The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism, Part V

[Robert Campbell]

Adam,

Not quite sure what you mean here.

I mentioned being behind on child support because that has been a major Federal agenda item for some years—and it has diddly-squat to do with terrorism.

Interestingly, my non-detention followed shortly after I renewed my passport.

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

That's interesting. Here is a screenshot I just took of that poll (June 27, 2009) with my indications in red (and here is the link again):

The option I circled reads:

"Disastrous and Evil: A Mussolini Who'll Get the Same Fate (Linz Option)"

This means that Lindsay Perigo not only reversed his recanting, he is now preaching for President Obama to be shot and hung while in office, not before he takes office as given previously. He is calling for an acting USA president to be shot and hung. That is clearly the insinuation. And 14 of his site members voted for this. This has been up since April 30, 2009.

I'm stunned.

And all it takes is some deranged fanatic somewhere to read this and think that means for him to act on it. We have crazies here in the USA who fit that bill. I have no doubt Perigo knows this and that is exactly why he is doing it. Once again, like with Peron, he seeks some poor sap to do his dirty work for him.

This is Objectivism?

This is certainly the person Ms. Stuttle thinks you should forgive because, according to her, "hatred" is such "a foolish, foolish thing to be committed to..."

Michael

[Selene]

Adam,

Not quite sure what you mean here.

I mentioned being behind on child support because that has been a major Federal agenda item for some years—and it has diddly-squat to do with terrorism.

Interestingly, my non-detention followed shortly after I renewed my passport.

Robert Campbell

Robert:

That was exactly what I meant. The damage to individual rights, Constitutional rights and the economic/psychological and social damage that has been perpetrated by the gender feminist marxists is deeply entrenched.

It is a great little legislative scheme that culminated in the State by State passage of the "child support standards acts" wherein the imputation of income becomes the basis for assessing a completely fictitious percentage of post tax dollars which are universally applied regardless of the facts.

As the wonderful progressive [marxist] John Dewey stated remove the child's loyalty to the family, the country and the God and we can create the "common child".

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

This means that Lindsay Perigo not only reversed his recanting, he is now preaching for President Obama to be shot and hung while in office, not before he takes office as given previously. He is calling for an acting USA president to be shot and hung. That is clearly the insinuation. And 14 of his site members voted for this. This has been up since April 30, 2009.

I'm stunned.

And all it takes is some deranged fanatic somewhere to read this and think that means for him to act on it. We have crazies here in the USA who fit that bill. I have no doubt Perigo knows this and that is exactly why he is doing it. Once again, like with Peron, he seeks some poor sap to do his dirty work for him.

This is Objectivism?

This is certainly the person Ms. Stuttle thinks you should forgive because, according to her, "hatred" is such "a foolish, foolish thing to be committed to..."

Michael

Nobody's going to act on LP nonsense. Not even that thug of a lawyer from Chicago. Obama will soon be neutralized anyway, but the damage will take years to repair and I'm afriad not all of it will be.

I think the economy including equity and bond markets will soon take another major hit. If CA bonds are downgraded it could happen over the next two weeks as that would precipitate major forced, then panicked bond selling. Anyone owning CA bonds in particular is first at risk.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Nobody's going to act on LP nonsense.

Brant,

I hope you are right.

Michael

[Selene]

Gentlemen:

The O'Biwan election operation had a specific unit, a large specific unit, that not only monitored blog and website activity, but "infiltrated" and fully participated in shaping the semantic contexts of the blogs, etc.

Moreover, they monitored same with some much more "unclear" reasons.

Knowing how the political world works, you bring your contextual organization philosophy into the government with you. Either you get absorbed by the big "it" and your organization is co-opted and some good or some bad change occurs, but it is within the "bell curve".

However, these folks are going in with an ends agenda and they fully know they do not have much time. Cutting corners or throats will not concern these folks at all.

I assume, and I tell my clients, to conduct yourself as if every word is read and heard. "Privacy" does not exist.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

I sent LP an email suggesting he strike the thread. He must have a screw loose. I'd already warned him about this sort of thing late last year.

--Brant

[Selene]

Guys and dolls:

I grew up in Queens in the 60's when a federal agency opened, copied and resealed approximately 100, 000 pieces of public mail in that county alone.

