When doves cry

Will Storr

August 04, 2007


Deep behind the barbed wire, the most powerful army in the world is making final preparations for war. The dugger-dugger-dugger of a flock of helicopters ricochets through the clouds, which have set in low, mean and portentous over the usually sparkling Capricorn Coast.

There are 26,000 American and Australian soldiers in this place, along with 30 warships, 100 armed aircraft, stealth bombers and a nuclear submarine. This is to be the biggest "war game" in history, during which our nation's fighting men and women will join the massed forces of the last empire on Earth. And in front of all this, metres away from the perimeter fence, there's a 62-year-old man with a cardboard rocket and no shoes, climbing on some barrels. He's going to try to stop the games. And he's going to do it with mime.

I look on with swelling concern as Benny Zable clambers shakily up his two-high stack of oil drums. Watching him with me are a clutch of cold protesters, all stretched woollens, hand-painted placards and snivelly noses. Watching them are several bored policemen, their leather gloved hands shoved into their armpits, knees bouncing up and down in the chill.

"Benny's amazing," one of the protesters tells a policeman.

"He's famous all over the world," another adds.

Benny pulls a gas mask over his face. He's wearing a black ankle-length apron with "END THE WAR GAME" written on it in white and fluoro orange. Carefully, he pushes himself to his feet. And then his performance begins. He holds his cardboard rocket above his head. He waits a moment. And then he pulls it in half.

"Yes!" says a protester behind me. "Ha! Ha! Yes! I love it!"

Suddenly, beyond Benny, there's a commotion.

A woman is shouting at the soldiers on the other side of the fence in a crazed manner "Mother Earth is ready to shake her boots and be rid of you! BABY MURDERERS!"

"No!" someone nearby tells her. "We've got to show concern for them!"

The woman considers this for a moment before clasping her hands to her chest in a sad, motherly gesture and setting her face to "compassionate care".

"Guys," she implores softly, "your lives are too precious to be playing war games."

As she speaks, a man in scarlet pyjama pants starts playing Give Peace a Chance on a ukelele; Benny moves his left arm about a bit and a corporate events organiser dressed as the Grim Reaper shakes his scythe at a helicopter. And all the while, a convoy of vast army trucks is being let into the base, each carrying several young soldiers in its cab. None of them really notices.

I'M IN ROCKHAMPTON, NEAR THE SHOALWATER Bay Military Training Area where Exercise Talisman Sabre 2007 is due to take place. The precise detail of what the game is going to entail is unclear. All we really know is that the two armies are "testing inter-operability", which will involve, it is thought, the use of bullets, bombs and miscellaneous toxic nasties in this environmentally precious part of Queensland.

My plan is to spend three days with the protesters, who are doing everything they can think of to stop Talisman Sabre happening. I want to find the answer to one stark question: why? Because it feels to me as if the age of protest is dead. Our parents might have believed they could change the world by poking daisies down gun barrels and painting "love" on their bums, but since then we've had the idealism kicked out of us. To the average angry young person of the noughties, making "love, not war" sounds as childlike and absurd as fairies at the bottom of the garden.

We've come to believe that serious decisions are not made on behalf of the masses but for industry, economy, governments and other powerful instrumentalities. It's as if the machine is out of our control and all that is required of us are taxes and votes. And so our politicians have become wily salesmen and our democratic system a terrible circus, the ringleaders promising marvels but delivering nothing but wheezing donkeys and alcoholic clowns, while the eminent few sit backstage and watch the real show. Even at the ballot box, it seems, our capacity to impose serious change has long been disabled. So why would anyone think a slogan on a stick would make any difference?

Of course, in the spring of 2003, hope unexpectedly lit up the Western world when millions of people swamped their cities to voice their objections to the invasion of Iraq - only to be ignored by the politicians. In the end, I was sure, those parades added up to nothing more than one long funeral march for the protest movement.

And then I heard rumours of mass demonstrations, a "Peace Convergence" on the Capricorn Coast. Thousands, it was said, were going to attempt to halt the multimillion-dollar international war games. So, in a spirit of curiosity, I set off for the communities of Yeppoon, Rockhampton and Byfield to find out more about these strange, dreaming people.

I LEFT MY FIRST "ACTION" IN A SORRY MOOD. I'M not sure what I was expecting of Benny Zable.

He's featured in an exhibition celebrating cultural diversity at the National Museum in Canberra and even has a costume on display in Sydney's Powerhouse Museum. To his own crowd, he's a legend. His performance today might have been surreal but it was also infinitely memorable - brilliantly designed and creepingly disturbing under that troubled sky. The thing is, I left not a bit wiser about what was happening behind the barbed wire or how the protesters intended to stop it.

So I decided to visit one of the locals. Steve Bishopric is a Byfield potter who's been roused from his simple life by a restless fury at the way he feels his people have been treated by the military. "I came to the Capricorn Coast 30 years ago," he tells me. "I fell in love with the place. It was quiet, sleepy, warm, and there was cheap land and beautiful women."

As Bishopric speaks, his fingers squeeze constantly and his eyes keep flickering up towards the windows. He doesn't so much answer my questions as drown them in torrents of formal, prepared statements. It's hard to keep up, but I manage to grasp that live firing is taking place on the catchment area for the region's water supply, which means that highly toxic chemicals such as perchlorate may end up in the locals' tea, as they have in the water supply of residents who live near military bases in 25 American states. Ominously, the military has refused to reveal what sort of weaponry is being used up there in the hills. And, bearing in mind that the US Army has a track record for environmental desecration, Bishopric is understandably worried.

And then there are the animals of Shoalwater Bay. The 26 species of dolphin and whale, the green turtles and the largest dugong population on the Great Barrier Reef, all which will be imperilled by the debris that it is standard US policy to dump overboard, not to mention by the use of sonar during anti-submarine exercises.

As I'm taking all this in, we hear the sound of a passing motor on the road outside. Bishopric looks up. "There's the police," he says. "They're watching me. They're watching everybody."

The vehicle drives past the window.

"It's an ambulance," he notes. "Cancel that; I'm just paranoid." He looks at me with raised eyebrows. "For some reason "

Clearly, this is a man in a state of some agitation over what's happening. I wonder why he's putting himself through these efforts and what he realistically hopes to achieve.

"This is a story that hasn't got out," he tells me. "But we've managed to get a huge focus on this. This is a story that's going out across the Pacific."

The next morning, now fully briefed on the issues, I attend a Peace Convergence meeting in a wooden building in the forest at Byfield. As well as the locals, there are 44 separate campaigning groups here. Because they're all ideologically opposed to authoritarian behaviour, they're against having a leader. So the man with the tiny ponytail called Franklin who's standing in front of the 200-strong crowd is not in any way in charge. He's merely a "facilitator". And it's not going very well.

"Respect for the facilitator!" someone shouts above the bubbling din that Franklin's trying to calm.

There's an agenda on a blackboard behind Franklin, but he keeps getting interrupted. Firstly by a woman who announces she's brought a Geiger counter (whoops and applause), then by a man selling homemade "Peace on Terra" T-shirts (more whoops and applause), and then by a young hotblood who angrily demands immediate action instead of all this bloody talk (yet more whoops and applause).

Franklin responds to all this by throwing his chalk on the floor. As he stoops to retrieve it, a woman I recognise from the previous day stands up. "I just want to say that activists need to be better supported than they were yesterday," she says. "There were more police than us out there. It was terrible."

Then a girthy man in a white boiler suit and cowboy hat stands up. He's introduced as Bryan Law, one of the "Pine Gap Six", four of whom (including Law) were recently prosecuted for breaking into the US spy base near Alice Springs in December 2005. Despite being found guilty in June in the Northern Territory Supreme Court of breaching the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act, the Christian protesters managed to avoid a seven-year prison sentence when Justice Sally Thomas let them off with fines.

"Look, I've got nothing against standing around bases with signs," Law says. The protesters shift uncomfortably. There's something in the 51-year-old's sure gaze and slow delivery that gives you the impression that this might not be entirely true. "But if any of you want to deepen your resistance," he adds, "I reckon a few arrests down at the gate this morning would really up the ante."

As I leave for the next action, I hear about a group of young Christians who'd broken into the training area the previous day. Apparently, they had hoped Talisman Sabre would be immediately halted out of concern for their safety. The army ignored the protesters until they decided to show themselves, at which point they had a game of Frisbee until the police showed up to arrest them. A second group, however, were still in there. So far, their presence had yet to bring the armies to heel.

Two hours later, the end of a remote and muddy road in Byfield has turned into a bouncing, chanting, multicoloured din of gloriously dissenting humans. In front of a high gate and a row of poker-faced police, there are at least 100 people. It's a weird and confusing scene. There's a middle-aged man with a guitar singing Give Peace a Chance, a hippie on a bongo, an elderly Quaker reading a homegrown poem, and some rap anarchists with a concert-grade amplifier disguised as a crippled soldier. And towering over the entire bubbling carnival is Benny Zable doing his mime. Despite the passion and energy that's going into all this, I'm finding it tough to decipher the point. Everybody seems to be angry about something slightly different. If I were the boss of Talisman Sabre and came down here to find out what all the fuss was about, I wouldn't even know who to ask.

Amid the melaacée, I see facilitator Franklin. "How's it going?" I ask. He eyes me suspiciously. "Well, the war games are still happening," he says. "Until they stop, it's not going good." He scuttles off in the direction of a group of women who are dressed as CWA members and are chanting "scones, not bombs".

