THE NEW YORK TIMES on Jan. 6th & Trump's "Zombie Army of Followers"

From Alan Feuer and Dan Barry's 1-5-26 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "For Many Jan. 6 Rioters, a Pardon From Trump Wasn’t Enough":

In the five years since the Capitol was stormed, no new facts have emerged to undermine the basic findings of congressional and Justice Department investigators that many of the rioters acted in the misguided belief, pushed relentlessly by Mr. Trump, that he had been robbed of victory in 2020 — and that in attacking the Capitol they not only injured about 140 police officers but also struck at a cornerstone of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

Even so, Mr. Trump has long maintained that the rioters endured horrible, even illegal, mistreatment during their prosecutions.

And yet if that is true, some pardoned rioters are now asking, then why haven’t their persecutors been thrown in jail? And if the rioters are martyrs to a righteous cause, as the president and his allies have often said, then why haven’t they been made whole through financial reparations?

While this disillusionment is not universal, some so-called J6ers have even begun to ask why, after nearly a year in power, Mr. Trump’s law enforcement agencies have yet to provide any proof of the conspiracy theory they promoted to help him reclaim the presidency: that deep-state agents lured Trump supporters into storming the Capitol to derail the MAGA movement and justify political reprisals.

What J6ers rarely seem to acknowledge is the possibility that Mr. Trump’s government has failed to reveal the hidden truth about Jan. 6 because there is no hidden truth, no deep-state conspiracy, and therefore no legal reason to bring further charges related to the riot [...].

By feeding a steady diet of unfounded conspiracy theories not only to the J6ers but also to others in their base, Mr. Trump and his allies have spawned what some experts have likened to a zombie army of followers. And now, by failing to follow these theories to their logical conclusions, they are seeing that army begin to turn on them.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

James Grauerholz, R.I.P. (1952-2026)

From Oliver Harris' 1-2-26 obituary for James Grauerholz, the executor of William S. Burroughs' literary estate:

James’ extensive and outstanding work as an editor has never been recognised. It started early: in his introduction to the revised edition of The Adding Machine, James noted how closely he was already working with Burroughs from the mid-1970s on his columns for Crawdaddy magazine. More substantively, he worked from the original manuscripts to edit Junky, Queer, Interzone, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text (with Miles), My Education: A Book of Dreams, Last Words, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. He also co-edited, with Ira Silverberg, Word Virus, a Burroughs anthology, and contributed his original research to Miles’ landmark 2014 biography.

James’ erudition was impressively wide-ranging. At times, when I felt my own inadequacy, he knew just how to be supportive. While re-editing Queer for my 2010 edition, I asked him to review my introduction, worrying that, as a straight guy who didn’t really know the field of gay literature or queer studies, I might well have missed what mattered most. He wrote back to say (I paraphrase): ‘You’ve never been an addict, either, but that didn’t stop you doing Junky…’ It was pragmatic advice that helped me know my place and get the work done.

James got a lot done in the Burroughs universe. For a good while, ‘William Burroughs Communications’, led by James and staffed by a wonderful crew of helpers, brought the creative best out of Burroughs and ensured his legacy. But there were times while Burroughs was alive and, in the years after his death, when James regretted what that cost him, what was left undone in his own name. James will not be remembered for his music or his writing. But he will be remembered, and rightly so, with love.

To read the entire obituary, click HERE.

Happy Birthday, Melissa!!!

Callooh! Callay! Here at Cryptoscatology Headquarters we've been celebrating Melissa's birthday every January 31st for exactly 20 years now! In the earliest photo, you can see Melissa preparing to perform aggressive surgery on a birthday cake shaped like a bowl of Top Ramen. The cake is somewhat more modest in this latest photo but no less delicious. It was a frabjous birthday all around. Here's hoping for many more to come!!! Callooh! Callay!

 

HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD on... CONSPIRINORMAL!

I'm delighted to report that CONSPIRINORMAL is up and running again on a regular schedule, and I've just appeared on the latest episode with hosts Adam Sayne and Serfiel Stevenson! Topics include my most recent nonfiction book, HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS, as well as the 2020 Nashville bombing, shapeshifting police officers, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, Bob Brewer, Warren Getler, treasure hunting, James Shelby Downard, The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraïm, Egyptian Freemasonry, CORONADO'S CHILDREN, Harold T. Wilkins, FLYING SAUCERS ON THE ATTACK, The Hidden Hell Window, Richard Shaver, THE MALTESE FALCON, Bishop James Pike, Philip K. Dick, NATIONAL TREASURE, Charles Darwin, MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, FRANKENSTEIN, Devo, predictive programming, the Revelation of the Method, Michael A. Hoffman, Marc Maron, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, AQUAMAN, Jack Parsons, Ray Bradbury, TWIN PEAKS, the Black Dahlia, the Zodiac Killer, Crispin Glover, and Scientology Santa! You can listen to this epic two-hour-plus interview in its entirety on YouTube...

Conspirinormal 502- Robert Guffey 6 (Hollywood Haunts the World)

 

Lilliputian Hallucinations

From Rachel Nuwer's 1-21-26 BBC article entitled "'They Saw Them on Their Dishes When Eating': The Mushroom Making People Hallucinate Dozens of Tiny Humans":

Only recently described by science, the mysterious mushrooms are found in different parts of the world, but they give people the same exact visions.

Every year, doctors at a hospital in the Yunnan Province of China brace themselves for an influx of people with an unusual complaint. The patients come with a strikingly odd symptom: visions of pint-sized, elf-like figures – marching under doors, crawling up walls and clinging to furniture.

