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ANONYMOUS targets Tea Party funders, Charles and David Koch
by Stephen C. Webster via anon - Raw Story Sunday, Feb 27 2011, 10:00pm
international / social/political / other press

"Money doesn't talk, it swears" - Dylan

The decentralized protest group "Anonymous" has a new target: no, it's not a middle eastern dictator, a major bank or even a bit player in the military-industrial complex. It's none other than Tea Party financiers Charles and David Koch, an open letter stated -- for their attempts "to usurp American Democracy," with money we presume! A little late for that, ANONYMOUS; Corporatists OWN Capitol Hill, lock, stock and barrel, just ask house slave, Baa' raack Obaa' maa! [Edited;]

anonflag.jpg

"Koch Industries, and oligarchs like them, have most recently started to manipulate the political agenda in Wisconsin," an announcement posted to anonnews.org declared.

"Governor Walker's union-busting budget plan contains a clause that went nearly un-noticed. This clause would allow the sale of publicly owned utility plants in Wisconsin to private parties (specifically, Koch Industries) at any price, no matter how low, without a public bidding process," they explained. "The Koch's have helped to fuel the unrest in Wisconsin and the drive behind the bill to eliminate the collective bargaining power of unions in a bid to gain a monopoly over the state's power supplies.

The group, which was responsible for taking MasterCard Worldwide offline for an entire day -- along with numerous other organizations that plotted against secrets outlet WikiLeaks -- said it would now be "actively seeking vulnerabilities" in Koch industries.

"In a world where corporate money has become the lifeblood of political influence, the labor unions are one of the few ways citizens have to fight against corporate greed," the release added. "Anonymous cannot ignore the plight of the citizen-workers of Wisconsin, or the opportunity to fight for the people in America's broken political system. For these reasons, we feel that the Koch brothers threaten the United States democratic system and, by extension, all freedom-loving individuals everywhere."

They added that if one would like to withdraw their unknowing support for the brothers Koch, an array of products would need to be boycotted -- and not just by Americans, but people world-wide.

"Anonymous hears the voice of the downtrodden American people, whose rights and liberties are being systematically removed one by one, even when their own government refuses to listen or worse - is complicit in these attacks," they continued. "We are actively seeking vulnerabilities, but in the mean time we are calling for all supporters of true Democracy, and Freedom of The People, to boycott all Koch Industries' paper products. We welcome unions across the globe to join us in this boycott to show that you will not allow big business to dictate your freedom."

In the US, those products were listed as Vanity Fair, Quilted Northern, Angel Soft, Sparkle, Brawney, Mardi Gras and Dixie. For Europe, they were Demak'Up, Kitten Soft, Lotus / Lotus Soft, Tenderly, Nouvelle Soft, Okay Kitchen Towels, Colhogar, Delica, Inversoft and Tutto.

All were produced by the "Georgia-Pacific" company, and all bear the logo seen above.

The Koch's, who've seen their libertarian cause raised to a full-blown rightwing boogyman status, were principle financiers of Wisconsin's Republican Governor, Scott Walker.

Among his first items of business as the state's governor was attempting to crush public worker unions by making it illegal for them to organize into a union. And while he'd been saying throughout the affair that this was not an attempt to bust unions, a front group for the Koch brothers had one of its spokesmen at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), who plainly stated that their goal was to take the
unions out "at the knees."

Walker was humiliated last week by a gonzo journalist with The Buffalo Beast, who managed to get him on the phone by pretending to be David Koch. During the conversation, the governor admitted to considering sending agent provocateurs into the throngs of protesters to try and stir up trouble. He also appeared to accept an offer for a flight to California, where he was to be shown "a good time" by the tea party financier.

"Anonymous" was calling their latest project "#OpWisconsin". They asked that supporters begin boycotting the Koch paper products right away.

Copyright applies.

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HBGary CEO Aaron Barr resigns amid ‘Anonymous’ scandal
by Stephen C. Webster via Kismo - Raw Story Wednesday, Mar 2 2011, 7:15am

Aaron Barr, who claimed he could easily put WikiLeaks and its supporters into disrepute had the tables turned on HIM. A line of coke a big mouth and no action allowed amorphous hacker group, 'ANONYMOUS,' to disgrace Barr publicly and prove he was all mouth and no skill.

Barr's reputation -- what's left of it -- will never be the same again, he'd be lucky to get a job selling second hand PCs. Let's just say it couldn't have happened to a more deserving, lying prick.

Let it be a lesson to all loud-mouthed yanks; you can't take on a decentralised global movement and hope to prevail.


Report follows:

The chief executive at data security firm HBGary Federal has resigned his job following a high-profile hack staged by online protest group "Anonymous."

Aaron Barr, the embattled CEO, made the disclosure yesterday speaking to ThreatPost, an online security blog.

"I need to focus on taking care of my family and rebuilding my reputation," he reportedly said. "It's been a challenge to do that and run a company. And, given that I've been the focus of much of the bad press, I hope that, by leaving, HBGary and HBGary Federal can get away from some of that. I'm confident they'll be able to weather this storm."

The website of Washington DC-based HBGary Federal was hijacked earlier this month, along with Barr's Twitter account. The company's website was defaced with a message that read, "This domain seized by Anonymous under section #14 of the rules of the Internet."

"Your recent claims of 'infiltrating' Anonymous amuse us, and so do your attempts at using Anonymous as a means to garner press attention for yourself," the messaged continued. "How's this for attention?"

He went on to complain that even at home, hackers were trying to break into his personal router, leaving him no choice but to drop offline entirely.

Barr later told the Financial Times that he'd identified the "core leaders" of the group and had information that could lead to their arrest. He even claimed to have infiltrated "Anonymous" to demonstrate social media security risks.

In addition to hacking the company's website and Twitter account, "Anonymous" gained access to more than 44,000 company e-mails, which were released to the public in a 4.71 gigabyte Torrent file. The group also gained access to the report that was allegedly going to be sold to the FBI and posted it online (PDF).

"Anonymous" also claimed that most of the information he gathered was either publicly available or inaccurate.

"The lack of quality in Aaron Barr's undertaken research is worth noting," the group said in a statement. "Aaron Barr missed a great deal of information that has been available online, and in fact failed to identify some of those whose identities were never intended to be hidden. People such as DailyKos' diarist blogger Barrett Brown, and the administrator of anonnews.org, joepie91, whose identities could have been found in under a minute with a simple Google search."

"Anonymous does not have leaders," the statement added. "We are not a group, we are not an organization. We are just an idea. What we have done today will appear harsh. It is harsh. We will respond to those who seek to threaten us. We understand that our participants have been concerned about recent FBI raids and companies such as HBGary Federal lurking and logging our chats, so we’ve given all of Anonymous a message: we will fight back."

Burr reportedly talked to members of "Anonymous" in an IRC chatroom, claiming he never intended to sell the information he gathered to the FBI.

"Ok I am going to say this one more time," he told the room. "I did this for research. The FBI called me because of my research. The email you are referring to about selling data was about a model built on this type of research. It was not to sell specifically this data. I was going to use it to describe the process of how social media exploitation works."

Barr's emails would later reveal the firm was working on a plan to attack and discredit progressive critics of the US Chamber of Commerce, and had worked on ideas to take down secrets outlet WikiLeaks on behalf of Bank of America. The Chamber denies knowing about their proposals.

A collection of congressional Democrats said Tuesday that the company's actions warranted a federal investigation. House Republicans, however, were seen as unlikely to be responsive to such a request.


Copyright applies.


Barr, pompous prick
Barr, pompous prick


 
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