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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."
Looks like them favoring will do anything to make their issue known ... everything, including ruining thousands-year-old world heritage site
We need a PETA vs Greenpeace death-by-irony cage fight.
"It appears my hypocrisy knows no bounds." -Doc Holliday
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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.
The Aliens will never find out where to land now
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.
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.
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%.
Are you upset? You seem upset.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
You are a bigot; you think in terms of environmental damage without even considering the people who were insulted by Greenepeace's callousness. This has nothing to do with ecological impact, it has everything to do with irreparably damaging a world heritage site and something that is extremely important to Peruvian and South American culture. They didn't cause environmental damage, but they basically insulted an entire nation by being careless and thoughtless about their culture to make a message that would result in nothing.
Then their initial response was essentially a backhanded slap to the Peruvian people. From the Greenpeace Facebook page:
"Without reservation, Greenpeace apologises to the people of Peru for the offense caused by our recent activity laying a message of hope at the site of the historic Nazca Lines.
We are deeply sorry for this."
Which basically says "we're sorry people got offended by our message of hope." It should be reading "we're sorry we irreparably damaged this site and trod on your culture", so once again, callousness and carlessness.
Greenpeace is not a good organization. It's a bunch of people who make a lot of noise and act like thugs and morons, and often their positions are not supported by science or thoughtful discourse.
Because it's darker sand on top of lighter sand.
Heavy footprints change the colour of the ground.
Rake would do more damage.
Go to a sand trap in a golf course. Sprinkle a thin layer of black dust over the sand, but thick enough so that you cannot see the sand beneath. Walk through that area of black dust over whitish sand.
Now use a rake to remove the footprints.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
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.
I'm more disappointed than I am upset. The Millennials could have been a truly great generation. Yet they've squandered this opportunity in every way. People who could have done amazing things have instead sunk to new lows, dragging everyone and everything else with them. The loss of what could have been is something to be disappointed about.
Maybe in 1000 years that will be the only which remains as a sign of human civilization. That, and the pyramids.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
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.
http://www.latinamericanstudie...
I was hoping that the authorities were exaggerating, but looking at the pic on this page one can see that they aren't :-(
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Well, "the Inca's" don't exist anymore. They were a group that ruled the area in the past.
As to why Peru hasn't "totally blocked off the area", it would take thousands of troops to surround the area, just to prevent the one group of morons in several decades who thought trampling world historic sites for political messages sounded like a good idea.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
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.
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
good point about the Inca's not being around anymore...of course I meant their ancestors.
Presumably if the Incas aren't around anymore, their ancestors aren't either...
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
bent on keeping the world in a Stone Age sort of existence. And then they blew up those ancient Buddha statues. The Taliban, that is.
Pretty much felt the same way about Greenpeace, and now they've defiled the Nazca lines. I'm for the same treatment for them that we gave the Taliban.
You're not really defending blatant douche-baggery based on the notion that other people have been douche-bags in the past, are you?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
When there's a dark layer of soil on top of sand it's usually a macrobiotic crust, that has taken a few hundred years to do its thing - that is what they crushed as they walked. There's not much worse you can do as far as lasting ecological damage except for sawing down trees a few hundred years old...
They did also harm the aesthetics of the lines themselves.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.)
The start of the bracket for the generational definition for Millennials is based on their high-school graduation / college freshman admission year, and thus refers to those born in 1982. Those 14-year-old kids you refer to are the young end of the bracket.
That anythink you're complaining about the Millenials fucking up is directly the responsibility of the Boomers since they didn't not only didn't have time to raise us, but let us be told we couldn't be responsible nor self sufficient until we were adults.
If you really are a Millennial then your parents are likely Gen-Xers so the Baby Boomers had no role in raising you except as grandparents. If you really were raised by a Baby Boomer then you're more likely Gen-X.
While it is possible for some exceptions for people born at one end of a group or the other, Millennials are the children of Gen-X and Gen-X are the children of the Baby Boomers. For example, it is possible for someone at the end of the Baby Boom to have a child but that would be a rare exception that proves the rule.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
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.
