The Rise and Fail of the Griftocrats

Oprah, Deepak Chopra, Huckabee, Trump and his ICE marks

by Phil Rockstroh / February 26th, 2026

I have been writing for decades that Oprah Winfrey was a more effective force insofar as retailing capitalist propaganda than the Joseph Goebbels’ progeny of Fox News/NewsMax outrage peddlers and the corporate-funded nomenklatura/apparatchik clowns of the rightwing think tank shit-circuses.

Oprah’s grift emanates from the same capitalist ideological snake oil of self-bootstraps transcendence; withal, if an individual visualizes the capitalist order’s conception of success with the proper measure of rigorous intensity and unquestioning belief in the magical nature of the system then the universe will align with your entitled destiny. If not the failure is all on you — but not, in any manner due to the (rigged against you) system.

It was in the Oprah cosmology of con artistry that Jeffrey Epstein confidant and enabler Deepak Chopra retailed his New Age spiel that engaging in a ghost dance with constellations of quantum entanglement would deliver the true believer to material success and perpetual psychical bliss.

In essence, the mode of belief is and remains the “power of positive thinking” salesman’s credo of Ronald Reagan (“Its morning again in America”) and Donald Trump (“Make America great again”) political hucksters that trace their worldview back to the “good news” testifiers of Christian evangelists’ so-called prosperity gospel.

In a capitalist culture in which anything and everything, from ghostly quanta to human flesh is fodder for exploitation and passes as normal – i.e., The Epstein Island Of Everyday American Life – then the contents of The Epstein File and the personages named would only come as a shock to the noxiously naive.

UFO enthusiasts posit, we have entered into the “Age Of Disclosure.” One would have to have been abducted by aliens – or be alienated into deep, protective insularity — to have experienced ontological shock at the news that the capitalist overclass was a private club reserved for High Dollar degenerates. In that case, welcome to childhood’s end.

The noxious naivety of the self-grifted true believer

US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee waxing Christian evangelical lunacy, “Israel is a land that God gave, through Abraham, to a people that he chose. It was a people, a place and a purpose.”

Pressed in a recent interview by aging, prep school crashout, Christian Nationalist Tucker (a demon tried to eat my face) Carlson on whether Israel has the right to annex the whole of the Levant, Huckabee responded: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

Yet, from the realm of historical and archaeological records — there is not a shred of evidence confirming the Old Testament yarn relating a Jewish, out-of-Egyptian bondage and the slog through the Sinai Desert to The Promised Land. Instead we are presented with an origin myth created by Bronze Age barbarians, a band of malcontent, underclass, breakaway Canaanites.

Revealing Christian Zionists such as Huckabee’s claim of divinely blessed Israeli exceptionalism all the more loony muffin: The state of Israel was established by European atheists.

While there is nary a remnant of a chariot of Pharaoh’s army to be found at the bottom of the Red Sea nor a single artifact of a wandering tribe of Jewish refugees in the Sinai, the DNA of Palestinians confirms, they are the Jews of the Torah. In contrast, my own Ashkenazi/Dutch Sephardic DNA reveals a genetic admixture that tilts in a far greater direction towards Europe (southern Italy, Spain, France and Germany) than in the direction of the Levant.

Moses Views the Promised Land, 1670 engraving by Gerard Jollain

Yet I am privy to the Zionism-contrived The Law Of Return to The Promised Land while Palestinian victims of the Nakba are barred from their (scientifically and historically verified) ancestral homeland.

In essence, as personified by Ambassador Mike (The Crackbrained Revelator) Huckabee, MAGA foreign policy is the product of a collective hallucination of Bronze Age barbarians.

Regarding the self-undermining felicity to Israel of the so-called opposition party

Have the Democratic Party elites internalized the reason for losing to the careening towards senility, shambling tub of toxic goo Donald Trump?

Nada, judging by Democrats’ response to Trump’s militaristic belligerence towards Iran.

Evidence suggests, a determining factor to Kamala Harris’ defeat was her cruelly boneheaded response to Gaza protesters at her rallies, and her general indifference to Israel’s proclivity for war criminality.

Harris to anti-genocide demonstrators, “You know what, if you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

The protesters chanted in response: “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide. We won’t vote for genocide.”

To state the obvious, Candidate Harris did not take them – and the millions of others there in spirit – at their word.

Then there is this: When interviewed on the daytime kibitz show, The View, when asked how her policies would depart from then President Biden’s, she answered, “not a thing comes to mind.”

History is a rhyming pattern: Nothing appears to be coming to Chuck Schumer’s and Hakeem Jeffries’ minds when it comes to Trump’s ethnic cleansing, build-Dubai-over-the genocide-rendered-corpses plan for Gaza or his risking a catastrophic war with Iran due to the goading/rumored blackmailing by war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu.

Soldat und Tod, 1917, Hans Larwin

Trump is the Second Law Of Thermodynamics disguised in human form, on scene to bring down the US empire. Concurrently, It appears the rotten-to-its-core Democratic Party needs to be composted and have an actual opposition party be seeded and rise from its corrupt, reeking remains.

The Rise and Fail of the MAGA Reich

ICE incels costumed into Brownshirt thugs are kvetching that they are being reamed by the MAGA Reich. For example, insofar as receiving a promised $50k signing bonus, the bait-and-switch con was: If they quit before fulfilling their full five year deportment of thuggery, they are obliged to repay their signing bonus — plus interest. Also, the promised health benefits were a sleight-of-hand trick. Many are yet to have received even a single paycheck for their fascist service.

It appears you hyper-authoritarian soreheads have revealed your stupid, vicious nature to the world at large and your only payback will come in the form of karma. You reveled in Trump’s cruelty; you were amused when he grifted “losers.” (He was notorious for not paying contractors.) Well now, you have been grabbed by the pussy, exploited, and then dispatched to the Epstein Island of your own private Hell.

Proceed to the nearest mirror, take an extended perusal: It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fascist jerkopath.

The Cardsharps, c. 1594, by Caravaggio

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Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist, and essayist. His poems, short fiction, poetry and essays have been published in numerous print publications and anthologies; his political essays have been widely posted on the progressive/left side of the internet.  Read other articles by Phil, or visit Phil's website.

Massive wagers on Trump confirming alien life ignite insider trading speculation

Robert Davis
February 25, 2026 

RAW STORY

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he delivers the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 24, 2026. REUTERS/NATHAN HOWARD

Someone in the Trump administration may be trying to profit from the president's push to release information about extraterrestrial life, according to a new analysis.

The Atlantic analyzed betting data on Kalshi, a prediction market app, and found that one bettor placed a $100,000 wager that President Donald Trump would reveal the existence of aliens by the end of December. Another, who The Atlantic surmised could actually be the same person, placed another "market-moving" bet within a half hour of the first, raising concerns about insider trading.

"Shayne Coplan, the CEO of Polymarket, has described prediction markets as global truth machines," the report reads. "On subjects where official information sources are suspect, they may instead serve as paranoia generators. Thanks to a fair amount of government bumbling, and decades’ worth of pop culture, everyday Americans are already predisposed to assume that they’re being lied to about alien life."

"People seize on the tiniest scraps of evidence to justify their belief that Earth has already received interstellar visitors," the report continued. "They have put their faith in blurry pictures and videos, unverified rumors about crash sites and autopsied bodies. Even an offhand joke from a former president was eagerly interpreted as a long-hoped-for disclosure. And now someone, somewhere, is betting a small fortune that the truth is about to come out, and the rest of us are left to decide what, if anything, that actually tells us about the world."

Read the entire report by clicking here.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for UFO

 Trump tells Pentagon to release files on UFOs and "alien and extraterrestrial life"

Joe Walsh
Thu, February 19, 2026 



President Trump on Thursday directed his administration to release files on UFOs and any "alien and extraterrestrial life," an issue that has drawn decades of public fascination — and spawned more than a few wild theories.

In a Truth Social post, the president told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other agency heads "to begin the process of identifying and releasing" any relevant files.

Mr. Trump also called for the release of "any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters."

It's not clear what files on UFOs might be released — or what information they might contain. The Pentagon has tracked reports of what it calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, for decades. But the military said in a 2024 report there's no evidence that any government investigation into UAPs has confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Mr. Trump's announcement came just days after one of his predecessors, former President Barack Obama, made waves by telling a podcaster that aliens are real. He later clarified that he never saw evidence of contact between humans and extraterrestrial life during his time in the White House, and he primarily believes that extraterrestrial life is real because "statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there."

Asked Thursday about Obama's comments, Mr. Trump told reporters he isn't sure whether or not aliens exist, but added that the former president "made a big mistake" and "gave classified information."

