Earlier this month, Anonymous announced Operation: Nimr (#OpNimr), calling for the IOC (International Olympic Committee) to band the country of Saudi Arabia from the upcoming summer olympics.
As usual, Twitter has lit up with Anon-Hacktivist jargon; and equally as predictably, it hasn’t travelled further from there. Granted, it’s quite a viable operation, and if there’s anyone Guy Fawkes should be calling out at this point, it should be the US/Saudi Petrodollar alliance that has perpetuated a market of suppressed technology and alternative energies since its inception.
Quoted from a press release given by the Anon faction operating under @OperationNimr:
“Anonymous are calling on the IOC to ban Saudi Arabia from this year’s Summer Olympics. Anonymous and Operation Nimr ‘#OpNimr’ are calling on the International Olympic Committee to ban Saudi Arabia from the upcoming Summer Olympics in Rio. On January 2, 2016 Saudi Arabia executed and crucified 47 people, several of whom were children at the time of their arrests.”
Prominent and peaceful Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and Arab Spring activists Ali Saeed Al Rebh, Mohamed Al Sheuikh, and Mohammed Al Suwamil were among the executed. Arab Spring activists Ali Mohammed Baqir Al Nimr, Ali Saeed Al Rebh, Abdullah Al Zaher, Dawoud Al Marhoon, Mohamed Al Sheuikh, and Mohammed Al Suwamil were teenagers at the time of their arrests. In 2012 an online movement was started to ban Saudi Arabia from participating at the London Summer Olympics because of the country’s suppression of women’s rights. Saudi Arabia lifted their ban and allowed two female athletes to compete for the first time.
“We feel the IOC banning Saudi Arabia from this year’s Olympics for their human rights atrocities will secure the freedom of the three remaining Arab Spring activists. We hope added attention on Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses will help spark another online movement to ban Saudi Arabia from the Olympics.” – Anonymous
Concise, succinct, and poignant, yet it doesn’t help to alleviate any of the cynicism that many in the online research community continue to hold towards the collective, due to US Intel infiltrations, an uncharacteristically heavy cooperation with the press media, and a lack of any sort of action from the collective in recent time. While it seems assured that there are many authentic hacktivists still out there with the Guy Fawkes mask on, the persona of Anonymous has effectively become nothing more than that sarcastic loudmouth kid on the playground, always making jokes and complaints, yet hardly doing anything more.
However, it is good to see some sort of focused effort from Anonymous after their questionable “operations” of internet censorship with #OpISIS, #OpTrump, and the like. With this in mind, it should be noted that while The Last American Vagabond cannot speak for the specific names of the individual activists referenced by Anonymous, it does appear that Operation: Arab Spring was a CIA-facilitated movement meant to provoke unrest for a variety of reasons. Since Anonymous holds Arab Spring as one of its greatest sources of triumph and prestige, what exactly does this mean about the integrity of the collective on a grand-scale?
An Anon who has kept a close correspondence with The Last American Vagabond, username TheBoycottSnake, describes that “hosted attacks” or “operations” that have action with a designed end-result, have already become something of a legend within the IRC chatrooms (which can be considered the dingy internet tavern that anyone with a Fawkes face meets at). This is to say that after the massive, paralyzing sting operation that LULZXMAS turned into at the beginning of 2012, there’s far too much potential US Intelligence infiltration when two or more individual parties get together and plan a hacktivist operation online. At this point, it’s a game of a cat-and-mouse through layers of encryption: Can the one eluding detection keep his information encrypted faster and longer than the hunter can decrypt his signal, copy his information and send a SWAT van to his house? TheBoycottSnake and other independent sources corroborate that no Anon is currently prepared to take those odds.
So, sadly, despite the great message that #OpNimr spreads, it will probably remain nothing more than a message, which means that it will still be missing half of the equation–unless, of course, the IOC actually decides to take the advice of Fawkes, which unfortunately seems quite far-fetched at this point.
Sources: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/anonymous-calls-international-olympic-committee-ban-saudi-arabia-human-rights-violations/, https://www.rt.com/news/316621-anonymous-targets-saudi-websites-nimr/