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The Hatchet Job On Stan Friedman In FT383

I find Brookesmith's column a must-read in every FT because it shows the absurdity of ufology these days. I also REALLY enjoy Ballester-Olmos because he has come to a logical conclusion after a thorough examination. They don't speak in terms of speculation, fantasy, or conspiracy.

If you think the government covered up anything this big for so long, you've obviously never worked for the government.

There is something (more than one something) to UFOs for sure, but decades of reports and study have not led anywhere near to a reasonable conclusion of physical piloted craft. Yet, the idea is just too ingrained to give up.

I'd also say that we should not sugar-coat people's lives because they just died. Their entire legacy deserves to be known. A magazine about Fortean ideas seems like an appropriate place to have such discussions. (I wouldn't do it at the funeral, that is.)
 
Sharon Hill said:
I find Brookesmith's column a must-read in every FT because it shows the absurdity of ufology these days. I also REALLY enjoy Ballester-Olmos because he has come to a logical conclusion after a thorough examination. They don't speak in terms of speculation, fantasy, or conspiracy.

If you think the government covered up anything this big for so long, you've obviously never worked for the government.

There is something (more than one something) to UFOs for sure, but decades of reports and study have not led anywhere near to a reasonable conclusion of physical piloted craft. Yet, the idea is just too ingrained to give up.

I'd also say that we should not sugar-coat people's lives because they just died. Their entire legacy deserves to be known. A magazine about Fortean ideas seems like an appropriate place to have such discussions. (I wouldn't do it at the funeral, that is.)
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I agree that we shouldn't be inhibited from criticising someone's approach just because they died. On the other hand -- maybe not in this case -- it is often the case that critics will crop up and rubbish someone after they departed, because they didn't have the courage to put their views directly to the victim while he was alive. I don't accept Friedman's simplistic extraterrestrial notion either, but he was a good researcher who tried to be objective. His re-examination of the Hills' alleged abduction produced new facts that actually contradicted the ETH, for example.

I respect the incredible work that Ballester-Olmos has done over the years but he, too, is fixated on the ETH and point blank refuses to look at alternative hypotheses such as those of Vallee.
 
Given what we actually know about the origin of flying saucers (basically nothing) it seems foolish to insist everyone choose a "side" in some contrived question of ETH or something else. It is likely to be as valid a question as Are they from Venus or Mars? The ensuing "debate" produces much heat and pretty much zero light.
 
Is there a link someone can provide to the piece by Mr Brooksmith...?
 
INT21 said:
I don't know about Brookesmith (never heard of him) But Jenny Randles is a member of this site, maybe you could ask for her opinion ?

INT21.
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You have over 5,000 posts on here and presumably read the magazine, but have never heard of a guy who has a regular column in said mag?
Am I missing something here (as in, are you PB and I'm out of the loop)?
 
XEPER_ said:
You have over 5,000 posts on here and presumably read the magazine, but have never heard of a guy who has a regular column in said mag?
Am I missing something here (as in, are you PB and I'm out of the loop)?
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Not missing anything.

But you are making and assumption. Not a good trait in this field.

You see, I have never read the magazine.

INT21.
 
dr wu said:
Is there a link someone can provide to the piece by Mr Brooksmith...?
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Do you mean in the FT issue 383? If so - I strongly doubt there is an online version to be accessed.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Do you mean in the FT issue 383? If so - I strongly doubt there is an online version to be accessed.
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Ok....I would have liked to read it online...too bad.
 
Just been alerted to this thread. Happy to answer questions - though I should add that I declined to say anything bad about Stanton Friedman in the FT issue being referred to. It was not my choice to raise the matter as it is complicated and in some respects involves thing I cannot talk about publicly even 30 years later.

I made this clear to FT when asked and on the FT Facebook page chat at the time of his death that despite his actions I bore no ill will. And the last time we met (in Washington in 1999 at the MUFON conference - at what proved my last involvement in that side of things) we managed to get on quite respectfully. And I was pleased about that as I prefer not to hold grudges with anyone.
 
As for the other comments in this thread about my support of the psycho-social theory/or the link with epilepsy - I don't believe TLE is loosely involved in more than a few cases. Certainly not a dominant factor. And whilst I think there are multiple explanations for UFO events - not a one size fits all theory - I would actually love some kind of alien component to exist.

I took astronomy and geology at college and in other circumstances would have done astrophysics at Edinburgh University. I was accepted to do this but other complications in my life as a teenager got in the way of that.

So my interest in UFOs, like most who were at school in the 60s, was driven by the concept that as we were taking baby steps to the stars then others might well be heading in the opposite direction.

Whilst I have never been persuaded that this is what is happening I have never ruled it out as a possibility. Indeed I had many conversations on this in the 1980s with Allen Hynek in the last years of his life - in 1983 I had a road trip with him across America and house sat briefly for him and Mimi for a while in Evanston and our thoughts seemed quite similar in how our paths in UFO research had gone. He was at a point then long into his UFO investigation as I was recently. And I can see how he got where he had and why in eways I could not at that time when I was young.

Though I have by circumstance (as a full time carer for 15 years) not written any new books since 2004 I am writing now. And I hope to make up for lost time over the next few years.

I think the recent US revelations and video from the USS Nimitz incident in 2004 are very interesting. From what I have seen of the UK MoD data it is likely they took similar paths in what happened internally on data such as this versus what happened openly via the MoD Air Staff, which largely was there to deal with all the misperceptions that we all know comprise the vast majority of the UFO evidence.

I recall calling this a shop window to attract attention whilst the real work went on in a workshop at the back of the store and I think that more than ever today.

There always have been rare outlier cases and I have never assumed these do not hide a signal in the noise.
 
Sharon Hill said:
I find Brookesmith's column a must-read in every FT because it shows the absurdity of ufology these days. I also REALLY enjoy Ballester-Olmos because he has come to a logical conclusion after a thorough examination. They don't speak in terms of speculation, fantasy, or conspiracy.

If you think the government covered up anything this big for so long, you've obviously never worked for the government.

There is something (more than one something) to UFOs for sure, but decades of reports and study have not led anywhere near to a reasonable conclusion of physical piloted craft. Yet, the idea is just too ingrained to give up.

I'd also say that we should not sugar-coat people's lives because they just died. Their entire legacy deserves to be known. A magazine about Fortean ideas seems like an appropriate place to have such discussions. (I wouldn't do it at the funeral, that is.)
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Governments have covered up sensitive subjects for decades. Want a list? Moreover I'm afraid that your working for one branch of the government (which one, by the way?) hardly entitles you to pronounce on classified subjects that are deeply compartmentalised.
 
Cecil Baargs said:
Governments have covered up sensitive subjects for decades. Want a list? Moreover I'm afraid that your working for one branch of the government (which one, by the way?) hardly entitles you to pronounce on classified subjects that are deeply compartmentalised.
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Sharon Hill made no pronouncements on any such subjects - classified or otherwise. Her comment related to governments' (in-)ability to cover up major secrets involving subject matter not exclusively controlled by nor contained within said governments for an extraordinary length of time.

More to the point here ... Belief in any controversial subject or proposition doesn't entitle one to presume its ongoing lack of validation has to be the result of deliberate secrecy, much less official secrecy imposed at any given level.
 
The latest attempt to explain Roswell citing some anonymous message board poster named purrlgurrl (or similar) marks a new low in 'back of a fag packet' analysis by Mr Brookesmith incidentally. Not worth the dye in the ink used to print it.
 
Cecil Baargs said:
Governments have covered up sensitive subjects for decades. Want a list? Moreover I'm afraid that your working for one branch of the government (which one, by the way?) hardly entitles you to pronounce on classified subjects that are deeply compartmentalised.
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So what are YOUR qualifications to rebut mine?
[That's a rhetorical question because a forum is not the place to establish genuine credibility that can justify saying UFOs are alien craft.]
Even pilots mess up on observations.
Just because there have been real conspiracies does not mean UFOs are alien craft, if that is what you are suggesting (as many do).
 
I hope I've not upset you. Sometimes I can be blunt. But I think that many would agree with my basic point that working in government cannot tell you everything you want to know about how government works, especially on the classified side. I'm not a conventional ETH believer, by the way. But to look at how governments actually have behaved around UFOs suggests strongly that they are pretending they're not an issue when OF COURSE they would be an issue: of defence and civil order significance for starters. An apparent insouciant failure to investigate leaves many of us to infer that they actually know more than they crack on but that it's too sensitive to share with 'us'. But that's just my opinion. Richard Dolan puts it much better than I do. He would be exactly the person to put Mr Brookesmith in his place, to return to the start of this thread.
 
