George Rebane
Legalization of marijuana (MJ). Now that California begins its statewide march toward legalizing MJ, it is noteworthy to look at the path such initiatives have forged for our forebears Washington and Colorado. In both states the ‘leakage’ of medical MJ (MMJ) into recreational MJ (RMJ) markets is now rampant. Both states’ taxes on RMJ are so high that they have given rise to lively and growing RMJ black markets, and of course, the corresponding growth of the population of illegitimate MMJ consumers, since MMJ is taxed at much lower rates. In many ways this is a blessing for the MJ law enforcement industry since such over-taxed legalization has not eliminated the lawless side of MJ production and distribution.
We in California should pay close attention to these happenings as we assemble coalitions and committees to study and propose our own state’s new laws and local codes for MJ. The main contenders will again be the inevitable fact that most MMJ buyers will be RMJ users, and that the neighborhood nuisance factor will be prominent in considering where and how MJ can be produced. We should do a better job than so far demonstrated (as predicted) in Washington and Colorado (and Oregon?).
The Muslim colonization of Europe. Those most liberal and progressive Swedes are demonstrating the approach of their breakpoint to the established and growing Muslim enclaves in the country. As the informed reader knows, such Muslim enclaves are entrenched today in all well-to-do northern European countries, enclaves where Sharia law is openly and blatantly practiced, where indigenous constabularies dare not go, and in which the established lamestream media dare not report on the actual medieval practices and goings-on on formerly Christian, now secular humanist, soil. (See also ‘Islamophobia 2.0’)
This colonization and the atrocities of Islam are abetted by our progressive ranks in leadership positions and the gruberized voters filled with politically correct pabulum who continue returning them to those positions. (Our own foothills run rampant with these types.) None of these people in the west hold the so-called moderate Muslims to account as they quietly watch the global campaign of murder. Now one of their own, President al-Sisi of Egypt and leader of the largest Arab nation in the world, in a major speech has accused the global Islamic population of encouraging their own ragheads to spread the carnage in the middle east and elsewhere (more here and here, and H/T to reader). He joins with the many other leaders of Islam (and precious few westerners) in attesting that we are not in a worldwide ‘war on terror’, but in a resumption of the war between Islam and the west that is promoted and prosecuted by the now multifarious and growing number of radical Islamic factions. Al-Sisi and other truly moderate (anti-radical) Muslims see no good end for Islam from this escalating conflict, and are trying to convince their own populations to oppose their indigenous radicals. Only the double dummies of the west are blind to this comprehensive and global reality.
Liberal blindness endemic. At one of the dinner parties during the holidays I was witness to the remarkable interpretations of a learned liberal jurist from the bay area. He claimed to be a consumer of outlets such as The Economist, WSJ, NYT, Wash Post among others, and had a tolerable command of current events (with some notable blind spots in technology and economics). What absolutely confounded many of us around the table were his unassailable assessments of the state of our nation and of our world. From his readings he has seen no evidence that there are historical problems with our educational system, tax code, regulatory overreach, growth of systemic unemployment, unfunded national obligations, ethnic/racial divisions, existential impacts of accelerating technology, and so on. For this man, we do not live in extraordinary times that need extraordinary measures to combat threats to our quality of life and world order impinging from all quadrants. His counter-astonishment was that we were being flooded by all these unsubstantiated alarums. To many of us who witnessed his aggregate worldview, it corroborated the (here oft-stated) observation that those of the Left can indeed look at the same reports and observations that we all see, and still come away with diametrically opposite facts and their interpretations. Everything is fine, stay the course, full speed ahead.
[5jan15 update] They have not a f%@$!&g clue of what they speak. Stock analysts and strategists are high on my list of professions that range from worthless to harmful. The stock pickers are closer to harmful. The 5jan15 WSJ published their aggregate performance predicting the SP500 over the last 15 years (see figure below). For giggles I took the data from the righthand bar chart and computed the correlation coefficient between their average forecasted next year’s gains and what actually happened. Seatbelts please – the correlation coefficient for the two series came to be about -0.09. You may remember that correlation coefficients range from 1.0 (perfect match between two data series), through 0.0 (the two series do not correspond at all), to -1.0 (the two series zig and zag perfectly in opposite directions). So getting -0.09 is saying that these people are blind babes in the woods when it comes predicting market – I mean they are really bad and should be replaced by monkeys throwing darts. Instead, these pompous charlatans continue to inhabit fancy offices in upscale buildings, and year after year are paid a pretty penny for their putrid performance.
