Saturday, May 9, 2026

UFOs: The Apollo and Gemini Reports Are the Ones Worth Reading.


The Apollo and Gemini Reports Are the Ones Worth Reading

On May 8, 2026, the United States Department of Defense released over 160 declassified files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs. The files are now publicly accessible at war.gov/UFO, with more coming on a rolling basis. The release covers sightings dating back to the 1940s and includes military reports, astronaut transcripts, photographs, and video footage.

Most of the coverage has focused on recent military sightings. Diamond shaped objects moving at 434 knots over Greece. Metallic elliptical objects floating in mid-air. A football shaped object near Japan. These are compelling. But the reports that deserve the most serious attention are the ones from the Apollo and Gemini missions of the 1960s and early 1970s.

The Debunking Toolkit Does Not Apply
When a modern military pilot or drone operator reports an unusual object, there is a long list of conventional explanations available. Satellites. Space debris. Commercial drones. Weather balloons. Lens flare from modern camera optics. Atmospheric distortion. These explanations are not always correct, but they are available, and they muddy the water significantly.
None of them apply to observations made in space in 1965 and 1969.

In the vacuum of space there is no atmosphere, no weather, no lens distortion, no commercial air traffic, and no terrestrial light sources. The satellite density of the 1960s was a tiny fraction of what exists today. Drone technology did not exist. The men making these observations were not excitable civilians. They were test pilots and engineers, among the most highly trained observers ever sent beyond Earth's atmosphere.
What Frank Borman Saw on Gemini 7
The released files include a transcript from NASA's Gemini 7 mission in December 1965. Astronaut Frank Borman, approximately four and a half hours into the flight, reported a bogey at ten o'clock high. Houston asked him to repeat. Borman described it as hundreds of little particles going by to the left, out about three or four miles.

Borman was a United States Air Force colonel and test pilot. He later commanded Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon. He was not a man given to loose language or imprecise observation. The word bogey is military aviation terminology for an unidentified aircraft. Borman used it deliberately.

What the Apollo Crews Saw
The released files include reports and imagery from the Apollo 12 mission in 1969 and the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
The Apollo 12 image shows an unidentified phenomenon above the lunar horizon. The Apollo 17 files include both imagery and astronaut transcripts. Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, a geologist with a doctorate from Harvard, described the scene outside his window as looking like the Fourth of July. The transcripts describe very bright particles or fragments drifting by, described as very jagged and angular, tumbling.

Three lights are visible above the lunar terrain in the released Apollo 17 photograph.
On the surface of the Moon there is no ice, no atmosphere, no weather, and no human made objects in lunar orbit at that time. The conventional explanation for the Apollo 17 observations, offered by the astronauts themselves in the moment, was chunks of ice. That explanation has never been formally confirmed.

Why This Matters More Than Modern Sightings
The modern sightings in the released files are interesting. A 1994 State Department cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan describes a pilot and three Americans watching a brightly lit object making 90 degree turns, doing corkscrews, and maneuvering in circles at high speed over Kazakhstan. A 2023 military report from the Aegean Sea describes an object flying just above the ocean surface and making multiple sharp turns. These are compelling observations.
But every one of them exists in an era of dense satellite coverage, proliferating drone technology, advanced atmospheric optics, and potential adversary aircraft with capabilities not publicly disclosed.

The Gemini and Apollo reports exist in none of that context. They are clean. The noise floor is as low as it will ever get. Highly trained observers in space, with no conventional explanation readily available, describing objects they could not identify.
That is worth more than any number of ambiguous infrared videos from a modern military platform.

What Comes Next
The Department of Defense has stated it will release additional files on a rolling basis. The Gemini 7 transcript, the Apollo 12 image, and the Apollo 17 photographs and transcripts are a first batch. There are almost certainly more mission records in the archive.

The question worth asking is what, in 1965 and 1969, was out there with Frank Borman and the Apollo crews, in an environment where virtually every conventional explanation fails. That question does not have an answer yet. But it now has official documentation.

Sources
NBC News, May 8, 2026
"Pentagon begins releasing never-before-seen files on UFOs"

CNN Politics, May 8, 2026
"Pentagon releases initial batch of declassified files detailing UFOs"

ABC News, May 8, 2026
"Pentagon begins release of decades of unresolved UFO files"

Fortune, May 9, 2026
"UFO files show Buzz Aldrin saw a sizeable object close to the moon"

Fox News, May 8, 2026
"Trump admin releases highly anticipated UFO documents"

Primetimer, May 8, 2026
"Pentagon publishes UFO records linked to Apollo moon missions"

Department of Defense PURSUE website
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Three Million Albertans Got Doxxed. Someone in the Room Knew

The Centurion Project and the Biggest Voter Data Leak in Alberta History

A separatist group in Alberta called the Centurion Project has been caught using an app that illegally accessed the personal information of nearly three million Albertans. The data came from the province's official list of registered voters, called the elector list. That list is only supposed to be in the hands of registered political parties. Somehow, it ended up in the hands of a far-right organization with no legal right to it.

Elections Alberta, the RCMP, and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner are now all investigating. A third investigation has since been launched by Alberta's privacy commissioner, bringing the total number of active investigations to three.

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What the Centurion Project Is

The Centurion Project was founded by David Parker, a far-right activist. Parker previously ran Take Back Alberta, a movement that mobilized conservative opposition against former Premier Jason Kenney during the COVID-19 pandemic. That movement helped push Danielle Smith into the leadership of the United Conservative Party.

The Centurion Project is a separatist organization. Its members have a noted preoccupation with Roman history and often frame Alberta's political situation as a kind of civilizational struggle. The name itself comes from a commanding officer's rank in the Roman army. The group was also registered as a third-party advertiser in the separatist Stay Free Alberta petition campaign.

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Where the Data Came From

Elections Alberta says the database used by the Centurion app matches the elector list that was legally provided to the Republican Party of Alberta last year. The match is not just approximate. Elections Alberta deliberately adds fake names to each party's copy of the list for tracking purposes. Those fake names appear in the Centurion database, which means the data did not come from a general breach. It came from the Republican Party of Alberta's specific copy of the list.

Republican Party of Alberta leader Cam Davies has said he granted access to vendors under contract, as is permitted under Alberta's Election Act, for political work such as contacting voters and soliciting donations. He says he later issued cease-and-desist letters to those vendors after the alleged misuse by the Centurion Project. Davies did not respond to questions about which vendors he had hired.

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What Was Exposed

The database was posted online in a searchable format that required no identity verification and was accessible to anyone who had the link. It contained the names, home addresses, phone numbers, electoral districts, and voter registration details of 2.9 million Albertans. The database included the home addresses of prominent politicians, judges, Crown prosecutors, senators, and journalists.

Parker has compared the database to a phone book and said it was intended to be used by volunteers to search for friends and acquaintances while canvassing for supporters.

Alberta's Information and Privacy Commissioner Diane McLeod described the situation plainly. More than 2.9 million Albertans had their personal information breached. For some of those individuals, she said, there is likely a real risk of significant harm, particularly for people who work in law enforcement, public officials, those fleeing intimate partner violence, and other vulnerable individuals.

A former RCMP major crimes investigator put it in starker terms. For organized crime, that kind of information is gold. In the hands of the wrong people, it becomes a criminal record of contacts, not just for one election cycle, but potentially for decades.

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What the App Did

On April 16, the Centurion Project held a demonstration of its app for a group of roughly 80 people attending a virtual meeting. During that demonstration, the app was used to pull up the home address of former Premier Jason Kenney without his knowledge or consent. Kenney has previously faced serious and high-profile threats to his safety.

The Alberta NDP says it has shared footage of this demonstration with the RCMP and with Kenney directly. Kenney released a public statement saying he is seeking legal advice over what he called an outrageous and potentially dangerous violation of his personal privacy.

