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This is the fifth book in the series of snapshots of contemporary Australian history which began with Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost in 2015, and was followed by Hideout in the Apocalypse, Dark Dark Policing and Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia.
While canvassing a wide range of experts and commentators and factually accurate, partly for legal reasons the books tell the story through the eyes of a retired reporter, Old Alex, and thereby use novelistic techniques to cover this pivotal point in the nation’s history.
Cover design by Jessica Bell
Cover images from Asanka Ratnayake of Getty Images
PREFACE
No book can do anything but scratch this remarkably complex, twofaced period of Australian history, a time when hypocrisy reigned and the nation became infamous around the world for its draconian response to Covid
This book is set in the period from mid-2021 to early 2023
It is the direct sequel to the 2021 book Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia and is the fifth in a series of snapshots of Australian history which began in 2015 with Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost, and was followed by Hideout in the Apocalypse and Dark Dark Policing
Unlike its predecessors, this book is not footnoted While Australia Breaks Apart, as with the others in the series, occasionally uses subjective narrative techniques to help tell the story, every single word in this book is true and accurate as far as the author is aware
A number of Australia’s leading public intellectuals have contributed to this text, usually through the initial mechanism of having their work published in A Sense of Place Magazine, which the author edits
In the age of the internet, the quotations from various sources, including academics, commentators and journalists are clearly defined, on the public record and easy to find Any researcher having difficulty locating a source is welcome to contact the author
While the majority of the book is direct reportage, the narrative is constructed through the eyes of the central character Old Alex, a retired journalist
The author is one of Australia’s most experienced news reporters, having worked on mainstream mastheads, particularly The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, for more than a quarter of a century, making him uniquely placed to tell this story He continues to write and publish in retirement
John Stapleton
In this third person style of telling the nation’s story, the author employs a narrative device which allows for a vivid evocation of the tectonic shifts in our cultural landscape, the spiritual reformation driven by the excessive authoritarianism and population wide abuses of the period and which feeds into the human story as a whole
According to the most recent research, more than half the population think in pictures and equally more than half the population experience lucid or waking dreams akin to hallucinations, at least to some degree
Old Alex is thus afflicted This condition inspires the more subjective or lyrical interludes and allows for a symbolism and reflection on a wide scale medical and societal fraud which until recent times almost everyone has struggled to comprehend and digest
While they may sometimes seem fantastical, these episodes are an accurate record of the author’s experiences, made more intense by Australia’s prolonged lockdowns
Outside a small pond of populist literature, almost all book publishing in Australia is government funded Despite an abundance of documentary material from this period, including podcasts and a blizzard of personal testimony on social media, there are unlikely to be many histories of this era in Australia because none of the major players, including politicians, health bureaucrats, regulators, media personnel, police, the military and the intelligence agencies emerge as innocent parties
Hopefully this book will help to shed some light on one of the darkest periods of Australia’s history
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 and almost at once to set foot upon the egalitarian, post-enlightenment West a global dystopia run on cruelty and cognitive dissonance
How could otherwise nice people have come to do such evil?
Naomi Wolf The Bodies of Others.
As someone long prepared for this to happen Go firmly to the window Drink it in Exquisite music Alexandra laughing Your first commitments tangible again
Leonard Cohen Alexandra Leaving
Old Alex sat on that sunlit step in an unfanciful suburb called Oak Flats; flooded with light, exhausted, perhaps, to be fanciful about it all, as if he’d just written 1984 and was basking in creative satisfaction, and the glory Except, of course, there was no glory, and George Orwell aka Eric Blair never lived to see the stunning success of his anti-totalitarian novel He was suffering the effects of tuberculosis even as he wrote it There is no glory in the grave
That most curious of books, a book which would have never have found a mainstream publisher in the 21st Century, became the most referenced
John Stapleton
work in the English Canon in 2020; and even more so in 2021, the year he sat on that doorstep in Oak Flats
The country was at the height of its totalitarian derangement, where every single aspect of life was controlled by the government
Half the country, 12 million people, were now officially in lockdown His neighbours were encouraged to report him if he spent more than two hours away from home The mainstream media delivered a blizzard of Covid fear mongering, hour in, hour out, day in, day out The population was confused, terrified and remarkably compliant They turned on each other, on anyone who did not comply
Politicians and Chief Health Officers placed themselves front and centre of the nightly news bulletins; and panic, everywhere there was panic
Hundreds of military personnel now patrolled the streets of Sydney, searching for anyone who might not have a legitimate excuse for being outside their home The overweight New South Wales Police Commissioner announced with apparent delight that they had issued more than 600 fines for non-compliance the previous day, an abuse of the citizenry of which, as far as Old Alex was concerned, the dictatorial Commissioner and his political masters should have been absolutely ashamed
But of course, shame wasn’t in the lexicon Nor was honesty, proportionality, decency, compassion
The authoritarian derangement overtaking Australia was without precedent, and every sign of collapse came jumping out through the voices all around, the electronic blather that filled the air, a terrible threat whispered on a bed of deceit
On his private newsfeed there was a steady stream of outrage and scepticism Everywhere else there was a shuttered, terrible silence, an acquiescence he struggled to understand
Eighteen months on from the country’s first Covid death Australia was almost unrecognisable The nation had seen the most violent demonstrations in its history and a brutality of policing only ever seen in the first days of colonisation when the natives were shot and the convicts whipped till blood filled their boots Australians had been turned against Australians, divided by race, wealth, education, cognitive ability, and most recently vaccine status Police blanketing the suburbs across Australia were now enforcing the equivalent of martial law
All in the name of keeping Australians “safe”
Australia had become a laughing stock around the world, a warning of the consequences of Covid overreach The massaged image of Australia as an egalitarian and welcoming tourist destination populated with colourful animals and equally colourful people vanished as police bashed, arrested and pepper sprayed protestors The courts would be clogged for years to come; for none of this was done with consent
Where was the evidence that putting millions of people under house arrest, unable to visit friends and family, unable in many cases to work, to see elderly relatives in their dying days, destroying tens of thousands of businesses, throwing vast swathes of the population on to welfare, quadrupling the national debt, destroying the education of millions of Australian children, where was the evidence that these actions were an appropriate response to the coronavirus?
Where was the evidence that instituting curfews on millions of Australians was effective or appropriate? Or proportionate?
Even to question these multiple insanities was considered unpatriotic
The mainstream media in which he had worked all his life trumpeted the government’s propaganda, while real journalism died on the Covid altar
Australia! This really was happening in the land of kangaroos, crocodiles and poisonous snakes, homesteads and sprawling sheep stations
Evidence?
Australia’s public servants like to talk about “evidence-based” policy It usually meant the exact opposite
In the case of Covid, and the insane level of micromanagement recklessly imposed on long-suffering suburbanites, the so-called evidence was all kept secret from the public Following the science or following the medical advice, as the politicians repeatedly claimed they were doing, actually meant nothing of the kind Old Alex believed not a word they said
Across the country’s most populous states, in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, indeed across the entire country, there had been the same charade: the implementation of draconian law enforcement and massive restrictions on personal liberty, but state and federal governments
John Stapleton
were all refusing to release the medical evidence on which these decisions were based
For the simple reason: It didn’t exist Not one single Australian politician could produce the evidence that their government’s actions were appropriate
Setting the conspiracy theorists alight, the ridiculously dictatorial New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard spoke of the New World Order, where everyone would be forced to be vaccinated, where everyone must comply, but was refusing to release the “medical advice” he was relying on to institute a statewide lockdown
Because, of course, Health Hazzard was off and running on his own lousy railway
You can lock them up, destroy their livelihoods, businesses, and mental health; but you are too arrogant, too incompetent, or perhaps just too conflicted, to reveal to those whose lives you are destroying exactly why you are doing it
