Wow there are so many of you out there Thank you so much for inviting us here, and thanks for getting up this morning for this thing this into the wild moment I Got a little worried

When I found out that this was called into the wild Because I don't know if you know this, but there's a popular book and movie Where an idiot goes and dies Cold and hungry in the back of a bus In the back of a school bus, that's the that's the last place you want to be when you're dying

Whatever. I mean he was a little naive a little romantic He died It's very sad. I don't know why the the book and the movie were made

but But I didn't want to end up like that. I don't think either of us did and So it seemed a little daunting. I mean it we get paranoid you know about the things that we do because when you get invited somewhere and The title of the thing is into the wild you begin to wonder if they're trying to lure you into a trap

Is this the conference where we finally show up and somebody plays a joke on us? So go ahead this is your moment go ahead do whatever you're gonna do we're ready

Nothing. Okay good All right. Well, we have some stories to tell Yeah into the wild. I mean interestingly enough We we of course don't want to end up dead in the back of the school bus like that poor young man And unfortunately, it looks like our civilization is kind of headed in that direction

The way we keep insisting on profiting and growing and Pursuing the same capitalist ideals That have come to define the last part of this century and so that's what we've been focusing on in our work is trying to

Understand that trying to understand why we're doing it and doing social experiments where we infiltrate business environments Where decision-makers from these industries like the oil industry are and our men are discussing their bit their trade and

We try to do things that reveal What goes on the mechanisms that that keep that system going? Yeah, and we have a social experiment today for you You It's a keynote. This is the first talk of the the whole conference. It's a great honor and

we thought we'd do something very special which is Tell a story that we've never told before in front of an audience Which means that it is going to be a social experiment because it's going to be true the actual true story Instead of what we usually tell and we don't mean to tell lies

It's just when you tell a story again and again and again you tend to embroider You add a little detail that gets an extra laugh that makes people Laugh or moan or you know, if they're silent too long you just stop that part You don't talk about that as much the next time until finally you're telling a totally different story But what you're what we're gonna talk about today is the actual story because we haven't talked about it to audiences that can

Influence us so you're gonna be the first audience to influence us in this story So a year from now we're gonna be telling this story because of something that we said here that made people laugh and Not telling other things that left you silent. So it's a it's a responsibility

You're we're collaboratively writing this story of what happened last week So, please laugh at the parts that you think are important not necessarily the ones that are funny because it's the laughing ones So we're gonna tell Alright, so where do we begin it just happens so we don't actually have a way of beginning. Yeah, so

You know, one of the reasons why we have to tell this story for the first time To you is that we don't have another story to tell you And that's because the last few weeks we were consumed with a project. We were infiltrating a Homeland Security Conference in the United States in Washington DC

and We chose the Homeland Security Conference Because Well, first of all, because it's it's a funny kind of an idea Homeland Security. It's a new idea We didn't grow up with that. It was

installed in 2001 after 9-11 when Bush George Bush the second realized that he could irrigate control and power under one big massive government umbrella and He would be able to institute a whole bunch of legal reforms

restrictions the Patriot Act other things that made it very difficult for the activists who had gotten so much momentum with the anti-globalization movement to Continue their protests against neoliberal economic policies That was the sort of silver lining in the response the paranoid response to terrorism

Yeah, so we we saw this Congress we wanted to go there and We really we had an idea what we wanted to do was present You know, we're making a movie it's called the yes men are revolting and in the movie there's a lot of doom and gloom It's about climate change. It's about movements and fighting against climate change and there's a lot of good stuff

There's a lot of happy stuff, but there's also a lot of depression because climate change is depressing and What do we do about it? So we just we really wanted to give a very upbeat happy Positive speech at the very end of the movie and we wanted to give it in the most hostile environment we could think of

