These are quite interesting. There is an entire thread that was hijacked for a while at KOS and the subject matter was soj’s identity. It’s quite interesting that soj, in his twisted mind, comes up with a whole post over at his site, making up a fantastic story about how the same Eddy Reames who was a clerk at the Macon Georgia police department had an ‘accident’ and talks about how people were harrassing his mother after she buried him. Somehow this guy blames the “Idema krewe” with the argument over his sex trafficking over at KOS. Ridiculous! He obviously can’t keep up with the dates and the trail that he’s left all over the internet, which I find incredibly amusing if not downright hilarious. Apparently he credits his readers with very little intelligence and makes up a fantasy story in order to solicit more sympathy, claiming he ‘used’ his ‘friend’s’ id over at KOS…a ‘friend’ who is now tragically dead. Patriotic Girls was started in 2001, yet it still marches on, and if Eddy Reames were dead, would that site still be in existence today? Soj apparently disassociates himself with Eddy Reames, but the fact is, by all appearances, curiously, they’re one-in-the-same.

What planet is Kathryn Cramer on when she says

“Soj, of Flogging the Simian, has just reconceived her site as a community blog … Also, it is especially important to support Soj and Flogging the SImian, since the Jack Idema Koolaid Klub thinks they’ve outed her…”

Uh Kathryn, are you really that stupid???…no, Kathryn and Soj, your own kind did it to him…and I find it perfectly wonderful, delightful and delicious to see you people eating your own. This information has been out there– meticulously gathered from different public places and websites– and neatly laid out for everyone since December of 2005. And if Soj is really a woman and we’re all full of it, and the info he’s put out there is wrong, then why all the concern and call for ’support’ and the revamp of the site under a dot com? C’mon. Most of us aren’t as gullible as you to swallow all these wild stories…ever hear of the boy who cried ‘wolf’?

Not one iota of the argument at KOS has anything to do with us, but we took note of it, nevertheless. You can find some of this convo over at KOS on a thread entitled ‘defend the whores, which took place somewhere around December of 2005′.

Oh and to the stupes: I have no problems writing over here, finding subject matter or whatever, maybe you guys should stop relying on the cabal for your lies. And you literally make me laugh when you say that Jack is writing over here. Give.me.a.break and stop.making.me.laugh! bwahahahaha!

Inevitably, Jerome, I would comment on this thread (4.00 / 11)
If you take the high moral ground and ask us earnestly to “Please ponder her words” I must ask again that you also ponder these and why you continue to feature Soj as a front pager when his attitude to women remains so controversial.

The Welshman seems to have a head on his shoulders.

You and I found no place of agreement over his dating agency and site that promoted Romanian women over American girls because poverty kept Romanian women grateful to men and slim, as compared to a survey quoted that claimed over 50% of American women were obese.

Kathryn, Kathryn, Kathryn. As a progressive woman, I would think you would object to this kind of thing.

We resolved the matter by my withdrawing from European Tribune at the start so that you could promote Soj and his readership.

I don’t care that he featured nude women in dimly lit rooms in the handful of photographs on his dating agency site or that the owner of Flogging the Symian has a site offering nudes for display. I do care if there is any sense of exploitation of women that I discern when I read these word of Soj on Flogging the Symian, explaining why he likes Roamania:

“It is a matter of opinion whether you have to give props to all the young beautiful women in Romania who squeeze into tiny clothes and go out dancing on a Friday night. Or a Thursday night. Or maybe even a Wednesday night.

The good Lord blessed Romanian women with three things. Being poor makes ‘em scrawny. A healthy mix of ethnicities over the years makes their genes strong. And a cold winter makes them want to take off all their clothes when summer comes around. It’s a can’t fail proposition. I can tell you that one of the least inexpensive treats in the entire world is nursing a 30,000 lei coffee at a sidewalk table, watching all the feminei go by.”"

If you are going to lecture us on women’s issues, I must ask why you choose to support such attitudes in featuring this writer as a key member of European Tribune? Any “Good Lord” that I know of did not bless women with poverty to make them more attractive and compliant to American men with the dollars to pursue them.

I know you disagree with my views but if you publish a diary that speaks to us of women’s issues, it is perfectly legitimate to challenge your own attitude. link

Soj can’t hide his chauvinism although he did take the picture of jailbait off his blog

…something that Kathryn Cramer seems to have turned a blind eye to. But others took note, read “When Blogging becomes Panhandling”.

