I see that there's been an exchange of fire between two of Britain's 'UFO experts' recently, especially coming on the heels of the final release of the MOD's UFO Files.
The Huffington Post article by Lee Speigel gives a good summary so far of these two having come to blows.
Whilst, I tend to favour Pope's view - and those of others such as Timothy Good - that these are not all the files that the relevant UK authorities possess concerning UFOs (note I'm not specifically concerned with just MOD's files here), I do wish these two would try and settle their differences.
One of the most recent salvos in this exchange was by Pope seemingly and indirectly referring to Clarke as a 'useful idiot' (which was in both the Reuters and UFOs and Nukes articles I referred to in my last post), which I thought was unkind given Clarke's work to have the MOD files released. Pope now appears to have offered an apology for his remark. It also doesn't help matters that - if certain claims being made about him are true - Pope might not have been the UFO sceptic he maintained he was before working for the MOD (the HuffPost article by Lee Speigel gives details).
As Lee says in his article:-
"If there are any losers here, it must be the public, for the confusion
this has brought up. After tens of thousands of pages of UFO files have
been released by the U.K., who are we supposed to believe about how
significant (or not) those documents really are?"
The two protagonists - like many others in the UFO community - seem more concerned with attacking each other (and perhaps protecting their own reputations) than making a collective effort to continue to search for answers.
Despite the arguments put forward by both supporters and sceptics generally, the phenomenon of UFOs and UAP persists. Of those cases that come to light, there are still a significant number that cannot be put down to chinese lanterns, balloons, experimental aircraft, drones, meteorological or astronomical phenomena, the mental state of observers etc.
The observable universe apparently stubbonly refuses to fit into the neat world-view of either hardened sceptics or avid supporters. In addition, whilst I favour 'cock-up' or 'WYSIWYG' (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) rather than 'conspiracy' to explain much Government activity, it would be foolish to think that any Government is entirely 'open' or 'transparent' on a topic such as this.
Still both Clarke and Pope - whatever flaws they might be considered by some to have (including each other) - are well-known and dare I say, respected names in the field and are bolder than I (and many like me), by publicly having just such an association with the UFO phenomenon, whilst I - through necessity - must remain anonymous.
That is why I think it is important that they acknowledge their differences in a mature, gentlemanly fashion and just try to get along.
