This blog is ...This is not a settled question, but it's certainly ringing some bells for me.
... where I will be posting samples of fiction and literature I am working on.
This blog will contain chapters and drafts.
This blog will have what may sometimes seem likely deeply personal accounts. And sometimes they will be. But there will also be fiction. *And I will not tell you which is which.* (emphasis mine)
This blog will sample what I'm writing.
This blog is not a diary.
This blog is not about politics.
This blog invites your comments.
Out of curiosity, do we know the US Embassy in Damascus has not been alerted to a missing citizen?Nope. There's just that unverifiable comment that Catseye alluded to.
I'm having trouble tripping my moral outrage switch from the safety of my liberal democracy complete with free speech, gay people, and a fairly minimal amount of government sanctioned violence, you know?I'm honestly not sure how I would feel about it if it's fake. I think it would depend to some extent on the motivations of the person who was actually writing it, and that's sort of tought to get at. Also, it would depend on what that person actually had on the line. I mean, if it's someone in Damascus who has invented a persona because he or she didn't feel safe revealing his or her real situation, I don't think that would bother me. At any rate, if the blogger is not who she/he says she/he is, I'm not sure whether the net effect will be to bring attention to the situation in Syria or to increase skepticism about people who claim to be fighting for personal or political liberation.
Bagaria, who said she planned to meet Arraf in Europe later this month, told me their last contact was an e-mail on Monday morning, hours before Arraf's arrest.
"She said just yesterday that she felt the situation in Damascus was secure," Bagaria said. "But she also said she had received e-mails from me that I never wrote, telling her that I was in Damascus, and asking her to meet up... someone obviously hacked my e-mail account or somehow pretended to be me. They were trying to approach her, I think."
(Bagaria did not have copies of the e-mails.)
Sandra Bagaria manages the online presence for the Montréal club. In her day job, she’s the Assistant to the Director and Chief Curator of The Canadian Centre for Architecture. A new technologies enthusiast and tech geekette, she worked for two years as the coordinator of special projects at Bluesponge, an internationally-recognized interactive web company in Montréal. She has also worked at Vivendi Universal and at Canal Plus. She shares, with the team, her knowledge of the web and her passion for sport, which she has previously brought to various projects, including the FINA World Championships.I'd vote on faked by the "friend", but who cares when the real situation is so much more dire than any blog drama.
Brooks suggests another possibility. An email that Arraf sent her in February reads, “On another subject, do you have any opinions regarding graduate schools for history/classics/archaeology in the UK? I'm applying for masters’ programs (at Edinburgh, St Andrews, Oxford, Cambridge, and Kings) with the intention of doing a PhD afterwards (as I can 'commute' from here for the majority of the time) and wonder if it is a good idea (I've been accepted to three and waiting to hear from Oxbridge).”Most Masters programmes here in the UK are taught courses; there are research degrees, but at Masters level they're generally not the kind of thing you can do via distance learning, and usually require taught portions too. She's suggesting she can 'commute' from Syria once a week for a year? Um.
Since Arraf’s IP address is in Edinburgh in Scotland, she could have been blogging from the University of Edinburgh all along.
Ms Bagaria* said that Amina posted about 200 pictures on her Facebook page. It turns out, all are of Jelena Lecic.**In case you don't want to read the article:
A note of caution about the source of the information on the IP addresses: Paula Brooks, Executive Editor of LGR claims to work at the Smithsonian Institution and to hold a Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College and three Masters degrees from Gallaudet University, University of North Carolina, and University of Dayton.Reading LGR's take on it (by Linda S. Carbonell, not Brooks) it sounds like they were a key step in "Amina" starting the Gay Girl in Damascus blog in the first place. And this controversy has brought up some other complications for them, including some drama (that I can't make heads or tails of) with a former contributor. However, it turns out Paula Brooks is also deaf and at a disadvantage when dealing with the press.
However, Paula Brooks is the sole source of information on Paula Brooks; extensive Internet, dissertation abstract, media, and Lexis-Nexis searches reveal no evidence of the real life existence of such a person beyond the persona on LGR, Facebook and LinkedIn.
“Paula Brooks” may be an avatar for a real person who fits the same description but uses a different name in real life, or it could be a fabricated persona. The IP address information appears circumstantially to match MacMaster’s movements and interests, but, given the uncertainties about its provenance, needs to be treated with extra caution unless Paula Brooks’ identity can be confirmed.
"Some time ago, I learned the hard way that posting messages with my own identity turns any discussion into an orgy of name-calling. When I'm personally involved, people speculate that I'm being defensive, or back pedaling, or being a douche nozzle, or trying to weasel my way out of something.posted by ericb at 11:58 AM on June 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
... The messenger with a strong self-interest is automatically non-credible, and should be. There are some types of information that can only be communicated by an unbiased messenger. And the most unbiased messenger in the world is one that is imaginary, such as my invisible friend, PlannedChaos. "
Just one day after the author behind a popular Syrian lesbian blog admitted to being a married, American man named Tom MacMaster, the editor of the lesbian news site Lez Get Real, with the tagline “A Gay Girl’s View on the World,” acknowledged that he is also a man.posted by jokeefe at 2:51 PM on June 13, 2011 [12 favorites]
“Paula Brooks,” editor of Lez Get Real since its founding in 2008, is actually Bill Graber, 58, a retired Ohio military man and construction worker who said he had adopted his wife’s identity online. Graber said she was unaware he had been using her name on his site.
Brooks’s identity came under suspicion after news broke that a woman called Amina Arraf on the blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus” might not really be a Syrian lesbian.
... at least a shred of poetic justice in this whole thing: MacMaster and Brooks had corresponded online with each other under the guise of their lesbian personalities, unaware of each other’s true identities.Yeah, sure, justice. But did they come? Is that masterful piece of fiction anywhere online? That really would be one for the lesbian blogs, no?
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posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:06 AM on June 8, 2011 [5 favorites]