This will be a brief Weekender. It consists of a reading assignment. Please find and read or reread Seymour Hersh’s “The Killing of Osama bin Laden,” first published by The London Review of Books in May 2015 and then the following year in Hersh’s book of the same name published by Verso.

I’ve referred to it before, most recently in “Update, 9-8-21” (click HERE for it). But while rereading Hersh’s 10,000-word piece yesterday and today I realized anew how seemingly comprehensive and revealing a piece of reporting it is.

What got me to look at it again was the first of dozens of references Webster Griffin Tarpley makes to bin Laden in the fifth edition of his book 9/11 Synthetic Terrorism: Made in USA (2011). It comes at the end of this passage on page 14:

“The post-9/11 hysteria was successfully redirected by the neocons to motivate the infamous US attack on Iraq of March 2003. . . . With [President] Obama’s West Point speech of December 2009, the Afghanistan war has been officially expanded to include a war against the nuclear power Pakistan. This war has been further accentuated in the spring of 2011 by the much touted elimination of Osama bin Laden, who in reality has been dead for almost a decade.”

What?

It appears that people interested in truths behind the September 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent wars launched by the United
States might want to read the 2011 Tarpley book and compare what he says against what Hersh does four years later, and how both of them say it.

— Mark Channing Miller

The following piece is reprinted with the author’s permission from the Wayne Madsen Report, where it was posted on Sept. 7-8. — MCM

The Hypnotic Effects of TV News Intros

By Wayne Madsen*

For the last 30 or so years, it has not mattered whether you tune into the televised news in Kansas City or Khartoum or Denver or Dar es Salaam. A few seconds of viewing and hearing news introductions have had the same effect: you are mesmerized by techniques developed by psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychological warfare experts to keep your attention and lure you into the trance-like state. Once you are hypnotized, you will have the tendency to believe whatever is being transmitted to you by news readers who are merely following what they are seeing on teleprompters.

Using various forms of technology to control or subjugate populations was termed “biopower” by French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault. Modern television, including large- and small-screen displays relying on high-definition clarity, computer-generated graphics, and surround-sound audio has been manipulated by social control engineers, in conjunction with broadcasters, to achieve the maximum in phantasmatic media impact, which is a fancy phrase for “brainwashing.”

The use of captivating screens, mixed with photo and video montages, is designed to fixate the viewer, through illusory perception, as the deictic center of the temporal few seconds it takes to mesmerize the target.

Convincing the viewer that he or she is the deictic center is achieved by the use of slick graphics such as a spinning globe. Over 80 percent of all news intros rely on some form of a spinning globe. Known as “cartographic stimulation,” this technique helps to place the viewer in his or her own deictic center based on geo-tagging. Other techniques use a virtual maze, for example, within a familiar city, to mesmerize the target. The viewer, briefly disoriented, focuses in on where he or she is at the moment. Everything else on or off screen becomes a blur.

The spinning globe has the same effect on the viewer as the hypnotic wheel or “hypno spiral” [readers may find examples online]. The viewer gazes intently on the point of fixation, the center of the vortex. The center might be the East Coast of the United States, the greater Paris region, the Qatar peninsula, or the island of Sri Lanka. Foucault would call this technique a biopower tool for mass hypnosis.

Fox News was the first major network to rely on such psychological gimmickry in its coverage of Desert Storm, the first Gulf War. Some psychologists and graphics experts believe that such news intro mental manipulation, for example, by West Germany’s ARD and ZDF and Austria’s ORF networks, has been in effect since as early as 1955. After the September 11, 2001 attacks and the U.S. military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the “Global War on Terror,” the technological mesmerizing of television viewers was adopted by all major networks, including CNN and MS-NBC. Today, hypnotic effect intros are available at a nominal cost or as freeware to the most obscure Internet-based television programs, including those that constantly spout extreme far-right propaganda.

Few people understand that television news and what purport to be news programs in broadcast, cable, and web formats are using hypnotic intros to spread their messages.

