www.guelphmercury.com Thursday March 13, 2003 VIK KIRSCH MERCURY STAFF

GUELPH -- Guelphites woke up Wednesday to sky-high gasoline prices.

"Pumping it in I had a bit of a shock," Chris McCracken said as he gassed up his minivan at the Canadian Tire self-serve gas bar on Woodlawn Road.

At a pricey 83.4 cents a litre, he yanked the nozzle out at $15, kicking himself for not filling up several days earlier when gasoline was less than 80 cents.

He wasn't buying the argument that an impending war with oil-rich Iraq is driving gas prices up, saying they fluctuate too much for that to be the simple explanation.

But that's what Canadian Petroleum Products Institute Ontario vice-president Bob Clapp was suggesting.

"It's the threat of war," said Clapp, conceding this is cold comfort to Canadian families facing expensive refueling costs for their SUVs and vans.

"We can certainly understand people's frustrations."

Driving this irritation is the rise of regular gasoline prices Tuesday to record highs averaging 84.2 cents a litre across Canada, up almost three cents over the past week. That's amid decade-high crude oil prices, which surged more than $1 US a barrel Wednesday to almost $38. Diesel, propane and furnace oil also peaked: diesel chugged to 84.4 cents Cdn, propane rose to 66.4 cents and heating oil floated to 77.5 cents.

Susan Dankert recalls how diesel fuel was once cheaper than gasoline.

"Now, it's right on par," said the partner in Choice Transportation Services, a Guelph company whose large truck rigs haul commercial freight.

Her trucking firm is among the lucky ones that can pass some of the higher costs on to customers through a fuel surcharge. And while that doesn't completely cover rising costs, she is more concerned for independent truckers driving their own rigs who aren't in a position to pass on some of the added expense.

The worry, said Guelph Chamber of Commerce president Ian Smith, is what damage rising energy costs are doing to the economy. It's not just the trucking sector passing along energy surcharges, Smith said. He cited airlines and Canada Post as well.

It's ironic, he said, that the Bank of Canada recently raised interest rates to combat oil-related inflation that is out of the hands of Canadians. (His last home hydro bill, he said, "was obscene," estimating it's almost 50 per cent higher than a year ago.)

Dankert proposes the federal government re-evaluate high gasoline taxes when crude prices soar.

Among the demons said to haunt oil -- aside from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein -- are production shortfalls in strife-torn, oil rich Venezuela and an unusually long and harsh winter in North America, though an oil industry-tracking Internet site (www.oil-gasoline.com) isn't buying it.

The Web site concludes the refining industry is "devoid of competition." Refiners are not replenishing inventories because they expect prices to drop.

Crude prices, the site said, are high because of significant costs to the industry from speculating in the commodity, with refiners passing on these costs to consumers.

That doesn't surprise Consumers Association of Canada Ontario president Theresa Courneyea, who is convinced high prices are driven by the refining industry. She said regular gasoline prices in her home town of Toronto were in the 75- to 76-cents a litre range at one point Monday. Two hours later, prices at those gas stations had risen to 83.9. "Nobody can tell me that just happens accidentally."

"The trouble is there are so many things happening at once," said Peter Dyne, the consumers association's oil expert. "What we are seeing is the workings of an open market, reasonably competitive."

What's impossible to gauge are the reasons prices are peaking and when, or if, they'll come down. "I can't offer you any comfort," said Dyne.

If motorists feel they're gouged by high taxes, Dyne said it doesn't reflect the reality that they pay among the lowest in the industrialized world.

"Gasoline is taxed heavily everywhere," said Dyne.

vkirsch@guelphmercury.com

www.voanews.com VOA News 13 Mar 2003, 13:39 UTC

Seven Latin American countries have signed an agreement pledging to work together to combat terrorism and drug trafficking.

Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, the five Andean nations, signed the accord Wednesday during a summit of foreign and defense ministers in Bogota.

Representatives from Brazil and Panama also signed the agreement. The two nations, along with Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, border Colombia.

The deal comes as Colombia struggles with a 39-year civil war that involves leftist rebels, rightist paramilitaries and the government. The conflict kills thousands of people each year.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has asked that neighboring countries declare Colombia's outlawed groups terrorists. The United States lists the Andean nation's two main rebel groups, and their rivals, the paramilitaries, as terrorist organizations.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Thursday, March 13, 2003 By: Charles Hardy

VHeadline.com commentarist Charles Hardy writes: Once upon a time there was a country in which many giants lived. The ordinary citizens greeted each other with a "Hello," "Good morning," "Good afternoon" or whatever would fit the occasion. The giants greeting to one another was always the same: "Don't fall."