Reach not far to find a vaccine manufacturer
Let this madness wither in the light, or emerge from behind your bodyguard of tame journalists and grossly manipulated mainstream media outlets; and face your critics
Around Oak Flats Alex heard the eerie comment from people faced with the Hobbesian choice of getting injected with a controversial vaccine they did not want, or losing their jobs “They’re culling us ”
Trust was zero
With their jobs went their homes, their mortgages, their sense of selfworth and the ability to care for their children
While horror stories of vaccine injuries and lost employment mounted around him, the disfiguring of the society cast multiple absurdities into his own life Unable to go to the pub or a restaurant, forbidden to even leave his own Local Government Areas
The authorities and the politicians Australians so unwisely trusted had betrayed their own people, leaving a polity racked with pain, raked daily with a kind of frothing insanity
“The central government will collapse in 2047,” Old Alex said a number of times for no particular reason, except that he believed it to be true
Australia Breaks Apart
To him, as a newspaper reporter a longtime observer of base human conduct, none of the politician’s behaviour, their fevered, demented attempts to get the entire population vaccinated, made any sense whatsoever; unless those who claimed the political class were in receipt of millions of dollars in bribes from vaccine manufacturers happened to be accurate
Almost every other conspiracy theory had come true in this benighted era
You couldn’t convince Old Alex these people actually cared about the welfare of their constituents, their safety and well being; the same poor bastards being imprisoned in their own homes, whose careers and businesses were being destroyed, whose voices were ignored Punitive fines were dished out to anyone who dared to protest
Diktat after diktat rained down on an imprisoned population
With “Health Hazzard”, as NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard was rapidly dubbed, riding wingman at their morning press conferences, the lunatic, at least to Old Alex’s inflamed imagination, Chief Medical Officer Dr Kerry Chant, with a mad germaphobic glaze in her eyes, issued what were to his mind an endless stream of utterly pointless but nonetheless lifealtering decisions: Citizens could not cross state or international borders, could not visit their dying parents or children in hospital, go to church or go dancing, had to wear masks, practise social distancing, and for the sake of the welfare of the community, get vaccinated, once, twice, thrice
As the black joke of the day went: “What do the vaccinated and unvaccinated have in common?”
“Neither will ever be fully vaccinated ”
Lie after lie after lie; that’s what, in the end, it all amounted to, because nothing the government did worked
Tracking the rationale for decision-making back to Big Pharma wasn’t difficult; nor was uncovering the fact that everything happening “in this space”, as the public service expression went, was highly contested by some of the world’s most eminently qualified practitioners, academics and researchers
But power drunk apparatchiks across Australia saw no need to explain themselves to “the great unwashed”, that is, the voters, their constituents
John Stapleton
One might have thought that as a class there was not much point in politicians and health bureaucrats placing themselves front and centre of everybody’s life if the principal result was to leave a frustrated, angry and disillusioned population; which was exactly what Australia’s state and federal governments were doing
“You can’t catch the virus if you just stay home,” Dr Kerry Chant declared
A siren went off in the distance and he thought: “Another person just died of boredom ”
It felt as if the country was breaking apart; caught in an evil rustle of insanity, the population led down the garden path by some of the most malignant personalities to ever grace the political stage
The world’s only Pentecostal leader, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, was at the height, or the depths, of his destructive power; and while sooner or later he would have to face the electorate, right now his personality traits, his autocratic tendencies, his slithering out of all personal responsibility, his lowbrow intellectuality, his ability to play to the cheap seats, his dishonesty, as some saw the endless corporate and government rorting that went on under his watch, the funnelling of tens of billions of dollars to corporate mates, all these factors were now in play
Old Alex, and many others, were left with that deadening sensation: You know you’re being ripped off, there’s just nothing you can do about it
Once regarded as a Federation, as one country, it had been news to him, just as it had been news to most Australians, that the states could shut their borders at will; but that’s exactly what had happened
He couldn’t leave Australia, now little better than a Prison Island, he couldn’t leave his home state of New South Wales, the borders to the neighbouring states of Queensland, Victoria and South Australia all being shut; and he couldn’t even legally travel more than 10 kilometres
We were all confined to quarters
The atmosphere was intensely hermetic, we were all trapped in our own domestic situation, cosy, deteriorating or alone
His was just a small thing, desperately ridiculous, that was all, nothing compared to the much of the rest of the country, but still he felt it most
intensely as he sat on that step; behind him the broken flyscreen, and inside broken doors and broken furniture, after the tradie who had been living there rent-free for six months decided to smash up his house as a thank you note
Messy lives, messy people Invite chaos into your life and that is exactly what you get
He had been lonely The house was full of ghosts; and he repeatedly thought of that line: “Be careful who you pray to ”
Humans may be able to summon the spirits, but who knew that these dark forces could be so easily stirred?
That’s how it felt, in that freezing, miserable house; and so he had indeed invited chaos into his life; and was well served The tradie, Connor, had been a good drinking buddy if nothing else, a bong and beer for breakfast kind of guy, a dispeller of ghosts, a Ghost Buster extraordinaire, and so Alex came to smile on the reasons for the domestic ruin, and his own role in it
The book was over, the first copies of Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia had arrived, he was proud of the effort, and in the wake of it all he had declared he was giving up drinking; and had gifted a bottle of bourbon to Connor; to add to the bottle he was already drinking
Fast forward a few hours and Connor was out on the back verandah screaming at all the neighbours that they could all “go and get fucked”; in between smashing up cupboards, doors and walls
Through the violent tirades Alex made a dash to his car; and spent the night down at the beach
Needless to say, that was the end of Connor as a house guest
Meshneks Black, insect-like creatures phasing in and out of that moment in time and place The ones that come at the time of an impending death He had been able to see them in the corridors Summoned from the dark Summoned from the God-fearing nature of his elderly parent; literally a house full of ghosts
They were gone now
And he had one mad bastard to thank for that: Connor
John Stapleton
That same day the NSW government announced that an easing of restrictions would begin in 18 days; as if we should all kiss the hand that destroyed us
“New freedoms for vaccinated first step on state roadmap out of COVID” read the headline on the government missive: “People across NSW who have received both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine will be allowed more freedoms next month after NSW hit the target of six million jabs This is the first step in the roadmap and further freedoms will follow for those who have had the jab when the state hits new vaccination targets of 70 and 80 per cent ”
None of it applied to him The unvaccinated The new pariah class refusing to get a “jab” which didn’t stop you getting this most feared of diseases, didn’t stop you spreading it, and was developed by some of the most scandal-plagued companies on Earth As lonely as he was, he’d take his chances
“Following consultation with Dr Kerry Chant and her team, as well as the NSW Chief Psychiatrist Dr Murray Wright, the following individual freedoms will be allowed for adults who have received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine
From 12 01 am, Monday, 13 September:
For those who live outside the LGAs of concern, outdoor gatherings of up to five people (including children, all adults must be vaccinated) will be allowed in a person’s LGA or within 5km of home
For those who live in the LGAs of concern households with all adults vaccinated will be able to gather outdoors for recreation (including picnics) within the existing rules (for one hour only, outside curfew hours and within 5km of home) This is in addition to the one hour allowed for exercise
The then Premier of NSW Gladys Berejiklian, who held a press conference each morning at 11 am, making herself a feminist icon or a blight on the state, however you saw it, thanked the millions of people across NSW
“We are so grateful for every person who comes forward to get vaccinated because the more jabs we get into arms, the sooner we can lift restrictions,”
Ms Berejiklian said “We appreciate the community’s patience in the lead up to 13 September, this additional time will allow the recent surge of vaccines to take effect ”
While it all turned out to be based on lies that the vaccine stopped infection and transmission, at the time the public had no idea
As part of the so-called “roadmap” when the following targets were hit, the promised freedoms would be:
70 percent full vaccination: a range of family, industry, community and economic restrictions to be lifted for those who are vaccinated.
80 percent full vaccination: further easing of restrictions on industry, community and the economy
Simple as that, Australia introduced medical apartheid It was a dangerous path, fully embraced The terrible health fascism of the era was now in play
The release continued: “The government is also investigating trials of certain industries in coming months, as a proof-of-concept measure to prepare the businesses to open up and operate in a COVID-safe way ”
Deputy Premier John Barilaro said the “roadmap” was the path to freedom and the biggest incentive yet to get vaccinated
“The roadmap announced today outlines a clear pathway forward in which a range of family, industry, community and economic restrictions will be lifted for those that are fully vaccinated when NSW hits 70 per cent,” Mr Barilaro said “Having a meal with loved ones, or having a drink with friends is just around the corner, but to get there, we need to keep up momentum in the vaccination rollout ”
Snake Oil salesmen, that is all they had become
Was it true that Pfizer was somehow secretly funnelling millions of dollars of influence to politicians, as was rumoured at the time?
Who knew?
Soon enough both the Premier and Deputy Premier would be gone, with accusations of corruption, albeit not to do with the vaccines, buzzing around both of them
TWO HOW IT ALL ENDS
Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear, both the things which are and the things which are produced For substance is like a river in a continual flow, and the activities of things are in constant change, and the causes work in infinite varieties; and there is hardly anything which stands still And consider that which is near to thee, this boundless abyss of the past and the future in which all things disappear How then is he not a fool who is puffed up with such things or plagued about them and makes himself miserable? For they vex him only for a time, and a short time
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
A freezing winter, diabolically bad weather, lockdowns, and the unparalleled brutality of Australia’s malfunctioning political system
All of it combined; in those days before it went feral
“Its surprising people aren’t more angry,” was a common enough comment; having endured a period of time when it seemed as if every little fascist in the country had been unleashed, officials strutting their temporary power and their temporary illusion of moral ground In this little edifice, or place, Oak Flats, this little ledge on a diminishing authority In this place which, unlike much of the country, would, if his waking dreams were correct, see great prosperity in the years, the decades, the centuries to come While much about this period of Australian history was incredibly confused, those visions of a prosperous future, of a highly developed culture, of soaring buildings giving all the appearance of floating against the sky, those visions never contradicted themselves
In the Australia of Old Alex’s time, that time in between, evil got rewarded Cognitive dissonance reigned And the feeling that frequently besieged him, of having been taken hostage by a seer from the future, cast back into a primitive time and place, of being utterly intrigued by what he saw, as if an anthropologist fascinated by a stone age tribe, or a biologist fascinated by another lifeform, never left him
For years the biggest story in the country had been the slow-motion collapse of the Australia of old into a country of uber surveillance caught in an all embracing bureaucratic stranglehold
Now, with the country imprisoned by the world’s most extreme lockdowns and insane levels of social restrictions, introduced without debate or parliamentary approval in what was tantamount to martial law, it had all come to pass, seemingly in an instant
The previous four books he had written on this pivotal point in Australian history, Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost, Hideout in the Apocalypse, Dark Dark Policing and Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia, all warned of a darkening time
He had felt compelled to write them, he was never quite sure why
Now, when he looked back, it was as if someone else had actually written them; that all he did was act as a transmission point
Let me be an instrument of your peace; except this had nothing to do with peace This was all about conflict The Imperial Battleship had landed For some it was the Second Coming View it as you like
These were darkening times, and these books, switching from street scenes to fantastical flights of the imagination to reportage, all had a certain prophetic tone to them
Shocking even to him, who had written them, mostly in the early hours of the morning, was how quickly it had all come to pass
The books were all written in the third person Alex, a dishevelled retired newspaper reporter who bore a passing resemblance to the author, was the vehicle through which the nation’s story was told
All four books ended with a warning of a totalitarian future
By way of background, here are the closing episodes in sequence
This is the ending of Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost
John Stapleton
“It’s terrible what’s happened to this city,” Old Alex said to the Vietnamese woman making his coffee at the late night cafe in Kings Cross, once a vibrant entertainment district in the heart of Sydney “You not only one say terrible,” she said “Many people say the same The government, so many rules ”
Alex was sad, he explained because he had been born here; had some identity with the country The city he once treated as his own backyard was lost
“Maybe it get better in the future,” the Vietnamese woman said, handing him his coffee and his change
“I don’t think so,” he replied “I doubt it very much ”
Walking back to the office where he commonly worked from midnight to dawn, a time when the buzz of humans all around him was less intense, he passed, again and again, derelict scenes in the street; and wanted to be long gone
A group of Middle Eastern men drove past in a spanking new Bentley They barely noticed the societal collapse they were driving through; more than comfortable inside their own world You didn’t drive around this town in a brand new Bentley because you worked nine to five This was a city where crime had always paid
Walking once again past the promotional “Building the Future” signs erected by the Sydney City Council, he knew for certain: this was Paradise Lost, and it was never coming back
Whatever form the society would take in the future, and there would be considerable chaos and bloodshed before the final outcome, it was not the world he had grown up in, and it was not the world the social engineers had hoodwinked the people into believing it was
Screwed by the left and screwed by the right Jihad within and jihad without Terror within and terror without The freedoms of thought, expression, conduct, enterprise, character which had once been so much a part of Australia had vanished