When it comes to major catastrophic weather events arising from global climate change, the Covid pandemic becoming endemic, and the breakdown of democratic rule by fascist political movements, this combination of graphics, lights, video and auditory stimuli is intended to brainwash large sectors of the population. The fact that the viewing masses become complacent with regard to corporate polluters and environmentally-destructive corporations, who are teamed up with political fascists, cannot be understated.

Below [in the version of this article on the WMR website] are compilations of news intros from around the world. A note of caution is in order. Since all of these intros rely on the aforementioned methods, view them only if you are free of other tasks or do not suffer from flashing light-inducing seizures, including epilepsy. Most people will find themselves falling victim to the disorienting hypnotic effects of the following intro segments. That is, of course, the desired effect.

–   –   –

* Wayne Madsen is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist, author and columnist. Among his books are The Star and the Sword (2014), in which he describes intimate involvement by both Israel and Saudi Arabia in the planning and carrying out of the September 2001 terror attacks on the United States.

In no particular order, below are some things worth noting.

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*  I found the link for yesterday’s entry, “Due Diligence,” on the Boston 9/11 Truth website, https://www.boston911truth.org, which is full of interesting stuff. Keep it up over there!

*  Indira Singh, featured in that entry. is a fascinating character who appears to be enormously capable and remarkably articulate. Among her attributes is her experience as a trained EMT. She used it on site at the World Trade Center for several days after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Click HERE for the transcript of a long interview recorded on April 27, 2005 (which I haven’t finished reading yet) to see what I mean.

*  I can’t recommend highly enough The Corbett Report, published by James Corbett. From it I picked up the interview excerpted and linked to yesterday. Not that I don’t have differences with Corbett, who in his Episode 020, “Webster Tarpley on the 9/11 Drills,” referred to “the myth of peak oil.” I’m with Richard Heinberg on that subject and since 2006 have considered myself a peak oiler. But people change; that presentation by Tarpley was in 2004 or earlier, and maybe Corbett has seen the light since then.

*  Wikipedia’s entry on Tarpley says he was “born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1946,” something omitted from the short biography of him in the fifth edition of his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA (Progressive Press, 2011). As I listened to Tarpley’s 2004 presentation on the chaos created by the unprecedented number of military drills on and before Sept. 11, 2001, I wished I had a transcript of it. But perhaps it’s contained in Chapter 2 of the book mentioned above; it’s titled “The Theory and Practice of Synthetic Terrorism.” I own a copy of the book but haven’t read through it, but plan to.

* KISS. An axiom in basic journalism as practiced at the local level goes, “Keep it simple, stupid.” Editors teach cub reporters to not confuse readers with a bunch of verbiage and unnecessary details. One editor I have in mind would mark up a story (sometimes with the reporter looking over his shoulder) and “let the air out of it,” improving as he went along and making it more readable. However, the KISS principle seems to have been misapplied by the craven mainstream media in “our democracy” since early 2002 as outlets have wholly adopted, without attribution, the impossible and implausible official Executive Branch accounts of the September 2001 terror attacks — which necessitates forgetting about some of the solid reporting their own reporters did early on. Nine-eleven “truthers” have been widely disparaged in the mainstream media as “conspiracy theorists” even though a lot of their research has relied on MSM reporting done before the reporters who did it seem to have been reined in by news managers and their managers.

— Mark Channing Miller

Ptech and the 9/11 Software

This morning, while looking for something else, I came across a fascinating and possibly key interview that may help to answer some important questions about the carrying out of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

It’s a talk with Indira Singh, who as a senior risk management consultant to JPMorgan Chase & Co. was researching software to implement for the financial institution. HERE, speaking in April 2005 with Bonnie Faulkner of KPFA’s Guns and Butter program, she describes the path that led her to discover the role the Saudi-financed company Ptech played as a contractor for a number of federal agencies, how she continued an investigation into Ptech, and the resistance she encountered.

The excerpt below is only several minutes of the interview, which was featured on Episode 045 of The Corbett Report in August 2008.

Indira Singh: “As we spoke, other names started to come out. My head was pretty much spinning at this point, and I said, ‘Have you reported this to the FBI?’ And the answer came back, ‘Yes, I wrote a report to the FBI,” and I said, ‘Okay, if the Boston FBI has been told, I need to speak with people there because it’s not just my group that’s been evaluating [Ptech], it’s so many other groups.

