Okay - now that everyone else has written their new year column and predicted the events to come from last week through the next calendar flip, here are my brave divinations for the period.

Sin - Men will continue to sin, and revel in their sin. Many other sinners will delight in the sins of others and offer support for those sins...which also is a sin.

War - War, which is a result of sin, will continue in the new year. The liberals' dream for 'world peace' will be foiled yet again...drat! Nursing home residents' visions of whirled peas look more certain.

Race - Racial disunity will continue through 2003. Liberals will once again fail to explain why, if we're all equal, that anyone has to integrate with anyone. People who were never enslaved will continue to demand money from people who never owned slaves. News anchors everywhere will respond with a furrowed brow and concerned stroke of the chin, instead of the belly-laugh the whole idea deserves. In response to the idea of erecting a statue of Lincoln in Richmond, Springfield city officials will reveal plans for a statue of John Wilkes Booth.

Israel/Palestine - [See 'war'] The peace process will forge ahead in the next 12 months, and continue to bear the same sort of fruit as always. Residents of the area will begin to wonder, 'if this is a peace process, what does a war process look like?' Yasser Arafat will celebrate his 174th birthday in the lavatory of his bombed-out headquarters in Ramallah.

Iraq - Saddam Hussein will continue to [gasp!] defend the sovereignty of Iraq. President Bush will fail to explain how come it was okay for the United States to have nuclear warheads deployed all over the planet during the cold war, but Saddam is a threat to 'world peace' if he gets even one deployed within his own borders.

Mexico - Thousands of Mexicans will flood across the border again this year, as they have done for a century, looking for work in the USA. Employers will continue to hire them for jobs most self-respecting Americans refuse to do. In response, Washington will continue to answer questions no one asked and seek solutions to problems that don't exist. Some Americans will still rightly wonder why Gen. Pershing didn't ignore Wilson and stay in Mexico.

Canada - Our neighbor to the North will continue to drive our cars, eat our food, watch our TV shows, listen to our music, transport their troops in our naval vessels, and still lob an insult our way once in a while...just to show the world they're different. Quebecois [if I got the right word] and Western Canadians will continue to wonder why people from Ottawa keep telling them what to do.

Michael Jackson - [See 'sin']

Democrats - In light of Tom Daschle's recent interview comments in which he admitted that Democrats must formulate an agenda for the coming legislative session, Democrats the nation over will fail to realise that during the previous election season they must have never had an agenda, or that their only agenda was to retain power, which they failed to do handily.

Republicans - Recently elected Republicans will forget that they won because a majority of voters liked conservative principles of governance, instead spending the next year trying to appease Democrats.

Web Journalism - Scores of Internet journalists will continue to moralize and instruct everyone else on how things ought to be.

Of that last one, you can be sure! Happy New Year.