An unusual light that recently appeared in the night sky over Honolulu resulted in 911 calls to local law enforcement, as well as inquiries with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about whether an aircraft might have crashed into the ocean. Read the full article here.
Plenty of political spin has already been applied to the post-Brexit UK-EU trade and cooperation agreement. This not only glosses over much of the detail, but it can also be decidedly misleading. Read the full article over at The Conversation here.
With the pandemic routed, old political problems will resurface. Read the full article over on UnHerd here.
Below is a link to a message from whistleblower Edward Snowden. His revelations about secret surveillance programs opened the world’s eyes to a new level of government misconduct, and reinvigorated EFF’s continuing work in the courts and with lawmakers to end unlawful mass spying.
In June 1960, Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, third Director of Central Intelligence under the Truman Administration and first to direct the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency created under the National Security Act of 1947, went on the record with his views on UFOs.
“I know that neither Russia nor this country had anything even approaching such high speeds and maneuvers,” Hillenkoetter was quoted saying.
It would not be the last time a former CIA director would comment on UFOs’ perennially controversial topic, as recent days have shown. Within the final weeks of 2020, former CIA director John Brennan also weighed in on the subject, during a podcast interview with George Mason University economics professor Tyler Cowen. Read the full article over at The Debrief here!
On December 28th, President Donald Trump signed into law an omnibus spending bill allocating $1.4 trillion in federal funding for the 2021 fiscal year. Covering everything from pandemic-relief provisions to defence spending, the massive bill also contains the FY 2021 Intelligence Authorization Act, which codifies U.S. covert and clandestine operations and defines reporting requirements to Congress. Read the full Debrief article here.
Michael Wade has some tips for new bloggers!
What is truth? You can speak of moral truths and aesthetic truths, but I’m not concerned with those here, important as they may be. By truth, I shall mean the kind of truth that a commission of inquiry or a jury trial is designed to establish. I hold the view that scientific truth is of this commonsense kind, although the methods of science may depart from common sense and its truths may even offend it.