www.oregonlive.com 03/10/03 BRENT HUNSBERGER

Mad Dog Trucking's David Hutchison turned to friends last week to fix his semitrailer's leaky radiator. Try Our Classifieds

Louisiana-Pacific warned investors late last month of lower profits this spring.

Blue Heron Paper shut down two of three paper machines and sent a third of its workers home in late February.

All three Oregon companies made these moves to cope with the same demon: spiking energy prices.

In the past two weeks, West Coast diesel prices have neared an all-time high, spot electricity prices have more than doubled what they were a month ago, and natural gas prices have soared to three times above normal.

The trend has meant trouble for Oregon truckers, timber producers, food processors and other power-intensive industries that buy power on short-term markets. Such unexpected essential costs are hard enough for commodity manufacturers to manage in normal times. They become even more dangerous as the state's industries struggle to pull out of a long recession.

And if prices stay high into summer, as some predict, they could mean higher energy bills for everyone -- businesses, schools, government and homeowners -- and a big drain on Oregon's economic recovery. The state's latest revenue forecast cites rising regional energy prices as a major risk for more layoffs and production slowdowns.

"I don't think the hikes are at the point where it would actually throw us back into a recession," state economist Tom Potiosky said. "But it makes the recovery that much more difficult."

Roy Hemmingway, chairman of the Oregon Public Utility Commission, said he has "absolutely no doubt" that high energy costs have had a significant impact on the state's economy.

Portland General Electric's 2001 increase alone, which raised rates by 30 percent for households and 50 percent for businesses, drained $400 million from the economy, he said.

"That's $400 million that otherwise would have been available for other things," he said.

Utilities said they are trying to hedge against passing on heightened costs to residential and commercial ratepayers. PGE is taking advantage of the high prices by selling excess power on the market, said Jim Lobdell, the utility's vice president of power operations.

Northwest Natural Gas spokesman Steven Sechrist said the Portland-based utility is not paying high spot prices because it bought its current gas supply last year, when prices were lower.

Customers of other utilities aren't as lucky. Last week, Puget Sound Energy, which provides natural gas to more than 600,000 users in Washington, asked state regulators for a rate adjustment to recover soaring gas costs, potentially adding an average of $10 to residential bills. Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power from the region's 31 hydropower dams and nuclear plants, has proposed a 15 percent wholesale rate increase this fall.

The recent dramatic price increases have been fueled by an unusual mix of war fears in the Middle East, labor strife in oil-producing Venezuela, harsh winter weather in the Eastern and Midwestern United States and inadequate levels of natural-gas storage and drilling rigs.

To meet high winter demand, oil refineries switched from making diesel to producing heating oil, crimping diesel supplies and boosting prices at the pump. Crude oil inventories in the United States, meanwhile, have tumbled to 25-year lows, analysts said.

Winter weather also boosted demand for natural gas, depleting the nation's underground reserves to low levels. Higher gas prices, in turn, helped push electricity prices up, since natural gas can be a raw material for electricity production. One quarter of PGE's electricity comes from natural-gas-fired plants.

Looking ahead, another wild card in the Northwest lies buried beneath the light mountain snowpack. Even if usual spring rains arrive, the Columbia River runoff will be 70 percent of normal, federal forecasters said Friday. That means less water will churn dam turbines. With a shortage of cheap hydropower, the region might have to rely more on pricier sources of electricity this summer.

One manufacturer hard hit by the energy-price spikes of the past two weeks was Blue Heron Paper in Oregon City. The mill, partly employee-owned, furloughed 80 workers and idled two small paper machines on Feb. 28, three days after spot energy prices soared to $116 per megawatt hour. That's far above the Jan. 6 price of $35.42. Prices remained above $70 last week, but the company restarted one paper machine and called back 30 workers, President Mike Siebers said.

Across the Willamette River from Blue Heron, West Linn Paper's monthly energy costs have risen $250,000 since October. The mill is in better shape than Blue Heron because it buys natural gas month by month, instead of daily. Still, the company is instituting conservation measures and using more heating oil to fire its pulp boilers, mill manager Brian Konen said.

SP Newsprint shut down half its Newberg mill for a day when electricity surged above $100. But a hedge agreement that fixes most of the mill's energy costs for six months has helped blunt the impact of the price increases, company officials said.

