Report from Islamabad: In an 11-minute segment today on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” HERE, co-host Steve Inskeep relates that many Pakistanis regard Osama bin Laden favorably — possibly a majority since his 2011 death. He visits the site of Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad raided by U.S. Navy SEALS who killed him there and later dumped his body in the sea.* The compound has been razed, in part for fear it would become a shrine.

One Pakistani interviewed sees the Sept. 11 attacks as “a drama orchestrated to justify an attack on a Muslim country” (as an interpreter worded it). Inskeep: “This man endorses a conspiracy theory, for which there is no evidence, that America attacked itself.” About half the Pakistanis surveyed in a recent poll reportedly said the U.S. government was responsible for 9/11. Another interviewee said many Pakistanis have high estimation for Bin Laden because he is “portrayed as a good man by the state.”

–   –   –

‘The Imagination of the Terrorist’: On Day 3 of its series “9/11 20 Years Later,” the Springfield Republican yesterday ran Jim Kinney’s report headlined “How safe are we because of 9/11? Security evolved to meet challenges posed by terrorists.” (Subscribers can read an online version HERE.)

In it, Jane F. Garvey, an Amherst resident who headed the Federal Aviation Administration 20 years ago, recalls the skies: “The pilots call a day like that ‘a severe day.’ It’s perfect for flying.”

Garvey said a positive change resulting from the attacks is intelligence information sharing by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies that used to work less cooperatively than they do today.

”You can put all the technology you want in the world,  but when you are dealing with the human mind, which is what we are dealing with, it’s the imagination of the terrorist,” she said. “You need to know who they are.”

–   –   –

Accidental Witness: Albany Times-Union reporter Paul Grondahl took the train to Manhattan on another assignment on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, expecting to stay just for the day. He stayed for five. Read his look back on the experience, headlined “Days that churned with grief and dust” in today’s newsprint editions, HERE.

–   –   –

George Will and Secrecy: In today’s Times-Union, syndicated columnist George Will focuses on President Biden’s “tentative step in the right direction” in ordering review and declassification of some federal documents related to the September 2001 terror attacks. The T-U headline: “End secrecy over Saudis and 9/11.”

Two things about the column. Will conveniently ignores the role of the mainstream media, of which he is a shining example, in keeping the public in the dark for three years about Senate Resolution 610 that “documents related to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, should be declassified to the greatest extent possible.” And, why declassify just material related to possible Saudi involvement in the attacks?

To read the column online courtesy of  a Michigan newspaper, click HERE.

— Mark Channing Miller

–   –   –

* The operation is examined by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in a 10,000-word piece published by the London Review of Books in 2015. Click HERE to read it.

 

 

President’s Statement on Beginning Review and Declassification of 9/11 Documents, made Friday, is HERE.

The Executive Order is HERE.

For news stories Saturday on the order, click HERE.

–   –   –

Cancer Rates of 9/11 First Responders: National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” program today began what cohost Steve Inskeep said would be a week of reports on the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. In the first, titled “A Study Says First Responders Survive Cancers at Higher Rates,” A. Martínez interviews NPR correspondent Allison Aubrey. Listen HERE.

In part of it, Elizabeth Cascio of the New York City Fire Department recalls the experience on Sept. 11 of “walking through six to 10 inches of concrete sand and literally the entire dust cloud that was in every direction. We were literally engulfed  by it.” Some, including Cascio, were on the scene for weeks.

–   –   –

A Special Times Look at TV 9/11 Specials: Today’s New York Times carries a piece by its chief television critic, James Poniewozik, titled “What Needs to Be Said About 9/11: TV should treat it as serious history, not just pay it homage.”

The wrap-up might well have been subtitled “. . . And What Doesn’t Need to Be Said,” which would match what the Times has left out of its coverage for the last 20 years, thus enabling other news organizations to do the same.

“Focusing on the emotion and heroism of one day,” Poniewozik notes, “avoids getting snared in everything that came after. It sticks to what we can all agree on.”

