It is absolutely impossible not to evoke the Wallace Hartley Band
(popularly known as "the Titanic orchestra") when talking about theactions of governments around the world in the face of evidence of
climatic and environmental collapse in which our planet has been
immersed for decades, and which everything seems to indicate is already
heading towards its final stretch in the coming years. ---- Legend has
it, never fully confirmed or denied, that the musicians of said
orchestra continued playing even beyond the moment when it was already
evident that the ship was going down in the icy waters of the Atlantic,
where sub-zero temperatures made survival impossible for too long if you
did not find a place in one of the few lifeboats.
This modern myth is often cited to refer to cases in which, faced with
serious situations or events that will predictably and irremediably end
in a catastrophe, it is decided not only to do nothing, but to continue
pretending that nothing bad is going to happen.
The Spanish Criminal Code establishes sentences of up to seven and a
half years in prison for those people who directly or indirectly cause
or carry out emissions, discharges, radiation, extractions or
excavations,[...]that, by themselves or in conjunction with others,
cause or may cause substantial damage to the quality of the air, soil or
water, or to animals or plants, and could seriously harm the balance of
natural systems as well as pose a risk of serious harm to people's
health. (art. 325 CP)
On the other hand, article 570 bis) of the aforementioned penal code
understands a criminal organization as a group formed by more than two
people on a permanent basis or for an indefinite period of time, who in
a concerted and coordinated manner share various tasks or functions with
the aim of committing crimes.
In the context of a climate crisis scenario and the passivity of
governments to tackle it, groups have emerged that have decided to
confront this situation through civil disobedience and peaceful protest.
If we put the two previous paragraphs in relation, it is easy for us to
conclude that they are talking about companies such as Repsol, Endesa,
EDP, Naturgy, Arcelormittal, Cepsa, FCC, Iberdrola, Enagás or Cemex (the
ten most polluting companies in Spain:
https://www.publico.es/ciencias/diez-empresas-contaminantes-espana.html).
I am not saying that these multinationals have the aim of committing
environmental crimes, but it is clear that they act with obvious intent
in this regard.
Translated into plain language, this means that their policy is: no
matter what happens, I will act. If fracking is necessary to extract
gas, despite the obvious environmental disturbance that this entails and
the risk to human populations in the area, then it is done and we cross
our fingers that the damage is not very noticeable and in the short term.
It is an open secret that the most polluting companies on the planet are
so because the states in which they are based lack the political will
necessary to put a stop to these predatory practices. In this way, the
States become necessary collaborators, either by action or by omission,
of the actions of the main polluting companies on the planet.
In the context of this climate crisis and the passivity of governments
to tackle it, groups of people have emerged who are aware of the
planetary disaster that wild capitalism (excuse the redundancy) is
leading us towards, and who have decided to confront this situation
through civil disobedience and peaceful protest.
These non-violent actions have taken the form of different actions to
raise awareness, consisting, for example, of roadblocks, interruption of
sporting events or, more commonly, the throwing of washable paint at
government buildings or yachts and private jets.
Logically, the State's repressive response has not been long in coming,
and dozens of activists have been arrested throughout Spain during the
past year 2023, accused of being part of a criminal organisation, which
the Prosecutor's Office initially even threatened to consider to be for
terrorist purposes. A qualification that had to be rectified in the face
of popular outcry and the obvious absurdity, even for them, that such a
claim represented. So much so that during one of the arrests, one of the
investigating officers confessed to one of the detainees that "they knew
they were not criminals" but that they "had to do their job."
Unwittingly admitting that the arrests were not aimed at prosecuting or
preventing any crime, and that they therefore responded to interests
other than those of criminal policy.
The "Operation Spora", which is how the national police have called the
raids carried out against climate change activists over the past year,
aims to configure the protest actions of these people as a set of crimes
ranging from public disorder to damage to property, including crimes
against traffic safety (roadblocks).
To do this, it has become essential to "paint" as criminal actions that
in no case can be considered as such and that, in most cases, are also
protected by the fundamental right to protest and freedom of expression.
The protest and visibility tool most used by these activists is to throw
washable paint (watercolour) at buildings that house public
institutions. These actions have been described by the national police
in their reports as a "crime of damage", when in fact absolutely nothing
is damaged by them.
The protest and visibility tool most used by these activists is to throw
washable paint (watercolour) at buildings that house public
institutions. These actions have been described by the national police
in their reports as a "crime of damage", when in fact absolutely nothing
is damaged by them.
As stated in Supreme Court Ruling 273/2022, of March 22, from an
interpretation derived from the legislative evolution of the typicality
of the crime and the inclusion of graffiti in the crime of damage, it
must be taken into account that the criminal legislator, when
promulgating the 1995 Code, decided to differentiate the crime of damage
from the tarnishing of property. The former contemplates the damaging
results that a loss of the substance of the thing implies, while
tarnishing included the acts of tarnishing because it disfigured the
property, without physically damaging it, or if it did so, it did so in
a way that could be repaired, without affecting the substance, so it
would not cause damage. Mere tarnishing, which did not cause damage
because it was easily repairable, was not subsumed under the crime of
damage, but under the lack of tarnishing, which was repealed by the
reform of the Criminal Code in 2015. So that for there to be a crime of
damage, the thing must be destroyed, or it must be made to lose all or
part of its value, leaving out of this crime the so-called tarnishing
which in its grammatical meaning is "action of removing grace,
attractiveness or lustre from a thing", because the action carried out
does not affect the substance of the thing that continues to exist as
such, although stained. Functionally, it continues to provide its
utility. Therefore, if the result involves the loss of aesthetic
conditions, which are susceptible to being cleaned, it found its place
in the lack of article 626 of the Criminal Code, and that after its
decriminalization in 2015 is now referred to the administrative
sanctioning area of the Citizen Security Law (art. 37).
In other words, staining is not damaging an object, because it does not
need repair, only cleaning, and therefore, it should not be punished as
a crime, although administrative sanctions of a purely economic nature
may be imposed. This statement is of a general nature, since the
jurisprudence contemplates some cases in which the tarnishing of goods
with certain characteristics could be considered a crime of damage, but
that is not the subject of this article.
We live in a system in which passivity in the face of the ecological
excesses of large polluters is the norm, and, nevertheless, people who
try to awaken governments and people with enough power to try to stop
this slow agony of a planet that can no longer support more "capitalist
accumulation" and that, in a sort of self-defense, responds to us more
and more frequently with extreme heat waves out of time, endless
droughts, rapid desertification of immense areas or irreversible
disappearance of flora and fauna are persecuted, singled out and
criminalized.
Governments, like the "Titanic orchestra", remain unperturbed by the
sinking of the earth-ship, and have preferred to continue playing the
macabre melody of economic interests over that of the survival of the
planet, deciding to forget that none of the musicians of the Wallace
Hartley Band survived the shipwreck either.
https://www.cnt.es/noticias/recetas-represivas-del-pasado-contra-futuro-vegetal/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten