The Yes Men:
Igor Vamos (Andy Bichlbaum), Asst. Professor Media Arts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Jacques Servin (Mark Bonanno), Author

Throwing a new spin on culture jamming, in 1999 The Yes Men developed a website at the domain www.gatt.org which parodied that of the World Trade Organization. Through this site, they received several invitations to speak at conferences and on news programs as spokesmen for the WTO. In such venues, they began practicing what they call "identity correction." In opposition to identity theft, they describe identity correction as a situation in which "honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else" (http://www.theyesmen.org). Their hijinks included attending an international trade law conference in Salzburg, Austria, where they proposed that the free-market solution to democracy should involve auctioning votes to the highest bidder. At a textiles conference in Tempere, Finland, they unveiled their idea for the "businessman's leisure suit," complete with three-foot phallus with a built-in television screen allowing businessmen to watch workers from a distance and to administer electric shocks to sweat shop employees. And at an accounting conference in Sydney, Australia, the two announced that in light of all its mistakes, the WTO would shut itself down, reorganizing itself to aid not corporations but to help the poor and protect the environment. The Yes Men were the subjects of a film directed by Chris Smith, Sarah Price (directors of American Movie), and Dan Ollman in 2003, nd the two men recently published a book detailing their exploits.

The book:

• The Yes Men: The True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization. Disinformation Press, 2005.

The Movie:

• www.theyesmenmovie.com/