Yes Men “Mike Bonanno” and “Andy Bichlbaum”Naomi Klein calls the Yes Men, “the Jonathan Swift of the Jackass generation.” For more than a decade now, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (The Yes Men), have spent their free time posing as representatives from big corporations they don’t like and then embarrassing them. Dow Chemical is one of those companies the Yes Men don’t like. In 1999 Dow bought Union Carbide for 11.9 billion and immediately settled Union Carbide’s liabilities in the US, billions for asbestos claims. But the company did nothing to right the wrongs Union Carbide was responsible for in India, namely Bhopal. Bhopal was the site of the biggest industrial accident in history. In 1984, thousands of Indians died and hundreds of thousands got very sick. Bichlbaum and Bonanno created a fake website, and then waited for the calls to come in. Eventually an international conference, not realizing they were imposters, invited the duo to speak. You can watch a video of the world-renowned trouble makers’ presentation here.
The BBC fell for their trick, too, and invited Bichlbaum (posing as Dow spokesman “Jude Finisterra”) on their program for a big announcement. Click here to see that broadcast.
There’s more about the Bhopal accident here.
Here is the link to the Yes Men website.
For more about their new documentary, click here. The Yes Men Fix the World is airing on HBO this weekend.
-Andy