Saturday, November 29, 2008

Living Voices: THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION


And now, gentle people, a gently-performed song about the end of civilization....not that it was ever so civilized. Religious people have always devoutly gone out to murder other people, simply for not sharing the same view of an imaginary friend. It's just that these heinous incidents are coming with a lot more frequency.
The two people in the photo were among the over 150 destroyed by religious terrorists two days ago.
It was a familiar message; Muslim maniacs or Islam assholes killing complete strangers, by way of declaring God is Great. All around the world, from London and Spain to India and America...these Middle Eastern monkeys are emigrating just to blow things up and gun people down.
The legendary Brigitte Bardot has actually been fined for speaking her mind on the subject of immigration. Her countrymen don't know the meaning of free speech, nor the threat she exposed five years ago in her book "A Scream in the Silence." Of the “Islamicization of France”, she declared: "Over the last twenty years, we have given in to a subterranean, dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration, which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own."
Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, not yet 30, came to Mumbai to be charitable and decent. They presided over Nariman House, a joyous, open, honest place where anyone was welcome to share a meal, pray or rest. They went to a foreign land to be part of a kindly outreach program. They came up against Islam-Muslim fanatics who had an outrage program...the slaughter of defenseless people. The terrorists found it very easy to storm into the rabbi's building...and neighboring hotels that housed unarmed tourists and business people.
In America in the mid-60's, a call for change was made non-violently by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and on the radio, by such men of Jewish heritage as Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs. They were joined by Christians old (Pete Seeger) and new, including P.F. Sloan, who wrote "Eve of Destruction," a hit for Barry McGuire and covered by Anita Kerr's "Living Voices."
There's something unsettling about a middle-of-the-road choir handling "Eve of Destruction," but in this world gone wrong, their rendition can be interpreted in many ways. Were they harmonizing over a melody and ignoring the words? Or were these lambs all too certain that there was nothing to do but sing...and await the slaughter?
EVE OF DESTRUCTION

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