Chilean art collective Casagrande brought its “Poetry Rain” project to Berlin last weekend, dropping 100,000 poems over the city as a protest against war. Casagrande has done this several times since 2001, focussing on cities that have been bombed during actual warfare, such as Santiago de Chile, Dubrovnik, Guernica, and Warsaw. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any video of the drop, just the perparation for it. But if it was anything like the one they did in Warsaw, it was no doubt a spectacle to behold.

According to The Guardian:

Organisers say that just as wartime bombings were intended to “break the morale” of the inhabitants of a city, so the poetry bombing “‘builds’ a new city by giving new meaning to events of her tragic past and therefore presenting the city in a whole new original way”.

The Berlin project, for which Casagrande worked with Literaturwerkstatt Berlin as part of the Long Night of Museums, took place in the city’s Lustgarten, where a crowd of thousands had gathered to hear readings and performances by Latin American artists.

Poems dropped from the helicopter circling the area were by poets including Ann Cotten, Karin Fellner, Nora Gomringer, Andrea Heuser, Orsolya Kalász, Björn Kuhligk, Marion Poschmann, Arne Rautenberg, Monika Rinck, Hendrik Rost, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Tom Schulz, Thien Tran, Anja Utler, Jan Wagner, Ron Winkler and Uljana Wolf, according to Lyrikline.org, one of the organisations supporting the project.

Twenty-one-year-old art student Emily Henochowiz sounds to be at ease with herself while giving an interview to the Village Voice as she says half-jokingly:

“I guess I can be grateful to the IDF for giving me the chance to see the world in a new way.”

Donning a pair of black rimmed glasses, the self-designed art on the left lens intentionally obscures what was once her eye before she lost it after being hit by an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) tear-gas canister.

Emily was born a grandchild of Holocaust survivors and from an Israeli father that emigrated to the U.S. raising her in Potomac, Maryland. Emily became a creative artist and eventually attended Cooper Union Art Program in Lower Manhattan. She then went over to Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem as an exchange student. Her main focus was to make art, study history, and improve her Hebrew.

During her stay, though, she witnessed how Palestinians were being treated by Israeli settlers. This slowly started to show through her drawings. In one case a group of settler’s taunted Palestinian children with prayers.

This experience ultimately drew her in to political action with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-based organization of volunteers (one having been the late Rachel Corrie) who push for nonviolent demonstrations against the IDF. As the Village Voice reports:

Emily says her ISM protest activities were about the Palestinians, to prove to them that ‘it’s not all of our people’ who are against them. ‘It was important for me to tell them, “I’m Jewish, and I support you,’’ she says. “We’re a people like any other, which is part of the reason we’re in the situation we’re in!” Not the self-serious type, she laughs and adds, “Just because we went through the Holocaust doesn’t mean we aren’t racist, too!”

Among her work is some creative graffiti against the Israeli construction of The Wall that separates Palestinians from their land. Emily took part in a dozen demonstrations throughout her semester, but it was the day after the massacre on the Mavi Marmara that brought her face-to-face with IDF soldiers firing tear-gas grenades.

On that day, she was waving an Austrian and Turkish flag at the Qalandiyah checkpoint near the West Bank in protest against the flotilla attack. A few boys from a distance started throwing rocks at the soldiers. Even though the rock throwers were not in close proximity to her, IDF soldiers fired tear-gas at close range directly at Emily. Two canisters hit on either side of her feet, but the third smashed directly into her left eye. Blood began running down her face, covering her Nakba T-shirt.

As Emily collapsed a Palestinian woman instantly ran over, caught her, and wrapped her arms around Emily’s body while simultaneously applying gauze to her injured eye and dragging her off to the side.

Emily was then rushed to Hadassah University Hospital only to find out after examination that she’d have to undergo surgery to remove the eye. Upon her fathers arrival from the States, he discovered that the room next to hers was holding an injured prisoner from the Mavi Marmara flotilla. At one point one of the doctors approached her father and asked:

“Are you Jewish? Because, then, how could your daughter be involved in such an activity?”

Emily however is not alone. There are many other Jewish Americans who have been outspoken against the Israeli government’s actions towards Palestinians. She has made her drawings a plea for others to take notice of the injustices visited upon Palestinians. Even though she has lost her eye in the process she remains upbeat:

After all, her political activism, she adds, “was a real change from who I was before—an experiment, in a way. And it ended in me losing my eye. But it’s OK.”

Emily continues to write and draw at her blogspot Thirsty Pixels and has no plans on giving up as an artist.

• New Orleans artist Mitchell Gaudet has created a conceptual display of 53 black oil drums on the grounds of National Historic Monument Longue Vue House and Gardens. The barrels represent the amount of crude oil being spilled into the Gulf of Mexico every minute.

