15 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/1/2018”

1. ” I feel compelled to point out that “rebellion” is one of the few crimes, possibly the only one, that can be punished by death in the European Union.”

   Which I believe was a well-buried provision in The Lisbon Treaty… Which gives some sense of the deeply authoritarian nature of this entity as it progresses its agenda. However, I don’t think the EU is feeling secure enough to go down this road in this particular case at this particular time.

   I may be wrong of course.

   The answer given to an EU Parliamentary question (with respect to a treaty re-introduction of the death penalty) submitted below does not seem, to me, to be absolutely clear. Don’t trust any of them in any event…..

   http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+E-2008-3106+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN

   • Speaking of which, I wonder which court would be the one passing that kind of sentence?

2. HÅLL TRUTEN

   https://youtu.be/tuSikn9TaYk

3. The death penalty does not exist in any Member State of the EU.

   Perhaps it might seem tempting to see in the Catalan separatists an example of resistance to the EU globalists. Their separatism is deeply liberticidal of the currently 55-60% of the population in Catalonia who claim their right to a Spanish identity harmonious with a Catalan identity or with an identity as non-Catalan Spaniards living in Catalonia (analogous to non-Texan Americans living in Texas).

   The Catalan separatist movement is represented by 3 political currents:

   – Catalan burgeoisie who made their wealth on the back of the Spanish empire;

   – Catalan leftists, such as the author of this op-Ed in the NYT:

   https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/opinion/catalonia-independence-spain.amp.html

   – Catalan anarchists for whom Lenin or Mao are too conservative

   • “Liberticidal”? The Spanish laws against secession seem like a hangover from the Franco era. If the Scots, who, unlike the Catalans in Spain, are a net drain on the UK economy, had voted to leave the UK a few years ago, we English would have said we were sorry to see them go, but wished them well.

     Spain should hold another referendum, properly administered, in Catalonia, and accept the result. It’s called democracy, Rodrigo.

     • Mark H –

       The Spanish laws against secession that you describe as “a hangover from the Franco era” as are part of the Spanish Consitution, which was approved by 90% of the population of Catalonia in the 1978 nation-wide referendum that asked the Spanish people (including everyone in Catalonia aged 18+). The Spanish 1978 Constitution, approved by 90% of the Catalonia voters, marked the normative entry of Spain into its current contemporary democracy after 40 years of fascist dictatorship.

       This Constitution sets the rules for secession. Unilateral referendums like the one held on October 1st 2017 are illegal. Spain has something called Rule of Law – as the EU, the Council of Europe, the OSCE and other institutions will attest.

       There certainly are many people in Catalonia who want to secede, and that’s legitimate. Doing it unilaterally, to the detriment of the rights of those in Catalonia who do not want to secede, is not democracy. “Voting” illegally is not democracy. Voting is a consequence of democracy, not a unilateral source of it.

       The Scottish referendum was an agreed, legal one. The Catalan secessionist one wasn’t: it was an attempt to disguise a coup d’etat against a democratic country as a drive for freedom from opression. There is something called the monopoly of violence that states use to validate the legitimacy of their sovereignty. If you challenge it, you are repressed.

       The Catalan secessionists wanted to cut all ties with Spain unilaterally. Even if this would have been possible, one would at least expect for there to be a discussion/negotiation about paying back for assets of the Spanish State. But no, there was no intent even to address that. What about the Spanish State’s real estate, investments, and other past and present assets invested into and benefiting Catalonia? That’s called theft, Mark H.

       The Catalan secessionists have had a virtually independent country since 1978 and they now wanted the full thing. But you see, Mark H, not only is Catalonia also Spain; Spain is Catalonia, for there is slightly more than 50% (it fluctuates between 45% – 55%, sometimes peaks at 60%) of the population in Catalonia who either are both Catalan and Spanish, or just Spanish in Catalonia, but linving since long or born there, and therefore – according even to the separatists official definition of what being “Catalan” means – Catalan as well. Or not? Because the crux of the matter here, Mark H, is the supremacist separatist doctrine that believes the casus belli against Spain is the impossibility of the authentically Catalan identity to exist within its own framework of purity, and political control.

