Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum are two well-intentioned individuals who manage to stir up a storm of terrible news for various corporations in an effort to highlight some bad things that are happening in our world. On the strength of one press conference they caused Dow Chemical stock to plunge two billion dollars. The judgment is subjective, though. Some can argue that Dow Chemical caused Dow Chemical stock to plunge two billion.

What Bonanno and Bichlbaum did is astounding; we wonder what luck has saved them from becoming one of the disappeared. They created a phony Dow Chemical website and waited. When the site received an invitation to participate in a BBC program commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, they accepted the invitation. They flew to France, and in a satellite interview in front of 300 million people, Bichlbaum (posing as a Dow spokesman) said that Dow was accepting all responsibility for Bhopal, and would be putting 12 billion dollars into clean-up and medical aid. (Union Carbide was originally responsible for Bhopal, but Dow bought them out—responsibilities and all.)

Mike and Andy’s purpose had not actually been to cause an en masse dumping of Dow stock, but to showcase the fact that, after 20 years, nothing had been done to clean up Bhopal, and that thousands of Indians were sick, deformed, and dying as a result of that long-ago “gas leak.” They were reminding Dow Chemical—and the world—of Dow’s responsibility. Their message went viral before Dow disclaimed it.

The Yes Men Fix the World is the story of this fraud heard ‘round the world and a number of others Bonanno and Bichlbaum perpetrated. Their target is the free market and, like Michael Moore’s, capitalism. They pose at an oil industry conference as representatives of Exxon, there to introduce a new fuel, vivoleum, which is made from the remains of global warming losers (i.e., bodies of people whose deaths were caused by the same elements as global warming). They went so far as to design a candle that gave off a putrid odor which they handed out at the dinner where they introduce vivoleum.

Article Author: Miss Bob Etier

Bob Etier, a/k/a Miss Bob, was raised in various parts of New Jersey, and lived there until love called her to Louisiana. She resided in both Baton Rouge and Gulfport, Mississippi, until Hurricane Katrina blew her and her little dog to the mountains of Western North Carolina. …

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