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Not this long ago, a bad news bearer prepared you by putting a hand on your shoulder and saying, "You'll have to remain strong."
The bad news bearers has changed into the daily newpaper. It does not prepare you for shocks any more. It throws you direct into the urn which reeks and will reek more and more (the urn= our planet, Rev of Ares XIX/15), facing which the powers, religious, political or economic, tremble more and more in their sleeves (XIX/16). The modern world, a miracle of technology, is going on the blink precisely under the weight, rattling, juddering and leaks of its own technology, which is devouring it alive.
Refinery

This morning the paper brings only bad news, except the 80th birthday of Elisabeth II with a begonia-colored hat. The US automotive industry is declining: Ford reports a $1,2 billion loss and General Motors a $323 million loss for the first quarter of the year. The situation keeps worsening in the Middle east, in Iraq (an insoluble political deadlock), in Afghanistan. The relations between Iran and the Western countries are getting more strained. It's not definite, at all, that Prodi swapping places with Berlusconi is favorable for Italy. The visit paid by China president Hu Jintao to George W. Bush is turning sour in Washington DC. In Nepal, the non-unlikely transition from the king to the maoists, whose guerillas have spread their ideology, would not help matters in the country. In France the political leaders reach sky-high disapproval ratings: 70% of the French are discontented with Chirac, 73% with de Villepin. And the price of oil is rising, rising...
An oil barrel costs more than $74 now, will cost $80 soon, may well be reaching $100 in the near future. It's China, whose expanding industry is in enormous need of oil, that is bidding higher than ever against other countries. She is tempting the oil producers with promises to pay similarly enormous prices. As China pays out in salaries and social expenses far less than we Westerners pay out, it has got large available funds for energy, money which we are going to lack, instead. "You're wrong," some tell me, "the government will reduce the taxes on gas and fuel." They will do so for sure, but this will not avoid the oil shortage (a few European countries have already had gas ration coupons printed), because the oil reserves will not increase as quickly as the oil requirements will in China, Asia and even Africa one of these days. In any case, if the government deduct less taxes from energy, the citizens will be granted less benefits, less schooling, less public facilities and less oil (which is to be paid, anyway). In other words, we will have to pay for oil one way or another. What's more, this won't improve matters for the jobless.
Things actually are much more complicated, but a news flash is just a news flash. A good way of cutting short this post consists in reminding that, in the late seventies, erudite analysts, who had studied The Revelation of Ares, gave the sort of wise laugh sagacious men give and told me, "Your so-called revelation heralds quite a lot of disasters. They usually guarantee a book a fine success, but they belie the economic reality." Things were rather going well in 1974, I admit. Thirty years later, we have to recognize this Word's extraordinary propheticality and, therefore, the reasonableness of its appeal for a radical change of the world (Rev of Ares 28/7).