Latest news: all flights in the U.S. are grounded, and all planes were ordered to land at the nearest airport. One of the two towers of the WTC has collapsed (at least partially). According to the news, there can be up to 100,000 people in the WTC at any given time.

Terrorists have attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon by deliberately crashing planes into them. One of the planes that crashed into the WTC was a hijacked American Airlines 767 out of Boston, I don’t know about the others.

John Ashcroft’s First Six Months at the Justice Department: The Right-Wing Dream Team Takes Over is a report by the People for the American Way on Ashcroft’s first 6 months as Attorney General. It’s good to see some follow up after the initial furor during Ashcroft’s confirmation hearing. I can summarize the report in one sentence: he’s just as bad as I thought he’d be.

David Greenberg has an interesting piece on the history of the “Zionisim is racism” sentiment in the U.N.

Is there a more unethical company than X10? From their popunder campaign to their shameless enticement to voyeurism, these people are slime, slime, slime.

The Salon pledge drive continues.

If you thought the DMCA was bad, check this out.

Markets around the world are down this morning due to fears raised by the unemployment figures released last week by the Labor Department. At this point, can we turn the bleak economic landscape into a platform from which we can attack the ridiculous amount that CEOs are being paid, and even better, the idea that the corporate executives are only responsible to their shareholders? The Al Dunlap mentality has been in vogue for quite some time now, and it was hard to argue with when the markets were growing like gangbusters. Now that the largest legal creation of wealth bubble has burst, perhaps we can revisit the idea that corporations are best served by screwing their employees, customers, and community to the greatest degree possible in deference to quarterly results. When life gives you lemons, you may as well make lemonade, and the lemonade here could be attacking the “shareholders uber alles” dogma that currently rules the capital markets. Can we officially call that a failure yet?

This story I found at Slashdot was too good to pass up: Bobby Fischer may or may not be playing grandmaster level chess matches anonymously via the Internet. I don’t know what’s more interesting, that Bobby Fischer might be beating up on top level competition anonymously, or that some other person might be knowledgeable enough and good enough to pass for Bobby Fischer in online chess matches.

The Privacy Foundation has a report on the privacy practices of Monster.com written by Carol Dixon. I have not yet read it, but here’s the operative quote from the executive summary:

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blockquote> This report does not allege illegalities regarding the privacy practices of TMP/Monster. However, the findings in totality raise critical questions about the company