The President of the district of Alpes-Maritimes in France (French Riviera) reported to the District Attorney a local exposition including this peculiar picture:
The District Attorney answered that nothing in a juridic point of view allowed him to sanction such a picture, as, outside of public offense (fee of 7500€ if offending the flag in an official public event organized by the authorities), and altough the national flag is the symbol of the republic, nothing forbids the expression of artistic freedom of mind (sic).
Even assuming the said picture would have whatever pictural or artistic quality, which in my opinion it does not have, would you please answer to my question as stated in the title?
Even the Confederate flag, or the Briton flag, or call them what you want might deserve some respect.
But they are not the national flag, and even if each of us can contest some event of our past or today’s history, even is each of us can alike think that, at least speaking of France, our national anthem is very excessive, both are (or should be) the symbols of our union, and even if they are not, remain the witnesses of the people who, maybe uselessly, but still died not “for” them, but instead of them.
There were many good people who died for those flags (including many of my relatives). I wouldn’t advise anyone coming to where I live and disrespecting either the American OR Confederate flags.
a scandal which the news media would show for 3 days every 1 hr.
all new press would carry it as front page article.
booked under “dignity towards national symbols” act.
imprisonment for a few days or not, depends on who you are.
case would go for decades.
famous = media interviews and maybe even a movie role.
Nothing which a little crying on tv and saying -
you did it coz you were drunk or
-did it coz its a conspiracy or
-did it coz you didn’t and its a doctored pict (proof of it being doctored or not could take decades) or
-did it for the good of the country.
would not be able to get you off. ANd if all else fails… there’s the green stuff and Bada-Baap … :-*
As far as i remember, there has been cases in the United States where, not speaking of simulating wiping themselves with it, people have, e.g., burned the National Flag.
What happened to them?
Threre also has been some “rearrangements” of the National Anthem (Jimmy Hendrix).
In France, the same by Serge Gainsbourg some years ago on a reggae music made a real riot.
Funny enough, there was in almost the same time this week a documentary about the recruitment campaign in the “Légion Etrangère”.
39 different nationalities, former bandits or business managers, some of them not even speaking french: Legio Patria Nostra, no one has ever set such a high standard of the french nationality, altough in very difficult conditions, than the Légion
Thanks to Napoleon we (the Dutch) inherited the French justice system, we inherited the Trias Politica of the French pholospher Montesque, also. After the second world war we adopted some American liberal ideas (now often seen as typical Dutch habits) as ‘civil disobedience’ and the ‘policy of tolerance’. These were actually American ideas (Henry David Thoreau, I know sounds French but he is an American). So regarding the national Flague things are even more liberal than in France.
Due to our geographical position we have some other traditional heritage. The Dutch 'regent Willem III (we did not had a king/queen at the time), known as Wililiam the Third became the King of Engeland (Glorious Revolution), so the ties between English royalty and Dutch Royalt were very tight (our Queen called Elizabeth ‘Aunt’). After Napoleon was beated by the English, they promoted the regent to king (an heir of Willen III) and added some of the English touch to law. So you are fined high penalties when one insults the royalty in the Netherlands.
