<a href=www.dailyrecord.co.uk>The Daily Record Apr 18 2003

JONAY HERNANDEZ watched Real Madrid clinch the Champions League against Bayer Leverkusen last year and realised he had no chance of breaking into the first team.

The defender and his mates from Real's B side looked on in awe at Hampden as Zinedine Zidane and Co scooped the greatest prize in club football.

Hernandez fell in love with Scotland's National Stadium and the experience made him even more determined to step out of the shadows and make his name.

At the time he had no idea he would be set to return to the Hampden less than a year later.

Hernandez, who is a good pal of Roberto Carlos and Raul, feels facing Inverness on Sunday will top anything he has experienced in football - so long as Dundee win.

He said: "Last year I was in the Real second team and the club president invited everyone to go to the final.

"My first time in Scotland was the game at Hampden and I never thought I'd be going there again.

"We flew back the same day and had a big party in Madrid. I didn't have a clue at the time that Dundee were interested in me.

"When my contract ended two months later my agent told me I had an option in Scotland as well as teams in Spain.

"He said it was better to come here because I would be playing in the Premier League with a good atmosphere and good supporters.

"I trained for 10 days, they asked me to sign and I said yes.

"Places like Ibrox and Celtic Park are very good places to play because everyone is shouting but I really loved Hampden.

"It will be even more beautiful if we beat Inverness on Sunday and then I'll get to go back again.

"I've never had the chance to play in a semi-final so this will be my biggest game."

Hernandez has settled well in Scotland and has developed a novel approach to learning English. He said: "I've been learning by going to the college. I also rent DVDs with subtitles and try to memorise the words.

"I've done it with films like Training Day and Collateral Damage - you could say I am a good member of Blockbuster."

The left-back still keeps a close eye on his old club's progress.

He said: "I was at Real for three years and played some first-team friendlies but no competitive games.

"I hope to watch them against Manchester United at Old Trafford because my friend Paco Pavon, who is still playing for them, has given me tickets.

"When you train with Roberto Carlos and see how he touches the ball, it is amazing. I had no chance of taking his place in the team."

Hernandez, who was born in Venezuela but grew up in Tenerife, will hit the headlines back home if Dundee reach the final.

He added: "I'll get calls from journalists because we'll have the chance to play in the UEFA Cup."

<a href=www.thescotsman.co.uk>The Scottman Fri 18 Apr 2003 STUART BATHGATE

THE last time Jonay Hernandez visited Hampden he was just an onlooker, part of the Real Madrid party flown in to witness their team’s triumph over Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League final. The Tennent’s Scottish Cup semi-final on Sunday may not be quite such an exalted occasion, but the Dundee defender is looking forward to playing a more central part in proceedings.

The 11 months which will have passed between his visits to the national stadium have seen the 24-year-old confront a dilemma which is common to many employees of big clubs. As a minor squad member, a mere spear-carrier, you need to move on to get regular first-team football: but can you do so without suffering too big a blow to your self-esteem?

With all due respect to Dundee, anyone who swapped the Bernabeu for Dens Park would be regarded as going down in the world, but Hernandez seems settled now. Being unable to break into the Madrid first team was no disgrace with a certain Roberto Carlos standing in his way, and by last summer he was reconciled to parting company with the club.

"I played a few friendlies for the first team, and sometimes trained with the main squad as well, but I was unlucky," recalled Hernandez, who was born in Venezuela but raised in Tenerife. "It was really difficult with Roberto Carlos playing in the same position as me."

Yesterday, as the sun beat down on Dens, it would have been easy for Hernandez to feel he was back home in Spain. Not every day is like that, of course, and he admitted that, at the time of his initial visit last May, he never dreamed he would be back so soon.

"I was playing for the second team and that was my first time in Scotland," Hernandez said. "I never thought I’d be here again. We flew back the same night and had a party back in Madrid, so I didn’t even stay a night here then.

"I didn’t know then that Dundee might be interested. I played on for another two months in Madrid, then my contract ran out and I came here.

"When I signed, it was all done very quickly, in ten days. I came here, I did some training, then the manager asked me to sign and I said yes.

"My agent told me it was a good option to come here, because Dundee needed a left-back and I would be playing in the top division. I came here, I liked it, I signed."

Hernandez has been part of a squad which, under Jim Duffy, have developed a more competitive edge, justifying their status as firm favourites to beat Inverness Caley Thistle in two days’ time. Although they were inconsistent during the first half of the season, taking some time to gel, they have thrived in recent months, and last weekend secured a place in the top six of the Premierleague.

