THE YES MEN:
The True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization
$14.95 Paperbound, 192 pp.
(Disinformation)
www.disinfo.com

With The Yes Men, co-directors Chris Smith (American Movie), Sarah Price, and Don Ollman tell the story of anti-corporate activists Andy Bichelbaum and Mike Bonanno. What is particularly inspiring about the story of the Yes Men is the ways in which they blend their activism with humor. Mike and Andy met when they discovered shared interests. You may have already heard of some of their antics over the past several years. Under the auspices of the BLO (Barbie Liberation Organization), Mike swapped out the voice boxes of talking Barbie dolls with those of GI Joe action figures and placed them back on the shelves in time for Christmas. Not only did some children have an unexpected holiday surprise--as when GI Joe exclaimed, "Let's go shopping!" or "Math is too hard," or when Barbie belched forth testosterone-fueled sentiments such as "Dead men tell no lies"--but reporters across the country were treated to press releases describing the work of this group's "gender transformation laboratories." When working on a video game called SimCopter, Andy programmed "an army of men wearing nothing but swimsuits, who from time to time popped up and showered each other and the player with kisses." The glitch was not discovered until 80,000 units had been shipped to stores; Andy's services were no longer required.

Andy and Mike teamed up in 1999 to create a satirical George W. Bush website during the then-governor's presidential campaign, which sought to correct several of the omissions and distortions of the candidate's real website, and prompted Dubya to candidly remark, "There ought to be limits...there ought to be limits, to, uh, to freedom." That Bush's administration would actively engage in such policies to limit freedom--including such draconian and unconstitutional police state measures as the USA PATRIOT Act--should come as a surprise to no one. (Perhaps it's time to put the "riot" back into "patriot.")

The success of the fake Bush website led the Yes Men to take on the World Trade Organization (WTO), continuing with the process of what they term "identity correction." As opposed to identity theft, where individuals steal someone's identity for the sake of personal gain, wealth accumulation, and so forth at the expense of that person, identity correction is quite the opposite. According to the Yes Men, "we have found people and institutions doing horrible things at everyone else's expense, and have assumed their identities in order to offer correctives." Setting up a fake WTO website, which attempted to state a little more plainly the processes by which this organization's fiscal austerity policies actually serve to keep the poor destitute while increasing wealth for those nations and people who already have it, the Yes Men were surprised when they were invited to speak in legitimate venues by those who confused their website for the "real" thing.

The film, and the companion book (which offers greater detail than the time limitations of the documentary), follows the Yes Men to engagements where, for example, speaking on "The Future of Textiles," they unveil a gold lamé management leisure suit which features a giant phallic monitor enabling management to keep tabs on and control workers worldwide, even while working out or relaxing. Most fascinating is the fake WTO rep's assertion that slavery would have eventually gone by the wayside, since businessmen would have come to realize that it is cheaper and much more efficient to have the slave (ahem, worker) do the work in his own country. The Yes Men visit a college economics course where, after supplying the class with McDonald's hamburgers for lunch, they explain how Mickey D is teaming up with the WTO to help put an end to Third World hunger--specifically by recycling First World human waste into food for those born on the unfortunate end of the economic food chain. The metaphor is right on and brilliantly captures corporate arrogance and Western indifference to the suffering of others, especially when that suffering directly correlates to the wasteful and inefficient manner by which we attempt to feed the world, and the means by which hunger and poverty become a way to maintain a docile and compliant (and cheap) workforce.

For their final stunt, the Yes Men travel to Australia with the goal of shutting down the WTO. In a heartfelt proclamation, Andy tells a group who think they have been assembled to hear about WTO plans for international agribusiness that the WTO, as we know it, will cease to exist. What was most promising about this moment was witnessing many people who work in the arena of international business and finance essentially agree that the system as it currently functions--increasing concentration of wealth at the expense of exponential increases in
poverty--is not sustainable. - EDWARD BURCH