Raising Hell: Issue 55: The Freedom Edition
"...our real Disease; which is Democracy, the poison of which by a subdivision will only be the more concentrated in each part." - Alexander Hamilton, US Founding Father and banker.
Following a decade spent whipping up a pointless culture war about the threat of Islam, the US appears to have full circle and enshrined its own Christian Shura Council: geriatric, totally immune to the popular will and hell bent on using the law to forge a morally pure America.
In a matter of weeks, those knights of the Supreme Court have overturned half a century of precedent on abortion, blocked attempts at any sort of gun control and kneecapped the power of the federal Environmental Protection Authority to regulate carbon emissions. This is the promise of America in 2022: all the guns you can afford, carbon you can belch and a branch of the local PD out there telling people what they can do with their uterus — just don’t ask about social security or healthcare. That’s freedom, baby.
It’s easy, sitting here in Australia, to look at our cousins in the US and shake our heads at the insanity of it all, as if the multi-generational conservative project to wind back change by promoting states rights is not also at work here. The natural response to learning about an organisation like the The Federalist Society, a shadowy group which approves nearly every judicial appointment and has been grooming generations of lawyers to carry on their ideology, is to assume it’s just another intractable problem the US can’t solve. Don’t worry though, we’re doing the exact same here in Australia and they’re called The Samuel Griffith Society.
Founded in 1992 by Nationals Senator John Stone, the organisation has aped its US counterpart for most of its existence. It describes itself as dedicated to the study of the Australian constitution and education of the public on constitutional matters but it also a vehicle geared to promoting a state rights agenda through the arcane route of constitutional interpretation. Unlike The Federalist Society, which has used abortion as a wedge, The Samuel Griffith Society differs in that its primary target has been Indigenous rights and especially native title.
A list of past speakers on its website boasts a long list of notable figures — some rather surprising. The group is not just interested in influencing the courts, but also parliament. In February last year it threw its support behind the nomination of former SAS soldier and barrister, Keith Wolahan as the Liberal party candidate in the Victorian seat of Menzies. When I tried to report this history through SBS, and pointed to a very strange speech he gave to the society in 2017, the report was published as “opinion” in an effort to stave off the risk of litigation.
At heart is the issue of states rights, an political current trying to put democracy in chains. In the context of the US, for example, it may be difficult to convince 51% or more of a population to re-embrace segregation, but it’s far easier to dissolve the mechanisms by which a federal authority can do anything about these things. When there are 50 different parliaments instead of one, it becomes next to impossible to do anything on problems that require collective action. The over-tuning of Roe v Wade is the clearest expression of this yet.
Australia, for what it’s worth, has its own history around this stuff and it is no surprise that it has been most visible on issues like climate change. When Tony Abbott was elected in 2013, he brought with him a state’s rights agenda — albeit in a way that was confused and primarily motivated by austerity. On climate change, the result was a federal government that made a point to do nothing. In the resulting vacuum, the states were left to introduce their own policies in isolation from each other. Where they succeeded, these triumphs were held up by those pushing for a transition as a win, but also worked to justify the pitch being made by the federal Coalition: see, sport, you didn’t need us anyway.
Yesterday it was renewables, tomorrow it will be something else — as events over the last fortnight have shown with the leader of the South Australian Liberal Party being sprung attending a meeting of anti-abortion activists. If you have been side-eying the US and it would be a mistake to act as if there are no problems in on our backyard — or to assume the rights we take for granted can’t be unwound.
The Plug Zone
I want to take a moment to plug this investigative project to peel apart the Department of Social Services using FOI. Though the process described below can be used for any department, this one is aimed at revealing how the Department of Social Services actually works — if you want to be part of it, I will leave it to them to explain the process with this great video:
For the Fortnight: June 22 to July 4
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 …
- ‘‘It leaves you speechless’: Australian storm chaser captures America’s monster skies” (The Guardian Australia, 24 June 2022).
- Back in May I attended the annual oil and gas industry conference in Brisbane — thanks to the support of my generous subscribers. This last fortnight I filed a 3500 word feature with Rolling Stone AU about the experience and I have a short report on what was said coming in the next edition of The Monthly.
- I have also been busy putting in an application to the Copyright Agency’s Nonfiction Fellowship for $80k to support the production of my next book. While I’m not counting on this, the engine’s revving on my next adventure and I look forward to sharing more as I lock in the details.