"We have not lost any games since we came back from Trinidad and Tobago," Hernandez added, referring to the club’s winter break. "I think the team have improved a lot. We’ve worked harder and are playing to quite a high level now."

His English, too, is at a reasonable level, having been by his own admission nonexistent when he arrived. Everyday social encounters have helped him grasp the local language, but he has also been able to take a break by reverting to his native tongue in the company of others at the club such as Julian Speroni and Nacho Novo, both of Argentina.

"When I came here I didn’t speak any English. I go to the college sometimes, but it helps to have other people here at the club who speak the same language as me.

"To learn more English I also rent DVDs, put on the subtitles, read them and try to memorise them. Every film - Training Day, Collateral Damage . . . I’m a good member of Blockbuster."

Yet however native he may become, there will always be a part of Hernandez which remains attached to the institution in the Spanish capital which nurtured him as a player. Far from resenting Real for letting him go, he maintains an active interest in the club, keeping touch with some players, and watching their matches whenever he can.

"Unbelievable" was his description of their performance in the first, home, leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Manchester United. He witnessed that one on TV, but aims to be there in person next week when Real visit England.

"I hope to go to Manchester because Paco Pavon, one of the Real players, has given me tickets. The first half of the first leg was really good - I think Real are the best team in the world."

On the evidence of last week, that is hardly a controversial opinion, but Hernandez also has the evidence of his own eyes to go on. "When you are training with players like Zidane and Figo and Roberto Carlos, you can see how they touch the ball," he concluded. "It’s amazing."

Dundee manager Jim Duffy may delay naming his team until Sunday to give two players every chance of proving their fitness. Nacho Novo has been cleared to play, but doubts remain over two other forwards, Steve Lovell and the on-loan Mark Burchill.

<a href=www.americandaily.com> The American Daily By Edward Daley on Thu Apr 17, 2003 6:09 pm

Well, the list of Democratic Presidential candidates is beginning to swell heartily now with the fairly recent inclusion of individuals such as Joe Lieberman and John Edwards, and as I watch these leftist hopefuls maneuver for breathing room within the pack, I am reminded of just how useless most of them have been to us over the years. I won't go into all the particulars at this time, suffice it to say that trying to enumerate what each of these people has done (or failed to do) while in elected office would take weeks to accomplish and fill up hundreds of single-spaced, typed pages. Frankly, I don't think I have a strong enough constitution to subject myself to that sort of hell. I mean, who really wants to think that much about liberals after all? I will say though that not one of these Democratic leaders has the wherewithal to run a wiener stand effectively, let alone the country, yet that won't stop them from seeking the highest office in the land. Soon these close political allies will be attempting to bump each other off, metaphorically speaking, using any means necessary, as they hop on their respective stumps and lie their asses off to the American people for the next 19 months or so. This should be as troubling to you as it is to me, and it's because I do indeed cringe at the very thought of one of these babbling fools possibly becoming President of the United States that I have decided to take a good look at their party, and pick apart a few of the policies which they all have in common.

Let me start by saying that the vast majority of modern American liberal voters have been so brainwashed by the these primarily socialist politicians that they are completely ignorant with regard to the manner in which a Capitalist society is supposed to work. They lack any real education in economics and are, consequently, not aware of the fact that they themselves are embracing socialism. Even if they were able to grasp that concept, they likely would not be cognizant of the dangers to our society which socialism represents, because they are as deficient in knowledge of world history as they are rational instruction in practically all other disciplines. Most of them cannot articulate intelligently why they believe what they do, yet they emotionally proclaim their views to be superior to those which are demonstratively more sound in nearly every respect. They promote feel-good policies which, more often than not, prove to be counter productive to the very aims to which they aspire; aims not entirely dissimilar to the aims of conservatives, by the way.

After all, every American, indeed, every human being wants clean air and water, abundant resources, equal opportunity, effective education for their children, better jobs, true justice, etc.. Yet the people of the left believe that they can micro manage the country into some sort of ideated utopia using the oppressive power of government to achieve their goals. Conservatives realize that such an idea is utter fantasy at best and dangerously authoritarian at worst. They would rather just work hard to achieve a better life for themselves and their families, and their idea of utopia is being left the hell alone by the government as much as possible.

Here are just a few examples of how liberals, after being prompted by people like Al Sharpton and Dick Gephardt, approach America's problems and the solutions they've devised. The left's idea of saving the environment, for instance, is to prohibit people from utilizing natural resources as much as possible. Of course, anyone with any intelligence at all understands that exploiting a certain amount of those resources is essential to keeping a balance in nature while avoiding economic catastrophe. Just consider the way these do-gooders have tried to "save the forests" in the western US over the past decade. They did everything in their power to stop logging in states like California and Colorado. They were successful to the point of preventing people from clearing out dangerous overgrowth and putting fire roads into place. The result was a rash of unmanageable forest fires which destroyed more trees in one year than loggers could have cut down (and used productively) in a century!

Furthermore, they have attempted to prevent potentially harmful oil spills caused by US companies drilling in places like the frozen tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, by banning any procurement there altogether. This, of course, has forced the US to buy more oil from other countries, such as Mexico and Venezuela, which do not adhere to our standards of environmental protection during drilling and transportation operations, actually increasing the likelihood of damage to the environment and hindering America's ability to become less dependent upon other nations for oil (it's potential enemies included) at the same time.

The liberal method of promoting equality among the races is bizarre to say the least, because it involves embracing the most divisive policies imaginable. These people actually believe that the best way to get to a "color blind" society is to effectuate different employment and educational standards for people based solely upon their race! They are the first to state that we need to have constant "dialogue" with regard to ethnicity, yet they do not explain how focussing on our differences at every turn will ever lead to the sort of racial equality they say they want. Clearly, if all people do is endlessly preach about ethnic divergences and are only considerate of others based upon their skin color, they can never be color blind! It's a completely self-defeating strategy.

Liberals also espouse the idea of wealth redistribution by the government. They fail utterly to take into consideration certain basic economic truths. One is that it's not the government's money! The second is that the government is incapable of creating economic productivity through taxation. The money which people make and spend on goods and services is what fuels an economy, not the money that the government takes in. The third thing is that the government runs deficits because it spends more money than it receives in revenues. Since raising taxes can only be injurious to the economy, because doing so takes money out of the hands of the people who make the economy work, cutting spending on unnecessary government projects, as well as reducing the amount of waste inherent in governmental activity, is the only effective way to balance a budget without causing a recession. The forth and final economic truth which is always overlooked by liberals is that lowering taxes actually increases revenues to the government over time. That has proven to be the case every time it's been tried in modern history, and there's no reason to believe it won't continue to happen in the future! Instead of looking at tax cuts for what they are, which is an investment in our economy, these uneducated twits constantly refer to them as a liability!

Their idea of dealing with vicious dictators is to placate them by giving them whatever they ask for. Liberals make deal after deal with tyrants the world over, yet the only way they can see to handle these two-bit thugs when they break those agreements is to offer them more deals and hope they eventually decide to play nice! This policy of appeasement so readily adopted by people like Jimmy Carter and Jaques Chirac is absolutely ludicrous. It is the primary reason we find ourselves faced with a nuclear North Korea and a Syrian regime which is one of the most virulent terrorist supporting governments on the planet. How ironic is it that these leftist pacifists seem to be just fine with megalomaniacs possessing weapons of mass murder, but are absolutely outraged at the idea of peaceful American citizens owning handguns?

The list of these chronically ill conceived and often detrimental policies goes on and on, yet no liberal I know, be they elected representatives or working-class constituents, can explain to me in any reasonable way why they insist upon clinging to such socialistic and/or defeatist ideas; ideas which run contrary to all historical evidence and, in most cases, basic common sense. Their propaganda is as ceaseless as it is foolish, and it is reiterated in lemming-like fashion by the most dimwitted people this country produces. A collection of Marxist politicians who call themselves Democrats sets the agenda, their cronies in the news media repeat it ad nauseam, and the liberal masses follow it religiously. Liberal voters parrot the talking points of their often condescending and hypocritical leaders without question and then characterize anyone who disagrees with them as being a "right-wing fanatic" or worse. They tend to regard pragmatic conservatives as extremists, moderates as conservatives and themselves as mainstream, in spite of the fact that the ideas which they promote are not readily accepted by the majority of Americans.

