Destroying A Nation: Part IX Unfolding Catastrophe, A Sense of Place Magazine, 13 April, 2021.

By John Stapleton The onslaught of Covid incompetence came at a time when the nation itself was on rocky ground.  Those who would doubt Australia’s democracy were spread far and wide. Trapped in circumstance, Old Alex was reliving his own version of The Crucible. Because of that old piece of whorage: “One sliver of truth […]

How To Destroy A Nation: Part VIII Unfolding Catastrophe, A Sense of Place Magazine, 4 April, 2021.

By John Stapleton Old Alex was alive to the whole End of Days narrative for multiple reasons, including his own childhood. Having grown up in a Christian cult, members of his family were preparing for the end of the world way back in 1972. Water bottles in the cupboard. Packed to flee.  Fascinating what happens […]

Sleaze and self interest is everywhere, Pearls and Irritations, 1 April, 2021.

By John Stapleton 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 absolutely nobody and utterly fail to rescue Morrison’s smashed reputation. It simply exposes the shallow […]

A Ship of Fools: Unfolding Catastrophe Part VII, A Sense of Place Magazine, 31 March, 2021.

By John Stapleton Very early on in the Covid drama the country’s commentators were straight out of the box slamming the government for mismanagement. There was no rallying behind the flag. From leading independent news site Crikey a story titled Ship of Fools:  “State and federal governments are busy telling citizens to be accountable, be responsible. That’s […]

Barrage: Unfolding Catastrophe Part VI, A Sense of Place Magazine, 26 March, 2021.

By John Stapleton Alex’s barrage began with a story titled “Covid-19: Pundits Queue to Criticise the Prime Minister” and subtitled “Australia’s Collapsing Democracy: A Deficit of Trust”. OK, warming up.  “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 […]

Sequestered: Unfolding Catastrophe Part V, A Sense of Place Magazine, 25 March, 2021.

There was a torrent on the water surface but Old Alex was hidden in the deep matting on the bottom of the sea. That’s the way it felt.  There was a tumultuous effect. There was a spiritual component. There were many threads to the story.  His original plan had been to come back to Australia […]

The Hanging of Christian Porter, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 March, 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 a teenager, is a classic case in point. What amazes old-timers like myself is that […]

Australians To Scan Faces For Government Services, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 March, 2021

  Australians To Scan Faces For Government Services By TOTT News Australians will soon use facial recognition technology to file bankruptcy applications, enrol to vote, apply/receive welfare payments and even register votes, in a new overhaul. A new $800 million digital technology package dubbed the ‘Digital Business Plan’ has been unveiled by Prime Minister Scott Morrison as […]

Murder On Lower Fort Street: Best of the Archives, A Sense of Place Magazine, 13 March, 2021.

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 was known as a slum, for its gambling dens, drinking houses, lively women, dirt poor […]

Australia’s Submarine Fiasco: We Should Do More Than Just Wait for the Attack-class Submarines, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 13 March, 2021.

  Australia’s Submarine Fiasco: We Should Do More Than Just Wait for the Attack-class Submarines By Michael Shoebridge: Australian Strategic Policy Institute Debate on Australia’s future submarines is understandably focused on the information that floats out of the Defence Department about France’s Naval Group and the $80 billion program to design and build the boats. […]

City Of Lost Mosques: How Suzhou Tells The Story Of China’s Islamic Past, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 13 March, 2021.

  City Of Lost Mosques: How Suzhou Tells The Story Of China’s Islamic Past By Alessandra Cappelletti, Associate Professor, Department of International Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University The labyrinth of alleys and lanes in the old city of Suzhou hides a secret: historical fragments of the long history of Islam in China. Regular stories in the international […]

Victoria Extends ‘State of Emergency’ for Nine Months, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 March, 2021.

 Victoria Extends ‘State of Emergency’ for Nine Months By Sonia Hickey: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog The Victorian Government has extended the jurisdiction’s state of emergency until December 2021, despite falling Covid-19 numbers across the state. Under existing laws, this is the last time a state of emergency can be consecutively used for Covid-19, but there […]

The Palace Of Lies Abolished, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 March, 2021.

  The Palace of Lies Abolished 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 “all men are bastards” style of feminism which was then infiltrating courts […]

Earth Has A Hot New Neighbour – And It’s An Astronomer’s Dream, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 9 March, 2021.

  Earth Has A Hot New Neighbour – And It’s An Astronomer’s Dream By Sherry Landow: University of NSW. A newly discovered planet could be our best chance yet of studying rocky planet atmospheres outside the solar system, a new international study involving UNSW Sydney shows.  The planet, called Gliese 486b (pronounced Glee-seh), is a […]

Bloody Colonials: Extract, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 March, 2021.

Bloody Colonials: Extract By Stafford Sanders. The latest from A Sense of Place Publishing. “Halloran!” barked Bascombe as we drew up in front of the stables. There was no immediate response to this, so he repeated more loudly: “Halloran!” And for good measure, “Get your lazy bog-Irish arse out here at once!” At this pleasant imprecation, […]

The Contradictions of Vaccine Politics, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 March, 2021.

  The Contradictions of Vaccine Politics By Paul Collits The current penchant that governments and many citizens have for “Covidocracy” looks like becoming permanent.  This is despite the initial promise of the silver bullet vaccine.  Those who, quite legitimately, question the efficacy of the jab, are prone to made pariahs.  Rather, they should be lauded […]

Scott Morrison: The Elephant In The Room. Best of the Archives. A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 March, 2021.

  Scott Morrison: The Elephant In The Room. Best of the Archives. The single most fascinating thing about Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison is: He Shows No Guilt. Not a shred of remorse at having thrown millions of people onto welfare thanks to his absurd misreading of the Covid Scare. Not for the tens of […]

The Daughter of Siberian Shamans: Best of the Archives. A Sense of Place Magazine, 2 March, 2021.

  The Daughter of Siberian Shamans: Best of the Archives Yakutsk is the coldest place on Earth. Winter temperatures plunge below minus 50 degrees Centigrade. Courtesy Sohu. Unlicensed Image. 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 environments […]

An “Open Letter” to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison from the World’s Most Powerful Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch, A Sense of Place Magazine, 2 March, 2021.

 An “Open Letter” to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison from the World’s Most Powerful Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch One of Australia’s most experienced journalists, the widely respected Steve Waterson, has penned a series of excoriating articles on Australia’s mismanagement of the Covid scare. The articles, with prominent headlines such as “Paying for an epidemic of […]

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, As Editor, A Sense of Place Masgzine, 25 February, 2021.

  Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism Extract: Angus Deaton and Anne Case From Nobel Prize winning economist Angus Deaton and leading academic Anne Case comes a beautifully written, concise, accessible and groundbreaking study of the collapse of America’s working class and the profound political consequences that go with it. There are many […]

A Year of Living With Discredited Mathematical Models, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 25 February, 2021.

 A Year of Living With Discredited Mathematical Models By Professor Ramesh Thakur and David Redman After a year’s experience of COVID-19 worldwide, the continuing hold of discredited mathematical models regarding lockdowns remain. As well, it is increasingly evident that medical specialists put in charge of public policy ignored existing pandemic preparedness plans, for better or […]

Fast Radio Bursts Across The Universe: What We Know So Far, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 21 February, 2021.

  Fast Radio Bursts Across The Universe: What We Know So Far By Ryan Shannon, Swinburne University of Technology and Keith Bannister, CSIRO. Fast radio bursts are one of the great mysteries of the universe. Since their discovery, we have learned a great deal about these intense millisecond-duration pulses. But we still have much to learn, […]

In Australia, Facebook’s Ban on Sharing News Stories has sent Publishers’ Traffic Tumbling, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 21 February, 2021.

  In Australia, Facebook’s Ban on Sharing News Stories has sent Publishers’ Traffic Tumbling By Joshua Benton: Founder of Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Laboratory In a vacuum nobody can hear you scream. Australia already has some of the world’s worst internet, thanks to chronic government mismanagement. Its international borders remain closed after what many regard […]

Birds Use Massive Magnetic Maps To Migrate: Some Could Cover The Whole World, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 19 February, 2021.

Birds Use Massive Magnetic Maps To Migrate: Some Could Cover The Whole World By Richard Holland, Bangor University and Dmitry Kishkinev, Keele University Every year, billions of songbirds migrate thousands of miles between Europe and Africa – and then repeat that same journey again, year after year, to nest in exactly the same place that […]

The Fear of Terrorism Does Not Justify the Wholesale Removal of Citizens’ Rights, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 19 February, 2021.

  The Fear of Terrorism Does Not Justify the Wholesale Removal of Citizens’ Rights By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog Home affairs minister Peter Dutton slid through his ASIO Bill 2020 with bipartisan approval on the final sitting day of parliament last year. The usual suspect, the fear of terrorism, was cited as justification for the passing of […]

AdRorts: Australia’s Health Minister, Comrade Greg Hunt, Deploys Communist Propaganda Tactics, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 18 February, 2021.

