1. I didn't know you were advocating for an ethnical immigration policy. I thought you were for meritocracy. Sorry for the confusion.

2. I've been to Taiwan, and I don't think I want the average Taiwanese to immigrate to the States. That goes for any other country. I want the best and brightest from Taiwan and from Nigeria as well. That's my version of meritocracy.

3. Flawed flawed flawed reasoning. I don't know where to start:
a) this is broken down by race, a physical characteristic, not sub-culture,
b) I strongly disagree that income equals productivity.
c)I guess you could count crime as a "cost"; but it's not by a longshot the only one. BTW, those aren't crime rates, those are arrest rates. conviction rates would reflect crime; arrest rates reflect who the cops harrass more.
d) you start with race, and try to create some correlation with some nebulous undefined "culture", whose defining characteristic is that is it tied to race.
e) So, what should I do with this chart? Should I adjust my immigration policy, my hiring, and my school admissions policy? Again, seems to go against this pure meritocracy you're always crowing about.
..........

>> ^chilaxe:
@longde
1. "Is that just some unjustified xenophobia?"
Wait, since when is advocating immigration by people of Asian culture xenophobic? Isn't that the opposite? That seems like a big oversight.
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2. "I know other [Taiwanese] who are here illegally, making money by breaking the law."
The normal rules when discussing statistics should probably apply: exceptions don't disprove averages.
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3. "Do you have an objective measure?"
Here's data pointing to how much people of Asian American background contribute to US society vs. how much they cost US society relative to other sub-cultures (including people of white background):
1. Average income per capita by race.png
2. Average crime rates by race.png
It seems a reasonable conclusion would be that the more people of Asian culture we have, the better off we'd be, since they outperform the majority group even though they're a minority. If the cause is they have better personal culture on average, then we can create the best parts of that culture within ourselves.
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4."Same thing with every low economic group in America. I know members of these groups who are hardworking..."
Yeah, it's good to note that we're only talking about averages. Middle-class members of low economic groups are welcome to dissociated themselves from the lower-class wings of their ethnicity, same as whites and asians do within their ethnicity. (For example, people of white background don't think rednecks have any relevance to them).

(a copy of the messy comment above)

A collection of verses from the Qur'an about unbelievers

A person's beliefs about life (and afterlife) have a huge effect on how they live and perceive the value of other people's lives; it is nothing like blaming school shootings on violent video games, unless you assume that the shooters actually believed they lived inside a videogame.

The Qur'an, Islam's founding text, makes it quite clear that
a) The unbeliever will burn in hellfire forever (e.g. 4:56)
(nothing new here, M's recycling the holy texts already in existence)
and b) the unbeliever must be killed if he does not accept Islam (4:89), either by God or "or at our hands" (9:52); only Islam can exist on earth (2:193).
See this article on the history of Jihad and martyrdom in Islam.

Of course, the majority of muslims, like any other group of human beings, aspire to live their peaceful lives, etc. The difference between Islam and Christianity or Judaism, apart from its youth, is that it is founded upon a character and his book that are highly impervious to the effects of secularization. While the Bible is an edited compilation of transcripts written by several authors over centuries, the Qur'an was written by one warrior general in the space of his lifetime; questioning any part of the book's infallibility puts the whole faith in question, a risky thing when you read what the book in question has to say about non-believers. (I could go on, but really, Harris says it so much better than me in "The End of Faith" ...for free!).

But you want evidence, so here are a few things to ponder, in relation to what the Qur'an, and thus Islam, has to say about the topics in question. (Keeping in mind that Mohamed did not invent the barbarities that the book contains; they were contemporaneous, he simply enshrined them as the "infallible" word of God. Also: Mohamed's life, as transcribed in the Hadith, is considered a role model).

Honour killing: women considered property of men (see s.4:34) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/02/0212_020212_hon
orkilling_2.html
Honour killing: adulterers should be killed anyway, no?
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/07/24/2003180222

Because of sharia law's stance on adultery, it remains a crime in several Islamic countries
(sharia law is for the most part copied from the Torah/OT; in Islam, adultery is one of the worst sins/crimes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zina_(Arabic) ):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery#Criminal_penalties

Also, denouncing rape can get you jailed... for adultery:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=7943698

homosexuality: illegal in 75/195 countries; 32/48 Muslim countries. In 8 countries it is punishable by death... under sharia law, of course (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, UAE, Sudan, Nigeria, la Mauritania and Somalia).

