Or, doctoring Debito Arudou.
First, I actually do think that the current Wikipedia article is pretty awful, but converting it to his CV, as the not-at-all sock puppets are trying to do, is not the way to go and is certainly not going to fly. I’d kill most of the Early Life and Divorce sections, make the publications into a bullet list and trash the academic papers section – from what I understand, publishing three papers on almost identical topics within a short period (“Embedded Racism …fill in the blank… Critical Race Theory“) is frowned upon – and the criticism section could do with pruning. Indeed, for such a minor figure, I think the Simple English entry is enough.
So, let us go back in time to 2008, where the first attempt at editing his own article resulted in this:
I’m just supposed to shut up and take it by people who won’t take any personal responsibility for what they say or reveal who they are, even when there is a potential conflict of interest with an editor and a source (in other words, the COI is perpetually placed on me, never you). The process here is neither fair nor professional. And I’ll have no part of it since it will have no part of me.
(My highlighting)
Fast forward to August of this year, when Sweetandloveable and Mister_Mtzplk appear and start favourably editing various pages relating to Dr Arudo – notably, despite having lots of detailed information about him at their fingertips, somehow both manage to spell his name without the final “u”, and despite both having lots to say about him, their editing trails never cross.
Now, things heat up on the 30th of September when Mr Googles adds a little about the then Mr Arudou getting fired instead of quitting so he could get unemployment insurance. After this entry, by some strange quirk of fate, Dr Arudou (or someone else with the keys to Debito.org) decides to edit the source of this text, and by an even more quirky quirk of fate, Mister_Mtzplk reports this change just five minutes after Eido says Firefox reports the last edit time as. I have also double-checked this with Chrome, one of the HTTP Response headers is “Last-Modified: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 02:08:13 GMT”.
Thus I am led to conclude that even if we assume that S&L and MM were previously operating independently of Dr Arudou, he must surely have been made aware of the Wikipedia edit war at this point in time, and I would expect him to recall issues of Conflict of Interest and be aware that S&L and MM were potentially breaking these guidelines.
Next, the page “gatekeeper” or whatever it is called in Wiki-world manages to rub S&L up the wrong way:
These wikipedia edit disputes really get on my nerves. I’m not used to them (I know, I’m new here, which Oddexit keeps pointing out) I’m trying to assume good faith in editors, but I’m having a lot of trouble.
I felt the appeals to “good faith” were a bit out of place, as S&L is not declaring their COI.
So, Eido decides to take things to the next level by calling for a sock-puppet investigation on MM, which seems a reasonable step to me – let’s wait and see how that turns out. This appears to annoy the good Doctor, as he calls in a retaliatory Request for Arbitration against Eido and Oddexit, reactivating his account after a six-year hiatus. However, a cursory reading of Wikipedia rules is that an RFA is a last resort after other resolution means fail, so not surprisingly a third party tells him to start from the beginning:
Maybe WP:DRN or WP:ANI should be tried first before arbitration.
Now, the interesting thing about Dr A’s RFA is that he somehow omits to mention S&L and MM’s roles (who co-incidentally have fallen silent) in the dispute or his awareness of a potential COI since, as I indicated above, it appears he made an edit to Debito.org in direct response to an edit on Wikipedia. I also await with bated breath his promised “Mr Googles is a big meanie”:
Will discuss Eido Inoue’s WP:COI based upon published personal animus towards BLP subject later.
UPDATE 16th October:
After going strangely quiet, and after a not-too-surprising rejection of Dr A’s arbitration request, he now posts this epic to the Biographies of Living Persons Noticeboard. The post includes mentions of both Japologism and Tepido, with the Tepido link being prefixed with:
the forums that [Eido] contributes to engage in cyberbullying and cyberstalking
The destination of the link, however, is an article where I unmask James Grey (now Jim Di Griz, one of Dr A’s favoured commenters) as a troll. Furthermore, there is a second link that leads to a dead page on a rather strange site.
