The Miami Herald, Posted on Sat, Jun. 21, 2003 By NANCY SAN MARTIN nsanmartin@herald.com

WASHINGTON - Exchanging handshakes and smiles with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President Bush sent a clear message Friday that he is prepared to set aside ideological differences in favor of a firm and profitable relationship with Latin America's largest country.

''Brazil is an incredibly important part of a peaceful and prosperous North and South America,'' Bush said as he welcomed da Silva to the White House. ``This relationship is a vital and important and growing relationship.''

Da Silva also touted the importance of a solid partnership, but stressed that it ''should be on the basis of sincerity'' and not ``just build up a spectacle for the press and for the public.''

''I believe that Brazil is and can continue to be a good partner of the United States,'' da Silva said. ``Without any question, I believe that we can surprise the world in terms of the relationship.''

The gathering was more than just a cordial exchange between two leaders. It involved high-ranking Cabinet members from both governments, and by the end of the day they had committed to a series of joint initiatives, ranging from agriculture to energy to health programs for combating AIDS in Portuguese-speaking parts of Africa.

HIGH POINT

''The high point of the meeting was when we discussed the need for guaranteeing peace in the world,'' da Silva said at a news conference later in the day.

``To guarantee peace, you have to think of the development of the poorest regions . . . We must make up for wasted time in South America.''

Bush, who has met with da Silva three times over the past six months, personally complimented a man who rose from poverty to trade union activist to leader of a country with the world's ninth-largest economy.

''I'm very impressed by the vision of the president of Brazil,'' Bush said of da Silva, who took office Jan. 1. ``He's a man who clearly has deep concerns for all the people of Brazil. He not only has a tremendous heart, but he's got the abilities to work closely with his government and the people of Brazil to encourage prosperity and to end hunger.''

With a population of about 180 million -- the Western Hemisphere's second most populous country after the United States -- Brazil has the largest economy in South America. Trade between the United States and Brazil is impressive, totaling $26 billion last year.

REGIONAL CONCERNS

Beyond bilateral interests, such as the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas that Washington is pushing for implementation by 2005, the two leaders also discussed regional concerns. Among them: crime, drug trafficking and continuing instability in Colombia and Venezuela.

Both stressed the importance of supporting an end to the civil war in Colombia and of a referendum to resolve the political crisis surrounding Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

<a href=www.wired.com>Wired, By Bruce Sterling

The Aesthetic Imperative 

Is our ability to alter nature changing what we consider natural? 

The Sound of Stolen Thunder 

New World Disorder 

The High Cost of Efficiency 

Scott Menchin

We denizens of the early 21st century cling to a leftover notion that anything "global" is remote, abstract. That's no longer true. A global problem is everyone's problem, often in intimate ways. Chinese germs multiply in American bloodstreams. Colombian narcoterrorists maintain branch offices in every major US city. There's only one atmosphere, and no pulldown menu for selecting a new one.

American bombs and satellites are impressive, but they can't stop SARS, AIDS, or drug-resistant TB. European regulations and good intentions can't manage dwindling fishing stocks, water shortages, or climate change. Asian hard work and community values barely dent the global trade in drugs, arms, and humans. Vast tracts of the developing world are no longer developing at all but visibly and violently decaying.

EMEK
Four types of mechanisms exist to finesse the world's world-sized problems. Unfortunately, none of them are of much use.

At the top of the heap are the global multilaterals, the brass-plate institutions whose members include diplomats from the world's 190-plus nation-states. Examples are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations. They might look big and scary to street protesters, but once you peek behind the velvet curtains, it's dead obvious that they're stretched thin, put-upon, weak, fractious, crooked, and low in morale. They lack public legitimacy and democratic representation. Street opinion, the "second superpower," hates and fears them bitterly. The first superpower, the one with stealth bombers, can't stand them either. That's bad news for global multilaterals.

The second system involves international treaties and conventions. These vast, clotted webs of apparent consensus are too many, too messy, and too meager to manage a teeming, boisterous world. Often treaties are signed but never ratified. Many that are ratified aren't enforced. National leaders just plain lose track of all their accords. Consider environmental agreements, more than 200 of which have been promulgated in the past 40 years. Whatever the subject, the Bushites take positive pleasure in sweeping away clutter like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the International Criminal Court treaty, and whichever target of opportunity they choose to hit next.

