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Anonymous plans to occupy Wall Street
- simonsarris 15y ago> Its stated intent is to persuade as many as 20,000 people to camp out on the streets of Manhattan's financial district until the Obama administration meets its demands. This seems a little incongruous, doesn't it? Shouldn't they attempt to be occupying some part of D.C. instead if that is their goal? They may be championing some actual cause, but they have not articulated it well. Both the reasoning and the demands seem very unclear for a protest that is to occur two days from now. http://twitter.com/#!/OccupyWallSt http://twitter.com/#!/OccupyWallSt has only 2,000 followers. I highly doubt this will go very far.
- fleitz 15y agoDC marches to the beat of NYCs drum. Anon is just doing root cause analysis. Anon isn't a group so they aren't going to have consistent messages with spokespeople sticking to the talking points.
- Locke1689 15y agoNah. Unfortunately this seems like people are... well, stupid. People do understand that 'Wall St' is just metonymy, right? Wall St, literally the street, is somewhat meaningless. People can occupy the street but that's not actual going to stop financial trade because 'Wall St.' is just a figure of speech.
- ynniv 15y agoIf it were a meaningless place, there wouldn't be such a strong police response. From the linked Huffington Post article, trial run activists were arrested without cause and released without charges. Contrast that with another reported protest where folks camped outside City Hall for three weeks with minimal response.
- Locke1689 15y agoI imagine any mass protest in the Manhattan business district wouldn't be taken to kindly. Remember that the right to organize and petition for a redress of grievances is directed towards the government. You actually have no right to protest and impede traffic in private areas.
- tptacek 15y agoIt's not a meaningless place. It's heavily secured, because it's perceived to be a target for violence. But he's right; staging a protest there won't slow down trading.
- yummyfajitas 15y agoThis has nothing to do with Wall St, and everything to do with NYC cops being out of control. The NYPD uses similar tactics against innocent bikers and anyone else they don't like. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkiyBVytRQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkiyBVytRQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IORuR5iRuxs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IORuR5iRuxs I've heard that the NYPD is even going after people practicing parkour now, though I haven't seen it on youtube yet. (Full disclosure: I got picked up during one of these incidents. The judge dismissed all charges after the cop lied and I showed videotape proving it.)
- prodigal_erik 15y agoCritical Mass is a bunch of thugs conspiring to break laws, obstruct traffic, and threaten and enrage the same people every legitimate bicyclist was hoping to coexist with. I'm no fan of violence but "corkers" should be arrested.
- jbooth 15y agoIt's symbolic, like all protests. Whatever the intelligence of the protesters, I seriously doubt any of them actually believe being a PITA in the street is going to inconvenience traders significantly.
- joezydeco 15y agoUnless it's a diversion. Damn, I've been watching too many heist movies...
- notahacker 15y agoYou don't have to go into the buildings to wind the traders up... www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6YB53wp5dA
- Locke1689 15y agoHow? What are they actually protesting? The existence of the banking industry? It seems like poorly informed reactionary tactics to me.
- dissident 15y agoIf you dig through their website, it looks like the common theme is "get money out of government", which is a rather vague goal and doesn't explain much. Assuming they mean political finance regulations, who objectively determines when the goals are met? What kind of specific regulations do they want? You can't find this information anywhere. This is more of a symbolic protest than a redress of grievances. People who have no idea how to solve problems and want one person to solve them all because they're holding up traffic in New York.
- sliverstorm 15y agoSilly thing about "getting money out of the government" is, where exactly do you think that money comes from anyway?
- jbooth 15y agoDid you see how a few months ago there was a patent carve-out explicitly for wall st firms because one company was causing them a bunch of trouble? That wasn't patent reform on the merits, that was 'the money' and where it comes from.
- danenania 15y agoI think the idea is to go out and try to do something proactive instead of sitting on one's ass and smugly criticizing from one's keyboard. The US government is corrupt as hell. I'm not sure how anyone could see large numbers of people demonstrating against this corruption as anything but a positive development for our civilization. As any number of past movements have shown, the particulars of the message aren't what's important early on, it's getting people out of their houses and convincing them that they actually have power to create change.
- burgerbrain 15y agoPeople demonstrate in DC all the time. Everyone there is used to it and (perhaps more importantly) the police are pretty good at quelling things. Obviously people demonstrate a lot in NYC too, but on a different scale.
- mburns 15y agoI highly doubt the NYPD will be put off when a bunch of Anons have a sit-in.
- burgerbrain 15y agoNo, they won't. But compare their response with what you see in DC.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- libraryatnight 15y agoI'm just refreshed to see something is happening, a date, feet hitting the pavement. I hope it's a success with a huge turn out, and I hope people notice. Even if the message isn't super clear, the feeling is, and if demonstrations like this gain momentum maybe people with a more clear message will realize action isn't impossible.
- cHalgan 15y agoYou really think D.C. is the place were decisions are made? Really? Anyway these Anonymous are just kids and I don't think they understand problem - let alone the solution to the problem.
- niels_olson 15y ago> Really? Ad hominem attack in the guise of a question. Be nice.
- jpdoctor 15y ago> Shouldn't they attempt to be occupying some part of D.C. instead if that is their goal? I was thinking that occupying Wall Street on a Saturday is pretty much guaranteed to go unnoticed. Hope you prove me wrong Anon.
- 0x12 15y agoAnd on the wrong day to boot...
- patrickod 15y agoThe demonstration is planned for Saturday ?
- PakG1 15y agoLook at how many turned out when Anon wanted people to come out to SF for the rail shooting for prior data. I think Anon is out of touch with the common people.
- morganw 15y ago> Shouldn't they attempt to be occupying some part of D.C.[...]? In the defenses-probing visit, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayUGOgFaCs8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayUGOgFaCs8, they're "camping" right in front of Federal Hall, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Hall_National_Memorial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Hall_National_Memorial, where the US government operated first after being Constituted. A symbol/place that I'm amazed the Tea Party hasn't seized upon, but I suppose the Koch brothers wouldn't like that.
- irrumator 15y agoDidn't start as Anonymous, started on Reddit[1] but seeded by AdBusters[2], a liberal "anti-consumerist" outfit. They're supposed to camp out on Wall St in New York for reasons that aren't really clear at all. It's basically every delusional Redditor on /r/politics slacktivism turned into reality. They're supposed to be protesting something about banks, bailouts, corporate personhood, jobs, and other assorted /r/politics common whining points.They apparently weren't aware that very few of the evil big banks are actually on Wall Street and that the NYSE is just a vestige of history by now. The only thing that will happen is a lot of tourists will flock down and the street will get even more clogged than it is for traffic and some arrests. People try to protest here all the time. It's nothing new. Stick the word "Anonymous" on it though and for some reason people take it to be a big deal for some reason. This is the coming together of the most extremist Chomsky acolytes and reactionary redditards all in one with some V for Vendetta masks. Huge parody potential except for the fact that they're doing it for themselves already. Quite hilarious. edit: this sort of reminds me of the 2005 Greenpeace attempt[3] to stop open-air trading at the International Petroleum Exchange by flooding the floor of the exchange with loud buzzers and bells, but getting beaten back bloody literally to the curb by all the angry traders. This was right around Kyoto. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet http://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters [3] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article515384.ece http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article515384.ece
- sliverstorm 15y agoI'm all for slacktivisim turning into real activism, whether or not this particular motion is well-thought-out.
- knorby 15y agoSo they should just start rioting instead, like many are predicting will happen sometime next year?
- gyardley 15y agoI haven't seen any predictions about rioting, but I probably read different news sources than you do. Whereabouts? I'm curious.
- jwingy 15y ago"Bought by hard and soft dollars, disloyal, incompetent, and wasteful interests have usurped our nation’s civil and military power, spawning a host of threats to liberty and national security." This. At least some people are trying to do something about it. What have you done lately for your country?
- thaumaturgy 15y agoI was more interested in the claims made in #Ref#Ref. It looks like the exploit needs server-side Javascript execution in order to work. (edit: Nevermind, no it doesn't, that was confusion on the part of people that had written articles after reading other peoples' articles.) I don't see a lot of the stodgy old Wall Street web-facing systems (or even internal systems) supporting something like that. It also looks like it requires a working SQLi on the target site, which means that before it can even be used, someone's going to need to find a nice exploit on the target, and if they find that, then using RefRef to take down the target is kinda pointless. Shucks. I was almost hoping to see a cool new exploit here. edit: Bah, it's even more simple than that. It uses an SQLi to run the MySQL "benchmark" function an absurd (99999999999) number of times, according to the code I found. Not only that, but it's just benchmarking a simple text string; they could have given MySQL something much more gnarly to chew on if they'd wanted. "Patching" against this attack should be as easy as adding an htaccess rule for any requests containing "select+benchmark" and then restarting MySQL. Son, I am disappoint.
- emiraga 15y agoI am not sure if this is the whole thing http://www.refref.org/p/refref.html http://www.refref.org/p/refref.html but it does not seem very sophisticated edit: #refref seems to refer to multiple tools, but looking at this screenshot http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v_gCKJilPLw/TjPob43lXiI/AAAAAAAACoU/dpq93BW25zY/s1600/anon_ddos_tool+%25281%2529.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v_gCKJilPLw/TjPob43lXiI/AAAAAAAACo... is also trivial.
- thaumaturgy 15y agoYeah, that's what I found too. I think you beat my edit by a few seconds. :-) It looks like several versions have been written, but they're probably all based on the same basic concept. The "Javascript" version that people were referring to is probably the screenshot you posted, which would be trivial to launch with a few Ajax requests. I will point my finger and laaaaaugh if this manages to take down any Wall Street websites.
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- buff-a 15y agoBought by hard and soft dollars, disloyal, incompetent, and wasteful interests have usurped our nation’s civil and military power, spawning a host of threats to liberty and national security This is true. So If I were such interests, I would try to find a way to allow mainstream media to stigmatize anyone making such claims, such that anyone expressing these ideas can be sidelined. A good, violent, riot in NYC should do it.
- anamax 15y agoWhen buying and selling is regulated, regulators are the first thing to be bought and sold. The only way to stop govt from giving money to the politically powerful is to not let govt have money. Regulatory capture is like conservation of momentum; if the situation satisfies the constraints, the results will happen, no matter how much one might like otherwise, no matter how much better things would be if those results didn't happen.
- rorrr 15y agoThe message is not clear at all.
- vermontdevil 15y agoWhy Saturday? Why not during normal trading hours which are 9:30-4, Monday through Friday
- veyron 15y agoincreased police presence during normal trading hours. Have you tried to enter wall street on the weekdays? It's a mess
- vermontdevil 15y agoBut who will pay attention on a Saturday?
- yummyfajitas 15y agoI'm a bit confused as to why Anonymous would be targetting Wall St. According to opensecrets.org, only three corporations (AT&T, UPS and Goldman) make the top 25 list of donors. The vast majority of big donors seem to be unions, with professional associations (trial lawyers, realtors, AMA) coming in a distant second. http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A
- jacoblyles 15y agoI'm sure this will not come as a surprise to you, but the progressive populist narrative does not have a 1:1 correspondence to reality.
- brendn 15y agoI live on Wall Street, as do many other hard-working New Yorkers. The Financial District isn't just fat-cat bankers and hedge fund managers these days. I don't expect that interfering with people's routines is an effective way to win their hearts, regardless of the intentions of the protest.
- momspete 15y agoAnd I think that it is very good that the Wall St. will be reminded that they have their money as a result of wealth transfer from middle class. They produce nothing but losses and we socialized those losses. There should be protests there daily reminding them that. Bankers havent added any value to the society, they destroyed it. To say any different is not to comprehend the current economic crisis.
- andr 15y agoIsn't Deutsche Bank the only bank with HQs still on Wall Street?
- microkernel 15y agoIs it just me or do you get a download forced upon you when you open the page? Mine is called 'ayUGOgFaCs8' and it's contents look executable.