Harry's Place

Andy Newman will be suffering from cognitive dissonance.

AQ v. the Chinese Communist Party – bit like Arsenal v Cheslea – you want them both to lose.

I wonder who the kitsch left will fit this into the ‘Islamists are really anti-imperialists’ paradigm?

AQ v. the Chinese Communist Party – bit like Arsenal v Cheslea – you want them both to lose.

Nah, Al Qaeda is definitely Man City – bankrolled by arab billionaires but still get nowhere apart from the occasional consolation win against their arch rivals.

Andy Newman will be suffering from cognitive dissonance.

Wa-haha!

AQ v. the Chinese Communist Party – bit like Arsenal v Cheslea – you want them both to lose.

Wa-haha, wa-haha!

Nah, Al Qaeda is definitely Man City – bankrolled by arab billionaires but still get nowhere apart from the occasional consolation win against their arch rivals.

Wa-haha, wa-haha, wa-haha!

Obviously, I don’t want any migrant worker in Africa to be attacked, but I can’t help but feel that A-Q may be about to find out what a state response unemcumbered by notions of restraint is like.

If AQ attack China in Sudan we’re going to see one very confused George Galloway.

Frankly I can’t take any of this seriously because I keep mishearing the news reports as talking about “ethnic WIGGAS”, and imagining an army of Ali Gs on the rampage.

But yes, China vs Al Q will be grimly funny if it happens.

I don’t quite get what you’re saying with that last sentence, David. Are Al Q the “engineers” of this ethnic massacre?

Ref to this:

“Three weeks ago, AQIM attacked an Algerian security convoy protecting Chinese engineers on a motorway project, killing 24 paramilitary police. While the Chinese were not injured and were not targeted, the assessment notes: “Future attacks of this kind are likely to target security forces and Chinese engineers alike.””

Regions and regional minorities have a right to self government

Why?

I didn’t think you were keen on Sharia law for the Bengalis of Tower Hamlets. Or perhaps you are?

Hmmm. China’s relations with Pakistan (not least their nuclear dealings) might come into play in all this somewhere.

I think that Bengalis in Tower Hamlets (and indeed, the inhabitants of Pimlico) might have a little difficulty in forming an independent state.

However I am in favour of Tower Hamlets and Pimlico having some form of local government. It is usually called “the council”.

And, no, I don’t think that Bengalis in Tower Hamlets have anything like a majority of people who would prefer a sharia to an English law system.

ChrisC: Is it deliberate trollism that you cite but then ignore the words Region and regional?

“Regions and regional minorities have a right to self government”

Maybe Pickett’s Charge was not in vain, after all.

I fail to see what the attacks on Chinese engineers in Algeria several weeks ago have to do with this. The Uighur riots hadn’t happened yet.

I think AQ just hates everybody, and the fewer the engineers who are willing to work in Islamic countries, the worse off those countries just become. French engineers certainly won’t go there, nor will British or American ones.

But then AQ’s agenda depends on keeping the natives backward, impoverished and ignorant so that they can then exploit the resentiment thus generated to maintain power.

I’m wonder, though, if this will take some of the heat off of the NATO forces in Afdganistan.

Al Qaeda attacking China would be about the most counter-productive thing they could possibly do.

I always come back to the same question: Who exactly do Al Qaeda NOT want to kill?

Is it deliberate trollism that you cite but then ignore the words Region and regional?

So what is a region then? Cornwall? Greater London? If populations there are entitled to “self government”, then why not the population of a London borough? If the majority of people in a state wish it to be governed on a unitary basis, why shouldn’t they have their wish granted?

If Cornwall wanted a greater degree of autonomy, or even independence, whatever that would mean in the context of the EU then yes it would be entitled to it. The basic principle of self-determination is axiomatic and only in extremis (the American Civil War?) can there be any moral or philosophical basis for its denial.

To the extent that there is a London identity (I think there is some sort of share identity amongst native Londoners who seem to be a minority in London) it is not a regional/national identity based on experience or myths of oppression by some dominant power that calls for statehood – in contrast to that of the Scots, Welsh or Cornsih.

Of course if we were going to have a City-state the southern border would, of course, be the Thames, with a 1 mile no-mans buffer zone just south of the river and machine guns in place to stop the tunnel and bridge brigade getting through ;o)

Good luck with making war on China, Al-Q… though something tells me it might not go as well as planned.

