And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
The time is 702.
Stay tuned for a special expanded edition of off the hook here on WBAI New York.
One day we'll be back for the best, expect the worst, I hope that's understood, one day we'll be back.
One day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be
back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll be back, one day we'll
Greetings from Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, okay, good.
We're all here today on a special
two-hour edition of
Off The Hook as kind of the culmination
of the winter fundraiser here at
WBA. I want to thank everybody who has
called in for our previous two shows.
We've had a very good response and we're
hoping tonight we'll get double that response because we're
on for double the time and we really have some
interesting material for you tonight, some special
guests, all kinds of fun
things to look forward to.
First, any new business
that we want to address? Anything going on?
I just want to point out how exciting it is that
we have five Wednesdays all in February.
We have five Wednesdays in February?
Yeah. And this is leap year. Yeah.
It's leap year day. Leap day, yeah.
In actuality, there was one other program
that we did on February 29th, way back
at least ten years ago.
And it doesn't happen very often.
I would like to say this is the only time we've ever done a
leap year show, but it's not. We've done it before.
But I'd like to know,
are there people out there born on the 29th
of February and how old are they?
Do they just age one year
per four years or how does that work?
What kind of complications maybe do you
have in your life as a result of that?
They live forever.
Maybe so. Maybe that's the secret
but I don't think so.
Bernie, anything new from you?
Well, I missed February 29th
birthday by a couple of days.
I researched this. I was curious if
Off the Hook had ever fallen on a leap day
before. And the last leap day
that happened
on a Wednesday was 1984
but back many years ago
we were on Tuesday nights.
That's true.
So that's probably when the leap day was
on a Tuesday.
It's very easy to look up. All you have to do is go to
www.2600.com
slash offthehook
and you'll see every single year is represented.
Just keep checking out February's until you find one
that has February 29th and voila.
It'll be that simple.
And you only have to look in leap years.
Yeah, exactly.
And you don't even really have to do the looking yourself.
You can very easily type ctrl-f or whatever
the keys are to do a search function in your web browser
and it'll do it for you.
Interesting. Kyle, you're here from Seattle, I believe.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's where I was last, Seattle.
And you came here by train?
Yeah, I took a train across the country.
Well, good for you. And do you recommend people do that?
Yes, I think anybody who's interested in
a sort of mellow way to travel
should take the train and see what it's like.
Because it takes how long?
It's like 42 hours.
So it's a commitment.
Let me just stop you right there, Redhike.
I note some skepticism in your voice there
that you don't think maybe traveling by train
is the best way to go.
He said it was mellow and I thought maybe it had something to do
with the fact that it was such a long trip.
It is a long trip, but you know what?
How many days was it?
It was like two or three days for the one leg
and then one other overnight.
So a full 24 basically for the leg from Chicago to New York.
So when did you leave Seattle?
I left Tuesday
at half past five
on Tuesday and I arrived
in New York
at 7 p.m. on Friday.
I just want to say
don't blame the mode of travel.
It's not the train industry's fault
that we don't have
high speed rails in America.
Well, I'm not blaming the mode of travel.
I'm blaming Kyle for taking it.
It sort of is their fault.
It's not just their fault.
There's a whole host of reasons
in America why for some strange reason
we don't want to have high speed rails
over here.
Well, people do debate things in this country a lot.
They debate things that are good like health care
and high speed rail and long life
and education and things like that.
And those things don't win apparently.
Yeah, but in this particular case though
people say, oh yeah, it's more expensive to take a train
cross country. It takes longer.
But you know, you get room and board. You get a place to sleep.
You get meals.
And when you add in all the costs, flying and doing all that
if you go into a distant city
someplace, it actually is much cheaper
and much more relaxing. No TSA to worry about?
Yeah, I mean I don't want to elaborate
on the nicer things too much.
You guys might get really into it
as far as the meals and the wine tastings
and all that.
When's the last time you had a wine tasting
on a Delta flight?
I was able to do cool things
like bring my bike. I was fairly easy.
It was like $5 for the handling fee
and so I brought my bicycle
which is really cool. I think it's more complicated on planes.
He rode to the train station
on his bicycle, got on the train
took it cross country and got off the train
and rode his bicycle again.
And the TSA remark is so
spot on. There's really
no scrutiny. I mean you just get
on the train and you associate with your
attendant and it's pretty easy going.
The bags you check, they don't really look at.
I didn't see any x-ray machines or anything.
I have an experiment for you. Next time you get your bike
onto a train, open up all the doors between
the cars, then go in the back car, ride your bike
to the front of the train while it's moving, then do
the math and see how fast you just rode.
What do you think the first thing he tried was?
That's how he met the entire crew.
Now Bernie, it strikes me
that this is something that you might be interested in.
Okay. What? Riding on trains?
Yeah, definitely. Riding on trains for long distances.
Absolutely.
My most
recent memorable train experience
was in Shanghai
where I landed, I guess it was about
two and a half years ago
at the Shanghai airport and I had to get to
the Shanghai
main train station from there
so you have to take a connecting train.
So I get on this train and it turns
out that it's this high
speed magnetic levitation
train, which we don't have any
of in this country. And I was totally not
expecting this. I had no idea.
The thing took off. It was
really quiet with just this little
whine sound from the electric motors
and
there was an odometer
at the front going well over 200
kilometers an hour and it was just
a blur. You're looking out the windows and I thought
this is how it should be.
And I was just really disappointed
that we don't have that in the United States.
It should be that there's a blur through our windows? Yes.
Okay. All right. I'll keep that in mind. I'll try to
provide that for you whenever
I'm in charge of giving you a window.
But this particular
train, this was the train from
Shanghai. Was it to the airport in Shanghai?
No. Well, yeah. It goes between the
airport and the main central Shanghai
train station. Yes. I've been on that train. It takes about, what,
15 minutes or something?
It goes extremely fast. Yeah. It's a wonderful trip.
It's just really fast and there's no vibration
because it's magnetic levitation.
It's fast. It's quiet. It's
modern. How far does it
have to go in that 15 minutes? I'm just curious.
I'm not really sure of the distance, but
we could do the math. It's like I was over
200 kilometers an hour and it takes
about 15 minutes, so
whip out your calculator. So about 50 kilometers?
Yeah. I was fantasizing
one day maybe they could do something like that, put a train
like that in lower Manhattan and go to JFK
or something like that and get there in five or six minutes.
Wouldn't that be cool?
But there's all kinds of reasons not to do that.
Yeah.
All right. Okay. So that's
what has been going on with one person anyway.
All kinds of other things have been happening
obviously regarding
hacking, regarding
I think Wikileaks
is involved in something lately?
Anybody know about this? Yeah, they
released a cache of documents that
I guess Anonymous, we'll just say
they found them
from a company called Stratfor, which is some
I don't really understand what they do. There's some
sort of like private intelligence
firm. Right now they do damage control.
Yeah. Well, that's important, but I don't know what they
did before that, but there's some
interesting stuff in there.
Five million emails. What's that? Five
million emails? Yeah.
They lost five million emails?
Well, I think they still have them.
They just inadvertently
loaned copies of five
million emails between all
their strategic
customers, which amounts
to all kinds of government
agencies, intelligence agencies
and rather amusingly
4,000 of those
emails mentioned Wikileaks
or Julian Assange because the government
has been hiring
companies like Stratfor to come
up with the strategies to
go against Wikileaks
and
shut them down.
Let me tell you what's a bad strategy
for dealing with Wikileaks is
sending your emails about it
to them. This seems very poorly
thought out. Frankly, the
government, for all their flaws,
usually doesn't lose five million emails
at a time if only
because they're too incompetent to build a single server
to hold all five million.
I don't really understand what is gained
by this sort of outsourcing.
I would consider it just
a very thorough backup system that
now the entire world has copies of
this as well, but it really strikes me that
wow, how incompetent can these people get
where they're talking about just this
and
all of their sensitive information gets
found by the very people
they're talking about and distributed using
that particular network.
It's comical.
Was there any encryption on these emails or any kind
of security or were they just sitting on an email
server somewhere ready for the taking?
I don't know. I didn't find
them. Alright, well whoever did
I'm sure will tell us, but I would
imagine whatever you think is
the least amount of security they could have possibly had
that's what they had. I'm pretty sure
because that's what we notice all the time.
We're going to be getting into that in great detail
in just a couple of minutes, but first I just wanted to
let people know that we have
some
additional
hackerspace packages
We had a lot of demand for this, so we have
a limited amount that's still
available from our previous show two weeks
ago. Bernie, do you think you might be able
to describe what's contained in these
packages? Wow, there's a lot of stuff
in that package. It was.
This is a nice
package consisting of
a great book called Hack This
24 amazing
projects from hackerspaces
around the world written by our friend
John Doctell. I hope I pronounced his name
right. These were donated by
publisher Q Publishing
and these will be signed
copies by the author who was on our last show a couple
weeks ago and he's been on talking about the Cult of
Lego book and some other books he's written.
Along with that we have some really neat
stuff from hackerspaces
around the world. I contacted
a bunch of hackerspaces that are in that book
and a few others from around the
world as far away as Australia
and
Shanghai and got
them to send us a bunch of
stickers and
buttons and
like the one in Perth, Australia
gave us, sent us a bunch of these laser
cut keychains that they made with a
laser cutter and they
sent us all this stuff to give away to
people who call
212-209-2950
and pledge to support
WBAI because it's a great
cause and they're all in it.
In addition to that
there's more.
This is like about a dozen of those
hackerspace stickers and
buttons and keychains and stuff.
There is an amazing
hackerspace passport which we
talked about in the last show but it looks like a regular
passport but it's a diplomatic passport.
It has a fist holding a soldering
iron and it has
it was designed by our friend Mitch Altman
as an open source design and
Mitch made 2600 of them in his first
run and then
he couldn't make any more for various reasons so
the fine folks at Sparkfun
Electronics
had a bunch
of them printed up and they donated them to
WBAI for us to give away.
The hackerspace passports, they look like a regular
passport but you go around to different hackerspaces
many of which have a special rubber
stamp for their
hackerspace and you can get it
stamped. It's just kind of a neat thing as you go around
visiting hackerspaces you can get it stamped just like
you would if you're going into another country.
So we have that and
geez what else? We have a bunch of
DVDs about hackerspaces from
HOPE conferences. We have a whole bunch of DVDs
dating back to
oh gosh I think it was H2K2
one of the very first HOPE conferences
talking about hackerspaces and you get to see
you know what it was beyond
HOPE in 1997 with
The Loft. People from The Loft
were part of that conference
and that was one of the earliest hackerspaces
so you can see the evolution through the very
wide
array of talks that have been given
at the eight HOPE conferences that have taken place
so far. So you'll get all of those DVDs
in addition to the
hackerspace passport
to the stickers
the book
of course and the buttons and whatever
else is thrown into that package.
