From Peter Maloney:

Stinger: James O’Keefe’s Greatest Hits
by Zev Chafets
The New York Times
July 27, 2011

The temperature was hovering near 90 degrees on the afternoon of Memorial Day when James O’Keefe III emerged from the woods and ambled over to my car. He was tall and thin, with pale skin and matted reddish hair. When his mug shot ran in the papers, some people told him he looked like Matthew Modine. Others said Lee Harvey Oswald. On the day I met him, he wore muddy work boots, filthy jeans and, despite the heat, a long-sleeved shirt. “Keeps the mosquitoes off,” he said. All day he was in the outback of a regional park just west of the Hudson, breaking rocks with a pickax to construct a trail. As a boy he was an Eagle Scout, but this wasn’t a nature project. O’Keefe, the man whose video stings helped take down high-ranking people at National Public Radio and led to the demise of Acorn, the nation’s biggest grass-roots community organizing group, was doing federal time.

Eighteen months ago O’Keefe and three confederates, two dressed as telephone repairmen, walked into the New Orleans office of Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. This was during the debate over President Obama’s health-care plan, and angry opponents of the bill, which Landrieu supported, claimed their calls weren’t being answered. Landrieu’s staff said the voice-mail system was not working properly because of high call volume, and O’Keefe’s guys were out to get her staff to say that the phones were really fine while he captured the exchange on film. Similar strategies worked well in the past, but this time he was arrested and brought before a federal judge. In the end, he pleaded to a misdemeanor charge of entering federal property under false pretenses, paid a $1,500 fine and was sentenced to three years of probation and 100 hours of community service. (more…)

Submitted by David Strom:

‘Gay Girl In Damascus’ Turns Out To Be An American Man
by Eyder Peralta and Andy Carvin
NPR
June 12, 2011

Over the last several months, Amina Arraf, a blogger who said she was Syrian-American and went by the name Gay Girl In Damascus, captured the world’s attention. Her blog caught on just as the protests against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria became widespread and the crackdowns more violent.

On June 6, it all came to a screeching halt when Amina’s cousin declared on the blog that Amina had met the fate of many bloggers in authoritarian regimes: Assad’s police had taken her into custody. Whether she was alive or dead, no one knew.

As soon as “Free Amina” groups popped up on Facebook and the State Department began looking for her, the story began to seem a lot like fiction. No one had ever talked to Amina. The Guardian published a profile of her June 7 that included a picture they soon found out wasn’t Amina but of a Londoner called Jelena Lecic. The biographical details in her blog posts did not check out. Amina Arraf couldn’t be found in any public records in Georgia or Virginia and the names of her father and mother also turned up nothing. (more…)

MI6 attacks al-Qaeda in ‘Operation Cupcake’
by Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
The Telegraph
02 Jun 2011

British intelligence has hacked into an al-Qaeda online magazine and replaced bomb-making instructions with a recipe for cupcakes.

The cyber-warfare operation was launched by MI6 and GCHQ in an attempt to disrupt efforts by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular to recruit “lone-wolf” terrorists with a new English-language magazine, the Daily Telegraph understands.

When followers tried to download the 67-page colour magazine, instead of instructions about how to “Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom” by “The AQ Chef” they were greeted with garbled computer code.

The code, which had been inserted into the original magazine by the British intelligence hackers, was actually a web page of recipes for “The Best Cupcakes in America” published by the Ellen DeGeneres chat show.
Written by Dulcy Israel and produced by Main Street Cupcakes in Hudson, Ohio, it said “the little cupcake is big again” adding: “Self-contained and satisfying, it summons memories of childhood even as it’s updated for today’s sweet-toothed hipsters.” (more…)

Can’t Hack Marriage? Try Quantum Entanglement Instead
By Scott Thill
WIRED
May 11, 2011

In his latest science-themed prank, concept artist Jonathon Keats will marry anyone — or anything — using quantum entanglement as the tie that binds.

