It Needs to be Repeated

By Jan McDaniel | 06/21/09

The Iconoclast New English Review Friday, 19 June 2009 It needed to be said, apparently Yesterday, Terry Gross interviewed Chip Berlet on Fresh Air on National Public Radio, on an episode entitled "Extremism, Conspiracy Theory and Murder". Quoting the Fresh Air site: "Chip Berlet has studied extremism, conspiracy theories and hate groups for more than 25 years." Berlet focused on the recent murders of a guard at the... read more »

Why is California Broke?

By Jan McDaniel | 06/20/09

Why is California Broke? Public employee salaries like these could be part of the problem. One that jumps out is the Assistant Medical Examiner making $248,000. For the rest of the database, click on the link. http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/sfpay/index.shtml?appSession=106393991145922 City of San Francisco’s Over - $100,000 Earners In the 2007 calendar year, the City and County of San Francisco had more than 8,000 employees with total... read more »

Seeds of the Culture War

By Jan McDaniel | 06/20/09

In the political and cultural conflict that is often called the culture war, certain books are often recommended for background.  Among them is David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, an analysis of America’s cultural origins in Britain.  His analysis sheds light on why we are the way we are and that is a good thing just now.  As Samuel Huntington’s Who Are We? makes clear, there is considerable confusion... read more »

Muslims in the West

By Jan McDaniel | 06/19/09

  When the USSR unraveled, many Russians were stranded in former Soviet states.  Their status is still unhealthy and unstable, as in the Ukraine.  If problems similar to the Ukrainian problems afflict Russians in the Baltic states, will Russia send troops?  Will NATO respond?   Transposing from the Russian empire to the Islamic empire raises even more troubling questions.    When the West finally realizes... read more »

Why Iran is a Theocracy, Not a Democracy

By Jan McDaniel | 06/19/09

Charles Krauthammer, in a passionate denunciation of President Obama’s hands- off policy toward Iran, says that 476 candidates presented themselves for the Presidential contest. Only four were deemed qualified by the Guardian Council.  When Iranian officials are told that this process does not qualify Iran as a democracy, they come back with the argument that our Presidential candidates are also reduced to very few from... read more »

Iran Election Maps

By Jan McDaniel | 06/18/09

Middle East Strategy at Harvard has maps of the election results in Iran. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2009/06/irans-elections-mapped/ read more »

Sharia Compliant Finance

By Jan McDaniel | 06/18/09

A reader whose intelligence leaves nothing to be desired tells me that I have not made a case against SCF and gives two reasons:   I shouldn’t object to kosher branding (I don’t), so why SCF? SCF is a purely commercial decision. The Islamic parallel to Jewish kosher is halal, and I have no problem with it.  SCF observes halal and haram laws, and if it stopped there, I wouldn’t care who did or did not... read more »

Islamic Law and International Law

By Jan McDaniel | 06/17/09

Prior to World War II, Europe and America bent over backward to praise Germany.  Until Hitler actually started invading countries for which he had not even a lame excuse for annexing, everyone wanted to avoid offending Germans.  The Japanese had a superiority complex and everyone adored Il Duce.  We ignored the building storm until the dead at Pearl Harbor would not allow us to ignore it.    Until Stalin made it... read more »

Colonizers in America

By Jan McDaniel | 06/16/09

What is the difference between an immigrant and a colonizer?   We Americans arrived, not as immigrants, but as European colonizers of the North American continent that was already  inhabited by an indigenous race, whose ancestors were colonizers from Asia.    This bit of history was recently mentioned by an Israeli columnist who remarked on the irony of President Obama lecturing Prime Minister Netanyahu on where Israel... read more »

Obama's Islamist Speechwriter

By Jan McDaniel | 06/15/09

The Saudi online news site, Asharq al Awsat, has a story on the source of President Obama’s remarkable view of Islam as presented in his Cairo speech, confirming what many had assumed.  All Americans have a stake in who is advising the President on issues Islamic.  Obama’s choice of Dalia Mogahed, an Egyptian immigrant, is very revealing.  This is from my book, Irredentist Islam and Multicultural America: ... read more »