McKeen - Outlaw Journalist - HST - Comment

On my weekly travels, I walk past an old, used bookstore. Outlaw Journalist - The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson sat in the front window for three weeks. It's a hardcover displaying a background of the American Stars and Stripes with an image of Hunter in his signature aviator sunglasses driving in a car with a pistol pointed in the air. The book begged to be purchased. This particular bookstore is open on the weekends. I made a memorable train trip on the 3rd week on a Saturday to hopefully to buy the text. It was there in all its glory. It has turned out to be a first edition.

What a find and what a read. 

The text opens with the news of Hunter's unexpected death. Like his literary hero, Hemingway, Hunter shot himself in the head. McKeen never focuses on the writer's suicide but takes the reader on a narrative ride about the Gonzo journalist and his bizarre life. Hunter became a Rebel with a Cause.

I first became aware of Thompson in college. Hells Angels was my first introduction to his work. I became one of his hardcore fans who would read anything he published, including his grocery list. 

As the book suggests, you either loved him or hated him, and there was no middle way.  

Mckeen takes us through Hunter's life from his beginnings, love of reading and writing, loves/ relationships, and lifelong crack at fiction. 

The irony is Hunter's journalism was a mixture of fact and fiction/drama, with the writer as the main protagonist. 

This loosely defines Gonzo Journalism.

At the start of Hunterr's political journalism, he found his muse: Richard M. Nixon. 

Anyone who has read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 will read the most scathing, creative descriptions of a president that any independent journalist today would ever get away with...and from many perspectives, Nixon represented to Hunter the actual end of the American Dream.  In many ways, he was right. 

It was a nightmare for any editor working with Thompson. He despised deadlines. 

Finally, reaching national and international celebrity didn't work so well for the man. However, the money allowed the writer to write on his own terms.  

Seeing what "journalism" has become today, that is corporate stenographers vying for status in the establishment that is currently filling our minds with BS, reading about a true American who never pulled any punches in the political arena, using a style of writing that captured the American imagination is stunning. (That's why I support independent journalism.) 

Again, our times have changed, where uttering the "wrong" pronoun, for example, will get you drawn and quartered in the public square. We have become a species of self-absorbed wimps. Hunter S. Thompson's work would never have seen the light of day in the present time. This is shameful.

This text is available because most people like the truth with a little entertaining fiction. 

William Mkeen has given us a look into the mind of an alcohol-drenched, drug-induced genius/madman, An old Southern gentleman, who made it a point to shake as many trees as possible, pushing the limits of the Constitution. Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech. 

Excellent biography. 

Assange - Hypothetical Protest - a Thought Game.

 

The Assange case is finally reaching a conclusion. On the one hand, he will be extradited to the US and put on trial in a kangaroo court filled with spooks and weapon manufacturers under the antiquated Espionage Act, where there is zero due process. He will certainly be found guilty and thrown into a dark hole where he will be forgotten. He can also come home to an Australian prison where he'll receive proper Health Care. As the current Prime Minister said, "Enough is enough" because this case must be resolved. 

In the meantime, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, lectured the Australian parliament, telling lies about Assange. He said his publications may have enabled our enemies to kill and capture American lives. At least, he said, may have placed our assets in danger. I guess Blinky Boy didn't read the memo. The Pentagon reported that the WikiLeaks publications resulted in no deaths or endangered any American or allied assets. Similar to most politicians and leaders of the Security State, he blatantly lied. 

After watching and reading about Niger and how they basically told the US and France to piss off, the US war pig and neocon, Victorian Nuland, traveled to Niger to persuade them against the recent coup. This American "diplomat" failed and left with her head in her hands. This got me thinking. 

What if Australia made a stand over the Assange case? 

Australia has been America's closest ally, next to the UK, since the end of WWII. We have followed them into at least 80% of their "conflicts" around the world, beginning with Korea. What if we told the US to bugger off unless they release Julian Assange? What would the all-powerful bully boy of the planet do to Australia? 

If I was in power, I'd list what Australia would do if they continued prosecuting an Australian citizen who was merely doing his job as a journalist/publisher.

1. All US military basis, including their black sites, must be shut down and moved out of the country in 90 days. 

2. All American spooks will be found and injected from the country.

3. Australia will remove our membership in the five eyes network of intelligence agencies.

4. Australia will remove our membership from AUKUS. 

5. The American embassy will be closed down.

6. All weapon deals, including the multi-billion nuclear Submarine deal, are now null and void. 

7. All trade deals with the US will stop.  

8. Australia will remove all its military personnel from US bases worldwide. 

This is only the beginning. 

If you do not release Julian Assange from UK custody, these actions will come into effect immediately. 

A thought game, of course, but if Australia had any backbone, the government would disconnect from the American empire, and the world would be a different place entirely.

Dangerous? Yes. Standing up to the world's bullies is necessary for real democracy to continue to exist. 

One can only speculate on the ramifications and response by the US Security of State. 

The US depends on Australia, including Japan and South Korea, amongst other countries, to maintain its strong presence in the Pacific Rim. For Australia to do something like this would be unprecedented and reveal to the world that US hegemony is not the only game in town. 