“Unlike conventional weddings, which must meet church or state standards for couples to be married, the nuptial entanglement process is totally open, as nondenominational and nonpartisan as the laws of physics,” experimental philosopher Keats told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. “As long as people meet the basic criterion of exposure to entangled light, the procedure can be as simple or complex as they wish.”

Monogamy isn’t mandatory. In fact, spouses need not even be human, said Keats, who will begin his quantum marriage ceremonies Thursday at New York’s Art Currents Institute.

“Many people already have a more intimate relationship with their iPhones than with their spouses, and perhaps this is another way in which nuptial entanglement is honest,” said Keats. “Technology is neutral. From a technical perspective, you can become entangled with your pet or your plant or your iPhone. You can show the ultimate environmental commitment by becoming entangled with the planet.” (more…)

Submitted by Dorette:

An Artist Takes Role of China’s Conscience
by Holland Cotter
The New York Times
April 5, 2011

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who disappeared into police custody in Beijing after he was detained on Sunday while trying to board a flight for Hong Kong, is a fully 21st-century figure, global-minded, media-savvy, widely networked. He is also the embodiment of a cultural type, largely unfamiliar to the West, that dates far back into China’s ancient past.

In a 30-year career he has combined, often at calculated personal risk, both aspects of his persona to create a role as an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, delivering his most stinging rebukes from within China itself. In light of his detainment, however, his ability to sustain this role, in China at least, would seem to be in serious doubt.

From a Western perspective, Mr. Ai’s career fits a familiar profile. We tend to like our contemporary Chinese artists to come across as aesthetic tradition-busters. (This is one reason that Pop-style Mao paintings by the likes of Wang Guangyi remain big-selling auction items.) In this regard Mr. Ai has not disappointed. In the 1990s he painted Coca-Cola logos on ancient Chinese pots, broke up classical Chinese furniture and photographed himself making a single-digit rude gesture in front of the White House, the Eiffel Tower and Tiananmen Square.

But gradually such Duchampian moves have given way to large-scale, socially critical projects. For a conceptual piece called “Fairytale” at the 2007 Documenta in Kassel, Germany, he placed 1,001 antique Chinese chairs, available for use, throughout the exhibition. He built an outdoor structure from 1,001 doors salvaged from Ming and Qing houses that had been eliminated by rampant development in Chinese cities. Through the Internet he recruited 1,001 Chinese citizen-volunteers to come to Kassel to live for the duration of the show. (more…)

‘I am not a witch’: Buffalo Beast editor running for Congress to replace Rep. humiliated on Craigslist
by Stephen C. Webster
The Raw Story
March 29th, 2011

Exclusive interview: Journalist behind prank on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is on the ballot in New York’s 26th congressional district

Ian Murphy has been at the lonely work of gonzo journalism for a while now, but it’s only recently that he’s achieved a level of national notoriety from his perch atop New York publication The Buffalo Beast. Others might call it infamy.

You may remember his last hit: prank calling Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, pretending to be billionaire tea party supporter David Koch.

Well, Murphy has a new project: He’s running for Congress.

When Gawker published shirtless photos that New York Republican Congressman Chris Lee sent a woman he contacted on Craigslist, Murphy didn’t see red like so many other voters living in New York’s 26th congressional district. He saw green.

Today, less than two months out from a special election, Murphy has secured a place on the ballot as the Green Party’s nominee: a nod he won by a unanimous vote.

In his candidacy announcement, Murphy sits by a fireplace smoking a pipe, reading off his hand (à la Sarah Palin) and intentionally flubbing his talking points for laughs.

This video is from YouTube user MurphyCanHasCongress.

