Nation of Islam
oracknows | December 1, 2015When it comes to blogging, sometime's it's feast or famine. Some days there are more topics and stories that I'd like to blog about than I could ever get to, given that I generally only do one post per weekday, while other days I seriously think about skipping a day because there's just nothing out there that interests me. This is one of the former kinds of days.
Seriously, there was an embarrassment of riches last night, so much so that I had a hard time making up my mind what story to write about. The one that I ultimately chose only just edged out the second place choice, and then only at…
oracknows | November 3, 2015I hadn't planned on writing about this again today. (How many times have I started a post with that phrase? I forget, but a lot. Sadly, developments frequently make me change my plans about blogging.) Here's what made me change my plans It was a pair of Facebook posts on hip-hop and fashion mogul Russell Simmons' Facebook page.
Here's post #1:
And here's post #2:
This, of course, is the news report regurgitating antivaccine talking points broadcast in Atlanta late last week by Ben Swann, an all-purpose conspiracy theorist and, apparently, now antivaccinationist, who is anchor for the…
oracknows | October 28, 2015No doubt, regular readers are probably somewhat surprised that I didn't discuss the antivaccine rally scheduled to be held in Atlanta last weekend that I wrote about last week. As you might recall, this rally consisted of two crappy tastes that taste crappy together, namely Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the antivaccine movement together with the Nation of Islam. Given that the Nation of Islam, besides being a truly crank religion on its own, of late has gotten very cozy with the Church of Scientology, thus amplifying the crank factor by orders of magnitude (at least).
Readers not familiar with…
oracknows | October 20, 2015If there's one thing that's amusing about the antivaccine movement, it's the disconnect between its members' perception of their own importance and the reality of it, which is that they tend to be a pretty pathetic, risible band. They post their blogs, full of the rage of Dunning-Kruger, thinking that they are putting forth the most sophisticated scientific arguments that real scientists, who have spent their entire professional life studying vaccines and autism, somehow missed and finding evidence of a link that no other scientist can. Of course, pesky things like rigorous study design tend…
oracknows | June 21, 2015Last Thursday I took note of a rather fascinating confluence of cranks who have come together to oppose SB 277 in California. For those not familiar with SB 277, it is a bill currently under consideration in the California Assembly that would eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. It was passed by the Senate last month, and a couple of weeks ago it cleared its first hurdle in the Assembly, having been passed by the Assembly Health Committee on a 12-6 vote. So now it's in the full Assembly to be debated, and it shouldn't be too long before it comes to a vote. As I've said…
oracknows | June 18, 2015The saga of SB 277 just keeps getting stranger and stranger as its end game comes into view.
SB 277 is, of course, a big deal. If it's passed by the California Assembly and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, it would eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, making the largest state in the union only the third state that only allows medical exemptions. Since its passage by the California Senate last month and its clearing the Assembly Health Committee last week on a 12-6 vote, SB 277 has taken on the air of inevitability. Sure, it could still stall or be hopelessly…
emjohnson | March 20, 2010RaceWire is reporting that Thomas Hagan, one of three men convicted for the assassination of Malcolm X (and the only to plead guilty), was released after his 17th attempt at parole yesterday. Hagan, at the time of the murder, was known as Talmadge X and was a militant member of the Nation of Islam.
According to The New York Times:
Mr. Hagan said in a 1977 affidavit that he and several accomplices . . . decided to kill Malcolm X because he was a "hypocrite" who had "gone against the leader of the Nation of Islam," Elijah Muhammad. Mr. Hagan said that after one man shot Malcolm X in the chest…