Monthly Archives: February 2002

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Arab Americans Call on President to Insist Ashcroft Clarify Offensive Remarks

Given your dedication to tolerance and greater understanding, it is with some concern that we write to you about a matter of serious import. During an interview with syndicated columnist and radio personality Cal Thomas, Attorney General John Ashcroft is quoted as having made anti-Muslim remarks that could only serve to incite the very hatred you have worked so hard to combat. Commenting on faith, Attorney General Ashcroft reportedly said, “Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you.” This, of course, is a horrible distortion of Islam.

emphasis mine

New surveillance office run by J. Poindexter

How one of the two brains behind the Iran-Contra scandal this week became one of America’s most powerful men

Last Wednesday something strange happened. The American population was instructed to panic. Place themselves, that is, on a state of highest vigilance. Some cataclysmic act of terrorism would happen – within hours. But nothing terrible happened. Something creepy did. On Thursday there was an inconspicuous news item. John M Poindexter had been appointed to head a new agency “to counter attacks on the US”, such as Wednesday’s no-show. It is equivalent, in British terms, to Jeffrey Archer being made chancellor of the exchequer.

Safeweb Fix

Hello — Just wanted to inform you that we have completed the patch we promised,
and we have implemented the changes so that PrivaSec users can now turn off JavaScript
on their browsers and still have some functionality when surfing the Web anonymously.
This solves all problems pointed out in the paper by Martin and Schulman.

Regards,
====================
Sandra Song
Communications Director
SafeWeb, Inc.
(510) 601-8855 x108
sandra@safeweb.com <mailto:sandra@safeweb.com>

Nice followup to a previous entry.

Common Sense Copyright

Lawrence Lessig, my favorite lawyer (with Mike Godwin and Mike Wallace), has just launched a new project called Creative Commons that aims to facilitate the creation of legally sound legal that can be attached to creative works, enabling them to be released into the open, so to speak, without the creative author losing all rights to the work. For example from the article:

An artist might, for example, agree to give away a work as long as no one is making money on it but include a provision requiring payments on a sliding scale if it’s sold

It’ll be very exciting to see how this technology is embraced.