Bars of iron...

for he breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron....

2,500 years old these words. Probably spoken to slaves in Baghdad - or Babylon as it was. Not a lot of progress then! Days when one can be totally despairing about humankind - no particular crisis required to do that - just a scan of the global back-news (the news that carries on quietly behind our obsession with eurozone disasters).

For example, Somalia