.

On the other hand, security, when implemented well, can save money, he said.

Yu also pointed to certain “money-saving” security techniques, which include using a network address translation (NAT) to stop Trojans from taking over corporate PCs; setting Read-only to normal .dot and email.dot files to stop infections by macro viruses; and taking advantage of the Win2000 security capabilities, like ActiveDirectory, IPSec, Kerberos and router, NTLM 2.

On a positive note, Yu said that not only IT vendors, but also governments and universities, are beefing up and promoting security.

He highlighted key security initiatives by IT vendors, such as Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative; Sun Microsystems’ JavaCard, SunOne and Liberty Alliance; and Oracle chief Larry Ellison’s pledge to make his company’s database programs “unbreakable”. Smart-card technology has also made considerable headway recently, where cryptography for smart cards has “improved dramatically”, with AES replacing DES.

Governments worldwide are also implementing or committed to a smart national identification or national healthcare card within a PKI infrastructure, such as Finland, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Slovenia, Venezuela, Malaysia and the US.

www.sfgate.com David Gonzalez, New York Times Sunday, March 9, 2003

Maracaibo, Venezuela -- In this sun-drenched city built on oil and agriculture, government workers complain of missed paydays and stalled projects.

Beyond the high-rises and office towers, impoverished families live in dank, crumbling shanties along unpaved streets.

These scenes in the western state of Zulia make the billboard outside the government-run oil company seem like a cruel taunt, particularly given that Venezuela's journey to becoming the world's fifth-largest oil exporter began here in 1914.

"Social Investment Fund," the sign proclaims. "Improving the Life of All Zulianos."

Complaints that the central government has exported not just oil from the region, but increasingly its attendant profits as well, have turned many residents against President Hugo Chavez, whom they have accused of withholding $500 million from their state budget over the years.

Only one of the state's 21 mayors supports Chavez, while the governor, Manuel Rosales, has easily rallied tens of thousands of people against him.

In Chavez's struggle to overcome the devastating effects of a two-month nationwide strike, Zulia, the country's most populous state with 3.2 million residents, is a crucial battleground. Chavez must not only boost oil production, but also his support in this state whose people tend to vote as a bloc.

Two weeks ago, with the strike faltering, Chavez set his sights on removing Rosales, urging people to demand the kind of recall referendum that his own critics have sought unsuccessfully against him. Chavez's supporters accuse the governor of being unwilling to see the wealthy give up their privileges.

Yet even among the poor, the very group that Chavez says benefits most from his Bolivarian Revolution, disenchantment has grown.

"The economy is fatal, and since Chavez came to power it has gotten worse, because there is no work," said Addis Atencia, who shares a dusty compound of five shanties with nearly three dozen adults and children. "In a country that produces petroleum, how can you live like this?"

Zulianos consider themselves a breed apart, which is evident in their accent, culture and temperament. The differences are a result of having been cut off from the capital, Caracas, for years, and of frequent contact with foreigners through the port here.

For years before the bridge spanning Lake Maracaibo was built in the 1960s, residents intent on going to Caracas had to get a visa, since the ferry stopped first on the Dutch island of Curacao.

When Chavez introduced reforms, including one that allowed squatters to occupy fallow farmland, Zulianos reacted with a statewide strike in September 2001. For many, the reforms were another insult after years of seeing no returns on the revenue Zulia produced for the country.

"Zulia paralyzed the state and lit the fuse that led to a national strike," said Tomas Guanipa Villalobos, the local leader of the Primero Justicia political party. "Zulia has suffered the most under Chavez. The money which was generated by oil was not invested into making Venezuela truly productive."

Roads on the outskirts of Maracaibo are potholed, while signs heralding a commuter rail station rise above empty lots where work has stopped. The public hospital in the Veritas neighborhood looks rundown, paint flaking from its walls and weeds choking one entrance even as patients stream into the building.

A state medical supply store is closed.

Guanipa said that rather than tackle problems like those, Chavez devoted most of a brief visit here last month to lambasting the governor and the opposition as coup plotters.

"He said nothing about any program of investment to elevate Zulia," Guanipa said. "He spent hours urging people to eliminate the enemy. It was the politics of revenge, and that is very dangerous. It will get worse unless we get out of this fast."

The government has insisted that oil production has improved among the oil rigs on Lake Maracaibo, where soldiers patrol the lake and shores to prevent sabotage. It has estimated that oil production nationwide is now up to 2.1 million barrels daily after being paralyzed by the strike. Venezuela produced 3.1 million barrels a day before the strike.

Alexis Arellano, the coordinator of the oil company's Tia Juana district, said he was now able to pump almost 800,000 barrels daily, despite having fired 60 percent of his workforce during the strike.

Combined with joint ventures that were not affected by the strike, he said, regional production hovered at a little more than 1 million barrels daily.

"They said it was impossible to increase production," he said. "The people who stayed with us see it as a personal challenge to keep on operating and make the company grow."

But former executives have disputed the government's figures and insist that actual production is half of that claimed.

"If they are producing a million barrels a day with so many fewer people, then they should have fired us," joked Tarciso Guerrero, who used to manage the gas facilities. "They are only saying they reached a million to show the country that everything is normal."

Outside the oil company's Miranda Building, lines of job applicants file past a ragtag group of "Commando Reservists," Chavez supporters who have guarded the area since December, with a battered bus as their headquarters and dormitory.

The mood has been tense, especially after two people were injured this week when unknown assailants tossed a grenade and fired a dozen shots while the Chavez supporters slept by the sidewalk.

"We are defending these trenches because this institution is ours," said one of the group, Leonardo Sencial. "Without this we are nothing. If they try to take it away, we will take to the streets as the president said."

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 09, 2003 By: Kira Marquez Perez

Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2003 16:55:04 +0100 From: Kira Marquez Perez Kira.MarquezPerez@uni-duesseldorf.de To: editor@vheadline.com Subject: You can't buy intelligence

Dear Editor: I have been a very lucky girl. I was born in one of the most beautiful countries in the whole world and grew up within a wonderful family. My parents, who are both professors of Science, have worked with people from around the world, and always say (and they are absolutely right about it) that you can’t buy intelligence.

Money and luxury are material things that have actually nothing to do with intelligence, which is strictly a "human quality."

• Today, we can see how the world is being driven towards a really chaotic place by the actions of a few people with a lot of money, but with an obvious absolute lack of intelligence.

However, many of them have been clever enough (again cleverness is NOT equal to intelligence) to use their money to manipulating information.

We have recently seen how a few wealthy sectors and groups in Venezuela actually intend to make us believe that they are more intelligent than the rest (although their actions have shown exactly the opposite) just because they have more money. They have even given themselves important names, such as: "meritocratas,“ "gente del petroleo," "gente de la universidad" etc.

And, as Voltaire said: “those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.“ Actually, the only thing that is really attributable to these individuals is the fact that they can access education more easily as a result of their economical condition. But ... this fact can not be confused under any circumstances with special intelligence or brilliancy.

Furthermore, corrupts can sometimes even buy themselves a title (like Ms. Blanca Ibanez did) ... but that doesn’t improve their intelligence at all, does it?

These poor people are so mistaken, that they can’t see reality and they actually believe themselves to be indispensable. Pride has often made them blind, and has kept them from acting rationally. This has driven them to disdain the rest of the population, from which often the real genii arise ... history has already done its job to prove that, as we will see below:

(1) Jesus from Nazareth (00 ú 33). Born into a modest family. His father was a carpenter and his mother was a housewife. He received home education and showed a great interest in religious matters. His wisdom, his teachings and his love towards the others made him the leader and guide of Christianity.

(2) Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 ú 1519). Was the son of a notary from Florence. He studied at Verrocchio. He was an outstanding artist, scientist and inventor. The variety of his work made him a universal genius.

(3) Galileo Galilei (1540 ú 1603). Was the eldest son of a trader. He started his studies in medicine, but had to interrupt them for financial reasons. Later, he became well known for his work in physics and mathematics (pendulum, hydrostatic balance, gravitational movement, telescope, astronomic studies). He was punished by the Inquisition for supporting Copernico's theory.

(4) G. W. Friedrich Hegel (1770 ú 1831). Eldest son of a low-ranking military official. He initially worked as a private family teacher and later began to teach at the university of Jena. His outstanding work at the University of Berlin made him a leader in the German intellectual community. His contributions to philosophy were very valuable.

