This is getting weirder and weirder, it sounds like you're really on to something here. I'll be watching with great interest. Thank you for all your research.

May I say I'm very impressed by the thoroughness of your investigation. I hope we get to the bottom of this quickly, or the person responsible makes themself known because, as you said, there is precious time and energy being wasted when we could direct our efforts to help those actually in need in this precarious time.

We are both very real. But there is a reason neither of us gets terribly "traceable" in our on-line personas. We have family members who work for the government. We have jobs that would be in jeopardy if our blogging were ever linked to those jobs. More importantly, Paula has encountered the same situations that my daughter has - physical threats because she is gay. Being deaf, Paula is more vulnerable than most people under any circumstances. She is afraid of something happening to herself or to her children. Just in case you hadn't noticed, it's open season on gays, Hispanics, Jews and Muslims in some parts of this country. Paula lives in one of them. Do you really want to push this until you read on-line that a single, gay mother of three was attacked in the parking lot of her job? We take very liberal positions in our blog, positions that don't exactly endear us to the rightwingnuts in the world. Just how seriously would you take the open forum threats that are posted everyday if they were aimed at whatever or whoever you are? We take that rhetoric seriously because we have known too many victims.

I told the absolute truth about our involvement with "Amina" - we believed it all. I was the one who recruited her to write for our site. Where she went with her own site, I had no control over. My purpose was to try to offset some of the hatred in America for practitioners of Islam. A very, very small number of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world are terrorists. We were duped. I apologized for that. Most of all, I apologize to the Muslim community if the discovery that Amina was not who she said she was bolsters some bigot's idea that all Muslims are not to be trusted. That is for later today.

We do not know MacMaster or Froelicher - whoever the hell they may be. Yes, I lived in Georgia for over 10 years - 250 miles from Stone Mountain. My daughter and son-in-law don't know these people either. They would have to be naturalists for them to have ever met them. I would do just about anything to find out who Amina really is, but I simply do not have the resources to do so.

LezGetReal is a voice for lesbians, women, union members, the poor, immigrants and the disenfranchised in this country. We link to the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, dozens of other sites and publications. We are not responsible for their content and they are not responsible for ours. Your accusations about Paula are unfounded and unnecessary. We have a couple of other writers who blur their identities because of where they live and the danger they could be in. We live in the real world - we know the dangers of being gay and transgendered in far too many places in America. You are being downright irresponsible to demand any of us expose ourselves to that danger just so you can make a headline or three.

Please, back off Paula, for the safety of her kids.

I do find it quite disturbing that the individual at LGR, Paula Brooks, that handed out the information on the IP adresses seems to have a somewhat 'weak' presence IRL.

I've sent the link to this page to several journalists covering this story, if you can, please do the same. This information needs to get out there.

"Amina" claims her occupation is a teacher on many of her profiles.

Britta in this video also claims to be a teacher:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Nice work. Also - nice work on the part of the hoaxers. Drew attention to things that need attending, imo.

One the one hand it's very sad that it's possible to pull hoaxes like that. On the other hand - the potential of the internet to dismantle deceivements, hoaxes and hidden PR has been once more proven itself as astoundingly effective. My trust in the net has even grown, despite the anger about having believed in this 'Amina' at first.

He was active with Palestine Solidarity in Atlanta while it was functioning, but withdrew for I believe personal reasons, although there may have been political reasons as well. He always seemed to be in the middle of an internal squabble and was sometimes undisciplined at demostrations. Britta who I did not know was laid off from AFSC in 2008, but her support for the Palestinian struggle from what I heard was typically that of a liberal.

Britta is well connnected and something of a "player" in the sense of helping arrange contacts and discussions. In 2008 she jointly organised a discussion panel on "whether peace was going to break out" between Syria and Israel, and the possible Turkish role. Speakers included the Syrian ambassador in Washington. It was to be followed by a similar event featuring the Israeli Consult-General. She wrote the event up at length for Joshua Landis's widely-read blog Syria Comment:
http://www.joshualandis.com/bl...

