Now it's Catalonia's turn

[Onkel Neal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/wo...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.

[Oberon]

Merkel better dust off the Condor Legion...

[Catfish]

^
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"

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Self determination.

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/Liber...ical-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!]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

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

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