
Date:   Sun Oct 10 1993  11:39:00
From:   John Powell
To:     David Bloomberg
Subj:   Don Ware...
Attr:   
INFO.PARANET                   -------------------------------

 -=> Quoting David Bloomberg to John Powell <=-

 MC> Does anyone know what happened to Don Ware and his involvement with
 MC> MUFON? 
 JP> MUFON booted him out.
 DB> Who is Don Ware and why did they boot him?

Donald M. Ware was MUFON's Eastern Regional Director.  (MUFON State
Directors, who report to the Regional Director, are in charge of a
particular state and have Assistant State Directors reporting to them.
In some larger areas the heirarchy has an extra level or two.  The
Eastern Region is composed of the states:  ME, VT, NH, MA, CT, RI, NY,
PA, NJ, DE, MD, WV, VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, PR, AND VI.)

Here's the announcement:
------------------------

REMOVAL OF BOARD MEMBER

        The MUFON Board of Directors has the authority to elect people
to the Board through a mail ballot. Conversely, the same authority may
be applied to the removal of present Board members who continually defy
the corporate goals and objectives of the Mutual UFO Network to the
detriment of MUFON's scientific credibility. In an unprecedented
election, Donald M. Ware was voted to be removed from the Board
effective June 1, 1993. This action stemmed from continued advisory
statements by members of the Executive Committee to Don that he refrain
from mailing books to Board members and Eastern Regional State Directors
espousing "channeling" philosophies and techniques over a two-year
period.

        As a result of Mr. Ware's fascination with channeling as a means
of communicating with aliens or entities, he invited Dr. Norma
Milanovich, a professed channeler, to attend the closed MUFON
"Face-to-Face" meeting in Albuquerque, NM in July 1992 and allowed her
to read her channeled answers to the questions posed for discussion by
the participants. Much to the shock and dismay of MUFON officers
attending, Dr. Milanovich read the answers from a computer print-out
which she claims was obtained from "Master Kuthumi" during a 33-minute
period the previous night.

        Walter Andrus gave Donald Ware an opportunity to resign from the
Board. After he refused to resign, a vote by the Board of Directors was
felt to be the fairest way of determining his status. Since it has taken
25 years to establish MUFON's scientific credibility, it seems unwise to
allow one individual's unscientific interests to be taken as
representative of those of MUFON. The results from the mail ballot are
as follows: 15 (65.2%) voted yes to remove; four (17.4%) voted no to
removal, and four directors abstained as the third choice.

        MUFON is indebted to Don for the outstanding job he performed as
a Field Investigator, State Section Director, State Director and later
as MUFON's Eastern Regional Director. Any member of MUFON may study any
of the fringe aspects of Ufology such as channeling and the New Age
concepts, however, MUFON does not endorse these fringe aspects and is
strictly against any member's attempt to proselytize other MUFON
members. Channelers have produced no scientific evidence, thus far, that
is applicable to resolving the UFO phenomenon. The removal of Mr. Ware
from the Board was a difficult and painful decision and he will be
sorely missed.

        Eastern Region State Directors should discontinue sending UFO
sighting reports to Mr. Ware and instead mail them to Jerold "Ron"
Johnson, MUFON Deputy Director of Investigations, 12700 Silver Creek,
Austin, TX 78727, until such time as a new Eastern Regional Director is
elected.
---
Mutual UFO Network UFO Journal, Number 303, July 1993, Copyright 1993 by
the Mutual UFO Network, 103 Oldtowne Rd., Sequin, Texas 78155, published
monthly with a membership/subscription rate of $25/yr.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Naturally, I have my own opinion on why Ware was booted.  Most cults,
especially combination belief/money cults, have something similar to a
business plan or at least a 'plan' to guide the development and
marketing of the cult.  In Ware's case, even though he was moving in the
same direction as MUFON, he was simply moving faster than MUFON wanted
to go at this particular time.  MUFON's membership has increased 150% in
just the last two years and while there is clearly the desire to
continue that growth there is also the serious caution present to
protect what has already been acheived.

The phrase "corporate goals and objectives" is rather obvious.

The statement that MUFON "does not endorse these fringe aspects and is
strictly against any member's attempt to proselytize other MUFON
members" is laughable considering that MUFON pays the bills in support
of John Komar's Channelling Echo and supports his efforts to get that
Echo onto the Fido backbone.

However, the item that stood out the most, that channelers "have
produced no scientific evidence, thus far, that is applicable to
resolving the UFO phenomenon" is especially interesting as written.  One
gets the impression that channelers _have_, according to Walt Andrus and
presumably determined using his enormous personal scientific skills and
abilities, produced scientific evidence of some particular kind - just
not the kind that can _resolve_ the so-called UFO phenomenon.

Of course, the scientific evidence accumulated to date on channeling
indicates that a tiny fraction of channelers are capable of creating an
altered state of conscious using auto-suggestion and auto-hypnosis and
yet are incapable of revealing anything not already known to them or at
least not generally known.  The vast majority of channelers, on the
other hand, are simply con-artists who are successful at duping an
uncritical audience.

Thanks, take care.
John.
-
<Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence>


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