There is also perhaps an unintentional revelation of motivations that further suggest Mister_Mtzplk is a sock-/meat-puppet:
Even after I removed the section in question from my website, in order to see how Wikipedia would enforce its own rules, Eido decided to use the Wayback machine as a source, which violates WP:SELFPUB. For if Wayback becomes the template for citing internet-archived self-published sources when current sources exist, issues will arise. This has been raised on the Talk page by Mister Mtzplk
Eido also suggested to me privately that perhaps Dr A is unaware of the sock-puppet investigation. We still haven’t got the bottom of the popcorn bucket, folks!
@Ken Y-N: Hang on, that’s not fair! He spent
yearshours slaving over his novel!-).@Ken Y-N: Hang on, that’s not fair! He spent
yearshours slaving over his novel!-).I’ve gone off my popcorn. This is a bit sad.
Since he left Japan, he’s less plugged in and he therefore has a thinner supply of stuff to get offensively wrong. (That said, he seems to be going into the comfort women issue, which is a cesspit of nastiness on all sides. Not a great source of laughs, though.)
I continue to be shocked at his decision to not only leave his blog up and running, hideous warts and all, but that he continues to do nothing more than run click-bait articles and stories from other people.
For example: one of his current stories is on the ‘ troubling pattern of deaths of suspects in police custody’. The story isn’t from a proper journalist or news agency. It’s from Progressive News Service – which is nothing more than a Facebook group, run by one guy, Edwin Stamm, who literally shows up nowhere on the interwebz….except for a couple of recent comments on….debito.org. That’s it. That’s the extent of the online existence of Edwin Stamm or Progressive News Service – which apparently runs ‘news stories of interest to American progressives and left constitutionalists, some of which may not have received much coverage in the mainstream media’.
My guess is that the focus is on ‘only lightly covered’ news stories, and not on ‘progressives and constitutionalists that haven’t received media coverage’.
His story? Five deaths of suspects in police custody have died in the past year, with no publicity or investigation and victims’ names not released.
But a closer look reveals that in all five cases, the victims were clearly under the influence of drugs – and they weren’t suspects, police were only called when people called in to report the patients ‘violently agitated’ or ‘on the sidewalk convulsing, bleeding, and saying ‘just kill me’, or running amok and charging at people – naked. None of the ‘suspects’ were arrested, all were taken to the hospital, which is where all of them died of heart failure and so on, some days or even weeks later, some with drugs in their system, some with drug paraphernalia found in their room.
On the ground, convulsing for several minutes, dying of heart failure – basically River Phoenix. Debito poo-poo’s this, claiming the berserker drug is ‘unique to Japan’, ergo, it can’t be the drug it must be police killing the suspects and covering it up.
Um…well, 30 seconds on Google shows any number of stories on people OD-ing after displaying violent or agitated, bizarre behavior – a guy on drugs that died after running himself at full speed into fixed objects and trees, a ‘bad batch of ecstasy’ resulting in a wave of violent and bizarre behavior (including getting naked) in Australia last year, the guy that was hopped up on LSD and then got the munchies so he chewed off 75% of some homeless guy’s face, or the UK uni student that tried to rip his own face off after taking an ecstasy-like drug. And that’s even before we touch on PCP (which, apparently, is making a come-back…)
And, it’s pretty odd that he and Edwin are claiming ‘no publicity and no investigation’, seeing how every case was widely reported, and every case is being investigated. I mean, that’s how Edwin got the story in the first place – it was in the friggen’ newspapers, for cryin’ out loud. It’s awful, horrible reporting – a nonstory – that he basically took and ran with. Nobody that was actually serious about research and about their academic reputation would run it.
He desperately wants to be recognized as a ‘serious academic’ which, quite frankly, I think is a bridge too far for him; based on every single thing he’s ever done in the public sphere – the Otaru book, the various organizations he’s been a member of, the ‘novel’, the website – the evidence is clear that he is utterly incapable of structured, disciplined action, he has only limited critical thinking ability, he’s incredibly thin-skinned and thus is impervious to any and all feedback, his problem solving and conflict management skills are pretty much non-existent, and petty, vindictive, egotistical and a poor writer, and he suffers from both massive inferiority and superiority complexes. Other than that I’m sure he’s a swell guy.
But if he does want to at least try to be taken seriously, he needs to end his website and focus on…you know, real, actual research. His website now is just a three-ring circus of Faux News-esque stories and heavily censored comments made up of only comments he approves if it looks like the person is supporting him, even if he’s too dumb to recognize the ones that are just mocking and trolling him.
yes but it’s very funny
Progressive News Service.