The third arrangement is the coalition of the willing. More of these exist than you might think, including the Group of Seven Industrialized Nations, the Group of Eight, the Group of 20, and the weirdly named Group of 77 Plus China. Coalitions of the willing are barely coalitions, they're rarely willing, and they're never broad enough. Nafta has been good at dissolving trade barriers, but outside the gates of the Nafta consumer's club, Argentina collapsed while Brazil and Venezuela turned hard left. The top willing coalition, the European Union, is a golden exception to the norm, because it boasts an occasional accomplishment.

The fourth approach is to stage glamorous international powwows like the Rio Summit, Rio Plus Five, Rio Plus Ten, the Cairo summit on population, the Durban racism summit, the Copenhagen Social Summit, and, lately, nongovernmental countersummits like the World Social Forum. These massive blabfests are ritualized and wooden. They make proper noises, but they have no teeth, no budget, and no follow-through. They're good for consciousness-raising and for swapping business cards, but they have no effect on the awful crises they purport to address.

Outside the US, most people believe the planet recently suffered a massive, bomb-flinging breakdown in the new world order. The news is worse: There never was any order to break down. If the war in Iraq had gone badly for the US, the world would now be staring into an abyss, a pit of lawless, dog-eat-dog mayhem. We need - we really need - a global civil society that isn't made of toffee and chicken wire. Forging it will require new ideas, methods, and technologies, new principles and a new realism. If we can't confront the big issues with real grit, competence, and determination, we've got problems waiting that will make Iraq look like Disneyland.

The New World Order, proclaimed in Gulf War I, died in Gulf War II. The Next World Order has means, motive, and opportunity now. Instead of the customary 20th-century hot air and phony baloney, it might turn out to be rather hands-on, tough-minded, and practical. There are good reasons to think this will happen, with or without American cooperation. The Next World Order may well look like nothing we previously were led to expect.

The global future is already here. It exists somewhere on a slider bar between dusty refugee camps and a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. Sometimes, as on 9/11, it's both those things. When we've created a world order that can walk the walk in our planet's very best and very worst locales, 24/7/365, then we'll have a world order that can actually order the world.

Email Bruce Sterling at bruces@well.com.

Buen día, Sr. Robert Alonso,

Ante todo déjeme decirle que no sé cómo llegó a su lista VIP mi dirección de correo electrónico; sin embargo, tengo que agradecerle a quien lo hizo, ya que sus crónicas y sus escritos son bien interesantes.  Acabo de leer la correspondiente al concierto de Serrar en el Poliedro y, de inmediato me dije: “Que suerte tiene, ya que yo no pude ir debido a que mi situación económica no me lo permite”.  Me alegro que lo haya disfrutado; sus palabras me recordaron las varias veces que yo también disfruté a ese “catalán sencillo y poeta”, en algunas de las muchas veces que ha cantado aquí.

Pero mi intención no es comentarle sobre el concierto de Serrat y corregirle los nombres de temas que escribió mal: es “Cantares” y no “Caminante”, que es parte del poema de Machado; es “Fiesta” y no “Gloria a Dios en las Alturas”.  Sin embargo, me alegro que una canción, de las varias compuestas por él sobre la libertad, lo haya emocionado, como seguramente lo hubiese hecho conmigo.  Mi verdadera intención es comentarle que a pesar de darle un tanto la razón sobre el comportamiento del público contra el imbécil de Calixto Ortega (el mejor ejemplo de que existen zulianos sin cerebro,  con el perdón de los zulianos), creo que debería reflexionar sobre esa actitud y no auparla como lo hizo en su escrito.

