Getting 'round to the truth about 9/11

Members of the 9/11 Truth Alliance held a rally yesterday that began with speeches
in Fisherman's Wharf and ended at Municipal Pier where a floatable replica
of the 9/11 Commission Report was tossed into the frosty waters of the San Francisco Bay.
Photos by Luke Thomas and Robert B. Livingston.

By Robert B. Livingston, special to Fog City Journal

December 17, 2007

I was late to today's Tea Party for 9/11 Truth at Fisherman's Wharf because I do not like to miss listening to Robert W. McChesney's Media Matters. It's an insightful radio program about the media and current affairs that airs (or streams) every Sunday from a campus station of the University of Illinois.

Today after some initial glitches that prompted a seasonal Vince Guaraldi interlude and lots of "hellos" à la No Time for Sergeants, the journalism professor spoke with Paul Krugman, an economist best known for his columns in the New York Times.

Krugman, easily caricaturized by his enemies as the quintessential hand-wringing liberal (God, bless him!), wasn't nearly as elucidating as much as I always hope he will be. On the program, he admitted that the fallout from the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis was much more serious than he had anticipated, and he predicted a terrible year ahead-- possibly even a "horrible" year. (As if many of us hadn't already guessed.)

He also offered realistic advice tailored for the you-know-who realistic supporters of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, or Barack Obama (certainly not for the daring, but daft dreamers who believe that Dennis Kucinich stands a chance of winning the Democratic party nomination). If there was any "silver lining" to his general doom, gloom, and despair it was Krugman's acknowledgment that the War in Iraq is not nearly costing us as much as the Vietnam War had.

Are you listening Clinton, Edwards, and Obama? The military industrial complex is an equal opportunity employer, so keep your sabers rattling!

By the way, no one could ever accuse Krugman of ever allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, least of all himself... but could anyone, anywhere, please explain to him why things have been getting worse for so many of us every four years? He has his own ideas of course, but I think Krugman truly suffers from not knowing completely why.

Oh yeah.... I was late to Fisherman's Wharf

Without having to wait very long, a Muni 9X zipped me there from Third Street in about 40 minutes... the driver was kind enough to drop us all off at an unmarked spot a block or two from where she and others hunkered down to take a break. No matter. I knew I would catch up with the activists knowing where they had protested last year, so I continued on by walking... spotting a number of Deception Dollars along the way which clued me to their trail.

Photo by Robert Livingston

Uh oh

After having just explained that my friends should be right around the corner to a Russian couple who ogled a Deception Dollar and smiled with glee after I said something about Vladimir Putin and our own "president" being an idiot (while doing an abbreviated pantomime of Bush giving German Chancellor Merkel a neck rub)-- I soon discovered only quietly lapping waves at the famous beach by the Dolphin Club.

Photo by Robert Livingston

"Where are they?" I puzzled. Was I late?

After a while of wandering about without any more signs-- and beginning to wonder what I was missing in Orlando, Florida, I spotted a friend wearing a Green Party button on a boat at the wharf. He told me that authorities had told the activists to "split." Those weren't his words, but that was the picture he painted. He pointed up the hill and said that the activists had gone to find another route to the harbor so that they could, like the patriots of old who tossed tea into Boston Harbor, symbolically toss the Zelikow Commission Report away.

"Thanks, Jeffrey!"

It wasn't long before I finally caught up with the 9/11 Truth Activists, all colorfully dressed in some American Colonial period garb, at the top of the park near Ghirardelli Square. There, they had set up displays and banners calling for a reinvestigation of the terrible September 11, 2001 terror incidents which had given a floundering Bush Administration new vitality and a reason for implementing their plans for resource domination in the Middle East.

Photo by Luke Thomas

Attorney William Veale.
Photo by Luke Thomas

Several gave speeches which were interrupted by maddened buskers performing some sort of an escape trick. One, in a mask and bound to a pole by a heavy chain yelled, "Go away! Can't you see we are making a living?" "We'll take care of you!" responded one activist who paid the man off later.

Photo by Luke Thomas

Because I was focusing on that particular mini-drama, plus a three-legged dog dragging a leash all-about, some drunks arguing among themselves about who dissed who and when, and some curious hangers-on (one with a mustache full of cookie crumbs, a spy or an agent provocateur perhaps?), I am sorry to relate that I hardly payed attention to the speeches given-- which were, if not as eloquent as I am trying to be writing this with a splitting headache, obviously passionate, serious, and reasoned.

I think the message of the activists was pretty much in tune with the description that the eminent "Truth Movement" leader Dr. David Ray Griffin gives whenever he himself refers to the Official 9/11 Commission Report. He calls it a "571-page lie."

Among all the faces there, I was most reassured to see that of Carol Brouillet who has been courageously asking questions about 9/11 longer than anyone else I know. Rebuffed and snubbed by her own Congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, Carol ran against her in 2004.

Carol Brouillet
Photo by Robert Livingston

Carol has been smart and indefatigable in her quest for justice on behalf of the families of those who died on 9/11, and for others who have suffered as a result of misguided wars instigated for an imagined retribution. Once practically alone in her mission, she has witnessed an explosive increase in the number of people who distrust and question the government's accounting of what happened on 9/11.

Photo by Luke Thomas

Photo by Luke Thomas

Like many of the activists today, Carol is especially concerned by the unconstitutionality of the Patriot Act which eliminates habeas corpus and of even newer laws which can give the executive branch of government more sweeping and unrestricted powers. If anyone comes close to living up to the reputation of the patriots who protested British taxes and helped spark a revolution back in 1773 when they tossed tea into Boston Harbor-- it would be Carol and her closest friends.

As I glanced around and took note of some the more eccentric characters that strung along with the event today, one being San Francisco's lovable and quite occasionally discomfiting Frank Chu, I wondered to myself just how much we really know about the actual people that composed the original Boston Tea Party. Had it also in its time its own share of eccentrics, geeks, and misfits? Too, I wondered what might be different today if less people spent their weekends glued to television sets or text-messaging on their cell phones. How relevant is patriotism today?

Frank Chu returns to planet Earth after an extensive recount of observable galaxies.
Photo by Luke Thomas

Searching for answers and the truth behind 9/11.
Photo by Luke Thomas

Carol, not one to hesitate despite having pondered such questions, spurred the group to gathering its stuff and moving back down the hill toward the bay. Hurrying to keep up, (Dylan Avery, one of the originators of the phenomenally popular documentaries about 9/11, Loose Change, among us... damn! I meant to ask him how the film got its name), we soon rendezvoused at the end of the jetty that curls out from Aquatic Park.

Dylan Avery (third from left)
Photo by Robert Livingston

There, looking out over the San Francisco Bay, activist John Wright, wearing a tricorne hat, read a long list of grievances which began with these words:

"Fellow citizens, the lies and deceptions of the tyrannical elite within our government regarding the crimes of September 11, 2001 have undermined our democratic processes and liberties, and have been used to launch wars upon other nations for far too long. The Executive, Judiciary, and U.S. Congress are hereby advised that we, the citizenry of these United States, hold an uncompromising DEMAND for a genuine independent investigation into the attacks on 9/11/2001 and full accountability for the crime, cover-up, and abuse of power committed under a veil of deceit."

Photo by Luke Thomas

After he had finished reading (amid cheers of encouragement and jubilation), Mr. Wright tossed a replica of the Official Commission Report into the water down below.

Photo by Luke Thomas

Truth activist John Wright tosses a floatable replica of the 9/11 Commission Report
into the frigid waters of the San Francisco Bay.
Photo by Luke Thomas

Photo by Luke Thomas

Photo by Luke Thomas

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