PNS
PeNiS
Troll??
@gohomeloser:
Even Adelstein managed to cover the story semi-objectively (he did bury the most important details in the final paragraphs though):
http://www.japansubculture.com/us-citizen-dies-after-being-taken-in-to-protective-custody-in-february/
I was at that “protest” by the way (I have photos and recordings).
One guy (the PNN guy), came a few minutes before the event. Later joined a few minutes after by two very young Japanese guys and an older Japanese woman.
Cop politely asks him (since he’s in front of a police station on a sidewalk potentially blocking passer-bys) what he’s doing in Japanese. Edwin ignores him. Cop keeps asking “Can you speak Japanese?” Edwin ignores him. He’s holding an English sign that says “All Lives Matter!”. He then takes out a piece of paper with a translated speech written in romaji (which he later passed out*, I have a copy) and starts reading it in heavily accented Japanese.
The young Japanese guy realizes the message isn’t getting through due to his heavily unnatural and accented Japanese and takes over, ad libbing.
The cops then say they can protest, but they should have applied for a permit first. So they cordon Edwin off with a barrier, taking 33% of the width of the sidewalk, and ask them to stay in their and not impede the progress of people passing by.
The young guy ignores him and starts provoking the cop, talking at him with his face really close and keeping a pointed finger just centimeters away from the cop’s nose.
I’m thinking, “just screw up and touch him and escalate it to assault. Please, just give them an excuse. Give them an excuse”. :)
Despite the cops asking politely to stay in the makeshift zone (there are by now about a dozen officers watching four people, since hey, it’s 50m away from a police station), the guy and a women are putting their bodies (temprarily) in front of pedestrians like Roppongi touts just wanting to walk by as quickly as possible.
A few of them take the paper just so they can get by and be left alone.
I am watching from about 100m away. A cop asks. “You know these people?” “Oh no, not at all. Just watching.” He laughed.
One of the pedestrians that was forced to take a flyer gives it to me as she passes by. “I can’t read this. Here. It’s not Japanese.”
The first half of the A4 paper was English. The second half was romaji. As there was no kana/kanji on it, she just assumed it was all English.
I read it. Pretty amusing. My favorite part was a plea about how this matters more than Harrison Ford crashing a plane. Not up on my American centric entertainment news, I googled it that evening. Thanks for the Ford tip, Progressive News!
@gohomeloser:
FYI:
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/uncounted-why-government-cant-keep-track-number-people-killed-police
Why don’t we have a link to these so-called photos of young crusaders?
@havill – dolfy’s right, it’s the only thing we care about. Don’t hold out on us… man!
Romaji! That’s great, debito fans really are the gift that keeps on giving.
I do wonder why the English language papers are quiet. Japan times and today wouldn’t miss the chance to show how the Japanese cops are picking on the gaijin as it’s what their readership craves to read. Tokyo weekender is one of those freebies handed out in mock Irish bars giving tourists advice on sightseeing…awful strange they are the ones with the scoop.
Here you go. They’re not very exciting. Sorry.
https://plus.google.com/photos/117944255792788034101/albums/6128508571697341585?authkey=CPr1-reS5-3GuAE
The guy in the green parka vest on the left was the uppity guy who took the sign, refused to stay in the coned off area, and kept testing the cops limits (nothing happened).
The guy in the blue cap on the right is E.S. Shots are of the cops assembling the coned off area (about 1.5m by 4m for them to protest in so that passerbys can “opt out” of being accosted with a flyer.
Well thanks for taking the trouble to tear yourself away from promoting yourself online to document the weirdness but next time try pointing the fucking camera at people when they are facing toward you.
Jesus man, just take a blurry snap while you are walking past or something. 0 marks out of 10 for effort.
@havill:
Don’t know what is more sad. This pathetic ineffective protest, or the fact that even this amounts to more real world Japan activism than some Japan-hate bloggers have done in the past 5 or 10 years?
