Anonymous activists to hit the streets Protestors associated with the online activism group Anonymous will hit the streets of London twice this week, in criticism of Scientology and in support of Julian Assange. Buoyed by its current high profile, a result of interest in its recent DDoS attacks on Visa, Mastercard and Amazon, the group has issued a call for global …
«almost everywhere on Earth, but it reveals the thinking - or faith - behind Anonymous.» Is this to be taken to mean that Mr Williams thinks - like the Google leadership - that government (not to mention corporate) control over the internet should be subject to protest only when it takes place in, say, China ? That here in Europe and in North America, «we» should be grateful for our respective governments' efforts to protect us from those who would undermine diplomatic secrecy and, not least, monopolistic/oligopolistic profits ?....
Henri
"Is this to be taken to mean that Mr Williams thinks - like the Google leadership - that government (not to mention corporate) control over the internet should be subject to protest only when it takes place in, say, China ? That here in Europe and in North America, «we» should be grateful for our respective governments' efforts to protect us from those who would undermine diplomatic secrecy and, not least, monopolistic/oligopolistic profits ?"
No. It should be taken as a statement of reality. Governments and corporations can to varying degrees re-engineer, disrupt, filter, and intercept the internet.
The people can't. They can temporarily inconvenience the webmasters at Visa.
Wrong. The initial thingie that we now call "the Internet" was built by grad students & professors, with zero government oversight. ARPA[1] financed it, but they didn't do any of the actual work, nor did they look over our shoulders as we got on with it.
AT&T helped, by granting us license to use UNIX[tm], but I can assure you that Google, MS et ali had zero impact on what we have today. Virtually very site that you are likely to visit today is a Johnnie come lately in the great scheme of things.
[1] DARPA came later ...
tend to feel more aggrieved by groups claiming to speak for "the people" when only given a general republican mandate. Mobs and riots are the closest thing we get to a democracy in this world.
Too terse? Groups, such as politicians, do the same thing when only elected because their opponents were even more useless and unreasonable than themselves. Very few are actually elected because a majority of people believe they will do a good job. Look at the actual percentage of the populace that votes if you want some hard evidence. And once a group is in the majority, they immediately believe that they've been given free reign to do whatever they want to regardless of any other opinions around. Note, there is a substantial difference between a republic (of which there are many) and a democracy (of which there are none.) Mobs represent democracy directly by showing up with each person standing for himself and noone else. Obviously then, such a mob can only speak directly for themselves. But whether they speak for the majority of the people can reasonably be determined by a simple count and comparison to the overall size of the relevant community.
than their ability to go out in the streets and smash people's faces in. Well, hopefully only smash people's faces in. The last loon who got loose over here in The States opted for different tactics. Or maybe you missed all the calls for civility in the media these last few days.
And don't give me any shit about how they'd never do that sort of thing. I've been there when they've targeted people who weren't corporate stoolies or government stooges and people got hurt. Specifically a woman got her face smashed with a boom box.
If the Anonymous group called street protest flops then the Governments in europe will have a field day. With europe fixed for a cold, wet, and windy few weeks i can tell you, most, including me won't be there.
If on the otherhand Wikileaks was to call the planned protest i would be the first to turn up
Whilst I do have sympathetic tendancies towards anonymous, stating something so blitheringly untrue as 'the people own the internet' just makes them look a bit silly.
I mean, there wouldn't BE an internet without people, sure, but to think that the piddly little fees we pay per month for access and storage etc. is peanut, PEANUTS I say to what it cost to actually build the internet.
It makes me wonder if they actually know what it is.
Perhaps they are suggesting that it is the IDEA of the internet that belongs to the people, now THAT I can argue a case for.
CAPS used for emphasis, not shouty shouty.
(Reptilian graphic chosen in honour of crackpot David Icke. Conspiracy theorism follows.)
The number of comments on the Information Supersidewalk suggesting Assange's role as a CIA lackey (though not necessarily an operative) I have happened across recently while 'window shopping' have been interesting notions supported with various logical observations. I am in agreement with the idea that the '9-11 truth movement' is the ultimate litmus test in determining who is for or against publication of truth; Assange is happy with the explanation by the U.S. government of 9-11, from all accounts noted.
It causes me to consider, on one hand, that Anonymous is a group consciousness unconscious of continued government-based spoonfeeding of 'secret' operations that are only used to direct the global consciousness to general positions within the playing field.
With the amount of information released by Wikileaks that are (allegedly) detrimental to geopolitical efforts, how can Assange walk around freely without fearing that his life is in jeopardy from the same parties capable of silencing anyone they so choose? He can't. Yet he still does.
On another hand (I have more hidden under the poker table), what are the chances that Anonymous itself has associations to geogovernmental efforts at controlling the group geoconsciousness?
The fudgey cake of truth is out there, topped with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. Mmmmmm... sprinkles.
Once again, undoubtedly, Plod is busy readying cameras, shields and Tasers whilst dirtying or loosening their ID tags, in preparation for yet another go at suppressing members of the public who wish to exercise their charter right to freely express their opinions.
The rhetoric against funding cuts will rise as Plod tries to maintain the status quo.
There will be about a dozen protesters in Guy Fawkes masks, 20 - 30 hangers on that are playing the "We can just walk off if anything gets scary" angle, 2 police vans and about 20 police on foot.
Oh, and 30 - 50 assorted photographers, TV crew and 'journalists' stirring shit up as much as they possibly can and covering the most tedious, mundane events as though they're world changing. eg. A protestor gets bumped into and spills his latte = half a dozen cameras in his face and 30 to 40 minutes of air time.
How do you discern their lack of intent to lynch? Would they even know if they lacked that intent themselves?
Some of the chat which appears to be associated with the amorphous collection which seems to go under the general heading of "anonymous" is pretty violent. Can't be more evidentiary than that because of the inevitable "anonymous" nature of the group.
Now that may be completely unfair to a lot of people who would count themselves as associated with anonymous but one of the key characteristics of a lynch mob is that it takes a very small core of determined people to pull it towards behaving in a way which the vast majority of the group would not contemplate as individuals.
Their attacks on the women accusing assange of rape and their lawyer show a complete disregard for anyone who is inconvenient to their outlook. They are reactive in the extreme to anything which they perceive as a threat to that outlook and their typical response to rational challenge is to turn the rhetoric up a notch and get angrier. There is nothing new on the web - this kind of self-reinforcing, deliberately ignorant clique is exactly how you would describe a mob in any age.
And the transition from mob to lynch mob is very little to do with rational intent.
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