Rony Vernet on Brazil's UFO Hearing

I am George Knapp listening to That UFO Podcast and having one hell of a good time. Hi everyone and welcome back to That UFO Podcast. My name is Andy and you might remember just yesterday I released a UFO news update where I was talking about a few interesting news items that have happened over the last week, especially after the fallout from the hearings in the United States. Well, on the 16th of September there was a hearing held in Brazil. Again, Brazil is a real hotbed for this topic and they have been really doing their best to try and keep up political pressure from all sides of the UFO phenomenon and topic. And no better than to discuss this right now with me is researcher, documentary maker. He is the founder of UAPBrasil.com. Welcome back to the podcast, Ronnie Vernet. Ronnie, welcome. Thank you, Andy. Thank you for inviting me again. I think I have a lot to talk about this last hearing. Yes. And you know what? Really remiss of me, it was actually on my Discord server. Several people asked when they heard the news update about the hearings in Brazil to get you back on. And it should have been my first thought and it wasn't. So that's my bad. But people wanted you on. So Ronnie, you've been on previously to discuss cases in Brazil and other hearings we've had in the past. But can you give us a little bit of background as to how long these hearings have been in the pipeline? Yeah. I joined, participated as a speaker in the last hearing. Not this one, the last before that one in the Senate. This one that happened Tuesday was in the House of Representatives in Brazil. This first one in the Senate was in 2022, three years ago. Since then, we had a lot of political instability in Brazil, a lot of problems. Right now, the former president was just sentenced in prison by the Supreme Court. So this is causing a lot of issues with the U.S. and Trump in Brazil with tariffs. And this is continuous. So we didn't have since then any free time in politics to try to have this conversation about UFOs. I'm in contact with Senate. I'm in contact with the staff. But all the time they say, oh, it's not time. It's not time. It's not time. And one of the biggest critics to have this hearing this week is that we don't have this right time to do that. Because if you go to the media, if you go to the coverage of this hearing, you see that it's very little because all the news, all this stuff is just talking about the president and the politics in Brazil, the stability, Trump and all the things. So this one was the biggest issue for me on this topic. Many people said, Rony and White in this hearing, a lot of happened since then, since the last hearing. That was the person, that was the leadership that was in contact with the Senate staff that invited me in the last hearing. He is now deceased. Right one or two months after the hearing, he was deceased. So this was a very sad moment for me. It was a good friend. It was a person that dedicated many years of his life about this topic. And he was also the leadership of the UFO magazine that I collaborated a lot. So I helped a lot of them to launch some articles to give some insights of my research in Amazon for them. We were planning also to some indigenous tribes together in Amazon. So I was a huge collaborator to the UFO magazine because it's a form of retribute to them what they did in the past of the subject of dedication and also retributes to AJG for him. But unfortunately, after he passed away, people took over this UFO group. Okay. They have another group called Society of Commission of Brazilian Ufologists that in fact does not represent all the biggest ufologists in Brazil. I myself do not consider ufologists. I'm considered a collaborator for them because I think everyone, civilian people, researchers, scientists, ufologists need to get together to have this conversation. But they have this group, it's called CBU. It's the Brazilian Ufologist Committee or something like that, commission. But not all the good contributors in ufologists in ufology are in this group. So it's a group of people that decides who can join and they are responsible to do this lobby in the House of Representatives for this hearing that happened. They organized it. I didn't have any involvement about that. And sadly, some days after JVR passed away, like one week or something like that, they removed me from all the WhatsApp group, from all the collaborations without talking anything to me. They just remove it, simply remove it. I have a question of ego or something like that, that humans have. They never say to me why they remove it. So my collaboration with them stopped it there right after the passing away of AJ JVR. So this is the reason I'm not in this hearing of it. I wouldn't want to be a speaker because I think we need to move further. I think we don't need ufologists. I don't think we need any people that is inside of this bubble of ufology bubble. We need the military. And I'm not talking about to release new documents because when we talk with them, they say, we don't have any documents. So the conversation