Condoning slavery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_slavery#Slavery_
in_the_contemporary_Muslim_world

forced marriage of minors: what Islamic doctrine/scholars say: http://muslim-quotes.netfirms.com/childbrides.html
women protest age limit laws: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88589
more statistics on child brides (once again, the problem did not stem from Islam, but is upheld by it... Mo+Aisha): http://marriage.about.com/od/arrangedmarriages/a/childbride.htm

Apostasy and human rights: http://www.iheu.org/node/1541

Of the 126 designated terrorist organisations, 73 (60%) are religious, 65 (51%) are Islamic extremists. To compare, the second highest ranking terrorist-fueling ideology, communism, has only 21 (17%) groups. Jihad anyone?

Government report on link between Koranic schools and terrorism: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21654.pdf

Of the 17 "Significant Ongoing Armed Conflicts of 2010", only 5 are not marked by religious ideologies (only 2 if communism is counted as a religious ideology). Eleven of these conflicts involve Islamists, who are either trying to instate an Islamic theocracy (in accordance with the teachings of the Qur'an), or they are fighting Muslim governments that are considered not "Muslim" enough.

A collection of verses from the Qur'an about unbelievers

A person's beliefs about life (and afterlife) have a huge effect on how they live and perceive the value of other people's lives; it is nothing like blaming school shootings on violent video games, unless you assume that the shooters actually believed they lived inside a videogame.

The Qur'an, Islam's founding text, makes it quite clear that
a) The unbeliever will burn in hellfire forever (e.g. 4:56)
(nothing new here, M's recycling the holy texts already in existence)
and b) the unbeliever must be killed if he does not accept Islam (4:89), either by God or "or at our hands" (9:52); only Islam can exist on earth (2:193).
See this article on the history of Jihad and martyrdom in Islam.

Of course, the majority of muslims, like any other group of human beings, aspire to live their peaceful lives, etc. The difference between Islam and Christianity or Judaism, apart from its youth, is that it is founded upon a character and his book that are highly impervious to the effects of secularization. While the Bible is an edited compilation of transcripts written by several authors over centuries, the Qur'an was written by one warrior general in the space of his lifetime; questioning any part of the book's infallibility puts the whole faith in question, a risky thing when you read what the book in question has to say about non-believers. (I could go on, but really, Harris says it so much better than me in "The End of Faith" ...for free!).

But you want evidence, so here are a few things to ponder, in relation to what the Qur'an, and thus Islam, has to say about the topics in question. (Keeping in mind that Mohamed did not invent the barbarities that the book contains; they were contemporaneous, he simply enshrined them as the "infallible" word of God. Also: Mohamed's life, as transcribed in the Hadith, is considered a role model).

Honour killing: women considered property of men (see s.4:34) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/02/0212_020212_honorkilling_2.html
Honour killing: adulterers should be killed anyway, no?
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/07/24/2003180222

Because of sharia law's stance on adultery, it remains a crime in several Islamic countries
(sharia law is for the most part copied from the Torah/OT; in Islam, adultery is one of the worst sins/crimes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zina_(Arabic) ):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery#Criminal_penalties

Also, denouncing rape can get you jailed... for adultery:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=7943698

homosexuality: illegal in 75/195 countries; 32/48 Muslim countries. In 8 countries it is punishable by death... under sharia law, of course (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, UAE, Sudan, Nigeria, la Mauritania and Somalia).

Condoning slavery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_slavery#Slavery_in_the_contemporary_Muslim_world

forced marriage of minors: what Islamic doctrine/scholars say: http://muslim-quotes.netfirms.com/childbrides.html
women protest age limit laws: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88589
more statistics on child brides (once again, the problem did not stem from Islam, but is upheld by it... Mo+Aisha): http://marriage.about.com/od/arrangedmarriages/a/childbride.htm

Apostasy and human rights: http://www.iheu.org/node/1541

Of the 126 designated terrorist organisations, 73 (60%) are religious, 65 (51%) are Islamic extremists. To compare, the second highest ranking terrorist-fueling ideology, communism, has only 21 (17%) groups. Jihad anyone?

Government report on link between Koranic schools and terrorism: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21654.pdf

Of the 17 "Significant Ongoing Armed Conflicts of 2010", only 5 are not marked by religious ideologies (only 2 if communism is counted as a religious ideology). Eleven of these conflicts involve Islamists, who are either trying to instate an Islamic theocracy (in accordance with the teachings of the Qur'an), or they are fighting Muslim governments that are considered not "Muslim" enough.

edit: html's not working, so this looks like crap. sorry, i'm too tired to rearrange right now.


