When hacktivist Jeremy Hammond was arrested last week in Chicago as a part of a wide government investigation in the online group Anonymous, his mother, Rose Collins, called him a genius without any wisdom.
“Again?” she asked when informed by the Chicago Tribune that her son had been arrested for hacking. “I love my son, but he is a genius with no brain. He has a 168 IQ, but he has no wisdom.”
In an attempt to educate the world at-large about the dangers of Anonymous, Rose Collins reached out to Townhall Finance and spoke about Jeremy and Anonymous. She ended by asking a few questions of her own in an open letter to Anonymous.
Collins, who lives in Texas, says that she has not been in contact with her son since his arrest, but has looked for him with the Bureau of Prisons online. Jeremy’s father, Jack, aged 55, is in jail in lieu of bond, says the Chicago Tribune. He is “charged with three counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse,” writes the Trib, “one count of grooming and one count of indecent solicitation of a child, according to DuPage County State's Attorney spokesman Paul Darrah. He faces up to seven years in prison for the most serious charge.”
Rose told me that while her son detests Glenn Beck (“He called him a liar”), Jeremy confirmed to her that information that he gathered by hacking buttressed Beck’s claim that some groups, including Anonymous, are working toward trying to “bring down capitalism” in the United States. And while Collins says that her son never told her that any members of the federal government were involved “Jeremy also went to UIC and he bragged that he met with Bill Ayers.” Ayers is the controversial retired professor from University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) who used to be part of the Weather Underground, a 1970s far-left radical group responsible for bombings and other criminal acts in the United States. Ayers and Barack Obama were friends in Chicago, served on the same boards and Ayers even contributed money to Obama’s first campaign.
Collins also said that Jeremy claimed that he was working with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, a black supremacist group in Chicago, as a part of his work with Anonymous, to promote an Islamic takeover of the United States.
A Letter to Anonymous
By Rose Collins*
Hi. Lulz to you. I’m Jeremy’s mom and I have a few questions. Answer them or not, but at least think about it.
1. If you are legion, do you have attorneys among you? If so, please send one to help Jeremy. I certainly don’t blame you for his behavior. He is (theoretically) an adult and knows what he is doing.
2. If you do not forget or forgive, are you in agreement with Jeremy regarding imprisonment of those convicted of crimes? He is against it for several reasons, including rehab futility, slave labor, training people for new crimes, etc. If you do feel the way he does, what will you do if/when you meet up with Sabu? Does he deserve to go to jail? If you would rip him to shreds as I have considered doing myself with my long, sharpened, poisonous, badly manicured fingernails, doesn’t that smack of the same injustices you have railed about for instance, in San Antonio? How would you be able to wear a mask superior to that of the government you detest?
3. Speaking of Sabu and our government, have you considered the possibility that Sabu himself was a victim? I cannot figure out why the feds would out him if he indeed had turned against his comrades and worked with them. It certainly won’t make protecting him any easier for them. I have seen it blamed on FoxNews, but how could they have accessed that information without a little haction on their part? And don’t you consider them liars anyway? Here’s a theory: The feds found a way to become stowaways on the Luhlzboat and got the dirt on LuhlzSec without his knowledge. And when they did arrest him, since he wouldn’t cooperate, they put the word out complete with pictures, just to distract You. In this scenario, you won’t find him because he’s busy making his little kissy-face to the fishes that are eating him piece by piece. Further, if the data stolen from Stratfor was indeed held on a server controlled by the FBI, the data is definitely compromised and therefore useless to the cause of transparency you wish.
Look, I’m a nobody and my mask is smaller than yours, as is my power. Like you, I don’t trust the government as far as I can spit a rat. Some of your shenanigans I approve of, such as the Westboro Baptist church, who gives all Christians a bad name, and the KKK morons who make all white people look like racists. But who decides what is good and bad? The government? OWS? The tea party? Westboro Baptists? You? Who are you to decide that all government secrets must be exposed? Let the wrong information out and we may all have to learn Mandarin soon. Keep working with Farakkhan’s Nation of Islam to end capitalism, and when you win that battle come over to my house and shoot me in the head, because I will never wear a burka. Better yet, free Jeremy and send him. He can even use my Baretta. He got a few luhlz when I told him that, but these people have more faith in their beliefs than I do in mine. No offense intended to Muslims, but there are those who would force their religion on a flailing nation.
My final question/point is this: I watched a video on YouTube saying that those who caused our economy to shatter for their own enrichment must pay. I totally agree! The question is, who are they? I believe (could be wrong) that you and the OWS crowd think it was the Wall Street Fat Cats. I personally believe that while their hands are not clean, they did not cause the housing crisis which was the first domino to fall. Look into history and you will see that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (probably others too), had much more to do with it. Back in the 70s, these cartoon characters, along with ACORN and other protest professionals forced banks to give loans to people who could not pay it back or be labeled racist organizations. FYI it is no longer a race issue. My brother, who is of the peachy persuasion, also lost his house during the first year or so of the fallout. Here’s the question. How come you buy into one part of the answer, but fail to investigate other possibilities? Could it be that Anonymous is also susceptible to propaganda? I’m sure I have been as well, but I do try to see other views to a question. Can you?
Please don’t come at me bro-nonymous. I’m just trying to understand. More importantly, help my son!
*Editor’s note: After receiving the letter from Mrs. Collins via email, she asked me to make several minor edits to the letter of not more than a dozen words, more or less. Otherwise, the letter is unedited.
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