Feminism’s greatest achievement? – Failed families, Bettina Arndt, Politicom, 16 March, 2025.
IT IS the 50th anniversary of Australia’s Family Court. That’s hardly cause for celebration. Over the last half century, what was originally designed as a “helping court” became the frontline of feminism’s gender wars and thus one of the country’s most hated institutions. Inquiry after inquiry has explored what has gone wrong with Australia’s callous and […]
Failed Family Court Reform, Bettina Arndt, Substack, 12 March, 2025
It is the 50th anniversary of Australia’s Family Court. That’s hardly cause for celebration. Over the last half century, what was originally designed as a “helping court” became the frontline of feminism’s gender wars and thus one of the country’s most hated institutions. This led to dozens of government inquiries and attempts at reform which were […]
The failure of Family Law reform in Australia, Augusto Zimmerman, Spectator Australia, 12 March, 2025.
John Stapleton spent a quarter of a century working as a general news reporter for two of Australia’s leading mastheads, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. He is currently the editor of A Sense of Place Magazine and is the author of a number of books, including Terrorism in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost and Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. His latest book, Failure Family Law […]
Hard-Hitting New Book on the Failure of Family Law by John Stapleton Now Available, The Daily Dad, 11 March, 2025.
My new book, Failure: Family Law Reform Australia, was published on 28 February 2025. It is now available on some platforms and will become more broadly available in the coming weeks. A Rigorous Critique of Family Law Failure: Family Law Reform Australia was published on the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Family Law Act, the single most intrusive […]
Failure: Family Law Reform Australia. Out in February. Extract. A Little Bit Of History
On the 5th of January 1976 the Family Law Act 1975 came into effect It was passed into law by just one vote This marked a controversial and historically significant turning point for Australian family life Making contentious changes to the law relating to marriage, Australia had introduced no fault divorce For the first time, […]
A Front Page Reminisce, A Sense of Place Magazine, 24 January, 2025.
Newspapers are collaborative efforts – journalists, editors, layout people, printers, distributors, the office manager, all combine to produce order out of the chaos of daily life. And every now and then, the universe decides to collaborate as well, in a fine confluence of circumstances, the result being a front page story. Such was the case […]
One of Australia’s Best Journalists, Martin Chulov, Sacked from The Guardian, A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 September, 2024
Martin Chulov is one of the single most outstanding journalists to have ever emerged from Australia, his coverage of Muslim radicalisation at the turn of the century without peer. Formerly employed by The Australian, his on-the-ground knowledge of radical Islam in Australia and his excellent sources and connections within Australia’s intelligence and policing communities, combined with […]
What Happened to Journalism? A Conversation come Interview between John Stapleton and the leading chronicler of our times Michael Gray Griffith, Rumble, 9 September, 2024
Farmers’ Market cancelled due to high wind, The Bugle, 28 August, 2024
The Kiama Farmers’ Market has been cancelled for this afternoon due to high winds. The market was originally going to move indoors to the Uniting Church next to its usual location at Surf Beach. However, the wind gusts have been so strong that branches from the surrounding Norfolk pines have broken off or become a […]
Windfarm saga encore, The Bugle, 13 August, 2024
Opinion piece by John Stapleton There are now two parliamentary inquiries into the impact of wind farms and the consultation process in the Illawarra, one a Federal government Senate inquiry and another in the NSW Upper House. At the same time the government is set to announce the winner of the so-called “feasibility licences” to […]
Turbulent Opposition: Anti-Wind Farm Rally Gathers Momentum, The Bugle, 29 July, 2024
“This Will Not Blow Over” read one of the makeshift placards at an anti-wind farm rally over the weekend. And so it is proving to be. Some 400 diehard opponents gathered in cold, windy conditions to hear a string of high profile speakers, including former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, outspoken free speech advocate and […]
The Snake Catcher of Jamberoo, The Bugle, 25 July, 2024
The snakes are sleeping now, dormant in the cold weather. But they won’t be sleeping for long. The minute spring arrives, the snakes wake up, hungry and randy, looking for food and looking for a mate. And that’s when the services of the Jamberoo snake catcher Hugh Marriot come into play, with locals encountering them […]
Labor’s decline: How Albanese’s policies and Dutton’s image are shaping the future of the South Coast, The Bugle, 18 June, 2024.
This is an opinion article written by John Stapleton. A curse on both their houses. So say the general public. Two years ago, Anthony Albanese, a Labor Party machine man if ever there was one, lied his way into office by promising to reduce household electricity bills by $275 just as “the cost of living […]
A Happy Dutton in Bomaderry, The Bugle, 18 June, 2024.
Must be nice to be voted Australia’s preferred Prime Minister for the first time in your long political career, as has just happened to Opposition leader Peter Dutton on 17 June. He certainly appeared upbeat as he visited Bomaderry on Tuesday, 18 June. He was given a tour of the electorate of Gilmore by local […]
Nationals pledge to scrap Illawarra Wind Farms if elected, The Bugle, 17 June, 2024.
The South Coast has suddenly become the focal point for some of the country’s most senior politicians, including Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, who has just come to the region to formally announce the formation of the multi-billion dollar Illawarra Offshore Wind Zone. This week it is the turn of the Federal leader of the […]
No Minister! Say anti-ocean windfarm groups to new zone, The Bugle, 15 June, 2024.
Cold and wet conditions greeted the Minister for Climate Change Chris Bowen, as he announced the new offshore wind farm zone off the Illawarra coast at the BlueScope steel works at Port Kembla. Mr Bowen was with Stephen Jones, the Labor Member for the Whitlam and Alison Byrnes, the Labor Member for Cunningham. The ocean […]
The Old Jamberoo Dairy Coop, The Bugle, 14 June, 2024.
The days when 50 dairy cows were enough to permit you a good, decent life in the prime dairy farming country around Jamberoo have long gone. Geoff Boxsell, 84, remembers the days when there were 96 farms providing milk on a daily basis to the Jamberoo Dairy Coop. Now there’s ten. And the Coop itself […]
Politics, Profit and a Whale of a Dilemma: A long-form essay, The Kiama Bugle, 2 June, 2024.
The whale watching season has begun, a ripple of excitement moving up the coast as enthusiasts perch on headlands and promontories to watch and record one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. The migration up and down the East Coast of Australia extends from May to November as the behemoths travel up from the Antarctic […]
Southern Gin, The Bugle, 22 May, 2024
With winter showing every sign of settling in, and barely a fortnight of autumn left, now might just be the perfect time to cruise the Kiama Farmers’ Market, and come across the stall for South Coast Distillery, most famous for its Sublime Gin. In an era when many local beer breweries have gone bust, finally […]
Historic Signa returns to Kiama, Kiama Bugle, 8 May, 2024
Nobody died and the boat didn’t sink. But nonetheless, the return of the Signa to Kiama Harbour managed to create quite a stir, with locals braving the drizzling weather to occupy vantage points along the foreshore. Many people have memories of the Signa, and a significant number of them showed up in Kiama on May […]
Max Hair Anzac, 93, holds ceremony in his driveway, Kiama Bugle, 25 April, 2024
Once upon a not so many years ago Max “Bunny” Hair, 93, was the returned veteran who, prouder than proud, would raise and lower the flag at ANZAC Day ceremonies in Kiama. Then Covid hit, and he was deeply upset that government restrictions meant he could not pay his respects to fallen comrades, and could […]
Jamberoo Flood Hero, The Bugle, 20 April, 2024.