Perhaps liberalism is, as I have heard radio personality Michael Savage hypothesize on more than one occasion, a mental disorder. And no, that isn't meant to be droll or foment resentment in people. I really wonder! As I look at the names of the people currently running for President on the Democratic ticket, I am hesitant to guess which one of them may turn out to be the 2004 front-runner. Does it really matter? Aren't they all basically the same animal, repeating nearly identical anti-American phrases and promoting the same cookie-cutter, socialist agenda? Who among them will be able to honestly point at any other one of them and state that their fellow liberal is trying to do something potentially damaging to our society which they themselves aren't trying to do, or haven't done in the past? I certainly can't answer that questions, but I will tell you this, I thank God every day that we have a fairly conservative Republican in the White House at this particular time in history. Just thinking about the alternative is more frightening to me than any terrorist could be.

Fox. Friday, April 18, 2003 By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

WASHINGTON — While victory in Iraq may have increased the likelihood for stability in the Persian Gulf and freed up oil from Iraq’s previously sanctioned markets, policy experts say the new circumstances probably won’t change the energy debate on Capitol Hill.

“We're moving forward business as usual,” said Marnie Funk, communications director for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is in the process of marking up its long-awaited energy package.

Asked whether any changes to the package have resulted as a result of the war, Funk said, “Absolutely none.”

One House Energy and Commerce Committee aide who asked not to be named said it's uncertain whether the war will have any impact on the final legislation passed by Congress.

“After a few months, who knows how the war will influence it?  Right now it’s too early to know,” the aide said.

The House passed its energy package 247-175 on April 10. It closely resembled the bill passed by the House last year that eventually died during negotiations with the Senate.

Among other provisions, the House bill includes a proposal to drill for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a measure lacking support in the Senate and the source of intense bickering last legislative season.

The ANWR provision is popular among Republicans who say the country needs to reduce its dependence on foreign oil. Opponents agree on the goal, but say regulating  fuel efficiency standards for automobiles and pursuing alternative sources of energy like hydrogen fuel cells are better methods of getting there than drilling in the nation's protected wilderness.

The expected debate on the measure is unlikely to change because of the victory in Iraq and the corresponding drop in oil prices, energy experts said.

“It’s not as if the end of the war made the arguments change,” said H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, Texas.

“The conservatives interested in national security issues and the oil link, they will still say we need to be less dependent on those sources,” Burnett said. “The liberals are still going to say we need to produce alternative sources.”

Myron Ebell, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., said the fact remains that the greatest need lies in changing domestic manufacturing and distribution processes.

Ebell said the energy infrastructure comprised of antiquated and inadequate oil refineries, gas pipelines and electricity transmission sources is in desperate need of an overhaul. At the same time, massive consumption of energy has left the country in need of more and more practical  uses for natural resources in the future.

None of that will be changed by the availability of Iraqi oil, he said.

“I don’t know how the Iraq situation is going to color our energy policy,” Ebell said. “We’re for more energy production here in that it creates more wealth for America.”

The House bill passed in April addresses some of those domestic concerns, including $6.7 billion in tax incentives for conservation methods such as solar heating equipment and more efficient appliance purchases. The bill also calls for $31.7 billion in research and development involving renewable energy drawn from nuclear power, oil and gas.

Debate is also expected over an electricity deregulation measure in the House bill, which is opposed by both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate.

The House and Senate bills do include $18.7 billion and $15.7 billion in tax incentives respectively, the bulk of which would be directed at the oil, gas, nuclear and coal industries.  The credits are virtually unchanged from the bills in the last congressional session.

Daphne Wysham, an energy expert with the Institute for Public Policy in Washington, D.C., said the return to tax motivators is exactly the “business as usual” that Funk described.

“Basically, these incentives are an invisible hand manipulating the market in favor of traditional  dirty automobiles and reliance on old sources of energy rather than in favor of the new, cleaner sources of energy,” Wysham said.

“There are a host of economic, social and political reasons why we should be using that invisible hand of the market to steer our country toward sources of energy that  will make us more self-reliant,” she added.

Nobody expects the opening of the Iraqi oilfields to stop the Bush administration from pursuing other oil sources -- both foreign and domestic -- outside of the Middle East. Currently, the United States imports about 55 percent of its oil from foreign sources, the bulk of which comes from Venezuela, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Canada.

If anything, Burnett said, the war might make the domestic drilling question less urgent, at least for the current Congress.

“I don’t think [the debate] will go away, but [ANWR] may not make it into a final energy bill.”

The war has led to a drop in oil prices to around $30 a barrel, and prices are expected to fall to a more historically average rate of around $18 a barrel, said Ebell.

This will result in lower prices at the pump, but it won’t eliminate all the problems in the market. Nor will it solve domestic consumption pressures, he added.

