“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.” — Thomas Jefferson  

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” — George Orwell

–   –   –

There are certain ways to think about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and death that are acceptable to mainstream newspapers, TV, radio, movies, magazines, opinion periodicals, book publishers, book distributors, and booksellers. These tend to be the ways acceptable to the populace in an increasingly manipulated, regimented, propagandized and spied-upon permanent-warfare state.

Try to find a copy of William F. Pepper’s comprehensive The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (2016) in a public library in central or western Massachusetts (CWMARS). None exists.

One may find Pepper’s two previous books: Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King (1995) and An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King (2003) — four and eight copies, respectively, in the region’s public libraries.

By contrast, at least 13 of the region’s libraries already have a copy of Killing King: Racial Terrorists, James Earl Ray, and the Plot to Assassinate Martin Luther King Jr., by Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock (2018), seemingly designed to appear around the 50th anniversary of King’s murder last April.

From the dust jacket of Killing King: Wexler “has long been considered one of the top investigative researchers on domestic terrorism and radical religious activities … lives and teaches in New Jersey, where he won the prestigious James Madison Teaching Fellowship in 2010.” Hancock “is considered one the top investigative researchers on [sic] the areas of intelligence and national security. Hancock’s books have received praise from former House Select Committee on Investigations staff members and the former Joint Historian for the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency.” Each is a previously published author.

Pepper* is a lawyer and a dogged investigator. In 1999, representing the King family, he got a Memphis jury to exonerate the small-time professional criminal James Earl Ray of guilt in King’s assassination, posthumously, finding involvement in it by governmental agencies. I found Pepper’s The Plot to Kill King, which builds on his previous work on the subject, first rate and compelling.

In late March 2018 The Washington Post featured Pepper in a Page One story, breaking with the rest of the establishment media on King’s murder. It probably helped that Washington is a majority black city where many of all colors in the federal government had long given up on the government/media coverup.

Pepper** is the real goods. But try to find a copy of his latest book in a bookstore or library. To me, Wexler and Hancock seem to be state historians, hacks. In the United States an author whose work conflicts with the wishes of the shadow powers who run things may get something published, somewhere, but getting it reviewed or read is another matter.

— Mark

* He is also a “truther” on the mass murder and destruction of Sept. 11, 2001. And since 2012 he has been contesting the conviction of Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, contending that a second gunman killed Kennedy at a Los Angeles hotel that evening. Pepper is 81 years old.

** Pepper is one of 66 signers of a joint appeal announced this long weekend by the Kennedy and King families for new investigations into the assassinations of President Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sen. Robert Kennedy.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lived from Jan. 15, 1929, to April 4, 1968. The quote above is from a speech he gave in Memphis on behalf of striking black sanitation workers the night before he was killed.

Here are some others:

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.”

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

Last night’s speaker on “Constitutional Insights,” James Arpante, ranged widely — as did a few attendees at the hour-long Friends of the Berkshire Athenaeum event. He quoted from pocket-sized copies of the Constitution provided for free by U.S. Rep. Richard Neal* for everyone there.

When Mr. Arpante said “Congress can add to your rights, but it cannot take away your Constitutional rights,” someone asked how Congress could pass the USA Patriot Act** of  2001 then signed into law by President George W. Bush abridging the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments,among other changes. His reply was brief and my notes don’t say what it was, but I’ll try to get clarification.

One of the handouts was a six-page “Constitution Day Bibliography” of nearly a hundred titles available at Berkshire Community College’s Jonathan Edwards Library plus the names of a dozen related data bases.

— Mark

* One of five Massachusetts’ ten members of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote “Yea” to approve HR 3162, the USA PATRIOT Act, on Oct. 24, 2001.

** Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism

The U.S. Constitution will be front and center tomorrow evening, Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019, at 7 at the Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield’s public library*.

“You’ll be amazed at the foresight of our forefathers,” the Friends of the Berkshire Athenaeum say in an email about the event, “Constitutional Insights.” See announcement HERE.

James Arpante, adjunct professor of government, history, and business at Berkshire Community College, is the featured speaker and will lead discussion about the Constitution, its historical significance and why it matters so much today.

The presentation and discussion tomorrow night present an opportunity to be brought up to date on the U.S. Constitution and how much of it is still in effect.

Among the consequences of the mass murder and mayhem of Sept. 11, 2001, most of it at the World Trade Center in New York City, was the stripping away of U.S. citizens’ liberties by the USA PATRIOT Act** passed by a nearly unanimous United States Congress and signed into law by President George Walker Bush on Oct. 26, 2001.

Last year, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry successfully petitioned the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York to empanel a Special Grand Jury to examine evidence the Committee assembled pertinent to as-yet unprosecuted federal crimes in connection with the murder and destruction at the World Trade Center.

On its website, the Committee has posted a list of more than a dozen “Consequences of 9/11,” including loss of civil liberties under the USA PATRIOT Act; bulk data collection in a “surveillance state,” failure of government to uphold the United States Constitution, immunity of high-level officials from war crimes, and a constant fear campaign.  See the list HERE.

Does the Committee’s work have anything to do with reality? The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post think not. Either that or those four newspapers based within blocks of the World Trade Center are not free to express any interest by reporting on it.

Mr. Arpante or some attendees tomorrow night may have something to say about what has been called our post-Constitutional era.

— Bruce Riblet Henry and Mark Channing Miller

* Located at 1 Wendell Ave., Pittsfield, MA.

