[NetBehaviour] Happy Holidays among the dead and dying -

[Ruth Catlow]

The New Year Fireworks celebrations at the London Eye, televised last 
night on BBC1, were a spectacular, decadent wonderment. Thousands of 
people gathered to watch. As the ending evoked the anihilation of the 
city with a series of intense and dramatic white-outs that one could 
not fail to associate with images of allied air-raids and bombings in 
Iraq in 2003.

This in stark contrast to the drivelly spoken commentary that 
accompanied it. Really it has to be possible to do better.  Aside from 
a thin reference to how the explosions might remind spectators of "love 
ones abroad" and a repeated question about whether or not the firework 
display could be considered art or not,  the active shallowness of the 
New Years  message  really got me down. After the display was over, the 
chap gasped into the microphone, " So let that inspire your 2007.... 
Whatever happened last year, this year....give up cigarettes, drink, 
drugs...whatever you want!"

  In another year when our world is ripped apart and our dignity raped 
by arms and ignorance promoted in the smoothest way by our leaders, if 
central broadcast media really can find no-one out there to talk with 
some depth and resonance of these things, they should dissist 
altogether
The scope of our collective dreams and visions of the future 
constrained merely to aspirations for a better regulated personal 
life".


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On 1 Jan 2007, at 00:53, Alan Sondheim wrote:


Houston Chronicle - 26 minutes ago
By DANIEL WOOLLS AP Writer. ) 2006 AP. MADRID, Spain - A weekend car 
bombing in Madrid shattered a nine-month-old cease-fire with Basque 
separatists and left Spain's prime minister groping for a way to 
salvage the nascent peace process.
Thousands protest at Eta airport bomb attack Independent
Thousands protest after Madrid airport bombing (Roundup) Monsters and 
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