VHeadline.com en Español news chief, Jesus Nery Barrios writes: I would like to dedicate this VHeadline.com "return" article to Jutta Schmitt and to Iris & Stella Buehler, whose permanent example of courage and warm support allow me to keep hoping and remain fighting for truth in the news.

* It's a pity that volunteers such as those who give of their time and energy for VHeadline.com have had to be a Phoenix returning from the ashes to bring the most balanced, timely and truthful information we can offer.

At VHeadline.com we expect to meet the readers need to know of events in Venezuela and the world, stressing deep analysis, since it's not enough simply to keep our readers fully informed about the facts and current events if they do not have the chance to place them into a backward and a forward context, extracting all the implications and how they affect the future of the Venezuelan people and the world around them, not only as mere spectators, but as possible actors influencing Venezuela's destiny and their own reality.

If globalization is to be taken seriously, and if oil is going to play the role all the experts expect, what happens in Venezuela will affect the fate of every single person around the globe ... and therefore VHeadline.com becomes a very useful tool not only to know the truth but to be part of the flow of truth, since the Internet has become the soul and the nerve center of the new, globalized world.

It's not only the "butterfly effect" but the "peak oil effect" and, of course, the "Chavez effect" which has encompassed the globe.

Through its trade deals, cultural exchange agreements and humanitarian solidarity, the Bolivarian government of Venezuela has set itself in the epicenter of global confrontation between the old and the coming powers ... a very dangerous game on the knife's edge where no country ... nuclear or not ... is safe with or without oil.

I'm very proud the be part of the VHeadline.com team and these days of absence allowed me to realize many things, among them, that to be objective is the most subjective that can exist in the field of journalism since, you decided to side with the truth ... one of the sides in this war of disinformation, in a campaign to achieve the mental holocaust, as Professor Franz Lee has explained in many of his articles in VHeadline.com.

I realized realized that most of Venezuela's political and business leaders are not interested in telling the truth ... not to those they represent and especially not to people outside of Venezuela ... okay, it happens in almost all other countries and states throughout the world, so it makes our task even more difficult and which gives us even more reason for existence!

In a nutshell, our objective, our mission is to tell the truth to the wretched of the earth, and not to "inform" some decision-making high executives sitting on their new chairs trying to decide what to do with the money they are stealing from the people who elected them.

Our "target" is those who had never had the chance to know who they are, and why they are exploited and used as cannon fodder for millennia. For the first time, they must know what's it's all about in this world of lies and death.

Within this context ... apparently not much has happened in Venezuela while VHeadline.com was away ... but do not fool yourselves, because it's the calm before the storm.

So we had better prepare our umbrellas and open our eyes very wide because, oh yes!, the un-democratic, tyrannical and under-developed Venezuela is having a presidential election campaign again!

To make it brief, and to make you aware of the level of political opposition to president-candidate Hugo Chavez, let's take a look at the election contenders they've launched to oust him from power ... presumptively by democratic means:

