www.forbes.com Reuters, 01.15.03, 9:51 AM ET By Hugh Bronstein

NEW YORK, Jan 15 (Reuters) - The Venezuelan opposition moved its struggle against President Hugo Chavez to the international stage on Wednesday, urging Wall Street players to pressure the leftist leader into calling early elections.

As Chavez's foes extended a national strike aimed at ousting the beleaguered president into its 45th day, members of the opposition told an audience of market analysts, investors, and Venezuelan expatriates here that if their efforts succeeded, Venezuela would become a safer place to invest.

"The international community can no longer be passive. It has to take on a greater role," said Timoteo Zambrano, a member of the National Assembly of Venezuela, at a meeting sponsored by the Americas Society.

As the domestic standoff, which has crippled oil production in the world's fifth largest petroleum exporter, intensifies, both sides in the conflict have appealed for international support. Chavez is set to hold talks on Thursday with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York.

Opposition leaders argued that while Chavez was elected fairly in 1998, he has since veered off the democratic course, putting basic liberties, such as freedom of the press and property rights, in jeopardy.

"It is not only necessary for the president to be democratically elected, but also that he continue along the democratic pathway," said Carlos Fernandez, president of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Caracas.

Outside the gathering on the streets of New York's posh Park Avenue a dozen pro-Chavez demonstrators shouted slogans defending his presidency.

The protesters' voices drifted through the meeting room's second floor window even as Fernandez blasted Chavez for his poor handling of the Venezuelan economy. He said poverty has increased 25 percent during Chavez's administration, and sharply criticized him for describing the opposition as coup-plotters.

"We have proven that we want a constitutional and democratic solution," he said.

Chavez, notorious on Wall Street for his fiery rhetoric and brash leadership style, was elected in 1998. He vowed to wrest control from what he branded the country's corrupt elite and enact reforms to help the poor. But opposition has grown amid charges the president wants to establish a Cuban-style authoritarian state. Chavez weathered a short-lived coup last April.

Fellow opposition leader Carlos Ortega, president of the confederation of Venezuelan workers, or CTV, also addressed the Americas society.

www.wsws.org By Kate Randall and Barry Grey 15 January 2003

In recent weeks popular opposition to the impending war against Iraq has grown not only internationally, but also within the US. Even polls published by the pro-war American media show a sharp drop in support for Bush’s war drive. A CBS News poll published January 7 reported that only 29 percent of Americans support unilateral US military action against Iraq, while 63 percent favor a diplomatic solution.

Nevertheless, the Bush administration continues its feverish military buildup in the Persian Gulf, with an estimated 160,000 troops now present or en route to the area. According to the same CBS poll, while a majority of Americans oppose a war, 74 percent believe it is inevitable—a feeling that owes a great deal to the prostration of the Democratic Party to the Bush White House and its general support for the administration’s war policy.

The government’s justification for an invasion—based on the claim that Iraq poses an imminent military threat—is becoming more and more threadbare. There is open discussion in the media that the failure of UN inspectors to find evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is fueling public skepticism toward the administration’s war agitation.

Recent events in Korea have further undermined the White House propaganda campaign. Government spokesmen have been unable to explain the disparity between American policy toward North Korea and the administration’s war drive against Iraq. At least publicly, the administration insists that North Korea—which is openly developing a nuclear weapons capacity—is to be dealt with through diplomatic channels, while Iraq—where there is no evidence of nuclear weapons—is to be bombed, invaded and militarily occupied.

In the face of the failure of the government/media campaign to build mass support for a US invasion of Iraq, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman has felt obliged to come to the aid of the Bush war cabal by proposing a shift in its propaganda. Hence Friedman’s January 5 column headlined “A War for Oil?”

In this thoroughly cynical piece, Friedman concedes what is obvious to anyone who has followed the US military buildup against Iraq with any objectivity: Bush’s plan to invade the country is driven, above all, by a determination to seize control of Iraqi oil.

