26 May 2018

The Strange Case of Philip Cross – Wikipedia’s Mystery Editor and its anti-left, pro Israeli, fake neo-con entries


The Vicious Vendettas of Oliver Kamm – Times Leaderwriter, erstwhile journalist and Cyberstalker




I am combining two stories – what is being termed the Philip Cross Affair and the Vicious Vendettas of one of the most unpleasant people in British journalism, Oliver Kamm.  They intertwine and it may be that Philip Cross is a composite person, whose persona includes that of Kamm.

If we are to believe that “Philip Cross” is a genuine person then he is an amazing person.  He has not had one single day off from editing Wikipedia in almost five years. “He” has edited every single day from 29 August 2013 to 14 May 2018. Including five Christmas Days. That’s 1,721 consecutive days of editing. 
Below is a fascinating article by Craig Murray, who was the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan before he was sacked by Jack Straw.  What was Murray’s offence?  Criticising the regime in Uzbekistan headed by Islam Karimov for its quaint use of torture, in particular the boiling alive of victims.  This criticism was deemed a sackable offence.  It is a measure of the depravity to which New Labour sank, that under Blair and Straw we had extraordinary rendition for torture in Libya and other places and the sacking of Craig Murray for speaking out.

Omer Benjacob in Israel’s Ha'aretz immediately jumps to the defence of Cross, labeling his critics as Kremlin stooges – 


Why Are Russia, WikiLeaks and the British Far Left Out to Get This 'pro-Israel' Wikipedia Editor?

Beneath this article is another, equally fascinating article on the vendettas and stalking of Oliver Kamm.  Kamm’s lack of any discernible talent is only matched by his ego.  I first encountered him 30+ years ago when I gave a talk on Palestine to Oxford University Labour Club.  A fairly right-wing bunch it must be admitted.  Kamm’s contribution, which he later denied, was to ask me how Zionism could be racist when Jews weren’t a race. My response was to suggest that if that were true then the Nazis too weren’t racists since the Jews weren’t a race.  Kamm’s own recollections of my addressing the Club are in an article The fight’s gone out of me in the Jewish Chronicle announcing his overdue resignation from the Labour Party.

A good article describing the dishonesty of Kamm and his method of argumentation is by the Socialist Unity editorial team Oliver Kamm: Smearing Himself…In Person which talks about Kamm’s ‘accidental misrepresentations, inadvertent omissions of fact and what on first sight looks like outright manipulation?’  It is one way of putting it. 
Kramm’s views on our interactions can be gauged from his Harry’s Place article Oliver Kamm, Tony Greenstein, the IRA and musicians
Kamm was an enthusiastic support of Blair and the war in Iraq, supported extraordinary rendition, loves Israel, describes the struggle of oppressed people as ‘terrorism’, was a member of the far-Right cold war and Islamaphobic Henry Jackson Society.  A leader writer on The Times he still says he is ‘left wing’!  He is also a banker and when once I called him a ‘wanker banker’ he accused me of homophobia!  I’m still working it out.
The article by Neil Clark is disturbing because it suggests that he isn’t just a reactionary and narcissistic freak but a genuinely disturbed person who engaged in persistent stalking over a number of years because a  book of his had, in his opinion, not been given a fair review.

The Philip Cross Affair  

Craig Murray
Philip Cross's tweets

UPDATE “Philip Cross” has not had one single day off from editing Wikipedia in almost five years. “He” has edited every single day from 29 August 2013 to 14 May 2018. Including five Christmas Days. That’s 1,721 consecutive days of editing.
133,612 edits to Wikpedia have been made in the name of “Philip Cross” over 14 years. That’s over 30 edits per day, seven days a week. And I do not use that figuratively: Wikipedia edits are timed, and if you plot them, the timecard for “Philip Cross’s” Wikipedia activity is astonishing is astonishing if it is one individual:
The operation runs like clockwork, seven days a week, every waking hour, without significant variation. If Philip Cross genuinely is an individual, there is no denying he is morbidly obsessed. I am no psychiatrist, but to my entirely inexpert eyes this looks like the behaviour of a deranged psychotic with no regular social activities outside the home, no job (or an incredibly tolerant boss), living his life through a screen. I run what is arguably the most widely read single person political blog in the UK, and I do not spend nearly as much time on the internet as “Philip Cross”. My “timecard” would show where I watch football on Saturdays, go drinking on Fridays, go to the supermarket and for a walk or out with the family on Sundays, and generally relax much more and read books in the evenings. Cross does not have the patterns of activity of a normal and properly rounded human being.
There are three options here. “Philip Cross” is either a very strange person indeed, or is a false persona disguising a paid operation to control wikipedia content, or is a real front person for such an operation in his name.
Why does this – to take the official explanation – sad obsessive no friends nutter, matter?
Because the purpose of the “Philip Cross” operation is systematically to attack and undermine the reputations of those who are prominent in challenging the dominant corporate and state media narrative. particularly in foreign affairs. “Philip Cross” also systematically seeks to burnish the reputations of mainstream media journalists and other figures who are particularly prominent in pushing neo-con propaganda and in promoting the interests of Israel.
This matters because, an ordinary reader who comes across an article questioning (say) the official narrative on the Skripals, is very likely to turn to Wikipedia to get information on the author of the article. Simply put, the purpose of the “Philip Cross” operation is to make certain that if that reader looks up an anti-war person such as John Pilger, they will conclude they are thoroughly unreliable and untrustworthy, whereas if they look up a right wing MSM journalist, they will conclude they are a paragon of virtue and entirely to be trusted.
The “Philip Cross” treatment is meted out not just to left wingers, but to all sceptical of neo-conservatism and who oppose “wars of intervention”. A list of Cross’s victims includes Alex Salmond, Peter Oborne, John Pilger, Owen Jones, Jeremy Corbyn, Tim Hayward, Diane Abbott, Neil Clark, Lindsey German, Vanessa Beeley, and George Galloway. As you would expect “Philip Cross” is particularly active in making amendments to the Wikipedia articles of alternative media, and of MSM critique sites. “Philip Cross” has made 36 edits to the Wikipedia entry of The Canary and, staggeringly, over 800 edits on Media Lens. George Galloway remains the “Philip Cross” operation’s favourite target with a quite incredible 1,800 edits.

See also War on the left: Targets of relentless Wikipedia editor Philip Cross report intriguing patterns

I'm launching a crowd-funded legal action for libel and harassment against Oliver Kamm, The Times newspaper and Rupert Murdoch. Here's why: 
 Oliver Kamm-  cyberstalker.
A SIGN OF THE TIMES- THE VICIOUS VENDETTAS OF OLIVER KAMM, CYBERSTALKER
Neil Clark
The author of a-pro Iraq war book sees it critically reviewed in a national newspaper. He then spends over ten years stalking, attacking, hounding and defaming the anti-war author of the review. He even tweets the Minutes of the reviewer’s local parish council meetings in an attempt to discredit his ‘enemy’. He attacks articles written by the wife of the reviewer on the rare occasions she ventures into print. He boasts about his efforts in ‘destroying’ the reviewer’s career in a blog post. 
He tweets obsessively about the 'obscure' reviewer and when the reviewers’ work is cited or praised by someone with a high profile on Twitter, he intervenes to warn them off with  claims that the reviewer is a ‘fake’, a ’fraud’,  a ‘crank’ and a ‘genocide denier‘.
Then, after he is finally questioned under caution of arrest by the police in relation to stalking/harassment activities, the author accuses the person he has been relentlessly persecuting of harassing him- and  falsely claims that his victim has been ordered by the police not to contact him, his family and his employers!
Sounds like pretty disturbing behaviour, don’t you think? I certainly would agree, but as I’ve found out over the past decade,  waging vicious vendettas - and telling lies in an attempt to destroy the reputation of his ‘enemies’ is par for the course for Mr Oliver Kamm, ‘former banker, Leader Writer and Columnist, The Times’ and author of Anti-Totalitarianism-The Left Wing Case for a NeoConservative Foreign Policy’. 
Kamm’s behaviour is a scandal, but even more shocking has been how powerful individuals in the British neocon Establishment have not only protected the Internet stalker, but promoted him.  
My review of Kamm’s book was published by the Daily Telegraph on New Years Eve 2005. It was critical, but as reviews go, not particularly harsh- and certainly nowhere near as harsh as the bile-dripping book reviews that Kamm himself writes for The Times. What I did not know, when I filed copy, was that the book’s author was an incredibly malicious and vindictive individual with a history of cyber-stalking and online persecution of people whose views he disagreed with.
The day after the review appeared, Kamm attacked me on his blog- and accused me of not reading his book. The first of over twenty-five posts devoted to attacking/denigrating me (or my wife) over the next two years, was no mindless rant, but was clearly designed to discredit me with newspapers who commissioned my work. 
In subsequent blog posts that month Kamm made further allegations against me which I responded to on my own blog. I had said that the source for one of my claims in the review was The Institute of Strategic Studies Organisation. I had meant The International Strategic Studies Association. Kamm attempted to build this up into a heinous offence, writing that ‘a reasonable person might readily take this as a reference to the well known International Institute of Strategic Studies’. I think ‘a reasonable person’ would think Kamm was making a mountain out of a molehill in a deliberate attempt to discredit the reviewer of his book.
Kamm’s initial attempts to discredit me didn’t work, but then there was a more sinister development. A poison-pen style email, from a  ‘George Courtenay’ was sent to Tom Switzer, the opinion editor of The Australian newspaper, who regularly commissioned me. The email read: 
 ‘I see you have published an opinion article by Neil Clark today. That's all good to print a range of views but you may be interested that Oliver Kamm of the London Times has been investigating Mr. Clark's use of sources. Mr.Clark doesn't say the same thing in his new article but as he's lied to other editors I'm bringing it to your attention'. 
G. Courtenay

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