Dissident Veteran For Peace: Traficantes de Sueños

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."

Monday, February 04, 2013

Traficantes de Sueños

Traficantes de Sueños (English title Sleep Dealer) is a fascinating low-budget, high-quality 2008 sci-fi film. The movie was made in the US and Mexico in Spanish with English subtitles. Set in the dystopian near-future, the film follows a young man named Memo from his home on a milpa in Oaxaca state to Tijuana. In Memo's world, corporations have locked up water resources and protect them with lethal force; drone attacks are regular television entertainment fare à la Cops; and the only part of immigrant labor that immigrates is the labor, which is technologically alienated and expatriated leaving the workers, cybraceros, in their home country.