September 3, 2013
My Story about Robert Broughton, founder of the anti-smoking Air Space group in British Columbia, Canada.
Michael McFadden, author of several books about anti-smokers, including his latest, "TobakkoNacht", in which he mentions this story, recently suggested that I post a more detailed version of my story about Robert Broughton on my current tobacco related website, tobaccosmokersofcanada.ca. Michael is a close long time friend of mine, and he used a short mention of my story in his latest book as an example and warning of just how far some anti-smokers will go to attack and suppress our side's efforts to expose the truths, the facts, the real science, about the global anti-smoking campaign.
My Robert Broughton story began in 2002, on the Can.Talk.Smoking newsgroup. There I found and joined a battle of words raging between real science and anti-smoking junk science, a no-holds-barred word-battle of mutual hatred, waging between about half dozen or so smokers, Eric Boyd; Jason; Marky; JohnJay Runnion; Dave ; Rumik; Ray Johnstone; Paul Neascu; -- and a bunch of anti-smokers, Paul Smith; Steady Eddy; Mr Pink; Daniel Stern; etc - led by Robert (Boobie-Bawb) Broughton.
Backgrounder -
In early 1999 I was on the verge of quitting smoking, butt, I changed my mind after I found out about the 1998 WHO study, from Gian Turci's and Pat Hagan's FORCES Canada site and from Samantha Phillipe's The Smokers Club site. That study concluded that the researchers did NOT find any Statistically Significant Health Risk from second hand tobacco smoke.
The original owner of Smokers.com Barb Jones had 'retired', having become quite distraught from the constant increasing attacks and threats of physical harm from anti-smokers, and I took over ownership of the domain, primarily to fight the global anti-smoking campaign by exposing the facts that their claims about second hand tobacco smoke were all based on junk science, mostly paid for by Big Pharmaceutical companies, most notably Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, for two basic reasons.
The 1st was / is - to blame tobacco smoke for all the rising illnesses and deaths being caused by their bad pills, and the 2nd reason was / is - to make billions more from their equally bad anti-smoking products.
By 2002 my Smokers.com site was getting approximately 50,000 visitors per month, my online forum had over 1,000 members, and was garnering a lot of attention from anti-smokers also. In response to both sides, I started up several more websites, including a Toronto Ontario Chapter of FORCES. I was later in negotiations to accept being invited to head FORCES Canada after Gian returned to Italy and Pat got married, but I decided not to take it on. I had just begun a new service, homemovies.ca, and needed to give it most of my attention.
In the summer of 2002 somebody told me some smoking activists were having fun in word-battles with some anti-smokers on the can.talk.smoking and other newsgroups, so I joined in whole-heartedly, which is where I 1st 'met' Robert Broughton online, founder of anti-smoking Air Space in British Columbia.
I derived considerable pleasure in focusing most of my efforts against Broughton, and as a result, he did likewise to me. I became the smoker that Broghton most loved to hate, and I equally hated him in return.
Our exchanges thru the newsgroups went on for several months, and the longer they went on, the more and more troubles I experienced with my several websites being hacked/changed/crashed, my email accounts being frozen - used to send out 10s of 1000s of spam mail all over the world and being threatened with closures by the IPs, and viruses were attacking and destroying my home and business computers. My forums and online surveys were being 'populated' and destroyed by anti-smokers pretending to be smokers. I was being contacted by various government departments, including an office of Canada's Department of National Defense, even the RCMP, and several U.S. State gov't representatives, all causing me no end of grief.
In my forums and online surveys, the worst culprit was Errol Povah, aka The Grim Reaper, who turned out to be an early recruit of Robert Broughton's 'army' of likewise mentally deranged anti-smokers. Though I did not manage to indisputably prove it, neither of them ever denied my research which indicated that they had met each other as fellow inmates at the local mental institution. Even most anti-smoking groups and organizations refused to have any sort of affiliation or interaction with them.
I learned that other smoking activists were also being attacked, and that Broughton was the prime suspect. Broughton was an IT Network Server consultant, a Linux and JAVA programmer, and, knew exactly how to hack websites and email accounts.
When I tried to file a formal complaint against Povah and Brougton with their local police department, it was rejected. I concluded the reason for the rejection of my complaint was that both of them were all too well known to their local police, who were equally as afraid of them as was myself and other victims.
By 2006, I had lost Smokers.Com to Russian Mafia, and I had to relinquish several other websites for lack of funds to keep them going, including SmokersRightsCanada.org
The very day that my ownership of SmokersRightsCanada.org expired, Robert Broughton registered it for himself, and filled it with anti-smoking rhetoric and junk science, even making it seem as though I still was involved with it by numerous mentions of my name on it.
Broughton has maintained ownership of SmokersRightsCanada.org from that day till the present, and will hang on to it so that I can not ever get it back, for as long as he or I lives.
Indeed, even though he retired in 2012 to a small city in central Mexico, Broughton still posts the odd blitherings on the website.
This story is butt one example, a warning, to all who try to fight back against the global anti-smoking campaigners. Some believe the false claims about second hand tobacco smoke. Some do it simply for the funding money, and/or to redirect attention away from what their products and services are doing to the human race.
Some, like Robert Broughton and Errol Povah, are mentally unstable fanatics, who will do whatever they can get away with to destroy your efforts.
Be aware of and prepared to suffer their efforts to destroy you and your efforts against the global anti-smoking campaign, the Big Pharmaceutical companies, and the even 'bigger picture' of junk science-for-a-buck about everything.
steve hartwell