Anti-Vaxxer Conspiracists News - How Trumpanzee Cult Conspiracists Are Risking People's Lives For Money While Feeding Populist Extremism

Online spaces attract conspiracy theorists. Social media has helped propagate conspiracy theories faster than was possible with more traditional media. This has driven engagement with political parties that focus on conspiracy theories.

Envato/DC_Studio

Anti-vaccine conspiracies fuel divisive political discourse | The University of Tokyo

According to a news item carried today by Agence France-Presse (AFP), US antivaxx conspiracists are deliberately spreading fear and disinformation to sell quack medical kits to gullible fools and in doing so are risking the lives of anyone foolish enough to believe them. And a recent paper published by a Japanese research group has shown how extremist parties are trading on growing antivaxx paranoia, originating in Trump-supporting conspiracists in the USA, by incorporating it into the political platforms.

This team of researchers recall how Donald Trump first of all tried to take credit for developing the mRNA vaccines against Covid-19, as though he had personally directed the research and invented the science behind mRNA vaccines, then switched to curry favour with the antivaxxers by casting doubt on the need for boosters. And of course, antivaxxer conspiracy theories became a central theme of the rabidly pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theorists.

Firstly, the AFP report:

Creationism in Crisis - How Radiometric Dating Really Works - And Refutes Creationism

Example of a radioactive decay chain from lead-212 (²¹²Pb) to lead-208 (²⁰⁸Pb) . Each parent nuclide spontaneously decays into a daughter nuclide (the decay product) via an α decay or a β− decay. The final decay product, lead-208 (²⁰⁸Pb), is stable and can no longer undergo spontaneous radioactive decay.

Source: Wikipedia

Creationism in Crisis - How Radiometric Dating Really Works - And Refutes Creationism

As a service to Creationists, I asked ChatGPT to outline the main geochronology techniques, how and when they are used by palaeontologists, what their limitations are, and how scientists allow for possible sources of error.

All creationists need do is explain how and where these techniques are wrong and what the source of error is that can make 10,000 years or less look like hundreds of millions, or billions of years, without claiming the fundamental forces which control the universe changed to such an extent that atoms would not have been able to form when the they believe the universe, Earth and all life on it were created.

Remember to supply the verified evidence because a claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and false claims will simply demonstrate what many people already know - that creationism is a cult for people gullible enough to believe falsehoods and ignorant enough not to know they've been fooled.

Creationism in Crisis - How Panic Is Causing Creationist Frauds To Expose Their Dishonesty On Amazon

Why would someone lie to you about the contents of a book?

Like those who lie to you about science, their problem is not that they think it is wrong; their problem is that they think it is right, but they don't want you to think otherwise because they don't want you to be informed. They have an agenda that requires you to remain ignorant and believing falsehoods.

These are frauds who understand how knowledge empowers and sets you free, so they need you to remain captive and weak probably because their income and power depends on it.

This was never better illustrated than by the barrage of lies and disinformation with which the creation industry is trying to stop you reading my books. It is so important to them that you don't read these books that expose them as frauds and conmen that they are willing to sacrifice their personal integrity to try to fool you into not reading them. The fact that they are willing to bear false witness to you for their own self-interest, should tell you that their pretense of piety is part of their agenda, since a devout Christian would believe that bearing false witness is a sin. These are frauds using religion as an excuse for their behaviour.

I suppose I should be flattered in a way, that they are so afraid you'll read these books because of the irrefutable arguments they present and the examples I used that they need to go to these lengths to retain their control of their cult members and recruit more ignorant dupes into it.

Two of my books that are causing consternation in creationist cult circles are, The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax, and The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good.

An indication of this consternation is the number of misleading and downright dishonest 'reviews' that Amazon are allowing to remain on these books.

The following is an all-too-typical examples, written by someone who calls him or herself 'The Professor' and who purports to be a University professor who has written numerous books, although he/she neglects to say what chair he/she holds at what university or give the tile of any of these 'numerous books'. We just have to take their word for it.

However, the veracity of their word can best be judged by the content of the 'review' of The Malevolent Designer. For some reason, the title of the book in their 'review' is followed by Unintelligent Design in parenthesis, so it's not even clear which book is being 'reviewed' here.

