It's 2004. Shares in Dow Chemical are tanking after news breaks that the company is to reverse its stance on the notorious industrial accident in Bhopal, India, at a plant run by its Union Carbide subsidiary.
For 20 years, the company has resisted calls to increase the compensation offered to victims and clean up the site. Now it's decided to commit up to $12 billion to do so.Dow Chemical - Bhopal
There's no comparison between the value of money and that of human life, he says. Fine sentiments, but expensive ones: within minutes, Dow shares have fallen by 3 per cent, the beginning of a slide that will ultimately wipe more than $2 billion off the company's value.Hoax announcement
That's the first Dow Chemical hears about it. The company says it doesn't have a spokesman named Finisterra, the announcement is a hoax, and it's made no promise to increase its commitment in Bhopal. Finisterra is actually Andy Bichlbaum, frontman for audacious pranksters the Yes Men.
Big BusinessTargetted
Bichlbaum and fellow Yes Man Mike Bonanno target big business and its supporters, whose hypocrisy and callousness they aim to expose. As their new film, The Yes Men Fix the World, documents, their modus operandi is to put unexpected words into others' mouths and see what happens.
Posers
To that end, they've posed as officials of the World Trade Organization, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and ExxonMobil, among others, and routinely set up fake websites in the name of companies or organisations, sowing confusion about who's really saying what.
Fake Identities
This extends to their own identities: Bichlbaum and Bonanno aren't their real names. Sometimes the intention is to provoke shock and disgust at their targets' actions, sometimes it is to ridicule – but as with other pranksters, the biggest pay-offs come when they hoodwink their antagonists into giving themselves away.
No comments:
Post a Comment