SHAPES IN FLUFFY CLOUDS

Ravings of a misfit in the abyss of conspiracy (with 148 illustrated hallucinations)

“This combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces” (- Carl Sagan¹)

NOTE: This essay is, first and foremost, a Martian adventure centred on the idea of extraterrestrial contact and disclosure, but it is also a reflection on the emergence of the Paternalistic State and society’s troubling conformism to the “official truths” served up by the elites.

Chapter I — THE DARK HOLE AND THE INSANITY

In the introduction to his “Confessions”, Jean-Jacques Rousseau², himself no stranger to the idea of conspiracy, writes: “Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, Thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I.”

Chances are that the man won’t make much of a fuss if I borrow his inkwell to write that I, too, wish to present myself before you with this book in my hand, so you can judge, and loudly proclaim: You are about to witness the furious effects of multiple hallucinations and, hopefully, understand the reasons for my descent into the dark hole of conspiracy.

Crawling out of that glorious pit was a long and arduous process, punctuated by a number of inebriating setbacks, but here I am, wobbling in reality, bruised and shamefaced, willing to make this agonising admission: The images of Mars you are about to see here are showing nothing. There is nothing there, only rocks and rock formations. Interesting rocks, sure, strange formations, yes, but not much else besides a shadow here, a weird angle over there, a trick of the light in the distance.

Why bother with images if they show nothing? Well, because they are what happened to me – and to numerous others – and they must be included in my confession of sins against the gospel sanctioned by the State and its courtiers. I cannot make amends, acknowledge the error of my ways, warn readers of the dangers hidden in the pleasurable sucking sounds of the abyss of conspiracy, if I don’t illustrate the operation. Either the exorcism is complete, or it is a screwed-up exercise and soon enough I’ll find myself once again sitting in bed, hollering against imaginary plots everywhere, my bloodshot eyes fixated on walls while they twirl gaily around the floor. What would have been the point, then?

Part of the healing process is knowing that every single one of these images carries with it the memory of the intoxicating bolt that traversed my being each time I thought I had just discovered another sign of life on Mars. Stirred, moved, astounded, electrified, I nosedived into a delicious lunacy: Oh! August House of Orion. Look at these structures! These ruins. And those pipelines. Look at that statue! They are lying to us. They are lying to us all!

My neuronal highways were seized by traffic jams of feverish messages about the meaning and implications of these stunning “anomalies”. More than once I excitedly jumped out of my chair and went for long walks into the silence of the night to calm down and try to make sense of it all. I just couldn’t wait to share this phantasmagoria with the world, and of course that’s what I tried to do on numerous occasions, but only to have that sweet delirium come crashing down into a spluttering mess as soon as my intended victims started throwing things back at me: I don’t see anything; It’s too blurry; It’s not clear enough; It’s just a rock; Time for your medication.

Online, the usual trolls, who seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time launching into name-calling attacks against anyone foolish enough to have an idea or an opinion that transcends the narrow confines of their conformism, went straight for the insults: You’re sick; You’re an imbecile; You’re a liar; You’re making this stuff up; You’re a fraud; Screw you.

The very few who took pity and were willing to pet my baloney said yeah, they could see something, a structure, maybe. That was enough for me. The thought of having succeeded at dragging them into my insanity was exhilarating, and I giddily awaited excited ramblings, like: Are these pipelines proof that Percival Lowell³ was right after all? Are these ruins evidence of an outside intervention⁴? What about the structures that appear to be intact? Were groups of rebels – Adam and Eve for short – unceremoniously kicked out of Mars, maybe also of other places in the near universe, and sent to graze on a strange blue dot to see if they could live in peace with each other? Did visitors come down from heaven to check on the situation and put them back on the right track if necessary? Are sacred texts nothing else than a convenient mythology gleaned from word-of-mouth stories, transmitted from generation to generation, about cosmic overlords made into “Gods”, then into “sons of God” who, as it happens, had developed a taste for the “daughters of man”?⁵

Nah. What I got instead was a resounding “Bof”. They appeared to be indifferent, unperturbed by the possibility that intelligent bipeds could have walked and talked on a neighbouring planet. They probably saw me as “one of those crazies” trying to hoodwink them, which may explain why they refrained from pouring out their hearts about such extraordinary possibilities. Some of them, though, did volunteer a few words: “Of course, our governments don’t tell us everything”, and right back they went about their earthly occupations, as if extraterrestrial life in their backyard was a State business of no concern to them.

One time I caught several of my would-be witnesses glancing at me and throwing furtive smiles at each other while walking away. Their unspoken words came out flying: Phew!, we just barely escaped the drivel of that screwball. On another occasion, my fever was brought down by a young woman, an educated professional, who peremptorily declared this beauty: “I will believe it when they [the State] tell us about it.”

I looked up towards the nothingness of the ceiling and narrowly avoided spewing out the colourful fit of arrogance her response fully deserved. Great, I thought, if modern citizens can go no further than wait for the State and its experts to tell them through an app on their phones what they can believe and when they can start believing it, that’s the end of us. Our collective brain has finally risen to the level of its uselessness.

That’s how far gone I was.

I didn’t know if I was supposed to be satisfied that the existence of sentient beings so close to Earth was no big deal to those people, or disappointed that they were so darn oblivious to the deep impact a single intelligently-made structure on Mars would have on Earthlings and the history of their origins, on ethical and philosophical considerations, on social order, religious dogmata, world governing institutions and, inevitably, on the military-industrial complex of spacefaring nations, to mention just a few subjects.⁶ But I was certainly aghast to see that many people had been reduced to accepting as a fact of life, if an unfortunate one, that the authorities and a handful of experts on their payroll would not only hide such a phenomenal truth from them, but would also lie repeatedly when poked by weirdos like me.

Alas, most reactions to my Martian piffle amounted to an echo of Rhett Butler⁷: Frankly, my dear, we don’t give a damn. The only animated reply I ever got came from a man who swiftly turned his gaze away and flailed his arms in the air, as if trying to rid himself of some annoying fly: “No, no, no! Even if what you are showing me is true, I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to hear about it, Jesus is our only saviour”.

Chapter II — THE EMBARGO AND THE FLAPPING WINGS

As if that was not frustrating enough already, numerous news outlets in the United States, France, Great Britain, Canada and Québec completely ignored my communications and shut their doors to my attempts at sharing my absurdities with them and, through them, with the public. And it got worse: Imagine my exasperation when, at about the same time, they published a series of reports, often complemented by graphics and images, on the idea of the Earth being flat. Not round like any other visible planet, but flat like a large pizza pie that had been left to stew for six days in some god’s oven.

When I learned that reputable news institutions had dispatched correspondents to “Flat Earth Conferences” and saw, displayed on several costly columns, long-form articles about space agencies and governments possibly lying to everybody about the shape of the Earth, all the while not a single media dared to investigate or publish even one piece of the visual evidence of life on Mars I had repeatedly sent their way, I was gobsmacked. It was inconceivable to me that journalists and editors would look down their noses at what could only be the scoop of all time, and yet there they were, just like my Jesus man: They didn’t want to see it, they didn’t want to hear about it.

Their silence and the closed doors didn’t make any sense. Something was going on. Maybe visual evidence of life on a neighbouring planet was not entertaining enough for their readers, and it dawned on me that if I had forwarded to news outlets a series of photos purporting to show Taylor Swift jumping up and down in her private loge with a few Martian fans during a football game on the red planet, instead of images of alien-built structures, maybe my work would have met the media’s ethical standards. Heck, my story would probably have received front-page treatment. But I know now that my folly was too great to understand that news professionals were just trying to help. They had identified me, and several others, quite correctly as it turns out, as the creepy ones and signs of life on Mars as pure nonsense that had no place on their pages or websites.

In any event, the media’s embargo on my derangement did nothing to impede an obstinate fancy to write about it. I persisted with my analysis of Mars images, mesmerised by what I thought I was seeing, and my keyboard took repeated beatings. I hammered it day and night, sleeping a few hours here and there and keeping the zombie away with gulps of strong coffee and self-inflicted slaps, not necessarily in that order and, surely to the disappointment of the wicked among you, never at the same time. In one article, which of course no one saw fit to publish, I plunged right into the heart of my frustration:

It must be saying something about humanity that in the scientific XXIst century the belief in flying angels, in godly voices jumping out of burning bushes and in the rise of putrefied corpses from their tombs is still considered a virtue deserving tax exemptions and a comfy place near the circles of international power, whereas any claim of the existence of intelligent beings on a neighbouring planet - even with visual evidence - is invariably denounced as “batshit crazy stuff” deserving nothing but ridicule and expensive therapy in a modern day version of a confessional.

I asked: Is this the sort of intellectual prowess our society wants to bequeath future generations? (Said article is reproduced after the illustrations, so readers can have another good laugh at my expense.)

So sure of myself and of the results of more than a decade of work, I threw a tantrum each time I heard scientists claim that “nothing out of the ordinary has been found” on Mars, or when debunkers during interviews always made sure to remind audiences about how ridiculous it was to believe that Aliens would travel incredible distances through the cosmos, at the speed of light, just to land on a rural patch somewhere on Earth, gambol around cow pies and wave hello at a guy named Bubba⁸. I could see myself grabbing my television set with both hands, snatching the thing from its hinges and lifting it over my head to scream at them: Hypocrites! Cheeky liars! Signs of a highly advanced civilisation are right next to us, visible to anyone willing to open their eyes. The truth is not out there, it is right here, in our backyard, and you damn well know this!

Luckily, I usually regained my composure, the TV stayed on the wall and I carried on with my work. The more I looked at the photos from Mars, the more I analysed them - inch by inch, foreground to background - and the more I became convinced that the most grotesque conspiracy of silence ever unleashed on humankind was very much in full swing. I strongly suspected that it involved select individuals in governments, space agencies, intelligence and military services, scientists on State payrolls, religions’ highest authorities and business leaders linked to space exploration, with the necessary help of a few “reporters” and “debunkers” excited by the idea of being able to serve the authorised doctrine.

I theorised about the existence of a worldwide Deep State taking its cues from powerful national elite circles that wallow in the power of a knowledge jealously guarded by and for themselves, whilst the rest of us are left to bathe in blissful ignorance of such matters, busy as we are being entertained into oblivion by a dizzying array of trifling amusements and a non-ending series of overblown “crises”. Someone had to warn this sleeping world, and, as madness would have it, my entire being felt the wind coming from the flapping wings of a grandiose mission.

That’s how far gone I was.

This illumination led me to occasionally jump tracks and babble about other matters, like the similarities between the treatment of dissidents in the old communist world and the reaction of modern democracies towards their own apostates. In the defunct USSR, authorities sent them away to mental wards and labour camps, and sometimes injected them with substances sure to bring about their docility and cooperation⁹. But democracy oblige, and Western gatekeepers had developed a softer approach: Here, I said, pompous pricks, showing off their titles or press credentials and posing as unimpeachable authorities, publicly ridicule those who don’t conform to the official truths, gently impugn their sanity and hint at the idea that a therapy would do them some good.

“Conspiracy theory”, I added, has become Newspeak¹⁰ when State officials and other members of the haut monde partake in campaigns to discredit people and mock ideas that don’t fit with “the approved pattern of thought”, to use the words of Erich von Däniken¹¹. And the thing is, their callous enterprise pays off most of the time: A largely indifferent public gets a good laugh, and whatever “the freaks” have to say goes nowhere. Their claims are pushed to the margins of society where, once in a while, arrogant sticklers can have a look at it with a haughty smile plastered on their faces.

