Bartholomew's Notes

Tim Ireland has received an “interim statement” from Patrick Mercer, MP and former Shadow Minister for Homeland Security:

“I disassociate myself from anything that Glen Jenvey may have claimed about Mr Tim Ireland and will be looking carefully into my other dealings with Mr Jenvey.”

This comes in the wake of Tim’s communication with Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, about whom Jenvey boasted on tape of using as an intermediary:

Meanwhile, after weeks of radio silence, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has finally been in touch. We’re still discussing what will or won’t be said on the record, but he’s not standing shoulder to shoulder with Jenvey by any means.

Jenvey’s former associate Dominic Whiteman, meanwhile, has been very keen to stress that he has had nothing to do with Jenvey for some time.

But what about Jenvey’s other friends and associates?

No word yet from journalist Jeremy Reynalds, who wrote a bizarre smear attack against the Guardian newspaper at Jenvey’s behest. Reynalds also sent an email to Tim from Jenvey in which Jenvey denied he had ever used the false name “Richard Tims” – audio evidence has proven this to be lie, so Reynalds must be feeling a bit of fool. Plus I’ve found further evidence suggestive that Jenvey used bogus postings in 2007 to try to whip up Muslim anger against Reynalds’ book War of the Web; there is no suggestion that Reynalds had anything to do with this, but it’s rather embarrassing.

No word yet from Paul Ray ( blogger “Lionheart”), who has continually asserted that any concerns about Jenvey can be dismissed as the machinations of Muslims.

No word yet from the Sun newspaper, which is currently facing legal action over a front-page splash derived from Jenvey’s tainted research.

The evidence that Jenvey concocted stories about Muslim extremists by making bogus postings to Muslim forums has been pieced together from diverse sources, some of which are both obscure and several years old, and it is simply not credible to see some Muslim masterplan behind it all. Plus, from the “Richard Tims” lie and from Jenvey’s threat of violence against Tim, we’re now able to see directly what kind of a person he is.

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Original version, at the pro-BNP Leicestershire Community Voice:

This morning, worshippers from many parts of Leicestershire gathered at the Baptist Chapel, [location redacted] to take part in a Service conducted by Rev. Robert West of Lincolnshire.

New version:

This morning, worshippers from many parts of Leicestershire gathered at a Baptist Chapel to take part in a Service conducted by Rev. Robert West of Lincolnshire.

Old version:

Footnote: By preaching at [the chapel], Rev. West follows in the footsteps of the notable Leicestershire clockmaker and Baptist pastor, Samuel Deacon (1746-1816). The Chapel itself is a Victorian gem, maintained in superb style by a dedicated handful of local people. The pews are original, there is seating for 800 worshippers on 2 levels, a beautiful carved pulpit, and still retains a church organ, which it is hoped will one day be heard again. Do visit,or attend a Sunday Service and, if you are part of Barton’s community, treasure this lovely old building in your midst.

This “footnote” has now been removed, along with a picture of the chapel.

I blogged on this event here. The unrevised version is still available at other far-right sites.

UPDATE: I’ve now found some clues as to how and why this event took place.

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Following on from my previous post, I’ve now received details about Zaidi234’s registration on the MPAC forum in 2007:

user: zaidi234

email: nashraf_abu@hotmail.com

Registration IP Address: 195.93.21.39

This is interesting for a number of reasons:

1. “195.93.21.39” resolves to the Yorkshire Dales, just north of Skipton. Curiously, so does “84.13.23.48”, the IP which was used to spread bogus messages purportedly from the Daily Mail accusing Tim Ireland of being a paedophile, and which, according to the moderators of the Ummah website, was also used by abuislam/Richard Tims.

2. A poster named “Nashraf” made a one-off posting to another Muslim forum, again in 2007, to publicise Zaidi234’s posting about Jeremy Reynalds – see here.

