GOOD MORNING! to students of life, and the communications media, history, and political science.*

There’s no class today, but here is some homework to read on your own and maybe discuss with one another while practicing social distancing.

HERE is an example of the ad hominem and the kind of writing one can do when not restrained by editors and publishers of the controlled media. It’s by the Australian commentator Caitlin Johnstone.

HERE is an example of hyperbole as well as the kind of writing one can do when not restrained by editors and publishers of the controlled news media. It’s by upstate New Yorker and aging upstart James Howard Kunstler,

The Kunstler entry, valid as much of it seems to be, leaves out the possibility that the people running the Democratic Party will be doing that whether “the Democrats” win or lose the presidency or the House or the Senate—they win either way. This includes the hypothesis that the United States has a one-party system with two heads, one called the Democrats and one called the Republicans. Which may be why there are so many “independents,” or unenrolled voters, and nonvoters, and Greens and Libertarians.

Getting back to today’s assignment, Kunstler and Johnstone routinely employ both hyperbole and the ad hominem, and the above entries are no exception.

Anyone might ask what this has to do with 9/11 truth. For extra credit, you can compose an answer and email or text it in.

— Mark Channing Miller

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* “Political Science” is the title of THIS 1972 song by Randy Newman.

All of those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, as a result of the attacks that morning were special to someone.

Click HERE for a reminiscence about one of them, published on April 9 in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

It came in an email with this link.

After years of stonewalling on the part of the Executive and Judicial branches of the federal government blocking efforts to elicit truthful information about the attacks of the September 2001 attacks . . .

. . . last Wednesday the National Institute for Standards and Technology received a 100-page formal “request for correction” signed by ten 9/11 family members, 88 architects and structural engineers, and Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The request aims to force NIST to reverse its position that fires destroyed the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7. It disputes eight separate NIST claims as violating the agency’s own information quality standards, and contends that NIST can correct the violations only by revising its “probable collapse sequence.”

Is it “the most serious challenge to date against NIST’s World Trade Center investigation”? In THIS half-hour conversation with Andy Steele of 9/11 Free Fall Radio, Attorney Mick Harrison* and Ted Walter** explain why it may be. The link includes a transcript of the chat.

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* of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry

** of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

This has been John Prine Week. What a good time for the man to die, a week ago yesterday. Mainstream media gave him lavish spreads, his music and poetry were all over the Internet, and cooped-up Americans had all the time in the world to do him justice.

This introductory tribute is copied from the back of Prine’s first album, “john prine” (1971):

“John Prine caught us by surpise in the late-night morning letdown after our last show in Chicago. Steve Goodman (who’d shared the bill with us that week) asked us to go to Old Town to listen to a friend he said we had to hear, and since Steve had knocked us out all week with his own songs, we obliged.

“It was too damned late, and we had an early wake-up ahead of us, and by the time we got there Old Town was nothing but empty streets and dark windows. And the club was closing. But the owner let us come in, pulled some chairs off a couple of tables, and John unpacked his guitar and got back up to sing.

“There are few things as depressing to look at as a bunch of chairs upside down on the tables of an empty old tavern, and there was that awkward moment, us sitting there like, ‘Okay kid, show us what you got,’ and him standing there alone, looking down at his guitar like, ‘What the hell are we doing here, buddy?’ Then he started singing, and by the end of the first line we knew we were hearing something else. It must’ve been like stumbling onto Dylan when he first busted onto the Village scene (in fact Al Aronowitz said the same thing a few weeks later after hearing John do a guest set at the Bitter End). One of those rare, great times when it all seems worth it, like when the Vision would rise upon Blake’s ‘weary eyes, Even in this Dungeon, & this Iron Mill.’

‘He sang about a dozen songs, and had to do a dozen more before it was over. Unlike anything I’d heard before. Sam Stone. Donald & Lydia. The one about the Old Folks. Twenty-four years old and writes like he’s two hundred and twenty. I don’t know where he comes from, but I’ve got a good idea where he’s going.We went away believers, reminded how goddamned good it feels to be turned on by a real Creative imagination.’

Kris Kristofferson

“P.S. Thanks to the people at Atlantic for making good things happen to someone who deserves it.”

And thanks to Kristofferson and Paul Anka for their parts.

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* From the chorus of “Spanish Pipedream.”

Masks are being widely worn this week as a hedge against contracting the new coronavirus. You can make your own if handy with needles and the materials, buy packets of them on the Internet, or fashion one out of a whole T-shirt.

