The Looting Lie

What to say?

Read this:

"A deux ruines d'ici, une équipe de sauveteurs français -venus de Nice, de Lyon et de Guyane- ausculte en vain une dalle de béton. Sous cette toiture, devenue pierre tombale, une voix de femme s'est tue. Un peu plus haut, quelques rescapés ont pris place sous un arbre. Il y là Fritzner, un agent des douanes qui a perdu aussi son épouse. Jusqu'à mercredi, Miranda répondait aux appels ; depuis, plus rien. A ses côtés, le frère cadet de Philippe. Lui garde sous sa chaise un fusil à pompe, l'arme de service de l'aîné. « Dans l'état où il est, confie-t-il, ça vaut mieux comme ça. »"

Two ruins from here, a team of french rescuers from Nice, Lyon and Guyana vainly pound on a block of cement. Under this roof, become a fallen stone, a woman's voice has fallen silent. A little higher, some escapees have take up a place under a tree. There is Fritzner, a customs agent who has also lost his spouse. Up to thursday, Miranda responded to calls; since then, nothing. At his side, the little brother of Phillipe. He keeps a pump action shotgun under his chair, the service arm of his brother. 'In the state we are in, he confides, it is better like this."


Read this.

Kathleen Tierney: Social scientists began studying disasters in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A lot of this research was sponsored by the military and defense establishment, and the kinds of things they wanted to know about were related to nuclear war. They wanted to know how people would behave if Russia dropped the bomb on us—would they panic; would they engage in criminal behavior; would they engage in antisocial behavior; would they be able to pick themselves up and rebuild society? So, from the very beginning, researchers put a lot of emphasis on crime, deviance, looting—that sort of behavior—because that’s what their funders cared about. And there was a lot of field work done in disasters, where researchers go out in disaster areas and take a look at what’s happening. And what did the early research discover? If you go back to the 1950s and you look at some of those writings, a lot of it’s aboutdisaster myths—what people say happens in disasters versus what really happens. What these researchers discovered was that the media—even way back in the 1950s and 1960s—approached huge disasters with certain frames. When the media reports on disasters, they’re inevitably going to focus on the dramatic and antisocial, even if it’s one percent of the population committing these acts. And even back then, the looting myth always came to the fore of media reports.">Kathleen Tierney: Social scientists began studying disasters in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A lot of this research was sponsored by the military and defense establishment, and the kinds of things they wanted to know about were related to nuclear war. They wanted to know how people would behave if Russia dropped the bomb on us—would they panic; would they engage in criminal behavior; would they engage in antisocial behavior; would they be able to pick themselves up and rebuild society? So, from the very beginning, researchers put a lot of emphasis on crime, deviance, looting—that sort of behavior—because that’s what their funders cared about. And there was a lot of field work done in disasters, where researchers go out in disaster areas and take a look at what’s happening.

And what did the early research discover?

If you go back to the 1950s and you look at some of those writings, a lot of it’s aboutdisaster myths—what people say happens in disasters versus what really happens. What these researchers discovered was that the media—even way back in the 1950s and 1960s—approached huge disasters with certain frames. When the media reports on disasters, they’re inevitably going to focus on the dramatic and antisocial, even if it’s one percent of the population committing these acts. And even back then, the looting myth always came to the fore of media reports.