In those weeks and months that held breath, it felt as if the battle between those trying to trigger an enlightenment and those trying to trigger an apocalypse could go either way
Signs and portents were everywhere
For some reason an expression by a rough sleeper he had become friendly with in the Nepalese lakeside city of Pokhara kept popping into his head:
“You think you the only tiger in the jungle Not possible ”
The fanatical, the fantastical and the theological, all had far too much to do with the present circumstance Alex scanned the news and despaired He read easily accessible advice to jihadists on the best smartphones and encryption programs, while the Australian government pounded on about terror
Increasingly appalled, he read account after account of massacres, tortures, murders, looked at pictures, as millions of people in the West had done, of those about to die
Imagine a world where it was impossible to lie
In those days before, Alex sincerely hoped, an ultimate grace would settle upon mankind, a grace that would not be at the behest of any faith, that would not be held within the frame of any belief There were too many deaths, too much butchery In that microcosm of Australia where he had been born, a depressed population, muttering in its own frustrations, abandoned all hope that the wider world would ever make sense; and watched football instead
“There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” went the Shakespeare line, while the words “Apocryphal” and “Apocalypse” shimmered in the middle distance
The world he had known was gone
“Be happy that you knew it,” an old friend advised when he expressed his anger at the empty streets, the impoverished state of the country, the hapless state of the media, the gathering strength of the Sharia, the contempt for native spiritualities, the barbarians inside the gate, the horror that had enveloped the world “Be grateful that you knew it when it was good ”
Alex, he would sometimes mutter to himself, was dyslexic across time and space Tell him to do one thing and he would do another, turn left and he would turn right He didn’t like being told what to think, on spiritual matters or anything else Nor had most of the people he had ever known
“Be happy,” he thought, “that many of your friends died before they could be stoned to death Be happy that they weren’t faced with the choice, convert or die Be happy that as apostates they weren’t crucified
John Stapleton
or beheaded Because they would never have converted It wasn’t in their nature ”
Over his lifespan he had seen the wheel turn several times: everything he and that initial little band he had partied with so hard back in the sixties and seventies had believed in, all of it had been dumped from the buckets of the Ferris wheel into a vacant allotment The rise of the wowsers The rise of middle-class probity The rise of the politically correct The rise of the Christians The rise of Islamic State
This time around it wasn’t just melancholy at the loss of a few souls, or the loss of a scene or demimonde This time around he grieved for the loss of everything, his home, Australia, a place, the spirits of old, the landscapes that had breathed a timeless spirituality and the inner-city demimondaines which had breathed a licentious thrill, a place where all delinquent, time-sliding souls met before departure; in the once crowded streets which had been so much a part of his youth
A place where they had laughed, genuinely and freely, in delight at each other’s physical forms A place where they could love; and be loved A place where they had been, for however a brief a time in the firmament, free
Five years on, “The world’s gone mad,” the old newspaper reporter said as he passed people on his morning walk
“Didn’t make any sense anyway,” came the response
Australia was shutting down Empowered by tough new laws and public pressure, police forces were testing how far they could go in punishing behaviour that was ordinarily routine, keeping their political masters happy while increasing their own power
In Australia, the authorities had threatened people sitting alone drinking coffee with six months in jail, or for sitting in their cars, for not having a good reason to have left their house, for eating a kebab alone on a park bench
Under these conditions, where basic humanity is lost, the perpetrators act like predators and the targets act like prey
As Paul Gregoire pointed out in the Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog, the government was making criminals out of ordinary people
“When NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller explained during a
Australia Breaks Apart
budget estimates hearing on 1 September, 2021, that, in relation to COVID-19, his force is treating the virus itself like a criminal, it seemed a little odd
“The top cop added that as he’s treating this tiny biological entity that’s spread across the entire globe like a human who’s broken the law, ‘therefore, wherever the virus is, you will see an increased police presence’
“But the truth of the matter is COVID isn’t a criminal and it doesn’t abide by human-imposed laws
“So, it would seem that more to the point, the Commissioner is actually saying his officers are treating people who are infected by COVID-19 or have the potential to be infected by the virus as if they have done something illegal
“Indeed, one only has to think back over the past 18 months, with the heavy police presence on the streets, checking IDs and handing out penalty infringement notices, to come to the conclusion that in the COVID-19 pandemic era, we are all guilty until proven uninfected ”
Hideout in the Apocalypse was 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 had prosecuted the greatest assault on freedom of speech in the nation’s history The media was highly manipulated, and journalists closely monitored They were 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 became a war on the people’s right to know, justifying an unprecedented expansion of state power Now we had Covid-19
