Talk:Looting/Archive 1

message: OK, so if there’s a riot and you steal a stereo out of a store, yes, that’s looting. But, if you steal food from a half-submerged store that is just going to go bad and be thrown out anyway, is that “looting”?
The perpetrators might call it "scavenging." The law doesn't look at it any differently, though.--65.113.231.67 20:25, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: scavenging

message: This article needs serious help.  Benjamin, how much of this are you responsible for? · Katefan0(scribble) 21:41, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
I think that's what history is for. If you go back to my first edit, you'll see what it looked like before. Basically - it was the "looting is stealing" racial ignorant POV. Now it has a new shiny - "everybody steals you idiot" look to it. Jump right in there's plenty of room for synthesis. Given that WASP looted the entire continent, I suggest we start with that. Benjamin Gatti
:I'm listing this on RFC; it was a lot less biased before you started working on it.  I'm tempted to just revert to The Anome's last version before you starting inserting unproven assertions and POV statements. · Katefan0(scribble) 05:05, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
::I hope of course that we do get some eyes on this. However, the assertion that "looting" is simply theft is ignorant and I won't stand for it. Looting is a complicated psychosocial dynamic separate from other forms of "wealth redistribution". Benjamin Gatti
:::Looting is a complicated psychosocial dynamic - true. Your edits are blatant POV - equally true. Sorry, I revert. Cyclopia 19:14, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup... 

message: I thought I'd drop in and see if I can help. Just a little pointer...I'd rather not see comments like "Write here" in the article itself. If you want to make it a comment on the page, that's fine, but that kind of stuff really shouldn't be in the article itself for everyone to see. Just looks sort of messy. --Woohookitty 00:07, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is messy, but it is a section that must be written and that someone has to do. It is a remark, like stub alerts are. Unfortunately AFAIK there's no "stub alert" for paragraphs, it would be nice if it exists. --Cyclopia 14:42, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep I know the purpose, but there is a better way. Making it a comment on the page is cleaner and it serves the same purpose. Actually I don't like meta comments at all, especially since you can make the same comments here (i.e. "someone needs to write...). But I'm ok with them as comments as long as we don't have a ton of them. --Woohookitty 15:55, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Can I see where is that metacomment? I'd like something much more visible to the casual reader as a stub alert. --Cyclopia 19:04, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I added the section stub tag instead. I'm tired of arguing with people on here. Btw, to see meta comments, you just have to click on "Edit this page". Right now, we have a meta comment about needing a free picture for the article. --Woohookitty 04:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for letting me know the existence of the section stub tag! :) I have never seen one before, so I didn't know about their existence. Anyway I don't think meta comments are a good idea, especially in this case where a comment would have to induce people to edit. It is plain nonsense that an "Edit me!" comment is put in a section visible to people that are already editing. Remember that WP is a work in progress, there's nothing bad in stub alerts or comments on pages. Even more, it emphasizes the fact that's is an unfinished product, so we're honest with the casual reader. --Cyclopia 14:50, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the tip. --Woohookitty 17:47, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I made the comment a meta comment outside of the article. --Woohookitty 00:16, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks like the thrashing around has actually stopped for the moment. · Katefan0(scribble) 14:56, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah I'm good, I admit it. lol --Woohookitty 15:52, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: HA!!  No shame! :D · Katefan0(scribble) 15:57, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New editor here

message: This anonymous user seems to vandalize articles by randomly deleting content from the article. I sent him/her a warning, so please keep attention on edits by this IP or similar anonymous users. --Cyclopia 17:39, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: deletions by 200.122.153.10

