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Antworks from Catherine Chalmers on Vimeo.

radical islamic terrorism is the usage of a rigid fundamentalist interpretation as a justification predicated on abysmal politics.

ill-thought and short sighted politics is the tinder.
hyper-extremist fundamentalism is the match.

ISIS would never even have existed without al qeada,who themselves would not have existed without US interventionism into:iran,egypt and saudi arabia.

and this is going back almost 70 years.

so lets cut the shit with apologetics towards americas horrific blunders in regards to foreign policy.actions have consequences,there is a cause and effect,and when even in the 50's the CIA KNEW,and have stated as much,that there would be "blowback" from americas persistent interventionism in those regions.which stated goals (in more honest times) was to destabilize,dethrone (remove leaders not friendly to american business) and install leaders more pliant and easily manipulated (often times deposing democratically elected leaders to install despots.the shah and sadam come to mind).

see:chalmers johnson-blowback
see: Zbigniew Brzezinski-the grand chessboard.

or read this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881

so to act like islamic radicals just fell from the fucking sky,and popped out from thin air,due to something that has been boiling for almost 70 years is fucking ludicrous.

radicalization of certain groups in populations have long been understood,and well documented.

and religion,though the most popular,and easiest tool to motivate and justify heinous acts of violence for a political goal,is not the SOLE tool.

nationalism is another tool used to radicalize a population.
see:the nazi party.

but it always comes down to:tribalism of one kind or another.

@transmorpher

so when you use this "ISIS themselves, in their own magazine (Dabiq) go out of their way to explain that they are not motivated by the xenophobia or the US fighting wars in their countries. They make specifically state that their motivation is simply because you aren't muslim. You can go an read it for yourself. They are self confessed fanatics that need to kill you to go to heaven. "

to solidify your argument,all i see is someone ignoring the history and pertinent reasons why that group even exists.

you may recall that ISIS was once Al qeada,and they were SO radical,SO fanatical and SO violent in their execution of religious zeal..that even al qeada had to distance themselves.

because,again...
religion is used as the justification to enact terrorism due to bad politics.
but the GOAL is always political.

you may remember that in the early 90's the twin towers were attacked and it was the first time americans heard of al qeada,and osama bil laden.

who made a statement back in 1993 and then reiterated in 2001 after 9/11 that the stated goal (one of them at least) was for the removal of ALL american military presence in saudi arabia (there was more,but it mostly dealt with american military presence in the middle east).

but where did this osama dude come from?
why was he so pissed at america?
just what was this dudes deal?

turns out he was already on the road to radicalization during the 80's.coming from an extremely wealthy saudi arabian family but had become extremely religious,and he saw western interventionism as a plague,and western culture as a disease.

he left the comforts of his extremely wealthy family to fight against this western incursion into his religious homeland.he traveled to afghanistan to join the mujahideen to combat the russians,who were actually fighting the americans in a proxy war.and WE trained osama.WE armed him and trained him in the tactics of warfare to,behind the scenes,slowly drain russia of resources in our 50 year long cold war.

how's that for irony.

osama was not,as american media like to paint the picture "anti-democratic or anti-freedom".he saw the culture of consumerism,greed and sexual liberation as an affront to his religious understandings.

this attitude can be directly linked to sayyid qtib from egypt.who visited the united states as an exchange student in 1954.now he wasnt radicalized yet,but when he returned to egypt he didnt recognize his own country.

he saw coco cola signs everywhere,and women wearing shorts skirts,and jukeboxs playing that devils music "rock and roll".

he feared for his country,his neighbors,his community.
just like a southern baptist fears for your soul,sayyid feared for the soul of his country and that this new "westernization" was a direct threat to the tenants laid down by islam.

so he began to speak out.
he began to hold rallies challenging the leadership to turn away from this evil,and people started to take notice,and some people agreed.

change does not come easy for some people,and this is especially true for those who hold strong religious ideologies.
(insert religion here) tends to be extremely traditional.

so sayyid started to gain popularity for his challenge if this new "westernization",and this did not go un-noticed by the egyptian leadership,who at that time WANTED western companies to invest in egypt.(that whole political landscape is totally different now,but back then egypt was fairly liberal,and moderately secular).

so instead of allowing sayyid to speak his mind.
they threw him in prison.
for 4 years.
in solitary.

well,he wasn't radicalized when he went IN to prison,but when he came OUT he sure was.

and to shorten this story,sayyid was the first founder of the muslim brotherhood,whose later incarnation broke off to form?

can you guess?
i bet you can!
al qeade

@Fairbs ,@newtboy and @Asmo have all laid out points why radicalization happens,and the conditions that can enflame and amplify that radicalization.

so i wont repeat what they have already said.

but let us take dearborn michigan as an example.
the largest muslim community in america.
how many terrorists come from dearborn?
how many radicals reside there?
how many mosque preach intolerance and "death to america"?
how many imams quietly sanction fatwas from the local IHOP against american imperialistic pigs?

none.

becuase if you live in stable community,with a functioning government,and you are able to find work and support your family,and your kids can get an education.

the chances of you become radicalized is pretty much:zippo.

the specific religion has NOTHING to do with terrorism.
religion is simply the means in which the justifications to enact violent atrocities is born.

it's the politics stupid.

you could do a thought experiment and flip the religions around,but keep the same political parameters and do you know WHAT we find?

that the terrorists would be CHRISTIAN terrorists.

or do i really need to go all the way back to the fucking dark ages to make my point?

it's
the
politics
stupid.

@RedSky

while i agree with you that this was most certainly a scripted interview,and one of the reasons i did not tag it "news",let us be clear and concise that this is a practice that most politicians,or heads of state engage in for most press conferences/interviews.

but that is where our agreement ends.

to downplay americas role in the overthrow of mossadeqh as to little more than a nuisance,with little actual affect on iranian politics,is not entirely accurate.while those elements existed,it was eisenhowers TPAJAX project which was specifically directed to inflame the already tense relationship between the royalists and the PM mossadeqh.

chalmers johnson and john perkins wrote at length and great detail in regards to this situation.

i will concede that i agree to a point (but only to a point),that american foreign policy is about reciprocation,but i find your analysis to be far too simplistic.when there is an over abundance of evidence that american foreign policy is not some benevolent spreading-freedom and democracy for the masses but rather colonialization by way of exploitation,indebtness and ultimately military might.

see:smedley butler
see:IMF and WTO
see:john perkins-confessions of an economic hitman

america is in the business of empire.this is about business and profit and the military is used as the hammer to keep those countries in line.

quid pro quo.

i am no fan of putin.he is ruthless and his domestic policies have caused immense suffering with the under class,but i have to respect his abilities as a politician.the man knows how to work a room.

@lantern53
oh come on man...
now your just trying to get peoples goat and garner a reaction.you cant seriously be THAT ignorant to history.
no way..
uh uh..
unless you dropped out of school in the 8th grade.
so i aint buying your schtick,go to another corner and peddle your wares somewhere else.

@RedSky
i hear ya and the situation did not just pop out of nowhere.this has been brewing for decades all the way back to world war one.
for anybody interested *cough* lantern *cough* look into:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
and a most excellent book by chalmers johnson:
http://www.thenation.com/article/blowback

Thank you, John Deere, Alice Chalmers, and Takahashi Kubota!!

That's right, Supernintendo Chalmers!

The claim is that there is a special substance that is our consciousness, not that it causes our consciousness.

Those who propose that this is true usually attempt to support this with arguments showing not only do we not yet have any explanation for how consciousness could arise solely from physical matter (which is true), but we cannot in principle show that consciousness could arise from matter (which is debatable). If it is not possible to explain consciousness in terms of matter only, then we have to posit a non-physical substance--or at least non-physical properties. (The philosophers who argue for non-physical properties are called property dualists, like David Chalmers, and should be contrasted with substance dualists like Plantinga.) So, according to dualist philosophers of mind, postulating a non-physical substance is not an unnecessary complication, but an essential element of any complete account of the mind.

The arguments themselves can get very complicated. Philosophy of mind is a sonuvabitch.

