Raising Hell: Issue 26: Glamping At The End Of The World

It’s almost feels naff to talk about secret societies. The people drawn most to these organisations are those who either have a deep love of dress-up and heavy drinking, or that sub-set of broadly racist conspiracy theorists obsessed with The Freemasons — an organisation that really is quite disappointing what with all their charity work and crumbling masonic halls.

So you might say I was somewhat amused this last fortnight to learn about a gathering of the Young President’s Organization near Mt Gambier, if only because it was so eye-rollingly predictable.

If you haven’t heard of it, the organisation today known by the acronym “YPO” caters to that subset of the population who take LinkedIn very seriously while also resenting those who don’t. Founded in 1950 by a 27-year-old named Ray Hickok in Rochester, New York, YPO began as a support group for rich people who had inherited a family business and needed someone to talk to about their lot in life — other company Presidents. Naturally, Hickok — who I presume did not hold any problematic views or ever did anything evil with his money and power during his lifetime, mostly because I did not bother to look very hard — did what any normal, ordinary person would do when seeking solace and founded a secret society for the rich and powerful.

Today YPO boasts 30,000 members who oversee $9 trillion in combined revenue across 142 countries. It’s website does little to hide how insufferable it is, where the tagline reads:

"Our history is long, our achievements many and our trajectory ever-forward. YPO welcomes extraordinary leaders to grow stronger together to improve lives, businesses and the world.”

Members, of course, are forbidden from posting photos from their meet-ups and are not allowed to out another member of the group. To join, there are only three real requirements: you have to be young, you have to run stuff and you have to be psychopathic enough to want to belong to an exclusive organisation of other psychopathic young people who run stuff:

And yes, the group’s activities absolutely sound about as depressing as you would expect from a vaguely messianic corporate wealth cult. Here is a description according to one member, Neha Hirandani, writing for Quartz in 2016:

“Much of the YPO member experience happens through your local “Chapter.” That is where you meet others in your area who have also made the cut. And although the organization attracts competitive “go getter” types, our Chapter also offers a sense of warmth and approachability that is usually missing in elite circles. Some conversations in my chapter involve say, trading tips on the best private safari reserves in Africa (Singita&Beyond are fabulous).

But others go above and beyond in an different way. It was in the Dubai Chapter that we received valuable advice about navigating high offices and public policy, and my husband and I have felt free to ask the questions that we wanted to ask—both for our business and for our family—without fearing a judgmental “poor little rich thing” comment.”

In Australia the organisation has 16 chapters and 1092 members. Here they run programs like “Full Day Growth workshops” hosted by global accounting firm EY, meet and greets with dignitaries like the President of Rwanda and, of course, wine tastings conducted over Zoom so everyone can participate, even during a pandemic.

Most recently, on 16 April the group held a two-day “camping” get-together at Mount Schank Station, just south of in Mount Gambier. I say “camping”, because well…

Now, I can’t share photos of the program, the entertainment and the helicopters without outing my source, but you can be sure those who gathered were extremely well fed judging by these tomahawk steaks…

There is a long, fine tradition of secret clubs for the rich and powerful, so it’s no surprise an organisation like YPO exists with a healthy membership. Extreme wealth is deeply alienating and the kind of people who are drawn to these sorts of groups are exactly the same weirdos who, when outed, will keep insisting it’s like, totally not weird or anything.

That being said, say what you will about The Top One Percent, they sure know how to grill.

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 …

• ‘Insanely cheap energy’: how solar power continues to shock the world' (The Guardian, 26 April 2021).
• ‘The worst electric vehicle policy in the world’: automotive coalition pans Victoria’s EV tax' (The Guardian, 22 April 2021).
• ‘The race for rare earth minerals: can Australia fuel the electric vehicle revolution?' (The Guardian, 17 April 2021).

Cracking COVIDSafe

Over the course of November, Raising Hell ran its first serialised investigation, CrackingCOVIDSafe, in association with Electronic Frontiers Australia. The series looked at the creation of the government’s automated contact tracing app COVIDSafe and stepped out how I used Freedom of Information to learn more so that others may learn to do their own. Along the way, we tracked how a constellation of government agencies and a clutch of for-profit companies made a hash of a new public service. So far we have managed to reveal how the government prioritised reputational risk over service quality and how security issues were not addressed by government for weeks after release, even though they put the app in breach of the government’s own privacy policy.

Laramba’s Water

The story of Laramba so far is straight forward. High concentrations of uranium were first found in Laramba’s water back in 2008. The situation in the remote Indigenous community of about 263 people hit the headlines in 2018 when NT Power and Water Corporation (PWC) published a report showing uranium concentrations there nearly three times higher than the national guidelines. That story made news again early this year when the community lost a legal fight to force the NT Government to do something to fix it.

Thanks to the support of my generous subscribers I’ve been able to pick up the issue to find out more. Here’s a running list of published stories that will be updated as I do more over time.

• ‘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).

Special Appeal

Australia might be sitting pretty during a time of global plague, but that is not true for many in India. There, Covid-19 has ripped through the country while western nations — including Australia — have been stockpiling vaccine and refusing to give up control of the intellectual property that would enable these medicines to be made readily available. Over in India, meanwhile, Modi’s fascist government has so badly handled the situation, the nations crematoriums cannot keep up and its hospitals are buckling.

