Creationist Failure News - Yes! It's Another of Those Commonplace 'Non-Existent' Things!

Cantabrigiaster fezouataensis from the Lower Ordovician (Tremadocian) Fezouata Shale,
Zagora Morocco

Credit: Collection of Yale University

New starfish-like fossil reveals evolution in action | University of Cambridge

Researchers from Cambridge University's Earth Sciences and Zoology Departments have identified an Ordovician period fossil, about about 450-million-years-old, from Morocco's Anti-Atlas Mountains as intermediate between the sea lilies or Crinoids and modern starfish. The Ordovician was a period of rapid diversification starting about 485.4 million years ago immediately after the Cambrian and lasting until about 443.8 million years ago.

Regular find like this must be acutely embarrassing for the Creationist frauds who tell their credulous dupes that the absence of these transitional forms in the fossil record means Darwin's TOE is falsified!

Evolution News - How a Single Gene Alteration May Have Separated Modern Humans From Cousin Species

Modern Human skull (L) compared to Neanderthal skull (R)

How a Single Gene Alteration May Have Separated Modern Humans from Predecessors | UC San Diego News Center

Researchers at UC San Diego, led by Alysson R. Muotri, PhD, believe they have shown that a mutation in a single gene could have altered the way our ancestors' brains were wired, enabling them to develop complex social structures, language, adaptability, creativity and use of technology, all of which appear to have arisen over a very short period of time, by evolutionary standards.

The mutation involved a single base-pair substitution - the simplest of all mutations!

They did this by growing brain 'organoids' in Petri dishes from modified stem cells. The UC San Diego news release explains:

Trumpanzee Fruitloop News - "God Didn't Say Trump Lost, So He Won Really!"

Amanda Grace,
"All part of God's plan to make eveyone think Joe Biden won"

'Prophetess' Amanda Grace Says Trump's Impeachment Trial Is Proof He's Still President | Right Wing Watch

Self-declared "prophetess" and Talibangelical grifter, Amanda Grace, normally bases her 'prophesies' on what the voices in her head say. This time, however, she's going with what they don't say.

In this case, despite wrongly telling her Trump would win last November, so far, 'God' hasn't told her Trump lost - so he must have won really and is still president! Or so she told a delighted right-wing author, commentator, and leading Trumpanzee cultist, Eric Metaxas, on The Eric Metaxas Radio Show.

Apparently believing that it's not the final tally of the votes cast, the certification of the count by state officials, the votes of the Electoral College and finally, certification of the result by Congress, that determines the outcome of American elections, but what her personal voices say, that determines them, she said:

There has been a delay for a reason. It’s not over, and it’s far from over with what the Lord is going to do with President Trump, what the Lord is going to do to the wicked of this nation, including the media. You know, I prophesied from the Lord in October about the media suffering the biggest crisis they ever had in 2021 for their crimes, so I’m watching for that to unfold.

She also 'revealed' that it is all part of God's plan to make everyone think Joe Biden won, so there will be no doubt it is God's miracle when Trump is reinstalled in the White House.

But the real clincher is the fact that Trump is being impeached for a second time. Grace has declared, despite legal opinion to the contrary, that it is only possible to impeach a president in office, and not after he has been deposed, therefore, impeachment 'proves' he is still president, really:

There’s been a delay because I believe God is trying to get people’s eyes on him. He wants all eyes on him right now for the demonstration he’s going to put on. Just like when the Jews were at the Red Sea, and they’re there, and Egypt’s at their back, and it’s all eyes on God because either the Lord is going to do this, or it’s not going to happen. And when they thought there was a dead end, God saw a path through that water. So, God’s ways are much higher when he sees how to make a path when people don’t think there is a way.

The Lord has never said to me [Trump is] not going to serve a second term. Sometimes what the Lord doesn’t say is as important as what he says. And he never said to me, ‘President Trump is not going to serve a second term.’ However, I do believe, because I prophesied this last night from the Lord, a surprise is coming with this impeachment because you can’t impeach a citizen. So something is very interesting here going on, because they’re trying to impeach a citizen right now, if he really is a citizen. You can only impeach a sitting president, so this is like we have dueling presidents right now. This is what it is: dueling presidents.

People’s actions speak louder than their words. These wicked peole right now in Congress—who the Lord is going to deal severely with, by the way—you can only impeach a president. If he is really a citizen right now, how are you impeaching him? You can’t impeach a regular citizen. It’s not possible, not according to the law, not according to the Constitution. So their action—sometimes the actions of the wicked will give them away—are pointing that something is not quite kosher going on with who’s the president.

You actually can impeach a former President, FWIW

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) December 4, 2019

One person who disagrees with Grace on that score, is President-reject, Donald J. Trump who once famously called for the impeachment of Barak Obama after he had left office. In early 2020, in a tweet which is no longer available, Trump's Twitter account having been permanently suspended, in response to Obama's comments on health care, Trump said, "We should impeach him for that. Why aren’t we impeaching him?"

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), himself a lawyer, though not a constitutional scholar, also disagrees with 'Prophetess' Grace. Answering criticism of his call to impeach Obama in December 2019, he assured Jake Sherman, "You actually can impeach a former president, FWIW".

Not that anyone need take fruitloop, Amanda Grace's opinion on the niceties of US constitutional law, seriously, but there is actually some unsettled debate on the matter of impeaching former officials, unsettled partly because it's never really been tested at this level before. The argument is over the interpretation and the intent of two Articles:

• Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, says, “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
• Article I, Section 3, says, “Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”

In other words, a person convicted on impeachment can't be imprisoned, executed, fined, have property seized or face any other penalty - not even the loss of his pension.

So, those convicted face two penalties - removal from office, and disbarment from holding future office, the latter being the only relevant penalty for a former official, meaning the purpose of impeachment is not solely to sack a corrupt official, but also to prevent them from ever holding office again.

The other argument is over the intent of the people who framed these articles, and it surely can't have been their intention to build in a massive loophole that would render the entire thing moot and unusable - namely, by offering the escape route of resignation to avoid the penalty of being disbarred in the future, and the ignominy of being convicted.

Be that as it may, the reality is that Congress has the right to bring articles of impeachment against a former office holder, and has decided to do so, as is their constitutional right; and the Senate now has a constitutional duty to hold a formal trial once articles of impeachment have been brought before them, to which they are bound by their oath of office. The argument over whether the Senate can then convict under the Constitution is a separate one altogether.

