From: v129qp43@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Hugh Jarvis - Anthropology Dept.)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Hardwick's Repeat Abuse of Rindos (Among Others)
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 1993 20:54:00 GMT

    I have finally grown totally fed-up with Gil's direct and oblique
attacks on Dave Rindos's name and reputation.  Here is one of his latest
diatribes:
-----
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 93 15:55:09 GMT
[...]
> Both Marvin Harris and Cliiford Geertz would surely both agree that
> any fool arriving to sell the *latest* in evolutionary theory does not
> an anthropologist make.

> Rather that said fool, along with his mates, get off . . .
-----
While Dr Rindos is not the only person Gil attacks as an "evolutionist",
it is pretty clear that he is never far from mind.

Gil seems to think he can sling around the most outrageous accusations
(and these kinds of rumours can really HURT a persons' reputation no less
their feelings!) and his ONLY source is UNNAMED SO-CALLED "REPUTABLE"
SOURCES.

The following are a FEW of the things that Gil has said over the past few
months. Many more could be added.  All are directly
> From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)


At the end of this post I include quotes from some of the most reputable
scholars in our field regarding Dr Rindos' work and contribution to the
discipline . They certainly stand in great contrast to what Gil has to
say.  I think the scholars quoted at the end of this posting represent FAR
better judges of Dr Rindos' credentials and contributions than our Dear
Gil for whom we have only his OWN testimony of worth! 

-----
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 93 09:52:07 GMT
[...]
The first matter I would raise in comment here, is the very public
difference between myself and Dr Rhindos on the matter of categories
in Aboriginal culture, played out on this very news.group. In that
case Dr Rhindos quite openly attempted to discredit my own lifetime's
experience with Aboriginal people on the basis of his one phone call
apparently to an outstation!

I have met the man myself, and my impression is that his entire career
has been built not on field research at all, but on his ability to
berate and bully all and sundry on the logic of his own evolutionary
theories. In the local pub, drinking and chain-smoking all the while
for that matter.

Secondly, and this is rumour passed to me by several reputable and
long-standing Western Australian anthropologists as to Dr Rhindos'
[horrid allegations about Dr Rindos' personal life deleted: I
understand these statements apparently form the basis for Dr Rindos'
suit against Dear Gil]

[...]
The rest of you professors, lecturers, staff, students, professionals
and sundry lurkers and lookers-on, I do ask that yoy think critically
about what is going on here. Please be a little more intelligent than
to be swayed by grossly exaggerated and one-sided campaigns by a media
to which only one party has ready access. Please think about which
powerful politicians and vested interests might be behind this whole
business.
-----
Date: Sun, 05 Sep 93 03:08:24 GMT
[...]                                                          I can
provide any number of examples, but having all these "colleagues" who
prefer to engage lawyers in their endeavour to have their favourite
theories prevail instead of presenting evidence in the dispassionate
discourse we anticipate joining, I'll not post them here.
-----
>Date: Tue, 14 Sep 93 02:51:34 GMT
[...]
Yet I have been booted off ANTHRO-L, supposedly a specialist list for
anthropologists, for daring to argue that any anthropologists anywhere
are entitled to consult with their colleagues without being attacked
and criticised by these evolutionary theorists, philosophers, lawyers,
-----
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 93 02:44:53 GMT
[...]
I do not think it is sufficient either, to propose a body of theory of
no greater substance than that which, by contrast with being invented
by somebody's juvenile and overactive imagination, has been borrowed
from some other more "prestigious" discipline still without anybody
bothering to go out and check for facts which might support it in the
context it is being deployed.
[...]
It would help greatly were more than a few people less concerned
about losing face in an argument based on imaginings, hypotheticals,
and borrowed paradigms, or even as we have seen here going to the
extreme of actually claiming that one didn't lose the argument at all
but was being "victimised" for being gay, or whatever.

If the conditions of use of the Internet mean having to swallow that
crap, then the medium is not worth a bumper. I find the prospect of
all those years of research and development costing multi-millions of
dollars to construct an international communication in the cause of
science and knowledge, toward a little more understanding and peace
in the world, going to waste just to save the embarrassment of a few
deadshits being exposed thereby as frauds and charletans, bizarre in
the extreme.
-----
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 93 00:19:23 GMT
[...]
But I continue to find it fascinating how our good Dr Rindos pursues his
scholarly career; we have all seen the quality of his field research and
his persistent refusal to acknowledge the evidence presented to him by
those with years of experience in the particular field he chose only
very lately to join, Aboriginal Australia being flavour of the month
in New York and London as I understand it.

Here now we find further hysteria being drummed up by this team of
frauds and pretenders to science and scholarship who have already
earned the ostracism of their peers, led by a scruffy and thoroughly
distasteful individual who has already been fired by his University
but simply refuses to quit campus. News is that he even went to the
extreme of holing up in the campus radio station while his overseas
mates attempted to drum up further hysteria internationally against
the University!
-----
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 93 14:50:06 GMT
[...]
Be very careful now, pal. You have stepped well over the mark and your
reputation as a scientist is at stake. I do hope that later you will
not resort to claiming that we had just been picking on you because
you are gay, or some such nonsense your lawyer thinks will get you
your job back.
-----
>Date: Sun, 21 Nov 93 04:25:07 GMT
[...]
I tell you, Gil Hardwick will not accept being made the resident Idiot
Savant of Internet Anthropology, to be mocked, ridiculed and attacked
by any juvenile deadshit who happens to get access, and then dragged to
court in a most spurious libel suit as I seek to fend them off.
-----
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 93 07:44:54 GMT
[...]
In the meantime, those same evolutionary theorists have no more right
to intrude upon the profession of Anthropology than any religious,
intellectual, esoteric, or other order extant in the world.

If I am a "case" for arguing that that be the position taken on the
matter, if for no other reason than that we might be left free to get
on with our work without being ridiculed and attacked, summoned to
court on the most spurious legal grounds, harrassed and denied the
integrity of anthropological research, then I remain a "case".
-----
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 93 15:07:24 GMT
[...]
My question is, If Western Europe and North America are so civilised,
so advanced, so highly *evolved*, why do you so insist on sending us
so many of your idiots?
-----
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 93 14:46:43 GMT
[...]
There is a vast difference between some Western academic somewhere
wishing to assert his *a priori* taxonomies as human universals, and
an individual anthropologist out in the filed expressing his personal
opinion in response to questions from real people on any particular
matter *a posteriori*, and then posting his reply here to queries on
practical professionalism.
-----
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 93 14:53:41 GMT
[...]                    I have to put up with these idiot Americans
enough without you migrants soming here getting jobs in or libraries
under State sponsorship without ever bothering to understand for yourself
what our human reality is all about.

 > I fear Gil may have been referring to your academic exports. I cannot,
however,
 > be sure of this. Ask him.
That too, [...]
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