Utah State University Student Newspapers | 2009-10-12 | Page 12

World&Nation Monday, Oct. 12, 2009 Page 12 Prison time and felony charges rare for relic looters SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Stepping into the afternoon sun last month, Jeanne Redd and her daughter Jericca walked away from a federal courthouse with probation papers – not prison time – for their role in the theft and illegal trafficking of Indian artifacts. Some, including one of the Salt Lake City’s daily newspapers, expressed frustration that the judge didn’t come down harder on the duo from southern Utah. History however says the punishment for the Redds, who pleaded guilty to several felonies, was fairly typical. Despite high-profile arrests and indictments, most people convicted of illegally digging up, collecting and cashing in on artifacts in the United States don’t go to prison. And for those that do, most are in for a year or less, according to a 10-year analysis of prosecutions under a 1979 law meant to punish those that foul the country’s cultural resources. In Jeanne Redd’s case, prosecutors had sought at least 18 months in prison. She’s among 26 people charged after a federal sting operation that lasted more than two years and included hundreds of transactions between an undercover agent and buyers and sellers from Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. At sentencing, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups gave her three years probation and a $2,000 fine for seven felony counts of plundering artifacts from tribal and federal lands. She and her daughter, who got two years of probation, had already surrendered a collection of more than 800 artifacts ranging from exquisite pottery and decorative pendants to human remains. The sentences didn’t surprise Robert Palmer, an archaeologist and former academic who analyzed Archaeological Resources Protection Act prosecutions from 1996 to 2005. His analysis, published in an obscure law journal in 2007, found that of the 83 people found guilty, 20 went to prison and 13 of those received sentences of a year or less. Palmer also found that while prosecutors were successful in the cases they took on, they turned away about a third of the cases they got, mostly because of weak evidence or a lack of clear criminal intent. Those refusals – along with a lack of manpower and other priorities for investigators – are part of the reason why “we are witnessing the wholesale stripping and selling off for scrap our collective American heritage,” said Palmer, who now works as the senior law enforcement ranger at Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa. “People might see these as insignificant but over time, you’re removing context, you’re removing significance, you’re removing the lens of the future to look back at the past,” he said. On average, 840 looting cases are reported each year – more than two per day – across federal land managed by the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to Todd Swain, the Park Service’s lone investigator on cultural crimes. There are certainly more cases that are either never discovered or never reported, he said. “Lord knows what the scope of the problem actually is,” he said. “But clearly the numbers we do have are seriously under what’s going on.” Of the cases reported, only about 14 percent ever get solved. Roughly 94 percent of violators walk away with misdemeanor tickets, said Swain, who examined records from 1996 to 2005. Some of those are minor cases worthy only of a misdemeanor citation but “a bunch” could probably be pursued as felony cases – those that result in damage of $500 or more – if there were the time and resources to conduct a lengthier investigation, Swain said. “ARPA investigations can be as complex as murder cases,” Swain said in his 2007 analysis which, like Palmer’s, appeared in the Yearbook of Cultural Property Law. Often those cases require archaeological expertise, weeks or months of investigation and prosecutors with the time and inclination to take on the cases with a portion of federal law they’re not always familiar with. A park service program to train federal prosecutors lasted for 12 years before it was discontinued in 2003. Swain said most of those who were trained have either left the office or taken on other assignments. The program resumed last month and Swain is hoping it’s going to continue. Despite a push in recent decades to get tougher on artifact looters, there are no significant signs that prosecutions or punishments are having any major effect on looting, especially those that steal for commercial purposes. “The numbers should be going down,” said Swain, who has investigated more than 30 archaeological looting cases. “That’s definitely not the case.” As China’s economy grows, so do mounds of garbage: 300 million tons a year ZHANGLIDONG, China (AP) – Visitors can smell this village long before they see it. More than 100 dump trucks piled high with garbage line the narrow road leading to Zhanglidong, waiting to empty their loads in a landfill as big as 20 football fields. In less than five years, the Zhengzhou Comprehensive Waste Treatment Landfill has overwhelmed this otherwise pristine village of about 1,000 people. Peaches and cherries rot on trees, infested with insect life drawn by the smell. Fields lie unharvested, contaminated