Monday, 13 June 2011
'Gay Girl In Damascus' Turns Out To Be An American Man
On June 6, it all came to a screeching halt when Amina's cousin declared on the blog that Amina had met the fate of many bloggers in authoritarian regimes: Assad's police had taken her into custody. Whether she was alive or dead, no one knew.
As soon as "Free Amina" groups popped up on Facebook and the State Department began looking for her, the story began to seem a lot like fiction. No one had ever talked to Amina. The Guardian published a profile of her June 7 that included a picture they soon found out wasn't Amina but of a Londoner called Jelena Lecic. The biographical details in her blog posts did not check out. Amina Arraf couldn't be found in any public records in Georgia or Virginia and the names of her father and mother also turned up nothing.
Today, the Gay Girl In Damascus blog ended the mystery, posting an apology that revealed Amina was in fact the work of Tom MacMaster, an American from Georgia whose university records show is in a medieval studies graduate program at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
On the blog, he wrote:
I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone — I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.The revelation came hours after NPR approached Britta Froelicher, his wife, with some evidence that connected her with Gay Girl In Damascus. Other news organizations appeared to be zeroing in on the couple, too. Over the past week, we've been talking to people who kept in contact with "Amina." Some of them had been in contact with this online persona for as long as five years.
We obtained hundreds of e-mails from a Yahoo! group called thecrescentland that was administered by the online persona. The group has since been removed. One of the people on that list, however, provided us with a mailing address the online persona had given them. The website The Electronic Infatada connected the address with the owner Tom MacMaster.
Sandra Bagaria provided us pictures that Amina had sent her during their six-month friendship in which they exchanged some 500 emails. We found that nine of them matched pictures uploaded by Froelicher in 2008 to a public album that has since been made private.
We matched up the pictures of a trip to Syria visually, then compared the data embedded in the pictures and found all of them contained the same time stamp and all of the pictures contained the same focal length, aperture and exposure time.
The only difference we found in the photo data was that the pictures posted to Picasa were edited using the photo editing program iPhoto, whereas the pictures sent to our source were the originals from the digital camera.
Many the details in the emails also corresponded with MacMaster's life. In his emails to the Yahoo! group for example, Amina shared detailed observations of Edinburgh and a great deal of knowledge of the Atlanta area. In other emails Amina wrote about getting a post graduate degree at the University of Edinburgh.
Another clue came from Paula Brooks, the executive editor of a lesbian news site called LezGetReal. Amina began blogging on her site before she started her own blog. Brooks told us she confronted Amina at first, because the IP address that came up when she accessed the LezGetReal site traced back to Edinburgh, not Syria, where Amina said she was.
Amina told her through email that she used a proxy. Brooks accepted that explanation until this story started breaking. Late last week, she checked her server logs and found that the IP address was from Edinburgh all 135 times Amina logged in. That is highly unusual if one uses a proxy.
Froelicher told us by email that the she and her husband were on vacation. She pointed us to the statement on the blog, which they published a few minutes after emailing NPR.
"We are on vacation in Turkey," she wrote, "and just really want to have a nice time and not deal with all this craziness at the moment."
In interviews with Washington Post, before the announcement was put on the blog, MacMaster denied any involvement with the blog:
"Look, if I was the genius who had pulled this off, I would say, 'Yeah,' and write a book," said MacMaster, reached in Istanbul, where he is vacationing with his wife, a graduate student working on a PhD in international relations.On the blog, MacMaster said he created Amina to illuminate the story of the Middle East for a western audience. In a lot of ways, the accessibility of the blog was likely the reason it got so much attention. Since February, it has been filled with posts that are dramatic and compelling and full of action. Amina had love interests and a father with failing health. She was a gay woman living in a country where being gay is illegal. She was a girl with close ties to the Assad regime but with heartfelt sympathy for the aspirations of an oppressed people. She spoke against Assad and his iron fist with literary flair and with an unflinching and courageous tongue.
"I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in this year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience," wrote MacMaster on the blog.
"This experience," he continues, "has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism."
Eyder Peralta and Andy Carvin @'npr'
Gil Scott-Heron Tribute Mix by Gilles Peterson
01. Gil Scott Heron — Offering (Midnight Band - The First Minute Of A New Day, 1974) Flying Dutchman
02. Gil Scott-Heron — Essex (From South Africa To South Carolina, 1975) Arista
03. Gil Scott-Heron — Fell Together (From South Africa To South Carolina, 1975) Arista
04. Gil Scott Heron & Brian Jackson — The Bottle (Winter In America, 1974) TVT
05. Gil Scott Heron & Jamie XX — I'll Take Care Of You (We’re New Here, 2011) XL
06. Gil Scott-Heron — Alien (1980, 1980) Arista
07. Gil Scott-Heron — Whitey On The Moon (Small Talk At 125th And Lenox, 1970) Flying Dutchman
08. Gil Scott-Heron — Did You Hear What they Said (Free Will, 1972) Flying Dutchman
09. Gil Scott Heron & Brian Jackson — We Almost Lost Detroit (Bridges, 1977) Arista
10. Gil Scott-Heron — Angel Dust (Secrets, 1978) Arista
11. Gil Scott-Heron — No Knock (Free Will, 1972) Flying Dutchman
12. Gil Scott-Heron — The Revolution WIll Not Be Televised (The Revolution WIll Not Be Televised, 1974) Flying Dutchman
13. Gil Scott Heron & Brian Jackson — It's Your World (It’s Your World, 1976) Arista
14. Gil Scott-Heron — Fast Lane (Moving Target, 1982) Arista
15. Gil Scott-Heron — B Movie (Reflections, 1981) Arista
16. Gil Scott-Heron — Lady Day & John Coltrane (Pieces Of A Man, 1971) Flying Dutchman
17. Gil Scott Heron & Brian Jackson — It's Your World (It’s Your World, 1976) Arista
18. Gil Scott-Heron Gil Scott-Heron — Fast Lane (Moving Target, 1982) Arista
19. Gil Scott-Heron — Lady Day & John Coltrane (Pieces Of A Man, 1971) Flying Man
20. Gil Scott-Heron — Everyday (Small Talk At 125th And Lenox, 1970) Flying Dutchman
21. Gil Scott-Heron — Grandma's Hands (Reflections, 1981) Arista
22. Gil Scott-Heron — Winter In America (Winter In America, 1974) TVT
23. Gil Scott-Heron — Spirits (Spirits, 1994) TVT
24. Gil Scott-Heron — Is That Jazz (I’m New Here, 2010) XL
25. Gil Scott-Heron — Rivers Of My Fathers (Winter In America, 1974) TVT
26. Gil Scott Heron & Brian Jackson — Home Is Where The Hatred Is (I’m New Here, 2010) XL
27. Gil Scott-Heron — Johannesburg (1975) Arista
28. Gil Scott-Heron — Peace With You Brother (Winter In America,1974) TVT
(Thanx Stan!)
Apology to readers
I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone -- I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.
I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in thıs year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience.
This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism.
However, I have been deeply touched by the reactions of readers.Best,
Tom MacMaster,
Istanbul, Turkey
July 12, 2011
@'A Gay Girl In Damascus'
From Damascus with Love: Blogging in a Totalitarian State
Sunday, 12 June 2011
♪♫ Mark Stewart and The Maffia - Liberty City (Live @ Link Bologna)
With the world's greatest live mixer Adrian Sherwood at the controls!
Bonus:
Tack>>Head Live after the jump
Inside the murky world of Pete Doherty
Pete Doherty with his friend and fellow addict Pete Wolfe. Photograph: Andrew Kendall (www.andrewkendall.com)
In 2008, Jake Fior received a phone call from a woman he didn't know. "Her voice was a sort of husky velvet," says Fior. "She said her name was Robin Whitehead and she wanted to speak to me as she was making a film about Pete Doherty. I said, 'Oh dear, that's bad luck.' She laughed, and it started from there."
Fior hadn't been joking. The musician and bookseller, now 47, had known the Libertines' singer since 2001. Fior had rewritten and produced Doherty's first top 10 hit, "For Lovers", but by 2005 he'd "had enough of all this chaos in my life", as Doherty's drug-fuelled lifestyle took its toll on everybody around him. Fior returned in 2008, to try to record a solo album with Doherty, before walking away for good.
Whitehead never got that chance. On Sunday 24 January 2010, she died from a suspected drug overdose in the Hackney flat where she had been filming Doherty and his friend, another musician, Pete Wolfe, whom Fior had previously managed. Last month, Doherty was sentenced to six months in prison for possession of class A drugs, and Wolfe 12 months, for possession and supply of class A drugs, a conviction secured by damning evidence filmed by Whitehead on the weekend of her death. It is Doherty's third prison sentence since 2003, and follows multiple fines, court appearances, spells in rehab and broken promises to clean up his act. "The media are calling this a tragedy," says Fior, speaking before the pair received their sentence. "But for a brilliant, beautiful, vibrant 27-year-old girl to have gone into that flat and not come out, it is not a tragedy, it's an obscenity."
Whitehead and Fior had a relationship for nearly a year, but at the time of her death they were just friends. "She was as bright as a button and hilariously funny," he says. "She was really unusual – very, very talented. I couldn't quite work out how Doherty had managed to get her involved [in the film], she seemed too sophisticated… but I think she was first approached when Doherty was still with Kate Moss and she hadn't envisaged that he'd make the film so difficult for her to complete."
The Friday before her death, Fior had dropped Whitehead outside the flat in east London. "I rang her up the next day," he says. "They had reduced her to tears over this film. I was going to go over there, but it would have resulted in a serious confrontation, and Robin didn't want that. But of course, I should have gone all the same."
Film-maker Robin Whitehead. Photograph: Family Handout/PA
Whitehead was the daughter of film-maker Peter Whitehead and his former wife Dido Goldsmith, a cousin of Jemima Khan and Zac Goldsmith. "Had they known that she was related to the Goldsmiths, I think it would have made a big difference with them," says Fior. "Despite his public persona, Pete [Doherty] isn't immune to being impressed by that sort of thing. They are just bullies really, and like most bullies they are cowardly enough to know who they can and can't pick on."Fior should know. His first contact with Peter Wolfe came in 2001. "Everybody said I shouldn't go near Wolfe, but Carole – my girlfriend at the time – was living in the same flat, so avoiding him proved difficult. She asked if I could help Wolfe with his music career."
Wolfe, a "failed plumber from Maidstone", was born Peter Randall. He had already made several unsuccessful attempts to become a singer but Fior was sufficiently impressed by Wolfe's writing skills to offer to help. "Even then it was clear that he was a drug addict and quite dishevelled," says Fior. "I told him that if he got himself sorted out I'd try and do something. At the time I thought it was a win-win because he'd never sort himself out and I'd look good for offering. Unfortunately, he went to America and got off drugs for a bit. I wish he hadn't bothered."
Fior put together a band, eventually renamed Wolfman and the Side-Effects. A buzz began to build, partly thanks to their biggest fan. "Even at the height [of our fame], we didn't have much of a fanbase," says Fior. "We had hit records, but only about 100 people at our gigs – but the number one fan was Pete Doherty. I knew Doherty well, I had employed him to hand out wine at private views when I was running a gallery – he did a good job. He is capable of being quite charming."
At the time, Doherty was a singer with indie group the Libertines, the band he had formed with Carl Barât in 1997. Doherty was also hooked on heroin and crack, and partly because of this shared addiction, Doherty and Wolfe were virtually inseparable. Doherty regularly used lines written by Wolfe in his songs and borrowed aspects of his personality. "With his kitchen-sink romanticism, Doherty assumes the existential position of the outsider," say Fior. "But in reality he is an extrovert. Wolfe is the outsider, and for good reason." Wolfe was also getting back into drugs. "We played a show at the Sundance film festival in the US. Afterwards, the bass player told me Wolfe had smuggled some heroin over, up his bum. From then, it just became a case of trying to manage his dependency and make a joke out of it. I approached Special Brew for sponsorship but they declined. Maybe they were worried about the image of their beer?"...
Continue reading
Peter Watts @'The Guardian'
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