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

Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 86 posts

Re: Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

#61

Post by lz400 »

crdoconnor wrote: post #52
lz400 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very obvious fallacy. Women's suffrage used to be legal, therefore all laws are wrong? or, the law I don't like is wrong?

The fallacy is your presumption that because something is illegal, it cannot be democratic. It's illegal to hold a vote like this in North Korea too and the judicial process would be similarly "forced" to follow the law. Still democratic.

I don't presume that, although I think legal strongly signals democratic in a democracy. What I say is that this referendum is illegal and not democratic.

Re: Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

#62

Post by patrickaljord »

nickpp wrote: post #28

Classic "Atlas Shrugged" moment: the hard-working, tax-paying people of Catalonia are tired of supporting the wealth-redistribution, equalitarianist Spaniards. A warning for other countries where the tirany of majority is becoming unbearable? That would be pretty much the whole Socialist West at this point, although I am not aware of similar geographical concentrations. It brings back memories of the old communist re…

Spain and the EU (who's turning a blind eye) can't let this happen. If every productive region who's fed up of paying for the regions who don't produce much and spend irresponsibly declare independence, this would be the end of the EU and of most of its countries. Can't let that happen. Let's hope at least this will put pressure on non-productive regions to start spending more responsibly other regions money and make their economy more competitive and productive by liberalizing the economy a bit more.

Re: Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

#63

Post by krona »

chki wrote: post #36
patrickaljord wrote: post #20

The fact that many politicians still don't know about the Streisand effect never ceases to amaze me. They should have let this slide and no one would have cared, heck most people can't spot Catalunya on a map and now it's all over international news with voters in blood including women and elderly people.

I'm not sure wether that would have actually been a possibility. The referendum ist illegal according to the ruling of the highest constitutional court. The absolute minimum of what a functioning state needs to do is pushing back on all illegal activities. By not doing anything against an illegal referendum the Spanish state would have made the first step towards accepting that it does no longer have full control ove…

What the Spanish constitution says is largely besides the point on the matter of the rights of Catalonians to assemble, protest and express themselves. See Chapter I of the United Nations Charter.

The acts of internal or external self-determination such as the Scottish referendum are expressions of fundamental human rights. The significant difference is whether such acts are recognized by the international community.

The sensible thing would have been to let the referendum to go ahead and not recognize the result. Instead the Spanish government uses violence to pro-actively prevent peaceful protest, and makes the situation dangerously unpredictable.

Re: Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

#64

Post by lz400 »

Grustaf wrote: post #59
DCKing wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing, but just a semantic argument here. The referendum is absolutely democratic. But it is also illegal under the Spanish constitution. The problem is that the Spanish constitution and the judge's interpretation (which is straightforward but unfortunate) patently would disallow self determination through a referendum, which to me is democracy in its purest form. The only reason it's illegal is because…

Of course it would look bad if 95% of Catalonian voted for independence but I wonder if there are legal reasons stopping the Spanish government from just letting the vote go through and then simply ignore the outcome. It seems to me Catalonian independence can only really happen with support from Madrid anyway.

The judiciary ordered the dismantling. It had to be done. We can argue about the execution, I won't disagree it's being poor but in a country with separation of powers, the executive needs to obey the law.

Anyway, the referendum specifically doesn't have any anti-fraud guarantees and people who don't want independence aren't going to vote so the "yes" is going to win 9X% most likely.

Re: Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

#65

Post by bitL »

lz400 wrote: post #33
bitL wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All great movements of the past were illegal; that's what made them great in the history books, even if they were carefully planned by Machiavellian types in the background. One very popular past dictator in Germany was democratically elected though. If Spain wants to stay united, they really need to start talking to Catalonia instead of literally kicking their butts and smashing them on the ground, or they risk an a…

You have already godwin'd me :) Anyway, imho this is still just fallacious. You are attaching to the Catalonian independence movement the adjective of "great". Then you say great movements are "illegal", etc. etc. Too much of a fact-less reasoning for me.

It might be great from the point of view of Catalonians, horrible from the point of view of Castillians; it might be meh from the point of view of Balearians. Like all those *stan countries splitting from Soviet Union, I am sure they are super happy celebrating it and Russians looking sad, embarrassed and upset back at those events. What I was trying to point out is a simple historic observation that once population's perception of benefits is lost, inevitably a dissolution in a few decades comes (unless you do Stalin's style mass murders/transfers of nations to remove the issue completely, which I hope post-Franco Spain doesn't mediate at all).

Re: Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

#66

Post by flexie »

wilun wrote: post #40
flexie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The violence part is a disgrace and likely extremely counterproductive. But there is not much democracy in the catalan referendum. It's unconstitutional, and there is little guarantee it's fair to the castellano half of the catalan population which is also much more likely to refrain from voting. The referendum will probably not reflect the will of the catalan population.

You can accuse any pool of not reflecting the wishes of the population, with the (poor and fallacious) excuse that some people choose not vote. Now remains the problem of having to make such a choice in case an illegal vote is organized, but there shall be no problem in the first place if the results are ignored. But even then, you can't recursively deplete the meaning of the word "democratic" by tying it to pre-exis…

Your use of the words poor or fallacious are indeed poor. There is a huge difference between

a) the usual situation where some people don't participate in a regular referendum or election that most of the population and all authorities support as constitutional, and then

b) the situation in Catalonia where the referendum is only considered legal by some of the authorities, where other authorities have told voters to refrain from voting and are actively trying to prevent the voters from voting, and where a presumed 40-50 percent of the "electorate" don't even believe it's constitutional.

Let's not pretend that people that would vote "remain" are likely to participate in a vote they have been told by the some of the authorities not to participate in. Only the "leave" voters who believe the referendum is legal in the first place have a clear incentive to participate in it.

Re: Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

#67

Post by ghaff »

akvadrako wrote: post #32
bjourne wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. But what if the inhabitants of the Navajo Nation ( http://www.nec.navajo-nsn.gov/portals/0/TEC%20US%20Map.png ) demanded sovereignty? The US would likely suppress its self-determination in exactly the same way.

Hell, a bunch of semi-autonomous US states tried this in the 1860s and got crushed by the full force of the national military for their attempt. There is clearly no internationally accepted right to self-determination. Maybe there should be, but I'm not sure it can be made fair and practical. The status quo seems to be: > According to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, the UN, ICJ and international law experts, there is…

Although, even leaving aside issues specific to the Civil War, 2017 is also a lot different from 1860. To the degree that a region of a Western democracy, especially one with a clear historic identity, really wants to separate from the parent country, most would say it's their right to do so. (Although the separating region may not like the terms.) Sending national government troops into Scotland, Quebec, or California to force them to remain would be a pretty unpopular move throughout the Western world.

Re: Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

#68

Post by lz400 »

nsnick wrote: post #42
DCKing wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing, but just a semantic argument here. The referendum is absolutely democratic. But it is also illegal under the Spanish constitution. The problem is that the Spanish constitution and the judge's interpretation (which is straightforward but unfortunate) patently would disallow self determination through a referendum, which to me is democracy in its purest form. The only reason it's illegal is because…

The Spanish government did have a choice and this particular decision will likely lead to a shooting war.

No it won't, Catalonia doesn't have an army. It could lead to the creation of terrorist cells I guess, I hope things don't get that far.

Re: Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

#69

Post by Findeton »

_hgt1 wrote: post #47
Findeton wrote: post #31

I'm from Spain (Madrid) and I support the referendum, because I'm an economic libertarian and I support the freedom of association and smaller States. BTW, this is not a real referendum, as there are no guarantees. Of course, the reason why there are no democratic guarantees is because of the actions of the Spanish government. But you can see the "high degree" census control here in this video: https://elpais.com/Com…

The Catalan police is here too, and they're not cracking skulls.

Of course, but they will use violence when something that the Catalan gov doesn't like happens. And it's not an hypothesis, it has already happened in the near past.

Re: Catalan referendum: Voting begins amid police crackdown

#70

Post by Findeton »

patrickaljord wrote: post #51
Findeton wrote: post #31

I'm from Spain (Madrid) and I support the referendum, because I'm an economic libertarian and I support the freedom of association and smaller States. BTW, this is not a real referendum, as there are no guarantees. Of course, the reason why there are no democratic guarantees is because of the actions of the Spanish government. But you can see the "high degree" census control here in this video: https://elpais.com/Com…

As a libertarian you should support smaller government though and a Catalan government would most likely be much smaller.

And my post starts with "I'm from Spain (Madrid) and I support the referendum".
Post reply on HN