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You are confusing domestic law enforcement with alien combatants captured on foreign battlefields while engaged in combat with US forces.

No, you are dealing with people who are alleged - often by paid informants - to be alien combatants. These aren't POWs of definite affiliation who will be sent home at the conclusion of hostilities between our nation and theirs; they are either violent criminals, who need to be imprisoned for the protection of the innocent, or they are innocents, picked up by mistake or out of racism or xenophobia or for profit, who ought to be freed.

Given the fact that none of them even followed the laws of war to begin with...

We don't know whether they followed the laws of war or not. That's why we're supposed to have trials, to find out.

Open a history book and find out what happened to the Germans that were captured during the Battle of the Bugle while fighting in Allied uniforms.

And that example would be relevant to a Tajik fellow working in a library arrested by Pakistani secret service agents...how, exactly?

Could be worse. FEMA could "practice" Operation SCATANA. LOL

Well, the article got a few little facts wrong, but it was pretty good. It is just a re-write of http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,660700 ,00.html, but this article has more details http://www.mojones.com/news/feature/1994/01/fema.h tml. Here is a less biased article http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd0 1schwartz

FEMA will also be conducting tests of GETS 710-627-4387 access codes and coordinating with ham radio shortwave volunteers. (Do not call that number or the FBI will knock on your door) I hope they test NAWAS.

Raven Rock and Mount Weather will not be the only US underground areas busy during the drill. Olney, Maryland, will be busy also.

But, I would be worried if the Russians also have a June 19 drill at Yamantau Mountain in the Urals.

The National Guards and port authorities will also be coordinating efforts.

Odd, I can't find the code name for this June 19 drill and it is not mentioned on the FEMA calendar.

By the way, Iran is not planning on performing a traditional nuking of Washington DC. Iran is planning on performing an EMP attack that will wipe out almost all electronics in the US.

Such disaster preparations are important not just for nuclear attacks, but for events such as pandemic and asteroids. Rumor says that someone at NASA has reopened Project Orion, for lifting the US equivalent to the Tsar Bomba. Bye bye asteroid.

But before you go defending the BSA's actions, particularly with respect to enforcing Microsoft's "rights," maybe you best take a look at Overseas Invasion. It's an old article (1997 or 1998, I think), but one is inclined to wonder if this is still going on. (Never mind that it shouldn't have been happening in the first place!)

I once thought the BSA was a Good Thing. But after reading that article many years ago, the BSA forever lost any credibility in my eyes!

FWIW.

That could change quite dramatically if a few ISPs actually started to make their users aware of security and provide them with help (both helpdesk and software like ZoneAlarm). It happened to cars, for example. Manufacturers knew you were in big trouble when you crashed a car, but no one thought of telling the public, because it might scare them away from their cars. Look what the situation is nowadays: results from crash-tests (such as Euro NCAP) are heavily used in commercials for cars. The more security measures a car features, the better the public likes the car. Security sells!

So why wouldn't this be true for ISPs? Suppose I'm someone who wants to get a cable modem because I want to surf a lot and maybe run some other stuff. Not an advanced user, just John Doe who likes having a permanent and fast connection (and I think that's the larger part of cable modem users all over the world). Now two of my friends have normal providers who keep their mouths shut about whatever might concern security and two others have a decent ISP, that explains about what might happen and how to avoid it. Sure, the first two guys will probably have less "strange messages" to worry about, but I think I'd sleep a lot better if I knew that my connection had at least some sort of protection against the threats my other two friends don't even know exist.

And I think it would be better for ISPs themselves. After all, if their users have some basic knowledge of security and check their configuration every now and then, the ISP will not get involved in this kind of stories as often. Better for their name and the chance of probable claims from victims.

Again I want to point to a story from car history: the Ford Pinto. This car had the petrol tank behind the rear wheels. It proved that this was catastrophic when another car crashed into your back: the tank would burst and the petrol would instantly turn to fire because it was in immediate contact with the hot engine of the car that crashed into it. Ford didn't change it, because at that time security didn't sell. When it turned out that Ford had known that this car was dangerous and hadn't done anything to change it (because it was cheaper to pay a few claims than to change the design of the car), they got the public opinion against them.

I think the same goes for ISPs: security does sell, it's just that the general public needs to be made aware of it. I'm sure a lot of @Home users aren't too pleased to hear that they've been abused for criminal activities, while their ISP knew that but didn't act. So let's spread the word: using the Internet can be dangerous, just as driving a car can be dangerous. Don't be defenseless, do something about it!

author: Pulina Borsook
publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1891620789
pages: 256
rating: 8/10
summary: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech

I heard about Cyberselfish when driving around Vermont Memorial Day weekend from used bookstore to used bookstore. The NPR station was broadcasting an interview with Cyberselfish author Paulina Borsook, a writer who worked for Wired during its glory years. I was put off by the book's wretched title, but engrossed by the subject: the powerful undercurrent of libertarianism that flows through high-tech circles. I have been astounded but not amazed at the deeply adolescent and peevish libertarian attitudes that so many techies cling to, from gun worship to fear of governmental Internet regulation. Listening to Borsook speak intelligently and cogently about technolibertarianism made me want her book very much.