The specials are or will be on the History Channel, Discovery, CNN, Netflix, PBS, and HBO. Most are, indeed, studies in avoidance.

–   –   –

He Helped Guide Payments to 9/11 Families: Today’s Springfield Republican salutes Attorney Kenneth R. Feinberg, who oversaw more than 900 hearings for the distribution of compensation payments to families of victims of the 9/11 attacks. In all, about 1,600 hearings were held and a total of $7.1 billion in federal funds was distributed from 2001 to 2003.

Reporter Ron Chimelis’s story is headlined “‘A patriotic undertaking’: UMass alum took charge of 9/11 compensation fund.” Subscribers to the newspaper and mass live.com can read the account HERE. It explains why the payments were unequal: They were based on rough percentages of the unequal financial losses families suffered.

Feinberg’s experience is described in much greater detail in his 2005 book What Is a Life Worth? A movie, “Worth,” starring Michael Keaton as the Compensation Fund special master, opened Friday in a limited number of theaters and on Netflix.

–   –   –

9/11 and Covid-19 Were Killers for Lower Manhattan Businesses: Yestrday’s New York Times carried a report headlined “Where Towers Stood, Rebirth Grinds to a Halt,” by Matthew Haag and Patrick McGeehan. The page 1 story describes the financial toll suffered by restaurants, stores, hotels and other businesses in the district, beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, years of slow recovery for some of them, and a second crisis delivered by Covid-19 in early 2020.

— Mark Channing Miller

 

 

President Biden yesterday signed an executive order ordering federal agencies to review and declassify an unspecified amount of documents related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

HERE is the Washington Post story by Amy B. Wang as it appeared in the Anchorage Daily News. HERE is the New York Times story by Annie Karni as it appeared on bdnews24.com.

The order was a breakthrough of sorts, but not all documents are necessarily to be released. One of the agencies, the Justice Department, is to review and release selected documents over the next six months.

As recounted HERE, nearly a month ago families of 9/11 victims and others told the president to stay away from 20th anniversary events unless he ordered documents declassified. In 2018 the U.S. Senate approved a resolution without objection calling for declassification of all documents related to the September 2001 attacks; for details click HERE and scroll down.

–   –   –

Two of this country’s oldest magazines have been handling “9/11” differently. The Atlantic’s September issue has a long cover piece by Jennifer Senior, “Twenty Years Gone: One Family’s struggle to make sense of 9/11.” family is that of Bobby McIlvaine, 26, who died in the first of the Twin Towers to collapse.

Larger truths of 9/11 are avoided in the 15-page up-close-and-personal examination of the anguish and other emotions of this one victim’s family, friends, fiancée, neighbors, schoolmates, teammates /and a former coach as they remember him and have grappled with his loss over 20 years.

One of many paragraphs focusing on the young man’s father:

“Crucial to Bob Sr.’s understanding of September 11—that it was the cynical skulduggery of the U.S. government, not a grisly act of terrorism by jihadists using commercial planes filled with helpless civilians—is the work of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which popularized the idea that jet fuel couldn’t burn at a high enough temperature to melt beams into molten steel. This is, it should go without saying, contrary to all observable fact.”

Some will see disinformation in that by Senior, who doesn’t elaborate on “all observable fact.”

Disinformation is the topic of Harper’s September issue cover piece, “Disinformed: How We Get Fake News Wrong,” by Joseph Bernstein, which does not mention 9/11 or get into what news consumers are to do with news managers’ decisions to leave out inconvenient information. HERE it is for Harper’s subscribers.

Click HERE for Aldous Huxley’s 1936 look at propaganda, “In the Dark,” in the September Harper’s. In less than a page it says a lot about how Americans and the world have been misled about 9/11, although the author of Brave New World could only guess what might be in store that long ago.

A couple of passages:

“Advertisers claim to know accurately enough the potentialities and limitations of different kinds of propaganda—what you can do, for example, by mere statement and repetition; by appeals to such well-organized sentiments as snobbery and the urge toward social conformity; by playing on the animal instincts such as greed, lust, and especially fear in all its forms, from the fear of sickness and death to the fear of being ugly or absurd to one’s fellows.”

and

”[P]ropaganda is most influential when it is a rationalization of the desires, sentiments, prejudices, or interests of those to whom it is addressed.”