Which was a Homeland Security Congress and so we found this Homeland Security Congress. It was filled with lobbyists. There was a Retired general there was an admiral There was a Navy SEAL who used to kill people for a living who paid assassin sort of an American Ninja and there were all of these like

defense contractors The the conference was sponsored by Northrop Grumman a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman called task It was pretty bad And so we thought it was the perfect place to give a really stirring uplifting happy speech which we prepared and it's a very long story of preparation, but I I was

going to be the Representative of the Department of Energy and maybe we should show originally We actually wanted to give them a general from the military but a lawyer that we know suggested that maybe we didn't want to dress as a general because in the United States if you do that and

Somebody perceives you to be a general then you can be tried for a federal crime that puts you away in jail for a very long time And so It seemed like it would be I mean it seemed worth the risk to me

Because why not we haven't actually listened to lawyers in the past But then we realized that you know We just spent about five years working on this new film and if we were in jail and everything would be difficult to finish it And yeah inconvenient basically I chickened out. I didn't want to go to jail us for wearing a military uniform

But but but then also I saw this guy like look at him This is the the head of the Department of Energy Ernest Moniz, and he's got the most amazing hair in the world and I thought that is hair that is hair that we we need to say something about and

so So, okay So I was all set we were this was let's say a week before I was gonna be the Department of Energy representative His name was Benedict Waterman came up with a whole speech about renewable energy and how we can Convert the United States to be run on 100% renewable energy

Completely remove fossil fuels completely convert to renewable energy Technologically, that's not far-fetched at all. There's plenty of studies that show how that could be done It would require a massive effort, but you know, we've engaged in massive efforts In the past it's how we won World War two

and The we can do it again. This this enemy is a little more daunting than Germany was in World War two Would take us a little longer to win but ha ha sorry

Bigger enemy we can still do it and So that was the idea in in 15 years would convert entirely to renewable energy But there was a Little extra bit which is that everything we would build We would give to the people on whose land it's put So if you have if you put a solar panel on your roof

It's yours and you it's your electricity you generate it from the Sun you sell it to the grid you make a little money the whole system works from everybody being a producer and among the the producers would be Indian reservations, you know back a couple hundred hundred couple hundred years ago. We North America

Slowly became less and less of a place for the people who lived there the Native Americans and they got put in these kind of I guess large land based concentration camps called Reservations and many of those are in places that you don't really want to live like where there's too much wind or it's too sunny

And those are exactly the places where we need renewable energy installations so the Department of Energy would place wind farms solar farms on the reservations and they would own them and Be able to sell the energy back and that would serve as reparations for genocide

and We had a representative of the Bureau of Indian Affairs there with us Bana slow horse and He's really An activist from the tar sands. This is his real name is gets crazy boy not kidding GITZ crazy boy and

He is he is a Athabasca Chippewa, he's from the Athabasca River Valley Where they are now scooping massive amounts of earth And tar sands out of the ground and then leaving toxic tailing ponds

Much larger than than Berlin in fact I think the entire land mass is the size of England that they're planning on digging up and turning into a Complete wasteland and and all the the pipelines that people are stopping Are taking that oil to the sea for export and if they actually make it to the sea

It gets exported to China or I think Europe has banned Tar sands fuel so it doesn't come to Europe, but it goes to China for example, where? The amount of carbon just skyrockets and we're doomed So gets joined us in Washington

He's gonna represent the Bureau of Indian Affairs Andy is gonna be from the Department of Energy. I'm some guy from a PR company that kind of set the thing up and What I have to do at the beginning of this thing is convince everybody That they should let the Department of Energy guy go on

Even though the guy who they wants to speak at this conference who happens to be Colin Powell isn't showing up Right. I'm not gonna explain why they think Colin Powell is gonna be there Because that's a long story, but they think it. Oh, they believe that Colin Powell The Colin Powell is going to arrive and so I show up early in the morning and

I start to tell them that Colin Powell has had a slight delay, but it's okay Because the representatives of the partner organizations in this new plan this new renewable energy plan called American and

You know, there's the question are you an American are you an American? You're not an American are you I mean if you ask Americans this question, of course, they can only respond one way, right? So So it works. Well the new program American

