The other night I was finally getting into David Ray Griffin’s 2006 book Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action, which Bruce* lent me a month or two ago, and I wondered when Griffin’s birthday was, in order to give him a salute in this blog. I was a few days late. It’s Aug. 8. He’s 80.

    He was born four score years and seven days ago today.

    Maybe in a more sane era one of our everyday coins will bear his likeness. If not that, a postage stamp. For now, he is one of those distinguished authors whose books are barely acknowledged, much less reviewed in newspapers and magazines in the United States.

   While searching for his birth date, I came across — a few weeks late — word of a month-long exhibit in Ipswich, Massachusetts, of 29 portraits, each with a quotation by the subject, from the series by the artist Robert Shetterly, entitled Americans Who Tell the Truth. Griffin was one of those pictured.

   The quote Shetterly used for his portrait is:

“There are literally dozens of problems in the official account of 9/11 sufficiently serious to show the official story to be false. But the clearest proof is provided by the video of the World Trade Center building #7 coming straight down in absolute free fall. Even though this proof has existed in plain sight for all these years, the fact that 9/11 was an inside job, and hence a State Crime Against Democracy, has remained a hidden fact.”

    See the portrait of Griffin HERE. Read a newspaper article about the exhibit HERE. See all the portraits in the series, from which the 29 for Ipswich were selected, HERE.

    Below, peruse the titles of the books Griffin has had published related to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (If your interest is sufficiently piqued, see which ones are in the collection of your public library to borrow, and which ones you may borrow through interlibrary loan.)

    * The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Northampton, MA: Oliver Branch Press, 2004)

    * The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton: OBP, 2004)

    * Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006)

    * The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God: A Political, Economic, Religious Statement, with John B. Cobb, Richard A. Falk, and Catherine Keller (Louisville: WJKP, 2006)

    * 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, Vol. 1, editor, with Peter Dale Scott (Northampton: OBP, 2006)

    * Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (Revised & Updated Edition) (Northampton: OBP, 2007)

    * 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press, (Northampton: Interlink Publishing Group: 2008)

    * New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-up and the Exposé, (Northampton: OBP, 2008)

    * Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? (Northampton: OBP, 2009)

    * The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False (Northampton: Interlink Publishing, 2009)

    * Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee’s Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory (Northampton: OBP, 2010)

    * 9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed (Northampton: OBP, 2011)

    * Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World (Northampton: OBP/Interlink, 2017)

    * 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation, with Elizabeth Woodworth (Northampton: OBP, 2018)

    * The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic? (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2018)

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* Fellow Pittsfield resident Bruce Henry, with whom I, Mark Miller, walked across Massachusetts from Provincetown to the New York State line at Hancock wearing signs saying “9/11 TRUTH.”

They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hands on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. — Mark 7:32-35

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To read about an NBC “editorial” vilifying the actor Alec Baldwin for being a non-hypnotized citizen demanding accountability for President Kennedy’s murder in 1963 in Dallas, click HERE.

You will be venturing outside the world presented by that network and corporate news media generally, a world designed to keep readers and viewers deaf, dumb and blind — to the extent possible — to the truth about a variety of matters they seem to want to keep covered up.

Thanks to the Justice Integrity Project for standing by Baldwin.

Note: NBC and CNN put on this summer’s forums in Miami and Detroit presenting the Democrats’ presidential candidates and largely succeeded in controlling them. The Associated Press left out of its coverage of the televised shows, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE, any mention of NBC and CNN as if their roles were inconsequential.

Commissioners of a small fire district next to the New York City borough of Queens Thursday unanimously urged the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York to present to a Special Grand Jury the petition of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry alleging un-prosecuted federal crimes connected to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“The overwhelming evidence” in the petition “demonstrates beyond any doubt that pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries  — not just airplanes and the ensuing fires  — caused the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings, killing the vast majority of victims who perished that day,” according to the resolution of the five-member board of the Franklin Square and Munsun Fire Department in Nassau County.

The board “fully supports a comprehensive federal grand jury investigation of every crime related to the attacks … as well as any and all efforts by other government entities to investigate and uncover the full truth surrounding the events of that horrible day,” the resolution states.