Jamberoo tradie Mitchell (Mitch) Rosser is being hailed as a hero after rescuing a man from the flash floods which occurred during the torrential downpours in the early hours of Saturday 6 April. But he doesn’t want this story to be about him. He wants to make sure it never happens again. On inspection, it’s […]
On interviewing the last surviving Anzac, Kiama Bugle, 20 April, 2024
After decades in mainstream journalism, and having written literally thousands of stories, there aren’t too many things I haven’t written about. But there was one story about the world’s last survivor of the Gallipoli campaign, Alec Campbell, that has stuck in my memory all these years. Alec lied about his age in order to enlist […]
Kiama Community Garden brims with joy, Kiama Bugle, 19 April, 2024
“We love compost here,” declares a jubilant Peter Maywald, a staunch member of the Kiama Community Garden. But that’s not all that the dedicated members of the garden are in love with at the moment. A sense of jubilation surrounds the dedicated crew at the Kiama Community Garden, which until recently were certain they were […]
Golden Times in the Golden Valley, Kiama Bugle, 18 April, 2024
After three years of planning and dispute, the Golden Valley Subdivision, set on an old dairy farm just outside Jamberoo, has finally been approved. The proposal is for 50 houses on 850 square metre blocks. As land releases are rare around Jamberoo, and the area increasingly sought-after, the Golden Valley Road development is expected to […]
Jamberoo Croquet Championship, Kiama Bugle, 8 April, 2024
They call it “The Nasty Game for Nice People”. And Jamberoo is playing host to some of the fiercest competitors in the game, with the Jamberoo Croquet Club Championship kicking off today and running until the weekend. Thirty two competitors have assembled from clubs around the state, coming from Wagga, Nowra and as far north […]
After the deluge, Kiama Bugle, 8 April, 2024.
The entire South Coast region is still recovering from one of the heaviest deluges in years on Friday and Saturday 5-6 April, with some areas receiving more than 300mm of rain. The wild weather cut off roads and railway lines and caused major disruptions along the coast. According to the Bureau of Meteorology the heaviest […]
Behind the scenes of Australian hostage negotiation, Kiama Bugle, 31 March, 2024
The Australian Federal Police has more than 7000 staff, but few Australians have any idea what they do. In an attempt to better inform the public of at least some of their operations, for the first time the Federal Police are showcasing the work of their Negotiation Operations Team. The work of the Team includes […]
The Best Butcher on the South Coast: That’s the aim, that’s her reputation
The Kiama Bugle: 26 March, 2024. Back in 2015 Tina Henderson walked into the butcher in the centre of Shellharbour and applied for a job. And some of the first words out of her mouth to the then owner were: “I’m going to buy this business off you one day.” The owner laughed. But thus […]
The Honey Man
The Kiama Bugle, 23 March, 2024. Common name: The Honey Man. Real Name: Jeffrey Bell. He bought his 50 acre property on the plateau at the top of Jamberoo Mountain Road 35 years ago, long before the Southern Highlands became one of the most prized real estate areas in the state. “It was just a […]
Stoic by Name Stoic By Nature
The Kiama Bugle, 22 March, 2024 Ever feel like the last remnants of productivity and creativity in Australia are being demolished by a government determined to destroy every sign of local character and initiative? If you’re into craft beer, that’s exactly what you’re feeling as one major brewer after another has gone into administration in […]
Sick of the Rat Race? Why Not Set Sail?
Kiama Bugle, 8 March, 2024. Original copy: By John Stapleton Well, if you feel like you’ve suffered enough, and pretty much all of us feel like we’ve endured enough daily tribulations in the “Lucky Country” about now, there’s always the grand escape. The cruise industry is booming. Punters are cashed up after the years of […]
Remembering Barry Williams – Fighter for Australian dads
The Kiama Bugle: 5 March, 2024 One of the greatest fighters for Australia’s many separated dads, Barry Williams, founder of the Lone Fathers Association, has passed away aged 85. His funeral will be held in Canberra this Wednesday at Norwood Park Chapel in Canberra. Warwick Marsh of Dads4Kids fame writes: “Barry Williams (18 April 1938 […]
Jamberoo’s Million-dollar Listing
The Kiama Bugle: 26 February, 2024. Josephine Osborne remembers the days when the local farmers used to lead their cows through the centre of Jamberoo. That was 20 years ago, when the picturesque village nestled in the folding green hills at the base of the Escarpment was a centre for the local dairy industry, and […]
The War on Small Business: Survival in a Collapsing Economy
The Kiama Bugle, 22 February, 2024 By John Stapleton Ask yourself, would you open a business in Australia in 2024. The general answer: “You’d have to be mad. Not in a fit.” Small businesses across the country are in despair. The bakery and cafe in the centre of the picturesque South Coast town of Jamberoo, […]
Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. Extract.
By John Stapleton The national derangement was complete. A Melbourne hospital prevented a mother from seeing her son, who was suffering from a severe brain injury after a motor crash. “We haven’t been able to see our son since he woke up from a coma.. We just want to hug our son.” Police were filmed […]
Going cashless: you will be cancelled and you will be happy
Kiama Bugle: 13 February 2024 Colourful Queensland Senator Bob Katter has created a national furore by insisting a cafe inside Parliament House in Canberra has broken the law by refusing to take cash. In an era when trust in government and trust in banks is approaching zero, Katter’s claims struck a chord with the general […]
Where Is Australia’s Royal Commission into the Covid Response? The Truth Will Out.
A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 February, 2024. By John Stapleton Australia’s response to Covid was arguably the worst in the world, with the country making headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons, including the pepper spraying of protestors and the censorship of dissident voices. The current Australian government, headed by Prime Minister […]
Prices are rising across the economy, The Kiama Bugle, 9 February, 2024.
Prices are rising across the economy Wherever you go, the ever rising prices of virtually everything, petrol, groceries, electricity, services, beer, basically everything, is front and centre of the conversation. It doesn’t matter if you are living in an upmarket area or a slum, the cost of living crisis is impacting on everyone. And causing […]
New Beer Tariffs Impact Our Local Hotspots
The Kiama Bugle, 9 February, 2024. Online version. Ever rising cost of alcohol John Stapleton 09 February 2024, 3:23 PM The ever rising cost of living is driving everyone to despair, but if you want to drink away your sorrows, as of this week you’ll be paying more even for that. Prices are up this […]
Ancient Texts: The Vedas of India. The Black and White Photography of Russell Shakespeare
Collated By John Stapleton Russell Shakespeare is one of Australia’s most celebrated photographers, having worked in newspapers and magazines for the past three decades, fulfilling an obsession which began in early childhood. He is rarely ever seen without a camera in hand. John Stapleton is the editor of A Sense of Place Magazine. The pair have […]
The World’s Worst Family Law System: The Death Spiral of Australia’s Albanese Government, A Sense of Place Magazine, 22 October, 2023.
By John Stapleton Australia has the world’s highest electricity costs, highest housing costs, slowest and most expensive internet, most insane immigration system and consequently one of the most fractured societies on Earth. And is one of the most heavily taxed and over regulated communities. And if not always technically true on every metric, you get […]
A Resounding NO: Australia’s Referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament Fails, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 October, 2023.
By John Stapleton. Sources: Various. Millions of words have been written over the past 18 months in Australia about a government proposal to create an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, an advisory body to represent the interests of the Nation’s First Peoples. It has preoccupied the nation’s political class, filled television screens and the front pages […]
The Albanese Government’s Death Spiral: The Loss of All Credibility. A Sense of Place Magazine. 10 October, 2023.
By John Stapleton Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be touring Australia this week promoting the “Vote Yes” campaign for the Referendum for constitutional recognition of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, prior to the vote this coming Saturday, 14 October. Problematic from the beginning, the government’s heavy promotion of The Voice has left the country deeply […]
YouTube Censors One of Australia’s Most Talented Young Journalists
By John Stapleton. With Rebekah Barnett: Dystopian Down Under. Rebekah Barnett reports from Western Australia. She holds a degree in Communications from the University of Western Australia and when it comes to a new generation of journalists born out of this difficult time in our history is one of the brightest stars in the firmament. […]
A Public Relations Disaster: The Wind Farms That Ate Australia, A Sense of Place Magazine, 29 September, 2023.
By John Stapleton The Albanese Labor government is in a death spiral, suffering savage reputational damage from its highly divisive and failing campaign to change the Referendum and establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. It has been desperate to distract attention from its own failings in recent weeks. Hence the flurry of announcements about windfarms. […]
Freedom Loving Australians Celebrate: Dictator Dan Resigns
By John Stapleton There are few moments in Australian history more glorious than the resignation of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, otherwise known as Dictator Dan. At last, at long, long last, the widely despised Premier of Victoria, the man responsible for the world’s longest lockdowns during the Covid era, who backed his police 100 percent […]
Destroying Australia’s East Coast: The Windfarms that Ate Australia
By John Stapleton There’s one thing the Australia’s left wing Labor government is good at, and that’s spectacular own goals. Their much spruiked climate change policies and rush to “Net Zero” involves the building of massive , diabolically expensive and environmentally ruinous windfarms which are meeting community opposition wherever they’re built. This week alone the […]
What is Wrong With This Picture? Civilian Casualties and the Death of Truth
By John Stapleton We’re rerunning these images for one simple reason, once again Australia is in lockstep with America’s endless wars, as it has been in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan; wars in which the general public never ever see a single dead body. Yet that is exactly what it is all about, killing people. Soldiers. […]
Australia’s Ministry of Truth, The New Dawn, 1 September, 2023.
hat happens when the government itself becomes the country’s greatest purveyor of misinformation and disinformation – gaslighters of their entire populations? And that same government is hell-bent on censoring the truth? That is exactly what has happened, and is happening, in Australia. Long known as the most illiberal of all Western democracies – as the […]
Chapter Fifteen: A Time For All Time. Extract, Australia Breaks Apart. A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 July, 2023.
We are living interludes, bookended between not yet and no more, each of us a random draw of the cosmic lottery, each allotted a sliver of spacetime in which to live out our lives as chance configurations of stardust suspended in time. There are times in life when the firmament of our being seems to […]
The Government, My Enemy: A Journalist records Covidian Australia’s Pandemic Over-reach, A Sense of Place Magazine, 23 July, 2023.
By Professor Ramesh Thakur: Spectator Australia. Medically idiotic, economically ruinous, socially disruptive and embittering, culturally dystopian, politically despotic: what was there to like in the Covid era? Billions, if you were Big Pharma. Unchecked power, if you were Big State. More money and power over the world’s governments and people, for the WHO. Template for […]
Our Enemy, The State, Brownstone Institute, 22 July, 2023.
Ramesh Thakur: Brownstone Institute Listen to this article. Medically idiotic, economically ruinous, socially disruptive and embittering, culturally dystopian, politically despotic: what was there to like in the Covid era? Billions, if you were Big Pharma. Unchecked power, if you were Big State. More money and power over the world’s governments and people, for the WHO. […]
The Government, My Enemy, The Daily Sceptic, 21 July, 2021.
By Ramesh Thakur. Medically idiotic, economically ruinous, socially disruptive and embittering, culturally dystopian, politically despotic: what was there to like in the Covid era? Billions, if you were Big Pharma. Unchecked power, if you were Big State. More money and power over the world’s governments and people, for the WHO. Template for action for climate […]
From Out of Chaos: The Art of Ronan Dinneen, A Sense of Place Magazine, 21 July, 2023.
By John Stapleton Ronan tells it like this: “I had full on psychosis. But I kept drawing all the time. I was living in Saigon in Vietnam, ended up homeless. I was pulling the cameras out of the wall in my hotel; and they kicked me out. I was so anxious. I couldn’t work. I […]
The government, my enemy: A journalist records Covidian Australia’s pandemic over-reach, Ramesh Thakur, Spectator Australia, 20 July, 2023.
Medically idiotic, economically ruinous, socially disruptive and embittering, culturally dystopian, politically despotic: what was there to like in the Covid era? Billions, if you were Big Pharma. Unchecked power, if you were Big State. More money and power over the world’s governments and people, for the WHO. Template for action for climate zealots. Dreamtime for […]
Australia Breaks Apart: A Book Review, A Sense of Place Magazine, 17 July, 2023.
By Paul Collits: Substack What exactly do you say when your country betrays you and disgraces itself before the world? When you find out that it is run by thugs and goons? When you realise that the institutions that you thought would protect your rights don’t bother even trying? When your police forces turn on […]
The Historic Wonboyn Lake Bush Fires of 2020: Stay and Defend. Lessons Learnt. A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 July, 2023.
By Ian Williamson and John Stapleton Surrounded by nature reserves and national parks, Wonboyn Lake is a spectacular waterway nestled within the absolutely beautiful wilderness of the far south coast of New South Wales, Australia. Encircled by forests and remote beaches, Wonboyn Lake is known as a fisherman’s paradise. Seals swim in the saltwater lake. […]
Fumigating Scott Morrison: Ridding Australian Politics of a Terrible Blight, A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 July, 2023.
By John Stapleton Want to shut up an Australian? Just ask them this: “When did you last have a good Prime Minister?” The incumbent, Anthony Albanese, is turning out to be worse than anyone could possibly have imagined. His predecessor, Scott Morrison, is widely seen as the worst Prime Minister in Australian history, leading the […]
Essential Reading For The Dissident, The Disenfranchised, & The Disillusioned, ZeroHedge, 2 July, 2023.
John Stapleton’s incredible new book Australia Breaks Apart has a surreal quality to it. He taps into the dissonance, the discord, and the disillusionment of those among us who were able, or who dared, to step outside the wall-to-wall propaganda and look at it in real time, or back at it later, in horror. Through the book’s central […]
Essential Reading for the Dissident, the Disenfranchised, the Disillusioned, Brownstone Institute, 29 June, 2023.
By Richard Kelly: Brownstone Institute. John Stapleton’s incredible new book Australia Breaks Apart has a surreal quality to it. He taps into the dissonance, the discord, and the disillusionment of those among us who were able, or who dared, to step outside the wall-to-wall propaganda and look at it in real time, or back at it later, […]
The disgrace of Australia’s pandemic betrayal, UK Conservative Woman, 27 June, 2023.
By Paul Collits. WHAT exactly do you do when your country betrays you and disgraces itself before the world? When you find out that it is run by thugs and goons? When just about no one in the political class has the moral compass and the spine to stand up for you? When your fellow citizens […]
Royal Commission or Nuremberg 2.0? Australia Breaks Apart. Excerpt Chapter 18. Factcheck This: Bombshell Revelations. A Sense of Place Magazine, 26 June, 2023.
Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no substitute; no matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough, even if he enlists the help of computers, to cover the immensity of factuality. The liar, who may get […]
Veteran journalists discuss fall of mass media, TOTT mentioned
TOTT NEWS John Stapleton joins Nick Cater on ‘Battleground’ to discuss how the media have lost the trust of the public, and why they are now supporting independent outlets like TOTT News. Real coverage shattered the perception-manufacturing empire. https://videopress.com/embed/SRHTTu85?cover=1&posterUrl=https%3A%2F%2Ftottnews.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F06%2Funtitled-3_mp4_avc_240p.original.jpg&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=1&hd=1Watch in a new tab here. Thank you to John for the mention! FULL EPISODE Check out John’s […]
Australia Breaks Apart: A Book Review
By Paul Collits: Paul’s Newsletter. Substack What exactly do you say when your country betrays you and disgraces itself before the world? When you find out that it is run by thugs and goons? When you realise that the institutions that you thought would protect your rights don’t bother even trying? When your police forces […]
Australian Labor Government’s Appalling Family Law Amendment Bill 2023. John Stapleton’s Interview with Dads4Kids.
With Warwick Marsh John Stapleton is the author of Chaos at the Crossroads: Family Law Reform in Australia and was a cofounder of the world’s longest running radio program dedicated to fatherhood issues, Dads On The Air. Of all the many things that the Albanese Labor Government did not bother to tell the Australian public […]
Australia’s Labor Government to Destroy One of the World’s Greatest Whale Migration Routes
By John Stapleton Australia’s Labor government, elected in 2022, is planning to destroy the country’s most beloved whale migration route by placing hundreds of wind turbines directly on its path. Wind farms are notorious around the world for their destruction of whale habitats. Sound travels well in water, and the noise they generate causes them […]
Australia Breaks Apart: The Sky News Interview with Author John Stapleton
Massive harm was done both to Australian society as a whole, and to millions of individuals, as a result of Australia’s deranged Covid response. Chris Kenny at Sky News is one of the few commentators in Australia who has repeatedly call for a Royal Commission into the entire vexed issue of the government’s authoritarian and […]
The Zeee Media Interview with John Stapleton, Author of Australia Breaks Apart, A Sense of Place Magazine, 20 June, 2023.
