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Anonymous Organizes Global Protests For WikiLeaks
pafein writes "Internet collective Anonymous launched a global protest for January 15 in support of beleaguered WikiLeaks. Anonymous has a history of defending Internet freedom, beginning with Project Chanology against the Church of Scientology. The group gained recent attention for itself with DDOS attacks on Mastercard, Visa, Paypal and the government of Tunisia."
I'm a coward.
I think it's a sad comment on modern reality that my response to anything counter-culture or pro-liberty and freedom for the past 30+ years would have been a fist in the air and a "fuck yeah!" and, today, my gut response is "some people are going to be disappeared" and "better to keep my mouth shut and not even give vocal support or encouragement to anything which might seen to dissent from my government, because I can't afford the hassle of being eyeballed or investigated or put on a list somewhere". Not just for this, but things with even more credibility.
Hell, it's almost to the point where it feels like calling yourself a "libertarian" or - worse - being a registered libertarian, is potentially as risky as calling yourself a communist or socialist in the 1950s.
I thought they had a history of DDoSing anyone they disagree with.
It started back in Team Fortress Classic
Why single out 4chan? At least they're doing something. More, I always get a kick out of how we say things like "Americans are too fat and lazy and content with their sports teams and iced coffees to bother ever standing up to their government or taking real action beyond singing songs while standing in a circle with rhyming picket signs", but the truth is that if you or I voiced any dissent against our government or even took some sort of action and were given the hell of a boot, we'd be bawling like little bitches, too.
We're all willing to kick Hitler's ass or storm Washington DC with torches and sidearms in our heads, but the moment there's any risk -- even just the risk of losing our internet access or having a hassle at the airport security line -- we're all bitches. We're not really in a situation where we can afford to be anything else, I guess. No matter how justified we are in our principals and should do something, most of us really do have something to lose. It's not like we're mining "blood diamonds" and have nowhere to go but up.
That said, Anonymous has done some things I thoroughly support (Scientology related, in particular) and some things that make me grin, even though I know it probably isn't helping things, over all. Some of their recent actions seem to have definitely risked the real cause, on which their actions sometimes reflect.
Anyway, if there is any time in your life where you can afford to be a snotty, spoiled, idealistic person rebelling against stuff, it's when you're a snotty little teen (and if you think these guys are even mostly teens, I think you're wrong). As soon as you're of age to be truly held accountable or persecuted and you have responsibilities and things to lose (your physical freedom, access to your cash, your home, your family, your job, your reputation, etc) -- you start falling into line. Idealism is a young man's game. As is just being an ass (though I, personally, have far exceeded the average years in which most people pursue that one!).
How many of us throw that quote around along with "Give me liberty or give me death!" and really mean it? And if we haven't acted on your principals against the actions of our own government by now, exactly what is it going to take for us to ever do something? I mean, for fuck's sake, we slept through the suspension of Habeas corpus and endured several years of corporate welfare to provide economic speculators a safety-net that we've never before offered. We've tolerated questionable wars in our name, with shifting justifications given. One could generate a nearly endless list of significant concerns just from the past decade and while we still throw around quotes, we do nothing (I'm lumping myself in here as well, of course).
I think my point flew over your head.
People say things about how if they had been alive when the Nazi party was taking over Germany, they "would have done something". In reality, if you or I or anyone else who talk big about how much we'd stand up to oppression and violation of liberties and just plain "wrongness" would do no such thing if we stepped back in time.
If we were on the street and saw some brown shirts hauling a jewish family out of their home, making them get on their knees, and putting a gun to their head, you know what we'd do? We'd shut our fucking mouths and look the other way, because we don't want to be next.
My point with that given example was that we do an awful lot of talking about how we should stand up to injustice and fight on principal to retain those ideals that we've lived on for a couple hundred years (and of which many are now considered general "human rights" by the UN, even) . . . but none of us would ever be willing to take the risk of doing anything about it. Except maybe putting a bumper sticker on our cars, a little button on our websites, and if we're really "rebels", going out and standing outside a building with signs . . . on sticks!
Go fight Hitler? Did you miss History, or were you misinformed? The Americans basically sat back saying "meh. Not our business." for two years.
As they should have. Why should they have declared war on Axis powers until they were attacked? For "freedom and democracy"? Isn't that neo-con thinking? It never ceases to amaze me that many of the same people that criticize neocons for their doctrine of forcibly spreading democracy across the world also criticize the US for not jumping right into WWII in 1939.
We tried that, actually, just a couple of decades before. Woodrow Wilson committed this country to war with Germany in 1917. He was looking for a reason to get us in it, and finally got it when the Germans sank the Lusitania (which, yes Virginia, was carrying arms and ammo bound for the British, a violation of our neutrality policy). People were so disillusioned about "saving the world for democracy" precisely because we saw we were snookered in WWI.
So, have we got that straight? Bush was wrong for war with Saddam, but no no no, Wilson didn't send US troops to fight in what was basically a European pissing match over empires. It was making the world safe for democracy.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel