Where Have All the Manhole Covers Gone?

It's a world gone MAD!!

By Daniel K. Gardner
Published: March 28, 2008

This from the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago on on Jan. 12: "On Dec. 22, police pulled over a 33-year-old Lake in the Hills woman after she failed to use a turn signal. The authorities say they found 11 manhole covers in her car, eventually leading to charges against her."

And from The Guardian in England in October 2004: "London has joined the select band of world cities cursed by the mysterious phenomenon of manhole cover theft. The target has been Newham, east London, where in recent weeks nearly 200 grates and covers have been stolen. The thieves made off with 93 covers in one week."

Since 2004, dozens of cities on every continent - including Cardiff, Montreal, Milwaukee, Daegu, Chandigarh and Johannesburg - have experienced waves of manhole cover theft.

Calcutta's daily Telegraph has estimated that at least 20,000 of the city's manhole covers are stolen every year. The Beijing Times claims that Beijing lost 24,000 covers, valued at over $5 million, to theft in 2004 alone, and the China Daily has reported that on average, 12 are pilfered everyday in Shanghai. In Greenville, South Carolina, population 56,000, the Public Works Department says as many as 40 manhole covers have disappeared since November.
Even if you're like me, you're not normally given to thinking about manhole covers, you still may be asking why a 33-year-old woman would be driving around a Chicago suburb with 11 of them in her car. What motives did she, and all the other manhole-cover thieves around the world, have for making off with cast-iron discs weighing in excess of 50 pounds?

This: In 2001, scrap metal sold for $77 a ton; at the end of 2004, it was $300 per ton, and today it's approaching $480. Behind the rise, say the analysts, is China's voracious demand for steel.
The construction market in China has been booming since the dawn of the new millennium, fueled by explosive growth in the industrial economy.

Steel companies in China have been racing to keep up with the demand, but iron ore production in China is limited, pressuring steel companies to sign long-term supply contracts with foreign mining companies. These contracts run into the billions of dollars.

Melting down existing metal is cheaper and more efficient than processing iron ore. Representatives of Chinese steel companies consequently have fanned out across the globe in search of scrap metal.

scrap dealers, from San Diego to London to Kuala Lumpur, tell of Chinese knocking at their doors every five minutes, offering premium prices for any scrap metal they might have. The dealers, in turn, have been aggressively expanding their networks of suppliers - often small mom-and-pop salvage yards - promising them ever higher prices for their scrap. Mom and pop, finally, are happily paying $5 to $6 for each 50-pound cover, while the city of Elgin, Illinois, for one, is left with a dangerous hole in the street and a $150 bill for a new cover.

The epidemic is spreading beyond manhole covers. The beer industry estimates that it is losing some $50 million in pilfered stainless steel kegs every year. Some July 4 and Super Bowl celebrators have discovered that taking the empty keg to a scrap dealer fetches far more than the $10-$30 deposit they put on it, so they forego the deposit. That may be financially sound, but it is illegal, as is stealing empty kegs from alleyways and storage areas of restaurants, bars, and beer distributors.

Enterprising individuals in Ukraine recently stole a historic 1924 steam locomotive, the first ever to be built in Ukraine, from an open air museum and sold it as salvage to a scrap dealer.
In 2006, a sting operation in Vancouver recovered an intact phone booth. One obvious moral here is that unscrupulous dealers are enablers. Those who trade in manhole covers marked "Property of the City of Milwaukee," or beer kegs stamped with "Anheuser-Busch," or telephone booths carrying the Telus logo, probably have a pretty good idea that these didn't come from a musty attic.

Deterring the theft of manhole covers could take a range of forms. In Vancouver, officials ordered stricter enforcement of laws prohibiting scrap dealers from trading in manhole covers and other obviously stolen scrap. Milwaukee considered installing locking devices on its manhole covers, but decided it was too expensive.

Finally, cities could replace their iron covers, so tempting to criminals, with covers made of non-metal polymer materials with no recycling value, such as glass fiber, resin, quartz or corundum. Beijing has been experimenting with composite covers since early 2005.

Those cities around the world hit hard by the epidemic should have no difficulty obtaining these theft-deterrent covers. Factories all over China - some probably built out of recycled manhole covers - are standing ready to take their orders.

Daniel K. Gardner is a professor of history at Smith College.

Another Take on the Hillary-Bill Political Machine

By hook or by crook, it's the Clinton way
Senator Hillary Clinton holds a baby during a campaign event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, this week

By Johann Hari in Washington

Thursday March 13 2008

Haven't we seen this movie before? Barack Obama has just proved his chasm-wide appeal again by conquering another Republican-red state -- Mississippi -- yet the battle for the Democratic nomination is set to stretch out on to the far horizon.

As the comedian Bill Maher says, in a reference to John McCain's age, "It's a bad sign when the Democratic campaign is set to last longer than the Republican nominee." But the looming ending to this story feels flatly familiar -- like a slo-mo remake of Florida in the year 2000.

