Daniel Mathews

On 4 April 2013, I was invited to speak very briefly at the protest outside the Institute of Public Affairs’ 70th anniversary dinner, on behalf of WACA, the Wikileaks Australian Citizens Alliance. Events rapidly overtook the planned activities, but I meant to say something like the following…

Well, what an auspicious occasion we find ourselves at tonight. What inauspicious guests.
This sort of provocation — MC Bolt, guest of honour Murdoch, $500 a head fundraising bonanza for the Institute of Public Affairs – complete with Abbott, Rinehart, a full rogues’ gallery in attendance — this demands witness.
So who are the Institute of Public Affairs?
A think tank, whose list of funders has run the full gamut of oil, mining, and tobacco companies.
Sponsoring climate denialists, slamming unions, indigenous groups and NGOs — other than themselves, of course — the shock troops of causes from corporate capitalist conservative to climate crackpot.
But the affairs of the Institute of Public Affairs are not, in fact, public affairs. Donations are secret. The executive director explains his contempt for democracy: “Australian democracy is not so sophisticated that companies can reveal they support free market think tanks, because as soon as they do they will be attacked”. Funny about that.
They maintain tax-deductible status. The type of tax-deductibility that requires donations go through a scientific committee for scientific research purposes. I’d love to see their committee.
Because those dozens of public meetings against the carbon tax really looked like scientific research to me. As did those full-page newspaper ads.
But without disclosure, it just looks illegal. Innocent until proven guilty of course. But it is well known that secrecy has its advantages in matters of tax evasion.
* * *
The IPA may well be best ignored, much of the time. Or a good source of amusement.
But like all good PR firms, the IPA has the money and connections to project itself into public consciousness — with regular opinion columns and TV appearances, including, and especially, on the ABC.
And although traditional media may be in decline, TV, radio and newspaper are still the main way people get information — or, as the case may be, disinformation.
Corporations understand that funding the IPA amplifies their voice, laundering it through a supposedly “independent” source. If the IPA didn’t promote its donors’ interests it would rapidly go out of business.
Corporate donations to institutions like the IPA are protection money, pure and simple. The IPA protects corporations from democracy.
* * *
But for secretive, illegitimate institutions with powerful friends, recent times provide new antidotes.
When Julian Assange and I and others set up Wikileaks, we had many reasons, but one of the reasons was — the state of the media.
We all know that the mainstream media, by and large, feeds us shit. We all know that the Murdoch press serves up a steady stream of militarism, xenophobia, and class warfare against the poor.
Murdoch’s operations are quite a machine. Before the Iraq war, every single one of Murdoch’s 175 newspapers editorialised in favour of war. When it comes to the important issues, the “free” press follows the master in lockstep.
But Murdoch’s editors didn’t need a phone call from Rupert to dictate the party line. If they hadn’t internalised it they wouldn’t be there. And so we find stable, tightly ideologically controlled doctrinal institutions in formally democratic societies.
In the face of this wholesale corruption of truth and accountability, Wikileaks struck back, bypassing traditional media. Leaks went directly to those who took them seriously.
With leaked documents in hand, the press came to Wikileaks for the story — as they come to think tanks like the IPA for opinion columns.
Except Wikileaks was speaking fact and truth.
* * *
The IPA claims to be protecting freedom of speech — by which they mean things like, the freedom of Andrew Bolt to falsely defame indigenous Australians.
Some comparisons are instructive.
Bolt’s false defamation of private, non-powerful, individuals, got him a rap over the knuckles.
Wikileaks, on the other hand, revealed truthful, vast, encyclopaedic details of diplomatic machinations and human rights abuses — and got a banking blockade, a whole of government taskforce, an ongoing espionage investigation, and high-level calls for its leader’s assassination.
Some years earlier, Wikileaks revealed alleged tax evasion by a Swiss bank and its Cayman Island subsidiary — and I got sued personally.
No, those who speak of “freedom” to maliciously and falsely abuse and defame do not speak of freedom of speech. They speak of the freedom of children’s tantrums.
Now, there are problems with free speech in Australia. Our constitutional protections on freedom of speech are woefully limited.
But if we speak seriously of free speech, we do not speak of Bolt; we speak of those like Wikileaks.
* * *
Think tanks are rhetorical brawn, not brains. Think army tanks — rapid, aggressive, weaponized thought. Sharp, but not deep. A sharp sound bite is all that matters.
But serious thought, scientific, intellectual thought, is careful. We must understand the world in order to change it. Corporate think tanks blast away subtleties, along with anything contradicting their donors’ interests. As Bertrand Russell said, “the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
The question of how to establish a viable, independent, free media is not an easy one — but no important social questions are easy.
However, there is an easy part of the answer. We need new forms of media to replace the kind of disinformation machine gathered above us tonight — to toss it into the dustbin of history.
Many, including Wikileaks, have made a start. There is a long way to go.