Of the many independent Australian media outlets which have emerged in the past three years, driven by the failure of the mainstream media to cover the abysmal collapse of freedoms in the country, Zeee Media is one of the most outstanding. Professionally produced, punchy as all get out, and presented by the charming, forceful and […]
Chapter Fourteen: Australia Breaks Apart. Convoy to Canberra. Extract. Out This Week. A Sense of Place Magazine, 19 June, 2023.
The humanitarian crimes committed by Australian authorities against their own citizens, beginning inearly 2020, would live on in infamy, but it is the people themselves who create a nation’s history. On the 12th of February 2022, one of the largest gatherings of Australians in the nation’s history marchedon the National Parliament in Canberra to protest […]
Matthew Thornton & John Stapleton on The Dean Mackin Show, TNT Radio Live, 19 June 2023.
GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Matthew Thornton is a TalkTV Producer and Host of Insanity Radio FM. He covers music, both from the UK and internationally. GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: John Stapleton is a graduate of Macquarie University and studied both philosophy and anthropology and following his university studies he distinguished himself as a free lance writer with […]
Covid lockdown insanity: shameful leaders should pay. The Weekend Australian, 17 June, 2023.
The story is behind their paywalls here: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/shameful-fearmongering-leaders-should-pay-for-covid-lockdown-insanity/news-story/78a2de07ee79d3488093c89a441c5046 Comments are very positive. For example: There is no doubt that the whole sorry affair destroyed my feelings for the country that I have ever loved and revered. It is the rise of the bureaucracy that threatens us. It now seeps into our collective soul, corrosively and […]
Clips from the Nick Cater Interview with John Stapleton
These are short YouTube clips from an interview with John Stapleton by Nick Cater on his program Battleground on ADH TV.
Taking the Male-Bashing Disaster of Australian Family Law Back to the Dark Ages
John Stapleton with John Flanagan. The Daily Declaration. Of all the many things that the left-wing Albanese Labor Government did not bother to tell the Australian public prior to last year’s election was that they intended to take Australia’s utterly dysfunctional family law system back to the dark ages, when most fathers entering the Family Court rarely […]
Agent Orange: The Long Reckoning. The Long Read.
The pain of America’s endless wars linger long after the generals and opportunists and political grifters depart the battlefield. Vietnam is the classic example. No one even bothers to pretend that the war was morally or strategically justified in any sense; that it was not built on a lie, that it did not do enormous […]
Australia Breaks Apart: The Author Interview
To watch. The interview with author John Stapleton is the first 24 minutes of this program. John Stapleton addresses the madness of the past few years elegantly and with an urgent clarity that puts most commentators – and all politicians and bureaucrats – to shame. Steve Waterson, Senior Editor, The Australian. With terrifying clarity and a […]
Chapter 12: Shattered Ground. Extract from Australia Breaks Apart. Out This Month.
The Indigenous Voice to Parliament aka The Voice is the proposed new advisory group containing separately elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, perpetually enshrined in the Constitution of Australia, which would “have a responsibility and right to advise the Australian Parliament and Government on national matters of significance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made The […]
Australia Breaks Apart: The Lead In. Publication Date 12 June, 2023.
This piece also Features the Spectacular Photography of Dean Sewell. John Stapleton addresses the madness of the past few years elegantly and with an urgent clarity that puts most commentators – and all politicians and bureaucrats – to shame. Steve Waterson, Senior Editor, The Australian. With terrifying clarity and a unique literary flair, John Stapleton […]
Chapter 13: SOS Australia: The New World Order. Extract from Australia Breaks Apart. Publication Date 12 June, 2023.
With Monica Smit of Reignite Democracy Australia John Stapleton addresses the madness of the past few years elegantly and with an urgent clarity that puts most commentators – and all politicians and bureaucrats – to shame. Steve Waterson, Senior Editor, The Australian. With terrifying clarity and a unique literary flair, John Stapleton chaperones us through […]
Chapter Five: A Narrow Valley Threads Down To The Sea. Extract from Australia Breaks Apart. Publication Date: 12 June, 2023.
John Stapleton addresses the madness of the past few years elegantly and with an urgent clarity that puts most commentators – and all politicians and bureaucrats – to shame. Steve Waterson, Senior Editor, The Australian. With terrifying clarity and a unique literary flair, John Stapleton chaperones us through our social decline and the loss of […]
The Rise of Ultranationalism in Australia: Facebook and the Sites of Discontent
By John Stapleton The story below was written some four years ago. It showed the massive connivance between social media platforms and the Australian government. It also covered the violent suppression of protests, in this case over Australia’s high immigration rates and the fact that traditional working class cultures felt under threat. The violent suppression […]
Falun Dafa: The End of Days, A Sense of Place Magazine, 7 May, 2023.
Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance “When two truths meet the most courageous one wins.” Chinese proverb. This piece was originally written some 20 years ago and is republished here out of curiosity. Falun Gong remain a powerful if essentially invisible force to this day. In the years since Falun Gong was launched in 1992 it has attracted […]
Extract from Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost.
Australian governments have always appealed to nationalism in their aggressive drives to recruit young men to war. World War One posters included: “Under Which Flag Will You Live? Enlist Now”; “The Trumpet Calls”; “The Boys In The Trenches Vote Yes”; and “It Is More Serious Than You Think, The barbarian is almost at your gates, […]
Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. Extract. Part Three. The Biggest Mistake In History. A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 April, 2023.
If the geniuses of Australian government weren’t satisfied with all the cautionary voices emerging from some of the world’s most venerable tertiary institutions, they only had to go as far as the Australian National University, to Professor Ramesh Thakur, whose work Old Alex seized on early in the piece. Eminently qualified, the professor’s high intelligence […]
Obituary: The Australian Liberal Party: 1944 to 2023
By John Stapleton. Illustrations by John Brack. This isn’t just a temporary setback, it’s an extermination. Australia’s conservatives are going through their worst period since the formation of the Liberal Party in 1944. Their rout at the May Federal election last year and in the country’s most populous state New South Wales last month has […]
Tony Westwood: Visiting His Old Australian Stomping Grounds, A Sense of Place Magazine, 22 February, 2023.
Way back in the 1970s, that’s before Noah’s Ark for all the Millennials, Tony Westwood was a founding member of the Australian Dance Theatre. He is back in Australia for a visit after spending much of his life in Germany, where he etched out a successful career as a director, stage designer and choreographer for […]
Convoy to Canberra: The Reunion, A Sense of Place Magazine, 13 February, 2023.
By John Stapleton Numbers were nowhere near what they were last year, but the spirit was the same. On the 12 February, 2022, people from all over Australia traveled to the nation’s capital in one of the largest protests Australia has ever witnessed. In contrast to the hundreds of thousands who thronged the front lawns […]
Convoy to Canberra One Year On: Dusty Starr: Make A Stand While You Can, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 February, 2023.
By John Stapleton Dusty Starr is from Kinglake Ranges, the mountain districts north of the world’s most locked down city, Melbourne Australia. A well known star of Australian country music, like so many other Australians he has been radicalised by the draconian overreach of the Australian government’s response to the Covid era. He has attended […]
Convoy to Canberra One Year On: Aftershocks, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 February, 2023.
By John Stapleton The saying, “as so often in Australian public life, we’d all have been better off if the government had done absolutely nothing”, attracted outrage in the first few months of the “Pandemic”. Despite the blizzard of blatant falsehoods, grandstanding, nonsensical rules and words of caution from leading intellectuals around the world, bizarrely […]
Convoy to Canberra One Year On: The Great March, A Sense of Place Magazine, 9 February, 2023.
