Raising Hell: Issue 47: A Word To The Wise
"Early to bed, Early to rise, Work like hell — And advertise!" - As quoted in The National Provisioner, Vol 44, June 1911.
This fortnight I wanted to kick off by doing something a little different. Behind the scene things have been a little n flux so for those keen readers of Raising Hell I wanted to talk briefly about what has been happening to me, where I’m at and what I think comes next.
For the last few months — since about October last year — I’ve been working a short-term contract with The Guardian, helping out in-house in general news and on their environment team. From 31 March that contract will come to an end and unless something significant changes — which in this world and this moment in history is entirely possible — I will be back working as a full-time freelancer from this point.
This means everything I am currently in the process of tying off the obligations I owe The Guardian and prepare for what comes next. My current plan going forward is to take two weeks off at the end of March — I worked right through Christmas with no time off and, frankly, I’m feeling it. During this time I plan to sleep in, take a breathe, give all my public facing media a refresh (including, hopefully, Raising Hell) before diving back in full time.
By then a federal election will be called and the South Australian state election will have been run. I will continue publishing Raising Hell as-is through this period, but after that how I run this newsletter will likely change as there are two significant developments on the horizon.
First, I have to spend some time completing an outline for my next book — which is long overdue. While I know what I want to address with it, the challenge so far has been about how to tell that story in a way that allows me to get to the heart of the thing. Over this last few years I have been taken mental notes — and the two panels I chaired at Adelaide Writers Week have conveniently served as handy inspiration for how best to approach it. When I am no longer contributing to a daily news rounds as a reporter responding to each new crisis in real time, I will have the space to develop it more appropriately — and will hopefully share some details here.
The other is that while the reality of working as a full-time freelancer means I have to take my stories as I find them, from this point forward, my reporting and investigative work will be increasingly looking at climate change, finance, class and the intersection of these things. As an extra set of fingers on the environment desk with The Guardian — which produces the best climate change reporting in the country — I have had a first-class education on the influence of the fossil fuel sector. Climate change, I am convinced now more than ever, is the biggest story going at this point in history. When I am no longer having to pick up daily news, I’ll be free to spend more of my time digging into these issues.
To this end, I will also be getting more ambitious about the subjects I pursue going forward. For instance, I have a half-completed investigation that I will be devoting more time to fleshing out in full — though the election promises to make that difficult as the government enters caretaker mode and any outstanding Freedom of Information requests are put through the shredder. In addition, I have the results of a previous investigation that I look forward to sharing.
I share all this in the hope of keeping my subscribers and readers in the loop; it’s why I haven’t been responding to emails in a timely fashion, it’s why I haven’t been picking up new stories, and it’s why Raising Hell has been a little inconsistent this past few fortnights. This will also continue for a little longer as it’s still early days — it’s not even the 31 March yet. But what I’m thinking at present is the fortnightly newsletter will be slimmed down, I’ll be publishing more through the platform and organising more collaborative projects.
Until then: stay safe and vote smart.
For the Fortnight: March 2 to March16
Reporting In
Where I recap what I’ve been doing this last fortnight so you know I’m not just using your money to stimulate the local economy …
“Fertiliser company urged to halt plans to remove Burrup Peninsula Indigenous rock art” (The Guardian, 12 March 2022).
“Coalition shortlist for nuclear submarines base were not in Defence’s top five in 2011 review” (The Guardian, 8 March 2022).
“Children born in 1990 have grown up in a more unequal Australia, long-term study finds” (The Guardian, 5 March 2022).
“Woman gives birth after being rescued from Brisbane floods by neighbours and a kayak” (The Guardian, 3 March 2022).
“Fears Lismore art gallery’s entire collection lost in NSW floods” (The Guardian, 2 March 2022).
Projects
Cracking COVIDSafe - An examination of the machine that made the COVIDSafe app, a piece of software made by people who wanted to hack the pandemic (complete).
Laramba’s Water - Laramba is a remote Indigenous Community in the Northern Territory which has been drinking uranium-contaminated water since 2008. We tried to find out what why (on-going).
‘High levels of uranium in drinking water of NT community’ (NITV, 31 July 2020).