For more giggles, take a look at the left side of the figure. There you see the spectrum of what the investment ‘experts’ deliver for second opinions. In medicine that’s like one doc telling you that you pancreatic cancer, and the second opinion comes in as only the hearbreak of psoriasis. I may go into the business 😉
[8jan15 update] The Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris by French Islamists may, just may, have triggered a sea change in the attitude of European and American observers and thought leaders about the grossly misnamed conflict that we have been calling the War on Terror. For years RR has argued that it is anything but a war on terror, it is nothing less than the resumption of the inter-civilizational war between Islam and the west (formerly Christendom). One of the reasons the west has been losing this war in the last two decades is that we not correctly recognized our enemy, and it is hard to win when you don’t know who you are fighting.
Today a major publication, The Wall Street Journal, joins other outlets that have recently been opening their eyes to the historical conflict in which we are engaged. Through an op-ed by its award winning journalist, columnist, and deputy editor Daniel Henninger (here) we see, after decades of describing Islamist attacks as “incidents”, the long overdue admission that “Past some point, it is feckless to call these events “incidents.” They are acts in a war. The people committing them think so and they say so. Why don’t we?”
In the west we have been held sway to the ludicrous notion that Islam is attacking us as retaliation for the iniquities of western colonialism and disrespecting Islamic culture. This continues to be channeled by progressive pundits holding court from the lamestream media to local blogs that dare debate the issue. Henninger concludes –
The people of the Western nations have defaulted to ambivalence and confusion about the nature of this threat (emphasis mine). I have seen no clearer statement of where our confusions will lead than former U.S. diplomat Charles Hill ’s recent essay in Politico, “Why Political Islam Is Winning.” Mr. Hill concludes:
“ John Kerry ’s statement about ISIS having ‘no place in the modern world’ was oblivious to the possibility that the modern world itself may be coming to an end. History is not predetermined to proceed always in a progressive, ever-better direction. “If the current course of events and ideas is not reversed, the coming age will have abandoned its assumptions of open trade, open expression and the ideal of government by consent of the governed. Political Islam will be comfortable with itself at last.”
In January 2015, it already is.
In a comment stream to ‘Heckler’s Veto’ I responded to a reader with a summary timeline of Islam’s expansion that comports with the views offered by Henninger and Charles Hill. It is reproduced below.
… For openers, there should be no contention that Islam and Christianity have both traded territories over the centuries in conquest and colonization. The timeline is not all that complex and begins with the spread of Islam by the sword from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century. By the end of the first millennium Islam had conquered and colonized all of north Africa (and most of its eastern coast), the middle east, Europe’s Iberian peninsula, and all but the eastern seaboard of India.
During the 800-1000+ period Muslim navies sought territorial footholds on the Italian boot and the Balkans. During the second millennium Islam’s armies expanded into south central Europe and what today is the Indonesian chain of islands. At the beginning of the second millennium Europe’s Christian kingdoms launched a series of ‘crusades’ to retake their Holy Land and blunt Islamic expansion. These had limited success with Christian control of the Levantine quickly dwindling and ending before 1300. Meanwhile the Ottoman Turks emerged as the Islamic power in the Levantine, conquering most of north Africa, the Levantine extending into Arabia, and all of south central Europe. This control lasted well into the 18th century, and it remains today in the Caucuses (Azerbaijan, southern Russia, Georgia) and the Balkans (primarily in Albania and Kosovo). The Islamic conquest of Europe began a hiatus with the Ottomans’ 1683 defeat at the Battle of Vienna.
European pushback into Islamic territories began in the 15th century at the end of which the Iberian peninsula again was all Christian. European conquests of Islam began in earnest in the 18th century and ended for all intents and purposes after the Treaty of Versailles concluding WW1, and legally with the ending of WW2. Today Islam again controls all of Asia Minor and is again on the march in Africa and has established itself in the population centers of Europe. According to their current geo-theocratic leaders, 1683 was considered to be the beginning of halftime used for consolidation, retrenching, and planning the resumption of the battle to establish the global caliphate.
A marked difference between Islamic and Christian territorial conquests during this thousand year see-saw was the way each sought to proselytize the populations of the conquered lands. Christianity’s efforts ranged between lame and non-existent since the latter day colonizations were done for economic purposes and not to spread the faith. Opposed to this was and still is Islam’s intent to become THE global religion with its enduring ‘Accept Allah or die!’ Today Islam tolerates no Christian territories or enclaves in its lands.
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