Julian Assange calls the events in Catalonia an “internet war.” The Spanish government has raided Catalonian government offices, arrested government officials, frozen telecommunications links, and censored hundreds of internet sites. The government has refused to accept that secession is happening, and that the people of Catalonia are tired of Spain’s reckless abuse of their tax dollars. Catalans contribute 21 percent of the country tax revenues, but don’t receive their fair share of government services. So in order to stop the bleeding of their tax dollars, they have taken the bold step of secession from Spain. Other parts of the world, such as China and Venezuela, have also faced oppressive government internet restrictions and similar retaliations for voicing opposition to government bureaucrats.
This internet war has grown in many of these non-English countries to an unlimited extent because most computer programming languages are English-based. For many non-native English speakers, learning computer programming and implementing the tools to navigate around oppressive government restrictions is almost an impossible task. This emboldens these countries’ public officials to continue to legislate more restrictive laws to a populace that isn’t equipped to navigate around those laws.
The following is a computer program written in Java, one of the most commonly used languages:
public class CallingMethodsInSameClass
{
public static void main(String[] args) {
printOne();
printOne();
printTwo();
}
public static void printOne() {
System.out.println(“Hello World”);
}
public static void printTwo() {
printOne();
printOne();
For most native English speakers, you might not understand the words in context, but you will be able to recognize every word used. However, a native Spanish speaker wouldn’t recognize the language and wouldn’t be able to use these codes without learning the English language to some degree.
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