• Five activists from Culture Beyond Oil poured a black oil-like slick around one of the British Museum’s statues in central London to protest its sponsorship by BP. The thousand year old statue was chosen because it “represents the way in which civilisations once considered invincible can collapse in a short period of time”.

• More than 200 people, mostly Latino, gathered outside last night’s All-Star Game at Angel Stadium in Anaheim holding signs and distributing pamphlets that asked Major League Baseball to move next year’s All-Star Game from Phoenix because of Arizona’s controversial immigration law.

• A Libyan aid boat carrying 2,000 tons of food and medical supplies to Gaza was forced to reroute to Egypt yesterday because of engine trouble. A spokesman for the aid mission insisted the boat still intended to reach Gaza, but would not violently resist any efforts to stop them.

• More than a million people held a march in Barcelona to call for greater autonomy for the Catalan region after a Spanish constitutional court declared that there was no legal basis to recognize Catalonia as a nation or for the Catalan language to take precedence over Castilian Spanish.

• Several hundred hotel workers and supporters, many wearing black-eye Mickey Mouse masks, rallied at the Anaheim Convention Center on Monday to demand better health care benefits for employees of Disney.

• A small group of anarchists held an unauthorized picket at the South African Embassy in Moscow on Saturday in support of social activists and residents of informal settlements in South Africa, who were evicted for the World Cup.

• Around 200 dairy farmers gathered on the streets of Brussels on Monday to protest reforms that bring an end to permanent contracts between farmers and milk companies.

• A group of artists under the name The Good Crude Britannia picketed a party at the Tate Britain on Monday, calling on its bosses to cut their ties with sponsor BP.

• More than 11,000 Egyptians responded to a Facebook call on Friday to protest the death of Egyptian businessman Khalid Said by police brutality.

• Eight people were arrested in San Francisco yesterday for occupying the city’s Human Services Agency in protest of the closing of a homeless shelter and the mistreatment of the people who had used its services.

• A group of US military veterans hung a large banner on an abandoned hotel in Detroit on Saturday to protest and reveal the effect of war spending on American cities. The 10 x 15-foot sign read: “How is the war economy working for you?”

• Greek workers staged walk-offs on Tuesday, as part of the latest in a series of general strikes called to protest pension and labor reforms proposed by the government in an effort to reduce the nation’s soaring deficit.

• More than 1,000 people rallied outside police headquarters in Toronto on Monday to protest the police department’s brutal crackdown and arrest of 900 people, including many journalists, during the G20 summit.

• Some 200 people were arrested in Bangladesh on Monday for violating a ban on processions in thoroughfares during a march that was part of a 24-hour general strike to protest the “failures and excesses” of the government.

• India’s opposition parties have called a nationwide strike on July 5 to protest a rise in fuel prices they say will stoke inflation and hurt poor people.

Cruising down the busy streets of Buenos Aires, Argentinean artist and peace activist Raul Lemesoff has converted a 1979 green Ford Falcon into a moving library with the title “Arma de Instruccion Masiva” (Weapon of Mass Instruction) painted across it. Clambering out of the vehicle, he greets bystanders with a smile and offers them a book.

The Ford that buses him around used to belong to the Argentinean armed forces during its dictatorship. But now covered with over 900 hardcover books, he makes his cross-country trip handing out free literature for people in the cities of Argentina and in remote areas where schools and books are scant. He also accepts donations in order to supply schools in need.

In a recent interview, Raul explains the purpose of his project :

“The Weapon of Mass Instruction is meant to get people to recognize various aspects of life: sharing, education, and also to have a good time. It’s a contribution to peace through literature.”

By taking what was once a symbol of suppression and violence, Raul has transformed it into a peace campaign of communication through recycled books.

I’m not sure if Raul and his artistic rendered Ford Falcon are still traveling (the sustainability of the project depends on donations that can match-up or surpass the handouts). Despite any of these shortcomings, he plans on building more booktanks that will travel to other parts of the world.

• At their commencement ceremony last week, University of Maryland graduates held signs above their caps to protest the BP oil spill and demanded clean energy now.

• Thousands of French workers marched yesterday in Paris and other cities to protest planned pension reforms.

• Dozens of teachers rallied in Karachi, Pakistan yesterday to protest delays in certain allowances.  After police charged at them with batons, they held a sit-in.

• Last week, art activists entered the London Tate Museum and filled an exhibit with oil and dead fish to protest BP sponsorship as they labeled the Gulf oil spill “the largest oil painting in the world.”  The exhibit had to be closed for cleanup.

