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

Anthony

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/15/looting-typhoon-haiyan-philippines-new-orleans-haiti

These narratives about "looting", though they never withstand scrutiny,
tap into animating myths about human civilisation being only a few hot meals
away from total breakdown. By mobilising that common sense, often in a racialised way,
they exert real effects in organising violent interventions into disaster zones.

And it is worth someone asking why that is almost invariably the preference.
Rebecca Solnit has demonstrated that, contrary to a conventional myth, human society
does not collapse into a Hobbesian state of nature in the event of disaster. On the contrary,
people tend to pull together and become more cooperative – a certain baseline communism
takes over.
In the aftermath of 9/11, one of the important stories that was neglected at the
time, only later to be patronised in a docudrama, was the spontaneous boat lift which transported
half a million people off Manhattan island.

I was listening to the news earlier, and apparently they are showing a picture quite different
than it really is. Perhaps there is no need for armed convoys guarding the food source, as this article
shows, and as has Naomi Klein written near the end of her book.
 
Perhaps a little of both, encouraging patterns of chaos by reporting on it out of context, such as that within the Philippine situation, most of that 'food' will go to rot exposed under those conditions, which is why, you occassionally hear stories of grocers etc giving it away when the power goes out and doesn't look to come back on before it spoils... especially if they have insurance for it. As usual, it's what they don't say.
 
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