  AdRorts: Australia’s Health Minister, Comrade Greg Hunt, Deploys Communist Propaganda Tactics By Callum Foote: Michael West Media. “I suspect Orwell would see, as he did back in the 1930s, the rich and outrageous irony of governments using the resources of the people to manipulate them and to keep them acquiescent, passive and apathetic.” Shadow […]

This Must Surely Be The Most Corrupt Government in Australian History, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 14 February, 2021.

  This Must Surely Be The Most Corrupt Government in Australian History By Elizabeth Minter with Michael West Media AdRorts, on the back of the Covid, is the latest corrupt practice in a prodigious body of Australian government dirty work. Is the Covid-19 vaccine the Liberal Party’s vaccine or the Australian Government’s vaccine? It’s not […]

Ode to Australian Tennis Legend Margaret Court, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 February, 2021.

 Ode to Australian Tennis Legend Margaret Court By Paul Collits Margaret Court has brought on the ire of the diversity brigade because as a fundamentalist Christian she is opposed to gay marriage. Ms Court has been promoted from an Officer of the Order of Australia to a Companion (AC); an honour opposed by LGBTQI groups […]

Police Acting Outside Their Powers at the Australian Open, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 February, 2021.

  Police Acting Outside Their Powers at the Australian Open Melbourne Activist Legal Support In the past week, police have been threatening a small group of refugee protesters, including members of Grandmothers for Refugees, with arrest and issuing them with ‘Directions to Leave’. Three members of the protest group have been issued banning orders for 24 […]

How Morrison Taught Australian Voters to Relax and Love the Rort, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 14 February, 2021.

 How Morrison Taught Australian Voters to Relax and Love the Rort David Donovan: Independent Australia It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Australian people are being actively groomed by conservative politicians to accept, dismiss, overlook, or ignore their unethical activities. In fact, corruption scandals involving conservative Australian politicians are so plentiful and out-in-the-open […]

No Plan PM: How the Australian Government’s Lack of an Aged Care Plan Cost Lives, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 February, 2021.

 No Plan PM: How the Australian Government’s Lack of an Aged Care Plan Cost Lives By Dr Sarah Russell: Michael West Media Australia’s aged care sector is a national disgrace. A 21 billion dollar taxpayer funded industry is so user unfriendly, so byzantine in its bureaucracy, that few elderly citizens could ever negotiate it. The […]

Morrison Drafts Laws to Placate Murdoch, as Google Threatens to Pull the Plug, AS Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 February, 2021.

 Morrison Drafts Laws to Placate Murdoch, as Google Threatens to Pull the Plug By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. Since the advent of the internet, data has increasingly risen in worth to the point that these days it’s the most valuable resource on the planet. Over that same time frame, consumers have become increasingly aware that […]

Scott Morrison Leaves Australia In Flames, An Extract from Dark Dark Policing. Featuring the Photography of Dean Sewell. A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 February, 2021.

By John Stapleton There is an encyclopaedic array of scandals swarming around Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, with journalists already forming a queue to label this the most corrupt government in Australian history. Scott Morrison is now plotting to go to an election in September or October this year, before the madness of his Covid […]

Nothing More Permanent Than A Temporary Measure, Part IV Unfolding Catastrophe, A Sense of Place Magazine, 5 February, 2021.

Part IV Unfolding Catastrophe Already by the Australian autumn of 2020, following straight on from a Christmas of bush fires and extreme loss, the warning signs should have been entirely clear to anyone who cared to look. An uneducated public makes for easy victims. The Australia of 2020 faced plummeting educational outcomes, some of the […]

Threats and Seductions: The Ever Present Rupert Murdoch, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 5 February, 2021.

  Threats and Seductions: The Ever Present Rupert Murdoch By John Menadue with Michael West Media That Foxtel has been double dipping by charging the ABC up to $105,000 to broadcast three Matildas matches while receiving $40 million from the federal government to increase coverage of women’s, niche and community sport is just business as usual for […]

When We Needed Churchill – We Got ScoMo: The Best of 2020. As Editor. A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 December, 2021.

  When We Needed Churchill – We Got ScoMo: The Best of 2020. By Paul Collits We are living through a national crisis.  Things are out of control.  Sitting atop the disaster is a man who shouldn’t be there. There can be little doubt that Australia, now in a time of crisis and clearly out […]

G, O and D, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 January, 2021.

 G, O and D By Ian Purdie The library stood five stories tall, Looking up from its entrance the children felt small, Inside they could smell all the musty old books, And feel the silence enforced by harsh looks, Off to one side were some tables and chairs, And beside them there was a set […]

And So Much More, Unfolding Catastrophe: Part III. A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 january, 2021.

Unfolding Catastrophe: Part III. Early in the “pandemic”, or “plandemic” as sceptics were already calling it, both mainstream and independent commentators queued to attack Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whose mishandling of Covid-19 was likely to be derided by historians for generations to come. Katharine Murphy, a senior political reporter with Guardian Australia, inside the beltway […]

The Desert Stars: The World’s Most Remote Rock Band. Best Of The Archives. A Sense of Place Magazine, 28 January, 2021.

Desert Stars Justine Currie and rhythm guitarist and lead singer/songwriter Jay Minning stand a the edge of the Nullabor Plain. The Photography of Dean Sewell/Oculi. Text by John Stapleton. The Spinifex People, as they are now known, are the immediate descendants of the last nomadic hunter gatherers to experience contact with the modern world. They […]

Naive Faith: Unfolding Catastrophe Part II, A Sense of Place Magazine, 28 January, 2021.

None of it would last, or so Old Alex believed, retaining as he did a naive faith in the natural, healthy scepticism of Australians. Surely none of what was happening made any sense at all. There had been weeks of extraordinary confusion, a series of contradictory government announcements which appeared almost deliberately designed to instill […]

Prelude: Unfolding Catastrophe Part I, A Sense of Place Magazine, 27 January, 2021.

 Prelude: Unfolding Catastrophe Part I The thing he remembered most starkly about those early months of the so-called “pandemic” were empty trains churning through the night, a sense of dread as everything was altered, military helicopters hovering over an empty Sydney Harbour, empty streets, silent suburbs, and dread, mostly dread. One of the extraordinary things […]

Lost Worlds: Australia. How It All Ends Part I. A Sense of Place Magazine, 23 January, 2021.

How It All Ends Part I 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 approval in what was tantamount to martial law introduced, under the […]

Shutting Down Australia: How It All Ends Part II. A Sense of Place Magazine, 23 January, 2021.

 Shutting Down Australia How It All Ends Part II “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 purportedly to stop the spread of Covid-19 are requiring extreme policing measures to force a […]

Australia’s Unfolding Nightmare. How It All Ends Part III. A Sense of Place Magazine, 23 January, 2021.

 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 woman pay more or less no […]

Deserted From Above, Unfolding Catastrophe. A Sense of Place Magazine, 20 January, 2021.

Unfolding Catastrophe: By John Stapleton For days, or was it weeks, he could feel the ships hovering overhead, across time, across space, terraforming as they settled on that picturesque part of the South Coast. There was everything to be said. We have a time and place. Weary from the journey. Exhausted by the epoch changing […]

Bridget Lafferty Leaves Redfern: The Best Of. A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 January, 2021.

Images, paintings and recollections by Bridget Lafferty Editors Note: This story, written way back in 2018, was pivotal in the evolution of A Sense of Place Magazine, because it was at this very point that we realised and came to understand the potential of the new publishing technologies. Bridget Lafferty was an old neighbour of mine in […]

Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. The Best of 2020, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 January, 2021.

By John Stapleton The wildly inaccurate nature of initial modelling may proffer some excuse for the Australian government’s catastrophic mishandling of the Covid crisis. But within weeks of it all beginning epidemiologists from some of the world’s leading institutions were speaking out, warning  that lockdowns were not the way to go.  The geniuses in the […]

The Triumph of Death: Bruegel The Elder: The Best of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 January, 2021.

By John Stapleton 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 reddish horse, destroying the world of the living. The latter are led […]

Lumbini: Buddha’s Birthplace: The Best of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 7 January, 2021.

Extract: Hideout in the Apocalypse by John Stapleton “You must heal yourself, no one else can, no one else should,” reads one of the placards posted around Buddha’s birthplace, Lumbini in Nepal, where he had spent several months not so long before. Of all the sayings of the Buddha, that one meant the most to […]

The Intellectual Clout Behind The Anti-Lockdown Movement, A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 January, 2021.

John Stapleton. With Professor Ramesh Thakur In the lockdown insanity which has gripped the Australian political class one of the country’s most distinguished academics, Professor Ramesh Thakur of the Australian National University, has stood out for his bold, erudite and highly intelligent breakdown on why lockdowns are the wrong policy, at the wrong time, for […]

A Celebration of Genius: Maria Popova and Figuring. The Best of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 5 January, 2021.

