Persecuted scientist Peter Dow @ British Science Festival, Aberdeen

Discussion in 'About the Members' started by Peter Dow, Sep 8, 2012.

  1. Peter Dow Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    215
    To everyone reading this forum.

    This does not follow as a reply to my quote.


    Then you must use you brain to elicit the facts from my facts plus conclusions.


    You quoted only an introductory phrase to a list of facts you did not quote.

    Banning me was not my idea and I do dispute the logic of their stated reasons for banning me. I gave a link to quotes of their stated reasons.

    I am repeating myself here but I have added another direct link to the image of one of the scan-ins to see if that helps you more.

    At that link you should be able to find


    The correct answer to the prompt is "Braveheart".


    Speaking to people, giving out leaflets.

    Although I was not arrested and imprisoned as regards the particular court case to enforce the ban and gag, only threatened with arrest and imprisonment by the courts, I have been terrorised by arrests and imprisonment on other occasions, as per the examples I gave earlier.

    I am talking about when the state denies any scientist the civil liberties we need to defend academic freedom in universities and other places scientists might work, then the scientist cannot do his or her work.

    Scientists do require to be allowed onto the university premises where equipment and colleagues can be matched up for scientific research and development. If the scientist is booted out by university or research centre by administrators, has his or her reputation as a scientist wrecked (Reference - "we could not even stand him on the premises") and he or she is not allowed to defend his or her reputation by criticising the bad decision of incompetent managers to boot him or her out then his or her career can be permanently wrecked, however good a scientist he or she might be. All the potential good work the scientist might have done had he or she been allowed that freedom to speak in defence of his or her potential is lost. All of society doesn't get the benefit of new good scientific knowledge gained or newly applied, in medicine, in engineering, in all aspects of the economy.


    My persecutors do not believe that I should be entitled to freedom of expression, they do not believe that I am a victim of persecution in having my freedom to express myself suppressed. I am saying if you too believe that, then you join them in sharing that belief.


    I would not wish to put myself in Her Majesty's prison under any circumstances. It is always the authorities who decide to do that. It is perverse to blame the prisoner for imprisoning himself or herself. It is perverse to blame a person who feels forced to obey a court order for fear of the imprisonment which may follow if he or she does not obey the order.

    There was no mistaking the threat to imprison me. The newspapers did not mistake the threat - they reported it.


    I was fully clothed and only spoke as loud as I needed to be heard. It is apparent that in practice we in Scotland are afforded no constitutional rights by the Queen's courts. But I do not surrender my view of what my constitutional rights ought to be. Nothing I said or did prevented the university from functioning as it ought to. Suppressing my contributions on campus did prevent the university from functioning as it ought to.

    As for exploring the law, I am not a lawyer and have no wish to be one. It is simple, if I am not free but subjugated, oppressed and terrorised by the state then I want a different head of state who will deliver my freedom. If it is not a free country I want a president with a republican army at his or her back who will make it a free country.

    I did only the latter, but it was a university not a "school".

    By court orders with the threat of imprisonment if I did not obey.

    Well I was not allowed to give out leaflets about my view of the law, or what it ought to be. I was told by the court not to do that on pain of imprisonment.

    Well clearly there was a difference between the managers' view and my view of what normal operating procedure should amount to. Further, I was not allowed to speak or publish about my view on pain of imprisonment.

    I am talking about I want to live under a constitution that allows me freedom of expression. As there is imposed upon me and other Scots a constitutional monarchy whose courts deny me freedom of expression then I want the constitution changed, reformed, overthrown by revolution, regime-changed, whatever it takes. I want a republic and a president who would arrest all such judges who deny the people freedom of expression and other essential democratic rights.

    It was not a "school" but a university and the courts enforced the ban of me and the gag order to stop me complaining about the ban.
     
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  3. Peter Dow Registered Senior Member

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    A person with a gun pointing it at someone could be attempting to put themselves in a state of temporary authority over someone else with a threat to shoot the other person so as to give orders and expect them to be obeyed.

    That's not a legal authority but it is a practical authority that the person having the gun pointed at would be well advised not to ignore and disregard as if there could be no consequences of ignoring the order.

    Supposing a person with a gun orders someone "Give me your wallet or I will shoot you" then no, clearly, of course not, I do not support that different kind of authoritarian freedom of expression.

