The year 2007 has been extremely strange for me, Ovi magazine turned daily and that meant following all the news all the time just to be contemporary with international events. Of course that also had its dark side; there were times I didn’t want to write anything, I had enough of wars, death and miserable times. Everywhere I was looking I had the feeling that I will see dead bodies. There where really devastating times, like when the first pictures of the monks dying in Burma, or for one more year bodies, victims of bombs, piling in the streets of Baghdad. Even the end of 2007 will haunt us for a long time with the face of the Pakistani man screaming in sorrow after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

It is sad that what we are going to remember of 2007 is a murder and not a new law voted in Russia that forbids the public rejection of Santa Claus! A few centuries from now when somebody – if humanity still exists – decides to write a summary of 2007, it most likely will write that it was another year of embarrassment for the human race. Nuclear weapons are still here, conflict is still here, wars are still here, hunger is still here, poverty is still here; and, the worst of all, thirty thousand kids still die every single day. Thirty thousand kids die everywhere on this globe every day from the superpower USA to the camps of Darfur and the fields of China. That’s what we have to show for the next generations - death and pain!

Of course in the year 2007 Paris Hilton went to prison for some days and Britney Spears lost custody of her kids due to her alcohol and drugs problems but do you think that this is what the future will remember from us? We shouldn’t forget Sarkozy’s divorce and his new girlfriend but, however weird this might sound, I would much rather be remembered in the future for Sarkozy’s girlfriends, Spears’ fat and Paris Hilton than remembered for 30,000 kids dying every day!

For us, the contemporary, let’s see what happened for the year 2007 and let’s hope that things might, might change next year!

January 2007 was important for the European Community, Romania and Bulgaria, two more former communist countries, joined the EU expanding the community to 27 nations and nearly 500 million people. At the same time in Somalia, President’s Abdullahi troops enter the capital Mogadishu continuing a civil war with the Islamists that never seems to end with constant victims, women and children. The Iraqi government announces the devastating number of 34,000 innocent dead during 2006; by the end of 2007 the number will double.

February 2007 and the scientists in an international forum confirm that the global warming has worsened and we should act now, while in Palestine, except their external enemies, they start fighting between them as well, Hamas versus Fatah in the Gaza Strip. Portugal votes in favour of legalizing abortion and in Britain Tony Blair announces plans to withdraw from Iraq and the International Criminal Court is after the Darfur atrocities. The UN is still thinking what to do with Darfur!

In March 2007 the US troops start another miserable month killing innocents in Afghanistan, while French President Chirac talks about retirement. While the US administration hardens its attitude against Iran and their nuclear plans the Iranian navy arrests a group British soldiers saying that they were in Iranian waters. Pictures of them wearing suits tailored from the same place the Iranian president goes saddened the whole world. The first Guantanamo detainee is convicted without a lawyer or defence, of course, where human rights end and Guantanamo starts!

April 2007 starts with the British sailors captured by Iranians walking free and naturally the Iranian puppet president of the religious dictators feels ready to announce that Iran has the ability to enrich uranium making the whole world breath happily and secure! Mugabe, the ruthless ruler of Zimbabwe sends the country to the hell of inflation with 2,300%.

May 2007 and Rice meets Syrian officials, after screwing with Iraq, the American administration discover diplomacy! Sarkozy, the French playboy, wins elections and becomes the President of the French Republic, at the same time, President Bush's favourite director of the World Bank, Wolfowitz resigns his seat for violating bank’s ethical rules - they let a Wolf to guard the sheep!!! Tony Blair announces he's ready to step down showing Gordon Brown as his successor.

June 2007, the number of innocents killed in Afghanistan and Iraq continues rising, the American liberators and their allies have proven to be lethal for the locals and Palestinians and Israelis once more move their conflict in Lebanon. The victims are naturally local innocents.

Alan Johnston is freed in Gaza at the beginning of July 2007, while Russia, after arguing too often lately with the US administration about the new missiles the Pentagon hawks want to put in Europe, pulls out of the arms treaty. The Americans never really liked the end of the Cold War; their industry was depending too much on the Wall! Surprisingly Pakistani court rules that the dictator Pervez Musharraf acts illegally by holding the position of the president and Chief of the Army at the same time. Recep Tayyip Erdogan wins elections in Turkey with 46.6% and everybody wonders if the army – the real ruler of Turkey – will let him govern. The UN Security Council seems to finally reach some kind of decision with Darfur, since 2003 more than 200,000 have been killed there and the UN is still ….thinking!

