"Combining meticulous research with thoughtful personal reflection, this is a devastating indictment of Australia's response to the Covid pandemic." Steve Waterson, The Australian.\n"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.\nUnfolding Catastrophe: Australia aims to dismember the political, administrative and social derangement which has overtaken Australia since the early days of 2020.\nAustralia'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.\nThe 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.\nGovernment 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.\nUnfolding 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.\nAs 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.

Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia

History

Stapleton, John

Australia & Oceania

Sense of Place Publishing

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.\nOn 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".\nCrowd 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.\nBetween 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.\nA 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.\nAustralia's democracy proved virus thin.\nRetired 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.

Australia Breaks Apart

The daily robbing, bashing, drugging, extortion and murder of foreign tourists on Thai soil, along with numerous scandals involving unsafe facilities and well established scams, has led to frequent predictions that Thailand's multi-billion dollar tourist industry will self-destruct. Instead tourist numbers more than doubled in the decade to 2014. The world might not have come to the hometowns of the many visitors fascinated by Thailand, but it certainly came to the Land of Smiles. While the Thai media is heavily censored, and bad news stories about tourists suppressed, nonetheless there is more than enough evidence to demonstrate that something has gone seriously awry with the nation's tourist industry. In 2014, just as in the years preceding it, there were train, bus, ferry, speedboat, motorbike and car accidents, murders, knifings, unexplained deaths, numerous suicides, diving accidents, robberies gone wrong, anonymous bodies washing up on the shores and a string of alcohol and drug related incidents. Thailand had a dying king and serious succession problems, weak democratic institutions, an economy slipping into recession, faced issues of corruption across many of its key services and was host to international crime syndicates, awash with despised foreigners and drifting perilously towards civil war. Tourists choose one destination over another for a number of reasons, most of which Thailand scores highly on. But on the core issue of tourist safety, Thailand scores very badly indeed.

Thailand: Deadly Destination

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

America's Destruction of Iraq

America's Destruction of Iraq by Washington insider Michael M. O'Brien details the origins of radical Islamic terrorism now spreading across the Middle East and North Africa. The outgrowth of America's involvement in Iraq, culminating with its March 2003 invasion, is the Islamic State-the most violent terrorist organization in history. Michael O'Brien is an outlier: a conservative and former political appointee in the administration of George W. Bush, with an abiding contempt for the political and military mismanagement of the Iraq War, officially referred to as Operation Iraqi Freedom. A graduate of West Point and former Infantry officer, and a former U.S. government Contracting Officer, O'Brien saw the effects of the Iraq invasion from the inside out-not as a soldier but as a contractor advising the new Iraqi Army and Ministry of Defense on its physical infrastructure, including the acquisition of land and Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) originally built for Coalition forces. Compounding in outrage, compelling in detail, Michael O'Brien condemns the waste of tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, and the needless loss of American and Iraqi lives. The Bush administration's desire for war was built on fabricated intelligence and the political agendas of a handful of senior officials. But it is the senior American military for whom O'Brien has his greatest disdain. They should have known how to properly execute the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and the courage to tell their political superiors what it would take to succeed, come what may to their careers. America's Destruction of Iraq is a detailed exposé of the "military-industrial complex" President Eisenhower warned America of in 1961. Only someone with Michael O'Brien's background and experience, who was at the heart of America's so-called 'reconstruction' of Iraq, can accurately describe America's intervention in Iraq for what it is: a disaster in magnitude equal to the quagmire of the Vietnam War.

O'Brien, Michael M.

Middle East

Bloody Colonials

Literature & Fiction

Sanders, Stafford

Humor & Satire

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