The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend. Maybe.

    In the wake of the Islamic terrorist attack last week on Charlie Hebdo and the murder of 12 of its staff members France, according to its Priime Minister Manuel Valls, has declared war "against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity.”    
    The rest of the world the world has stood in unity and solidarity with France in their resolve to fight terrorism. 
    The only problem seems to be that as of yet no one's come up with a plan of action.
     Or rather, no one did until the war effort was joined a few days ago by one strange, though perfectly logical ally:  Anonymous.
    For those who aren't sure exactly what Anonymous is - which is all of us - Wikipedia describes it as:
    "... a loosely associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. A website nominally associated with the group describes it as "an internet gathering" with "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives."  
    They're anti-establishment, anti-censorship, anti-internet regulation, anti-whatever anyone who calls him- or herself Anonymous chooses to be against.  The membership rules are that anyone who calls themselves Anonymous is Anonymous.  In other words, there really are no rules. 
     Though the original pursuit of the Anonymous was to pull internet pranks which they called "lulz" (their lingo for LOLs), their current pursuit seems to have evolved into hacking into and disrupting websites of organizations, individuals, or activities that they are against,  or promoting issues they support.

The Guy Fawkes mask from the movie "V for Vendetta" is their official image.  I need not worry that Anonymous might pursue me for breach of copyright in using their image in my blog, since they are against internet copyright laws.

   But whether the Anons, as the group members are called, are activists for social justice or cyber felons depends on which side of the issue you stand.
    They've done protest hacks of government agencies and financial institutions, which is bad, and of the Church of Scientology, which some say deserved it.  They supported WikiLeaks, which was mostly nasty, and the Occupy Wall Street movement, which was mostly well-intended.
    They've targeted child pornography sites, and the Westboro Baptist Church,  a group known for its for its hatred of gays, Jews, Catholics, and for its harassment of the bereaved at military funerals.
    They are against copyright law, which is bad for writers like me who want our work protected, but it was good  when they  organized a protest march in Columbus in support of Carla Hale, a 57- year-old gym teacher who was fired after 19 years from Bishop Watterson high school for being gay.

    ...which Theresa and I thought was unjust and unkind.
    A few months ago they took up the cause of Michael Brown, the black teenager who was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
    A a few days ago Anonymous leapt back onto the internet, made the  announcement,  "We,
Anonymous around the world, have decided to declare war on you the terrorists," and launched #OpCharlieHebdo with the promise that:
    "We will be crippling all terrorist outlet websites and terminating all terrorist social media accounts. We will dump personal information on every terrorist we come across. We will not sleep until we bring you to your knees".
    Since then Anonymous has been targeting terrorist twitter and faceboook accounts and has already brought down at least one French jihadi site, ansar-alhaqq.net.
    Some are cheering Anonymous on, some are willing to give these bad boys and girls of cyberspace the chance to step up and be heros, and some are declaring that Anonymous is out of their competence league, may only make things worse and are not to be trusted.
    Well, we'll see, right?
    In the mean time has anyone come up with a better battle plan?