The 'review' read:

How Creationists Lie to Us - Ken Ham's Top 10 'Evidences' [sic] (For the Moral and Intellectual Bankruptcy of Creationism)

Ken Ham, Creationist
Net worth (2023) $55 million

10 Best Evidences That Confirm a Young Earth | Answers in Genesis

I've just been shown an article from Ken Ham's deception site, answersingenesis.com, which the posted claimed proved the Bible contains accurate science.

Evidently the dupe hadn't got the courage or the ability to check the claimed '10 Best Evidences [sic] from Science That Confirm a Young Earth.

The article starts of in typical Creationist style with circular reasoning arguing that the Bible must be true because it says so in the Bible. He then launches into an attack on dating methods which he claims can't be proven because no-one was there to witness it (apart from his God, obviously.

This has the same intellectual merit as arguing that you can't be sure your great grandparents met and has sex, because no-one recorded seeing them doing it, so their children being born by magic is at least as good an explanation as that they had them the normal way.

Or, more subtly, it you met a friend in one town one day then in a different town a month later, you can't prove he/she travelled from the first town to the second in the intervening month unless you saw them on the journey, so a rational explanation is that he/she magically teleports from one place to another.

Despite this wealth of evidence, it is important to understand that, from the perspective of observational science, no one can prove absolutely how young (or old) the universe is. Only one dating method is absolutely reliable—a witness who doesn’t lie, who has all evidence, and who can reveal to us when the universe began! And we do have such a witness—the God of the Bible! He has given us a specific history, beginning with the six days of Creation and followed by detailed genealogies that allow us to determine when the universe began. Based on this history, the beginning was only about six thousand years ago (about four thousand years from Creation to Christ).

And Ham doesn't even understand the science he's attacking: The evidence is that Earth is 4.54 billion years old, not the 3 billion he's attacking. But this is only a minor aspect of his profound ignorance and/or intellectual bankruptcy, as we will see. There then follow several Bible references which are supposed to prove that the Bible is the word of God - because it says so in the Bible. And believe it or not, this site appears to be aimed at adults, although Ham shows his contempt for his dupes by treating them like toddlers and being incapable of basic logic. But let's move swiftly on to the 10 evidences [sic]:

Nasty Party News - I Hate To Say IT But I Told You So!

WhaLiz Truss resigns as prime minister: the five causes of her downfall explained

As the Tory Party tries to recover from yet another mistake in its choice of leader, even openly discussing bringing back the mistake before last in the unappealing form of 'conviction politician', Boris Johnson, the factional infighting as Tory MPs try to decide "What's in it for me?" continues to dominate UK politics as it has done ever since they chose David Cameron. Meanwhile major problems such as increasing poverty, a collapsing NHS, almost non-existent social care, lack of affordable housing and a stagnating economy are ignored in favour of personal gain and political careers.

On the day Truss was elected, I wrote:

Liz Truss could be the latest in a long line of increasingly incompetent Tory leaders which began with John Major, followed by William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith, Michael Howard, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson in that order. Arguably, Tory leaders have been increasingly less competent since Neville Chamberlain, interspersed only by Winston Churchill and (arguably) Margaret Thatcher, who, nasty though she was, can't really be described as incompetent, save only for the Poll Tax debacle that cost her the leadership.

She [Truss] is something of a political balloon, going with the political wind in whatever direction furthers her career. She comes from a left-leaning family and used to go to peace camps with her socialist mother. But she chose the Tory Party to stand as an MP. In the Tory Party she was initially to the left of the party and voted ‘remain’ in the EU referendum. Having been on the losing side she quickly realised she had been a Brexiteer all along and is now an enthusiastic supporter of the idea. It remains to be seen what other principles she will be willing to abandon to retain power. As always, with Tory MPs, “What’s in it for me?” is the only principle worth holding to.

To add to her difficulties, Truss inherits a party, after a fractious and bruising leadership campaign, that is hopelessly divided on a number of issues, with a substantial number holding former Labour 'safe' seats in Northern ‘red wall’ constituencies, who are fearful of losing them at the next election, and she was elected by just 57% of the members - the smallest majority of any leader since they allowed the members a say in the matter.

