Zine Terrorists!

From Lex McMenamin's 6-24-26 GUARDIAN article entitled "‘This Is Injustice’: How Leftist Zines Were Used to Sentence Anti-ICE Protesters to Decades in Prison":

Last year on the Fourth of July, a small group from Dallas-Fort Worth held a night-time noise demonstration, setting off fireworks outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility south of the cities, in solidarity with the detainees. A few protesters broke away and spray-painted graffiti on employees’ cars and a security post, slashed the tires on a government van, and broke a security camera. The facility’s guards ordered the protesters to disperse, and most of them did. When a police officer arrived at the scene, drawing his gun, an armed protester shot her rifle, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.

After a three-week trial, a jury found eight of nine protesters guilty of “providing material support to terrorists”, among other crimes. For the Sotos, this “material support” included owning a “printing press” used to print anarchist zines and being part of a leftist book club, the federal government argued. The couple had already left the scene by the time guns were drawn. All eight of the defendants sentenced so far have received unusually harsh sentences – 30 to 100 years – essentially life in prison.

Their attorneys announced their intention to appeal, but many supporters are doubtful that anything short of a presidential pardon from a future administration would free them.

The Prairieland case was the first tried and convicted under the Trump Department of Justice’s “counter-terrorism” initiatives targeting “antifa” – short for antifascist – a decentralized movement the administration has officially categorized as a “domestic terrorist organization”. The federal government argued the Prairieland defendants, what they called a “North Texas Antifa cell”, had planned the demonstration as an assassination attempt against a law enforcement officer. The government alleged this conspiracy even though the defendants were loosely connected, and some who attended the protest did not even know each other.

The conviction of the Prairieland defendants has shocked legal and civil liberties experts, who say the Trump administration is making examples of them and setting a dangerous precedent for what this means for the first amendment right to protest and to create and distribute information.

“It is not only an attempt at chilling speech,” said Chip Gibbons, policy director at the advocacy group Defending Rights and Dissent, “but an indication that the [the Trump administration is] going to continue going after protests extremely hard.”

In total, 22 people have been charged in connection with the protest: five others took plea deals, another five have state charges pending and three more were indicted last month. What the federal government has described as “antifa extremists” are activists you’d find anywhere in the US: trans people, tattoo artists, vegans and anti-ICE community members who engage in mutual aid. The federal government’s focus on the possession of leftwing literature, including zines, and other basic security measures common in our modern era – like owning Faraday bags, meant to block wireless signals to prevent surveillance; using the encrypted messaging app Signal; or dressing in all-black clothing – is alarming to activists.

“Zines are a foundational first amendment document” going back to the Federalist papers, said Xavier de Janon, the director of mass defense at the National Lawyers Guild and the attorney representing Elizabeth in her state case. “Zines discussing ideas of revolution, mutual aid, ideas of a world after capitalism should not be able to be criminalized in and of themselves … That’s just dangerous to all of us” [...].

One zine found in multiple homes during FBI raids was a 2019 review of the films Hereditary and Midsommar by the feminist theorist Sophie Lewis, titled: “The Satanic Death-Cult Is Real.”

“If you weren’t crying, you would laugh, because it looks as though they didn’t read any further than the title,” Lewis said, “and so it’s almost like a confession – as though the words on the pamphlet are: ‘We worship the devil, signed, antifa’.”

Donald Trump’s targeting of “antifa” began in his first administration and has only intensified since he retook office. Last month, the Trump administration issued its “counterterrorism strategy”, describing “anarchists and anti-fascists” as “violent left-wing extremists” and equating “pro-transgender ideology” to terrorism. This strategy built upon its National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7), issued in September shortly after the killing of far-right commentator Charlie Kirk, which the right inaccurately blamed on violent leftwing protesters and trans people. 

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Your Random Jack Kirby Panel of the Day

Reports from Trumplandia: The "Smash and Grab"/"Were We Controlled?" Edition

1) From Bernard Condon's 5-19-26 Associated Press news report entitled "Trump Discloses Thousands of Stock Trades, Some in Companies Directly Influenced By His Policies":

Call him the Trader in Chief.