The moral of this story is, if you want to understand the US Constitution and the powers of the legislature, ask a constitutional lawyer, not a deluded fruitloop who hears voices and even understands what they mean when they don't say anything - especially when what they don't say is what she doesn't want them to say anyway.

What is the probability that she is just plain lying because she is too embarrassed about making false prophesies to admit she made them up too and got it wrong?

---

Tweet Link

The Fundamentalist Christian Child Pornographer and Trump Aide.

Christmas at the White House with Trump's Ad designer, child pornographer and paedophile rapist, Ruben A. Verastigui.

Former Trump and GOP Aide Ruben Verastigui Charged With Child Pornography Offenses

Of course it would be wrong to suggest that all Trump's supporters and staffers share his lack of moral scruples in sexual matters, but this one certainly did.

In fact, when he was working for the Senate Republican Conference and Christian pro-life groups, and designing social media ads for Donald Trump's Make America Great Again Committee and Donald J Trump for President, Inc., Ruben A. Verastigui was also trading in child pornography and telling his online pal and fellow paedophile:

Well like I said babies are some of my biggest turn-ons and beast. Young rape… Fuck I love all that.

According to this report in The Daily Beast:

D.C. Metropolitan Police arrested Ruben A. Verastigui on Friday after an investigation revealed he allegedly “distributed, received, and possessed images of child pornography” between March 2020 and February 2021. Jared Holt, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, first reported Verastigui’s arrest on Twitter.

Trump's Legacy - How Trump Made America Hate Again

Police clash with a mob of Trump supporters who breached security and stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

Photo: Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

How America Changed During Trump’s Presidency | Pew Research Center

What happens when an advanced nation elects an incompetent oaf with a narcissistic personality disorder and the emotional maturity and self-control of an over-privileged adolescent, gives him a Twitter account and his own room and tells him he runs the world?

We spent the last 4 years finding out when America did just that in 2016. As this article by Michael Dimock and John Gramlich of the Pew Research Center, based largely on Pew Research polling over the period, shows, it left American society and the Republican Party deeply divided and at one point on the brink of violent insurrection, and America massively diminished in the eyes of the world.

Trump became the first world leader to try to govern (with his idea of government) through a Twitter account. Policies were announced and people were sacked not after discussions with colleagues and attempts to reach consensus but on a whim, often in the small hours of the morning by a Twitter tweet in response to an item on one of the right-wing disinformation TV networks, such as Fox News.

Evolution News - Our Common Ancestry in Fish

Polypterus bichir

We’re more like primitive fishes than once believed – University of Copenhagen

Humans, like all terrestrial tetrapods, have a couple of major differences with the bony fish we are all believed to be descended from via an intermediate species such as Tiktaalik roseae, which crawled out onto land about 370 million years ago; the major differences being our jointed limbs and our lungs, all thought to be adaptations to walking on land and breathing air.

However, researchers at the University of Copenhagen believe they have found evidence to show that these structures could have been present in our ancestral fish some 50 million years before that. In fact, lungs may be the forerunner of the swim-bladder found in bony fish, rather than the swim-bladder being the forerunner of lungs.

The conventional view is that bottom-feeding fish, in low-oxygen environments, used their swim-bladder as a fresh-air supply by gulping air from the surface. The swim-bladder is connected to the gut. This, over time, evolved into the lungs and enabled this bottom-feeders to use the limbs they were evolving to crawl around in the silt, to come out onto land.

This research challenges that view by suggesting that some early bony fish may have had lungs that later evolved into swim-bladders in fish that needed to vary their buoyancy while some retained them as functional lungs which server the purpose of a fresh air store for foraging in an anoxic environment.

Evolution News - Evolution of Skin, Fur and Feather Colours

Summary of Current Understanding of the Location of Melanosomes in Different Body Tissues and Organs and Putative Functions in Major Vertebrate Classes.

Functions of Melanin in Ancient Vertebrates

Fossil pigments shed new light on vertebrate evolution, UCC study finds | News and Views | University College Cork

A team of palaeontologists from University College Cork (Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh), Ireland have uncovered how melanin, the pigment that now gives mammals and birds the colours in their skin, fur and feathers, once had a different function in our evolutionary ancestors, but, because of one of those effects of the utilitarian 'design' process of evolution by natural selection, it was also toxic. Unless, as a creationist who believes in intelligent [sic] design, you believe toxicity was a problem deliberately created so it could be solved with a clunky work-around later.

Of course, the work debunks intelligent [sic] design creationism simply by revealing the facts, especially its latest ploy - evolution = devolution!

Melanin initially evolved as part of a mineral storage system which also played a role in immunity, and was stored in several internal organs in the bodies of early amphibians and reptiles. But it has a tendency to produce free radicles and is thus mildly toxic. The benefits of a functional, albeit primitive, immune systems outweighed the damage done, but as later animals evolved improved immune systems - given added impetus by the toxic melanin, the dynamic shifted so that the net result of melanin in the internal organs was detrimental, producing selection pressure to remove it to a place of safety - namely, outside the body in the outer layer of the skin, in hair and feathers of the evolving mammals and birds.

This in turn created selection pressure favouring colouration for camouflage, display, etc, as well as protection from harmful solar radiation, so we now have a rich diversity in hair and feather patterns in the mammals and birds.

Religion Declining Even in Former Devout Islamic and Catholic Countries

Middle East: Are people losing their religion? | Middle East| News and analysis of events in the Arab world | DW | 04.02.2021

The increasing rejection of religion which we have seen in most of the predominantly former Christian Western industrialised world since the mid 20th century, is now also being seen in the predominantly Moslem parts of the Middle East according to a poll conducted by the Arab Barometer, a research group based in Princeton University and the University of Michigan. The poll was the subject of a recent article in The Economist.

Coincident with, or maybe because of, this loss of faith, there is a corresponding fall in the trust of political parties and religious leaders who, in some countries are one and the same.

U.S. Ethics Ratings for Clergy at Second Lowest on Record

Percentage who believe each profession has a high or very high standard of professional ethics.

Source: Gallup Poll Social Series^[PDF]

U.S. Ethics Ratings Rise for Medical Workers and Teachers

The level of trust of the US public in the ethics of the clergy continues to decline, according to a Gallup survey published just before Christmas, 2020, based on sampling over 1-17 December, 2020. The same poll shows an enhanced level of trust in the medical and medical-related professions, doctors, nurses and pharmacists, probably due to the way they are seen to be coping with the coronavirus pandemic.