Are we leaving anything out? That's all for a pledge of $75
$212.00, $209.00, $295.00
Again left over from
last time. Limited amount. We're just
doing that as kind of a prelude to what we're
really offering tonight that's brand new.
Good stuff.
$212.00, $209.00, $295.00
I mean besides getting all this great
hackerspace related stuff
which is going to give you countless
hours of amusement and
entertainment and
edification, you're going to support a great radio
station, WBAI, which is
the only station that's going to air the kind
of stuff we talk about, hackerspaces
and the stuff that we're going to
be talking about real soon.
We have one call on the line. We had two a moment ago
and I want to see two
more come in. When we see two more come in, then we're
going to move on to the next segment
in this particular two-hour program.
Now, we know from the number of
people that have stopped us in the streets and
called us in the middle of the night demanding
these premiums that, and really
it's kind of rude sometimes with the way people do this, but
people do demand these things
because they hear it on the radio and
it's really good and sometimes they can't listen live
and they miss out on the opportunity so they get kind of
agitated. Well, this is your chance.
It's your chance to call in and get
an amazing package, learn all about
hackerspace projects
and if you're one of those people
that have accosted us in
the last couple of weeks, this is your opportunity.
212-209-2950
Pledge is $75. Get you the full
hackerspace package of the
book, passport, the DVDs, the stickers, the buttons.
The whole works.
It's really pretty
incredible.
Go ahead, Rob. I should
mention for those of you who
listen to us on podcasts and rebroadcasts and things
like that, who always ask us
after the fact if they can get our premiums.
We can only give our premiums during
the live broadcast of our show but if there's
some other point in time in which you'd
like to support our show and our station,
you can go to WBAI.org and there's
a donate function on there to donate to your favorite
show and if you choose off the hook then
the donation will be credited
toward keeping this particular show
on the air and keeping our station on the air. We can't
give you our premiums for that but there are some WBAI
premiums that they have of their own to offer you
for that. There's a reason because these
are donated, as you say, they're donated
by people that are very generous to
us and think about it. If we had
these available 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, lots of people would go out of business. Lots
of companies would go out of business because we're offering them
for nothing to the radio station.
Giving them away to the radio station
to entice you to call us
and I see one person is calling in now. I want to thank that
person. All it takes is one other person calling
in and we can move on to the next
segment. It's to
entice you to call in and support this place.
You're getting something really cool but you're also
investing in a most
remarkable place. But at the end of the day
you're getting the radio station and if that's
important to you, even if you're listening to this
on the podcast, please consider donating
to WBAI at
WBAI.org. Kyle in
Seattle, do you get many radio stations like this?
Yeah,
absolutely. There's a pretty strong
community radio station presence.
How does it compare to BAI?
It's not nearly as big. It's not going
to reach nearly as many people.
Absolutely.
Are there programs like Off the Hook on those stations?
No, not like that.
No hacker radio programs?
No.
Why is it that people are so afraid of hackers?
Could it be because they have
access to 2 million emails
from various large organizations that
really don't want them to? Could it be because they...
5 million.
5 million, I'm sorry. Maybe they lost
3 million and they still have 2 million left.
They have a lot.
For reasons like the Central Intelligence Agency
and the World Trade Organization
and all kinds of other
entities that hackers seem to come up
against, maybe that's why
radio stations feel it's too hot. But you know what?
Not here at WBAI. Here at WBAI
it's something that
we embrace. We embrace controversy.
Before us, we had the Occupy Wall Street show.
If you listen to this radio station
throughout the course of a week,
you will hear so much diversity,
so much controversy. I just want to add one thing.
One thing I have noticed in the Northwest
is that stations are moving towards a
community-based model because it works.
One of my favorite classical stations, King FM,
is in their first year of community radio
and they have pledge drives
just like a lot of the other community stations out there.
It's a model that works, so please
call in 212-209-2950.
And also, this is
New York here.
We're seeing a great community radio movement
in other places, but right here it would be
truly impossible for the insane string
of events that led to this station's
existence, it would be impossible for that to
happen again. This is a one-of-a-kind place
here at WBAI and it's only been kept
on the air for the past 50 years because of you.
And that insane chain of events, by the way,
involved, back in
I believe 1960,
someone listening to Pacifica Radio
out in California, falling in love with the
program and the alternative viewpoints and just the
controversy, this person happened to
own a radio station here in New York City at
99.5 FM and offered
yeah, people do this, offered to donate
the radio station to Pacifica.
Of course, he wasn't believed at first, he got
hung up on a few times, thinking it was some kind of crank
call, but eventually
yeah, you know what, I think he was legit.
And we've been operating since 1960
solely on listener contributions.
Isn't that the most amazing thing?
52 years of this.
Yes, it's very amazing.
And while I'm sure that
those of you who are listening to us right now may not agree
with everything you hear on the station, but the one
thing you can't ignore is the fact that
the station pushes the button in
so many ways, and I'm sure there's plenty of other
programs that you might be interested in, such as
the Occupy Wall Street show that was on before,
the various science programs, there's all sorts of other things.
And, you know, people
shouldn't get too relaxed. You know, you
might hear these pledge drives
come and go, and you know that
eventually it's going to end and the station
will still be here, but, you know,
that only happens because people are
pledging. Yeah, because if they didn't
pledge, then maybe the
station would be here after the fun drive, but would
it be there six months after the fun drive?
That's always the question. Bills have to be paid,
electricity can get turned off,
you can lose leases, and
equipment can break down and not get fixed.
Not to mention, if they're,
you know, all this great programming that we are speaking
of could start getting cut because maybe
they're, you know, less adventurous,
you know, and so it's always good.
If you like what you hear, support.
And the thing is that people do care. People do
care. I mean, you know, there was a, I think it was April
Fool's once when, you know, we turned
WBAI into a country station for 20 minutes.
Yeah, I still... And there was
a lot of, not backlash, but, you know,
people were upset. What happened? Where'd
WBAI go? And so,
you know, that just goes to show that it's
really an important voice here in New York
and, you know, the only way it's going to stay on
the air is if you call and pledge. It doesn't seem
like reality until it actually happens.
I was actually very impressed by that
because we had a lot of people calling the number which
we put out there during every fun
drive which is 212-209-2950
and somehow these people had these numbers
stashed away in their drawers
somewhere and when WBAI turned to
a country station, they all started calling this number.
Yeah, they called all numbers. They called and started
visiting. People were very concerned
and there's nothing worse than knowing that you
had something amazing and you
let it slip through your hands and that's the kind of
thing that definitely can happen if
listeners don't stand up
and support what they believe in.
Not just in this particular case, in general,
throughout life, that's how it works.
You have to support the things that matter.
212-209-2950. Now, Bernie,
I know that you're the one who can
get phone calls to come in because you always
do, so let's see if you can
get that last phone call to come in.
212-209-2950. Frankly, I think
that's what it's about, but I think
it's not lost on most of our listeners that this is
an
election year for, you know,
general election and
there's a lot of ideologies floating around
on the mass media and
there seems to be a lot of people
saying government
should not be funding
public media, public
radio, public television, that sort of thing.
If you believe that, if you believe your tax
dollars should not fund
radio stations or TV
stations or other public media,
then this is a medium
you can support. WBAI
accepts no tax dollars,
no corporate
sponsorships or advertising,
so even if you don't agree with
most of the ideologies
that are broadcast on the station, you should support
for its business model,
which is listener-supported
radio. It's as grassroots as it
gets, it's as libertarian as it
gets, and I encourage listeners to call
212-209-2950
to support
this kind of listener-supported radio.
I think you did it, Bernie. You got a call.
So, thank you for that
and thank you for the person calling in.
And if there's someone else who is about to call in,
don't stop. We still have a few
of those Hackerspace packages left.
Again, you'll get the
amazing Hackerspace. But what's the title
of the book again, Bernie?
Hack This. I'm paraphrasing
here. It's called Hack This
24 Amazing
Hackerspace Projects
from Around the World, or something
very much like that.
And that's donated by John
Batesell, who wrote that book.
And it's
really a great read.
A lot of pictures. It's very fascinating.
A good introduction to
the hacker world and
creating all kinds of things.
And you also get the Hackerspace passport, which is a great
conversation piece. And also, if you visit
Hackerspace, you'll get neat little stamps in there.
You'll get a whole bunch of DVDs
from our HOPE conferences
involving Hackerspaces throughout the years.
And you'll get commemorative stickers and
buttons from Hackerspaces all over the planet.
So it's
really fascinating. It's amazing.
212-209-2950
We have two calls on the line
right now, and
there's room for a few more.
Any final words on this particular...
I think that people want to know what's
next. I mean, it's a great
package, but I don't think we would ever just have
just the same package
two weeks in a row.
We always want to add something else.
And I guess we can
move on to
another feature that we have
as well, because
this week is a two-hour show, and we did want to do something
rather special. And we have
talked about this on our website
and through Twitter and all that kind of thing.
So let me actually start
off by
playing a little hint as
to what lies ahead.
This is
an organization, a couple
of people you might have heard of.
Let's take a listen.
Meet
the Yes Men,
the next generation of activists.
We're like Santa Claus,
only less radical.
To fight corporate
greed, they will become
anyone. With the Yes Men, we
target people we see as criminals, and we
steal their identity to try to make them honest.
This is Ken Sprung Spratt
from the WTO. Michael Bonanno
here. I'm Hank Harvey Unruh.
Dr. Andreas Bickeldauer.
Grandma's hula berry.
How are we expecting you? I'm good.
To fix the global economy,
they will go anywhere.
Well, we're arriving in Helsinki
right now. We're in London.
We're en route to Australia. I'm due in
Hong Kong the week after.
Run!
To protect freedom,
they will use any means necessary.
This time, we just have to really push it
and make it totally extreme.
This is the big day to close down the WTO.
At this point, it's upset quite a few people.
Oh, it gets better.
The Yes Men.
Changing the world, one prank
at a time.
And
as you may have heard,
the Yes Men will be one of the
keynote speakers at
the Hope No. 9 conference
July 13th through 15th
here in New York City. That's exciting
enough. But what's even more exciting
right now is we have one of them on the phone with
us and another one on his way to the studio
right now. Mike Bonanno,
are you with us from London? Or from
England, anyway? I am with you
and strangely,
I'm in a place called Dundee
in Scotland. Oh, you're in Scotland.
Yeah, not that far from London. I was in London
a few days ago, though, for
this entertaining
release of the
Stratfor
emails. Okay, so
you guys are involved in that somehow.
Yeah, well, basically
we're named
in it several hundred
times.
You know, when
they're tracking you, of
course, they repeat your name over and
over every time they're making a report
back. In this
case, it was Dow Chemical, mostly,
that
was paying
Stratfor to look
after us, in a way.
You know, they call it intelligence,
but it really wasn't very smart. It was
just things like
trying to sign up for mailing
lists that we have and
keep track of where we were going and
speaking.
So they would report back to Dow,
and Dow was apparently very worried
about what we
were doing.
So when Wikileaks
found
a few references to us
in it, they gave us a holler
and asked if we wouldn't like to join
them for a press conference in
London.
And that press conference
took place when?
It took place on Monday, and
yeah, it was a really
exciting event. We ended up
in turn
inviting a bunch of
Bhopal activists, including a Bhopal
survivor, whose
name appeared dozens of times
in the documents as well. I mean,
we had been working with them in the
past, and so we
found that they were being monitored
as well. And yeah, since
it's all blown up in the media,
as one has come to
expect and count upon
when it comes to
Wikileaks, and especially with the
double whammy of a Wikileaks
Anonymous Alliance.
That must
really scare the powers that be
senseless to think of
Wikileaks Anonymous and the Yes
Men all working together.
I can't imagine
what's going on in the boardrooms.
Well, you know,
the funny thing is that we no longer need to
imagine everything, because we can
just read the real documents.
Yeah, you know,
maybe we can get like a real-time
video feeds now of their
complex, of their office meetings,
and things like that.
What does this tell you about the security that they have
as far as all this material
being so apparently
easy to access? Well,
I mean, I don't know. I unfortunately
don't know enough about that, but
my sense is that it's
about as
kind of
hole-ridden as Swiss cheese.
I mean, it's just like
any of these things, though. It seems like
the security is only as
good as the humans that
populate the organization, and
in this case, they're pretty cretinous
and despicable humans.
Although, in some cases,
they may have
been very intelligent, but that
doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes.
The other thing is that
it was a large
company with a lot of employees,
and it seems like they
hired people fresh out of college, and
without any training, really,
they could work their way up the so-called
ladder.
I think it's
a system that's bound to fail
at many points
in those
structures.
I'm not at all surprised
that they're having
this kind of problem.
It was mentioned earlier that
there's this issue about
whether the governments were doing
and whether you would have gotten as many emails
from the government
website, for example.
This just points out
that these guys are operating
to make
a profit. It's this
organization of
security industry, the military
and intelligence industry. When we were
kids, I think we all expected that the FBI
sometime would have a file on us
because we grew up
learning about COINTELPRO
and things like that, but nowadays
it's like the FBI is
trading files with all of these
networks of private intelligence
agencies,
and the private
firms are doing business with
other corporations at the same time.
They're buying
information from
the U.S. government, selling it
on to Dow, selling it on to
other governments. It just becomes
a strange and
complicated
commercial entity that in many
ways is extra-governmental.
We can expect
there will be problems eventually,
and I think they'll keep coming up.
We were speaking with Mike Bonanno
of The Yes Men,
talking to us live from Scotland,
and Andy Bicklebaum is on his way up to the studio.
He'll be here very shortly.
This is a special two-hour edition of Off the Hook,
and I just want to say The Yes Men
have been very generous in donating
items to our fundraiser as well.
What we're able to offer you tonight for a pledge
of $75 are
autographed DVDs, both of their films,
The Yes Men and The Yes Men
Fix the World.
As well as those
autographed DVDs, you'll get
I believe a fake newspaper,
a fake newspaper that
The Yes Men put out. Mike, can you tell us
something about what those newspapers are all about?
Yeah.
A few years ago,
2009, we put out
a...
Well, actually, I guess
it was 2008 when we put out
the newspaper. It was just after
Obama had been elected, and we
published a fake edition in The New York Times.
We worked with a whole bunch of other
organizations and activists
in New York City.
The newspaper
had all the news
that we hoped to print.
Not all the news that's fit to print,
which is what it says up in the corner
near the map of
The New York Times.
The idea was to
postdate the newspaper
six months in the future and
populate it with all of these stories
about what we imagined could happen
with a progressive
president in office.
Of course, you know,
none of that actually did happen,
but the newspaper is really
a fun document to look at
and, you know,
get depressed about.
Yes, Barney, go ahead. I just want to point
out that this is kind of a collector's
item, this printed
spoof edition of The New York Times.
There's a
semi-famous New York Times
reporter and a media scholar named Alex
Jones, and he said
about this newspaper,
quote, I would say if you got one,
hold on to it. It will probably be a
collector's item. I'm just glad someone
thinks The New York Times print edition is
worthy of an elaborate hoax.
A web spoof would have definitely been
infinitely easier, but creating
a print newspaper and handing it out
at subway stations, that
takes a lot of effort.
Here's your chance to get one of these
collector's items
by calling and supporting
WBAI. In addition to the
two movies, we're going to play an excerpt from
one in just a moment.
The two Yes Men movies also
autographed.
This is inspirational. This is what the hacker world
is all about, this kind of mischief, this kind of
antagonism, and
lately this kind of awareness of what's
going on in the world.
So you'll have a lot of material
to digest. All for a
pledge of $75, you'll get that.
In addition, we have the
aforementioned Hackerspace package for
a $75 pledge.
In addition to that, we also have
a $50 package
of off-the-hook DVDs
every single show from 1988
through 2011.
22 DVDs. So that's for $50.
So for $125, you can get the Yes Men
package and the off-the-hook
archive, or
the Hackerspace package and the off-the-hook archive.
All kinds of combinations
there, but it's only available
during this special
two-hour off-the-hook. 212-209-2950.
You need to see those phones start ringing
and we need to know people are out there
supporting this kind of thing.
We're going to have both Yes Men on at the same time in just a
few minutes, and
we'll be able to talk about all kinds of mischief, past,
present, and future.
What I'd like to focus on now
and Mike, you made reference
to it, is what happened
at Bhopal in the 1980s.
Something a lot of people in America don't even
know about, and you guys
decided to tackle this.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to play an excerpt from the
beginning of your film, The Yes Men
Fix the World, but
could you possibly just give a little bit of background
as to what brought you guys
into it?
Yeah, well,
you know, in 1984
a Union Carbide
plant in Bhopal had an accident
that several
journalists had actually been warning about
for years. They said the plant was going to
explode, and it did
because of Union Carbide's
negligence. Well, in
2002 Dow Chemical
bought Union Carbide,
but they said that
they were basically inheriting
their assets and not their liabilities.
And, you know, corporations
often do this. They try to wash
their hands of a sort of bad memory
or sometimes
liabilities themselves
by reconfiguring
a corporation, by bankrupting
it and then redistributing
its assets under a different name.
And so
there were a bunch of activists, including
the activists in Bhopal, who had been struggling
for 20 years to,
at that point, 18 years, to try
to hold Union Carbide
accountable. And they wanted to make sure
that people knew that
that Dow was
now the company that owned Union Carbide
so it was Dow's problem.
So they asked us to
help them out and put up a fake
website, which we did.
And initially
it caused a little bit of
a rumble in the media. The New York
Times wrote about it. It was kind
of funny. But then two years
went by and nothing happened, and the site
sat there dormant.
But one day we received
an email from none
other than BBC World Television,
and that's the most
watched news program in the world.
They claim to have 300 million
viewers. And they
asked for Dow Chemical
to send representatives
to speak on their
program live on the 20th anniversary
of the disaster.
At first we didn't think it could possibly
be true,
but of course it ended up being
true. They really thought we were Dow Chemical.
And we
were able to go on and
make a very special announcement
on behalf of Dow.
I don't want to give away too much here.
We do want to play an excerpt
as to what exactly happened from the film.
This film is part of
the package that we're offering here
tonight.
212-209-2950
And this is basically
what happened when
the Yes Men took on
Dow Chemical.
You'll learn about the concept
of the gold skeleton, for instance.
Again, you'll get
both films and
a newspaper autographed by the Yes Men for a pledge
of $75, 212-209-2950.
We have other
levels as well. We have the off-the-hook archive. We have the
hackerspace package. But this Yes Men
package we're only offering tonight, and
it's really something amazing.
Let's take a listen to the film.
Hi.
My name's Mike.
And I'm Andy.
And this is a movie in which the two of us
fix the world.
Judgment day, forget your
troubles, come on, get happy.
Are we fixing the world?
Yes.
I'm scared.
Get ready.
Get ready.
For the judgment
day.
Now what?
What we do
is pass ourselves off
as representatives of big corporations
we don't like.
We make fake
websites, then wait for people
to accidentally invite us to conferences.
My name is
Fred. I'm from Halliburton. My name is
Hannaford Schmidt. I'm with the World
Trade Organization. I'm from Arizona.
My name is Francisco Guerrero.
Omerliu Haqmex. Hundreds of
oil and gas executives were duped
today. Louisiana officials
are taken for a ride by the Yes Men.
The Yes Men? The Yes Men.
Anti-globalization activists
that travel the world pulling pranks at
corporate events. A bunch of lefty protesters.
World-renowned troublemakers.
Sick, twisted,
cruel. And what they do
is really to take absurd ideas
and present these ideas in all seriousness.
The group has done this many times before. They have a track
record of getting away with it. So, how
did this happen? Equity International
says the impostors showed up... At home
in our underground headquarters,
it was time to start planning our next mission.
Tens of thousands
of Iraqis have died.
Worries are growing among top government and
business leaders about the surge of
food riots. Markets continue to shake.
Unemployment is up.
The oil companies reported the highest
profits in the history of the world.
But with so many things going wrong,
who should we go after
next?
We got our answer when a text message
arrived.
Dow Chemical had just
bought Union Carbide,
a company that became infamous in the
1980s. You remember the
1980s. Challenger.
Chernobyl.
Bhopal.
In 1984,
when Union Carbide's pesticide
plant at Bhopal exploded,
at least 5,000 people
died within weeks, and 100,000
more remained sick for life.
It was the biggest
industrial disaster in history.
But Union Carbide settled with
the Indian government for $470
million, meaning
most of the victims got less than
$1,000 each.
I just want to say to
shareholders of Union Carbide
that I am confident that the
victims can be fairly and equitably
compensated without a material
adverse effect on the financial condition
of Union Carbide Corporation.
There was little adverse effect on the
shareholders, but in Bhopal,
people continued to suffer.
When Dow announced it would buy
Union Carbide, there was finally
hope for justice. Dow said
it would compensate victims of Carbide's
past negligence, and promptly
paid over $2 billion
to 14 asbestos
plaintiffs in Texas.
Dow could do for Bhopal
what they'd done for Texas.
But we knew they wouldn't.
So, we decided
to do it for them.
We set up a fake
Dow chemical website,
DowEthics.com, and we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Then one day,
we got our chance.
You have mail.
We'd just been invited to a conference
on international finance.
Some of the biggest banks in the world
would be there.
These were the kind of banks who helped
companies like Union Carbide and Dow
do what they do.
A company might say,
we're going to build a shoddy plant
in a corrupt legal system.
The plant might explode and people might die,
but we'll make a lot of money.
And the bank comes back
and says, great, sounds like a plan.
What could
we possibly do
to show bankers what was wrong with this logic?