In light of this, I have donated $250 of funds paid to Raising Hell by my generous subscribers to three Indian charities on this list provided by Lina Srivastava. I know these funds were earmarked to pay for things like FOI’s and research materials, but in this instance I figured this is a higher priority.

Two charities were chosen at random, while another was listed as requiring urgent assistance. For transparency’s sake, I have posted the receipts below and would encourage anyone who feels similarly to do the same.

• Moitrisanjog

• Spoorthi Foundation

  

• Khaana Chahiye

  (No receipt came through but the transaction was made).

You Hate To See It

A dyspeptic, snark-ridden and highly ironic round-up of the news from our shared hellscape…

• Pastrami: What Dreams Are Made OfWe begin our fortnightly recap with the underdog story of the fortnight: a deli in rural New Jersey, USA known to some as Hometown, but more familiar to others by its stock exchange listing: “Hometown International (HWIN)”. Run by the local high school wrestling coach, the deli went public in 2015 and despite making a net $631,356 loss last year, the deli has since been valued at $100 million despite making nothing more than sandwiches in one location. However — and in a twist that in no way suggests nothing wrong with financial capitalism — it turns out that the arcane workings of the stock market mean that figure was off by a wide margin. Hometown — again, nothing more than a sandwich shop — is actually worth $1.9 billion.
• How To Make Your Job Work For YouTo Italy now where a hospital employee is being charged with fraud after collecting full pay for 15 years even though he hadn’t turned up to work once since 2005. Police allege the man threatened his manager, but when she retired no one noticed his absence and he kept cashing checks, banking somewhere in the region of €538,000 over the next decade-and-a-half.
• The Peasants Are RevoltingA new paper published in the Cambridge Journal of Education claims that it’s actually employees who are the “real bullies” in the enduring dance between capital and labour. Having spoke to 20 deans from education, business and science faculties across eight Australian universities, the researchers concluded that workers were employing “a new form of harassment which involves disrespect and insubordination”. Of course, this plague of snark has nothing to do with radical restructures that have sought to turn universities into commercial entities, staffed by a casualised labour force who may no necessarily buy into their bosses “vision”.
• Landlords Of The World Unite!Landlords across the Gold Coast have taken their chance to strike back against recalcitrant tenants who, during a global plague that has so far killed more than 3.1 million people and triggered periodic lockdowns across the nation in an effort to contain its spread, stopped paying their rent while they sought refuge in their homes. Sally Hynes, a principal of real estate company Ray White told reporters how landlords, frustrated that the passive revenue stream on their investment properties had dried up at a time when housing became a necessary, are not renewing the lease of tenants who did not, or could not, pay their rent and flipping the properties in order to cash in on the current property boom. "There are some people that did wrong by owners in COVID," Hynes said without a shred of irony.
• Now Do Climate ChangeHaving watched the east coast burn down during the Black Summer Bushfires, those in the federal government have now found a new way to defend their unconditional support of fossil fuel extraction even as the world teeters on the edge of ecological collapse. The Australian government may be spending $19,686 a minute to subsidise the extraction of fossil fuels, but two senior federal government ministers now suggest we couldn’t possibly transition to renewable energy — a move that would surely be beneficial to national security over the long haul — in order to do anything about climate change — another national security threat — because we may need to go bomb China someday.
• Eat The Rich?Elon Musk may have said “fuck earth” in announcing his plan to escape to the stars, but at least he’s honest about the reality that achieving his dream of colonising Mars will mean “a bunch of people” will die along the way. This, of course, has raised a critical question for the ethicists of our generation: if the worst should happen, would it be ethically permissible to eat another human being?

Failing Upward

Where we recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…

• Ben Roberts-Smith simply proved impossible to ignore this last fortnight, especially for those of us pulling overtime here at the Raising Hell offices. The Victoria Cross Recipient, alleged war criminal and wholly-owned asset of billionaire Kerry Stokes has taken leave from his work at SevenWest media’s coalface — where he serves as managing director of the company’s Queensland operation — to focus his energies on an upcoming defamation lawsuit against several media companies that reported said war crimes. The former SAS soldier, who is alleged to have executed people during his time in Afghanistan and still has his military kit on display at Australia’s War Memorial, has denied all allegations and relied on $1.87 million in Seven West Media funds to bankroll his litigation in an effort to shoot the messenger. Stokes, meanwhile, continues to sit on the board of the War Memorial where he is said to have the “full confidence” of the Prime Minister.Those of you who have a critical bent may say we’re phoning it in with this one — and we would agree with you that we didn’t have to work too hard, what with the guy’s consequence-free existence to date and all the alleged war crimes.

Good Reads, Good Times

To share the love, here are some of the best or more interesting reads from the last fortnight…

• If you have the stomach for a deep dive into how humanity has basically cooked itself when it comes to climate change, I strongly suggest this longread by three scientists into talking about how the “net zero by 2050” targets are basically bunk. It concludes:

  “Current net zero policies will not keep warming to within 1.5°C because they were never intended to. They were and still are driven by a need to protect business as usual, not the climate. If we want to keep people safe then large and sustained cuts to carbon emissions need to happen now. That is the very simple acid test that must be applied to all climate policies. The time for wishful thinking is over.”

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!