“I couldn’t believe, if this was true, that Ptech was still being used by the Department of Defense. There’s something a little bizarre about this, really. I was beginning to understand, unwillingly, that the world wasn’t the way I thought of it. This was beginning to sound like a Tom Clancy novel, and I needed proof. I told [my source] I needed emails, I needed documents, I needed hard evidence.

“But in the meantime I had contacted my rep at IBM, and I told him, ‘I need to walk outside and talk to you about something. If you guys are getting seriously into bed with this company [Ptech] I would suggest that you do some background investigation so that your clients — like JP Morgan and myself — don’t end up in this situation. … [He] told me [later] he wrote a quote-unquote ‘book report’ to his legal department, and he was told to just back off the whole thing. In fact, he didn’t want to have anything to do with me as I continued investigating.”

–   –   –

In his introduction to the interview excerpts, James Corbett mentions two other episodes of The Corbett Report that provide background and context.

One is Episode 020, “Webster Tarpley on the 9/11 Drills,” from September 2004.

The other is Episode 031, “Welcome to 9/11 Truth,” from February 2008. Note that this “audio documentary” was put together after the Indira Singh’s interview with Bonnie Faulkner. Besides Singh, it features ex-CIA field agents, FBI translators, the former German Defense Secretary, the pilot who flew two of the planes used in 9/11, Congressman Curt Weldon, and others.

–   –   –

— Mark Channing Miller

Today’s Weekender, begun after 4 p.m. on Sunday, is simply a followup to Paul Simon’s recommendation in the last entry, “In Their Own Words.”*

Here it is:

People lie, but the facts don’t. For professional firefighters’ in-depth analysis, watch our film, available for free at www.FF911truth.org. — Paul Simon, Leeds, UK

The film he urges people to watch is titled “CALLING OUT Bravo-7, the 2020 Version.” It’s about an hour and 42 minutes long. It can be seen at both www.FF911truth.org and www.justicefor911heroes.org.The latter site is largely about the 911 Resolution of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District on Long Island, whose former commissioner, Christopher Gioia, is well-known in the 9/11 truth movement.

Simon doesn’t mention a second, longer documentary, “BEYOND Bravo-7.” It’s about two hours and 48 minutes long. This sequel, also put out by Firefighters for 9-11 Truth, complements the earlier film by putting the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in historical context. It’s a history lesson — actually a history course that contains all sorts of information underemphasized in history courses and history textbooks, or left out entirely. To say the least, it is not kind to mainstream media outlets.

At a minimum, each of the documentaries cries out for a booklet summarizing key points, quoting some speakers’ statements, and knitting together the arguments.

— Mark Channing Miller

Nine-eleven truthers are a raggedy bunch. They — we — do not conform to all the conventions prescribed by news media commentators. Some think of themselves as on the “left” or “right” politically, but many or most do not. News media commentators (although less so this past year) were content to call them — us — “conspiracy theorists.” But that was getting lame, and it wasn’t working. It wasn’t working because the phony Executive Branch story about the attacks of September 2001 designed to terrorize Americans is itself a story of conspiracy. As this September approached, two or three dozen “9/11 Truth Advocates” got in front of cameras to say why they do what they do. Listen and watch as they speak, HERE. Some of their statements are excerpted below. — MCM

–   –   –

After all these years 9/11 still matters, more than ever. … We’re in it for the long haul — it doesn’t stop at twenty. — Sandra Jelmi, Montreal, Canada

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Nine-eleven changed everything. Pitched the world into endless wars. Once the masses understand the massive lie, they will no longer allow unjust wars and unlawful infringements of our rights. Question. Look at the evidence. It affects us all, and all future generations. — Susan Sherpa, Worcester, MA

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Nine-eleven still matters … because truth matters. And the truth about the crime of the century sure as hell matters. Don’t give up. Be courageous. Ask questions. Peace. — Michael Grillo, Eugene, OR

