<a href=www.vheadline.com>venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, June 08, 2003 By: The Very Reverend Roger Dawson

sermon by The Very Reverend Roger Dawson Dean of St. Mary's Anglican Cathedral, Caracas

Today it is Pentecost when we thank God for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

When I was a boy, we called today Whitsun and Monday was a Bank Holiday when everyone crowded the roads with cars and buses in a frantic attempt to have a day on the beach somewhere. It was called Whitsun because the Sundays between Easter and Pentecost were called White Sundays after the girls who were baptized and confirmed on Easter Day and who wore their white dresses to church on these Sundays.

The tradition largely died out except for them coming to church on Pentecost in these dresses, the last of the White Sundays and it got shortened first to White Sunday and then to Whitsun. It has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, which is why the Church has pushed us back into thinking of this day as Pentecost Sunday and the events recorded in Acts when the disciples were sitting in the upper room waiting for something big to happen.

Paul, who did not experience this upper room phenomenon, wrote to the Romans, "And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." (Rom 8:27) In the First letter to Timothy (2:5) Paul says (if it was Paul who was the author), "There is one God, and also one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus."

If we put these two together it suggests that Jesus and the Spirit are either the same or interchangeable." If we cannot have Jesus any more in the flesh then we have the Holy Spirit, which is his replacement in the world as our guide and comforter. The holy being by which we are kept in touch with God the father and the one who will guide us into all truth.

Certainly the world could do with such a figure. Watching the news reports from all over the world gives one the impression that everyone is losing touch with God. We need desperately to be in closer contact with God to learn what is his purpose. As transport between places gets faster our whole lives become more frenetic.

When we had to walk from one place to another, or ride in a cart pulled by a slow moving mule or horse there was time for us to consider what we were doing, why we were doing it and what the consequences would be. In today's world we are pushed into snap decisions. We can be transported to any part of the world by satellite communication and computer conferencing and instant answers and solutions are demanded by problems that may have taken years to develop.

Disease of all kinds in Africa has become so rife, not just AIDS, that a solution was seen in providing cheap drugs to African nations by giving them a seventy-five per cent discount. Then the drug producers noticed a reduction in the demand coming from the developed world for the drugs they were supplying to Africa on this cheap deal.

The reason? "African dealers were selling the drugs at discounted prices back into the producing countries and pocketing the profit. The moral obligation to help their own people was ignored it seems.

When food aid was first taken into Iraq the lorries were looted so that instead of everyone getting a little, some got a lot and others got nothing. Survival of the fittest, or a prime example of selfishness and inconsideration for others?

It is easy, of course, to point the finger at others especially the glaring faults such as the two I have outlined. Closer to home we find black market racketeers making big profits on money exchange and the supply of scarce basic foods.

What about our own lives and the decisions we take?

Can we say that they are in line with the work of the Holy Spirit who is trying, as always, to line us up with God?

In an imperfect world we too are imperfect, making hasty decisions and instant judgments and flawed reactions to information that may also be lacking true objectivity.

In Birmingham, Alabama, a large explosion alerted a policeman, he saw a black African American sprinting down the road and immediately came to the conclusion that he had caused the explosion. He took out his gun and aimed for the man but missed. He called for back-up and set off in pursuit. The black man stopped and looked up but the policeman was concentrating on aiming his gun. As he fired the black man caught a child who had jumped from a window of an apartment from which a gas oven had exploded setting the apartment alight. The policeman's bullet hit the child and killed it.

Our gut instincts and training and prejudices often get in the way of good decisions. We all make errors of judgement though hopefully they don't result in the death of others but do we give time each day in training ourselves to work with the Holy Spirit so that our decisions are more likely to be good ones?

Working with the Holy Spirit is the same as working with Christ himself. He is both an intermediary and an intercessor with God on our behalf but we can't just leave everything to him alone. It is not a question of saying "oops! Sorry" and then thinking that Christ will put all things right for us. We have to work through our life's decisions using him as a confidant and counselor. The result may not always turn out as we would like and it could well be that our preferences and prejudices turn result in great hindrances preventing us from making decisions that are in line with God's thinking.

You know, the story of Pentecost is such a strange one and so unlike all the other stories, there must be, I think, some special message in it. Many feel it is yet another description of a resurrection appearance and they may well be right but I believe its special significance for us is that the disciples allowed themselves to be taken over by the Spirit just as they submitted themselves to Jesus and his teaching when he was alive.

