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January 14

Ministerial confirmation hearings

Is there any parliamentary democracy in which all a prime minister's choices for minister are questioned by members of parliament before they take office and need to be accepted by them in order to take office? Mcljlm (talk) 18:36, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No individual grilling sessions, but in Israel the Knesset has to approve the prime minister's choices. Card Zero (talk) 07:33, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is an occupied regime a country?

If a regime A of a country is mostly occupied by regime B, and regime B is later recognized as the representative of the country, while regime A, unable to reclaim control of the entire country, claims that it is itself a country and independent of regime B. the questio＂n arises: is regim＂e A a country? 36.230.3.161 (talk) 18:43, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are you talking about a Government-in-exile? Blueboar (talk) 19:09, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is based on the definition of a country. Anyone in any place can claim to be a country. There is no legal paperwork required. There is no high court that you go to and make your claim to be a country. The first step is simply making the claim, "We are an independent country." Then, other countries have to recognize that claim. It is not 100%. There are claims where a group claims to be a country but nobody else recognizes it as a country, such as South Ossetia. There are others that have been recognized in the past, but not currently, such as Taiwan. There are some that are recognized by only a few countries, such as Abkhazia. From another point of view. There are organizations that claim they have the authority to declare what is and is not a country, such as the United Nations. But, others do not accept their authority on the matter. In the end, there is no way clearly define what is a country, which makes this question difficult to answer. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 20:46, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Taiwan [...] is a country, although I suppose the fact that this has multiple citations says something. (Mainly, it says that the CCP would like to edit it out.) Card Zero (talk) 06:46, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I assumed that everyone was referring to independent countries. I think this is exactly what the question is about. Our article says Taiwan is part of China. China is a country. So, Taiwan is part of a country and not a country by itself. But, the article says it is a country. So, it is independent. It isn't part of China. Which is true? Both? 68.187.174.155 (talk) 20:51, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Our article says Taiwan is part of China." Where does it say that? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:40, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of trying to draft an abstract, do you have a concrete example you're thinking of? --Golbez (talk) 20:57, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One should always maintain a distinguish between countries and the regimes administering them. Syria was not the Assad regime – Assad is gone but Syria remains. Likewise, Russia is not the Putin regime. Identifying the two can only lead to confusion.

What makes a geographic region (or collection of regions) a country – more precisely, a sovereign state? There are countless territorial disputes, several of which are sovereignty disputes; for example, the regimes of North and South Korea claim each other's territory and deny each other's sovereignty over the territory the other effectively administers. Each has its own list of supporters of their claims. Likewise, the People's Republic of China and Republic of China claim each other's territory. By the definition of dispute, there is no agreement in such cases on the validity of such claims. The answer to the question whether the contested region in a sovereignty dispute is a country depends on which side of the dispute one chooses, which has more to do with geopolitical interests than with any objectively applicable criteria. --Lambiam 10:16, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

At least in part, it depends on other countries agreeing that a particular area is actually a nation and that the government that claims to represnt it has some legitimacy; see our Diplomatic recognition article. For many nations, recognition would depend on whether the Charter of the United Nations had been adhered to. Alansplodge (talk) 12:24, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One of the peculiarities of the Cold War is the emergence of competing governments in multiple countries, along a more or less similar pattern. We had West and East Germany, South and North Vietnam, South and North Korea and ROC and PRC. The only thing that separates the Chinese case from the onset is that there was no usage of the terms West China (for PRC) and East China (for ROC), since the ROC control was limited to a single province (and a few minor islands). Over time the ROC lost most of its diplomatic recognition, and the notion that the government in Taipei represented all of China (including claims on Mongolia etc) became anachronistic. Gradually over decades, in the West it became increasingly common to think of Taiwan as a separate country as it looked separate from mainland China on maps and whatnot. Somewhat later within Taiwan itself political movements wanted (in varying degrees) to abandon the ROC and declare the island as a sovereign state of its own grew. Taiwanese nationalism is essentially a sort of separatism from the ROC ruling Taiwan. In all of the Cold War divided countries, there have been processes were the political separation eventually becomes a cultural and social separation as well. At the onset everyone agrees that the separation is only a political-institutional technicality, but over time societies diverge. Even 35 years after the end of the GDR, East Germans still feel East German. In Korea and China there is linguistic divergence, as spelling reforms and orthography have developed differently under different political regimes. --Soman (talk) 10:41, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The difference with Taiwan vs. the other Cold War governments is that pre-ROC Taiwan was under Japanese rule. Whereas other governments split existing countries, Taiwan was arguably a separate entity already. Butterdiplomat (talk) 14:02, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the UK, the long-standing diplomatic position is that they recognise governments not countries, which has often avoided such complicated tangles. Johnbod (talk) 14:30, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To further complicate the issue with Taiwan... When the United States had a trade ban with China, most of the cheap goods shipped into the United States had a "Made in Taiwan" sticker. That was OK because hte United States recognized Taiwan as being completely separate from China. It was a bit odd that Taiwan could produce as much as it did. The reality is that they simply made "Made in Taiwan" stickers and put them on Chinese goods before sending them to the United States. When the trade ban was lifted, there was no need to route all the goods through Taiwan. Now, everything has "Made in China" stickers on them and the United States no longer recognizes Taiwan as an independent country. From a simplistic point of view, it appears that the recognition of status was based on convenience rather than political standing. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 15:14, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is no evidence that this false labeling is happening. Butterdiplomat (talk) 15:16, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Photos in a novel

