September 3: Can Mankind Seize Its Unalienable Right To Develop, Without War?

Aug. 23—“Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto—”I am a man. I think nothing human to be alien to me." The Roman playwright Terence’s saying has been used for many centuries, for many purposes. Let it now be used to call attention to the hope, as of last Friday’s Aug. 15 meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, that thermonuclear war can still be averted, that we can yet reverse our still-descending path downward into a final species-threatening tragedy.

To do this requires a next step—a meeting among Presidents Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin, as early as September 3. In this meeting, if the idea, “nothing human is alien to me,” should prevail, it would demand that the practice of seeking the benefit for one section of humanity must now be supplanted by the principle of attaining the benefit of all humanity. It is only through the benefit of the other that a truly human standard for a new security and development architecture can be established.

The proposal to create a new physical platform for humanity’s joint collaboration through an Earth-bound “Apollo Project,” the Bering Strait Development Corridor linking Asia to America, is now circulating worldwide through a statement authored by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche. If people of good will join together for the next ten days, an international groundswell can, in this way, build a bridge for humanity out of Hell, and at least to Purgatory. Humanity’s way home lies across the divide of the Bering Strait.

At the same time, we must face the fact that unless the millions of trans-Atlantic spectators who daily absolve themselves from morally “taking arms against a sea of troubles, and, by opposing, end them,” in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan, and are forced to hold up a mirror to their own nature, the genocide in Gaza will not be stopped. Israel’s Netanyahu continues to deny his enforced famine, one of the most painful ways to die, even though, now, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which describes itself, has declared that famine conditions exist in Gaza Governorate, an area of the Gaza Strip that includes Gaza City. Helga Zepp-LaRouche called for UN General Assembly Resolution 377, Uniting For Peace, to be invoked superseding recalcitrant members of the UN Security Council, and which says, in part, “the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with the view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures, including, in the case of a breach of the peace or active aggression, the use of armed force if necessary, to maintain or restore, international peace and security.” The dramatic use of the principles of Classical tragedy in drama can assist us in rousing people out of the cave of their moral indifference.

The recently released film, “Dead To Rights,” which portrays the 1937 massacre of 300,000 people in the occupied city of Nanjing in a two-week period, and how the suppressed truth of it was gotten to the world by a few people who refused to be doomed, should be seen by all who wish to understand the nature of what is now transpiring in Gaza, but is being denied, just as the Nanjing massacre was, and is even now being denied. Where possible, this film should be seen together with the film, “Hiroshima 8:15,” on the refusal of individual civilians at “Ground Zero” of the atomic bomb’s detonation, not only survived the blast, but also refused to be doomed after first impact. Two different views of Japan, provided by the two different films, juxtaposed, are resolvable only at a higher level, from the mountain-top of the idea, “nothing human is alien to me.”

A Japanese blogger living in China, named Hayato Kato, known for amusing posts, stunned his 1.9 million followers by recounting how he had seen the film and wrote about it, instead of his usual diversions. “He said he had seen many people on the Japanese internet denying the Nanjing Massacre had happened, including public figures, even politicians. ‘If we deny it, this will happen again,’ he continued, urging Japanese people to watch the movies and ‘Iearn about the dark side of their history.’” Over 600,000 have now seen his remarks.

The dark side of the world’s history, in which well over 100 million died in the Second World War, including at least 35 million persons of Chinese ethnicity, 4 million-plus Japanese, and more than 27 million Russians, who were killed mostly on Europe’s Eastern front, means that there is a much different meaning for these people to this 80th anniversary of the September 3 Victory Against Fascism, than Americans or Europeans might dream. An American presence, or at least, an appreciation of the solemnity of what this occasion represents, may be decisive in moving forward. Consider, also, how the Chinese, and Russians, are thinking about a report from Reuters on Aug. 19: “Trump Shock Spurs Japan To Think about the Unthinkable: Nuclear Arms.”

Nuclear weapons expert Ted Postol, speaking on the Aug. 22, Friday 116th meeting of the International Peace Coalition, sobered the gathering by making it clear that Iran, now separated, as a result of the United States and Israel’s bombing of its nuclear facilities, from any International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection procedures regarding the uranium known to be in its position, could, or can, under certain circumstances, he believes, produce and use nuclear weapons without the need for testing them. Now, Iran is the second undeclared nuclear weapons country in Southwest Asia, after Israel. Does that mean that if Israel concluded that Iran was working right now on a bomb that could be deployed without testing, like the bomb used on Hiroshima, to the doorstep of Tel Aviv, that it would launch a nuclear pre-emptive strike against Tehran? How important is Russia’s relationship to Iran in this circumstance? More importantly, how significant is it, given this new danger in Southwest Asia, that the United States’ strategic relationship with Russia is now being positively advanced, as of Aug. 15? How could a Trump-Xi-Putin summit further consolidate this, given China’s recent constructive role with Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians? And there is the additional matter that it has been China that has most recently been the leading proponent of a Bering Strait connection to further facilitate trade with the United States—a far happier and more economically productive policy than the Trump Administration’s tariff offensive.

Such a meeting will result, if those tens of millions in Europe and America, who now insist they are underlings whose the fault lies, not in themselves, but rather “in their stars,” such as the current President of the United States, fight for it. We suggest that that fight start from Principle Ten of Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles for a New Security and Development Architecture: “The basic assumption for the new paradigm is, that man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul, and being the most advanced geological force in the universe, which proves that the lawfulness of the mind and that of the physical universe are in correspondence and cohesion, and that all evil is the result of a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome.” That principle of humanity is not alien, but a fundamental, unalienable right of all people. September 3 can be a major step in building a bridge to the future, which determines our present.