Below is the closing sequence for Hideout ***
John Stapleton
At the Tables of Knowledge scattered across the country there was nothing but contempt for their political leaders from a stubborn, resentful, disillusioned and increasingly embittered population
The once staunch left-leaning Labor voters who populated the beer garden at the Lakeview Hotel, builders, labourers, concreters, plasterers, truckies, electricians, carpenters, mixed with subsiding alcoholics in poor health, switched their vote
A year or two before, few of them would have ever admitted publicly their politically incorrect support for ultra-nationalist anti-mass immigration advocate Senator Pauline Hanson, leader of One Nation
Now, she garnered the protest vote, and they supported her to a man, or woman
Fueled by resentment, some of the often vacuous chatter was now vicious: “I can’t wait to watch Pauline string up the first rope ”
But the vast majority of it was simply the voices of people who had had enough; sick of a country where nothing worked, where everything was expensive, where government mangled into every part of their lives, where fat cats and politicians stole their taxes, where their own opinions and hard work were regarded as of no account
The identity politics of the day, refugees, lesbian mothers, Aboriginals in custody, ignored the muddling middle
Not one politician stood up and declared to ordinary workers: “I am going to make your life better ”
The social engineers, their tertiary acquired groupthink theories failing to take in the real world, reaped what they had sowed: contempt
One of Australia’s most esteemed writers, Richard Flanagan, delivered a heartfelt condemnation of the country in which he dwelled: “Every day we hear grim and grimmer news that suggests we are passing through the winter of the world Everywhere man is tormented, the globe reels from multitudes of suffering and horror, and, worst, we no longer know with confidence what our answer might be And yet we understand that the time approaches when an answer must be made or a terrible reckoning will be ours ”
Resentment curdled everywhere
A petition went up online for returned soldiers, sent to war by the very government which now ignored them: “When you slip into your warm
Australia Breaks Apart
bed tonight, over 100 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan wars will sleep rough in parks around Australia Cold, hungry and suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of service to their country, these brave veterans deserve better They need a place to shower, to eat, to sleep and to talk to other veterans who understand what they are going through But where do they go? How can the government justify spending millions and millions on refugees yet forget those who were prepared to lay down their lives for the country they love???
The horsemen wheeled out onto the plains of Dabiq
And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth
The drones flew overhead Western bombs rained down on crying children
The massacres grew worse Talk of a World War was everywhere in the wind
So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes of the earth, and he threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and the blood that flowed from it rose as high as the bridles of the horses…
In those waking dreams which continued to haunt the old news reporter, the attempts by those who had sent him and hundreds of others like him to rescue a race from an apocalypse, to avoid the gifting of billions of souls to the Dark Lords, stood on the precipice of failure
The world had ignored the warnings of the town criers The Enlightenment had failed Time was running out
The books he had loved as a youth began to recycle rapidly through his brain Ask not For Whom the Bell Tolls, it tolls for thee
The policies and procedures were in place, the rules and regulations drafted The place had been prepared The plane was on the tarmac There was a gap in the air, that intake of breath prior to calamity
John Stapleton
We will meet in the place where there is no darkness, in the middle of the torture chamber
But it would all avail the torturers nought; their feeble souls the flashes of light at the edge of a firestorm, barely existing before they were gone, destroyed in the maelstrom they themselves had helped create Above, as it had done all year, the sky burned
All of the books warned of a darkening time; and unimaginable as it once was, the implausible was now becoming the reality Below is the closing sequence for Dark Dark Policing
“Swampie”, as he was so appropriately called, a former bikie and a member of Oak Flats royalty, was back for a brief stint from his FIFO, Fly In Fly Out work in the Northern Territory
“Plunder the poor, give to the rich ” The retired news reporter repeated the old line when the conversation drifted to the government of the day
“Why haven’t they risen up?” Swampie asked, gesturing towards the lines of suburban houses surrounding them “Why hasn’t there been a revolution already?”
Alex shrugged: “There will be Millions more unemployed in a chronically mismanaged economy, that will do it You can only treat people like dirt for so long ”
All around where he was staying the once bucolic hills and pastures of a dairy farm were being scraped for a $700 million freeway Wind whipped the topsoil into mini dust storms while thousands of houses sprung up out of the surrounding farmlands, seemingly overnight
“Where are these people going to find work?” Alex asked, only to be met with a shrug
The democratic contract was broken; Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his predecessors had perpetrated the crime
The media hunts in packs And every journalist in the country now had Morrison in their sights Shameless as he was, politics would prove just as big a public humiliation for the current Prime Minister as it had for his
