Stefan Molyneux

Freedomain Radio (FDR) is a philosophy podcast hosted by Stefan Molyneux. A number of independent contractors are hired to perform a variety of tasks related to the show. On August 17 and 18, 2014, one of these independent contractors, Michael DeMarco, served a series of DMCA takedown notices based on claims of copyright infringement against a YouTube channel hosted by J. Raven entitled “Tru Shibes” which contained dozens of videos and photos with excerpts of original FDR material. Subsequent to its receipt of the takedown notices, YouTube disabled the “Tru Shibes” channel. Raven never submitted any DMCA counter notices to YouTube. These events resulted in a dispute between FDR and Raven, as well as online speculation that the “Tru Shibes” channel had been taken down due to doxing of FDR listeners. FDR has subsequently investigated this issue and has not found any instances of doxing on the “Tru Shibes” channel. In any event, to resolve this dispute and foster a broad range of discussion and debate regarding FDR’s content and material, FDR has no objection to the “Tru Shibes” channel being reinstated on YouTube, although FDR does not endorse the commentary and opinions of J. Raven that are expressed on the “Tru Shibes” channel.

ISIS Beheadings: 9/11 Continued Introduction 13 years ago today, Osama bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda, attacked the World Trade Centre, causing the deaths of 3,000 people. Yesterday, Barack Obama announced a new plan to wage war against yet another terrorist organization from the Middle East, ISIS. Al Qaeda was originally founded, funded, armed and trained by the CIA, as proxy warriors designed to oppose Soviet imperialism, particularly in Afghanistan. Since the end of the Second World War, imperial empires have become increasingly expensive to maintain - due to the rejection of targeting civilian populations, defensive fighters have abandoned their uniforms and blended in with the locals, requiring boots on the ground infiltration – and all the associated vulnerability. The British Empire dissolved after World War II, since the British Government was broke – thus Empires were revealed as cripplingly expensive, and the path for expelling foreign dominance made clear. To expel foreign occupation, the modern defensive fighter wages a war of expensive attrition designed to target the occupiers economy. This was well known to the French resistance under the Nazis, who aimed to wound, rather than kill, occupying German soldiers. It was also taught to the mujahedin in Afghanistan in the 1980s by the CIA - a single Stinger missile could bring down a Soviet jet worth tens of millions of dollars. This mismatch of costs between attack and defense is the new reality in war - the occupier who stays, dies. The costs of occupation - for the US, over five trillion dollars for the war on terror - vastly outstrip the costs of resistance. Al Qaeda spent a few hundred thousand dollars on the 9/11 attacks, but destroyed between a third and a half of America’s annual GDP - 10 million times the cost of attacks. This was their stated goal. "All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies," stated Bin Laden in a video that was broadcasted by Al Jazeera to Muslims through the world. The US economy took a massive, war-related blow in 2008, where 40% of American household wealth vanished, but it has not been enough to end US occupations, or close the 700+ American military bases around the world, and so now we have videos of beheadings, designed to provoke the US government into destroying what is left of the American economy in the fruitless pursuit of reactionary vengeance. Iraq Western politicians have recently come under fire amidst the growing crisis in Iraq. Professor George Joffe, one of the three experts who briefed Tony Blair on the potential fallout of an invasion in Iraq stated that Blair and George W. Bush bear "total responsibility" for the current situation with ISIS. Blair ignored the experts' warnings and helped create a power vacuum that was filled by terrorist organizations. Blair addressed these accusations in an essay: "The reality is that the whole of the Middle East and beyond is going through a huge, agonising and protracted transition. We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven't. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not; and whether action or inaction is the best policy and there is a lot to be said on both sides. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it." Media outlets are often blaming the Iraqi crisis on the divide between the Sunni and Shia Muslim sects, as well as the failed policies of the country's U.S.