By John Stapleton “We should call this Australia Day,” said one indigenous woman. They came with their dogs. They came with their kids. They came with their hearts. There were an estimated 200,000 protestors on the Epic campsite alone. The 12th of February, 2022, was the Ground Zero of days; when the nation stood up and […]
Convoy to Canberra One Year On: The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth
Exhibition Park in Canberra, otherwise known as Epic, lies on the northern outskirts of Canberra and is the site of the annual Canberra Show, which like other shows around the country exhibits the produce and achievements of local farmers, craftspeople and others, a festive occasion to delight the nation’s children and the public at large. […]
The Convoy to Canberra One Year On: Joy and Calamity, Brutality and Kindness, A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 February, 2023.
Events accelerated. Australia was producing what looked very much like a national uprising. Daily thousands upon thousands of people, all sorts of people from all walks of life, continued to stream into the capital. The stills and footage from that first week of February show joyous signs of communality and good cheer among the protestors; […]
Convoy to Canberra One Year On: We Will Wash Away Tyranny, A Sense of Place Magazine, 5 February, 2023.
Day three was a cooler day, but only weather wise, Matthew Gray of Café Lockdown wrote. Every hour the police entered the campsite in Canberra’s parliamentary zone and did a walk through. All of them were masked up and initially polite. As they passed through the growing camp they were surrounded by protesters, who were […]
Convoy to Canberra One Year On: The Prime Minister Who Destroyed Australia, A Sense of Place Magazine, 4 February, 2023.
One young woman wearing a halter top with the word LOVEDOWN pencilled across her breasts pretty much summed it up. She held high above her head a sign which read: “We’re not from the Left or Right, We’re from the Bottom and We’re Coming for those on Top!” Many hundreds of thousands of Australians had […]
The Canberra Convoy One Year On: The Fulcrum Points of History, A Sense of Place Magazine, 3 February, 2023.
By John Stapleton. Canberra’s Parliament House, an elegant 4,700 room building designed as a symbol of national unity, was opened in 1988 by Queen Elisabeth II and cost what was then regarded as a wildly extravagant $1.1 billion. The front forecourts are normally a sedate tourist zone, characterised by tour operators and the comings and […]
It’s Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong. The Covid Scandal. Newsweek. 100 Million Views A Month. A Sense of Place Magazine, 2 February, 2023.
The entire world was hoodwinked by the corrupt American medical establishment. Now the worm has turned, the house of cards has collapsed, whatever clichés you want to clutch for, words are simply insufficient to describe this calamity. This time in our history marks a profound turning point in the history of humanity. Here’s one more […]
From All The Lands We Come: The Canberra Convoy One Year On
By John Stapleton This is Chapter Two of the book Convoy to Canberra. The excitement, and let’s be frank, the astonishment, gathered like a rolling storm. The preceding days had taken everybody by surprise. No one, not even the most optimistic of activists, predicted the size, strength, power and popular support for this spontaneous uprising. […]
Convoy to Canberra One Year On. Chapter One: A Time For All Time. A Sense of Place Magazine, 1 February, 2023.
The humanitarian crimes committed by Australian authorities against their own citizens, beginning in early 2020, will live on in infamy, but it is the people themselves who create a nation’s history. On the 12th of February 2022, one of the largest if not the largest gathering of Australians in the nation’s history marched on the […]
Bill Gates In Australia, A Sense of Place Magazine, 1 February, 2023.
By John Stapleton What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? The most truly bizarre of all the many bizarre aspects of Bill Gates visit to Australia was the confession that the vaccines he promoted, and which the Australian government and countless health bureaucrats enthusiastically championed, don’t […]
The Best of 2022. What On Earth? Extract from Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. A Sense of Place Magazine, 3 January, 2023.
Australia’s social progressives are exultant over the success of a record number of women and climate change activists in the May election which saw the conservatives thrashed. These are the same social progressives who raised not one word of protest, indeed cheered on the authoritarian derangement which began in Australia in March of 2020. Women […]
The Best of 2022. “Give Us Our Jobs Back Ya Dog”: Australians Have Had Enough. A Sense of Place Magazine, 17 December, 2022.
By John Stapleton The disruption to Australian life continues to grow worse; with supply chains broken, supermarket shelves emptying, and suburban parks quiet as a confused and anxious people shelter in place. A dark evil spreads across the land. Everyone is vulnerable. The rich get richer; and the rest remain bewildered, with thousands of teachers, […]
Dark Seas. Extract: Hideout in the Apocalypse. A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 December, 2022.
By John Stapleton. Photography David Sandford. The spooks were easy to spot. Most Australians couldn’t afford a new iPhone, and certainly not in that part of town. Old Alex felt decidedly unsafe, packed up the apartment, both glad to be out of there and angry at being made homeless, relentlessly pursued; as if he had […]
Australia’s Battered Inland Rivers: The Greed of the Oligarchs Destroys Australia’s Outback
By John Stapleton. Photography by Dean Sewell. Australia’s fabled Outback is now being regularly described as an inland sea as the country experiences its third year of widespread heavy rains, by far one of the wettest periods in living memory. The story below, featuring the magnificent photography of multi-award winning Australian photographer Dean Sewell, was […]
Australia’s Only Celebrity Jihadist Creates Diplomatic Chaos: The Life of Neil Prakash. A Sense of Place Magazine, 29 November, 2022.
By John Stapleton. Once labelled Australia’s most dangerous man, Neil Prakash was stripped of his Australian citizenship in 2018, amid considerable political theatre from the government. Lawyers and academics argued at the time that it was against the law to strip someone of their Australian citizenship if it left them stateless, and the current government […]
Media Manipulation, Censorship, Surveillance: Australia. The Best of 2022. A Sense of Place Magazine, 13 November, 2022.
By John Stapleton One of the most vile of all the vile deeds perpetrated by the Coalition under the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison era of benighted Australian governance was to make journalists Persons of Interest – POIs – under the ASIO Act. The current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, raised not one word of concern asthis legislation, introduced by […]
Victoria’s Freedom Party: Australians Fight For Liberty, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 November, 2023.
By John Stapleton Australia experienced one of the most extreme and counterproductive Covid responses of anywhere around the globe, and as a direct result of the totalitarian lunacy which overtook the country, its politics have changed profoundly. The Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews became infamous around the world for his completely over-the-top response to the […]
Craig Kelly: The Most Reviled Politician in Australia. Pilloried, Ridiculed, Marginalised, Vindicated. A Sense of Place Magazine, 5 November, 2023.
Widely condemned as a conspiracy theorist, no one has been more marginalised by his own side of politics, nor ridiculed in the public square, than United Australia Party’s Craig Kelly. Originally joining the nation’s ramshackle conservatives, the Liberal Party in 2010, he resigned in 2021, disgusted by his own mistreatment and by their mismanagement of […]
Pfizer’s Reputation Destroyed by European Union Parliament Admissions: Why Isn’t Australia Holding a Similar Inquiry? A Sense of Place Magazine, 2 November, 2023.
By John Stapleton. Extract from the Upcoming Book Australia Breaks Apart. Below is a transcript of a press conference held by members of the European Parliament expressing their absolute outrage over the performance of vaccine manufacturer Pfizer, including, despite being funded by the taxpayer, the company’s complete lack of transparency. For anyone who has followed […]
Shearers: The Photography of Russell Shakespeare, A Sense of Place Magazine, 20 October, 2022.
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 day. It’s romantic […]
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews Unmasked: The Man The Monster, A Sense of Place Magazine, 23 September, 2022.
There is no doubt that Geoff Shaw regards the Premier of Australia’s second most populist state as a monster. But before we get into the excerpts, let’s skip straight to the end of the horror story. Alex Berenson, former New York Times reporter and author of Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, […]
The Stars of Australia’s Blossoming Independent Media: Morgan Jonas and The MCJ Report, A Sense of Place Magazine, 14 September, 2022.
By John Stapleton A profound lunacy has overtaken Australia; and the entirely bought mainstream media, hostage to their government funding, has ignored what is happening right in front of all our eyes. But as the saying goes, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and as a direct result of the legacy media’s […]
The Long Read: Covert Concessions and Sweetheart Deals. Extract from Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia, A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 September, 2022.
