Introducing the Serious Problem by Commenting Thomas Bearden

Already on June 12, 2000, in an article, "The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How to Solve It Quickly", T. E. Bearden, LTC, U.S. Army (Retired) CEO, CTEC Inc., the Director of the Association of Distinguished American Scientists (ADAS) and a Fellow Emeritus of the Alpha Foundation's Institute for Advanced Study (AIAS), explained the energetic quintessence of the current world recession, depression and crisis. In the last analysis, within this context, the current "crisis" of Venezuela and the still ongoing war on Iraq have to be seen.

You could study this excellent document at:
http://www.franz-lee.org/files/bearden_energy_crisis.doc

Let me quote some relevant passages. What did he write with reference to the world energy crisis?

"The world energy crisis is now driving the economies of the world nations. Presently there is an escalating worldwide demand for electrical power and transportation, much of which depends on fossil fuels and particularly oil or oil products. The resulting demand for oil is expected to increase year by year. Recent sharp rises in some U.S. metropolitan areas included gasoline at more than $2.50 per gallon already.

"At the same time, it appears that world availability of oil may have peaked in early 2000, if one factors in the suspected Arab inflation of reported oil reserves. From now on it appears that oil availability will steadily decline, slowly at first but then at an increasing pace."

Concerning the "some 150 nations", mainly of South America, Africa and Asia, who live outside the big metropolitan countries, he explained their immediate future:

"The transfer of manufacturing and production to many of these nations is a transfer to essentially "slave labour" nations where workers have few if any benefits, are paid extremely low wages, work long hours, and have no unions or bargaining rights. The local politicians can usually be "bought" very cheaply so that there are also no effective government controls. This has set up a de facto return to the feudalistic capitalism of an earlier era when enormous profits could be and were extracted from the backs of impoverished workers, and government checks and balances were nil."

Already in 2000, what did Bearden foresee for the immediate future?

"Bluntly, we foresee these factors — and others { } not covered — converging to a catastrophic collapse of the world economy in about eight years. As the collapse of the Western economies nears, one may expect catastrophic stress on the 160 developing nations as the developed nations are forced to dramatically curtail orders."

Thus, how do the desperate actions of blowing up "Twin Towers" and declaring "new wars" on Afghanistan and Iraq, including oil sabotage in Venezuela, fit into this gruesome picture?

"History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea { } launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response."

And, how did he portray the current global fascism that has been launched shortly thereafter?

" The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.
My personal estimate is that, beginning about 2007, on our present energy course we will have reached an 80% probability of this ´final destruction of civilization itself´ scenario occurring at any time, with the probability slowly increasing as time passes. One may argue about the timing, slide the dates a year or two, etc., but the basic premise and general time frame holds. We face not only a world economic crisis, but also a world destruction crisis."

We have reached the middle of Year 2004, which for him is a critical year:

"The 2003 date appears to be the critical "point of no return" for the survival of civilization as we have known it.
Reaching that point, say, in 2005 will not solve the crisis in time, and the collapse of the world economy as well as the destruction of civilization and the biosphere will still almost certainly occur, even with the solutions in hand. ... Eerily, this very threat now looms in our not too distant future, due in large part to the increasing and unbearable stresses that escalating oil prices will elicit. So about seven years or so from now, we will enter the period of the threat of the Final Armageddon, unless we do something very, very quickly now, to totally and permanently solve the present "electrical energy from oil" crisis."

So, what ss required to solve the problem? Venezuela, listen very carefully to what he said.

"To avoid the impending collapse of the world economy and/or the destruction of civilization and the biosphere, we must quickly replace much of the "electrical energy from oil" heart of the crisis at great speed, and simultaneously replace a significant part of the "transportation using oil products" factor also. ... In the name of all humanity, let us begin! Else by the time this first decade of the new millennium ends, much of humanity may not remain to see the second decade."

What solutions he had suggested, you could read in the original document; however, according to him, it is now already too late. No real measure was taken to avoid a global catastrophe.

At any event, la lutta continua, but it is important to see the real, true, historic context of the current Venezuelan crisis; its solution is to be found neither in "away with Chávez" nor in "away with the three "Carlos". Rather, in Mercosur, Yes! ALCA, No!!

Directly, concerning Venezuela, the Bolivarian Revolution is a direct transhistoric product of the transitional global capitalist mode of production in death agony. Surely, everything that comes into existence on this planet merits to fade away into oblivion. The so-called homo sapiens sapiens does not escape this universal law. This simply means that, as the result of a universal labour process, that has reached its destructive nadir in capitalism, we are living in a mode of destruction, and that a new mode of creativity and creation is appearing on the current horizon, in the galactic aurora.

Here in Venezuela, with a serious historic responsibility, we are living in the transvolutionary epoch of a mode of creativity and creation, where transcending man -- not homo homini lupus -, that is, where the Experiment Man is dawning, not with "miracles", but with transsystemic achievements that already ocurred right here in Venezuela between April 11 and 14, 2002, and again in December-January 2002/3. And, surely, again on August 15, 2004. No country in the world, not even in official history, except Venezuela, could have outlived such severe national, international, political, military and economic attacks. The Bolivarian Revolution is "made of sterner stuff", and cannot "be nipped in the bud" (Shakespeare) so easily, because it concerns other things in Heaven and on Earth than those that are dreamt of in the bloody ideology of Bush, Kerry, Powell, Rumsfeld, and Ortega.

Generally, in times of severe capitalist crises, over-production and recession, the negation within the system awakes, and globalizes itself. Currently, the superation, the neither affirmation nor negation, is being born in Venezuela, with all its weak revolutionary birthmarks. But, it is something else, not just a negation, it is an exodus, the expression of billions of obsolete physical labour forces, that sense the coming Physical and Mental Holocaust, that have to counter-act, counter-attack it with all their might.

The Bolivarian Revolution is a mighty challenge, it is only the first emancipatory spark that will set the North American prairie on fire. It is not only a matter of solidarity with Venezuela, it is a Latin American, African, Asian, a World Issue. Thomas Bearden has indicated the real problem, the transhistoric context of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Thus, Bolivarians of the World, Unite! You have much to lose!! As Karl Marx had already predicted it, had explained the tendential laws of the movement of capital, which would lead to the total extinction of capitalism itself, to its own self-annihilation. Its energy crisis is its life crisis. Long live Mercosur, long live ALBA!