I glanced at soj’s blog, Flogging the Simian. He’s cleaned it up a bit since I last looked at it, but then, that was some time ago. Gone was the pouty image of what appeared to a be a “barely legal,” Slavic girl. The site sports a fresh, new look with more taste, less jail bait.

Soj seems to have attempted blurring the line as far as his gender is concerned, but some people haven’t fallen for it:

Fortunately, we are still free to comment on Dkos (none / 0)
Soj’s site is owned by a man, a Soj derivative name who lives in Cluj and claims to own Flogging the Symian describes himself as a thirty five year old man in seeking meetings with women and Soj has written here on Dkos in response to a man who claimed prejudice because of his having long hair that he had had no such problems.

Soj claimed the dating site was his new business. You initially agreed to his advertising it on your site and you responded on that basis on the now deleted thread on European Tribune. That the dating agency failed is irrelevant; that this has now been removed does not remove what it said and how it promoted the availability, compliance and desirability of Romanian women because of the effects of poverty on them.

To not deny what Soj has said or done and just to pretend that Soj did not promote the dating agency on European Tribune as his own, to ignore the fact that it continued to be promoted on Flogging the Symian, which is cross referenced from your own site, is extraordinary. I don’t impugn your motives. I do, with respect,question your judgement.

You state: “She is a respected blogger, we have no way to control the life of our co-bloggers and decided to trust her heartfelt defense of what she was doing.” I am appalled that you should feel able to defend what he wrote and talk of him “as respected”. By whom? By you? Despite what you now know? Despite the quotation of his own words that I give above or the promotion of Romanian women on the basis of that dating agency of which you are fully aware.

You do have responsibility for the people that you promote on your site. It comes from the fact that you choose to do this promotion. If you know that a front-pager on European Tribune has views about women that do not conform to the liberal values that this person otherwise espouses, then you cannot isolate one from the other. Do I ignore all that George Bush has done because he shares my liking for dogs?

I’m sorry, Jerome, but I will speak truth to the power of your preeminence as the favourite recommended diarist on Daily Kos whenever I agree (as I have done fully with you at times) or disagree. It is the nature of free speech and and a free society that I am allowed to do so.

Two weeks ago Channel 4 had a documentary showing the sexual exploitation of Romanians. It showed a man pimping to other men his fourteen year old Romanian son in Paris. It then followed the trail back to Romania where it showed a British man offering boys for sex tourists.

This is not a free and equal transaction. The poverty in Romania that makes Soj see their women as compliant to men and attractively “scrawny” because they cannot afford Western food and have to walk everywhere, may not be the same as the trade in young boys but it has the same roots.

You challenge the gender of Soj although the evidence is overwhelming, you say it is alright because the dating site is now closed. You do not deny the things that Soj has written because it is undeniable. Nor in your post do you object to them but maintain your intent to continue promote him. Instead you say that I must not raise my objection to him.

I’m sorry Jerome, but for as long as you choose to ignore the truth about Soj and promote his writing, regardless of what this consists of in other places, then I am afraid I retain the right to say so.

I also request you respect my right to comment in your diaries if you choose to publish them on what I believe is an open site. link

It’s interesting, isn’t it?

Jerome… (4.00 / 3)
respectfully. I have no interest in your conflict with Welshman. That’s between the two of you. But I would caution you about going out on a limb where soj is concerned. He is not a credible person. He has made outrageous claims about a career in law enforcement that do not pass muster. He has allowed people to infer a lot of things without setting the record straight. I would hate to see your own fine work damaged by a Stephen Glass type of episode, and I would urge you to parse some of soj’s language a bit. link

Yes, quite a bit of what Soj writes is outrageous, I agree with that assessment.

I have no interest in the internal conflict… (4.00 / 2)
between any of these fine people either. I like them all and appreciate their writing tremendously. But, if I may, I don’t think the issue is what soj has advertised on his blog. The “Love in Romania” site is his, in partnership with his friend, the camel, and the language used in that site is degrading to women, in my opinion. It is not accusing him of criminality to point out that statements like the one on his blog, about “chicas” — which appeared in more cleaned up copy about Romanian women being thinner and more attractive then American women, on the “Love in Romania” site — are degrading to women. It makes women sound like livestock, in my opinion. And, while we’re on the subject of that site, how can it be called a “dating” site when the women post for free and the men have to pay? It is constructed as a Romanian Bride site, plain and simple. I looked it over, and I was disturbed by it. link

A lot of folks were disturbed by it, on both sides of the ideological tracks, although…apparently not Kathryn Cramer.