>> ^messenger:

If someone's going to propose that there's a special substance that causes our consciousness and is non-physical, it has to be explained how this different substance creates consciousness AND how it interacts with physical objects. To propose an as-yet undetected type of physical matter (similar to how "dark matter" has mass, but remains undetected) only requires explanation of how it creates consciousness. Proposing that it's "non-physical" adds complexity, and doesn't provide any answers. It's a dodge.
@GeeSussFreeK
It's possible that we could know all the physical properties by empirical investigation, eventually. Why not? And if we can create robot intelligence, it might become superior to our own, as in chess. It might then create yet another higher form of intelligence, and so on until one is created that can derive all the physical laws of the universe and communicate them to us with proofs. We do have more than a billion years before the sun dries up all our water. Maybe we've got time.

conflations.
deflections..
and false equivalencies are all the dissenting arguments i am seeing.
and this is not due to me being a "leftist' and therefore not owning the ability to critically digest historical information and come to a conclusion.

someone spent 20 minutes to refute some of the data in this video only to find out the numbers were accurate BUT they did not reveal the specifics and hence the argument was invalid.
kinda like: "the yellow honda ran over a man today crushing his skull"
"HA! the car was GREEN"
"so it was but how does that change the fact the car crushed a mans skull?"

some have suggested that american interventionism is sometimes messy but usually a necessity.so while it may be complicated,sometimes america has had to do what the rest of the world would not.
this (falsely) implies that their is a thread of moral good when america attempts to straighten out an ugly situation in a foreign country and that sometimes,sadly,this leads to unintended consequences that may lead to blowback.
this is pure propaganda and i say this not because i hate my country but because if it were a true statement then america would be where ALL human rights,oppression and suffering under the hands of despotic governments resided worldwide.

see:rwanda,east timor,bangledesh there is a massive amount of places where america had a strict non-interventionist attitude.
and the reason is simple.those countries had nothing to offer,but our government seems to REALLY like working with dictators.easier to deal with one person who is friendly to american interests than a whole population that might (gasp/horror) have the ability to vote your interests down.so not only does america not give two shits about a country with no resources to exploit,they prefer despotic dictators and have installed them when necessary in the name of american interests.

war is always for the same things:resources,land and labor.now for thousands of years it was religion that was the driving force to get the average person to go out and slaughter but for the past 100 years it has been nationalism.

one last thing to address those who have mentioned alqaeda and what they post.
firstly:this has nothing to do with this video and is a false equivalency.
secondly:look up where alqaeda was on the FBI's most wanted list in 1999.look at who trained alqaeda,even funded them.notice anything?

so we can say vietnam was complicated.
ok..i can agree with that but lets remember it would have never even been issue if not for our government creating a false situation in which to enter vietnam in the first place.see:gulf of tonkin.
and again,has nothing to do with the premise of this video.

we can say muslims dont hate our freedom but rather they perceive us as immoral and decadent.
i would agree with that also if we were in the 1950's and the conversation was sayyid qutb and the muslim brotherhood but we are talking alqaeda which is the creation of the american intelligence CIA.
so it is america which created the complications we are speaking of.so whatever propaganda alqaeda uses now to recruit besides just pointing to us bombing the shit out of them is still indirectly a result of american interventionism.

neo-conservative ideology has nothing to do with being conseravtive but everything to do with using the massive might of the military to secure american interests globally.
might makes right.

lets also remember traditionally republicanism tended to be isolationist and faaar less hawkish.so ron paul is just being a traditional republican.of course now we live in bizzarro universe where everything is opposite so we have self-proclaimed republicans admonishing ron paul for ..what exactly? being a republican?
thats just weird.

and please understand that my points are not just some rage against america.i am not,by my commentary,ignoring the vast amount of good and noble things my country has done over the past 100 years or so but i also will not shut my eyes to what my countries foreign policy has done to so many small countries who happen to coincidently all be populated by brown people.

might i suggest:
chalmers johnson "blowback"
bryzenski's "the grand chessboard"
or the stellar book by john perkins "economic hitman"

maybe you will understand ron pauls position on these things.
/rant off

Personally I find it hard to reconcile what I know about physics with the existence of consciousness to begin with. Perhaps a better thought question would be something along the lines of Chalmers' zombie world arguments. That is, could a person appear outwardly to perceive and act in the world normally and not be conscious? That is, could they just be some sort of robot, or cascade of known biochemical processes? Alan Turing, in his own way, was interested in the same question.

Therein lies the problem. If there is no satisfactory physical test for consciousness, how can we be so sure about how consciousness is anchored to matter? Frankly, I see little hope of unifying an understanding of consciousness with an understanding of physics without invoking quantum mechanics. Even that just feels like punting to the physics equivalent of magic.