message: First - I object to redefining looting as theft in the first Sentence. If they were the same thing - we arguable could use a redirect.
Second, this Sentence: "One young man was seen drunkenly attempting to break the window of a bank with a large pipe." doesn't belong anywhere in an encyclopedia. This isn't a newspaper. Breaking into a bank with a large pipe in no way serves to enlighten the reader as to the meaning of the term.
Looting (IMO) is morally neutral - some looting is theft - but some looting is simply a necessary reversion to a state of nature, and we unfairly discuss the issue if we begin with the presumption that the term refers to theft.
Put yourself in the position of persons cut off from society, trapped in the shell of a city with boarded up and empty stores while your children are dying of thirst. You would quite likely break down the boards are get to the water and such really is not theft. Theft presumes a system of private ownership and voluntary transactions - in the absence of such a market, and where lives are at stake such abstraction are unhelpful and irrelevant. You cannot sit there in your easy chair with your cable modem and criticise people in a life threatening situation for failing to choose death rather than appropriate available stores of necessary goods. Benjamin Gatti 08:13, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I know we're "enemies" in your arbitration case, but here I agree on your behaviour on WP. I removed the sentence about the young man you correctly warned about. If only you were always so polite. --Cyclopia 15:36, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "enemies"? good grief save the hyperbole, we're parties to a debate; an interesting and harmless debate about ideas, words, orthodoxies, normative presumptions, and clashes of intellect. I'm curious to see how or if Wikipedia will climb above the mediocrity of the average reader/user. The challenge of democracy really; people want to be represented by someone who feels close to them in background, in speech, etc ... so we elect Everyman to be President, an intellectually uninspiring mostly beer-drinking, spoon-fed man-child - instructed by handlers on how to perform, who can thank his parents for every privilege and has conducted the first multiple-choice Presidency - over say - a legend in his own time - John McCain - war hero, author of inspiring books, lived through the best and worst humanity can offer. Why? John McCain is not Everyman - he isn't similar to any voter, and loses a serious advantage in a democracy, in the US we have become an instinctive democracy. (The first expense of a political campaign are hordes of illegal road-side adverts which only sing the Candidates name to the subconscious of drivers) The Best Vice-President the Democrats could field was an ambulance-chaser - but Edwards is an everyman in the Red States, never mind his intellect or principles, he feels right to the mindless class. So how do we here, as a bit of a democracy elevate the level of dialogue so that it represents the best of the editor group, and not the mean. Let's find out. Benjamin Gatti 16:41, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "enemies" was just an hyperbole (note the quoting marks). I'm glad you don't take it personally. I agree on the principle that WP should not become a voice of the majority, but a voice of the best. Meritocracy is a hard and painstaking process, however, to achieve here. It's a trade-off: freedom of editing and improvement VS quality. The problem is, many people (me and you, for example) disagree on what is quality. BTW, can you frankly explain me something: why are you so obsessed with GW Bush? I very personally agree it must not be nice to live under his presidency, but you seem to have to deviate every subject on a rant about current US politics. I feel under my skin you would eventually talk about Bush in a debate about quantum properties of electrons, or paleolinguistics. Why? I just can't get it. --Cyclopia 17:51, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Bush is a metaphor for the problem of allowing the incurious to participate in democracy. Quite probably democracy cannot survive if we continue to flood the polls with the ranks of ignorance and egoism. China, with its increased structure and the ability to graduate more engineers (while we focus on remedial reading for the least of these) has a fairly good chance of trumping democracy. Israel (highest engineer per capita) is devolving from a democracy to an ethnic oligarchy, and its fairly clear that a democracy in Iraq would be more fundamental and radical than a Hussein presidency. Benjamin Gatti 18:08, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "One young man was seen drunkenly attempting to break the window of a bank with a large pipe." 

message: This article is missing many sources.  example, New Orleans post-Katrina statement about looting, including looting by police, is totally unsources. Iraq and other sections also unsourced.Jo7hs2 (talk) 16:05, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: SOURCES

message: "The iconic bust of Nefertiti, was illegally obtained by the Germans(...)" - The article on the Nefertiti bust is far more cautious to make statements about the legality or illegality of this acquisition. There is a decades old disagreement between Egypt and Germany on this matter, but it is undisputed that the German archaeologists were legally entitled, under Egyptian law of the time, to take a considerale part of their findings home - the dispute is only about the question wether the sharing between the German and the Egyptian Government was a fair deal.
As I said, the article about this matter does avoid this POV. I have thus changed the caption of the picture to "claimed by some to be illegally obtained(...)", since this agrees with the wikipedia article about this issue. The quoted sources also agree that this question has not been settled in a legal or diplomatic way, and there is no reason for wikipedia to take a side in this conflict.
178.200.211.126 (talk) 16:18, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Nefertiti bust