Recent presidents have stayed away from trading stocks in companies whose fortunes they could lift or scuttle with the stroke of a pen, but Donald Trump smashed that precedent in the first quarter of this year with more than 3,600 buy and sell orders, many of them involving companies whose profits have been directly impacted by his decisions as head of the government.

Among the Trump trades in a recent report filed with a federal ethics agency was as much as $6 million in Nvidia, whose advanced chips Trump approved for sale to China last year. His portfolio also scooped up stocks of several U.S. military suppliers impacted by the Iran war, including Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.

“If he were defense secretary, he would be committing a crime,” said Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics adviser in the George W. Bush administration and a big critic of congressional trading, too. “Technically he can do this, but it is a fundamental breach of trust.”

To read the entire article, click HERE.

2) From Liz Landers' and Doug Adams' 5-28-26 PBS NEWSHOUR report entitled "Trump Stock Trades Fuel Accusations of Corruption and Profiting Off Presidency":

It's one thing to watch the market, but it's another thing altogether to actively trade stocks while in office. Mr. Trump's most recent federal financial disclosure form, filed earlier this month, reveals more than 3,700 trades in the first three months of this year, a flurry amounting to tens of millions of dollars in transactions.

The disclosure filing, called a Form 278, is required of senior government officials by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics within 45 days of any financial trade. It doesn't list specific amounts, only broad value ranges, and it's designated to ensure some level of transparency [...].

In the State of the Union this year, President Trump threw his support behind efforts to ban stock trading by members of Congress. But what he didn't say is that there's no such ban for presidents, and he didn't call for one [...].

In 2025, Mr. Trump's accounts traded almost exclusively in municipal and corporate bonds, which didn't raise conflict of interest concerns. But that changed in January this year, when Mr. Trump's accounts started to actively trade individual stocks, and some of the companies have ongoing direct involvement with the federal government.

Take Palantir Technologies. It has billions of dollars in contracts with the Trump administration, including a $1.3 billion contract with the Pentagon to develop A.I. systems to help orchestrate military operations.

Since January, Mr. Trump's account has made nine purchases of Palantir stock worth up to $680,000. When the stock declined nearly 15 percent in early April, Trump posted on TRUTH Social -- quote -- "Palantir Technologies has proven to have great war-fighting capabilities and equipment. Just ask our enemies."

Within 10 days, the stock had more than regained its value [...].

In early January, the president's account purchased between $500,000 to $1 million worth of Nvidia stock. A week before, Commerce officials approved the sale of some Nvidia chips to China.

In February, he purchased between $1 million and $5 million more just days before Nvidia announced a major computer processing power deal with Meta.

Vice President J.D. Vance defended the trading in the president's portfolio.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

3) From Ben Protess' 6-19-26 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "Inside Trump’s Stock Trading Surge":

The trades came in bursts, sometimes dozens or even hundreds in a day, all for the benefit of the Trump family.

In the first three months of the year, President Trump’s brokerage accounts placed more than 3,600 trades, as they bought and sold a wide variety of stocks and bonds, according to a disclosure form released last month.

On the surface, it appeared to be an unusual trading spree. In prior months, Mr. Trump typically reported a couple hundred trades or fewer. One disclosure last year showed only 25, The New York Times found.

Some of the trades early this year also appeared to be well timed, notably a purchase of Dell shares that came months before the company secured a lucrative government contract.

Mr. Trump’s critics contend that he is profiting from his presidency, and worry that he could be trading on inside information, while his supporters argue that any well-timed trades are coincidental. In a recent statement, Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, said that he and his family had no ability to direct the trading, all of which is controlled by outside brokerage firms [...].

Mr. Trump routinely namedrops companies in his social media posts and in public appearances. He owns shares in many of them.

But it would be difficult to ascertain whether these references were designed to affect a share price, or if they were simply musings.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

"Were they mere pawns in a fantastic game of international finance?"

--from the dust jacket copy of Lincoln Lawrence's WERE WE CONTROLLED? (1967) 

Bigfoot, THE GUARDIAN, and THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK!