Personally I'm on the lunatic fringe with consciousness. I can't derive consciousness, but I'm overwhelmingly convinced of its existence. So, instead of dealing with all the paradoxes I just assume consciousness is present in all matter. There are varying experiences, or "degrees" of consciousness however. The nice entropy reducing capabilities of our nervous system make our particular conscious experience substantially richer than that of, for example, a rock. So I guess my thought is that the experience sort of fades towards the experience the matter would have without the metabolic energy necessary to support neuronal conduction. Honestly, I don't think it would be possible to obtain data on it, but I imagine it to be somewhat like fading to gray. I suppose it would be equally likely to be like fading into chaos.

@spoco2
iraq was going to happen.9/11 was just a convenient tool to get there.
see: http://www.takeoverworld.info/grandchessboard.html
or: http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/chalmers-johnsons-blowback-the-costs-and/

as for the political extortion coming from saudi arabia,and understand this is pure speculation.i would surmise it had something to do with very unsavory information that the body politic of washington would do much to keep under wraps.
when you consider the political landscape of the mid east it is an animal wholly and unequivocal in its absolute opposite of western politics,and that the US foreign policy over the past 50 years has been grossly under-reported and was rife with murder,assasinations,(economic as well as literal),coup de tats and the ruining of whole countries to rape and pillage their resources.
the open hand of the free market can never succeed without the closed fist of military might-arundhati roy
i have no doubt that certain american political factions got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
just look at how the bush years handled the iraq war and how convinced they were things were going to go in certain direction.
it probably would have in a western country but the mid east is organic as much as it is chaotic.
western politics has always and i mean ALWAYS gotten the politics of the middle east wrong.

>> ^jmzero:

Suppose you have 5 schools, and their "average tests scores" are (40%,40%,40%,90%,90%). In this case, the "average school" would have a score of 60% and 3 of the 5 schools are, thus, below average.


I heart statistics. Superintendent Chalmers would sandbag one school in the district so that all the other schools are above average.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

I want the dumb-fuck truthers to answer a couple of "simple" questions for me, or to STFU:
1)What is there to gain from it?
2)Where are the signature multi-level explosions used to fell a building?
3)How the fuck do you sneak all the explosives in with no one noticing?
4)Why would they bother making them fall straight down? Wouldn't sideways be better if you're going to kill a bunch of people?


1.what is to gain from it?
this is the question that really stood out to me.
my friend.look up "false flag operations".
read bryzenski's "the grand chessboard" or chalmers johnson "blowback" and naomi klein's "shock doctrine" for more insight in to what might be gained from any fear-inducing crisis situation.
why?
because governments lie...thats why.
this is not my opinion but historical pattern.

as for the rest of your inquiry,i tend to agree with you and is one of the reasons i am not a "truther" but to suggest that somehow asking questions of a seriously flawed "conspiracy theory" put forth by the american government somehow makes people "dumb-fucks",is dis-ingenuine at best.because just as many 9/11 truther theories fail under scrutiny,so does the version put forth by our government.

so lets keep asking those questions and understand that the government is not our buddy,our pal or our friend and governments lie.

Thanks for the promote!

In reply to this comment by enoch:
fantastic!
i posted a clip from this.glad you got the entire interview geo!
*promote!

>> ^thinker247:
While I am one to never believe anything my government tells me, I find it highly improbable that anybody but the 19 hijackers caused the events of September 11th. But to play devil's advocate, let me for a minute suspend my belief and agree with the "truthers" that my government perpetrated an act of terrorism against itself.
Why?
In order to invade Afghanistan to plunder its oil? We already had bin Laden on the FBI's Most Wanted List for the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. We easily could have invaded under the pretense of finding and extracting bin Laden (and the Taliban and al-Qaeda), because that's exactly what we did after September 11th.
In order to invade Iraq under the banner of anti-terrorism? Hussein had already defied U.N. weapons inspectors for over a decade and Bush was never the type to ask permission, so we didn't need September 11th to justify illegally invading a sovereign nation. We did it anyway.
In order to enact greater restrictions upon the citizens by inducing their fear response? Hell, as a general populace we're lemmings. The Bush administration certainly did not need to kill 3000 people in order to take away our liberties. We gladly give them up whenever anybody in authority asks.
I have yet to hear a rational answer to the question of "Why?" But I'm all ears.


