Africa-South America Summit in Venezuela Cements South-South Collaboration

 COMMENTARY:  Annihilation of all capitalist alliances, organizations, common wealths, 'unions', 'united states' or 'united nations' which perpetuate global exploitation ...

By Franz J. T. Lee

We welcome the immense efforts of President Hugo Chavez Frias and the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela in their gigantic efforts to foster a South-South, a Latin American-African Unity against global imperialism and fascism.

Of course unity must be based on revolutionary and emancipatory principles as elaborated by scientific socialism, as real, concrete praxico-theoretical anti-capitalism, directed against the current world order in which system none of our fundamental problems ever could be resolved.

Africa and South America formed and still compose two decisive sides of the Bermuda Triangle of the global division of labor, of the unequal exchange on the world market. Hence, our historic duty is to annihilate all alliances, organizations, common wealths, unions, 'united states' or 'united nations' which are perpetuating global famine, misery and repression, more precisely,  exploitation, domination, racism, militarization and alienation. Anything else will lead humanity itself to total extinction.
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Africa-South America Summit in Venezuela Cements South-South Collaboration

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September 27th 2009, by Tamara Pearson - Venezuelanalysis.com
The Africa-South America (ASA) Summit (María Cecilia Toro/PP)
The Africa-South America (ASA) Summit (María Cecilia Toro/PP)

Mérida, September 27th, 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) - Creating a new Radio of the South, formalising the Bank of the South, criticising the make-up of the UN Security Council, and supporting Honduran President Manuel Zelaya were among the outcomes at the second Africa-South American Summit (ASA) that was held this weekend on Margarita Island, Venezuela.

Heads of state from 61 countries, 49 from Africa and 12 from South America, participated in the summit, with the theme of "Closing gaps, opening up opportunities."

Radio of the South

The Summit launched the Radio of the South, a network of radio stations driven by Venezuelan National Radio (RNV), which, as it says in its mission statement, aims to bring the revolutionary struggles of the people of the South to the forefront, and to promote the union of peoples of the South through information exchange and cross-national collaboration.

Initially the radio network will reach 40% of Venezuela, as well as integrating 18 radio stations in Argentina, 10 in Colombia, 4 in Bolivia, 4 in Honduras and Uruguay, 3 in Panama, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Brazil, Mexico, and the U.S, 2 in Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, and Haiti, and 1 in Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Chile, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea.

A team of translators in Caracas will bring the programming to Gambia Radio, whose news will also be translated into Spanish. A similar exchange will be carried out with Radio Benin and Algeria's International Radio.

Programming will include 35% Venezuelan and Latin American music, and Radio of the South studios in Caracas will produce a third of the programming, while the rest will be produced by allied radios across America and Africa. The radio can also be listened to live on the internet at http://www.laradiodelsur.com/.

Bank of the South

During the Summit on Saturday, the heads of state of Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela signed a document to form the Bank of the South, which will have a starting capital of US$20 billion. Venezuela will contribute $4 billion, as will Brazil and Argentina, with other countries also contributing according to their capacity.

"It will be our bank, to bring back the reserves that we have up there in north that they use to give credits to us," Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said.

"The transfer of resources from the South to the North is a tremendous figure and they lend that money back to us with interest rates far superior to what they pay us...but we're not stupid, we are waking up and they won't keep manipulating us with this tale of the ‘free market,'" Chavez said.

The constituting agreement says the bank will have its headquarters in Caracas and offices in Buenos Aires and La Paz. It will only lend to member countries and can lend to a range of organisations, including private companies, cooperatives, and state organisations, but taking into consideration the extent to which they generate food, energy, health, natural resources or knowledge sovereignty. It will also encourage development projects.

"The bank of the south is strategic... I think we should go even further and gradually put together our own South-South financial system," Chavez said, adding that in the future, "We have to create...a South-South bank or the Bank of ASA, Banasa."

For a fairer UN Security Council

In order to achieve more "balance," the ASA conference called for a reformation of the UN Security Council, in which 5 countries (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US) are permanent members and have veto power.

In a document passed by the summit, the ASA countries stated the need for "a greater participation of developing countries in South America and Africa...in order to correct the current imbalance and make this Council a more democratic, transparent, representative, effective and legitimate organisation that responds to the new political realities."

The document continued, "We praise the efforts carried out in the inter-governmental negotiations on this issue, in conformity with decision 62/55 of the General Assembly of the UN."

Honduras

Regarding the recent coup in June in Honduras and the return of legitimate president Manuel Zelaya to the country on 21 September, when he sought refuge in the Brazilian embassy, Brazil proposed a declaration on Honduras to ASA, which was approved unanimously.

The Declaration condemned the coup of 28 June and demanded the immediate and unconditional return of Zelaya to his position as president and that the Honduran coup regime comply with the Vienna Convention regarding the inviolability of diplomatic missions.

"The heads of state of South America and Africa meeting on Margarita Island on 26 and 27 September express their deep concern for the current political situation in Honduras," the declaration said.

Venezuela's participation in the Summit

Chavez proposed, and the summit approved, a proposal that Venezuela take on the responsibility of organising the ASA secretariat from now on. The secretariat would meet on Margarita Island and would ensure implementation of the plans and projects coming out of the summit.

Chavez said that in order to turn "ideas into projects" he should be permitted to head up the secretariat, and that what were previously working groups could be turned into presidential commissions.

During the summit, Venezuela also signed notes of understanding for the formation of joint mining ventures with Sierra Leone, Mali, Namibia, Niger, and Mauritania. Chavez announced that he had signed an agreement of cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations to assist with the battle against hunger in Africa by providing seeds, fertiliser, and other farming technology.
"[ASA] is a vital mechanism, it's the union of South America with Africa... We'll prove that we are a big power and that the union of these two powers, South America and Africa, will contribute to what [Simon] Bolivar said, the equilibrium of the world," Chavez said.
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4822

'9/11' IS IN LINE WITH THE FASCIST BIG LIES OF THE USA AND NAZI GERMANY ABOUT 'PEARL HARBOR' AND THE 'REICHTAGSBRAND'

'9/11' IS IN LINE WITH THE FASCIST BIG LIES OF THE USA AND NAZI GERMANY ABOUT 'PEARL HARBOR' AND THE 'REICHTAGSBRAND'

COMMENTARY: SOME AMERICANS STILL CAN'T ACCEPT THE TRUTH ABOUT 9/11

By Franz J. T. Lee

Still sane young kids love their parents, they do not expect that they  tell blatant lies to them.  In general they accept what the grownups say and do. Among themselves they tell small white lies, they deny having placed the finger in the pie or of having pinched some sweeties. On the other hand, since days of yore, unspoilt youngsters accept Mom's tale that overnight Mickey Mouse took their extracted milk teeth from their shoes and replaced them with coins. Furthermore, as long as Father Christmas fills the socks with nice goodies, they would believe in anything that the parents tell about the silent and holy night.

However, if somebody would tell the kids that their Dad has just blown up the Statue of Liberty of their homeland, the young folk would scratch out his very eyes, for having divulged such a nonsense. Such heinous things only the communists, 'Arabs',  'terrorists' or Al-Qaeda are capable of performing.

This is the psychological essence of the Big Lie strategy that all authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorial regimes  have used to commit genocide, launch brutal wars and to ravage, plunder and conquer natural and human resources across the centuries, and on all continents. The United States Big Lie of '9/11' is part of what Wilhelm Reich has described as the 'Mass Psychology of Fascism'.