"I may get him out of trouble by declassifying," Mr. Trump said.

Public interest in UAPs has grown in recent years. Pilots and military service members have reported spotting hundreds of unexplained objects in the sky, leading some lawmakers to press the Pentagon to investigate the phenomena and determine whether they pose a threat to safety or national security.

Last year, one House Republican released a whistleblower video of a U.S. missile striking an unidentified glowing orb in the sky and bouncing off it. And in another case, a former Navy pilot told "60 Minutes" about frequent sightings of strange, fast-moving objects in restricted airspace.

A large number of UAP reports can be explained by birds, balloons, drones, satellites and other everyday phenomena, according to the military's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. But many cases remain unresolved.

"It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology," the office said in a 2024 report. The office also noted that it has "no indication or confirmation that these activities are attributable to foreign adversaries."

Trump Makes UFO Announcement as Seth Meyers Predicted He Would After Epstein Revelations

Michael Luciano

MEDIAITE
Thu, February 19, 2026 


President Trump announced the release of government files on unidentified aerial phenomena and potential alien life, following predictions made by late-night host Seth Meyers.




President Donald Trump announced that he will order his administration to release files about unidentified aerial phenomena and potential alien life. The announcement comes after late-night host Seth Meyers predicted seven months ago that the president would make a declaration about UFOs to distract from revelations about Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump received a wave of bad press in July, as The Wall Street Journal reported that he sent Epstein, the deceased child sex trafficker convicted in 2008, a lewd birthday message in 2003. The message contained a fictional cryptic dialogue written inside a drawing of a woman’s torso. The president denies writing the message and is suing the Journal, which also highlighted a 2002 interview in which Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy.”

Two days later on July 23, 2025, the Journal reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi told the president that his name appears in the Justice Department’s files on Epstein.

“Whatever is in those Epstein files must be really f*cking bad,” Meyers said on the July 24 episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers. “They must be finding so many mentions of Trump, they’re going to have to change the name to the Trump files featuring Jeffrey Epstein. They’re so desperate to distract everyone.”

The comedian added, “I honestly think we’re just one Epstein story away from Trump announcing that UFOs are real.”

Eventually, the Justice Department released some of its files about Epstein, even though Congress passed a law in November compelling the release of all the material, with only victims’ names to be redacted. Even so, the DOJ did redact portions of the files that went beyond names and images of victims.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing or knowing about Epstein’s illegal activities. On Tuesday, he claimed he had “nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.”

On Thursday, the president announced he would release documents about UFOs, writing on Truth Social:

Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Earlier in the day, Trump accused former President Barack Obama revealed classified information by claiming that aliens exist. Obama later walked back the comment, stating that he saw no evidence of aliens, but believes they could exist, given the vastness of the universe.

The government releasing material about UFOs and potential alien life is nothing new. Multiple presidential administrations have disclosed all manner of reports, videos, and testimony on the subject. Moreover, Congress has held hearings on the matter, which have yielded little in the way of proving aliens exist.

GOP Rebel Says New Trump Bombshell Is a Desperate Distraction

Ewan Palmer
Fri, February 20, 2026


Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Rep. Thomas Massie has accused President Donald Trump of desperately trying to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files by directing the government to release information about alien life.

The Kentucky Republican, who spearheaded efforts to force the Department of Justice to release all documents linked to the late pedophile, accused the administration of deploying the “ultimate weapon of mass distraction” with the announcement.

“But the Epstein files aren’t going away… even for aliens,” Massie posted on X.

Thomas Massie has been a nemesis of Donald Trump for several years. / Anadolu / Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

The 79-year-old president posted on Truth Social late Thursday that he is directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon, and other relevant government agencies to release all files related to “alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”

Trump said the announcement comes after “tremendous interest shown” in the question of whether extraterrestrial life exists. Last weekend, former President Barack Obama caused a stir after claiming on a podcast that aliens are “real,” but that he personally has not seen them.

“They’re not being kept in, what is it? Area 51. There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” he added.

Obama later clarified that he was suggesting that, “statistically,” it is likely that there is some form of life somewhere else in the universe, given how vast it is.

“But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens are low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us,” Obama posted on Instagram. “Really!”

Trump accused Obama of disclosing “classified information” with his comments about the existence of aliens.