Chapter III — THE PATERNALISTIC STATE AND THE ENEMIES

To be sure, this frame of mind put me squarely in the family of misfits who believe that modern society is hobbling along towards the normalisation of a paternalistic State, modelled in some ways on the old idea of enlightened despotism¹², supported by corporations and professional groups that are anticipating a few advantages from it.

In this emerging system, governments pride themselves with working for the betterment of citizens’ lives, particularly their health and security, not to mention their entertainment¹³, and in return they expect subservience to the official truths and the absence of annoying questions. Vexing ideas are allowed to float as long as they can be walloped with plausible denial or otherwise turned into a joke in the media. But when those ideas collide head-on with secrets and interests held in high places, they are rejected vigorously and their authors are denounced as “conspiracy theorists” that good citizens would do well to ignore at social functions.

I suggested that the political correctness we’ve been witnessing from both the left and the right in the first quarter of the XXIst century, and which gave rise to fits of intolerance, to the banning of books and the cancellation of speeches that did not fit with some groups’ prevailing thoughts, to the blurring of reality from images and videos, and the constant censoring of words and expressions deemed “offensive”, may just be the hummock of what could flip onto the surface if the programming of advanced technologies (AI models and applications for example¹⁴) were to fall into the hands of backward-looking creeps searching for “sinners” to convert and “traitors” to punish, or into those of progressive but patronising figures bent on proscribing whatever their experts have identified as possibly injurious to a sanitised and overprotected society.

I said “sanitised” and “overprotected” because I had come to believe, erroneously of course, that paternalistic decision-makers had been busy these last decades developing a pervasive system based on the premise, mostly false and utterly laughable, that somehow we have become a society of plaster saints with an easy draw in matters of moral indignation, composed of overly sensitive, weak and fearful entities that must be spared the less-playful realities of everyday life.

Thus we are increasingly subjected to censorship and to a multiplication of “warnings” about anything and everything that can be construed as disturbing or offensive (a nude shoulder or the act of smoking in a movie, half-censored news reports, half-blurred images, or “vexing” words removed from speeches, interviews and videos by eardrum-piercing beeps).

Unsurprisingly, my obsession with plots from on high, already in flight towards Mars, reached the stratosphere during the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that gave rise to a formidable and relentless campaign of fear built on contradictory messages and shaky truths. To be clear, the virus itself was not responsible for the reawakening of my conspiratorial fixation. Society’s reaction did the trick. For the things I saw and heard whipped my conspiracist mind into a frenzy and dragged the whole of me right back into the dark hole. I went on and on about the authoritarian attitudes we were witnessing in many quarters of society and the unsettling general compliance with restrictions on basic freedoms that bordered on laughable nonsense.¹⁵

Remember, I said, when duly scared individuals felt authorised to deliver verbal abuse to strangers in the streets, in parks and other public places when they saw families strolling “too close to each other”, people not wearing their masks “properly” or failing to follow the arrows painted on the ground. These pontifical sentries were not so much enforcing “public health” as they were inflicting their hysteria. It was the same kind of hysteria that had given rise to shameful behaviour during the 2003 SARS outbreak when their brethren had visited their neurosis on people of Asian descent in public places.¹⁶

Remember, I said, when sales employees of private businesses were drafted overnight by the State, authorised to verify the medical status of customers and refuse entry to any person unable to show State-provided proof of State-managed injections. Even fully vaccinated customers, like me, were apparently still danger to society, as we were followed in the aisles of stores to make sure that our repeatedly washed hands wouldn’t spread death by unnecessarily touching merchandise. Or when buying shoes or a small carpet for your kitchen floor was forbidden because the authorities had decreed that these, and more, were not “essential products”. I wondered out loud about how many lives I had saved by being forced to walk around with cracks in the soles of my shoes.

It became clear to this conspiracist, and I’m sure to all the others too, that we were witnessing the insidious reach of a paternalistic State¹⁷ hitting in all possible directions to be seen as “doing something”, even if it only came down, in the end, to reassuring the delicate ones among us who had become apoplectic at the mere sight of their shadows following them too closely.

It was disturbing enough for this conspiracist to see the behaviour of a minority who fell prey to their own political fears by breaking stuff during rare protests or rushing into stores to grab rows of masks and violently throw them to the floor, but the big whammy came with the realisation that a significant majority were more than willing, in return for a sense of security – real or imagined – to submit to the protective whims of Big Brother and its agencies without saying a word.

That we had become malleable to the point of complicity with the authoritarian bent of a paternalistic State, some loud voices going as far as lamenting that Big Brother’s decrees were “not severe enough”, was a dreadful revelation. Clearly, society was not the least disturbed by the idea of tossing aside people’s basic liberties under the pretext that danger was loitering on door knobs¹⁸ and because shouts of “crisis” were being thrown around by a well-oiled machine.

The proud conspiracist in me didn’t care much for the excuse that the crackdown on basic civil rights was “only temporary”, for I saw this as a deceptive apologia at a time when one precedent after another was being created in what was looking more and more, to me at least, like an opportunistic experiment in crowd control and manipulation of the masses. Most grievous of all to my eyes was how surprisingly easy it had been for various authorities to obtain unquestioning submission at all levels of society, even from those who, in a free world, are supposed to be a check on the powers of the State¹⁹. The way I saw it, we all basically shut up and fell in line, and the paternalistic establishment showered us with congratulations, taking care to camouflage our docility with the more melodious term of “solidarity”.

I tried to impress upon anyone willing to listen that this atmosphere, worthy of George Orwell’s imagination²⁰, was taking a disturbing turn when the authorities and sanctimonious chroniclers in the mainstream media went about identifying and denouncing as “a danger to society” any individual or group of individuals who had had the audacity to express their hesitation or their open dissent. These objectors were threatened with loss of employment, heavy financial penalties and social infamy. We stopped just short of branding them “enemies of the State”²¹. Holier-than-thou characters, in the streets, online and in the media angrily pointed fingers and applauded the repression, excitedly calling out for more of it. Punish them!, they cried, Punish them! I was blown away.

Remember, I said, when the manifestly paternalistic government of Québec decided that its 8 million “children” were in need of a shock treatment and imposed two curfews in a matter of a few months²². Thus Québec citizens enjoyed the distinct honour of living in the only State in North America where general curfews had been decreed, and the only repressive State where obedience was compelled by police forces empowered to conduct raids, make arrests and deliver heavy financial penalties on offenders caught strolling around their own houses (a generous concession was made to your freedom if you happened to have a dog that was intent on gifting the nearest tree²³).

Remember, I said, when public figures invited people to keep an eye on their neighbours and report them to the authorities if they so much as appeared to be non-compliant²⁴. I was floored. I couldn’t understand why citizens, even those untouched by the virus of conspiracy, did not immediately recognize how wholly unacceptable such a despotic move was in a country claiming freedom as a core value. But nobody said a word. There we were, heading straight for the theatre of the absurd, silently going along with agents of the State demanding that good patriots spy on their neighbours. Former Stasi²⁵ bosses, I thought, must have been nodding approvingly while looking through the peephole of history.

That’s how far gone I was.

But don’t get me wrong: Even to me, the COVID virus was real enough, and some actions were indeed called for, provided that they were rigorously justified. What was not called for, in the eyes of this conspiracist, was an all-out assault on the civil liberties of entire populations and the justification of this repressive order by an end-of-the-world atmosphere that the State, its agencies and the media themselves had mightily contributed to create and maintain²⁶. What was not called for, in the eyes of this conspiracist, was the State, its agencies and sententious characters in the media encouraging citizens to regard any disagreement or open dissension as the sole work of dangerous elements who deserved to be identified, pursued and punished.

“We are in a crisis. Shut up and obey” was the almost universal reaction to any person questioning the effectiveness, let alone the necessity, of certain measures. Disagreements and attempts at common sense were shoved aside as pesky inconveniences to the prevailing Order of fear and the rule of delirium. For me, and for any conspiracist worth their salt, this was a bad omen.

In any event, I was in for a surprise when the Covid virus paid a visit to the residence of my soul. Rather messed up, and of course having in mind the strongly encouraged and thus widespread belief that the infection, especially at my age, could mean the abrupt end of my visit to this planet, I was a bit ruffled when health professionals did not appear to be much concerned by my condition. I was told that hospitals had stopped treating the infection as an emergency (something I was able to verify by myself) and that the Covid virus was, as it turned out, “a bad cold” lasting about 11 days and better treated at home with the usual acetaminophen tablets, chicken soup and a touching puppy love movie that helps the production of tears through which the bad stuff can be ejected.

Needless to say, this development sent my conspirationist mind into overdrive, for I saw it as one more contradiction to the all-out campaign of fear and accompanying assaults on freedoms we had all been subjected to for months. It was particularly jarring given that, at the time of my dance with the virus, we were smack in the middle of a renewed fear-mongering campaign about “the spread of a dangerous new variant”, with the implied warnings that some sort of societal collapse would soon follow if the State did not immediately go back to governing by decrees and didn’t announce new restrictions on those liberties we all naively thought were guaranteed by a Constitution.

Exasperated, I let the conspiracist in me dream up ridiculous questions: Was a “bad cold” used as a rehearsal for things to come when the next crisis – real or made-up – is presented as a reasonable justification for a new wave of control and repression? As a reasonable justification for demanding blind obedience to the obliteration of civil liberties? As a reasonable justification for the infliction of financial hardship and social disgrace on citizens who may have the treasonous audacity to refuse that the State be empowered to force a needle into their arms?

That’s how far gone I was.

As you can see, I had plunged once again into the abyss. Ultimately, though, I came to realise that I was wrong – after all, we’ve all recovered our freedoms – and I reckon that my thoughts at the time were the symptoms of a relapse when fear, restrictions, interdictions, police-controlled decrees and curfews, near-forced injections, informants, finger-pointing, social infamy and punishment rained down overnight on a hitherto free society.

In such a context, the setback was inevitable for any person predisposed to ideas of conspiracy, with the unsurprising result that I spent most of my time during the pandemic, and the subjugation that came with it, reminding people of what thinking minds had repeatedly warned us about: When a docile society is more or less expertly manipulated into a general state of confusion and fear, it will gladly give the State all the tools it needs to lay the foundations of an authoritarian and repressive order.²⁷

I couldn’t resist blabbering about the danger that future “crises” – almost inevitable, we are told – could bring back this order of fear and repression as either a recurrent or permanent fixture hanging over our heads²⁸. Governments, maybe more authoritarian by then, might not be much bothered by political worries, or recognised civil rights, when they will decide to revive the Covid precedents as side dishes to the State’s power to invoke reasonable justifications (not open to discussion and which are ultimately backed by the courts anyway²⁹) as tools to exert strict “parental controls” over the masses and identify recalcitrant citizens as public enemies who must be pursued and punished.

For conspiracists everywhere, who have this bad habit of keeping a watchful eye on the authoritarian impulses of paternalistic States, enlightened or not, that’s where the troubling portent can be found.

Chapter IV — RETURN TO PLANET MARS

I am keenly aware that the preceding about viruses and paternalistic States will be denounced as nothing more than claptrap, and given my propensity of the time for conspiracy theories, the accusation is probably justified. But the point must not be lost that my disease made me see a link between the forces of enlightened despotism taking over the Earth and the elaborate trickeries orbiting Mars.

