Anonymous- The Story of the Hacktivists (Full Documentary)

To the average citizen they came onto the world scene out of nowhere. Internet hackers, associated with Anonymous, Electronic Disturbance Theater, LulzSec and others, who had such advanced skills that they could control the internet, and bring global corporate giants and governments to their knee's.
 

Often with more than an inventive sense of humor as the front page of the British newspaper, the sun, showed in July of 2011. The hoax story suggested Murdoch had taken [the rare-earth metal] "palladium" before "stumbling into his famous topiary garden late last night".

Or, when LulzSec broke into the website of the US public service broadcaster PBS and published a fake article claiming rapper Tupac Shakur was alive and living in New Zealand.

Most participants in the groups of hackers were socially conscious, human and civil rights activists. They have, combined, changed the world for the better, taking control out of the hands of those who had full control of our lives -  leveling the playing field.

That was global. From the Middle East, to the America's, Europe and Eurasia..

But then the arrests and criminal trials started and we saw such a misuse of our court systems as lengthy pre-trial detentions, convictions and sentences far beyond those given to violent criminals became the norm. Many, like Mercedes Haefer,  and the Paypal 14 made plea deals.

Mercedes Haefer, an undergraduate student at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who was indicted in July 2011 with 13 others for alleged conspiracy to commit DDoS attacks against PayPal's website, spoke out briefly about her case in the panel session entitled "Anonymous and the Online Fight for Justice."

Nearly two years after the charges made headlines, the case remains an anxiety-provoking daily reality for Covelli and his 13 co-defendants. Though they come from disparate worlds -- drawn from different points on the map and stages in their lives -- the defendants collectively share a sense of unsettling uncertainty, their plans and aspirations stuck in a limbo of indeterminate duration as they await a resolution of their case.
Their wait may be nearing a conclusion. This week, the defendants -- known collectively as the "PayPal 14" -- attended a closed-door hearing in federal court in San Francisco in hopes of negotiating a settlement that could keep them out of prison. Lawyers for both sides declined to discuss the negotiations, but a joint court filing called the meeting "productive."

Some of the early antics were socially unacceptable. Annoying perhaps. but as the movement made the transition into justifiable civil & human rights  activism the reaction from certain political persuasions was shocking. The radical right wing quickly branded Anonymous as "terrorists," just as they had Assange, Wikileaks, and eventually Snowden, totally oblivious to the fact that they were benefiting from the very action they condemned. To risk jail time in order to stop corruption is not a "small deal." It is a huge  risk, for a noble cause.

In the Middle East hackers from around the world became the very backbone of the Arab Spring movement.  In the west, corporate strangleholds started to feel the threatening presence of a movement on the move that wasn't going to be stopped - but would stop the nefarious dealings of the corporate world and governmental deceit.

And as each hacker was arrested... 100 more surfaced and was motivated to action.  My personal belief is that we need these groups of hackers, but my prayer is that they will continue to work in the field of social, human and civil rights and not venture to the dark side.

From Texas:

Hello.

We are Anonymous. Never mind what you have heard about us in the media.
Create your own opinion. Find out your own facts. Look in to things, for yourself.
The media would have you believe we are cyber terrorists.
This could not be any more in accurate.
Our actions have brought justice to this world.
From Egypt to Libya. Now, we are here, San Antonio.

Our goal is to make this community, state, and country, as a whole,
a better place free from tyrant and corruption.
The bad news is, our leaders are, not our knight in shining armor.
The good news is that, together, as one, we can be our knights in shining armor.
Together, we can be fearless of our unaccountable leaders.


Along with feeding the homeless and less fortunate,
Anonymous has been keeping a close watch on the investigation regarding
the tasering and beating of Pierre Abernathy.

Anonymous, would like you to join us in peaceful resistance as
we speak out against such acts of cruelty and injustice. Together, as one, we
can make our community a much better, and safer, place.

