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A Sign Of Just How Quickly The Looting Will Start When The SHTFApril 27, 2011 One of our readers here at The Warning Signs forwarded me a video from the Weather Channel in which they pointed out the problem with looters in an area that was recently hit by a tornado (thanks Dan). This immediately grabbed my attention and prompted me to investigate whether this was an isolated incident or an ongoing problem in these areas. In a matter of minutes I was able to find dozens of news articles reporting the problem of looters preying on victims of the...

My sister, Amy Chavez, has been living in Japan for 15 years and writes a humor column for the English-language Japan Times. Given her experience in both cultures, she’s been called upon more than once to comment on Japanese culture and speculate on the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. Her most recent piece at the Huffington Post (not a usual hangout for conservatives and libertarians) makes one simple but hugely important point about why the Japanese have handled the current disaster with such dignity: Their culture values integrity. It’s not that they have faith in government, or even necessarily...

If I hear one more snide comment about the utter lack of looting in Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, I’m going to scream. First, what happened in Japan? Entire towns were washed away. In the hardest hit areas, there was little left to loot and few left to loot it. Second, the scope of the disaster is so great — the death toll still unknown but leaping upward every day, with nuclear reactors flirting with meltdown and huge numbers of homeless, it isn’t as if the media is going to stop and figure out whether any...

Foreign observers are noting with curiosity and wonder that the Japanese people in disaster-plagued areas are not looting for desperately-needed supplies like bottled water. This behavior contrasts sharply with what has so often happened in the wake of catastrophes elsewhere, such as Haiti, New Orleans, Chile, and the UK, to name only a few. Most people chalk up the extraordinary good behavior to Japanese culture, noting the legendary politeness of Japanese people in everyday life. Culture does play a role, but it is not an adequate explanation. After all, in the right circumstances, Japanese mass behavior can rank with the...

Notice the difference between the character of the Japanese people under extreme stress patiently waiting for relief vs. the unemployable welfare recipients and their unemployable offspring looting everything in sight in New Orleans during the Katrina aftermath...look at what entitlements has fostered in this country...scum!

Apparently not. And solidarity seems especially strong in Japan itself. Perhaps even more impressive than Japan’s technological power is its social strength, with supermarkets cutting prices and vending machine owners giving out free drinks as people work together to survive. Most noticeably of all, there has been no looting, and I’m not the only one curious about this. More at The Telegraph I'm not that curious. I've never been to Japan, I don't know anything about it beyond they make my Playstation 3 work, and looking at it go you'd think a nuclear reactor powers it, so I have high...

VIDEO

The landscape of parts of Japan looks like the aftermath of World War Two; no industrialised country since then has suffered such a death toll. The one tiny, tiny consolation is the extent to which it shows how humanity can rally round in times of adversity, with heroic British rescue teams joining colleagues from the US and elsewhere to fly out. And solidarity seems especially strong in Japan itself. Perhaps even more impressive than Japan’s technological power is its social strength, with supermarkets cutting prices and vending machine owners giving out free drinks as people work together to survive. Most...

An amazing thing to ponder. Thankfully the world is taking notice.

The layer of human turmoil - looting and scuffles for food or services - that often comes in the wake of disaster seems noticeably absent in Japan. “Looting simply does not take place in Japan. I’m not even sure if there’s a word for it that is as clear in its implications as when we hear ‘looting,’" said Gregory Pflugfelder, director of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University. Japanese have “a sense of being first and foremost responsible to the community,” he said.

Mob Robbers And Rampant Looting: Is This The Future Of America?Feburary 26,2011 Have you ever heard of mob robberies? What happens is that dozens of young people storm a store at the same time, take whatever they want, and then storm out as powerless store clerks watch helplessly. Most of the time these "mob robbers" end up getting caught, but unfortunately "group crime" is a trend that is rising. Is it a sign of the times that large groups of people are starting to recklessly invade retail establishments? Is this the future of America? As I have written about...

