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! 

 

Reports from Trumplandia: The "Great White House Situation Room Nipples Debate" Edition

From Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's 6-10-26 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files":

In the emails, [Sarah] Ransome claimed that she knew a girl in Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring named Jen, who said she had sex with Trump. Ransome also claimed that Jen had told her that Trump had a predilection for nipples and that he had aggressively flicked and sucked hers. Ransome wrote that she had seen evidence when she shared a bathroom with Jen. “They looked incredibly painful as they were red and swollen and I remember wincing when I looked at them,” she wrote.

Ransome’s credibility was not uncomplicated; she had made another claim that she possessed video footage of prominent men having sex with young girls in Epstein’s entourage. She later retracted the claims, saying she feared for herself and her family if she proceeded. But after a federal judge ordered the unsealing of some of the Giuffre case files in 2023, the document that connected Trump to the claim about abused nipples was among the material that came out. It was an unconfirmed allegation and had not been made publicly, but the disclosure led to some articles that were quickly lost in the swirl of election-year news.

Some of Trump’s advisers in the Situation Room had never heard of the nipple claim; those who had seemed to have only a passing familiarity with it. Many in the room thought this was all just discredited nonsense. But it might not matter. The Ransome emails could get new attention if they were included in a “public-facing and searchable” Epstein library that carried the branding of the Justice Department. An administration official had already searched for Trump-related materials on the still-private test version of the website, and the nipple material was among the first items to show up. None of the credibility issues would come into consideration if a government-endorsed database gave Ransome’s claim about Trump a stamp of validity.

“This is out there,” one of the officials told the group in the Situation Room. “They’re going to make a huge scene of this, even though it’s not true and everybody knows it.”

Blanche argued that in context, the Ransome document — and Ransome’s disavowal of some of her other claims — would make clear why the allegations related to Trump had never been pursued for prosecution. Besides, these allegations were already available online because of what had been unsealed, so there was no reason to leave them off the Justice Department website.

The vice president said he thought the president would be OK with releasing the nipple-related documents, arguing that Trump had been accused of worse. “I think we should put it out,” he said. “It would cause people to say we’re going further than we need to.” Wiles quickly responded that the president would not, in fact, be OK with it. It was a point no one wanted to continue debating.

One official would later describe it as a “surreal” experience to be discussing nipples in the White House Situation Room.

This was, in miniature, the entire problem the White House had with the Epstein files: Piles of accusations were impossible to disprove and equally impossible to make go away. Every door they opened led to another room, and in every room were more claims from more women [...].

In a January 2020 email, a federal prosecutor told a colleague that Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet far more than anyone knew. Flight records in the files showed at least eight trips between 1993 and 1996, sometimes with his second wife, Marla Maples, sometimes with his children. In January 2024, Trump declared that he had never been on the plane.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Reports from Trumplandia: The "Trump vs. Charlie Kirk" Edition

From Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's 6-10-26 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files":

The Justice Department had struggled with just how to dispose of the Epstein matter since the beginning of Trump’s second term. The issue was all-consuming for the president’s political base, but also potentially compromising for the president himself in ways that officials in the new administration didn’t fully understand. Any path forward would be fraught.

Some of that complexity was self-inflicted. In the engine room of the MAGA movement, the Epstein files were potent fuel. Elon Musk had used his social media platform to repeatedly question why a client list had not been released. Donald Trump Jr. and JD Vance had invoked the Epstein files as a broader campaign message to argue that “powerful people” were hiding the truth from Americans. Tucker Carlson and the young conservative leader Charlie Kirk had each insisted that the government should release the documents and each floated the idea that there was an expansive cover-up in progress.

Trump himself had been cagey. On the “Lex Fridman Podcast” in September 2024, when asked about releasing the client list, Trump responded, “I’d certainly take a look at it,” adding, “I’d have no problem with it.” The list “probably will be” made public, he said, but he sounded less than enthusiastic. In private, Trump later told Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene that a release of Epstein material could hurt some of his friends. He repeatedly insisted that he had done nothing wrong and that the whole saga was “fake news” designed to harm him politically.

But his posture was overtaken by the growing frenzy among his supporters. Throughout 2024, Greene had made it her mission to force the release of the files. And there were so many others. The far-right influencer Laura Loomer, the conservative activist Scott Presler, Chaya Raichik from Libs of TikTok. But when it came to propagating the Epstein files as evidence of a “deep state” capable of evil, two podcasters were not to be outdone: Kash Patel and Dan Bongino.

Patel — a National Security Council director for counterterrorism and Defense Department chief of staff in the first Trump administration — had repeatedly claimed in podcast interviews that the government was hiding Epstein’s “black book” or client list, and he frequently asserted that the F.B.I. was deliberately withholding names to protect the powerful. Patel promised that a second Trump administration would release “everything” to restore public trust.

