Spain's Crackdown on Catalonia Includes Internet Censorship (internetsociety.org) 363
Spain's autonomous Catalonia region wants to hold a referendum on independence next weekend. Spain's Constitutional Court insists that that vote is illegal, and has taken control of Catalonia's police force to try to stop the vote. They're deploying thousands of additional police officers and have seized nearly 10 million ballots. And now the Internet Society has gotten involved, according to an announcement shared by Slashdot reader valinor89: Measures restricting free and open access to the Internet related to the independence referendum have been reported in Catalonia. There have been reports that major telecom operators have been asked to monitor and block traffic to political websites, and following a court order, law enforcement has raided the offices of the .cat registry in Barcelona, examining a computer and arresting staff.
We are concerned by reports that this court order would require a top-level domain (TLD) operator such as .cat to begin to block "all domains that may contain any kind of information about the referendum."
We are concerned by reports that this court order would require a top-level domain (TLD) operator such as .cat to begin to block "all domains that may contain any kind of information about the referendum."
Generalismo Fransico Franco (Score:5, Interesting)
Ain't dead yet!
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Indeed, and it's not exactly unprecedented....The country didn't end fascism until 1975, and Europe in general still loves censorship.
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The RWB list has a few problems in that it isn't about speech or free press as much as it is about how what RWB thinks about the country overall.
A few examples:
- They give negative marks to the US because the military bombed a building that had some journalists in it. Two died, but the rest survived, and the military gave them medical aid once they realized what had happened. If this was a free speech issue, they probably would have made sure to kill all of them.
- The current year makes statements about Tru
Well that is one way of ensuring a loss (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to suppress people's freedom is the surest way of pissing them off. How many went from pro-union to pro-independence due to this nonsense?
Re:Well that is one way of ensuring a loss (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hey Quebec, (Score:5, Informative)
Since the last referendum, the federal government has passed the clarity act. Has to be a clear super majority rather then 50%+1. Quebec leaving also means amending the Constitution, with an amendment that requires 100% of the Provinces agreeing. There also will need to be a discussion of how much territory Quebec can keep. What they entered Confederation with? Or what the Feds bought from the Hudson's Bay Company. Of course the natives won't want to go either and they're a Federal responsibility.
Quebec leaving is not as simple as the separatists have preached.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It rarely is, is it?
Why yes, Britain, I did glance at you.
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Them problem is, the separatists are generally older - the younger voting population practically never votes for the PQ. And given the current provincial government is Liberal, while they're in power it's not going to happen.
In fact, there's reports that the Quebec Language Police are going to let up on some anglicisms [theglobeandmail.com] after they not only proved unpopular, but no one used them. And yes, Quebec enforced use of those words, even when the
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And yes, Quebec enforced use of those words, even when they don't bother in France! (The stop signs are ARRÊT in Quebec, but STOP in France (and yes, the French do say "Stop").
It's understandable - some of the Quebec French-isms are a mouthful compared to the more compact anglicism (which is probably why they never caught on), while the more compact ones have actually stuck and have been adopted by France.
Actually, the verb "stopper" (meaning "to stop") has been in use in French since at least the 1840s (it was used in Balzac's Comédie Humaine "Cousin Pons" from 1847). Once it's been used by a great French author, it's automagically considered as "valid French and a French invention thank you very much". Note that there is also a "stopper" (meaning "to darn") in use since at least the 1730s, that was borrowed from Dutch (stoppen -> restauper -> estoper -> stoper -> stopper). Of course, both
Re: Hey Quebec, (Score:2)
I have no issues whatsoever understanding Canadians from outside Quebec when they speak French.
That's over the top; no wonder the French speakers i know feel the way they do about le quebecois (I've found they roll their eyes when the subject comes up).
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Nah, just call them Nazis. Then censoring them or even physically assaulting them is okay.
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Child molester is better. Everyone agrees they don't deserve any rights, not even a trial.
