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From: Peter Brookesmith-Mendoza <DarkSecretPB@compuserve.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 10:28:56 -0400
Fwd Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 00:27:48 -0400
Subject: Re: Beyond the Blunderdome


With the compliments of the Duke of Mendoza:

>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net
>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark@frontiernet.net
>Subject: Re: Beyond the Blunderdome
>Date: Tue, 15 Jun 99 13:14:02 PDT


>>Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 22:30:48 -0400
>>From: Mendoza - Peter Brookesmith <DarkSecretPB@compuserve.com
>>Subject: Re: Beyond the Blunderdome
>>To: To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net


>Peter,

>>I believe I was among if not the first to express some outrage
>>in public at Budd Hopkins's regression of small children, in a
>>review in "Fortean Times" of an IUN Sheffield conference in
>>approximately 1993. In his presentations (which I taped, but I
>>write from memory) he actually admitted the children were as
>>young as two and a half.

>Since this is a very serious allegation, I think we need more
>than your memory here.  Could we have an exact quote from this
>tape?

Yes, but for me to give you chapter, verse and I context I need
(a) a working cassette player, and all four of mine are currently
on the blink, with a new one on order due in a couple of weeks (b)
about three hours (max.) to listen to both Budd's presentations
from that conference. So bear with me.

Meanwhile, if you look up Fortean Times #72 (1993) pp44-5, you
will at least have a printed reference to Budd's statement and my
reaction to it, written hard on the event, tape machines whirring
and in good order.

>>I don't think Hopkins is honest, although he may be sincere in
>>his own peculiar way.

>Interestingly, I've more than once heard the same said of you,
>for whatever it's worth.

Worth not much. But, as yer man famously said, there is only one
thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being
talked about.

Otherwise, I can't currently do better than Dennis Stacy is
doing to point out the problems with Hopkins' thinking. Know ye,
there is wisdom among the sasquatches.

>>Nor do I think Mad Max is honest. In
>>neither case, however, do I think is there is any question of
>>deliberate misrepresentation or hucksterism. But it surely is
>>self-deception, which I've called intellectual dishonesty (see
>>UFO UpDates, passim), and for which I've been most vehemently
>>reprimanded, most often by people who I'd naively expected
>>would know better. That the strongest detractors are citizens
>>of the United States is not, I think, entirely coincidental.

>Please explain what this last sentence is supposed to mean.

The post you quote was (like Jenny Randles's wonderful satire on
censorship) actually intended for distribution only to a bunch
of British ufologists and observers of ufology who have been
discussing this & that among ourselves, and like Jenny I didn't
notice that UpDates (and Jeff Rense, I see) was on the CC: list.
None of those in that sophisticated circle seems to have had any
trouble understanding what I meant, most of them being somewhat
skeptical (in the Truzzian sense), and every one a patriot
(guffaw).

But the gloss is that of any random sample of American
ufologists, I would predict that more were sympathetic to Budd
Hopkins and his claims than you would find in a random sample of
an equal number of British - or, indeed, European - ufologists.
Thus, criticism of Hopkins might be expected to attract more
detractors from the USA than from Britain and/or Europe.

>That it is rendered by a citizen of the United Kingdom is not,
>I think, entirely coincidental. (Or something like that.)

My own think is that an informed Esquimaux ("in his skin canoe",
ho ho) would not disagree with me. I haven't counted any more
than you have, but you must surely have noticed how often
exchanges that could broadly be called skeptic-versus-believer
debates on this list divide between the Old World and the New.
Given enough time but without too much trouble I could work up a
psychosocial hypothesis for the reasons for this that would
probably put you in a fine dudgeon: although I think the
Esquimaux perspective would be preferable, as more impartial. It
would likely be pretty dry about Sir John Franklin, too.

>Cheers,

And to you.

best wishes
Palmreader D. Moonraking
Bootleg Clairvoyant