Ginger Ail
FYI: There is an ethnic group known as the Uyghurs (pronounced Whee-gurs).
FYI: Uyghurs typically stand out among other Chinese as many have blue eyes and red hair, and live in the Xinjiang Province (an autonomous region formerly known as the Islamic East Turkestan Republic).
I repeat, there are ginger kids in China.
Ever since Mao occupied Uyghur territory tensions have remained high between the Chinese government and this Muslim minority eastern province. Immigration policies and incentives for ethnic Han (majority Chinese) have continued to challenge Uyghur majority in the region, and today these people occupy 50 percent of the region. Since September 11, 2001 and China's vocal support of the War on Terror Uyghur nationalists have been dubbed terrorists by the Chinese national government, and violent clashes between the majority Han Chinese military and Uyghur separatists have often been fatal occurrences.
Things have escalated further in the weeks following Obama's liberation of two Uyghurs formerly detained at Gitmo under terrorist charges by the Chinese government. Protests over two Uyghur factory workers erupted into turmoil that apparently led to the PLA to fire indiscriminately into a crowd of protestors, leaving 156 dead. At least 800 people have been labeled "injured" in what the Chinese government call the Xinjiang riots. Nominally autonomous regions continue to plague the Chinese state with its lifelong legacy of a disunified and diverse internal empire. Brutal crackdowns in Tibet and Xinjiang stand as living testament to China's domestic nature of insecurity and hark back to the tanks of Tiananmen.
From Russia, With Love
Obama has met with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to achieve a new nuclear arms reduction agreement as apart of his START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) initiative that will cut each country's current nuclear stockpile by thirty percent. These two countries alone account for 95 percent of the world's total nuclear weapons arsenal.
The governments hope to achieve military cooperation in Afghanistan, even if it just means Russia supplies some weapons. The issue of missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic will surely be discussed this week. The erection of new missile defense systems would support international relations' Offense-Defense theory which suggests that as offensive capability gives way to defensive strategy states can increase defense so as to sustain a period of relative peace. Way to go O-Ders...This Scud's for you.
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