'9/11' IS IN LINE WITH THE FASCIST BIG LIES OF THE USA AND NAZI GERMANY ABOUT 'PEARL HARBOR' AND THE 'REICHTAGSBRAND'.    
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SOME AMERICANS STILL CAN'T ACCEPT THE TRUTH ABOUT 9/11
By Mark Anderson

The news video of Richard Gage¹s evidence that the twin towers of the World Trade Center anda third building there were utterly demolished on 9-11 (AFP, April 6, 2009) in what was aninside job using mega-explosives generated 1,171 views in less than four days. But it was the related comments posted on YouTube that exposed a disturbing phenomenon in‹the servility of human beings to accept the ³official line.² 

Many Americans are trapped in a psychological
maze; they don¹t know that they don¹t know. This igno-
rance of one¹s own ignorance is the ultimate ingredient
in mastery over people¹s thought patterns.

The big government-big media system can make
many people believe absolutely anything it wants them
to believe, no matter how absurd. These unwitting cheer-
leaders for all things official are, in an indirect sense,
³drafted²to become the most ardent protectors of the
official story. They give the big lie of 9-11 the appear-
ance of popular support so more inquiry into the events
of that terrible day is avoided; thus, the big lie is rein-
forced to become another unsolved mystery alongside
JFK on Nov. 22, 1963 and other watershed events.
The late novelist Taylor Caldwell was one of a few
insightful writers who warned that society will hang its
heroes and defend its villains. And with 9-11, we see that
ugly tendency. One of the responses to AFP¹s online 9-11
video was that people like Gage and myself should
³move to Iran,²and that Gage‹an inoffensive guy who
calmly and logically examines the evidence of purpose-
ful inside demolition of the three destroyed WTC build-
ings‹must therefore ³hate²America.
There were positive and neutral comments as well.
But the nasty comments‹other remarks not listed here
were far worse‹reveal that one of the major barriers to
free inquiry to find the truth is indeed within oneself, not
just within government. It¹s these everyday people who
the establishment cons through its well-honed media. All
the government needs to do is announce something, it
seems, and,  just by saying it, it is accepted as ³fact.²
We have 110 floors an acre in size each‹per WTC
twin tower, plus 47 for Building 7, totaling 267‹disap-
pear in clouds of mostly pulverized concrete, and multi-
ton beams are shot out horizontally up to 600 feet. We
have telltale spheres of once-molten iron and unignited
fragments of a 4,500-degree-Fahrenheit incendiary
explosive, likely nano-thermate, strewn all over. But
because ³the powers that be²and their minions insist that the impacts and fires from the planes which 19 alleged hijackers flew into the towers are all that you need to eradicate two skyscrapers that were designed to withstand plane collisions, then the case is ³closed,² thwarting those who want to start or continue independent probes and make the critical move toward legal action, in order to do a real investigation.

The first inquiry, the 9-11 Commission, was wholly
inadequate, producing little more than a police state with its recommendations for creating the Department of
Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the TSA at airports,
and various other bills and bureaucracies that cost bil-
lions and increased surveillance on average Americans,
even while our borders remain largely open to would-be
terrorists and drug cartels.

Many Americans Can¹t Accept the Truth About 9-11
Mark Andersonis a longtime newsman now working as a corresponding editor for American Free Press. Together he and his wife Angie provide many photographs of the events they cover for AFP.  

Email truthhound2@yahoo.com. 

Kwame Nkrumah: The dark face of the Bolivarian Revolution

Kwame Nkrumah: The dark face of the Bolivarian Revolution

By Franz J.T. Lee


Kwame Nkrumah: The dark face of the Bolivarian Revolution
(Document)
 Surely, Latin America and Venezuela have to create their own revolutionary praxis and theory, to realize their own socialism, however, out of ignorance we should not repeat the fatal mistakes, concerning unity and integration, that occurred elsewhere, for example, on the African and Asian continents already nearly half-a-century ago.

Our current Bolivarian relations to Africa should not be only diplomatic, economical or commercial; for the sake of our own emancipatory advancement, they have to be, all in one, historical, social, global and emancipatory.

Only in this way, we need not go North, East or West, but straight forward.

We have to know, to learn from past revolutionary experiences, in order that the Bolivarian Revolution could transcend myopic, parochial vendettas, the current imperialist stumbling-blocks, and henceforth invent new social arms to defend ourselves against the current, fierce Yankee attacks, the unscrupulous, lying Leviathan of the mass media, to surpass global, world fascism, that is, to be invincible, to introduce our own socialism, together with those of others, especially of Africa, on a world scale.

This is what deepening of the revolution ... socialist, permanent revolution ... is all about.

For all these reasons, we have to study conscientiously the totality of the equal, unequal and combined trans-historical relations and events on a world scale. We have to learn and study the past and present African revolutionary lessons of continental integration and solidaric unity, to enrich our own Latin American, emancipatory endeavors.

Here, in a short commentary, we cannot go into much detail concerning the daily actions and thoughts of the various titanic, African revolutionary leaders, for example, of Kwame Nkrumah, of Patrice Lumumba, also not delve profoundly into their numerous scientific and philosophic works.

We can only blaze the trail, to encourage our Bolivarian comrades, by studying other languages, to understand other views, to learn from the African liberatory experience, but, also to avoid the catastrophic results of continental disunity, imperialist collaboration and criminal betrayal of the deepest aspirations, sentiments and wishes of millions of oppressed and exploited peoples. The African parallels ... in unequal historical space and time ... to the current situations in Latin America, to President Chávez, are fascinating, so obvious, thus, only here and there we will directly make some specific references.

Everything said here, directly concerns the Bolivarian Revolution.

Next to Patrice Lumumba, Frantz Omar Fanon, Nelson Mandela and others, Kwame Nkrumah ... one of the greatest African leaders and revolutionaries, in the epoch of "decolonization", of launching European and North American neo-colonization ... was born in Nicroful, in the British-ruled colony, the Gold Coast, on September 21, 1909. Originally he was named Francis Nwia-Kofi, only later in 1945, he changed his identity to Kwame Nkrumah. In 1935, as a trained teacher, he left for the USA; till 1945, there he further pursued university studies.

In 1945, together with George Padmore and other future African presidents, he participated in the organization of the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England.
Two years later, he returned to the Gold Coast, the future Ghana, and in 1949, he founded the Convention People's Party (CPP)
In 1950, during heavy social upheavals, that swept across the country, he was jailed. In the elections of 1951, his political party, the CPP, won, and he was liberated, to form the new government that led to the independence of Ghana in 1957.
In 1960 Ghana was declared a republic, and two years later, in August, 1962, at Kulungugu, in the Northern Region, he was already a target for the British and international CIA "Death Squads"; luckily he escaped assassination.
What concerns us especially here in Venezuela and Latin America, is Nkrumah's radical Pan-African policy ... explained in his work, "Africa Must Unite" ... the formation of the "Organization of African Unity" (OAU) in 1963, and like Fidel Castro, his unconditional support of all revolutionary, anti-colonial movements in Africa and elsewhere.

However, just like our President Hugo Chavez , he experienced the same national and international hateful slandering campaigns, the vicious attacks of the global mass media. Furthermore, while on an official trip to Beijing, China, and to Hanoi, North Vietnam, he was overthrown by a military coup, organized by the British Secret Service and its global, bloodthirsty allies in 1966. He spent the rest of his life in exile, aided by his friend, President Sekou Toure of Guinea; there, in Conakry, he continued writing his books. On April 27, 1972, while receiving medical treatment against cancer, he died in Bucharest, Romania. However, till this day, his revolutionary daydream about a liberated "United States of Africa" still lives on.

Among his most famous political, revolutionary writings, which we will comment below, are the following:

1947: "Towards Colonial Freedom"

1957: "African Socialism Revisited"

1961: "I speak of Freedom"

1963: "Africa Must Unite"

1964: "Consciencism: Philosophy of the African Revolution"

1965: "Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism"

1968: "Handbook for Revolutionary Warfare"

1970: "Class Struggle in Africa"

1973: "Revolutionary Path

Here we will just comment generally about these theoretical works and the serious attempts to convert them into revolution praxis in Africa.

Immediately, when it became clear what he was up to, in the huge national and international mass media, Nkrumah was slandered as a dangerous "dictator", a blood-thirsty "tyrant", suffering from a psychopathological "personality cult", putting up huge statues of himself all over Ghana, and of forming a one-party, communist, undemocratic State.

Well, we really want news, we in Venezuela and Cuba, already know all these, especially their relations to dis-information campaigns, big lies, big business and destabilization conspiracies.
In a nut-shell, to accomplish Continental Freedom, he emphasized African Unity, described in his work "Africa Must Unite", and with others, in 1963, he founded the "Organization of African Unity", including its Liberation Committee. Against what African integration and class struggle were directed he narrated in detail in his "Neocolonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism".

In this work, he stated that modern neo-colonialism ... nowadays also called "savage neo-liberalism" ... with its fake democracy and political independence, represents late imperialism in its final, and perhaps most dangerous stage. The social essence of neo-colonialism is that ideologically the State ... adorned with all kinds of democratic gems, with national and international sovereignty, supposedly politically independent ... in reality, is completely directed from outside, from the metropolitan countries. He concluded that it is also the worst form of imperialism itself; for those who practice it, it means global power without responsibility, and for those who suffer under it, signifies endless exploitation without any remedy.

(See: Kwame Nkrumah: Neo-colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism, Panaf, London, 1974, p. 9-11.)

To liberate the oppressed Africans masses from their inferiority complexes, master and slave relations, ethical and religious illusions and colonial, racist ideologies, in his work, "Consciencism: The Philosophy of the African Revolution", he developed a specific scientific praxis and philosophic theory for African emancipation.

Especially valid for the whole Bolivarian movement, this is what he understood by dialectical, revolutionary praxis and theory:

"Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought. ... We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility."

Returning from the Bandung Conference in 1955, Nkrumah was convinced that socialism would liberate Africa from the capitalist vices of the world market, moving Ghana and other "Third World" countries, out of the tentacles of the colonial trade system, hence reducing their dependence on foreign capital and technology. In other ways, like President Chavez, he stated; "Socialism is the Path!"

However, Ghana, already reduced to a colonial, mono-cultural economy of cocoa production, dependent on world market prices, had no real chance of achieving massive industrialization. The various economic, expensive projects that Nkrumah launched, were generally unsuccessful. By dropping the market price of cocoa, this was precisely the economic weapon that world imperialism used to crush this revolutionary paradigm, thus preventing all forms of possible, future, economic independence.

(Also, see: http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Kwame_Nkrumah )

Like President Chavez of Venezuela today, more than forty years ago, Nkrumah arrived at the logical conclusion that for a very long time, the capitalist, colonial and neo-colonial effects were going to stay in Africa, unless something very radical happens to drastically change this exploitative, dominating status quo. He saw socialism as the path to follow. However, to preserve African human values, in the spirit of Frantz Omar Fanon, to create an original, authentic African emancipatory identity, he distanced himself from the ideologically infested "African Socialism" of many other "leaders" of the liberation movement.

In "Class Struggle in Africa" he analyzed the specific social structures of Africa, the internal and external social conflicts, and in "Revolutionary Path", he indicated the road of armed struggle to be taken.
In this writing, in 1970, already thrown out of power, Nkrumah indicated that the only real road towards total independence in Africa, Asia and Latin America, was via the "class struggle". He analyzed the class structures in the real African historical situation, and, in accordance with Fanon, concluded that the alliance of the peasants and workers of Africa, led by their revolutionary vanguard, should liberate themselves by armed struggle from their colonial, fascist masters. Politically, the urban workers should win over the progressive peasants and take the potential national revolution to the agricultural, rural sectors, to the countryside. These "wretched of the earth", this millionfold popular base, will give the African revolution its true vigor and striking force.

Later, in 1968, in his "Handbook for Revolutionary Warfare", written for the African guerrilleros, concretely he explained armed self-defense, and the future construction of a Pan-African Liberation Army, against global imperialism and fascism.

(See: Kwame Nkrumah; Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, I. P., New York, 1980.)

Already then, in 1968, Nkrumah urgently suggested the establishment of an effective, continental, military organization, to plan the future tactics and strategies for Fanonian self-defense of the African Revolution. He made concrete proposals for the political and military co-ordination of the emancipatory, armed struggle.

In the second part of his "Manual", he summarized the experiences of guerrilla warfare and popular armed resistance in Soviet Russia, China, Vietnam, Algeria and Cuba. He emphasized that the coming global revolutionary struggle against imperialism and neocolonialism is logical and inevitable; we do not have the luxury of an alternative, we are facing a liberatory necessity, the dimension of this armed revolutionary answer to imperialism is as immense as Africa itself. According to him, the armed struggle of the peoples of Africa is the highest form of political action, of social praxis, it could be the continental catalyzer to spark off the global human fire to extinguish neo-colonialism forever. (Handbook of..., p.p. 42-56.)

As early as 1963, in his famous work, "Africa Must Unite", inter alia, he suggested the establishment of the following:

A. A Common Market for Africa;

B. A Common Currency for Africa;

C. A Central Bank for Africa:

D, A Common Monetary Zone for Africa;

E. An African Continental System of Communication;

F. A Continental Armed Force of Africa.

Obviously this was too much for European and North American imperialism in Africa, they had to get rid of Patrice Lumumba, Frantz Omar Fanon and Kwame Nkrumah.

In Ghana, as we related, Nkrumah's government was overthrown in 1966, and was replaced successively by rightist and leftist puppet regimes. His "Organization of African Unity" degenerated into a Talk Shop of Neo-Colonial Quislings, not even Khadafi of Libya could save it anymore. Its Liberation Committee supported reformist, neocolonial "liberation movements" and "freedom fighters".

The African version of the North American ALCA came in the form of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) "as vision and strategic framework for Africa's Renaissance", that Thabo Mbeki of post-Apartheid South Africa so eloquently glorified. The neo-colonial NEPAD was honorably baptized by the OAU ... originally founded by Nkrumah, ... at its 37th summit meeting in July 2001. Earlier, Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa were given the mandate to produce "a socio-economic development framework for Africa".

On their face value, the principles, priorities and programs of NEPAD, like in the case of the ALCA, seem plausible, sustainable and adequate, however, seen at a closer look, they have nothing to do with African integration, independence, socialism and emancipation.

On the contrary, the NEPAD wants to "build the competitiveness of African countries and the continent"; to "ensure that all Partnerships with NEPAD are linked to the Millennium Development Goals"; etc. Its program of action "is a holistic, comprehensive and integrated sustainable development initiative for the revival of Africa."