is not moving further beyond that. But what I think we need is have a military, just to say what happened in US in 2017, 2020. The phenomena is real. The phenomena can be a potential. The phenomena attack people. We had, we Air Force had Operation Souser, we investigated it. People were attacked. We are aware of what's happening in Amazon. People are being attacked in Amazon. This, simply talking about that, simply talking publicly what's already public, people that is outside this bubble of ufology will say, oh my God, this is real. Because people don't even know, people in Brazil, 90% of people don't know that we had Operation Souser. People don't know that people were attacked. People don't know that we have in 1986, a press conference with the minister of the Air Force saying, we chased them with our fighter jets. So for me, it's time to have this authority of military just saying the obvious, just saying what's happening in the history of Brazil to everyone that's outside the bubble, that see this topic as a fringe, that see this topic as a waste of time, because I have a lot of politics happening, stability is happening. For me, it's a first step. If I was helping organizing this hearing, this would be my contribution to say simply that, call the general, the commander of the Air Force. Only he can move this step further. So a few things there. First off, you had put me in touch with AJ Javard at the time. He sadly passed away just before, and I was actually speaking to AJ over text message, and we were arranging an interview when he sadly passed, and that was a great shame. I would have loved to have spoken to him, because he's rather famous in Brazil in terms of his UFO work and his research over the decades. So that was real sad that I didn't get a chance to speak to him and let more folks hear from AJ. Of course, strange happenings afterwards that you removed from all those groups, and I suppose that's a key difference to highlight. The hearings in the United States that happened just one week ago in September, you had three military witnesses, one active military, and George Knapp representing journalism and UAP journalism. Whereas in this hearing in Brazil, while it's in the House of Representatives, you say, the speakers were Tiago Tichetti, who is the editor of Revista UFO. So you've got a UFO magazine. Vittorio Pacaccini, you can correct my pronunciations here, who is a consultant for Revista UFO. Marco Antonio Petit, who is the president of, you mentioned the Brazilian Committee of Ufologists or CBU. Fernando de Aragua Romaglio, who is the vice president of CBU. And Lala Barreto, who is a member of CBU. So for you, Ronnie, it seems there's a real lack of authority speaking at these hearings. Would that be fair? Yeah, these people are good people. They researched a lot in the last decades. They deserve to be remembered. Tiago Tichetti, just to give context, Tiago Tichetti and Marco Petit are in charge of the UFO magazine and CBU today. They are responsible for this happening. They're responsible for who are invited. And the Ramalho that you said, Ramalho is, he works in the House of Representatives. He's not a politician, but he works there. He's an officer there. And he was responsible to do this link between the UFOlogist and the representative, that is Chico Alencar, who was the representative that organized this session. And Pacatini is a veteran researcher from the Varginha case. So the Varginha case had two main researchers, Ubirajara and Pacatini both were sent to the, they were subpoenaed by the military to speak with them in a closed session. The both Pacatini and Ubirajara was pressed a lot by the military to move from this topic. And this happened after this closed session of military in 1996, Pacatini and Ubirajara just give up and didn't research anything anymore. So the military were threatening them with prison and they moved away. Ubirajara until today doesn't speak. He has another vision of the phenomena. He's more skeptic about that. But Pacatini, two or three years ago, he appeared again and started to talk. So this was some of the context of this session. So what were some of the key takeaways from the session itself that you feel were positive? Shall we start with positives? Yeah. What's positive is that in 2022, it was not a public hearing because a public hearing needs to be connected, just like in US, a public hearing needs to be connected to a commission, a committee. And in the Senate, it was just a special event. So we're talking a special event. This one is linked to a committee. I think it's more serious because it can start investigations, but it's the positive thing. As prestigious and not have much power as far as any relationship committee or intelligence committee or armed service committee in Brazil. So this is a very small committee that don't have so much power to move the ball further. So this is the positive and negative side. So what did they want to get from this? Because, and forgive me if I've got this wrong, is this a case of you've got some passionate researchers of the UFO topic who have gone here and