So right now I'm painting
Gilda, the gilded
skeleton, actually the golden skeleton
that we're going to use in the
Dow chemical lecture in London
at a financial services conference
in just a few short days.
The only good skeleton
is a gold skeleton.
In case Gilda didn't scare them enough,
we had a backup plan.
We rented a theatrical pyrotechnics
unit here so that we can
make a big puff of smoke.
Ah!
We're on our way
to a conference
and Erastus Hamm
is going to be speaking
at the conference
as Dow Chemical Company.
Our plan was to have Dow demonstrate
for the first time ever
exactly how they calculate
the cash value of human life.
Would this make the
bankers think twice?
It was time to find out.
Thank you very much.
On May 1st,
we are releasing the beta version
of Acceptable Risk,
the world's first market-smart
risk calculator to help you
find out instantly what risks
are or are not acceptable
from a bottom-line business perspective.
Will Project X
be just another skeleton
in the closet, something your company
comes to regret, or will it be
a golden skeleton?
A complex case is
IBM's sale of technology
to World War II Germany
for use in identifying
certain populations.
This was very bad, of course,
but no one can deny they were profitable,
and although the issue remains
a skeleton in the closet,
in retrospect, it is quite clearly golden.
Now, you may have
heard the joke.
How many Americans does it take
to screw in a light bulb?
Twelve.
Eight to climb the ladder,
and 11 to file the lawsuit.
What about Indians?
Oh, just one.
We would, of course,
never wish to imply
that an Indian life is worth
more or less than another.
I, myself, believe in the sanctity
of all life.
But the market has its own logic,
and if we're willing to live with it,
we must make the most
of the choices it makes.
I would say it's that
the only good skeleton
is a gold skeleton.
Oh!
applause
Surprise!
This is Gilda.
She's the mascot
for the Dow Acceptable Risk Program.
Gilda is here to basically tell you
that if you have a skeleton
in the closet, it may not
be just a skeleton.
It may very well be
a golden skeleton as well.
And as you move into a future
of ever-increasing complexity
and ever-increasing opportunities,
Dow Acceptable Risk can assure you
that your touch will be
the Midas one.
And I'd like to finish
with a little poem.
I'd rather be handsome than homely,
I'd rather be youthful than old.
If I can't have a bushel of silver,
I'll do with a barrel of gold.
Thank you very much.
We hope you come up
and get a closer look.
applause
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Here's a keychain.
Thank you very much.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Unfortunately, I don't have a card anymore.
I've ran out of them.
Oh, wonderful.
Yes, you were one of the earlier speakers.
Is it applicable?
Is your model applicable to anything?
Can we use it in risk management?
Oh, absolutely.
Our risk management guys take a look at it
because we do a lot of interesting things.
Wonderful.
This is interesting.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Take care.
And that was an excerpt
from the Yes Men.
Fix the world.
Wow.
If anything,
it's a testament to what hackers can do
when they're clever,
when they try to fool various people.
This is what social engineering is all about.
This is the film.
Yes Men Fix the World.
We're offering this in addition to the Yes Men.
We're offering this in addition to the fake newspaper
put out by the Yes Men
and all of it autographed by the Yes Men as well.
212-209-2950
is our telephone number.
Open lines and I know there's lots of people
out there that are fascinated by this kind of thing.
Please give a call.
212-209-2950
Mike Bonanno is on the phone with us from Scotland.
He's half of the Yes Men.
The other half of the Yes Men are on their way
up the elevator right now to the radio station
and we'll have both of them here
in just a moment.
But Mike, first of all, it's unbelievable
what you guys were able to get away with
actually appearing before that crowd.
It was in Finland, I believe.
The one you just saw was London.
That was London, okay.
The one you just heard, I mean.
Right, and you will see it if you get the DVDs.
And it's really
it's pretty funny.
You get to see what the gold skeleton obviously looks like
and all of that.
But most importantly
you're learning about
what the Yes Men are up to.
You're supporting the radio station.
It's win-win. But tell us something about how that all happened.
How do people fall for this kind of thing?
And there are people actually after the talk
coming up to you asking
for more information on this particular
crazy scheme
that you're presenting to the crowd.
Yeah, I think most
of the time the reason
that people still come up and want their business
cards is that we're
usually
presented as the most important people
in the room.
Everybody is there to meet
us. They don't
suspect that we're anybody
else. Anybody other than
who we're introduced as. So for the
Dow representatives, people think that we
are no matter how bad
our presentation or performance is.
They still believe that
we are who the conference organizers
say we are.
And that's happened probably
a good
dozen to twenty times when we've
appeared. People
haven't doubted it even when the presentation
has been really over the top.
Including unveiling
a three foot long golden phallus
that we said we used to
give remote workforces electric
shocks. That was when we were
representing the World Trade Organization.
I mean, we went
basically when we discovered that we
were tapping into this
weird psychological phenomenon
where people
held us in such respect that they
weren't ready to question anything we did.
We began to push it as far as we could
and see how far
we could actually take it
before people would object. Before people
would say something.
We've never actually
found
that boundary. We've never
made it across that border
to where people stand up
out of their seats and start screaming at us.
We always expected to, but haven't gotten there yet.
You mentioned
the golden phallus. I believe that was in
Finland, correct?
That's correct.
I was watching a little bit of this.
I noticed that you guys were
a little bit nervous. It seems like you had
had all your things in your arms
ready to go.
Unexpectedly, they said
please stay for some questions.
You were ready to
back out and walk off stage. It seems like
you're always on your toes in those moments
where you've given the presentation
and you're not quite sure how it's landed.
At that point,
that was back in 2004
and we hadn't done
very many of these things.
The first time that we actually
did it, the first time we represented the
World Trade Organization
in, I think it was
2001,
we actually
just expected that we would get up
and make this absurd speech about
privatizing voting.
For example, we came up with a plan
to open a free market in democracy
by allowing corporations to sell
their votes to the highest bidder using
the internet. It was
something that we presented.
We thought that
the group of international
trade lawyers at the conference
would rebel against the idea
and we just had
video cameras there to witness
our arrest. That's what we'd
imagined.
We only had one camera there
and we thought, we're just going to get arrested.
It'll be funny. We'll find out
what it's like in a...
Where were we?
We were in
Austria? Yeah, we'll find out what it's like
in an Austrian jail.
I think it was Finland that time,
wasn't it?
Finland was the...
The first time that we did it was actually
in Austria in Salzburg
at the trade law conference.
The first time
when we didn't get arrested, that's when we realized
this is weird.
That's when we started trying to turn up the volume
and make things more and more absurd
resulting in that golden phallus suit.
Absolutely.
How do you deal with that when you
do get found out?
I know there's other instances, maybe you can describe
what Vivolium
is, but there's been instances
where you do get found out
and how do you deal with that and what are your
expectations? I just don't reveal everything,
but generally, how do you approach that?
Yeah, I mean,
in the case of the Vivolium candles,
we were up in Calgary representing
ExxonMobil
and we presented the new biofuel
which is made from the human
victims of climate change.
But strangely,
we were giving this talk
at a luncheon with 300 people.
It was a keynote address for this big petroleum
conference and
it wasn't actually that people were
objecting to what we were saying. It turned out
that somebody recognized us from our
first movie and that's how the
conference organizers found out. We only
figured that out by watching
the videotapes really carefully
and we had people
sitting at the different tables and somebody
just taped the woman who noticed
us and we just
discovered after the fact. We actually
thought that the conference organizers
figured it out,
but they only figured it out because they were
tipped off by a woman who recognized us.
Now, when they did actually come
up and drag us off stage, it was really
funny because
the conference organizers were having a very hard
time convincing security to
take us off stage because we were
dressed in suits. We were at the podium.
The conference organizers were
dressed in suits in the audience.
Who are they supposed to believe, right?
They actually...
This was held at the Calgary
Stampede Grounds.
That's where the event was.
It's the largest rodeo in the world.
They hold rodeos
there. They hold petroleum conferences
there.
These cowboy kind of
bouncer guys who were in charge of security
had not a clue what to do.
They were caught between one
guy in a seat and another guy in a seat
and eventually the conference organizers
got so frustrated they went up and actually
dragged us off himself.
I think that his...
When he started dragging
us off, then the security
decided that he must be in the right
because nobody in their right mind would go
and drag off the other guy in the seat if they
didn't have the authority to do so.
Then they kind of begrudgingly
locked us in a little
room while they waited for the police to come.
Oh my gosh.
The whole time we just
maintained that we were still from ExxonMobil.
Sure. Oh wow.
Never back down on the story. You always have to
have a graceful way out of it.
Mike, Andy, your cohort has
arrived here in the studio.
Andy, welcome to the station.
Thank you very much.
We were just listening to this clip here from
the S-Men fix the world.
You're off to a good start. I think you are
fixing the world because you're making people
think, you're making people laugh, you're
basically getting
through a lot of
transparent security barriers that
don't seem to really exist.
Humor can do that. Yeah, we try.
We try to be funny. Well, you succeed.
Definitely. Now, is there
any advice you can offer
people that might be interested in
waking up the public
with humor or just with awareness?
We'll be funny.
That's basically it.
Yeah, be funny.
Aren't you
surprised by how many
big corporations you're able to
impersonate just by putting up
a fake website? Is that all it takes?
Yeah. You put up the fake
website, you wait for somebody to bite.
Yeah, that's one of the ways.
We used to do it that way.
Several times in a row we would
just put up a website and find
a way to publicize it one way or the other.
That
with the way we got started
with the fake World Trade Organization
fake website, we put it up
and
fortunately the WTO
hated it and reacted
and put a press release
about it on their website and sent
us email
telling us that we had insulted
them and it wasn't that terrible.
We used that opportunity
to blast it out and tell thousands
of people about it, which got it into
the search engines, whatever they
were in 1999.
That helped it
become a trap.
People would search on World Trade Organization
because of all the links to it.
They would often get ours.
It's all about the links, all about where you place on Google.
At the time, yeah. But since then we've
moved on to other ways because you can't really
rely on that and Google has improved its
algorithms and so on.
It's very easy though, as you know,
just to call up a place
or email a place and just
pretend to be somebody you're not.
We've done that as well.
That's putting it mildly.
Yeah.
The technique to actually get in
is, I mean, Mike can
explain this better than I, but he's
posed as somebody
from a public relations agency
and emailed a conference and
said, we have a very, very high profile
client who's very interested in your
wonderful conference and
the rest is easy.
Wow.
Aren't you
scared though when you're standing up there on stage
and you're saying that you're the WTO,
you're saying you're Exxon Mobil or Dow Chemical,
you're representatives and you're in front of a bunch of
suits that are busy taking notes
of things that you're saying and you just keep saying
more and more outrageous things
and they don't
seem to bat an eye. They just keep
writing down and then asking
questions, agreeing with you,
all kinds of things you just
not think are possible in the first place.
What's going through your head when you're up there on stage
while this is happening?
