April Fools Day: Bloggers Uncover Lebanon War Fraud

A favorite of mine which I had no part in making from The Spoof

Bloggers Uncover Lebanon War Fraud

Written by Douglas Salguod

ALTOONA, Penn. -- In the wake of the United Nation's Security Council resolution to end the war in Lebanon, some fear the root cause of the war may be lost. The war was the result of geographical fraud, according to a report produced by a virtual convocation of internet bloggers. The report documents compelling evidence from hundreds of digitally enhanced eye-witnesses that every map the describing the Middle East conflict, every single one in print, broadcast or on the internet, is uncontestably inaccurate. The discovery of the fraud began innocently enough as an Israeli teenager crept up to the border with Lebanon late last Thursday night to meet the Lebanese girl he had hooked up with through MySpace. He used a MacBook® with a Geosensory® USB-interface version Gobal Postitioning System receiver module. She had a Garmin® eTrex®, a stand-alone handheld unit that literally fit in the palm of her hand, and cost only 165,851 Lebanese pounds. They knew that it could be fatal if either of them crossed the border -- but in the dim and shimmering moonlight they met exactly at the rendezvous coordinates -- and there they were together, alone -- and there was no border, none at all. They kissed in a way that, according to their precisely cailibrated GPS-enabled devices, neither of their lips crossed the suppposed border, then ran home to get on the internet tell the world about what they had discovered. Love would have to wait. Hundreds of bloggers, posters and blog readers from Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, all equipped with GPS-enabled smartphones, handhelds and other information appliances walked to the points on their maps indicating the international border. Regardless of whether their devices were voice-centric or data-centric, and whether they ran Symbian, Palm OS, Windows Mobile or Linux, the results were the exactly the same: there was no border, none at all. Walls, ditches and fences appeared at some points, the eye-witnesses report, but never the lines, solid or dashed, that showed on every map or mapping device. Academic geographers, when presented with the information provided at this conference, were astounded. "It's irrefutable; completely, entirely, undeniably irrefutable," said Brent R. Skeeter, Chair and Professor of the Salisbury State University's Department of Geography and Geosciences. "Nothing I've taught for 40 years has been anything but a fraud, a hoax, a sham, a deck of duplicious dupery. It's too late for me to do anything, but maybe the next generation of geographers will take their students on field trips and not just rely on pull-down maps." Because of Photoshop, which was used to create many of these maps, no photo can be trusted any longer, experts in photo manipulation agree. So, the bloggers will lead an expedition to the Middle East with top journalists from around the world to show them the actual "border" between Israel and Lebanon. "After they've been there they will understand the deception that has been perpetrated not just on the government of Israel, government of Lebanon and the leadership of Hezbollah but on the whole world," said Catholicgauze, the meisterblogger of Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze! Local journalists and photographers not esteemed enough to be included in the Middle East tour can simulate its impact by going to their own county's county-line with any neighboring county. "What you will see, invariably, is a change in pavement, but no actual line. And where the line extends into the grass on each side of the road, nothing. There's no line, dotted or otherwise," said David Rayner, co-founder of the Give Geography its Place Campaign. "The people behind this, and I don't want to sound paranoid but there are people behind this, they are trying to divide us. And they've done quite a good job of it, whoever they are," said Simon Beevers, a geography teacher from the United Kingdom. IN OTHER NEWS, members of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, a voluntary, non-governmental border patrol organization, report that their standard-issue Magellan GPS 2000 devices, which were assembled in Mexico, are indicating that the U.S. border is north of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Until further notice, the Minutemen say they will protect Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah and Nevada from illegal aliens coming from the states south of there. Copyright 2006, Douglas Salguod