Bending Truth

Mission Accomplished?

2009-01-13T21:06:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Post (Jan-13, 2009):President George W. Bush says history will be the final judge of the success, or lack thereof, of the Iraq War.Bob Woodward, the investigative reporter who has authored four books on Bush's presidency, agrees that the legacy of the war has yet to be determined. He calls the conflict a "war of choice" that hasn't come to a conclusion."As we know the war is

2004-07-19T04:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I updated this blog. As it probably will be again but I was correcting a typo pointed out to me by a reader so I thought I might as well publish this email I received recently from William Boyd - one of the people I previously named as prime movers behind the riverSbend smearblog. This is probably about as close to a mea culpa from TeamTroy as we're ever going to get

2004-02-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

Evil Genius Obviously I have greatly underestimated my foes. I would never have guessed the truth - that Troy and pals are geniuses at psychological warfare. When I logged on today I discovered that someone had ingeniously subscribed the bendingtruth hotmail address to the mailing list for Newsmax - for anyone who doesn't know this is an extremely conservative leaning news service. What

2004-02-05T07:58:00.000-08:00

Brief Update on Fake Threats Just as a brief follow up to the last piece in which I suggested that Troy, William or another of the team had posted comments here misrepresenting themselves as staff of the company TeamTroy www.teamtroy.com, and suggesting I was "slandering" them. As I strongly suspected no individual from the company has responded to mails I sent to the addresses these

2004-01-27T12:38:00.000-08:00

Any Similarity To Persons Living Or Dead... This is kind of funny. As regular readers will know to save time on trying to identify individual members of Troy's cohorts - his pals from soc.retirement who helped him with the riverSbend smearblog - I have named them collectively as TeamTroy for some time. So when one of them writes a silly comment on this blog I can just write "TeamTroy" wrote as

2004-01-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

Pretty On The Outside... Don't worry, this is still basically the same site. But since - with the demise of the riverSbend smearblog - this blog content-wise has become fairly redundant, (apart of course as a kind of rage outlet for the anti-social urges of a couple of unseemly old gents), I thought I should at least give visitors a slightly prettier facade to look at as they stumble through.

2004-01-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

Trolling, Trolling, Trolling... I note with some degree of satisfaction that my increasing success at spotting and unmasking the fake nyms used by TeamTroy in the comments sections on this blog has seemingly caused them to abandon any attempts to fool me. Instead they are now simply scrawling gibberish and nonsense in some comments like spoilt brattish children who have stumbled on a box of

2004-01-12T07:17:00.000-08:00

Salam on Riverbend I did receive a short but gracious reply from Salam Pax over the weekend on the subject of his acquaintance with Riverbend. He confirms Riverbend's story about their acquaintance on a couple of points. "Riverbend sent me an email quite some time before the war. It freaked me out, I thought she was the secret police. Then I was not sure she were in Baghdad (questions about a

2004-01-10T08:28:00.000-08:00

Riverbend on Salam As I mentioned in the comments here, at Ken Bell's suggestion I emailed Salam Pax to ask if he could clarify how well he knew Riverbend, and thus could he vouch once and for all for the fact that she is an Iraqi. This of course to counter the claims of a couple of pestilent commentors (who like to give the impression they are large in number by endlessly using different nyms)

2004-01-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

Has it Really Come to This? It seems hard to believe that just a few months ago - when this blog was set on exposing and ridiculing the smear activities of a disgruntled GOP activist in the US intent on undermining the voice of a newly liberated Iraqi, even then some people (not many but some) said it was a waste of my time. What would those people say now? It seems the blog has degenerated

2004-01-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

So Many Idiots, So Little Time... I note after perusing my comments on haloscan that not only did WKS reject my call to attempt to show themselves to be a genuine, non TeamTroy affiliated poster when asked. In fact he continued posting here using the name George (numbskull used the same email address for both names). That may not be proof beyond reasonable doubt that WKS and George are

2004-01-07T06:14:00.000-08:00

Good News For TeamTroy on the Asia Blog Awards Just kidding, fellas... Riverbend trounced the competition. These were the final standings as listed here. Baghdad Burning - 941 votes healing iraq - 342 votes Salam Pax - 330 votes What an amazing vindication of the riverSbend smear campaign. (snigger). Anyway while it would be obviously unbecoming of me to gloat, it is nonetheless

2004-01-07T05:54:00.000-08:00

Bouncing Stats Eagle-eyed/obsessive readers may have noted my hit counter has been acting a bit peculiarly lately. This isn't my fault. Apparently problems at gostats.com caused them to lose a large amount of member data. This is why it went down from over 10000 to 0 sometime over the Christmas period. Out of pure vanity I added back 10000 entirely artificially though I know it was in fact