Then, over to the left where the six-metre fence becomes a 1.2m one, I hear a cry that resonates with much of what I've begun to feel about all this. A respectable-looking middle-aged woman in a long grey scarf has committed the arrestable offence of climbing through the wire into the training site, and she's shouting: "We're all having a great time singing songs and chanting, but we're not having any effect!"

She's quickly joined by seven more protesters. They're approached by three young soldiers. "Look," one of them tells her. "There's a place over there where you can protest to your heart's content."

"We'd rather not," says one of the protesters.

The soldier takes a deep breath and says, "But saying it here is no different to saying it over there."

"We don't want you here!" comes the reply. "You're killing machines! You're poisoning everything on Earth!"

As the police begin their arrests, another spontaneous rendition of Give Peace a Chance springs up. I push my way out of the crowd and as I go I hear a woman muttering, "I wish we knew another bloody song."

Keen to speak to the frustrated arrestee who made the initial, mournful complaint, I head down to the watch-house. Eight hours later, she emerges into the darkness, cold, hungry and anguished. Trish Mann is a 54-year-old registered nurse who now has a new entry in her appointments diary: a court date on a charge that carries, at worst, a six-month custodial sentence.

I begin by telling her I heard her comment about "having no effect" and that I empathised, deeply. "Well, it's no good just standing around singing songs and then going home again," she says, shaking her head. "I thought that climbing over the fence and refusing to leave would be saying it's not a little party we're having. Millions of people don't want US bases in Australia, so what are they doing here?"

"But how is getting arrested going to help?" I ask.

"Because I'm going to talk to people and tell them what's happening."

"So is it that you feel being arrested adds weight to what you have to say?"

There's a silence.

"I don't think so," she says.

"So what is it?"

Mann sighs, looks down and touches her forehead with her fingertips. "I don't know," she says. "It's just a voice, you know? I just want to be a voice."

THE NEXT MORNING, ACCORDING TO THE PROGRAM printed on a leaflet that's freely available back in town, there's due to be an action at the "Green Gate" at the end of Raspberry Creek Road. When we arrive, however, it seems the police have managed to get hold of the leaflet too and have responded by erecting a roadblock 11.5 kilometres from the gate. Bryan Law is first to arrive at the barricade. The air fizzes with tension and drizzle as he strides slowly up to the police sergeant.

"What's going on?" Law asks, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops.

"The road's closed," says the sergeant. "And if you make the decision to go through, there may be consequences."

Suddenly the tension is shattered by the police chief's mobile going off to the sound of the theme from Mission: Impossible. Law walks away, chuckling.

When the rest of the protesters arrive, we all gather in a circle and a man in a yellow raincoat commandeers a loudhailer. "I think we should challenge this here today," he shouts. "And I think we should challenge it in a mass way."

My heart sinks as the whoops and applause signify the decision to break the law by walking up the road. Resisting the treacherous but powerful urge to grab a policeman and plead bystander status, I begin the two-and-a-half hour trudge feeling superficial, unworthy and slightly damp about the toes.

On the way I decide to probe the deeper motives of some of the more established protesters, and so I catch up with Benny Zable. What strange path,

I want to know, does a life have to take in order to plonk a man, two years into his seventh decade, on a pile of barrels outside a military base, dancing very slowly in an ankle-length apron?

A cruel and eventful one, as it turns out. Zable tells me that his parents fled Poland in the 1930s to dodge the Nazis. He was born in New Zealand before the family emigrated to Australia in 1948. His parents might have succeeded in escaping violence, but in Melbourne Benny ended up being bullied by anti-Semitic Catholic gangs outside school and by teachers within it.

"In those days the teachers used the cane and the strap," he says. "They'd leave me a bloody mess. And my parents were too frightened to do anything about it, because they'd had these experiences in Poland and Russia. In the end I didn't go back to school. I had to go to work."

But he says his apprenticeship at a Melbourne print works brought no peace. He was victimised there, too, his tormenters stripping him and painting ink on his testicles. "The stuff that went on there," he remembers sadly, "it was bad news." He pauses for a moment, lost in memory, and grimaces. "The other thing was that you had to go to the pub with them."

Two further events seem key. The first, the modern dance classes that he adored, the second a stint in a kibbutz on the Lebanese border during the Six Day War. "I watched the planes fly over and drop the bombs," he says. "I saw the body parts. I saw the families. It's imprinted on my mind now."

Traumatised by violence and rescued by the creative arts, Zable has managed to construct a life in which he fights against the former using his gifts in the latter. And perhaps more importantly, following extensive travels in Europe and the US, he's finally found the security and acceptance whose absence made his formative years so bloody and dreadful.

