A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, returned a second superseding indictment against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange last week charging him with “offenses that relate to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States,” according to a Department of Justice statement released Wednesday.

What does it mean?

A search will turn up several news accounts of the action. THIS ONE dismissive of the worth of the indictment was sent out Thursday by Caitlin Johntone. It contains a wealth of links, including one to the Justice Department’s release and another to the indictment itself.

At this pivotal moment in American history, we have to make a fundamental decision. Do we want to spend billions more on endless wars in the Middle East, or do we want to provide decent jobs to millions of unemployed Americans here at home? Do we want to spend more money on nuclear weapons or do we want to invest in decent jobs and childcare and healthcare for the American people most in need? …

Now at this moment of unprecedented national crises—a growing pandemic, an economic meltdown, the demand to end systemic racism, and police brutality, and an unstable president—it is time to truly focus on what we value as a society and to fundamentally transform our national priorities. …

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Who said the above? When? Where? Why? In what context?

Cick HERE to listen to the full statement being delivered and to read a news account about it.

Today, just three songs.

The first is “That’ll Be the Day” by Buddy Holly. HERE are the lyrics, and HERE and HERE are a couple of bios of Holly.

THIS is “How Great Thou Art,” sung by Kathrine Jenkins with some backup. HERE are the lyrics, and HERE is some information about the song.

Here is “I Wear a Face Mask in My Car.” Perhaps there will be more information about it another time.

The dawn from on high will visit us, to give light to those who live in darkness and the shadow of death. — Luke 1: 78b-79a *

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The sun appears to be slowly setting on the United States as a country that can be taken seriously in the world except as a military power.

Under the headline “As E.U. Opens, It Aims to Keep Americans Out: Repudiation of Trump’s Pandemic Blunders,” the New York Times this morning carried a report by Matina  Stevis-Gridneff that opened:

“BRUSSELS — European Union countries rushing to revive their economies and reopen their borders after months of coronavirus restrictions are prepared to block Americans from entering because the United States has failed to control the scourge, according to draft lists of acceptable travelers reviewed by The New York Times.

“The prospect, which would lump American visitors in with Russians and Brazilians as unwelcome, is a stinging blow to American prestige in the world and a repudiation of President Trump’s handling of the virus in the United States, which has more than 2.3 million cases and upward of 120,000 deaths, more than any other country.”

Near the end, the report tells of European Center for Disease Prevention and Control officials “warn[ing] negotiators that the case numbers were so dependent on the level of truthfulness and testing in each country, that it was hard to vouch for them ….”

The phrase “the level of truthfulness and testing” jumped out. In this country, scientific and other truthfulness has fallen by the wayside in matters related to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The executive and judicial branches of the U.S. government have downgraded the importance of truth when it comes to the facts on the ground of 9/11. And the news media (including the New York Times) have followed suit after some great reporting initially, apparently accepting as valid what might be called “government science.”

It’s not just Trump.

— Mark Channing Miller

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* From Luke 1: 57-80, a reading for today celebrating the nativity of St. John the Baptist, in The Revised New Jerusalem Bible

Geoffrey Berman’s firing as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York got lots of coverage. Readers can go to a search engine to find stories and editorials on it.

There is nothing in all the summaries of Berman’s tenure about his apparent refusal to present to a Federal Grand Jury stacks of evidence of a list of federal crimes committed in the destruction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001–evidence at variance with the 9/11 Commission’s 2004 report.

It was provided in 2018 by the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, but readers will have to go to their website to find it, as the “free press” of this country won’t touch it.

In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous. — Aristotle (taken from a tea bag tab)

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul … there is no need to be afraid. — Matthew 10: 28a, 31a

All alone you’re just another brick in the wall. — From Pink Floyd’s best-known song

The times they are a-changin’. — From one of Bob Dylan’s best-known songs

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What is really going on, anyway?