Which is going to replace the entire fossil fuel infrastructure of the United States with the renewable energy Generating and distribution system in less time than it took to win the Second World War And

I Tell the conference organizers this in confidence because it's all embargoed. They can't tell anyone else It's very secret because if they tell anyone else right now Then you know word will get out the stock market will be influenced and they'll be in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission So they'll be in trouble with the law if they tell anyone yeah

so What you see here is? I'm the one on the right and I'm wearing I've just spoken and you can see on my head occur a very strange wig That believe it or not is supposed to emulate the way the hair of this guy

And I tell this part this is this is really stupid. Okay, I don't actually know that he's gonna be wearing this wig So he walks in To the just before the conference and I'm standing with a couple conference organizers, and I'm looking at what the fuck

cuz he walks in and This thing did not look like hair at all. I mean what the hell is that on his head? Well, it turns out that basically, you know, we had somebody working with us who said yeah sure I'll take care of the wig thing, but their idea of taking care of the wig thing

was that they knew RuPaul's wig maker and And RuPaul's wig maker at 4 a.m. The morning before we went down to Washington after the drag show made this wig for his head and Didn't show it to anybody Delivered it at 7 a.m. And in a very carefully

Closed package and it was like, you know It had the little net around it so that no hair would leak and we were all like Oh RuPaul's wig maker made this and so we kept it very preciously and then like right before the event when when Mike and About ten other people were in the conference venue getting things ready cameras the whole thing

I was off in a little place across the street with two people who didn't have cameras or anything and they actually it was with Bana with Gitz and his girlfriend and We took out the wig and put it on and it was clearly like a big blond drag queen wig

and I realized kind that there was something wrong with it, but I tucked it behind my ear and Amelia combed it so that it stayed behind my ear somewhat although not entirely So we're always worried about our cover getting blown

We're worried about being recognized or we're worried about people realizing or fake and so in he walks and he's clearly fake Like there's no question about it I turned to the conference organizer and she looks at me and she says And I and I say oh, you know, it's Department of Energy Have you seen the head of the Department of Energy the weird hair he has and she says to me that's not hair

Anyway, so I was shitting myself because I think okay, this is it. They're gonna shut us down. Our cover is blown they know but no a Weird wig is acceptable. They greet him. They shake his hand and they send him up to the stage

Yeah, and up on the stage I I begin speaking and I present the plan for converting the u.s. To renewable energy by 2030 and I get very emotional

And at just the right moments people applaud You know when I I can't remember a word of this, that's right defense contractors defense contractors Admirals generals all the people in the audience were genuinely excited about Converting to renewable energy and doing it very quickly

Now there were no oil executives in the room So there were there were no booze in there But I mean it turned out that people a general audience of Americans of defense contractors Were very excited about doing the right thing doing what they knew had to happen what they knew was inevitable

And if we did it sooner would benefit everybody and then not only that so I give my whole talk and Explain how we're gonna do it and ownership of the the means of energy production will go to the people who? Can produce it and I also mentioned that the Department of Defense is particularly interested in this because of the massive amounts of climate

Change massive effects of climate change that could well create immense conflict In the future with a lot of border crossing migration Future wars could happen and even worse. There's already a lot of outrage over climate change

You see these pipelines being stalled because of protesters and even stopped I mean the Keystone XL in the US would have already happened if it hadn't been for Protesters and there's a couple of pipelines in Canada that have been seemingly dead in the water at least for now because of indigenous activism and

So basically I Said well, what about when climate change is really felt in a very strong way by everyone, you know Then this could go anywhere we could have a revolution and we've got to convert to an energy revolution We got to convert our energy today have an energy revolution before we have a real revolution tomorrow. So that was sort of a

Call to revolution Through the point of view of the Department of Energy saying that's the way we will actually force these fuckers to do something So it's a very sick, but they applauded that they applauded everything they applauded the idea of revolution and then

yeah, and then Gets crazy boy who takes the name Bana slow horse Gets up and gives a very stirring speech from the Bureau of Indian Affairs on behalf of his Native American tribe Which is the tribe of the wannabes?

