I'm surprised at Grey. There are no buffalo in America (the continent). Those are Bison.

Buffalo live in Africa and Asia.

This seems pretty naive to me. Isis has killed thousands of people, according to a CNN report:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/07/isis-s-gruesome-muslim-death-toll.html

According to the syrian observatory for human rights, Isis has murdered 3200 people in Syria alone. Other reports place the death toll in Iraq at 7000 people.

They have millions of dollars at their disposal, they are allied with Boko Haram, and they not just in Iraq and Syria but all over North Africa.

To say they are weak is naive..weak organizations don't have millions of dollars, territory all over the middle east and murder thousands of people.

I think Ratigan's summary is quite accurate for describing pre-9/11 motivation. Saudi promoted Wahhabi-ism can certainly be blamed for drawing stark divisions between Shia and Sunni Islam and fueling inter-Islamic conflicts in the region. Funds from Saudi benefactors (who have profited handsomely from the US/West's collaboration with Saudi Arabia due to its oil reserves) have certainly fueled terrorist groups.

Today, I would suggest that terrorist attacks are basically publicity, recruitment and funding campaigns for a militia based land battle by ISIS in the Middle East. Take for example the beheading of Americans that arguably escalated the US involvement in the conflict. it would seem that in terms of their survival this would have been counterproductive. I can only assume that a successful terrorist/militia organisation like ISIS is acting quote-unquote rationally in its own interests if it is as successful as it is. That forces me to conclude that the recruitment and funding that it gets from these publicized actions actually outweighs the cost of being attacked militarily by global powers like the US/EU.

While religion is certainly used to motivate the foot soldiers of these insurgents, I would not at all be surprised if the likes of the al-Baghdadi's of the conflict are purely in it for money and power. Kind of reminds me of how insurgents in Africa post-colonialism had to reinvent themselves to remain relevant and became either religiously or otherwise racially sectarian militias / factions.

I would even have said North Africa was a different region to the Middle East

I don't really see the need to hold it back. It is close, in the sense of only the entire country of Saudi Arabia between the filming location and Egypt, but it's not as if it was filmed at Sharm El Sheikh.

Actually I would argue against holding it back even if it was filmed there, or in the Sinai.

My point...the police (for the most part) know it doesn't work, yet they continue to use it as a 'tool' to trick people....people who think it DOES work....so teaching them that the cops are lying to them (again) about this is 100% appropriate and useful information for them.

I had no idea what you were saying about Africa...let's drop it.
If 1/2 million people (a HUGE number, and yet I think not 1/100 of the likely true number) still believe in them, that's 500000 people out there ready to convict you based on lies...and it's probably 100 times more than that. Americans were told for decades that lie detectors work, and barely told at all that that was all a lie. Many many people believe in them as factual devices, not just boxes to trick people with.
EDIT: The same could be said today for fingerprint evidence...which the public perception is that it's an infallible science (just like we were told about lie detectors), when the truth is it's closer to an interpretive art form than a science.

As to your second post...plenty of people still believe, far more than you give credit for, and these people may sit on a jury. If you have one person who KNOWS that lie detectors work, and 11 who think they don't, but aren't sure, the mere mention of 'the defendant failed a lie detector repeatedly' during closing can put many a defendant in prison....and has.
Again, I think you give the public too much credit, first by saying that only .3% think lie detectors work...I would bet that a survey would show more like 10% still think that, and the idea that the rest of us all KNOW for certain that they don't, and can't be convinced by one of the 10%.
For those, and other reasons, repeating 'lie detectors are liars' over and over is proper and useful to both those who don't know, and those who do.

I don't assume anything more than Adam is assuming. He even says police don't believe in it yet claims it is believed in...

And what are you saying about Africa? I made the point to say,
A-Some Africans believe in something, but most do not. It should not be attributed to their population at large.
B-In this same manner a relatively few (even 1/2 million Americans is a paltry sum, since our population is in the hundred millions) Americans believe in lie detectors.

I did not imply anything more. Nothing about educating, nothing about anything. It was a comparison. I guess you could infer it, but then I am fine with videos like this (So long as they don't blow the proportions out of proportions.)

Again, my point is clear. A very minor amount of people believe. Just like a flat earth is still believed in. Unfortunately people lose perspective of HUGE numbers, like millions. So yeah, there is that.

@SDGundamX

We can criticise religion generally - for it's falsehood, for it's stultifying effect on the mind, for the shadow the faithful cast over an enlightened world.

We can criticise religions individually - for the divine exhortations to genocide in each of the abrahamic canons, for the promise of infinite torture by a benevolent god in both christianity and islam, for their arbitrary or bigoted taboos, and particularly of the newer creeds - islam, mormonism, scientology - for what we know to be the bad character of their founders.

