At this point, after five plus years of observing his shenanigans from my roost in We Hunted the Mammoth Manor, there’s very little that Paul Elam could do that would really shock me.
But I have to admit that I was a bit shocked last night when I discovered a little bulletin on the internet garbage heap that is Elam’s A Voice for Men website with the title “Plagiarism discovered and removed from AVFM.” I was even more shocked to discover that Elam actually credited me with this discovery:
Recently, David Futrelle posted a piece on his agitprop site regarding an article published here which was written by Amartya Talukdar. Futrelle makes the allegation that part of Talukdar’s content was plagiarized.
AVFM staff investigated the claim as soon as we became aware of the allegation and found Futrelle’s claim to be true.
That last sentence is a sentence I never would have expected to see on AVFM, quite possibly the first acknowledgement of objective reality I’ve ever spotted on the site.
But evidently Elam is unable to keep up this level of truth-telling for long, and his “bulletin” quickly turns to damage control, minimizing the plagiarism itself and patting himself on the back for thinking about ways to try to keep from being humiliated like this again.
Indeed, even the brief portion of his note I just quoted downplays the extent — and the obviousness — of the plagiarism by now-former AVFM contributor Talukdar.
And the only “investigation” that AVFM would have needed to do to verify the plagiarism was to read my carefully documented post on the subject and click on some of its links.
I mean, the plagiarised post in question was full of paragraph-length, word-for-word “borrowings” from other sources, many of which I quoted verbatim, at length, with links back to where Talukdar got them. They basically had a solved case handed to them, with a little bow on top.
Elam continues, doing his best to downplay the extent of Talukdar’s plagiarism:
Without a doubt, there were passages in Amartya Talukdar’s piece that were directly lifted from the works of another writer or writers.
Not just “passages.” Practically the whole thing.
Elam also neglects to mention that Talukdar’s previous post, as I also showed in detail, was also heavily plagiarised.
Now, Elam, who describes himself on the AVFM masthead as its “Chief Executive Officer as well as its “Founder and Publisher,” is the person who is ultimately responsible for everything that runs on the site.
But instead of accepting the responsibility for posting numerous pieces by a brazen plagiarist on his site, and/or offering his readers an apology, Elam decides to attack me, first for noticing that he had taken down the posts without explanation and second … for being a fat fatty.
“In his fervor to blow this story out of proportion,” the thin-skinned Elam sniffs,
Futrelle followed up his initial piece almost immediately after I removed Talukdar’s material. He was so quick with his follow up assertion that Talukdar’s work had “mysteriously vanished” from AVFM that it appeared as though he was sitting there with a bucket of fried chicken, refreshing the site every ten seconds with a single greasy finger until he saw that the content had been removed.
Dude, if I were refreshing the page every ten seconds while eating fried chicken, I would have carefully kept that one finger grease-free.
Futrelle does his best to make it appear as though our intent was to remove the content and act like it was never there to begin with. In other words, the implication is that we sought to mislead our readers.
I dunno, dude, normally when a reputable media outlet takes down posts due to some egregious violation of basic journalistic ethics, they post a little note saying why. In this case the plagiarism was blatant and extensive, and there was no need for a long investigation. I provided you with all the evidence you needed.
Seems like maybe you should have posted a note.
Ah well, there’s always next time!
And I can only assume there will be a next time After all, this is the third time that AVFM has published plagiarised work in the last two years. In 2014, while apparently digging up dirt on former AVFMer John “The Other” Hembling, the site’s crack anti-plagiarism squad discovered that Hembling had plagiarised big chunks of one of his posts for AVFM.
Then last year, Voice for Men’s fake WhiteRibbon.org spinoff site proudly reposted an article on domestic violence that included some stolen material from other sites, including — irony alert! — a chunk plagiarised from feminist writer Amanda Marcotte, who’s been on AVFM’s enemies list from the start. In this case, AVFM almost certainly knew that it was posting plagiarised work — because the plagiarised piece in question had just gotten its (ostensible) author fired as a columnist for The Australian.
Maybe after another half-dozen plagiarism scandals AVFM will finally get it figured out.
But I don’t hold out much hope for them on the whole Holocaust denial thing. .
What, you ask, what Holocaust denial thing?