by toxic muck. Every day, another 100 or so tons of garbage arrive from nearby Zhengzhou, a provincial capital of 8 million. “Life here went from heaven to hell in an instant,” says lifelong resident Wang Xiuhua, swatting away clouds of mosquitoes and flies. The 78-year-old woman suddenly coughs uncontrollably and says the landfill gases inflame her bronchitis. As more Chinese ride the nation’s economic boom, a torrent of garbage is one result. Cities are bursting at the seams, and their officials struggle to cope. The amount of paper, plastic and other garbage has more than tripled in two decades to about 300 million tons a year, according to Nie Yongfeng, a waste management expert at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Americans are still way ahead of China in garbage; a population less than a quarter the size of China’s 1.3 billion generated 254 million tons of garbage in 2007, a third of which is recycled or composted, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But for China, the problem represents a rapid turnabout from a generation ago, when families, then largely rural and poor, used and reused everything. “Trash was never complicated before, because we didn’t have supermarkets, we didn’t have fancy packaging and endless things to buy,” said Nie. “Now suddenly, the government is panicking about the mountains of garbage piling up with no place to put it all.” In Zhanglidong, villagers engage in shouting matches with drivers and sometimes try to bodily block their garbage trucks coming from Zhengzhou, 20 miles away. “Zhengzhou is spotless because their trash is dumped into our village,” says Li Qiaohong, who blames it for her 5-year-old son’s eczema. Li’s family is one of a few who live within 100 meters (300 feet) of the landfill, separated from it by a fence. These families get 100 yuan ($15) a month in government compensation. The dump has poisoned not just the air and ground, but relationships. Villagers say they were never consulted, and suspect their Communist Party officials were paid to accept the landfill. In China, especially in rural regions, there is often no recourse once local officials make a decision. The villagers say not only were their petitions ignored, but they were warned by the Zhengzhou police to stop protesting or face punishment. “We villagers were too naive ... we didn’t know what a landfill was,” said Li. “If we had known earlier about all the pollution it would cause, we would had done everything possible to stop the construction process. Now it’s too late.” Elsewhere, thousands of farmers in the central province of Hubei clashed with police last year over illegal dumping near their homes. A person filming the clash died after being beaten by police. Protests in cities are driving trash to the countryside. Residents in central Beijing swarmed the offices of the Ministry of Environment last year, protesting the stench from a landfill and plans for a new incinerator there. In July, officials scrapped the incinerator plan and closed the landfill four years early. In eastern Beijing, local officials invested millions of dollars to make the Gao An Tun landfill and incinerator one of a handful in China to meet global health standards. That was after 200,000 residents petitioned for a year about the smell. “Our standard of living is improving, so it’s natural that more and more of us begin to fight for a better quality of life,” says Zhang Jianhua, 67, one of the petitioners. “Widespread media coverage embarrassed the local government, so they finally decided to take action,” she says. After millennia as a farming society, China expects to be majority urban in five years. Busy families are shifting from fresh to packaged foods, consumption of which rose 10.8 percent a year from 2000 to 2008, well above the 4.2 percent average in Asia, according to the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. By 2013, the packaged-food market is expected to reach $195 billion, up 74 percent from last year. At least 85 percent of China’s seven billion tons of trash is in landfills, much of it in unli- censed dumps in the countryside. Most have only thin linings of plastic or fiberglass. Rain drips heavy metals, ammonia, and bacteria into the groundwater and soil, and the decomposing stew sends out methane and carbon dioxide. Regulations allow incinerators to emit 10 times the level of dioxins permitted in the U.S., and these release cancer-causing dioxins and other poisons, according to a Chinese government study. “If the government doesn’t step up efforts to solve our garbage woes, China will likely face an impending health crisis in the coming decade,” warns Liu Yangsheng, an expert in waste management at Peking University. In Zhanglidong, resident Zheng Dongxiao says the village’s only water well is polluted and causing chronic ulcers. Wang Ling, a spokesman for the Zhengzhou Ministry of Environment, said the landfill has a polyethylene liner to protect the ground beneath. “Test results of the local soil, water, and air quality, in 2006 and this year, showed that everything was in line with national standards,” he told The Associated Press. Residents say the liner has tears and only covers a fraction of the landfill. The government knows its garbage disposal will always draw complaints, says Liu. “What they need to do is invest more money into building and maintaining better plants.” That remains a tall order in a country bent on growth, where economic planners hold more sway than environmental regulators and are loath to spend scarce funds on waste management. Fraud: Afghan vote wrapped in controversy -continued from page 2 complete. Eide said Galbraith’s allegations against him have “affected the entire election process.” Final results have been delayed by more than a month as a U.N.