       There is a duplicity and perversity in their discourse that sells their plight externally as one of oppression under Spain, when in fact for the last 40 years they have had Catalonia nearly to themselves; indoctrinated 2 generations in a parallel reality, and have nearly successfully built another country to the detriment of half of the population who do not agree.

       • Thanks Rodrigo. I still believe this should be settled by a (properly constituted) referendum.

       • Contrary to volumes of news reports claiming that Catalonia wants succession from Spain I am thankful to another GOV reader to put an opposing opinion in view.

4. Published on April 1. A joke or someone preparing a remake of the First World War?

   Serbia is preparing for a big battle. Rapid development of the situation in the Balkans

   All the information so far shows that Albanians are now preparing for something very large. This is a feeling that is spreading in many intelligence services in the Balkans.

   http://infomaxx.ru/voynyi-i-konfliktyi/ww3-serbiya-gotovitsya-k-bolshoy-bitve-stremitelnoe-razvitie-na-balkanah.html

5. Thanks Mark H for your civilized reply and for contributing to make this blog a “safe space” of sorts where deeply controversial issues can be discussed with intellectual honesty. I like the idea of safe spaces that actually make sense.

   I have the impression that you either agree with the secessionists or sympathize with what you perhaps perceive to be their plight. I attempted to shed some light into a very complex issue with several layers of truth. it’s not all black and white.

   I read with concern some opinions in this blog that seem to side with the secessionist side. I credit that to a reflex to identify them with other movements in Europe that are anti-EU, anti-globalism, and so forth. This is yet another reason why the Catalan secessionists are so successful at propaganda: they’re crafty with “alternative facts”, and harp on emotions so as to render people immune to rational fact-based critical analysis.

   I find your last response a logical one, Mark H. Indeed, a democratic referendum would seem like a sound political solution. I like the fact that you use the expression “a properly constituted referendum”. This is absolutely key. I’ll try to explain:

   What makes modern countries “modern” and civilized, aside from culture, values, social cohesion, and other attributes of a social contract (as Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke would argue) is the Rule of Law and the monopoly of violence. Both of these essential features of a modern state, among many other important things, assure predictability, security, trust, stability, and help the economy and the prosperity of the people advance.

   The Spanish democratic Constitution of 1978, approved by 90% of the Catalan population in a nation-wide referendum that year, sets the rules under which Spain, one of the oldest nation states in Europe (and if I’m not mistaken, in the world), may be fragmented by the secession of one of its territories. This important clause in the Spanish Constitution is there in order to preserve the system from tyranny and slavery. According to this clause, again, accepted by all in Catalonia who voted (massively) in favor of this Constitution in 1978, and precisely as you put it Mark H, for Catalonia to secede there must be a properly constituted referendum that, for starters, must be bilaterally agreed upon and then validated by all of the Spanish population. Why? Because otherwise any organized minority with a militia (i.e. the Basques) – or without it (i.e. some Catalans today) could secede unilaterally to the detriment of people within the territory who may want to remain, and to the detriment of the economic, financial, historical, security, and geopolitical interest of the Kingdom of Spain (think of the cost of losing 2/3 of the border with the rest of Europe, and 1/6 of the Mediterranean coastline).

   I mention above, as Jordan Peterson put it in a video of his I saw recently, that in human affairs there are only 3 states of being: tyranny, negotiation, and slavery. I guess this is probably from one of the Greek philosophers he quotes, I’m not sure whether Aristotle or Plato. In any case, and this is *very important* Mark H: Catalonia has not lived in slavery since its autonomy in 1978. It has enjoyed an unparalleled level of self-government, prosperity, and indulgence from the Kingdom of Spain with what amounts to a de-facto statethood (they have their own police, prisons, schools – I mean, these are essential tools of sovereignty, statehood and national identity). They claim they are oppressed when in fact it’s the Spanish identity that’s oppressed in Catalonia. So not being subjected to slavery, you have negotiation or tyranny left.

   The last 40 years were characterized by negotation between Spain and Catalonia, resulting in concessions from the former to the latter in exchange for political support from the latter to the former in the national parliament. Spain, being the result of a complex setup where you have 3 national identities within the Spanish one: the Catalans (roman language, Mediterranean peoples just like most of the rest of Spain); the Basque (completely separate, never Romanized; in the same league as the Magyars and the Finns) and the Galicians (romanized but largely Gaelic and very different), is a very difficult country to manage. It will always be this way.

   So the Catalans, together with the Basque and the Navarrans, have had the best deal. Lots of political concessions, a privileged status, and a nearly virtual status as de-facto countries federated to Spain. History is important. The Basque and the Catalans are where they are economically today also thanks to investments and transfers in the form of, for example, human capital (domestic migrants). Here, Spanish human capital made them great. And now that they’re rich, they say – “screw the rest”. That’s not fair, and Spain will not have it, not least, because (as I mentioned), more than half of the population in both Catalonia and the Basque country, simply want to remain being both Catalans or Basques and Spaniards.

   My conclusion: Spain, because of having Rule of Law, despite its imperfections, cannot just simply change its own laws in order to accommodate a political solution. The referendum you wish for Mark H, is not possible outside of the established rules. Rules are there to be kept and observed.

   The Catalan separatist movement is having a tantrum because they cannot believe they cannot get the last bits of candy in the bottom of the jar. And Spain is guilty of having tolerated their behavior for 40 years, and though it’s too late to spank a 40 year old, it’s less bad than permitting conditions that could lead to civil war.

   • A small point: Linguists consider the Basque language, Euskara, to be unrelated to any other language. It is not Finno-Ugric. The wiki on it says: “Basque is unrelated to the other languages of Europe and indeed, as a language isolate, to any other known living language.”

   • as Jordan Peterson put it in a video of his I saw recently, that in human affairs there are only 3 states of being: tyranny, negotiation, and slavery.

     I recommend Gabriel Marcel’s version. He lived through both world wars in France, the first as an ambulance driver.

     Marcel said that tyranny leaves you two choices: to lie or to flee. He said this in the context of living in occupied France during WWII. I used his ideas in working with battered women (and some men), many of whom were blaming themselves for not “standing up” more effectively.

     And with parents of adolescent and adult children who were being terrorized by their drug-addled thugs. Parents who told their daughter to go to her room until she could speak civilly only to have her retaliate by, say, burning down the house.

     Yeah, I get it about the tantrums you describe…btw, spanking NEVER works long-term. It’s a short-term solution that can lead to a child who wants only revenge.

   • Thanks again, Rodrigo. Like many, I suspect, I had assumed native Catalans were a majority in the region. They certainly give that impression; when in Barcelona three years ago I saw Catalan flags everywhere; in Andalusia last October, not so many Spanish ones, but a fair number.

     You have a beautiful country with a rich history, but Barcelona is more interesting than Madrid! (except the Prado)

6. Baron,

   For clarification: by putting the Basque in the same league as the Magyars and the Finns, I meant (and should have wrote): a non-Roman language, league of their own.

7. Dymphna,

   I agree that spankings are counter-productive. I allude to them allegorically to make the point that some transgressions must have consequences.

   Some transgressions against the State must be paid back with repression – the point is calibrating that trough a democratic filter. But the sovereign State must hold the monopoly of violence and not hesitate to exercise it to protect the social contract.

   Otherwise the social contract is unenforceable. There’s a near universal consensus in this blog about the need for this in Europe to show the new “refugees” who transgress, and prior migrants and their descendants, their obligation to integrate and assimilate.

   So the idea of state repression doesn’t militate against democracy, morality, or fairness. The error Spain made with Catalonia was to give them everything and then suddenly spank them – send the riot police – when they held their illegal referendum. That was clumsy and disastrous, for it legitimized something that had been declared illegal, illegitimate and without any legal consequence. What people saw on TV was ordinary citizens (who were in fact breaking the law by voting an illegal referendum without basic electoral safeguards) being beat up by the police.

   Now the only solution is to manage Catalonia from Madrid and show the population that someone in Catalonia is actually managing the region and paying attention to the everyday problems of the citizens, and not just an increasingly artificial problem of “oppression” under Spanish rule.

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