Antony Loewenstein

My book review in yesterday’s Weekend Australian newspaper: 

After Hastings’s scoop, many mainstream journalists went after him, instead of questioning McChrystal’s credentials. Hastings was attacked for breaking the “gentlemen’s agreement” that existed between reporters and the military. Journalists would received scoops and access if they played this cosy game.

The New York Times published articles praising McChrystal and urged the president to keep him in his role. Largely ignored was the fact that his aggressive counter-terrorism policies were a key factor in surging violence against civilians and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hastings, who died in a car crash in Los Angeles in 2013, was contemptuous of uncritical, embedded journalism that cared little about the lives of Afghans and Iraqis.

Australian war correspondent John Martinkus shares much with Hastings’s worldview. His new book, Lost Copy, is a damning indictment of what we don’t see and hear about the never-ending “war on terror”.

A veteran of conflicts in East Timor and Aceh, Martinkus spent years reporting for SBS’s Dateline. In an introduction, he argues that the positive stories told by journalists about Afghanistan, and Australia’s presence in Helmand and Oruzgan, are fantasy.

“The truth of the situation that governments, militaries and some sections of the press that unquestioningly supported them spent so many years trying to deny has been revealed,” he writes. “But very few are telling that story now.”

Today the Taliban controls more territory than at any time since 2001. This is the reason Donald Trump gives for occupying the country indefinitely, but Martinkus cites historical examples to show how greater use of US drones and CIA covert actions will only inflame the situation. Indefinite war, benefiting arms dealers and private contractors, is the result.

Lost Copy is a lesson in the ugly alliances forged by Washington in its futile attempts to control Afghanistan. Perhaps there’s no better example than Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, backed by the CIA in May 1979. Martinkus calls him a “religious fanatic and heroin trafficker” who, “despite his outspoken and virulent anti-American views, received between a third and a half of all American aid to the [anti-Soviet] rebels, valued at hundreds of millions of dollars”.

In 1992, Hekmatyar’s rebels “laid waste to large parts of Kabul, with rocket attacks being one of his favourite tactics”. A former ally of al-Qa’ida and the Taliban, Hekmatyar is now rebuilding his political career in Kabul.

Martinkus directly links the American indulgence and patronage of individuals such as Hekmatyar to the country’s ongoing chaos. Travelling independ­ently gives him unrivalled access to hidden secrets. He documents cases of American and foreign forces denigrating, destroying, burning or cursing Muslim bodies.

“Somewhere in the US military, people were identifying Islamic, Afghan and Iraqi customs and recommending ways to violate them, with a frequency that was only slowly becoming apparent as occasionally an incident was caught on film or witnessed or photographed.”

Martinkus claims many of these stories never saw the light of day: “Countless more were dismissed on the ground by sceptical and partisan reporters as the complaining of those with an agenda. Others were blocked at an editorial level by a press, in the US, the UK and Australia, that by and large supported both wars [Iraq and Afghanistan].”

The risk of “taking sides” in war reporting is expertly dissected by Martinkus. When he was kidnapped in Baghdad in 2004, across the road from the Australian embassy, he was condemned by then foreign minister Alexander Downer and also by right-wing bloggers. Some even claimed he had faked his ordeal. On his release, Martinkus said he did not support the US occupation of Iraq, which made him a prime target for attack. “To even broach the topic of what was motivating the Iraqi insurgents,’’ he writes, “was enough to bring down a wave of condemnation for being seemingly sympathetic with terrorists.”

Lost Copy is a fine example of war reportage, sceptical of official claims and committed to honest journalism. Martinkus provides inspir­ation to the next generation of reporters who want to move past the military PR to document the endless wars consuming the Middle East and Africa.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist. He will be at the Sydney Writers Festival, April 30 to May 6. swf.org.au

Lost Copy: The Endless Wars: Iraq and Afghanistan

By John Martinkus
Australian Scholarly Publishing, 272pp, $39.95

I was recently in the UK researching the “war on drugs” for my forthcoming book, out in 2019, on the global drug war.

