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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."
So they are as despicable as BP, who trashed the Gulf of Mexico, because they made a mistake? That sounds like a very reasonable assessment.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
"There is no known technique to restore it the way it was."
not to be over simplistic or even the least bit forgiving against GP and this ridiculously stupid stunt, but perhaps they should look into a device called a "rake".'
it does wonders in sand traps for removing footprints...a different beast to be sure but come on..."no known technique"? :)
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Can anyone explain to me why the so-called Millennial Generation is so goddamn rotten?
This destruction of archaeologically-significant formations in Peru is just the tip of the iceberg.
I used to think that the Boomers were the worst generation ever. But their offspring, the Millennials, are quickly exceeding the Boomers in terms of nastiness.
Just look at what they've done to San Francisco, Brooklyn, and numerous other places. They move into well established urban locales, drive up rents, and destroy the existing communities. Even the Boomers generally didn't do this, as they just built their own shitty suburbs.
The "hipster" culture that Millennials bring with them is absolutely toxic. They dress like morons, just to be "ironic". They have disgustingly large egos. They wear glasses without any lenses, for crying out loud. No sane person would do something that fucking dumb.
They've ruined the Internet, too. We can't go a single day now without somebody incorrectly calling somebody else "racist" or "sexist" or "misogynistic". They force censorship wherever they go, because according to them it's completely inappropriate for somebody to potentially read or hear something that might hurt their feelings, even if it's completely factual and correct.
We also see Millennials supporting the wrong side in incidents like Ferguson, where the thug who got shot chose to physically attack an armed police officer, for fuck's sake. That's a dumb as shit thing for anyone to do, regardless of skin color. And it's disgusting to see the Millennials then say it was okay for the thug to rob the convenience store, to rough up the clerk, and to then disrupt traffic. It's even more disgusting to see the Millennials then justify the subsequent rioting as acceptable, when clearly it is not.
Millennials have even started ruining open source projects, and entire Linux distros. Firefox, GNOME 3, systemd, and the forcing of systemd on to all Debian users are all the work of Millennials. They've managed to completely kill GNOME, and Firefox and Debian are on life support now.
In just a few years, Millennials have managed to cause more problems than any of the generations before them. And they're competing with the Baby Boomers! Yeah, that's just how fucking awful the Millennials are: they make the Boomers look respectable and responsible people!
Like I said, a very reasonable assessment. BP = mistake, Greepeace = evil egomaniacs. Of course the profit motive for BP was much less evil than the trying to save the earth from the likes of BP, which is the motive that drives Greenpeace. Very reasonable indeed.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
"While this stunt is nothing, if not stupid"
The destruction of an important cultural, ecological, and archaeological site is nothing but a stunt, eh?
What fucked up world do you come from?
Damnit Khyber, we are opposed to forcible child rape, same sex of otherwise, and we're sick of you defending pedophilia, by omission of condemnation, on this site. Why don't you come out and admit that it is wrong, like the rest of us? No all you do is go off on tangents and misconstrue what others say.
I am not a member of NAMBLA and I think men forcibly raping 8yo boys is wrong. You've never stated that, have you? Why not? What is it you are hiding?
Or maybe when someone condemns the stunt itself, they are referring to the deliberate goal of putting a sign and not the incidental and entirely unintentional damage to the site itself from footprints. The greenpeace activists aren't archeologists trained in that sort of soil analysis. If you want to conflate GP's sign walkers destruction with Deepwater Horizon's "mistake", which would have earned them millions in bonuses if they hadn't come up snake eyes that time, then you can take your NAMBLA membership and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.