Luminously intelligent, gifted with a great eye and a startling, incandescent love of beauty, the already celebrated Maria Popova has finally put out a book. Figuring, is now available. For twelve years now Popova’s weekly newsletter Brain Pickings has dazzled, delighted, diverted and intrigued its followers. Carson Ellis. Featured in Brain Pickings There is nothing else on […]

Melbourne Meltdown: The Best of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 5 January, 2021.

Every single day, seemingly without end, more than five million people in Melbourne are suffering through the harshest lockdowns in the world. Metropolitan Melbourne residents may only leave their homes for a “valid” reason and must comply with a curfew between the hours of 9 pm and 5 am. All Victorians must wear a face […]

The Worst of the Worst: The Best of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 3 January, 2021.

Guantanamo Bay and A Bigger Picture The publicity blurb for the shortly to be released book A Bigger Picture by former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull makes the claim that he “stood up to Donald Trump”. Really??? But thereby hangs a tale. And a story about Australia, Turnbull, Trump, secretive refugee deals and Guantanamo Bay inmates that […]

Lockdowns Wrong: The World Experts Australia Ignored. The Best of 2020. 2 January, 2021.

The Great Barrington Declaration Some of the world’s most distinguished doctors and public health scientists have called on governments to stop the lockdowns which have had such a devastating impact on Australia. A public statement, known as The Great Barrington Declaration after the town in Massachusetts where it was drawn up, was authored by Dr. […]

Boy On Fire: The Mark Mordue Interview: The Best of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 1 January, 2021.

 Boy On Fire: The Mark Mordue Interview: The Best of 2020. The Young Nick Cave There is one book birthed out of Australia this season which has all the hallmarks of becoming an international bestseller, and that’s Boy On Fire: The Young Nick Cave. Author Mark Mordue is a classic journeyman of Australian rock and cultural […]

Morrison Government Wreathed in Scandal: The Best of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 1 January, 2021.

Extract from Dark Dark Policing The sorry Covid-19 saga says a lot about Australia and the churn at the top of the pile, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison. None of it complimentary. We have seen in the past few days the deliberate creation of panic in the broader population, a compliant mainstream media becoming handmaidens […]

Violent Australia: The Mob Rises: The Best of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 31 December, 2020.

Australia has never seen anything like it. And somehow we’re all fine with it. This extremely distressing footage of yet another pregnant woman being violently and aggressively arrested in Melbourne went viral within hours yesterday and is likely to be seen by as many millions of people as saw the now infamous footage of a […]

Yen’s White Lie: Charles Gerard and the Secrets of Old Saigon: The Best of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 31 December, 2020.

By John Stapleton Yen’s White Lie details a complicated lover’s tryst in Old Saigon. But the city itself is as much of a character as the denizens that haunt the atmospheric alleyways and cafes of the past. When author Charles Gerard first came to live in Saigon in the mid-1990s, the former capital of South […]

Australian Medical Association’s Reputation Destroyed in Covid Chaos: The Best Of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 29 December, 2020.

By John Stapleton Do No harm. So goes the most basic maxim of medical practice. Yet many hundreds of Australian practitioners have done exactly that, with senior health bureaucrats standing side by side with the nation’s grandstanding politicians as they impose draconian, counterproductive lockdowns. On 5 October, The Australian’s economics editor Adam Creighton wrote: “In […]

The Carlisle Hotel: Extract from Hideout in the Apocalypse: The Best Of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 29 December, 2020.

By John Stapleton. Photography by Dean Sewell. The Carlisle Hotel in the back streets of Newtown in Sydney’s inner-west is one of the few places left in Sydney where the wowsers have not won; an old-fashioned pub in an increasingly strictured, shuttered country. Hotels and beer gardens across Australia are now largely empty, barren places, […]

Scott Morrison: The World’s Only Pentecostal Leader. The Best of 2020. A Sense of Place Magazine, 28 December, 2020.

 By John Stapleton The End Is Nigh As the shutdown of Australia continues apace, there’s one very legitimate question to ask: How is the Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s avowed belief that we are living through The End of Days influence his decision making? How does his belief in prosperity theology, that God rewards the righteous […]

The Future History of Publishing: The Best of 2020, A Sense of Place Magazine, 27 December, 2020.

By John Stapleton Since the beginning of literature technologies have shaped the written word. And thereby publishing technologies have shaped history, culture, politics and war. The adage history is written by the victors has transposed in this truly astonishing era into something else. In fact, in our current time, history is being written by the […]

Betrayal of the People: Australia’s Political Class Spirals into Chaos: The Best of 2020, A Sense of Place Magazine, 26 December, 2020.

By John Stapleton Desperate to distract attention from his spectacular mismanagement of the Covid crisis, the destruction of the national economy and the devastation his idiotic policies have wrecked on the lives of millions of people, this week Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison ramped up his attacks on China. The hypocrisy is truly astounding. Scott […]

Australian Sues The Emir of Dubai, A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 November, 2020.

By John Stapleton Australian Sues The Emir of Dubai Well that’s not a headline you see everyday. But that’s exactly what one Australian has been doing. The story is a complicated one, made more complicated by the passing of time and a long history of legal maneuvering. But it begins spectacularly against, as suits the […]

Shearers: The Photography of Russell Shakespeare, A Sense of Place Magazine, 14 November, 2020.

By John Stapleton 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 good deal of romance associated with them, historically and to the present […]

Lives, Livelihoods and Liberties: Lost, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 November, 2020.

By John Stapleton The arrest of 404 people protesting outside Parliament House in Melbourne’s central business district, and the issuing of 395 very punitive fines, has crystallised Australia’s descent into authoritarianism. It is now a simple statement of fact that Australia’s police are being misused to suspend the democratic right to protest. While the adversarial […]

Reignite Democracy Australia, A Sense of Place Magazine, 27 October 2020.

By John Stapleton The group Reignite Democracy Australia has been busily documenting the many government abuses swelling out of Victoria under the most draconian and abusive lockdowns in the world. After weeks of mounting criticisms, all of a sudden Premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews is being given rave reviews for supposedly having seen off the […]

Peta Credlin Goes Feral: Daniel Andrews Dissolves, A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 October, 2020.

By John Stapleton For more than 100 days in a row Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has held lengthy press conferences where he details the latest Covid stats and answers questions from a tame media pack. This daily piece of theatre, where young and inexperienced journalists have acted as little more than channels for the state […]

Australian Medical Association’s Reputation Destroyed in Covid Chaos, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 October, 2020.

By John Stapleton Do No harm. So goes the most basic maxim of medical practice. Yet many hundreds of Australian practitioners have done exactly that, with senior health bureaucrats standing side by side with the nation’s grandstanding politicians as they impose draconian, counterproductive lockdowns. On 5 October, The Australian’s economics editor Adam Creighton wrote: “In […]

Lumbini: Buddha’s Birthplace, A Sense of Place Magazine, 1 October, 2020.

Extract: Hideout in the Apocalypse. By John Stapleton. “You must heal yourself, no one else can, no one else should,” reads one of the placards posted around Buddha’s birthplace, Lumbini in Nepal, where he had spent several months not so long before. Of all the sayings of the Buddha, that one meant the most to […]

Australia’s Virus Story Collapses: Sky News Goes Feral, A Sense of Place Magazine, 14 September, 2020.

By John Stapleton With police blanketing the streets of Melbourne, citizens being assaulted by thugs in uniform, doors being broken down, a woman being dragged screaming from her car while millions in Melbourne remain shut down in the world’s most draconian and irrational lockdowns, the Australian government has lost control of the very Covid narrative […]

Police Arrest Pregnant Woman for Facebook Post, A Sense of Place Magazine, 4 September, 2020.

By John Stapleton Every lie has a trigger point when it unravels. In Australia, it is the arrest of a pregnant woman in front of her two children because she had dared to put up a Facebook post in support of lockdown protests. The arrest took place in her own home as she was getting […]

Alarming Expat Experiences in Thailand’s Prisons, A Sense of Place Magazine, 20 August, 2020.

By John Stapleton Many books by foreigners about Thailand include romantic or dissolute tales of alcoholism or substance abuse in the enervating heat; accompanied by a colourful caste of local prostitutes, gangsters and police, with virtually all the characters on the take in one way or another. Others affectionately record the characteristic slippery collisions of […]

Australia’s Lockdown Sceptics Go Mainstream, A Sense of Place Magazine, 19 August, 2020.

By John Stapleton The debate over Australia’s harsh lockdowns has turned. From the beginning the cognoscenti, if you wish to call them that, did not climb on board, much less rally behind the flag. But the masses thought otherwise. Anyone who didn’t agree with the lockdowns soon learnt to keep their mouth shut. The public […]

Australian Federation of Islamic Councils President Dr Rateb Jneid, A Sense of Place Magazine, 9 August, 2020.

The Interview: By John Stapleton Only a few short years ago the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, the country’s leading Sunni Muslim organisation, was drenched in controversy, day after dismal day.  The Federation, reported to be sitting on more than $60 million in assets, became a household name for all the wrong reasons, a byword […]

Thailand: The Varieties of Expatriate Experience. The Tartan Pimpernel. A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 July, 2020.

By John Stapleton Walter ‘Whacky’ Douglas looked like he was having a fine old time when he was arrested and deported from Thailand in 2014. Douglas, known as “The Tartan Pimpernel” and once described as one of Britain’s ten wealthiest drugs traffickers, disappeared from official view in the late 1990s after a career linked to […]

The Rise of Gab, A Sense of Place Magazine, 29 June, 2020.

By John Stapleton The role of the Silicon Valley tech companies in manipulating public opinion during the Corona lockdowns has thrown a harsh light straight back on their own conduct. The creation of at scale emotional contagion and high levels of compliance in populations, all at the behest of governments and their intelligence agencies, will […]

By Australia’s Mehi River, A Sense of Place Magazine, 25 May, 2020.

The Craft and Art of Jupuul Mari Mehi means girl in the gamilaraay dialect Miyaay. Moree is Mari and Mari means man. That is just the way whitefellas take our language and put it in their phonetic context. Because our language is not written, it is only spoken. They misconstrue our meaning of words by […]

Australia’s Flying Kangaroo Flies Straight Into Trouble, A Sense of Place Magazine, 20 May, 2020.

By John Stapleton Australia’s Transport Workers’ Union is calling on the Federal Government to implement a national plan to lower the risk of infection and spread of COVID-19 in aviation as Qantas announces changes which the union claims fall short of measures of keeping workers and passengers safe. Ironically, only last year Qantas won the […]

A Race Against Time

By John Stapleton Maintain radio silence. There is a Rat. While the rest of us have been waiting for this. Entropy in decaying forms made the mission, well this mission, urgent. From a parallel world. Everything became possible. To be in two places at once. To travel in the blink of an eye, as the […]

The Least Expected Consequence of Hyper-Connectivity

By John Stapleton It was the least expected consequence of hyper-connectivity. I need you to do something for me. No one could have predicted any of it. There had always been the rumours. They had always walked amongst us. Down the millennia, spilling across the ages. Some exposed themselves. Some tried to lift up the […]

The Future has Arrived: Surveillance in Australia

By John Stapleton This week ten people were arrested in Melbourne for attending a protest against self-isolating, social distancing and tracking apps, the only real political protest in the country since climate demonstrations earlier in the year. The government perpetrated scare on terror, however real or otherwise its basis, has morphed into Covid-19. Whether it […]

Who’s Watching the Watchers? Surveillance in Australia

By John Stapleton With Australia’s economy tilting into collapse and numerous questions now arising over the government’s management of the Covid-19 response, the question of surveillance of whistle blowers, journalists and dissidents is now front and centre of the debate. The government is urging all Australians to download the Covid tracing app to their phones. […]

Thailand: World’s Centre for Fake Passports

By John Stapleton Visitors to Thailand are not warned by travel agents, airlines or their own governments that their passports are highly prized in Thailand, and stand a very good chance of being stolen. Depending on the nationality, a passport can fetch thousands of dollars on the black market, several months pay for many Thais. […]

World Experts Warn: Stop the Lockdowns, A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 April, 2020.

By John Stapleton 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 governments around the world. State of the art epidemiological research suggests that […]

How Australia Got Covid-19 Completely and Totally Wrong: Experts Warn Against Authoritarian Madness, A Sense of Place Magazine, 13 March, 2020.

By John Stapleton 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 good reason. Those who are self-isolating in their holiday homes are being ordered to go back to […]

The Biggest Bungle Of Them: All How It All Ends Part III, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 April, 2020.

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 woman pay more or less no attention to the media. It is this demographic which […]

How Did It Get So Bad? The Square and the Tower, A Sense of Place Magazine, 9 April, 2020.

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 being outside his home. But the government is telling people that exercise is a legitimate […]

Shutting Down Australia: How It All Ends Part II, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 April, 2020.

“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 purportedly to stop the spread of Covid-19 are requiring extreme policing measures to force a sceptical population, accustomed to being lied to by their […]

Crushing Information Flows: Manufacturing Ignorance, A Sense of Place Magazine, 7 April, 2020.

By John Stapleton Adishonest 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 polling suggesting a surge in popularity for Prime Minister Scott Morrison, despite […]

Stasi Australia, A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 April, 2020.

By John Stapleton 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 of martial law. All the fiats, storms of regulation and expansions […]

Lost Worlds: Australia How It All Ends, A Sense of Place Magazine, 5 April, 2020.

For years the biggest story in the country has been the slow motion collapse of the Australia of old. Now, with the country in lockdown and what is essentially martial law introduced under the cover of Covid-19, it has all come to pass, seemingly in an instant. The three books I have written on this […]

Morrison Government Wreathed In Scandal, A Sense of Place Magazine, 31 March, 2020.

The sorry Covid-19 saga says a lot about Australia and the churn at the top of the pile, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison. None of it complimentary. We have seen in the past few days the deliberate creation of panic in the broader population, a compliant mainstream media becoming handmaidens in support of the demolition […]

Deliberately Destroying the Economy: Fiscal Stimulus on Steroids, A Sense of Place Magazine, 31 March, 2020.

By John Stapleton 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 millions of Australians onto the dole queues. And delivering billions of dollars to their corporate […]

Welcome to Australia: The World’s Newest Totalitarian State, A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 March, 2020.

By John Stapleton Noone 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 inept political class ensures a once optimistic country is optimistic no longer. […]

Covid-19 Plays Out in Australia An Unfolding Catastrophe, A Sense of Place Magazine, 29 March, 2020.

By John Stapleton 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, and all their malfeasance has come floating to the surface, plain for everyone to see. […]

How to Destroy a Nation, A Sense of Place Magazine, 28 March, 2020.

By John Stapleton 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 rooms, told not to go outside unless absolutely necessary. It’s 2020, and Australians have endured extremely poor […]

Scott Morrison: The World’s Only Pentecostal Leader, The End is Nigh, A Sense of Place Magazine, 27 March, 2019.

By John Stapleton As the shutdown of Australia continues apace, there’s one very legitimate question to ask: How is the Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s avowed belief that we are living through The End of Days influence his decision making? How does his belief in prosperity theology, that God rewards the righteous and destroys the unbeliever, […]

Covid-19: Pundits Queue to Criticise the Prime Minister, A Sense of Place Magazine, 26 March, 2020.

By John Stapleton Experts have long warned that with the extremely poor qualiy 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 media rally behind the flag. Not this time around. Lie to the […]

Welcomed Everywhere: Until He Wasn’t, A Sense of Place Magazine, 20 March, 2019.

This is an extract from the upcoming book Dark Dark Policing, by veteran Australian journalist John Stapleton. The book will be published next month. They weren’t so wrong, those who had painted the world as a battle between good and evil. For everything, now, stood at a precipice. Step over the ledge. You can see […]

Mosul: The Great City Malcolm Turnbull and Australia’s Bombs, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 March, 2020.

By John Stapleton FROM Malcolm Turnbull’s first day as Prime Minister in 2015 the bombings on Iraq increased. That is, not to put too fine a point on things, he was responsible for killing more Muslims than any other prime minister in Australian history. For years, putrid skeletons were being dug out of the rubble. […]

Betrayal of the People: Extract from Dark Dark Policing, A Sense of Place Magazine, 3 March, 2020.

By John Stapleton Everyone felt like a stranger now. The announcement came, the legendary Kidman properties, spanning three states and the Northern Territory, reportedly some 2.6 per cent of the nation’s land area, 101,000 square kilometres, was being sold to a Chinese consortium with Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, as the local figurehead. Then Treasurer […]

Yen’s White Lie: Charles Gerard and the Secrets of Old Saigon, 27 February, 2020.

By John Stapleton Yen’s White Lie details a complicated lover’s tryst in Old Saigon. But the city itself is as much of a character as the denizens that haunt the atmospheric alleyways and cafes of the past. When author Charles Gerard first came to live in Saigon in the mid-1990s, the former capital of South […]

The Worst of the Worst: Guantanamo Bay and A Bigger Picture, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 February, 2020.

By John Stapleton The publicity blurb for the shortly to be released book A Bigger Picture by former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull makes the claim that he “stood up to Donald Trump”. Really??? But thereby hangs a tale. And a story about Australia, Turnbull, Trump, secretive refugee deals and Guantanamo Bay inmates that I as […]

The Intoxicating Fall of Malcolm Turnbull, A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 February, 2020.

