Gonzo Journalism at Its Weirdest

Gonzo journalism defined by its fans. Should it be emulated?

2010-11-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

Hunter S. Thompson Books

With the decline in popularity of newspapers I believe something should be done to shake up the way news is written. The problem with this is that some (if not a lot) journalists tend to play it safe with their writing for fear their editor will butcher their work. I’m not talking about the usual mundane 100 word articles about a fender-bender in the high street or a local Mayor caught with a mistress. I’m talking about feature articles that require a lengthy, investigative or research process.

This is something HST did best, he investigated to the point of becoming part of the story. He got to the juice of the story, hence the beginning of Gonzo journalism. Should it be emulated? I’m reluctant to give a yes or no answer.

Let me put it like this. Like regular people every journalist is his or her own person. They have their own personality, wit and opinions, although some argue opinions have no place in an journalists’ work. (The opinion factor is one of the prominent features in Hunter Thompson’s work.) Most journalists will only share their opinion if it tends to fall into line with popular opinion. Case in point- Marty Beckerman has no qualms about sharing his opinion be it popular or not, which is why a lot of folks consider him to be of the Gonzo journalist ilk. But he is no HST nor would he claim to be.

I would define a Gonzo journalist as an unpretentious writer who writes as he or she feels, or what he or she sees without thoughts of popularity, or fear of the editor’s delete button.

Looking back on this as I write it maybe I should have used the title Hunter S. Thompson: Should his writing style be emulated? The answer to that would be NO. For my money a Gonzo journalist is just a writer being themselves.

Below are the contributors to this topic. To get to their sites just click their names. Many thanks to all concerned for taking the time to share their thoughts and expertize.

Marty Beckerman. Author of Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and Other American Idiots. Generation S.L.U.T. (sexually liberated urban teens): A Brutal Feel-up Session with Today’s Sex-Crazed Adolescent Populace, and Death to All Cheerleaders: One Adolescent Journalist’s Cheerful Diatribe Against Teenage Plasticity. HST called him “a morbid little bastard.” He has written for Playboy, Discover, Reason, and many more. Click on his name above and get the full whack. You can see my review of his book Dumbocracy here. And buy it here.

William McKeen is the man behind my favorite HST biography, Outlaw Journalist. You can see my review of McKeen’s book and an interview I did with him here. McKeen first met Hunter in the 70s and has written two books about him. He’s one of the folks we can learn something from. You can buy his books here.

David S. Wills. Scholar, editor, writer, and publisher is currently writing a book about Hunter S. Thompson the man and his relation to Duke the fiend (David’s words) to see one of his many sites just click on his name.

Simone Corday. Spent time with Hunter during his time at The Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater. She’ll give a unique perspective on the ins and outs of Gonzo Journalism. Always an interesting read from Simone. You can see my review of her book and interview here. You can buy Simone’s book here.

Peter Richardson. Author of A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America. He teaches California Culture at San Francisco State University. He also wrote American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams. He is also editorial director at PoliPointPress, which publishes trade books on politics and current affairs. See my Q+A and review of Peter’s book here. You can buy his book here.

Peter W. Knox. Gonzo Beat reporter at Washington College, Peter went to Woody Creek to cover Hunter’s “Blastoff service” for the premier issue of Five magazine . Peter also did his undergraduate thesis on the theme of The American Dream throughout the life and literature of Hunter S. Thompson.

So in no particular order. Enjoy.

“Buying the Ticket” by Simone Corday

Early in the warm, distant October when I started grad school in English, our fledgling pack met, trying to look our hippest. One veteran grad student in his late thirties stood out—he was dressed in nineteenth century working-class looking clothes, loose shirt and vest with a slouchy hat and beard–distinct from a hippie, back to-the-land look that would have blended in more at the time. Cold Mountain comes to mind, although this was long before Charles Frazier wrote it or it became a Hollywood distortion. When I asked why he was dressed that way, someone explained he was doing his dissertation on the poet Walt Whitman, and to get into the spirit, decided to dress like Whitman. Even in a more hang-loose era, this was eccentric, and his intense focus set him apart, too. Talk about emulating your favorite author. . . . I don’t know how his experiment panned out, but he was clearly committed. Did he get closer to the spirit of Whitman by trying on his style?

But who am I to point a finger? Fast-forward some years later, when Hunter Thompson was honorary night manager at the O’Farrell Theater and I was a stripper, I chose even more outlandish costumes: gorilla, shark, fencer, horse/cowboy, prom queen, the mayor of San Francisco. . . . “Your shows are so different from what she’s doing. From what everyone else is,” Hunter said, glancing at the dancer onstage posing in a negligee, “Why?”

I digress. We are talking about whether or not a genre of writing, gonzo journalism, should be emulated. And in looking into this, I was most curious about what Hunter’s own view would be. In Wayne Ewing’s documentary Breakfast with Hunter (2005), P.J. O’Rourke asks Hunter, “There have been a lot of kids out there for the past 25 years, trying to write like you. It’s always struck me that there are certain artists, Jackson Pollock is an example, that are absolute geniuses that it’s fatal to imitate.” Hunter answers, “Particularly if you imitate the style without the reality.”

Like it or not, we are each stuck in our own skin, with our own limitations and promise, as writers and otherwise. It’s impossible to escape our exposure to books we’ve read and techniques we have absorbed–but it’s a principle tested by time that to create original work it’s crucial to rely on our own experiences and perspective.

I am not a student of journalism, so I’ve been reading The Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight by Mark Weingarten (2006), that gives a detailed view of how new journalism, and Hunter’s gonzo journalism, developed and were so innovative while the social history of the 60s and 70s evolved. And as I began to read, journalism as a topic expanded, and I came across so many intriguing books and side issues. I also found a cache of Hunter’s thoughts in Conversations with Hunter Thompson edited by Beef Torrey and Kevin Simonson (2008). But after all this exposure, emulating gonzo journalism seems as complex as reading it is fun.

Hunter didn’t identify with new journalism: “Wolfe and Talese go back and recreate stories that have already happened, where I like to get right in the middle of whatever I’m writing about—as personally involved as possible.” In sending Tom Wolfe the first part of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter wrote to him, “What I was trying to get at in [this] was the mind warp/photo technique of instant journalism: One draft, written on the spot and basically unrevised, edited, chopped, larded, etc. for publication.” quoted in William McKeen’s Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (2008).

But the technique sounds deceptively simple: “All you have to do is drink a little whiskey, smoke a joint, eat some acid, and you too can write like this! . . . That’s as stupid as it sounds.” HST quoted in “Man of Action: Hunter S. Thompson Keeps Moving,” by Jesse Jarnow, from Relix (2003), in Conversations with Hunter Thompson.

For those new to Hunter, the Las Vegas book started in March 1971, with his infamous drug-fueled trip with Oscar Acosta to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race, and a second trip to cover a convention on drug abuse. Much of the writing took place that summer, when Hunter wrote for 12-hour stints at Owl Farm. After Las Vegas became a hit, and Hunter’s gonzo reputation was secured, he rarely did rewriting.

Originality and talent are great gifts, but Hunter had augmented his with keen instincts, boldness, experience, hard work—by the time he developed gonzo, he had been a working writer for ten years. “It took me about two years of work to be able to bring the drug experience back and put it on paper. . . . to retain that and to do it right. One of the hardest things I ever had to do in writing. That’s what Vegas is about–about the altered perceptions of the characters. It’s the bedrock of the book,” Hunter explained to P.J. O’Rourke in Breakfast with Hunter.

Douglas Brinkley asked Hunter,” Almost without exception writers we’ve interviewed over the years admit they cannot write under the influence of booze or drugs—or at the least what they’ve done has to be rewritten in the cool of the day. What’s your comment about this?” Thompson: “They lie. Or maybe you’ve been interviewing a very narrow spectrum of writers. . . . Did you interview Coleridge? Did you interview Poe? Or Scott Fitzgerald? Or Mark Twain? Or Fred Exley? Did Faulkner tell you that what he was drinking all the time was really iced tea, not whiskey? Please. Who the fuck do you think wrote the Book of Revelation? A bunch of stone-sober clerics?” (quotes from “The Art of Journalism: An Interview with Hunter S. Thompson,” by Douglas Brinkley, from The Paris Review (2000), in Conversations with Hunter Thompson.

Although drugs enhanced Hunter’s perceptions and were part of his gonzo reputation, when it came to writing he acknowledged being straighter. In a 1974 Playboy interview, Craig Vetter asks, “When you actually sit down to start writing, can you use drugs like mushrooms or other psychedelics?” “No. It’s impossible to write with anything like that in my head,” Hunter answers. “Wild Turkey and tobacco are the only drugs I use regularly when I write. But, I tend to work at night, so when the wheels slow down, I occasionally indulge in a little speed—which I deplore and do not advocate—but you know, when the car runs out of gas, you have to use something. The only drug I really count on is adrenaline. I’m basically an adrenaline junkie. I’m addicted to the rush of the stuff in my own blood, and of all the drugs I’ve ever used, I think it’s the most powerful.” also in Conversations with Hunter Thompson.

A few years ago, in a long glass case, the San Francisco Public Library exhibited the scroll of the text of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. The scroll is 120 feet long, but in the case at least twelve readable feet sprawled before me—this roll of taped sheets the writer fed through a typewriter since the story was spilling from his mind so fast. When I leaned closer, On the Road was there in its magnificence, plus extra material, some different word choices—this stream of consciousness masterpiece had clearly been through some revision, more than one previous draft.

Kerouac scholar Paul Marion said: “Kerouac cultivated this myth that he was this spontaneous prose man, and that everything that he ever put down was never changed, and that’s not true. He was really a supreme craftsman, and devoted to writing and the writing process. . . . In truth, Kerouac heavily reworked On the Road — first in his head, then in his journals between 1947 and 1949, and then again on his typewriter.” Between 1951 and 1957, Kerouac reshaped as many as six drafts, desperate to get his work published. But when television host Steve Allen asked how long it had taken him to write On the Road, Kerouac answered “Three weeks.” (Quotes from “Jack Kerouac’s Famous Scroll, ‘On the Road’ Again,” by Andrea Shea, on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” July 5, 2007)

“Jack Kerouac influenced me quite a bit as a writer,“ said Hunter. “. . . Kerouac taught me that you could get away with writing about drugs and get published. It was possible. . . . I wasn’t trying to write like him, but I could see that I could get published like him and make the breakthrough, break through the eastern establishment ice. That’s the same way I felt about Hemingway when I first learned about him and his writing. I thought, Jesus, some people can do this.” (quotes from Douglas Brinkley, in Conversations with Hunter Thompson.)

The world has turned. Now media and journalism are in flux, with social media and “citizen journalists” playing a part. New technology has added an immediacy and a broad range of input, while newspapers struggle and diminish. We have moved beyond even the new new journalism, it seems. Now that there are fewer newspapers and fewer journalists employed to report on corruption, it is expanding into a cesspool. We need journalists who are skilled at investigation, as well as journalists who master narrative and are developing new techniques. Let us hope they also possess respect for the truth and a sense of ethics. Muckraking can be a masterful tool for social reform, while propaganda can cover up evil-doing, usually by the rich and powerful.

How would Hunter want to influence aspiring writers? He was asked:
“If you found yourself teaching a journalism course—Dr. Thompson’s Journalism 101—what would you tell students who were looking to go about covering stories?” HST: “You offering me a job? Shit. Well, I wouldn’t do it, I guess. It’s not important to me that I teach journalism classes.

“But if you did, what would your reading list be?

HST: “Oh, I’d start off with Henry Fielding. I would read writers. You know, I would read Conrad, Hemingway, people who use words. That’s really what it’s about. It’s about using words to achieve an end. And the Book of Revelation. I still read the Book of Revelation when I need to get cranked up about language. I would teach Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times. All the journalists who are known, really, have been that way because they were subjective. . . . I think the trick is that you have to use words well enough so that these nickle-and-dimers who come around bitching about being objective or the advertisers don’t like it are rendered helpless by the fact that it’s good. That’s the way people have triumphed over conventional wisdom in journalism.”
—from “Writing on the Wall: An Interview with Hunter S. Thompson,” by Matthew Hahn, in the Atlantic Online (1997), in Conversations with Hunter Thompson.

While becoming part of the story can get you to the heart of some substantial material, drugs and liquor in themselves aren’t inspirational. Hunter’s process and mystique won’t necessarily unlock creativity for other writers. His gonzo journalism can’t be pinned down—it retains mystery and power. The world doesn’t need would-be Hunters posing with cigarette holders and glasses of Chivas, mimicking Hunter’s exterior style. What is truly needed? Originality; talent; timely, well-chosen material; insight; ethics; and a power of expression in synch with our new time of challenges and unpredictability.

I—Copyright 2010 by Simone Corday

Simone Corday is the author of 9 ½ Years Behind the Green Door, A Memoir: A Mitchell Brothers Stripper Remembers Her Lover Artie Mitchell, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Killing That Rocked San Francisco

William McKeen

Gonzo: May it Unrest in Peace

It’s not hard for me to recall my life as a college freshman. When I was a young and impressionable writer, I fell under the spell of Hunter S. Thompson.

It was the early 1970s and after reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and his presidential campaign coverage in Rolling Stone, I became a committed fan.

I worked for a small daily newspaper in the Midwest then, and we passed around the newsroom a tattered and disintegrating Fear and Loathing paperback and spoke of it as Holy Writ.

I once tried to write like him. I went to Naked City, Indiana, one of the Midwest’s largest nudist colonies, to cover the Mister and Miss Nude America contests.

It was a disturbing and weird day, ripe for the gonzo-journalism treatment, with pantsless grannies and nudist master sergeants weary of the voyeuristic mobs that came to watch strippers strut and body builders romp naked.

But after two long Saturdays struggling with the story, I came to this important conclusion: only one person could write like Hunter S. Thompson. And it wasn’t me.

As I said, I was young (17) and impressionable. I’m glad I figured that out then, rather than wasting a few years of this short life imitating someone else.

Since becoming a teacher, I’ve faced the same problem from the other side of the table. Young people, enamored of Thompson (or Vonnegut or Foster Wallace or Didion . . . fill in the blank) say they want to write like their hero. “You want to write gonzo?” I ask the Thompson fans. “Sure, go right ahead.” When they fail miserably, I tell them, “See, only one person could write like that and he’s dead.” Pause. “But only one person can write like you.”

Hunter S. Thompson may be the best friend a writing teacher can have. He gives us an example of writing with wit, grace and a unique style. And those who try to imitate that style soon learn how much work went into creation of those masterpieces of non-fiction writing. Through trying and failing to write gonzo, students learn how to unmask their own (pardon the redundancy) style.

So don’t write gonzo. Write what you write.

In another context and speaking of another great artist, Johnny Cash once wrote this:

There are those who do not imitate,
Who cannot imitate
But then there are those who emulate
At times, to expand further the light
Of an original glow.
Knowing that to imitate the living
Is mockery
And to imitate the dead
Is robbery
There are those
Who are beings complete unto themselves
Whole, undaunted, — a source
As leaves of grass, as stars
As mountains, alike, alike, alike,
Yet unalike
Each is complete and contained
And as each unalike star shines
Each ray of light is forever gone
To leave way for a new ray

Johnny was writing about Bob Dylan for the liner notes for Nashville Skyline, but these words might just as well have been written about Hunter.

Peter Richardson

Gonzo is usually considered a species of New Journalism, which grafted literary techniques (first-person narration,dialogue, etc.) onto the usual conventions of magazine reporting. The taxonomy is good as far as it goes, but it masks some important distinctions among practitioners. Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe never visited Planet Gonzo, for example, and though Hunter Thompson would probably appreciate the comparison to Norman Mailer, the labels take us only so far.

What distinguishes Thompson’s writing at its best is the tension between the experiences he describes–savage is a favorite adjective–and the extraordinary control and precision of his prose. Those little sentence-level decisions create devastating and sometimes hilarious effects. When combined with the unique persona Thompson created, through which the world reveals its perverse meaning, this style precludes imitation. Only a fool would try to emulate it for any purpose besides satire.

Which isn’t to say that Thompson has no progeny. The first place to look is Thompson’s old stomping ground, Rolling Stone magazine. Having hired Thompson after the decline of Scanlan’s, which first matched Thompson with illustrator Ralph Steadman, Jann Wenner is now publishing Matt Taibbi, whose work invites comparison with Thompson’s.

Like Thompson, Taibbi is profane, outlandish, scornful, and funny. He covers politics but also writes about sports, and he makes no pretense of objectivity, at least in the now discredited sense of reflexively seeking out an opposing perspective, no matter how absurd. He also has Thompson’s ability to penetrate and dismiss the bullshit that permeates our political discourse. A major difference is that he hasn’t created a literary character called Matt Taibbi, which is probably wise. This should keep him out of Doonesbury, at least for now, and it allows him to focus more on the scandal at hand. His analysis of Goldman Sachs and the health care debate, for example, can’t be dismissed as the ravings of a celebrity provocateur.
Privately, Thompson complained about writing for a magazine preoccupied with what the Jackson Five had for breakfast. Taibbi could probably say the same thing, perhaps substituting the Jonas Brothers. But you have to hand it to him–and Rolling Stone. They’re doing some of the most interesting and hard-hitting political journalism in the country, and the gonzo parallels are irrefutable. If this is emulation, I say bring it on.

David S. Wills

“Gonzo” is an annoying word. I happen to have it tattooed on my left arm as a tribute to everything I consider as itsdefinition, but that definition varies wildly from person to person. It’s one of those strange words that mean everything and nothing; it even exists in multiple languages, meaning strength, stupidity and drunken courage.

Gonzo Journalism thus logically takes its cue from these meanings. It means something weird and different, and maybe even dangerous. Gonzo Journalism is by some definitions the sum of the parts of its creator, Hunter S. Thompson: integrity, suspicion, talent, madness, intoxication, and much more.

I would argue, however, that Gonzo Journalism is a one man genre. It can be emulated, and it should be emulated, but it will never be repeated. Gonzo Journalism was born with, and died with, Hunter S. Thompson.

The problem is Gonzo Journalism was so unique to Thompson that any piece of writing that incorporates more than one or two its features ends up looking like a parody. Thompson so deftly marked his own literary territory that no writer since has been able to write anything “Gonzo” without looking like a thief.

Marty Beckerman

HST is one of those authors—like Bret Easton Ellis, Stephen King, Dave Barry and Charles Bukowski—whom amateurs cannot resist emulating. (I know because I have emulated all of them.) Fittingly enough Thompson owed much to Hemingway early in his career, a natural part of the process, but nobody loves Thompson’s writing because “it’s just like Hemingway!” With the Kentucky Derby article and especially Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson stopped aspiring to the title of The Next _____ _______ (Faulkner/Fitzgerald/etc.) and instantaneously evolved into The First Hunter Thompson.

People who dream of glory as The Next Hunter Thompson are missing the point, kind of like how right-wingers impose fascism to defend freedom, or how teenage nonconformists all dress exactly the same and slash their wrists with the exact same corporation-manufactured razorblades while listening to the exact same moody songs, those whiny f*****g pussies.

All writers have influences, and you can learn a lot from your heroes. (Thompson evoked Hemingway, Hemingway evoked Twain, Twain evoked Shakespeare, Shakespeare evoked Homer, Homer evoked Ray Charles, etc.) The problem is that readers can tell when you imitate another writer’s voice, even if they have never read the original. They might not know enough to say “this sounds like _____ ______ ,” but they inherently know “this does not sound like you.” When you put 100% of yourself into your work—which requires unique life experiences, most likely unpleasant ones—the readership automatically recognizes the birth of an original voice, and that is why people will love you, not because you copied (excuse me, “gave tribute to”) another guy’s mannerisms and catchphrases and techniques and opinions.

If you covet the crown to the gonzo kingdom, your writing will suffer from an inherent and malignant dishonesty. If you really want to emulate the great writers, then deliver the truth in your own way. The footsteps of giants can lead us to the mountain, but we must reach the pinnacle ourselves. Mahalo.

Peter W. Knox

The photo below by Peter W. Knox. The portraits of eight great writers line the black tent containing HST’s blast-off August 2005 funeral. For more of Peter’s great photos see here.

The son of a librarian, Hunter S. Thompson found himself surrounded by books at a very young age and would keep those influential writers close to him throughout his life, as eventually the portraits of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Samuel Coleridge, Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Henry Miller, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway would hang along the entrance of the tent to his incredibly gonzo funeral.

Thompson was fond of saying “He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master,” and served as living proof. Long before Thompson successfully developed his own (now infamous) style, he would copy The Great Gatsby word for word (among others) to better integrate Fitzgerald’s rhythms into his own (and to experience, he admitted, just how it would feel to write something that great). Thompson was a well-studied scholar and never stopped reading, admiring, and pondering the greats that paved the way for him to join them.

While Thompson certainly labored over the texts of these literary greats, he harbored no delusions of emulating them. He wanted to write, as they had, the Great American Novel and wanted their fame, but not necessarily to take their style. Instead, like any to-become-great writer, Thompson wrote non-stop for years, taking what he appreciated from each and rolled them into his own style, born of necessity, deadlines, chemicals, and yes, fear and loathing. Look hard enough at any of his work and you will see its inherited literary DNA, but pull back and the piece as a whole becomes its own animal, one the likes of Library of Congress had never seen, and some say, never will again.

I stood outside Owl Farm’s security patrolled wooden fences that hot August day and could see just far enough into the large black tent containing the funeral party to see the start of the black and white portraits eager to welcome Thompson to join their ranks in the great library in the sky. As whiskey bottles got passed around the other outcasts, this very debate was taking place. Among a group of such loyal admirers and gonzo enthusiasts, there was not one of us that wasn’t guilty of several cheap attempts to channel the Good Doctor into our own writing, just as every late 90s guitarist cops to playing a few bars of Nirvana when they first started playing, and the ‘Gonzo Beat’ was currently working out for several Thompson fans present, myself included.

If imitation is indeed the highest form of flattery, there was more than enough smoke to blow Thompson’s ass out of the cannon that night, as the bottles were drained and the boasting grew louder to challenge the Japanese drummers counting down the fireworks. But as the opening chords of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” began to echo across the Woody Creek valley following the colorful and loud explosions of the blast-off, a quiet reverence, and with that a humble sense of loss and enlightenment, settled in the fields.

The question of whether Thompson’s writing style, ‘Gonzo’ or otherwise, should be reproduced, emulated, copied, or even attempted no longer mattered. He was gone, like the greats before him, and try hard as we might, fan writing won’t come close to replicating that magic. As the ashes mixed with the Aspen dirt, so must those writers influenced by Thompson take from his style what speaks strongest to them and make it their own—tis far better to learn from many masters than just one.

Nabbed! Man boards flight in 'elderly' disguise

2010-11-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

Officials probe 'unbelievable case of concealment' on Canada-bound jetliner

msnbc.com staff and news service reports
Nov. 5 2010

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A young Asian man who boarded an Air Canada flight elaborately disguised as an elderly white male was intercepted after emerging from a toilet mid-flight without his silicone mask, according to reports.

Officials were notified of a "possible imposter" on an Air Canada flight originating from Hong Kong on Oct. 29. After arriving in Vancouver, the man was escorted off the flight and he subsequently made a claim for refugee protection.

According to an intelligence alert issued by the Canada Border Services Agency, officers later recovered a "disguise kit" — which included "a silicone-type head and neck mask of an elderly Caucasian male, a brown leather cap, glasses and a thin brown cardigan."

The statement described the case as an "unbelievable case of concealment."
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"The passenger in question was observed at the beginning of the flight to be an elderly Caucasian male who appeared to have young looking hands," the bulletin added. "During the flight the subject attended the washroom and emerged an Asian male that appeared to be in his early 20s."

After being detained at the airport, officials asked the passenger to put on the clothing and mask found in one of three pieces of luggage linked to him.

"The subject donned the 'disguise' for Border Services Officers and they noted that he very much resembled an elderly Caucasian man, complete with mimicking the movements of an elderly person," the alert added. "The subject admitted at this time that he had boarded the flight with the mask on and had removed it several hours later."

The statement said the young Asian man had swapped boarding passes with a 55-year-old U.S. citizen before getting on the plane. He had later used a frequent flier card as ID to board the flight, the alert added.

"As neither boarding passes nor Aeroplan (frequent flier) cards reflect dates of birth, it may not have been very difficult for the very elderly looking imposter to present himself as a 55-year-old man," the bulletin said.

Chris McCluskey, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, said a man is in detention and the matter is before Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board. A spokeswoman for the Immigration and Refugee Board declined comment.

Air Canada also confirmed a passenger on board flight AC018 had been met by border services officials in Vancouver.

"It should be noted that there are multiple identity checks before departure at the Hong Kong international airport, including Chinese government-run Hong Kong passport control, which Hong Kong originating passengers must undergo," Air Canada spokeswoman Angela Mah said.

John Babcock, a spokesman for Canada's Transport Minister, declined to release details but said airlines have the responsibility to verify the identity of all passengers who appear to be 18 years of age or older.

"That means air carriers are supposed to look at a passenger's entire face to determine if they appear to be over 18 and if so, compare their physical appearance with their travel documents," Babcock said.

The security bulletin was originally obtained by CNN.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Hunter S. Thompson: His Final Hours

2010-09-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

DVD Verdict Review

Judge Gordon Sullivan rather likes fear and loathing, thank you.

"These are psychological detective stories attempting to uncover the mystery of why a celebrity died."

Hunter Stockton Thompson, the doomed poet of gonzo journalism, took his own life with a pistol on February 20, 2005. Despite decades of hard living, what ultimately did him in was the constant pain and limited mobility caused by two different hip surgeries and a poorly healed broken leg. He did not end, as many expected, by driving his famous red convertible off a sheer cliff, nor did he overdose on some newly discovered narcotic. No, the famous writer died alone in his study, his son and grandson just rooms away, and that final pistol shot fit like the last piece in the puzzle of Hunter S. Thompson's life. Despite the lack of a truly sensational story, the Final 24 series decided to take a look at the last day of Thompson's life, combining re-enactment footage with interviews of those who knew him. The result is an odd document, the corpse of Thompson's genius revived to sell DVDs, but even Thompson's reanimated self has something to offer longtime fans.

Because Hunter S. Thompson: His Final Hours is such a strange film, I'm going to break down my review by probable audience:

• The Ignorant. If you've never heard of Hunter S. Thompson before, this documentary will do very little to convince you of his genius or his import. His writing is featured only fitfully, and those who comment on his importance do so with the assumption that everyone knows why Hunter is famous, so there's not much hard evidence.

• The Initiate. If you're one of those who has just inherited a worn paperback of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Hunter S. Thompson's drug-fueled tale of decadence and depravity has changed your life utterly, then this is a surprisingly good place to start. Although much of the talking-head stuff might seem opaque without deeper knowledge of his other books, this documentary does a very effective job presenting Thompson's biography, from his upbringing in Louisville, through his rides with bikers and presidents, to his eventual decline and death. It largely skips over his military service, and like most documentaries wants to pretend that nothing of interest happened to the writer between 1982 and 2002, but for a 50-minute feature this is understandable. The show itself intercuts between Thompson's final 24 hours and his past, including interviews from relevant individuals in those time periods, including Hunter's first wife, and some of his editors at Rolling Stone.

• The Casual Fan. Honestly, if you own a couple of HST's books, like Fear and Loathing and The Great Shark Hunt and have done any reading at all of his numerous biographies, or even the eulogizes published after his death, then the small bits of new info contained here probably aren't going to be worth your time. This is a pretty straightforward rehash of the usual biographical details, but without as many of the famous commentators other documentaries have dug up. It's hard, as a casual fan, to lend credence to a documentary on Thompson that features no input from Ralph Steadman, Jann Wenner, Juan Thompson, Anita Thompson, Douglas Brinkley, etc. I'm not saying that all of those individuals are shining examples of journalistic integrity and would ensure the accuracy of the film. Rather, they are the major figures in Thompson's story, and their absence, to the casual fan, might appear suspicious.