The column is by no means the first effort by Friedman to provide a cover of legitimacy and even humaneness to Washington’s war drive. On December 1, for example, he authored a column in which he urged his readers to “pay no attention” to the inspections taking place in Iraq. Instead, to fabricate a pretext for war, he advocated that the United Nations, at the bidding of the US, kidnap Iraqi scientists, remove them and their families from Iraq, and allow American interrogators to extract “proof” of weapons of mass destruction from their captives. [See “Inventing a pretext for war against Iraq—Friedman of the Times executes an assignment for the Pentagon”]

At that time, Friedman had no quarrel with the official line that Iraq represented an imminent threat to the safety of Americans. But, despite the columnist’s urging, millions of Americans have been paying attention to the weapons inspections—as well as the rising toll of layoffs and pay cuts at home—and have grown increasingly hostile to the administration’s obsession with war, as well as to Bush himself.

Thus the “liberal” war hawk Friedman feels compelled to shore up the flagging credibility of the Bush administration’s case for war. “Is the war that the Bush team is preparing to launch in Iraq really a war for oil?” he asks. “My short answer is yes. Any war we launch in Iraq will certainly be—in part—about oil. To deny that is laughable.”

Friedman admits, quite openly, that the official reasons given by the government for a war against Iraq are lies, and crude ones at that. He writes that Bush’s “recent attempt to hype the Iraqi threat by saying that an Iraqi attack on America—which is most unlikely—‘would cripple our economy’ was embarrassing.”

He continues: “Let’s cut the nonsense. The primary reason the Bush team is more focused on Saddam [than on North Korea] is because if he were to acquire weapons of mass destruction, it might give him the leverage he has long sought—not to attack us, but to extend his influence over the world’s largest source of oil, the Persian Gulf.”

Thus, having acknowledged that the US government is lying to the American people and the world, Friedman seeks to fashion a new justification for war against Iraq. It is not a matter of self-defense, or even countering something Iraq has done. Rather, the country must be attacked and occupied because the regime might—in the future—extend its influence over the world’s largest oil reserves.

“There is nothing illegitimate or immoral about the US being concerned that an evil, megalomaniacal dictator might acquire excessive influence over the natural resource that powers the world’s industrial base,” he writes.

Leaving aside Friedman’s use of pre-packaged epithets to demonize the Iraqi ruler, this statement is remarkable for its espousal of a course that violates every cannon of international law. Friedman is asserting that the US has the right, unilaterally and preemptively, to attack any country or regime that it deems to be a threat to “the world’s industrial base.”

In other words, the US has the right to wage wars of plunder against those countries that stand in the way of its monopoly of vital natural resources. If, in the process, it violates the national sovereignty of weak and small countries, deprives the local populace of the benefits of resources located on its national soil, and kills untold thousands of people—so be it.

It is self-evident, Friedman would have us believe, that the world would be far safer and happier if the oil in the Persian Gulf were in the hands of American-based oil giants and the US military machine than if it remained in the hands of the Iraqis.

But the implications of this argument go beyond Iraq and the Persian Gulf. If Friedman’s injunction is true for Iraqi oil, then why not for Russian oil, or that of Venezuela, Nigeria and other oil-possessing nations? Why, moreover, should America’s global mission be limited to the “protection” of oil? What about iron, copper, cobalt, uranium and other vital ores? Can the US permit other nations to get control of that other increasingly scarce strategic resource—water?

The logic of Friedman’s position is clear. It is a formula for imperialist aggression and plunder not seen since the heyday of the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s. There is no essential difference between the impulse of global domination by means of military violence that underlies Friedman’s arguments and that which was summed up in the Nazi demand for “Lebensraum.”

In line with the “liberal” pretensions of the New York Times editorial board, Friedman tries to give his defense of imperialist war a progressive twist. Advocating a “politically-correct” policy of aggression, he argues that the “Bush team would have a stronger case for fighting a war partly for oil it if made clear by its behavior that it was acting for the benefit of the planet, not simply to fuel American excesses.”

“I have no problem with a war for oil,” he writes, “if we accompany it with a real program for energy conservation.”

Friedman concludes by declaring that an oil war in Iraq “would be quite legitimate” if, after bombing and conquering the country, the US helped “Iraqis build a more progressive, democratizing Arab state.” Here the Times columnist echoes the growing chorus of liberal apologists for American imperialism, who seek to attribute a historically progressive and humanitarian role to the single most violent and destructive force on the planet.

www.news24.com 15/01/2003 13:09  - (SA)  

Caracas - Venezuela's vice president said the government would respect the high court if it rules to allow a February 2 referendum on President Hugo Chavez's rule.

However, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel warned that such a ruling would create chaos in this country of 24 million coping with a general strike called by opponents to overthrow Chavez.

"If the Supreme Tribunal confirms the referendum is constitutional we will accept this verdict," said Rangel. The government, he added, complied with a ruling exonerating the leaders of an April 11 coup against Chavez.

Anger is growing on both sides as the strike drags into its sixth week. It has hurt oil production in the world's fifth largest exporter and depleted store shelves. Chavez's opponents call him authoritarian and unfit to govern, while supporters of the leftist former paratrooper accuse strikers of trying to force a coup.

On Tuesday, an airliner headed to the Dominican Republic was forced to return to Caracas when passengers staged an on-board protest targeting an ally of Chavez.

They shook fold-out trays and shouted to protest the presence of retired General Belisario Landis, Venezuela's ambassador in Santo Domingo, shortly after the Aeropostal-Alas de Venezuela flight left the ground. The pilots returned to Caracas, and everyone on board was evacuated.

Citizens can convoke referendum

The Boeing 727 took off again an hour later, after passengers promised not to disrupt the flight again.

Another incident occurred inside the airport on Tuesday when an unidentified man threw a teargas grenade at a group that was shouting "Assassins! Assassins!" at three pro-Chavez lawmakers.

After a few minutes of confusion, the airport continued functioning normally.

On November 6, opposition groups fought through teargas and bullets to present election authorities with the 2 million signatures required to convoke the nonbinding referendum on Chavez's rule.

Under Venezuelan law, citizens can convoke a referendum by gathering signatures from at least 10% of the nation's 12 million registered voters.

If high court magistrates declare the referendum legal, Rangel said, the government will urge "Chavistas", as the president's supporters are called, to abstain from casting ballots.

Allies and adversaries of Chavez have presented the Supreme Tribunal with 14 cases for and against the plebiscite.

Chavez, who was elected in 1998 and re-elected two years later, argues the only way he can be removed from office is through a recall referendum in August, halfway through his 6-year term.

Chavez says his government won't transfer $22m required by election authorities to organise balloting until the court decides if the vote is legally sound.

Riding roughshod over public institutions

While the fate of the referendum remains in limbo, opponents of Chavez claim the former paratrooper is building an authoritarian regime and riding roughshod over public institutions.

The Bloque de Prensa, the nation's largest association of newspapers, issued a statement Tuesday accusing Chavez of "violent repression of peaceful marches" and preparing "to close television and radio stations" critical of his government.

Leaders of the Democratic Coordinator opposition movement said they would intensify the strike in response to a government takeover of the Caracas police force.

Soldiers loyal to Chavez seized riot gear from the police department Tuesday in what Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena, an opposition supporter, called a deliberate effort to undermine him.

Pena said the raid stripped police of their ability to control street protests that have erupted almost daily since the strike began on December 2. Five people have died in strike-related demonstrations.

Police used teargas on Tuesday to separate pro- and anti-Chavez protesters. Caracas Fire Chief Rodolfo Briceno said one protester was wounded by gunshots and another hit by a vehicle. Both were in stable condition, he said.

Rangel said the seizure was part of an effort to make police answer for alleged abuses against pro-Chavez demonstrators. The government accuses police of killing two Chavez supporters during a melee two weeks ago.

Troops searched several police stations at dawn, confiscating submachine guns and 12-gauge shotguns used to fire rubber bullets and tear gas, said Freddy Torres, the department's legal consultant. Officers were allowed to keep their standard-issue .38-caliber pistols.

Chavez ordered troops to take control of the force in November, but the Supreme Court ordered it restored to Pena last month.

Also on Tuesday, seven people died and four were burned when improperly stored gasoline exploded in western Venezuela. Officials said they didn't know what caused three containers of gas to explode.

Fuel shortages caused by the strike have prompted many Venezuelans to stockpile gasoline using containers unfit for such purposes. Warnings by state authorities against inappropriate storage and transportation of gasoline have been largely ignored by the population. - Sapa-AP

www.sptimes.com With a strike worsening in the South American country, more people retreat to the city that has long been a second home.

By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent © St. Petersburg Times published January 15, 2003

MIAMI -- It was the day after Christmas that Venezuelan businessman Luis Bethencourt finally decided it was time to get his family out of the country.

