Song in My Head: Look here Brother....Who you jiving with your Cosmic Debris? -Frank Zappa

In Season: Shooting Stars, hyacinth

From Today's Oregonian:

Al-Qaida supporters hack into student's Web site
04/01/03
JEFFREY KOSSEFF

The Web site of a Portland State University graduate student has been targeted in a wave of Internet hackings supporting al-Qaida, attracting federal authorities and terrorism experts who worry the break-in may be more than a prank.
Files planted in Conrado Salas Cano's personal Web site housed threats against the United States, tributes to the Sept. 11 attacks and purported messages from Osama bin Laden. The physics student said the files were added without his knowledge or consent.
The FBI reportedly launched an investigation, and some cyberterrorism followers said it resembled attacks by the online propaganda unit of al-Qaida, the Islamic group led by bin Laden. But it is unclear whether the cyber-intruders represent a terrorist threat or are playing a joke on Cano, whose site explores theories about science and space.
Liquid Web, a Lansing, Mich., Internet service provider that stores Cano's site, said it contacted the FBI when it discovered the hacking about a month ago. The FBI began investigating the site and took control of the al-Qaida pages, removing them more than a week ago, said Jack Flintz, Liquid Web's security administrator.
Flintz said that according to Liquid Web's records, intruders used computers in Saudi Arabia to bust into his servers.
We consider it more than just a prankster bit," Flintz said.
Bill Murray, a spokesman for the FBI's cyberdivision, early Monday could not confirm the FBI's investigation.
"Generally, Web site defacements have to achieve a certain level of damage for us to be involved" because thousands of pages are defaced every day, Murray said.
Cano was stunned last month to receive e-mail messages from groups opposed to al-Qaida alerting him to the pages, buried within a folder in his personal Web site.

And to show that not all Muslims disappear in Portland, the Snoregonian offers this:

An Iraqi refugee hopes for Saddam's demise
04/01/03
MICHELLE MANDEL

BEAVERTON -- Mohamed Muhaisin, a slender 13-year-old with a quick smile who attends Five Oaks Middle School, remembers only fragments of the decade he lived in Iraq.
His parents remember everything: the arrests, the torture and the escape that led the couple and their young children to a refugee camp in Syria and ultimately to the United States.
Now Abdul-Ridha Olaiwi, 38, and his wife, Suad Hassan, 27, watch television daily, hoping that coalition forces will obliterate Saddam Hussein's regime.
And that soon, they will see their homeland.
"Maybe there is a chance to visit, if I can collect the money," says Olaiwi, seated on one of three sheet-covered couches in his modest Beaverton apartment. His five children watch cartoons on the tiny television, while his wife, who speaks no English, putters in the kitchen. Like her 11-year-old daughter, Hassan, she wears a hijab, or head scarf, in public.
Portland Community College has hired him to teach an Arabic conversation class starting next week in Hillsboro, but mostly, Olaiwi says, he must lean on public assistance, though he was a physics and science teacher.
It's been more than three years since Olaiwi, his wife and four of his five children fled their small town near An Nasiriyah in southern Iraq, where heavy fighting has taken place in recent weeks. The family headed north to Syria, where their fifth child was born.
Olaiwi says that Saddam Hussein's secret police repeatedly arrested, jailed and tortured him because he is a member of the Islamic Daawa opposition party. The party promotes a freely elected government that respects human rights and guarantees other freedoms, religion among them.