The Haiti earthquake disaster is undoubtedly very sad - these poor people have suffered enough without having this cruel twist of nature's fate laying waste to the sprawling city of Port au Prince.
What I find very curious about the unfolding disaster, is how everyone has decided that Haitians who find goods and walk off with them are 'looters'. How do you loot a pile of crumbled concrete and twisted steel foundation rods?
I would dispute whether, in this instance, it counts as 'looting' when people find stuff and take it as their own. Think about it. Nothing really exists anymore. The country, society, whatever you want to call it, has been utterly razed to the ground. There is no infrastructure, no functioning government, no industry, no insurance companies to come to the rescue, no concept of land and property ownership...because most buildings in that city have either been seriously damaged or totally wrecked.
I won't call it a case of 'finder's keepers'. But I would call the 'looting' a form of salvage. Most people are starving, or homeless, or starving and homeless. They are the lucky ones. Others are dead, suffering under a pile of busted concrete and breeze block, or are mourning deceased relatives.
So I think it fair game that people tuck in and help themselves in the circumstances. Any owners of whatever used to exist can't possibly 'sell' the wares they have.
Some of the pictures I've seen in the press have shown shopkeepers with guns, loosing off into the crowd, with a caption underneath along the lines of: "a shopkeeper protects his shop in the face of rampaging looters".
And he'll be stood on a large mound of broken steel, aluminum and wood, in the same way as an Anteater stands on his ant hill with his big old schnozzle poking out defiantly.
"Deez mah motherfucking Ants! You back da fuck up, y'hear?"No, mate, this is really sad and I'm sorry to have to point this out but...it used to be your fucking shop. It's no longer a shop, is it? It's a sorry mound of shite. Martha isn't going to drop by at 3 o'clock later this afternoon with a crisp dollar bill in order to pick up a couple of tins of chick peas and some collared greens. Martha is dead. The dollar bill is worth one sheet of bog roll, which you don't sell anymore because it turned to putty in the rain.
Adios, for now.
This is a link to Unicef's Haiti Earthquake Fund for Children, should you happen to be reading this site today in a generous mood.
11 comments:
"Deez mah motherfucking Ants! You back da fuck up, y'hear?"
Genius. I lol'd. That's going in my quote vault.
Genius! I LOLLed.
A sad state of affairs. Still, the yanks are there now so everything will be 'alright'.
Comment cava, Haiti?
Yo Mr D -Some just can not let go of the life they used to have,even if it is just a pile of rubble.
I guess many are still in shock and will take time to adjust to a new reality.
As for those cunts going around shooting salvagers/survivors well...there cunts!
But then Ive never had to life through a natural disaster so what the fuck would I know....I go into a panic when I`m running low on cigars for fuck sake!
"Deez mah motherfucking Ants! You back da fuck up, y'hear?"
Is that supposed to be a Haitian..FFS!
The best/worst (clearly very bad) thing I heard was the prison.
Fuck me, it stayed up but the 5,000 nutters in killed the guards and left. And we're not talking petty crime here, we're talking kidknapp barons and drug lords, mixed in with the occasional nutjob Papa Doc fan.
It's all gone a bit Batman Begins.
I think it's hit a stage where the UN has to envoke whatever the power it has that allows it to take control. The government is similar to that shop, crumbled. The yanks have also said they aren't there to fight, which basically means they will not leave the airport and are happy to watch it all flush down the toilet.
There is a certain irony in that their response to Haiti is ten times that of Katrina.
In Omega Man, is Charlton 'the' Heston looting?
It's called looting because the unfortunates are black people. Just the usual dog whistle.
TV - and the media in general - tells us that black people are all robbers by their very nature, so when Hurricane Katrina struck the US immediately we were told about looters. They didn't say anything like that about Galveston.
Just remember that after the Tsunami in 2004 the big scare story wasn't that there were looters everywhere but instead focused on child trafficking. Those perverted Thai paedophile rings and Gary Glitter you see.
The media reflects the prejudice of the society it operates in. So these must be ours sadly. In Brazil the looting story is being expanded into one of gang warfare...
Good comment Shug
I notice the Daily Mail is really making a meal out of how savage and unruly all those horrid darkies are.
Fucking racist cunts.
It manna from heaven for the Mailites,violence, sex and darkies...great stuff!
The Mail was very close to being done I thought. Last week it's headline was about how they were making road blocks out of dead bodies. No pictures.
The actual comment was that bodies were blocking the roads, I would imagine because there isn't really anywhere else to put 50,000 dead people. Then the article spoke only about raping crime gangs.
Nice.
The Mail editorial stance on the whole Haiti thing is nothing short of a national disgrace. Utterly despicable. And as usual, only Boaty & D pick up on it and talk about it.
That sick rag should be boycotted.
"You're 'shop' is finished."
You are shop is finished?
lol
I fucking hate typos. Most annoying thing about writing.
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