I like this, from Carl Grove:
' ...there are, and always will be those who express the belief (and it is only a belief) that a "rational explanation" can always be found for any strange phenomenon -- "strange" meaning something that makes the rationalists rather uneasy. Nobody denies that a majority of raw UFO cases can be accounted for in conventional terms, but everybody who has taken the trouble to study the evidence knows that it isn't that simple. Something -- probably a lot of somethings -- is going on, and anybody who thinks there is one simple answer to everything is being rather foolish. There is a huge body of evidence that some highly sophisticated intelligence is having physical effects in our environment: this includes photographs, video and cine footage, radar tracking, landing imprints, burn marks and thermal effects, radiation traces, biological effects, malfunction of electrical devices, cars, airplanes, and missiles; and alleged crash residue and debris. Psychological, paranormal, social and cultural effects are also manifested.'
Citation on request.
 
^Just an observation on what Carl Grove said, (which btw is right out of the Dr J Vallee's playbook which is also ok being that I am fond of Dr Vallee's work over the years), while it is true that the phenom has had many effects on various aspects of the environment as pointed out in the quote above, it is not automatically true that is is the work of a 'highly sophisticated intelligence'. That is speculation.
 
I reckon that the pre-emptive actions of the tic tac UFO imply a high level of sophistication?
 
dr wu said:
^Just an observation on what Carl Grove said, (which btw is right out of the Dr J Vallee's playbook which is also ok being that I am fond of Dr Vallee's work over the years), while it is true that the phenom has had many effects on various aspects of the environment as pointed out in the quote above, it is not automatically true that is is the work of a 'highly sophisticated intelligence'. That is speculation.
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While that quote is from an article I wrote several years back, I would still suggest that some intelligence is behind many UFO manifestations. That would not, of course, rule out Jung's collective mind concept, or something similar. And of course an intelligence could be something very unlike our own, something more like Keel's ultraterrestrials perhaps.
 
Cecil Baargs said:
I reckon that the pre-emptive actions of the tic tac UFO imply a high level of sophistication?
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Why the question mark? That's not a question, it's a statement.

Yours

A. Pedant
 
Cecil Baargs said:
Something -- probably a lot of somethings -- is going on, and anybody who thinks there is one simple answer to everything is being rather foolish.
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Agreed.

Any large bureaucratic body like a government agency or a military arm regularly malfunctions at various levels and degrees. One person can throw the system out of whack by just misplacing or mischaracterizing data. For the same reason, a detailed, complex conspiracy involving many people will almost certainly fail. We're going on decades and there is still a government conspiracy? Doesn't add up. So I can not buy the government conspiracy idea if incompetence (as there is in every human endeavor at some level) can be the cause. I see the UFO phenomenon as highly complex with perception, social influence, and politics at play throughout its history. One simple answer (Aliens!) just does not suffice.

But I'm not sure anyone is really saying that it's all aliens (ever since humans reporting weird things in the sky) except as a sound byte for attention. We all know there have been many errors and hoaxes. However, several people who once entertained the idea of possible alien craft have discarded that belief because the other evidence that should be there to support it just isn't there. UFO belief hinges on many other beliefs regarding anecdotal evidence, etc. and, in recent times, highly questionable videos.
 
Sharon Hill said:
Agreed.

Any large bureaucratic body like a government agency or a military arm regularly malfunctions at various levels and degrees. One person can throw the system out of whack by just misplacing or mischaracterizing data. For the same reason, a detailed, complex conspiracy involving many people will almost certainly fail. We're going on decades and there is still a government conspiracy? Doesn't add up. So I can not buy the government conspiracy idea if incompetence (as there is in every human endeavor at some level) can be the cause. I see the UFO phenomenon as highly complex with perception, social influence, and politics at play throughout its history. One simple answer (Aliens!) just does not suffice.