What's going through my head
is I hope I don't crack up,
and of course I never do,
because it's such a high-tension
thing, you don't want to crack up.
Also, I hope this shot
looks really good in the movie.
Yeah.
The fact that they're sitting there taking notes
and just listening and nodding is going to be really
spooky for audiences, so that's good.
Rob? It amazes me
how you guys go into these situations
and just basically
with the addition of a press suit
and a haircut, you're immediately accepted
by these people because you look like
one of them. So much
of the social engineering job that you
do is based on just what you look like going in
and blending in.
Do you find that's
still the main part of what you do
if it's via a website or a
press release or what have you?
If people think you look like one of them, they just accept
you without question?
Yeah. That's
basically what we do, I think. It makes for
good humor. If you
can really convince yourself
that you are who you say you are,
then you can usually convince other people.
So, yeah.
Whether it's a website or a press
release or doing it live in front
of people, it's a matter of
kind of...
We've come up with an exercise recently to help people
who aren't funny be funnier
than they are. And it's to basically
try not to be funny.
Try to be your target,
your enemy, like whoever you're
trying to make fun of. Just try to really give their
point of view as honestly and sincerely
like your life depends on it. Just really
go for it. And it's amazing.
It's really funny.
People represent the nuclear
industry in a really funny
way if they try to not be
funny about it and try to actually defend them
because, you know, what's to defend?
It's preposterous. So you do your best and that's
funny. We're speaking with Andy Bicklebaum
and Mike Bonanno
over in Scotland on the telephone from
the Yes Men. These are the Yes Men here in the
studio right now. We're offering a special
Yes Men package.
For only $75
you'll get both DVDs and a fake
newspaper autograph by the Yes Men.
And it's awesome. It really...
I'm going to pledge one of these myself.
I think
the epitome of social engineering, what
these guys do. And you will
simply learn so much about how
it's done. How
things can get messed up and
how you recover from that.
212-209-2950
Show your support for the radio station. Keep us going
so we can talk about things like this in the future
as well and hopefully inspire
other listeners to be a part of this as well.
212-209-2950
$75 gets you the Yes Men package.
You mentioned before that, you know, when
you're on stage you're thinking about hoping that the video
comes out. And it's obviously very important in this day
and age to have documentation of these things
because you can disseminate that
and it kind of increases the impact of it.
But obviously in a lot of these
cases, as we've seen
usually organizations are kind of
wary of video cameras. Do you
bring your own cameras? Do you rely on
the
conference cameras?
Do you just tell them, we need to document this
for our company?
Either we have to document it for our
company or
there's a separate team that
has cameras
as well and they say they're a documentary crew
making a documentary about textiles
or some whatever
silly subject there is.
So that's...
And one of the principles that we've
always had with
actions is never to
rely on journalists to get the story.
In fact, often you prefer
them not to be there because
they'll interpret
it wrong. You have to edit it
to make it really good.
To convey what's actually happening
you might have to actually
tell a story.
That's what press releases are
for. That's what video news releases are for.
Everybody does it and
activists have to do that as well.
Mike and Andy?
Go ahead, Barney.
Thanks for coming on the show, first of all.
I wanted to
congratulate you on the BBC World
hack and
wanted to ask you
what other major
media news outlets around the
world
utterly fail to do fact checking
and bring you on
as someone
you weren't?
Or which ones
don't? Whichever is a shorter answer.
Which other major
media news outlets have had you on
posing
as representatives of some corporation?
I can only remember one.
Mike, can you remember anything other than CNBC?
Well, yeah.
CNBC Market Rep Europe
had one, Granwith
Huletberry
from the WTO, and that was Andy.
That was back in
the early 2000s.
What was that name again, Mike?
Granwith Huletberry.
Aren't you
kind of tempting fate with a name like that?
One would think.
And apparently they
don't think. Okay, we'll continue.
But more
recently, we haven't
faked them out with appearances,
live appearances, but
they have picked up a lot of
press releases. So, for example,
we were
working with a group called US Uncut
who put out a
press release about
General Electric giving
back their tax
credit
that they received last year.
And
that was, of course, fake, but it was
reported as real. And we have
another case not so long ago
where the US Chamber of
Commerce announced that they were going to get
behind climate legislation that was going
through Congress, and that was
Andy again behind the podium.
But the press release itself
was covered
by Fox News. It was
read out as if
it was real. So,
there's newscasters who have been fooled, but
not necessarily...
We haven't been invited on TV
very much.
What's the reasoning behind using
a completely made-up name as opposed
to, say, someone who actually exists within
the organization? Are there legal
ramifications, or is it just that it's
hard because they can't verify that the
person exists?
It's a Google thing.
So, if they don't really
exist, then it's harder for them
to find any real information about the person.
And also, it's not
legal concern, but it's maybe
ethical. Like, who cares about this person?
Unless they're a really high-profile person, it would
be great to impersonate them, but then everybody
would know what they look like, so that
wouldn't work very well.
But, yeah, it's more just that the people
in the corporation aren't really
our targets. We're not saying anybody's
evil who works in a corporation, or even
the CEO isn't evil, necessarily.
It's just...
It's the actual system that
is evil. It's not even the one
corporation, and it's not...
Evil's the wrong word.
But there's this big system that
benefits the very wealthy, and it's
engineered that way. It's very carefully
constructed to do that at the
expense of everybody else, and that's really what we're
trying to say with all of our actions.
It's not that there
are any bad apples, or that
certain people are psychopathic,
although they are.
It's that there's this entire system.
So we wouldn't take
names and impersonate people,
generally, for that reason.
We're here with Andy and Mike of the Yes Men,
showing us all kinds
of interesting techniques,
philosophies, experiences, things like that.
And we're offering the Yes Men package
two of their DVDs,
two of their films that have come out over the past
few years, showing
these particular
I guess
adventures
in social justice, which
is presented through comedy,
is presented through social engineering, but it is
effective in getting the message out, and you'll see
how it's done, and the reactions
and all that kind of thing. You'll get two autographed
DVDs and a fake newspaper
that they also put out and handed out
to the unsuspecting commuters
at various rush hours.
That's for a pledge of $75. It's an amazing deal.
Only good till 9 p.m. tonight.
212-209-2950.
We have three calls on the line, over $1,000
so far, which is great.
Please keep those calls coming in. Again,
we can only offer this for
a very brief time.
212-209-2950.
What I'd like to do is play a little
bit more from the
Yes Men
World. This is
basically more about what we were just talking
about with fooling BBC
World into getting on the air
and speaking before 300 million
people, which I don't know how.
That was you,
Andy, right? Being
on TV in front of 300 million people,
how did that feel live? Well, it was in a
broom closet, so it felt okay.
If they had all been there, it would
have been really awkward. And it wasn't in BBC
Studios? It was, but it was
in the Paris studio. You didn't go to London
though? No. You wanted neutral territory.
Well, I lived in Paris at the time, so it was
natural, but also it was lucky because
it was a broom closet and there was one
technician there and there was no ID
checking or anything. Alright, let's listen to how
this unfolded. This is an excerpt from
the Yes Men Fix the World.
It's yours, along with the Yes
Men, the other film, and
the fake newspaper for a pledge of $75.
212-209-2950. And for an
additional $50, you get a full archive of
Off the Hook, every show we've ever done
from 1988 until
2011. 212-209-2950.
Let's
hear the Yes Men Fix the World.
Back at home.
You had new mail. We had mail.
Turned out, our Dow site
was the gift that kept on giving.
This time,
it wasn't a mere conference.
We'd hit the jackpot.
The BBC,
perhaps the world's most respected news
organization, was doing a big broadcast
about Bhopal.
And they wanted to know whether Dow might finally
clean up their mess.
The interview, they said, would be broadcast
to 300 million
people.
This was what we'd been waiting for.
To the BBC's great surprise,
Dow emailed back to say they would be delighted
to speak publicly about the catastrophe.
As for us,
300 million people was about
a million times bigger than any
other audience we'd ever had.
We were scared. So we asked the BBC
if instead of coming to their
headquarters in London, we could meet
them in Neutral Territory, the original
land of revolution.
Are you a little nervous?
I'm so nervous.
Oh, God. It's like
going to the guillotine.
I think
it's right near where they used to have the
guillotine too in Paris.
The office.
Yeah,
I think it's the biggest thing we've ever done.
This.
I haven't
combed my hair in like
20 years.
Yeah, really.
I think I used to do it this way.
All right.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
When we acquired Union Carbide
three years ago, we knew what we were getting,
and today we are prepared to do
the obvious.
Let's see.
Don't film too much when we get
there, I think.
Hi. Bonjour.
And you're watching BBC World.
Our main headlines.
The world's worst industrial accident is being
remembered in India today.
It's 20 years since deadly gas leaked
from the Union Carbide chemical plant
in the city of Bhopal.
At least 18,000 deaths are attributed
to the leak, and many local people say
the contamination has never been properly
cleared up.
Should I typically just look right into the camera?
Okay.
The factory still exists here,
and that's been a real problem for the people
living here locally.
I mean, there's a site, I've been to it,
and it's full of toxic waste.
People who are living in these houses,
they've all got a story to tell
about that day 20 years ago.
Many of them lost members of their family,
and they say that they're continuing
to suffer because of the tragedy.
And they're saying somebody needs to answer for this.
Legally, what they're saying is they want
to pursue the company to try and clean up
the site, but whether the company
will accept liability seems doubtful.
Well, joining us live from Paris now
is Jude Finisterra.
He's a spokesman for Dow Chemicals,
which took over Union Carbide.
Good morning to you.
A day of commemoration in Bhopal.
Do you now accept responsibility
for what happened?
Steve, yes.
Today is a great day for all of us at Dow,
and I think for millions of people
around the world as well.
It's 20 years since the disaster,
and today I'm very, very happy
to announce that for the first time,
Dow is accepting full responsibility
for the Bhopal catastrophe.
We have a $12 billion plan
to finally, at long last,
fully compensate the victims,
including the 120,000 who may need
medical care for their entire lives,
and to fully and swiftly remediate
the Bhopal plant site.
Now, when we acquired Union Carbide
three years ago, we knew what we were getting,
and it's worth $12 billion.
$12 billion.
We have resolved to liquidate Union Carbide,
this nightmare for the world
and this headache for Dow,
and use the $12 billion
to adequately compensate the victims.
Jude, that's good news
that you have finally accepted responsibility.
Some people would say too late.
It's three years, almost four years on.
When we acquired Union Carbide,
we did settle their liabilities
in the United States immediately,
and we are now, three years later,
prepared to do the same in India.
We should have done it three years ago.
We are doing it now.
And I would also like to say
that this is no small matter, Steve.
This is the first time in history
that a publicly owned company
of anything near the size of Dow
has performed an action
which is significantly against its bottom line
simply because it's the right thing to do.
And our shareholders may take a bit of a hit, Steve,
but I think that if they're anything like me,
they will be ecstatic to be part
of such a historic occasion
of doing right by those that we've wronged.
Just to reiterate
what Jude Finisterra,
the spokesman for Dow Chemicals,
has just said, he says,
Dow Chemicals now fully accept
responsibility for the events in Bhopal.
Great. That's it?
Well done. Great.
Now you do...
I can tell you one thing.
We will continue to make profit.
We will simply make slightly less profit
than normal.
But we are doing the right thing.
We're comparing here, though,
the value of money to the value of human life.
And there is no comparison.
It's a good thing to announce.
Exactly.
I mean, how often does Dow get to...
You know?
I wouldn't want to be a Dow spokesperson otherwise.
You know, this might be
the best hack I've ever heard or seen.
And, Andy, I just cannot...
I cannot express enough
how in awe I am
of what you pulled off there
in front of BBC world audience,
300 million people impersonating Dow Chemicals,
taking responsibility for Bhopal.
What happened after that?
How long did it take?
And first of all, let me just say that
by calling 212-209-2950,
pledging $75,
you'll get that film plus another film
plus a newspaper that was created
by the Yes Men, all autographed
and sent to you,
212-209-2950.
It's utterly awesome and incredible.
So when did they start to realize
that they'd been punked?
We got a call
about half an hour later
from the BBC.
I went back to my apartment,
got this call, and I tried to talk to them.
I tried to do the social engineering thing
and say, well, you know,
Union Carbide, they were saying,
had not, you know,
they had reached Union Carbide headquarters
and they had said there was no such person.
And I said, well, of course not.
We have just liquidated Union Carbide.
And so...
It did not work.
No?
No.
I think they did laugh.
It didn't have to work at that point, though, did it?
No, no, there was no reason for it to work.
These things aren't meant to really fool people
Where were they when they found out
that they'd just made fools of themselves in front of the entire world?
They were British.
They were very gracious about it.
They invited us back
into the studio that evening.
Their studio in London?
No, the same studio.
Different show, but
same studio.
Wow. Now, I imagine Dow Chemical
probably made a few furious phone calls
when they got wind of what was going on over Global Airwaves.
Yeah, I don't think they were too happy.
They were probably not British about it.
No.
And what did they say? They must have said something to you in some form.
No.
No, no, no. They barely said anything to anybody.
They wrote this little
very terse little statement
that's in the movie, you'll see there,
where they just deny it.
Well, that's the thing. I mean, you've already given them
this incredible public relations coup
where they can take responsibility, do the right thing,
help people out, accept responsibility,
and they have to go and say,
no, we're not going to do any of that.
How do you say that
gracefully without looking like really
evil people?
Well, you don't. I mean, they had a prepared statement.
They probably, you know, probably they'd prepared
it years before.
But it was, you know, two lines,
and they just read it, and that's all they could do.
I mean, I think they should have just run with it.
You know, said, okay, yeah, yeah,
what's it to us? Sure, we'll compensate
the survivors. Liquidate a $12 billion company.
Yeah, whatever. That would be the
hack of the world, for sure.
All history. No, their
response, their actual response was so
disappointing that we had
to actually do one much better
for them. So we
very quickly wrote a press release
on their behalf, attacking us,
denying the hoax,
saying how terrible we were,
and saying all the many, many things
they wouldn't do, like they would not
compensate the Bopolis, their share
would not go down, therefore
they would not clean up the site, they would not
do all these things. And was that
picked up by the media as well? Yeah.
Yeah, that was.
And we still get people occasionally
today who say, wow, you really got
Dow to react.
Mike, what are your
recollections of this?
Well, I no longer
have any recollections.
I've just been listening to Andy talk about it,
and I was like, yeah, that must be what happened.
Come on.
Wow.
Hey guys. Yes, Bernie.
One of the best, world's
greatest hacks I've ever heard.
I've heard it before, of course, but last night
I was listening to BBC World Service,
and they are commemorating
the 80th anniversary of the
BBC World Service, and they were playing
some of the most
noteworthy
moments in BBC
World's history of
reporting, but they didn't play that.
And I think that was a glaring omission.
And they really should have,
because that stuck in my mind probably
as much as anything that BBC World Service
has ever reported.
It was aired once, right? They didn't
repeat it? No.
They immediately lost
the tape afterward.
Well, I think Anonymous has the tape.
I'm not kidding either.
We
looked into
getting the best quality
copy that we could to put in our movie,
and they said
that the tape no longer exists.
They couldn't find it in their archives, which is
of course a total bull.
It disappeared because
they are embarrassed
about it. But I just want to point out
that it really wasn't their
fault. I mean, they were actually just trying to get
somebody to speak. They were
trying to get a Dow representative to speak,
and if there are people out there
who will agree to
be Dow representatives, then I think
there's nothing that they could do
to inoculate themselves against that,
really. So it wasn't
really their fault.
Well, they did contact a website
that wasn't a Dow website,
correct? Minor detail.
Just a minor detail.
Alright, alright. Now, what other
news agencies have
fallen for
your antics over the years?
Well, the
thing that Mike mentioned when we
issued a press release for General
Electric, last year they
paid no taxes. That was a big story
for a while. Yes. And we
issued a press release, or US Uncut
actually issued a press release with
a little bit of help from us,
announcing that they would actually
pay the
proper amount in taxes that they were
not paying. And
USA Today published that.
They were the first ones to jump at that.
Interesting. Yeah, online.
And that got a lot
of other journalists laughing
at them. So I'm on
your, off the hook, I think is on your distribution
list, and we get these press releases
saying like, hey, we're General Electric, we're gonna
pay all our taxes.
And as soon as I see it,
I say, oh, that's the yes men doing one of their things.
Because there's no way GE would
do that. You would think
USA Today would be at least as smart as I am.
It's really strange that they're not.
Really? You'd think that? I wouldn't.
I would hope that they would be.
I'm not that bright, so it's not a high bar.
I don't know. Well, this is
something we all would hope for, but as we've criticized
on the show time and time again, the media
in many cases has turned into this giant
echo chamber where they simply
regurgitate various press releases
that have been thrown at them without doing too much research.
You know, I mean, if you look around
enough, a lot of times you can actually find a news story
and actually trace the origin of the
press release in which it came from.
In this case,
they were just following the same pattern, apparently.
Back when I was in college,
and I think the statute of limitations has run out on this,
I was involved in
circulating some fake information
through various mischief makers late at night.
We'd post memos up on walls and
change policy. One thing we did was
we instituted a curfew
for students at 11 p.m.
just to provoke some outrage.
And we said this is a throwback to the
1968
statute, and we quoted the statute and all that.
And it turned into
a big story. The newspapers, the
president's office, they all had to
put out releases saying, no, we're not
doing this, we're not reverting back to this
statute of 1968. And what they didn't
check was that there was no statute in 1968.
So we basically
rewrote history and introduced a statute
back then just by something they
weren't going to check. Have you guys ever been able to do that?
To actually rewrite history? And you'll have to tell us
what you rewrote. We'll read about it someday.
But is it possible to just go back
and change a little slight detail
so that, you know, maybe Roosevelt
had an extra term or something?
That would be great.
Ah, I don't know.
People are very believing about these
sorts of things. You know, I don't really
care too much about the statute of limitations, but I've done
some culture jamming stuff in the past.
Put out various
documents for organizations
on their behalf, such as for the
MTA. It helps them out, yeah.
Yeah, it does. And people look at this and actually
will believe it, even though it's the most absurd thing you've ever
seen. And actually, it takes a lot of
brain power. They look at it and they think,
for a second, they think this is real. And then they think,
wait, would they really say this?
Some more seconds go by, maybe half of it.
And they're like, no, they're still not sure.
Someone else has to confirm.
I don't think so. But at least they're thinking.
You know, they're starting to think.
You know, if something looks official, then, you know,
people tend to think that it is. I mean, that's why
you can get away with, you know, putting on
construction workers' outfits and suddenly
being in places you're not supposed to. It's just,
if it seems like it fits, if it seems like
it's supposed to be there,
people don't usually think twice about it. And that's
just, you know, part of our culture, I guess,
that you don't look to... Why would someone
go through the effort to
make a fake press release
or make a fake... or, you know,
put on a suit and go talk at a conference when they're not
supposed to be there? Why would anyone do that?
And then when it happens, you know, people are somehow
surprised. Yeah, but, Rittacht, a
three-foot golden phallus? Like, that has
to set off... which,
not a three-foot golden phallus, a three-foot golden phallus
which is used for delivering electric shocks
to your workers remotely.
But it wasn't... they didn't walk into the conference
like that. You put it underneath your suit,
and then it just all of a sudden came out on stage.
Yeah, it's human nature to believe.
It's not that they're stupid.
What we learn in social engineering, people
want to trust you. You call somebody on the phone
and say you're trying to help them,
they will give you all the information.
And they want to be your friend,
they want to have somebody they can confide in.
Yeah, we're all wired that way.
Either we want a friend or we just want to believe
what's going on on the stage. That's why we can
enjoy films and plays.
It's a good thing we have this capacity to be fooled.
We fool ourselves all the time, constantly.
And I know I'm one of the most gullible
people I know.
I'll believe anything you tell me something,
and I'll believe it at least for a while,
for a second. You know, I might think about it for 30
seconds and get it, but I
really enjoy believing
things that aren't true.
And, yeah, I think it's fun.
Yeah, and it all goes back to that point of you put on
the suit, you get the haircut, and you go
there, and people accept that you are
who you say you are because it's all about the context.
And people are just so willing to accept
things in the context they're presented
versus doing the little bit of extra
research, the two minutes of
Googling or what have you to
check the claims that are
being presented. But two minutes is so
long. And one thing we're forgetting here when we're
talking about press releases
is that this isn't because
reporters are stupid, or they're not
paying attention, or they're
easily fooled.
They actually don't have time.
The market pressure
in the way the
press has turned
so capitalist lately, it's
like the bottom line is the
bottom line, and they don't have time.
They have to get the scoop. That's how they
make their money.
You mentioned the golden phallus, and
we've talked about some of the other
stunts and
how it's integrated into a talk. Once you get the venue
and you've kind of got
an idea of where you want to go, can you describe a little
bit of the creative process for the story?
Like how you come up with
the suit or this kind of
gag or the golden skeleton?
Because it looks like you guys have a lot of fun with it.
I'm just interested in what those brainstorming
sessions are like and how you develop the ideas.
Mike's been quiet for a while.
Hello?
It's kind of getting late here.
I might actually fall asleep.
It's like three in the morning.
Never mind.
What happens
is
how do we come up with stories?
How do we come up with our stupid
pranks?
Usually
we steal them. We like
hack somebody's computer and look
for an idea.
That's where the skill comes in.
The funny thing is we don't even know how to do that.
We try for a security
company like Stratfor, because
they're very creative, those guys.
They have some really creative ideas.
