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.

Little Mr Inadequate is shitting his pants now...!

 Background

I have been loath to publish too many entries, because, unless I just repeat myself, they detract attention away from the objective facts and arguments. So here’s a recapitulation of the objective facts.

(1) From at least as early as 2000, a charlatan wannabe translator, Harold William Vadney III, advertised himself on the Internet as a Master of Arts of SUNY at Albany, a Member of the Insitute of Linguists and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

(2) Harold William Vadney III was none of those things.

(3) In August 2007, I published, on the now defunct Network of Independent Linguists’ discussion forum, an exposé revealing the facts listed at (1) and (2) above.

(4) As the charlatan Vadney was also using these lies in his campaign for election as Town Justice in the hamlet of New Baltimore, New York, the Albany Times Union took an interest in the case, and published a story by one Scott Waldman, raising the matters referred to at (1) and (2) above, and some others.

(5) Since that time, the charlatan Harold William Vadney III has been waging a hate campaign of lies, distortions and irrelevant half-truths against me and anyone else he considers to have been involved in the exposure of his charlatanism.

There is ample evidence for (1) all over the web. Although Vadney changed his various CVs and profiles shortly after being exposed, there is nothing he can do about archived or cached copies of his puff pages. The evidence for (2) came from the organizations concerned; copies of the emails I received from them are in the zip-folder at <http://www.rbenham.com/Vadney/Press_Kit.zip>, along with a small selection of the Vadney’s puff pages.

Vadney has since disputed the contents of the emails from DegreeChk.com (agents for SUNY) and the IoL. The arguments he raises are typical of his dishonesty and desperation. He claims the IoL forgot about an exam he did way back in 1981. On the IoL’s own forum, he claims that he “sat the then IoL examinations in London in about 1981 and received the certificate 'Associate of the IoL' etc.” So much voluntary self-incrimination: “Associate” is a lower grade of affiliation than “Member”, and the Vadney consistently claimed the latter, either explicitly or by using the abbreviation MIL (Member of the Institute of Linguists) rather than AIL (Associate of the Institute of Linguists), which, by his own account, he just may have been entitled to for a period of one year at most. Similarly, he complains that DegreeChk.com gave me “inaccurate” information, but the only inaccuracy was that it said he had a Bachelor of Science degree rather than Bachelor of Arts—of no relevance to the undeniable fact that he lied by claiming a Master of Arts degree.

So far, the Vadney has not even thought up a plausible excuse for claiming to be a Fellow of the RSA.

The Vadney’s latest pseudo-legal posturings

In his latest blog entry, the Vadney tells us:

What Internet defamers do not seem to grasp is that (1) the defamed does not have to prove the falsity, the defamer has to prove the truth of the statements published, (2) that in a civil defamation lawsuit the presumption in most jurisdictions is that the statements are false and that the defendant must prove the truth of the statements, (3) that jurisdictions generally have established systems of so called "mutual assistance" in both criminal and civil matters. What this means is that a case can be filed in the US and a foreign jurisdiction will cooperate in the investigation phase, the prosecution phase, the enforcement/execution stage. (4) Most defamation (libel and slander) cases not only involve the actual defamation but also secondary counts associated with the defamation or resulting from the defamation. (5) When a case is brought, the defendant must defend against it whether right or wrong; that costs time and money. As a result, everyone loses until the judgment or jury verdict comes in.

Let’s look at this rant objectively.

(1), (2) In his typical puffed-up style, the Vadney makes the same point twice. With typical intellectual dishonesty, he begs the question by referring to the “defamed” and “defamer” rather than “plaintiff” and “defendant” in (1). (In this case, who is really the “defamed” and who the “defamer”? ) Why does the Vadney even raise this question of burden of proof? Because he is shitting his pants, that’s why! Why would you want to make an issue of the burden of proof if you were in the right?! Translation of (1) and (2): “I, the Vadney, alias Little Mr Inadequate, know that I’m dead wrong, but I’m hoping as a last resort that you won’t be able to prove it!’ Sorry, Haroldkins, there’s enough evidence to nail you on the criminal standard of proof, let alone the civil!

(3) Just random ravings. The Vadney hopes to frighten me with the prospect of some kind of international proceedings. No such luck. Besides, he glosses over the distinction between civil and criminal proceedings.

(4) So what?

(5) Again, this only requires translation from Vadneyese to show that it’s another desperate bluff: “I, Little Mr Inadequate, alias the Vadnikins, know I haven’t got a leg to stand on, but I can always threaten you with the trouble and expense of defending one of my famous vexatious and frivolous lawsuits.”

Vadney, Master Spy?

In earlier entries, Little Mr Inadequate regales us with stories like:

'Benham Spotters' have placed him in various locales but we need to know exactly where he is so we can keep the authorities informed ...

or

There are too many of us out there watching, waiting and ready to do our part in stopping scoundrels and cowards who misuse the Internet to perpetrate their malconduct.

Now why exactly would these “authorities” be interested in hearing from Little Mr Inadequate about my whereabouts? Does it not occur to Mr Inadequate that I show my (genuine) passport on request from the “authorities” when I travel, and that they have a much better idea of where I am than he does? (Actually, I did post my exact coördinates on ProZ.com; I have since moved a few hundred metres because accommodation is pretty tight around here at this time of year.)

But especially noteworthy is the implication that Little Mr Inadequate is the head of a network of spies...and wrongdoers like me have nowhere to hide. This sounds awfully like a threat to me, but I am not exactly quaking in my boots.

Puffery

One thing that has emerged remarkably consistently from Little Mr Inadequate’s rantings is that whatever he accuses others of applies to himself, not to them. So he has accused me of lying, fraud, defamation, criminality and even impotence. (I will forbear all reference to his allusions to homosexuality.) What does this say about him?

Well, one other term he likes to bandy about is “puffery”. This makes me think of some animals, which use inflatable sacs to make themselves look bigger to potential rivals or predators. This is exactly what Little Mr Inadequate does too. Note his consistent use of “we” and his habit of referring to himself in the third person. And don’t forget the network of spies he commands...in his own pathetic little imagination.

Footnote: One of Little Mr Inadequate’s recent outrages has been to refer to me as an “alleged "translator"” This is a clear slight to my professional competence. In the unlikely event that any real translator who reads this has any illusions about the Vadney’s competence, I suggest you go to ProZ.com and/or TranslatorsCafe.com and look at his terminology questions. Don’t bother looking for his answers: he is far to self-centred to think of helping anybody else—mercifully so, as it happens. One of his major triumphs was to ask (on ProZ.com’s KudoZ) about the meaning of the French preposition à (a question which I answered!). Admittedly, it was in a chemical/medical context, but it could have been answered by anyone with a high-school knowledge of chemistry, let alone the “clinical scientist” the Vadney claims to be. A total fraud.