Redwire Design

[This post as been relocated to this back-up blog after a complaint was made to my provider on 16/03/2010. The original article was posted to Bloggerheads.com 27/01/2010. Details here.]

This post is about some (or perhaps hopefully just one) of the wonderful people at Redwire Design, but first we need some background for those who came in late (and to cover some recent parts that have only just come to light). Please bear with me:

Early in 2009, a conman by the name of Dominic Wightman (aka Dominic Whiteman, aka Richard Walker) saw in the Glen Jenvey story an opportunity to screw over some former associates while at the same time screwing me (for reasons that have yet to be fully established). This scheme of his resulted in a false claim of paedophilia spread by Jenvey, who (with nothing to gain by lying) later claimed that he was fed this lie and my ex-directory home address by Wightman, along with the assurance that I "needed sorting out".

Things didn't quite work out the way Wightman planned, and eventually circumstances led to the uncovering of a blatant smear campaign created and conducted by Wightman, resulting in multiple visits from the police that Wightman hilariously portrays as being appointments of his own design.

Fearing what I might report (there is a LOT that has so far gone unreported), Wightman decided to get his retaliation in early (!) with an extraordinarily rambling, malicious and misleading attack on my good name. It was at this time that some associates of Wightman began to publish my home address alongside false accusations that I was in league with extremists, and a stalker of women.

The bulk of these associates hide behind pseudonyms, go by the collective name of the 'Cheerleaders', and are also involved in a band by the name of The Fighting Cocks. There are also some mates and hangers-on whose real names are more accessible, and that group of people includes 'Jonny Yeah' (aka Jon Chappell). More on him in a moment.

This campaign of harassment has included the repeated broadcast of my home address to the types of people that Wightman himself has described as having "a history of late-night visits to enemies". Further, while the 'Cheerleaders' style themselves as anti-fascist activists, they had no qualms about repeatedly broadcasting my home address to members of the BNP while alerting them to my involvement in campaigns they would be none-too-pleased with. If the intention wasn't to do me harm, it was to make me fearful for my safety and cause me distress. It certainly did the latter, especially when the campaign escalated to direct threats of violence, causing me and my family great concern.

'Jonny Yeah' (aka Jon Chappell) was CCed on the emails threatening me with violence. Further threats involving the continued misuse of my data were then issued on his behalf (and on the behalf of other relevant parties) after I dared to list on my site the names and/or email addresses of all those who were associated with the earlier therat of violence. 'Jonny Yeah' also appears to have been closely associated with an anonymous SPA (single-purpose account) on YouTube that was used in this ongoing campaign of harassment.

I can prove that this account was used to repeatedly broadcast my home address to people the author regarded to be potentially hostile to me, and that this was visibly and quite obviously the only purpose of the account. Further, I can prove that an account in the name of 'JonnyYeah1' was associated with this anonymous account and that an account in the name of Kooba Radio ('KoobaTV') was used to link to and promote the anonymous account in a way that cannot have escaped the attention of the main 'KoobaTV' account holder, even if they were to later claim that they had been hacked or set up or some such nonsense.

Kooba Radio was founded by... 'Jonny Yeah' (aka Jon Chappell), along with a man by the name of Alex Malloy (The Boy Malloy) and a mysterious woman by the name of Angela Collins (She Who Must Not Be Named).

After changing his story a few times, Johnny Yeah eventually denied involvement and claimed that Angela Collins had left Kooba Radio. He also appears to have changed the Kooba Radio email settings so they now reject any email from me as spam, but I have yet to confirm this. More on that in a moment.

Public versions of the ongoing online attacks from 'Cheerleaders' then started afresh, this time quite specifically on behalf of 'Johnny Yeah' and his Kooba Radio colleagues:



Faced with the following error message, legally, I needed to be certain that I had been deliberately spam-blocked, not least because of the delightfully self-reinforcing accusation of stalking that is so easily exploited in situations where people start refusing contact by email:

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 571 571 5.7.1 Message contains spam or virus : 16522:4131863472|125F (state 18).

The website and email accounts for Kooba Radio are hosted by a company by the name of RedWire Design.

The man who handles the bulk of enquiries for that company is.... Alex Malloy (Jon Chappell's partner in Kooba Radio).

So, wanting to give Alex a chance to tell his side of the story (Chapell's denials implied his involvement), and needing to go through Alex to find out if his 'client' had actively spamblocked me, I got in touch.

Having just been informed of pretty much everything I just explained to you, Alex was queried about the apparent spam block, but didn't act at all surprised about any of it and - speaking as an official representative of RedWire Design - had this to say...



... before promptly hanging up.

Alex is listed on the Redwire site as a Director of the company (citing Search Engine Optimisation as his lead skill, and you better believe there'll be more on that in moment).

The only person senior to Alex appears to be Managing Director, Nick Catt.

I should stress that there is no visible evidence of Nick Catt's involvement in this ongoing campaign of harassment at this stage, but his profile states that he "runs a live music and club night with Alex" (and another man), so he probably knows those 'Cheerleaders' who are in The Fighting Cocks at least, and doing the right thing is likely to complicate his life in those circles, so I am wary of any further approach through direct channels, especially with the ever-present risk that someone might hide behind a cry of "Stalker!" at any moment

Instead, I'm here in public (again) having to explain all this crap (again) and finding myself quite surprised that I have to drag some people kicking and screaming into the light just to get them to do the decent thing (again).

In about an hour, this post should be a high search result for queries relating to 'redwire design'. I am hoping that this will lead to a sudden upsurge of professionalism on their end, but I'm not holding my breath.

In fact, I'm half expecting some kind of misguided counter-attack by Alex Malloy or maybe even the company he does all them professional communications for.

Fine by me. I'd stake my SEO kung-fu against his any day... especially with the law, the truth and a shedload of evidence on my side.

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UPDATE - 48 minutes, this took. Nowhere near the record, but still worthy of mention:




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UPDATE (28 Jan) - Hey, guess what, everyone? They're going to be ratbags about it.

Alex Malloy cannot deny involvement in the KoobaTV account, and it is certainly reasonable in my view to ask who the primary account holder might be in the circumstances. He sees things differently.

Meanwhile the 'Cheerleaders' are hopping about angrily playing the side of law enforcement all of a sudden, outraged that I'd dare to ask anyone about their real names (when they claim it is not an issue); the abiding theme is that if I dare to object to being attacked, then they will continue to attack me... but it has already been established that they plan to continue to attack me anyway. It's just another piss-poor justification to add to the collection.

Kooba Radio

[This post as been relocated to this back-up blog after a complaint was made to my provider on 16/03/2010. The original article was posted to Bloggerheads.com 22/01/2010. Details here.]

Kooba Radio bills itself as an "independent, non-profit, Internet-based radio station focused on alternative rock, playing unsigned bands from around the world" and was founded by Jon Chappell (Jonny Yeah), Alex Malloy (The Boy Malloy) and Angela Collins (She Who Must Not Be Named).

Kooba Radio is also a joke, and just a wee bit corrupt in places.

As most of you are aware, most of last year was marred by an ongoing campaign of harassment resulting from my encounter with the 'amateur terror expert' Dominic Wightman (a former associate of Glen Jenvey and Patrick Mercer). That campaign of harassment escalated to the repeated publication of my home address by a group calling themselves the 'Cheerleaders'. These people claim to be anti-fascist, but they had no qualms about broadcasting my address to BNP members alongside mentions of my involvement in anti-BNP campaigns such as Billy Brit. The 'Cheerleaders' have made a number of unsubstantiated claims in a belated attempt to justify their actions, but what's most likely is that they initially did this because Wightman told them to do it, and they painted themselves into a corner* from there.

Kooba Radio first came to my attention a couple of days before the email address of one of the founders (Jon Chappell, aka 'Jonny Yeah') turned up in the CC list of a group email from the 'Cheerleaders' threatening me with violence.

I wrote about that threat and included the relevant email addresses in the report. Months passed, then, over the New Year holiday period, when most people in the entertainment industry were busy with gigs (or at least sleeping it off), someone on that list wasted away their days and nights (again) making good on an earlier threat to share my personal data with Nigerian scammers if I refused to remove that list of names and email addresses.

When doing so, they posed as me, pretended that I was manager of a small local bank branch, and provided them with my main email address and (ex-directory) home address. Nice, huh?

I was recently assured in a further email from someone with a third-person fetish that "they're going to keep coming until you remove the email addresses from your blog".

This suggested to me that someone on that list didn't want to be visibly associated with what the 'Cheerleaders' had been up to, so I contacted everyone on that list, and offered them the chance to disassociate themselves from the online attacks and threats of violence. If they wanted to be removed from this post, all they had to do was account for their conduct to date (i.e. why not object before now?), and distance themselves from this ongoing campaign of harassment.

Only 'Jonny Yeah' took me up on the offer and asked for his name/address to be removed. Initially, he pretended not to know anything about the campaign of harassment. When this pretence was fatally undermined by the evidence, 'Jonny' suddenly lost interest in the attempt to have his name/address removed, but how he did it will be of most interest to any fans of Kooba Radio:

First, while claiming to know nothing about any of it, 'Jonny Yeah' implied that his inclusion on the list was the result of some random activity by fans who lifted his email address from his website. Because he's a superstar DJ, don't you know.

His claim was contradicted by the evidence, and I said so.

'Jonny Yeah' responded by attempting to explain away his demonstrable association with the Cheerleaders (and connections with leader Charlie Flowers) by saying that their 'very good' band (The Fighting Cocks) had featured on his show, and that was the limit of his involvement. Because he's a superstar DJ, don't you know.

His revised claim was contradicted by the evidence, and I said so.

'Jonny Yeah' then went on to claim that he hadn't been aware of any of this despite being CCed on the original threat and emailed specifically about it because Kooba Radio have strong spam filters to avoid all the 'crap' that results from his efforts to "enable young (and not so young) musicians to submit [material] to us". He then urged me to tune into his show that evening. Because he's a superstar DJ, don't you know.