Well, as it turns out, AVFM’s latest disgraced plagiarist is also a bit of a Holocaust denier, given to posting Tweets like these here. Well, exactly like these here, since these are a couple of his (now deleted) Tweets. (Click on the screenshots for archived copies of the Tweets.)
When I first presented Elam with evidence of Talukdar’s Holocaust denial Tweets last year, he responded by blocking me on Twitter; AVFM’s then-managing-editor Dean Esmay, meanwhile, freaked out about the polite email I sent him on the subject, calling me a “sociopathic sadist” and a “stalker madman,’ and literally threatening to call the police.
So apparently Holocaust denial isn’t enough to get you canned at AVFM, but really really really blatant plagiarism is — provided that someone outside of their ridiculous website does all the work in ferreting it out and announces it to the world in a way that makes AVFM’s “staffers” look like the incompetents they are.
I guess that technically counts as a plagiarism policy, huh?
Now I’m really hankering for some nice greasy chicken.
@Orion
Yes, but I was specifically addressing Pandapool, in the context of “did it happen/was it a thing.” It did. It was a thing. Whether or not it was spread evenly across the entire subcontinent … well, that’s actually not something that seems plausible, India is huge. However, southern India not doing it has no bearing on whether or not it happened elsewhere.
It was never my intention to imply that India is homogeneous.
re: matriarchal cultures being so peaceful
I would be super-cautious about advancing this as a cause->effect relationship without solid proof that 1. these cultures really were both matriarchal and peaceful; and, 2. there is really a cause->effect relationship in that, and that the null hypothesis that the peacefulness was caused by other factors has been reasonably rejected.
Men commit the vast majority of the violence in our society, but I don’t think anyone here would argue that this is because men are just naturally violent and out-of-control, but because of the way boys and men are socialized with respect to how to handle their emotions. The “female-dominated societies are super-peaceful” narrative advances the position that there is no equivalent argument to be made about women: that women are naturally peaceful, and that this is not the result of socialization.
I just honestly can’t believe that. I have seen evidence that women can be socialized to be violent. If you want to convince me that this is an aberration because: anecdata, I need to see some actual data and not a just-so story that can be explained just as readily by the imposition of modern/western gender mores onto an ancient/foreign culture by the assumptions of the modern/western researchers.
@Bazia: Presenting fiction as fact is called lying. AVFM is known for doing it a lot.
@ Very Scary
Thank you for that and welcome!
The points you raise are very valid. I hope I did address them to an extent in my postings in that India was by no means a homogenous, the practice was by no means universal and that, whatever we may have done about sati/suttee didn’t make up for some of our other actions.
Indeed, even on a personal level, whilst I do think Napier did a good thing with regards to sati/suttee, overall he was a horrible person in his dealings with India and Indians, even by the standards of the day.
I hope also I addressed that there were many Indians who abhorred the practice and sought its abolition, Ram Mohan Roy being a prominent example.
You’re right that we shouldn’t pat ourselves n the back, as if it was entirely down to is. In a way it draws parallels with the abolition of slavery. In the West we give al the credit to Wilberforce (ironically of course he was also a campaigner against sati/suttee) and ignore the efforts of the slaves themselves and black people generally.
Ultimately a lot of it boils down to the fact that we’d occupied a place and enforced our will through force. That does perhaps mean in practical terms we were in a better position to do something, but of course we also used that power in a negative way. I won’t give the many examples of our abuse of our position, I’m sure you’re more than familiar.
The irony of our occupation is of course that, not only did we benefit from our exploitation of India economically, but India became one of our closest allies. You were a lot nicer to us than we deserved.
One major example of this was the assistance that Indian troops gave us during WW2 and beyond. This is a contribution that is oft forgotten. I’m glad to say that we’re now beginning to recognise this and the role Indian troops have played is starting to be properly acknowledged.
Ironically that may be down to a response to our home grown fascists. They would harp on about Indians, and others, “coming over here” as if we didn’t owe Indians a huge debt. Fortunately people responded by pointing out that, a Spitfire pilot say, was just as likely to have a Punjabi accent as a British public school one.
Sorry to harp on about the military aspect. I know Indians have contributed in all sorts of ways, just the military is an area that I’m involved in.
