<a href=www.cnsnews.com>Read Source By Alan Caruba CNSNews.com Commentary from the National Anxiety Center March 24, 2003

It is not too soon to look toward the rebuilding of Iraq after the war. "Once Iraqis stabilize and liberate their own capabilities and infrastructure, they will turn outward. Then the modern standard-bearers of the world's oldest civilization will use their extraordinary talents as entrepreneurs and facilitators to shine light on knowledge and information gaps all over the Middle East and beyond." So says Joseph Braude in his book, The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for its People, the Middle East, and the World . A senior analyst for Pyramid Research, a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm, Braude knows both the history and languages of the Middle East, and he offers an optimistic forecast.

<a href=www.cnsnews.com>Read here the complete source

www.vheadline.com Posted: Monday, March 24, 2003 By: Hector Dauphin-Gloire

Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 21:45:40 -0500 From: Hector Dauphin-Gloire montonero22@hotmail.com To: editor@vheadline.com Subject: Venezuela, Cuba, and Fidel

Dear Editor: There has been a lot of mendacious propaganda recently concerning how President Chavez is allegedly trying to turn Venezuela into another Cuba.

Left unsaid in all this is the presumption that Cuba is some sort of totalitarian hellhole that any decent person would want to avoid like the plague. But it is false to claim that Cuba is some sort of totalitarian terror that must be avoided at all costs.

In point of fact, in spite of the many problems and criticisms I have of the Castro regime, it must be acknowledged that they have done a better job at securing stability, social solidarity, and a decent standard of living for their people than most countries in the region; and while there certainly has been political repression, the fact is that human rights have been better protected in Cuba than in most Latin American countries historically.

Those who conclude that, because Cuba calls itself a Communist country, it must therefore be a tropical clone of Stalin's Russia, cannot have paid close attention to the historical record.

As a non-Communist (I am in fact highly critical of most communist countries, of Marxism as a philosophy, and of the totally unprincipled record of most world communist parties) but one sympathetic to the Cuban experience, I feel I must comment.

Let us consider, for a moment, a few facts about the historical record of socialism in Cuba. Let's consider the specific claims that the Cuban regime has disrespected human rights. One must first ask, what are human rights, or to put it another way, what are the obligations that society has to the individual?

If one accepts the general definition given by Simone Weil that these obligations involve satisfying man's spiritual as well as material needs, then we must observe that the Cuban regime has in fact provided food, housing, health care and education to all its people, something that only a few Latin American countries have done -- and something that democracies like India, to say nothing of the US itself, are still light years away from achieving.

What sort of "human rights" are being respected in the standard model of a developing-world neoliberal democracy -- the right to starve, to be without housing or without an education?

At least up until the loss of its main trade partner, these rights were met at a high level in Cuba. Today, Cuba doesn't have a whole lot of wealth to go around, it is a very poor country -- but in spite of that, everyone has the basic necessities of life, which is the most fundamental human right there is.

But more than that, Cuba has carried out a transformation in people's consciousness. They have created a society where people strive to fulfill themselves through helping others and serving the greater good, and where something more than power and money are the drivers of human relations.

For this and this alone they deserve praise, for creating a society where greed and pride are actively de-emphasized, and where true equality has been approximated more than anywhere else in the world.

What about the political repression, the executions, the lack of competitive elections that we hear so much about in Cuba?

To begin with, remember that the 10,000 or so political executions that have taken place in Cuba were almost all following either the civil war of 1957-1958, or the Playa Giron invasion ... and were of people that, by any standard were guilty of terrible crimes -- torture, civilian bombing, murder, corruption, treasonous invasion of their own homeland.

Consider how the French Resistance dealt with the Vichy collaborators after the victory of 1945, and then ask yourself if by that standard the executions carried out by Castro and Guevara were more along the lines of Stalinist terror, or were they more along the lines of justice?

Lest I seem to imply that all of the people executed by the Castro regime were guilty of war crimes, it is certainly not true (certainly innocent people were put to death mistakenly in the regime's excessive zeal to punish the guilty) but I do believe that most of them were guilty of such crimes. I also believe that such abuses, while terrible when they occur, are characteristic of all societies going through periods of war and revolution, and do not fall into the pathological model of Stalinist totalitarianism, where anyone who was or might potentially be a threat to Stalin, or simply not supportive enough, was summarily executed.