On “The Dan Bongino Show,” Bongino’s background as a Secret Service agent had lent authority to his claims of a cover-up. “What the hell are they hiding with Jeffrey Epstein?” he’d asked his large audience of MAGA devotees. The release of the client list would “rock the political world,” he predicted. The “Washington swamp” was “not telling you the truth.”

And so as they took office in 2025, Trump’s advisers were subject to intense pressures of their own making. Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly made things much worse [...].

The relationships at the top of the Justice Department were by now beyond dysfunctional. At another July meeting, in [Susie] Wiles’s office, Bongino and Patel told the chief of staff they suspected that Bondi had leaked negative stories about them.

“Blondie fucked this whole thing up,” Bongino later told a confidant, echoing Loomer’s derisive nickname for the attorney general. “She was the one on TV saying over and over they had all this stuff. There was never anything. We were always clear about that. But now everyone thinks we did something wrong. And I gave up everything.” Bongino complained that he had given up his high-rated show and millions of dollars, “and now it’s all disappeared, because people think we screwed something up with Epstein.”

Bongino paused.

“This is going to be President Trump’s Iran-contra.”

On July 12, the president took to Truth Social to defend Bondi against criticism and to urge his “boys” and “gals” to stop wasting “Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.” Trump told aides he was very unhappy with some of his most influential supporters, including Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, all of whom were publicly urging the administration to come clean. Kirk had held a Turning Point USA event the previous day that turned into an Epstein grievance fest, with one speaker after another bashing Bondi over her handling of the situation. Trump had called Kirk and scolded him.

Nobody in Trump’s orbit had a better feel for the younger part of the MAGA base than Kirk, who saw that the Epstein cover-up, as it was now viewed, was capturing attention to an alarming extent. 

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Nick Gray's CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

"In 1993, a film crew from Yorkshire Television in the U.K. led by producer Nick Gray and director Tim Tate went to Omaha, Nebraska in the U.S.A. to make a documentary about an alleged paedophile ring.

"Funded by the Discovery Channel in the U.S.A., their proposed film would first be broadcast in the U.K. and Ireland as part of Yorkshire Television documentary series: 'First Tuesday'. A U.S. broadcast would follow.

"In Omaha the film crew discovered the machinations of a vast operation functioning throughout the country providing children to the wealthy and the political establishment for molestation, drug trafficking and blackmail.

"A year later in 1994 the documentary 'Conspiracy of Silence' was to air in the U.K. but--during final editing with first broadcast approaching--the Discovery Channel inexplicably withdrew support and reimbursed Yorkshire Television the half million dollars it cost to make.

"To this day the documentary remains 'unaired.'"

--from the preface to Nick Gray's CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

If you want to watch this banned documentary, which is largely based on the research of John W. DeCamp (author of THE FRANKLIN COVER-UP), then click HERE. 

You can hear filmmaker Tim Tate, who produced CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE, discussing the strange saga of this censored documentary on the 11-18-22 episode of THE NICK BRYANT PODCAST. To listen to the entire interview, click HERE.

As a bonus, here are two related excerpts from my 2022 book, OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP:

“ADRENOCHROME — Those Who Know Cannot Sleep” is a nearly fifteen-minute video that contains almost no facts whatsoever. It’s as if someone read and reread John W. DeCamp’s 1992 True Crime book The Franklin Cover-Up, which revolves around reportage about an alleged pedophile ring operated by prominent Republicans like Nebraska businessman Lawrence E. King Jr. (a crime ring that reportedly overlapped with Iran-Contra money-laundering schemes operating out of the Reagan-Bush White House), and decided to toss these scandalous rumors into a giant blender mixed with 100% pure gonzo jabberwocky — but this time around, Democrats are now the evil, moustache-twirling villains at the center of the soap opera. As with so many of Q’s claims, elements of past conspiracy theories have been distorted and flipped, always in favor of Republicans. Any allegations that reflect badly on Republicans are conveniently left out of the retelling [...].

One of the most controversial aspects of The Glass House Tapes was [Louis] Tackwood’s claim that the Los Angeles Police Department, in concert with various U.S. intelligence agencies, were using satanic cults in California for the purposes of blackmailing and brainwashing high-profile initiates. I find it ironic that this scenario has now been embraced by the right wing, when back in the early 1970s the only people talking about this were far-left radicals like the members of the Citizens Research and Investigation Committee, with whom Tackwood collaborated on The Glass House Tapes. Subsequent nonfiction books like Walter Bowart’s 1978 Operation Mind Control, Maury Terry’s 1987 The Ultimate Evil and John W. DeCamp’s aforementioned 1992 The Franklin Cover-Up explore similar themes in far greater depth...