wannabes and He's part of the long back clan. He's the hereditary chief of the long back clan. They have no buts That's why they're called the long backs. It's apparently a derogatory term they use and At the end of his stirring speech in which he describes the effects of fossil fuels on his land and how it's an additional sickness

That follows the genocidal sickness the original ones that that were spread around now we're gonna be past that and He asks everybody to stand up and he demonstrates a traditional Native American wannabe circle dance and

He has everybody all the men stand up and grab the belt loop so normally, you know in the movies it's like this but in in this case you put your hand on the back of the man next to you slide it down to his butt and and then you grab his belt loop and

You hold on to his belt loop so that if he goes out of line, you can just give him a little yank Yank or whatever. Yank up, yank sideways, yank in, whatever. Hey, I got your belt loop And sometimes that happens and and that's a lot of fun, too So this is a then Tito Ibarra a native comedian from Minnesota

begins singing a very very interesting song and This is a traditional wannabe song traditional wannabe circle to go with the traditional wannabe circle dance

Excuse me. I composed this song last night and I Composed it for this occasion. I made it a simple song So we can sing it together because it's not just my song. It belongs to all of us This is to commemorate the special occasion and moving forward

So it's real simple. The words are way. Ah, hey You guys are fast learners Okay, so I'll sing one verse and you guys and so on and so forth here we go

Goes on for five minutes that defense contractors are very human and

Are willing to have a good time doing a traditional wannabe dance in celebration of

Converting to alternative energy overnight And that if we lead if we actually lead they will follow Nobody there are very few people in the world who actually want to see the world doomed That's the lesson there are some and they're mainly the ones in charge of oil companies are standing to profit

tremendously off oil company profits, but by and large if we come up with another way of doing things and simply order or Enable or incentivize or Require or whatever word you want to use require Industry to actually serve humanity instead of serve itself only

People like that will follow even what we think of as the dark side wolf will follow and do a circle dance As long as you have some good rhythm so So that's the that's our lesson

Yeah, yeah, no we're telling secrets up here is anybody want to know some secrets does Anybody have a question yeah, we like we like to I mean this is a huge audience So it's kind of hard to be interactive, but individually if any of you have questions

Does anybody want to know how we set that thing up? I? Don't okay Yeah, maybe some hackers in the room. Yeah, okay, so it's just a bit of social engineering You know a conference company is throwing is the one hosting the conference and so they want somebody

Important to speak at their conference there by getting more people to come to their conference paying attendees Right so they want somebody important to speak at their conference So it's not that hard to fulfill their desire

Simply by calling them and saying do you want Colin Powell to speak at your conference for example? For example you could say hi I'm from a company that represents Colin Powell because of course he doesn't represent himself No a particularly nasty giant PR company for example. You know there are all these really big

PR companies you know Edelman's one of the biggest you know Hill and Knowlton and these companies on a daily basis tell Massive lies to the public that are never meant to be revealed I mean they were Implicated Hill and Knowlton for example implicated in actually

Gathering the momentum of the American public behind the idea for the first Gulf War Gulf War one in 1991 they manufactured consent for that war Using a fake a completely fabricated story About Iraqi troops taking babies out of incubators after the invasion of Kuwait and not only was it completely fabricated

They had the US ambassador's daughter in the US the Kuwaiti ambassador in the US His daughter who hadn't been in Kuwait at all at the time She gave eyewitness testimony before Congress and cried about seeing the babies taken out of the incubators

It's all manufactured by a PR company, and so you know they're also the one they're bursting Marsteller behind the Famous campaign about how smoking is good for you That dates back aways, but they also put together the grassroots groups in the United States the smokers Alliance

These are these fake Grassroots groups of pro smoking smokers the lobby of smokers who are there to you know oppose Any legislation against smoking so anyway to get in so Mike becomes four? Employees from one of these PR agencies one single PR agency four different employees for emails and

rights from one of the employees to the conference and says look we Colin Powell wants to speak at your stupid little Homeland Security conference Stupid little Homeland Security conference by the way, that's his interpretation

