A video shared on Facebook claims to show Israeli troops celebrating the Iranian president’s helicopter crash. Verdict: False The video is from at least 2021. It is not related to the Iranian president’s helicopter crash. Fact Check: The Iranian president and foreign minister died in a helicopter crash, according to The Associated Press. Elections for his replacement […]

In 2020, GNN reported that the inaugural class of the nation’s first medical college on a Native American reservation had begun their studies. Well now, they’ve just graduated. The 46 graduating students from Oklahoma State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation include fifteen members of tribes all around the country, including Cherokee, […] The post First of its Kind Medical School in Cherokee Nation Graduates First Class of Doctors appeared first on Good News Network.

Books Five Works of SF Inspired by Pseudoscience Some very good (or at least very interesting) SF has been based on truly bonkers pseudoscience–consider the following! By James Davis Nicoll | Published on May 28, 2024 Photo: Life Magazine (Public Domain) Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Life Magazine (Public Domain) Pseudoscience, if it is applied to real life, may leave people poorer and unhappier. If they are unlucky, it may well leave them dead. Moreover, it may impoverish, immiserate, or kill unfortunate kinfolk of the gullible or those under the rule of those who believed some egregious crackpottery. But there is an upside1. Even completely bonkers pseudoscience can be wonderfully inspirational for a hard-working science fiction author. Embracing a single impossible idea for the sake of a story is widely held as acceptable behavior. The results can surprise and delight2! Consider the following works based on pseudoscience. Some I would consider very, very good; others are at least interesting. Ancient Astronauts As anyone who has filled the empty hours on public transit with dissection apps on their phone can attest, under the skin humans are commonplace tetrapods, their interior structure homologous with that of a tetrapod lineage that can be tracked back through the fossil record for hundreds of millions of years. In other words, humans are a very local product. Nevertheless, the idea that humans came from somewhere else can be narratively useful. Take for example Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish setting. She posits that humans originated on Hain, not Earth. Hain peopled a great many planets, sometimes modifying the settlers for reasons now unclear3. Among other benefits, this allowed Le Guin to play with the consequences of altering one significant element of human biology while leaving the rest untouched. In the setting of her The Left Hand of Darkness, Gethenians have no fixed sex, which has profound consequences for their culture. Young Earth Creationism The physical evidence strongly supports the belief that the Earth is billions of years old. However, for reasons I am certain my editors would strongly prefer me not to dwell upon4, certain groups find an ancient Earth philosophically unacceptable and have poured vast efforts into alternative models. Still, the rocks say what the rocks say. Happily for science fiction, authors need not be bound by overwhelming evidence. Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy plays with the notion of an Earth whose age is illusory. Hitchhikers’ Earth is a creation of comparatively recent vintage, built for a very special purpose. Alas for human self-regard, that purpose had nothing to do with us. And alas for the original architects, Earth was destroyed just before it reached its goal. Which, to be fair, is how they should have expected events to play out in a Douglas Adams novel. Parapsychology Wouldn’t it be wonderful if by sheer force of will we could communicate with distant people, levitate heavy objects, or transport ourselves from one location to another? Alas, despite J.B. Rhine’s efforts to show otherwise5, parapsychology is pure bunkum not supported by the evidence. Humans are forced to rely on functional but unromantic technological solutions such as phones, forklifts, and airplanes. Nevertheless, narrative universes in which humans possess vast mental powers are super-cool. Examples abound. Anne McCaffrey’s To Ride Pegasus is set in a world where paranormal powers are real and useful. The North American Center for Parapsychic Talents struggles to deal ethically and safely with the consequences of that fact. Fortean Phenomena Dissatisfied with conventional science for various reasons, Charles Fort methodically documented apparent anomalies which, when taken together suggested vast lacunae in human understanding of the world. Fort’s sincerity is debatable. Perhaps Forteanism was Fort’s coping mechanism for life’s absurdities. Nevertheless, his acolytes took Fort quite seriously. Eric Frank Russell’s Sinister Barrier may have been inspired by Fort’s thesis that “the Earth is a farm; we are someone else’s property.” If not, it is still a useful demonstration of what one author can do with such a notion. In Sinister Barrier, a wave of inexplicable deaths and sudden suicides strikes America’s brain trust. Are foreign powers6 targeting America? The truth is far worse. Conspiracy Theories Conspiracy theories provide many benefits. A confusing world becomes explicable thanks to a straightforward model. Adherents can take comfort from knowing that they are important enough to be schemed against and from the belief that they are among the cognoscenti in the know. It’s true that such beliefs, when pitted against real-world facts, turn out to lack any explicative or predictive power. That is no problem for the true believers; the media and the powerful have obviously been corrupted by conspiracies that are even more pervasive than previously believed. After dealing with all too many crank letters, Playboy Forum editors Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea posed the question “What if all of the conspiracy theories, even the mutually exclusive ones, were true?” The answer was Wilson and Shea’s Illuminatus! Trilogy, a stupendously 1970s tour of a world filled with plots, a world where They are very much out to get You. The above works are a very small sample of the pseudoscience-based confections that SF authors have published. Quite possibly I’ve neglected your favourite examples of pseudoscience-inspired works. If so, feel free to entertain us all in comments below.