The night when the Mexican intellectual, Don Miguel Alvarez, told me that fable he could see that I didn't get the point. He very kindly asked me, as though it was a part of the story, "Do you know why they greeted each other that way?"

"No,"I responded.

"They were so big they knew that if they ever fell they would never be able to get back up again."

I went to sleep that night pondering his words and woke up the next day with them imbedded in my mind ... the story was about Venezuela.

We have been living in the land of the giants during the past year.

First, there were the Generals and Admirals who thought they were so important that they could claim a part of the city of Caracas as territory for their own battle. Time would show that officers without soldiers backing them are simply imitation Mona Lisas, who are quickly removed from the museum when their lack of authenticity is discovered. They, had their admirers ... for a moment.

Then there was Pedro Carmona Estanga ... who after rising to the presidency of the big business organization Fedecamaras ... quickly thought he could be President of the country. His deportment displayed an act of momentary insanity, extreme insensitivity or total lack of wisdom.  You do not change the name of a country and wipe out the Constitution, the Congress and the Supreme Tribunal within hours after taking power.

Gradually, the triumvirate of Carlos Ortega, Carlos Fernandez and Juan Fernandez emerged. How they came to be the spokespersons for the Coordinadora (anti-) Democatica is a story that those on the inside will have to tell some day.

Today Carlos Fernandez is under house arrest; Carlos Ortega is in hiding; and Juan Fernandez had to notice on March 8 that there weren't the masses that used to be present when he and the others would mount the platform to speak ... even television coverage of the event that day wasn't what it used to be.

The triumvirate started a fight that they thought they could win. They were wrong, and the damage they did to others is incalculable.

Not only that, just think about the following: PDVSA is now going almost full speed again ... with more than 10,000 less employees, most of them executives and office workers!

To make matters even worse for the trio, the rest of the Coordinadora is happy with their absence. It gives them a chance to try to regroup. Among those who remain, there are still other giants. Will they too fall?

However ... is the story of the giants really applicable in Venezuela?

What about President Chavez?

Shouldn't he be put in the category of giant also? He fell.

Why was he able to get up?

Either the story is not valid or Chavez isn't a giant.

I like the second thesis, and think it could be helpful to understanding what is really happening in Venezuela.

Here's another story that you might have already heard. In one part of the ocean there were some giant fish that were eating all the little ones. A few of the tiny creatures got together and decided that they better think of something or they, too, would be eaten.

What they decided to do was to swim in formation so that they would look like a big fish and thus scare their aggressors away ... they did it, and it worked.

I would like to propose that Chavez is just a little fish, not a giant one. He may not even be at the head of the movement. A woman said to me one day, "I'm not a follower of Chavez. Chavez is following my ideas!" Listening to Chavez on 'Alo Presidente' it is not uncommon to hear him say to someone,  "That's a great idea!"

Thus, when Chavez was kidnapped, the organized fish didn't depend on him and didn't stop swimming. It turned around, tightened its ranks and because of its great size, it scared the giant fish away and the little fish Chavez was freed.

Those giants are going to try to come back.

But remember: the little fish have grown and the big fish haven't been eating as well as they used to. It is not going to be easy this time. Personally, I suggest that the big fish learn to make friends with the little fish. The little fish are willing.

Don't underestimate the importance of such an event if it can happen.  A lot has transpired the past year.  The blue Caribbean waters that touch Venezuela seem to be mingling with the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

It appears that some of them have already touched Brazil and Ecuador ... and, Bolivia has always wanted the entrance to the ocean that was taken away from her years ago by Chile.

If the big fish and little fish can learn to live together in Venezuela, the message might travel through all the waters of the world ... and the world will be better for what Venezuela has suffered.

Maybe even the giant fish in the United States, England and Spain could learn from the lesson before it is too late.

Charlie A native of Cheyenne, Wyoming (USA), VHeadline.com columnist Charles Hardy has many years experience  as an international correspondent in Venezuela. You may email him at: hardyce2@yahoo.com

www.vheadline.com Posted: Thursday, March 13, 2003 By: Thais J. Gangoo

VHeadline.com lifestyle correspondent Thais J. Gangoo writes: Years ago, finding someone who spoke English in Venezuela was not an easy job. All over the country, big companies tried to find professionals with high-standard capabilities and if they spoke English that was the key to open the door to a bright future.