While I was there my film Disaster Capitalism screened in Newcastle in the north-east of the country. Sponsored by the great group, Recovering Justice, there was a full house to watch the film and then discuss the drug war and the film’s themes.

Here’s the review of the evening, written by Rugged University’s Alex Dunedin, along with the links between the drug war and disaster capitalism.

Before the event, I was interviewed by You Die Twice, an outlet that covers alternative culture in the north-east of England:

My film Disaster Capitalism is currently screening across the world.

It showed for the first time in the US in late March at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. After the film, there was a Q&A and it later broadcast on the great Disaster Politics podcast (where I appeared last year):

Take a listen to the live panel discussion after the US Premiere of Disaster Capitalism (@DisasterCapFilm) in New York City on March 27, 2018 at the Columbia Journalism School (@ColumbiaJourn). The panel includes the film’s director Thor Neureiter (@ThorNeureiter) and disaster experts Chernor Bah (@Cee_Bah), Jeff Schlegelmilch (@JeffSchlegel), Sarah Baker from Healthcare Ready (@HC_Ready), and is moderated by Jonathan Sury (@JonathanSury) from the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute (@Columbia_NCDP).

A key aim of my Disaster Capitalism film with director Thor Neureiter is to highlight the darker sides of aid (without arguing that aid should stop). There are currently many screenings of the film around the world from Australia to the US and UK (with many more to follow).

Aid Watch is a wonderful group that challenges the often wasteful and opaque nature of aid – they’re sponsoring a film screening in May alongside Jubilee Australia – and they’ve written an insightful overview of the movie:

Ever wondered why some societies seem to exist in a permanent disaster? Some would have us believe it’s their fault. This film lays blame squarely at what it calls ‘disaster capitalism’ – an aid-industrial complex that solidifies vulture capital, aid agencies, ‘donor’ governments and local cronies. The bloc is shored-up by the military but mainly works at the level of policy. Its genius is in converting disaster into opportunity, exploiting vulnerabilities to force a permanent ‘transformation’.

The idea is not new. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 the World Bank saw its opportunity for ‘shock therapy’, as WB official Jeffrey Sachs called it. Naomi Klein named the concept back in 2007, most graphically focusing on the aftermath of the 2005 New Orleans flood. In 2015 Antony Loewenstein extended the concept, with a focus on profit and securitisation, and now his film takes the concept further, into the murky world of ‘development assistance’.

Best-selling journalist and author Antony Loewenstein joins award-winning filmmaker Thor Neureiter, along with co-producers Media Stockade, on a six-year investigation into this world and the ramifications of disaster capitalism in Afghanistan, Haiti and Papua New Guinea.

The film takes us along today’s global frontiers of ‘disaster capitalism’, from Afghanistan, to Haiti to Papua New Guinea (PNG).

In Afghanistan we encounter the disaster of the US ‘hearts and minds’ reconstruction effort, larger than the Marshall Plan. The film exposes new US efforts to control the country’s corrupted and coercive mining sector, ironically to compensate for US beneficence as occupier. In Haiti, aid inflows seal deals between the government and post-disaster carpet-bagging investors. The film shows how local people are compulsorily shunted from shanties to industrial estates, to capture their labour for world factories, at knock-down wages. And finally, the film takes us to PNG, the largest recipient of Australia’s aid largess. Mining again is the key, with a focus on Bougainville, and Australia’s role in fuelling the war over the Panguna copper mine, and subsequently in trying to reopen it. Again, aid offers renewed disaster.

Across these countries and very different situations the focus is on how aid is used – not on how it could be used. Yet it remains agnostic – the situation is bleak, yet the possibilities remain. One of the films great strengths is in the way it portrays the people and organisations it engages with – a mining campaign group in Afghanistan, shanty-dwellers in Haiti, community landholders in Bougainville. Their strength is an inspiration and an indication of how true democracy and self-determination can prevail, against corrupted elites, hooked on disaster capitalism. The film advances this cause, exposing this increasingly familiar mode of domination, and how people contest it.