spoken, but with the lack of any military or officialdom being connected to this, does it really dampen any potential impact that this hearing in Brazil can actually have? And what would they want to come from it? I think the strategy was completely wrong because, as I said, the time to ufologists, to researchers to talk about UFOs was insanity. Three years ago, we did that. We didn't have to repeat this again. We need to move the strategy because that hearing in the Senate didn't change too much in reality. It was good. It was people get noticed about that, but it not exploded the bubble. We need to explode this bubble of the ufology. We need to get more people inside. We need to get 99% of the population in Brazil that is not aware of this phenomenon together. So, um, it, it was, it was like a UFO Congress in the House of Representatives. It, it, it was like that, uh, Pacachin talking about Virginia to talk about something about happening in the U.S. and, and so on. So, uh, they are wanting with this hearing. Oh, they say, oh, it's not time to, to, to come military here because the military will say, we don't have anything. Because they will say that we don't have any documents because if you, if you get a request from the Freedom of Information Act for them, they will say that we don't have any documents. All the documents are already in the National Archives. So we don't have anything new. But for me, as I said, the strategy is not that. The strategy is please, uh, talk what you already had did in the past, that people don't know that. Talk it publicly. So if they say that, the journalists, the scientists, the population will get more interested about it. So, and what, what, what they want with this is just the same we wanted decades ago is please give me the documents. But what documents? Which documents? They, they don't have, they say they don't have documents. So for me, it's a waste of time because of that. And if you get the, the, the, the requirement for this here is to press them to release more documents that they don't, they, they say they don't have. So I think it's... How, Ronnie, does that change then? Because in the United States, no matter what people think of the progress and the politicians being involved, you've got some quite heavy hitters from Republicans and Democrats, congressmen and women, senators who are now talking about the UFO topic. Is it, that being missing in Brazil doesn't help, but how do you, how do you get those senior levels of politician and military personnel involved in the topic? What's, what's missing? I think what's missing is to have a more closer approach to the military, maybe in a closer session first, to avoid the battle. If you want, if, if you get the tone of this hearing, it's a lot of, we need to battle with the military. I think we, it's the wrong strategy because if we do that, it will be worse, our relationship with them and they won't release anything new. I think we need to have another approach of, okay, we need to start the conversation. We, we know sometimes in the past, maybe they destroyed documents at this time to put anyone in prison about anything that was, because it was not. It's like what people are calling, are calling the U.S. some type of amnesty, because I think if we get so much aggressive against them, we'll don't move further. So I think we need to establish a conversation. In 2008, 2007, we had huge, big, big amount of documents in our national archives released by the military because we had this good relationship with them. We are not pressing them aggressively like we saw in this hearing. It changed the, the strategy to get in touch with them. You mentioned it's a time of political upheaval, political struggle around the globe. People are struggling financially just to make ends meet. Is it the same in Brazil that perhaps the timing is wrong for this hearing? And as you mentioned with the president, you know, there's a lot of issues there. Everyone's attention is elsewhere. Has this had any impact on the Brazilian people at all? The impact is very, very low. The most people that are outside this ufology bubble is criticizing it. They're saying, oh, it's a waste of time. We want to, to have science, real science there. We need to discuss rockets and satellites to launch from Brazil instead of green man, little green man. So people, a lot of people that's outside this bubble is saying that. And this is because they are seeing the only ufologists there. So they have this preconceived notions that, oh, they are believers. They are IAZ. And this is the reason that we need the military there. So like U.S. So this, I think, it needs to change. But this group that organized the hearing, they say that in the hearing, in fact, Ramalio said that, no, it's not time to call the military. And I don't agree with that. So it sounds like it's been a disappointment for you, the hearing and any potential impact. What were your thoughts on the hearings in the United States that happened just the week before? It's another level compared to Brazil, even with the first hearing, it was already another level