Adam

[Robert Campbell]

Courtesy of WSS, the collected wisdom of Pelagius1 (complete Wikipedia posts and edits) is now available at

http://www.marciadamon.com/rndz/pelagius1.php

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

The collected wisdom of Pelagius1 (complete Wikipedia posts and edits), available at

http://www.marciadamon.com/rndz/pelagius1.php

now has my notes, identifying authors and adding in a few other pieces of time-line evidence.

If you mouse over the little orange tab (marked with a red equal sign) at the top left of an item, you'll see the note.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Cross-posting from SOLO:

Why Did the Peikoff to Wales Email Repeat a Bogus Charge?

One consequence of James and Holly Valliant's disastrous escapades at Wikipedia was the attempted intervention by Leonard Peikoff, complaining to Jimmy Wales about PARC being deemed an unreliable source (which Dr. Peikoff disorted into "non-reputable").

Dr. Peikoff did not complain about the topic ban and conflict of interest ruling against Mr. and Mrs. Valliant. Had he been told about them?

Most importantly, he laid the blame for the nonreliability determination on Barbara Branden:

My understanding, which may not be correct, is that one of the

instigators of your new policy is Barbara Branden, one of the two persons

identified in the Valliant book, with substantial corroborating evidence, as

hostile to Ayn Rand. Surely such an individual and her claque have a

transparent motive to kill this book. Can you justify removing one side of this

dispute, the one endorsed by someone with my credentials? Do you describe as

"reputable" only enemies of Ayn Rand?

Where did Dr. Peikoff get his "understanding"?

The unreliability determination, handed down on May 11, became widely known in Rand-land on May 16, when Barbara Branden emailed Michael Stuart Kelly's OL post

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...amp;#entry69782

around to her distribution list.

A couple of days later, Lindsay Perigo launched his attack on "Babs the Book-Burner" at SOLOP (May 19, 06:40 UTC.)

http://www.solopassion.com/node/6242&p...5#comment-71311

Later that same day, Pelagius1 got busy for the first time. Four edits, the last acknowledged by Mr. Valliant to William Scott Scherk, took place between 16:51 and 17:26 (all times UTC).

There would be no further edits. Pelagius1 was now desperately concentrated on making a case on the talk pages.

A mini-essay on "Restoring References to 'The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics'" went up on Wikipedia at 18:19. This has Jim Valliant's stylistic prints all over it. The Valliant household then stuck the essay up on a couple more talk pages, followed by the debut of the babe-in-the-woods persona Mr. Scherk calls "Pollyvalliantanna" ("I'm new"; "I am newly logged in").

The next 24 hours saw feverish activity from Pelagius1 (James and Holly Valliant, working in relays).

Mr. Valliant emailed WSS twice during this period (wee hours of May 20, UTC), pretending not to know that he was under a topic ban. He was obviously lying. Editing of Wikipedia articles had been abandoned and defensive operations, some quite disingenuous ("I'm new," James Valliant referring to himself in third person) were under way.

At 16:01 on May 20, a post mainly by Holly made a threat that is often the prelude to a lawsuit: "As to the current controversy, he is investigating other means of redress." Since Mr. and Mrs. Valliant have not served notice on anyone, this appears to have signaled their project of getting Leonard Peikoff to intervene with Jimmy Wales.

Of particular interest is the "I got him up for this" post (May 20, 19:26 UTC). What Holly said she woke James up for was a post at SOLO defending Durban House (the infamous "They were careful editors").

The version of it now on SOLOPassion has been edited; the time-stamp is 21:00 UTC on May 20.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/6242&p...5#comment-71353

During the hour and a half before his final edit, Mr. Valliant kept busy at Wikipedia, and he stayed busy for some hours after completing his isolated post at SOLO.

On May 22, Pelagius1 went silent for 2 weeks; he/she/it/they would not reappear at Wikipedia until June 6.

On May 24 (03:21 UTC), I challenged Mr. Valliant about the editing at Durban House and the lack of enthusiasm or support for his book:

http://www.solopassion.com/node/6242&p...5#comment-71428

Mr. Valliant and his book are now so discredited that just one uncertainty remains: When will the Ayn Rand Bookstore truck its remaining stack of PARCs to the pulper?

