The real story of 'looting' after a disaster like typhoon Haiyan - good read

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/15/looting-typhoon-haiyan-philippines-new-orleans-haiti
<snip>
At some point, the natural disaster as a category will have to be interred and obituaried.

It isn't just that the climate is partially manmade. All such disasters, insofar as they befall human communities, are socially constituted. We have known for some time, for example, that famine is the result not simply of crop failure, but of political and market failure. It is planned human responses, as much as the natural event itself, that produces the disaster.

So it is in the Philippines after typhoon Haiyan. The winds, reading 195mph, tore up the previously solid streets of towns and cities, killing thousands: there is no reliable count, for who has tallied up every rotting corpse on every devasted street? Major towns were almost totally submerged in storm waters. But the immediate aftermath is where there is an opportunity to prevent death by disease, starvation and injury.

And there the tale becomes depressingly familiar. The agonisingly slow delivery of aid. Desperate survivors scratching out messages pleading for help, seemingly getting none. Soon, the panic about social breakdown provides a justification for militarising the disaster zones. And at the centre of it all, a morally loaded narrative about "looters". Consider the following examples.

[daleanime]

1. ........

[brer cat]

2. very good read, malaise.

The looting myth is used to justify much abuse by the state/local authorities as we certainly saw after Katrina.

[Doctor_J]

3. kind of like how the banks looted the US treasury after hurricane w went through

One man's looting is another man's opportunity

[hunter]

4. Highly recommended...

Sad truth there.