We are the local collective of San Antonio's Anonymous idea. We are here to share our information collected by our local citizens about issues happening in our community that we all know are wrong. We are here to tell the city of San Antonio that we will not stand for the unjust and corruptions. We are here and we will be heard. We the 99% are tired of the 1% corruption and greed.

We are SAnonymous Street Crew
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect Us San Antonio, Texas.

Anonymous message to SAnonymous Street Crew:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaDGtjj0gew

Henry Porter wrote an article that caught my attention on the 21st of September, 2013.

But more than the article itself, which was a delightfully worthy piece of satire, I was intrigued by the responses.

American gun use is out of control. Shouldn't the world intervene?

The death toll from firearms in the US suggests that the country is gripped by civil war

Last week, Starbucks asked its American customers to please not bring their guns into the coffee shop. This is part of the company's concern about customer safety and follows a ban in the summer on smoking within 25 feet of a coffee shop entrance and an earlier ruling about scalding hot coffee. After the celebrated Liebeck v McDonald's case in 1994, involving a woman who suffered third-degree burns to her thighs, Starbucks complies with the Specialty Coffee Association of America's recommendation that drinks should be served at a maximum temperature of 82C.

Although it was brave of Howard Schultz, the company's chief executive, to go even this far in a country where people are better armed and only slightly less nervy than rebel fighters in Syria, we should note that dealing with the risks of scalding and secondary smoke came well before addressing the problem of people who go armed to buy a latte. There can be no weirder order of priorities on this planet.

That's America, we say, as news of the latest massacre breaks – last week it was the slaughter of 12 people by Aaron Alexis at Washington DC's navy yard – and move on. But what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and, instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis – a quasi civil war, if you like, that calls for outside intervention? As citizens of the world, perhaps we should demand an end to the unimaginable suffering of victims and their families – the maiming and killing of children – just as America does in every new civil conflict around the globe.

The annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000 deaths and climbing, even though the general crime rate is on a downward path (it is 40% lower than in 1980). If this perennial slaughter doesn't qualify for intercession by the UN and all relevant NGOs, it is hard to know what does.

To absorb the scale of the mayhem, it's worth trying to guess the death toll of all the wars in American history since the War of Independence began in 1775, and follow that by estimating the number killed by firearms in the US since the day that Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968 by a .22 Iver-Johnson handgun, wielded by Sirhan Sirhan. The figures from Congressional Research Service, plus recent statistics from icasualties.org, tell us that from the first casualties in the battle of Lexington to recent operations in Afghanistan, the toll is 1,171,177. By contrast, the number killed by firearms, including suicides, since 1968, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, is 1,384,171.

That 212,994 more Americans lost their lives from firearms in the last 45 years than in all wars involving the US is a staggering fact, particularly when you place it in the context of the safety-conscious, "secondary smoke" obsessions that characterise so much of American life.

Everywhere you look in America, people are trying to make life safer. On roads, for example, there has been a huge effort in the past 50 years to enforce speed limits, crack down on drink/drug driving and build safety features into highways, as well as vehicles. The result is a steadily improving record; by 2015, forecasters predict that for first time road deaths will be fewer than those caused by firearms (32,036 to 32,929).

Plainly, there's no equivalent effort in the area of privately owned firearms. Indeed, most politicians do everything they can to make the country less safe. Recently, a Democrat senator from Arkansas named Mark Pryor ran a TV ad against the gun-control campaign funded by NY mayor Michael Bloomberg – one of the few politicians to stand up to the NRA lobby – explaining why he was against enhanced background checks on gun owners yet was committed to "finding real solutions to violence".

About their own safety, Americans often have an unusual ability to hold two utterly opposed ideas in their heads simultaneously. That can only explain the past decade in which the fear of terror has cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars in wars, surveillance and intelligence programmes and homeland security. Ten years after 9/11, homeland security spending doubled to $69bn . The total bill since the attacks is more than $649bn.