The hospital treats hundreds of these cases every year. All share a common culprit: Lanmaoa asiatica, a type of mushroom that forms symbiotic relationships with pine trees in nearby forests and is a locally popular food, known for its savory, umami-packed flavor. In Yunnan, L. asiatica is sold in markets, it appears on restaurant menus and is served at home during peak mushroom season between June and August.

One must be careful to cook it thoroughly, though, otherwise the hallucinations will set in.

"At a mushroom hot pot restaurant there, the server set a timer for 15 minutes and warned us, 'Don't eat it until the timer goes off or you might see little people,'" says Colin Domnauer, a doctoral candidate in biology at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah, who is studying L. asiatica. "It seems like very common knowledge in the culture there" [...].

Domnauer is on a quest to solve the decades-old mysteries about this fungi species and identify the unknown compound responsible for its unusually similar hallucinations – as well as what it can potentially teach us about the human brain [...].

In a 1991 paper, two researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences described cases of people in Yunnan Province who had eaten a certain mushroom and experienced "lilliputian hallucinations" – the psychiatric term for the perception of tiny human, animal or fantasy figures. It is so named after the small people who inhabit the fictional Lilliput Island in the novel Gulliver's Travels.

The patients saw these figures "moving about everywhere", the researchers wrote – usually, there were more than ten tiny beings on the scene. "They saw them on their clothes when they were dressing and saw them on their dishes when eating," the researchers added. The visions "were even more vivid when their eyes were closed".

To read the entire article, click HERE.

NEW YORK TIMES: "Renee Good’s Family Should Be Able to Sue the Officer Who Killed Her"

From Erwin Chemerinsky and Burt Neuborne's 1-14-26 NEW YORK TIMES Op-Ed piece entitled "Renee Good’s Family Should Be Able to Sue the Officer Who Killed Her":

If Renee Good had been killed by a state or local police officer rather than an ICE agent, her family could sue the shooter for excessive force and violating her rights. But there is no law that allows federal officers to be sued for their constitutional violations. Congress should pass long-overdue legislation to fix this anomaly: a Renee Good Civil Rights Act.

Federal officials can be held criminally liable for their actions. But, because of the hole in federal law, civil suits against them struggle to move forward. In one case, the Supreme Court held that people who had been illegally thrown off the Social Security disability rolls and were left without income could not sue, even though they had been given no due process. In another, the court declared that a man dying of cancer after the prison repeatedly denied him any medical care could not sue. Similarly, the court ruled that people illegally detained after Sept. 11 and subjected to great abuse by prison guards had no remedy.

Yet for over 150 years, civil suits against state and local officials have been allowed. Soon after the Civil War, significant violations of civil rights, especially in the former rebel states, led Congress to recognize the need to empower federal courts to enforce the Constitution when it is violated by a state or local government. The Civil Rights Act of 1871 makes it a crime for state or local officers to use their authority “under color of law” to violate a person’s rights. The act also allows civil suits for monetary damages or injunctive relief against any state or local employees who, in the course of their work, violate the Constitution or federal laws.

That second provision, known as Section 1983, is the basis for virtually all lawsuits against state and local governments and officials who violate the Constitution. If a city adopts an ordinance that violates the First Amendment, a citizen can sue the city under Section 1983. If a police officer uses excessive force, which the Supreme Court has held violates the Fourth Amendment, the victim can sue the officer under Section 1983. Section 1983 suits account for a significant part of the workload of federal courts.

But Section 1983 applies only to those acting under the authority of state law. That is why the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd, could be sued under Section 1983. (Mr. Floyd’s family did sue Mr. Chauvin and others, and the lawsuit was settled for $27 million.) The ICE officer who killed Renee Good cannot be sued under that statute.

There is no comparable federal law that allows suits against federal officers who violate the Constitution.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

I Make My Debut Appearance on HI, STRANGENESS!!!

The latest episode of Steve Berg's HI, STRANGENESS podcast just dropped! Here's Steve's description of this nearly two-hour-long interview:

"HI friends! This week, my guest is the legendary fringe culture author, Robert Guffey! Robert has been writing about conspiracy culture for years now, and has contributed a lot of wildly fascinating stories, books, and magazine articles to this field of interest. On this episode, we spend most of the time discussing his new book HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD, which focuses on encoded cinema and cultural taboos. I don't want to spoil too much here, but we get into intel agencies involvement in screenwriting, things you can say in fiction, but not in real life, and a whole lot more. Being a deep fan of cinema history, I have to say that this one hit the spot perfectly for me. Enjoy!" 

Topics include Charles Fort, the Clarion Writers Workshop, Jack Womack, THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, James Randi, Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, CHAMELEO, Stephen R. Bissette, TABOO, Charles Darwin, TWIN PEAKS, Jack Parsons, L. Ron Hubbard, Marjorie Cameron, George Adamski, William S. Burroughs, PSYCHIC SELF-DEFENSE, the Black Dahlia, Musso & Frank, the JFK assassination, WE'RE WE CONTROLLED?, Jose Delgado, Curt Siodmak, CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN, Roky Erickson, Heaven's Gate, the OSS, SPIES & SAUCERS, HAMLET, THE GAMMA PEOPLE, Robert Aldrich, Nelson Rockefeller, Albert Broccoli, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, WINTER KILLS, Richard Condon, THE PARALLAX VIEW, Loren Singer, Permindex, Ted Kennedy, John Huston, and NOMENCLATURE OF AN ASSASSINATION CABAL! To listen to the entire episode, click HERE!!!