There's something truly surreal about reading LiveJournal at the moment. Some people are so forcefully not writing about what's going on in New Orleans that it hurts. And others are concentrating on the looting -- or more accurately the reporting of it and whether it happens to be racist. It no doubt is, both unintentionally and otherwise, but that's beside the point right now, and it going to take more than a concerned letter to the Guardian to sort that out. The problems that Hurricane Katrina has brought in its wake are way too big to sneak into a LiveJournal post in a few stolen minutes while working....

And I think there needs to be a term for "wading through six feet of raw sewage to salvage what you need to survive the next 24 hours" as opposed to looting. This is looting:

Looting broke out in some New Orleans neighborhoods, prompting authorities to send more than 70 additional officers and an armed personnel carrier into the city. One police officer was shot in the head by a looter but was expected to recover, authorities said.

A giant new Wal-Mart in New Orleans was looted, and the entire gun collection was taken, The Times-Picayune reported. "There are gangs of armed men in the city moving around the city," said Ebbert, the city's homeland security chief. Also, looters tried to break into Children's Hospital, the governor's office said.

On New Orleans' Canal Street, dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates on clothing and jewelry stores and grabbed merchandise. In Biloxi, Miss., people picked through casino slot machines for coins and ransacked other businesses. In some cases, the looting was in full view of police and National Guardsmen.

When people's first reaction to this sort of disaster is to see how much Tommy Hilfiger crap they can stuff in a shopping trolley then you know it isn't just the levee that need fixing.