Web Saturday, March 29, 2003 By Christopher Toothaker / Associated Press Gregorio Marrero / Associated Press

Jesus Barrios poses with the CD-ROM game he invented called "Politikal Kombat" in Caracas, Venezuela. Some Venezuelans are trading street politics for the computer version. Gregorio Marrero / Associated Press A military soldier and an opposition politician are seen fighting in the CD-ROM game "Politikal Kombat." Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery CARACAS, Venezuela -- Wham! President Hugo Chavez delivers a jarring left to opposition leader Carlos Ortega. Pow! Ortega recovers with a blow to the groin. Crowds cheer as a police helicopter hovers overhead. After a tough year including a coup, street protests and a damaging general strike, some Venezuelans are releasing stress by playing a CD-ROM game called "Politikal Kombat." More than 2,000 people have snapped up copies since February. That's good numbers by Venezuelan standards, much to the delight of the game's 35-year-old creator, Jesus Barrios. Even the presidential palace bought a copy, Barrios said. "I think it was so they could check if the images in the game offended the figure of the president or ruling party members in any way," he said. "We haven't received any feedback, so I imagine there was no problem." Barrios said pro- and anti-Chavez lawmakers are playing the game, which retails for $18. Twelve protagonists -- including images of Chavez, whose character wears military fatigues -- fight "for the country's virtual destiny," the game says. All have an equal chance of winning because "we didn't want to be accused of favoring one side or the other," Barrios said. In real life, Ortega, a labor leader, went into exile Thursday in Costa Rica after directing a two-month general strike demanding early elections or Chavez's resignation. The strike fizzled out in February. Venezuela's opposition accuses Chavez of trying to impose an authoritarian regime. Chavez, who led a botched coup attempt in 1992, was first elected president in 1998. His second term ends in 2007. Barrios released the game just as the tension-ridden strike ended. "The concept is to provide a channel to relieve stress, which is the result of so much political conflict," he said. At least one opposition lawmaker -- and "Politikal Kombat" figure -- agrees. "I think it's funny. I'm a lawyer and a legislator shown in a street brawl," Deputy Geraldo Blyde said. Despite frantic kickboxing, Barrios says he wanted to avoid overt allusions to the political violence that claimed dozens of lives over the past year. "We made sure there was no blood, disfigured faces, fatalities or heads being ripped off -- just knockouts," said Barrios. A new version is in the works, featuring more protagonists in Venezuela's political scene. They include Lina Ron, a pro-Chavez street activist whose followers have attacked opposition marches, and Marta Colomina, a prominent journalist known for her stinging criticism of Chavez. Though crude by the virtual reality standards of high-tech video games, "Politikal Kombat" has touched the funny bone of Venezuelans in need of a good laugh. "It's perfect to play after watching 'Hello President' (Chavez's weekly radio show)," one player wrote on a "Politikal Kombat" Web site. "I'm going to give it to the tyrant in the mouth!" On the Net (in Spanish): www.infoofersitio.com

<a href=www.sfgate.com>Web Reference MARIANELA JIMENEZ, Associated Press Writer Friday, March 28, 2003
(03-28) 23:29 PST SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) --

Safely in exile, Venezuelan opposition leader Carlos Ortega is urging followers back home to maintain their effort to oust President Hugo Chavez.

At a news conference Friday in Costa Rica, the president of the Venezuelan Labor Confederation denied the criminal charges that forced him to flee his country, where he was one of the leaders of a paralyzing 61-day general strike.

"I have nothing to fear. I'm not corrupt, nor am I a delinquent," Ortega said. "The most corrupt person our country has given birth to is Chavez, and he will pay with prison for that."

Ortega, charged with treason in Venezuela for his role in the strike, arrived late Thursday in Costa Rica, where he was granted asylum.

He urged his followers to "stay united, no matter what personal or political differences ... so that we can soon leave behind the nightmare we are living."

Costa Rican officials gave Ortega diplomatic asylum after the labor leader expressed fears for his life. Chavez's government allowed him to leave the country on Wednesday.

The general strike disrupted the Venezuelan economy and oil industry, costing an estimated $6 billion in losses without achieving its objective of ousting the president.

Facing rebellion and treason charges, Ortega slipped into the Costa Rican Embassy on March 14 and requested political asylum. "I think I'm more useful to my family and country alive," he said.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Saturday, March 29, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Francisco Arias Cardenas says he’s willing to accept the post of Executive Vice President if President Chavez Frias gets rid of radical sectors he has surrounded himself with.

The former Zulia State Governor and February 4, 1992 (4F) rebel commander recalls his last talk with the President by phone a month ago and being held up on his way to La Chinita airport by government gunmen, who, he claims, are part of a parallel military command.