• The Geek. You're like me, and you've got all of Thompson's books, the numerous biographies, all the documentaries, and you celebrate every February 20th with a glass of Wild Turkey in Hunter's honor. For you, this is probably worth at least a rental. While none of the biographical stuff will be new, this is the first time I recall anyone getting such an extended response from Hunter's first wife Sandy on living with her husband during those years. In fact, I almost wish the entire documentary had instead been one long interview with her. The input from Rolling Stone editors is also likely to be interesting to hardcore fans, even if the stories they relate aren't surprising.

Now, on to the bad: this series is obviously trying to be sensational, and the most sensational aspect is obviously the use of re-enactments. I'm not entirely against the use of re-enactments, but the gentleman who plays the older Hunter looks like somebody's pedophile uncle when he's dressed in Thompson's costume, he has none of Thompson's energy, and he mumbles poorly. The attempts to recreate Fear and Loathing look like a bad film-school ripoff of Terry Gilliam's fantastic film of the book. Together, these re-enactments give the film a sleezy air, like robbing Thompson's grave to sell his bones. This isn't helped by the kind of "eh" looking video on this disc. It has a very smooth, shallow look to it, although there are no compression artifacts worth mentioning. The audio is a stereo track, keeping the dialogue and music balanced with ease. There are no extras on the disc.

Ironically, when Hunter S. Thompson took control of his life (and death) by shooting himself, he finally lost control completely of his image. Although the process had started with the Doonesbury strips decades ago, only after his death were the vultures allowed to circle and rip the flesh from his literary body. Some of the post-death cash-in attempts seem to be animated by a genuine desire for Thompson's spirit to live on, while others—like this Final 24 documentary—look like a straight cash grab. Although there are reasons for some fans to see this DVD, it will likely leave viewers with a bitter taste.

It's not my place to pass judgment on Thompson's suicide, but the jury is hung in the case against His Final Hours.

IFJ Condemns Murder of Journalist in Rwanda

2010-07-09T18:55:00.001-07:00

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today strongly condemned the killing of Jean Léonard Rugambage, journalist of the independent newspaper UMUVUGIZI suspended in Rwanda, who was shot dead on 24 to 25 June, 2010 in front of his residence in Kigali, capital of Rwanda.

“We are deeply shocked by this dreadful crime committed by cowards, whose only goal is to intimidate the journalists in order to hide the truth,” said Gabriel Baglo, Director of IFJ Africa Office. “We firmly condemn this murder which should not remain unpunished and urge the authorities to quickly launch a thorough investigation to track down and punish the perpetrators,” he added.

Jean Léonard Rugambage, also known as Sherif, was killed in the night of Thursday 24 to Friday 25 June, 2010 around 11 p.m. local time, by unidentified armed men who coldly shot him dead in front of his residence as he was returning home.

According to local sources, the journalist whose newspaper was recently suspended by the High Council for Media for “incitement to hatred and revolt” was investigation a story to be published in another independent newspaper in which he was highly critical of the government.

The assassination of the journalist occurred one month before the presidential elections and in a context of rising political tension.

IFJ calls on Rwandan authorities to investigate, identify, arrest and punish severely the murderers. It further demands that all political forces respect the freedom and the independence of journalists, particularly in this electoral period.

For more information, contact +221 33 867 95 87
The IFJ represents over 600,000 journalists in 125 countries worldwide

Cavan's going Gonzo!

2010-02-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

The Anglo-Celt
Feb 3 2010
By Sinead Hogan

"Cavan needs a new space to give new ideas a voice," says Philip Doherty of Gonzo Theatre, which will open in the loft of the Imperial bar and nightclub on Cavan's Main Street next Wednesday. "Young people need something to do other than go to the pub or the cinema, or watch Cavan play in Breffni Park (which is depressing!)."

Philip tells how the theatre takes its name from the style of subjective journalism, which often includes the reporter as part of the story. The word 'gonzo' is broadly accepted as having been first used in connection with Hunter S. Thompson by Boston Globe magazine editor Bill Cardoso in 1970. Cardoso wrote of Thompson's "pure gonzo journalism", "gonzo" being South Boston Irish slang describing the last man standing after an all-night drinking marathon.

Philip lists a thesaurus of associations with the name of the new performance space: bizarre, crazy, eccentric, weird, non-conformist, hyperactive, off-beat and left-of-centre are among them. Gonzo Theatre is a new independent theatre, which Philip describes as "a dedicated space for theatre, comedy and music in keeping with the 'gonzo' ethos".

Sick of talk of recession, lack of funding and so on, Philip approached the owner, Donal Keogan, with a view to starting up the theatre in the loft of the night-club where Philip first performed his award-winning play Mysterious Ways last summer.

Now a 90-seater venue, the loft has been fully renovated and boasts a newly built stage, air-conditioning system, raised seating, lighting and a sound system. There are plans to develop the loft space further over the coming year.

See full story on page 6 of print edition.

Gonzo students

2010-01-21T17:22:00.001-08:00

Commenter sUNEEL drew my attention to London Student, the "gonzo jounalism website" (his description) he edits. Here's a fragment of its content:

Sam, the peroxide blonde, with ice blue eyes under bangs, is an experiment in hilarity. As we slowly ascend the three staircases to the interview room, she tells me about herself, a lot about herself, actually. She's from Melbourne and has spent a lot of time working around in odd jobs. She wants this job to make a quick buck and then head off back to Oz, or LA which is like her favourite place, her being a rock chick and all. She really has an LA look, what with the headband. She tells me she has a short skirt that she's bought from American Apparel and I tell her my boxer shorts are from there too and I'm like the biggest fan of the store ever, even though I'd never heard of it before seeing the job advert. She laughs weirdly.

I like it. There's more. And then there's more and more and more...

Gonzo Journalism

2009-11-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

Journal "Ism" genre associated with Hunter S Thompson

aka [New Journalism]? (term associated more with Tom Wolfe)

...is a highly subjective and extremely personal form of reporting...Gonzo is really an Italian word for absurdities - "gonzagas".

A rambling rolling style of writing that sucks in the audience and makes the reader feel as if he or she is actually experiencing the action.

Thompson's writing technique requires hands on experience. He lives what he writes. The technique compares to the acting technique known as [Method Acting]... The beating is unfortunate, but Thompson could not cover the story of the Hell's Angels without becoming personally involved. He never lies to the Angels about being a reporter, and they seem to respect him for his honesty; although the Angels hate reporters for all the bad press they receive. He tries to avoid conflict by blending in with the group and living their lifestyle. He becomes like a fly on the wall Observ Ing everything, but not interfering. The style allows Thompson to do something unheard of previously, report truthfully about the Hell's Angels.

Thompson wrote The only thing I ever saw that came close to Objective Journalism was a closed-circuit TV (CCTV) setup that watched shoplifters in the General Store at Woody Creek, Colorado.... So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here - not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market quotations, there is no such thing as Objective Journal Ism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism - which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Crazy man in peroxide jetpack makes Guinness World Record attempt

2009-11-12T13:42:00.000-08:00

By Tim Stevens
May 15th 2009
engadget

Scotland's Knockhill Racing Circuit is a little too small for setting land-based speed records, but there's apparently plenty of room above it for some airborne attempts. It was the site of a new Guinness World Record attempt for the fastest man in a jetpack, with pilot Eric Scott scoring a maximum speed of 68mph, verified by a police radar gun. His propulsion is basically the same hydrogen peroxide-based tech that enabled Bond to make a daring escape in Thunderball in the '60s, which sadly still means 30 - 40 seconds maximum flying time -- faster, but a little less impressive than the 30+ miles offered by the competition. It's now up to the officials at Guinness to decide whether the record is worthy of inclusion, but you can watch the video and decide for yourself.

Inside the ASPCA ER: Dog Ingests Toxic Pennies and Survives

2009-11-06T13:02:00.000-08:00

From the ASPCA Newsletter
November 6, 2009

On September 29, when Keiver Guacane of Manhattan brought his five-month-old Cockapoo, Gordo, to ASPCA Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital, his beloved pup was in dire straits. The fuzzy, light-brown pooch was in critical condition, suffering from severe anemia and dangerously low blood pressure. ASPCA veterinarian Dr. Geruza Paiva examined Gordo, and immediately suspected the cause of the pup’s distress. “She was worried he may have eaten coins because he had hemolytic anemia—anemia due to red blood cell rupture—which can be caused by zinc toxicity from eating pennies,” says Dr. Louise Murray, Director of Medicine at the ASPCA. “Dr. Paiva took an x-ray and saw the coins in his stomach.”

Pennies minted after 1982 contain a zinc core surrounded by copper and are the only U.S. coins in circulation that pose a toxicity hazard to pets. Unfortunately, these toxic, late-model pennies are commonly ingested by our furry friends. The stomach provides an exceptionally acidic environment and aids in the rapid distribution of zinc into the blood stream, which can cause life-threatening anemia and kidney failure.

Luckily, Gordo was in good hands. He immediately received a blood transfusion, and then ASPCA veterinarians passed an endoscope (fiber optic technology attached to a tiny camera) through the dog’s mouth, down his esophagus and into the GI tract to locate the pennies and retrieve them with a long, grabbing instrument. The non-invasive procedure was a success, but the evidence was startling. The handful of retrieved coins included several gnarly, partially decomposed pennies and others that appeared almost new.

“If you look at the pennies we took out, the pure copper ones from before 1982 are perfect, intact and shiny,” reports Dr. Murray. “The newer, zinc ones are all eaten away.”

Of course, this interesting disparity in coin metals is probably of little consolation to mischievous little Gordo. His pet parent, too, was just relieved to see his furry friend recover well, and no doubt will forevermore watch what Gordo eats!

As always, if you suspect your pet has ingested pennies or any other toxic item, please contact your veterinarian immediately or call the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center hotline at (888) 426-4435.

Kansas couple’s trash bin tryst takes wrong turn

2009-09-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

The couple wanted to be alone - but were held up at knifepoint instead.

Tues., Sept. 15, 2009
Assoiated Press

WICHITA, Kan. - A tender moment in a trash bin went all wrong for a couple who found themselves being held up at pocket knifepoint.

Police said two 44-year-olds had climbed into a dumpster to be alone just after 6 p.m. Saturday when two men interrupted them and demanded their belongings. Officers said the man and woman were engaged in "an intimate moment" when they were robbed of their shoes, jewelry and the man's wallet.

Police said one of the robbers was a 64-year-old man who egged his 59-year-old companion on during the robbery.

The suspects were found a short time later and the stolen property was returned.

Turtle whose front legs were amputated gets around with the aid of furniture sliders

2009-09-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

September 9, 2009
Los Angeles Times

Make all the jokes you want about the ironically named Lucky, the box turtle whose front legs were amputated following what his owner believes was an attack by a rampaging raccoon. Lucky won't hear you; he's too busy skidding about on his furniture-slider "legs."

Lucky's owner, Sally Pyne, had created a veritable wonderland for Lucky and her other box turtle, Lovey, in the yard of the Petaluma home she shares with a roommate. For the summer months, Pyne gave the turtles an outdoor enclosure measuring 12 by 16 feet, complete with a pond and surrounded by a short fence. Unfortunately for Lucky, the fence was designed to keep the turtles in rather than to keep other, more athletic animals out-- and Pyne suspects that one of these, a raccoon she'd seen in the yard previously, was drawn by the cat food she'd left out for another pet. It came for the cat food and stayed for the dessert: box turtle.

"In most countries, when a raccoon bites a turtle’s front arms off in a vicious inter-species attack, that little hard-shelled fella would be all out of luck, assuming turtles understand the concept of fortune caused by accident or chance and/or Billy Zane," Best Week Ever's Michelle Collins quipped of Lucky's unfortunate run-in.

Pyne found Lucky seriously injured July 31. Lovey hadn't been hurt in the attack, causing both Pyne and veterinary surgeon Dr. Robert Jereb to speculate that something -- perhaps a shell deformity or overly portly front legs -- prevented him from being able to withdraw his legs into his shell. Jereb performed surgery to remove what was left of the turtle's legs, and Lucky was bandaged and given a slew of medications to prevent infection and ease his pain.

Pyne gave serious consideration to having the turtle euthanized. "I was ready to let little Lucky go home," she told Sonoma County's Press-Democrat newspaper, "but Lucky, he was not ready to give up. His eyes were open, and he was shoving himself around on his two back legs. He was not going to quit." Jereb, who'd previously read about a tortoise whose similar problem was solved with the aid of a billiard ball cut in half and affixed to its shell, decided what Lucky needed was a prosthetic of some sort.

After some deliberation, he decided on using furniture sliders, doubled up in order to match the length of his amputated legs and stuck to the bottom of his shell. The solution seems to have worked, although the casters may need to be replaced periodically. We bet he won't be locomoting on a grass surface any time soon, but Pyne says Lucky now ambles around the house like a champ.

-- Lindsay Barnett

Conspiracy Theorist Convinces Neil Armstrong Moon Landing Was Faked

2009-09-03T12:26:00.000-07:00

August 31, 2009
Science & Technology
the ONION

LEBANON, OHIO — Apollo 11 mission commander and famed astronaut Neil Armstrong shocked reporters at a press conference Monday, announcing he had been convinced that his historic first step on the moon was part of an elaborate hoax orchestrated by the United States government.

According to Armstrong, he was forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos, and reading several blog posts on conspiracy theorist Ralph Coleman's website, OmissionControl.org.

"It only took a few hastily written paragraphs published by this passionate denier of mankind's so-called 'greatest technological achievement' for me to realize I had been living a lie, " said a visibly emotional Armstrong, addressing reporters at his home. "It has become painfully clear to me that on July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module under the control of my crew did not in fact travel 250,000 miles over eight days, touch down on the moon, and perform various experiments, ushering in a new era for humanity. Instead, the entire thing was filmed on a soundstage, most likely in New Mexico."

"This is the only logical interpretation of the numerous inconsistencies in the grainy, 40-year-old footage," Armstrong added. Amstrong was swayed by OmissionControl's use of bolding and capital letters to highlight NASA's many blatant fallacies.

Although Armstrong said he "could have sworn" he felt the effects of zero gravity while soaring out of the Earth's atmosphere and through space, he now believed his memory must be flawed. He also admitted feeling "ashamed" that he had failed to notice the rippling of the American flag he and Buzz Aldrin planted on the surface, blaming his lack of awareness on the bulkiness of the spacesuit and his excitement about traveling to the "moon."

"That rippling is not possible in the vacuum of space," Armstrong said. "It must have been the wind from an air-conditioning duct that I didn't recognize because you can't hear a damn thing inside those helmets."

"This is all just common sense, people," he added. "It's the moon. You can't land on the moon."

In a symbolic display of his newfound skepticism, Armstrong then grabbed a collection of moon rocks he had kept as souvenirs and dramatically dumped them into a trash can.

One of the main arguments posited on Coleman's website—that America could not, in 1969, have realistically possessed the technological capabilities needed to put a man on the moon—was reportedly one of the first things to cause the legendary astronaut a pang of doubt. Despite having spent thousands of hours training for the historic mission under the guidance of the world's top scientists, technicians, and pilots, Armstrong said he knew the conspiracy theories were true after learning that website author Coleman was "quite the engineering buff."

"Yes, at the time I thought those thousands of NASA employees were working round the clock for the same incredible goal, but if anyone would know what was really going on, it would be Ralph Coleman," Armstrong said of the 31-year-old part-time librarian's assistant. "He knows a lot more about faked moon landings than I ever could. He's been researching the subject on the Internet for years."

"Literally years," he added.

Addressing another inconsistency brought to light by OmissionControl, Armstrong explained he was probably so focused on piloting the lunar module that he failed to notice that one of the moon rocks visible in footage of the landing appears to have the letter 'C' stamped on it. An emotional Armstrong said that the only possible explanation for this detail was that the rock actually came from NASA's prop department.

"They forgot to turn it over," Armstrong said, removing his eyeglasses to wipe away tears. "Those lying bastards at NASA went through all the trouble to fake the moon landing, but they forgot to turn over one little prop rock. And now the whole damn thing's blowing up in their faces."

Although Armstrong initially questioned why the U.S. would attempt such an elaborate cover-up, he cited one overarching explanation provided by Coleman: that it was a ploy to defeat the Soviet Union and fulfill the Illuminati's plan to unify the world's banks and control the dissemination of information.

"Just ask Ralph Coleman," Armstrong said. "He'll answer any questions you have."

To conclude the press conference, Armstrong showed reporters footage of his first steps on the moon to demonstrate that the most daming evidence was "right under our noses." Speeding up the tape and replaying the graceful moonwalk several times in a row, Armstrong explained that the iconic images of humanity's triumphant dance with the cosmos was actually just a film of him walking backwards, slowed down, and played in reverse.

"What other explanation could there be?" Armstrong asked. "It's all right here. Everything is all right here if you'd just open your damn eyes and see!"

Added Armstrong, "I suppose it really was one small step for man, one giant lie for mankind."

Man fires shotgun at a stray cat, hits two people

2009-08-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

August 21st, 2009
By Anne Forester
ksl.com

LINDON -- Lindon police arrested a man for firing a sawed-off shotgun in his own backyard. When the man missed his original target, the stray pellets hit two people.

A driving instructor and a student were filling up at a gas station when they were hit. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt.

When police investigated, they tracked the stray pellets back to 52-year-old Kay Fotheringham. Police say Fotheringham told them he was actually aiming for a stray cat that was chasing birds in his yard. The cat escaped, apparently unharmed, but the stray pellets hit a nearby trailer, then the driving instructor, his student and the car, all several yards away.

Police say Fotheringham had been heavily drinking.

Chief Cody Cullimore, with the Lindon Police Department, said, "Alcohol and firearms never go together. This situation, luckily, wasn't tragic, but could have been a very serious problem."

Police say at first Fotheringham denied firing the gun but later admitted to it. He was booked into the Utah County jail for reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, disorderly conduct and discharging a firearm in the city. Fotheringham has since been released from jail. Police say he has no prior history.

Police say the sawed-off shotgun Fotheringham used wasn't legal; that'll mean a federal felony charge.

E-mail: aforester@ksl.com

Man uses behind to catch laptop, in a leotard

2009-08-17T14:09:00.000-07:00

Friday, August 14, 2009
Metro.co.uk

You're miserable. You have to trundle into work. Or maybe you don't have a work to trundle into and that's why you're miserable. Either way, you are about to be cheered up. By a guy catching a laptop. With his bum.
It's not something you see every day, is it?

This genius video features a very athletic young man in a leotard throwing an equally athletic young man in a leotard a laptop. Which he then catches. Between his butt cheeks.

Cleverly titled 'Guy Catches Laptop With His Butt', the new video is already turning into something of an internet sensation (bringing the 'internet sensation' tally to 175,600,486,426,893) hitting the one million views mark on that site with You and a Tube.

The video is a viral advert for a new X-Series laptop from MSI (Micro Star International) and is designed to show just how thin their contraption is. Thin enough to fit in a guy's bum, it would appear.

In fairness to him, he does catch the laptop with his ass in a variety of angles – hanging on a climbing bar, doing a cartwheel and somersaulting through the air. He also manages to catch it after it is thrown over a house. Nice.

The video is a take on the very popular 'Guy Catches Glasses With Face' clip that was an, er, internet sensation a few years ago.

MSI is holding a competition for people to come up with their own weird videos in the same vein. But please, don't try to catch a laptop in your bum. At least not on our account...

Legion Of Terra-Cotta Mouseketeers Found Beneath Disney World

2009-08-11T16:01:00.000-07:00

Science and Technology
August 7, 2009 | Issue 45•32
the Onion

More than 8 square miles of perky, rosy-cheeked soldiers were found buried deep beneath the theme park.

ORLANDO, FL — A Disney World maintenance crew performing routine electrical work below Cinderella Castle last week accidentally stumbled upon a mysterious underground chamber believed to contain more than 8,000 terra-cotta Mouseketeer statues dating back to 300 B.C.

Within days of the discovery, the nation's top archaeologists had begun excavating the massive subterranean army of fresh-faced clay youths, already considered the finest collection of relics from the Early Disney Dynasty ever unearthed. The opulently decorated mausoleum—suspected to be the final resting site of Emperor Retlaw I—houses row upon row of life-sized ceramic sculptures modeled after clean-cut teenagers, their faces forever frozen in a mix of joy and wonder.

"Very little is known about the early history of the Disney civilization, so this is quite a significant find," said lead archaeologist Dr. Robert Moore, adding that it may take years to fully explore the labyrinthine system of tunnels and pits that surround the burial chamber. "By analyzing the crude markings above the doorway to the tomb, we've concluded that it was likely constructed during the Pre-Eisnerian period, one of the bloodiest and most chaotic eras in the history of the Magic Kingdom."

"These eternally wholesome soldiers stand watch over the body of their ironfisted leader, poised to ensure his reign over children's entertainment continues into the afterlife," Moore continued. "Or so the legend goes."

According to photographs surfacing from the dig site, the terra-cotta Mouseketeers are arranged according to rank, from Annette to Cubby, and appear to be marching or tap-dancing in place. On the walls of the tomb, archaeologists have discovered a large fresco that depicts thousands of the mouse-eared foot soldiers bowing before what appears to be a large reptilian figure wearing a crown. The apparent king is shown seated upon a throne of skulls and bears a striking resemblance to Walt Disney.

"The statues were placed in what was once known as 'Roll Call' formation, no doubt a fearsome sight to any intruders who foolishly opposed their spunky will," said noted Disney historian Margaret Weaver, who has written several books on the elaborate burial practices of the ancient Imagineers. "One look into their lifeless blue eyes is enough to send chills down your spine. Of course, that's only if you get past the heaped remains of thousands of costumed Goofy slaves whose bones now litter the very catacombs they constructed."

Added Weaver, "I also noticed the faintest smell of cotton candy."

Because only a few hand-drawn animated cells from the reign of Retlaw I have survived to the present day, the extensive carvings found in the necropolis will provide reams of new information about the powerful Mouseketeer army. Scholars first determined the statues were intended to accompany the dead into the next life after deciphering a tablet that read 'Akman al Luad H'Beth," or "See you real soon."

"These relics have so much to tell us about the formative years of the Disney empire," said Smithsonian head G. Wayne Clough, who has already made attempts to acquire the 13-foot jade Big Roy found inside the mausoleum. "And we can finally put an end to the ridiculous rumor that these soldiers can be awakened from their centuries-long slumber and unleashed upon the greater Orlando area to mercilessly trample their enemies underfoot and reclaim the Magic Kingdom for their immortal ruler simply by some bozo saying the phrase 'Meeska, Mooska, Mouseketeer' while holding this amulet I've got here."

While surveying the massive dig site, the expedition also uncovered the foundations of an ancient Epcot Center that accurately depicts life in the Middle Ages, and the ruins of three previous Space Mountains.

Man convicted of groping Minnie Mouse

2009-08-11T13:41:00.000-07:00

Disney employee says she tried everything to keep his hands off her breasts.

Associated Press
August 11 2009
MSNBC

ORLANDO, Florida - A 60-year-old man has been convicted of groping a woman in a Minnie Mouse costume at Walt Disney World.

John William Moyer of Cressona, Pennsylvania, told the judge he is innocent. His son said before sentencing that his father would never inappropriately touch a woman, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

He was convicted Tuesday of misdemeanor battery and sentenced to write the victim an apology, serve 180 days probation and complete 50 hours of community service. Moyer must also pay $1,000 in court costs and possibly undergo a mental evaluation.

The victim says she had to do everything possible to keep Moyer's hands off her breasts.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Report says police taunted, Tasered handcuffed man

2009-07-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

This is not exactly "gonzo journalism," but I couldn't find any of my other blogs that had a topic which would cover running this article. So I decided to feature it here. It might relate to "Serious World Politics," though, in that it shows clearly the direction the authorities are willing to head into when it comes to arresting suspects - and potentially other people - and the utter misuse of the harsh and potentially lethal (it has so far caused hundreds of deaths) taser gun.

July 24, 2009

The AP on Google News

BOISE, Idaho — Boise police officers used excessive force when they taunted and threatened a handcuffed man and then Tasered him in the buttocks, a report from the city's police ombudsman said.

The actions of one of the involved officers — called Officer No. 3 in the report — were "not appropriate, not condoned and not professional," Boise Police Chief Michael Masterson said in reaction to the release of the report on Wednesday.

The February incident was captured by an audio recording made by one of the police officers at the unidentified man's home.

"If you move again, I'm going to stick this Taser up your (expletive) and pull the trigger," one of the officers said. "Now, do you feel this in your (expletive)? — I'm going to Tase your (expletive) if you move again."

Police violated the department's use-of-force policy when the officers Tasered the man once in the back before he was handcuffed, and then in the buttocks after he was handcuffed, Boise Community Ombudsman Pierce Murphy concluded in the report, which was based partly on the audio recording.

"Officer No. 3 punctuated his offensive speech language by pushing the Taser between the complainant's buttocks and against his anal and genital areas," Murphy wrote. "Such speech combined with these actions was especially offensive."

The ombudsman, established by the city council in 1999, carries out independent reviews and investigates complaints made against the police department.

Eight officers responded to the home in February on what police said was a potentially violent situation, with the safety of a woman and child thought to be at risk. When officers pounded on the door the man inside shouted profanity back at them, then pushed against the door to keep police out, police said.

Murphy wrote in the report that police didn't identify themselves, and that the man feared that a friend of the woman had arrived to beat him up. But once police came through the door, the subject quickly went down on the floor, Murphy wrote.

Police officials said an officer and supervisor have been disciplined, although they wouldn't say how, citing state law on personnel matters. The names of the officer and supervisor haven't been released, and they are identified only as Officer No. 3 and Officer No. 10 in the ombudsman's report.

Officer 3's behavior is the exception, not the rule for the department, Masterson said.

"This was the first time either employee had been before the discipline board," he said. "They have not been involved in serious policy violations throughout their career."

The supervisor, an 18-year veteran, also erased an audio recording of an interview with the suspect at the jail and neglected to write a report on the use of force in the arrest, according to the ombudsman.

Ron Coulter, an attorney in nearby Eagle, said he was retained by the man earlier this year and plans to file a lawsuit against the police department.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Reinventing Gonzo Journalism in a digital age Part 1

2009-07-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

May 8th, 2009
Dutchproblogger.com
Ernst-Jan Pfauth of Amsterdam

Hunter S Thompson is a hero of many. The writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the most honest book about the Hell’s Angels appeals to thousands of young journalists. He invented Gonzo Journalism. A journalism genre that finds its roots in New Journalism, where the old distinctions between journalism and creative writing were blurred. Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote are two of the most famous New Journalism-writers.

Gonzo Journalism took things a little further. It’s more colorful, wilder and more extreme. As the BBC puts it: ,where Tom Wolfe politely declined an acid tab in his iconic Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Hunter S Thompson denied himself nothing. (..) The writer became the story. Structure was thrown out of the window, replaced by a shambolic, yet magical, rollercoaster ride of artless hedonism.”

So Thompson died in 2005. You’ve read all his books. What’s left? Pointless nostalgia? Or can we reinvent this genre? Give it a twist and adapt it to the digital revolution which took place? Let’s find out.

What’s there to write about?
To get an idea how we can reinvent Gonzo Journalism we should come up with some ideas for stories first. After that we can brainstorm about how we could cover these subjects in a new and rocking way. I posted the following message on Twitter yesterday:

Want to experiment with Gonzo Journalism (coined by Hunter S Thompson) and thinking about spectacular subject. Who has an idea?

Some stories that need Gonzo style reporting
Olaf Koens, a Dutch correspondent in Moscow suggested to send a reporter to war-zone, since that’s one of the subjects where Hunter S Thompson had flaws. A few hours later, he added:

Antonie Fountain from the band Little Things That Kill suggested to investigate trafficking and forced prostitution on the Red Light District.

