About 4 episodes into the season I realized that I was seeing more than just the usual subtleties that television usually contains to condition people into considering certain real world plot elements as normal. To give some background information for those not familiar with "Predictive Programming", we've heard of movies containing prophetic story elements like "The Long Kiss Goodnight" that foretold of 9/11 5 years before it happened. The Matrix, released in 1999 features a scene with a passport for Neo that has an expiration date of 9/11 2001 and an issue date of 9/12 1990, the day after George Bush's famous New World Order speech.
There was also an episode of The Simpsons aired in 1997 titled "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" that showed a magazine cover that had a large number 9 next to the twin towers to form a 9/11.
Another famous example of Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda script writing team to flaunt its plans of 9/11 to the U.S. is the pilot episode of the "The Lone Gunmen", a spinoff of the X-Files that aired 6 months prior to 9/11 2001. The story contained a plot by rogue government agencies to hijack a commercial jet by remote control and crash it into the World Trade Center. As if that wasn't eerie enough, they then planned to blame it on Muslim extremists and start a war. These examples of foretelling the future through the media are called "Predictive Programming". I am not breaking any ground here, I am just setting up my themes. For those who want to learn more, Alan Watt and others have done extensive research on this.
The drama Heroes has just completed it's 3rd season and 4th volume, which references its comic book setup that introduces each episode as a chapter number and title that make up volumes. The first 3 volumes followed regular people who realize through sets of circumstances that they are special and have super human powers. Some of the characters who have these abilities use them for self gain, some are outrightly evil, but many are good people who want to use their powers for good and to make the world a better place. Some characters can see the future in dreams or in visions that they paint or draw, others can freeze water, heal from injuries, fly, run fast, etc. It's very similar to the X-Men, in more ways than one, especially in this most recent volume. In the X-Men comic books, like Heroes, people have developed
special abilities through the natural course of evolution. In X-Men they are called mutants and the government realizes that these people cannot be allowed to exist and begin to detain them without due process even though many of them are perfectly normal and law abiding citizens. In Heroes, a private corporation called "The Company" has been secretly tracking, tracing, and arresting the dangerous people who show abilities. As it turns out the company is actually run by a group of heroes who have abilities. They created The Company to ensure their secrets are never revealed. They stop at nothing to arrest or kill their own kind to keep it quiet.
In season 3 one of the characters, Nathan Patrelli, is elected to the U.S. Senate for New York. He uses his post to speak to the President and propose that the government take over for the recently disbanded Company to seek out and arrest these dangerous super heroes. Patrelli is given a special strike force who is above the law and charged with the task of seeking out and detaining these heroes with a blanket warrant that allows them to arrest or kill anyone who they deem necessary for the greater good. The operations to find and track these people, who are almost all U.S. Citizens, are run from the ambiguously named "Building 26". Almost every episode of the new season has themes that any listener to Alex Jones, the talk show host who covers The New World Order and police state tactics daily on his show, will be familiar
with. In the interest of brevity and to cover them all, I will now list them with a brief synopsis of how they were used in the show along with a hyperlink to a real world news story as reference:
1. U.S. Marines being used as experiments: In chapter 12, "Our Father", a scientist is given a group of Marines who volunteered for these experiments to inject them with a serum that will mimic the evolutionary process that happened naturally and give the soldier random super human ability that his own body makeup will determine. Our boys in uniform have been used as guinea pigs for an awfully long time. Here's a selected history of U.S. sponsored biological experimentation.
2. Highway and Street Camera Surveillance: Multiple instances throughout the season of the government accessing the surveillance cameras on street corners or on highways to track the movements of a particular person's car. Sounds a lot like the National Vehicle Tracking Database. It also reminds me of the government's plan to put GPS tracker boxes in every car to tax us by the mile.. and so they know where you are at all times.
3. Biometric and face scanning cameras: There were multiple appearances of face scanning technology that identified a character from their surveillance picture taken while on public street corners and in their own cars. Interpol facial recognition software anybody?
This technology is really taking off and is finding a lot of uses in the consumer world as well. But keep in mind, every technology will be used to oppress you before it's used to help you.
4. DNA Database: A national DNA database was accessed to identify someone from evidence left at a scene. G.W. Bush signed "The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007" which authorizes the taking of DNA from every newborn which is then entered into the DNA database for life.