Years have passed, and people have become more aware of the fact that English stopped being a key to open a door and has begun to be the language in which you write your resume.  No English capacity,  no resume … no to a good job!

Being an English teacher has given me the opportunity of interacting with people from all ages and different social classes. They all have a dream … learn English. I must admit that I never thought I would ever be a teacher, but I decided to give it a try and I found that it is one of my vocations.

The beginning…

When I first came into a classroom full of people, I believe I was more scared than the students. It’s funny, but it is true. However, after a while I realized that I was the teacher and they trusted me ... they put their hope in me to learn not only a language but a culture.

I've found that a great ice-breaker is asking why they want to learn English ... and I'm often amazed by the different answers I get.

Most of them do it because they need it for their jobs ... or their university classes. Others do it for fun! Oh, well ... children study English because most of the time their parents tell them to do so, but there are still a few who just want to learn because they like the language.

Of course, we can’t forget those who study English because their main goal is to go and live overseas. There are all kind of reasons for people to go into a classroom and be immersed into a new language.

The little ones…

Because the story has always two sides, I believe it’s fair to show them both, and try to come to a conclusion.

Sometimes, when a teacher sees a group of students for the first time, there are some expectations. Although the teacher knows that when students want to learn a language they're usually excited about it ... even when they're in the classroom only because their parents sent them.

In the case of children, it is amazing how they respond in a very positive way when they decide go learn English and ask mom and dad to take them. They learn so much in a very short period of time ... not only that, they're willing to do homework and participate more and more each day in a very active way in class. But… Unfortunately, many times the children are pushed by the parents ... told that they must learn English because it's important.

How would they know why it’s important if we don’t explain that to them?

It’s even worse when parents send the children to so many activities in the afternoon and during the weekends only with the idea of taking them away from their computer games ... I'm pretty sure many of our VHeadline.com readers feel familiar with this situation one way or another ... no matter that we're talking about English or any other subject.

Do our children really need to be taken away from what they like (in this case computers)?

...I truly believe that “communication” is the key word in a parent-child relationship.

Why then don’t we sit down and talk about their future and it’s needs ... instead of just giving them orders they won’t accept.

Computers are part of our future as much as knowing different languages.

It’s just a matter of establishing priorities in our lives ... our children can have enough time to do anything they want ... including some entertainment from time to time.

“Communication”…. I believe it is a word that implies more than just talking.

A need for many…

After a few years, people have become more aware of their needs ... they think about their future and their children too; though sometimes they believe it’s too late for them to go back into a classroom.

When they finally decide, they know they'll face a sometimes uncomfortable reality… they will have to deal with teachers, homework ... and even classmates they might not like.

From personal experience, I must admit that my favorite part, when I first started teaching, was when I came into the classroom and the students looked at me and ask how old I was ... I was 21 when I first taught class and I knew I was going to love my career as an English teacher.

Nowadays, the question is asked a few days after the first day of classes and it causes a different reaction ... people look at teachers and they see an authority no matter how old the teacher is.

However, for those VHeadline.com readers who don’t know, I must tell you that here in Venezuela some people still see teachers and believe they should be older than the students.

Is Venezuela the land of equal opportunities for all now?

Usually, I ask my students why they decided to study English ... and, as I said before, their answers were a lot different a few months ago, but now the common answer is: “Teacher, I need to learn because I would like to leave and find a job in another country.”  That’s the main reason for many.

Even though, I know how they feel, I truly believe it is very sad to see how people see their future built far away from their homeland ... Venezuela.

Why can’t we feel the freedom of doing what we like and enjoy it?

Why do we feel like we must do things we don’t want, to finally feel we got the happiness we have always wanted for us and for our children?

Learning English is only one of those restrictions we have now to find all the things we have always wanted.  A good job, a solid ground for our kids to live … a brighter future after all.