Soj is male… (4.00 / 2)
and it is evident from his own language. While he has obcured that fact in recent writings by avoiding all mention of his own gender or that of people he dates, referring to them by their first initials, his early writings indicate strongly that he is male. This was well established recently on a Booman Tribune thread, in which he had claimed to have interrogated hundreds of violent felons. In that thread a couple of people posted links to text he himself had written which establish him as male.

“Speaking of Macon, I do not dress the way you do in your picture, but even with my very long hair I manage to work for the police, be the ODP’s liaison and have a generally good experience with the citizens of this fair town.”

He said this in a post right here on Daily Kos. I doubt highly that woman having long hair in any American city would present enough of a problem to be worthy of mention. link

The ownership of the Flogging the Simian site is that of a man. You can check this yourself by checking ownership of the URL. He has posted over time in his own name on various sites from the same European locations as Soj.

That’s right. No accident. No obituary. Cluj. 2000. Spain. 2003. Beat feat from Silvia Vargas as fast as your little feet can carry you, change your dating profiles from ‘divorced’ to ’separated’.

Unless it has now been removed, the entry by the Soj-something character was on Romanian dating site where he described himself as living in Cluj and owning Flogging the Simian.

The quotation that I give of the benefits that poverty has given to Romanian women that make them attractive to him are a cut and paste from Flogging the Symian.

The posting about long hair not having caused problems in the Macon area was here on Daily Kos.

The original discussion of Soj has been removed from the European Tribune site.

Much of this comes from other posters who disputed extraordinary claims by Soj to be experienced in police interrogations - a claim made ludicrous not just by the number of such interrogations that were indicated but by the contradiction of the previous statements of having previously had low level jobs. One poster on another site refers to Soj at merely having been a transcriptionist in the Macon Police department. link

So Soj’s own claims have placed him in S.E. Reames’ shoes in Macon Georgia.

Here’s a juicy one:

do progressive women use this kind of language to describe other women?

4. Chicas!

I don’t care if you’re a gay man, a straight woman or anything in between, you have to give props to all the young beautiful women in Romania who squeeze into tiny clothes and go out dancing on a Friday night. Or a Thursday night. Or maybe even a Wednesday night.

The good Lord blessed Romanian women with three things. Being poor makes ‘em scrawny. A healthy mix of ethnicities over the years makes their genes strong. And a cold winter makes them want to take off all their clothes when summer comes around. It’s a can’t fail proposition. I can tell you that one of the least inexpensive treats in the entire world is nursing a 30,000 lei coffee at a sidewalk table, watching all the feminei go by.

That’s from his own blog. I suppose I could stretch credulity and assume that soj is a lesbian, but I’ve not heard too many lesbians use such objectifying language, at least not for public consumption. (Take a scan through the emails he received about that. I’m not the only one who found it degrading.) But that still doesn’t explain why possessing long hair in Macon GA would be an issue, as I’ve referenced upthread. Soj is quite male and doesn’t appear to have much respect for women. link

I think we can all agree that Soj is a chauvinist pig, which he finds difficult to conceal whether he lives in Macon Georgia, or Des Moines Iowa, and that whining crying post about Eddy Reames dying in a car accident didn’t make me shed any tears. Show me the obituary.

I am supporting no one’s position… (4.00 / 2)
but my own. I have read soj’s writing and I do not find it credible. I find his claims of a law enforcement background inconsistent, and at times, fraudulent. I find the charade of being in hiding from ex cons bizarre. People who are in hiding, do not post that they are in hiding on the internet and they certainly do not post their general where-abouts, announce when they are moving and getting new cell phone contracts under new names, post the where-abouts of their parents, and numerous details of their past. None of this passes the laugh test. And while women have been known to use degrading, objectifying language to describe other women, they do not insult other diarists by pointing out that they, themselves, are not vilified for having long hair, even in the deep south. You could drive a truck through the gaps in logic and credulity presented over the course of soj’s blogging career.