"If we didn't have that, we probably wouldn't be running today," said Scott Conant, the company's regional controller.

Diesel and power prices also have hurt forest-products manufacturers.

Portland-based Louisiana-Pacific warned investors Feb. 28 that first-quarter profits would suffer because the company was paying more than expected for deliveries of wood fiber, energy for its manufacturing mills and petroleum-based raw materials, an official said.

Food processors rely most heavily on natural gas during summer harvests. Still, Norpac Foods recently switched from natural gas to heating oil to run boilers at its Stayton plant. The farmer cooperative expects to pay more than twice as much for natural gas this summer than it did last year, lowering profits for its members, said Mark Steele, Norpac's corporate engineer.

Truckers might be screaming loudest. Early last week, average West Coast diesel prices hit $1.80 a gallon, a 30-cent rise since Christmas week, the U.S. Energy Department reported. In response, trucking companies began passing the higher fuel costs on to customers by raising fuel surcharges.

Last month, fuel surpassed maintenance as Titan Freight Systems' second-highest cost behind labor. The Milwaukie trucking company, which hauls freight for such customers as Intel and Fred Meyer, raised its fuel surcharge from 3 percent to 4 percent. Larger companies are imposing higher surcharge rates.

Even as costs rise, Titan for the first time in five years is seeing no growth in monthly revenues, compared with the previous year, because of slow shipping demand, company vice president Keith Wilson said.

"The depressed business levels are hurting us, compounding this fuel run-up," Wilson said. "It's really a dangerous mix for some trucking companies."

Smaller truckers are most at risk because they have less leverage to impose surcharges, industry experts said. Over the past two years, thousands of trucking companies have gone out of business as shipping demand has slowed and diesel prices have risen.

Hutchison, an independent truck driver from Molalla, sought bankruptcy protection last month after demand sank for his services hauling sawdust and wood chips. Hutchison borrowed from family and retooled his operation. He now hauls Tillamook cheese and butter in a refrigerated trailer.

But the recent spike in diesel prices has prompted the 47-year-old father of two to hold off on a $1,500 repair to his truck's suspension system. He's considering running with a leaky radiator unless he and friends can find a way to fix it for cheap.

"It cuts into your preventative maintenance," Hutchison said of the fuel costs. "When you start doing that, you're going to pay in the long run."

Oil industry experts said diesel prices should fall once temperatures warm.

But natural gas and electricity prices are another story, analysts said. The nation's natural gas storage is headed for a record low, they said, fueling predictions that summertime prices will be twice as high as last summer.

And if natural gas costs stay high, electricity rates could hover above normal as well.

"That's not going to be good news anywhere," said Marshall Adkins, managing director of energy research at the Florida-based investment firm Raymond James & Associates. "Our view is this summer is going to be real interesting."

Gail Kinsey Hill contributed to this report. Brent Hunsberger: 503-221-8359; brenthunsberger@news.oregonian.com

money.cnn.com 10, 2003: 10:01 AM EST

Iran's opposition to free pumping also boosts bid for crude as armed conflict in Iraq looms.

LONDON (Reuters) - War jitters boosted oil prices Monday as the United States seemed confident of gaining U.N. support for a resolution allowing it to disarm Iraq by force.

London benchmark Brent for April rose 24 cents to $34.34 a barrel while U.S. light crude rose 26 cents to $38.04, about $3 under highs hit in the buildup to the 1991 Gulf War.

In Vienna, OPEC oil ministers were assembling to discuss output policy ahead of a possible attack on cartel-member Iraq.

Iran said Monday it will oppose any proposal to suspend output limits should war break out in Iraq as this could imply support for a U.S.-led war.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have signaled they could allay supply fears by allowing cartel members to pump oil freely. But Saudi Arabia faces stern opposition from Iran for a plan that Tehran says implies support for a U.S. attack by controlling oil prices.

"Iran will not back politically motivated decisions," Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told the official IRNA news agency.

OPEC should refrain from taking decisions which would imply support for a "U.S. military assault against one of OPEC's member states," Zanganeh said.

"It looks like it could be a very strong week for crude and products as war fears mount," said GNI Man Research analyst Lawrence Eagles. Related stories Kuwait to shut oil fields OPEC: speculation driving oil prices Saudi seeks OPEC plan to stop oil shock

"It's difficult to see oil going lower with the potential of conflict so close. There's really nothing to push prices down very quickly, the risks are all skewed to the upside," said David Thurtell, strategist at Commonwealth Bank in Sydney.

Price hurtled higher Friday after a new draft resolution proposed by the United States and Britain set a deadline of March 17 for Iraq to destroy all weapons of mass destruction, or face war. Iraq denies having such weapons.

The showdown vote could come as soon as Tuesday.

The resolution has sparked a wave of intense lobbying in the 15-member U.N. Security Council and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said there was a "strong chance" of getting up to 10 votes in favor of the document.

The issue of Iraq's compliance with U.N. demands has created a bitter divide in the U.N. Security Council.

The United States, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria seek support for military action from Pakistan, Chile, Mexico, Angola, Cameroon and Guinea, while veto powers France, Russia and China say U.N. arms inspections should continue.

But, analysts say war will go ahead even if the resolution is defeated, as Washington intends to lead a "coalition of the willing" against Iraq even without U.N. approval.

"The U.S. position is no longer about avoiding a veto but of demonstrating that if a veto is used, that a majority of the Security Council members support such action," Eagles said. OPEC Quotas

OPEC, which supplies over a third of the world's crude oil, wants to prevent any oil price shocks that could dampen future global economic recovery, but it is expected to stick to its current 24.5 million barrels per day (bpd) output limit for now.

"There may be no formal suspension of quotas but the two or three who can do so will be given freedom to pump at will to cover any losses," predicted one delegate.

Although OPEC has pledged to fill any supply gap should war halt Iraqi exports of two million bpd, many in the group are already pumping close to full capacity.

Only Saudi Arabia has any appreciable room to turn up the taps and analysts estimate OPEC has little over 1.7 million bpd of untapped capacity -- the equivalent of daily Iraqi exports.

But the war threat, hot on the heels of a strike which crippled Venezuela's oil industry, is coming at a time when stocks in the United States, the biggest oil consumer, are at low levels unseen since the Arab oil embargo of the mid-1970s.

Heating oil stocks are especially worrying as cold weather is expected to persist over the U.S. Northeast in coming days.  

www.canada.com Canadian Press Monday, March 10, 2003

TORONTO (CP) - Overseas stock markets were down and Wall Street index futures were weak Monday, on the third anniversary of the peak of the technology-stock craze and a week before the March 17 deadline envisioned by the United States in a proposed United Nations ultimatum to Iraq.

American State Secretary Colin Powell said he is close to rounding up the votes for the disarmament deadline, and warned that a French veto would have "a serious effect on bilateral relations."

European stock markets were down, on war worries and after Deutsche Telekom reported the worst corporate loss in European history.

Europe's largest telecommunications company said Monday it lost 24.6 billion euros ($27.1 billion US) in 2002. The net loss was largely on writedowns of such holdings as wireless company T-Mobile USA, but chief executive Kai-Uwe Ricke acknowledged: "There is no way to put a good face on it."

The Deutsche Telekom loss - reported on the third anniversary of the Nasdaq's technology-bubble peak - exceeded the records set last week by France Telecom, at 20.7 billion euros, immediately overshadowed by Vivendi Universal, which lost 23.3 billion euros last year.

The German DAX index was down 1.7 per cent early in the afternoon. The Paris CAC-40 declined 0.8 per cent, while London's FT-SE 100 index was little changed, slipping 3.4 points to 3,488.2

Asian stocks closed down. The key Nikkei index in Tokyo fell to a new 20-year low, down 101.86 points, or 1.25 per cent, to 8,042.26, led down by banks.

The Hong Kong Hang Seng index declined 45.23 points to 8,861.87.

South Korea's main index closed 0.33 per cent lower after North Korea test-fired a missile into the sea in what was seen as a move to raise tensions further over its nuclear programs.

The Canadian dollar was trading at 68.37 cents US, up 0.13 cent from Friday's 32½-month high, after gaining 0.85 cent last week.

The currency got an additional boost Monday morning as Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported that housing starts last month were up 34.5 per cent over the January level.

