Category Archive: HISTORY
The New Manchurian Candidate
Fierce Pashtuns, over time Teach us what we should mark well: All invaders, in their prime Find Afghanistan is Hell. Since Alexander and Genghis Khan Empires laid plans to attack But a donkey borne to Mecca by divan Remains a donkey, when it comes back. Regression, Poverty, Heroin, Despair Its GDP, after the Great Game; Until a parochial tribe assumed the care Of benighted lands, to general shame. For a very few years the only folks To be pained by this, were local tribes Who stood as Shia or told the wrong jokes Or encouraged girls to read or be…
Continue Reading →The Covid-19 Hall of Shame
911 deaths in Australia from (with?) Covid, in 18 months. 169,301 registered and received deaths in Australia in 2019 (pre-Covid). Are we missing something here? Like a sense of proportion? Pardon our manners, but here we must quote ourselves : “In this plague year…we saw Australians banned from returning to their own country; banned from leaving it; banned from crossing state lines, in apparent/arguable breach of section 92 of the Constitution; locked in their homes unless adjudged by a bureaucrat as ‘essential workers’; arrested on beaches, golf courses, parks (and in the case of one pregnant woman in Victoria, handcuffed…
Continue Reading →Cabaret
(Directed by Bob Fosse) (1972) Adelaide Cabaret Festival, 24 June 2021 Inspired by the Weimar work of Christopher Isherwood, Cabaret is perhaps the last great movie musical. A brilliant rendering of the last days of chaotic democracy in Germany, the long shadows of Nazism entering stage left, the Kit Kat Klub becomes a trope for the death of heady, insouciant decadence, about to be replaced by something far more depraved. Fosse’s direction is faultless, as are the period feel and production values. The cast is superb, led by Liza Minnelli, perfect as the brash and wide-eyed Sally Bowles, an American…
Continue Reading →The Faucian Bargain
(With apologies to Christina Rossetti and her “Goblin Market”) Morning and evening Folks heard the coolies cry: “Come buy our pangolins, Come by, come buy; Bats and lemurs, Bits of Uyghurs, Human femurs, Embargoed seegars – All ripe together In wintry weather,- Morns that pass by, Fair foreign bats fly; Come by, come by; Pass the wet market.” ♠ Evening by evening Beyond the fence and bollards, Shi Zhengli bowed her head to hear, Her Wuhan boss, who hollered “Lady, veil your blushes Crouch in your office like a cave In the cooling weather; With cautioning arms and clasping lips,…
Continue Reading →Elegy for the Tank Man
[Tiananmen Square, Peking, 5 June, 1989] — A stand-off in the liquid heat of Tiananmen Square Caused Deng’s conga-line of tanks to begin rolling there. They rumbled down the avenue… Scoping tired students; waiting for their cue. — Suddenly a man appeared and stood before the ranks, Armed only with shopping bags – He defied the tanks, The lead tank turned and tried to pass, the man moved in its way; Then firing came, a soldier yelled but still he chose to stay. — He clambered on a tank and knocked, no friendly answer came, And finally the cameras stopped…
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