It is clear the Clintons are determined to get this nomination, any way, any how. If they have to do it by falsely claiming to have won states like Florida and Michigan -- where Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot, because there was an agreement by all the candidates to punish the states for holding early primaries -- then they will.

If they have to do it by overturning the will of the Democratic electorate by appealing to the unelected super-delegates -- a group of party functionaries who seem likely to hold the balance -- then they will. If they have to do it by pandering to racist sentiments n dismissing Obama as akin to the black firebrand Jesse Jackson, or by leaking images of Obama in African tribal dress -- then they will do it. Some American liberals have been suddenly, violently disillusioned by the Clintons' tactics over the past few months. But in reality, for people who could see beyond political tribalism, the nature of the Clintons has been plain for a long time.

The idea that Clinton was "the first black President" was always implicitly racist: so screwing around, riffing well in speeches and liking fried chicken makes you black now? In fact, Bill Clinton was prepared to lash black people whenever it was politically convenient, with the quiescence of Hillary. Just after receiving the Democratic nomination for president, Governor Clinton returned to Arkansas to authorise the execution of a black man, Ricky Ray Rector, who was so profoundly mentally disabled that he told the guards to keep his last meal so he could have it tomorrow.

Attacking blacks when an election neared became a habit: in 1996, Clinton signed a package of welfare reform that effectively abolished benefits for poor women after a two-year time-limit. They are disproportionately black -- and as a recession hits now, they will suffer severely.
Of course you have to make compromises to achieve power. But at some point, on some issues, you have to say: no, I can't. I can't execute this mentally disabled black guy. I can't plunge millions of kids into poverty. I can't still insist I was right to back the war in Iraq, when it has killed more than 650,000 Iraqis. The Clintons don't have that gagging reflex.

Instead, they chose to turn themselves into weathervanes, pointing whichever way the winds of mega-power blow. Why did it take us so long to see them for what they are? Partly, it is because the Clintons were blessed with a parade of even greater grotesques as enemies. The right couldn't attack the Clintons on their genuinely scandalous behaviour, because they supported it all: the executions, the abolition of benefits, the crackdowns.

So they contrived nonsense scandals, like Whitewater and Monicagate. Today, many of them are serving up stale sexism against Hillary: right-wing host Tucker Carlson has announced, "There's something about her that feels castrating, overbearing and scary." Think about the symbolism for the watching world if the Clintons manage to snatch this nomination. The people in a majority of states in America will have shown they are ready to embrace a black man as president -- only for some white guys in suits to hand it to the wife of the ex-president.

Their arguments in their own defence will seem feeble. The idea that Hillary is more "experienced" seems to me both anti-feminist and untrue. How does being married to a man make you "experienced" in his job? As the stand-up comedian Chris Rock said in a recent gig, "I don't get it. I've been married for 10 years -- but if my wife came out here on stage now, you wouldn't laugh."

There is evidence that President Obama would be more susceptible to pressure from progressives than Hillary. If the Clintons prevail, there will be a worse effect still: the US will be much more likely to have another Republican president. Most major polls show Obama is more likely to beat John McCain. The Republicans are desperate for a Hillary candidacy, knowing it is the one thing that can unite their base behind McCain. The far-right radio hosts, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, have begged their listeners to go out and vote for her in the Democratic primaries.

Hillary would be unable to make an election issue out of McCain's greatest weakness -- his support for the invasion of Iraq -- because she made the same dumb mistake. She would have to fall back on reinforcing right-wing ideas by bragging about her "toughness". The enthusiasm Obama has stirred among first-time voters would leech away.

With their latest lunge at power, the Clintons have shown us how they should be remembered when the end credits roll -- as a greasy stain on the bright blue dress of the Democratic Party.

(© The Independent, London)
- Johann Hari in Washington

Poets, Scholars, Storytellers

Ireland's literary history is well-known and, as a rabid reader of all things, I am in heaven, even with just the small Westport library to browse in. There are several bookstores and many reading clubs. The one I have joined meets in the rare and used bookshop in town and our selection for March discussion was 'In Cold Blood.' What an interesting choice! For me, an American, I remember this book being controversial because of the sympathetic treament by the author towards at least one of the murderers and also the fact that it was one of the first efforts to understand 'senseless' murders and their perpetrators. The advent of nurture or nature in regards to criminals.

When I mentioned that in the U.S. murders like this are so commonplace that they might not even be reported anymore, my Irish co-members told me that while gangland execution-style murders are becoming more common in Ireland, and domestic abuse has always been part of the crime scene, senseless murders are extremely rare. In fact, they were hard put to think of any more recent than one they all remembered from the 1980's. So we spent some time discussing the boys who did the cold-blooded murder of the family back in the 1960's and how these young men were mistreated enough that perhaps they were not completely responsible for what they did, that they must have been insane because what normal person would do a thing like that, execute a whole family for $40?

All in all, a wonderfully literate evening with honest scrutiny of the writing, premise, style, and conclusion of a timeless piece of literature.