— Mark Channing Miller

The Maine 9/11 Truth website, https://www.maine911truth.org, is unrecognizable compared to what it was for years, I learned today. The current website, HERE, is a replacement.

For some of its former content, click HERE and HERE. The two links are past entries in this blog titled “A Breath of Maine Air” and “Consider . . . ”

Note: The link in the first entry’s third paragraph, which originally was to a number of recommended websites, now is to a replacement page rather than those websites.

Also note: The change is likely a result of the original authors’ deciding not to continue paying a service for online display of the content, which had not varied for years although it remains valuable to people curious for alternatives to mainstream media accounts backing those of the U.S. government’s Executive Branch.

— Mark Channing Miller

Ed Asner, a stalwart participant in and supporter of the maligned  9/11 Truth effort, and certainly the best known, died yesterday at age 91.

Here is a short tribute to Asner emailed out this morning by the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 inquiry:

–   –   –

Ed Asner 1929-2021

UPDATE: Ed Asner, our dear friend and fellow Lawyers’ Committee board member, died this past Sunday, August 29, 2021. He was 91 years of age.

We are all deeply saddened by his passing. His courage and leadership in life was an inspiration to us.

God Bless Ed and his Family.

There will be a tribute to him at the Lawyers’ Committee 9/11 20th anniversary event.* As was previously planned, he would have given the welcome address.

–   –   –

HERE is a tribute to Ed Asner by Craig McKee, emailed this afternoon from Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. McKee notes the actor’s key involvement in two AE911Truth documentary films, “Solving the Mystery of WTC 7” in 2011 and “SEVEN” in 2020.

HERE is Asner’s Associated Press obituary by Marcela Isaza as it appeared in today’s Buffalo News under the headline “Actor Ed Asner, TV’s blustery Lou Grant, dies at 91.”

One version or another of that AP obituary appears today in hundreds of daily newspapers in the United States and abroad. Neither of the two I read mentions his interest in challenging aspects of the official 9/11 narratives.

A Washington Post obituary of Asner by Emily Langer, HERE, goes into detail on his career in TV and film, and in one of a dozen paragraphs on his political activities briefly notes his skepticism concerning official accounts of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The New York Times obituary (HERE, for subscribers), under the byline of Anita Gates, even more extensively chronicles Asner’s professional acting career but, in the single paragraph about his political activism, does not mention his support for a new look at the attacks.

Ironically, Asner’s voice may be stronger now on behalf of the search for truth and justice related to those attacks than it would be if he were still alive because of the widespread and heartfelt attention being paid to the man and his life as a professional actor and a citizen.

— Mark Channing Miller

–   –   –

* For more about the forum on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021, click HERE. Expect further details on this blog between now and then.

 

The truth is hard
The truth is hidden.
The truth must be pursued.
The truth is hard to bear.
The truth is rarely simple.
The truth isn’t so obvious.
The truth is necessary.
The truth can’t be glossed over.
The truth has no agenda.
The truth can’t be manufactured.
The truth doesn’t take sides.
The truth isn’t red or blue.
The truth is hard to accept.
The truth pulls no punches.
The truth is powerful.
The truth is under attack.
The truth is worth defending.
The truth requires taking a stand.
The truth is more important now than ever.*

[signed] The New York Times

Every purchase supports New York Times journalism.

–   –   –

The above is, verbatim, from a full-page ad two or three days ago in the Times’s A section, for hoodies bearing the sentences about truth in light lettering on a dark background.

–   –   –

Then, yesterday, came an example of New York Times journalism inside the same section in a story headline under the headline “Lee Re-edits Series That Features 9/11 Conspiracists.” Staffers Julia Jacobs and Reggie Ugwu get the byline, and Kevin Roose is acknowledged as having “contributed reporting.”