“I don’t know if they’re real or not,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday. “I may get him out of trouble by declassifying.”

The Trump administration has been widely condemned for its handling of the Epstein files.

Massie’s and Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna’s Epstein Files Transparency Act directed the Department of Justice to release all its files connected to Epstein, who died in 2019, by Dec. 19, 2025.

The DOJ has released more than 3 million files related to Epstein, while acknowledging that nearly 3 million more were being withheld for various reasons, including ongoing cases and the sensitive nature of some materials.

Donald Trump is mentioned in the Epstein files hundreds of times, although the president denies being aware about his former close friend's child sex crimes. / Davidoff Studios/Getty Images

“The DOJ said it identified over 6m potentially responsive pages but is releasing only about 3.5m after review and redactions,” Khanna said in a January statement following the latest release. Khanna believes that “hundreds of thousands of emails and files” from Epstein’s computers are still to be made public.

Several Trump officials cheered on his “weapon of mass distraction” after he ordered the release of files on aliens and UFOs.

In a post on X, Hegseth shared Trump’s social media announcement with alien and saluting-face emojis.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt praised the move as “OUT OF THIS WORLD NEWS.”

Newsmax Reporter Asks Karoline Leavitt Point-Blank: ‘Does the Trump Administration Believe Aliens Are Real?’

Zachary Leeman
Wed, February 18, 2026
 Mediaite

Key takeawaysPowered by Yahoo Scout. Yahoo is using AI to generate key points from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about President Trump's beliefs on aliens after Lara Trump hinted at a prepared speech on the subject.See more

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked on Wednesday whether President Donald Trump believes aliens are “real” or not after his daughter-in-law teased a speech on the subject.

Newsmax’s Mike Carter noted at a White House press briefing that former President Barack Obama recently made waves by saying aliens are “real,” and Lara Trump suggested her father-in-law has a speech on aliens prepared.

“President Barack Obama, Karoline, was recently asked if aliens are real. He says they’re real, but he hasn’t seen them. President’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, told Miranda Devine of the New York Post that the president has a prepared speech on this issue that he prepares to deliver at the right time. Is that true, and does the Trump administration believe aliens are real?” Carter asked.

Leavitt said any such speech existing would be news to her.

“Well, a speech on aliens would be news to me. That sounds very exciting though. I’ll have to check in with our speechwriting team. And that would be of great interest to me personally, and I’m sure all of you in this room, and apparently former President Obama too. So we’ll keep you posted on that,” she said.

Lara Trump said this week that she believes her father-in-law will be discussing aliens in depth “at the right time.”

“Then I have just heard just kind of around — I think he’s actually said it, I think my father-in-law actually said it — that there is some speech that I guess at the right time, and I don’t know when the right time is, he’s gonna break out and talk about [it]. And it has to do with maybe some sort of extraterrestrial life, so to speak,” she said.

Obama released his own statement clarifying comments he made in an interview stating that aliens are “real,” but professing to have never seen them.

“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” Obama wrote. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.”

Lara Trump reveals president has speech pre-written to announce the discovery of alien life after Obama claim

Isabel Keane
Wed, February 18, 2026 

Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, says the president has a speech pre-written and is ready to address the discovery of aliens.

Lara, 43, made the shocking claim in an episode of the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast, published Wednesday, after she was asked about former President Barack Obama's apparent confirmation that aliens are real during an interview last weekend.

“I believe I’ve heard on your podcast that you’ve discussed with the president these UFOs. Do you think that he’s about to make an announcement about UFOs, because President Obama was just on a podcast talking about how he believes in UFOs and hinting that he saw something when he was president?” host Miranda Devine asked.

“What’s kind of funny is we’ve kind of asked my father-in-law about this cause we’re like, ‘Well, what do you know?...”Lara began.

However, the president reportedly “played a little coy” when she and her husband, his son, Eric Trump, inquired about the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

“Eric and I were like, ‘Oh my gosh, he won’t even fully tell us, maybe there’s more to it,’” she said.

“I have just heard kind of around that he’s actually said, my father-in-law has actually said it, that there is some speech that he has, that I guess at the right time...I don’t know what the right time is...that he is going to break out and talk about, and it has to do with maybe some sort of extraterrestrial life, so to speak,” Lara added.

Her comments come as Obama made a stunning admission over the weekend during an appearance on the No Lie With Brian Tyler Cohen podcast.

