10/18/2001 Entry: "Just Say Yes"

Just Say Yes
I got the latest issue of Harpers Magazine and was kind of shocked at a transcript that I read of a speech given at a WTO conference that suggested that globalization is more economically efficient than pre-Civil War slavery, and that the U.S. Civil War was a waste of time because eventually slavery would have been replaced by overseas labor, which is cheaper. I should have read the intro to the piece, because it turns out the speech, which was widely praised by conference attendees, was a prank pulled by "Hank Hardy Unruh" of The Yes Men, a group that runs a WTO parody site and were accidentally invited to speak by unsuspecting/idiotic conference organizers. Here is the Yes Men's take on how things went. (Links via Boing Boing.