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The Legal Response

Elections Alberta did not move slowly once it became aware of the situation.

The Chief Electoral Officer issued a cease-and-desist letter on April 28. On April 29, Elections Alberta sent representatives to a Centurion Group event to ensure the database was not being accessed. On April 30, an emergency injunction was obtained from the Court of King's Bench, forcing the Centurion Project to shut down the database. A hearing for a permanent injunction is scheduled for later this summer.

Elections Alberta identified 23 people who received full copies of the voters list from the Centurion Project, and another 545 people who accessed the searchable database. Cease-and-desist letters were issued to all 568. The 23 people who received full copies were given 48 hours to provide a signed declaration of compliance.

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A Warning That Went Unheeded

What makes the legislative response harder to accept is that Elections Alberta saw this kind of problem coming.

On May 9, 2025, a full year before this breach became public, the Chief Electoral Officer wrote to all members of the Legislative Assembly outlining serious concerns about Bill 54, the Justice Statutes Amendment Act. The letter warned that requiring "reasonable grounds" in the legislation would eliminate the majority of the compliance activities undertaken by the Election Commissioner and would impact Albertans' trust that the rules were being followed.

That letter was sent. The bill passed. Elections Alberta has since confirmed that requiring reasonable grounds in legislation did directly impact its ability to act in this matter.

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The UCP Connection

The Alberta NDP identified two UCP-connected individuals as attendees of the April 16 virtual meeting: Arundeep Singh Sandhu, the United Conservative Caucus director of stakeholder relations, and a Rob Smith, who shares his name with the President of the UCP.

The UCC's official response was that caucus staff regularly attend events of political interest, and that the staffer present had no reason to believe anything unlawful was happening because the organizers claimed the data was obtained legally.

What makes that explanation harder to accept is a set of details that emerged after the initial report. Screenshots of the April 16 demonstration show that the web browser being used by Parker during the demo had bookmarks saved under the name "arundeep." The icons on those bookmarks appear to link to CTV News and the City of Edmonton website. The only Google result connecting that first name to the City of Edmonton website is Sandhu's campaign disclosure from a 2016 city council by-election.

Sandhu and Parker also share a documented history. They both worked on Erin O'Toole's federal Conservative leadership campaign in 2020. A photo from that year shows the two of them sitting at the same table. It was taken from Parker's Facebook page before he made it private.

When contacted by Canada's National Observer, Sandhu said he could not explain why his name appeared in the bookmarks. He said he was on his phone during the meeting and referred the reporter to the caucus statement.

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What Was Not Done

Political scientist Lori Williams from Mount Royal University put it plainly. She said the big question is how a political staffer could watch a demonstration that accessed the home address of a former premier who has faced violent threats and not report it to their boss or to police.

That question has not been answered.

The NDP has also asked publicly why no UCP official or government representative reported to the RCMP or Elections Alberta that the Centurion Project appeared to have unauthorized access to the elector list. No answer has been provided.

Premier Danielle Smith has said she only learned about the Centurion Project's unauthorized use of the elector list when it was first reported in the media. If any UCP staffer reported what they saw to their superiors and nothing was done, that contradicts Smith's account. If nothing was reported at all, that raises its own set of serious questions.

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Voter data is not supposed to move outside of registered political parties. It exists to support democratic participation, not to be used as a targeting tool by private organizations with no legal right to it.

What happened here was not a technical glitch or an accidental exposure. The data was posted in a searchable, publicly accessible format. It was demonstrated live to a room of volunteers. It was used to look up the home address of a former premier with a known threat history. And at least two people connected to the governing party were in that room.

Three separate investigative bodies are now involved. Calls for a full public inquiry are growing. The answers to how this happened, and who knew what, are still outstanding.