No matter what language we speak, Venezuelans do want to break down all those barriers and be able to say the words: “I am who I want to be, in my own homeland!”

www.spectator.co.uk Mark Steyn says that the high-minded, pacifist tax-and-spend ideology of ‘Eurabia’ means the future is American (but not Canadian) New Hampshire In 1898, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, prime minister of Queen Victoria’s great white north, declared that just ‘as the 19th century was the century of the United States, so shall the 20th century belong to Canada.’ The line caught on. ‘The 19th century was the century of the United States,’ James Longley, attorney-general of Nova Scotia, informed a Boston audience in 1902. ‘The 20th century is Canada’s century.’ The voice of America‘The day is coming,’ predicted another prime minister, Sir Charles Tupper, ‘when Canada, which has become the right arm of the British empire, will dominate the American continent.’ Now, if you’ll quit laughing and wipe the tears from your eyes, I’ll get to the point. Tupper was talking to the historian John Boyd, who fleshed out the soundbite: ‘Canada,’ he explained, ‘shall dominate the American continent, not in aggression or materialism, but in the arts of peace, in the greatness of its institutions, in the broadness of its culture, and in the lofty moral character of its people.’ Does that sound familiar? It’s the European argument today: just as the 20th century belonged to America, so the 21st will belong to Europe, a Europe that cannot — and, indeed, disdains to — compete with the Yanks in ‘aggression’ (military capability) or ‘materialism’ (capitalism red in tooth and claw), and so has devised a better way. We’ve all had a grand old time these last few weeks watching M. Chirac demonstrate his mastery of ‘the arts of peace’ and his ‘lofty moral character’, but it would perhaps be fairer to choose a more representative Euro-grandee to articulate the EUtopian vision. Step forward, Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who said in London last year that ‘the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests.’ No doubt it sounds better in Finnish. Nonetheless, like the Canadians a century ago, the Europeans are claiming that the old rules no longer apply, that they’ve been supplanted by new measures of power, not least the ‘greatness of institutions’ (EU, UN, ICC, etc.). And, like the Canadians, the Europeans are doomed to disappointment. Just for the record, if you’re reading this in an obscure corner of the jungle, not only did the 20th century not belong to Canada; the decayed Dominion will be very lucky to make it through the 21st at all: I doubt it’ll get past 2025 with its present borders intact. But that’s by the by. What the world — or, at any rate, ‘old Europe’ — wants to know is: what will it take to nobble the Yanks? Or, to be more accurate, what will it take for the Yanks to nobble themselves? The corollary to the Euro-Canadian redefinition of ‘great power’ is that a lone cowboy who sticks to tired concepts like guns’n’ammo is bound to come a cropper. As Matthew Parris put it last week, ‘We should ask whether America does have the armies, the weaponry, the funds, the economic clout and the democratic staying power to carry all before her in the century ahead. How many wars on how many fronts could she sustain at once? How much fighting can she fund? How much does she need to export? Is she really unchallenged by any other economic bloc?’ My colleague is falling prey to theories of ‘imperial overstretch’. But, if you’re not imperial, it’s quite difficult to get overstretched. By comparison with 19th-century empires, the Americans travel light. More to the point, their most obvious ‘overstretch’ is in their historically unprecedented generosity to putative rivals: unlike traditional imperialists, they garrison not remote ramshackle colonies but their wealthiest allies. The US picks up the defence tab for Europe, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, among others. As Americans have learned in the last 18 months, absolving wealthy nations of the need to maintain their own armies does not pay off in the long run. This overstretch is over. If Bush wins a second term, the boys will be coming home from South Korea and Germany, and maybe Japan, too. So the EU will begin the second decade of the century with an excellent opportunity to test Mr Lipponen’s theory: it can either will the means to maintain a credible defence, or it can try to live as the first ‘superpower’ with no means of defence. In other words, the first victim of American overstretch will not be America but Europe. I doubt the Continentals of a decade hence will be in any mood to increase defence spending. For all M. de Villepin’s dreams of Napoleonic glory, his generation of French politicians will spend the rest of their lives managing decline. By 2050, there will be 100 million more Americans, 100 million fewer Europeans. The US fertility rate is 2.1 children per couple; in Europe it’s 1.4. Demography is not necessarily destiny, and certainly not inevitable disaster. But it will be for Europe, because the 20th-century Continental welfare state was built on a careless model that requires a constantly growing population to sustain it. In hard-hearted New Hampshire, we don’t have that problem. According to a UN report from last year, for the EU to keep its working population stable till 2050 it would need another 1.58 million immigrants every year. To keep the ratio of workers to retirees at the present level, you’d need 13.5 million immigrants per year. Personally, I’ve never seen what’s so liberal and enlightened about denuding the developing world of their best and brightest. But, even if you can live with