When asked about extraterrestrials, Obama replied, “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in — what is it? There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”

The Internet went wild over his admission that aliens are real, prompting the former commander-in-chief to take to Instagram to clarify his stance.

“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” the former president wrote. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.”

Barack Obama confidently said that aliens are real during an appearance on a podcast this past weekend (Getty)

“But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us,” he continued,

Doubling down on his claim, he added, “Really!”

Its long been speculated by many that aliens and UFOs are hidden at the mysterious Area 51 base in southern Nevada — and a documentary released last year suggested that Trump may soon confirm the existence of other life forms.

In The Age of Disclosure, director Dan Farah suggests that a massive government cover-up operation has concealed the existence of non-human intelligence, but that the cover-up will soon be exposed.

“I think it's only a matter of time before the release of this film is followed by a sitting president stepping to the podium and telling the world, ‘We're not alone in the universe,’” Farah told Entertainment Weekly in late November.

“It's the most significant moment a leader could possibly have.”

Despite Farah’s claims, Trump has not yet shared a definitive answer about the existence of aliens since returning to office.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for UAP

Lufthansa pilots, crew to strike on Thursday

DW

FEBRUARY 11, 2026

Lufthansa passengers should expect disruption and possible cancellations. A pilots' trade union has called a 24-hour strike amid a dispute over pension payments.

Employees of German flagship carrier Lufthansa have been called to go on a 24-hour strike on Thursday, the VC (Vereinigung Cockpit) union representing pilots and the UFO union of flight attendants both announced.

What do we know so far?

VC president Andreas Pinheiro announced the work stoppage, saying that staff "would have very much liked to avoid an escalation."

The VC union's members voted in favor of striking in a ballot at the end of last ‍September, hoping to pressure Lufthansa into granting more ​generous ​pension benefits.

"We deliberately gave Lufthansa several months to come up with a solution," Pinheiro added.

Meanwhile the flight attendant's UFO union also called on its members at Lufthansa's CityLine to strike on Thursday over the planned shutdown of ​its flight operations and "the employer’s continued refusal to negotiate a collective social plan."

Lufthansa announced one year ago that it would close Lufthansa CityLine, with operations and staff relocated to a new subsidiary.

Passengers who are flying with Lufthansa on Thursday could face disruption and cancellations all over the country. The strike is expected to impact all German airports, including major international hubs Frankfurt and Munich.

Cargo flights would also be impacted.

Lufthansa says cost-cutting is necessary

In the latest earnings report, Lufthansa saw a loss of a fifth of its earnings in 2024, as profitability has fallen behind leading European airline rivals.

Lufthansa has said it needs to cut costs to manage its debt load.

Last year, the airline said it would cut 4,000 jobs, or nearly 4% of its workforce. It has also been hit by walkouts, aircraft delivery delays and rising costs.

Edited by: Wesley Dockery

Eric von Daeniken, Swiss author who popularised ancient alien theories, dies at 90

Legions of fans snapped up his more than 40 books and watched his television specials and documentary films despite academics refuting his theories.

Reuters
12 Jan, 2026


Best-selling Swiss author Erich von Daeniken, who built a lucrative career on his argument, rubbished by scientists and archaeologists, that humanity owes much of its development to the intervention of extraterrestrials, has died aged 90.

Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968, sold millions of copies with its thesis that advanced aliens had repeatedly visited Earth, leaving their mark in the form of Inca and Egyptian ruins, cave drawings and other physical monuments.

“It took courage to write this book, and it will take courage to read it,” the work begins. It acknowledged that scholars would dismiss it as nonsense, but insisted that “the past teemed with unknown gods who visited the primaeval earth in manned spaceships”.

‘Pseudoscience’ theories

Academics wrote books refuting his theories, criticising him as a purveyor of some of the more fantastical notions of pseudoscience. German news magazine Der Spiegel even had a 1973 cover story titled ‘The Daeniken Hoax’.

Nevertheless, legions of fans snapped up his more than 40 books and watched his television specials and documentary films. The over 70 million books that he sold were translated into more than 30 languages.

Von Daeniken spent the early part of his working life managing a hotel in eastern Switzerland, where a fraud conviction landed him in jail for 18 months. But as his book took off, he emerged from prison as a best-selling author.

