The Work of John Stapleton Journalist
A Cafe Locked Out podcast
After working in rehearsals all day, then working on the boat for the play i didn’t think I’d have the energy for a hour long interview, but instead John was so lovely and cool that we almost crack three hours.
We start with how he became a writer, until now, as he, like so many, watches his culture decline
Below are his books he’s written on the subject
TERROR IN AUSTRALIA
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Australia-Workers-Paradise-Lost/dp/0994479115/
TWO
HIDEOUT IN THE APOCALYPSE
https://www.amazon.com/Hideout-Apocalypse-John-Stapleton/dp/0994479190/
Hideout in the Apocalypse is about surveillance and the crushing of Australia's larrikin spirit. The government knew when it introduced the panopticon, universal surveillance, that it would have a devastating impact on the culture.
If people know they are being watched they behave differently. Dissent is stifled, conformity becomes the norm, the population easier to manage.
At the same time the Australian government has prosecuted the greatest assault on freedom of speech in the nation's history. The media is highly manipulated, and journalists closely monitored. They are now classified as Persons of Interest for the nation's security agencies, an outlandish assault on the Fourth Estate.
A democracy in name only, in Australia the war on terror has become a war on the people's right to know, justifying an unprecedented expansion of state power.
Forced by a plethora of new laws targeting journalists to use novelistic techniques, in his latest book veteran news reporter John Stapleton confirms the old adage, truth is stranger than fiction.
THREE
DARK DARK POLICING
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Policing-John-Stapleton/dp/0648293394/
Dark Dark Policing compels the reader's concentration as it documents a nation polarised between the working poor and the uber rich at a time when ultranationalist groups are on the rise.
Written with hallucinatory intensity by one of Australia's most experienced journalists, author John Stapleton, it uses novelistic techniques to depict Australia during the early millennial period, a pivotal point in its history.
Dark Dark Policing is seen through the eyes of a crumpled old newspaper reporter whose visionary imagination drives him from the arid lands of the interior to confront the nation's plethora of ultra-secret security agencies.
He speaks with an incandescent rage of the destruction of his beloved country.
Driven by the unalloyed greed of the nation's oligarchy, indifference to the working poor and shocking levels of government incompetence, Australia is a polarised country where revolutionary sentiment and totalitarian impulses now thrive.
With incendiary intent and urgent flights of fantasy, entwined with extensive reportage, Stapleton responds savagely to a conservative government's destruction of free speech and the surveillance of journalists.
It's 2020, and Australians have endured extremely poor governance at federal, state and local levels for decades, and must live with the consequences. A dishonest government is a paranoid government, and intrusive surveillance of everyone from nationalist groups to the Muslim minority fires indignation at home and abroad.
The Australian government had one operating principle: plunder the poor, give to the rich. Overtaxed and over regulated, when the coronavirus hit much of the population did not have the resources to cope. A million workers joined the dole queues within days. This is the story of a once optimistic country.
Dark Dark Policing is a must read for anyone interested in the failure of democracies worldwide.
FOUR
UNFOLDING CATASTROPHE: AUSTRALIA
https://www.amazon.com/Unfolding-Catastrophe-Australia-John-Stapleton/dp/0645039438/
"Combining meticulous research with thoughtful personal reflection, this is a devastating indictment of Australia's response to the Covid pandemic." Steve Waterson, The Australian.
"Well researched, courageous and revealing of the truth. One of Australia's most important books this century. A must read. Unfolding Catastrophe couldn't be more timely, coming at a pivotal point in our nation's history." Guy Campbell, GP.
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 is almost unrecognisable.
The Australian government ignored all the cautionary tales emanating from some of the world's leading tertiary institutions, all warning that lockdowns were a dangerous social experiment which would do more harm than good. The result has been an authoritarian derangement, with military on the streets, unprecedented levels of highly aggressive policing, a dramatic loss of liberties, thousands marching in the streets and uber surveillance at a level previously unimaginable.
Government overreach has destroyed all the nation's traditional freedoms, from barbeques in the backyard to going to the beach. By mid-2021 half the population were enduring what amounted to house arrest under some of the most extreme lockdown measures seen anywhere in the world. State borders opened and shut on a single case, tens of thousands of businesses had been destroyed; and the national debt quadrupled. All the while Australia's Big End of Town grew vastly richer.
Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia tells the story of the nation through the eyes of a retired reporter, switching from street scenes to reportage while incorporating the work of some of the country's leading journalists and academics.
As one of Australia's most experienced general news reporters, having worked on two of the country's leading newspapers The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald for a quarter of a century, John Stapleton is uniquely placed to tell this story. His experience in publishing a wide range of hard hitting material sceptical of Australia's COVID response in his publication A Sense of Place Magazine forms the backbone of Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia.
FIVE
AUSTRALIA BREAKS APART
The humanitarian crimes committed by Australian authorities against their own citizens, beginning in early 2020, will live on in infamy, but it is the people themselves who create a nation's history.
On the 12th of February 2022, the largest gathering of Australians in the nation's history marched on the National Parliament in Canberra to protest the totalitarianism of the Australian Government, chanting "Sack Them All, Sack Them All".
Crowd numbers are notoriously difficult to calculate and prone to distortion, but whatever the number, no politician, intelligence agency, police force or political strategist in Australia failed to notice that a massive number of people marched on the nation's capital, with a remarkable amount of good cheer, jubilance and camaraderie; character traits which the nation's leaders had failed to show in the years of authoritarian derangement.
Between 2020 and 2022 Australia was gripped by a madness which was spiritual, administrative, political, social and judicial in its dimensions. Australians who stood up against the rising tide of tyranny found themselves pepper sprayed, bashed by police, fined and imprisoned in dictatorial abuses which made headlines around the world, a warning to the world against Covid overreach.
A nation which once prided itself on its laissez faire approach to life and the friendly, easy going nature of its population lay besmirched by a descent into totalitarianism. All the systems Australians had come to rely on failed them at their time of greatest need, every last one of them: the mainstream media, the social media platforms, the legal, medical and academic professions, politicians, bureaucrats, the police, the military and the nation's intelligence agencies.
Australia's democracy proved virus thin.
Retired news reporter John Stapleton shines a light on one of the darkest episodes in the Australian story. Australia Breaks Apart is a fine demonstration of the old saying, journalism is the first draft of history.
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John Stapleton
Commissioning Editor
A Sense of Place Publishing
ABN: 8589 215 7567
Emails:
john.stapleton@gmail.com
asenseofplacepublishing@gmail.com
Skype: mr.john.stapleton
Mobile: +61 411 686 871.
Websites:
http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/
https://johnstapletonjournalism.com/
The truth has had to be told as fiction, many times, if it was to be heard at all