That was their commitment and all this time later I believe God is looking for the same commitment in us so that we can be bathed in the Spirit also ... dare we commit ourselves this far to become active agents of God's love?

It is not too difficult to become passive recipients of grace.

We do that by joining a church and attending the Services but to become active is to stop being disciples and with the power of the Spirit becoming apostles. "And there," said William Shakespeare, "ah! There's the rub."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, June 08, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

President Hugo Chavez Frias has come out in support of the National Assembly (AN) pro-government bench, accusing the opposition of seeking violence and blood to prevent parliamentary sessions by threatening to take Parliament by storm and prevent sessions ... "the opposition is desperate and full of hatred." 

The President has defended the AN plenary session held at El Calvario last Friday that passed the controversial internal and debate procedure regulations, claiming that the opposition wanted to stage an institutional coup against parliament to avoid the passage of laws, such as media content law. 

10 deputies elected on the Presidential ticket were blasted as traitors for passing over to the opposition. 

The government bench that assembled on the steps of El Calvario after Thursday's stand-off with the opposition bench, drafted in 10 supply deputies to step in for those who had gone over to the other side ... 94 deputies turned up ensuring a majority to pass the regulations. 

The pro-government offensive has taken the opposition by surprise, since the tactic of boycotting sessions by walking out or other tactics had worked successfully up till now to bring in such bodies as the negotiations table and international facilitation efforts and check-mating parliamentary activity. 

The government accuses the opposition of failing to respect majority rule and thus, acting undemocratically, while the opposition retorts that the government bench is trying to steam-roller its political agenda on a minority opposition. The government scored another goal in solving a problem that has always plagued the Venezuelan parliamentary system, namely deputies elected on a political party ticket changing sides and remaining in Parliament. 

Government benches have always argued that such a deputy should leave parliament and hand over to a supply deputy placed by the party in government. 

At El Calvario, the following former MVR deputies were substituted for loyal party men; Ernesto Alvarenga ( Solidaridad),  Jose Luis Farias ( Solidaridad), Nelson Ventura ( Solidaridad), Alejandro Armas  ( Solidaridad),  Luis Salas ( OFM- Vamos), Rafael Simon Jimenez  ( OFM- Vamos), Leopoldo Puchi ( MAS),  Alberto Jordan Hernandez ( Transparencia Revolucionaria), Jess Narvaez  and Carlos Santafe.