By John Stapleton EVERY DOG has its day. And the most disappointing Prime Minister in Australian history certainly had his. The intoxicating fall of Malcolm Turnbull was a transfixing, delightful spectacle; a Shakespearean tragedy played out in the Antipodes. And no, the good guys did not win. There were no good guys, so collapsed the […]

And then there were the spooks: Dark Dark Policing, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 February, 2020.

By John Stapleton Image Courtesy Long Wallpapers THE CAR ROSE SLOWLY from the fetid plains. For days, in tormented dreams, he had been a soldier going around a battlefield killing the wounded, firing shot after shot after shot. Most of the victims were already dead and his bullets thudded into corpses beginning to rot in […]

Sound Clown: The Music of Ian Purdie, A Sense of Place Magazine, 28 January, 2020.

Ian Purdie was interviewed and this piece arranged by John Stapleton Amazing to me, now that I’m old, is that for such an impatient person I was able to devote the thousands of hours to playing guitar that it takes to become competent on the instrument. It seemed when I was young that music was […]

The Intoxicating Fall of Malcolm Turnbull, Michael West Media, 25 December, 2019.

Former gun reporter and star of ‘Dads on Air‘, John Stapleton, with alter ego, old Alex, looks back on the Turnbull era as the critical turning point in our country’s self-immolation. EVERY DOG has its day. And the most disappointing Prime Minister in Australian history certainly had his.  The intoxicating fall of Malcolm Turnbull was a transfixing, delightful […]

Australia now a surveillance state with journalists as POIs under ASIO Act, Michael West, 21 November, 2019.

Will future historians see the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison era as the period of governance when totalitarian instincts were unleashed? The targeting of journalists is just the beginning of a much greater disaster, writes journalist and author, John Stapleton. The #RighttoKnow movement barely touches on the intensity of media manipulation by the conservatives since they regained power in 2013; […]

The Carlisle: Extract from Hideout in the Apocalypse, A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 November, 2019.

By John Stapleton The Carlisle Hotel in the back streets of Newtown in Sydney’s inner-west is one of the few places left in Sydney where the wowsers have not won; an old-fashioned pub in an increasingly strictured, shuttered country. Hotels and beer gardens across Australia are now largely empty, barren places, the victim of grotesque […]

Grafton: Extract from the upcoming book Dark Dark Policing, A Sense of Place Magazine, 31 October, 2019.

By John Stapleton. Photography by Dean Sewell. NOTHING could be more volatile. Some stories are long in the cooking. Some turn on a single day. Some are erupting moments of long internal struggle. Arguably one of the worst consequences of the widespread disillusionment in government that has flowed from the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison era has been the […]

Donation to NSW State Library of material on Sandor Berger and Vicki Viidikas from 1989 and 1990.

RELATED ON SANDOR BERGER https://thejournalismofjohnstapleton.blogspot.com/2012/09/sandor-berger-telegraph-poles-talk-for.html https://thejournalismofjohnstapleton.blogspot.com/1989/11/telegraph-poles-talk-for-sandor-loner.html https://thejournalismofjohnstapleton.blogspot.com/1989/11/on-job-pix-sandor-berger-sydney-morning.html https://medium.com/a-sense-of-place/sandor-berger-84ba5bd509ff?source=friends_link&sk=8d4d654f0924561f6fa0c5d1e495d068 ON VICKI VIIDIKAS  https://thejournalismofjohnstapleton.blogspot.com/1999/03/where-final-price-is-high-indeed_24.html https://randomstrikesrawmaterial.blogspot.com/1987/06/a-note-from-poet-vicki-vidikas-1987.html https://randomstrikesrawmaterial.blogspot.com/1990/03/letter-from-poet-vicki-viidikas-27.html

The Glories of Caitlin Johnstone: The Internet Transforms Journalism, A Sense of Place Magazine, 3 September, 2019

With John Stapleton Talent works hard. Genius is compelled. Caitlin Johnstone is compelled. There are more than ten million blog posts published every single day. According to Hosting Tribunal there are 70 million new blog posts each month on WordPress alone. How can anyone make sense of all this? But out of this flood Caitlin […]

Australia Is In Dire Straits: Crony Capitalism and the Collapse of Democracy, A Sense of Place Magazine, 2 September, 2019.

By John Stapleton Quiet Australians, so-called. They’ve become an article of faith for a victorious Coalition government. Against the odds, surprising pundits, pollsters and even themselves, the conservatives have just won government once again despite a history of internal division and public scandal. After his May victory Prime Minister Scott Morrison was fulsome in his […]

It’s Snowing in Australia, The Photography of Dean Sewell, A Sense of Place Magazine, 19 August, 2019.

By John Stapleton Better known for its strikingly beautiful desert landscapes and the harsh heat of the inland, it has been snowing in parts of Australia that haven’t seen snow in decades. The lingering and unusually cold winter is continuing, with snowfalls and arctic conditions expected in the eastern states of Victoria and parts of […]

Dental Tourism in Vietnam, A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 August, 2019

By John Stapleton Australia’s major dental associations have all issued dire warnings about the dangers of travelling to Asia in an attempt to save money on dental work. The Australian Dental Association has produced a number of fact sheets about dental tourism, warning of potential complications, poor training and lack of recourse if things go […]

Shearers: The Photography of Russell Shakespeare, A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 July, 2019.

By John Stapleton 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 good deal of romance associated with them, historically and to the present […]

Whatever Happened to Earl Black? A Sense of Place Magazine. 8 July, 2019.

By John Stapleton Stories from the rollercoaster of his life flow out of Frank Earl. By his early twenties he was an internationally renowned wrestler with a villainous reputation performing around the world, England, Canada, Japan, Australia. Here’s just one story: The King and I: In 1969, Thailand was virgin territory for wrestling.The country had […]

Adrift on the World: The Art of David Tees, A Sense of Place Magazine, 26 June, 2019.

By John Stapleton David Tees has been drawing almost every day for the past 40 years, in a journey which has traversed continents and judicial systems. He was born in London, southern Ontario, in 1972 and moved to Vancouver cresting twenty. I was always drawing. If you play music you play guitar all your life. […]

Allies Drive Opium Trade To New Heights, A Sense of Place Magazine, 20 June, 2019.

By John Stapleton The failure of the Afghanistan war in which Australia, as a loyal ally of America, has been a major contributor has fuelled opium and heroin production in the region to unprecedented levels, the world’s leading expert on global drug trafficking has warned. A tiny, landlocked, poverty-stricken nation has brought the combined military […]

Australia’s Vicious Assault on Freedom of Speech, Pearls and Irritations, 11 June, 2019.

By John Stapleton World’s most secretive democracy. Absurd overreach of power. Secretive, ruthless and vindictive executive government. The scandal over the Australian Federal Police raids on journalists has deepened ever since their execution last week. But the scandal has been years in the making. First to recount: News Corp political editor Annika Smethurst had her […]

In the Realm of the Mongolian Kasakhs, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 June, 2019.

By John Stapleton Every year their numbers drift inexorably towards zero. Deep in the wilds of far western Mongolia are the last remaining Kazakh eagle hunters. The burkitshi, as they are known in Kazakh, are proud men whose faces echo the harshness of the beautiful, barren landscape they call home. They have a remarkable bond […]

Twitch: The Evolution of Connectivity, A Sense of Place Magazine, 3 June, 2019.

By John Stapleton Humans spontaneously form villages and have an inherent desire to tell stories. Wherever and however people gather, others are sniffing around for money. And predators abound. Twitch is well on the way to becoming the world’s dominant streaming platform; a quick scan of its history showing phenomenal growth. Transformative is now an […]

Commute: The Black and White Photography of Russell Shakespeare, A Sense of Place Magazine, 25 May, 2019.

By John Stapleton Russell Shakespeare is a multi-award winning Australian photographer. His professional work, while at times a fascinating high pressure roller coaster ride, has its decided restrictions. This series explores the artistic side of one of Australia’s most accomplished lensmen. The Commute series of photographs have been captured on his phone. In my working […]

The Voices of Dickson: The Essay, A Sense of Place Publishing, 16 May, 2019.

John Stapleton May 16 The sprawling electorate of Dickson in Northern Brisbane is Ground Zero for the coming election; pivotal for the future of the country. Every major media organisation has sent journalists to the seat; almost all of them with an agenda to discredit and if possible help unseat the sitting Member — Home Affairs Minister […]

Someone to Lead, The Voices of Dickson Part III, A Sense of Place Publishing, 15 May, 2019.

