February 12, 2006: The Middle East and Green Fuel - Howard Bloom

Howard Bloom joins Art Bell to discuss the Middle East, biofuels, flex-fuel vehicles, Iran, and intelligence emerging from the Big Bang after Art's opening headlines. Art opens with Vice President Cheney's hunting accident and record-breaking weather, including the warmest January on record. He highlights NASA scientist James Hansen's battle against agency censorship over climate change and discusses Israeli researchers who created ball lightning in a laboratory. Art also shares reports about a Canadian Radio Shack plagued by a talking pedometer that allegedly chanted prayers backwards.

Bloom explores the intersection of science, geopolitics, and Islamic fundamentalism. He discusses the Big Bang and the emergence of intelligence from nothing, arguing that consciousness was implicit in the universe from its origin. He presents an analysis of militant Islam's conflict with non-believers, citing conversations with Muslim friends who estimate that 70 percent of the Islamic population holds pro-militant sympathies. Bloom warns that nuclear terrorism could strike within months to three years.

Bloom proposes that Iranian intelligence manipulated the U.S. into invading Iraq through fabricated weapons intelligence funneled through Ahmed Chalabi. He argues that Iran positioned itself to control Iraq through Shiite religious networks, the only organizational structure Saddam Hussein could not destroy. The discussion touches on the Danish cartoon controversy as a tool for reuniting Sunni and Shiite factions against the West.