• A hundred people protested outside the courthouse in El Paso, Texas against Obama’s plan to deploy the National Guard to the US/Mexico border there.

• Several dozen people gathered in front of the Chevron building in Houston on Wednesday to protest the connections between oil and war.  A few were arrested for trespassing on private property.

• 400 employees of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago walked out on Wednesday to protest poor working conditions.

• A hundred people protested at a Toronto Gay Pride conference on Tuesday against the decision to ban the term “Israeli apartheid” from upcoming pride events.

• Activists mass-purchased an acre of land in Scotland near Donald Trump’s planned golf resort to prevent and protest the development of the land.

Renowned street artist Shepard Fairey—known best for creating the iconic Obama HOPE poster—caused a stir in Covington, Kentucky last week with the unveiling of a new mural, depicting an Asian child soldier brandishing an automatic rifle. The proprietor of the business who offered up his wall was not pleased and quickly covered it in white paint. According to Cincinnati.com, “He didn’t think his location across the street from an elementary school was an appropriate place for an image of a child soldier.”

Fairey, however, was unaware that his mural directly faced an elementary school. Had he known, Fairey said he might have made alterations. Nevertheless, he defended his work saying, “I felt like it was very obvious that it was about promoting peace and discouraging violence but not everybody agreed, obviously…It’s not hurtful so much as it is discouraging that there can’t even be a discussion about it.”

Surprisingly, though, the school and the city seemed just as disappointed by the business owner’s decision to paint over the mural.

No one involved in the mural project wanted to censor Fairey, said Natalie Bowers, Covington’s arts district manager.

She said she wished the mural could have stayed up so teachers could have discussed it with their students, and she stressed that the city of Covington did not play a part in the decision to paint over the mural.

Kudos to Covington for showing that provactive and political art has a place in small-town American society.

Remember the controversy that erupted back in 2005 when a Danish newspaper published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad? While there were nonviolent protests around the world, including a boycott of Danish goods, violent riots also broke out in many cities that left more than 100 dead.

Over at True/Slant, Michael Peck just wrote about one creative nonviolent response to the drawing of the Prophet Mohammad that occurred earlier this month in Wisconsin:

When the Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to defend the right of free speech by drawing stick figures of the Prophet Muhammed on campus sidewalks, the campus Muslim Students Association quickly responded. They followed the atheists on their blasphemous journey, and whenever a drawing of the Prophet Muhammed appeared, the Muslim students drew boxing gloves on the figure, and changed the name to Muhammed Ali.

[...]

Confronted with satire, the Muslim students responded with humor (yes, you could say they desecrated the atheists’ grafitti, but grafitti artists are in no position to complain).

And not only did they not complain, but the atheists actually were moved by the nonviolent response. As Chris Calvey, one of the group’s members, wrote on their blog:

You’ve got to hand it to them, it was a creative and non-confrontational way to minimize the intolerable offense of seeing stick figures labeled Muhammad. It was a celebration of free speech for everyone!

As a tribute to the “Hoover Carts” of the Great Depression, New York artist Jeremy Dean has created a horse-drawn Hummer cart for display in Central Park. He explained his motivation in a recent interview with the Daily Mail of London:

‘I came up with the idea during the global economic meltdown,’ Mr Dean said.

‘I thought these hummers are the pinnacle of consumerism and a powerful status symbol, so what will happen when they are no longer sustainable?’

Dean’s answer may be more provocative than realistic, but it’s certainly something to think about as the Hummer becomes ever more obsolete. Excessive (and worthless) luxury can always be put to good use. Maybe we can think of a better function than horse-drawn carriage since, personally, I’d rather see people make use of pedicabs than put a poor animal to work.

• Hundreds of people gathered in Moscow yesterday to protest the reopening of a factory environmentalists say will lead to waste being dumped into the world’s oldest lake.

• Hundreds of protesters, many in kayaks, took to the water off Horseshoe Beach in Newcastle, Australia yesterday morning to prevent shipping movements at the world’s top coal port. Rising Tide Newcastle said the protest stopped ships from entering and leaving the port between 10am and 5pm, but the Newcastle Port Corporation denies these claims.

• Landmarks around the world—including Beijing’s Forbidden City, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Sydney Opera House—went dark Saturday evening to observe Earth Hour, a global effort to raise awareness of climate change. 126 countries and more than 4000 cities and towns took part worldwide.

• Greenpeace activists unfurled banners of every size today outside the offices of Dell in Bangalore, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen, just as Dell executives meet to discuss a roadmap to finally remove the worst toxic chemicals from their electronics. The message around the world to Dell’s founder and CEO: “Michael Dell: Drop the Toxics!”

