Unaccredited, Uncredentialed, Unpaid, Unapologetic

Jeremy Hammond is a hero.

On the front page of the Chicago Tribune, you’ll find the headline “Genius with no Wisdom.”

The same paper that concentrated it’s coverage of Occupy Chicago’s celebration over their victory over Rahm and G8 with a half page on their hecklers would, of course, be the paper to paint Jeremy Hammond, recent federal arrestee involved with Anonymous, Lulzsec and Anti-sec’s raid on the intelligence firm Stratfor, as an intelligent idiot.

Idealists are fools, to the mainstream.

But to me, Jeremy Hammond is a hero in the grand tradition of the anarchist movement as one of intellectuals, angry industrial peasants and idealistic criminals.

This isn’t, after all, a first time thing for Hammond— and that might be offputting, to the average American. But look at his rap-sheet: arrested for burning the American flag and federal time for stealing the credit card information of anti-protest conservatives… and seeking to donate it elsewhere. The man wasn’t even stealing for himself.

Indeed, Hammond is described, in the Sun Times, as a good, respectful employee— gasp, he was unemployed!- who still volunteered for Food Not Bombs, who created websites to teach people anonymity and infiltration (in truth, if one’s learns how to be a White Hat, one can easily become a Black Hat— but apparently we’re in a “knowledge is dangerous” world environment); a guy with an apartment who still dumpster dived and do you know what that tells me?

Jeremy Hammond *believed.* He did not steal from the innocent, he did not attack the bottom of the pyramid and he certainly wasn’t doing what he did for *himself.* Jeremy Hammond is a *believer.*

He, and other’s like him, are the heart of all change.

As I said, I liken him to the days of anarchy past: the Propaganda By Deed, often done by people with rap-sheets just as long as his. This time, though, the criminal with an agenda destroyed no property or life— the new Black Bloc is the Hack Bloc and Hammond was among it’s vanguard.

I listened to people talk about the subject, about these hackers, these shadowy credit card thieves, when discussing the paper—- the papers all emphasize the “theft” of information of over 700,000 employees and figures, including a former CIA director and a VP, as well as Credit Card information.

This is the Mass Media’s propaganda tactic: tell the what but never the why… and especially the *why them.*

They “stole” information from Stratfor, a company who is in the business of spy-craft… that is to say, stealing information.

Wikileaks’ “stolen” info on Stratfor’s activities which included information on their monitoring of activist groups on behalf of Dow Chemical.

Why is it that when the powerful spy on the weak, it is a business and when the weak spy on the powerful, it’s a capital offense?

And what have the Anons, in the past, done with this Credit Card information we so worry about? Donate it to charity.

These are the things the Mass Media will keep as quiet as possible. Anonymous is a threat to your suburban home— never mind that they caught pedophiles, they are pure evil. They will destroy the nation’s power grid despite the fact that they, as computer Hacktivists, NEED the nation’s power grid.

Smoke screens and comfortable lies.

As this continues, into trials and further Authority propaganda, I will remember Hammond— not the posterboy, the distraction that the media wants you to look at: Hector Xavier Monsegur, Sabu, the snitch who lived in Public Housing, the comfortable stereotype that reinforces the message that the those who strike against the concentrated powers who spy, “steal” and sell our information daily are just jobless bums (the image they want to use against the Occupy movement).

I’ll remember the genius who actually did as he believed, went to jail for it, came out and did it again. I believe that man is a hero.

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A Resurgence of Anarchism (that dares not speak its name).

You should be noticing a trend, all around you.

The world is angry and it is angry at Power itself.

Corporations.

Money.

Dictators.

States.

Systems.

That isn’t to say that every uprising is explicitly in search of some stateless alternative— indeed, most want modest reforms like respect for human dignity. Some want modest reforms… and more power to morality dictatorships. 

They’ll learn soon enough.

But what each of these have in common is the organizing principles underneath— to deal with the mechanisms of the state, they de-centralize. They use dispersal tactics. When they meet a wall, they become water. And they use technology to do it. 

That is global. To bring it local, one need only look at the kind of non-hierarchical, distributed organization of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is, implicitly, an anarchist movement.

Better yet, one need only the hacking group… Anonymous.

Anonymous is notorious right now, for bringing down simple websites to recording the FBI in their dealings with Scotland Yard over copyright, to their newest exploit— supposedly hacking and taking information from the nation of Bahrain and attacking US companies that supply anti-protest weaponry to police states.