message: Why is there no source for this statement: "However, upon investigation many of the looting claims (in Iraq) were in fact exaggerated."  Iraqi installments are being looted to this day.
: Several sources about the looting in Iraq are cited in looted art - i propose a merger of both articles.Okinawasan 20:47, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Iraq

message: Pillaging now redirects here.  I was wondering if there should be information here about "burning and pillaging" (which does not yet redirect here), including details about the practices of the Vikings and other groups throughout history. -- Beland 08:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Burning and pillaging

message: In 1664 the Maratha leader Shivaji sacked and looted Surat. When Shivaji arrived at Surat he demanded tribute from the Mughal commander and the small army stationed with him for port security. The tribute was refused and so after Shivaji took the city, he put it to sack. Surat was under sack for nearly 3 weeks, in which the army looted all possible wealth from Mughal & Portuguese trading centers. All this loot was successfully transported to Maharashtra before the Mughal Empire at Delhi was alerted. This wealth later was used for development & strengthening the Maratha Empire.
The only exception to the looting was the British factory, a fortified warehouse-counting house-hostel, which was successfully defended by Sir George Oxenden. But the prosperity of the factory at Surat received a fatal blow when Bombay was ceded to the British as part of the dowry for Catherine of Braganza's wedding to Charles II in 1662. Shortly afterwards in 1668 another factory was established in Bombay(Mumbai) by the British East India Company. From that date Surat began to decline with the rise of British interests in Bombay, and the city was sacked again by Shivaji in 1670. By 1689 the seat of presidency was moved to Bombay by the British East India Company. The Surat population had reached an estimated 800,000 in its heyday, but by the middle of the 19th century the number had fallen to 80,000. Surat was again taken by the British in 1759, and the conquerors assumed the undivided government of the city in 1800. Since the introduction of British rule, the city and the surrounding district remained comparatively tranquil; and even during the Revolt of 1857(also known as the first struggle for India's independence) peace was not disturbed, owing in great measure to the loyalty of the leading Muslim families to the British and to the largely mercantile interests of the local population.
::vkvora 02:20, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  In 1664 the Maratha leader [[Shivaji]] sacked and looted [[Surat]].  

message: I edited the looted art article and added many references before i came across this article. I propose a rewriting/merger of both articles as they both cover the same area. While looting provides a better introduction, the looted art article has gathered many examples, references, and sources that might be useful. Any comments?Okinawasan 20:51, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think they are best kept seperate. Looting means the taking of money and valuables of all sorts - to most people the first thing they think of is TV sets etc after American riots, or after the occupations of Iraq, Kuwait etc.  Looted art is far more specific. Of course they could be interlinked more, but i don't see how the looted art article could keep its focus after a merge. Johnbod 22:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oppose merge -- Looted art is a specific subcategory and better treated in a focussed separate article -- a merged article would be far too long anyway. Need a clearer link out of Looting to show there is a major sub-article at Looted art. Also, both articles need a lot of cleanup!!! --mervyn 07:54, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I believe the topics are quite distinct. Looting has a much broader compass. Ergo, I remove the merge tag. --Ghirla-трёп- 17:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I think that the "Looting" article should contain a link to "Looted art", though, e.g. in the "Examples of Looting" section where Nazi plunder is mentioned, but the plundering of art and treasures by the Allies isn't. Alternatively, we could add a "See also" section and put the link to "Looted Art" there. -- 134.2.190.254 (talk) 11:46, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Looted art, while it has many great examples, lacks the neutrality and organization of Art theft, which notes controversial relocations of art. I'm in favor of merging looted art entirely into art theft. Looting, however is more generic than looted art or art theft. (See related discussions at Nazi plunder and looted art.) Ruodyssey (talk) 12:43, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger of [[Looting]] and [[Looted art]] 

message: Yamashita's Gold is an urban legend in the Philippines. It is in regards to searching for looted items, and not necessary about the looting that took place. This reference may not be appropriate for this article. Jim (talk) 16:42, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yamashita's Gold 