Soy el primero en reconocer la rabia de todos los venezolanos pensantes, en contra de las acciones dictatoriales y fidelistas de este régimen.  Gracias a Chávez, a mis 44 años de edad, con un título de licenciado en Comunicación Social, con cursos en Venezuela y en el exterior, con el conocimiento de saber manejar dos idiomas; 18 años de experiencia y luego de haberme fogueado en excelentes medios impresos y audiovisuales de mi país (que también, gracias a Dios, es suyo), apenas sobrevivo dando clases en una universidad, donde no llego ni a trescientos mil bolívares de sueldo, ya que la empresa trasnacional donde trabajaba como gerente de comunicaciones, se cansó de tener que pagar comisiones a los funcionarios de este régimen y se fue de Venezuela, dejando sin empleo a cerca de 15 venezolanos, entre ellos a mí.

Pero me preocupa ese odio existente entre nosotros y la posibilidad, cada vez menor, de volver a ser y a tener ese país que todos queremos, el cual usted conoció y yo también disfruté.  Viví en Caracas muchísimos años; tuve amigos cubanos, que estudiaron conmigo en el San Ignacio y conozco a muchos cubanos que viven en Miami y que me han contado sus penurias y sus tristezas por ser “cubanos sin Cuba”.

No quiero que Venezuela sea el Chile de hoy, dividido por el odio dejado por una dictadura como la de Pinochet (con todo y que a veces he llegado a pensar, viendo las acciones de los chapistas, que ese señor tenía razón en hacer muchas de las cosas que hizo).  Tampoco quiero que nuestro país sufra de las brechas existentes entre los cubanos, gracias al sátrapa de Castro.  Por eso creo que aunque tiene razón en decir lo que dijo de un “personaducho” como Ortega, o del cretino de “Frasso”, a quien conozco y que ahora dice que la violencia en televisión es mala cuando él se ganó el Premio Nacional de Periodismo gracias a sus violentas fotos sobre “El Caracazo”, ha debido usted minimizar un problema que nos va a dar muchos dolores de cabeza, ya que cada vez se acrecienta más.

Yo mismo me he quedado impresionado de la actitud de Juan Barreto.  Él, es el mejor ejemplo de esta democracia, que le dio a un muchacho humilde y disléxico, sin padre conocido, la oportunidad de llegar a donde llegó.  Entonces, ¿por qué actúa así, con un odio y un resentimiento que no tiene razón de ser?

Realmente Chávez y su camarilla nos están haciendo mucho mal.  Comprendo la rabia de los serratistas como usted y como yo, de pitar a Ortega, que seguramente no diferencia a Serrat de Camilo Sexto, pero me preocupa que una persona como usted, aliente una llama que nos puede quemar a todos.

Gracias por su tiempo y su atención y lo seguiré leyendo.

Alejandro B.

Caracas, 1ro de julio de 2003

Enviado a

ROBERT ALONSO

Envíen sus comentarios – UNICAMENTE – a robertalonso2003@cantv.net pues los otros buzones colapsan con la cantidad de correo que reciben.  --

PORTAFOLIO VIRTUAL DE ARTÍCULOS Y ENSAYOS DEL MISMO AUTOR

By DONALD RATAJCZAK For the Journal-Constitution

As the Federal Reserve is about to begin a two-day meeting on the economy that probably will culminate Wednesday with yet another reduction in their targeted overnight bank rates, I thought I would provide a brief summary of what I would be saying if I were there.

First, there already is a lot of economic stimulus being pumped into the economy. Previous tax cuts have not yet used up all their stimulus medicine. The latest tax reduction removes some timing problems that prevailed when child tax credits, marriage penalties and reduced marginal tax rates were scheduled for future reductions. Making them effective this year and changing the July withholding tables will provide significant stimulus.

Second, the dollar's weakness has removed some impediments to export growth. At present currency rates, American producers have a fair chance to gain sales abroad. Yet productive international producers still have incentives to increase their international sales. Relative to domestic costs, currencies outside China probably are the nearest to desired levels in several years.

Third, despite the dollar's more appropriate valuation, not enough stimulus and economic reform are occurring in many world markets. The recent shift toward expansive monetary policies in Europe is only a first step toward needed stimulus in that part of the world.

Japan needs more bank reform, possibly allowing international mergers of its major banks to inject much-needed lending capacity into its economy. Pension reforms and the removal of inflation-indexed devices that no longer are needed must be accelerated in some of the Latin American economies.

In short, the global recovery is not yet assured.