Re:Well that is one way of ensuring a loss (Score:5, Informative)
The vote was already illegitimate; this is just going to slant it further. They already tried a non-binding "referendum" in 2014 with predictable results: 80% pro-independence (even though fair polls show more like 40%). The only way to have a fair referendum is to do it in a way that is approved and legal; the moment it becomes dodgy in any way, it severely biases the results because of course participation is going to be severely skewed towards people who want to vote yes.
This is why the central government only really has two choices: they can either support a completely legitimate referendum (whether this can actually be done legally or not based on the Constitution is unclear), or they can wholly suppress attempts. They can't allow an illegitimate referendum to go through because the result is going to be obvious and not representative of the citizens' will. The pro-independence regional government has stated they intend to declare independence within 48 hours after a "yes" victory; this would be ridiculous in this case given that result would in no way be accurate with the current circumstances surrounding the referendum.
(Note: I don't approve of the censorship part, just trying to explain what is going on.)
Re:Well that is one way of ensuring a loss (Score:4, Informative)
The only way it is illegitimate is because the Spanish government has said they won't abide by it, but it can still be a legitimate referendum for the self-rule and in the eyes of the world.
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No, this isn't about what the Spanish government thinks. The referendum as it is being currently attempted is fundamentally illegitimate because it all but guarantees a "yes" outcome by severely biasing participation towards "yes" proponents. That makes it invalid in to every rational pair of eyes. To have a legitimate referendum, you need to have high participation that is balanced between supporters of all sides, which, in a functional democracy, means both sides have to agree to hold the referendum (or a
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So how do you propose to ever have change through a referendum when the status quo can just choose not to participate and thus make it "invalid", winning by default?
Assume for a moment that there is a majority in favour of independence - how could they ever legally achieve their goal without the cooperation of national government?
I'm actually asking, because I can't think of any way.
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The proof is that the outcome wildly differed from random polls.
It's a pretty obvious conclusion that if a referendum is unilaterally pushed by the party with one outcome as their agenda, that there will be a large bias for that outcome. Yes, it's difficult to make these kinds of polls perfectly fair (just look at Brexit or the US election for examples where things *probably* went the opposite way of what the population truly wanted by a small margin), but to even have a chance at approximating fairness the
Re: Well that is one way of ensuring a loss (Score:5, Interesting)
Who is able to vote? All of Spain is affected by this, should they not all have a chance to vote?
Hmmm
That is the same argument that so many little Englanders expressed over here in blighty when Scotland wanted an independence referendum, of course those same people would have been outraged if it was suggested that the UK leaving the EU required a majority vote from all the EU countries. It should be the vote of the majority of people in the region/state/country that decides on independence.
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Re:Well that is one way of ensuring a loss (Score:4, Informative)
Except, you know, the independentist regional government's own poll that puts the split at 49.4% against/41.1% for independence. [www.abc.es]
Seriously, you guys (as in the vehemently pro-independence crowd) just delegitimize yourselves by going down to Trump's "biggest inauguration crowd" level. This is obviously a contentious issue and the population is pretty much evenly split. An independent Catalonia would screw over half of Catalonia's population as much or even moreso than the status quo screws over the other half. Yes, this is a difficult problem, and yes, you have every right to campaign for independence, and yes, a solution that magically pleases everyone would be great, but it certainly isn't an open-and-shut-case.
This is the slippery slope (Score:5, Insightful)
If you start condoning Internet censorship for political reasons (for example, what has been going on with the Daily Stormer), it will never stop where you think.
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Talk about politics and politicians should be the most highly-protected of all. In the US even flat-out lies are protected as the government may not become the arbiter of truth about itself.
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If you start condoning Internet censorship for political reasons (for example, what has been going on with the Daily Stormer), it will never stop where you think.
The "Daily Stormer" was not censored, they just weren't supported by businesses. If they were censored, they wouldn't be back online and being hosted by some company in Iceland.
Is it too much to ask of mods to grasp the truth of content before modding it? (mod me down, "-1 oww, my feels!")
Re:This is the slippery slope (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't play word games and call yourself anything other than an oppressor.
