Haiti and the looters

[slugger]

Having had a look through a few pics on the nytimes.com website, i'm absolutely in shock at the pain and suffering that people are going through. I've donated and will do next month as well to try and help these poor people in a small way.

What i also find shocking is the brutality being shown towards looters, ie. hung up alive, stoned then set on fire... Yeah sure, looting is a totally wrong thing to do (disrespect to lost lives, property etc), but we have no idea of the suffering that these people are going through and what has driven them to become looters in the first place.

What's your thoughts on the whole situation.

 

[freddielong]

Its just a very sad desperate situation, why is it people with nothing always seem to loose the most.

 

[USER1999]

It is all desperately sad, but the looting has to be stopped. As the police and security forces are heavilly outnumbered, they will make examples of people they catch 'to discourage the others'. If they don't secure the situation, no aid will get through for anyone. It is not fair if what little gets through gets hijacked by armed young men, instead of going where it is needed most.

Also, why are the looters stealing cloth from shops? To sell on?

 

[CliveW]

What i also find shocking is the brutality being shown towards looters, ie. hung up alive, stoned then set on fire... Yeah sure, looting is a totally wrong thing to do (disrespect to lost lives, property etc), but we have no idea of the suffering that these people are going through and what has driven them to become looters in the first place.

What's your thoughts on the whole situation.

If we did this here we wouldn't need to build so many prisons!

 

[viscount17]

What i also find shocking is the brutality being shown towards looters, ie. hung up alive, stoned then set on fire... Yeah sure, looting is a totally wrong thing to do (disrespect to lost lives, property etc), but we have no idea of the suffering that these people are going through and what has driven them to become looters in the first place.

the punishment for looting in situations like this is almost always death. without knowing the specifics of this case (it's too soon) many (i was going to say most) looters aren't usually those directly affected, many are organised and come in from outside the affected areas.

next will be the aid racketeers. show up at every distribution point, take what they can get, however they can get it. to hoard or sell for as much as they can.

cynical? just a bit. I had a friend, helicopter crewman in one of the perennial asian flood emergencies. they were delivering aid to outlying districts - strangely the same trucks kept showing up. so they flew the route backwards one day - got hell from a government minister! after that they dropped the sacks of rice from high enough that they split open.
remember the blue peter appeals for clothing and the rest for Ethiopia back in the 80's? I can tell you where a mountain of it was in 1986 - stuck in a dockyard in Djibouti, along with three brand new trucks (tyres burst in teh heat), grain, rice and oil (from the States), all because of bureaucracy - and the nearest refugee camp was only 8 km away.

 

[Parmo]

I like the way Haitian people are shouting "White people get out" and "Where is America?".

No doubt the US will do the most and still become the villan, yet we donate millions away and yet WE still have people in poverty and OAPs dieing from the cold because they can not afford heating.

 

[viscount17]

No doubt the US will do the most and still become the villain, .

probably because all their aid is marked 'a gift from the people of the united states'

 

[Parmo]

No doubt the US will do the most and still become the villain, .

probably because all their aid is marked 'a gift from the people of the united states'

Truth though if that is the case.

 

[Ethan]

Let any smart ass who has been made homeless and then starved and parched for a week without a penny in their pockets make the first wisecrack or Daily Mail type comment.

 

[CliveW]

The BBC News tonight tells of survivors who have had no food or drinking water for seven days, and then Ben Brown comes on and the first thing he says to camera is how stiflingly hot it is and how he has been drinking copious amounts of water all day! Idiot!