If ever cynical Australians needed a definition or an example of an asylum seeker, it is these people.

Whether they ever reach the southern hemisphere or we simply help with RAAF air drops of supplies, these people need the haven and humanity of the West.

Remember Rwanda and the 100-day slaughter in 1994 of up to a million Tutsi and Hutu tribes people, simply because of their culture and faith.

Soldiers from Western countries were forced to stand by while the slaughter took place in front of them.

Then-US president Bill Clinton expressed regret at the West's intransigence. Too late.

Australians worry about the "queue jumpers" and those merely in search of economic improvement, who gamble their lives on a new life in Australia, on a leaky boat owned by a dodgy people smuggler.

Yes, they jump the queues in front of many thousands, stuck in overseas refugee camps.

But the Yazidis should be allowed to leap the queues.

They are fleeing terror - besieged by barbaric cowards who butcher everything including their own religion, purely for the sake of power.

In the absence of a strong and coherent Iraqi government, the West is the Yazidis' only hope.

THE world is in shock over the tragic death of comic genius Robin Williams.

Many greats from the screen have provoked our sadness from afar, with their death, but Robin Williams's untimely death is a moment in our lives that got our complete attention.

As many have said in vast columns of print, social media and television, he made us laugh and cry.

He had a brutal clarity and a brilliant insight into the sort of thinking normally dismissed as weird, creative and eccentric.

A great loss to the entire world. We'll miss him.