As a quick way to have broad contact with the outside world, I subscribe to the BBC daily email which has several one liners on what’s happening in any given part of the world. You get to choose which regions you wish to have these one-liner updates and you have it pretty much first thing in the morning in your inbox, everyday. It’s a great way to know what’s going on and if you want the details, you just click on the link at the end of that one-liner. You get to choose which sports you want to stay in touch with as well, down to the club or team you want to stay on top of. So, I more or less know for example, on a very high level (ie without the details), that the Vatican has said aid to Amnesty International should be curtailed to cut down assisted abortion. I also know Saha and Smith have both said they wished to remain at United and fight for first team appearances, and that the US has again said something about its currency and China’s role in it. You got to hand it to the BBC/British – they’ve been at it for easily 10 years now and I have subscribed to it for almost as long.

Now that we’re here in Melbourne, I have found this daily email service particularly necessary, as the local newspapers, radio and television can be rather parochial. You’d get a 10-page spread on Aussie Rules football, down to the meaningless statistics (which the Americans are more known for) of something like the goal drought the St Kilda team is experiencing this season in comparison with the goals they have scored in the past 3 seasons. You wont however, have more than half a dozen paragraphs on the G8 in Germany and hardly anything on the recent street demonstrations in Turkey against the government for its Islamic bent. You also will have little on the heat wave in Pakistan or the landslides in Bangladesh. I’d bet you’d get plenty on last night’s State of Origin rugby league match between Queensland and NSW (the banana benders won that game, my interest in rugby league to be blamed on my uni days in Sydney).

One region I constantly subscribe to is the middle-east. I have heard, a long time ago, that that region is the clock for world history. I imagine it being a sun-dial which has a screaming device which would absolutely go off when the shadow hits say, twelve. So I try to keep an eye on it, though events in my country of birth and my adopted country keep distracting me.

The escalation of fighting, this time by Hamas in a civil war type of struggle against the Fatahs, somehow caught my eye. These battles go on all the time so although dozens are reportedly killed, they don’t ordinarily get more than 30 seconds of my attention. Maybe it is the next story, which was the killing of an anti-Syrian Lebanese MP, which had a combined effect on me. It suggests a swelter is building up, even escalating and although similar developments have taken place before, I somehow feel something is going to boil over. I hope I’m wrong. Maybe I should not, because if developments there suggest history is indeed heading for a showdown it may mean better things to come, thereafter.

Apocalyptical events – in so far as they are seen through the eyes of the church (as opposed to the eyes of Hollywood, which often features a nuclear holocaust in Los Angeles or New York City, followed by big-brother style policing by sub-human personnel – are usually tied to the middle east in general and Israel/Palestine in particular. Daniel refers to the “abomination that will cause desolation” which would be set up in the temple, presumably in Jerusalem. The Armageddon is often thought to be in the middle-east, in the region of the ancient city of Megog (again, it neither happens in Los Angeles nor New York City – or outer space). Since the 70s oil shock, focus has grown a lot sharper in that region, where it is thought the end of the world would play out. Can you blame this simple, excitable person therefore, when battles escalate there? I often get this picture that conditions are so volatile there that it won’t take much to set things off. Rock throwing can escalate beyond mere skirmishes, growing into bloody battles and exploding into full-on wars. With rampant threats of nuclear proliferation in places like Iran, wars can be catastrophic, threatening to spark off annihilation of the human race. Yes, the apocalypse. Maybe it’s the very cold weather blanketing Melbourne for now – it was 1 degree this morning in Moorabin, a suburb not too far from us, and was only 3 degrees when Theresa and I left home for work – which is numbing my brains…