-backed Prime Minister. Are Western governments mere enablers or did they light the match that exploded the Middle-Eastern powder keg? Let's take a look at the facts. Stoking Sunni resentment, the U.S. established relationships with Shiite tribes in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq and propped up a Shiite government after toppling Saddam Hussein's pro-Sunni state. Ultimately, ISIS exploited the growing tension between Shia and Sunni Iraqis to fill up its ranks. After Iraq's army was disbanded, many of the professional soldiers joined terrorist organizations. At least two of the ISIS top leaders are former generals in Saddam Hussein's army. According to an Iraqi scholar, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the current leader of ISIS, spent five years in an American prison where he became more radicalized. Baghdadi's path to terrorism is not unique; many ISIS members - both foot soldiers and leaders - spent time in U.S. prisons, where they may have been tortured. Libya Amidst claims of an impending massacre in Benghazi, the U.S. and its allies launched an attack on Libya in 2011 - the goal, however, was to topple Muammar Gaddafi's government. In April 2014, the Citizens Commission on Benghazi, an organization comprised of former top military officers, revealed that the U.S. allowed half a billion dollars worth of weapons to get in the hands of anti-Gaddafi terrorist organizations - ISIS being one of them. Not only did the U.S. help arm jihadists, but after Gaddafi was killed, terrorists tapped into his massive weapons arsenal and started distributing them throughout the Middle East. "We helped build ISIS," claimed Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney with reference to Libyan weapons ending up in the hands of jihadists. Syria There are always lunatics lurking in the crevices of Muslim politics prepared to proclaim a new caliphate; there isn’t always a recruiting pool in the form of nearly 14 million displaced people (11 million Syrians, or half the country’s population, and 2.8 million Iraqis, or a tenth of the country’s population). A new UN study claims that half of Syrians are displaced. Many of them will have nothing to go back to. When people have nothing to lose, they fight to the death and inflict horrors on others. The Wall Street Journal reported in June 2012: "U.S. intelligence operatives and diplomats have stepped up their contacts with Syrian rebels in part to help organize their burgeoning military operations against President Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to senior U.S. officials. [...] The U.S. in many ways is acting in Syria through proxies, primarily Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, say U.S. and Arab officials." "Relying on surrogates allows the United States to keep its fingerprints off operations, but also means they may play out in ways that conflict with American interests," stated the New York Times later the same year. In 2012, the U.S. trained Syrian rebels in Jordan to help them overthrow President Assad in Syria; those same rebels later joined ISIS. In June 2014, the Obama administration requested $500 million to arm and train "moderate" Syrian rebels. Factions of the "moderate," US-backed Free Syrian Army were reported to have pledged allegiance to ISIS only 11 days later. The billions of dollars sent through Saudi Arabia and Qatar have helped make ISIS the richest terrorist organization in history. Did the U.S. help ISIS rise to power? Since at least early 2012, despite growing concerns that anti-Assad insurgents are involved with terrorist organizations, the CIA has continuously provided training, weapons and finances to Syrian rebels. As veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn points out: "U.S. government as a whole - and foreign powers steer away from one very crucial aspect of the rise of ISIS, which is that in Syria, the West backed the uprising against President Assad, and still does, and this enabled ISIS to develop, gain military experience and then use it back in Iraq." Moreover, the destabilization of the region has given Muslim radicals a new voice; the civil war in Syria has so far claimed the lives of more than 170,000 people, and it's a conflict that's largely sustained through Western involvement. Indeed, the ruins of Syria have become a breeding ground for ISIS terrorists. Epilogue ISIS initially avoided provoking the U.S., but its approach changed over the last few months, beheading two U.S. journalists on video and taunting Barack Obama. The president did not remain silent. Obama opened his September 10 [2014] "Address to the Nation" with the following sentence: "My fellow Americans - tonight, I want to speak to you about what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL [or ISIS]." He stated later in his speech: "Still, we continue to face a terrorist threat. We cannot erase every trace of evil from the world, and small groups of killers have the capacity to do great harm. That was the case before 9/11, and that remains true today," Obama stated