>> ^SDGundamX:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/hpqp" title="member since July 25th, 2009" class="profilelink">hpqp
You repeated his speaking points and provided no evidence to support them and then insinuated that I know nothing of Islam's teachings to boot. You've clearly learned from your teachers (Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens) quite well.
Show me some evidence please that shows that Islamic followers are more likely to cause harm to fellow human beings than others. By evidence I mean an empirical study that controls for other factors that include but are not limited to: education, income, regional cultural factors (other than religion), and local political systems (or lack thereof as the case may be, for example in countries such as Somalia).
And no, you didn't correct that for me. It doesn't matter their stated reasons for committing the violence. People who resort to violence do so for a complex array of reasons. I dispute the notion that people commit violence soley "because of their religion" any more than school shootings occur "because kids play violent video games."

I actually think this was a pointless interview. We gained no great insights, we heard no new information, etc... All of what was said has been said for weeks AND has been said better, i.e. reasons to be there and reasons not to be there.

Plus, I don't consider the CIA to be anything more than a tool anymore and hopefully it stays that way; as in the past you could make a case that the CIA was GETTING us involved in wars and shaping internal politics. I'm sure they still do this, but enough whistle-blowers came forward to create an environment were the CIA must tread carefully. Especially, after their complete and utter fuck-up of the century for the last Iraq war.

I appreciate this man's council, but in the end he has as much experience in leading a country as I do (armchair generals). He's very well informed in some international dealings, but his answer of "do nothing" is an old answer and it needs to be done away with to some degree. As it's an answer that does nothing; in fact it shows you the shear amount of apathy that our country feels is O.K. to use (like Cambodia, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, etc.). The problem as I see it is that the U.N. passed a unanimous security council resolution on Libya, a U.N. member. Libya said it would comply and then went on to do exactly what @bcglorf has said.

The solution I see is that NATO shouldn't be the watch dog here. The problem is that the U.N. is a useless body without fangs. It NEEDS fangs. The fact that EVERY security council member is not involved in this situation/resolution to me means that their "security club membership" should be nullified. I'm tired of people abusing the U.N. . It's perhaps our best way to solve many of these problems. But, when the military action is ALWAYS carried by NATO at the end of the day, I begin to believe that members that don't participate in resolutions THEY PASSED need to be kicked out of their position (I'm looking at you China).

Until the U.N. gains some fangs and the ability to enact resolutions that are passed UNANIMOUSLY (5 abstains for the countries too scared to take a stance), we will continue to carry the weight via the U.S. Armed Forces or NATO; otherwise, we let innocent people die. We could do nothing, but if we did do nothing the media needs to put the blame squarely at the feet of U.N. Security members that abstain; make them swim in the blood they've spilled by their political maneuvering called "abstain"... We don't do this, but I think it's time we did. If China wants to be a big boy, they need to learn about responsibilities related to their direct inaction. Likewise, Russia needs to learn that the Cold War is dead; holding their feet to the fire internationally might do that.

Eventually, this comes down to the media getting the story right and being willful enough to put countries to the question: Why?

Don't bring up the "reverse angle" of death and destruction. I know it will happen, but this is the cost of choosing and FIGHTING for any side. Death is everywhere; it doesn't make it right, but it makes it true...

Here is the vote for, Resolution 1973:

U.S.-Y*
Lebanon-Y
France-Y*
U.K.-Y*
Bosnia and Herzegovina-Y
Columbia-Y
Gabon-Y
Nigeria-Y
Portugal-Y
South Africa-Y

Abstained (the eternal worthless permanent security council members: China-they never do ANYTHING, and The Russian Federation-who seem to vote just to be contrary); I'll put a mark next to permanent members that abstained^:

^The Russian Federation-NA*
^China (as usual)-NA*
Brazil-NA
Germany-NA
India-NA

I find it hard to keep Russia and China on the security council (they'd whine like babies if removed) as they almost always abstain AND they don't help; in fact they do nothing. The other members are not permanent and may be cycled out in the upcoming year; making me not very concerned with their attitude.

*Permanent Security Council Members

So take it or leave it; but, I think our worldwide diplomacy from every country still revolves around the Cold War and WWII. It's terribly sad to me that we are still stuck on such ridiculous fears and ghostly machinations...

Has the world become a deus ex machina to politicians? Do they believe complex problems can be solved with the smallest of effort? This is what it seems to be coming to and it's scary to see people like Donal Trump in the runnings for president. Sarah Palin is a walking and breathing Captain Catherine Janeway in the sense that she believes she has answers and solutions that are easy to implement and as ridiculous as every piece of deus ex machina "Voyager" ever used. AND she is not alone...