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Sources

Canada's National Observer, May 8, 2026
"UCP staffer appears to have been more than just 'observing' the doxxing of Jason Kenney"
Rory White and Jeremy Appel

Global News, May 3, 2026
"Alberta voter list leak is a potential public safety disaster: Enforcement experts"

Global News, May 7, 2026
"3rd investigation launched into Alberta voter database accessed by nearly 600 people"

CBC News, May 7, 2026
"Elections Alberta says it has issued 568 cease-and-desist letters over Centurion Project leak"
Wallis Snowdon

The Tyee, May 4, 2026
"Alberta's Voters Data Breach Was Very Bad. And Inevitable"

The Tyee, May 6, 2026
"The Centurion Project Scandal Ensnares the UCP"

Elections Alberta, May 2026
"Message to Albertans from the Chief Electoral Officer re: Unauthorized Use of List of Electors"

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Thursday, September 4, 2025

Traitor Wrapped in Prairie Smoke

 


a traitor wrapped in prairie smoke
she smiles freedom
while cutting the country apart

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Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Universities in a hostile MAGA world

 

"Universities should see the White House’s campaign as a wake-up call rather than the root of their troubles—a warning that they have to rebuild trust among not just prospective students, parents, and donors, but also voters and elected officials across party lines," E. Thomas Finan argues.

- from https://bsky.app/profile/theatlantic.com/post/3lxu5id4pa52j


What is the average reading level of a MAGA supporter? It seems a stretch to expect universities to “rebuild trust” across party lines when one of those parties has increasingly positioned itself as anti-university, anti-intellectual, and openly hostile to higher education.

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Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Book Banning in Alberta Is a Dangerous Path


 “Sorry kids, even the books from your own backpack need Premier’s approval first.”

Book Banning in Alberta Is a Dangerous Path Alberta Premier Danielle Smith recently called the Edmonton Public School Board’s removal of books “vicious compliance.” She said she would hold the school board’s hand to get it right. These actions raise serious concerns about censorship in schools. At the news conference she held to criticize the school board, Smith appeared to mock their compliance while also offering to oversee their decisions about which books can stay in libraries and classrooms. The message is clear. This is not a freedom of choice or local oversight. This is control from the top. When lawmakers allow governments to determine what children can read, it has deep historical roots. Book banning in Nazi Germany targeted authors who challenged state power. Schools were stripped of works by Einstein, Kafka, and many others. The Soviet Union also suppressed books that did not fit state ideology. In the 1950s America experienced another wave of censorship. During the Cold War era, books by black authors, civil rights leaders, and political radicals were often banned in school libraries. These bans were a tool to suppress dissent. They told the next generation what they should not think or question. Alberta’s ban is aimed at books with sexual content. But critics are concerned that it targets LGBTQ topics and suppresses marginalized voices. Margaret Atwood warned of rising threats to expression. She said she cannot remember a time when words themselves felt under such threat. That warning should not be ignored. When governments restrict what children read, they walk a dangerous path toward authoritarianism. Thought control, even if it starts with books, leads to less debate and more repression. Schools should not be battlegrounds for censorship. We must push back against banning books in public education. We cannot trade curiosity for control. Our children deserve access to diverse ideas and stories. Sources Global News, Margaret Atwood takes aim at Alberta’s school library books ban with satirical story https://www.globalnews.ca/news/11358174/margaret-atwood-takes-aim-at-albertas-school-library-books-ban-with-satirical-story/ The Guardian, Banned the 20 books they did not want you to read https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/23/banned-the-20-books-they-didnt-want-you-to-read The Guardian, Margaret Atwood says she cannot remember another time words themselves have felt under such threat https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/may/12/margaret-atwood-words-under-threat-freedom-to-publish-british-book-awards Yahoo News (via Global News), Alberta premier criticizes Edmonton schools’ banned book list https://ca.news.yahoo.com/edmonton-public-removing-more-200-151745127.html



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Monday, September 1, 2025

CBC's Golden Consultant Not Needed on Home Defence Policy

Why Canada’s Current Home-Defence Laws Are Enough


Pierre Poilievre has proposed changing Canada’s Criminal Code so that any force used inside one’s home is automatically considered reasonable if someone breaks in. He says that people under threat should not have to worry about whether their actions meet complicated legal standards.


