tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post6691415640219421672..comments2023-10-22T18:25:39.688+08:00Comments on The View from Taiwan: Are there any lessons from Catalan Independence for Taiwan? Michael Turtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974403961870976346noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-81839856565374350932017-10-07T06:35:16.387+08:002017-10-07T06:35:16.387+08:00Despite the differences, there are some commonalit...Despite the differences, there are some commonalities with Catalonia - namely a generalissimo who tried to quash local languages through corporal punishment in school and blacklisting in the workplace before dying in 1975, while infantilizing them by allowing them in limited contexts like puppet shows. You also had an influx of national-language speakers coming in and helping normalize its use, though in Spain it was largely because Catalonia and Euskadi (the Basque Country) were more industralized. Then you have a democratization process that learned to tolerate - but not embrace - the local languages, so some of the bitterness remained. If two Catalan speakers speak Catalan to each other at a bar in Madrid, they might get dirty looks.<br /><br />Still, the situation's been good enough for long enough in Catalonia that support for independence was probably in the low 40% range (just my gut feeling) until President Rajoy was openly contemptuous enough of the Catalans to push that number up. Doing what the UK did with Scotland - letting them vote, and holding a "we love you, please don't go" campaign probably would've worked very well. But Rajoy couldn't do that, and the new king blew his chance to calm things down in a televised speech. I don't see short-term independence happening, but in the long term it's much closer to being inevitable than it was a month ago. I'd personally be sad about that, but understanding (I'm half Valencian - we speak a dialect of Catalan but don't have their history of self-rule so we generally feel more Spanish). <br /><br />The former regional president of Catalonia came out and said that Catalonia isn't structurally prepared for independence yet. It sounds like his preferred approach would be to set up all the necessary institutions first, and then declare independence once doing so was a mere formality. That's more like Taiwan's situation (and Scotland's if they had voted to leave, I think).Carloshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13079284428870214896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-764298140069344912017-10-05T21:59:06.002+08:002017-10-05T21:59:06.002+08:00Someone post this
https://sentinel.tw/norway-one...Someone post this <br /><br />https://sentinel.tw/norway-one-china-policy/ <br /><br />to Hacker New and generated some interesting comments:<br />https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15407804<br /><br />People are waking up to China's bad behaviour. Even the nerd only site like Hacker News has interest in what China is doing. I think Sentinel.Tw had some big traffic today.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-19608668457867727362017-10-05T11:13:23.079+08:002017-10-05T11:13:23.079+08:00Hi Michael,
Truly inspiration to take Estonia as ...Hi Michael,<br /><br />Truly inspiration to take Estonia as our example. That is actually historically and politically correct (now that I think about it), we need to restore our former state of independence, because we were only at most colonized by foreign powers (Dutch, Koxinga, Manchurians, Japanese, KMT), we were never part of any of these country's legitimate sovereign soil.poseidon206https://www.blogger.com/profile/06067768693055737854noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-7922204133369541272017-10-04T13:42:07.799+08:002017-10-04T13:42:07.799+08:00Wonder if Easton's book will have a Kindle ver...Wonder if Easton's book will have a Kindle version?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com