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- At least 17 artifacts from the Egyptian Museum of Cairo are missing following a break-in, the country's minister of antiquities said Sunday. The missing objects include a gilded wood statue of King Tutankhamun being carried by a goddess; parts of a gilded wood statue of Tutankhamun harpooning; a limestone statue of Akhenaten; a statue of Nefertiti making offerings; a sandstone head of an Amarna princess; a stone statuette of a scribe from Amarna; 1 wooden shabti statuettes of Yuya; and a heart scarab of Yuya. The discovery that the ancient treasures are missing came after museum...

From FOX: DEVELOPING: Loud explosions and gunfire were heard in the Egyptian capital of Cairo Friday, as protesters demanding the removal of President Hosni Mubarak defied a curfew, Al Jazeera reported. Egyptian television reports the ruling party headquarters in Cairo are on fire. From TWITTER: WashingtonPost: Clinton: We urge #Egypt authorities to allow peaceful protest, reverse unprecedented steps it has taken to cut off communications less than 20 seconds ago

NEW DELHI: Standing in the darkness in the chaos of Saturday night Cairo, members of the Indian community had nothing but their children's cricket bats to fend off looters. One of them requesting anonymity managed to get through to this paper despite intermittent mobile phone services. "All the men are standing guard outside our building. Our wives and children are inside. There is no police or military on the roads in our area. Shops near here are being looted, they even looted the main government hospital. Pray for us," he said. ( Read: Obama calls on Mubarak, warns Egypt against...

Looters broke into the Egyptian Museum during anti-government protests late Friday and destroyed two Pharaonic mummies, Egypt's top archaeologist told state television. The museum in central Cairo, which has the world's biggest collection of Pharaonic antiquities, is adjacent to the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party that protesters had earlier set ablaze. Flames were seen still pouring out of the party headquarters early Saturday. "I felt deeply sorry today when I came this morning to the Egyptian Museum and found that some had tried to raid the museum by force last night," Zahi Hawass, chairman of the Supreme Council...

...Then dozens of would-be thieves started entering the grounds surrounding the museum, climbing over the metal fence or jumping inside from trees lining the sidewalk outside. One man pleaded with people outside the museum's gates on Tahrir Square not to loot the building, shouting at the crowd: "We are not like Baghdad." After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, thieves carted off thousands of artifacts from the National Museum in Baghdad — only a fraction of which have been recovered. Suddenly other young men — some armed with truncheons taken from the police — formed a human chain outside the...

A federal appeals court in Boston has ruled that the Museum of Fine Arts owns a valuable 1913 painting by Oskar Kokoschka, saying that the statute of limitations had run out on an Austrian woman's claim that the painting had been sold by one of her ancestors under Nazi duress and belonged to her. But the First US Circuit Court of Appeals noted that it wasn't ruling on the legality of the MFA's acquisition of the painting in 1973. And it added that, in the future, museums should take a close look at the background of paintings from that time....

Attorneys general in all 50 states have pledged a coordinated investigation into chaotic foreclosure practices by some of the nation’s largest banks. The Department of Justice is also looking into what happened, while some lawmakers are now calling for a nationwide moratorium on all foreclosures until the legal questions are settled. The Obama administration is insisting such a broad delay would hurt the economy. Editorial Series There is plenty to worry about. But amid all this roiling, neither Congress nor the administration has found a way to address an even more fundamental problem: What government and banks need to do...

This article is about how the nation's biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece. The article is long but well worth reading. If you want to know what life in the Third World is like, just ask Lisa Pack, an administrative assistant who works in the roads and transportation department in Jefferson County, Alabama. Pack got rudely introduced to life in post-crisis America last August, when word came down that she and 1,000 of her fellow public employees would have to take a little unpaid vacation for a while. The county,...

Looters pillaged shops, homes and even attacked a fire station in the burning Chilean city of Concepcion, as rescuers try to find quake survivors. Police fired tear gas to try to disperse an angry crowd that set fire to the Bigger supermarket after they were prevented from entering. Black smoke billowed out over the ruins of Concepcion, one of the cities worst hit by Saturday's 8.8-magnitude quake, which has killed more than 720 people. "It's full, they have water, food, diapers, but the police won't let us go inside," complained one man standing next to the supermarket after a curfew...