Fifty-eight years ago the world celebrated the beginning of a new era. The Second World War, the worst war in history, was brought to a close. The world's fascist empires lay defeated. The new era promised to be an era of peace. Two words rang out in remembrance of the great tragedies that had been suffered. The words were, "Never Again!" 

Still, in the unfolding era of victory a seed had been created that forever changed the world. It changed it in an unprecedented manner, but it did not change it towards peace and prosperity. It caused the emergence of an infinite threat.  In a very real sense, as the seed unfolded, it challenged the whole of humanity to change itself and raise itself to a level of being where it could live with the impact of what had been sown into the world.

The seed that had been sown, that changed the world, was an idea, an awful idea that gave us for all time to come the knowledge to build atomic bombs. 

This knowledge, the knowledge to build these bombs, will remain with us. It will never be eradicated. It will forever challenge us to find a way to live and prosper against the background of this knowledge. But what about our success in meeting this challenge? Did we have any success?  Have we changed our ourselves as a human society sufficiently to be able to live securely with that knowledge for all times to come? Well, I must invite you to answer that question yourself.

The only two atomic bombs that we've ever dropped onto human beings killed a quarter of a million people and terrified the whole world. Now, half a century later, we have built twenty-thousand more nuclear bombs, and those of a type that can be up to five-thousand times more powerful in destructive force than the early atomic bombs had been. It is surprising really, against this background, and this is in a large measure due to the dedicated effort of many people, that we are still alive, that we have survived this threat in spite of a couple close calls. When one of the scientists involved in developing the knowledge for building the bomb said of his role in that, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," he probably didn't realize how right he might yet be. Those dreadful words still stand to be fulfilled at a moment's notice.

Indeed, the world had changed. In the era before the bomb was built, for the event of the infamous fire bombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, a massive force of 334 large scale B-29 bombers was required. This massive attack achieved a level of destruction similar to the Hiroshima type damage. But the effort in logistics and organization to cause this tragic damage was immense. The huge armada of 334 planes dispersed 2000 tones of fire bombs across the city in order to set off a firestorm in which 100,000 people died and a million were made homeless in the space of a few hours. The point in bringing this tragedy up, is to point out that an enormous organizational effort was once required to achieve a level of destruction that is now considered puny in comparison with what can be unleashed by a single man, with a single act. 

In today's world, a single MIRVed missile carrying twelve to sixteen nuclear warheads, could conceivably render an entire country uninhabitable for long periods of time. And that too, might conceivably be the act of a single person. We need to realize that we, humanity, have created many hundreds of such missiles with the potential to destroy our human world. We placed in deeply dug silos or into submarines that ply the oceans of the world where they remain secure from threats, but can we trust the people who guard them, and the commanders who control them? Can we feel save with such weapons in our midst in a world that has become fascist once again and echoes with cries of terrorism and the glorification of preemptive force?

So, what must our answer be? Are we meeting the great challenge of this age to create a world in which we can live securely in the shadow of the capacity that we have acquired for our global self-destruction?

It appears to me that we are not meeting this challenge. It appears that we do everything in our power to hide this challenge from, us as we lay the foundation for an unprecedented rise in terrorism, fascism, imperialism, domination, intolerance, and economic degradation. If we were to rate the state of our global civilization towards meeting the great challenge before us, to create a foundation for survival in the nuclear armed world, we would have to give ourselves a failing grade. In fact, almost everything that we have done in the global context in terms of economics, politics and security over the last half century is now disintegrating and becoming more and more destructive against ourselves. 

For instance, the economic destruction of Africa is already looming more dangerously as a threat to human existence than the atomic bomb has become. We have created with the destruction of Africa a disease breeding caldron, with a potential that we cannot even guess at. This makes the atomic bomb a small fry in comparison. We know where all the atomic bombs are located. If we choose to do so, we can cause them all to be eliminated in a very short time. In contrast to that, the rebuilding of Africa and all the poverty centers in the world, in an effort to stop that caldron, cannot be easily achieved. It takes a massive economic upgrade to reverse the biological breakdown of an entire continent, or continents, that now threatens to unleash a biological holocaust that has the potential to be far more deadly than AIDS. The issuing caldrons cannot be shut down over night. Such a task will require the economic redevelopment of the entire world, and to achieve that, we need to achieve a level of love for one another as human beings that isn't even put on the agenda as yet, not even for a meaningful exploration. Nevertheless, the great challenge that the nuclear age brings upon us, and whatever associated with it, must be accepted, and all the implied goals must be achieved for our civilization to be able to survive, and humanity to prosper.

All of this means that we have come to a cross roads junction today, with historic implications for the course of human development. There was a time in 1648 when the nations of Europe had come together and had 'imprisoned' as it were, into some kind of Pandora's box, the notion that might equals right. Prior to this event, the terrible notion that might equals right had reigned for a hundred years in the course of which half of the population of Europe was put to death in a rampage of mutual destruction in a long chain of wars. In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed that sealed this imprisoned evil in its box, for all times to come, so it was hoped. Unfortunately, this Pandora's box has now been reopened, and its ugly content be let loose in an era of nuclear weapons, global imperialism, and terrorism fuelled by greed, ideological perversion and gross acts of inhumanity. Out of this same box also comes the related doctrine of preemption, that now applies to all nations, all people, all governments, all terrorists, and all 'patriots' alike. The question that we need to ask ourselves, is this: Can we survive going down this path?

