Re:BRUCE KAMIAT RESPONDS TO LIBELOUS ACCUSATIONS POSTED ON THIS LIST

As I was not a member of this group, I was not aware that Bruce Kamiat
posted this message about myself, until a friend informed me. Clearly,
I must respond. I do not intend to follow up with any further
responses...unless he decides to provoke me again. Even in that case,
I will try hard not to pay any attention to him.


On Sep 3, 2007 6:29 pm, Bruce Kamiat <SN195...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Tom Clabough for a long time pursued a macropolitical agenda:
using John Pazmino's Yahoo group, ostensibly an amateur astronomy
forum, as a platform for verbally assaulting Democrats and others who
disagree with his far-right-wing politics."


First of all, I didn't begin posting political responses on that
group
until AFTER many
left-wing and Republican-bashing messages were posted. Second, the
extent of my "far-right-wing politics" is to state my objection to
the
FACT that the democratic party has moved waaaay to the radical left.
In fact, two democrat party House chairmen, John Conyers and Charlie
Rangel, OPENLY work with Revolutionary-Communist organizations! One
of
the organizations, The Revolutionary Communist Party, actually calls
for the violent overthrow of the American government.



From the website of the Revolutionary Communist Party, parent org
behind World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime, the same
organization that democrat Chair of the House Judiciary Committee,
John Conyers of Michigan, endorsed, then gave a SPEECH to!

The RCP "Mission Statement": "Create Public Opinion, Seize Power! We
are preparing minds and organizing forces for the time when there is
a
major crack in the system, whenever it comes and wherever it comes
from: an opening that makes it possible to bring the future
Revolutionary Army of the Proletariat (R.A.P.) into the field and
wage
a revolutionary armed struggle that actually has a chance of winning.
And we have said that building our party itself is the most important
part of organizing forces for revolution. This is true now, and it is
true looking forward to the creation of that future R.A.P. and the
waging of that armed struggle. ":


(see link for details)
http://revcom.us/a/v20/1000-1009/1000/barw.htm


On Oct 5, 2006, Democrat Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
John Conyers Jr, the same who is out leading an "investigation" into
the Bush White House, *gave a speech* to the World Can't Wait--Drive
Out the Bush Regime organization.


(see link for details)
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&i...


Or, if the long url above breaks up:
http://tinyurl.com/ygx9w6


Before that, he openly ENDORSED the movement!
See "Endorsers of the Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime Include...".
(John Conyers' endorsement appears immediately after Ward
Churchill's)


(see link for details)
http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25....


Or, if the long url above breaks up:
http://tinyurl.com/ef6z6


FACT: World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime is a MAOIST-
revolutionary movement initiated and controlled by the Revolutionary
Communist Party!
(scroll down the list that appears to find the World Can't Wait
organization --rwor.org is the website of the Revolutionary Communist
Party) :
(see link for details)
http://rwor.org/a/rwlink/links.htm



From David Horowitz's FrontpageMag.com /DiscoverTheNetworks.org:


Profile: World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime (WCW)

*Revolutionary communist movement that stages protests against the
Bush administration


*Organizes college and high-school students


*Founded in June 2005 by Charles Clark Kissinger, a longtime leader
of the Revolutionary Communist Party


(see link for details)
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7213


Here's the Revolutionary Communist Party (see link below) boasting of
a FULL PAGE 'World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime' ad of
theirs which actually appeared in the New York Times.
(either "rwor.org" or "revcom.us" takes you to the website of the
Revolutionary Communist Party). The NY Times allowed a 2nd full-page
RCP/WCW ad to be run several months later! In fact, they are, or have
very recently, ran another large ad.
(see link for details)
http://www.rwor.org/a/028/who-hated-bush-ad.htm


Here's a photo of the current chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee, DEMOCRAT Charlie Rangel, at the podium of a Workers World
Party /
Troops Out Now demonstration here in New York City. Also, in this set
of photos are terrorist and communist attorneys Lynn Steward and
Ramsey Clark. They were at the same WWP event in which Rangel spoke.
Ramsey Clark is the founder and chair of the International Action
Center, as well as the former Attorney General under democrat prez
LBJ. The IAC works very closely with WWP. In fact, they even share
the
same office space in NYC.
http://www.workers.org/march19/index2.html


Here's a letter former, now deceased, chairman of the Workers World
party, Sam Marcy, sent to "Comrade Kim Jong-Il". It's from the
Workers World Party's own website (workers.org) :


"On July 9 (1994), Workers World Party Chairperson Sam Marcy sent the
following statement to Comrade Kim Jong Il, the Central Committee of
the Workers Party of Korea and the State Funeral Committee of
President Kim Il Sung." :


"Dear Comrade Kim Jong Il... Comrade Kim Il Sung devoted his whole
life to the Korean people's struggle for national self-determination
and the international working-class struggle for socialist
emancipation. With his leadership, the Korean people defeated the
Japanese colonial occupation and soon after brought about the first
defeat of the U.S. imperialist military machine....


Workers World Party values our close, comradely relations with the
Workers Party of Korea very highly. We are proud to have known Kim Il
Sung as a great leader and a comrade in the international communist
movement. And it is with the most profound sense of loss that we mark
his passing. Yet it is also with the greatest revolutionary optimism
that we are confident that Comrade Kim Il Sung's legacy will live on
with your efforts to win new victories for the Korean people.... With
comradely solidarity, Sam Marcy Chairperson, Workers World Party":
(see link for details)
http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/sam94/1994html/s940721.htm



From wikipedia.com:


The WWP has organized, directed or participated in many coalition
organizations for various causes, typically anti-imperialist in
nature. The International Action Center, which counts many WWP
members
as leading activists, founded the Act Now To Stop War and End Racism
(ANSWER) coalition shortly after 9/11, and has run both the All
People's Congress (APC) and the International Action Center (IAC) for
many years. The APC and the IAC in particular share a large degree of
overlap in their memberships with cadre in the WWP. In 2004 , a youth
group close to the WWP called Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST)
was founded.
(see link for details)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers_World_Party

And here's old (democrat) Charlie Rangel again with terrorist
attorney
Lynn
Steward and International Action Center (IAC) leader Ramsey Clark, at
the Workers World Party/Troops Out Now rally:
(see link for details)
http://www.workers.org/march19/index2.html


As for Bruce Kamiat's "moderate" political positions, he once
admitted
to me he attended an annual socialists scholars event at BMCC, a 2-
year community college I attended during the eighties. The event
included an indoctrination/propaganda campaign aimed at recruiting
young naive college kids into the socialist and/or revolutionary
communist movement. Kamiat also once stated that he went over to
communist Nicaragua during the eighties to 'see for himself' what was
happening there. Nothing wrong or illegal with any of this of course,
but it does take away a bit from his claim that he is a standard
liberal democrat. He also defended a so-called "anti-war" rally in
NYC
several years ago which was actually led by communist activist Leslie
Cagan, who is/was? the founder and co-chair of the org Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism/CCDS. The CCDS is an
offshoot of Communist Party USA. Obviously, any group or individual
who supports "Revolution", such as the Cuban revolution, cannot
possibly be truly "anti-war". In fact ALL of the popular "anti-war"
coalitions around today were initiated by communist organizations. We
have:


United For Peace and Justice, chaired by the above mentioned, Castro
supporter Leslie Cagan.


Troops Out Now and A.N.S.W.E.R., both initiated and controlled by
Workers World Party leadership or 'former' leadership.


World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime, initiated and controlled
by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP).



Bruce Kamiat <SN195...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Clabough accuses me of actual felonious acts (brandishing an
unlicensed firearm with menacing intent) and potential for deadly
violence. This is therefore far the
more serious of the two. There are three basic components to this
libel: that I threatened him with a gun; that I said "you never know
who we might shoot"; and that I said "don't approach me in the park
again," with various ominous implications he tries to attribute to
this entreaty."

I never mentioned anything about your gun being "illegal"
Anyway, here is exactly what Bruce Kamiat said in his message:


"By the way, don't approach me in the park again, Tom.
Just don't...".


And when I reminded the group of an earlier threat he made ("You
never
know who we might shoot!"), in which he included the following direct
link to a photo of
himself holding a gun while lurking in some decrepit old
hallway somewhere, he reissued the threat by saying,


"I'm glad you remember that, Tom. Keep it in mind."


Sound like "sarcasm" to you?


