Word: islanders
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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China's dream 2008 Olympics in Beijing have one potential nightmare: Taiwan. And the bogeyman is the island's outgoing president Chen Shui-bian, with his vision of a state separate and independent of the mainland, which claims the territory as an inseparable part of China. Any hint that Taiwan may declare itself a nation on its own - neither part of China nor Chinese - have elicited bellicose threats of military intervention from Beijing in the past. That has been enough to keep populist sentiment in Taiwan sober-minded about separatism. But Chen may have found a new way to insinuate...
President Chen has proposed a referendum to be held alongside Taiwan's presidential election in March. It would ask the people whether Taiwan should apply to join the United Nations under the name "Taiwan." After Beijing took over Taiwan's U.N. seat in 1971, the island has failed in its attempt to re-enter the body under its formal national title of "Republic of China." Chen says he doesn't want to compete with China for representation, but to find a global voice for Taiwan's 23 million people. Any application to the U.N. by Taiwan would have no chance...
Thus far U.S. opposition has done little to dampen Chen's enthusiasm for an island-wide referendum. For Chen, who is coming to the end of his final term as president, it's an issue of legacy, says Loh Chih-cheng, a political science professor at Soochow University in Taipei. "He's pushing to make his name in history," Loh says. (Loh also notes that all this could be the President's canny understanding of voter math in Taiwan: a referendum in 2004 helped get out the vote during chen's re-election campaign.) The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) has accused...
...even though a Brazilian judge had only authorized the concert days before. Even the smaller shows seemed well-attended, if a bit schizophrenic: the Tokyo concert segued from the gentle folk of Japanese pop star Cocco, who tearfully sang about manatees threatened by a military base on her home island of Okinawa, to the American rap-metal group Linkin Park, who urged the crowd to "get rowdy...
...Italy, the 200th anniversary of his birth has been a yearlong opportunity to bring to life the countless Garibaldi monuments in town piazzas. A made-for-TV movie depicted his battlefield prowess, the month-long Giro d'Italia bicycle race began in his adoptive hometown on the island of Sardinia, his famous speeches have been re-enacted from the same balconies were he once appeared before adoring crowds, and of course the obligatory commemorative stamps and coins. But Garibaldi's spirit has also returned to foreign shores, with a concert in Staten Island, New York, and celebrations in the Uruguayan...