2004-01-06T07:19:00.000-08:00

A Better Place To Attack Riverbend Bending Truth is/was intended to expose and undermine the riverSbend smearblog culprits. It was never intended to support every single item that appears in Riverbend's blog as fact. It believes Riverbend is a genuine Iraqi blogger but that is pretty much as far as it goes. If people wish to criticise her blog and its details this is not the place for it. I

2004-01-06T06:45:00.000-08:00

WKS and the Idiot Ordnance Pt II I received by email a tip from a reader who suggested I might have been hasty in adjudging WKS as a directly involved member of TeamTroy just because he consistently posting moronic defences of the aims of the riverSbend smear blog in the comments section here. This person said that WKS was a "well-known idiot in the alt.impeach.bush newsgroup" and that they

2003-12-28T12:36:00.000-08:00

WKS and the "Idiot Ordnance" WKS you may note you are the first commentor here to have fallen foul of the guidelines I laid out in the Dec 16th entry "PLEASE NOTE - This comment was posted by an active member of the riverSbend smear team", thus you have in a sense been "quarantined" - having that warning placed below your comments, and assumed to be one of TeamTroy (I shall belatedly christen

2003-12-28T11:35:00.000-08:00

When Salam Met Riverbend... Ken posted something in the comments relating to Riverbend's relationship with Salam and how well they know each other: "[Salam] posted this to his blog on the 3 August 2003: "People, I have the most amazing surprise for you, well for those who have been reading the blog before the war. do you remember [Riverbend]? she's in Mosul now she is OK but she had to quit

2003-12-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve Update I didn't think I'd have time to do anything PC-related today. But Mrs AtBendingTruth is thoughtlessly putting a big damper on all my holiday plans by lying in bed late at the moment trying to sleep off a heavy dose of the flu. Women, eh! I don't know... So anyway I cast a glance over the Asian Web Awards, Best Iraqi Blog and noticed that Riverbend is doing extremely well

2003-12-23T06:31:00.000-08:00

Did Christmas Come Early? I'm hesitant to leap to any judgements about the current non-activity at riverSbendblog. I'd been away from my PC all weekend until yesterday evening when I discovered emails in my mailbox starting from Sunday afternoon saying that the smearblog appeared to be down. Now Blogger does have occasional glitches and Bending Truth itself has sometimes been inaccessible

2003-12-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

More Tenacity from the Cockroaches There is currently a poll being run for best Iraqi blog at this location Eagle-eyed viewers may note that Riverbend (Baghdad Burning) is doing pretty well, but also that River's Bend has a decent supply of votes. Call me crazy but is it really possible 60 people think River's Bend is the best Iraqi blog there is? God knows a lot of people dislike Riverbend.

2003-12-18T06:31:00.000-08:00

Team Troy Scores (Yet) Another Own Goal In the most recent entry on the riverSbend smearblog, TeamTroy has reproduced another batch of comments from an Iraqi blog including a couple I initially found both intriguing and troubling: I got an email earlier today saying that there is too much Riverbend bashing occuring on some blogs and that I should go and make trouble at them. Alaa's, Zeyad's

2003-12-17T08:04:00.000-08:00

Inside the Mind of a Serial Liar Yesterday TeamTroy (daJudge) posted in the comments here the following shameful (and semi-literate) excuse for their behaviour: "In fact all who does post on the Blogs and News Groups do so with a fictitious name, in addition they in some cases post under names previously used by other posters. The whole thing is a sham and hiding go seek game." As frequently

2003-12-17T06:06:00.000-08:00

Update on Comment Warnings I posted yesterday how I intended in the future, to give Troy and his cowardly contingent a helping hand towards being brave enough to put their own names to their comments by adding the message "PLEASE NOTE - This comment was posted by an active member of the riverSbend smear team" at the end of any comments they post on my site under their variety of psuedonyms.

2003-12-16T12:43:00.000-08:00

PLEASE NOTE - This comment was posted by an active member of the riverSbend smear team Obviously for a long time, there have been a number of apparently "independent" commenters appearing here to offer rather shallow and illogical arguments in defence of Troy's activities. Today we have a couple of new ones Pam and dajudge. Unfortunately, due to extreme stupidity these people tend to leave big

2003-12-15T10:02:00.000-08:00

More Honest Riverbend Foe Calls Troy "Coward" A very regular poster to the comments section of a number of Iraqi blogs, Cherice Baye, could never be accused of having a pro-Riverbend bias. In fact Cherice has never made any secret of her dislike for the Iraqi girl blogger and, in fact, for Bending Truth as well. However Cherice is one of those people intelligent and principled enough to know

