Gone

[GAROVORKIN]

10 hours ago, Hereward said:

No, they are a Muslim people with Turkic/Mongol roots.

The Chinese authorities make Uyghur shop keepers sell alcohol. They won't let  them practice their culture.  What's being done to them is truly  awful. 

[Altherion]

On 8/25/2017 at 5:46 AM, Yukle said:

Alliances: WWI was founded with two great alliances: the Triple Entente (the British, French and Russian Empires) and the Triple Alliance (The German, Italian and Austro-Hungarian Empires). Come the actual battle the Italians didn't stay true to their agreement, but the Ottoman Empire joined the Triple Alliance, who are referred to as the Central Powers, while the USA continued to trade with the Allied Powers. The USA eventually turned in-principle support into military support as their economy was so dependent on a stable and wealthy Allied Powers alliance.

Does this seem like the present world? Yes; even today, most nations don't want to risk stable trade for war. However, once a war breaks out it is in their interests to assist their largest trading partners. This could mean the USA and China will be more likely to support each other, rather than oppose each other - the only exception is that if one can deliver a knockout blow to the other that will result in long-term benefits to the victor.

How does this seem like the present world? For a massive war between alliances to start, both of them have to think that they have at least a plausible chance of winning. Right now, we have one juggernaut alliance (NATO) and... that's basically it. There are a few local groups which are much smaller and a few countries with WMD which could end the world as we know it at the price of their own existence, but there is no alliance that could stand up to NATO in a conventional war and, unless NATO splits in half, there's no plausible way to construct such an alliance from the remaining countries especially since, for example, China, has little incentive to go to war with NATO. There is no balance of power which is why NATO as a whole or its more powerful constituents have a tendency to bomb a new country every once in a while.

[Sullen]

21 hours ago, Yukle said:

Who, I'll be honest, I'd never heard of until just now. I know that China has a lot of ethnic minorities, and even though Han people make up 90% of China, even a minority within China is still a vast population in most cases.

Are they a Chinese minority? Their name sounds as though it is from that region.

They're a Chinese minority of Turkic origins.

The Chinese government is supposedly trying to assimilate them by relocating Uyghur families here and through through China and by flooding Xinjiang with Han settlers, they've been accused a few times of trying to commit cultural genocide, mostly by Muslim communities that stand in solidarity with the Uyghurs. They're currently dealing with a radicalization problem that's mostly reactionary to the treatment they endure at the Chinese government's hands.

[Yukle]

20 hours ago, Hereward said:

No, they are a Muslim people with Turkic/Mongol roots.

By that I mean Chinese nationally, not ethnically. As in do they live in China. I'd not heard of them before, that's a sad (yet kind of common) situation to be in within China.  

@Sullen also answered this, so thanks.

[Feologild]

I think some people missed the point.

[GAROVORKIN]

2018 wil bring us the to the 100 anniversary of the Armistice and the end of the first world war.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

On 2017-08-27 at 6:25 AM, Sullen said:

They're a Chinese minority of Turkic origins.

The Chinese government is supposedly trying to assimilate them by relocating Uyghur families here and through through China and by flooding Xinjiang with Han settlers, they've been accused a few times of trying to commit cultural genocide, mostly by Muslim communities that stand in solidarity with the Uyghurs. They're currently dealing with a radicalization problem that's mostly reactionary to the treatment they endure at the Chinese government's hands.

I know a couple of Han Chinese people from that province in China actually. They see themselves as colonizers and are completely open about the reason for why the Chinese government encouraged them to migrate there being to turn the native Uyghurs into a minority, and thus cement Han control over the region. 

Their views on Muslims in general are not that positive either, unsurprisingly. 

[SerHaHa]

Quote

A quick war is a very common fallacy throughout history.

I can think of a 1/2 dozen examples off the top of my head where the reverse was true.  The least of which was Desert Storm/Gulf War1 circa 1991.  CNN and many other media outlets of the day predicted tens of thousands of Allied casualties, and a war that would drag on for years like Vietnam did.  The actual ground war was measured in hours, not days, after a couple weeks of an air campaign which demolished Hussein's so called "battle hardened" military and infrastructure. 

[SerHaHa]

2 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

I know a couple of Han Chinese people from that province in China actually. They see themselves as colonizers and are completely open about the reason for why the Chinese government encouraged them to migrate there being to turn the native Uyghurs into a minority, and thus cement Han control over the region. 

Their views on Muslims in general are not that positive either, unsurprisingly. 

I lived in Hong Kong in 1996, the year before it was handed "back" to mainland China.  There were similar attitudes there, even among many of my friends, regarding HK and returning to the "wonderful" PRC.  Heh, most of them there I'm still in contact with don't feel the same way anymore, and I don't blame them, after all the rights that have been stripped away in HK by the central government of the PRC.

[Larry of the Lawn]

6 hours ago, SerHaHa said:

I can think of a 1/2 dozen examples off the top of my head where the reverse was true.  The least of which was Desert Storm/Gulf War1 circa 1991.  CNN and many other media outlets of the day predicted tens of thousands of Allied casualties, and a war that would drag on for years like Vietnam did.  The actual ground war was measured in hours, not days, after a couple weeks of an air campaign which demolished Hussein's so called "battle hardened" military and infrastructure. 

Well some would argue that GWBs Iraq invasion was the drawn out ground war, just years later.   I mean especially after we found no nukes made of green cheese and yellow cake uranium.

 

[SerHaHa]

8 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Well some would argue that GWBs Iraq invasion was the drawn out ground war, just years later.   I mean especially after we found no nukes made of green cheese and yellow cake uranium.

 

If you look at the map of Iraq, and how both wars went...they were completely separate actions, yet covered much of the same territory.  Iraq had 12 years to rebuild and redeploy their forces after all prior to 2003.  GW2/2003 certainly wasn't some sort of continuation of the first Gulf War, some situation where Iraq held positions that weren't taken in 91 that were objectives in 2003 - no, in GW1/91, Iraq was completely defeated, it was the Allies decision to stop the advance and call it a win, and declare that the objectives were met, which they were.  2003 turned into a drawn out affair due to it becoming an insurgency/police action - again, the military objectives were met extremely quickly, and Iraq's military that was in the field, such as it was, was rapidly defeated and mostly destroyed, again, in just a matter of days, not even months.  Finding/not finding WMD has no bearing at all on the statement made, which is whether or not "quick" wars are a fallacy, which, obviously with both GW examples, they aren't.   I could use the Falklands war, or the 67 war between Israel and Jordan/Egypt/Syria/Iraq as examples of pretty abrupt wars as well.

All I'm saying is that it isn't uncommon for wars/actions to end far more quickly than projected either. 

 

I don't disagree that many wars take far longer than projected by those who start them - tons of examples supporting this, when Germany attacked Russia in 41/Barbarossa, a famous quote from a well known German general was "at last, a proper war", as if it would be some simple cake walk. Initially it likely seemed so, I'm sure, what with Germany destroying over 1500 Russia aircraft in the first day, and over 5000 in the first month, giving them complete air supremacy, while their mechanized forces performed nearly as well.  4 years later, a tad bit longer than projected, Russian troops pulled down the Nazi flags in downtown Berlin.