This is as good a time as any to put in another plug for the 2018 book 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation, by David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth (Olive Branch Press).

From a squib on the back: “Many Americans have been embarrassed by the Trump presidency. But Americans should also be embarrassed by the fact that this country’s foreign policy since 2001, which has resulted in millions of deaths, has been based on a complex deception.

“9/11 Unmasked is the result of a six-year investigation by an international review panel, which has provided 51 points illustrating the problematic status of all the major claims in the official account of the 9/11 attacks, some of which are obviously false. Most dramatically, the official account of the destruction of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7 could not possibly be true, unless the laws of physics were suspended that day. But other claims made by the official account—including that the 9/11 planes were taken over by al-Qaeda hijackers, that one of those hijackers flew his plane into the Pentagon, and that passengers on the planes telephoned people on the ground—are also demonstrably false.”

One may purchase a copy online and have it delivered within a week. Why not do so? It may arrive before one’s order of masks.

— Mark Channing Miller

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

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The words above open Chapter 1 of Dickens’ 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities. The Rt. Rev. John Tarrant, interim rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, borrowed them to begin his April letter to parishioners, publication of which was delayed several days by Covid-19 chaos. For the whole letter, click HERE or on the quote.

Among other things, Tarrant observes that “[e]ven in the ‘best of times’ there are many experiencing the ‘worst of times.’”

For years before the new coronavirus began to dominate the news and everyone’s lives, a selection of mostly mainstream news and opinion has been available HERE, at the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Integrity Project.

Today’s editions of the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican contained these two editorials:

Intelligence Failures Led to This Moment

and

Commission Needed to Find Answers

In their own right, they are well-stated assessments of the Covid-19 phenomenon as it is affecting Americans and as it reflects government action and inaction, as well as what government can do to expose the failures in addressing the pandemic to prevent them in the future.

For a website — one of many — like this one that focus for the most part on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the impossibility of the government accounts of the attacks, the newspaper’s two editorials are also noteworthy as they draw attention to aspects of “9/11” that could help as the United States goes forward as a nation.

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Is a U.S. military invasion of Venezuela in store? Probably not, but here are two accounts of the Trump administration’s sending of two Navy destroyers toward that country:

This one is from venezuelanalysis.com:

US Sends Navy Ships to Caribbean in ‘Anti-Drug’ Mission Targeting Venezuala

This one is from the newspaper USA Today:

Trump: US to Deploy Anti-Drug Navy Ships Near Venezuela

Here are a video and three articles of opinion related to the new coronavirus and its economic and social consequences:

(1) In an interview, Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University emphasizes the imperative of having accurate data before making decisions. The physician and epidemiologist questions the validity of assumptions made by public figures responding Covid-19. His talk with filmmaker John Kirby took place a week or so ago.

(2) Bret Stephens includes three paragraphs on Ioannidis in a New York Times column headed “It’s Dangerous to Be Ruled by Fear.” It was published on March 20.

(3) In this post headlined “People Get Ready!,” James Howard Kunstler envisions a United States ahead that will be unrecognizable to many. He is the author of The Long Emergency (2005), among other works of fiction and nonfiction.

(4) How will the Russians pay for their government’s response to Covid-19 if President Vladimir Putin has his way? And how does that compare with how Americans will pay back the trillions the Trump administration, Congress and the Federal Reserve are doling out to address the contagion and keep the economy going? HERE is journalist Mike Whitney’s view. (A Russian ruble yesterday equaled $0.0125676 in U.S. currency, so the 1 million rubles referred to equaled about $12,568.)

In a new song, “Murder Most Fowl,” Bob Dylan puts the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy in any number of political and cultural contexts.

Edward Curtin of Behind the Curtain provides an audio of Dylan singing it and the lyrics to Verses 1 and 3.

Here is a link to it:

Dylan Sings Truth About the JFK Assassination

A phrase in the song, “Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing,” describes how although the killing was witnessed by countless people in Dallas’s Dealy Plaza and on television, it was planned and executed and covered up in such a way as to throw the blame away from the perpetrators of the coup d’etat and fool everyone for a time. In this respect it was similar to how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were planned and executed and covered up.

Another phrase, “I’m just a patsy,” refers to the denial of the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald during an interrogation, “I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir … I’m just a patsy” — shortly before he himself was shot to death by Jack Ruby while in police custody. It is worth noting that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden denied several times any involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.