I’ve written a long essay/memoir in the latest edition of leading Australian literary journal, Meanjin, on Judaism, Israel/Palestine, human rights and modern identity.

Think: Digital Futures is a great program on Sydney’s 2SER radio. I contributed to its latest episode:

When you think about Puerto Rico—decimated by Hurricane Maria, a debt crisis and the longest power blackout in US history—most people see destruction. To a small group of cryptocurrency millionaires, it’s a chance to build a new type of society from scratch. A society built on blockchain technologies.

We chat to Dr Pip Ryan (University of Technology Sydney) and Nathan Waters (founder of Peerism) about what a blockchain based society might look like. Then we speak to journalist Antony Loewenstein about whether this is just a case of disaster capitalism in disguise.

My investigation in the Sydney Morning Herald/Melbourne Age:

The legal pursuit in Israel of alleged sexual predator Malka Leifer took a strange turn this week.

As she fought extradition attempts by Victoria Police over 74 charges of child sexual abuse, the 54-year-old first gained, then lost the support of influential Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman.

Grossman is a highly respected rabbi in Israel. He was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement in 2004 – Israel’s highest cultural honour – and he’s the founder and head of Migdal Ohr, a major NGO that helps children and underprivileged teens across Israel.

But last week, in a surprise appearance before the Jerusalem district court, he pledged to monitor Leifer under house arrest if the judge agreed to her release from police custody.

It was “humiliating”, he claimed, for Leifer to remain incarcerated, and bad for her mental health.

The court apparently agreed and authorised her release.

Leifer is a former teacher and principal at Melbourne’s ultra-orthodox Adass Israel girls’ school, who fled Australia with the aid of the Adass community after her alleged offending was revealed.

One of Leifer’s alleged victims, Melbourne-based Dassi Erlich, was gutted at the court’s decision.

“We are trying so desperately to hold onto hope and trying to desperately see justice. We want to hold onto the fact that we will see her back in Australia one day,” she said.

However, early this week, Grossman reversed his position and withdrew support for Leifer, citing the perception that his backing had been “interpreted as supporting an attempt to avoid trial”.

There are many confounding aspects of this case including the role of Rabbi Grossman.

Grossman has assisted accused sexual predators before, including Breslov Rabbi Eliezer Berland who fought extradition to Israel from South Africa.  Grossman went to South Africa twice and argued for Berland to be given bail.

Ultimately, Berland was sentenced in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court in 2016 after admitting to one assault and two counts of indecent acts.

So why did Grossman back away from Leifer?

Multiple sources in both Australia and Israel said the backlash against the rabbi’s decision to support Leifer was immediate. Donors, staff and some board members of his Migdal Ohr organisation objected to his move on social media, and directly to the organisation.

One source said that he personally knew people who had contacted board members to complain, only to be told they were sullying the reputation of a fine man.

However a social media campaign involving Australian and American activists and a number of Australian rabbis put moral pressure on the rabbi. An open letter addressed to Grossman said Leifer’s alleged crimes had “caused untold pain and suffering”.

“Your conduct in this matter raises many serious questions … By involving yourself in legal proceedings which have nothing to do with you for the purpose of supporting an alleged multiple rapist and child sexual abuser and in showing no regard for the pain and suffering of her alleged victims, you are guilty of not only gross Rabbinic overreach but have also committed a huge Chillul Hashem (desecration of G-d’s name), which has brought the entire Jewish community into disrepute,” the letter read.

More than that, sources say, was the threat to the funding of Migdal Ohr.

Rabbi Grossman’s group claims to endorse child protection, and sources have told Fairfax Media many key funders, particularly in the United States, demanded that Grossman retract his support for Leifer.

About half the funding for Grossman’s organisation comes from the Israeli government, and the rest from Jewish communities from across the world including Canada, Brazil and Britain and 10 percent from the Jewish Agency for Israel. The United Israel Appeal Australia (UIA) donates money to the Jewish Agency but a representative from the UIA in Melbourne told Fairfax Media that “we’re transparent about where our money goes” and none had ever been sent to Migdal Ohr.

