When will it end

This year end is packed with disasters, murders, fires, occupations and an economic tsunami. Is this what we can expect for 2009? I see little change, unless there is a change in the attitude of leaders of major countries, and a serious attempt to help the world's poor.
There can be no peace in the Middle East until the world recognizes that Israel has to leave the lands it now occupies. I don’t see much change in the US attitude during Obama’s presidency. I can’t see him asking Israel to step back from the occupied lands, if he wants to run again in 2012. Unlike other presidents he may not have to pick a war on some poor country to retain support, but he has to toe the US foreign policy line.
That policy line has created havoc in Africa, Middle East, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Europe. There is tension in all the above and the US is connected in some way or another. The only hope lies in decline of the US economy.