From the high desert in the great American southwest, I bid you good morning, good afternoon,
good evening, wherever you are in the world's 25 beautiful time zones, each and every one.
Covered like a blanket by this program, Midnight in the Desert, I'm Art Bell.
Thank you for being here.
There are some, you know, some days in your life you live long enough where you get to see things or walk in on things on TV and they just stop you cold, right?
For me, I remember walking in as Challenger launched and the accident.
That stopped me cold.
And, uh, so did, uh, of course, 9-11.
And now, uh, today, Paris.
I walked in, uh, and the TV was nothing but Paris.
It had just begun.
And I've seen all the coverage.
So we're gonna talk about it, uh, in this first hour.
In the second hour, we're going to go to open lines, and you can talk about that or anything else.
But it's pretty darn big news.
Two rules for this program.
No bad language.
One call per show.
Here's what I know about Paris.
It's not much.
Six sites were attacked in the city of Paris.
They believe a hundred and fifty-three people or more may be dead.
Reported dead.
It was a terrorist attack.
France has declared, get this now, a state of emergency and France has closed its borders.
Very unusual move.
The citizens of Paris are asked to stay at home tomorrow.
There are thought to be five attackers dead thus far.
There were three wearing varying kinds of explosives like belts.
Gunmen are thought to perhaps still be loose, unknown how many.
You have to wonder where the next major city is, perhaps New York.
ISIS is celebrating, but not yet claiming official credit for doing this.
And there could be a lot of reasons for that.
It could be there are more attacks to unfold, there or elsewhere.
One attacker was quoted by somebody who was there, As speaking in French that this attack is related to Syria and Iraq and then he was heard to scream Allah Akbar.
I have one complaint.
I guess you could call it.
The French police did not move in on the theater soon enough.
If they had understood who these people were they would have moved in right away because they were in there killing them one at a time and it's probably ISIS that's my opinion but whoever it turns out to be they had only one motive and that was to kill people to commit a terrorist act as many as possible so that theater should have been rushed immediately in my opinion otherwise the French look like they're doing a good job coming up Richard S. Hahn
is president of Arhan and Company Inc.
They are a security consulting and investigative company specializing in counter terrorism and homeland security.
All at stake here, right?
Rick also works as an instructor and a lecturer for various U.S.
government agencies including the U.S.
Department of State.
Rick retired from the FBI after a distinguished career spanning 32 years.
As an agent, he specialized in investigations of domestic and international terrorist organizations dating to the first terrorist activities in this country.
And so here he is.
Welcome aboard, Rick.
Good evening, Art.
Yeah, good evening.
So good to be here.
It's good to have you.
You're here in the first half hour, then we've got John Batchelor from New York on, which I would imagine New York is somewhat on its toes tonight.
Wouldn't you?
I'm sure all of our major cities are at this point.
You know, this is the sort of thing that all of the intelligence community is acutely aware of is the fact that there are sleeper cells probably in Throughout the world, that can be activated to do these types of terrorist attacks at almost any time, on short notice.
Alright, there is a theory that you might want to comment on, and that is that we apparently turned Jihadi John into little pieces with a strike, what was it, 24 hours ago, If whoever did this had a cell ready in Paris, do you think it could be a reaction to that?
Oh, there's no question that that's certainly one of the more probable motives, but at this point the fact that, as you point out, that ISIS has not claimed credit for this, uh, you know, leaves us wondering at this point, speculating as to what group this could be.
I mean, um, well, I think they were quoted on Twitter as saying, be patient.
Now that might indicate that they're going to take credit, but, uh, there's still something going on or they don't want to expose operatives or who knows.
Well, exactly.
And at this point, uh, there, there could be, um, Outstanding orders for them to attack other cities either in Europe or the United States or Australia for that matter or Canada and they may be just waiting to see how opportune those situations are in those various countries.
Again, as you stated, the city of New York is on alert, and I'm sure Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco are also on alert at this point.
If you had to hazard a guess as to who did this, who would it be?
Well, ISIS, of course, is probably number one on the list, only because of the motivation factor with Jihadi John.
now uh... as you said in pieces that doesn't eliminate al-qaeda it doesn't eliminate last
carrie type up which is the organization that pulled off the attacks in mumbai
and i would point out that in mumbai we had ten attackers that also
attacked six separate targets uh... very similar targets in that they're upscale
restaurants hotels things like that people are actually comparing this to
mumbai uh... and i suppose in the method of attack it's a
reasonable comparison right
All right.
Absolutely.
And it's a demonstration of the fact that it doesn't take a lot.
A few weapons and a small amount of explosives can cause a great deal of havoc.
And because these are terrorists, these are not military personnel that I don't know how you're going to take this, but take it the way you will.
of the crowd it makes it almost impossible for security services be it police or military
to identify, locate and neutralize these people.
Alright, I don't know how you're going to take this but take it the way you will.
It seems to me that this is blowback.
And when I say blowback, I don't mean just for Jihadi John.
I mean blowback that goes back all the way to the U.S.
deciding that it was going to nation-build in Iraq.
And all it did was nation destroy, and then of course it became a giant civil war and complete chaos, and that spread into Syria even more.
And the end result was the caliphate that we're going to have to end up eliminating before this is all over.
What do you think?
Well, I think you're certainly in part right that we opened Pandora's box by going into Iraq.
There's no question about that.
We failed to recognize, I think, back at the time, in 2001, 2002, was the conflict that goes on within Islam between the Shia and the Sunni organizations.
At this point, we're kind of caught in the middle.
We're ending up more or less supporting Shia organizations against terrorists like ISIS, In Syria and in Iraq at this point, which is, you know, not exactly where anyone would have thought we have been ten years ago.
No.
Syria is the biggest mess of all, of course.
You've got the president of Syria still sort of barely there, Assad, and then you've got the rebels trying to take him out, and the Russians trying to take out the rebels.
Then you've got ISIS, and we're bombing ISIS, and upset that the Russians are trying to help us to death by hitting the wrong people.
I mean, you've got American and Russian airplanes, jets in the air, and now boots on the ground.
That seems like a mixture for World War III to me.
It is very much that politics makes strange bedfellows sort of thing.
Again, the fact of the matter is that Al-Qaeda and ISIS are both Sunni organizations.
On the other hand, the people who, over the past three decades, have treated the Americans worst have been the Shia, starting with Iran, of course, and now we're basically defending the Shia populations, and we've installed a Shia government, basically, in Iran.
Well, I don't always trust news that I read, Rick, and I'm sure you don't either.
The plane that was taken down, that was sort of blamed on ISIS.
In fact, they took credit for it.
I'm still absolutely sure that it was ISIS or even that it was a bomb, and here in the West we seem to want to pin it on them really hard, probably hoping to get the Russians to retarget in Syria.
What do you think?
Certainly the Russians have some reason to I suspect that this is probably ISIS striking at them because they've clearly have struck at ISIS in Syria.
And again, there's good reasons for this.
In the geopolitics of things, Russia would very much like to have those Iranian oil fields.
And Iran, of course, is backing Syria.
And as a consequence, Russia is backing Syria and striking out against ISIS.
All right, now let's just move on and back to Paris.
Frankly, I'm going to move us to New York now or any other U.S.
city.
And yeah, we're on our toes this morning wondering if this is about to happen in an American city.
If it doesn't happen now, how long will it be till something this awful occurs here, do you think?
There's just no telling.
There's no answer to that.
The fact of the matter is that we all believe that there are sleeper cells here in the United States.
Their access to weapons, their access to explosives here is probably pretty much unlimited.
So, in terms of having the logistics to do this, having personnel on the ground that are trained to do this, I think there's no question that those cells exist in the United States.
Okay.
It seems to me That the ideology central to ISIS right now is to initiate, basically, Armageddon.
Is that far off?
I don't think that's too far off.
I mean, obviously the goal of the extremists is to Islamophile the entire world.
And that's where they would like to go, starting with establishing the Qliphate in the Middle East and Europe.
So either convert or kill?
Exactly.
Precisely.
All right.
So, if you know that you've got a group like that, that's going to say to you, convert or kill, well, we're not going to convert.
And so, if kill is the only thing that's going to happen, and it sure looks like it's the only thing they did in Paris tonight, so, what about the idea of just Absolutely eliminating them from the face of the earth, more or less.
Well, that certainly is perhaps a speculative dream, but I don't think that that would ever be possible.
This is a system of beliefs and it has successfully recruited thousands of young people who Perhaps they had no other future in store for themselves.
They see themselves as brave, heroic warriors.
It gives meaning to them.
This is the sort of thing that terrorism does.
It provides a reason for being for a lot of young and energetic people.
I get that.
Well, if their sole drive in life is to kill and or bring upon Armageddon, I think we ought to deliver it to them as best we can.
face of the earth because they'll go into hiding and they'll reemerge somewhere else.
Well, if their sole drive in life is to kill and or bring upon Armageddon, I think we ought
to deliver it to them as best we can.
And I don't know what other path would you see us follow?
I think it has to be a two-pronged sort of thing.
I think you're absolutely right that we have to go to complete war.
But this is, again, this is a terror organization that is amorphous.
Trying to identify and recognize specific individuals that may be movers and shakers in this organization gets to be pretty difficult when you get outside of their own publication networks.
And so you don't know who's out there that may be fomenting this sort of thing.
Well, look, we have a lot of drone strikes.
We take out highly placed individuals within ISIS, let's say.
It doesn't matter.
It's like the head of a snake getting replaced.
So this is going to be, before it's over, it's going to be an all-out war.
Of some sort, Rick.
I guess with France on our side now, huh?
Well, I think France has always been on our side.
Unfortunately, France has always been a very open society.
Going back to the 1970s, you may recall that organizations like PLO were committing assassinations in France.
It's a very diverse and ethnically diverse society there in France.
And as a result, there's lots of opportunity for that sort of, again, international geopolitical combat to be carried out there.
Yes, but isn't this ISIS now, wouldn't it be fair to compare it to a virus?
Let's say it's a deadly virus.
The spread has begun, much the way Ebola did in Africa.
Now, Ebola we dealt with, and I think we have to deal with them in much the same way, or in much the same way as Ebola spread.
So will this.
And it's only a question of what American city is coming next.
Certainly it is something that's contagious.
There's no question about that.
And obviously they've recruited Uh, the lone wolf terrorist.
They've inspired young people to do things.
Uh, but on the other hand, America, the United States specifically, uh, cannot confront this alone.
This has to be confronted everywhere that exists, which means all of Europe.
And of course, the, with the, the refugee out outflow from Syria and Iraq at this point, uh, has just been an opportunity for organizations like ISIS to infiltrate more and more believers and establish more and more sleeper cells in Europe.
So we really need to make sure that Germany, France, Belgium, etc.
etc.
get on board here and cooperate with us.
What do you think, you can take a shot at this if you want to, has changed in American culture?
That allows for the successful recruitment of these young people even here in America who go there and then come back here and they're part of a cell or whatever.
What has changed in our culture?
Specifically what has changed is our methods of communication.
The director of the FBI testified this summer about the fact of the matter that things like Twitter allow these organizations to be literally in the pocket of people who may be recruited.
That didn't exist 10 years ago.
These days, you start visiting various websites, you communicate with people on Twitter, and suddenly in your pocket, there's constant reminders that, gee, you could, you know, you may be a bus driver in New Jersey, but you could be a jihadi. You could be a freedom fighter for the great
Islamification of the world.
And that's the sort of thing that I think has really influenced a lot of young people and
not only recruited them to take terrorist actions, but recruited them to do other
things to support organizations, including raising money and sending money on to the organizations.
So basically your answer is social media.
Yes.
Okay, that's a pretty good area to explore.
Social media.
So, should we go to the Twitters of the world?
There are now many of them like that, I suppose.
And then there's even the Darknet.
I have no idea how we control that.
That's probably where they're communicating.
But I mean, should we go to these?
The Twitters allow real distribution to the masses.
So should they responsibly stop this?
Now we're getting into the area that Mr. Edward Snowden obviously took umbrage to.
And that is, at what point did the government intrude into these sorts of communications?
At the moment, perhaps, that national security is threatened.
Well, at that point it may be too late.
For example, if we did not have the infrastructure in The National Security Agency to do the things that were going on when Edward Snowden outed the agency.
After the fact, you can't go back and recapture those messages if they haven't been archived in some way.
You know, that's the other side of the coin.
On the one hand, we all want to say, well, we're sure that the government isn't somehow surveilling us 24-7.
And on the other hand, something like this happens in France.
And, you know, France is the country the size of Texas, roughly.
And the communications in and out of there, and I would suspect that much like Mumbai, that the actors, the terrorists that have been carrying out these actions in France, Have been in communication with some sort of leadership or with one another.
And that sort of thing, if we haven't been capturing it as it goes along in terms of that communication, then we're not going to be able to figure out exactly who these people are.
I mean, they throw away their, you know, when they're done, they throw away their weapons, they throw away their explosives, they change clothes and they're just somebody else walking around somewhere in France.
Right.
With a lot of gunpowder residue on the Middle East?
Well, again, if they change pose, they're not going to have that problem either.
Well, it gets on your hands and stuff.
Yeah, I know.
So, if you had the power, I'm just curious, and it'll tell me kind of where you are about this, but Rick, if you had the power to order what would happen with respect to the West versus The problem's in Syria and Iraq right now.
What would you do?
Well, there's two things.
I would take two different prongs to this.
Number one, I think that we need to sit down with someone like Assad or Assad himself.
Really?
Yes.
Oh, I think so.
I think we need to sit down with Assad and with his backers, which of course would be the Iranian government, and say, look, We cannot let this continue to spread.
We cannot let this continue to go on.
Assad, of course, is, at this point, believed to have used chemical weapons.
I mean, this is a violation of international accords.
But we do need to go to him and say, this has to stop.
And then the other thing we need to do is, again, have a coalition that goes to these various organizations.
If they are unwilling to speak with us and have some sort of armistice, then we just have to go completely to war with them.
We sent over, I believe, 50 special forces guys here recently.
Was that just the beginning of what's really to come?
Oh, I think so.
You know, if we want to resolve this problem, Again, it has to be a coalition of various governments that have interest in this, including the Russians.
And we have to send more than just advisors and trainers.
The bottom line is we have to engage in war with those that are not willing to cooperate.
Is this going to begin to occur before the next president is in place?
You know, I don't have a lot of confidence that this administration has the temerity to engage in a new war.
So I don't think so.
Temerity is a kind word.
I would agree with you.
You know, past administrations, God knows, made their own mistakes getting us into Iraq in the first place.
So, as you pointed out, Assad has used chemical weapons He stepped right on over the line that the President drew, and stuck his tongue out at us.
On the other hand, we went into Iraq because of chemical weapons, and there weren't any.
And so then we deconstructed a country.
We didn't build a nation, we sort of deconstructed one, and then walked away.
Totally.
All troops out.
Not the first time we did that.
We did the same thing in Afghanistan.
Yes, oh yes, we're famous for it.
And the question is, do we ever learn our lesson?
Now, this president isn't doing much of anything about all this.
If a Republican gets in, in all likelihood, something really big is going to happen, and I guess it needs to, huh?
Well, I don't think this is going to go away.
Let's put it that way.
Again, these are These are ideals.
The world, unfortunately, the world economy does not offer a lot of hope for young people, particularly from the Middle East and some of these other countries, or Middle Eastern people living in Europe for that matter.
And so the recruitment ability of organizations like ISIS or Al-Qaeda Or you name it.
I mean, it doesn't really matter.
The whole point is that those young people are frustrated, they're angry, and they're easily motivated to do terrible things.
In the belief that they're somehow participating in something romantic, something that's a grand cause, and something heroic.
And as long as that exists, that's not going to go away.
Well, again, without respect to a discussion about Mr. Snowden, do you think that the Twitters of the world should be asked not to propagate this stuff?
I don't know how you do that.
You ask.
Well, you ask.
If you're the President of the United States, I guess you just ask.
But you'd have to have an NSA-like agency with You know, vast computer resources to monitor the Twitter accounts of virtually everyone.
And every terrorist organization, every one of them, uses some sort of tradecraft.
They don't say, hey, on September 11th, we're going to run planes into the World Trade Center in New York City.
Of course, it's all in code.
And it's all encrypted in some sort of coded language that's innocuous.
And so, you know, how do you do that?
The bottom line is that you can't.
Well, I think Twitter could, for example, if they wanted to, Twitter could.
They could actually stop messages from that part of the world, if they wish to, I suppose.
Or maybe I don't properly understand the nature of the Internet.
Maybe they could.
But that is where, as you pointed out, a lot of the recruiting for this kind of thing is going on.
And it's going on right now in Minnesota, also.
I mean, the bottom line is that, again, because they'll use code words, how do you recognize what is or isn't potentially dangerous communication?
Well, you can't.
And as I pointed out, they could use, if you're talking about the terrorists, they could use the darknet to communicate their wishes and commands, but I was just addressing what you pointed out, which was the ISIS public relations campaign that seems to be effective in luring our young people to go do stupid things.
We're running out of time, Rick, but I'm going to have you on again.
It's been really, really good having you on, so I hope you will come back and do another program.
I'd be happy to, Art.
My pleasure.
Alright, it was a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
Subject Paris and the attacks there.
I'm Art Bell.
And I'm Art Bell.
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to two to five fifty two seventy eight that's one nine five two
two thousand one and the day after the fall of the twin towers w a b c a m
in new york city recruited john bachelor
to go on the air until some of the modern was either killed or captured
John's been on ever since.
And remains on.
Offering insightful commentary on the war on terrorism, politics, presidency, national and global economics.
And defending our civilization.
That's one you'd underline for tonight, right?
His personal interest in American history and wars from Revolutionary through today's long war has generated remarkable coverage of Jihadism as it enters our Western vocabulary and at high speeds our chests and our heads as well.
Hello, John.
It's wonderful to have you back.
Good evening, Art.
It's a grim evening, but we're in a war, and things go wrong, and today was a very bad day for the good guys.
Yeah, I opened up with, you know, the main facts as we know them in Paris, and a gentleman who is in this business from the U.S.
government originally, and we had a talk about it.
You're in New York, so what I'd love from you is How is New York this morning, do you know?
I mean, are they on edge?
I don't know, Art.
The whole story has drifted away from New York City these last years.
We're the number one target.
We were in 1993, certainly 2001, the two strikes on the towers.
And we remain the number one target, not for want of trying, these last 15 years I've been broadcasting.
Right.
So I do believe that the enemy, and there are a number of groups, there's an alphabet soup of witchcraft out there, the enemy has a very small playbook, and it repeats and repeats and repeats.
And New York City is page one, paragraph one, sentence one.
Always.
Of to be destroyed.
Yes.
Of course, Paris was probably an easier reach, considering the refugees flooding out of Syria and Iraq.
I hope that's true.
I hope that's true, Art.
We can't be certain.
This was a complex attack.
It was.
Yes, and they hit a soft target, but it was a target that was in the middle.
It's downtown Paris.
It's the young people of Paris.
They hid it without French intelligence knowing, or anticipating, or being prepared.
We have very incomplete facts at this point, but the Decem Bureau, the French intelligence network, is first rate.
We learn from them.
They have skills we don't have.
That's right.
And to go back to your New York question, New York is a lot worse off now than it was 24 hours ago, knowing that the enemy just cracked a better and more sophisticated fortress than this one.
You're saying security is better in Paris than it is in New York?
They have the skills.
They have North Africa.
The Arabic language is integrated into French life.
The North Africans have been fighting for the French Empire for hundreds of years.
Their families are intermarried.
Their literary skills are entangled.
The French language and the Arabic language flow back and forth, have for, well, we can reach back to Rome.
And in the commerce of the Mediterranean, we're a new bunch to this of maintaining the watchtowers.
I don't want to get paranoid here.
I just want to emphasize that Paris is very, very good.
And what I heard in the course of the evening, because the attack first word of it was about 4.50 p.m.
East Coast time.
Right.
What I heard in the course of the evening from people I respect a lot, I've worked with for a lot of years, is that the French intelligence was asking this side of the Atlantic for anything we'd heard, because they didn't have identities, they didn't have patterns, they didn't have safe houses, they didn't have it, Art.
Well, I keep noticing that they say, after they talk about Paris, they say, but U.S.
sources say they're not hearing any chatter about the U.S., and I thought, well, yeah, but the French didn't hear any chatter about Paris either, so what does that mean?
It means that the enemy is very good and it's necessary to respect the adversary.
This was a murder raid launched by young men who aimed to die.
That was their intention.
Self-destruction and spectacular self-destruction in order to disrupt modernity.
And they did it.
As I mentioned to my last guest, John, it seems like the center of their ideology Is to initiate Armageddon.
That's what they want.
They want Armageddon.
And I have come to the view that we should deliver it to them as best we can.
I agree with that.
I agree reluctantly with that.
However, the political class in this country is not their art.
If it was ever there.
I know.
And the political class in the European Union is not there.
If it ever was.
Well, it may be nudged a bit tonight.
Angela Merkel is the leader of Europe's banks and the leader of Europe's future.
And Angela Merkel, her government, has ruled that they will accept one million refugees fleeing Mesopotamia.
That in itself has disrupted their ability to govern.
What would you imagine of that million refugees that they're willing to accept?
I wonder how many will be jihadists
if someone said to me and i can't remember exactly where it was
that it isn't the jihadist in hand it's the one in the future
it's the it's the teenager
alienated by a difficult culture with with incomplete language and his mom and dad alienated
because they can't work who's at the mosque
and in the year twenty twenty two or twenty twenty eight is recruited
for a single mission That's the worry.
Well said.
And we talked about that last half hour as well, and I asked my guests, and I'll ask you.
They're doing a lot of recruiting on Twitter.
And I wonder if we shouldn't politely ask Twitter and some other social media to stop propagating the damn stuff.
I don't know.
I mean, we can ask, but who are we?
I mean, you and I, we observe politics.
We don't plunge into partisanship.
I know this, Art.
We watch.
I mean, everybody comes from somewhere, but you can watch without picking an end.
And our political class is no longer speaking the language that would be required to follow through on what you just suggested.
They're not there, Art.
We have an administration now that is seeking every remedy to empty Guantanamo.
Every remedy.
Because it believes that by making that gesture, the enemy will respect us, or will like us, or will learn to work with us.
Yes.
No, that's not going to work.
I made reference, and I will again, to Ebola.
Remember Ebola in Africa recently?
It hasn't gone away.
No, not well.
We did go over there and pretty much get control of it.
But ISIS is kind of like Ebola in a sense.
I mean, it spreads in much the same way.
It gets in one area and multiplies like rabbits.
And if we don't do something to stop it, if we don't muster up I don't want to use should.
I don't want to do that, Art.
I've watched this for 15 years now.
I think we're beaten.
Until and if it gets much worse.
Until it gets much worse.
Much worse.
We're trying to pick a bottom, and you know you can't do that.
No, you can't.
You know it when you're there, but you can't pick it.
I'm hesitant to use the word beaten.
I think we're lazy.
We're in a contest, a recognizable contest with the great powers right now.
Yes.
We're fighting on several spheres.
We're contesting in the South China Sea against Beijing.
We're contesting in the Black Sea Basin and the Mediterranean Basin against Russia.
Right.
And Russia is moving very effectively to coax, to invite the great powers of Europe into the Russian camp, as Beijing is moving effectively to intimidate the powers of Asia into its camp.
So we have that contest.
And then we have this other contest out of Mesopotamia.
They're not savages.
They're warrior class.
They're a primitive warrior class we come from.
We started there 3,000, 2,000 years ago.
And they're making war on civilization.
And I don't, at this time, measure that we have the authority, the money, the power, or the unanimity.
To go into Mesopotamia.
And here's what has to happen.
Not has to happen.
Here's what would work.
What would work is what we did and what the Russians did between 1942 and 1945.
Massacre.
That's what works.
And we're not ready to do that.
Oh, well.
I wonder how much further down this road we have to go before we are ready.
I saw something on the Internet earlier that I thought was appropriate.
It said, some cancers have to be treated with radiation.
Hmm.
I don't want to go, I don't, I don't, I don't want to use the metaphor of malady.
I do not think the enemy is ill.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
I wasn't suggesting... The enemy is sophisticated.
The enemy is... John, John, I wasn't suggesting they were ill.
I was suggesting Treatment with radiation, not medical radiation.
All right, all right.
I hesitate.
I'm taking this attack on Paris as a major landmark.
This is as big a success as the attack on New York in 2001.
Well, I don't know.
It's not 9-11.
It's a further raid into Paris' confidence in itself.
It's Mumbai, for sure, plus And it's worrisome.
And it's scary.
And, God, we have to start doing something, John.
We have to start acting.
Look at the political class, Arn.
I know.
I've watched four Republican debates and one sort of Democratic debate.
Me too.
It doesn't come up.
It didn't come up.
It's not there.
All right, let's examine, just for grins, what's going on in Syria right now.
I love doing this because it is such a mix of near-end-of-the-world stuff.
You've got Assad, right?
Then you've got the rebels trying to take out Assad.
You've got Syria operating in another big hunk of the country.
I mean, ISIS operating in another part of Syria.
We're going after them.
So we've got planes in the air bombing.
The Russians have planes in the air bombing.
They're mostly going after the rebels instead of ISIS.
Maybe after the downing of their planes, some other stuff, they'll join us.
Who knows?
You've got Russians in America at wingtip to wingtip.
And I see it as, you know, the beginning of the end of it all.
It could be.
We've entertained, in the course of conversations, and you know I do this every night so there's a lot of time to get to these things, we entertain that we're looking at a surrogate battlefield.
Yes.
A proto-Great War.
Proxy.
And we think of 1936 Spain and how the powers interfered, intervened, manipulated The outcome in Spain, training their own weapons to contest with each other.
It's not a complete fit, but it's not bad to describe what Russia and its ally China and its ally Iran are doing in the Syrian and Iraqi and Yemeni battlefields.
And it's not bad to argue the way we're manipulating and intervening with our surrogates in the same battlefield.
Do the do the does and NATO and its contest with Russia in Eastern Europe is part of this mix.
So that's why it's not a perfect fit for Spain.
But we do see now the the the symmetrical warfare units that we associate with the great powers practicing and practicing their ability to project power In a battlefield that contains this warrior class that just raided Paris.
There is no easy example, because it's like we're fighting in time and space, and some of the enemy is fighting in the 21st century, and some of the enemy is fighting in the 10th century.
And that means that I do not see a remedy for this.
Well, I do, actually.
There is one larger remedy.
And that is?
Which is to recognize that we're outside of it.
To accept the fact that Russia is the center of the world island of Eurasia, and that Russia and Europe can defend themselves, will defend themselves, and that our interference, our intervention is not welcome, and that we remain outside, and they'll call upon us.
We're a sea power, not a land power in the world island.
And remaining outside, that gives us some time to prepare.
So you're somewhat, for the moment, isolationist?
No.
No, no.
No, no, no.
Because isolationism, it's their problem, not ours.
It's our problem.
We're just not effective.
We're not ready?
I'm measuring how we've performed these last Let's date it from the fall of the Soviet state in 89.
We're not effective.
We're fighting half-heartedly, or we're coming up with limited goals, and then we fail.
And we think capitals and governments are important.
They're not.
This is a battle for modernity versus savagery, but at the same time the capitals themselves, Moscow and Berlin, are cognizant
of the fact that it's their land, it's their world island. I don't have an easy metaphor for
this, I work on it all the time, and I'm describing something that we're not good at, or
haven't been.
We're the savior nation, and nobody's asking us to save them.
Well, maybe that's because they know we don't know how. I mean, we have the power, obviously,
perhaps not the will to use it, though, and so what kind of power is that?
Alright.
Right now, politically, I think that we're in, you know, really big trouble.
We have a president who's not acting like a president right now.
And I hate to say that, because I was a supporter of his, but in terms of foreign policy, he has been a disaster.
He had a vision, and it was based on premises that didn't work out.
I'm being diplomatic.
And the next president, the 45th president, will come to office with premises that work out or don't.
I want to be positive here.
I'm being too dire.
I want to be positive.
There is a way to talk about this.
Okay, let's try this.
Let's try this.
Give me the name of anybody on either side of the aisle who might be president who would be best fitted to handle this situation for us.
Heroes rise.
Heroes rise from catastrophe.
And my thinking is we haven't met that catastrophe.
It's not there.
Are you running for office?
Give me a name of somebody running currently, or not running, who is fit or the right person in your view to handle this.
There's no one contesting for the presidency right now.
No one.
Wow.
That I admire, that I have confidence in for this contest.
These are actors, these are actors, In a stage drama ongoing, the state takes care of itself.
All right, can you stick around a few more minutes, please?
Of course.
This isn't a conversation you can just, you know, end like that.
So, uh, stand by.
John Batchelor is my guest right now.
He's got a lot to say about this, and you should have a lot to say about this, too, and you will have your opportunity.
This is Midnight in the Desert.
of mine.
I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy. I'm going to be a good boy.
That's 1952.
Call Art.
My guest at the moment is John Batchelor.
I was on John's show.
That interview, by the way, is generally available on the web.
I think you can find it quite easily.
It was a lot of fun.
And we're talking about what happened today in Paris, which was not a lot of fun.
And again, John, I'm going to make a... My analogy is, I guess, best made with medicine, and that would be Ebola.
I mean, where Ebola begins, it spreads rapidly.
It's almost impossible to stop.
But every now and then somebody gets on an airplane and spreads it to some other country.
And if we had not gone in there and cleaned it up, it would still be spreading.
And it just seems like that.
It seems like ISIS is an organism, a virus that needs to be dealt with very quickly.
It's an idea, and the idea is to conquer the Earth, to make it a global caliphate, either submit or die.
That's the idea.
Absolutely.
It's a simple idea, and it's attractive to alienated young men, tending to be between the ages of 18 and 38, somewhere in there.
Alienated by their broken cultures, by their failed states.
Oh yes.
Alienated because they've been dislocated into Europe or North Africa or some other part of the world.
Right.
Alienated and who find the power of a gun and the power of the band of brothers to kill the Crusaders, to kill the Christians, to kill anything that isn't like us, that doesn't obey us.
Right, absolutely.
And that makes them a murder cult.
And we've dealt with murder cults before over the last several hundred years.
Well, I'm not converting, and I'm sure you're not, so it's time for them to die.
And Art, here we are, two gentlemen of the 21st century in agreement, and I observe that is not the conversation in the United States of America.
Well, you're right.
Not in political circles where it needs to be for something to actually Get done.
I suppose an American city is going to have to be hit in the same way Paris was just hit, or worse.
I'll tell you a story, Art.
I was a very young man, and I wrote novels.
You know this.
I was a literary writer.
And I wrote my second novel, entitled The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica.
And in it, I wrote it between 81 and 82.
I published it in 83.
In it, My characters for reasons to do with the plot was about alienation and refugees and being driven out of your land and not being able to get back in and it was projected between the year 1972 and 2035.
In it, my characters come across the Falkland Islands and there's a war and it's been invaded and there's a battle and my characters are caught up with it and escape because they see the whole place is burning and it's been overrun by savagery.
I wrote that before the Falklands War.
And NPR had me on to ask me how I did that, and I didn't have an answer.
I didn't have an answer.
I published the book the next year, it got a lot of attention, and I never had the answer.
But a science fiction friend of mine, who's gone now, his name is Tom Dish, he was very popular once upon a time in the 20th century, he came to me and he said, John, how'd you do this?
And I said, I don't know.
And I had a Literal story to tell that I looked it up and I read it a little bit and I saw the map and it was just it was a plot device.
And he said, do me a favor.
All right.
He said, whatever you've got, never write about an atomic war.
And I never did, Art.
And I've over all these years and it's what, 30 years later now, I've obeyed that taboo.
I don't like to speculate about it.
The problem is that that is exactly what ISIS wants to initiate.
I can agree with you.
Yeah, it's exactly what they want, and we cannot let that happen.
I'm not sure what political colonies we've got to work up to get the right group of countries together to get this done, but it's got to get done.
It's 70 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I just did a story with Charlie Pellegrino, a very detailed story of what those bombs meant, August 6th, August 9th, 1945, to the people on the ground, to the survivors, to the single and double survivors.
Oh, yes.
That horror, that horror is not in our culture.
We don't teach it, Art.
The children don't know what it means when you talk about the ant walkers, the people who have had their upper,
they're no longer able to reason, they're just mechanically moving across the landscape until they drop from dehydration.
They don't know what it means to talk about alligator people who've been burned
so badly they're dying as they move. It's gone. We don't know about it.
And that's necessary to recover the horror in order to stop it from
happening. Well that's exactly why I did a show recently on global
thermonuclear warfare and it was a horror to listen to but I really felt
that the young people needed to know what was on the line here.
You can't make intelligent decisions without information.
Our Pentagon now, I did a report last week with Josh Rogin of Bloomberg View, a young correspondent, great sources, works in intelligence.
There was a conference recently in Washington attended by Secretary Carter and some very big brains at the DoD.
They have a concept that is in the think tank part of the DoD.
It's called third offset.
Third offset.
The first two offsets were in the 20th century and they describe how America's technology upped the game so we overwhelmed our adversaries.
They're now talking about the third offset because they're anticipating That the Chinese and the Russians have caught us, and they have aerial denial weapons and ability to fight in the air, land, sea, and low earth orbit.
So we need a leap.
And they can't describe what it is.
It's some leap into the future.
I think that that is probably what the Pentagon is also thinking about in combating the jihadists.
A third offset.
Some magical way of defeating the enemy, knowing they're coming for us.
I don't believe it.
I think it's a sales device in Washington right now.
You cannot beat an idea that means to destroy itself, and you with it.
You can't beat that.
You have to kill it.
Yeah, there we absolutely agree.
Anything willing to give its life to take another's is going to nearly always succeed.
And therefore there's this, and this is not acceptable in conversation in the U.S.
We need allies.
Allies who live there.
And the first ally, the important ally, is Moscow.
We need it.
Well, I'm not above John believing that we are manipulating some news toward Moscow about that plane, for example, and perhaps now about what's going on in Paris.
That will move the Russians in the direction we wish them to move, because right now they're just mainly bombing the rebels, not ISIS.
We need to work with them, somehow.
This president has decided that that's not acceptable.
We need to work with them.
I don't know when it will happen.
I don't know what will drive us together.
And that's why I asked you if you saw anybody on the horizon Who could do that?
No, no, no, no.
I look all the time.
Well, then that's pretty tragic, because this is going to wait another eight years.
Heroes come out of crises.
Ernest King, commander of the Pacific Fleet, 1941 to 1945.
They do tend to, I know.
Yes, he was ready to retire.
They were going to throw him overboard.
And then Pearl Harbor.
And FDR said, you're staying.
Yes, no, you're right.
It tends to be true that heroes come along with just the right stuff at the right time for America.
I hope that luck holds.
It's the great genius of America.
We prepare to go in all directions.
We have a deep bench and a rich tool set to call upon depending on the crisis, and I can't predict it.
So, it's mostly hope.
That we'll find an Ernest King, or a George Marshall, or a Dwight Eisenhower, when we need them.
Well, you're an optimist, and I'm going to try to be with you, and I am going to certainly thank you for being on the air.
I know it's very late back here.
It must be, what, a little after one in the morning?
Oh, I work bad news art.
You know, this is early.
I work bad news.
Yeah, don't we all?
Well, I'm going to proceed.
I've got open lines to do, John, but it was such a pleasure having you on, and we'll do it again.
Let's see how this story proceeds.
Who knows?
Maybe back on Monday.
Thank you, Art.
Good night.
Thank you, my friend.
Good night.
All right, we're going to take a break now, and then I am going to do as promised and open the lines.
That's John Batchelor, a very wise man.
It'd be interesting to see what you thought of what he said, and for that matter, what our other expert, Rick Hahn, said.
I'm Mark Bell.
This is Midnight in the Desert.
right back do
do do
do Night is young and music's fun
Well, all right, obviously the news of the night is what has occurred in Paris.
It's terrorism.
on the dark matter digital network to call the show please direct your finger
digits to dial 1952 225 52 78 that's 1952 call art alright obviously the news
of the night is what has occurred in Paris it's terrorism you've heard two
views tonight a little divergent but two views Rick Hahn and John Batchelor
And I want to thank them both heartily for being here tonight.
And I now want to invite all of you to join in, in any way you want.
It's open lines, so you can really talk about anything you want.
If you want to talk about Paris, I'm prepared for it.
If not, I'm prepared for it.
I'm easy.
So, here comes the talk.
My national line is area code 952-225-5278.
Are you getting a pencil?
It's area code 952-225-5278.
And of course you can reach us on Skype.
Are you getting a pencil? It's area code 952-225-5278.
I'll get this paper out here.
And of course you can reach us on Skype.
If you have a computer, a tablet, an iPhone, whatever, or an Android, whatever, you can download Skype.
Get Skype.
Go get it.
It's free.
Once you've got Skype, you can put us in.
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Pretty cool, actually.
So in North America, Canada and America, once you've got Skype, go to the little plus sign, that's add a contact, and add us.
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And then we'll be on your contact list, and when you're moved, you can hit that button and call us instantly, and it's free.
Oh, and we also have a first-time caller line, uh, which I'm operating tonight, and, uh, that number would be area code 775-285-5800.
Once again, 775-285-5800.
So, whether it be Paris or whatever else you would like to talk about, uh, it's open.
Come get it.
again seven seven five two eight five
fifty eight hundred so whether it be paris or whatever else you would like to talk about
uh... it's open on the first on caller line you are on the air hello
hello are how are you Well, I guess like everybody else, I'm very thoughtful about what's going on in Europe right now and when it's coming here and what we're going to do.
Well, I think it's time that we call on the great-grandsons of our greatest generation to get their heads straight, stop looking at their iPhones, look around, see what's happening in this world.
And come together for America, stand up for America, let's put this country back on its feet, and get that Muslim out of the White House.
He's not a Muslim.
I believe he is.
No, he's not a Muslim.
No, you know he's not.
See, that's where you walk right over the line.
He's not a Muslim.
He's just not effective.
You can't even prove who he is.
Well, sure you can.
He's got a birth certificate and he showed it to everybody.
That's the problem.
Why do people go over the line?
You know, I voted for this president.
First time around.
And I am very, very disappointed in his apparent... What's the right way to phrase this?
Lack of interest in foreign policy as it affects our national security.
But no, I don't think he's a Muslim.
I think he's ineffective, that's...
Perhaps more of an insult.
I mean, that's kind of like saying if you're a talk show host, well, you're boring.
There isn't any greater insult than boring.
You can be a lot of things, but you can't be boring.
What a night, huh?
Let's go here.
Hello in New Jersey.
You are on the air.
Hey, Ed from New Jersey.
How are you this evening, sir?
A little perplexed, but I'm okay.
Yeah, same here.
Prayers go out to the people of Paris tonight.
My quick thought on it was, unfortunately, I don't think this is going to be a one-time deal.
I think we might see a few more of these, whether it be here or in other European cities.
I just see history replaying itself here.
I see them dragging us.
Europe and Russia into a war, being allies again.
And then, you know, I don't think it's going to be as long as the last war, where we were all allies.
However, it'll start a new Cold War between us and Russia again.
And, you know, I just see history repeating itself.
Well, if it starts a Cold War between us and Russia, then we're not obviously going to be allies to extinguish this problem.
No, I meant after we extinguish this problem, we'll end up getting into another Cold War.
Oh.
As we did in World War II.
Well, you know, if this prevents, actually, a big escalation in the Cold War and we have to actually get together to fight a common enemy, you actually could be right.
It might at least forestall what's going to inevitably come.
It could, and I read a report this morning where ISIS threatened to take out the Kremlin, and I was listening to the news on the radio as I was driving, and I was saying to myself, they're messing with the wrong guy.
We might not agree with Putin's politics, but if they go and try anything funny over there, they're done.
They're absolutely done.
He's not going to think twice.
I very, very much appreciate your call, and it's going to be interesting to see how it's done.
I do agree with both of my guests tonight that we don't have the political construct right now to deal with this, and we're not going to.
It's not going to be this president that deals with it.
He's just not going to do it.
Having said that, it was probably a painful thing for me to ask either one of these fellows who they saw on the horizon on either side of the aisle who could come along and effectively deal with this.
Nobody came up with a name.
That in itself is a little concerning.
John on Skype, you're on the air.
Yeah, good evening, Art.
Nobody could ever accuse you of being boring, that's for sure.
Yeah, I'm not boring, I guess.
The one thing, when I was listening to your guest talk, nobody seems to talk about any hope for intelligence, where we can all kind of move the world along to get rid of this religion stuff.
I just don't understand how... This religion stuff is what's got us in all this trouble right now.
I know.
So, you know, it's everywhere.
You're not going to get rid of religion.
I know.
I listen to these Republicans talking about, you know, they always emphasize that, oh, they're killing Christians.
Well, you know, that's just throwing fuel on the fire, too.
I worry more about our guys sometimes, you know?
My only hope is that someday maybe the world will wake up and start thinking about what we can do as a race of humans, you know.
Well, we better wake up before this thing, and by the way, you've got a hum in your audio, you might want to look at that.
We're going to have to do something before this infection, and that really is how I think of it as a virus, an infection.
And if we don't stop it, if we don't stamp it out, as we finally decided we had to do with What was happening in Africa, or it would have come to get us.
It was actively trying, right?
It was getting on airplanes, just like people flying to Turkey and then making their way to Syria.
A lot of people think I don't pay attention to politics, but I do.
I am glued to it, even though I don't discuss it all the time.
I'm fully capable of doing so.
It's just that in general I find politics boring.
When something like this happens there's no way to avoid a little bit of discussion about politics because it drives national policy and in this case national policy damn well better get driven by a competent driver pretty soon or we're in big trouble.
It's like a virus, I'm telling you.
They have only one goal and that is to Kill us.
I think they have long since decided they're not going to convert us, so killing us is their only other option.
And if that's the name of the game, then I say kill them first!
Right?
Let's go to the first time caller line and say you're on the air.
You're on the air.
Going once, going twice, gone.
You get one shot at that.
Let's instead go to Skype and say, yo-ho, you're on the air.
Hello, Art.
Hi.
Go ahead.
Good evening.
Good evening.
He's gone.
I have a feeling he pushed the wrong button.
You know, I know you can get excited and do that, Instead, we'll pick on CryptoLord here.
Hello.
Art, how you doing tonight?
I'm doing real well, thank you.
Yeah, I was listening to you earlier and I was thinking, you think maybe the Navy should possibly test fire a third Trident missile and say, whoops, that one's got a live warhead and... Gee, look where it's going, huh?
Maybe treat the cancer with some radiation.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
You know, and really, I say that, but I know that's not going to happen, and you know that's not really going to happen.
No, it would be too devastating, and plus, you know, the radiation is just going to disperse, and you don't know who else the radiation is going to hit, so it would be pretty bad if that happened.
Well, I guess the only way this is going to get done Boots on the ground, lots of American young men going off to fight yet again another war.
I hope that we can put together the kind of coalition it's going to take to really do this, and maybe the world's not quite ready for it.
Paris was awful.
I think that if a New York City was hard hit, and I don't mean just New York City, a city here in the U.S.
was hit hard, that might be enough to do it.
I don't know.
What about you?
You know what I'm worried about is I'm not thinking that New York could be the target next time.
I'm thinking possibly it might be Las Vegas.
Just because of, um, you know, ISIS's beliefs and all that, and, you know, Las Vegas is gambling, uh, sin, sex, you know, everything, you know, and I'm thinking, God, I hope I'm wrong, but I keep thinking maybe Vegas might be the next place they might get.
And then it's just a hop, skip and a jump to Pahrump.
Well, hopefully you and the family will be safe there in Pahrump, I hope.
I don't want to have to be fighting off ISIS in Pahrump, thank you very much.
But you're right, Las Vegas is probably a relatively soft target, although I'll bet you tonight that the big dam out there is being very, very heavily guarded.
I would bet.
I bet they are.
Yep.
I was going to ask you real quick.
I sent you an email concerning Windows 10.
And I don't know if you got it or not.
Because I sent it to the KNYE email address.
Yeah, that was the thing about the privacy issues, right?
Yes.
I got it.
I got it, brother.
And thank you.
I'm considering it.
Believe me, I'm considering it.
I don't know when I'm going to make this.
I've got seven computers.
And the Windows advertisement for Windows 10 keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Should I do it or not?
Most of my computers have DVD machines, by the way.
I'm not convinced.
I am of the old school that if it works, leave it alone.
Now, I suppose eventually something might change my mind.
But right now, I'm just not of a mind to say, OK, make the switch and then go to bed and hope, you know, for the best.
It's just not in me.
I can't bring myself to click it.
So you all tell me, is it a wise move or is it wiser to, you know, wait a while?
I think I'm voting and acting on the latter.
Not, just not ready yet.
I'm Art Bell and this is Midnight in the Desert.
Oh the night is my world City lights painted blue
In the day, nothing matters A cup of wine
Got a punch from you girl But I don't need no cure
I can stay up at ten If I can't be sure
To initiate a dialogue sequence with Art Bell, please coordinate your phalanges and call 1952-225-5278.
That's 1952.
Call Art.
Randy on the wormhole is so cruel.
Randy said, you bite off ices from grump, you can't even bite off a mouse.
Oh, Randy.
I wasn't trying to fight off that mouse, anyway.
I was intrigued by that mouse.
Nor, if I could have caught it, would I have killed the mouse.
The mouse has... had no ill intentions that I'm aware of toward me.
No, no, no, no, no.
I would have, uh... Actually, I tried to feed the mouse.
And, uh, if I could have caught him, I would have put him in a box and taken him outside and introduced him to the great wild.
But he went all on his own.
So there you have it.
All our phone lines are full, but if you would like to try and get through, you're welcome in so many ways.
Public number 952-225-5278, Skype.
For North America, MITD51.
The rest of the world, MITD55.
And, of course, the first time caller line, if I can find that number, which is area code 775-285-5800.
Whether it's Paris you want to talk about, Or anything else.
And I love Paris, by the way.
I really love Paris.
I've been there a number of times.
In fact, it accounts for one of the times that I quit.
Well, I didn't quit.
I got fired.
From KDWN in Las Vegas, what happened was that the company that operated the Concorde, you remember that?
We used to have supersonic flying.
They contacted me and said, hey Art, how would you and your wife like a free trip To Paris on the Concorde from Las Vegas.
You don't get that every day.
So I went to my boss, Claire, and I said, Claire, I'm going to Paris on the Concorde.
I hope it'll be OK.
She said, you're fired.
I said, that's OK.
I quit.
And I walked out and went to Paris, had a great time, came back and immediately got rehired.
So, it all worked out.
That was one of about five times I got fired there, actually.
Uh, Steven on Skype, hello.
Hello, Art.
Uh, extinguish your whatever, please.
Hello, is it good now?
Uh, turn it off.
All the way off.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, standing by.
Good.
Hi.
Hi.
I want to say a couple things.
Yeah.
Three things.
Okay.
Firstly, I'd like to say that your guest tonight, your little mini guest, whatever you want to call him, was absolutely correct about a player basically emerging.
Like an unknown player, I think, is absolutely going to emerge from basically, once we really hit bottom, which we haven't hit It's been with like quantitative easing and any other sort of inflations or whatever you want to call them.
I know, I kind of like what you already came up with in the political spectrum.
It's like quantitative easing.
That's very good.
Next.
About that, my dad's been saying that literally since about like 2008.
Even though it's been bad, I mean it just hasn't gotten So bad that it's, like, abysmal.
Like, it's, um, like, not to sound, uh, like an alarmist, but basically, honestly, like, like Weimar Germany, like, before it fell, basically.
Yeah.
Um, I absolutely believe that.
Not, like, a Hitler, but when we do hit bottom, we're going to have someone who would either be horrible, um, or who will probably be, who will be either horrible for us or great for us, one way or the other.
But it'll be, Something like that, and I honestly believe it'll change the country dramatically and for a very long time.
What do you think would happen, Stephen, if we began to get a lot of attacks like the Paris attack here in the U.S.?
Or even worse, a dirty bomb?
That actually kind of ties into the second thing I wanted to talk about, which was this Bulgarian psychic or whatever that my ex-girlfriend told me about, Baba Vanga.
Have you ever heard of her?
No.
Sorry.
She was this blind woman.
She predicted a bunch of things.
Again, I only heard about this a couple years ago, but it was way before ISIS or anything like that.
Alright, what did she predict?
She predicted, she was a little off in her years, in her time frame, but something she's apparently been right about.
She predicted that Europe would be attacked by the Muslims, or by, rather, Muslims.
And they would attack it with chemical weapons, and Europe would be basically decimated.
The United States would be mostly fine eventually in like over the course of like 80 like something like I think in like 80 years like after like that course of events a revolution would start basically in France and that would pretty much start the end of like the reign of the Muslims like in Europe.
So I think that was a Kind of interesting, especially since it was way before Syria or anything else like that.
Okay, you've got one more big thing.
Oh, yes.
And how that ties into, by the way, the first thing I was talking about when you asked me, what do you think would really happen?
I think chemical attacks, serious chemical attacks and serious decimation of the European economy would absolutely affect our economy and would just destroy our way of life.
So I do believe that that would be one of the things that would bring about a dramatic change in our way of life.
All right.
Beyond that, the third thing I want to talk about was actually your first caller, where he started to talk about current generation, like, stop looking at their iPhones.
I mean, I'm from that generation.
Yes.
And honestly, in my opinion, the problem is mostly not our generation, but rather Just in general.
We aren't any worse than any previous or any preceding generation.
Baby boomers, what have you, are no treat, have been no particular boon to the country.
It's just that if you look at how horribly set up the country is just structurally, how many just structural disadvantages that we have for like the future, be it population growth rates, What do we want to call it?
What do we want to bring up?
Honestly, we have so many things coming to a head at this point where there has to be a dramatic change or we're just totally kind of screwed.
Right.
Well, when the fertilizer hits the fan, we'll find out what this generation is made of.
I wonder how they would react.
It is kind of an interesting question in a lot of ways because, of course, when Vietnam was the issue, Many declined to participate, went to Canada and did other things.
So, I don't think we're going to find out, really, the answer to that question until, as I mentioned, the fertilizer hits the fan.
Going overseas to Sean.
Hello.
Yeah.
Yes, hello.
To tell you the truth, I'm really scared.
Where are you, Sean?
Japan.
Japan.
Okay.
You're at the moment, I think, fairly safe with respect to geographically what's going on, the awful stuff.
Well, yes.
Japan is an isolated nation and pretty nativist in its outlook on taking in immigrants and whatnot.
It sure is.
By the way, did you feel the seven-point earthquake that occurred off Okinawa earlier?
Didn't even notice it.
Might have been on the news, but...
Didn't feel anything here, nothing shook or anything.
Okay.
But, no, the thing I just wanted to say was about ten years ago, the United States military and its satellites had operations going all over the world to take care of terrorists and there was a lot of stuff that just people didn't know about.
They were training, SF was training in the Philippines and down in Africa and the Middle East, of course, and from what I'm hearing from people still in the military today, it's The Obama Administration has really cut back on that.
I don't think there's a political will to deal with ISIS the way that Bush did.
Okay, then let me try the same question on you, if I can, that I did on my guests.
If you could, as you look around the political landscape right now, is there anybody either running or thinking of running that you think could take care of the problem?
Nobody on the Republican side really impresses me too much.
Definitely nobody on the Democratic side, but if I had to pick one, I'd probably say Donald Trump.
Well, he's on the... Well, I don't know where he is, actually.
Thank you.
Donald actually is running as a Republican.
He's probably not a Republican.
He's somewhere in between.
Which I guess for some people would make him an attractive option.
The problem is that since we're rarely do I talk politics but I think that Trump is on the verge of falling apart.
Now I say that not because I want him to fall apart but because I don't see him articulating Any sort of national issues beyond the one that he has picked, you know, immigration and a couple of others, I think Trump would be effective in dealing with China.
He knows China.
He knows trade policies.
Economically, he'd be not so bad.
But unless he begins articulating rather quickly what issues really are important to Americans right now, Then I think he will be cast aside, and that's just an opinion for whatever it's worth, and that's not much.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Is that me, Art?
That is you, sir.
This is Jay in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home of the Manhattan Project.
And you have never called before?
No, sir.
Welcome.
No, sir.
Thank you very much.
I'm so happy you're back on the air.
We love you.
I've got one question I want to ask you.
It's been puzzling me for some time now.
Sure.
Why do you say every night covering all 25 time zones?
Because that's how many there are.
Where did we gain the 25th time zone?
It's like... There's only 24 hours in a day.
Yeah, I know, but there's an area where things are on the half hour.
It's really crazy.
You have to look.
There actually are 25 time zones.
Well, I'm going to have to check into that.
Well, Google can help you out.
How many time zones?
All right.
I'll check there then.
Thank you very much, Art.
You're very welcome.
Take care.
Okay, let's... I don't know.
Bill on Skype.
You're on the air.
Hi.
Hey, it's Bill the Atheist.
And you are my old friend.
Bill, you're still breaking up, buddy.
Oh, am I breaking up?
Yeah, it's probably your religious point of view.
I'm calling also about Windows 10.
I'm in IT.
And, um, you say you have seven computers, right?
That's right.
Well, put it on one and see what you think.
Well, there is that.
Um, I've considered doing that, but I don't know.
I get, I get the little square down there.
And it says, do it now, do it now, do it now, and I just can't click it.
My best advice is, if you are concerned with wanting to click it, just double check your manufacturer's website and make sure that they have the drivers compatible.
Alright, listen, I'm going to ask that you do a little work, Bill, on your Skype.
It could be actually your internet provider, but you're cutting out.
So you probably have a little bit of what's known as jitter in your upside internet on that side.
You might want to look into it, but it's kind of weird.
When Skype is good, it's very, very good.
And when it's bad, it's still actually tolerable most of the time, unless you've got bad internet.
Let's go to Kennewick, Washington, on the phone.
Hello.
Hello, Mr. Bell.
Hi.
Well, my question revolves around this tragedy that happened tonight.
You had just mentioned Donald Trump.
With his immigration plan, do you think that it will galvanize the American public seeing the terrorist attack that happened to France and Seeing people gravitate even more to Donald Trump?
I think that, uh, here's what I think.
I think that the terrorist attack on Paris is probably going to help, if anybody, Trump.
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, it's, yeah, I'd have to agree with that.
I mean, what we've seen in the eight years of Obama in the White House has just been like a shame and anything we can do to get Obama, that'll be a great day for America.
Everybody gets so mean in what they say.
Thanks for the call.
I cut out what... You know, it's like calling the President a Muslim, right?
Or... I won't go into what he said, but...
I'm not going to allow that, and it's not productive in the discussion of what to do anyway.
Let's go to Dave on Skype.
Hello, Dave.
Hey.
Hey.
Oh, may I just say that it's absolutely a delight to talk to you.
You may.
Mr. Bell, yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Although I require you and your audience a bit of patience with me, because I don't... English is not my mother tongue.
What is?
What is your mother tongue?
It's Russian, actually.
Russian?
Oh, Russian!
Okay, excellent!
Good!
Proceed.
Well, yeah.
Though I'm not from Russia, per se, I'm from a country that's called Turkmenistan.
I'm not sure...
Maybe people can point the finger on the globe to point that country.
But it's ex-USSR, sort of a satellite republic.
Sure.
Now, it's an interesting topic today, and I was shocked to find out, as everybody else, what happened in France.
But I just want to say that I was back in Moscow, I think it's about 2003, When they had a hostage situation in their North-Ost, I believe it was called, the musical, the show that they had, and there was about 700 hostages.
I recall.
Yeah.
So as I was hearing, I was teaching at that moment when that happened, today actually, and I was thinking about that back in Moscow, and I was hoping that French government would contact The Russian government, so to speak, to kind of get those clues and those tactics that they were using back then and what they learned.
Because from what I remember, the Russians, Spetsnaz, that's the special tactical group, they were using this sort of a sleep gas.
Yes.
You remember that, right?
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Okay, well, I want to say something here, and it is this.
In the theater, where most of the people died, I noticed that the French authorities waited way, way too long.
There were actually messages being sent by hostages inside saying, for God's sakes, raid this place, they're killing us one by one, picking us off like birds, and And still they waited.
And I think that was wrong.
When you encounter a group like ISIS, if that's who it was, or these jihadists, they have only one goal, and that is to kill as many people as they can.
So once you know that, you don't wait.
Because there's not going to be any bargaining.
There's not going to be any back and forth.
There's just going to be dead people.
And that is surprising to me as well.
Well, I didn't know the details.
That's the first details I'm hearing from you.
I've read some of it, but this is very surprising to me.
And given the fact, if you remember, and I'm sure your audience remember, I think it was just past this year, Charlie Hebdo.
Yes.
It was very close, geographically, actually.
Exactly.
Well, was it in France, wasn't it?
It was in Paris.
It was only a few blocks away, actually.
And so what's striking me is that the measures that were not taken, given the fact that those armed radicals were with a weapon, and at the show, I believe, the American band, metal band was playing at that time, and they had those AK-47 inside of that club.
That was just kind of a Really strange and inconsistent with the previous events that happened.
Back in Russia, when that unfortunate event happened, I knew that things were much more tighter in a sense of security, because you can turn the corner, but there was security all over the place.
All right, listen, I'm sorry I've got to run on you.
I very, very much appreciate your point of view and your call.
And we'll be back.
We're going to take a brief break from the high desert.
A very, very sad day for France and Paris.
I'm Art Fowler.
To call the show, if you're east of midnight, call 1-952-CALL-ART.
If you're west of midnight, call 1-952-225-5278.
And make sure you use the right line.
This is Midnight in the Desert. To call the show, if you're east of midnight, call 1952.
Call Art. If you're west of midnight, call 1952-225-5278.
And make sure you use the right line. I mean, pick one of those and do it.
All right, we're in open lines.
Anything is fair game.
The story in Paris, the sad story.
God, there's a lot of people to be killed in one terrorist strike.
It's a Mumbai-like strike, right?
Just go in with guns, explosives, and kill as many people as you can.
That was the entire goal.
Whether they still have anybody loose over there or not is entirely another question.
Let us go to... Let's go to Phantom, I guess.
Hello there, on Skype.
Hi.
How are you?
I'm alright?
Just fine, yes.
Alright, well, my heart goes out to everybody affected, not just in Paris, but around the world.
I'm pretty sure a lot of families are affected by this.
Of course.
And I had a few things I wanted to talk to you about.
I don't normally get Fridays off, so I always listen to the replay of Open Minds.
And you had a really good show on last week, and I wanted to call and share one of my stories with you real quick, if that's alright.
It is?
Well, I am convinced that I was a bird in one of my past lives.
Really?
I'm darn convinced.
All my life, I've had dreams that I fly.
I just jump off my feet and fly.
I've flown all over the world, and I see everything from a top-down perspective.
Are you tempted to flap your arms?
I do.
I recall flapping my arms, actually.
Okay.
You know, just like a bird would.
Sure.
It's just, you know, I'm wondering if maybe I was a bird.
You know, I try to talk to people and they don't understand what I'm saying.
Oh, I do.
And what kind of bird do you think you might have been?
I'm thinking I might have been a bluebird or maybe, uh, maybe a robin.
Okay.
I thought you were going to probably say something like eagle.
No, no.
So maybe a robin or a bluebird.
That's, that's fair enough.
Yeah, oh, and I forgot to mention, I listen to you on AM 630 in Utah.
Oh, well, that is so kind.
Do you know the call letters?
It's KTKK.
They go by Ktalk.
That's the way to do it, brother.
I really appreciate your giving the affiliates a... You know, I keep forgetting to ask people to do that, but I think it's important.
Yeah, I don't pick it up very well at my house, but when it does fade out, I switch over to the Internet.
You sound loud and clear on the A.N.
dial.
Well, we pride ourselves on audio, on very, very clear audio, and I think we've achieved it.
Yeah, and the stuff going on in Paris, you know, I sleep during the day, so I got up, I'm just finding out about what's going on.
Right.
Has any of the terrorist organizations... Taken credit?
Yeah.
No.
The last I heard, ISIS is celebrating all over the internet, but they have yet to officially claim credit.
And there could be a lot of reasons for that.
It could be that they still have operatives in Paris that are loose.
It could be other attacks are planned and they're waiting.
So they have said things like, be patient, like we're going to take credit, just hang in there.
That's kind of scary when they say be patient like that.
Yes.
Because you don't know what they're going to do if they're going to attack next.
Well, just think, if it had been earlier in your life, you'd have really had a bird's eye view of all this.
I've got to run, but thank you very, very much for the call.
And yes, you can listen to our shows, folks, through the Internet, when you want them.
You get actually two benefits by joining the Time Travelers group.
I rarely do an ad for this, but here it is.
Benefit number one, you can download the show on our RSS feed.
They're really cool.
And just listen when you want to, on your phone, tablet, whatever, computer, all of that.
So every single show is, about an hour after it's done, is up there on the RSS feed for you.
That's one thing.
Second thing is, you get the benefit of the wormhole, so you can send messages to me, either positive or negative.
I tend to read more of the negative ones than the positive ones, just because.
I don't know why, but they catch my eye, and for some reason I want to address them.
In Hollywood, Florida, I guess, you're on the air.
Okay.
Wait, wait, wait.
Never, never, never use your last name on the air.
So I had to bleep that out.
Oh, okay.
I apologize.
First names only.
Okay.
Understood.
So your name is?
Brian.
Brian.
Welcome.
I started listening after your episode with Joe Rogan.
Oh, yeah.
I had a couple of questions.
I was wondering if the Dark Matter Network noticed an increase in listeners after that show, because I've been listening to the Dark Matter Network every night since.
So I was just curious about that.
The answer is yes.
The Dark Matter Network has noticed a gigantic increase all across the board, actually.
Not just since that show, but since we went on.
Well, that's excellent.
I'm very glad.
There's great programming on it, and I've recommended it to a couple of my friends.
Thank you.
We depend on that, too.
That's called grassroots.
That's how we grow.
Indeed.
And the second question was, if possible, where are you going to go on the Joe Rogan experience?
You know what I really want to do with Joe?
I want to try his sensory deprivation tank out.
Yes, I was also curious about that.
I would love to hear your experiences on it.
More than going on his show, I would like to try that tank out.
So, I'm toying seriously with that idea.
Yes, excellent.
In relation to the French attacks, I only wanted to mention one thing, and that's just meditation.
Just taking 15 minutes out of the day to just sit down, notice your breath.
I think it's important to not be reactive in this time.
Rather, to observe our thoughts and to notice our impulses.
I think that may help in some way.
It may.
Thank you.
I'm not against that at all.
I think that intent is extremely important.
Whether it's expressed through religious belief in prayer or just simple concentration or whatever you want to call it, I think it can have an effect.
I am hesitant to But to direct many people in one, you know, toward one thing or another, ever since the experiments I did, as you know, but should it be important enough, I definitely can get behind it.
William on Skype, hello.
Yeah, Art, I've listened to you for, I don't know, quite a while.
I remember as a kid, you know, used to get yelled at by my parents, you know, turn the radio off, you got school tomorrow.
That was always kind of funny.
May I ask what you're calling on?
Uh, my laptop.
Your laptop, okay.
Look carefully at your laptop.
There's a little bitty hole like in the rim somewhere there where the microphone actually is and you want to get close to that.
Okay, is that better?
It is.
Okay, another thing real quick.
I started listening to you on the TuneIn app, which I actually found on my PlayStation, so I can actually listen to you through the TV.
Yeah, Xbox too.
It's really cool.
What I was calling about was, of course, like everybody else, the French attacks tonight, and I just wanted your opinion on the concealed carry.
You know, I know Europe, you know, in general is pretty anti-gun.
And do you think it would have made much of a difference if Concealed Carry was, you know... I do.
...a legal idea?
I do.
At least somebody on the inside may have had a chance to, you know, maybe save at least one life, because you saw how long it took for any officers to show up and do anything.
Yes, sir.
I think what you've brought up is really important.
I imagine in France they're going to have a lot of discussion about this now, don't you?
That's kind of what I'm thinking too.
But I'm thinking on the other hand, it may have that opposite effect here.
You know, mask, you know, well, you know, gunmen going in.
So that's more fuel to the current political, you know, thinking around here is Now we need to get rid of everybody's firearms.
Not in America, sir.
A lot of things might happen in America, but that would be about last on the list.
Americans are not going to give up their guns.
I have had a carry permit for most of my adult life and wouldn't be without it.
I totally agree.
I'm in the process of getting mine myself.
Just waiting on the next class to start here in town.
So that'll be good.
Yeah, I just think that it's, you know, a decent idea.
Because you may not be able to prevent the entire tragedy, but if you can save one life, I mean, it's well worth it.
All right, sir.
Thank you very much for the call.
I think you'll find, if you look at the statistics, that there is very little to no trouble that comes from people who possess carrier permits.
And I think the authorities, frankly, have figured that out, too.
And if you look for, you know, where most of the people are getting murdered and plowed down, it's in areas that forbid guns.
Right?
Let's try the first time caller line.
You're on the air.
Well, good evening, Art.
Good evening, sir.
Turn your device off, please.
My device?
Yeah, whatever it is.
Radio?
Radio, yes.
Okay.
I hate doing that to you, but it's off.
You're not doing that to me.
When you're on the phone, it feeds back, so it's not good to have on when you're actually on the air.
Well, I'm sorry about that.
I'm a first-time caller and a long-time listener.
I've got it.
Right.
But you may have noticed that when you get on the line, you automatically begin hearing, you know, the audio from the show.
So at that point, you can turn your radio down.
Okay.
Well, I can listen to you on the phone, and then it would come on the radio.
That was cool.
But anyway, I'm an ex-vet.
Right.
I'm an ex-combat vet.
Right.
And I'm tempered by war and disciplined by a hardened bitter peace.
When I got out of the military, I commanded a 15-man fire team.
And we guarded nuclear weapons, warheads, components.
I even guarded the President of the United States.
My call sign was Spike.
S-P-I-K-E.
I got it.
Security police intercepting and killing the enemy.
That's exactly what we did every day.
We trained, we critiqued, we trained, and we did the job.
Well, Spike, what is it that you think should be done with all this ISIS business?
Well, the first thing we need to do is we need to fix our country.
Along our southern and northern borders, we don't build a wall.
We built two and inside of it we put it about a mile apart and inside of it we put prisons.
Prisons?
Not one person, not one person will jump that wall to get into our country.
I thought you were going to go for a moat, maybe with, you know, fish.
No.
We take and get rid of Gitmo.
I see.
Well, Gitmo's on the way out anyway, you know.
The President is slowly bringing all the Gitmo prisoners up into the U.S.
Yeah, well, take them and put them inside the wall and they won't have anywhere to go.
And we clean the country.
We close the country.
Close it.
Well, France just closed the country.
Shut the doors.
It amazed me.
I've never heard of a country like France closing its borders.
I guess it happens, but boy, that's pretty rare.
I'm not talking about France.
I'm talking about the U.S.
of A. We close the borders.
Get rid of the illegal aliens.
In World War II, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we gathered up every Japanese American and put them in a place where we could watch them.
Yes, and we're not that proud of the fact we did that.
I'm not saying it was a good thing, but we severed a finger to save the hand.
Okay?
Well, I understand it.
You know, it was a sad kind of history in this country that we did that.
But yeah, I do understand it.
Believe me, I really do understand it.
The fear was palpable then.
Let's go to Kirkwood, Missouri, I believe.
Let's see, let me pick one.
Kirkwood, Missouri, I believe.
Hello.
Actually, it's Jeff from Ferguson, Missouri.
Ferguson, really?
Yeah.
Famous Ferguson.
Yeah, I got a cell phone, and I don't know why it says Kirkwood on the ID.
Maybe it has something to do with the cell towers.
Could be, yes.
Doesn't matter.
Anyway, we've got you, so go ahead.
Yeah, um, the thing, uh, you want to know how this generation might handle the, um, ISIS threat and all that stuff?
I do.
I think we have a perfect example from what's going on in Mizzou right now.
St.
Louis, I mean Missouri, University of Missouri.
Yes.
There are students from Mizzou that are upset that the Paris story is taken from their little tenter tents that they're having over there right now.
They're thinking that's more important than what's going on over there.
Well, you can't control the headlines, now can you?
And I'm sure that a lot of the presidential candidates are upset with it as well.
It steals the news cycle for many days to come.
Yeah, and I think what needs to happen is if they want a global conflict, fight, fight, I can't pronounce that word, we need to have a global crusade and we can't be afraid to say that word anymore.
That's what it'll take.
Well, that's what they're doing against us right now, essentially, is a crusade.
Well, they want a global caliphate.
A caliphate.
They want a caliphate, yes, but in pursuit of that, they have a crusade.
And it just hit Paris.
But we got a president who's afraid to say Islamic terrorism.
He won't even say the word.
I agree with you, sir.
And I think we'll provide material support and all that stuff for an incident that happens here.
I don't think we'll actually get physically involved.
I appreciate the call, thank you.
And I do also agree with that.
We do have a president who's afraid to say that, and I'm not afraid to say it.
I voted for the man first time around, and I'm so incredibly disappointed with his foreign policy.
Lack of decisions.
Shall I put it that way?
Lack of decisions.
I think that's fair.
Okay, you're on the air from Anchorage, I believe, Alaska.
Hi.
Hi, my name's Mark.
Hey, Mark.
Been listening to you, actually, for many years.
I just found your show again.
It's been very pleasant this evening, other than the horrible news, of course, out of the air.
Yes.
But I was listening to your first two guests earlier, and I think the one thing that our country is missing, and that they don't cover in the press, and it drives me nuts every time I watch it, is context.
This movement didn't appear out of nowhere overnight.
These terrorists just didn't pop up in our generation.
Oh, indeed not.
They came of age in the 1970s.
So, I remember, Eric, that it was going on back then.
I remember the incendiary raid.
You know, these things were happening back then.
Yes, sir.
But what really lit the fuse on this was what happened in Iraq.
What we did in Iraq.
CNN is actually running a pretty good show right now called The Road to Hell.
And it's about Iraq and what we did in Iraq.
Right, but we went into Iraq to a degree to clean up our own mess.
Look at what Iraq was doing.
Are you familiar with Project Babylon that was going on over there where they were building an artillery piece capable of shelling Tel Aviv from Baghdad?
Yeah, I'm aware of all these stories that were out there.
Thank you for the call.
I'm not going down that road.
There was no good reason to start a war with Iraq.
None at all.
It was manufactured.
It was a case, in my opinion, of making the intel say what you wanted it to say so you could justify a war that otherwise was completely unjustifiable.
So we went in there, sacrificed American treasure, American lives, and then we walked out.
Completely.
Just vanished.
Said, OK, that's it.
Mission accomplished, I believe was the phrase.
And then we completely left the country.
We disassembled the government.
So by the time we left, there was no real government there, and there wasn't going to be.
And we just left.
And so we created a vacuum.
And nature abhors a vacuum.
Truly it does.
And so ISIS came along in Syria and then Iraq to fill that vacuum.
I'm telling you, we lit that fuse.
James on Skype, you're on the air.
Hi.
I remember you having that experiment where you got to heal people, and I've also read that you can change, you know, things around the world, like stop crime a little bit.
What about some suggestions?
What would we, or throw it out to the audience, what would be the best mass experiment we could do right now?
Would it be calm the minds of those guys?
Just a thought to throw out there, if anybody has any thoughts on a good meditation, or not a meditation, but a mass prayer that we could conduct, and hopefully you'd be open to something like that, and to ease the stuff over there.
I'm open to it, but I don't do it lightly.
In other words, I'm worried about Well, you ever listen to these medical ads on TV where they try to sell you a pill for whatever, and then they list 35 possible side effects, including death?
Right, well, that's why, you know, if we had an open discussion and everybody tried to agree on one idea, see if one great idea comes up, what would be the best thing to meditate on, you know?
Okay, it sounds like you're in a windstorm.
Where are you?
I'm sitting outside, sorry.
That's alright.
You are in Windstorm.
Okay, well I'll consider it as I have said many times on the air, but I don't want to tamper with things that I don't fully understand.
Simple as that.
Let's go to first time caller line.
Let's try it out.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, I'm calling from WQTT 1270 here in Marysville, Ohio.
That's the way to do it.
Thank you.
Sir, when you go off this evening, one of your proteges I listen to on WTVN, 610 radio
here in...
I see.
I'm not sure that a lot of your...
We'll see you next time.
Listeners will agree with what I'm going to say.
It seems that the youngsters, our youngsters now, and I'm from the time when we had the draft.
I do not believe in the draft so we'll go there first.
I did enlist.
There are a lot of kids enlisting but I don't think that the A lot of the underprivileged, a lot of the kids that just don't have any idea what they're going to do with their lives.
Let me try something out on you, sir.
You said you don't believe in the draft, right?
Right, but if you'll let me just a second.
I will, but then I want to interject something, so go ahead.
Okay.
If we would basically go back to the initial thought.
Okay, let's extend schools two to three years.
Basically, after you graduate, jump into the military for two to three years.
You're going to have your GI Bill when you come out, all the benefits when you come out, and there's many things in the military you can do besides go to war.
But at the same time, we're going to pull a lot of these kids that are underprivileged, a lot of these kids that don't know where they're going, To learn something not only about welding, being a barber, working in a shop somewhere, working with motors, the many things that you can do, be an MP.
I've been through quite a few.
Once you do that, their minds are going to be reset away from the way the kids are thinking now.
Because they're going to get that responsibility.
They're going to get the training.
They're going to get all of that.
Plus, they're going to get the GI Bill to go back to college if they want to go when they're done.
Okay, well, you sound like a recruiter.
And that's fine.
I agree with you.
I mean, you know, they're going to get all of that, but that's if they decide to join.
My question for you... They can just extend their time after high school.
Yeah, my question for you, sir, was why not the draft?
Because the draft is taking a select few of us.
They're not able to go ahead and take those kids that don't have a chance in life, that don't have an opportunity to learn something.
They're going to be in the slums.
They're going to be someplace in the middle of Chicago where they're shooting at each other.
Take all of them.
Take everyone when they come out of high school.
Give them the two years or three years, whichever they choose to do.
You mean whether they want it or not?
Just, yeah.
Okay, well then your whole call doesn't make sense because you said you don't want the draft.
So if you don't want the draft, you're saying after they come out of high school, make it compulsory for them to go into the military.
That's the same as a draft.
No, the draft they chose numbers.
Okay.
So we're just arguing about the method of compulsory service?
That's all we're arguing about.
Not much of an argument.
Let me go to Florida.
Hello.
Hello?
Yes.
Hi.
This is Bill in Tampa.
Hey, Bill.
First of all, I'm very glad you're back on the show, Art.
Thank you.
And secondly, I really, really like the clearness of your sound over the Internet.
It's fantastic.
Isn't that something?
It's really quite amazing.
It's what we were shooting for.
You know, we wanted a good Right.
I understand.
Now, I'm not on the Internet now.
I'm calling via basically Fios, which I guess maybe is the Internet.
I don't know.
But I'm calling on a landline, so to speak.
But I do listen to you on the Internet, and the sound is really great.
Uh, I also wanted to put out something which may not be real popular tonight.
And my concern is, given... All.
My concern is that the backlash to that will be further...
deprivation of rights in this country, we will say, oh, please, government, protect us, help us, keep us safe, which means a further tightening of all of the freedoms we used to have.
That's a good observation, and it's very likely.
And my position is that we used to be a country where we were presumed innocent.
I think that is no longer the case.
We're now presumed guilty.
And, I mean, I was at an organization meeting, for example, a small example, where an FBI agent came and spoke to us, and he said, well, if the FBI is investigating somebody, there's got to be some problems.
They've got to be guilty of something.
That kind of attitude really concerns me, and that's my primary point that I wanted to make.
Well, Hillary, too.
Yeah, to put it mildly, absolutely.
I don't know how to balance that.
I don't have a solution, but the thing that we're looking at is certainly we need to have some kind of safeguards and protections, but the other side of that is the A coming, if not already present, police state which seems to be so prevalent in the U.S.
and around the world, if you will.
It is beginning to feel that way, isn't it?
Yes, it is.
If you're old enough, and I'm old enough, I can remember... Well, I can remember, and then so can you, back when we actually had freedoms.
The thing is that a lot of these youngsters Don't remember the kind of freedom that we enjoyed and therefore don't really miss it.
You know what I mean?
It's very sad and scary.
Thank you for the call, sir.
Appreciate it.
I'm Art Bell.
And this is Midnight in the Desert.
I hear the drums echoing tonight.
She hears only whispers of some quiet conversation She's coming in from the distance
It is the night, your body's weak I'm on the run, no time to sleep
I've got to run, run like the wind To be free again
Clock strike twelve and Midnight in the Desert is pounding packets your way on the Dark Matter Digital Network
To call the show, please direct your finger digits to dial 1952-225-5278.
That's 1952.
Call ART.
It is indeed, and we're talking about many things tonight.
It's actually open lines, but of course the attack in Paris is pretty much on everybody's mind.
And what happened in Paris can certainly happen here.
And I think that kind of doubly puts it on everybody's mind.
This spreading virus, this caliphate, whatever you want to call it, has to be dealt with, and I think soon.
And we had better find somebody capable of dealing with it.
All right, that said, to Skype and Frank.
Going once, Frank.
Going twice.
And gone.
Windsor, Ontario.
You're on the air.
Hi.
Hey, it's Chad from Windsor, Ontario, and I just want to call and say that I love you, Art.
Well, thank you.
I'd rather you like me a lot, but thank you.
Well, same thing.
Same thing, but you have a good night.
Oh, that's it?
Yep, that's it.
All right, then.
On we go.
You're on the air.
Hello.
That ding sound means you're on the air.
Oh, okay, thank you.
You bring up so many things tonight.
First of all, I love John Batchelor.
I'm really into history and military history at that, and I enjoyed him a lot.
