white rich dudes lose their minds, world over, shocker.
i am not an unreasonable man. i can understand why the parents, friends, and hey even most compatriots of some kidnapped young men would feel like bombing the shit out of those they thought responsible. i can even understand why the US would veto a resolution calling for the release of the kidnapped men and the end of violence in the region. i can just about comprehend why the US would want to give Israel a week to play with it’s missiles before calling for a ceasefire. and i can understand that for every individual involved in the arab-israeli war, the weight of precedence on their shoulders and their own pressing individual interests are much more keenly felt than the obvious need to abandon tactics that have been killing people and destroying countries for over thirty years with no discernable achievement.
what i can’t understand is that for thousands of yanks gathered together in Washington, the recent bloodbath around the israel-lebanon border is a welcome affirmation of their mystical scriptures which they believe prophesises that God’s people will create Israel in order to fuck shit up for dirty foreign unbelievers, culminating in a world war, cue anti-christ, jesus christ, Armageddon. yeah, it’s his idea:
this is john hagee. apparantly, when you look like that, being one of the highest-paid televangelists of 2001 is no compensation.* he has to take it out on the poor morons who believe his peculiarly fire-and-brimstone flavoured brand of hokum. 40 million of them are right behind him, by his count. i can’t quite repeat it without exploding with incredulity, so here is how the BBC summed it up:
His latest book, Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World, interprets the Bible to predict that Russian and Arab armies will invade Israel and be destroyed by God.
This will set up and confrontation over Israel between China and the West, led by the anti-Christ, who will be the head of the European Union, Pastor Hagee writes.
That final battle between East and West - at Armageddon, an actual place in Israel - will precipitate the second coming of Christ, he concludes.
There is no clearer cry for help than predicting imminent Armageddon and supporting the arms trade to the country you believe to be causing it. shame he has to lose out the weeks most hilariously perverse award to the charming inhabitants of this next photograph:
I’m not sure if it’s the 18,000 attentive pairs of ears at his Church each week, or the warm fuzzy glow of the TV cameras that have skewed Mr Hagee’s perception, but I can’t help but think my chances of having a rational conversation with the Klansmen in pink are monumentally greater than me getting on with Mr Hagee. His considered views on a swift, well-executed, plutoniom-fuelled planet-ending solution to the middle east crisis are available at the ever-reliable ArmageddonBooks.com. I for one will be heading straight there, drooling with excitement to see how the great man smooths out this particular philosophical crease:
Hagee skillfully unveils the reasons Islam and Israel cannot dwell peaceably together as he paints a convincing picture explaining why Christians must support the Holy Land…
Jihadbooks.com is still currently available.
*i don’t know what the needles are like round his way, but i’d be worried…
[…] it can be informative to pick up on a phrase that the media is currently overusing and analyse it. lawson picks up on ‘disproportionate’, subjects it to his high-powered analysis and conclude that the vagaries of parliamentary democracy permit firing rockets onto villagers you have commanded to evacuate their homes. at the time of writing 400 lebanese and 42 israelis have died in this conflict. lawson argues this is ‘proportionate’, because of the nature of the threat to israel and the prevalence of fanatics within hezbollah. now everybody got fanatics. but to even begin analysing this situation in terms of what ratio of deathtoll is supposedly acceptable, well i’d rather turn my putrid carcass over to a mcdonalds processing plant. even accepting the sickening concept of ‘just war’ and ‘offensive defense’, whether military action with a supposedly humanitarian goal is proportionate can only be judged by whether it is effective in it’s goals. how many rockets we can justify after they fired two rockets at us is logic that the densest playground bully knows, deep down, is flawed. and starting a war you can’t win, which makes your previously unpopular enemy stronger and has less chance of getting back your missing kids then a missing ad on a milk carton, well, A for effort and Z fucking minus for delivery. […]