Raising Hell: Issue 65: "Govern Me Harder, Daddy"
“We now have 28 flavors --that’s more than Howard Johnson’s has.” - Fidel Castro, on the success of his socialist ice creamy, as recalled by journalist Georgie Anne Geyer in 'Buying the Night Flight'
The facts were not remarkable: on Friday, 2 December 2022 Deanne ‘Violet’ CoCo appeared in court where she plead guilty to seven offences including an use of an authorised explosive device not as prescribed and resisting a police officer during arrest. In April this year she had stopped a truck on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, climbed out and stood holding a lit flare. A second lane of traffic remained open and 25 minutes later CoCo was arrested.
Appearing before magistrate Allison Hawkins at Sydney’s Downing Centre local court, CoCo was handed a fifteen month sentence. In doing so Hawkins shamed CoCo for “selfish emotional actions” and a “childish stunt” that “let an entire city suffer”. When CoCo’s lawyers announced their intention to appeal and requested bail, Hawkins refused. CoCo was also fined $2500.
The decision was red meat to Sky News who initially reported the story under the headline “‘Selfish emotional actions’: Judge lashes climate protester before thrown in jail”. Almost immediately the story was picked up by Human Rights Watch and the UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Association. In the eyes of one climate scientist, it showed a double standard among western countries who celebrate dissidents in Iran and China but freak out over dissent at home.
I’ve written a fair bit on social movements over the years — anti-poverty movements, populists, demagogues, groups of far right nationalists stomping around harassing people. In December last year I opened a new chapter when I started to pick up on how Australian governments and law enforcement agencies appeared to be working to repress climate change protests. Tasmania and New South Wales had moved to pass their own anti-protest laws and even over in Labor-led Western Australia, a counter-terrorism unit within the police raided six climate change activists for dabbing chalk paint on a bridge within sight of the Woodside headquarters. Here’s some of that reporting:
Chalk paint and police raids: why climate activists are under fire
Fireproof Australia: who are the radical Extinction Rebellion splinter group?
Strict anti-protest laws may have encouraged mining conference to move from Melbourne to Sydney
WA police raid home of Indigenous woman campaigning to protect sacred rock art
Then and now it seemed that inter-agency cooperation, information-sharing networks and the nation’s political leadership has been working hard to ensure not much changes. At times this has resulted into darkly absurd situations, like the New South Wales police officers dressed in camo rumbled surveilling a Blockade Australia protest camp.
Where government’s have gone, the private sector has followed. Already large corporate agencies in the “risk management” space have been looking to cash in on the growing anxiety among political and corporate leaders over the potential for disruptive protest. A good example is World Travel Protection, a company whose business is built around fear. It’s primary product is a “Travel Risk Management Tool” which scoops up reports about potential risks and shoot out an email to subscribers or presumably those with travel insurance if they are travelling to a corresponding location. The company appears to partly source its reports from Crisis24, a global risk management firm that specialises in open source intelligence on everything from earthquakes to climate protests.
One such alert was sent out recently giving a warning about the South Australian branch of Extinction Rebellion who announced support rallies on Facebook for the 13 activists scooped up by police while protesting an oil and gas conference in October (see Issue 62). What, on the spectrum of protest actions, is a pretty routine and tame affair was recontextualised by Crisis24 and spat out through World Travel Protection’s alert system as “moderate” risk to those travelling to Adelaide:
On the one hand, this could be read as free promotion for protest groups like Extinction Rebellion for whom attention is currency but it is also a concerning indicator of the way surveillance capitalism is moving — that, however, is a subject for another time.
With news of CoCo’s sentence doing the rounds, I started going back over an old interview I did with CoCo in March 2022 about her activity with Fireproof Australia. My impression then was of a person who is both very intelligent and empathetic. The interview was fairly messy — there was a third person present, who I was also interviewing, and I mostly let them ask each other questions. At times CoCo was cheeky, joking about trying to recruit me to Fireproof’s media team and making snarky comments about how it wasn’t possible to maintain my commitment to journalistic impartiality on a dying planet. Naturally, I disagreed, but I don’t believe this banter compromised any sort of mutual respect between us.
In light of recent events, I thought I’d share a few lines from that interview that never made it into print, as I believe they offer some insight into who CoCo is and why she is doing what she is doing:
"If we have increased alarm from scientists and action from government, then we wouldn't need to protest. But we have increased alarm from scientists and governments opening 800 gas wells in the Pilliga and approving eight more coal mines in three months."
"We have these very respectable people, like Christina Figueres and Secretary General of the United Nations saying, you know, civil disobedience is not only a moral choice, it's the most powerful way of shaping real politics."
"There is a lot of power in our system that is governed by capital, and specifically in the fossil fuel industry. And that capital, you know, influences our politicians."
"When the freedom protests happened about the [vaccine] mandates, you know, Scott Morrison said, 'Well, I can understand that, where they're coming from.' And, you know, Clive Palmer, cooked them a barbie. They had free food at their protests the whole time, funded by political parties."
"I expect that there is no possible way to win without that power trying to repress us. You know, I am expecting that and I'm expecting it to get a lot worse before it gets better."
For the Fortnight: November 23 to December 6
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 …
‘WA police raid home of Indigenous woman campaigning to protect sacred rock art’ (Guardian Australia, 4 December 2022).
I also delivered two large stories this last fortnight, one investigative story and one long-form feature, but neither have yet to run so I couldn’t include them here.