The euro was solidly above its four-year highs of $1.10 US, while the yen strengthened to 116.5 to the American dollar amid fears that war will wound the already shaky American economy.

In Canadian corporate news, business software maker Cognos has announced an alliance with the Giuliani Group, a consulting firm headed by former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Canada's largest pension-fund manager, the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, reports Monday on what is believed to have been a bad year. Reports say the Caisse lost more than $2 billion on telecommunications investments last year, mostly on cable company Videotron.

Analysts suggest the fund lost $10 billion in 2002, out of $133 billion in assets. The fund's report precedes an expected

UPDATE 1-Oil rises as diplomatic battles rage on Iraq www.forbes.com Reuters, 03.10.03, 7:50 AM ET (updates thoughout, PVS SINGAPORE) By Sujata Rao LONDON, March 10 (Reuters) - War jitters boosted oil prices on Monday as the United States seemed confident of gaining U.N. support for a resolution allowing it to disarm Iraq by force. London benchmark Brent for April rose 24 cents to $34.34 a barrel while U.S. light crude rose 26 cents to $38.04, about $3 under highs hit in the buildup to the 1990 Gulf War. In Vienna, OPEC oil ministers were assembling to discuss output policy ahead of a possible attack on cartel-member Iraq. Iran said on Monday it would oppose any proposal to suspend output limits should war break out in Iraq as this could imply support for a U.S.-led war. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have signalled they could allay supply fears by allowing cartel members to pump oil freely. But Saudi faces stern opposition from Iran for a plan that Tehran says implies support for a U.S. attack by controlling oil prices. "Iran will not back politically motivated decisions," Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told the official IRNA news agency. OPEC should refrain from taking decisions which would imply support for a "U.S. military assault against one of OPEC's member states," Zanganeh said. "It looks like it could be a very strong week for crude and products as war fears mount," said GNI Man Research analyst Lawrence Eagles. "It's difficult to see oil going lower with the potential of conflict so close. There's really nothing to push prices down very quickly, the risks are all skewed to the upside," said David Thurtell, strategist at Commonwealth Bank in Sydney. Price hurtled higher on Friday after a new draft resolution proposed by the United States and Britain set a deadline of March 17 for Iraq to destroy all weapons of mass destruction, or face war. Iraq denies having such weapons. The showdown vote could come as soon as Tuesday. The resolution has sparked a wave of intense lobbying in the 15-member U.N. Security Council and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said there was a "strong chance" of getting up to 10 votes in favour of the document. The issue of Iraq's compliance with U.N. demands has created a bitter divide in the U.N. Security Council. The United States, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria seek support for military action from Pakistan, Chile, Mexico, Angola, Cameroon and Guinea, while veto powers France, Russia and China say U.N. arms inspections should continue. But analysts say war will go ahead even if the resolution is defeated, as Washington intends to lead a "coalition of the willing" against Iraq even without U.N. approval. "The U.S. position is no longer about avoiding a veto but of demonstrating that if a veto is used, that a majority of the Security Council members support such action," Eagles said.

OPEC QUOTAS OPEC, which supplies over a third of the world's crude oil, wants to prevent any oil price shocks that could dampen future global economic recovery, but it is expected to stick to its current 24.5 million barrels per day (bpd) output limit for now. "There may be no formal suspension of quotas but the two or three who can do so will be given freedom to pump at will to cover any losses," predicted one delegate. But although OPEC has pledged to fill any supply gap should war halt Iraqi exports of two million bpd, many in the group are already pumping close to full capacity. Only Saudi Arabia has any appreciable room to turn up the taps and analysts estimate OPEC has little over 1.7 million bpd of untapped capacity -- the equivalent of daily Iraqi exports. But the war threat, hot on the heels of a strike which crippled Venezuela's oil industry is coming at a time when stocks in the United States, the biggest oil consumer, are at low levels unseen since the Arab oil embargo of the mid-1970s. Heating oil stocks are especially worrying as cold weather is expected to persist over the U.S. Northeast in coming days.

www.narconews.com By Reed Lindsay Narco News Authentic Journalism Scholar March 10, 2003

Fernando Buendía leads of one of Ecuador’s most powerful political parties, the Pachakutik Movement. A small, balding, sociologist with gracious manners, he speaks slowly and deliberately, measuring each phrase and stopping for long pauses.

