Evil Twin Booking speakers Greg Palast and Bill Ayers in the news:

Greg Palast, investigator of financial fraud and author of bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, discusses Blagojevich revelations on CNN Headline news, and Bill Ayers, educator, author and activist, debates Chris Matthews on Hardball.

Evil Twin Booking Agency speakers William Ayers and The Yes Men in the news, again:

Educator, author and activist William Ayers is enjoying the last laugh, greeted with an overwhelmingly positive media blitz and packed houses in support of his reissued book "Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Antiwar Activist". Ayers on Good Morning America:

And, The Yes Men continue to make headlines with the spoof NY Times forecasting real hope and change. Clip from CNN prime time:

The Yes Men, us, and headlines of real Hope and Change.

It's been a very eventful month for Liz Cole and Scott Beibin of the Evil Twin Booking Agency. We kept mum while deluged with hate mail over Bill Ayers. When Obama won, we were overjoyed at the historic significance and danced in the streets. Rather than publicizing the pre-election attention, we decided to focus all of our energy on a project that we believed would really inspire a sense of true Hope and Change. That project, of course, was to work in coalition with dozens of organizations and thousands of volunteers to blanket US cities with 1.2 million copies of a hopeful, albeit fake edition of The New York Times with fantasy headlines like "Iraq War Ends", "National Health Insurance Act Passes" and "Public Relations Industry Starts to Shut Down".

Today was the big day, and we've made headlines. The success shows what can be accomplished when a lot of people we respect and love think big and work together. It is interesting that so many people are pointing the finger at The Yes Men - and, why not? Their brilliant antics and pranks have captured the imagination of a generation that believes another world is possible.

* PDF of the fake New York Times: http://www.nytimes-se.com/pdf

* Ongoing video releases found here: http://www.nytimes-se.com/video

(be careful - if you blink, you might miss Lili Taylor talking about her "compassion muscle")

* The New York Times responds: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/pranksters-spoof-the-times/

Oh the hilarity...

Much love,
Liz Cole and Scott Beibin

We're deluged with Bill Ayers' hate mail...

It's been a blessing to have the current flurry of attention for our speakers bureau, the ever so fabulous, sexy, and sleep deprived Evil Twin Booking Agency.

Evil Twin Booking Agency speaker Mitchell Joachim in this months WIRED Magazine

The 2008 Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To

MITCHELL JOACHIM: REDESIGN CITIES FROM SCRATCH

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/16-10/sl_joachim

By Tom Vanderbilt

Dressed in architect black and sporting dreadlocks, Mitchell Joachim isn't your average Whole Foods envirogeek. For one thing, he speaks in an intense staccato punctuated with words like peristaltic and epiphetic. And don't get him started on sustainability. "I don't like the term," he says. "It's not evocative enough. You don't want your marriage to be sustainable. You want to be evolving, nurturing, learning." Efficiency doesn't cut it, either: "It just means less bad." Even zero emissions falls short. "This table does zero damage," he says, thumping the one in his office. "No VOCs, no carbons. Whatever. It doesn't do anything positive."

Joachim spent a decade working with architect Michael Sorkin, followed by a short spell with Frank Gehry. He now teaches at Columbia University and is a partner at Terreform 1, a nonprofit focused on ecological design. A kind of Frederick Law Olmsted for the 21st century, he spends most of his time thinking about how to reduce the ecological footprint of cities. It's not a short-term project. "It took 15 to 20 years to get a hybrid car," he says. "To change the basic paradigm for how we make buildings, 40 to 50 years. To change a city? That's 100 to 150 years." If the next president is smart, he'll want to get started sooner rather than later.

At the top of the agenda, Joachim says, is mobility and its inefficiencies. Citing US Department of Energy statistics, he says that while 29 percent of the nation's energy expenditure--what he calls "the suck"--now goes toward getting around, "in 50 years that will double." Among the biggest sources of waste, he argues, is the automobile--not only in energy but in the space it occupies (cars, he notes, spend more than 90 percent of the day parked). For nearly a century, Joachim says, "cities have been designed around cars. Why not design a car around a city?" So he did just that. One of his concept vehicles, the City Car , was named to Time magazine's Inventions of the Year list in 2007...

read more:http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/16-10/sl_joachim

Free Press Media Reform conference and other plans

One of the ten bazillion camera wielders at Free Press's Media Reform conference stuck the lens in my face and asked for five words describing the whole thing.

My thoughts:
"Fetid brontosaurus carcass ponders blogging."
"Irrelevant to anyone under 30."
"Geena Davis. Hanoi Jane. Snore."
"White wealthy liberals congratulate selves"

Yes, the conference is meant to be policy focused. However the almost complete absence of discussion of the effect of social networking, video blogging (web 2.0 stuff) was a gaping hole for any media conference, especially a grassroots one. It was easy to notice lack of discussion regarding current upheavals in the world of print media distribution such as Publishers Group West going under, smaller magazines like Clamor and Lip folding, and the far off cracks of layoffs at large newspapers. Yes, of course conversations on these subjects went on in the wings between folks whose jobs and institutions and publications stand to have their worlds rocked by bankruptcy, but Free Press certainly missed the ball on this one by taking the low road and not exercising leadership.

For anyone organizing a conference, there are basics that need to be addressed. One of which is the availability of healthy nourishing food, which was incredibly difficult to locate at the conference. The brain can't operate on coffee alone.

There's much more to say, and I've got a bit to transcribe - I think I interviewed all five of the attendants of the conference under age 20 at this thing - but we've got a plane to catch in an hour to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City Utah. Mormons and Redford await.

It's Bigger than Hip-Hop...

Dead Prez plays at the Muffathalle in Munich, Germany TOMORROW, July 19.
Not only are DP hosted by the most gorgeous venue in town (I'm serious. Do an image search on the Muffathalle), they are official guests of the City of Munich. How amazing is that?

Yet this extraordinary event was nearly monkeywrenched at the 11th hour by the EU Embassy in Dakar, Senegal. Senegalese HipHop legend Duggy Tee is performing with Dead Prez, along with Munich outfit Main Concept. The Embassy tried to deny Duggy Tee and crew their travel visas because the five "could not prove to have a regular income and a bank account", and claimed they might stay illegally in Europe. Nevermind they were invited by the City of Munich, by a promoter (the wonderful Patricia Mueller of the Munich Department of Arts and Culture) who has worked with hiphop artists from Senegal since 2000. And nevermind that over 90% of Senegal lives under poor conditions, making their lack of documented income hardly unusual. The embassy clerk merely gave Patricia this "advice" before hanging up: "You'd better work with European rappers!!!"

After a night of calls to influential institutions throughout Belgium and Germany (all of whom were shocked at this EU decision), at least three of Duggy Tee's crew got their visas.

In the meantime, Senegalese social groups and media are planning a huge manifestation of protest in front of the EU Commission in Dakar. For more than two weeks Senegalese journalists have been reporting extensively about this show in Munich. The TV and radio channels and the print media are especially willing to set an example.

Phew! Expect lots of pictures after the show.