As 2022 draws to a close, I’ve been trying to ease up. After three months with barely any downtime — and a year of absolute madness — I tried to take a couple of days for myself last week. Though I’m back at it this week, I’ll also been slowing down as we head into the holidays as I’ll probably be working as most people are partying.
That said, Raising Hell is going on holiday over the Christmas period, likely beginning from next issue and running into January. I have yet to decide the precise dates but I’ll make this clear in Issue 66.
You Hate To See It
A dyspeptic, snark-ridden and highly ironic round-up of the news from our shared hellscape…
Coal — So Hot Right Now.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ongoing the price of coal is through the roof — and coal miners are frustrated no one will lend them the money to dig more of the stuff out of the ground. Never fear though, because in October Jonathan Barrett and Robert Felice came riding to the rescue when they launched the Iris TIME investment fund. Speaking to Reuters about the poor, sorry bastards who run coal mines, Barrett explained their fund is “backed by wealthy families” and has a stated aim to “focus on unfashionable sectors with attractive cash flows”. "Most of these guys are generating cash hand over fist and they are trying to reduce their reliance on banks, because they have seen how quickly banks are turning on the industry,” Barrett said. In totally unrelated news that has no bearing on the issue whatsoever, the UN warned in October there was currently “no credible path” to keep emissions below the 1.5C necessary to prevent the rolling catastrophes that would unfold as the world approached 2C of warming.
Don’t Meet Your Heroes, Kids
There are some things in life that are almost too painful to bear. Take, for instance, the revelation that popular internet celebrity, the Liver King, is a fraud. In 2021 Brian Johnson made it big for being big. The bodybuilder and fitness influence promoted an “ancestral” and “primal” lifestyle that mostly consisted of eating raw liver and testicles, accompanied by a strict workout routine. Johnson would roam around freely without a shirt to show off his washboard abs and rock hard biceps as he preached to the masses on his nine “pillars vital for a healthy and happy life”: sleep, eat, move, shield, connect cold sun, fight and bond. It was a business model that earned him $1m a year in income. Turns out - shock- that that chiseled physique, that rock hard ten-pack, was all an illusion as leaked emails showed it was obtained by consuming $12k of human growth hormone a month — a story that was broken in an hour-long video by a Youtuber.
The Infinite Conversation
The Slovenian philosopher asks: “Do you really think that the idea of climbing Mount Everest is the same as the reality of climbing it? Like you’re crazy but you can do it and everything okay?” “No!” he exclaims, answering his own questions. “It is not, in my opinion, the same thing.” “The Adventure Film,” the Bavarian filmmaker responds, is a “very good description” and he is glad his counterpart sees the situation the same way. “I’ve always labeled myself as a film poet and as a filmmaker who tries to be radical and who composes like a musician composes music,” he goes on. So much is said, and yet so little is understood between the two men —or are they men? Perhaps they are two AI bots programmed to speak with the cheek-slapping resonance of Slavoj Žižek and the dry, breathless rasp of
Werner Herzog, locked in conversation for all eternity? In fact, this is exactly what they are. The deepfakes are the creation of Italian engineer Giacomo Miceli, titled The Infinite Conversation, which locks the two facsimiles in conversation about nothing on repeat, indefinitely. Which really is the ultimate commentary on philosophy as a profession.
Well, Someone’s Got To Whip The Neckbeards Into Shape
Speaking of crackpots who talk a bunch but say little, famed internet daddy and alleged kidnap victim Jordan Peterson was on a speaking tour of Australia this last fortnight. In Adelaide, crowds of people actually lined up outside the Entertainment Centre to take life advice from Peterson — man who went to Russia to kick his benzo addiction where he was put into a medically induced coma and caught Covid-19 in Serbia while still trying to kick the addition — before he then flew on to the eastern states. Along the way he was invited to Parliament House by Queensland Senator Matt Canavan for a lunch-time event where no lunch was provided. Before the talk, Peterson met and was photographed with former Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Front row at the speech One Nation figures Pauline Hanson and Malcom Roberts, Jacinta Price, Scott Morrison himself and a good cross section of the nation’s defence forces in the public gallery. Later some enterprising reporters from Crikey bumped into Peterson where he struggled to recall what he discussed with the former Prime Minister and, after several moments, eventually offered up: “we had a fine conversation”.
Sing Me A Tune, Mr Governor General
In other news about the colourful bunch of lunatics who ran the country over the last three years, the pending release of Nikki Savva’s book has revealed details about the peccadillos of Governor General David Hurley. It would seem the deeply religious military man expected guests at his official parties to sing to one another. After being quietly told that it was expected that guests would join into song by his wife Linda, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade would give a heads up to visiting ambassadors and diplomats who were visiting for the first time so they weren’t taken by surprise at the quaint custom. Apparently, You Are My Sunshine was a particular favourite, with guests expected to sing the final chorus to those next to them:
Failing Upward
Where we recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…
Pour one out for that absolute king, Gerard Rennick. It’s the end of 2022 and the year has been a bastard. The nation’s lawmakers, gathered for the final week of parliament to censure a former Prime Minister and pass an IR bill that had Michaelia Cash on national television talking like a business-friendly Che Guevara. Everyone just wanted to go home. But not Gerard Rennick, the Liberal-National party Senator from the sun-drenched state of Queensland who, at 5.29pm on a Thursday afternoon, during a speech about vaccines and Covid-19, uttered the immortal phrase:
“Govern me harder daddy!”
The good news is that this absolute, raw poetry from Rennick, a big small government guy on a fat government salary, will now be recorded for posterity in Hansard. But if forever is too long to wait, can watch the moment again, yourself, below:
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 — contact me first for how. 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!