STRATFOR E-Mail #2: "Re: Yes Men prank today?"

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

Re: Yes men prank today?

Email-ID        387524

Date    2010-02-19 21:47:10

From    [email protected]

To      [email protected], [email protected]

Ok, just thought I heard something. Never mind.

 

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 19, 2010, at 2:40 PM, Kathleen Morson wrote:

 

they appear to be in sante fe for a benefit on their movie this monday.

 

there's a sante fe reporter article about them that lists little actions

that people can take in the sante fe area -- one of them is for the

independent petroleum association of mountain states and to register for

a "washington call in" event IPAMS is doing.

 

Target: The Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, a

trade association that represents 400 a**independent oil and natural gas

producersa** including Shell, BP and Halliburton

 

The problem: IPAMS claims to be dedicated to a**building a sustainable

energy future,a** but it lobbies against alternative energy and devotes

the bulk of its advocacy to ensuring the continued primacy of fossil

fuels.

 

The prank: Register for the IPAMS a**Washington call up." Bring 10

friends and perform a musical theater piece in the middle of the keynote

speech. RSVP for the briefing by emailing Becca Ness or calling

303-623-0987. Be sure to use a good pseudonym!

 

YES, PLEASE

 

THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLDNEW MEXICO

 

By: Zane Fischer 02/17/2010

 

http://sfreporter.com/stories/yes_please/5365/

 

As a 14-year-old fan of both Jimmy Carter and George Orwell, 1984 was a

tough year for me.

 

I was convinced Ronald Reagan would find a way to ensure an Orwellian

dystopia and that a dark future was at hand.

 

It turns out I was right.

 

But the plot proved to be a lot bigger than Ronald Reagan, and Big

Brother manifested more as a corporate medusa than a monolithic

government.

 

If Ia**d known what to look for, the signs were sitting right in front

of the sleepy rural town in which I grew up.

 

On Dec. 3, 1984, 32 tons of toxic methyl isocyanate gas leaked out of

a Union Carbide Corporation plant in Bhopal, India. Death toll numbers

vary depending on the source, but between 4,000 and 18,000 people were

dead within two weeks.

 

Meanwhile, just a few miles west of my home in Bishop, Calif., and

upriver from the sweet little stream that trickled past my house, Union

Carbide was running the largest tungsten mine in the United States. In

my town, Union Carbide was a source of good jobs and local benevolence.

Union Carbide guys were heroes.

 

I can remember my mother explaining to me that big companies werena**t

always as responsible as they should be and would sometimes cut corners

and take advantage of the poverty in other countries, but that the

neighbor who worked at the mine wasna**t necessarily a bad person.

 

As the years wore on, people continued to die by the thousands in

Bhopal. Union Carbide claimed it was not responsible and it abandoned

the Bhopal plant, leaving behind another 390 tons of toxic chemicals

that continue to leak into the groundwater to this day. The disaster

there is now frequently cited as the worst industrial disaster in

history.

 

Twenty years after the Bhopal leak, on Dec. 3, 2004, a spokesman for Dow

Chemical Company, which had purchased Union Carbide in 1999, announced

on BBC World News that the company would pay reparations to the people

of Bhopal and foot the bill for a comprehensive cleanup.

 

In a little more than 20 minutes, the value of Dow stock dropped by $2

billion. The spokesman was a hero.

 

But he didna**t work for Dow. He was Andy Bichlbaum. He was a Yes Man.

 

The Yes Men, an activist organization that uses parody and

satire to bring attention to government and corporate misdeeds, came to

prominence when they participated in the faux World Trade Organization

website, gatt.org, which was launched in tandem with the protest-riddled

1999 WTO meeting in Seattle, Wash.

 

Bichlbaum and fellow Yes Man Mike Bonanno have spent the 10 years since

engaged in increasingly elaborate and far-reaching activist stunts.

 

In 2000, the group spoofed President George W Busha**s election website,

prompting Bush to say, famously, a**there ought to be limits to

freedom.a**

 

Among its many pranks striking at the core of social and economic

issues, the Yes Men, in corporate or spokesman guise, have proposed that

McDonalda**s include 20 percent post consumer waste in its hamburgers,

announced that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development would

do right by impoverished citizens left homeless by Hurricane Katrina and

suggested that Africa could be better managed through the use of

slavery.

 

More recently, the Yes Men held a press conference in which they

announced the US Chamber of Commercea**s newfound support for

alternative energy and pretended to be representatives of the Canadian

government at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

 

As a result of Yes Men actions and film projects, thousands of articles

have been written about otherwise-ignored issues. They have become the

de facto publicity and propaganda arm of social-justice activism and,

this week, theya**re on the loose in Santa Fe. SFR spoke to Bichlbaum

about life as a Yes Man, and asked the group to provide some

hypothetical a**actionsa** for some usual New Mexico suspects.

 

 

 

WHO ARE THOSE UNMASKED MEN?

 

SFR: An article in Mother Jones recently argued that Yes Men high jinks

have degenerated to the level of mere entertainment, that it has become

difficult to parse your attacks on corporations like Dow Chemical and

Halliburton from the social or celebrity antics of Borat or Ashton

Kutcher.

AB: Really? I havena**t seen that. But, you know, wea**re just trying to

get an important message out through the means that are available to us,

the avenues that we are good at. We are doing what we can to publicize

and drum up enthusiasm and engagement surrounding issues that we and a

great many other people consider to be important. Certainly we use

humor. And certainly entertainment can be about making people laugh, but

also about something greater. Borat, for example, makes some points

beyond simple jokes; therea**s a kind of a thesis in there. But the Yes

Men are activists who are using comedy and Ia**m not sure therea**s a

direct comparison to comedians who may have some activist element or

some amount of social agenda that appears in their routines.

 

Is humor an effective way of cutting to the heart of our most pressing

social, economic and political issues?

Laughter is a simple tool that gets publicity and that results in

articles being written and in the development of a broad audience. If

what youa**re doing isna**t funnya**and I suppose you could correlate

that to entertainment valuea**then your audience is likely to be a lot

smaller. But ita**s possible that ridiculing those who are in fact

ridiculous or whose ideas and actions are somewhat ridiculous can

translate to some popular and progressive power. Some believe that humor

is a potent political weapon; humor may have kneecapped Sarah Palina**s

run for vice president or it may have toppled the Soviet Union. I

dona**t know if I believe that exactly, but humor certainly is a

powerful component of human belief and experience.

 

If the Yes Men differ so significantly from comedians, what about

self-declared activists with a different agenda, like James Oa**Keefe

and Robert Flanagan and others involved in the controversial ACORN

videos and the attempt to infiltrate US Sen. Mary Landrieua**s office?

Oh, those guys are rank amateurs. I mean, going in and messing with a

senatora**s phone lines and not even bothering to make fake ID? Ita**s

just unbelievably stupid. Ita**s also not at all like what we do. They

seem to be about hurting people who are in a position of weakness or

hurting people who are trying to help people who are in a position of

weakness. Wea**re more interested in stopping and exposing people who

are hurting others. I mean, I dona**t actually understand the motivation

for those guys: How can you put so much energy into hurting people? I

know theya**re using the, uh, a**fair and balanceda** argument, but that

doesna**t play with what amounts to a fraudulent sting-style operation

perpetrated under false pretenses. Again, what we do is something a

little different.

 

But waita*|when you posed as a US Chamber of Commerce representative,

you didna**t have any business cards when questioned. Why not?

Good point. I guess my only defense is that we were engaging in

political theater. We werena**t up to something definitively illegal. We

were not trying to do something that we knew could land us in jail.

Therea**s performance and therea**s amoral, illegal behavior, and I

think the difference is perceptible.

 

Do you think that Yes Men actions have been effective?

Well, it gets media attention for sure. And, as I said, I think if that

attention relates to a larger, cohesive campaign then, yes, it can be

very effective.

 

Whata**s an example of relating to a broader strategy?

Our sort of multifaceted attacks on Dow Chemical related to the Bhopal

disaster were highly coordinated with groups that are dedicated to

helping the victims in Bhopal or raising awareness about the incident.

At the Copenhagen climate conference we worked with the Climate Debt

Agents. We sort of drum up attention for causes that many other people

and groups are already working on. Everything we do comes down to

pointing out when economic policies place the rights of capital before

the needs of people and the environment. Thata**s the key problem that

wea**re always driving at and we can usually frame our actions within

the context of other organizations that are dedicated to some aspect of

that fight.

 

Is corporatocracy the primary problem facing the US today?

I think I can agree with that. Yes, yes it is.

 

Is there an official Yes Men response to the US Supreme Courta**s recent

assertion that the rights of corporations extend to unlimited campaign

contributions?

Just the obvious: Ita**s horrifying. Ita**s exactly the wrong direction

to go in and, as a nation, wea**d better not let it stick. Ita**s so

totally bad. The only way to ever see progressive legislation would be

to end corporate lobbyinga**perioda**and this ruling, of course, goes in

exactly the opposite direction.

 

In some opposition to the usual position of the more conservative

justices, that ruling appears to attack statesa** rights, as a great

many states have laws governing corporate contributions. Do you think

states will become the front line on this battle?

I guess Ia**m not up enough on that as I should be. I dona**t really

know what role the states will play.

 

Your presentation in Santa Fe serves as a benefit for the Santa Fe Art

Institute. Are the Yes Men artists?

I dona**t know. I guess it depends on who is asking. Or who is being

asked. Ora*|I dona**t really think of it that way, I dona**t wonder

about how to define what we do; I just think of it as doing something.

 

Why are so few of us doing something?

I dona**t know that either. Ita**s a good question. Maybe most of us

dona**t realize how fun it is to start doing something. Trying to make

things better may not sound like a good time but, I promise, there can a

lot of fun in it.

 

Are you able to hint at any new targets on the horizon or do you have to

feign innocence?

Well, the list of potential targets is, regrettably, almost endless. But

right now, I feel like wea**ve just finish