MIDNIGHT REFLECTIONS ON POWER

It´s midnight. The candle flame turns blue.
The wicked sorcerer sets loose all the evil spirits of the underworld.

He already exploited the horse´s power, even the sacred cows are now running mad. Where have all the flowers, all the trees gone?

Even the air groans, moans, suffocated by the smog, the fog of the scorched log. The rain, gone with the wind; and, in the Iraqi desert air no rose blushes unseen anymore. Power, power reigns, rules the waves, the electro-magnetic waves, scalar waves. Rocks melt, faith no more moves mountains; Big Brother does. With the desert rats, Mohammad now hides in the dark sewerage systems, in the quagmire of powerful oil mongrels, of megalomaniac war mongers.

The bush is gone, so is the Bushman, only a wild bush fire scorches, scourges the agonizing face of the earth. Innocent bush-babies, so spoilt by their loving moms, now boil, broil in the oil of power.

Even knowledge is power, as Orwell predicted; gnosis, episteme, paedagogics, all fall under the heavy blows of the brotherly axe of Colin Powell and his rummy Nazi Feldmarschall, the honourable Rumsfeld. Infowar, psychowar, cognitive dissonance, psychotic disassociation shake the very foundation of Pallas Athena.

Power, Labour Power, Force, Coercion, Violence, call them all by any other name, even name them Democracy, in which Kratos definitely is Power per se, nonetheless, they all will remain just as terroristic, will remain powerful terror, terrorist power.

Franz J. T. Lee.
24/01/03.

Venezuela's Oil Crisis Boils Down to Power
Chavez Takes Steps to Increase His Authority

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 17, 2003; Page A18

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 16 -- The battle for Venezuela's oil industry has taken center stage in negotiations to end a 46-day-old general strike designed to remove President Hugo Chavez from power, and it promises to have a lasting impact on the state-owned industry that is the country's main source of wealth.

The stakes have increased in recent weeks for the United States as it moves toward a war with Iraq that could affect petroleum shipments from the Middle East. The United States used to get 15 percent of its foreign oil from Venezuela. But the strike has drastically cut exports and contributed to a rise in the price of gasoline at U.S. service stations.

Over the long term, the Venezuelan oil industry could draw more U.S. private investment if it is reformed according to Chavez's apparent plans. Officials and analysts say he would welcome foreign capital as he seeks to strengthen authority over a company that provides nearly half the government's $20 billion budget but has often acted as an independent and even hostile entity since Chavez was elected in 1998.

By increasing reliance on international partnerships, Chavez would be in a better position to avoid the work stoppages that have shut down the company twice in the past year, several diplomats, oil executives and opposition analysts said. In doing so, the president would also cut out Venezuela's private sector, mostly composed of opposition members, from many lucrative contracts with the state oil company, weakening its influence in the industry.

"He may end up with a much weaker company or a different model, one where he invites the foreign capital he chooses," said Luis Pacheco, an executive with Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) whom Chavez suspended from his job on Dec. 23. "In any event, every politician sees PDVSA as a political threat right now. You have 40,000 employees who believe they can change the course of the country."

In the past week, Chavez has fired 2,000 oil company employees, and more dismissals may be on the way. Among those ousted from their jobs were dissident white-collar managers who have resisted the president's attempts to harness the $40 billion-a-year company on behalf of his populist program. But the firings also included secretaries, technicians and other low-ranking employees in what opposition members interpret as a government signal that no one at the company is safe.

The purge is consistent with Chavez's repeated efforts over the past four years to rein in executives and appoint political allies to key positions. Knowing the president's track record, many opposition members and diplomats wonder why the employees walked out for a second time in the past year, giving Chavez the opportunity he has been seeking.

Chavez fired and then reinstated dissident white-collar managers after a similar walkout in April that led to his brief ouster in a military-led coup. He is unlikely to make that mistake twice, diplomats, Chavez allies and opposition members said.

"Right now it is harder to get an agreement on PDVSA than on elections," said a source close to the two-month-old negotiations to end the crisis, which is being mediated by Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States. "Those guys won't back down, and the government won't either."

