When talking about Hate or Unhate I prefer relations between real people. Those on the front line.
Unhate isn’t about stunning Photoshop work or a green logo from Italy.
The Ottawa Citizen has taken an interesting approach to memorializing Canada’s war dead. Perhaps taking a cue from Israel’s tradition of annually naming all the people killed by Palestinian terror attacks, The Citizen has created a Twitter feed called ”We Are The Dead”
The Citizen’s Glen McGregor set up a bot that accesses the Canadian Government’s Virtual War Memorial, which houses 119,531 records of Canadians killed at war (mostly in the 20th century). Once an hour, it randomly accesses a name, rank, posting and date of death and uploads it to Twitter.
“A quick calculation showed us that it will take more than 13 years for the bot to work through the list of war dead. We decided it was worth doing anyway,” says McGregor in his blog.
“We are the dead” is a line from the WWI poem ”In Flanders Fields” by Canadian physician and Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae”
Here is the stanza:
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Nice animation from Vidar Bakkeli made for ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Banning Nuclear Weapons isn’t the most salient activist movement these days. Remember the 90s.
That is what ICAN tries to change:
“Our aim is to inspire young people to take action and raise awareness on the fact that nuclear weapons do not make us safer because they cannot address the threats that young people and our societies have to face today.”
These are the arguments from ICAN:
- because there are 20.000 nuclear weapons in the world today, and represent a constant threat to humanity;
- because in case of a nuclear attack, borders would not protect us from radiations and climate change;
- because the resources that we invest in nuclear weapons could be reinvested, helping the economy to get back on track;
- because we believe that change does not just happen we, collectively, make it happen!
Inspired by ancient solar temples like the Newgrange Tomb (which catches winter solstice sun), the Canadian War Museum included an interesting architectural feature in its 21st century rebuild. Each November 11, Remembrance Day in Canada, a carefully-placed window allows a column of morning sun to frame the headstone of Canada’s Unknown Soldier at 11 am Eastern Standard Time (DST -5:00). This coincides with two minutes of silence observed at Canada’s War Memorial in downtown Ottawa.
The phenomenon is being webcast live from the museum today, so if you care to see it you can tune in here.
I’m not sure I love the art direction in this ad by DDB for a Canadian heritage NGO, but I do support the sentiment. The anniversary of the armistice that ended World War One is observed in Canada by the wearing of red plastic poppies and ceremonies at war memorials across the country. The poppy symbol was adopted after Canadian soldier-physician Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote the poem ”In Flanders Fields” , which used the numerous poppies growing on the disturbed soil of battlefields and graves and a key image. McCrae did not survive the war.
My complaint is simply one of balance. The tiny soldiers marking tomorrow’s date are overshadowed by the poppy. I find this unfortunate, because the emphasis should be the other way around. The poppy is supposed to symbolize the very real sacrifice people like them have been willing to make. But it is only a symbol. Tomorrow’s memorial is about mourning the loss of human lives to war, and hoping for a more peaceful future.
I wrote about the Impossible Brief before, very briefly in 2010. I forgot about it until a few weeks ago when I saw the result: Blood Relations. To be enthusiastic is an understatement. For me this is one of the highlights from 2011. It is how hate and revenge can change in love and understanding.
It isn’t the ultimate solution, but it is powerful. It is about blood, a symbol for war and for life. A vehicle what can only be conceived by a creative.
The Impossible Brief was launched in June 2010 by Saatchi & Saatchi Israel at the Cannes Advertising Festival. Creative minds from all over the world were invited to present ideas that would bring Israelis and Palestinians closer together.
Saatchi & Saatchi Israel launched the ‘Impossible Brief’ which led to ‘Blood Relations’ - a joint Israeli-Palestinian blood donation last week of September in Tel Aviv. Israeli and Palestinian members of the Parents Circle Families Forum (PCFF), an organisation for parents from both sides of the conflict who have lost family members, came together to give blood as a symbolic act of healing. The blood donations will be shared by Israeli hospitals through the Israeli Blood Bank, Magen David Adom and the Al-Makassed Islamic Charitable Society Hospital for Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
Ali Abu Awwad, Spokesperson and Project Manager said on behalf of the Parents Circle Families Forum: “Blood Relations’ seeks to provide a catalyst for dialog by demonstrating two peoples’ shared humanity through the common bond of blood. It is incumbent upon us to stress the need for an ongoing dialog towards peace, whatever the result of the Palestinian quest for an independent viable state.”
Outrageous to say probably but what a beautiful video from ActionAid UK. I was hoping this video wouldn’t be necessary.
It’s latest campaign from ActionAid to highlight the 10th anniversary of US and British forces’ intervention in Afghanistan.
The presence of the troops is questionable but without it would a devastating situation for women.
Running literacy workshops for women or teaching 5-year-old girls the alphabet may not sound like much. But in a country where 84% of women never learn to read, they are the most important steps towards stopping the violence. For good.
ActionAid recently carried out an extraordinary survey where 1,000 women from Afghanistan were polled to gain a rare insight into their opinions about living through the last ten years of war and the current reconciliation process with the Taliban.
Read it after the break.
"No big said eyes, no laughing or crying children. No drawn faces of hunger...” I read it in the german magazine “Werben & Verkaufen”.
There is a lot of courage to advertise in this way. But only because it is different, it catches my eye. I would almost call it Art. And advertising .
The one does not exclude the other.
I recently had the privilege of being invited to speak and participate in the 2012 Design Ethos Conference/Do-ference at Savannah College of Art and Design. The creator of the conference, Scott Boylston, is a longtime friend in the relatively small socially conscious design community and I was delighted that…
Some things in life are easy. We know them, we think of them, we understand them. And then there are those phenomena we would rather not know about. All the bad things … murder, rape, child molestation. We try hard to look away, and most of the time we…
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