Hunter S. Thompson's ashes to be fired from cannon

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The ashes of the US writer Hunter S. Thompson are to be fired from a tower the height of the Statue of Liberty in a ceremony at his Colorado home on Saturday befitting his eccentric and controversial life.
The actor Johnny Depp will fire the cannon to spread the ashes of the author of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", who shot himself dead on February 20 at his home near Aspen, Colorado.

Thompson was 67 and had been in failing health.

Depp, who appeared in the film version of "Fear and Loathing" paid for the construction of the wooden cannon for the ceremony that Thompson had always said he wanted. He played Thompson in the movie and became a close friend of the writer.

Thompson said in a 1978 BBC documentary that he wanted the cannon send off, prompting family and friends to start planning the event soon after he died. Saturday will be the six-month anniversary of his death.

"I think he had a brilliant imagination and this (funeral) was something of a fantasy," Troy Hooper, associate editor of the Aspen Daily News, said.

About 300-350 friends and relatives are expected to attend the private ceremony on the grounds of Thompson's home in Woody Creek, just outside of Aspen, the posh Colorado mountain resort.

Thompson's ashes will be scattered from the cannon on a tower topped by a double-thumbed red fist -- the symbol of Thompson's "gonzo journalism" -- just as the moon rises over the area, Thompson family spokesman Matt Moseley said.

The Kentucky-born Thompson created "gonzo" journalism -- a form of story telling where the author is part of the story in the 1970s. But besides his creativity, he was also known for hard living.

"He'd be drinking all the time. In the morning he'd pour a glass of scotch, smoke a cigarette, eat devilled-eggs and go from there," Hooper said.

One of Thompson's famous lines covered all the vices. "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they're always worked for me."

Fans of the writer hoping to get a glimpse of the ceremony will be disappointed, according to the Pitkin County sheriff's office. Private security will keep spectators away and no one will be able to see the event from the road, a spokeswoman said.

And they probably will not even be able to hear Jim Ibottson of the "Nitty Gritty Dirt Band" who will play one of the group's most famous recordings "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" just before the tower goes off.

After the solemn ceremony, friends and family will proceed to the bar to trade reminisces of the American icon until the wee hours of the morning, just like Thompson would have wanted.

In fact the 5:00 am close off might come up a little short of what the writer would have arranged. "Kind of early, isn't it?" Hooper asked in true Thompson style.
SOURCE

 

what?!! i didn't know that. that's insane...i'm reading his book now... Fear and Loathing in America...

 

Great. More publicitity for that lying gutless hack.

He's dead already let's move on.

 

How was he a lying, gutless hack?

 

I while ago I heard a strange rumor, how there is a group called Global Elite, a government Controlled orginization which controls all the currency flow coming threw America, and all other countrys or something like that, and that Hunter S. Thompson was writing a book about them. And Apperently the government didnt like that, and need to make sure that book was never published...

 

I read a few theories about his death being a murder and that he was working on a book exposing a child sex ring and the WTC attacks. Sorry about the cut and paste job being such a mess but conspiracies are always interesting.












Posted August 15, 2005 08:30 PM August 15, 2005 08:30 PM
CONFIRMED: Hunter S. Thompson WAS Writing eXpose Articles on 911 WTC Demolitions and Washington DC's Pedophile-Sex-Rings

Today, Alex Jones interviewed Toronto Globe and Mail journalist, Paul William Roberts, confirmed that his recent article, Alexander Pope in a prose convertible (Saturday, February 26, 2005, Page F9), WAS NOT SATIRE.

Hunter Thompson was working on WTC collapse story before mysterious sudden death - Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Toronto Globe and Mail February 26, 2005: 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.

Hunter S. Thompson ... was indeed working on such a story.

Now check out this February 25 Associated Press story about Thompson's death. Sounds a lot like a professional hit with a silencer: "I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and he did it. I heard the clicking of the gun," Anita Thompson told the Aspen Daily News in Friday's editions.

She said her husband had asked her to come home from a health club so they could work on his weekly ESPN column...

Thompson said she heard a loud, muffled noise, but didn't know what had happened. "I was waiting for him to get back on the phone," she said.

(Her account to Rocky Mountain News reporter Jeff Kass is slightly different: "I did not hear any bang," she told Kass. She added that Thompson's son, who was in the house at the time, believed that a book had fallen when he heard the shot, according to Kass' report.)

Mack White sums up the questions well: Thompson's family says he was not depressed, nor was he in enough pain to kill himself. In fact, by all reports, he was quite happy. He was talking on the phone to his wife, getting ready to work on his column, when he decided it would be wise to kill himself, so that he could go out (we are told) while "still at the top of his form," even though this would mean not finishing his column or his expose on 9/11 (potentially the most important thing he would ever write)



zeronewmark
Member

Posted August 15, 2005 08:31 PM August 15, 2005 08:31 PM
Via LibertyThink.com - Check out this short partial transcript below and this audio file (link below) from Thursday's Alex Jones show. The audio clip has material not in the transcript. Jones' sites may or may not plan to post more complete audio.