“Ayala Battalion commander Colonel Clevert Alcala Cordones, Military Police chief Colonel Jose Gregorio Montilla Pantoja and former State Political & Security (DISIP) Police director, Army Captain (ret.) Eliecer Otaiza are part of a parallel army command … they’re crazy and are ready to kill Chavez Frias if he negotiates with the opposition … they are responsible for all this."

"I would like to know how General Garcia Montoya’s stomach is because he’s been suffering from ulcers since he was a teenager … the country can’t be governed with kids that still wear diapers.”

Arias Cardenas says PM intervention was a constitutional move.

Commenting on criticism that the Armed Force (FAN) High Command has failed to comment on the Metropolitan Police (PM) intervention, Francisco Arias Cardenas says it’s probably because the measure was taken using the mechanism of a Presidential decree which is part of the President’s constitutional right.

”If the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) and its Constitutional Chamber took the precautionary measures that police commissioners requested and rule in favor of the Metropolitan Mayor, then it would be a different matter.”

• Arias Cardenas forecasts that there will be no “home” or Chavist coup and that an unfavorable consultative referendum vote will be respected by military officers supporting the government.

The President’s former comrade-in-arms says it’s time to end the PM intervention and stop calling for a national stoppage.

Arvind Lavakare March 29, 2003

In his speech on March 11 in Washington at a convention of Veterans of War, Paul Wolfowitz, US deputy secretary of defence, said, 'The issue is not oil' and that if war comes, 'it will be a war to disarm Saddam's weapons of mass terror... a war of liberation to secure peace and freedom, not only for ourselves, but for the Iraqi people.'

Now Wolfowitz is a Ph D, a former dean and professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University -- qualifications that are expected to yield views that must be respected. But Wolfowitz is also a hawk, perhaps the biggest one in his supremo's parlour in the White House. He's also a neo-conservative politician and an American at that. And so the learned professor need not always be taken at face value where Uncle Sam's interests are concerned.

Consider his delinking of War Iraqi Freedom from Iraq's oil, said to be the world's second largest reserves.

According to the official energy statistics provided by the US Energy Information Administration, total gross oil imports (crude and products) of the US in the first nine months of 2002 were 11.2 million barrels per day (MMBD) representing 57 per cent of total US oil demand. After Canada, the top two suppliers were its satraps, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia with 1.5 MMBD each, closely followed by Venezuela (1.4 MMBD).

With its 60-year-old monopoly lease of Saudi oil fields coming to an end in 2005, the US may well be confronted with a problem there. Moreover, the US' own proven oil reserves have declined 20 per cent since 1990 and its production remains at a nearly 50 year low. (EIA's stats available on www.eia.doe.gov).

There was news recently that the US senate has, for considerations of environment, turned down the Bush administration's proposal to explore the rich oil reserves believed to be under the Atlantic Wild Life Refuge Region in Alaska. So despite what Prof. Wolfowitz told the simple-minded War Veterans the other day, oil is a concern for its largest guzzler in the world; though it may not be the reason for the current war on Iraq, oil could well be a major spin-off, like, you know, killing two birds with one stone.

Take, next, Wolfowitz's attempt to sell the ongoing war as 'a war of liberation to secure peace and freedom' for the US (apart from securing that for the Iraqi people.) Goodness gracious! Even the simple-minded American soldiers of yesteryears cannot be expected to swallow that bit. How on earth can an Iraq emaciated by 12 years of UN sanctions even cast a shadow on mighty America's security and freedom? It has no links with Al Qaeda; it hasn't known to threaten the mighty America even with the atom bomb of the firecracker variety.

Further, the UN inspectors didn't find anything terrorising or terrifying in Saddam's domain even in their latest round; what was found instead was that the documents (regarding Iraq's nuclear nexus with Niger) which the mighty USA presented to the UN Security Council were forgeries as poor as Saddam's subjects.

The paradox and the mystery here is that though it is North Korea that has boasted of its ability to drop nuclear-tipped missiles on US soil, the mighty America engages it -- not in a war of shock and awe, but in diplomatic talks.

What then is the truth behind the 'Iraqi Freedom War'?

Its seed lies in the document named 'Defense Policy Guidance' (DPG) written in 1992 by two who were then relatively obscure political appointees of President Bush Sr in the Pentagon's policy department in the aftermath of the Gulf War. The authors were Paul Wolfowitz and I Lewis Libby, currently Vice-President Dick Chenney's chief-of-staff.

The draft DPG called for US military pre-eminence over Eurasia by preventing the rise of any potentially hostile power and a policy of pre-emption against states suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. When excerpts of the DPG's draft version leaked to The New York Times, Senator Joseph Biden, a Democrat, was horrified and denounced the document as a prescription for 'literally a Pax Americana.'