By John Stapleton The brutal and very ugly face of the Covid response in Australia, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, is now mired in scandal, flayed daily in the public square. The discovery that he appointed himself to five different portfolios in secret under the cover of the Covid panic made him the laughing stock […]
The Evidence is Out There: There Is No Excuse for Ignorance. The Grand Jury Of The Court of Public Opinion. A Sense of Place Magazine, 10 September, 2022.
“After months of deaths and vaccine injuries, no one can plead ignorance.” Now even one of the great censors and distorters of our time, the Google owned YouTube, is running at least some of the episodes of this forensic picking apart of the Covid narrative by some of the world’s most formidable experts. The Grand […]
Prison Island: Extract from the Upcoming book Australia Breaks Apart, A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 September, 2023.
By John Stapleton. The Long Read. Chapter One. PRISON ISLAND This massive edifice of evil was too complex, and, really, too elegant, to assign to just human awfulness and human inventiveness. It suggested a spiritual dimension of evil. This evil was like a giant cultural spaceship which landed on Earth, with a technology to unfold […]
How It All Ends: Extract from Australia Breaks Apart. A Sense of Place Magazine, 31 August, 2022.
By John Stapleton. The Long Read. This is Chapter Two, How It All Ends, of the upcoming book Australia Breaks Apart, the sequel to Unfolding Catastrophe Australia. The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears […]
Scott Morrison: The Very Ugly Face of Australia’s Covid Madness, A Sense of Place Magazine, 23 August, 2022.
John Stapleton. Extract from Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. In recent days Scott Morrison, as he has done since Covid lurched onto the Australian scene, has been spinning the pandemic story hard in an attempt to rescue his political career. In early 2020 he placed himself front and centre of the unfolding drama, hoping, on the face […]
Power Hungry Elites Have Upended Australia, A Sense of Place Magazine, 18 August, 2022.
By Paul Collits: Politicom John Stapleton, editor of the fine online journal A Sense of Place Magazine, has now published two books on Australia’s experience of COVID totalitarianism. The first, Unfolding Catastrophe, chronicled Australia’s descent into policy madness over two miserable years. His latest, Convoy to Canberra, focuses on the extraordinary popular uprising in February 2022 in which […]
Reignite Democracy Monica Smit’s Charges Dismissed: Australia’s Courts Clogged, A Sense of Place Magazine, 29 July, 2022.
Australia’s court system is now clogged with people protesting thousands of punitive fines or jail sentences. Of all the online personalities and citizen journalists to emerge during the Covid era, one of the most prominent was Monica Smit of Reignite Democracy. From pepper spraying grandmothers to arresting pregnant women in their own homes to bashing […]
Convoy to Canberra: The Day Australia Changed Forever. A Sense of Place Publishing, 30 June, 2022. Text Only.
CONTENTS ONE A TIME FOR ALL TIME TWO FROM ALL THE LANDS WE COME THREE THE FULCRUM POINTS OF HISTORY FOUR THE PRIME MINISTER WHO DESTROYED AUSTRALIA FIVE WE WILL WASH AWAY TYRANNY SIX JOY AND CALAMITY, BRUTALITY AND KINDNESS SEVEN THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH EIGHT THE GREAT MARCH NINE THE SAD AND […]
With our dismal history of bombings in Iraq, Australia cannot take the high moral ground on Ukraine, Pearls and Irritations, 28 June, 2022.
By John Stapleton From Malcolm Turnbull’s first day as Prime Minister in 2015, the bombings on Iraq increased. We all became responsible for killing great numbers of Muslims. For years putrid skeletons were being dug out of the rubble. Lovers, sons and daughters, soldiers old and young, men and women, children. Most of all, believers […]
Australia’s Unfolding Nightmare: How It All Ends Part III, A Sense of Place Magazine, 27 March, 2022.
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 […]
Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. Extract. Part One. The First Draft of History. A Sense of Place Magazine, 24 February, 2022.
Photography by Dean Sewell THE THINGS HE REMEMBERED MOST STARKLY from the early months of the Covid Era were empty trains churning through the night, a sense of threat as everything was altered, military helicopters hovering over a deserted Sydney Harbour, empty streets, silent suburbs, and dread, mostly dread. Perhaps one of the single most […]
Video From The Day Australia Changed Forever, A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 February, 2022.
The 12th of February 2022 is the day Australia transformed.Without counting the several hours missing from the police report of people coming on the 11th, over 1.2 millions cars entered ACT in the week preceding this epic day. Epic as the name of the camping ground, the Canberra showground, where more than two hundred thousand […]
The Sad and Brutal Final Hours of Camp Freedom and the Convoy to Canberra, A Sense of Place Magazine, 15 February, 2022.
What had been a remarkably successful policing operation, handling the one million protestors who showed up in Canberra to protest two years of government overreach during the Covid era, turned sour in the final hours. Until that point there had been no reports of violence, rapes, vandalism or all the other behaviours one might fairly […]
Anxiety Grips Canberra’s Freedom Camp, A Sense of Place Magazine, 13 February, 2022.
By John Stapleton Twenty four hours after a jubilant atmosphere gripped Canberra, with a massive protest involving crowds estimated between 500,000 and a million in one of the largest protest gatherings in Australian history, a deep anxiety has afflicted the camps of protestors. Tensions have been rising throughout the day; with many protestors either leaving […]
The Day Australia Changed Forever. Protestors Ring Australia’s National Capital. A Sense of Place Magazine,12 February, 2022.
They’ve come with their dogs. They’ve come with their kids. They’ve come with their hearts. There are an estimated 200,000 protestors on one Canberra campsite alone. Today is the Ground Zero of days; when the nation stood up and said no to the authoritarian derangement which has overtaken the country. In one telling incident, last […]
Images from the Convoy to Canberra: A Day That Changed History. A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 February, 2022.
By John Stapleton. Australia has just witnessed the largest demonstration in its history. Many people had streams of tears flowing down their faces. The emotion flowing through the entire crowd was overwhelming. Kath, 53, a delivery truck driver who lost her job due to the vaccine mandates, drove nearly 4000 kilometres from Darwin to be […]
Imprisoned Dr Bruce Paix Released on Bail: Given A Hero’s Welcome at Canberra’s Camp Freedom, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 February, 2022.
By John Stapleton. War veteran and trauma specialist Dr Bruce Paix was arrested near Canberra airport while on his way to attend the Convoy to Canberra gathering. Cheering crowds celebrated Dr Paix’s release today, 11 February, 2022, as he was driven around the campsite on the back of a Convoy to Canberra truck. Dr Bruce […]
The Spirit Rises: Inside Australia’s Protests, A Sense of Place Magazine, 10 February, 2022.
By John Stapleton. While mainstream journalists around the country continue to ignore the biggest story of their lifetimes, Australia’s independent media is on fire. Thousands of people from all around Australia are converging on Canberra as part of the Canberra Convoy protests. The protests are both chaotic and glorious, and the burgeoning campsite on the […]
The Meek Will Inherit The Earth: Inside Australia’s Camp Freedom, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 February, 2022.
By John Stapleton. With numbers now in their tens of thousands at the rallying point for Convoy to Canberra, the atmosphere at the heart of Australia’s Camp Freedom is both chaotic and glorious, jubilant, exultant. And all participants say one thing: “This is history in the making.” Crowds line the streets of the campsite cheering […]
The Largest Aussie Protest Gathering In History: As Seen from the Sky, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 February, 2022.
Drone footage by Bailey and his Dad. Travelling from all states around Australia, including one lone driver from Perth who travelled 52 hours, the Convoy to Canberra is inundating the ACT like no event ever before seen in Australia’s history. At the time this image was taken, it’s been estimated that 350 vehicles per hour […]
How It All Ends: Australia Transforms. Part One. A Sense of Place Magazine, 10 February, 2022.
John Stapleton. For years the biggest story in the country has been the slow motion collapse of the Australia of old. Now, with the country only slowly stumbling out of lockdown and insane levels of social restrictions introduced without parliamentary approval in what was tantamount to martial law introduced, under the cover of Covid-19, it […]
Vaccine Mandates Fails: Day Ten of the Canberra Convoy. A Sense of Place Magazine, 10 February, 2022.
