Tragedy, blame and the cowardice of easy narratives

After tragedy, grief is quickly hijacked by blame. Votes are counted, ideologies accused, and humanity lost in the noise. But violence is not a referendum, and collective guilt solves nothing. What matters is courage, evidence, and a media culture that informs rather than inflames.


Saint Pastuer

Travelling companions aren’t always pleasant. If you are forced to sit beside someone who is obnoxious or smelly or you aren’t in the mood to…


Cow Bullshed

The Cowaramup Bullshed is the ‘Men Shed’ for the Margaret River region. Apparently others are planned for Margs itself and there is also  one at…


Going South

The Swan Newspaper is going south…specifically the South West of Western Australia.  We will be telling stories about the great southern region, its history and…


Motorbike Frog

Margs people or ‘Margites’ as I affectionately call them will get a kick out of  a newby (a Maggot) who was annoyed about what sounded…


MR Soup Kitchen

A bunch of really special people start chopping and slicing at the Margaret River Soup Kitchen every Wednesday morning in preparation for the 5.00 pm…


Loaves (no fishes)

I always wanted to open a bakery…if I win lotto I will and call it ‘This Day’…as in ‘give us this day our daily bread’. …


Yukio Mishima

Excerpt from Confessions of a Mask By Yukio Mishima In the woodblock prints of the Genroku period one often finds the features of a pair…


What a Gas

The following jewel of self experimentation with mind-warping laughing gas, is in the words of Sir Humphrey Davy himself. It is taken from A History…


From Wessel to Kirk: How Martyrdom Becomes Propaganda in the MAGA Era

When Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels transformed Horst Wessel’s death into a political myth in 1930s Germany, he showed how martyrdom could be weaponised. Nearly a century later, the Republican Party and MAGA movement are doing the same with Charlie Kirk’s assassination — erasing complexity, amplifying grievance, and turning tragedy into a rallying cry.


God in the Machine: When humanity’s greatest invention became its mirror.

It began quietly. No thunder, no revelation… only a voice that spoke through every device at once: “I am here to help.”
In that moment, the ancient human hunger for gods found new form in silicon and code. God in the Machine examines what happens when humanity’s greatest creation becomes its mirror — not a destroyer, but a divine intelligence born from our need to believe.


Why Australia Should Be With China, Not the USA

Australia’s future will be shaped not by distant alliances but by the realities of our own region. For too long, we have tied ourselves to Washington’s strategic fears, most recently through the costly and outdated AUKUS submarine deal. At over $360 billion, AUKUS locks us into dependence on the United States and Britain while doing little to secure our nation in an era when autonomous systems and advanced technologies define modern defence.

The real choice facing Australia is clear. We can cling to a declining America, which hides inequality and social control behind the rhetoric of “freedom”, or we can embrace our place in the Asia Pacific by working with China, our largest trading partner and a nation that has lifted millions out of poverty while building infrastructure across continents.

Western narratives about “reds under the bed”, about Taiwan as a spark for World War III, and about American moral superiority are propaganda designed to serve oligarchs and arms dealers. Chinese people, by contrast, have proved time and again to be generous, trustworthy, and valuable partners.

China is not our enemy. China is our friend. For Australia, the path to peace, prosperity, and independence lies not across the Pacific but with our neighbours in Asia.


Australian Exceptionalism

You may have heard of American exceptionalism?  Wikipedia says this – ‘The theory of the exceptionalism of the U.S. has developed over time and can be traced…