No, what’s more sad is that he claims he has been the victim of ‘racial harassment’ despite being a member of the most ridiculously under-skilled yet over-privileged group of people in the history of the planet: the fair-skinned English-speaking male in Japan. Seriously. He got by as an English teacher, because – let’s face it, in Japan it’s not an actual job – but I can easily imagine he was a complete and total fuckwit at the trading company; his troubles were because he was incompetent, not because he wasn’t Japanese.
Want evidence? Go read his travelog of his trip to Europe and see what he subjected his poor wife and two kids to. What a sad, pathetic, disorganized train-wreck of a trip where he complains constantly about not having any money, and blames everything and everyone – sound familiar? – all because he lacked even the most basic of planning skills. I can’t imagine putting a three-year old and a one-year old through that.
To claim racial harassment as a white male in Japan you need to be lack any semblance of self-awareness and be a thin-skinned, incompetent, self-important clueless jackass twit of epic proportions.
Amazing how everywhere he goes he runs into so many problems. It’s almost like the problems follow him around.
gohomeloser, do you have a link to the vacation blog? I love those archives. They are an absolute goldmine.
Did someone just second the fact that it’s not an actual job?
@gohomeloser: I don’t think anyone has ever tried to claim that he didn’t suffer from racial discrimination or that racial discrimination does not take place in Japan. The disagreement is over whether it is endemic and epidemic, as he continues to assert, or 99% of the time a simple misunderstanding. Claiming he wasn’t discriminated against because of his race or privilege, though, is a red herring.
@Lack of Research: First, yes the onsen was wrong to exclude him – although I still think the scorched earth way he went about it caused more harm than good, and I still can’t believe people don’t hold his feet to the fire more for purposely sending his daughter in to get rejected because of her looks…just so he could ‘make a point’. It’s an extraordinary thing for a so-called father to do, and I am not at all surprised that neither of his daughters want anything to do with him.
About his ‘racial harassment’ in Hokkaido: I know or have known hundreds of foreigners working in Japan. Some have complained about how they were (under)utilized, or how they were paid, or about idiot bosses or idiot co-workers. None of them – none – have complained that they were the subject of ‘racial harassment’. And the ones that complained the loudest about being ‘underpaid’ or not having a contract renewed that I worked directly with were 100% without fail, bad at their job and/or lazy. We’re not talking one or two isolated incidents.
In his first job in Japan, at a ‘small trading company in Sapporo’, he claims he was subject to racial discrimination. Is it possible? Sure – there’s a non-zero chance it’s true. But I think the far greater likelihood is that it was his first real job anywhere, and he’d never experienced 体育会系人間.
A lot of gaijin when they come to Japan and have to take the morning rush hour train are positive, absolutely positive, that people are pushing against [i]him[/i] – because he’s a gaijin. They old Japan hands understand that no, the train is just that crowded; everyone is pushing against everyone else. Debito didn’t understand that he was being treated [i]like any other 新入社員[/i] – that the company was doing him a favor by treating him like any other employee. But he refused to listen to the advice people were giving him, and he resented things that he wouldn’t have resented had he understood the sitatuion. You can read about the ‘discrimination’ he says he faced.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120918033026/http://www.debito.org/gyakutaigaisha.html
What does he complain about? Having to work on Christmas. Having to go to work on Saturdays twice a month instead of once a month like non-新入社員. He complains about being told not to make excuses. he complains about being yelled at when he asks if he can wear gym sneakers to a gathering at his boss’ house (wtf? Who the hell wears sneakers to go have dinner with his boss?), he complains that ‘in America it would be like this’, he complains that his boss calls him ‘omae’…..No wonder he never properly adjusted – he gave up after just a year or so and blamed it on the company being ‘racist.
Also, his travelog is here – fair warning, it’s depressing reading. It’s hard to believe a grown adult could be this irresponsible and disorganized while dragging a 3yr old and a 1yr old and his poor wife basically back-packing across Europe, just to meet up with his ‘friends’, none of whom turn out to be all that ‘friendly’.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130530054138/http://www.debito.org/publications.html#FICTIONAL
regarding taking the kids along for the ride, it has been previously explained… “…remember that Olaf did the same thing. He brought his kids along that day to the onsen. So did the other American couple with us. So did our Chinese friend with her Japanese children.”
@ilikedolphins: Dolfy’s right.