(more…)

Prankster O’Keefe Strikes NPR
The Daily Beast
March 8, 2011

Ian Murphy, step back: James O’Keefe is back in the game. The young conservative activist and prankster released a new video Tuesday morning showing Ron Schiller, a recently departed NPR fundraising executive, bashing Republicans, the Tea Party, and Juan Williams for Islamophobia during a meeting with what Schiller was told were representatives of a charity funded by the Muslim Brotherhood. “They’re seriously racist, racist people,” he says of Tea Partiers. Schiller announced Monday that he was leaving for a job at the Aspen Institute. NPR strongly condemned his taped remarks Tuesday. O’Keefe rose to fame with the sting videos that helped bring down the community organizing group ACORN. Read it at Weigel. Watch the video here

NPR Muslim Brotherhood Investigation Part I

Read more about political pranks:

Submitted by Erin:

Revealing the Man Behind @MayorEmanuel
by Alexis Madrigal
The Atlantic
February 28, 2011

It was the best fake Twitter account ever, deftly satirizing Rahm Emanuel, and elevating the Tweet and the f-word to the level of literature. But the mystery writer was never revealed – until now.

There were many storylines in Rahm Emanuel’s romp to the Chicago mayor’s office: a powerful presidential aide leaves the White House; a mayor’s race without a Daley or even an incumbent; a candidate with a hazy claim on residency; the meltdown of former senator Carol Moseley Braun; the terrible voter turnout; and more.

But for networked Chicagoans and political insiders across the country, the performance and identity of @MayorEmanuel, a fake Twitter account, captured the imagination nearly as much as the real politics.

Caricaturing the notoriously dirty-mouthed former White House chief of staff, the Twitter account was a sensation as the election came to a close last week. @MayorEmanuel wrote nearly 2000 tweets in five months and collected several times as many followers as Rahm Emanuel’s real account. Since its last — and apparently final — update on Thursday night, some 1500 Tweets have been issued about the fake account . Daxid Axelrod himself, a frequent character in the stream, responded to a tweet Friday asking whether he missed the account, “You’re freakin’ A right I do.” (more…)

Update from Huffington Post 2:28pm: Buffalo Beast Website Goes Down Following Walker, Koch Prank Call. But you can listen to the prank call here or watch the 2 part video below.

Blogger Pranks Wisconsin Gov
Daily Beast
February 23, 2011

Wisconsin’s public workers are still deadlocked in a fierce battle with Gov. Scott Walker, but one blogger has his number—literally and figuratively. Ian Murphy, a writer for the Buffalo Beast, says he posed as businessman David Koch, a major funder of conservative and libertarian causes, and managed to get through to Walker, engaging him in-and recording-a somewhat embarrassing conversation. The ersatz Koch offers favors, draws Walker into an objectifying remark about MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, and gets him to tip his hand on a procedural trick to draw Democratic senators back to the state after fleeing to Illinois. Walker’s office confirmed the recordings are genuine on Wednesday. Read it at Buffalo Beast.

Here’s video in two parts of the phone call:

Koch Whore: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, part 1

Koch Whore: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, part 2

image: dailynews-update.net

Additional links:

Submitted by Chris Cook as seen in this article from the BBC about the origins of the phrase “Bunga Bunga”, February 5, 2011:

The infamous Dreadnought hoax, circa 1910, was dreamed up by aristocratic joker Horace de Vere Cole, who contacted the British Admiralty pretending to be the Emperor of Abyssinia. He informed officials that he wished to inspect the Home Fleet while on a forthcoming visit to Britain.

After enlisting some friends – artists from the Bloomsbury group, including writer Virginia Woolf – to masquerade as his entourage, he turned up at the navy’s state-of-the-art ship, the Dreadnought.

Officials, taken in by the dark stage make-up, false beards and oriental regalia, treated the group to an official civic reception.

They were reported to have cried “Bunga, bunga!” while marveling at the ship. An account of the visit plus a picture were sent to the Daily Mail newspaper – probably by Cole himself.

Virginia Woolf said that when the real Emperor of Abyssinia arrived in London weeks later, wherever he went, ”the street boys ran after him calling out ‘bunga, bunga!’”

Read the rest of the article here.

