Spelling Bee Kid aims to Bring Back Deported VHP Rowdy

Today the New York Times is running a story about a thirteen year old scripps national spelling bee contestant Kunal Sah who aims to win the competition to raise awareness of his parent's stalled immigration case. It's the sort of quirky story that immediately pulled on my heartstrings because I have known many people to get stuck in an oppressive US immigration bureaucracy, humiliated and eventually deported back to their home countries.

Kunal's parents were Bihar natives who were seeking asylum in the states on the basis of what they perceived as persecution from their neighbors. See, Mr. Sah had been a rowdy for Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a fundamentalist Hindu outfit known around the world for its deep pockets and regressively conservative agenda.

Mr. Sah acknowledged in his application that he had been active in organizing a campaign against Babri Mosque, in northern India, because it was “built on our sacred land” and that he “actively participated” in riots intended to demolish.

After several years pursuing his case in courts and in front of immigration officials the Times reports that:

In denying him haven, immigration officials noted that Mr. Sah “had participated in the persecution of non-Hindus and thus was ineligible for asylum.”

While I feel for the son who has been separated from his parents by State powers, I basically agree with the decision. Why should the United States allow violent anti-muslim groups into the the country. This is the same outfit that helped plan and execute the riots in Gujarat, demolished the Babri mosque and continues a direct lineage of colonial "divide and rule" strategy as it sets one community against another.

Sah says he feels that Muslims in his community may target him for retaliation for his involvement in the VHP. I find this unlikely in itself, but while it could be true, I see no reason that America should protect perpetrators of hate crimes from other countries.

While the story has a premises with a good hook: "thirteen year old spells to get his family un-deported", the Times should think twice about running articles that are sympathetic to the struggles of violent fundamentalists from other countries. No matter how cute their sons' story's may be.

Bad News on the American Fascist Front

Bombislam.com is now up and running again.

Robert Sterkeson of Mesa/Glendale, Arizona has e-mailed me several times to make the point that he has been able to find an ISP to host him that does not censor hate speech. He's very happy about this. He has also included a dedication on the site's homepage that includes my mailing address in Seattle (but I don't actually live in Seattle, only collect my mail there). So needless to say Robert is acting a little threatening. My guess is that he wants people to send hatemail (or mailbombs) to me about Bombislam.

So, since Robert Sterkeson has once again violated normal ethical guidelines (as if running a hate site isn't enough) I thought it might be a good idea to contact his ISP a couple more times to ask them to shut down the website. Maybe you guys can help.

His new ISP is 1ST-AMENDMENT.NET which is a hosting company that says that is is all about free speech and will not censor content. However, in their Acceptable Use Section they state that the following two conditions are acceptable reasons for them to terminate an account:

#1 Threats: Use of the 1st-amendment.org service to transmit any material (by e-mail, uploading, posting or otherwise) that threatens or encourages bodily harm or destruction of property and which helps others to break copyright law by promoting warez software, music, movies and games exchange tools, memberships and lists.

#2 Harassment: Use of the 1st-amendment.org service to transmit any material (by e-mail, uploading, posting or otherwise) that harasses another.

Since Robert Sterkeson is in violation of both of these I think it would make sense for them to shut down the website once again. His website not only has innumerable threats against muslims around the world including several images of him shooting firearms at islamic effigies, but he has target personal attacks against me.

It would be great if you could write a few letters to the ISP to tell them how you feel about Bombislam.com. The address for the support people is: support@1st-amendment.org

Or you can file an abuse claim here: http://www.1st-amendment.org/support/index.php?a=add&cat=2

And, hey, if you want to drop a line to sterkeson himself to tell him in the nicest ways possible to shut down his site do so here:

Sterkeson, Robert
rob1337@hotmail.com
5510 W Pershing Ave
Glendale, AZ 85304
US,

Phone: (602)377-9890

I Killed BombIslam.com

A few days ago an Internet troll posted a short comment on my other blog Bodyhack that caught my attention, but not because he made a thought provoking and intelligent point. The author of the comment, Brian, hosted a website called BombIslam.com that compared the world population of Muslims as an aberrant strain of HIV that could only be cured with TNT and hydrogen bombs. Brian had been posting comments all over the Internet trying to drive traffic to his site, and was surprisingly good at garnering traffic. The site had been registered only a few months ago and according to his site meter he had over 20,000 hits.

I deleted his comment, but not before I checked out the website.

What I found was a long list of videos showing cartoon Arabs in compromised positions with animals, videos of the sites authors shooting Korans with rifles and Brian wearing a ninja outfit and posing with his gun. Interspersed throughout were long diatribes about what all muslims should be killed.

Here's a snippet of their hate speech:

Islam's army of madmen rode out of the deserts of Arabia. They raped/conquered and enslaved the minds of all the people in the area and to this day more than a billion people have been infected with the mental disease we know as Islam. I urge my fellow Americans to boycott all Muslim businesses and write your congressmen to stop the billions of dollars in foreign aid to Muslim countries, stop all future Muslim immigration, and BAN ISLAM.

And then there was this passage.

According to the demon worshippers, "Allah" is the one true God. Now Allah is pretty much Satan, but Muslims have been convinced that he is God. The pedophile and mass murderer known as Muhammed(may pig shit cover him) was a completely delusional psychopath

Needless to say, I didn't really like these guys. I thought about writing them a little message saying that they were idiots, but I figured that engaging these folks in open debate would be pointless. I decided that I could spread a little good will as one of the vast majority of world's sane American by doing what I could to shut down their website.

I logged their URL into the WhoIs database with the intention of finding out who registered the site. Not to my surprise, whoever Brian is, he didn't want to leave his contact details. I did, however, discover that they were located somewhere in Arizona and they were using a service provider called Tucows to host their web space.

I found a feedback form at Tucows and sent a short message stating that they were hosting a website that was clearly proffering hate speech and was not in compliance with federal guidelines that require website owners to register valid contact information. I suggested that they shut the site down.

It was a shot in the dark, and not likely to work. While free speech is still the rule in America, Internet hosting companies have the ability to decide what sorts of content they want to put online. I was hoping that the good people at Tucows were somewhat liberal in their viewpoint and would see BombIslam.com for what it was.

Later that afternoon I received this simple e-mail response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting the StartLogic Abuse Team.
We have addressed the issue.

Kind Regards,
StartLogic Abuse Team

I killed BombIslam.com

If for scholarly purposes you are interested in what BombIslam used to look like, there is still a Google cache of the site still up. The videos however went down with their server. If you want to send a short message to Brian at BombIslam.com expressing your condolences, or just want to say hi his e-mail address is rob1337@hotmail.com.

And so the story of BombIslam.com comes to an end. Their URL is no longer active, and a little piece of internet hate speech has been wiped clean.