message: How absurd is the request for a cite to a source for the sack of rome or constantinople?  Are you gonna ask for sworn and signed affidavit from Geiseric?  Next I expect to see someone demanding a citation for the assertion that Rome is in Italy.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Naerhu (talk • contribs) 14:05, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the tag. The stubbed article on this, Sack of Rome (455), has 3 references but could very easily include many, many more. Ruodyssey (talk) 12:35, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Sack of Rome

message: I have removed a video inserted into this page. The video was released by As-Sahab Foundation for Islamic Media Publication, the media production house for Al-Qaeda. We do not know where it was filmed, although it is presumed to have been in Afghanistan. We don't know where or whether it was edited, by whom, or in which country. What we do know is that the human remains being looted are of a clearly identifiable person. 
There are all kinds of images of looting scenes that would be available that do not involve identifiable individuals, and whose copyright and licensing status is clear. They may not be from the past few years, but they will probably provide a much better depiction of looting than the stripping of valuables from a single body.  Risker (talk) 01:33, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Addendum: I have located an appropriate image on Wikimedia Commons which elegantly matches the text of the article, and have now added it to the page.  Risker (talk) 02:51, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I reverted this edit because I do not agree that the 1906 image is superior to the video.  One cannot tell from the 1906 image that it really depicts looting -- as opposed, for instance, the clearing of traffic hazards from a roadway.  Geo Swan (talk) 23:56, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing video 

message: Someone added the follwong to the header of the article:
"The term looting has been depicted in some quarters as an intrinsically racist term as it seems to have been applied more frequently to the behavior of African Americans than to that of white people." with the following source: http://www.aamovement.net/news/2005/katrinacoverage.html
While I do indeed concur that the article describes a rescist application of terms, I ABSOLUTELY disagree with the claim that this validates the usage of the term 'looting' as intrinsically rascist. While the medium did use the word looting in a rascist context, this does not mean that looting is intrinsically rascist. Looting has a connotation that is by most accounts negative. This negative connotation was used in the describtion of the activities of a black youngster, who was doing the same thing as white people, while what these white people where doing was described with a word with a positive or at least neutral connotation: 'finding'. In this particluar article, the context of the usage of the word looting is rascist, not the word itself.Mkruijff (talk) 18:06, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the above editor. Given the demographic location of the disaster, the looting was done by the residents. Had the disaster happened in Beverly Hills, the ethnicity of the survivors or looters would not be an issue. I think any reference to race should be removed from the article. Jim (talk) 13:39, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

text: I agree it should go, too. Its three refs are not reliable as the above editor stated. It may also border on WP:OR. Just because one caption says "looting" for black people and another says "finding" for whites doesn't mean the word "looting" itself is intrinsically racist; it means the captions' authors may be racist or at the very least made an egregious choice of words. Looting for survival or personal gain is thousands of years old and shouldn't be redefined with modern, race-related connotations. Ruodyssey (talk) 06:29, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

text: Though the listed "examples" go back over a thousand years, the English term itself is certainly from no farther back than the late 18th century, and was only converted into a verb in the mid 19th.  The situation of the former was in British colonized India, and the use of the term in the United States began in earnest in the highly racialized South, especially gaining steam during the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow era. Thus, the term as it is understood in modern English was created entirely within the confines of "modern, race-related connotations" 24.14.38.230 (talk) 08:18, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Forgive me, but in that last sentence I was not referring to the word "looting", which as you know is rooted in Hindi, predates British Raj and was integrated into the American South. Indeed, the word "looting" is closely tied to racism, but I'm not convinced of its the subject's intrinsic racism due to the vast (and scarcely listed) historical context it is commonly used to describe. I'm really more concerned that this article serves as a redirect for plundering, pillaging, despoiling, sacking, spoils of war and their variants. An etymology paragraph for "looting" and other terms would be a great expansion to the article, but since this is a point of contention, solid RSes would be needed. Do you agree the those three sources are not? Ruodyssey (talk) 07:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Looting a rascist term??? NO!!!

