A different view on current affairs & history
Perhaps this series of photographs should be called eclectic as there is no overarching theme aside from their evident beauty. Perhaps one can invent a collective noun for stunning photographs. I propose an old English word now is disuse but which I can still recall from studying Latin under the tutelage of Mr Wright at Alexander Road High School in the late 1960’s. How about pulchritude of photographs? No. It doesn’t take your fancy. Too old fashioned?
This is not a uniquely South African phenomenon or even the propensity of the ANC. The previous Nationalist Government aka “The Apartheid Regime” would without qualms use the British atrocities during the Boer War as a point of argument. The Arabs used it against the Americans when George Bush Junior obligingly used the “inflammatory” word “crusade” to describe the American invasion of Iraq. So why do certain peoples, nations or political parties have a predilection for harping about the past?
Main picture: President places the blame for South Africa’s “challenges” squarely on the first white in South Africa – Jan van Riebeeck
The fact that President Jacob Zuma stirred the racial pot before the ANC’s meeting in the Western Cape by proclaiming that the landing of Van Riebeeck in Cape Town in 1652 was the commencement of South Africa’s problems was both a blatant lie and vicious distortion of the facts was ignored by most commentators. Instead with the proverbial racial hackles raised, the Rainbow Nation bifurcated into racial segments as if cleaved with a meat chopper.
One wonders what level of general knowledge that the average university student in South Africa possesses today? Look no further than the Wits University SRC President and fifth year law student, Mcebo Dlamini with his contentious comment “I Love Hitler”.
Earlier this week the SRC President posted a photo on Facebook comparing the Israeli Government to the Nazi Regime. As if the ire the Jewish Students were not sufficiently incensed by that photo, he added “I Love Hitler” in the comments section.
Main picture: The Mampara himelf – Mcebo Dlamini
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Everybody has to be a handyman periodically. In these cases the person who performed the occasional domestic repairs and minor renovations around the home clearly had pretensions of becoming an engineer. It is not that these improvisations do not work – they clearly do – but they lack the finesse of a properly executed engineering job. From the obvious crudity, the term Heath Robinson springs to mind as they all bear this hallmark.
Main picture: Earbuds that will not tangle
What possessed Britain to attempt to subordinate a primitive, desolate country that was trapped in the Middle Ages? How was it possible that a third rate force could massacre 17 000 British soldiers with only ten survivors – a surgeon and an officers wife amongst them? This defeat even exceeded that against the Zulus at Isandlwana in Natal.
The country in question is Afghanistan, a country wedged precariously between two expanding Empires – the Russian and the British. The Russians under the Tsars during the nineteenth century were rapidly expanding eastward towards Alaska whereas the British were initially content on the Indian subcontinent.
Main picture: Alexander Burnes – Scottish explorer and adventurers & fluent Persian speaker
Three economic criteria have dominated the world economy since the crash in 2008: the Central Banks have been mandated to maintain low inflation – not more than 1.5% – , Quantitative Easing and extremely low interest rates. All had one objective in mind: to ease the economy gently and gradually out of depression and to stimulate growth. The result has been continued deflation in consumer prices, moribund inflation while asset prices have surged. This scenario is unsustainable and will have consequences in the near future.
After galloping inflation in the nineteen seventies – the culmination of decades of Keynesian policies – inflation rates ratcheted up. The stimulant effect of the drug benignly known as inflation now presented deleterious effects. Drastic action was called for. Easy money flowed into unsustainable or delinquent assets such as leviathan but unproductive such as British Steel, British Airways and British Coal. No longer was the propping up of bloated uncompetitive entities viable.
Main picture: No matter how hard I try, I cannot understand what message or instruction the sign is actually attempting to convey. Do you?
A case in point is Winston Churchill who is indubitably my history hero. Like all such luminaries Churchill was human. In the heat of moment, Winston did make some crass comments. Being an old-fashioned Imperialist and Royalist at heart – the last of a dying breed in the Nineteen Thirties’ – his vitriol was often directed at the Indian people & Gandhi in particular.
Main picture: Mahatma Gandhi Continue reading