Some of the elements of at least the surface of what is going on are readily available in newspapers and on the radio and on TV, with plentiful commentary by paid professional commentators. A lot of it is extraordinarily well done, and it is easy for people in their target audiences to rely solely on it for their views of what is going on, which is intended.

Then there’s the Internet, with most of the above available there, too, along with a range of news and views from other sources, a lot of the latter being rarely available in newspapers or on the radio or TV. If one tried to take in even the best of what’s available in newspapers and on radio and on TV, that would preclude going to these other sources.

Last night, I took well over an hour to listen to and watch a conversation, HERE, in which both participants give voice to information about the environmental movement and related organized activities that most people likely have zero awareness of. I won’t attempt to summarize the conversation but do recommend that visitors to this blog set aside an hour or two to do it justice.

Here’s an intro by Mark Crispin Miller of News From Underground, which alerted me to the conversation—he titled it it “Cory Morningstar on how the ‘climate movement’ and the ‘Green New Deal,’ are really all about DESTROYING nature”:

“Millions of well-meaning people, especially the young, have been adeptly played by mighty interests looking to realize the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” so as to make themselves still wealthier, and further tighten their control, through blockchain technology, AI, total surveillance.

”HERE’s Cory taking us through all that she’s elucidated through her must-read investigative series, which you can find at http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org. The very telling silences that Cory notes throughout the “climate movement” also tell us something about BLM/Antifa, who say nothing about class, or the economy, or the war machine, which just keeps grinding on throughout this crisis, further poisoning the planet, and bombing peoples of color, and destabilizing their societies, while everybody here is shouting ‘Black lives matter!’

“MCM

”p.s. Cory has a very interesting take on Jeff Gibbs’s [documentary film] “Planet of the Humans,” and Michael Moore’s regressive use of it.”

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Another view deserving of a careful reading is THIS ONE by Chris Hedges, titled “The Treason of the Ruling Class: They have destroyed our capitalist democracy and replaced it with a Mafia state.”

Who is Hedges? Two bios are HERE and HERE.

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If you would like to remotely take in a church service for today, put together in advance by a team at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, click HERE or HERE. The four readings were written in their own languages by, I’m guessing, some privileged people of their times, thousands of years ago.

The quote up top from Matthew is from one of today’s readings. It reminded me of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968).

The guest preacher read Matthew 10:24-39 before his sermon, which was about, among other things, nature. A retired Episcopal priest, he is apparently a product of white privilege, as are Miller (no blood relation to me), Morningstar, Hedges, and myself.

— Mark Channing Miller

Yesterday’s entry on Juneteenth was limited to the views of two people whose words online only went so far. One of them concentrated on inner change, largely slighting what can be done when humans acting together can effect broad, positive structural change. The other focused on massive violence and cruel acts carried out by celebrated historical figures and on the blindness and hypocrisies about it.

On the other hand, yesterday’s and today’s issues of the the Berkshire Eagle, contain articles about the future. For instance:

“Berkshire youths’ march will focus on racial equality” is the Friday page 1 headline over an article in which one of the organizers talks about suppressing his own feelings about racist incidents he experienced as a high schooler. “Change is occurring right now,” he said. “People are seeing that things have to change.” Racist police brutality is only one item on the agenda. The march, organized by three males ages 26, 20, and 16, takes place this Sunday (which is also Fathers Day). It’s roughly a mile and a half long and includes a roster of speakers at the end.

* “Move afoot in Mass. to make Juneteenth a state holiday,” reads the headline over a detailed story by a local reporter.

* “Amid protests for racial justice, Juneteenth gets new renown” is the headline over THIS national Associated Press story in today’s Eagle.

* Less obvious as a story concerning racial decisions ahead for Pittsfield public schools is the top page 1 article today, headed “A split in learning eyed in the fall.” The schools superintendent said a likely scenario with caronavirus in mind is that some students are in schools and others stay at home and learn remotely through computers and the Internet. How students who are already disadvantaged would be affected was not part of the article.

Today is Juneteenth. What does that have to do with 9/11 truth, the main purpose of this blog and the walk that began it? Plenty.