I'm reading a certain novel. In the middle of Chapter II (written in the first person), there are three pages containing photos of the hotel the author is writing about. Flicking through I find another photo towards the end of the book. I think: this must be a memoir, not a novel. I check, but every source says it's a novel.

I've never encountered anything like this before: photos in a novel. Sure, novels are often based on real places, real people etc, but they use words to tell the story. Photos are the stuff of non-fiction. Are there any precedents for this? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:59, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone's interested, the novel is Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:00, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC Loving Monsters by James Hamilton-Patterson has some photos in it. DuncanHill (talk) 21:03, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach, 1892. DuncanHill (talk) 21:13, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can quickly go to the fiction stacks and pull a dozen books with photos in them. It is common that the photos are in the middle of the book because of the way the book pressing works. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 21:16, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Really? I would like to hear some examples of what you're referring to. Like Jack, I think the appearance of photos in (adult) fiction is rare. The novels of W. G. Sebald are one notable exception. --Viennese Waltz 21:31, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This post in a blog "with an emphasis on W.G. Sebald and literature with embedded photographs" may be of interest. DuncanHill (talk) 23:44, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fascinating. Thanks. So, this is actually a thing. Someone should add it to our List of Things that are Things. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:30, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The word "adult" did not come up until you just decided to use it there. I stated that there are many fiction paperback books with a middle section of graphics, which commonly include images of photographs. You replied that that is rare in adult fiction. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 00:42, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Photonovels, you mean? Card Zero (talk) 06:59, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It was assumed that we are talking about adult fiction, yes. --Viennese Waltz 09:06, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I found Photography-Embedded Literature – Annual Lists, 2010-present, a "bibliography of works of fiction and poetry... containing embedded photographs". Alansplodge (talk) 12:28, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea how to paste a photo in here. What I am referring to is fiction paperback novels. They don't have to be fiction. Some are non-fiction. That is not the point. The book is a normal paperback, but in the middle of the book the pages are not normal paperback paper. They are a more glossy paper and printed in color with pictures. There is usually four to eight pages of pictures embedded into the middle of the otherwise normal paperback novel. It is very common in young adult novels where they don't want a fully graphic book (like children's books), but they still want some pictures. Out of all the novels where there is a graphic insert in the middle, some of the graphics on those pages are photographs. I've been trying to find an image on Google of books where the center of the book is shiny picture papges, but it keeps pushing me to "Make a photo album book" services. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 13:34, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification: "novel" refers only to works of fiction. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 21:42, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can you name one adult fiction (not YA or children's) novel which has a section of photographs in the middle? --Viennese Waltz 14:00, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So having photos in the middle of a book is quite common in non-fiction (example: I have a bio of Winston Churchill that has photos of him during various stages of his life). Publishers do this to make printing easier (as the photos use a different paper, it is easier to bind them in the middle… and photos don’t reproduce as well on the paper used for text).

It is certainly rarer for there to be photos in works of fiction, simply because the characters and places described in the story are, well, fictional. But it obviously can be done (example: if the fictional story is set in a real place, a series of photos of that place might help the reader envision the events that the story describes). Blueboar (talk) 13:57, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I just realized another area for confusion. I was personally considering a any image that looks like a photo to be a photo. But, others may be excluding fictional photographs and only considering actual photographs. If that is the case, the obvious example (still toung adult fiction) would be Carmen Sandiego books, which are commonly packed with photographs of cities, even if they do photoshop an image of the bad guy into them. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 18:57, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tom Hanks's novel The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece tells a story of adapting a comic book into a movie, and includes several pages of that comic book and related ones. (To be clear, these are fictitious comic books, a fiction within a fiction). Where the comic book was printed in color, the book contains a block of pages on different paper as is common in non-fiction.

...and then of course there's William Boyd's novel Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928–1960, which is a spoof biography of an artist, including purported photos of the main character and reproductions of his artworks (actually created by Boyd himself). As our article about the book explains, some people in the art world were fooled. Turner Street (talk) 10:30, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]