It is political speech, suppressed on the basis of politics. It used to be that any company who deigned to offer communication services to the public understood itself to do so on a non-discriminatory basis as to the ideological content of that communication.
Any business that thinks it has the right NOT to take that business should not be in the communication business. It makes no difference whether censorship is carried out by government, or corporations. The people are neither.
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Don't play word games and call yourself anything other than an oppressor.
Way to play the victim!
It makes no difference whether censorship is carried out by government, or corporations.
So, you are upset that a intrinsically oppressive ideology is being oppressed? Doesn't is seem like they are getting exactly what they want? Oh, they want to be the oppressors, right.
That's some serious mental gymnastics you got going on there, buddy.
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Was this before the age of media barons - like William Randolph Hearst, Silvio Berlusconi, and Rupert Murdoch - or after?
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And who gets to decide who the Nazis are, me or you?
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Not smart, but it is right (Score:5, Interesting)
Cataluña has no reason to secede. Nationalists, who are basically localist fascists are the ones pushing for an impossible exit of cataluña from the Spain, when by the way, they werent anexed. Cataluña entered Spain voluntarily, more than 500 years ago. Now the spanish government though is anything but smart. Prime Minister Rajoy could almost qualify as a sea sponge if we are talking about intelligence. This is why this move on the Spanish part is sad, stupid, but not unforseen. It plays into the hands of the fucking cataluña nazis, which is what nationalists are.
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Spongebob Squarepants has moments of genius.
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The Spanish party that is currently in power, the Partido Popular, is an indirect decendant of the Franco regime. Franco repressed would-be secceeders too, so thsi reaction is no surprise.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's founder was a minister under Franco, and it has not been so long agoo (the party was founded in 1989) that one can claim such bounds are a thing from the past and things have changed.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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On the subject of succeeding, you fail it!
The US had no reason to secede from the Empire (Score:5, Insightful)
And by the way, lot's of European countries would still be under the despotic rule of some emporer far away in Rome, had they not been "disobedient" to Roman law.
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"And by the way, lot's of European countries would still be under the despotic rule of some emporer far away in Rome, had they not been "disobedient" to Roman law."
Your ignorance of history is astounding. The Roman empire was defeated by foreign armies, not native ones.
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In the later days oif the Roman empire this distinction was rather unclear, since most of the soldiers were non-Romans.
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He's not too brilliant at grammar, either.
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The north could keep their cattle too, so the south should also.
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There is a balance between expressing democracy and theft of rights of citizens. So a culturally Spanish person living in Catalonia, will have their rights stolen, they would either be required to get out, losing their established life or lose their Spanish citizenship. It is called tyranny of the majority, in either direction. It will always be problematic and undesirable, there are never good outcomes and inevitably everyone is worse off but scammy nationalists, people scamming democracy for their own per
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Why is that ironic? The Nazis were on the same side as Franco. They sent troops and aircraft - the Condor Legion - to help him in the civil war.
Re:Not smart, but it is right (Score:5, Insightful)
It plays into the hands of the fucking cataluña nazis
Witness the new political norm in action, people. Just label your opponents Nazis or fascists and then anything you do to them--be it censorship, assault, or even murder--then becomes justified. Such is modern political discourse.
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Nazis are the modern equivalent of 1940s Jews. Does that blow anyone else's mind?
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Not really, now. Human history has a habit of being funny like that.
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And the ACLU *used to* fight legal battles on their behalf, arguing that they had a right to march just as much as anyone else. How times have changed, eh?
See, for example, a statement made by a protester at UC Berkeley in January 2017 at a protest event that turned into a violent riot: "Your free speech is raping and killing us. [dailycal.org]"
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Not smart and not right (Score:4, Insightful)
Cataluña has no reason to secede. Nationalists, who are basically localist fascists are the ones pushing for an impossible exit of cataluña from the Spain, when by the way, they werent anexed.
You can say exactly the same things about Scotland in the UK and Quebec in Canada. In both cases the regions were given a free vote (two in fact for Quebec) about whether they wanted to secede and in both cases the majority voted against it and the independence movements in both locations are now effectively muted for decades. So while Spain has been saying that "no country would tolerate this" they are utterly wrong: two countries have and it worked out well both times.