This idea sounds simple. However, Canada already allows people to defend themselves when someone unlawfully enters their home. The law says that force must be reasonable under the circumstances. That means it must be proportionate and appropriate to the level of threat. Judges and police use criteria like whether there was a weapon, the size and age of the people involved, and whether there were other ways to respond. These rules protect both victims and ensure that force is not abused.


Lawyers have said that the current system works. It allows self-defence when a person truly feels threatened. It also keeps the standard clear. People do not need to think of nine separate legal factors in the heat of the moment. They only need to act in a way that is reasonable. That protects both homeowners and the legal system.


There is also a legal principle called necessity. It applies when a person has no choice and is facing an imminent threat. Canadian law says self-defence is allowed if someone honestly believes they are in danger, and their actions match the threat. This principle balances protecting lives with preventing misuse of force.


Canada does not have laws that make it automatically legal to use force, even if it is inside your home. Some places use a “castle doctrine” or “stand your ground” rule. Canada does not. It maintains a way to review whether force was reasonable. That protects innocent lives and ensures justice is fair.


In short, Poilievre’s proposed change is not needed. Canadians already have legal protection when they face a home invasion. The current laws strike a balance between defending oneself and following fair legal standards.


Sources and References


Global News, Poilievre pushing for ‘reasonable’ self-defence definition in Criminal Code

https://www.globalnews.ca/news/11355963/poilievre-criminal-code-self-defence/


CTV News, ‘You can’t just get mad’: Lawyer explains limits of self-defence in Canada

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/reasonable-in-the-circumstances-what-the-law-says-about-self-defence-in-canada/


Ground News, Fact File: Canadians can defend against home invaders but force must be ‘reasonable’

https://ground.news/article/fact-file-canadians-can-defend-against-home-invaders-but-force-must-be-reasonable


Wikipedia, Stand-your-ground law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law


Wikipedia, Necessity in Canadian law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_in_Canadian_law


 

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Sunday, August 31, 2025

Balanced Coverage


"Balanced Coverage"

CBC and the Poilievre Problem

CBC is supposed to be Canada’s national broadcaster that covers all sides fairly. Lately, it feels like they look to Pierre Poilievre for his opinion on almost everything. At the same time, there is much less focus on what Mark Carney and the government are saying about those same topics.

The Numbers

An analysis by The Maple looked at how often reporters asked questions to Poilievre compared to Carney during the campaign. The results showed that Poilievre was asked only 30 questions over 17 days. Carney was asked more than three times that number. Many of the questions to Poilievre were neutral or easy. Carney was asked a much higher number of tough questions. CBC was part of the group of outlets included in this coverage.

How Access Works

Poilievre’s team carefully controls who gets to ask questions at his events. Reporters who push too hard can be blocked out next time. This makes journalists less likely to ask difficult questions. CBC has been part of this system, which means Poilievre often faces less serious questioning.

Why It Matters

Poilievre has spoken many times about wanting to cut funding to CBC’s English services. Some people are concerned that CBC’s soft coverage could make him seem stronger and more influential than he is. Carney, on the other hand, often faces harder questions and more critical coverage. That means his ideas and policies are not getting the same space or attention.

The Result

When CBC treats Poilievre like its main source or consultant, it shifts the balance of information Canadians receive. Instead of hearing clear views from both leaders, audiences often hear Poilievre’s opinion first and most often. For a public broadcaster, this raises questions about whether CBC is living up to its role of providing fair and balanced coverage.

Sources

The Maple, “Poilievre Getting Easier Ride at Media Events Than Carney”

Wikipedia, CBC News allegations section

Policy Options, “The high stakes of defunding the CBC”

The Times, “Pierre Poilievre defeats Mark Carney”

Business Insider, Canada election result coverage

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UFOs: The Apollo and Gemini Reports Are the Ones Worth Reading.

The Apollo and Gemini Reports Are the Ones Worth Reading On May 8, 2026, the United States Department of Defense released over 1...