If the defining images of previous years were the conflagration of the twin towers and the two fingers of Liam Keane in Limerick, this year it’s the blotchy image of kidnapped westerners pleading for their lives on Arab television.
When they demolished the Twin Towers it was said that they had found a way through the armour of the most technologically advanced society on earth. That was before they realised that the new technologies could themselves be harnessed. They use digital cameras and can upload from anywhere: nobody can prevent the proliferation of the images. It’s the 21st century and the internet is Al-Qaeda’s new Afghanistan.
And now they’ve appropriated reality TV, with which the west is obsessed. Instead of the cast of Big Brother, we get tragic figures bound and blindfolded and paraded to inspire our pity and our rage. The victims include Ken Bigley and Margaret Hassan, one an engineer trying to make enough to retire on and the other an Irishwoman married to an Iraqi.
Hassan had spent a generation in Iraq, had converted to Islam and was a trenchant opponent of UN sanctions. To no avail. An easy prey, she was seized, worked for as much publicity as was going and then casually despatched with a bullet in the back of the head. And the brutal bastards had the inhuman effrontery to film it for broadcast.
Elsewhere, 39 people died in February in a suicide bombing on the Moscow underground during the morning rush hour. In March there was carnage in Madrid with over 200 killed and 1,200 injured, as bombers hit commuter trains. It was enough to change the Government. In August the siege of a school in Beslan in Ossetia (near Chechnya) ended in terrible bloodshed.
It’s rough out there, like we have never known ‘rough’.
Good people are dying. Innocent people are dying. And the fear is that it will get worse before it gets better.

State Sanctioned Suicide: Eamonn McCann's 2004
Sinking Into The Dust: In Iraq it gets more like Vietnam everyday
Tales From The Billy State A goat called Elvis is the guy with the big cojones
There Are More Guns Then Ever On The Streets Crime in Ireland Part 1
The Gardaí Are Part Of The Problem Crime in Ireland Part 2
The African Nightmare by Stuart Clark War, famine, poverty, AIDS, debt - the crisis points may shift but the cocktail of disasters remains the same for the tragic continent.
One Ireland, Many Ireland's Adjusting to a multi-cultural society is taking time.
Reality TV Turns Evil Bootboy's 2004
Stranger And StrangerCaught In The Net's Top 10 of 2004
Season To Be Cheerful by Duan StokesIrish football fans had plenty to cheer in 2004 as The Boys In Green marched to the top of their World Cup qualifying group, and Shelbourne went stud to stud with some of Europe's finest.
The Games People Play It wasn't all drugs at the Olympics in Athens - but they left their mark, not least in Ireland.
Saving The Planet Your copy & paste guide.
Crowning Glory by John Walshe With Ireland winning the Triple Crown for the first time since 1985, there was a lot to cheer about in 2004
Armin The Horrible Even cannibals can find soul mates on the internet
Rip Off Ireland by Jackie Hayden Is it true that we are robbing ourselves blind
America Becomes The USSA The home of the brave perhaps. But the land of the free?
America Becomes The USSA The home of the brave perhaps. But the land of the free?
The Kingdom Come Again by Tara Brady Fermanagh played some fine football - but the All-Ireland title belonged to Kerry
Lost In Space 2004: was there life on Mars? No, just ice, baby
Cork Rules Dramatic new plan to revive Dublin hurling unveiled!!
Celebrity Games Surely it's time we celebrated our, er, celebrity?