Tom Rovers said that we should go to a music festival since most festival reports are boring and can use some Gonzo style reporting.

Twitter user Gumbah said we’ve to investigate coffeeshop suppliers by posting outside their doors. ,,Gonzo style would be to infiltrate their system,” I replied. Then he came up with the brilliant idea to start our own shop.

Journalistic talent Loek Essers has sent me a direct message with two story ideas and even mentioned who should write them. Firstly a story by Antonie van Campen about the world of the Roma in Europe and secondly Adriaan Alsema should write a Gonzo story about gang wars in Colombia.

Last but not least, Sjeltur had a gonzo tip that sounded somewhat familiar: ,,Start a political party. Make a weird movie. Get elected and become THE new politician! ”

Those ideas make a great start, what’s next?
So the idea of reinventing Gonzo Journalism has been coined, the first story ideas have been submitted, what’s next? Well, I’d say two things:

Let’s come up with even more story ideas! Let’s think about how we can use new technology for the reinvention of Gonzo! I can’t wait to see your comments and ideas and write another post about them. Gonzo style!

(Anybody who says Gonzo 2.0 must buy the other commenters a bottle of whiskey!)

Gonzo journalism about cats?

2009-07-04T16:27:00.000-07:00

Gonzo journalism about cats?
Posted by Kerry Grens
[Entry posted at 26th July 2007 05:07 PM GMT]
Comment on this news story by clicking on the title link above!

This week one of my sources sent me a recent newsletter from Allerca, a "lifestyle pets" company now headquartered in Delaware that claims to have developed hypoallergenic cats. I was interested to read a rant by the company's founder, Simon Brodie, about the "gonzo journalists" who "trumpeted absolute falsehoods and downright lies" regarding the company.

I imagine Brodie might be referring to yours truly. Not because I lied in my investigation of Allerca, but because what I found out about the company was not exactly favorable, and, as far as I can tell, The Scientist and the San Diego Union Tribune are among the few outlets that actually reported with skepticism the wonders of these miracle cats. I left a message with Allerca's press office, asking if The Scientist was included in this gonzo bunch, but did not receive an immediate response.

Brodie claims that these gonzo journalists "went very quiet (surprise, surprise!) once ALLERCA began delivering kittens. They didn't write about ALLERCA when our cats appeared on live national television with allergic individuals who failed to have any allergic reaction (talk about a "trial by fire"!); and they failed to report that ALLERCA had won a TIME Magazine Best Inventions of 2006 award."

But the only customers I've heard from were those who were denied cats because of their particular allergic profiles, and who complained that their refunds did not come back. Shortly after they contacted me, both customers received their refunds. And as far as silence goes, I had called Allerca months ago to ask them about the progress of their cats, and received no word.

Hunter S. Thompson's somewhat autobiographical adventures in gonzo journalism highlight the fact that no reporter can completely divorce himself from his own way of viewing the world. As a science writer, trained in science, I admit to being skeptical of claims that have no vetted data to support them. To me, bringing a cat on a TV show is not scientific proof that its Fel d1 protein has been disabled. A scientific publication is a start, and anything less I consider gonzo.

The Last of a Dying Breed

2009-06-10T13:19:00.000-07:00

The Last of a Dying Breed

By Karen Cole
Published in "Seattle Downtown News"
Word count: 800

Right here in downtown Seattle are half a dozen old-time newsstands, the kind that tend to be made of wood and painted green or brown, with a simple roof for shelter in a downpour, and a hard-edged lean-to look. Spare and Spartan, such booths have existed here since at least 1919. But the news hawkers are in deep danger of disappearing forever…potentially overnight.

Just as he closed for the day I met with one of the men in the downtown newsstands, peak-chinned and hawklike, green-eyed, small, lithe and sharp as a news hawker should be.

We sipped two dollars worth of coffee at the Turf near First in the Market’s part of downtown as he told me about his particular newsstand at Third and Union in front of the old Woolworth’s building.

“My name is Pat Hickey. I’ve been here since August of 1975.” Twenty-eight years hawking papers from inside an old run-down newsstand. “I manage the stand. My boss is Dennis Hogan.

“It was put up in 1919. The legendary Frank Turco opened up the stand. He ran it until his death in 1966. There have been 85 years of continuous service on this corner.

“Some of our customers are wealthy men who own horses and depend on us to sell their racing forms. We make most of our money selling the racing forms.

“When they built the bus tunnel and narrowed Third Avenue, we lost most of our car trade and never got it back.”

Times and PI sales have fallen off pretty badly over the years on account of so many vending racks on all the downtown corners.

“You see, people don’t depend on newspapers anymore, because they get their news off the television. The truth of the matter is that the downtown newsstand, for decades a fixture in all the major American cities, is going the way of the dinosaur.”

I interrupted Hickey with “I caught you just in time!”

“Well, sort of. Due to the fifteen cents profit per paper. It goes to the dealer or the owner of the vending rack. Ten cents is the wholesale price. We buy it for ten cents and we sell it for twenty-five, hence the fifteen cent profit.”

To clear fifteen dollars one would have to sell 100 papers.

“In the old days selling that many papers was nothing. Now to sell 100, one would have to have hot headlines or a great day.”

Frank Turco, Hickey told me, was middle-aged when he founded the first downtown newsstands.

“He came out from Pittsburgh, PA and he lost a leg in a train accident in Montana. He was quite an industrial entrepreneur. In not too many years, he had newsstands over a good portion of downtown Seattle.”

For a long time, he was one of downtown’s most recognizable faces; people in the thousands knew him by sight. In the 1940’s he ran for city council as a reform candidate.

“A reform candidate is one who’s going to, you know, radically reform the whole system. Politics in the 40s were very corrupt,” Hickey stated significantly. “Frank Turco was very involved in union politics. He was the head of Seattle’s newsboy union.

“It was sort of a closet union…it was set up for the benefit of the union to make money off the newsboys who made peanuts for money. Turco was a newsboy and believed in justice for the working man. You gotta handle that with a little more skill. He was exploiting the newsboys.”

Too soon, Hickey had to get back to his beloved newsstand.

“The idea is, you’re in a dinosaur, and you may be catching the tail end of something that really has a very long history.”

Downtown newsstands are almost as old as the cities. Over the years there have been hundreds of colorful newspaper vendors, such as PI Mary, an eccentric old lady who sold papers down on First. She went back to the Second World War. She would boldly go right into the First Avenue bars, and directly sell papers to the customers.

“We’ve definitely been a part of the fabric of downtown life. Unfortunately, most of the newsboys have been pushing up roses for a long, long time,” Hickey sighed.

When I left the newsstand, an unknown gambler in the booth, whispering to Hickey, “I.M. Anonymous” by name, closed its green doors at me as a definitive sign-off.

The Eight Dumbest Car Thieves

2009-05-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

If you think it takes smarts to steal a car, you're dead wrong. Getting away with it — that's another story.

By Josh Condon of MSN Autos

Despite what Hollywood blockbusters such as "Gone in Sixty Seconds," "Heat" and "Catch Me If You Can" would have us believe, most criminals are not masterminds playing a well-orchestrated cat-and-mouse game with members of law enforcement, while working toward the heist of a lifetime. If movies were made about real criminals, the majority would be far more slapstick, like an episode of "America's Funniest Home Videos," but with guns.

Here are eight real car thieves who prove that those too lazy to get what they want through hard work and determination are prone to costly shortcuts and mental lapses when it comes to committing crimes...(to read the rest of this story, please click on the link in the title above.)

Michigan police shock cougar - a toy one - with Taser

2009-05-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

Associated Press
6:48 AM CDT, May 15, 2009

WARREN, Mich. - Police responding to a 911 caller reporting a cougar on the prowl in a suburban Detroit park saw what looked like the big cat hiding in a discarded section of cement drain pipe.

So Warren police on Monday shot a Taser electroshock weapon -- hitting what turned out to be a large toy cougar right in the stuffing.

The Detroit Free Press reports the toy apparently was placed in the pipe as a hoax. About 10 officers responded to Bates Park. The Macomb Daily of Mount Clemens reports the caller said it was a 150-pound cat.

Warren Police Commissioner William Dwyer says the department is "out there to keep the community safe."

This week's incident took place about a month after a 16-year-old from Detroit died after a Taser was used by Warren police to subdue him.

2 Yellowstone workers fired after watering geyser

2009-05-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

A live webcam facing Old Faithful catches seasonal park employees urinating on the famous geyser.

By Bob Moen, Associated Press
Thu, May 14 2009 at 7:34 PM EST

Two seasonal Yellowstone National Park concession workers have been fired after a live webcam caught them urinating into the Old Faithful geyser.

Park spokesman Al Nash says a 23-year-old man on Tuesday was fined $750 and placed on three years of unsupervised probation for urinating, being off trail in a restricted area and taking items from the area. The man also was banned from Yellowstone for two years. The second employee's case is pending.

The park's dispatch center was called after someone watching a webcam on the geyser saw six employees leaving the trail and walking on Old Faithful on May 4.

The geyser was not erupting at the time.

Xanterra Parks & Resorts general manager Jim McCaleb says the former concession workers were hired at the Old Faithful Inn and that such incidents were rare.

Copyright 2009 AP News

Study finds cocaine in the air of Spanish cities

2009-05-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

Wed May 13, 2:07 pm ET
Yahoo! News

MADRID (AFP) – Spanish scientists have detected the presence of cocaine in the air of Madrid and Barcelona by using a new technique for the first time, a research institute said Wednesday.

The scientists looked for 17 components in five different types of illegal drugs -- cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, cannabinoids and lysergic acid.

The results revealed cocaine is the predominant drug in the air of the two cities, the CSIC institute said.

It was found in concentrations of 29 to 850 picogrammes per cubic metre of air. A picogramme is one trillionth of a gramme.

The study is the result of the first use of a new method for the detection of drugs in the air, adapted specifically for the researchers, who are to publish their results in the review "Analytical Chemistry".

"Heroin was also found in detectable levels in the samples taken in Madrid, but not in those from Barcelona," the CSIC said.

This it explained by the fact that the area of Madrid where the sample was taken is close to a district where drug dealers are suspected of operating.

The scientists also reported a higher concentration of the components during the weekend, "suggesting higher consumption this time."

But it said there was no reason for the public to be concerned.

"Even if we lived 1,000 years we would not consume the equivalent of a dose of cocaine through the air," said one of the scientists, Miren Lopez de Alda.

Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) on the Iraq War & the Bush Presidency

2009-05-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

February 23, 2005
Amy Goodman and Mary Suma

On Sunday the founder of ‘gonzo’ journalism, died at the age of 67 of an apparent suicide. Today we are air a Jan. 2003 interview Thompson gave on KDNK in the Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado. An excerpt: “Bush is really the evil one here and it is more than just him. We are the Nazis in this game and I don’t like it. I am embarrassed and I am pissed off. I mean to say something. I think a lot of people in this country agree with me–a lot than that are saying anything…we’ll see what happens to me if I get my head cut off next week—it is always unknown or bushy-haired strangers who commit suicide right afterwards with no witnesses.”

Today we pay tribute to one of America’s best-known journalists and authors–Hunter S. Thompson. He shot himself Sunday night at his home in Woody Creek Colorado. He was 67 years old.

He first became well known during the late 1960s and early 1970s while working for Rolling Stone where his drug-induced books Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail were first serialized. Thompson once said, “I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone … but they’ve always worked for me.”

Thompson identified the death of the American Dream as his reporter’s beat. He called his style of writing “gonzo” journalism. He said, “Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.”

Hunter S. Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1937. He served two years in the Air Force where he was a newspaper sports editor. He later wrote unpublished fiction and made his name after publishing an article in Harper’s magazine about the Hell’s Angels who he had rode with for a year.

In 1970, he ran unsuccessfully for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, on the “Freak Power” ticket. His platform included changing the name of Aspen to “Fat City” and decriminalizing drugs. During his campaign, Thompson shaved his head and denounced his Republican rival who sported a crew cut as “my long-haired opponent.” He lost by a handful of votes.

He is the author of a dozen books, his latest was titled “Hey Rube: Blood Sport, The Bush Doctrine and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness.” He once said “By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died.”

Thompson killed himself this past Sunday. He reportedly stuck a .45 caliber handgun in his mouth and shot himself while his wife listened on the phone and his son and daughter-in-law were in another room of his house. His lawyer for the past 15 years told the Boston Globe that he wanted to be cremated and his ashes to be blown out of a cannon across his ranch.

Today, we hear Hunter S Thompson in his own words talking about President Bush, Iraq and much more. He was interviewed on community radio station KDNK in the Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado. Former KDNK station manager, Mary Suma, began by asking Thompson about him saying that “the idea of war is not just wrong but borders on insanity.” This is Hunter S. Thompson.

AMY GOODMAN: Today we hear Hunter S. Thompson in his own words talking about President Bush, Iraq, and much more. He was interviewed on community radio station KDNK in Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado in January 2003. Former KDNK Station Manager Mary Suma began by asking Thompson, saying the idea of war is not just wrong, but borders on insanity, a comment of Hunter Thompson’s, he responded.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Of couse, it depends on which vantage point you look at the war from. If you are the president of a huge oil company, no, it’s not insane at all. The war would be quite justified.

MARY SUMA: How do you feel—I’ve read that you were in the streets in the Chicago riots back at that convention? Do you think that we can elicit that sort of passion as it builds? I mean, it really seems to be building up there, the anti-war faction.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Yeah, it does. But look at this. I don’t recall, anyway, a massive depression, economic collapse, at that time, 1968. I was going to say, “Do you?” but, uh… What we have now is a collapse of the economy and a totally unjustifiable war, irrational really, except from the point of view of the oil industry.

MARY SUMA: Did you watch the State of the Union the other evening?

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Oh, boy, I did.

MARY SUMA: What did you think?

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: I was horrified. It was a nightmare of a thing to go through. You know, he rattled off all these “pie in the sky” ideas in the beginning, none of which are going to either work or be funded. He knows that. As a matter of fact, the New York Times today said that already they see that even republicans are admitting that the Medicare—he was talking about the Medicare plan, the $400 billion plan—

MARY SUMA: Right.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Is impossible. Members of both parties expressed doubts about its feasibility today, forcing the administration officials to reconsider important elements of the package. So, none of the domestic issues he talked about are feasible. I don’t even think he can get the tax cut through, which is insane. Cut taxes in a time when the country is going broke. So over the line, I mean, it’s not just the war that’s wrong. I can’t imagine any justification for just going over to Iraq and bombing the place back to the Stone Age like we did before.

MARY SUMA: Why does it seem a good portion of the country is buying into this?

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: That is a really—that’s a disturbing aspect of it.

MARY SUMA: Can we believe the polls? I mean, certainly the applause the other evening, they always say that you can sort of gauge the popularity of a president by the applause at the State of the Union. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But it seems like we’re living in two separate countries.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Well, remember, that Bush’s popularity and the popularity—or the support for the war and two months ago when it was much higher. But these are just daily. These are things that change every day. But I remember writing in—I don’t know, it might have been at least five years ago—it was a, I think, ABC, some serious poll, several of them came up with the findings that the American people, overall, favor giving up some of their freedoms in exchange for more security.

MARY SUMA: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: They would rather be secure than free, in other words.

MARY SUMA: Right.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: That really is shocking.

MARY SUMA: It is shocking, and more so today, maybe.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: That’s the answer, I think, for your question is why is the public buying into it. Another reason is that the fear which I—that’s why I tried to address or at least rave about in the book. Fear is an unhealthy condition, living in fear. And as we clearly have been for two years now, it makes the population more obedient, particularly if they’re willing to give up their freedom for security. More obedient, more easier to control, and it’s, well, it is very much like Nazi Germany.

MARY SUMA: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Remember the old good German syndrome.

MARY SUMA: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: We used to ridicule it, the good Germans who just went along with it because that’s what the Fuehrer wanted.

MARY SUMA: You’ve said the president has destroyed the country, the economy and our relationship with the rest of the world.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Well, I believe that’s true and even the countries that allegedly go along or support us, our allies going into this war, popular opinion in most of those countries, I can’t say this for sure, but in England, certainly, the English people, as a whole, are strongly opposed to the war and to going along with whatever George Bush says. Democracy is on its last legs in this country, and freedom, you know, the Free World?

MARY SUMA: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: We’re defending freedom? We’ll fight to the death for freedom? That’s absurd. This country is no more a capital or bastion of freedom now than Nazi Germany was in the 1940s. This country is a rogue nation in a way, but worse than a rogue nation. We’re a war-crazy, war-dependent, really, nation and that leads right to the oil industry. It is ridiculous. And particularly in the media; with the media I noticed. To not discuss the connection between oil and bombs in Iraq is disgraceful. Winston Churchill said, “In times of war, the first casualty is always the truth.” Truth is the first casualty of any war.

MARY SUMA: In lieu of fear.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: You see, I’m a little bit cranked up and fanatical about it.

MARY SUMA: That’s the age group, isn’t it, Hunter, that we want to really—

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Yeah. This is—I mean, if you want to live in a Nazi nation, I wouldn’t want to be 20 years old now.

MARY SUMA: I wouldn’t either.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: I fear for what’s coming and for the welcoming committee of kids that’s going to meet it, saying come on in. No, it’s just ignorance, and well, the media, we’re being deprived of the real news. I’m not going to try to say I have the real news, but just what you said. That’s exactly right.

MARY SUMA: Again, you’re going to be at Pepkey Park on Saturday afternoon. Do you know what your topic is yet? We know the topic, but do you know what—can you give us any preview of what’s going to be said, or do you just stand up there and let it—

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Yeah. I usually just take a—just wing it, freefall, just like I did today. I had no idea what I was going to say today. This is really a disgraceful moment in history and just thinking about the war, or attending the peace rallies, going out in the street, voting with your feet, as they say.

AMY GOODMAN: Hunter S. Thompson speaking with KDNK’s Mary Suma in January of 2003. She then asked him about his book Kingdom of Fear: Loathesome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: It started off—it’s supposed to be a memoir; I think it started off as memoirs. You know, it just sort of—a very quick and active story about how I got to be what I am today, you know, different key adventures in my life. Mainly it is fun. Yeah, I could use a little bit more editing, but everything could. It’s a fun read. It’s a very—pretty savage one. And it’s clearly, not anti-Bush, but anti-war. See, I don’t hate Bush personally. I used to know him. I used to do some drugs here and there.

MARY SUMA: Is that true, Hunter? What about, I didn’t know that you were an unofficial adviser to Jimmy Carter.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Yeah. Weird things happen here and there. I got to know him early, two years before he ran, and he just looked like a pretty good bet to me, because I was a gambler, and I wanted to win. It was important to win at that time.

ANITA THOMPSON: Evan Dobelle, who was, among other things, Carter’s Secretary of Protocol, he held a dinner in Hawaii about two months ago and Hunter was a guest of honor and he stood up to say and thank Hunter because Jimmy Carter would not be president if it wasn’t for Hunter Thompson.

MARY SUMA: Really?

ANITA THOMPSON: Yeah. Isn’t that cool?

AMY GOODMAN: Anita and Hunter Thompson. Anita, Hunter Thompson’s wife, again, speaking with Mary Suma of KDNK in January of 2003. Finally, Mary Suma asked Hunter Thompson about his upcoming trip to New York.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: What I’m going to New York to do is stir up trouble. I’m not going to change hats, yeah, Saturday in the park, Sunday in New York City, Monday night, Conan O’Brian, or something like that. I just believe in this. I’m offended and insulted by the slope of the American people, and that means us. That means these bastards who just sit around—

ANITA THOMPSON: We’re getting there.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Let’s keep hitting on this because I doubt that George Bush is going to go away before the next two years anyway. He should be run out of office. He should resign right now, in my opinion. I did call for his resignation, but I don’t think we would have a groundswell immediately for that. There will be a lot of people who agree with me.

MARY SUMA: Down the road?

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Well, no, in a year. I mean, the—

MARY SUMA: Will we be at war in a year, Hunter?

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: I think so, without a doubt. Like I said, we’ve been at war for 13 years. We’ve been bombing that country that long and we’ve cut off everything, all their food, books, you know, close—cut off all imports of books over there.

MARY SUMA: Have you ever been there?

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Excuse me?

MARY SUMA: Have you ever been over there?

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: I don’t think so. Not in any way that I was impressed by. I probably have gone through it or stopped there. I don’t really know Iraq. I made a point of getting to know it a lot better. It was a very advanced, progressive country, had, what, 90% literacy, health care for the whole entire population. They were doing well, prosperous, high literacy. Many more book stores per capita in Iraq than there are in this country. Many. No more. We bombed their children. We killed their husbands and wives and we bombed them, and we saw her, and we’re going to do it again. Just random killing like that, mass killing to force a population to get rid of Saddam so we can move in and take over and control the oil, God damn it, if that’s not evil, I don’t know what would be. You know, Bush, he’s really the evil one in here. Well, more than just him. We’re the Nazis in this game, and I don’t like it. I’m embarrassed and I’m pissed off. Yeah. I mean to say something and I think a lot of people in this country agree with me. A lot more never say anything. We’ll see what happens to me if I get my head cut off in the next week by—it’s always unknown Bush [inaudible] strangers who commit suicide right afterward. No witnesses. They have a new kind of crime.

MARY SUMA: Is that the CIA kind of crime?

HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Oh, absolutely. Anyone who’s a successful criminal has got a crime. Absolutely no witnesses, no records. We can go on and on. I have to be restrained on the subject.

AMY GOODMAN: The late Hunter S. Thompson, speaking two years ago in an interview on community radio station KDNK in the Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado, speaking with then-Station Manager Mary Suma. Hunter S. Thompson died of an apparent suicide this weekend; shot himself Sunday night at his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. His latest book, a collection of his essays called Hey Rube: Bloodsport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness.

"He Was a Crook"

2009-05-04T20:17:00.000-07:00

From CounterPunch, America's Best Political Newsletter
February 21, 2005

HST Says Farewell
"He Was a Crook"
By HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Editor's Note: How Thompson said goodbye to Richard Nixon is as good a way to remember the high priest of gonzo as any. AC/JSC

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK

DATE: MAY 1, 1994

FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON

SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON:

NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER...HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA...BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is becoming the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."--REVELATION 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing--a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that I know Iwill go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, andI am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hatedNixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said. "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive--and he was, all theway to the end--we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instinctsof a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by thehead with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style--and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

Nixon was a navy man, and he should have been buried at sea. Many of his friends were seagoing people: Bebe Rebozo, Robert Vesco, William F. Buckley Jr., and some of them wanted a full naval burial.

These come in at least two styles, however, and Nixon's immediate family strongly opposed both of them. In the traditionalist style, the dead president's body would be wrapped and sewn loosely in canvas sailcloth and dumped off the stern of a frigate at least 100 miles off the coast and at least 1,000 miles south of San Diego, so the corpse could never wash up on American soil in any recognizable form.

The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the body of the man who was, after all the President of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable--some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogenically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian Mainland.

It would also play into the hands of those millions of self-stigmatized patriots like me who believe these things already.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern--but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man--evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him--except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. "It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard," said one. "And it fucks up my children's sense of values."

Many were incensed about the howitzers--but they knew there was nothing they could do about it--not with the current president sitting about 50 yards away and laughing at the roar of the cannons. It was Nixon's last war, and he won.

The funeral was a dreary affair, finely staged for TV and shrewdly dominated by ambitious politicians and revisionist historians. The Rev. Billy Graham, still agile and eloquent at the age of 136, was billed as the main speaker, but he was quickly upstaged by two 1996 GOP presidential candidates: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Gov. Pete Wilson of California, who formally hosted the event and saw his poll numbers crippled when he got blown off the stage by Dole, who somehow seized the No. 3 slot on the roster and uttered such a shameless, self-serving eulogy that even he burst into tears at the end of it.

Dole's stock went up like a rocket and cast him as the early GOP front-runner for '96. Wilson, speaking next, sounded like an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator and probably won't even be re-elected as governor of California in November.

The historians were strongly represented by the No. 2 speaker, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state and himself a zealous revisionist with many axes to grind. He set the tone for the day with a maudlin and spectacularly self-serving portrait of Nixon as even more saintly than his mother and as a president of many godlike accomplishments--most of them put together in secret by Kissinger, who came to California as part of a huge publicity tour for his new book on diplomacy, genius, Stalin, H.P. Lovecraft and other great minds of our time, including himself and Richard Nixon.

Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he has already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. "He will dwarf FDR and Truman," according to one scholar from Duke University.

It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism--which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Nixon's meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along 10 years earlier. He got away with his sleazy "my dog Checkers" speech in 1952 because most voters heard it on the radio or read about it in the headlines of their local, Republican newspapers. When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates, he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona. Interestingly, most people who heard those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly. It was the first time in 14 years that Nixon lost an election.

When he arrived in the White House as VP at the age of 40, he was a smart young man on the rise--a hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream with a heart full of hate and an overweening lust to be President. He had won every office he'd run for and stomped like a Nazi on all of his enemies and even some of his friends.

Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him.) It was Hoover's shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon's downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director's ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.

Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.

For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director--who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.

That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says--and he is, after all, the President of the United States.

Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."

Shit. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb. he was a flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed. But he was Nixon's vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.

Unlike Nixon, Agnew didn't argue. He quit his job and fled in the night to Baltimore, where he appeared the next morning in U.S. District Court, which allowed him to stay out of prison for bribery and extortion in exchange for a guilty (no contest) plea on income-tax evasion. After that he became a major celebrity and played golf and tried to get a Coors distributorship. He never spoke to Nixon again and was an unwelcome guest at the funeral. They called him Rude, but he went anyway. It was one of those Biological Imperatives, like salmon swimming up waterfalls to spawn before they die. He knew he was scum, but it didn't bother him.

Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Richard Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his Presidency.

It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that--but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure, Nixon was one of these, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.

Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.

Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives--whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's 16-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him. This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

KICKING NIXON WHILE HE WAS UP

It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string warts, on nights when the moon comes too close....

At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps 50 feet down to the lawn ... pauses briefly to strangle the chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness...toward the Watergate, snarling with lust, loping through the alleys behind Pennsylvania Avenue and trying desperately to remember which one of those 400 iron balconies is the one outside Martha Mitchell's apartment.

Ah...nightmares, nightmares. But I was only kidding. The President of the United States would never act that weird. At least not during football season. But how would the voters react if they knew the President of the United States was, according to a New York Times editorial on Oct. 12, presiding over "a complex, far-reaching and sinister operation on the part of White House aides and the Nixon campaign organization ... involving sabotage, forgery, theft of confidential files, surveillance of Democratic candidates and their families and persistent efforts to lay the basis for possible blackmail and intimidation?"

National Gonzo Press Club Vows To Carry On Thompson's Work

2009-04-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

March 23, 2005

LAS VEGAS—During a Tuesday press conference at the National Gonzo Press Club, members of the nation's foremost organization of gonzo journalists vowed to carry on the mission of its founder Hunter S. Thompson, who took his life last month.

"Now that the whore-beasts and the scum-sucking degenerate rat bastards in Wall Street and the White House are hell-bent on turning us all into pliant, Scripture-mewling puppet-slaveys, we must take up Hunter's fallen colors and charge into the fray," said NGPC president Gene Zolonga, who is the National Affairs and Shark Hunting Editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer. "The next four years will be an unprecedented monument to bestial human ugliness, but I'd sooner let Yakuza thugs strap a rabid wolverine to my groin than shirk my responsibilities as a gonzo journalist."

The heavily sweating, speed-frenzied Zolonga then removed a Luger automatic pistol from his coat and shot the microphone with a deafening blast.