-backed panel set up as a check on the Afghanappointed election commission examines complaints and suspicious votes. Though preliminary tallies show Karzai winning with about 54 percent, enough Karzai ballots are suspect that the voiding of fraudulent votes could drop him below the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Eide said he remains “committed to the process” and pointed to the ongoing fraud investigations as proof that systems set up to catch cheating are working. Last week, Galbraith said he was sticking by his allegations. He accused the United Nations of failing to exercise its responsibility to oversee the Afghan elections, adding that “the fraud that took place in Afghanistan was preventable.” Four U.N. staffers who worked under Galbraith have resigned over the dispute, U.N. spokesman Aleem Siddique said. Among other things, Galbraith complained that polling stations were allowed to open in areas that were insecure, raising the likelihood of fraud. Eide said military operations were launched in a bid to secure to open as many stations as possible. Eide said that closing such stations would have denied a large number of people the opportunity to vote and created “an important element of potential instability in the country.” Many polling stations believed affected by fraud were in areas of the Taliban-con- trolled south where turnout was low. Eide denied that he had told U.N. staffers not to pass on credible information about ballot-stuffing or low-to-nonexistent turnout. However, he said reports from second- or third-hand sources were not reported because they did not appear credible. “Some of these allegations are based on private conversations whilst he was a guest in my home for two months,” Eide said. “My view is that private discussions around the dinner table remain just that: private.” www.a-bay-usu.com 1 LG KF *' o =8JK<I K?8E ;@8C$LG! ?@>?$JG<<; @EK<IE<K @J ?<I< ;@K:? PFLI ;@8C$LG 8E; JK8IK <EAFP@E> K?< @EK<IE<K 8>8@E% *0 0, dfek_ =FI M8CL< G8:B8>< =FI K?< =@IJK () DFEK?J Utah State University • Logan, Utah • www.aggietownsquare.com 2297 North Main, Logan 753-6444 /..$)-+$..0( nnn%n`c[Ycl\%Zfd 8cjf XmX`cXYc\ ]ifd pfli cfZXc i\kX`c\i% ?liip# f]]\i \e[j jffe% JlYa\Zk kf N`c[9cl\ k\idj Xe[ Zfe[`k`fej% 8[[`k`feXc fe\$k`d\ XZk`mXk`fe ]\\ Xggc`\j# gclj dfek_cp \hl`gd\ek c\Xj\ ]\\ Xe[ kXo\j% D`e`dld Zfdd`kd\ek k\id `j )+ dfek_j% M`j`k nnn%n`c[Ycl\%Zfd&c\^Xc ]fi [\kX`cj Xe[ k_\ =X`i 8ZZ\jj Gfc`Zp% !Jg\\[ ZfdgXi`jfe YXj\[ fe Ô c\ [fnecfX[ lj`e^ N`c[9cl\Ëj Gif gXZbX^\ mj% +) BYgj [`Xc$lg% 8ZklXc jg\\[j dXp mXip% )''0 N`c[9cl\ :fddle`ZXk`fej @eZ% Please Note If any of these ads are incomplete (without e-mail or phone), please consult the complete list of free classifieds at www. a-bay-usu.com Announcements Announcements 500 Days of Summer PG-13 Time Traveler’s Wife G-Force PG G.I Joe: Rise of Cobra PG-13 Daily 7:30, 9:5 Daily 4:45 Sat 12:15, 2:45 JK8IK@E> 8K FECP Classified Ads Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince PG Daily 3:45, 6:35 Sat 12:45 PG-13 Daily 7:30, 9:45 Daily 7:15-9:50 Ice Age 3 PG Daily 4:20 Sat 12:00, 2:00 Inglorious Basterds Up PG R Daily 9:20 Daily 4:30, 7:00 Sat 12:30, 2:30 Christian Bible Study Sunday night 7 pm, Food Science Building rm 202. www. hotm.tv Christian Bible Study Sunday night 7 pm, Food Science Building rm 202. www.hotm.tv Bicycles Bicycles 24” Mountain Bike for sell! Norco mountain bike, 24”, purple, hand brakes, 15 gears, adjustable seat, in good shape. $55 OBO. Call Storee 208- 360-2376 or email missrusset_2006@ yahoo.com Apts. for Rent Apartments for Rent Apartment Contract for Jan-May FOREST GATE APARTMENTS -$1100 (all utilities included) -Private Bedroom -One clean and tidy roommate -Quick walk to campus -Wireless internet -Cable TV -Contract for mid Dec to May Apartment Contract for Sale I’m selling my contract for a (girl’s) private room/private bathroom at Glenwood Apartments, just a block down from campus! The rent is three payments of $466 each semester, adding up to be $1400 a semester. The room will be empty by Saturday, October 24th, but I can also sell it for Spring semester if you need to wait. Five other girls live in the apartment, great roommates! Washer and dryer, cable included. Call Amanda at [phone]. If you leave a message I will call back as soon as possible. Aggie Village Large Private Bedroom Spring Contract: Female I am selling my contract for a single Aggie Village Large Bedroom apartment. Will have a roomate but you will have your own private room. Total payment of $1633 is the total housing fee you pay to the University which includes all utilities, internet, cable, and most amenities. There is a laundry-mat on site with hook-ups available in apartment. Share a ride for Fall Break -- check out the Car Pool page at www.aggietownsquare.com. It is right there, under the calendar and events tab. Go Green, Go Aggies!