And, as you say, we can criticise the behaviours of individual believers, communities or sects - catholicism on condoms and the spread of aids, genital mutilation in africa (which you're quite right to point out has cultural roots that pre-date islam, though it would be disingenuous to claim religion has no reinforcing or propagating effect on that practice).

I wholly disagree that this last is the only or most meaningful critique to offer of religion. There are fundamental tenets of these ideologies on which all their denominations, however fractured, can be said to agree.

Allow these people their diversity, their specificity and their subtle variation of interpretation and you're in danger of chasing a thousand little fish at once, in a thousand different directions, while the religious school as a whole shifts, shimmers, dazzles and slips away. I prefer to play the dolphin pack: surrounding, corralling, squeezing and finally devouring the enemy entire.

See, I agreed with everything you said up until that last statement (that I quoted below).

All organized religions brutally and mindlessly suppress individual freedom. But lately the target de jour seems to be Islam. People like Sam Harris got off track when they forgot that the real target is the dismantling of all organized religion and focused almost exclusively on denouncing Islam--usually with obnoxious overgeneralizations and a complete lack of understanding how diverse Islam actually is.

And that's the major problem with the whole argument Dawkins and Maher are proposing (i.e. that you can't criticize Islam anymore). You can't criticise Christianity or Judaism or any other major religion without hugely overgeneralizing, either. Instead you need to target specific denominations within specific communities and how they practice the religion.

For example, are you upset about how "Christianity" has helped spread AIDS or protected pedophiles? Well then really you're really looking to criticize the Catholic church and it's stance on contraception and handling illegal activities within the church, not Christianity as a whole.

Upset with how gay people are viewed? Again, you're probably not looking to criticize the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and many other Christian denominations who have reformed in recent times to be accepting of LGBT members and clergy. It's not a Christianity problem so much as it is a problem of how specific people in specific places for specific cultural reasons interpret the texts of their religion.

Basically, I don't think it is a problem if people want to criticize how Islam is practiced in a specific context (say, for example, the use of female genital mutilation in some subsets of Islam in Africa). But I do think it is a problem when the speaker is simply set on demonizing the religion as whole rather than making a rational argument, for example overgeneralizing female gential mutilation (which actually pre-dates Islam and was incorporated into it later after Islam's rise of influence in the region) as an example of why Islam is evil.

Certainly people have the legal right to make such an argument (in the U.S. at least). However, I'm guessing most universities don't want to come across as looking in support of such ill-structured arguments that are more akin to tabloid magazine hit pieces than an actual intellectual argument which is grounded in facts and reason.

All that said, I have no inside information about the real administrative reasons why certain speakers have been declined/uninvited at specific college campuses.

3 things, I may have mixed them a bit.

1 - past experience specifically with muslim migrants (some may have been refugees) in Europe - overall not great, mostly they consider our social system and political correctness as signs of weakness. They consider themselves superior, the first generation may be grateful for a better life than back home but the second and third generations feel superior to non-muslims (especially jews and atheists, but also christians) and entitled to benefits while hating the secular state. Will the current and future waves accomodate better? This has nothing to do with our imperative to help those in need, it is a practical problem. Also not racist - although I do admit racism and xenophobia are a major problem in many parts of Europe and trouble me very much in my own country. More so than the Vietnamese or Ukrainians or people from the Balkans "these people" organize in clans and tribes and will try to impose their view of the world on us, who organise in tiny families and on facebook. Albanian thugs are well organised but they dont hold the view that everyone else should be an Albanian thug too.

2 - current wave of migrants and refugees - lets assume we are talking only about real Syrians boarding boats in Turkey trying to reach Greek islands and not people from all over north africa trying to reach Italy or anyone else trying to reach the EU (possibly pretending to be Syrian). So we have this exemplary Syrian family which has run away from a war to Turkey. They are safe there, only they have to either stay for a couple of years in a refugee camp before they can try to find work or they have to survive in a grey economy sort of like Mexicans in the USA. They know that if they dont apply for asylum in Turkey and manage to set foot on EU soil they can ask for asylum there and be treated better than in Turkey. So these boat people are actually not running from war to asylum but rather from one asylum to another. They make sure not to stop in Greece or Croatia or Austria or Hungary but head for Germany or Sweden. Mostly I believe they have no idea of political geography but they have mobile phones and friends who have already made the journey and know how to milk the local system. So for purposes of compassion they are refugees and totally need our help but from a clinically economic (yes, materialistic) point of view they are very much migrants. Migrants we feel obliged to help because they are sort of refugees too.

3 - the mass and speed of the exodus means we are stretched to accomodate them and they will later start to passionately hate us because Europe will not be the heaven they expected it to be.
A few thousand refugees every year are no big deal even for a small EU state. Hundreds of thousands will be very difficult to take care of in the entire union. Inviting more is just irresponsible.

