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Since I first started following Aussie Rules footy at the age of 9 in 1967, the qualities I have most loved seeing are courage at the contest and skill, speed and flair. Outstanding players I have seen in this regard are Barry Price, Keith Greig, Robbie Flower, Barry Cable, Garry Ablett Senior, Eddie Betts, The Krakouer brothers and the current Number 5 of the North Melbourne Kangaroos AFLW team, Tess Craven. As a human being Tess is modest, kind, friendly and helpful and always puts her team ahead of herself. The strength, skill and determination she shows above in tackling...

This article originally appeared on vigilantfox.com and was republished with permission. Anderson Cooper just aired a short segment from his interview with actor George Clooney, discussing his Broadway directorial debut, Good Night, and Good Luck—a play about journalist Edward R. Murrow’s confrontation with McCarthy-era fearmongering. Screenshot from Anderson Cooper 360. The interview started off with Anderson Cooper trying to paint Trump’s first 136 days in his second term as the “worst” in America’s history. That was a claim so absurd that even Clooney couldn’t bite on that. “I can make an argument that we’ve had much worse times in our...

My friend, the late Anna Rumaderun, was a young Indonesian woman totally dedicated to friendship with The West based on the bonds of history forged in World War Two. Like me she had huge respect for General Douglas MacArthur. She trusted traditional medicine and died from breast cancer. She was terrified of modern medicine because two of her friends died post mastectomy. She leaves behind a husband with movie star good looks and a six year old little boy named after me. Rest In Peace, Anna. We miss you deeply. We know you ARE WITH GOD.

I love watching women’s football (Australian Rules). It provides a better spectacle and healthier community than the men’s game. Watch the strength, agility and quick thinking of number 22 from Aberfeldie as an example of how good the women’s game can be to watch. (click link to see video) With a fantastic tackle she dispossesses a powerfully built Hillside opponent of the football, and then gets to her feet and brilliantly anticipates the trajectory of a handpass from another Hillside player to knock the ball behind an opponent and run around that player to possession for her team and race...

Yesterday, I had the enormous privilege to witness the three quarter time huddle of the Hillside women’s senior football team in a match against Aberfeldie. Hillside had gone into the match undefeated and Aberfeldie were second on the ladder with two losses. At halftime it was a point the difference but Aberfeldie completely outclassed Hillside in the third quarter to go five goals ahead. The determination of Hillside to fight back reflected in the fierce raw of their voices in that huddle was the most passionate sound I have ever heard from a group of footballers. Previously it has been...

Father Hunger is an astonishingly insightful phrase that has been profoundly meaningful to me ever since I first heard it from my friend, poet Patrick McCauley, 2 or 3 decades ago. (Patrick is in mourning for the recent tragic loss of his deeply loved daughter, Eliza.) This morning, I made this little prayer at the side of St Patrick’s cathedral, Melbourne, where there is a wonderful statue of St Francis of Assisi: FATHER HUNGER, an old Aussie immensity, that touches us all. I am not sure if I know what Father Hunger is, but my instincts tell me that it’s...

I just thought this was hilarious. Common sense in a movie? WHODATHUNKIT?! RedLetterMedia mentioned it in a movie commentary years ago and I thought I would share it with my FRiends.

The best thing about being in Melbourne, Australia, is watching the free flowing glories of Australian Rules football in the state where the game was born. I love watching fast skillful free flowing football, especially the rapidly rising female Aussie Rules action. Its the best part of Australia for me.

The day I took this photo of Melbourne ruckwoman Georgia Campbell being tackled by key forward Tayla Harris, the configuration of elbows, heads and hands caught my eye as something special. Together, the two players looked like a Lotus Flower - the Buddhist symbol of purity, spiritual enlightenment and rebirth. I asked Tay if she'd like a song to be written about it and she said she'd prefer a rap. So I tried (without huge ability in the art form) to make one. (click here) In Melbourne, Aussie Rules football is often called a religion. Could the game become more...

Dockamentry film maker, Jim Cousens, opens up on what it is like to be a man in modern Australia: Jim says: "Being faced with the reality of the feminism which has got its claws into just about all of us is a little bit like when you've got visitors over and there's a rat in the kitchen ........ ......... If you say, 'Oh God, there's a rat in the kitchen.', then you've actually drawn their attention to the problem. Maybe, if you'd just kept your mouth shut ,they would never have noticed. But if you keep your mouth shut and...

