Now it's Catalonia's turn

[Onkel Neal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/world/europe/catalan-leader-defies-spain-by-signing-decree-for-secession-vote.html?_r=0

The regional leader of Catalonia signed a decree on Saturday to hold an independence vote, which the Spanish government has promised to block, pushing his northeastern region into a risky and direct confrontation with the central government in Madrid.

After signing the decree, the regional leader, Artur Mas, said the independence vote would show that “Catalonia wants to decide pacifically and democratically its political future.” He added, “Nobody should fear that somebody expresses his opinion by placing a vote in a ballot box.”

The vote is scheduled for Nov. 9.

Let my people go! Self determination.:hmm2:

[Oberon]

Merkel better dust off the Condor Legion...

[Catfish]

^ :haha:
A lot has been said about Spain and Franco, and the LC.
But do not forget Mr. Hearst...
But then, what was the Condor Legion in comparison to what the USAF did to Laos ?

Regarding OP, will end like the Hornberger Schiessen just like with "Scotland" :hmph:

[Skybird]

Self determination.:hmm2:

Indeed! This is from 1927:


It has already been pointed out that a country can enjoy domestic peace only when a democratic constitution provides the guarantee that the adjustment of the government to the will of the citizens can take place without friction. Nothing else is required than the consistent application of the same principle in order to assure international peace as well.

The liberals of an earlier age thought that the peoples of the world were peaceable by nature and that only monarchs desire war in order to increase their power and wealth by the conquest of provinces. They believed, therefore, that to assure lasting peace it was sufficient to replace the rule of dynastic princes by governments dependent on the people. If a democratic republic finds that its existing boundaries, as shaped by the course of history before the transition to liberalism, no longer correspond to the political wishes of the people, they must be peacefully changed to conform to the results of a plebiscite expressing the people's will. It must always be possible to shift the boundaries of the state if the will of the inhabitants of an area to attach themselves to a state other than the one to which they presently belong has made itself clearly known, In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Russian Czars incorporated into their empire large areas whose population had never felt the desire to belong to the Russian state. Even if the Russian Empire had adopted a completely democratic constitution, the wishes of the inhabitants of these territories would not have been satisfied, because they simply did not desire to associate themselves in any bond of political union with the Russians. Their democratic demand was: freedom from the Russian Empire; the formation of an independent Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, etc. The fact that these demands and similar ones on the part of other peoples (e.g., the Italians, the Germans in Schleswig-Holstein, the Slavs in the Hapsburg Empire) could be satisfied only by recourse to arms was the most important cause of all the wars that have been fought in Europe since the Congress of Vienna.

The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars.

To call this right of self-determination the "right of self-determination of nations" is to misunderstand it. It is not the right of self-determination of a delimited national unit, but the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong. This misunderstanding is even more grievous when the expression "self-determination of nations" is taken to mean that a national state has the right to detach and incorporate into itself against the will of the inhabitants parts of the nation that belong to the territory of another state. It is in terms of the right of self-determination of nations understood in this sense that the Italian Fascists seek to justify their demand that the canton Tessin and parts of other cantons be detached from Switzerland and united to Italy, even though the inhabitants of these cantons have no such desire. A similar position is taken by some of the advocates of Pan-Germanism in regard to German Switzerland and the Netherlands.

However, the right of self-determination of which we speak is not the right of self-determination of nations, but rather the right of self-determination of the inhabitants of every territory large enough to form an independent administrative unit. If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done. This is impracticable only because of compelling technical considerations, which make it necessary that a region be governed as a single administrative unit and that the right of self-determination be restricted to the will of the majority of the inhabitants of areas large enough to count as territorial units in the administration of the country.

So far as the right of self-determination was given effect at all, and wherever it would have been permitted to take effect, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it led or would have led to the formation of states composed of a single nationality (i.e., people speaking the same language) and to the dissolution of states composed of several nationalities, but only as a consequence of the free choice of those entitled to participate in the plebiscite. The formation of states comprising all the members of a national group was the result of the exercise of the right of self-determination, not its purpose. If some members of a nation feel happier politically independent than as a part of a state composed of all the members of the same linguistic group, one may, of course, attempt to change their political ideas by persuasion in order to win them over to the principle of nationality, according to which all members of the same linguistic group should form a single, independent state. If, however, one seeks to determine their political fate against their will by appealing to an alleged higher right of the nation, one violates the right of self-determination no less effectively than by practicing any other form of oppression. A partition of Switzerland among Germany, France, and Italy, even if it were performed exactly according to linguistic boundaries, would be just as gross a violation of the right of self-determination as was the partition of Poland.
Ludwig von Mises, 1927: Liberalism, part III: Liberal Foreign Policy, chapter 2: The Right of Selfdetermination

http://mises.org/document/1086/Liberalism-In-the-Classical-Tradition


Any politician, party, state government, institution denying me this, necessarily is my bitter enemy. Any law or treaty used for denying the right for secession by claiming that the option to fall away has not been included and thus it would be illegal to seced, is an illegal law or treaty, and must not be obeyed. From a liberal/libertarian POV, the right of selfdetermination cannot be separated from the natural right of freedom.