niiiice.
ask a question and then propose possible hypothesis which of course you then dismantle.
let me preface this by stating i am not a "truther" and am not as convinced as my friend rougy is concerning 9/11.
that being said,the US government has never,in my opinion,given this a proper investigation.
let me give you an example:
lewinsky and the impeachment of bill clinton =168 million dollars.
9/11 investigation=6 million dollars
and lets be clear here.the governments version of what happened on 9/11 is itself a conspiracy theory and one that does not hold up well under closer scrutiny.
who is responsible? i do not know and neither do you but i think it prudent to not only ask questions but be allowed to ask those questions.
agree?
now...
as for YOUR question thinker247.
why?
i presume you are asking for motive.
ok.
1.lusitania
2.reichsthag
3.gulf of tonkin
these are all false flag operations and all preceded war.WW!,WW2 and vietnam respectively.i could mention the oil embargo on japan but that is a lengthy conversation.
what ARE the motives for war?
they have always been unequivocally about:
1.land/labor/resources/trade
how does a government,crown or ruling entity get its poorest,least educated and therefore most expendable to go fight and die for something the ruling class wishes?
1.propaganda.
which creates a "fighting spirit".
for thousands of years religion was the impetus to create this spirit but for the last hundred years it has been nationalism but it is ALWAYS the F>E>A>R that is the true driving force.
now that we have established a basis for war let us get to the heart of your question.
since i am not privy to secret documents i must make my answer based on conjecture.i shall do my best.
why would the US government use 9/11 (by action or by proxy) to change 200 years of national defensive posturing to one of "pre-emptive" and declare a war,not on any person or nation but one against an ephemeral opponent?the "war on terror".
1.war is HUGE business and the DOD has been one of the top 10 lobbyists since 1962.
2.saddam hussein,having been bombed for over 10 years straight(fact,look it up) along with sanctions and that ridiculous "oil for food" threatened to change iraq's oil transactions from the american dollar to the euro(fact,look it up)which would have cost the US billions if not trillions.seeing that every oil transaction is done in american dollars.it is the world reserve currency (not for much longer).
3.uzbekisthan has one the last and richest oil and natural gas left in the world.a pipeline which was denied by turkey (that has since changed,but for europes benefit,not america) is being built right now...
where?
ill give ya a guess.
iraq.
and do you know where it will lead into?
want to try another guess?
afghanistan.

those are just a few off the top of my head.i could take the time to be more concise and specific but this is a comment section.
maybe we have differing political philosophies thinker247.i do not trust government nor power because that power historically has ALWAYS attempted to garner more power for itself at the expense of liberty,freedom and the common good of society.
so while i dont think the US government attacked the twin towers,i believe they ALLOWED it.
what evidence do i have? none.and any evidence we could have gotten has been destroyed.
but i was military for a number of years and unless they have gotten lazy and stupid there is no way that would have happened.
could i be wrong?you betcha.
but unlike you i do not trust government and neither should you because historically,governments will abuse whatever powers they have and take your rights away as fast as they are allowed to.
might i recommend:
1.bryzinski "the grand chessboard"
2.naomi klein "the shock doctrine"
3.chalmers johnson "blowback"
hell...just go the PNAC website they practically lay it out for you and that minority controlled the government for 8 years.
history is the greatest teacher and it is your friend.
i have enjoyed this conversation thinker247.

Psychologic:

To initially approach the question of dualism from the perspective that it is essentially a "discussion about physical reality" is to assume your conclusion from the outset. The whole thing hinges on whether or not it is a discussion about physical reality, at least where "physical" is construed in the narrow sense as concerning the phenomena explainable by physics.

When I refer to the "hard" problem(s) of consciousness, I am using the distinction put forward by David Chalmers, between the "hard" problem--the explanation for the sense of internal experience that we have--and the "soft" problems regarding cognition, emotion, etc. It is not at all obvious why the chemical and electrical processes of the brain should give rise to or be associated with particular experiences.

Indeed, Chalmers makes this the bedrock of one of his arguments for dualism. We can, he says, conceive of the existence of what he calls p-zombies. A p-zombie is simply a human physiologically and behaviorally identical to any other--but entirely lacking this internal experience. If we can conceive of the existence of such a being, if we can know what it would be like for such a thing to be--and this is a point of philosophical contention--then it must be the case that our internal experience is not identical to the physical processes associated with it.

Another argument that consciousness cannot be explained by a scientifically reductionist account comes out of the work of Thomas Nagel, notably in famous essay "What is it like to be a bat?", and explored more thoroughly in The View from Nowhere. While Nagel himself is a confirmed physicalist, similar lines of argument have been advanced to defend dualist notions.

And, of course, there are the many other arguments--some good, some bad, none very decisive--regarding the existence of non-physical qualia.