    A hoaxer shouting "FIRE!" falsely in a theatre might induce panic because people believed the person shouting "FIRE!" was a person in authority giving good advice about a fire and not a hoaxer. Again there is an attempt to achieve the same effect as authority even though the authority is not legitimate in any way.

    I cannot right away think of an example of freedom of expression which had no bad consequences and could have good consequences if communicated which ought to be limited.

    I cannot think it right that there should ever be right to suppress someone trying to make a reasonable case that his or her freedom of expression to communicate something ought to be supported.

    However my belief is not a belief supported by authoritarians who seem content to suppress expressions which they do not understand or agree with, especially those expressions which challenge their own authority.
     
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  5. Bells Staff Member

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    You criticised them for 2 to 3 years for failing your thesis. Do you think they were incompetent for failing you?

    One of the glaring things that stood out from your website, Mr Dow, is that you were campaigning for yourself, alone. I saw no evidence of other students at the University championing your cause. And Universities are often hotbeds of people wanting to champion a cause, especially one of their fellow students. So I found it strange that none spoke up for you or stood by you when you initially started protesting or later on.

    So how were they incompetent and why did you feel you needed to try and mount a revolution against the University and your Professor? Since you have said you did not care if they failed your thesis, you must have another reason for harassing, disrupting and slandering them?

    Of course there is. Because you are the guy who made up some uniform and has taken to standing on street corners waving signs because you have been wronged... Of course you are going to describe the judge's rulings differently.

    You are an authoritarian and you are demanding they take you at your word, no questions asked. You give criticism without being able to accept criticism in turn.

    Perhaps if you had been able to accept their failing you, you would not have attempted to suppress their criticism of you by slandering them, by disrupting classes on campus, by harassing and hounding staff and students because you felt you had been wronged.

    They put up with you for around 3 years before they finally took you to court? A fact which belies what you are attempting to portray here and on your site.

    And who can blame them?

    I certainly do not. I am just shocked that it took them that long to take you to court. If it were me, you'd have been jailed much sooner.

    You tried to harass and hound them into the ground because they failed you and instead of doing what everyone else does when they fail (ie do it all again), you went on a campaign to slander and harass the staff and students to demand that they accept and/or give you special rights that no one else gets.

    In short Mr Dow, you had become a public nuisance.

    It was. And they failed your thesis, Mr Dow.

    They were exercising their academic and civil freedoms in failing your thesis. You don't get to harass and be disruptive on campus because they failed you in an attempt to bully them into passing you.

    In no way were you winning that argument then, nor are you winning it now, Mr Dow.

    It seems to me that you enjoy being the martyr, you enjoy making a public spectacle of yourself (you seem to obsess over it) and you enjoy trying to bully people into doing what you want them to do. They gave you 2 to 3 years to cease and desist and you refused to stop harassing and slandering them for failing your thesis. You likened one of them to a Nazi. Because your thesis failed to pass the muster. Really? And you expected to be taken seriously?

    And this somehow makes it better or more acceptable?

    They failed your thesis and you accuse them of possible manslaughter and involuntary homicide? Really? You think this is acceptable behaviour? What surprises me about the Scottish legal system is that you weren't jailed sooner.

    It all stems from their failing your thesis.

    Your universities are open and have academic freedoms, Mr Dow. That does not mean you get to pass and academic and open freedoms also means that you can still fail.

    They had every single right to fail you. They were not oppressing your freedom when they failed you and they weren't oppressing your freedom when they prevented you from disrupting classes and lectures and harassing staff and students. They were protecting the freedom of the students and staff. You seem to forget that the staff and students have a right to not be harassed and harangued on campus by some man who has taken it upon himself to act this way because he failed and he is angry that the school would not pass him.

    Stupid people aren't calling the shots, Mr Dow. Clever people are stopping stupid people from trying to bully them into passing said stupid people.

    If it was just the leaflets, you might have gained some sympathy. You went much further than that. You disrupted classes and lectures, you harassed and abused the staff and students.. In short, Mr Dow, you acted like a crazy person and they were well within their rights to protect the staff and students and their establishment from being damaged by the likes of you..

    No offense, but I am currently questioning the court's effectiveness in allowing you back out on the street, seeing that you are still being a public nuisance about this...

    On the contrary Mr Dow.

    'It is a perverse disregard of the true identity of a university' to demand that it passes everyone.