3. A poster named “Nash1965” made a couple of dozen postings to Pravda‘s forums on Muslim extremists in 2007 and 2008. This included some strands promoting Jeremy Reynalds’ book and the work of Glen Jenvey. One thread is headlined “Pravda User’s in New Book” (sic for apostrophe – a Jenvey trademark), and he explains that (sic for spelling)

JOHNATHAN GALT AND GLEN JENVEY

They were both Pravda message board users who met on Pravda and pulled off a sting on Abu Hamza.

Another thread is entitled “Muslims Up in Arms!“, and it links to Zaidi234 on MPAC – in other words, Nash1965 is using a posting made by Zaidi234 as evidence of Muslim extremism. That’s a strangely familiar story. And by the way, Jenvey apparently is 43 years old, so was probably born in 1965.

4. In November 2007, “Nashraf Abu” left a post at Ummah linking to http://www.al-qaeda.us, and telling us that

They have stolen al-qaeda’s name they think it’s so cool.why can’t they think of their own name.

And who are “they”? Well, the link redirects to the blog of Paul Ray, aka “Lionheart”, a long-time associate of Jenvey who rails against “Paki Muslims” and who in the past has expressed support for the BNP.

What a remarkable set of coincidences.

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Soon after Tim Ireland first noted the evidence which suggested that “freelance anti-terrorist investigator” Glen Jenvey had made bogus postings to a Muslim website with the intention of stirring up a panic over an extremist plot against British Jews, several bloggers rooted around the internet looking for extra information about Jenvey and his associates. I had a bit of a head-start, having written about Jenvey and the “VIGIL Network” back in 2006, but some other interesting sites also came to light. One of these was an an old thread on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee’s (MPACUK) discussion forum in which a certain “Zaidi234” – who made only a few posts between April and July 2007 before disappearing – claims to have been passed private emails from Dominic Whiteman in which Whiteman suggests encouraging Muslim extremists to use elderly women as suicide bombers, as this will create a more generalised fear of Muslims. “Zaidi234” also claims to know some personal information about Whiteman. As I blogged a couple of weeks ago, Whiteman is a former associate of Jenvey, and he recently issued a statement at his Westminster Journal in which he seemed keen to put a bit of distance between himself and his one-time collaborator.

However, there’s a very weird twist in the tale: the alleged private emails are all written in good English (although the British Whiteman asks for a “favor” rather than a “favour”), but I’ve just noticed that “zaidi234” himself writes like this:

A friend in Jordan past on his concern’s about Dominic Whiteman who real name is in fact spelt wightman.my friend sent me copy’s of email’s and serveral county court case number with people who are concerned about this whiteman.
In the email’s he sent me it show’s the police were informed that vigil was making up lie’s about muslim’s, but the lie’s would of led to targetting of OAP’s in the muslim community.
I was then sent the above story, my friend in Jordan wrote but no British newspapers would print it as the government or the tory’s control them all.
so if anyone can pass on the story in exposing vigil and Dominic Whiteman it will help stop attack’s on the muslim community.

This bears all the hallmarks of Jenvey’s dyslexic punctuation – redundant apostrophes, missing capital letters, and missing gaps before the beginning of sentences. I collected some other examples in a blog entry here; and emails sent directly from Jenvey to Tim Ireland confirm that this is indeed his style.

In another thread “Zaidi234” warns readers that

Several non Muslim forums are advertising a Book called War Of The Web see http://www.bookfinder4u.com/IsbnSear…70&mode=direct

The book tells a story about how for twenty years MI5 knew British muslims were going abroad killing civillians in many countrys like Chechnys Kashmir Isreal Yemen and so on…..

It also claims British muslims killed Serb civillians in their hundreds during the Bosnian war,
It goes on to disclose the inside story about Abu Hamza’s arrest and Abu Izadeen and others arrested under the anti terror laws for incitement.

It then goes on to compare terrorist crimes with written passages from the Quran calling Islam a Evil faith and made up faith which was invented as a means to control earth at gun point and ok,ed the killing of civllians.

Can you all be aware of this book’s evil message and ask shops not to stock it.

And further down:

looking at author’s back ground notes on internet.he was born in the UK seem’s He has written many story’s mocking muslims.

