Quite an old story (end of April) but interesting. Write a protest on your own property: get warned off by the police.
A German man who staged a political protest by writing “The Government is crap” on his own car, has been told to remove it or face jail.
Police failed to see the funny side of 33-year-old Stefan Lukoschek’s protest at the policies of Gerhard Schroeder.
Officers said they had received complaints from several people about protest on his yellow VW. The words were stenciled on the rear and side windows.
Lukoschek said: “I put it on there because my father who worked all his life, has seen his pension reduced to nothing by the current government.”
“Police failed to see the funny side”. Well obviously that’s because:
- It wasn’t a joke.
- They’re German.
So the German police warn a guy off who writes anti-government statements on his own property (so he must presumably have been breaking some law), the French now have laws against booing the national anthem or insulting the flag (no, really)… and apparently also against insulting the president, and the EU is concocting assorted speech-crime laws to cure “online xenophobia”. What a fine state of affairs.
Very good article!
I found it the BBC article interesting too, that Chirac stormed out of a stadium as fans sports fans booed during the national anthem. Took it rather personal, didn’t he?
hmmm Europe a few steps ahead of America toward total authoritarianism?.
Two birds with one stone. Seig heil!
Just one question – how can you insult a French politician?
well if Blair and his sycophants sign us up to the EU “constitution” we will all know what it is like to live in the Union of European Socialist Republics and this will only be the small end of the wedge
“Europe a few steps ahead of America toward total authoritarianism?.”
[Continental] Europe has always and everywhere been a few steps (or more) closer than America to authoritarianism.
One of the really appalling things I have learned in some recent reading about WWII was the lack of any resistance mounted to the Nazis by the vast majority of Europe, east and west. Most Europeans found the Nazi mixture of anti-Semitism and authoritarianism easy to live with, if not downright familiar. Most countries generated numbers of volunteers eager to fight alongside the Nazis.
The fable of the “resistance” to Nazism in most of Europe is quite fictional; with a few scattered exceptions none of the underground resistance movements amounted to anything. It is telling that, on the eve of D-Day, not a single Nazi division in Western Europe was tasked with pacification. The resistance in Europe had no military impact on the outcome of the war. Again, with a few notable exceptions, it didn’t even generate intelligence worth the effort. All this in spite of considerable resources put into fomenting resistance by Churchill and the Allies.
The really sad part of the last few years hasn’t been Europe’s renewed flirtation with an authoritarian EU, it has been the degree to which England has been making eyes at the EU as well.
There is a reason that the First Amendment was First.
I am increasingly glad that my plans to relocate to Europe in mid-2001 did not come to fruition. Turns out my view of it was based on more fantasy than I knew.
Just one question – how can you insult a French politician?
Smash the Vampire L’Etat!
All that euro-Enlightenment stuff from Voltaire about “I may disagree with your view, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to hold it” turns out to be as hollow as we always suspected.
Centuries behind. At least five or six.
Mark, also from Voltaire: “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong”.
Oh yeah, and speak that fractured French while holding a Big Mac and wearing a T-shirt with this on the front. That should insult plenty of French politicians.