Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Black Mischief
Reflections on the Rainbow Nation, South Africa ‘You know,’ he added reflectively, ‘we’ve got a much easier job now than we should have had fifty years ago. If we’d had to modernize a country then it would have meant constitutional monarchy, bi-cameral legislature, proportional representation, women’s suffrage, independent judicature, freedom of the Press, referendums . . .’ ‘What is all that?’ asked the Emperor. ‘Just a few ideas that have ceased to be modern.’ (Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief, (1932), p. 128). South Africa’s once diamondiferous soil was always leavened with blood, running down the anthill to the lowest point of Kimberley’s…
Continue Reading →The Guns of August Revisited
(By Barbara W. Tuchman, 1962) Tuchman’s classic history of the stirrings of WWI deserves a fresh look, when one compares some of the events leading to and culminating in August 1914 with some of the events leading to and maybe culminating in August 2023: 1910: Edward VII dies / 2022: Elizabeth II dies. A comet appears in both years (“When beggars die there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes” – “Julius Caesar”) “All the old buoys which have marked the channel of our lives seem to have been swept away.” (Lord Esher, 1910)….
Continue Reading →Bandt Musik
"Google it, mate"
Leader of the Australian Greens, Mr. Adam Bandt, is on record as wanting – a Treaty; A Republic (for which he called on the day QEII died); eliminating coal and gas as sources of energy; wiping student debt and funding free education for all; a cheap housing construction orgy; tenure for all; an end to all forms of discrimination (including the good ones), and defenestrating the Australian flag. So here’s our Song for Adam (with apologies to Stuart and Marco): [For Michelle] “Well I’m standing here looking at you What do I see? I’m looking straight through It’s so sad,…
Continue Reading →Good
(written by C. P. Taylor (1981); Directed by Dominic Cooke, Harold Pinter Theatre, London, 25 June 2023) Regarding the grand achievements of the Third Reich, “As with Stalin’s Great Terror, only a madman could guess what was on the way. Even the perpetrators had to go one step at a time, completing each step before they realised that the next one was possible.”* In “Good,” A liberal German Professor of literature (NOT Victor Klemperer), named John Halder, becomes involved with the Third Reich’s war machine and the Final Solution. Halder, a ‘good man,’ shows all the moral courage of Albert…
Continue Reading →And Justice For Some
When one does a crime We expect one will do time: But today it all depends On who are your true friends. A lass who thought that Pell Belonged in deepest Hell Tried to justify this thought All the way to the High Court. The judges boxed her ears And conviction disappears, But confronted with bent cops She did not pull out the stops. In the Land of the Free, It clearly pays to be A member of the Club Who won’t even have to scrub A charge from his good name; There’s none to lay the blame. You can…
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