An interesting story surrounds this weblog of a courageous 24-year-old Iraqi woman (“Girl Blog from Iraq… let’s talk war, politics and occupation.”) to which I was pointed by an FmH reader [thanks, gary]. Riverbend offers realtime commentary on events in Baghdad, inside perspective on Western analysis of the situation, and a humane introduction to Iraqi Islamic mores and customs. She is even going to start posting some recipes, she has decided while laboring preparing the evening meals that break each day’s fast during Ramadhan.
But ‘riverbendblog.blogspot.com’ is being spoofed by someone at ‘riversbendblog.blogspot.com’ (note the ‘s‘) who also called his weblog Baghdad Burning but, as she describes in her Oct. 29th post (scroll down) ‘Riverbend and Multiple Personalities’ , is rife with errors of fact about Iraq, an antithetical political philosophy supported by cutting and pasting posts from US government sources, and grammatical errors she speculates are designed to sound like his idea of an ignorant Iraqi ‘hajji’. The spoofer, she discovers, is a retired US Air Force veteran of the Korean War and a ‘GOP Team Leader’, whatever that is. Two other sites (here and here) have been digging into the fraud. Skip the fine print if you are not that interested in the intricate details:
The story begins on Sept. 2, 2003. The retirees on soc.retirement were giving “Solerito” Troy, Korean War vet and GOP Team Leader, a hard time over a blog he suggested. It was called solerito.blogspot.com. He’d recommended it as a welcome antidote to the negative blogging coming out of Iraq. “Here is one that’s not supportive of Saddam and is interested in a better future for Iraq,” he wrote.
“And this one sounds exactly as if you wrote it, Troy,” a poster responds. “C’mon, fess up.”
He doesn’t. The Solerito blog has begun in the thick of things with the death of David Kelly, described as a friend of the blogger — who goes under the name “river.” But she is quick to adapt to our American ways, and before long has already achieved scorn for Hillary. “I long for the day we can watch FoxNews in Iraq,” she pines.
The Solerito blog has sort of run out of steam by then. But Troy/Diego, who has also been accused of being an infamous soc.retirement mischief-maker named Sordo/Bodine , and is also the kind of guy who tells people they are traitorous “basteds” who belong in hell — has moved on to stage two of the Doppleblogger Project, a cheeky new blog called Riversbend.
Except that Troy/Diego accidentally leaves, on the URL of his hit counter page, a reference to his nickname — “Solerito” (as spotted by Claude, a keen Atrios reader).
Many of his Usenet posts end with the nickname, which is Spanish for “saltshaker.” His signature:
El Solerito Troy,
Artist, HAM, Korean War, Reg. Army & USAF Retired, MOPH L38342 Unit 1849, Phi Theta Kappa, RNC 146441197-D186, GOP Team Leader, NRA 040959746 —John Gorenfeld
Interesting discussions on the two sleuthing weblogs arbout the ethics of posting the identity and the email address of the spoofer, of defacing the fake weblog, etc. Under pressure, the spoofer has modified his spot to be less of an infringement on the original, removing fake archives and stolen graphics, no longer claiming to being written by a “girl from Iraq”, no longer calling it Baghdad Burning (for awhile, calling it Baghdad’s Not Burning, duh). The spoofer violates several of the Blogger terms of service, and the author of the original Riverbend complained to them but was brushed off politely. The spoofer has apparently started two other ‘smearblogs’ with varying degrees of similarity to the genuine Riverbend.