The pleas to Dr. Peikoff must have risen in amplitude.

On May 27, 06:26 UTC we got parturiunt montes, nascitur ridiculus mus. Lindsay Perigo admitted that his astounding piece of information was ... um .... well ... you know ... Barbara's email of May 16.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/6242&p...5#comment-71636

An hour and a half later, Wikipedia editor J Readings whomped him upside the head

http://www.solopassion.com/node/6242&p...5#comment-71647

As for "B. Branden" and her alleged involvement in this unpleasant episode, let me state for the record that at no time did I speak with, contact, exchange e-mails with, or discuss with anyone affiliated with "B. Branden" the topic banning of anon IP 160 or the eventual consensus to remove the shameless self-promotion of the book, The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, throughout Wikipedia.

Embarrassed, Mr. Perigo (May 27, 09:05 UTC) publicly retracted his accusation against Barbara Branden.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/6242&p...5#comment-71662

I'm prepared to believe "forgetfulness and lack of expertise with web use" is all I can pin on her [i.e., Ms. Branden] in this case. And I'm contemplating the possibility that I've been quite intentionally misled that it was she who laid the complaint. If I find this to have been the case, believe me, I shall shout it from the rooftops. And I intend to find out.

What he did privately could be a whole 'nother matter.

Did Mr. Perigo privately warn Jim Valliant to lay off accusations against Barbara Branden?

Or did he privately encourage Jim Valliant to carry on with the accusations against Ms. Branden?

Could it have been too late to call off the Peikovian dogs?

On May 28 (12:52 UTC) at

http://www.solopassion.com/node/6242&p...5#comment-71730

Mr. Perigo declared, "...I say again, James is wasting his time there. At the moment he's in hospital. If he's now banned from Wiki I suspect that will help his recovery, even if he doesn't realise it."

Did anyone see fit to alert Leonard Peikoff to the bogus charge against Barbara Branden?

The Peikoff-to-Wales email went out at 22:13 UTC on May 29.

Leonard Peikoff did not respond to two queries from me about that email, on which I was cc'd for reasons that were never explained.

But on June 3 (01:54 UTC) Mr. Perigo could be seen chortling

http://www.solopassion.com/node/6242&p...4#comment-71987

"Is it possible that Peikoff has not acknowledged the prof's queries because he, Peikoff, regards him, the prof, as a skank?"

Did Mr. Perigo know anything about the Peikoff to Wales email before it went out?

Did he have any "input" into it?

If he did, he could have spared Dr. Peikoff some embarrassment.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

I've followed up at SOLO with two more posts concerning the Honourable Mr. Valliant and his unimpeachable credibility.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/6242#comment-73369

and

http://www.solopassion.com/node/6242#comment-73370

They're long, so I'll just put the links here for now.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

One of the claims made in the now-ended campaign by Pelagius1 was that Durban House was a "liberal" publisher with no Objectivist leanings or connections.

Well, as Neil Parille discovered, it turns out that on Amazon.com there are a couple of reviews by one "Durban House Publishing."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-review...ostRecentReview

This review is from: The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand (Paperback)

Kelley endorses a concept of "tolerance" that includes the "toleration" of the comprehensive dishonesty of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. A "Big-L" Libertarian is almost by definition one who uncritically embraces the Brandens or Rothbard in their dishonest slams on Ayn Rand, just as Kelley has now embraced the Brandens.

Politically, the valid concept is "rights." Morally, the concept of "tolerance" is meaningless. Debating, discussing or working with someone depends on having an honest colleague or rival to do it with, whatever you agree or disagree about. Nothing positive can come from cooperating with the dishonest. "Tolerating" the dishonest, in any non-political sense, means endorsing it -- voluntarily giving it the very credibility it does not deserve. Would Kelley debate flat-earth advocates or those who deny the Holocaust, if he found in a particular case, he wasn't totally sure whether the advocate was evading or not...?

That don't sound like no liberal to me.

Now, what's the date on this item?

July 21, 2002. In other words, well before The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics was submitted for publication.

It gets better.

If we go to

http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1EDX...f=cm_aya_bb_pdp

and check the profile for "Durban House Publishing" we find a wish list with 2 items on it, only one of which is currently available.

And that item is ... The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics.

