www.vheadline.com Posted: Friday, March 14, 2003 By: Kay Onefeather

Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 22:16:21 EST From: Kay Onefeather Kaonefeather@aol.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: What Am I Missing?

Dear Editor: What am I missing?  I fail to understand how street rioting and open rebellion against the duly elected President of Venezuela is "democracy in action."

What am I missing?

It wasn't the sabotage of oil refineries by employees of the opposition to halt production  of the prized "Black Gold."

It wasn't the televised demand for assassination of President Chavez Frias by one of the oppositions leaders.

I didn't and haven't missed the overwhelming poverty suffered by the majority of the population for decades, while the opposition was in control.

I didn't miss the blatant attempts to paralyze the economy, with NO regard for the sufferings of the people.

I didn't miss all the attempts to force illegal early elections.

I do not miss the almost daily shenanigans of the conniving opposition malcontents, bent on destroying the democratically-elected President, at the expense of the country -- Venezuela -- and its people.

What General of one democracy would dare say such things are "democracy in action," when these things  are happening in another democracy? Certainly not one from my country! The very first attempt at such malfeasance would be swiftly dealt with, no exception.

So...what am I missing?

Where is this double standard evaluation originating?

Perhaps, it is a misquote; perhaps a typo ... or, perhaps it is just another malicious lie.

One more lie amidst a deluge of lies about Venezuela.

Kay Onefeather kaonefeather@aol.com

www.vheadline.com Posted: Thursday, March 13, 2003 By: Kay Onefeather

Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:43:30 EST From: Kay Onefeather Kaonefeather@aol.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: Simple Truth

Dear Editor: There is a saying here: "Too many Chiefs, and not enough Indians."

It means everybody wants be a leader, and nobody wants to be a follower.  In Venezuela, there seems to be some "wannabe" leaders who refuse to follow ... like spoiled children, they try to disrupt everything and everyone, simply because they cannot have their own way.

• It's sad to see adults behaving so badly, adults who, if they were "adult" would use their resources to help the leader and help their countrymen.

Instead, they spend their time and resources plotting and conniving and conjuring up ways to disrupt and violate and infringe. Infringe upon the Rights of each and every Venezuelan to vote for and elect the leader of their choice ... which the people have done, time and time again.

But, the spoiled wannabees refuse to accept it.

Venezuelan people have the right to the leader of their choice.

What is it about that that the wannabees cannot understand?

Have the "oh, so many" years of "free-handing" in Venezuela left them incapable of understanding Simple Truth?

Kay Onefeather kaonefeather@aol.com

www.vheadline.com Posted: Thursday, March 13, 2003 By: Oscar Heck

VHeadline.com commentarist Oscar Heck writes: I recently received a letter from a USA military person (USMC) who fought in the Gulf War (1991) in Kuwait, where I was working at the time. He said something to the effect that many US personnel that fought in that war are not very happy with what I wrote in my last article … principally, my statement that the USA did not “help” Kuwait (as the USA claims) but that they were “paid” to do the job.

• I based my statement on what I was personally told by some Saudi Royalty members at the time.

First, I would like to apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings ... I would feel the same if I were told something to the effect that the effort I made in a war was of no value, or was not appreciated. In addition, I suspect that military personnel have no say in whether or not they will, or will not, do something that they either believe in or not.

Next, I decided to do a little numbers research:  Here are the results ... 32 countries (allies of Kuwait) apparently participated in the war, which lasted up to 42 days in January and February 1991. The total estimated cost of the war was US$82 billion ... there were approximately 700,000 allied troops; 540,000 from the USA. Apparently, the USA contributed US$18 billion (of a total of US$82 billion).

Here is my analysis: Using the above figures, US$18 billion  would cover roughly 22% of the military forces, being 154,000 people. The USA had 540,000 military personnel. Someone else paid for 540,000 minus 154,000 people, which represents 55% of the forces, which represents US$45.2 billion.

Now, supposing that the USA made a profit of 40% on the use of US$45.2 billion for their involvement in the war … the profit would be about US$18 billion ... in other words, the war may not have cost them a penny. (I suspect that it may be financially possible to make a 40% profit on operations of that nature, especially under situations of war).

Isn’t it also possible that the USA was/is/will be indirectly or directly involved in the reconstruction of Iraq’s infrastructure? (in 1991, estimated at US$200 billion).