The stock of the clergy, never as high as that of nurses, doctors and pharmacists has been in steady decline since 2004, falling 17 percentage points in the intervening 16 years to 2020, probably as a result of the child abuse scandals that engulfed the Catholic Church. The evangelical alliance with Donald Trump has done them little good either; all four of their worst years have been since 2016 when they fell below 40% for the first time, never again to rise above it.

The medical professionals all appear to have benefitted from the coronavirus pandemic in terms of perceived professionalism, all three showing sharp rises during 2020.

Anti-Covid-19 Vaccination Diary - The Beginning of the End!

Anti-Covid Vaccination Record Card

To begin at the beginning - we got a phone-call from our doctor's surgery last Wednesday inviting us to have the anti-Coronavirus vaccine. Of course, being fed up with restrictions on our movements for getting on for a year now, and looking forward to a holiday somewhere warm and sunny this year, unlike last year where we made do with a few days in Pembrokeshire, Wales, we jumped at the chance and were duly booked in today at the Village Hall in Clifton Hampden, about 5 mile drive away on the Wallingford road.

In this diary, I'll record our experiences, any side-effect and hopefully, come the day, our second dose and our road to a good level of immunity, how easy it is to do foreign travel, etc.

The purpose to to show that there is nothing to fear and averything to gain from this vaccine!

Malevolent Designer News - God Loves Elephants More Than he Loves Us

Artist's illustration of species within the taxonomic order Proboscidea, which includes elephants.

Credit: Liam Elward
Larger versions are available by contacting Charlotte Hsu at chsu22@buffalo.edu.

How elephants evolved to become big and cancer-resistant - University at Buffalo

Unlike most other mammals, and especially humans, elephants hardly ever get cancers.

The reason for this has been known since 2016 when researchers at the University of Chicago found that elephants have multiple copies of the TP53 gene, probably produced by gene duplication during their evolution to large size! The TP53 gene is involved in DNA repair, but in most mammals, this gene is not very efficient. Multiple copies of it seem to compensate for this inefficiency, however.

Now another team have shown that this is true for other related animals and was probably true for their remote ancestors.

This is how I explained it in by popular illustrated book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good as an example of something creationist's putative designer could have give us and other mammals, but chose not to (assuming you believe that magical nonsense):

Malevolent Designer News - Different Responses to the Same Cancer!

Moffitt Researchers Discover Mechanism that Regulates Anti-Tumor Activity of Immune Cells in Ovarian Cancer | Moffitt

Yet another conundrum to ponder for intelligent [sic] design creationists who like to believe their putative designer is one and the same as the allegedly all-loving god of the Christian Bible.

Why has it given some women a better immune system for dealing with ovarian cancers than it gave to others?

This difference was the subject of an investigation by researchers from the Moffitt Cancer Center to discover what it was that meant the outcomes from immunotherapies for this cancer were so variable from one woman to another. What they discovered was:

Malevolent Designer News - Now Bats Get the Batty Sadist's Attention

Hybernating bats infected with Pseudogymnoascus destructans, showing white-nose syndrome.

Credit: Government of Alberta/Flickr, CC BY-ND

How European hibernating bats cope with white-nose syndrome which kills millions of North American bats - Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research

It's not a good day to be an intelligent [sic] design Creationist. In addition to that little problem with Creationism's supposedly all-loving creative deity apparently trying to find ways around the vaccines human medical science has developed against the nasty little SARS-CoV-2 virus it created to kill us or make us seriously sick, we now have this muddle over its treatment of bats, where for some reason it has created a fungus that has been designed to kill North American bats but not European bats!

To believers in intelligent [sic] design who know the facts about bat immune systems (and I accept that's probably very few if any) it must appear that their putative designer has some special affections for bats. Either that, or it wants them to have a robust immune system so they can act as laboratories and testbeds for producing novel coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2.

As I said in my illustrated popular book, The Malevolent Designer:

Malevolent Designer News - How SARS-CoV-2 Mutates to Escape Antibody Binding

How SARS-CoV-2 Mutates to Escape Antibody Binding - University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

It's time to play at being intelligent [sic] design creationists again to see what mental summersaults are needed to believe in it.

This time it involves looking at how it is coping with the fact that human medical science has found a way to make the immune system it designed to protect us from the viruses like SARS-CoV-2 it creates to make us sick, actually do the job it would have done if only it had been competently designed in the first place.

Remember, one of the rules of the game is to pretend that nothing happens without the personal intervention of a perfect, omniscient god. The corollary to that is that whatever happens is exactly what that god intended to happen, nothing more and nothing less. Oh! And we have to pretend that this god is the god of the Christian Bible whom Christians believe is an omni-benevolent god, worthy of worship and praise.

Catholic Child Abuse News - Suffer Little German Children, Sold By Nuns to Paedophiles

Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.
Refusing to publish the report into the sexual abuse of children by Catholic nuns and priests in his archdioces.

Child abuse in the Catholic Church — a scandalous approach to scandal  | Germany| News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond | DW | 25.11.2020

We're used to stories of the sexual exploitation and abuse of children by Catholic nuns, what with the Irish Mother and Bay Homes scandal and reports of Spanish nuns selling new-born babies and telling their single mothers their baby had died, that it comes as little surprise that a scandal has been uncovered in Germany, involving nuns and priest selling orphaned children for sexual exploitation in the Archdiocese of Cologne.

This scandal has come to light as a result of a lawsuit brought by some of the victims.

The lawsuit alleges that boys living in the boarding houses of the Order of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer were sold or loaned for weeks at a time to predatory priests and businessmen in a sick rape trade. The boys were denied the chance of being adopted or fostered out to families because selling them or hiring them out for sex orgies was more lucrative.

Evolution News - Evolution of Bitter-Taste Receptors Over 400 Million Years

Coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae.

Graphic: Sabine Bijewitz, Template Drawing: Robbie Cada.

PM_20210202_Press_release_Coelacanths_bitter_taste_receptor

Creationist dupes are constantly attacking what they like to pretend are problems with the fossil record, imagining that the entire Theory of Evolution depends on fossils and fossils alone.

It doesn't, of course and the TOE would still stand up to scrutiny even if we had never found a fossil. The geological/paleontological evidence of fossils is merely additional supporting evidence to the mass of evidence to be found in the biochemical, physiological, genetic and anatomical record, all of which show evidence of common origins and the nested hierarchies this predicts.