If what you say is true then the Spanish government is being idiotic in its response. It should not only have allowed the vote but organized it too to ensure it is performed fairly. If you are right then such a vote would have been against independence and the problem goes away for several decades. Actively suppressing it is likely to greatly increase support for independence and the result will be some sort of election probably in favour of independence and then you'll have a resurgent independence movement which will cause you problems for decades and way well eventually result in independence!
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So seceding would be illegal, but asking the population if they want to secede (and as a result for example, have the local government lobby for a change in the law) should be perfectly legal. If it is illegal to openly lobby for a law to change you live in a dictatorship.
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Cataluña entered Spain voluntarily, more than 500 years ago.
They entered Spain as voluntarily as Confederate states joined the union: they lost a war.
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Bullshit. By definition you can't secede from something that you're not already part of.
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Bullshit. By definition you can't secede from something that you're not already part of.
Cool story bro, what has that got to do with what I said again?
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And Rajoy shows his true colors, wanting to be the true heir of Franco.
Re:Not smart, but it is right (Score:5, Insightful)
Repressive governments don't like that. Look at the US and see how it reacted when some parts didn't want to belong to the US any more.
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Yeah, they just wanted to go their way by main force, seizing the lawful property of the Federal government without negotiations or agreement, and keep their peculiar (read human bondage) institution in place.
Shhh. Don't tell the Southern "historian lovers" that. They think their ancestors peacefully minding their own business when some alien army came charging in from the North.
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Let's not act like the civil war in the US was thought because the north found it ethicly unbearable to enslave those poor negros.
That war had nothing to do with empathy for the plight of fellow human beings or lack thereof.
Wars are tools of politics and ethics and politics so rarely mix, we might as well assume they didn't at all. Please stop acting like they did...
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*fought.
First weekend without offspring in weeks an my brain goes into power saving mode :D.
"Slow Down Cowboy!" Ya know what, Slashdot? Go fuck yerself.
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But it isn't. It would be, if it were done legally, with general support, completely in the open, with fair campaigning for both sides, and with central support (which is what happened
There is more (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:There is more (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't Spain in the EU? How the hell is this allowed to happen?
I mean, Brussels has so little to do they can micromanage the length of carrots and the yellowness of bananas. Clearly they must have the big stuff like free speech guaranteed everywhere.
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Isn't Spain in the EU? How the hell is this allowed to happen?
I mean, Brussels has so little to do they can micromanage the length of carrots and the yellowness of bananas. Clearly they must have the big stuff like free speech guaranteed everywhere.
EU can punish after treaty and regulation breaks after the fact but they doesn't have any direct powers short term. Well not beyond calling a meeting of various kinds and saying harsh words. And then there is the whole problem with human rights abuses being under a difference European organization, but a much weaker one because even Russia is still a member of that one.
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The EU doesn't have a police force like the FBI that could override state authorities. It does have a supranational court, the ECHR [coe.int], that can judge human-rights issues and force an EU country to implement a decision. However, I believe that it can only hear a case after it has gone through the country's judicial system and all possible appeals have been tried. In this case, the catalonians could, and probably will, sue the spanish state before sp
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Isn't Spain in the EU? How the hell is this allowed to happen?
EU: Here is a constitution, we're going to have a vote on it
EU population: We're not going to vote for it (polls)
EU: OK, you didn't like it. We renamed it, but kept it the same, now you can't vote on it
EU population:OK then
Ireland and a few others:Eh, no, we're still going to have a vote
EU:Grumbling, hmmm, we really don't want you to!
Ireland and a few others:Who cares
EU: OK, so long as you vote in the correct manner
Ireland and a few others:...
Ireland: Sorry guys, that's a no to that constitution t
And this after 2006 an auonomy treaty was signed (Score:4, Interesting)
And now Spain has a government that seems inclined to follow in the foot steps of Erdogan and alike, who think that violence and oppression is the way to go if you don't like what some regional government has decided upon.