I just want to step in here and
urge people to call in. We're getting a couple
of calls. We need some more. 212-209-2950.
The Yes Men are here.
They very graciously offered
their two films and
one of their newspapers
autographed for anybody who calls in
and pledges $75.
212-209-2950. Keeping WBAI
on the radio so that
we can talk about this and all kinds of other
mischievous pranks that actually have
social relevance.
Please support us. Please keep us going.
212-209-2950. We also have
an off-the-hook archive for an additional
$50. 212-209-2950.
We have three calls on the
line. Let's make that seven. We can do it.
There's enough people down there
to support this. 212-209-2950.
Rob?
I'd like to talk a bit
about the whole angle
of wrapping your activism up in
jokes and gags and these wonderful creative
things, because we've seen that with you guys.
We've seen that now with things done
under the banner of Anonymous and
all this other stuff where it seems, even touches
of it in Occupy Wall Street and things like that going
on now, where the
activism that really resonates is
the stuff that makes you laugh.
The stuff with a bit of absurdity laced
into it. What do you think it is about
that versus just marching up and down
the street with a sign and shouting that
really sticks in people's minds?
A couple
things. I think one
reason it works is
just technical. Journalists
need something to write about.
They can't just write about people walking up and down the street.
They can, but
it's not enough.
Their editors are asking for more.
If you give them something, you can give them
smashed windows, they'll write about that, but
people don't necessarily like that very much.
It doesn't really work public relations
wise so well. If you give them something
really funny and silly to
write about, that
might be enough. That's one
thing. Plus, people just like to laugh.
If you do
funny things, people laugh at them.
Then they like you.
People like things that they laugh at.
It cuts through a lot of the
people might have mental
walls up against certain things.
If you can make a really incisive joke about it
that's not at their
expense but with them
and they can see
that there is a joke there,
that's the beginning of breaking
through and convincing them
that there's another way to see things.
Are you ever worried
about the legal ramifications?
If I was standing up on stage representing
Dow Chemical and I actually had never
been inside their building, I'd be
worried that they might come after
me with some kind of defamation of character
or impersonating
somebody or anything like that.
Does that ever worry you?
Yeah, we've been worried.
That's the extent of it?
When we first did it, the first
time we decided to
accept an invitation to a conference
and go as the World Trade Organization,
we were terrified.
It was in Austria for one thing
which has a really weird history
if you look at it 50 years ago, 60 years
ago.
Plus
we just didn't know. We thought this was
just universally a terrible
crime to impersonate somebody
and speak to people as somebody you're not.
It turns out that it isn't
unless they're a police officer and you're trying
to arrest somebody as a police officer.
That's not good.
Going as a representative of
a corporation or even a
government agency seems to be
okay.
As long as you're making
a point with it and you have a point, it seems
to be protected under at least
US law and apparently European law.
It's also because the satire
is always revealed
at some stage so that you
say, okay, this is basically what we
were doing, what we were saying. But has there ever been a case
where it wasn't revealed and you're
still going on to this day and you've changed policy
of a company? No.
That's the hope, right? Not really.
Our hope really
isn't to change any company's policy
in fact. It's to change public opinion.
It's to appeal to people to see
there's this big systemic
problem that we've got to change.
We've got to change the rules of the game.
It doesn't even
matter whether the company changes.
If we don't change the rules of the game, it's totally
unimportant.
That's who
we're really trying to appeal to.
That's why we...
It's in the nature of it, but
these things don't remain believed
for very long.
It's like an hour or two and then it's revealed
and that's what we want.
Awesome.
We're speaking with Andy Bicklebaum and
Mike Bonanno of the
Westman here on WBAI.
Mike, I know it's about 1.30
in the morning over there in Scotland?
1.36 according to my
clock. You're probably pretty tired.
I'm giving you the option to
disconnect before we go
off the air at 9 o'clock if that's
what you want to do. Thank you. I appreciate
that. It's been great talking to you
and I hope lots of people
are pledging to the great
radio station WBAI
and your program
which is awesome.
I hope we come back on
and see you again in the near future.
We're all looking forward to
Hope where you guys are going to keynote.
That'll be fun.
It's been such an amazing
couple of years
seeing what the
seeds of
Hope and I think your legacy
and the legacy of so many
people who are engaged
in the phone freaking
and hacking movement over the years.
I think now hacking
has really come
into a sort of place
of maturity that's really
amazing and exciting.
I'm totally stoked
to come to Hope and
talk with people.
Looking forward to it.
All right. Thanks.
Thanks so much for joining us, Mike.
Good night to you over there in Scotland and we'll see you soon.
All right.
Mike Bonanno from Yes Men.
Andy Bickleman remains with us in the studio.
Yes, as we mentioned,
they will be keynoting at the Hope conference.
More information on that, www.hope.net.
For now,
though, we still have
the Yes Men package of
a couple of DVDs and newspaper
autograph for a pledge of $75.
212-209-2950.
We also have
the off-the-hook archive for an additional
$50 and we also have
the hackerspace package which we mentioned earlier
for $75. 212-209-2950.
These Yes Men
premiums are amazing. They're flying off the shelves.
I see calls coming in.
Again, we only have this available until 9 o'clock.
We absolutely cannot offer it beyond that.
It just gets a little crazy.
212-209-2950.
I believe we have people to thank.
Who wants to start? Mike?
We want to thank Jacqueline who's from
New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Thank you, Jacqueline.
From Chatham, New Jersey.
We'd like to thank Michael from Darien, Connecticut.
Janet from
White Plains, New York.
Abbey from Brooklyn, New York.
We also want to thank
Pamela from
Danbury, Connecticut.
We want to thank
Scott from Azusa, California.
I want to thank the people who are calling
in right now. Please keep those calls coming
because your
calls are what make the difference. That's why
we're on the air right now. That's why we're talking about this.
That's why we're able to
spread all this around. Communications
are just so important.
212-209-2950.
I'd also just like to thank everyone who has
called, whether you asked
to be spoken of and we didn't get
a chance to read about you, or
if you wanted to keep private.
Even if we're not saying your name, we are
thankful for every single call
that we get. I'd like to play
one more clip.
This is something that actually
isn't in the film. It's an intro to the film
The S-Men Fix the World
that's online. It's
more or less kind of a campaign
involving an organization
known as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
I think I'd just like for it to
speak for itself and we can discuss
it in just a little bit. There is a good example
here of what happens when you get caught.
That does
happen sometimes. It does
happen.
How do you deal with that?
We talk about this when we're dealing with social engineering
quite a bit.
Having graceful ways out of things
and just humorous ways out of things.
Let's listen to this intro
to The S-Men Fix the World
which you can get a copy of.
212-209-2950
Pledge of $75. That and
one other film plus the fake newspaper.
All autographed. 212-209-2950.
Let's listen.
Back
in September, we were
working with a bunch of climate change activists
to plan an event in Washington
D.C.
We wanted to make a political point about
an organization that's pulling off
some of the world's biggest hoaxes.
No, not
this organization.
The one across the street.
The one that looks like a U.S. government office
but really is working against
the government.
In reality, the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce is a large corporation
that is reported to lie to the
public on behalf of even bigger
corporations. They spend
nearly half a million dollars a day
trying to convince the U.S. government
to do really stupid
like killing environmental regulations
and undermining workers' rights.
But since
they spend so much money on their hoaxes,
many people believe them.
And as it says,
American Free Enterprise dream big
but their dreams are our nightmares
because their plans are to
prevent us from passing climate change
legislation, which means
we're screwed.
Since the chamber was hoaxing us all
and threatening our survival,
we decided to fight fire with
fire. We would
reveal one of their biggest lies
by masquerading as them.
We would
hold a press conference as the chamber
at the National Press Club.
But first, we sent out a
parody press release from them.
It was sort of like their normal ones,
except ours was sane.
How would the world react to the chamber
suddenly reversing its position
on climate change?
A reversal on climate change from the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It will
reverse its position on
the climate change bill
and wants a
carbon tax, if you will.
Alright, so the U.S. Chamber
is denying it now.
Alright, so
maybe not.
Apparently it was a hoax.
Either there is a group or some people
or a person.
Is there any involvement of the
White House whatsoever?
I couldn't even begin to go there,
Larry, on that one.
The country's largest business lobby,
the Chamber of Commerce, got punked.
It began early this morning
when a press release went out, purportedly
from the United States Chamber of Commerce.
Amazingly, the release said that the chamber
would now support this legislation
that it's spent months fighting against.
Reporters were surprised
and probably confused at this odd turn
of events, but that was nothing compared
to what actually happened at the
press conference when it was held
later on this morning. Watch this tape.
Clean coal is
a technology that has
not only not been proven,
it basically doesn't exist.
Okay, this is, I'm Eric Walschlagel,
I'm with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
This is not an official
U.S. Chamber of Commerce event,
so
I don't know what pretenses you're here.
I know some of you
in the press world,
but this is a fraudulent press activity
and a stunt.
Who are you really, sir?
And do you have a business card?
Are you with the U.S. Chamber?
I do. We can discuss afterwards.
Okay. Can I see your business card?
Can I see yours? Are you here representing
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? Yes, I am.
Okay, well, I work there and you do not look familiar to me at all.
Could I see your
business card?
Are you interrupting a press event?
Yes, I am.
This guy does not represent the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Can we finish the interview?
This is not an official Chamber of Commerce.
This is not...
What is your position at the Chamber of Commerce?
I just spoke my position.
What is your title
and your official title at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?
I'm the assistant to Mr. Donahue.
Okay. This guy is a fraud.
He's lying.
This is a stunt that I've never seen before.
So if you'd like to actually talk
to the legitimate Chamber of Commerce,
I've got my business cards outside.
This gentleman, I will assure you, does not have any business cards
that are not legitimate.
Show me your business card. No, show me yours.
They both look like imposters.
You got a business card?
It's so weird, though.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says
it was victimized.
Victims of a hoax by environmental activists.
Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort
to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.
A hoax actually led to
the Chamber admitting that there is
a challenge for climate change.
It seems like a good first step.
Poverty, violence, hunger.
Education.
The big education hoax. We've got a big education hoax.
The hoax is a good first step.
So that's the story, folks.
Not entirely.
Then they decided to use this opportunity to raise funds.
They put out Google Ads.
You'd click on that,
and it would take you to a page
from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
asking you to give them $250
to help defend themselves against us.
It gets even funnier.
They not only used this opportunity
to fundraise,
but then
they decided to sue us.
And by the way,
we're being defended by some of the
best lawyers in the world.
We're being defended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Go to EFF.org to check them out.
Wait, wait.
There's another punchline.
Not only did Fox pick up our release,
not only did Volschlegel
come and interrupt our press conference,
not only did the
Chamber of Commerce try to raise funds
off this event,
and not only did they sue us,
not only did they sue us,
but they actually changed
their policy two weeks later.
Just today,
the Chamber of Commerce changed
positions, not courtesy
of the yes-men with that stunt
in Washington a few weeks ago.
But they're now saying,
surprisingly to me, and I'm glad about it,
that they want to get
legislation, and they're now working
with the sponsors of the bill.
Gore saying
it didn't happen
because of the yes-men is kind of the
highest compliment we've ever been paid, I think.
So if you're interested in
people maintaining their freedom of speech,
EFF.org
is a very good organization
to support. And also,
if you're interested in basically more mayhem
of this sort, please do go
and see theyesmen.org
slash lab. That is
theyesmen.org slash lab,
where you can find out about the Yes Lab.
The Yes Lab is a thing we've launched
to try to make this happen a lot more.
Pass this film around to other
people, because
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
wants people not to see it.
That's reason enough as far as we're
concerned. The Chamber of Commerce
needs the support of every American who gives
a damn about free markets, private property,
and fears creeping fascism.
This country cannot
afford for the insurance
industry to cave. This country cannot afford
for the Chamber of Commerce to cave.
The Chamber of Commerce has been
screwed, screwed, screwed, screwed, screwed, screwed.
Oh, brilliant.
I can't believe Rush Limbaugh's
on our airwaves.
So the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may not
want you to see this movie, but you can
simply by calling 212-209-2950,
pledging $75.
You'll get the Yes Men
fix the world. You'll get the first
Yes Men movie, and you'll get one of their fake
newspapers all autographed. Pledge is $75.
212-209-2950,
but only for about another 10 minutes or so,
and then we are no longer offering
that deal. 212-209-2950.
Andy from the Yes Men is here with us
right now in the studio.
I've never heard of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce before. I have no idea
who these people are, but they sound scary.
Are they still after you? Are they still
telling people not to see the film?
No idea.
We haven't heard from them in about two years.
They sued us
and then promptly disappeared, which
seems kind of rude.
Yeah, usually they stick around
for one thing or another, but they were
just bent out of shape because you impersonated them
and showed that in the movie? They didn't like that?
It's not in the movie.
Yeah, no, it's just there.
Really? But no, they sued us because
I think they were hurt. It was personal.
Obviously it was personal. You heard that guy.
He had a lot of hurt in his voice.
And I think they're angry.
Very interesting.
They're actually involved in all
sorts of distasteful things. They actually
were very much a part of the
whole SOPA thing
that was going on. I am so not surprised.
And I also find it amazing that
we keep hooking up with the same
basic good guys and bad guys.
You know, MPAA on one side,
Electronic Frontier Foundation on the other,
and of course they're helping you guys out,
and we just keep meeting each other.
It's like some crazy adventure
where we just keep
reuniting at some point.
It's like dodgeball, where you have one people
on one side of the line, another group of people on the other side of the line.
It's just the same people. Yeah, but one side has a ball
and one side doesn't.
We don't talk about these things.
You know, it's interesting, too, because
they themselves are in a way sort of impersonating.
I mean, they sound like a
government organization. When you hear the name
Chamber of Commerce, you think,
well, a chamber, that's usually something that occurs
in, say, the Senate.
So in a way, they're almost
impostors themselves.
I didn't realize,
myself personally, I didn't realize it was a
lobbyist group. I always just thought of it
as some other branch of the government.
Well, let me just say right now that I still think it's
possible that Mike and Andy, this is an
elaborate hoax, that they don't actually exist
and that they're suing them as part of the hoax
and that one day, a few years from now,
we'll find that out, because it just seems kind of absurd.
Really?
We need these people?
They just seem so evil.
I don't know much about their history, but I know
that now they do have a budget of about
$450,000 a day.
I was going to say, that seems
rather low for something so evil,
but per day, okay.
What do they do?
They lie to the government.
The government can lie all by itself.
Yeah, but it helps if you get a lot of people
lying at it.
All those senators and congressmen,
they need something to do.
How did that one work?
How did you get to host the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce talk?
Well, we worked with a lot of really smart
people.
The Avaz Climate Action,
sorry, Action Factory people,
they were in D.C.,
a group of them
wanting to go after the chamber, because they knew,
unlike us, that the chamber was
a really nasty business lobby
that was fighting
climate legislation at the time, and as you
mentioned, they fought everything else.
They fight against labor rights,
against healthcare, against
anything that cuts into corporate interests,
because that's their clients, is big corporations.
So they
had this idea to host a press conference
as the Chamber of Commerce
and announce that we were going to do the right thing,
that we were actually going to
stop fighting this
lame climate legislation,
and instead we were going to make this lame
climate legislation stronger
and actually do something. This was the Waxman-Markey
bill in the House.
So we did that.
Together we
rented a space at the
National Press Club, sent out
a press
advisory, got some journalists
there, and made this announcement.
So it
wasn't that
complicated, it was just actually
doing it. And who invited
the guy from the real U.S. Chamber of Commerce?
Well, that was a funny, funny error.
Our press advisory
said, Chamber of Commerce
is having a press conference at the National
Press Club, which is
odd, but, you know, the National
Press Club is the premier place to have press conferences,
but it's not where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
would normally have it. They would usually have it in their
palatial building that has plenty
of press rooms. They don't need to rent one
at the press club. So this reporter
didn't even read that it was at the National
Press Club, just went straight to the Chamber of Commerce,
showed up, and said, where's the press conference? And they
said, what? And got in
a taxi, and right at the end of our
talk, and answering
some questions, barged in.
It was just perfect.
It sounded also like some of the
reporters were defending you in terms of trying to
get the actual representative
to go away, or...
Were those reporters, or were those cohorts?
Well, yeah. Some of those reporters were not reporters.
How many actual reporters showed up?
There were about half of them were reporters,
so maybe about five or six
of the, I don't know, maybe there were
15 total reporters, in quotes,
of which maybe, I don't know,
half were real.
Well, this whole kind of scenario
that played out at the end of the press conference might
actually fit into the whole
charade that they're trying to
create, that they're impersonating someone,
because how many times have you seen
various news clips
and so on, activists
jump in a press conference
and try to cause a ruckus
for whoever's speaking on behalf of
whatever large organization?
So if someone comes and starts trying to
say, hey, hey, hey, other people
are going to want to give the person up on the
podium a chance. He is, after all, on the podium.
Although usually the activist isn't
going there trying to keep the
current position of that group, so...
It's true.
Now, what happened afterwards when you guys
met outside in the hallway?
Any kind of... He had gone
by then. Oh, he didn't stick around.
No, but it was just tremendous that
he showed up. I mean, we did not plan
that, and we should have.
Like, if we ever do it again, we'll definitely
plan it. We'll tip off the target
and we'll leak it to them
that it's happening, so they show up.
Because that was gold. I mean, if we hadn't had
that, we maybe would have
gotten a day of press. You know, there would have been
definitely a ton of print
and some TV,
but because of that and the amazing
footage that we got, which we immediately
shared with the networks, we got
an extra day and a half of, like,
really mainstream, you know, NBC,
CNN, not Fox,
covering it.
And then they changed their position?
Yeah, they actually did change their position two weeks later,
and that was Al Gore on the Charlie
Rose show talking about that,
and I don't think it was because of the yes-men
and our stunt.
It was because of the hard work
of a lot of activists
just making it untenable.
Also, we hopped on
this issue right in midstream. There was a
lot of pressure on the chamber.
Even some of its members, even some of the
big companies in its membership, had
left the chamber over its opposition to
climate legislation, and there were
activist groups galore,
making it really ugly for them.
Okay, we don't have a lot of time
left, but if I could ask really quick,
what is your feeling on the future of
yes-men stunts? Because
do you ever worry that, like,
with film posters and films and everything,
that things will get so big that
people will just decide one day that,
you know, if something's this goofy, it must be the yes-men
and just dismiss it? Or are you...
Well, we've recently started
this thing we're calling the Yes Lab,
which is about helping
activists, activist groups,
individuals, what have you, to do
actions on their own. We got
tired of people coming up to us
and saying, why don't you go after Monsanto?
Or whatever.
You know, we'd retort, well, you do it.
It's not that hard, and we start publishing
our tips and all that, how we do
it. Now we actually have workshops,
and we tell them
very simple things like, don't worry
about lawyers, don't even talk to lawyers,
here's how you get into a
conference if you want to do that, here's
how you can be funny.
So,
you know, other people now.
There's a lot of people
and a lot of faces that
these places don't expect.
And as whether
this sort of thing will become old,
I don't think so. I mean,
this has been done
for centuries. You know, people
making fun of power
using humor has been used
for a really long time to good effect.
Just 11 years
ago, activists in
Serbia toppled Milosevic,
the dictator there, using a lot
of these funny techniques. A lot
of really crazy things
they did. If you look that up, there are
some really funny stories. It's a very
powerful thing. And in Egypt, there was also
a tremendous amount of humor used by the activists
in all kinds of ways.
It's just useful.
Well, just about out of time, Bernie, I wanted to give
you the last word. We haven't heard from you in a while. Anything
from down in Philadelphia? Well, I just want to say
I'm a huge fan of the Yes Men, and
I imagine anybody who listens
to WBAI is,
which I'm sure everybody listening is
a fan of WBAI. WBAI is
a fan of the Yes Men, and Yes Men
fans are fans of WBAI's goals.
They're very
complimentary
missions. I was laughing when
you were talking about the Les Labs
that are wondering if there's going to be
Yes Men corporate franchising
opportunities, so we
could start our own branches.
But it's not really necessary. Anybody can do this,
and that's the beauty of it. But I wanted to
sort of close out by encouraging our listeners
who support this sort of
activism
with a
great streak of humor to call
212-209-2950.
Pledge support for WBAI,
which publicizes and
honors this sort of thing, and you're going to
get some great gifts. There's a spoof of
the New York Times, two of their movies
autographed. It's a great package
for $75. 212-209-2950.
Alright,
we're pretty much out of time. I
want to thank both you guys just
for being here, for doing what you
do. Thanks to you,
and thanks to BAI for
giving us information.
There's a lot of magic in this world
that if we band together, we can do
incredible things, and I'm
looking forward to the Hope Conference when you guys will be
keynoting, and just the connection of worlds
there. And whatever comes
this spring with Occupy Wall Street, and
all kinds of other fun things that are happening.
Please keep those calls coming in.
212-209-2950.
We'll be back next week with a regular program,
and
any Yes Men sites that
you want to give out? Any contact info?
Sure, yeslab.org
is our newest thing.
www.yeslab.org
and you can sign
up, read
all our tips,
how to do things, and
join one of our Yes Labs. If you're in New York,
at NYU, every Friday we
do workshops.
Just drop a line and
say hi. Alright, thanks Andy
Bicklebaum from the Yes Men, and thanks also
to Mike Bonanno who was with us from Scotland
earlier, and we'll be
I'm sure hearing more from you guys. Again,
212-209-2950.
That's the number to call to pledge.
We'll see you next week. Goodnight.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.