An apology? That’s a start....

I note that Mr Vadney has made an apology to his readers (both of us) for his recent somewhat unseemly outbursts. At least that is a step in the right direction. However, now that Mr Vadney has calmed down a little, I would ask him to consider, calmly, the following.

• Mr Vadney makes the following statement:
  

  I am a very kind and considerate person but when faced with unashamed stupidity and recalcitrant arrogance [I only said he’d calmed down a little!] even when the malfeasors are confronted with proof of error or falsity it becomes annoying and frustrating.

  
  I assume I am supposed to be one of those unashamedly stupid and recalcitrantly arrogant “malfeasors”.
  
  
• Let’s have a look at Mr Vadney’s “proof”. As far as I can see, this “proof” consists of his unsupported assertion of the existence of several documents:
  
  
  
  1. A certificate from the IoL, dating from 1981, to the effect that Mr Vadney was elected a Member, or Associate Member, of the IoL;
     
     
  2. A certificate from the RSA, dating from 1979, to the effect that Mr Vadney was elected a Fellow of the RSA;
     
     
  3. A letter from the Department of the Army confirming Mr Vadney’s medals.
     
  
  
• Let’s assume, for the moment, that all these documents exist and are genuine. Now let’s consider their relevance:
  
  
  
  1. The certificate from the IoL may or may not confirm that Mr Vadney was entitled to use the abbreviation “MIL” in 1981 and into 1982. If it mentions the word “Associate”, however, as it does in the account Mr Vadney gave of it in the IoL forum, it only entitled him to the designation “AIL”. In either case, of his own admission, Mr Vadney allowed his (full or associate) membership to lapse, and was not entitled to either designation in 2007, when he claimed to be a Member on his campaign website, as well as his TranslatorsCafe.com and ProZ.com profiles. So I was right in my assertion that he had falsely claimed to be a Member of the IoL.
     
     
  2. Again, assuming Mr Vadney was elected a Fellow of the RSA in 1979, by his own admission, he did not maintain his membership, and so was not entitled to call himself a Fellow or use the designation FRSA. However, he did so on his campaign websites and on his ProZ.com and TranslatorsCafe.com profiles until August 2007, when I published my exposé. Again, I was right to do so.
     
     
  3. As for Mr Vadney’s Army decoration, he seems to be under a bit of a delusion. I did not mention this medal on the NIL forum in August 2007. The forum was closed down, thanks to Mr Vadney’s intervention, just as Scott Waldman’s article was about to be published. It was in this article that I first learned of the issue about the medal. Mr Waldman did not get the information from me; he claimed in the article to have a letter from the relevant authority to the effect that Mr Vadney’s medal had been revoked. I find it extraordinary to suppose that he would have fabricated this. If Mr Vadney has a beef with anyone, I would say it is with the record-keeping authority for giving Mr Waldman the false information, assuming that’s what happened. I certainly had no rôle in it.
     
  
  
• Mr Vadney has made allegations about the manner in which I obtained records of his degree status. I do not intend to enter into any discussion of that here. It is a red herring. The fact remains that Mr Vadney claimed to have an MA from SUNY at Albany, and he did not and does not. The CVs and other documents in which he made this claim have been archived by neutral third parties and can be produced in court. So too, his SUNY records can be obtained on subpoena. The question of how I came to know about Mr Vadney’s degree status is not relevant to the issue of defamation. Either he got his MA or he didn’t.
  
  
• Another red herring is the claim that my information about Mr Vadney’s degrees was “inaccurate”. The “inaccuracy” does not relate to the absence of an MA degree; it relates to the title of Mr Vadney’s bachelor’s degree: it was listed as BS rather than BA. So what? A BA degree is no more an MA than is a BS.
  

In view of all this, Mr Vadney must realize that he cannot possibly win a defamation suit against me. On the other hand, Mr Vadney has made numerous defamatory statements about me, attacking my honesty and my mental health, accusing me of lies, fraud and defamation, and questioning my academic credentials. None of these allegations is accompanied by any evidence, and none has any substance. So Mr Vadney might be well advised to publish a comprehensive apology and retraction, in order to reduce the head of damages against him should I decide to sue him for defamation.

He might also consider his position in relation to the defendants in his ill-considered court action. He has a lot more to apologize to them for than to me.

Sorry, but it's interesting ... Expatriate Horne? Huh???

The tininess of the Vadney’s mind has just beeen illustrated yet again:

Sorry, but I can't resist posting a tidbit that is truly "extraordinary":
According to information from an unofficial source, Mr Scott Horne isn't even a 'real' Canadian living in Montréal but is an American expatriate. But why Canada? That's an interesting question but one for which we'll have to wait for an answer.