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Twenty years. Here we still are. But we’re never going to forget. We’re never going to give up. We’re never going to go away. — Gene Laratonda, Pittsburgh, PA

–   –   –

I feel strongly that 9/11 is still relevant today because thousands and thousands of people continue to die from 9/11-related illness and we still don’t have a full and complete explanation for exactly how the Twin Towers and Building 7 came down, from the U.S. government. — Julia Picicci, West Pasco, WA

–   –   –

Learning about and sharing 9/11 truth is important. Because we need to expose false-flag operations and deception that have been used for wars of aggression and tyranny at home. We need justice for the crimes of 9/11 and a return to the rule of law. — Michael Atkinson, Edgewater, CO

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My bottom line is the lies. The official story is unacceptable. It’s total fabrication. And the truth, all the truth of the events that occurred on that day, needs to be revealed. — Lawrence Fine, Hudson, MA

–   –   –

Why? Because there’s a palpable call to follow my conscience, that thing that leads to truth, justice. And as with other historical calls to justice — the Abolitionist movement, for example — they didn’t give up after 20 years. — Deb Lee, New York, NY

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It’s important to be outspoken about the continuing need for legal action, for new investigations, to go up against the right-wing, capitalist, corporate-media coverup, and to stand for lefty democratic action against the falsities of our “war on terror.” — Sander Hicks, Brooklyn, NY

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I was on the 39th floor at the World Trade Center on 9/11 when the first plane hit the building. No joke. Conspiracy theorists — people think they’re a little crazy. … Two quick side notes: One, I heard a woman specifically yell, quote, “There’s been an explosion in the mechanical room on the 42nd floor.” Number 2: The people I talk to have no idea and have never heard of Building 7. Why is that? How the hell did Building 7 come down? Why did it come down, it looks like a controlled demolition. And nobody knows about it? So, I highly encourage [people] to get to know, to spend the time. … We’re starting to uncover all the bullshit with Fauci and the things that are going on here. Let’s uncover the truth about 9/11. It’s about time. Semper Fi. — Bob Jenkins, Carefree, AR

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Nine-eleven truth still matters because the perpetual war machine that carried out that attack is still in power today. — Bill Floyd, Chester, SC

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There’s no statute of limitations on mass murder. None of the perpetrators have been brought to justice and accountability. The $4.4 trillion from the American taxpayer for unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 1.2 million dead, intelligence services engaging in massive-scale collection of individual private conversations in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Indefinite detention and assassination of Americans are now permitted without [charge] or trial. This is an ongoing problem that has to be resolved before we will ever have justice in this country. — Alfred Magaletta, Concord, MA

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We will be spreading the truth about what happened on 9/11 and our government’s refusal to examine the evidence. We will be spreading the truth because the mass media will be spreading lies. — Mike Sullivan, Chicago, IL

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Let’s not forget to remind people of the eternal nature of 9/11 truth, which is that eventually it will be known for its iconic wars and the truthers like us who relentlessly pursued the truth. Let’s not forget to remind them of the desecration of that day — which is the official story: Nineteen Muslim hijackers with box cutters and two planes took down three of the world’s strongest buildings. — Ross Muir, New York, NY

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I have to confess I smoked the official story of 9/11 for a full 10 years. But thanks to people who cared, who showed me through YouTube videos, footage and interviews never showed on mainstream TV, I was able to experience an awakening. — Max Galic, Niles, IL

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After 20 years of work based on the events of 9/11 we owe it to the first responders on the scene there and the men and women of the Armed Forces that have been fighting these wars for the past 20 years, to learn the truth. — Kenneth Henry, Seattle, WA

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If you look at the videos that everybody has seen you can tell that the buildings did not collapse on their own — they were demolished through sequential explosions. It’s very easy to see if you just look for it. — Bob May, Denver, CO

–   –   –

Twenty years of deception and coverup signifies to me just how completely dominant and powerful the ruling class is. A lot of people tell me there’s more important things to focus on besides 9/11 — the environment, racial and social injustices, the banking system, etc. But I contend those issues can’t be resolved without humanity moving toward love and compassion for oneself and others — and from all appearances the ruling class has no compassion or love for their fellow human beings. — Don Plummer, Grand Junction, CO

