Anonymous 101 Part Deux: Morals Triumph Over Lulz. (Editor’s Note: Any decent coverage of Anonymous is going to verge on some NSFW material at points.
There will be questionable language and strange imagery.) Part Two of a Three-Part Series Examining the History of Anonymous. Part One. [bug id="anonymous-2011"]In the beginning, there were lulz, pranks and a culture of trolling just to get a rise out of anyone. But despite many original Anons best efforts, Anonymous has grown up to become the net’s immune system, striking back whenever the hive mind perceived that the institutions that run the world crossed the line into hypocrisy. The fall and winter of 2010 started a pattern that persists; when the use of power gets suspect, people join Anonymous. The voice of the hive mind, though still computer-generated, had changed its tone. Pages: 1 2345View All. Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz. (Editor’s Note: Any decent coverage of Anonymous is going to verge on some NSFW material at points.
There will be questionable language and strange imagery.) Last week the net and the media were ablaze with the news that Anonymous might be taking on the Zeta drug cartel in Mexico, a story that has morphed into a wider drug corruption story, and led to one American law enforcement official in North Carolina being named as a gang conspirator. Also this year, Anons released documents on, or d0xed, several police organizations and one prominent police vendor in retaliation for heavy-handed law enforcement reaction to occupations associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement. They’ve fought with child pornographers, hacked Sony repeatedly, and even tried to release compromising pictures to blackmail Bay Area Rapid Transit spokesman Linton Johnson into resigning. But what is Anonymous? NYU Professor and Anonymous researcher Biella Coleman compares Anonymous to the trickster god archetype.
Law professor Lawrence Lessig. Tavis: Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Harvard and director of the school’s Edmond Safra Center for Ethics.
His new text is called “Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It.” Professor Lessig, good to have you on this program. Lawrence Lessig: Great to be here, sir. Tavis: To suggest that the Congress is corrupted is one thing and I don’t think most Americans would argue you on that, but to suggest that the republic is lost, those are two very different things, yes? Lessig: That’s right. Tavis: Why suggest the republic is lost? Lessig: Well, because we have to understand first what they meant by a republic. What we’ve allowed to happen is we’ve allowed Congress to develop a different dependency. Tavis: There are two over-arching issues that you really focus in on that underscore the point you’re making in the text.
The best example of this, I think, is Wall Street. Lessig: It is, and let’s just be clear, though, about what I mean by corruption first. Iraq, Iran and the Nuclear Phantasm: We've Seen this Picture. Nuclear issues are so complicated that the public is easily misled and frightened by nuclear demagoguery.
That is why the new International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear program will be hyped endlessly. Iran is a theocracy in which the Supreme Leader has said that nuclear weapons are forbidden in Islamic law. In the medieval Muslim law of war, killing innocent non-combatants is forbidden. The same people who jump up and down about Iran being “medieval” in this regard suddenly dismiss Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s injunctions against nuclear warheads as irrelevant when the latter subject comes up. But if he gave such a fatwa and at the same time undermined it, he would risk a fatal blow to his authority and legitimacy. The way you tell if a country like Iran is actively working on a nuclear bomb is that it diverts uranium to weapons purposes. It is likely that Iran wants “nuclear latency,” or the “Japan option.” But the propaganda will say otherwise.