It was a yeah standard stupid little Homeland Security conference he wants to speak there and make an announcement and would that be okay with you, and they're of course Absolutely thrilled and they write back and somebody you know I don't know There's a lot of communication that happens over two weeks at least or three

Yeah, the point is it's not actually that that hard. It's not espionage or anything It's just giving somebody what they want which is somebody famous to speak at their conference only then withholding the famous person At the very last minute you know It's not rocket science. No if anybody else wants to do it I'm sure you could because there are thousands and thousands of these conferences and

One of the things that we're working on now is a system that will enable All kinds of people out there who might want to engage in these kinds of shenanigans To do it themselves so For many years now. We've been getting requests from

Individuals often organizations who say I'm having trouble Getting attention for my issue It's just getting lost and this has been happening more and more as there's more media Consolidation even though the internet helps social media helps as far as getting mainstream media attention

People have been really having a hard time Because there's very limited bandwidth now Yeah, and so they ask us for help, but obviously there's only two of us So we can only do so much yeah, and so this is the thing that we're launching. It's it's almost ready It's called the action switchboard, and it's basically it's called a switchboard

because that's a very old technology where the human beings plug things into Other things and connect people that way and that's basically what happens like you can write in say I There's a coal plant being built near me I want to stop it or I have a funny idea for an action about surveillance for example

Send it in somebody will Help you refine your idea will brainstorm it a little bit And then you can post it on a page and get collaborators from our database We've got about a hundred thousand people who have indicated. They'd like to help with things over the years and The facilitator behind it will help put you together with people you can also advertise it on your social networks

you can raise money for it if you need and Then have little brainstorms online or in person These are some of the brainstorms for those of you who like diagrams Nets but yeah

so it's a bit like See the Homepage looks a bit like Kickstarter Right it's individual projects that people list and then each project has different goals first of all there might be a financial goal They might use this for fundraising so it has that Capacity, but it's also a bit like a dating website only for you know

polymorphously perverse polygamists Because you can date with lots and lots of people if you want to It's more of a sort of network for people who have signed up and so you can it match makes people who have ideas for projects with people who have the ability to carry them out or the network or the

resources to do it and Behind every project. There's a real-world goal. So anytime a project comes in A facilitator man figures out what it's about what it's trying to do and if that's in the diagram

Then where it belongs in this diagram and what this does is to connect ultimately Activists from across different issue areas and have them learn from each other So there's these group brainstorms every week where people from different parts of this diagram Brainstorm and share ideas across what are called issue silos

So that's so it's fitting things into a goal tree because one of the problems with the type of thing that we do is That it can be just Like hit and run fun you know we get we do an action and then we're not if we're not part of an ongoing campaign of an

activist organization it just It happens and it's gone Whereas we really want them to contribute to ongoing pressure that leads to some kind of Substantive change. So for example a policy shift and what we found is that by working with organizations

Who have ongoing campaigns we can really figure out exactly when it's appropriate to do this kind of media action And then when it applies pressure, so for example a few years back We did an action against the US Chamber of Commerce The US Chamber of Commerce is not part of the US government it's the largest lobbying organization in the world or so they claim to be and

They often lobby against the government or at least against the public And public representation in government so it's a massive pro-business lobby for many years they're working very hard to fight climate change legislation and we

There was a big sort of activist push to try to get them to stop doing that and we piled on We worked with a few organizations piled on at just the right time and did a very Well received media event where we impersonated the Chamber of Commerce and a Few weeks later. They actually changed their position, but it wasn't because of our action

It was because there it was part of a massive Campaign of many activists doing many different things and that's what the action switchboard wants to foster. For example This is a common dreams article You know a progressive news advocate aggregators article

There's above it. There's the usual Facebook like button and then to the right of it There's an act now button, which we're trying to develop and that would lead to a page where you could take action on the whole issue around it and It would include you know much more standard much more traditional activism as well as