As for the spelling btw, the suttee variant was the one first used by Indian writers writing in English, so it’s the one that caught on here. Transliterating Sanskrit always throws up this sort of thing.
As to other subjects, I really hope you post some more about the Indian MRA thing. I agree with you that it’s no laughing matter. In fact, the more I read here about Western MRAs the more my thoughts have moved from “they’re amusing idiots” to “they’re a genuine and significant danger”.
Some friends of mine are involved in India working with women’s groups there to try to address some of the real dangers Indian women face, so it’s another subject close to my heart and one I’d love to hear more about.
I really hope you begin to post a lot more. I always feel a bit presumptuous pointing out there’s a welcome package but hopefully somebody more appropriate will be along shortly to present you with one.
ERMAHGERD HUSKIES
Definitely not the best conditions for my phone camera. Freezing cold, snowy, windy, dark, and dogs who would never stop moving.
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160117_152707_zpst2xxe4ql.jpg
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160117_153012_zpsutsxh2kx.jpg
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160117_152555_zpsg5vnle2p.jpg
These aren’t Siberian huskies, but Alaskan huskies who are apparently better runners.
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160117_170712_zpsxvyhs4zq.jpg
One dog was called Mel B!
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160117_172517_zps8b0p550w.jpg
Dogs all ready to runnnnn
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160117_160255_zpsxxqxxgmm.jpg
Turns out you usually put the female dogs in front since they are just more intelligent, I guess? 😉
These were our two female leader dogs, Minimasi and Paprika:
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160117_163306_zpsyluwpd1l.jpg
The two boys Rex and Hamsun were our heavy lifters:
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160117_171226_zps21m7g9wj.jpg
I didn’t get a good picture of her, but one of our dogs was a girl called Tipi or Tippi or Teepee. They told us she hates other girls and will refuse to run alongside a girl. She will seek out Carstens and couple herself up with him, or another boy if Carstens is already taken.
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160117_163704_zpsxlvvb8nv.jpg
@ dhag
Aww, you’re really bringing out my ” hug hmm, pat him, and call him George” tendencies.
Mind you, the second one down looks like he’s very unimpressed. Had you just done something daft?
This husky farm is located outside Tromsø, which is the world’s 4th largest city north of the arctic circle, and the largest outside of Russia.
Yesterday we went to Bodø, the world’s 7th largest city north of the arctic circle.
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160116_141202_zpsi1fasizk.jpg
The day before yesterday we were in Trondheim:
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160115_095152_zpsqdmttz3i.jpg
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160115_095328_zpsfii9twx6.jpg
Home of the Nidaros Cathedral.
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160115_095630_zps1m9te5rf.jpg
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160115_100101_zpsyg9hdcjc.jpg
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/20160115_100114_zpsi7k2idao.jpg
That’s all for now. Gotta get ready for dinner. 🙂
HUSKIES!!!
@Alan
That’s just the way Tana is!
Is Tana a boy or a girl. Whichever way, I love his/her “Hmmph, humans” look 🙂
dhag, you appear to be on the best vacation ever.
@katz
Definitely the best vacation I’ve ever been on. :p
Sadly it’ll be over soon. We’ll be going to the North Cape tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow we’ll reach Kirkenes in the morning. From there we’ll fly back home, via Oslo. Sigh.
But at least I’ll get to see the cats again.
@Alan
I think Tana is a girl.
Is there room in your hand luggage for her? I’ll meet you in Oslo.
Is there room in your hand luggage for her?
I’ll meet you in Oslo.
@Dodom, 🙂 very true.
It’s one thing to distort statistics or make groundless assertions or even to publish frank propaganda. Readers can check for themselves or take the propaganda for what it’s worth to them. But it’s quite another to deceive their own readers, manipulating them to incite prejudice. It shows such disrespect for the reader. And it directly violates the most basic standards of journalkism, even yellow journalism. I’m shocked, if this is really happening.
@Very Scary Indeed
Thank you very much for your input about sati. I’ve known about it from before this but have dismissed it as one of those things white people make up about other cultures or make it more extreme and awful than it really is. Evidently, this wasn’t one of those things.
And that’s exactly why I wasn’t gonna take the word from any 200-300 year old British person about India.
I’m sure David will get right onto this, and certainly none of us in the comment section will not make light of it if we have been already.