Fourth, near-term energy uncertainties still could derail expansion. Iraqi oil has been slower to reach world markets than anyone expected. Fortunately, a cool spring has allowed North America to partially rebuild inventories, but Europe has not been so fortunate. The longer-term outlook remains favorable for energy, but weather-induced price spikes are possible through next year.

Fifth, despite assertions that short-term rates could fall to zero, such a low rate would create serious problems for liquid assets, such as interest-bearing checking accounts, short-term certificates of deposit and money market rates. The ability to market and administer such instruments might require fees, with unintended consequences on liquidity holdings.

A quarter-point reduction in overnight rates would not create problems. Indeed, such a reduction is so widely anticipated that failure to make such a move would unsettle financial markets. A half-point reduction may be absorbed without problems, but anything larger would create distortions. Therefore, the effective remaining ammunition in rate reductions is half a point.

To use up all this ammunition before the global and energy uncertainties are resolved would leave the Fed with few traditional methods to deal with further weakness.

Is the danger so great that all that available ammunition should be used at this time? I think not.

While manufacturing clearly is suffering from continued declines in unit costs from abroad, especially China, economywide deflation has not occurred. In the past year, consumer prices have increased 2.1 percent. Excluding the direct impact of food and energy, the increase has been 1.6 percent.

To be sure, consumer prices are unchanged in the past three months, but that is because of falling energy prices. A concurrent dip to 1 percent in the core inflation rate also should be viewed without serious concern. Falling energy prices indirectly affect transportation service, lodging service and rental costs. In these areas, energy is not effectively removed from the core inflation rate. Thus, falling energy prices push down the core while rising energy prices hold it up.

If these indirect effects of energy are removed, the core inflation rate has been relatively stable at slightly more than 1.25 percent in the past year. This is desirable price stability, not undesirable deflation.

Thus, hold that extra quarter percent in case global and energy uncertainties turn into more serious issues. Believe in economic theory.

The previous monetary expansion, current tax cuts and a more appropriately aligned dollar should begin to stimulate this economy. Uncertainty is the reason it has not done so thus far.

As those uncertainties diminish, and they are doing just that, the strength of the stimulus medicine will begin to take over.

Nothing is certain. A new terrorist attack would be damaging. Further oil disruptions in Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq or elsewhere could be disruptive. So, to the Fed: Keep some ammunition and only cut by the quarter-point that already has been virtually promised to the marketplace.

Donald Ratajczak is a regents professor of economics emeritus at Georgia State University.

Fri June 20, 2003 05:29 PM ET (updates with joint statement) By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON, June 20 (<a href=reuters.com>Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, who comes from the business world, and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his country's first working-class president, agreed on Friday to seek closer ties despite differences over Iraq.

The commitment came in a joint statement issued after Bush and Lula held their first face-to-face talks since the Brazilian was sworn in as president on Jan. 1. The statement made no mention of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, which Lula strongly opposed.

"The United States and Brazil resolve to create a closer and qualitatively stronger relationship," it said.

The two men agreed their governments will have regular and high-level consultations on issues ranging from counter-terrorism to African poverty relief -- a pet issue for both.

The warming ties between the seemingly political odd couple has come as a surprise, and reflects U.S. hopes Brazil can be a stabilizing influence in Latin America at a time when the region's democracy movement has come under strain.

The countries announced joint initiatives including U.S. support for Lula's anti-hunger program in Brazil, cooperation on energy and fighting AIDS in Africa.

"Without any question, I believe that we can surprise the world in terms of the relationship between Brazil and the United States," Lula told reporters in the Oval Office with Bush at his side.

Lula brought 10 ministers with him. For the United States, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Special Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham were among those expected to take part an expanded meeting following the Bush-Lula meeting.

Brazil and the United States have clashed over trade in the past, particularly subsidies and tariff barriers slapped on key Brazilian exports like orange juice, textiles and steel.

The two countries also co-chair the Free Trade Area of the Americas talks to create a hemisphere-wide free trade zone by January 2005. The FTAA is central to Bush's policy of promoting trade and democracy in Latin America, and the joint statement reaffirmed the leader's aim to conclude negotiations on time.

Most of the region suffered a recession in 2002, with Venezuela and Argentin