The Play Is The Thing

If you are a fan of Shakespeare, then you know that the title of today's column comes from Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, and the next line is, "In which we shall catch the conscience of the King."  That is what I intend to do today, since "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women are but actors upon't."

I assume, since the readers here are highly intelligent humans, that we all see world events from a certain perspective high above the fray.  From where we sit, things like the Ukraine situation look like silly schoolyard blustering between rival gangs.  Not to belittle the actual and very real suffering of people caught in the middle of this pissing match, but the actions of especially the Western factions look like so much unbridled testosterone flying about.

What is interesting to note about the Ukraine mess is that the West is playing poker, while the East is playing chess.  Perhaps we can call it a game of "choker".  The West is bluffing and upping antes, while the East is enacting gambits and positioning fronts.  And frankly, the East is kicking a little tail, since apparently the West is also a very bad poker player, not to mention having brought a knife to a gun fight.

Putin is oviously the superior intellect in this match.  Obama, being a vacuous creation of committees of power brokers, is hopelessly outmatched and outclassed. 

Putin is approaching the situation with a sharp and idealistic intellect.  He is an Russian Orthodox Catholic, a nationalist and steeped in history.  He is a veteran of Russian intelligence services and understands world politics and geomancy   He is viewing the world and his country's place in it from the perspective of centuries of history.

Obama, on the other hand, can barely remember his own history, much less that of nations.  He was carefully groomed by handlers to be what he is: an automaton.  He has no thoughts besides those fed to him on Tele-Prompt-R.  He serves no noble purpose outside feeding his vices and base desires.  He has no ideals or beliefs that can be discerned or expressed.  Even his "autobiography" was ghost-written by a marketing team determined to have a Manchurian Candidate at their disposal.

Putin acts as an idealistic individual who receives advice from his courtiers.  Obama is a camel - a horse by committee - incapable of acting without his strings being manipulated.

And the people of the West have only themselves to blame for having allowed, through hubris and sloth, their system of law to deteriorate to such a deplorable state.

On other fronts...

MH370.  Now this is starting to get rather intriguing.  At first, I viewed this exclusively as a theater or slight of hand intended to distract the masses and fill column inches and push more important topics off the front page.  To a certain extent, I still believe it is distraction, but only in the way it is being handled in the public sphere. 

Behind the scenes, I am coming around to the idea that no one, at any level, has any idea what is going on.  All the major players seem just as mystified as everyone else.  All the stories and details being floated about don't have the "flavor" of being scripted, unlike say the 9/11 movie of the week.

In the case of 9/11, global broadcasts were preempted for a week, the evil-doers were identified before the sun even set the first day.  The storyline was installed within hours and was only tweaked by public opinion over the next few months.

In the case of MH370, they were all caught with their pants down.  Instead of a single narrative being foisted on us from the very start, the top actors are scrambling around trying to back-engineer some plausible cover.  The longer the situation goes on, the more baffled - and even scared - the top dogs seem to be.  There's a certain smell of desperation in the way the PTB are throwing around "debris fields" and "pilot fanaticism" and "possible flight paths". They really have no clue what is going on, and the are frantically trying to concoct a story out of some bits and pieces they've found lying around.

The scripted game has been in the Ukraine, and that's where they want all of us focused to receive our mental templates.  But this damn plane thing keeps distracting everyone from their game and they are not happy about it.  Furthermore, at some level, folks instinctively know that the "authorities" have no answers, and it's undermining their power structure.  This problem is untenable to them.

The way to approach this is ask the ago-old question, "Qui bono?"  To whose benefit is this event?

The Trilateral Group (US, Russia, China) obviously want us all focused elsewhere - specifically Ukraine.  Also, if any one of them were found to have instigated this mess, they would instantly lose credibility in their Hunger Game.  I don't think we can look that direction.

Israel is an obvious culprit.  They've been losing creds faster than a Sterno-drinker at a Baptist wedding.  If we follow the Zionist playbook, we would have "disappeared" a jetliner from a fundamentalist Islamic country, floated stories about the pilots being "true believers" and then dropped the plane on the Knesset within a couple of days.  The problem is, the plane is still missing and their slavering over the prospects of finding it and using it for propaganda are dimming fast.  In other words, we got part of the scenario, but something happened...they lost the plane or it was lost for them.

Other than the Big Four, there are no real contenders for Global Domination who could pull something like this off and then use it to their benefit.  Which means...

Another player.

What we are looking at is beyond your standard 2-D chess game.  We are now in the realm of 3-D Star Trek chess with a twist - a third player whose pieces are invisible and whose presence we only detect by having accidently stumbled over a piece while playing the "independence gambit".

Ukrainian "independence" was supposed to have set off a series of similar movements (Venice, Scotland, etc.) that would have freed up the classic bankster strongholds and placed the EU firmly inside the orbit of Russia.

Instead, Putin threw a monkey-wrench in the works with the Crimea Gambit, while global headlines were - and continue to be - stolen by a missing passenger jet.

A new (or very old) player has entered the game.  The new player has been quiet for some amount of time, be it years, decades, centuries, or even millennia.  This new player has chosen a specific time to reveal itself that sends the clear message to the PTB that it can play the game just as well (maybe better) and has the advantage at the moment.

