Category Archives: corruption

corruption, politics

Corruptions of power?

Does power corrupt or is something else going on?

When the Green Party was set up in West Germany in the early 1980s, it had a radical platform of ecology, nonviolence, social justice and grassroots democracy. It included a radical plan for candidates elected to parliament: they would serve only one term of office, then step aside for another candidate. But that’s not the way it turned out. Several of the initial Green members of parliament decided to continue in office, flouting the party principle, seemingly in favour of their own careers. Was this a case of power leading to corruption?

            Time to quote the famous saying by Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It is widely quoted because it seems to capture something often observed in politics, and beyond. Have you ever known a mild-mannered colleague who, on becoming the boss, became an oppressive bully? But is there any research to confirm informal observations about what power does to people, research that might back up Acton’s saying?

            For decades, I’ve been fascinated by studies of power, and read books and articles by various authors. For example, Pitirim Sorokin and Walter Lunden in their 1959 book Power and Morality provided data that government and business leaders were much more likely to commit serious crimes than the average citizen. This sure fits Acton’s saying.

            Among academics, one of the most-cited books is Power by Steven Lukes. It is an insightful analysis of concepts, proposing that it is useful to view power in terms of one, two or three dimensions.

The one-dimensional view is the one we usually think of: the capacity to make others do things they don’t want to, for example the power of a boss to instruct an employee. The two-dimensional view includes what’s called non-decisionmaking. Sometimes employees don’t need to be asked. They try to anticipate what the boss wants and do it, without any conscious decision-making process. The three-dimensional view includes structural arrangements. A workplace run with a hierarchical system of bosses and subordinates sets the agenda for all decision-making.

Klaas’ view

A recent book by Brian Klaas challenged my long-standing views. In Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, Klaas raises a number of objections to the power-corrupts narrative. What if those seeking power were more prone to corruption? What if the earliest Green politicians were the members keenest to become candidates and obtain positions of status and influence? This would be a different process: it would be positions of power being especially attractive to those individuals most easily corrupted.

            Corruptible also challenged my view that books about power are pretty boring, of interest only to specialists. Corruptible is entertaining. Klaas travelled the world interviewing a range of people, including brutal dictators, trying to figure out what makes them tick. And he tells fascinating stories about corrupt individuals.

Recruitment to positions of power

Consider a police department, one where some officers are venal and brutal, taking opportunities to steal and to lord it over others. Think of the officer in Minneapolis in 2020 who held down George Floyd, while he cried out that he couldn’t breathe, for nine minutes until he died. This became infamous, but unfortunately there are lots of other incidents, large and small, in which officers abuse their power.


The beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police, 1991

            Is the problem that police, because they have power, become corrupt, or is it that corruptible individuals are attracted to joining the police? Klaas describes revealing research findings showing how some police job advertisements are more attractive to bullies.

            The usual response to police abuses is to institute training, to try to change the behaviour of the officers who have been hired. Klaas describes a different, additional idea: spend more effort recruiting individuals who are different, who normally would not be attracted to a police career, such as gentle, compassionate, honest individuals who are reluctant to use violence. The idea is to avoid recruiting people who are attracted to the sort of power wielded by police.

            Maybe the Greens should adopt this approach: encourage the members who are least interested in leadership roles to become candidates for office. Dream on!

Don’t (always) blame the powerful

Klaas offers another challenge to the idea that power tends to corrupt: he notes four things that are commonly overlooked when examining the actions of people in positions of power. The first is “dirty hands.” When Green parliamentarians have to choose between two evils, their vote will cause harm no matter what choice is made. In Australia, the Greens had to decide whether to support or oppose weak legislation on climate change. They either disappoint their supporters for compromising or are condemned for being blockers. Klaas tells of cases in which rulers have had to make decisions and, whatever choice they made, people would die. Not nice, and not about power corrupting.

            Another thing commonly overlooked is that those in power have more opportunities to do bad, so they look worse than others. Earlier I mentioned the study by Sorokin and Lunden about political and business leaders being higher than average in criminality. Maybe this wasn’t because they were corrupted by power but because they had the power to get away with murder.

            Yet another factor is that people in positions of power are closely observed, so they seem to be up to more mischief. Green parliamentarians receive a lot more scrutiny than ordinary members of the party, so anything they do that’s wrong is more likely to be discovered and publicised. Again, greater scrutiny of the powerful might give the mistaken impression that power corrupts. Klaas summarises his analysis:

“Corruptible people are drawn to power. They’re often better at getting it. We, as humans, are drawn to following the wrong leaders for irrational reasons linked to our Stone Age brains. Bad systems make everything worse. Yet, our intuitions about power can be flawed and mistaken. Four phenomena — dirty hands, learning, opportunity, and scrutiny — make it seem that power makes people worse than they actually are. We sometimes confuse the effects of power with intrinsic aspects of holding it.” (p. 148)


Brian Klaas

But power does tend to corrupt

After canvassing many challenges to Lord Acton’s comment about power, Klaas finally addresses it, and he agrees with him: power does tend to corrupt. Klaas cites studies showing that gaining power makes behaviour worse, with powerholders interrupting and stereotyping others more, and being more hypocritical.

            Klaas says that “for decades, the scientific literature on how power affects us was limited,” but he missed the work of one important researcher in the field, David Kipnis, who carried out careful experiments that showed the psychological effects of having power over others. For example, it makes the powerholder think their subordinates are not autonomous and hence deserve less respect, making them even more vulnerable to exploitation.

What to do

Most academic writings on power focus on analysis, on what it is and how it operates. Klaas does something else: he gives a lot of attention to solutions to the corruptions of power. As well as arguing for the recruitment of individuals who are less susceptible to temptation, he recommends choosing decision-makers by lot, called sortition, like the selection of jurors for a trial. With random selection, power-seekers have no better chances of being chosen than anyone else.


Me boss. You not.

            Yet another option is rotation of office-holders. This is just what the German Greens initially planned: elected parliamentarians would serve only one term of office. The Greens couldn’t do it on their own, but what if all parliamentarians were allowed only one term? This would cut corruption, because those in office for short periods are less susceptible to special interests.

            Decades ago, I corresponded with an unusual political activist in the US. He sent me leaflets and bumper stickers with the slogan “Re-elect nobody.” His idea was that voters should always vote against whoever was in office. If enough did this, members of Congress would serve only one term. Predictably, his idea never caught on. And it’s crazy to imagine the members of any parliament legislating to restrict their terms of office. They’re not likely to listen to anyone, even if Klaas has a great idea for getting better people into positions of power.

            Klaas notes that there are far more studies of disasters than of successes. Assuming for the moment that the Australian Greens opposing a carbon-price scheme in 2009 was a poor decision, Klaas’s point is that there has been much more attention to it than to good decisions by the Greens. He argues that as well as examining the results of decisions, there should be audits of decision-making processes.

“Better people can lead us. We can recruit smarter, use sortition to second-guess powerful people, and improve oversight. We can remind leaders of the weight of their responsibility. We can make them see people as human beings, not abstractions, before the powerful turn them into victims. We can rotate personnel to deter and detect abuse. We can use randomized integrity tests to catch bad apples. And if we’re going to watch people, we can focus on those at the top who do the real damage, not the rank and file.” (p. 246)

            I’ve mentioned just a portion of the fascinating material in Corruptible. Even so, there is one topic about which I would have liked more: getting rid of positions of power altogether. It’s often assumed that hierarchies are inevitable, and someone has to be the boss. But there are many examples of cooperative endeavours in which no individual has a great deal of formal power. This is a big topic, so I’ll just mention consensus decision-making techniques, worker co-ops like Mondragon in Spain, participatory budgeting like in Brazil, and all sorts of voluntary groups.

            So imagine this. The Greens, instead of trying to get their own members elected to parliament, push for a different sort of decision-making system, one in which no individuals have a great amount of power. Well, it hasn’t happened yet, but it can be added to the agenda for those concerned, like Lord Acton, with power and corruption.


Lord Acton

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Comment from “Alicia Verde,” who has close familiarity with the Greens New South Wales

The Greens have historically had fewer problems with power and corruption than other major parties. Our grassroots focus helps reduce these problems.

         However, in the Greens NSW we do occasionally experience those who abuse power, both those who are corrupted by power and those who are already corrupt and seek power for its own sake.

         As the Greens NSW Party grew, the career path to becoming an MP (member of parliament) became easier and more attractive, potentially attracting those who desire power, including those who want power for power’s sake. This is far more evident in the two larger Australian political parties for obvious reasons. This defined career path has led to several instances of prospective and elected MPs abusing power.

         Any new political party with no guarantee of electing an MP is less attractive to those who are driven to seek power.

         Greens NSW enshrined grassroots democracy in its constitution, rather than an MP-focused perspective. That was early on in our formation. I believe it would have been more difficult to achieve this with the current number of MPs.

         In the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Party Coalition, power rests in their party rooms, caucuses and party elites. In Australian politics, the Greens NSW are unique in successfully seeking to devolve power from MPs to grassroots membership at the heart of our constitution and processes.

         The Greens NSW constitution facilitates dealing with toxic MPs by any local group bringing a proposal to a state delegates council (held six times a year) that can reprimand or, as happened on at least one occasion, force an MP to resign. This is despite MPs having considerable soft power (instinctive deference to MP opinions) within the party. There is constant pushback against soft power due to a significant commitment to a non-hierarchical structure. Though this isn’t easy, the Greens’ consensus decision-making model can be effective in dealing with power-related toxicity, far more so than in the other major parties, that either rely on popular votes or have a structure that effectively silences voices from the membership.

         Yes, power does tend to corrupt, and yes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s inherent that MPs start to believe their own media, while sycophants prop up their egos. However, it really gets toxic when external groups with vested interests become involved, such as via political donations, which the Greens don’t take from corporations. These donations enshrine and feed power imbalances; the corporations need the imbalance to protect their influence. This is a really corrosive problem in Australian and Western democracies, corrupting even those who are not “power-hungry.”

         Given inherent problems with power corrupting groups, it is the robustness of the structures and processes underpinning organisations that count to derail the corrosive aspects of power.

         In Greens NSW, what helps to ensure that a non-hierarchical perspective is not eroded over time is the constitution and the willingness of state delegates councils to dictate policy, reprimand abuses or over-reach, plus party members’ wariness of those in power and of power itself. This has enabled maintaining policy positions on many very difficult issues and reduced the “protecting my re-election prospects” agenda where MPs are conflicted in difficult situations.

         On limited terms for MPs, this was contemplated in Greens NSW but rejected as it also serves to end the careers of some really great MPs. It can be a double-edged sword.

         Randomly selecting MPs would be effective if it were also for the entire parliament but this would mean abandoning our Westminster system for something far more progressive, which is not an option in the next few years I imagine! Sadly!

corruption, health, media, politics, science

A Covid cure?

Could ivermectin have ended the pandemic?

The official story on ivermectin. It’s a horse dewormer. There’s no evidence that it’s effective for treating Covid. It’s dangerous. The only people advocating it are loony right-wingers, conspiracy theorists. It should not be used. Only trust medical authorities. They say it’s no good.

            Ivermectin is toxic in another way: anyone who thinks it should be taken seriously as a possible treatment for Covid is suspect. They are deluded. In fact, just by discussing ivermectin, they harm public health by raising doubts about health authorities.

            So by treating positive claims about ivermectin seriously, I’m taking a risk of contributing to the spread of dangerous misinformation.

            Okay, I’m taking the risk. I read The War on Ivermectin by critical-care physician Pierre Kory, and I’m going to say a bit about the book. Kory tells a story so contrary to the official line that it is like entering an alternative reality, one in which health authorities turned away from a cheap, safe drug that could have ended the pandemic and saved millions of lives, indeed a drug that did save millions of lives in parts of the world where it was used extensively.

The Kory story

Medical authorities and the mass media denounced Kory when he publicly challenged the official Covid line, but for many he is a hero, fighting the establishment. I haven’t read all the research papers addressing ivermectin and other treatments for Covid, so I’m not proposing to offer an authoritative evaluation of Kory’s claims. Instead, I will just summarise some of his views and, based on my study of the politics of medicine, comment on whether I think these views are outlandish — or plausible. If Kory’s views are potentially correct, the attack on ivermectin may have enabled one of the greatest medical disasters ever.

            Kory was an emergency care physician, working in the US, handling the most acute cases in crisis conditions. Before Covid hit, he was involved in using intravenous vitamin C for sepsis, following the finding by Paul Marik, a leading figure in critical-care medicine. Discovering an effective treatment is one thing.


Paul Marik

More difficult is convincing practitioners and authorities, and Kory helped win allies to promote intravenous vitamin C.

            In this story, there’s something important to remember later. Doctors regularly prescribe drugs “off-label” when a drug is approved for one condition but is found useful for others. It’s not only legal to prescribe drugs off-label, it’s quite common. For example, doctors might note that a drug approved for heart problems is effective against migraines and prescribe it for migraine years before regulatory approval.