Writing in 1982, the anthropologist Laura Betzig noted a parallel between two very-long-term trends in human societies.
The first trend is increasing inequality and hierarchy. Roughly speaking, early human societies evolved from relatively simple, egalitarian bands of hunters and gatherers, to more complex, hierarchical, unequal societies. Over time, as a general tendency, leaders, chiefs and kings emerged with ever stronger authority and powers.
The second trend is increasing injustice in dispute resolution — what Betzig called “asymmetry in the resolution of conflicts”. Roughly speaking, when there are disputes, they are resolved less and less on the merits of the case, and more and more on the power and wealth of the parties. The powerful tend increasingly to win disputes even if they are in the wrong. Asymmetric rules may develop: for instance, insulting a peasant has rarely had serious consequences, but not so with insulting the king.
Betzig found that these two trends (among others) are correlated. Those societies which are more hierarchical and unequal, tend also to be the ones with unjust dispute resolution. The more powerful the leader or chief or monarch, the more the strong prevail in disputes and the less the weak can expect justice.
Well, surprise, surprise, one might say. We do not exactly expect economic injustice or political authoritarianism to lead to legal justice — or any type of benevolence for that matter.
The details, nonetheless, are interesting. Betzig gives the example of the Tlingit, an indigenous society of North America, studied by the anthropologist Kalervo Oberg. In traditional Tlingit society,

If a man of low rank was caught stealing from another clan, they could kill him for it. If he was high in rank, his clan could settle with the other by a payment in goods. And if he was of very high rank, he was said to have been bewitched.

That’s right: if you’re sufficiently powerful, commit a crime, and it will automatically be assumed someone put a spell on you to make you do it.
This is *almost* the medieval doctrine of “The king can do no wrong”. In this case, the king *can* do wrong, but only when bewitched by someone else!
Furthermore, a powerful Tlingit criminal will not just be held innocent automatically. The hunt is on for the true culprit, who must have cast the spell!

A shamanistic performance was held over [the thief of very high rank] to discover the sorcerer who had forced him to steal in order to injure his position. The sorcerer when discovered was killed and the crime thus compensated

So when the king does wrong, not only is the king automatically not responsible, but an innocent person will automatically be sought out for punishment.
(As an aside, we might question the fairness of this representation of Tlingit culture. However for present purposes we take Betzig and Oberg at face value, and note that, however unjust this aspect of Tlingit culture may have been, the injustice pales in comparison with what we shall shortly discuss.)
Turning to “modern” societies, Betzig notes that the trends of increasing inequality and increasing injustice do not quite apply. Despotisms over much of the earth have been defeated by democracy, and struggles for economic equality have, in some cases, enjoyed success.
Turning to more recent history, economic inequality has rapidly advanced in the last few decades under the ideology of neoliberalism, and political inequality and authoritarianism has advanced under the guise of counterterrorism. And indeed, following Betzig’s correlations, the level of legal injustice has approached Tlingit levels.
Indeed, the US now surpasses it.
After all, in the Tlingit example, it was essentially a random innocent who was picked out by shamanism, to answer for the crimes of the powerful.
In the contemporary case, it is different.
When the modern king — that is, the State, and its force of arms, its military and intelligence agencies — does wrong, it is no small wrong. Torturing, invading and destroying countries on the scale of Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorizing and bombing civilian populations, traumatising whole populations into psychosis, declaring the whole world the battlefield — these are the epic wrongs in question.
We often say that nobody is punished for these crimes. That is not quite true. The US just meted out the first punishment for its torture policies, Tlingit-style.
As the State is “very high rank”, the punishment is not of the wrongdoers in the State. The Tlingit would have selected a scapegoat at random and declared “sorcerer!” But today, we select for punishment specifically on the basis of moral virtue and courage.
Whereas the Tlingit would have admitted the wrong done by the king, if not the king’s responsibility, we admit nothing. We return to the medieval doctrine that the king can do no wrong, with the cruel addendum that brave and good souls will be punished for the king’s non-existent wrong, in addition to the original victims of the non-existent wrong, which number in the millions.
Of course, this extra-cruel version of Tlingit justice is not exactly new: revolutionaries of all stripes have long known not only the punishment they face for demanding a better world, but also that their struggle for a good society would be presented by the powerful as wicked, evil, and depraved, and punished with prejudice. However, the scale of the crimes, and the unimpeachable virtue of the punished, have reached a new level.
John Kiriakou was involved in US torture policies — he blew the whistle on it. We admit no crime of the torture, but we do of the whistleblowing. The state therefore expurgates its sins by punishing those upholding their own conscience and international law.
Bradley Manning blew the whistle on the whole world — the machinations of the powerful, the webs of deceit, the lines of force that radiate from the most powerful States and envelop the world, condemning its unfortunates to poverty, exploitation and death.
Upon crimes of this scale being discovered, the Tlingit of Betzig’s example would have required vast expiation — punishment administered at random. But the shaman’s wrath no longer strikes at random; in defending the criminal, it now, rather more rationally, strikes at the good.
In the present day, the State also requires expiation. So the humble Bradley Manning has been targeted for his own form of torture and vicious punishment, and now awaits helplessly for its blows to strike.
Courage deserves punishment, and telling the truth is a crime: so says the State. Its crimes continue.

“This population works and suffers, and suffering and toil are the two faces of men. There are vast numbers of unknown beings teeming with the strangest types of humanity, from the stevedore of the Rapee to the horse-slaughterer of Montfaucon.
Fex urbis, cries Cicero; mob, adds the indignant Burke; the herd, the multitude, the populace. Those words are quickly said.
But if so, what does it matter? What difference does it make if they go barefoot? They cannot read; never mind. Would you abandon them for that? Would you make their misfortune their curse? Can’t the light penetrate these masses?
Let us return to that cry: Light!
And let us persist in it!
Light! Light!
Who knows but that these opacities will become transparent?
Are revolutions not transfigurations? Go on, philosophers — teach, enlighten, kindle, think aloud, speak up, run joyfully toward broad daylight, fraternize in the public squares, announce the glad tidings, lavish your alphabets, proclaim human rights, sing your Marseillaises, sow enthusiasms, tear off green branches from the oak trees.
Make thought a whirlwind.
This multitude can be sublimated.
Let us learn to avail ourselves of this vast conflagration of principles and virtues, which occasionally sparkles, bursts, and shudders. These bare feet, these naked arms, these rags, these shades of ignorance, depths of despair, the gloom can be used for the conquest of the ideal.
Look through the medium of the people, and you will discern the truth.
This lowly sand that you trample underfoot, if you throw it into the furnace and let it melt and seethe, will become sparkling crystal; and thanks to such as this a Galileo and a Newton will discover the stars.”
— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (Paragraph breaks added!)

A few weeks ago, a 29 year old Irish woman named Jill Meagher was at a bar in Brunswick in inner Melbourne, drinking with friends on a Friday night. After leaving the bar late that night, in the early morning hours of Saturday 22 September, she disappeared.  The search for Jill’s whereabouts became front page news and seized the attention of Melburnians, including myself.
Our worst fears were confirmed a few days later when Jill’s body was found, raped and murdered, near Gisborne, 50 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. A man has been arrested and is currently awaiting trial.
The following weekend, a local photographer organised an impromptu rally to send a message of hope. Spontaneously, thirty thousand people showed up, rallied and marched, and created a stunning floral tribute. Such a touching display of human solidarity, at such short notice, illustrates how profoundly people were affected by the tragedy.
I felt it too. And my family. I accidentally left my mobile phone in the other room on silent for a few hours one evening around then — by the end of which, it was flooded with missed calls and increasingly frantic messages, and my family, not usually given to paranoia, was convinced that I, too, had gone missing.
The whole episode touched a deep nerve in our collective psyche — a deeply rooted belief that we should be able to go about our lives without fear. The brutal abduction of someone off the street, let alone rape and murder, offends our most basic notions of how life should be.
To walk the upon this world should not be to walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
Melburnians felt this, on a collective scale. It may be an interesting question why this particular incident received such overwhelming attention, but the essential point remains — human beings should not have to live looking at each other down the barrel of a gun.
* * *
On Tuesday 25 September, as Jill Meagher remained missing, and the Victorian police force appealed to the public for help, a report was released by the Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford University, and the Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law. The report investigated some of the impacts of the ongoing war in Afghanistan and Pakistan — a war, of course, in which Australian military forces continue to fight.
A significant part of the impact of this twenty-first century war comes from a new technological development — we now wage war by robot.
Robotic drone aircraft now regularly patrol the skies above Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Without a human on board, they are small and light, and can fly for 24 hours or more at a time — remote controlled planes with missiles. Their pilots can unleash hellfires from afar, and view the aftermath doubly remotely, via computer screen via on-board camera.
The investigators from Stanford and NYU spent nine months conducting interviews with those affected by drone warfare, reviewing media reporting, consulting experts and humanitarian and medical workers. Those affected are, of course, mainly civilians.
The investigators summarised:

