In 1999, just before the Seattle protests, they set up a parody of the WTO website at gatt.org.

Soon, they found themselves invited to various conferences as representatives of the WTO. That was all they needed. They extended the concepts of free trade to ridiculous lengths.

At a trade conference in Austria, they proposed a free-market solution to democracy — auctioning votes to the highest bidder. On CNBC Europe, they declared there should to be a market in human rights abuses. At a New York University they proposed that to solve global hunger, the poor should have to eat hamburgers-and then recycle them up to 10 times.

Finally, at an accounting conference in Sydney they announced that in light of all its mistakes, the WTO had decided to shut itself down, refounding as an organisation whose goals were not to help corporations, but rather the poor and the environment.

That year, they also managed to launch www.gwbush.com, a parody of Bush's real campaign website, www.georgewbush.com, which tried to explain in 'more honest terms' the real reasons that Bush wanted to be president, essentially to help the rich.