I do understand that Al-Q has a fully functioning sabre-rattling department, and Religion-Of-Peacists all over like to get giddy about making life-ending threats. But rumour has it that China has less interest in politically correct human rights legislation and fewer policies of craven appeasement than the west.

Al-Q may just find out that China may take a remarkably dim view of attacks on their people.

I have long waited on this development. The Chinese have been ‘in business’ for many long years. Watch them at work and learn.

AQ apparently “loves death”.

Unfortunately, the People’s Republic likes killing people.

“Regions and regional minorities have a right to self government”

What rubbish. From where does this right flow? It is true that regions and regional minorities have a right not to be oppressed, because they have that right as individuals. But the mere identification of a group as having some ethnic identity does not instantly accord them a right to self-determination.

“From where does this right flow?” Its proponents would argue it is inalienable and flows from natural law but John Locke is a good starting point. At essence the arguments for self-determination of a minority “people” are the same as those for democracy and self-rule of “the people” as opposed to rule by a monarch, dictator or minority elite.

There are difficulties about what counts as a people, how far self-governance should go and the rights of the majority in a state as against a minority of secessionists (minority in the state but a majority in the sub-state) but the basic right is pretty non-controversial amongst liberal democrats in the broadest sense, ie from the centre right to democratic socialists.

There is no right to self governance for regional minorities in international law. The right might be emerging in customary international law (there is a great deal of controversy over it), but it is grossly premature to make the statement made in this entry. Currently the right to self-determination is only available to members of minorities in the same way that it is available to any citizen of any country irrespective of minority status.

Members of minorities have a right to participate in their own cultural and/or religious practices to the extent that they do not violate international human rights law, and to speak their own languages. This is enshrined in Article 27 of the ICCPR. They are also entitled to protection from discrimination. These are the only substantive rights that can be said to be held uncontroversially by the Uighurs.

davidmcgrogan: ‘There is no right to self governance for regional minorities in international law.

I’m pretty sure there is – what regional minorities don’t have, though, is the right to secession. It is perfectly possibly for a regional minority to have self-government without challenging the territorial sovereignty of the state within which they are situated.

I’m no expert on international law (a body of rules subject to very signficant practical and conceptual limitations) but I thought the right of peoples to self-determination was setout in Art 1 of the ICCPR?

In any event my contention was not that there is a legal right of self-determination but a ‘natural’ or ‘moral right. Slaves may have had no legal right but few would claim that they had no moral or natural rights in consequence.

OK, lets put it more succinctly: What rights (moral or legal, take your pick) do a regional minority have that are not already provided by their rights as individuals. I would argue that there are no extra rights that come from membership of an ethnic minority. Or majority, for that matter. Thus, we should condemn China because it is being bad to people, not because it is being bad to Uighurs.

the notion of democracy is not based on individual liberty and rights as such (although sits alongside such rights) but the right of a people or a nation to self-govern. It is a collective rather than individual “right”, although ultimately expressed through a right to vote for each adult.

Sovereignty resides in the people. This is a basic and central tenet of liberal theory from Locke onwards.

By extension each different “people” has a right to self-determination. Its not neccesarily an ethnic issue. The Irish (as least the 26 counties of Eire) wanted to become a nation and govern them selves so secceded from the UK. The Scots have not gone for independence but self-governance within the UK. Bangladesh seceeded from Pakistan. Kosovo from Serbia.

Few could argue against the justice of these decisions which go behond the rights of individuals in those countries to civil rights, etc.

“Thus, we should condemn China because it is being bad to people, not because it is being bad to Uighurs.”

Yes, but if the Uighurs collectively want out because they are stuck in a crap country, we should have sympathy. Ditto the Tibetans or anybody else.

“the notion of democracy is not based on individual liberty and rights as such (although sits alongside such rights) but the right of a people or a nation to self-govern.”

Yes, but what is a nation? The official position is that the Uighurs are all Chinese. But they don’t feel Chinese, and the Chinese don’t treat them as Chinese.

London an independent state? The rest of the country hopes so. Have you noticed the excavations on the Cordon Sanitaire – sorry, I mean the M25? Gun emplacements. And the guns won’t be pointing outwards.

