Friday, February 20, 2015

Bradley Manning and "The Running Man'


Why are there so many coincidences between Bradley Manning's saga and the movie "The Running Man"? For those of you who don't remember the movie the "crime" which the main character (Ben Richards) is accused of committting is firing from a helicopter at unarmed civilians. Richard's real crime in the movie is disobeying the order to fire on people who were rioting for food. When he disobeys the order the commander back at the baseorders the co-pilot to detain Richards and take control of the helicopter. They do, massacre the civilians anyway and then Richards is set up as "the butcher of Bakersfield" complete with doctored video/audio footage as evidence.

Coincidence number one: The "smoking gun" material released by Wikileaks from the alleged Bradley Manning material was a video of military pilots firing on unarmed civiilians while receiving confirmation from their commanders that what they were doing was legal. For attempting to tell the truth about this incident Bradley Manning has now been in solitary confinement for 4 years or so and awaits his February 2013 military show trial in which he could receive the death penalty for "aiding the enemy".

In the movie version of the story the American population has been lulled into compliance by a neverending stream of violent and meaningless television programming (sound familiar) until a group of activist/commandoes hijack the satellite signal and interrupt the broadcast with the text "KILLIAN IS LYING TO YOU". After this text appears on the screen the actual footage of Ben Richard's helicopter's attack is broadcast and the house of cards comes down for the government controlled media.

So all we really needed was the text "KILLIAN IS LYING TO YOU" to appear on the screen as the Wikileaks video of the helicopte gunship attack was broadcast on the internet for this whole "Running Man" scenario to take place. The book is set in 2025, that makes us a couple decades early but then again who thought we would have drones patrolling the US as early as 2011-12?

There wasn't such thing as a public internet in 1982 when "The Running Man" was published so King's vision of the public suddenley becoming aware of the totalitarian state's machinations was via a hijacked satellite feed. But it's interesting that the Wikileaks infomation is often obtained when it is "hijacked" by whistleblower citizen activists like Bradley Manning (allegedly).

In a recent photo of Bradley Manning he was wearing a beret and I thought of the Dweezil Zappa character's beret in "The Running Man".

So now we have at least two events: 9/11 and the Wikileaks video allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning which were foretold by Kings book (1982) and movie (1987). Coincidence number three: An important character in the book who leaks important information to Richards and helps him expose what the government is doing in named Bradley.

The moral of the story is: If you want to know what is going to happen in thirty years read Stephen King's sci-fi.

No comments: