Reply #99: Things are changing again now, though

[starroute]

The Great Recession has led to a revival of political radicalism, and a lot of the "Millennials" (boy, do I hate that term!) are very different from the Gen X-ers.

This is why I've been following the statements from Anonymous over the last couple of months. They're often juvenile, sometimes obscene, but at best they express a larger point of view than you're likely to find in most public discourse. For example, here's a message to NATO from last month:

http://circleof13.blogspot.com/2011/06/anonymous-message-to-nato.html

Anonymous and WikiLeaks are distinct entities. The actions of Anonymous were not aided or even requested by WikiLeaks. However, Anonymous and WikiLeaks do share one common attribute: They are no threat to any organization - unless that organization is doing something wrong and attempting to get away with it.

We do not wish to threaten anybody’s way of life. We do not wish to dictate anything to anybody. We do not wish to terrorize any nation.

We merely wish to remove power from vested interests and return it to the people - who, in a democracy, it should never have been taken from in the first place. . . .

You know you do not fear us because we are a threat to society. You fear us because we are a threat to the established hierarchy. Anonymous has proven over the last several years that a hierarchy is not necessary in order to achieve great progress - perhaps what you truly fear in us, is the realization of your own irrelevance in an age which has outgrown its reliance on you. Your true terror is not in a collective of activists, but in the fact that you and everything you stand for have, by the changing tides and the advancement of technology, are now surplus to requirements.