The scientist chosen by President Barack Obama to lead the National Institute of Health has a controversial history of mixing politics with faith.
Dr. Francis Collins was a leading pioneer in human genome research and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2007. He led the government’s successful efforts to decode the human genome.
Obama nominated Collins to lead the NIH on Wednesday.
July 10, 2009 archive
Jul 10 2009
‘Evangelistic’ scientist tapped to lead National Institute of Health
Jul 10 2009
An interview with an Iranian socialist: “Electoral Fraud” and the movement in Iran today
Original article, by Ted Sprague and subtitled Millions of Iranians have come out on the streets demanding a change in regime. The movement that was first sparked off by “electoral fraud” has become a movement to demand complete democratic rights and against the dictatorship of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is an interview (conducted on July 2nd 2009) with Arash Azizi, an Iranian socialist, which was originally made to explain the situation in Iran to an Indonesian audience, via In Defence of Marxism:
Ted Sprague: Can you explain to our readers about the electoral fraud in Iran and the movement that has emerged out of it?
Jul 10 2009
POV: “The Reckoning.”
Please take a minute to mark your calendar for this coming Tuesday, July 14th, so you can watch PBS’s new documentary on the International Criminal Court, “The Reckoning.” The documentary should air at 10 pm in most areas, but check here to see your local listing.
Jul 10 2009
Docudharma Times Friday July 10
AIG Seeks Clearance For More Bonuses
$2.4 Million in Executive Payments Due Next Week
By Brady Dennis and David Cho
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 10, 2009
American International Group is preparing to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to several dozen top corporate executives after an earlier round of payments four months ago set off a national furor.The troubled insurance giant has been pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage.
The request puts the administration’s new compensation czar on the spot by seeking his opinion about bonuses that were promised long before he took his post.
China Bans Mosque Prayers Amid Strife
By EDWARD WONG and ANDREW JACOBS
Published: July 10, 2009
URUMQI, China – Chinese authorities banned prayer gatherings at mosques here on Friday, the principal day of prayer for Muslims, as security officials tried to prevent further ethnic violence in the Xinjiang region.But officials appeared to partially relax the ban on Friday afternoon, allowing shortened prayer services after hundreds of Uighur worshippers gathered outside at least two of Urumqi’s main mosques, news agencies reported.Meanwhile, in another large Xinjiang city, the ancient Silk Road oasis town of Kashgar, foreign journalists and other visitors were instructed to leave.
USA
Pool accused of turning away minority kids
Swim club denies any wrongdoing in statement on Web site
msnbc.com news services
HUNTINGDON VALLEY, Pa. – In a statement posted on its Web site Thursday afternoon, a swim club said accusations that it discriminated against a day camp for minority children were untrue.The Valley Club doesn’t have the capacity to deal with outside groups and returned money to more than one day camp, the club said.
Alethea Wright, director of Creative Steps, a summer camp for minority children, said the organization paid for weekly swim time at the pool. But during a trip there June 29 some of the children said they heard people asking what “black kids” were doing at the club, Wright said.
Jul 10 2009
Muse in the Morning
 Muse in the Morning |
 Toward the Cusp
|
Jul 10 2009
Dozens of US Military personnel spotted on Nazi networking site
From the tech site BoingBoing
“The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate-group watchdog organization based in Alabama, will present documentation to Congress on Friday about the presence of active duty military personnel on the white supremacist social networking site newsaxon.org. On that website, SLPC spotted 40 users who claim to be serving in the military, an apparent violation of Pentagon regulations prohibiting racist extremism in the ranks….”
Jul 10 2009
What the hell happened to ThinkProgress.org?
I used to go to Thinkprogress.org at least once a day. They were a fantastic source of news you wouldn’t get anywhere else.
Since Obama has been elected, however, they’ve become, frankly, pathetic.
Almost every single story over there now is about Republicans.
It’s almost like they didn’t notice that Republicans are out of power now.
Hello, guys, those fools lost the election. They are no longer in power. They like to make a lot of noise to DISTRACT YOU.
Why is a place as smart as thinkprogress taking that bait?
Here is a list of the stories there right now:
Right Wing Concocts False Claim That Obama Is Steering Stimulus Money To Areas That Backed HimRight winger’s argument against a right to health care: ‘Should food be a basic human right?’
Aspiring philosopher Palin quotes ‘Plato.’
Jeb Bush: ‘I don’t know’ if Obama is a socialist.
Palin’s key reason for resigning was inflated.
King’s New Rationale For Voting Against Slave Labor Resolution: It Wasn’t ‘A Balanced Depiction Of History’
Steele dismisses Palin as ‘old school’: ‘That’s not the generation of candidates I’m trying to groom.’ (Updated)
All of this is completely irrelevant. NOBODY CARES about any of this bullshit. Not even the Repubs believe their own bullshit except for the TRUE idiots like Michelle Bachman.
How about some stories like this one:
AIG seeks clearance to give $235 million in bonuses.
Or about how Obama’s new Vietnam is killing American servicemen every damn day.
How about some real news?
I think it’s sad. And disturbing.
Jul 10 2009
Book Review: Brown and Garver’s Right Relationship
Recent events have made it somewhat evident that the current system of global governance is inadequate for the problem of abrupt climate change. A suggestion that is slowly becoming more popular is that of a new system of global governance, and so this is a review of Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver’s (2009) book Right Relationship: Building A Whole Earth Economy. Right Relationship is, to a significant extent, a “Quaker” outline for the reconcilement of economy with ecology; meaningfully, its transformative suggestions do seem quite apropos of the need for post-capitalist environmental design.
(crossposted at Big Orange)