Still, he never presented the smoking gun to fulfil astronomer Carl Sagan’s famous adage that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. “He … says that the astonishing astronomical information ancient civilisations, such as the Mayan, had is proof that there were some space travelers around to teach it to them. This fits in with his general questioning of the ability of the Egyptians to build the pyramids, or the Easter Islanders to erect those massive stone heads,” the New York Times wrote in 1974.

“His method is to use a negative — ancient peoples couldn’t have done or thought all the things they did — to prove a positive — that the ancient people were the beneficiaries of some kind of cosmological Point 4 (development assistance) programme.” Such criticism never knocked von Daeniken off his stride.

“We owe it to our self-respect to be rational and objective,” he wrote. “At some time or other, every daring theory seemed to be a Utopia. How many Utopias have long since become everyday realities!” Television specials about his books made him a well-known figure in Europe and the United States. In 2003, he opened a Mysteries of the World theme park in Interlaken — although it went bust after three years.

Return of the Aliens

In a treatise on his website, von Daeniken said he was not an esoteric, and that his work served to debunk “a world of religious and unfortunately often scientific humbugs”. “From countless old written records, I know that these ‘gods’ promised to return. Then we will experience the god shock, a total catastrophe in religion and science. And everything would have been so easy to understand — without this god shock. The evidence speaks a clear language. That is what drives me.” The release in July 2021 of a watershed US government UFO report that did not rule out extraterrestrial origins gave him hope.

“In future, anyone who talks about UFOs and extraterrestrials can no longer simply be ridiculed. People will slowly realise that many things are possible that they previously considered impossible,” he told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper.

“As soon as we are prepared and get used to the idea that we are not alone in the universe, the extraterrestrials will come to us. I expect that to be the case within the next 10 years.”

Originally published in Dawn, January 12th, 2026

Not in My Jewish Name: From Israel’s (perpetual) Crimes Against Humanity to Slandering Ms. Rachel

Plus an excursion into other current manifestations of state-sanctioned criminality and mendacity

by Phil Rockstroh / December 11th, 2025

A tragic canard of history — i.e., the assertion: “Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people; therefore, we Jews have the right to return and establish a Jewish ethno-supremacist state.”

Only by a literal reading — i.e., cracked-brained — of Old Testament mythos can we Jews claim to be the people G-d choose to [ethnically cleanse] the Levant.

DNA analysis proves the Jews of the Torah are, wait for it, the Palestinian people (and that would include a certain rabble-rousing, empire-agitating rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth). In contrast, my Jewish DNA reveals, my ancestors origins are from Europe e.g., Germany, France, Spain, Greece, with 4% traced to northern Iran and Iraq.

Thus we can conclude the “Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jews” canard should be regarded as flat out, Flat Earth theory-level risible.

Conceived in lie Zionist perpetual crimes against humanity continue unabated:

A journalist and former detainee, identified as “Yahya” reports, during his year and ten month of incarceration in Sde Teiman prison, he was subjected to torture by electrocution, being beaten, starved, and was the victim of sexual assaults that were filmed by his jailers.

Yahya went on to relate he was sexually assaulted by a dog trained to inflict the act.

Yet Ms. Rachel is accused of all forms of depravity, including “blood libel,” by defenders of Israel — a crime against humanity disguised as a nation.

May be an image of child and text that says ‘PET ES RECYCLE > Meeting Rahaf from Gaza'”

These are the people, when I, as a Jewish person, object to the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, hiss I am a self-loathing Jew and I am committing an act of treason against my tribe.

Truth be told: if I acted as an apologist for Israel, doing so would amount to an act of treason against my soul and I would loathe myself as I made the utterance.

Update from the annals of the “most moral army on earth.”

A CNN investigation has revealed the IDF opened fire on starving Palestinians while they were desperately attempting to secure flour in Gaza. Then the IDF used bulldozers to bury their corpses in mass graves.

Their deaths were not chronicled, nor was the location of their bodies disclosed to their families.

According to the UN, since the US-brokered “ceasefire” in Gaza, the Israelis have slaughtered an estimated 360 Palestinians (and counting).

The above, since the establishment of Israel, has been the Zionist state’s conception of peace. Moreover, any act of retaliation or even resistance by Palestinians are termed as acts of terrorism.

In the late 1930s, the Gestapo entered my family’s home, arrested my grandfather, and imprisoned him in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. If he and his fellow prisoners had escaped and fought their way through the streets of Berlin, the Nazi regime would have termed them terrorists — yet history would have lauded them as heroes.

