For those of you who don't get the title, it's a song from the British post-punk group "The The" from the late 80s. I was well into them whilst doing my A levels (UK national exams you do at 18). They were that sort of band. They wrote the theme song for the rightwing US 'anti-terrorist' blogosphere 15 years before it had been invented ("Islam is rising/the Christians mobilising/the world is on its elbows and knees/its forgotten the message and worships the creed.") in the same way that Ronald Reagan's team thought that Bruce Springsteen had written "Born in the USA" for Reagan's re-election campaign - i.e. they didn't listen to all the words.Anyway, I digress. Mike sent me the rather natty photo at the top, mainly I think because a) I'd asked him to and b) so he doesn't lose out to Marion who has become in a week first a journalist, and now a photo journalist. It's of the "International Christian Embassy Jerusalem" (ICEJ) down the road from him in Jerusalem. I know someone at Turku University who has literally written a book on Christian Zionism and their apocalyptic worldviews and saw her make an excellent presentation on Jerusalem's role in all this. They struck me as utter nutters; completely mad. But when they start influencing the US Congress you have to take them seriously. Anyway Mike says the ICEJ always seems empty except for the gardeners, but they are easy to find on the internet. He pointed me towards this document where they attempt to explain why they aren't as crazy as everyone thinks they are. This is at least honest, but after a skim read I can't say I'm convinced. Purely by chance linked on another blog I came across this collections of postings from a Rapture Ready website collected by Harper's Magazine. Mike had said in his email of ICEJ: "I believe [they] support Israel as a way to advance Armageddon. Sometimes I think they know something we don't." The people quoted on the Harpers website definitely think so!
BTW, the final verse of Armegeddon Days goes like this:
If the real Jesus Christ were to stand up today
He'd be gunned down cold by the C.I.A.
Oh, the lights that now burn brightest
Behind stained glass
Will cast the darkest shadows
Upon the human heart
But God didn't build himself that throne
God doesn't live in Israel or Rome
God doesn't belong to the Yankee dollar
God doesn't plant the bombs for Hezbollah
God doesn't even go to church
And God won't send us down to Allah to burn
God will remind us what we already know
That the human race is about to reap what it's sow
Hmmmmm....
I've had that song running through my head for 2 weeks now! Eerily appropriate at the moment.
ReplyDeleteAnd that line from the opening track - Oh children, you've still got a lot to f***ing learn!
All too true.
Simplistic lyrics by a composer who can't come to terms with the need to use justful violence in dealing with totalitarian religionists.
ReplyDeleteIt is 17 year old pop song KGS, I wouldn't read too much into it. I like your idea of "justful violence" though, but isn't that also what "they" say when they do it to "us"?
ReplyDeleteIts immaterial what "they" think, anymore than what the Facists thought about Jews during the 30's. Its what "we" think that matters most. "WE" deem facism/intolerant Islamism as a threat, and something worth defending ourselves from and defeating.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that its 17 yrs old doens't detract from the fact that its overly simplistic. If only intolerant/fanatics felt the same way....but then, that's what makes them intolerant fanatics....they can't be reasoned with, any more than Hitler could be persauded that Jews were not a threat and sub human.