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October 16, 2003
"Threat Matrix" - PC Propaganda
I nearly finished reading Ann Coulter's "Treason," which among other things describes the liberal "anti" crowd's methods and inanities. The current chapter covers their ways of obstructing the War on Terrorism, more properly called The First Terrorist War. Needless to say, Hollywood idiotarians figure large in this effort.
By coincidence, tonight I watched "Threat Matrix" by those same Hollywood idiots. The blatant subtext was [very timely] how the War on Terrorism is destroying America and hurting innocent Arabs.
The script could have come straight from an example in Ann's book.
It starts with a bombing in a College Library, in the American History section, where a student is looking for a copy of the US Constitution. [Subtle, this isn't.]
Quick as liightning, the anti-terror squad folks go ripping through online library records looking for folks who have checked out suspicious stuff. One of them asks "Can we do this?" and another answers "Under the Patriot Act, we can get anything." [This is a total lie. They need a court order. And before the Patriot Act, the same information could be had by court order or by a grand jury, which is how a major serial killer was caught]. They find a suspicious pattern of behavior by a [big surprise] Muslim college professor who was a childhood friend of an investigator on the team, who just happens to be [big surprise] an Arab and lapsed Muslim named Mohammed. The professor is up to some suspicious stuff, like donating money to groups "alleged" [it's always "alleged" with the idiotarians, unless conservatives did the dirty deed] to support terrorism. He has also written some nasty stuff in a Saudi journal.
In addition, demands keeps being made for newspapers to publish a certain old college thesis, one which is quite radically against the American status quo. Each demand is tied to a subsequent bombing. Sure enough, our suspicious professor has had that very thesis checked out for a year [Surprised?].
Cut to an ordinary New England home with a stereotypical college type sitting at his desk. He is the author of the old thesis.
Suddenly, without warning, his home is invaded by a SWAT team, who haul hiim off to the anti-terror headquarters. After a short quesitoning, one of the anti-terror team suggests locking him up indefinitely in a cold cell because they think "he knows something", and "under the Patriot Act, we can declare him an enemy combatant and he has no rights" [a total lie - the enemy combatant declaration is made by the President as part of his war powers from the constitution, but facts never slow down the anti's - especially when making propaganda].
Cut to a classroom scene. Our Arab professor is lecturing on how the US Constitution is supposed to be interpreted. [Clever, eh? But it gets worse]
In comes the FBI, who handcuff him and haul him off. [This is about a subtle as a two-by-four between the eyes. Obviously the message is that the anti-terror folks don't have to obey the Constitution.] The Arab professor is then placed in military custody - [again, total lie. There is no such authority in the Patriot Act].
There is a short questioning, in which his former friend throws a Quranic saying at him, and gets back one about betrayal. End of questioning.
[Message to the watcher: childhood friendship and ethnic solidarity should be more important than national security]
Naturally, when all is said and done, the professor is innocent, and an ordinary non-Arab American is the bomber .
As a final touch, cut to the roof of a buliding. Our lapsed-muslim agent is standing there. There is a prayer rug on the roof.
Our agent has an epiphany and the scene ends with him praying towards Mecca (or Hollywood, it's hard to tell). [Message: don't suspect Muslims, terrorism is normally done by ordinary white guys. Oh, and Islam is an okay religion since our hero resumes its practice, while in Hollywood, if a character's religion is identified as Christian, he's obviously the villain.
Posted by John Moore at October 16, 2003 09:03 PM
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Comments
I'm so glad you commented on this. I watched that Threat Matrix and was completely digusted with the show. I'm glad you did as well.
Posted by: Plunge at November 2, 2003 07:48 AM
I suspect that the DNC is one of the secret sponsers of this show. The 12/6/o3 version was not so subtly aimed at making the president look like a fool, only looking for votes.
