Iran will not submit a film for Academy Award consideration because of  “an intolerable insult to the Prophet,” culture minister Muhammad Hosseini told INSA news.

The “insult” is the hideous piece of schlock filmmaking/BS propaganda The Innocence of Muslims which has provoked deaths, riots and unrest in the Middle East, as well as lawsuits in the United States.  A court in Los Angeles denied an actress’ request to have Google remove the film from YouTube.

Citing the failure of Academy Awards organizers to take a position on the incendiary footage,  Hosseini urged other Islamic countries to follow also boycott. Last year Iran won ran won its first Oscar in the best foreign language film category  with Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation.” According to Variety:

The country’s committee in charge of selecting Iran’s Oscar candidate had already picked helmer-scribe Reza Mirkarimi’s dramedy “A Cube of Sugar” — about a family wedding that turns into a funeral when a member of the groom’s family dies — for Oscar consideration.

By not submitting a film, Iran is kinda cutting off their nose to spite their face, as art and culture are often an ambassadors for goodwill which can open dialog (though obviously as seen by recent events, one asshole with a video camera and a computer can cause a world of pain).

Egypt and Libya may miss the deadline, which is October 1st, though Academy Award officials say the countries lack of entries is “probably not connected to political factors surrounding the Arab Spring.”

The Academy Awards ceremony, which airs February 24, is televised live in over 100 countries. So far no Muslim countries have stated they will block the ceremony’s broadcast.

In reaction to BART’s shutdown of cell phone service Thursday, Anonymous has taken to the Internet and begun #opBART and #opMuBARTek (a reference to the Egyptian president’s shutting down that country’s Internet service during protests) a  multi-pronged series of actions designed to protest the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s  stifling of  free speech. There will be a peaceful Anon-organized protest Monday at BART Civic Center Station at 5pm. Attendees are requested to wear either a red shirt or clothes with fake blood stains, and to bring video cameras.

BART has issued a statement which said, in part:

Paid areas of BART stations are reserved for ticketed passengers who are boarding, exiting, or waiting for BART cars and trains, or for authorized BART personnel. No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms.

No telling what BART would do if a carload of passengers suddenly put on Anon masks once riding.

Anonymous does not appear to be involved in the planning of last Thursday’s aborted protest over the Transit Police’s fatal shooting of a man in July of this year, and activated only when the cellphone service was shut off.  BART’s cellphone service shutdown was decried by the ACLU, State Senator Leland Yee and the Electronic Freedom Foundation-Austin, amongst others.

On Sunday, mybart.org was defaced with Anonymous’ iconic Guy Fawks (Epic Fail Guy) mask. BART had issued a press statement on Sunday morning saying that there could be disruptions to their web service.

In another action, some Anonymous person/s hacked into the BART database and dumped data, including users’ emails and passwords onto the BART website.  Some people have tweeted their objection to that action, one writing:

I dont support the leak. I don’t support “pickles” as a password either.

Good point. No credit card data was involved in the leak; however, it is always a good idea to use a different password for different sites (hence possibly the reason one person’s password was admin123). On their Twitter feed #opBART, Anonymous claims to have

emailed all the people on the BART mailing list (over 120k) on how to join tomorrows protest and why

Because user information was accessed and posted, the FBI has been called in according to the San Francisco Examiner, and there is speculation that cellphone service may be blocked again for the protest. The National Lawyers Guild will have their hotline in place for the protest, and demonstrators are advised to write down the phone number on their arms and/or memorize it in case of arrest or injury.

And while they were at it, Anonymous also defaced the California Avoid website, with messages including

Free Topiary

a reference to the jailing of an alleged Anon in England over various acts of  hacktivism.

With regards to upswings in hacking activities and the UK riots, Anonymous issued this statement:

We found thousands of messages that claim to be Anonymous, attributing responsibility for things we would never do and now it happens with the riots. Be alert to this. Do not allow Internet Censorship! An article in PC magazine shows that the corporate media is starting to ask the same question that the alternative media has been asking. Are the recent string of hacker attacks a false flag operations meant to drum up support to push through Internet censorship laws that the public would otherwise protest? Are the recent riots a false flag operations meant to drum up support to push through Internet censorship laws that the public would otherwise protest?

