Mass media outlets earn a lot more from corporate sponsorship than they do from ratings or readership and it is, therefore, more in their interests as profit making institutions to convince the ‘public’ that what corporations want is the way forward and not to publish the ‘truth’ in order to increase readership or ratings. Corporate America (and this applies to the private sector in the UK and other allies just as much) was very much in support of the war.

Phil,

Ink you are losing the point very badly indeed and so are you Jester. This IS about self determination and you are just going to have to live with it.

I think perhaps you need to read my post again. I know that this IS about self determination – my point was (and I thought I had made that clear) that the concept of self determination is a very tricky one and is very very far from black and white.

Ink I live in Birmingham and yes your information is VERY questionable, Birmingham is part of the UK (so too, according to the Falkland islanders is the Flaklands) and until a minority becomes a majority in the country as a whole (and although it is a large minority the Pakistani community in Birmingham is indeed just that, a minority) becoming a majority in a single city simply does not cut the ceasation argument on a national scale.

What about if a minority (in a “country as a whole”) is a majority in one region – for example Kosovo. In Yugoslavia Albanians were very much a minority but had (and still have) a majority in just one small region of that country. NATO (including the UK) thought that this was enough and went to war (for the first time in its existence and in defiance of its own charter) to ensure the right to self determination for Kosovo Albanians. The Kurds, as another example, are not a majority in Turkey – would you deny them the right to self determination? What about Czechs, Croats, Slovenes, Poles, Slovaks etc – none of which were a majority in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and yet the concept of national self determination was enshrined in international law based on their experience.

As for Birmingham, its relatively unimportant how accurate the article I read was because the hypothetical case is sufficient to illustrate my point: You say that the Pakistani community is a large minority now, well what if through a faster birthrate and additional immigration they become a clear majority in a decade or so? Same goes for Mexican communities in the southern states in the US. The lines are blurred – surely you can see that.

Sorry chap, you used a bad example for a bad argument, you best go back to the drawing board.

Hows this then: The very same Austrian German who has been mentioned in this thread used the Wilsonian concept of national self determination as justification (to his own people as well as internationally) for his invasions of the Sudeten Land and of Poland*.

Does “self determination” still seem so clear cut to you now?

As a side note; Its worth mentioning that I am actually in full agreement with you as regards the Falkland Islands and Gilbraltar – at least until I hear convincing arguments to the contrary.

*Both states were accused of mistreating their respective ethnic German minorities and of infringing on their political rights.

This is a fascinating thread and I for one am very interested to read intelligently presented arguments from both ‘sides’ (if I may refer to you as such). The thread has, however, hit upon a very tricky subject, that of the right of self determination.

Sealord,
According to you self determination of peoples is key amongst

all the principles upon which a sane and peacefull world should be run

. And far be it from me to disagree yet this does not really hold true in the world today, nor has it in history.

I’m just briefly going to outline a couple of examples to show how tricky the subject can be. Firstly, in 1999 NATO went to war, ostensibly to fight for the right to self determination of the Kosovo Albanians whose rights had been “trampled” by the Serbian government during the Milosevic administration. All well and good you might say – a victory for the principle of self determination of peoples. Yet in that same year NATO member Turkey launched a massive military campaign against the Kurdish Worker’s Party in Kurdistan (in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq) causing over a million people to be internally displaced, destroying hundreds of villages and killing god knows how many people. In 1999 Turkey for the first time overtook Israel as the major recipient of US foreign military aid. Now this doesn’t, of course reflect too much on the British way of doing things but certainly calls into question the ‘sanity’ of the world order.
Another example is Birmingham, UK. Now I’d read somewhere that the Pakistani population of Birmingham will, according to projected figures (from the same article), explode over the next decade and the Pakistani community would form an outright majority by that time. Now, for the sake of discussion it really isn’t important how questionable this information is (and for the record, I think it very questionable) because we can use the case as a hypothetical scenario. Now if in a few generations the Pakistani community, being the outright majority ethnic and cultural group in Birmingham called for independence from the rest of the UK would they have a case? In my view, certainly not – or at least no form of independence or autonomy would even be considerred by the British government.
Now we could go back to the beginnings of the idea of national self determination at the end of the 19th century and its final applications in Eastern Europe during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and immediately after WWI. These cases are all full of contradictions and, in almost all cases, certain groups were given the right to run their own affairs at the expense of other groups simply for the benefit of “Great Power Politics”. This pattern appears to have continued, in South Eastern Europe at least, ever since. I would not be surprised if this held true elsewhere in the world.

When all the 16 MiG-29 K/UKs are new ones, they all will be “hand-built”.

As opposed to….? They certainly aren’t going to come off a robotic production line like VWs do. All the parts will be machined or moulded or whatever is appropriate and they will be put together by people who know which bit goes where and where to weld etc. What method of production did you have in mind?

How about “shipy” or “shipal”?