[end-mark] Well, there’s another upside. Pseudoscience can make a few con artists extremely rich. As can fortunetelling, astrology, cults, etc. Human gullibility in general is a real moneymaker. ︎Sometimes the only reader who was surprised and delighted by stories based on pseudoscience was John W. Campbell, Jr. but he paid reliably and well. ︎The notion that the ancient Hain were colossal jerks seems reasonable. That would explain why they did the things they did and why their colonies cut off contact with Hain/were abandoned by Hain for hundreds of thousands of years. ︎My editors can take comfort in my decision to stick to books by dead authors, thus moving pseudoscientific responses to climate change in general and Fallen Angels in particular off the board. Also omitted, A. E. van Vogt. He had a hard life; documenting his efforts to fill the hole left by the Mennonite upbring from which he distanced himself feels like bullying. ︎Alfred Bester explained away the lack of evidence by positing that parapsychological powers require extreme, life-threatening circumstances to trigger. Don’t try this at home. ︎Sinister Barrier was published in 1939 and its treatment of non-Americans, Asians in particular, has [understatement font] not aged well [/understatement font]. ︎The post Five Works of SF Inspired by Pseudoscience appeared first on Reactor.

More Military Members and Veterans Dying by Suicide Than in Battle

Biden Protecting Iran From European Sanctions

After years of campaigning by Greenpeace, a court in the Philippines has revoked the permit to grow “Golden Rice”, a genetically modified crop designed to combat malnutrition. The move is a highly controversial one, with some scientists saying the decision could potentially cost “thousands and thousands” of lives.The Philippines became the first country in the world to approve Golden Rice in 2021. However, the Court of Appeals in the capital Manila revoked the permit for the commercial production of the rice in April 2024, citing “conflicting scientific views and uncertainties on the risks and effects of Golden Rice,” according to AFP.The decision comes after the case was brought to the court by Greenpeace Southeast Asia and other groups.“This decision is a monumental win for Filipino farmers and Filipino people who have for decades stood up against genetically modified (GM) crops,” Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaigner Wilhelmina Pelegrina said in a statement.“We reiterate our stance: the involved companies and agencies have yet to show concrete evidence that these crops would be in the best interest of Filipinos, our environment, and our agricultural sector,” she added.Bear in mind that scientists have yet to find any confirmed negative health or environmental consequences linked to the consumption of Golden Rice or any other genetically modified organism (GMO) crops – although some researchers claim they have identified several potential benefits. “The court’s decision is a catastrophe,” Matin Qaim, Professor of Food and Agricultural Economics at Bonn University and a member of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, which supports the crop’s introduction, told the Guardian.“It goes completely against the science, which has found no evidence of any risk associated with Golden Rice, and will result in thousands and thousands of children dying,” added Professor Qaim.The debate around Golden Rice is a long and fiery one. Developed over two decades ago, Golden Rice is white rice that has been genetically tweaked to include certain genes from maize and common soil bacterium. The additional genes enable the rice to produce beta-carotene, an orange-colored pigment found in many fruits and vegetables that is converted into vitamin A in the body.Its purpose is to address vitamin A deficiency, a pervasive problem in developing countries that puts around 140 million children at greater risk of illness, hearing loss, blindness, and even death. Advocates of Golden Rice claim that enriched GMO super-rice has the potential to save millions of children’s lives while posing minimal threat to human health or the wider environment.Greenpeace has been one of the loudest voices of opposition against its roll-out, arguing the purported benefits have been massively over-hyped. They also suggest it could open the door to more GMOs and allow big agribusiness to dominate the market at the expense of smaller farmers. However, the environmental NGO’s stance has been heavily criticized over the years. In 2016, over 100 Nobel laureates signed a letter calling on Greenpeace to review its position on genetically engineered Golden Rice, claiming they were pushing a “fact-challenged propaganda campaign against innovations in agricultural biotechnology." "GMOs are extensively tested and subjected to a higher degree of regulatory review than any other crops and foods," the letter read. "Greenpeace have also claimed that Golden Rice would not work; that it would not deliver enough vitamin A to be effective, or that it would produce so much as to be dangerous. All these claims are false."Greenpeace has remained dogmatically opposed to GMOs, especially Golden Rice. They doubled down against the 2016 letter by responding: “Corporations are overhyping ‘Golden’ rice to pave the way for global approval of other more profitable genetically engineered crops.”“Rather than invest in this overpriced public relations exercise, we need to address malnutrition through a more diverse diet, equitable access to food and eco-agriculture.”

