I can't fault Gates his technological optimism, our entire culture has had it since industrialization began. But I am a bit disturbed that after all the research he and his team must have done to write How to Avoid a Climate Catastrophe, the book is full of "we have to invent it". He doesn't seem to notice that saying that for every emissions source's solution indicates how many ways there are we can fail, so of course we will fail at some.
Experts' blasted for cautioning against use of term 'looting' to describe large-scale California thefts 'People don't need help understanding looting' Critics reacted strongly to claims by "experts" Monday that use of the term "looting" to describe recent large-scale thefts from retail stores in California could be associated with people of color and therefore shouldn't be used. According to the California Penal Code, what we saw was not looting," it wrote. "The penal code defines looting as ‘theft or burglary...during a ‘state of emergency,’ ‘local emergency,’ or ‘evacuation order’ resulting from an earthquake, fire, flood, riot or other natural or manmade disaster.'" The affiliate cited Lorenzo Boyd, a professor of criminal justice and community policing at the University of New Haven, and a retired veteran police officer, who described the term through a racial lens. "Looting is a term that we typically use when people of color or urban dwellers are doing something. We tend not to use that term for other people when they do the exact same thing," he told the affiliate. The affiliate pointed out that they did not yet know the identities and races of the perpetrators of the recent wave of thefts, before noting that they occurred following last Friday's acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. It then cited Martin Reynolds, co-executive director of the Robert C. Maynard Institute of Journalism Education, who was reminded of Black residents in New Orleans that were described as looters for committing "crimes of survival" following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when they stole water, food and other supplies prior to receiving aid from the federal government. "This seems like it's an organized smash and grab robbery. This doesn't seem like looting. We're thinking of scenarios where first responders are completely overwhelmed, and folks often may be on their own," Reynolds said. Critics took to social media to blast the attempt to describe the crime wave as something other than looting, with some suggesting the change wouldn't make any difference, and others calling it an attempt at being politically correct. It’s looting. Just like there were riots in Kenosha, not just protests," former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wrote, referring to the unrest in Kenosha following the non-fatal police shooting of Jacob Blake. "'Experts.' Remember-- they believe if they can control the language they control reality. Time to 'smash and grab' this garbage," Fox News' contributor Tammy Bruce wrote, while another simply wrote, "Umm ok." One critic likened the pushback on using the term "looting" to people claiming critical race theory was taught only in law schools and not to school-age children. "There was no looting. As a matter of fact, 'looting' is only a term used in law school," he wrote. Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/media/experts-blasted-looting-california-thefts
Makes sense. Irish, Italian, Catholic, Jewish gangs, etc., all shook down entire neighborhoods, we called it organized crime, not looting.
I think people are conditioned in their thinking when they see people ransacking a store, stealing it’s merchandise.... it’s looting. Words, meanings evolve. One can make the case for the text-book definition of the word but what people associate with the video footage of the crime is “looting.
Yes, there is something weirdly respectable about, say, white collar looting. We make tv shows celebrating it, in fact.
The failed state's swan song is for leadership to loot the nation. Rome ...you just came along at the right time. failed state government By Naazneen H. Barma | View Edit History Fast Facts Related Content Related Topics: nation-state failed state, a state that is unable to perform the two fundamental functions of the sovereign nation-state in the modern world system: it cannot project authority over its territory and peoples, and it cannot protect its national boundaries. The governing capacity of a failed state is attenuated such that it is unable to fulfill the administrative and organizational tasks required to control people and resources and can provide only minimal public services. Its citizens no longer believe that their government is legitimate, and the state becomes illegitimate in the eyes of the international community. A failed state is composed of feeble and flawed institutions. Often, the executive barely functions, while the legislature, judiciary, bureaucracy, and armed forces have lost their capacity and professional independence. A failed state suffers from crumbling infrastructures, faltering utility supplies and educational and health facilities, and deteriorating basic human-development indicators, such as infant mortality and literacy rates. Failed states create an environment of flourishing corruption and negative growth rates, where honest economic activity cannot flourish. The dynamics leading to and compounding state failure are many and varied, including civil war, ethnic violence or genocide, and predatory government and bureaucratic behaviour. State failure comes in degrees and is often a function of both the collapse of state institutions and societal collapse. A strong state provides core guarantees to its citizens and others under its jurisdiction in the three interrelated realms of security, economics, and politics. A failed state cannot maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and minimize internal conflict. It cannot formulate or implement public policies to effectively build infrastructure and deliver services or effective and equitable economic policies. In addition, it cannot provide for the representation and political empowerment of its citizens or protect civil liberties and fundamental human rights. Thus, state failure manifests itself when a state can no longer deliver physical security, a productive economic environment, and a stable political system for its people. The total collapse of the state marks the final, extreme phase of state failure, and very few states can be described as completely failed or collapsed. Yet, research demonstrates that many states suffer from various degrees of weakness and are therefore potential candidates for failure. Weak states were failing with increasing frequency, most of them in Africa but also a handful in Asia and the Middle East, and failed states are known to be hospitable to and to harbour dangerous nonstate actors such as warlords and groups that commit terrorist acts. For example, at the end of the 20th century, Somalia descended into state collapse under rival warlords, and Afghanistan, a failed state under the Taliban regime, harboured the terrorist group al-Qaeda. Furthermore, state failure poses pressing humanitarian issues and possible emergency relief and state-building responsibilities for the international community. Consequently, understanding the dynamics of state failure and strengthening weak nation-states in the developing world assumed new urgency.
