Insanity

I often meet incompetence. I occasionally encounter stupidity. Very, very occasionally I come across madness.

Before anyone panics, no, I’m not talking about any of my family, friends, colleagues or even my clients. No, they’re all perfectly reasonable, sensible and sane. Well, most of them are. OK, some of them are almost normal.

However, there have been a few occasions when I’ve encountered someone completely and utterly bonkers. Mad as a hatter, bats in the belfry, nutty as a fruitcake.

I had another one last week.

As readers will have seen I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few months looking into fake educational establishments. The “Atlantic International University”, “Belford University”, “Omega Global University” and the “University of SouthCentral Los Angeles:, the list goes on and on. None of them are real universities at all, they’re all fakes that award fake degrees. There is a page on the Wikipedia web site that lists many of these non-accredited universities, it’s worth examining next time you hire someone who claims to have a qualification from somewhere you’ve never heard of.

One of these fake establishments calls itself the “Northern Ireland Institute of Business and Technology (British)”. Despite this name, they have nothing to do with either Northern Ireland or Britain, they just used those place names to gain a bit of credibility, they’re actually based in Malaysia. They do the usual things, they claim to employ various academics, none of whom can be traced, they claim to be accredited but in fact their accreditation is from an unrecognised body and they claim to be based in places where they aren’t even registered as a company.

I’ve mentioned them a few times in Mmegi and on our blog and eventually they got in touch. That’s when I encountered the madness. They began by telling me that:

“FBI is watching your uncorrectable behavior. You better watch out!!!”

and:

“To avoid unforeseen serious consequence will come after you”

Meanwhile a reader got in touch with them and asked them some questions. They responded by email and copied it to me. I won’t burden you with the nearly 400 words they sent but here are some highlights.

“From the beginning, we sensed that you had been used by the internet terrorist Richard Harriman. Our sixth senses were accurate.”

“NIIB(British) is a genuine establishment providing comprehensive education training by distance learning, home study, open distance education and research activities in the field of education. It provides training people from unemployment to professionals from professionals to businessmen. An internet terrorist Richard Harriman should not discredit our genuine services to mankind.”

“Richard Harriman comment is totally baseless, misleading and lying.”

“Entertainment: He even rudely comments that he would go bald and a tooth drops out. You may tell him that the people of Botswana will cheer if he would boil his mini bald cannon and two flat balls until both of them drop off.”

“Do you think Richard Harriman is an accredited blogger? The answer is no. The public suspected that he is a modern internet terrorist. The Interpol Police are watching him with an eagle eye. The public urge you to distant yourself from Richard Harriman because his actions tell the public that he is an anti European, anti American and anti Asian. He has been classified as an internet terrorist by international community. His action is liable to invite disaster to mankind and unrest to the country.”

“The Interpol police would take action against anyone who runs foul of the law. They are monitoring closely on the internet terrorist (Richard) activity. Warn him to stay away from this unproductive, unpopular and very stupid and indecent job.”

"Strongly urge him to remove all the slanderous and defamation remarks on so many establishments in Europe, USA, Asia and many regions around the world from his illegal blog immediately.”


“Hello, Richard, can you behave yourself and learn more from Madam Theresa than terrorism”

I don’t know where to begin. I’m not the only one who senses that the author of that tirade is not entirely normal, am I? Maybe I should just be charitable and I shouldn’t mock the afflicted?

Let’s just say that I think you can judge the quality of an educational establishment by the sanity of it’s spokesperson. The “Northern Ireland Institute of Business and Technology (British)” is completely bonkers.

But, you might ask, what about the people who buy degrees from these crooks? Aren’t they equally to blame? Yes. I agree, they are. I don’t think there can be any sane people who think that a qualification you buy over the internet without doing a significant amount of real work is real. They’re not mad if they think this is how things work, they’re bad.

So here’s a suggestion. If you got a job or a promotion using a fake degree or if you have simply told your employer that you have such a degree you need to come clean and confess. Or just resign. You really, REALLY need to do either of these things as soon as possible because we are going to be naming these fake universities for everyone to see. Do you want to be found out?

Resign or come clean now before we expose you. You’d be insane not to.

This week’s stars

• Irfan from Citizen Design. Go and buy a “Re Mmogo” t-shirt today.