Slashdot Mirror
Peru Indignant After Greenpeace Damages Ancient Nazca Site
HughPickens.com writes The NYT reports that Peruvian authorities say Greenpeace activists have damaged the fragile, and restricted, landscape near the Nazca lines, ancient man-made designs etched in the Peruvian desert when they placed a large sign that promoted renewable energy near a set of lines that form the shape of a giant hummingbird. The sign was meant to draw the attention of world leaders, reporters and others who were in Lima, the Peruvian capital, for a United Nations summit meeting aimed at reaching an agreement to address climate change. Greenpeace issued a statement apologizing for the stunt at the archaeological site and its international executive director, Kumi Naidoo, flew to Lima to apologize for scarring one of Peru's most treasured national symbols. "We are not ready to accept apologies from anybody," says Luis Jaime Castillo, the vice minister for cultural heritage. "Let them apologize after they repair the damage."
"But repair may not be possible. The desert around the lines is made up of white sand capped by a darker rocky layer. By walking through the desert the interlopers disturbed the upper layer, exposing the lighter sand below. Visits to the site are closely supervised — ministers and presidents have to seek special permission and special footwear to tread on the fragile ground where the 1,500 year old lines are cut. "A bad step, a heavy step, what it does is that it marks the ground forever," says Castillo. "There is no known technique to restore it the way it was." Castillo says that the group walked in single file through the desert, meaning that they made a deep track in the ground then they spread out in the area where they laid the letters, making many more marks over a wide area. "The hummingbird was in a pristine area, untouched,". Castillo added. "Perhaps it was the best figure."
Looks like them favoring will do anything to make their issue known ... everything, including ruining thousands-year-old world heritage site
Turning off people who might otherwise agree with them. Instead, they just generate hatred.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Greenpeace has been, for quite some time now, nothing but a group lobbying for its self-interest, no matter its impact on the rest of us. I.e. they have become as despicable as the oil industry.
Perhaps them walking wouldn't have caused so much damage if they had reduced *their* carbon footprint by not stuffing their face with more than their fair share of food on the planet.
Silly sods. Greenpeace's whole ethos is to take the moral high ground against destructive activities of government and big business.
Well, their careless actions here have fucked that up big time. Once you throw away the "moral high ground", good luck getting it back.
So, here we have a nice example of something like Jon Stewart's "one mistake"... with all the willful environmental destruction in the world, this story of one admitted dreadful mistake by people who actually care deeply (for which the Greenpeace response -- as strong an apology as possible, while accepting that mere apology is insufficient -- is missing from the summary) becomes the story.... sad.
Yes, that's overly simplistic.
The Nazca lines are human made, as we all know Greenpeace doesn't care about humans. They only care about the "environment", even though they often oppose things that would in fact help protect the environment.
Whoever loses.
We win.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They could have achieved the same thing with Photoshop.
Have gnu, will travel.
Or they could just kill themselves and everyone to save the planet.
Carbon emission wouldn't be an issue if the whole human population is reduced by 90%.
While I agree that this is an opportunity for politicians to discredit Greenpeace.. its not an issue of ENVIRONMENTAL damage.. its an issue of preserving National and World Heritage. The government of Peru is not worried about plants and animals in this case.. it is worried about keeping these ancient grounds for future generations.
What they did is the equivalent of pissing on the Mona Lisa.
Then please tell us how a rake would not work.
The surface consists of a hardened layer that has been darkened by weathering process'. The subsurface is a much lighter layer of sand that blows away easily, and is a different color from the hardened surface. Once damage has been inflicted on the surface, the sand beneath can blow away (and does with each storm) causing the damaged areas to spread over time. The only way to prevent this is not to cause the damage in the first place.
It should be noted that there is no wildlife in those areas of sufficient size to damage the surface, It is only through human intervention that damage can occur. If Greenpeace values its reputation, they will expel every idiot involved in this debacle and tell them don't come back.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
In what universe is fixing up crumbling old downtowns and making them livable again an evil thing to do?
And the PC crapola you cite, including the Greenpeace organization and all its Luddite folderol, was a creation of the Boomers.
Same goddamned thing that's "wrong" with every other generation ever. Greed, selfishness, etc. The difference in outcomes stems from things like cheap air travel, which makes it possible for local idiots to literally go global. I bet these Greenpeace activist could have never afforded to fly to Peru in say 1964.
Of course, the boomers and their Soviet counterparts came pretty close to inadvertently wiping out civilization during Able Archer, which no other generation has managed to repeat since then.
I hate to break the news to you, but these so-called "Millenials" you keep ranting about do not exist. And if they existed, theyd' all be 14 years old.
More generally speaking, not all people from one generation are the same, and the elderly have been complaining about youngsters even before Seneca wrote about it.