Aside from the fact that librarian’s research posted in this thread, actually reveals soj’s quite male identity, his subterfuge, pornographic or otherwise, doesn’t convince. For instance, his explanation of getting his “ass beat” and his “heart broke” over “L.” He gets himself sucker-punched and repeatedly kicked by L’s “ex” and a third party. Not your classic girl-fight from the description, but let’s assume for a moment that it was. Do you mean to tell me that the Moldovan thugs he meets later, whom he describes as male, were offering to beat up a couple of women? They would be some rough trade, indeed. I suppose one could assume that “L” is a switch hitter of some stripe, and the “ex” and friend were male. So a couple of men were beating the crap out of a woman on the street in broad daylight, and no one did a damned thing? I’ll remember to stay away from Romania because it’s not sounding like the peaceful place soj claims.

Welshman can speak for himself and his assertions are his own, but I am saying that soj is not credible and I find his language on his own site and on the Romanian Bride site degrading to women. You are welcome to hitch your wagon to that train, but I’m afraid you’re going to be hurt by it, ultimately. link

Precisely.

google sojosoniq… (4.00 / 3)

the first three or five hits will all be set-ups that promote Flogging.

but you can follow the progression in the cached pages that follow…as this person:

Eddy Reames, sojosoniq@yahoo.com
Des Moines, IA USA
Was just in Cluj (as a tourist) and loved it. Anyone visiting (and who speaks English) and wants to know what to do for fun there - just drop me a line. Love the site!
-Friday, November 24, 2000 at 12:09:04 (CST)

*

sojosoniq is 32, between 5′6”-5′8” tall, athletic build and lives in Cluj-Napoca, OTHER PROVINCES, Romania.

Occupation: Own Business
Age: 32
Education: little college
Height: 5′6”-5′8”
Location: Cluj-Napoca, OTHER PROVINCES, Romania Weight: 175-200
Personal Situation: single
Build: athletic
Children: I dont have any children
Looks: average looks
Nationality: American
Interests: reading, current affairs
Race: caucasian/white
Dress Sense: casual
Religion: Spiritual
Play Sports: never
Star Sign: Capricorn
Smoking: I smoke
Relationship Type Wanted: romantic
Drinking: I drink occassionally

http://www.jumpdates.com/…

*

From: Sojosoniq
Date: Wed Oct 31, 2001 7:06 pm
Subject: Terrorism got you down?

These girls are beautiful, half naked AND patriotic! Check out
http://clubs.yahoo.com/… and then recite the pledge of allegiance with new stamina and vigor! Unite America!

http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/…

*

somehow turns into a woman…i mean, athletic is one thing, but a 5′8″ 200 pound woman? wow. how’d “she” get beat up by those thugs, then?

there’s lots more, and back in the summer you could still get the registration info for Flogging, LoveInRomania, etc., but some of that has since gone down the rabbit hole.

personally, i don’t really care who Soj actually is, it just bugs me that they are having a fun game at the expense of others. i don’t want to ruin their fun, but it’s dishonest.

Librarian link

And really, if you want me to get into what happened in Macon Georgia, Des Moines Iowa, the University of Wisconsin, etc., etc.–and Spain 2003- and Silvia Vargas–I can go ahead with all of that, but believe me. There is a lot more here than can be obtained through a ‘google’ search.

| the tuning fork within us that hums
when we stumble on something
| beautiful.

5′6″ -5′8″ 175-200 pounds
Capricorn
Smokes

Lived in Tel Aviv, Bologna, Mexico City, Lancaster, Chicago, Des Moines, St Louis, Washington DC

All of this is public information and readily available. In other words, as one of the commenters says, soj, none of this is a secret, you put all of this out there on your own. Your incessant denials do nothing to negate its veracity.

Exactly Librarian… (4.00 / 2)
Are we supposed to believe that it’s a coincidence that a “sojosonic” takes credit for Flogging the Simian here and that some entirely different, very patriotic, sojosonic, who also claims to live in Romania, has posted this on Yahoo? At some point you have to wake up and smell coffee. link

Which Eddy, Kathryn and the stupes are betting their readers are too stupid to do, obviously.

And I guess all those sojosonics love Romania. (none / 0)
That’s quite a coincidence.

As far as Soj not having an education, well this site says otherwise.

