…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
Money Found in Toilets Across Japan
AP
July 13, 2007
Tokyo — Envelopes containing 10,000 yen ($82) bills and well-wishing notes have been discovered in municipal toilets across Japan, media reports said, baffling civil servants and triggering a nationwide hunt.
Local media have estimated that over two million yen ($16,400) worth of bills were found at men’s rooms in city halls in at least 15 prefectures (states) in recent weeks. Read the whole story here.
photo from: nbabi weekly
China Executes Former Food Chief
Time.com
July 10, 2007
(Beijing, AP) “” China executed the former head of its State Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Zheng Xiaoyu was sentenced to death in May for taking bribes to approve an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths and other substandard medicines.
The sentence was unusually heavy even for China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined. It was an indication of the leadership’s determination to confront the country’s dire product safety record. Read the whole story here.
Image from The Slow Cook, which also has an interesting article on this subject. Just look for the dead fish.
By Sheldon Rampton, PR Watch, June 25, 2007 about artist-activist Steve Kurtz:
I happened to meet Steve Kurtz in December 2002 at a “World Information Organization” conference in Amsterdam, where we were both speakers. Kurtz spoke on the topic of The Spectre of Intellectual Property Rights and described his work as a performance art provocateur. To challenge corporate control of biotechnology, for example, his Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) produced an exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. called Molecular Invasion. It consisted of a “live public experiment” that attempted to “reverse engineer genetically modified cash crops” by developing a chemical that can be applied to the Monsanto company’s genetically-engineered Roundup Ready crops to make them vulnerable again to “the crippling effects of RoundUp herbicide.” Another CAE project, Free Range Grain, consisted of a mobile lab that invited the public to test foods for genetic modification. Another, more whimsical project that Kurtz showcased at the conference in Amsterdam was called Cult of the New Eve (CONE). It consisted of a mock religion that practiced “molecular cannibalism” by inviting people to eat bread and drink beer containing human DNA.
At the end of the conference, I had dinner with Steve Kurtz and some of the other participants. He told some funny stories, and I told a few myself. Neither of us knew at the time that his life was soon to take a strange turn that would lead to the FBI accusing him of terrorism. Continue reading “Steve Kurtz, artist or terrorist?”
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Constitutional Law Scholar Jonathan Turley discuss the urgency of the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007, a bill that would restore the constitutional right, originally embedded in Article One, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution but revoked by Congress last year as part of the Military Commissions Act, for a prisoner to be brought before the court so that the court can determine whether that person is serving a lawful sentence or should be released from custody:
From Reuters:
U.S. Senate moves to restore detainee rights
by Jane Sutton
WASHINGTON, June 7 (Reuters) – Guantanamo prisoners and other foreigners got a step closer to regaining the right to challenge their detention in the U.S. courts in a bill approved in a U.S. Senate committee on Thursday.
The Judiciary Committee voted 11-8 to send the proposal to the full Senate for debate, with Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania the lone Republican joining the Democratic majority.
Congress last year revoked the rights of foreign terrorism suspects labeled “enemy combatants” to challenge their detention by the United States. The Bush administration said it was necessary to prevent them from attacking Americans if freed. Continue reading “Losing our liberties one by one”
When is local journalism not really local? When it’s about Pasadena and written by someone in India.
Local news reporting outsourced to India: A news site hires two to cover Pasadena from afar. That helps a shoestring budget go further.
By Alex Pham
LA Times Staff Writer
May 11, 2007
James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the Pasadena Now website, hired two reporters last weekend to cover the Pasadena City Council. One lives in Mumbai and will be paid $12,000 a year. The other will work in Bangalore for $7,200.
The council broadcasts its meetings on the Web. From nearly 9,000 miles away, the outsourced journalists plan to watch, then write their stories while their boss sleeps “” India is 12.5 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time. Continue reading “Staying ahead of the news”