Posted on 02/07/2007 11:07:41 PM PST by Dallas59
London, Feb 07: The European Commission will propose laws to combat so-called "green crimes", which will be penalised by prison sentences and large fines, the Financial Times reported.
The nine offences listed by the draft directive, a copy of which was seen by the business daily, would be enforceable across the European Union and range from the illegal dumping of waste to the "taking or damaging" of protected wild flowers.
"Experience has shown that the existing systems of sanctions have not been sufficient to achieve complete compliance with laws for the protection of the environment," the directive said, according to the Financial Times.
"Such compliance can and should be strengthened by the application of criminal sanctions."
The directive also assigns minimum sentences for the most serious "green crimes", such as those that cause death, many of which are already crimes in some EU member states.
Among the minimum sentences are two to five years in prison for the unlawful transport of nuclear material or for serious pollution. If criminal gangs or death are involved, the minimum sentence could rise to 10 years.
According to the FT, the proposal sidesteps what has historically been a right of national parliaments to decide on what constitutes a criminal offence and how it should be punished.
Wow.
Seems that Brave new World is arriving about 530 years too soon..., with touches of "1984" and Animal Farm thrown in.
50 years ago, only in an insane asylum would one find the sentiment that a flower, wild or otherwise was precious enough to imprison the human spirit, as well as the human body.
Proposals such as these will trigger violent reactions, sooner or later, to make the Animal Liberation Front look like Girl Scout Brownies...
About time. It's not as if this is about you dropping your old couch in the park, or throwing your old batteries in the trash can...this is about factories using rivers to dispose of their chemical waste without permission and stuff like that.
Is questioning global warming also going to be criminalized?
Europe's been steadily moving towards fascism for years now.
Think I'll go out this weekend chop down a tree and burn a tire. Just for old times sake.
They're rapidly being taken over by Muslims and they worry about such crap as this. They had better be worried about having their throats cut.
The idea that one human being would WANT another human being to be locked behind bars for stepping on a wild-flower is an amazing thing to me. But then, everything about the totalitarian mind-set of socialism amazes me. I just don't get why people WANT to be the boss of every little thing that every person does.
They're rapidly being taken over by Muslims and they worry about such crap as this. They had better be worried about having their throats cut.Excellent point. And you know damn well that no prosecutor is going to apply this wildflower law to Muslims, for fear that he, the prosecutor, will be found in an alley with his throat slit and a wildflower stuck in his stupid socialist mouth.
They might be socialist creeps, but they know how to cringe and grovel at the feet of Muslims. No Muslim will have to obey these new laws.
No it's not.
Those all have been universally serious crimes for generations, for the simple reason that they have a negative effect on people.
This is an entirely different thing.
I see on the horizon jail time for skepticism over human-caused global warming, like that fruitcake Weather Channel idiot suggested, and also jail time for "hate speech" agains bugs and bunnies, insect and plants...
Because power has driven the world since it began. The bigger eat the smaller. It is part of the human animal spirit. Power is the ultimate drug.
This is what Europeans can never understand and why they hold our country in disdain. They have all at one tme or another been ruled by tribal chiefs, kings, emperors and dictators; the U.S. has not.
This primacy of the American individual human spirit has been bred out of their genes...
Sargon, Alexander are remote enough in time to view with some amusement and curiosity.
These new fascists are serious.
I wouldn't worry much about this. After you start this kind of law enforcement...then companies get scared and they move...out of Europe. The jobs move too. And so in a town where you had 11 percent unemployment one year...and 19 percent the next...ask why. The government can't force people to manufacture in Europe...so the Ukraine and Russia benifit the most off this deal. After about five years of trying to jump economies...and figuring out why one million jobs moved out of Europe...then everyone will whistle a different tune. The sad part is...you can't bring jobs back once you dismiss the company.
It is simply another example how Greens don't understand the reality of economy. Other than the construction of windmills...there hasn't been any creation of jobs via Green strategy.
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