This revised claim was contradicted by the evidence, and I said so.

I also made it absolutely clear to him at this stage that I could prove his association with a YouTube account created mainly to publish my home address and gave him one last opportunity to deny it... or perhaps explain himself.

'Jonny Yeah' responded by asking me what I thought of his show that evening.

(!)

At no stage did he express any interest in or disapproval of the repeated use of my personal data to intimidate me... most recently, on his behalf.

It wasn't until I made it clear that I intended to publish something about it that he made good with a vague denial of direct involvement, before quickly moving on to assure me that he wouldn't ever be mentioning me on his show, as if that's what I wanted.

Because he's a superstar DJ, don't you know.

Sadly for 'Jonny', this claim of star-status is also contradicted by the evidence:

1. The IP address used when sending almost all of his emails corresponds with IP data connected to many/most of the edits to this Wikipedia page about his radio 'station'. Said page is a shameless (and lengthy) construct of laughable self-promotion, the highlight of which is an account of 'Broadband Aid', a "new arrangement of Band Aid, the famous Christmas Single", in which the author goes on to specify (and link directly to) everybody who sang a line in this bold venture. There's no way it's going to survive in its current state once I've mentioned it here, so here's a screen capture for the ages.

2. Encouraged by 'Jonny Yeah', I did visit their site and explore their glorious world of online radio stardom. For starters, according to Alexa, my main website (bloggerheads.com) attracts a larger audience than theirs (koobaradio.co.uk)... by a factor of around 10-1 by the looks of things. Alexa is really only reliable as a thumbnail sketch, but the Twitter stats support this; I presently have 1,542 followers, while Kooba Radio have 175 (and 'Jonny Yeah' has 95). The YouTube stats also support this; with Bloggerheads currently standing at 10,210 channel views and KoobaTV at 1,702. Their most popular video got 402 views. My least popular video got 843. I say all of this while recognising the modesty of my own efforts... it just amused me to be dismissed as a delusional fanboy by a guppy who thinks he's a shark. The only thing that gives this tosser any power/edge over me is his willingness to participate in the kind of anonymous harassment that almost every web user recognises as being beyond the pale. It also needs to be noted that the audience of this radio 'station' listens via these channels; it is not a case of them having a smaller web audience than their actual audience, because the web audience is their audience. There's more in #4, but if 'Jonny Yeah' is worried about going mainstream, he shouldn't let those concerns keep him up nights; the nearest he's likely to get to compromising his anti-establishment principles is accepting the 'employee of the month' award at Burger King.





On the subject of YouTube, I wasn't able to mention this before now because Google only got around to suspending the relevant account yesterday, but someone at Kooba Radio used their YouTube channel to link to and promote another YouTube account created mainly (if not only) to publish and promote my ex-directory home address as part of an ongoing campaign of harassment. I'd make a bigger deal of my not knowing exactly who at Kooba Radio did this if it weren't for the fact that the account JonnyYeah1 was also visibly associated with that same online attack. At the very least, it can be said with some certainty that when 'Jonny Yeah' claimed to be completely unaware of the campaign of harassment yesterday, he was lying. This, sadly, undermines the vague denials he made about direct involvement before signing off.

3. It also needs to be noted that 'Jonny Yeah' is a lot closer to some of the bands he promotes than he lets on. This is what the professionals in the show business call a 'conflict if interest'... not that I would dare to imply that Jon Chappell (aka Jonny Yeah) is in any way professional.

4. Attention, unsigned bands (and bands signed with small labels): not only is Kooba Radio co-founder and 'headline' DJ Jon Chappell a pathetic lying scoundrel who knowingly participates in anonymous web bullying, but he's most likely going to end up being a complete waste of your time even if he decides to help you rather than, say, put the safety of your family at risk for shits and giggles. I could help you to reach a much bigger audience without even trying, and even if the deal goes hopelessly sour, there's no way I'm going to be as much of a twat about it as this guy.

(Not that I've any interest in being a superstar DJ at this stage of my life... or a twat. I'm just saying is all.)




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[*At any stage, the 'Cheerleaders' can render themselves an irrelevance by rolling over on Dominic Wightman. I've said so privately will happily declare it publicly. I have no interest in vendettas, as my treatment of Jenvey after his confession should make clear; there are some who may beg to differ on that point, but like 'Jonny Yeah' they've been telling outright lies about the extent of their involvement in this affair. I'm not out to 'get at' any of the 'Cheerleaders', but if I have to, I will go through them in order to clearly establish the role played by Wightman. At least one of the 'Cheerleaders' should be warned that recent impersonations could lead to the closure of their email account regardless of what I have to say about it, and a window of opportunity is likely to close with it; they will not be able to present me with solid evidence of Wightman's role if the receiving account has been deactivated. The 'Cheerleaders' have made a number of vague claims about being deceived by Dominic Wightman, and if they want to prove it, then now is the time, and there is nothing holding them back if the evidence is there. After all, they can't possibly claim that they refuse to reveal relevant evidence on the grounds of a person's right to privacy.]