“Rabbi Grossman didn’t have a moral realisation”, the source said. “He didn’t issue an apology for the hurt caused [to Leifer’s victims.]”

I was interviewed last week in Australian media outlet Crikey by Charlie Lewis about my Disaster Capitalism film:

The documentary Disaster Capitalism opens with the earthquake in Haiti, 2010. Through the ghostly fog of CCTV video, we see the ground furiously shake buildings into dust. Fronted by Australian journalist and writer Antony Loewenstein and shot over six years, in collaboration with director Thor Neureiter, Director of Video at Columbia University, the film visits and revisits three countries — Haiti, Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea —  riven by various crises and trapped in a cycle of dependence on Western aid. This cycle, Loewenstein tells Crikey, is no accident.

“I thought it was important to look at how these countries are connected politically and financially, in other words, how certain conditions are designed to keep poor countries poor,” he said.

Filming began in 2011, when Loewenstein was working on a book of the same name.

“The aim wasn’t to spend six years making the film,” Loewenstein said. “But there is something to be said for seeing how these countries evolve over six years. All that’s really changed is that PMs or presidents have come and gone, but they remain economically broken and I thought it was important to look at why.”

Cycle of dependency

A key factor in the Disaster Capitalism  is that these countries are not, and never have been, without the resources to pay their own way. Papua New Guinea and Afghanistan in particular are rich in minerals. Loewenstein says this is part of the problem.

“Trump has been very keen to really  harness and expand the mining industry if Afghanistan, and they’re tying aid to that … So aid is being used to not help people, but to enrich foreign businesses. Look at PNG, it has huge resources, and after several decades of those being exploited, it hasn’t helped the locals one bit.”

Aid not only enriches Australian business interests, Loewenstein says, but backs up political aims.

“Aid to PNG has been increased, in my view, to provide a bribe to the PNG government to house the refugees we don’t want,” he said.  “Obviously not all of the aid money is related to the pacific solution, but aid has gone up since it was revitalised under Labor.”

And the oversight ensuring that aid isn’t misspent or funnelled towards corruption, he says, is weak.

Missing Oversight

“People in government will tell you there’s lots of oversight and reporting with aid. But I think the problem is that there’s almost no political cost to [Western politicians] if Afghanistan’s aid doesn’t do its job — no one is going to lose their seat over that.”

Part of this stems from those bodies tasked with aid oversight — such as the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) — who expose the misuse of aid, have their findings ignored.

“[SIGAR] do amazing work and deliver important reports, and what happens? They’re largely ignored … Obama promised to make the system more transparent and open, and did nothing in his eight years. So I think there has to be more of a political cost when aid money isn’t just ineffective, but governments know that it’s actively going to corruption.”

This oversight is even weaker in Australia, where there is currently no equivalent to SIGAR.

“There are senate committees and politicians who ask these questions, so oversight exists, but it’s weak, doesn’t get much of a voice, and get’s almost no media attention.”

What’s next?

Loewenstein says that many of the worst elements effecting aid may, paradoxically, lead to improving the debate.

“The debate Trump has started, ironically enough, asks the question: is more aid automatically a good thing? The argument from the left has traditionally been that we need more money and support for the poor of the world, and what I’m saying is, after 30, 40, 50 years, these countries are not improving. You have to ask why.”

Further, Loewenstein hopes the current sexual assault scandal afflicting Oxfam — in which aid workers were found to be exploiting vulnerable women — may help illustrate one of the fundamental problems with the current international aid system.

“A lot of other orgnisations are doing the same thing, and hopefully this makes people more aware of what happens when the relationship between aid giver and aid recipients is really unhealthy,” he said.

“So what I hope comes out of this, and it’s so obvious, but far too often aid is administered without asking the people on the ground what they want. You’d be amazed how rarely that happens.”

Broadcast rights for Disaster Capitalism have been sold to several European territories and screenings can be organised through Demand Films.

