Maher is quickly falling into the trap of many 'New Atheists' and turning towards a strong denouncement of Islam (http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/dawkins_harris_hitchens_new_atheists_flirt_with_islamophobia/).

The end of that article is particularly telling after having read the whole thread of comments here:

"Proving that a religion — any religion — is evil, though, is just as pointless and impossible an endeavor as trying to prove that God does or doesn’t exist. Neither has been accomplished yet. And neither will."

One thing that has been hinted at here but not overtly said is that there is a dominant, violent ideology which certainly rivals if not trumps the posited "evil" Islam in terms of casualties and suffering. Who builds the drones and the bombs and the fighter jets that rain fire from the skies? Who manufactures the small arms and ammunition that fuel countless civil wars across the globe? For me the answer is clear: oligarchical, capitalist states. Let's put them (and by them, I mean complicitly us) under the microscope for their acts instead of undertaking the Sisyphean task of proving that one religion is more evil than another.

Kissinger: Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at
meetings, "The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a
little longer." [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act,
I'm afraid to say things like that.

http://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/P860114-1573_MC_b.html#efmCS3CUB

anyway yea you can read the operational reports talking about civilan casualties and guess what? try and google for a news story about some of the horrors... must not have happened eh... someone made it all up, names, places, times

And the casualty list:

Five Injured in Accidental Shootings at Gun Shows on "Gun Appreciation Day"

The Taliban kill school children. The Taliban declare that they specifically targeted and meant to kill those children. I call this an act of terrorism.

American drones target the Taliban leaders making those declarations. They spend many hours gathering intelligence trying to verify the accuracy of their targets. If the American's kill any innocents nearby by accident, they don't claim that as a bonus. They don't publicly declare, as the Taliban do, that those dead children should serve as a warning to everyone else of what happens to those that oppose them. The American's declare such casualties as regrettable, but insist on the necessity of stopping the Taliban leaders.

Both are acts of violence, but it is naive in the extreme to fail to see that there is a substantial and objective difference between the two.

If you must have your good guy bad guy terms to be able to understand things: The bad guys kill children, on purpose, and insist that they will continue killing more children until they get their way. The good guys kill the bad guys, and occasionally some children get killed by accident. The good guys apologize and say they wished they could stop the bad guys in a better way.

Okay, that's one example. Have any others? Also, guess how the shooter in that spree was stopped? He was shot by someone else with a gun. If nobody else was carrying guns in that area, the casualties would have been significantly higher.

The fact is that the vast majority of shooting sprees happen in schools and business areas.

Also, why do people think that banning guns would be any more effective than banning drugs? Have the junkies and cartels disappeared since the war on drugs began? No. Will guns disappear if they are banned? No. If people really want a gun, they'll get one, legally or not. Banning guns just ensures that people who obey the law will be left defenseless against criminals, which is exactly what criminals want.

Wow, I see so many viewing fails here.

1) Yes, some of these people are gun novices. But these people got more training in gun-handling and marksmanship than is required by most states in the U.S. and they STILL failed to stop the shooter.

2) The whole point of the video is that it takes hundreds of hours of training under stress (like in this scenario) in order for people to overcome their natural instincts and avoid a) freezing up or b) accidentally shooting themselves or another innocent in the confusion.

3) How many gun carriers (barring ex-military or police) have had the kind of training mentioned in Point #2? Of those that have, how many continue to put in the training hours necessary to not lose the skill?

It's all great spouting hypotheticals about how a CCW would have saved the day at Sandy Hook, but this video shows that's a patently false statement. What might have resulted in less casualties would have been a CCW in the hands of a highly disciplined individual with combat firearms training experience. How many gun carrying Americans do you know who fit that description?

And even if such a person HAD been in the school on that day, with the shooter wearing a bullet-proof vest and utilizing a semi-automatic rifle, there's no guarantee the outcome would have been any different.

More guns in the hands of undertrained Americans is not the answer. Modifying the social system so that identifying and dealing with mentally unstable individuals before they go on shooting rampages is a priority, though, would be a step in the right direction.

@GeeSussFreeK

I tried to stay way from issues specific to the use of nuclear technology for a reason. There's very little in your reply that I can respond to, simply for a lack of expertise. So bear with me if I once again attempt to generalize and abstract some points. And I'll try to keep it shorter this time.

You mentioned how construction times and costs are pushed up by the constant evolution of compliance codes. A problem not exclusive to the construction of power plants, but maybe more pronounced in these cases. No matter.

