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Property damage
*** Shopping-Tip: Property damage
'''Property damage''' is damage or destruction done to public or private
property, caused either by a
person who is not its
ownership owner or by
nature natural phenomena. Property damage caused by persons is generally categorized by its cause: neglect (including oversight and human error), and
intentional damage. Intentional property damage is often, but not always,
malice malicious. Property damage caused by natural phenomena may be
law legally attributed to a person if that person's neglect allowed for the damage to occur.
Intentional property damage may be considered a form of
violence, albeit one usually (but not always) less reprehensible than violence which does
bodily harm to other living beings. For example, allowing a
artificial pacemaker pacemaker to fail or a
water well well to become
poisoned may qualify as both property damage and bodily harm. On a similar note, certain forms of property damage may prevent bodily harm, such as breaking a piece of
machinery that was about to
injury injure a person. Some argue that property damage signals a willingness to do bodily harm or otherwise
intimidation intimidates the free flow of
communication in
politics political or
economics economic debates.
Mohandas Gandhi was of this opinion, but nonetheless differentiated doing bodily harm from property damage, even if he thought both to be violence, which also he thought admissible in certain dire circumstances.
The term
vandalism is often used
synonymously with intentional property damage, although that term is often associated with superficial or
aesthetics aesthetic damage, such as
defacement (vandalism) defacement. When property damage is undertaken for the purpose of intimidating a
government or society at large, it may be categorized as
terrorism. In certain contexts, the relations between these terms are inextricably politicized. For example, the
Earth Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for a number of incidents of property damage, but claims to have never harmed a living being, and in fact has a
doctrine forbidding members from doing so. However, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation classifies them as a "terrorist" group ostensibly because they send a political and ideological message with this destruction. Meanwhile, the
United States Department of Defense restricts the term "terrorist" to groups that do actual bodily harm.
Property damage tactics have been part of the
labor movement,
peace movement,
ecology movement,
environmental movement and
anti-globalization movement, among others. The
infrastructural capital of
logging loggers,
mining miners,
fishing fishers,
suburbia suburban housing development housing developers, the
mass media,
employers who are subject to
Strike action strike actions, and even
military forces have been targeted. The property so targeted, in most cases with the notable exception of labor actions, tends to be that which is deemed to be causing or threatening some form of damage to living beings. Typical examples include
Greenpeace sabotage of bulldozers, peace movement activists entering
NATO bases by breaking fences, and Earth Liberation Front destruction of empty new homes that they deem to be imposing on the Arizona desert
ecoregion.
Category:Property
da:Hærværk
de:Sachbeschädigung
*** Shopping-Tip: Property damage