The NGPC is composed of nearly 3,000 journalists who practice gonzo, a subjective, emotionally charged observational reporting style that is often fueled by recreational drug use. Members of the 34-year-old organization cumulatively hold 14 Pulitzer Prizes, including eight in the Distinguished Weirdness In Feature Writing category.

"It's up to us to carry on the mentor's vision and expose all in American life that is strange, terrible, bad, crazy, or bad crazy," Zolonga said. He then climbed onto the podium and emitted a blood-curdling screech. "I am full of love, you motherfucking bastards. Pardon me, I believe my heart just stopped."

Gonzo stringer Zach Kiel, who most recently wrote "Fear, Loathing At The Owensboro Parks And Recreation Department" for the Louisville Courier-Journal, said Thompson will go down in the history of American letters as "the greatest gonzo reporter there ever was."

"Hunter opposed the editing of half-truths in all of his endeavors," Kiel said. "He had balls like an elephant and a cruelly beautiful prose style to match. He had stiff competition, but I'd say he bested even a hardened pro like Del Armbruster, who once wrote a story about Amazon gold prospectors while engulfed in fire head-to-toe."

Even gonzo journalists who have disagreed with Thompson in the past, such as award-winning New York Times columnist Heck Murdo, count him as a freak comrade.

"We did have sharp differences in opinion," Murdo said. "He thought Richard Nixon should have had his intestines slowly unwound onto a giant cable spool. I thought he should have been lashed to an oceanside cliff near San Clemente, so that ospreys could feast on his eyes. We feuded for years, at one point conducting a bourbon- and mescaline-fueled motorized-cart demolition derby on a Lake Tahoe golf course. But we patched things up when Dubya was elected, agreeing—to our mutual horror—that Nixon far outclassed that Jesus-loving pinheaded man-child."

During the past four decades, gonzo journalists have encountered their share of critical backlash, with college journalism departments around the nation reducing funding for gonzo-journalism programs and local editors questioning the wisdom of covering school-board meetings and slow-pitch softball matches on amyl nitrate.

"The gonzo philosophy is not always an effective or practical way to convey fact," Tulsa Daily Courier managing editor Patrick Jacobs said. "Average newspaper readers want to turn to the weather page and see the next day's forecast. They don't really have much use for a map captioned, 'Leeches are sucking my spinal fluid!' And when the sports page contains an unintelligible 3,000-word screed about ballpark hot-dog buns in place of the major-league scores, I get mail."

Gonzo entertainment writer Gail Nucci said 14 publications dropped her syndicated gossip column "Vacuous Sluts And Perfidious Dandies" over the course of the past year.

"The scores of out-of-work gonzo journalists say it all," said Nucci, an angel-dust abuser who tried to place Hilary Duff under citizen's arrest at the world premiere of Raise Your Voice last October. "Save for a handful of maverick magazine publishers, editors are too busy slobbing the knobs of the men on high to risk publishing an original voice."

In spite of these challenges, Zolonga is adamant that gonzo journalism has a place in this century.

"The world is growing assuredly weirder," Zolonga said. "Just as history remembers such prominent journalist-commentators as H.L. Mencken and Mike Royko, I have faith that future generations of swine will know the name of Hunter S. Thompson."

The Holi Festival is decadent and depraved

2009-04-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

March 23, 2009
Education and more
By Taylor Atkins

I had my first taste of gonzo journalism Sunday at Topeka’s Holi Festival.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the Holi (pronounced like holly) Festival is a traditional Indian holiday where participants welcome the spring by throwing colored powder, called Gulal, on one another as a blessing.

For those of you unfamiliar with the other term, gonzo journalism is a style of reporting credited to Hunter S. Thompson where the reporter is part of the story.

I didn’t try to mimic Thompson, mind you. I was forced into the style. It turns out when almost 75 people are covered from head to toe in bright blues, oranges, greens and pinks, anyone who isn’t also caked doesn’t stand a chance. No matter how much they insist they are just there to cover the event for The Capital-Journal.

Children and adults alike threw, rubbed, smeared and sprinkled Gulal all over me, wishing “Happy Holi” with each tag. My shirt looked like a kindergartner’s easel. My coworkers back in the newsroom (one they stopped laughing) called me “Smurfette” because of my blue-powder mask. And our press guys offered me a job for the night because I already looked like I’d gone swimming in CMYK ink.

Despite the “clever” nicknames and strange looks, my foray into gonzo journalism was actually pretty fun. I tried something new, learned a little about another culture and even got to watch a bit of Kansas running over Dayton on the way to the Sweet 16. (Apparently, modern Holi Festivals, always held this time of year, have learned to make room for the NCAA Tournament. The Gulal was thrown at halftime.)

I’m no Hunter S. Thompson, and the Holi Festival is nothing like his depiction of the Kentucky Derby, which the title of this blog entry could imply. I believe as a reporter I shouldn’t become the news. But it is good to know that while on a story in the future it’s OK to get my hands (or shoes, shirt, hair, pants, face, etc.) a little dirty.

Check out the story on the Holi Festival and a Spotted photo gallery of the event.

Werewolf boy appeals to doctors to find a cure

2009-04-13T13:27:00.000-07:00

June 30, 2008

An 11-year-old "werewolf" boy who desperately seeks a cure for his condition is baffling medical experts.

Pruthviraj Patil is one of 50 in the world who suffers from hypertrichosis, a rare genetic condition known as Werewolf Syndrome.

As a result his face and body is covered in thick, matted hair.

But he is hoping doctors will one day find a cure for his ailment...(to read the rest of this article, click on the link in the title above.)

Samaritan cleans dirty crook's clock with soap

2009-04-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

By ROB PIERCY / KING 5 News

EVERETT, Wash. -- Don't mess with a Good Samaritan carrying a bottle of laundry detergent.

Last Thursday, Susan Blackwell was loading groceries into her car at a Safeway when a man ran up and grabbed her purse. He pulled her to the ground and dragged her 20 feet.

Blackwell hung on tight, screaming.

“He was tugging and tugging and I had my arms over my head,” said Blackwell...(to read the rest of this article, click on the link in the title above.)

The Most Shocking Laws Overseas

2009-03-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

Seasoned travelers know to watch out for the accidents, illnesses and delays that can ruin a vacation. But a few laws are so unexpected that they can catch even the biggest travel junkies off guard.

By Katherine Spiers, Budget Travel

A penny spurned: The phrase "legal tender" isn't entirely straightforward in Canada. There are lots of pennies in circulation, but there's a limit on how many can be used at a time. The maximum number allowable per transaction is 25, so no getting cute with excessive change at the mini-mart...(read the rest of this article by clicking on the link in the title above.)

Last Words: A Testament to Hunter Thompson

2009-03-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

By Henry Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005; Page C01

They found Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note, and it twists our moral telescopes back into the focus we had when we first heard that he'd shot himself in the head.

You recall that on Sunday, Feb. 20, when he took himself out, we wanted to think that it was a .45-caliber hara-kiri, an act of honor by a 67-year-old cultural hero who hadn't written much major work for 30 years, and now faced old age with a broken leg, a hip replacement, an addiction to alcohol and a habitual fondness for whatever else would light his crazed Christmas tree of a mind.

Hunter Thompson's suicide note was written to his wife, Anita Thompson. (By Ed Andrieski -- Associated Press)

But no, we quickly learned that it wasn't that pretty. He killed himself while talking on the phone with his wife, Anita. In the house with him were his son Juan, and his grandson. Not so honorable.

You're supposed to go out behind the woodshed, face the existential solitude and let your loving survivors find you later.

Oh, well. His ashes were fired into the sky near his home in Woody Creek, Colo., on Aug. 20 with lots of fireworks. That seemed to bring us some kind of suitably mad "closure," as the TV shrinks say.

Now, Rolling Stone magazine, for which he wrote a lot of his best stuff in the '70s, has published a note he wrote to Anita four days before he killed himself in the kitchen.

The note doesn't make you feel any better about his timing with the phone call and the son and grandson hearing the gun go off, but it turns out that our first, and nobler, explanations had some truth to them after all.

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt."

With a sort of cryptic, ironic, metaphorical hilarity, he took a black marker and titled the note: "Football Season Is Over."

Douglas Brinkley, a historian and Thompson's "official biographer," had a more mundane explanation for the title. In his piece on the Rolling Stone Web site, he wrote: "An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year. February, by contrast, was doldrums time."

How bizarre that Thompson, who despised all that was official, and spent his life writing his own stone-loon autobiography, has an "official biographer."

Those who would like to think that Thompson killed himself over something more crucial than professional football can re-read the note.

Blue Eyed Greed?

2009-03-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: March 28, 2009
The New York Times

As international lunacy goes, it was hard to beat the pope saying that condoms spread AIDS.

But Brazil’s president, known simply as Lula, gave it his best shot.

At a press conference Thursday in Brasilia with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain — who has a talent for getting himself into dicey spots — Lula started off coughing from some cheese bread he’d wolfed down. Then he suddenly turned accusatory.

“This crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing,” charged the brown-eyed, bearded socialist president...(read the rest of this article by clicking on the link in the title above.)

Charges filed in slingshot attack on Tacoma Narrows bridge tollbooths

2009-03-27T14:19:00.000-07:00

Posted by Stacey Mulick @ 08:18:26 am

Pierce County prosecutors have charged a 50-year-old Gig Harbor man with assault after he allegedly used a slingshot to fire ball bearings at the Tacoma Narrows bridge tollbooths earlier this month...(read the rest of this story by clicking on the link in the headline above.)

Let's talk: Wife handcuffs herself to husband

2009-03-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

Cops say she attempted to reconcile with him, and allegedly bit him, too.

Associated Press
March 24, 2009

FAIRFIELD, Conn. - Police in Connecticut say a woman attempting to reconcile with her husband handcuffed herself to him as he slept and then bit him on his torso and arms...(read the rest of this article by clicking on the link in the title above.)

King's severed head going home to Ghana

2009-03-23T16:32:00.000-07:00

Was hacked off 170 years ago; discovered in jar last year in Netherlands.

Associated Press
March 20, 2009

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The severed head of King Badu Bonsu II is going home to Ghana, around 170 years after it was hacked off in retaliation for the slayings of two Dutch emissaries whose skulls were hung from the tribal leader's throne.

Bonsu's head was discovered last year in a jar of formaldehyde at the Leiden University Medical Center's anatomical collection by a Dutch author.

Ghana immediately asked for it to be returned and the Dutch government asked the hospital to cooperate...(read the rest of this article by clicking on the link in the headline above.)

Thoroughbred Horse Racing - A Glimpse at Kentucky Derby History

2009-03-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

By Kiawah Smart

The number 2 comes up a lot when discussing the Kentucky Derby. The horserace covers a distance of two kilometers, and it's the second oldest sporting event in the nation. The course record, set by Secretariat in 1973, is just under two minutes (1:59 and 2/5ths of a second). No horse since Apollo in 1882 has won the race without racing at age 2. But the many fans who've nicknamed it "the most exciting two minutes in sports" will agree that there's nothing second-rate about the Derby.

Due to the rich fields of its Bluegrass region (the same area for which the music is named), Kentucky was known throughout the nineteenth century for producing fine racehorses. The idea for a race was hatched in 1872, when Colonel Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr. - the grandson of the William Clark who, with Meriwether Lewis, mapped the Louisiana Purchase - visited races in England and France. Inspired by his travels, he formed the Louisville Jockey Club when he returned home to Kentucky, and began raising money for a racetrack - soon known as the Churchill Downs - outside the city.

The first race was run in 1875, making it the oldest continually-held sporting event in the US. After a shaky start, the race was taken over by a syndicate of businessmen under the direction of Colonel Matt Winn of Louisville in 1902, and quickly became the most successful thoroughbred horse race in America.

The race became part of the fabric of American culture. With the Preakness Stakes race in Pimlico, Maryland, and the Belmont Stakes in Elmont, New York, it forms the Triple Crown of US Thoroughbred racing. Only 11 horses have won the Triple Crown, and none since 1978. Over the years the Derby has given rise to various traditions, such as the consumption of mint juleps (a drink consisting of bourbon, mint, and sugar syrup), pari-mutuel betting, parties on the infield (where it's so hard to see the race that there's not much else to do), throwing day-of derby parties (if you can't get into the actual race), the chocolate-and-walnut Derby Pie (sold by the nearby Melrose Inn), and the wearing of elaborate hats.

The Derby was the site of the invention of "Gonzo journalism," the influential, expressive, confrontational, and proudly counterfactual style of journalism pioneered by writer Hunter S. Thompson in a 1970 magazine piece with the tongue-in-cheek title "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved." Most of all, there's "My Old Kentucky Home," the Stephen Foster tune played every year by the University of Louisville marching band as the horses parade through the grandstands and the proud hometown crowd falls to weeping and loud singing. The Derby is so important that it even spun off the state's largest festival, the Kentucky Derby Festival, which began in 1956 and fills up the entire two weeks prior to the Derby race with the Pegasus Parade, balloon and steamboat races and a marathon, as well as the largest fireworks display in the US.

Visiting the Kentucky Derby takes advance planning. Grandstand seats require a written request submitted several months in advance (see http://www.kentuckyderby.com for more details). Infield access is available for $40, as is SRO admission to "the bricks" (paddock gardens near the track). Show up early (by 7:30AM) and bring a blanket. Wear a strange hat. Onsite parking is near-nonexistent, and hotels must also be booked several months in advance. The best bet is to try to land a room at a hotel that also offers shuttle service to the Downs on Derby Day.

Most of all, make a point of reading up on the proceedings. Watching thoroughbred horse racing offers a timeless thrill. Whether you're a fan of horse racing gambling or just like the thrill of live horse racing, the sport is full of drama and passion, and sports news sources, as well as tip services, can help you maximize your enjoyment of thoroughbred horse racing by clarifying the details and letting you know who the favorites are.

TRP Services offers Thoroughbred horse racing and horse racing tips online for horse racing handicapping and those who love thoroughbred horses for the horse racing tracks

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kiawah_Smart

Hunter S Thompson and the Birth of Gonzo

2009-03-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

By Russell Shortt

Hunter S Thompson created Gonzo journalism - a style of journalistic writing that blurs the distinction between fiction and non-fiction. It is written subjectively and often includes the reporter as part of the story, via a first person narrative. Indeed, the writer is the central figure of the story, with everything circling around them with personal experiences and emotions being used to provide context for the story. Clear editing is abandoned, creating a gritty, real-time, in the zone read and exaggeration and profanity is par for the course. Gonzos believe that truth in journalism can be achieved while writing objectively.

The term was first used by Bill Cardoso, editor of the Boston Globe magazine, when he described Hunter S Thompson's Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved which was included in the June 1970 edition of Scanlon's Monthly as pure 'Gonzo'. Cardoso claimed that Gonzo was South Boston slang for the last man standing after an all night drinking marathon. Gonzo Journalism can be seen as an offshoot of the New Journalism movement of the sixties which was led by Tom Wolfe.

Thompson was an enigmatic figure - reclusive and often unintelligible in conversation but a writer of genius who was a mammoth in political criticism who could define entire movements in his sprawling articles. He will always linked with the hippie counterculture of the sixties for his ruthless hounding of the Nixon administration and his wholesome consumption of psychedelic drugs. Both Bill Murray and Johnny Depp (both who became close, trusted friends of Thompson) both portrayed him on screen in Where the Buffalo Roam and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas respectively.

Russell Shortt is a travel consultant with Exploring Ireland, the leading specialists in customised, private escorted tours, escorted coach tours and independent self drive tours of Ireland. Article source Russell Shortt, http://www.exploringireland.net - http://www.visitscotlandtours.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Russell_Shortt

Teach Your Kids to Break the Rules

2009-03-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

Five survival skills they'll use the rest of their life.

By Craig Playstead for MSN Lifestyle

Everything you read about parenting today tells you how to mold your kid into a perfect little angel. There's just one problem: The world isn't perfect. In order to survive in what can be a brutal place, kids need to have smarts they can use outside the supervised environments of the classroom, your kitchen table and church...(go to the link above for the rest of this fine article.)

Gonzo Journalists

2009-03-02T19:39:00.000-08:00

By John Parks

Perhaps the most famous Gonzo journalist of all time is the late Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson is often credited as being the inventor of Gonzo journalism. So what is Gonzo journalism and what does a Gonzo journalist do?

Side note: In reference to the late Hunter S. Thompson, all journalists in this article will be referred to as "he" "him" or "the journalist." In fact, the word "Gonzo" was first used to describe the writing style that Hunter S. Thompson used in his writing.

Gonzo journalism is a journalism style in which the journalist tells the story from the first person. The story usually takes on the form of a first person narrative in which the journalist will mix factual information with fictional elements to emphasize the various points that he wants to make. This work is often much less polished than what you would read in one of the glossier news magazines or see on television. This is because this style of journalism rewards a style of writing over the accuracy of the piece itself.

Gonzo journalists are known to rely on a "regular" voice in their writing. This voice will often use sarcasm, exaggeration, humor and even profanity to get a point across and is more likely to use slang or current colloquialisms than he is to resort to the more formal style that other journalists use. For a Gonzo journalist, getting the reader to feel like a part of the story is more important than the simple transfer of facts from the page to the brain. Many journalistic experts consider this form of journalism a type of editorial piece.

Gonzo journalism is also a name of the type of writing done by a journalist who finds himself not able to remain subjective or out of the story. One of the most common examples of this is storm chasing in which the journalist is immersed in the storm while writing or filming the story.

The first Gonzo journalist, as already mentioned was Hunter S. Thompson and the term was first used to describe his article "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" which was run in Scanlan's Monthly's June 1970 issue. One of the many meanings of the word "gonzo" is South Boston Irish slang for the last guy who is still standing after drinking all night long with his buddies. This could certainly be used to describe Thompson who wasn't afraid to partake of any substance at a party. He also did not believe in remaining objective when telling a story and felt that the best stories were written from a first person experience of the situation.

Tom Wolfe is another famous Gonzo Journalist along side George Plimpton and Lester Bangs, all supporters of a "New Journalism" movement. Tucker Max, the author of Fratire is another Gonzo journalist and Alan Cabal, the writer of CounterPunch magazine also embraces this journalist style.

Since the style was embraced by Hunter S. Thompson, many otherwise stuffy and formal news organizations can be seen embracing a less formal and more first person approach to journalism.

For more information on journalism, visit http://www.journalistmicroblog.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Parks

Gonzo News

2009-02-22T13:47:00.000-08:00

For Immediate Release
February 7, 2008

Florida Keys “Gonzo Girl” Rushed to Emergency Room

Gonzo Writer Sammie Mays was rushed to the Mariners Hospital Emergency Center late Wednesday night for undisclosed reasons.

“The Gonz,” famous for her near-criminal stunt of infiltrating a Super-Max Penitentiary and photographing (for the National Enquirer tabloid) baseball bad-boy Pete Rose in prison, Sammie had just finished an hour-long radio show interview at WORZ 104.3 FM in Ocean Reef where she discussed her latest coup – “Jimmy Hoffa: The Florida Keys Connection.” “The Gonz” was moved into a private room on Thursday, Feb. 7 and unable to speak with us.

Why There Won’t Be a Revolution

2009-02-13T18:36:00.000-08:00

Americans might get angry sometimes, but we don't hate the rich. We prefer to laugh at them.

By Jerry Adler | NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 7, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Feb 16, 2009

The poor you will always have, the good book says, but as for the rich man, he will wither away like a delicate flower in the midday sun. The first prediction has certainly been borne out, but the second part (James 1:11) had not yet come to pass by the Panic of 1907, when Theodore Roosevelt warned of a coming reckoning against the "malefactors of great wealth." Nor by 1990, when former Nixon aide Kevin Phillips predicted that Americans would rise to extract revenge on "the rich who got the benefits of the go-go years" of the 1980s. As late as 2001, no less an authority than, uh, NEWSWEEK wrote in the wake of 9/11 that "the arrogant wheeler-dealer ordering a $600 bottle of wine with dinner … has vanished utterly as an icon," which remained true until approximately 2002. Well, listen up, you rich guys, this time we really mean it. The president himself is repelled by your rapacious greed, your kids are ashamed to admit that their mom is a banker, even your girlfriends are sick of your whining about your bonus, and you're going to have to learn to live on $500,000 a year like a normal person. Oh, and by the way, nice watch. Is it Cartier?

In America, the country that invented the modern model of wealth—i.e., derived neither from inherited landholdings nor royal patronage—mocking the rich is historically one of the most durable cultural memes, matched only by envy of them. In different eras over the past two centuries, one or the other has predominated, but only rarely has the American public evinced the kind of outrage that gives rise to serious political change. Historically, that has happened only when Americans suspect that the rich haven't been playing by the same rules as the rest of us, so today's crop of Wall Street millionaires—celebrated for their frugality, honesty and wise stewardship of the economy—should have nothing to fear, right? Except that the day after the administration proposed capping executive pay in financial companies that have been bailed out by the government, the letters published in The New York Times ran six-to-one in favor of the idea. That included one warning that ending bonuses for overpaid bankers might drive them into occupations, such as driving taxis, where their incompetence could get other people killed. While some economists worry that a cap of $500,000 a year is too low to attract experienced executives, ordinary Americans may actually regard it as excessively generous. A study published last August by political scientists Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs found that on average Americans think CEOs of large corporations should be able to get by on $200,000. That would represent an average pay cut, by Page and Jacobs's calculations, of 98.57 percent from the actual figure of $14 million.

Also last week, the Web was crackling with posts and counterposts on The Bag Lady Papers, a blog on The Daily Beast Web site by Alexandra Penney, the former editor of Self magazine who claims to have lost almost all her money to Bernard Madoff. On the night she realized that she wasn't rich any longer, she Googled the Hemlock Society, looking for a painless way to die. She gave up on that idea, but had to weather another crisis when she went on the wrong night to get two-for-one pizzas at Domino's.

Yes, sometimes rich people do come across as clueless, self-involved twits! Yet for all the schadenfreude in the air, no one was sharpening the guillotines, with the possible exception of Berkeley economist and former labor secretary Robert Reich. On his blog, Reich wrote hopefully that the debacle of Tom Daschle's cabinet nomination might be a signal that public disgust with the antics of the overclass had begun to boil over. Yet who but a Berkeley professor could imagine blood running in the streets over a nominee for secretary of health and human services? What we haven't seen, muses Lee Eisenberg, author of the financial-planning-guide-cum-Wall-Street-jeremiad "The Number," is anger at rich people as a class. "I'm surprised there isn't more of it," he adds.

Populist sentiments have waxed and waned over the decades, peaking during times of economic distress for farmers and workingmen, especially the 1890s and the 1930s. Yet by and large most Americans have tried to stay neutral in the war between the classes, particularly in contrast to European countries of comparable wealth. What Americans lack is what the European working classes gleefully exhibit: resentment of the rich personally, as distinct from unhappiness with policies that affect how income and wealth are distributed. The press considered it a major gaffe last fall when Barack Obama gave a tentative endorsement to the idea of using the tax system to help redistribute income—although the record shows that he won the election. In fact, according to Page, for the first time since the 1930s a majority of Americans are in favor of taxing the rich—heavily, if necessary—to redistribute income. But that doesn't mean they want to kill them. So far, at least, they prefer to laugh at them. The vagaries of the economy over the next several years will determine if Jay Leno can continue to fill in American society the role the French delegated to Robespierre.

Americans' contradictory attitudes toward wealth are ingrained in the national culture. Sigmund Freud, steeped in fin de siècle Middle European pessimism, memorably compared the unconscious significance of money to that of excrement, an idea that found very few takers on this side of the Atlantic. The first European settlers to New England were Calvinists, belonging to a stern creed obsessed with the fate of their souls. Believers in predestination, they anxiously sought the outward signs of inward grace, signifying their "election" to heaven. One of these was worldly prosperity; wealth was a valued indicator that the possessor enjoyed God's favor. The other salient feature of American society is that it lacked a landed aristocracy. This meant, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed in "Democracy in America," that "there is hardly anything left but money which makes very clear distinctions between men or can raise some of them above the common level."

And lacking a hereditary upper class, Americans have typically looked at themselves in the mirror and asked, why not me? The belief that anyone can become rich in America has its roots in an extraordinary statistical fact noted by Malcolm Gladwell in "Outliers." A list (compiled by Forbes magazine) of the 75 richest people in all of history, going back to Crassus (No. 8) and Pharaoh Amenophis III (No. 12), shows that an astonishing 14 of them (including John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, Nos. 1 and 2) were Americans, born mostly of humble origins between 1831 and 1840. That made them just the right age to take advantage of the tremendous creation of wealth in the years following the Civil War. The example of those men, and those decades, has colored American attitudes toward wealth ever since. It persists today, according to Page and Jacobs, who found that "large majorities of Democrats and low-income Americans agree with Republicans and more affluent people that it is still possible to start out poor, work hard, and become rich." People who expect to join a country club someday are, obviously, less likely to want to burn it down now.

Without a nobility standing in their way, rich Americans have been able to use their money in all sorts of creative ways. Wealth spelled luxury, of course, but that was not the only benefit it could bring, or even necessarily the most salient. Money brought social power to the Astors and Vanderbilts, political influence to the families of Rockefeller and Joseph Kennedy and the ability to pursue worthy philanthropic goals to men like Carnegie. More recently, wealth has emerged as the key to dating a supermodel. Rich men have always attracted women to them, of course. But in the past few decades wealth has taken on an aura of sexual glamour that would have scandalized the upright likes of Rockefeller or J. P. Morgan. This was a development heralded in 1990 by the notorious New York Post headline quoting 26-year-old calendar girl Marla Maples about her lover, Donald Trump: BEST SEX I EVER HAD. Not even Trump himself could have believed that the act could be separated from Maples's knowledge of what was in the pockets of the pants left on the floor. That same year a national poll found that 76 percent of Americans considered rich people smarter than average, and 61 percent said the wealthy were better-looking. (The same poll also found respondents considered them less sympathetic to the poor, more likely to be racists and less honest than other Americans.) It was the best publicity for the idea of getting ahead in business since 1925, the year that advertising man Bruce Barton published a bestseller titled "The Man Nobody Knows," which depicted a hard-driving Jesus Christ as "the world's greatest business executive."

Hence the cult of the businessman, which was stronger in the U.S. than almost anywhere else. The rule in America, says Claudia Goldin, an economics professor at Harvard, has been that "if you make your wealth yourself, honestly and through your own intelligence, you will be admired and envied." It mattered, too, that Rockefeller, Carnegie and their cohort were mostly industrialists or merchants who dealt in tangible goods that benefited the entire country, including even the workers they arguably exploited. There are still fortunes to be made in the humble business of shaving a dime off the price of a pair of pantyhose, as Sam Walton demonstrated, and in late-night toil in the computer center, as Bill Gates and his successors have shown. Even people who have no idea what computer programmers actually do understand that Microsoft provides something the world needs. That is not quite so obvious in the case of investment bankers, Goldin says, which works to their disadvantage in the current crisis: "There is little understanding that people on Wall Street produce anything of value. There is a sense that they're not doing any good for anyone else."

Of course, they do; the fact that what began as a banking crisis has led to layoffs at Microsoft and Macy's demonstrates that the financial system is essential to the workings of the "real" economy. Whether the people who run the banks deserve to be paid as much as a shortstop who drives in 120 runs a year is another question. Page and Jacobs's research suggests that most Americans don't think so. Their study found that Americans' predominant attitude toward wealth could be characterized as "conservative egalitarian": they understand the need for disparities in income to motivate and reward people, but believe that those differences should be reasonable. By a margin of 68 percent to 28 percent, they rejected the idea that the current distribution of wealth is "fair." By a margin of … well, the question hasn't been asked this way, but presumably Americans who read the Bible are looking forward to the day when the words of James come to pass, and "you rich men [shall] weep and howl for your miseries that shall come on you." You can look up the rest of the passage (5:1-6), but trust us, it makes living on a paltry $500,000 a year look pretty good by comparison.