I could see that link in the powerful propaganda machines of States, of their agencies and collaborators; in the readiness of large sections of the population to conform to the official truths as soon as they are packaged and delivered, and if asked, to turn their backs on fellow citizens who stand accused of straying; finally, in the abject failure of those in a position to question the official truths – the news media in particular – who choose instead to go along with it.

But I shall insist no more on any of that. After all, I am here to bend the knee and confess my sins, and consequently I must acknowledge the rubbish I tried to spread during my illness, especially those Martian hallucinations I disguised as “visual evidence”. It is even possible that, at this point in your reading, a sizable number of you, sane readers, may already be disheartened by my condition. Fair enough. Go ahead, throw your hands – and this book – in the air. I will understand. But understand also that I am laying it all here, in the open, so you can take the full measure of how far gone I was.

For indeed, thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I.

The good news, because there is good news, is that I was saved. You see, unbeknownst to me at the time, the invisible hand was actively working on my soul. To my great annoyance, not unlike the misfit who must suffer repeated family interventions for his own good, I was rescued from my Martian dragons by space agencies launching into episodic denials and creative explanations; by the news media sticking to the prescribed lines of the official truth and dutifully avoiding awkward questions; and by experts always at the ready to help the rest of us, mere mortals, get over our crass ignorance and start putting together the pieces of a complicated universal puzzle.

They injected some sense into my thinking and brought me back from the brink of strangeness. They helped me realise that not only was I a tad freaky, but that I was also prone to repeated hallucinations and given to multifarious and senseless gurgles. That’s when I realised it was time to claw my way out of the dark hole, and today I can say with some elation that I am a recovering conspiracist and on my way to redemption as a reborn conformist. This calls for an Alleluia!

Chapter V — THE WARNING AND THE GENTLE SLAP

Now, despite the state of perdition I have just described, there remains a possibility that, upon looking at the images in this book, a certain number of troubled readers may start yakking about seeing strange things, objects or shapes. Things, they will say, that should not be standing or lying around on a planet supposedly devoid of past or present life.

I can already see them making the rounds of friends, co-workers and families to rattle on about artefacts and massive structures supposedly left on Mars by some highly advanced civilisation. To those poor souls, I say: Please don’t, just don’t go there. The best way to protect your sanity is to leave such considerations to the experts and instead keep enjoying the distractions that glut modern society.

My own experience, and that of fellow truthseekers (it’s just about time people dropped the undiplomatic and tasteless “Alien hunters”), has taught me that seeing things on Mars doesn’t give you a licence to scream scandal and make a public fuss. You know, like demanding that governments and scientists on their payroll stop treating people as if they were inhabited by infantile brains unable to handle reality, or shouting at corporate media that it’s high time they stopped being a mere delivery system for the State’s authorised truths. Don’t be ridiculous. Governments and scientists are not in the business of keeping secrets from people, and the news media are far too busy analysing wardrobe malfunctions on the red carpet to waste their time at pampering your Martian delusions.

To be blunt, if you see “things” on Mars, it is because you are hallucinating, just like many of us did. Unfortunately, there is no vaccine against this virus of the mind, not yet anyway. At best, you will feel the effects of mild symptoms such as “pareidolia’‘, a generally benign human weirdness that makes people see things where there is nothing³⁰. At worst, you could find yourselves curled up in a muggy cocoon taped to the walls of a dark corner of your house, sucking on weird stuff and slowly metamorphosing into reptilian conspiracy theorists intent on pestering the good Earthlings with absurd ideas. Or you could end up in some purgatory, utterly confused about what to believe, limping behind the great numbers of us who have seen the light and received the official truth on our phones.

If you are about to fall into that chasm, it is best that you should right now suffer this gentle slap from a science reporter:

“If everyone with an active imagination and a blog is to be believed, Mars is a wonderland of jelly doughnuts, human bones and alien-built monuments to Elvis Presley … Odd-looking things pop up in Mars images all the time, but we can excuse them due to shadows, tricks of the light, strange angles and our very human propensity for assigning familiar names to random shapes, just like when we see dragons in fluffy clouds.” (– Amanda Kooser, C-NET, August 4, 2015)

Take that, ye souls of the unfaithful! And just in case this rebuke does not bring you back to Earth, check out this one:

“The Five Most Insane Conspiracy Theories About Mars – Yep, there are people who believe that Mars was once inhabited by intelligent life and that space researchers want to cover up this amazing fact. And scientists have chosen to do this by focusing the world’s attention to the Red Planet itself. We can’t even.” (- Stephen Luntz, IFL Science, 2 October, 2015)

And this one:

“Of course, these missions are also surrounded by pseudoscientific conspiracy theories, making them very attractive for UFO hunters and other cranks to hover around.” (- Emil Karlsson, Debunking Denialism, 27 April, 2017)

See now? That’s what the intellectual cream of society will say about you. Better keep in mind that if yesterday’s heretics were those who refused the truth so generously delivered to them by the popes and their high priests, today’s heretics are the truculent ones who loudly question the certainties handed down by the State and its attending stewards.

If, despite my counsel, some of you still want to join the ranks of renegades, consider yourselves warned about what’s to come: The authorities, their numerous mouthpieces and a large slice of the population will ignore you completely at first, and if you persist, they will come out swinging. Either way, the inconsequential beings you are will be tossed aside and your farcical theories suffocated in a swamp of ridicule. Do you really want to go there? Remember: Profound ruminations should remain the exclusive domain of experts.

Chapter VI — THE GREAT MINDS AND THE ODDBALLS

Talking about experts, you should know that Ms. Kooser, Mr. Luntz and Mr. Karlsson are not the only ones trying to keep your spirits away from the hellish fire of conspiracy theories. As you will see in the next pages, a legion of science reporters, debunkers, scientists and space agencies - in short a special bunch of people who know better than you and I - have repeatedly told us that “no sign of life, past or present, has been found”. Other specialists have joined this chorus with decidedly curt manners, like astronomer and science blogger Philip Plait, who reportedly had a choice word to describe the claims of life on Mars: “Garbage”, he said³¹.

This officially-sanctioned line of thought was pretty much confirmed by the executive editor of an online magazine, who wrote this to me after I sent him several images of what my sick mind thought were pipelines on Mars: “This conspiracy of silence you’re touting doesn’t exist. … NASA probably has the biggest incentive of all to find alien life. Imagine how much funding they would get. You have this conspiracy all backwards.”

I remember saying to myself: Here’s an educated man who would have me believe that he’s never heard of “black budgets” and top secret military missions in space³². I noted that he was keeping silent on the actual content of the images and instead made a grab for the conspiracy theory implied in my communication. This was an unsurprising reaction since we already know that conspiracy theories are usually regarded by the erudite as a symptom of a pathology that is best dismissed with a wave of the hand and a condescending smile.

Not so long ago this would have irritated me, but not this time, for his answer contributed to a healing process already under way and steered me towards the inescapable reality that questioning the opinions of the cream of society is pointless, especially if you’re not a member of this group of outstanding citizens. After all, they collectively stack up degrees and doctorates at the same rate you and I collect shopping coupons, and, lest we forget, they are the ones imbued with the capacity to observe, to reason and to deduce. It is not our place to doubt the verities they sometimes throw at us from the back of the truck. Our place is to be the grateful consumers of the ideas and products that come out of those beautiful minds.

After all, science is a field which, from the time of its birth, has been associated with a courageous search for the truth, whatever that truth may be, and the news media are the fierce protectors of the right of the public to be entertained. They’ve remained loyal to their mission, except on those occasions when their corporate owners are summoned by State officials and are privately told, in the name of national security, to remain silent³³.

And precisely because we all know that the existence of highly intelligent civilisations out there would have no impact whatsoever on national security, we can rest assured that if something had been found on Mars, or anywhere else for that matter, no one would have had the audacity to tell the media to shut up about it. More importantly, the only articles published on the subject have been penned by authors who repeatedly denied the existence of any sign of life on Mars, and, if they felt jovial that day, threw mini darts poisoned with sarcasm at oddballs like me who had the nerve to claim the contrary.

About that, I guess I’ll never understand why it took me so long to pluck those darts out of my derrière and summon up the courage to face the conspirationist folly controlling my thoughts. But the time has come to confess, and since it’s never too late to do a good thing, I’m on a roll: Yes, I was deliriously wrong, and yes, specialists, officials, debunkers and the media were right, as always. All of us truthseekers, living thousands of kilometres from each other, were the victims of collective hallucinations on the same Martian rocks, not once, not twice, not ten times, but hundreds of times in just a few years.

As for the conspiracy thing, it was all in my head (just like your back pain). The time has come to prostrate myself before the intelligentsia and ask for a pardon, in exchange of which I am ready to admit this reality: Nothing has been found on Mars. No sign of life, past or present. Rocks, shadows, tricks of the light and fluffy clouds, that is all. Roses are red, violets are blue, that is all I can tell you.

And so, if at any moment you think you may be experiencing symptoms similar to those I suffered because of my hallucinatory disorder, or if you just want to protect yourself against a possible infection after having been in contact with fools like me, I invite you to nail this message to your wall and read it aloud every day:

The faster you accept the official truths, the less vexatious doubts you express and the less nasty questions you ask, the more cheerful and satisfying your life will be. Blessed are the distracted and the oblivious, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Chapter VII — THE MISSIONARIES AND THE GOSPEL

Before we get to the images that show nothing, it is a good thing to share bits and bobs of the official truth, as transmitted by experts and professional organisations that have been of great help in my quest to join the long lines of the heedless. I am not entirely there yet, but I did bid adieu to my shapes in the Martian clouds, which is a good start, and I owe this new normal to all those missionaries who worked hard at propagating the authorised gospel. See for yourself:

“There is no sign of any life – plants or intelligent Martians – on the planet. We know now that Mars is a very cold, dry planet, where liquid water cannot exist on the surface” (European Space Agency, ESA Space for Kids, 17 November, 2010)

“NASA: Claims of Life on Mars ‘Positively False’” (Clara Moskowitz, Space.com, 29 April, 2010)

“No life on Mars after all as NASA says it’s too dry.” (Jacqui Goddard, The Sunday Times, 22 November, 2017)

“This is of course not the first time people have claimed to find evidence of structures on Mars. Most famously, American author Richard Hoagland claimed to find a so-called ‘Face on Mars’, which turned out to be merely a trick of light.” (Benjamin Radford, Space.com, 23 August, 2010)

“The Mars Curiosity rover has taken tens of thousands of photographs, and in those photographs are millions of rocks. It’s inevitable that if you stare at millions of rocks for long enough, then you’ll find a rock that resembles something.” (Mick West, Metabunk.org, 6 July, 2015)

“Scientists have not yet found any life form on the red planet, whether that’s intelligent beings, animals or even bacteria.” (The Week, 26 July, 2018 - NOTE: Appears to have been updated in 2021 with new title)

“‘We now think the likelihood of life existing on its surface is slim to non-existent’, said Matthew Golombek of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.” (Robin McKie, The Guardian, 27 October, 2018)

“... But they aren’t proof of life on Mars, or even necessarily strong evidence that there’s anything living, or anything that used to be alive, out there.” (Rafi Letzter, Live Science, 7 June, 2018)

“Detecting life on Mars may be ‘impossible’ with current NASA rovers, new study warns.” (Jamie Carter, Live Science, February, 2023)

“Despite searching for decades, scientists still haven’t found definitive proof of life on the Red Planet, either alive today or long dead.” (Belinda Smith, ABC-Science, 26 July, 2018)

“Despite what the headlines might be claiming, there is no proof yet of past or present life on Mars.” (Kerry Lotzof, Natural History Museum, 27 July, 2018 - Updated in 2025)

Chapter VIII — THE IMAGES AND THE DAMN BLUR

I spent a lot of time, during my insanity, coming up with explanations for people who complained that my images were “blurry” or “not clear enough”. I pointed out that many signs of life are located far in the background of the official photos, and making close-ups, then close-ups of the close-ups, inevitably has an effect on the resulting quality. But, I said, the objects and the structures are there nonetheless. If you pull your head out of the sand and look attentively enough, you will see.

