331–340 of 541 posts
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> Spanish paramilitary, Guardia Civil is really a police force like the french Gendarmerie, seen it described as paramilitary is a bit odd, tbh.
Is this the same force active when people attempted to vote at polling stations?
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Yes we can. There are independentists in parliament. The president of Catalonia is an independentist. Pro-independence demonstrations happen and there are no arrests just by going there (except in riots, but that's because the police force is way too uncontrolled, not because of a general freedom of expression issue). This takedown was to an app that was used to organize a blockage of a major airport. I do not agree…
The treatment of Carles Puigdemont and others is hardly consistent with free expression.
The fact that lots of people in Europe wouldn't touch him anymore with a fifty foot pole and that Canadians panicked this same week about the idea of receiving him in Canada, is probably related with the fact that he can talk, but is definitely unable to stop talking.
Native speaker of Castillian Spanish here. IMO the most critical sentence in this judicial order was mistranslated by GitHub, changing our understanding of the government's request and casting GitHub's response in a more negative light (if you believe information and communication tools should be free.) The original language in the last paragraph is "...para solicitar la retención del contenido y los datos relacionad…
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It's not entirely sensible to talk about "rule of law" when it comes to secession. Most countries exist in violation of some earlier set of laws. They were part of some nation and broke away, or they replaced their own government with another form through revolt.
I think you meant "secession". A really small minority is actually revolting, thankfully. Lots of pro-independence people are protesting peacefully. There's also the other side that don't want to hear anything about seceding that are just looking at these events unfold pretty worried.
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>It's neither impossible nor unlawful though, they just need the rest of the country to agree with them leaving. Why do they need the approval of people living elsewhere?
For the same reason they include Barcelona in their hypothetical new country when most people there do not want independence or the same reason a state with 80% of democratic vote has to accept a republican president voted by people "living elsewhere". That's just how democracy works, else I can just secede if I don't like the result of the elections.
What's wrong with self-determination?
Github will not be shutdown over any action they do or do not take in Spain. The worst that can happen to Github is that they are prevented from doing business in Spain. Given how strongly Spain has come down against freedom of expression on the Catalonia issue, Github is making it very clear by taking this action that freedom of expression is not one of their values. Let me repeat, Spain has come down hard enough ag…
> I highly value freedom of expression, and to me it is especially important to me that a code-hosting and (like it or not) a social media website holds to that value as well. This will definitely affect whether I choose Github or Microsoft in the future. Would you rather choose a company that doesn't comply with local laws? Most governments ( no doubt, yours too), want companies operating under their jurisdiction to…
Absolutely. Companies and the individuals who make up companies should not comply with unethical laws just as people at large should not comply with unethical laws. Ethics stands above the law.
But muh western values! If Russia had done the same exact thing this thread would be filled with jingoists calling for sanctions or war. Remember that the next time somebody tries to goad you into tribalism with ideology, the ideology to them is a means, not an end.
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> 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…
Constitution reform is the only way and yet lots of people keep pointing to other things, this is the reason we are stuck in this situation now. That road is long and requires actual politics, what they have done is taking a shortcut to nowhere.
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>Moreover, not even half of people in Catalonia (more or less) want independence. The results of the elections and the independence referendum strongly disagree. >Most people in Catalonia (1978) voted in favor of these constitution, Unlike those that voted the Estatut d'Autonomia (see below), many of these people are dead. There was no alternative to this constitution as it happened in a very unstable climate after t…
What happened with the Estatut should not be a carte blanche to secede, it was bad? yes it was pretty bad. But to drag probably half the people in Catalonia through this ordeal is just as bad as what happened with the Estatut. We need politicians doing politics again, change whatever it needs to be changed but inside the current framework.
Nobody took a "carte blanche" to secede. The succession of pro-independence governments were put in there by voters. These governments exhausted all possible avenues with the spanish goverment, which refused to even talk about the topic.
Catalan people were then asked explicitly whether they wanted it, in the referendum that's famous for the violence of the spanish police that were sent to prevent it. And even after that, the Catalan government tried again and again to establish dialogue with Spain, to no avail.
Spain then went on to suspend catalan government, put everybody they could in jail, and to force an election in Catalonia. An election from which yet another pro-independence government was formed.
And to date, Spain has refused any and all dialogue, and the politicians in Jail have been given a judgement that most people in Catalonia cannot agree with, by a trial that independent international observers found outrageously biased and unfair.
This is why we are where we are. The people have taken to the streets because that's what's left.
Governments† burn libraries. Don't create central points of vulnerability to coercion. That multiplies the effectiveness of coercive force. Create decentralized systems. Git, not GitHub. Bitcoin, not Citibank. Email, not Gmail — although we still need to free email from DNS. Never forget how the Spanish Inquisition — the origin, in the West, of these sorts of degraded "laws" against "criminal content" — treated the J…
What's the Spanish Inquisition got to do with this? Are they in your reply because of the word "Spanish", as in "the union between the people of Arragon, Castille and the very same Catalunya, who (re)conquered the Iberian peninsula?" > governments burn libraries Not really. > Catalan separatists are ... pedophiles Is there really anyone who said so? Or are we a bit hyperbolical today?
Regarding the libraries comment, it happens plenty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_libraries#Hu...
GP may be a bit verbose and dramatic, but the parallels between the Inquisition (a form of censorship) and current events happening in the same geographical location seem to be quite appropriate. He also brings up China besides Spain, so maybe you read too much into the country-specific reference with regards to the original topic.
I think it's a valid warning. All humans equally deserve knowledge, and as long as we have centralized systems then some humans will attempt to censor others. Simple as that.