 |
|
RELIGION All hail the US Christian right (actually don’t) The US Christian Right: The dispensationalists or millenarians aka American Christian right believe that at the "end of time", ie, now, Jews will return to their ancestral home — hence the CR's "Christian Zionism". After the return "12 times 12,000 of the tribes of Israel" will convert to Christianity. Then comes the "rapture" when all "true Christians including these newly saved Jews" will be taken bodily into heaven. After that comes the battle of Armageddon and, essentially, the wiping out of those remaining - hence the CR's long opposition to nuclear disarmament as an attempt to "frustrate the will of God", because God "has said that the world will be destroyed by fire, ie, by nuclear war." Those killed will go directly to hell; included in this list are nominal Christians such as Episcopalians, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics as well as Muslims, Buddhists, unconverted Jews, etc. "Extreme dispensationalists" believe that this train of events will not take place until the Jewish temple is rebuilt — and you all know where that will be. The Israelis know all this of course and they've said that they'll reexamine their options when Jesus returns; in the meantime they're pleased to take all the assistance they're given by the CR. I take comfort in the fact that far fewer than 144,000 of the tribes of Israel have converted to Christianity — hence delaying this horrendous sequence of events sine die. This is not the belief of a small minority; their leaders claim 70 million adherents although I suspect that's somewhat high. It's the religion of my (early) youth which I left after enlightenment at the age of 10. It's still the religion of most of my relatives who love me and are pained by their certain knowledge that I'm headed to hell. © JA |
|
"Can't
find the bog? |
|
SEPTERROR
11 UPDATE If one thing’s certain today, as the new ‘millennium’ unfolds (will it ever last that long?), it’s that humanity is on a road to nowhere. September 11, Big Brother, Tony Blair, The Unions, Corporate Responsibility, Paedophiles, Fly Me To The Fucking Moon… Names so dumb and pointless that they might as well be signposts in the Sahara Desert. Nothing, nowhere, nobody. This new millennium certainly has got a lot to live up to. But what’s really happened lately? Not a lot. In fact, so much hasn’t happened lately that we’d be better off inventing a new way of talking about ‘it’. September 11, for instance. It didn’t really happen. We imagine it did, but it didn’t. No, really, it didn’t. If you think I’m being facetious then don’t just take my word for it, ask anyone. They’ll tell you that something like that couldn’t have happened. Big Brother didn’t happen. Not just once. Over and over and over and over again. Big Brother didn’t happen so predictably that at one stage I seriously considered putting money on it — and I never gamble. What about The Unions? (note how all these non-events have capital letters.) Surely what they do makes waves? Do me a favour! Paedophiles? A thoroughly non-happening bunch, particularly when they’re sticking their cocks up the arses of the kids they abduct prior to strangling them, stripping the bodies naked and burying them in woods on the edge of town. And so on and so forth… Nothing happens — or rather doesn’t — quite a lot these days. So frequently, in fact, that even the days have a job registering an impact. If any proof were needed, I have this vague recollection of some filthy cunt accosting me in Leicester Square at some point in my adult life (I must have been an adult because I wouldn’t have had the strength to knock him out had I been a child — although, of course, they do say that angel dust gives a man the strength of ten men, although I’m not sure what effect it has on children) for a ‘spare fag’. I don’t carry ‘spare’ fags, I told him, just the ones I’m going to smoke. But not being able to remember what time, day, week, month, year it was, when I think about it now I get this weird impression that it couldn’t have been me at all. It couldn’t have happened after 1975. Anyone knows that, because that was the last time something did happen. Some people might claim they don’t remember, or that they were on holiday and missed it, or that they don’t believe it happened. But these are the sorts of people who always predict that things won’t happen, and then when they do deny they ever said they wouldn’t, even though they refuse to admit whether or not things actually have. Like the boss who tries to bribe you with a pay rise or ‘perks’ (not to fuck you) to let him fuck you, and then insinuates to the rest of the staff that you did it when you didn’t, or that you didn’t when you did. Either way you can’t win. But let’s forget the two-faced fuckers. Because when things really happen there’s no two ways about it. You just know. Take 1975, a fairly happening year as far as non-events go. General Franco, The Unions (again! — where wouldn’t we be without them?), British Leyland, The IRA, The Usual Fucking Suspects… But there was also something out of the ordinary about 1975, something really quite ‘big’. So ‘big’, in fact, that there were two of them (that’s the thing with events, you wait for ages and then two come along at once). Two events in one, if you like.
First, there was Cambodia. On 17 April, following a three-and-a-half-month siege, the capital Phnom Penh surrendered to the Khmer Rouge: ‘We enter as conquerors,’ they declared in their first radio broadcast from the capital, ‘and are not here to talk about peace with the traitors of the Phnom Penh clique. They are only fit for hanging.’ Then, 13 days later, as if to remind the world that it wasn’t dreaming, Saigon surrendered to the National Liberation Front as its tanks knocked down the gates of the presidential palace. 11 marines were air-lifted off the roof of the US embassy. That was the last thing that happened. Two countries, two wars, two victories. And there the comparison ends. After 30 April Cambodia and Vietnam might just as well have been at opposite ends of the universe as victorious communist peoples in the global struggle against imperialism. Some might say that it wasn’t much. After all, 15 years spent fighting for the ‘free world’ and it had to come down to this. Eleven marines being air-lifted off the roof of the US embassy. Followed by 27 years of nothing. A valid point, perhaps, but then again let’s not get too carried away. At least it was something. How often do 15 years go by with something happening at the end of it? That’s longer than a lot of kids manage to stay alive. And some people get to live at least five or six times as long with nothing to show for it. Despite the fact that the temptation to opt for something over nothing is always overwhelmingly strong, personally I’m not so convinced. Not that I’d look a gift-horse in the mouth, you understand, especially if it came in the following guise: my ex-boss + secluded alley + crowbar. It’s just that most of the time the ‘something’ in question just isn’t worth the hassle (that cunt never did carry any cash around in her handbag). Unless we’re talking about a completely different type of something. Surely something, like a crowbar to the head or a knife in the back, teaches people a lesson? What goes around comes around, right? Here lies the greatest irony of all. Having endured aeons of nothing, when something eventually does happen people will always refuse to believe that it happens for nothing. Especially if it happens to someone. Princess Diana’s death wasn’t really the pissed chauffeur’s fault, but proof of an MI6 assassination plot (I still reckon the butler did it). No sooner was her glamorous lifestyle unceremoniously slammed into a concrete pillar at 70mph than the masses wanted justice. And what did they get? Elton John’s Candle In The Wind. Oh, and Earl Spencer’s public lecture on morality. How about this for a lesson? The US military spends 15 years fighting a war in Vietnam that it cannot possibly win, and today stands poised on the brink of entering into another protracted war… that it cannot possibly win. Some lesson. (Mind you. Having said that the US army always was a bit like a premier league football team that couldn’t hit a barn door from 30 paces. So what does it do? It blows up the barn!) Some people have short memories. But most people just don’t want to forget.
|
 |
