Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spanish government orders GitHub to take down Tsunami Democràtic repository

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 541 posts

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

#391

Post by ErneX »

tassl wrote: post #384
ErneX wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I don't want to be part of the new Catalonia I can secede my home or join with a few neighbors to be independent from Catalonia? We have a constitution for something it's a not a Chinese vase to glance at it.

The argument of "I can secede from my home" is reductionist, simplistic and overall insulting to any group of people that want independence from the country they depend on or have fought for independence in the past. Most countries today are independent even though it was illegal for them to become independent before they did. Poland or Estonia would still be part of the Russian empire. Austria and Hungary the same c…

We are talking about a region of Spain that in 1978 voted YES to approve the Spanish constitution. One of the wealthiest regions of an EU member. This is not an oppressed or punished population, the right of self determination does not apply to it when it's an autonomous region that is part of a functioning modern democracy. Even ex-UN chief Ban Ki-moon agreed on this:

https://www.thejournal.ie/catalan-independence-ban-ki-moon-2...

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

#392

Post by kragen »

couchand wrote: post #374
kragen wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be talking about the meanings of some Spanish words, but the disagreement is about the meanings of words in English, which is not the same language as Spanish. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21397278 .

There's no real disagreement, just some folks seem to be unfamiliar with how much of the world uses these terms. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21396866 et al.

Indeed, I said as much in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21396745 and (a bit snarkily) in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21396708.

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

#393

Post by iagovar »

saagarjha wrote: post #357
iagovar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Spanish police, concerned citizenry, etc. can use the app just as much as anyone else, to prevent things from getting out of hand They can't. The app uses some kind of location data to silo information. So for example if they want to make an action in Tarragona, people from Barcelona is not going to know about it. It is likely, seeing some threads of people who have analyzed the application, that the administra…

Can't you spoof location data?

I guess so, I didn't do the analysis, but I'm pretty sure the guys who did the app already thought about that possibility.

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

#394

Post by Jare »

ivalm wrote: post #338
ErneX wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Catalan are not majority of Spain. They cannot themselves change the constitution, yet they do not want to stay in Spain. So it's a fake "way." The majority should not be allowed to bully the minority.

But if Catalonia secedes, the majority (they're not, but for argument's sake) of independentist catalonians will be bullying the minority of non-independentist catalonians, right?

It's turtles all the way down.

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

#395

Post by skissane »

szeptik wrote: post #152
big_chungus wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The current Spanish constitution was voted with more than 90% of support in Catalonia. Should that not count as self-determination?

The current Spanish constitution was drafted by a process heavily dominated by members of the former Francoist regime. The Spanish people were never formally asked "What sort of constitution would you like?" They were asked "Would you like a democratic constitution or not?" And I think a lot of people voted 'yes', whether or not they liked the constitution on offer, but simply because they wanted to ensure the return to democracy and the end to dictatorship was solidified. A fairer process of drafting a constitution would have produced a very different document.

If a dictatorship offers people democracy on its terms, people will accept it. But, was their choice really free? Would they have agreed to the same terms if the threat of dictatorship wasn't there? (1978 was only three years after Franco died, Spanish democracy was very young, and it was entirely believable in 1978 that it might not have lasted.)

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

#396

Post by kgwgk »

zozbot234 wrote: post #112
swebs wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically Catalonia, the region of Spain that includes Barcelona, is attempting to gain independence. The Spanish government is attempting to prevent that. These protests are a result of this tension. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Catalan_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Catalan_independence_refe...

It's worth noting that much of this "independence" business is not as serious as outsiders might assume. The Spanish government largely brought this 'independence' movement on themselves by rejecting requests for more sensible forms of increased local self-govenment. To a mildly-sophisticated observer, this just looks like a whole lot of overstated politicking. (This is also why PSOE - the party with the more "sensib…

It’s also worth noting that Spain is already one of the most decentralised countries in the OCDE and Catalonia is one of the regions which a higher level of self-government in the country. Including its own police force, which results in the amusing situation that the regional government is at the same time encouraging the masses to revolt and sending the police to repress the revolts.

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

#397

Post by tassl »

ojosilva wrote: post #255
vitobcn wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The takedown is referring to charges of terrorism: "the movement Tsunami Democratic has been confirmed as a criminal organization driving people to commit terrorist attacks. Tsunami Democratic's main goal is coordinating these riots and terrorist actions by using any possible mean." Can anybody point me to such terrorist actions? Tsunami Democratic is indeed organizing demonstrations and protests, but I don't underst…

As I understand the Spanish police and courts have framed Tsunami Democratic as part of the ongoing terrorism investigation similar to the "Judas Operation" [1], where 7 members of the CDRs have been arrested allegedly with raw materials and instructions to build explosives and were charged with terrorism. Within the investigation, the National Police has tied the CDR's and Tsunami as being the same organization [2].…

For context, other people have been convicted for terrorism with this list of materials: a mask of an activist [1], a printed map of a city [1], bleach, cabbage and a tweet saying "Goku still lives" [2].

But yet the terrorist attack in Barcelona that killed 15 people is not being investigated because of the connection of the master mind with the Spanish CNI [3] and its knowledge of the attack beforehand [4].

[1] https://www.publico.es/public/repressio-precedent-d-adria-i-... [2] https://elpais.com/politica/2018/07/26/actualidad/1532619800... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/world/europe/spain-barcel... [4] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/spanish-intelli...

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

#398

Post by skissane »

ricardbejarano wrote: post #65
StavrosK wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true, and neither side is handling this very well. The government could have let the referendum happen but campaign against it, appeasing the people who wanted a democratic vote but still winning. Instead, they went full suppression and made themselves look much worse.

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…

Compare Spain to Iraq. Around the same time, Iraqi Kurdistan had a referendum on independence. The Iraqi central government declared it void. But they didn't make any physical attempt to stop it.

The Spanish central government and court system didn't have to try to physically stop the referendum. They could have just declared it illegal but then ignored it rather than seeking to physically prevent it. They could have followed the same approach as Iraq. They chose not to. Likewise, rather than imprisoning those who declared unilateral independence, they could have just declared the act legally void and then pretended it never happened.

Governments (and judicial systems) always have discretion about enforcing the law. A wise government knows when to step back. A foolish government demands it be enforced 100% of the time. (And I guarantee you, that there will be other issues, on which the Spanish government and judiciary make no such demand for 100% enforcement – prosecutorial discretion exists in every country, Spain included.)

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

#399

Post by ivalm »

Jare wrote: post #394
ivalm wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catalan are not majority of Spain. They cannot themselves change the constitution, yet they do not want to stay in Spain. So it's a fake "way." The majority should not be allowed to bully the minority.

But if Catalonia secedes, the majority (they're not, but for argument's sake) of independentist catalonians will be bullying the minority of non-independentist catalonians, right? It's turtles all the way down.

That's disingenuous, Catalonia is comparable in size to other EU countries, has it's own language, and has long historic objection to being part of Spain. There are not many subgroups that can have similar claim.

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

#400

Post by kragen »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #305
kragen wrote: post #42

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…

Hyperbolic much? > Jefferson's future or Stalin's You know, there is an awful lot of space between the two, the entire globe doesn't need to adopt US mores on everything or is inevitably an oppressive dictatorship shipping folks off to the Siberian gulag. That kind of black and white expression of the "correct ideology" helps no one. FWIW I happen to have a fair amount of sympathy for the Catalan separatists in light…

Indeed, nor are US mores even the optimum, particularly the slavery of Monticello; the spectrum of possibilities is much wider than I suggested, including both dystopias far worse than GULAG and states of global eudaemonia unimaginable today. But approximations of both Jefferson's visions and Stalin's are among the possibilities, and where we end up depends entirely on which direction we go. So my top-level comment was not, I think, hyperbolic; it was understated, but only because I cannot imagine what will happen in the future any more than others can.

I have no sympathy for the Catalan separatists; I think they are a bunch of nationalist clowns. I think dark days will come to Catalunya if they succeed in their secessionist mission. But I think that is a far less important issue than preserving the intellectual heritage of humanity, rather than subjugating the noble pursuit of reason and freedom to the depraved animalistic contest of dominance that these "laws" serve.

Post reply on HN