PIXELATION: The act of blurring sections of images by creating patches of unidentifiable content, often for the purpose of censorship.

On top of that, I added, small and large areas on multiple photos have been tampered with, prior to and sometimes after their release, in a deliberate attempt to hide the most obvious signs of life (blurred/smudged to the point of making the objects look like rocks, or colour-brushed in such a way as to make the anomalies indistinguishable from their surroundings). Large sections of images have been saturated with pixels, making it almost impossible to analyse them closely and bring out the stuff your trained eyes tell you is there. But, I said, if you stop fixating on the damned blur for a second, and instead concentrate on the details visible through the fog, you will see.

Naturally, these explanations were the children of a delirious mind and, rightly so, they went nowhere fast. So I don’t see the point of repeating them here. The following, though, should be noted:

1) Colour was added to some images to better delineate my hallucinations;

2) Arrows are mine.

Chapter IX — THE IMAGES

“The truth does not need 10 or 100 structures to make its point. Only one structure, one statue, one piece of machinery or one object is necessary. To be clear: If, among all the anomalies, you were to recognise only one for what it truly is - a sign of life on Mars -, then one conclusion would impose itself: Humans are not alone, they have never been alone, and they have been lied to for a very long time.”

-From the author, in “This Conspiracy Is Not a Theory”, 2020, 2022, reproduced after the illustrations.

PART 1 — NOTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY

SERIES A - Pipelines — Curiosity in the lower parts of Mount Sharp (2015)

SERIES B - STRUCTURES — Curiosity at the Teal Ridge (2019)

SERIES C - OBJECTS — Curiosity at Bagnold Dunes, Sol 1647 (2017)

SERIES D - STATUES — Curiosity at Marias Pass, Sol 992 (2015)

SERIES E - MACHINERY — Perseverance at Sol 911 (2023)

SERIES F - ANOMALY — Curiosity at SOL 1405 (2016)

SERIES G - OBJECTS — Curiosity at SOL 1296 (2016)

SERIES H - STATUES — Perseverance at SOL 406 (2022)

SERIES I - ANOMALY — Curiosity at the Murray Buttes, Sol 1454 (2016)

SERIES J - HARDWARE — Perseverance at SOL 915 (2023)

SERIES K - OBJECTS — Curiosity at Yellowknife Bay, Sols 137, 138, 141 (2012)

SERIES L - HARDWARE — Curiosity at Mount Shields/Logan Pass, Sol 957 (2015)

SERIES M - OBJECTS — Curiosity at Sol 1452 (2016)

SERIES N - STRUCTURES / STATUES — Curiosity at Sol 1285 (2016)

SERIES O - PIPES — Curiosity at Ireson Hill, SOL 1598 (2017)

SERIES P - RUINS / WALL / STATUE — Perseverance at Sol 916 (2023)

SERIES Q - OBJECTS — Curiosity at Sol 1285 (2016)

SERIES R - STRUCTURE — Curiosity at the Murray Buttes, Sol 1454 (2016)

SERIES S - STRUCTURE / STATUE — Curiosity at Sol 1348 (2016)

SERIES T - OBJECTS — Curiosity at Mount Shields/Logan Pass, Sol 957 (2015)

SERIES U - STRUCTURES — Curiosity at Windjana Drilling Site, Sol 613 (2014)

SERIES V - STATUE — Curiosity at Sol 1375 (2016)

SERIES W - RUINS - Curiosity at Sol 1375 (2016)

SERIES X - STRUCTURAL ANOMALY — Curiosity at Sol 1348 (2016)

SERIES Y - STRUCTURE — Curiosity at Naukluft Plateau, Sol 1302 (2016)

SERIES Z - MULTIPLE STRUCTURES — Curiosity at the Vera Rubin Ridge (2017)

NOTE: It appears that the following image cannot be found anymore on official sites. The author analysed and archived this image years ago.

PART 2 — HALLUCINATIONS GONE WILD

SERIES 1 - ANOMALY — Curiosity at Murray Buttes, Sol 1429 (2016)

SERIES 2 - ANOMALY — Curiosity at Gale Crater, Sols 64-74 (2012)

SERIES 3 - ANOMALY — Viking Lander Program (1976-1977)

SERIES 4 - ANOMALY — Curiosity at the Kimberley Formation, Sol 551 (2014)

SERIES 5 - ANOMALY — Curiosity at the Rocknest Position (2012)

SERIES 6 - NONE

SERIES 7 - RUINS — Curiosity at the Kimberley Formation, Sol 551 (2014)

SERIES 8 - ANOMALY — Curiosity at Rocknest Formation, Sol 64 (2012)

SERIES 9 - ANOMALY — Curiosity at Lower Mount Sharp, Sol 1115 (2015)

SERIES 10 - ANOMALY — Viking Lander Program (1976-1977)

SERIES 11 - ANOMALIES — Curiosity at the Shaler Outcrop, Sol 120 (2013)

SERIES 12 - OBJECT — Curiosity at Sol 1375 (2016)

SERIES 13 - ANOMALY — Curiosity at the Naukluft Plateau, Sol 343 (2013)

SERIES 14 - ANOMALY — Curiosity at the Naukluft Plateau, Sol 1278 (2016)

SERIES 15 - STATUE / STRUCTURE — Curiosity at Rocknest (Gale Crater), Sol 64 (2012)

PART 3 — ROCK FORMATIONS (with a pinch of shadows and weird angles)

SERIES A - STRUCTURES — Celebrating Perseverance (2021)

NOTE: To celebrate the landing of its Perseverance rover, NASA launched a “Photo Booth” allowing visitors to upload a photo of themselves over a Martian landscape. Below is one of the Mars images used for this photo booth.

It goes without saying that I immediately went to work investigating some “rock formations” located in the background.

SERIES B - STRUCTURES — Curiosity at Teal Ridge, Sol 2440 (2019)

SERIES C - STRUCTURES DELIBERATELY BLURRED — Perseverance at Sol 193 (2021)

SERIES D - INDUSTRIAL INSTALLATION: Curiosity at Teal Ridge, Sol 2440 (2019)

Chapter X — THE ARTICLE AND THE SILENCE

Pounded by the effects of multiple hallucinations, I let loose my indignation in a first version of the following article in 2020 and in a second version two years later in both French and English. It was sent, loaded with what my sickness made me believe was “visual evidence” of life on Mars, to numerous media in various countries, to a few reporters and other individuals, as well as to 338 elected members of the Canadian parliament and 125 elected members of Québec’s National Assembly. The resulting general silence was viewed by my troubled mind as further proof of the point I was making. It is only now that, cleansed of my malady, I can understand the lack of interest.

I was in the process of writing this third version when I saw the light and decided instead to confess my heresy. It is reproduced here to show readers how a conspiracy theory can sometimes take the appearances of an enlightened wizard graciously offering to guide your steps all the way to your doom.

ARTICLE — THIS CONSPIRACY IS NOT A THEORY

Warning: The following text, written in fits of frustration, contains nasty ideas, offensive words and ridiculous allegations about a non-existent conspiracy. Readers’ discretion is advised.

The race is ongoing to find microbial life in the solar system. Time is running and new players - States and private interests - are joining the exploration of Mars³⁴. These developments are making the microbe thing a rather pressing endeavour if the ruling elites and the cream of society are to find a face-saving way to free themselves of the accumulated weight of denials and lies about extraterrestrial life.

“Breakthroughs are available to those who can remove one of the truth’s protective layers.” (Neil Armstrong, astronaut, first human to set foot on the Moon)³⁵

The announcement of the discovery of microbial life on a celestial body, as opposed to that of intelligent life, would have the double benefit of showing that science and space agencies can deliver, if only partly, on what has long been expected by open minds, while it would avoid far-reaching repercussions on the governing institutions of this world and, not least, on the founding principles of organised religion and the idea of the centrality of the human experience in the universe. We are, after all, talking about microbes, which would be evidence of some life out there, but more importantly a reassuring sign for those who still cling to the belief that they are the only thinking bipeds made in God’s image (or, for the less lucky, from a simple rib³⁶).

While the attention of the newstainment media, of many scientists and millions of neophytes around the world would be directed at playful microbes on Enceladus, Europa or Titan, members of the deep State could concentrate their efforts on one central objective: Keeping the larger truth’s protective layers firmly in place until it is deemed safe to let go (gradual disclosure). Unless, of course, the truth is suddenly forced on everyone from somewhere else, but that’s another story for another time.

For now, the extraordinary implications of what has been found on Mars - and how a few chosen elite circles are dealing with it - must remain, if not squarely under wraps, at least blurred by an imposing cloud of plausible deniability.

WAITING FOR DISCLOSURE

For a great many people, the existence of extraterrestrial life has always been a certainty, and most of them fully expected to witness a revelation during their lifetime. But they could never have imagined that this reasonable expectation would hit such a thick wall, erected brick by brick through an assortment of denials from authoritative voices in government and in the scientific community, with the complicit silence of corporate media providing the mortar.

Nor did their expectation find a satisfying answer in the study of UFOs. It should be said, though, that the work of leaders and personalities of this eclectic community greatly contributed to keeping the subject alive and, more recently, even brought it back at the forefront of public consciousness with valuable undertakings, such as James Fox’s films “I Know What I Saw” (2009)³⁷ and “The Program” (2024)³⁸, as well as the largely publicised disclosure, supported by official videos, that military pilots were more or less regularly observing UFOs that displayed extraordinary flight properties³⁹.

But while truthseekers, including this author, were repeatedly trying to alert society about the existence of stupefying “anomalies” on Mars, with the only result that we were attacked and laughed at, some other quarters spent their time recycling more or less entertaining stories about decades-old UFO sightings and abductions. The public was fed an endless series of variations on the Roswell Incident, which took place a whopping 75 years ago, but barely a word was uttered about the exceptional nature, let alone the extraordinary implications, of the visual signs of life on Mars that have been piling up in the last 15 years or so. This is a rather troubling picture.

Online, a few sincere efforts have been eclipsed by a celebration of tawdry jokes and made-up stories about Aliens and UFOs, supported by questionable “documentaries” starring adventurers in search of extraterrestrials in the dark who never find anything of interest, and outlandish videos claiming, for example, to show a spaceship over a city when that spaceship had been screen-grabbed from a science-fiction movie or an online game.

It goes without saying that this festival of bad taste has blurred the line between truth and falsehood and contributed by leaps and bounds to the discrediting of the entire matter, with the unavoidable consequence that people of good will, first inclined to look at it with an open mind, have now turned their backs on an enterprise they associate with cheap spectacle, especially when there is no State representative or scholarly group to back it up through official channels.

THE DECEPTION AND THE ARROGANCE

Obviously, the ruling elites and complicit “debunkers” tasked with keeping a lid on the truth could not have hoped for a more propitious environment to pursue a campaign of blanket denial and lies. The idea that “there is nothing on Mars” has been so well planted in the public mind that space agencies and the news media don’t even bother to look at or investigate the visual evidence sent to them, much less publish it for the public to see.

I should note here that my repeated attempts at communicating this visual evidence to politicians, as well as to the media in Great-Britain, France, the United States, Canada and Québec were repeatedly ignored and sometimes even blocked. Theirs is a stance not dissimilar to that of an adversary who knows he’s got an insurmountable advantage over you and does not need to put much of an effort into the fight. The thinking seems to be that if your assertions are ignored or laughed at long enough, they will flutter away and you will finally turn your attention to other, more useful, occupations.

They are, after all, well aware of the success their campaigns of denial and disinformation have had in the population. The supposed “fact” that there are only rocks on Mars has been so completely accepted by the public that trying to convince people of the contrary is akin to shouting in the desert. A good illustration of this state of affairs is the peremptory reply I got from an otherwise educated and intelligent woman:

“I will believe it when they [the State] tell us about it.”

There you go: Citizens in good standing can enjoy the relatively sweet life provided in part by Big Brother, and in return they must wait for the State and experts on its payroll to tell them what to believe and when to start believing it. Anything else coming from non-official or non-authorised channels must be rejected immediately, and annoying questions should be avoided, unless one wants to be denounced as a fool. What you get in the end is an oblivious flock, already gripped by a non-ending series of distractions and inflated “crises”, that refuses to even consider the possibility that what you are putting in front of their eyes could actually be the real thing.

This is how society surrenders to deception and looks the other way while unwritten rules of silence extend their venomous tentacles everywhere. It follows that people having to go anywhere near the accursed file suddenly feel a bit concerned for their career and reputation, or for the research funds they hope to get from the State. The only time the silence is broken is during oddball-news segments of television shows - always delivered with that awkward laugh - or when some condescending pricks in the media get the green light to make fun of and discredit people who have the audacity to question the official truth.

To put it succinctly, the reasonable expectation of a disclosure has been smothered to death by the confluence of various efforts and the complicit silence of a great many. A generation or two of believers are going to their tombs not knowing the actual truth, because State agents and associated erudite have decided that we are not ready for it.

DEBUNKERS NEED A GOOD DEBUNKING

If you were to make a list of individuals with academic titles as long as an arm who have repeatedly assured us that “no sign of extraterrestrial life has been found”, and another list of media and reporters peddling this message without ever questioning it, you would end up with a book in your hands as thick as a telephone directory.

Their denials, occasionally sprinkled with a good dose of haughtiness, and their attacks on the credibility, and sometimes the mental health, of people who have the audacity to doubt the authorised truths, are an indication of how the fields have been sown and the minds softened up just enough for one single message to be assimilated at the expense of all others: There is no sign of life on Mars, only rocks and rock formations. Whatever you think you are seeing is nothing more than a trick of the light, a shadow, the Sun’s reflection or a weird angle.

We are a long way from the infamous “swamp gases” of the 1960s used to discredit UFO witnesses. Still, try telling the media, or the public, that there is ample visual evidence showing more than mere shadows and weird angles on Mars, and your case will be dealt with swiftly. You become a disturbing conduit of idiotic conspiracy theories and a pitiful individual, or group of individuals, in urgent need of a therapy to cure the furious effects of multiple hallucinations.

This 3-D campaign (Denial, Disinformation, Discredit) is nothing new. It is not a strictly modern response to a strictly modern set of questions, but a well-rounded effort mounted on the back of decades of practice. Here’s what a Michigan man, who long ago appeared on television to talk about the UFO he had seen, said later when he was asked by a reporter if he regretted having come forward:

“Yes I am. I am sorry, because… Not that it’s not the truth… I just… It’s the reaction… I just… Leave me alone… If the thing lands right there near that pump, I won’t say a word.”⁴⁰

This exchange took place in 1966, long before that man’s reputation could be trashed on social media by the usual trolling mob or made into a laughing stock in the news media by a platoon of science reporters and paid debunkers. Yet, the witness was visibly shaken and quite ready to promise that from then on he would remain silent. The poor man had just experienced a close encounter of the pathetic kind: That he should be less apprehensive of UFOs and cosmic cousins, and much more concerned about the scorn of his fellow humans.

It must be saying something about humanity that some 60 years later, in the scientific XXIst century, the belief in flying angels, in godly voices jumping out of burning bushes and in the rise of putrefied corpses from their tombs is still considered a virtue deserving tax exemptions and a comfy place near the circles of international power, whereas any claim of the existence of intelligent beings on a neighbouring planet - even with visual evidence - is invariably denounced as “batshit crazy stuff” deserving nothing but ridicule and expensive therapy in a modern version of a confessional.

Is this the sort of intellectual prowess our society wants to bequeath future generations?

And don’t think for a moment that you will get somewhere by appealing for the recognition of your ability to think and make judgements independent of specialised knowledge. In all fairness, experts do have a point about scientific theories offering more reliable measures of the unseen than any human “intuition” based on practical experience, but we have yet to find conclusive evidence that Nature intended for experts, science reporters and assorted debunkers to be the sole proprietors of the capacity to observe, to reason and to deduce.

That some of them would associate our studying of Mars images with a search for “jelly doughnuts and alien-built monuments to Elvis Presley” (Amanda Kooser, in C-NET, 4 August, 2015) is not just an attempt at being cute, it is a warning to any person who would have the impudence to come forward with ideas and arguments that go against the official truths they are peddling around.

The arrogance of their interventions is sometimes so explicit that we could be forgiven to think that they must have had the pleasure of long walks on Mars and been able to see with their own eyes that the planet is populated only by rocks. Of course, I cannot claim such frolicking adventures for myself, but, like other truthseekers, I did spend countless hours in the last decade analysing, corner to corner, inch by inch, foreground to background, hundreds of official Mars images. Which brings me to the question: When was the last time, if ever, those “debunkers” and those “science reporters” sat at a computer for several hours to analyse just a few images sent back by the Mars rovers?

Understand here that the point of my article is not to engage in long debates on quantum mechanics, or on the type of weather Elon Musk’s Martian children should be expecting in the month of June, nor on the scientific validity of educated theories about the universe. I wouldn’t be able to do that. I am not equipped for that. I am not a scientist. I would never have been able to predict the shape of Ultima Thule. But this obvious limitation should in no way imply that we must remain silent when lordly individuals use their scintillating titles in public venues to impeach the sanity of some and insult the intelligence of others.

The point, here, is to denounce the rupture that exists between the strong visual evidence of life on Mars accumulated to this day and the repeated statements made by authoritative figures about Mars offering “nothing out of the ordinary”.

That experts and debunkers would, however politely, say to our faces that we are a bunch of hallucinating morons, just when structures, statues, ruins and other objects on Mars are jumping out of photos, is an insult to the intelligence that no one should take lying down. If people’s lack of specialised knowledge means that they do not possess the requisite background to take part in the erudite deliberations of some circles, it does not entail that what comes out of their mouths is gobbledygook, or that they are incapable of making a distinction between a rock and an intelligently-made structure, or less capable of drawing inferences from their own observations.

How can they affirm that “no sign of life, past or present, has been found” when truthseekers, who spent a serious amount of time analysing the images from Mars, end up being convinced beyond a doubt of the past existence of an advanced civilisation on the red planet? When fields of debris and ruins all over Mars seem to be pointing towards some violent and destructive event or events?

How can they parade from one microphone to another and declare, with that smirk on their faces, that claims of life on Mars are just a fantasy constructed in the minds of a few troubled people who have fallen victims to the very same hallucinations not once, not twice, not ten times, but hundreds of times in a matter of a few years?

In the end, though, we must concede that the official propaganda has been highly successful. With the result that most people are falling for the official denials and getting in line behind the authorised gospel. They will refuse, quite obstinately as it turns out, to acknowledge the validity of any sign of life if the image is somewhat blurred, even when the outlines of the object itself or of the structure itself should be clear enough for anyone bothering to look closely. The entirety of the evidence is rejected because the rest of the image “is not clear”. But if the image is pellucid, and the object or the structure cannot be denied, you will be told that it must be a fake, because it’s too clear to be true. You’ll get a shrug, and the matter won’t go any further.

You can always try to explain that the signs of life are often found far in the background, and that many of these areas have been deliberately smudged, blurred, colour-brushed, or inundated with pixels in an attempt to hide the most obvious, you’ll get another shrug of indifference. You will be left there with nothing more to do besides waiting with them for the State and its experts to tell you when it’s time to believe.

Occasionally, the obstinate refusal to accept the validity of any visual evidence of life on Mars rests on considerations that have nothing to do with the quality of a photo. One person who saw some of my findings could only find this to say: “No, no, no. Even if what you are showing me is true, I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to hear about it. Jesus is our only saviour!”

THEY COME BY THE DOZENS!

The undeniable success of the official propaganda and the conspiracy of silence unleashed on the world are that much loathsome when we know that it is not at all necessary to come up with 10 or 100 structures to make the point. Only one structure, only one statue, only one object, is sufficient. And, on Mars, they come by the dozens! So we must insist: If only one of the visual signs presented thus far is ultimately accorded the status it deserves of indisputable proof of life on Mars, the conclusion would be unavoidable: Earthlings are not, and they have never been, the only center of attention in the Universe, and they have been lied to for eons.

I submit to you that we have, by far, surpassed this threshold of one, and this threshold is precisely why the ruling elites and their collaborators are compelled to promptly shoot down any credible visual evidence before it can reach a large public. “Debunkers” spring into action and the news media become saturated with articles trumpeting the official explanations: From the Sun’s “reflection on a rock” to a “strange shadow”, to a “weird angle”. Case closed.

No one in a position to question these modern versions of the infamous “swamp gases” actually comes forward. Silence prevails. For it is impossible for the cream of society to admit one piece of evidence without immediately bringing down the entire deception and forcing higher ups to explain why they lied or kept silent for so long. Thus the most revealing anomalies on Mars must be ignored, and the few that somehow find their way to a large public are promptly denounced and their discoverers are dragged through the mud.

To put a fine point on it, no more than one structure, one statue, or one object is needed to expose the fact that what Earthlings have been told in the last 50 years about the absence of life on Mars – or elsewhere for that matter - is nothing less than a scandalous lie constructed on a heap of malodorous muck. Maybe then, once this is realised, a painful but necessary question will be asked: Is it possible that all those people, experts and less experts, claiming to know for sure that there never was any life on Mars, and who deliver scorn against anyone claiming the contrary, didn’t even bother to look at the images sent back by the rovers? Or is it possible that they have indeed seen what’s there, but, for whatever reason, became complicit in the greatest cover-up in human history? Whatever the case may be, these debunkers need a good debunking.

PRESSING QUESTIONS

“But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited? Are we or they Lords of the world?⁴¹

The visual evidence found to this day gives rise to many questions, some more pressing than others: What is it exactly that has led governments and their servants to conclude that the truth must be hidden under “protective layers”? Did multiple rovers sent to Mars in the last 50 years make a series of discoveries disturbing enough to provoke fits of anxiety in political and scientific constellations?

An exercise of abductive reasoning points to the possibility that world authorities and their associated elites are distressed by the unpredictable reaction in many quarters of the world once they let loose this mind-bending, world-altering truth, which could shatter the history of humanity such as it has been taught and universally accepted. Let’s just say that the sudden and substantial budget increases for the military (including the Space Forces) and the necessary rewriting of all the sacred books would not be simple matters.