Havill’s write up? Great.
Havill’s pictures? Pretty lame.
Guess the good old high megapixel camera with a decent zoom has yet to be eclipsed by smartphones then…
@gohomeloser: I’m still curious about the going nuclear option here. You do realize that there were (IIRC) 12 onsen that denied Dr. Dumbass and his cohorts admission right? You do realize that 11 of them agreed that they had been wrong to post the sign and removed them right? You do know there were months of negotiations, from both private parties and the city, before he and his 2 co-plaintiffs filed their lawsuit right? The lawsuit was a last resort, don’t resort to red herrings like “well, he shouldn’t have brought his children” or “he’s a dumbass for the way he travels” or, well, anything. In this case he absolutely tried everything possible (including the “Japanese” way) to resolve the conflict, the lawsuit was a last resort.
Now his latter attempts to turn it into a career. The very Japanese judicial displeasure that was shown for him bringing the city into the suit (you are aware that the plaintiffs had to pay 1/2 their own legal fees, 3/4 of the onsen’s legal fees, and 100% of the cities legal fees right? I don’t know but I would bet the lawsuit cost them money rather than being a net positive for them). Yes, him bringing his children into a potentially damaging situation (which, BTW is not why they want nothing to do with him – that has 100% to do with the situation surrounding the divorce – it will be interesting to see if he ever comes clean about that like he promised). Publishing private correspondence and posts to private message boards while naming names without the authors permission (which is what ultimately shut down Issho Kikaku) which could have negatively impacted people’s real lives. His current race bating habit and inability to handle criticism without going nuclear (and the reason all of his friends have essentially abandoned him – why do you think, for instance, Olaf posted 1-2 mild rebukes then disavowed anything to do with him? I’ll give you a hint, look at what happened to Eido). Those and a myriad of other reasons you can mock/hate on him for, but not the onsen case.
@Lack of Research (at work):
Agree with most of what you wrote in the first paragraph except for the “Japanese Way” part. I have and have read the “Japanese Only” book. There were parts of it where he’s describing the “Japanese Way” that make you want to cringe; in particular, the “talking down” he did to the onsen owner and doing things like putting his hand on the onsen owner’s shoulder and aggressively grabbing his hand while talking to him around TV cameras. The amazing thing is that he described this as damage control after one party losing face and the Japanese way… although when I read it, especially reading Debito’s tone, it sounded incredibly condescending.
Obviously, he’s not going to describe everything he did during the negotiations, but I found it telling that the parts of the negotiations he did choose to include in the book didn’t make him appear to be very diplomatic (either in the “American” or “Japanese” sense)
==
You mentioned me in the latter paragraph, so allow me to elaborate.
I wrote these reasons in a tepido.org comment reply to a Debito supporter who asked me why White former-American naturalized Japanese can’t get along, after all we have so much in common. (rolls eyes)
Japan Probe turned that tepido.org comment into an essay, Debito wrote me a email indicating his extreme displeasure (“Please don’t contact me in any way again.”) with the comment-turned-viral (reddit and all that jazz)-essay, and the rest is history.
==
But what some don’t know is I actually told him, privately, that I’d stop posting to debito.org long before that (alluded to in my reason #3).
My displeasure with debito.org commenters (and the moderator who enables those around 2008… when the great recession, the fallout from the collapse of Nova, etc, and something going on personally with Debito. Debito.org was getting Dark.
To give an example: You know how you have to be careful with associating with groups like the pro-Palestine activist groups? Being pro-Palestine and against the political policies of Israel is an understandable political opinion (whether you agree or disagree is irrelevant to this point).
The problem with groups like that is they tend to attract racists using the groups founding political purpose as cover.
IOW, there are sometimes people in those groups that join them not because they really care about the geo-politics, but Just Because they just don’t like Jews. And it’s easier for them to say controversial stuff that they wouldn’t normally be able to get away with in other forums.
Debito.org has become like that. I believe there are a lot of commenters on there that just don’t like Japan and the Japanese. Borderline or in some cases outright racists.
I didn’t want to be associated with the racism and 反日 on debito.org, so I stopped contributing.
The moderator/admin of debito.org needs to accept some responsibility for enabling these people in his exclusively controlled forum.