She also inherits an impending financial crisis with standards of living forecast to fall by 10% in the next two years - in the lead up to the next general election, due in Spring 2024 - with soaring energy prices, zero economic growth, accelerating inflation expected to exceed 20% - levels not seen since the 1970s, increasing interest rates, and an NHS on the point of collapse, due to the 'Brexit bonus' of lots of staff in the NHS and the Social Care sectors returning to their EU home countries, having lost the right to live and work in the UK.

And the Tory Party can no longer get away with blaming everything on the previous Labour Government, having been in government themselves since 2010. Instead, they are now facing the humiliation of having to adopt some of Labour's policies if they are to tackle the impending crises. The Tories are quickly losing their reputation for economic competence, that was never really deserved anyway, having successfully blamed the Wilson/Callaghan government for the economic chaos of the 1970's caused by the 'Barber boom' under Ted Heath, which was a cynical attempt to buy popular support.

What probably won it for Truss was her promise to introduce big tax cuts, which appealed to the Tory Party members whose single political concern is always, "What's in it for me?" She is now faced with either implementing that against all the financial advice that it will do nothing for the poor, who are facing the brunt of the economic crisis, because they don't pay tax, but will be inflationary, so making the poor poorer, or reneging on a central promise to her members to make them richer at the expense of the poor.

[…]

The latest update to this story is that Truss seems to be stuffing her cabinet with those who supported her in the leadership campaign and sacking or refusing jobs to Sunak supporters. This bloodbath might make the cabinet easier to control but will leave a lot of frustrated, ambitious, and embittered Tory MPs on the back benches, when the last thing she needs is enemies. A 60-odd seat majority is no guarantee of an easy time in the Commons, as Johnson discovered. Perhaps she is merely showing her party how tough and ruthless sha can be and how she will deal with disloyalty in the future.

The next two years will be… interesting.

Little did I suspect that the interesting times would be so short and that the car crash that was Liz Truss's premiership would be so short-lived. It's almost disappointing that one of the most gratifying spectacles in UK politics - the Nasty Party if full civil war - has come to an end so soon. However, that may be an unrealistic assessment, as there is no sign yet of even a truce, as the backstabbing and manoeuvring for position is to last at least another week as the MPs choose another leader and this time try to deny the 60,000 or so party members a say. After all, they chose, in succession, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, so clearly they can't be trusted to choose responsibly.

So, how did the oh-so-predictable failure of the Truss premiership come so quickly?

In this article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency, Matthew Flinders, Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield, suggests there were five key elements in her rise and fall. The original article can be read here:

Christian False Witnessing News - David Barton is Lying Again

David Barton,
Pseudo-historian and professional liar for Jesus and the gun lobby

The pseudo-historian, David Barton, who earns his living lying for Jesus is also lying for the gun industry in the USA. Apparently, he feels his piety entitles him to an exemption from the commandments which forbids bearing false witness and he knows the extreme right-wing causes he take money for promoting can't be promoted with truth and honesty.

Long-time readers of this blog may recall how David Barton went on American TV to try to fool Americans into believing the US Constitution was taken 'verbatim' straight from the Bible and so America should be a Christian theocracy, by lying about what was in the Bible - a tactic that depends on the fools he dupes taking his word for it and not fact-checking his claims.

Religious right-pseudo historian David Barton insists that gun control will not lessen the death rate in the U.S. because England does not "allow guns and they've got a knife death rate higher than we have in some of our major cities." pic.twitter.com/BOEdBrV7Op

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) December 17, 2021

He has repeated that tactic, this time to defend and promote the gun lobby (which traditionally provides vast financial support for right-wing politicians and buys political influence at Washington). On 17 Dec, he tried to fool viewers of Victory News, that banning guns would not reduce the death rate because England [sic] does not "allow guns and they've got a knife death rate higher than we have in some of our major cities."

Not only does he appear to be unaware that the UK is not just England (a common enough mistake American's make, but a curious degree of ignorance for someone who poses as a historian!), and guns are banned throughout the UK; he is also lying about the knife death rate in the UK. According to a freely available House of Commons Library research briefing, in the year ending March 2021, there were just 224 homicides involving sharp instruments (including broken bottles) in England and Wales. The worst area was the area covered by West Midlands Police, which includes the major industrial cities of Birmingham, Coventry, West Bromwich, and Wolverhampton where the knife crimes in total, not just deaths, stood at 156 for the same year.