Anyone who understands Anonymous understands that calling them a “group” of “hackers” is ridiculous at best, a misnomer at worst. Most of the “hackers” of Anon use simple tactics, like Distributed Denial of Service attacks— that is to say, bombarding a website with so much information at once, they have to shut down. And using simple programs most of them haven’t written to do so.  Anyone with basic computer literacy could do something of the sort, with enough numbers on their side— or pay someone who runs a bot-net to do it for them. Hackers? Mostly, no.

As for “group….” Anonymous is a label that anyone who acts in line with Anonymous can use. I could be Anonymous right now (though I am not— how could I be, I’m using a nom-de-plume); any of you could be. All you have to do is Be Anon.

If you think of it in those terms, Anonymous is less of a group than it is a movement— or more accurately, the militant wing of a movement that is shared by the likes of Wikileaks and the Pirate Bay, as well as many websites and even large companies, such as Google. What these groups share in common is the belief that the Internet is going to lead mankind to salvation— and that salvation is based on freedom of information. 

Information Longs To Be Free.

When Anonymous attacks anti-protest companies or creates backdoor servers and proxies for Iranians and other oppressed people, they do so in solidarity with a goal: Freedom of information. They may not even agree with the message, but they intend to assist anyone whose state is trying to suppress their ability to deliver it.

This is the new face of Anarchism. It need not be called that because, in the end, it comes from different philosophical roots. Indeed, many “hackers” are libertarian by nature— they are more inclined to the Austrian school of economics and belief in the primacy of the markets. 

Being a Syndicalist, one might think I’d find them distasteful— on the contrary, these new breed of anarcho-capitalists differ from their thinly-veiled clepto-corporate parents. These libertarians are just as likely to attack corporations as they are anything else. 

I think of these as the reaction to the totalitarian left that marked the bipolarity lingering in modern political thought—- when they think of freedom, they assume markets because state socialism requires a state and, thereby, an Authority. 

As the realization of the power of unions as self-organizing share-holders in the markets, workers creating and reaping the rewards of their labor over the management class’s machinations takes hold, most of these right anarchists will move left.

They will realize that serving one master (the state) is as bad as or worse than another (the corporation).

This is a glorious time to believe that centralized power must be opposed. As never before, the means of spreading information and quickly organizing the people have become democratized.

As the Printing Press led to revolution in the major powers (the church) and Radio led to revolution (the beginning of the age of Propaganda), so too as the internet led to revolutions across the world.

It remains to be seen how it all ends.

Keep your politics in your soul and keep fighting your battles— Anarchism is a means with a far distant ends.

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Witnessed at UIC.

I went down to the University of Illinois at Chicago and saw many things while waiting for the President to come make his speech and collect his money at the forum.

Yes, I witnessed many things.

I saw too many people in suits, lined up and shuffling into the forum for a glimpse of the President who had signed the bill that gave their right to trial away— I saw too few signs and heard too few voices on the other side of the barricade, calling out to those who should be listening and opening their eyes to what is going on in their country.

I listened.

I listened to libertarians speaking for Ron Paul with socialists and they were all for the same cause.

I listened to whispers, whispers that Bill Ayers, terrorist and Obama campaign boogyman, spoke with friendly officers about the G8 and the Secret Service’s recommendations. I listen to whispers that the police expected Black Bloc, the anarchist boogymen, coming with poison spikes under their skin and poison powders to throw at the officers of the peace. 

Sounded like a powder-keg waiting for its fuse.

And still, I saw the red and black flag of the 4 Star Anarchist Orgnization, reminding people that an anarchist is a belief no different from Republicanism; no masks on their faces, no scary raised fists, they asked only that the people, the workers, unite and find a new way forward.

And I heard.

I heard a woman speak with such hesitant elegance I could not help but be swept up in her moment. I heard the way the first people who listened to Barack Obama speak at the Democratic Convention heard. I heard her in my bones, my blood, my gut.

She attached the NDAA and the idea of belligerent acts and unspecified terrorist actions with Civil Rights movement, lest we forget that COINTELPRO existed, that the black panthers and Martin Luther King were terrorists too— and under this law, they could disappear as quickly as any jihadist. She connected it to the 60s, to the Chicago police, to black men killed and framed.

Unpracticed, unprepared, she spoke and I heard her.

At UIC, I saw the many faces of protest: students, passionate one moment and flippant the next; older folk, remembering the fights of the past and still fighting; passersby who thought if we are protesting Obama, we must all be Republicans….

But she was the only one I heard.

And when the President’s limo, unseen, made the crowd buzz with anticipation, I left.

At that point, I had seen and heard enough. 

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Behind the Scenes at an Occupy Action.

