As a civilisation we have lost our way when we no longer consider every single human being as equally precious
Category: opinions and journalism
This post includes both musical and “word power” bonuses.
The afternoon of 21 August 2025 was not “stormy” in the Margaret River region, but local waters were turbulent.
In 1876 this was also true, as November transitioned to December…and the SS Georgette developed an irreparable leak
Over the ensuing hours a lifeboat was smashed, several people drowned, and several others were successfully transferred to the captain’s gig (ship’s boat/tender) which then managed to reach another Margaret River beach.
Meanwhile, the other fifty or so passengers and crew were heading south, on a sinking ship.
Its captain then attempted to strand the Georgette on Calgardup Bay’s Redgate Beach.
Here, a “miraculous”/“heroic” rescue was undertaken by two equally courageous local people.
The white one’s heroism was hailed, worldwide.
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The above cartoon was published this week in “The Age” & “The Sydney Morning Herald”.
Artificial Intelligence offers a whole lot of possibilities, not all of which are dire.
However, it is undeniable that AI has already become the great enabler of greedy bastards who seek to profit by plagiarising (and “dumbing down”) the work/s of the world’s writers, musicians and visual artists.
Hats off to Cathy Wilcox for using her natural intelligence to depict this reality so vividly.
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The headline above is the key sentence in an essay published on 04 May 2025.
That essay’s headline: Are the Liberals in danger of becoming the Kodak of Australian politics?
Yesterday’s Pelican Yoga post included its most telling paragraph.
It is a direct quotation from a speech delivered in 1946 by a young, multiply-wounded ex-RAAF pilot; in 1949 he became a Liberal senator.
In 1968 he – John Gorton – became Prime Minister.
As the essay’s author observes:
His vision was generous, compassionate and cosmopolitan: of an Australia and a wider world “in which meanness and poverty, tyranny and hate, have no existence.”
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An hour earlier, I had been standing in brilliant sunshine, as my eyes and camera gazed across intensely blue water, a rocky shoreline, coastal scrub, and colourful, granite-loving lichens.
By 2.45 pm, however, our little group was walking under a light grey sky, and heading just a little inland.
It was no longer pointless to point a camera lens at the “roof” of Flinders Island.
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A: yes, in the Mafia/ Crime Boss sense of “Don”, according to a seasoned, well-respected observer of US Presidential politics.
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Behold Donald Corleone, the US president who behaves like a mafia boss – but without the principles. Of course, one hesitates to make the comparison, not least because Donald Trump would like it. And because the Godfather is an archetype of strength and macho glamour while Trump is weak, constantly handing gifts to America’s enemies and getting nothing in return.
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Pictured above is a satirical carnival float in Düsseldorf, Germany.
The essay below was written by David French.
Its opening paragraph:
President Trump is doing damage to America that could take a generation or more to repair. The next election cannot fix what Trump is breaking. Neither can the one after that.
One CommentOn this blog, a Word power post is always an attempt to draw your attention to an essay, article, report, poem or book that is particularly worth reading.
This post’s title is in fact the subtitle of the current Quarterly Essay; Minority Report, by George Megalogenis.
If I could “prescribe” just one “essential” piece for every intelligent Australian voter to read before our next Federal election….
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This post is a pointer to two opinion pieces.
Both are particularly worth reading in light of the re-election – as leader of “our” planet’s most powerful “democracy” – of an incorrigible liar, felon, bully, ignoramus, narcissist, jingoist, misogynist (probably, also a “sex offender”) and racist.
Just published by ABC News, Carrington Clarke’s is an immediate response to Donald Trump’s victory.
The October 2024 edition of The Monthly published Tim Winston’s more finely-crafted essay, which makes absolutely no direct reference to the American presidential election.
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Hmmmmmmmm…
Look!… flying, up there, in the sky….is it a pig, or a pie?
Pelican Yoga wishes you all a happy new year, regardless!
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