By John Stapleton. Another in a queue of court cases against vaccine mandates has failed; leading critics to emphasise the urgent need for an Australian Bill of Rights. Here renowned Australian photographer John Napper, who is presently documenting the Canberra Convoy and the astounding events in Australia’s national capital, reports on the demonstrations outside the […]
Canberra Explodes: Australia’s National Capital Transformed, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 February, 2022.
Sources various. Compiled by John Stapleton. Days of protest are marching towards a resolution. So here are the scattered notes from multiple sources; as the river of this history changes all our lives. And transforms the nature of the polity. They tried to crush the people, and instead transformed them. A story which has made […]
Notes from the Frontline: Australia’s Capital Under Siege, A Sense of Place Magazine, 7 February, 2022.
Compiled by John Stapleton. Fortune favours the brave. The scale of the catastrophe that is enveloping Australia, that is the most staggering thing about this period of history. The psychopathic lack of empathy by the perpetrators. The dismal state of the nation. The Prime Minister Scott Morrison is now twirling in the wind, forced to publicly […]
The Right to Protest Has Been Restored: And Protestors have travelled from all over Australia to surround the National Parliament, A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 February, 2022.
Compiled by John Stapleton. With Joel Gilmour. The mainstream media has utterly disgraced itself over the past two years; allowing itself to be manipulated or bludgeoned by government into being propaganda cyphers and willing puppets for the authoritarian derangement which has seized the country. What the authorities failed to appreciate was that in this era […]
The Australian Convoy: Day Three, A Sense of Place Magazine, 3 February, 2022.
In his own grudging, peculiarly ungracious way, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has admitted that some Australians are unhappy with his management of the Covid “pandemic”. Bull dust. They’re absolutely bloody livid. Morrison must face the electorate before 23 May this year. Two years of mayhem under his “leadership”; and the country is in chaos […]
Australia’s Convoy: Day Two, A Sense of Place Magazine, 2 February, 2022.
With TOTT News & True Arrow. Many hundreds of thousands of Australians have been protesting for months over the authoritarian derangement which has seized the country. Almost all those protests have been ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream media. Not this time around. Australians are a phlegmatic people, slow to take to the streets. It […]
Pure: Timothy Mo’s Neglected Masterpiece, A Sense of Place Magazine, 1 February, 2022.
Timothy Mo is a superbly gifted writer but a difficult man who has long fought with his publishers. As the son of wealthy Hong Kong Chinese, he attended Oxford and was once a favourite of the English literary set, but fell out of favour. In later life he has produced a masterwork, Pure. Timothy Mo had […]
Millions March: Australia: The Best of 2021
With Real Rushkan, TOTT News, Reignite Democracy Australia, Hold the Line, the Aussie Cosack and Others. Compiled by John Stapleton. With a number of books now emerging about the Covid era, including most recently Robert F Kennedy’s The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health and Alex Berenson’s Pandemia: […]
Christmas Day: The Nightmare of Australian Family Law. The Best of 2021.
The Family Court of Australia is finally being abolished, dissolved Into the Federal Court. There Are Very Good Reasons. The misuse of expert witnesses is a problem throughout Australia’s judicial system, but no more so than in family law. Here, in a piece originally published in the 1990s, we look at a past which should […]
Civil Unrest Across Australia: Violence Envelops The Nation. The Best of 2021.
Sources: TOTT News and Others. Compiled by John Stapleton. Black clad police firing into unarmed crowds. Somehow we’re all fine with it. Two police standing over an unarmed 70-year-old grandmother pepper spraying her in the face. Somehow we’re all fine with it. Genuine protest, an unfamiliar sight in Australia after the orchestrated public displays around […]
It Could Not Have Been A More Wonderful Day. Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost. Extract. A Sense of Place Magazine, 31 December, 2021.
As a young man Alex had taken every opportunity to travel. He stayed several times at a beach on Penang island known as Batu Ferringhi. In the 1970s it was little more than a haphazard shanty town strung along a beach; butby 2015 was a major resort lined with high rise hotels. Back then he […]
The Palace of Lies Abolished: The Best of 2021. A Sense of Place Magazine, 27 December, 2021.
By John Stapleton. A dark stain on the nation’s legal, social and political history is finally being removed. Known colloquially as the Palace of Lies, the Family Court of Australia was established in the mid-1970s, at the height of the “all men are bastards” style of feminism which was then infiltrating courts and tertiary institutions […]
In A Year of Utter Madness One Thing Is Certain: New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard Has To Go
With TOTT News and A Sense of Place Magazine. Millions of citizens of Australia’s most populous state have had their lives and businesses destroyed or profoundly disrupted throughout the madness, the sheer unadulterated insanity, of 2021. Front and centre of this debacles has been the increasingly crazed figure of Health Minister Brad Hazzard, whose deranged […]
Unfolding Catastrophe: Journalist John Stapleton on the Government’s COVID Response. The Best of 2021, A Sense of Place Magazine, 10 December, 2021.
By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog Tensions are high in the Sydney region as the population looks towards its tenth week in lockdown, without any clear understanding of when it will be coming out of the home confinement it’s enduring as cases of COVID-19 continue to soar within the community. And as far as […]
SOS: Australia to the World, A Sense of Place Magazine, 6 December, 2021.
As Australia disintegrates before our eyes, one extraordinary event follows another with extreme rapidity. What was once a slow motion train wreck is now a collision with destiny at lightning speed. Australia has become an international pariah for its absurd mismanagement of the Covid scare and the outrageous abuse of its own citizens, who have […]
Mounting Protest: Australia’s Real Rukshan, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 November, 2021.
The Digital Realm Outflanks the Official Narrative The breakup of Australia and the breakdown of Australian society is also transforming the media landscape. One figure, the Real Rukshan, has captured a significant following, and even plaudits from some of the mainstream media, who are no doubt taking note of the enviable imprint he is building […]
Cockatoo Island: The Story Behind the Story, A Sense of Place Magazine, 9 November, 2021.
John Stapleton: The Sydney Morning Herald. It was an honour to be appear in The Sydney Morning Herald again, under a piece headlined: From the Archives, 1991. Curiously, there was a story behind this story; and of all the many hundreds of stories one does as a general news reporter, this was one I never […]
Australian Protests Ground Zero: Melbourne and the Rise of Citizen Journalists, A Sense of Place Magazine, 31 October, 2021.
The abject failure of the mainstream media to do anything but parrot the destructive alarmism and propaganda of government over the past twenty months means that much of the population has turned off mainstream media. The failures of legacy media are writ large. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, funded to the tune of $1.2 billion in […]
Telegram: The Rise and Rise, A Sense of Place Magazine, 28 October, 2021.
Big Tech’s hefty manipulation of the Covid narrative is driving many dissenting Australians away from Facebook, Google and WhatsApp to less compromised applications less manipulated by governments and military contractors. In the age of surveillance capitalism, both Facebook and Google have also suffered from a perceived lack of privacy for users. And thus it is […]
Mandates Provoke Protests Worldwide, A Sense of Place Magazine, 25 October, 2021.
By John Stapleton While the heavily manipulated mainstream media has been filled wall to wall with climate alarmism, out in the real world thousands of Australians are being forced to leave their jobs in tears because they refuse to have “the jab”. Mandating a vaccine which is yet to receive final regulatory approval, which has […]
Destroying the Land of the Long Weekend: Extract Part Eight. Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia.
For Old Alex, on the cold but picturesque south coast of NSW, it was an entirely inflamed time. The Land of the Long Weekend was being destroyed. The population accepted it all as one bizarre edict after another flattened them against a wall inside their own homes. In Oak Flats, a kind of banishment from […]
The Intellectual Clout Behind The Anti-Lockdown Movement
By 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, […]
Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. Part Seven: A Signal Derangement.