More jobs for all ... more profits.

So, to conclude, the person that wrote to me saying that they (the USA) did it to “help” Kuwait, may be be right.

Depends how one looks at it.

As for the USA being “paid” to fight, I would still say yes, the USA was “paid” to fight...

Why?  Because 72% of the USA involvement in the war (as per the above figures) was paid for by others, not by the USA.

One thing for certain, the USA provided approximately 77% of the wo/man-power ... and that is admirable I suppose … if war is a justified and needed tool … and if one believes it.

• As far as I can see, the Saudis who told me that the USA was paid to fight were not wrong after all.

This article does not have much to do with Venezuela, at least not in a direct fashion. Indirectly, yes!  Venezuela can manage its own affairs without the “help” of the USA ... or any other country ... or group of “friends.”

“Help” can be interpreted in many different ways, depending on where one stands.

I am not “bashing” the USA ... as I was accused of doing … I just hope to awaken others to the dangers that Venezuela could face if Venezuela follows the path of Colombia in its partnerships with the United States of America

Saudi Arabia has lots of oil ... so does Kuwait, Iraq, Colombia … and Venezuela.

Oscar Heck oscarheck111@hotmail.com

www.prospect.org By John B. Judis Issue Date: 4.1.03

Much of the furious debate at the United Nations has been over whether inspectors are capable of disarming Iraq, but what really divides the United States from its chief critics on the Security Council are two diametrically opposed scenarios of a post-war Iraq. The American scenario, dubbed "new dawn," sees a transformed Iraq leading a democratic revolution in the Middle East that would sweep away monarchs and dictators, end the isolation of Ariel Sharon's Israel, boost oil production and bring in high-tech industry. The French and Russian scenario, dubbed the "gates of hell," foresees a rise in Islamic radicalism and terrorism and in global economic and military instability. No one can really know what this war would bring -- the repercussions from the Gulf War are still being felt -- but here are some reasons why, even if the United States quickly ousts Saddam Hussein, the Mideast might more closely resemble the gates of hell than the new dawn.

Democracy and modernization

The Bush administration hopes to imitate U.S. successes in establishing democracies in post-World War II Japan and Germany, but doing so in Iraq may prove far more difficult. Iraq has never experienced even a semblance of democracy. The country was knitted together by the British after World War I out of three Turkish-controlled provinces and is composed of three feuding religious-ethnic groups, the Sunnis, the Shia and the Kurds. Even though the Sunnis constitute only about a third of the population, the British, following the practice of the Turks, put this group in charge. Under Hussein they have remained so, but only by violently repressing separatist uprisings. Iraq after Saddam Hussein would be like Yugoslavia after Josip Broz Tito: It will be pulled apart by centrifugal forces. What most concerns American military strategies, for instance, is having to police a fractious post-war Iraq. Says one war college professor, "They aren't worried about fighting Iraq but about garrisoning it afterwards."

An invasion of Iraq could transform neighboring Arab countries, but not in ways that would fit the administration's specifications. After the Gulf War, Islamic radicals led upheavals in Egypt and Algeria. Currently the principal opponents of the Saudi and Kuwaiti monarchies and of the Algerian, Egyptian and Pakistani governments are pro-Palestinian, pro-al-Qaeda Islamic radicals who would turn these countries further away from the West.

Bush administration officials believe that a post-Hussein Iraq would also help modernize the Mideast, but Iraq is a poor candidate for this job. Like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, it would depend primarily on oil revenues for its income, and like other oil-rich states, it would suffer from what economists call the "Dutch disease" -- high exchange rates from its oil exports that price other potential export industries out of the world market. Even in countries such as Nigeria and Venezuela, oil wealth has undermined rather than encouraged modernization. The key to modernizing the economy of the Mideast would be to integrate the high-tech Israeli economy into the region, as some Israeli Labor Party officials advocated in the late 1990s. But that dream is unlikely to be realized by an invasion of Iraq that is meant, in part, to buttress the pro-occupation Likud Party's rule in Israel.

A decline in terrorism?