With Raina Kelley

© 2009

Last Words: A Testament to Hunter Thompson

2009-02-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

By Henry Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005; Page C01

Hunter Thompson's suicide note was written to his wife, Anita Thompson. (By Ed Andrieski -- Associated Press)

They found Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note, and it twists our moral telescopes back into the focus we had when we first heard that he'd shot himself in the head.

You recall that on Sunday, Feb. 20, when he took himself out, we wanted to think that it was a .45-caliber hara-kiri, an act of honor by a 67-year-old cultural hero who hadn't written much major work for 30 years, and now faced old age with a broken leg, a hip replacement, an addiction to alcohol and a habitual fondness for whatever else would light his crazed Christmas tree of a mind.

But no, we quickly learned that it wasn't that pretty. He killed himself while talking on the phone with his wife, Anita. In the house with him were his son Juan, and his grandson. Not so honorable.

You're supposed to go out behind the woodshed, face the existential solitude and let your loving survivors find you later.

Oh, well. His ashes were fired into the sky near his home in Woody Creek, Colo., on Aug. 20 with lots of fireworks. That seemed to bring us some kind of suitably mad "closure," as the TV shrinks say.

Now, Rolling Stone magazine, for which he wrote a lot of his best stuff in the '70s, has published a note he wrote to Anita four days before he killed himself in the kitchen.

The note doesn't make you feel any better about his timing with the phone call and the son and grandson hearing the gun go off, but it turns out that our first, and nobler, explanations had some truth to them after all.

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt."

With a sort of cryptic, ironic, metaphorical hilarity, he took a black marker and titled the note: "Football Season Is Over."

Douglas Brinkley, a historian and Thompson's "official biographer," had a more mundane explanation for the title. In his piece on the Rolling Stone Web site, he wrote: "An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year. February, by contrast, was doldrums time."

How bizarre that Thompson, who despised all that was official, and spent his life writing his own stone-loon autobiography, has an "official biographer."

Those who would like to think that Thompson killed himself over something more crucial than professional football can re-read the note.

'Gonzo' film explores HST

2009-02-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

By Joseph Froemming
February 5, 2009

Honesty was something "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson both cherished and rebelled against.

That is, his work often walked the line between fantasy and fiction seamlessly.

"Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson" is a documentary that exposes the highs and lows of the infamous writer from friends and associates whom have both kind words and brutal truths that give Thompson a more 3D element over his crazed journalistic persona.

Narrated by Johnny Depp, (who played Thompson in the film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas") the film follows Thompson's life from his early days in Louisville, Ky. to his final days in seclusion in Woody Creek, Colo.

Depp reads some famous passages from Thompson's books, imitating the voice of the late author in the vein he did while portraying him on film. Highlights include "The Edge," from the book "Hell's Angels" to the "High Water Mark," from his "Vegas" book.

Included throughout the film are old TV appearances, such as the odd appearance on a 1960s game show "To Tell The Truth," to being accosted by a Hell's Angel for what he said in his book about the outlaw bike gang.

The film is pseudo-linear, it strays from one period in time to the present, where there is plenty of bashing of George W. Bush, but it remains fairly consistent covering his three main books: "Hell's Angels," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," and "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72."

Some of the people interviewed gave some great insights as to what kind of person Thompson was. Ex-Hell's Angel president, Ralph "Sonny" Barger, claims most of the book about his gang was glorified, but thought it was well written anyway.

Thompson's ex-wife, Sandi Wright, gives insights to Thompson's rage, stating that when she asked for a divorce, Thompson flew into such a rage that she had to call the authorities. When a deputy asked her if Thompson had any guns, she said "22 of them, and they're all loaded."

Other people interviewed were Nixon speech writer Pat Buchanan, who claimed despite Thompson's left-leaning politics, he was perhaps the most viscous critic of liberals at the time.

Nixon's Democratic opponent in the 1972 presidential campaign, George McGovern, said Thompson's over the top dispatches from the campaign trail were both the most false but honest take on presidential politics on a campaign trail.

The film uses archival footage from many of Thompson's weird adventures. Things like his failed run for sheriff of Aspen in 1970 on the "Freak Power" ticket, which he advocated police not to carry guns and change the city's drug laws.

Another documented aspect was his desire to build a monument to be put up after he died, designed by himself and artist Ralph Steadman, who worked with Thompson on many of his projects.

That would, of course, be the giant double-thumbed fist built in the summer of 2005 that blasted his ashes into the Colorado wilderness.

As fun as his life seemed to be, the sad truth expressed by people like Jann Wenner (editor in chief and founder of Rolling Stone magazine), Steadman, his wives and friends is when he hit his wall in the mid-to-late '70s when his productivity began to dwindle in lieu to his drug and alcohol excess.

From the late '70s until his death in 2005, Thompson wrote very little in comparison to his work from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s.

This decline is pointed out by Jann Wenner, who sent Thompson to Zaire to cover the legendary Ali-Forman boxing match for Rolling Stone. Thompson went, ended up not going to the match and could not write anything about it.

The film is impressive visually, yet there are moments when things become a bit too cheese ball. This is usually during the reenactments of things he caught on an audio recorder.

The audio is authentic, but having a tall skinny guy with a drink in one hand and a suitcase full of narcotics in the other seem to only add to the persona rather than the person.

The DVD bonus features are good, including deleted scenes, extended interviews and audio commentary.

The thing one picks up from this voyeuristic journey into the life of a famed author are the trappings of fame and expectations that come along with it.

As Thompson said in a BBC interview in the '70s, "I don't know when people want to interview me or Raoul Duke [his alias in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and other stories he wrote for Rolling Stone]."

This is an interesting film, but leaves one wanting more. Perhaps it could have been done in two installments, but one can only take what they can get.

The Sims Online Hosts the Mafia

2009-02-06T18:54:00.001-08:00

By Karen Cole

I wrote this a couple of years ago regarding the popular video game, "The Sims Online." It suffered from a lack of entertaining things to do onsite, which made it eventually fail. But the article below is all about the interesting times I actually did have on it, even while it was very Mafia-influenced.

If I told you this, would you believe me? Try doing so, because it’s the truth. And also, in this strange and perverse world, young people are busy killing each other at an alarming rate. Do we really need something like a pseudo Mafia causing the same sorts of problems? Gangsterism, in other words, on our children’s beloved video games?

According to Wikipedia, the Web’s foremost online encyclopedia, ever since 9/11 the FBI hasn’t had much in time or resources to handle organized crime, and there has been a sudden resurgence in its activities.

Right now, the online game “The Sims Online”-- which is labeled a “T for Teens” game -- has been overrun by several obviously Mafia named “families.” These people don’t seem to have enough imagination to be Mexican Mafia, Chinese Mafia or Japanese Mafia (yet), which also exist in real life. They are very aggressive and very obvious.

Whether or not they are the real Mafia is a question which I cannot answer. They may be a bunch of “errant” teenage boys and girls – but ones with some very eclectic adult tastes and also many violent and weird high tech tendencies. You should see the Playboy style icons they paste on top of their houses from certain views of the TSO video game.

And one thing these kids, if they are kids, really do, even though it is to virtual and not real houses: they trash people’s paid-for beautiful properties. The kind of properties that people would like to build, taking a lifetime to achieve. Beautiful, sprawling mansions you can’t own in real life, the kind that are totally out of reach for the vast majority of people. And no one could tell if it was part of the game, or something far worse.

I am so tired, I don’t know. Values are very hard to gauge in life, anyway.

To “green up” on The Sims Online at all, or to keep your simulated character going, you must do interactions that are similar to having sex with animals (wrestle with your dog, but you should see what it looks like if you really see it) and that’s bad enough, but rather bearable. Sigmund Freud would have told us that such behavior is relatively normal, that having an “orgy session” involving “heavy petting” with your own puppy where it loves you and licks your face and you are all over each other, is fun. Also, there is sexy dancing, heavy kissing and hugging, and so forth, which works for most people -- including twelve year old kids. This is done with your fellow “characters,” real life people in the game whom you can become acquainted with, work with, and even “marry.” The marriages are not legal of course, and tend to dissolve fairly quickly.

Meanwhile, your town is crawling with “De Corleoni Territori,” the “Italian Mafia Empire,” “The Vito Family Territory” and so forth. I am not talking Anti-Italian Defamation. I had several Italian friends on the game, whom I am now stuck missing in my daily life. I am talking about a bunch of people either acting like the Mafia, or worse yet, actually being connected with them somehow and taking over a children’s video game. Possibly, several children’s video games. Or were they involved in the first place, and is Maxis a Mafia held game company? Look at the names.

Maxis, Mafia. Why doesn’t Entertainment Arts do something about the house trashing problem, for example, even though people have repeatedly complained about it? What is it exactly that they are trying to hide? Apparently not much; you can easily find “the Mob” everywhere on that game. And their version of “the cops” does absolutely nothing at all. Meanwhile, I have talked to Maxis, and they have repeatedly claimed “we are taking care of the problem.”

The game is labeled “T for Teens” and is connected with what looks like some harmless fake gambling. The money being exchanged seems to be Simoleans at first. Fake money, which you get by working at odd jobs on the game, and you may also acquire skills so you can make more of the fake money. But there are “payoffs,” and you can also buy blocks of the money on EBay, roughly $15-25 for 1 million Simoleans. I heard of one lady who blew thousands of real life dollars on this. It’s possible that the teenagers who are playing it are making money from performing vaguely illicit “sexual acts” on this game – for real money.

Is this what you want your teenager to be doing? For 6-10 hours a day, five-seven days a week? Eventually, obviously, after I spent about a month on the game, it was so that the money was swiftly turning real.

Okay, video addiction is bad enough, but we’re talking about Organized Crime here as well. Remember a little place called Columbine High School? What if there’s some sort of eerie connection to that sort of business? I had to join this game to find out, kind of as a lark, but I did some real exploring too.

And the Mafia is in and roughly controlling every town that I’ve visited on The Sims Online, and I’ve reasonably checked them all over. Dan’s Grove, Jolly Pines, Blazing Falls, Alphaville. The Mafia is…everywhere.

I have talked to these “Mafia” gentlemen and ladies, and visited their houses. They don’t have very much to do at them but the usual Sims stuff. I’m afraid they have discovered game “cheats” and, being bored, are using them to destroy other game players’ properties. And yes, I have evidence, not hard unfortunately, that they have watched people play the game from a distance. One of them knew about something he shouldn’t have known. And another friend of mine who regularly plays video games has noticed these tendencies toward having strange “game powers” that other players don’t have in yet other video games. He says it’s pretty common. Hackers, he calls it, but in the TSO case, it’s hitting a little too close to home.

For example, a gay bashing was set up right in front of me. I rode it out, but I had to comfort the “gay” being bashed. Of course, it was his simulated character, not “he” who was hurt. TSO is real people playing games. I’m not gay, but it was getting a little peculiar that such stuff is allowable on a “T for Teens” video game. I was more than a little confused.

A “lady” in fun fired a game Civil War cannon at me, in private, and this Mafia guy named “Riccardo” knew that it had happened. I don’t think she told him about it. How did he know? She did it just for laughs, and it was a harmless game event (I peed my pants as the game character, and it seemed okay), but it’s not very funny that he knew about it. I didn’t exactly care, and it was sort of humorous. He couldn’t have known about it unless he’d seen it happen, in all probability. And he wasn’t anywhere on the property or onscreen at the time. He had a private view of it going on.

The same Mafia dude, who kept denying he was Mafia -- while dressed in an obvious game-style Mafia suit and with the name “Riccardo” -- also told me you can’t trash houses unless you’re a roommate or the home owner. This should indeed be the case; it involves “building permissions.” But one of the house trashing victims had no roommates whatsoever. And she wasn’t motivated to trash her house…no insurance money is involved.

Game players on this game can be quite friendly. I made a lot of good friends doing things like making pizzas, opening up my own skills house business, doing minor gambling (legal for adults and I’m over 40) and in general -- partying. You can play high tech, beautiful looking musical instruments and feel like you’re there. It’s a great game. You should see some of the wild and crazy characters on this game! Or should you?

Except that I can’t play it anymore. I quit the game solely because of the
extremely heavy Mafia presence that was starting to visit my house and breathe hotly down my neck. That, and the game was cutting into my work routine as a full-time writer quite a little bit, too.

First, “Riccardo” showed up. Out of nowhere, after I had used the Maxis device to screen all apparent “Mafia” members out of my “house.” He showed up at my house. The same day my friend’s house was trashed. It was the second such trashing since I had started playing there. Obvious Mafia guy, obviously scouting me. Denied everything completely. This was after two of my friends’ houses had been trashed.

Want to know anything about terrorism? Now I know what it is. A little too thoroughly for my tastes. The Mob was making it obvious that I could be next. Why is that exactly? And what sort of “next” would it be—real, or simulated game activity? These people looked capable of tracking down my actual computer’s IP address, my ISP -- and finally, my real life house.

And all I could do was flee. I quit playing the game for good. I don’t feel much like a serious game player after that. I feel rather like an inebriated cipher.

“Yeah, they’re just a bunch of teenagers who like to trash houses…” “They’re not the real Mafia, they’re just kids.” I heard a lot of that from people both on and off the game, even my fellow writers. Harmless kids.

Like the ones at Columbine? That bunch even called themselves “The Trench Coat Mafia.” What’s with this strange fascination of teenage kids with the Mob? Does gangsta rap, or something even worse, have anything to do with it?

The Sims Online is conceivably the haven for a slinking beast with no better name than the Neo Mafia: “My New Family.” And for the last time, if you’re Italian, I am not picking on you. I’m worried about you instead. And do you need to be affiliated with these mysterious strangers, who maybe think all organized crime is still from Italy? Are you, like me, a parent? Ma fia? Neo ma fia…

Yes, parents, that is what it means in Italian-American. My new family. Still feel comfortable with the concept?

“Trust me. I’m only Italian. I’m not a Mafia member. You must be a bigot. It’s because my skin is brown. Yadayadayaday.” You can be whatever skin color you want to be on TSO, and either sex for that matter. Everybody kept going, “It’s only kids, calm down, and it’s only kids.” Yeah, pretty old kids.

Maybe I was a fool for ever playing that game. I assumed it was just a game, and someone was being silly about the Mafia on it. Later, I found a very professional looking website dedicated to The Sims Mafia. “Don’t enter here if you’re under thirteen” is a quote from it. Maxis is doing nothing whatsoever to stop these people, which is getting to be sickeningly obvious.

I’m sure that if this story is ever widely promoted, people will join The Sims Online (TSO) after having read it. It’s an extremely download, a free two week trial, $10 per month and bam, you’re in it. News items like the War belittle this pretty much. But that’s somebody else’s problem. The Federal Bureau of Investigation should be looking into at least our nation’s video games. You can buy money on EBay to sell on that TSO game, kids are on that game, and they are being threatened into being recruited into the, I would assume, mostly “swarthy white people Mafia”…right now…since they keep mentioning the Italian one so much…

…the real one or the virtual one?

Who knows?

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Get That Out of Your Mouth #27

2009-02-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

Column by Chris Dahlen

I keep hearing the same gripe from the critics of the critics of pop culture: Today's writers eat it. Nobody knows how to cover music, or movies, or video games, or any of the other media that matter. We need someone to swoop in and save us: We need a new Lester Bangs, or a new Hunter S. Thompson-- one of those guys who made criticism and alternative journalism seem so vital back in the 1960s and 70s. Where they hell did they go?

Chuck Klosterman writes in Esquire about the failure of the gaming press to cough up a single critic who embodies whatever Bangs was doing when he told people to listen to the Troggs. Old school fans of music crit watch the field slip into the morass of mp3 blogs, message boards, and kids who just shout, "Hey, can you YSI that to me?" every time a new album leaks-- and they wonder, what happened to the great critics? They want a tastemaker, a voice of authority, who can put it all in perspective and knock our heads together with his or her crazy-yet-dead-on arguments.

But I think I've found the answer: We don't have a new Bangs or Thompson yet because pop culture today is primarily a technology story. And we don't know how to write about technology.

Oh sure, we cover tons of stories about technology. We write up every new thing from could-be-big trends-- whatever happened to the podcast revolution, anyway?-- to tiny but buzzworthy ones, like that "personalized" Jessica Simpson download they're selling at Yahoo! Music. The problem is that every time we write about some new technology like podcasting, we go through the basic template-- explain how it works, decide whether grandmothers will care about RSS feeds, and so forth-- and we quote the same types of people: The early adopter, the industry analyst, the skeptic. And no matter what context the story falls into and how important the subject may seem, the overall tone is always the same: whatever it is, it's "neat."

In fact, all tech is "neat." Maybe we can see some ill effects on the horizon-- would federal endorsement of the destruction of embryos for stem cell research open the door to greater exploitation of humanity down the road? Can iPods damage your hearing?-- but we only throw in the storm clouds for effect, to give the story some yang and make it more engaging. In the end, science is good, and progress is inevitable-- so there's no way that the technology we're covering could be anything but good.

It was much easier for Hunter S. Thompson to write about drugs. I would argue that technology colors our pop culture far more than the drug culture affected the 60s, but let's still look at what made Thompson's job so cushy. Technology is the province of geeks, a sterile, above-board, carefully marketed phenomenon; drugs are underground, illegal, and risky. You can call Apple if your iPod falls in the toilet, but if you lose your stash, you're on your own. Hiding pot from your parents is daring, while programming their TiVO for them is not. So if you were to try to write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but update it as Fear and Loathing at the E3 Expo-- well, you can tell how compelling that ain't.

But there's another reason drugs make a better subject than technology: People understand and accept how drugs affect us, but we think we're safe from our electronics. It's a cliché to write a screed about the first time you got high, or to shoot a movie that simulates or stimulates an acid trip. But with all of these drugs, we still believe they have a compelling effect on human beings. Pot makes you slow and stupid. Heroin is destructively addictive. Acid makes you smell colors and fart light.

Technology also affects us-- biologically, deeply, and psychologically. The web screwed up my short term memory; why do I need to keep movie trivia in my head if I can just look it up at imdb.com? And 9/11 was a technology story, because almost none of us were there-- but we saw the images filtered through television and the internet. I first heard about 9/11 when I booted my laptop and read a terse, text headline about a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center towers. Five years later, every morning, I still open my browser and read the headlines, and I'm always wondering: What blew up last night? When will the other shoe drop?

The pop culture we're supposed to be covering understands this better than we seem to. The Matrix and cyberpunk got us started, and it's only gotten better: The Sci Fi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica" combines a rigorous allegory for the war on terror with a war against technology, where the enemy is a mob of computers that knows us, imitates us, and gets inside our heads. In music, bands like the Books blur the once-obvious lines between the electronic and the acoustic to create an organic fusion of the two. And we play video games and they play us: The console and the gamer affect each other in hundreds of ways, stimulating our sight and blurring our hearing, and teasing us with the illusion of control and then yanking it away.

So what are the scribblers missing? People seem to be unhappy with modern music crit, maybe because we haven't digested the real changes in the music we're listening to: after all, nothing in music today-- from the recycling of old trends, to the flattening of the historical timeline, to the rise of self-made artists-- makes sense without the Internet, yet we've barely taken a yardstick to its impact.

Games crit is another great example. Chuck Klosterman-- and he's far from the first-- bemoaned the lack of good game critics, but of course, plenty of people make a living writing serious and sometimes striking reviews. I'm guessing the root cause of Klostermann's argument is that no great critics have emerged, and by that he means he's never been at a big lit/journo cocktail party and heard anybody say, "You've gotta read THIS WRITER. I could give a damn about gaming, but whoa, s/he writes about games like a house on fire!" Nobody has shown up with that bowl-you-over voice that takes a seemingly alien and marginal activity-- an activity that, like drugs, many in the audience will never even try-- and turns it into a must-read experience.

Instead, tech magazines are digging deeper ruts in fallow soil. Wired's devolving into Cosmo for geeks: It hypes and glosses over tech the way Cosmo turns the most spectacular human experience, the orgasm, into bulletpoints. And who else is out there in the popular press? We know that our readers probably play an Internet-enabled XBox 360 that can pipe movie trailers while they're listening to an iPod and instant messaging their friends on a laptop. But what's the real story-- that we're entertained? We almost need a refresher course in media studies, á la Marshall McLuhan. We should start with McLuhan's quote-- "After more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace"-- and step by step, relearn our relationship to the world.

‘Cause it's only getting stranger from here. On the horizon, we can already see new shifts in our self-understanding with the 3-D virtual worlds of World of Warcraft or, stranger still, Second Life. Men give birth. Gamblers lose at Russian Roulette. Celebrities pretend they're nobodies. And everybody has sex with everything. This isn't a novelty, or a fetish: It's self-psychoanalysis, and it draws on everything from sexuality to art to commerce to leisure. And as we spend more of our lives online, more of our experience of the world takes place entirely in our own heads-- and our imagination is being rewired by computers.

The tech press says we're at a buffet of gadgets and gizmos; but we should be knocking over the table and eating off the floor. We have to strip away the geekery, the gadgetry, and the consumerism, and instead of explaining why this brave new freakshow interests us, we have to understand what it's doing to us. And whoever does that, wins the title of "the next..."

Hunter S. Thompson and gonzo journalism

2009-01-30T17:10:00.000-08:00

By Tim Swan

"We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold." And it was with those words that the work of Hunter S Thompson was introduced to a whole new generation of "Gonzonians". That of course was one of the most memorable lines from the 1998 film, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I first saw the film shortly after it was released on VHS (yes, VHS. The kind you had to rewind before returning, imagine that!), and I instantly fell in love with it. It wasn't long before it was frequently viewed before heading out for a night reckless teenage fun and underage drinking.

It wasn't until 6 months after I first saw the film that I discovered that it was originally a book. I was absolutely ecstatic and immediately hopped in my parents Caravan, and took off to the nearest book store to purchase it. I was absolutely positive that it was going to be a read that would keep me entertained for hours and I couldn't wait. I brought it home and began flying through it as soon as I could. I was not disappointed, it was even more vivid than its on-screen counterpart.

I couldn't put it down, not even for a minute, and before I knew it I had read it front to back in just a few hours. Hunter's writings had a way of doing that, it was just something in the way he was able to describe the surroundings and characters that he was writing about that would keep you reading the whole night through. His work had a certain tone to it, an authenticity, which I feel was attributed to the fact that he lived through the characters he was writing about, and vice versa. It's hard to explain, but his work had a very clear feel, and at the same time it was very opaque, incoherent ramblings that at the same time were incredibly lucid.

I would read his books and there would be certain lines, or even entire paragraphs, that would have me in awe as I read them, "How in the hell did he think to write about this in that manner, using those words? He could describe the most simple situations or surroundings in such a descriptive and beautiful manner, and that was his brilliance.

It wasn't long before I moved onto more of his writings, Hells Angels, The Rum Diaries, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, etc. The way and manner in which he wrote was groundbreaking for the time. By putting himself directly in the situation or subject that he was writing about brought his books that authenticity and feel that was nearly impossible to achieve with any other author of that era.

Whether it was drugs, politics or sporting events, he gave you the real story, as only he could.

Hunter S Thompson had a sense of humor that was second to none among authors, during that time or presently. He was able to inject his own outlandish, frequently hilarious and irreverent thoughts and outlooks into any subject that he was covering. He could make even the driest material readable, and more importantly, enjoyable. I have never been an avid follower of politics, but as I was making my way through his extensive catalog of writings, I eventually came across Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

I thought to myself that if anyone can make the apparent monotony of politics exciting and humorous, it was Thompson. I was correct, he injected the story with life and vibrancy that until then, I didn't believe could be associated with American, or any sort of Political writing(albeit, that is just my simple opinion). That was what I loved about Thompson, it was as if he was looking at a situation from a whole other angle, while everyone else was seeing it from the same, tiresome side. He had a ferocity to his writing style, and that was especially clear when it came to writing on a subject such as Nixon. It made everything he wrote worth reading, and it was always hard to put a Thompson book down.

Although it was frequently his eccentric nature or his fondness for high powered weapons and Wild Turkey Bourbon that gained him attention and notoriety, it was his brilliance and creativity on the typewriter that kept his fans coming back. He was one of few authors that had that sort of appeal. Not only did he have it, he was able to keep it throughout his entire writing career. When Hunter Thompson released a new book, you bought it, and rarely did it disappoint. He was a Doctor of Journalism, and we were his patients, eagerly awaiting our next appointment with his genius.

His influence reached far and wide, not only throughout the writing community but throughout all artistic circles. Unique does not begin to describe Hunter S Thompson, but it is the best description I can think of. He was a unique voice in a chaotic time, and that has endeared him to his legion of fans and admirers, and continues to garner him a whole new generation of dedicated and appreciative followers who wish he was still with us.

Oops! Inmates' escape stopped by light pole

2009-01-29T12:25:00.000-08:00

Two handcuffed men flee courthouse only to end up on the ground.

Associated Press, Thurs., Jan. 29, 2009

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Two prisoners in New Zealand are facing more charges, and major embarrassment over an escape attempt gone bad.

The men were handcuffed together as they fled a courthouse, but apparently forgot that little fact as they ran to opposite sides of a light pole, with predictable results. The men slammed into each other and fell to the ground. End of escape.

Jailers nabbed them as they struggled to their feet.

Their escapade on Wednesday was captured by a CCTV camera at Hastings District Court on New Zealand's North Island.

The two were back in court today, facing fresh charges of escaping from custody.

Bedtime for Gonzo?

2009-01-27T18:26:00.000-08:00

By Andrew Walker
BBC News

The death of Hunter S Thompson has brought a whole raft of tributes to the founder of "Gonzo journalism". But what exactly is Gonzo, where did it come from and how has it changed the face of writing?

"The gig," as Hunter S once so famously wrote, "is finished."

Aged just 67, the often drunken, drug-addled chronicler of the dark side of the American Dream has gone the way of all flesh, by his own hand, in the manner of his hero, Ernest Hemingway.

Obituarists from Wapping to Sydney have hailed Thompson as, among other things, "a great American", "explosive, shocking and frequently funny" and "a supernova of chaos, conspiracy theory and beautifully phrased bile".

GONZO - WHERE FROM?

Thompson credited Bill Cardosa with coining word
He said it was "some Boston word for weird, bizarre"
It possibly comes from the Italian gonzo or Spanish gonso, both meaning fool

And all have spoken of him as the inventor, and ultimate practitioner, of Gonzo journalism, that compelling and outrageous amalgam of reportage and literature, held together by an intoxicating emulsion of drink, drugs and sexual excess.

As a literary style, Gonzo has a number of roots, most notably the so-called New Journalism of the late 1950s and 60s.

Championed by Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Thompson himself, New Journalism blurred the old distinctions between journalism and creative writing.

Lasting legacy: Hunter S Thompson

It was the time of "love-ins" and "happenings", of flower children, surfers and hot-rod racers.

The tone was resoundingly colourful and experimental and, horror of horrors, the writer's own feelings and experiences often formed a cohesive part of the story.

Fellow-travellers also played a role in defining Gonzo. Most notable among these was Terry Southern, satirist and screenwriter on Dr Strangelove, Barbarella and that hippest of all hippy odysseys, Easy Rider.

Southern, whose sunglass-framed face graces the cover of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper album, was scurrilous and frequently pornographic - witness his novel, Candy - and was feted by the New York Times as "the hippest man on the planet".

But where Tom Wolfe politely declined an acid tab in his iconic Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Hunter S Thompson denied himself nothing.

Excess... and then some

As Wolfe put it: "He was something totally new in journalism and in literature."

From now on, all bets were off. The writer became the story. Structure was thrown out of the window, replaced by a shambolic, yet magical, rollercoaster ride of artless hedonism.

This from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls."

Must have been one heck of a picnic.

Tom Wolfe: New Journalism's urbane paladin

The UK had, after a fashion, its own exponents of Gonzo writing, confessional scribblers fuelled by drink, terrified of women and constantly in thrall to the Siren-call of the race course and the bookie.