            At the beginning of the pandemic, Kory was one of many doctors putting heart and soul into treating patients on the frontlines, conferring with doctors internationally, learning everything he could about Covid, and especially searching for treatments. He helped form a group called the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance. The group posted a protocol for early treatment of Covid using methylprednisolone, vitamin C, thiamine, heparin, melatonin, zinc and vitamin D. Doctors using the protocol had great results, but the medical establishment and mass media showed no interest.

“The first six months of the FLCCC [in 2020] certainly resulted in better outcomes for many patients, but little did we know that we were teetering on the brink of a revolution. Paul was about to identify ivermectin, an inexpensive, incredibly safe, generic, repurposed drug as an immensely effective and potent therapy against SARS-CoV2. It was a discovery that could and should have saved lives and ended the pandemic — if not for one major problem: Repurposed drugs like ivermectin are generally off-patent, which means the manufacturer has lost exclusive marketing rights. In other words, competitors can make and sell dirt-cheap versions.” (p. 90)

            To cut a long story short, there was more and more evidence that ivermectin was effective against Covid, so effective that it was almost a miracle cure when used early and with strong enough dosages. Patients who were extremely sick recovered quickly. And there was other information. Places where ivermectin was introduced population-wide saw dramatic falls in Covid morbidity and mortality.

Opposition

Many medical authorities, it seemed, didn’t want to know. Rather than enthusiastically exploring possibilities for using and studying ivermectin, some hospital administrators refused to allow it to be used. A common argument was that the drug shouldn’t be offered until it had been proven effective in randomised controlled trials (RCTs).

            Kory kept a record of evidence, and co-authored a paper showing ivermectin’s effectiveness, including evidence from RCTs. He thought the evidence was overwhelming, and that ivermectin was so effective against Covid that it would end the pandemic then and there.

            The opposition grew stronger. There was hostile media coverage and official statements condemning ivermectin. Kory and others were dismissed from their positions. There was a publicity campaign to discredit ivermectin, introducing the label “horse dewormer.”

            Pharmaceutical companies ran their own RCTs, which showed limited benefits from ivermectin. Kory and others examined these studies and discovered serious flaws. For example, the dosages of ivermectin used were too small, or treatment was started too late. However, each negative RCT received saturation media coverage, while critiques of these studies, and RCTs supporting ivermectin, were ignored by the media.

            What was going on? For Kory, this was the most amazing thing he had ever seen. Here was a cheap, safe drug that seemed to work amazingly well against Covid, yet it was attacked, and so were those who advocated it. It even got to the stage that when doctors prescribed ivermectin for patients, some pharmacists refused to fill their orders, something Kory had never encountered in his career.

            When hospital administrators refused to allow patients to access ivermectin, an attorney named Ralph Lorigo took them to court, winning half the time. Kory reports that of 40 cases that Lorigo won, only 2 of the patients he represented died; of the 40 cases he lost, 39 of the patients died.

            The easiest explanation for the attack on ivermectin was that big pharma shaped the entire response to the pandemic. Pharmaceutical companies stood to make billions of dollars from expensive drugs and from vaccines. This massive income stream was in jeopardy if there was a cheap and safe treatment, so it had to be discredited. Big pharma has penetrated hospitals, medical associations, governments, media and tech companies, all of which acted to shut down ivermectin and its advocates.

A revealing table

One table in the book especially impressed me. It lists all the treatments for Covid ranked by treatment benefit. Here I only list a few illustrative items from the table.

ivermectin, 62%, 95 studies, $1
Casirivimab/imdevimab, 52%, 27 studies, $2100
Bamlanivimab/etesevimab, 51%, 15 studies, $1250
diet, 48%, 24 studies, $0
vitamin D, 36%, 109 studies, $1
Paxlovid, 34%, 28 studies, $529

The percentage figures indicate the estimated treatment benefit, 62% for ivermectin (higher is better). The next figure is the number of studies on which the benefit estimates are based, 95 for ivermectin. The final figure is the cost of a full course of treatment. Now guess which items from this list were recommended by the US government during the pandemic. Yep: Casirivimab/imdevimab, Bamlanivimab/etesevimab and Paxlovid. The same pattern holds for the full table. Only high-priced therapies were recommended, with one exception, acetaminophen, whose treatment benefit is negative, -28%.

Is it plausible?

The War on Ivermectin is filled with information, though with two weaknesses: there is no index and all the references are in the form of URLs. Even so, it is not hard to track down sources for most of the points covered.

            The book is also Kory’s personal story, well told in part due to co-author Jenna McCarthy. It is filled with Kory’s rage and anguish: his rage at the forces blocking a treatment for Covid and his anguish over the people who died unnecessarily.


Jenna McCarthy

            But are Kory’s central claims plausible? I haven’t studied the original articles in medical journals, for example to assess Kory’s claim that RCTs showing ivermectin is ineffective were flawed. However, I can assess some of the general claims that underpin his arguments. These are shocking enough.

1. Big pharma corruption To believe that Kory might be right, it is necessary to accept that large pharmaceutical companies are so corrupt and unethical that they will promote their own products and attack cheap alternatives at the expense of large numbers of lives. Some people just can’t accept this, but it’s plausible to me. One revealing bit of evidence is that many of the companies have been fined billions of dollars for illegal actions. Kory cites a book by Peter Gøtzsche, Deadly Medicine and Organised Crime.

Gøtzsche gives extensive documentation of corrupt behaviour by big pharma, and it is eye-opening. I read it and wrote a blog post about it. I had also read Sergio Sismondo’s book Ghost-managed Medicine, which offers a close-up account of big-pharma manipulations, and was so impressed that I wrote a review of it. With this background, believing there could be more criminal behaviour during the pandemic is not a stretch.

2. Fiddling RCTs Kory alleges that six important randomised controlled trials of ivermectin were fudged to give negative results. It is shocking to imagine that companies, and the researchers who work for them, would traduce scientific principles to obtain a desired result. This is shocking for anyone who believes scientists operate on a higher ethical plane than other mortals, but it was not surprising to me, having studied bias in science since the 1970s.

            Ben Goldacre wrote a book, Bad Pharma, in which he described the many ways in which companies manipulate research to give desired results. Reading Bad Pharma, and other similar accounts, gives reason to believe pharma-run ivermectin RCTs might have been fiddled.

3. Mass media partisanship Kory says the US mass media trumpeted every pharma RCT showing ivermectin was ineffective, while ignoring evidence that it is effective. How could the mass media — including prestigious outlets such as the New York Times — be so one-sided? This was no surprise to me. Critiques of the mass media abound, especially of the US mass media. For several years, there was even a magazine titled Lies of Our Times — I subscribed to it —with critical analyses of stories (and the absence of stories) in the New York Times and other US media. You can also turn to Project Censored for media analysis.

            Given the power of the pharmaceutical industry, with its vast profits and sway over the media, mass media partisanship during the pandemic was only to be expected.

4. Censorship Kory tells about having YouTube videos taken down and a host of other actions taken to silence anyone questioning the government line on Covid. There is a large body of evidence for this sort of censorship. I wrote about it, and a group of us reported on interviews with scientists and doctors who were censored. With the release of the Twitter files, more evidence has become available. Kory’s stories of being censored are typical features of this wider picture.

5. Neglect of generic drugs There is plenty of evidence for the neglect of cheap alternatives to drugs. One example is exercise as a way of addressing depression. Many studies show that exercise is just as effective against mild and moderate depression as antidepressants, and furthermore has beneficial side-effects — physical health — rather than negative ones. Yet this finding, rather than being trumpeted by the media and in medical circles, receives relatively little attention. Initially during the pandemic, evidence for the effectiveness of ivermectin was ignored. As Kory recounts, a full-scale attack began when ivermectin began to gain attention.

6. Political retractions When a scientific paper is exposed as fraudulent, for example based on manufactured data, journal editors may withdraw it. It is “retracted” and usually this means it is discredited. Just being wrong is not considered a sufficient reason for retraction, because many if not most scientific papers are wrong. However, in recent years, there has emerged a new sort of retraction, not because of fraud or gross error but because of hostility towards a paper based on disagreement with its findings. Sometimes there is a pretext for such retractions, such as conflict of interest, but these sorts of retractions are quite different from the usual sort. Kory’s claim that retractions of papers supporting ivermectin were unwarranted is compatible with evidence for “political retractions.”

7. Guilt by association One of the most effective attacks on ivermectin was to label it a horse dewormer. This is an example of guilt by association, in which a person or thing is stigmatised by being linked to something with negative connotations. Another example is claiming that scientists advocating ivermectin are right-wing. Kory says he and most of his FLCCC colleagues are liberals politically, yet the only media willing to report on their findings were identified as right-wing. By this association, Kory thus was tarred as right-wing. Ivermectin was caught in US left-right political polarisation.

Conclusion

The War on Ivermectin presents a shocking story. If we are to believe Kory and others in FLCCC, the actions of the pharmaceutical company and its allies — including medical authorities, governments and tech companies — have allowed the unnecessary deaths of millions of people, by discrediting the use of a cheap, safe and effective treatment for Covid, a treatment that could have stopped the pandemic in its tracks.

            I examined general claims underlying Kory’s arguments, for example that pharmaceutical companies are capable of corrupt actions on a large scale. To the extent that Kory’s story seems shocking, it is because such general claims are shocking, yet for every one of them there are ample precedents. In short, Kory’s arguments should not be dismissed out of hand simply because they clash with widespread beliefs, for example that decisions by medical authorities are always in the public interest. Instead, it is worth the effort to independently assess Kory’s claims carefully and systematically. Millions of lives were at stake with Covid, and millions more may be at risk in future pandemics.

            It might seem that Kory is proposing there is a giant conspiracy to serve big-pharma profits, but there is another way of thinking about the story.

The belief system in which salvation from Covid is provided by vaccines and expensive drugs can be likened to a paradigm, a way of understanding the disease and how to respond to it that shapes research priorities and policies. If you believe that only vaccines and proprietary drugs can be trusted and that “natural” remedies are inherently suspect, then claims about the benefits of ivermectin can be ignored, as they are bound to be bogus or, worse, they may discourage people from being vaccinated. This belief system serves the interests of big pharma, but it does not mean those who subscribe to it are consciously conspiring to hide the truth.

            Kory was previously an uncritical believer in the standard view of medicine. Pursuing the wellbeing of his patients led him into an alternative reality in which everything he thought he knew about medicine was turned on its head. He has provided his story so readers can decide whether to venture into this alternative reality.


Pierre Kory

            There is much more to The War on Ivermectin than I’ve been able to cover here, including hospital power plays, mass media bias and the politics of vaccination. One highlight is Kory’s account of the founding and operation of FLCCC in the face of powerful opposition. If you plan to help organise a challenge to a ruthless opponent during an emergency, you can learn a lot from the FLCCC’s methods and efforts. Just be prepared to lose your job and be labelled a conspiracy theorist.

Brian Martin, bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks to Tonya Agostini, Kelly Gates, Kurtis Hagen, Anneleis Humphries, Julia LeMonde, Susan Maret and Erin Twyford for helpful comments. None of them necessarily agree with Kory’s views or my own.

corruption, social dynamics, whistleblowing

Conspiracies are everywhere!

What’s going on with the alarm about conspiracy theories?

It seems that conspiracy theories have become a new, even urgent danger. There are numerous articles and commentaries decrying beliefs in seemingly implausible conspiracies, often holding these beliefs up to ridicule. Examples include that the moon landings were faked, that KFC has a secret lab producing genetically-mutated chickens, and that the world is ruled by alien shape-shifting lizards.

            What exactly is a conspiracy theory? Simply, it is a belief or claim that people are plotting to accomplish something. A conspiracy must involve at least two people secretly arranging to do something, most commonly for ethically dubious purposes. The “theory” part of the term just refers to an explanation. So a conspiracy theory is a proposed explanation for events based on the assumption that some people are covertly cooperating for a shared purpose, often one contrary to others’ interests.

Conspiracy theories are often dismissed as absurd ravings emanating from impressionable or paranoid minds. The most common way to discredit conspiracy theories in general is to refer to ones that seem absurd, at least on the surface. Is the US government really covering up information about visits by aliens?

By pointing to allegedly absurd beliefs, the very idea of a conspiracy theory is made to sound irrational. The assumption that conspiracy theories are inherently ridiculous has become so common that to call something a conspiracy theory has become a way to discredit it. The label “conspiracy theorist” has become a term of abuse.

Philosophers have a look

Looking more closely provides a different picture. Unbeknownst to most people, for many years philosophers have been debating claims about conspiracy theories. One set of philosophers argues that there are features of conspiracy theories that make them suspect, so they should be dismissed out of hand. For example, new evidence can never refute a conspiracy theory because the evidence is just part of the conspiracy — or so these philosophers say. They are called generalists because their assessments apply to conspiracy theories in general.

Another set of philosophers argues that conspiracy theories are not systematically different from any other explanation for events and that each conspiracy theory should be examined on its merits. They are called particularists: they argue it is wrong to dismiss explanations according to generic features.

            Particularists like to point out that there are plenty of actual conspiracies, ones that have been exposed and widely acknowledged. For example, in the Iran-Contra affair, the US Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran despite an embargo and used the money to fund rebels in Nicaragua that were falsely claimed to be independent.

Some people define conspiracy theories in more limited ways than I’ve indicated here. Whatever the definition, particularists would argue that the onus is on those who dismiss an explanation just because it is categorised as a conspiracy theory.

Whistleblowers

Having read arguments by generalists and particularists, I started thinking about what I know about conspiracies, and eventually reflected on the experience of whistleblowers. For decades I’ve been talking with whistleblowers, who are individuals who speak out in the public interest. A typical whistleblower is a conscientious worker in an organisation who notices something that seems wrong and reports it to the boss or someone else in authority. They might report a discrepancy in accounts, abusive behaviour, danger to workers or customers, or deceptive claims. After making the report, which in many cases means just doing their job, suddenly the worker starts experiencing adverse actions, which can be called reprisals. These include ostracism, petty harassment, rumour-mongering, denunciation, demotion, punitive transfer and/or dismissal. In nearly every case, superiors claim the actions taken against the worker are justified.

            The worker’s concerns might or might not be validated, but in quite a few cases they are, and most of those cases involve conspiracies. Occasionally just one manager is fiddling the books, but in many cases the fraud involves more than one: a conspiracy. In many cases, higher management knows what is going on and tolerates it. Then there are the reprisals, which often are coordinated. Another conspiracy.

Police conspiracies

In many police forces, it is common for officers to make false arrests. Someone talks back to them and they arrest them and then coordinate their lies to justify the arrest. When officers lie in court, this is called verballing. It is perfectly routine.

The worst thing a police officer can do is report on wrongdoing by another officer — the worst, that is, from the point of view of senior police. In what is called the police code of silence, officers are expected to remain silent when their co-workers steal from premises or take illegal drugs. Those actions might be wrong, but not as wrong as reporting on them.

            In Los Angeles on 19 March 1991, around midnight, a motorist named Rodney King was arrested after a car chase. During the arrest, he was badly beaten. Four officers were involved in the beating and more than a dozen others were at the scene, which was illuminated by a helicopter’s spotlight. This beating might never have been known to the public except that George Holliday, who was living nearby, was woken by the commotion, and recorded the beating on his newly purchased videocamera. Later, he took the videotape to the media. When it was broadcast on television, it caused a storm of outrage against the police. But were the police at the scene concerned? No, not a single one reported the beating. Nor did a single one of them testify in the subsequent court cases.

This sounds like a conspiracy. It happens all the time. The only difference in the beating of Rodney King was the videotape. Few police conspiracies are ever revealed. Only occasionally, as in the killing of George Floyd in 2020, does the non-local public become aware of police abuse. (My analysis of the beating of Rodney King.)


A still from George Holliday’s video of the beating of Rodney King

Developer conspiracies

Next consider property development. In Australia, there is rampant corruption at the local and state government level. Property developers influence politicians and government employees to rezone land, give building permissions, enable clearing of land and a host of other actions that benefit the few at the expense of the public. A play was written about corruption in Wollongong. It started off with a list of other local government areas that had been exposed for corruption. There’s no reason to think this sort of corruption occurs only in Australia. Every time, it involves a conspiracy.


A shot from the play “The table of knowledge,” about corruption in Wollongong

Corporate conspiracies

Advertising is all around us. Some of it is honest and straightforward, such as the price of bananas at the local fruit shop. However, much advertising, especially the more expensive varieties, is deceptive: using the most sophisticated persuasion techniques, it is designed to manipulate the desires of consumers. This is business as usual but, arguably, it involves conspiracies. Few workers in advertising agencies — who perhaps should be called conspirators — break ranks and explain in detail how they omitted information, massaged statistics and appealed to unconscious prejudices.

In pharmaceutical companies, scientists make choices that favour their employer’s drugs, for example by ignoring side effects, excluding certain subjects and using placebos with active ingredients. Then they recruit academics who were not involved in the research to be authors of publications about it. This is a massive deception that has led to harm to hundreds of thousands of patients. Surely it should count as conspiracy. Indeed, many of the biggest companies have been fined billions of dollars for their activities, though this is a small penalty considering their much larger profits. The few regulators who tackle big-pharma fraud certainly treat it as a conspiracy.

            Critics of conspiracy theories sometimes claim that big conspiracies cannot be maintained because too many people are involved. There are lots of contrary examples. Think of Volkswagen’s fraud about its emissions being low. None of the Volkswagen workers who knew about the fraud spoke up. It was only revealed by outside testing.

Surveillance conspiracies

Do you have a loyalty card at a supermarket, or regularly use a credit card when making purchases? Do you know that doing this enables the company to keep track of every purchase you make, and that your data might be sold to other companies, so that the advertising you see online is tailored to your interests? Data collection and sharing occurs all the time, usually without your knowledge. It’s a type of conspiracy. In some ways it’s in your interests, to better supply you with products and provide you with information about things you can buy. It can also be used to manipulate your preferences. Be assured that highly talented experts in psychology, marketing and data heuristics are working hard to collect and use your data without you taking much notice.

Governments also engage in surveillance, both of corporations and other governments, and of their own citizens. The US National Security Agency, which intercepts electronic communications around the world, was once so secret that even the massive agency was hardly known to the public. Edward Snowden’s revelations exposed some of the NSA’s activities. Still, it’s reasonable to say that the NSA and its Five Eyes partners (Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) operate as conspiracies against both external adversaries and their own citizens.

            Harmless? Hardly. If you live in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan or Pakistan, you would have reason to worry about being targeted by a drone strike. Military operations are typically carried out in secrecy, while plans and consequences are hidden or disguised through disinformation. For many purposes, militaries are giant conspiracies. If they’re on your side, you might say they are for a good cause. Enemy operations are always thought to be sinister.

And more

Torture occurs in many countries around the world. Just read reports by Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. Torture is nearly always hidden from the public. It is a conspiracy. So is genocide.

A widespread conspiracy was maintained for decades by hundreds or thousands of people: the cover-up of paedophilia in the churches.

A lot of what goes on in corporations, churches, trade unions, environmental organisations, police, militaries and governments is plotting to achieve goals. Some of this is for the good of others; much of it is not. Some of this plotting is known to informed outsiders; a bit of it is known to the wider public. It all can be categorised as conspiratorial — but seldom is.

Conspiracy and social theory

Jaron Harambam is a Dutch sociologist. For his PhD, he spent two years in Dutch conspiracy-theory circles, talking with key figures, attending meetings and in other ways learning how participants — called, by others, conspiracy theorists — thought and acted. Among his many insights is one about the connection between conspiracy theorising and scholarly social theorising.


Jaron Harambam

            Few academics like to be called conspiracy theorists. Quite separately from the derogatory associations of the label, social scientists think what they do is different from uncovering conspiracies. What Harambam discovered is that there is much in common between conspiracy theorising and conventional scholarly theorising in the social sciences.

In both cases, the social world is explained, in part, through processes that happen behind the scenes, in ways about which most people know nothing. In conspiracy theorising, the processes involve plotting by individuals, usually powerful ones. In social theorising, the processes involve systems of power that shape people’s thoughts and behaviour.

A standard concept in social science is neoliberalism, which is a particular manifestation of capitalism. Neoliberalism is both a set of ideas and a set of practices. One facet is turning activities into markets, for example through privatising health care or prisons. This doesn’t happen by magic but by people making decisions, for example to set up a private hospital and to change laws to make this possible and lucrative. This involves people getting together to achieve their aims, often ones that give them wealth and power. This isn’t greatly different from a conspiracy, if a conspiracy is defined as people plotting to achieve certain aims.

Another example is patriarchy, the collective domination of men over women. Patriarchy is a standard concept in social science, though often contested. For patriarchy to operate, men (and women) need to make decisions that maintain certain patterns of thought and behaviour, for example that combat is a male domain. So it seems that patriarchy involves conspiring, for example to block women from being front-line soldiers. Think of the old boy’s club, an expression referring to the insider groups of men and some women that ensure that men are given preference for appointments and opportunities.

            In social science, there is a longstanding tension between structure and agency. Structure refers to widespread patterns of regular activity. Neoliberalism and patriarchy are concepts of social structure. Agency refers to what people do. Structure is maintained and sometimes changed by people’s agency, while agency is channelled by structure. Trying to reconcile these two perspectives on the social world has exercised generations of social theorists.

Many academics prefer a structural perspective. Those who are called conspiracy theorists typically use an agency perspective: they explain occurrences through the activities of individuals. In many ways, this is not all that different from what social scientists do. After all, the social world is composed of individuals whose activities maintain what are called social structures.

Why discredit conspiracy theories?

Given that numerous conspiracies are around us all the time, most of which we are not aware, why do conspiracy theories have such a bad reputation? How is it that the label “conspiracy theorist” has become a term of abuse?

One explanation is that in the late 1960s the CIA initiated a programme to stigmatise conspiracy theories. Why? The CIA wanted to discredit challenges to the view that President John F. Kennedy was murdered by a lone gunman. Previously the term had few negative connotations, but the CIA’s efforts associated “conspiracy theory” with lunatics.


Lance deHaven Smith writes about the CIA’s role in stigmatising conspiracy theories

            This explanation is itself a sort of conspiracy theory, but should not be rejected on that basis alone. There is evidence to back it up. However, even if the CIA played a role in discrediting the idea of conspiracy theories, that doesn’t easily explain why so many people have jumped on the bandwagon of condemnation, especially because so many conspiracy theories these days have little to do with the CIA or national security.

Another explanation involves the concept of boundary work. Scientists make efforts to distinguish their activities and knowledge claims from neighbouring endeavours or claims. This protects the status and domain of science. For example, astronomers distinguish their field from astrology and from the study of UFOs (unidentified flying objects). This ensures there is a clear boundary distinguishing science from what is labelled non-science or pseudoscience.

            As noted, many conspiracy-theory explanations are not all that different from scholarly explanations of the social world. However, there is an important difference. Most so-called conspiracy theorists are not academics. Some of them are highly knowledgeable but do not have the degrees, scholarly publications or jobs that are characteristic of professional scholars, ones with positions in the academic system. These conspiracy theorists are, from the academic point of view, amateurs. To defend academic turf from interlopers, it is useful to discredit conspiracy theories. If the theories can be discredited, then so too are those who endorse them.

Yet another explanation for the attack on conspiracy theorising is support for the status quo, in particular support for dominant political and economic institutions, along with the experts who gain their livelihood from these institutions. Many conspiracy theories are about plotting by powerful groups. If taken seriously, these ideas could threaten these groups.

In this context, it’s highly convenient to apply the label “conspiracy theorist” to anyone who questions orthodoxy. You think pharmaceutical companies are selling drugs they know are dangerous? You’re a conspiracy theorist, and not to be taken seriously. You think Google, Facebook and Apple are manipulating people’s desires? You’re a conspiracy theorist.

            There’s a straightforward way to test this explanation: have a look at those who are most vociferous in condemning conspiracy theorising and see whether they are supporters or critics of dominant institutions. Do they defend or attack the US government or big companies?

Is there a lesson here? Personally, I support the particularists who say explanations should be judged on their merits. This has an uncomfortable implication: it’s no longer easy to dismiss ideas that might seem crazy on the surface but you haven’t investigated in depth. It’s reasonable to think that establishment experts are often right, but also reasonable to leave open the possibility that they might be wrong or that there are other truths available.

This means being sceptical when hearing the term “conspiracy theory.” An appropriate response might be, “So what?” or “What exactly is wrong with this particular explanation?”

I’ve talked with whistleblowers from all walks of life, including those working for government departments, private companies, the police, the military, schools, universities, churches, environmental organisations and Indigenous organisations. Their stories are remarkably similar, and nearly all involve conspiracies to cover up wrongdoing and to take reprisals against the whistleblowers. Conspiracies are everywhere, and some of them are affecting you. Who doesn’t want you to take them seriously?

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks to Kurtis Hagen and Jaron Harambam for valuable comments.

corruption

A singer and a crooked lawyer

In 1987, I met Delcie Schipp. She was a piano and violin teacher, but her real love was singing. We got together to play trios: Delcie as soprano voice, me on clarinet and Alice Fitzsummons on piano. We were brought together by Wayne Dixon, conductor of the Wollongong Symphony Orchestra, who suggested we might make a good combination.

Once a week, Delcie would pick me up from home and drive us to Alice’s home in southern Wollongong, where we would rehearse a range of pieces for an hour or so. The most famous piece for soprano, clarinet and piano is “Shepherd on the rock” by Schubert. We practised and performed it but soon became tired of it. I tracked down many additional pieces for the combination, plus Delcie sang solos with piano, Alice and I played clarinet and piano pieces, and we even had a couple of pieces for soprano and clarinet.


Brian, Alice and Delcie

            Over the following decade, we enjoyed playing music together, and performed occasionally at music club concerts and other events. We organised several performances at Delcie’s unit in downtown Wollongong. We would invite friends to attend, charging a small amount that we donated to a good cause. Delcie had an excellent grand piano and a large main room. She had some chairs and we encouraged guests to bring pillows to sit on the floor. These were delightful occasions.