    And that is what you tried to do.

    You were prevented from publishing because your thesis was not good enough. In short, you failed.

    Your behaviour after that was appalling.

    I can assure you, Mr Dow, had you tried to pull this kind of stunt off in the US, you would have been arrested and imprisoned.

    And the way you see the truth is not actually the truth.

    Mr Dow, you likened your professor as a murderer because he failed you.

    You called him and the university Nazi's.

    You don't get to do that in free countries.

    And in free countries, universities can still freely fail you if your work is not good enough.

    And yet, there you were, because they failed you.
     
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  7. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
    Peter Dow,

    I'm not sure what you think a university is. You complain that universities are like private members' clubs. Well, as far as I can see, they are.

    Here's how a university works:

    You want the backing of an authoritative body that says "This man has attained a certain standard of academic knowledge and performance which we have set." So, you choose to apply to "join the club" and do what the university requires in order for them to give you the piece of paper that says you have met their standards. When you meet their standards you are "admitted to" a degree under the auspices of the university.

    It is not compulsory to get a degree. Nor is it your right to demand one or to get one from the university. If you want one, you have to join the club and play by the rules set by the club. You are asking them to endorse you. You need them. They don't need you.

    To me, it sounds like you think you have some kind of right to demand that a university grant you a degree on your terms and not theirs. Am I right?
     
  8. Peter Dow Registered Senior Member

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    215
    No. Nations do not stampede and cannot be stampeded towards establishing national legal systems which defend academic and civil freedoms.

    Rather nations can and in my view ought to calmly and carefully establish national legal systems which defend academic and civil freedoms


    So that's the opinion you have reached is it, that it was justified to ban me from university and gag me from campaigning about it?

    Well since you don't support my right to discuss this openly there seems to be no point me in me discussing those matters further with you seagypsy.

    Thanks for giving my entire life and ability as a scientist 2 minutes of your time to dismiss and wish to consign to a prison or a perhaps to a mental hospital.

    No actually you too seem to be in favour of having me jailed for speaking out on this matter against a court order so I suggest that you are helping me make it very clear that a real danger to freedom of expression exists.

    I am right to warn my fellow scientists about the danger we all face from suppression of freedom of expression by courts being accepted in society.

    There is indeed a bonfire of civil and democratic freedoms going on and it is about time that scientists were warning each other and the population about the dangers of holding people's freedoms with such contempt.

    In the court case to do with the university, the judge did not order a psychiatric evaluation although it was requested by the lawyers for the university.

    I think you misread this -

    In any case yours is the second mention of psychology / psychiatry and so I think it worthwhile for the general education of forum members for me to post these videos about the abuse of psychiatry and the damage it can do to society.


    Psychiatry is fake science. The Thud Experiment proof.

    [video=youtube;hqaptRYjhq4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqaptRYjhq4[/video]

    Psychiatry: An Industry Of Death (part 1 of 10 parts)

    [video=youtube;6qs9TLTvYFs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qs9TLTvYFs[/video]
     
  9. Peter Dow Registered Senior Member

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    Well let's just pretend for the sake of argument that I am in jail or mental hospital as you would be content to see ...
     
  10. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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    7,028
    Dude...they don't recommend remand just for mental illness...you have to be deemed a danger to yourself or others. I'm starting to understand why. You're a freaking nut!

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  11. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    3,203
    You've ranted a lot about your rights and freedom here. What about the rights of others?

    The general agreement in democratic societies is that your rights and freedoms end where they infringe upon the rights and freedoms of others. Freedom of speech and expression works both ways: while you have the right to say and believe what you want, others have every right to freely decide that they are not interested in hearing what you have to say. So freedom of speech and expression only works in situations where you offer others a reasonable "opt out" option. Hosting and publishing on your own personal website is fine, since people can choose simply not to visit it. Posting here is fine, as long as you don't start spamming the whole forum, since visitors to the site can choose not to read your thread. Even there there are going to be limitations, since people have the right not to be slandered and insulted. Harassing students and faculty on campus and disrupting classes is not fine, because you offer them no way to get on with their work and activities if they decide they've already heard enough from you.

    You may not be happy with that arrangement, but I think you'll find the public at large does like it that way. So it is no surprise that in a democratic society, where the laws are supposed to reflect the wishes of the majority of the population, there would be legal mechanisms in place to protect the rights of people to not have to listen to you if that is their choice.

    Jehova's Witnesses are somewhat notorious for imposing themselves and their views on others. That's just for harmlessly showing up on people's doorsteps uninvited from time to time, and we find that annoying enough as it is. How much sympathy do you expect from people when they read news articles saying you were harassing students and faculty and disrupting classes at a university for three years before it got to the point where you were banned by a court order?
     
  12. Peter Dow Registered Senior Member

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    215
    My big hope is for humanity, what humanity can achieve eventually.

    I have little hope for myself now. I am 51 and I have spent most of my life alone on the dole / on the sick, often home if not 24/7 then 23/7 (shopping is the other 1 hour a day) terrorised into silence about matters dear to me in the public space here in Aberdeen for much of the time, sometimes seized by apathy and despair at a cruel state that does not understand me.

    I have no hope for a scientific career, no hope to find a woman who I love and would love me, little hope of starting a family of my own.

    When my mother dies I have no hope that anyone will telephone me except automated telemarketing calls.
    I have no hope that anyone will be at my funeral. I expect that I will die alone and unloved.
    I am without much hope for myself or what I can achieve for myself.

    So hope is not really a thought which I have for myself when I have been so isolated from the company of my scientific and academic peers for so many years.

    The one small hope remaining, which gives some purpose, which I have is that I hope I can continue to use the internet to pass on to my readers some insights which I am confident I have a good understanding of, insights into certain systemic and structural problems society has and flounders with in attempting to find a solution to. If I can explain some things like that to a few that might be an achievement that is still open to me in my remaining years of my life.

    And you never do know. Something might turn up even when there's no reasonable hope because you never do know, so never give up, just keep plodding on and who knows what might happen?

    Well I have certainly posted a fair bit on the internet, made some videos, people have read that, watched those. So yes I suppose for those limited goals I have had some success in getting my ideas noticed by some. It's not much of a life but it keeps me busy and when I am busy it stops me pondering the train-wreck of my life.

    I do lack advanced interpersonal skills of tact and diplomacy. I tend to put some people's backs up by telling it as it is, as I see it. Sometimes I don't see a soothing way to explain something other than simply and straightforwardly, bluntly explain what the problem is. The problem usually is that someone who is in charge is giving bad leadership. Explaining that truth and attempting to burst people's faith in their poor leaders often seems to infuriate their followers.

    I do admire people who can suffer fools and find a way around their foolishness. I don't seem to have the time or patience for fools. I am not sure if that is something I can develop, whether I could slow myself down enough to take account of fools and how they often react which is with extreme prejudice against me.

    Well if I become too introspective it is not good for my mood. Mostly, I find it better to see if I can help those less fortunate than myself. I have so much - my brains, my little flat, warm and dry, food, the internet. That's a lot and I can use that to help others. So yes I am positive about some things.

    Oh credibility with the masses comes only from having a high paid or high profile job or by being on TV a lot.

    Then again, I look at some of those "credible" people and I think that's not what I want. I could do without being as "credible" as them.

    I'd rather be misunderstood and ridiculed by the few from the masses who notice me and understood and loved by one smart person. When I find that one smart person I will let you know.

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  13. Bells Staff Member

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    Whatever you do, don't make the mistake I made when he first linked me his site a while ago, and do a google search. My retinas never forgave me..

    But yes, it seems it is sane to threaten a head of State with assassination if you live in the world of Dow. And he wonders why he was handcuffed after the London bombings... It defies belief and logic.
     
  14. Bells Staff Member

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    24,270
    Perhaps having photos of yourself in your underpants online and news articles where you list the requirements for your mate may not help you in that search for 'that one smart person'... Just saying..
     
  15. Peter Dow Registered Senior Member

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    I just don't see your logic of replying to me as if you are inviting a response while wishing me jailed? If I were jailed now I would not to able to post here, read your reply or reply to your reply.


    Again, imagine what I would have been able post here had I still been jailed now as you seem to recommend ...
     
  16. Peter Dow Registered Senior Member

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    215
    They aren't. Universities here anyway are trusted with the higher education of the people and sometimes to set standards in other institutions in society and they get a lot of public money in grants and loans too.

    Google trust universities OR university and you get 650,000,000 results. That's one measure of the amount of trust that universities have.

    Google trust "private members club" and you only get about 760,000 results. Private members clubs are not nearly so trusted in society.

