Chavez also noted that there is an undermining process in progress through the manipulation of opinion polls on the presidential elections.

There is an interest in disclosing false numbers pointing to a supposed advance by opposition candidate Manuel Rosales, said Chavez who described Rosales as the "candidate of the [US] empire."

FOREIGN MINISTER URGES THE UN TO HOLD INQUIRY ON HIS DETENTION

UNITED NATIONS.- Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, informed UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, about his 90-minute detention on Saturday at JFK International Airport, reported Prensa Latina news agency.

Maduro returned to his country's mission in Manhattan after being detained at the airport terminal and even threatened with a beating by the police, according to his statements at an improvised press conference.

"We were the target of an illegal detention," said the Venezuelan foreign minister, who explained that he was asked to be submitted to a body search.

Maduro said that his ticket and passport were retained, and although they were finally returned to him, it was already too late for him to reach the plane that would take him back to Caracas.

The revelation came in a commentary in the Vea newspaper, and also assures that extra measures have been taken to protect the life of President Hugo Chavez.

"A new element has been added: a possible connection with the sophisticated Israeli secret service, Mossad, capable of doing absolutely anything," assured the journalist.

Chavez warned Saturday that US President George W. Bush had ordered his assassination after the Venezuelan president's speech at the UN General Assembly last Wednesday. In his address, Chavez dubbed Bush as the "devil."

Chavez also noted that there is an undermining process in progress through the manipulation of opinion polls on the presidential elections.

There is an interest in disclosing false numbers pointing to a supposed advance by opposition candidate Manuel Rosales, said Chavez who described Rosales as the "candidate of the [US] empire."

FOREIGN MINISTER URGES THE UN TO HOLD INQUIRY ON HIS DETENTION

UNITED NATIONS.- Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, informed UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, about his 90-minute detention on Saturday at JFK International Airport, reported Prensa Latina news agency.

Maduro returned to his country's mission in Manhattan after being detained at the airport terminal and even threatened with a beating by the police, according to his statements at an improvised press conference.

"We were the target of an illegal detention," said the Venezuelan foreign minister, who explained that he was asked to be submitted to a body search.

Maduro said that his ticket and passport were retained, and although they were finally returned to him, it was already too late for him to reach the plane that would take him back to Caracas.

In our democracy, freedom of speech also means the right of Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, and other hate groups to express their views. The point is not that these groups speak the truth and are therefore entitled to speak openly. Rather, we tolerate the expression of these views because the danger of silencing the opinions of others with whom society or government disagrees means that any view -- no matter how credible -- may end up on the chopping block.

As Mill also recognized, the danger of being cocksure of oneself is that one takes no pains to subject one's views to the court of public opinion. Witness the recent remarks of Donald Rumsfeld in which he likens those who disagree with the Bush administration's stand on the Iraq war to Nazi supporters. And witness the President's own recent accusation that a media that questions his Iraq policy is aiding the terrorists -- and thus by implication is on their side.

In a true democracy, the formidable power of the state should be checked by an almost absolute right of political free speech -- so long, said Mill, as the speech in question does not place anyone in imminent danger.

It is therefore ironic that some of the most ardent opponents of the Bush administration have elected to place themselves on the very side of the government regime they so ardently oppose. I am referring here to Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel.

In addressing the United Nations, Hugo Chavez made no bones about his scorn for the President of the United States when he referred to him as "The Devil." No term of endearment, this gesture of ill-will is likely to prove abundantly less "incendiary" and dangerous than the President's own demonizing denouncement of entire nations as members of "The Axis of Evil." Just how incendiary the President's remark is perceived to be obviously depends on what side of the axis you are on. The point is not that this damning rating of nations such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea (and more pointedly, of their leaders) was degrading, provocative, and foolish -- it was all that. The point is rather that ours is supposed to be a nation that embraces freedom of speech, and if a President is entitled to indiscretions without censor, then, lest we face the fact that we live under a totalitarian regime, so too are others so entitled.

About Chavez's remark, Nancy Pelosi stated, "Hugo Chavez abused the privilege that he had, speaking at the United Nations"; and Charlie Rangel stated, "You do not come into my country, my congressional district, and you do not condemn my president." He told Chavez that he shouldn't "think that Americans do not feel offended when you offend our Chief of State."

For such "champions of democracy" to gloss over the distinction between indiscretion and offensiveness, on the one hand, and the right to free speech on the other, is not unlike a President who condemns the media for disagreeing with his war policy. The fact that Chavez's remark came in the form of a personal attack is irrelevant from the perspective of freedom of speech. In a democracy no federal government authority -- Democrat or Republican -- has the right to hold itself out as the arbiter of what etiquette freedom of speech must embrace. In the United States, there are civil courts that exist for such purposes. If Chavez or anyone else who rightfully has the bully pulpit wants to get up in front of a distinguished body of statesmen or a crowd at a rock concert and proclaim the President of the United States a devil, that is surely their prerogative. If the speaker demeans himself or his nation -- as Pelosi said of Chavez -- that is clearly the speaker's problem. It is the nation's problem only if this indiscretion is censored. From Mill's perspective, we are then prevented from "the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

To be credible, Democrats like Pelosi and Rangel need to stand firm against a government that likens those who dissent to its policies to Nazis and terrorists. In order to do so, they need to stand firm for freedom of speech. The main issue was not that Chavez was right or wrong; discrete or indiscrete. The important point is that he was exercising free speech -- and they (all of us) should support the right to do so, even if this means recognizing the right of another (even a foreign leader such as Chavez) to call the President of the United States The Devil.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Elliot D. Cohen is a media ethicist and author of many books and articles on the media and other areas of applied ethics. He is the 2006 first-place recipient of the Project Censored Award for his Buzzflash article, Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, and Why Corporate News Censored the Story.

The initiative was put forward by a non-governmental organization in the southern North Ossetia region, Accord and Stability, which started in September to campaign for a referendum to revoke the constitutional ban on a third consecutive presidential term.

President Vladimir Putin, who was first elected in 2000 and is serving his second term, enjoys high popularity in the country, but he has said on different occasions that he would not run for a third term in the presidential election in 2008.

According to a new Gallup poll, 42% of respondents agreed with the statement that the Bush administration "deliberately manipulated the price of gasoline so that it would decrease before this fall's elections." Fifty-three percent of those surveyed did not believe the conspiracy theory; 5% said they had no opinion.

Not surprising, almost two-thirds of those who suspect President Bush intervened to bring down energy prices before Election Day are registered Democrats, according to Gallup.

White House spokesman Tony Snow addressed the issue Monday, telling reporters that "the one thing I have been amused by is the attempt by some people to say that the president has been rigging gas prices, which would give him the kind of magisterial clout unknown to any other human being."

"It also raises the question, if we're dropping gas prices now, why on earth did we raise them to $3.50 before?" Snow said.

The excitement - and suspicion - among U.S. motorists follows a post-summer decline in gasoline prices that even veteran analysts and gas station owners concede has been steeper than usual.

The retail price of gasoline has plunged 50 cents, or 17%, the past month to an average $2.38 a gallon nationwide, according to Energy Department statistics. That is 42.5 cents lower than a year ago, when the energy industry was still reeling from the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which damaged petroleum platforms, pipelines and refineries across the Gulf Coast.

Industry officials say the competition among gas station owners to sell the cheapest gas on the block is fierce.

"They want to gain market share," says John Eichberger, director of motor fuels at the National Association of Convenience Stores.

Jay Ricker, president of Ricker Oil Co. in Anderson, Ind., which owns about 30 gas stations and supplies fuel to 30 more, says he's thrilled to see pump prices sinking as fast as they are.

With prices falling, more customers are buying mid-grade and premium gasoline, Ricker said, and they're spending more inside his convenience stores, where profit margins are higher.

"I'd much rather sell them a donut or a fountain drink," says Ricker, whose stations are selling regular unleaded for a few pennies above $2.

Fimat USA oil analyst Antoine Halff says there is no doubt "the downturn in prices is welcome news from an electoral standpoint for the ruling party." But he scoffed at the notion that the president has the power to muscle a global market.

The plunge in prices, Halff says, is the result of growing U.S. inventories of fuel, slowing economic growth and toned-down rhetoric between Iran and the United States, which has been critical of Tehran's uranium enrichment program.

The sell-off has been magnified, Halff says, by the recent retreat from the market of many speculative investors who got burned by the late-summer volatility in commodities prices. Just last week, a prominent hedge fund told investors it lost some $6 billion due to bad bets on natural gas prices.

That said, "the sky is not falling," says Halff, who believes oil prices will likely head higher again this winter and average more than $65 a barrel throughout 2007.

At the start of summer, oil analysts were worried about rising demand, the threat of hurricanes and the nuclear standoff between the West and Iran, OPEC's second-largest producer. As a result, crude-oil futures soared to more than $78 a barrel in mid-July.

By summer's end, these fears had largely dissipated. On Monday, November crude futures settled at $61.45 a barrel.

"We have lots of gasoline supply," said Joanne Shore, an Energy Department analyst. Her agency shows U.S. inventories of gasoline at 207.6 million barrels, 6% more than last year and slightly above the five-year average for this time of year.

Asked if it was possible that oil companies would reduce prices to help Republicans, Shore responded: "What company in their right mind would step forward to kill their profit?"

At a suburban Miami Mobil station, where regular was selling for $2.66 a gallon, no one was buying the conspiracy theory.

"The decrease of gas prices is simply due to a seasonal adjustment of price," said Javier Gudayal, a 48-year-old attorney. "And that the Bush administration does not have the power to manipulate."

But in Los Angeles, which has some of the highest gasoline prices in the country, motorists wouldn't rule out the possibility of politicians eager to sway the electorate.

Twenty-eight-year-old attorney Amnon Siegel sensed more than market forces at work.

"I'm sure there's some sort of string-pulling going on," Siegel said.c

The connection between these two circumstances is obvious. Certainly this is the view of a substantial section of the American population-42 percent of which, according to a new Gallop poll, believe that the Bush administration has deliberately manipulated the price of gasoline to improve the chances of the Republican Party in the coming elections.

In investigating the forces behind the very rapid decline in prices, the first question to ask is, "Who benefits?" An article in the September 24 edition of the New York Times ("With Prices Falling, Gas May Lose Its Electoral Punch" by Danny Hakim) quoted Ed Patru, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, as stating, "Virtually every newspaper in America is reporting on their front page that gas prices are plummeting. That denies Democrats another issue that they're trying to use to nationalize the election."

The Times cited a survey by the Pew Research Center showing that between May and September, the percentage of people listing high energy prices as the nation's most important problem fell from 14 percent to 7 percent.

Large energy companies certainly feel they have an interest in maintaining Republican control of the government. Not that they have anything serious to fear from the Democrats, but there are divisions within the ruling elite and no administration has been so closely tied, personally and financially, to the interests of the energy giants as the current one.

The ties between oil companies and various administration officials and other high-ranking members of the Republican Party are too numerous to list exhaustively. It is worth recalling that both Bush and Vice President Cheney are former energy executives. Cheney held meetings early in the administration's tenure, in which the oil companies were invited to help formulate energy policy and plan for the war in Iraq. In 2001, the administration helped block any measures that would ameliorate the California energy crisis, through which companies including Enron reaped billions while fleecing the consumers and businesses of the state.

More recently, several government auditors have charged top Interior Department officials with blocking efforts to collect millions of dollars from energy companies-money that the auditors say was fraudulently withheld from royalties the companies must pay to the government for extracting oil from the Gulf of Mexico. Earl Devaney, the inspector general of the Interior Department, told a House committee, "Short of crime, anything goes" among senior officials at his own department.

The dispute within the Interior Department is part of a broader issue of government leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Administration officials have written off any attempts to get energy companies to pay $1.3 billion in royalties that the government has lost as a result of the interpretation that energy companies have given to contracts signed in the late 1990s. Republican leaders in both the House and Senate have stalled legislation that would pressure companies to renegotiate these contracts.

These are no doubt only a sampling of the ways in which the financial interests of energy companies are tied in to ensuring that the Republican Party retains control of Congress. There is also the issue of price gouging itself. When investigations were held following the sharp rise in gasoline prices after Hurricane Katrina last year, oil executives testified that there was no price manipulation involved. The Republican leader of the House Energy committee, Ted Stevens, insisted that this testimony not be held under oath.

Notwithstanding the spinelessness of the Democratic Party, there can be no doubt that energy executives see their own interests as bound up with a Republican victory. Certainly they have invested more heavily in buying off Republican legislators than they have their Democratic counterparts. The profits given up as gasoline prices decline may be considered merely another form of investment.

Do energy companies have the ability to manipulate prices in this way? The workings of the energy market are highly opaque; however, the number of companies involved has decreased substantially over the past decade, due to consolidation. Companies such as ExxonMobil-whose executives routinely move in and out of government posts-have enormous leverage over world supply of oil and gasoline, and a few of the companies acting together could have a serious market impact.