What buggers me, however, is what you can currently observe in real time at the EPR construction sites in Olkiluoto and Flamanville.
For instance, the former is reported to have more than 4000 workers from over 60 nations, involving more than 1500 sub-contractors. It's basically the Tower of Babylon, and the quality of work might be similar as well. Workers say, they were ordered to just pour concrete over inadequate weld seams to get things done in time, just to name an example. They are three years over plan as of now, and it'll be at least 2-3 more before completion.
And Flamanville... here's some of what the French Nuclear Safety Authority had to say about the construction site: "concrete supports look like Swiss cheese", "walls with gaping holes", "brittle spots without a trace of cement".

Again, this is not exclusive to the construction of NPPs. Almost every large scale construction site in Europe these days looks like this, except for whatever the Swiss are doing: kudos to them, wonderful work indeed. But if they mess up the construction of a train station, they don't run a risk of ruining the ground water and irradiating what little living space we have in Europe as it is.

Then you explain the advantages of small scale, modular reactors. Again, no argument from my side on the feasability of this, I have to take your word on it. But looking at how the Russians dispose of their old nuclear reactors (bottom of the Barents Sea) and how Germany disposes of its nuclear waste (dropped down a hole), I don't fancy the idea of having even more reactors around.

As for prices, I have to raise my hands in surrender once again. Not my area of expertise, my knowledge is limited to whatever analysis hits the mainstream press every now and then. Here's my take on it, regarding just the German market: the development, construction, tax exemption, insurance exemption, fuel transport and waste disposal of the nuclear industry was paid for primarly by taxes. Conservative government estimates were in the neighbourhood of €300B since the sixties, in addition to the costs of waste disposal and plant deconstruction that the companies can't pay for. And that's if nothing happens to any of the plants, no flood, no fire, nothing.

That's not cheap. E.ON and RWE dropped out of the bid on construction permits for new NPPs in GB, simply because it's not profitable. RWE CEO Terium mentioned ~100€/MWh as the minimum base price to make new NPPs profitable, 75.80€/MWh for gas-powered plants. Right now, the base (peak) price is at 46€/MWh (54€/MWh) in Germany. France generates ~75% of its power through NPPs, while Germany is getting plastered with highly subsidized wind turbines and solar panels, yet the market price for energy is lower in Germany.

Yes, the conditions are vastly different in the US, and yes, the next generation of NPPs might be significantly cheaper and safer to construct and run. I'm all for research in these areas. But on the field of commercial energy generation, nuclear energy just doesn't seem to cut it right now.

So let's hop over to safety/dangers. Again, priorities might differ significantly and I can only argue from a central European perspective. As cold-hearted as it may sound, the number of direct casualties is not the issue. Toxicity and radiation is, as far as I'm concerned. All our NPPs are built on rivers and the entire country is rather densely populated. A crashing plane might kill 500 people, but there will be no long term damage, particularly not to the water table. The picture of an experimental waste storage site is disturbing enough as it is, and it wasn't even "by accident" that some of these chambers are now flooded by ground water.

Apologies if I ripped anything out of context. I tried to avoid the technicalities as best as I could in a desperate attempt not to make a fool of myself. Again.

And sorry for not linking any sources in many cases. Most of it was taken from German/Swiss/Austrian/French articles.

I love VS for these kinds of debates, but I see some straw-man arguments going on here.

First, not every Palestinian belongs to Hamas. In fact, the majority of the population does not belong to Hamas. Similarly, very few Germans were actually members of the Nazi party. German citizens backed the Nazis because they felt they were the best hope for getting Germany's economy out of the toilet, getting Germany out of what the citizens perceived as the unfair terms of the Versailles Treaty, and protecting Germany from (Nazi manufactured) external threats. Again, similarly, Palestinians back Hamas because they see Hamas as the best hope of dealing with Israeli oppression.

For 45 years the world (read: United States) has shown little interest in stopping the Israelis--who are supplied with arms and training by the United States-- from forcibly displacing people from their homes and relocating them to what Chomsky calls "the world's largest open-air prison."

How could the Palestinian people possibly expect to defend themselves against Israel in an open and conventional conflict? The Palestinian people back terrorism because it works--it forces Israel to the negotiating table. Consistently, these Israeli "flexing our big muscles" incursions and retaliations by the military have failed completely to stop rocket attacks, suicide bombs, etc. and at some point they must always go to the negotiating table. A side benefit is that the terrorist attacks and subsequent negotiations get the world's media eye focused on the region and what Israel is doing there.

So this talk about whether Hamas are terrorists or freedom fighters is besides the point. They're terrorists to Israelis and they're freedom fighters to the Palestinians. Israel and the U.S. are just as much terrorists as Hamas if not more so. You can watch Chomsky clearly explain why on this Sift: http://videosift.com/video/noam-chomsky-is-america-a-leading-terrorist-state

Second, let's look at the casualties from this latest conflict:
Israel: 3 Israeli's dead, 60 injured from shrapnel (all adults according to latest reports)
Palestine: 100s dead, including 26 children

Yet, Israel tries to spin its military campaign as one of self-defense. The balance of power is so skewed here it's comical.

