Fear and Paranoia are ruled by different hemispheres- brain hemispheres, that is. The basic type of Clear and Present Danger is a left-brain, flight or fight stimulus. The grade school bully who glowers at you and demands your lunch money is in that category. Not wanting to be smacked, the timid schoolboy hands it over. Fear wins.

Lingering fear is a little different. If that same child hears too many tales of the Boogieman or the Closet Monster, he may become very unreasonably worried about the consequences of looking Under the Bed or leaving the closet door open, even though there has been no demonstrated threat. If an adult worries too persistently about What Others Might Think, then the same type of creative paranoia can be generated, and sustained by personal insecurity without any outside help.

Unless somehow refreshed and sustained, most fears and paranoid reflexes are cast off as time goes by. One day, the schoolboy looks right back at the bully and instead of handing over his lunch, says, “Hey! Shut up!” The unreasonable paranoia loses its grip and the Closet Monster has to go find another closet in which to lurk. Of course, Clowns are still creepy and terrifying, but we all have our little peccadilloes.

Seriously, the point is this: a manufactured Fear tends to lose power over time. NASA was created to be the enforcement arm of the Conspiracy as much as for any other reason. It was the Closet Monster’s Keeper. As dearly as the Hidden Powers would like to be the Tyrants of the World, the logistics are impossible. Only by manipulating selected parts of the whole can any advantage be gained. You cannot micromanage an empire. So you count on Fear to keep most people away from any activities that would potentially threaten the power structure, and withhold as much information as possible. That is why the Conspiracy so quickly morphed into a psychological game- overt control would have rapidly collapsed if attempted on such a huge scale. To use a criminal-world metaphor, if you wish to rig a horse race, you drug all the horses except the one you want to win. The Stewards only drug-test the winning horses, not the losers.

After 60 years, there were too many horses on the track. The contracts which NASA, through control of so much of the grant money, managed to have all the international scientists sign, stipulated restrictions on what they could say in public. Every published paper, every speech at a conference, had to be cleared by NASA first. But on the technical side, NASA was lagging behind.  The Russians were launching most of the satellites. The Chinese were starting their own separate, no-you-can’t-have-my-lunch, space program. And the European  Space Agency was designing and launching very ambitious missions, including one to Mars.

The Mars Express was a harkening back to the adventurous days of the Viking missions. Instead of a tentative little flyby, this one had it all- an orbiter carrying a superior camera with full color capability, and a lander. The BeagleII lander, designed by the British, looked like it might have been built by “Q” of the James Bond movies, cute and clever. Unfortunately, it was the one item that failed. It made a perfect descent, and then vanished. Since the Express was still refining its orbit, the telemetry for the lander was relayed by the NASA  Mars Odyssey probe. NASA’s own landers, the two Rovers, were  not quite there yet, so some conspiracy theorists suspect that politics might have been involved in the loss of the BeagleII . That of course is just silly, to think professional jealousy could have caused such a thing to happen, Right?  

	esa image of Huygens Crater

The pictures coming from the Express mission were somehow different than what had been seen before. Even though the color images favored the same bilious orange hue typical of the NASA composites, the images were crisp, clean, and detailed. One thing  immediately noticeable was the lack of “tweaking”. The pictures did not have the distortions added which were so typical of what had been seen before. It was in fact that lack of modification that made them look different.  Someone was being honest for a change. It would be a while before most people realized just how profound that change was, and what it would ultimately mean. Though the scientists involved were restrained by the NASA “cooperation” agreements they had signed from making public presentations about the Real Mars, the actual images were not. “No, you can’t have my lunch- in fact, I’m going to share it with everybody else!” Neenerneener nyah nyah. Or the European equivalent thereof.

So entrenched was the Lie, so ingrained in the public consciousness were the cover stories, that only when the Express took images of  Cydonia did things really start to change.  