This is the context of the Palestinian struggle from 1948 to the Oct. 7 Gaza prison breakout. The response of the Zionist state: a rampage of collective punishment.

By the standards of international law, a flagrant war crime; by Israeli standards — the modus operandi of Zionist tyranny.

As brazen as SS (Schutzstaffel) officers who wore death-head skulls on their uniforms and US Jim Crow era Klansmen prone to brandishing lynching nooses, Ben-Gvir, Israeli Minister of National Security, Culture Minister Amichai Eliyahu, and other devotees to the radical right-wing death cult, masquerading as the Israeli government, have taken to affixing golden noose-pins to their lapels expressing their call for Palestinian detainees from Gaza be executed.

All as:

“An elderly woman and her son were among at least seven Palestinians killed in the latest Israeli attacks in Gaza, as the military continues to operate across the “yellow line” ceasefire demarcation.

“Health officials reported the killings on Saturday in Beit Lahiya, Jabalia, and Zeitoun, including a 70-year-old woman and her son, who were hunted down and killed by a drone in Gaza City.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said the woman and her son were chased by a quadcopter drone about one kilometre [half a mile] from the yellow line and “left there to bleed to death” as the aircraft continued hovering overhead, preventing anyone from reaching them.”

Yet Israel’s apologists bristle and insist on their perpetual victimhood because the world views their genocidal rampage through Gaza and observers posit the mindset of all too many Israelis is analogous to that evinced by racist sorehead denizens of the Jim Crow ruled US Deep South and the blood-drenched actions of the Israeli government are Third Reich adjacent.

The conduct of the Zionist state is an affront to the memory of my relatives who perished in the flames of The Shoah. Israel defenders, to their shame, represent a whole new bloc of Holocaust denialists.

Yet, through the horror of it all, the world has witnessed the true nature of the Zionist ethno-supremacist state: i.e., a perpetual crime against humanity disguised as a nation.

All the Zionist hasbara lies, including social media trolling as a national enterprise, will not cause the world to forget what we have witnessed. And the Israeli citizenry senses the fact. A recent poll reports: 40 percent of Israelis are considering or making plans to leave the country.

Personally, I will welcome them if they come in the spirit of repentance.

More from The Department of Not In My Name

Zionists are attempting to bulldoze the reality of their lawless actions, to bury the people of the world’s awareness of the massive crimes against humanity Israel perpetrates, from Gaza to the West Bank, and outward towards their neighbors in the region — rather than face the reality that Zionism, the dream of an ethno-supremacist state, has been manifested as the blood-drenched, waking-life nightmare that it is.

Israel’s apologists, relentlessly, attempt to whitewash away the nation’s perpetual transgressions by means of the proliferation of propaganda and character assassination with the soul-defying agenda of imposing censorship and intimidate critics into silence.

Withal, a comment/threat made by a Zionist troll on a recent post of mine on the subject:

From Vincent ******* “We are noticing you. Never again. #noticing Jew-haters”

I replied, “can you say that with a World Two era, Hollywood movie German accent to achieve its full effect?”

Speaking of acting in a Third Reich-adjacent manner, from the fascist-minded homefront, Donald Trump is demanding stripping US citizenship from individuals who refuse to swear absolute fealty to the tenets of what he terms: “Western Civilization.”

Quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi when asked what he thought of Western Civilization:

“I think it would be a good idea [if they tried it].” [A disputed quotation. — DV ed]

Withal, the US (a nation established in ethnic cleansing, slavery and genocide) has slaughtered over 4 million people of the Islamic faith since the early 1990s alone. Israel, a de facto Western nation, remains committed to ethnic cleansing and genocide, and the funds and weaponry to do so are supplied by the West.

Masked ICE thugs patrol US streets. The economic elite serially exploit all their greedhead minds survey, from the resources of the cupidity tormented earth to the bodies of teenage girls and women from power-devoid economic groups. As, all the while, rents, medical care, utilities, and food prices rise and rise when life’s necessities, in a civilized society, would be a birthright not a privilege of the few.

Yes, I agree with Mahatma Gandhi, we, in the West — where we have been brainwashed to believe our capitalist-imposed shackles are the very wings of liberty — should give civilization a go.

What else is on the minds of the civilized men of Western civilization?