Actually it says that soj went to school there. It does not say he completed a degree. I don’t dispute that he was in Spain, but, if memory serves it was for about a year. He also appears to have been married briefly to a Spanish woman. All of this comes up, if you google sojosonic, Eddy Reames, etc. Actually the info is fairly congruent.

As to the writing not being comparable, the Yahoo! profile is a rather pathetic attempt at affecting broken English and bad spellings. The picture is removed, so I don’t know if it was of an underage male or female, but the speech (ie. “giggle”) seem to be an attempt to appear female. But the copy he wrote for his patrioticgirls YahooGroup, linked to that profile, sounds, like it was written by a male and lacks the foreign affectation.

Here is an entry for a sojosonic@yahoo.com — there can only be one at a time registered to yahoo — that contains no such attempt at mimicking the foreign persona, but is written as an American who knows his way around Cluj.

Eddy Reames, sojosoniq@yahoo.com
Des Moines, IA USA
Was just in Cluj (as a tourist) and loved it. Anyone visiting (and who speaks English) and wants to know what to do for fun there - just drop me a line. Love the site!
-Friday, November 24, 2000 at 12:09:04 (CST)

All this takes is a little googling, a few minutes of scrutiny, and a modicum of critical thought. People don’t see that soj is an utterly fraudulent person because they do not want to see it. link

And then there are sources other than google…

what i know vs. what i think (4.00 / 2)
all i can say i KNOW, is that “soj” isn’t who they claim to be. there are others with more solid information, and the time to put the pieces together.

there is only one sojosoniq person, and that person is the soj in question–that same email address was used to register the “Flogging” and other sites, and in multiple forums for the last 8 or more years, and last time i checked, two unrelated people can’t register the same email name on the same service. and, it’s hardly a common name.

you can use Technorati to verify this:

”
Technorati Profile for Sam Reames (sojosoniq)

Claimed Weblogs:
Flogging the Simian @ WeBlog.ro
108 links from 87 sources

Technorati Profiles–

Member Profiles are an easy way to find out more information about the people behind the weblogs. Anyone can become a Technorati member simply by signing up .

Once you’re a member, you can choose to give more information about yourself and the weblogs you author.

You can “claim” your weblogs in the member’s area by submitting the weblog URL and then adding a small HTML snippet to the front page of your weblog. Technorati verifies that you are indeed an author of the weblog by spidering your weblog and looking for the special code you placed on your weblog.

Once you’ve done this, your picture and profile will be associated with all links to your weblog in any Technorati search.”

*
and if you read enough of the really old posts connected to that same email, you can tell it is the same person. and in some of the 2001 and later posts, i would not exactly say that person is always respectful, by any means.

i tried to untangle this mystery for a few days last summer, and what i can say for certain is that whomever s/he or they are, they’re pretty smart, and if they are leaving new “clues” around now, then it’s all part of the game.

for some kinds of people, that’s all there really is–One Big Game. i think that’s the kind of person/people we’re talking about here. i ended up with one or two possible real people who this person probably is, but i think that is beside the point (and there are ethical reasons for not sharing that.)

all that concerns me is the dishonesty. it’s using people, playing with them, and i really don’t like that. i don’t care how great of a writer someone is.

all i can say, is do your own checking around, and make up your own mind. search that yahoo email addy in the Wayback or the old Usenet logs, you’ll probably find the person i found.

i have no idea if the people who promote soj really know anything about them or not, or if they do, are they in on it? seems more likely they are just getting played, along with us.

actually, i kind of feel sorry for whoever the original real person was/is, behind the elaborate persona.

Librarian link

Yes, and so do I, because now he felt it necessary to not only come up with the fantastic fantasy that he’s not only dead in some tragic car accident, but fabricate a ridiculous story about his mother being hounded by bloggers after his supposed demise. Watching too many 20-year old television re-runs, makes a person’s imagination run wild, I guess. Considering all the fantastic stories he’s coming up with, you don’t have to wonder about the rest of the content over there.

So tell me, Eddy. I mean Soj (hehehe). When did this tragic car accident occur? What town was it in? What papers did the obituary appear in? How many people attended the service? I’m sure that as a devoted friend, you were there and kept a clipping or something. I’m terribly interested, and I feel your pain.

flogging the simian

Thanks to Euphoric Reality, Basil’s Blog, Mudville Gazette, Outside the Beltway, BRight and Early, Jo’s Cafe, Wizbang