Humour goes a very long way to sweetening what could have been a giant pill of social history in Pride, but it's kept in check by the spectres of poverty, homophobia, Aids and, of course, the miners' defeat.
With help from Mr Sezer and Deniz Baykal, leader of the opposition Republican People's Party, the army is again conjuring up the twin spectres of radical Islam and Kurdish separatism in a bid to force early elections.
And cynics point out that raising fearful spectres is a well-tried device of governments under political pressure (or of generals who want bigger budgets).There is one less simple explanation: a reported disagreement within Israel's defence establishment over whether or not to ratify the new international convention against chemical weapons.
Both are multiethnic states haunted by the twin spectres of racial tension and a separatist periphery.
Plenty of spectres stalk the sector, among them the naming on September 2nd of some big European lenders in lawsuits filed by the US Federal Housing Finance Agency for mis-selling mortgage-backed debt.
Here too is the man who could light up a room, the clown, the mimic and dancer of hornpipes but also the obsessive who prowled the streets unable to "get rid of my spectres unless I can lose them in crowds".After his death, Dickens's daughter Katey (shown above, with her sister Mamie, being read to by their father) said that she had loved him immeasurably, but that he was "a wicked man".
Watching brilliant athletes tread this line, and strive even in the face of pain and adversity, is a part of sport's dramatic appeal.But sport's very success has also raised two spectres which, many believe, threaten to damage that appeal: drugs and money.
It is a season of mists and fogs, haunted by the Hallowe'en spectres of Kenneth Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton and Henry Hyde, the chairman of the committee that must decide, in the next few months, whether the president should be impeached or not.
This collection is best enjoyed by dipping in and out.For a more academic study of ghosts in England read Shane McCorristine's recent book, "Spectres of the Self".
Its neighbours treat it indulgently out of fear not so much of its strength but of its weakness, and of the spectres that evokes: in the short term, economic stagnation; in the long term, waves of refugees, pirate-infested seas and a power vacuum to be filled by competitors such as China.Is this the president's fault?
These worst spectres are unlikely to prove more than that, not least because Mr Chavez is not quite the ogre he is painted as.