(5) Vincent van Gogh (1853 ú 1890). Spent his adolescence in a rural environment. He received religious education and dedicated an important part of his life to arts and teaching. He specialized in painting and worked in Holland and France. He became one of the greatest Dutch painters in history.

(6) Marie Curie (1867-1934). Was born in Warsaw, the daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. She became involved in a students' revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw. In 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licentiates in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions, laboratory arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. Mme. Curie was the woman who discovered radium, paving the way for nuclear physics and cancer therapy.

(7) Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in 1928 in the small town of Aracataca, situated in a tropical region of northern Colombia. He grew up with his maternal grandparent -- his grandfather was a pensioned colonel from the civil war at the beginning of the century. He began to read Law but his studies were soon broken off for his work as a journalist. Besides his large output of fiction, he has written screenplays and has continued to work as a journalist. He is one of the greatest contemporary Latin American writers.

This is only a small sample, although the list is a lot larger. Naturally, we have also had some very important leaders coming from more wealthy families but in almost ALL cases they have come from families with very high human values and a great dedication to work.

So … merits DO NOT come from money alone.

You have to build them with work.

• Money may help you develop your skills (if you have any), but it will not create them for you.

Misinformation, corruption and arrogance have never made genii and they won’t do it now.

Best regards, Kira Marquez Perez Kira.MarquezPerez@uni-duesseldorf.de

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 09, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

"A clear vision without action is a dream. But action without a clear vision is a nightmare" Japanese Proverb.

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: To give an update on Petroleos de Venezuela one has to invent a new word, because there is nothing up about our company nowadays ... everything is down.

PDVSA president Ali Rodriguez and Energy & Mines Minister Rafael Ramirez just visited Washington, D.C., to "reassure" the US government that Venezuela was, as always, a reliable and stable petroleum supplier to that country.

They were met with cold stares and an official statement: "Conflict in Venezuela has damaged its reputation as a reliable oil supplier ... it has been clearly demonstrated that Venezuela's democratic institutions and its reputation as a reliable supplier appear no longer matters of primary importance to President Chavez.  We are disturbed by measures taken by President Chavez and the government of Venezuela that can only be seen as polarizing the conflict and eroding Venezuela's democratic institutions." (Undersecretary of State Alan Larson, March 4, 2003).

They came back home empty-handed ... knowing that what they had been doing to PDVSA had a high cost in terms of national prestige and in terms of their own good names, now pretty much devalued in the international community. The Venezuelan Ambassador in Washington had organized a luncheon for the visitors with 14 organizations, but the event had to be cancelled as 11 of them were "unable to attend."

The most recent government show (March 5) in connection with PDVSA was put on in the Paraguana Peninsula where PDVSA has one of its largest refining centers in the world. President Chavez announced the lifting of the 'Force Majeure' clause they had invoked back in December when the "strike" started ... this means that PDVSA should now be able to supply all customers.

Time will rapidly tell the truth about this announcement of the Supreme Oil Commander of PDVSA, as current production levels and (the more so) current refining levels make it physically impossible to make good on that promise.  In his obsessive military lingo, Chavez said that "whoever wins the battle of Paraguana wins the petroleum war."

A bulletin dated March 6 and published by Veneconomia (a respected publication on Venezuelan economics) adds that "the President should worry, as only 20-30% of the plants are operating and producing leaded gasoline at 25% of normal output. Unleaded gasoline and lubricants are not being produced." Veneconomia also mentions the total administrative chaos prevailing in the refining complex. Workers are being paid in cash, something we had not seen since the 1940s. Nobody is being asked to sign a receipt, rendering the cash outlays impossible to audit. According to the Veneconomia report, the show included a TV take of PDVSA staff at work ... which was not real, as the workers were contractors who were told that, in order to get paid, they had to lend themselves to the charade. The disorder is such that most of the dismissed workers are still receiving their pay, while those who did not rebel are not getting paid.

The new Board of PDVSA ... number 6 or 7 in the last 4 years ... is made up of modest middle-level managers, none of whom is well-known or respected in the international petroleum community. It is a Board that sadly fits the diminished size and importance of the "new" PDVSA.

