Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository • Hacker News Board

Re: Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

#101

Post by cfv » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 12:56 PM UTC

deltron3030 wrote: post #90

iagovar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the accusation of terrorism is too much, but honestly some of the actions are worrying. I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from, but I understand why so many Catalonians are angry and protest for. But I also understand what different police forces are facing. You get actions like putting trees and blocks of concrete on railroads, making it very dangerous for passengers and…

>I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede. I also think that a secession wouldn't be the smartest choice, but that's a totally different matter. A functional democracy implies that the whole has to arrange itself democratically with the parts it consists of, if not it ri…

It's neither impossible nor unlawful though, they just need the rest of the country to agree with them leaving. The fascist dictator who formed modern Spain made it so its constituent lands can expel a part of it but no one part of it can choose to leave.

This is the root of why the procés is illegal, and why they are being charged as violent agitators. They are seen as young kids trying to leave their parent's house and taking their bedrooms and console with them.

If they amended the constitution, changed the rules, THEN left, that would change things. Problem is, that's even harder to do, in a country where the aforementioned military dictator died free, of old age, and he and his legacy are greatly revered by a whole lot of people.

Re: Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

#102

Post by nl » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 12:57 PM UTC

deltron3030 wrote: post #90

iagovar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the accusation of terrorism is too much, but honestly some of the actions are worrying. I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from, but I understand why so many Catalonians are angry and protest for. But I also understand what different police forces are facing. You get actions like putting trees and blocks of concrete on railroads, making it very dangerous for passengers and…

>I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede. I also think that a secession wouldn't be the smartest choice, but that's a totally different matter. A functional democracy implies that the whole has to arrange itself democratically with the parts it consists of, if not it ri…

The section on "Self-determination versus territorial integrity" on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination addresses the different arguments here.

Re: Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

#103

Post by iagovar » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 12:57 PM UTC

deltron3030 wrote: post #90

iagovar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the accusation of terrorism is too much, but honestly some of the actions are worrying. I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from, but I understand why so many Catalonians are angry and protest for. But I also understand what different police forces are facing. You get actions like putting trees and blocks of concrete on railroads, making it very dangerous for passengers and…

>I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede. I also think that a secession wouldn't be the smartest choice, but that's a totally different matter. A functional democracy implies that the whole has to arrange itself democratically with the parts it consists of, if not it ri…

> The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede. I also think that a secession wouldn't be the smartest choice, but that's a totally different matter.

I don't think I'm in position to have a long discussion about this in english, but I thought about it and reached no conclussion.

If I'm against the Catalan independence it's basically because of practical reasons. I don't think it will solve any problem, but create many more, make many people from Catalonia and from outside miserable and it's also the question of how this momentum has been achieved, which actors have been involved, and in what way.

Currently the independence movement is probably, and for the most part, outside the control of PDCAT and ERC, which are the two main independence parties.

But I can't just erase my memory and forget how it got here, and on what arguments.

I have Catalan friends and relatives, as well as two ex-girlfriends, so I don't live in a television reality (exclusively), and the situation hurts me a lot, and I can understand how the Catalan perception of events develops, and I am perfectly aware of the failures of the Spanish state, but I can only be in favour if I do a very selective memory exercise.

All this without forgetting that there is a legal way, which is to reform the constitution. But it is difficult and requires a political capital that the parties that (now) are idependent have burned long ago.

And I can imagine what a politician sitting in his office thinks when he observes that he has never had better material and symbolic conditions, and that if he wanted support from other regions he would have to recover the capital lost in the last, I don't know, fifteen years.

Re: Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

#104

Post by nl » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 1:00 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #89

iagovar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was from the police I'd probably want to block the chance to coordinate such attacks, not only do an investigation to track certain individuals. What would be the point to spend many resources to put a guy or a few of them in jail when they can be easily replaced.

Of course it depends how many people are involved in such things, and whether the app specifically is allowing them to coordinate these attacks. Most of the commentary so far has been about demonstrations, sometimes turning into violent riots. Purposely sabotaging/obstructing a piece of critical infrastructure is something rather different, although whether it could be defined as "terrorism" is somewhat ambiguous.

It's worth noting that this conflict has previously had groups who were terrorist (the bomb planting kind).

Re: Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

#105

Post by ricardbejarano » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

arien wrote: post #83

ricardbejarano wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, the government can't let a "comunidad autonoma" organize a binding referendum about a region's secession of Spain, because that would put the region's sovereignty on the region's people, and that's against the Spanish constitution (art. 1.2, the sovereignty of the entire Spanish territory is of all Spanish citizens). That also infringes Spanish constitution's 2nd art., "the Constitution is fundamented a…

It didn't have to be binding, just advisory or symbolic with no action to be taken. It might have prevented most of the current situation if the result had been to remain (which would have been most likely, back then, now I'm not so sure). If it had been independence I suppose we would be in a very similar situation.

We had a non-binding referendum on November 9th, 2014, with 90% saying yes to independence, but 37% voter turnout.

