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

Author aSense

Confronting A New Age of Threat

The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones, Confronting A New Age of Threat, by security experts Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum of the Brookings Institute and Harvard University Law School respectively, brings the reader into a very… Continue Reading →

Worldwide Crackdown on Journalists

Reporters Without Borders Launched by Reporters Without Borders, “Tracker 19” is a tool made for an unprecedented global crisis. So named in reference not only to Covid-19 but also article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this project aims… Continue Reading →

My First Ever Front Page Story

Hunting the Famous Everything came in torrents from the past; always disturbed, always flung to the four winds, good times non-existent. The world had become a flat, monochromatic place, leaden grey, terrifying. There was no coherent, single personality. The grey was… Continue Reading →

Lives Versus Lives

By Ramesh Thakur with Pearls and Irritations When did the world’s media and politicians become collective versions of Lance Corporal Jones in the British comedy series Dad’s Army, screaming: Don’t panic! Don’t panic!? Colour me contrarian, but since the 2003 Iraq… Continue Reading →

Since when is it a crime to report a crime?

Bernard Collaery exposes the Timor Sea betrayal Witness K is in court this week, in closed-court proceedings nobody is meant to know about. He is on trial for doing the right thing. With the release of his book, Oil Under Troubled… Continue Reading →

Stasi Australia

An overwhelmed and distrusting Australian population, repeatedly betrayed by their own government, is now being fined and threatened with jail if they gather in public in groups of more than two people. Covid-19 has provided the perfect cover for the introduction… Continue Reading →

Richard Trevaskis Meets Malcolm McLaren

Hunting the Famous “Malcolm McLaren is dead. Cancer.” The mother of my children relayed the news in 2010. We were lounging in the muggy heat by a Phnom Penh pool. We were behind 20 foot high mansion walls; the chaos of… Continue Reading →

Gore Vidal at the Claridges

LIVING IN LONDON in the 1980s, by the time I got to Gore Vidal I was a bit blasé about interviewing famous people. I had interviewed Norman Mailer, Anthony Burgess, Dirk Bogarde, Salman Rushdie, the founder of the Sex Pistols,… Continue Reading →

In 1919, Anzac Day was commemorated despite the Spanish flu pandemic. In 2020, we will remember them again

Anzac Day 2020 will be a far cry from the Australian War Memorial’s dawn service of recent years. While dignified and solemn, the dawn service has also been spectacle. Sophisticated technology is used to project images from the memorial’s photographic… Continue Reading →

The Afghanistan War: Australia’s longest running deception

Michelle Fahy with Michael West Media What Australia’s prime ministers said about their country’s longest running military engagement, the War in Afghanistan. Michelle Fahy’s report follows secret information about the Afghanistan war obtained by The Washington Post. After a three-year legal battle, The… Continue Reading →

Anger Boiling Over Across Inland Australia

There are times in a nation’s history when the misdeeds of its ruling castes are writ large not just across its peoples but across the land. Now is such a time. A group of irrigators in Australia’s rich farming land… Continue Reading →

The War On Men

Fomenting Revolution in the Pandemic By Sue Price A key element to fomenting revolution is a large body of undervalued and underemployed males. Which is exactly what the ceaseless demonisation of men by Canberra’s massively funded femocracy has achieved. They are operating… Continue Reading →

World Experts Warn: Stop the Lockdowns

Panicked and irresponsible responses to Covid-19 are destroying the very societies they purport to protect, some of the world’s leading experts claim. The scientific community is increasingly coming out to condemn the societal wide shutdowns ordered by numerous, increasingly authoritarian… Continue Reading →

Rolling Out The Architecture Of Oppression: They Fear The People

By Caitlin Johnstone They all knew a pandemic was coming, academics, researchers, every intelligence agency, according to famed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In a groundbreaking Vice News interview Snowden declares: “There is nothing more foreseeable as a public health crisis in a… Continue Reading →

How Australia Got Covid-19 Completely and Totally Wrong

Experts Warn Against Authoritarian Madness None of it makes any sense. The streets are spookily quiet. The economy has been killed stone dead. People are being fined for going about their normal lives, even for being outside their homes without… Continue Reading →

Drones and the Police State Pandemic

By Ethan Nash with TOTT News It’s all Going Straight to a Totalitarian Hell As COVID-19 restrictions tighten across the world, governments are harnessing the potential of drones. From delivering medical supplies, to helping keep people indoors — drones can do a… Continue Reading →

The Square and the Tower: How Did It Get This Bad?

The lockdown of Australia continues apace. A man has been fined $1600 for driving to a park near his house with the intention of going for a bike ride. Breaching no distancing rules, he apparently had no good excuse for… Continue Reading →

Covid-19 Expands Power of the State

Australia’s Uber Surveillance Just Got Worse New reports have revealed authorities are incorporating smart phone tracking as a means to monitor and control COVID-19 ‘clusters’ in various locations. Agencies are requesting metadata reports from telecommunications giants, leading to growing concerns that… Continue Reading →

Crushing Information Flows: Manufacturing Ignorance

A dishonest government is a paranoid government, and the excessive legislation and manipulation of Australian media is already backfiring on the operatives behind it. The deliberately engineered bland-out of Australian media creates an illusion of consensus; as exemplified by the latest… Continue Reading →

Coronavirus, Mass Psychological Engineering and 1984

Military on the streets, police targeting rule breakers, surveillance drones barking orders and citizens told to stay in their homes. There have now been 27 deaths from the coronavirus in Australia. At times like this, with a bewildered, confused and… Continue Reading →

Covid-19: Australia’s Dismal Missteps and Mismanagement

By Jack Waterford It is too early for the official history of the impact of COVID-19 on Australia. We are not even at the end of the beginning, let alone the beginning of the end. Politicians and the independent experts… Continue Reading →

The Madness of Crowds

Extract and interview with author Douglas Murray Suddenly we have a genuine crisis on our hands. The petty politics and fashionable shibboleths of the era now look very petty indeed. In his most recent blockbuster book, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race… Continue Reading →

People’s Skepticism About Covid-19 Is The Fault Of The Lying Mass Media

By Caitlin Johnstone Propaganda is to Democracy, what violence is to Totalitarianism.” Noam Chomsky. You can’t blame people for being distrustful when you make them that way. The people screaming the loudest about disinformation right now are the ones most responsible… Continue Reading →

Australia’s Cufflink Comrades: The Victims of the Big Bail-out

By Michael West, Founder of Michael West Media Apart from the assorted state government stimulus initiatives, Australia’s Federal Government has been notching up stimulus at the rate of more than one per week. On March 12, a $17.6 billion stimulus — a $4.76… Continue Reading →

Deliberately Destroying the Australian Economy

Fiscal Stimulus on Steroids The government which brought the nation some of the most expensive electricity in the world, worst, read truly abysmal internet, plummeting educational outcomes, highest household debt and soaring costs of living is in the act of throwing… Continue Reading →

Bow Your Heads In Shame: Arm Merchants and the Australian Government

By Michelle Fahy with Michael West Media A disturbing number of Australia’s military personnel, senior defence and intelligence officials and politicians leave their public service jobs and walk through the ‘revolving door’ into roles with weapons-making and security-related corporations. Nowhere is government… Continue Reading →

Welcome to Australia: The World’s Newest Totalitarian State

No one with two neurones to rub together trusts the Australian government. Their actions during the pandemic are being wildly and widely condemned. Australians have been suffering a slow death of democracy for years. A sclerotic bureaucracy and a greedy, dismally… Continue Reading →

Covid-19 Plays Out in Australia

An Unfolding Catastrophe The coverage has been excoriating. And so it should be. Australians have been abandoned by the political establishment. In a time of crisis, they’ve been doubly abandoned. There has been a catastrophic loss of faith in democracy,… Continue Reading →

How To Destroy A Nation

The Failure of Australian Governance All politics is local. An adage Australia’s inept government forgot long ago. It is what is happening in people’s lounge rooms that matters the most. Now almost everyone is hunkered down in their own lounge… Continue Reading →

Covid-19: Pundits Queue to Criticise the Prime Minister

Experts have long warned that with the extremely poor quality of government which has characterised the last decade in Australia, the country was rapidly becoming ungovernable. Now the future has arrived. Normally in times of of war or crisis the… Continue Reading →

Covid-19: Pundits Queue to Criticise the Prime Minister

Australia’s Collapsing Democracy: A Deficit of Trust Experts have long warned that with the extremely poor quality of government which has characterised the last decade in Australia, the country was rapidly becoming ungovernable. Now the future has arrived. Normally in times… Continue Reading →

The Uncanny Melancholy of Empty Photographs in the Time of Coronavirus

By Cherine Fahd and Sara Oscar Over the last few weeks, photographs in the news and on social media have documented our behaviour in response to COVID-19. Panic buying of pasta, rice and, surprisingly, toilet paper is represented in empty shelf after… Continue Reading →

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