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[ECrownofFire]

Technically speaking, in Robin Hood's time, the government and the wealthy were the same people, if not the same concept.  That's kinda what feudalism means.

And the difference between that and the current situation is really in name only...

Edit note: This is rather exaggerated, I'm not quite that crazy

[SalmonGod]

Identity theft does happen all the time.  It's just not typically done en masse like this.  I've also heard it's very neglected by law enforcement.  My understanding is victims are typically forced to just freeze all accounts, beg for rollbacks, and move on without ever knowing who was responsible.

[ChairmanPoo]

The goverment and the wealthy tend to be strongly linked in pretty much any society you can think of, to be fair.

[mainiac]

Not to mention, I'm pretty sure what this particular conglomeration of Anonymous thinks they're planning is patently impossible.  I mean, if it were possible, not just for these goons but possible at all, to steal millions of dollars straight out of banks from the comfort of Mom's basement, I'm pretty sure somebody would have do it by now for vastly less politically-motivated reasons.  All the time, even.

Maybe they have a patsy insider who has given them inside information?  Having someone on the inside is pretty much the only way I could imagine them pulling this off.

[Heron TSG]

Hey look! I just linked an awesome song that has to do with Occupy Wall Street! It's pretty catchy, actually.

[SalmonGod]

Chris Hedges getting involved with Occupy outside of Harvard.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Actually a large-scale identity theft operation wouldn't be too much more difficult than some other Anon Ops in the past.

The difference is the degree of people affected. This would be perfectly keeping with Anon if there was some great trolling going on from the action, but to steal from random people and give it to the occupy movement just doesn't fit. Not only does it not make much of a point, but it doesn't even inspire lulz.

"Hey, we just randomly committed identity theft on a grand scale trusting people to do the right thing and forgive the debt we ran up in another person's name and gave the money to Occupy Wallstreet" just sounds off.

It's also way too specialized. Where's the use of the lesser drones? A real Anon op has tons of support. This sounds like something a very few individuals could do and then blame on Anon. It feels very false-flaggy.
An operation where they encourage everyone to pretend their identities were stolen for a day would be much more in keeping with their previous behavior. This though? I don't think it's a real Anon op.

[Criptfeind]

How can you blame something on "Anonymous" anyway? Anonymous is just whomever is going by that name at the time. You can't shift blame onto something that basically does not exist.

[SalmonGod]

This is looking ambitious.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Zangi]

How can you blame something on "Anonymous" anyway? Anonymous is just whomever is going by that name at the time. You can't shift blame onto something that basically does not exist.

Sure you can. Cause people as a collective in real life cannot giggle at the ghosties.

This could fuel the anti free internet fire...

[Aqizzar]

Some fascinating reading from the world of political commentary.  Frank Luntz, Republican media guru and among the men most responsible for poisoning American politics of the last twenty years, had a conference with the Republican Governors Association, where he gave them an interesting messaging symposium on how to talk about Occupy Wall Street and the economy in general.

Long story short, Luntz's assessment: taxing wealthy people is in fact really really popular, and the Republican party is boned if it doesn't minimize the sentiment as fast as possible.  Calling people who espouse it dirty lazy hippies isn't getting the traction it did in the 1960s, so it's time to start spinning spinning spinning.  I'm not even going to bother quoting it, because every single sentence is quote-worthy in itself.  The takeaway is that the guy the Republican party as an institution turns to for learning how to talk about issues is basically conceding that the American populace writ large does not trust his party to concern itself with anything other than providing for rich people.

I've said it before and it becomes more true all the time.  If "Occupy" has a purpose, it's to change the attitude of American politics.  As late as August, every politician and media outlet in America was obsessed with debt reduction at any cost, and it was up to the American populace to absorb whatever austerity it took to keep taxes, especially on the highest incomes, as low as possible.  Three months later, the things on everyone's mind are the (considerably more nebulous) concepts of income and tax disparity, white collar crime and justice, and national economic solidarity (i.e. job creation that isn't top-income tax cuts).  And the people whose job is to find ways to talk about these issues and diffuse them back to "suck it up so the wealthy don't have to" are finding all their old tactics running up against a wall.

[mainiac]

I've said it before and it becomes more true all the time.  If "Occupy" has a purpose, it's to change the attitude of American politics.  As late as August, every politician and media outlet in America was obsessed with debt reduction at any cost, and it was up to the American populace to absorb whatever austerity it took to keep taxes, especially on the highest incomes, as low as possible.  Three months later, the things on everyone's mind are the (considerably more nebulous) concepts of income and tax disparity, white collar crime and justice, and national economic solidarity (i.e. job creation that isn't top-income tax cuts).  And the people whose job is to find ways to talk about these issues and diffuse them back to "suck it up so the wealthy don't have to" are finding all their old tactics running up against a wall.

We are potentially at the start of something big.  Not just in terms of Occupy, but in the decades to come.  Young people don't buy the bullshit the baby boomers ate up.  The demographics are chipping away at the demographic lock that gave us the Regan revolution.  In the decades to come, this nations politics could move back towards traditional american equality and to a nation that is once again comfortable with the ideas espoused by the New Deal and the Great Society.  But it's all just potential and opportunity.  It takes something like Occupy to actually realize that potential.  It tells the political system which way the wind is blowing (and the political system is nothing if not flighty, willing to follow any wind).  And it reminds people that this shit is actually important and worth fighting for.  But only time will tell if people keep caring for the years and decades it would take to fix the system.

[Kogan Loloklam]

It's also a continuation of the "Arab Spring".

Same Causes, different country.
It just goes to show you that no Theocratic government is safe!

[Luke_Prowler]

Is it offical to call 2011 the "Year Of Rage"?

[SalmonGod]

It looks like Occupy is hoping to organize 1,000,000 people in D.C. on Jan 17th