'Anonymous' puts central banks on notice, demands Bernanke resign

Decentralized protest group "Anonymous" has encountered many foes in the past: Sarah Palin, PayPal, the Church of Scientology, MasterCard, the Westboro Baptists and even the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, to name a few.

But now, one of the group's members has issued a call for perhaps their most audacious campaign yet: civil disobedience against the private central banking system that underpins all the world's industrial economies.

In a little-noticed video published Sunday, one "Anonymous" calls for the dawning of "Operation Empire State Rebellion": a "relentless campaign of peaceful resistance" against organizations that participate in they termed the "control" of large populations through pieces of paper and bits of data.

They also called for US Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's resignation.

It reamains to be seen whether this operation will succeed in drawing the support of other members of "Anonymous." It was also unclear what exactly they had planned, or even if they could prove to be more than mere annoyance to the world's banking cartels.

But then again, ostensibly the same group did take down MasterCard for a day.

However, as with most "Anonymous" operations, it was impossible to say whether this proposal came from a known member of the group, someone on its fringes or a source outside of "Anonymous" entirely.

The Department of Defense said recently it was opening an investigation into "Anonymous" after someone allegedly threatened to release the personal information of soldiers guarding Pvt. Bradley Manning, an American accused of leaking secret data to WikiLeaks.

Pentagon officials also said that "Anonymous" sought to interfere with communications at the Quantico, Virginia military base where Manning was being held.

The video below was published to YouTube on March 13, 2011.

Updated from a prior version for clarity.