Cuba has been authoritarian, I believe, but not totalitarian -- more along the lines of Hapsburg Austria, or France in 1945, than Stalinist Russia.

My family background stems from a developing country (not in Latin America) which is a textbook example of democracy -- yet in spite of that, political violence, corruption, arbitrary arrest and police torture are commonplace occurrences.

Say what you will about Cuba, they don't have extra-judicial executions, and torture is now a thing of the past.

Yes, you can lose your job or be arrested for speaking subversively about the government, and, while that is wrong, one must bear in mind that countries under siege from a foreign power (the US) ... which has tried to overthrow it by means ranging from propaganda to outright violence ... can often not afford to be liberal.

Where are human rights better respected -- in a country like India, where you can participate in competitive elections and freely speak your mind, but run the risk of arbitrary arrest, political assassination, and be stifled by daily corruption ... or in Cuba, where you are protected against these practices, even if you do lack the right of free speech?

And let's remember that while Cuba arrested its dissidents, it did not kill them in the way that regimes like Argentina, Chile, or Guatemala chose to do.

My closest friend has worked in Cuba, and he attests to the fact that he saw better relations between the police and the people in Cuba than in any other country he has seen including the USA. In much of the US, people actively fear the police; in Cuba, my friend says, he saw people relating to the police as equals, on a friendly basis. Cuba is called a 'police state' by its enemies ... but this account seems to question that assumption.

And I haven't even begun to touch Cuban foreign policy.

While Cuba (like every country) was in bed with a lot of unsavory characters (like the genocidal Ethiopian tyrant, Mengistu) they also did more than any other country to liberate Nicaragua from the Somoza tyranny, South Africa and Namibia from apartheid and countries like Angola from Portuguese colonialism.

This is but a brief attempt to counter some myths about Cuba, Venezuela's closest friend and ally at the current moment in time.

I am sure that there will be comments regarding this, and I hope to deal with some more issues that I expect will come up in the course of those responses.

Sincerely, Hector Dauphin-Gloire montonero22@hotmail.com Environmental Technician

<a href=www.upi.com>Source By Hil Anderson UPI Chief Energy Correspondent From the National Desk Published 3/23/2003 9:51 PM

LOS ANGELES, March 23 (UPI) -- A flare-up of simmering ethnic violence in Nigeria could soon replace the war in Iraq as the major cause of anxiety for oil traders, who return to work Monday after seeing world crude prices plummet at the end of last week.

ChevronTexaco said Sunday that it had joined the French oil major TotalFinaElf in evacuating personnel and shutting down some operations in the Niger Delta region of the African nation, which has become a leading supplier of crude to the United States.

"The safety of people is our absolute priority and is the reason for our decision to shut in production and relocate our people and community members displaced by the crisis to safe locations," said Jay Pryor, managing director of the Chevron Nigeria Ltd., subsidiary. "While we do not believe the unrest is directed toward CNL people or assets, we do not consider it safe for our people to remain in the Western Niger Delta, given the current situation."

The news from western Africa came after a wildly bearish week that saw front-month crude fall from dizzying heights of near $40 per barrel to Friday's $26.30 settlement price on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Meanwhile, some price firming was seen on the Singapore exchange late Sunday as Asian traders apparently reacted to the weekend's sharper fighting in Iraq.

ChevronTexaco said it had shut down daily production capacity of 44,000 barrels of oil and 285 million cubic feet of natural gas as well as the Escravos tanker-loading terminal.

Nigeria, an OPEC member and the fifth-largest supplier of crude to the United States, has recently seen an upsurge in fighting among government troops and the two major ethnic groups in the delta region. That region accounts for much of the country's 2 million barrels per day of crude production. Nigeria also supplies oil to India as well as nations in Europe and Asia.

Both ChevronTexaco and TotalFinaElf have declared a "force majeure" for scheduled March deliveries of crude, which means the companies won't guarantee their contracted deliveries will be made on schedule. Such declarations often force oil traders to find replacement supplies on the volatile spot market, where buyers often find that the price is well above the going rate.

The trading period for April crude futures has already expired on the world's major commodities exchanges, although May prices could become more unpredictable as traders calculate the impact the lost Nigerian production will have on oil supplies in the industrialized world.

Crude markets soared in recent months after labor and political strife derailed Venezuela's state oil company, and the United States and Britain began gearing up for what last week became a full-scale invasion of Iraq.