Nevertheless, often force is used to keep people as the property of other people in other parts of a country, which maybe can be achieved if the oppressor is strong enough, but nevertheless it is illegal and unlawful, a moral crime anyway (Russia and Kiev comes to mind); and sometimes force also is needed to enforce a wanted secession against the will of the other to not let you go, Catalunia and the Spanish central government denying the legitimacy of this referendum, or the Eastern Ukrainian Russians and the Crimean resisting Kiev are examples. Needless to say that the Catalunian referendum necessarily is perfectly legal and morally fine).


One part of a nation's population not wanting to allow letting the population in one part of the nation fall away, claims nothing else than slave holders' rights over other people. Unacceptable. Self defence justifies the amount of force and resistance needed to secede, if that is what the regional/local population wants for sure.

[Jimbuna]

Well it's certainly becoming a hot topic in some countries....self determination that is.

[Skybird]

Madrid let fall its mask. The high court, by demand of minister president Rajoy, declared bthe referandum as unconstitutional, claiming that the people ion one region have no right to decide over their fate if the Spanish people in other regions do not want to let them go.

Claims for possession for people are called slavery, and I call Madrid a dictatorship from no on, not difficult in claims to possess people and territory like Germany claimed against Poland.


The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars.

To call this right of self-determination the "right of self-determination of nations" is to misunderstand it. It is not the right of self-determination of a delimited national unit, but the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong. This misunderstanding is even more grievous when the expression "self-determination of nations" is taken to mean that a national state has the right to detach and incorporate into itself against the will of the inhabitants parts of the nation that belong to the territory of another state. It is in terms of the right of self-determination of nations understood in this sense that the Italian Fascists seek to justify their demand that the canton Tessin and parts of other cantons be detached from Switzerland and united to Italy, even though the inhabitants of these cantons have no such desire. A similar position is taken by some of the advocates of Pan-Germanism in regard to German Switzerland and the Netherlands.

However, the right of self-determination of which we speak is not the right of self-determination of nations, but rather the right of self-determination of the inhabitants of every territory large enough to form an independent administrative unit. If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done. This is impracticable only because of compelling technical considerations, which make it necessary that a region be governed as a single administrative unit and that the right of self-determination be restricted to the will of the majority of the inhabitants of areas large enough to count as territorial units in the administration of the country.
I find it ironic that when I argued for zero state in other threads, I got accused of wanting to revive "nationalism" and "national states". That accusation simply is pointless.

The Calatonians should go ahead with their referendum, and when they get a solid majority for sovereignty and self-determination and have the economic means to afford that, they should boycott Madrid and send its occupiers over the border and back to Spain. I would only wish them that they do not get such a razorsharp outcome like in Scotland were in 20 people 11 were against and 9 were for independence. In principle, 11:9 is almost as good as a half-half result, isn't it.

"Democracy is when 51% of the people democratically decide to plunder the other 49%".

Oh, And Rajoy is morally wrong, and wrong from a libertarian perspective and from the point of view of natural law: the Spaniards outside Catalonia have no say at all in whether they have to let the Catalunians leave. The Spaniards only necessarily have a say when a foreign region and its people asks them for permission to join them - not when a region wants to secede.

[Feuer Frei!]

Tribesman, you do realize you are talking to yourself don't you?

When addressing Sky.

[Feuer Frei!]

You do realise that you read it.
So are you me?
If not then you just proved yourself wrong.:yep:

No wrongs about it, you missed my point, which i will make clear to you, with the next bit.

I address what is written Nothing wrong with that, it's what we all do it matters not one jot of Sky reads it or not But you are addressing his points (whether flawed or not, that's not the point at this moment) in fact its easier if he doesn't as that way he cannot come back and try and defend the rubbish he wrote. Easier for you or him? I thought the whole point of addressing someone's pov was to have a 2-way debate, obviously in this case he has you on ignore so is there much point in arguing or debating someone's pov if the author of the pov isn't going to reply anyway?
Easier for you. Not very exciting or interesting to debate someone's pov when they can't or won't read the arguments raised against them.

That was my point with saying you are talking to yourself when replying to his pov.

I read your reply, i am not you and i am not wrong :haha:

[Feuer Frei!]

...Obama.... do you think it would matter if he read it?

Well yes.
Or you're telling me that on the slimmest of chances you wouldn't relish the opportunity to go head to head with the big O? :yep:

That of course means he hasn't got you on his ignore list so he can see your rebuttals.
And gives a dam about replying :haha:

[Onkel Neal]

And yet another one gets drawn in....

[Rockstar]

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d9/db/d1/d9dbd1f085bdfb1b4b386d1295c77643.jpg

[Skybird]

In a votum labled as "symbolic", the Catalonians voted with a 80+% majority for independence and against Madrid centralised rule over them.

However, only every third Catalonian cared to go to the poll. Which means that roughly only every fourth Catalonian cared for actively expressing his support for independence.

That should settle the row for the moment. However, I think the imperial and arrogant attitude displayed by the central government in Madrid, and ordinary politicians in general, is one that should piss everybody.