But I'm not sure anyone is really saying that it's all aliens (ever since humans reporting weird things in the sky) except as a sound byte for attention. We all know there have been many errors and hoaxes. However, several people who once entertained the idea of possible alien craft have discarded that belief because the other evidence that should be there to support it just isn't there. UFO belief hinges on many other beliefs regarding anecdotal evidence, etc. and, in recent times, highly questionable videos.
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From what we now know of the USA and its secret world, there are black projects deep in the heart of the military-industrial complex there. Their budgets are almost limitless. Worryingly it appears they are off-limits to all but a few select individuals and are carried out in highly sensitive locations, far from oversight, even by politicians. So no, I don't believe politicians/government spokespeople are lying or covering up. Not knowingly. But THEY just don't know. They're civilians, no more. Here today, gone tomorrow.
UFOs exist as the released tic tac UFO footage, now vouched for by the USA, clearly shows. Are they just nuts and bolts? Alien? A projection? A tulpa? Gawd knows but those objects defy the known laws of physics.
 
Cecil Baargs said:
From what we now know of the USA and its secret world, there are black projects deep in the heart of the military-industrial complex there. Their budgets are almost limitless. Worryingly it appears they are off-limits to all but a few select individuals and are carried out in highly sensitive locations, far from oversight, even by politicians. So no, I don't believe politicians/government spokespeople are lying or covering up. Not knowingly. But THEY just don't know. They're civilians, no more. Here today, gone tomorrow.
UFOs exist as the released tic tac UFO footage, now vouched for by the USA, clearly shows. Are they just nuts and bolts? Alien? A projection? A tulpa? Gawd knows but those objects defy the known laws of physics.
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There's no doubt that UFOs represent an incredibly complex phenomenon and the simple "flying saucers from outer space" scenario just doesn't fit. Strange things in the skies -- and strange humanoid beings -- have been reported for centuries. Maybe the fairy/jinn theory could apply. There's also no doubt that there are highly classified projects in the US that operate under the strongest form of compartmentalised security, some of these dealing with advanced propulsion systems. They managed to keep stealth totally secret for decades. And there is also no doubt that, ever since Roswell, the alien visitors notion has been actively promoted by agencies such as AFOSI. I am certain that the HIlls' alleged abduction case is an example of this. If nothing else it is a good cover story for the black projects activities. But the core phenomenon is still there -- strange aerial vehicles exhibiting incredible performance characteristics, and humanoid beings behaving in equally strange ways. I doubt that anyone in official circles really understands what is going on, the ludicrous stories about US presidents meeting aliens and the like are just designed to keep the UFO believers (believers rather than serious researchers) active and keep the noise level at max.
 
Carl Grove said:
While that quote is from an article I wrote several years back, I would still suggest that some intelligence is behind many UFO manifestations. That would not, of course, rule out Jung's collective mind concept, or something similar. And of course an intelligence could be something very unlike our own, something more like Keel's ultraterrestrials perhaps.
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Ok...that's possible ,though still highly speculative, and that was my main point.
While I enjoyed reading The 8th Tower by Keel it is at times very speculative. The problem with all of these alternate ideas is that we have nothing to support them ...actually we have little hard evidence to support the ETH either.
 
dr wu said:
Ok...that's possible ,though still highly speculative, and that was my main point.
While I enjoyed reading The 8th Tower by Keel it is at times very speculative. The problem with all of these alternate ideas is that we have nothing to support them ...actually we have little hard evidence to support the ETH either.
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I draw a clear distinction between evidence and proof. After all, false evidence entered into court is still evidence, whatever its veracity. Hard evidence for metallic UFOs is scarce but it exists, if you look for it. The highly anomalous 'meta-material' is one example that's difficult to rebut. Anecdotal evidence is never 100%, agreed, but enough highly credible witnesses have come forward. For seven decades now. What they offer is evidence. You can either choose to accept it or reject it. Like a juror indeed. I'm no fan of the ETH myself but speculation about it and other more esoteric explanations is inevitable. Let everyone pitch in. Nobody is going to hand us the complete truth, are they. Just make sure there's some internal logic in your argument and never tolerate the loftily deluded words 'But I just don't think the aliens would DO it like that. Ergo there can be no no aliens'. They are not nice in polite company. Frankly a truly great thinker has no more idea what would be in an alien's mind than a narrow-minded sceptic, so it's best not stoop to the level of basing our judgments upon how little we could ever conceivably know of alien intelligence
 
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