Then an illegally-binding referendum was organized by the Catalan government on October 1st, 2017. The result was 90% leaves, but yet again, 43% voter turnout, and there were no democratic guarantees, as some people were caught voting multiple times, the census was obtained illegally, etc.

After that illegal referendum, the Catalan government decided to secede and declare independence. That's why they were prosecuted and recently convicted. Declaring the independence of a part of Spanish sovereign territory is explicitly forbidden under the name of "secession" in Spanish constitution, and because it goes against the nation's own sovereignty it is considered a very serious crime, that's why they were convicted up to 13 years.

From my POV, as a Catalan citizen, this is ordinary application of law, the law that we all agreed upon in the first place, and the riots and violent scenes seen recently are simply caused by a minority of the pro-independent minority which want independence at all costs, and police forces can't allow that, thus, conflict.

Re: Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

#106

Post by zozbot234 » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 1:02 PM UTC

deltron3030 wrote: post #90

iagovar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the accusation of terrorism is too much, but honestly some of the actions are worrying. I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from, but I understand why so many Catalonians are angry and protest for. But I also understand what different police forces are facing. You get actions like putting trees and blocks of concrete on railroads, making it very dangerous for passengers and…

>I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede. I also think that a secession wouldn't be the smartest choice, but that's a totally different matter. A functional democracy implies that the whole has to arrange itself democratically with the parts it consists of, if not it ri…

> The question is if a democracy can be called democratic if it's impossible/unlawful for minorities to secede.

Well, as both Americans and Spanish might say, "we had a war to settle that issue." The U.S. have been a republic (what you call a "democracy") for the entirety of their history as a nation, and yet unilateral secession is clearly forbidden.

Re: Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

#107

Post by gwright » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 1:04 PM UTC

zentropia wrote: post #76

enriquto wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a massive ongoing police operation to suppress the catalan independence movement. The spanish paramilitary is trying to take down the source code of an app that people use to coordinate peaceful demonstrations. They say that this is to "fight terrorism" which is ridiculous, albeit there are already several people preemptively incarcerated, falsely accused of terrorism (still waiting for a trial).

They don't try to supress catalan independence, but violence. People on jail are there because they set fires, throw stones to police or hold some explosive substances.

A good example of why I think "terrorist" and "terrorism" communicate almost nothing other than "I think they are the bad guys". That sort of statement is ripe for debate.

On the other hand if you say that someone was arrested for arson, assault, or unauthorized possession or explosives then some objective reasoning can sort things out rather than having to fall back on an endlessly subjective debate of what is or isn't terrorism.

The phrase "hate crime" is another example of this problem. Someone being arrested for assault is pretty straightforward to investigate and adjudicate. If you also want the police to make some additional determination as to their motive and thoughts in order to make it a "hate crime" then everything is much more complicated. How about just punish appropriately for the assault and move on.

Note, I'm just talking about the use of language here, not trying to discern who are the bad guys in this particular dispute.

Re: Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

#108

Post by pas » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #75

iagovar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the accusation of terrorism is too much, but honestly some of the actions are worrying. I'm against the Catalonian independence, so everyone knows where I'm coming from, but I understand why so many Catalonians are angry and protest for. But I also understand what different police forces are facing. You get actions like putting trees and blocks of concrete on railroads, making it very dangerous for passengers and…

> You get actions like putting trees and blocks of concrete on railroads, making it very dangerous for passengers and workers. There are laws against doing such things on the books, I'd assume - even if the motive were "just" to block railway traffic. The government should focus on investigating those responsible. It's not at all clear that blocking an app that might have countless legitimate, non-violent uses is the…

Wasn't this app purposefully made and has been branded as such for this group and their cause?

Re: Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

#109

Post by ricardbejarano » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

big_chungus wrote: post #96

ricardbejarano wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, the government can't let a "comunidad autonoma" organize a binding referendum about a region's secession of Spain, because that would put the region's sovereignty on the region's people, and that's against the Spanish constitution (art. 1.2, the sovereignty of the entire Spanish territory is of all Spanish citizens). That also infringes Spanish constitution's 2nd art., "the Constitution is fundamented a…

And yet, doesn't this violate the principle of self-determination? If the people of a region want to create a separate region, who is to tell them not to? Catalonia now needs the permission of the others to leave? It seems as though the Spanish constitution was written for the primacy of a centralized state, rather than federated government down to the individual. I suppose the idea that sovereignty is effectively gr…

I can count with one hand the amount of state constitutions that allow the sudden declaration of independence of a part of their territory.

Self-determination is a right you reject when you step foot on Spain (and practically every other country).

We might have to change that, I don't know, but the Spanish constitution is no fascist rule, or else almost all modern democratic states are, too.

It is very complicated.

Re: Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

#110

Post by kragen » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

consp wrote: post #94

physicsguy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's a US English meaning that isn't widely used in other English speaking countries.

Or other non-English speaking parliamentary democracies for that matter.

I don't think the meaning currently given to cognates in other languages is relevant to the question of what a word means in modern English. In Spanish, bizarro means "brave", and recordar means "to recall from memory"; this does not provide any evidence that "bizarre" means "brave" in English, or that "recording" means "recalling from memory" in English. (Although, as it turns out, it once did.)