message: I removed the  tag (dated Sept. '08) on this item due to its extensive coverage at New York City blackout of 1977. Ruodyssey (talk) 07:24, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: New York City blackout of 1977

message: I removed the sentence along with its  tag (dated Sept '08) about shop owners defending their stores with personal firearms. This point is already sourced and elaborated upon in the main article here. Ruodyssey (talk) 08:55, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: [[1992 Los Angeles riots]]

message: Don't looters typically justify their actions based on expediency and/or some concept that they are owed equality of outcome in revolutions and so forth? Surely there's been papers on this  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.193.177.126 (talk) 19:53, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethics of looting? 

message: There's been a merge tag on war loot since 2009, and it really has no business being a different article to this one. Also, what's with the ridiculous over-representation of Indian burial sites here? Shouldn't it be at best a minor note under "Archaeological removals" to avoid undue emphasis? Herr Gruber (talk) 05:29, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Looting and War Loot 

message: Note to self & others: Could be improved with Nobelist George Akerlof's work on (corporate) looting.John Z (talk) 11:08, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Akerlof 

message: "Modern commercial actors are seldom held accountable for their role in the illegal exploitation of natural resources from modern conflict zones, even though pillage is prosecuted as a matter of course in other contexts."James Stewart, "Corporate War Crimes: Prosecuting Pillage of Natural Resources", 2010 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1875053 writes James G. Stewart.
I don't see how this passage, in the article since June, is misplaced in war looting, nor how it could be undue weight, as it surely is economically the largest looting / pillage (redirects here). There are plenty such sources and articles Blood diamond , Conflict minerals. Could be quoted better, yes, but don't see any confusion. John Z (talk) 21:36, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I meant that it gives undue weight to a single essay; as expressed, it appears to be one person's opinion (I realise that it isn't, but that's how it appears). The section on war looting is about something completely different, and appending that quote to the end of it makes it seem something of a non-sequitur. If it were part of a section on the commercial pillage of war zones, that would be fine, but since such a section hasn't yet been written, that quote doesn't really fit anywhere. DoctorKubla (talk) 07:59, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  passage on commercial natural resource exploitation in wars 

message: I've land here looking for the meaning of ransack, was redirected here, but can't understand what is the relation between the terms. Ransack is not mentioned, except for the redirection notice.
If someone can fix it, it will be appreciated.
El Hoy (talk) 17:35, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: To ransack something is to loot it. They're synonyms. Herr Gruber (talk) 21:38, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ransack unexplained redirection. 

message: Based on the definitions mentioned in the beginning of the article, the following sentence in the latter part of the article should be re-worded, as being desperate for food is not looting, but is actually scavanging.
"In 2005 in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina there was extensive looting by some people desperate for food"  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gizziiusa (talk • contribs) 22:21, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there are further problems with that definiton  (Looting is loosely distinguished from scavenging in terms of objects taken: scavenging implies taking of essential items such as food, water, shelter, or other material needed for survival while looting implies items of luxury or not necessary for survival such as art work, precious metals or other valuables.) - "Scavenging" to me implies taking stuff that is abandoned or unwanted (regardless of value or why the scavenger wants it).  The Scavenger article seems to agree, as it points to Waste picker for the issue of humans taking stuff.  Conversely, straving people breaking into a warehous to take food necessary for survival would probably still count as "looting", even if justified. 62.172.108.24 (talk) 13:41, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  rewording needed ? 

message: I check pages listed in :Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of :Looting's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "Haykal 1976":
From Al Kudr Invasion: 
From Invasion of Banu Qaynuqa: 
From Expedition of Abdullah Ibn Unais: 
From Al-Is Caravan Raid: 
From Invasion of Banu Qurayza: 
From Invasion of Buwat: 
From Expedition of Dhat al-Riqa: 
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 20:09, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: DoctorKubla (talk) 09:34, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphaned references in [[:Looting]] 

message: Is there a term or phrase that encapsulates: Once the first person has broken a window, everyone starts looting?
Don't know where to look to search for such an entity of language so I typed it here.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.8.100.150 (talk) 21:20, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken window theory? 

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thread_title:  External links modified