It's really a shame how this conflict is being escalated for no good reason.
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inclined to follow in the foot steps of Erdogan and alike
One is arresting people associated with a ballot and bypassing banned material.
The other actively killed opponents, arrested people with wide ranging roles including the media in attempt to silence opposition all while passing laws to gain additional power over people and also the judicial system.
Spain's government may not be acting in the purest of democratic ways, but comparing this to what is going on in Turkey severely undermines just how bad the situation in Turkey really is.
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Did you say that about the Basques as well? If they suppress this with enough repression the fight for independence might escalate.
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> They want to stand eternally against the evil Spain
We Dutch know that can take some time, we had the 80 year war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years%27_War) with Spain to gain our independence.
Wow, democracy (Score:2)
Spain made the first mistake move (Score:2)
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I hope Europe is ready to receive another wave of refugies.
Well, due to their cultural background and education, refugees from Catalonia would certainly be way more welcome in other European countries than the economic migrants from Africa, who happen to arrive in great numbers under the disguise of claiming to be refugees from persecution.
Innovation (Score:2)
In 1950-80's Eastern Europe people printed their own newspapers, flyers and pamphlets.
Today the world has bluetooth, wifi for short-range ad-hoc networks, low cost usb sticks and ways if moving larger amounts of local data around without needing a national internet.
The more a government attempts to ban independence the more a local community will embrace anything that supports and s
From: Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine (Score:2)
"The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe." - Tom Wolfe
Stupid move (Score:2)
The move from Spain government seems rather stupid. It would have been easy to let the referendum happen and consider it unconstitutional, or illegitimate if few people attended.
Now Spain government appears as fighting democracy, I am sure that it pushed many people in Catalonia toward independence.
obvious (Score:2)
Guardia Civil... (Score:2)
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No, there's no "Spain's crackdown on Catalonia" (Score:3, Informative)
Catalonia is not a colony.
Catalonia has been always part of Spain, and a very important part. This was already so when the province of Hispania was created under the Roman Empire, imposing a layer of latin culture and roman institutions on top of the existing Iberian tribes. After the downfall of Empire, the visigoths ruled all of the Peninsula as a single kingdom for more than two centuries. The small christian kingdoms and principalities that from 711 to 1492 fighted the muslims were at times also fighting each other, but the general trend was that of strengthening alliances and uniting forces under the same religion, not unlike other places in Medieval Europe.
Catalan counties were already integrated in a larger unit (the Kingdom of Aragon) in which different languages (such as castilian and catalan) already coexisted for two centuries before the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs. They no doubt kept their identity, but the same could be said of every other region. Asserting that those small medieval kingdoms survived into today's regions with zero intermingling, thus conforming clearly separate and distinct societies, is simply untenable.
In the heyday of the Spanish Empire and till the 19th century, catalans (and basques, BTW) were not just part of the thing, but a *leading* part of it. You can find lots of catalan surnames in Hispanic American countries, many of them in well-to-do families (check out the names of some well known distilleries such as Bacardi, Brugal, Barceló, if you don't mind my alcoholic references).
With the historical digression, I just wanted to point to the fact that there have been no borders inside Spain for many centuries. This is not some country with huge differences in racial/ethnic aspects, or torn out by religious strife. The interrelationships are deep and extended in time. At this point it's difficult to define exactly who is catalan or not. Is it just being born in today's arbitrarily defined administrative region what makes you catalan? Are you catalan if your parents were not? Are you catalan if you don't speak catalan? Are you catalan if you do speak catalan but don't live in Catalonia? The top 10 most frequent family names are the same in Cat and in the rest of Sp. Catalan is the first language of 36% of people living in Cat while Spanish is the first language for 46%. Catalan exports to Germany, to put an example, are less than half of those to its neighboring autonomous region of Aragon. Who gets to vote in a referendum?
