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Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

theguardian.com

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Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#61

Post by toyg »

trothamel wrote: post #20
coenhyde wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's appropriate to ask the citizens of the rest of the country if they support the secession. To create a simple analogy lets say you have a group of five people. One is a captive and four are the captors. Is it appropriate to have a referendum with all five people to vote on if the captive is allow to go free? No the four captors are always going to vote no. The captive has to escape without the suppo…

I'm sure if you went to any prison and polled the inmates, you'd find quite a bit of support for the inmate's freedom. Without taking a position on Catalonia, I think one has to analyze the reasons they want to hold the referendum and decide if you find them compelling. When the USA seceded from the UK, the Declaration of Independence provided a reasonable list of reasons. By contrast, the main reason the CSA seceded…

But you are not polling inmates, you are effectively polling wardens. How many wardens will poll to release the inmate their own jobs depend on? None.

Independentism is always a thorny subject, because most justification ends up being defined ex post. It’s like “resistance” movements against lawful but tyrannical governments: if they succeed they will be freedom fighters, if they fail they’ll be brigands and terrorists. Usually the threshold for legitimacy is overwhelming support from the population, something that happens sporadically (it happened in Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Kossovo, almost in Scotland, and of course in post-soviet republics all over the old federation). But once popular support is somehow made manifest, then the Wilson doctrine must be allowed to set the agenda.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#62

Post by evanlivingston »

charlesism wrote: post #56
evanlivingston wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps that's a point of failure in democracies as we have seen them implemented, in that a large group of people are sometimes beholden to a larger group of people with whom they don't identify.

Lately, I have the feeling that all this growing nationalism in the world will take care of itself within a decade or so. The logical end to having pride in your (ethnic or geographical) subgroup isn't a few hundred happy nations living separately in harmony. It's war :(

I tend to agree. But I do see a problem with political systems such as the one in the US that allows injustices like slavery or racial segregation to go on as long as they did. there is a real issue with minority groups being disenfranchised by representative democracy.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#63

Post by justin66 »

lacaza wrote: post #46

I feel a little bit disappointed with hacker news having this superficial and anti-analytical article in the front page. As a Spaniard id like to address some points brought up here in the comments. I've read people comparing this with Crimea, thoughts on self determination, thoughts on the repression by the government, etc. The first thing is to question the referendum itself: there was no census, there are people f…

> This referendum is illegal and unconstitutional. There are millions of public money and public space used in order to carry on with "crime of sedition", using the political force against the law in order to rebel against the institutions.

Since the referendum doesn't have any legal force anyway, why did your government send out cops to use force to keep people away from the polls?

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#64

Post by farresito »

lacaza wrote: post #46

I feel a little bit disappointed with hacker news having this superficial and anti-analytical article in the front page. As a Spaniard id like to address some points brought up here in the comments. I've read people comparing this with Crimea, thoughts on self determination, thoughts on the repression by the government, etc. The first thing is to question the referendum itself: there was no census, there are people f…

The only two autonomous communities I could see leaving are Catalonia and Basque Country. Madrid, despite being rich, has many more privileges than Catalonia.

What makes you think less than 15% of people voted? Did you by any chance get these numbers from the extremely objective and impartial newspapers abc, el mundo, or la razon?

I don't feel like arguing at 3am, so I will leave it at that, but reading things like our history is null makes me pretty sad.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#65

Post by demonshalo »

coenhyde wrote: post #17
argonaut wrote: post #12

I thought this analysis article was really thought-provoking and now I have uncertain and mixed feelings about the referendum: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/europe/independence... . Basically, when it comes to things like this there's a conflict between two international ideals: integrity of national borders and human rights . And there are some thought provoking ideas in the article. If you think about it…

I don't think it's appropriate to ask the citizens of the rest of the country if they support the secession. To create a simple analogy lets say you have a group of five people. One is a captive and four are the captors. Is it appropriate to have a referendum with all five people to vote on if the captive is allow to go free? No the four captors are always going to vote no. The captive has to escape without the suppo…

This to me is essentially eternal political debate between the collective vs. the individual. Do we "put down" the individual in order to promote the well-being of the collective (read tyrannical majority rule) or do we value the rights of the individual regardless of they impact the collective? I am personally on the side of the latter.