** The Act’s acronym stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.

I died for beauty, but was scarce / Adjusted in the tomb, / When one who died for truth was lain / In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed? / “For beauty,” I replied. / “And I for truth, – themself are one; / We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen, met a night, / We talked between the rooms, / until the moss had reached our lips, / And covered up our names.

–   –   –

The above is from Emily Dickinson of Amherst (1830 – 1886), and also from a 2019 calendar. Amherst is, among other things, a town Bruce and I walked through part of* on Route 9 last May on our mostly-pedestrian way from Provincetown to the New York State line at Hancock wearing four “9/11 TRUTH” signs. (For pix of us, look around in http://boston911truth.org/.)

Warm under a Pittsfield roof as it snows outside some 17 years and four months after the mass murder and mayhem of September 2001 that transformed much of the world and goes on murdering every day yet whose perpetrators have never been prosecuted for their federal crimes — it occurs to me that a poem, HERE, that John Keats (1795 – 1821) wrote near the end of his life may have inspired the belle of Amherst to write hers.

Thanks to Steve, Osneyda, Emily, John, Joel, Ed, Paul, Tom, David, Mick, Bruce, Kevin, Al, Chris, and the Pelham or Belchertown road angel, among others, for all your help.

— Mark

* We got a considerable lift from a road angel in a small beat-up Toyota (guessing) who knows who she is and may even be reading this if she follows the blog. We were leaning against a split-rail fence forlornly waiting for a taxi that wasn’t likely to ever come, when she appeared. She did some research online for the best place to have us spend the night and, based on that and her own experience, deposited us there. After having the desk clerk take a photo or two of the three of us on her cellphone, she was off, perhaps back to Pelham or Holyoke or Chicopee.

A child is born.

Why?

Because its parents got together in a certain way and, nine months later, biologically it’s what happens sometimes.

Is that what it’s all about? In the United States of America? Really?

Keep your nose clean … play your cards right, and YOU … you can …

What?

That scenario could play out two thousand years ago. Or 2019 years ago. But here …

… here, in this country, in the United States of America, which we, helped along by Norman Rockwell’s pictures* were brought up to believe was a democratic republic, with liberty and justice for all?

Think about it.

— Mark

* Especially vivid in the minds of people in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and vicinity

Another event related to the murderous terror of Sept. 11, 2001, left out of our attempt at a 2018 summary a couple of days ago:

The multiple-artist show at The Met Breuer in Manhattan entitled “Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy.” For links to eight reviews, click HERE.

Warning #1: The last day for the exhibition is this coming Sunday, Jan. 6, so if you can’t go yourself, tip off a friend who can.

Warning #2: Just reading the reviews was unsettling for this correspondent, who has not seen it. Actually seeing it may be more so. The exhibition was meant to be unsettling.

The Met Breuer, located at 945 Madison Ave., where the Whitney Museum of American Art used to be, has been a part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 2016.

— Mark

A possibly key development in 2018 that we omitted yesterday was the U.S. Senate resolution unanimously calling for declassification of all “documents related to the events of September 11, 2001,” to be declassified and stating that “the survivors, the families, and the people of the United States deserve answers about the events and circumstances surrounding the terrorist attacks upon the United States.” Please find our post about it HERE.

It’s worth noting that the senator who sponsored the resolution, Richard Blumenthal, was United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut from 1977 to 1981 and may be able to communicate effectively with U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman of the District of Southern New York. (Our post yesterday notes Berman’s response to the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry petitions for a Special Grand Jury to consider evidence of as-yet unprosecuted federal crimes related to the World Trade Center building collapses.)

Like the three events in 2018 we mentioned yesterday, it was not covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, or other organs of the mainstream media. Which is why we didn’t find out about it until more than three weeks after the unanimous vote.

— Mark

* As Lt. Columbo might say.

In 2018 we walked across Massachusetts from Provincetown at the eastern tip of Cape Cod to the New York State border with “9/11 Truth” signs on our chests and backpacks, after talking about doing something like it for more than a year.

This blog has provided occasional glimpses of the walk from mid-April to mid-May and, later, of events in the 9/11 Truth movement or related subjects. It will continue.

Among the year’s events related to the historic mass murders and destruction of Sept. 11, 2001:

* Publication in September of 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation, by David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth. It’s roughly the tenth book Olive Branch Press has published by Griffin, the first co-authored by his longtime collaborator.

* Official action in November by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York to empanel a Special Grand Jury to consider evidence contradicting the official government account of the destruction of three World Trade Center skyscrapers, and act on it. U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman was responding to petitions filed in April and July by the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry on behalf of more than a dozen surviving family members of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror.

* The off-Broadway debut in June of “A Blanket of Dust,” at The Flea in lower Manhattan, which we drove in to see after missing our train by minutes. After the performance we attended media critic Mark Crispin Miller’s interview on stage with playwright Richard Squires and architect Bill Brinnier. Brinnier’s best friend, Frank DeMartini, the WTC construction manager, died in the collapse of the North Tower while rescuing dozens of people trapped in its upper floors.

We hope this powerful drama will be performed “on the road,” possibly starting in 2019. Its title reminds one that the two WTC towers and Building 7 were not destroyed by the impact of two jetliners and office fires touched off by their fuel, but rather were mystifyingly pulverized, coating a large area with several inches of fine dust.

What there was not in 2018 was any significant lessening of the surreal mainstream media neglect of anything challenging the official, impossible “9/11” narrative — in disappointing contrast to their publishing valuable work by dozens of their own reporters in the first few years after the murder and mayhem of Sept. 11, 2001.

With thanks to everyone who provided physical or morale-boosting help or inspiration . . .

— Bruce Riblet Henry and Mark Channing Miller