The fact is that since 1978 Sp has been a highly decentralized country, much more similar to federal Germany than to centralist France. Cat, being one of 17 autonomous regions, has had for almost 40 years plenty of effective "independence": both an autonomous government and parliament, capable of passing their own laws within a large margin, as long as they don't undermine the general interests of Sp as a whole, which doesn't seem so unreasonable to me.
If you ask me, this autonomy has been used to put the emphasis on the difference. Autonomous administration has reached all aspects of civil life, to a point that the presence of national institutions are scarcely felt, and the words "país", "nació" are used all the time to refer to Cat and not to Sp. There's a huge part of the population whose first language is Spanish, yet it is not possible to study primary nor secondary school in Spanish (due to the official policy of "linguistic immersion"). Regional governments have spent a lot of money and effort in building their image, uniformizing and boosting the usage of catalan language, confering dignity to their institutions, projecting an international image, etc. etc. The regional PM is paid almost twice as much as Rajoy - not bad for an "oppressed nation"!
At the same time, complaints about things that don't go well are targeted to a ghostly oppresive presence, the "State", the "Central Government". The idea of Spain is ass
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If Catalonia wants independency, there is a legal way. But it needs the approval of Spanish Parliament, and the independentists know it most likely won't succeed...
They kind of did succeed, when in 2006 a majority of the Spanish Parliament voted in favor of a treaty that basically gave Catalonia all the aspects of independence they asked for - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But that treaty was never enacted due to the very questionable verdict from the a Spanish high court - and that is basically why the people in Catalonia do not believe in there being a "legal way to independence" anymore.
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That makes no sense. You cannot have to rely upon someone else to allow you to vote on something. If Wyoming wanted to hold a vote on whether to secede tomorrow, so be it. On the other hand, the results of the vote wouldn't mean much, unless they were willing to go to war. Catalonia, Scotland, Puerto Rico. etc. should be able to vote as often as they want to bolster their peaceable efforts to obtain their goals.
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See, the thing is the current Catalonian independentist government has said they will declare independence 48 hours after a "yes" victory.
Basically, the referendum is a political tool to illegitimately declare independence unilaterally (illegitimately, not only for legal reasons, but especially because the referendum will be obviously biased, the way it is being pushed by one side only). And that's why the central government doesn't want to let it happen.
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So now thay claim independence because the referendum was sabotaged by an invading army. The only difference is that now more people will support them. Spain might win the war but at the cost of having created another ETA.
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I sure hope that won't happen. If the Catalan independentists get credit for anything it's going about their business peacefully (at least in the physical sense; lots of political mudslinging going on, of course).
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Note that the issue here is not about independence or freedom of speech. It is about the authority to call a referendum, which the Spanish constutitution (which was accepted in a referendum by more than 66% of Catalonians) says belongs only to the central Government (or Parliament).
Well, if 66% of Catalonians still support not seceding, then why are you so afraid of them having a vote?
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Soif they don't call it a referendum but call it an opinion poll, nothing is against the law?
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The concept behind the Second Amendment was discredited and abandoned a long time ago. The founding fathers had a deep distrust of a standing army, and so the theory went that a well-regulated militia could instead serve to defend the nation. After a series of failures of militias to various crises, within a couple of decades there was a large standing army. Now the US military is so large and so heavily armed and trained that the sole remaining provision (the right to bear arms) is superficial at best. The
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"Well armed" must mean something different to you and me. Most "arms" are pistols... what war were handguns instrumental in winning? Oh, yeah, none.
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Hinckley? What in the world? He was an insane man trying to impress Jodie Foster. Of all the assassinations or attempts to pick as an example...
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but ultimately all the Star Wars gadgetry in the world wasn't enough to police Iraq's basic infrastructure
We were an interloper hated by all sides. We also were limited in tactics by the Geneva convention. Saddam held the country in check for decades using a military several notches below the one that the US invaded Iraq with (twice!). US military action within the US would be more analogous to either our own civil war (doubtful, that was regional) or a dictatorship situation.
look incapable of simple deductive reasoning.
Funny, I'd reflect that back at you for sticking to a thoroughly defeated and abandoned concept. When you have a large, well trained stan