The Yes Men Fix the World, on You Tube, Notes by Linda Summers   Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men

This is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world's most outrageous pranks.

Andy & Mike  ---  pass themselves off as business men of Big Corporations / illusions through Big websites and get invited to conferences, passing off absurd ideas.  Troublemakers!!!! 

Andy’s lie to the public. Why?

To right the wrongs of course. Because nobody else takes responsibility to do the right thing.

NEXT MISSION ---  DOW

Union Carbide 1984 – India explosion of factory, 5,000 deaths, over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and other chemicals, 100,000 sick for life.  Settlement $470 million to government --- individual victims receive less than $1,000 ea.

Dow buys Union Carbide, do they right the wrong in India? Not exactly.

Instead, DOW paid $2 billion to 15 asbestos victims, for Texas West Fertilizer Company explosion 2013.

CASH VALUE of                 HUMAN LIFE

Acceptable Risk Program --- Golden Skelton, “not just a company’s Skelton in a closet, but a Golden Skelton (Profit).

                                “I’d rather be handsome than homely;

                                I’d rather be youthful then old;

                                If I can’t have a bushel of silver;

                                I’ll do with a barrel of gold.” 

                                                                                James Jeffrey Roche

REFRESHING?  Or SHOCKING!

Cults – Jamestown Suicide Cults, 1978, over 900 people died, now that is shocking.  Refreshing is not, learning how to be profitable off of human life.   Other cults – Bankers!   What’s shocking to outsiders is normal to insiders.  Greed to bankers – who are the cult leaders?   Milton Friedman, Uncle Milt!  Introduced the Friedman for corporations to profit no matter the risk to people, no influence from government theory.

BANKERS MINDSET

What we must learn from the guru of greed.    Washington DC, carrying the flame—free market think tanks, want to make us believe--“if we just let Big Corporations do what they want, everything works out just GREAT!” So, HOW do we fix the world? How do we do it?   Private Property – Rule of Law & a Market unrestricted by government regulation and control.   Wealth, Money & Prosperity!!  Get the message?   Friedman’s Gospel, being spilled out in any way it can.

There're ALWAYS RISK GOING INTO the FUTURE

The Bhopal tragedy, for 1,000’s of people in Bhopal, there was no future.  At least the Jonestown Suicide Cult killed only themselves. The Free-market cult, are willing to put everyone else at risk.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL

Hitting the jackpot, interview broadcast reaching an audience excess of 300 million. Meeting in a neutral territory, Paris!  So how does one right a wrong?  It’s been over 20 years since the catastrophe in Bhopal, India.  You take responsibility, accepting FULL responsibility, with a $12 billion dollar plan, to compensate the victims. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do!!!  

THE HOAX

Coming clean is never easy, retractions through news & media, rebutting the claim to “TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY” for what happened in Bhopal. Outcome, Dow’s shares drop 3 %, in 23 minutes (after announcement) a $12 million dollar hit/ loss. This all happened 20 years to the day of the catastrophe. During the 20 years, Dow has been prorogating a hoax, convincing the public, that they cannot do anything about the Bhopal, they cannot accept responsibility. They only wanted to bring light to the fact that they could help if only they wanted too, not to further the victims with false hope of more help after already waiting 20 years. 

JOURNEY TO BHOPAL – ARE THEY UPSET WITH US?

Media portrayed extreme unrest among the victims, that announcement was a hoax, that no additional compensation was forthcoming. Yet, the hoaxers were welcomed with warmness!  Visiting the Sambhavna Trust Clinic, that was set up to treat some of the gas victims. Ongoing testing is preformed, most disabled children experience difficulties through their nervous system, women under 40, experience menopause early.  The overall reaction was “it was too good to be true.”  Sure it would have been wonderful, but not expected.