There was the late, lamented, Jeffrey Barnard, the Coach and Horses' own writer/boozer, and the extraordinary novelist, Julian Maclaren-Ross, the template for Anthony Powell's X Trapnel, whose warning to fellow creative drunks echoes down the years:

"Only beware of Fitzrovia," Tambi said... "It's a dangerous place, you must be careful."

"Fights with knives?"

"No, a worse danger. You might get Sohoitis you know."

"No I don't. What is it?"

"If you get Sohoitis," Tambi said very seriously, "you will stay there always day and night and get no work done ever. You have been warned."

Back in the States, writers like PJ O'Rourke took up the baton of Gonzo. His bitingly waspish works, including the groundbreaking Holidays in Hell, thrilled a generation.

New horizons

Today, though, even O'Rourke looks neutered. The Republican Party Animal espouses the virtues of British Airways in a series of anodyne, if well remunerated, television adverts.

But 33 years after Fear and Loathing, and with technology opening-up new avenues of expression, Gonzo journalism has gone from strength to strength.

Weblogs allow writers unfiltered access to the internet and some bloggers, like the celebrated London call-girl Belle de Jour, have taken the process full-circle, pulling-in lucrative publishing deals.

Films like Supersize Me embrace the Gonzo spirit

On the big screen, Michael Moore is pure Gonzo. Bowling for Columbine, for instance, featured Moore as director, star and protagonist, successfully campaigning for K-mart to remove bullets from its shelves.

More recently, satire, experimentation and polemic came together in Morgan Spurlock's chillingly hilarious Super Size Me, in which he ate nothing but McDonald's products for a month, with predictable consequences.

But not everyone is taken with the idea of journalist as agent provocateur.

The highly-rated US blogger Billmon Billmon recently voiced his disillusion at the genre: "What began as a spontaneous eruption of populist creativity is on the verge of being absorbed by the media-industrial complex it claims to despise."

The truth of the matter may well be that, in its purest form, the only real Gonzo journalist was Dr Hunter S Thompson himself.

To the end, more extreme than the rest, he died, as he had lived; recklessly and defiantly unrepentant.

Let the final words, then, be his.

"If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today.

Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."

The Gonzo Science Files: Skeptics of the Kensington Runestone

2009-01-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

Written By: Jim Richardson and Allen Richardson
Posted: 12/7/2002

Skeptics of the Kensington Runestone:
More on Skeptic #1, Birgitta Wallace

By Jim Richardson and Allen Richardson

(The Kensington Runestone is an artifact unearthed a century ago by Minnesota farmer Olof Ohman. The stone’s inscription tells of an ill-fated expedition to North America that predated Columbus by a hundred years. Long derided by skeptics as a forgery committed by Ohman, the stone’s inscription has been validated and all modern scientific work indicates that it is authentic. For this series, Gonzo Science contacted all the major living skeptics and asked them about the basis for their continued intransigence.

Birgitta Wallace is a writer associated with the Smithsonian Institution who has failed to acknowledge the authenticity of the Kensington Runestone artifact. She holds to this position even in the face of the groundbreaking studies of Dr. Richard Nielsen and Barry J. Hanson, which respectively establish that a.) the language of the stone is authentic and b.) the “expert” skeptics throughout the years have not seriously studied the artifact.

We sent Birgitta Wallace a list that contained every linguistic feature of the Kensington Runestone and specifically asked her which features she believed could not have had a 14th century origin. We asked too that her objections be accompanied by citations that could be independently verified and checked in the linguistic literature. Unfortunately, Ms. Wallace failed to make even one referenceable remark, and provided no citations which could be independently verified – just like every other supposedly serious skeptic we contacted.)

During our exchange with Ms. Wallace about the authenticity of the Kensington Runestone, she wrote the following: “If you are going to do a reasonable evaluation of factors pro and con (regarding) the inscription, you should consider which scholars have considered it a modern fabrication as opposed to those who have advocated its authenticity. Judge for yourself as to whom you would place your greatest trust. If you would need a heart transplant, would you go to a cardiac surgeon or a lawyer for the operation? Unfortunately, medieval Swedish and runology require as specialized knowledge as cardiac surgery, a case that most people overlook. Below I will list some of the specialists who have pointed out the many modern aspects of the Kensington Stone inscription.”

Wallace then listed 27 language/runology specialists who are on record as being skeptical of the stone’s authenticity – the “cardiac surgeons” of her analogy.

To get another perspective on Wallace’s list of 27 specialists, we contacted Barry J. Hanson. Hanson, an expert on the “experts”, has studied literally every word ever written about the stone by each of Wallace’s specialists in his two-volume book, Kensington Runestone: A Defense of Olof Ohman – The Accused Forger. (Hanson actually identifies 32 people who have been “cited as experts and appealed to as authorities” in the century-long fight over the stone’s authenticity.)

Hanson sent us a chart of source documents which details where many of the so-called “anomalous” features of the Runestone have been found in other authentic 14th century documents. He then commented, “If I were to have a heart operation … yes I would want a cardiologist, one who studied medicine in that area. But I’d be very wary of people calling themselves heart docs when in fact they didn’t study that specialty. None of those on Birgitta’s list … even knew of the source documents on the chart you have.”

According to Hanson’s book, of the 32 people commonly cited as experts, “only six have actually published any original research on the language of the Kensington inscription. When the bibliographies of the six are examined it becomes apparent that virtually none of the pertinent source documents that would explain the provenance of the (Kensington Runestone) language were consulted … some confirmation of the (Kensington Runestone) language as medieval comes from Erikskrönikan, written in 1330. Some comes from the Swedish Diplomas (Diplomatarium Seucanum) of which thousands are registered from 1348 to 1375 with dates and places. Some comes from the law codes of the time such as the Vastergotlandic codes from 1325 and 1345. Some comes from the Codex Runicus (1319) or the Codex Bureanus. These source documents do not tend to be found in the bibliographies of the critics.”

The stone’s inscription has plainly been authenticated by the data. The specialists who were unaware of the appropriate data have necessarily been unable to authenticate the inscription.

In her correspondence with us, Ms. Wallace also presented a partial list of people who have argued in favor of the stone’s authenticity over the years. Her point was to demonstrate that these people were not (for the most part) linguists and runologists, and therefore, why should one believe them in this matter? What she fails to mention is the telling fact that of the geologists who have examined the stone, not one of them ever supported the idea of a modern hoax. Every geologist who ever examined the stone stated that it looked like it was carved a long, long time ago - as the inscription itself claims.

Next Week: Skeptics #2 and #3 (on their website, not here)

Recommended Reading: The two-volume Kensington Runestone: A Defense of Olof Ohman – The Accused Forger by Barry Hanson. Available by mail for $43.90 (includes postage) from Archaeology ITM, 3194 Smith Creek Road, Maple, WI, 54854. Also check out www.archaeologyitm.com.

Mayor denies kissing ban, invites all to pucker up

2009-01-21T15:07:00.000-08:00

By Associated Press
Jan. 21, 2009

MEXICO CITY — When you come to Guanajuato, pucker up.

Mayor Eduardo Romero is declaring the colonial city in central Mexico “the kissing capital” of the world to disprove, once and for all, claims that he has banned smooching in public.

The flap arose over an anti-obscenity law that many people believed would fine anyone caught kissing in public. The government denied it intended to ban kissing, but agreed to suspend the legislation so its wording could be reviewed.

Romero unveiled advertisements Tuesday featuring a couple locking lips on one of Guanajuato’s many winding, cobble-stoned streets. They read: “Guanajuato, the kissing capital.”

A local legend of forbidden love gives the city claim to the title.

It tells of a young woman whose father prohibited her from seeing her lover because he was too poor. But the couple lived across from each other in a street so narrow they could lean out their windows to kiss in secret.

That street remains known as the “kissing alley.”

What is Gonzo Journalism?

2009-01-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

Written by Michael Pollick
For "Wisegeek"
copyright © 2003 - 2009

The traditional role of a journalist has often been that of an objective outsider who simply observes and reports a newsworthy event, not an active participant in or instigator of that event. A responsible journalist could still express personal thoughts and other subjective observations, but there needs to be a clear separation between the reporting journalist and the event itself. This journalistic philosophy does not hold true, however, in a radical form of news reporting known as gonzo journalism.

In gonzo journalism, a journalist is free to participate in events and circumstances which may themselves be considered newsworthy. A gonzo journalist can actively participate in a political candidate's campaign without making any effort to appear politically neutral or unbiased. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of gonzo journalism is an almost complete personal immersion into the world a gonzo journalist ultimately wishes to expose or record for posterity.

While a traditional journalist might interview drug dealers or drug addicts for an expose on the local drug trade, for example, a gonzo journalist may actually participate in the shady deals and backroom exploits of a drug kingpin or a local gang. The purpose of gonzo journalism would be to produce a brutally honest or highly subjective journalistic piece based on the real experience of a trained reporter writing from the inside. A gonzo journalist is not necessarily protected from law enforcement efforts, so even the legal ramifications of the journalist's actions could become part of the news story.

Perhaps the most famous gonzo journalist was the late Hunter S. Thompson, a self-styled renegade reporter who frequently wrote pieces for Rolling Stone magazine while living a no-holds-barred personal lifestyle. Ostensibly assigned to cover the 1972 presidential campaign, for example, Thompson instead chose to deviate from the campaign trail and report on his own drug and alcohol-fueled adventures. His book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail has since become a classic example of gonzo journalism.

Critics of gonzo journalism consider the practice to be little more than sanctioned hedonism. Responsible journalists should not take it upon themselves to instigate news items or become completely immersed in the very culture or circumstances they have been assigned to observe. Gonzo journalists are a rare breed of writer, often possessing larger-than-life personalities and a "gonzo" or go-for-broke approach to the subject at hand.

While some reporters may choose to explore "participatory journalism" under the strict guidance and supervision of a superior, gonzo journalists often take it upon themselves to experience the event on a personal level first, then rework their observations into acceptable journalistic form later. While a magazine or newspaper may underwrite some of the gonzo journalist's expenses while on assignment, a true gonzo journalist is keenly aware that he or she is working without a net.

Goofy Gimmicks

2009-01-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

With 3-D re-emerging as a fad, we celebrate the weirdest ways to sell tickets, both past and ... future?

By David Fear
Special to MSN Movies

"A lion in your lap! A lover in your arms!"

So proclaimed Arch Oboler's "Bwana Devil," a torrid 1952 tale of jungle love that would be forgotten in the annals of film history were it not for one crucial fact: It's considered by many to be the first "modern" 3-D movie. Though filmmakers had been experimenting with various stereoscopic projection processes since the 1920s, it wasn't until the early '50s that the 3-D experience we know and love (the cheesy cardboard glasses, the ridiculous "comin' at ya!" scenes featuring grasping sea monsters and gratuitous flying spears) was born. With studios desperately looking to get viewers away from their Xboxes and back into cineplexes, it's no surprise that this vintage gimmick is enjoying a major resurgence. Last year saw 3-D films like "Journey to the Center of the Earth" clean up at the box office, and Lionsgate's 3-D remake of the cult slasher flick "My Bloody Valentine" on Jan. 16 is just one of eight (!) three-dimensional movies set to be released in 2009.

But while 3-D has been one of the most durable gimmicks ever used to put rumps in seats, it's surely not the goofiest. We look back at a few legendary moments in the history of ballyhoo marketing and screen gimmickry courtesy of the charlatans, shysters, carnie barkers and creative types who've trafficked in the business of show.

And just to sweeten the deal, we're not only including a wish list of outrageous stunts and techno-cine-tomfoolery we'd love to see in the near future. We're also presenting this entire article in "WORD-O-RAMA""!, a brand new process patented by MSN Movies in which high-voltage nouns and vivacious verbs will implant concepts of awe and admiration directly into your cerebral cortex. Trust us: You'll read sentences as you've never read them before!!!

You Won't Believe Your ... Nose?

The inspiration: "Polyester" and Odorama

The gimmick: Cinema works its magic by engaging viewers through sight and sound. But for cult filmmaker and provocateur John Waters, two senses just weren't enough. No, the Pope of Trash decided that in order for audience members to truly experience the movies, they needed to smell what was happening on-screen. For "Polyester," his 1981 celebration of camp, the Bard of Baltimore had Odorama cards handed out to patrons when they entered the theater. Then, during the film, a number would flash on the screen; once you scratched the corresponding circle on the card, you would experience the exact same olfactory sensations as the movie's seedy characters. (William Castle, who we'll get to in a bit, tried something similar in 1960 with "Scent of Mystery," made in Smell-O-Rama.) The choices included flowers, pizza and a skunk; as for what the card's No. 2 held in store, let's just say that you kept your fingers crossed that the digit never showed up.

What we'd like to see: Since sight, sound, smell and touch (see Sensurround entry) have all been accounted for, the next logical step is Tasteorama. A four-star chef will cook an audience several delicious meals during the film, so when, say, Brad Pitt or Lorenzo Lamas eats a tuna casserole on-screen, viewers can munch along with the stars. Yum!

"Found" Footage

The inspiration: "Snuff"

The gimmick: The urban myth surrounding the existence of "snuff" films (movies that show real people being murdered) has been circulating for decades, but there's never been any conclusive proof that celluloid atrocities have ever been produced. Enter Allan Shackleton, an exploitation-movie producer who found the perfect opportunity to fleece the public. After one of his grade-Z horror flicks, "Slaughter," failed to draw any business, Shackleton started circulating press releases that claimed this cinematic turkey contained a bona fide homicide. He then sent out faux articles detailing the efforts of a crusader named Vincent Sheehan and an organization named Citizens for Decency, who called the film immoral and depraved. (There was no Sheehan, naturally; oddly enough, a real group known as Citizens for Decency actually did rally against the sight-unseen trash once these articles starting showing up in legit newspapers.) After shooting a new (and obviously fake) ending featuring an actress being disemboweled and renaming the end result "Snuff," Shackleton's 1976 magnum opus packed theaters for weeks straight. This gimmick has never been given an official name, but we're coining it: "Hoax-O-Vision."

What we'd like to see: A movie that comes with an "Auteur-dacity Meter" that determines degrees of directorial repugnancy. Once the meter goes irreversibly into the red, audiences will determine whether the filmmaker gets to keep his head. Literally. Watch out, Uwe Boll and Brett Ratner.

Did the Earth Move for You, Too?

The inspiration: "Earthquake" and Sensurround

The gimmick: By 1974, the market was already becoming flooded (pardon the pun) with disaster movies that put all-star casts through the will-they-or-won't-they-make-it ringer. So when Universal Pictures was preparing to release Mark Robson's 1974 addition to the genre, "Earthquake," the studio knew it needed to bring a little something extra to the proceedings. Luckily, the studio had an ace up its sleeve: Sensurround. For the film's premiere run at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, technicians outfitted the venue with mammoth, bass-heavy speakers that would emit loud rumblings during the disaster sequences. The result was an immersive experience designed to make viewers feel as if the ground were cracking open under their feet as well. The gimmick proved to be successful, if a bit of a liability; a giant safety net was installed directly underneath Grauman's ceiling to ensure that no ornate fixtures fell on filmgoers' noggins, and one unlucky patron ended up with a cracked rib courtesy of the effect's sonic booming. Still, it proved to be effective enough to be used for two more features, the WWII epic "Midway" (1976) and the thriller "Rollercoaster" (1977).

What we'd like to see: The implementation of the "Feel-Around" effect, as demonstrated in the classic sketch comedy "Kentucky Fried Movie" (1977): Every audience member is assigned an usher, who lets him or her experience the movie's more visceral moments first-hand. Watch out for those barroom brawl sequences, or, for that matter, those steamy love scenes!

Battle of the Sexes

The inspiration: "Mom and Dad"

The gimmick: You can't talk about the history of exploitation cinema without invoking the name of Howard W. "Kroger" Babb, a showman who turned selling cinematic salaciousness into an art form. For any aspiring movie marketer who isn't above using a little of the ol' ballyhoo, the job Kroger did to push 1945's "Mom and Dad" on an unsuspecting public should be considered a master class. After cobbling together a cheapie sex-hygiene film that ended with footage of a real, live birth (!), Kroger was able to successfully convince legitimate venues, as opposed to the grindhouses, to show the movie on the basis of its alleged educational value. Then he stipulated two conditions: 1) the screenings would be divided by gender, so that only women were allowed into matinees and only men could attend the evening showings; and, 2) the theaters allow "sex expert" Elliot Forbes to lecture audiences on the importance of contraception during an intermission. (The title of his sermon: "The Secret of Sensible Sex.") Both ploys worked like gangbusters, causing lines around the blocks, boffo box office across the country and, because Kroger kept some of the proceeds from the booklets sold by a legion of nurses at each theater, a hefty profit for the producer.

What we'd like to see: Since Kroger proved that the divide of "Gender-Vision" could actually be a selling point (according to Daniel Faris and Eddie Muller's book "Grindhouse," crowds of men and women would argue over who saw a racier cut), we're curious to see if separating the crowd according to intelligence would cause an equal amount of supply and demand. At the very least, showing a movie in "Intelli-Rama" would mean that smart, mature patrons could sit through a screening without having to suffer through someone else's cell phone conversation.

Shock and Awe

The inspiration: William Castle, Percepto and "The Tingler"

The gimmick: When it comes to mondo-goofy movie gimmickry, William Castle has no peer. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, this director-producer came up with a number of crazy, creative ways to attract audiences to his third-rate horror movies, including: an insurance policy from Lloyds of London against "death by fright" for "Macabre" (1958); pulling a plastic skeleton across a theater's ceiling, aka "Emergo," during a key scene in "House on Haunted Hill" (1959); handing out special "Illusion-o" glasses for sequences in "13 Ghosts" (1960); and setting up a "Coward's Corner" area for viewers too frightened to witness the end of "Homicidal" (1961). But the crown jewel of Castle's conceptual gambits has to be Percepto, his idea for "The Tingler" (1959). While researching the effects of fear on human beings, Vincent Price discovers a small organism that lives in the base of one's spine known as the Tingler. After one of these creatures escapes its host, Price chases the mini-monstrosity into a movie theater. Castle had devised a plan to have certain venues install special buzzers attached to seats that delivered electrical jolts to audience members; at the appropriate point in the film, a number of low-voltage vibrations would treat random filmgoers to short, sharp shocks. In a word: genius.

What we'd like to see: A modern-day remake of "The Tingler," this time with stronger jolts, each triggered by constant BlackBerry typing from rude moviegoers. Hey, we can dream, right?

David Fear is a film critic for Time Out New York. He's also written for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Filter and MovieMaker magazine.

‘Gonzo’: Journalism of fact and fiction

2009-01-15T13:57:00.000-08:00

‘GONZO JOURNALISM’ is a style of journalism which is written subjectively, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first person narrative. The style tends to blend factual and fictional elements to emphasise an underlying message and engage the reader. The word ‘Gonzo’ was first used in 1970 to describe an article by Hunter S Thompson, who later popularised the style. The term has since been applied to other subjective artistic endeavours. ‘Gonzo’ journalism tends to favour style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered. It disregards the ‘polished’ edited product favoured by newspaper media and strives for the gritty factor. Use of quotations, sarcasm, humour, exaggeration, and even profanity is common. The use of ‘Gonzo journalism’ portends that journalism can be truthful without striving for objectivity and is loosely equivalent to an editorial.

The term ‘Gonzo’ in connection to Thompson was first used by Boston Globe magazine editor Bill Cardoso in 1970 when he described Thompson’s The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved, which was written for the June 1970 Scanlan’s Monthly, as “pure ‘Gonzo journalism’.” Cardoso claimed that ‘Gonzo’ was South Boston Irish slang describing the last man standing after an all night drinking marathon. Cardoso also claimed that it was a corruption of the French Canadian word ‘gonzeaux’, which means “shining path”, although this is disputed. In Italian, ‘Gonzo’ is a common word for a gullible person, a ‘sucker’. Another speculation is that the word may have been inspired by the 1960 hit song Gonzo by New Orleans R&B keyboardist James Booker. This last possibility seems to be supported by the 2007 oral biography of Thompson where it is stated that the term ‘Gonzo’ is taken from a hit song by Booker. Yet, this conclusion still says little of why Thompson or Cardoso would use that word and not another. According to a Greg Johnson biographical note on Booker, the song title ‘Gonzo’ comes from a 1960’s character in a movie called ‘The Pusher’. The movie on the other hand seems to have been inspired by a 1956 Evan Hunter’s novel by the same title, so it remains a mystery as to - who first used this word in American slang, and why.

‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream’ followed the Mint 400 piece in 1971 and included a main character by the name of Raoul Duke, accompanied by his attorney, Dr Gonzo. Although this book is considered to be a prime example of ‘Gonzo journalism’, Thompson said that it was a failed experiment. He had intended it to be an unedited record of everything he did as it happened, but he edited the book five times before it was eventually published. Thompson would instigate events himself, often in a prankish or belligerent manner, and then document both his actions and those of others.

Notoriously neglectful of deadlines, Thompson often greatly annoyed his editors because he often faxed articles late, too late to be edited but just in time to make the printers. It is speculated that Thompson’s work going to print unedited due to a late delivery was completely intentional. Thompson wanted his work to be read as he wrote it, in its “true Gonzo” form. “I don’t get any satisfaction out of the old traditional journalist’s view— ’I just covered the story. I just gave it a balanced view’,” Thompson said in an interview for the online edition of The Atlantic. “Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can’t be objective about Nixon.” Historian Douglas Brinkley said ‘Gonzo journalism’ requires virtually no rewriting and frequently uses transcribed interviews and verbatim telephone conversations. ‘Gonzo journalism’ can be seen as an offshoot of the New Journalism movement in the sixties, led primarily by Tom Wolfe, and also championed by Lester Bangs and George Plimpton. It has largely been subsumed into creative non-fiction.

The work of Greg Palast, however, is considered by many to be a revival of ‘Gonzo journalism’. ‘Gonzo’ also occurs when an author cannot remove himself from the subject he investigates. In some cases - such as tornado chasing, wherein most documenting is done by the person driving the car and holding the camera - the ‘Gonzo’ element is inherent. In most other cases, however, it is a deliberate and voluntary choice of the journalist, or the media firm for which he or she works.

Thompson felt that objectivity in journalism was a myth. The term has now become a bona-fide style of writing that concerns itself with “telling it like it is”, not far from the ‘o Fist’, a two-thumbed symbol attributed to Thompson originally used as the slogan for his 1970 campaign for sheriff of Aspen, contains within the image a peyote button, the bud of a cactus plant that has hallucinogenic properties when ingested. The fist is combined with the word ‘Gonzo’, so styled as to form the hilt of a sword. In other contexts, ‘Gonzo’ has come to mean “with reckless abandon,” or, more broadly, “extreme”. ‘Gonzo’ porn refers to pornographic films which are filmed by a participant, and as such have eliminated fictional plot and scripted dialogue and focus on the fornication.

Greater the exposure given to villagers’ problems by ‘Gonzo journalism’ higher is the chance of familiarity in the society. ‘Gonzo journalism’ accelerates or increases the power of expression i.e. the fundamental right of the entire citizen.

It also increases the process of democratisation. In reality the democracy shall be meaningful only when it is strengthened at the grassroots level. For this purpose ‘Gonzo journalism’ plays a very vital role. ‘Gonzo journalism’ must awaken people so that the rural community could be made willing to accept the change and became flexible to adopt new measures in resolving their socio-economic problems. ‘Gonzo journalism’ may also play an effective role in influencing the political elite, bureaucracy and other decision making agencies in order to implement and decide policies with budgetary support in larger interest of rural community.

‘Gonzo journalism’ established a milestone in respect to social welfare by using the voice of the persons belongs from society. Participation of society members in the activities of ‘Gonzo journalism’ is like oxygen for life. Due to its participatory nature it is obvious that the ‘Gonzo journalism’ has had a very considerable effect on journalism everywhere.

Man shot twice in year outside same pizza place

2009-01-15T13:53:00.000-08:00

He's expected to survive second shooting in front of Mass. restaurant.

WORCESTER, Mass. - A 26-year-old Worcester man may want to avoid a certain pizza place — after he was shot in front of the restaurant twice in less than a year.

Police said the man, whose name was not immediately released, is expected to survive three gunshot wounds he suffered in front of the Golden Pizza on Tuesday, after surviving another shooting there in April.

Detective Capt. Edward McGinn told the Telegram & Gazette the man had just gotten a haircut at a barber shop Tuesday when he went across the street and got into a skirmish with a person in front of Golden Pizza.

McGinn said the man was hospitalized after being shot in the legs and abdomen. The shooter fled.

In the April 13 incident, police said three people were arrested after the same man was shot multiple times.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

NO BIZ LIKE SHOE BIZ!

2009-01-12T17:36:00.000-08:00

THERE'S A RUN ON BUSH-THROW FOOTWEAR!

By ANDY SOLTIS, NEW YORK POST WIRE SERVICES
AMAZING FEET: Ramazan Baydan has renamed one of his shoe models "The Bush Shoe".

December 23, 2008

The shoes hurled at President Bush are flying off the shelves - making them the fastest-selling celebrity footwear since O.J. Simpson started a boom for Bruno Magli lace-ups.

Orders for the anti-Bush missiles have been pouring in from around the world at the Baydan Shoe Co., their Turkish manufacturer, company officials said.

The company's president, Ramazan Baydan, said he received 300,000 orders for the brown, thick-soled shoes in the week after journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi flung a pair at Bush's head during a Baghdad press conference on Dec. 14.

That's four times as many of the "Ducati Model 271" shoes Baydan sells in a typical year.

"We've been selling these shoes for years, but, thanks to Bush, orders are flying in like crazy," said Baydan, who is hiring 100 extra people to cope with demand.

Baydan's company has renamed their $40 best seller "The Bush Shoe" and printed advertisements that say, "Goodbye Bush, Welcome Democracy."

In Iraq alone, there were 120,000 orders, compared with sales of 19,000 in all of 2007. The company said there's been strong demand from Syria, Egypt and Iran, and some from Britain and the United States.

A similar sales spike occurred for Bruno Magli after California detectives found bloody footprints from size-12 Magli lace-ups believed to belong to O.J. Simpson at the scene of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Meanwhile, Iraq's Higher Judicial Court said Zeidi's trial will begin Dec. 31. He faces up to 15 years in prison.

The office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last week Zeidi wrote an apology to him and asked for a pardon.

But Uday Zeidi said when he saw his jailed brother Sunday, he was told the reporter was forced to seek forgiveness.

"He told me that he has no regret because of what he did and that he would do it again," Uday said.

He added that his brother told him that in his first days locked up, he believed his family, co-workers and tribe would forever shun him. Guards forced Muntadhar to watch a television channel run by Sunni extremists loyal to Saddam Hussein and claimed it was the only news outlet in the world applauding his act, Uday said.

"They told him, 'Your tribe and your family reject you,' " Uday said.

In fact, his employer, the al-Baghdadia channel, his relatives and other Arabs have hailed him.

Gonzo Journalism Defined

2009-01-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

Gonzo journalism is a style of reporting based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism -- and the best journalists have always known this. True gonzo reporting needs the talents of a master journalist, the eye of an artist/photographer and the heavy balls of an actor. Because the writer must be a participant in the scene, while he's writing it -- or at least taping it, or even sketching it. Or all three. Probably the closest analogy to the ideal would be a film director/producer who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least a main character.

Funny Journalism Quotes - Funny Quotes about Journalism

2009-01-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

Journalism is merely history's first draft.
More funny Geoffrey Ward quotes

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Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.
More funny Arnold Bennett quotes

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I used to get on great with journalists until I married Paul.
More funny Linda McCartney quotes

Late for school, Va. 6-year-old takes family car instead

2009-01-09T20:06:00.000-08:00

WICOMICO CHURCH, Va. (AP) — A 6-year-old Virginia boy who missed his bus tried to drive to school in his family's sedan — and crashed. His parents were charged with child endangerment.