Secession is by definition a break out from the collective. So considering what the collective wants seems to me like asking the majority to vote for their tyrannical interest (very biased way of doing things).

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#66

Post by girvo »

lacaza wrote: post #46

I feel a little bit disappointed with hacker news having this superficial and anti-analytical article in the front page. As a Spaniard id like to address some points brought up here in the comments. I've read people comparing this with Crimea, thoughts on self determination, thoughts on the repression by the government, etc. The first thing is to question the referendum itself: there was no census, there are people f…

> Also, Catalonia can never be compared with Scotland, their history is null in contrast. Their identity is as special as many other regions of spain.

I’m curious what you mean here, do you mind expanding on your opinion?

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#67

Post by justin66 »

bassman9000 wrote: post #42
Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optics (at the moment) seem to be the most important issue here. Whether or not the vote is legitimate is quite irrelevant in immediate aftermath. This is a government using physical force against its citizens for, of all things, voting -- a core democratic principle. Democracy must be tolerant of peaceful protesting. An "illegal" vote (depending who's lens we are viewing this from), to me, is a form of peaceful…

It was an illegal act, funded by public money. Had the government not acted, it would have set a bad precedent: that constitution doesn't hold weight in real life.

> Had the government not acted, it would have set a bad precedent: that constitution doesn't hold weight in real life.

Nobody expected them not to react to the referendum. Using cops with clubs instead of lawyers was disappointing.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#68

Post by derekp7 »

kcorbitt wrote: post #21
argonaut wrote: post #12

I thought this analysis article was really thought-provoking and now I have uncertain and mixed feelings about the referendum: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/europe/independence... . Basically, when it comes to things like this there's a conflict between two international ideals: integrity of national borders and human rights . And there are some thought provoking ideas in the article. If you think about it…

In a divorce, you don't require that all parties agree that divorcing is the right decision. If a single party wants to dissolve the relationship, that is sufficient. There's more nuance when we're talking about entire states, but I believe the same principle should apply. This particular vote was irregular enough to not really be legitimate, but the Spanish government should recognize that some sort of Catalan refer…

That may work between two people, but not for a large enough group. For example, if a group of people owned a large enough amount of land to be self sufficient, should they be able to separate their land from their country? Even if it is a few dozen people, and a few square miles?

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#69

Post by jwhitlark »

kcorbitt wrote: post #21
argonaut wrote: post #12

I thought this analysis article was really thought-provoking and now I have uncertain and mixed feelings about the referendum: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/europe/independence... . Basically, when it comes to things like this there's a conflict between two international ideals: integrity of national borders and human rights . And there are some thought provoking ideas in the article. If you think about it…

In a divorce, you don't require that all parties agree that divorcing is the right decision. If a single party wants to dissolve the relationship, that is sufficient. There's more nuance when we're talking about entire states, but I believe the same principle should apply. This particular vote was irregular enough to not really be legitimate, but the Spanish government should recognize that some sort of Catalan refer…

But if you are the wealthier party, you will be required to pay support...

The problem with easy non-mutual dissolution is that a party with a temporary advantage can transform it into a long term gain at the other party's expense.

Re: Catalan referendum: preliminary results show 90% in favour of independence

#70

Post by lacaza »

farresito wrote: post #28
randiantech wrote: post #2

There are reports of people voting from two to 4 different schools. Wondering what methods authorities used to ensure there was no fraud on these referendum.

I voted. I can't talk about all the schools, but the ones I checked made sure (electronically) that you didn't vote twice, but of course there's a chance that some people did indeed vote more than once if for some reason they manually wrote down the name.

Check this out:

https://twitter.com/key_opinions/status/914529367543382016

https://twitter.com/juanmalamet/status/914448261964029957

https://twitter.com/yuyudecai/status/914577981812674566

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