@havill: I’ll be honest with you, my knowledge of Dr. Dumbass’s book are limited to the reviews I’ve seen. I’ve got no interest in reading it. I’m going off memory of the town meetings by the city to mediate the problem, Ken and Olaf’s participation, and Tony Laszlo’s attempts to mediate all viewed from the sidelines. If Dr. Dumbass screwed things up by being himself, well, doesn’t change my opinion significantly of the onsen, the situation, or the man in the mirror.
The dark turn of 2008 – I think we both know what happened around that time. And perhaps, in his mind, the only way to “attack” it was by attacking the Japanese as a group since to do otherwise would reveal more than he wanted the public to know.
As for you and your comment which turned into an essay which went viral. I don’t think Dr. Dumbass ever personally attacked you (did he?) but he did by proxy by encouraging the mentally unstable CJ (did CJ actually contact your and Ken’s employers? Wouldn’t surprise me). He even posted libelous material knowing full well what he was doing under the “well, I didn’t write it and smoke fire whatever it’s something bad about someone who said something I don’t like” doctrine.
And of course he went full retard on Mike Guest.
There’s a reason people like Olaf, Bern, Ken, Scott, etc. no longer associate (at least publicly) with him. You might be right on target (that he’s being pushed by genuine racists) or it might be that they don’t approve of his methods and increasingly dark opinion but the fallout of publicly rebuking him is far far worse than just quietly fading away.
I can’t imagine why nobody has picked up his novel A JAPAN MAN for publication. Maybe I should share some extracts here in case it raises any interest.
eg. I love the fine balance of exposition with the natural flow and rhythm of conversation here: ‘I switched to English. “Because it would defeat the purpose of spending that awful year in Shiunshu [my IRPS internship in Niigata-ken]. I have to achieve a certain level of language proficiency, averaging to a ‘2’ on a foreign service equivalency exam, in speaking, reading, and writing Japanese. Or else I can’t graduate from IRPS. My test is in six months, which gives me plenty of time to lose my abilities. I can feel them draining away this very moment. Look, I have to say all this in English.”‘
And what about the exquisite representation of the expat psyche here: ‘However, I had an advantage over my fellow Japan-major students–a Japanese wife–and I needed to exploit it to the fullest in order to keep a step ahead of everyone else.’
Lovely stuff.
@Taurus: wow, for some reason I was expecting it to be more MBA porn. You do remember his fictional book about MBAs in Japan right?
@KT88 (towoo datt): Yeah, how are we supposed to stalk him if all we have is some blurry photo? It’s not like we can type his name into Google and have his mugshot appear!
Oh, and I should hand out a banning for making me read that Euro trip report!
@Ken on another phone: Hey, I warned you. It takes you to a dark, dark place.
@Lack of Research (at work): wait – you haven’t even read the book? sheesh – please, read the book. After reading the book you will come away with the unwavering conviction that Debito wasn’t trying to bring about actual change in Japan for the better, he was trying to make a point, to win an argument, and he didn’t care that he was trying to smash a butterfly with a bulldozer.
In a book that he wrote by himself, while taking great pains to paint himself in the most favorable light possible, he comes across as a self-centered, self-righteous, thin-skinned egotistical twit, prone to provoking people into arguments and then proclaiming loudly to all and sundry about how he was wronged.
Being ‘right’ does not excuse any action; the end does not justify the means. Of all the problems people have with Debito, it’s tied in to that – his insistence on using his ’cause’ – racial harassment – as a shield to deflect any and all criticism of how he goes about his ‘activism’. Any complaint that he’s over-reacting, or being completely unfair in painting people with his broad brush, or that his action is likely to back-fire, or that instead of promoting change he’s promoting the view of gaijin being loud, angry, litigious brutes, or that he’s acting in a petty/vindictive/stalk-ish way, and the response from him is invariably a shrill shriek into the wind, ‘HOW CAN YOU BE IN FAVOR OF RACISTS JAPANESE BEHAVIOUR’.
The people you’d most expect to be his most ardent supporters – people involved in ISSHO /BENCI and the Onsen suit – now want nothing to do with him. His family has rejected him. I mean, forget having enemies, he can’t even find a way to get along with his friends.
@Cornelius:
When the others turn the incident into a career, including using the names and pictures of his daughters in his marketing materials, I’ll hold the others’ feet to the fire as well.
JDG’s trolling is truly a thing of beauty, note his ‘hey, they’re stalking you!’ comment on debito.org:
http://www.debito.org/?p=13136#comment-867578
Hilarious – yet debito and Edwin, star reporter for PNS (he really should hook up with Japan’s Greatest War Dog Reporter CJ) are too stupid to see that he’s pulling their chains. Edwin is at a protest, hoping to drum up public recognition for his cause….but god forbid you write about the event or take pictures because, um….? Man, the stupid runs strong in this one.
@gohomeloser:
for the record, I strongly approve of and give a two hearty thumbs up to anything Jim Di Griz writes. Especially about me. He’s the only debito.org commenter I make an exception for.
@ken – got it… Somehow I conflated Edwin with a unicorn… still better pictures would have been nice. Nonetheless, azaassu to Eido.
Meanwhile, no editing required
Edwin Stamm Says:
March 22nd, 2015 at 1:35 am
I saw that guy. He came up and asked me what was going and was trying to peek into my backpack, so I assumed he was a spook from the Embassy. He was wearing one of those dragon jackets that servicemen like to wear and looked like someone you would keep an eye on if he was in your shop, if you know what I mean. Only one foreign guy was hanging around, so I’m sure that was him. The FBI agents chat you up and tell you they sympathize with your cause….
Edwin Stamm Says:
I assumed he was a spook from the Embassy.
Great, you know who’s buttons this is going to push. Here we go again…
Seems redundant that Adrian “Googly Eyes” Havill would be trying to sneak a hysteric peek into Edwin’s Backpack of Secrets when we all know he could just as easily be using the X-Ray function on Google Earth to search the Stamm residence for evidence of independent thought and anti-Wa propaganda materials.
@ilikedolphins:
Funny he (seemed to) notice that, because I didn’t remember him having a backpack or looking in it. If he says I did (in our less than 10 second verbal exchange before a stayed 100m away from the protest at the request of the police*), I guess I’ll have to take his word for it.
P.S. for the lulz I added a scan of the romaji flyer that he read as his speech to the pair of photos in the set pointed to in the link above. Enjoy.
https://plus.google.com/photos/117944255792788034101/albums/6128508571697341585?authkey=CPr1-reS5-3GuAE
* “Please don’t block the sidewalk so pedestrians can get by easily.”
Okay, wait a second. Back to the travelogue:
“Under a policy to move the minorities out to the suburbs (like Athis Mons), we found that every train we were on was filled with those minorities, which was fine when it was daytime.”
Debito, rather graciously, I think, is fine with minorities during the daytime.
“Finally I said to Aya that we should put ourselves in another carriage before something happened. She agreed, but just before we moved, some women and more well-to-do-looking minorities boarded, and we set off for Athis Mons without incident.”
And he is also fine with well-to-do-looking minorities.
Thank goodness he is now willing to help us pick a delicate path through the thorny and contested issues surrounding minorities in Japan!
No-one should ever have to be expected to sit next to minorities on a train. It just goes without saying.
The travelog is just all kinds of awesome. Check this out, where he doesn’t realize he’s basically taking a piss all over his ‘friend’:
He’s traveling with his wife, a 3yr old and a 1yr old. He’s traveling across eastern Europe, and he doesn’t speak the language. To save money he decides to take night trains, which can double as a hotel! Yeah, kids don’t need proper beds to sleep in!. When does he decide to plot out the course for the trains? Why, the night before they leave, of course. Not ‘the night before they leave Japan’, no – the night before they leave for Belgrade:
Because he’s doing this at the last minute – probably using 地球の歩き方 or something – he never realizes that one connection involves having to get to a different station on the other side of town. He complains about paying for bread. he complains about needing to buy a double-entry permit. They steal the towels and washclothes from the train compartment they stayed in. He planned on spending several days going across Europe – no sightseeing of any kind – because he couldn’t afford to fly. When he realizes he needs to buy not one, but two visa entry permits to Hungary for his wife (one entering the country on the way to Belgrade, one entering on the way back), in a pique he stamps his little foot, demands that the visa he already paid for – after spending hours with his wife and kids in tow at the border embassy – be canceled and he get a refund:
Remember – 95% of that paragraph? That’s the plan he made…the night before. He’s complaining about the visa fee, which he had clearly failed to plan for. His response of course is typical Debito – suave, classy, controlled, polite and patient:
gee, what about your friend Nick and his wife? You think they might have made plans and preparations related to a family of four coming to stay with them? Nope, doesn’t matter, I’m angry now so I’m going to make a point and punish Hungary by not giving you the satisfaction of getting a visa fee off me. That will show them! *stomps feet again*.