    A private members' club can admit any fool and refuse any genius. A so-called "university" that was run as a private members' club of all fools and no geniuses ought not to be trusted.

    I agree that a university should set appropriate standards but a university that doesn't do so is a fraud upon society. The way to make sure universities are keeping up the standard is to allow open academic debate within the university so that the question of appropriate standards can be argued over where there is disagreement among the university community about standards.

    You don't maintain standards by kicking out anyone who wants to discuss the question of standards. On the contrary, kicking people out who raise the standards issue means standards can go to hell and you can end up with pompous fools working as professors and clever students get banned for disagreeing with the poor professor and no-one can say a word about it.
     
  17. Peter Dow Registered Senior Member

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    I was remanded for breach of a bail condition which was that I was required by the judge to go to a mental hospital for examination. I didn't go so I was jailed and they sent the psychiatrist to see me.

    Then I got a lawyer put in a guilty plea and got released for time served.

    There was no deeming me "to be a danger to myself or others". You are making it up. You checked the web page but you don't remember the bits you don't want to remember.

    Well you ought to watch those videos I posted about the abuse of psychiatry.
     
  18. Peter Dow Registered Senior Member

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    I respect them.

    Correct.

    OK but if they insist on staying in a room while I am speaking they can't demand that I be shut up. If they don't want to listen when I am speaking then leave the room. I am a reasonable person so I am very willing to allow people to take turns at speaking. But I do insist on having my turn at the floor.

    I do. If people attend a publicly advertised meeting hosted by a university then they ought to expect to hear complaints from people concerned about gross mismanagement of that university.

    Well that's what moderators are for.

    I didn't harass students on campus nor did I disrupt classes. I never stopped anyone getting on with their work and activities. Like I said university education is about more than sitting silently while the lecturer reads out his notes. There ought to be an opportunity for questions.

    Well indeed the public will follow like sheep any one person if that person is the only one who is allowed to speak.


    Democracy means "government by all the people". "All" means including the people you don't want to listen to.

    The news article I posted was about a court action to stop me from giving out leaflets on the street or anywhere in Scotland. I hadn't disobeyed the order which banned me from the campus. I chose to fight that ban order by criticism in leaflets I distributed outside the university. So typically, I was leafleting on the public pavement near the university and and while doing so I collected 1200 signatures of students and others who supported my freedom of expression and who opposed the court order to gag me.
    The only order I defied for a time was the gag order.
     
  19. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Peter Dow,

    As I said before, I wasn't willing to click through your little firewall or whatever it is which is why I was asking you to state your case. After giving me the link to the newspaper clip, I was immediately surprised to see this happened in 1991.

    I find your responses hard to understand. They contain something I associate with dishonesty but I can't say for sure. Let me give you an example. You immediately trot out a general claim against authoritarianism and you seem to identify with Bruno and Bravehart. (Note, Obviously Bruno was wronged more egregiously in that he was not a soldier.) Yet when I asked you to state your claim to me you refused and you even ignored my statement that I was not willing to click on your button. You just told me the answer was Bravehart.

    More to the point is this odd manner of placing conclusions before facts. What can be more authoritarian than to deny your readers the freedom to assess the facts themselves? You see, I find this to be a huge gaping hole in your ethos, insofar as you are demanding freedom from authoritarianism while imposing it on me in this manner.

    I was trying to understand how this incident from 1991 still eats at you. I went back and looked at your OP and that was when it occurred to me that you are also banned from a science fair. Or something like that. It's odd to me that you wouldn't construct your argument more clearly. I'm not even sure why any links were needed. Let me see if I can put together the pieces from what I know so far.

    1. You submitted a Master's thesis concerning MRI. It was rejected.
    2. (Something is missing here. What was the stated reason for the rejection?)
    3. (Something else is missing here. Were you given any remedial course of action?)
    [omission of (2) and (3) so far into this discussion strikes me as odd.]
    4. At some point you appealed (a process I'm not familiar with. Perhaps you could explain how it works.)
    5. Your appeal was denied.
    6. (Missing: the stated reason for denial of the appeal.)
    7. (Something happens next, presumably you are no longer enrolled. Is that correct?)
    8. You return to the campus and circulate a paper alleging that the faculty member who failed your thesis had wronged you, and in this paper you made characterizations that included the word "killer".
    9. The school (which also means university in my country) filed an action in court seeking an injunction.
    10. You received a court order restraining you from (details are missing. Were you ordered to stay off the campus?)
    11. You violated the order and were arrested.
    12. (something happened next. You paid bail? Went to trial?)
    13. (Your academic career ended?)
    14. (A bunch of stuff happened for 20 years.)
    15. You go to a science fair recently, but you are banned, so you put up a protest sign.