later in his speech. He proceeded to outline a plan involving systematic airstrikes, sending more troops to the region, and providing support to anti-ISIS Syrian forces. Much like Blair, Obama ignored experts warning him that every U.S. bomb is an advertisement campaign for ISIS. Are you beginning to see the parallels between ISIS and al-Qaeda? Remember, ISIS grew out of an al-Qaeda branch in Iraq. Will ISIS finish off what its predecessor - al-Qaeda - started? Will Americans finally learn that when you let slip the dogs of war, catastrophe is sure to follow? Sources: Al-Qaeda http://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/17/yemen.islam http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan#1986:_Stinger_Missile http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch5.htm http://nation.time.com/2011/06/29/the-5-trillion-war-on-terror http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/fed-americans-wealth-dropped-40-percent/2012/06/11/gJQAlIsCVV_story.html Iraq http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/17/iraq-tony-blair_n_5503110.html http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/jan/21/iraq.iraq http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2665670/ISIS-seize-key-border-crossings-Syria-Jordan-John-Kerry-lands-Baghdad-showdown-talks-Iraqi-PM.html http://www.tonyblairoffice.org/news/entry/iraq-syria-and-the-middle-east-an-essay-by-tony-blair http://thediplomat.com/2014/09/how-the-us-made-isis-a-threat http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/was-camp-bucca-pressure-cooker-extremism http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/world/middleeast/us-actions-in-iraq-fueled-rise-of-a-rebel.html http://www.vox.com/2014/6/20/5827046/who-are-sunnis-who-are-shias Libya http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-j-kucinich/isis-libya-nato_b_5764988.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2610598/Group-US-switched-sides-War-Terror-facilitating-500-MILLION-weapons-deliveries-Libyan-al-Qaeda-militias-leading-Benghazi-attack.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/world/africa/in-a-turnabout-syria-rebels-get-libyan-weapons.html http://video.foxnews.com/v/3760226769001/gen-mcinerney-provides-insight-into-ukraine-crisis Syria http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2014/09/08/14-million-refugees-make-the-levant-unmanageable http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303410404577464763551149048 http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/officials-u-s-trained-isis-at-secret-base-in-jordan http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/world/africa/weapons-sent-to-libyan-rebels-with-us-approval-fell-into-islamist-hands.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-begins-weapons-delivery-to-syrian-rebels/2013/09/11/9fcf2ed8-1b0c-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/06/rice-united-states-is-leading-with-lethal-and-non-lethal-aid-to-syria http://online.wsj.com/articles/obama-proposes-500-million-to-aid-syrian-rebels-1403813486 http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/07/08/US-Backed-Moderate-Free-Syrian-Army-Factions-Join-Islamic-State-Terror-Group http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11052919/How-Isil-is-funded-trained-and-operating-in-Iraq-and-Syria.html http://stopwar.org.uk/news/eight-facts-everyone-should-know-about-the-rise-of-isis-and-the-new-war-in-iraq http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-begins-weapons-delivery-to-syrian-rebels/2013/09/11/9fcf2ed8-1b0c-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/asking_the_wrong_questions http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/28/syria-death-toll_n_5626482.html Epilogue http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2740998/ISIS-release-video-showing-beheading-American-journalist-Steven-Sotloff.html http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/text-obamas-speech-destroying-isis_804732.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/middleeast/a-return-to-action.html http://www.vox.com/cards/things-about-isis-you-need-to-know/what-is-isis

Bravely said, thank you.

Well, arrests should be relative to crimes, no?

Thanks, great points - could you point me to statistical studies showing racism by cops? Do you mean that cops arrest a black man when the victim complains about being assaulted by a white man, or something like that? Thanks!

"After" on my youtube channel

thanks so much everyone, this is great to repost!

Thank you so much everyone, keep them coming, they are fantastic to repost!

thanks so much, reposted!

thank you

Thanks Mick!

Why did you choose that profile pic Ellie?

beautiful, thanks so much!

Fantastic, let me know when it's available, I will share it!

Still reviewing, the studies Kohn cites are all behind paywalls, just keeping y'all up to date...