This Week In Meh

Conditions: Sunny, Clear.

Speaking Indifference To Power.

Recently General McChrystal, the senior military commander in Afghanistan, made an announcement concerning the shooting of civilians that was ...completely ignored.

KABUL, Afghanistan — American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but in no instance did the victims prove to be a danger to troops, according to military officials in Kabul.

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,”
[...]

Though fewer in number than deaths from airstrikes and Special Forces operations, such shootings have not dropped off, despite new rules from General McChrystal seeking to reduce the killing of innocents. The persistence of deadly convoy and checkpoint shootings has led to growing resentment among Afghans fearful of Western troops and angry at what they see as the impunity with which the troops operate — a friction that has turned villages firmly against the occupation.

Failure to reduce checkpoint and convoy shootings, known in the military as “escalation of force” episodes, has emerged as a major frustration for military commanders who believe that civilian casualties deeply undermine the American and NATO campaign in Afghanistan.

Many of the detainees at the military prison at Bagram Air Base joined the insurgency after the shootings of people they knew, said the senior NATO enlisted man in Afghanistan, Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall.

- nytimes.com/

Well on the one hand I guess it's nice to see the military admitting it's mistakes. But on the other hand, it would be a hell of a lot better to see some kind of reaction to these mistakes. The fact that not one of the people shot to death or wounded at a checkpoint was actually a bad guy trying to do harm is, frankly, a tragedy. A tragedy of planning, of operations, of bloody common sense. And the fact that we are still failing in common sense, some 9 odd years into a stupid pointless war, and still killing civilians, is sickening.

And furthermore, the fact that such an admission is made in this day and age, and does not become a scandal, just goes to show how indifferent we all really are at the end of the day. No body really cares about the Afghans, nobody ever really did.




Film Review: Clash Of The Titans

I'm not really sure how or why, but Sam Worthington seems to have become Hollywood's go-to guy for action movies. He's appeared in virtually each one of late, and here he is again in Clash of the Titans. This time he is Perseus, a half-godly bastard son of Zeus, played by Liam Neeson. Yes that's right, Liam Neeson. Dressed up in shiny god-armor and a beard straight out of a Greek fresco. Ralph Fiennes plays Hades, Zeus's brother, who pisses off Perseus by killing his family. The age of the gods is drawing to a close, and the age of man is dawning, with Perseus being tasked to lead an expedition to find a way to stop the Gods from unleashing the Kraken on the city of Eros, or Argos, or something Greek and ancient.

It's relatively silly stuff, with people wildly thrusting swords at giant screaming creatures, while Zeus and his cronies look down on it all from their throne room. He figures if he lets Hades unleash the Kraken, the people will be scared again and will resume praying to him. The ingratitude-of-the-beings-I-gave-free-will-too, kind of stuff. Perseus is in it for revenge, and hates the fact he's a half-god, despite it being the only reason he has a chance of succeeding. Along the way, he'll gain the respect of the poor sods who got roped into helping him, find love, and even bond with his dear old dad. Worthington is essentially reconstructing his terminator role, with a chunk of Maximus thrown in. But it's all a bit too light weight to have much of an impact.

So the CGI beasties are most impressive, and the action sequences are fairly well done. There's even a little bit of a moral somewhere, about governance I think, but really I'm not sure it's worth the effort. You see, Gods can't actually be killed, no matter how angry you are at them, so, yeah. It's ultimately a well-shot film, but with not a lot to it. It really needed more time with Zeus and the other Gods, to try and balance out the whole Gods versus Humans thing that this film is actually about. Instead it's kind of a road movie about guys that we really don't know much about, interspersed with big CGI battles. Two and a half togas out of five.



- Peace out