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Do you believe we could ever live in a world with no nuclear weapons? Do you think it would be a better place, or a more insecure place? Did nukes save us from a Third World War during the Cold War of 1945-1989, or did they take us to the brink of Armageddon?

The reason I ask is that there is a growing - with some very eminent supporters - arguing that now is the time for governments to start moving seriously towards the total elimination of all nuclear weapons.

Idealistic nonsense, you say? From the likes of George Shultz and Henry Kissinger? Mikhail Gorbachov? Robert McNamara? David Owen?

Something is stirring in the world of nuclear non-proliferation, which is why we devoted a large chunk of last night's programme to it. (If you missed it, you'll find it in the usual place: Listen Again on the website. And my apologies, by the way, for the technical problems earlier in the week, which prevented us from updating the site.)

George Shultz's line boils down to this: nuclear deterrence was all very well when it was about just America and the Soviet Union - but now that there are so many more nuclear powers (I make it eight at the last count: the US, Russia, China, France and Britain, plus India, Pakistan and Israel), deterrence becomes a hugely risky option.

The former chief of the UK Defence Staff, Lord Bramall, wrote in a to The Times recently: "Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently, or are likely to, face -- particularly international terrorism; and the more you analyse them the more unusable they appear."

Consider this: the attacks of September 11, 2001, the attacks in London in July 2005, in Mumbai in November - all took place in countries with a nuclear weapons capability. So who exactly was deterred by the fear of a retaliatory nuclear strike?

I put that argument to the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. Ah, he said, you're right, nuclear weapons don't deter terrorists, but they may well deter future potential enemies 20 or 30 years into the future. And until everyone gives up their nuclear weapons, Britain will retain its own capability.

As for the argument that Britain could set a good example by going it alone on nuclear disarmament: "fanciful," says Mr Miliband. Does anyone seriously think that Iran, for example, would give up its own nuclear programme (it denies, of course, that it is developing nuclear weapons) just because the UK decided not to renew Trident?

There is a serious debate to be had. A growing number of policy makers seem to be convinced that it should be possible to turn back the tide of nuclear proliferation if the existing nuclear powers do more to reduce, and eventually eliminate, their own arsenals.

Here's what the says about the Obama administration's policy objectives: "(We) will stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take US and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the US-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global."

All of which sounds pretty ambitious. But can aspiration be converted into achievement? To be honest, I have no idea, but it's going to be interesting to watch over the coming months as Washington and Moscow size up each other's true intentions.

Just this week, the word from Moscow was that it may now suspend its plans to place a missile system in Kaliningrad, close to the border with Poland. Was it a goodwill gesture to President Obama, or an attempt to drive a wedge between him and Washington's allies in what used to be the Soviet backyard?

We do live in interesting times.

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I think I was probably witness last Tuesday to one of the biggest, loudest and most enthusiastic gatherings of Obama inauguration-watchers anywhere in the world.

I was in the Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama, with between 5,000 and 6,000 black Alabamans who were there to celebrate the inauguration of a man who - to use the phrase I heard over and over again - "looks like us".

The southern state of Alabama has two main claims to fame: it was, from before the days of the American Civil War, a bastion first of slavery and then of segregation and racism, where blacks weren't regarded as second class citizens, but as non-citizens. And then, in the 1950s and 60s, it became the cradle of the civil rights movement: where Martin Luther King preached non-violence, and where the segregationists made their last stand.

The Boutwell Auditorium itself tells its own story: in 1948, it hosted the States Rights Democratic Convention, at which Southern Democrats - the "Dixiecrats" - broke away from the national party in protest at its commitment to "human rights" over states' rights. And in 1956, the black singer Nat King Cole was attacked on stage by white assailants while performing to a whites-only audience.

It was so very different on Tuesday. Giant TV screens beamed the pictures from Washington as Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office to become the 44th US President. (No one in Birmingham seemed to mind, by the way, that he got the words slightly muddled.) You know that cliché - "There wasn't a dry eye in the house"? There wasn't.

