Reviewing the 'collar bomb' hoax ordeal of Madeleine Pulver in Mosman, N.S.W., and the ransom demands; clues in James Clavell's novel Tai-Pan?

Network TEN News video: Victorian Police Commissioner Kel Galare explains what the night may have been like for those involved in the Madeleine Pulver case.

Her father, William Pulver, is the former CEO of Nielsen NetRatings in New York and is now the CEO of software company Appen Butler Hill in Sydney. August 4, 2011. http://youtu.be/jrAN6ec5fiE

When I first heard about this despicable situation, I thought back to this case, which, coincidentally, had been mentioned at length in the Sunday NY Post I'd bought and later read over at Panera Bread on Sunday afternoon while listening to the Marlins game on the radio.

New York Post

Bizarre story of pizza-delivery man blown up by collar-bomb still an enigma eight years later

By Candice M. Giove

Last Updated: 11:45 AM, July 31, 2011

Posted: 1:09 AM, July 31, 2011

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/bizarre_story_years_pizza_delivery_4j2oqM9g08aY7QWutcMHnJ

Network TEN News video: Reporter Matt Doran exclusively recounts previously unknown aspects of the ransom demand in the Madeleine Pulver collar bomb extortion case. August 4, 2011.

http://youtu.be/vas1KSJ-7sc

Network TEN News video: Reporter Lachlan Kennedy speaks about Madeleine Pulver's parent remarks to the Australian news media at the N.S.W. Police HQ, as another strange detail emerges from the ransom note. August 4, 2011.

http://youtu.be/33M4dDuOrsQ

Network TEN News video: Reporter Gabrielle Boyle talks to Prof. Greg Barton of Monash University and explosives expert Tony Garland on the background and history of the collar bomb. August 4, 2011.

http://youtu.be/e3E77MIMqEc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai-Pan_(novel)

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/collar-bomb-was-a-fake-australian-police-say/

More on TEN News at

www.tennews.com.au and http://www.youtube.com/user/ten

A hoax swallowed in one big gulp!: The curious case of the faulty Mainstream Media gaydar and the kidnapped lesbian blogger

The Guardian video: Gay Girl in Damascus hoaxer - Edinburgh-based American student Tom MacMaster, 40, talks to the Guardian's Esther Addley via Skype, and explains why he pretended to be a lesbian Syrian blogger with the A Gay Girl in Damascus blog and claimed to have been kidnapped.

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"You can't con an honest man" - Phineas T. "P.T." Barnum

American hoaxster Tom MacMaster completely fools the Mainstream Media not by claiming to be a 'Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,' but by playing on their latent news/political bias and claiming to be a lesbian blogger in Syria -who was kidnapped!

News media can't get out of their own way fast enough, disavow the expected wariness and vetting and swallows in one large gulp!

Well played, sir, well played!

Still, in the end, that hoax was not nearly as insidious as the one perpetrated on the American people by John Edwards of North Carolina, the future prison-yard lawyer and celebrity, who was exposed not by the dogged investigation and muckraking of the Washington Post or NPR or the New York Times or ABC News or... but by The National Enquirer.

I mention them just in case you forgot who did the real sleuthing.

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The Guardian

Gay Girl in Damascus hoaxer acted out of 'vanity'

Tom MacMaster, heterosexual American, contrite over fictional lesbian blogger 'Amina Abdallah Aral al Omari'

By Esther Addley, guardian.co.uk

Monday 13 June 2011 16.58 BST

The male American PhD student who confessed to being an internet hoaxer masquerading as a lesbian blogger in Damascus has spoken publicly about the reasons behind his deception, saying he was motivated, in part, by his own "vanity".

Read the rest of the story at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/13/gay-girl-damascus-tom-macmaster

See also:

Panic Attacks: Media Manipulation and Mass Delusion, by Robert E Bartholomew & Hilary Evans.

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/2167/outbreak.html