Some minor issues

How do you fight an organisation like the WTO? By pretending you’re them.
That’s exactly the way the yes men figured out.

What’s it about? Some time ago I accidentally bumped on a documentary aired on the Dutch television called The Yes Men. These guys are hosting a website called gatt.org which is more or less a copy of the WTO website. Sometimes (and that’s what they hope for) people mistake them for the real WTO and invite them as speakers and so on.
The yes men jump on these opportunities, call themselves WTO executives, but bring what’s in their mind the real thoughts of the WTO.

Example: the WTO is supposed to be a supporter of 3th world countries, global trade and economics .. but it seems they only care about the Western/rich countries. So in stead of helping people who really need it, they kind of make things worse for them.

The Yes Men is a kind of positive protest to this. A clever form of protest, and a more subtle one. But one that might really change peoples minds and hearts.

I’m not going to describe the actions they did, would lead us too for. In stead I would like to invite you to see the docu yourself. It’s on Google video! (turn of the Spanish subtitles if you wish)

Basically, what the yes men are doing is marketing. If you want to beat your opponents (which is a strong sentence in this context, but after all it’s about winning/selling/gaining .. whether it’s products or minds) there are 2 way: or you position yourself over your opponent, or you position your opponent below you.
The yes men are doing exactly this, except they do it on what one might call ethical grounds. They also do it by not presenting their opponent as inferior, they do it by expressing their opponent’s true thought. Let common sense decide!
But then again, it’s quite scary to see how people living in “the system” swallow almost everything, no questions asked.

BTW: The Yes Men is about much more then the WTO, but the documentary is centered around this topic