This month I garnered a copy of Cyberselfish, and I'm still appalled with the title (which comes from an eponymous essay for Mother Jones she wrote in July 1996, when such cyberlanguage wasn't so cybertrite). Cyberselfish is a book-length essay, in fact a somewhat thinly edited series of linked essays. There's a rush of immediacy and wit; for a random example, "Polyamory is the preferred term of art; it's gender-neutral, where polygamy and polyandry are not, and allows for all persuasions of partner choice (gay/straight/bi/it depends)." With the freshness and informality comes flaws. There is too much repeated material in the book. It's clear that essays written at different times have been cobbled together. Reading the book straight through is like reading some multivolume series straight through, in which the characters and history are rehashed at the beginning of each book.

Cyberselfish looks at a few specific examples of technolibertarianism in depth: Bionomics, cypherpunks, Wired magazine, and Silicon Valley's impressive lack of philanthropy. Each time Borsook exposes the compassionless, fearful, posturing, politically myopic core, without dismissing the good aspects of the high-tech culture and individuals. For example, she thinks fighting for privacy rights is good, but obsessing about it and descending into rabid, paranoid ranting on alt.cypherpunks is scary. She moves smoothly from the historical to the academic to the personal, deliberately exposing her own frailities and biases while she examines those of others.

To give a deeper example of the content of Cyberselfish, Bionomics is the use of biological (and particularly Darwinian) metaphors to describe economic processes, as popularized by Michael Rothschild (Bionomics: Economy as Ecosystem) and then the The Bionomics Institute (TBI). Borsook convincingly points out through both empirical observation and reasoned analysis that Bionomics boils down to economic libertarianism, where government involvement is wrong and the most cut-throat, efficient and entrepeneurial businesses are the best. Ecological metaphors are used in Bionomics only when they're useful and sexy: The ecosystem of Hawaii was used as a metaphor for the fragility of protected industries. Under Bionomics logic, Hawaii's beautiful, lush, peaceful ecosystem is to be derided. Bionomics uses metaphors to draw syllogistic conclusions. Doing that can be powerfully convincing but amounts to hand-waving and emotional appeals. Borsook cuts through the smoke and mirrors.

After a few years, the Bionomics Institute conferences were (literally) taken over by the Cato Institute, the premier libertarian think tank in the nation. The annual Bionomics conterences began in 1993. The 1997 conference was the Cato/Bionomics Conference; 1998, the "Annual Cato Institute/Forbes ASAP Conference on Technology and Society." TBI morphed into software-startup Maxager, which intends to offer Bionomical tools to companies. Borsook wonders what meaning can be ascribed to the success or the failure of the company. If Maxager fails, is it because it wasn't Bionomically good enough, or just because of the many uncontrollable factors that cause the vast majority of startups to fail? If it succeeds, does it validate Bionomics, or just the good connections the founder has with Silicon Valley venture capitalists?

The other chapters are just as interesting. Cyberselfish sharply describes all the archetypes of the technolibertarians, from the neo-hippie polyandric Burning Man attendee to the Lexus-driving, 100-hour-a-week, plugged-in entrepeneur with a sprawling bungalow in Santa Clara county.

One of the most crystalline passages in the book describes Eric Raymond's leaking of the Halloween Document, written by Microsoft program manager Vinod Valloppillil. The two clearly have vast ideological differences, the open-source cowboy and the Evil Empire functionary, but they're both hard-core libertarians, an entirely unreported fact. In Borsook's words, "It was rather like discovering that both a liberal and a conservative senator had both acquired their law degrees from Yale: no news here."

As I said before, the book is somewhat haphazardly put together, and nearly every sentence is to some degree contentious; even someone who agrees with her basic position will find reason to quibble. Cyberselfish doesn't come near to answering all the questions it raises. Borsook doesn't really tackle the paradox that "libertarians celebrate the cult of the individual" but Open Source celebrates the collective. What does it mean to be an Open Source libertarian?

I personally think it's somewhat unfair to attack those flaws, as they're inexorably part of Cyberselfish's loose, immediate, opinionated, and conversational style. It's kind of like how Slashdot's open forums allow for a review like this and the inevitable "hot grits" responses.

• They tried to buy Ingram Book Company, a wholesale book retailer. This would mean that thousands of independent book stores (the kind I like) would be dependent on B&N (their competitor) for books.
• The American Booksellers Association and two dozen independent booksellers have filed suit against B&N, contending that B&N "engaged in a pattern and practice of soliciting, inducing, and receiving secret, discriminatory, and illegal terms from publishers and distributors."
• B&N open up huge stores in strip malls, which are institutions I cannot support. Amazon.com doesn't do this.

• US Companies selling defective products overseas
• Mobil Oil involved in Indonesian massacres
• 4,000 babies die every day due to being bottle-fed, thanks to companies like Nestle

The Ford vehicle with the unfortunately-placed fuel tank was the Pinto.
According to this report, Ford decided it was more economical to pay the court costs for damages than fix the problem.

Let us see here...
There is some evidence that cellular phones may cause a number of maladies, including cancer, memory loss, a$$hole-ness and Republicanism...

If my thinking is correct (yah, right), these puppies will probably turn you into a forgetful Newt Gingrich, except more cancerous.

So there!
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"Cogito ergo es... I think, therefore you is." -The King of the Moon's Head,