Now a team of researchers from Technical University of Munich Leibniz-Institute for Food Systems Biology have revealed even more evidence of common origins in the form of taste receptors in fish that perform the same function in humans. The team compared two original bitter receptor types from the coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) with four others from the zebrafish (Danio rerio) phylogenetically, functionally and structurally.

They found that they were essentially identical in both species even though they were separated by 400 million years of evolution. What's more, the test system they used showed that these fish taste receptors recognise the same bitter substances as do humans!

Altruism News - Covid-19 Plasma Donation is Fuelled by Kindness. No Religion Involved

Convalescent plasma is a treatment being trialled for Covid-19 and involves blood plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients being transfused into patients who are currently in hospital with the virus.

News - Research finds Covid plasma donation is fuelled by kindness - University of Nottingham

In a piece of research by psychologists from Nottingham University with colleagues from Australian Red Cross Lifeblood and the University of Queensland Australia, has identified 6 main motivations for recovered Covid-19 patients in the UK donating blood plasma, which is being used to treat people who are currently ill with the virus.

The study involved 419 UK residents who who indicated they had been infected with Covid-19 and were eligible to donate convalescent plasma. They were asked about their awareness of convalescent plasma, motivations, and barriers to donating.

The six main motivations were:

• Altruism from adversity.
• Post-traumatic growth.
• Moral and civic duty to help research.
• Patriotism and control.
• Reluctant altruism.
• Signalling reluctant altruism.

Covidiot News - Campaign to Boycott Jewish Newspapers for Telling the Truth

Stamford Hill campaign to boycott Jewish News for exposing lockdown criminality | Jewish News

America is far from being the only country where religious fundamentalists are being obstructive over measures to control the coronavirus pandemic currently killing millions, and putting the public at risk rather than be deprived of their assumed privilege to do what they want, when, where and how they want, without regard for the health and welfare of others.

Readers may recall my article of a few days ago about the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Charedi community that was routinely breaking the Covid-19 lockdown regulations by holding clandestine mass weddings with 300+ guests, some of whom were known to have tested coronavirus positive, in a local girls' school in Stamford Hill, London. That story had been broken by Jewish News and prompted prominent Jewish barrister, Daniel Greenberg, to condemn the organisers in blunt terms with:

Those who have attended illicit weddings under lockdown represent a self-indulgent sect that should be disowned by the rest of the Jewish world...

But the reality is that this is just a new emergence of something that many of us have known known or suspected for some time, and which now perhaps needs to be articulated clearly and publicly: much of the lifestyle for many Charedi communities is completely incompatible with the fundamental principles of Judaism...

It is time for the rest of the Jewish community to disown those individuals publicly and allow them to go their own mad and dangerous way, and turn to the task of publicly representing a more balanced approach to Jewish practice as being the real continuation of the Jewish heritage in all meaningful ways.

Evolution News - Tiktaalik Just Keeps on Transitioning!

Side-by-side comparison of Tiktaalik (top) and alligator gar (bottom) showing similarly shaped snouts that may suggest convergence in feeding strategies.

Credit: Justin Lemberg, University of Chicago.

New clues emerge in how early tetrapods learned to live—and eat—on land

Tiktaalik is one of those embarrassing fossils that drive Creationists bonkers because they annoyingly keep violating so many dogmas that it makes it difficult to fool even the scientifically illiterate simpletons who normally comprise the marks of Creationist frauds.

For one thing, it was discovered exactly where biologists, using the TOE, predicted it would be found in rocks of the right age and type for a species transitional between a fish and a terrestrial tetrapod.

Then back in January, 2014, a team from Chicago University, which included Dr Neil Shubin, who was one of the biologists who predicted where the fossil they named Tiktaalik would be found, showed how the hind limbs of terrestrial tetrapods had evolved out of the hind fins of a fish like Tiktaalik.

And now essentially the same team have shown how Tiktaalik roseae's skull shows the transition between feeding in water, where suction is important and feeding on land where biting is the main method of catching prey.

Trumpanzee Losers News - The Repugnican Party is Falling Apart.

Trump addresses a rally in Georgia ahead of the run-off election to decide both of Georgia's Senate seats, Jan 4th, 2021. Trump's Republicans lost both, conceding control of the Senate to the Democrats.

Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis

Exclusive: Dozens of former Bush officials leave Republican Party, calling it 'Trump cult' | Reuters

It's a well-known phenomenon, especially in political circles, that losing parties tend to turn inward and break up. This is especially true when the defeat is heavy. We saw it in the UK when the Tories fell apart after their catastrophic defeat in 1997 by Tony Blair's Labour; we saw it again when Labour fell apart after Gordon Brown's defeat by Cameron's resergent Tories in 2010; in 2017 when the Tories again degenerated into waring factions when Theresa May lost her majority in the House, and in Labour again in 2019 when Corbyn was beaten badly by Johnson.

And now, the American Republican Party is falling apart following Trump's defeat by Biden in 2020 and the loss of the two Georgia Senate seats and with them, control of the Senate, in 2021.

But perhaps the biggest cause of this mass desertion of the Republicans by former loyalist is not so much the scale of Trump's defeat but by his bizarre behaviour, supported by many senior Republicans, and the immense damage he did to the dignity of the office, afterwards. According to Reuters:

Ancient Humans in the Green Sahara

Engraving of Giraffes near Gobero in Niger, ca. 8,000 yrs old, witness ancient green times in the desert.

Photo: Mike Hettwer, 2006, www.hettwer.com

Past river activity in northern Africa reveals multiple Sahara greenings - GFZ Helmholtz

Today, we think of the Sahara Desert in North Africa as a hot, very dry place where only highly specialises species can live and where humans can only survive by careful preparation including a supply of water.

Having said that though, my experience of the Tunisian part of it, one unseasonably cold Spring about ten years ago, is that the Sahara is a cold, slightly damp place with a fine drizzle where the last thing you want to be dressed for is Summer!

Now, however, an international team including researchers from Germany, South Korea, the Netherlands and the USA, led by Cécile Blanchet of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Helmholtz Centre, Potsdam, Germany has shown that it was not always the hot, dry place most people find today.

Trumpanzee News - And Still The Fruitloops Come...

Lance Wallnau, False Prophet

Preacher: God Anointed Trump, Therefore Biden is an “Illegal Counterfeit” | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

The seemingly endless stream of evangelical Trumpanzee Christians unable to accept that their hero lost the November election and that Joe Biden is now POTUS, shows no signs of abating.

