Dissident Veteran For Peace: Three Images from Chris Jordan

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Three Images from Chris Jordan

Below are three images from "Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait" by Seattle-based photographer Chris Jordan. The first image, called "Prison Uniforms," depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005. As I mentioned in "Lenin's Foresight," the US locks up more people than any other country.

The last two images are from "Barbie Dolls," comprised of 32,000 Barbies, equal to the number of elective breast-augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the U.S. in 2006. To see more images and read an interview with Jordan go to "Chris Jordan photographs our culture of excess in hopes of changing it."