State police said the boy suffered only minor injuries and authorities drove him to school after he was evaluated at a local hospital for a bump on his head. He arrived shortly after lunch, Sgt. Tom Cunningham said.

It happened around 7:40 a.m. Monday on Route 360, about 61 miles east of Richmond.

The boy, whose name wasn't released, missed the bus, took the keys to his family's 2005 Ford Taurus and drove nearly six miles toward school while his mother was asleep, police said.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Virginia | Richmond | Lord | Route | Ford Taurus | Grand Theft Auto | Monster Truck Jam
He made at least two 90-degree turns, passed several cars and ran off the rural two-lane road several times before hitting an embankment and utility pole about a mile and a half from school.

The boy told police he learned to drive playing Grand Theft Auto and Monster Truck Jam video games.

"He was very intent on getting to school," said Northumberland County Sheriff Chuck Wilkins. "When he got out of the car, he started walking to school. He did not want to miss breakfast and PE."

His parents, Jacqulyn Deana Waltman, 26, and David Eugene Dodson, 40, are each charged with child endangerment, Wilkins said. Waltman is being held without bond. Dodson was released on a $5,000 bond.

It was not clear if they had attorneys.

The boy and his 4-year-old brother were placed in protective custody.

"This really is a story of miracles," Wilkins said. "The Lord was with him, along with everybody else on the highway."

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Saving a Squirrel by Eating One

2009-01-07T14:38:00.000-08:00

British gray squirrels are being culled to protect beloved red squirrels.
The New York Times

By MARLENA SPIELER
January 6, 2009

RARE roast beef splashed with meaty jus, pork enrobed in luscious crackling fat, perhaps a juicy, plump chicken ... these are feasts that come to mind when one thinks of quintessential British food. Lately, however, a new meat is gracing the British table: squirrel.

David Azia for The New York Times

A NEW TASTE Gamekeepers like David Wiggins, and others in England, hunt more gray squirrels to save the reds.

Though squirrel has appeared occasionally in British cookery, history doesn’t deem it a dining favorite. Even during World War II and the period of austerity that followed, the Ministry of Food valiantly promoted the joys of squirrel soup and pie. British carnivores replied, “No, thank you.”

These days, however, in farmers’ markets, butcher shops, village pubs and elegant restaurants, squirrel is selling as fast as gamekeepers and hunters can bring it in.

“Part of the interest is curiosity and novelty,” said Barry Shaw of Shaw Meats, who sells squirrel meat at the Wirral Farmers Market near Liverpool. “It’s a great conversation starter for dinner parties.”

While some have difficulty with the cuteness versus deliciousness ratio — that adorable little face, those itty-bitty claws — many feel that eating squirrel is a way to do something good for the environment while enjoying a unique gastronomical experience.

With literally millions of squirrels rampaging throughout England, Scotland and Wales at any given time, squirrels need to be controlled by culls. This means that hunters, gamekeepers, trappers and the Forestry Commission (the British equivalent of forest rangers) provide a regular supply of the meat to British butchers, restaurants, pâté and pasty makers and so forth.

The situation is more than simply a matter of having too many squirrels. In fact, there is a war raging in Squirreltown: invading interlopers (gray squirrels introduced from North America over the past century or more) are crowding out a British icon, the indigenous red squirrel immortalized by Beatrix Potter and cherished by generations since. The grays take over the reds’ habitat, eat voraciously and harbor a virus named squirrel parapox (harmless to humans) that does not harm grays but can devastate reds. (Reports indicate, though, that the reds are developing resistance.)

“When the grays show up, it puts the reds out of business,” said Rufus Carter, managing director of the Patchwork Traditional Food Company, a company based in Wales that plans to offer squirrel and hazelnut pâté on its British Web site, patchwork-pate.co.uk.

Enter the “Save Our Squirrels” campaign begun in 2006 to rescue Britain’s red squirrels by piquing the nation’s appetite for their marauding North American cousins. With a rallying motto of “Save a red, eat a gray!” the campaign created a market for culled squirrel meat.

British bon vivants suddenly couldn’t get enough squirrel. Television chefs were preparing it, cookbooks were extolling it, farmers’ markets were selling out of it and restaurants in many places were offering it on the menu.

Meanwhile gamekeepers, hunters and trappers were happy to know that the meat was being eaten, not wasted. “My lads don’t like to kill an animal if it’s not going to be eaten,” Mr. Shaw said of the hunters who bring him game.

Many enjoy squirrel, however, simply because they like its taste. Mr. Carter said he didn’t know what he was eating when he tried it. But, he said, “at first bite, I thought it delicious.” Patchwork will send squirrel pâté, by the way, in return for a donation to “Save Our Squirrels” — but only within Britain.

Mark Holdstock, a writer and broadcaster specializing in countryside matters, is less enthusiastic, having recently eaten squirrel on the air on “Farming Today,” BBC Radio 4’s iconic program devoted to rural issues. “It’s fair to say I didn’t dislike it,” he said.

Nichola Fletcher, a food writer and co-owner of a venison farm, held a squirrel tasting for Britain’s Guild of Food Writers, finding “their lovely flavor tasted of the nuts they nibbled.” At a later event, however, she found the flavor disappointing, with “a greasy texture and unpleasant taste,” presumably reflecting these squirrels’ diet.

Though squirrel has been promoted as a low-fat food, Ms. Fletcher said that in her experience, “the quality and amount of fat varied from no visible fat to about 30 percent, depending on the season, their age and, especially, diet.”

Squirrel is appearing on more menus, as at Fergus Henderson’s restaurant St. John, in London. Step 1: Shoot or Thaw Squirrel (January 7, 2009) Fergus Henderson, the chef and co-owner of St. John restaurant in London, offers squirrel on the menu “seasonally.” Though the meat is available all year long, it is in the spring, when hunting season is over, that country folk can focus their attentions on controlling the squirrel population. That’s when squirrel appears on St. John’s menu.

Mr. Henderson, who cooks with both poetry and passion, sometimes prepares his squirrels “to recreate the bosky woods they come from,” braising them with bacon, “pig’s trotter, porcini and whole peeled shallots to recreate the forest floor.” He serves it with wilted watercress “to evoke the treetops.”

Other chefs may be less lyrical, but they are no less enthusiastic. The Famous Wild Boar Hotel in Britain’s Lake District serves squirrel Peking-duck style; at Matfen Hall, a grand country house hotel, it is layered with hazelnuts into a terrine; in Cornwall, it can be found baked into the iconic meat pie known as a pasty.

If you want to grab your shotgun, make sure you have very good aim — squirrels must be shot in the head; a body shot renders them impossible to skin or eat. (You want to get rid of the head in any event, as squirrel brains have been linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease.)

Skinning a squirrel is “difficult and unpleasant,” the food writer Leslie Mackley said, adding, “You have to fight to rip the skin from the flesh.”

A. H. Griffiths, who sells squirrel for the equivalent of about $3 per squirrel at the butcher shop in Shropshire that bears his name, added that it is “best left to the professionals.”

“Each squirrel skinned makes the next one easier,” he added. “When you’ve skinned as many as I have, you find the best way.”

Mr. Griffiths is a fan of the meat, likening it to a slightly oily rabbit. “We started selling squirrel a few years ago, after the owner of our local pub bragged about winning a squirrel-eating contest,” he said. Then, he said, the owner “caught a squirrel, casseroled it up, and we liked it so much Griffiths has been selling it ever since.”

One might think that because of easy availability, squirrel would be the perfect meal-stretcher for these economically challenged times, but it takes a lot of work to get the meat off even the plumpest squirrel. (One would make a good main course.) Combined with the aforementioned difficulty in skinning, Mr. Carter said, many otherwise enthusiastic hunters, gamekeepers and chefs “can’t be bothered with it.”

A version of this article appeared in print on January 7, 2009, on page D1 of the New York edition.

Independent Study: Gonzo Journalism

2009-01-03T18:01:00.000-08:00

To observe, to record and to be the fly on the wall; to live, to experience and to probe. That is what gonzo journalism is, I think. I believe it would be easier to explain what e-journalism is than it would be to explain what gonzo journalism is. It is not about the man, although the man was important to it's creation, but about the writing and the lifestyle. It was not the norm and it was rebellious, but it was honest and truthfully and trustworthy despite its fancy word usage. I guess that is why it appeals to me.

I think people are more and more interested in gonzo journalism than they are of regular news media. They are just two distinct styles because regular news media thrives of scandal, deceit and death. But whether it is an accepted form of writing or not is something to be questioned. I know I can write hard news: lead - opening - quote - transition - quote transition - etc., sprinkled with a bit of facts and statistics. Served on an oval 11-inch plate decorated with a generic piece - boring. But like feature writing, gonzo has a different mixing of flavours. It adds a different experience there is an opening, a reflection and symbol. It is roasted, simmered and sautéed into a coordinated display of Iron Chef prowess.

If you have not noticed my independent study was on Gonzo Journalism. I think this type of journalism is a powerful tool to engage, educate and empower.

It can engage the reader by showing them a different perspective of a story told through a unique way that is appealing to many. It is like reading a book or listening to a story and it adds all sorts of visual elements to help engage the senses. Through my pieces I engaged readers the best I could with a lot of imagery.

It can educate people by informing them of the truth and of the facts. Gonzo Journalism still keeps a tight grip on traditional news fundamentals. Despite its colourful language and imagery it is truthful, accurate and accountable to the people. Through my pieces of writing I educated the readers with facts and figures that gave my stories a firm foothold in reality even though they seemed fantasy and gave them the truthful numbers.

It can empower people because it can push them to act or really see an issue. It can make them write a letter to someone for the issues raised in the piece, or against it. I tried to do this by putting some social commentary that would push a reaction button in people. I think I did this best with my social justice issue and homeless people.

Gonzo Journalism has a real place in online news reporting where blogs are the king of the media. The way it is told just needs to be improved.

Blog Talk Radio - The Daily Gregg

2008-10-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

Date / Time: 10/21/2008 5:46 PM

Just what the world and I need...another Internet thing to do

I intend to make this a daily Green and Gregg briefing. To be sure all my cards are on the table so to speak, this daily piece is not authorized by or a part of any other Internet site. I do write at www.GreenPartyWatch.org, as well as at Green Commons, American Chronicle, OpEdNews, my personal blog, Independent Political Report, so one could ask quite reasonably why I would start another site.

I believe that we Greens need people to articulate their perspectives as individuals in addition to representing the Green Party line, so to speak. As has been noted many times, the decentralization value in the Green Party means, for many of us if not most, that state and local Green Parties are free to use the tool that is the Green Party in ways they see as best suited to their situation. No state or local chapter would go out and make recruitment of youth for military service one of their goals, but if a group did do so the rules are flexible enough to allow for other Greens to set up another group that better represents Green Party values from their perspective.

So, here every day you should hear a two minute or less statement, and I'll post it here in text as well, since I know I must read something I have written in advance if I expect people to take the time to listen.

Obviously I will not be doing interviews, but I will continue to do that at Green Party Watch Radio. I think that format works and the audience for GPW Radio will grow if this webcast is a success.

So, grab the text that you can use to make a button for my show at your site and help the program grow. I believe we all will be better off if we get out there and spread our personal vision of a Green future.

This ISN'T Gonzo Journalism - It's Just Gonzo in Iraq, as Usual

2008-10-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

Iraq Attacks Kill 26 as Shiites Mark Eid

If you want lighter, intelligent reading, try here!

by Amal Jayasinghe
Thu Oct 2, 1:32 PM ET

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Twin suicide bombings near Shiite mosques in Iraq's capital killed 20 people on Thursday as worshippers celebrated Eid al-Fitr, which ends the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, officials said.

Another six people were shot dead in an ambush north of Baghdad drawing condemnation from the United Nations.

Security officials said a suicide bomber blew himself up as he was being frisked outside the Al-Rassol mosque in Jadida, a Shiite district of southern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 30.

In the second attack, a bomber slammed his explosives-filled car into an Iraqi armoured vehicle at a checkpoint near a mosque in the nearby district of Zafaraniyah.

The blast killed eight people, including four Iraqi soldiers, and wounded 10 worshippers.

A US military patrol came under a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad's Mansur neighbourhood at midday, the American military said. There were no immediate details.

UN envoy to Iraq Staffan de Mistura strongly condemned the series of "criminal bombings" and described the attacks as "particularly abhorrent."

He said the violence was aimed at men, women and children as they prepared to break their fast and celebrate Eid Al-Fitr, or while on their way on pilgrimage.

Iraqi policeman Ali Abdul Hussein, 33, said the bombing at the Rasool mosque would have been more serious had the bomber made it inside the building.

"I saw a man rushing to the checkpoint just outside the mosque," he told AFP. "I noticed his belt and shouted to my colleagues to stop the man. I also ran towards him but two colleagues ahead of me stopped the man."

Just then, the bomber detonated the explosives, killing the two policemen and sending Abdul Hussein flying. Wounded in the leg, he returned to the mosque after taking victims to hospital.

"If my two friends had not stopped the bomber outside, there would have been many more killed at the mosque," he sobbed.

Mosque security chief Mohammed Borhan, 29, pointed to the sidewalk where the suicide bomber's head landed, face to the sky. It was a few yards (meters) away from where the man detonated his explosives.

Borhan filmed the remains of the bomber. The man's face was almost perfectly intact, with eyes wide open and a hint of bewilderment.

Slippers and shoes of those killed and wounded in the attack were scattered on the roadside.

Six people were also killed when gunmen opened fire at a minibus near Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, a security official said.

Meanwhile, the US military reported that four people had been killed and 15 wounded on Wednesday in a car bomb attack at a mosque in Balad, north of Baghdad, as devotees gathered for prayers.

The latest wave of attacks came as Iraq's Shiite majority celebrated Eid, a day after Sunni Muslims began to mark the end of the dawn-to-dusk fasting month of Ramadan.

Iraq has seen a downward trend in violence since the middle of last year, although bloodshed spiked in March and April during clashes between Shiite militiamen and US-led security forces.

In September, a total of 440 Iraqis were killed in militia and insurgent violence: 359 civilians, 26 Iraqi soldiers and 55 policemen, according to figures from various ministries.

The death toll was little changed from 431 in August.

The first 21 days of Ramadan were the quietest fasting period in the Iraqi capital in three years, Major General Jeffery Hammond, the US commander for Baghdad, said last week.

The period saw just 60 attacks compared with 600 in 2007 and 800 in 2006 -- the year when sectarian violence erupted across Iraq.

Hammond said Baghdad was now witnessing "4.2 attacks per day, 89 percent less than in 2006 and 83 less than in 2007."

"There has been a slight increase of violence in September," he said, adding that this was always the trend during Ramadan. But the rise had not changed the overall declining trend.

Deepak Sarkar's Opinions on Al Quaeda: It's a covert wing of the US, NATO and Israel, using private mercenaries like Black Water

2008-09-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

THIS ARTICLE IS ANYTHING BUT GONZO JOURNALISM. But it largely depends on how you DEFINE the term "gonzo journalism." If by gonzo you mean some truly groovy hellfire from a genuine Indian and Canadian-American dual citizen...read Kolki.

[From the Author of “Poems by Kolki – Absolutely Humane”, a recipe for better world]

Please ignore the lack of good grammar in the below. The native is not a writer or editor at Rainbow Writing, Inc.; he's a political author and poet - for whom English is simply a second language.

[CIA-Central Intelligence Agency, FBI-Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mossad–Israeli Intelligence Agency, MI6-UK Intelligence Agencies, NSC–National Security Council, NORAD–North American Aerospace Defense Command, ISI–Inter-Services Intelligence, RFU–FBI Radical Funmental Unit]

[Abstract: While the US-British-Australian-Canadian intelligence, US Federal Bureau of Investigation, Key Politicians, and Main Stream Media ignored and/or helped breed Al-Qaeda in US-British-Canadian soil before 9/11, they were equivocally prompt to convict Al-Qaeda moments after 9/11 implementation bypassing/shutting all standard intellectual investigation towards the truth of 9/11. Since then the World has been terrorized, countries have been invaded/destroyed, Airport/Airline securities have been heightened costing world Governments dear tax dollars, US/NATO leaders obtained authoritarian power, Islam Bashing fulfilled Evangelical dreams deifying virtual Bin Laden, all in the name of fighting terrorism while NATO expansion has been continuing conveniently! But the only survived suspected hijacker mastermind in US custody Zakarias Moussaoui didn’t have the Bin Laden’s phone number in his diary rather the phone number of US Private mercenary company Black Water! Since 9/11, Al-Qaeda inflicted more damages to the Islamic world than the NATO countries helping evangelical’s control on Vatican and the world. Based on the quotes from US leaders, politicians, then CIA director, FBI counter terrorism expert & translator and actions of high ranking CIA-FBI officials it can be concluded that Al-Qaeda has become the covert wing of US/NATO/Israeli military/intelligence using US/British/Israeli private mercenaries including Black Water. Kolki]

(Between February 24-August 16, 2001): Moussaoui Writes Blackwater Phone Number in Notebook!

A page of Zacarias Moussaoui’s notebook with a phone number for the security contractor Blackwater. [Source: US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division]Zacarias Moussaoui writes the phone number for the private security contractor Blackwater in his notebook. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria District, 7/31/2006 ]

As the US Judge Robertson speaks for the military (the main suspect of 9/11 disaster) and against open democracy by leaving the fate of the Guantanamo Bay detainees to military tribunal burying the truth forever it is time to spell out what Al-Qaeda has become exactly to ensure US/NATO/Israeli global security for supremacy! World citizens must not forget that based on the 9/11 anomalies US military, Intelligence and FBI are the major suspects for the 9/11 disaster on US soil! Thus trying Al-Qaeda detainees under military tribunal is like making the murderer also the Judge of a trial!

Let us start the revelation with statement from Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator, "If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country. And that is something that they are not going to let out. And, believe me; they will do everything to cover this up."

Let us also hear from the Director Col. Robert Bowman of the U.S. "Star Wars" space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions who stated that 9/11 was an inside job. He also said: "If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot—I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they’ve changed them to—if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason!"

I am fully confident upon reading this article fellow Americans and world citizens would vehemently protest against the Military Tribunal and world politicians would think twice before signing any major deal with the current shadow US administration where all major foreign policy decisions are being made in secret disrespecting transparency of democratic Governments! Just imagine, how cold blooded 9/11 perpetrators were that they formed a Secret Government without any knowledge of the elected Senate and Congress that would be effectively running USA as the 9/11 planes were hitting World Trade Centre (WTC) and Pentagon without any Military-CIA-FBI-NORAD interceptions!

The only survivor of the alleged 9/11 plot masterminds Zakarias Moussaoui didn’t have Bin Laden’s phone number in his diary rather he had the phone number of the private US mercenary company Blackwater [Source: US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division]. Blackwater supplies private mercenaries throughout the world including Kosovo/Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq as private security contractors recruiting ex-military personnel and previously trained international militias, highly skilled with explosives and covert assassinations!

It is to be noted that all unproven charges of CIA/FBI/MI6/MOSSAD against Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda always helped the US/NATO/Israeli military agenda tangibly or intangibly including 9/11 and all other attacks around the globe before and after 9/11. This arti cle would prove beyond reasonable doubt that prior to 9/11 Al-Qaeda has been totally converted to US/NATO/Israeli covert wing of intelligence operations using their training facilities and private mercenaries like Black Water! This interpretation is the best educated assumption not just based on hearsay or scholarly work but focusing on the words from horse’s mouth and their actions!

When FBI Radical Fundamentalist Unit Headquarter vehemently opposed search warrant from the FBI Minneapolis field office for the suspected terrorist mastermind Zacarias Moussaoui’s belongings Minneapolis division chief Coleen Rowley will say, “I feel that certain facts… have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mischaracterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons.” She asks, “Why would an FBI agent deliberately sabotage a case? The superiors acted so strangely that some agents in the Minneapolis office openly joked that these higher-ups ‘had to be spies or moles… working for Osama bin Laden.’

Thus, everyone must wait for the final judgement and urge their governments to press United Nations to take the lead for an honest, open and thorough public investigation for exposing Al-Qaeda and the culprits of 9/11 disaster, so that world can live happily ever after!

Let us hear what FBI counterterrorism expert John O’Neill had to say about Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda! In July 2001 O’Neill said, “The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.” He added, “All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden’s organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia .” O’Neill also believed the White House was obstructing his investigation of bin Laden because they were still keeping the idea of a pipeline deal with the Taliban open [Irish Times, 11/19/2001; Brisard and Dasquie, 2002, pp. xxix; CNN, 1/8/2002; CNN, 1/9/2002] He died during World Trade Center demolition on 9/11 while working as the new security chief under the new private owner Sylvester Properties which mysteriously obtained 99 year lease on WTC on July 24, 2001 harvesting 4.2 billion US in profit from the insurers!

Yet in May 2001 the US introduced the “Visa Express” program in Saudi Arabia, which allowed any Saudi Arabian to obtain a visa through his or her travel agent instead of appearing at a consulate in person - “The issuing officer has no idea whether the person applying for the visa is actually the person in the documents and application.” [US News and World Report, 12/12/2001; US Congress, 9/20/2002] An ideal disguise for fabrication of covert operation by the authoritarian intelligences like CIA, MI6 and MOSSAD!

At the same time, warnings of an attack against the US led by the Saudi Osama bin Laden are higher than they had ever been before - “off the charts” as one senator later puts it. [Los Angeles Times, 5/18/2002; US Congress, 9/18/2002] The CIA warned the interagency Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG) that al-Qaeda members “believe the upcoming attack will be ‘spectacular,’ qualitatively different from anything they have done to date.” [9/11 Commission, 3/24/2004; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 259]

Incidentally, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted “New Pearl Harbour” during his inaugural speech in January 2001 who is also one of the signatories of the ‘Project For The New American Century (PNAC)’ where they argued about the requirement for a “New Pearl Harbour” to maintain American supremacy throughout the world. Rich B. of CIA Alec Station who is Vice President Richard B. Cheney, another signatory, also predicted it a week before 9/11/2001. Yet CIA moved all its airplanes and helicopters to Monterey, California, for training and the North Eastern Airforce fighters were sent to Turkey for training exercise leaving Capital and North East unprotected – even lowered the threat level prior to 9/11 so that the perpetrators can setup the remote hijacking and demolition requirements with precision needed to ensure success!

CIA Director George Tenet later claimed in his 2007 book that “a group of assets from a Middle Eastern service” is unknowingly working for the CIA by this time. Out of the more than twenty people in this group, one third is working against al-Qaeda. By September 2001, two assets have successfully penetrated al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. [Tenet, 2007, pp. 145]

Just as a brief recollection of partitioning of India in 1947 for enlightening the reader it is being re-iterated that it was the British Military who formed ISI of Pakistan while CIA was officially formed in USA (1948) with zero accountability and congressional license of covert global hostile activities. The newly formed intelligence ISI of a nascent tiny country like Pakistan had an extensive covert wing for international espionage! Now just imagine why newly formed Pakistani intelligence would need international covert operations just after separating from India?

Well the only logical answer is that ISI became the hub of British covert intelligence outside Britain to pursue shadow Monarchial activities which would be illegal in Britain against existing laws and accountabilities built in the British Parliamentary System! During the same time CIA officially was granted international covert activities around the globe by US Congress in 1948! And we all know CIA, FBI, and MI6 are just allies of NATO expansion since WW II even overtly claiming victory in many James Bond movies!

It is to be noted that it was then ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed who transferred 100,000+ to alleged Muhammad Atta’s Florida account irrespective of who this Atta was who couldn’t speak German (not certainly the framed Atta who had been studying in Germany)! The same ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed visited Washington from September 4-11, 2001 for mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council” as well as meetings with CIA Director Tenet, unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon, and his “most important meeting” with Marc Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

Ever wonder why Pakistan could never sustain democratic Government which can live in peace with its ex-better half democratic India? When then ISI director was visiting Washington in October 12, 1999, Musharaf came to military power dismantling democratic government of Pakistan. It is to be noted that all Pakistani leaders were assassinated whoever dared to make peace with India. That is because peace with India will make ISI transparent to Pakistani citizens and the world that they don’t belong to Pakistan rather an international covert intelligence force which later became Al-Qaeda to protect and expand US/NATO/Israeli and Vatican’s worldwide interest!

Here is a short list of events that led to the official success of 9/11 disaster on US soil with complete knowledge of most responsible top officials and their deliberate efforts to block information flow through normal proper channel keeping citizens in darkness while keeping Al Qaeda attack theme alive spreading rumours using most sophisticated US/NATO/Israeli propaganda dissemination methods and methodology:

September 2000: 90 page Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, is written by the Project for the New American Century. It calls for unprecedented hikes in military spending, American military bases in Central Asia and Middle East, toppling of non-complying regimes, abrogation of international treaties, control of the world's energy sources, militarization of outer space, total control of cyberspace, and the willingness to use nuclear weapons to achieve "American" goals. (Source)

The plan emphasized in Page 51, "The process of transformationis likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." American Free Press asked Christopher Maletz, asst. director of the PNAC about what was meant by the "need for a new Pearl Harbor": "They needed more money to up the defense budget for raises, new arms, and future capabilities," Maletz said. "Without some disaster or catastrophic event," neither the politicians nor the military would have approved.

• January 2001: Bush Installed as US President by The Supreme Court

Bush was appointed to the US Presidency undemocractically and in turn appointed leadership of PNAC to highest levels of Executive branch and Pentagon including Richard B. Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Lewis Libby. Jeb Bush, a PNAC member, helped his brother to win the disputed Florida state as Governor. Bush started executing PNAC plan proposing trillion dollar tax cuts and trillion dollar increase in defense budget which would eveltually bankrupt USA! PNAC leadership in the White House and Pentagon started implementing New Pearl Harbour immediately coordinating with CIA, FBI, NSA, Media, and Military.

• 2000–2001: The military conducted exercises simulating hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets causing mass casualties. One target is the World Trade Center (WTC), another the Pentagon. Yet after 9/11, over and over the White House and security officials said they’re shocked that terrorists hijacked airliners and crashed them into landmark buildings. [USA Today, 4/19/04, Military District of Washington, 11/3/00, New York Times, 10/3/01, more]

• February 13, 2001: The existing system of Interagency Working Groups was abolished

President Bush issued a little-noticed directive that dramatically changed the way information flowed among top Bush administration officials ending all National Security accountabilities. The directive also stated, “The existing system of Interagency Working Groups is abolished.” Instead, Rice would coordinate a series of eleven new interagency coordination committees within the NSC. Professor Margie Burns will later ask rhetorically, “How could the White House ever have thought that abolishing the interagency work groups was a good idea, if security was the objective? Why was so much responsibility placed on the shoulders of one person, Condoleezza Rice, whose [only] previous experience had been at Stanford University and Chevron?” [US President, 2/13/2001; Chronicles Magazine, 1/2004]

• February 2001-March 2001: Withdrawal Of DIA Support Contributed To End Of Able Danger Program

Able Danger was an 18-month highly classified operation tasked, according to Army reserve Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Shaffer, with “developing targeting information for al-Qaida on a global scale”, and used data-mining techniques to look for “patterns, associations, and linkages”. He said he himself had first encountered the names of the four hijackers in mid-2000.