'Woke' crowd tricked voters into passing looter-friendly Proposition 47, sheriff says https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...g-looter-friendly-proposition-47-sheriff-says It’s hard to imagine, but California was once known for being a trailblazer of tough anti-crime laws in the 1990s. After the novel three-strikes law passed in 1994, making the third violent felony a life sentence, the crime rate dropped dramatically. Other measures followed, strengthening laws pertaining to sexual assault. So when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a California prison reduction of up to 46,000 inmates in 2011, the tide was turning toward liberals, and the time was ripe for Proposition 47. This was a ballot initiative that passed three years later, downgrading numerous nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors. Police and politicians say it was an ill-conceived law that tricked voters, as evidenced most recently by a surge in looting in the Bay Area. Because thefts aren't usually prosecuted, many retailers in liberal San Francisco have shut down. "The easiest way to reduce crime is to fix Proposition 47 and reimpose strong sentencing for the pervasive retail theft that is literally closing stores across our state," said Tracy McCray , vice president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association. "Exacerbating the situation is San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin's insistence on dropping or downgrading charges of those caught red-handed that allows those very same crooks to further victimize our communities over and over again." Ever since the death of George Floyd last summer, the nation has watched disturbing images of mass looting as TV crews and citizen journalists beat police to crime scenes to film the spectacles. Suspects who do not steal more than $950 face only the equivalent of a traffic ticket. Before Proposition 47, anything more than $450 was grand theft — a felony. It’s easy to see how the public fell for a campaign to vote for this law, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told the Washington Examiner. Celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Kevin Hart, Arsenio Hall, Alyssa Milano, John Legend, and Jay Z supported the measure, with the latter talking about it during a 2014 Rose Bowl concert. Catholic bishops in California got behind it, believing that prison savings would be spent on rehabilitation . “Pope Francis called upon the legal community to examine and address the causes of crime — which are rooted in economic and social inequality,” the bishops said in a statement. “He further emphasized that the increase in harsh sentencing does nothing to address the underlying issues.” What the public wasn’t told was that a specialized drug court in the state’s courthouses had been a highly successful rehabilitation tool that got users, motivated to have their charges dismissed along with the prison sentence upon completion of treatment, sober. “They sold this as a bill of goods that was going to reform the criminal justice system and relieve prison overcrowding — this was going to do everything,” Villanueva said. “It was very well organized and financed by the typical George Soros types who think cops are bad, crooks are good.” The main supporters of the measure were then-San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the California Teachers Association. Law enforcement and prosecutors opposed it. “Prop. 47 supporters admit that 10,000 inmates will be eligible for early release. They wrote this measure so that judges will not be able to block the early release of these prison inmates, many of whom have prior convictions for serious crimes, such as assault, robbery and home burglary,” the initiative’s opponents wrote in the ballot statement . Villanueva blames the current looting epidemic squarely on the shoulders of Proposition 47 — with one exception. “It’s half of what is responsible. The other half is the Gascons of the world who don’t want to prosecute the reduced crimes,” Villanueva said. “It’s the worst of both worlds.” But voters are waking up to this new reality that they were tricked and will start voting for more centirst candidates, as evidenced by the efforts to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, Gascon, now the District Attorney of Los Angeles County, Boudin, and a Los Angeles city council member, the sheriff said. “People are getting tired of the far-left 'woke' crowd ... and the narrative that we have to support lawlessness or we are racist. I think California as a state is lurching toward the center but dominated [politically] by the far, far Left.”