Interesting bit of information: according to multiple sources, including Wikipedia, one of the primary ingredients of sarin is sodium fluoride, which if you live in countries where they routinely poison the population with fluoridated water, then you drink this crud daily.
It certainly helps to illuminate why the Touch Someone's Ass (TSA) brigade are so antsy about letting folks on planes with water. Certainly, mixing up explosives in the head makes little or no sense, but apparently, mixing up a batch of sarin would require very little effort with a little American tap water.
Another bit of information: most Americans would happily send Congress to Syria just about now.
Which leads us to a little Far Side speculation on this fair Saturday morning.
Does it appear to you, as it does to us, that the antics of the Hidden Hand are becoming less effective? If you squint just the right way, it seems they are losing their grip on the mass psyche. The Boston Marathon bombing didn't seem to have the desired effect. And now, the Syria sarin doesn't seem to be working as well as they had hoped.
It took a couple of weeks, but in the aftermath of the Boston bombing, folks kind of came out of a stupor and said, "Wait a minute! Two and two aren't adding up here."
In the wake of the Syria sarin attack, it was almost immediate. Folks just didn't buy it. The BBC ran a photo of alleged victims and immediately someone saw that it was actually a photo of US victims in Iraq a decade before. The Hidden Hand claimed it was the rebels and folks said, "Hey, aren't those rebels al Qaeda and didn't we just spend a decade and thousands of our youth fighting those bastards?" Doctors Without Borders, who treated the victims, questioned the whole sarin thing. And even Rush Limbaught, for gods' sakes, questioned the Party Line.
It would seem that a very healthy amount of skepticism is creeping into the public mind. So much so, that Bammy had to tuck tail and run to Congress for permission - something that would have been inconceivable just a couple of years ago.
To his credit, Bammy does seem to be a little trigger-shy, but we can dismiss his Nobel-laureate peace-making and put it down to political expediency. He probably sees the same thing we are.
It's taken the better part of two decades for people to wake up from the 9/11 spell we've been under, but it does seem that we are shaking it off and starting to realize what happened to us. And none too soon.
For those of us who are duck-and-cover alumni, it seems completely incongruous that we should be cheering the Russian president, but there it is. Putin, to his great credit, it not allowing the West to get away with its usual tricks, and the world is siding with him. China, not surprisingly, sided with him, and that put a lot of financial pressure on the US. Seems the Chinese hold a lot of US paper, and if the US doesn't behave itself, the Chinese can crash what's left of the US economy overnight. That's a big brake on US belligerence.
The mass awakening may not (yet) be enough to actually change things, but it is quickly becoming enough to temper the head-long rush to war we've witnessed over the past 20 years. We've gone from Bush II running around in trench-coat flashing world leaders with his "evidence" behind closed doors to the world sitting back and saying it's not enough for a few "leaders" to see - we all want to get a look at the "flash".
And no, we won't be fooled again (thanks Pete T.).
So where to from here?
Two possible outcomes are likely at this point. The good one is that the Hidden Hand will see its power wane and slowly fade to insignificance. The bad one is that something bigger than 9/11 is in the offing to put us further under the spell of fear.
It could be that the tide has turned. As any practitioner of magic knows, once the audience sees through one of your tricks, it is nearly impossible to get it to suspend disbelief again. The spell must be maintained in order to keep the rubes believing in your powers. Once you lose that, then the audience is looking much harder for the 'trick', and they are far less willing to believe you have special abilities and moral superiority (magic requires an audience to grant moral superiority to a magician).
We may be at that point now with the Hidden Hand. If the world continues to wake up to the illusion they have foisted on us for the past two decades, then eventually they will be required to slink back into the shadows of has-been status and the world will be a better place.
On the other hand, if a magician starts to lose his audience, then he must trot out a trick of such magnitude and power as to completely entrance the masses once again. And here lies the danger. The Hidden Hand is not likely to surrender its status of world ruler easily. Now that the curtain is slipping, it is in a position of having to wave the magic wand and create an illusion of such magnitude that we will all be entranced once again.
It took a 'trick' the size and scope of 9/11 to put us all under their spell in the first place, so it will take a 'trick' that is orders of magnitude grander to put us all under once again. In other words, we won't go down for a couple of skyscrapers again. This time, it will take an entire city. That will require a nuke (at least one), and it will require a boogieman that can credibly pull it off.