Could the catastrophe have been avoided?  For years, a reporter tried to for tell, protect his fellow man, but nobody listened.  He felt he failed.  Visiting the actual site of Union Carbide, where leaks of contamination still go into the ground. A diagram reflects that 8 villages do not have clean water. Other villages are only getting 12% of the requirements, contaminated water is still being used to drink, bath, and cook and clean.   Dow could have cleaned up their mess, but they didn’t.  Instead, the spent 10’s of millions of dollars on an ad campaign, to clean up their image. Their campaign -HUMANITY matters, nothing else matters.

ANALYZING WHY

A broker describes, that in 23 minutes Dow lost $2 billion dollars. Everybody they spoke to in Bhopal was thinking it was a good thing that Dow was going to do.  But, not Dow stockholders, who is expecting a $20 billion dollar dividend to come back to them, instead, that money is going to those people. The analysis says, “You can see how they would be upset about that, don’t you?”   Confused?  We learned back in school – Let’s Be Good Citizens. It was bad to do something bad, but if you did something good, you got a reward. Yet, when they announced that Dow was going to do something great, the market gave Dow a spanking.

HOW TO GET COMPANIES TO DO THE RIGHT THING?        

Change the rules, Government was drinking the Friedman Free Marketers cool aid.  They believed that if you ignore the problem long enough, it will work its self out.   They lifted the restriction, faith in the Free Marketers brought about disaster. (Housing market implosion, Global Warming).  Free Marketers did everything they could to stop government from interfering. Big business like Exxon, were secretly paying so that government would not regulate them.   If we keep letting the Free Marketers keep running the world, there wasn’t going to be a world left to fix.  

WHAT WILL SHOCK THE WORLD?

Abundant enough to shock the world, DEAD PEOPLE, and candles!   Miracle fuel, if government will only get out of the way.  Keynote speaker, dupes those at Expo for Fuel and Energy. Exxon’s new biofuel announced, the human flesh smelling candles were lit. Regis Watts, the dying human, used for human fuel. A candle has so many uses!!!  After being escorted out, one must question, did we actually make the oil people think about what they were doing? Big oil was already destroying the planet, and not by just speeding up climate change.  For decades, the government ignored scientist warnings and let industry carve up the wet lands that protected Louisiana from storms. It was all done, cannel by cannel, oil field by oil field, fuel by death by a thousand cuts. Culture illegally, we will deal with the results later. Just a preview of what this country will become and has in store for them. Hurricane Katrina – the wet lands were not there to diminish its force and the levees did not have a chance. The real culprit was not just the hurricane, it was greed. The government was handing out billions of dollars to contracts, letting greed solve the problem.

LET THE MARKET FIX THINGS

Gulf coast reconstruction conference, a reconstruction of New Orleans. A tremendous opportunity, take advantage of a situation and that’s a good thing, It’s A Great Thing!    Once in a while a crisis is not a bad thing. Turns out the whole convention was displaying equipment for power and control. This stuff would be great, if New Orleans was going to fight a war. The Yurt displayed, was the only thing there that would help the people. The government reps were not interested, there was no money in selling Yurts.

CREATING THE ULTIMATE PROTECTION

It would cost too much to make it, only the richest business men could afford it. What company would make such a thing? Halliburton.  Halliburton, has been the world leader from extracting profit from every kind of disaster. Making billions, (Gulf Wars, Katrina) all paid for by the US Government, whose Vic President, is their own CEO. If anyone could make a total killing from disaster, Halliburton was the one.  The Catastrophic Loss Conference was for insurance people.    With simple math you get – Global Calamity + Billions of People = We’re Screwed

