On the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month ...

[iamdrgonzo]

On the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month ...
Laying Down Arms
By PETER LINEBAUGH

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the Great Powers of the World signed the armistice laying down arms after four years of the bloodiest war in history. That was 1918.

Now, we call it Veteran's Day.

What caused the armistice was the refusal of soldiers to fight. They refused 'to go over the top' anymore. In Russia, France, England, Italy they refused to participate in the slaughter which had begun in 1914.

What we learn from Armistice Day is that the soldier is the front line of the peace movement.

Sailors and soldiers mutinied against the war, turning their arms not on so-called "enemies," namely brother soldiers from across the world: instead, they turned their arms upon the officers who otherwise sent them to the butchery of the trenches or ordered them to a freezing death in battles at sea.



No more wars no more lies not one more son or daughter dies.

Please click link for full story:

http://www.counterpunch.org/

[Cuchulain]

Huzzah!

Love the Kerouac quote, btw. Great avatar, also.

[iamdrgonzo]

Thanks Hunter S is one of my all time favorites as is old Jackie boy.

It's a shame that Hunter decided to check out when he did, IMO he couldn't stand to bear witness to the coming fear and loathing in America.

Here are a few HST gems:

"We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer."
—"Extreme Behavior in Aspen," February 3, 2003


"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile—and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep."
—The Great Shark Hunt, 1979



"There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die."
—Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s, 1988

[Cuchulain]

Here are a few HST gems:



I really miss the crazy bastard. At the risk of derailing your thread, here are my two all-time favs:

The wave speech -
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

and, of course, his eulogy for his old pal Tricky Dick -
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/graffiti/crook.htm

It's always good to see a fellow HST fan

-Selah-

[iamdrgonzo]

At the risk of derailing your thread,


How can you derail the derailed?




It's always good to see a fellow HST fan



It is indeed. I miss the old coot he most certainly was a one of a kind practicioner of gonzo eccentricity. His power, his raw energy transcribed into word are sorely missed.

[hippifried]

Thomson was only 8 or 9 years older than I am when he died. I find myself just a tad resentful of this "old coot" shit. Y'all're on your way, if nobody shoots ya first.

Buy & wear a poppy.

[iamdrgonzo]

Thomson was only 8 or 9 years older than I am when he died. I find myself just a tad resentful of this "old coot" shit. Y'all're on your way, if nobody shoots ya first.

Buy & wear a poppy.

I thought I was dead once turns out I was in a crap-hole called Diego Garcia

[russtafa]

what a fucking hippie

[hippifried]

what a fucking hippie
Absolutely.

[Cuchulain]

Absolutely.

Ahh, the good old days...