Defence #7; Tea and Humbug

Hello,

Just a quickie.

A few days ago the Prime Minister announced in the Commons that Britain was 'taking the lead' on the Libyan crisis. This 'lead' included the possibility of enforcing a no-fly zone over the country to counter Gaddifi-loyalist forces bombing the rebels.

As the Ink Spots blog points out though, without the US Navy enforcing a no-fly zone would be highly difficult at best. The UK does not have an aircraft carrier active at the moment - HMS Ark Royal is going to be decommissioned a week today. The next carrier, the Queen Elizabeth class supercarrier HMS Prince of Wales will not be ready until 2020. It's interesting to note that on 26th February the conservative Daily Telegraph was calling on the Prime Minister to help economically isolate the Libyan regime.

As Ink Spots argues, we are increasingly facing a simple fact that was first relayed to us in 1956 - the UK can do virtually nothing militarily on the international with the United States. At Suez we needed their approval. Now it seems we need their help.

Defence #6: Tea and Unsympathy

Hello,

While I work out how to make those two posts on Gerry Adams into something worth reading, here's a very interesting article on Tea Party hostility to the US Defence Budget, and the subsequent disagreements within American Republicanism:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/12/us-military-tea-party-movement

Politics, American and British

I offer you this article, from the BBC on Jon Stewart's 'Restore Sanity' rally in Washington D.C, this blog post on the declining and aging membership of the Conservative Party and this question: what are political parties for nowadays?

From the desk of the good people at Scans_Daily

FYI: Tom Wright's retirement, and the Florida Phone Shop Manager

Tom Wright, who's retiring from the Bishopric of Durham to take up a chair at St. Andrew's University, has given an interview to Today's Jim Naughtie, talking about the need for the Church to concentrate more upon social mobility (as well as on the CoE's media image). Worth a listen:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8948000/8948907.stm

Also in the News, from some time ago, is this story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10822923. Christian forgiveness at its finest, in my humble opinion

Some brief thoughts on the Park51/Cordoba building situation

As I understand it, this building will serve as an Islamic community centre, include worship rooms. It is not at the Ground Zero site, but two blocks away - such was the force of the impact on 11th September that some parts of one of the planes managed to do serious damage to the building that day.

Under the auspices and spirit of the US Constitution, the owners of Park51 have full right to build a community centre on the site they have chosen, which can include as prominent and large an Islamic worship area as they like. Freedom of expression including religious expression is plainly allowed within the US Constitution. That goes for those supporting and those opposing the project. Let's face it too, I doubt whether or not real estate in Manhatten is that cheap. This is probably the best place they have available to build if they're going to.

There are some questions about the funding involved, but that is beyond my ability to comment upon. Apart from that the reasons for not putting a site including Islamic worship rooms on a site that close to Ground Zero are fairly similar to my not founding a British cultural centre on the Garvagh Road in Belfast. I would have every legal right to, it would not be a centre designed to throw the history of The Troubles in the faces of the locals, and possibly it would be beneficial when it came to healing the divisions between Nationalists and the British state. I still wouldn't volunteer to lay the foundation stone.

I'm not going to start dictating who people can worship. I am a Christian, but I believe that the argument is best won by persuasion and prayer rather than plain shouting. The builders of this project can have the best of intentions, but that still doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea.