It seems I’m not the only one who seeks meaningful connections in real life through works of art. Fellow online journalists (including George Galloway and Kim Iversen) have stumbled onto one themselves that almost prophesied what happened to Charlie Kirk, quite literally to a word.

By Emad Aysha
Brian De Palma’s conspiracy flick Snake Eyes (1998) is the guilty culprit. I’d seen it before, but rewatching it was uncanny. You also have an assassination at an arena in Atlantic City during a boxing match. The target is a penny-pinching Defence Secretary, Charles Kirkland, who was about to expose a corrupt missile defence deal. And that’s not the half of it.

HUNTER'S BALL: A screenshot from 'Snake Eyes' (1998) with the aptly named boxer Lincoln 'the executioner' Tyler and shady cop Rick Santoro trading blames in a room full of weapons and animal trophies.

The secretary was retrieving documents from an employee, Julia Costello (played by Carla Gugino), and used the arena as a venue. The heavyweight champion Lincoln ‘the executioner’ Tyler (Stan Shaw) then takes a 'dive' to open a line of fire, and the shot rings out. And, you guessed it, it's hits Kirkland right in the throat!

There are other similarities, such as the old man in the crowd who creates a ruckus to create a distraction. Needless to say, he’s part of the plot too. The only difference this time around is that the cop in charge, Rick Santoro (Nicholas Cage), actually knows what he’s doing and shuts down the entire complex.

They didn’t even have that common sense in the Utah campus assassination; see this ex-FBI officer interview. (Or the School Book Depository, incidentally.) As for the crime scene, it’s a casino-hotel that is being prepared for demolition. (The man doing the demolishing is the same corrupt defence contractor, wouldn’t you know it.)

Santoro is streetwise, so he sees through Tyler's pretence of being knocked out and starts pulling strings, tracking down the girl. Then he gets the jolt of his life. The real planner is the man in charge of security for Kirkland, the straight-laced Navy officer Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise), who is not coincidentally Santoro’s best friend.

Well, Dunne is also a lobbyist for the said defence company. Sadly, he is actually doing this for what he sees as the country’s national security, and chose this venue because he knew he could bribe Santoro to look the other way.

Or so he thought. The penultimate moment in the movie is when the girl tells him how she saw Dunne with the would-be assassin. A Palestinian, typically, and with a (phoney) death wish to boot, with Dunne conveniently next to where he’s hidden to take him out and become the unceremonious hero.

SITTING DUCKS: Eric Hoziel [left] as the disposable assassin, Carla Gugino as the whistleblower (decked in angelic whites) and Joel Fabiani as the bespectacled Secretary Kirkland.

When I first saw this movie, way back when, I liked it, but I didn’t see the connections. De Palma, very cunningly, was both talking about the past and the future. The condemned casino is going to be renamed the Millennium, suggesting that the movie is set in post-Cold War America on the cusp of a new century, and whether it will truly put the past behind it.

The quick answer is no. The military-industrial complex won’t let that happen and will, furthermore, dredge up new and convenient threats to keep the wheels of commerce rolling. Terrorism is named explicitly here, and Dunne himself was a veteran of the Gulf War, narrowly surviving a missile attack on his ship. (Hah!)

The Palestinian stoolpigeon was supposed to be angry about Kirkland giving missile defence tech to Israel, and conveniently sent angry letters to him. (This is an apparent reference to Sirhan Sirhan and the RFK assassination, and maybe even the Iron Dome.)

Even the journalist on the job, Lou Logan (Kevin Dunn), says he wants the gig to become famous like Dan Rather from the John F. Kennedy assassination. (This is like the TFX contract under JFK; see Fletcher Prouty 1992 interview).

Now you could chalk down all these coincidences to satanic forces determining the fate of our political systems – one researcher has said that – or take a less otherworldly option. Namely, that Mr De Palma is like Rick Santoro – streetwise as hell.

COMMERCIAL CAPERS: Nicholas Cage as the anti-hero hero of the piece. Notice the Pepsi logo over the millennium sign. Brian De Palma's the man!

Clearly, he conducted thorough research for this movie. Previously, he made Blow Out (1981), where a presidential candidate is murdered through a manufactured car accident. It was meant to be a setup involving a prostitute and a sex scandal, but it turned serious.

The man in charge, Burke (John Lithgow), goes on a murder spree to find the prostitute and cover his tracks, making it look like the work of a serial killer. The calling card the supposed killer uses is the Liberty Bell, a clear political message on the part of the director.

You see this in the closing scene in Snake Eyes, too, where Santoro talks about how Atlantic City was peopled initially by pirates who built false light towers to draw ships to crash on the rocks. The only thing that’s different this time around is the lights, as he tells the still naïve Julia.

It’s also noticeable how grimy and seedy so many of the characters are. Squeaky-clean people with high-sounding ideas are the true culprits, while it’s the more self-interested who saved the day. Both Santoro and the equally shifty journalist dude are in the right place at the right time.

Santoro loses everything by the end, as the media attention exposes his own shady deals, but he meets up with Julia and they exchange kisses. He has reconciled with what he did, and things technically end happily.

IMPERIAL DECOR: Gary Sinise as unassuming badguy Kevin Dunne, somebody who clearly takes his job too seriously. (Notice the tacky Oriental background in the hotel corridor?)

One more conspiracy quip. I’d wager that the people who did the dastardly deeds before are the ones responsible for the Charlie Kirk assassination. Hence, the similar handiwork. I’ve discussed the neck shot and the signalling system before. There was also the famous epileptic seizure in Dealey Plaza just before Kennedy’s motorcade, which was also a distraction.

I’d also wager that they read pop culture themselves and use it to devise their cover stories, including movies. (There is something called the ‘military-entertainment’ complex.) If you read Robert Heinlein’s Between Planets (1951), you have aliens on Venus called ‘Dragons’ and also, by pure coincidence, a large and prosperous Chinese immigrant community.

Slit-eyed aliens, I’ve argued before, are a stand-in for the Yellow Menace. Mike Benz has connected supposed UFO sightings to CIA conspiracies himself, referencing the Mirage Men documentary.

Wouldn’t you know it, Between Planets actually begins on Earth. Where? Roswell, New Mexico!