If Catalonia was Hong Kong, then those standing in support of Spain would not have stood with the People's Republic of China(PRC). They would have supported the separatists with a view to seeing a new Republic established.

Since Catalonia is not Hong Kong, those supporting Spain's bid to retain the autonomous region under Madrid rule, in my opinion, are guilty of harboring a double-standard pertaining to who people could and those who should not aspire to self-rule.

The call by the chief prosecutor in Madrid for charges, including rebellion, be brought against Catalan's leaders for expressing the voted-will of Catalans, remains ludicrous.

That Spain's chief prosecutor, Jose Manuel Maza, has called for rebellion charges against the ousted Catalan leaders, is simply ludicrous.

Spain should be cautioned that any unnecessary and excessive punishment of deposed Catalan leaders could have damning effects to the continuity of the unity of Spain. And if the hardline-conservatives in Madrid would believe for one second that any harsh punishment of those Catalans, who sought independence, would send any deterrent message to any future ambitions to sovereignty, then Spain has not heeded vital lessons from history nor does it comprehend the thirst of people to be free to government themselves.

First Scotland, then Kurdistan, now Catalonia - recent independence ambitions by peoples within larger nation States have either died or have been deferred. Aspirations deterred are essentially dead. 

That Spain's central government in Madrid now controls the former autonomous Catalonia - perhaps the shortest ever lived declared Republic in modern history, confirms the death of Catalonia's independence. On Friday, just after Catalonia declared independence from Spain, the Madrid government fired Catalan's government and seized control of the Barcelona region.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont has vowed to resist Spain's takeover of Catalonia and he has called for "democratic opposition" to direct rule by the Madrid central government over the Barcelona region.

Puigdemont's comments in a pre-taped televised message to Catalans, the BBC-News reported, came after Madrid fired Catalonia's government and suspended its autonomy on Friday to disallow the autonomous region's desire to independence from Spain.

Thousands of pro-independence supporters took to the streets of Barcelona earlier today and yesterday in support of their independence aspirations and to defy the actions of the Madrid government.

In a deepening constitutional and sovereignty crisis in Spain, Catalonia today declared independence from Spain, then the Spanish central government in Madrid, via its Senate, voted to impose direct rule over the northeastern region that encompasses Barcelona.

Such are the developing constitutional and sovereign crises on the Iberian peninsula. 

On October 1, this year, Catalonia, one of the 17 autonomous regions of Spain, its wealthiest, approved an independence referendum by a whopping 90 percent of the 43 percent of registered voters who took part in the vote.

Turkey continues to skirt with authoritarian rule as many rights activists, jurists, civil servants, educators, military personnel and journalists, have been dismissed, accused, charged, tried and jailed in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ambition to full control of a non-dissent Turkey.

Erdogan has embarked upon a dissent-clearing policy in Turkey to consolidate his power as the "state" ever since becoming president in 2014, after serving as prime minister from 2003 to 2014. Erdogan proposed and gained approved changes to the Turkish Constitution to clearly solidify his strength in the presidency.

China has entered a new era. If any doubts had existed as to this fact, then those suppositions were quickly dispelled by President Xi Jinping, whose vision for China has now been officially cemented into  the social and cultural fabric of the communist nation, right alongside those of the much revered Chairman Mao, founder of the Peoples Republic of China.

At the just completed bi-decade-meeting of the Communist Party Congress in Beijing, which is held to name new leaders to the Politburo, China's political powerhouse, and to put forward new policy for the communists for next five-years, President Xi announced that China has entered a new era of innovation that would "oppose and resist the whole range of erroneous viewpoints," signifying a clear affirmation of continued censorship of the internet and other forms of speech and of expression in China.

Today, October 24, is United Nations(UN) Day, hereby marking the 72nd birthday of the intergovernmental organization, credited with averting a third world war, thus far.

In spite of many criticisms, the UN still stands as a body of peace in service to humanity. 

Since the UN Charter was signed in June 1945 and entered into force on October 24, 1945, the worldwide body has continued to conduct extraordinary services through its many agencies toward the continuity of the human race.

I will have no criticisms of the UN today.

Wherever people live, they should possess an inalienable right to sovereignty. The freedom of people to form their own nation-state ought to be a right that could never be abridged. 

However, when a people have already entered into a union with other peoples to form an indivisible federal power, then the conduct of all the peoples within the union, are subject to the Constitution or the Articles of Confederation that created their central government. Therefore, the actions of all the people within the union become limited in scope per any desires to exit such a union.

President of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont yesterday affirmed to 450,000 marchers in Barcelona that their autonomous region would not bow to the actions of Madrid taking over the Catalan government.

Marchers took to the streets of Barcelona to affirm their aspirations for independence after the Madrid government, Spain's Central administration, proposed the suspension of the President, Vice-President and Ministers of the northeastern region in an effort to force Catalonia back into the fold of the Spanish government under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.