Much of the media analysis of former President Donald Trump’s visit to the South Bronx centers around whether it was electorally savvy or good campaign strategy. Little has been said about the outbreak of bigotry vomited over the airwaves subsequent to the rally. Most representative of this is The View host Ana Navarro’s bilious exchange with CNN’s Jim Acosta, which at the time was covered by our very own Alex Christy (click “expand” to view transcript): JIM ACOSTA: I mean, you and I've talked about this many times about his rhetoric, the rhetoric he uses to talk about migrants and so on and I just have to ask you, Ana, I mean, when you look at the poll numbers and you see, if you break out the demographics, Trump is doing better among Latinos. He is doing better among African American voters and it's certainly is a threat to the president's reelection campaign. Is there a disc— I mean what do you make of this disconnect.” ANA NAVARRO: Well, a few things. One is I think America has a little bit of amnesia when it comes to Donald Trump and frankly being in a courtroom for the last 20 days, I think, has helped him because he's not been out in rallies saying the stupid stuff he says and the incendiary, outrageous things he says on a daily basis. We've been focusing on Michael Cohen, we’ve been focusing on Stormy Daniels. We haven't been focusing on the things that Donald Trump says. Another thing is, I think at this point in 2024, this is kinda baked in, people already know the guy’s a misogynist, they already know he's a racist, they already know he says divisive things and they seem not to take him literally or seriously. They think it’s, kind of, part of a clown act, entertainment and then the third thing, Jim, and this is the truth and you and I know this as Latinos, there are some Latino immigrants who forget they came here as immigrants and who want to shut the door behind them and, who think being anti-immigrant somehow is going to make them pass as more American, pass as whatever. And that's a very stupid attitude to have because what folks don’t realize is that when the guy drives thousands of miles to go hunt down Latinos in a Walmart in Texas. He doesn't care when you came here he doesn't care— ACOSTA: Right. NAVARRO: -- what your accent is, what he's looking for is “Does it look like me, does it sound like me?” That's what he's looking for. ACOSTA: Yeah. NAVARRO: So, you know, when people are anti-something, they're not asking for your papers, they're just anti-that group. I find that the most telling part of this exchange is Acosta setting Navarro up by saying that they discussed “the disconnect” on other occasions. To be clear, “the disconnect” Acosta refers to is ongoing, and it is between Hispanics and the Democratic Party. Once Acosta sets the segment up, Navarro goes into a word salad about alleged Trump amnesia, the ongoing trial, and eventually works her way to her toxic race reductionism which, quite frankly, sounds like a knockoff of the bile that fellow co-host Asunción Cummings Hostin regularly spits on The View.  We recently heard similar nonsense from race grievance merchant John Leguizamo, also while on The View. I will note for the record that Navarro performs this service while under the approving gaze of the white former Biden campaign and White House communications flack who revolving-doored her way over to CNN (Kate Bedingfield), which leads to further questions about who is really trying hard to “pass” here.  We’ve heard all of this before- the repulsive idea that central to Hispanic (or Latino) identity is this attachment to the left and to the entire leftwing policy pupu platter, starting with immigration. And that one is somehow a race-traitor for embracing different ideas or choosing to vote for a different party. Univision anchor Jorge Ramos said as much the morning after Election Night, 2016: JORGE RAMOS: The only way to explain it is (that) immigrants or the children of immigrants that forgot their origins… When you hear media types whining about Trump’s rally in the Bronx, or poo-pooing it, or deriding those who attended, what you are really hearing are the lamentations of scorned gatekeepers- those chosen not to represent the Hispanic community within media and elsewhere, but to represent the left to the Hispanic community. As you see more of this pattern becoming evident, and more polling showing Trump gaining significant support within the Hispanic community, expect more of those angry denunciations from self-appointed gatekeepers who find they don’t have the clout they thought they had.  Ana Navarro’s toxic word vomit was only the beginning.   