‘Company remains shtum on plans to filter Laramba's contaminated water supply’ (NITV, 21 October 2020).
‘‘It makes us sick’: remote NT community wants answers about uranium in its water supply’ (The Guardian, 18 October 2021).
You Hate To See It
A dyspeptic, snark-ridden and highly ironic round-up of the news from our shared hellscape…
Fresh Air
If you are old enough to remember filling up the tank with leaded petrol, well a new study has some bad news: roughly half the population of the US, some 170 million people, have been poisoned by the stuff blunting the IQ of the average American. IQ loss from inhaling exhaust fumes from leaded petrol is though to average 2.6 per person though things were far worse for those born in the 1960s and 1970s the loss was estimated to have been 6 points, and for some, 7 points. Before you go cracking jokes about the intelligence of our American cousins, consider for a moment that while the US banned leaded petrol in 1996, it took Australia until 1 January 2002 to do the same — which may actually explain a lot of Australian politics lately.
True, If Big
Pity Larry Fink. The BlackRock CEO, a multinational investment firm founded in 1988 which has since come to dominate the world of global finance, has had a rough run of it. The company, which lost an eye-watering $17b on its Russia investments in recent days, was also revealed for being about as two-faced as you’d expect a global financial firm to be. Fink, who wrote a letter to investors at the start of this year titled “The Power of Capitalism”, raised a few eyebrows when he appeared to be charting a new, green course for the firm. Spooked by the prospect oil companies would have their access to finance turned off, the Texas Oil regulator met with BlackRock representatives who explained BlackRock “didn’t mean — or no longer believes — many of the disagreeable things the company and its CEO have said about the oil and gas industry”.
Joint At The Hip
And if global financial firms have been blatantly twofaced about their “ambitions” on climate change, consider the Western Australian government who, in released a press release about a draft bill to “help WA’s resources industry reduce emissions” did so in a joint release with the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association — almost as if the oil and gas industry association is an extra arm of government.
Think Positive
Times of crisis have a way of clarifying situations. Take, for instance, Peter Dutton encouraging those whose homes are underwater to “to look at the positives” during a catastrophic flood event across Queensland and northern New South Wales. Or Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk saying of course the recent floods are the result of climate change — but that she still supported fossil fuels. None of these, however, hold a candle to Sarina Russo, founder and owner of a JobActive provider, taking the opportunity tell people who have lost everything to quit smoking to find success.
A Total Cock Up
But then, Australia makes a whole lot more sense when you realise that government and institutions don’t really run things and mostly just shitpost. Take for instance, the design of the logo for the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s new Women’s Network. You’d think a government rocked by rape and sexual assault scandals, who had spent months putting together this effort to right the ship, would have noticed how the logo for its effort to reset was a dick and balls, but alas…
Failing Upward
Where we recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…
We here at Raising Hell have long taken an interest in Nicholai Petrovsky. Since we first took a look at the anti-vaxxers favourite vaccine scientist, he has since gone on to crowdfund more than $1m on GoFundMe — a service that allows him to remove the money at any time — for the development of his vaccine, Covax-19. Unfortunately for everyone who gave money to the project, it now turns out the Phase 1 clinical trail failed to find any scientific evidence Covax-19 did anything to stop the spread of the virus, which would explain a lot.
The only thing perhaps more amusing is that The Australian appears to have republished the letters concerning this with the unredacted name and postal address of the trial participant. You love to see it.
Good Reads, Good Times
To share the love, here are some of the best or more interesting reads from the last fortnight…
If there was any question about how the Russian invasion of Ukraine, fossil fuels and climate change overlap, the issue was starkly highlighted by one Ukrainian climate scientist, Dr Svitlana Krakovska, who was working on the latest IPCC report from her home in Kyiv when the bombs started falling.
Not a read, but a remarkable video of a unknown Russian throwing molotovs through the windows of a military recruitment office. I’ve shared here as it is a very brave act of resistance, especially at a time when the protest movement in Russia is being arrested for holding blank signs.
Before You Go (Go)…
Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal or through encrypted message Wickr Me on my account: rorok1990. Alternatively you can send us your hard copies to: PO Box 134, Welland SA 5007
And if you’ve come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell!