Must be a transvestite, 'eh?
"Fake Syrian lesbian blogger apologizes" June 14, 2011|Associated Press
LONDON — An American man living in Scotland said yesterday that he is sorry for posing as a Syrian lesbian blogger who offered vivid accounts of life amid revolt and repression in Damascus, a hoax that highlights the difficulty of sifting truth from fiction online.
At least we all know the newspaper is total fiction.
Tom MacMaster, 40, said he created the fictional persona of Amina Arraf and the “Gay Girl in Damascus’’ blog to draw attention to conditions in a Middle East convulsed by change.
“I never meant to hurt anyone,’’ the Edinburgh University grad student wrote yesterday in a long apology on the blog....
Well, contributing to agenda-pushing propaganda does just that!
Gay rights activists and bloggers say MacMaster has endangered real people who are trying to tell their stories in authoritarian societies.
“He completely stole the limelight of real LGBT bloggers and activists in the Middle East and diverted it in a negative way,’’ said Dan Littauer of the website Gay Middle East....
But he did do one thing positive: from NOW ON ALL BLOGS that SUPPORT or PUSH FORWARD the AGENDA are SUSPECT!
Blogs that OPPOSE the AGENDA and POSE QUESTIONS simply DO NOT BENEFIT, and in fact endanger themselves. That is how you separate truth from fiction online, dear readers.
Here is another way: DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH and YOUR OWN THINKING! Use me for information and analysis, but MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND!
The blog postings about life as a Syrian-American lesbian grabbed international attention soon after they began in February.
Alongside video clips and erotic poems, the writer told of her childhood in Virginia, daily life as a gay woman in Damascus, the growing protest movement, and hopes for a future Syria freed from “dictators and rule by strong men.’’
And now we find out he is a 40-year-old "college student?" Now I'm smelling CIA.
--more--"
Update: Gay Girl in Damascus: Second 'lesbian' blogger is a man
Related: Juliette Kayyem A fake blog can cause real problems
So can a lying, agenda-pushing, war-promoting morning newspaper.
