All hijinks... ever
These are projects carried out over the years by Yes Men and their activist partners. For the full, gory stories behind them, take a peek behind the curtain.
A Total Terrorism Solution For Europe
In the European Parliament in Brussels, a "defense and security consultant" presented the ENDURAsphere, an "industrial solution to terrorism" which—unlike all other military and security solutions—is guaranteed to actually work. Read all about it, …
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Ft. Detrick Ghosts
Frederick, Maryland has one of the highest cancer rates in the country, thanks to the chemical and biological weapons produced and destroyed in and around Ft. Detrick. Thousands of people who've drunk Frederick's contaminated groundwater have died…
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Snowden Pardoned
When Edward Snowden made his first in-person public appearance on U.S. soil since receiving a Presidential pardon, a bi-partisan crowd went wild. Sadly it wasn't true. Read all about it or watch the video.
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Skip Showers for Beef
As California's drought worsens, attempts at curbing personal water use have gotten more and more drastic. Even the state's legendary agricultural industry has been the target of concern over its large water requirements. Enter Skip Showers for Beef…
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Shell's Last Iceberg Snow Cones
Royal Dutch Shell has spent billions on its plans to drill for oil in the Arctic. Despite setbacks, in the spring and summer of 2015, they were ramping up operations to go drill in areas made newly accessible by climate change. To counter the…
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Hoax Dog Video Highlights Government's Treatment Of Firefighters
A YouTube video depicting older firefighters accidentally blowing a dog into a raging fire, which has spread globally via social media, was part of an elaborate hoax intended to oppose dangerous pension reforms for firefighters. The reforms, which…
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Calling All Climate Activists
Before the UN Climate Talks in Lima, the New York Times told us that “at stake now is the difference between a newly unpleasant world and an uninhabitable one.” But in Lima, the world's governments chose the latter, offering the world not solutions…
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Reed Divests
Graduating Reed College students and their parents gave a standing ovation to an announcement by their commencement speaker that the college had decided to divest from fossil fuels. But the President and Chair of the Board of Trustees, who were…
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Operation Second Thanks
To a dance-ready crowd of security and defense contractors at the Homeland Security Congress in Washington, one "Benedict Waterman"—a crazy-haired, bespectacled official supposedly from the U.S. Department of Energy—announces a revolutionary new…
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Black Pete is beloved, totally racist
In the form of entertaining caricature, black face has been used throughout the Western world to justify slavery, to emphasize white superiority, and to reinforce racial segregation. It has taken many different appearances over the last few hundred…
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SaveCanada
Update Nov. 18, 2014: TransCanada freaks out, plays dirty
In towns across Canada, troupes of mischievous activists, dressed as TransCanada reps (with "SaveCanada" logos instead), successfully derailed the attempts of TransCanada (the company…
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The Gazprom/Shell Polar Partnership
In 2012, Royal Dutch Shell failed to drill a single hole in the Arctic off the coast of Alaska thanks to a series of dangerous blunders and mismanagement that led to the U.S. government calling the company "screwed up." This year, they trained their…
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Monsanto and the Carnival of Corn
See also: "Monsanto attempts to silence criticisms of its transgenic seeds business" (in Spanish)
On August 14, 2013, the St. Louis based biotech corporation, Monsanto Company, released an announcement saying the Mexican government had finally,…
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Deport the Statue
Every year, hundreds of thousands of undocumented people face deportation. Under the Obama administration, the number of deportations has hit record highs. In 2012 alone, the United States deported 409,849 people.
In June of 2013, a video, released…
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DREAMers Keep On Dreaming
The college application process is a grueling rite of passage for many high-schoolers, but for students without papers (called DREAMers), it can be an insurmountable wall. Despite having grown up in the U.S. - often after being brought here…
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Bank’s Dodgy Climate Portfolio Revealed
The mandate of the European Investment Bank (EIB) is to further EU sustainable development objectives, including Europe’s 2050 Energy Roadmap, which calls for quickly cutting carbon emissions. On their website, the EIB claims to be "among the…
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The Dalai Lama Welcoming Committee
On October 12, 2012, Middlebury College welcomed His Holiness the Dalai Lama to campus. An announcement was made that in honor of the visit from the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, the College had chosen to demonstrate ethical leadership in…
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Murder Is Bad
In the 1990's when Nigerians began to nonviolently protest Shell’s oil development, Shell collaborated with the Nigerian military regime to violently suppress opposition. More than 60 villages were raided, over 800 people were killed, and 30,000…
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Fake websites
Because a so-called fake website started the Yes Men, we've made dozens more over the years. These websites represent our opponents more transparently than they ever present themselves—making these true websites, not fake! Also, whereas sinister people use trickery to get outcomes, we reveal hoaxes to mobilize.
Videos
These are a few standalone short pieces we or our partners have made. For videos that reveal actions, are used within actions, or come out of actions, see our hijinks videos page.
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Behind the curtain
These are the secret stories of actions that Yes Men have been a part of—in all their complexity, and not as a movie or press release represented them. Be sure to check out the lessons we learned from these and other adventures; some might even be useful!
Photos
These are photos from various actions, usually in high-res.
