Liverpool, England

Yesterday marked 70 years since the birth of John Lennon (1940-1980), a talented activist/misfit and empathetic non-conformist with a burning passion for peace and world unity. Nearly thirty years have passed since John was murdered on a New York street—yet his influence and “presence” continue to loom large…

Here are a few quotes by the former Beatle…

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Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

Philadelphia, USA

Lots more good parody along the lines of the above on his website here…

(Thanks to Matt Warburton for the link).

Hiroshima, Japan

This is a day that weighs heavy on the hearts of pacifists and peacemakers every year… 65 years ago today, at 08:15 on Monday, 6 August, 1945 the first nuclear weapon ever deployed on human beings (a bomb named Little Boy) was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay. Several days later, at 11:02 on Wednesday, August 9, Nagasaki was the target of the world’s first plutonium bomb (named Fat Man) dropped by the U.S. B-29 Superfortress Bockscar, flown by the crew of 393rd Squadron.

In 2005, I was one of 24 designers invited to contribute posters to Lest We Forget: Canadian Designers on War, an initiative marking the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (I’ve posted on that previously, here).

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On this holiday day of nationalist celebrations in the United States of America, billions of the world’s citizens (particularly those in the 150+ countries in which the American military is currently deployed) wish nothing more than that the “Yankees go home”—for everyone’s good. Many of my friends in the U.S. wholeheartedly agree…

London, U.K.

As anyone who visits this blog already knows, I hold pacifist views which I am prone to express in posts (as well as fireside conversation, and occasionally street protests) from time to time. I’m also not a fan of the use of nuclear energy in any form, least of all to create bombs and weaponry (as I have posted previously, here, here, and here for example).

That said, it really rankles me to hear the ongoing stream of dishonest and hypocritical rhetoric on this topic emanating from Washington (and Jerusalem, etc.), now leveled at Iran and North Korea—since Iraq can no longer be fingered. Any reasonably objective citizen of our planet can quite clearly see where the real nuclear threats lie. The above illustration (by The Times) underlines graphically, and with little bias (for a change), the real lay of the land as regards current nuclear proliferation.

Thanks to friend Filip Spagnoli for the source.

…is give peace a chance.

(just step back… or move to the side)

Kabul, Afghanistan (from today’s online New York Times)

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.

“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter. The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan. (more here)

While I have my doubts that PowerPoint can actually make you stupid, I’d agree that it’s a great tool—in an arsenal of many others—that can readily help portray your stupidity… although in the case of the USA and the coerced “Coalition” still fighting in Afghanistan, that seems to be a foregone conclusion.

Thanks to friend Marie-Aline Oliver for the link.

Winnipeg, Canada

Dad—you were born on this day in 1920 into the tough conditions of the Russian Civil War,—then happily escaped that conflicted land with your nuclear family to the new frontier of Western Canada a few years later. As I understand it, you’ve been smiling pretty much ever since… at least that’s the most pervasive and enduring trait that comes to my mind and memory (photos don’t lie either :-)  I remember a line from a magazine article (back about 40 years ago) that described you as “the genial jut-jawed John Jacob Peters”—still as apt and appropriate a descriptor as anyone could possibly pen, methinks.

Thanks for the faith and positive energy you’ve imbued in my brothers and me (along with the thousands of others whom you have given the better part of your life to)… may the next ten years be your best yet—and may your smile continue to warm the hearts and souls of everyone you meet!

I love you Dad. Happy, happy birthday…

(Thanks to brother Jim for the image scans, from last summer’s momentous family get-together in Pinawa.)