whistleblower - The Art of the Prank

October 2, 2024

“Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPeep” October Film Festival Screenings

Are your genetically modified chicken nuggets strangely addictive? Guess what…

In 1998, Dr. Joseph Howard (a.k.a. Joey Skaggs) blew the whistle on BioPEEP, a covert research initiative designed to genetically modify humans into “consumer junkies.”

You can catch a film festival screening of “Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPEEP,” the #10 film in the oral history series, in person in New Hampshire on Oct 4 or On Demand between October 8 & 20, 2024!

Monadnock International Film Festival (MONIFF)
Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPEEP (20:20)
Selected Shorts Program C
Friday, October 4, 2024, 5:45pm
Also screening on-demand October 8-17, 2024
Showroom
20 Commercial Street
Keene, New Hampshire 03431
Tickets are here

Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival
Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPEEP (20:20)
Friday, October 14 – Sunday, October 20, 2024
Screen from anywhere in the world on-demand
Select “Monday, October 14” for ticket to online festival
Tickets are here

September 19, 2024

Stop BioPEEP before it’s too late!

“Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPEEP,” the 10th film in the “Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond” oral history series, is screening at the New Jersey Film Festival at 7 pm on Friday, September 20, 2024. It’s also available to stream online for 24 hours. Details are here.

September 5, 2024September 5, 2024

“Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPEEP” Oral History Film Review

Check out Anita LaBelle’s wonderful film review of the oral history film “Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPEEP” for New Jersey Stage. This film, which is about Joey Skaggs’ 1998 hoax Stop BioPEEP, is screening at the New Jersey Film Festival on September 20, 2024. Festival details are in the link.

Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPEEP is the tenth installment of the oral history series Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond, a film episodic that the New Jersey Film Festival has shown every episode of. Giuseppe Scaggoli, or as he is better known, Joey Skaggs has used artistic mediums and prank behavior to push pivotal societal issues into questioning. Through news clips, old prank footage, and modern interview excerpts conducted by Joey Skaggs and Judy Drosd, each episodic endeavor is thoroughly documented and hilariously explained. Skaggs’ work, though often gaining controversy at first, seems to always later reach critical acclaim due to retrospect and perhaps his own air of anthropological foresight. In this latest episode, Skaggs targets the still-topical issues of genetic mutation and government intervention, except this time, his audience goes global. Unfolding in 1998 when Joseph Howard (Joey Skaggs) plays the role of a corporate whistleblower, he foils BioPEEP’s 1997 corporate project to genetically alter and addict humans to chosen products, thus creating “consumer junkies” and targeted “gene-ocide”. When the information is leaked to the press via Skaggs, protests against BioPEEP occur in both the U.S. and Australia. Even more unexpected, was the mass alarm that the whole affair caused in Slovenia. Whether international conspiracy or guerilla artwork, audiences will be shocked by the inner workings and affairs of the piece, including the reach one story can take, and the media’s lust to grab any sensational story rather than the hard-hitting truth.

Read the rest of the article here

January 8, 2014December 15, 2023

F.B.I. Burglars Come Clean After 43 Years

In 1971, eight anti-war activists, including John and Bonnie Raines, broke into a suburban FBI office outside of Philadelphia and stole just about every file in the building.

john-and-bonnie-raines-425

They then leaked pertinent documents to the media that directly implicated J. Edgar Hoover in his efforts to discredit protestors, particularly black student activists, with extraordinary surveillance and “dirty tricks”. In particular they uncovered an operation called COINTELPRO, short for Counter Intelligence Program, which followed “subversive” domestic political groups, specifically to discredit people and destroy their reputations.

Said one of the most damning memos regarding the surveillance: “It will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an F.B.I. agent behind every mailbox…” The burglars, who remained anonymous until now, feeling the information they revealed was more important than their identities, put the first chink in Hoover’s formidable power base, eventually helping to bring down his operation.

Betty Medsger of The Washington Post was the first reporter to write about the files. She has now written a book, out this week, called “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI“. Documentarian Johanna Hamilton has produced a film called “1971,” about this daring feat.

For the full story:

Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows, The New York Times

After 43 years, activists admit theft at FBI office that exposed domestic spying, NBC News

‘Somebody had to do it’: Aging activists confess to being behind great FBI heist in 1971 which shed light on controversial surveillance program (and say ‘hi!’ to Edward Snowden), The Daily Mail

July 27, 2013December 15, 2023

Edward Snowden wins Whistleblower of the Year Award… in Germany

From Jon:

Edward Snowden awarded with German ‘Whistleblower Prize’
IBM Live / Press Trust of India
July 25, 2013

edward-snowden-awarded-with-german-whistleblower-prize-425

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who exposed the most extensive US global surveillance operations, was on Thursday awarded this year’s German “Whistleblower Prize” worth USD 3,900 in absentia.

“Mr Snowden has done a great public service by exposing the massive and unsuspecting monitoring and storage of communication data by US and other western intelligence agencies, which cannot be accepted in democratic societies,” Berlin-based whistleblower prize jury said in a statement.

Top secret National Security Agency (NSA) documents leaked by Snowden since the beginning of June “made it possible and unavoidable” intensive investigations to establish whether the operations of domestic and foreign intelligence services have violated the existing rules applicable to them, the jury said. Continue reading “Edward Snowden wins Whistleblower of the Year Award… in Germany”