by anonymous
Friday, Jan. 25, 2002 at 11:49 PM
raisethefist has been shut down.
LOS ANGELES, JAN 23 2002 - Heavily armed with high-powered machine guns, shot guns, and hand guns, the FBI, Secret Service, and Los Angeles Police Department sorounded the founder of raisethefist.com in his house. The founder was currently asleep, woken up by a relative who said fbi, police and undercover's were currently up and down all of the streets, with they're eyes focused on the premises. Raisethefist.com founder aproached the door were 2 FBI agents demanded that he step outside. Within seconds a swarm of FBI raided the house with automatic weapons and shot guns. Additional police and fbi also stayed on the front lawn, around the house with a door baracade and additional weapons. "armed and ready".
FBI and secret service entered the house, seizing all servers and political liturature. Raisethefist.com was currently being ran within the founders room of the house, over a computer network. The room was literarly ransacked, and all equipment, disks, cd's .. etc. were boxed up, loaded into a truck and seized until further notice.
Since 1999, raisethefist.com has been under extensive government monitering. At times, Raisethefist.com has recieved over 100 hits from the U.S Department of Defense in a single day. The FBI, police department, NSA (and who else) continuesly monitered the site on a daily basis. Even government's from the UK, Canada, Lavtia, Belgium, Egypt, Finland, and Australia monitered the site continuesly. The FBI had also previously intercepted all packets going through the DSL line hosting the site, and have seized additional accounts being used by the site.
In yet another successfull attempt to silence our vioces, Raisethefist.com, an anarchist/activist independent media/collective has been shut down by the secret service.
"It's not yet known at this point if the site will be back up. As of now, we have nothing. No more servers, no more network, nothing. My room remains completly ransacked. My neighbors remain shaken up by what happend. I most likely won't be getting any of the equipment back. They also took alot of my political litature. Apparently, they're excuse for shutting it down was the 'militancy' portrayed on the site. This is not true. This was an excuse. This same 'militancy' they were concerned about is portrayed on at least a thousand other web sites across the internet, and they havn't been touched by the federal government, with the exception for remote monitering. Raisethefist.com was progresive. It was going somewhere. Kids started creating clubs in their schools called 'RaisetheFist'. People started utilizing the collective as a powerful resource for the activist/anarchist community. The federal government has been investigating me, and the site very closely, long before 9-11, and long before such militancy was even portrayed on the site. They knew the site had potential, that it was turning into something more than a site, but a strong collective utilized by activists throughout the world committed to social justice. And that's become a crime. Justice has become a crime. Freedom has become a crime. Anyone activly disagreeing with policies of the U.S is now automaticly rendered a "terrorist" in the eyes of national security.... Where raisethefist.com will go from here, I don't know. Based on what i've been told, i'll most likely be in jail, so most of my focus will be towards getting an attorney."