Free Republic

AUSTRALIAN Journalist Lauren Tomasi has been shot by a rubber bullet fired straight at her by an LAPD officer in Los Angeles. Demands are being made in Australia that Anthony Albanese call Donald Trump to protest. Should The Donald pick up the phone or have any such call redirected to Newsom?

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...

84 years ago today, Bob Dylan was born. At his Nobel Prize winning best, from 1961 to 1966, he challenged us to rethink everything with everything he wrote. Donald Trump, born about 5 years after Dylan, in 1946, looks to me like he is just entering into a period of his Dylanesque best. Trump forces us to revealuate this modern world all the time. Bob Dylan mastered and elevated American music twice to great literature in a few short years, first as a folkie but then as a great rock n roller. Potus 45 surprised everyone to come down a...

I think that men and women should be treated as equal in everything except the three female spheres of activity of being pregnant, giving birth and breast feeding. But I think that there are subtle differences in abilities and tendencies between men and women such as a slight tendency for women to be more empathetic than men. Overall, empathy is also a very common quality in men, but my life experience has been to see a little more empathy in women than in men. To me there is an emotional beauty in the way that the Fitzroy footballer pictured in...

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...

One year ago today, Miley Cyrus, won Best International Song for “Flowers”. The first verse paints a chilling picture of the modern world: “We were good, we were gold Kinda dream that can’t be sold We were right ’til we weren’t Built a home and watched it burn.” I told Joe from Niddrie thatthe world needs a restoration of freedom. He told me a list of other problems he thought took precedence. Joe believed that conservatives need to stand up for the battler to alter the perception that conservatives only help business. I observed that American President Franklin Roosevelt described...

On January First, 1953, Hank Williams died of heart failure in the back seat of a car on the way to a gig. (He had hired a student to drive him from Alabama to West Virginia to be there. Dedication.) Hank liberated the pop music voice to sound wholeheartedly and powerfully American with unparalleled directness and emotional honesty on the hit song charts in ways no one had done before. He is not the father of The First Amendment but he is for me a pivotal grandfather of modern freedom of speech. The cultural achievements I revere of Dylan, Elvis,...

Marlene Dietrich passed away on the 6th of May, 1992, after a life of glamour as a sex symbol and one long marriage. She knew how things work between men and women. Her words prove it: “Darling, the legs aren’t so beautiful, I just know what to do with them.“ “Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him.” “To be completely woman you need a master, and in him a compass for your life. You need a man you can look up to and respect. If you...