From Leyland Cecco's 6-11-26 GUARDIAN article entitled "Sasquatch ‘Sightings’ Reignite Fervour and Scepticism About Ape-like Beast": 

Sceptics argue that Sasquatch believers underestimate just how many of these mammals would have to exist in order to maintain a breeding population that could persist for generations. For a giant primate to survive, there would need to be a population of several hundred individuals, across a large and wild environment. So far, no bones, body or DNA samples have ever been recovered. Footprints have proven frustratingly divisive.

Still, this has done little to dim the hopes of groups such as the Bigfoot Mapping Project, which has catalogued more than 16,600 sightings across North America. The reports are concentrated around some of the continent’s wildest landscapes, but they also include golf courses, suburban ravines and prairie treelines.

For [Josh] Redstone, one of the most overlooked aspects of the Sasquatch phenomenon is how dramatically conceptions of the creature have changed over time. The idea of the giant ape hiding in the wilderness is now so culturally pervasive that many people assume the stories have always existed. But many Indigenous traditions understood it differently.

“When people cite Indigenous stories of Sasquatch, they often ignore that for many communities, these creatures were actually a society of giant people who had clothing and tools but they just lived far away in the wilderness,” he said. “The idea of an ape – a lost primate – is relatively new.”

To read the entire post, click HERE. 

By the way, in case you're not already aware of this, Bigfoot endorsed my Wonderland Award-winning book, THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK, back in October of 2025! Surprisingly, the Sasquatch people make three separate appearances in my comprehensive guidebook for the recently impregnated. No vital subject (including cryptids) remains overlooked in this useful tome. Yes, a panoply of werewolves, sea serpents, and Bat Boys also pop up from time to time. Even more wondrous manifestations of the strange and the supernatural await you in the hermetic pages of THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK! If you want to see why Bigfoot and his kith and kin are so excited about this unique book, order a copy or two for yourself by clicking HERE... or HERE!!!

 

PRAISE FOR THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK:

"Robert Guffey’s The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is weirder than parthenogenesis, weirder than the Republican Party, weirder than the fetishizing of pregnancy that suffuses our culture, weirder than all the back issues of Weird Tales combined. You will laugh, gasp, and scratch your head in pleasurable bemusement. I can’t recommend this tongue-in-cheek tour de force too highly."

—James Morrow, award-winning author of Only Begotten Daughter and Behold the Ape


"Here it is. THE perfect baby-shower/gender reveal party gift. Forget all the binkies, blankies, cute little onesies, and diaper-service subscriptions. Those are so overdone and boring. Want to make a REAL impact? This book. This book right here [...].

"Well-written, lively, engaging, easy to read, and tons of fun. If I were a truly evil imp with plenty of money, I’d sneak copies into every OB/GYN office and ‘Parenting and Family’ bookstore section in the country."

—Christine Morgan, award-winning author of Spermjackers from Hell and Lakehouse Infernal 

 

"We've got plenty of people who think that they know best--better even than a given pregnant woman. We don't need more of them, but we could damn well use more examples of them turned into buffoons just like we get to see in the Handbook [...]. [The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook] is often weird, often funny, frightfully well written, and it gives us that unique satisfaction that only fiction can provide by putting the bastards into a magic circle of their own disinformation and locking them away. Isn't it sweet to think that they'd stay there."

 —Géza A. G. Reilly, Dead Reckonings 

 

You can hear me talking about the secret origins of THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK on multiple podcasts and radio shows including Steven Snider's THE FARM, Matthew M. K. Hopewell's THE AP STRANGE SHOW, and Seriah Azkath's WHERE DID THE ROAD GO? (Warning: Bigfoot may or may not be mentioned during these particular interviews.)

THE INTERCEPT: "Philly Cops Admit That They’re Tracking 'First Amendment Activity' Critical of AI"

From Matt Sledge and Sam Biddle's 6-1-26 THE INTERCEPT article entitled "Philly Cops Admit That They’re Tracking 'First Amendment Activity' Critical of AI":

Americans speaking out against artificial intelligence data centers on social media are falling under police surveillance, a confidential law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Intercept reveals.