But there are other possible causes for concern. Are collapsed structures and visible destruction on Mars the result of a planet-wide natural catastrophe? Of an “outside intervention”? Of the mass suicide of an advanced civilisation brought down by its own repeated acts of belligerence? Was Percival Lowell right when he published his theory about a civilisation on Mars that had tried to counter the obliterating effects of climate change? Was physicist John Brandenburg on to something when he claimed to have found evidence of nuclear explosions on Mars? Is the red planet a lost paradise wherefrom our mothers and fathers were expelled, forced to start over and overcome suffering and sickness on a strange Earth?

Any confirmation of what’s implied in these interrogations would create shockwaves on Earth, a planet, it should be pointed out, still characterised in the XXIst century by periodical outbursts of hatred and violence towards anything or anyone “different”, or by vicious wars carried out in the name of conquest, imperial power, religious proselytism, financial greed and blind revenge.

It cannot be denied that humans, through their States, possess an enduring inclination towards the identification of potential enemies. Our leaders spend time organising and playing war games which, inevitably, will be replicated on other worlds⁴² (even if, in the meantime, an incurable optimism motivates us to leave messages of peace on the Moon and send greetings and songs into outer space). Lest we forget, humanity’s history is a large sun-drenched boulevard bordered on each side by long lines of cadavers sacrificed to bigoted views⁴³. Who’s to say if horror movies, on other planets, are not about Earthlings landing in their people’s potato fields?

We should not be surprised to learn that fanatics are already hard at work spreading the idea that Aliens, whatever they look like and wherever they come from, are “the envoys of Satan”. Next thing you know, they will make loud calls for some powerful countries to send “missionary forces” out there to push their idea of god down the throats of the newly found heretics. Talk about a good start for cosmic diplomacy!

Still, not even this sordid feature of humanity can justify the betrayal of people’s right to know. Yet, almost 50 years after the first Viking Lander touched the surface of Mars, it is painfully clear that the full truth remains inaccessible to the great majority. It is hidden under the protective layers Neil Armstrong talked about, and in all appearances it has been banned from the jolly prose of reporters too busy anyway covering what’s fun to print (the Flat Earth movement received more press coverage in a few months than all the visual evidence of life on Mars has in the last 15 years).

OBSERVED, VERIFIED, CONFIRMED

“Truth goes through three stages: First it’s ridiculed, then opposed strongly, and finally it becomes self-evident.” (Prof. Laura Mersini-Houghton, cosmologist and physical theorist)⁴⁴

Tackling these questions openly has become a necessary undertaking. The enterprise of disclosure would greatly benefit from the organisation of a series of public discussions between thinkers and experts (independent of the powers in place), discussions which would be supported by a large circulation of the best visual evidence of life on Mars. The main objective of these conferences would be to offer some elements of clarification to questions raised by the visual indications of life, as well as to questions raised by the tenacious silence and the repeated denials trotted out by officials.

Among those indications of life are what looks like pipelines and structures of various sizes in more than one area on Mars, many of which are buried in Martian sand while some others – surprise! – appear to be intact. Top billing should be accorded to the rehabilitation of Percival Lowell’s ideas about Martians trying to counter the destructive effects of severe, planetary-wide, climate change. His theory, it should be recalled, was viewed as “nonsense” by experts when it first saw the light of day over 100 years ago, and is still regarded as such today (officially, that is).

In closing, let me say that I am acutely aware of the deceptive atmosphere of our times, and I do not doubt that my suggestions, although meant to be a step in the direction of disclosure, must be made without much illusion. For it is all but certain that in many quarters people will continue to prefer silence and denial. They will not hesitate to slap this article, and the images it contains, with the derogative stamp of “conspiracy theory”, and conformists will be invited to stay away from it unless they’re just searching for a good laugh. Well, then, let them have their fun.

In the meantime, I submit to you that the conspiracy of silence visited in this article has long ago ceased to be a mere “theory”. For the silence can be observed, the silence can be verified, and the silence can be confirmed. It is loud enough to be heard by people who are willing to raise their heads above the overwhelming flow of distractions and silly stories we are subjected to, on a daily basis, by those who were supposed to keep us informed.

SUGGESTIONS: BOOKS, DOCUMENTS, VIDEOS

PERCIVAL LOWELL

“One of the things that makes Mars of such transcendent interest to man is the foresight it affords of the course earthly evolution is to pursue. On our own world we are able only to study our present and our past; in Mars we are able to glimpse, in some sort, our future.”

— LOWELL, Percival, “Mars and its Canals”, Part IV, Chapter XXXII: Conclusion, p. 376 (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1906), digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007.

— “The Bizarre Beliefs of Astronomer Percival Lowell” (Kat ESCHNER, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 March, 2017).

— Video: “Astronomer Percival Lowell looked at Mars in 1877. Here’s what he discovered” (Audioburst) (01:24).

TRAGEDY ON A PLANET

“Then, after some indeterminate period Mars suffered a bizarre nuclear disaster. (...) The Lyot impact occurred late in Mars history near Cydonia Mensa and appears to have collapsed Mars climate.”

— “Evidence for a Large Anomalous Nuclear Explosions [sic] in Mars Past” (J.E. BRANDENBURG, document online.

— BRANDENBURG, John E., “Life and Death on Mars - The New Mars Synthesis” (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2011), 324 p.

— BRANDENBURG, John E., “Death on Mars: The Discovery of a Planetary Nuclear Massacre” (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2015), 276 p.

— Biographical notes and links to Brandenburg’s books: The Space Show.

— Video: “Did Aliens Nuke Mars? - NASA’s Unexplained Files” (Science Channel) (08:00)

COSMIC OVERLORDS

“As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness about it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal.”

— Ezekiel 1:4 (English Standard Version), Bible Hub.

“The Anunnaki gods were worshipped by the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia long before the Greeks praised the Olympian gods or the Egyptians prayed to Osiris.”

“While Zeus and the rest of the Greek gods resided at the top of Mount Olympus, and Osiris was the god of the earth and the underworld, the Anunnaki were winged deities who lived up in the heavens and came down to Earth to decide on people’s destiny.”

— “Anunnaki: Mythological Sumerian Gods or Space Aliens?” (Philip CHRYSOPOULOS, Greek Reporter, 17 May, 2024).

“I claim that our forefathers received visits from the universe in the remote past, even though I do not yet know who these extraterrestrial intelligences were or from which planet they came. I nevertheless proclaim that these ‘strangers’ annihilated part of mankind existing at the time and produced a new, perhaps the first, homo sapiens.”

— DÄNIKEN, Erich von, “Chariots of the Gods” (Introduction, p. xxv), 50th Anniversary Edition (Berkley, New York, 2018), Translated to English (1969) by Michael Heron.

— HANCOCK, Graham, “Fingerprints of the Gods” (Crown Publishing Group, 1996).

— Video: “Have Aliens Been Visiting Earth for Millions of Years? (Ancient Aliens - History) (37:12).

— Video: “BAM, Builders of the Ancient Mysteries – Traces of an Ancient Civilization?” (Jayan Films) (2:19:20).

SIGNS OF A PRESENCE

“Astronomers have discovered over 4,000 exoplanets, or planets orbiting other stars, a number that doubles every two years. Some of these exoplanets are considered habitable, since they are close to the Earth’s mass and at the right distance from their stars to have water on their surfaces. The nearest of these habitable planets are less than 20 light years away in our cosmic ‘back yard’. Each of these Earth-like planets is a potential biological experiment, and there have been billions of years since they formed for life to develop and for intelligence and technology to emerge.”

— Chris IMPEY, “I’m an astronomer and I think aliens may be out there - but UFO sightings aren’t persuasive” (The Conversation, 4 December, 2020).

“Three important lines of discovery have been fuelling the growing belief that we are not, after all, alone in the universe. Many organic molecules have been discovered in space, suggesting that the building blocks of life are widespread; planets have been found orbiting other stars, raising the possibility that some may harbour life; and living organisms have been found alive and well in habitats on Earth so hostile that survival on Mars, or even other Solar System bodies, seems quite feasible.”

— “Life, the universe and everything discussed in Frascati” (European Space Agency - ESA, 29 May, 2001).

“The continuing lack of transparency about UFOs in the US is causing concern not only about the existence of aliens but about the psychological fallout of uncovering a conspiracy.”

— Stuart CLARK, “‘It only takes one to be real and it changes humanity for ever’: what if we’ve been lied to about UFOs?” (The Guardian, 14 January, 2024).

“This disparity between the public’s insatiable appetite for fictional alien narratives and its relative disinterest in the accounts of UAP is itself a fascinating topic. It demonstrates a keen public interest in alien themes, yet it remains a largely subliminal interest, perhaps due to the conscious mind’s desire to avert what psychologists call, quote, cognitive dissonance. This awkward term describes a mechanism our minds employ to protect us from conflicting information that could cause debilitating stress and anxiety. It is not hard to see why conscious recognition of an alien presence would for many people prove anxiety producing, disruptive and difficult to reconcile with society’s prevailing view of reality.”

— Video: “Christopher Mellon ‘We Are Not Alone’ - A Reflection on UAP & Humanity’s Cosmic Context” (Disclosure Foundation) (07:53)

“Mars remains the best candidate for the breakthrough discovery of an extraterrestrial organism. In the early solar system four billion years ago, it may well have offered better prospects for life than the Earth.”

— “Extraterrestrial Life” (European Space Agency, ESA) (undated).

— FRANK, Adam, “The Little Book of Aliens” (Harper, 2023), 240 p.

— “NASA rover finds strongest evidence yet of ancient life on Mars” (CBC News/Thomson Reuters, 10 September, 2025).

— “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (Office of the Director of National Intelligence), 25 June, 2021.

— “Finding Our Place in the Cosmos - From Galileo to Sagan and Beyond” (Collection, Library of Congress).

— Video: “NASA & UFO controversy: Private briefings, pilot insights & report findings” (NewsNation) (31:44)

— Video: “Pentagon Releases ‘UFO’ Videos Filmed By US Navy Pilots” (The Telegraph) (02:27).

— Documents and videos released by the US government in 2026.

— Documentary Film: “I Know What I Saw” (James Fox, Director) (IMBd).

— Documentary Film: “The Program” (James Fox, Director) (IMBd).

CONTACT

A document produced by the Future Policing Institute discusses the “far-reaching ramifications for all aspects of society” of the sudden disclosure of a contact with intelligent alien life. Readers are encouraged to visit the Institute’s website for the complete text (link below):

⦿ “Governments might conceal the existence of extraterrestrials for many reasons. These include: National security; possible panic in the public; international relations; control of information; protecting extraterrestrial life; scientific and technological uncertainty; religious and cultural sensitivities; legal and ethical considerations; economic implications; preparations for disclosure.”

⦿ “Disclosure of extraterrestrial life by government would be an extraordinary event with far-reaching ramifications for various aspects of society – not least the police. The following implications are hypothetical and depend on the specifics of extraterrestrial life and its discovery. These implications illustrate possible challenges and considerations policing agencies would need to address after disclosure occurs: Public safety and crowd control; new laws and regulations; training and education; international cooperation; technological advancements; intelligence and counterintelligence; cultural and social dynamics; ethical and moral considerations; environmental and planetary security; psychological impact on officers.”