This morning I was interviewed on one of Melbourne’s best breakfast radio programs, Triple R Breakfasters, about Disaster Capitalism (after a very successful public screening in the city last night):

My investigation in Foreign Policy:

MANILA, Philippines — The murdered man lay in a pool of his own blood. At around 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 22, two men on motorcycles shot Manny “Buddy” Wagan outside his small shop selling junk metal just outside Manila. He was killed instantly with two bullets to the head. A witness recalls seeing the killers get off their bikes, approach Wagan, and shoot him at point-blank range — a common method of execution in the Philippines. Police called the case a “death under investigation.”

It has become a familiar sight in the Philippines since President Rodrigo Duterte took power in June 2016 and launched his war on drugs. As Wagan’s corpse was photographed, examined, and eventually removed by police, young children stood speechless with their parents. A relative of the deceased began weeping loudly. Onlookers shot video and photos with their smartphones. Once Wagan’s body was taken to the morgue, a man lit a solitary candle on the ground beside a puddle of congealed blood. It was just another bloody evening in Manila, a city that has seen a massive spike in drug war-related violence.

It is impossible to say with complete certainty that Wagan was killed because of his drug use or connection to the narcotics trade. But over the past 18 months, many victims of Duterte’s war on drugs have been innocent, only tangentially involved in the drug world, or simply users of crystal meth. And as with thousands of other deaths, the police investigation into Wagan’s killing is unlikely to be properly conducted.

Wagan will end up a mere statistic in a brutal war that has received support from U.S. President Donald Trump, fierce opposition from the global human rights community, and largethough diminishing backing from the Filipino people, especially those in communities most affected by the government’s extrajudicial killings. Duterte has created an effective social media army, with the help of Facebook, to bully enemies and rally his followers. And the country’s war against the Islamic State has brought international backing for the Duterte government.

The exact number of people who have died in Duterte’s war is unclear. The police suggested in October 2017 that only one person had been killed extrajudicially since July 1, 2016, a claim ridiculed by both local and foreign rights groups. The real figure could be as high as 20,000. In January, Human Rights Watch saidmore than 12,000 drug suspects had been killed, mostly the poor in urban areas from either police operations or vigilante-style killings — sometimes by plainclothes police.

The Philippine government has repeatedly violated international law because it does not hold fair trials, or any trials, before executing its citizens. After a brief lull in deaths in late 2017, the last months have seen a sharp upturn in drug war killings.

Duterte has created a culture of impunity, learned from his years as mayor of Davao City on Mindanao Island, where the so-called Davao Death Squad committed multiple rights abuses (with echoes of vigilante violence from the U.S.-backed, anti-communist purges many decades ago). In February, the president told soldiers to shoot female rebels in their genitals.

The government claims that its drug war has drastically reduced crime across the country, alleging that fewer than 4,000 suspects have been killed. The crime reduction narrative was confirmed anecdotally when traveling around Manila; many citizens told me that they felt safer walking the streets at night and less afraid of gang violence. But this apparent reduction in unrest in some areas has come at a tremendous cost, especially for the country’s poorest citizens. When I visited Binondo in Manila, one of the bloodiest areas during the drug war, the first thing I noticed was not violence but extreme poverty. Residents lived in tin sheds and defecated in the nearby Pasig River. Meth, known as “shabu” in the Philippines, was still sold in the area. A printed sign asked residents to call a police hotline to report drug activity.

Unlike other global drug war hot spots — such as Honduras, where vast sections of the country are unsafe, and Guinea-Bissau, where narcotraffickers control parts of the state apparatus — the Philippine drug war has targeted society’s most disadvantaged groups. Other parts of Manila, sprinkled with Starbucks and high-rise office buildings, do not witness state-sanctioned murders on the street.

Not many local groups have challenged Duterte’s murderous policy, but there are a few human rights lawyers attempting to bring justice to the aggrieved victims. The Center for International Law (CenterLaw) in Manila has bravely taken on five cases related to the drug war. Gil Anthony Aquino, one of the center’s attorneys, told me that 99 percent of such cases would never go to court. He acknowledged that he and his colleagues have taken precautions to protect their personal safety, as the government has become increasingly brazen in its attacks on opponents, including trying to shut down critical media by force if necessary. During the Duterte era, at least five journalistshave been murdered while working, mostly in Mindanao. According to the International Federation of Journalists, the Philippines is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for reporters.

The lawyers have therefore been strategic in their work against the president. “We don’t personally attack Duterte,” Aquino said. “We don’t call for his ouster. We skirt around the issues. We try to get accountability from the police.” Aquino’s colleague, Gilbert Andres, explained how Duterte’s drug war was inspiring other nations, including Indonesia, to implement similarly harsh policies against drug suspects. Andres said Duterte had created a dangerous atmosphere in his country. “If you’re a drug suspect, you don’t deserve rights,” he said of Duterte’s mindset. “If you’re an advocate for human rights, you’re an enemy of the state.”

Duterte’s presidential spokesman, Harry Roque, dismissed Human Rights Watch’s concerns in the Philippines because, he said, financier George Soros supported HRW and was a “lobby” against the country’s drug war. Duterte made the same argument in 2016. Roque was simply following the playbook against Soros perfected by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, using anti-Semitic imagery to conjure a global Jewish conspiracy run by the billionaire.

Andres is not oblivious to the dangers of narcotics; he has seen the tragic cost of drugs. “I lost my father, who was killed by a drug addict in Manila in 1989, so this is personal for me,” he said. But the lesson he took from that incident was that “human rights and crime busting can operate together.”

Both he and Aquino are critical of some local and international human rights groups that only document drug war killings and don’t invest in local lawyers to defend victims’ families, prosecute trigger-happy police, and litigate the thousands of crimes that have occurred in the last 18 months. “At the end of the day,” Andres argued, “INGOs [international nongovernmental organizations] should put their hands where their mouths are by helping local lawyers in whatever way. In the end, it is us local lawyers who will risk life and limb for human rights.”

One of the five drug-related cases taken on by CenterLaw involves the police murder of Emiliano Blanco (and others) on Nov. 30, 2016, in highly suspicious circumstances. Residents of the area where he was killed filed a writ of amparo in 2017 — a legal concept originating in Mexico to safeguard individual rights — to protect their community from any further police-led violence and intimidation. The action was partially led by Blanco’s brother, Francisco Blanco Jr., who is now the primary guardian for his brother’s 7-year-old son.

Francisco Blanco was defiant but scared. At times, he was on the verge of tears when describing his brother’s death and tough life. He acknowledged that his brother was a drug user but said he had surrendered to police months before his death. Since the drug war began, police and district heads have collated “watch lists” of suspected drug users, a dangerous and secretive practice that has led to thousands of killings.

He now faces constant police harassment and threats to his life, a common problem for family members of victims. “If I was there on the night of the murder, I would have been killed for sure,” he said. Police visited him a few months later, gesturing to suggest they’d slit his throat and asking him, “Do you want the same fate as your brother?”

Until there is a legal remedy for the Duterte government’s gross human rights abuses, including police being held accountable for their violent crimes, citizens will remain in a precarious position. With few viable options available to victims, and the threat of retribution if they launch legal challenges, it’s not surprising that so few cases are being pursued. Those that have been filed are a crucial check on government abuses.

Blanco’s case is now winding through the courts, and CenterLaw hopes to get resolution this year. The government’s solicitor general, Jose Calida, has condemned the attempt to use a writ of amparo, claiming it would set a “dangerous precedent” and could be used as a “tool by drug personalities in order to ‘fish’ for evidence in the guise of protecting their human rights.” Calida is a defender of Duterte and argues that law enforcement would be impeded in their drug war investigations and the legal move would allow “groundless” accusations against police.

For all the country’s flaws, the Philippine courts are one of the few relatively independent institutions left in the Duterte era, so Blanco’s case still has a chance. Others do, too. Local human rights lawyers desperately need more international backing for such litigation. Without it, they won’t be able to continue their dangerous but necessary work.

