The YES MEN Spoof the WTO with Fake Website
The World Trade Organization (WTO) aims to liberalize international trade by decreasing tariffs, quotas, and bans and encouraging trade agreements amongst its 153 member states. The organization asserts these measures help the environment, improve the economies of the less-developed countries, and ultimately lower costs for the consumer. Critics of the Organization, however, believe that its policies ultimately yield higher profits to the richer, capitalistic countries while exploiting the lower labor costs of their financially weaker counterparts and ignoring the human rights and environmental implications.
Along with their “loose-knit association of some three hundred impostors worldwide," activists Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno – also known as the “Yes Men” – have a history of “impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them … targeting leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.” In effect, their “hijinks” serve as a form of protest against globalization, “provid[ing] a public glimpse at the behind-the-scenes world of business.”
