Metro reports:
The ‘hacktivists’ group Anonymous vowed to target the likes of Barclays, Vodafone, arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin and healthcare company Atos.
HM Revenue and Customs along with Conservative MPs Louise Mensch and Nadine Dorries will also be targeted in what is being dubbed OpBritain, the group said…
A press release from the group lays out the complaint against Dorries:
Many politicians holding office are attempting to enact policies based upon hard-line interpretations of the bible. This includes reducing the abortion limit and these politicians actively work with grass roots right-wing religious fundamentalists to do so. Nadine Dorries being one prominent example http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2011/01/27/churches-and-pro-life-groups-dread-any-attempt-to-change-the-law-on-abortion/. The government is also promoting the growth of faith schools http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7746263/Coalition-pledge-on-faith-schools.html and is supportive of the religious right-wing in the UK. Hard line religious leaders who attempt to introduce their authoritarian theocratic beliefs into UK law using the Conservative government should also be targeted. For a brief introduction to the role of hard-line religious leaders in helping shape UK law, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjp4A6jBWzo . Anyone who espouses less freedom for the sake of their own dogmatic, theocratic ideology and any politician who collaborates with such people will be a target.
The YouTube video is an upload of a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary which I discussed here. Mensch is not mentioned in the press release, but presumably she is being targeted for supporting the idea of shutting off access to social media during times of social unrest.
Anonymous promises that:
As well as orchestrating direct attacks, we will organise leaks, expose’s and counter-propaganda activities targeted at mainstream politicians, and mainstream populist fascist groups (such as the EDL, CFI, etc). to help destroy the momentum of support for them.
(“CFI” is the Conservative Friends of Israel)
Needless to say, I have nothing but contempt for this sort of nonsense: on-line vigilantes acting out a fantasy of self-empowerment while hiding behind keyboards is a pathological development in modern life, as I’ve seen before. If you don’t like particular ideas in public life, you can argue against them. If you think someone is behaving badly, you can call them out on it. By contrast, the threatening rhetoric and tactics of Anonymous are a self-defeating and repellent parody of political engagement.
There is no need for “counter-propaganda” or for “leaks” and “exposés” – Dorries has already been exposed by the careful scrutiny of her statements and of publicly-available documents. She is, however, adept at using bogus claims of victimisation to discourage critical interest, and Anonymous have just handed her a gift.
(H/T @bloggerheads)
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