Operation Green Rights: Anonymous targets the Tar Sands

The ever-growing hacktivist group, Anonymous, has announced plans to target Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Canadian Oil Sands Ltd., Imperial Oil, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and many others in an operation they’re calling “Project Tarmeggedon.”

Anonymous, who was thrust onto the international stage after a coordinated protest against the Church of Scientology in 2008, discusses the plan for Project Tarmeggedon in a July 12 statement:

Anonymous’ Operation Green Rights calls your attention to an urgent situation in North America perpetuated by the boundless greed of the usual suspects: Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Canadian Oil Sands Ltd., Imperial Oil, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and many others.

This week, activists are gathering along U.S. Highway 12 in Montana to protest the transformation of a serene wilderness into an industrial shipping route, bringing “megaloads” of refinery equipment to the Alberta Tar Sands in Canada [more information / sign a petition].

Anonymous now joins the struggle against “Big Oil” in the heartland of the US. We stand in solidarity with any citizen willing to protest corporate abuse. Anonymous will not stand by idly and let these environmental atrocities continue. This is not the clean energy of the future that we are being promised.

Given the seemingly endless stream of secrecy surrounding the tar sands, from supressed reports to the exclusion of greenhouse gas pollution data to the media blackout concerning the impacts of the tar sands on human (indigenous) populations, it will be interesting to see what Anonymous uncovers.

Anonymous continues,

We will, over the course of the next few days, use the powers we posses to spread news about this scenario and the corporations involved. We are actively seeking leaks to expose the corruption that we all KNOW is beneath this. Anonymous will support the activists on July 13-14 when they initiate civil disobedience and direct action to confront this dire issue. We urge you to get involved. Montana and Idaho citizens, we ask you to join local protests and attend the Highway 12 rally if you are close enough! If you’re not, join us in the IRC listed below for our own good times.

The continued development of the tar sands is a major step backward in the effort to curb global warming. Anonymous will not suffer this without a fight, and Operation Green Rights will always support the rights of the people to live in an unpolluted world, and aim to help safeguard it for the future. One way or another.

Just prior to their announcement of Tarmeggedon, Anonymous began releasing data in another phase of Operation Green Rights, aimed at the agriculture giant Monsanto–a company that is obsessed with genetically modified organisms and forcing every farmer in the world to use their so-called “designer products.” Many of us, here in the west, consume them and we don’t even know it.

Of course, Monsanto is also the company behind the Bovine Growth Hormone rBGH; Aspartame, an artificial sweetner that has 92 different health side effects associated with it; and, among others, Agent Orange and Roundup, broad-spectrum herbicides well known for the toxic effects on humans. They are also largely responsible for the plague of farmer suicides in India’s cotton belt, a region better known today as the “suicide belt.” More than 5000 farmers killed themselves between 2005-2009.

You can find more information on Monsanto and what Anonymous uncovers during Operation Green Rights, at anonpad.org/opmonsanto

A massive public protest against the tar sands is being planned from August 20th – September 3rd in Washington DC. Details on the protest and more info is available at http://www.tarsandsaction.org/

Credit to Censored News for the initial report.