Posts tagged Guy Fawkes

Politics on Film

16
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in

And now for some­thing com­pletely different …

I’m going to give brief descrip­tions of some of my favorite movies with polit­i­cal over­tones. Many of them aren’t nor­mally thought of as being “polit­i­cal movies.” Some are sim­ply light enter­tain­ment. I deeply enjoyed them all, and would highly rec­om­mend them to any­one. I’m sure I’ll for­get a few, even some of my favorites (I can claim age as an excuse, but I’ve never had a good mem­ory). I hope you, dear reader, will share some of your favorites as well.

In no par­tic­u­lar order, here are some of my top polit­i­cal movies: (more…)

Fighting the Next War II

0
2 years ago
by Michael Weiss in

Peo­ple who appear in pub­lic as mem­bers of “Anony­mous” wear Guy Fawkes masks, as an homage to the book and film V for Vendetta

A while back I posted an arti­cle, in which I men­tioned that the next war is likely to have a sig­nif­i­cant cyber com­po­nent to it.

HBGary, a com­puter secu­rity firm with exten­sive United States gov­ern­ment con­tracts, was com­pro­mised a few weeks ago by the loosely affil­i­ated group called “Anony­mous.”

Fans of the graphic novel V for Vendetta (or the film adap­ta­tion) will rec­og­nize in the photo the use of the masks of anonymity asso­ci­ated with Guy Fawkes, who was part of a failed attempt to blow up the British Par­lia­ment in 1605. Fawkes made his attempt to over­throw the gov­ern­ment under a false per­sona. Hence the use of the mask is often asso­ci­ated with attempts to over­throw total­i­tar­ian regimes through the use of anonymity and solidarity.

The trig­ger for Anonymous’s attack was a direct, pub­lic threat made by HBGary’s CEO, Aaron Barr, to the Anony­mous group to expose their con­stituents. Two weeks ago, Peter Bright pub­lished an arti­cle on Ars Tech­nica out­lin­ing how the attacks took place.

(more…)

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