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Monday, 18 December 2006 |
The broadcast Wednesday evening on Belgian public television looked and sounded like big, breaking news.
Fuzzy film footage seemed to show King Albert II and Queen Paola fleeing the country on a military plane; pro-monarchy demonstrators were seen waving Belgian flags outside the royal palace; live video showed trams being halted at a hastily erected roadblock.
Flanders, the Dutch-speaking half of Belgium, had proclaimed its independence, the report declared. The fragile, federal country of ten million people, two major languages, more than a dozen different parliaments and regional governments and 300 kinds of beer, would be no more.
Actually, the broadcast was fiction, but done up to look as authentic as possible, complete with real reporters conducting live interviews with real politicians about the imaginary news. |
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