Last week in Sydney was the first public screening of my film, Disaster Capitalism. Director Thor Neureiter was in New York but co-producers Media Stockade were there along with a solid audience. There will be many more public screenings in Australia, the US and beyond soon. After the film, we held a Q&A around aid and development plus journalism in conflict zones. It was recorded by Sky News TV and broadcast last weekend. Here’s how they described the event:

The Walkley Foundation has held its first Walkley Talk for the year at the State Library of NSW. The event featured a screening of independent documentary film Disaster Capitalism by journalist Antony Loewenstein. The screening was followed by a robust discussion on aid in conflict zones, revealing how the supply of aid to those in need isn’t always as transparent and ethical as it seems. The panel included the filmmaker himself, along with head of journalism at Macleay College and former foreign correspondent Monica Attard, and journalists Hugh Riminton and Yaara Bou Melhem.

The conversation touched on the role of journalists in delivering accurate public interest news from war zones, and holding NGOs and aid organisations accountable when bringing the reporters on the ground in the first place. It explored the corruption and conflict rampant in countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, and Lebanon, and implications for the media and global community, who may all too often be switching off the television to avoid distressing news. The discussion also offered an insight into the world of freelancing and war reporting, while challenging the concepts of international assistance and development through the perspectives of investigative journalists.

My story in Australian magazine Crikey:

President Rodrigo Duterte has maintained a firm grip on the Philippines since being elected in July 2016. Although public support is slipping, due partly to the brutality unleashed by his “war on drugs”, which has seen up to 20,000 people killed in 18 months, the general population still backs the leader. But the violence has done little to change the support of America and Australia for Duterte’s conflict against ISIS in the Philippines.

Yet dissent is rising. During a recent visit to the Philippines to investigate the country’s drug war, I saw posters of Duterte with a Hitler moustache. “Dictator” and “Fascist” were written below his name in Tagalog — “Fight!” It was a message from the country’s biggest labour union. It was strong and direct, a sign of resistance. I saw, too, countless pro-Duterte posters in this battle of propaganda.

Duterte has used social media brilliantly to rally his supporters and denigrate his opponents. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this movement, largely ignored in the West, is how Facebook actively assists political campaigns around the world and then works with winning candidates to harness its online tools. BuzzFeed recently exposed this practice in authoritarian Cambodia, and Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany Party had Facebook assist its campaign for the 2017 general election. A former Republican digital strategist runs the Facebook global government and politics team in the US.

In the Philippines, Duterte’s media team weaponised trolling against its critics. Countless fake accounts attacked and threatened anybody who questioned the President. At the presidential palace, I asked Duterte’s communications undersecretary, Lorraine Badoy, if her department had any connection with Facebook officials. She said it hadn’t, and claimed that the many pro-government, online activists weren’t paid by the government. Badoy used language reminiscent of Donald Trump’s allegations of “fake news” regarding how Western media reported so severely on the drug war. This was an “internal problem”, she said.

Duterte’s war on drugs has become, like in every other nation where a drugs war is waged, an onslaught against the poor. Virtually no wealthy drug users or dealers have been arrested or killed, but thousands have been murdered in the poorest neighbourhoods in and around Manila. This mirrors Honduras, West Africa, the US and other nations where violence is used to control and exterminate the most under-privileged in society. Every barangay (district) collates a list of suspected drug users or dealers, which is given to government authorities. It’s a secret list, impossible for citizens to see, and I was told that those on the list can never get off it.

Horrific stories have defined Duterte’s drug war, and I heard them constantly. With authorities intent on killing and imprisoning poor drug users, rehabilitation services are left to churches (though the government is even cutting funding to these essential services). One such service at the San Roque De Manila Parish seeks to assist drug addicts through lessons on the Jesus and the Bible.

Police senior inspector Ana Lourence Simbajon, who works at the church, said that she believed religion was an answer to drug use and, more tellingly, that she believed the current war on drugs was successful. “Since Duterte, and his fight against drugs because it’s a big malaise in society, street crime has declined”, she said. “Only the President focused on illegal drugs.”

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, author of Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe, writer/co-producer of the documentary, Disaster Capitalism and currently writing a book on the global “war on drugs”, out in 2019