"They're wonderful," he says when I ask about his community of friends. "I love them. It's family, you know?"

An hour later, today's action is at full boil. There's a constant merry-go-round of protesters climbing into the site and being carried out. There are slogans and songs and flags and banners. There's a woman meditating in a puddle. All is well. Until a group of young men in black hoods try to force the gate open. Suddenly, the police are heads-down and shoving, faces purpling, jaws gritted, the air punched-through with the shouts and grunts of struggle and rage.

And then, just as suddenly, it's over. One of the protesters grabs the loudhailer and launches a diplomatic appeal for calm. "We can control ourselves," she says, "so we ask the police to control themselves."

"But they won't!" comes a shout. "We know they won't!"

"They can," she says. "They've been doing it all week. I've just been told they've granted permission for a food truck to deliver us all lunch."

"Great!" shouts someone. "If the food van's on its way we can get a bit more energy and blood sugar and then have another go at the gate!"

Less than a minute later, the loud hailer crackles on again. "The police are now saying they're not going to send the food van anymore," the female protester says. The crowd reacts with shock at the raw injustice of it all. Near where I'm standing, a friendly policeman mutters, "This is the most disorganised bunch we've ever had to deal with."

The next afternoon, I manage to secure some time with the Pine Gap Six's Bryan Law. Having just returned from a surreal morning involving a young couple trying to literally "make love, not war" at the gate (they were prevented by the swift action of police and a regrettable bout of performance anxiety on the part of the man), I want to find an answer to my original question: why? Do they really think they'll make a difference? If so, how does getting arrested help? Or taking your clothes off?

"A lot of this stuff is about informing people and forming public opinion," Law tells me. "It's a known equation: arrests equal publicity. But a big part of all this is what I call interventionary non-violence - you intervene into the machinery of war and cause it to malfunction or disrupt."

I take this as a reference to the two groups who tried to stop the games by entering deep into the base. Surely they hadn't a hope of halting Talisman Sabre?

"It was a promising start," he replies. "But if, the next time, instead of having two groups prepared to go in we have 20, then that would seriously compromise the operation."

Perhaps. But I've a bigger doubt about all this: for any non-violent movement to succeed, it needs to recruit the support of the broad mass of people. Surely the average suburban Australian will look at all this and see the dreadlocks, the bare breasts and the arrestees and become alienated. They'll think "these people are not like me" and put the footy on.

Law laughs, generously and knowingly. "Well, yes, I do think that there's a real challenge here," he says. "How do you build a diverse movement and then accept the consequences of that diversity? So, yes, it's an issue. But at the same time it's not that critical. I see that some people can get alienated and find the message confusing or react to the appearance of the people, but I have a deep faith in the Australian people. And I also think it's a bit beside the point."

He goes on to point out that many of the protesters - himself included - are motivated by faith. "If you believe that a human being is the measure of all things, you won't walk into unexploded ordnance and try and stop war games," he says. "You have to believe there's a greater purpose that we all serve, find that faith within yourself and then try to work out how to align your external life with your internal belief. And that's a process that can go on forever."

In conversation, Law's an impressive presence. He's sincere, respectful and articulate, and it's hard not to be drawn into his force-field of chuckling charisma. He's like brave David from the Goliath fable, but with bigger trousers and even more fallible tactics. Because this non-violence movement of his won't even throw stones. They're battling against impossible forces with nothing in their armoury but courage, fury and a rare tolerance for prison breakfasts.

DESPITE THEIR DISORGANISED, ECCENTRIC AND ramshackle presentation, I've come to admire these people hugely. The great majority of them aren't simply against "war" in a vague and simple-minded way. Most of them accept that the Australian Defence Force needs to have a defensive role and are actually volubly proud of the nation's peacekeeping work.

Whether or not you agree with their politics or methods, it's clear to me that most of them are genuine in their motives. They're not, like so many of their generation, drained by apathy or hollowed out by cynicism. They desperately want the world to be a better place and are doing everything they can think of to make it so. But their legitimate arguments - about local environmental issues, the offensive action in Iraq and the Howard Government's policy of co-operation with the US - are continually polluted by idiots shouting "baby murderers" and trying to start sing-songs. It takes just one clown to corrupt the whole class and in an arena where attention and purity of message are the most valuable commodities, you shouldn't allow entry to corporate events organisers dressed as the Grim Reaper. Right now there are too many voices, too many tactics and not enough people in charge. The rainbow flag of unconditional acceptance that this movement is so proud of might just be its greatest single flaw.

In these days of internet campaigning and the slick PR and lobbying that global brands like Amnesty and Greenpeace do so effectively, it feels as if these organic, homegrown movements are increasingly removed from the real front lines of social change. In the West, since the 1970s, ideology itself has been slowly punched to death by individualism. And so, it could be argued, have its tactics.