By contrast, according to a 2021 CNN analysis of 40 US Cities:

The rise in violent crime is an epidemic that is happening "all across the country," said Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, and a result of three major factors: the impact of Covid-19 on communities and first responders, the fallout of the social unrest after the murder of George Floyd, and the surge in gun sales since the start of the pandemic.

At least nine major cities have broken their previous annual homicide records with about three weeks left to go in 2021. There have been 513 homicides this year in Philadelphia, higher than the previous total of 503 in 1990. There have been 230 homicides in Indianapolis, breaking the previous record of 215 set just last year.

These increases are not isolated to any particular region of the country. Other cities with record homicide totals include Louisville, Kentucky; Columbus, Ohio; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; Rochester, New York; and Portland, Oregon. Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Nashville are also on pace to reach record homicide numbers by the end of the year.

Los Angeles recorded 352 homicides so far this year, and Chicago has seen 756, with year-to-date increases of 12% and 4% respectively. In Houston, homicides are up 18% from 2020.

In other words, the knife-related deaths in England and Wales (awful though they are), far from being what David Barton lied about, are at levels of which those trying to reduce US gun deaths in the USA can only dream. By contrast, the number of gun deaths in UK is minuscule compared to those in the USA with total anula gun deaths in the entire UK being well below those in an average US city in a month.

Barton's chosen platform from which to lie to America is a right-wing evangelical Christian channel which laughably describes itself on its website as:

VICTORY News is here to bring you daily news you can trust—always delivered in a spirit of faith. Stay informed and encouraged with faith, facts and freedom!

As 'Christians' they would know the power of truth to 'set you free' and so they also know that lies achieve just the opposite. The last thing they want their dupes knowing is the truth when, as a recent Pew Research survey showed, affiliation to the protestant churches in the USA, including the white evangelical churches, is collapsing at an accelearating rate and unaffiliated ('None') numbers are doubling every ten years. They know the only way to keep the faithful inline and paying their tythes is to keep them fooled and enslaved by believing the lies they pump out.

And David Barton knows that too. He also knows how it would hit the profits of the gun industry and so the size of their donations to right wing political causes such as the Repugnican Party if gun sales were curtailed and controlled - which is why he went on a right-wing Christian TV 'news' channel to lie to Americans and probably why the right-wing Christian TV 'news' channel invited him on to lie to Americans.

When you show the world you know you need to lie for your faith, you show the world you know your faith is a lie that needs people to believe falsehoods

Tweet

Eric Hovind's Very Silly Questions

I'm not sure who they're aimed at - not people of normal intelligence, that's for sure - but these astoundingly facile questions are what Eric Hovind believes are killer knock-down questions for non-Christians. (Apparently Eric is either genuinely unaware that other religions offer answers to all these, or is feigning ignorance and relying on his target audience's ignorance to get away with it).

Eric is the son and chief acolyte of his father, the notorious liar and grifter, Kent Hovind, and was caretaker of the family 'business' while Kent was serving jail time for tax fraud and again for a violent assault on his former wife. Little Eric seems to be very much a chip off the old block-head

He is ignorant of, or is feigning ignorance of, the answers to several of these questions which can be found by a moment's search on the Internet, or by going to a decent reference library or any good bookshop.

The originals can be seen here: http://www.drdino.com/questions-science-cant-answer/. In the best traditions of the snake-oil peddler, they are nothing more than the God of the Gaps, gotcha! questions where the target marks are expected to not realise they are nothing more than the argument from ignorant incredulity combined with the false dichotomy fallacy. Eric assumes the targets can be relied on to assume, if science hasn't answered something, science won't ever answer it, so, since the only alternative is "God did it!", that wins by default. This saves the fraud the trouble of producing any evidence to support his/her contention, and taps into the parochial ignorance, scientific illiteracy and cultural chauvinism of his target audience.

This is the hallmark of the dishonest, intellectually bankrupt creationist apologist.
Let's take a look at them (in red)