We are witnessing a most interesting set of circumstances.  An unknown power has injected itself onto the world stage at a crucial moment when the "standard" players were comfortably executing their "standard" moves.  The apple cart has been upset and everyone is slipping and tripping trying to stay upright while at the same time catch the rascal that did it.

From our position high about the fray, the usual mess has suddenly become quite a bit more interesting, and entertaining.  It bears watching to see how things will play out.  We can be quite certain, though, that anything "official-dumn" tells us at this point is wild speculation, because they haven't got a clue either.  The worm has turned.

If nothing else, we must admire the skill and timing of whomever or whatever has thrust its way into the plot.  It's almost as if this new entity is a deus ex machina.

All The World's A Stage

Yes, folks, the roar of concern over our long silence on the Far Side has been heard!  We apologize for yanking the rug out from under everyone, but unfortunately, we have yet to discover circumventions to the Laws of Physics, though we are trying furiously!

As we described the situation in one recent response to a long-time reader, we are busy putting all our rants and raves into action.  On top of that, everything we've examined and fretted over here in this column is now coming into reality, so there seems little point to reiterating what can be found in copious amounts in our archives.

As we have previously mentioned, our latest project has been starting up Indonesia's first international-standard theater, as well as several large galleries, a museum, and all the ancillary things attendant to them.

A theater is an incredibly complex series of interlocking technologies married to highly specialized architecture to deliver a spectacle for the eyes and ears.  Cable trucks as big around as a man carry signals to lighting instruments, communications, sound, and rigging, and any mistake in judgement could kill a person.

Consideration like having the systems isolated from the internet because nasties like StuxNet infect the control systems of theaters that support incredibly large loads over people's heads.  A misfire or miscommunication among any of the myriad parts could end up in disaster, as the experience at the Apollo Theater in London a few months back will attest.

Most people are blissfully unaware of how complex putting on modern stage shows can be, and really, that's the point.  The audience is supposed to be amazed and enthralled, not thinking about how that massive chandelier was hung over their heads.  All of the effort and machinery are supposed to be invisible or the illusion is lost.  Yet, somewhere in all that mix, someone has to worry about the safety and security of that 3-year-old in the 24th row who is staring in wide-eyed amazement at flying Disney characters - not on TeeVee or the movie screen - but in real life.

Among our copious responsibilities is knowing the dizzying intricacies of the theater's innards.  If a single cable ceases to function properly, it is our responsibility to know where that cable originates, where it terminates, and the precise path it takes in between.  We must know precisely how much load and stress can be applied to any given spot on the stage or in the rafters.  We must know the precise measurements of every function of every system in the venue.

Add to that the various social and political concerns of being GM of such a place - it's unique position in Indonesian history - and the desire to inform, educate and entertain large masses of people, and one can begin to appreciate the demands on the time of an individual.

Despite the demands and stresses of managing such an effort - still in construction phase - we would not have it any other way.  We have always maintained that when one does the thing one loves the most, there is no such thing as work.  There is only joy.

Some letter writers to us on the Far Side have asked why we don't have columns on Malaysia Air or the Ukraine situation.  The simple answer is that our answers are contained in the archives.

Malaysia Air is a distraction.  It is an operation planned and executed to do one thing - keep you from looking at the Big Picture.  The Ukraine is little more than the dying crash of Western hegemony and the rise of the New East.  These are topics we have explored at great length within these pages.

The Malaysia Air mystery is designed to soak up headlines and column inches, distract the minds, and hold attention off other - more important - events.  There is something in this story for everyone, conspiracy theorist or not.  If there is in fact a real flight with real people involved, then our heart goes out to them for their suffering.  But we are unconvinced to the extent that we have followed the story at all.  It is not a cause, but a symptom of a much larger story being played out on the world's theater, with its attendant million moving parts.

The Ukraine story is also a symptom and part of the kibuki theater of global politics.  Not to make light of the suffering there, but the people of the Ukraine must at some point see that they are being manipulated in a crass and cynical game of geo-pissing.

The Western oligarchs set into motion back in the 80s a plan to crater the Soviet system, rearrange the Mid-East to their liking, and ensure that none of them could mount a serious challenge to Western hegemony.

They had not counted on China having its own agenda.  Instead, they were supposed to be infinitely grateful to the banksters for having unloaded tons of toxic debt within their borders.  They had not counted on the Russians experiencing a moral and religious reawakening and cleaning house of the mafia corruption, as Putin has done.  They had not counted on the internet becoming a means of circumventing the official media and mind-numbing distractions of network TeeVee.  In short, they f^cked up.

Once they realized what they had done, the various factions within the bankster class began fighting amongst themselves trying either to salvage the original plan, or scavenge for any amount of power and wealth as could be grabbed in the collapse.  The dominant group, myopically and pathetically wedded to their 40-year-old plan, are moving as fast as they can to complete it, though nearly all the assumptions of their plan - all the million variables - have changed, and it is no longer viable.