I am in the process of reading 'The Ireland Anthology' edited by Sean Dunne which covers Irish literature from the earliest times to modern days, including history, religion, and fiction. There I found a poem by Desmond O'Grady that struck me, especially in regards to the past year of searching for the place I might call home:

Tipperary

It's a long way to Tipperary
it's a long way to go -- and various.
It's a torture of twists, about-turns,
disillusions, disappointments.
The way to Tipperary appears
perennially dark with only
occasional twilights.

If you decide to go to Tipperary
set out while you're young, plucky;
at that age when you're bright-eyed with visions
of radiant horizons of revelation and achievement
and you know nothing of twilights or the dark;
that age when all creation, all life shines clear
as spring sunlight, bright as light-catching gold.

When you set out you must go alone.
There are no maps of the way to Tipperary.
Your only conmpass is your own heart. Trust that!

Some see their Tipperary clearly from the start;
see it's a long road, full of daily pitfalls;
a labyrinth of curious sidestreets, inviting
guesthouses; giddy with the temptations
of those bogey people's trinket stalls'
hokeypokey -- daily thieves of eternal energy --
easy come, easy go, you've sold your soul,
you've no more choice. They sell bedlam!

On the way to Tipperary keep your eye open
for signals of direction, encouragement;
that nod of understanding, comradeship,
a cherishing arm on your pillow. You'll see
beautiful sights on the way to Tipperary:
man's mirage tales, imagination's monuments.
You'll behold the endless vistas, panorams
of vision. Be curious about them all
for the gracious gifts they will afford you.
Without them you'd live that much the poorer.

It's a long way to Tipperary
and when you get there
nothing awaits you. You'll find no roadsign,
no brassband and welcoming committee
with a banner proclaiming you're in Tipperary
and a medallion to hang around your neck.
You'll find only what you brought with you
in your heart.

Then, what you must do
is make and leave some record
of what your Tipperary means to you --
as witness for all those behind you
on their way to their own Tipperaries.

It's a long way to Tipperay
but all our hearts lie there.

The News for This Week, the First Week of March

Each week is a little different. As I get a bit more settled, meet people, find my way around, life feels less strange, more familiar. This week I have been in Westport for 5 weeks. Soon I will stop counting and just BE here.

Last week I drove for the first time, something I was irrationally terrified at the prospect. Well maybe not so irrationally; having been carted around a bit on the back roads, I just don't look anymore. The margin of error on not slamming into a tree or stone wall must have given rise to the measurement of the 'nano.'

But driving myself from Castlebar where I picked up the Ford Fiesta rental car (a piece of US crap if there ever was one) to Dublin was daunting. Not the least because I STILL don't get driving on the right. I continue to look in the wrong direction and so spend long minutes studying the road before venturing across. I must look like a right idjit!

But I did ok, especially on the satanic roundabouts where everything in you is screaming that everyone is going the wrong way and we will all DIE!! I did ok. I chanted the mantra 'driver is always on the middle line in the road, middle line in the road' and that really helped. I only found myself on the wrong side of the road once and that was solely beacuse there were no lines on the country lane and no one else on the road for me to gauge my position against.

I took the big highways from Castlebar to Swinford, Charlestown and on toward Sligo where I stopped at Strandhill on the Atlantic to see the incredible waves the last evening's storm had brought in and indulged in a seaweed bath at Celtic bathhouse. Very relaxing although soaking in a tub of tendrilly seaweed seemed strange, slimy, sea-smelling and yet very relaxing. And supposed to be moisturizing as well but I can't say that I noticed that improvement.

I also drove up the side of a mountain in pursuit of the Carrowmore Megalithic Tombs, 5 passage tombs from pre-Christian times. I drove along the ledge of a skimpy track which was barely hacked into the side of the mountain, no guard rails, edging astonished sheep out of the way with the front of my funky Ford, and then got stuck. No place to turn around unless you consider 1000 feet down a way out. So I rocked the car a little, found traction, and continued on, through potholes the size of ponds, and a track that looked more like a riverbed.

I love doing these things, looking for remote artefacts in isolated places but why do I always have to do it ALONE!?? I considered the real possibility that there was no place to turn around, the weather was changing into something like a storm, and where the fuck was I?? Thankfully, responding to my prayers, a flat place opened up marked with a sign for the Tombs several km further off, down the side of the mountain. I got out of the Ford and made my way down mountain a bit but saw nothing resembling a tomb unless it was my own so returned to the Ford which I was now praising to the high heavens, clumsily turned in a 12-point turn, and weak-kneed, made my way down the river bed, through the ponds, past the still astonished sheep, stopped to open the cattle gate, stopped to close the cattle gate, and then as I hit tarmac, breathed a sigh of relief. Back in civilization once again.

I made a promise to myself -- no more remote wanderings solo, I will have to explore with others from now on. Not that I was ever in any real danger, but the view which I was rewarded with at the top of the mountain proved to me that I was in true Irish wilderness, remote and beautiful but not even within cell phone coverage if I should need a tow out.