East Turkestan, also called Xinjiang, Sinkiang or Uyguristan, lies north of Tibet and north-east of Afghanistan. It is a land of emeralds, oil and gold in the middle of Asia. It has huge deserts where the Chinese try out their death machines. The Silk Road used to pass through it, when Kashgar was its main city.
Most people born there are Turks – Uighurs, in fact (sounds like “Weegurs”). They are distant cousins of the people in Turkey, close cousins to those in nearby Uzbekistan. Like most Turks, they are Sunni Muslims.
The Chinese have ruled East Turkestan since the late 1800s, calling it Xinjiang (Sinkiang on the old maps). The Chinese know it is not their country, which is why they have been sending their own people there to live so that it will no longer be a Turkish place. It is now about half Chinese, half Turk.
It was not always so. East Turkestan was once the centre of an empire, a place of great poets and great buildings. The Uighurs even ruled Mongolia. They defeated the Chinese in 751 and were free of Chinese rule for a thousand years (though they were ruled by the Mongols in the 1200s, but then so was everyone else in that part of the world). The Chinese sent them silk and the hand of princesses in marriage to keep the peace. Some say acupuncture started there.
East Turkestan started to fall under Chinese power in the 1700s. It came under direct Chinese rule in the late 1800s. When China was torn apart by civil war in the early 1900s, East Turkestan was independent for a time in the 1930s and again in the 1940s. In 1949 the communists won the civil war and the Chinese firmly took over again.
There has been violence directed against Chinese rule, especially in 1954, 1997 and now in 2008. The Chinese call it Islamic terrorism and blame foreigners like Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. But given the nature of the violence, it seems to be homegrown with little money behind it. Its aim seems to be freedom from Chinese rule, not jihad or holy war.
Turkestan is the old name for the region in Central Asia where the Turks live. In addition to East Turkestan there is West Turkestan, which the Russians once ruled: the present-day countries of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (but not Tajikistan or Afghanistan, which are Persian, not Turk).
Religion: Islam came there in 934. Before that the Uighurs were mainly Buddhists, though there were many who followed Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism. Some Uighurs to the east are still Buddhist to this day.
Islam as practised there does not seem be strict or extreme: many of the young Muslims drink and dress just like the Chinese. Most Muslim women do cover their hair, but not their faces. There has been no clear proof of any suicide bombings. No one is allowed to visit Mecca on his own: the Chinese government is afraid of Islam (and any religion it cannot control).
– Abagond, 2008.
See also:
Somewhat off topic, but seeing as how there are no comments here, the Devil made me do it.
Somehow, the Dems need to be able to translate this calculus into a sound byte:
The Fed for years was governed by Alan Greenspan, who was completely in bed with the Republicans. Didn’t even make an effort to disguise it.
The Fed is of course an executive agency, and thus the fact that its chairman is aligned with the sitting president is not surprising. However, in the past, such as with Paul Volcker under Jimmy Carter, there was generally some level of independence — recall that Volcker (whom some call “the last honest man to have been in politics in America”) raised interest rates under Carter for the purpose of stemming inflation, which was certainly the correct thing to do at the time, but not surprisingly it proved to be wildly unpopular with voters and was probably what cost Carter the next election.
The Republicans under Bush43 have been famous for, among other things, stripping away the last vetiges of independence of executive agencies like the US Attorney’s office, the Fed and the SEC. Hence Greenspan.
An express purpose of the Fed when it was established was to watchdog and put a stop to economic bubbles because of the tremendous harm they cause to the economy when they burst. However, the economic bubble in the US housing market under Bush43 was convenient to the Repub cadre. It created the simulacrum of economic growth by using leverage to flow large sums of $ through the economy. The money flowed, but it was all borrowed, not earned. Thus, larger $ volume, but no real growth. However, the Repubs have been using this smoke and mirrors trick to now claim that though taxes were cut, Federal tax revenue increased. The Repubs like to attribute this increase to economic growth spawned by tax cuts. The reality is that it is attributable to increased economic activity, phantom “growth,” spawned by leverage and easy credit.
At the same time, the Fed adopted a policy of lax oversight over regulated financial institution, sending out the tacit message that risky lending would be allowed.
At the same time, the SEC, another executive agency under POTUS control, fostered an environment on Wall Street under which these risky mortgages could be bundled into securities, given an “A” rating by bond rating agencies, and thereby sold at a handsome profit to investors, including huge investment houses like Lehaman and AIG. In this way, Wall Street money flooded into the housing loan market, and was eagerly snapped up by borrowers lured by the low teaser interest rates.
It was clear that this bubble would burst one day. Nobody seriously questioned this. The gamble by the Repubs was that the bubble would endure long enough to get them through another election cycle. The bet was that it would burst under a Democratic president, who could then be blamed for the nation’s economic woes, just as Jimmy Carter was blamed for the economic hard times caused by the stagflation and the necessary interest increases that were the legacy of Nixon’s ruinous economic policies.
Alas, it burst a year too early. The Repubs let greed get the better of them and they inflated the bubble too quickly. Now, the mess has plopped into their laps just in time for the election. What the dems have to figure out is how to explain this to Joe Sixpack in Pennsylvania.
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Indeed.
At the very least the Republicans turned a blind eye to what was going on – or, more likely, drank Wall Street’s Kool-Aid.
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tolkien_87@hotmail.com
ı am very love eat türkistan ı want other turkish people speak want mey adresim enetr you
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This is a politically charged post, and subject to interpretation which *some* may regard as inaccurate (depending on who you ask). It might help to explain where some of the information was sourced from.
Even the use of “East Turkestan” is a very politically charged term.
I think different historians would have a field day with this statement, as it was claimed by the Han Dynasty over 2000 years ago. Certainly it is debatable whether such claims were legitimate, but certainly most Chinese believe it belongs to their country. They are aware that until recently, few Han Chinese lived there, but that might not be a direct implication on whether people believe a place belongs to their country or not.
Could you say that Americans know that Puerto Rico, Guam, Alaska or Hawaii is not their country, or even South Dakota? I would claim that white Anglo-Americans recently flooded into areas that were not previously occupied by them, but not because they “knew” that it was not their country.
But, it is definitely verifiable that Han Chinese were a small minority there until just a few decades ago, when Han Chinese started moving there in the tens of millions.
But this has occurred throughout the millennia. Peoples on the edge of Han Chinese civilization have bit by bit been assimilated into the largest ethnic group on the planet.
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China is stepping up its firm stronghold on Xinjiang.
Xinjiang residents must register before buying mobile or PC
(http://www.ejinsight.com/20150130-xinjiang-residents-must-register-before-buying-mobile-or-pc/)
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