Below are headlines (only) over two articles related to quarantining – from today’s editions of the French daily Le Monde and the Spanish daily El País. One report concerns official measures taken so far in France and the outlook for more. The other describes a European Space Agency experiment in which six scientists were isolated together for nearly a year and a half inside a simulated spacecraft. Click on the links for the articles.

 (A glitch changed the appearance of one paragraph. At least it’s easier to read.)

Le Monde

France, already paralyzed for a week, awaits possible quarantine extension: Expected to last two weeks, it will be decided “in the next few days,” says the government, which modified work rules considerably to take into account “the economic and social shock.” Follow the situation live and ask us questions.

(La France paralysée depuis une semaine, dans l’attente d’une eventuelle prolongation du confinement: Le prolongement du confinement, censé durer deux semaines, sera décidé « dans les prochains jours », selon le gouvernement, qui a modifié en profondeur le code du travail pour prendre en compte « le choc économique et social ». Suivez la situation en direct et posez-nous vos questions.)

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El País

‘Our mission as we face the coronavirus is to survive and to not infect’: A Colombian-Italian scientist who was isolated [with five others] for 520 days in an experiment simulating a voyage to Mars gives some clues on putting up with quarantines

“Nuestra misión ante el coronavirus es sobrevivir y no contagiar”: El científico colombo-italiano que se aisló 520 días en un experimento que simulaba un viaje a Marte da algunas claves para soportar major la cuarentena

Hope is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me

It’s an ill wind that blows no good. — Common saying

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One thread in the silver lining of the Covid-19 world challenge is that some people around the world who are sequestered in their homes can do some reading they otherwise would not have a chance to do. It can include works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and posts from the Internet like links contained in emails from Facebook friends and friends.

One example of the latter is THIS ONE containing a small portion of an “International Review Panel Investigation” of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It is Parts 1 and 2 of “The Assumption That the Todd Beamer ‘Let’s Roll’ Call from United 93 Was Authentic.”

They are from the book 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation, which contains dispassionate examinations of 51 elements of the phony official narrative put out by the Bush/Chaney administration — the same official narrative that has not been challenged by either administration since that one.

The book is not readily available in bookstores and has gone unreviewed in the “free press” but just may be delivered, within days, to the doorstep of anyone who wants to order it from the publisher, Olive Branch Press, or from an online bookseller.

Here is some advice from Wendell Berry that may be particularly useful in these times of corona virus sequestration even if you don’t intend to write a poem. 

How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

Researcher Barbara Honegger of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry spoke on March 6 on San Diego’s connections to both the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and efforts to establish the roles of perpetrators not considered in official accounts.

Among other ties, the city was a temporary base for Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two of the five al-Qaeda operatives who reportedly hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.

San Diego is also home to former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska, who in retirement worked for passage of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) which removes the sovereign immunity that prevented lawsuits against governments found to be involved in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

And the FBI’s San Diego Division was where for a time Richard Lambert was assistant special agent in charge, years before becoming better known as highly critical of the “Amerithrax” investigation following the anonymous mailing of anthrax-laced letters resulting in five deaths and 17 victims sickened in the weeks after 9/11.

In Honegger’s 37-minute talk to San Diego 9/11 Truth, HERE, she also recommends a 2008 article she wrote for Oped News on connections between the anthrax scare and the September 11 attacks; and an interview HERE (one of many online) in which Gen. Richard Clarke, adviser to the White House on counter-terror from 1998 to 2002, points out federal government failures to prevent the 9/11 attacks and apologizes for them to victims’ families.

The event also featured Lawyers’ Committee president Richard D. Meiswinkle (see below) and fire commissioner Christopher Gioia of the Franklin Square and Munson fire district on Long Island. A brief summary of the event is HERE.

A board member  of the Lawyers’ Committee, Honegger was a White House policy adviser for several years during the Reagan administration. She is a journalist specializing in military affairs, and authored the 1989 book October Surprise: Did the Reagan-Bush Election Campaign Sabotage President Carter’s Attempt to Free the American Hostages in Iran?

Attorney David R. Meiswinkle, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, took several minutes of a talk in San Diego on March 6 to read off a version of what has happened since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001:

“Over one million dead and injured, … the Patriot Act loss of civil liberties, the use of torture and drone warfare, full-spectrum dominance,* trillions diverted to war profits, the increased domination by corporations, refugee crisis, immunity of high elected officials from war crimes, failure of government to uphold Constitution, economic decline for 95 percent of us, censorship of the media, increased power of the Deep State, constant fear campaign, crackdown on whistleblowers, militarization of police, official coverup, destabilization of Middle East and Afghanistan, clash of cultures, wars for empire, surveillance state bulk data collection …

“As I mentioned before,” he continued, “the Constitution and its Bill of Rights … shredded … eviscerated since 9/11. And everything I mentioned previously sort of confirms that: the USA PATRIOT Act, the FISA courts,** Homeland Security, indefinite detention …

“Now I can imagine the Founding Fathers, the Sons of Liberty, at their meetings and the King of England wanting to quarter soldiers in their houses to keep an eye on them, and how they stood up to prevent that.

