Robert L. Peters

12 October 2011

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.


10 October 2011

Wise words of warning…

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This one’s for TransCanada Corporation and transnational ConocoPhillipsin solidarity with the hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions) of concerned citizens on both sides of the Canada/U.S. border opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline extension.

Seriously—don’t say you haven’t been warned.


9 October 2011

Power to the People…

New York, USA

Today was John Lennon’s birthday. In 1971, forty years ago (wow, that went by fast) he recorded and launched the song Power to the People.” I can’t help but wonder if and how he might be supporting the Occupy Wall Street protestors if he was still with us today…


8 October 2011

A salute! To Wall Street Occupiers…

New York, USA

Hats off to the ordinary citizens, 20-somethings, seniors, union workers, off-duty policemen, environmentalists, (and increasingly, journalists)—employed and unemployed—who are either camping out on Wall Street or visiting the protestors this weekend. I predict a steadily growing movement that will spread in both energy and girth, and that will ultimately help to create long-overdue change in the once-powerful United States of America (which much of the world still looks to for leadership). Keep it peaceful, keep it real—stay the course, good people!

The time to overthrow the corporate kleptocracy that has bedeviled your land, and—by “globalized” extension—the rest of the world, is long overdue… take in some reportage and commentary on this exciting grass-roots action here (Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Chris Hedges).

 


7 October 2011

Who does not thank for little will not thank for much.

—Estonian proverb


6 October 2011

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

Francis Bacon, (1561-1626)


5 October 2011

Rest in peace…

Cupertino, California

This evening marks the passing of a visionary light


3 October 2011

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

Chief Seattle, 1854


2 October 2011

Speaking of Gandhi…

Porbandar, India

Today is the birthday of the great Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), now celebrated around the world as the International Day of Non-Violence.

Although I have not been able to find verification that the “Seven Dangers to Human Virtue” attributed to him were actually stated by him (this could, admittedly, be an Internet meme—the airwaves are filled with chatter about him), from what I know of the man, they seem to fit with his character and worldview.

The illustration is from a Russian postage stamp issued in 1969 in honour of Gandhi’s 100th birthday (illustrator unknown, copyright free through Wikimedia Commons).


1 October 2011

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)


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