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The CrackBerry Chronicles

With Elaine Santore


Photo(s) by Luke Thomas

By Elaine Santore

 

December 17, 2007

Boston Tea Party turns 234, doesn't look a day over 62

American colonists tossed 300 boxes of British tea into Boston Harbor in 1773 to protest Great Britain's taxation without representation. The Boston Tea Party led to the American Revolution and the protest continues to be celebrated and reenacted in US cities every December 16.

In San Francisco, enthusiastic supporters for anti-war presidential hopeful Ron Paul staged a Tea Party and rally outside the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. Paul supporters in Boston used the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party as a massive fundraising event.

By midnight, the Texas congressman's acolytes raised over $6 million online during a 24-hour "Money Bomb." On November 5, Paul's first Money Bomb raised over $4 million.

Local 9/11 Truthers party like it's 1773

A few piers up the Embarcadero, Northern California 9/11 Truth Commission organized their own Tea Party event, with protestors colorfully clad in 18th-century period costume. The protestors gathered at Pier 39, then moved west to Fisherman's Wharf and the Hyde Street Pier.

After a presentation by several speakers at Hyde Street Pier, the protestors then marched on to Aquatic Park and Municipal Pier.


V for Vendetta meets A Christmas Carol: the ghost of 9/11 past.

At the end of the march participants threw a replica of the 9/11 Commission Report into the San Francisco Bay. To ensure the utmost environmental responsibility, a wet-suited activist retrieved the replica from the water.


Costumed revelers toss the 9/11 Commission Report into the Bay.


"There she blows!"

The San Francisco protest focused on omissions from the 9/11 Commission Report, criticisms of the Military Commissions Act, the National Security Presidential Order 51, Homeland Security Presidential Order 20, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and the Patriot Act.

Sept. 11 conspiracy theories have become a hot topic on the web, with new "9/11 Truth" videos appearing online daily. Even South Park got into the act, spoofing the conspiracy theorists in an episode entitled "The Mystery of the Urinal Dunce."

After an act of gross vandalism in the boys' bathroom, the investigation turns into a broader conspiracy about Sept. 11: an inside job perpetrated by the Bush administration to win support for a pre-planned occupation of the oil-rich Middle East.

Comedian Bill Maher, self-described libertarian like Paul, angered Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists September 14 when he made the following statement during HBO's Real Time:

"Crazy people who still think the government brought down the Twin Towers in a controlled explosion have to stop pretending that I'm the one who's being naïve. How big a lunatic do you have to be to watch two giant airliners packed with jet fuel slam into buildings on live TV, igniting a massive inferno that burned for two hours, and then think, 'well, if you believe that was the cause.' Stop asking me to raise this ridiculous topic on the show and start asking your doctor if Paxil is right for you."

The "9/11 Truthers" made headlines in October when Maher ejected them from a live studio audience.


9/11 Truthers infiltrate Bill Maher Show

Here's your chance to chime in. With many 9/11 conspiracy theories abound, what do you think really happened on 9/11?

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