Abram Katz , <a href=www.zwire.com>Register Science Editor 06/08/2003 Photo courtesy of NASA Earth was less than a speck in the old universe of planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, and quasars. Now it turns out that our whole universe of visible matter, and gravity is but a mote in the cosmos. Much of 20th century physics may have to be modified to accommodate two enormous oddities — dark matter and dark energy. The latest research suggests that this "dark," undetectable stuff constitutes 99 percent of the mass of the universe. Dark matter is mysterious, but it follows the standard laws of gravity. Dark energy, on the other hand, is an enigmatic force that seems to behave like gravity in reverse. While gravity should be slowing the expansion of the universe, dark energy is accelerating the spread. "We have no clue what’s going on. That’s exciting," said Charles Baltay, Higgins professor of physics and professor of astronomy at Yale University. Baltay and colleagues at Yale, Indiana University, and at a Venezuelan university and an observatory hope to shed some light on dark matter and energy. Baltay will use the world’s largest telescopes and other instruments to observe quasars on the edge of visible space. These incredibly bright beacons will help astronomers and physicists chart the geometry of the universe, estimate the mass of dark matter, and probe dark energy. Baltay said the universal domination of dark matter and energy makes human science seem like a puny enterprise. "The stuff we’ve been studying is a lousy 1 per cent of what’s out there," he said. Scientists calculate that dark matter comprises about 30 percent of the universe and dark energy around 70 percent, meaning visible matter is indeed trivial. Dark matter at least behaves like normal everyday matter — it just happens to be almost impossible to detect. German astronomer Fritz Zwicky posited the existence of dark matter in the 1930s. Zwicky saw stars exceeding the expected speed limit around galaxies. That could only happen if the galaxy had 10 times more mass, which could not be accounted for by stars, dust or gas. At roughly the same time, Edwin Hubble realized that stars and galaxies were all speeding away from each other. Albert Einstein and others supposed the universe was static, but here it was expanding. Einstein had added a "cosmological constant" to his equations to save the universe from gravitational collapse. When it became clear that the universe was expanding, Einstein removed the cosmological constant, calling it his biggest blunder. Meanwhile, expansion raised the question of the universe’s mass. A certain mass would produce sufficient gravity to pull the spreading galaxies back together in a big crunch. If the universe were too light, matter would keep expanding. And should there be exactly the right amount, expansion would slow but never quite stop. This is the "critical mass." Depending on the mass, the universe could be "closed," "open" or "flat." Closed meant collapse and curved space. Open meant eternal expansion and negative curvature, and flat implied perpetual slowing and uncurved flat space. The amount and mass of dark matter became an important element in cosmology. This whole model was thrown into disarray in the late 1990s. Researchers at Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard measured how fast a certain type of supernova was receding. The astronomers found the universe is not merely expanding. It’s accelerating. "Your first reaction is ‘That’s ridiculous,’" Baltay said. A force like repulsive gravity must be pushing matter apart. Einstein’s disavowed cosmological constant appeared real, after all. The weird reverse gravity became known as dark energy. Since energy and mass are equivalent, the observations suggest that dark energy accounts for about 70 percent of the mass of the universe. "The universe is more complicated. When we finally understand it, we’ll have a nice simple picture again," Baltay said. Baltay and colleagues hope to clarify what’s out there, using a technique that Einstein would appreciate. Massive things like galaxies can bend light enough to act like optical lenses. A quasar provides the light. If the quasar is behind a galaxy, or a clump of dark matter, observers on Earth will see multiple images of the quasar. This is called gravitational lensing. Lensing without a visible galaxy suggests the presence of dark matter. "We’ll look at a lot of lenses to see if there is dark matter, if the lens is invisible," Baltay said. Knowing the distance to the quasars and the mass of the lenses, researchers can measure angles like a prospector and calculate the degree to which space is curved, Baltay said. "By drawing big triangles in space, we can see the geometry of space," he said, including dark matter and energy. First, the researchers will use a large array of charge-coupled devices attached to a Schmidt telescope in Venezuela to survey the sky for quasars and lensing. The 200-inch telescope at Mount Palomar and the world’s largest telescope, the 10-meter Keck telescope in Hawaii, will be used to observe and confirm the quasars. As part of the project, Baltay and researchers also will make their own measurements of supernovas. Because only about one in 1,000 quasars are "lensed" the experiment will require viewing hundreds of thousands of quasars.

Abram Katz can be reached at akatz@nhregister.com or 789-5719.

Sunday, June 8, 2003 By Cliff Peale The Cincinnati Enquirer

After bombing in the stock market three years ago, the Internet revolution is alive and well in the nation's biggest companies.

Shareholders in dot-com companies lost billions. But the same strategies that drove that craze are now established programs inside companies including Procter & Gamble Co.

The strategies are helping P&G cut millions of dollars in costs. They're also shrinking production cycles and improving communication among thousands of employees. All of this benefits corporate profits - and yes, stock prices.

"I don't see how a company of this scale can survive without the Internet being at the core," said Robert Dixon, vice president for information technology and leader of the "Leverage the Internet" program within P&G.

Leverage the Internet has focused on the way P&G deals with consumers, suppliers and customers, and employees.

• From Pampers.com to beinggirl.com, consumers are using P&G's Web sites more. P&G's corporate site, www.pg.com, hosted 1.87 million users in April.

• Suppliers in remote areas, who were still faxing or mailing order slips to P&G, are tapping into an Internet portal that automates the process.

• Employees now access virtually all of their benefit and job-related information over an internal Web site.

Big companies around the Tristate and around the world are making similar discoveries. Some, including P&G and General Electric Co., have earned high marks for integrating those programs with their basic business.

Large companies long have used technology to cut costs. But they've discovered that they can complete more transactions faster by plugging the Internet into even the most mundane corporate functions.

Jack Cassidy, president of Cincinnati Bell Inc., said the telecommunications company does similar things. Virtually all purchasing is done through electronic auctions, buying everything from copiers to services.

With consumers, Bell now is offering electronic billing through all of its business, with about 10 percent of wireless consumers signing on. Clearly, Cassidy said, that's the wave of the future.

And with corporate customers, Bell is providing data solutions that allow companies to concentrate on their core business, which provides a double benefit, Cassidy said.

"The good news for us is we provide the pipe," he said. "We get efficiencies on one end, and we make money on the other."

Creating an Internet-friendly culture takes years, said Christine Overby, a senior analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.