Scary did not work with Gilda, Gross did not work with Regis, and we were going for ridiculous by showing ~ What Noah Knew ~ with a personal guarantee, “level heads will always be able to turn lemons into lemonade.”  The Black Plague, an unspeakable rotten event, where 1/3 of the population died, but overturned by the entrepreneurs of the renaissance. The great deluge, this world ending disaster was seen by Noah’s contemporaries as disastrous, but nobody was ready to seize the day, Noah was left with a monopoly of animals.     For those who have to take responsibility in a crisis situation, innovated solutions are necessary. Introducing the Emergency Product ~ we want to be able to save a human being no matter what Mother Nature throws at him. The Halliburton SurvivaBall. Easily inflatable, can extract items from the elements without harm, protection in cold as well as underwater. Protection from tornado’s and tsunamis. People need people, allowing amoebas to aggregate and come together, creating one big happy dancing SurvivaBall.    If people want them, then price is no object, right!  Modeling terrorism around the world, this fits in it?  Total failure to expose greed. A matter of fact, all their efforts were failures.

A YES MAN NEVER GIVES UP

A whole new approach was needed. Maybe making fun of stupid ideas, was a stupid idea, we had to get smart. The people with the really stupid ideas, were very, very smart. “Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.” Milton Friedman.

For Friedman and his followers, disasters were not just a chance to get rich, but an opportunity to push through unpopular policies. Like--- Privatizing public schools, shutting down public hospitals, and kicking people out of their homes.  Lafitte Housing Development, New Orleans, survived Katrina intact, which was good, people had a place to come home to. So what did the government do, they TORE IT DOWN.  The government came up with a way to dismantle public housing, privatize it. The poor get a chance to live like the rest of us and around us, we become a role model for the poor. In New Orleans, government, was drinking the Free Market cool aid.  The government didn’t believe in government.

WE HAD TO BECOME THE GOVERNMENT

We found out what would happen if government did the right thing. Heading back to the Gulf Coast Reconstruction Conference, on the first anniversary of Katrina, as HUD spokesmen. Thousands of contractors would be there. Announcing HUD’s radical new approach to public housing and cost them money, putting some of them out of a job.    

Truth and Lie, cannot stay in the same place at the same time.  A well-dressed lie, being chased by naked truth.  The change starts today, reopen all public housing. Further, Exxon and Shell, finance rebuilding the wet lands from the $60 billion in profit this year.    We will rebuild the American Dream.  Very positive and encouraging message, getting people back home and rebuilding. When the contractors heard that the government was going to do the right thing, even though it might cost them some business, they cheered. Friedman was wrong, Greed alone did not rule the world.

The gig is up, pulling off one heck of a hoax. Actually telling the truth is worth lying to all these people. Sick, twisted, cruel, all words described in the prank.  Taking the mayor for a ride, these contractors followed to a ribbon cutting, welcoming the people back to their homes.  The people, respect his hoax, calling their hands, to bring them out here to see what we are going through. Exposing HUD, that they could be doing great things, if they wanted too.  Expressing, everything that they did was excellent.    

REALITY SINKS IN

It had all been worthwhile, reality sinks in, and we didn’t fix the world. The Free Market was still destroying New Orleans. All over the world people were losing their homes, climate change kept getting worse, and in Bhopal people keep getting worse. It was going to take more than two guys, in cheap suits and a fake website to fix the world. It would take millions of us. Real change will not come easy. The Free Market Cult is still here. WEALTH, MONEY AND PRIVATIZATION is.

BACK ON TRACK

Back to how it was before it all fell apart. But, how it was, was the problem.   What does real change look like?   100,000 copies of our own newspaper, THE NEW YORK TIMES, but a little different, set 6 months in the FUTURE.  Realistically presenting what this would could be.  Optimistic, we can do all these things, why not!  Free NEW YORK TIMES, reactions, this is too good to be true, but it’s not impossible.  The fake news, was a hit.  Extra, Extra, read all about it!!!!!!

We printed a newspaper with the headlines that we wanted to see, and if people were excited, let’s make it happen. We have to take back our government. March into city hall and say, here, we have the solutions.  We need to say, business as usual is unacceptable, because people are being hurt and we’re not going to play the role, subservient routine role that we usually play.   Make change happen. Put your effort on the line, to make something happen.         

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