2003-12-12T07:29:00.000-08:00

A Fuller Picture As the riverSbend site becomes more and more open in its basic "We Hate Riverbend" message it has taken to collating negative comments about Riverbend from other locations. Troy and the boys of course remain entirely oblivious to the reality that it is perfectly legitimate to criticise someone with whom you don't agree; while it is completely illegitimate to pretend to be them

2003-12-12T06:57:00.000-08:00

Troy and the Boys Might Find This Interesting Typosquatter pleads guilty to luring kids to porn sites "A pervert who tried to lure kids to pornographic Web sites by registering misspellings of Net sites likely to be popular to kids faces a lengthy prison sentence. " [...] "Under a plea bargaining arrangement, Zuccarini has agreed to go to jail for between 30 to 37 months for his crimes. " [.

2003-12-12T06:38:00.000-08:00

Troy's Boss Confesses - "We were wrong" They sure took their time about it. And it wasn't exactly announced with a fanfare, but here in the comments on the riverSbendblog Sordo (Troy's mentor) finally let a little piece of reality into his crazy, paranoid and very, very stupid world: "I think I change my mind on the origin of the Riverbend blog. Considering the Subversive (sic) activity of the

2003-12-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

The Real Reason This Blog Started Anyone with a braincell who reads this thread will see my conversation on Usenet in October with "Diego Gastor" over the bridge was 100% cordial and non-judgemental up until the following comment was made by Troy/Diego "I think river, http://riversbendblog.blogspot.com/ has found herself an American boyfriend because her attitude has taken a 180 deg. turn lately

2003-12-10T07:03:00.000-08:00

Mocking the Afflicted (again) Anyone still following this sorry saga may have noted that in comments on the riverSbend smearsite, on Alex's blog and here there have been a couple of dubious Troy apologists Charles, Yenshui and Gordo who have first popped up pretending to be independent voices and then under the tiniest bit of pressure have suddenly switched to talking about what "they" (the

2003-12-09T06:27:00.000-08:00

Low Comedy In the comments Gordo/Sordo writes: "Why don't you just change your name to the Rambeler, as that is what your Blog Posting does. Speak your peace in fewer words, it might be easier to read." Gordo, no offence but the borderline illiterate are going to have trouble reading practically anything. If I were to cater my blog towards your idea of what is "easy to read" it would consist

2003-12-08T08:58:00.000-08:00

More From the Comments David asks (jokingly?) of Sordo's vile comments "Extraordinary quotes! He speaks like a very learned scholar and I would love to read more, can you direct me to the quotes origin?" Sordo posts regularly on soc.retirement. He does not archive his posts, as I mentioned earlier, so you basically need to catch them when they are hosted on a news server. Some time back I

2003-12-08T08:55:00.000-08:00

Anonymous Revision Lately we have been graced by a true iconoclast. Daringly naming themselves "anonymous" this individual, (both here and in similar comments on the riverSbend smearsite) is apparently of the opinion: "You are wrong as to what the intent [of the riverSbend smearblog] was all about. I think it was always about the contract. Where is the $50 million dollar contract? "

2003-12-05T12:46:00.000-08:00

Words of Wisdom Our recent visit from Sordo, Troy's idol, makes me think now would be a good time to provide a little peek into their cozy world. These are a few choice quotes from Sordo. He doesn't archive his posts, which suggests even he is not proud of them, and which might make me slightly uneasy about posting his thoughts here. On the other hand there is this from the man himself,

2003-12-03T06:28:00.000-08:00

For Your Information - Diyala Bridge Documents Sorry - no $50 million dollar contracts here. I have long been somewhat conflicted about commenting on this matter as I'm afraid that it could open the floodgates for me to be asked constantly to fact-verify every word on Riverbend's blog. I won't, can't and shouldn't even attempt to do that. But anyone left following the whole riverSbend affair

2003-12-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

A Legend Appears From the comments, Gordo outs himself: "Hope it is not getting to hot in the kitchen for you.You don't seem to understand, They did not reveal all of the errors made in the Riverbend blog that shows that it is fake. One of them is, Power Grid schedule / Blog post time. Compare them and you will see there were posting at a time when the power was off. There are more, They might

2003-12-01T08:51:00.000-08:00

The Worst Defence is a Really Pathetic Offence We really shouldn't laugh but... ... one of Troy's buddies from his soc.retirement, a man called William Boyd (but also going under the nym Freddy Sharp) has uncovered this earthshattering revelation which will shake all Riverbend's fan's faith in her veracity to the core. After months of painstaking research, harnessing sometimes the combined

2003-12-01T08:33:00.000-08:00

Late Breaking News: Glasnost Deferred John Gorenfeld who may be remembered as one of the prime movers behind the campaign to tell the truth about the riverSbend smearblog, writes in the comments recently that he has been banned from commenting on the new comments section on the riverSbend blog. I feel a little slighted as Troy has not barred me. On the other hand he hasn't barred any of the

2003-11-26T11:01:00.000-08:00

A New Era I see Troy is now actually allowing comments at the riverSbend blog. He isn't even deleting those that are critical of him. It's like Glasnost all over again.

2003-11-24T11:23:00.000-08:00

Riverbend Gets New Domain As Riverbend mentions on her blog she has now got the domain name www.riverbendblog.com. Hopefully that will lessen the confusion between her blog and the fake one. I also note riverSbendblog has plagiarised and printed an attack on Salaam Pax by a conservative writer. Troy's also posted at the top of his blog Where is that $50,000,000!! "NEW DIYALA BRIDGE" Contract?

2003-11-21T07:54:00.000-08:00

On Cybersquatting Also from yesterday's comments, AJ asks what does cybersquatting mean? dictionary.com: cyber-squatting The practice of registering famous brand names as Internet domain names, e.g. harrods.com, ibm.firm or sears.shop, in the hope of later selling them to the appropriate owner at a profit. The classic offence of cybersquatting to my recollection originated in the eighties or

2003-11-21T07:13:00.000-08:00

From the Comments A couple of points were raised by "Gordo", who has written to object to some of Riverbend's comments on the US Operation Iron Hammer. BendingTruth takes no editorial position on the contents of Riverbend's blog, that is simply not our ambit. We accept at face value that she is an Iraqi and thus has a right to speak and be heard as an Iraqi. We disavow that right in Troy at

2003-11-20T09:42:00.000-08:00

What Kind Of A Person... I just said I'm not going to google on every single one of Troy's blog entries to discover the source, but here's one I just noted on riverSbend that I really think speaks volumes about Troy. This is the entirety of Troy's Remembrance Day Entry (posted following Nov 11 it replaces a very big flag Troy had featured) The American Flag Flew Here All Day in Remembrance of

2003-11-20T08:53:00.000-08:00

State of Play on riverbendblogS Just a couple of words on the current situations on Troy's most recent blog at riverbendblogS. (To be perfectly clear I don't really believe he's responsible for Just Around the River Bend. It's much too well-written and mature sounding). riverbendblogS now features on the right-hand margin a picture of a gaunt, dark-skinned man holding a somewhat come-hither

2003-11-19T13:10:00.000-08:00

Troy Finds True Love Perhaps it's a little early to be sure, but it seems new romance has brought a little ray of sunshine into Troy's life. Hopefully the healing power of love may serve to lessen some of Troy's troubling inner rage. Here he writes lyrically in what is presumably his latest fake Riverbend blog, Just Around the River Bend Monday, November 17, 2003 This weekend was the best

2003-11-19T08:03:00.000-08:00

Myths That Aid Troy II: "Everybody knows..." ("Freedom of Speech for Grown-ups" can be considered Part I in this series) Funnily enough this myth was first raised just a few days after the blog began. On Monday Oct 28th it was brought to my attention that BendingTruth had been discussed in the comments section of Zeyad's HealingIraq blog. In those days the blog was a little less clear in its

2003-11-18T11:37:00.000-08:00

More on Troy Another Iraqi blogger hits the airwaves and like a bad smell Troy is there promoting his blog thusly Omar, I join others here in welcoming you to blogging. I know you will enjoy your freedom of speach. Don't let anyone stop you or try to make you change. They will try, don't listen. I guess it's no wonder Troy has such a difficulty understanding freedom of speech when he isn't

2003-11-18T10:18:00.000-08:00

Thank God for Polite Disagreement I don't want to give the impression that I believe per se that anyone who has a word to say against the BendingTruth campaign is a nasty hypocrite or a moron. It is simply, quite honestly that most of them are, and are extremely willing to demonstrate it. And anyone who passes a disrespectful here comment like "ASSHOLE" can expect to be treated like one.

2003-11-18T07:11:00.000-08:00

On The ACLU From the comments A Constant Reader: "If any genuine ACLU members are defending Troy, they may be interested to read comments he made on the ACLU in the newsgroup soc.retirement. Here are a few: [Snip of Troy's comments insulting the ACLU] Thanks ACR, and as I think you have at least half suspected I was having a little bit of fun. I don't genuinely think these people clamouring

2003-11-17T08:14:00.000-08:00

Freedom Of Speech For Grown-ups Just as the right to vote gives you the right to put your own name on the ballot and not someone else's. So freedom of speech does not give you the right to impersonate someone else, and then misrepresent their opinions. It saddens me (though it no longer surprises me) to see the grave difficulty some partisans have in grasping this simple fact, and to witness

2003-11-17T07:52:00.000-08:00

Let's Play a Game... ... we'll call it "Spear the Hypocrite". First let's imagine that someone, an active member of the ACLU in the US, decides to set up a blog called healing_iraq (note the underscore). healing_iraq is designed to look exactly like the blog of popular Iraqi blogger Zeyad, copying the format, and claiming to have been written by an Iraq-based dentist. But the healing_iraq

2003-11-17T07:06:00.000-08:00

Success! I've been away from my PC all weekend but I note Sam's blog at Hammorabi no longer links to the riverSbend smear blog. I haven't heard back from Sam himself, but can only speculate that I was correct to assume he did not realise the riverSbend history when he posted the link, and like all reasonable and decent people when he found out he was appalled and took steps to distance himself

2003-11-14T15:11:00.000-08:00

Alert and Call To Action I mentioned below how Troy had posted in the comments section of new Iraqi blogger Hammorabi. Well I was more than a little shocked to later see that on this page linked as an "Iraqi Blog" is our odious friend's blog at River's Bend. In no real sense is riverSbend an "Iraqi blog". It's not even really a blog, as most people would understand the term. And while Troy

2003-11-14T13:47:00.000-08:00

Lifting The Manhole Cover – the origin of a smearblogger Part I Events of recent weeks have dimly called to my mind a science fiction episode of some sort I saw on TV in recent years. (Now there's an inauspicious opening sentence if ever I've written one, but please bear with me for a while). In this story individuals aged backwards, they died looking like human children, but were born

2003-11-14T10:54:00.000-08:00

Couple More Anti-riverSbend Testimonials A Brooklyn Bridge Riverbend's gift for gentle understatement is one of the things I like about her: when she truly howls she has compelling reasons (unlike me, who may howl because I'm simply pissed off). In her situation, I would have tried to deprive "dear Troy" of some very personal body parts. Michael Totten.Com There is also a riversbend, which is

2003-11-14T09:43:00.000-08:00

He's Still At It In the comments section of new Iraqi blogger Hammorabi, this turned up on Nov 12: Hammorabi, Welcome to blogging. You are off to a good start, enjoy. (Note) Most of your links don't work because they have this "!" in their address. River's Bend | Email | Homepage | 11.12.03 - 10:31 am | # Need I say that the email and homepage links here were to the faker's versions not to

2003-11-13T06:54:00.000-08:00

Anti-riverSbend Testimonials I have collected from the web a number of negative commentaries about the riverSbend smear campaign. I found it useful to post some of this on Usenet when Troy began again promoting his smearblogs. If anyone comes across any other similar testimonials feel free to send them in and I will add them to the list. John Gorenfeld exposes perpetrator of fake site: A lot

2003-11-13T06:38:00.000-08:00

So I Guess Troy's Not All Bad... Wading through an inbox of undelivered junk, as has become de rigeur since BendingTruth started successfully turning the screws on poor Troy, I uncovered a slightly unusual item this morning. It was an email from AdultFriendFinder.com (apparently "the world's largest sex and swingers personals site"), and stated: Dear Visitor, We noticed that you didn't

2003-11-13T06:14:00.000-08:00

From the Comments... Paul: If it's possible to block by IP address, then I guess that's how he prevented me from posting any more comments directing readers to the real Riverbend site. Yes. I've actually learned a few things by copying Troy. The only reason I started this anti-Troy thing as a blog - transferring my investigation of the sources of all Troy's stolen material from a Word

2003-11-12T06:53:00.000-08:00

No Comment. But An Invitation to Correspond As of yesterday evening it appears that Troy is no longer accepting comments on the riverbendblogS It seems odd that he did this now, since compared to my comment writing of before yesterday's notes were comparatively innocuous. For anyone who missed it for a couple of days there had been only one comment on the blog: A wonderful blog keep up the

2003-11-12T06:39:00.000-08:00

From the Comments... A Contstant Reader: The detail Riverbend provides on daily life in Iraq is compelling and leads me to believe she is "real". It would be difficult, if notimpossible, for someone who was not in Iraq to fake this. One can only consider how quickly any efforts to pretend to be an Iraqi woman fell apart on the fake Rivers sites. And on this subject, one of Troy's apologists in

2003-11-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

Troy Mocks American Flag Could it be that rogue anti-American activist Troy has insulted the US flag on this Veteran's Day? Even though his site is specifically run to attack American and universal human values like free speech and freedom of expression, to undermine the laudable aim of liberating Iraqi citizens from the grip of oppression, Troy has chosen today of all days to falsely represent

2003-11-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

Online Journalism Review Mentions riverSbendblog Link: Many do believe that Riverbend and Zeyad are who they say they are. Chris Allbritton, a freelance journalist who wrote the Back to Iraq Weblog, says he has corresponded with Riverbend by e-mail and believes she is a woman writing from Baghdad. He points out that someone put up a fake version of her Weblog with the name "Riversbend," but was

2003-11-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

Troy Pretends to be an Arab Here someone using the nym Atta (atta@bagh.dad) is promoting the riverbendblogS on Usenet as follows: A Gift from American President Bush to Iraq http://www.riverbendblogs.blogspot.com/ The U.S. Senate gave final congressional approval Monday to an $87.5 billion measure for Iraq and Afghanistan, a package largely mirroring President Bush's request of eight weeks ago

2003-11-10T07:09:00.000-08:00

From the Comments Section Rachel, a Brit in London "In the UK, if someone publishes another's name and address on the web (without that person's permission), s/he is in breach of the Data Protection Act, and the law will descend on them like a ton of bricks. Don't you have a law like that in the US?" Quick answer: I don't know. Does anyone know if there's a law against publishing someone's

2003-11-10T07:02:00.000-08:00

This Just In... Following an all-night session of the Bending Truth laws and ethics committee, a judgement has been handed down that, based on the following factors: a) the name has been widely released on other forums across the web; and b) the name was used on the web by the culprit himself as recently as last month promoting the fake site we need not feel bound to continue referring to

2003-11-10T06:53:00.000-08:00

Increased Denial of Service Attack Unfortunately the attention attracted by the Bending Truth campaign has, it is now beyond doubt, led to some more low, underhand tactics by anti-free speech tactics by "Diego Gastor" and/or friends. Increasingly this mail box is being filled with 140K+ size "undelivered" messages. And similarly large "Microsoft security patches". One correspondent, HJP,

2003-11-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

Call Me Stupid... but I've just added the functionality for any reader to do just that. Yes, a mere couple of hours after I indicated how much fun I'd been having at "Diego's" expense by posting fake comments on his blog, I am giving him the opportunity for him, or indeed anyone else, to do the same on mine. Of course I have asked many times on these pages and elsewhere for "Diego" to get in

2003-11-08T10:24:00.000-08:00

More Flesh on the Bones I recently received an interesting email from someone called Nancy Evans, who gave me permission to publish some illuminating information about "Diego" (She used his real name but I have altered it to "Diego" as is currently the policy on this site.) There is a newsgroup soc.retirement which I read occasionally, and one of the posters is "Diego". He lives in Texas, is

2003-11-08T09:59:00.000-08:00

Freedom of Speech Under "Diego" Regular readers will recall that I have been using the comments section of riverbendblogS to post little notes to "Diego" to let him know just how much trouble he's managed to get himself into thus far. I have noted several other fans of the real Riverbend have also availed themselves of the facility. Of course "Diego", who despises American values like free

2003-11-07T13:16:00.000-08:00

Comrade Diego Bunkers In Finally. My God. Finally. I can't believe it took him this long but at long last Comrade Diego has figured out that if he keeps linking to sites to steal their graphics, it is very, very easy for me to let the site owner know, and for them thus to alter their site to kill his link. Finally, Comrade Diego has the had idea, which would have occured to the slowest

2003-11-07T08:09:00.000-08:00

Diego Sells Out On New Country. Turns Commie Another U-turn by our man! It looks like he may have got served up some stale croissants this morning, because Diego has cut his ties to France, and taken his allegiance on walkabout again. Talk about a fair-weather friend! As of this morning "Diego" is once again linking from both riverSbendblog and riverbendblogS to the cpa site by using their

2003-11-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

He's At It Again Unbelievable but true. "Diego" has found himself a new nym and he's again promoting his sites on Usenet. Message-ID: <3FA90292.EB472EF3@buba.de> From: bedu@buba.de Organization: - X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens,alt.politics.democrats, alt.politics.republicans,talk.politics.mideast,

2003-11-06T13:03:00.000-08:00

On Blogger And Evasion of Responsibilty I had until yesterday avoided directly contacting Blogger over Diego's shameless antics using their facilities. I knew that Riverbend had been told to put any complaint in writing so I didn't see much chance of me, a party not directly affected, having much influence. But yesterday when Wendy McElroy contacted me to ask for my help in taking her

2003-11-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

Diego Turns Back on US. Switches Allegiance to France As readers will know, for the last several days "Diego" has been displaying a flag on his site directly lifted from the CPA-Iraq website. Readers will also know that after contact with me Steve, the webmaster of the site, became rather keen to distance himself from the smearblog, once he understood its anti-free speech, anti-Iraqi,