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…
U-S-AY! U-S-AY!
We gather here today to pay our respects to the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. One week they’re overturning 50-years of precedent to police women’s bodies, the next they’re pulling the guts out of the Environmental Protection Authority with a speculative judgment on its ability to influence climate change. But then are we surprised? This is a nation that builds sniper nests into its sports stadiums and where the Democrats — ostensibly the good guys — keep meeting the challenge of their openly white nationalist opposition by throwing their hands up and asking, “why can’t we all just get along?”
New Feudalism Just Dropped
But hey, the UK aren’t far behind what with the plan to deal with the housing affordability by allowing 50-year mortgages that people can inherit — in other words feudalism by stealth.
Idiocy In The Eye Of The Beholder
A 22-year-old woman was among protesters with Blockade Australia arrested during a week of protests in Australia’s most populous city this last fortnight. Their goal was to push for action on climate change by stopping the ability of Australia to go about business as usual — and were met with all the usual guff from people complaining about being inconvenienced, especially from people who have never actually tried to organise a protest in New South Wales before. That 22-year-old who blocked the Sydney Harbour tunnel may have a thing or two to say about inconvenience however, as a resident of Lismore — a town which was inundated by 14m floods — twice. Though the New South Wales state government contracted Twiggy Forrest — yes, the Twigster himself — to bring in emergency accommodation but only managed to supply ten “pods” as of late May. These were the pods:
Since We’re Talking Real Estate…
How have you always wanted to shit where you eat? Well, one lucky renter in North Adelaide will get the chance after a Raising Hell subscriber spotted an ad for a “self-contained”, one-room apartment that came complete with its own “perspex shitting cube” for $400 a week. The story was quickly picked up by the ABC and challenged by the Real Estate agent who claimed it was entirely up to code. This then forced a correction: the frosted glass shitting cube was not, in fact, perspex.
More Dishes, Less Marx: Hollie Hughes
Hollie Hughes, a surviving member of the Coalition, was making an appearance at the Sydney Institute who was asked how the party plans to address the youth vote. Her answer? We have an education system run by Marxists. The cure? Cut off the kids from the internet, ban them from taking the car for a spin.
Senator Hollie Hughes blames Marxist teachers for the fact that so many young people rejected the Liberal Party at the election.
— Matt Burke (@matttburke) 9:04 AM ∙ Jun 25, 2022Tomb Of The Kings
But then as we all know capital is eternal. Take, for example, how workers a the Concord Mall pulled back a wall to discover a Burger King lying entirely in state. You could still find barbeque sauce on the wall.
A fully intact vintage Burger King was found behind a wall at the Concord Mall in Wilmington, DE. This photo was snapped by Jonathon Pruitt April of 2022.
— Jeze3D.exe v2.2.1 (@RealJezebelley) 11:55 AM ∙ Jun 28, 2022
Failing Upward
Where we recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…
- We here at Raising Hell’s elite satire unique get to mark something a milestone: the first sitting federal Labor MP to be recognised for the coveted Failing Upward award. This fortnight it goes to Tony Burke in his capacity as Employment Minister and the roll-out of a major reform to social security payments. Introducing by the Coalition, the bill passed with full support from Labor but Burke seemed genuinely surprised by the reaction among people who will have to deal with its introduction from July 4 on. Despite calls to suspend the system of mutual obligations that will cut people off their payments for three months while the kinks get worked out, Burke refused. Why? To ensure people involved in the system remained “engaged”, of course — though Labor was kind enough to introduce a “clean slate policy” at the last minute. It seems we have bipartisan agreement on at least one issue: don’t be poor, or else.
Good Reads, Good Times
To share the love, here are some of the best or more interesting reads from the last fortnight…
A reminder that ASIO surveilled pro-choice activists in Australia in the 1970s.
Enjoy this photo of Jeff Bezos riding Space Mountain solo.
This photo of Jeff Bezos riding Space Mountain completely alone is one of the funniest, most pathetic demonstrations of wealth I’ve ever seen.
— Kendall Brown (@kendallybrown) 8:26 PM ∙ Jul 1, 2022
Imagine having the power eradicate poverty & choosing to instead spend your money and time doing shit like this.
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!