The Lee in question is filmmaker Spike Lee. His HBO series is titled “NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021½.” The “conspiracists,” apparently, are Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Here’s the top paragraph: “Facing mounting criticism for spotlighting conspiracists in his new HBO documentary series about the Sept. 11 attacks on New York, the filmmaker Spike Lee said Wednesday that he was re-editing the final episode.”

This treatment of the Lee’s series is echoed in a report in the Los Angeles Times headlined “Spike Lee yanks 9/11 conspiracy theorists from HBO documentary series amid scrutiny,”under the byline of Christi Carras.

Here’s the top paragraph: “Prolific director Spike Lee has removed interviews with Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists from his HBO documentary series after raising eyebrows with recent remarks about the 2001 terrorist attacks.”

In the New York Times report, variations of the phrases “conspiracy theorists,” “conspiracy theory” or “conspiracy group” appear at least seven times. In the shorter L.A. Times account, which relies in part on the earlier story from New York, three times.

In both stories Lee is quoted expressing hope that, as a result of his series, “Congress holds a hearing, a congressional hearing about 9/11.”

In the L.A. Times account Lee refers to what reporter Carras terms “a widely debunked conspiracy theory” about the amount of heat required to melt steel beams. The link is to a short article Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, wrote that appeared in 2005  on the website of Scientific American titled “Fahrenheit 2777.”

(Shermer refers in his article to coverage in the magazine Popular Mechanics, which was dealt with in the 2007 book Debunking 9/11 Debunkers by David Ray Griffin. (To debunk, according to Merriam-Webster, is “to expose the sham or falseness of.”)

Julia Jacobs is a culture reporter for the New York Times. Reggie Ugwu covers film, television, music, and internet culture for the New York Times. Kevin Roose is a technology and business columnist for the New York Times. Christi Carras is an entertainment reporter at the Los Angeles Times who has worked at Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and CNN.

Other coverage of the matter includes THIS by columnist Andrea Peyser in the New York Post, THIS by columnist and film critic Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times, and THIS by pop culture reporter Sonia Rao in the Washington Post.

Of them all, Rao’s seems least alarmist about AE911Truth and its founder Richard Gage.

Roeper is most disparaging of them. This is from his column: “Last Monday, the New York Times reported Lee had devoted about a half-hour of that final chapter to wholly unsubstantiated and categorically false conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks, and in particular to a group known as Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, including the organization’s founder, one Richard Gage, who has been peddling fictional garbage about 9/11 for years.” (The columnist then refers to Slate’s reporting on Gage’s opinions about  Covid-19 and vaccine “hoaxes.”)

The rash of stories on the re-editing was kicked off by a story leading the Arts section of the Times on Tuesday by Ugwu. Headed “Capturing the Spirit of the City,” it is mostly excerpts of an interview in which the reporter talks with the filmmaker.

Here is an exchange near the end of the article:

“You interview several members of the the conspiracy group Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Why did you want to include their perspective?

“Because I still don’t . . . I mean, I got questions. And I hope that maybe the legacy of this documentary is that Congress holds a hearing, a congressional hearing about 9/11.

”You don’t buy the official explanations?

”The amount of heat that it takes to make steel melt, that temperature’s not reached. And then the juxtaposition of the way Building 7 fell to the ground — when you put it next to other building collapses that were demolitions, it’s like you’re looking at the same thing. But people going to make up their own mind. My approach is to put the information in the movie and let people decide for themselves. I respect the intelligence of the audience.”

Lee is far from alone in his hope for some action by Congress. The entire U.S. Senate seems to be on his side. As this blog reported, HERE, in 2018 the Senate approved a resolution without objection calling for declassification of all 9/11 documents. The resolution was reported HERE in the Congressonal Record on Aug. 21, 2018, but no news organization, including all those mentioned above, covered the matter. Since then those “thousands of pages of documents” remain classified by the Executive Branch of the federal government.

— Mark Channing Miller

A live-stream conference aiming to connect other jarring phenomena of this century with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, will be held on the attacks’ 20th anniversary.

The eight-hour forum, titled “From 9/11-Anthrax to the Pandemic: Life & Liberty in the Balance,” begins at 1 p.m. EDT on Sept. 11, a Saturday. It is sponsored by the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry.

The suggested minimum donation for a ticket is $20. But “any size is ok,” according to a Lawyers’ Committee news release sent out Sunday. (See the news release HERE.) Donations are tax-deductible.

The entire event will be archived for 7 days afterward so people who attend online can arrive late, watch it later, or watch any part of it again.

The following is a letter LC president David Meiswinkle emailed to supporters Sunday:

“Saturday, September 11th 2021 will mark the 20th Anniversary of the dreadful criminal attacks against the United States of America.

“On that day, almost 3,000 innocent people were slaughtered, and many thousands more have died from exposure to the contaminants at Ground Zero. These horrible crimes have never been properly investigated by the United States government, and the guilty parties have never been brought to justice.

“Join us this September 11th for [the] tremendous commemorative life-stream event, entitled “9/11-anthtrax to the Pandemic; Life and Liberty in the Balance,” featuring many outstanding speakers who will address the crimes of 9/11 as well as the continuing assault on civil liberties resulting from the  present pandemic, and show the connections between 9/11 and Covid-19.

“The Lawyers’ Committee is dedicated to Government transparency and accountability regarding the crimes of 9/11, investigating and litigating where necessary.

“Help us carry on.  Support our efforts and join us this September 11th for a very educational, eye opening experience.

“Thank you.”

On the legal front . . .

Application for New Inquest to Be Submitted: Is the British legal system is any better than the American for people trying to get to the bottom of the September 2001 terror attacks? Members of the Campbell clan are hoping it is. This week they take the next step in their quest. Read a news advisory about it HERE. Titled “UK Family to Seek New Inquest for Son Who Perished on 9/11,” it was sent out today by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Readers of this blog may recall accounts (even in one British newspaper!) of earlier steps in the Campbells’ effort. Find three of those entries HERE, HERE and HERE.

News advisories are sent to media outlets (and other recipients) by organizations hoping to get coverage of events. They are followed by news releases closer to the event and afterwards.

–   –   –

[ MORE ]

— Mark Channing Miller

 

Two examples of how newspapers in the United States are seeking readers’ views on the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and how they and the government’s response helped shape the next two decades:

–   –   –

From the Sunday Republican: One of the dailies in Western Massachusetts (which is at the moment preparing for the effects of the approaching Hurricane Henri) is the Springfield Republican, whose executive editor Cynthia Simison penned a column for today headlined in the newsprint edition “Legacy of 9/11: 20 years later, share your views,” inviting readers to do just that. (Open for digital subscribers.)

”We look at the work and activism taken on by families of those lost, how they turned their personal grief into powerful and positive actions to benefit us all,” Simison writes.

The Republican will “look at how young people not yet born then view 9/11, how they are learning about it and how they think it should be remembered,” she continues. And “Here’s my question for readers: What do you think the legacy of 9/11 is for our nation?”

Near the end of her column, Simison quotes from two parts of  “an editorial written in haste that morning” (of Sept. 11, 2001) for the Springfield Union-News:

”The nation knows now that it is fragile and vulnerable; that a determined group of terrorists poses a greater and more volatile threat to our safety than any previous enemy.”

And . . .

”Yes, there will be hell to pay — and we hope that someone will pay dearly for the death and destruction they have caused. America must respond, but not quickly or blindly. It will likely take months, if not years, to determine who is responsible for the attack. It is a day of darkness for America, but we must be a source of light for the rest of the world in the fight against terrorism.”

–   –   –

From the Berkshire Eagle: “9/11 then and now: Where were you, and what are your current thoughts?” reads the headline over an invitation in Friday’s newsprint edition of the Pittsfield-based Eagle. (Subscribers, including those on a one-month free subscription, may read.)

“Tell us where you were on Sept. 11, 2001, and share your world two decades later.” The newspaper will “gather the responses and publish a selection of them in a special report next month commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11.”

Participants are asked to limit responses to 300 words maximum and get them in by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 1.

— Mark Channing Miller