Firefighter Thomas J. Hetzel of the volunteer department’s Hook and Ladder Company No. 1 was killed while performing his duties at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, along with 2,976 other emergency responders and civilians, and other members of the department contracted life-threatening illnesses from breathing deadly toxins in later rescue and recovery operations and cleanup there, according to the document.

A full account of last Thursday’s vote, HERE, on the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth website, called the board “the first legislative body in the country to officially support a new investigation into the events of 9/11.” Last September, however, U.S. Senate Resolution 610, “adopted without objection,” called for “Declassification of ALL 9/11 Documents.” Read about that resolution HERE.

Dear Liba Vaynberg, Ed Asner, Tovah Feldshuh, Donald Corren, and Jimmy Burke,

Thanks for coming to the Williamstown Theater Festival’s main stage and filling the place on Monday night for your reading of “The Soap Myth.” You were terrific.

And thanks to Williams College professor Jeffrey Israel, author of the new book Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion: How Popular Culture Can Defuse Intractable Differences, for leading the challenging discussion afterwards with playwright Jeff Cohen, director Pamela Berlin and the audience.

“The Soap Myth” grapples with a grisly subject but is a wonderful device through which to effortlessly have the many horrors of the Holocaust pounded into one’s being.

I wrote down only six words in my program. The first five were the question the young journalist Annie (Liba Vaynberg), asks the authorities who are keeping any trace of the soap myth out of their museum: “Your argument feels like fear.”

The sixth was “gaslighting,” an elaborate form of psychological manipulation, mentioned by playwright Jeff Cohen in the discussion.

I hope you had or have time to enjoy the Berkshires before hitting the road for your national tour. Break a leg!

Sincerely,

Mark Channing Miller

p.s. Thanks to New England Public Radio and reporter Karen Brown for informing this listener on Monday morning of the reading, this way.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.* — Voltaire

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. — Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany

All I know is just what I read in the newspapers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.** — Will Rogers

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* From the French “Ceux qui peuvent vous faire croire des absurdités peuvent vous faire commettre des atrocités.” David Ray Griffin used the English version on page vi of his 2006 book Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action, right after the table of contents.

** If Rogers were alive in the 21st century he might say, “All I know is just what I read in the newspapers and magazines, hear on the radio, and see on the TV, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.”

Truth is elusive. In utmost secrecy, a Special Grand Jury may be investigating evidence of federal crimes involving the use of pre-planted explosives and incendiaries in the destruction of three World Trade Center skyscrapers on Sept. 11, 2001.

However, it’s possible that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey S. Berman, has not presented to any grand jury evidence the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry supplied to him on behalf of family members of murdered victims.

The U.S. Attorney’s office has been extremely guarded on the status of the 54-page Petition submitted to it in April 2018, an amended petition submitted in July 2018, and a supplement to the petitions submitted in March 2019.*

In a brief letter last November, Attorney Michael Ferrera, chief of the office’s terrorism unit, said only that the U.S. Attorney was complying with the statute, 18 U.S.C. §3332, the Lawyers’ Committee had cited.

A telephone conversation two representatives of the Lawyers’ Committee (LC) had last month with Ferrera shed little more light on the matter. Ferrera cited the portion of Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure** dealing with necessary secrecy.

What to do about it? For months the LC has contemplated a “mandamus” lawsuit asking a federal judge in the Southern District of New York to order the U.S. Attorney to comply with what the LC contends is his nondiscretionary duty to present the LC’s evidence to a special grand jury.

But as Attorney Mick Harrison of the LC put it this month to Andy Steele of 9/11 Free Fall Radio, “We’re in the awkward position of trying to go the federal court and asking a judge to order compliance when in fact compliance may be occurring.”

So the LC could next ask the federal court for some limited disclosure of the status of any grand jury proceedings regarding the LC’s evidence relating to the World Trade Center destruction on 9/11.

“And the court,” Harrison said, “would have the authority and discretion to determine how much would be disclosed, to whom it would be disclosed, and in what manner it would be disclosed.”

Audio of the full interview Steele had with Harrison and David Meiswinkle of the Lawyers’ Committee is HERE.

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* Details of the three submissions are HERE in paragraphs numbered 1, 2, and 4.

** Details of Rule 6 are HERE.

For a time, the audio of “No There Ain’t No News Today” was missing from this blog’s April 16, 2019, entry. What appeared at the linked site instead was

Video unavailable

This defect has been corrected,* thanks to the discovery of another YouTube offering of the same early 1950s recording of The Penguins’ song. Click HERE to hear it.

Better, click HERE for the lyrics as well as the audio.

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* Along with the spelling of saxophone

The Eucharistic service today at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, included the prayer below in addition to the Collect for the Day. The priest said it was a Collect for Independence Day, and later said it might better be called A Collect for Freedom.

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Lord God Almighty, in whose name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The original Petition to Report Federal Crimes to a Special Grand Jury Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §3332(a), submitted on April 10, 2018, to United States Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman for the Southern District of New York by the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, began with a Preliminary Statement, the first two paragraphs of which appeared in this space yesterday. The statement concludes as follows:

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Pursuant to federal law, including the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and 18 U.S.C.§ 3332(a), the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Inc. (Lawyers’ Committee), a non-profit organization, and the additional signatories hereto which include some 9/11 family members and survivors, hereby petition the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to present the facts and evidence stated herein and attached hereto to a special federal grand jury or, in the alternative that presentation to a special grand jury is not feasible, to a federal grand jury. The facts and evidence presented here and in the accompanying exhibits concern federal crimes committed within the Southern District of New York on September 11, 2001 (9/11), and in the months leading up to 9/11, related to the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC).

This Petition is presented to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) because the victims of 9/11, their families, the people of the City of New York, and our nation deserve that every crime related to the 9/11 attacks be investigated to the fullest, and that every person who was responsible face justice. The DOJ has a duty to present the information contained in this Petition to a special grand jury pursuant to federal statute. A special grand jury or, in the alternative, a grand jury, once convened, has the power and duty to investigate the facts and evidence presented herein, wherever the evidence may lead. This is the least that the people we lost that day deserve. The most worthy memorial we can provide for those who died on 9/11, and for those who died as a result of the events of 9/11, including many First Responders, is discovery and public disclosure of the full truth.

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For the whole 54-page original petition plus a two-page cover letter to U.S. Attorney Berman, click HERE.

For a partial update with links to the Lawyers’ Committee’s actions over the last 15 months, click HERE.

The Preliminary Statement of the original Petition to Report Federal Crimes to a Special Grand Jury Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §3332(a), submitted on April 10, 2018, to United States Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman for the Southern District of New York by the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, begins as follows:

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The City of New York has issued over 2,700 death certificates related to the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. In addition to the murder of over 2,000 innocent civilians, hundreds of First Responders were also murdered on 9/11 while selflessly attempting to save others. Many more First Responders have died subsequent to 9/11 as a result of their exposure to toxic and corrosive air contaminants at Ground Zero while participating in heroic rescue and recovery work. A number of FBI agents have also been reported to have died as a result of such exposures. This Petition presents evidence heretofore ignored by federal authorities that the World Trade Center (WTC) Twin Towers (WTC1 and WTC2) and WTC Building 7 (WTC7) collapsed on 9/11 due to the detonation of pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries. This Petition is intended to renew the investigation into these murders, raise awareness, bring truth to light and hold everyone responsible to account.

Overwhelming evidence presented here demonstrates that pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries – not just airplanes or fires – destroyed three steel-framed World Trade Center buildings that day in New York City and killed so many of these people. By law, the Department of Justice through the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York must present this evidence to a grand jury. Justice for these victims requires nothing less and the soul of our nation commands it.

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The third and fourth paragraphs of the Preliminary Statement to the original Petition will appear in this blog tomorrow.

For the whole 54-page original petition plus a two-page cover letter to U.S. Attorney Berman, click HERE.

For a partial update with links to the Lawyers’ Committee’s actions over the last 15 months, click HERE.