If there is any hope for peace in this region, it will only come after the U.S. not only stops actively supporting Israel but openly condemns them as well. But that can't possibly happen without the U.S. looking supremely hypocritical about the actions it takes globally (for instance in Afghanistan) in the name of the "War on Terror."

From there, as others have mentioned, you have to stop the occupation and bring both sides together on equal terms. Yes, there will still be fanatics who will fight to the end. But they won't be finding the sympathy and support of the majority of the populace if that populace is no longer oppressed and instead is living in free and safe conditions. Without that popular support, those fanatics will be much easier to deal with than they are now. It's not going to be an easy road to peace because hatred has been bred into both sides so deeply. But I do think it is possible if only the U.S. government will get its head out of its ass.

My 2 cents, anyways.

EDIT: Please don't take this post to mean that I support terrorism in any form or think that it is justified by the Israeli occupation. I am only pointing out the historical fact that terrorism gives the Palestinians pretty much their ONLY bargaining chip at the negotiating table--the Palestinian leadership (whoever is in charge at the time, though it is currently Hamas) agrees to reign in the terror attacks in exchange for humanitarian aid such as food, building supplies, etc. In other words, it "works" in achieving short-term goals but clearly doesn't help achieve lasting peace in the region--which as others have pointed out Hamas doesn't really want anyway.

@My_design

After reading your post, I had a quick curiosity (zero effort) search on Google, typed in "Israel celebrating civilian deaths footage" Result #1 below

http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/11/19/new-battlefield-footage-shows-idf-aborting-missions-to-avoid-civilian-casualties-video/

Searched a bit more and found numerous news sites stating stories of relatively consistent situations of Israels attempts to minimize civilian deaths.

There are sure to be casualties ... they can whet their whistle[s] while they work!

Has asymmetric warfare ever been proven to do much more than create civilian casualties?
It's like killing people to create peer pressure.

Hoping the cheers at the end indicated zero casualties!

Ok, I'll start with a few things that most people would probably agree with, but the police force currently would fight like hell to avoid. How about we decide to actually punish cops who break existing rules and laws. Use testing to weed out unbalanced power hungry or corrupt types from becoming cops. QUIT hiring COMBAT veterans to become PEACE officers. I'm sure there are many things that could be done to fix the problem with the police, its just that it's not being done because the police think the only problem is that we, the lowly people, dont always follow ALL commands,and sometimes we need to be put in our place. >> ^shveddy:
False dichotomy, among other things. There are innumerable intermediate steps between "allowing them to do whatever they want to you" and "shooting the motherfuckers." I'll admit that there is a point where armed resistance is warranted, but if you think that we have arrived anywhere near that point with enough frequency to warrant armed resistance, then you are crazy.
Yes, there are plenty of instances of people's rights being violated - but in 99.99% of those occasions, I think the problem can best be solved through other means.
Do I think that the students who got peppersprayed at UC Davis had their rights violated?
Yes, I do. But this guy seems to suggest that the proper response is for the students to pull guns and start a shoot-out. Let's imagine what that would look like for a second:
One of the students peers through the caustic mist with righteous fury and a wet t-shirt over his mouth. He can feel the comforting weight of his Barretta, held close to his heart in a chest holster, and he knows that this is the moment to act. He stands up tall despite the onslaught of bright orange asphyxiation, reaches for his piece and takes aim. Somewhat startled, the officer is suddenly defenseless with his canister and it is not long before he crumples to the ground in an ever expanding pool of blood. He basks in a brief moment of clarity before chaos reigns. His fellow students are quick to bear arms themselves, but the training, body armor and poise of the officers allows them a significant head start and the students suffer heavy casualties in this initial volley.
Not to be deterred by the deaths of their friends, the occupy movement takes up refuge in the life sciences building which, designed in the late sixties with a brutalist aesthetic, is mostly concrete and as such is a perfect fortress from which to outlast the ensuing siege and inspire innumerable citizens on the outside world to take up arms as well. Guerrilla warfare is the only tactic effective in such asymmetrical circumstances, and after a few weeks of violence the powers that be succumb to international pressure and agree to negotiate with the 99%...
...or we could launch an official investigation, fire the guy as a scapegoat after an admittedly long, expensive and cumbersome process, and let the public outrage that ensued lead to a more cautious approach to future student protests. Bloggers and editorialists collectively write millions of words on the subject, increasing awareness and generally shaming the agency that allowed it to happen.
Not perfect, but a whole hell of a lot more civilized.
Any time you use guns against a government entity in he US, you will eventually be caught and put in jail. Period. The only way to avoid this is to be a small part of a large popular movement that eventually overthrows the US government, and I don't see that ever happening with citizen gun-owners unless it involves guerrilla tactics. Imagine gunfights erupting at your local municipal buildings. Imagine pipe bombs at your local police station. People need to realize that this is what they are advocating when they argue for second amendment rights as a fourth check and balance.
If you disagree with that statement, feel free to fill in a reasonable sequence of events to span the gap between "guy whose fourth amendment rights are violated guns down cop" and "said guy is vindicated, and massive changes are made to our law enforcement policies." I suspect that we are far more likely to see a greater militarization of the police in response.
I humbly propose that we join the civilized world and come up with more creative ways to correct our problems.