Posted by: Paul Rigby at December 4, 2003 10:42 PM
I just watched one episode of Threat Matrix on tv ( I live in australia, they just aired the show ). It had to do with this woman agent being sent to Jakarta, Indonesia, a country where I was born and raised. It's just hilarious to find a military guy guarding a prison, and the dress looks similar to an Indonesian Special Forces uniform (trust me, I know, I'm an Indonesian). Some German guy looked like he just got tortured in that prison. Ok,ok, now for the fun part: the truth: 1.The Cipinang Prison is NEVER guarded by a military force, not even for a foreigner.It's guarded for some greedy, money hungry police forces, which leads to 2.If the guy imprisoned is a drug trafficker,he can just pay some amount of money to the prison officers to set him free.3.There's no death penalty for drug traffickers (btw, that's Malaysia, not Indonesia).4.I just realized I am commenting on one stupid tv show about US propaganda to eliminate muslims around the world, but, hell, You readers cannot deny that tv shows are one of the most influential brainwashing media around.
Posted by: Ryan Rayford at May 31, 2004 08:49 AM
Thanks for your comment.
And yes, I think our TV shows are one of the reasons we are so disliked in much of the world. They give a very distorted view of our values - far more promiscuous sex and violence than we have in reality, US government, big corporations and religion almost always shown as evil, and other distortions.
And yes, it is also a powerful tool for altering attitudes, which is one reason that I wrote about that show. When you watch American TV fiction, you see shows that are designed to attract big audiences (first goal) and to alter American attitudes to be in line with that of the left wing, hedonistic attitudes of Hollywood (with a few exceptions). If you see American news, unless you watch Fox News, you see a medium intent on imposing their ideas (almost identical to those of Hollywood) on Americans. Hence the New York Times, at last count, had the Abu Ghraib massacre on its front page for 28 days in a row. A balanced news view of it would have it there a day or two - the incident wasn't that newsworthy in the sense that in all wars, there are occasions where soldiers get sadistic or otherwise out of control. In this war, these soldiers up to a Brigadier General were being investigated by a Major General, and they were going to be punished and new checks put in place to try to prevent similar situations. Furthermore, as a Vietnam Veteran, I went through more humiliation and real torture in my training. So the rleal story that a balanced news would report would say cover the following points:
A few members of a unit treated prisoners in the terrorist wing of Abu Ghraib more badly than was appropriate, and in some cases went way too far. Furthermore, they had a sex party in front of the prisoners with other people not assigned to the jail. The unit is being investigated for military punishment. Furthermore, somebody associated with the defense leaked SECRET/NOFORM classified pictures to the press in order to make it more difficult to prosecute some of the individuals, because the public release of the pictures prevents the defense from legally suppressing irrelevant but emotionally biasing pictures, giving room for appeals of a tainted jury (in military terms, "command influence"). Some of the techniques shown are used normally against prisoners with high value information, specifically humiliation. None of these techniques were used or are supposed to be used against common criminals. American military personnel themselves go through greater humiliation as part of their training, and many, iSurvival Evastion Resistance and Escape (SERE) schools go through physical torture. No cover-up was attempted except possibly by members in that unit.
By the way, if you are interested, there is a blog at http://www.rogerlsimon.com/ that you might find interesting (geopolitics, US politics, and especially the War on Terror). The comments section has a diverse group of people and thus good discussions. Roger is a novelist and screen writer, which is relevant to this discussion.
Posted by: John Moore (Useful Fools) at May 31, 2004 10:08 AM
Hi. Oddly I watched an episode of Threat Matrix and felt exactly the OPPOSITE of what you did. I saw it as reactionary propaganda that approves of (and tries to brainwash its audience in believing and supporting) Homeland Security, Patriot Act and other nonsense. Hilarious that we both think the show is crap though :)
ciaran
Posted by: ciaran at June 10, 2004 11:34 PM
Why when they took a suspects coputer away
did they also take the monitor ?
Posted by: Len at July 6, 2004 10:29 AM
sorry! computer
Posted by: len at July 6, 2004 10:32 AM
Posted by: online poker ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tinyvital.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 25, 2005 01:38 PM
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