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Yes Man, no guff

Andy Bichlbaum is an easygoing guy. Campy, animated GIFs dance on his laptop, and he cites beer as a big factor in his work. He’d make an awesome-cool prof, and in fact, he is one.[rssbreak]

Andy Bichlbaum is his nom de guerre, and if you happen to run an evil corporation, he could cost you billions in mere seconds.

His real name is Jacques Servin, and he’s one-half of the Yes Men (the other being Mike Bonanno, aka Igor Vamos), a change-the-world guerrilla duo who’ve raised impersonation and misrepresentation to a fine art.

Witness the legendary Dow hoax, in which the two appeared on BBC World claiming to be company reps willing to compensate the victims of the 1984 Bhopal disaster to the tune of $12 billion, or their distribution of a phony edition of the New York Times reporting the end of the Iraq War. And their recent Copenhagen caper, a fake Environment Canada press release trumpeting new, advanced carbon emission standards, was no snooze either.

Bichlbaum, whose day job is teaching at Parsons the New School for Design in New York City, is here January 29 to present his new film, The Yes Men Fix The World, but before that, he’s taking time out to speak at Ryerson to a sympathetic crowd of about 50 aspiring shit-disturbers.

For someone who’s been impersonating executives and subverting major institutions since 1999, he’s impressively open about his methods. It’s a deliberate move Bichlbaum is selling activism, and we already know he’s a master of convincing pitches. This time he’s got his recruiting face on. In fact, all his secrets are available at challenge.theyesmen.org.

The crowd at Oakham House loves him. He makes culture jamming seem effortless, and obviously downplays the nerves of steel required to deceive on a mass scale. But then, this is one totally chilled-out dude.

One attendee asks about financing. “It’s surprising how cheap it is to do these things,” Bichlbaum says, pointing to their many volunteer helpers and explaining that the only large expenses are for travel and fees for the conferences they infiltrate.

Another wants to know about legal complications. “Nobody dares sue us,” he replies. Well, except the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (it got Yesed, too), but not to fear – the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a big law firm are defending them pro bono. “It’s going to be fun!” chirps Bichlbaum. As for prison, no problem. Sure, they spent time in a Calgary holding cell, but in the end there was only a tossed-out trespassing ticket.

If lawsuits, handcuffs and funding problems scare you, you might be willing to spend a little time building a fake website. That’s actually how the Yes Men began – with a joke World Trade Organization (WTO) site set up during the 1999 Seattle meet. The WTO directed attention to the site, calling it “deplorable” and linking to it. Of course, the faux WTO shot up in the search rankings.

“We started getting invitations to conferences, and we went – as the WTO. We gave lectures that revealed what the WTO was really about,” he says. And conference attendees took it in. The real yes men in the crowd would listen as Bichlbaum spelled out how to best exploit the weak.

In 2002, after being approached by Greenpeace, the group took on Dow Chemical. “We set up a fake Dow site, and two years later, on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal catastrophe, the BBC accidentally sent us an email asking for a statement,” explains Bichlbaum. “Dow graciously complied,” he chuckles.

Going on TV as fake Dow spokesperson Jude Finisterra, Bichlbaum announced that in order to pay for remediation, the corp would be liquidating Union Carbide, the company Dow inherited this mess from. In under six minutes, his words sent Dow stock plummeting by $2 billion.

“It tells you something about what’s wrong with the world when a company does the right thing and its stock value goes down,” he notes.

It also tells you something about the mad logic of ethics-free corporations and governments. In straight-faced, Stephen Colbert style, the Yes Men can go to an oil and gas expo in Calgary as Exxon reps and present a new fuel called Vivoleum, made by rendering the human victims of climate change, and not be immediately dragged off the stage.

Bichlbaum admits he’s mischievous by nature. After all, this is a guy who got fired in 1996 by the makers of SimCopter for programming kissing men into the video game just to counterbalance the bimbo-love of his aggressively heterosexual boss.

As for making fools of media outlets that fall for the Yes Men’s carefully crafted press releases, he counters by saying they’re only balancing a media pack mentality that lets corporate lies run free.

“Thirty per cent of the news we see in the U.S. on local news stations is actually news releases from corporations,” he says, noting that there’s usually very little time between his stunts and admissions. Sometimes the talking head doesn’t even finish before being handed a correction.

Perhaps because it involved messing with the media he usually relies on to spread the word about his hoaxes, Bichlbaum counts the fake New York Times as his favourite action. It certainly encourages us to imagine choosing our own adventures.

As for hoax fatigue, Bichlbaum isn’t worried. His hope is that people will take up the concept and improve it in a kind of open-source sabotage movement. If there’s any prank action come late June, when the G8’s in town, put it down to that Ryerson pep talk.

Resumé of sabotage

Saying the right things has taken the Yes Men places in the corporate world. Here are some highlights of Andy Bichlbaum’s and Mike Bonanno’s CVs.

1999 They construct a faux World Trade Organization website and speak at conferences as WTO reps.

2004 Bichlbaum poses as Dow rep Jude Finisterra, promising $12 billion compensation on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster.

2005 Their faux Dow “acceptable risk calculator” shows how many deaths are tolerable to achieve certain profit levels. Enthusiastic bankers applaud.

2006 At a housing summit in New Orleans, they appear as U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reps to say that low-?income units would not, as planned, be demolished and replaced by mixed-income ones.

2007 Posing as reps from Exxon and the National Petroleum Council at Calgary Gas and Oil Expo, they unveil a new fuel made from the bodies of those killed by climate change.

2008 They create and distribute thousands of copies of a good-news version of the New York Times in NYC

2009 They issue a phony Environment Canada news release during Copenhagen announcing Canada’s shift from carbon villain to saint and back it up with a fake Wall Street Journal story.

Posing as U.S. Chamber of Commerce reps, they announce a 180-degree flip on climate policy. They’re now being sued.

pault@nowtoronto.com

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