False dichotomy, among other things. There are innumerable intermediate steps between "allowing them to do whatever they want to you" and "shooting the motherfuckers." I'll admit that there is a point where armed resistance is warranted, but if you think that we have arrived anywhere near that point with enough frequency to warrant armed resistance, then you are crazy.

Yes, there are plenty of instances of people's rights being violated - but in 99.99% of those occasions, I think the problem can best be solved through other means.

Do I think that the students who got peppersprayed at UC Davis had their rights violated?

Yes, I do. But this guy seems to suggest that the proper response is for the students to pull guns and start a shoot-out. Let's imagine what that would look like for a second:

One of the students peers through the caustic mist with righteous fury and a wet t-shirt over his mouth. He can feel the comforting weight of his Barretta, held close to his heart in a chest holster, and he knows that this is the moment to act. He stands up tall despite the onslaught of bright orange asphyxiation, reaches for his piece and takes aim. Somewhat startled, the officer is suddenly defenseless with his canister and it is not long before he crumples to the ground in an ever expanding pool of blood. He basks in a brief moment of clarity before chaos reigns. His fellow students are quick to bear arms themselves, but the training, body armor and poise of the officers allows them a significant head start and the students suffer heavy casualties in this initial volley.

Not to be deterred by the deaths of their friends, the occupy movement takes up refuge in the life sciences building which, designed in the late sixties with a brutalist aesthetic, is mostly concrete and as such is a perfect fortress from which to outlast the ensuing siege and inspire innumerable citizens on the outside world to take up arms as well. Guerrilla warfare is the only tactic effective in such asymmetrical circumstances, and after a few weeks of violence the powers that be succumb to international pressure and agree to negotiate with the 99%...

...or we could launch an official investigation, fire the guy as a scapegoat after an admittedly long, expensive and cumbersome process, and let the public outrage that ensued lead to a more cautious approach to future student protests. Bloggers and editorialists collectively write millions of words on the subject, increasing awareness and generally shaming the agency that allowed it to happen.

Not perfect, but a whole hell of a lot more civilized.

Any time you use guns against a government entity in he US, you will eventually be caught and put in jail. Period. The only way to avoid this is to be a small part of a large popular movement that eventually overthrows the US government, and I don't see that ever happening with citizen gun-owners unless it involves guerrilla tactics. Imagine gunfights erupting at your local municipal buildings. Imagine pipe bombs at your local police station. People need to realize that this is what they are advocating when they argue for second amendment rights as a fourth check and balance.

If you disagree with that statement, feel free to fill in a reasonable sequence of events to span the gap between "guy whose fourth amendment rights are violated guns down cop" and "said guy is vindicated, and massive changes are made to our law enforcement policies." I suspect that we are far more likely to see a greater militarization of the police in response.

I humbly propose that we join the civilized world and come up with more creative ways to correct our problems.

>> ^alcom:

Excellent point. Drone use, according to the video, began in 2004. It doesn't matter who's in power, drones are here to stay until reporting of civilian casualties breaks into mainstream media.
>> ^Hive13:
Honestly, saying they are living under "Obama's" drones is a bit trite don't you think?



I think you are a very blind if you think civilian casualties are being under reported when it comes to drone strikes. Admittedly, I spend more time on Al Jazeera than most, but still. How many civilian casualties in tribal Pakistan from Taliban and extremists militants make the news here? Maybe 1 per year? How many civilian casualties due to drone strikes make the news here? Probably monthly?

Here is the reality though. For every single person killed in Pakistan by drone strikes, almost 100 people in Pakistan are killed by the Taliban and religious extremists. That's some pretty unbalanced and poor reporting out west don't you think? And it doesn't even take into account the painstaking hours and effort made by America to target Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders with their strikes, while the Taliban proudly and publicly declare that women and student civilians are among their intended and preferred targets for killing.

Sure, using Drones to kill people is bad. Unfortunately we live in a bad world, and the alternatives are a ground war against the Taliban(more deaths) or ignoring them(more deaths). The choice is between bad and worse, and so yes a 'bad' choice has been accepted.