2003-11-05T14:03:00.000-08:00

More From Centcom I have recently received another very amiable email from Steve the webmaster of the CPA website. He agreed that my point - that his graphic ought not to be included on an anti-free speech, anti-Iraqi site - was a compelling one. He's said he'll try to email "Diego" at the potentially live email address I have for him to ask him to remove the flag from the riverSbend smearblog

2003-11-05T13:17:00.000-08:00

Dark Clouds Overhead for Diego I think every blogger probably harbours some traces of egomania, and I'm afraid I can't claim to be an exception. It seems I may have fallen victim to this complaint in recent days. I say this because I really believed that no one, or at least no sizeable contingent, could have existed who might visit the riverSbend smearblog and yet not know about this one at

2003-11-05T08:09:00.000-08:00

Our Next Target. And Contact From Centcom! Today Diego took down Wendy McElroy's photo and replaced it with this one. It's a book cover featuring a picture of a young Iraqi girl. I'm not sure if it was a genuine stroke of... intelligence that provoked him to take it from what appears to be a non-English language website. Perhaps "Diego" thought that I'd be unable to contact the owner. But

2003-11-05T06:09:00.000-08:00

Another Retreat A quick glance at the fake riverSbend's blog this morning reveals that the photograph of Ms McElroy has been removed. Interestingly a check at the link "Diego" was using confirms that it is still live. In other words on this occasion "Diego" was not discouraged from using the picture by a broken link as has been the case with the ArtForAChange, youthNoise and Leon Sparx

2003-11-04T07:49:00.000-08:00

Fox News Contributor Disassociates Herself from Diego As Bending Truth pointed out yesterday Diego's latest, apparently inexplicable steal was of a photograph of occasional Fox News contributor Wendy McElroy. It currently features prominently on his site. Just this morning Ms McElroy sent me an email asking for my assistance in having her picture removed from this site, and I responded

2003-11-04T07:33:00.000-08:00

Update on Hotline It is with heavy heart that I must report to my readers what appears to be the entirely unexpected revelation that "Diego Gastor" the smearblogger has some kind of problem with that American-as-apple-pie concept "Free speech". Believe it or not, it looks as though the comment I left for Diego at the riverbendblogS site has been removed! Nor do I see any other messages from

2003-11-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

Your Hotline to Diego Gastor As I've mentioned earlier quite a few people have written asking me for an email address for the riverSbend smearblogger. And for various reasons I've had to demur, but how about this for an alternative. It does seem that as of today Diego may have opened a little window into his world at the following location. As can be seen as of today the third suspected

2003-11-03T14:02:00.000-08:00

You are getting tired. Very, very tired. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to raise up much concern over Diego's current activities. True he's still abridging various copyrights and he's still - as I put it earlier - thumbing his nose at the campaign by continuing to make additions to his ever duller site. But it's not exactly much to get worked up about. He just looks silly. He's now

2003-11-03T11:43:00.000-08:00

This Week's Voltaire Award Nomination ... goes to someone who is definitely not suffering from Novak's Syndrome. Leon Sparx wrote after his part in the riverSbend imbroglio: "Riverbend is an Iraqi woman who blogs from Baghdad. ... While I disagree with her politics, I sympathize with her status as an Iraqi woman in Baghdad and encourage her to keep blogging. " let's hope [the faker riverSbend

2003-11-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

Medical Update: Novak's Syndrome A mildly debilitating psychological malady, which renders in the sufferer an inability to grasp, or a pathological reluctance to acknowledge, the gravity of a dishonest politically-motivated attack, based on: (a) the sufferer's perception that the object of the attack was in some way deserving of it; and/or (b) their sympathy with the political inclinations of

2003-11-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

Mending Fences In the continued spirit of reconciliation of last week having confused many readers with what looked like a lukewarm endorsement of the riverSbend faker, Zeyad jumped at the chance of clarifying his position publicly in his blog on Saturday: "I mentioned that he might be an Iraqi or someone from the CPA and noted that it might have been an interesting read if he did NOT post

2003-11-03T08:11:00.000-08:00

ISP Problems I'm having terrible connection problems this morning. So much so that just going through the BendingTruth mail box is taking forever. Also I suspect it may be under some kind of low level attack as it was filled with a lot of 150K system admin mails telling me that mails I couldn't recall ever sending weren't being delivered. Thus it may have bounced back a few genuine mails. If

