Bad Guys Fighting Evil?

Anonymous hides behind Guy Fawkes masks

That seems to be the case. In case you've been exploring 1,000 foot caves in Popocataptl for the past three years, there's a vicious group of bloodthirsty murderers in Mexico who call themselves Zetas. Their pleasant exploits include regularly chain-sawing the heads off men, women and children and just about shooting anyone who so much as looks at them.

These are bad, bad people, flock -- they make the Einsatzgruppen look like a bunch of kindly young soldiers off to have a Sunday afternoon plink at a few Jews in nearby woods, with schnapps to follow.

Recently however, up has popped another group of not-so-bad guys, who call themselves Anonymous. They seem to be a motley crew of hackers dedicated to, well, doing whatever they want to do. Quote: "We [Anonymous] just happen to be a group of people on the internet who need — just kind of an outlet to do as we wish, that we wouldn't be able to do in regular society."

Well, that can be bad or it can be good, depending on to whom you're speaking. I myself think that it's about time.

Recently, apparently, they've decided to take on the Zetas. (I know, sounds like an L. Ron Hubbard novel, doesn't it? All we need is a few Engrams. (Boss Anonymous to be played by John Travolta.) I don't know how it all started, but apparently a member of Anonymous was kidnapped by the Zetas. The Zetas responded by threatening to post the names, addresses and home phone numbers of every corrupt cop, taxi driver, military officer etc. known to be aiding and abetting the Zetas (well, you can pretty much infer that the entire town of Juarez is just a suburb of Zetaville -- they should issue passports!)

So apparently the release of this information so has the Zetas' knickers in a twist that they released their Anonymous guy. But now Anonymous have upped the stakes.

They just don't like the Zetas, they inform us in this clever video, and they're threatening to do it anyway, just to see how many "law-enforcement" officers swoop in and arrest all the Zeta co-thugs.

And the Zetas are promising to kill ten people for every name exposed. Christ, if Anonymous exposed every name on the list, Mexico would suddenly become a very empty place . . . If there were a place to send donations to help Anonymous in this admirable quest, I'd leave ten dollars in the bank and give the rest to them.