The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the efforts of one particularly odious individual, who has attempted to capitalize on Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin’s death to spread his anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views.
An unauthorised Bindi Irwin website linked to anti-Israel material and the names of Federal Government ministers has been condemned by her late father’s friend and manager John Stainton.“It should be stopped – I don’t know how that’s allowed, I don’t know how a little eight-year-old girl’s name can be linked to anti-Israel propaganda,” Mr Stainton said today.Bindiirwin.com, set up by a Queensland man just hours after Steve Irwin’s death on September 4, appeared to be a tribute site to the Crocodile Hunter’s eight-year-old daughter.However, a string of politically charged domain names – including fuckisrael.org, philipruddock.com and amandavanstone.com – automatically redirected web surfers to the Bindi Irwin site.All the domains were registered to “Wayne Smith” of Brisbane, who also owns the terriirwin.org and bindisueirwin.com names.After the Bindi site was reported on smh.com.au this morning, all links were temporarily redirected to a Yahoo chat room, the “Unofficial Bindi Irwin Yahoo Group!”.In a post on bindiirwin.com, Smith says he is not a “cybersquatter” – a person who registers website addresses in the names of famous people or corporations with the aim of selling them for a profit.Instead, he says he is protecting the Irwin name by keeping the addresses from profiteers and he will transfer ownership of the domain names to Irwin’s widow, Terri Irwin, for free.“I’ve been advised by several people that I can make serious money from this domain and that I even have a convincing case in court to retain it,” Mr Smith said.“I won’t be doing that. Taking an eight-year-old to court over a domain name that I only payed $6.95 for is simply not my style. It’s only drawing interest because of her fame anyway … The main reason I purchased it was to keep it out of the hands of advertising agencies.”However, Mr Stainton, said it was a “very big concern” Bindi had been linked to “political propaganda”.“It’s abhorrent that anyone can register another person’s name in the first place – I don’t understand why the law allows it either.—-Mr Stainton said Australia Zoo had received an email from Mr Smith on September 11 offering to transfer ownership of the Irwin domain names.He also said a Wayne Smith had worked as a volunteer at the zoo for two weeks in 2001.Most of the bindiirwin.com site is dedicated to news articles and chat about Bindi, but a message thread, now closed, contains posts by the site’s administrator, “Wayne”, discussing “evil pig” Jews and “Zionist scumbags”.Wayne this afternoon admitted in a new post that he may have been critical of Israel following its bombing of Lebanon earlier this year.“I thought I had removed all the political postings from the forum when I gave it a wildlife emphasis,” he wrote.“Political debate is always heated. My opinions regarding the 300 children killed by Israel during their campaign against Lebanon were my own and I make no apology for them.”As the site’s administrator,Wayne deleted or modified some comments critical of the site that were posted this afternoon.He posted that the message board containing the anti-Israel comments had been previously closed and could not be accessed by users.“This is a profit free board by the way,” he wrote.On other websites, such as Wikipedia and several science and space-based sites, user names linked to a Wayne Smith have been banned for cyber-vandalism and inappropriate comments.
Now that’s what I call a croc.