Also, these gems:
Given Baye McNeil’s staunch support of Debito’s Blogging For Freedom and Poon career he might surprised to learn that when in Europe, his personal Great White Saviour would be that guy that gets up and moves away from him, leaving the seat, the empty seat….
@gohomeloser: I should ask Oddexit to add some of this stuff to Wikipedia.
I actually had to give up shortly after he left his shitty nappies at the consulate in Italy. I couldn’t take any more.
Well, that was then… But compared to the price of a US visa…
@gohomeloser: why do I think the irony of his travelogue would be lost on him…
Back to Edwin Stamm:
He does seem to be serious.
@Ken Y-N:
I think I read that book. Over two decades ago. He’s talking about the plot to Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun, right?
Don’t forget, folks; One nutbag wrote that conspiracy theory comment. But ANOTHER person found it worthy to manually read and approve the comment for publication.
Wow – Debito must have pictures of the Wiki editors in compromising positions or something; it is amazing the lengths they go to for him to keep the page completely pro-debito.
Did anyone else notice this? Guys that raise legit questions are being banned, and when people leave comments noting that a criticism section is justified, or questioning the editorial oversight of the page, the wiki editors banned ‘non-signed in’ accounts from editing the page.
One of the page gatekeepers, it turns out, is an English teacher. From Hokkaido.
Don’t know how much it cost debito in bribes, but he’s getting his moneys worth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Debito_Arudou&action=history
For what it is worth, I am also amazed at the efforts made by the moderators to kowtow to Debito. And the efforts they go to dress it up as some sort of impartiality. I cannot see how Debito passes the criteria set out in the notability guidelines. He has a blog. He was once in the local papers along with a lot of other people because of a minor lawsuit. That’s it, right? If those are the criteria then about 90% of the people living in the western world deserve their own wikipedia page for them to upload their CV/resume.
It’s not about ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ against Debito Arudou. It’s about ‘laughing’ at Debito Arudou.
If he wasn’t fighting battles to protect the sanctity of his pure and innocent Wikipage, there’d be nothing to laugh at.
I like watching that cunt spazzing out.
@ilikedolphins: He is humorous isn’t he?
I mean his hissy fits are longer than the actual article about him.
If he put as much thought, effort, and research into his actual research as he does into trying to slag those who he thinks are wronging him he’d be a Donald Keene level academic.
@Lack of Research (at work):
Yes, but that presupposes he has the capacity to engage in original, scholarly research.
I just checked out his online CV. It is beyond cringeworthy – for someone claiming to be a scholar, academic, researcher, or anything approaching credibility in the academic game. I am not suggesting it is all complete wankery, but for someone wanting to be taken seriously by members of the ‘academe’ it is just… the equivalent of a 13 year old angsty girl diary.
In my best Christopher Walken voice:
I like to read his words, y’know. I find them. Amusing.
meat/sock puppets…
whinging on the talk page…
very obvious pro-Debito gatekeepers…
… and he wonders why people have a negative opinion of him…
I LOL’d when I saw that the claim that the wikipage has caused him financial troubles…
He has :
– (other than ESL teaching) very little experience and from what he says himself, the shitty “Hokkaido Information University” even treated him like “just another gaijin teacher”,
– a “PhD” from a sub-par university with a shitty thesis topic,
– very, very few citations of his “academic work”,
– published in very, very questionable journals,
– a shitty website filled with nothing but Japan-bashing idiots (and a few fairly obvious trolls), and a few revealing posts by Dr. Dipshit himself,
– a column in a fringe newspaper…
and he blames that wiki article for his ills?