@Josh
Yeah, I know there’s a big difference between matrilineal and matriarchal.
@PoM
I don’t think anyone was saying it was peaceful. I brought up the fact that this one matriarchal (before I knew it was actually matrilineal) village was the most eco friendly and had 100% literacy rate for its 500 inhabitance. Nothing about them being more peaceful for it.
@dhag85
*is jealous*
@Hedge-Alchemist
Sorry for the very late response… Been busy with school and what not.
Anyway, New Sincerity is a cultural movement where, as it states in its name, things are “sincere” as opposed to what Post-Modernism was doing with its irony and deconstruction. Perhaps a good example of how it works is to look at that most boring superhero ever: Batman.
In a Post-Modern mindset, Batman really isn’t anything without the villains, his wealth, and the city of Gotham. If you took away all those things, Batman is nothing, and you realize how all the other things work together to give us the hero.
In a New Sincerity mindset, well, “Batman is awesome because he’s Batman!” Really, that’s how it works. It doesn’t question or deconstruct what Batman is, nor does it even go back to analyze all the pieces… You just “accept” that because it’s presented as is.
Wikipedia explains it better than I do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sincerity (The Evil Knievel example is probably the best way to describe it)
But you can kind of see why it’s such a horrible way of doing things; if we can’t deconstruct and criticize things, let alone ask ourselves why that thing is “awesome”, then what stops people constantly screaming “We do these things because it’s tradition and tradition is tradition!”. It’s probably why sexism has exploded in the past few years for; nobody’s been taking a step back to see how all the pieces work in order to draw their own conclusions.
And for “funsies”, go to a place like Facebook and state “Bacon sucks” and list some other food that you like as being better (Bonus points if it’s something like Canadian Bacon or Spinach). Even if you listed another meat product as being better than bacon, people will slam you and call you names for having the very “nerve” to downplay the “awesome goodness” of a crappy pork product. “Bacon Mania” is one of the many by products of New Sincerity, and as you can see, it’s impossible to criticize bacon because of this movement, even in a world where there is much better food (either it’s healthier or tastier than bacon).
Hopefully that gives you some insight about what I’m talking about… But remember, always do research and come up with your own conclusion of things… Because I could be full of shit and not even know it.
Hi Pandapool
Did you manage to sit all the way through that programme? If so, I’d be interested in your thoughts, especially as someone who can bring a non UK perspective to it (in many ways the programme is very grounded in English attributes, but wildly popular abroad, so I’m curious why that may be)
@Alan
Yeah, I managed to watch it all. Well, watch some/listen to the rest because iIwas pretty tired yesterday.
From what I can gather, you guys sure like the word fascist. I’ve never heard it said so much in such a short amount of time. It was also nice there was a lady judge (I think) but it was strange to hear talk about Indian people and not see any that I remember. It also doesn’t take much for you guys to break windows, either.
Also, you guys must have had bigger TVs than us back then because 70% of the screen was theater setting.
EDIT: Oh, and for some reason, people don’t like unattractive people being defended in court or something?
@dhag85
Kickass photos! And I could see all of them right away. Beautiful huskies. Gorgeous buildings. Brrr. Thanks!
@Alan
Oh, wait…there was an Indian guy. That part I was half listening to. He’s the dude the whole court thing was about.
Which makes the point about people being “unattractive” actually even worse in hindsight. Um, what the fuck? Especially since the guy is really good looking??
???
????? ?? ?
I don’t know what to think of this. Did that old guy really mean it that way…
Okay, I don’t think I watched it at all. I think I zoned out more than I thought I did.
And that old dude made an Alice in Wonderland reference.
And that lady was like “we have the same problems” like no lady you don’t.
I didn’t watch this at fucking all. How do I even remember what I did yesterday.
Yeah, actually someone did say that. Kat was talking about Riane Eisler. I wasn’t referring to you at all. Go back to the last page and read the quote Kat gave and tell me how I misinterpreted that.
So, why did they even bother talking about this? They had no trouble at all ignoring his holocaust denial. I imagine plagiarism is even easier to cover up than that.
I didn’t miss anything in the article did I?
@Pandapool
Sorry if I sounded like I was talking down to you or anything. It probably did, looking back at what I wrote