American strategists believe that by ousting Saddam Hussein, they will intimidate would-be terrorists. That might work in the short run, especially if combined with successes against al-Qaeda and with the Sharon government's no-holds-barred military offensive in the Gaza Strip, but it's not likely to provide a lasting solution. Al-Qaeda and other Arab terrorist groups put an Islamic gloss on Arab opposition to American and British imperialism, and to Israel as a proxy for Western imperialism. An American occupation of Iraq, along with continued backing for the Sharon government, would only strengthen this opposition. The immediate reaction could be confined to raucous but terminable street demonstrations. Yet if peoples and movements feel themselves faced with superior and unyielding military force, they often turn -- as the Chechens and Palestinians already have -- to terrorism.

As the Europeans have urged, the first step toward reducing terrorism in the region is not to invade Iraq but to begin resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. After the Gulf War, the intifada continued to rage but was cut short by the first Bush administration's aggressive diplomatic initiatives, the victory in 1992 of a Labor government and the subsequent Oslo Accords. If this Bush administration were to follow up a victory in Iraq with a peace offensive in Israel, it could, perhaps, begin removing a critical source of terrorism and unrest. With the pro-Likud Elliot Abrams now firmly in charge of policy toward Israel, however, the Bush administration is unlikely to pressure Israel to withdraw from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The region's peoples also have long memories. The Israelis keep believing that they have subdued Palestinian militancy only to find it returning stronger than ever. The first intifada took place five years after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon drove Yasir Arafat to Tunisia. In Iran, the United States helped engineer a coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953, restoring Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power and helping him crush his political opposition. But the opposition finally rose up again in the late 1970s, overthrew the shah and installed a virulently anti-American regime dominated by Islamic clerics. What goes around comes around.

Of course a U.S. overthrow of Hussein wouldn't necessarily embitter the Iraqis themselves. But the specter of the United States, with Israel watching enthusiastically from the sidelines, brutally imposing its will on an Arab regime, even one unpopular with its citizens, could inspire a strong response in the Arab world that would eventually take the form of terrorism. And if an American occupation persisted in Iraq, the Iraqis, too, might turn against their would-be liberators.

A prosperous America and world?

Bush strategists promise that a successful war would free up Iraq's oil resources and reduce world oil prices, helping to revive the flagging world economy. By contrast, the French and Russians warn of Hussein burning up his oil fields to prevent an American takeover, as he did to Kuwait's oil fields during the Gulf War. That would lead to skyrocketing energy prices and an almost certain world recession. It is impossible to say whether this will occur, but what can be said is that American predictions of an Iraqi oil boom are unfounded. According to a joint study by the Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Council on Foreign Relations, it would take Iraq as long as three years and cost up to $30 billion to restore even the production levels it enjoyed on the eve of the Gulf War.

The war -- and the resulting conflict between the United States and its European allies -- could also exact other tolls on the world economy. The United States is running a huge international-payments deficit of almost $3 trillion. Over the next decade, that deficit could spiral upward due to irresponsible fiscal policy and to military expenditures -- enlarged by the costs of occupation in Iraq and by foreign adventures in places such as the Philippines. During the Vietnam War, when the United States was running similar deficits, European pressure on the dollar helped precipitate a financial crisis in the early 1970s. The same thing could occur during the coming decade.

Such a crisis would be caused primarily by American financial overreach, but just as before it could be aggravated by geopolitical conflicts -- this time emanating from the bitter UN debate over Iraq. Already European Union countries are calling for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to denominate oil in euros rather than in dollars, and the Chinese have floated the idea of replacing the dollar with the yuan as the East Asian regional currency. These conflicts could also spur the creation of protectionist trade and currency blocs. The United States is threatening to retaliate against Germany by reducing its military expenditures there, while the EU opposition to American geopolitics probably contributed to the failure of the recent World Trade Organization meetings in Tokyo.

Economists argue that the trends toward globalization will sweep away these hostilities, but as Newsweek columnist Robert J. Samuelson recently pointed out, the opposite could happen: The conflicts themselves could threaten the global trading and financial order, as happened on the eve of World War I, when the world economy was just as integrated as it is now. Who knows: Perhaps an Iraq war would turn out to be an unfortunate but forgettable interval in world history, much like the Crimean War of the 1850s. But it could also turn out to be a watershed in international relations, one in which the United States, harboring illusions of omnipotence, undermined the international institutions created after World War II, sowed decades of discord in the strategically vital Mideast and, by fatally overreaching, set itself on a path of national decline. John B. Judis

Copyright © 2003 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: John B. Judis, "A Case for Hell," The American Prospect vol. 14 no. 4, April 1, 2003 .

www.vheadline.com Posted: Thursday, March 13, 2003 By: Charles Hardy

VHeadline.com commentarist Charles Hardy writes: Once upon a time there was a country in which many giants lived. The ordinary citizens greeted each other with a "Hello," "Good morning," "Good afternoon" or whatever would fit the occasion. The giants greeting to one another was always the same: "Don't fall."

The night when the Mexican intellectual, Don Miguel Alvarez, told me that fable he could see that I didn't get the point. He very kindly asked me, as though it was a part of the story, "Do you know why they greeted each other that way?"

"No,"I responded.

"They were so big they knew that if they ever fell they would never be able to get back up again."

I went to sleep that night pondering his words and woke up the next day with them imbedded in my mind ... the story was about Venezuela.

We have been living in the land of the giants during the past year.

First, there were the Generals and Admirals who thought they were so important that they could claim a part of the city of Caracas as territory for their own battle. Time would show that officers without soldiers backing them are simply imitation Mona Lisas, who are quickly removed from the museum when their lack of authenticity is discovered. They, had their admirers ... for a moment.

Then there was Pedro Carmona Estanga ... who after rising to the presidency of the big business organization Fedecamaras ... quickly thought he could be President of the country. His deportment displayed an act of momentary insanity, extreme insensitivity or total lack of wisdom.  You do not change the name of a country and wipe out the Constitution, the Congress and the Supreme Tribunal within hours after taking power.

Gradually, the triumvirate of Carlos Ortega, Carlos Fernandez and Juan Fernandez emerged. How they came to be the spokespersons for the Coordinadora (anti-) Democatica is a story that those on the inside will have to tell some day.

Today Carlos Fernandez is under house arrest; Carlos Ortega is in hiding; and Juan Fernandez had to notice on March 8 that there weren't the masses that used to be present when he and the others would mount the platform to speak ... even television coverage of the event that day wasn't what it used to be.

The triumvirate started a fight that they thought they could win. They were wrong, and the damage they did to others is incalculable.

Not only that, just think about the following: PDVSA is now going almost full speed again ... with more than 10,000 less employees, most of them executives and office workers!

To make matters even worse for the trio, the rest of the Coordinadora is happy with their absence. It gives them a chance to try to regroup. Among those who remain, there are still other giants. Will they too fall?

However ... is the story of the giants really applicable in Venezuela?

What about President Chavez?

Shouldn't he be put in the category of giant also? He fell.

Why was he able to get up?

Either the story is not valid or Chavez isn't a giant.

I like the second thesis, and think it could be helpful to understanding what is really happening in Venezuela.

Here's another story that you might have already heard. In one part of the ocean there were some giant fish that were eating all the little ones. A few of the tiny creatures got together and decided that they better think of something or they, too, would be eaten.

What they decided to do was to swim in formation so that they would look like a big fish and thus scare their aggressors away ... they did it, and it worked.

I would like to propose that Chavez is just a little fish, not a giant one. He may not even be at the head of the movement. A woman said to me one day, "I'm not a follower of Chavez. Chavez is following my ideas!" Listening to Chavez on 'Alo Presidente' it is not uncommon to hear him say to someone,  "That's a great idea!"

Thus, when Chavez was kidnapped, the organized fish didn't depend on him and didn't stop swimming. It turned around, tightened its ranks and because of its great size, it scared the giant fish away and the little fish Chavez was freed.

Those giants are going to try to come back.

But remember: the little fish have grown and the big fish haven't been eating as well as they used to. It is not going to be easy this time. Personally, I suggest that the big fish learn to make friends with the little fish. The little fish are willing.

Don't underestimate the importance of such an event if it can happen.  A lot has transpired the past year.  The blue Caribbean waters that touch Venezuela seem to be mingling with the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

It appears that some of them have already touched Brazil and Ecuador ... and, Bolivia has always wanted the entrance to the ocean that was taken away from her years ago by Chile.

If the big fish and little fish can learn to live together in Venezuela, the message might travel through all the waters of the world ... and the world will be better for what Venezuela has suffered.

Maybe even the giant fish in the United States, England and Spain could learn from the lesson before it is too late.

Charlie A native of Cheyenne, Wyoming (USA), VHeadline.com columnist Charles Hardy has many years experience  as an international correspondent in Venezuela. You may email him at: hardyce2@yahoo.com