On Sunday, Paul Elam, head cheese of A Voice for Men, proudly announced that his colleagues at the phony WhiteRibbon.org website were republishing a kind of shitty article on domestic violence by Tanveer Ahmed, a columnist for the Australian and a man Elam described as an “esteemed psychiatrist, author, [and] media regular.”

Wait, did I say he was a columnist for the Australian? Make that former columnist. The Guardian reports that the Australian has just fired Ahmed – for plagiarizing a chunk of the very article that Elam has just republished.

It’s the second time Ahmed has lost a media gig for plagiarism.

The plagiarism was first discovered by blogger Ketan Joshi, who wrote:

Out of curiosity, and following some of the social media commentary around Ahmed’s piece, I plugged his writing into a bunch of online plagiarism checkers, and, lo and behold, a portion of his article is either plagiarised from work he’s published well into the past, or ripped directly from another website.

In one of the many ironies of this case, the sentence that Ahmed plagiarised virtually word for word for his Australian piece was written by feminist and MRA bete noire Amanda Marcotte.

Here’s the sentence as it appeared in Ahmed’s article:

…it is critical that improving arrest and prosecution rates, establishing shelters and abuse hotlines, pushing for state provisions against stalking, and creating protections for immigrants all have the goal of getting victims out of abusive -relationships.

And here’s the original from an American Prospect article by Marcotte:

Improving arrest and prosecution rates, establishing shelters and abuse hotlines, pushing for state provisions against stalking, and creating protections for immigrants all have the goal of getting victims out of abusive relationships and into safe situations.

Ahmed — at least in the version of his piece up on WhiteRibbon.org — actually footnotes Marcotte’s piece, though he presents her words as his own, not as a quote. (Yep, fellas, that’s still plagiarism.) He also manages to misspell her last name.

In addition to this bit of plagiarism, Joshi uncovered a number of similar examples in other articles recently written by Ahmed, and some examples of his own writing that he had repurposed numerous times in different pieces.

Another irony? Ahmed is an “ambassador” for the real White Ribbon Australia, a genuine anti-domestic violence campaign, yet he’s allowing his piece to be republished on A Voice for Men’s WhiteRibbon.org website, a site that’s impersonating the real White Ribbon campaign in what seems like an obvious ploy to create confusion about the real organization.

In other words, he’s allowing Elam and his cronies to publish his plagiarised article on their fraudulent website.

This will do wonders for the credibility of all involved.

Not long ago, Elam removed posts by his former number two dude at AVFM, John Hembling, after it was pointed out that one of his posts was plagiarised. Will Elam or the AVFM staffers who ostensibly run WhiteRibbon.org remove Ahmed’s post as well?

H/T — @ clementine_ford and @ drspacejunk

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