Turkey again in August 2007 and the Turkish PM Erdogan finds an ally in the seat of the President, Abdullah Gul, the former foreign minister becomes the new President of the republic but …the army is still out of the barracks so nothing really matters. At the same time in another dictatorship, Pakistan's Musharraf decided to keep only the suit of the president and return his uniform. It won’t last for long.

The globe becomes busy for September 2007 with North Korea agreeing to disarm nuclear fuel plants while George W. Bush makes a surprise visit to Iraq, rumours that the rats were running out of Baghdad have been checked as untrue! Bin Laden releases a new video that hits the top ten in the CIA and MI5 top ten, while American private security companies take over from the American army in the killing of innocents. In Myanmar dozens of people are getting killed in demonstrations against the dictatorship, including monks.

Musharraf, the Pakistani dictator is easily elected president for a third term, like all dictators manage to do similar things. In October 2007 the former Pakistani democratic Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returns after eight years in exile. Gordon Brown is the new British Prime Minister and he reduces the army in Iraq, while the Turkish parliament, obeying the army’s orders, authorizes an invasion of Iraq to hunt PKK, the Kurdish Liberation Army. One more toy company has to take back all their toys made in China. First it was child labour, now poison materials follow - remember that China is organizing the next Olympics!!!

And when you thought that Musharraf will be happy and quiet in the beginning of November 2007 he declares Pakistan in a state of emergency and sends human rights once more down the toilet! John Howard, one more of the Bush’s allies, goes down; deep down, except his seat as Prime Minister he loses his seat as a Member of the Australian Parliament! George W. Bush does the unbelievable, hosts a Middle East peace conference!!! Let the wolf lead the sheep!

December 2007 and Putin is near the end of his presidential term and the beginning of his imperial future! Putin I, the karate kid! Hugo Chavez hears a glorious …'shut the fuck up' from a king and he loses a referendum; bad times for revolutionaries. The CIA discovers something we all knew, neither Iraq nor Iran have any programs for weapons of mass destruction! If they had given me just a few of the millions out of the billions they spent I would have told them just the same. I suppose the difference was the “with high confidence” note in their report! But the CIA was busy with other things as well; they had to destroy XXX videotapes with S&M in Guantanamo as well. The EU forgets the Euro-constitution and adopts a Euro-treaty, sounds like a bastard! Turkey needs genocide in every century so they had the Armenian for the 20th and they start the Kurdish for the 21st by invading north Iraq.

On December 27th former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated and Musharraf blames al Qaeda making even his own allies smile.

Perhaps going through all that and remembering some more that intentionally I left out, I suppose Paris Hilton's imprisonment and Britney Spears’ teenager sister pregnancy are not so important compared to young Madeleine McCann’s mysterious disappearance in Portugal.

I'd like to stop a bit at this case. I’m not sure what has happened with Madeleine McCann and I still feel that there are too many unanswered questions for her case, including her parent's innocence. I have a three and half year old daughter myself and if that had happened to me I have no idea what I would have done and how far I would have gone, but two things: first, I would have never let my daughter sleep alone to go to the local pub for a beer and I would have never thought to make an international spin with the media to collect money. Leaving a so-young child alone for a night while going to the local pub is a crime in itself and every time I see the McCann’s begging for help on the television screens I cannot avoid that this child pays first for her parent's crime and I’m sorry to say their crime is unforgivable.

Madeleine McCann gets a lot of publicity and well done, but please remember that Madeleine McCann is not alone. Thousands of kids, literally thousands follow her destiny daily, as the victims of pedophilia, slavery and wars. Child pornography is everywhere, even if we don’t like to see it or admit it; child labor is everywhere, child prostitution, child violence, child soldiers. Children die all the time, even in our civilized west, and we are all responsible. It doesn’t matter how much George W. Bush will give for children’s care as long as there are parents like the McCanns who go to the pub and leave their kids alone. That’s why I say that we are responsible for the kids.

For 2006 we had chosen kids as the persona/event of the year. Alan Johnston is going to be the persona for the year of 2007 but please always keep in your mind that every single day, every bloody day, all around this world 30,000 kids lose their life and we must do something to change this number!