2003-10-31T10:04:00.000-08:00

Diego's Modus Operandi And A Call For Vigilance As we've seen Diego, the smearblogger, is currently maintaining 3 blogs all having various degrees of similarity to the genuine Riverbend blog. But there is limited possibility for actual confusion. While his more recent actions suggest that Diego's denuding of his original smearblog yesterday was perhaps more aimed at avoiding being yanked by

2003-10-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

Clarification from Zeyad "Deploring" the riverSbend Blog This morning I received a very polite and measured email from Zeyad clarifying his position on the riverSbend site. To me it demonstrated if there was any doubt that he's on the right side on this issue. We clearly are not going to see 100% eye to eye on the connotations of his controversial words of Wednesday but on the larger issues I

2003-10-31T06:30:00.000-08:00

Follow Up On Mr C - the other faked identity I promised to get back here with the story of another instance of Diego's identity fakery, so for a refresher course go to this link and scroll to the bottom. Basically what happened was I noted (having done a "riverbend + riversbend" google search) that on the Nielsen-Hayden blog there had been some recent confusion over the two blogs, though I

2003-10-31T06:25:00.000-08:00

The Saga Continues Reader Brian pointed out today: "Not sure if you know about this one - now it's getting a bit ridiculous... riverbendblogS.blogspot.com The image is from: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2003/pipc_images/030411-D-6570C-001a_10_0001.jpg " Yes folks, there's another one. It seems there may be life in the old dog yet. This time, apart obviously from the name, there's

2003-10-30T11:35:00.000-08:00

Moving Through the To Do list (by cheating really) It turns out my readers are in the end a fairly timorous bunch. Only one person confirmed they would like me to publicise a message for "Diego". and even they said it was OK if I didn't. So Gillian, even though I heartily agreed with your sentiments and thought you expressed them very well I couldn't help feeling that posting the message

2003-10-30T10:29:00.000-08:00

A Riddle Wrapped Inside an Enigma Yesterday on the Healing Iraq blog Zeyad wrote the following: "some people in the comments section pointed out a blog http://riverSbendblog.blogspot.com, which seems to have been around for a while. I only heard about it yesterday. I am not affiliated with it at all. It looks like an Iraqi or someone from the CPA writing his own perspective on current events.

2003-10-30T06:25:00.000-08:00

Slight Correction Diego, as a couple of readers have been so good as to point out does not in fact now point to the Iraqi Riverbend blogger. He links to the riverbend.blogspot blog, not riverbendblog.blogspot blog. This is the blog from where he stole the "Yekke my friend" entry that used to be in on his site.

2003-10-30T05:48:00.000-08:00

Running Behind By the way folks anyone who thought I was purely dissembling when I said yesterday about not having limitless time should be getting themselves out a big plate and preparing to eat those words. I've got to be on my way out in under an hour and I am aware that what with all the making dinner, spending time with Mrs AtBendingTruth, going to bed last night etc. I have amassed a

2003-10-30T05:40:00.000-08:00

The Enemy is in Retreat! Great news folks. If you check out the riverSbend smear site today you can plainly see that our campaign is having considerable success. It looks like almost complete capitulation by "Diego". - He's obviously given up on trying to replace the graphics we've had yanked. (And to think I thought he was completely incorrigible.) - He's removed his fake archives -

2003-10-29T14:05:00.000-08:00

On Diego's Email I don't have it! Or I might have and just don't know. I have so many. I have recently tried emailing him at a couple of the more likely candidates but if one of them turns out to be live I think it's only fair to give him the opportunity to cease and desist before I'd even consider doling it out. Remember folks he is an old guy, and even though he's a mean, mean old guy I

2003-10-29T13:15:00.000-08:00

Comments on Riverbend today: The real Iraqi blogger wrote today on her blog a couple of things I wanted to comment on: I wrote to Blogger, telling them about the site and how the person was pretending to be me, they said that if I wanted to make an official complaint, I had to mail in (by snail-mail) a letter complaining that someone was stealing the contents of my site. Now that seems a bit

2003-10-29T12:14:00.000-08:00

More Diego-spotting As pointed out by reader HJP: "You probably already noticed, but about two hours ago he changed his stats login from the very incriminating "solerito" to the more generic "mosul". http://extremetracking.com/open?login=mosul" Thanks to HJP for pointing this out. And as I told HJP that's not the kind of thing I tend to notice so if anyone spots anything else like that and

2003-10-29T12:10:00.000-08:00

More from Leon Sparx "I just got a bright idea. After renaming the filenames so his link wouldn't work, I created a file with the same filename as the old baghdad children picture, only this time the image contains text calling his site a fake." That's right folks. For a limited time only (one presumes) the riverSbend fake blog bears a graphic saying "This website is fake. Find the real