it, it won’t be an option much longer. The UN’s most recent population report has revised the global fertility rate down from 2.1 — i.e., replacement rate — to 1.85 — i.e., eventual population decline. It will peak in about 2050, and then fall off in a geometric progression. What this means for the Continent is that the fall-back position — use the Third World as your nursery — is also dead. The developing world’s fertility rate is 2.9 and falling. The Third Worlders being born now in all but the most psychotic jurisdictions will reach adulthood with a range of options, of which Europe will be the least attractive. If that ratio of workers to retirees keeps heading in the same direction, the EU will have the highest taxes not just in the Western world, but in most of the rest. A middle-class Indian or Singaporean or Chilean already has little incentive to come to the Continent. If the insane Bush–Steyn plan to remake the Middle East comes off, even your wacky Arabs may stay home. If it doesn’t, the transformation of Europe into ‘Eurabia’, as the droller Western Muslims already call their new colony, will continue. So for Europe this is the perfect storm, with Jacques Chirac in the George Clooney role. Best case scenario: you wind up as Vienna with Swedish tax rates. Don’t get me wrong, I love Vienna. I especially like the way you can stroll down their streets and never hear any ghastly rockers and rappers caterwauling. When you go into a record store, the pop category’s a couple of bins at the back and there are two floors of operetta. All very pleasant, though not if you’re into surfing the cutting edge of the zeitgeist. I quite like Stockholm, too. Well, I like the babes, but they’re gonna be a lot wrinklier by 2050. And Sweden’s already got a lower standard of living than Mississippi. Its 60 per cent overall tax rate is likely to be the base in the Europe of 2020 and fondly recalled as the good old days by mid-century. Worst case scenario: Sharia, circa 2070. For the Americans, it doesn’t make much difference whether the Austro-Swedish or Eurabian option prevails. This is nothing to do with disagreements over Iraq: you can’t ‘mend bridges’ when the opposite bank is sinking into the river. The death of Europe in its present form is a given. The phase we’ve just begun is an interim one: America’s gone to the store, and is trying various outfits on for size. There is Bush’s wooing of Putin, who has not been so insane as to follow Jacques on his diplomatic suicide-bomber mission. There is the suggestion, floated more and more frequently vis-à-vis the Korean peninsula, that now may be the time for Japan to go nuclear. There are the Atlanticist states of Eastern Europe who declined to be shut up by Chirac. There are the President’s Latino inclinations, soon to be given expression in the Free Trade Area of the Americas. From the American point of view, the FTAA brings their principal foreign energy suppliers — Alberta and Venezuela — in-house and, in the broader sense, Catholic Latin America is more culturally compatible with the US than post-Christian Europe is. And then there’s the conservatives’ favourite: National Review’s current cover shows Bush, Blair and John Howard above the headline ‘Three Amigos’. Five years ago, when Bill Clinton launched his non-Chirac-sanctioned mini-war on Baghdad with the assistance of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, I noted that what those countries had in common was a perverse determination to recoil from the notion that they had anything in common. For a generation, these countries’ elites have worked tirelessly to deny the reality of language, culture and history. Much of the territory Anglospherists claim is already lost — Canada and New Zealand, for starters — and anyone who wants to make it a going concern had better step on it, because it will be a lot harder to do in another generation. Where Britain will lie depends on how serious Mr Blair is about going down with the Franco–Belgo–German ship. All these arrangements in embryo, however, have one thing in common: the intention is that America’s partners should be both economically and militarily credible — or, in that Canadian historian’s terms, they’re being evaluated in terms of ‘aggression and materialism’. Australia will never be as powerful as America, but it doesn’t, as Mr Lipponen does, trumpet its arthritic defects as a virtue and demand that these should be accepted as the new global norm. Indeed, once you stick a black void in the centre of the map where Western Europe is, it’s amazing how the global outlook improves. I should add that by ‘Europe’ I’m using the Chiraquist shorthand for a European Union run on sclerotic Franco–German lines. What we’ve seen in the last few weeks is that for Europeans the real clash of civilisations is not between Islam and the West but between what the French call ‘Anglo-Saxon’ capitalism and Eurostatism. I was amused by the sheer snobbery of Martin Amis’s analysis in the Guardian last week: the condescension to Bush’s faith, the parallels between Texas and Saudi Arabia, both mired in a dusty religiosity. America’s religiosity, now unique in the Western world, is at least part of the reason it reproduces at replacement rate, also uniquely in the Western world. Besides, for all Amis’s cracks, Texas doesn’t seem as fundamentalist as the radical secularism of post-Christian Europe. Why would anyone think a disinclination to breed or to defend oneself is the recipe for success? Just because there’ll always be an England? As Bernard Shaw wrote almost 90 years ago in Heartbreak House, of a Europe too smug and self-absorbed to see what was coming, ‘Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favour of England because you were born in it?’