Yes Men pull Halliburton hoax
By Jen Haberkorn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 12, 2006
http://washingtontimes.com/business/20060511-110534-5777r.htmhttp://halliburtoncontracts.com/about/history.htmlHalliburton Co. fell victim this week to a group of pranksters pushing a "SurvivaBall" to save corporate executives from the effects of global warming.
Members of the Yes Men, a group of environmental and corporate ethics activists, gave a presentation at a trade conference pretending to be Halliburton executives touting large inflatable suits that provide corporate managers safety from global warming. They also distributed a phony press release through e-mail and set up a Web site, halliburtoncontracts.com, similar to the real Halliburton site, halliburton.com.
"It's basically a giant inflatable orb," said a Yes Man posing as "Fred Wolf of Halliburton" during a phone interview yesterday. "If catastrophe threatens a large population, the business manager simply enters the orb, puts it on, and it protects him or her in any climate condition, whether it involved tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, ice conditions or heat conditions."
The Yes Men posted photos of the products, which look like large plastic bubbles with six hands, two speakerphone-looking ears and an opening for the executive's face. The group, which has pulled similar stunts on Dow Chemical Co. and the World Trade Organization, says it presented the phony global-warming-protection suits -- priced at $100 million each, nonetheless -- to show that corporations are more concerned about profits than taking expensive steps to reduce carbon emissions to reduce global warming.