About those looters
CNN appears to be pushing the ‘widespread looting in Egypt’ story pretty aggressively. I would caution people not to accept that narrative quite so readily. While there is definitely looting, it’s unclear how common it is. Democracy Now‘s senior producer Sharif Kouddous is tweeting from Egypt, and reports that Egyptians are actually cleaning the streets of trash and forming neighborhood watch committees to protect innocent Egyptians from the looters. Furthermore, Al-Jazeera is reporting that apprehended looters were in possession of central security services IDs and government issued weapons.
My point is, revolutions are chaotic beasts. The media should definitely cover the looting stories, but by overemphasizing such events (without bothering to fill in the details of who is looting and why?) the media ends up discrediting a largely peaceful, democratic movement.
When societies break down, looting almost always happen happens. Some people steal to steal, some steal for survival, and others commit anticipatory stealing (Who knows how much longer bread is going to be around? Better stock up now). It’s best to let the dust settle before we start calling for the government to shoot everyone, especially if some of Mubarak’s secret police are doing the stealing.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Michael Rivero and Ossama Khayat, Somad Mann. Somad Mann said: News coming out of Egypt that some Mubarak security police thugs are doing the looting in order to blame and… http://dlvr.it/FMyfF [...]
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Tweets that mention About those looters at Unreported -- Topsy.com
29 Jan 11 at 6:25 pm
We Americans are not accustomed to collecting facts before we judge others. Our middle name is “knee-jerk”.
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Jim
29 Jan 11 at 8:49 pm
This sounds about right. As far as coverage of this goes, NBC’s Richard Engel is the only one in the U.S. mainstream media to trust.
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Nick
29 Jan 11 at 8:59 pm
[...] police thugs are doing the looting in order to blame and demonize the revolutionaries – Read More Here(Gizmodo) – Al Jazeera English Live for iPhone – Read More Here(Uruknet) – [...]
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Protest News 1-30-11 | Dprogram.net
30 Jan 11 at 8:25 am
Forget these biased media! According to the German magazine Der Spiegel (which is biased, too, but never mind), there is solid evidence that Mubarak’s regime is responsible for most of the looting, opening of prisons, and arson. An Egyptian policeman reported that he was ordered to “go home” after 3500 prisoners were released from a prison in Kairo. He’s in hiding now, fearing for his life. Another witness, Emad Gad, an analyst working for the Al Aram Centre for political studies, said that there had been a lot of orders from the highest echelon, to release prisoners, arm them and send them to the streets.
Mubarak obviously needs Egypt to look like total chaos, in order to discredit the protest movement and justify his further presence in the country. And also, the administrative structures in Egypt do operate on corruption, this should not be forgotten.
(Been to Egypt, know what I’m talking about).
Here is a link to the Spiegel article, unfortunately it’s all in German, but perhaps they’ll translate it before long.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,742498,00.html
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Petra
30 Jan 11 at 10:19 am
hey, Allison, you’re alright.
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FrankBlank
30 Jan 11 at 5:38 pm
[...] Originally Posted by Sinar_Matahari The Egyptian people don't want incumbent president Hosni Mubarak in office any longer and I suppose they feel that the only way to get their point across is to burn, loot and destroy homes, businesses, buildings…Apparently, he's running an authoritarian regime. I was just reading how Egyptian youth are rising up because they're pissed off that all ISPs have been cut off. I guess they can't live without their facebook…lol….The Egyptian government has taken the news network Al Jazeera off the air, too. There's more to it than this, but that's all I know for now. Read this (about the looting). About those looters at Unreported [...]
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Riots in Egypt? - Page 2 - SocialPhobiaWorld.com
30 Jan 11 at 7:37 pm
Do you have a link to the al-jazeera reports? We need it to substantiate a statement at the Wikipedia article about the 2011 protests.
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Ocaasi
31 Jan 11 at 3:08 am
From the Al-Jazeera live blog, though I hear it was also reported on AJE.
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Allison Kilkenny
31 Jan 11 at 7:12 am
[...] story pretty aggressively. I would caution people not to accept that narrative quite so readily. Read More Here(TotallyCoolPix) – The Egypt Protests in pictures – Read More Here(Breitbart) – US [...]
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Protest News 1-31-11 | Dprogram.net
31 Jan 11 at 3:55 pm
We’ve seen that narrative ‘reported’ on Australia mainstream news media also. And they mention the Muslim Brotherhood a lot. Or should I say the ‘banned’ Muslim Brotherhood. Every time MB is mentioned, they throw ‘banned’ at the front, which immediately implies that the MB is some sort of nefarious organisation – probably terrorists because they are, you know, Muslims. Of course the fact that Mubarak is a dictator and bans any worthy opposition is not reported. Who needs context, or facts for that matter.
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ttramone
7 Feb 11 at 9:38 am