Rolling Stone: Barrett Brown Faces 105 Years in Jail. But no one can figure out what law he broke.

Fascism.

There's a very good one.

people rise up against them.

Anonymous is brilliant, they have struck fear into all the right people who have secrets to hide.

I wonder if they are not part of the good side of our government who have watched the corruption exploding but are not in a position to speak out without being silenced. Who knows? Whatever or whoever they are, they are a natural outgrowth of oppressive policies that restrict people's freedoms.

http://www.dailytech.com/Anonymous+Vows+Personal+Attacks+on+US+Military+Families+War+on+US/article21087.htm

I just googled on it and that phrase has appeared exactly once in connection with Brown, in the March 2011 article that you quote. Brown is most often described as an unofficial or de facto spokesperson for Anonymous -- and he denies even that. (He also likes to pull people's chains.)

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/we-spoke-to-barrett-brown-from-prison

VICE: We have such little time, so let’s get right into it. A lot of people say that you’re the spokesperson for Anonymous. What do you say to that?
I’m not. For two years now I’ve denied that publicly. Every time I’m asked, it turns out that I’m not. The first thing people find when they Google me should be a D Magazine article in which I explained that. No one is the spokesperson for Anonymous. It doesn’t work that way. I wouldn’t want that position if it were a position.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything Anonymous does, I don’t necessarily like a lot of Anons. I was very supportive of the dynamics that Anonymous represents, I’m very much an advocate (and continue to be) of these new sorts of communities to express yourself on the internet and the next move I’ll be making is deploying some communities—a little more structured than Anons—to perpetuate themselves, and grow, while maintaining Anonymous’ core qualities. I’ve identified with Anonymous very closely for two years now, but one of the interesting things to me is how all the articles refer to me as the self-proclaimed spokesperson for Anonymous. They all copy off each other.

You did also call yourself Cobra Commander at one point.
Oh yeah, I called myself that after the NBC Nightly news called me the “underground commander in a new warfare.” Which is just a ridiculous thing to be called.


http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2011/april/how-barrett-brown-helped-overthrow-the-government-of-tunisia

Anonymous is sometimes referred to in the mainstream media as a group or a collective—the Christian Science Monitor went with “a shadowy circle of activists”—but Anonymous, per se, doesn’t exist. It has no hierarchy, no leadership. So even though Bloomberg and others have called Brown a spokesman for the group (which, again, isn’t a group at all), Brown denies having any position within Anonymous.

“Anonymous is a process more than it is a thing,” Brown tells Isikoff. “I can’t speak on behalf of Anonymous, because there’s no one who can authorize me to do that.”

When he explains Anonymous to a newbie, Brown relishes the inevitable confusion and will toggle between sincerity and irony to heighten it. Until you’ve spent some time with him, it’s hard to know what to believe. When you’ve gotten to know him better, it’s even harder.

“You have to remember,” Brown says, reclining in the green lawn chair, one arm slung over its back, a cigarette dangling between his fingers, “we’re the Freemasons. Only, we’ve got a sense of humor. You have to wield power with a sense of humor. Otherwise you become the FBI.”

anything about Anonymous which would be the antithesis of what you are claiming.

But I do love how they create confusion in those who support the 'security state' which is why I would not be surprised if some of them are part of the good people in our government. I think they relish the attempt to find out who they are, but anyone who has followed their more important work has to wonder how they know as much as they do.

Try again.

Pride in one' sown ignorance is something I've never understood.

Should I be arrested?

Anonymous goes after the inverted justice system, corrupt capitalist institutions, groups waging war on whistleblowers, and child pornography rings, all with zero loss of life or lasting damage to anyone, and you come up with one example of some people in a free association group doing something shady?

Whatever. Barrett Brown gets 105 years, and the people Anonymous targeted with minor inconveniences for their roles in war crimes, growing the police state, and screwing the 99% get off scot free.

They are not civil rights leaders.

Stop trying to cast them that way.

should get 105 years in prison?

Jamie Dimon, Dick Cheney, and James Clapper are walking around free men, but when a group uses ultimately harmless tactics to minorly inconvenience them they should get the book thrown at them?

Whatever. It's clear what side of this fight you're on.

Steubenville for example. I'm not sure why you love governmental and police overreach so much, but you'll find that isn't a particularly popular view around here. Which you well know.

the adults are trying to have a conversation here. maybe you can take your imaginary words and impress someone elsewhere.

"'Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up.' English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!"

we get a constant, reeking stream of corporate-fascist propaganda.

All governments that turn authoritarian find people by the hundreds who do not hesitate to sell their morality and human decency in order to shill for policies that exploit, imprison, impoverish, or murder human beings by the millions for the profit and power of a few.

Some may eventually find their conscience and regret their complicity. In general, though, I suspect that this line of work attracts those who rarely struggle with such internal voices in the first place.

States that build surveillance machines also build propaganda machines.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4216987
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3189367

That's screwed up.

but, WTF?

I can't understand what this man did wrong that would even approach being charged with a crime (I know that is the point of the article) ... I am trying to figure out at what point the criminal justice system has been allowed to "make shit up" as they go along?

How they have used that tragedy to roll back democracy is a crime in itself.

you are probably going to be charged with a crime.

I guess I didn't read carefully. I would hope threatening anyone and their family ... and post threats, your actions would be addressed legally

I would be banned if I repeated here what Mr. Brown said, and if I were writing a sympathetic article or an OP about an 'investigative journalist' I might conceal the fact that he passed on people's credit card information by passing links to the hacked information...... something no legitimate news source would do.

anytime a federal prisoner claims they don't know why they're in jail that means they're too stupid to read their indictment or think that you are.

the Constitution is just a piece of paper, so maybe Barrett Brown really is in a pickle.

As he said,i he could be a dictator if it wasn't for the Constitution or words to that effect. I've actually begun to see a the Constitution being trashed right here on DU lately. It's creeping into our party now.

the so-called felonious ones on the SC.

that some were not so much concerned about the Constitution after all, it seems it was all about politics for them.

These have been very revealing years for many of us who actually MEANT it when we attacked those who were vioting their oaths of office.. I guess I thought we were the good guys who stood up for what was right. I have learned not to be so naive anymore, which is probably a good thing.

For whatever reason, the powers that be don't want him out there, and they'll use what ever means to make sure he's finished.

every day, in every way possible

9/11 because it was the starting gun in the war of terror, signaling our willing abandonment of the rule of law and constitutional rights.

2008, because that's when our party stopped caring.

''The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.'' ~George Orwell, 1984

- The Banality of Evil, indeed. They don't even have the intelligence to come up with their own script.

K&R
[center][/center]

It's amazing what they are doing to this journalist. It sends a chill through journalism, the world over.

partisanship and apathy prevent the people from using their power. However, throughout history it has been the same way until things reach a critical point when the criminals go just a bit too far and that is when things begin to change. Too bad so damage is usually done before that happens. You'd think we would have learned by now, but propaganda works still on far too many people.

as you say in your post....We hope for better when they go...TOO FAR...and for sure it's looking like that more and more these days!

It's real.

.

People can still post on the internet!

We don't have a police state!

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's s time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Don't say you were not warned beforehand.

... "they can't take a case to court unless it is a slam dunk conviction".

That's the BULLSHIT I get around here when I complain that not one bankster has been even subjected to a trial. That selective prosecution is effectively justice thwarted.

Excuses, excuses and more excuses, but when they have a message to send that they WANT to send they will damn well prosecute whether there is much evidence of a crime at all.