When one considers what these sociopathic, warmongering assholes have done to Julian Assange, also considering the threat to Freedom of the Press, something drastic needs to occur. 

This was merely a 'thought exercise,' a what-if movement of thought. 

Our PM is right, "Enough is enough." 

Free Julian Assange. 

1950's Montreal, and Kurt.

 

A meaningful talk with mother. As she is 92'. Her memory is fragmented today, though spot-on in her early life. 

She loved my father.

My mother left her middle-class, somewhat privileged life to travel to Montreal, Canada. Something unheard of in 50's Melbourne. Unfortunately for them both, my mother got pregnant with me. Their relationship changed; from there, as two young Australians, their adventures had only begun. 

Montreal in the 50s' was a different place. Post WWII, migrants from war-torn Europe moved to any safe place...anywhere. 

My father made a friend from East Berlin. 

The boy's name was Kurt. The boy was raised in the "Hitler Youth" in Berlin. He believed his fatherland, because of WWI, was unduly punished. The term 'Patriotic" for young Kurt would be an understatement. He loved his country. 

Kurt looked like Hitler's image of a pure Arian: blond hair, strong body, and handsome. 

My mother and father lived a somewhat bohemian lifestyle. Their friends were jazz musicians, artists, and political refugees. 

My father met Kurt in a dive bar. As my family has always done, we take in strays, and Kurt was welcome in their one-room apartment.

Kurt managed to get a job as a waiter in a posh restaurant. He later obtained a flat (thanks to Dad)  a flat right above my parents.  

From tales about Kurt, before my father passed, loved the young German. Kurt would play German songs at 4 am, and his footsteps sounded like he was marching. He could hear Kurt singing in German. 

Kurt was homesick. He wanted to go home. My parents and other friends in the apartment complex pooled their money, so Kurt could go home. My father watched his plane disappear towards the east. 

About three months later, my father received an urgent telegram. 

"Please, I need the fare to come back to Montreal." 

It sounded urgent. 

Again the people in the apartment complex gathered as much money to spare - just enough to get Kurt back to Montreal. 

My father met Kurt at the dock. 

They hugged, and Kurt said, "Bill, my home will never be the same. My home is gone."

Both found the nearest bar and continued to drink into the morning. 

My mother was pregnant again with my sister. Dad had to go where the work sent him. 

Kurt and Dad corresponded for some time. The letters slowly faded. 

Before my father passed on, he'd talk about Kurt, a good soul with strong beliefs. 

My father was Jewish. 

Murakami - 1Q84 - Comment.

 

This is the most extraordinary novel read this year. To quote a cliche, a real page-turner, all 1318 pages, keeping the reader riveted from start to finish. The novel touches on many themes, including multi-universe theory, assassination by way of vigilante justice; sex, food, love lost and regained; cults and religion, mystery, and murder. 

Murakami is certainly an original author. In most of his novels read so far, cats always play a role in the story. In 1Q84, there's a story about "cat town." A man jumps off a train in a remote part of Japan, entering a well-kept town that is devoid of life. He decides to remain and sleep in the tower of the town's church. Once the sun sets, cats of all shapes and colors appear and gather food, pushing carts of supplies and repairing buildings. At one point, they smell a human man but never find him. Once sunrise, they disappear completely from the town. The man stands at the train station waiting for it to arrive, but it whizzes past him, where he is stuck forever in "cat town."

The story primarily centers on two characters: Aomame and Tengo. Aomame is a thirty-something sports trainer. Her side job is working for a wealthy dowager, who takes in battered women due to domestic violence. Because the authorities are useless in punishing these sadistic powerful men, she hires Aomame to murder them, making it appear like they've had a heart attack. Both Aomame and the dowager feel totally justified in killing these sadistic men. 

Tengo is a mathematics teacher at a cram school and a budding writer. He is pulled into a scheme by his publisher to ghostwrite a novella written by a mysterious 17-year-old girl. He re-writes the novella, and it wins first prize and becomes a best seller. The story is about a little girl who meets the "little people" who create what is called an Air Chrysalis, a womb-type structure made from string captured in the air. Once the novella is published, both Aomame and Tengo believe they've been transported to another dimension, where everything is the same except there are now two moons. 

There is a spiritual connection between Aomame and Tengo. Both attended the same primary school and once they hold hands, that connection remains even though they have never seen each other for twenty-five years. 

The 17-year-old girl was once part of a secret cult that exists off the grid. We come to realize that this cult and the so-called 'little people' are real in this dimension, and the publication of the book exposes their existence, causing strange events to happen. 

The dowager wants Aomame to assassinate the cult's leader because he has Congress with 10-year-old girls. He must be stopped, and Aomame is assigned the task. 

Murakami traps the reader in the mystery of the dimension of two moons and the relationships between all the characters. The writing style, in translation, at least, is elegant and descriptive. Through the reading process, Tengo and Aomame become real, three-dimensional beings, and the reader wants both of them to solve the mystery and be together again. 

Please don't let the size of the text, 1318 pages, put you off from reading the novel. It moves like a top thriller, retaining the reader's attention until the end. 

A beautiful novel.