Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Marni Halasa the British lawyer, journalist, and performance artist for Occupy Wall Street in New York City and member of Occupy’s Alternative Banking Group, a direct action and seminar group that distributes information to the public, has published an article on Huffington Post titled ‘Show Time! Tripping the Light Fantastic as a Performance Artist for Occupy Wall Street’. Halasa states “My conservative Arab father always told me I had no shame. Little did he know that my insatiable desire to exhibit and entertain as a performance artist would come in handy for Occupy Wall Street. I help the movement spread its message of the 99 percent in a somewhat unique and flamboyant way. Whether I am dressed as Marie-Antoinette, protesting against workers’ low wages in front of a Walmart in New Jersey; a police officer during an anti-police brutality march in Union Square; or a dominatrix covered in fake money in front of the Federal Reserve, I am compelled to be a living breathing costumed illustration of my own political beliefs. And mind you — all of this is done on skates. So why do I risk arrest, brave the sometimes hostile elements and lose sleep over hours of preparation? An obsessive desire for creative self-expression is the obvious reason. The other is that it is my chance to belong to an amazingly purposeful politicized community. When Occupy began, I connected with a group of people who could discuss the complexities and dynamics of wealth, power and social mobility in our society. From them I learned how bankers from HSBC laundered money for the drug cartels and avoided criminal prosecution, why the Dodd-Frank reforms do not go far enough to insure our country’s financial stability, and the reasons behind the lack of mobility for the low income. Although these people were for the most part strangers, they charmed me with their warmth, intellect, and uncanny ability to make complex information understandable. They were also keen to make a positive impact. I quickly decided I had to join the Occupy movement…”

Inspired by Marni Halasa, Huffington Post ow.ly/kuGR4 Image source Twitter ow.ly/kuGMQ

Walter Ruiz the American lawyer and Naval Commander appointed to serve as Defense attorney for captives who faced charges before the Guantanamo military commissions, reported that Guantanamo guards had improperly seized privileged documents his clients needed to aid in their defense and that security officials had improperly been secretly monitoring the conversations between the suspects and their attorneys. In a Huffington Post article titled ‘Obama’s Guantanamo Is Never Going To Close, So Everyone Might As Well Get Comfortable’ Ryan J Reilly states “…Navy Cmdr. Walter Ruiz stood inside an old airplane hangar on the southernmost tip of the island and reflected on a central but unfulfilled promise of Obama’s 2008 campaign. “We’re still here,” Ruiz said, as reporters milled around the aging hangar, which has been repurposed as a work space for the journalists and human rights observers who have been flying in and out of Guantanamo since the first suspected terrorists were brought here 11 years ago. …“We’re still in military commissions. We’re still arguing about the basic protections the system affords us. We’re still talking about indefinite detention,” Ruiz continued. “We’re still talking about not closing the facility.” After years of legal wrangling, the trials of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and four other men allegedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks have barely gotten off the ground. Ruiz, an attorney for alleged 9/11 organizer and financier Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, estimates he has traveled to Guantanamo 50 to 100 times for client meetings and pre-trial hearings on legal minutiae since he joined the military’s defense counsel office in September 2008. “I’m here trying this case, people were here trying this case in 2008, arguing many of the same motions we’re arguing now,” Ruiz said. “And I think folks that have been around here for a while would tell you not much has changed at all.”

Inspired by Ryan J Reilly, Huffington Post ow.ly/iuHCm Image source Robert Stephenson ow.ly/iuHfy

Omar Deghayes the 43 year old Libyan with residency status in the UK, having been arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and  taken into US military custody, was sent onto Guantanamo Bay detention camp where he was blinded permanently in one eye after a guard used fingers to gouge his eyes. Deghayes had moved temporarily to Pakistan with his Afghan wife and child, where he was arrested along with his family by bounty hunters in Pakistan and taken to the Bagram Internment Facility, prior to being sent onto Cuba. His wife and child were later released. Deghayes states “…troops marched into his cellblock ‘singing and laughing’ before spraying his face with mace and digging their fingers into his eyes as an officer shouted ‘More! More.’ …My eye has gone a milky white color… Matt Sledge in an article for Huffington Post states “…spending six years in Guantanamo. He was never charged with or convicted of any crime, but it took strenuous pressure from United Kingdom authorities to win his release during the waning days of the Bush administration. Since then he has transformed himself into an anti-Guantanamo campaigner in the UK. He has mixed feelings about the camp’s recently passed 11th anniversary. “To an extent it’s good because it does make people aware that Guantanamo still exists,” Deghayes said. But for Deghayes the anniversaries take on a more personal meaning than an excuse for speech making or press releases. …whenever such an anniversary rolls around, “All this comes back to memory, the mistreatment there.” Obama, he said, has been “a real big disappointment to many of the human rights groups and people who care about justice.” “Look at the people who committed all the crimes before Obama. He said let’s look forward and we don’t want to bring justice. That’s turning a blind eye, I don’t think anybody can excuse that.”

Inspired by Matt Sledge, Huffington Post ow.ly/hYADV Image source Tobias Klenze ow.ly/hYAqg

Zones of pain and pleasure near and far (March 15th)

Maurice Benayoun the 54 year old Algerian born French new-media artist and theorist whose recent works comprise large-scale urban installations and interactive exhibitions “hopes his recent work will in fact aid and engage the Occupy Wall Street movement, which he says is still more potent in the U.S. than in Europe — though not for long” according to Michael Kurcfeld in his recent article published on Huffington Post. Benayoun arrives in Manhattan to unveil the latest in an ongoing multimedia series called “The Mechanics of Emotion” — a 15-part opus which grew out of the idea that the Internet is the world’s nervous system, and that messages sent between users crossed “zones of pain and pleasure” near and far. Using various analytic and graphic tools in his ever-evolving tech arsenal, he set out to map the world’s emotions. In one part, he created a series of “frozen feelings” — machine-made sculptures of digitally carved disks in various materials. Each disk bore a topographic pattern that corresponded to real-time Web data which inventoried emotional states in the 3,200 biggest cities on the planet, by tracking word clusters …”

Inspired by Michael Kurcfeld http://ow.ly/9v94d image source MoBen http://ow.ly/9v8Zx

Isaac “Biz” Stone the 37 year old co-founder of Twitter and its Creative Director is now to join the Huffington Post team following its acquisition by AOL. Stone’s role at AOL will be to provide strategic advice on the social impacts of new media primarily to the Huffington Post along with other AOL interests. Stone has previously published books about blogging, and been involved in several blog startups before his venture into the creation of the micro-blogging world of Twitter. Stone’s arrival at AOL, while still maintaining his Directorship at Twitter, is on the eve of a 20% cut to AOL’s workforce as it re-orientates from the declining revenues of its dial up internet access business to alternative new media formats with new potential advertising revenue streams.

Inspired by Dominic Rushe ow.ly/4kuFi image source Joi Ito ow.ly/4kuRb