	For context (sort of a pun, sorry), here's one of the later MGS regional images of Cydonia. Surely they had gotten the hang of it by then, right? We'll use the USGS version. Oops. Well, what if we stretch the contrast a little? Oops.
	Must have been a fluke. Let's try another one. Oops. Not very clear.
	All right, let's try one more- actually, a really old one. Hmm. Less mess, but not much resolution- and a horrible unconvincing color to boot.

	Just to be fair, let's see what the color version from esa looks like... Hmm. A lovely bronze hue, but not any more realistic than the MGS one But look at all that detail!
	There's something to be said for B&W- if the alternative is pseudocolor.

The Cydonia image from Express is not a close-up of the Face. It covers a fairly large area, and it doesn’t look all that different from previous images, but it is clear. That was  what made it a shocking revelation. Two things were pretty obvious- what everyone had called the Face for so long did not actually look much like a Face, but it was artificial. It was a structure of some sort. That much should have been enough to settle a whole host of questions, but you know the old saying, “Dreams die hard.” Sometimes, so do Lies. Several months earlier, another image of Cydonia had been added to the esa archives, but with little fanfare and even less reaction- it didn’t show what Face enthusiasts wanted to see. The later one was featured with a whole presentation, including colored , perspective-shifted composites, and some of the usual NASA-type boilerplate about how the feature had been so often “mistaken” for a Face. It was not what was in the text that mattered, however. It was what one could see on the image…if one would only look.  

	Here's the Face area from the above image, but at full resolution. Not bad. So even though the main image is not a "close up", the clarity is far beyond what had been released on any MGS image. Strangely reminiscent of Viking, isn't it?
	if you've forgotten what the Viking image looked like already, click HERE

As if playing catch-up, the ASU team in charge of the Odyssey probe released a clear (compared to their prior output)  image of the Cydonia region a few months later, without comment. 

	Here's a little piece of that Odyssey image, released only in color. The whole thing covers an area comparable to the Viking ones, 82 megabytes worth.

	For comparison with the other images, here's part of it with the false color removed. Fairly high resolution, and it lacks the noise and odd projection perspective of so many before it. Again, very Viking-esque.
	Let's see what this one has to offer, given the unique tastes of the Odyssey team for filters and bands...
	Notice the Hindu avatar at the lower left.  The feature is visible on all of the Cydonia images, but seems to have many moods- sometimes Greek, sometimes Celtic, sometimes Other. There are really several faces there, if you look.

Everyone seemed to be waiting for the MRO image. It followed soon after.  

	It was upside down, so I flipped it for you. Obviously, this is the conventional anomalist- preferred orientation, not the one I think is more accurate.

Now, here was what the Face fans had awaited for so many years. A great big close-up of the Face, taken by the best camera ever to orbit the Red Planet. The image file was so large that few people had the computer equipment to handle any real enhancement of it, but that shouldn’t matter, right? Well, there seemed to be a little problem. It did not show what the anomalistas expected. .They had been through this before- a huge close-up had been taken by the Mars Global Surveyor camera some years previous, and it had not showed what was “supposed” to be there, either. On that occasion, the counter-explanation had been that the image was molested, tweaked, dishonest, and therefore proved nothing. In some part, there was truth in that accusation, but only in part. The real problem had been that the image file was so large. All the MGS images needed to be enhanced in a particular way to repair the pre-processing built in to the releases, and that one was no exception. One of the most  secret of the Dirty Little Secrets had always been that the pictures were not that bad.

I used to work in the Art business, selling paintings by Famous Artists. Much of the work which qualifies as the so-called New York style High Art is gratuitously ugly, or absurd, and Everybody knows it. There, another Dirty Little Secret revealed. The reason behind purveying such, well, crap, is easy- the buyer is getting not just a chromed urinal or a noisome smear of colors, or a painfully stylized depiction of uncomfortable events, but more importantly, a Story. The sale always involves  a tale told by the artist or their agent about the Significance of the work. These elaborate explanations of Angst and Inner Feeling are then lovingly retold  at cocktail parties to demonstrate how deeply plugged in to the Soul of Man the purchaser is. That is the true purchase, the detail which sets the value. For this to be most effective, the actual artwork  should be either inscrutable or obnoxious. If it were to truly communicate on its own, the mystique would be diminished. If that sounds unduly cynical, then you don’t understand Art as a business. Honest, there are  people who want that stuff. We are so conditioned as a society to the prevalence of fiction, that a chance to be the pusher instead of the addict is just what a lot of people consider a hallmark of success.