Manuel "Manny" Rosales: ex-governor of oil-rich Zulia State (temporarily retired from that post to fight against Chavez ... electorally) and who signed, on behalf of all governors, the Carmona Decree, by which Mr. Pedro Carmona Estanga dissolved the National Assembly (Congress), Supreme Court, the Constitution and removed all people-elected governors and mayors from office after toppling Chavez in the April 11, 2002 coup. Stubbornly called the "unitarian" candidate, Manny is only supported by his own regional party: Un Nuevo Tiempo (A New Time), with true followers only in Zulia; Primero Justicia (Justice First), a right-wing party configured with the leftovers of the old Social-Christian party Copei, with true followers only in the rich sectors of Caracas; and other mini-parties whose leaders only show their faces on some TV stations but never in the Venezuelan slums; plus some senile and out-of-date characters who used to have some relevance in the Venezuelan political life ... namely Teodoro Petkoff, an unsuccessful pre-candidate for this election and a former guerrilla of the 60s, currently a newspaper director; Enrique Ochoa Antich, an opaque former leader of the even more opaque Movimiento Al Socialismo (Movement To Socialism); Omar Barboza, a former member of Accion Democratica and one of the most corrupt governors the State of Zulia has had the disgrace to have; Hiram Gaviria, a neoliberal technocrat and the owner of large tracts of land, who has had great influence in past governments (Perez and Caldera) in the implementation of privatization of the land and the food sector; Cecilia Sosa, former president of the previous Supreme Court of Justice, another one who signed the Carmona's Decree; Vicente Brito, another unsuccessful pre-candidate and former president of the employer's federation, Fedecamaras; Enrique Tejera Paris, a prominent member of the old and decadent Venezuelan political class whose most recent deed was waiting in his limo outside Miraflores to be called to enter the palace to be appointed as President the night of April 11, 2002 ... only to be usurped by Pedro Carmona who was fastest into action; and Rafael Simon Jimenez, a childhood friend of Chavez, a former member of MAS, later of PODEMOS (supporting Chavez), and currently of VAMOS (opposing Chavez) ... you can write the rest by telling us what you think of somebody you know since you were kids and later betrays you; only to name the most notorious supporters and current members of his campaign command.

"Manny" goes to the barrios (slums) of Caracas and the people living in them throw stones at him. What is his reply?: "Mi Negra," a debit card aimed at giving people money, houses and education according to the daily price of oil, benefiting 2,500,000 impoverished people ... pretty strange for an opposition which says most of the population in Venezuela (a total of 26,0000,000 inhabitants) are poor and that Chavez is trying to solve the problem through "populism."

The other hope for some opposed to Chavez is outsider Benjamin Rausseo, who became famous in Venezuela playing the role of a comic character named "El Conde del Guacharo," telling rude and vulgar jokes in bars, like saying his mother and sisters were whores and that he was ashamed of that ... and that later made records of his expensively produced live shows (100,000 bolivares a ticket, without the whisky bottle) and used to be on mediocre TV shows exploiting and showing the lowest misery of the human spirit, i.e., chasing an almost nude vedette or riding a donkey (as he repeated the day he signed for candidate in the National Election Council-CNE). He is currently a "successful businessman" who opened an expensive theme park on Isla Margarita and who expands his economic influence by building houses for the poor using credits he got from the state-owned Banco Industrial de Venezuela in the States of Anzoategui and Monagas (were he was born).

"El Conde," despite his experience in the show business, is not showing his face on TV very much and is not visiting many cities or villages ... maybe because his party named PIEDRA (stone) is the worst joke he ever made to promote and support his campaign for president.

Since it's traditional many 'bozos,' witch-doctors, "buffaloes," "tigers," "gochos" and "frijolitos" run for president in Venezuela, the picture I draw for you above shows the pathetic and decadent level of the so-called "opposition," which is not casual in this globalized and oil-rich country who prepares to confirm, in a very loud voice, that an old stage came to its end and a new one starts, and that explains the desperate attempts of the US government to sabotage and, in the end, annihilate Chavez and the chavistas, that is, the immense majority of the people of Venezuela before the presidential elections to be held next December 3.

In part due to the low level of these "contenders" this election campaign is different from others in Venezuela's past ... causing Chavez to emphasize his trips and alliances abroad. Since his success and popularity in office increases every month, he does not have to conduct a huge campaign ... the impoverished people can see and are affected by the work of his administration, when he visits a city or a village to open a new school, hospital, bridge, cooperative enterprise, etc. His administrative success is his political campaign and vice versa ... opposed to a mediocre regional government in Zulia by "Manny" and the filthy mouth of "Benji."

We will tell you more about this odd presidential campaign and will try to focus on the real motivations of the so-called opposition, which go beyond their apparent democratic spirit and which entwine with the interests of a treacherous new internal political class and the old criminal dominant classes who, at the end, always determine what happens and what does not happen in our folkloric, bizarre and globalized reality.

Jesus Nery Barrios
jes...@vheadline.com

En español: http://espanol.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=67213