–   –   –

People lie, but the facts don’t. For professional firefighters’ in-depth analysis, watch our film, available for free at www.FF911truth.org. — Paul Simon, Leeds, UK

–   –   –

Nine-eleven actually changed our whole world. . . . Obviously, we do not live in an honest world. The 9/11 Commission, the NIST investigation were all dishonest. They were fraudulent. And I want to congratulate all of us in the 9/11 truth movement, especially the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry and Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, to help make this an honest world and help get to the truth about 9/11. — Fran Shur, Denver, CO

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The families of the victims never got their questions answered. Nine-eleven wasn’t an event in the past. It was a turning point. And it’s been used — it’s used even today — as a rationale for one atrocity after another. So it’s something that doesn’t go away. It hasn’t gone away. And it’s important to understand what 9/11 was all about to understand what’s going on in the world today. — David Chandler, Denver, CO

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I believe that life, truth, love, and courage are four of the highest human qualities, and 9/11 truth is addressed by all four of those. We simply have to keep going with this. There’s no statute of limitation on murders, and there are so many people who are dependent on us to speak truth to power and to fight the good fight on their behalf. — Dorothy Lori, Paonia, CO

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I am a psychologist, and I believe that the two greatest barriers we have to break through with 9/11 are corporate media and also people’s beliefs. Those are very huge barriers, and they still exist today. We still need to work through those. I also feel that my understanding of those barriers through the 9/11 truth movement . . . has really informed everything that I’ve done in the last year and a half in understanding our current situation. I see how this all ties together and how important it is to continue to work to find and expose what has happened in our world. — Marty Hopper, Boulder, CO

Who is Richard Dolan? (A bio is HERE.) In some ways he was made to order for people who ridicule online sources because for years he has been talking and writing about UFOs. Then last year some military  accounts kept under wraps for decades were declassified and became news.

Dolan’s main subject HERE is what he alternately calls “top-down revolution,” “revolution from above,” “state revolution” or “totalitarian revolution.” He says the main thing about this kind is that it’s world wide. Hence the title of the talk: “We Are in a Global Revolution.”

I share it on this blog because Dolan says the horrific September 2001 terror attacks may be a part of a global revolution from above. It’s a fascinating thesis.

Dolan includes a power point outline about halfway though the talk. A version is below. Listen and be skeptical. See what seems to make sense and what doesn’t.

— Mark Channing Miller

–   –   –

Totalitarian Revolutions

1. Massive Expansion of State Power
2. Information Control / Psychological Warfare
3. Destruction of the Individual
4. Wealth Transfer & Loss of Economic Freedom

–   –   –

1. Massive Expansion of State Power

* Significant travel restrictions
* Overt GPS and tracking of the population
* Radical expansion of police powers
* Heavily coerced vaccination backed by legal or financial measures

–   –   –

2. Information Control / Psychological Warfare

* Emphasis of group over individual & safety over freedom
* Censorship
* Attack on dissenters including academics and intellectuals
* Creation of a climate of fear
* State & corporate media join to propagandize population
* Demonization/dehumanization of dissenters, creation of a domestic enemy
* Creation of learned helplessness and bystander effect for many
* Visual symbols of conformity — from flags and uniforms and rallies, now to masks
* Slogans. “Trust the Science” “Flatten the Curve”

–   –   –

3. Destruction of the Individual

* Shutdown of social life and activities
* Closure of large numbers of businesses
* Closure of large numbers of public spaces
* Psychological harm caused by masking
* People easier to control when isolated, psychologically damaged

–   –   –

4. Wealth Transfer & Loss of Economic Freedom

* Creation or exacerbation of economic precariousness and uncertainty
* Economic transformations to massive entities
* Destruction of small businesses and economic freedom

This weekend’s Weekender comes in two parts. Today’s begins with a longer look at a sermon delivered on Sept. 12 in New York City by the Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, Primate of the Episcopal Church of the United States. The sermon may be worth listening to, HERE, as an example of how a leader can feel compelled to grapple publicly with the lying impossible official Executive Branch explanation of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

I take it as a given that Presiding Bishop Curry knows full well, 20 years later, that the Executive Branch “9/11” explanations are hogwash, a coverup of the truth. However, apparently he felt he couldn’t say so from a pulpit lest he endanger the national church he was selected to lead, lest he endanger his own top leadership position, lest he pay with his life.