The latest forlorn nutjob is evangelist 'prophet' Lance Wallnau, who appeared on the Jim Bakker show (do people still listen to that serial adulterer and fraud?) to announce that Biden was an 'illegal counterfeit' in office because God had anointed Donald Trump, who was therefore still the real president.

Trumpanzee News - Catholic Priest's False Witnessing for Deranged Donald

Fr John Zuhlsdorf

Priest performed US 'election exorcisms'

Catholic priest and fanatical Trumpanzee, Fr John Zuhlsdorf, who maintains the popular Catholic, "Fr Z" blog, Has no worries about the truth of his claims when it comes to supporting President-reject Trump.

Falsely claiming his bishop had granted him permission to do so, he included the rite of exorcism after his noon Mass the day before the attempted coup d'etat at the Capitol on 6th January.

Having fully signed up to the evidence-free QAnon, pro-Trump conspiracy theory of a stolen election and massive electoral fraud, he claimed his reason for doing so was:

Christian Fundamentalist - Claiming the Right to Deny Rights to Minorities of his Choice

Bob Updegrove, photographer.
"Photographing LGBTQ weddings would violate his faith"

Christian Photographer Challenges Virginia Law That Could Force Him to Photograph Same-Sex Weddings : Society : Christianity Daily

One of the more obnoxious tendencies of fundamentalist Christians is their insistence that their faith entitles them to determine who should and who should not have basic human rights, as though the human rights of others are in their gift.

They feel it's an attack on their civil libertes to deny them the right to deny civil liberties to others, especially minorities of their own choosing and people who don't conform to their dogma.

We have seen this manifest itself in the UK when entitled fundamentalist Christians have even gone to the European Court of Human Rignts, asking the court to rule that to deny them the right to deny basic human rights to others is a denial of their human rights, as Christians.

Invariably, the ECHR has knocked them back, explaining that under the European Convention on Human Rights, no-one has the right to deny rights to others, and a person's religious beliefs dont't entitle them discriminate against and victimise others, hard though that might be for them to accept.

American fundamentalists are, of course, no different in that arrogant assumption that their rights should be paramount in any conflict. One such fundamentalist is wedding photographer Bob Updegrove, who is suing the state of Virginia, claiming the fact that it denies him the right to deny services to same-sex couples is a violation of his right to victimise same-sex couples by refusing to provide wedding photography services to them.

Evolution News - Another Case of Rapid Human Evolution

In the last 500 years, the people of Cabo Verde have evolved at a breakneck pace -- thanks to a genetic variant, inherited from their African ancestors, that protects against the ravages of malaria.

Credit: F. Mira

Malaria Threw Human Evolution Into Overdrive on This African Archipelago | Duke Today

Imagine if you will, you are setting out to prove Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. First off you fix in your mind the definition of evolution - change in allele fequency in a poulation over same - an allele being a variation of a gene.

According to Charles Darwin's theory, this happens when the environment differentially selects the allele in question for 'favour' so more descendants end up with the favoured allele, compared to those with the less favoured allele. The hypothesis you are testing then is that a population will, given enough time, have a greater frequency of the given allele than it started out with and this will be because of something natural in the environment. To check this latter requirement, you need to show that when that something in the environment is missing, there is no change in allele frequency in the population.

So, imagine if you could take large enough number of people, a few with the gene that gives an advantage in the given environment, and a lot with the 'normal' gene and put them on different islands in an archipelago, one with an environement which favours one allele, and the rest with an environment that doesn't favour any of them. Then you leave this setup for nature to take its course and then go back and measure the frequency of the different alleles on the different islands in, say, 500 years, if that were possible.

The hypothesis is that on the island where the favoured allele gave an advantage, there would, after enough time, be a greater frequency of it in the population gene pool than on the islands where there was no advantage to be had.

And this is precisely what the Portuguese colonialist who discovered the then uninhabited islands off the west coast of Africa, unintentionally set up. And 500 years later we have the results of this natural 'experiment'.

Catholic Abuse News - Former Priest Jailed for Sadistic Paedophile Offences

Former Catholic priest and education advisor to Catholic schools, Joseph Quigley,
"Sadistic paedophile and voyeur"

Ex-priest Joseph Quigley jailed for child sex offences - BBC News

Yes, it's yet another tale of a predatory paedophile Catholic priest and an archbishop (now cardinal) who did little to stop his abuses or safeguard his potential victims.

A former Catholic priest and former national education advisor for Roman Catholic schools, Joseph Quigley, has been jailed for 11 years and ordered to sign the Sexual Offenders' Register for life after being convicted at Warwick Crown Court last December of four counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child, two counts of sexual assault, one count of child cruelty and two counts of false imprisonment.

Covid-19 Pandemic - More Good News as Science Keeps Delivering - A One-Shot Vaccine

A woman receives an injection during phase 3 testing for the Janssen-Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the US.

Photograph: Cheryl Gerber/AP

Johnson & Johnson one-dose Covid vaccine shown to work | World news | The Guardian

A little bit more good news to add to that which I reported earlier - we have yet another vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus!

This is one produced by Johnson & Johnson, using techniques they developed for producing a vaccine against ebola. It differs from the other four so far announced in two ways:

• It is effective with only a single does (the others all require two for maximum immunity).
• It is based on a short double strand of DNA, not the single-stranded mRNA that the others contain.

Like the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, it can be stored in an ordinary refrigerator so is easier to distribute, especially to poor, third world and developing countries or over long distances.

Religious Fundamentalism - A Threat to Health and Safety

Police outside the wedding at Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls High School last week

Government gives final warning over illegal Jewish weddings | Jewish News

The ultra-Orthodox Jewish Charedi community in Stamford Hill, London, have been warned to stop holding mass gatherings at weddings at the Yesodey Hatorah school during the present coronavirus emergency lockdown, or face the consequences, following a wedding at which a reported 150 guests were present.

This warning was given by the Faith Minister, Lord Stephen Greenhalgh at an emergency meeting with the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, Charedi charity Interlink and the Jewish Leadership Council. The meeting was attended by the Mayor of Hackney, Philip Glanville, the head of the police in the local area and senior Jewish figures.

The family that organised the event have been fined £10,000. Those who helped organise it, including the Yesoday Hatorah Girls School, are currently under police investigation.