“Let’s look at it again, the consequences of 9/11: indefinite detention, citizens as enemy combatants, NSA surveillance twenty-four/seven of all our text messages, emails, cellphone communication and web searches, being harvested and stored at a facility in Utah, a giant facility at our taxpayers’ money [sic] …

“So again we think back to the crimes of yesteryear during the colonial period, and our forefathers wouldn’t even allow soldiers to come and squat in their house, but we have surveillance at all times now. And we’ll go into it — G5 and things of that nature, but if you’re into some of the 2030 technology it’s going to get worse.”

The whole talk before a meeting of San Diego 9/11 Truth is 47 minutes long. Meiswinkle mentions some of his colleagues and recounts the committee’s progress over the last three years and plans for the future. Items shown on a screen as he spoke were intended to be shown in the video, but apparently no 14-year-old was present.

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* “Full-spectrum dominance, also known as full-spectrum superiority, is a military entity’s achievement of control over all dimensions of the battlespace, effectively possessing an overwhelming diversity of resources in such areas as terrestrial, aerial, maritime, subterranean, extraterrestrial, psychological, and bio- or cyber-technological warfare,” according to Wikipedia.

** “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of ‘foreign intelligence information’ between ‘foreign powers’ and ‘agents of foreign powers’ suspected of espionage or terrorism,” according to Wikipedia. “The Act created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It has been repeatedly amended since the September 11 attacks.” (Wikipedia’s entry on the “9/11 Truth movement,” HERE, has evolved over the years but still contains the dismissive label “conspiracy theorists” favored by the mainstream news media.)

British authorities have had Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange in solitary confinement for the past year while he fights extradition to the United States for espionage. First, he was charged with rape in Sweden.

HERE, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson talks with Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, who sees it as the powers that be showing Assange’s colleagues in the Fourth Estate what can happen if they go and do likewise. That is, tell the truth.

Waters refers to a report by U.N. special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer. HERE is an op-ed article Melzer finally got published on Assange’s experience, in medium.com.

David Ray Griffin should be the person most associated with getting the word out comprehensively that the U.S. government’s Executive Branch narrative about the “9/11” attacks 18-plus years ago can’t possibly be true, defying the laws of physics and common sense as it does.

He has been researching and writing on the subject since before turning out his first book (of at least 14) on it, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, published in 2004 by Olive Branch Press. That was two years before architect Richard Gage founded Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth after listening to him being interviewed on the radio. Click HERE for the titles of Griffin’s 9/11-related books as of mid-August of last year.

David Ray Griffin is professor emeritus of philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont Graduate University and a founder and co-director of the Center for Process Studies.

At last someone has written a review of his The Christian Gospel for Americans: A Systematic Theology (2019). HERE is the review, by Edward Curtin, direct from his blog, Behind the Curtain.

Thank you, Ed, for taking the trouble to do this book justice and even urging your readers to look at a 2013 article by Roger Olson detailing why he, Olson, is not a process theologian, linked by a commenter who will not read the book. That’s transparency!

— Mark Channing Miller

It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn’t know – and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything. – Joyce Cary, English author (1888-1957)

 Alongside all our knowing must be the equal and honest “knowing that I do not know.” – Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest (b. 1943)

The rising power of the United States in world affairs, and particularly of the American President, requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism, as noisy but also as accurate as artillery fire. – James Reston, U.S. journalist (1909-1995)

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The “mainstream media” gets plenty of blame for shielding the public, to the extent that it can, from the ugly truth that the official accounts of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are full of impossibilities, inconsistencies and scores of outright lies. A couple of distinctions need to be made, however.

First, in the weeks and months after that horrific crime of the century, much invaluable reporting was done and relayed to the public in newspapers and on TV and radio. Independent researchers have used this as well as their own digging to nail down the falsity of the Executive Branch narrative.

Secondly, plenty of reporters would love to be unleashed to continue to track down the truth for the public that depends on a free press in a democracy. Apparently, owners and managers and the advertisers and “underwriters” on which those businesses survive won’t stand for it.

Below is a small example, taken from a book to be reviewed in this blog — three paragraphs of a report in a February 2002 issue of the New York Times by James Glanz and Eric Lipton, under the headline “A Search for Clues in Towers Collapse: Engineers Volunteer to Examine Steel Debris Taken to Shipyards”:

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“From the moment the two towers collapsed on Sept. 11, engineers and other experts have been struggling to answer the monumental questions of exactly why and how the buildings, designed to sustain a jet impact, completely collapsed. But despite promises of a broad federal investigation, and after weeks and calls from victims’ families and others to halt the destruction of the steel that could hold all sorts of clues, the half-heroic, half-comic scenes at the Jersey City scrapyard continue to play out.

“Small teams of engineers plan slightly mad dashes, like mountain goats, into mounds of steel to claim pieces of tower columns. The engineers time their forays to avoid being crushed … Through it all, [they] profess optimism that they are catching and saving what is most useful. But they concede that there is no way of saying for sure; an unknown number of steel columns has been sent off to mills as far away as Asia without ever having been examined or saved.

“‘What they’re doing is extremely noble, ambitious and wonderful and I’m glad somebody is doing that,’ said Dr. James G. Quintiere, a professor in fire protection engineering at the University of Maryland. But, he added, ‘the steel, to me, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that it’s gone.'”

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— Mark Channing Miller