Some NASA contrarians had long maintained that there was a separate secret archive Somewhere which contained the “clean” images, and all of the public releases were carefully screened and if necessary airbrushed to remove anomalies. Logistically, this was far beyond impractical- the number of technical personnel that would be required to modify so many images was just too large. Too many in the loop. That was why from the earliest days, certain standard protocols were built in to the cameras and transmission systems which would  obscure detail, and almost all of the releases were inverted. When they all look alike, hardly anyone suspects there is anything amiss. So only images which might be expected to draw special scrutiny from the suspicious, like Face pictures for instance, needed special care. But most of any extra  tweaking done was to enhance the mystery and further the misdirection. They knew perfectly well that what was actually there would be largely ignored. A Conspiracy Years in the Making assured that people’s expectations were pointed in the wrong directions. Meanwhile, the archives filled with perfectly retrievable images, should anyone in the know need to make use of any of them. When the European Space Agency, under Dr, Neukum,  broke ranks with “tradition” and released their images without the NASA protocols, few really noticed how profound the change was. There were no public statements decrying the fraud of the past, just quiet honesty in the images.

Since I was of the opinion that I had figured out most of the Conspiracy long ago, I did notice the change. But few listened- the pictures were not superficially all that different from what had been seen before, so it was widely assumed that it was simply the result of using a different camera.  I noticed more, however. The very first   Press Release images had indeed followed the classic NASA guidelines, but at some point, apparently when they released the first batch of  archive images, things changed. Even those first ones were a revelation in clarity, however.
		A little piece of one of the first Express images, of Valles Marinaris.

When the European Space Agency  (to use the full name for once)  released its Cydonia image , I had the last piece of the puzzle- a reference point. As I mentioned, it isn’t a close-up, and it isn’t the sharpest image in their catalogue, but it did not have to be. Since it was of the area that had always been central to the Conspiracy itself, all that was needed was that one honest image, without the usual trickery, and all the others from the past could be referenced and corrected. Like I said, most images of everywhere else got little “special attention”, so they could be corrected based on the common modifications they shared. But the one area where public attention had been cleverly focused for so many years was the ONLY place where the Conspiracy might finally be unmasked. The contents of most Mars images were, because of the conditioning of public perceptions, too strange for people to accept. Only by demonstrating that conditioning to be the Lie that it was could the real wonder and mystery be appreciated . NASA would never admit any of it willingly. It wasn’t what was on Mars, or anywhere else in the Solar System, that they were hiding after so long, it was the fact that they had lied about it. Only Cydonia could provide that relief.  

Without the actions and the honesty of  the team at the esa, under the direction of  Dr. Gerhard Neukum , the Conspiracy would have continued  offering only darkness and deception. Maybe at some secret level, a decision was reached to just let the Truth come out, or maybe brave men and women found a way to slip around the barriers. Certainly there have always been those on the Inside who wished there was no cover-up. It almost doesn't matter- it needed to be done, and finally someone did it. Only those who knew at least some of the Truth could have appreciated how important such disclosure was. to everyone. The images from the MRO are honest, and remarkable, but that may very well be  because the European Space agency made that possible by showing the way. No one wants to be first, when it is the Emperor's wardrobe at issue. Simple candor sometimes takes great courage.

	esa Express 300-230906-3253-6-nd1-Cydonia_H detail
	By now you might be beginning to appreciate the Wonder of  the infinitely varied Face of  Mars. I hope so.

If you are wondering why I built right up to the release of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter super-Face image and then abruptly veered off in other directions ( I would be), just hang on through one more  page. It turns out that another image needs to be  brought up first, Don't worry, it's Cydonia too. "All Cydonia, all the time", that's my motto- except most of the time. Don't get me started. Just read on...