As I mentioned yesterday, one of the main charges against the Occupy movement is that they have no organization and no goals.

Months ago, I was on the outside looking in. I had heard the charges, had seen the ruffled neo-hippies backed by the 60s oldsters giving CPR to the Age of Aquarius and judged them all from a frame of ignorance.

I am, however, a thorough agnostic: I know when I don’t know. So I went to find out.

I marched with Occupy Chicago, from Jackson and La Salle to Grant Park where the General Assembly was held. There, I saw order: people waiting their turns to speak, issues being voted on, organizational anarchists being asked to follow to procedural protocol. I’ve said it before but if this is disorganized, what do you call Congress?

All that and only one sign asking why someone won’t think of the dolphins.

But that’s the big organization, the big sloppy mess of direct democracy. What’s more interesting is the behind the scenes meetings. As open-door as their general assemblies, but very much smaller, this meeting was for a plan of action meant to react to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s odious G8 power grab: his plan to raise fines for resisting arrest— even passive resistance (a horrifying phrase, knowing how liberally the word “resist” is interpreted by police)— registration for equipment such as bull horns and mics, requirements for having one parade marshal per 100 protesters at any demonstration (all of which are now listed as “parades” if done in the central business district; poor Critical Mass), deputization of outside agencies such as the FBI to police the streets of Chicago, gatherings on sidewalks— like union pickets— requiring permits… the list goes on and on.

On January 18th, at 10:00, the City Council will decide on the future of protest in the city of Chicago.

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Resist The Narrative.

The thing one must understand about News, in general, is that it is driven by the human need for a story to organize the world. And if that story is repeated enough, it becomes true to everyone- except those who live that story, day in and day out.

If you ask Reuters, for instance, you’ll find the repetition of the same memes the mainstream ever goes about Occupy: it is disorganized and lacks a coherent message.

This is demonstrably untrue, which I will, in the coming days, show in a simple word-frequency content analysis (the data has been collected and needs compiling- COMING SOON-); that doesn’t matter though, because it fits the narrative.

The Occupy movement resists the old narrative on how politics, policy and activism are done by acting firmly from Anarchist/Direct Democracy principles. That isn’t to say they aren’t organized— if you want to talk about parliamentary procedure, Occupy, as a movement, runs by the same Roget’s Rules of Order as the 112th Congress of the United States. 

It is just as bogged down in motions to carry as any other organization, only with “twinkle fingers”— symbolic, but quiet, ways to praise or condemn particular thoughts, agendas or action items— and “temp checks” on how the group may feel about something, without a vote.

This is something they have done in the larger, city wide General Assemblies in Downtown Chicago, something they have done in neighborhood Occupy meetings and, indeed, something they casually do amongst themselves— as I witnessed during a seminar on Economics, where one eager, though quiet, participant confused a Harvard Professor by constantly wiggling digits in his periphery. 

It is a failing of the media as a business model that they can not get deeper into the story- News simply does not have the resources for a story so boring as the truth behind a popular uprising.

Cheaper to point the camera, provide no context, and let the images speak for themselves—- after editing, of course.

Don’t blame the Journos, blame their leash-holders, Media Consolidation and the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

But I digress.

The only way to resist the Narrative is to talk about the truth: your truth.

Be a witness to what is happening on the ground. See it. Go to a meeting, a single meeting, and let it speak for itself. 

Don’t speak objectively- you’ll fail, just as all news has failed by holding itself to an impossible standard and letting the public hoist said expectations upon them. 

You may find that in the meeting you attend, there is no coherent message for you to hold on to— though they begin every meeting by saying they are a non-violent, non-partisan movement, so you can start there— and you may find that they seem disorganized to you.

That is just fine.

As long as you have witnessed the truth and haven’t been spoon fed it, believe as you wish. Do not accept someone else’s narrative of the story; play a small part and, from there, try and see the whole.

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They’ll take your blood, spit and sweat and charge you for the service.

Question: What do Arson, Sexual Assault, Aggravated Assault and Possession of LSD have in common? 

Answer: They illustrate how the state can control your body and violate your fifth amendment rights. As long as you’re a criminal.

In the People v. Johnson, filed with the Illinois Supreme Court, Dec. 2011, we have the Defendant,  Amos Johnson, charged and convicted with a felony count of possession of a controlled substance. Pursuant to Illinois Corrections Code 5-4-3, any individual convicted of such a felony- controlled substances being cocaine, crack cocaine, LSD and heroin- must submit their DNA for categorization by the state.

Oh, and they have to pay 200 dollars to do so.

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