"This is about quick hits, small wins, and the systematic communication of those throughout the entire system," she said.

'Value creation' Within P&G, Dixon is the voice of the Internet focus. Last summer, he got the seal of approval from chairman and chief executive A.G. Lafley, becoming the newest member of P&G's Global Leadership Council, the three dozen top executives who report to Lafley.

The 47-year-old Atlanta native is the second African-American on the CEO's top team at P&G. Trained as an engineer at Georgia Tech, he started at P&G's paper plant in Albany, Ga., but decided that he wanted to broaden outside P&G's network of plants and research hubs. He has managed information technology in P&G's baby-care unit since 1999.

Lafley's increased focus on using the Internet - "value creation" in Procter-speak - gave Dixon the organizational muscle he needed to nudge acceptance among employees around the world. He's done that by emphasizing that new technologies only matter if they get P&G more focused on consumers.

Milan Turk, director of global customer business development, said success for Leverage the Internet is measured not by new technologies, but by sales and profits.

"Everybody has a computer on their desk, and everybody who leaves the building has a laptop in their briefcase, but the point isn't to focus on the technology," Turk said. "It's all tied to business results."

Working without a defined budget, Dixon has identified people responsible for LTI in all of P&G's five major businesses and seven major geographies. He identified nine major goals last year, and is streamlining that to three goals now, isolating those that can be leveraged throughout P&G's 102,000 employees in nearly 80 countries.

Some tasks are easier than others. For example, P&G now does all of its "concept testing," or focus groups, over the Internet in the United States. Costs are 10 percent of what they once were, and the tests often are done in 24 hours, chief information officer Steve David said.

Dealing with consumers is a dicier proposition. Not all consumers want to use the Internet. Many just want to find their Tide on the store shelf, and that's that.

Other consumers, David said, feel "empowered" by the ability to opt into P&G's Web programs.

Much of P&G's Internet work is invisible to the consumer. Wall Street investors love it, because it cuts hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses.

The job, Dixon said, is far from done. When pushing the program to P&G managers in any part of the company, Dixon's role is half corporate executive and half cheerleader.

"It's just an intuitive feel, but let's push the envelope," Dixon urged a late April meeting on the E-procurement program at P&G's Winton Hill campus. "I think the pool (of savings) could potentially be much more than a couple of billion dollars."

'Now that's transformative' "The business can do what they've always done, but they do it in a better way, so they replace the fax machine with the portal," says David Heppenstall, P&G's associate director of global purchasing systems.

He's on a conference call from England in late April, and Dixon is participating from his Winton Hill conference room.

"Then we say, 'You can do it better.' "

The subject is the supplier portal, started by P&G two years ago to replace paper transaction forms.

There are a "few thousand" suppliers using the portal now, but Heppenstall thinks that will multiply 3 to 5 times in the next few years.

Dixon wants to tap into P&G's existing service centers in Manila, Costa Rica and Newcastle, England to manage the growth and give suppliers all of the options they need. That could present a problem, because many of the functions at those centers are about to be outsourced after P&G signed a 10-year, $3 billion information-technology services contract with a unit of Hewlett-Packard Co.

"It'll be tough to get their attention in the next six weeks," Heppenstall says.

"Get some time with me in the next several weeks," Dixon replies. He says he'll talk to Global Business Services officer Filippo Passerini. "We need to play in this space and have the service ready to go sometime next fiscal year."

Next Dixon turns to Latin America, where the portal is not as widely used. But as a mid-sized player, it's "changed some of the rules," says Jose Ignacio Sordo, director of information technology for P&G in the Latin American market development group based in Caracas, Venezuela.

"They've been doing things one way, and technology is not one of their core functions," Sordo says of some of the smaller Latin American suppliers. "People sometimes are afraid. They say, 'If I don't do it, will you get rid of me?' ... Let's build reliability, something that works short-term."

People skills Much of Dixon's work is not hard-core programming, but nudging people to drive changes through P&G's sometimes rigid corporate culture.

That skill took center stage when Dixon met with a group seeking to implement electronic procurement for P&G employees buying everything from computer repairs to professional services to office supplies. The baby and family care unit, which makes Pampers, Bounty and Charmin, has led the way. On office supplies alone, they're saving up to $2 million a year globally.

Until now, businesses have bought what they needed, then gone to accounts payable, a process dubbed "renegade spending." There were not enough discounts on large-volume buys, said Pat McCurnin, section manager in Global Business Services.

Employees are starting to take to the program, McCurnin says.

"If you think about Amazon.com as the gold standard, we're not there yet," Dixon says.

"Actually," McCurnin responds, "we're closer than you think."

E-mail cpeale@enquirer.com

<a href=www.newsday.com>NewsDay.com

Maracaibo, Venezuela - Six months after Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez turned back nationwide strikes and protests against his rule, his opponents are organizing a new effort to oust him - this time via the ballot box. This country of 25 million people has seen some of Latin America's nastiest politics in recent years as Chavez's leftist policies and pugnacious style have helped divide the country between those who love him and those who would love to see him gone. Starting in December, Chavez's opponents held a nine-week strike that shut down oil exports and the economy, but failed to dislodge Chavez from power. Last year, a coup by military and business leaders ousted Chavez for two days in April before collapsing. Those crises, and periodic street clashes between supporters of the two sides, have raised worries that this country, one of the United States' top four oil suppliers, could slide into civil war. Last month, the Organization of American States, backed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, guided the government and opposition into signing an agreement to fight for power according to the constitution. That allows the opposition to petition for a referendum on a president's mandate after the halfway point of his term, which for Chavez will be Aug. 19. Thus, the opposition, which appeared dispirited after the failure to oust Chavez last winter, is finding new energy. "All of our efforts are for the referendum," said Nerio Romero, regional secretary in Maracaibo for Democratic Action, one of the country's two traditionally dominant parties. Still, the May 29 accord does not guarantee that a referendum will be held, or that Venezuelan politics will be made more polite. The accord is "encouraging," said Michael Shifter, a senior analyst with a Washington-based think tank, the Inter-American Dialogue. Still, "a lot of things need to be worked out," he said. "Will the opposition be unified? Will there be enough international pressure? Will Chavez work in good faith?" Under the accord, the opposition will have to present 2.5 million petition signatures to force a referendum, and the government is barred from altering the ground rules for such a vote. The government and opposition are arguing over the appointment of a National Electoral Commission, which would set the date and the rules for a referendum. The legislature, where Chavez supporters hold a slim majority, has nominated two Chavez backers and two opponents to the five-member commission, but is deadlocked over the crucial final seat. The opposition accuses the government of trying to pack the supreme court and to render the legislature a rubber stamp. On Wednesday, legislators threw papers, shoved and screamed at each other in the National Assembly over government plans to change its operating rules to eliminate some quorum requirements. Venezuela was for generations one of Latin America's stablest democracies, but one in which the vast majority of people live in miserable poverty alongside the wealth of a tiny elite. Chavez, a former paratrooper who attempted a coup in 1992, won a landslide vote six years later with his promise to reduce inequalities with a populist revolution. In office, Chavez has alienated many with incendiary rhetoric and authoritarian tendencies. The opposition coalition - including unions, business groups and media companies - says Chavez has alienated foreign investors and seeks to impose a Cuban-style communism. Chavez denies this. "It looks like [the opposition] is beginning to accept that to get rid of me they'll have to work hard in the streets and follow the constitution," said Chavez, after the OAS-brokered agreement was reached. The new round of Venezuela's political battle will be fought amid the shambles of a weakened economy. The gross domestic product fell 8 percent last year - and 29 percent in this year's first quarter as a result of the December-to-February strike. Unemployment is around 25 percent and the currency, the bolivar, has plunged, sharply escalated the price of imports and thus the cost of living. "There's no money," lamented Franyi Rivas, 28, who sells women's clothing from a stand in a Maracaibo street market. He estimated that his sales have dropped 80 percent from a year ago. Rivas blamed the economy's troubles on the anti-Chavez opposition "for not letting the government work." Chavez consolidated his grip on many national institutions after the coup and strike, firing dissidents and replacing them with his loyalists. But his popularity has stayed low - at 36 percent, according to a prominent polling firm, Datanalisis. "If the opposition motivates the people to vote, they'll beat Chavez," said Luis Vicente Leon, Datanalisis' director. "The [opposition] advantage exists, but it isn't much." Leon said he expects Chavez to use legal mechanisms to delay any referendum and to promote abstention to undermine any vote that is held. Even if Chavez's mandate were revoked in a referendum, the Constitution does not bar him from running in the elections to follow. So unless the fractured opposition manages to rally around a single candidate, Chavez could win re-election with a plurality of the vote.