During those years, Delcie and I had plenty of opportunities to talk during the 10-minute drives to and from Alice’s place. After a few years, Delcie started telling me about a business matter. She had been involved with a property deal that somehow involved lawyer George Harrison, a prominent figure around Wollongong. The deal had gone wrong in some way, and Delcie — or rather her lawyers — were pursuing Harrison for money. Harrison defended vigorously and the costs kept rising.


George Harrison in front of his Lagoon restaurant, 1987

            She was obviously distressed by the events but, from what she told me, I could never make sense of what had happened. She believed she had been at the mercy of some devious dealing but it seemed the details were beyond her comprehension.

It was only years later, when I read about the matters in the Illawarra Mercury, that I finally understood the sequence of events. In the late 1980s, Delcie had been involved in a property deal with Don Cameron, a real estate developer, and George Harrison, a solicitor. Delcie put up the money and the three of them planned to develop the property together. However, the development never went ahead. Delcie sold the property and was pleased that its value had increased. But she wasn’t happy that Cameron and Harrison each claimed $40,000 from the sale, because they hadn’t proceeded with the planned development.

Delcie’s lawyers pursued the two men for the $80,000. Some ten years later, in 1998, a judge ruled in Delcie’s favour, saying that Harrison had willingly lied under oath. Cameron and Harrison claimed that Delcie was financially shrewd, knowing what was happening the whole time. Delcie said she had been duped. Given that Delcie had never been able to explain to me what had happened, I thought she was telling the truth. The judge, like me, believed her and he thought Harrison was a liar.

Harrison was active in the Labor Party, and in 1999, despite the recent court ruling against him, was elected Lord Mayor of Wollongong.

Cameron bowed out of the court case and Harrison took over the legal defence. Senior Labor Party figures told Harrison to pay up, because the ongoing publicity about the case was bad for the party. But Harrison decided instead to appeal the judge’s decision. In February 2001 the appeal court ruled against him, and he declared that he would pay. But then he didn’t. He went to a higher court.

Due to legal costs and interest, the amount at stake grew, eventually exceeding a million dollars. A newspaper article at the time reported on Harrison’s many properties; he seemed to have the means to pay.

Meanwhile, due to some complex matters to do with legal insurance, it turned out that Delcie owed $700,000 to Harrison’s wife Vania. Delcie couldn’t pay. She had no income. She sold her grand piano. Then she declared bankruptcy.

In 2002, the court of appeals ruled against Harrison. The Law Society struck him off the register of solicitors and he was kicked out of the Labor Party. There were numerous newspaper stories about whether he would pay up, including stories about Delcie pleading with him to do so.

            Then Harrison declared bankruptcy. This meant he had to step down as lord mayor, because bankrupts are not allowed to hold public office. It was amazing. Rather than pay Delcie, Harrison preferred to declare bankruptcy and step away from the most prestigious public office in Wollongong.

During this time, Delcie changed her name. Rather than Delcie Schipp, she became Kathryn Chaffey. She told me she had never liked the name Delcie. It took a while to get used to calling her Kathryn, especially because newspaper stories about her stoush with Harrison still referred to her as Delcie.

Even after both parties had declared bankruptcy, the legal cases continued, but I never heard what happened in the end.

Harrison’s failure to pay was hard on Delcie, and her lawyers were left out of pocket too. She was reported as saying Harrison had destroyed her life. She contracted cancer and died in 2006, aged 70. Years later, in December 2020, Harrison died, also of cancer.


George Harrison in 2017

Are there lessons from this story? I can’t think of any obvious ones, except perhaps that amateur music is more likely to give pleasure than property deals.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Selected Illawarra Mercury stories

Lisa Carty, “‘Naive woman held to ransom’: judge’s ruling damns solicitor, real estate agent,” 22 July 1998, pp. 1, 3.

Lisa Carty, “Labor heavies tell Lord Mayor: pay up, George,” 5 January 2000, pp. 1–2.

Lisa Carty, “‘I’ll pay’: Harrison loses court appeal,” 21 February 2001, pp. 1, 3.

Lisa Carty and Paul McInerney, “‘Poor’ mayor has a range of rich assets,” 10 March 2001, p. 6.

Lisa Carty, “Bizarre twist: now Schipp owes Vania,” 29 November 2001, p. 9.

Louise Turk, Paul McInerney and Jodie Duffy, “Struck off! Lord Mayor unfit: Law Society,” 29–30 June 2002, pp. 1, 3.

Lisa Carty, “He’s gone: Harrison quits as mayor,” 26 July 2002, pp. 1, 4.

Lisa Carty, “The letter that could have saved George Harrison’s job: Schipp asked for $20,000, the mayor chose bankruptcy,” 27 July 2002, p. 5

Jenny Dennis, “‘Brave’ Delcie passes away without seeing a cent of Harrison payout,” 14 June 2006, p. 2.

Greg Ellis, “George Harrison dies after long cancer fight,” 17 December 2020, p. 6.

corruption, politics

Layers of corruption

In April 2013, Frédéric Pierucci was arrested in New York and taken in chains to a  prison. Thus began a long ordeal that taxed his survival capacities and also provided deep insights into corruption.


Frédéric Pierucci

Pierucci was an executive for the French multinational company Alstom. Part of its operations were in the energy business, including manufacturing boilers for large power plants. Alstom sought contracts in countries around the world and, like many Western multinationals, used bribes to obtain them. As anti-corruption efforts stepped up, Alstom set up internal systems to control bribery.  Instead of paying bribes directly, Alstom hired “consultants” who organised the bribery. Everyone knew what was happening but the corruption was more covert.

In Alstom’s hierarchy, Pierucci was several levels down from the CEO. He had no idea that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) had ordered his arrest, so when he was taken into custody, he was caught unawares. Eventually he learned that his arrest was related to an Alstom contract bid in Indonesia years earlier.

He couldn’t figure out why he, of all people, was arrested. The contract in Indonesia was long ago, and he wasn’t the senior figure involved. Gradually he pieced together what was going on.

The DOJ relied on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). This law allowed the arrest of anyone anywhere in the world if they were involved in corruption with the slightest connection with the US, for example using US currency or Internet servers based in the US. Even if the individual was not a US citizen, did not work for a US company, and the alleged corruption was in another country, the FCPA could be applied.

This use of the FCPA is called extraterritorial, meaning it applies outside the US. It is a prime example of what might be called imperial overreach. The US government asserts that its laws apply throughout the world, not just in the US. But on the other hand, the US government notoriously refuses to be bound by non-US laws that affect its own citizens. For example, the US government refuses to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The double standard involved — the US government applies its laws to citizens of other countries but rejects their laws applying to US citizens — reflects US economic and military power.

It might seem that the FCPA, despite its imperial reach, is being used for a good cause: stamping out corporate corruption worldwide. In this picture, the US government is applying its high anti-corruption standards as widely as possible.

Pierucci, caught in a nightmare in the US criminal justice system, gradually learned otherwise. He was being held in a maximum security prison though he had not been convicted of any crime, and he was not a violent offender. Naturally, he applied for bail, thinking this would be routine. He discovered the DOJ didn’t want to release him no matter what. Why couldn’t Alstom post bail? The DOJ wouldn’t allow it. He had to post an exorbitant amount personally. Then there was an additional requirement: a US citizen had to be willing to mortgage their house as part of the bail requirement. This was difficult to arrange, because Pierucci had been living in Singapore. His wife, taking care of their four children, was not allowed to interact with Alstom because of the DOJ’s case against it. She had few contacts in the US, but eventually a friend offered to put her house up as security for bail. Even this wasn’t enough.

Pierucci realised he was being held as an economic hostage. The DOJ had no intention of releasing him while its case against Alstom proceeded. Pierucci’s plight was a message to top Alstom executives that they might also be imprisoned.

Alstom’s top executive, Patrick Kron, was fully implicated in its corrupt practices. Unlike other companies targeted by the DOJ, Alstom had refused to cooperate, admit guilt, pay a huge fine and allow a DOJ agent to work in the company to monitor compliance, of course paid by the company. The DOJ was playing harder because of Alstom’s resistance.

Patrick Kron

Pierucci discovered a pattern: numerous European companies had paid huge fines to the US government following DOJ anti-corruption investigations. The DOJ had a large workforce for this purpose, and it was reaping large rewards. There was something else. The DOJ apparently had access to electronic monitoring of European communications, as later revealed by Edward Snowden. It was using information gained through surveillance, justified as countering terrorism, for economic warfare.

There was yet something else besides. The DOJ’s operations enabled US companies to take over their competitors. This is what happened to Alstom. Its primary US competitor was General Electric (GE), a massive multinational. Alstom’s CEO, Patrick Kron, commenced secret dealings with GE that eventually led to the sale of Alstom’s power division, its largest, to GE. The price was huge but the benefits to France were minimal. Furthermore, GE did not fulfil any of its promises, for example to create new jobs in France.

The sale of a crucial part of France’s energy sector, in particular its nuclear power production, was a blow to its economic independence. For such a sale, various government approvals were required. Pierucci tells how the US government used the corruption proceedings as a lever to achieve the sale. The tale is complicated, but essentially the US government used various types of power to serve the interests of GE.

The official name of the game was anti-corruption, but behind the scenes was a deeper level of corruption: US surveillance capacities, diplomatic power and economic power, tied to the anti-corruption gambit, were corruptly deployed to serve US corporate interests.

Pierucci was a pawn in this game. To induce Kron to proceed with the sale, Pierucci had to be on the hook. It was apparent that the DOJ did not want to sentence Pierucci until the sale was settled. Pierucci was finally allowed out on bail and returned to France, but had to come back to the US for sentencing. Finally, he was — four years after pleading guilty. The DOJ forced Pierucci to plead guilty to being the central figure in Alstom’s bribery. He was the fall guy. He served another year in a US prison.


Wyatt Detention Facility, a maximum-security prison where Pierucci spent some of his time behind bars

Through these travails, Pierucci had to rely on his US lawyers, who kept promising things that didn’t pan out. The DOJ presents itself as the paragon of justice — what else? — but its treatment of Pierucci was anything but. Yet Pierucci could not afford to challenge decisions made because, if he had, he would have been treated much worse.

Here is another injustice: the US legal system. Pierucci was threatened with decades in prison. If he said he was innocent and went to trial, he risked a long stretch in prison. So wisely he pled guilty. He was not alone in being pressured to lie. The entire US legal system is based on plea bargaining. People are charged with crimes and warned that if they contest the charges, they will face a long prison sentence. Hence most of them plead guilty.

In his time in several US prisons, Pierucci saw the country’s penal system up close. As other observers have noted, it is horrendous. Prisoners are humiliated, treated harshly, subject to abysmal conditions and given little encouragement for rehabilitation. In some prisons, prisoners are forced to work for a few cents per hour: they are slave labour.

Pierucci, throughout his time in prison, wrote about his experiences and his study of the interactions between Alstom, the DOJ and GE, and sent his writing to a French journalist, Matthieu Aron, who is the second author of their book, completed just five weeks after Pierucci was finally freed. It is engaging and alarming, covering Pierucci’s personal experiences and what he found out about corruption.


Matthieu Aron

The title of the book, The American Trap, can be interpreted in several ways. It refers most obviously to US economic warfare using the legal system, warfare in which the rhetoric of anti-corruption is used for a higher level of corruption. The title might also be taken to refer to the US legal and prison system. In the name of justice, this massive system beats down its victims in the most appalling ways.

Superman famously fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” Unfortunately, this was an illusion. Instead, behind the scenes are “lies, injustice and the American trap.”

Frédéric Pierucci with Matthieu Aron, The American Trap: My battle to expose America’s secret economic war against the rest of the world, translated by Deniz Gulan (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2019)

Some choice quotes

Re the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), “They have transformed a law that could have weakened their own industry into a formidable instrument of underground economic warfare and intervention.” (p. 115)

Re corrupt operations by the US company KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton: “So in a case [mainly concerning a US company] unearthed by a French judge, a French company was ordered to pay $338 million to the US government rather than to the French government itself. This is known as shooting yourself in the foot.” (p. 118)

Re a US judge saying Pierucci should apologise for Third World corruption, despite the US government’s support for Suharto’s corrupt regime in Indonesia: “This judge fully embodies American hypocrisy in all its grandeur.” (p. 265)

Re the DOJ’s onslaught against European companies, netting billions of dollars in fines: “This racketeering, because that is what it all boils down to, is unparalleled in its scope.” (p. 305)

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks to Tonya Agostini, Anneleis Humphries, Cynthia Kardell and Jody Watts for useful comments on drafts.

corruption, politics

Wollongong: horror behind the scenes

Some of Wollongong’s most prominent figures were involved in sexually abusing boys. Residents might never have known about it except for media stories.


A scenic view of Wollongong

I’ve lived in Wollongong since 1986, yet there are lots of things I don’t know about the city. Some of the things I do know about, or think I know, are mainly due to news reports. One of them is paedophilia in high places.

News reports in the 1990s revealed that a previous mayor — the elected head of the local government — had run a paedophile ring, and another previous mayor was a suspected paedophile. These revelations were so striking that I saved some of the newspaper reports about them. Recently I read them again. They paint a grim picture, and provide a lesson in how a city’s public face can conceal horrible activities.

Here I summarise some of the media revelations, focusing on three individuals: Tony Bevan, Michael Evans and Frank Arkell. Links are given to articles published at the time, which give more details.

Bevan

On 9 March 1995, the front page of the Illawarra Mercury — Wollongong’s only daily newspaper — had a huge headline: “Former mayor ran child sex ring.”


Tony Bevan

Tony Bevan had been mayor and a pillar of the community. He died in 1991, leaving behind numerous tape recordings he had made of conversations with politicians, businessmen and other paedophiles. These tapes were obtained by the Mercury. The newspaper published transcripts of some of the recordings. The story summed up the findings in this way

Bevan ran a paedophile “school” where Illawarra and Sydney boys were seduced and manipulated. They were then used to sexually service Bevan and his friends.

Bevan and his paedophile associates in Sydney controlled a youth refuge where boys were kept before being sent to work as prostitutes in Kings Cross [a Sydney red-light district].

Bevan was involved in bringing young Filipino boys to Australia to work as prostitutes.

Bevan pimped for influential Illawarra, Australian and foreign paedophiles — offering boys who provided sexual favours.

An international paedophile network exists that allows those “in the club” to access boys worldwide.

The Bevan Tapes also identify 15 Australian paedophiles associated with Bevan as well as a number of corrupt officials in the Philippines.

Evans

On 22 July 1995, the Sydney Morning Herald — the most prestigious daily newspaper in Sydney — ran a story titled “Brotherly love.” It told about the Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious order, which runs schools throughout Australia. In particular, the story told about some members of the Christian Brothers who had been accused of paedophilia. The lead character in the story was Michael Evans, who in 1982 became head of Edmund Rice College, a Catholic boys high school in Wollongong.

During his years in Wollongong, Evans became its most prominent Catholic figure. Then in 1993, a story in the Illawarra Mercury about an alleged indecent assault ended his career ambitions. Evans left town. In 1994, he was served with an arrest warrant over an indecent assault on a teenage student. The next day he committed suicide.

From 1995 to 1997, there was a royal commission into the New South Wales Police Service, often called the Wood royal commission. It was not one of those inquiries that quietly reinforces the status quo. Unusually, it was a crusading commission, using its extraordinary powers to shine a spotlight on police corruption. The public hearings received saturation news coverage.

Among other things, the commission looked into policing and paedophilia. As reported in a front-page story in the Illawarra Mercury on 17 April 1996, a priest testifying at the commission criticised Wollongong’s Catholic Bishop William Murray and a high-ranking police officer for not acting against Evans. It was reported that even before being appointed head of Edmund Rice College, allegations of sexual abuse had been made against Evans. The church hierarchy did not act on them. The police had also been notified, but Sergeant David Ainsworth decided not to take action.


Michael Evans

Media coverage stimulated the police to reopen the case. A 20 April 1996 story in the Sydney Morning Herald summed up what happened after allegations about Evans were made to the bishop.

… Brother Evans’s career, far from being stymied, flourished in the years that followed. He had a popular Sunday night radio program …, wrote a column for the Illawarra Mercury, opened the youth refuge Eddy’s Place in 1988 and basked in the image of a man dedicated to caring for Wollongong’s youth.

The Illawarra Mercury played a major role in exposing prominent figures who were paedophiles. The editor-in-chief at the time, Peter Cullen, took the lead in both exposing and condemning sexual abuse in the church. A Wollongong priest, Father Peter Comensoli, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sexually molesting teenage boys. In a column castigating the church for leaving open the possibility of Comensoli returning to the priesthood, Cullen concluded by writing

To this day, none of Comensoli’s victims, their parents or family have received any communication from the Catholic Church expressing sorrow or regret at what happened.

Not a line, not a phone call. They are still waiting.


Peter Cullen in front of Mercury headlines

Another Mercury story reported on testimony before the royal commission by Bev Lawson, chief superintendent, who commented critically about Wollongong police not following up in their investigation of child sexual abuse allegations. Sergeant David Ainsworth had left messages with the bishop asking for an interview. The bishop didn’t respond, and Ainsworth decided not to pursue the matter.

It seems that, in Wollongong, leading figures in the Catholic Church and in the police were reluctant to investigate allegations of sexual abuse. The media, and media coverage of royal commission hearings, were what pushed matters along.

Arkell

Frank Arkell was mayor of Wollongong from 1974 to 1991. He was widely known for his promotion of “Wonderful Wollongong,” taking every opportunity to advocate for the city, which went through difficult times economically, especially in the early 1980s.

After losing office in 1991, things went downhill for Arkell. In 1994, he was accused in state parliament of sex offences. During the police royal commission, he was called to give evidence but pleaded illness. The commission, with other matters at hand, decided not to pursue him further. But subsequently police mounted a case against him.

Then on 28 June 1998 there was a spectacular headline in the Sun-Herald, a major Sydney Sunday newspaper: “Child sex MP slain.” Arkell had been murdered in his home, beaten to death. His Rotary badge was stuck in an eye and tiepins were stuck in his cheeks.


Frank Arkell

Arkell’s murder opened the floodgates for reporting and commentary. Arkell was dead and couldn’t sue for defamation, so gloves were off. The lllawarra Mercury ran eight pages of special coverage, with the main story by editor-in-chief Peter Cullen. Cullen wrote:

Some of our community leaders are saying Arkell put Wollongong on the map.

I agree. He did. But for all the wrong reasons — for his double life, the sinister side which resulted in his being charged with sex offences against teenage boys, now grown men with their lives torn apart.

Arkell’s life is over. For some of his victims, their lives finished years ago.

Arkell was relentless in blaming The Mercury for his fall from grace. At every opportunity he condemned the newspaper, pleaded with people not to buy it, and said he would not stop until we answered for our sins.

He had sued for defamation.

We were not fazed by that and intended to defend our wicket with every resource at our disposal.

However, let’s get a few facts straight. It was the Wood Royal Commission and its investigators who caused most of Arkell’s heartache.

They produced three alleged victims, all strangers to The Mercury. They went before the commission under code names and made damning allegations against Arkell.

Yet, when Arkell had the chance to enter the witness box and refute the allegations, he ducked it.

Instead, he produced a statement and his solicitors presented a sick certificate to the commission as a reason why Arkell could not attend.

The following day The Mercury interviewed Arkell, and he told us he felt fine.

In other stories after Arkell’s murder, the question was raised whether the media, once the restraint of being sued for defamation was removed, had been too harsh on Arkell. Another story asked why people in Wollongong did not seem appalled at Arkell’s murder.

In August, a lengthy story, “City of secrets,” appeared in the Good Weekend, the magazine of the weekend edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. The author, Richard Guilliatt, linked Wollongong’s working-class masculinity and Catholic morality with the seamy activities that had been revealed by the royal commission.

It now transpires that Wollongong was run for 20 years by two mayors who preyed sexually on their teenage constituents, and that a raft of well-to-do figures — the headmaster of the local Catholic boys’ college, a local councillor with five children, a rotund industrialist who drove around town in a Rolls-Royce, a Catholic priest, a local restaurant manager, a shark-patrol pilot — molested dozens of boys for years with apparent impunity.

Guilliatt pointed out that homophobia was very strong in Wollongong, especially compared to Sydney. Bevan and Arkell would never have been elected had they been openly gay. In 1984, Arkell actually voted against legalising homosexuality. Ironically, said Guilliatt, Arkell would have had a stronger defence against the allegations against him if he had acknowledged being gay: he could have said he was mistaken about the boys’ ages.

Guilliatt questioned some of the allegations about Arkell, who might have been found not guilty in court. The “vigilante” who murdered him pre-empted the verdict.

I have no way of judging the allegations myself, though one of my colleagues told me that one night he witnessed Arkell leaving the Council building at midnight, with a young boy on each hand.


The Council building in Wollongong

Lessons

One lesson from these stories is that public figures may not be what they seem. Even in private they can lead double lives. According to news reports, some of Bevan’s friends had no idea anything untoward was happening, and a longtime friend of Arkell’s thought he was heterosexual.

One reason Bevan, Evans and Arkell were able to maintain their public façades for so long was that the church hierarchy and the police did little to act on complaints about abuses. For those who had been abused, or who knew them and heard their stories, it seemed no one in authority was willing to act.

The role of the media was crucial. To my knowledge, no academics have investigated the Wollongong story. For a blow-by-blow account of the murder of Arkell, and two related murders, see John Suter Linton, Bound by Blood: The True Story Behind the Wollongong Murders (Allen & Unwin, 2004).


In 2012, former Edmund Rice College Brother John Vincent was sentenced to at least six years in prison for sexual offences in the 1980s.

Apparently, in the media the allegations were known for a long time, but nothing could be reported because of the risk of being sued for defamation. The result is a tainted legacy: after Bevan, Evans and Arkell died, their reputations were trashed. Some might say deservedly so, but they were no longer around to contest claims made about them.

In Wollongong, media revelations occurred because the editor-in-chief of the Illawarra Mercury, Peter Cullen, personally campaigned against paedophilia. In the Sydney media, those opposed to homophobia were caught in a bind. Paedophilia in high places was a big story, but it could harm the struggle for gay rights.

There was also another factor, highlighted in Gulliatt’s story about Arkell. He had done more than anyone else to promote Wollongong, especially when its fortunes were at an ebb. To raise allegations about his personal life could also harm Wollongong’s reputation, in a process of guilt by association. Some people may have preferred that the paedophilia story be quietly forgotten.

If you know about criminal or unethical action by people in high places, what should you do? This is especially difficult if your own status has been tarnished. It is seldom easy to admit being duped or abused. Many of those victimised by paedophiles felt ashamed, and their lives had gone downhill. Who will believe you? Who should you trust to take action?

In the Wollongong paedophilia chronicles, the answer was not the police and not the church hierarchy. The most effective avenue for redress was the media, even though the resulting publicity did not offer the protections of a court trial. But surely trial by media was preferable to the vigilante justice that claimed Arkell’s life.

Postscript

Things may be better in Wollongong. There haven’t been as many stories about high-level paedophiles. Edmund Rice College is under new leadership. Homophobia is less vicious. Perhaps Arkell’s sales pitch of “wonderful Wollongong” is more credible these days. But who knows for sure?

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Sources (in chronological order)

Brett Martin, “Former mayor ran child sex ring,” Illawarra Mercury, 9 March 1995, pp. 1, 6–8.

Richard Guilliatt, “Brotherly love,” Sydney Morning Herald, 22 July 1995, Spectrum pp. 1A, 4A.

Paul McInerney, “Priest damns bishop, senior police officer,” Illawarra Mercury, 17 April 1996, pp. 1–2.

Richard Guilliatt, “Sins of the Brothers,” Sydney Morning Herald, 20 April 1996, p. 25.

Peter Cullen, “Catholic Church should defrock this molester,” Illawarra Mercury, 20 April 1996, p. 7.

Paul McInerney, “How the police blew it,” Illawarra Mercury, 23 April 1996, pp. 1, 4–5.

Liz Hannan and Anna Patty, “Child sex MP slain,” Sun-Herald, 28 June 1998, pp. 1, 6–7.

Peter Cullen, “Vigilante on the loose,” Illawarra Mercury, 29 June 1998, pp. 1–8.

Kate McClymont, “The demise of a double life,” Sydney Morning Herald, 29 June 1998, p. 15.

Pilita Clark, “The media and the murder,” Sydney Morning Herald, 4 July 1998, p. 33.

Stefanie Balogh, “Killer wins kudos in a city as hard as steel,” The Weekend Australian, 4–5 July 1998, p. 12.

Richard Guilliatt, “City of secrets,” Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 1998, Good Weekend  pp. 22–28.

(Some of the these citations include related stories by other authors.)

Some informative more recent treatments

Peter Newell, “Long struggle to expose evil abuse of children in the Illawarra,” Illawarra Mercury, 17 November 2012.

Angela Thompson, “Edmund Rice College was ‘a dumping ground’ for child sex predators: Stephen Jones MP,” Illawarra Mercury, 16 June 2016.

Nick McLaren, “Frank Arkell: how a vicious murder unmasked a city’s darkest secrets,” ABC Illawarra News, 26 June 2018.

 

corruption, politics, social dynamics

A tale of two steel towns


Steelworks in Gary, Indiana, USA


Steelworks in Wollongong, Australia

I was born in Gary, Indiana, the city hosting the biggest steel manufacturer in the US. Now I live in Wollongong, the home of Australia’s largest steelworks. So I’ve moved from one steel town to another. There are several similarities between these two cities, and some striking differences.

Aerial view of Gary, with Lake Michigan in the distance

Gary is located on the shores of Lake Michigan, a huge inland lake, while Wollongong is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean.