This sort of thing and the action that Mike just described or we impersonated the Chamber of Commerce could have been in this page As one of the as one of the things you could do so it's a it's trying to drag people To a place where then they can act instead of just like a page and provide a clearinghouse for action

Yeah, it's a kind of platform for Facilitating more direct action and more creative direct action direct action in places where you might not expect it So yes, we need to sit down in the roadways. Yes We need to go out in the street and protest

but we also need to do every other thing that we can possibly think of like intervening in these business meetings because The alternative if we don't do everything that we can and we fail is one thing Right, then at least we'll have tried

But if we if we don't do everything we can and we and we don't succeed The result is of course on our shoulders So

Yeah, are there any questions about this stuff? I mean we can also show you another video But um questions If you have questions and you want to ask them directly feel free to come up to this side of the stage To get the mic from me or to the other side of the stage to get the mic from lovely Paul

And here's one person already Hi, thanks very much for talking today Are you not worried that by talking about the things you do in front of thousands of people and lots of? Video cameras that you'll be less effective with this kind of stuff in future that people will recognize you more and stuff

Well that actually is why I wore a big crazy wig I don't think I really had to probably if I hadn't I mean maybe if we're both together we're kind of recognizable but Think as individuals were pretty nondescript So I I don't know. Yeah, we we've taken a kind of

Transparent approach to this we decided years ago that we would just tell all our secrets and Because because they're really not rocket science and you know this kind of method that we use Should be available to everybody it shouldn't be

Mystical and so so really I think Holding on to that information is is as a worse approach because it could be that somebody in this room wants to do something that's much bigger and more daring and more exciting and has a much bigger impact than anything we would do and

So maybe this could just help a little bit Pushing in that direction Hi Mike, hi Andy, um, I was wondering if people are going to go on to this switchboard I think you should advise them to use Tor because it's really handy if you have like an index database of

Who is really creative at creating these kinds of things? So please use Tor please be anonymous if you if you do direct action like this. Thank you Yeah, that's a really good point Tor Sounds great Um

We Yeah, yeah, we're sort of I mean Tor is Tor is great. We're sort of a little too impervious to paranoia maybe We've had a very funny approach to this, you know over the over the years At various times we've implemented

Some kinds of security like we just you know PGP or something like that and then we've abandoned it because Each time we did something complicated it limited the people we could collaborate with and That for us was a bigger problem because the types of risks that we were taking

The types of laws that we might have been breaking we weren't even sure were were laws You know, well, I guess we realized that it was that we we were Reacting a lot of what we were reacting to we couldn't see We knew that whatever we were doing was a paranoid response

Regardless of whether the paranoia had a reason to exist. Yeah, and so we thought okay We thought okay, like let's say the FBI is reading our email Who cares? Well, you know we weren't I mean for us bad for us for action. It doesn't matter as much for action

Yeah, yeah because we were waiting. I mean we're we are hoping that we do get Taken to court or something. I mean, we're not dealing with the Mafia here. I mean, we're not gonna get hit You know because of the things we're doing There are people who will and there are countries where you will or that'll happen to you But for the types of things that we were doing

We realized that we could simply talk about it and hope that somebody was eavesdropping and then see what kind of action they took and eventually We were hoping that we would end up in court It's never happened or in jail But that hasn't happened. No, I've remained at large the degree of incompetence is is really also very comforting like

Driving up to this this Washington event this Homeland Security Congress we actually Had this really just completely surreal experience we have gotten paranoid at various times over the years thinking we've been unmasked or

It's a sting or you know, we're we're gonna walk into this and then they're gonna arrest us this time we were absolutely certain that we had been unmasked because we got a phone call from the conference organizer who had been trying to reach Mike's special cell phone and hadn't been able to and had then taken the measure of calling the PR company that he was pretending to be from

the headquarters and they said who and Then asked for the phone number that she had for him and the next call we got Well, the first call we got was from the conference organizer finally getting through and saying and sounding really suspicious and sounding like