compared to Brazil, because in the U.S. they are calling the military, they are calling the U.S. officers to testify, even if they are not saying anything huge or anything, any evidence, real evidence of a video in close distance and something like that. Just talk about the phenomena, just to have authorities talking about the phenomena, just having the military officers talking about that, that is real, something that's moving. This is why we see evolution in each hearing that we see in the U.S. We have, for example, Borland there, that talked about this crazy triangle above him. So we had a military active from the Navy, the first one that's real active there, very courageous. And this is only happening because you started right there in 2020, 2017, saying the phenomena is real. So the people got attention about that, scientists, civilians, and other people started to press the representatives. And this is what we need in Brazil. We need the data to talk publicly to people get together. And when you have a military saying that this is real, this happened, we investigated that, people will get interested and start to pressure them to release more and more and more and more. And this is a, like an avalanche. This will not stop. People like yourself are doing very good work. If people check out uapbrazil.com, for me, I'm glad the website's in English because I, I barely speak English myself. So it's really handy to see. There's, there's documentaries on there that you've made. There are, there's film revealed from Operation Prato, Operation Saucer. There are documents from the Brazilian National archives that were released last year. You can view all of this, including right on the main page. There's a highlight of all the main cases from Brazil. Accra, 2014. Claudio, 2008. Virginia, of course, is on there. There's Chubacabra coming soon. There's a lot of stuff on there. People can go and look at Roni, isn't there? And what you, what would be your final message to the folks out there listening? Yes. The, the site of UAP Brazil is a little bit stuck because of the, the, my, my, I'm doing a lot of things at the same time. Today I'm traveling, uh, a lot of states in Brazil. Brazil is a continental area country. So it's difficult to do research. It's, it's very rich to do research here, but very difficult to move because it's like we are moving between different countries inside Brazil because of the distances, mainly in Amazon. So, and I'm, I'm finishing my research in physics in the Brazilian Center for Research in Physics right now. And I have my 80 hour regular jobs. So the time is very, very rare for me to try to update people. Um, to see, I did not update people in X until this day because of this, uh, message, but, uh, as soon as some of these jobs is completed in my research in physics, I'll start to dedicate more and more time to this topic. And we'll hear more in the future. I'm going to Virginia every month. Virginia will complete 30 years in January next year. Uh, I obtained a lot of documents from the firearms. They are not very happy with me because of that, uh, very interesting points that I could explore that are processing the Freedom of Information Act in Brazil. And I hope that in January next year, we will review some interesting stuff about Virginia and also other connections of my research. I'm doing, I'm going every year to the Atacama desert in Chile, that we are evolving a lot to take images and sensor data about the phenomena using mediums, using psionics in Brazil, in Brazil have is a hotspot for mediums, for psionics. Um, and we are very successful in moving that. And I think in next year, we'll see some interesting images, interesting data that we are collecting in Amazon and Atacama desert that for me are the best laboratories that we have today in South America. Awesome. Ronnie, thank you so much for your time. And I think it's a testament to your work, especially when you're outside of the U S when this so much of this phenomenon is centric around the United States. I can appreciate someone outside of there doing the work and you've got folks on my Discord requesting you to come on and give these updates. And you've provided some wonderful context behind these hearings in Brazil as well, and perhaps what has to happen moving forward for them to have a much larger impact. So thank you very much for your time, mate. Thank you very much. That is all for this episode. Thank you very much for tuning in. Don't forget to leave the podcast a review on your chosen platform. Apple and Spotify do make a huge difference to the algorithm. If you're checking the show on YouTube, please don't forget to like and leave a comment on here as well. Any sharing you do is very much appreciated on any social media platform. And finally, you can listen to shows ad free and sponsor free and their glorious full versions by subscribing for less than the price of a coffee on Apple, Spotify, just search that UFO podcast premium, YouTube, you can sign up and be a member, or you can do that through patreon.com. Thank you very much for listening, folks. It wasn't a tick.