Old bin Laden bought the farm,
E-I-E-I-O ...

Lyndon LaRouche ... Teddy Goldsmith ... Roberto Calvi ... P2 ... my head is spinning.

I've mentioned LaRouche before. He's probably delusional, but if he's not, and if he's right, we're all in a heap of trouble.

Example:

"First of all, what has happened to the United States is on last Tuesday, the 11th, it came attack by a mysterious force, which I know is some kind of rogue operation inside the security screen of the United States. This did not come from the Middle East. It didn't come from Europe. It didn't come from South America. There may be people who are nationals from other parts of the world who were involved in this, but the operation is very sophisticated, and no one could do an operation like this, from outside the United States at present; there's no one who could do what was done here then."

I think he's dead wrong. I hope he's dead wrong. If you enjoy having your head turned inside out, check out this piece of agitprop.

Teddy Goldsmith is another interesting character - brother of James (Jimmy) Goldsmith, somehow implicated in the vastly complex and largely forgotten Iran-Contra scandal (remember that?) both descendants of Europe's Goldschmidt dynasty - he founded, among other things, The Ecologist magazine, and Howlett's zoo park outside Canterbury. Teddy Goldsmith's own bio, posted on The Ecologist's site, makes it possible to believe there's a link there between him, the Goldschmidts, the groups that have been protesting the IMF and World Bank meetings, Roberto Calvi, P2, the Mafia, the KGB, the CIA, the Catholic Church, the assassination of JFK, and the crashing of two airliners into the World Trade Center ...

For those who want to crank up their personal paranoia meters just a little higher, there's the NameBase, a search engine for citations to "names of individuals and groups involving : assassinations, organized crime, scandals, Wall Street and transnational corporations, foreign policy and media establishments, political elites from the Right and Left, Cold War history and intelligence". Surf away. Type in the name of any shadowy and/or influential figure you've ever heard of - James Bamford, Oliver North, George Bush (GHWB or GWB), any of the Kennedys, either of the Goldsmiths, Henry Ford - and see where the citations lead you.

Finally, if you've never read it, this'd be a great time to invest in a copy of the Illuminatus! trilogy and some high-grade hydroponic marijuana ...

Reprobates is pleased to bring you the following piece of financial advice (thanks to Tim for passing this one along):

If you bought $1000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.
If you bought $1000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, and traded in the cans for the nickel deposit, you would have $79.

My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.

My email inbox, it suddenly seems, is full of exhortations to light a candle at a particular time and be photographed by a satellite, or to show the world (or my neighbor in the double-wide next door, at least) that I'm an idiot who actually reads chain emails and does what they say, or something like that.

Well, here's a suggestion I'm sure we can all get behind:

Show your support for bush at 7pm tonight, by slipping an extra dollar bill into your favorite stripper's waistband.

Boo-ya!

Now, for a limited time, Reprobates is bringing you a special section that is devoid of humo(u)r. How is that different from the usual drivel we serve up? you might well ask. Well, not only is it devoid of humo(u)r, it's also lacking in references to bodily excretions, gonads (with or without strife), drugs or any of the other, err, finer things in life.

So how does it qualify for inclusion in Reprobates? 'Coz I'm a moderator, dammit, and I say so. Yes, dear reader, Reprobates is a dictatorship, and the most important thing to remember about that is, you can't say "dictatorship", without saying "dick".

Anyway, the point is this. The Western world seems to be on the brink of ... something. There are more opinions, and more "information" (good, bad, correct, incorrect, or indifferent) available to the general public than at any time before any previous military action. I don't know about you, but I've been exposed to more information about the geo-political make-up of the Middle East than I ever wanted to know before. Some of it I sort-of knew, or thought I'd heard before, but suddenly, now, every little detail seems so much more relevant, germane, crucial. I was dimly aware, for example, of the British role in creating Israel, as documented in this personal screed that has been fairly widely circulated (this particular copy of it comes from, of all places, the 7-Series BMW Bulletin Board). Also on the same BB, however, is a piece about Afghanistan, too.

Some of what I've learned must seem hopelessly trivial to those people some of us went to college alongside - you know, the poli-sci students, and so on. Those same graduates must now be some of the most clued-in burger flippers around. For example, I learned that Iranians are not Arabs. At that revelation, some of you must be saying "Duh!", while others are saying to themselves "I had no idea there was a difference" and yet others are simply thinking "Mmm ... orange ..." But I digress.

It's also becoming increasingly clear that whatever is coming is probably (hopefully) not a war in the conventional WWI/WWII/Korea/Falklands/Vietnam/Gulf sense - the "enemy" is too sneaky to face a conventional force across anything resembling a recognizable battlefield. The author of piece on Afghanistan quoted above makes a fascinating and terrifying point - to draw the West into a pitched battle against Islam is precisely what Bin Laden wants, because he believes Islam will win.

One insight into the kinds of activities that the West will be increasingly undertaking can be gleaned from an article in Sunday's Washington Post about networks.

Bush is right when he says this won't be a short war - it took years for the terror networks to build up to their current level of sophistication, and it will take years to dismantle them. This will be an action that continues long after the spectacle of war fades from our TV screens, and we will know little about its methods and its successes, but I fear we'll know all too well about its failures.

Many in the UK wonder whether the US's new-found sense of outrage and horror towards terrorism will mean that the Boston & New York Irish will finally stop funding the IRA. Personally, I doubt it. I don't think most of Noraid's contributors are bright enough to make the mental leap, but there you go.

For one final link (because everyone likes links), I would like to remind everyone of the existence of my personal favo(u)rite wild card - Lyndon LaRouche. My biggest fear is that this man is not as deluded as he seems. Read just about anything on his site - particularly the stuff about terrorism - and make your own judgment.

Somewhere in a remote corner of Kabul, the voices of the Pakistani delegation can be heard uniting in song. Softly, oh so softly, the sounds drift to your ears through the fetid air ...

"Come, Mr Taliban,
Gimme me Bin Laden ...
Daylight come an' me wan' go home ..."

You're watching one of your favorite TV shows and you start thinking that the writers must have run out of ideas. Like the X-Files was after "Fight the Future". You wonder if you're the only fan who thinks that show has gone in the dumper. Well, you're not. And, as long as Ted McGinley doesn't show up in an episode, everything is going to be fine.

Monster Trucks... good. The Messiah... good. A Jesus Monster Truck... very good!

Just in case you find yourself in Montogomery, Alafrickin'bama, there are no Starbucks. In fact, the closest stores are near or in Birmingham, as you can see here.

Damn! Another disillusionment, it turns out NASA faked the whole moonshot program. Don't believe it? Here's undeniable proof.