Well, no sign of Chavez' ALBA anywhere. Patrice Lumumba, Frantz Omar Fanon and Kwame Nkrumah, including Jose Marti and Simon Bolivar, would turn in their graves, if they could see what our current African "great leaders" understand by unity, integration and emancipation.

For sure, Africa is the dark face of the Bolivarian Revolution, Europe is its pale-faced reformist nightmare, North America is its bare-faced nazi plague.
The lion's share of our current, immediate Latin American emancipatory tasks is composed of that what Kwame Nkrumah forty years ago was already daydreaming about, On the basis of past, global, revolutionary experiences, we have to construct our ALBA, our "Organization for American Unity", our Socialism.

Finally, Kwame Nkrumah taught us: " The best way of learning to be an independent sovereign state is to be an independent sovereign state."

OUR ENGLISH VIDEOS: CONCERNING THE GLOBALIZATION OF CAPITALISM

OUR ENGLISH VIDEOS:  CONCERNING THE GLOBALIZATION OF CAPITALISM

WHAT IS CAPITALISM?
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
THE DIALECTICAL NEGATION OF CAPITALISM
WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC, PHILOSOPHIC SOCIALISM?
PART ONE
 
PART TWO
 
PART THREE

International Financial Crisis and End of the Dollar Hegemony: United States versus ALBA

International Financial Crisis and End of the Dollar Hegemony:  United States versus ALBA

By: Jutta Schmitt

The truth now is: “He who prints the money makes the rules”-- at least for the time being. (...) The goals are (...): compel foreign countries to produce and subsidize the country with military superiority and control over the monetary printing presses.
Ron Paul

In November last year, at the third extraordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) - Peoples' Trade Agreement (TCP), the presidents came together with the intention to confront the crisis of the global capitalist system. Considering the volatility of the international financial system, the untenable situation of the capitalist model with its destructive logic, and the absence of proposals and categorical measures by the big global power centers in order to confront the crisis, the presidents of the ALBA member States shared the opinion that the international financial system cannot simply be re-founded but has to be replaced by a different one, based on solidarity, stability, ecological sustainability and social justice. The Heads of State concurred with each other in that the countries of our region, if their response to the crisis intends to be efficient, definitely have to break lose and protect themselves from the grip of transnational capital so as to be able to take a different direction that does not make them dependent on the eroded international economic and financial system, nor on the US dollar hegemony, artificially maintained and literally imposed by force. To this effect, they agreed on creating a Latin American monetary zone that would, in its first phase, comprise the ALBA member States and it was further detailed that the monetary zone would count with a Chamber for the Compensation of Payments and a Stabilization and Reserve Fund, financed by the contributions of its member States. What concerns the economic policies of the future Latin American monetary and economic zone, the Heads of State agreed on the implementation of an expansive policy of demand stimulation, Keynesian in nature, promoting investments to further the development of complementary economic activities. (1)

Furthermore, the presidents agreed that the Latin American monetary zone would issue its own currency, the 'Unified System of Regional Compensation' or Sucre, in order to gain independence from the international financial markets and to break with the eternal dependency on the US Dollar as the main currency for trade and financial transactions, prevalent up to now in the trade relations between our Latin American countries.(2) The financial operations with the new currency are expected to begin next year, and there is trust that the ALBA member States can count on this instrument from the very 1st of January 2010 on.(3) Therewith, an extremely important step will be taken on the road to the necessary dismantlement of the present international economic and financial system which remains characterized by the hegemony of the US Dollar, enabling the United States to import goods and services from all over the world in exchange of a printed piece of green paper which is practically worthless. 

The fact that the dollar today has no other real value than the value of the paper its printed on, makes the continuity of its world hegemony a matter of life and death for the United States of America. In a condensed overview of the history of the rise and fall of the US dollar, it is pertinent to remind the reader that after the Second World War the North American economy was the most powerful and solid of the entire world. It had enormous capacities of exportation and credit, which allowed it to finance the reconstruction of Western Europe through the famous Marshall Plan, in view of fostering a future European market to absorb US exports and investments, as well as containing the possible influence of the Soviet Union in Western Europe. The US Dollar transformed itself into the world's unchallenged, leading reserve currency, within the framework of the Bretton Woods international monetary system under the gold-exchange-standard. The Dollar figured as the anchor or reserve currency, convertible in gold, and fixed exchange rates were established between the different international currencies.

However, the growing trade deficit of the United States, combined with an inflationary monetary policy, especially during the Vietnam War, lead to the collapse of the Dollar's convertibility in gold, which ended with its unilateral suspension by the Nixon administration in 1973. Therewith, the original Bretton Woods system had collapsed and the dollar suffered a sensitive decline as international reserve currency, although it did not really get challenged by other currencies at that moment, given the absence of a sufficiently strong competitor who could have occupied this position. The breakdown of the Bretton Woods system lead to the devaluation of the dollar and thus caused a decrease of revenues from oil for the OPEC countries, as oil was priced in dollars only. This fact, in addition to the 1973 Jom Kippur war in the Middle East, lead to the rise of oil prices and the oil crisis of 1973/74, which, in turn, generated the phenomenon known as the 'recycling of petro-dollars' that ended up in strengthening once more the position of the US dollar. In the absence of an alternative international reserve currency or the existence of a petro-currency basket, the dollar got 'anchored' to oil in a kind of 'oil-standard', which enabled it to perpetuate itself, in spite of the enormous and growing balance of payments deficit of the US, as the primary international reserve currency and the only petro-currency, practically until our days. This panorama only had begun to change with the rise, at the beginning of the new millennium, of a strongly competing international reserve currency, the euro, and the displacement of the world economic center from North America to Europe and Asia. Today, with the collapse of the international financial system and the generalized capitalist crisis, the panorama looks troubling for the US dollar.  

Until now, two main factors have helped sustain the privileged position of the dollar in the world: Firstly, the capital flows towards the United States as a result of the re-investment, in the United States, of the commercial surpluses obtained by nations and investors through their trade with the US. Secondly, the exclusive pricing, on a world wide scale, of oil transactions in US dollars, being this factor of vital importance to the United States for guaranteeing the perpetuation of their currency as the leading and indispensable international reserve currency. This allows the US to continue to encumber itself with debts denominated in their own currency, for which the US holds the exclusive printing monopoly. This means that the Federal Reserve has printed and continues to print dollars in the quantity and at the time it deems necessary, practically without restrictions, apart from the capacity and will of others to absorb them on a global scale, and the inflationary pressure generated by this on the domestic as well as international level. As if this were not enough, the immense capital flows towards the United States from abroad not only have financed its trade and balance of payments deficits, but, and perversely so, also the costs of its military spending which are the highest of the planet. This is how, on the one hand and given the astronomical costs of its military spending, US military supremacy would come down like a house of cards if the dollar would lose its role as the world's leading reserve and petro-currency; and on the other hand, it is the same US military supremacy by virtue of which the United States have been able to defend, in a 'preemptive' manner, their currency and its privileged position in the world on which the whole deficit-existence of the United States of America has comfortably rested until now.

In the words of US congressman, Ron Paul:

         "Ironically, dollar superiority depends on our strong military, and our strong military depends on the dollar.  As long as foreign recipients take our dollars for real goods and are willing to finance our extravagant consumption and militarism, the status quo will continue regardless of how huge our foreign debt and current account deficit become." (4)

The price that a part of the world had to pay so that this perverse system would maintain itself intact, has expressed itself in pressures, coercion, threats, aggression wars, military coups and destabilizing operations, especially in the cases of those countries which, in one way or the other, have tried to establish another kind of financial framework which could have led, eventually, to the demise of the dollar hegemony. Remember the case of Iraq with the decision of Saddam Hussein, in November of the year 2000, to shift Iraq's international reserves from the dollar to the euro and to price the sale of Iraqi oil in euros; situation which was immediately reverted by the North American invaders once Iraq had been attacked and occupied in 2003. There is the case of the continuous threats against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country which in the year 2002 began to shift a big part of its international currency reserves from dollars to euros and which launched the project of an Iranian Oil Bourse to be set up on the island of Kish, which would price the sale of Iranian oil in euros and other currencies with exception of the dollar. The project was postponed various times for unknown reasons until the Iranian Oil Bourse finally opened its operations in February last year.(5) And then, there is the notorious case of our Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, victim of a military coup in the year 2002 and since then, of continuous destabilization operations which point to an eventual direct military intervention by the US Armed Forces, from Colombian territory; not only because of the appetite the government of the United States has for the natural and energy resources of Venezuela and the region, but also because president Hugo Chávez has pronounced himself in the past in favour of the pricing of Venezuelan oil in euros and other currencies, and also has traded certain amounts of Venezuelan oil for its respective equivalent in goods and services with other countries of the region, thus avoiding the use of the US dollar in inter-regional trade transactions. Russia and China, which holds the world's largest dollar reserves, have long considered that the dollar does not fulfill a meaningful role as the leading reserve currency and have proposed, at the last summit of the G-8 in July this year, that a new, supra-national unitary currency be implemented world-wide, based on a mixture of regional reserve currencies and considered to be indispensable to overcome the abysmal crisis of the international financial system.

The price that ultimately had to be payed for the artificial maintenance of the dollar hegemony on a global scale, has been the very collapse of the international financial system, payed, as always and naturally, by the workers of this world, who do not only see the future of the present generation of workers compromised, but that of many generations to come. Even the United Nations seem to have woken up, given that the recently published annual report of the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) of the year 2009, suggests the replacement of the US dollar by a new, leading world currency. (6) And while a chorus of ever stronger voices is beginning to be heard, claiming for a new international financial order, our ALBA member countries, confident in their own strength, will and potentiality, are taking the first concrete steps in order to not only detach themselves from the dollar hegemony but to establish the parameters of a new kind of mutually beneficial and complementary trade relations. It is in this context that we can better understand why Latin America, at this moment and apart from its natural and energy resources being coveted by the global power centers, adopts special importance for the United States. A regional alliance like ALBA, with its own currency for trade and financial transactions, constitutes doubtlessly another nail in the coffin of dollar hegemony. This is at least one of the reasons for which, in the near future, the government of the United States will be pointing its guns against us, from Colombian territory. 

Notes

(1) http://www.alternativabolivariana.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3730

(2) ibidem.

(3) http://www.alternativabolivariana.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5107

(4) Hon. Ron Paul of Texas Before the U.S. House of Representatives, February 15, 2006; http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr021506.htm
(5) Oil Bourse Opens in Kish; http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8611290655
(6) http://www.unctad.org/Templates/Webflyer.asp?intItemID=1397&docID=11867


jutta@franzlee.org.ve
http://english-juttaschmitt.blogspot.com

Venezuela: The Principle of Hope Against Global United States Military Bases

By Franz J. T. Lee

A year ago, our graduate department of political science at the University of The Andes, Merida, Venezuela, offered a Diploma in Marxist Studies, to elevate the class consciousness of our youth, students and comrades. Jutta Schmitt and I gave some introductory lectures on Ernst Bloch's philosophic principle of hope, his concrete utopia, on epochs of social revolution, 'zeitwenden' (turn of the times), revolutionary youth and human creativity. 1)

Over the next three days a fervent debate resulted with reference to the Bolivarian Revolution and its future. Amazingly the result was a very enthusiastic interest in such new topics, especially in relation to the current nearly hopeless situation in many countries, to the class struggles stuck in the doldrums of reformism, to the global depression,  economic recession, violent fascist repression. Also there exists a general repudiation against the genocidal killing at whim of millions of innocent peoples in the Middle East and elsewhere by social, by State order. The victims of corporate imperialism, ... of the United States war economy, financing hundreds of military bases across the planet, ... are countless. Aggressive, violent capitalism never ever had respect or any humane feeling for natural, human and social life, it converts everything on the planet even itself into ossified and cossified relations, into capital, wares, money, death. According to Karl Marx, in a footnote of his monumental work, Capital, Volume I, Part VIII, Chapter 31,  "If money, according to Augier, 'comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek', capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." 2)

This is what has to be annihilated, any alliance, any joint adventure with the ruling class enemy , that is, any reform project is tantamount to sacrificing ourselves on the postmodern Phoenician altar of Baal, of the golden calf. We have no alternative, our principle of hope against 'military humanism' is launching the New, that is, the turn of the millennium, youth and creativity, in short, emancipatory praxis and theory.

Hence, like elsewhere, among the socially less 'privileged' Venezuelan youth, especially among popular groups, a general frustration can be detected, which very often  results in psychological evasion, pathological consumerism, sublimation and capitulation vis-a-vis the brutal onslaught of the current 'second conquest'. Progressively this critical situation is shattering many of our juvenile anticipations, expectations and hopeful daydreams. Big Brother, the Empire, slowly are catapulting us into the devouring vortex of the ravenous Moloch of capitalism, of the greenback, yes, ... into the very cynical blasphemy of its 'In God We Trust". 

* Those who trust in great gods making history, now blame the small devil, the axis of evil, for breaking it;

* those who believe that great ideas, absolute ideas, are governing mankind begin to burn books and establish mind and thought control centers for the small workers;

* those who are convinced that history is the exclusive work of great men, solidify them in statues, and tell the small men to honor and adore them forever; finally,

* those peoples who do not have a superior, radiant white skin color as small, inferior soulless creatures neither serve for the use nor for the abuse of philosophy, in their blackness, they live in the backyard of democracy, of history.

What is our concrete utopian principle of hope? How could we act, think and surpass emancipation in Latin America? These questions can only be answered collectively in praxis and theory, no great god, idea, man or race will emancipate us: we have to do, think and surpass it all of, by and for ourselves, here and now.

After a decade of Bolivarian Revolution, the Venezuelan youths, the future leaders and hope of America, necessarily have to cast off all obsolete conceptions of history, all political ideological cobwebs. We have to activate our few remaining sane neurones, to think, to reflect very deeply about revolutionary theory, to go wisely on the anti-capitalist warpath of emancipatory praxis, of creative, constructive self-defense. Furthermore, among other things, especially in Venezuela urgently fiery youth and juvenile flames of all ages have to find, to blaze the serpentine trail towards the exit, the exodus out of such imperialist  vices and crimes like sabotage, mortal military  coups, destabilization, impunity, plunder of natural resources, bureaucracy, corruption and political assassination.

Our emancipatory exodus (exvolution) is the New, is that what never has been done, said or surpassed, and which will not be repeated. In Venezuela excellent examples of the thorny paths leading towards the real, true New were the class struggles  between April 11 and 13, 2002, and the battle to save Venezuela's economic heart beat PDVSA from the claws of Yankee imperialism. A typical  example of the Old, of the Obsolete, was precisely the 'Caracazo', the merciless massacre of thousands of workers on the 27th of February, 1989 by the then 'Accion Democratica' Carlos Andres Perez government. Till today the USA did not protest against this barbarism, and did not title Carlos Andres Perez neither as a 'tyrant' nor as a 'dictator' nor as a 'terrorist'.