Futures prices tumbled last week after traders decided that the war would be a relatively quick one with little disruption to oil exports from other Persian Gulf producers.

"There is no shortfall in oil production," OPEC Chairman Abdullah bin Hamad al-Atiyyah told an audience in Qatar Sunday.

"OPEC has the capacity to augment production to meet any scarcity in the markets."

According to a Qatari media report monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp., the chairman said that the 3 million bpd that had been lost due to cutbacks in Venezuela and Iraq had been restored, and the cartel saw no need for any immediate increases in production.

"This is a positive development since it has reduced the pressure on world markets and has created a surplus and thus achieved a significant reduction in prices," he added, without addressing the problems in Nigeria. "There is no reason for any anxiety. We do not draw our plans on the basis of fear and anxiety but on the basis of supply and demand in the markets."

Iraq's limited crude exports under the United Nations' oil-for-food program have been suspended, although it appears that Iraq will be able to get back into the market relatively quickly once the Anglo-American invasion comes to a close.

Previous fears that Baghdad would carry out a scorched-earth campaign in its oilfields were on the wane during the weekend after reports from the field found only a handful of wells in the south had actually been torched.

"We have in fact saved the southern oil fields for the Iraqi people, and that's a very good thing, and it was a big risk," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told NBC's "Meet the Press."

"There are only some 10 out of 500-plus oil wells that are still burning and we have people coming in tomorrow and the next day to repair them."

The BBC reported that a statement from the Baghdad government published in an Iraqi newspaper Sunday heatedly denied the Iraqis were torching their own oil facilities and said: "What is burning in that area is no more than artificial trenches filled with oil to be used as obvious methods of defense."

Iraqi forces were slowly being pushed out of the areas around Basra and Umm Qasar on Sunday, giving the allies virtual control over the region's oil infrastructure, harbors and a refinery with a capacity to process 140,000 bpd of crude.

Weapons of mass destruction, not oil. Sunday, March 23, 2003 By JENNIFER HICKS Norwich Bulletin

MYSTIC -- The war in Iraq is about weapons of mass destruction, not about oil, according to U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District.

Simmons, a Vietnam veteran and former CIA agent, talked about the war Saturday at his office in Mystic. He said America gets most of its oil from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia and not from Iraq.

Simmons said he understands U.S. forces trying to end the war quickly by conducting operations such as Friday's "shock and awe" bombing campaign.

"That kind of attack to the heart of their leadership has a lot of impact," he said.

He also said he doesn't believe the U.S. strikes will increase the risk of terrorist attacks here in retaliation.

"We're at the risk of terrorist attacks in this country to a greater or lesser degree, regardless of these attacks," Simmons said.

He said he believes the United States is sending a clear signal to countries that support terrorism to show it's not going to tolerate it.

Simmons said the Iraqi government failed to comply with 17 U.N. resolutions to disarm, particularly resolution 1441. He said satellite photos taken by the CIA showed suspicious buildings and vehicles.

"In situations like this, you have to be prepared to use force. War is an extension of politics by other means," he said. "I'm against war, but I believe it can be used as a last resort."

He said this war is a last resort to quash the goal of the Iraqi regime -- which is to kill Americans.

He said the Iraqi regime resents the influence that Western culture is having in the Middle East.

"They have fundamental differences and values than us," he said. "They feel our culture is taking over in other parts of the world."

Simmons also doesn't believe America's loss of allied support for the war will be long-term He said U.S. allies have disagreed with us in the past and then resolved the issues. He believes that will be the case again.

He said Congress' move to change the name of French fries to "freedom" fries because of France's reluctance to support the war was just for humor.

He said France, China, Russia and Germany have lucrative oil negotiations with Iraq, which is probably their reason for keeping out of the war.

He predicted Americans would continue to order Chinese take-out and White Russians even though the names come from countries standing on the sidelines of the war.

Simmons said the anti-war protests make this war different from other wars, such as Vietnam. Anti-war movements during Vietnam started several years after the war began.

"Here, we have a movement that preceded the war," he said of today's protests.

Simmons said protesters have the right to voice their opinions. Some might not have gathered all of the facts about the war, while others are pacifists, he said.

"I have great respect for pacifists," he said.

But, he said, Saddam Hussein is not a pacifist and eventually will go after the American people.

jehicks@norwichbulletin.com