The good news is that the real Syrian refugees who make it to Europe will probably be the more resourceful, better educated part of the current wave of incoming people and will be able to take care of themselves fairly quickly by my estimate. Also they are mostly variants of Shia - the less orthodox branch of muslims. I am worried more about future waves than the current one.

Maybe we have messed up a bit but we need to learn from our mistakes, and even Germany is now guarding its borders. It would be better if we were able to guard the Shengen perimeter.
Then if we wanted to save more refugees we could send trains or planes to pick them up in Turkey or Jemen. You know, set up an EU consulate there so they could directly apply for asylum in the EU country of their picking. But we have to make a conscious decision first - how many people from the desolate and failing parts of the world do we want to save over a given time period so that we dont fail ourselves. Are we failing? Ask the jewish families who used to live in Malmo until recently.

They should show a video of this to starving children in Africa.

Oddly enough, I just started a new job working in landmine clearance (I'm not doing the clearing, I just manage the process) and they asked me what I wanted as far as professional development, and I said I wanted to see the rats in action at some point since we aren't using them in my country. Guess I can cross that off the list - so much for my free trip to Africa.

Jesus Christ was apparently quite a tolerant bloke. He hung out with the whores, the beggars, the undesirables etc, he told parables about "good" people turning a blind eye to the hurting of their brother while a Samaritan turned out to be the truly good person. He said "Judge not lest ye be judged".

I don't even believe the guy was anything other than an altruistic nutter (if he existed at all) and I know his message better than you, or the douchebag in the video...

Persecution is being tossed in an arena with lions. It's being nailed to a cross. It isn't "co-existing with others and not getting the privilege of being able to make rules on how they live their lives". That's called equality, respect, common decency. You and you're ilk don't know true suffering mate.

Perhaps if you actually emulated the person you claim to worship (you know, the one that is waiting for you in the afterlife with a big fucking stick and an accounting of your years of intolerance) rather than made up your own interpretation, you'd actually be a christian worthy of the name...

And if you want to witness suffering, go minister in Africa for a few years, then get back to us about just how bad it is to be "persecuted"...

Pure quality by John, as usual.

There are a few points I'd like to add, in order of appearance.

5:10 – Greek default or Grexit could be manageable by the rest of the EZ, economically. Italy looks a bit shaky and Spain still looks like shit, so things could spiral out of control, but chances would be better now than they were in, say, 2010.

However, Grexit would be a political nightmare. EZ membership is supposed to be irreversible, so Grexit would reduce the Euro from a common currency to a peg when viewed from the outside. That's open season on the rest of the PIIGS. If Greek then rebounds, other people might very well decide to give Germany the finger and leave as well. If Greece fails, you have a NATO member turn into a failed state, which not only gives NATO the shivers, but also buries any notion of solidarity within the EU. This union survives because of the promises it makes, which include increasing standards of living and solidarity among different peoples. Without it, we're left with... what exactly?

And nevermind the humanitarian catastrophe taking part in Greece. We've conditioned ourselves to block out the pain and suffering of people in Africa. We even manage to shrug at the cesspool of corruption that is Kosovo. But if we do that to Greece as well, what little moral authority Europe might still have left would be gone then.

5:32 – The last payment Greece received was in August, long before Syriza took over. The previous government was in disagreement with the Troika and therefore transfers were frozen.

5:57 – Troika payments are required to service previous debt obligations. They are separate from what the Greek banks require to maintain their liquidity. That would be Emergency Liquidiy Assistance (ELA) from the ECB, which is a different thing entirely, even though it comes from a member of the Troika.

The ECB is bound by law to maintain and ensure the stability of the banking system(s) within the EZ. If a bank runs into liquidity problems, support is provided by the national bank of the respective country, which funnels funds from the ECB to the troubled bank. That's ELA, and a limit on ELA is a limit on the amount of funds that banks can draw from through this process. If an illiquid bank is cut off from ELA, it goes belly up. Bad idea.

Some argue that the ECB should not provide ELA to those Greek banks anymore, since they are insolvent, and ECB rules forbid ELA to insolvent banks. But as Varoufakis said, even the ECB's own Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) department, which is the new banking oversight, declares the four large Greek banks to be solvent. So there is no reason for the ECB to cut ELA to Greek banks. It's all political, and the ECB is designed to be outside of politics. That's also a reason why its membership in the Troika is so controversial.

The political argument for cutting off ELA is that Germany et al. are on the hook for the total amount should Greece itself go belly up. Somewhere along the line, someone made the glorious decision to install the ECB as a currency issuer without providing it with the attributes of a regular currency issuer. If the Bank of Japan or the Bank of England racks up losses, noone cares. They issue their own currency, they cannot go bankrupt, whatever debt they have in their books is irrelevant, for this discussion anyways. But the ECB has to balance its books, it has to receive funds from its members to balance losses, and in proportion to their economic size.

