Defender of
Buckingham Palace!
It seems
that The Queen’s Guard—the one that gets changed every day, you remember—is
completely slipping up. Because take a look at the picture below!
Yup—it’s a
firework exploding against Buckingham Palace.
OK, having
taken on Putin (see here
and here)
and won, a few days ago—he now assures us that he’ll welcome LGBT folk with
open arms and vodka bottles—I was all in the mood for a nice quiet time. But
no, with the slackers apparently overtaking the Guard, somebody has to step up
to the plate. What if the queen had been strolling on her balcony?
So I turned
to The
Guardian for the
dope, and discovered that the protest was part of a worldwide demonstration
against austerity cuts; here’s what they had to say on the topic:
Similar
events were staged in cities in Japan, Australia and New Zealand in opposition
to austerity cuts, corruption and an increase in state surveillance.
Well, the
event attracted hundreds of people, of whom 11 were arrested. In addition to
the fireworks directed at the palace, a fire was started near the gates of the
building, and the Lord
Nelson Column in Trafalgar
Square sustained damage. And apparently things got a bit heated—here’s more
from the Guardian:
Ceylan
Hassan, 24, a university graduate, who was among the protesters in London,
said: "They started shouting 'move back, move back', but we had nowhere to
go. The police started pushing us, screaming 'move back, move back'.
"There
was a fire on the right hand side of the monument and people started throwing
things."
OK, so I
absorbed that, but then the question became: who was Anonymous,
apparently the group behind the protest? And what were they all about?
In fact I
don’t know—or rather, they don’t. But here’s what Trent Peacock (love the name,
by the way), an Anon
(as they call themselves) had to say, as cited in Wikipedia:
We
[Anonymous] just happen to be a group of people on the internet who need—just
kind of an outlet to do as we wish, that we wouldn't be able to do in regular
society. ...That's more or less the point of it. Do as you wish. ... There's a
common phrase: 'we are doing it for the lulz.'
Lulz,
according to that Wikipedia
entry, is “entertainment.” But the group’s idea of entertainment includes
hacking—for some of its members—and they’ve gone after some really worthy
targets, including Scientology
and the Westboro
Baptist “Church.” Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:
Several
attacks by Anons have targeted organizations accused of homophobia. In February
2011, an open letter was published on AnonNews.org threatening the Westboro Baptist
Church, an organization based in Kansas in the US known for
picketing funerals with signs reading "God Hates Fags".[83] During a live radio current affairs program
in which Topiary debated church member Shirley
Phelps-Roper, Anons hacked one of the organization's websites.[84] After the church announced its intentions in
December 2012 to picket the funerals of the Sandy Hook
Elementary School shooting victims, Anons published the names, phone
numbers, and e-mail and home addresses of church members and brought down
GodHatesFags.com with a DDoS attack.[85]
Hacktivists also circulated petitions to have the church's tax-exempt status
investigated.[86] In August 2012, Anons
hacked the site of Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi in
retaliation for the Parliament of
Uganda's consideration of an
anti-homosexuality law permitting capital punishment.[87]
Good work,
guys!
Anons also
supported the Occupy
movement in its early days, and have protested stock exchanges and major
corporations; they also were active in the Arab Spring.
For all
this, the group attracts attention, if not notoriety. In 2012, Time Magazine named them on the 100 most influential
people; according to Wikipedia,
the NSA agreed. Here’s what it says:
In 2012, Public Radio
International reported that the US National
Security Agency considered Anonymous a potential national security
threat and had warned the president that it could develop the capability to
disable parts of the US power grid.
I report
all of this dispassionately—it’s hard to get a finger on this group’s pulse.
But one thing I’ll say: we’re skating quite rashly on the thinnest of ice. The
1% is getting unimaginably rich, and worse, frightenly isolated. The rest of us
are forming a collective time bomb of unemployment, poverty, and
disenfranchisement.
Anybody
remember the French
Revolution?