    Am I getting closer to reconstructing the facts?

    One last thing: I consider it very authoritarian of you to insist that (a) scientists have special rights not reserved for the public at large; and (2) the dismissal of your thesis causes health risks to the general public. This goes back to taking from me my freedom to reach that conclusion based on the facts. My initial impression is that there may never before have ever been a grad student who actually believed that his master's thesis was that crucial to the affairs of the world.

    There's something wrong with this picture, but maybe you can iron it out for me.
     
  20. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Actually, there's nothing missing - the whole picture is clear for everyone to see.

    This entire affair has *nothing* at all to do with science or even his failed thesis (he even states that himself). In fact, it's about nothing except POLITICS, 100 %.

    Just read through his rhetoric and you'll easily see a man who missed the 1960's in the U.S. and the entire "hippy" movement.

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    Like them, he rails against the system (schools and judicial), authority, the "man" (law enforcement) and big government.

    He's completely unrealistic, idealistic and has a rather mild touch of paranoia which is clearly indicated by his thoughts that ALL the various systems/organizations listed above are persecuting (out to get) him.

    Seriously, in a nutshell, that's all there is to the whole thing. Period. No more discussion or Q&A needed.
     
  21. Peter Dow Registered Senior Member

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    No the answer is Braveheart If you type "Bravehart" it won't work. It's "Braveheart". "heart" has an "e" in it.

    That information is just to help you if were stuck and too embarrassed to ask for help. Please feel free to ignore the link if you wish.

    I have no means of imposing authoritarianism on anyone here and certainly not you in particular.

    I am presenting to you the facts as I understand them and describe them but I can't agree to leave out any conclusions I might have come to along the way. If you ask me a specific about a fact I will try hard to give you a straight answer but if you ask for "all the facts" then you are going to get my story in full.

    What eats at me are the court orders passed long after 1991 to stop me going onto the university premises, to stop me giving out leaflets criticising the ban.

    It has not helped that I have similarly been denied my freedom of expression by the same Queen's courts many other times since then but also getting arrested and being imprisoned to enforce the decisions of the authorities to shut me up.

    Yes well the Science fair was on the premises of the two universities in Aberdeen and I have been banned from both!

    Well unless I can show people the newspaper clipping reporting on the threat to jail me people might not believe it.

    Well the examiners' no doubt had their reasons and whilst I was upset on the day I found out I had only been offered the diploma that was a decision I disagreed with but I had to respect people's right to express their expert opinion as they saw it. I expressed my expert opinion. The examiners' expressed theirs. We disagreed. They thought they were right and I was wrong. I thought I was right and they were wrong. These disagreements happen between experts.


    Not really no I was not offered any remedial course of action. I did suggest that in the case of a disagreement between student and examiner the way to proceed was be allowed to re-sit or a re-examination but that option was not offered to me.

    Well they set up some committees and I said to each of them - "surely everyone is entitled to re-sit their exams?" and they say "no, appeal denied".

    Well I can see the appeals process is a dead end so I raise with people at the university my suggestion that re-examinations be allowed as a matter of course. This leads to some doors being closed in my face and me being barred from some meetings and the university managers hiring lawyers to take court orders to ban me from the university premises.

    I consider the ban from the premises to be an outrage against academic freedom but rather than defy the ban to enter the premises I distribute leaflets making strong points such as "potential child killer" again "killer" not meaning "murder" but "manslaughter" or "involuntary homicide" - taking actions which could accidentally risk lives. I do believe that academic freedom is essential to medical science making best progress to saving lives and to ensure that organisations such as hospital universities trusts which oversee the management of some hospitals here are competent. The suppression of academic freedom is a very reckless and dangerous thing to do in my opinion.


    The first order from the local court in Aberdeen was to ban me from the premises.
    I leafleted in Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh, 100 miles from Aberdeen, at a meeting of scientists and after that they got an injunction (in Scotland it is called an "interdict") to stop me giving out leaflets with my defence of academic freedom and warning of the dangers that the order to ban me from the campus had for my and others' academic freedom.