Before it compared Trump to Hitler, Thursday’s edition of the PBS NewsHour made the Justice Alito flag controversy an all-encompassing scandal. First, the network’s Supreme Court expert Marcia Coyle discussed the Supreme Court’s decision to allow a Republican-drawn congressional district in South Carolina to stand but segued into the controversy over two flags being flown over two of Justice Alito’s homes – an American flag hung upside down at his residence and the “Appeal to Heaven” flag hung outside his beach home in New Jersey. On those feeble grounds, the New York Times Jodi Kantor, who broke the story in the paper and previously appeared on the NewsHour to suggest Alito had “insurrectionist” January 6 views, since the upside-down U.S. flag and the Appeal to Heaven flag (featuring a pine tree below the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven”) were allegedly symbols of the “Stop the Steal” movement in support of Donald Trump having won the 2020 election.     On Thursday, Coyle said that when she saw the flags, “I wanted to call Justice Alito up and say, what were you thinking? Because it's just something -- it's incomprehensible.” From there, host Geoff Bennett moved onto Flag-gate Part II: “Appeal to Heaven,” with slanted report from the show’s most biased correspondent, White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez. BENNETT: We're going to focus more closely now on that New York Times reporting about that Appeal to Heaven flag seen flying outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's New Jersey beach home last year. The flag has origins dating to the Revolutionary War, but is now associated with Christian nationalism and efforts to overturn President Biden's 2020 election win. The flag was also carried by rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021…. Barron-Lopez explained the flag dated back to the Revolutionary War but was recently popularized by pastor Dutch Sheets of the New Apostolic Reformation. She ran a clip from scholar Matthew Taylor, who said the “Appeal” flag had “become a symbol of right-wing Christian extremism, of Christian supremacy, of aggressive Christian nationalism” and support for Donald Trump. "So, as Taylor says, the flag was popularized by the New Apostolic Reformation. but it has become much bigger to represent the 2020 election lies," she added. PBS used the flag and its “undercurrent of violence” as a gateway to talk more about “right-wing extremism,” via a bad video that the Trump team posted and later removed from social media: BENNETT: So how does this fit into the bigger picture of right-wing extremism? BARRON-LOPEZ: So there were two other examples of extremism from Trump and his allies this week, Geoff, that we want to highlight. And on his TRUTH Social account, Trump posted a video that referenced a -- quote -- "unified reich" if he's elected in November. Trump's campaign said that that was reposted by a staffer, it wasn't a video that campaign created and that they weren't aware of that reference in the video. But this isn't the first time, Geoff, that Trump has echoed Nazi Germany. He has repeatedly talked about migrants -- quote -- "poisoning the blood of the country" on the campaign trail, which historians point out that that is a direct reference to Adolf Hitler and his use of the terms blood poisoning…. Evidently any odd thing Trump says could conceivably herald the dawning of fascism. Barron-Lopez even cited a Yale historian, who said Trump’s claim that Biden’s FBI wanted to assassinate him (as recollected by Barron-Lopez) “is essentially a classic tactic used by fascist movements, that they want to get a monopoly on victimhood...." Your tax dollars at work. This segment was brought to you in part by BNSF Railway. The Transcript is below. Click "expand": PBS NewsHour 5/23/24 7:29:30 p.m. (ET) Geoff Bennett: We're going to focus more closely now on that New York Times’ reporting about that Appeal to Heaven flag seen flying outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's New Jersey beach home last year. The flag has origins dating to the Revolutionary War, but is now associated with Christian nationalism and efforts to overturn President Biden's 2020 election win. The flag was also carried by rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, has been covering this and joins us now. So, Laura, you have reported on this flag before, but tell us more about how it's become popularized in recent years. Laura Barron-Lopez: As you noted, Geoff, this flag dates back to the Revolutionary War. It was used by the Colonies a lot during that war, but now it's connotation have changed. It's very different. And in recent years, it was popularized by a pastor named Dutch Sheets, a leader in what's known as the New Apostolic Reformation, and they believe that it's destiny for the U.S. to be a completely Christian nation. And I spoke to Matthew