After eight years of Bill Clinton's regime of friendly America reaching out to the world, Pax Americana became the uninhibitedly stated major objective of another document entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century prepared in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think tank called Project for the New American Century. This document, peppered with criticism of Clinton's policies, admits it 'saw the project as building upon the defense strategy' outlined by DPG of Wolfowitz and Libby. And Wolfowitz was, naturally, a participant in the PNAC. And President Bush Junior's 'National Security Strategy,' announced in September 2002, is, naturally, based on the PNAC document.

The 90-page PNAC document is an unashamedly self-righteous exhibit of America's arrogance as the globe's only superpower. Its founding 'Statement of Principles' asks --

• 'Does the United States have the resolve to shape a century favourable to America's principles and interests?'
• calls for 'a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad' and for 'a national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities"
• warns that 'If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests.'

Note the absence above of stating what the American principles and fundamental interests are. Not, too, the exclusion of any reference to democracy, equality, plurality, world peace, environment preservation, poverty alleviation and human rights.

In the immediate context of the Iraq war, just two excerpts from the PNAC are revealing. It says that 'constabulary missions' (the new phrase coined to denote the traditional peace keeping missions) 'demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations. Nor can the United States assume a UN-like stance of neutrality; the preponderance of American power is so great and its global interest so wide that it cannot pretend to be indifferent to the political outcome in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf or even when it deploys forces in Africa.'

• 'While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification (for enforcing no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq), the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.' (So much then for 'regime change' in Baghdad requiring an invasion by America.)

Some other alarming facets of the PNAC document are its support of a blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival

• its expression of worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA
• its spotlighting of China for 'regime change'
• its call for the creation of a 'US Space Force' to dominate space and cyberspace in order to prevent 'enemies' from using the Internet against the US
• its hint that the US may consider developing biological weapons

In short, forget the present war as being one to force 'tyrant' Saddam into history. Forget democratisation of Iraq. Forget destroying his alleged weapons of destruction. Forget what Wolfowitz tells America's Veterans of War. It's just Pax Americana, stupid, and its many gains, viceregal appointments and all, in the new 21st century colonialism of Stars and Stripes.

The Gulf War II

Reuters 03.28.03, 5:08 PM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela, March 28 (Reuters) - Breaking a two-month hard currency drought, Venezuela's government on Friday approved the first allocation of dollars for essential imports under strict currency controls which many private firms fear will put them out of business. Leftist President Hugo Chavez's government suspended foreign exchange trading in January and decreed the curbs to halt capital flight and a slide in the bolivar currency triggered by a crippling opposition strike in the world's No. 5 oil exporter. The government set a fixed exchange rate of 1,600 bolivars to the dollar but a 65-day delay in the implementation of the hard currency allocation mechanism had left importers, exporters and individuals clamoring for greenbacks. Edgar Hernandez, head of the state currency control board Cadivi, said on Friday the board had authorized the allocation of $5.29 million covering the first five applications of a list of 60 requests made by companies seeking dollars to import goods. "This is expected to be paid out today," Hernandez, a former military officer and a political ally of Chavez, told a news conference in Caracas. He did not say what products were involved but added other allocations would follow. Oil-rich Venezuela imports around 60 percent of its basic needs and business leaders said the dollar drought threatened many firms with financial ruin. They have also predicted the currency controls will generate corruption, cause shortages of products and stimulate inflation. Hernandez said an additional $30,000 had also been authorized to cover the needs of students studying abroad and other special cases requiring hard currency. Foes of Chavez, including many private business executives who supported the strike in December and January, have accused the populist president of trying to use the currency controls in a political vendetta to starve them of dollars. They say the president, who survived a coup last year, is trying to crush his powerful private business opponents as part of a plan to implant Cuban-style communism in Venezuela. Chavez says the strike, which slashed vital oil output and exports, inflicted serious damage on the oil-reliant Venezuelan economy. He says the controls are needed to protect the country's international reserves and ensure that scarce dollars are used to import essentials like food and medicine. Hernandez said the long delay in the start of the centralized dollar allocations was due to logistical problems. The government has said the curbs will be lifted when oil exports recover momentum and political tensions ease. Before the forex market was closed Jan. 22, the Central Bank had been selling an average of around $60 million a day. Since the controls were introduced, a flourishing black market in dollars has emerged, in which the greenback is being traded at between 2,200 bolivars and 2,300 bolivars. Opponents of Chavez have appealed to the Supreme Court to annul the controls, arguing they were unlawfully introduced without the approval of the National Assembly. The country's top tribunal has still not made a ruling on the appeal.