I hate to break it to you but the group called the "Millennials" are not called that because they were born at the beginning of this millennium but because they were born at the end of the last one. Generally that means from early/mid 1980's to 2000.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Millennial
http://www.livescience.com/38061-millennials-generation-y.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/millennial+generation
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Neither fire, the wheel, the printing press or the spork came from the "greatest generation". I don't know what they achieved to deserve that moniker.
But they did not come up with switch rape or yo (the app) either, so when it's all said an done, I'd say that at least they are not the worst generation.
lucm, indeed.
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.
In what universe is fixing up crumbling old downtowns and making them livable again an evil thing to do?
The one where as a result, many of the people who were living there can no longer afford to do so as a result.
Greenpeace was founded by Boomers and is ran by Gen X'ers, which includes those who set the stunt up. The only Millenials I saw were the ones posing for photos.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Way to miss the point. The complaint is they defaced a national treasure.
While I envy their goals, Greenpeace are nothing but a bunch of assholes whose antics are counterproductive. The court system is not the only way to go about protecting wildlife and the environment, I get that. But the inflammatory things they say and their repeated criminal actions not only make them incapable of affecting any meaningful change, but instead they galvanize those they accuse of wrongdoing and hurt the abilities of reasonable people to carry on the mission. Every time I see Greenpeace in the news I can't help but wish they'd just go away, so the rest of us might be able to talk some reason into the polluters and habitat destroyers of the world. With them present it is impossible to convince many on the wrong side of environmental issues, because Greenpeace are so needlessly combative and wrong-headed.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
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.
As a longtime resident of a 'crumbling downtown' that is getting made 'livable again', I can tell you what's wrong with it. We have had a self-sustaining and functional community in my neighborhood for over 30 years. Everyone from outside called it the 'bad part' of town, and we always just accepted that, because we don't want any attention anyways. A few hipster breweries and barcodes set-up in shop a few years ago, and now rents have gone up between 50-200 percent, the cops are here all the time when those nice cars attract petty theft, there are drunken douchebags screaming, fighting, vandalizing low-income apartments and houses all hours of the night every night, and buildings that sold for 170k 10 years ago are put on the market for 1.5 million.
But but but think of the business!! Amirite??? We were a mixed use neighborhood, but mostly residential and parks, with a few bodegas, a 40 year old family grocer, a few small restaurants and a few pubs. In the last 7 years we have had the displeasure of becoming the home to 9 huge alcohol related endeavors. Business can go fuck itself. It's ruined a decades old community.
By far the worst part about it though, is having to listen to dips hits like you, that move in, live her for a year or two, and then say shit like "BUT LOOK WE CLEANED IT UP FOR YOU DERP".
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.
You're not really defending blatant douche-baggery based on the notion that other people have been douche-bags in the past, are you?
Actually I think he might have a point.
Squatters have started raising pigs on the site of Peru's Nazca lines - the giant designs best seen from an airplane that were mysteriously etched into the desert more than 1,500 years ago.
"We get 120-180 reports or alerts about encroachments every year," Alva said. "For my colleagues in the rest of Latin America, who get two or maybe five cases per year, that figure is unbelievable."
It's not like they unsealed a tomb, careless people have been tromping around these things for millenia from early European explorers to various locals to backpacking douchbags who look up the location on google maps.
And yes it caused damage, but they didn't wreck the figure anymore than any of those previous groups wreaked it. It's like touching a painting in a gallery, your individual poke won't leave a mark, but if a bunch of people do it the painting will be ruined.
I think that's probably the main motivation for the comments, first they're rightfully offended by Greenpeace attempting to expropriate their heritage to try and make a viral video. But moreover they're worried that Greenpeace will inspire copycats to visit the sites, and it won't take a lot of that before you start seeing visible damage.
I stole this Sig
As usual, Jane/Lonny Eachus is wrong: "'The Greatest Generation' is a term coined by journalist Tom Brokaw to describe the generation who grew up in the United States during the deprivation of the Great Depression, and then went on to fight in World War II, as well as those whose productivity within the war's home front made a decisive material contribution to the war effort, for which the generation is also termed the G.I. Generation."
Members of the "Greatest Generation" were born from 1901 to 1924, but Tom Brokaw was born in 1940.
So Jane/Lonny Eachus is wrong. Again. The "Greatest Generation" isn't a self-designation.
