Looting or Lunch?

Remember those values clarification exercises from 6th grade? Is it ok to steal to feed your kids?

MSNBC says, "Looters take advantage of New Orleans mess"

People in New Orleans who were too poor to be able to get out of town, who had to live at the Superdome, who don't have cars, looted (an AP story on MSNBC and CNN).

At a Walgreen’s drug store in the French Quarter, people were running out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.

No electricity, the food in their fridges rotted.
And it's not like there were any stores open to sell them diapers and food.

Looting is wrong, and lots of the looting was just plain stealing stuff, but please, there's no food for sale in New Orleans!

In 1983 I got caught out in a Monsoon in the Philippines with a couple of friend. We were trapped by water, and slept on a porch of a store, and ate a pineapple that'd been left in the corner of the porch. We were ready to break in for water and food when the rain stopped and the water started receeding. It could have been called looting, but I would have called it lunch.