those interviewed for this report… described how the presence of drones and capacity of the US to strike anywhere at any time led to constant and severe fear, anxiety, and stress, especially when taken together with the inability of those on the ground to ensure their own safety. Further, those interviewed stated that the fear of strikes undermines people’s sense of safety to such an extent that it has at times affected their willingness to engage in a wide variety of activities, including social gatherings, educational and economic opportunities, funerals, and that fear has also undermined general community trust.

Drone attacks may not be happening everywhere all the time, but as one local put it,

even in the areas where strikes were less frequent, the people living there still feared for their lives.

The presence of drones was often constant — lightweight drones circling for hours before striking, or not.

Community members, mental health professionals, and journalists interviewed for this report described how the constant presence of US drones overhead leads to substantial levels of fear and stress in the civilian communities below. One man described the reaction to the sound of the drones as “a wave of terror” coming over the community. “Children, grown-up people, women, they are terrified. . . . They scream in terror.” Interviewees described the experience of living under constant surveillance as harrowing. In the words of one interviewee: “God knows whether they’ll strike us again or not. But they’re always surveying us, they’re always over us, and you never know when they’re going to strike and attack.” Another interviewee who lost both his legs in a drone attack said that “[e]veryone is scared all the time. When we’re sitting together to have a meeting, we’re scared there might be a strike. When you can hear the drone circling in the sky, you think it might strike you. We’re always scared. We always have this fear in our head.”

Psychological problems, too, are widespread, such as anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

A Pakistani psychiatrist, who has treated patients presenting symptoms he attributed to experience with or fear of drones, explained that pervasive worry about future trauma is emblematic of “anticipatory anxiety,” common in conflict zones. He explained that the Waziris he has treated who suffer from anticipatory anxiety are constantly worrying, “when is the next drone attack going to happen? When they hear drone sounds, they run around looking for shelter.” Another mental health professional who works with drone victims concluded that his patients’ stress symptoms are largely attributable to their belief that “[t]hey could be attacked at any time.”
…
Interviewees described emotional breakdowns, running indoors or hiding when drones appear above, fainting, nightmares and other intrusive thoughts, hyper startled reactions to loud noises, outbursts of anger or irritability, and loss of appetite and other physical symptoms. Interviewees also reported suffering from insomnia and other sleep disturbances, which medical health professionals in Pakistan stated were prevalent. A father of three said, “drones are always on my mind. It makes it difficult to sleep.”

Parents relate their dilemma as to whether they should send their children to school:

Another father stated that when his children go to school “they fear that they will all be killed, because they are congregating.” Ismail Hussain, noting similar trends among the young, said that “the children are crying and they don’t go to school. They fear that their schools will be targeted by the drones.”
…
These fears are not without a legitimate basis, as drones have reportedly struck schools in the past, resulting in extensive damage to educational infrastructure, as well as the deaths of dozens of children.

The deterioration in education led interviewees to express concern for the future.

We lag behind because of our lack of education and lack of facilities in our area. . . .We want our girls and boys to get [a] proper education. [We want] someone to become a doctor, someone to become an air pilot, but just because of drone attack[s] we can’t take them to school, can’t allow them.

The constant attacks have affected cultural practices such as funerals.

Because drone strikes have targeted funerals and spaces where families have gathered to offer condolences to the deceased, they have inhibited the ability of families to hold dignified burials. Interviewees stated that they stayed away from funerals for fear of being targeted. According to Ibrahim Qasim of Manzar Khel, “[t]here used to be funeral processions, lots of people used to participate. . . . But now, [the US has] even targeted funerals, they have targeted mosques, they have targeted people sitting together, so people are scared of everything.” Firoz Ali Khan provided a similar account, noting that “not many people go to funerals because funerals have been struck by drones. Many people are scared. They don’t go to funerals because of their fear.” Dawood Ishaq, who lost both his legs in a strike, confirmed this, explaining that people are reluctant to go to the funerals of people who have been killed in drone strikes because they are afraid of being targeted.