Wollongong is sandwiched between the ocean and the escarpment, seen in the distance

In the mid 1900s, they each had about the same population, 200,000. The steelworks attracted large numbers of immigrant workers, mainly from Europe. At their peak, each of these two steelworks employed more than 20,000 workers but, following downsizing in the 1980s and technological advances, this number in each city is now less than 5000. Gary is not far from Chicago, one of the largest cities in the US, and Wollongong is not far from Sydney, Australia’s largest city. On the down side, both Gary and Wollongong have suffered from political corruption, and each city has significant areas of social disadvantage.

So much for similarities. The differences are striking and revealing. I’ll first tell about Gary and then Wollongong.

Gary

I lived in Gary only for my first year of life and have no memories of the city, so I’ve relied on treatments by others, including the books Big Steel by Edward Greer and Lost Gary Indiana by Jerry Davich. My mother, who worked in the Gary steel mill during World War II, has told me various stories.

         Gary was created as a steel town in 1906, and was for years a shining example of enlightened civic enterprise. This was reflected in the architecture, with impressive buildings, including schools, churches, railway station, apartment blocks and theatres. However, this illustrious beginning eventually came to dust.


City Methodist Church, Gary, about 1955

            Many blacks came to Gary for jobs in the steelworks. However, they faced serious discrimination, and most were restricted to living in less affluent parts of town. The racial polarisation was highlighted when a young black candidate, Richard Hatcher, ran for mayor in the 1967. The opposition of the white-dominated political establishment was extreme. Hatcher sought nomination by the Democratic Party, which controlled Gary’s politics: whoever was the Democrat’s candidate was assured of winning the general election.

The Democrat party machine used every possible means to oppose Hatcher. I can’t resist quoting a few details about this extraordinary campaign.

“Attempts by Hatcher’s white supporters to distribute their campaign literature in white neighborhoods were met by so many individual acts of violence that it was necessary to suspend the effort. It even became necessary to provide armed guards to protect the homes of his most publicly prominent white supporters.” (Big Steel, p. 43)

After Hatcher won the nomination, the Democrat party machine then refused to support him at the election, instead openly supporting the Republican candidate and using various methods of voter fraud. Hatcher was a threat to the machine’s control.

“Moreover, the machine was able to see to it – and did – that on election day numerous voting machines in the black precincts were ‘out of order.’ Hatcher’s organization prepared for this eventuality by hiring on its own over a dozen voting machine mechanics from nearby Chicago to be on hand on election day to fix broken machines. … And Gary police officers, who stood in front of polling booths in black neighborhoods to prevent their opening, were driven away by armed gangsters from outside the city hired by unknown persons prepared for this machine tactic.” (p. 49)

Despite the resistance, Hatcher won the election and became the first black mayor in a major US city.


Richard Hatcher

            Racial tensions in Gary helped trigger “white flight”: white residents moved out of the city limits to independent towns that are part of greater Gary. The city of Gary lost a lot of its tax base. There was not enough money to maintain major facilities, and declining population meant less income and patronage. One by one, major buildings were abandoned, some of them razed and others left derelict, because there was not enough money to demolish them.


City Methodist Church, now derelict

            As the city amenities disappeared, Gary became victim to ever more crime, causing further decline. Businesses closed and visitors stayed away. In all the United States, Gary was matched only by Detroit as an example of urban decay.


Union railway station, Gary, once impressive, now abandoned


Abandoned row of Edison-concept homes, Gary

Wollongong

Wollongong started off as a small town on the east coast of Australia, south of Sydney. It has an excellent deep-water harbour at Port Kembla, chosen as the site of what became Australia’s largest steelworks. The city of Wollongong gradually grew, but with relatively little industrial diversification. Healthcare and education are now the largest employers. Being close to Sydney, there are ever more Wollongong residents who commute to work in Sydney.

Wollongong has had its share of social dysfunction and political corruption. Despite rising affluence, there are serious problems due to unemployment, poverty, crime, drug use and gambling. The local government was the scene of a major corruption scandal, publicised in 2008 in hearings by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (my analysis). One former lord mayor, after he died, was exposed in the media as having run a paedophile ring. Another stepped down from office after declaring bankruptcy, thereby avoiding paying millions of dollars in a court action. I have heard stories of bribes offered to allocate preferences in local elections. However, this pales into insignificance compared to the history of political corruption in Gary.


Frank Arkell, long-serving lord mayor of Wollongong, later murdered

            Many people say Wollongong is like an overgrown country town. It has few distinctive buildings. The most prominent is the Nan Tien Buddhist temple that opened in 1995.


Nan Tien Temple, Wollongong

            Despite its shortcomings, Wollongong seems a model of harmony, honesty and civic pride compared to Gary. In Wollongong, there are numerous nationalities but in comparison relatively little discrimination. The most serious racism, as in Australia more generally, is directed against Aborigines. Aside from this, Australia’s version of multiculturalism seems relatively successful.

Although Wollongong has never had many impressive buildings like Gary, it has not suffered anything like Gary’s urban decay. To the contrary: downtown Wollongong is gradually adding a few sites of note, and customers continue to patronise local businesses.


The Council Building, one of Wollongong’s few civic buildings of any size or notability

Explaining the differences

Of the two steel towns, why has Wollongong managed to survive so much better than Gary? This is a big question and I will not try to provide a comprehensive answer but instead just point to a few relevant factors.


Wollongong railway station: modest but still functioning

In Gary, urban decay was triggered by “white flight” so that now 90% of the city’s population is African American. In Australia, there is no equivalent to the US history of slavery and subsequent institutionalised racial discrimination.

Another factor is the way local government is organised. In the US, many cities are surrounded by independent towns, each with its own government and police force, and sometimes its own schools, libraries and other services. Right next to Gary are quite a few such independent towns. Their existence means that residents of the legal entity called Gary can leave and live in a nearby town, such as Merrillville.

The information about Gary says the population peaked at 180,000 and has since declined to 80,000. So I thought this meant Gary and Wollongong had had roughly the same population. But then I looked up the population of the Gary metropolitan area. It is over 700,000. Metropolitan Gary is over twice as populous as Wollongong.


Aerial view of Gary, showing the numerous neighbouring independent towns

            In Australia, city names and populations refer to the metropolitan area, not a specific administrative entity. Administrative arrangements make something like white flight less plausible in Australia. In Wollongong, and indeed in the entire state of New South Wales, there is a single government school system and a single police force. It’s possible to move to a more affluent part of Wollongong, but this has a limited effect on tax revenues.

The implication is that US urban decay, and the phenomenon of ghettoes, is facilitated by the administrative arrangements that allow formation of separate towns with their own income and local schools.

Trade unions may be another factor. Wollongong has long had a strong progressive labour movement. One of the pioneering initiatives of Australian trade unions was “green bans.” These involve unions refusing to undertake work that would be environmentally or culturally damaging. The decision by workers to undertake a ban requires being approached by a community group.

The South Coast Labour Council, representing unions in the region, has occasionally put bans on development projects that would damage buildings considered to have heritage value. Although successes have been limited, the readiness of community and labour activists to protest may have helped prevent a more rampant destruction of Wollongong heritage in the name of development. Labour militancy may also have played a role in maintaining living standards for workers.


Wollongong coal miners on picket line, 2015

This comparison of Gary and Wollongong is at most suggestive. Not all US industrial towns have gone downhill. Comparisons of other US and Australian towns might give a different picture. Even so, there is potentially much to learn from making comparisons, and towns in other countries might be brought into the mix. If it turns out that administrative arrangements greatly affect  the way regions evolve, this might give impetus to reform that actually makes a difference.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks to Anu Bissoonauth-Bedford, Sharon Callaghan,  Xiaoping Gao and Yasmin Rittau for valuable comments.

corruption, military, nonviolent action, whistleblowing

Military research dilemmas

Should peace activists care about corruption and exploitation in military research?

military censorship

In May 2015, a new law will take effect in Australia concerning military-related research and development. The law has many critics, including leaders of Australian universities. Among the law’s opponents is Brendan Jones, a high-tech entrepreneur. In a strongly argued article in the December issue of  Australasian Science, he lays out the case against the new law. The article begins:

From 17 May 2015, when the Defence Trade Controls Act (DTCA) comes into effect, the federal Department of Defence will gain control over a very large share of high-tech and science research in Australia. Under the Act, publication, discussion or communication of research without a Defence permit will be punishable by up to 10 years jail, a $425,000 fine and forfeiture of research to the government. This includes scientists, academics, librarians, engineers, high-tech workers and companies that have never had a prior relationship with the Department of Defence.

Jones has been passionate in raising the alarm about the DTCA. He claims his business was the victim of depredations by the Australian Department of Defence, which took over his intellectual property without any compensation, causing his business to fail. If it had just been him, he might not have tried to expose it, but after he found out about several other similar cases, he decided he had to act.

It appears the Defence Department has its own favoured business partners. The department seeks out promising research and uses the ideas for its own purposes, without permission or compensation. The DTCA will legalise this sort of extractive process, backing it with punitive penalties for resistance.

Jones quotes several organisations and high-tech entrepreneurs who are critical of the DTCA. And not just critical — some of the entrepreneurs are planning to leave Australia. Jones is one of them, but not without a fight.

For months, Jones has been writing the most amazingly comprehensive treatments of the problems facing whistleblowers in Australia, typically in the form of open letters to politicians. It’s because of his interest in whistleblowing that I have been in touch with him. I’ve commented on drafts of several of his open letters, and posted a couple of them on my website.

whistleblower_460

Jones wrote a highly informative treatment of how whistleblowers should interact with journalists. In preparing his article, he contacted numerous journalists for feedback and advice. His article, “A whistleblower’s guide to journalists,” is the best available treatment on this topic. One of his recommendations for whistleblowers is to always remain anonymous if possible.

Several of Jones’ open letters are impressive pieces of research, with dozens or even hundreds of footnotes with references, quotes and examples. If you want a compendium of serious cases of corruption in Australia, Jones’ “Royal petition concerning federal government corruption” is the best available. Likewise, for a powerful indictment of the state of free speech in Australia, it is hard to go past his “Debunking Dreyfus on free speech and freedom.”

Corruption in the military

Military expenditures are huge and highly subject to corruption. In many countries, the government runs a monopoly. In others, notably the US, the government buys from favoured suppliers. Because of secrecy and the pretext of national security, shonky operations prosper. In the US, where the processes are best documented, there is a revolving door for top-level military personnel, who join companies and lobby to obtain lucrative contracts.

One of the most famous early whistleblowers in the US was A. Ernest Fitzgerald, who in the 1980s exposed a $2 billion cost overrun in a military aircraft project. Taking inflation into account, this would be more like $20 billion in today’s dollars. For his efforts, Fitzgerald was subject to the usual methods of discrediting, harassment and sidelining. He wrote two books exposing corruption in US military contracting: The High Priests of Waste and The Pentagonists.

high-priests-of-waste

Over the years I’ve talked with quite a few military whistleblowers. They seldom have an easy time. Corruption is as common in the military as in any other part of society, perhaps more common; speaking out about it is quite a bit riskier, because reprisals can be severe, and sometimes whistleblowers are physically attacked. Few areas pose this level of danger to whistleblowers.

There’s a fascinating connection between military corruption and whistleblower laws. During the US civil war, President Abraham Lincoln was disgusted by companies cheating the government when providing military supplies, because their shoddy goods were undermining the war effort.

Lincoln-memorial

The government passed the False Claims Act, allowing whistleblowers who exposed companies defrauding the government to take legal action on behalf of the government, sometimes with the backing of the Department of Justice. The act provides financial rewards to these whistleblowers when prosecutions of corrupt companies are successful. The False Claims Act was revived in 1986 in response to corruption during a massive expansion in military expenditures, and is now widely seen as one of the most powerful pieces of whistleblower legislation. In Australia, the government has long resisted introduction of a similar law.

A dilemma for peace activists?

I’ve been involved with peace issues since the 1970s, and occasionally pondered the question of military corruption and waste. Should a peace activist care? Perhaps military waste is better than military efficiency!

In 1982, Mary Kaldor, a prominent figure in the European peace movement, authored a book entitled The Baroque Arsenal. She argued that military technology was becoming ever more gigantic in scale, high-cost and elaborate, rather like baroque churches that took decades to build. The result was that many weapons systems were becoming almost irrelevant for actual war-fighting: they were not rational from the point of view of military efficiency.

Baroque-arsenal

After I read Kaldor’s book, not long after it was published, I wrote in my notes about it, “But all this has little direct relevance to how to move against war. It seems more useful for those military and civilian planners who would like to truly modernise their armaments towards new industries and simplicity.”

Another thought: perhaps it is better for money to be wasted on inefficient, pointless technological monstrosities, especially if they don’t work. Billions of dollars spent on fighters or bombers that were never deployed might be better than less money spent on lean, efficient tools for killing.

