Jinn of Current Events

Iraq: a council designated by the Coalition will successfully take over some government responsibilities but Shiite clerics will try to control all political decisions (in order to implement Islamic law, aka Sharia); the first free elections for town councils will take place; the number of terrorist attacks against the police and Coalition military will decrease radically. Fundamental aspects of liberty will become more and more visible, such as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and free markets (despite repeated assaults on the part of religious fundamentalists). Iraqi oil output will destabilize the OPEC club of tyrants and lead to a 30% decrease of oil price. A full report on WMD will be released, suggesting that they were mostly spirited away to Syria.

Syria will receive an ultimatum to surrender all WMDs in its possession, return Iraqi wealth looted by the Bathist regime, abandon all support of Hezbollah and similar terrorist groups, and withdraw its occupation troops from Lebanon. They will give in, almost simultaneously with the violent unfolding of a new student revolution in Iran that will end the Iranian theocracy; the aftermath will reveal close links between Al Qaida and the Iranian as well as Syrian regimes.

Al Qaida: Bin Laden will not be captured, since he is still highly likely to be paste feeding worms in a remote Afghan cave. His terrorist group will fail to execute any major attack on Western countries, excepty possibly in France and Greece during the summer Olympics; they will however continue to pick soft targets in Muslim-dominated countries.

Saudi dictatorship:The House of Saud will witness multiple assassinations, due both to princely disputes, islamofascist threats, and powerlust. Nothing fundamental will change in their financial support of Islamofascist organisations world-wide.

Israel: the number of terrorist attacks against Israel will decrease sharply, as the security fence is completed, and Israeli defense forces continue to systematically target — and eliminate — Palestinian terrorist leaders. The requirements and obligations of the roadmap to peace agreement will be further ignored by Palestinian leaders. European anti-semitism will continue to rise, leading to a new exodus.

The Stalinist tyranny of North Korea will go yet another step too far, attempting an attack on a neighbour or on the USA — and be removed from power by Red China.

The Venezuelan tyranny will become an obvious problem, collaborating more and more with drug cartels, Fidel Castro, and islamofascist groups. The US will react forcefully.

Pakistan: An islamofascist coup may succeed in eliminating Musharraf and would pose great difficulties; at the worst, it would create a new high-visibility Al Qaeda sanctuary and give terrorists access to that country's nuclear weapons. The only rational Western reaction in that scenario would be for Special Forces to simultaneously attack all repositories of nuclear material in Pakistan.

USA: Bush will easily win his second-term election. Condi could be his running mate, in preparation for the 2008 duel with Hillary. Unless they wake up and oppose Bush in order to stop irrational domestic spending programs, Republicans will not win a comfortable majority in the Senate (conceivably above the 2/3 super-majority, should they stop the deficit spree). 

The US economy will continue to grow and outpace conventional predictions in both productivity increases, GDP growth, and declining unemployment. The UK, Australia, Italy, Spain, and Poland will closely track these trends. France and Germany will continue to decline, with Belgium in tow.

The governments of France and Germany will increase the destruction of their own economy, most notably taking authoritarian measures further offending the majority of other European Union members. One or more of those countries will have a major opposition party running on a platform to abandon the ultra-expensive Euro currency. (The proposed "European Union Constitution" will remain un-adopted by the EU.) 

Technological innovation will accelerate, with major progress announced and products released in medicine, wireless networking, and nanotechnology. Apple will continue to innovate with ground-breaking hardware and software aligned with iLife, their vision of the digital hub. Sales of music will shift radically towards digital downloads, including millions of free songs as part of marketing campaigns. New uses for P2P networks will appear. Weblogs will continue to grow in quantity, quality, and influence.

Evidence for (probably past) primitive life forms on Mars will be found. The X Prize will be won, possibly by Scaled Composites; this will open the doors to a massive race to privatize access to space and develop commercial applications in space (other than tourism) — which will be later known as the First Space Rush (who will make money? think transport infrastructure, supplies, and entertainment). Further evidence will be gathered contradicting the global-warming-is-a-catastrophy-caused-by-evil-human-action environmentalist dogma; environmentalist NGOs will switch to other scare-scenarios, especially those involving food and water; enviro-fascist groups will focus their sights on terrorist activities.

See also the Foresight Exchange for people who go on record with their predictions and keep track of their wins and losses.