9 amazing political art projects of 2010
by Michael Lithgow
ArtThreat.net
December 10, 2010

Nasty galleries, arrests, fast food, American imperialism, Olympic culture jamming, cyborgs and cute cartoons

The star of ‘engaged art’ is on the rise. The number of artists creating, performing, and exploring in the world of social and political reality is mushrooming. Or maybe that’s the way it has always been, and new technologies are allowing us to do end-runs around gate-keeping curators and mainstream media. Either way, we are discovering whole worlds of politically engaged and celebrated artists that not so long ago would just as likely have been escorted from the hallowed houses of high art for disturbing the peace.

Call it what you will — engaged art, social practice, avant-garde, dialogical aesthetics, community art, public art, activist art, radical art — audiences for the confounding, beautiful, horrible and hilarious kinds of symbolic dissidence these practices describe are growing. When Art Threat started three years ago there was only a few websites like us. Now there are dozens. This is a very good thing.

A top 10 (or 9) list is a necessarily troubled compromise made up as it is by hierarchy and exclusion. On the up side it’s like a map — something to help navigate an increasingly complicated and at times overwhelming volume of cultural choices. So here’s my map of people and organizations to watch for, some better known than others, but all involved in making art that gets under the skin and changes — at least I hope it does — in some undeniable way those who encounter it.

Read the rest of this article here.

Shining a light amid the angry debate over mosque
by Lincoln Anderson
The Villager
September 16-22, 2010

There’s been an overabundance of loud, often ugly rhetoric about the Islamic center planned near Ground Zero. But last Thursday night, a video-and-art collective did something entirely different — words were involved, but they were presented silently.

For half an hour, a handful of members from the Glass Bead Collective projected a loop of a 7-second video onto the facade of the “Ground Zero Mosque,” on Park Place.

The image, 30 feet by 30 feet, was of a globe that morphed into a circle. Superimposed were the words “unity” and “equality,” alternating between a dozen different languages, including English, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Russian.

Watch the video:

(more…)

July 19, 2010 Updates:

Twitter Communiques From Fake French Foreign Ministry on Haiti Hoax
by Robert Mackey
The Lede Blog, NY Times
July 16, 2010

A group calling itself The Committee for the Immediate Reimbursement of Funds Taken From Haiti took credit on Friday for an elaborate hoax carried out this week in which an actor pretending to be a spokesperson for the French government announced that France would reimburse Haiti money it was forced to pay in exchange for its independence in the nineteenth century.

As The Lede explained on Thursday, the fake announcement was posted on a near replica of the French foreign ministry’s Web site on Wednesday in both video and text form.

In an update posted on a Twitter feed established this week, in the guise of France’s foreign ministry, the group, using the French form of its name, announced:

(more…)

Submitted by artist Stephen Barnwell:

Bailout for America
Artist Gives $535 Trillion to Stimulate Economy

[New York, NY] In light of these desperate economic times, New York-based artist Stephen Barnwell has given the United States of America an aid package worth an estimated $535 Trillion. On July 4th, this massive stimulus package was given directly to Congress with each and every US Senator and Representative receiving his or her own One Trillion banknote. It is Barnwell’s intention that they will serve as constant reminders of the true value of a trillion dollars, and of where our nation’s money is coming from. (more…)

Submitted by Andrew Boyd of Agit-Pop:

People generally find it notable when the Founding Fathers show up at your rallies.

And when Agit-Pop and the Campaign for Fair Elections sent Benjamin Franklin and friends to razz BP’s major lobbying firm, the Washington Post stood up and took notice.

In one of the cooler Agit-Pop actions in a while, the framers stood guard at the biggest fundraising hot spots in DC – and caught more than a few Congressmen taking their cues from Big Money, getting major press attention along the way.

Take part in more delicious Fair Elections Now hijinks – learn about July 4th events happening in your community.

- Andrew Boyd, Chairman of the Blurb, & John Sellers, Chief Existential Officer, Agit-Pop

photo: Fair Elections Now