Dissident Veteran For Peace: Felon

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."

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Felon

Felon (2008), starring Val Kilmer and Stephen Dorff, is certainly not a perfect movie but it is a generally good, if disturbing, film with an important message about America's out of control police-judicial-prison-industrial complex. The film was made in a New Mexico prison and was inspired by actual events. In 1996, the Los Angeles Times published "Tales of Brutality Behind Bars" concerning the brutality of prison guards at the California State Prison, Corcoran; this is the real-life background of Felon. Mark Arax's article and Felon illustrate that there is no shortage of criminal gang members wearing uniforms and badges. Without really trying, I found a more recent example of this in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, "Suit says guards made inmates fight 'gladiator-style' in St. Louis jail," from last year. Another point Felon makes is how vulnerable even the most seemingly unlikely people are to being ensnared in the system. Felon writer-director Ric Roman Waugh has followed up Felon with Snitch (2013), starring Dwayne Johnson and also inspired by true events, which deals with much the similar subject matter. At right is an infographic from the Snitch official web site.