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From: Peter BrookesmithMendoza <DarkSecretPB@compuserve.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 20:40:02 -0500
Fwd Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1999 21:29:03 -0500
Subject: Re: SPI News From England February 1999



With the compliments of the Duke of Mendoza:


>From: Roy Hale <roy.hale@virgin.net>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>Subject: Re: SPI News From England February 1999
>Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 14:48:17 -0000


>People have been silenced in other Countries around the World
>for their beliefs or perhaps what they have stumbled across, and
>yet I hear on this list service the same crap from other
>ufologist's which is "I dont want to hear the other side of the
>story because I have already heard the version of events I feel
>comfortable with".

This is as muddled as Malcolm Robinson's remarks in his SPI News.
People can believe what they like. Not only that, they damn' well
will believe what they like, whether anyone else likes it or not,
and as far as I'm concerned they can shout their beliefs all day
and night. (I feel quite strongly about this. I recently published
a piece defending racism on the Internet, not because racism has
anything to commend it - as I pointed out there, if Operation Sea
Lion had succeeded in 1941 my mother would have gone to the gas
chambers shortly thereafter - but because I don't need or want
that personality in search of a disorder Jack "Boot" Straw to
decide what I am man enough to read, but I do like to know my
enemy, and for that I want his thinking to be accessible.

Free speech is not, I say again, not, the issue. The issue is
standards of research, and what standards BUFORA thinks it can
possibly be defending by giving Mad Max a platform. I am
comfortable with Dave Clarke's version of events because its
pieces fit pretty neatly, with one another and with what one knows
about the world at large. I am derisive and dismissive of Max
Burns' version of events because _none_ of it fits. Even the
"logic" of abductologists works better than this, because it is
internally consistent. Mad Max's story is a ramshackle edifice
even in its own terms. In the light of the world beyond, it is
simply incoherent gibberish.

Of course, BUFORA can present all the incoherent gibberish it
likes; it's a relatively free country still (although I _would_
like my pistols back, please), although I do wonder if these
days Russians, unencumbered by the thought police of political
correctness, may not, in practice, these days enjoy greater
freedom of speech than we do. And Secretary of State Jack Boot
Spliff is not going to interfere with lunacy like BUFORA's
because it's just the kind of thing to stop the plebs thinking
about all the people he's proposing to put into jail without
trial, and the assets of others he wants to seize, and his
bright wheeze that hearsay evidence should be acceptable in
court, and how the government should tell us when to put our
children to bed, and so on. (If you want to worry about liberty
in the UK, look at some of that stuff, old fruit.) But I should
be surprised if BUFORA really wants to be considered - or should
that be "recognized"? - as the foremost institution for
promoting unbaked rubbish in the land.

The muddle in Hale's and Robinson's thinking is not really about
Mad Max, but about what BUFORA should stand for, and what "free
speech" actually consists of. I might remind Roy Hale of the
analogy I drew with "Nature" before. The civilized world doesn't
censor flat earthers, any more than the Internet, or even our
own dear Moderator, censors Mad Max. But "Nature" would lose its
credibility as a scientific witness somewhat if it started
printing articles propounding the flat-earth theory, or Ronald
Pearson's whacky ideas about relativity. And for why? Because
these notions have no evidence, no recognizable mathematics, and
no logic to defend them, while there is a monstrous edifice of
evidence to the contrary to expose their shoddy thinking. The
parallels with Max's version of events in the so-called
"Sheffield case" are hardly difficult to descry.

>How would Peter Brookesmith feel if quite suddenly know one
>wanted to hear a single word about what his has found out about
>the UFO subject no-matter how small and insignificant it maybe,
>would that not be a little irritating, perhaps if such a thing
>happened would it still be worthwhile investigating UFOs?.

No doubt it would be irritating, but I wouldn't start squeaking
about freedom of speech, unless the censorship was
government-sponsored. Editors print what they want. That's how
it should be. That's freedom of speech in practice.

>Max will have his platform and his side of the story should be
>told, and for researchers in other Countries not to make their
>mind up until you have allowed Max to publicly have his side of
>events broadcasted.

One more time, all together now:

Max has already broadcast his side of the story not only
publicly but internationally, right on this List and no doubt
elsewhere on the Internet too, and his posts here are archived
on the Web for all the electronically-unchallenged to enjoy. And
it's not a matter of equality of opinion and "making up your own
mind". Anyone with a half a mind can see Max is making it up as
he goes along, and has the intellectual capacity of a gnat. It
is a matter of BUFORA supporting defensible standards of
research and conclusions drawn from that research, or not. At
the moment, it's not, no matter how often they may protest
they're letting Dave Clarke have his say too. That's just
weasely, although it's par for the course for ufology, sometimes
even for what claims to be the best of ufology.

best wishes
Petticoat D. Mithridates
Piano Leg