Regrettably (at least for those who value getting to the truth of “9/11”), Presiding Bishop Curry felt he had to mask the potentially most worthwhile parts of his 20th anniversary sermon, titled “Why We Go to the Mountain,” with irrelevancies and worse.

First, what were the potentially most worthwhile parts? For me, they included his paraphrases from Isaiah 2:2-4* and a few words at the beginning of  Matthew 5,** just before the Beatitudes.

The potentially most worthwhile parts of the sermon included renditions of or allusions to parts of the Irving Berlin song “God Bless America,” the African-American spirituals “Every Time I Feel the Spirit” and “Down By the Riverside,” and the hymn “How Great Thou Art.”

The potentially most worthwhile parts of the sermon included the statement “We’ve been playing too many games with one another and with God’s creation. And if nothing else will [make us go to the mountain], 9/11, in our memory and in the reality, should.” They included his reminding listeners of the Baptismal Covenant in the Episcopal Prayerbook.

But Presiding Bishop Curry squandered these potentially powerful elements by using them to pay obeisance to secular mythology cloaking the September 2001 terror attacks and by stirring into the mix (1) climate change, (2) the January 6 Capitol assault and (3) Covid-19. What came out was a stew, a mishmash.

To top it off, he quoted from former President George W. Bush’s speech a week ago at Shanksville, Pa., giving a coverup-artist better-than-equal billing with Abraham Lincoln, whom he also quoted.

Jesus, a Jew, stood for truth against a corrupt, hypocritical Temple hierarchy of collaborators with the Roman occupiers of their land, and he was tortured to death on a cross for it. He was a truther.

It is important to know that 9/11 “in our memory” and 9/11 “in the reality,” although they overlap, are two different things, but Presiding Bishop Curry did not point this out. Melding the memories and the realities of the terror attacks as if there are no differences between them is a continuation of “playing too many games with one another.”

— Mark Channing Miller

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* “In the days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain, and it shall be raised above the hills, and all nations shall stream to it, and many peoples shall say, ‘Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, that he may teach us his ways, that we may walk in his path, and then they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and neither shall they learn war any more. Come, let us go to the mountain, that he may teach us his ways.”

** “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, he began to teach them.” (Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount begins with eight blessings known as the Beatitudes.)

Saturday was a typical day for volunteers organized by Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity to join homeowners-to-be and some skilled trades professionals to put in a few hours building a new home. It was typical except for two differences: It was the first regular weekly Habitat workday since Covid-19 disrupted almost everything last year, and it marked 20 years since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Before work started, construction manager Brent Getchell, who is a former chief of the Sheffield Volunteer Fire Department, led a 20-minute ceremony on what will be the front lawn of a duplex on Pittsfield’s Madison Avenue. Getchell spoke about various experiences of his brother firefighters on “9/11” including dying in rescue efforts or getting sick and, in hundreds of cases, dying of cancer in the years to follow. Getchell concluded his remarks by reading the following from his cellphone.

Firefighters’ Prayer

When I am called to duty, God, wherever flames may rage,
give me strength to save a life, whatever be its age.
Help me to embrace a little child before it’s too late,
or save an older person from the horror of that fate.
Enable me to be alert to hear the weakest shout,
and quickly and efficiently to put the fire out.
I want to fill my calling and to give the best in me,
to guard my neighbor and protect his property.
And if according to your will I have to lose my life,
bless with your protecting hand my loving family from strife.

Afterward I told Getchell I was one of those “9/11 truthers,” people who question the official narratives of the September 2001 terror attacks. He didn’t seem to think I was a lunatic, so I told him I do a blog on 9/11 truth and would give him a copy of the web address.* He said he’d look at it. I wrote it down and Beth Frederick, one of the Habitat chapter’s organizers, took a picture of it and said she’d send it to him.