Thus, the Ukraine, and Libya, and Syria, and Iran, and Afghanistan, Egypt, et cetera ad nauseum.

The collapse of Empires is a dangerous time, but as the Chinese say, there is opportunity in chaos, or as their Western counterparts would say, Ordo ab chao.

As the audience, we have three choices: 1) we can sit passively and be enthralled like a 3-year-old in the 24th row; 2) we can seek to understand all the miles of cabling and systems integration of the theater we call the world/ or 3) we can ignore the bastards, refuse to buy a ticket and go set up our own show elsewhere.  We here on the Far Side stand firmly in the Option 3 camp.

Now, back to work!

Thar She Blows!

The way the jerk-nuts work in DC is always the same, at least for the past decade, probably longer.  They raise a huge fuss over nothing so that they can sneak a slider past.  And oh boy did they drop a whopper this time.

First, how they do it.  You see, there was never a debt default crisis.  The US Constitution, Fourtheenth Amendment, states that the US will and can not default on its debt.  The answer was incredibly simple.  All CON-BAMA had to do was send a not to the Treasury to issue enough chits to cover interest payments.

All the fuss and fighting was nothing more than the standard magician's technique of drawing your attention to the other side of the stage while they popped a whammy on the other.

And the whammy is quickly becoming known as the "Super Congress."  And no, the super doesn't refer to being a hero or anything so noble.  It is the old Latin meaning of "above" or "over," or in German, "uber".

You see, CONgress set up a new committee with the debt bill.  This committee, full of the bastards that got the country into the mess it's in, has the power to formulate bills that are fast-tracked through CONgress.  There is no debate, no amendments, no filibusters.  Just take it or leave it.  It's the perfect weasel vessel for a building full of weasels.  They can make a quick vote in favor of just about anything and blame it all on someone else, which they excel at.

Basically, America is now under a dictatorship, but with a twist.  Bammy has a lot of say, but this committee of 12 is pretty much a shared dictatorship, so that the American people will swallow it, hook-line-sinker, before they every know what hit 'em.

All those weaselly little lawyer shits have achieved their wet dream!  Now they can truly speak without saying, and do without responsibility!  Oh, what a great day in world history!

Really, it's all so amusing.  For decades, I heard the so-called 'patriot movements' scream and holler and jump up and down, saying, "They'll never have a dictator in Merica!  They can have my guns when they pry my cold, dead fingers off the trigger!"

All done.  Story's written.  The curtain is drawn.  House lights are up.

And not one 'patriot' saw it coming.  No one fired a shot.  There was no mass demonstrations.  No clashed with 'authorities'.

Just a mass howl of, "Don't stop my entitlement checks!"

What a joke it all is.  All the bluster and bombast for a piece of legistlation in the night.  It was so simple.  Even the 'patriots' are relieved, as they sink back into the couch to get their daily injection of MSNBC/CNN/XYZ.  The ;Tea Party' won!  We can all go back to sleep!  Them Republican boys saved our hides from certain cessation of SS checks and Medicare coverage.

Yes, I take my hat of to you, Patriot.  You put up a valiant fight.  History will mark your passing...like a ship in the night.

The scary part is now the Fourth Reich begins.  The Empire is born in earnest, and just like Lucas' second trilogy, all the little green men welcomed it!  And what's really astounding, at least to a child of the 60s, is that I have to turn to Pravda and Putin to get a breath of fresh honesty.

It's like an old relative dying.  They've been ill for years, languishing on machines in a nunery.  Then, in the night, at the very beginning of Ramadan, they slip away in the night.  They suck in one last breath and say something mystical that no one will every understand, then sputter their last breath to the Universe.  The jaw goes slack, the eyes cloud over and the hand drops to the side.

It's over.

Now the real fun starts.

If you noticed the markets and gold over the past two days, then you've seen the relatives fighting over the estate.  The Dow dropped 300 points and gold shot up $20.  They're all picking over the bones and fighting over who gets what.

At least they waited the requisite 3 days until the corpse was buried.  Damn decent of them, really.   But no one is waiting for the reading of the Will.  They're all squatting on their claims and no one will budge them easily.

An apt metaphor for all this were the alerts I got from the Republic of Texas folks.  For two weeks, I was getting imperative emails: madatory, absolutely necessary, increadibly dire meeting last Saturday.  No excuses.  You don't show, you ain't part.  Then, the last one was, "Rescheduled."  Yup, that's what happened.  Everyone ran off to claim a piece of pie while the relative slipped into the grave.

I never really envisioned it this way.  I always thought there'd be some fight to it.  Hell, at the least the hippies got shot at Kent State and the Bonus Army got hacked to bits on the plains of the Potomac.  But, this...

Good bye, America.  It was a fine dream.  It lasted until Lincoln, too.  Not bad for something so radical as personal freedom and responsibility.  There really was a kind of mystique to America.  Something I've never encountered in the 40-some-odd countries I've been to.  There was a sense of purpose and a global view of things.

To see it die at the hands of someone named Boner is almost an insult, but so apropos.  After all, every human being that ever called themselves an American, and especially those who fought and died to create her, just got shafted.

Good night, America.  We hardly knew ye.