As BART’s website infrastructure is not at all connected to the computer systems that run the trains themselves, the web attacks did not result in any service delays. Additionally, there was no disruption to BART’s schedule and information site, bart.gov.

Anonymous computer hacktivists  landed on the Syrian government’s website (Monday morning 8/8/11 in Syria) http://mod.gov.sy/ leaving their logo and a message to the Syrian people in English and Arabic:

To the Syrian people: The world stands with you against the brutal regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Know that time and history are on your side – tyrants use violence because they have nothing else, and the more violent they are, the more fragile they become. We salute your determination to be non-violent in the face of the regime’s brutality, and admire your willingness to pursue justice, not mere revenge. All tyrants will fall, and thanks to your bravery Bashar Al-Assad is next.
To the Syrian military: You are responsible for protecting the Syrian people, and anyone who orders you to kill women, children, and the elderly deserves to be tried for treason. No outside enemy could do as much damage to Syria as Bashar Al-Assad has done. Defend your country – rise up against the regime! – Anonymous

The hack falls in the middle of Ramadan. It was up from at least 9:30 pm west coast time and is still up at press time. UPDATE: By 12:30 am west coast time, the Syrian government’s site was not responding, either because of high traffic or because the government had pulled it down.

The logo of a torso with a question mark instead of head explicates the idea that Anonymous is a headless (dis)organization; there is no leader, as well as reference the Sixties motto “Question Authority.” Anonymous came out of the 4Chan pages, a NSFW image sharing site, and began their activism staging global masked protests against  Scientology and that organization’s abuses of civil rights. Since the success of that campaign, the WhyWeProtest.net aspect of Anonymous has expanded to embrace the uprisings in Iran and fight against censorship and for free exchange of information. Many also take issue with what they see as oppressive copyright restrictions.

 

Anonymous hacks in support of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange included taking over the non-transactional pages of MasterCard, Visa and PayPal to protest the institutions’ refusal to process payments designated for Assange’s defense. The Swedish government website was defaced this year by Anonymous in support of Assange. Other government sites including those of Maylasia, Zimbabwe, Tunisia, and Egypt have also been attacked. And the Westboro Baptist Church was hacked.  Basically a bunch of people in an IRC chat room will discover they have an affinity on certain issues, recruit some other like-minded folks and go do something.  The internet–with the right tools–allows anyone to be anonymous/Anonymous.

Recently LulzSec/AntiSec, which emerged from Anonymous, have hacked into government and law enforcement websites, as well websites of security companies such as HB Gary, as well as Sony. A Portuguese man was arrested then released in the LulzSec investigation, while a member of the anti-Scientology branch of Anonymous in Sweden was mistakenly named by internet vigilantes as  Topiary, the alleged the head of LulzSec/AntiSec, after the arrest of a teenager in the Shetland Islands.  The English teen has been charged, resulting in a retaliatory hack of 70 law enforcement websites, compromising 10 gigabytes of information:

We are doing this in solidarity with Topiary and the Anonymous PayPal LOIC defendants as well as all other political prisoners who are facing the gun of the crooked court system.

The Syrian hack–which follows the hacks of other repressive states in the Middle East–is a major move for a  branch/few people/many (?) Anonymous, showing they mean srs bsns when it comes to freedom and democracy, and that for this bunch, their hacktivies are focused on more that just teh lulz. Other Anonymous activities include supporting the current large scale demonstrations in Israel and Chile, and  encouraging voting in Argentina’s elections last week.

(for a good, in depth look at Anonymous, check out this edition of The Stream from late June of this year. The Anonymous segment begins at 22:48 and includes a live interview with an Anon who explains the Anonymous philosophy and the hows and whys of Anonymous political involvement, as a well as discussion about new forms of democracy evolving out of social media and cyberspace.)