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Mescaline's a hell of a drug

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Chi City 81, Dec 30, 2006.

  1. Chi City 81

    Chi City 81 Guest

    I was just reading Kingdom of Fear, Hunter S. Thompson's last real book, which I got for Christmas (my original copy has vanished). HST wrote this on Sept. 12, 2001. Pretty prescient, IMHO. I'm taking the time to retype it verbatim, because I couldn't find it online.

     
  2. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    Wow ...
     
  3. ifilus

    ifilus Well-Known Member

    Mick O'Regan: Could I take you back to September 11th. What I'd really like to know is your reactions. And I know you said you were writing a sports column for ESPN when the planes hit the towers, but could I get you to tell that story of when you found out about it and what you were doing and what your reaction was?

    Hunter S. Thompson: I had in fact just finished a sports column for ESPN. Here it is: "It was just after dawn in Woody Creek, Colorado when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City on Tuesday morning. And as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant compared to the scenes of destruction and other devastation coming out of New York on TV."

    Mick O'Regan: You went on to say in that article, which I have in front of me, that "even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States." Do you think that the event completely transformed the way in which Americans see themselves and their own vulnerability?

    Hunter S. Thompson: No, the event by itself wouldn't have done that. But it was the way the Administration was able to use that event. Even use it as a springboard for everything they wanted to do. And that might tell you something. I remember when I was writing that column you sort of wonder when something like that happens, Well who stands to benefit? Who had the opportunity and the motive? You just kind of look at these basic things, and I don?t know if I want to go into this on worldwide radio here, but ...

    Mick O'Regan: You may as well.

    Hunter S. Thompson: All right. Well I saw that the US government was going to benefit, and the White House people, the republican administration to take the mind of the public off of the crashing economy. Now you want to keep in mind that every time a person named Bush gets into office, the nation goes into a drastic recession they call it.

    Mick O'Regan: It seems a very long bow to me, but are you sort of suggesting that this worked in the favour of the Bush Administration?

    Hunter S. Thompson: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I have spent enough time on the inside of, well in the White House and you know, campaigns and I've known enough people who do these things, think this way, to know that the public version of the news or whatever event, is never really what happened.

    (August 2002)

    Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn't always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He'd been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: "They're gonna make it look like suicide," he said. "I know how these bastards think . . ."

    (Toronto Globe and Mail February 26, 2005)
     
  4. Chi City 81

    Chi City 81 Guest

    Good find, ifilus. I'd never read that before.
     
  5. Yes, by the way, it is.
    Or so I am told.
     
  6. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    Yeah, it really took a lot of rubbing of the crystal balls that day to forecast what was on the horizon.
     
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