This is off topic, but I'm not sure what the topic is at the moment - calling each other idiots, perhaps?

quark, I like your "signal-to-noise ratio" formulation. To my mind, much of the noise is the increasing propagandizing and politicking indulged in by the US mainstream and Murdoch-owned news media. Journalism is not meant to be involved in such areas in the first place, yet the dumber the message they try to foist upon one, the louder they bray it. As for the rest of the noise, we can thank that most inane of all media developments, the blog. End of sermon.

Aquicke,

You are quite right. First, media is a business. They do whatever
it takes to make a quick money, to serve themselves and their friends. This is the root cause of all these "infotainments".
This always leads to "lowest common denominator" which feeds
the dumber-nizing the population. It is self-indulging cycle that feeds itself.
Much of the breakdown of education system, current fanancial crisis and paralysis of the political system can be traced to
this self indulgence.

In a "democracy", there is no way out. Obama is starting to see
some lights, I think.

The thread is still about China's position to both domestic and global Muslim world. I say, don't let US/Israel color our vision and decide our policies. There are peoples I distrust, and the top one is not the Muslims. I distrust and fear: (1) US/UK, (2) Russia. EU is an iffy case, there's hope of courting them, but I wouldn't bet on it. Japan makes me nervous, but geography binds us and we've learned to live with each other for >1000 years. India, recent events are disquieting, but historically China and India have little to quarrel over, we aren't made to be brothers, but we don't want to be enemies to each other.

With the Muslim world, I think we have to have a strategic partnership. The Silk Road of the ancient world connected and enriched our cultures for centuries and I think just now European colonialism is starting to recede enough to bring the Silk Road history back to life. The Middle East is not just a land bridge to Europe nor a depleting source of dirty oil. Of all of China's neighbors, I would group Korea/Japan to the East, Silk Road countries to the West as top priority. Philippines, Indochina, India and Russia are also important but as second priority.

These are the big pictures, getting distracted with a few IED's a year or more recently these random bizarre syringe attacks is silly.

Remember, by all accounts, including public statements by US officials, the main sponsor of the Urghur separatists is Washington NOT Middle East, or any Islamic countries/organizations.

"Remember, by all accounts, including public statements by US officials, the main sponsor of the Urghur separatists is Washington NOT Middle East, or any Islamic countries/organizations."

"by all accounts?" Please provide a link or two to one of those "accounts." The US is guilty of meddling in the affairs of many countries, including China, but "the main sponsor of the Urghur separatists?"

Here is one "account" - news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/23/content_11760569.htm

"East Turkestan" Islamic terrorists are identified as being those responsible for activities in the region against the Chinese government.

Roll eyes...

Quoting your own source (paragraph 2):

The three "East Turkestan" groups -- the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), the East Turkestan Union in Europe and the East Turkestan Information Center, have proved to have close links with terrorism.

Now please look up WUC, who's the main sponsor? In particular, financial backing? National Endowment for Democracy: an overt channel of money right out of US Congress. It's all right there in plain sight (including Wikipedia). And who's the host of "East Turkestan Union"? Afghanistan? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Indonesia? Where? EUROPE, read your own source: EUROPE. Last I check Europe wasn't Islamic.

For more details, just backtrack a few pages, the involvement of US agents AND more importantly, the NON-INVOLVEMENT by Al Queda are well documented by other members in this thread and ATimes contributors and other sources. It's not my fault you jump into this discussion unread and uninformed.

For future reference, I don't have time to dispute every little silly opinions or misinformation or in this case utter lack of merits.

Re-re-post:

Washington is Playing a Deeper Game with China

And once again, I fell prey letting distractions divert attention to the real point. Good job Jim.

Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to reply to my request for links to back up your assertions. In the future I'll ignore any statements in Xinhua identifying Islamic terrorists as the source of unrest in NW China. You obviously are better informed than they. Any other geopolitical issues I should defer to you over what Xinhua provides?

ding73ding wrote:


Now please look up WUC, who's the main sponsor? In particular, financial backing? National Endowment for Democracy: an overt channel of money right out of US Congress. It's all right there in plain sight (including Wikipedia). And who's the host of "East Turkestan Union"? Afghanistan? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Indonesia? Where? EUROPE, read your own source: EUROPE. Last I check Europe wasn't Islamic.

.

You might have helped other contributors by cutting and pasting the following link

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Uyghur_Congress

(quote) The organisation is funded in part by the National Endowment for Democracy or NED, which gives the WUC $215,000 annually for "human rights research and advocacy projects".[19] The National Endowment for Democracy is a U.S. non-profit organization founded in 1983 to promote democracy by providing cash grants funded primarily through an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress.

Funded IN PART . So where does the rest of their funding come from?

Europe? European countries may have accepted Uighir refugees some of whom then formed WUC. Does not mean European host government endorse their aims. They just give people (even Uighir refugees) the freedom to form peaceful political organisations.

www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KK06Ad02.html

"Urumqi is now 70% Han, resulting in a lot of resentment among the Uyghurs, especially in the capital city. "

Just about every propaganda piece published on NYT and
elsewhere tries as hard as they can to make similar lies.

As I said many times before, all Uighur in Urumqi are immigrants from south Xinjian (500 miles away from Urumqi)
or their decedents. Urumuqi is a city created by Chinese
emperors first as a military post.

The truth:

sun-bin.blogspot.com/2009/07/ignorant-ho...ong-commentator.html

---
表1：乌鲁木齐维汉回民族人口变动表
(2000 data added/tabulized by ESWN):

Year Total Uighur %Uighur Han %Han
1949 100,710 18,310 16.99 67,588 62.29
1950 121,746 21,074 17.30 77,554 63.70
1951 125,275 21,955 17.52 78,902 62.98
1955 171,897 31,769 18.48 109,842 63.89
1960 634,844 76,496 12.04 477,321 75.18
1965 615,189 62,439 10.14 463,804 75.39
1968 679,165 72,339 10.65 511,547 75.31
1972 765,788 73,265 9.56 587,813 76.75
1975 930,430 91,708 9.85 716,550 77.01
1980 1,060,502 108,239 10.20 812,557 76.62
1985 1,172,335 138,546 11.81 868,789 74.10
1990 1,384,300 173,200 12.51 1,007,355 73.30
1996 1,478,922 188,327 12.73 1,076,319 72.77
2000 2,081,834 266,475 12.80 1,567,621 75.30

Quite on the contrary! I found Xinhua to be more reliable than other mainstream outlet to tell the truth and (almost) nothing but the truth. The whole truth part is quite lacking. But come on, which news agency can you rely on to tell the whole truth?

The nice thing about Xinhua is that (1) far better than BBC and American media, it separate the opinionating from the fact-reporting, its language is dry, un-colorful and un-colored; (2) its omissions are well defined and completely predictable: Tibet, Falong Gong, CCP in-fighting, and direct criticism on the USA (and in fact any country or government organization of significance). Even those taboo topics are shrinking, nowadays, you can read pretty reliable facts on Taiwanese politics, no worse than Western media, for sure.

In the particular case here, Xinhua labeling WUC as terrorist organization quite fairly fact-reporting, those organizations are verifiably on the official terrorism lists of China and many other countries (esp. Muslim countries). It self-censored in directly linking Washington to sponsoring terrorism because it's one of the taboo topics. But the information is all there, anyone can Google/Wiki WUC and figure out Xinhua's subterfuge.