"It was like being released from a prison," said the veteran civil rights campaigner Gwen Gamble on that night. "We had been in bondage, we had been denied certain rights, and none of us thought this would happen in our lifetime." (If you missed our programme from Alabama, you can still listen to it via the website - and you can also find a link to some from my trip.)

Do you remember when Obama first emerged as a possible Presidential candidate? The pundits wondered whether blacks would really vote for him. After all, his mother was white, his father was Kenyan, and he grew up mainly in Hawaii. He wasn't exactly a "typical" black American. None of that mattered: "he looks like us."

And in any case, he's not just been elected President of black America - he couldn't have won the election if only blacks had supported him. (But note this: in Alabama, only one-tenth of white voters supported him - and whites make up three-quarters of the total state population.)

I met one young white activist who told me that Obama as President is a "deviation", that he is a Marxist, and that America must remain a "European" (ie white) nation. Was he typical of white Alabamans? Perhaps not, but the fact remains that most white southerners did not vote for Obama.

Of course, there is much more to the Obama presidency than the fact that he is black. In the fullness of time he will be judged, to use the words of Martin Luther King, not by the colour of his skin but by the content of his character.

Yet, if you're black -- and if you were born and brought up in the deep South, with its history of segregation and oppression -- to see someone in the White House who looks like you is a very big deal. In the Boutwell Auditorium on Tuesday, I watched as a 10-year-old schoolboy told the crowd: "I am proud of Barack Obama. I am proud that he is an African-American - like me." That's why I saw so many black Alabamans crying as the new President took the oath of office.

They know it won't be easy. They know nothing will change overnight. He's told them that himself. But however longs it takes, and however hard it is, they also know that he will always look like them.

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I've just met two extraordinary people.

When Mary Smith was 18, she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white woman. This was in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, and in those days, black people weren't supposed to answer back. She was arrested and hauled off the bus in handcuffs.

You've probably heard of Rosa Parks, who did something similar a few months later, and became a national figure as her legal case became a landmark in the civil rights struggle. But Mary Smith was there first, and as we sat on a reconditioned 1950s bus and retraced that fateful journey of more than half a century ago, she told me her story.

The Rev. F.D. Reese is equally remarkable. He was on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma in March 1965, at the start of a civil rights march to Montgomery. They were baton-charged and tear-gassed by State troopers following orders from the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace. "I saw blood flowing that day," Dr Reese told me as he stood again on that bridge. "But now with a black man as President of these United States of America, I know that all our pain and suffering was worth it."

You can hear them both tell their stories on The World Tonight, live from Alabama, on Tuesday, Inauguration Day, at 10pm on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 4 or online.

And there are more pictures .

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Sometimes, it's useful to try to look at the world through someone else's eyes. So here's what I might be writing today if I were a Palestinian living in Gaza.

"You want to know what it's like in Gaza at the moment? It's Hell on earth. But that's nothing new - it's always Hell on earth here. Since the day I was born, I have lived in a stinking, rotten prison, with no freedom and no dignity. I remember my grandfather telling me about the beautiful home he once had, and of the lemon trees and olive groves he tended - I still have the huge metal key to his house, and he told me before he died that one day I would be able to go back and live there again. Yeah, right. I doubt it still exists: it was probably buried under the Tel Aviv ring road years ago ...

"Do I support Hamas? Yes, I do - because they stand up for me and they fight for me. I'm not a fundamentalist - I like to drink beer and I don't pray very often - but I don't see anyone else taking on the Israelis, and I can't live my whole life like a snivelling dog, just waiting for the next blow to fall.

"The rockets? Sure, fire rockets at the Israelis. Let them feel how it hurts when children are killed, when you live every day in fear. Let them learn how it feels to be a Palestinian. If they want the rockets to stop, tell them to stop killing us, to give us back our land, to lift their blockades. Give us a chance to live like ordinary human beings.

"Ah, you want to know if we can ever live in peace? Perhaps you should ask the Israelis. Ask them if they will end their illegal occupation, give us back the land they stole to build their settlements on, let me go home to my grandfather's house, if it's still there, and plant more lemon trees. When they say Yes, then, maybe, we can live in peace. Salaam."

And here's what I might write if I were an Israeli:

"You want to know why Israel is attacking Hamas in Gaza? Do you really need to ask? Do you know how many rockets they have fired at us since we left Gaza? How many times they have tried to send suicide bombers into Israel to kill us in our shopping malls and our bus stations? Have you any idea what it feels like when your neighbours are terrorists?

"Am I worried that we're losing friends around the world? Let me tell you something: the Jewish people have learned over hundreds of years that friends don't save you. For hundreds of years, we have been both hated and weak: if it's a choice between that, and being hated and strong, well, I'm sorry, I know which I prefer.

"Look at a map. Look how small Israel is. It's all we've got, and if we lose it, we lose everything. I'm sorry if some Palestinians have lost their homes - but so too have hundreds of thousands of Jews, in Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, and many other places. We remember the Holocaust, even if you don't. We all know what it means to suffer.

"I repeat, we have nowhere else to go. But the Arabs? If they feel so sorry for the Palestinians in Gaza, why don't they offer them homes in Egypt, or Jordan, or Saudi Arabia? There's plenty of space for them there. I'll tell you why: because they still hope that one day, Israel will disappear, that the Jews will vanish into the sea, and that they can have all of Palestine back.

"Sorry, it's not going to happen. We won't let it happen, because we have been victims too often. Strength is our only defence - and we will use that strength until our enemies understand that we are here, in our God-given homeland, to stay for ever. When the Palestinians say Yes, they understand that, and accept it, then, maybe, we can live in peace. Shalom."

Let there be no misunderstanding: these are not my views, but based on my experience of more than 20 years reporting from and about Israel and Palestine, I'm pretty sure they're the views of a great many Palestinians and Israelis.

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According to the Israeli government, more than 3,200 rockets and mortars were fired from Gaza during 2008. That's an average of more than 265 each month.

But for six months, Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, were meant to be observing a ceasefire, or truce. So didn't it make any difference? Well, yes, actually, it did.

We asked the Israeli military spokesman's office to give us a month-by-month breakdown of rockets fired from Gaza during the truce. It came into effect on 19 June; here are the numbers (all of them, according to the military spokesman, are approximate).

19-30 June: 9
July: 20
August: 17
September: 2
October: 2

On 4 November, when much of the world was watching Barack Obama win the US presidential election, Israeli forces crossed into the Gaza Strip and killed six Hamas fighters. Israel says Hamas was building a tunnel under the border fence at Deir al-Balah which it intended to use to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Hamas responded by launching rockets and mortar shells into Israel. The number of rockets fired from Gaza during November was, according to the Israeli military, 190.

According to the best estimates I can find, 16 Israelis have been killed by rockets fired from Gaza since the beginning of last year. Palestinian medical sources say more than 500 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the current Israeli military operations 10 days ago - but as you know, the Israeli military are preventing foreign reporters from entering Gaza, so these figures can't be verified.

Do numbers prove anything? Probably not. But I think they're interesting, nonetheless.

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I know it may seem perverse of me to draw your attention to this, given everything that's going on in Gaza at the moment, but if we take a step back from the daily headline horrors, there does seem to be some good news to take note of from the Islamic world.

According to the Middle East scholar Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, the good news over the past year includes: the election of a secularist government in Pakistan at the beginning of 2008; the "near strategic defeat" of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia; a political settlement in Lebanon; a consolidation of the transition to democracy in the world's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia; and the avoiding of a major political crisis in Turkey when the constitutional court declined to find the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) guilty of undermining the official ideology of secularism.

His full list is .

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