Meanwhile, south of the border ...
 | By Billy Cox
De Void
12-22-15 |
Wonder how Argentina’s air force (FAA) would respond if a UFO were on track to bust the no-fly zone over the home of its president, as
happened in the United States in 2008? Or if a UFO briefly parked over one of its busiest civilian airports – like
in 2006, at Chicago O’Hare-- and left behind recorded chatter between air traffic control and a freaked-out airline supervisor? What if one of Argentina’s federal agencies videotaped UFO activity over a civilian airport that created a flight delay, similar to
what happened over Aguadilla, Puerto Rico in 2013?
These parallels are unavoidable in the wake of the FAA's release of its first official report on UFOs since Argentina established a commission to check this stuff out in 2011. Spoiler alert: Argentina didn’t have much to work with. The good news: the report is too short and sketchy to put you to sleep.
Widely distributed online last week by Scott Corrales at
Inexplicata: The Journal of Hispanic Ufology and Google-translated by Alejandro Rojas at
OpenMinds, Argentina's Commission for the Investigation of Aerospace Phenomena (CEFAe) apparently resolved every one of the dozen cases it contemplated in 2014-15. All were individual incidents based on testimony, video and still photos, and not a single one made a compelling argument for a true unknown. None involved radar. Explanations were at least “consistent with” a star, the moon, airplane and helicopter running lights, a satellite, a tossed ball, and Jupiter. One of the UFO candidates was discovered to be “a couple of lights Red stop antenna.” Oh, and some of the translations were a little rough.
Argentina’s presumed glasnost toward The Great Taboo is part of a wave of South American nations – Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil – whose governments have either established investigative bodies or made a show of transparency for private researchers. However, in a note to De Void, Inexplicata’s Corrales says there’s a reason Argentina’s inaugural report is so thin and arid:
“The South American air forces have been clear about this – the purpose of their ‘UFO’ research organizations is to insure safety of the airways, not to promote a frame of reference.” By that, Corrales means a hypothesis. “If anyone’s expecting this government interest and/or disclosure of files will further that frame of reference … they’re in for a surprise.”
Well, nobody with half a brain in an official capacity wants to get stuck with trying to prove what legitimate UFOs are. Still, the incidents CEFAe investigated were so pedestrian, it begs the question of how the Commission might manage more problematic encounters. CEFAe’s dispensing with a dozen yawners invites comparisons to the rigorous and meticulously detailed studies performed by the
National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), the nonprofit that receives zero U.S. government support. Like CEFAe, NARCAP’s primary concern is air-traffic safety, which explains why Uncle Sam wants nothing to do with The Great Taboo. How would staging a we-don't-know press conference about the Aguadilla enigma work to the Pentagon's advantage? And, given its recent lurch to the right, maybe Argentina’s commitment to open analyses of UFOs will go the way of Project Blue Book.
“What I wonder,” Corrales wrote to De Void, “is whether the newly elected Argentinean government (Mauricio Macri) is going to be as inclined to promoting any release of military intelligence as his predecessor, who even accepted a petition from CEFORA, one of the UFO research organizations.”
Well, yeah, lefties are notorious for wanting to give away the farm. But what would happen if, before that window closes, the boss hog of Argentina’s military stepped up to the podium one day with a vetted Aguadilla-type UFO video and announced to the international media something like:
Folks, this bogey made a joke of our restricted air space, averaged 80 mph after it entered the water, split into two separate objects before flying away, and we have no idea WTF it is …
.jpg "O'Hare UFO")
.jpg "O'Hare UFO Sketch")