Globally speaking, a good portion of "The Greatest Generation" were fucking Nazis.
There is no "globally speaking" about the greatest generation. The term refers to Americans of that era that assumed the burdens that they did. And in ordinary discussion I don't think that refernces to a particular generation in a culture are inclusive of all people across the globe that fall into a similar age bracket otherwise most of those discussion which are framed in terms of particular cultures and values would be meaningless. You've made a poor argument.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Here is a picture of the damaged Greenpeace caused. Basically, all of the lighter color in the red-marked area is where their footprints broke the crust.
Repair is, of course impossible. Serious financial consequences, plus criminal prosecution of all involved.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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
The stupid part was that this could actually have been done with little or no damage at all had the activist just followed some basic rules when dealing with the area.
1. No not walk in other's footsteps.
2. Wear the foot square pads on your feet to spread out your weight.
3. Do not bring cars to the site.
Had they done some basic research they may not have had a problem. The activists did note care about the damage they did.
The people in charge at the start of the Korean and Vietnam wars were born before 1940, which rules out the Boomers. Do you really think 7-year-olds were in command in Korea?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
From this post here are some interesting images.
The Damage. Those are new lines created by Greepeace. Notice the bright line to the left. That is where they drove their cars off the existing roads. I guess walking a bit is more important than preserving an international heritage site.
The Foorwear This is what they should have been wearing to visit the lines. It spread out the weight and causes less damage. They did the worst thing possible by walking in a line in regular shoes.
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.
Look at the pictures. Those Greenpeacers don't look like Millennials to me.
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.
This nation was built on the principle that being first doesn't entitle you to the land. There's no reason why people should not be permitted to drive up property values around you whatsoever. Not fucking one. When that happens, your property value goes up. If you can no longer afford to live there because property taxes have risen or because grocery prices have because your save-mart was replaced with a whole foods, then you will get more for your house than when you bought it (unless you are a dumbshit, and bought at the top of the market) and you can afford to move someplace else — someplace not yet gentrified.
No, the problem with these systems is rent, because rent is theft. It's profiting from basic needs on the principle of artificial scarcity. Look at our country, there are far more vacant houses than there are homeless families. Why is this situation permitted to persist? Greed. And, mind you, it's Boomer greed. They're the ones running the banks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I bet these Greenpeace activist could have never afforded to fly to Peru in say 1964.
Not only would it have been cheaper, but they would have been able to just get on the fucking plane and go without being anal probed.
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.
Every generation since forever has been working hard on it. It's called deforestation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They wear glasses without any lenses, for crying out loud. No sane person would do something that fucking dumb.
Hey everyone. Don't mention jewellery. God forbid this poster finds out his own generation wore items that serve no useful purpose, he may just grab a gun and start shooting.
No, Americans did not "take the burden of defeating the Axis powers". That part was done by the Soviet Union. As far as the glorious victory over Japan, achieved with the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents (also known as the biggest war crime of History), then yes, it was 100% American.
The truth is that Americans of that generation (and many others) were far from being as great as Hollywood movies made you believe. They were like the dullard who hangs out with the cool kids and that puts himself in the center of every event when he writes his diary.
lucm, indeed.
I'm a "spanner" myself. WW2 parents, Gen-X peers. This happens when your WW2 parents don't have you until they hit their 40s. Thus, you skip the entire generation and have some anomalous things going on, such as all your cousins being *adults* while you're growing up. Silly me, aren't cousins always adults? Nope. For most people, those are aunts and uncles, and aunts and uncles aren't so old.
I've run into a few other people with the same "span" and it's always interesting. In some ways, I can relate to boomers more than I do to my peers.
By now, we should have some Millenial "spanners" too--people who skipped Gex-X and grew up with adult Boomer cousins. I have no idea what that'd be like... but maybe we'd both have the common ability to understand that to some extend, all of this generation bullshit isn't really that damned important. People are people, and while analyzing cohorts isn't an entirely worthless concept, it needs to be kept in its place..
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Not 100% American either, the Soviets have destroyed the Kwantung army in Manchuria.
So basically the Russians did most of the work in WW2, the Americans took most of the credit.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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).
Don't be grateful for another turd just because turds are the only things on the buffet.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"