By John Stapleton CLICK TO PLAY Like many areas in a rapidly changing Australia, the seat of Dickson in the north of Brisbane straddles many divides. It is also a fulcrum seat which holds a key to the future of the country. It is the electorate of Peter Dutton, the man who by running against then […]

Dark side of Sky at night, The New Daily, 15 May, 2019.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/election-2019/2019/05/14/andrew-bolt-sky-news-labor/ Dark side of Sky at night: Analysis of Murdoch TV network reveals extent of anti-Labor comments Research conducted by The New Daily confirms perceptions of anti-Labor bias amongst conservative commentators, while the Liberal Party and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party were the subject of glowing commentary. Sky, previously available only on subscription, became a much more […]

Running to Stand Still, The Voices of Dickson Part Two, A Sense of Place Magazine, 10 May, 2019.

Click Here To Play Australia, despite all the official prattle about diversity, has never been more divided. And the same holds true of Dickson, which hangs by a knife-edge. Sitting conservative member Peter Dutton holds the seat by a tiny 1.6 percent and opposition parties are throwing everything they can at him. Statistically Dickson is Middle […]

What They Say In The Pubs of Australia’s Most Controversial Electorate, The Voices of Dickson Part One, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 May, 2019.

By John Stapleton Less than two more weeks to go in what is being condemned as the most turgid, dull, boring election campaign in Australia’s history. Daily politicians on both sides announce this, that and the other, all their various empty schemes backed with eye popping price tags in the billions. Nobody believes them. Nobody […]

Australia’s Underworld Versus A Celebrity Muslim Refugee Doctor, A Sense of Place Publishing, 5 May, 2019.

By John Stapleton Once upon a time there was nothing the Australian media liked more than a good gangster story. Now there’s nothing Australia’s media like more than a celebrity refugee. Crime stories require resources and insider knowledge; feel good refugee stories fit easily into the government’s propaganda machine and require no skills at all. […]

Australia’s Genius Son: Julian Assange, A Sense of Place Magazine, 17 April, 2019.

By John Stapleton Which master government strategists planned this? With all their resources, money, power and operational capacities, who on Earth dreamed up the idea of making the intelligence community’s Number One nemesis front page news around the world? And ensuring the story is dramatic enough that it will stay there in the coming months […]

Brexit in the Springtime, A Sense of Place Magazine, 10 April, 2019.

The daffodils are out. The cherry blossoms are in bloom. England’s famous meadows are looking their absolute best. And the headlines are all diabolical. It’s spring in the UK and the papers scream “Death of democracy”, “Cabinet in crisis”. Day after day. Three long years the British people have put up with this eternal, surreal […]

The Rise of Ultranationalism in Australia: Facebook and the Sites of Discontent, A Sense of Place Magazine. 23 March, 2019.

By John Stapleton Nothing could be more volatile. The live streaming of the Christchurch massacre to Facebook, perpetrated by an Australian citizen, broke new ground in online slaughter. Politicians and members of the public of all persuasions have used the event to peddle their own interests and display tolerance, progressiveness or prejudice. This is a […]

The Myth of Black Opal: Lightning Ridge and the Guardians of Fiery Love, A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 March, 2019.

The picture above was taken in 1909, at the height of 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 potential of black opal, said to be the world’s rarest and arguably the most beautiful of […]

Empire, A Sense of Place Magazine, 10 March, 2019.

By John Stapleton The library at Burnham Beeches, a decaying mansion in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, looks nothing like it did in its hay day in the 1930s. Now it sits inside a glass case flooded with inky water. Melbourne artist, known by the name of Rone, has transformed deserted Art Deco mansion […]

Finding Tom in the Philipinnes, Life as an Adventure Vlogger, A Sense of Place Magazine, 3 March, 2019.

By John Stapleton Thomas Kuegler is just having way too much fun. All the while attracting millions of followers and fulfilling a Millennial’s ultimate dream — to make a living out of social media. Tom, 25, has become famous largely by simply being himself, infectiously funny, wildly enthusiastic, smart, with a dose of self-deprecating humor thrown in. […]

The Birth of Dads On The Air, A Sense of Place Magazine, 19 February, 2019.

By John Stapleton When Dads On The Air, now the world’s longest running fathers’ show, began in 2000 we had no idea we were part of a worldwide trend protesting the treatment of fathers in separated families. We were a small group of disgruntled, occasionally disheveled separated dads who had no experience of radio and […]

What is Wrong With This Picture? A Sense of Place Magazine. 16 February, 2019.

By John Stapleton The truth is military authorities have no idea how many civilians have been killed by American and Australian bombs in the medieval streets of Iraq and Syria. Millennials obsess and blog endlessly about how they can be better, more socially responsible individuals. But at the same time as they genuflect before the […]

Hakeem, the Australian Federal Police and a Truly Desperate Government, Pearls and Irritations, 14 February, 2019.

Just how many own goals can one government make and still survive? As Prime Minister Scott Morrison leads his shambolic government to electoral wipeout, he is now embroiled in yet another controversy. Are the Australian authorities, including the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Border Force, to blame for the diplomatic fracas that erupted over […]

Acknowledged Civilian Casualties Only Beginning of Defence Scandal, Pearls and Irritations, 8 February, 2019.

The truth is military authorities have no idea how many civilians have been killed by Australian bombs in the medieval streets of Iraq and Syria. The latest news, that the Defence Department has officially admitted that Australia may have been implicated in the deaths of up to 18 civilians in the Iraqi city of Mosul […]

RAAF bombs obliterated enemies, civilians and truth in Iraq, The New Daily, 2 February, 2019.

By John Stapleton The truth is military authorities have no idea how many civilians have been killed by Australian bombs in the rubble-strewn streets of Iraq. The latest news, that the Defence Department has officially admitted that Australia may have been implicated in the deaths of up to 18 civilians in the ISIS-occupied Iraqi city […]

The Ecological and Environmental Catastrophe Visited Upon Australia’s Inland River System, A Sense of Place Magazine, 29 January, 2019.

By John Stapleton. Photography by Dean Sewell. They blame climate change. They blame the drought. They blame everyone and everything but themselves. The stench of millions of dead fish, the rotting corpses of kangaroos and sheep, the missing bird life, the farmers who can no longer farm, devastated indigenous peoples, an ancient, desecrated landscape, internationally […]

Phfen Shock: Yearning for the Chasm, A Sense of Place Magazine, 22 January, 2019.

Phfen Shock. The words kept repeating through his head, although he could find no definition, no logical reason. That was the sensation, he discovered, when you arrived at a new place expecting welcome, the village beyond the veil, only to discover as you lay awake in the horror hours, that your mind was picking across […]

World Press Photographer Jailed in Chinese Crackdown: The Photography of Lu Guang, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 January, 2019.

By John Stapleton Lu Guang picked up a camera for the first time in 1980, still a teenager. He was a factory worker in his hometown of Yongkang in China’s Zhejiang Province. After studying in Beijing he became a freelance photographer in 1993, primarily focusing on documentary projects in China. From humble beginnings, as a […]

Australia’s Only Celebrity Jihadist Creates Diplomatic Chaos: The Life of Neil Prakash, A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 January, 2019.

By John Stapleton Since October of 2016 Neil Prakash has been in a prison near Turkey’s southern border, accused of being a supporter of Islamic State. As he appeared front and centre of some of the terror group’s most powerful and widely distributed propaganda, there isn’t too much doubt about the veracity of the allegations. […]

Bob Hawke and the Demon Drink, A Tale from Hunting the Famous, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 January, 2019.

By John Stapleton At 89, former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke has declared himself in miserable health and unlikely to last much longer. While he expects the Labor Party, which he led for many years, to win the next election, due by May of 2019, he does not expect to be around to see it. […]

A Homage to Warren Clarke Photo-Journalist, Inveterate Traveler, A Sense of Place Magazine, 4 January, 2019.

Written By John Stapleton with Russell Shakespeare, Michael Amendolia Warren Clarke was known for his high adventurism. Whether on assignment or not, he trekked to places no other photographer wanted to go. In recent years he had become fascinated by India; where he did some of his greatest work. In November of 2017, unable to […]

The Currumbin Valley Rock Pools: The Photography of Russell Shakespeare, A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 December, 2018.

The Voice of Russell Shakespeare written and Transcribed by John Stapleton “For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.” Leonardo da Vinci The Currumbin Valley Rock Pools are about five minutes from where I live. […]

The Daughter of Siberian Shamans: The Coldest Inhabited Place on Earth, A Sense of Place Magazine, 26 December, 2019.

By John Stapleton Yakutsk is the coldest place on Earth. Winter temperatures plunge below minus 50 degrees Centigrade. Courtesy Sohu. Unlicensed Image. 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 environments include the Yukighir, the Eveni, the Evenki […]

From Little Things Big Things Grow, Interview with Dads On The Air, 13 December, 2018.

From Little Things Big Things Grow THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2018 AT 9:00AM With special guest: John Stapleton … in conversation with Bill Kable John Stapleton is a legend at Dads on the Air. In the year 2000 while working as a journalist he became involved with a number of fathers who struggled to see their own […]

Salman Rushdie, A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 December, 2018.

