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Anonymous Goes After GodHatesFags.com
An anonymous reader writes "Anonymous is now recognised as a serious force to be taken seriously, but its activities aren't confined to mass global protests, as the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, is discovering, according to p2pnet. Says the Examiner, 'Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church is infamous for their "Love Crusades," obnoxious displays of insensitivity and homophobia at the funerals of fallen American soldiers. The controversial if monotone message of the "Love Crusade" seems to be to blame everything that is wrong in the world on homosexuality. The crusades are part of a hate-based mission started in Kansas by the WBC and Fred Phelps.' In an open letter on AnonNews, 'We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS – the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People – have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism,' says Anonymous, stating 'Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS.'"
These tactics sound like hate meets hate.
Wouldn't praying for them in a spirit of love work better?
It would either make Phelps & Co. see The Light or at the very least it would annoy the Hell out of them.
Either way society wins.
Is there anything ironic about the self-appointed "voice of free speech" trying to bully an admittedly annoying and vocal cult into silence?
The average mental age on the Internet is at least 13 and the 85th percentile is at least 15.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The Westboro Baptist Church fills an odd role where they're so extreme and, possibly more problematically, rude, that they have very little support. Will damaging them in some way actually change anything? Even people way on the right already dissociate themselves from them, and they have basically no actual influence on anything.
It's sort of the same with Actual Nazis imo. I'm worried about a certain kind of intolerant right-wing strain in the U.S., but I think Westboro types and swastika-flag-waving types are mostly distractions and not where the real problems lie; the right-wingers who aren't actively shooting themselves in the foot like those two groups do are bigger problems.
It'd go the other way too. Say you were a conservative worried about leftism in the U.S. You could attack the Communist Party USA, but would that be a good use of your time? They're a sideshow.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
WestBoro Baptist Church is just a media whore stirring up trouble to provoke a reaction. Whoever claims to speak for anonymous is the same. "anonymous" is just a group of people, in the loosest sense of the term, with no leadership or agenda. You can not declare a warning from something you have no control over. As the wikileaks DDOS attacks have shown us, most of them barely even qualify as script kiddies, and are ridiculously easy to catch. There are some that know enough to do SQL injection attacks, or brute force passwords (or use the built in password reset) but super hackers they are not. The mainstream media is laughable in how clueless they are about it. They can't seem to understand that the internet makes it possible to have a group with common goals who is coordinated through group-think instead of a firm leadership. There is no monolithic entity, no membership, no initiation ritual or brotherhood. It's a loose group whose actions are dictated by a herd mentality.
WE ARE ANONYMOUS, VOICE OF FREE SPEECH. OBEY US OR BE SILENCED.
Only twats as self-important as they obviously are could write this sort of thing and not even realize what they're saying. Or perhaps they do realize and just think that they're so great that their hypocrisy doesn't matter. I believe we've seen this sort of thing in history before. It starts with a religion and ends with lots of dead people. But hey, maybe this time it will be awesome.
Exactly. It seems that the WIkileaks coverage has inflated someone's head to grotesque proportions. Anonymous isn't an "advocate of the people" or "the voice of free speech". Quite the contrary. Anonymous has fucked around with largely random people for years and is a poster boy for the abuse of free speech, quite possibly engaging in activities that will make politicians call for further limitations to free speech. Anonymous is...well, Anonymous. They're a huge group of people who spend too much time on the internet and have engaged in a wide variety of activities, from protesting Scientology to DDoSing Wikileaks to a multitude of lower-profile activities, like screwing people over the internet as hard as possible just for the lulz. And "super-consciousness"? Gimme a fucking break.
The Phelps Gang tests the extreme end of free speech. I despise them with all my being, but if it came to push and shove and I had to either choose whether Phelps and his gang of vile hatemongers or Anonymous lived or died, I'm afraid I'd stand on the side of Phelps. Anonymous is attacking Phelps' right to freely express his views, no matter how noxious. Anonymous is wrong on this one, and should be ashamed of themselves, if they weren't, of course, a bunch of halfwitted scriptkiddies with as much of a hard-on for getting attention from the press as Phelps and Co.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
When two groups of retards attack each other, everyone wins...
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Worse, I doubt anonymous cares about Fred Phelps. heh
Anonymous must fundamentally be about the lolz. You're welcome to credit anonymous if you get even bigger lolz by inciting Fred Phelps. Yet, I'm not sure that's possible, meaning any normal reaction will already involve lolz. Don't let me stop you from trying! Just please make sure your shit is actually funny before you take on the anonymous label.
If otoh you're just looking for some good ol' internet vigilantly action, may I humbly suggest Muskegon MI Prosecutor Tony Tague. Our dear public servant Tony has clearly got a full plate what with a serial killer on the loose in his town. Yet, he find ample time to prosecute a youtube comedian for tasteless editing. Yes, that right, he's sending some poor kid with a guitar up the creek for 20 years over bad taste in editing.
I'd never call harassing Tony Tague, or the parents that put him up to it, an Anonymous action, well no epic here, maybe if the kid was a funner singer, but meh. I'm confident however that many people feel rather annoyed by grandstanding prosecutors and retarded paranoid parents. And clearly this prosecution goes beyond the pale. So here's your chance to vent some frustration and take a stand against stupidity. Just call Tony Tague's office tell his secretary what an ass hat he is for abusing due process like this.
I'm sure they'll be posting the complaining parent's telephone numbers all over /b/ too, but honestly I doubt America's breeders will gain any collective intelligence just because some get bitch slapped by /b/, something awful, etc.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You used the critical word: rude. Their message is ugly but protected as free speech. It is the deliberate bad manners exhibited by Westboro that is unforgiveable!
For the life of me I cannot comprehend why people do this sort of thing.
The solution when your chosen religion conflicts with your lifestyle and biology is not to try and reinterpret and redefine that religion's beliefs to align with yours, it's to stop believing in that religion and choose another (or none at all).
The motivations of women who wish to be ordained as priests are similarly mystifying.
So shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, screaming death threats, and publishing blatantly libelous material as though it were fact is protected as free speech? That's news to me.
The WBC are definitely not loons. They're barrators with a money stream that looks like this:
1. Select a sign guaranteed to offend people in a 100% legal fashion, and chant carefully worded slogans trolling for a reaction.
2. Receive reaction in the form of ??? (a punch in the nose, or a city council bannination, either works)
3. File lawsuits and profit !!!
What anonymous seems to be failing to understand is that they're just a bunch of amateurs, while the WBC are *professional trolls*. They make their living by trolling. They will not be stopped by other trolls, as they are simply too disciplined to fall for a troll. It's like trying to con a con-artist.
Some of the other God Hates $(foo) groups may be loonies who believe the hateful crap they're defecating on the world, but do not count the WBC in that group. There is actually little chance the WBC believes their own crap. They just substitute the value for $(foo) that looks like it will offend the local crowds the most.
John
If that's what you believe, then you have already stopped being a Christian, you simply don't want to give up the label.