The photo, which had been in the group's file section, has since been
removed. And since John Pazmino rarely, if ever, removes content from
his group, I suspect that Bruce Kamiat himself removed the photo.


On Sep 3, 6:29 pm, Bruce <SN195...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

BRUCE KAMIAT RESPONDS TO LIBELOUS ACCUSATIONS POSTED ON THIS LIST AND
ELSEWHERE ON THE NET BY JOHN PAZMINO AND TOM CLABOUGH

I only recently became aware of these libelous posts to this and other
lists on the Internet. These posted libels are accessible by Google
search, so they are viewable by family, friends, and current and
potential employers; therefore, I feel compelled to respond, although
some time has passed since they were posted. I apologize for the fact
that this response, while necessary, is no longer a timely one. I also
apologize for its length. I will not burden the readership and myself
by including copies here of the ugly posts to which I am now
responding. If you, the reader, wish to see these, you may find them
as I did-with a Google search on my full name. You will see the dozens
of places on the Net on which these libels have been posted-a
particularly dirty way to fight, don't you think?


Fellow amateur astronomer, as you read this, imagine being yourself
the target of this sort of treatment. You work hard to survive and to
take care of those you love. You adopt a hobby of surpassing beauty
that helps you to transcend the ugliness around you. Then you run into
characters such as Pazmino and Clabough who try not only to poison
your joy in the hobby by polluting it with such hostile and abusive
behavior, but also to threaten your very livelihood, your very
survival, to satisfy their own petty agendas. They even try to hurt
other people in your life, outside of astronomy, who are vitally
important to you! Thus you are forced to spend what little, precious
spare time you have writing responses like this one to their slanders.
What a way for them to treat a colleague who has never done either of
them any harm!


These libelous posts originally appeared on John Pazmino's own Yahoo
group, on which I responded at the time. I did not then realize he had
widely disseminated them elsewhere on the Internet. John Pazmino has
now disallowed any response on his own group from the victims of his
harassment and of whatever libelous statements about me or others he
may post there in the future.


BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT


John Pazmino and Tom Clabough have been conducting a vendetta for some
years against the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York (AAA)
and its board of directors. Pazmino and Clabough came into conflict
with that organization over personal, ego-related issues and have
adopted harassment and slander as their preferred modes of conducting
their feud. As a board member, I have been a target of theirs. John
Pazmino has particularly targeted me since the day I insisted he stop
handing out flyers attacking the organization and its members at an
AAA workshop I chaired at the time. That was apparently enough to put
me on the other side of the line as far as he was concerned. Still,
John had far less reason for his animosity toward me than toward other
members of the board.


John had been asked to resign from the AAA's board of directors for
conduct unbecoming a board member. That conduct included the wide
distribution, within and outside the club, of a letter that used
extremely obscene language to attack other board members, particularly
the women on the board. I could not support his retention on the board
after that; yet of the 18 board members, I was the only one who, then
and thereafter, opposed his expulsion from the club altogether. I
remembered that, in his saner days, he had done a great deal of work
for the AAA and been a real asset in many ways. I hoped to avoid a
split in the club and hoped he would calm down and return to reason.
My arguments on those lines prevailed for a time, but his conduct
gradually worsened to the point of forcing the organization to finally
expel him regardless. Even then, while I could no longer argue against
his expulsion, I abstained rather than vote for it; and I chastised
certain members of the board whose behavior I believed had pushed John
farther over the edge. I felt very sad that things had gone that way,
but it was mostly John's own fault.


He frequently peppers his "Pazminibits," "NYC Events," and other
supposed astronomy-news articles with digs at the AAA and its members.
These are usually at least partly, and sometimes entirely, false and
are just part of his ongoing feud. The worst of these he has entitled
"AAA News," a subtle deceptive tactic designed so that the unwary
might mistake these bulletins as coming from the AAA itself. In one
typical example, his "Pazminibits" "news" column recently introduced a
myth that AAA president Rich Rosenberg and I had formed a new club.
The column vaguely referred to a "controversy" in which unspecified
members of this new club objected to our leadership. In reality, there
was no new club and no controversy; that was fiction. All that had
actually happened was that John Pazmino's sidekick, Tom Clabough, had
joined a long-established astronomy Yahoo group of which Rich and I
were moderators. The group owner (neither Rich nor I) at first gave
Clabough the benefit of the doubt and allowed him to stay, but
eventually kicked Tom off for reverting to habit and attempting to
post offensive, inappropriate material (see two paragraphs below).


In addition to supporting John Pazmino's micropolitical feud with the
AAA, Tom Clabough for a long time pursued a macropolitical agenda:
using John Pazmino's Yahoo group, ostensibly an amateur astronomy
forum, as a platform for verbally assaulting Democrats and others who
disagree with his far-right-wing politics. For years, until new
moderators recently stopped him, he filled John Pazmino's Yahoo group
with political posts, incessantly baiting his opponents to draw us out
and then launching personal attacks. This was a mostly successful
tactic to drive us out of the group. All who disagreed with Tom
Clabough's politics had to choose between leaving the group, remaining
silent under his barrage of insults, or speaking up and being
subjected to personal attacks such as you see he has leveled at me.
Thus silencing or driving off his opposition, he flooded the list with
his political propaganda almost unopposed. I drew his particular ire
for refusing to quit or to be silent. I leave it to you, the reader,
to imagine what kind of person tries to take over an amateur astronomy
group for the purpose of spreading macropolitical propaganda,
aggressively insulting his fellow amateur astronomers and using
Internet libel to threaten the livelihoods of those who stand up to
him. This was the context in which the libels that I'm addressing here
occurred.


Tom Clabough is obsessive in his attacks, and he hounded me
relentlessly for about five years until the advent of the new group
moderators mentioned above, directing at me every sort of insult and
provocation-even pursuing me to another astronomy Yahoo group (see two
paragraphs above) where I and others had gone specifically to escape
from him and to share our astronomy interests unmolested. In the most
recent case (as of this writing), he attempted to post a message on
that group directly mocking my personal belief in God in a rather vile
fashion. I am thankful to the owner of that group who refused to
permit it, despite Tom's attempts to intimidate him by verbally
bashing him on Pazmino's group (again, see above). If I were the sort
of violent person Clabough disingenuously pretends to believe me to
be, I would have creamed him long ago. He obviously knows that I am
not such a person, as he has expended great effort in trying to drive
me into a rage. This would be very self-destructive behavior if he
really believed me to have the violent tendencies that he says he
believes me to have. Despite his provocations, I never once laid a
hand on him or raised my voice to him in person-just asked him to stay
away from me. I admit that I have succumbed to rage at him on occasion
to the extent of speaking to him quite harshly on John Pazmino's Yahoo
group.


BRUCE KAMIAT RESPONDS TO TOM CLABOUGH'S LIBEL


I will respond to this libel first, as Clabough accuses me of actual
felonious acts (brandishing an unlicensed firearm with menacing
intent) and potential for deadly violence. This is therefore far the
more serious of the two. There are three basic components to this
libel: that I threatened him with a gun; that I said "you never know
who we might shoot"; and that I said "don't approach me in the park
again," with various ominous implications he tries to attribute to
this entreaty. I will address these in reverse order, the most
significant last.


Tom Clabough's style is to make much use of out-of-context partial
quotations to create extremely distorted impressions of those whom he
libels. Additionally, he often rearranges fragments of quotations to
create a different meaning or even puts quotation marks around
complete fabrications to make it appear that others have said things
they never did.


The third component cited above, in which I told him not to approach
me in the park, refers to my response to his frequent attempts to walk
up to me in the park or at the museum and act as though we were great,
warm friends, as though he had not just finished posting another set
of insults and lies about me and others on the Yahoo group. I was
getting awfully tired of this. I felt extreme anger at him and just
wanted him to stay away from me.


He had strenuously objected on the Yahoo group to the fact that I was
a lifelong member of the Democratic Party and proud to be so. He had
attempted to equate liberal Democrats with anarchists, Communists,
terrorists, and supporters of Al-Qaeda. For my offense of being a
liberal Democrat, he had publicly accused me of being a traitor to our
nation. It requires an odd sort of mental disconnect to hurl such
accusations repeatedly and incessantly at someone-not in the abstract,
but at a direct, personal level-and then expect him to warmly welcome
you with a smile. Perhaps those of you among the readers of this
message ...


read more »

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