At a condominium meeting for his upscale barrio in the east of the capital, Caracas, residents were planning for war.

"No one was talking about fixing up the park," he said. "They were drawing up inventories of weapons."

More than 40 days into a general strike that has crippled the state oil industry and closed most schools, Bethencourt fears his country is headed toward violent confrontation.

He and many others who can afford to leave are packing their bags -- and most are heading to South Florida. Some own homes in the area, which has long been a favorite holiday and shopping destination for Venezuelans. Others are renting.

Desperate parents have been showing up at one elementary school in Key Biscayne, where 15 new students -- all Venezuelan -- have enrolled since classes restarted last week.

Opposition leaders called the strike to demand the resignation of leftist President Hugo Chavez. Despite mounting economic chaos, Chavez has refused to budge, accusing the opposition of trying to mount a coup.

Fearing the worst, Venezuelans in South Florida who plan to return home to join antigovernment street protests are stocking up on protective material at security stores. On the streets of Caracas, opposition demonstrators clash almost daily with riot troops equipped with tear gas. Several people have died in shootings.

"People are afraid," said Josephina Capriles, the Venezuelan-born owner of Spytrix, a North Miami security store where sales of bullet-proof jackets and gas masks are booming. "I used to sell two bulletproof jackets a month but now I sell three a day," she said, adding that the extra sales were to Venezuelans.

Capriles offers discounts to Venezuelan clients. An Italian-made jacket costs $375, reduced from $498. Gas masks go for around $140. Other popular items include Mace, stun guns and more powerful electromuscular disruption devices, which can put down a human target at 20 feet.

"We are going back, but we have to be prepared," said Leopoldo Baptista, the 60-year-old owner of a major Venezuelan construction company. Baptista spent several thousand dollars at Spytrix on protective gear for his wife and children.

Venezuelans have always felt at home in Miami. After an oil boom in the 1960s made the country the fifth-largest exporter of crude in the world, middle-class Venezuelans became frequent visitors at Miami shopping malls.

At least 40,000 Venezuelans live in South Florida, according to the 2000 census. The figure is likely much larger as nonresidents tend to be undercounted. Most new arrivals enter the country on tourist visas valid for up to six months.

Since the strike began, it is not uncommon to see cars in South Florida flying the Venezuelan flag. About 40 demonstrators held a protest recently outside a Citgo gas station, a chain affiliated with Venezuela's state-owned oil company.

When opposition leaders announced in late December that they were calling for a February referendum on Chavez's rule, the Venezuelan consulate in Miami was besieged by thousands of expatriates seeking to register to vote.

"We registered almost 4,000 new voters," said the consul, Antonio Hernandez, double the existing number.

Like Miami, Venezuela was a refuge for Cuban exiles after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. These days the political ties are stronger. Opponents of Chavez accuse him of trying to create a Castro-style dictatorship.

On Saturday Cuban exiles are organizing a rally in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood to express their solidarity with the anti-Chavez cause.

Venezuela's political crisis is a daily topic on Spanish-language TV and radio news shows. Miami's Univision affiliate, WLTV-Ch. 23, devoted a 20-minute segment on its Saturday morning show, Miami Now, to a studio debate between Venezuelan exiles.

Two Miami radio hosts made headlines last week when they caught Chavez in an on-air prank. The pair managed to have a live phone conversation with Chavez by using tape of Castro's voice.

Cuban exiles also are playing host to dissident Venezuelan military officers who have rebelled against Chavez.

Last week the president's former pilot, air force Maj. Juan Diaz, held a news conference accusing Chavez of providing financial support to the former Taliban government in Afghanistan and al-Qaida. Diaz, who offered no evidence, also alleged that Venezuelan civilians were being sent to Cuba for secret military training.

During the political crisis, airlines have trimmed their operations from 21 daily flights between Miami and Venezuela to eight. Revenue lost from visitors to Miami is estimated at $60-million a month, according to the Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce.

The strike also has hurt local businesses, which have been unable to ship goods.

With supplies drying up in Caracas, Venezuelans who travel home are presented with long shopping lists from friends and relatives.

"I just got a call from a family member asking me to bring flour, coffee, beer and Pepsi," Bethencourt said. "Can you believe it? Those are all Venezuelan export products. Now there isn't even any Pepsi!"