Indeed, we need to ask ourselves if we can survive on the path that we are presently on? Our world financial system is disintegrating. The world is awash with debt that can never be repaid, for which not even the interest can be paid, while the physical economies are strangled by it to the point that they are beginning to collapse almost globally and a new wave of (economic centered) genocide is unfolding in many parts of the world. The world is also awash with imperial structures, from global empires all the way down to tiny private family empires. Over the years in which these developed we have become nearly exclusively vertically interrelated, instead of standing laterally side by side with one another. But can we change these vast developments? Is it too late to change what came out of it? Can we create a new renaissance in our time in which we support and enrich one another's existence and the whole world in which we live?

The answer is still unfolding. I suppose we can measure our chances for a long term survival by the answer that we find as we open our eyes. The evidence that we find suggest that only a few people presently speak affirmatively for the required goals, and fewer steill are actively fighting for them.

Among those few who fight for these goals, a single man stands out prominently, a man who has fought for thirty-five years for economic policies to enrich the people of humanity and their world; who has fought in this context to reestablish the necessary global financial and cultural foundation on which to create a new humanist renaissance in our world. This man is none other than the world renowned economist, intellectual activist, and at the same time the world's most persecuted and reviled politician, Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr.. 

As a politician LaRouche is persecuted, because he stands in opposition to the imperial structures of the world and in defense of a world of sovereign nations in a community of universal principles. He is slandered too, as an economist, because he represents the "general welfare" constitutional principle, the American intellectual tradition, and the traditional American System of Economy that twice in U.S. history turned a bankrupt nation into the most prosperous and respected nation on the planet. He is slandered, because this process creates a nation in which imperial structures have no place. In short, LaRouche is fighting for a return to the humanist principles of the cultural renaissance on which the USA itself had been founded. He is slandered, because he fighting for the kind of principles that have the potential to cause us to become human beings again in a political, economic, and cultural context that would end the looting practice of empires and enrich our civilization.

Perhaps it is in society's support for this man, for his policies based on long established universal principles, that we find a yardstick for ourselves with which to measure the potential for our survival. The principles that he represents are the principles of civilization, and society's support for them translates itself into a support of one another. If this trend becomes established and becomes the foundation for a new world, nuclear weapons will indeed become obsolete and today's seemingly insurmountable problems will be overcome with a great certainty. All of this this lies before us, because the universal principles of civilization are not arbitrary principles. Nevertheless for this to happen, something else needs to happen in parallel. We need to achieve a good measure of success in exploing mankind's final frontier.

This final frontier is evidently not found in outer space. Haven't we already stood on the moon; explored the planets; and are we not even now working and living on platforms in space where we look out from them upon the universe? In a very real way, we have already conquered to some degree the boundless frontier of space. But there exists another frontier. This one lies elsewhere and is far less explored. This frontier is found in the space that lies between ourselves as human beings. To the degree to which we become able to reach across this space to one another, our world, our civilization, and our existence will become secure. But this is also were we face the greatest challenge we have ever faced, and where we must win to survive.

I have developed a series of websites, novels, and other writings, to explore the vast, multifaceted challenge that pertains to the survival of our civilization in a nuclear armed, and economically and biologically disintegrating world. The purpose of the work that I have done is not to start a specific political campaign, nor even to speculate whether we will, or will not survive the onrushing crisis that looms before us. Each one must answer those questions for oneself, and one must do this by asking: "what am I doing to assure the survival of our world?" And one must also ask, "is this enough?" Instead, my work is designed to make us more aware of the scope of challenge that we face.

In a sense, we are all involved in a world-encircling classical tragedy, of the nature if Shakespeare's tragedies. In a classical tragedy the tragic element is always society itself, whose failure to itself is reflected in the tragedy of the figures of the plot, and in the tragic outcome that happens, but should have been avoided. Thus, it is the purpose of the classical tragedy to elevate society to the point that the tragic outcome can be prevented in the real world. In our case, the outcome has not yet been determined. The play is still in progress, but the writing is on the wall, the challenge to act intelligently and wisely is plainly in the open. This means that we have still have space for repentance, or room in time to elevate ourselves in order the shape the outcome. My hope is, and my work is focused on that, that we will indeed elevate ourselves, and that we will elevate ourselves in our regard for one another so that we will look at one another and our world with open eyes and honest hearts; and that, in this frontier, we will discover within us that love that meets all human needs. Only then can we say that our world is secure and that the night of nuclear bombs, fascism, terrorism,  poverty and pandemic diseases is passed. And when this day comes, we will also say, and we will say this with joy, that we live in a rich and beautiful world of our own creating that no one can take from us again.

Rolf Witzsche

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