zenpundit.com

ZENPUNDIT BRACED

Blogging has been light and I apologize. Some of this has been due to my current one-handed typing limitations which might soon improve. My incredibly cumbersome splint has been replaced by a an equally formidible but far more comfortable hinged arm brace that has freed up my left hand at least. The arm still hurts and the surgery cost close to 6k which – allegedly – will be covered mostly by insurance. Basically, when I have been online I’ve been commenting over at Calpundit, generally irritating some of Kevin’s more partisan readers. I’ll try to work a bit more on my own blog now that I’m feeling a little better.

<ON THIS NOTE:

Juan Cole has reported the following today on his blog:

“*The Sunni clerics of al-Azhar Seminary in Cairo have issued a new fatwa requiring Muslim states to seek nuclear weapons. The ruling says that for Muslim states to renounce such weapons while non-Muslim governments have them would be a horrible mistake. Muslims, the clerics said, have a duty to strive to be as powerful as their enemies. –Az-Zaman “

Quite simply, radical Islamist regimes that attempt to develop nuclear weapons will either be forced to give up such programs under international pressure or the United States will dismantle those programs using military force by invading and forcing a change of regime. This includes Iran. Is this fair in an abstract sense ? No but it is a matter of survival as the Islamists are both impervious to reason and fanatical enemies of the United States they need to be relegated to the same level as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Their avowed hatred will be treated seriously for what it is – a desperate wish for our destruction.

DEMOCIDE AND GENOCIDE:

One of the more interesting threads on H-Diplo that I was involved with was a debate with Tom Nichols and Judith Klinghoffer over whether Stalin’s use of Terror qualified as genocide. Class-based Communist terror, like Stalin’s De-Kulakization and Collectivization campaigns are not included under the Genocide Convention definition of genocide because in the aftermath of WWII Soviet diplomats were very well not going to agree to any language that implicated their supreme leader in the ultimate crime against humanity. Nevertheless, the convention represented a significant improvement over the international response to the Armenian Genocide after WWI when nothing much was done or even acknowledged. Hitler in fact, is known to have remarked ” Who remembers the Armenians ? ” which demonstrates the impact on future monsters when the internatational community fails to react to such atrocities.

All of this has been a preface to an interesting website on Democide by RJ Rummel. Check it out.

CHINA AND TAIWAN:

China is still continuing their missile build-up against Taiwan that began in the mid-1990’a. This to me says several things. First, China does not have any serious plan to invade and conquer Taiwan in the near future regardless of how Chinese Communist Party leaders or PLA generals periodicaly bluster whenever some prominent Taiwanese politician gets a tourist visa to the U.S. If they had such an intent their investment would be far better spent in acquiring some kind of airlift and sealift capacity. The Chinese have not done so because their boats and planes would get shot to pieces by the more technologically advanced Taiwanese air force. Secondly, it indicates that while China does not intend to conquer Taiwan, war remains a serious card to play because the missiles could inflict devastating losses on Taiwan’s economy and civilian infrastructure without Taiwan being able to retaliate in-kind on a similar scale. Third, it may be China’s attempt to acquire the ability to destroy any nuclear facilities should Taiwan resume the quest to build nuclear weapons, a program abandoned under U.S. pressure back in the days of the Nationalist dictatorship.

This is a backburner issue but one where the Bush administration may have to review upgrading arms sales to Taiwan with all the complications that would arise from such an action.

PROFESSOR GRADES STUDENTS ON HOW WELL THEY PARROT ANTIWAR VIEWS

Oh yeah. She also didn’t bother to teach her course material because it took too much time away from her political propagandizing for Saddam Hussein. The university owes these students an apology and a refund of their tuition. From Frontpagemag