However, over the last decade, we did not cross the Rubicon. Like in the case of the October Revolution, if we are not cautious, we can still fall back into a murderous  'puntofijismo', that is, into reactionary reformism. The New, the concrete social utopia, is one of the most complicated scientific and philosophic categories. It is very complex to grasp, very responsible to act and within the capitalist global system well-nigh impossible to venture beyond, to surpass, to transcend. Thus we should be very careful when we use concepts like the 'new man or woman'.

Now let us get down to serious 'transhistoric' reflections about earthly reality, human existence and its transcendental 'quo vadis'. We have to part from natural history, from the origin of life, of men, to enter capitalism and its dialectical negation, socialism, and to depart via the new, towards creation and emancipation.

Fiat lux! Nearly unnoticed by billions of whitewashed eyes, in sublime magnitude 'experimentum mundi', namely, the cosmic experiment world, Pacha Mama, life, all are taking place here at the edge of the galaxy called the Via Lactea. In formal geological terms, Mother Earth, Chthon, Geo, ... as a child of "multiversal" 'natura naturans natura naturata' (Avicenna), that is, of creative, creating and created Nature, ... has already existed since a myriad of aeons; our best scientific guess dates our material origin, the birth of our planet Earth back to some 4.54 Ga. Formal logical Big Bang adherents even claim that our universe, our 'hen kai pan', our one and all,  is between 13.5 and 14 billion years old. Seen from such celestial dimensions, with all due respect, how Lilliputian must be the arrogant character of the United States administration in the White House and of all the global corporate moguls! All this happened and still is occurring in order that a few elites bomb the planet to hell? Worse even, will billions of workers really allow them to do it? Is this reason, rational, rationality? Or is it the total eclipse of reason?

However, let us advance...

Nonetheless, what all still could happen on our small planet is still written in the stars. On principle, youths, youngsters generally  experiment hopefully with the new, they  become social detectives, political engineers and economic constructors. On the face value, apart from brilliant exceptions, nowadays the above seems to be a pipe dream, a fata morgana from the 1960s. Mass media, video games, music, drugs and consumerism seem to have mesmerized also a great part of the postmodern 'colonial' youth. It seems that the modern globalized chatting young people are interested in every thing else except in socialism, Marxism and revolution.  Surely, also in Venezuela, everything is not won as yet, but also everything is not lost as yet either. The latest orchestrated demonstrations by the 'opposition' in Venezuela against President Chavez verified that apart from a small minority of brainwashed individuals, the youth, pupils and students, are not prepared to blindly support open fascism. 

Being already a decade in power, Chavez still enjoys at least 60% popularity -- next to Fidel Castro, this is a Latin American record. This is why the coupsters protest against the new law of education. They fear that their manipulation and indoctrination of the youth are coming to an end. They are losing the body, mind and thought control of the young people, of all youth at heart.

Thus, void of Big Lies, military hoaxes, fairy tales and religious myths, that is, without any illusions we are trying to reflect some innovative aspects of the turn of our epoch. This simple and relatively introductory commentary is directed towards the emancipatory youth of the world, towards accumulated youth of all ages. Nevertheless, because of the complexity of our topic, allow us to return to our experiment world, to the sublime philosophic heights of emancipatory analysis and of constructive critique and self-criticism.

We know that material, spiritual and transcendental life developed itself here on Earth millions of years ago and progressively multifaceted life changed Geo into a 'non-centric', hylozoist, panpsychic, cosmic world. This world process Friedrich Engels and Charles Darwin have highlighted centuries ago. As such appeared a myriad of natural experiments: the dawn of apes, chimpanzees, monkeys, gorillas, ape-men, men-apes, hominids and men ... much later, even tyrants, dictators, saviors, saints, popes, men-gods and god-men appeared on the solar horizon. All this partially has already been spotlighted by Charles Darwin in his pioneering work, The Ascent of Man (1871).

On St. Valentine's Day, 2009, we reminded the terrestrial great lovers about their ape descent, also about some possible things to come:
"About the future of ruling class homo sapiens sapiens, about his coming mode of destruction, in 1876 Friedrich Engels already warned us. In his famous essay 'The Part played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man,' written in May-June 1876 and first published: in 'Die Neue Zeit', 1895-06, Engels stated:
'Only Man has succeeded to put his stamp on nature; not only is he transferring plants and animals from one place to another; also by changing the climate and their natural habitat and even by modifying the flora and fauna to such an extent that the consequences of his activities will only disappear with the universal extinction of the entire earthly globe.' " 3)

Engels definitely warned that the 'experimentum mundi' could fail, that no 'Happy End' will await us if we perpetuate  master and slave relations and that the exploitative activities of ruling class capitalist man will only disappear with the "universal extinction of the entire earthly globe." As we can see nothing is determined, deterministic, 'economistic' or absolute in scientific, philosophic anti-capitalism, that is, in socialism.

Mankind, we ... the toiling 'speaking tools' (Aristotle) of our reigning 'philosopher-kings' (Plato) ... only stepped into terrestrial existence a few hundred  millennia ago, into a man-made, self-destructive world order, in the labor process, in the process of production, into a history of natural and social exploitation, domination, discrimination, militarization and alienation. It, our 'pre- and post-modern' historic reality, the current inexorable mortal process of the accumulation of capital is casting us on the very edge of time; we find ourselves at the Rubicon, at the brink of a 'Zeitenwende' (turn of the era), at the cataclysmic crossroads of an imperialist, corporate Russian roulette. If no last minute scientific 'miracle' would occur, if in time we cannot jerk ourselves out of our current lethargic complacency, then rapidly billions of us will be sacked, laid off, down-sized and be cast out of history, sliding towards the nearest  black hole of cosmic oblivion.

It really seems that all ruling class men are hell bent on destroying life on our planet. War mongrels of all bellicose genres, as was the case of the unnecessary nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,  are desperate to test their latest mortal and lethal arms of mass destruction, viz, to destroy within a few centuries what had taken thousands of aeons to come into earthly being and planetary existence. The heinous dimensions of the bourgeois, imperialist, corporate, capital and cardinal crimes against nature and society cannot be expressed in words. Perhaps, who knows, at best the previous United States president George H. W. Bush, Sr. has formulated the truly democratic, popular sentence for such abominable transhistoric atrocities and fascist treachery:
"If the North American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts."  4)

What does all this mean? Can mankind, planetary life, still survive, still emancipate itself?

As far as we could gather, over the past aeons of creating itself, of experiencing and experimenting itself and with itself, in contradistinction to today, in the past, life on planet earth on various occasions was seriously threatened externally by radical climatic changes and other adverse astronomic factors.

On July 27, 2009, with reference to this, we explained:
" ... according to scientific estimates, over millions of years, at least three times natural disasters, ... collisions with other heavenly bodies or sudden drastic climatic changes, ... had annihilated over 90% of then existent life, destroyed a myriad of invaluable cosmic experiments of living beings. So-called homo sapiens sapiens probably underwent a premature birth, compared to cockroaches and crocodiles, it, the 'crown of creation', ... deliberately using a neutral pronoun, ... barely could survive. Only thanks to the natural genes that he was sharing with chimpanzees and pigs, especially with his creative brain (wo)mankind was able to survive. Brains in cooperation with his thumb, early human praxis and theory, saved man's life. Across the millennia the above formed his only formidable weapons of self-defense in a violent natural and social habitat." 5)

Against current global fascism, which has already claimed more than a million  innocent lives over the last decades, could our thumbs and our brains still save earthly life? If not, farewell, crown of creation!

