Posted on 06/17/2011 7:55:44 AM PDT by Bed_Zeppelin
SO many people in France believe that the world is about to end that a government agency today alerted the country to the risk of mass suicides by converts to prophesies of imminent Armageddon.
Natural disasters, the internet and French fears of economic doom are lending credence to predictions that the planet will self-destruct on December 21, 2012, said Miviludes, the government body that monitors cults and suspicious spiritual activities.
There have been 183 false predictions of the end of the world since the Roman Empire collapsed and these are multiplying with new technology and a global climate of fear, it added.
In the US, doomsday radio preacher Harold Camping received global publicity by predicting that the Rapture would occur May 21. When the day passed uneventfully, Camping offered a new date, October 21, for the end of the world.
The 2012 prediction, based on the end of the 5000-year Mayan calendar, has taken root around the world but nowhere does it seem to have been as widely embraced as France, The (London) Times reported.
The government is worried about a rush of converts to Bugarach, a hilltop village in the southwest that is destined to survive judgment day, according to internet rumours.
Miviludes chairman Georges Fenech visited the area between Perpignan and Carcassonne last week to be briefed by the police intelligence service and local officials on the gurus, disciples, magicians, healers and others who have arrived to await next year's expected Apocalypse. The village, which is said to be a haven for UFOs, was besieged by Armageddon tourists on Monday, the Pentecost holiday.
Mr Fenech, a judge and former lawmaker, dismissed the prophesies as a "hodgepodge of bad astrophysics" but added that Apocalypse fever is no laughing matter.
He recalled "the horror of the dramas which cults have caused in recent years with their doctrines that provoke extreme anxiety."
The most recent involving France was a series of 74 suicides in the late 1990s in France, Switzerland and Canada by devotees of the Order of the Solar Temple.
The fascination for Apocalypse theories fits with the mood of gloom that has engulfed France over the past decade. Opinion polls regularly highlight the country as one of the most pessimistic in the world.
2012? Pah... according to Hollywood, armageddon can be averted by the acting skills of John Cusack... how limp and apocalypse is that?
“Armageddon tourists”. Well... now there’s a term I can’t say I could have predicted.
Oh sure...That worked out so well with the Bush clan...
2 years after that disaster, tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs, hours slashed, lost homes, lost careers, investments decimated, lost businesses, retirement pensions destroyed, heath benefits gone, etc etc...8 years of that made American citizenship all but pointless and our borders now resemble a lawless war zone.
Bring it on?
Riiight!
The only dopes they roped, were the American people.
mass suicides by converts to prophesies of imminent Armageddon.
Well that will just leave that much more water and air for the rest of us thank you. Might even help their traffic problems.
Those crazy French!....always the first to give up!
Zappa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWFlD-rs7jc
“Just make sure you do it right the first time
‘Cause nothing’s worse than a suicide chump
...and we’re all gonna be so sorry when we find out you are dead..
Don’t wanna mess your face up
Or we won’t know if it’s you
Oh, there’s just so much to worry about
Now what you gonna do?”
Indeed. To the last knife, club, rock or baseball bat. To the last bullet. To the last man.
To the last.
Those who would think themselves our Overlords should be aware of that if they are not already. They mistake our resolve at their peril.
Sure, let’s compare our cult mass-suicides, Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate, with theirs. Is America going to come out favorably?
We have our own 2012 craziness here: some of Jared Loughner’s ranting seemed to be about this, and what sense I could make out of it was that he believed the beginning of 2011 was the actual beginning of 2012. So it’s to be commended that the French are taking this seriously.
And here also, Camping is really looking for lawsuits to recover money donated to his church, isn’t he? Maybe he’s been confusing his own death with the death of the world, or rapture, or whatever he’s calling it. Soon after his predicted date came and went, he had a stroke, seemingly ending his preaching. Maybe this October date is something he intuitively knows is near his own end.
Mega LOLs!!
For some time I’ve held that China will start a major war just to, um, balance the gender ratio there.
Your post invokes a sobering thought.
The fastest way to reduce population and supercharge an economy is war; the only way to resolve the >$100T unfunded obligations, short of default or hyperinflation, is to terminate the obligators and push the taxable economy into overdrive.
The Left needs a war. A big one.
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