One more figure. There have been fewer than 20 terror-related deaths on American soil since 9/11 and about 364,000 deaths caused by privately owned firearms. If any European nation had such a record and persisted in addressing only the first figure, while ignoring the second, you can bet your last pound that the State Department would be warning against travel to that country and no American would set foot in it without body armour.

But no nation sees itself as outsiders do. Half the country is sane and rational while the other half simply doesn't grasp the inconsistencies and historic lunacy of its position, which springs from the second amendment right to keep and bear arms, and is derived from English common law and our 1689 Bill of Rights. We dispensed with these rights long ago, but American gun owners cleave to them with the tenacity that previous generations fought to continue slavery. Astonishingly, when owning a gun is not about ludicrous macho fantasy, it is mostly seen as a matter of personal safety, like the airbag in the new Ford pick-up or avoiding secondary smoke, despite conclusive evidence that people become less safe as gun ownership rises.

Last week, I happened to be in New York for the 9/11 anniversary: it occurs to me now that the city that suffered most dreadfully in the attacks and has the greatest reason for jumpiness is also among the places where you find most sense on the gun issue in America. New Yorkers understand that fear breeds peril and, regardless of tragedies such as Sandy Hook and the DC naval yard, the NRA, the gun manufacturers, conservative-inclined politicians and parts of the media will continue to advocate a right, which, at base, is as archaic as a witch trial.

Talking to American friends, I always sense a kind of despair that the gun lobby is too powerful to challenge and that nothing will ever change. The same resignation was evident in President Obama's rather lifeless reaction to the Washington shooting last week.

There is absolutely nothing he can do, which underscores the fact that America is in a jam and that international pressure may be one way of reducing the slaughter over the next generation. This has reached the point where it has ceased to be a domestic issue. The world cannot stand idly by.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/21/american-gun-out-control-porter

Remember the United States government has presently been hijacked by a group of renegade politicians the NRA has in it's hip pocket. The radical right wing who firmly believe that gun ownership is a God given right, but not healthcare. Everyone must pay or pray for health.

But the article caused such an international furor that readers posted almost 3,500 comments in the short period of time The Guardian permitted comments to be made. Of course, the radical right wing were livid and took it as a sure sign that the UN was going to invade the United States and make everyone hand over their personal arsenal. 

Watching the reaction to a satirical piece of journalism was akin to watching ants when you step on an ant hill. Mass chaos.

 I am neither pro or anti gun control legislation. I am a Bible believing, born again Christian conservative who happily sits on the fence  bemused at the reactions that I see from those who are armed to the back teeth. 

So I started asking people why they felt a need to collect weaponry like it's going out of style. I expected "personal defense in the case of home intrusions" to be the primary reason.

To my amazement the majority of people I spoke to immediately turned to the 2nd Amendment, specifically citing "armed resistance against the government"

I countered that argument. "But the government have drones and bombs, tanks and armored vehicles. Even the most sophisticated weapons available on the market are not protection from the military hardware."

That reality made not a dent in the delussional logic I was listening to.

Pierce Morgan - another Englishman - made a national brew-ha when he made a comment about gun control, and this is a fairly recent conversation between Pierce Morgan and Breitbart.com editor, Ben Shapiro:

SHAPIRO: I told you, why the general population of America, law abiding citizens, need AR-15s.

MORGAN: Why do they need those weapons?

SHAPIRO: They need them for the prospective possibility for the resistance of tyranny. Which is not a concern today, it may not be a concern tomorrow.

MORGAN: Where do you expect tyranny to come from?

SHAPIRO: It could come from the United States, because governments have gone tyrannical before, Piers.

MORGAN: So the reason we cannot remove assault weapons is because of the threat of your own government turning on you in a tyrannical way.

SHAPIRO: Yes.

  
The lack of rationality and logic knows no bounds.
 

I don't think I will be buying a gun in the near future, but I am sure this post is going to get me 30 lashes...