Your phone wasn't working. Where are you? Who are you? and then we got a call from the PR agency saying who are you and who hired you and he just made up a name and they hung up and We were absolutely certain that we were sunk this was over it was done they had exposed us they had

Figured it out, but then slowly over the rest of the day They just we it dawned on us that The PR company hadn't called the conference to tell them that they had figured it out that we were hoaxers So it just went ahead anyways, so you know You can protect yourself or not

They'll they'll kind of do the job of stumbling around and being completely incompetent which you can almost count on One more question. Hi, I wonder what was the worst kind of trouble you got into

with your method of social engineering Yeah, the worst kind of trouble Well, yeah, we got sued But but it wasn't really trouble I mean conventionally the worst trouble was when we were sued by the US Chamber of Commerce these very deep pocketed

lobbyists You know, they spend a half million dollars every day Fighting against the public good and so for them it was actually beneficial to sue us for most Companies that have a brand to protect. It's a risk to sue people like us

And but for these guys They could benefit from it because their constituency are the richest people in the United States and the biggest companies So anyway, we have a video to show Yeah, let's show it. Okay. It's a five-minute video

Back in September. We were working with a bunch of climate change activists to plan an event in Washington DC We wanted to make a political point about an organization That's pulling off some of the world's biggest hoaxes No, not this organization The one across the street the one that looks like a US government office, but really is working against the government

In reality the US Chamber of Commerce is a large corporation that is reported to lie to the public on behalf of even bigger corporations They spend nearly half a million dollars a day trying to convince the US government to do really stupid shit

Like killing environmental regulations and undermining workers rights But since they spend so much money on their hoaxes many people believe them And as it says American free enterprise dream big but their dreams are our nightmares because their plans are to prevent us from

Since the chamber was hoaxing us all and threatening our survival. We decided to fight fire with fire We would reveal one of their biggest lies by masquerading as them

We would hold a press conference as the chamber at the National Press Club But first we sent out a parody press release from them. It was sort of like their normal ones except ours was saying How would the world react to the chamber suddenly reversing its position on climate change

The reversal on climate change from the US Chamber of Commerce. It will reverse its position on the climate change bill and Once a carbon tax if you will the US chambers denying it now. All right, so

maybe not Apparently was a hoax either there is a group or some people or a person. Is there any involvement of the White House Whatsoever I couldn't even begin to go there Larry on that one today the country's largest business lobby

The Chamber of Commerce got punked Began early this morning when a press release went out purportedly from the United States Chamber of Commerce Amazingly the release said that the chamber would now support this legislation that it spent months fighting against Reporters were surprised and probably confused at this odd turn of events But that was nothing compared to what actually happened at the press conference when it was held later on this morning. Watch this tape

Clean coal is is a technology that has not only not been proven. It basically doesn't exist This is not an official US Chamber of Commerce event

So, I don't know what pretenses you're here I know some of you in the press world, but this is a fraudulent press activity and a stunt Who are you really sir?

That's your business card, can I see yours are you here representing the US Chamber of Commerce? Yes, I am. I work there and you do not look familiar to me at all Because I see your business

No, this is not an official Chamber of Commerce, this is not What is your position at the Chamber of Commerce? I just spoke my position What is your what is your title? I'm the assistant to mr. Donahue. Okay. This guy is a fraud. He's lying

This is you know a stunt that I've never seen before So if you'd like to actually talk to the legitimate Chamber of Commerce, I've got my business cards outside this gentleman I will assure you does not have any business cards and he's not legitimate. Show me your business card No show me yours. No show me yours It's so weird though, but you don't look familiar the US Chamber of Commerce says it was victimized victims of a hoax by environmental activists

Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change I hope actually led to that the chamber admitting that there is a challenge for climate change It seems like a good first step. So next up hoaxes about poverty violence education

Today the Chamber of Commerce changed positions not courtesy of the yes, man with In Washington a few weeks ago, but they're now saying Surprisingly to me and I'm glad about it that they want to get legislation and they're now working with the sponsors of the bill

