So many millions are disgusted by Westboro Baptist Church, and even more disgusted than normal this week by the psychotic nutbags’ attempts to protest the funerals of those slain in the Sandy Hook massacre. Anonymous has been busy DDOSing the WBC website and otherwise messing with WBC in their own inimitable style; and a petition has been sent to the White House calling for the recognition of WBC as a hate group and to be stripped of their tax exempt status. Even the Ku Klux Klan loathes WBC.

Since the Occupy movement began, many have attempted to position the group in opposition to electoral politics. Occupy in its purest form is nonpartisan, and since the beginning of the movement this has been a source of criticism.

If we want to really make a difference, we were told time and again, we should organize similarly to the Tea Party and begin to field candidates for office. When occupiers protested Mitt Romney or other hyper-conservative politicians, they’d be accused of being in bed with Barack Obama. If the movement protested neo-liberals like Obama, we were accused of being traitors to all that was good in the world because we obviously wanted Romney to win (Carnacing is not limited to blogs). Most of all, occupiers got accused of being disconnected from what their critics perceive to be real politics — we were lazy hippies who didn’t understand how the world works and worst of all we don’t vote.

Members of the hacktivist group Anonymous have released sixty hours of footage of the raid by the New York Police Department against Occupy Wall Street on November 15, 2011. The footage posted is from the NYPD’s Technical Assistance Research Unit (TARU), a surveillance unit that is regularly present at political demonstrations to film police actions. It was posted as a torrent for download late in the evening on September 23, 2012. A tiny sample of the footage, including a statement read by a member of Anonymous, was posted on YouTube.

Judge Joan Campbell has threatened to dismiss the case unless these documents are presented along with the names of two other undercover officers at the next hearing, scheduled for September 5 2012.

Sometimes occupiers take risks, but none of us expected to be arrested that evening for chalking on a sidewalk.

WikiLeaks has announced that its website is now operational again after “installing substantial extra capacity” and additional support through CloudFlare, a website security service capable of blocking threats and limiting “abusive bots and crawlers” from wasting “bandwidth and server resources.”

Since September 11, 2001, discerning Americans have watched in dismay as their government has stripped away their most basic freedoms, and continues to mutate into something resembling a police state.

Wait til you meet Trapwire.

Society needs weapons against cyberbullying, which can be a seriously harmful activity, and against libel that is shielded by anonymity. But somehow, surprise surprise, neoliberal governments are using those worthy goals, in Great Britain now (but in New York last month), to advance a sledgehammer attack on internet anonymity.

A variety of links to articles/interviews/speeches on current issues that may be of interest.

Anonymous hackers have defaced the home page of Alpha Unmanned Systems, a company based in Spain which claims to be:

“experts in designing simple and portable Flight Control Systems. The company is based on over 25 years of combined experience in the field of aircraft control systems. UAV Navigation designs and manufactures the most advanced Flight Control Systems (FCS) for UAV and General Aviation on the market.”