A fusion center in Philadelphia combed through spicy internet comments from AI critics and concluded there is a growing risk of physical violence against data centers from “domestic violent extremists,” ranging from white supremacists to anarchists.

“Domestic violent extremists (DVEs) are likely interested in targeting artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, posing a physical and cyber threat to infrastructure in the Philadelphia regional area,” the Delaware Valley Intelligence Center wrote in a December alert.

The fusion center distributed its warning, marked “for official use only,” through the national fusion center network of state, local, and federal police agencies.

Like many of the reports produced by fusion centers, the bulletin points to news reports and social media posts, but cites little in the way of tangible threats. It acknowledges “a lack of specific information on plans to target AI data centers in the Philadelphia area,” but warns law enforcement that three planned data center facilities in the region could become targets of future protests.

Some of the anti-AI posts included in the document reflect hyperbolic anti-AI rhetoric that is widespread across social media, including an unnamed internet user who “indicated a desire to ‘burn down’ data centers.” Other examples of potentially terroristic posts included references to a fictional anti-robot movement in the science fiction novel “Dune” and a Facebook meme.

The fusion center, housed inside the Philadelphia Police Department, warned that “disruptive First Amendment activity” is an “indicator” of risk from “Domestic Violent Extremists,” an expansive term favored by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

Fusion centers, which sprouted up across the country after the September 11, 2001, attacks, have long been criticized for doing little to thwart actual terror plots and too much to subject lawful protesters to suspicion and surveillance. 

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Father's Day with Godzilla!

To celebrate Father's Day, my wife and daughter took me to the charming Bay Theater in Seal Beach to see an entry in the GODZILLA series that had somehow escaped me up to this point: Kazuki Omori's GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE (1989), in which the King of the Monsters fights a dead girl who has taken the form of a giant red rose with teeth. This might be the strangest kaiju beatdown I've ever seen, and that's saying something! I recommend it highly, of course... 

 

Note: The 2025 Criterion blu-ray edition sports a brand new cover painted by the inimitable Eric Powell of THE GOON fame...

Stephan A. Hoeller, R.I.P. (1931-2026)

Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, the Bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica (the Gnostic Church of Los Angeles), passed away on May 3, 2026 at the age of 94. I first interviewed Dr. Hoeller back in July of 2003 for PARANOIA MAGAZINE. He was easily one of the most fascinating gentlemen I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. He was a genuine raconteur. Like his mentor, Manly P. Hall, he had the rare ability to deliver a two-hour-long lecture about the most esoteric topics imaginable without once referring to his sparse notes. In fact, very often he had no notes at all! I spoke to him over the phone as recently as May of 2025, and he was just as lucid and insightful as when I first encountered him. Dr. Hoeller continued to deliver illuminating lectures at the Ecclesia Gnostica all the way up until a few weeks before his death.

Dr. Hoeller was the author of numerous important books including JUNG AND THE LOST GOSPELS: INSIGHTS INTO THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY (1989), FREEDOM: ALCHEMY FOR A VOLUNTARY SOCIETY (1992), THE GNOSTIC JUNG AND THE SEVEN SERMONS TO THE DEAD (1994), and GNOSTICISM: NEW LIGHT ON THE ANCIENT TRADITION OF INNER KNOWING (2002). This latter book, my personal favorite, is possibly the best and most concise introduction to the complex subject of Gnosticism. It receives my highest possible recommendation. 

The unexpurgated version of my lengthy, in-depth conversation with Dr. Hoeller will be included in my forthcoming collection of articles and interviews (about which, more later). In the meantime, you have at your disposal decades of recorded lectures by Dr. Hoeller that you can watch and rewatch at your convenience. I've recently posted links to some of these lectures. To check those out, click HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. I encourage you to search through the official Ecclesia Gnostica YouTube channel and avail yourself of this man's impressive wisdom. You can also find many of his lectures on the Philosophical Research Society YouTube channel.

Rest in Peace, Bishop Hoeller!