A world still in trouble: Hold tight – there’s a new year ahead

The year that expires tonight has been scored to a greater or lesser degree on almost all of our continents by conflict, threat, fear, and avoidable suffering, much of which has been inflicted on children.

“We have two classes of forecasters: Those who don’t know — and those who don’t know they don’t know”— economist John Kenneth Galbraith

Needles and haystacks come to mind when scouting the planet for developments, trends, and patterns that promise outbreaks of peace, common sense, or even mere stability as we close the book on the old year and wait nervously for the arrival of 2019.