On the other hand, when a military force has more than enough firepower for its purposes, additional expenditures may be pure waste and a drag on society. Furthermore, military corruption and waste may lead to lobbying for more funding: beneficiaries of boondoggles will seek to find ways to continue and increase their income streams. And even if some projects for new fighters or submarines are dropped after the expenditure of billions of dollars, this doesn’t mean other weapons disappear. Whatever the level of waste, rifles keep being produced.

Recently I read Paul Koistinen’s book State of War. His analysis of US military systems supports Kaldor’s analysis. Koistinen writes:

As a form of state capitalism, the defense sector was freed from practically all competitive market pressures. Under those circumstances, the industry became characterized by inefficiency, waste, and corruption; defense contractors too often turned out defective or failed weapons and equipment. Over time, massive expenditures for defense have had a very deleterious effect on the economy. These outlays have led to the hoarding of capital and human resources, especially among scientists and engineers, and to the diverting of public assistance from civilian enterprises. Of crucial significance, according to numerous critics, DOD [Department of Defense] budgets have distorted public priorities and spending, denying adequate attention and resources to infrastructure, education, medical care, and other public services and interests. (p. 235)

state-of-war

Activists have long stated that military spending would be more beneficial if redirected to human needs. However, making the military more efficient does not guarantee that savings will be redeployed for clean water, housing, education or health. Military efficiency might simply mean more money is available for weapons systems.

The DTCA brought back memories of these issues. The DTCA can be thought of as a straitjacket for Australian military-related research. Arguably, it will hinder research and development, with the additional side effect of undermining related civilian research, especially concerning so-called dual-use technologies, which can be adapted for military or civilian purposes.

Another possibility is that military systems that are fair and honest might be more open to switching to nonmilitary production. For decades, there has been a small but dedicated push for what is called “economic conversion” or “peace conversion,” which means switching from military production to production for civilian needs, for example from military vehicles to public transport. After the end of the cold war in 1989, there were great hopes that much such conversion would take place, as it did after the end of World Wars I and II. But these hopes were dashed: the military-industrial complex continued pretty much as before while searching for a new rationale. (Terrorism turned out to be the prime justification.)

peace-conversion-task-force-cartoon-sized-down-adapted-300x235

It does seem plausible that military research and development that is riddled with corrupt and exploitative practices will be resistant to change, because corrupt operators are less subject to rational argument and planning. On the other hand, corrupt systems are less likely to lead to efficient killing machines. Perhaps the world is a safer place if nuclear weapons contractors cut corners in manufacturing, design and maintenance, so that weapons, if ever used, miss their targets or simply won’t work. In this scenario, the baroque arsenal that Mary Kaldor warned about is not such a bad thing: incredibly wasteful but less deadly than it might otherwise be.

militarywastetitle2

An alternative research agenda

There is an alternative to military defence based on civilian methods of nonviolent action such as rallies, strikes, boycotts and occupations. Many people, because they believe violence always triumphs over nonviolence, see this as totally implausible, but there is good evidence that nonviolent methods can be more effective than armed struggle in challenging repressive regimes, because the goal is to win over the opponent, including the opponent’s troops.

The arguments about nonviolent defence – also called civilian-based defence, social defence and defence by civil resistance – have been canvassed elsewhere. Their relevance here is that if this alternative is taken seriously, it leads to an entirely different agenda for research, development and infrastructure. For example, decentralised renewable energy systems are much more suited for surviving an occupation, a blockade or a terrorist attack than centralised energy systems based on fossil fuels or nuclear power. Analogous considerations apply to communications, transport, agriculture and construction. A nonviolence-driven research agenda would give far more attention to social sciences and would change priorities in nearly every field of study.

From this point of view, the DTCA and problems of corruption in the military seem almost irrelevant. Research continues to be driven by military priorities, whether done efficiently or not.

Back to practicalities

A reorientation of military expenditures towards nonviolent alternatives is almost completely off the agenda. It proceeds only to the extent that developments, for example in energy and communications, increase the capacity of citizens to take action. As seen in the Arab spring and other nonviolent movements, network communication systems help citizens organise and coordinate actions.

For now, I will continue to support two seemingly disparate agendas: one is nonviolent defence and the other is dissent, including those who challenge the DTCA and other such legislation.

censored-igor-saktor
Image: Igor Saktor, The Australian

I’ve talked to a number of people in the military about nonviolent defence. Although most are sceptical about whether it could work, they recognise a common interest in thinking strategically about defending against aggression. Indeed, many officers would prefer to never have to fire a weapon in anger, seeing deterrence and prevention as superior to fighting.

In the same way, there can be a worthwhile dialogue and sharing of concerns when it comes to supporting integrity and free speech in the military. I will continue to support military whistleblowers and hope others will too.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

I thank Anu Bissoonauth-Bedford, Jørgen Johansen, Brendan Jones, Anne Melano, Brian Rappert and Kim Sawyer for valuable comments on drafts.

Jørgen Johansen comments

There are several discussions running in parallel here: one about the waste in military spending, one on the corruption in the military-industrial complex, one on defending a country without violent means, and one on the morality of having an inefficient military system compared to an efficient one. Even if they are related I think these should be held separate. One reason is that addressing topics separately makes it easier to understand, analyse, and act.

More importantly, for anyone who wants to oppose military/violent/corrupt systems, it is strategically important to confront them one at a time. To lump them together makes it almost impossible to “sell the arguments” and/or build alliances with those who are engaged in only one of these topics.

Too many activists are trapped in a fundamentalist attitude; “If you don’t agree with us on veganism, feminism, pacifism, sustainable energy, bi- and trans-sexuality, … we cannot have you in our group.” Almost all successful movements have focused on more limited questions, such as universal voting rights, anti-slavery, civil rights (anti-segregation), anti-personnel mines and anti-whaling.

If you don’t plan to write a huge book, there is no way you can properly describe all the complexities of the issues you mention in a single blog. This is of course not an argument against your topic for the blog, but advice for those who want to take up any of the issues you present and to run a campaign.

A final thought: it should not be on the peace movement’s agenda to discuss what sort of military means we want to see. Leave that to others.

corruption, tactics, whistleblowing

Whistleblowing and loyalty

Whistleblowers can gain insights from Jonathan Haidt’s studies of the foundations for morality.

Whistleblowers are people who speak out in the public interest, for example to expose corruption, abuse or dangers to the public. Surely this should be seen as a valuable service. Yet whistleblowers are frequently treated as traitors, as guilty of something worse than the abuses and crimes they reveal.

In-case-of-whistleblower-break-glass

National security whistleblowers, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, have been called traitors. Whistleblowers who are teachers, police officers, public servants or corporate executives may be called traitors, dobbers, snitches or other epithets.

Just as important as words are the reprisals that whistleblowers experience, including ostracism, petty harassment, demotions, referral to psychiatrists and dismissal. To be targeted with such hostile actions signifies condemnation, even contempt. Where does this vitriol and hostility come from?

Also important is the role of bystanders, in particular the co-workers who might personally support the whistleblower but are unwilling to take a stand. Many of them are afraid they will become targets themselves; others always support management, sometimes in the hope of rewards. It is reasonable to ask, where does the incredible power of the organisation come from?

The Righteous Mind

Insights can be gained from Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind. Haidt, a psychologist, set out to discover the biological bases of human morality. But first it is useful to explain Haidt’s picture of the mind.

Righteous_Mind

Imagine that your mind has two main components. The first is a rational, calculating operator that can examine courses of action and logically consider principles of behaviour. This is how most people think of themselves. Haidt calls this component the “rider.”

The second part of the mind is an intuitive operator that makes judgements on the basis of gut instinct, without consideration for facts or logic. This part is filled with passions and commitments, which the rider might consider biased and impulsive. Haidt calls this second part of the mind the “elephant.” The elephant makes day-to-day life possible; its quick responses are often sensible — but not always.

Haidt uses the metaphors of the rider and the elephant to highlight a key insight from studies of the mind: for many purposes, rational evaluation is unable to restrain instinctive responses. The elephant is too large and powerful to be controlled by the rider.

Haidt, through careful assessment of psychological research, concludes that in most cases the primary role of the rider is to figure out ways to justify what the elephant does. In other words, people reach their views about the world on the basis of gut instinct, and then their rational minds figure out reasons to justify these views.

Elephant and Rider

This is not a pretty picture, especially for those who believe in the primacy of rationality, or believe that they personally follow reason rather than emotion.

The next step in Haidt’s analysis is discovering the foundations of morality. Through a variety of means, he arrived at six main foundations that shape people’s senses of right and wrong: care, liberty, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Haidt used various tests to work out which of these values influence judgements in US people. He found that “liberals” (who might be called progressives in Australia) rely especially on care, liberty and fairness, whereas conservatives rely more equally on all of the foundations. This helps explain some of the political differences in the US.

Most of these foundations are relevant to whistleblowers. One key foundation, care, means looking after those in need, for example children and people suffering misfortune. When whistleblowers speak out about abuse of children or shortcomings in health services, they are implicitly appealing to the care foundation for morality. Another foundation, fairness, is relevant for those who speak out about corruption, including bribery, theft and nepotism. These are all violations of fairness.

So far so good. But whistleblowers come up against some of the other foundations. They are seen to be disloyal (to their employers), undermining authority (of their bosses) and sometimes transgressing on things considered sacred (such as when revealing confidential information). Haidt’s framework suggests that whistleblowers can gain support from some foundations of morality but are up against instinctive responses based on others.

At this point it is worth remembering the rider-elephant metaphor. Few people sit around scrutinising the bases of their own morality. Rather, their ideas of right and wrong are intuitive: they react with their gut and then search for rational justifications for their feelings. So if someone’s morality is strongly shaped by respect for authority, they may react emotionally against a co-worker who breaks ranks and then find reasons for their antagonism.

Sometimes there are multiple sources of authority. For example, a person can accept the authority of church leaders or seek a higher authority in the teachings of spiritual leaders such as Buddha, Jesus or Mohammed. However, the rider-elephant factor enters in here: because most teachings can be interpreted in various ways, the rider can find ways of justifying the elephant’s actions. For example, even when religious texts oppose killing, most religious leaders allow participation in war, using various rationalisations.

However, it seems too simple to say that whistleblowers put a priority on care, fairness and liberty (moral priorities for liberals) whereas bosses put a priority on loyalty and authority (which influence conservatives more than liberals). Whistleblowers vary greatly in their beliefs; many are the epitome of the loyal employee. Furthermore, what about all the bystanders, who by their inaction support bosses and let whistleblowers cop it? They are bound to include people driven by a variety of moral precepts.

loyal_employee

Various researchers have tried to figure out what, psychologically, makes whistleblowers different from others. Employers would love to know, so they could avoid hiring potential whistleblowers or, having hired one, keep them away from sensitive information. Given the lack of any reliable psychological tests to detect potential whistleblowers, it is safe to assume that psychology is not the key to understanding whistleblowing. This is especially the case for inadvertent whistleblowers, the workers who report a problem, are totally surprised when they experience reprisals, and afterwards say “I was just doing my job.” There are psychological factors involved in this, for example honesty and conscientiousness, but no obvious connection to the foundations of morality traced by Haidt. Or is there?

Care versus loyalty?

Sexual abuse is a violation of the morality of care: those who are vulnerable need to be protected. Speaking out about the abuse, on the other hand, challenges authority and loyalty.

Consider, for example, sexual abuse by clergy. The disturbing reality is that many people in churches knew about it but took little or no action. This can be interpreted as loyalty and authority taking precedence over care. On the other hand, the response of many members of the public, when they learned about the abuse, was completely different: many were horrified and disgusted. As outsiders, their conceptions of loyalty were potentially quite different. They may have had no particular connection to the church, or perhaps had their own loyalty, for example to their children.

But what about authority? Those who are not directly subject to a particular authority may not think deference to it is so important. This observation is compatible with the advice that whistleblowers can gain greatest support from other whistleblowers and from members of the public, for example through media stories.

So morality based on authority seems, at least when it applies to whistleblowers, to be quite specific: deference to authority takes precedence mainly when people are directly subject to the authority, as in the case of bosses or church leaders. This deference can also be explained a different way: people are afraid of the consequences of bucking authority. They might lose their job or, just as worrying, be subject to reprisals such as reprimands, harassment and ostracism. It might seem that fear is a fundamental factor in this dimension of morality.

Loyalty to what?

For me, this raises another question. Why should the two factors of loyalty and authority be tied to the organisation where a person works? In terms of evolution, humans lived in groups whose very survival often depended on banding together. Dissent was potentially dangerous, so it could have been advantageous to attack or expel those who challenged the group’s leaders or threatened its cohesion.

However, many groups today are a far cry from the groups in human prehistory, which were often quite small and probably never much more than a few hundred people in size. Working for a government or corporation with thousands of employees is not the same, neither in scale nor in the danger to the organisation of a bit of dissent.

This suggests to me that although loyalty is a key factor in morality, how loyalty is assigned remains open. Inside a school, for example, a pupil might be loyal to a peer group, a sporting team, a teacher or the school as a whole. In a corporation, a worker might be loyal to a work team, a union, professional peers in the field, a particular boss or the company as a whole. The possibility that loyalty is not automatic suggests that it is worth looking at the methods by which organisations foster it.

Changing gut reactions to whistleblowers

It’s worth considering each of Haidt’s six foundations for morality and asking, what can be done, by whistleblowers and their supporters, to change gut reactions to whistleblowing so it is more valued? The foundations of care, fairness and liberty are ones that should create favourable attitudes towards whistleblowers. The message is to continually emphasise care for others when speaking out about hazards to the public, emphasise fairness when speaking out about corruption, and emphasise liberty — resistance to domination — when speaking out about threats from government or corporate power.

Those three foundations are the easy ones for whistleblowers, namely ones where they have a natural advantage. The other three foundations are more challenging: loyalty, authority and sanctity.

Loyalty to the employer is commonly expected. Whistleblowers violate this sense of loyalty: they are seen as traitors. Are there other ways to assign loyalty to which whistleblowers could appeal? One possibility is loyalty to the mission of the organisation, not to the organisation itself. Of course organisational leaders say they are pursuing the mission, so distinguishing between the mission and the organisation is hard to sell.

you-did-right-thing-wb

Another possibility of an alternative loyalty is to other workers, especially when they are supportive of each other, as in work teams or unions. Instead of speaking out as an individual, a worker concerned about abuses could instead build networks and alliances first, gaining support in order to promote collective action. This is not easy, but does have a prospect of fostering a different assignment of loyalties.

Then there is authority, a moral foundation that whistleblowers almost inevitably challenge. Questioning the boss’s authority is difficult, whether by direct confrontation or by reporting problems to the boss’s boss, higher officials or watchdog bodies. Is there any different line of authority that can be an alternative source of legitimacy? One possibility is the authority of laws. If bosses are violating the law, they are violating legal authority. The trouble is that by the time legal sanctions are applied — if they ever are — it is too late for the whistleblower. After all, corrupt operators do not declare they are breaking the law. Indeed, they commonly allege that whistleblowers are criminals, by violating terms of employment, confidentiality agreements and the like.

One of the advantages of whistleblower laws is that they give legitimacy to whistleblowers. Even though the laws may give little protection in practice and, even worse, give a false sense of security, their very existence may help undermine the assumption that authority is always right.

Red-Queen

Finally there is sanctity, a moral foundation of special significance to many political conservatives. If corruption is stigmatised, then whistleblowers can draw on this moral foundation. This is suggested by the expressions “clean hands” and “dirty hands,” referring to honest and dishonest individuals. Whistleblowers can assist their cause by avoiding any activity that can be easily stigmatised as dishonest or unsavoury. By the same token, employers regularly manipulate the sanctity foundation by trying to stigmatise the whistleblower, by spreading rumours (sexual misbehaviour is a favourite allegation) and by treating the whistleblower as tainted, not to be trusted or even spoken to. Ostracism — cutting off personal relationships — is in essence to treat a person as dangerous and even contagious.

When whistleblowers join together with others, and obtain support from bystanders, it is far more difficult to stigmatise them. There is protection in numbers.

Considering the various foundations of morality thus provides some direction for whistleblowers and their supporters.

  • When appropriate, emphasise violations of care, fairness, and liberty.
  • Search for alternative bases for loyalty and authority.
  • Try to assign stigma to wrongdoers.
  • Be prepared for the tactics used to turn these moral foundations against whistleblowers.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

More information

I haven’t tried to provide sources for many of the generalisations I’ve made about whistleblowers. For more information see my book Whistleblowing and my site on suppression of dissent.

PS I’ve applied moral foundations ideas to several other topics:

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Paula Arvela, Don Eldridge, Kathy Flynn, Xiaoping Gao, Steven Howard, Nicola Marks and Tshering Yangden for helpful feedback on drafts.

I am vice president of Whistleblowers Australia but my views here do not necessarily represent those of others in the organisation.

Comments from Kim Sawyer

[Kim was a whistleblower at two Australian universities, and has been active on whistleblowing issues for many years.]

Excellent analysis – corresponds to the thoughts I’ve had over a long period of time. Haidt’s prescription of the rider-elephant dichotomy and the six foundations of morality are insightful. Your application of those foundations to whistleblowing is spot on. Two general comments, and then some specific comments from my experience.

First, whistleblowing acts to elevate the conflict between the foundations. It brings morality into focus for everyone; the whistleblower, the respondent, the bystanders. The foundations are like latent characteristics, and whistleblowing becomes the realization of those characteristics so that an individual has to now make a choice. It’s like going to the ballot box, you have to now choose between fairness and loyalty to the institution.

Secondly, one aspect which could be highlighted more is risk. Everyone, whistleblower, respondent and bystander, assesses their risks. Risk minimization takes over – that is, self-interest. The bystander may see the same unfairness as the whistleblower, but they also see the risk to themselves. You could say that these six foundations are a portfolio, and the whistleblower and bystander assign different weights to different foundations. My sense is that the bystander will always converge to the less risky portfolio which is loyalty to authority.

Some specific comments from my own experience

  1. For me, fairness was always the important factor. In both whistleblowing cases, I chose fairness over loyalty to an unfair authority. And it correlates with my political leanings which are progressive. Of course, there was also a sense of professional responsibility, that a professor should act in the long-term interests of the institution and of higher education in general. Obviously, I took my professional responsibilities too seriously.
  2. The two cases I was involved with highlighted the singularity of whistleblowing, but from vastly different starting points. In both cases though, the institution tried to replace the loyalty of colleagues to me by loyalty to the institution. This strategy emphasises the whistleblower and not the whistleblowing; the weaknesses of the whistleblower and not the foundational issues were highlighted.
  3. Another issue is the conflicting loyalties within the whistleblower. I had loyalty to both universities, but the loyalty was principally to the long-term, not to the short-term management. Whistleblowing involves a lot of internal conflict for a whistleblower between fairness and loyalty to authority. Fairness won out for me.
corruption, drugs, health

Pharmacrime and what to do about it

Is the pharmaceutical industry more dangerous than the mafia? Peter Gøtzsche thinks so.

PeterGotzschePeter Gøtzsche

Did you know that the third leading cause of death in western countries, after heart disease and cancer, is adverse reactions to prescription drugs? Did you know that large pharmaceutical companies usually control the trials of their new drugs, and sometimes manipulate the published results by misclassifying deaths, excluding some participants and not revealing studies that came up with null results? Did you know that some of people listed as authors of drug studies published in leading medical journals have had little or nothing to do with the research, have not written the papers, and are paid for their symbolic role? Did you know that several major pharmaceutical companies have paid fines of over one billion dollars for corrupt practice? Did you know that government drug regulators in several countries have become tools of the companies they are supposed to regulate? Did you know that hundreds of thousands of people have died from drugs when the company executives knew about and hid information about the hazards?

This information has been known to critics of large pharmaceutical companies — commonly called big pharma — for many years. There have been powerful critiques written by former editors of medical journals and as well as exposés by whistleblowers. Now there is a new book that puts together the case against big pharma in a more comprehensive and hard-hitting way than ever before: Peter C Gøtzsche’s Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare (London: Radcliffe, 2013).

DeadlyMedicines

The bulk of the book is a critical examination of research findings concerning pharmaceutical drugs, serving to illustrate general points. For example, chapter 4 is titled “Very few patients benefit from the drugs they take,” seemingly a startling claim. Gøtzsche gives some hypothetical examples of how results of drug testing might sound encouraging but actually disguise a very modest effect, and how double-blind trials that are not properly blinded can give misleading results. He then cites studies of antidepressants to show that the actual situation is probably worse than his hypothetical examples.

Different chapters in the book deal with conflicts of interest, pharmaceutical company payments to physicians, drug marketing operations, ghostwriting of articles for medical journals and the inadequacy of drug regulators, among other topics. Each of these chapters includes case studies of particular drugs or company operations. Then come chapters about particular drugs, abuses and companies, for example chapter 14 on “Fraudulent celecoxib trial and other lies.” Gøtzsche exposes corrupt practices, including the hiding of trials that did not show a benefit, disguising adverse drug reactions, promoting a new highly expensive drug that is no better than an existing one, making false statements about the benefits and risks of drugs, applying pressure on drug regulators, and suppressing information about dangerous drugs on the market.

Gøtzsche relies heavily on published studies (including his own) to back up his claims: the book is thoroughly referenced, with numerous citations to articles in medical journals. Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime is in the tradition of rigorous and knowledgeable exposé. Some previous books along the same line include Marcia Angell’s The Truth about the Drug Companies and Jerome Kassirer’s On the Take. Angell and Kassirer had been editors of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

Gøtzsche has impeccable credentials to write a critique of big pharma. He started his career working for a drug company, and saw dubious operations from the inside. He qualified as a doctor and then worked as a medical researcher for many years. Most importantly, he is a key figure in the Cochrane Collaboration, a group of medical researchers who scrutinise the full complement of studies of particular drugs, drawing conclusions about benefits and risks.

Undertaking a meta-analysis of drug trials seems like an obvious thing to do. What makes the Cochrane Collaboration significant is that it is largely independent of the drug industry. The industry’s influence is so pervasive that many trials are fraudulent or misrepresented, many publications are ghostwritten by company staff, and evaluations by drug regulators are biased due to company pressure. Being relatively independent of this influence makes an enormous difference.

As well as obtaining insights from his involvement with the Cochrane Collaboration, Gøtzsche has had personal involvement in trying to influence drug policy. Being from Denmark, on various occasions he has provided information to the Danish drug regulator on crucial issues, such as that a new drug is far more expensive than an existing one, but no more effective. Yet the regulator on many occasions has served drug company agendas by approving drugs, costing the government large sums of money and providing no added benefit to patients.

Here is Gøtzsche’s summary of problems with drug regulation.

We don’t have safe drugs. The drug industry more or less controls itself; our politicians have weakened the regulatory demands over the years, as they think more about money than patient safety; there are conflicts of interest at drug agencies; the system builds on trust although we know the industry lies to us; and when problems arise, the agencies use fake fixes although they know they won’t work. (p. 107)

In describing the unethical and damaging activities of the drug industry, with case after case of egregious behaviour, Gøtzsche sometimes expresses his exasperation. This comes across most strongly in the chapters on psychiatric drugs, many of which are useless or worse, cause addiction and massive damage, yet are widely prescribed due to massive marketing.

Gøtzsche’s book is filled with information and thoroughly referenced, yet perhaps its most striking feature is his claim that big pharma is organised crime, as indicated in the title. At first this may sound exaggerated, or just a metaphor, but Gøtzsche is quite serious. He looks at definitions of organised crime and finds that big pharma fits in all respects: the companies knowingly undertake illegal actions that bring them huge profits and kill people, and they persist in the same behaviour even after having been convicted of criminal activity.

At many points, Gøtzsche asks rhetorically what is the difference between the activities of big pharma in promoting addictive and destructive drugs and the activities of drug cartels producing and selling heroin.

organised-crime-cartoon

Calling big pharma organised crime is in a tradition of pointing to double standards in the way behaviour is labelled. The term “terrorism” is usually applied to violent acts by small non-state groups; some scholars have pointed out that many governments use violence to intimidate populations in way that fits the usual definitions of terrorism. They call this “state terrorism.”

If the operations of big pharma are a type of organised crime, except killing many more people than the mafia, what is to be done? Gøtzsche has a chapter spelling out ways to bring drug testing and regulation under control. One important step is for all drug testing to be done by independent scientists, rather than by the companies that manufacture the drugs. Another is to disallow payments from drug companies to physicians, researchers, medical journals, and regulators. Gøtzsche draws an analogy: what would people think if judges received payments from prosecutors or defendants? It would be seen as corrupt, of course. Company payments to physicians, journals and regulators should be seen as corrupt too.

doctorPayment176

Gøtzsche’s recommendations are sensible and, if implemented, would transform the way drugs are used in society. If this happened, company profits would plummet, which means that companies will do everything possible to maintain the current system. As well as saying what should be done, there is a need for a strategy for bringing about change, and the strategy has to involve citizen campaigners as well as concerned researchers and physicians. Just as the movement against smoking has involved a wide range of campaigners and methods of action, so too must a movement against corruption in healthcare. Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime is not a practical manual for such a movement, but it is essential reading for movement activists, especially so they will know what they are up against.

For readers thinking about their own health, and the health of their friends and family members, Gøtzsche provides important messages. He suggests not taking any drug unless it is absolutely necessary, because benefits are minimal and there are always potential harms. In this category would be included antidepressants and drugs to lower cholesterol and high blood pressure, for example. If you’re going to take a drug, then it’s usually better to take an old one, because newer ones are probably no better, cost vastly more, and are less well tested for harms.

olderisbetter

If you want to know more about the drugs you take, seek independent advice. That’s not easy, because so many researchers, medical journals, physicians and regulators are in the pay of the industry. Reviews by members of the Cochrane Collaboration are a good place to start. So is Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime. Gøtzsche provides enough references for even the most assiduous reader.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

 

I thank Melissa Raven for useful comments on a draft of this comment.