This is in addition to the problem that,

because the Hellfire missiles fired from drones often incinerate the victims’ bodies, and leave them in pieces and unidentifiable, traditional burial processes are rendered impossible.

The report also reviewed the significant evidence of double-bombing tactics, whereby a target is hit by a missile — and then again, shortly afterwards

Evidence also indicates that such secondary strikes have killed and maimed first responders coming to the rescue of those injured in the first strike.
…
Those interviewed for this report were acutely aware of reports of the practice of followup strikes, and explained that the secondary strikes have discouraged average civilians from coming to one another’s rescue, and even inhibited the provision of emergency medical assistance from humanitarian workers.

It is not just emergency workers who are unwilling to approach a bombing scene; ordinary people are unwilling even to approach each other to gather in groups.

Many said that they were afraid even to congregate in groups or receive guests in their home. Umar Ashraf, who has noticed the changes in community dynamics over the past few years, observed that “[W]e do not like to sit like this, like friends [gesturing in front of him at the small circle of interviewer, interviewee, and translator], because we have fear, since [they] usually attack people when they sit in gatherings.” Sameer Rahman, whose family’s house was hit in a strike, confessed that “there are barely any guests who come anymore, because everyone’s scared.” He also stated that he does not allow his children to visit other people’s homes when they have guests over, because he believes having guests makes it more likely that the house will be attacked.

The report continues in this vein for over 150 pages, carefully and methodically combining the evidence from interviewees with legal analysis and media reports to obtain an overall picture of the effect of drones on everyday life — an effect which can fairly be described as a life of continual terror.
* * *
The efforts of Melburnians on that Sunday — and, of course, efforts are not limited to Melbourne —  spontaneously turning out in the tens of thousands to reclaim the streets, was a beautiful and reassuring manifestation of collective humanity and love. We are rightly outraged at having to live in fear. We demand the ability to go about our lives as we please without interference and without fear — least of all, the fear in extremis of sudden abduction, rape and death.
But in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is also fear. And it is not just fear that a person might be,  late at night after a social gathering with friends, abducted off the street by a sexual predator and killed.
It is not just late at night — for the drones circle 24 hours a day without attacking, until they fire missiles without warning.
It is not just on the street — for the missiles have been known to hit bus depots, schools, and funerals.
It is not a one-off or rare event — during his term so far President Obama alone has ordered at least 292 strikes in Pakistan alone.
It is not just social gatherings with friends — for congregations of almost all types have been targeted, from schools, to funerals, to friends in one’s home; and delay-repeat missile tactics incinerate medical and rescue personnel as well.
It is not one person — the best estimates, which are difficult to make, report deaths from drone strikes in the range 2,600-3,300, including 176 children; with “high-level” terrorists estimated at 2% of the casualties.
And it is not just fear — it is mass neurosis. Disorders such as anticipatory anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder are seen on a tragically vast scale.
And, finally, it is not the work of one pathological individual, but the military forces of democratic nations that are inflicting this suffering. Unlike the difficulties of apprehending a lone psychopathic individual, this suffering can be stopped simply by not inflicting it.
Now, Australia has drones, but they are not armed — yet. For the moment they are used “only” for surveillance, targeting and “observing patterns of life” — which means hovering  24/7 above over a village with a machine known to those below to rain sudden death and terror. But in addition, US drones have fired missiles at the direction of Australian forces, and the Australian military is enthusiastic about these machines. One Wing Commander effuses to the ABC “It’s like crack cocaine, a drug, for our guys involved — just can’t get enough of it”. Australian troops pose enthusiastically for photographs with their drones. It does not exonerate Australians to say that the drones belong to the US — Australian forces use them, support them, and work closely with them, and with the US and NATO war effort in general.
If we are a people decent enough to turn up in the tens of thousands to restore hope and overcome fear, on the death of one woman — then are we a people decent enough to stop the suffering of constant death, grief, and terror being inflicted upon hundred of thousands of families in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
As Melbourne so profoundly expressed, we should not have to live looking at each other down the barrel of a gun. And there is an easy way to make a start. Stop shooting the gun, and put it down.