UK Activists Booted From US
Apparently New York has all the activists “they” want for now, but that won’t stop the British climate change activists from campaigning, via an assist from The Yes Men:
This Wednesday’s Revolutionaries Live! lecture with UK climate campaign activists John Stewart and Dan Glass has been postponed.
A few days ago, Stewart landed in JFK Airport for a month-long US speaking tour, only to be escorted off the plane by 6 police officers; interrogated for six hours by the FBI, Secret Service, NY police, and Immigration; and put on a plane back to the UK. The other tour member, environmental activist Dan Glass, was stopped by the CIA on the UK side.
Stewart and Glass are celebrated environmentalists who have won support from direct action activists and even Conservatives in the UK Parliament for successful efforts to reduce carbon emissions and stop the expansion of Heathrow airport. For some reason, however, our own government isn’t keen on them coming here.
We’re going to bring them to you anyway. Join us on Thursday, November 3rd for a special Skype session with these revered (and reviled?) climate revolutionaries. The best part: no transcontinental air emissions involved!
Thursday, November 3, 7pm
Department of Performance Studies
721 Broadway, 6th Floor
NY, NY 10003
(photo ID required)And now that your Wednesday is freed up, consider joining us at OccupyWallStreet! Wednesday is the biggest action yet, with the Steelworkers, Transit Workers Union, United Federation of Teachers, Working Families Party, MoveOn.org, Rebuild the Dream, and countless economic justice and community organizations taking part in a massive march to the Liberty Plaza encampment. Starts at 4:30pm at City Hall, 250 Broadway Ave
GE’s Fake Plan To Pay Taxes Causes Massive Stock Price Drop
Our friends the Yes Men are once again deftly mocking the shady practices of ethically-challenged business executives. Why large corporations and the mainstream media that cover them (sorry USA Today) keep falling for their ruses, I don’t know, but you gotta love it. Morgan Clendaniel reports on the activists’ latest shenanigans for Fast Company:
Today, GE appeared to put out a press release noting that it had decided to do the right thing and pay the $6.3 billion taxes that it owed for 2010. And all the thanks it got was a quick drop in its stock price. If GE’s paying the government, that’s less money for shareholders. We can’t have that.
Remember the story that GE paid no taxes last year–and in fact, got money back from the government–despite making $11 billion in revenues (though, as with all tax law, the story was maybe a little more complicated than that). Pick your jaw up…
For Hire In China: Fake White Businessmen
Jakob Boeskov's fake ID Sniper Rifle
This story totally reminds me of an essay we included in Russ Kick’s classic anthology Abuse Your Illusions: The Disinformation Guide To Media Mirages And Establishment Lies, “How I Crashed A Chinese Arms Bazaar With A Rifle That Doesn’t Exist,” by Jakob S. Boeskov. For some reason, white guys in China seem to be cloaked in Yes Men-like levels of suspended belief as to their (highly unlikely) cover stories. By Mitch Moxley for the Atlantic:
Not long ago I was offered work as a quality-control expert with an American company in China I’d never heard of. No experience necessary—which was good, because I had none. I’d be paid $1,000 for a week, put up in a fancy hotel, and wined and dined in Dongying, an industrial city in Shandong province I’d also never heard of. The only requirements were a fair complexion and a suit.
“I call…
The Yes Lab for Creative Activism
Our friends Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, better known as the Yes Men, have launched The Yes Lab, a series of brainstorms and trainings to help activist groups carry out Yes-Men-style projects on their own. Check out the Yes Lab site; this is how they explain it:
Why now?
We Yes Men have been doing our thing for about 12 years. Many of our best projects have been in collaboration with activist groups—our BBC announcement on behalf of Dow Chemical came out of a collaboration with Greenpeace, for example.
Last fall, we collaborated with a coalition of groups to release a much-improved “climate edition” of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, and to launch an assault on the U.N. by sea (”Balls Across America“). Also in collaboration with activists, we visited our nation’s capital to re-brand the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, then headed to Copenhagen to successfully embarrass Canada about its terrible climate policies.
In part because of these successes,…
Dow Throws A Party In Brooklyn: Zombies Show Up
The Yes Men strike again!
Bucolic Prospect park in Brooklyn, NY played host to a bizarre spectacle on Sunday, as a dramatically under-attended Dow-sponsored “Run for Water” was infiltrated and turned upside down by hundreds of furious activists, including a hundred dressed as Dow spokespeople…
Yes Men Dupe Utah With Call For Gay “Final Solution”
Pranksters the Yes Men held a bogus press conference in Salt Lake City, posing as an organization called “Patriots for a Moral Utah,” and called for a “Final Solution” of the forced removal of gays and lesbians of Utah. Amazingly, the event seemed believable enough for local reporters…Utah’s ABC 4 reports:
The so-called press conference was held at the Utah State Capitol at 1:00 p.m. Monday.
The woman claimed that…Utahns should get behind the initiative that would force homosexuals to relocate to New York City, Portland or San Francisco. According to the woman, who claimed to be Nora Young, homosexuals who chose not to relocate who be forced to undergo therapy that would “rehabilitate” them from homosexuality.
Canada Says “No” to Yes Men website
Nate Anderson writes on ars technica:
When corporate pranksters The Yes Men staged a December stunt against the Canadian government’s emission proposals, the group had no idea that the resulting backlash would take down more than 4,000 unrelated websites. Whatever you think of the hoax, the saga is a reminder of the power of ISPs and Web hosting companies. If they don’t like what you’re saying and doing, there are often no consequences to shutting down or blocking sites, even when tremendous collateral damage ensues.
The scenario played out in December when The Yes Men and another group called ActionAid staged a hoax aimed at the Canadian government. They put out press releases and launched official-looking websites at domain names with more than a passing similarity to their official counterparts. All of the materials said the same thing: on the eve of the international climate change shindig in Copenhagen, Canada was committing itself…
Copenhagen Spoof Shames Canada; Climate Debt No Joke
COPENHAGEN, Denmark – “Canada is ‘red-faced’!” (Globe and Mail) “Copenhagen spoof shames Canada!” (Guardian) “Hoax slices through Canadian spin on warming!” (The Toronto Star) “A childish prank!” (Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada)
What at first looked like the flip-flop of the century has been revealed as a sophisticated ruse by a coalition of African, North American, and European activists. The purpose: to highlight the most powerful nations’ obstruction of meaningful progress in Copenhagen, to push for just climate debt reparations, and to call out Canada in particular for its terrible climate policy.
The elaborate intercontinental operation was spearheaded by a group of concerned Canadian citizens, the “Climate Debt Agents” from ActionAid, and The Yes Men. It involved the creation of a best-case scenario in which Canadian government representatives unleashed a bold new initiative to curb emissions and spearhead a “Climate Debt Mechanism” for the developing world…
What Does Civil Disobedience Mean To You?
What does civil disobedience mean to you? That’s what the identity-shifting Yes Men want you to know. Then, they want you to take to the streets and protest bad companies and bad ideas. Here’s the thing – they want you to enjoy yourself while your raging against the machine! Check out the real men behind the Yes Men, as they reveal their true selves on Talk Stoop with Cat Greenleaf.
The New York Times Outs The Yes Men
I’ve known the real names of The Yes Men ever since we signed a contract with them to publish their book, but I always thought that it was like a state secret known to very few people and never to be divulged … only to find while flipping through the pages of the “Style” section of the New York Times that those names had been casually dropped in what was a very lightweight piece of journalism. Was this the Gray Lady’s way of exacting revenge on the pranksters following their highly publicized fake New York Times?
“USUALLY it’s my shoes,” Andy Bichlbaum said, staring at his feet. “They’re black, but — uh-oh — they’re work boots.” Apparently a small detail like this can give you away when you’re trying to impersonate a corporate spokesman in front of millions of TV viewers.
A glass of whiskey in hand, Mr. Bichlbaum, who is one half…
The Yes Men Dupe Fox Business Network
Gotta love those Yes Men. As I posted earlier this week, they fooled a lot of people into thinking that the U.S Chamber of Commerce was changing its position on climate change. The biggest suckers were our favorite Republican Party media shills at Fox News. Check out the poor anchor Brian Sullivan:
The Yes Men Punk the Chamber
Kate Sheppard writes in Mother Jones:
The Chamber of Commerce stunned DC on Monday by calling a last-minute press conference to announce a dramatic about-face in its climate policy—it would not only stop opposing the Kerry-Boxer climate bill but would work with them to make it better. But the whole thing turned out to be a hoax mounted by the Yes Men, a notorious band of anti-corporate pranksters.
Reporters received a press release early Monday stating that the Chamber would be “throwing its weight behind strong climate legislation” at an event at the National Press Club in downtown Washington, DC. But when I and others showed up, we were met by a fellow dressed in a suit looking like a typical corporate PR man. This wasn’t Chamber President and CEO Tom Donohue. And I recognized him as Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum. (I’ve written about the group previously.) He soon was telling reporters,…
Balls Across America
Some of you may have seen my appearance with Andy Bichlbaum last week when he persuaded me to try on a Survivaball. Although I looked ridiculous, it was kind of cool to be a part of The Yes Men’s “Balls Across America” campaign, described as:
a series of civil disobedience actions involving Survivaballs. It’s inspired by the Climate Pledge of Resistance and BeyondTalk.net. “Balls Across America” was launched in prime-time on CNN, and now will spread across the United States, in lockstep with the distribution schedule of The Yes Men Fix the World!
Well as it turns out you can try on a Survivaball too. If you’re in New York or have friends who are, you are “invited to come wear the world’s stupidest costume and hand out coupons for a free fake New York Times with each ticket. We really need people to do this, because a lot of people don’t know our film…
Disinfo’s Gary Baddeley Talks 2012 On CBS News, Tries ‘Yes Men’ Survivaball
I was invited up to the GM Building where CBS News stages its Early Show. They wanted to talk about 2012 and host Cali Carlin and producer Rick Borutta did a great job of featuring our film 2012: Science or Superstition and our new website 2012sos.net. Unfortunately they also invited my old friend Andy Bichlbaum from The Yes Men, who brought along his latest creation, the Survivaball.
Andy actually got arrested and jailed for over 24 hours while wearing one earlier in the week, so I suppose my 10 minutes or so wearing one weren’t bad in comparison. Still, it isn’t the most flattering thing I’ll ever wear. Check it out for a laugh here:
