Terror Supporter Teaching at Kent State (Updated)

I'd say that it was unbelievable that a follower of Osama bin Laden was teaching at Kent State, but I'd be lying. No, this is perfectly believable.

Here's what how Associate Professor Julio Pino describes his own website:

We are a jihadist news service, and provide battle bispatches, training manuals, and jihad videos to our brothers worldwide. All we want is to get Allah’s pleasure. We will write "Jihad" across our foreheads, and the stars. The angels will carry our message throughout the world.

The content of his website seems to be the stuff of treason. Some of it is nutty--conspiracy theories galore!--but a lot of it is out and out support of jihadis who are fighting Dr. Pino's fellow Americans in a very real war.

I'd agree with Dr. Mike Adams that Pino should be arrested--on charges of sedition and facilitating al Qaeda. I'm not a fan of torture, which Adams (tongue-in-cheek I hope) calls for in Pino's case, but I am a big fan of arresting those that support the enemies of the United States during a time of war. Townhall:

Many people believe that Julio Pino deserves to be fired because of his public statements about the War on Terror. I disagree. A simple firing is too light a punishment.

Dr. Julio Pino, for his decision to "provide battle dispatches, training manuals, and jihad videos to our (enemies) worldwide" deserves to be arrested and sent to an island off the coast of North America, striped naked, interrogated, and, if necessary, tortured to ascertain the extent of his involvement in assisting our enemies.

After we are done with him, he is free to return to Ohio. That is unless, of course, he is found to be something more than a professorial pansy posing as a genuine Jihadist.

Since that won't happen, I'd say that Pino has definitely exceeded the bounds of normal academic freedom. He should be fired. Immediately. Academic freedom is a license to criticize, but it is not a license to facillitate and encourage illegal acts. And if The Jawa Report was started for one reason, it was to expose the real role jihadi propaganda plays in the death and murder of so many around the world.

Here's Pino's website. It's not just vile, it's criminal.

Hat tip: Charles Johnson at LGF

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein responds to my demand that Pino be dismissed here. First, let me note that Jeff, as always, uses his mouth purtier than a $2 whore. Here is, I believe, the crux of his argument:

But I do wonder—at what point is it safe to begin punishing people for “encouraging” illegal acts (I’m reminded of the final “Seinfeld” episode, for some reason) as opposed to, say, active engaging in them? And is “facilitation” a matter merely of intent? Because the case can be made that illegal acts can be “facilitated” by information never meant to be used as such. So it remains unclear, from a legal standpoint, whether one would be “facilitating” simply by dint of collecting and transmitting information that is otherwise available, only in different contexts.

Make no mistake: personally, I believe the state of Ohio should be heavily scrutinizing this professor. Similarly, I wouldn’t find it at all troubling if some of our national security agencies wanted to a closer look at Dr Pino.

But I do wonder if, in the absence of using sedition and treason statutes (which we seem particularly loath to do), there are grounds for firing Dr Pino that wouldn’t run afoul of First Amendment protections.

There's much more than this--especially some important questions about the nature of Islamism itself--- so go read the whole thing. Personally, I don't see any First Amendment problems, but that's just because I'm not a lawyer. Which means when I talk about the Constitution, I'm talking about, you know, the Constitution, and not what lawyers in robes say---which is what passes as Constitutional law these days.

Posted by: Rusty at 11:09 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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