They made sure that politicians can scare the demos by pointing out how they have to foot the bill for this shit, even though it's the one entity where debt truly doesn't matter at all.

By the way, the funds that Greece is hoping to acquire are meant, primarily, for two purposes: making debt payments and to provide financial room to convert ECB(?) debt into EFSF debt (4% interest down to 1%). That's all. No spending.

6:54 – "Printing" money is generating demand out of thin air. There is a shortage of demand throughout the entire continent. So yeah, if the folks at the ECB could type in a few numbers, that would be swell.

Even Germany has a shortage of demand. We are merely hiding it behind the €200b+ of demand that we steal from other countries, i.e. our current account surplus. But the infrastructure and investment spending over here is at all time lows. We'd need an additional €200b+ just to get the infrastructure back to the state it was in a decade ago.

There is no productivity growth in Europe. The UK actually lost a lot of productivity by its introduction of zero hour jobs and other forms of slavery. Without sufficient demand, there is no need to improve production capacities – they can't even sell what they could produce right now.

Yep. One of the keys for me too. What good is He if the only thing He provides is salvation from the Hell He created to punish us for not loving Him to His satisfaction? What else have You done for me, or anyone else I know, in this present day life on Earth God? Nada, and sure some would say God saved so and so from an accident... then but then millions of good Christians die every year from accidents... it's almost like it's random who He helps or not... In fact, He indeed doesn't help any more than any other god does... He at one point had a better army, which allowed Him to spread around to Europe and force them to convert or integrate their holidays into His to make it seem better to those forced to convert.

Okay He created Hell for Lucifer and the angels who chose not to praise Him for a moment... which proves that angels do have free will... which goes against the teaching He created us to love Him of our own free will as the angels had no choice... so either He forced Lucifer and the third of all the angels to rebel, or they have free will. Then we get all those people in Asia, Africa and the Americas and all over the glove who are going to Hell before they heard about the gospel of Jesus as they never had a chance... but wait many Christians say, they won't go to Hell because they didn't know, they'll be judged on if they lived morally... which begs the question, if you are basically fully guaranteed of life in Heaven without the knowledge of Jesus, then why spread the message? Oh, the Great Commission... that command they apparently listen to, while the people like this ignore His command to Love and treat others as you'd have them treat you. How He hung around sinners and tax collectors and talked badly about those who were showing off how holy they were and prayed openly, trying to shame those who didn't do as they did. How He told the crowd who was about to stone a woman at the well "let those without sin toss the first stone" and then importantly doesn't toss any stones Himself, not because He's sinned, but because He's operating on a new covenant. Yet they love to toss stones of discrimination and hate towards those who sin differently than them. He commands us to heal the sick, and yet it is the Christians of this Nation that oppose guaranteeing everyone a minimum degree of universal health insurance, preferring only people with good jobs have affordable health care. And on and on...

And the Jesus is coming soon folks... Seriously I've head from family that even if Climate Change is real, the real damage doesn't come for hundred years or more, and Jesus will have come by then. Just look at the world, gay people can get married now. Clearly Jesus is coming soon. I had another family member note how after the election of Obama the first time that just means Jesus will come sooner now... as if the Bible doesn't say there's an appointed time, let alone that He appoints the leaders...

And then the whole help help we're being repressed attitude... when basically they are being denied special rights and privileges and just coming to equal legal ground with others. Basically they are coming into the situation that forced the Pilgrims to leave a Christian Nation to move to what would become America because they couldn't persecute others as they wanted to, as the theocracy that ruled that Nation didn't agree to go that far.

I could go on for ages. I covered the topic a billion times though... well not a billion...

This was also not the only man involved, and not the only concern that applied. This quote is his, not that of half a nation.

While I agree that the south had racist and white supremacist behaviors, I simply point out that the north was little better.

Both were plenty racist, and both cared a lot more about their money/power than they did about slaves. Rich white people in charge today don't give 2 shits about poor black people, I find it very unlikely that the rich white people in charge way back then cared any more.

Let me illustrate the 'champion of liberty' spin with an unrelated example :
Take the ww2 pacific theater for example. Japan teaches WW2 as a war to free Asia from western colonialism. U.S. teaches WW2 (pacific) as a war to free Asia from imperial expansion and oppression by Japan. Both are telling the truth, and both are full of crap. For neither was altruistic in their motivations, but both spin themselves as champions of liberty. For you will always have people on your side if you tell them you are standing up for liberty. (A concept well illustrated in The Prince - one of the earlier 'game theory' (from before it was called that) studies of governance.)

On a side note,

Keep in mind that slaves from Africa were usually purchased from black slavers.

And just a few generations ago, my own great grandparent's era, they and their peers were white peasant property of local white counts.

Things are not really all that 'black and white' (no pun intended).

-scheherazade