    Initially I defied the court order to gag me and I continued to leaflet and in addition criticising the gag order as against freedom of speech, against democracy, in line with oppression by regimes like Stalin and Hitler who too opposed freedom of expression.
    So there was a court proceeding to determine if I was in contempt of court and therefore ought to be punished by the court.
    I was found guilty of contempt of court and the newspaper and my lawyers warned me that jailing me was an option before the court. I was terrorised into agreeing to obey the order from then on. I was not arrested on the orders of the court in respect of that case.

    Well then any time after that if I pointlessly applied for a job they want a reference - and I had no reference from the university I had last been at and if potential employers asked about it what could I say except the truth - I was banned from the premises. Not exactly what employers are looking for.

    So I had no hope to continue with my career and no way to right the wrong done by the university because I was gagged by the court order. I had to go through the motions of applying for jobs I either could not get without a reference or were so menial as to be of no interest to me. This went on for years and years.


    Then after 10 or so years, around 2002/3 I got another chance to study at the other university in Aberdeen - Robert Gordon University. Although I did extremely well academically in the first term by the 2nd term I was under investigation for my outspokenness and asking tough questions etc. Again I got excluded and banned. I have links for images for papers which document that exclusion as well as that seems to be your preferred method


    image 1

    image 2

    image 3

    image 4

    image 5

    That was this week in Aberdeen where I have been staying stuck on the dole or now on the sick with no hope since 1991. The science fair was at the universities I have been banned from. I didn't bother attempting to go onto campus and giving them a further excuse to take me to court so I just went out with my protest sign on the public street near where the science fair was being hosted.

    Between us we are getting there.

    I don't. I think scientists should have freedom of expression as all citizens should have. None of us have those rights here if the courts deny them.

    I support academic freedom on campus for students of all kinds studying all subjects not just science.


    Well academic freedom is crucial to the affairs of the world. My point outside university is not that my thesis could save lives but that if academic freedom is denied as it is in Scotland then sooner or later we can sure that they will get away with failing a thesis of a good scientist and wrecking his or her career.

    I repeat for at least the fourth time in this topic thread. The issue for me here is not the decision to fail me but the decision to exclude me from the premises and gag me - to deny academic freedom and civil liberties like freedom of expression - because if they can do that to me they can do that to anyone no matter how able with consequential untold missed opportunities for science, medicine and the economy generally.

    What is wrong is that Scotland under Queen Elizabeth has never been a free country. All Scots are subject to an arbitrary judicial dictatorship.
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2012
  22. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,203
    According to your news clippings you disrupted meetings and your leaflets called the university administration "criminals and gangsters" and the principal "Hitler", "evil", "corrupt", and a "potential child killer" (in other words, libel). And whatever happened it went on for a period of two or three years, so you were certainly taking up people's time. It is no surprise that the university did not want you around regardless of what your original excuse might have been.

    (Also as a semi-relevant aside, comparing people with Hitler is now so cliché it's become the subject of an internet law of sorts. For fun there's also this.)


    Why is this an issue? Has your right to vote or start your own political party been blocked?


    I'll reserve judgement on the gag order, since I wasn't there. Of course you have the right to complain if you think you've been the victim of an injustice. You just don't have the right to complain in just any way you feel like doing it.
     
  23. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    Yes, but this is your submission.

    Therefore, it will be biased towards you, as it is you arguing your case against Robert Gordon University.

    In short, you paint yourself in a very good light in the images of what you distributed at Robert Gordon University, but you leave out their side. There are many academics who post on this site, many of whom teach at universities in various parts of the world and I am sure they will be able to tell you that a university does not merely ban students for being outspoken or asking tough questions. On the contrary, you are rewarded for asking the tough questions.

    The documents you linked show only the exclusion as you saw it. Image two does not post you in a good light.

    What image two showed was a man intent on harassing and intimidating people at that institution, you even admit to yelling in class. And sending unsolicited emails to faculty? And then demanding they take classes on learning to deal with you?

    I'm sorry, but what?

    It is up to you to behave appropriately, not for the world around you to take extra-curricular classes to learn to conform to your behaviour. It is not the University's fault if you cannot communicate effectively or behave properly while on campus.
     

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