Boston, Massachusetts 

Noam Chomsky turns 80 today. American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer, the New York Times calls him “arguably the most important intellectual alive.” Publisher of more than 100 books, Chomsky is an Institute Professor emeritus and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (he became well known in the academic and scientific community as “the father of modern linguistics”—since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist, and a libertarian socialist intellectual).

Hardly a minute has passed in the last half-century, it seems, when Chomsky has not been pouring out ideas and passions. So polarizing is his effect that the world seems split between Chomskyites and anti-Chomskyites.

Some quotable Chomsky quotes:

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued—they may be essential to survival.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control—“indoctrination,” we might say—exercised through the mass media.

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it. 

Winnipeg, Canada

My seasonal button for this year revisits a poster I created some time ago for Buy Nothing Christmas. There are compelling alternatives to consumerism, and less is usually more…

Bhopal, India

Twenty-four years ago, on the night of Dec. 3rd 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal. Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 20,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site. These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing, and gynecological disorders. The site has never been properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal.

In 1999, local groundwater and wellwater testing near the site of the accident revealed mercury at levels between 20,000 and 6 million times those expected. Cancer and brain-damage- and birth-defect-causing chemicals were found in the water; trichloroethene, a chemical that has been shown to impair fetal development, was found at levels 50 times higher than EPA safety limits. Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women.

In 2001, the Michigan-based multinational chemical corporation Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide, thereby acquiring its assets and liabilities. However, Dow Chemical has steadfastly refused to clean up the Bhopal disaster site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the victims, or disclose the composition of the gas leak, information that doctors could use to properly treat the victims.

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Nearly a quarter century after the disaster, the Bhopal site has still not been properly cleaned up. (Dow’s reported profits for 2007 were over $3.7 billion… so the lack of restorative action on this horrific issue is clearly not because the firm cannot afford to make things right). Children of victims continue to suffer, but have no health coverage. Hundreds of children are still being born with birth defects as a result of what is considered to be the world’s worst industrial disaster to date…

Photo: ‘Burial of an unknown child’ by Raghu Rai, 1984.

Hornbaek, Denmark

One of my all-time favorite graphic expressions… by a masterful designer and a real “Mensch” who I have had the profound honour and pleasure to get to know as a friend and colleague… Mervyn Kurlansky.

Kharkov, Ukraine

On 26 April 1986, at 01:23:44 a.m., reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant exploded (near Pripiat in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Lethal doses of radiation affected those working and living in proximity to the failed reactor (hundreds of times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima) and the plume drifted over extensive parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, and eastern North America. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people.

Three days after the explosion, former army officer (and poster artist) Lieutenant Oleg Veklenko was among thousands of reservists mobilized by the Chemical Defense army forces to “clean up” the remains of the reactor. In the disturbing days that followed (he was stationed at Chernobyl for two months), he took many photographs of the reactor and the people affected by radiation, capturing viewpoints not accessible to the international media at the time (especially hard-hit were those within 30 km of the plant).

As an artist and teacher at the Kharkiv Institute of Industrial Arts (now the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts), Oleg Veklenko created a significant body of documentarty portraits and pencil sketches of the soldiers who were risking their lives in service to their country—these works resulted in the organization of a formal exhibition of “Chornobyl heroes’ portraits,” which went on display in the art galleries of Chornobyl, Kiev, Kharkiv, Poltava, and other cities of Ukraine.

The hard experiences learned from the Chernobyl incident formed a leitmotif of moral responsibility that became central to Oleg’s subsequent life and art—in particular, the need to face the threat of new technological catastrophes and environmental pollution. In 1991, a decision was made to organize an international poster exhibition entitled «4th Block» devoted to the fifth anniversary of the Chornobyl tragedy. Designers and printmakers from 54 countries responded to the initial invitation to submit their works of art… a significant triennial event was birthed, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Every third year since, Kharkiv has been the site of the international triennial of the eco-poster, eco-graphics, and youth-oriented eco-projects. Exhibits “touch the most painful ecological problems; pollution of the environment, global warming, genetic engineering, etc.” The sixth triennial «4th Block» took place in 2006, drawing a unique collection of over 4500 contemporary graphic works and ecological posters from 54 different countries.

The call for entries for the seventh juried «4th Block» 2009 triennial has just been announced. Participation is free, and the entry deadline is 1 February 2009. Find full information (and entry forms) in a down-loadable PDF (324 KB) here.

Congratulations, and best wishes for another successful event, Oleg!

Steinbach, Manitoba

My lovely raven-haired mother, Amanda Marie Reimer, was born 82 years ago today… and was married to my remarkable father, John Jacob Peters, 19 years later to the day—congratulations (and thanks :-) are once again in order.

So sorry you were taken away from us at such a young age, Mom—there’s been so much in the past four decades you would have loved to experience…

What is it they say—only the young die good?

Geneva, Switzerland

According to UNAIDS (the joint United Nations project on HIV/AIDS) estimates, there are now 33.2 million people living with HIV, including 2.5 million children. During 2007 some 2.5 million people became newly infected with the virus. Around half of all people who become infected with HIV do so before they are 25 and are killed by AIDS before they are 35. Around 95% of people with HIV/AIDS live in developing nations. But HIV today is a threat to men, women and children on all continents around the world.

Started on 1 December 1988, World AIDS Day is about raising money, increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. World AIDS Day is important in reminding people that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things still to be done…

Find out more about HIV/AIDS and efforts to fight the disease here.

One of my favorites, by Marty Neumeier (smart consultant, great author, and talented designer). Download this copyright-free poster here… along with numerous others by American designers.

Worldwide…

Today is International Buy Nothing Day (a day later than in the U.S., where BND coincides with the annual frenzy of Black Friday, described by the New York Times as: “A quintessentially American ritual at the altar of consumerism, Black Friday marks a day of 5 a.m. openings, 50 percent discounts and… lurid spectacle(s) of shopping as competitive sport.”)

Shopping truly is an ugly orgy of consumerism in the U.S., where (according to the National Retail Federation) more than 128 million are expected to shop this weekend. To wit—at 4:55 yesterday morning, a shrieking mob of thousands of Wal-Mart shoppers in Long Island broke through glass entrance doors and trampled 34-year-old worker Jdimytai Damour (Jimmy) to death in a blind stampede for holiday bargains. Other workers were also trampled as they tried to rescue Jimmy, and customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death, according to police and witnesses. There’s more wrong with that picture than I can begin to shake a stick at…

Wanganui, New Zealand

This great little animation (on YouTube) is by Kate Adams, one of the talented students graduating from the Bachelor of Computer Graphic Design program at Wanganui School of Design. I acted as Kate’s external moderator last week… hope you enjoy wee Melvin and his journey of self-determination as much as I did.