Serious breaches were breaking through the fabric of things. Back in London in the 1980s, I was using my new found status as a freelance journalist to pursue literary idols. The interview with Salman Rushdie took place in the same room where he had written Midnight’s Children. He was already world famous, having won Britain’s […]

Katoomba Noir: Australian Gothic, The Photography of Dean Sewell. A Sense of Place Magazine. 8 December, 2018.

Wherever I have lived I have always documented my own immediate environs. The photograph above is of my front yard. You don’t get any more immediate. There is an old quip about Katoomba: The Retired, the Retarded, the Retrenched and the Religious. No one laughs but us. Proponents call it the home of The Relaxed, […]

The Triumph of Death. A Sense of Place Magazine. 5 December, 2018.

By John Stapleton 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 reddish horse, destroying the world of the living. The latter are led […]

Anthropocene. A Sense of Place Magazine. 1 December, 2018.

By John Stapleton The Anthropocene Project is a multidisciplinary body of work by photographer Edward Burtynsky, filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal and cinematographer Nicholas de Pencier. The project’s starting point is the research of the Anthropocene Working Group, an international body of scientists who argue that the Holocene epoch ended around 1950, and that we have officially […]

India’s Festival of Colours: The Black and White Photography of Russell Shakespeare, 25 November, 2018.

By John Stapleton 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 India, spreading into Nepal. At its core, people throw brightly colored powder over each other in a violent eruption of […]

The Future History of Publishing, A Sense of Place Magazine, 20 November, 2018.

By John Stapleton Since the beginning of literature technologies have shaped the written word. And thereby publishing technologies have shaped history, culture, politics and war. The adage history is written by the victors has transposed in this truly astonishing era into something else. In fact, in our current time, history is being written by the […]

Lunch With Joseph Heller, A Sense of Place Magazine, 14 November, 2018.

It’s not every day you get to interview one of the world’s most famous authors, someone who created an expression which entered the English language. Catch 22. The Oxford dictionary defines a Catch 22 as: A dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions. as modifier ‘a […]

Sydney: Song Before Sunrise, The Photography of Tim Ritchie, A Sense of Place Magazine, 10 November, 2018.

By John Stapleton Crisis turns into salvation at every step. For Tim Ritchie it was literally true. “I am a diabetic and eight years ago my doctor told me to walk 10,000 steps a day, but even then my blood sugar levels were still crappy,” he recalls. “So I decided to take up bike riding. […]

Brain Pickings: A Celebration of Genius, A Sense of Place Magazine, 7 November, 2018.

By John Stapleton Luminously intelligent, gifted with a great eye and a startling, incandescent love of beauty, the already celebrated Maria Popova is finally putting out a book, Figuring, due on the shelves in February. For twelve years now Popova’s weekly newsletter Brain Pickings has dazzled, delighted, diverted and intrigued its followers. Carson Ellis. Featured in […]

The Kashi Vishwanath Express, The Photography of Russell Shakespeare, A Sense of Place Magazine, 4 November, 2018.

By John Stapleton Apart from walking, one of the slowest ways to travel the 794 kilometres from New Delhi in the state of Uttar Pradesh to Varanasi on the Ganges is the Kashi Vishwanath Express. Multi-award winning Australian news photographer Russell Shakespeare first caught the train in 1987 as a young, wide-eyed twenty something who […]

My First Ever Front Page Story, A Sense of Place Magazine, 31 October, 2018.

    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 all that I knew, all it seemed I had known for years. Comfort came from […]

Could There Be a Greater Betrayal? Pearls and Irritations, 27 October, 2018.

By John Stapleton So it is done. The Coalition government has admitted defeat. Scott Morrison is not there to save the furniture. He’s there to steer his party direct to electoral oblivion. The ineptitude of the Wentworth by-election put on display just how deeply the rot and incompetence of this ineffectual government runs. They have […]

Could There Be a Greater Betrayal? Australian Politics. A Sense of Place Magazine, 27 October, 2018.

By John Stapleton So it is done. The Coalition government has admitted defeat. Current Prime Minister Scott Morrison is not there to save the furniture. He’s there to steer his party to electoral oblivion. The ineptitude of the recent Wentworth by-election for the vacated seat of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull put on display just […]

The fiasco of Australia’s telecommunications, Pearls and Irritations, 23 October, 2018.

By John Stapleton Complaints against the troubled broadband network have risen yet again with the latest Telecommunications Ombudsman’s Report, released this week, showing significant increases in complaints over the last year. As the government prepares to sell the NBN, levels of dissatisfaction against what critics describe as the worst infrastructure project in Australian history are […]

Publishing the Book: Children of the State, A Sense of Place Magazine, 22 October, 2018.

By John Stapleton Let’s face it: this is a tough sell. In the beginning was the Word. Well, there was a radio show called Dads On The Air. We were a small group of that most unfashionable of all people. Separated, sad, angry, overwhelmed fathers. But unlike most such creatures we had an outlet. Australia is […]

Richard Trevaskis Meets Malcolm McLaren, A Sense of Place Magazine, 18 October, 2018.

By John Stapleton “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 potholes and beggars that characterised the nearby streets entirely lost on her. “Can you […]

Optus named ‘worst performing telco’ as NBN complaints surge: Report, The New Daily, 17 October, 2018.

Optus named ‘worst performing telco’ as NBN complaints surge: Report John Stapleton SHARE TWEETSHAREREDDITPINEMAILCOMMENT Complaints against the troubled National Broadband Network have risen again with the latest Telecommunications Ombudsman’s Report, released on Wednesday, showing significant increases in complaints over the past year. As the government prepares to sell the NBN, levels of dissatisfaction against what […]

The Burning Ghats of Varanasi, with Russell Shakespeare, A Sense of Place Magazine, 13 October, 2018.

By John Stapleton 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 suffering, is over. Accomplished Australian photographer Russell Shakespeare’s connection with India, and […]

Gilligan’s Island, Sydney. Extract From Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost. A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 October, 2018.

Australian democracy is in collapse. A country once proud of its own story, of its tough convict origins and rough as guts bush legends, a prosperous country which held its head high in the world with a brazen, laissez faire anti-establishment attitude, has been in retreat for years. Now it has reached the Dead Zone. […]

Jac Vidgen and the RAT Parties, A Sense of Place Magazine, 25 September, 2018.

By John Stapleton Farewell Old Friend Jac Vidgen became both famous and infamous for one thing: his parties. They grew from his lounge rooms in Elizabeth Bay in central Sydney in the 1970s, where I was a frequent visitor, to become truly massive affairs, attended by thousands, literally the biggest ever held in Australia. The […]

Sandor Berger, Sydney’s Great Eccentrics, A Sense of Place Magazine, 10 September, 2018.

By John Stapleton The author outside Sandor Berger’s room, 1989. Not every famous person has a name. And almost no one knew the name of Sandor Berger, one of Sydney’s best known eccentrics. For many years notices appeared on telegraph poles across inner-Sydney: “Psychiatry is Evil, It Must Be Banned!!” Everyone knew of him, nobody knew […]

The Laughing Lama: On Meeting a Buddhist Master, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 September, 2017.

By John Stapleton “Spiritual truth is not something elaborate and esoteric, it is in fact profound common sense. When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don’t actually “become” a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but […]

Bridget Lafferty Leaves Redfern, A Sense of Place Magazine, 2 September, 2018.

Images, paintings and recollections from Bridget Lafferty. By John Stapleton. Editors Note: This story, written way back in 2018, was pivotal in the evolution of A Sense of Place Magazine, because it was at this very point that we realised and came to understand the potential of the new publishing technologies. Bridget Lafferty was an old neighbour […]

Murder on Lower Fort Street, A Sense of Place Magazine, 4 September, 2018.

Written by John Stapleton. 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 was known as a slum, for its gambling dens, drinking houses, […]

The Demise of Malcolm Turnbull, The Series, A Sense of Place Magazine, 27 August, 2018.

This is the series which begins just days before the excruciating fall of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The story ends with him disgraced, at war with his own Party and dismissed by the public; in virtual exile inside inside his own wealth, destroyed by his own ambition. It is a Shakespearean yarn of the […]

Coup Capital of the World: Australia, The Demise of Malcolm Turnbull, A Sense of Place Magazine, 26 August, 2018.

Homepage By John Stapleton I am a vengeful god The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents his wrath against his enemies. Nathum 1:2. In the end, the oligarchs who seize power are judged not by the way […]

We Come Not to Praise But to Bury, The Legacy of Malcolm Turnbull, A Sense of Place Magazine, 24 August, 2018.

By John Stapleton Those Whom the Gods Would Destroy The Coverage Malcolm Turnbull’s Day of Reckoning has arrived. He could have left with dignity ten days ago; doctors advice, spend more time with his grandchildren. But this hapless Prime Minister, with his Party Room in revolt, cannot even manage his own political death. A very bad […]

Australia’s Assault on Freedom of Speech: The Terrible Legacy of Malcolm Turnbull, A Sense of Place Magazine, 23 August, 2018.