The various reasons given in the media for why gasoline prices are declining so sharply now are generally as unconvincing as the reasons given for why they went up so sharply a year ago. There are references to changing political conditions, but these are always post facto rationalizations. For example, one of the reasons for the present drop is supposedly the lessening of fears of economic sanctions against Iran. If prices had risen over the past week, however, this would no doubt have been attributed to the remarks of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the UN, in which he sharply denounced the Bush administration. Venezuela is, after all, one of the principal suppliers of oil to the world market.

Others point to speculation in the oil and gasoline futures market. This may be a factor-prices rise and fall according to the profit considerations of various big investors. Here it is interesting to note that, according to US News & World Report, "Major energy trader Goldman Sachs embarked upon a massive liquidation of its position in gasoline futures-shifting to other energy investments instead. Gasoline prices fell sharply, and pulled crude oil prices down with them." Henry Paulson, the Bush administration's treasury secretary, took up his current position in 2005 after serving as chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Regardless of the exact forces behind the present decline in gasoline and oil prices, one can bet that by January or February prices will be back to their "normal" exorbitant levels.

Therefore, he will announce, our own national security and the security of the region requires us to act. "Tonight, I have ordered the elimination of all facilities in Iran that are dedicated to the production of weapons of mass destruction....." In the narrowest terms this includes perhaps two dozen targets.

But the authors of the war on Iraq have "regime change" in mind in Iran. According to Colonel Sam Gardiner (author of "The End of the 'Summer of Diplomacy': Assessing U.S. Military Options in Iran," The Century Foundation, 2006) to have any hope of success, such a policy would require attacking at least 400 targets, including the Revolutionary Guard. But even this presumes the Iranian people will respond to a massive U.S. attack on their country by overthrowing their government. Only an Administration inspired by pre-Enlightenment fantasy could believe a notion such as this.

Embracing this reverie requires believing in the Iranian Ahmed Chalabi, or perhaps even Mr. Chalabi himself since he has been working both sides of the street in both countries for some time.

It does not involve much imagination to understand the timing. The U.S. is poised to adopt a Congressional regime change of its own in November. A political strategy totally based on fear can offer few other options to prevent this. Besides, occupation by Democrats of even one house of Congress in January would make this scheme more difficult (one would certainly hope).

Further, time for super-power military conquest may be running short in the emerging age of fourth generation warfare. "...the age of Western military ascendancy is coming to an end." ("No Win," Andrew Bacevich, The Boston Globe, August 27, 2006).

The consequences? The sunny neoconservatives whose goal has been to become the neo-imperial Middle Eastern power all along will forcast few. But prudent leaders calculate all the risks, and they are historic.

These include: violent reaction throughout the Islamic world; a dramatic increase in jihadist attacks in European capitals and the U.S.; radicalization of Islamic youth behind a new generation of jihadist leaders; consolidation of support for Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and a rapidly spreading malignant network; escalating expansion of anti-American sentiment throughout the world, including the democratic world; and the formation of WWIII battle lines between the U.S. and the Arab and Islamic worlds.

In more rational times, including at the height of the Cold War, bizarre actions such as unilateral, unprovoked, preventive war are dismissed by thoughtful, seasoned, experienced men and women as mad. But those qualities do not characterize our current leadership.

For a divinely guided president who imagines himself to be a latter day Winston Churchill (albeit lacking the ability to formulate intelligent sentences), and who professedly does not care about public opinion at home or abroad, anything is possible, and dwindling days in power may be seen as making the most apocalyptic actions necessary.

Every organized society, from the most libertarian to the totally repressive, shares one goal: raising its children to believe in its institutions and ideology. If our values matter, they need to be passed on.

It's getting harder to do.

One of the problems is the breakup of mass media that has been taking place since World War II. They are being replaced by many specialized messages aimed at small, targeted audiences.

My generation grew up reading the same newspapers and listening to the same news broadcasts that our parents heeded. Advertisers today have created a cacophony of entertainment for teenagers that distracts them from the world's serious side.

Two political scientists at the University of Connecticut surveyed high school students in 2004 and '06 and made an alarming discovery: Regard for the First Amendment to the Constitution declined between the surveys.

Did you know?

I'm sure you know everything that's in the First Amendment, but the next person to pick up this newspaper might not, so here is the list. The guarantees are:

- Freedom of religion.

- Freedom of speech.

- Freedom of the press.

- The right of the people to peaceably assemble.

- The right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Four out of five high school students felt they knew enough to give opinions on this 215-year-old list of rights. And among them, 55% thought the First Amendment goes too far in granting rights.

That's a turnaround from two years ago, when 57% expressed support for the First Amendment and its enumerated rights.

This reversal is so surprising that you want to find a flaw in the question wording or the methodology. But they were big samples: more than 100,000 in 2004 and nearly 15,000 in '06. The question was in a self-administered form that replicated the wording of the amendment and reminded students that it "became part of the U.S. Constitution more than 200 years ago."

The researchers, David Yalof and Kenneth Dautrich, are old hands at studying attitudes toward the First Amendment. They started focusing on young people with a grant from the Knight Foundation.

The decline in support for the First Amendment as a whole came despite an apparent increase in the number of students taking high school classes that cover First Amendment issues: 72% in 2006 vs. 58% two years ago. Dautrich acknowledges that some of that could be testing effect. All 34 of the high schools in the second survey had participated in the first, and that might have motivated them to teach the First Amendment before Round 2.

Even so, Dautrich believes a stronger factor is the national debate on security vs. liberty. Teachers who relate their lessons to the news can find more reasons to bring up the First Amendment.

He also agrees with David Mindich, author of Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News, that high schools have reduced the time devoted to teaching civics. If colleges would make civics courses an entrance requirement, that might change.

Music, on the other hand

Meanwhile, we can take small comfort in the fact that a bare majority of high school students, 54% (up from 51% in 2004), believes that newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of a story. They are more interested, however, in freedom for raunchy music: 69% agreed that "musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive."

Maybe it's not so surprising when you figure that they spend more time listening to the songs than they do reading newspapers.

Hey, geezer, want to help? When you finish this newspaper, don't throw it away. Give it to some young person you know. Or, if you are reading this online, send the kid a hyperlink.

Philip Meyer is a Knight Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Research for his book The Vanishing Newspaper was supported by the Knight Foundation.

The leading candidate for the premiership had been seen as former WTO boss Supachai Panitchpakdi, whose leadership could ease concerns among investors about Thailand's economic future.

But Sonthi indicated that retired military officers would be considered candidates, sparking speculation in Thai media that the job could go to former General Surayud Chulanont.

Surayud, 63, is a career soldier who briefly became a Buddhist monk after retiring. He now sits on the Privy Council, the innermost circle of advisers to Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

The Bangkok Post newspaper said Wednesday that Surayud has already been encouraged to accept the job, but that no decision had been made.

He remains a popular figure among the military, where he is credited with professionalizing the armed forces and respected for his deep loyalty to the king.

The king has given his endorsement to the generals, a move which is widely credited with helping to prevent violence after the country's first coup in 15 years. Any prime minister they choose would be confirmed by the king, army officials say.

But if the military decides to name one of their own as prime minister, it could raise new questions about how tightly checked the junta plans to keep the new government.

Sonthi told AFP in an interview Tuesday that the governing military council would work alongside the new government "so that there is no loophole for the executive branch."

After ousting prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a late-night coup on September 19, the junta said they had acted to eliminate rampant corruption under the billionaire politician's regime and to restore democratic institutions that he had undermined.

The generals also tossed out the constitution, clamped down on the media, banned gatherings and imposed martial law.

They have promised the military-appointed premier will only remain for one year, until a new constitution can be written and elections held in October 2007.

The junta says it will appoint all 2,000 members of a council that will be tasked with writing a new basic law. It has already named more than 60 high-powered advisors to help formulate economic, foreign and domestic policies.

Sonthi has insisted the generals would not interfere with the work of the new prime minister, acting merely as "advisers" to the government.

While the search for a new premier intensifies, the junta's newly appointed corruption busters were meeting again Wednesday to dig deeper into allegations of wrongdoing by Thaksin, a former telecoms tycoon whose wealth was estimated at more than two billion dollars by Forbes magazine this year.

The ousted premier, who was at the UN General Assembly in New York when he was turfed out, is currently living in London.

Sonthi has said the junta was in contact with Thaksin about whether he should return home, but doubted he would do so anytime soon.

Among the cases being studied are the sale of bomb scanners for Bangkok's new three-billion-dollar Suvarnabhumi airport, which is due to open before dawn Thursday, an airport train link and the suspected misuse of lottery revenues and tsunami aid.

Another key focus will be Thaksin's tax-free January sale of his family's telecom empire to a Singapore state company for 1.9 billion dollars, sparking the months of turmoil that led up to his ouster.