Yesterday, conservative Australian political commentator, Andrew Bolt discussed a proposal for British-style AI intelligence cameras in Melbourne. Mr Bolt asked his audience: “Do you want to be safer or do you want to be spied on?” and said that rising crime and terrorism is turning Australia into a “surveillance state, Chinese-style, you know where they even have a system of recognising you in the street and if they don’t like, if you’ve got a bad social credit, they can stop you doing things like catching a train.” The Lord Mayor told Bolt: “As Lord Mayor, I am very firmly committed...

Byron York @ByronYork I know the winner is enormously deserving, but I still find it hard to believe that this photo did *not* win the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography. 2:58 PM · May 5, 2025

Rainn Wilson, the actor best known for appearing in the comedy series ‘The Office’ recently spoke with MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle and pushed back on her when she tried to blame President Trump and Elon Musk for the loss of trust in media. Wilson is probably not a Trump supporter himself, but he does make an excellent point about the media and their selective concerns about government. Ruhle talks about her belief that it’s the media’s job to hold the powerful to account, and Wilson reminds her that the media did not think that way at all when Biden was...

On April 20th, 2019, Cardinal George Pell (imprisoned in Victoria, Australia, as a result of conducting a mass) quoted in his Prison Journal this sentence from a letter to him from young Catholic Seminarians: ” We know that your trials and sufferings, your white martyrdom, will be a source of great fruit for the Church in Australia, and the Church at large.” Pell wrote about this thought: ” I pray that this will be so, not least to counteract the damage, confusion and disillusion provoked by the conviction.” But we do not have to live in the shadow of the...

Peter, an individual, betrayed Jesus, by denying knowing him three times, and thereby betrayed the group of individuals to which he belonged. His own conscience troubled Peter very deeply. Waltzing Matilda, often called Australia’s unofficial national anthem, is also about betrayal. But it is the betrayal of the human rights of an individual denied his basic right to food by an unjust society. The swaggy is driven to suicide, whereas Peter recovers to become the rock upon which the Christian church was built. For me the fusion of these two different types of betrayal is very beautiful. Perhaps a strange...

I have been watching Aussie Rules Footy seriously since 1967. It astonishes me now just how much fun it can be to watch local football. I cannot remember seeing more scintillating evasion of tackles in any code of football at any level than the play of number 68 for North Footscray in yesterday’s game against Wyndham Vale. First of all a “Don’t Argue.” (the act of fending a player off with an outstretched arm) when not in possession of the ball. Then four blind turns in four seconds. 180 degrees clockwise. 90 degrees clockwise. 90 degrees clockwise again.. Then 90...

In Alice Springs in 1989, an Englishwoman seeing Australian Rules football for the first time on television said to me, “There are no rules.” I said to her “You cannot understand Australia without understanding this game.” But I couldn’t explain why. I still can’t. It’s something to do with freedom. Freepers, I need your thoughts.

Cecil B Demille’s 1927 film, King Of Kingz, is a visual feast, one of the most unremittingly great depictions of the story of Jesus I have ever seen. Ave Maria for Mary and Waltzing Matilda for Peter. AVE Matilda.

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) introduced a bill to fully defund NPR and PBS during a viral congressional hearing this week, calling the taxpayer-funded outlets “propaganda machines for the radical left.” The move came after a House Subcommittee on Government Efficiency hearing Wednesday, where NPR CEO Katherine Maher was brutally grilled by GOP lawmakers for the outlet’s deep-seated liberal bias while taking taxpayers’ money. Jackson’s bill—titled the “No Partisan Radio and Partisan Broadcasting Services Act” or the “NPR and PBS Act”—seeks to eliminate federal funding for both NPR and PBS. “Hardworking Americans are sick of footing the bill,” Jackson told Fox...

my opinion, the great artistic acts for freedom of speech in American artistic history include: Mark Twain opposing racist bigotry through The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn. Walt Whitman’s life long Hymn to America a.k.a Leaves Of Grass. Dylan Rejecting Woke Censorship With Freedom of Emotional Speech in Maggie’s Farm And lines like “How Does It Feel?” and “Once upon a time you dressed so fine/Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?/People call say ‘beware doll, you’re bound to fall’/ You thought they were all kidding you” to deaf snobs and opened eared fans at Newport. Nobel Prize...