Oliver Kamm and A Case of Criminal Harassment

Long-standing readers of this blog will know all about the extremely vindictive campaign waged against me by the neo-conservative hedge-fund trader cum-blogger Oliver Kamm, which started when my critical review of Kamm's book appeared in the Daily Telegraph in December 2005. Ever since then, Kamm, his neo-con pal Stephen Pollard and their mysterious pseudonymous associates have done all they could to smear me, with emails, repeating Kamm's libellous allegations, being sent to editors who commission my work. Further details of this campaign can be found here. The campaign has been carried out on several fronts; including on the pages of wikipedia. My page was consistently maliciously edited by a mysterious personage called "Elena Zamm" (including on the evening of 25th December) A little research showed that Ms Zamm edited just two other wikipedia pages (but this time favourably) that of Oliver Kamm and a certain 'Anthea Bell'. Who's Anthea Bell, I hear you ask? Why, she's Oliver Kamm's mother.

In the end the malicious editors, unable to get the lies printed that they wanted, lobbied for my wikipedia page to be deleted. Now, the favoured technique is for untrue and libellous comments about me to be posted on any websites my work appears on, or indeed on any site I leave comments on myself.

Comments such as the ones below have been posted repeatedly on the Guardian's Comment is Free website beneath my articles. As you will see, the format is always the same: the comments are pseudonymous and always provide a link to one of two websites: Oliver Kamm and Stephen Pollard.

GreenCityGoddess
Comment No. 835587
September 27 12:12
GBR

Do you have anything to say about your exposure for fraud on Wikipedia? Clark posted comments praising himself under girlie pseudonyms (GreenGoddess and CityLightsGirl) on Wikipedia and Stephen Pollard's blog. He lied both times by denying he was Neil Clark.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/stephenpollard/89011/neil-clark-hypocrite.thtml

It's good of CiF to give Clark space though, even unpaid. Other papers don't publish him after his expousre for misrepresenting sources. He told the Telegraph his pro-milosevic boilerplate came from the IISS. It actually came from a group of Srebrenica deniers!
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/a-humanitarian-.html

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GreenCityGoddess
Comment No. 835587

And here's one from the website of the Green Party spokesperson Derek Wall, posted today. Derek had written to me about setting up an Erich Fromm Party/Society:

Derek, even if you like what he says, be aware that Neil Clark has been exposed for posting booster comments about himself across the web under false names and then lying when he's been caught. It's really funny that now he calls for people to post under their real name!

Neil posted under the name GreenGoddess on Stephen Pollard's blog, always praising himself. He also posted under the name CityLightsGirl on Wikipedia so as to delete any criticisms of himself. Both times he was accused of being Neil Clark and he lied in reply. (He didn't know that IP addresses could show he was lying.) He was banned from Wikipedia and had his entry deleted. Here he is being panned by a Wikipedia administrator for his fraud.

He writes unpaid for Comment is Free because most other places won't publish him. You need to be careful of him too.

Having given the matter much thought, I have this week, passed on all the evidence to the legal department of my union, the NUJ, who have very kindly offered to assist me in this matter. If you read all the material (and follow the relevant links on my blog), then I'm sure you will agree that what I have been subject to only be described as criminal harassment. The perpetrators of this activity have a clear aim: to discredit me in the eyes of those who employ me and prevent me from earning my living as a journalist. They are also perhaps hoping that in the light of their constant, malicious attacks, I will decide that in order to have a 'quiet life', I will quit journalism. They could not be more wrong. Unlike them, my conscience is clear. The malicious attacks have only energised me and motivated me to work even harder to expose the lies and deceit which underpin the neo-con war machine.

Anyway, things are now, at last, coming to a head. Let me make this pledge now: I will not rest until those responsible for such cowardly, underhand, and deceitful attacks are bought to justice.



UPDATE: You really couldn't make this up. 'anonymous' has returned to Derek Wall's site with the following classic:

Glad to hear of all the paying work, Neil. Does that exist outside your imagination?

And in an attempt to prove his case, 'anonymous' links to guess who? Yes, Oliver Kamm!!! (Kamm's words of wisdom are below)

"In the past 18 months he has, so far as I can see, written two articles for The Telegraph - about, respectively, the Edwardian comic writer Saki, and horseracing - and a 200-word contribution for The Times about the World Pipe-Smoking Championships in Poland. I have no doubt that he is competent to write on two of those three non-political subjects. His contributions to The Guardian have been more numerous, and commendably haven't included the relevant factoid. Indeed, the only time I've since commented on Mr Clark's writing has been a quizzical note about The Guardian's publishing, with predictably infelicitous results, a comment on French politics from someone who literally can't read a French newspaper."

The 'infelicitous' (coo, wot a big word Oliver!)result of the article in question was the rejection, by the Guardian's readers editor, of a spurious letter of complaint by a reader who wanted the paper to print a retraction for my claim that the gung ho French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had supported the Iraq war. I don't think I need to tell you who the letter of complaint was from....