[Skybird]

The ethnic population - Spaniards and Catalunyans are different people! - has the referendum that the Spanish "owners" around Rahoj wanted to prevent with all force. Now quite brutal pictures get reported from there, with the police firing rubber bullets and injuring dozens.

The Spaniards have misplayed this problem from all beginning on, brute force was their only reply, with a deeply narcisstically offended patriarch Rahoj leading the claim of Spain that the Catalunyan people must accept to be owned by Spain. And this while many Catalunyans do not even want full independence, but more autononmy only, and being less the milijng cow for Spain. From today on, the Spaniards will have far more opposition in catalunya. And more enemies.

As a libertarian, I of course always accept any regional population'S claim for wanting to govern itself and not being governed by foreign powers. Thats why I side with the Catalunyans, like I would with the Scottish or Irish, if they vote to split from the UK, or with the pro-Russian majoirty on the Krim, if they indeed are a majority. I would even accept if the Bavarians decide they do no longer be part of the Federal Republic. It is an internal affair and decision of these people, no law and no constitution can be coinsidered ethically valid and legally correct that rules that the one people may never split from another people. No man and no people lives for the sake of serving the interest of somebody else, that would be slavery.

However, I tell the catalunyans also this: sovereignty and independence means you need to afford that you can live by your own means. You have no right to demand others to pay your bills and come up for your living and come to your defence if you get threatened. You are not independant, when others pay your bill, right the opposite: you are dependant.

The media in germany in the past weeks reported inconsistent about the economic backgrounds. Sometimes it was said that Catalunya pays more than any other region of Spain into the national budget, while in order to do so its own indebtness has tremendously grown and the population indeed got poorer. Others say the times of Catalunyan wealth were over and they now get more from Spain than they give in return. I cannot judge what is true. I just stick to my rule: no people has claim to make for another people. Nobody owns somebody else. I indeed am convicned that this old famous oath from Atlas Shrugged is a mandatory fundamental precondition for real freedom, whcih always necessarily also means self-responsibility: I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Spain does shabby and shameful down there today. My sympathy is with the Catalunyans. But beyond that, I stay out of this, like we all should. Its a Catalunyan decision. It is not - and never was! - a Spanish or international decision. Freedom cannot be given, for it is the natural state and birthright of man. It can only be withheld by the use of brute force. And that is what Spain is doing today. And this makes Spain the oppressor.