I see this in our country and in others. Simplistic leanings that help no one except to further their own agenda. It's as though politicians and leaders use Rube Goldberg machines, yet these do have a purpose: they grab your attention, they pacify, they cause you to become their disease--ready to even spill the blood of what they hate. It's true in every country on the planet. So when Russia and China take the easy way out, that is what I think of them. It is also why they should NEVER be given leadership, as they seemingly don't know what it truly is or they abuse it.

/My long two cents with a little drama to get a dialogue started...

I paid my tuition with an advance from some powerful financial connections I have in Nigeria.

(I've secretly replaced blankfists stats on capitalism with wikipedia's democracy index, let's see if he is as easily persuaded.)

Countries with Full Democracy (democracy index number)
82 -- Australia (9.22)
78 -- United States (8.18)
82 -- Japan (8.08)

Countries with a Flawed democracy
81 -- Israel (7.48)
80 -- Italy (7.83)
71 -- Philippines (6.12)

Countries with a Hybrid regime
66 -- Russia (4.26)
70 -- Honduras (5.76)
65 -- Pakistan (4.55)
59 -- Senegal (5.27)
30 -- Haiti (4.00)

Countries with Authoritarian regimes
47 -- Nigeria (3.47)
45 -- Afghanistan (2.48)
40 -- Zimbabwe (2.64)
64 -- North Korea (1.08)

From their website:

Current life expectancy in nations where capitalism has significant presence (abbreviated list)
82 -- Australia
78 -- United States
82 -- Japan
81 -- Israel
80 -- Italy

Current life expectancy in nations where capitalism has only modest presence (abbreviated list)
71 -- Philippines
66 -- Russia
70 -- Honduras
65 -- Pakistan
59 -- Senegal

Current life expectancy in nations where capitalism has little or no presence (abbreviated list)
30 -- Haiti
47 -- Nigeria
45 -- Afghanistan
40 -- Zimbabwe
64 -- North Korea

Nigeria IS a member state of Interpol. It wouldn't do anything, but it would be entertaining to see them try to issue an international warrant for his arrest and extradition. Failing that, I hear extraordinary rendition is pretty kosher now.

Almost enough to get Nigeria some respect, it's about time someone showed some principals regarding world leaders that eagerly trample human rights. Go Nigeria!!!


Oh, wait. On October 23, 2009, Omar al-Bashir was invited to Nigeria by President Umaru Yar'Adua for another AU meeting, and was not arrested. So Nigeria isn't taking a bold stand against convicted human rights abusers. They're just singling out an American one, while openly welcoming others. I don't think that exactly warrants a happy tag...

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

^Those small timers could learn a lot from Mr. Cheney.


Cement oil plugs, going 2 for 1 sale!

Nigeria, a place well known for its abundance of wealthy land owners bequeathing their belongings to the elderly of the United States. I am doing the same thing for Christmas, just send me $100 dollars via pay pal this week and I will hook you up with 10x that in a week.

Id still keep the 5 sides for nigeria rule

Definitely check this video about Nigeria out also.
http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/video/Welcome-to-Lagos-BBC-Documentary

^http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigeria actually

I usually love TED, but you can't have a substantial conversation about aid and its efficacy or lack thereof if you aren't willing to engage in serious and critical political discourse. Unfortunately TED has always been too politically correct for its own good, but when you look at their trailing list of corporate sponsors how can you be surprised.

Hmmm, lentils, bed nets, immunization . . . what about the context that all these aid measures take place in? Africa is not some generic entity to be pitied. As an 'African' a South African more specifically, I get seriously annoyed by the disingenuous way in which 'African' issues are constantly portrayed and inevitably lugged together. Just trying to get a basic inkling on the poverty and aid issues underpinned by the social, economic and political fabric that exists in South Africa alone would take an incredible amount of time and is VERY specific.

Just learning about and trying to understand my own country has been consuming enough and truthfully I only have a basic handle on a few others like Cote D'ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Botswana and Nigeria. All have an incredibly diverse and complex set of problems and they will never be addressed by grouping them together as if inflicted with some kind of 'generalised poverty disorder' that you can throw a pill at.

Pointing to the success of small scale village based social programs as some kind of science based platform for understanding and eradicating poverty in Africa is, in my opinion, totally delusional. It wreaks of the ahistorical imperial anthropology of old.

If you are going to generalise and frame 'Africa's' problems, you have to have the courage to point fingers at some of the MANY corporations, banks, institutions and nations that so readily contribute towards the vast pools of misery found throughout this beautiful continent. Poverty is a complex bi-product of Africa's colonial history and the consequent exploitation and manipulation that has dogged the continent to this day. As long as the majority of the wealth of its nations is being siphoned off into foreign bank accounts there will be no solutions bearing any lasting impact.