Trump and his Heinrich Himmler toy soldier appointees to the US Department of War (Crimes) are careening towards an attempt at a military smash-and-grab of Venezuelan oil.

I thought I had witnessed the nadir of jingoistic stupid and soul-shriveling political class arrogance in the run up to the Bush-Cheney administration’s war of aggression waged against the people of Iraq. How could I have suffered from such pathology-based-optimism?

By any measure of sentience the history of imperial fuckery would serve to warn us off such a dance with catastrophe — in buying into such a dismal display of war mongering prevarication — such a psychopathic lust for mayhem and mass death.

The guiding god of empire (including the US imperium’s client state, Israel, is: Moloch, a God to whom the innocent are sacrificed. In modern imperium, his blood-crazed devotees, knowing his thirst is insatiable, proffer him libations of blood and oil.

Pete Hegseth insists his god is Jesus Christ but his guiding god is Moloch. This is the reason Hegseth does not, in any manner, regard the declarations of the Christian Messiah, The Prince Of Peace, blesser of the meek and peacemakers, Jesus Christ — who would demand of Tipplin’ Pete the question:

Why did God, the all-knowing Father, place the United States’ god-given oil beneath Venezuela’s commie soil?

Trump et al. are the emblems, in shambling human form, of the personality types i.e., one-dimensional, greed-crazed maniacs — human embodiments of the Second Law Of Thermodynamics — who cause the collapse of over-extended, corrupt-to-the-core empires.

Tragically, the remedy for the pathology of End Stage Empire is: the doubling down of said End Stage Empire by the dim and dismal machinations of belligerently obtuse imbeciles.

In this manner, Trump and his klavern of fools and tools have heard and are heeding the call of history.

Further dispatches from the realm of government-squatting fools:

The news has been “disclosed” by National Security State “whistleblower” insiders that “alien technology,” in the form of downed UAP/UFO craft and the remains of “nonhuman biologics” are in the (greed-rancid) hands of Military Industrial Complex (war) profiteers.

Of course, like a hammer that sees the world as an endless series of nails, these militaristic minded characters, straight out of a combination of Dr. Strangelove and Plan 9 From Outer Space, are warning us to watch the skies, and “be afraid, be very afraid!”

If we were not perpetually afraid, NSS and MIC types would be out of a job, wouldn’t they?

Think it through: If aliens possessed the tech they are purported to have, they could have blasted our species of bipedal, grifting ne’er-do-wells and genocidal knuckleheads to cosmic shitdust long ago and in an instant.

Same type of Big Lie storyline being deployed towards Venezuela — i.e., “narcotrafficking” Venezuelan fisherman, for the sake of US national security, must be bombed then survivors of the initial assault are to be “double-tapped” bombed.

Will we next be subject to official narratives reporting that UFO-manning aliens are the actual party delivering fentanyl to the decaying precincts of the collapsing republic?

If super intelligent aliens regard us at all, I suspect, it would be with the annoyance that we regard raccoons prone to upend garbage containers scattering the contents across the yard, albeit we humans, with our ecocidal, genocidal, and war making proclivities cannot be regarded as, in any manner, cute.

Consider this, the beauty and terror of it, at times, must be regard from what the poet Wallace Stevens termed to “central mind” of poetic imagination:

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,

We make a dwelling in the evening air,

In which being there together is enough. Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour, Wallace Stevens

As US empire, the global neoliberal order, and the Zionist state are falling apart — so are we.

We have been in service to a dictatorship of money, to a gangster imperium, and we are held and buffeted by the caprice of a soul-defying despotism that will kill what it cannot dominate.

Through it all, we are all storytellers conjuring tales of what isn’t and what has never existed. We are a fiction of possibilities, most of the latter being improbable.

How real is the tangible world that is invisible to us given its hidden-from-us order? Real enough to prove to us that it is us that must be regarded as unreal.

I am an ad hoc contrivance of myself. Only by surrendering to the implausible can I conjure a serviceable face to meet the day and to possess a modicum of plausibility I must allow myself to be transformed by the inchoate counsel of Impossible Angels.

You might not know it but, I suspect, the same goes for you.

Bear the above in mind as the world (we only believe) we know continues to fall apart.

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Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist, and essayist. His poems, short fiction, poetry and essays have been published in numerous print publications and anthologies; his political essays have been widely posted on the progressive/left side of the internet.  Read other articles by Phil, or visit Phil's website.