STWR - Share The World's Resources

I've lived through seven decades and can remember the late 1930s before WW II began. In fact, I began my formal education in kindergarten within days of when Hitler sent his Wehrmacht across the Polish border in an act of illegal aggression and began that near six year horror.

I was too young to understand it then, and I can barely remember that fateful "first Pearl Harbor" on December 7, 1941. Franklin Roosevelt wanted in on that fight and did all he could to goad the Japanese to attack us. He knew with enough prodding they would, and when it came, we knew about when and where it would happen. We were ready to mobilize and join the battle, we did it, and nothing's been the same since.

FDR at least took the country to war as the Constitution says we must. On December 11,1941 he asked the Congress to make that declaration against Japan and also Nazi Germany in response to Hitler's declaring it against us. It was the last time a US Congress would ever use the constitutional authority it alone is allowed in Article I, Section 8 of that sacred document. The Founding Fathers thought that authority so important they codified it. They believed that on what is the single most important issue a nation ever faces, that awesome power should never placed in the hands of a single person.

Somalis rebuild and cling to hope

When Abdirahman Farah, who is blind, returned to his native Somalia two years ago, his friends in Britain worried about him because of the country's lawlessness.

But Farah was not deterred by the peril, or by the lack of a functioning government to provide services or security. He started a school for the blind in Mogadishu, the capital, by raising tens of thousands of dollars from local businesses and enrolling 22 students, with 100 more currently on a waiting list.

Farah is among the thousands of Somalis who have adapted and plunged ahead with businesses, schools, and service organizations despite the continuing violence and leadership void. As Somalia this week took another important step to resurrect its national government after 15 years without one, many Somalis say they would welcome even a minimalist government, one that would guarantee their security but also allow their recent initiatives to flourish. They worry about a return to a dictatorial government that would quash many freedoms, including a free-market system.

During the past decade – particularly since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States – Westerners have generally considered international terrorism to be the most urgent threat to human security. Accordingly, vast resources have been mobilized and expended to counter its many forms.

Unfortunately, however, the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent invasion – without UN authority – of Iraq underscore the primacy of military solutions in the strategic thinking of affluent nations. At the same time, developing countries have continued to grapple with the persistence of mass poverty, endemic disease, malnutrition, environmental degradation, and gross income inequity, all of which have caused a degree of human suffering that far exceeds what has been caused by terrorist attacks.

We need, therefore, to revisit today’s global challenges from a Third-World perspective. Indeed, a fundamental lesson of terrorist attacks and insurgencies, we now know, is that no nation, however self-sufficient, can afford to remain heedless of whether others sink or swim.

Three years ago we were spending time together, every moment we could, building the type of relationship we would need to survive the unknown we were about to face.

It was our choice – going to war. Based on the information we had, and knowing that we don’t take our commitments lightly, we knew that we would face this duty to country together – the commitment we had made. Kevin to defend the constitution, the country and all that it represented as a volunteer in the US Army, and me as the one who would take care of everything that was ours while he was away.

Iraq happened.

Can you truly understand what it feels like to watch in the darkness as your husband, loaded with weapons, chemical antidotes and somber anticipation, boards a bus to an airfield where he will board a plane that will take him to war? For those of you who have never been there – please don’t say you understand. You never will.

The arms trade makes big money for the richest nations while fuelling conflict across the world

Cinema-goers will be shocked this week to see an advert selling them AK47 machine guns, alongside the ads for cars and soft drinks. It's a spoof by Amnesty International, sending up TV shopping channels to draw attention to the appalling ease with which weapons are bought and sold around the world. But the reality is far more shocking.

As a human rights campaigner, I've visited countless countries where people suffer terrible abuses. Women raped at gunpoint during the conflict in the Balkans, police killings of street children in Brazil, the horrors committed during conflicts in central Africa. Behind so many of these atrocities is one common factor: the gun. Around the world, arms facilitate abuse. Torture, "disappearances", rape, all take place at gunpoint. And behind that gun is the arms dealer, profiting from a trade that's barely regulated and spiralling out of control.

The Nobel Lecture by IAEA Director General and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2005 Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei

"Today, with globalization bringing us ever closer together, if we choose to ignore the insecurities of some, they will soon become the insecurities of all."

In an acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2005, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Association addressed the Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Comparing the aims of the work of the IAEA to that of his sister-in-law's humanitarian aid work, as ensuring the security of the human family, Dr ElBaradei listed the five borderless threats identified by the UN High-Level Panel as: