Pretend Pino Is Spamming Hate Poems at Me

Some time ago Julio Pino, a KSU history professor and muslim convert got himself involved somehow with an obscure pro-jihadist blog. After a day or so of answering questions, Prof. Pino adopted a public relations strategy of relating to the public as little as possible. He stopped answering press questions, didn't respond to blogger emails, etc.

Since then, someone representing himself as either "Julio Pino" or "Assad Pino" (a muslim name adopted by Prof. Pino upon conversion) has occasionally sent out emails stirring the pot again. Often they are some attempt at poetry and always they spew hatred and celebrate death.

If you are new to all this, you may catch up on my writings here.

This week, I am the lucky recipient. The name on the email is "Assad Pino," though the address is assadleon@yahoo.com (normally I crawlerproof emails, but in this case, the penis enlargement, Canadian pharmacy and Christian singles industries are welcome to add Mr. Leon to their rolls.) The email celebrates the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq. Out of respect for those who served and their loved ones I won't reproduce Leon's scribblings, except to say that he manages three typographical errors over five lines of rhymeless doggerel.

By the way, the email is titled Diamond Dogs. Jihadists dig Bowie. Who knew?

Some Googling turned up the following. First off, Assad Leon had a blog going that Word Press shut down due to terms of service violations. You can catch the flavor of that effort with some web archive captures here. It's very much like the Lover of Angels blog ascribed to Pino -- reproduced news stories with incendiary headlines penned by the blogger and/or a comment or two.

That's all to the good for anyone interested in defending Prof. Pino. But then there's this curious bit. Someone with a biography very similar to the professor gave an interview to a Pakistani site in which he identified himself as blogger Assad Pino and talks about his "site." A site I can find nowhere.

Hmmm . . .