He and two brothers are planning to rotate in and out of Venezuela for the next few months keeping an eye on the family business.

"I have no idea how long this will last," he said.

Despite the comparisons with Cuba's Castro, Bethencourt and other Venezuelan exiles are hoping they won't have to wait 40 years.

www.globeandmail.com Associated Press

Caracas — Venezuela's Vice-President said Tuesday the government would respect the high court if it rules to allow a Feb. 2 plebiscite on President Hugo Chavez's rule.

However, Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel warned that such a ruling would create chaos in this country of 24 million coping with a general strike called by opponents to overthrow President Hugo Chavez.

"If the Supreme Tribunal confirms the plebiscite is constitutional we will accept this verdict," Mr. Rangel said. The government, he added, complied with a ruling exonerating the leaders of an April 11 coup against Mr. Chavez.

Anger is growing on both sides as the strike drags into its sixth week. It has hurt oil production in the world's fifth largest exporter and depleted store shelves. Mr. Chavez's opponents call him authoritarian and unfit to govern, while his supporters of the former paratrooper accuse strikers of trying to force a coup.

On Tuesday, an airliner headed to the Dominican Republic was forced to return to Caracas when passengers staged an on-board protest targeting an ally of Mr. Chavez. They shook fold-out trays and shouted to protest against the presence of retired Gen. Belisario Landis, Venezuela's ambassador in Santo Domingo, shortly after the Aeropostal-Alas de Venezuela flight left the ground.

The pilots returned to Caracas, and everyone on board was ordered off the plane.The Boeing 727 took off again an hour later, after passengers promised not to disrupt the flight again.

Another incident occurred inside the airport on Tuesday when an unidentified man threw a tear gas grenade at a group that was shouting "Assassins! Assassins!" at three pro-Chavez lawmakers. After a few minutes of confusion, the airport continued functioning normally.

On Nov. 6, opposition groups fought through tear gas and bullets to present election authorities with two million signatures required to convoke the plebiscite on Mr. Chavez's rule.

Under Venezuelan law, citizens can convoke a vote by gathering signatures from at least 10 per cent of the nation's 12 million registered voters. If high court magistrates declare the plebiscite legal, Mr. Rangel said, the government will urge Chavistas, as the President's supporters are called, to abstain from casting ballots.

Allies and adversaries of Mr. Chavez have presented the Supreme Tribunal with 14 cases for and against the plebiscite. The President, who was elected in 1998 and re-elected two years later, argues the only way he can be removed from office is through a recall referendum in August, halfway through his six-year term.

Mr. Chavez says his government will not transfer $22-million (U.S.) required by election authorities to organize balloting until the court decides if the vote is legally sound.

While the fate of the voteremains in limbo, opponents of Mr. Chavez claim the former paratrooper is building an authoritarian regime and riding roughshod over public institutions.

The Bloque de Prensa, the nation's largest association of newspapers, issued a statement Tuesday accusing Mr. Chavez of "violent repression of peaceful marches" and preparing "to close television and radio stations" critical of his government.

Leaders of the Democratic Coordinator opposition movement said they would intensify the strike in response to a government takeover of the Caracas police force.

Soldiers loyal to Mr. Chavez seized riot gear from the police department Tuesday in what Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena called a deliberate effort to undermine him.

Mr. Pena said the raid stripped police of their ability to control street protests that have erupted almost daily since the strike began Dec. 2. Five people have died in strike-related demonstrations.

Police used tear gas Tuesday to separate pro- and anti-Chavez protesters. Caracas Fire Chief Rodolfo Briceno said one protester was wounded by gunshots and another hit by a vehicle. Both were in stable condition, he said.

Mr. Rangel said the seizure was part of an effort to make police answer for alleged abuses against Chavez demonstrators. The government accuses police of killing two Chavez supporters during a melee two weeks ago.

Troops searched several police stations at dawn, confiscating submachine guns and 12-gauge shotguns used to fire rubber bullets and tear gas, said Commander Freddy Torres, the department's legal consultant. Officers were allowed to keep their standard-issue .38-calibre pistols.

Mr. Chavez ordered troops to take control of the force in November, but the Supreme Court ordered it restored to Mr. Pena last month.