Finally, if we go to the wish list

http://www.amazon.com/Holly-Valliant/wishl...p_wish_all_itms

we discover that it belongs to one ... Holly Valliant.

You can't make this stuff up.

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

I took a screen-shot of Holly Valliant's Amazon wish list and couldn't resist posting it (with my annotations):

The items below are the first three items mentioned in "Customers Who Bought Items in This Wish List Also Bought." I pointed to the ones written by the Brandens. If you scroll to the right, the next item bought by people who bought PARC is the movie version of The Passion of Ayn Rand.

I bet you that PARC has sold more copies each of The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden, My Years With Ayn Rand by Nathaniel Branden and the DVD movie of The Passion of Ayn Rand than all three works combined sold of PARC.

PARC is even generating more sales of the books and movie it wants to destroy than any other, with the exception of 2nd place movie, Ayn Rand - A Sense of Life. For instance, all three works are ahead of Atlas Shrugged, which is currently jumping off the shelves...

Man are these folks incompetent at playing Avenging Angel.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

She was probably having a little fun.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

She was probably having a little fun.

Brant,

She was probably trying to manipulate public perception like she has always done, i.e., fake reality for others.

Just so it is clear, Amazon put the Branden books and movie on her wish-list page based on sales records.

She didn't.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Brant,

It's the same kind of fun Jim and Holly Valliant were having while anonymously inserting references to his book at Wikipedia.

Or when they were tag-teaming as Pelagius1. (The userid for Durban House Publishing was marcusantonius12).

Or when Mr. Valliant was pretending not to know what AnonIP160 and Pelagius1 were.

Remember, the review is from 2002.

Robert Campbell

PS added in editing: Neil Parille reminded me that marcusantonius12 derives from the name of one of the Valliants' dogs.

[Brant Gaede]

I didn't post my previous post on this thread. My cat ran over the keyboard while I was getting coffee. What amazed me is he then scrolled down and hit the "Add Reply." For all I know he must have used the spell checker too. I mean, no cat spells that good.

--Brant

Edited June 30, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Robert Campbell]

It gets even better.

http://www.amazon.com/Contested-Legacy-Ayn...nDateDescending

As Neil Parille noted on an unfortunately neglected thread over at SOLOP, when you scroll down a little from the "Durban House Publishing" review of David Kelley's book, you'll find this one, by...

James S. Valliant.

I guarantee that my cat did not run across the keyboard...

Meeeoowwwww....

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Rumor had it that there was a second letter of complaint to Jimmy Wales (besides Leonard Peikoff's) when Mr. Valliant's opus was declared an unreliable source at Wikipedia.

I haven't seen such a letter, and don't know whether Andrew Bernstein sent one or not.

But it could well be, for it turns out that a little while ago Dr. Bernstein's literary agent was none other than...

Holly White Valliant

http://www.spoke.com/info/p9kRCJV/HollyWhiteValliant

http://www.andrewbernstein.net/articles/16_artistswanted.htm

who was still handling publicity for him earlier this year

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressReleas...009+PRN20090106

Will Mrs. Valliant be putting Pelagius1 on her résumé?

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

To the collected works of "Durban House Publishing" over at amazon.com we need to add this negative comment

http://www.amazon.com/review/RLUFQR6J3P51A...Mx215RXN7HHEI5M

dated February 11, 2007.

It was in response to a review by our very own Dragonfly.

David Brown immediately accused Jim Valliant of writing it.

He was close. It looks to me like a joint product of Jim and Holly Valliant:

The demonstrations in Mr. Valliant's book should be read for themselves, but to attack his book for exhibiting a "cult mentality" is beyond the pale.

Valliant discusses the very "human" aspects of Ayn Rand, including her errors. He does not attempt to portray her as being "perfect" or any kind of "Goddess."

Indeed, the irony of this absurd attack is that Valliant demonstrates the terrible mistake both of the Brandens made in treating Rand as a "Goddess," for it was the Brandens who committed this grievous blunder themselves, just as they now attempt to justify their vile conduct towards Rand by smearing her character. Both the worship and the smears, as Mr. Valliant demonstrates, are two sides of the same wooden nickel - the failure to objectively identify both Rand's flaws and remarkable virtues.

