Let's be good. Let's be irrelevant

The Church of England has given further evidence of intellectual decrepitude.

I don't believe that there is a case for the moral acceptability of nuclear weapons that I could with integrity accept.
Rowan Williams

However, if they can somehow rope into their ranks a few more people like Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali (Bishop of Rochester), a 'refugee' from Pakistan, there is hope that the colonies will re-invigorate the mother country.

Nuclear weapons are here and they are not about to be disinvented. As they have done in the past, the Churches have a duty to set out the moral criteria for having, developing or replacing a nuclear capability. It is not their task to tell government what to do or to make policy on its behalf. They need to acknowledge that the government has the responsibility of protecting its citizens, strong and weak alike. They need to ask whether the international situation is such that a nuclear deterrent is needed. In the context of the Cold War, the General Synod agreed that it was. Is the situation any less dangerous today? I don't think so.

Of course, the CofE is not alone. The Scots and the Labour Left offer them solidarity.

"It would be the ultimate in hypocrisy if the UK were to be arguing, for example, that Iran should not be developing a nuclear weapons capability, while at the same time we were extending in scope and in time our own," a Scottish church report said in May.

Former environment secretary Michael Meacher, who is seeking to replace Blair when he steps down from office later this year, has the intervention by the bishops.

"On non-proliferation grounds - it is impossible to say to countries like Iran you should not have nuclear weapons but we must have ours," Meacher said in House of Commons motion, signed by 122 MPs last year.

That might be the case if all countries were equal in responsibilities, achievement and contribution. They are not.

(Second article via Ninme)

Eurovision fatality

The Israeli song for the Eurovision Song Contest ain't about adolescent love. It pushes different buttons.



But it may not get to Helsinki. There is talk of banning it on the Euro-principle that what is not harmless is positively dangerous.

On Iran

Former CIA director James Woolsey at the Herzliya Conference.

On who the Wahhabis hate more: Iran or us

The Wahhabis, al-Qaida, the Vilayat Faqih in Teheran, although often lethally competitive with one another in the way the Nazis and communists were in the 1930s, are capable of unification. Those who say that these movements will never work together because of their ideology are precisely as correct as those who in the 1930s said that the communists and Nazis will never work together. They didn't, until they did.

On approaches to Iran

...there is a very substantial likelihood that if the diplomatic approach failed - and I think it will - and non-violent regime change won't work [in Iran], there is no alternative except for the US to use force.

On the worst option

I agree with [Senator] John McCain: Using force against Iran to stop its nuclear program is the worst option we have, except for [the option of] letting Iran have a nuclear weapon.

A curiosity. There are six Google ads on the page that I arrived on. The first offers analysis of the rumours that Osama bin Laden is dead. The second offers the services of the Shura Corp if you want to

immediately identify explosives and chemicals used in terrorist attacks.

The next three are on politics and security, but the last is very particular. It is selling a glass film that will protect you from shattering windscreen or window glass - it's your Invisible Coat Of Armor.

Must be great living out there.

Truly scary

Gideon Rachman has an off-the-record interview and is surprised. He outlines the interviewee's background and his own expectations of someone

with longstanding and continuing involvement in the Middle East peace process and personal knowledge of all the major protagonists. So I expected him to say something like this: “The situation is worrying, but there are areas we can make progress in. In particular it is vital to make a new effort on the Israeli-Palestinian problem and to engage Iran and Syria.”

That was from a post on the 9th of November. He mentions the same point in a post today because a commenter had complained about the 'neo-con' nature of the interviewee's views. Rachman reiterates that

the whole point of that reported conversation was precisely that it did not come from the usual neo-con suspects, but from someone with impeccable peacenik credentials. Over the past months I’ve heard similar views not just from the Americans and the Israelis, but from the French and from non-aligned diplomats involved in peace efforts.

What are those views? Well, very similar to those of Walid Phares in the World Defense Review that I posted yesterday. And that, too, is the point.

The interviewee sees the major destabilising force in the region

as an expansionist and over-confident Iran, that is bidding for regional dominance. In his opinion the war in Lebanon over the summer was the “first Israel-Iran war in all but name.” He believes that there will be further Iranian-Israeli wars – perhaps next year.

He believes that

Hizbollah unleashed the fighting, more or less on the direct orders of Tehran. Under pressure because of their nuclear plans, “the Iranians wanted to show that they could destabilise the region just like that”. The Iranians are also using their nuclear programme to further their regional ambitions. A regional nuclear arms race is already beginning.

He has met Ahmadinejad

and describes him as “truly scary”. He adds that he is used to dealing with populist Arab leaders, “but when you talk to them in private, they are usually quite reasonable and rational. Ahmadi-Nejad is not like that.” His impression is that Ahmadi-Nejad is now calling the shots in Iran, and has intimidated the moderates into silence: “They are all scared of him.”

The Saudis, the Jordanians and the Egyptians have told him that they expect all this to end in war. Not only that

They are also much more concerned about Iran than Israel, because “they know that Israel is not really an expansionist power”. Indeed the moderate Arab states would like to form a de facto alliance with Israel to contain Iran – but opinion on the “Arab street” prevents them from doing it.

And finally,

The next round of the struggle will kick off internally in Lebanon.