–   –   –

The next day, Sept. 12, at Trinity Episcopal Church in Manhattan the celebrant and preacher was Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. The title of his 26-minute sermon: “Why We Go to the Mountain.” Watch and listen HERE. Presumably “truthers” who do will be forgiven for thinking the reason for going to the mountain is to avoid having to answer questions about whether the official government/media narratives about the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, can possibly be true.

— Mark Channing Miller

–   –   –

* https://www.x-ma911truthwalk.com

At the edge of an outdoor ceremony Saturday in Ludlow, Massachusetts, members of the fire department had parked their ladder truck, with the words “Let’s Roll” on its bucket.

In the Sunday Republican, Jim Kinney explains:

“It’s a reference to the words of Todd Beamer, who, with his fellow passengers, took back Flight 93 and, although they died, were able to direct the flight away from Washington, D.C., crashing in an open field in Pennsylvania.

“Speakers referenced those words in Ludlow, saying it’s not just people in uniform who can make a difference.”

Subscribers to the Republican or masslive.com can read Kinney’s anniversary report HERE. It began on page 1 Sunday, headlined “‘It doesn’t feel like 20 years’: Western Mass marks 9/11 anniversary with sorrow, calls for unity.”

According to official sources, Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer said to others on the plane preparing to heroically move against hijackers, “Are you guys ready? Okay, let’s roll.” This at the end of a 13-minute telephone conversation with a Verizon customer-service operator.

The problem is, there are good reasons to doubt that Beamer had that conversation.

In their book 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation, authors David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth devote two short chapters to investigators’ consensus that accounts of it are false. They are titled “The Assumption That the Todd Beamer ‘Let’s Roll’ Call from United 93 Was Authentic, Part 1” and “The Assumption That the Todd Beamer ‘Let’s Roll’ Call from United 93 Was Authentic Was Authentic, Part 2.”

(Four earlier chapters are titled “The Claim That Four 9/11 Flights Were Hijacked,” “The Claim That United Flight 93 Crashed in Pennsylvania,” “The Claim That Hijackers Were Responsible for Changes to 9/11 Flight Transponders,” and “The Claim That No Information Could Be Obtained from the Black Boxes of Any of the Four 9/11 Planes.”)

I apologize for not summarizing them. Click HERE to see if Edward Curtin’s review of 9/11 Unmaked does so.

–   –   –

At least two articles in Sunday’s mainstream newspaper coverage commemorating the 20th anniversary of the September 2001 terrorist attacks are notable for lacking falsehoods routinely repeated elsewhere:

A Copy Desk Editor’s Tale: Twenty years ago Robert Genest was an assistant news editor on the Wall Street Journal’s copy desk. But when two planes crashed into the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, he was in his Brooklyn apartment and unable to get to his desk at the newspaper near the World Trade Center.

He details working at home on a company computer connected to the newspaper’s servers, overcoming communication and transportation hurdles and, two days later, reaching a New Jersey office the Journal had thrown together where the emotional toll made it “incredibly difficult to work.”

Until recently memories of what Genest lived and worked through since then were foggy, the days and years “somewhat lost.”Why is his column headed “9/11 changed everything about my life”? A few years later he quit and moved back to Western Massachusetts, where he is now manager of reader engagement and editor of opinion and commentary at the Springfield Republican.

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Other Museums and Memorials Needed: “Memory is idiosyncratic,” Laila Lalami writes in a Sunday New York Times piece titled “What We Forget on 9/11.” Not only for individuals, like Genest (whom she probably has never met), but for societies.

“The story America told about itself after Sept. 11,” she writes, “was one of heroism and resilience in the aftermath of a brutal attack; the invasion of other countries, and the interruption of their political destinies, had no place in it. Even now … the story hasn’t changed. There are no ceremonies to honor the foreigners who died in U.S. wars, no memorials to victims of torture, no museums to house artifacts from hollowed-out buildings or bombed funeral processions, no exhibits on the lessons that ought to be drawn from such spectacular failures.”

Lalami, a novelist and essayist, is a Muslim.

— Mark Channing Miller