“I think in a rational world, the debate is the same today as it was a month ago, but you know how Congress is. We’ll see.”

Times On line April 18, 2003 Foreign Editor's Briefing by Bronwen Maddox

COULD the war in Iraq prove to be the death of Opec? The conflict has already been blamed for threatening the demise of the United Nations, the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation; to add the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to the list hardly seems ambitious.

It would be premature to write off the oil producers’ cartel, but all the same there is an urgency about its predicament. Opec is pleased with itself — and worried. Throughout the war, it kept oil supplies flowing and the price more or less stable. But with the war’s end, it has called an emergency meeting for Thursday to head off a glut and a sudden collapse in the price.

Even if it negotiates this month’s obstacles, Opec’s problems will get worse, and in part this is down to this weekend’s elections in Nigeria. But there are two other reasons why the world might look forward to lower oil prices in the coming years, and they are labelled Iraq and Russia. Opec’s ability to counter these three issues is small: talk of the end of the cartel may be melodramatic, but we are moving into an era when its power is almost certain to wane.

Before the war there were plenty of warnings that oil prices would rocket, and so they did. Then they came down again, as the predicted scenes of burning Iraqi oil wells failed to materialise.

Opec can pride itself on managing to keep production levels steady during the conflict, making up for the sudden stoppage of Iraqi oil. Saudi Arabia fulfilled its role as the “swing producer”, making up the shortfall, and the war coincided with Venezuela’s unexpectedly early return to something like stability.

But having risen to the occasion of the war, Opec must now persuade its members to cut back or risk a collapse in oil prices, as happened after the 1991 war. The cartel is producing about two million barrels a day too much, or about a tenth over, its own officials have suggested. Yet Opec has always been better at getting its members to pump more than it has at convincing them to cut back.

As the US Department of Energy put it in a monthly report last week: “Opec’s success in offsetting supply losses kept oil prices from spiking once the war in Iraq began. However, this same success has now turned to concern that oil prices, which have dropped by almost a third as market worries over the situation in Iraq eased, risked falling further.”

Not everyone agrees. The International Energy Agency argued this week that the “glut” was an illusion, that developed countries’ stocks of oil are low and that Opec had no reason to cut production. But the nervousness of the markets suggests that Opec may well be tempted to go ahead.

As the cartel well knows, even if it overcomes the hurdles of the next few months, there are good reasons why it will be difficult to keep propping up the price.

Iraq itself may prove hardest to control. It would be overdoing the conspiracy theories to suggest that the US intended to destroy Opec with this war. But to pay for Iraq’s reconstruction, the country needs to sell as much oil as possible.

Every plan for its renaissance aims to treble its production up to Saudi Arabian levels of between seven million and eight million barrels a day. Any exhortation by Opec to hold back is likely to get short shrift from the new government in Baghdad; the cartel can console itself only that this will not happen for several years.

Then there is Russia, firmly outside the cartel and, to judge by past experience, largely immune to its pleas. Opec can, of course, try to persuade Russia that a high oil price is in its own interests and that it should therefore restrain production. Moscow would acknowledge that if the price does slip too low then the exploration and development of new fields will not happen. But in practice Moscow needs the revenues: it will continue to pump as much as it wants, and if Opec’s own restraint manages to keep the price up, so much the better. The effect of the cartel’s attempts at persuasion has been close to zero.

Finally, there is Nigeria. An Opec member, it is the fifth-largest of the US’s oil suppliers, and the Bush Administration, catching its breath after the war, has suddenly taken notice of this weekend’s elections. American policy has been to support the present Government of President Obasanjo and to hope for something like stability, particularly regarding Nigeria’s efforts to hold the Muslim north and the Christian south together.

True, the past month has not been stable. Violent ethnic unrest in the oil-rich Delta region halted about one third of Nigeria’s oil exports. Optimists, including foreign oil company investors, hope that the violence was largely precipitated by the elections. But there are still open sores that need addressing, particularly the complaint of the ethnic groups of the Delta, who are mostly excluded from its wealth.

But a new government is almost certain to want to step up oil production: that, presumably, is the basis on which oil companies have been investing. It has already boosted capacity to about 2.5 million barrels a day, half a million more than the level set by Opec.

The question for Opec is whether it legitimises this, turns a blind eye, or contests it, with the risk that Nigeria will walk out the door.   Contact our advertising team for advertising and sponsorship in Times Online, The Times and The Sunday Times. Copyright 2003 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions. Please read our Privacy Policy. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website.