According to Jewish News, this was but one of 50+ such ultra-Orthodox Jewish weddings, some with over 300 guests to be held since the lockdown was imposed. According to this report, there have been:

• 50+ strictly-Orthodox weddings across London during lockdown.
• Lookouts set to raise the alarm and money set aside to pay fines.
• Bride at one Stamford Hill wedding was 'Covid positive'.
• Police 'not doing enough' to prevent acts of lawlessness.
• Further simchas[weddings with mass attendance] held since last weeks wedding scandal.

WATCH 📽 // Wedding? What Wedding? Police given Simcha runaround. Video evidence emerges of police being allegedly misled about an illegal simcha on the premises. pic.twitter.com/GHyBOmemXL

— Jewish News (@JewishNewsUK) January 28, 2021

THE ALLEGATIONS

A source intimately involved in the Orthodox wedding scene, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “These illegal weddings have been going on for 10 months. We’re not talking about one or two. We are talking multiple weddings every day. All have 150-200 guests. At one wedding the bride was Covid-positive.”

THE VENUES

There are five venues that are used regularly, several sources confirmed – “anything that has a hall”. One is the taxpayer-funded Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls’ School in Stamford Hill. “It’s the one that was caught,” said one person.

The school’s long-time principal, Rabbi Avroham Pinter, died from Covid-19 last spring. The new principal is his son, Chaim, who became a director of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations in July last year.

Another is Belz Hall at 98 Clapton Common. There, two floors below ground, is a new, purpose-built banqueting space for simchas of up to 350 people.


“There are up to four weddings a week there, Monday to Thursday,” another source said, in a claim later corroborated by three other people.

“There are many entrances to the building, with smaller halls upstairs for Jewish studies, security guards on all the doors. They confiscate your phones as you go in so photos don’t get out. There’s literally a table with a mountain of mobiles.”

Another person familiar with the shifting set-up said: “At one point they were taking over warehouses in the countryside, warehouses in Canvey Island, trying to do it behind closed doors… I think that’s what will happen now.”

Two separate sources said there had been several large weddings at the Lismirrane Industrial Park in Elstree over the spring and summer.

Another venue cited as frequently hosting large weddings during lockdown is Ohel Yaakov Beth Hamedrash (Pshevorsk) Synagogue at 26 Lampard Grove, a synagogue associated with the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations.

Yet another venue cited as hosting lockdown simchas is Beis Ruchel D’Satmar School in Stamford Hill, an 840-pupil girls’ school that was raided by police in October for breaching number restrictions in place at the time

A Charedi source based in Stamford Hill said: “There are 20-30 venues [for weddings] in Stamford Hill, almost all tied to a community centre with [a] wedding hall, school, synagogue, mikveh, such as [the] Bobov [centre] on Egerton Road.”

THE SUPPORT INDUSTRY

As might be expected in such an insular community, there are a limited number of caterers, florists, photographers, videographers, musicians, organisers and security teams who are trusted to supply and support these large Orthodox weddings.

For instance, the same florist was quoted by five different sources as supplying flowers to big Orthodox weddings during lockdown in London and, in recent months, Bournemouth. One informed source said: “She has 85 percent of the market, at least.” The florist denied all knowledge and involvement.

Several also named a videographer as having filmed many of the weddings during lockdown, while Jewish News understands that there are three Israeli photographers who regularly fly in from Israel to take the snaps – and have done since March. One covered nine big Orthodox weddings in under four weeks.

Another photographer is reported to have contracted Covid-19 at one of the London weddings, subsequently forcing an entire El Al flight into quarantine on its return to Israel.

An Israeli involved in the set-up of weddings later said: “The mother of the chatan [groom] called me to tell me that she also had corona. She came to the wedding on Monday and she also had corona. She feels she got it at the wedding. You understand what happened in Stamford Hill now? Unbelievable. Unbelievable.”

Yet the increased risk is not leading to decreased incidence but only increased cost, with several sources telling Jewish News that some organisers of big Orthodox weddings are now asking for a £10,000 payment upfront specifically for the purpose of paying the fines if the wedding is raided by police.

THE PLAYERS

The Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC) is an umbrella body representing more than 100 strictly-Orthodox synagogues around the country. It gets up to £500,000 per year from Kedassia Supervision Ltd, which approves kosher food for suppliers and caterers. Kedassia pointedly did not deny that it provides kosher supervision for the food at these weddings – a religious requirement if food is being prepared on the premises.

The UOHC also has a close relationship to Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls’ School. At least four board members are also governors of Yesodey. The UOHC vets prospective pupils, and its own Rabbinate is officially listed as the authority by which the school is guided. The relationship stretches beyond that, however. The UOHC says it “provides a range of facilities for the Orthodox Jewish community. These facilities include Simchas Nissuin.”

On marketing material, Simchas Nissuin is described as “a subsidised wedding scheme offered in conjunction with the UOHC”. Two venues are offered for a “total package”. One of them, Yesodey Hatorah, for £7,495. The school earns £750 for each wedding it hosts.

The lengths these ultra-Orthodox Jews have gone to in order to circumvent the coronavirus emergency laws has prompted Jewish barrister Daniel Greenberg, to make this astonishingly frank attack on the Charedi Community, in the Jewish Chronical:

Those who have attended illicit weddings under lockdown represent a self-indulgent sect that should be disowned by the rest of the Jewish world.

I have seen some surprisingly intelligent commentators support the idea that the Charedi world requires special consideration in relation to compliance with Covid-19 regulations in the UK, Israel and elsewhere, because those regulations are so challenging to their core lifestyle practices.

This is ridiculous: and offensive to everybody else whose lives also revolve around meeting people in lots of different contexts and gaining social, professional, spiritual and other support from them, and who have suffered in dignified silence for the benefit of the health of the public.

There is no reason why Charedim should have more need, or be any more entitled, to gather together than any other community. The idea that their day revolves around learning and praying adds nothing: both of those activities can be carried out alone, assisted to some extent by remote communication.

What Covid-19 has actually taught us about many members of Charedi communities is something that many of us have suspected for some time: that they have no connection whatsoever with Judaism in any meaningful sense.

As Chief Rabbi Mirvis powerfully put it in commenting on a large Charedi wedding in Stamford Hill broken up by the police for flouting Covid-19 regulations, this a staggering denial of the fundamental Jewish emphasis on health and safety. That is so much the case that it is difficult or impossible to recognise these people as practising any kind of Judaism that I recognise.