The author of War of the Web is Jeremy Reynalds, who writes articles for the American evangelical newssite ASSIST – recently he wrote a piece promoting the bizarre suggestion that Jenvey was being set up by the editor of the Guardian newspaper.

So, Zaidi234’s postings were all about either Dominic Whiteman or Jeremy Reynalds; he claims that someone passed him emails written by Whiteman; he claims to know about Whiteman’s financial affairs and his “real” surname; and he appears to know the contents of War of the Web in some detail. He also writes just like Glen Jenvey, who has (or had) links with both men. And after nine posts, he vanishes from the scene. Very curious.

Did someone copy Jenvey’s style to try and create a rift with Whiteman and Reynalds, or has Jenvey been playing a double game of some sort?

Whiteman has emailed me with this short statement, which he has also given me permission to publicise:

 Richard,

 I refer you to my statement published on Westminster Journal on the second of March this year. I am happy to remain in splendid isolation of your ongoing investigations into people I do not work with or have not worked with for over two years. I have nothing further to add to my statement except to say that in my writings and in my work I stand up to blabbermouth Islamist extremists and multifarious other cowards and they are most often the authors of anonymous/false ID slurs against me on the web. If I wanted to, I have the capability to investigate these slurs, find their authors and involve the authorities. As it is, I’ve always found that those who use the poison pen – whichever side they are on – are usually so lacking in grey matter that they almost always have their ink poison themselves in the end. Such muppets can write as much about me as they like because quite frankly I don’t give a damn; that does not mean I won’t come to their aid when they stop choking.

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A few days ago Sadly No! rightly made fun of Andy McCarthy after he scoffed at the spelling skills of UK Islamists who waved banners protesting against Royal Anglian soldiers. “That would be ‘Anglican'”, McCarthy intoned. Alas, a correction soon followed:

Our friend Andrew Stuttaford informs me that I’m in error.  The regiment in the video is from East Anglia in the U.K.  I regret the error.  It doesn’t change the essence of the post.  What’s depicted in the video is disgraceful.

But it’s not just Americans who have trouble here – Jade Goody famously asked about the foreign nation of “East Angular”, and the “Anglican” goof is widespread, even on Army websites. The latest Private Eye has some other examples (1232, p. 9):

Sky News’s Eamonn Holmes is the latest culprit, but many other hacks have made the same gaffe on the BBC News channel and regional news broadcasts…Last Friday, the Daily Telegraph‘s Middle East expert Con Coughlin also had members of the second Battalion The Royal Anglican Regiment parading through the centre of Luton.

But it’s not just the media. The British Army’s own “Army in Education” website draws teachers’ attention to the “organized learning activities” at the “Royal Anglican Museum”. And according to the recently launced official website of the royal family…the Duke of Gloucester “holds honorary military appointments with the Royal Anglican Regiment” among many others.

The Eye suggests that this common mistake is the reason why the Islamist fanatics targeted the parade, as they were under the impression this was a “Christian” regiment sent out to attack Muslims. That seems to me doubtful, given that the Muslim extremists in fact do appear to know the difference between “Anglian” and “Anglican”.

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Blogger threatened with assault, smeared anonymously as paedophile

Boasts of role in James Ujaama conviction

Links to prominent politician explored

Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads has returned to the subject of Glen Jenvey, who appeared on the anti-Islam Obsession DVD as a supposed “Free-lance Terror Investigator“. As I’ve blogged a number of times lately, Tim has found strong circumstantial evidence that Jenvey made anonymous postings to a Muslim discussion forum as “Abuislam”, urging Muslims to “target” prominent British Jews for revenge over Israeli action in Gaza – in particular, he named Sir Alan Sugar, a businessman and star of a TV competition show. Jenvey then presented these postings to the UK Sun as evidence of Muslim extremism, and he was featured in a front-page story headlined “Terror Target Sugar”. However, once Tim publicised his concerns, the story was withdrawn, and the Sun is now fending off an investigation from the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) and legal threats from Alan Sugar. Tim has now uncovered lots more – and there’s a small cameo by me in the unfolding saga.

Jenvey’s responses have been increasingly desperate. He claimed that he could prove that his computer had not been used to post to the Muslim forum – rather unconvincing given that it’s possible to own more than one computer, and to have access to more besides. Jenvey also took the predictable line that because he battles extremists, any criticism of him must be the work of extremists, and he made edits to Wikipedia accusing the PCC of supporting al-Qaeda. When the Guardian ran a short report on the PCC investigation, Jenvey then concocted a bizarre conspiracy theory about the editor of the paper, which was then promoted by his friend Jeremy Reynalds at the evangelical Christian newssite ASSIST. When that flopped, Jenvey then made a complaint to the police, accusing Tim of “hate comments”.

Tim then produced extracts from audio recording of Jenvey talking to an unknown journalist, and asked Jenvey for clarifications on some  points. After prevaricating for a few days, Jenvey came up with:

Is your email a threat? to me. if so i might have to go to the police. grow up you child.tim your a waste of space who supports terrorist at ummah.com as i said for the last time i’m going to sue the Guardian newspaper. and i’m very interested in why you are so interested in certain names? maybe you are the people you keep trying to say others are. i would suggest you stop writting to me as i have past each of your emails to the police already like i have the last one.

Jenvey, it should be noted,  is dyslexic, and his writing style is particularly distinctive. This was followed up with

do you not understand no one is taking any notice of you creep.but yes watch out in the dark you never know who might be around the corner.

Around the same time, a posting was made to a blog about Thailand, in exactly the same style as the above, pretending to be from the Daily Mail and accusing Tim of being a paedophile.

There is now strong reason to believe that Jenvey is a vindictive sociopath who is lashing out wildly and recklessly as the sense of self-worth he derives from his “terror investigator” status crumbles around him, and I doubt even Jeremy Reynalds will be wanting to defend his friend after these developments.

But this is not just an embarrassment for those who made and promoted Obsession or for Reynalds; as well as attempting to stir up hatred between British Jews and Muslims via the Sun, Jenvey’s antics may be a serious threat to countering extremism on both sides of the Atlantic. Tim has released more of the audio, including this:

The Abu Hamza videos led to the actual conviction and.. of… of… James Ujaama, because I uploaded them the day before he went to court. They hadn’t been shared by the FBI and the American Embassy who already had those… um… those tapes. See, it was the first time the Seattle FBI had actually had seen James Ujaama sat on a platform next to Abu Hamza, and they were struggling with the case and even struggling to keep him in prison. So if I hadn’t’ve uploaded the original page of ‘Al-Qaida Exposed’… videos.. um… basically… James Ujaama would’ve got off scot free. Probably, the snowball effect that then led to Abu Hamza extradition and case being built, which Ujaama in his plea-bargaining helped the FBI build, would never have happened… and the police in this country arrested Abu Hamza on an American extradition [“right?” iaudible] and then they tripped over… boxes of [VHS] videos similar to the ones that I uploaded. That I’d given them several years before.”

As Tim notes,

The action he describes above – releasing ‘evidence’ already rejected by authorities to the public a day before a trial – may be legal (just), but I can’t see it pleasing anyone doing the hard work of making a clean conviction stick.

No, all I can see is a yappy pup who continually spooks the game because he wants so much to be in on the hunt.

Tim also gives us some more details about Jenvey’s British friends – the audio also features Jenvey boasting about how when the police don’t take him seriously he goes to a British diplomat named Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, through Cowper-Coles’ cousin, a lecturer named “Mike”. Tim has now publicly identified “Mike” as Michael Starkey, and this was where I was able to help – I found a family tree which shows they have a common ancestor in Captain Cowper Phipps Coles, who drowned when a ship he had designed capsized in 1870 – “Mike” and Sir Sherard are (I think I’ve got this right) third cousins once removed. Someone left a comment on my blog naming Michael Starkey as a possibility for “Mike” from this family tree, but I removed it due to lack of evidence. However, Tim notes that Michael Starkey’s older brother is Sir John Starkey, who sits on the executive committee for his local MP – none other than Patrick Mercer. Mercer was formerly “Shadow Minister for Homeland Security”, but he resigned from this position under a cloud after a gaffe which suggested he did not fully understand that racist name-calling in the Armed Forces should not be tolerated (although he seems generally to be moderate sort of person). Sir John is not much of a fan of Mercer, and he accused him of disloyalty when Mercer agreed to take up an advisory role with Gordon Brown. Facing what the Daily Mail called “grassroots fury“, Mercer was in a tricky situation. Over the past few years Mercer has been in the media many times to highlight specific extremist threats – but how much of his material is now tainted by association with Jenvey?

