Let's see... There is North Korea, Israel/Palestine, Iran, Af-Pak... and don't forget Iraq, and this flu thing... that hasn't gone away either... Oh, yes, and the economy... "green shoots", some say, others say we are in for a long haul.

Any of these problems, would be a plateful for any US administration that I can remember, all together they give me the feeling of a chaos that I have often read about in history books, but have never personally experienced before.

For the moment it's a quiet sort of chaos, a bit like the ruinous aftermath of some all night party in a rented room: cigarette burns on the rug, cigarette butts in the half-empty glasses, cigarettes stubbed out in plates of half-eaten food; unfortunately none of them still smokable... all viewed in dawn light with a queasy stomach and a mouth that tastes like the bottom of a parrot's cage. Certain things are better not mixed... if only one could remember what they were. For the moment, basically nothing a good puke and a cup of black coffee wouldn't cure or at least greatly improve.

But, unlike the rented room of metaphor, the world today is dreadfully dangerous.

Just the possible, random, synergies that all these different problems we face might evolve among themselves are staggering: a deadly flu in the Gaza rabbit warren, a war between the Koreas with the US army as a hostage, an Israeli attack on Iran and the Chinese selling their dollars. All of these things are possible and none of them terribly improbable. In fact they might all occur at once.

Changing metaphors, the world situation today reminds me of a forest in a dry, hot, summer after a lush and verdant spring. Everything is beautiful, but bone dry; anything: a campfire, haystack lightning, sunlight through the bottom of a broken bottle, and most certainly the ministrations of a pyromaniac, and soon it could all be black, burned out and smoldering.

Without a doubt, if next year at this time everything has muddled through and shambled along and as they say in Spanish, "the blood hasn't made it to the river yet"; and a chain of tragedies has not transpired, then we will be able to say that, indeed, we are one of the luckiest groups of men and women to ever have inhabited this planet.