• February 26, 2001: Paul Bremer: Bush Administration Paying No Attention to Terrorism

Paul Bremer, who wasappointed the US administrator of Iraq in 2003, said in a pre-9/11 speech that the Bush administration was “paying no attention” to terrorism. “What they will do is stagger along until there’s a major incident and then suddenly say, ‘Oh my God, shouldn’t we be organized to deal with this.’” Bremer spoke shortly after chairing the National Commission on Terrorism, a bipartisan body formed during the Clinton administration. [Associated Press, 4/29/2004]

• January-March 2001: FBI Told Agent Wright ‘Let Sleeping Dogs Lie’ [They wanted the framing up of patsy’s to go on as they prepare for the execution on 9/11, the New Pearl Harbour]

Kathleen McChesney. [Source: FBI]FBI agent Robert Wright was continuing to protest and fight the cancellation of the Vulgar Betrayal, the most significant US government investigation into terrorist financing. In January 2001, he claimed that his supervisor told him, “I think it’s just better to let sleeping dogs lie.” FBI agent John Vincent backed up the allegation. [ABC News, 12/19/2002]

• March 2001: Regional Expert Sees Continuing Close Ties Between the CIA and ISI

Selig Harrison, a long-term regional expert working at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, said, “the CIA still has close links with the ISI.” Harrison is said to have “extensive contact with the CIA and political leaders in South Asia.” He also claimed that the US worked with Pakistan to create the Taliban. [Times of India, 3/7/2001]

• In April 2001, NORAD ran a war game in which the Pentagon was to become incapacitated; a NORAD planner proposed the simulated crash of a hijacked foreign commercial airliner into the Pentagon but the Joints Chiefs of Staff rejected that scenario as "too unrealistic"[4]

• April 30, 2001: Annual Terrorism Report Said Focusing on Bin Laden Was Mistake

The US State Department issued its annual report on terrorism. The report cited the role of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and noted the Taliban “continued to provide safe haven for international terrorists, particularly Saudi exile Osama bin Laden and his network.” However, as CNN described it, “Unlike last year’s report, bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization is mentioned, but the 2001 report does not contain a photograph of bin Laden or a lengthy description of him and the group.” [CNN, 4/30/2001]

• April 30, 2001: Wolfowitz in Deputy Secretary Meeting: Who Cares About [Bin Laden]?

The Bush administration finally has its first Deputy Secretary-level meeting on terrorism. [Time, 8/4/2002] Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the focus on al-Qaeda was wrong. He stated, “I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden,” and “Who cares about a little terrorist in Afghanistan?” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 30, 231; Newsweek, 3/22/2004]

• Spring 2001: A series of military and governmental policy documents is released that seek to legitimize the use of US military force in the pursuit of oil and gas. One advocates presidential subterfuge and hiding the reasons for warfare “as a necessity for mobilizing public support.” [Sydney Morning Herald, 12/26/02, more]

• May 2001: Bush administration hired Dov Zakheim as the Comptroller of the Pentagon who was the

Corporate Vice President of Systems Planning Corporation which specialized in Remote Control Flight Termination from the ground. He also brought with him extensive knowledge of WTC building.

• May 8, 2001: Vice President Richard Cheney was placed in charge of anti-terrorism training and military preparedness exercises by Bush. This gave him command authority during the 9/11 attacks because as many as nine war game exercises involving military and intelligence agencies were occurring simultaneously.

• May 2001: Medics Trained for Airplane Boeing 757 Hitting Pentagon

The Army’s DiLorenzo Tricare Health Clinic (DTHC) and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic, both housed within the Pentagon, held a tabletop exercise along with Arlington County Emergency Medical Services. The scenario practiced for was of an airplane crashing into the Pentagon’s west side—the same side as was impacted in the attack on 9/11. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. B17; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 23 and 107] Reportedly, the purpose of the exercise was “to fine-tune their emergency preparedness.” [US Medicine, 10/2001] According to US Medicine newspaper, the plane in the scenario was a hijacked Boeing 757. [US Medicine, 1/2002] (Flight 77, that targeted the Pentagon on 9/11, is a 757. [New York Times, 9/13/2001]

• May 2001: Tenet Secretly Visits Pakistan, Had Long Meeting With ISI Director [who eventually sent 100,000+ to alleged Atta’s account in Florida before his week long trip (Sep 4-12) to Washington DC]

Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, a former covert operative and Navy Seal, traveled to India on a publicized tour while CIA Director Tenet made a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with President Pervez Musharraf. Armitage had long and deep Pakistani intelligence (ISI) connections (as well as a role in the Iran-Contra affair). While in Pakistan, Tenet, in what was described as “an unusually long meeting,” also secretly met his Pakistani counterpart, ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed. [SAPRA (New Delhi), 5/22/2001]

• May 23-24, 2001: Rumsfeld, himself a PNAC member and proposer for the need of New Pearl Harbour, Warns of Inevitability of Strategic Surprise; Refers to Pearl Harbor

During a meeting with the House Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that the inevitability of surprise is a guiding principle of the Bush administration’s national security strategy. [US Department of Defense, 5/23/2001; Associated Press, 5/24/2001]

• June 2001: PNAC Dominated Bush Administration Set Up Belgium Based Secret SWIFT Money Tracking System worldwide

With all possibilities this system had been in use not only to track but also to launder money to Al-Qaeda in disguise throughout the world including USA and Britain using 2.3 trillion missing Pentagon Fund supporting Shadow Government agenda of worldwide domination with disruption of normal life and financial system which is obvious in the current worldwide financial turmoil. The question is with all these covert intelligence operations, shadow governments, secret wire tapping, money tracking and laundering where is open free Democracy? Aren’t lawmakers who are quietly voting to keep the illegal secretive system of few alive performing criminal acts in a society of rule-of-law and accountability?

• July 11, 2001: Assistant FBI Director Predicts Terrorist Attack in the US [Source FBI]

At a conference held in Washington, DC, Assistant FBI Director Dale Watson, the head of the Counterterrorism Division, warned that a significant terrorist attack was likely on US soil. He said, “I’m not a gloom-and-doom-type person. But I will tell you this. [We are] headed for an incident inside the United States.” [National Governors Association, 7/10/2001 ; Reuters, 7/12/2001; Newsday, 4/10/2004]

• Mid-July 2001: Pentagon Official Suggests to CIA Director that Al-Qaeda is Just ‘Phantom Enemy’

Shortly after a pivotal al-Qaeda warning given by the CIA to top officials (see July 10, 2001), Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Steve Cambone expresses doubts. He speaks to CIA Director George Tenet, and, as Tenet will later recall, he “asked if I had considered the possibility that al-Qaeda threats were just a grand deception, a clever ploy to tie up our resources and expend our energies on a phantom enemy that lacked both the power and the will to carry the battle to us.” Tenet claims he replied, “No, this is not a deception, and, no, I do not need a second opinion.… We are going to get hit. It’s only a matter of time.” [Tenet, 2007, pp. 154] [The question is if Tenet was so sure why he didn’t go public and to media the way he predicted many Al-Qaeda attacks around the world!]

• July 19, 2001: FBI Director Told Field Offices to Be Ready to Respond to New Attack but Not to Prevent It

Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard held a periodic conference call with the heads of all FBI field offices. This was to bring to light of all the increased threat reporting. However, he did not task the field offices to look into whether any plots were being considered within the US; nor did he tell them to take any action to disrupt any such plots. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 259]

• July 26, 2001: Ashcroft Stopped Flying Commercial Airlines; Refused to Explain Why except not for Al-qaeda;

CBS News reported that Attorney General Ashcroft had stopped flying commercial airlines due to a threat assessment, but “neither the FBI nor the Justice Department… would identify [to CBS] what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.” [CBS News, 7/26/2001]

• August 6, 2001: Bush Told CIA Regarding Bin Laden Warning, ‘You’ve Covered Your Ass, Now’

A CIA briefer went to Bush's Crawford ranch to read the president a briefing called, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" (2 redacted pages out of 11 reported). After the briefing, Bush told the CIA man, "All right. You've covered your ass, now." Bush then went fishing. [They don’t like anymore warnings as they prepare for the big event; also Bush knew CIA’s propaganda against Bin Laden as the military prepared for New Pearl Harbour]

• Early August 2001: Mass Casualty Exercise at the Pentagon Includes a Plane Hitting the Building [Again, ironically, they are not guarding Pentagon but want a plane to hit]

A mass casualty exercise, involving a practice evacuation, is held at the Pentagon. General Lance Lord of US Air Force Space Command, one of the participants in the exercises, later recalls: “[It was] purely a coincidence, the scenario for that exercise included a plane hitting the building.” [Air Force Space Command News Service, 9/5/2002]

• August 15, 2001: CIA Counterterrorism Head Cofer Black: We Are Going to Be Struck Soon

[He didn’t say, ‘we are hitting US soon’; all top officals knew by now whats going on, many cooperating others silenced by fear for life and livelihood; They all accepted this small American sacrifice for big American interests]

• August 16, 2001: INS Agent Presses for Moussaoui Warrant But Blocked by FBI RFU Unit

Immigration and Naturalization Service agent Steve Nordmann, one of the officers who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui (see August 16, 2001), pressed for a warrant so that law enforcement bodies could search Moussaoui’s computer files. He would later write of his regret that they were not allowed to access Moussaoui’s laptop. More details were not known as Nordmann died in a motorcycle accident in 2003 and would not testify at Moussaoui’s trial. [Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 6/28/2003; St. Cloud Times, 9/7/2003] [The search would have exposed Blackwater – Al-Qaeda – CIA link]

• August 16-September 10, 2001: FBI Failed to Inform Own Director of Moussaoui Case

The FBI failed to inform its own head of the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui. It is unclear how this failure occurred. The highest FBI official to be informed of Moussaoui’s arrest was apparently Michael Rolince, head of the FBI’s International Terrorism Operations Section (see Late August 2001), but he seemed to have failed to pass the information on. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 275]

• August 21, 2001: FBI Headquarters Blocked Criminal Investigation into Moussaoui

Dave Frasca of the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) denies a request from the Minneapolis FBI field office to seek a criminal warrant to search the belongings of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested on August 15 as part of an intelligence investigation (see August 16, 2001 and August 16, 2001). [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/9/2006]. A criminal warrant to search Moussaoui’s belongings will be granted only after the 9/11 attacks (see September 11, 2001). The question arises naturally, why? Well, the investigation would have exposed FBI, Black Water, CIA, Al-Qaeda, MI6 and Mossad links that were active for the success of 9/11 and subsequent cover ups;]

• August 22, 2001: Top FBI Al-Qaeda Expert Leaves FBI in Frustration; Misses Important Warnings

Counterterrorism expert John O’Neill retired from the FBI. He said it was partly because of the recent power play against him, but also because of repeated obstruction of his investigations into al-Qaeda. [New Yorker, 1/14/2002]

• August 31, 2001: Transportation Department Holds Plane Hijacking Exercise

[This was the rehearsal to test the actors and players to support the hijacking theory while planes would be remotely hijacked from Pentagon and CIA centres]

According to Ellen Engleman, the administrator of the DOT’s Research and Special Programs Administration, this is “actually much more than a tabletop” exercise, recounting, “During that exercise, part of the scenario, interestingly enough, involved a potentially hijacked plane and someone calling on a cell phone, among other aspects of the scenario that were very strange when twelve days later, as you know, we had the actual event [of 9/11].” [Mineta Transportation Institute, 10/30/2001, pp. 108]

• Mid-August-September 11, 2001: New York Air National Guard Unit in Saudi Arabia as Part of Operation Southern Watch [Military ensured New York sky was safe for remote hijacking and hitting WTC without threat of NORAD and its own patriotic military pilots re-scheduling October 2001 excercises on 9/11]

About 100 members of the 174th Fighter Wing, part of the New York Air National Guard, were deployed to Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, to patrol the no-fly zone over southern Iraq, as part of the ongoing Operation Southern Watch. This was the unit’s second deployment there, its first having been in March 2001. [Post-Standard (Syracuse), 9/11/2001; Post-Standard (Syracuse), 9/12/2001; US Congress, 3/1/2005; 174th Fighter Wing, 12/9/2005] The unit was due to arrive back at Hancock Field at around 3 p.m. on 9/11, … [Post-Standard (Syracuse), 9/14/2001]

• Late August-Early December 2001: Fighters from Langley Air Force Base Deployed to Iceland for Operation Northern Guardian [ As Amercans guarding Iceland and Turkey, no one is there to defend Americans from its own Frankestine mastermind of 9/11]

In late August 2001, two-thirds of the 27th Fighter Squadron are sent overseas. Six of the squadron’s fighters and 115 people go to Turkey to enforce the no-fly zone over northern Iraq as part of Operation Northern Watch. Another six fighters and 70 people are sent to Iceland to participate in “Operation Northern Guardian.” The fighter groups will not return to Langley until early December. [Flyer, 7/1/2003]

• September 2, 2001: Bush Administration Enthusiastic to ‘Take Down Saddam Once and For All’ [One can see why they are quiet about the warnings because they need New Pearl Harbour to justify invasion of Iraq]

• Early September 2001: Suspicious Trading in Reinsurance Companies

[Masterminders cashing in harvesting fruits of 9/11]

It will later be speculated that, around this time, people with foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks short sell reinsurance company stocks that are insuring either or both the airplanes and the buildings involved in the attacks. [Agence France-Presse, 9/17/2001]

• Early September 2001: NYSE Sees Unusually Heavy Trading in Airline and Related Stocks

[Again, Masterminders cashing in harvesting fruits of 9/11]

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later announces that they are investigating the trading of shares of 38 companies in the days just before 9/11. [Associated Press, 10/2/2001; San Francisco Chronicle, 10/3/2001]

• Early September 2001: Sharp Increase in Short Selling of American and United Airlines Stocks

There is a sharp increase in the short selling of American and United Airlines stocks on the New York Stock Exchange prior to 9/11. [Reuters, 9/20/2001; San Francisco Chronicle, 9/22/2001]

• September 4-11, 2001: ISI Director Visits Washington for Mysterious Meetings

[ISI is offshore Mi6 and CIA formed by British general]

ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed visited Washington for the second time. On September 10, a Pakistani newspaper reported on his trip so far. It said his visit has “triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council” as well as meetings with CIA Director Tenet (see September 9, 2001), unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon, and his “most important meeting” with Marc Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. [News (Islamabad), 9/10/2001]

• Shortly before September 6, 2001: CIA Secretly Warns FAA about Imminent, Spectacular Attack from Muslim Fundamentalists [Why secretly? Why not go public so that the country can prepare for it? Well, then the covert plan for New Pearl Harbour enacting remote military hijacking can’t be executed!]

On the morning of 9/11, David Welna, National Public Radio’s Congressional correspondent, said, “I spoke with Congressman Ike Skelton—a Democrat from Missouri and a member of the Armed Services Committee—who said that just recently the Director of the CIA [George Tenet] warned that there could be an attack—an imminent attack—on the United States of this nature. So this is not entirely unexpected.” [NPR, 9/11/2001]

• September 5-8, 2001: Raid on Arab Web Hosting Company Preceded 9/11 Spectacular Event

Terrorism Task Force conducted a three-day raid of the offices of InfoCom Corporation, a Texas-based company that hosted about 500 mostly Arab websites, including Al Jazeera, the Arab world’s most popular news channel. [Guardian, 9/10/2001; Web Host Industry Review, 9/10/2001] Three days after the initial raid, the task force was “still busy inside the building, reportedly copying every hard disc they could find. It is not clear how long these websites remain shut down.” [Guardian, 9/10/2001]

[Just imagine that Top FBI and CIA offcials were preventing searching Zakarias Moussaoui Laptop

in US custody without search warrant yet performing this big search operation copying InfoComCorp databases to aid post 9/11 cover up and propaganda against Islam]

• Before September 11, 2001: Tenet Said to Warn Congress (Congressman Ike Skelton—a Democrat from Missouri and a member of the Armed Services Committee) people about Imminent Attack on the US [Again why not tell the media, why Congress was silent? They all wanted New Pearl Harbour and waiting for it to happen at the cost of American and International lives and destruction! That is why while warning Congress CIA moved all of its planes and helicopters to California, military emptied Air force bases in New York and Maryland to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iceland and president changed NORAD protocol as well as lowered security threat so that FBI Special Forces and Al-Qaeda as mercenaries (Blackwater) can work freely inside USA for the success of the spectacular event]

• Just Before September 11, 2001: CIA, FBI Lack Counterterrorism Resources, and Focus [Imagine when CIA director has been preaching imminent attack for six months and Defence Secretary expecting New Pearl Harbour and Counter Terrorism Tsar is expecting Spectacular event which they all know of] [If they added more people they would have known Al-Qaeda was living within CIA and FBI who they wanted to guard for the cover up to protect real mastermind for the New Pearl Harbour]

• On the morning of September 11, 2001, the National Reconnaissance Office, who are responsible for operating U.S. reconnaissance satellites, had scheduled an exercise simulating the crashing of an aircraft into their building, four miles (6 km) from Washington Dulles International Airport.

• September 11, 2001: Dick Cheney Warned Bush Hijackers Knew Transponder of Airforce One

This is a direct evidence that virtual hijackers were hijacking 9/11 planes locking on the transponders since Vice President Cheney called President Bush in Florida asking him not to come to the White House warning that the hijackers might know the Transponder code for Airforce One.

• September 28, 2001: Bin Laden Denied Accusation for 9/11 Blaming Jews and US Secret Service

I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle [Ummat Karachi, 9/28/2001].

Now let us hear again from ex-FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds regarding MOSSAD agents within US Military and FBI: Edmonds wrote to the inspector general's office in March 2002 when a U.S. military officer and his wife another FBI translator tried to persuade her to work for Mossad - "Investigations are being compromised," "Incorrect or misleading translations are being sent to agents in the field. Translations are being blocked and circumvented." [Washington post, 6/19/2002]

• Up to 200 Israeli agents were arrested and detained in relation to 9/11 including five Mossad agents who were celebrating the World Trade Center job with "cries of joy and mockery." The Justice Department (sic) released all of the Israelis, and the entire matter was made "classified."

• Everyone was rewarded after the success of 9/11 New Pearl Harbour including all PNAC members in Bush team! No one was punished for the disaster that killed 3000 Americans, destroyed WTC and Pentagon due to inaction and/or covert actions of all responsible earning decent salary from tax dollars yet were idle and/or inactive to prevent such attack in broad daylight.

Let us end this article with excerpts from the 2007 book written by then CIA Director George Tenet where he will say, “As a result of the intelligence community’s efforts, in concert with our foreign partners, by September 11, Afghanistan was covered in human and technical operations.”

In the book Tenet also claims by September 11, 2001:

"The CIA is working with eight separate Afghan tribal networks
The CIA has more than 100 recruited sources inside Afghanistan
Satellites are repositioned over Afghanistan
Al-Qaeda training camps are systematically mapped
Efforts are stepped up to closely monitor news about al-Qaeda in the media around the world
Major collection facilities” are placed on the borders of Afghanistan
Other “conventional and innovative collection methods” are used to penetrate al-Qaeda worldwide
Leadership of the FBI [is] given full transparency into the CIA’s efforts.” [Tenet, 2007, pp. 120-121]

Now imagine why a Government with so much knowledge of and cosiness with Al-Qaeda wouldn’t be prepared for a terrorist attack like the September 11, 2001, that would change our way of life forever! Isn’t the answer quite clear that Al-Qaeda has become the covert wing of NATO/Israeli military intelligence! There are enormous data out there to support this case. I was very selective to ensure briefness of this article so that it can retain reader’s interests while not getting lost in the vastness!

Now let us consider the July 7, 2005, London Subway bombing which had many similarities with 9/11 terrorist attack including presence of Al-Qaeda suspect with MI6’s knowledge, lowering security threat level during G8 summit, and use of military grade explosives for the explosions as confirmed by France’s then new anti-terrorism coordinator Christophe Chaboud. In an interview with Le Monde, he announced to the world that he knew "the nature of the explosives" used in the London bombings. It "appears to be military, which is very worrisome," he said, adding: "...How did they get them? Either by trafficking, for example, in the Balkans, or they had someone on the inside who enabled them to get them out of a military base."

Bush-Cheney administration vehemently opposed any public inquiry into unthinkable 9/11 mistry attack on USA that happened with full knowledge of high ranking government, military, intelligence, FAA and NORAD offcials! Following the foot step former Prime Minister Tony Blair said an independent inquiry would undermine support for the security service. Just imagine how government prosecutors spent enormous amount of time and public money to prosecute citizens sometime for minor felonies based on hearsay yet the same governments are unwilling to diagnose the source of the Al-Qaeda virus bringing it under people’s microscope!

US/NATO/Israeli intelligence now spreading the rumour again that Al-Qaeda is regrouping and getting stronger than ever! Of course, without open public investigation of 9/11 this new alliance of covert intelligences has been gaining steam every day encouraging every intelligence on Earth in joining this shadow power and run Government from outside making politicians robots who could only talk about tax cuts, service cuts, tough on crime, and need for more military for war mongering and prisons to silence dissents!

The new Al-Qaeda is equipped with Echelon which can listen to and record/modify all phone conversations, sees/modify all text messaging, can break into any internet firewall to eavesdrop/doctor data for framing up opponents as convenient! It is well funded by Belgium based SWIFT money laundering secret Bank and well guarded by NATO. This Al-Qaeda openly meets for covert brainstorming as Bilderberg, Head Quartered in Switzerland, attended by major media owners (e.g., Graham, Donald E. - Chairman and CEO, The Washington Post Company), Publishing monopoly like Canadian Chapter-Cole-Indigo, Key US Senators and would be leaders, key business executives, lawyers, most members of Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and academic think tanks chaired by one of the worst war criminals in history Henry Kissinger. The Bilderberg Conference 2001 - May 24-27 - Gothenburg, Sweden - was attended by Senator Christopher Dodd (Democrat), Chuck Hagen(Republican), and John Kerry along with most CFR members. Senator Obama’s Vice President selector also attended the 2008 Bilderberg covert conference! Thus it is obvious Obama has to speak for the military and support the covert war-on-terror irrespective of the will of the voters, rather against citizen’s voice and democracy!

Fellow Americans, Canadians, and world citizens are not gaining anything out of this shadow alliance among aristocratic Private Power Bilderberg, covert union of NATO/Israeli military intelligence wings as Al-Qaeda, private mercenaries recruiting ex-military/ex-CIA militias from around the world and media monopoly meticulously glorifying military, evangelism and monarchy. It only helps NATO Constitutional Monarchs expand NATO and monarchy around the world dismantling true participatory democracy of “We the people, by the people, for The People”.

Reference: 9/11 Timeline from official 9/11 commission documents and interviews

Newspapers articles from around the globe

Book by Ex-CIA director George Tenet

Interview with Ex-FBI translator Sibel Edmonds

http://oldamericancentury.org/pnac_timeline.htm

www.historycommons.org

http://stj911.org/ Scholars For 9/11 Truth & Justice

Author: Deepak Sarkar, 844 Royal Oak Ave , Victoria , BC V8X 3T2 , Canada ; Tel/Fax: 250-412-2897; E-mail: kolki@kolki.com; Poetry & Peace Website: www.kolki.com

Segregation in Sixty-Seven

2008-09-20T23:56:00.000-07:00

By Karen Cole

When things were religiously, sexually and racially segregated, to the point of all obscurity, and nothing was real, nothing was right, and the world was upside down - I was not unhappy. This is because I was optimistic and had to maintain a “child’s mood”: overly boisterous and underly depressed. I only wanted to be a typical kid and have fun, but with segregation on, what was “typical?”

I was once at a school where, weirdly enough, racial segregation seemed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread to all of the evil-minded kids who were involved. This group of kids was truly wicked, evil down to the core, but a lot more harmless than they thought they were. Because the Negro girls had total control over our entire yard, and all of the boys were in their own section of the playground.
The black girls were somehow the lead group within the spread out zone map of an egalitarian war. They introduced me to the playground by being in the first section of it. I found out from them that they were superior at jumping rope, being able to do Double Dutch easily, and there was no way I could keep up with them. I couldn’t even do regular jump rope with the white girls, and they begrudgingly let me twirl the rope instead.

Being way overweight and thus unable to do much in the way of sports, I became the fat girl “journalist.” I wandered around the girl’s half of the playground, interviewing every segregated group. There were the black girls who jumped rope like it was going out of style, and the white girls who had to bow to that Goddess of Jumping, the master of the black girls.

I didn’t cause any of the “events” that happened there, I just entered each section of the segregated girls playground, interviewing girls like I was Alex Hailey or something, the ghost writer who helped Malcolm X write his book. The one unfortunate thing; I wasn’t allowed to enter the boys section of the playground, and interview the opposite sex.

I even got my African glasses knocked off when I tried to go to the boy’s basketball playground, which we didn’t have; they had total control of the entire available basketball court. They had a non-racist playground going. We girls had a racist, tallest, shortest, Jewess, Christian, fat girl, sexist segregated playground, and somehow, if it meant something to us that we were evil incarnate, that worked for everyone else . . . but me.

I wanted to be friendly, playful, and good. So I got to interview people instead. Why feel guilt ridden? I had to go to each segregated section of the weirdo playground, interviewing every evil loser queen on it, because the black girls were winning on our Negativity Playground.

As I went through life, I became the Lost Girl Journalist. Yeah, there is now Jeanne Emerson -- is there not? She lives in the Pacific NW and is going to become the oldest female talking head ever. I was never able to become a tall white male journalist. I didn’t make it through the system enough to become a million dollar piece of property.

My story? My life was determined by our Negativity Playground.

First I saw the black girl section, two black girls there, saw them skippin’ rope like sixty double dutch, and said to myself, “I can’t do that, what’s up with that? I know what. There’s a section of the playground I can play in.” I did a limp wrist at them and said aloud, “Ah, tha’s jus’ them,” and moved on to the white girls who were skipping rope. It wasn’t even double dutch, and I still couldn’t handle it. I jumped a teeny bit, and moved on. For I was the fat girl, and there was no such fat girl section on the playground.

But as I moved on, I headed towards the boy’s section, and as I walked toward it, thinking they wouldn’t mind, a white boy with black hair saw me and threw the ball as hard as he possibly could. It was a basketball, and it zoomed straight into my face and knocked off my glasses. I cried, stopped, contained myself, and picked up my glasses. There was no “glasses” girls section on the playground, either. I put them back on and continued, as my part Indian self and part black self woke up, and knew it wasn’t Jesus Christ the Lord. Surely I wouldn’t get anywhere in life. I sighed. I would tell these people something, somehow, but I didn’t know what.

I moved on. Eventually there was the tall girl section. As I had previously exhibited courage, they let me in. Probably the older Catholic girls. They let me in conditionally, to what, I did not know. When I admitted I favored Indians, especially Indian chiefs, they kicked me out. I moved on to the segregated Judeo-Christian -- or mostly Jewish -- or whatever section it was, cottoned to it really being the Jewish section, but you know those Christians, they read both books…I hung out with them and heard this:

Miss Lucy had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Lucy went to heaven
The steamboat went to hello
Operator, give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I’ll kick you in the behind
The refrigerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And broke her little ask me
No more questions
I’ll tell you no more lies . . .

It sounded like art, fiction writing, song lyrics and humor all rolled up into one. And it was being done by evil, leering, lecherous little girls. Who thought that since racial segregation meant something, so did they?

So I added the last lines, already. Which were:

The boys are in the bathroom,
Making chocolate pies.

No one was truly impressed by this. It was the best I could do, I gracefully apologized. Because they were all ready to go to Viet Nam too soon.

Then I had to wander, being the only fat girl, to the little kids section of the playground. It was a tree in a well. The roots were lovely, mysterious and intertwining, and it made it hard to walk around in down in the tree pit. The little kids were all having an easy time walking around in there. I sighed, decided to leave, and found out how hard it is for a fat girl to climb out of a pit. The Pit of Hell of the Babies. Ygdrasil, from the old Nordic legends.

And finally another fat girl, an all white one, found me and made fun of me. I was not all white. I was picking up the chestnuts with a bag and she said they had always been doing that before, it was passé, and I had not invented anything new. I kept picking up the chestnuts.

Just as I finished doing this, the school bell rang, and I had to go back inside. And be told I could become the President of the United States, or maybe go to Viet Nam, enter combat, and kill people. Or be killed.

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.