Lo and Behold! We have just such a boogieman. Iran. The Hidden Hand has spent 40 years building up Iran as its Ace-in-the-Hole. Ever since the Iran hostage crisis (I was 40 miles from the border with Iran when that happened), that country has been carefully built up to be exactly the kind of thing they would need to pull of a major 'trick' of the kind needed just now. The Muslim world has been carefully vilified in the Western mind. Iran's so-called nuke program has been carefully positioned as a threat. And Iran has been painted as a threat to Israel, which the Hidden Hand has implanted in the Western mind as an important emotional trigger.
So, now we need a Big Trick to put everyone under the spell. The last biggie has worn off and the magicians are losing credibility. It is time to pull out the Ace-in-the-Hole.
Likely scenario: in retaliation for Western support of the false flag attack in Syria, Iran pops off a nuke in Jerusalem. The attack on such a city has very deep psychological triggers in billions of people across the globe. Everyone will see this as fulfillment of prophesy and a direct attack against some god or another. This will immediately polarize the world into Christian and Muslim, with both sides arming themselves to the teeth. The deep emotional value of the target will prevent anyone from questioning, and if they do, they will be shouted down, even attacked for not lining up on the 'right' side of the issue. No one will question whether the attack was really perpetrated by Iran. It will be obvious, from years of implantation, that they did it. Even the pope will not be able to call for peace at a time like that.
Do you remember what you felt in the immediate aftermath of 9/11? Remember that burning need to retaliate? Remember that overwhelming patriotism? Remember how anyone who questioned the Party Line was shouted down and made to look like a fool?
Now imagine that feeling multiplied thousands of times over and spread throughout the world. No one will be unaffected. Jerusalem is a hot button for more than half the world's population. It is so deeply rooted in the identity and thinking of so many people that they can not extract it from reality. Even world religious leaders will be bound to call for blood or lose all credibility. The mental wound would be of such a proportion that it would take a century or more to heal, and that means perpetual war.
Yup, the Hidden Hand's wet dream of perpetual war would become a reality. Billions of people acting on pure fear and emotion without a single rational thought for generations. It would be 30 or 40 years before anyone could even formulate a doubt, much less express it. it would be another 50 years before enough people had doubts that it would affect the course of history. In the meantime, the Hidden Hand would have established a grip on the world that will take centuries to undo, and by that time, they would own and control pretty much everything. Unwinding the tentacles would be centuries again. Hell, just unwinding A. G. Farben took the better part of a century, and that was one company in one country. Imagine what it would take to unwind an octopus that sat in the heart of nearly every country on Earth and was every company on Earth, for all intents and purposes.
If I were a Hidden Hander, I would be preparing for this ultimate scenario. But since I am a regular kind of guy, I am instead looking for signs that just such a thing is in the offing. Certainly, all the pieces are in place for this End Game. It would eradicate any last vestiges of opposition and rational thought. It would solidify the mental and physical lock on the world that this group has been after for...well, centuries.
The only thing remaining is to set up the proper situation that would make it completely credible for Iran to nuke Jerusalem. Everyone must be looking in the right direction for the 'trick' to work. All magic tricks require absolute control over what the audience sees.
We know that the Hidden Hand has no problem sacrificing even its own in order to complete its tricks. We know that they are willing to use spectacular death counts to ensure their tricks capture the imaginations of large numbers of people. And we know that they are ruthlessly and myopically focused on world domination. So it makes perfect sense that they would be thinking along these lines, even if the details of the actual event are slightly different.
They need an emotional hot button. They need a Big Boogieman. They need shock and fear to pull it off. All the elements are here.
Here on the Far Side, we're ready for it. Wherever the magician tells us to look, we will be looking the other way. Our anthem remains:
There's nothing in the streetLooks any different to meAnd the slogans are replaced, by-the-byeAnd the parting on the leftIs now the parting on the rightAnd the beards have all grown longer overnightI'll tip my hat to the new constitutionTake a bow for the new revolutionSmile and grin at the change all around mePick up my guitar and playJust like yesterdayThen I'll get on my knees and prayWe don't get fooled againDon't get fooled againNo, no!YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!Meet the new bossSame as the old boss