ALEX JONES: We're talking to a renowned journalist and writer, Paul William Roberts. Wrote a story for The Globe & Mail up in Canada where he talked about Hunter S. Thompson before he died mysteriously a few weeks ago, saying he believed the government may have been involved in 9/11, and he was concerned. He lived basically in a little armored compound... now they're saying he committed suicide.

But Paul has also interviewed people like Saddam Hussein; has written on the subject -- just this whole global empire...

CALLER "Scott from Texas": I was just wondering if you guys might be able to clear up something I heard through the journalist Sherman Skolnick. He is reporting that another story or book, I don't remember exactly which, that Hunter S. Thompson was working on was about this gay prostitution ring in the White House and supposedly that was another touchy topic that he brought out, and the whole...

JONES: Had you heard that from Hunter?

PAUL WILLAM ROBERTS: Yeah, I had heard that quite a lot from Hunter. It goes back to Kissinger, I believe.

JONES: Wow.

Now that's a big confirmation. Now for those who don't know, We have Washington Times articles from 1989, you know -- 'underage call boys in the White House', and so this is serious . .. Hunter was working on that?

ROBERTS: Yeah, in fact Lyndon LaRouche published some stuff about that. And although, you know, a lot of his material was not that trustworthy, in this particular case there were a lot of sources cited and there was no lawsuit. And where there's no lawsuit you can be almost guaranteed that it's true.

CALLER: And I'm wondering if that might not be a hotter issue otherwise, because you get into the Jeff Gannon case and the whole gay prostitution and that's a national security issue.

JONES: Well, Skolnick is saying that now, we're talking about some of the fake reporters, and we know that ... again I haven't confirmed that part of the story but i'd like 2 get some conf on that

CALLER: And also it's interesting too because it dovetails with Jeff Gannon possibly being the leak that leaked the story about Valerie Plame...

JONES: Well let me just add this. I mean, we have the New York Post: 'Top gay porn star services moguls at Bohemian Grove... I mean I have Parade magazine articles, Spy magazine articles from the 80s where, as I said they bus in the gay prostitutes like Beluga caviar for our "Christian conservative" leaders... And is that what Hunter S. Thompson was on to?

ROBERTS: He certainly knew all about that and I believe had written about it. I don't know wheher there was a book in the works, but he certainly had published columns on it...

JONES: Well it certainly looks pretty suspicious. Man let me tell you.

[LATER IN THE PROGRAM]

CALLER "Thomas in Colorado": I never met Mr. -- Dr. Thompson myself, but we had a muutal friend and I'm still friends with this guy and through this mutual friend, I passed on to him about a year ago some of your vidoes. So Dr Thompson watched your videos, I know this for a fact and through my friend I heard that he was impressed and he said something to the effect, "Yes, that's the way it is" or "That's the way things are."



Posted August 15, 2005 08:31 PM August 15, 2005 08:31 PM
NY POST..PAGE 6

WAS Hunter S. Thompson's mysterious death really a suicide?

There are some serious irregularities surrounding the demise of the
gonzo author, who was found shot to death in the kitchen of his Woody
Creek, Colo., ranch on Feb. 20, and local cops seemed to have done a
lackluster job of investigating.

Police reports obtained by the Rocky Mountain News note that cops
arriving on the scene heard shots being fired, that Thompson's son,
Juan, was allowed to be alone with the body, and that there was
something odd about the gun Thompson supposedly used to kill himself.

Before his death, Thompson seemed in good spirits and was not known to
be depressed. And considering his long-winded style, the absence of a
note seems strange - he'd typed only the single word "counselor."

There were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, only an "earwitness" -
Thompson's wife, Anita, who was on the phone with him at the time and
who later drank scotch with the corpse. Her account of the incident is
inconsistent: She alternately has said that she heard a loud, muffled
noise and that she heard nothing but clicking.

The behavior of Juan, who was in the house at the time of the shooting,
also was unusual. Pitkin County Deputy Sheriff John Armstrong said that
when investigators arrived on the scene they heard shots, but Juan
assured them he had merely been firing off a salute to his dead dad.
Investigator Joseph DiSalvo also let Juan enter the kitchen alone and
drape a scarf over the body.

And in his report, Deputy Ron Ryan noted the semi-automatic Smith &
Wesson 645 found next to Thompson's body was in an unusual condition.
There was a spent shell casing, but although there were six bullets
left in the gun's clip, there was no bullet in the firing chamber, as
there should have been under normal circumstances.

DiSalvo said he did not check the gun, adding, "I think a bullet from
the magazine should have cycled into the chamber" unless there was a
"malfunction." A spent slug was found in the stove hood behind the
body.

Conspiracy theorists make much of the fact that Thompson had been
working on a far-fetched story about the World Trade Center attack at
the time of his death.

As Canada's Globe and Mail reported, Thompson 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 foundation.