So let’s get this straight: Mr Horne may (or may not) be an American expatriate...and that’s “extraordinary”? There are over two hundred nationalities, and the possibility that some person may happen to have one of them is news? This is like the Vadney’s story that I had “dishonestly” given an Indonesian address when I was an Australian citizen.... I was actually living in Indonesia at the time, and made no representations about my citizenship. (I assume the Vadney was talking about my ProZ.com profile: there is no provision to include one’s citizenship or nationality there.)

We'll [sic!] go to the official sources for the facts.
But I'm really curious about my inquiries with the Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol and am wondering what they're going to come up with now that we [sic!] have this curious bit of intelligence.

Did I hear the word “intelligence”? The Vadney and his imaginary friend(s) have acquired some intelligence? That would be very heartening! Vadney and friend(s), however, don’t seem to be doing putting this new-found intelligence to much use if they think government agencies are going to give them private details of someone else’s citizenship. Doesn’t the fact that they first tried to interest these agencies in Mr Horne several (with a promise to keep the eagerly-awaiting world informed of their response) months ago tell them anything?

Usually, expatriates find somewhere culturally stimulating like Paris or the like or somewhere exotic like Bali. The only real expatriates we [sic!] usually hear of going to Canada from the USA are draft-dodgers or criminals who are attempting to escape apprehension.

People have all sorts of reasons for their choice of residence. It is not for lowlife fraudulent would-be translators like the Vadney to speculate about the motives of real people. But draft-dodgers? Is the Vadney aware that the US abolished the draft in 1973? How old does he think Mr Horne was then?

Would that perhaps explain Mr Horne's aliases: Patrick S. Horne a.k.a. P. Scott Horne a.k.a. Scott Horne?

Aliases? Since when does choosing one or other of one’s given names as principal given name constitute using an alias? How would it even help to disguise one’s identity?

I happen to have some information from “unofficial sources” myself: After being banned from the IoL fora, a certain Harold W. Vadney III re-enrolled under the “alias” of “William”, and when William got banned, he re-enrolled under the “alias” of “HWV”. This despite having been told not to post any further by the moderator Dina even before his first banning.

Now on the subject of criminality: I will spare you the vadney’s meanderings on the subjuct, and merely remark that the Vadney still has yet to produce one skerrick of evidence of criminality on my part, on Mr Horne’s part or on the part of any of the other targets of his venom. Nor has he even denied the obvious: that he himself is up to his neck in fraud, harassment and perjury.

More lies, Haroldkins? Will you ever give up?

The Vadney has just added another post about Clare Lorimer’s departure from the IoL. It is news to me, but then I had next to no contact with her, other than to enquire about Vadney’s claimed membership of the IoL—a claim which, even on Vadney’ own self-serving account, was never anything other than a barefaced lie. Maybe she got another job; maybe she decided to devote herself to motherhood and domestic bliss; maybe, just maybe, she got sacked at the Vadney’s instance for correctly telling me that Vadney wasn’t an MIL.... Yeah, and maybe pigs will fly.

Then we have this whopper of a porky:

The Chartered Institute of Linguists has asked for information to assist in investigating Benham, who claims to be a member of the cIoL, and Horne, who appears not to be a member of anything at all.

[Comic colour effects in original omitted.]

First of all, let me say that I have never claimed to be member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. As I have previously mentioned, on this very blog, I have some fundamental differences with them. On a couple of occasions, I have downloaded the membership application form, with a view to trying to reform the system from within, but I have never proceeded with an application.

Secondly, how credible is the claim that the IoL “has asked for information to assist in investigating” Mr Horne and me? Why would they even want to investigate either of us? I am remined of the man who wrote to his local council with some suggestions, and received the reply that, if the council wanted his opinion, they would ask for it. So he told his friends he had been appointed an “honorary consultant”. If there is any truth at all in Vadney’s assertion (and he has some familiarity with the tactical ruse of interspersing his torrent of lies with the occasional half-truth as a diversion), then it can only be along the lines that he sent them a typical Vadney farrago of lies, and they responded (maybe not in quite these words) “If you have any evidence for your assertions, please provide it; otherwise bugger off!”

By the way, the Vadney earlier claimed I was being “investigated” by DegreeChk.com. This is, to put it politely, another Vadney fantasy. If DegreeChk.com were to investigate me for, as alleged by Vadney, falsely claiming to have his permission to use his details, the very first thing they would have done would be to contact me and ask me whether I had any evidence of this permission. Of course they didn’t investigate me. The Vadney’s accusations, once again, are as contemptible as the Vadney himself. Serious businesses don’t have time for crackpots.