Lies perpetuated over decades and centuries have lent themselves to injustices that continue today. Thanks to witnesses with cellphones, police killings can be widely exposed within minutes.

Government lies concerning the mass murder of Sept. 11, 2001, hid the basic facts of that atrocity and led to the carnage and destruction and waste that followed.

On this day, Juneteenth, two activists with different approaches may show some of the way out.

HERE is part of a 2017 presentation by the Rev. angel Kyodo williams that has been titled “Love and Justice Are Not Two.” It is introduced Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation.

HERE is a piece titled “Goodbye, Columbus” by Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report.

“Love and justice are not two,” angel Kyodo williams says. “Without inner change there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.”

Her passage ends with what she calls the Warrior-Spirit Prayer of Awakening, written “in response to the events of September 11th.”

Margaret Kimberley singles out Churchill, Columbus and King Leopold of Belgium as underrecognized for their racist savagery:

“The perpetrators of crimes against humanity are often elevated to positions of respect and admiration. It all depends on who did the killing and who was killed. Now the murderers are being called to account.”

Statues coming down are one sign of change this year. The exposing of long-tolerated police brutality is another. These could be steps toward a better world with yet-unforeseen transformative changes.

The following relate to the last two entries.

* Regarding yesterday’s, headed “News Breakthrough,” at least three things are worth noting:

(a) In a 2017 opinion piece occasioned by the University of Alaska Fairbanks engineering department’s then-ongoing study of the WTC Building 7 collapse on Sept. 11, 2001, writer Dermot Cole of the Anchorage Daily News couldn’t resist loading it up with highly suspect elements of the phony government narrative; a feeble attack on AE911Truth founder Richard Gage; and general all-purpose junk about conspiracy theorists. Maybe it was the only way Cole could get anything in the paper on 9/11 truth. He did spell Gage’s name correctly.

(b) In a 2019 report, “Fire did not cause World Trade Center Building 7 to collapse, UAF study suggests,” KTVA reporter Liz Raines stuck to the facts about that engineering study led by Prof. Leroy Hulsey. It’s worth looking at and reading.

(c) Even the Daily Commercial News article published this May 20 on the UAF study and AE911Truth’s filing of a Request for Correction with the National Institute for Standards and Technolody (NIST) for its report on the Building 7 collapse contained something that hasn’t been nailed down. Without attribution, it states that on Sept. 11, 2001, “two hijacked planes hit WTC 1 and WTC 2.” Oh, really? That’s far from proven, and it was NIST that reported on the Twin Towers’ miraculous collapses.

* Although they never met, the stars of “It Says Here …,” syndicated writer Curtis Honeycutt (“The Grammar Guy”) and Berkshire Eagle reporter (later managing editor) Thomas O. Morton have a least one other thing in common than appearing on page B2 last Sunday: a thorough grounding in correct English usage.

“Leave it lay where Jesus flang it,” Morton said more than once in the Eagle newsroom, in one breath illustrating three incorrect elements of the language and potentially riling any overly sensitive follower of Jesus present.

— Mark Channing Miller

A Canadian construction industry online news outlet has given added life to the University of Alaska Fairbanks study of World Trade Center Building 7’s destruction that is key to exposing the impossible myths cloaking the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Headlined “World Trade Center Building 7 did not collapse due to fire: Report,” the article and (so far) 97 comments, all HERE, are must reading, especially for those who find the long, technical UAF report itself challenging.

The final report by Prof. Leroy Hulsey and his team was released on March 25 after three months of public review.

The Daily Commercial News article about it came out on May 20–so far the only major journalistic coverage the UAF study has received in North America.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner is among the newspapers that have covered it.

Last Thursday, some PBS affiliates did start airing “Spotlight On: SEVEN,” a five-minute version of the full-length documentary “SEVEN” due out in September.

Of the highly readable comments by readers of the Daily Commercial News article, only five—three by the same person—are critical of the UAF study and Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which funded it.