⦿ “Disclosure of extraterrestrial life could also have profound ramifications on various religions, possibly leading to reevaluation of beliefs, doctrines and interpretations of sacred texts. The effects may differ widely depending on both its nature and specific teachings of each faith tradition. Some potential effects include: Reinterpretation of religious texts; challenging beliefs; new religions could evolve [new movements or sects]; maintaining public order [if disclosure leads ‘to social unrest, protests or conflict among religious groups’...]; hate crimes and discrimination … related to belief about extraterrestrial life; training and education … to understand religious and cultural dynamics at play…”

⦿ “Worst Case Scenario: Widespread panic and civil unrest; cults and extremist groups; cybersecurity threats; international conflict; biosecurity risks; resource allocation challenges; legal and ethical dilemmas; public mistrust; psychological effects on officers; global security threats.”

— “After Disclosure: Implications for Policing When We Find Out We’re Not Alone In The Universe” (Future Policing Institute).

“Putting our hands on a piece of alien technology would change the way we perceive our place in the universe, our aspirations for space and our philosophical and theological beliefs. Our psychological shock would resemble the one encountered by my daughters when they met kids smarter than they were on their first day in the kindergarten.”

— Avi LOEB, “What Should We Do if Extraterrestrials Show Up?” (Scientific American, 15 April, 2021).

“It would be a transformative event for humankind, one the world’s nations are surely prepared for. Or are they? ‘Look at the mess we made when Covid hit. We’d be like headless chickens’, says Dr John Elliott, a computational linguist at the University of St Andrews. ‘We cannot afford to be ill-prepared, scientifically, socially, and politically rudderless, for an event that could happen at any time and which we cannot afford to mismanage’.”

— Ian SAMPLE, “If aliens contact humanity, who decides what we do next?” (The Guardian, 29 December, 2022).

“With few exceptions, most of the discussions about Seti (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) tend to stay in the domain of the hard sciences. But the implications of Seti extend well beyond biology and physics, reaching to the humanities and philosophy and even theology. As Carl Sagan has pointed out in (the now out-of-print book) The Cosmic Question, ‘space exploration leads directly to religious and philosophical questions.’ We would need to consider whether our faiths could accommodate these new beings – or if it should shake our beliefs to the core.”

— Brandon AMBROSINO, “If we made contact with aliens, how would religions react?” (BBC, 16 December, 2016).

“... At this time, we cannot rule out the possibility that one or more ETI exist in the Milky Way, nor can we dismiss the possibility that we may detect, communicate, or in other ways have contact with them in the future. Contact with ETI would be one of the most important events in the history of humanity, so the possibility of contact merits our ongoing attention, even if we believe the probability of contact to be low.

A central concern regarding possible contact with ETI is whether the contact would be beneficial, neutral or harmful to humanity. This concern will help us decide, among other things, whether or not we should intentionally message ETI and what we should say if we do.”

— “Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity?”, Seth D. BAUM, Jacob D. HAQQ MISRA, and Shawn D. DOMAGAL-GOLDMAN (Actra Astronautica, 22 April, 2011), PDF document online (33 p.)

— DICK, Steven J., “Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact” (Cambridge University Press, April, 2018).

— WEINTRAUB, David A., “Religions and Extraterrestrial Life - How Will We Deal With It?” (Springer, July, 2014).

— HECKENLIVELY, Ken, MAZZOLA, Michael, “Catastrophic Disclosure: The Deep State, Aliens, and the Truth” (Post Hill Press, November, 2025), 352 p.

— STEINFELD, Alan, “Making Contact – Preparing for the New Realities of Extraterrestrial Existence” (Penguin Random House, Audiobook, May, 2021).

— Sarah SCOLES, “If Alien Life Is Found, How Should Scientists Break The News?” (Scientific American, 15 April, 2024).

— “Meeting extraterrestrials: Scenarios of first contact from the perspective of exosociology”, Andreas ANTON, John ELLIOTT, Michael SCHETSCHE (Science Direct/Actra Astronautica, February, 2024).

— “How Will We React to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life?”, Jung Yul KWON, Hannah L. BERCOVICI, Katja CUNNINGHAM, Michael E.W. VARNUM (Frontiers in Psychology, 9 January, 2018).

— “Potential cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact” (Wikipedia).

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

“The increasing export of authoritarian principles – through both technology and regulatory practices – undermines institutional trust and threatens democratic norms. This dynamic raises critical questions about the capacity of various states to develop AI regulations that genuinely serve the public interest.”

— Sabhanaz Rashid DIYA, “How Authoritarian Value Systems Undermine Global AI Governance” (Centre for International Governance Innovation, Policy Brief No. 187, July 2024) (PDF document online).

“To police speech, AI is often applied to identify and remove content considered illegal or undesirable, both by states and intermediaries. [...] While AI-based filtering of user-generated content may thus be appealing, AI tools are prone to mistakes. In addition to deploying AI themselves, states mandate private actors to monitor and remove content based on vague definitions within strict timeframes. Such outsourcing of human rights protection to revenue-driven private actors may incentivize over-blocking of legitimate speech and raises additional concerns about the rule of law and discrimination.”

— “Freedom of the media and artificial intelligence” (Julia HAAS, Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media). PDF Document online.

“Around the world, a new breed of digital eyes is keeping watch over citizens. Although mass surveillance isn’t new, AI-powered systems are providing governments more efficient ways of keeping tabs on the public. [...] Among other things, frail non-democratic governments can use AI-enabled monitoring to detect and track individuals and deter civil disobedience before it begins, thereby bolstering their authority.”

“To counter the decay of democracies caused by AI-powered surveillance, the international community will need to establish ethical frameworks and define clear limits and controls for these new, efficient tools of control and oppression.”

— Abi OLVERA, “How AI surveillance threatens democracy everywhere” (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 7 June, 2024).

“The opportunities that artificial intelligence offers our economies, labour markets and lives are immense and continue to amaze us. Yet hardly a week goes by without news alerting us to real, indisputable risks that arise from the use, or misuse, of AI technology. This may be the result of AI developments being deployed prioritizing commercial or geopolitical interests rather than protecting and promoting human rights and human dignity.”

— “Ethical Impact Assessment – A Tool of the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence” (Gabriela RAMOS, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO).

— “AI - The good, the bad and the scary”, Florence GONSALVES, Jama GREEN, Alex PARRISH, Tonia MOXLEY, Chelsea SEEBER, Ashley WILLIAMSON (Virginia Tech Engineer, Fall 2023).

— Video: “Surveillance State 2.0 – AI’s Role in the Ultimate Dystopian Nightmare” (Curious Quantum) (18:36).

— Video: “This is how surveillance uses AI research” (Nature video) (08:05).

PATERNALISM AND THE PANDEMIC

“... We see tension between public health recommendations and a public wary of a ‘nanny state’ bent on meddling in their lives. I have written about this before, participating in a debate with Boston University emeritus professor Leonard Glantz about the role of paternalism in public health. In that exchange, I argued that paternalism can be a positive force supporting the health of populations, provided it is informed by pragmatism and moderation.”

“I still hold this view. However, the context has shifted. In embracing a pragmatic paternalism, public health is tasked with using its power responsibly, toward the common good. In recent years, I would argue, it has fallen short of this task. During Covid-19, at times we saw public health use its power arbitrarily, without regard for the data.”

— GALEA, Sandro, “Book Excerpt: The Limits of ‘Paternalistic’ Public Health” (Undark, 22 December, 2023), from his book “Within Reason – A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time” (University of Chicago Press, 2023), 304 p.

“Whatever one’s view of the proper role of government as it relates to public health, another question must be posed: when, if ever, does public health provision as a public good supersede the protection of civil liberties as a fundamental role of the state? The initial wake of the pandemic saw disturbing support for sacrificing civil liberties in the name of public health.”

— Gina MILLER JOHNSON, “The Danger of Benevolent Paternalism: Socialization and the Role of Government” (Econlib/The Library of Economics and Liberty, 6 July, 2020).

“In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world saw an unprecedented wave of paternalistic government public health policies being implemented around the globe...”

“... Do governments have the right to influence citizens’ behaviour through vaccine mandates, mask mandates, travel mandates, social distancing mandates, alcohol mandates, isolation mandates and stay at home mandates? Or does this create an authoritarian state, leading to infantilisation, demotivation, and severe breaches in individual autonomy and freedom?”

— Dr Willem van AARDT, “The new era of COVID-19 legal paternalism and the limitation of fundamental rights” (De Rebus, February 1, 2022).

“The COVID-19 pandemic threatens more than the lives and the livelihoods of people throughout the world. It is also a political crisis that threatens the future of liberal democracy.”

“Authoritarian regimes, not surprisingly, are using the crisis to silence critics and tighten their political grip. But even some democratically elected governments are fighting the pandemic by amassing emergency powers that restrict human rights and enhance state surveillance without regard to legal constraints, parliamentary oversight, or timeframes for the restoration of constitutional order.”

— “A Call to Defend Democracy” (IDEA/International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 25 June, 2020).

— COOPER, Luke, “Authoritarian Contagion – The Global Threat to Democracy” (Bristol University Press, 2021), 160 p.

— Video: “How authoritarianism has spread since the coronavirus pandemic began” (PBS Newshour) (09:31).

THE COMING “CRISES”

From wars and climate collapse to the next killer virus, not a week goes by without the world being warned about “coming crises” of various degrees of severity and the necessity for governments to gear up for them. It won’t be too long before we get to see how paternalistic States and their agencies, in light of the freedom-suppressing powers we allowed them to use (and overuse) during the COVID pandemic, will react to the coming dramas. Should we prepare ourselves for a new sort of life under recurring curfews and restrictions on basic freedoms that no one will be allowed to question?

“While the list is not comprehensive, the 35 disruptions outlined in this report are plausible events and circumstances that could occur in the coming years. They are categorized into five domains: society, economy, environment, politics/geopolitics, and health – but their origins and impacts could span across more than one domain.”

— “Disruptions on the Horizon” (Policy Horizons Canada, 2024). Some of the 35 possible “crises” identified in this report are: Artificial intelligence runs wild; Homemade bioweapons go viral; Biodiversity is lost and ecosystems collapse; Antibiotics no longer work; Healthcare systems collapse; Civil war erupts in the United States; Democratic systems break down; World war breaks out.

“The European Union’s security environment has in many ways taken a turn for the worse in recent years. The world is more dangerous and crisis-prone. The continuation of peace cannot be taken for granted and security cannot be seen as a given, as is manifested by the increasing damage caused by climate change. We must be better prepared, not only to survive, but also to thrive in this new reality. This calls for an overhaul of the way we Europeans see the Union’s role in keeping us all secure.”

— “Preparing Europe for a more dangerous world”, Sauli NIINISTÖ, Special Adviser to the President of the European Commission (PDF online).

“A future pandemic could be swifter and more severe than COVID-19, experts say in independent report.”

— “Canada must act now to be prepared for the next health emergency, new pandemic report warns” (Nicole IRELAND, The Canadian Press/CBC, 16 October, 2024). See the “Report of the Expert Panel for the Review of the Federal Approach to Pandemic Science Advice and Research Coordination: The Time to Act is Now”.

“The pandemic has increased this uncertainty. It has imperiled every dimension of our wellbeing and amplified a sense of fear across the globe. This, in tandem with rising geopolitical tensions, growing inequalities, democratic backsliding and devastating climate change-related weather events, threatens to reverse decades of development gains, throw progress on the Sustainable Development Goals even further off track, and delay the urgent need for a greener, more inclusive and just transition.”

— António GUTERRES, Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation, Foreword to the United Nations Development Programme’s 2022 Special Report: “New threats to human security in the Anthropocene – Demanding greater solidarity” (PDF online).

“If our country falters because it is not prepared to accept losing its children – to put it bluntly – or to suffer economically as priorities shift to defense production, then we are at risk.”

