In January 2001, the Finnish organizers of the conference in the textile sector - «Textiles of the Future» - appealed to the World Trade Organization with a request to send a representative.However, a site that they have accepted for the official website of the WTO, in fact, was created by a group of anti-globalization.Invitation to the famous joker got Andy Bihlbaumu.
In 1999, two activists of the art group «The Yes Men» New York - Bihlbaum Andy (Andy Bihlbaum) and Mike Bonanno (Mike Bonanno) - open the Internet site gatt.org - false twin site of the World Trade Organization.
Externally gatt.org (it is possible to visit now) looks quite plausible - the emblem of the WTO, solid titles, circulation director general, specific officious syllable.
However, serious headlines hidden pages with content exactly the opposite: a murderous statistics increasing poverty and economic inequality in the world, strongly criticized the economic and ideological policy of the major players in the global market.
Oddly enough, but a lot of visitors to the site really took gatt.org for the official website of the WTO;even more interesting, that among "kupivshihsya" were representatives of trade and industry organizations.The mail gatt.org began receiving offers (facing, of course, to the WTO) to send representatives to those or other trade and economic forums or conferences.For «The Yes Men» the time has come "X".
In January 2001, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bihlbaum as "representatives of the WTO" took part in the international conference "The textile industry of the future" in Tampere (Finland).
The report opens the conference, Andy gave a brief history of the textile industry and, in particular, said that the American Civil War (one of the stumbling blocks which, according to him, was just the textile business, more accurately, the cotton plantations of the South) was a wastemoney for canceled as a result of its slavery was simply replaced by a more efficient version of their - low-paid wage labor, successfully exists to this day.
only weak point of the organization of work, he said, is the lack of control over the labor of wage workers: manager in New York can not be 24 hours a day to monitor the effectiveness of work cotton pickers in the fields in China.However, he said Andy experts commissioned by the WTO in this regard have developed a new technology solution - and with these words solemnly took off his business suit.
a suit appeared gilded tight leotards, represented by the bosses of the textile industry as a "suit manager on vacation", equipped with an inflatable phallus gilded same length in meters.
Bihlbaum explained that the suit "will give managers the ability to remotely control the labor force in developing countries": using a video at the end of the fake phallus, the manager will be able "to include electric shocks to spur fast enough working staff who will be implanted with special chips."
To the surprise of the artists, the audience responded with stormy applause ....Of the 150 participants of the conference speaker's sanity doubted none.The next day, Aamulehti, the largest newspaper in Tampere, published in the business section of a large photograph of a ridiculous costume and a report praising the invention, including a "small harmless chips."The error was discovered by the organizers when Bihlbaum admitted in the drawing.
truly offended pleaded only one participant - it outraged that "from the report that only men can effectively manage the textile business."
Photo source: photobucket.com
