1eab5666   
   XPost: alt.alien.visitors, alt.alien.research, alt.paranet.abduct   
   XPost: alt.conspiracy   
   From: garymatalucci@gmail.com   
      
   STRANGE EVENTS, STRANGE DEBUNKING IN FRANCE   
      
   Unusual UFO events have been reported since August 10 in many parts of   
   France. Extraordinary sightings of triangular aerial objects in the   
   Ardenne region near the Belgian border remain unexplained. But another   
   high-profile case in Voreppe, southeastern France, has turned comedic.   
      
   Videotape of a strange-looking object sighted over a tree in a   
   residential part of Voreppe caused a brief flurry in the French press   
   and   
   attracted the involvement of leading French researcher Jean-Jacques   
   Velasco of CNES/SEPRA. Initially, Velasco hinted that the case might   
   be   
   important. But after closer examination of the evidence, he pronounced   
   the Voreppe UFO a balloon -- not a weather balloon, as initially   
   thought,   
   but evidently a large child's balloon shaped like a ladybug.   
      
   French researcher Gildas Bourdais said, "This information has been   
   confirmed to me, convincingly, by Jean-Jacques Velasco. A family of   
   Voreppe informed the police that their son had dropped a balloon which   
   was fairly large (nearly one meter) and in the shape of a ladybug.   
   There   
   was very little wind, Velasco explained to me, and it drifted, first   
   losing altitude, hovered for a moment above the garden, and drifted   
   away.   
   The night was falling and the witnesses were mistaken about its size.   
   When they shot the video, the balloon was already at some distance and   
   hard to identify." Bourdais adds that an independent source familiar   
   with   
   the investigation had confirmed the presence of a string hanging down   
   from the balloon. "The Voreppe case is a good exemple of bad   
   information   
   and misunderstandings of all kinds," Bourdais laments.   
      
   Did Velasco himself, normally very conservative in his statements,   
   initially over-react to the Voreppe UFO? Bourdais thinks so. "It is   
   apparent now that, contrary to his usual approach, Velasco has been a   
   bit   
   overexcited on this case, did not look hard enough at the video, and   
   made   
   somewhat hasty declarations to the press," he says. Now this might   
   have a   
   negative impact on the treatment of other French UFO cases, Bourdais   
   fears. He points to a very recent case which seems to have been   
   dismissed   
   in a bizarre and unconvincing way.   
      
   "The popular newspaper 'Le Parisien' revealed that, on Friday evening,   
   September 18, policemen and gendarmes observed a luminous disc, moving   
   very slowly above the mouth of the river Seine, between Le Havre and   
   Honfleur," Bourdais reports. "It was surrounded by three white lights.   
   The Director of Le Havre harbor (the 'capitainerie') confirmed that   
   they   
   had also seen a UFO, which looked to them like a triangle (the three   
   lights seen from farther away?). However, Velasco told me that, after   
   calling the witnesses, he realized the whole thing was overblown   
   again:   
   they had seen, in fact, the planet Jupiter and its three satellites!"   
      
   Bourdais scoffs at this interpretation. "Sounds like the old days of   
   Blue   
   Book, doesn't it? To me, it sounds like, if Velasco had been   
   instructed   
   to keep the press quiet, he would not act differently," Bourdais   
   says.   
      
   Finally, what do you call a French debunker?  That should be easy >   
   "an asshole.  Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)