UFOs

It’s hard to avoid the subject of UFOs and while most people presently incarnated are interested to some extent in what it is all about, many individuals have confirmed definitely having seen unidentified objects in the sky, even have reported to have been abducted by one, checked out by aliens on the craft and then let loose again. In these days of mobile and smartphones, the internet has been set awash with footage of light spots in the sky, often of several moving in formation; quite a lot of them are actually inexplicable, enough to sit up and take note.

Ever since the American Government began to try covering up a story that happened in 1947 (!) in Roswell, New Mexico, where apparently an unidentified flying object crashed on a ranch, the matter continues to be of interest.

I was always quite eager to see at least one UFO with my own eyes as I am certain we are not alone in this vast universe, and have been privy to sightings of some sort over the years that indeed could have been the real thing.

Investigating further into the phenomenon I found many depictions of what look like UFOs in medieval paintings, woodcuttings and tapestries. Although nowadays a lot of UFO appearances are being explained away by ‘specialists’, I think those painters of the Middle Ages were merely depicting something that had actually been seen and reported, or maybe even observed by the artist himself.

For example, in this 15th-century painting of the Virgin Mary (The Madonna with Saint Giovannino, part of the Loeser collection in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy) something hovers in the sky above the Madonna’s left shoulder. A man is shown below, shielding his eyes looking up at it and a dog next to him appears to be barking at the image. And no, it’s not a smudge; look at the magnified bit. The artist Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) must have been inspired by something he saw flying in the sky; airplanes not known at the time, he painted the object somehow likening it to a flying boat with rays. There are also three more unidentified bits hovering under the sun, on the other side of the painting, that are unexplained.

This image is one of two flying vehicles on a 1350 painting of the crucification of Jesus. It depicts a small humanoid looking over his shoulder, maybe at the second flying vehicle that is shown on the other side of the painting. This vehicle is decorated with two stars, one reminiscent of national insignia on modern aircrafts. The full painting hangs above the altar at the Visoki Decani Monastery in Kosovo.

On this Cartouche on a temple wall in Seti I’s temple at Abydos, Egypt (19th Dynasty), several images that look like flying machines (even a helicopter!) can be made out clearly. But archaeologists are hesitant to confirm that and like to get away with defining them as ‘religious objects’.

In a cave in Japan, an image has been found that looks exactly like a drawing of an UFO that is being used as a simple illustration even today. Note the little dots underneath, signifying lights as have being reported and shown in uploads on the internet from people’s phones in recent years.

Going further back, beyond the many Mayan carvings that depict what looks like astronauts inside and outside of spaceships, petroglyphs have been found in many caves, dating back over tens of thousands of years.

Here is a 7000-year-old petroglyph discovered in the province of Querato, Mexico, showing four figures with outstretched arms below a large oval object radiating what could be beams of light. It must have been a startling experience and tales of such sightings have been orally communicated for eons.

All these images are merely tiny examples for illustration purposes. There is a motherlode of photos, videos and articles to be found on the worldwide net that can keep you occupied for weeks. The point is though, why – if there is so much evidence around – do governments inanely deny the existence of other life in the universe or that Earth has been visited from outer space in the past and is being under observation?

Fast forward to 2017. The fact that nowadays so many people have a mobile phone handy wherever they are, has resulted in a lot of footage of UFO sightings over the last few years. The quality is debatable at times but, to me, there have been enough clear images to make the case bullet-proof. In this very recent video below, an airplane passenger flying over Spain captured this amazing footage:

According to findings based on data crunched by Sam Monfort, a doctoral student in Human Factors and Applied Cognition at George Mason University, Virginia, USA, worldwide UFO sightings have hit an all-time high. Monfort wrote up his findings in a blog update that used information from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), an organization that documents UFO sightings; there have been 104,947 reported sightings on record over the past 100-plus years.

Arizona desert, photographs © Mauricio Morales, taken in April 2017

Furthermore, The New York Times  on April 24^th 2017, wrote an article on the increase in UFO sightings entitled, ‘People Are Seeing U.F.O.s Everywhere, and This Book Proves It’. This book is a compendium called U.F.O. Sightings Desk Reference, the work of a couple in Syracuse: Cheryl Costa, a former military technician and aerospace analyst, and her wife, Linda Miller Costa, 62, a librarian at Le Moyne College and a former librarian at the National Academy of Sciences, NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency. This important reference book contains no narrative or anecdotal accounts, but consists of 371 pages of charts and graphs that slice and dice the geography and timing of the incidents and the various shapes that witnesses reported: flying circles, spheres, triangles, discs, ovals, cigars.

Which brings me to Cheryl Costa’s own article in the Syracuse New Times of March 13, 2017, entitled ‘The UFO Question’. She writes that Jimmy Kimmel, American television host and executive producer of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, a late-night talk show on ABC, asked three former US presidents and one former presidential candidate about UFOs and the quite widely-known fact that every new president after been sworn in is made privy to secret documentation and information about said UFOs. I don’t know who is safekeeping that secret dossier but it is obvious that all of the presidents interviewed are obeying ‘someone’ to keep mum!

August 2, 2014: President Bill Clinton
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March 13, 2015: President Barack Obama

March 24, 2016: Candidate Hillary Clinton
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March 2, 2017: President George Bush
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Moreover, Cheryl Costa asked the pertinent question why Kimmel is the one heading this inquiry and not journalists affiliated with mainstream news stations or newspapers. She says, “How can the UFO subject matter be so trivial that the journalism elites can’t or won’t broach the question to current or former leaders?”

Although the CIA recently released millions of secret documents that became available thanks to a long-running court case, which tackled the CIA over their failure to grant public access to historic material, it seems prudent to suggest that those more than 13 million documents do not contain the holy grail of presidential insider information. Can President Donald Trump by expected to make a public statement as to the contents? He is enough of a maverick to maybe spill the beans….

Bhagawati is a regular contributor

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