Oy.

Well put.

Thanks for the heads up. I just posted about it. I'm not--repeat,not--buggin' out about this, but this is really repugnant. I noticed some really subtile humor: where the real River put links to two comic strips, the fake includes a link to the CPA and MEMRI (a Zionist advocacy site).

Some are ignorant and easily swayed. These templates are created by Blogger.com and not by http://riverSbendblog.blogspot.com/ or http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Matt, you seem to have missed the point. The point is not that the basic template is the same, but that the imposter blog is made up to appear like the real blog in all respects except that it conveys a very different message. People who didn't know any better could easily be led to believe they were looking at the real blog and get a very wrong idea about what River believes.

Matt:I'm curious about what made you dig up this old post to comment on. It's not like I linked to it in the post by the real River I quoted today…

P6,bendingtruth linked to this site with a lot of bluster for nothing. Al-Muhajabah,My imagination is not intense enough to visualize mistaking one for the other.

Matt:Brian at Bendingtruth is kind of intense about it. I think he overestimates the impact of blogs in general.Truth, if I had only heard of Baghdad Burning and run across the fake first, I'd have been foooled. But because I have a point of reference I wasn't.I just wanted folks to know the deal. I assume when people see someone set up a deliberate fraud they will judge accordingly. But they have to see it first.

I have no reference and can't understand how anyone can be fooled into believing they are the same person. One talks about their personal beliefs and experiences that can't be verified. Meanwhile the other provides news about Iraq that isn't easily seen in your everyday paper.I agree with your statement about Brian. He's intense on shutting the mouth of one of them.

Ruth:The problem is one may not be aware there's "another version" of the page. If you read both, of course you'll see they're prepared by two different people.Me, I'm not trying to shut the second guy up. I wouldn't mind making sure everyone who reads his page knows he's mimicking someone who holds positions opposite his, though. I think that alone would be enough to discredit him in the eyes of anyone who would look to "Baghdad Burning" for information.

P6 basically I agree with you. I don't necessarily think Troy should shut up entirely. Actually I sometimes wish he'd speak a bit more so people would realise where he's coming from ("turd world countries", "I've never seen any difference between communists, democrats or socialists", "I fail to understand why the Jews continue to support Democrats basterdslike you", Riverbend is "a bitch on the rag" are among his more notable though rare aphorisms). But his blog is almost completely devoid of editorial content. But I do still get email and read posts asking what's the difference between the two sites so there is obviously still a degree of confusion which is what Troy is after.I like to keep my blog fairly light-hearted, but I'm afraid my jokes often aren't recognised as such by even those who agree with me, so to those who don't I apparently come off as "ranting and raving" occasionally.If the entries on my blog sometimes veer off the track from satirical faux-outrage, or puerile amusement to self-righteous bluster it probably indicates that Troy's just signed my email address up to a swingers website or I've been bouncing back mails because it's been filled up with 150K spams. He has a history of denial of service attacks against people who disagree with him. But generally although I think Troy is a very odious person I doubt he represents a serious threat to the free world as we know it. I'm not sure what I should make of "Ruth" here. The individual using this name seems to have been going around looking for mentions of BendingTruth on the net specifically with the intention of attacking me. In fact she once posted the comment "ASSHOLE" anonymously on my own blog, unfortunately she'd just attacked me there using slightly more syllables signing "Ruth" from the same IP so the anonymous thing didn't fully pan out there. Troy himself has used similar language and arguments in defence of his blog when promoting it on Usenet, and I have yet to see any kind of web history from "Ruth" beyond those attacking me for my blog. That's not to say none exists and I'd welcome an indication from Ruth that she has one, but there has been at least one proven case of impersonation of another individual to defend the riverSbend blog. In that case the real name of a Usenet adversary of Troy's was used so it was very easy to contact the individual to confirm the impersonation.In any case I'd welcome some kind of indication of Ruth's bona fides before I'd spend much time addressing her points specifically. Cheers