Take it easy, my friend, and perhaps get a bit more sleep. (Lack of sleep is one of the primary causes of grumpiness.)
Green peace, Peta, and other "Groups" like them stopped being about the "issues" a long time ago and have since turned into ego trips for its members. It seems like a game for them to pull off the biggest stunt. Do they seriously think world leaders are "unaware" of renewable energy? Seriously?
That message wasn't for world leaders, it was a dick measuring contest with other activists.
A long time ago I might have supported organizations like Greenpeace and PETA on general principles, but the membership of both organizations have grown so outrageously batshit insane and arrogant that I feel differently now.
I feel like roasting a live cat over a pile of burning coal, frankly.
Way to win hearts and minds, idiots!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Globally speaking, a good portion of "The Greatest Generation" were fucking Nazis. Another decent sized chunk were Marxist, another chunk Fascist, and yet another chunk, Japanese Imperialists.
But yea, it makes total sense to whine that today's generation is somehow worse, morally speaking, than the assholes who started the last world war.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Did you get just as upset when the Taliban and ISIS blow up archeological sites as well?
I'm curious to see how far your anger reaches.
Apples and Oranges. ISIS and the Taliban are all about destruction. It's what they do. Greenpeace, on the other hand, is about preservation and conservation.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It takes a true imbecile to make that leap.
We are not ready to accept apologies from anybody," says Luis Jaime Castillo, the vice minister for cultural heritage. "Let them apologize after they repair the damage.
First, the damage cannot be repaired. But second, Greenpeace has NOT issued a real apology. Their disgraceful excuse for an apology is here:
http://www.greenpeace.org/inte...
The obvious missing element is an apology for defacing a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Instead, they offer mere apologies for how things LOOK, and the typical "I'm sorry if anyone was offended" not-pology. Peru should throw all of the activists in Prison, and when the Executive Director shows up in Lima, lock him up too.
Meanwhile, as others have pointed out, the image of the message doesn't even look real in the first place, and they could have gotten the exact same image from Photoshop. Here's the worthless Greenpeace image:
http://www.iflscience.com/site...
And here's the damage the fuckers caused:
http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-c...
Prison sentences for all.
At the heigh of WWII the Nazi party had 8 million members. That's .4 per cent of the world population of 2 billion. No where near "a good chunk."
The original post blindly labeled my entire generation as hipster, gentrifying assholes. The same argument comes to mind.
Name one thing a Millennial - any Millennial - has done to improve America.
Edward Snowden (millennial) blew the lid on massive online surveillance (an invention of the boomers).
QED
Crimey
>They wear glasses without any lenses, for crying out loud. No sane person would do something that fucking dumb.
In fairness a large percentage of the male population wears ties - an utterly useless accessory that's every bit as stupid as lensless glasses.
As for Ferguson - personaly I've heard almost none but the obvious trolls claim the thug's actions were excusable. What they mostly said was that it was utterly unnaceptable for a police officer to shoot a man who didn't pose a comparably severe immediate threat, especially not eight times. It seems extremely unlikely that the man still posed a serious threat after the first several shots hit him, making the later shots bald-faced murder. And that the official response was such an obviously biased travesty that the justice department may as well have just hung up a giant "Fuck You All" sign.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The alternative you clearly prefer is to continue the degradation of civilization. There is no other possible alternative; things either get better or they get worse. You have consciously and deliberately chosen making things worse.
BTW, why didn't the people who were living there improve it?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
To make it a fair comparison, you must move the time window such that the oldest boomers alive are the same age as the oldest millenials are now. That makes it the late 70s at earliest.
In the late 70s, the World Wide Web did not exist yet, and would continue to not exist for a decade.
The Internet was invented by the generation before them, and it was not yet all that important.
If you want to do intergenerational comparisons, you need to do one of three things:
1. Wait ~50 years.
2. Restrict yourself to the world as it existed when the oldest Boomer was in their early 30s (even if they already a great thing, it must be recognized as a great thing).
3. State your values clearly so we can know what defines "improvement of America".
I don't find Barack Obama particularly damning as a Presidential choice (it's not like he was a big drop-off from the last guy). You obviously don't value social media, which is kind of interesting actually, given that:
- In my experience things like facebook are more widely appreciated by the older generations than by the Millenials.
- Web forums, including slashdot, are social media. Forums were invented at the tail end of the pre-millenial generation, so you get a bye on using social media to complain about social media's worthlessness, but what makes you like forums but dislike others? What is the essential difference that makes the latter worthless?
why again do we have to let men who "feel like" women into the lady's room?!)
This is not a new issue; this is not a Millenial invention.
They've destroyed traditional cultural norms.
First: so what?
Second: literally every generation ever has done that. The US had a cultural norm that slavery was okay, and it was later replaced by a norm that slavery was abhorrent.
Note: I'm not an American so I have no horse in the "who improved America most" race.