Unfortunately, none of the "reviews" mentioned by this reviewer address any of the substance of this revolutionary work.

Back in March 2006, Mr. Valliant practically challenged me to a duel with pistols for implying that he had a "cult mentality" (those were his words; I had charged him with "promoting the worship of Ayn Rand's person").

Again, what kind of publisher lets an author and/or that author's literary agent post reviews or comments under the company name?

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

After reading all this stuff about Durban House and the Valliants and Wikipedia and them I'm beginning to wonder if PARC was just a cheap way for an insignificant lawyer to gain some fame.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

To my best knowledge, Durban House was not initially owned by the Valliants. On paper the owner, editor, staff, etc. was one clear set of people. Scratch the surface, however, and you discovered that another person (I believe it was the owner's wife, but I have to look it up to be sure) was a literary agent funneling a lot of writers to Durban House.

I believe these people where good friends and industry contacts of Holly Valliant, who had her own career. But I can only surmise that from a distance, watching events unfold.

Before, during and after PARC, Durban House was slammed at several places online for charging $25 thousand to authors for publicity to get their books published. That was bad enough. But the image of having an insider also as an author's agent meant a serious conflict of interest. The agent's fee from income coming from the publisher essentially gets funneled back into the publisher's pocket.

To make it clear:

1. Publisher pays author on sales.

2. Author pays agent a commission.

3. Agent happens to be publisher, so it receives the commission.

So in effect, publisher pays publisher while pretending to pay author.

This is greatly frowned upon in the market. So is charging authors money and saying you don't, which the ownwer of Durban House at the time did constantly. (Technically, Durban House used to be a "subsidy press," not a "vanity press," but the bottom line is that author's forked over money to the publisher to see their books in print. Nowadays, under the Valliants, it is just a very broke do-nothing press.)

Since Durban House's reputation was being wrecked by all this disclosure by disgruntled authors and industry whistle-blowers, the owners managed to unload the turkey on another publisher. It's main distributor, in fact. There are actually good titles in that catalog, though. Just because the owners were ethically-challenged, this does not mean they were amateurs at spotting talent.

At this point I believe the Valliants bought Durban House or traded for it or something like that. In the beginning, PARC was advertised on Amazon as being published by Durban House. Then, for a while the name of the publisher on PARC's advertisement changed. But that was for a short time only. After that, the publisher's name reverted to Durban House. (I have all this online here on OL in the PARC section.)

Since that time, the activities of Durban House have changed quite a bit, opting more for Internet freebies than professional publishing industry presence (say trade fairs, major distributor, etc.).

I have the impression that the Valliants got so emotionally involved with their crusade through PARC that they acquired the turkey Durban House (I speculate at quite a loss) just so they could maintain the image of PARC being published by a real publisher, and not vanity published. In addition to the public tarnish a wrongly-promoted subsidy press brings to the author, there is the embarrassment of failing dismally before ARI and Peikoff.

What I suspect is that the Valliants now have a room somewhere full of unsold books (PARC and books by some other authors) gathering dust and they don't have a clue about what to do with them.

Meanwhile, the Valliants go about at Internet freebie places (Wikipedia, Amazon, free Apple hosting for the main sales site, etc.) trying to manipulate the public image about PARC. They multiply themselves into sock-puppets (to use Wikipedia's term for multiple user accounts using pseudonyms and pretending to be different people, but all promoting the same thing) in order to make it look like there is a larger interest in PARC than actually exists.

In Valliant-land, A is not A.

I like the technical terms better, though: bullshit and hype.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Michael,

Could you lay out a timeline for Durban House? For instance, during what period of time was PARC temporarily said to be published by someone else?

There's a weird press release from Holly White & Associates plugging PARC on April 27 of this year:

http://wpr.hoccc.com.cn/blog/483

Over at SOLOP, Lance Davey gives some further links, to a "marcusantonius" post by Holly Valliant from 2001, and to some promotional activities by Holly White & Associates for Durban House authors in 2003 and 2004.

Here's another promotional activity that kind of undercuts the whole babe-in-the-woods act at Wikipedia ("I'm new," "They used IP addresses," etc.):

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2003/11/prweb87395.htm

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Maybe "The Dim Hypothesis" will be published by Durban House.

--Brant