5. Cell phone tracking: This is not a new one, as it has appeared in "24" and many movies and cop shows by now, but characters were located by merely having a cell phone on them. Here's a story dated only a few weeks ago about papers released by the ACLU that accuse the Justice Dept. of tracing without a warrant. It's good to know the constitution is being respected.
6. Staged terror: The character Matt Parkman was kidnapped, knocked out and dropped off in front of the White House wearing a bomb vest. This was meant to demonize the heroes and make them appear dangerous. The attempt was diverted by a rescue from a friend, but he made the news and the terror effect was shown in full. I don't think a reference is required for staged terror, but here's a compilation for you.
7. Torture and Sensory Deprivation: When the heroes were rounded up they were marched on to an airplane. They were shown marching in line while wearing orange jumpsuits with shackles, black hoods, blacked out goggles, earmuffs, heavy boots and insulated gloves to prevent any of their senses from getting input to disorient the prisoners.Torture has been something of a fascination for the CIA for many years.
8. Hacking into Gov Systems through the internet: There is a character named Micah who goes by the name Rebel and has the ability to interface with computers by touching them. He uses the internet to hack into the government's systems and help his friends escape or ascertain information. The government has ratcheted up the fear lately by spreading fear among the people that the internet will be used by terrorists to halt our nation's ability to survive. To make it through we will, of course, have to surrender freedoms in exchange for security. John D. Rockefeller asked if "the internet should never have been invented". The New York Times published an article titled "Do We Need A New Internet?" that makes reference to an imminent "digital pearl harbor".
9. Military Roadblocks/Checkpoints: At the end of the season a checkpoint was set up on a road where two police officers shine flashlights into the cars as they drive up as they look for a suspect. When the person they are looking for is identified a van pulls up behind and jackbooted troops rush out to apprehend him. Unwarranted checkpoints were a regular thing of Nazi Germany and the USSR. Do we really want them here? CheckpointUSA is a blog that works to expose them. "Papers please".
10. Fema Camps and mass graves: In chapter 10, "1961" Angela visits a prison camp named "Coyote Sands" in the southwest. She had visited this camp as a girl with her family so that the doctors could help to cure her family of their super powers. The father and two daughters exhibited abilities and came to this nice place that had a playground, movie nights and.. barbed wire fences and armed guards for their protection. After a group of prisoners tried to escape because they realized that they were there for human experiments they were executed by the guards and buried in mass graves. FEMA has been moving closer and closer to the center of the government power structure by becoming involved in the processing of prisoners after riots or protests as they were in Seattle in 1999 when people were protesting the WTO meetings.
Peaceful protesters were taken to Sand Point after rioting broke out from an anarchist group that was being organized by a government agency to make a mockery of the protests. They also created a homely gulag for the victims of Katrina. FEMA is completely incapable of managing anything, let alone mass disaster and internment camps for an unknown threat. In January, HR 645 was introduced. The "National Emergency Centers Act". It mandates the creation of special camps that could house people in case of an emergency. Of course the definition of an emergency is left open to the government's own interpretation and uses pre-existing camps that FEMA has already built and staffed. Alex Jones has covered camps for Americans and mass graves in detail.
11. Controlling the Weather: This one doesn't exactly fit because it's not a government activity or response in the story (and it's also a rip off of Storm from X-Men), but since it is used with all the other relevant themes it's worth mentioning. Angela's sister Alice has the ability to control the weather. Controlling the weather has been an obsession with climatologists and the military for a while. Chemtrails have been employed to mitigate, or modify the weather for a long time. They have been appearing with regularity all over the world since 1996, but have existed since long before that. The ENMOD treaty, signed in 1977 at the UN, was an agreement not to use weather as a weapon. It's also been stated that the US Military wants to
A screenshot from an earlier episode. Check out the chemtrails in the desert sky.
There is still a part that I cannot figure out. The viewer will identify with the heroes and despise the government. The heroes, i.e. American patriots are who people will identify with. They will want to rebel and oppose tyranny. If this was the intent, was it a revolt by the writers? Were they forced to implement these themes into the story no matter how they did it, even if they looked bad? I do not have the answers to these questions, but it was really fascinating to sit there with my notebook each week and play "find the conspiracy". It really made the show that much more interesting. You can play the same game with "24" but it's too easy so you need to go for more subtle things like the fact that Chloe O'Brien's baby is named Prescott.