By John Stapleton Let Slip the Dogs of War: Coverage The word “crisis” is bandied about a lot in discussing Australian politics right this minute. Nothing the present batch of oligarchs could do to manipulate, suppress or control the media has worked. Except when it comes down to warfare. The media hunt in packs, they […]

Betraying the Future: The Worst Internet in the World, The Legacy of Malcolm Turnbull, A Sense of Place Magazine, 22 August, 2018.

The First Harpoon Strikes the Flank In the petri dish of Australian politics, the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull thrashes in a blood soaked sea. The first leadership spill, on Tuesday 21st August, 2018, precipitated by the powerful Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, has left Turnbull mortally wounded. The first harpoon has hit the flank: 48–35. […]

War Crimes: Malcolm Turnbull’s Terrible Legacy, A Sense of Place Magazine, 20 August, 2018.

By John Stapleton America’s Wars, Australia’s hypocrisy With his fate set and Malcolm Turnbull’s Prime Ministership in its death throes, it is time to look back across the wasteland of his leadership. The ritual lies of political combat: The Prime Minister has my full support. Laugh Out Loud. Versus: I’m focused on delivering for the […]

The Many Lows of Malcolm Turnbull’s Prime Ministership, A Sense of Place Magazine, 19 August, 2018.

By John Stapleton Australia’s Failing Democracracy The Foundation Lie The frenetic efforts of a failing Prime Minister have curled into a frustrated ball of fury. And arguably the worst government in Australian history faces electoral wipeout. The slow motion trainwreck of Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership has been so excruciatingly long and played out on so many […]

From Out of the Maelstrom: A Very Australian Two Horse Race, A Sense of Place Magazine, 17 August, 2018.

By John Stapleton The Fight Is On At the centre of the maelstrom which has overtaken Australian politics this weekend lies one man: the departing Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Disliked by the public, disliked by his own party, disliked by the public service, Australia’s 29th Prime Minister is mortally wounded. His days are not just numbered, […]

Mr Harbourside Mansion: A House of Cards Collapses, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 August, 2018.

By John Stapleton A House of Cards Collapses “Mr Harbourside Mansion” was a pejorative term coined by critics within Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s own party. The insult stuck. Indeed it is Turnbull’s often boasted about wealth which has been his undoing. A tactic that worked to establish dominance in his social whirl of wealthy […]

The Demise of Malcolm Turnbull, Pearls and Irritations, 16 August, 2018.

The leadership is in play.  Diabolical polling ensures that. But how Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership devolved to the current disaster is a complicated yarn, like the man himself. So let’s begin at the beginning. Rob Hirst, drummer for Midnight Oil, recalls the future Prime Minister from the early 1970s when both were schoolboys at the elite private […]

No Breakfast with Anthony Burgess, A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 August, 2018.

By John Stapleton A TRULY VICIOUS HANGOVER fogged every sense, the morning I interviewed Anthony Burgess in London back in the 1980s. There was no better place to be than the English capital, which was spinning through a centrifugal moment of cultural incandescence. Or so it seemed to a wide-eyed young journalist from Beyond the […]

The Quagmire Collapses: The Demise of Malcolm Turnbull, A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 August, 2018.

By John Stapleton The leadership is in play. Diabolical polling ensures that. But how Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership devolved to the current disaster is a complicated yarn, like the man himself. So let’s begin at the beginning. Rob Hirst, drummer for Midnight Oil, recalls the future Prime Minister of Australia from the early 1970s when […]

Gore Vidal at Claridges, A Sense of Place Magazine, August 11, 2018.

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, you name it; and while Gore Vidal might have been one of the most celebrated […]

Thailand: The Varieties of Expatriate Experience, A Sense of Place Magazine,10 August, 2018.

By John Stapleton The Tartan Pimpernel Walter ‘Whacky’ Douglas looked like he was having a fine old time when he was arrested and deported from Thailand in 2014. Douglas, known as “The Tartan Pimpernel” and once described as one of Britain’s ten wealthiest drugs traffickers, disappeared from official view in the late 1990s after a […]

Falun Dafa and the End of Days: Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance: A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 August, 2018.

“When two truths meet the most courageous one wins.” Chinese proverb. In the years since Falun Gong was launched in 1992 it has attracted millions of followers in more than 60 different countries. As evidenced by the crackdown of the Chinese Communist Party, the spiritual practice posed a serious threat to the government of the […]

Paul Bowles and the Sheltering Sky, A Sense of Place Magazine, August 7, 2018.

Paul Bowles and the Sheltering Sky. By John Stapleton. Paul Bowles with Jane Bowles, Truman Capote and others Courtesy of Corflammae ONE BELONGS TO THE WHOLE WORLD, not just one part of it, Paul Bowles once told an interviewer. Gifted annually with a round-the-world free ticket courtesy of my father’s job as a Captain on […]

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, A Sense of Place Magazine, 23 July, 2018.

By John Stapleton One of the most truly brilliant and profound texts of the age, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, written by Buddhist master Sogyal Rinpoche, immediately assumed, upon first publication in the 1990s, its rightful place as a great spiritual masterpiece. It has now been republished with a Forward by the Dalai Lama. With […]

Hideout in the Apocalypse gets a mention in Independent Australia, 20 June, 2018.

The original article can be seen here. Australia, 2018: Lies, cover-ups and suppression of free speech  Alison Broinowski 20 June 2018, 8:00am Propaganda about an endless “war on terror” and a succession of enemies has led to the slow creep of suppression of inquiry, writes former diplomat Dr Alison Broinowski. GEORGE ORWELL could have been describing today, not the […]

Surveillance in Australia; Part Three. Pearls and Irritations, 1 June, 2018.

JOHN STAPLETON. The democratic contract is broken. The freedom of Australians to go about their daily lives without being watched by their government has vanished with barely a whisper of protest. Professor of Law at UNSW George Williams argues that the war on terror has recast the relationship between governments and individuals. The rushed nature […]

Surveillance in Australia, Part Two: A Parallel Secret Police Force, Pearls and Irritations, 31 May, 2018.

JOHN STAPLETON This is a government run on announceables. Even without the Budget blizzard, so far in 2018 we have had major announcements on everything from the so-called Gonski 2.0 education reforms, the establishment of an Australian arms industry to compete internationally, and an investigation into the practices of the Public Service. They cost millions, […]

Surveillance in Australia; Part One: Who’s Watching the Watchers? Pearls and Irritations, 30 May, 2018.

JOHN STAPLETON Beyond the daily media coverage of the frenetic efforts of a failing Prime Minister, the biggest unexplored story in Australia of Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership has been the massive expansion of state surveillance under his watch. It is a story which goes straight to the heart of Australia’s failing democracy, the dangerous gifting of […]

Abbott and Turnbull’s Assault on Freedom of Speech, Pearls & Irritations, 20 April, 2018.

JOHN STAPLETON. The Abbott and Turnbull governments have mounted the greatest attack on freedom of speech in Australian history. Legislation being pushed through by the government earlier this year under the guise of national security, allowing for journalists and whistle-blowers to be jailed for up to 20 years, was just the latest in a string […]

More than the Taliban, opium is the enemy in Afghanistan, The New Daily, 7 April, 2018.

By John Stapleton Even more than the Taliban, opium is the enemy in Afghanistan – and it’s winning The failure of the Afghanistan war in which Australia, as a loyal ally of America, has been a major contributor has fueled opium and heroin production in the region to unprecedented levels, the world’s leading expert on […]

Extracts from Thailand Deadly Destination, A Sense of Place Magazine, 9 March, 2018.

FROM CHAPTER ONE FRUIT FOR THE PICKING The daily robbing, bashing, drugging, extortion and murder of foreign tourists on Thai soil, along with numerous scandals involving unsafe facilities and well established scams, has led to frequent predictions that Thailand’s multi-billion dollar tourist industry will self-destruct. Instead tourist numbers more than doubled in the decade to […]

Quantum physicist named 2018 Australian of the Year, The New Daily, 26 January, 2018.

By John Stapleton Quantum physicist Professor Michelle Yvonne Simmons, described by some as the Marie Curie of Australia and with an almost unparalleled record of achievement, has been named the 2018 Australian of the Year. Professor Simmons leads a research team at the University of NSW, which in 2012 developed the world’s first transistor made […]

Order of Australia: The famous faces and unsung heroes who received the honour, The New Daily, 26 January, 2018.

  By John Stapleton Eighty-year-old Patricia Elliott, who lives on a rural block seven kilometres outside of Katherine in the Northern Territory, had no idea she was even nominated for an Order of Australia until a letter arrived from the Governor-General. Mrs Elliott was one of the 895 recipients to receive the honour from Governor-General […]

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