“These words were spoken by General Fabien Mandon, Chief of the General Staff of the French Armed Forces, on November 18, as a special guest of the Congress of French Mayors. They had the effect of a stick of dynamite.”

— Michel GURFINKIEL, “A French General Warns of War Spreading to Europe” (The New York Sun/Middle East Forum, 21 November, 2025).

“The ‘crises’ rocking national and international affairs are likely to get worse over the next few years and could have a significant effect on the federal government and Canada’s federal police force, says an internal report prepared for the RCMP.”

— Elizabeth THOMPSON, “Canada faces a series of ‘crises’ that will test it in the coming years, RCMP warns” (CBC News, 10 March, 2024).

“The rules-based world order is in retreat and violence is on the rise, forcing countries to rethink their relationships.”

— Patrick WINTOUR, “Are we heading for another world war – or has it already started?” (The Guardian, 10 May, 2025).

“The number of lives lost around the world due to infections that are resistant to the medications intended to treat them could increase nearly 70% by 2050, a new study projects, further showing the burden of the ongoing superbug crisis.”

— Jacqueline HOWARD, “Superbug crisis could get worse, killing nearly 40 million people by 2050, study estimates” (CNN, 20 September, 2024).

FEELING ANXIOUS?

Now, try to imagine the sort of international upheaval that would grip a world already in the throes of a series of “crises” if the announcement came that contact had been made with Aliens, or, even more dramatic, that representatives of a highly advanced extraterrestrial civilisation were on their way to Earth.

This scenario of disclosure is probably not for tomorrow morning, but it is certainly an answer to those who, in a fit of astonishing naïveté, replied to my claims of the existence of signs of life on Mars with: “Oh, come on now, why would governments keep these things hidden from us?”

NOTES FROM TEXTS

1. Interviewed by Charlie Rose (27 May, 1996) about his book “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” (SAGAN, Carl, DRUYAN Ann - Random House, 1995). Video online

2. “The Project Gutenberg EBook of the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau” (In 12 Books - Privately printed for the Members of the Aldus Society - London, 1903). EBook #3913. Full text online

3. Percival Lowell (1855-1916) was an American astronomer who developed the theory that an intelligent civilisation on Mars had tried to counter the destructive effects of climate change. His ideas were promptly dismissed as nonsense.

4. American scientist and author John Brandenburg claims to have found evidence of massive nuclear explosions on Mars.

5. Genesis 6:1-4: “... when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them.” Biblia online

6. Another subject is the prevalent anxiety about what kind of treatment humans should expect from a highly intelligent alien civilisation. In “Why these scientists fear contact with Space Aliens” (NBC News, 8 February, 2017), Rebecca Boyle recalls this 2010 warning from Stephen Hawking: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

7. Rhett Butler, a fictional character in Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, was played by Clark Gable in the 1939 film of the same name (Selznick International Pictures-MGM). Gable’s character uttered the famous line: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”.

8. “If these extraterrestrials are so highly evolved, how is it that they only address people named Bubba who are hunting and fishing?” A guest on Fox News, having a good laugh about people claiming to have seen UFOs. This segment can be seen in James Fox’s 2009 film “I Know What I Saw”). (IMDb online)

9. See Mark HENDRICKSON: “Zhores Medvedev’s Life: A Chilling Reminder of How the Soviets Weaponized Psychiatry against Dissidents”, in FEE Stories (Foundation for Economic Education), 23 December, 2018 (FEE online).

10. In George Orwell’s 1949 novel, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (also published as “1984”), Newspeak is a language developed by the all-controlling Party to “limit free thought and promote the Party’s doctrines”. See Cathy LOWNE in Britannica.

11. DÄNIKEN, Erich von, “Chariots of the Gods” (p. 26), 50th Anniversary Edition, Berkley, New York, 2018; Econ-Verlag GMBH, Düsseldorf/Wien, 1968. Translated to English by Michael Heron.

12. Form of government in the XVIIIth century led by “enlightened” and “progressive” monarchs who, at the same time, fiercely rejected any attempt at questioning their decisions or their authority. See Britannica online.

13. “Ordinary people in most times and places have cared more for their security, their personal finances and the validation of their social identities than they have for the upholding of democratic norms and procedures.” (Larry M. BARTELS, “The Populist Phantom”, in Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2024, p. 122-123).

14. “An autocratic state, for example, could easily take AI systems designed to collect intelligence in combat and deploy them against dissenters or political opponents.” (Mark A. MILLEY and Eric SCHMIDT: “America isn’t ready for the War of the Future”, in Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2024). See also Freedom House’s 2023 report: “The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence” (Allie FUNK, Adrian SHAHBAZ and Kian VESTEINSSON).

15. Unless otherwise noted, I am reporting on what I witnessed in my home State of Québec during the COVID pandemic. But I do not doubt for a moment that conspirationists in other countries have themselves seen and heard troubling things.

16. See Jenn FANG, “The 2003 SARS outbreak fueled anti-Asian racism. Coronavirus doesn’t have to” (The Washington Post, 4 February, 2020 (online).

17. “Paternalism is the interference of a state or an individual with another person, against their will, and defended or motivated by a claim that the person interfered with will be better off or protected from harm.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

18. See Ben GUARINO and Joel ACHENBACH, “Virus ‘does not spread easily’ from contaminated surfaces or animals, revised CDC website states” (The Washington Post, 21 May, 2020) (online).

19. To be fair, some individuals and organisations denounced the State’s heavy hand, but these wake-up calls could be counted with the fingers of one hand and, given the atmosphere of fear and blind obedience, were as effective as a shot in the dark.

20. George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (also “1984”), published in 1949 by Secker and Warburg, “centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society” (Wikipedia online).

21. The Premier of Québec at the time, François Legault, encouraged police forces to “crank up the number” of tickets against those who did not submit, describing them as “a small minority who were putting people at risk” (Joe LOFARO, CTV News, 26 Jan., 2022) (online).

22. The abusive nature of the second curfew was denounced in some quarters, but with punishing fines of thousands of dollars, we all submitted anyway. See Verity STEVENSON, “Quebec government faces backlash for 2nd curfew” (CBC News, 4 January, 2022) (online).

23. In a rare act of protest against the Québec curfew, a woman was caught by police while “walking her husband” on a leash near their home in Sherbrooke. The couple was fined CA$3,092 (see BBC online). Of note, we still don’t know, to this day, if the husband was forced to spend the night at an animal shelter.

24. See Cilian O’BRIEN, “People are reporting on their neighbours over COVID-19 concerns” (CTV News, 28 March, 2020) (online).

25. Stasi was the secret police of East Germany, one of the most repressive States in the Communist world. It relied heavily on citizens turned informants “who spied on and denounced colleagues, friends, neighbours and even family members” (Britannica online).

26. The same States and the same media that never hesitate to impose censorship on words and images that could “offend” or “scare” people, did not manage anyone in the COVID period. Citizens were served a brutal propaganda, supported by a series of articles, reports and videos entirely liberated from the usual censorship: Dying people on hospitals’ floors; Close-up of intubated patients on stretchers; Cadavers being transported to refrigerated trucks; Excavators digging trenches. Apparently, nothing was too offensive if it helped a State bent on ruling by fear and decrees.

27. The deliberate use of fear during the pandemic is well documented. For instance, a batch of leaked messages showed that high-level politicians in Great-Britain had discussed how to “frighten the pants off everyone”. See “Matt Hancock wanted to ‘frighten everyone’ into following Covid rules” (Nadeem Badshah, The Guardian, 5 March, 2023 (online).

28. In a review of David Keen’s book, “When Disasters Come Home: Making and Manipulating Emergencies in the West” (Polity, 2023), G. John Ikenberry writes: “In this engaging polemic, Keen argues that a dangerous and dysfunctional ‘emergency politics’ is taking hold in Western societies, threatening democracy and empowering groups that profit from disaster (...) Western democracies, beware: today’s cascading crises are a call for enlightened, civic-minded action, but they also empower demagogues and authoritarians.” (Foreign Affairs magazine, January/February 2024, p. 181).

29. In 2024 a Québec judge ruled against citizens who were contesting their fines (into the thousands of dollars). The judge admitted that the curfew imposed in 2021 did infringe fundamental rights, but added that, given the context, the violations were reasonable and justified (see Sidhartha BANERJEE, The Canadian Press/CBC News, 2 Feb. 2024) (online).

30. ”Pareidolia”, a benign form of hallucination, has gained in popularity in recent years. Used mainly by specialists, reporters and debunkers to discredit claims of signs of life on Mars, it has been adopted by less influential members of the public who are trying to keep intact their conformism to the official truths by convincing other people that they are the unfortunate victims of hallucinations. Less talked about is the “cognitive dissonance” those people are themselves suffering from, and which is the inability, or obstinate refusal, to see something where there is indeed something, because admitting its existence would be too distressing a blow to the “truths” they are so sure of.

31. See “Scientist attacks alien claims on Mars” (Robert ROY BRITT, CNN Science & Space (International Edition), 18 March, 2004 (online).

32. “Although NASA conducts a much more visible space program, the national security space program is larger in terms of funding. There is no easy way to track national security space funding since a substantial portion of the activities are classified (“black”) programs at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) for which budgetary information is not available to the public, but even funding just for the US Space Force is greater than NASA’s.” (Space Policy Online).

33. Created in 1912, the D-notice is an “arrangement” between government and the media to make sure that nothing is printed that could endanger national security. It is reasonable to assume that similar relationships exist in other countries, even if it’s not public knowledge. See “The D-notice system: A typically British fudge that has survived a century” (Roy GREENSLADE, The Guardian, 31 July, 2015).

34. Video: “The Future of Mars Exploration” (SLICE Science) (54:02)

35. Video: “Neil Armstrong’s Cryptic Speech” (Joe Rogan’s YouTube) (0:51)

36. The fairytale about a rib taken from a man after he was sent into “a profound sleep” by a god-anaesthetist has, at the very least, the merit of directing our curiosity towards theories about human genesis (or ulterior transformations) being none other than the transfer of extraterrestrial DNA under laboratory conditions. The news, in 2023, that an Israeli team had succeeded at creating a model of human embryo gives some plausibility to this scenario (see “Israeli scientists create model of human embryo without eggs or sperm” (Reuters, 7 September, 2023). For another hypothesis on the extraterrestrial provenance of human DNA, see “Directed Panspermia” and the video “Did Life on Earth Come From Outer Space?” (History of the Earth) (16:45)

37. “I Know What I Saw” (James Fox, writer and director), IMDb.

38. “The Program” (James Fox, director), IMDb.

39. See also this series of videos released by the US government (CBS News) (3:10:40).

40. This exchange can be seen in James Fox’s documentary “I Know What I Saw” (2009), written by James Fox, Jackie Gardner and Tom Christopher.

41. Formulation said to have been inspired by the work of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and used in H.G. Well’s “War of the Worlds”.

42. About a renewed rivalry in space between superpowers, see “Space race 2.0? US fast-tracking plans to build nuclear reactor on the Moon” (Pawel GLOKOWSKI, Euronews, 2025).

43. “Aliens are almost certainly out there. Let’s hope they are not like us” (Nathan J. ROBINSON, “We’re Not Alone in the Universe”, Current Affairs, 23 May, 2021).

44. In video: “60 Minutes of The Solar System Awe-Inspiring Magnificence” (BBC Earth Science). (1:08:17). The formulation of the “three stages” is attributed to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

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