Fernando Buendía Photo D.R. Jeremy Bigwood 2003 But his unprepossessing demeanor is soon forgotten when he unleashes the fire in his tongue. Buendía is piercing and direct, and he plays no favorites. His fool’s gallery includes such luminaries as the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund, Plan Colombia and some of the policies of his current ally, President Lucio Gutiérrez.

In an interview with Narco News on the eve of last November's presidential election, Buendía claimed the United States was violating its agreement to use the airbase at Manta solely in drug interdiction efforts. He also raised the possibility of opening a debate about drug legalization.

At that time, he was overseeing the work of those officials charged with drafting a plan of operation for the new Gutiérrez government. Since then, as an independent advisor at the Economy Ministry representing the Pachakutik Movement, Buendía has become an increasingly important player in the new coalition government. He was interviewed recently in Mérida, Mexico, where he gave a keynote speech drug legalization summit co-sponsored by Narco News.

Narco News: What is the legal status of drug use in Ecuador?

Fernando Buendía: Under Ecuadorian law, the consumption of drugs is not penalized. It is considered a disease, and the drug user is not persecuted nor punished, although the drug trafficker is…

Narco News: You can use drugs in the street and nothing will happen to you?

Fernando Buendía: It is not socially permitted, but it is not a crime… If you are taking drugs on a street corner and a policeman arrives he can cause problems if you’re obstructing the street, but he can’t bother you for taking drugs…

Narco News: Is drug consumption a problem in Ecuador?

Fernando Buendía: It is a growing problem... In the Third World the consumption of drugs has to do with poverty, while in the First World, it has to do with alienation.

Narco News: How has Ecuador been affected by drug trafficking?

Fernando Buendía: Criminalization has provoked grave consequences for Latin America and for Ecuador. We’re paying an extremely high cost for prohibition… In Ecuador’s case, there are thousands of people in the jails who worked as mules, or small-scale transporters of drugs, who lacked other opportunities and turned to drug trafficking as a way out of poverty. The Ecuadorian jails are full of people who were linked in one way or another to drug trafficking.

Narco News: Has drug production in Colombia spilled over into Ecuador?

Fernando Buendía: As a result of the war in Colombia, there is evidence that coca leaves are beginning to be cultivated in Ecuador and that clandestine laboratories are functioning. Last year, two labs were discovered and eliminated… Along with this problem there is an economic problem. The volume of money laundering in the case of Ecuador must be extremely high, because Ecuador has a dollarized economy and the flow of currency can no longer be controlled. Ecuador is now a paradise for narco-laundering, and it is generating serious distortions in the economy because money is being invested in consumption, in real estate, in the financial system, and as a result we have heavy speculation that works against investment in productive industries.

Narco News: Is Ecuador’s economy becoming narcotized, like Colombia’s?

Fernando Buendía: In last year’s trade balance, the country had a deficit of 1.4 billion dollars, or approximately 8 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. This is very high, and it’s explained in part by narco-laundering…

There is a strong pressure on demand. Where do these resources that maintain the pressure on demand, especially on luxury articles, come from? In part, it is explained by the remittances from emigrants, and on the other hand it is explained by narco-laundering…

We also have a political problem, which is that the quality of our democracy is being eroded, because the resources from narco-trafficking help finance electoral campaigns and buy judges and government officials.

Narco News: How can Ecuador resolve these problems?

Fernando Buendía: If we don’t resolve the problem of poverty, we aren’t going to be able to attack the structural causes of the problem of drug consumption…

The other issue that goes to the heart of the matter is foreign policy. We have to begin constructing an international arrangement that would be more balanced in the face of this unilateralism (of the United States), and in this context falls the issues of decriminalization of the drug trade. For this reason, it is important that we construct spaces of alliance among the Latin American countries, of the countries from the South…

We think that we’re on the offensive and that in the coming years there will be important changes in Ecuador, in Brazil, in Venezuela and even in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, which are behind the others, but whose social movements are beginning to make important advances.

Narco News: What can Ecuador do in the face of the U.S.-promoted “Plan Colombia”?

Fernando Buendía: “Plan Colombia” is the form in which the conservative ideology is taken advantage of to channel interests that don’t have to do with the problem of drug production, but more specifically with the imperial efforts to control the Amazon region.

