OBAMA MISSTATES HISTORY AGAIN: OFFENDS GERMANS

"Ich bin ein douchebag":

After receiving a hailstorm of criticism for considering Brandenburg Gate for a public speech, as well as official German dissuasion, Barack Obama moved the venue to the Siegessäule monument. Obama will speak about “historic” US-German relations, but once again, Obama’s own grasp of history has been proven deficient. Not only does the site contain a monument to Prussian victories over other American allies in Europe, its placement was decided by Adolf Hitler — in order to impress crowds in his idealized version of Berlin called Germania:

Still, even as the issue of his speech’s location has now been settled, a number of politicians in Berlin are still dissatisfied with the site. The Siegessäule — or Victory Column — was erected in memory of Prussia’s victories over Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870/71). The column originally stood in front of the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building, but was moved by Adolf Hitler to its current location in 1939 to make way for his planned transformation of Berlin into the Nazi capital “Germania.”

“The Siegessäule in Berlin was moved to where it is now by Adolf Hitler. He saw it as a symbol of German superiority and of the victorious wars against Denmark, Austria and France,” the deputy leader of the Free Democrats, Rainer Brüderle, told Bild am Sonntag. He raised the question as to “whether Barack Obama was advised correctly in his choice of the Siegessäule as the site to hold a speech on his vision for a more cooperative world.”

Andreas Schockenhoff of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats said, “the Siegessäule in Berlin is dedicated to a victory over neighbors who are today our European friends and allies. It is a problematic symbol.”

Hitler didn’t just move the monument to its more central location. He had a taller column built for it as well, to emphasize its message of German military domination over Europe. He saw it as a message to Germans of their destiny — as well as to other Europeans as their destiny as well. It was never meant as a symbol of peaceful, multicultural co-existence.

Team Obama has outdone themselves on symbolism with this choice. They’ve managed to make their hosts uncomfortable for a second time with their choice of rallying point, and perhaps more so this time. If one wanted to talk peace, what worse location could one choose than Adolf Hitler’s favorite monument to militaristic domination? One has to wonder how France, Denmark, and Austria will feel about Obama rallying German masses under the Siegessäule. Deja vu?

Obama could be excused for his gaffe, except for two reasons. His team certainly understood the historical weight that the Brandenburg Gate would have lent his event, so why didn’t they bother to ask the Germans about the Siegessäule? Quite obviously, the Germans understand the meaning and subtext of the monument, and most of them wonder why Obama does not. Maybe this is a better example of clueless Americans traveling abroad than those who can only say Merci, beaucoup.

The more basic question is why Obama feels the need to conduct a campaign event among Germans. Meeting with foreign leaders makes sense for a man with no foreign policy experience whatsoever, but that doesn’t require massive rallies among people who aren’t voting in this election. In his rush to look impressive for no one’s purposes but his own, Obama has made himself look ignorant and arrogant all over again.

I really don't like this man.

SOCIAL UNREST GROWING AMONG CHINA'S MUSLIMS

More and more signs of domestic unrest are emerging from within China.

Recently, hundreds of Muslim women in black veils gathered outside the market in this oasis city in an impromptu protest. Some carried signs demanding an independent state.
"I saw the demonstration myself. There were 500 to 700 women in black, waving placards for East Turkestan," said Wu Jiangliang, a hydroelectric company employee.
China handled the unrest forcefully, ensuring the stability of a region rich in oil, coal and minerals. Police moved quickly to quell the March 23 protest, arresting numerous women and shooing others away. It drew only minor notice.

"The Chinese are too bad, really bad," said Hama. He said that the Chinese had broken up a protest of about 200 people last month. He put his wrists together as if handcuffed, saying, "I can't say more or I'll get arrested."

As China grapples with protests in Tibet, it also faces unrest on its Central Asian frontier. Resentment against the Chinese has long been an issue in the traditionally Muslim western region, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia. Recent problems in Xinjiang came after nearly a month of anti-government riots and protests in Tibet and other provinces with sizable Tibetan populations.

Such clashes are growing as the Olympic Games approach, with the world's spotlight on China and its human rights record. However, the situation with the Muslim minority Uighurs is even more complicated because China worries about separatist sentiment.

And if you can believe the Chinese government, these unhappy muslims are beginning to take action.

China's Public Security Ministry said this month that it broke up a terror ring of 35 members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement — a militant group that calls for separation from China and is on the U.S. terror list — in Xinjiang in recent weeks suspected of plotting to kidnap athletes, foreign journalists and other visitors to the August Olympics.

Last month, Chinese officials accused the East Turkestan Islamic Movement of trying to crash a domestic flight from Xinjiang, though the details of the case remain sketchy.

Analysts fear that the combination of Han immigration and government repression fosters a potentially violent despair among the Uighurs, whose adherence to Islam has been used by Beijing to demonize them at home and abroad sijnce 9/11.

"It's a systematic Chinese policy to portray Uighurs as splittists and terrorists," says Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman who now heads the American Uighur Association and is the leader of an exile movement seeking greater rights for her roughly nine million compatriots who live in Xinjiang. Like Mutallip, Kadeer was once a rich businesswoman in Xinjiang but fell afoul of the authorities and served a six year jail sentence for revealing state secrets to foreigners. Two of her sons are still in prison in China. "It's a Chinese tool to have the Han feel a sense of animosity toward Uighurs," Kadeer says. "Look at it now! They have extracted all the natural resources and the oil. We're left in the darkness."

Beijing's security chiefs see a more sinister trend at work. On three occasions — most recently on April 10 — officials in the Chinese capital have announced that security forces foiled planned attacks by what they called Muslim separatists groups from the province. Details were scant, but the most recent announcement alleged that some 45 Uighurs in the provincial capital Urumqi had been arrested in raids that uncovered plans to kidnap athletes and others attending the 2008 Beijing Olympics. An earlier report alleged that a young Uighur woman had tried to smuggle a bomb aboard a commercial aircraft in an attempt to bring it down.

The history of Muslims in China goes back a way.

The history of the Uighurs can be traced back 2,600 years. According to a history compiled by the London Uighur Ensemble, a group formed to popularize the traditional and popular music of the Uighurs, the nomadic tribes of that era rose "to challenge the Chinese Empire" and to become "the diplomatic arm of the Mongol invasion."

China's ethnic Uighurs are moderate Muslims who are related to the Turks. Like the Kurds of Asia Minor and the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the Uighurs are a dissatisfied transnational ethnic minority spread across several countries, without an independent homeland or a strong leader. They are located mainly China, but also Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The London Ensemble notes that the ethnic minority "staged several uprisings" against the Nationalist Chinese government in the period before the Communists took control of the country. In 1933 and 1944, the Uighurs established an independent Islamic Eastern Turkestan republic, but that attempt at a nation state ended after military intervention by the Soviet Union. With the establishment of the Maoist government in China in 1949, the tribal homeland came under Chinese communist rule.

This whole thing has me confused. Who am I rooting for?