Month: February 2013

I was reading Twitter last night. (I have no idea how else to say that. You really don’t read twitter you scan it.) Anyhow… while scanning the hundreds of tweets, several started jumping out at me.

The strange part was that these tweets were from Anonymous, or someone claiming to speak for Anonymous.

I thought to myself “whats Anonymous doing reporting the news?”

Not that it’s inconsistent with their charter, but most of the time you think of them as making news by hacking into governments or corporations that have drawn the ire of Anonymous.

These tweets were reporting meteorite explosions over Russia.

I went to the first link thinking I was probably going to get infected by some kind of virus.

But no, there was a great video all in Russian showing a really bright streak with a glowing head. thick smoke trailing after it.

I thought “wow” I wonder if it’s real? Call me suspicious of Russian websites.

There are so many Russian sites that seek to infect your computer with malware, I’ve gotten very wary of anything in Eastern Europe.

It’s a pity too, there are some excellent English language sites that report on world wide events with a lot less bias than the American media.

However, because I’ve been infected too many times from Eastern European websites I’ve stopped visiting any of them at all.

I’d forgotten how straight-up the Russian reporting usually is. 

The first video I saw was impressive and at first I thought it was a promo for some new SciFi movie.

The next videos dispelled that thought. It was amazing, there were obviously cell phone videos pouring into a Russian YouTube site.

They were all taken of the same event from different angles, it was obvious that this was a real event. Then the photos of the damage appeared.

I flipped on the TV in time to catch the 11 O’ Clock news. 

I was disappointed, not one word of the event.

We could see the overflowing toilets from the Carnival Cruise ship, when the cabin Christopher Dorner was occupying was still burning the local news was saying that his body had been removed and identified.

But in a situation where something “REAL” was happening and it was ever more obvious that the event could be verified… Not one stinking word.

This might have simply been a local news phenomenon but even CNN was silent.

This morning of course, the American news agencies are all abuzz, probably because of the damage and the fact that 900 people were at last count reported as injured. 

Anonymous, has been reporting other things too.

Things like contrary to the official police statement the cabin in the Dorner case was purposely set on fire.

Like most people, I dismissed the Anonymous report at first, but now even the local news is saying the police might have intentionally used weapons known to cause fires.

The Anonymous news items have been pretty egalitarian, and unbiased. They simply point to information and leave it to the reader to make up their own mind. No spin, just “hey, have a look at this.“

Does anyone else think it’s strange that a group of hackers is ahead of the curve on news stories and they’re publishing those stories reliably?

Our media tries to portray Anonymous as criminals, or disgruntled technology people. The network news makes Anonymous sound like a bunch of nerds hiding out in a basement creating problems and chaos for their own purposes.

Is that a true representation? I’m inclined to say no, maybe not.

I’m not willing to take everything Anonymous says and does as honest and true. But I’m willing to look at them in a different light. Perhaps Anonymous is just about information being free, unbiased, and presented to everyone.

It’s funny. I hadn’t paid any attention to anything that Anonymous said or did until recently when I kept seeing their tweets retweeted by others. I saw time and time again their uncanny accuracy in reporting so I started following them.

It’s been an education. If nothing else, Anonymous has made me think and question. 

Perhaps that’s their point.

Keep questioning, keep thinking, keep an open mind, keep learning, just because the TV or the computer says something is true doesn’t mean that it is.

You don’t have to trust anyone or anything just because they’re “Authorities” or authoritarian, you can make up your own mind.

Before you decide the world is flat, do the research! You owe it to yourself. 

After all “There be monsters here…”