Beautifully written stories on politics, social movements, photography and books

Tag John Stapleton

Convoy to Canberra One Year On. Chapter One: A Time For All Time.

By John Stapleton The humanitarian crimes committed by Australian authorities against their own citizens, beginning in early 2020, will live on in infamy, but it is the people themselves who create a nation’s history. On the 12th of February 2022,… Continue Reading →

The Best of 2022: With its Dismal History in Iraq, Australia Cannot take the High Moral Ground on Ukraine

The Great City: Extract from Dark Dark Policing by John Stapleton. From Malcolm Turnbull’s first day as Prime Minister in 2015, the bombings on Iraq increased. That is, he was responsible  for killing more Muslims than any other Prime Minister… Continue Reading →

Dark Seas. Extract: Hideout in the Apocalypse.

By John Stapleton. Photography David Sandford. The spooks were easy to spot. Most Australians couldn’t afford a new iPhone, and certainly not in that part of town. Old Alex felt decidedly unsafe, packed up the apartment, both glad to be… Continue Reading →

Australia’s Battered Inland Rivers: The Greed of the Oligarchs Destroys Australia’s Outback

By John Stapleton. Photography by Dean Sewell. Australia’s fabled Outback is now being regularly described as an inland sea as the country experiences its third year of widespread heavy rains, by far one of the wettest periods in living memory…. Continue Reading →

Australia’s Only Celebrity Jihadist Creates Diplomatic Chaos: The Life of Neil Prakash

By John Stapleton. Once labelled Australia’s most dangerous man, Neil Prakash was stripped of his Australian citizenship in 2018, amid considerable political theatre from the government. Lawyers and academics argued at the time that it was against the law to… Continue Reading →

“Biggest cyber breach in history” as techs scramble to be heard above Omicron din: The Best of 2022.

By John Stapleton: Michael West Media. Australian governments and businesses have been warned they face their greatest hacking threat yet, Apache Log4j. John Stapleton reports on Australian Cyber Security Centre warnings of possible widespread systems failure. There has always been a dystopian theory that… Continue Reading →

Media Manipulation, Censorship, Surveillance: Australia. The Best of 2022.

By John Stapleton. One of the most vile of all the vile deeds perpetrated by the Coalition under the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison era of benighted Australian governance was to make journalists Persons of Interest – POIs – under the ASIO Act. The… Continue Reading →

Pfizer’s Reputation Destroyed by European Union Parliament Admissions: Why Isn’t Australia Holding a Similar Inquiry?

By John Stapleton. Extract from the Upcoming Book Australia Breaks Apart. Below is a transcript of a press conference held by members of the European Parliament expressing their absolute outrage over the performance of vaccine manufacturer Pfizer, including, despite being… Continue Reading →

Factcheck This: Bombshell Vaccine Revelations In the European Parliament Rock Australia

By John Stapleton: Extract from the upcoming book Australia Breaks Apart For anyone who has followed the Covid narrative and the rampant corruption involved, this is the biggest story on Earth.  The revelations out of the European Parliament that Pfizer… Continue Reading →

Shearers: The Photography of Russell Shakespeare

Award winning photographer Russell Shakespeare explains the obsession: I’ve photographed shearers a lot over the years for a number of different publications. They’re an important and easily understood symbol for one of Australia’s most important industries; and there is a… Continue Reading →

The Daughter of Siberian Shamans

Yakutsk is the coldest place on Earth. Winter temperatures plunge below minus 50 degrees Centigrade. The town of Oymyakom, in the East Siberian Depression, has recorded temperatures well below of minus 60. The indigenous tribes of this most hostile of… Continue Reading →

The Long Read: Covert Concessions and Sweetheart Deals. Extract from Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia

By John Stapleton The brutal and very ugly face of the Covid response in Australia, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, is now mired in scandal, flayed daily in the public square. The discovery that he appointed himself to five different… Continue Reading →

Prison Island: Extract from the Upcoming book Australia Breaks Apart

By John Stapleton. The Long Read. Chapter One. PRISON ISLAND This massive edifice of evil was too complex, and, really, too elegant, to assign to just human awfulness and human inventiveness. It suggested a spiritual dimension of evil. This evil… Continue Reading →

How It All Ends: Extract from Australia Breaks Apart

By John Stapleton. The Long Read. This is Chapter Two, How It All Ends, of the upcoming book Australia Breaks Apart, the sequel to Unfolding Catastrophe Australia. The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety… Continue Reading →

Winter’s Back in Australia: The Photography of Dean Sewell

Snow is blanketing the Blue Mountains west of Sydney as a cold snap sends temperatures plummeting across Australia’s south-east. The icy conditions brought thunderstorms, rain and snow in higher parts of the NSW tablelands and north-east on Tuesday, and treacherous… Continue Reading →

Scott Morrison: The Very Ugly Face of Australia’s Covid Madness

John Stapleton. Extract from Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. In recent days Scott Morrison, as he has done since Covid lurched onto the Australian scene, has been spinning the pandemic story hard in an attempt to rescue his political career. In early… Continue Reading →

Power Hungry Elites Have Upended Australia

Paul Collits: Politicom. John Stapleton, editor of the fine online journal A Sense of Place Magazine, has now published two books on Australia’s experience of COVID totalitarianism.  The first, Unfolding Catastrophe, chronicled Australia’s descent into policy madness over two miserable years.  His… Continue Reading →

Salman Rushdie: Hunting the Famous

By John Stapleton. Legendary author Salman Rushdie has been attacked and repeatedly stabbed in the neck and torso as he was about to give a lecture on artistic freedom in western New York. He was airlifted to hospital. In 1989, Iran’s first… Continue Reading →

Book Out Now. Convoy to Canberra: The Day Australia Changed Forever.

The humanitarian crimes committed by Australian authorities against their own citizens, beginning in early 2020, will live on in infamy, but it is the people themselves who create a nation’s history. On the 12th of February 2022, the largest gathering… Continue Reading →

The Myth of Black Opal: Lightning Ridge and the Fiery Guardians of Eternal Love

The picture above was taken in 1909, at the height of the what was known as the Three Mile Rush. The bicycle polisher rigged up in the centre of this picture was being used to rub down opal. The commercial… Continue Reading →

India’s Festival of Colours

The Black and White Photography of Russell Shakespeare India’s Holi Festival celebrates the triumph of good over evil. It lasts for a night and a day and erupts in vivid display of colours across the villages, towns and cities of… Continue Reading →

Australia’s Unfolding Nightmare: How It All Ends Part III

Oak Flats is a working class suburb south of Wollongong on Australia’s east coast. Its demographic of tradies, electricians, plumbers, tilers, truck drivers, school teachers and nurses do not like or trust the nation’s politicians and to a man and… Continue Reading →

Murder On Lower Fort Street: Best of the Archives

With Photography by Tim Ritchie There is no more historic, more superbly located or visually rich part of Sydney than The Rocks. Tucked in under the southern flank of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, from the earliest days of the colony it… Continue Reading →

The Triumph of Death: Bruegel The Elder

Death triumphs over the mundane. An army of skeletons raze the Earth. All life is extinguished. The background is a barren landscape in which scenes of destruction are still taking place. In the foreground, Death leads his armies from his… Continue Reading →

Dark Seas. Extract: Hideout in the Apocalypse.

The spooks were easy to spot. Most Australians couldn’t afford a new iPhone, and certainly not in that part of town. Old Alex felt decidedly unsafe, packed up the apartment, both glad to be out of there and angry at… Continue Reading →

The Burning Ghats of Varanasi: Photography by Russell Shakespeare.

People crawl across India to die in Varanasi for one reason: according to the Hindu faith if you die there, on the edge of the sacred Ganges River, you will not be reincarnated. The cycle of life, and therefore of… Continue Reading →

Shutting Down Australia: How It All Ends Part II

By John Stapleton. Extract from Hideout in the Apocalypse. “The world’s gone mad,” the old reporter said as he passed people on his morning walk. “Didn’t make any sense anyway,” comes the response. Australia is shutting down. Extreme measures introduced… Continue Reading →

How It All Ends: Australia Transforms. Part One.

John Stapleton. For years the biggest story in the country has been the slow motion collapse of the Australia of old. Now, with the country only slowly stumbling out of lockdown and insane levels of social restrictions introduced without parliamentary… Continue Reading →

Christmas Day: The Nightmare of Australian Family Law. The Best of 2021.

The Family Court of Australia is finally being abolished, dissolved Into the Federal Court. There Are Very Good Reasons. The misuse of expert witnesses is a problem throughout Australia’s judicial system, but no more so than in family law. Here,… Continue Reading →

Sleaze And Self-interest Everywhere: Australia 2021

Pearls and Irritations Who among us, eighteen months ago, could have believed the mess this country is now in? Few can doubt Australia is at a turning point in its history. The debacle is writ large. The current Cabinet reshuffle will please… Continue Reading →

The Hanging of Christian Porter. The Best of 2021.

The devolved state of journalism at the $1.2 billion Australian Broadcasting Corporation is now on full display. The current witch hunt of the nation’s Attorney General over entirely unsubstantiated claims of an alleged rape 33 years ago, when he was… Continue Reading →

The Palace of Lies Abolished: The Best of 2021.

By John Stapleton. A dark stain on the nation’s legal, social and political history is finally being removed.  Known colloquially as the Palace of Lies, the Family Court of Australia was established in the mid-1970s, at the height of the… Continue Reading →

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