Friday, December 01, 2006

jericho - a new tv series

the past few months i have been following a new tv series amongst others called 'jericho'. the premise is that the united states of america has been attacked by unknown military forces. a few mushroom clouds later it focuses on a small town of 5, 000 and how the folks there deal with being cut off from the rest of america and the world. communication lines are down and so is power supply. tempers and egos clash and everybody is looking out for number one. not only do they have to cope with internal strive they also have to deal with roving mercenaries from out of town looking to milk the disaster for all its worth. season one ended 2 days ago and fans have to wait with bated breath for the next episode which will only appear sometime in february 2007.

i was initially hooked but things turned sour for me 2 episodes ago when mysterious boxes of supplies are parachuted down to the town folks from unidentified airplanes. the mayor of the small town decides against distributing the food to the people fearing that they may be poisoned. reason? all the boxes carry a chinese flag. this reaction is typical of the culture of fear which the bush administration has taken to new heights; something that the writers of the show is obviously not immune to. also during this episode, one of the protagonist rattles off a list of potential culprits for the disaster that have reduced their cosy american lives to rubble. no prizes for guessing who was mentioned in this list of shame.

this is symptomatic of the all-pervasive scaremongering that is riding roughshod over common sense. only a few episodes ago, another character comes across an abandoned goods train outside of town packed to the brim with food. the town had no problems digging into those supplies that time. why? no chinese flags.

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