How I’m Learning Not To Take Anonymous So Seriously (feat. @YourAnonNews, @TorontoPolice & Sakura Saunders)

In (all of) Anonymous we (can’t) trust…

If you’re a regular reader you’ll probably remember my first interaction with Anonymous on February 13th. The genius who runs the @YourAnonNews Twitter account (w/1 million+ followers) tweeted that I like to try to get Canadian activists arrested on false charges. I explained to them they were mistaken, but the person running the account wasn’t up for discussion. This puzzled me, as I’d always been told that the people in Anonymous are in the world to make it a better place- not to be used as a tool for smearing people for political purposes.

I hadn’t thought much about it since then as nothing had come out of it but a nice bump in new readers- so, I looked at it as free publicity. Well, tonight @YourAnonNews has come on the radar once again, and I’m thankful to them for directing new readers in my direction. It appears that my article about Sakura Saunder’s cop baiting Barrick Gold protest has shaken-up a few feathers. It’s also taught me that I can’t automatically take people who self-identify as Anonymous seriously, not even if they have a million followers.

I smell a rat…

I also smell an idiot. Or, perhaps, a group of people who are so desperate not to have their criminal antics exposed  they’re willing to compromise their own credibility. In this case, they made the most seriously lame of all allegations I’ve ever seen. What @YourAnonNews posted on Twitter tonight really takes the cake:

So, the premise of their statement is that the Toronto Police have admitted, on video, that I’m an undercover officer- can I get my cheque now please? There’s also the tin-foil hat conspiracy angle in this deviously worded tweet, implying that the video’s been taken offline now, but the heroes at @YourAnonNews have saved us a copy! Deep.

If you haven’t yet seen my video on Sakura Saunder’s Barrick Gold cop-baiting protest yet, now’s the time to have a look. I included a clip of the video @YourAnonNews is referring to at 1:10 in the video where Captain Yarr focusses his camera on me and makes the implication I’m an undercover officer.

When Captain Yarr said to the cop “how come that undercover can be there” he was referring to why I was allowed to stand on the sidewalk and he wasn’t. The answer was simple, Yarr was part of a rabble of anarchists that were getting into a pushing match with the police. I was only a bystander filming the idiot’s antics, and wasn’t being aggressive towards the police. Duh!

Yarr was acting like an idiot. You can see on the cop’s face that he’s doing his very best not to (unprofessionally) burst out into fits of laughter. What Yarr, and apparently @YourAnonNews seemed to have misunderstood is that the cop was being patronizing when he responded saying “you just said it sir!”. Personally, I laughed at it the first time- it was amusing watching the joke fly over Captain Yarr’s head. But, in retrospect, I’m quite a bit disappointed. When this cop made a joke out of my being called an undercover he may just have exposed me to danger.

I’ll be honest, the first time that @YourAnonNews started tweeting nonsense about me I was shaken-up for a couple of hours. Not knowing what to expect, I was also on high-alert the next few days- tightening up security on my website, burning backups onto a DVD (can’t erase it that way), stuff like that. But this time, after reading their incredibly lame tweet, I could only start to laugh. That, and enjoy watching all of my new readers.

So, I responded:

And Toronto anarchist Zach Ruiter took only moments to retweet @YourAnonNews attack:

Only 130 followers Zach? You should buy some like Civilian Media did!

At this point, it didn’t take very long before a few hundred people watched the video I then responded with a link to the story behind it and picked-up a couple hundred readers. Free advertising, thanks @YourAnonNews! I’d also like to thank you for so transparently compromising your credibility at the same time you tried to slander me- I’d !never had been able to discredit your lies as well as you did on your own. Большое спасибо!

But, then, @YourAnonNews went into a temper tantrum and responded with a very angry tweet that indicated their intention to commit a crime against me:

So, when this person identifying as a member of Anonymous is exposed for their lies and incompetence,how do they respond? Simple, just threaten to publicly defame the person as a racist, sexist pig! And, of course include an #FTP (f##k the police). Is this what Anonymous stands for now? (I’m guessing not…)

I really don’t know enough about Anonymous to make any estimate of how much influence @YourAnonNews has over their (dis)organization- but, from looking at their Internet footprint, it appears they’re fairly high-profile. But they’re not recognized by all as saints- I’ve already had a few people introduce themselves and let me know they find @YourAnonNews to be problematic.

So I did some digging into @YourAnonNews’ list of people they’re following on Twitter- learning some interesting things. First, the person running this account is clearly sympathetic to anarchists, following people like Franklin Lopez- one of the world’s most prominent promoters of activist violence. I also saw Min Reyes there, but I already know that- we’ve spoken about it, Min tells me the account is run out of Canada.

Then I found this:

The @YourAnonNews account only follows 276 other twitter accounts- very low considering they’re followed by over a million (not that there isn’t any trickery in this, Twitter followers can be purchased, traded, etc..).  Prometheus Radio only has about 1,200 followers, so it was curious to see them being followed by @YourAnonNews. The significance of this is that I’ve written about Prometheus Radio before- it’s a Soros.org funded group that previously employed Sakura Saunders (she has a long history with Soros funded NGO’s) and was run out of a Mennonite church in Pennsylvania.

You can see where this is going…

I’m going to be very interested to see how all of this pans out. How people at Anonymous react to this situation will say a lot about their (dis)organization. If Anons start attacking me for having documented the truth (and without opening a dialogue) then I’ll personally know Anonymous cannot be trusted. But, on the other hand, if something constructive comes out I’ll be happy to see that @YourAnonNews is an anomaly.

Either way, it should be an interesting next few days.

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