Free Kareem
ALERT!! A serious injustice was committed. Please take action now! Kareem Amer, an Egyptian blogger who was imprisoned for exercising his right to freedom of speech, is still in prison and needs YOUR help!
Find out more information by visiting FreeKareem.org or by networking with us.
Latest News from freekareem.org- Hundreds of letters for Kareem
- Urgent request: Flood the Jail with Mail
- Security officers broke into Kareem’s prison cell, confiscated his letters and destroyed his writings
- Amnesty UK runs awareness campaign for Kareem
- Kareem in the news
Kareem has been in prison for: 1362 days.
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14 year old Kissing Girls Kicked Off Bus
A transit agency chief apologized Wednesday to two teenage girls who were kicked off a city bus for kissing each other.
The girls, both 14, said the driver called them “sickos” after a female passenger complained about their kiss. The driver then stopped the bus along the street and forced them off.
“Removing the girls from the bus was not consistent with our policy,” said TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen. “I want to reiterate that we welcome all riders on our system.”
The 64-year-old driver also violated company policy that requires operators to call for assistance before removing any minors, TriMet said in a statement.
The driver, an 11-veteran who was not identified, will be disciplined, TriMet officials said, though no details were released.
“TriMet sincerely apologizes to the girls and their families for this incident,” Hansen said in the statement.
The mother of one of the girls, Ronnda Zezula, welcomed the apology.
“The only thing I had a problem with is they didn’t really address why the driver broke those policies,” Zezula said. “He knew it was wrong. He’s been a driver for 11 years.”
She also said she wished the agency had made the extent of the disciplinary action public to show it will not “be just a slap on the wrist.”
Zezula said the family has been encouraged to consider a lawsuit, but they will “have to mull it over.”
Israeli Bikini Beauty Gal Gadot: Campaign Not ‘Pornographic’
Gal Gadot was Miss Israel 2004
The Israeli bikini babe whose racy picture has set tongues wagging from Tel Aviv to New York’s Turtle Bay insisted Tuesday that she was just using her assets to improve Israel’s war-torn image and didn’t intend to offend anyone.
The stunning former Miss Israel and model, Gal Gadot, said she is proud of her sexy photograph — part of a new tourism campaign touted by the Israeli Consulate that showcases a host of scantily clad Hebrew hotties.
“Obviously, I don’t think it’s pornographic, or I wouldn’t have done it,” said Gadot, 22, who’s starting law school in the fall.
She added, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Israel is a democracy and that’s what it’s all about.”
Her picture appeared on an official invitation sent out by the consulate in New York. It touched off an uproar in Israel, where several female politicians denounced it as the wrong way to promote the Jewish state.
Harry Potter “Hack†Claims to Give Spoiler Details of the Ending
Harry Potter “Hack†Claims to Give Spoiler Details of the Ending
You’ve probably never heard of Fyodor, or insecure.org. I expect you will over the next few days as the mainstream media begins to pick up on a Harry Potter story. Fyodor is a very gifted programmer who created an extremely valuable security analysis program called nmap over 10 years ago, and has been maintaining and improving it ever since. nmap is one of the most widely-used vulnerability scanners, and was even featured in the second Matrix movie (pictures are at the bottom of the insecure.org home page. Geek trivia: the versions of nmap, the target computer system, and the actual vulnerability are historically accurate.)
What does this have to do with Harry Potter? Well, Fyodor also hosts a number of extremely useful computer security discussion lists on his site. And on one of those, a day ago, someone posting as “Gabriel†posted a message entitled “Harry Potter 0dayâ€. (â€0day†is jargon for “zero dayâ€, and is used to denote a file — originally software, but more commonly now films or music — that is released onto the underground scene on the day of its public release. This kind of piracy gives bragging rights to the crackers.) In the post, Gabriel claims to give spoilers as to the ending of the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Interestingly, the post claims a religious motive (which fits with the poster’s choice of name):
We did it by following the precious words of the great Pope Benedict XVI when he still was Cardinal Josepth Ratzinger.
He explained why Harry Potter bring the youngs of our earth to Neo Paganism faith.
So we make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring.
More worryingly, the poster claims to have gotten the information through a malicious email sent to an employee of Bloomsbury Press:
The attack strategy was the easiest one.
The usual milw0rm downloaded exploit delivered by email/click-on-the-link/open-browser/click-on-this-animated-icon/back-connect to some employee of Bloomsbury Publishing, the company that’s behind the Harry crap.
It’s amazing to see how much people inside the company have copies and drafts of this book.
Curiosity killed the cat.
Even if this particular incident is not true, this illustrates the dangers that poor computer security can pose to a business, as well as an individual, because this kind of thing can indeed happen. When software is in a state where a single click on an email can allow a cracker access to the files stored locally on the computer (or on accessible network shares) you have a clear chance of this kind of thing happening. It only takes one foolish click, or error (or — the most dangerous — an exploit that triggers without this kind of action). Software security is boring, but the consequences of poor security can be devastating. Its marketing hyperbole aside, Apple does have a valid claim to significant superiority here, owing to Mac OS X’s Unix underpinnings.
If this incident is true, I don’t see it particularly hurting sales. Kids (and adults) will still want to buy the book, and this kind of information will be all over the web 1 minute after the books go on sale. It would however suggest the importance of quarantining critical information on a “need-to-know†basis, and storing it on a system not accessible to the public.
In any event, I don’t recommend reading Gabriel’s post. If true, it will ruin enjoyment of the book. If false, it will still do so, and you won’t fully realise until you get to the end. Either way, you are giving the poster publicity and credibility. If you really, really must, I will say that the post appears on the “Full Disclosure†discussion list, but that’s it.
LawFont
Thoof Invitations
We have 25 Thoof invitations to give out. Since we’ve received so many requests for them, we will have a contest. To win a Thoof invitation, register with EzineBlog.org, then write an original submission. These submissions will be then voted on, the top 25 authors will receive each one Thoof invite. As always, registered members will never receive any spam from us, nor will we ever divulge your registration information to anyone else.
Rules:
All submitted content must be original, no plagiarism.
Submitted entries can be your own musings or ramblings or write-ups of any issue.
Each registered user may submit as many entries as they like.
Only register ONCE. If you submit multiple registrations, and we find out, you will be disqualified and will not win a .
Bummer of a Tattoo
Bummer of a Tattoo
This guy had what he thought was a
great tattoo…
until he got arrested.
Now he’s…
THE MOST POPULAR GUY IN PRISON
The Politico Interviews Duncan Hunter
The Politico Interviews Duncan Hunter
Sunday, May 13, 2007 1:05 AM
The Politico has an interview with Duncan Hunter posted here. He focuses mainly on national security and protecting our borders. Very well done and worth your time.
Ideal Society
Ideal Society
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.†In 1776, on July 4, Americans affirmed that they were free of the long-held, yet patronizing view that ordinary people are inept at self-government. These pioneers boldly declared that government is not a supreme entity to which the governed are subordinate, but rather it is an instrument of the people, by which, and more importantly through which, the peoples’ desires are achieved by their own accord. Read more of this story…
Religion as a Cyber Society
The exponential growth of the Cyber society and Cyber culture within the Internet has not gone unnoticed by the “religious community.†As I write, church web sites are being published and electronic prayer groups zip by in modems and wire networks across the globe. Even isolated monasteries like the Monastery of the Christ in the Desert (see sidebar) are able to send their Benedictine messages from their cloister in New Mexico. New age religions also use the [virtual] soil of the Internet as the center of their “virtual church†(see end of the Cyber society Observation for links on religious web pages). With these in mind, it is safe to write that Religion has seamlessly incorporated itself within the realm of Cyber society. The presence of Religion in Net Culture is not an unforeseen trend. Although Religion and Modernity does not have the best relationship, Religion has learned that they need to conform with the current trends of technology to survive. Read more of this story…
Bullying Stories
“So, what is Bullying Long Term Effects and Bullying Stories Blog about. It’s actually been 28 years in the making for me. I am currently working on a documentary film about the long term effects of bullying. With this blog, I am hoping to collect your stories and start to share in what I believe to be the long term effects that being bullied or being a bully has on us as adults. This isn’t the kids perspective, but an adult perspective on how those informative years affect how we are as adults today: our fears, our attitude, and our memories of childhood.
Westboro Baptist Church
Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is a controversial U.S. church headed by Fred Phelps and based in Topeka, Kansas. It runs the websites GodHatesFags.com,[1] GodHatesAmerica.com and others expressing condemnation of homosexuals, Roman Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Swedes, African Americans, Canadians, Americans, and other groups. The organization is monitored by the Anti-Defamation League,[2] and classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[3][4] The group has achieved national notoriety in recent years due to its picketing of funeral processions for soldiers killed in combat, which functions as an extension of the Phelps’ anti-United States beliefs.
While its members identify themselves as Baptists, the Church is an independent church not affiliated with any known Baptist conventions or associations. The church describes itself as following Primitive Baptist and Calvinist principles.
The Church bases its work around the belief expressed by its best known slogan and the address of its primary website, “God hates fags”, and expresses the opinion, based on its Biblical eisegesis, that nearly every tragedy in the world is linked to homosexuality – specifically society’s increasing tolerance and acceptance of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. It maintains that God hates homosexuals above all other kinds of “sinners”[5] and that homosexuality should be a capital crime. Read more of this story…