Billions of us, as a result of ruling class 'information', 'culture', 'education' and 'socialization' have been bamboozled ideologically to the very brim. Many of us  do not have the foggiest idea of what is really happening around us. And who as a walking encyclopedia thinks that he knows everything, has patented the truth, very soon, like Socrates, will discover his immense chronic ignorance about Pentagon aliens, blue prints for 'rainbow revolutions', lies about Chavez, myths about '9/11', Bin Laden, about who really 'discovered' America, who was the first Russian in space and what is happening in Los Alamos under ground or in 'Area 51' in the desert above ground. He would be surprised what liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy and justice are all about.

Many of us, now already living in tent cities, under bridges, in ghettos, 'cerros' and 'favelas', perhaps soon will be marked and transported to camps, gulags, football fields, Bantustans or even caves. We are too near to the fleeting moments of contemporary belligerent reality. Many of us are pathologically submerged and immersed in omnipresent consumerism, in a deep reformist slumber, in an intellectual coma; millions of us do not care a dime about revolution, socialism, human emancipation or future life on this planet. As capitalism inexorably is globalizing itself in geometric progression, daily it is terrorizing us with true or faked excruciating horror stories produced by the Murdoch empire or even is harrowing us with gruesome reports like those from Falujah or Gaza. Slowly the youths are being accustomed to war, fear and horror, are being prepared for the military humanism to come, are being nipped in the bud, die in 'defense of their fatherland'.

Now, who scientifically and philosophically studies contemporary history, ... capitalism, socialism, imperialism, theories of imperialism, fascism, theories of fascism, ... who really knows what is happening in this great depression, in this global recession? All the forerunners of this global depression and recession ended up in bloody wars, and the workers had to carry the weight of the restoration of capitalism on their exploited shoulders. The past  'recoveries' of capitalism had a bitter price, thousands and millions of victims; infrastructures, houses, work places and cities, all destroyed. This time it will be worse, it is not only an 'economic crisis' it is the logical, the finite collapse of the decaying, global capitalist system.

Yes, we are living in a decisive epoch of radical changes, in a 'turn of the times'.
What are the social characteristics of such epochs of drastic internal changes? The matrix of all social revolutions, the French Revolution, gives us a glimpse of the feelings of such dramatic transitional epochs.

Allow us to quote extensively from a 'secretary' of the triumphant bourgeois revolutionary 'weltgeist', as described in his classic: "A Tale of Two Cities". In this novel Charles Dickens explains the severe sharpening of the dialectical contradictions of social class struggles. He tells us:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, ... " 6)

In that epoch of social revolution, there was "the spring of hope" for the upsurging bourgeoisie, for the global accumulation of capital, for the coming globalization. It was the "winter of despair" for the falling clergy and nobility.

But, what did he say about the workers, the "proletariat" (Marx and Engels), about "Les miserables" (Victor Hugo), the "white man's burden" (Rudyard Kipling) and the "wretched of the earth" (Frantz Fanon)?

Let us continue quoting Dickens:

" ... we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." 7)

Nothing ... that is why like here we have to say what we mean and mean what we are saying!

Nothing, the revolution did not reach the proletariat, it remained incomplete. Wage slaves were doomed to be exploited "for good or for evil".

In 1789, Rousseau's 'noble savagery' did not triumph on the streets and barricades of Paris; on the contrary, bourgeois 'democracy', ... the liberty, equality and fraternity of capital to accumulate and expand itself won the day ... the Hobbesian beast, 'bellum omnium contra omnes' (the war of all against all) was ushering in its future bloody 'reign of terror'. Today having reached its zenith of perverse military destruction, corporate imperialist terrorism calls itself "full spectrum dominance", by some, euphemistically it also is named "military humanism", by others, simply the war against the "axis of evil", which comprises "failed states", like Cuba, Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, Ecuador  or Bolivia. Ever since, global master races, a 'Herrenvolk', a 'chosen people', 'homo homini lupus', are reigning over slave races, the children of Ham, "les miserables" and "the wretched of the earth". Concerning the above, how deep racism is embedded in the original primitive accumulation of capital in 'civilizations' of Antiquity the following testifies: the Babylonian Talmud states that 'negroes' were the children of Ham, who were cursed by God with 'blackness'. In reality they were down graded to toiling slaves, to 'hewers of wood and drawers of water"; in the twentieth century the Herrenvolk, the apartheid fascist regime in South Africa, had used this 'sacred'  testimony to enslave over 40 million 'blacks'.

In fact, objectively, in corporate imperialism, more than ever before, within the current global mode of production, still the master-slave relations, the capital-labor contradictions, the international bourgeois-proletarian class struggles violently and inexorably are raging. Subjectively and "transjectively", the description of the current social situation is immensely complicated and complex, because we need a new logic, science,  philosophy and "man" to determine the global crossing of the Rubicon, from capitalist revolution to creative emancipation.

Concerning the "spring of hope" during 'Zeitenwende', on April 24, 2009, we commented:
"Across the millennia, in the brilliant words of Anaximander, our clarion call must read; who does not anticipate the unexpected will never find it. For this very reason there still exists the infinitesimal possibility, by means of global workers class struggles, to eradicate and annihilate the capitalist monstrosity. According to Bloch, in the titanic battle against capitalism, in global class struggle very little has been won, but also, not everything is lost as yet. The experiment world, man, continues." 8)

Generally, before obtaining success, many times experiments fail. It took capitalism many centuries to realize itself, as Hegel stated, to launch its eventual passing away into the galactic quicksands of time. Capitalism was possible, it became real, then it passed into decadence and will perish due to severe dialectical conflicts, and hence it will vanish into obsolescence. Its mortal error was that it never gave its possible negation, its Non-A, a chance of self-realization. Anti-capitalism, socialism,  remains utopian, the possible, the authentic new. Our moment is there, capitalism, with all its arsenals of destruction is currently experiencing the nadir of its hegemony; its life energy is running out. At the moment capitalism is bombing its internal dialectical quintessence: labor - capital, to blazes.

Much has been said, written and debated about the New; over the last decades it was given all sorts of ideological, 'postmodern', systemic connotations; nowadays formal logically and even dialectically as a philosophic postulate, as creative eros, as 'vis vitalis', as an emancipatory concept, the New is being violated and sacrificed on the altar of pathological capitalist greed, avarice and consumerism. In the twentieth century, among others, Ernst Bloch, Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara still tried to rescue its utopian emancipatory forms and contents.

Currently, experiencing its greatest recession and depression, world capitalism is entering its 'winter of despair'. Is there still a 'spring of hope" for us, for the exploited, dominated and discriminated classes or has global imperialism already stopped the proletarian "coming of spring"?