This is stupid. We in the west, with our finely tuned liberal outrage don’t care what happens in China. The Chinese care even less. This has about zero force through the news cycle. Now if the Wiggers renamed themselves the lost tribe of Palestinians expelled by the racist zionist colonialist blood drinking monsters in 1948, well then all the retards on HuffPo, DailyKos and the like would sit up on their hind legs, bang their golden trust fund bowls and scream for the blood of all Jews everywhere. It’s just bad marketing for al Qaeda to get bogged down in a land war in Asia.

Let’s say the people of Yorkshire wanted to break away and form their own state. To earn legitimacy from the left would depend on timing. If the claim arose during the Queen’s era, then Bennites, Gallowegians and Corbynites would flood Trafalgar Square demanding that all downtrodden Yorkies be freed from the imperial yoke. If the demand however arose during the era of The British People’ Republic, then the above mentioned forces would still be in what used to be called Trafalgar Square demanding that all Yorkies be severely punished for threatening to split the Motherland. Yorkies! If that’s what you want, get your demands in now.

“Regions and regional minorities have a right to self government.”

Has anyone told France?

As usual they are just chiming in with useless rhetoric.

Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network has taken up the cause of China’s Muslim Uighur minority with a pledge to attack Chinese workers in northwestern Africa in retaliation for mistreatment by Beijing of its largest Muslim minority.

Oh dear.

I hope that they don’t. (snigger).

“Let’s say the people of Yorkshire wanted to break away and form their own state” Somehow I dont think the rest of the country would object.

So a group has a right to self government (because Locke says so). Now, how big does a group have to be to have that right? Yorkshire? Maybe. My street? Well, why not. Me & a friend? Sure. Me? No, I’m not a group.

That’s the problem with giving rights to “groups” – you haven’t defined a group in any meaningful way, and probably can’t. So the issue of self-determination isn’t one of rights, but of practicalities. Now, the Uighurs may be – as a practical matter – better off as a separate nation (though probably not); but the pressure for this comes from the Chinese having no respect for their rights as individuals.

So my point is that the “right” to self-determination doesn’t exist; but that was all.

William – I wasnt trying to say that whatever Locke says is true but just that the right to self-determination is widely accepted as self-evident amongst liberal-democratic discourse – like the right to free speech. I thought that would be enough without me needing to go back to basics to try to justify the basis for that right. On the basis that you support the democratic principle the onus is on you, not me, to justify why if a clear majority in province/sub-state region X, want self-government for X they are not entitled to it. Denial of such a right is prima facie undemocratic.

It is hard to give an exhaustive definition of a “nation” or a “people” who are entitled to self-determination or statehood and I’m not going to try but definitional issues and difficulties in fixing boundaries do not negate the basid principle. By analogy, most people agree that there are limits to freedom of speech (around defamation and incitement) but the difficulty in presicely identifiying such limits does not render then invalid.

Your point that there is no “right” to self-determination is at best (for you) highly contested and contentious and at worst plain wrong and inconsistent with your own (presumed) belief in democracy. Why should the citizens of an arbitrary nation-state have the right to self-governance but the citizens of a clear region within it not.

This is interesting if true. Muslims are generally weird and they have always tread warily around China. Lefty, Russky, bolshies have translocated huge numbers of muslims in the past. Putin supposedly threatened to flush islam down the toilet of history yet the muslims still invited him to a standing ovation in Tehran a few years back.
Who says our trendy internationale lawyers, in rural Sussex, have it all their own way!

Al-Q will not know what hit them (repeatedly and with great and savage force) should they start targeting citizens of the PRC. Expect no mercy, jihadi.

all your accusations against china is absurd trash from the media..

ive personally being living and working in china for 11 years and have being to urumqi city 2 times so i know whats going on.

The uighurs are not mistreated!!i repeat that! The goverment gives them priority healthcare, education and they have the right to have as many children as they want and pay no tax.The city has transformed from a few mud huts in the desert to a modern metropolis with a skyline better than miami in less than 20 years. So its like giving them food and home and then them taking your house and killing you.
Uighurs have a bad reputation in all the cities around china because stereotypically their main occupations are selling kebabs and forming gangs roaming the streets attacking people. A bit like the disadvantaged african americans (no offense to anyone). And NO!! the goverment doesnt opress them like the media claims, but they are disadvantaged because there mandarin skill is poor and their cultural beliefs are totally different to the mainstream.

I believe that people who have not being there should not make judgement on something they only seen on fox news or tv.

Like everything else in china they will take care of al qeuda with no delay.