The Yes Men Strike Again! - Media Pranksters Spotlight Dow Chemical Connection to Bhopal

The Yes Men Strike Again!
Media Pranksters Spotlight Dow Chemical Connection to Bhopal Disaster

They have shut down the WTO and pretended to be the Bush Campaign, but this December, The Yes Men outdid themselves. The Yes Men are an activist/prankster duo who practice a form of culture jamming they call “identity correction”. According to their communiqués, they “impersonate big time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them.” Public humiliation is exactly what happened when BBC World TV invited someone from DowEthics to give the company’s side of the story in the face of international protest surrounding the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal chemical explosion.

The Yes Men operate a satirical website at www.dowethics.com. The site appears at first to be the actual web address of Dow Chemical, but at closer look, the content clearly makes a mockery of the company’s official rhetoric. Apparently, the journalists at the BBC did not catch the dark humor, because they used the site to request an interview with a Dow spokesperson for their anniversary story about the Bhopal explosion.

December 3, 2004 marked 20 years since a deadly chemical explosion killed thousands when tons of poisonous gas leaked from a storage tank at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. Somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 people died from exposure to the gas, and tens to hundreds of thousands more struggle to survive severe reactions related to continued exposure to the toxic aftermath. The 44 tons of lethal methyl isocyanate gas leaked in 1984 was one of the largest industrial disasters in world history.

Since the accident, Dow Chemical Corp. has acquired Union Carbide and has steadfastly refused to take any responsibility for the disaster or provide the victims with adequate compensation, despite clear evidence of gross negligence on the part of the company they now own. Every year since the accident, survivors and human rights advocates gather in Bhopal to demand adequate compensation from Union Carbide. Dow’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge their liability set the stage for a spectacular stunt played against them this December.

Reacting quickly to the request from BBC World TV, Yes Men operative Andy Bichlbaum agreed to offer a live interview. Under the alias of Jude Finisterra, and on behalf of Dow Chemical, Andy appeared in front of the Eiffel Tower via live satellite to the London studio of BBC.

Mr. Finisterra reversed the company’s decades old policy and took full responsibility for the tragedy, agreeing to liquidate Union Carbide and establish a $12 billion victim compensation fund. Furthermore, he said Dow would push for the extradition of Warren Anderson, former Union Carbide CEO who fled India to the US after his arrest for multiple murder charges in Indian courts.

The live interview broadcast on BBC and then rebroadcast around the world before anyone suspected anything. The first clue that the conscience-ridden chemical rep was not what he seemed was hidden in his name. Jude is the ‘patron saint of the impossible’ and Finisterra means ‘Earth’s end’. As the story of Dow’s capitulation spread quickly through international news, Dow stock took a steep tumble. Hasty damage control by the company, and the story that the interview was “an elaborate hoax”, soon stabilized the stock and replaced the interview as one of the top features in news around the world.

Fallout from the action began immediately. First, another prank by the Yes Men, this time in the form of an inflammatory false retraction sent out as a press release appearing to be from Dow, briefly ran as the top story on news.google. Not only were no arrest warrants issued, but the BBC invited Mr. Finisterra to come back later that day to do another interview explaining what had just happened.

In preparing this stunt, The Yes Men knew there was a danger of briefly raising the hopes of activists who have dedicated their lives to this struggle, by briefly allowing them to think they had finally won. They made the calculation that the global attention it would bring to this important issue, and the pressure that would put on Dow, ensured a net benefit for the Bhopali people from the prank. They also worried about the backlash against the credibility of the BBC, who ironically is one of the few major news networks to consistently have provided meaningful coverage of this issue.

Indeed, both of these consequences did result from the hoax, and the two have expressed their apologies for any unintended side effects they caused. The abundant coverage the stunt received, especially in the United States, most certainly elevated the issue to a level of discussion no tactic used by activists previously had achieved. As for the art of identity correction, The Yes Men hope their tomfoolery inspires others. As they say, they currently have hundreds of thousands of job openings.