Taylor, an expert on Christian nationalism and a Protestant pastor with Institute — a Protestant scholar — excuse me — with the Institute of Islamic Christian and Jewish Studies. And he described the modern symbolism of that flag. Matthew Taylor, Institute of Islamic Christian and Jewish Studies: I would say it has become a symbol of right-wing Christian extremism, of Christian supremacy, of aggressive Christian nationalism, especially built around ideas of spiritual warfare and fighting against the demons that they believe have taken over the United States. So it attaches itself to all these different things, and it especially connotes support for Donald Trump. And, today, to fly the flag is, in many ways, to reference January 6, to point back to this other moment where people believed that they were appealing to heaven to see an election overturned. Laura Barron-Lopez: So, as Taylor says, the flag was popularized by the New Apostolic Reformation, but it has become much bigger to represent the 2020 election lies. Geoff Bennett: Well, tell me more about this movement and how it's grown. Laura Barron-Lopez: So leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation, like Dutch Sheets, who I mentioned, who helped popularize the flag, are strong supporters of Donald Trump. They were some of the first Christian leaders to rally around him in 2016. And this movement, specifically, just to expand on that, Geoff, believes in Christian supremacy, believes that Christianity should be the official religion of the United States, ending any separation of church and state, and trying to enact their vision of a Christian society. And as the popularity of that New Apostolic Reformation has grown, so has Trump's popularity amongst Christians and evangelicals. And these Christian nationalists have essentially worked since 2015, Matthew Taylor said, to get more Republican lawmakers and government officials to fly this flag. And as we reported earlier this year, House Speaker Mike Johnson has this Appeal to Heaven flag, has — has put it outside of his Capitol Hill office. And Johnson's office told us at the time that they did not see any affiliation with January 6 in him putting this flag outside of their office. They denied that wholeheartedly and said that the speaker simply liked the historical — the history of the flag going back to the Revolutionary area. But key context here, Geoff, is that there's always been an undercurrent of violence attributed to this flag, whether it's the Revolutionary War history, but more commonly now, which is that this movement that has really popularized it believes in spiritual warfare. Geoff Bennett: Well, unpack the context around this inverted American flag that, according to The New York Times, was seen flying outside Justice Alito's Virginia home shortly after the election. Laura Barron-Lopez: That flag, which was an upside-down American flag, was also a flag that was carried by rioters on January 6. And that flag was flown outside Alito's Virginia home 11 days after the insurrection, three days before President Biden's inauguration. And it flew for multiple days out there, according to The New York Times. And I spoke to Jodi Kantor for "PBS News Weekend" a few days ago, and she said that Alito hasn't answered some key questions, whether it's about he doesn't believe in the peaceful transfer of power, if he is or isn't aware of the connotations around that upside-down flag. Geoff Bennett: So how does this fit into the bigger picture of right-wing extremism? Laura Barron-Lopez: So there were two other examples of extremism from Trump and his allies this week, Geoff, that we want to highlight. And on his TRUTH Social account, Trump posted a video that referenced a — quote — "unified reich" if he's elected in November. Trump's campaign said that that was reposted by a staffer, it wasn't a video that campaign created and that they weren't aware of that reference in the video. But this isn't the first time, Geoff, that Trump has echoed Nazi Germany. He has repeatedly talked about migrants — quote — "poisoning the blood of the country" on the campaign trail, which historians point out that that is a direct reference to Adolf Hitler and his use of the terms blood poisoning. And then Trump took to TRUTH Social also this week, claiming that the Justice Department authorized the use of deadly force against him during their search of Mar-a-Lago, claiming that Biden's FBI wanted to assassinate him. And so I spoke to a Yale historian, Timothy Snyder, who said, when you look at this in the big scale of things, Geoff, that ultimately Trump's comments about Biden trying to — his FBI trying to assassinate him is essentially a classic tactic used by fascist movements, that they want to get a monopoly on victimhood, so that way they can justify any actions they take, whether it's overturning an election or using violence against their enemy.