The struggle for Petroleos de Venezuela is perhaps the most important element of Chavez's "social revolution," which he has promised to the majority of Venezuela's 23 million people who still live in poverty. It has also prompted the United States to take on a larger diplomatic role in resolving the crisis. It will be one of six countries participating in a "friends of Venezuela" advisory group, created Wednesday in Ecuador to support Gaviria's efforts.

During his 1998 campaign, Chavez called the oil company inefficient, profligate and unresponsive to the needs of the poor, alarming a group of executives who had taken pride in the company's reputation as a world-class firm since its creation in 1976. But the first serious resistance did not come until last April, when white-collar managers walked off their jobs to protest Chavez's appointment of political allies to the board of directors.

The walkout prompted a general strike, violent street marches and, eventually, Chavez's brief removal by senior military officers, many of whom have since been replaced by the allies of the president. The United States, tired of Chavez's hostile rhetoric and overtures to Cuba, Iraq and Iran, endorsed the interim government that replaced him. It collapsed two days later.

The current protest began with a general strike on Dec. 2. Oil employees joined in two days later, after troops used tear gas to disperse a peaceful demonstration in front of an oil-company building. Almost at once, several executives assumed leading roles in the opposition and at times have appeared to be dictating the terms of the strike.

Since then, the 3 million barrels of oil Venezuela produced daily has dwindled sharply. Dissident executives say the industry is producing 440,000 barrels a day; government officials put the figure at 1 million barrels. Diplomats estimate production at 600,000 barrels a day, much of it being produced by U.S. firms and other private companies in partnership with the government.

ChevronTexaco Corp., for example, has restarted its Boscan field on the western shore of Lake Maracaibo and produces 120,000 barrels a day there.

The shutdown has cost the government $4 billion, according to Rafael Ramirez, the minister of energy and mines, while forcing the country to import gasoline. The government, Petroleos de Venezuela and Citgo, the company's Tulsa-based retail arm, have all had their debt downgraded. The national currency, the bolivar, has lost about 30 percent of its value against the dollar since the year began.

Chavez, however, has kept some gas in the filling stations by urging private companies to begin production and breaking part of a tanker strike that has bottled up exports and new production. Oil exports are moving more easily out of Venezuela's eastern fields and ports, but are still largely frozen in the western region, where the infrastructure is older and many tankers remain at anchor.

The financial effects could be more acutely felt by the government in the coming days, since the five-week lag for oil payments from abroad is about to mean no new money for pre-strike shipments. In addition, according to oil analysts here, inexperienced replacement workers have yet to resolve the key choke points in the production chain, namely the striking tankers and inadequate storage space.

"There really is just tremendous confusion right now within the company," a diplomat here said. "Over time that will drop off and the government will get to a million barrels a day." But, the diplomat continued, any production above that would require "many more bodies in the [oil] fields who know what they are doing" and months of work to restart the entire industry.

Chavez's hard-line tactics have foreign and domestic oil analysts wondering what he has in mind. Exerting greater political control over the 40,000-employee oil company might mean a smaller company, several diplomats and dissident executives said, but that could be a sacrifice Chavez is willing to make if the company continues to generate enough money to finance his political program.

Moreover, Chavez decreed a new law in November 2001 that makes the government the majority partner in any new energy venture in Venezuela. While the measure generated enormous controversy at the time, it could help Chavez remake the company. Many political and oil analysts said they believe that Chavez will begin encouraging new foreign investment, an irony given his nationalist rhetoric. The shift would dilute domestic financial influence in the industry, much of it now exerted by Chavez opponents. Those companies would be far less likely to strike, as demonstrated by ChevronTexaco's quick return to work during the current stoppage.

As the strike drags on, members of the opposition umbrella group known as the Democratic Coordinator have begun working with striking executives to find a way to lift the private sector strike while maintaining the oil-industry shutdown. Such a decision would help explain the increasingly poor participation among Venezuela's suffering small businesses, but it would have to be approved by oil-industry leaders who may not want to bear the burden alone.

Meanwhile, many people, like Andres Halvorssen, are left to find fuel where they can. Halvorssen, a tax attorney, recently called a cell phone number given him by a friend that connected him to a burgeoning black market for gasoline. His new Toyota sport utility vehicle takes unleaded fuel, scarce in Venezuela these days, but his contact showed up at his house the next day.

"The guy comes with a drum and a hose," Halvorssen said. "And he is making a killing."