To declare it "illegal" that people in a region claim their right to decide whether they still obey to some foreign central goivenrment and accept to get ruled by its leaders thgat behave and act in a more or less unhidden feudal self-underdstanding (not just in Spian, but everywhere); to argue that iut is not the regional population's case whether they stay in a bigge runion or leave, but that the remainign bigger union's population has to grant them the freedom to do so like a master must allow the dog the exit into the garden; to demand the "sovereignty of a nation" to rule higher than the sovereignty of the citizens living in it - all that is outraging, illustrates a claim for possessing people like peasants were owned by feudal landlords in the medieval, and shows what political leaders really think about the people that they demand to own and at whose costs they live by themselves, self-convinced parasites that they are.

The Catalonian referendum may not mean a difference in effect, and still - more than about Catalonians' apparent majority of desinterested people it tells something about the way in which politicians and their institutions meet the people which they claim "to serve". And nthat is not just true in Spain, but in all EU and the West, when considering how hostile foreign politicians and profiteering bureaucrats in the EU reacted to the Catalonian move.

Lesson of it all: we are not allowed to refuse our masters; we all are being seen as kind of property being owned by our leaders; plus the majority claims the right to own the minority, and certainly we are not legitimated to claim our natural right for freedom, liberty, and self-responsibility. Servile, submissive and obedient servants to the masterpoliticians we have to be. That is the role they have forseen for us. The alibi elections we are allowed to, only leave us the choice between the left and the right entry into one and the same prison.

And considering that only every third Catalonian cared to go to the referendum, I doubt that they deserve it any better.

[Catfish]

To declare it "illegal" that people in a region claim their right to decide whether they still obey to some foreign central goivenrment and accept to get ruled by its leaders thgat behave and act in a more or less unhidden feudal self-underdstanding (not just in Spian, but everywhere); to argue that it is not the regional population's case whether they stay in a bigge runion or leave, but that the remainign bigger union's population has to grant them the freedom to do so like a master must allow the dog the exit into the garden; to demand the "sovereignty of a nation" to rule higher than the sovereignty of the citizens living in it - all that is outraging, illustrates a claim for possessing people like peasants were owned by feudal landlords in the medieval, and shows what political leaders really think about the people that they demand to own and at whose costs they live by themselves, self-convinced parasites that they are

Are you also speaking about the Ukraine ? :hmmm:

or about Bavaria :O:

[Catfish]

^ interesting how democracies act, if they are challenged to behave, like it is written in their own statute books :-?

In Germany it is easy, if more than a thousand people protest, you just change the law and all is well.

[Skybird]

Are you also speaking about the Ukraine ? :hmmm:

or about Bavaria :O:

Of course. What is valid for Peter, must also be valid for Paul.

And I said that before, repeatedly. ;) If the population in a given region does no longer wish to be part of a bigger union, they have any right there is to leave, they do not need the bigger union's permission. Permission by such a union a regional population only needs if it wants to JOIN it.

That'S why I accept the Crimean secession and its joining of Russia, the majority ratios amongst its population are quite clear.

And that's why I asked in the Ukraine thread after the 70 or 80% victory claimed by the separatists, how many people actually went to the polling stations. It seems less obvious at least that the separatists indeed gathered a majority of the provinces' population behind them. But that is the decisive criterion for me whether I accept their break-away from the Ukraine as legal and valid, or not.

Of course I also accept the population in the central and Western provinces to orientate themselves towards Europe, if that is what they want. I never refused them that reight. I only recalled that their move would necessarily trigger reactions from Russia since, both nation's interests were on a head-on confrontation there. That is what the crisis in the Ukraine flamed up over. Forming the Ukraine by the borders in which two different population groups with two such different interests were forced together, lies at the root of it all. The Ukraine never has existed in its post-USSR borders as a sovereign state before, and it never should have been formed in these borders at all. You may see why I argued in favour of a splitting of the Ukraine, therefore: keep apart what does not live well if forced together in the same cage.

That's why I accept the move by the Abchasians and Ossetians to reject Geogian rule over them, and their voluntary (!!) move to join Russia. Moscow did not manipulate them and had not to force them to accept Russian passports by the many many thousands - it was them bringing up that request first.

And that's why I would have accepted the Scotts leaving, or would accept Bavaria splitting away.

And that is why I do not accept the claimed "legality" of any law or constitution ruling that such attempts and desires are "invalid". Such a law is invalid from the moment on it is written, for it defies natural law.

So, you should (and could!) have known my reply in advance! ;) You are German, like me. They celebrate the wall's fall currently. The wall was built to prevent people fleeing the Eastern Republic, over two hundred people were killed by shots at the wall, tho9suands were thrown into prison, and were tortured. Germans should know before anyone else what it means if a state claims the right to prevent its people, its population from leaving, if they want.

And now you can imagine why I am so totally pissed by the GEZ's enforced head tax for the parties' brainwashing TV - no matter whether you own a device to watch it, or not. That is like needing to pay for a book that you never have ordered, and would never order. You still have to pay for it. WT?