But the reality is that this is just a new emergence of something that many of us have known known or suspected for some time, and which now perhaps needs to be articulated clearly and publicly: much of the lifestyle for many Charedi communities is completely incompatible with the fundamental principles of Judaism.

He then went on to condemn a general culture of lawlessness within the Charedi community and the code of silence which facilitates it, with:

In the UK, benefit fraud appears to be endemic in parts of chareidi communities, with housing benefit in particular being manipulated through bogus shell companies and the like in order to support an otherwise unattainable lifestyle. This is incompatible with the fundamental Jewish principles of truth, yashrus (being straight) and avoiding falsehood of any kind.

And it is also inconsistent with seeking the right to coexist as a community within a decent rule of law society: as the judge said in the case of Kliers v Schmerler in 2018: "to be confronted by a plan of this nature [a purported tenancy agreement in order to obtain housing benefit] which, on the evidence, is common practice amongst esteemed and respected religious and community leaders, is one which must cause very great concern to any court seeking to administer the law and the process of justice and legal remedy in this country if not elsewhere".

Even where benefit is obtained without fraud, the Talmud emphasises the importance of people being trained to earn their own living: bringing people up to be dependent on charity is again contrary to fundamental Jewish principles.

Perhaps most important of all, an ancient talmudic concept of not handing fellow Jews over to the non-Jewish authorities, based on times and places without rule of law and with arbitrary and largely antisemitic criminal and civil authorities, has been increasingly turned into a kind of theological support for refusal to wash dirty linen in public, despite the fact that there are no effective private laundries.

It came sadly as no surprise to many of us when in 2013 the rabbinic leader of a major Charedi organisation in London was "outed" on television in secret film footage telling an alleged victim of abuse that it was forbidden to report the alleged offender to the police.

There is no foundation for this in Jewish law whatsoever, and it is based on nothing but the wish to preserve the reputation of the community at the expense of the pain and suffering of the individual. It is not surprising that there is abuse of various kinds, including child abuse and other domestic abuse, within Charedi communities, which consist of human beings: but it is not just surprising but appalling that any community should institutionally refuse to address abuse through the only effective mechanism, the criminal courts.

I admire many people who count themselves as Charedim. Some of them are deeply inspiring people. There are aspects of some Charedi lifestyles and communities that I find inspiring, although I would not want to share all of them.

And there are other aspects of Charedi life that I do not relish but to which I believe they have a protected legal right in the UK (something that has frequently arisen in my advice to Charedi communities over the years about the place of yeshivahs within the educational regulatory system, for example).

He then called upon the rest of the Jewish world to stand up and condemn a society that tolerates these abuses perpetrated by the Charedi Community (benfit fraud, child and domestic abuse and risking public health and safety):

But when the three things most publicly known about the Charedi world become benefit fraud, covering up abuse and breaking public health law, it is time for the rest of the Jewish world - including those Charedim to whom these things are abhorrent - to stand up and say clearly and loudly that any community that tolerates these three things has no connection with Jewish law or values and has become simply a self-indulgent and dangerous sect.

The biggest problem in all this is that Charedim look so very Jewish. Their obsession with the externals means that to themselves, to the outside world, and even to many other Jews, they appear to be the quintessence of Jewish life. In fact, many of them are the antithesis of fundamental Jewish principles in so many ways.

It is time for the rest of the Jewish community to disown those individuals publicly and allow them to go their own mad and dangerous way, and turn to the task of publicly representing a more balanced approach to Jewish practice as being the real continuation of the Jewish heritage in all meaningful ways.

What we have here is yet another example of religious fundamentalists living out their arrogant belief that they have a special entitlement to pick and choose which laws to obey and to disregard any that inconvenience them or interfere with their assumed right to practice their religion anyway they wish, regardless of any threat they pose to society at large and to the health and welfare of those with whom they come into contact.

In this regard, the Cheredi Jewish community of London are little different to the entitled American evangelical Christian nut-jobs and other religious fundamentalist throughout the world, who insist on holding their Sunday super-spreader events with no regard for the health and safety of their family or their local community. The coronavirus pandemic has brought the selfishness and basically antisocial nature of religious fundamentalists into sharp focus.

Religious groups have been a major obstacle in controlling the spread of this deadly plague, when we should have been able to rely on their support in the name of humanity.

If any good can come out of his terrible tragedy, we should never forget this lesson.

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Covid-19 Pandemic - Another Victory for Medical Science

Covid-19: Novavax vaccine shows 89% efficacy in UK trials - BBC News

We have another little victory for science in our battle against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus!

The Novavax vaccine has successfully completed trials in the UK and South Africa and has proved to be 89.3% effective against the 'Kent' variant which has become the dominant strain in the UK and responsible for the massive increase in cases which have led to another lockdown, and 95.6% effective against the original strain.

Unlike the other three approved so far, the Pfizer, Oxford/AstraZenaca and Moderna vaccines, this one, called NVX-CoV2373, works slightly differently. Those three are based on the virus' mRNA which codes for the 'spike' protein on the virus' coat. This causes the body's own cells to manufacture the spike protein which them provokes the production of antibodies which then recognise that protein on any virus particles that enter the body. The Novax vaccine contains a synthetic version of a viral protein itself, combined with a plant-based ingredient to help produce a stronger response.

Like the Oxford/AstraZenaca vaccine, this one can be stored in an ordinary fridge, so is much earier to distribute and store than the Pfizer vaccine which requires very low temperatures.

The study involved 19,000 people aged between 18 and 84 with 27% aged over 65. In South Africa, the vaccine was 49% effective in immune-compromised HIV patients.

At the start of the pandemic, many people predicted that it would be science that provided a solution and saved humanity from this terrible plague and that religion would play no part in it. Little did we appreciate at the time just how obstructive fundamentalist religions would prove to be with many refusing to cooperate with the social distancing measures and wearing face-masks, presenting these as somehow a Satanic attack on their religion and part of a plot to close churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.

Covid-19 Daily New Cases - UK

Source: Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center (29 Jan, 2021)

Little did we appreciate just what a political issue these measures would become in places like the USA where Christian fundamentalists saw it as their responsibility to help Donald Trump cover his increasing incompetence and paranoia by pretending the pandemic was not a serious threat and probably all a hoax to discredit him.