Tim has also been in contact with Sir Sherard:

Meanwhile, after weeks of radio silence, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has finally been in touch. We’re still discussing what will or won’t be said on the record, but he’s not standing shoulder to shoulder with Jenvey by any means.

(Psst! Glen! You may want to clutch your archived emails that little bit closer… they could well be the only ‘friends’ you have left.)

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Seismic Shock draws attention to a pro-BNP blog which reports that the BNP’s “Rev Robert West” has given a sermon at a historic Baptist chapel in a Leicestershire village:

The congregation, larger than is usual, joined in with the hymns and prayers and listened intently to Rev. West’s readings from the Old Testament – Malachi 3:1, and Isaiah 40:1-8, and from the New Testament: St. Mark’s Gospel,1:1-11, and his inspiring sermon which followed. He opened by explaining that this was a Gospel Church.

Malachi 3:1 begins with “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me”; maybe West sees himself as John the Baptist to Nick Griffin’s messiah.

West, as I’ve blogged in the past, runs a British National Party front-group called the Christian Council of Britain; he rails against “multi-racial” society, and he claims that the story of the Tower of Babel is actually about God’s wrath against humans for failing to “spread out”; obviously a polite way of saying that God objected to race-mixing. He is ordained in an obscure “Apostolic Church” denomination, although an established group with this name disavows any knowledge of him. The pro-BNP blog – Leicestershire Community Voice – tells us that “He was Ordained nearly 30 years ago by the Episcopic Church”, a botched way of saying he has an “Episcopal” background of some kind. In 2007 West brought American anti-gay fanatic Paul Cameron to the UK. Seismic Shock also notes that West is standing for election for the BNP in the next European election.

So, why was West allowed into the pulpit at? Although the building is historic, I’ve been unable to find any details about the current congregation or minister, if there is is one. The chapel is, though, listed as being under the control of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. Various tourist pamphlets on-line tell us of a museum open at the site on Fridays and Saturdays, but rather curiously it appears to be closed on Sundays. Might that explain why a congregation “larger than usual” turned out for a BNP harangue? Alas, while Leicestershire Community Voice gives us some pictures of West pontificating, there are no views of his enraptured disciples.

UPDATE: Leicestershire Community Voice has since removed identifying details that identify the location of West’s sermon, but I’ve dug up some clues as to why and how this event occurred.

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The Patrick Sookhdeo vs Ben White spat continues to grow, thanks to Melanie Phillips’ thudding pseudo-journalistic piece in the Spectator. As I blogged recently, Sookhdeo wrote a book in 2007 called Global Jihad. White gave it a bad review at the website Fulcrum; two of Sookhdeo’s supporters wrote a response which was published on the same site. However, Sookhdeo’s Barnabas Fund also distributed other versions of the response which also contained inflammatory personal attacks on White; it was also suggested that because White had brought his review to the attention of a Muslim blogger, he was responsible for putting Sookhdeo’s family at risk, and the Fund also drew attention to a private meeting which took place last year as evidence that the review was part of some kind of plot against Christians who publicly attack Islamic extremism. Although this was all nonsense, Mad Mel let rip in the Spectator, adding the claim that Sookhdeo had actually received a death threat and that some evangelicals and Islamists were now working together.

Phillips’s mischief-making has now crossed the Atlantic; the conservative evangelical World magazine has a follow-up piece:

…attacks on Sookhdeo and others who speak against Islam’s violent roots are flowing now that power has shifted on both sides of the Atlantic to leaders who favor a soft approach to Islamic radicalism.

As this political turnabout emboldens left-leaning evangelicals who favor the soft approach, they appear ready to turn against the critics of Islam within their own churches.

Evidence of that banishment came to light amidst the White-Sookhdeo controversy. Last year a group of 22 British evangelicals held an “invitation-only” meeting at All Nations Christian College to draft a soon-to-be released document called “Gracious Christian Responses to Muslims in Britain Today.” Not on the invitation list: Sookhdeo, Sam Solomon, Dennis Wrigley, and Baroness Caroline Cox (WORLD’s 2004 Daniel of the Year)—arguably Britain’s most internationally known evangelical experts on Christian-Islamic relations. In addition to Sookhdeo, Solomon also is a former Muslim, a leading imam before his Christian conversion—prompting Spectator correspondent Melanie Phillips to call the meeting an effort by fellow Christians “to discredit and stifle those Christians who warn against the Islamization of Britain.”

One small problem though: several of the organisations who had representatives at the meeting issued statements denying this characterisation, and Sookhdeo has backed down from his allegation – albeit in a disingenuous way that suggested he had been the victim of misrepresentation, when the truth was obvious to any unbiased observer: that Sookhdeo had responded to a temperate but critical book review in a vicious, unprincipled and unworthy manner that to any outside observer must destroy his credibility. The fact that prominent Christian media outfits like World should jump on the bandwagon rather than have a care for truthfulness says a lot (although perhaps nothing new) about the integrity of the US Christian Right.

One aspect of the controversy that I find particularly annoying and hypocritical is the claim that White’s review is an attempt to “silence” those who hold different views; this was Phillips’s take, and World‘s headline is “Stifling the messengers”. It’s a complete fabrication – as noted above, Sookhdeo in fact was given right of reply at Fulcrum; it is his side which is attempting to shut down debate with the preposterous assertion that to criticise Sookhdeo’s book is tantamount to inviting Islamic extremists to threaten his life (and I’ve seen for myself how shoddy Sookhdeo’s scholarship can be). Take a look at this paragraph from World:

[White’s] review trucks in every warmed-over jihadist sympathizer’s laments: Osama bin Laden is the product of the U.S. arming of Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s. U.S. support for the Shah of Iran beginning in the 1950s is the reason we have a terror-sponsoring Islamic republic in Iran today.

World doesn’t actually argue against this: it just calls White a “jihadist sympathizer”. Are we supposed to take this kind of thing seriously?

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A rare moment of sceptical debunking at WorldNetDaily:

Editor’s note: The story in this column about Times Square Church making thousands of sandwiches just prior to 9/11 is false. Janet Porter confirmed the story with a church staff member as she wrote the column, but was given incorrect information. WorldNetDaily regrets the error.

Here’s the tale as Folger told it:

In the fall of 2001, Pastor David Wilkerson, of Times Square Church in New York City, was warned by God that a calamity was coming. For six weeks they felt an intense burden and enormous heaviness…For six weeks, there wasn’t a sermon. Instead, there was intercession for our nation with weeping and repentance.

…Then Wilkerson felt God telling him something that seemed rather bizarre. He felt God telling him to make sandwiches – lots of sandwiches. What were they for? Who would eat them? That part wasn’t clear, but his church did what they believed God was telling them anyway.

And on the 10th of September they stayed up all night making hundreds and hundreds of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. By morning they had about 2,000 sandwiches. At 8:46 a.m. the first plane hit the World Trade Center and Times Square Church was ready to feed and minister to rescue workers and victims of our nation’s worst attack.

Maybe the clue was God saying on 10 September “make some sandwiches” as opposed to saying “call the cops and have them arrest a bunch of Islamic fanatics at such-and-such an address before they kill thousands of people”.

As I blogged on Sunday, Wilkerson recently announced that God had warned him of an “earth-shattering calamity” about to occur as a result of God’s wrath against secularism, and he has advised people to stockpile food as riots engulf the world.

His claim to some kind of pre-9/11 intimation was made shortly after the terrorist attacks, in a sermon called “The Towers Have Fallen And We Missed The Message“:

…Times Square Church was warned a calamity was coming. We are now in the seventh week of a visitation of the Holy Spirit and if you have been coming to this church you know that even weeks before that the Holy Spirit moved on the pastoral staff here to cancel everything.

We cancelled the Mission’s Conference, we cancelled the Youth Conventions, and we cancelled every speaker. We cancelled everything to come and call this body to prayer. We started with two weeks of prayer and those weeks of meetings continue this week again. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and stopping only when God says to stop.

But something indescribable has been happening in this church in this past seven weeks. Every service, as you witness today, a holy hush, a silence from the throne has come to this auditorium. There was one night when we sat for one hour in total silence and nobody could move. I remember putting my hands on my knees to stop them from trembling because of the awesome pres ence of God.

As the pastors began to pray and you remember if you’ve been here, you’ve seen the pastors weeping and wailing. I’ve seen pastor Neil laying here crying out to God. We were repenting. We were crying out to God and then the Holy Spirit spoke clearly that it was happening because a tragedy was coming, a calamity was coming to this city and to the nation and we didn’t know what it was. Suddenly a calamity struck the nation and especially here in New York City.

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Considerable media interest has followed in the wake of Terry Krepel’s investigation into Wikipedia editor “Jerusalem21”. As was noted a couple of days ago, Aaron Klein recently wrote a piece for WorldNetDaily in which he suggested that Wikipedia controllers were unfairly censoring material about Barack Obama’s birth certificate posted by a certain “Jerusalem21”. Krepel pointed out that “Jerusalem21″‘s only other edits were for the entry on Aaron Klein, adding positive stuff…and removing critical material. The story has now reverberated around the world, with stories in the Sydney Morning Herald and – in Hebrew – at YNet.

But Klein has a rebuttal:

“I am not ‘Jerusalem21’, but I do know the Wikipedia user (he works with me and does research for me), and I worked with him on this story,” Klein said.

However, WND has chosen to scrub all references to “Jerusalem21” rather than to add explanatory material, and WND editor Joseph Farah has decided that an attack on Krepel’s politics should be enough to deflect the evidence:

First, a fulltime anti-WND blogger named Terry Krepel, who also works for George Soros-backed Media Matters, put his spin on Klein’s scoop – claiming falsely that Klein himself was the Wikipedia user dubbed Jerusalem21. In fact, Klein’s Jerusalem bureau research assistant is Jerusalem21…Normally no one pays too much attention to Krepel, recognizing him for what he is – an ideological crusader masquerading as a press watchdog, determined to expose the slightest break in the ranks of the Obama media amen chorus.

He then mocks a couple of bloggers who picked up the story as being, respectively, an “unknown scribe” and an “obscure scrivener” – alas, I’m such a nobody that I don’t even merit a put-down, even though Krepel has in the past cited my research into Klein’s whitewashing of the Israeli far-right. But Farah is working himself up:

…But the libelous shots at Klein didn’t stop there. 

Now the story was going international…

This is nonsense – there was no “libel”, and there are few sights more disgusting than a journalist bandying the word about recklessly.

Farah claims “Jerusalem21″‘s edits were in fact legitimate research to see how Wikipedia responds to negative material about Obama. Krepel responds:

First, Farah is lying; I never asserted that Klein was Jerusalem21. Here’s what I wrote in my original post: “‘Jerusalem21’ is either Klein or someone close to him acting on his behalf, if not his direction.”…

Second, the “scandal” is not that Klein was the man behind Jerusalem21; it’s that he didn’t follow sound journalistic practice by disclosing this to his readers…

Third, if this is the non-scandal Farah claims it is, why did WND scrub all references to Jerusalem21 from Klein’s articles?

Fourth, Farah fails to address the other part of this “scandal” — the utter hypocrisy of complaining about removal of negative information from Obama’s Wikipedia page when Klein (or Jerusalem21) has been similarly quick to remove critical information from Klein’s own Wikipedia page.

The idea that there is a meaningful distinction between Klein making the posts himself and someone doing it for him is particularly laughable.

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