Sunday, December 26, 2010

Holiday of hate?

Ronald McKinley Everett was born July 14, 1941, in Maryland. Everett ended up in Los Angeles and, since a young man, has devoted his life to promoting hatred for the white man and all things white. That includes Christmas.

Although other more important black separatist- and black supremacist-militant movements sprang from or benefited greatly from the Watts ashes of the mid- and late 1960s riots, such as Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, Malcolm Little's Black Nationalist movement, and the Black Panthers, Ron Everett's hatred of white people and all other things white was second to none of these people.

Everett soon changed his white "slave" name to something that sounded African, began dressing as he fancied an African would dress, dropped the white religion of Christianity for that of Muslim, and so on. Of course, perceived white holidays had to go too, and Christmas soon gave way to a holiday he dreamed up himself: Kwanzaa.

Everett formed his own band of white haters called, at first (at least by the Panthers) the United Slaves. Later, he took the Us from United Slaves and began calling his group simply "Us" as in Us (blacks) against them (whites.)

Early on, before he was such a big cheese in do-it-yourself cults, Ron and his group had a feud with the Black Panthers, his followers killing a couple of them. Ron never went to jail for this. Unfortunately, though, one of Ron's favorite power-trip pastimes was abusing and torturing his women followers, and he DID go to prison for one of those episodes in which he tortured one of the women by putting a hot soldering iron in her mouth and clamping another's toes in a vise. There was also electrical wire involved, and some laundry detergent that wasn't intended to be edible. But you can read the sordid details of that in the old court records.

Later, he obtained a doctorate from a South African school and even later from some U.S. schools, and today is styled Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga. He now heads the African Studies department at UCLA, surely the only ex-felon to hold such a position.

In an amazing lapse of memory, or lack of background investigation, or simply wanting to humor the separatist portion of the African American community, the U.S. government some years back put out a Kwanzaa postage stamp, thus legitimizing Ron's Holiday forever. Beats me. Ron would have you believe that Kwanzaa is an ancient "African" tradition, when in fact he dreamed it all up in his cell while he was doing time for torturing women.

"Kwanzaa" as Dr. Ron called his dream of white hatred, or at least his dream of not doing white things, goes on for a week, starting today (white man's Christmas is over now) through January 1st. Sad that he used the white man's calendar after all that effort to Africanize.

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Saturday, December 25, 2010

A paradox

Today I was reading from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I noticed a message at the top of the page:

"Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Please read how you can help keep the encyclopedia free."

I confess I didn't read how I could help keep it free. I assume it is the same way I can keep Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, free, or my local channel of the Public Broadcasting System free: send them money.

I know most of you already think I am pretty dense, so exposing my quandary to you doesn't bother me. It is this:

If I send these people money, that means I am paying. If I am paying, then it isn't free anymore. At least not to me. So how have I helped keep it free by sending money to them?

Here I will also confess that I have never sent in any money to any of these folks over the past decade and it is still free to me. It is only not free to the suckers supporters who send them money.

This is also the season where brother Wales over at Wikipedia reaps his annual income as well with the same message: "Help keep it free by sending me money." Or something to that effect.

I should probably also tell you that I don't give a damn if any of these "purist" sites run adverts in their sidebars; PBS already does run commerical messages, though they lie and say they don't. Of course, they also say if we send them money then they will run quality programming, and they don't. Not unless you consider constant fund-raising with reruns and 30 year old endless bombardments of Are You Being Served? quality programming.

Maybe you can tell me how, by sending these people money, I will be doing my part to keep it free? Free for ME, I mean.

Friday, December 17, 2010

German doctors claim first HIV positive man cured

A man who was HIV positive who was given stem cell therapy for leukemia is no longer positive, his doctors say. This is the first instance of a person with the HIV virus ever getting rid of it. If this turns out to be a true "cure" for HIV/AIDS, it will be (like so many other major discoveries of the past) be an accident.

Apparently more research is needed to find out exactly what the stem cells did. Promising.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Big toys

[Click on picture to enlarge]

I was fascinated by the pictures on this website by a man who obviously loves playing with big toys. I envy someone who has apparently done what he wants to do all his life. If you like BIG mechanical things and down-to-earth people who play with them, you should spend some time looking at the photos on this website.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed looking at the pictures on this website. (And you thought Relax Max didn't like to get dirty. He does.)

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Preaching to the choir

There's something not quite kosher right about the boys and girls of the choir this session, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Enlarge the above 2010 class picture and help me out.

No black justices? No, got one of them. Good ol' white boys? Check. Jesuit-taught Sicilians? Check. Wild-eyed liberals? Check.

What then?

Hispanics? Check. Women? Check. Straight Jews? Check. Lesbian Jews? Check. Dead Jews? Check. (Some say Ruthie is still among the living, but we know better. Ever see the original "Psycho" with Anthony Perkins? A dollar to a donut says Ruthie is Norman Bate's mother, stuffed like a bird with sawdust and a wig put on her and sat up straight in a chair. Doesn't matter. We all know how Ruthie will vote.)

Wait. Did you guess? A first in the history of our country: the mindset of the majority religion in the U.S. is not represented on our esteemed Supreme Court anymore. Go ahead, count 'em: 6 catholics and 3 Jews. Protestants? Zilch.

We've come a long way, baby.


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