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

Venezuelan human rights PROVEA laments recent outbreaks of political violence typified in the opposition "Assault on Catia" two weeks ago and calls on the State to guarantee public security of demonstrations. 

The organization summarizes the results of the opposition-called protest in Catia, confirming one death, 28 injuries (20 due to firearms, 6 hit with heavy objects and the rest with minor injuries), defends the right of political fractions to undertake pacific political party activities and insists that the State has the duty to ensure that participants in a protest are protected from violence. 

However, the group also calls on political parties to act responsibly when convoking rallies and marches and to ask a basic question whether they are contributing or not towards creating an environment of tolerance and peace. 

"We reject the insistence of political sectors in calling marches without coordinating with the respective authorities .... the right to protest implies responsibility on the part of people those who convoked the rallies."

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

Amnesty International (AI) Venezuela has criticized what it calls a "cocktail of laws" passed by President Hugo Chavez Frias' government and warns that it could unleash a crisis of human rights. 

AI Venezuela director, Marcos Gomez goes back to laws passed since December 2001, which he claims caused 66 deaths and more than 849 wounded persons, as well as a deterioration of economic, social and cultural rights and the appearance of irregular and armed actors that have been seen acting with weapons. 

Taking the media content law, anti-terrorist law and criminal code reforms as examples of dangerous laws, Gomez says AI-Venezuela is concerned not just about the background of the laws but also the way reforms are brought about, adding that the above-mentioned laws are against constitutional principles, such as continuity, non-discrimination, subordination to the Constitution, international and institutional responsibility to reinforce the rule of law.

The strong-worded criticism comes a day after the National Assembly (AN)  pro-government bench held its first session outside of the Capitolio without the presence of opposition deputies passing internal procedures reform.

<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.