Mysterious posters popped up on trees and light poles along Avenida Pico, Avenida Del Mar and the downtown in San Clemente over the weekend, just as they have in other Orange County cities lately.
They advertise the “global revolution group” Anonymous and direct people to whatis-theplan.org, an equally mysterious site promoting Operation Onslaught, three-pronged worldwide protests
against corrupt corporations and government regimes.
]
As Adam Townsend first reported on Newport Beach Patch, Anonymous has also been linked to the “hacktivist” shutdown of PayPal and major banking websites after those sites refused to funnel money to Wikileaks. Anonymous also supported Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's publication of secret files from the Church of Scientology.
Federal agents arrested 14 suspected members accused of shutting down a website by flooding it with requests for service.
The San Clemente posters featured the Guy Fawkes mask from V for
Vendetta and tabs with the What is the Plan address.
“One Year. Three Phases. A World of Change,” reads the subhead beneath the site's name. Under the masked image that opened this post are the words, “Expect us,” while straddling the face are videos explaining what the movement is all about.
One video scrolls text in English and Spanish that says the idea that “democracy is now” was born at simultaneous demonstrations in 84 cities in Spain on May 15. The other, a “Hive Mind Production,” breaks down “The Plan” through an address to “the people of Earth.” That's who apparently launched the What is the Plan? movement on June 15, according to the narrator. It plays like something co-produced by the Church of Scientology and the Dharma Initiative.
Viewers are told, “Corporate bigwigs live the high life as they rape the land we all share. We grow up being told who to be. We have been consumed.”
Consumed ones are later directed to participate in discussion forums.
Despite the bad press for Anonymous, Whatis-theplan.org claims the group now seeks only legal and peaceful change with no hacking, violence, hate speech or criminal
methods. And like any good anti-corporate site these days, there is a link to the What is the Plan? shop.
You can't be a proper anarchist without the right t-shirt.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.