Specially damaging is the struggle for power going on between three rival groups inside the company ... one group is led by Ali Rodriguez, the former dynamite expert of the urban guerrillas of the 1960s. The second is led by Adinas Bastidas, also a former urban guerrilla during the 1960s. (A recent publication in El Universal reports that Mrs. Bastidas was "captured by the Caracas police in January 1964, after trying to rob, at gun point, the equivalent of $15,000 from a lady, outside a Bank.") A third is totally anarchic and labels Rodriguez as a "traitor to the revolution," asking for the takeover of PDVSA by the Tupamaros, a terrorist group, and the revolutionary army. To confuse the matter further now ... Chavez is the Supreme Oil Commander and claims that "PDVSA no longer will be able to build on its own agenda," meaning that PDVSA will no longer be an autonomous entity but a simple appendix of a President drunk with power.

Contrary to the claims by Chavez about the recovering oil production and refining .... the truth is that, during February, the government had to import 5.7 million barrels of finished gasolines from Trinidad, the US and Canada, Argentina, the Arab Enirates and ... most of it ... from Europe. Crude exports during February were only 61 cargoes averaging 1.1 million barrels per day ... 30% of normal output. Exports of products were limited to only 12 cargoes representing only a 20% of normal levels. The Paraguana refining center, the site of the show, has only 12 plants in operation out of 83. Conversion units for the production of gasolines are still paralyzed and outputs represent about 20% of normal levels. The El Palito refinery is totally paralyzed after a major fire scare interrupted the efforts to reactivate it during the last week of February. The Puerto La Cruz refinery is the only one operating normally, at some 90% capacity. The Isla refinery in Curazao is out of operation. The Bajo Grande refinery is not producing at all since it has no crude oil input.

Oil production is placed by the government at close to 2.5 million barrels per day. Our information is that only 1.1 million barrels per day are being produced, as follows: 409,000 barrels per day from Eastern Venezuela; 574,000 from Western Venezuela; 90,000 barrels per day from the South of the country and only 15,000 barrels per day from associations with foreign companies ... this represents 33% of normal output.

The local gasoline market is largely being supplied by imports, while there are important shortages of lubricants, paraffins, asphalts and industrial solvents. As a result, the construction and industrial manufacturing sectors are partially paralyzed as well.

Loss of direct petroleum income for the government is now over $3.5 billion ... roughly the same amount of money illegally diverted from the Economic Macrostabilization Fund by President Chavez to pay Christmas bonuses and other un-reproductive and populist expenditures.

The money criminally wasted then, would have been required today to overcome the financial crisis.

As a result, the national government is not sending the regional governments the money that they legally should receive ... prisoners are starving to death, teachers are not being paid, hospitals are being closed down.

The collapse is widespread and this, in turn, worsens the political crisis as Chavez is desperately trying to control all of the financial resources to guarantee the survival of his "revolution."

• But, there are so many holes in the dike, appearing at every moment, that the President is running out of hands to plug them.

And he is not getting much help from his increasingly reluctant followers who, like rats, sense the sinking of the ship.

 Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983.  In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort.  You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email ppcvicep@telcel.net.ve

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 09, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

According to Confederation of Trade Unions (CTV) secretary general Manuel Cova, 10% of Venezuelans face the risk of losing their jobs this year, amounting to around one million people. 

Cova claims that the reason for this problem is the ongoing political instability in the country and falling confidence in Venezuela's judicial system, following a number of decisions that the opposition has strongly questioned.

These two factors, Cova says are deterring necessary investment in job maintenance and creation.

The number of unemployed in Venezuela stands at around 17%, but industry chamber Conindustria is warning that this figure will increase to 27%, as businesses close as a result of recent maximum price controls on many goods. Posted: Sunday, March 09, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

CTV says 10% of Venezuelans will lose their jobs this year

According to Confederation of Trade Unions (CTV) secretary general Manuel Cova, 10% of Venezuelans face the risk of losing their jobs this year, amounting to around one million people. 

Cova claims that the reason for this problem is the ongoing political instability in the country and falling confidence in Venezuela's judicial system, following a number of decisions that the opposition has strongly questioned.

These two factors, Cova says are deterring necessary investment in job maintenance and creation.

The number of unemployed in Venezuela stands at around 17%, but industry chamber Conindustria is warning that this figure will increase to 27%, as businesses close as a result of recent maximum price controls on many goods.