Is this “our” John Jacobsen in the SMH letters today?

Han

http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index.html

A joyless Christmas

What is there to celebrate this Christmas when the world’s leadership has largely abrogated its responsibility?

One of the tenets of all religions is tolerance of others. But political leaders use intolerance to deliberately and coldly drive a wedge between their constituents. Intolerance has become a vote winner.

Similarly, leadership among religious leaders has seemingly vaporised. Children in schoolyards fight over whose version of God is best. Branches of the Christian religion splinter over the rights of women and homosexuals to be preachers. Branches of Islam feud, and the Jewish-Islamic divide seems wider than ever.

Instead of forming joint religious councils in each danger zone to work out the differences, they largely stand silent.

The Christmas message of tolerance is silent. There is nothing to celebrate.

John Jacobsen, Cremorne, December 23.

I suspect not - if so his surname is spelt wrong either here or in the paper - he is “Jacobson” here. Also the views in the letter don’t ring the same as my perception of John here.

John? I’d be interested to discuss it with you if this is yours.

Matt

Dear Hannah and Matt

First of all my sincere thanks to Matt who sent me a personal message alerting me to the thread.  I haven’t been posting a lot lately and if I hadn’t got the email notification of a new personal message from Matt I probably wouldn’t have checked in for a while - going on holidays soon.  So many thanks Matt for thinking of me.

As you guessed Matt, that’s not me - as you correctly guessed I certainly wouldn’t hold those views.

Don’t blame you for thinking that though Hannah - my name isn’t exactly common and it was very close :).  I wouldn’t mind being able to live at Cremorne though, it’s a nice place, with a great view of the upcoming fireworks :).

May I take this opportunity to wish everyone a blessed Christmas as we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

YBIC, John JacobsOn :)

Nice to see you again, John.  Have a great holiday and all the best for 2004.

God bless,
Ian.