He is something, isn't he?
Yes, he is.
You brought up a couple of things that I haven't heard anyone have the guts to say.
The first one is the nuclear alternative in the Middle East.
I know you certainly have a bunch out in your neck of the woods, and everybody seems to have survived, eventually, and I don't see why anyone has not mentioned it before you.
Probably because it's not actually realistic.
In other words, if you had ISIS all in one geographic area, and you could be sure that Well, let me give you another one.
innocent civilians weren't going to get slaughtered in large numbers then maybe
but that's why I mean it's it's it's an emotional reaction more than an
intellectual one. Well let me give you another one. You asked the question who
would be strong enough to take care of this. First of all you probably remember
that the Islamics destroyed the library in Alexandria Egypt at least 3,000 years
ago and they have never done anything except try to keep people ignorant for
that period of time.
And I've thought for a long time that we were at war with Islam, and what I'm afraid of It's the only way that we're going to be able to deal with it.
It's the same way that Adolf Hitler tried to do the Jews.
That's horrible.
I don't want it.
I'm not advocating it.
But I'm afraid that that's the only thing that's going to be able to stop them because they're all outlawed.
Let me say this.
First of all, it is a truth.
That is far from being just Islam that is a problem.
It's the radicalized arm or part of Islam that's the problem.
The radicalized part.
Islam is a gigantic religion and for the most part peaceful.
However, could it eventually turn into basically a war between Christianity or the West and Islam?
I would hope not.
And so every president has to be careful to say it is not a war or a problem we have with all of Islam.
It is the radicalized group.
Who somehow has found in the same book that the peaceful people use, language that to them indicates murder and genocide is the only way they want to spread.
I don't know how they find those words and they can't seem to make, you know, when you actually get somebody who's radicalized on and you ask them that question, they generally will quote something that makes no sense at all, except perhaps to them.
In Las Vegas, you're on the air.
Mark, this is Joe WBT.
Right.
Okay.
Just something I've got to get off my chest with regard to, what has occurred since Bush 43?
What has occurred since the uh since Bush 43? I mean the I mean this guy was an upper cross dimwit.
Had no sense of history, geography, economics, let alone morality or manners.
Had a sociopath war profiteer for a vice president.
And look what he's done as far as opening up the gates of hell in terms of revving up Islam.
The invasion of an Islamic country for what?
Weapons of mass destruction?
That was basically a delusion to begin with.
It was, yes.
And, you know, I mean, the trillions of dollars that we had borrowed from the Chinese to carry on with this guy's folly, I really contend that Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, they're sure to actually be put up for on trial, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
I mean, none of this would have occurred had we just simply Gone after the bad guys in Afghanistan, and that would have been that.
We had the whole world behind us after 9-11.
Even Iran was willing to offer assistance and aid.
And what did we end up with?
The world looked at us like one big hillbilly, rope belt and all.
I don't know about the trials, but I really don't disagree that we really did this.
We really did.
And if any of you get the opportunity, The Road to Hell in Iraq is worth watching.
It's a special on CNN, and I really recommend you watch it.
A lot of people, I guess, have short memories when it comes to what we do, and or they listen to To people who attempt to justify it, and it is unjustifiable.
Outside the country, you're on the air.
Hi.
How's it going, Art?
It's going well.
This is Jack from Australia.
I would have guessed.
I think something that will be very important in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy will be the foreign policies in Europe.
As they are formatted, especially in France, to see how they react to the whole migrant issue and immigration and stuff.
Well, yeah, I think you're right.
We're about to see a reaction.
They've closed their borders.
That's a pretty radical move for France.
And what they're going to do next is going to be an interesting observation.
What do you think?
Yeah, that's a pretty big thing for France.
They haven't done that since 1944.
Right.
So stuff is starting to really get real over there.
And with more of these attacks, public opinion starts to sway, which, you know, as public opinion changes, it may give politicians more power to do action or to get stuff done as well.
And this can even be more said for the American government and their inaction, especially in the Middle East.
Like, I believe, my own theory is that Mr. Obama, the reason he's not really interfering much in Syria is because he doesn't want the same issue that the Americans had in Somalia way back when, when American bodies were being strewn through the streets, you know?
Like, you don't want that.
It doesn't look good for public image.
It doesn't look good, yeah.
It doesn't look good, but you know, there are some wars worth fighting, and this is one of them.
I mean, this is a group Devoted to the extinction of mankind.
Ultimately, that's what they want is Armageddon.
And they are going to keep coming and keep growing and keep coming until we deal with them.
And I guess sooner is better than later.
Yeah, the thing is with ISIL and this whole Islam problem, you can't criminalize the whole race.
You can't be like, all of Islam is bad, that's the problem.
Because it's not!
No, nobody is saying, nobody of any intellectual prowess at all is saying that, because it's just untrue.
But these people who have decided they want to bring about Armageddon, the end of the world, and they're going to kill everybody who refuses to convert And they pretty much decided we're not going to convert in their right, so they just want to kill us.
And if that's the case, then we must go and kill them.
Yeah, again, even if America got boots on the ground in the Middle East, I'd feel it's sort of the same issue that America had in Afghanistan, like identifying targets, like who is the enemy, who is civilian.
You know, war crimes, it comes very blurred lines.
I'm quite perplexed on how to combat this, and I'm sure many top generals and world leaders are perplexed as well.
It's hard to erase an ideology from the face of the earth.
Well, you know, until some political person gives instructions to the generals, nothing at all will happen.
Yeah, it'll take some pretty big moves from some major powers for much to change in that region of the world, sadly.
I've got to run.
Somebody earlier said that history has a way Of having the right guy step up at the right time.
Actually, I think that it was a John Batchelor in the earlier interview, and he's right about that.
But boy, it's going to be a close, very close call.
Burlington, Vermont?
Am I right?
Yes.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
It's Laura.
I've been listening to you since 1985.
Long time.
A long time.
And when you went off the air, I missed you dearly.
And I had to listen to the other show, and it just was never the same.
And I'm so glad you're back.
Thank you.
So glad.
Thank you.
And I wanted to say one thing.
What I really miss about your old show is, do you remember when you'd give everybody the honors at the end to say goodnight?
Yes.
I've begun that again.
Have you?
I haven't heard that.
I have.
It was a little bit later.
I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
Yeah?
I'm going to put you on hold and I'll come back to you at the end of the show and what you want to say is goodnight world.
I can't say goodnight America?
Well you can but it's the entire world that's hearing you so you know I mean we don't want to not greet the appropriate people.
No problem I'll do that.
Can you say goodnight world?
I can say goodnight world.
Or you could say goodnight America and the world.
I'd be good with that.
That sounds better.
Alright, I'm putting it on hold.
Thank you very much.
Um, I think Chicago you're on.
Hi.
Going once.
Going twice.
Gone.
Spokane, Washington.
Hi.
Hello.
Going once.
Twice.
Gone.
Mill Valley, California.
Your turn.
Hello.
Hello.
I think we're missing the whole thing here.
We've all touched on it.
The whole reason, and I listen to you on the Internet, the whole reason that people listen to your show and shows like it is because there's a bigger picture.
If even some of the conspiracies, if even some of the quote extraterrestrials that are visiting us are true, then isn't it interesting that at a time when we're really pushing disclosure, Stephen Bassett and his group, Dr. Greer and all, That all of a sudden now, this point person, this point group, ISIS, that we created, I agree with everything you said, and we shouldn't have gone into Iraq and all the political stuff, but isn't it interesting that if there is a breakaway society, as we hear on your program, if there is a secret space program, if there are underground bases all around the world, what a perfect way to divert our attention
And what a perfect way, as you say, for people to take away guns.
Not that I'm a violent person, but I would feel a lot more comfortable if my community would allow me to have a concealed carry so I could defend myself if some idiot went off in a restaurant or a theater.
Right.
You're in California, right?
Well, I don't like to say, but yes.
Well, California is indeed a difficult state in which to obtain A carry permit.
It almost takes an act of the California legislature.
Or the governor.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, there was a time in a couple of the cities where the police chief was denying them, even if you have a perfect record of never been arrested.
And you say, well, the sheriff has the right.
The sheriff is the higher authority.
And then I went and talked to a sheriff once, and he said, oh, I'm not going to give any permits.
No, I know.
It's political.
The whole thing is idiotic.
If you look around, indeed, in places where they restrict guns, they have a lot of gun violence.
In places where a lot of people carry guns, well, not so much.
Well, getting back, and that's true, and getting back to the issue... But wait, one more thing.
Even more important than any of that is, the record of people who have received instruction and received carry permits is very, very exemplary.
Yeah, from what I've heard, yes.
Oh, no, it's true.
Anyway, go ahead.
Well, I'm just saying, back to the original issue, whether it's defending ourselves, which I would rather do, it becomes more of everything that we've talked about.
That's where it is political.
The Bill of Rights was thrown out after 9-11.
The military budget, or the $37 trillion that Cheney said was missing a week before 9-11, That got thrown out because of 9-11.
And that's how the black budgets, if we listen to people on your program, are funded.
And that's how we have weapons and technology that could throw oil down the toilet and we could all have free energy devices.
I sure hope you're right.
Well, if we believe any of these, I don't know if I'm right, you know, but I've met Travis Walton personally a couple of times.
I don't think he's lying.
You know, I've met Whitley Scriber personally.
Well, I know, but Travis Walton doesn't say we've got free energy.
Travis Walton got taken up in a saucer.
Well, then what made the saucer fly is the point.
But Travis Walton doesn't know.
He doesn't know, but the point is we all can surmise that if there are other civilizations visiting us, If we're being lied to and covered up by, quote, a breakaway society who keeps the technology, who keeps the knowledge of the fact that there are others visiting us secret, then that's the type of person that could create a group.
Who funds these groups?
At least Al-Qaeda, we had, you know, Bin Laden was rich, and there were rich Arabs, you know, and it was oil.
So it all ties together.
So if ISIS is created by us, who's funding them?
Are there that many rich guys in the 1% that want to spend money on this?
No, I think it's a diversion.
Well, they were funded to a large degree by an awful lot of the stuff we left in Iraq.
I hate to say that, but they hit one bank, I believe, when they...
When the Iraqi soldiers took off and ran away, they hit one bank for what was it?
Half a billion dollars?
Something like that?
Just astronomical.
Alright, we don't have a lot of time left.
It's too bad because we could go and go and go and go with just hours and hours and hours.
But it's about to end, so I'll take a few very fast calls.
If you can make a very fast comment.
Kuzpe, Oregon.
Very quick.
My time is...
The problem we have with this country starts at the top.
The President of the United States is not doing what he should be doing.
Okay, sir.
Thank you.
Hays, Kansas, very quickly.
Hi, this is Tim.
I just want to say, Kansas just released a constitutional concealed carry, and we have jobs, so come on to Kansas.
Way to go, sir.
Beverly Hills, California, quickly.
Well, this is the ghost of Ronald Reagan again.
Mendy had me call.
He's listening to your show, and he's a friend of mine.
I think either Donald Trump, Ben Carson, or Ted Cruz could give these ISIS people a run for their money.
You know, this is what happens when too many radical Muslims, the radical ones, just don't have cable television.
All right, I could go on and on.
Every line is full, but I'm not going to.
I'm going to go to a really nice lady in Burlington, Vermont, who is now going to say what?