These Muddled Times

Conditions: Difficult.

The Split of a Hair

The War on Terror is heavily invested in using pilot-less drones, driven from bases in America and used to blow up people identified as being "terrorists" in various countries around the world. I believe it is a blunt and stupid weapon, incapable of nothing more than creating more outrage and resolve in America's enemies. Given that no proper identification of the victims are done prior to detonation, these things are really just fancy car bombs. Recently yet another victory was claimed when Anwar al-Awlaki and "some others" were claimed as kills by the latest drone strike, but it's curiously a victory that has struck some commentators as hollow.

But more died on that day than two suspected terrorists. Awlaki and Khan were both American citizens and, according to the 14th Amendment, are therefore to be afforded the “privileges” and “immunities of citizens of the United States.” Among those privileges or immunities:

No person shall be held to answer for a a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury … nor shall [any person] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. (5th Amendment)
[...]

Citizenship cannot not be dismissed because of suspected crimes or words. In fact, it is citizenship in particular that keeps a person accountable to the rule of law. The 14th Amendment also states that being a citizen means being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

The idea that the government can authorize the revocation of someone’s rights because of words or suspected deeds, sets a frightening precedent — particularly when such a revocation leads to the assassination of the person without due process.

- antiwar.com/

I must say I find all this hand-wringing over Awlaki somewhat weird, akin to standing an a mountain of bones and complaining about the view. Exactly how many unknown people have been blown up by these drones over the last ten years simply because they were standing or sitting in the vicinity of someone who was thought to be a terrorist? Will we ever know? No, of course we won't. But blow up someone born in America and now the national conscious is pricked? Now we start worrying about due process? Now we're thinking about courts of law? This leaves yet more of a bad taste in my mouth.


Film Review: Hanna

Hanna is a very European take on a couple of themes we the audience are already familiar with. Firstly a young girl being taught by an assassin, secondly, a U.S government agent covering up an operation by any means necessary, and of course finally, a revenge flick. What's different about this movie is how decidedly odd it is. I'm not really sure what the plan was, how it was supposed to work, and whether it actually worked even partially in the end. Deep in the Arctic circle, Hanna is taught by her father (Eric Bana) the deadly arts until she is ready... to activate a homing beacon that will bring a squad of assassins who will put Hanna in an underground maximum security facility somewhere in North Africa, which she then escapes from while killing a lot of people, and sets off on foot for Berlin to meet up with her father, again. See, it just doesn't make any real sense.

Hanna is specially engineered on a genetic level, as part of a secret super soldier program, and that's why the Americans want her. Also the head agent (a very scary Cate Blanchett) is the one who killed her mother, long ago, while trying to shut down the project. The problem is that Hanna has spent her whole young life in the arctic, and knows nothing about the modern world other than what her father has told her. So she does rather well, considering. The director spends a long time showing Hanna enjoying, and talking to normal people. But the bad guys are never far behind. Considering how much preparation went into the "plan", it all goes wrong very quickly, and people start dying as Hanna enjoys her road trip.

While in the end there is an awkward comeuppance, once it's over we ponder things that the director did not show us: characters, plot explanations, inexplicable decisions, fight sequences, while thinking on the many moody shots of Hanna that he did show us. It is well shot, and well acted. But it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. A meal not quite cooked through, and not quite finished. While not quite the sum of it's parts, it is still an interesting take on an old standard. Two and a half dead cops out of five.


- Peace out