BY THE AUSTRALIAN autumn of 2020, following straight on from a Christmas of bushfires and extreme loss, the warning signs were clear. An uneducated public makes for easy victims. Australia of 2020 faced not only plummeting educational outcomes and a highly manipulated media easily turned to the narratives of fear, but, in a government-engineered fiasco, […]
Australia Stands Condemned
John Stapleton with Spectator Australia. Amid the devolved state of Australian mainstream media, which has played a diabolical role in inducing a population wide anxiety psychosis during the Covid era, one publication has stood out from the rabble of self-serving government propagandists, and that has been Spectator Australia. The Covid era has highlighted the squalid state […]
Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. Part Five: A Terrible Deceit. A Sense of Place Magazine, 3 October, 2021.
Paula Matthewson, senior reporter with one of the nation’s few mainstream news outlets not behind a paywall, The New Daily, wrote way back in early 2020: “If there’s one clear message to emerge from Australia’s efforts to combat COVID-19 it’s that there’s no one clear message. “Everywhere you look, from traditional news outlets to social media, […]
Oh Frabjous Day!!! NSW Premier Resigns as Protests Against her Policies held Across the State, A Sense of Place Magazine, 2 October, 2021.
By John Stapleton Make no mistake. Premier of NSW Gladys Berejiklian, with every passing day, was becoming an ever more deeply despised and deeply divisive figure. Until one glorious day, the extremely powerful Independent Commission Against Corruption brought her down. And a glorious joy spreads through the millions of households enduring some of the worst […]
Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. Part Four: Dangerous To Us. A Sense of Place Publishing, 27 September, 2021.
The first person in Australia to die with COVID was James Kwan, a 78-year-old man from Perth, on 1 March, 2020. He was a passenger on board the cruise ship Ruby Princess. The ship later became infamous as the single biggest source of infection in Australia, a symbol of administrative failure. From a leading independent […]
The Laughing Lama: On Meeting a Buddhist Master, A Sense of Place Magazine, 23 September, 2021.
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 […]
Ramesh Thakur and The Spectator, A Sense of Place Magazine, 22 September, 2021.
In the COVID insanity which has gripped the Australian political class and destroyed so much of the country, one of the nation’s most distinguished academics, Professor Ramesh Thakur of the Australian National University, has stood out for his bold, erudite and highly intelligent coverage. A former UN Assistant Secretary-General, Ramesh Thakur experienced the pressure, propaganda and […]
Elites ‘descendants from prison guards’ not convicts, Review of Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia in Politicom, by Paul Collits, 16 September, 2021.
Elites ‘descendants from prison guards’ not convicts Posted on : 16/09/2021– by Paul Collits– No Comment AUSTRALIA is now well and truly on the global map, for all the wrong reasons. The British historian Guy de la Bedoyere claims that “Australia is falling apart”. The Off Guardian suggests that we are “going full fascist”. The journalist class is so utterly diminished […]
Australia Becomes the Laughing Stock of the World, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 September, 2021.
Australia’s political and social derangement grows worse with every passing day. With hundreds of thousands of businesses having been destroyed, with millions of people still in lockdown under the harshest and most truly insane Covid response on the globe, overseas news outlets and commentators are looking on with savage disbelief. How is this even possible? […]
The Tragedy of Australia, The Conservative Woman, 10 September, 2021.
By Paul Collits. THE British historian Guy de la Bédoyère claims that ‘Australia is falling apart’. Off Guardian suggests that we are ‘going full fascist’. Daily reports in France, Russia and everywhere in between and beyond, hover between pity, amusement and disbelief. How did this happen – in Australia? The overseas storytelling can barely keep up with the never-ending stream of new […]
Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. The American Podcast: The Land Down Under. A Sense of Place Magazine, 9 September, 2021.
By Nick Asia. MGTOW Chats. Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia aims to dismember the political, administrative and social derangement which has overtaken Australia since the early days of 2020. Australia’s democracy has proved virus thin. There has never been a more politicised and thereby more disastrously mismanaged disease. Eighteen months on from the country’s first COVID death Australia […]
Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. Extract. Part Six. The First Draft of History. A Sense of Place Magazine, 9 September, 2021.
By John Stapleton. Photography by Dean Sewell. There is an old saying about journalism; it is the first draft of history. Part of the problem with the deteriorated and manipulated state of legacy media was that this noble function was now lost. As a former reporter, Old Alex naturally focused his interests on the media […]
Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia. Speech to Forum organised by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils
By John Stapleton. A Sense of Place Magazine. Public servants like to talk about “evidence based policy”. Well, where is the evidence that lockdowns work? Australia’s democracy has proved virus thin. There has never been a more politicised and thereby more disastrously mismanaged disease. Eighteen months on from the country’s first COVID death Australia is […]
Recording Australia’s Decline into the Abyss
By Paul Collits. Academia. 29 August, 2021. Australia is now well and truly on the global map, for all the wrong reasons.The Britsh historian Guy de la Bedoyere claims that “Australia is falling apart”. The Off Guardian suggests that we are “going full fascist”. There are daily accounts reported in France, Russia and everywhere in […]
Hello, Stranger: Manly Pop-Up Party Artist Andrew Riis Serenades Sydney Police While Covid Infringement Notice is Served, A Sense of Place Magazine, 27 July, 2021.
By John Stapleton The man at the centre of the “pop-up” party at Manly beachfront Andrew Riis has spoken out regarding the $1,000 infringement notice and what he claims to be the inaccurate reporting of the incident by the NSW Police. The $1,000 Infringement notice only served after four days. Police thanked Mr Riis for […]
The Lie at The Heart of Hysteria. Part Two of Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia.
Photography by Dean Sewell. There in that frightened time, Old Alex had believed he was putting his best foot forward, almost as a military instruction, a belief that reason could survive, that democracy, despite all its deformities, was worth saving, that the authoritarian if not totalitarian instincts being allowed to run amok could not be […]
By Australia’s Mehi River: The Craft and Art of Jupuul Mari, A Sense of Place Magazine, 11 July, 2021.
By John Stapleton 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 listening to it in […]
Sydney’s Song Before Sunrise: The Photography of Tim Ritchie
By John Stapleton Crisis turns into salvation at every step. For Tim Ritchie it is 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. […]
The Kashi Vishwanath Express: The Photography of Russell Shakespeare, A Sense of Place Magazine, 3 July, 2021.
Compiled 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 […]
The Big Clean Up: One Family’s Story Of Losing Everything: The Photography of Dean Sewell, A Sense of Place Magazine, 24 June, 2021.
After years of drought, last year Australia had one of its worst bush fire seasons on record. This year Australians have shivered through the coldest and wettest summer in living memory. The east coast has been inundated with torrential rain. Extreme rainfall on the east coast of Australia beginning on 18 March 2021 led to widespread […]
Shellharbour’s Village Fix: Bigger, Better and On The Move, A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 June, 2021.
Nine years ago construction worker Anthony Reale had a dream; he wanted to be his own boss, he wanted to run his own cafe. Most dreams never come true, most small businesses fail within the first year. But when it opened its doors some seven years ago, Shellharbour’s Village Fix was an instant success. “From […]
Farewell Kabul: Christina Lamb, A Sense of Place Magazine, 12 May, 2021.
From one of the world’s most admired war correspondents, Christina Lamb, comes a searing indictment of the West’s involvement in wars against fundamentalist Islam, Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World. The pointless loss of American, British and Australian lives, has achieved nothing; despite the efforts to eliminate the Taliban from the country, their […]
God And Scott Morrison, A Sense of Place Magazine, 30 April, 2021.
By John Stapleton Central to the Prime Ministership of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, his style, substance, policies and behaviour, has been his religiosity. Now the issue has come front and centre after remarkable footage emerged of him addressing a Christian conference on the Gold Coast. Michael Bradley at leading news site Crikey put the […]
Incomprehensible: Unfolding Catastrophe Part X
By John Stapleton He could feel the interest gathering; there to be used and reused and discarded, a threat that could neither be eliminated nor controlled. He was trying to make alliances, there in that place, there in those hours, while his dying parent stirred restlessly and tried to stay out of the way. He […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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