But, as always, it is science that is delivering the goods whilst religions stand by heckling from the side-lines, no doubt preparing to rush in and claim the credit within seconds of the pandemic finally being declared over, citing their magic spells and their 'loving' god as the reason and calling for services of thanksgiving for our 'deliverance' and salvation - and bigger donations to the churches to say thank you.

And we still await an intelligent [sic] design creationist explaining why evolution by natural selection is the only explanation for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that doesn't leave their putative designer deity looking like a pestilential, genocidal, malevolent, misanthropic sadist.

Covidiot News - Why Trump's Narcissistic Personality Disorder Was So Dangerous

Why May Narcissism Be a Risk Factor for COVID? | Psychology Today

Writing in Psychology Today, Susan Heitler Ph.D explains why people with narcissistic personality disorder may be more prone to catch Covid-19.

This could explain why people such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson were both early victims of the pandemic and why Dominic Cummings felt he was entitled to break the rules his government was telling everyone else they should comply with.

People with narcissistic personality disorder are basically too full of their own self-importance to pay any heed to what others are telling them and regard themselves as above the rules which are made for 'little people'. Other people should wear face-masks in public places; other people should maintain safe social distancing from others; other people should stay in their homes, only going outside for essential shopping, to do essential work that can't be done from home or for exercise. Those rules are for the little people who don't know any better or aren't so important.

A Little Bit of Good News About the SARS-CoV-2 Virus!

Transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, isolated from a patient. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Credit: NIAID

T cells can mount attacks against many SARS-CoV-2 targets—even on new virus variant

The good news is that research by scientists at La Jolla Institute of Immunology (LJI), La Jolla, California, USA has shown that our T cells are capable of recognising many targets on the surface of the virus (known as epitopes) and so can mount an attack against the new variants.

The bad news is that this is so for naturally-acquired immunity (in people who have recovered from the infection). It is not clear that this applies to immunity acquired by vaccination. All the vaccines approved for general use so far are based on mRNA technology that produces antibodies to the surface 'spike' proteins only, not to other surface proteins.

The research and its importance is explained in an LJI News release by Madeline McCurry-Schmidt:

When is a False Prophet not a False Prophet?

Hank Kunneman, false prophet of One Voice Ministries, Nebraska

Hank Kunneman Says God Hates Those Who Call Him a False Prophet for Falsely Prophesying Trump's Reelection | Right Wing Watch

Readers will be familiar with preacher of hate and false prophet, Hank Kunneman and his difficulty with coming to terms with the fact that not only did his idol and personal saviour, Donald J Trump, lose the presidency, but that he falsely prophesied he would win.

Pastor Hank, of One Voice Ministries, Nebraska, has now discovered that both he and his god also hate another group of people in addition to those who never voted for Trump. They both hate people who point out that Hank Kunneman is a false prophet!

Homophobia News - Homophobic Evangelical Says Trump Was Too Gay-Friendly for God!

Dr Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries.
"God removed Trump for being too Gay-friendly"

Scott Lively Says Trump Was Too Pro-Gay, So God Removed Him From Office | Right Wing Watch

Trumpanzees who had convinced themselves that their idol, Donald J Trump, would win a second term are now struggling to come to terms with the fact that he lost and Joe Biden is President of the United States.

Of course, we've all heard the evidence-free whinging about a 'stolen election' and a massive conspiracy to include hundreds of thousands, even millions of fake votes in the count, but perhaps the most original to date is that of Scott Lively, a homophobic Trumpanzee and former gubernatorial candidate for Massachusetts, who believed Trump would destroy the LGBTQ movement by enacting Russian-style anti-gay laws. But, apparently, Trump was too pro-Gay, so God removed him. It seems Lively's god lacked the wisdom and character judgement to know this about Trump when he inserted him into the White House.

In 2016, Lively won a case in a Massachusetts court against a group calling themselves Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), although 'won' scarcely describes it since the judge condemned his actions in the clearest terms. SMUG had brought a case against Lively alleging that his preaching in Uganda had led to that country introducing the death penalty for homosexuality and that this constituted a crime against humanity.

The 1914 Act had increased the sentence for same-sex sexual activity, which had been illegal since colonial times, from 14 years to death or life imprisonment. It was later ruled invalid by the Uganda Supreme Court on procedural grounds.

Following agitation in Uganda by Lively and two other US evangelical Christian fundamentalists, Stephen Langa and Caleb Lee Brundidge, Lively wrote in his blog, which he concludes with the usual appeal for money to help with his efforts:

My week began with a meeting with about fifty members of the Ugandan Christian Lawyers Association on the evening of my arrival, then an address to members of the Parliament on the following morning. There were from fifty to one hundred persons in attendance, including numerous legislators and the Minister of Ethics and Integrity, with whom I enjoyed a personal chat for more than half and hour leading to the event. The centerpiece event was a three-day conference featuring myself, Don Schmierer, author of An Ounce of Prevention and several other books designed to help the families of homosexuals, and Caleb Lee Brundidge of International Healing Foundation, a formerly "gay" African-American man who now leads recovery workshops. It was a paid event, very well attended, mostly by professionals in various fields including education, counseling, government and medicine.

[...]

On the positive side, my host and ministry partner in Kampala, Stephen Langa, was overjoyed with the results of our efforts and predicted confidently that the coming weeks would see significant improvement in the moral climate of the nation, and a massive increase in pro-family activism in every social sphere. He said that a respected observer of society in Kampala had told him that our campaign was like a nuclear bomb against the "gay" agenda in Uganda. I pray that this, and the predictions, are true.

The court dismissed the case on the narrow grounds that it did not have the jurisdiction as a result of a 2013 Supreme Court ruling issued after SMUG’s case was filed. The ruling in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell limited the extraterritorial reach of the Alien Tort Statute, under which SMUG brought its claim. In giving his ruling, Judge Michael Ponsor of the U.S. District Court in Springfield Massachusetts, said:

The question before the court is not whether Defendant’s actions in aiding and abetting efforts to demonize, intimidate, and injure LGBTI people in Uganda constitute violations of international law. They do... The much narrower and more technical question posed by Defendant’s motion is whether the limited actions taken by Defendant on American soil in pursuit of his odious campaign are sufficient to give this court jurisdiction over Plaintiff’s claims.... Since they are not sufficient, summary judgment is appropriate for this, and only this, reason.

Lively told listeners of the "Swamp Rangers" radio show that Trump had "fully endorsed backed and applauded [Richard] Grenell, [who] was an outspoken advocate for the central doctrine of the progressive movement, which is queer theory", so God had him removed.