"By sharing this information we want to provide the best chance that this story can be brought to closure and people’s attention directed back toward real world events."
It has been done. "Amina" has posted an apology.

Tom MacMaster has owned up - HE was Amina:

http://damascusgaygirl.blogspo...

One investigator on Facebook pulled up a post under Tom MacMaster's name offering "advice" to a new generation of Atlanta Palestine activists. Among the other "Advice" was the following:
4) Related to this was allowing a number of aggressively anti-Islamic people (primarily people of Christian Arab origin) to set a tone of open hostility to modest dress and people who didn’t drink while attempting to hijack the organization for their own feminist, gay rights, and anti-Islamic agendas. These actions further drove off many."

First, for a white activist, in the name of supporting Muslims, to openly attack Christian Arabs and Palestinians working on Palestine is....odd. (Even if a person holds this opinion, they would be much more likely to express it by focusing on anarchists or white students, not Christian Arabs.)

Also, the Amina character is feminist, supports gay rights, etc. Why is Tom McMaster attacking the identity (except for religion) of what would become the Amina character?? Does this speak to a personal/psychological motivation or something else?

He hasn't apologized. He blames everyone else for his conduct, and deleted comments to prevent everyone from pointing out his total lunacy.

5 years backstory behind this "character", including online relationships and dating profiles?

I think there's a sickness behind this that goes beyond just fantasy myself, grooming perhaps? I think the authorities should be looking at this guy/couple and feel sick to my stomach over the implications of the whole affair.

Whoever this Tom MacMasters guy is and I could care less about the hoax unless all the drama surrounding it discounts the fact that RIGHT NOW there are Syrians -men/women/children-gay straight whatever who are being tortured and murdered by the regime and THAT is not a hoax…
I followed the blog and yeah -I thought it seemed a little odd at times but of course the comments section very quickly descended into its very own Middle East conflict -in fact I posted a comment just after the news that 13 year old child Hamza Al Khateeb body had been returned to his parents having been tortured,castrated and murdered by the regime telling them to get a grip and they should be focused on that….
None of us should forget that-its not about gay rights here-its about human rights of the most fundamental kind….

paula's obviously erred in not including african-americans in her list of targeted groups of people. regardless, it is hard to imagine how ANY activist with years in the movement, could not understanding how activism makes activist and their families vulnerable. the statement: "Like "Amina" she's the total package - a woman, deaf, a lesbian and a parent of 3 kids. Both "Amina" and "Paula" are perfect cardboard cutouts for a certain type of American liberal to feel sympathetic towards."

implies that anyone with this list of identities should not be trusted. (would she be even more untrustworthy, were she african-american?")

her accuser goes on to state:

"In "Paula's" case, her deafness is a perfect excuse for "her" to dodge media interviews!"

how? deaf people can be interviewed. there's no use of deafness to dodge anything. instead, it would appear that paula is a deaf woman attempting to access the larger political activist arena, which is hostile and indifferent to people with non-conforming bodies, including deafness and dis-ability, assuming paula to represent the ideas of a very real person, albeit with a pseudonym (a frequent enough practice, samuel clemens!)

there is no evidence that she is part of this hoax. many activists use cover to continue their work while also struggling to take care of families and keep jobs, that might very well come under attack.

i know of at least 4 activists, myself included in los angeles alone, who have lost jobs and positions for supporting palestinian human rights. for the record, one is anglo, two are jewish, one is palestinian. three of us are women. to my knowledge, none is gay.

activists who support palestinian rights have been subjected to police and fbi investigations (again, myself included), private and public surveillance, blacklisting, cointelpro, character assassination, loss and damage to property in the siege, trauma, isolation, financial hardship.

let's not confuse the issue of this hoax, with the legitimate use of pseudonyms by activists who don't have the social capital to be outspoken and still support their families.