They spent four years suing us and then they withdrew the suit just before we ended up in court with them Which made us very sad Because we really wanted to go to court with the US Chamber of Commerce. It would have been so fun

You know, there's this process where we could have asked them questions And gone through their records to anything that related to the case and they actually have a lot of secrets They want to keep I mean it's us whatever they could find out some really basic really boring stuff but then they actually have some really

diabolical secrets and Unfortunately, they stopped pressing the case So here we are That's the worst trouble we've ever been in Okay Hi, thank you so much guys for doing this. I can imagine sometimes you deal with you know Serious money and they have their own kind of shady secret service type of organizations, you know to intimidate people

Now you're like big you're kind of protected because you're in the landline But has there ever been a point, you know where you have been threatened or were you thinking? Oh shit What have I done, you know, no made some serious enemy that packs a punch that maybe I'm not willing to take

Yeah Well, yeah, I mean it's very embarrassing Stories that we have to tell a couple of them, but one of the other times we got paranoid We had just impersonated the the US president the presidential campaign for Bush was in 2004 and

We were driving around the country in a bush bus Bus that looked just like the Bush campaign bus except it had things like a missile mounted on the roof That said the end is near and we had these costumes like a cowboy that would shoot

You know confetti out of a gas gas Nozzle and a gorilla we had all just all this crazy stuff and we went to we got ourselves invited to one Conference a ridiculous little conference They called themselves the web police the Web police for child safety on the internet was the conference or I don't know

International web police international web police was their name and we went to their conference and made this insane presentation we just thought okay this this time we're just gonna Go all the way And I'll spare you the details, but they they caught on and they

Actually chased us into the parking lot physically some of the other people at the conference not the web police themselves But other people at the conference chased us into the parking lot Threatened us with the FBI. They they were gonna call the FBI which they did And we drove off

Kind of terrified and they were clawing at the air like zombies behind us. I mean it was it was weird They were like trying to trying to grab us and grab ever and you know and hold us back and we had to peel away Yeah, it made us scared because we thought oh what have we done and what will they do? Yeah What will the FBI the secret service? We've never yeah

the Secret Service will be involved because it's the president that we're impersonating and so they We drove to the nearest dumpster and threw away all our props so that there wouldn't be evidence and then we went to Disneyland and the Secret Service the Secret Service actually did Investigate and the Secret Service. I think it was the Secret Service that investigated first put

Contacted the FBI who then? Dissolved the international web police because they were using the word police and they shouldn't have been so, you know You can be paranoid or not Thank you Maybe just a final question

You do all this amazing work like hacking life and conferences as activists and all these actions stand for themselves but you're also filmmakers and you have your third movie about to come out and And do all this video and work and film work to share of course the message that you're spreading with a wider audience How's that like impacted your work over the years?

Do you have the movie in the back of your mind when you're planning these actions? So how does the one kind of feed into the other? Yeah, it's strange the the making the movie kind of becomes a way of life planning and also of therapy So we do often structure another action based on what happened in the last action and how it fits into a narrative

Yeah, like this action was the big stirring happy event at a Homeland Security conference for the end of a movie about climate change and about trouble and about It's actually a very personal story about how You know at a certain point feeling like we're getting older. It's harder to do stuff

We have conflict sometimes and and getting past that through movement through being part of a big movement. That's Nutshell thing, but we thought about that as we were doing things. Yes I usually look forward to seeing the new film and Like to thank you both very much for giving a fantastic opening keynote of media convention and Republica. Thank you

I'd love to encourage everybody to sign up on our mailing list The URL is just yes lab dot org slash join and we we do actually we will be reaching out to you To and if you have any ideas for actions once you sign up

You'll be part of the action switchboard and you can propose them and use it It'll launch in a couple of months and become live. So please sign up. That's one thing I love too It's you know, it's an open concept as far as I understand you invite everybody to go and be the yes, man And do this. So this is a call to action for everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you

What a grand opening