This letter was submitted for publication in The Guardian which did not react in any manner. I will submit it to other journals and Internet forums.
It is on my blog : antipenalisation.canalblog.com
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My country is more and more a land of censorship and supervision of honest citizens by police. It is more and more comparable to China and to the former East European countries. Although the French government protested officially against the worldwide spying by NSA, it is doing the same. A recent law gives « for security reasons » the right to police to spytelephone calls, emails, Internet chat etc., without any authorization of a judge.
This law will be used to spy the sexual behaviour of all citizens because another recent law fines the request of sexual services at the level of 1500 Euros (2000 US $), and even 3750 Euros in case of recidivism. This does not concern only street prostitution but also discrete dates you might arrange by email or phone in private appartments. They plan to block access to Internet sites proposing escort services, to infiltrate Internet dating sites, to sendfalse prostitutes to catch as many men as possible. This is nothing but an official money extortion.
This is an obvious threat to public liberties. Furthermore, competent social workers have opposed to puritan ideologists that this law will have very bad side effects for prostitutes, making them even more dependent on procurer mafias as they will have to hide more than presently. The only reasonable way to oppose mafias is to legalize sexual services, as done in Germany in 2002. However, these well motivated arguments had no effect ! Or not enough effect, as the law passed (on first reading, more battle is in view) by 268 votes against 138 and 170 abstentions. This is only 46% of support which is not the majority but is better than the ridiculous 24% of positive opinions for our disatrous president, F. Hollande.
As a conclusion, I would say that France is not a democratic country (we had many occasions to observe that before !) : a handful of « good thinking people » claim to decide what is The Good and The Evil on the basis of their undeclared (or unconscious) religious opinions, and manage to impose them to the people. France is a land of censorship and unregulated supervision by police. Again, this is not new, but is dramatically increasing.
This is an obvious threat to public liberties. Furthermore, competent social workers have opposed to puritan ideologists that this law will have very bad side effects for prostitutes, making them even more dependent on procurer mafias as they will have to hide more than presently. The only reasonable way to oppose mafias is to legalize sexual services, as done in Germany in 2002. However, these well motivated arguments had no effect ! Or not enough effect, as the law passed (on first reading, more battle is in view) by 268 votes against 138 and 170 abstentions. This is only 46% of support which is not the majority but is better than the ridiculous 24% of positive opinions for our disatrous president, F. Hollande.
As a conclusion, I would say that France is not a democratic country (we had many occasions to observe that before !) : a handful of « good thinking people » claim to decide what is The Good and The Evil on the basis of their undeclared (or unconscious) religious opinions, and manage to impose them to the people. France is a land of censorship and unregulated supervision by police. Again, this is not new, but is dramatically increasing.
Foreign friends, France does not desserve your visit ! It is by no means a land of freedom ! In case of « misbehaviour » (as defined by some stupid feminists followed by intellectually castrated male politicians) you may have to pay a big fine.