Is capitalism or Marxism or both of them obsolete? As stated before, within a closed world system, an utopian daydream is possible, an anticipatory expectation may become objective, concrete, true or not. Socialism as real and true anti-capitalism never was realized on a world scale as yet, it is still possible. Something fully materialized, realized is dying: all the possibilities of the capitalist mode of production are running out, this is why lately it is so brutal in Iraq and Afghanistan, so mortal in Falujah and Gaza.
Bloch reminded us that hope (Hoffnung) is not confidence (Zuversicht); in emancipatory matters nothing is sure, secure. Emancipatory hope is beleaguered with all types of dangers, with hundreds of United States military bases, stockpiled with arsenals of mortal and lethal weapons of mass destruction. Internally this is amplified with an age old global mental holocaust, with sophisticated, technological mind and thought control machinations and mechanisms, and with Orwellian surveillance gadgets. These days, standing on a soap box on Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, London, in the midst of millions of surveillance cameras, trying  to convert the laborers towards socialism, to explain to the buzzing consumer bees global class struggle would be tantamount to the hopeless job of an ancient Sisyphus.
Who is not in orbit already, who does not have the long view of history, cannot see the sinking 'Titanic', cannot escape the coming deluge, the mighty 'tsunami' of tons and tons of melted ice coming from the North Pole, cannot feel the scorching rays coming from the holes in the earth's ozone layer, cannot register the radio-activity coming from above, from the powerful bombs which were launched by the USA after the Second World War in the Van Allen radiating Belts.

What did the philosopher Ernst Bloch consider to be the revolutionary distinctive signs, the principle of hope of our turbulent Zeitenwende?

Firstly, the 'turn of the times' itself.

Among many others, Marx, Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky and Bloch have explained that epochs of radical social change, of violent class struggles, have no recipes, no time-tables, they cannot be copied, imported or exported. Every time a new epoch presents itself, its zeitgeist blazes its own trail. Kant's 'practical reason' and Hegel's weltgeist (world spirit) ushered in bourgeois enlightenment. From there Bloch continued with his Marxist pedagogics of the oppressed peoples.

At the 'turn of the times', during epochs of radical change, like the one that we are witnessing now; because of the fragrant New, of their novelty, innovation and freshness, they are pregnant with youth, with erotic creativity and creative eros. The New is not the continuation of the obsolete, a copy of the past, it is not the ideological humdrum of yesterday, the repetitive rigmarole of an eternal political blue print or perpetual, competitive social bull-fighting. In this sense, according to Bloch, it is time to humanize and socialize the current global exploited classes. Linking Kantian enlightenment to Marxian humanism Bloch underlined that 'even if it should be true that the social relations form human beings, we have no alternative but to change the very relations into human relations. Long live practical reason!'.

To demonstrate the gigantic difficulty for mankind to walk in dignity, in upright gait, he stated that historically we could register thousand wars but less than ten revolutions.

Concerning the 'praxical' and theoretical depths and heights of Bloch's principle of hope, not to repeat ourselves, we will quote from two important articles published last year.

Concerning youth as a philosophic category, on June 18, 2008, in the article "Venezuela: Youth, Students, Education and Marxism", we emphasized that juvenile enthusiasm, imagination, fantasy, "youth itself, youthful anticipatory daydreams, form the concrete, utopian principle of hope (Ernst Bloch)". 9)
We explained that in his writing "Marx als Denker der Revolution" (Marx as the Theoretician of Revolution), Bloch (widely seen as the father of the 1968 student movement in Europe and elsewhere) emphasized that "Youth is driven by a dim presentiment of things to come," of something ahead, of the crimson dawn on the red human horizon." 10)

Bloch elaborated that the rebelling youths suspect  already what they do not want, however, they do "not yet" know what is to be done, what is to be thought, how to venture beyond this capitalist, terrorist vale of tears.

A year ago, on September 18, 2008, in an article titled "Ernst Bloch: The cat falls on its four paws, who has not learned to think falls into eternal yesterday", we informed that already in 1974 at the eve of global fascism, of international thought, mind and body control, Bloch warned us about the possible coming of a global 'Farewell to Utopia'. 11)

Secondly, Youth, restless youthfulness and energetic adolescence themselves are emancipatory elements and creations of the turn of the times. Bloch still hopes for emancipation within productivity, within the process of planetary production. We in honor of Bloch are trying to venture beyond systemic production, we include possibilities of realizing extra-systemic, 'transvolutionary', creative emancipation. Surely concrete, fundamental utopian hope is not confidence or national security; no 'happy end' or divine 'hunting grounds' await us. We are the experiment, we are part of the 'experimentum mundi'; it could be victorious, have a different result, that is, it could fail. However, the outcome of this planetary experiment could be totally new, it could be 'trifferent', be neither successful nor a failure. Hence, real Hope is not Confidence, is not triumphalism. For example, nothing is sure about a hopeful socialist victory in Venezuela or elsewhere.

Finally, in this epoch of radical social transformation, of political depression, economic recession and military repression, of world fascism,  where mankind de facto is already engaged in a life and death battle, in devastating international class wars under disastrous belligerent conditions ... inter alia, in Gaza, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Palestine, Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan ...  we better wake up urgently out of our long, deep consumer slumber (Shelley), get rid of our mechanisms of evasion, of our fear of freedom (Eric Fromm).

What Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in 1819 at the eve of the Industrial Revolution in England, on the occasion of the Peterloo massacre of many workers by the British government is still valid today:
"Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few." 12)

In spite of all its Big Lies, for example, about '9/11', world capitalism fears the truth, the youth, social creativity, the new, that is, that what the billions of wage slaves could become: emancipated!

Summing up, currently by means of intra-class wars ruling man is threatening himself internally; internationally he does the same via systematic means of self-annihilation. We are living in a decisive Zeitwende of history, we have to study its zeitgeist, its scientific tendencies and philosophic latencies and also its short and long term objectives, its revolution.

Marx expressed the principle of hope as follows: : a problem only turns up when humanity has the solution already at hand.

In our specific case, the long term objective of experimentum mundi, the New, already dawns on the crimson horizon of Planet Earth. We have the 'free' choice: it depends on us whether we want to sink into the current obnoxious quicksand of corporate arrogance, ignorance and obsolescence, into the capitalist cesspool of radio-active fascist darkness or to transcend this imperialist vale of tears by means of a creative exodus, by crossing the Rubicon towards the realm of the New, of Emancipation. A gigantic, titanic global war alias 'world peace' awaits us. Our clarion call is the New, a new logic, science, philosophy and wisdom, that is, the New per se. To create this we need no Manhattan project for arms of mass destruction: we only need to live the Truth 'praxically', to study reality theoretically, and to surpass the bourgeois, capitalist, world revolution with creative emancipation, with emancipatory creation. As Bloch taught, the genesis is now, after exploitative production comes human creation. However, these topics surely merit new discussions and new
 commentaries in the near future.

***
1) See: http://www.franzlee.org.ve/bloch001.html

2) http://www.econlib.org/library/
YPDBooks/Marx/mrxCpA31.html

3) (My own free translation from the German original)
http://www.pr-inside.com/franz-j-t-lee-
no-problem-r1059947.htm

4) http://www.mathaba.net/0_index.
shtml?x=619885
5) http://www.opednews.com/articles/Honduras
-and-Venezuela-Ro-by-Franz-J-T-Lee-090726-107.html

6) http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/
Charles_Dickens

7) Ibid.

8) http://www.mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=619885

9) http://quebec.indymedia.org/en/node/30964
10) (Ibid.)
11) http://www.trinicenter.com/modules.php?
name=News&file=article&sid=1896&
mode=thread&order=0&thold=0964
12)
http://www.artofeurope.com/shelley/she5.htm