Narco News: Will Ecuador take any action in opposition to “Plan Colombia” or in favor of drug legalization?

Fernando Buendía: Ecuador is 0.04 percent of the world economy. The government wouldn’t last a week if it legalized drugs. For example, look at the (U.S. military’s) Manta airbase. We suspect the United States has come to stay for a good while and they’re here to extend their presence until they convert this base into the one they lost in the Panama Canal. The capacity of the runways is being increased, for example. The asphalt has been raised 25 centimeters and the extension of the runway to 1.5 kilometers. What (drug) interdiction plane needs so much space for this type of runway? Only the Galaxy. And the Galaxy is not a toy plane. It is the biggest plane in the world and it transports heavy war machinery.

We are at the point at which what happened to Panamá under Noriega could happen to us. The Galaxies land, they unload combat vehicles and in eight hours they are in Ecuador’s capital overthrowing the government. Our sovereignty, our capacity of movement is very determined by the broader context.

I was in the meeting with the International Monetary Fund, after the president had resolved to choose the route of negotiation with the IMF. I was conscious that we could demand, criticize and even shout, but we had to reach an agreement with the IMF. If not, the country would become economically unviable. That is, the government didn’t have the money to pay the teachers’ salaries that month. This is a process that has established itself over time. We have a state with limitations on its economic and political sovereignty. The influence that the United States and the international organizations have in this country is huge. (You are) obliged to negotiate because you have a knife to your throat, but it is quite another thing to adopt policies of such a worn-out economic model, of the neoliberal model.

Narco News: How do you evaluate these first weeks of President Lucio Gutiérrez’s administration?

Fernando Buendía: The initial moves by Lucio are very conflictive, from the perspective of economic policy, foreign policy and also as regards political reform. The Pachakutik Movement characterizes this government as transitional. It is not a popular government nor is it a government that is going to make deep changes… In general, the Pachakutik Movement is not content with the policies of President Gutiérrez. They don’t correspond with the accords of the alliance we formed with the government… Now, the president wants to dissolve Congress any way possible, whether it is in according to the Constitution or outside the Constitution. This runs the risk of becoming a new Fujimorazo... Lucio comes from a military tradition. He believes more in presidential systems, in the executive being above all other powers of the state.

Full Disclosure: The author wishes to acknowledge the material assistance, encouragement, and guidance, of The Narco News Bulletin, The Narco News School of Authentic Journalism, publisher Al Giordano and the rest of the faculty, and of the Tides Foundation. Narco News is a co-sponsor and funder of the international drug legalization summit, "OUT FROM THE SHADOWS: Ending Prohibition in the 21st Century," in Mérida, Yucatán, and is wholly responsible for the School of Authentic Journalism whose philosophy and methodology were employed in the creation of this report. The writing, the opinions expressed, and the conclusions reached, if any, are solely those of the author.

Apertura total: El autor desea reconocer la asistencia material, el ánimo y la guía de The Narco News Bulletin, La Escuela de Narco News de Periodismo Auténtico, su Director General Al Giordano y el resto del profesorado, y de la Fundación Tides. Narco News es copatrocinador y financiador del encuentro internacional sobre legalización de las drogas “Saliendo de las sombras: terminando con la prohibición a las drogas en el siglo XXI” en Mérida, Yucatán, y es completamente responsable por la Escuela de Periodismo Auténtico, cuya filosofía y metodología fueron empleadas en la elaboración de esta nota. La escritura, las opiniones expresadas y las conclusiones alcanzadas, si las hay, son de exclusiva responsabilidad del autor

Abertura Total: O autor deseja reconhecer o material de apoio, o propósito e o guia do Boletim Narco News. a Escola de Jornalismo Autêntico, o editor Al Giordano, o restante de professores e a Fundaçáo Tides. Narco News é co-patrocinador e financiador do encontro sobre a legalizaçao das drogas Saindo das Sombras: terminando com a proibiçao das drogas no século XXI em Mérida, Yucatan, e é completamente responsável pela Escola de Jornalismo Autêntico, cuja filosofia e metodologia foram implantadas na elaboraçao desta reportagem. O texto, as opinioes expressadas e as conclusoes alcançadas, se houver, sao de responsabilidade do autor.