• Covered head-to-toe in black, a Saudi woman lashed out at hard-line Muslim clerics’ harsh religious edicts in verse on live TV last week at a popular Arabic version of “American Idol.”

• Students at two New Jersey high schools cut class yesterday morning to protest Governor Chris Christie’s State school-aid cuts.

• More than 7,000 people gathered in the main park of the northern Mexico city of Monterrey yesterday to protest a wave of violence that has affected the country’s third largest city in recent weeks. Most of the protesters wore white and some released white balloons and a white dove as signs of peace.

Here is the latest webcomic from our friend Jason Laning, who wrote the post on anarchism earlier this week. As always, visit his site to see it in its original size or check out his other work.

• British graffiti artist Banksy popped up with 4 new murals on the Regent’s Canal in London last week, one of which was this protest of global warming denialism.

• More than 1,000 people marched in Islamabad on Friday as part of a nationwide campaign that took place in 53 other Pakistani cities and towns to protest both Taliban bombings and the American drone strikes.

• Hundreds of demonstrators rallied on opposite sides of an Israeli-Gaza border crossing on Thursday to protest at the blockade of the strip imposed by Egypt and Israel. In Gaza, about 100 international activists staged a rally with some 500 Gazans, chanting and carrying signs denouncing the blockade. A small number of anti-Zionist, Orthodox Jews were among them.

• Hundreds of relatives of prisoners in a Mexican jail protested the expected transfer of inmates to make way for a film shoot with director Mel Gibson next year.

• Internally displaced people at a campsite in Nakuru, Kenya demonstrated along a highway to protest their poor living conditions following the onset of rains and demanded building materials.

• Dozens of Jordanians held a sit-in near the Egyptian embassy in the Jordanian capital on Sunday to protest Egypt’s plan to construct a steel wall along its borders with the besieged Gaza Strip.

• Thousands of people in Hong Kong took to the streets on New Year’s Day to demand full democracy in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The Chinese government ruled in 2007 that the territory cannot directly elect its leader until 2017 and its legislature until 2020.

• Police detained dozens of people at an anti-Kremlin protest on Thursday, including 82-year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva, one of Russia’s most respected rights activists.

Here is the latest biting comic from our good friend Jason Laning. For those that can’t read it, Bush is saying to Obama: “You know, you almost had us worried, for a minute there.” Again to get the full experience, check out the original on his site. There will be more on the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and resistance to it here soon.

The International Day of Climate Action on October 24th was so eventful that new and interesting photos from the more than 5,200 actions that took place around the world keep popping up. This one is from the flood-plagued shores of Borth, Mid Wales. According to Britain’s conservative tabloid The Daily Express, activists staged a photo of “domestic bliss” that gets “shattered by an uninvited guest – the Irish Sea.”

Hundreds of locals – who claim half their village could vanish by the end of this century – helped stage the event in which a living room, complete with walls and furniture, slowly disappeared as the tide came in.

Event organiser John Howarth said: “Much of Borth is very close to sea level and already suffers flood damage in high tides and stormy conditions.

“Unchecked climate change could be disastrous in our lifetimes.”

There are a lot of debates about whether violent video games contribute to causing violence in the world. They do. To remedy that, some have tried to develop nonviolent video games, notably A Force More Powerful, which we have but have yet to try out fully because Jasmine‘s PC is so phenomenally slow. Violence in video games is so dangerous, in part, because it misrepresents violence in reality; there is no cost and no real effect.

Now, artist Zach Gage has created Lose/Lose, a simple arcade game that takes a small step toward changing that. When an object in the game gets destroyed, so does an actual file on your computer. Here’s his statement:

Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted.

Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player’s mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land?

Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?

By way of exploring what it means to kill in a video-game, Lose/Lose broaches bigger questions. As technology grows, our understanding of it diminishes, yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly important in our lives. At what point does our virtual data become as important to us as physical possessions? If we have reached that point already, what real objects do we value less than our data? What implications does trusting something so important to something we understand so poorly have?

Following Lose/Lose, maybe it’s time for a new rule: violent video games must have violent consequences. I cringe, though, at the thought that people would probably play them anyway, just as they continue to get into real fights.

At the very least, it is time for a real warning on video game packages. Not just the current system of labels which even seem to make a violent game look more enticing, but truly substantive warnings, as on cigarettes. The research exists to support it. Still, that’s pretty pedantic. Do grown-ups really need to be told that they shouldn’t fantasize for hours about going on killing sprees? We should know better.

(h/t Joel Dietz)

Correction: A previous version of this post stated that the game only deletes files internal to itself. Zach Gage wrote in to clarify that, indeed, the game can delete any file on a user’s computer.