Today, CNN invited Rastani back into the studio, offering him the chance to explain himself more clearly. According to Jim Boulden, he was “very reluctant” this time around but also very honest. In a more measured and defensive tone, he explained that the BBC spot was not meant as a publicity stunt, and intriguingly, that he doesn’t care if people think he is a part of the Yes Men.

For the most part, Rastani maintained his message that there is money — lots of it — to be made during recessions. ”Yes, a recession can be horrible, it is, it’s a tough time,” he qualified before explaining that, “As a human being you don’t want it. As a trader you think differently. You’re going to have one of the most volatile and possible trending conditions to make money in that market.” This is something that he knows not through dark magic — “I don’t have a crystal ball that I look into” — but because that is what the charts and numbers and facts tell him. Anyone, he argues, can make money off the tough times; and everyone, perhaps, should “go to bed dreaming of recession.”

Boulden wondered if Rastani’s shocking showing then was a pitch, perhaps for a forthcoming book or for the financial trainings he offers on his site. He objected morally to the assumption that his appearance was a money making stunt, and assuring that, “I believe there is a god, and I could not possibly sit in front of you, and a television station, and say anything that I don’t believe. My conscious wouldn’t allow it.”

“The question is, why are they paying attention to this? In my opinion somebody out there doesn’t want my voice to be heard and they want to attack me and damage me,” he argued, suggesting that the “Big Boys” desperate to keep people like him quiet are the ones with whom the media should be most concerned.

Sounds entirely honest, and also sort of like the Yes Men’s manifesto, in full flesh. Asked one more time, as to whether or not he is working in coalition with the group? “Let people believe what they want to,” he said. “If people want to believe that I’m part of Yes Men then let them believe it.”

Now back to those “Big Boys” you speak of…

Yes Man? Not a Yes Man? Does it matter? Watch the full interview with Rastani, courtesy of CNN, below and decide for yourself:

The Yes Men‘s provocative anticonsumerist pranks tend to be hit-or-miss, with some of their more outlandish stunts not quite clicking because no one could possibly believe them in the first place.

If fooling people is their measure of success, it looks like their latest looks like it’s hit the bullseye: Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNBC all took a Yes Men press release that claimed to come from the Chamber of Commerce at face value.

The Yes Men claimed to be reversing the Chamber’s stance on climate change issues. From the release:

WASHINGTON, D.C.-The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is throwing its weight behind strong climate legislation, a spokesman for Chamber President Tom J. Donahue announced today at the National Press Club.

“We believe that strong climate legislation is the best way to ensure American innovation, create jobs, and make sure the U.S. and the world are on track to reduce global carbon emissions, and to provide for the needs of the American business community for generations to come,” said the spokesman, Hingo Sembra.

Shockingly, Reuters picked this up in a wire story, which the New York Times and Washington Post republished. And CNBC ran a whole segment on the Chamber’s ‘about-face.’

Their in-the-flesh press conference in DC wasn’t as successful: Mother Jones reports that real Chamber of Commerce spokesmen showed up and shouted, “this is a fraudulent press conference!”

According to TPMMuckraker, the (real) Chamber of Commerce wants a criminal probe on the Yes Men impersonation stunt. But for a group that thrives on publicity, any sort of publicity, this could be exactly what they want.

Here’s CNBC’s segment on the Chamber of Commerce’s stunning ‘about-face’ (h/t Mother Jones):

And here’s a video of the fake press conference, courtesy of our friend Anthony De Rosa‘s post over at Gawker:

SLIDESHOW: Fake New York Post

While last November’s fake Times announced the end of the Iraq war, today’s fake Post is all about the environment. Nothing like printing papers to save trees! The fake Post reports, (real Post-style!) on secret environmental reports predicting “massive climate catastrophes, public health disasters.” Considering the recent resurgence of swine flu probably more than pre-coffee reader was taken in by the front page alone.

Courtesy of some loyal Mediaite readers we have a slideshow of some of the contents — the Page Six page featuring Brad Pitt and Pamela Anderson is actually fairly well done, though the Flopenhagen hed “Will Things Go Rotten in the State of Denmark” is a personal fave. Those Yes Men have been studying their Post! See the slideshow here.

The Yes Men have been stirring up trouble since the early 2000s with pranks like handing out fake New York Times and impersonating HUD officials post-Katrina. They had a film made about them in 2003 focusing on their exploits that did well on the film festival circuit, and during the Bush Administration their anticorporate stunts were a beacon of hope to many on the political left who felt disenfranchised.

Their latest is a funny concept, and I LOLed at some of the fake demo videos. But how does it stack up to Yes Men stunts of old? One key difference: Their old pranks always tried to be plausible.

Survivaball is satirical, but it’s the kind of satire you expect in cartoon shows, where evil corporations have names like “Conglom-O” and always have menacing smokestacks in the background. It gives itself away from the start. Who is going to see those balls floating down the East River and think, “gee, I can’t believe Deutsche Bank is sponsoring this?” In the Yes Men’s older, sharper pranks,  the goal was always to make people believe that whatever they were doing was for real, even if the pileup of absurdity ultimately gave it away.

Plus, there’s the matter of the Gawker leak, which could be an honest-to-goodness leak, but feels like a publicity drum-up with the big response to Gawker’s big piece on the fake NYT in mind. Taken together, it feels like a viral stunt geared towards the Internet rather than to any onlookers. Maybe that’s the best way to reach an audience in this day and age, but the Yes Men lose something when they wink at the audience and give up on punking real people.

Maybe it’s a function of the times: on their website FAQ, which doesn’t seem to have been updated in a while, they say that “If Kerry had won, we who care about people might have had some hope of affecting his approach, perhaps second- or third-hand, via those who have his ear. With Bush, we have to focus on the preliminary step of getting this plague out of office.” Under Obama, their spoofs don’t quite have the same righteous anger behind them.

Still, this Bryce 3-D-looking ‘demo’ of Survivaballs turning cows into skeletons is pretty great.