Tuesday 15 December 2015
#OpISIS - A message from Anonymous and friends.
ISIS is small state that brutally censors visiting journalists and its own people.
As such it must be opposed. The question is in what manner should it be opposed.
We think it’s great if people want to hack ISIS and publish their secrets. But engaging in social media censorship campaigns and dealing with intelligence contractors and government agents is deeply stupid. The former will contribute to legitimize the spread of Internet censorship and will lead to the increased censorship for everyone, including Anonymous. Dealing with government agents et al will not only result in many more informers in Anonymous bu twill also damage its reputation as it will lead to a view that Anonymous is too close to US intelligence interests.
The same intelligence industry that runs their own NSA hacker operations against ISIS uses the same counter-terrorism justification to spy on everyday civilians with no regards for rights to privacy, encryption, or anonymity. They have always targeted Anonymous and other dissident groups as terrorists, and when they aren’t trying to discredit or imprison us, they are attempting to co-opt us – sometimes openly by attending conferences like DEFCON, seducing us with promises of money or calls for patriotic duty, other times covertly lurking around IRC channels attempting to steer us unwittingly into supporting their agenda.
We would like to strongly advise - while we cannot speak for the whole of Anonymous - to always release information to the public, as we want to operate in its interest. Any attempts to act in secrecy, supporting political or governmental organizations, will be discouraged by us or completely ignored to safeguard our allies and supporters fighting for openness and transparency within governments, dictatorships and organizations around the globe that control various aspects of our lives.
We are on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressors. We support the victims of war, not the war-makers.
War Machine by Hymany Films.
For as long as any of us have been alive, there has always been a war: The Boer War, The War to End all Wars, World War 2, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, The Six Day War, The Cold War, Lebanon, The Falklands War, Grenada, The First Gulf War, The Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Congo, Mali, Syria... To quote from US President Eisenhower’s farewell address: “In the councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought, or un-sought, by the Military/Industrial complex.”
War has been the language of our age. The politicians have declared a ’war on poverty’ and a ’war on drugs.’ We have ’holy wars’.
We fight terror with even more terror and call it ’war on terror’; the war with an ‘ideology’ as its battlefield. The terrorists, on whom this war is declared, use it to justify their terror, and in turn they fuel even more and more terror.
The war that brings death and destruction to the streets of our towns, and of our cities, and slaughters the innocent without mercy.
The war that brings death from the skies and smashes the fragile lives and homes of innocent men, women, and children who are presumed to be ‘enemy’, in the Middle East, in Afghanistan in Iraq, in Pakistan and other places. Where one war ends another eventually begins and, if we live long enough, all wars inevitably blend in to one uninterrupted stream of death and destruction that imagines and then re-imagines the endless-ness of this singular condition, this perpetual peculiar pathology we know as War.
Every day, in our own way we can say ’No’ to the pornography of death and destruction, say ’Never’ to the Machines that demand our compliance in the orgy of grief.
Turn off the War. Silence the Machine.
- Written and performed by Seamus Ruttledge
- Produced By Willow Sea
- Complimentary Vocals: Tracy Friel
- Video for ‘War Machine’ by Mike Casey
- ‘War Machine’ features extracts from the farewell address of President Dwight D Eisenhower
- Recorded and mixed by Mr Willow Sea at Willow Sea Studios
Mastered By Carl Saff
