INVESTIGATE
THE JIHADIS NEXT DOOR
WHAT’S REALLY RADICALISING MODERATE MUSLIMS?
NEW ZEALAND’S BEST NEWS MAGAZINE
WAITANGI DAZE
WHY AREN’T WE BEING TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR HISTORY?
ASK JEEVES
THE PG WODEHOUSE STORY Feb/Mar 2015, $8.60
MARK STEYN AMY BROOKE & MORE
Contents Feb/Mar 2015
14
THE JIHADIS NEXT DOOR
What’s really radicalising young Muslims? The shocking answer: it could be you. Just the ‘stench’ of living in Western culture is encouraging many young men to join extreme forms of Islam to compensate, and the hate preachers are there to recruit them. IAN WISHART with the stunning revelations
22 THE JIHADIS ON CAMPUS
22
The word ‘Islamophobia’ is flung around, but ShariaWatch UK has issued a new report suggesting westerners have good reason to be phobic about the growing extremism of Islam
28 PG’s TIPS
It’s the fortieth anniversary of the death of brilliant writer PG Wodehouse. HAL COLEBATCH re-evaluates the literary contribution of the man who gave us Jeeves & Wooster
IN HERS
WAITANGI DAZE
28
The tribunal has ruled Ngapuhi never ceded sovereignty, is it telling the truth? IAN WISHART argues no, and lays out the evidence
Contents
34 38
06 Editor
Speaks for itself, really
08 Communiques Your say
46
10 Steynpost Mark Steyn
12 Right & Wrong David Garrett
34 Invest
42 Science
36 Gadgets & Mall
44 Bookcase
38 Tech
46 Movies
40 Online
48 Consider This
Money in 2015 The latest toys
Self-drive cars Hacking medical records
Bad luck and cancer Michael Morrissey American Sniper Amy Brooke
36
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5
EDITORIAL
By Ian Wishart
Je ne suis pas Charlie
T
here is nothing more odious, more obnoxious, than journalists and others in the liberal media engaging in selfcongratulatory fawning and onanism as they compete to prove themselves the biggest or most ignorant prats on the planet. The massacre at French journal Charlie Hebdo brought out the worst in that kind of media hypocrisy. Suddenly, every Gen-Xer with a Twitter account, every Millennial with Instagram, was telling anyone who would listen that they, too, were Charlie. Yeah, right. So they were posting offensive cartoons of the prophet Muhammed on their accounts, in their newspapers or on their TV broadcasts? Not by a long shot. Free speech is one of those rights that has to be exercised carefully. One restrain on it is defamation law, which emerged as a less fatal alternative to duelling when gentlemen fell out over an insult. Because, traditionally, the ultimate comeback
from exercising one’s free speech has always been the possibility of death or financial ruin. The editorial team at Charlie Hebdo knew what they were doing, tweaking the tail of a religion whose holy book advocates violence against non-believers. Of course, in any civilised world we recognise that the death sentence is no longer the appropriate response to an insult, but Islam is ‘special’ and western liberals in the media have long argued in favour of that specialness. For example, when an idiot Florida Christian pastor of a tiny 50-strong church decided to burn a copy of the Koran a couple of years ago, the “JeSuisCharlie” brigade in the western news media argued, almost to a person, that the pastor’s actions were “despicable…hate-speech”. There was, it goes without saying, no defence of the pastor’s rights to his own free speech commentary on Islam. In the New Zealand Herald, Tracey Barnett wrote:
Suddenly, every Gen-Xer with a Twitter account, every Millennial with Instagram, was telling anyone who would listen that they, too, were Charlie. Yeah, right. 6 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Feb/Mar 2015
“You irresponsible imbecile. Not only do you have blood on your hands, you have become a symbol of moral bankruptcy in the great American cartoon.” Ironic, those last two words. For the record, this magazine opposed the Koran burning as well as a needless case of causing offence. Nonetheless, who had a greater right to issue such comment on the actual substance of Islam – a pastor who had at least read the Koran, understood how it advocates violence, and burned it in a form of spiritual judgement, or a bunch of cartoonists simply taking the proverbial to get a few laughs? Why did our vacuous news media rail so strongly against a pastor’s free speech rights, yet praise so loudly a liberal, atheist cartoonist’s? Hypocrisy? Much. More to the point, will the news media advocates of free speech welcome this magazine’s right to report on the state of Islam currently, or will it join those who pay lip service to the principle? At the end of the day, perhaps it doesn’t matter. If we are going to criticise Islam or any other religion, we will do it on its merits, not for comedic value.
www.epson.co.nz/precisioncore
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Volume 11, Issue 148, ISSN 1175-1290 [Print] Chief Executive Officer Heidi Wishart Group Managing Editor Ian Wishart NZ EDITION Advertising Josephine Martin 09 373-3676 sales@investigatemagazine.com Contributing Writers: Hal Colebatch, Amy Brooke, Chris Forster, Peter Hensley, Mark Steyn, Chris Philpott, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, Claire Morrow, James Morrow, Len Restall, Laura Wilson, and the worldwide resources of MCTribune Group, UPI and Newscom Art Direction Heidi Wishart Design & Layout Bozidar Jokanovic Tel: +64 9 373 3676 Fax: +64 9 373 3667 Investigate Magazine, PO Box 188, Kaukapakapa, Auckland 0843, NEW ZEALAND AUSTRALIAN EDITION Editor Ian Wishart Advertising sales@investigatemagazine.com Tel/Fax: 1-800 123 983 SUBSCRIPTIONS Online: www.investigatemagazine.com By Phone: Australia 1-800 123 983 NZ 09 373 3676 By Post: To the PO Box NZ Edition: $85 AU Edition: A$96 Email: editorial@investigatemagazine.com, ian@investigatemagazine.com, australia@investigatemagazine.com, sales@investigatemagazine.com, helpdesk@investigatemagazine.tv All content in this magazine is copyright, and may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. The opinions of advertisers or contributors are not necessarily those of the magazine, and no liability is accepted. We take no responsibility for unsolicited material sent to us. Please enclose a stamped, SAE envelope. Inquiries in the first instance should be made via email or fax. Investigate magazine Australasia is published by HATM Magazines Ltd
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Your say
SATIRICAL PROFANITY In the light off the recent slayings in Paris, I doubt if any religion could have felt as justifiably incensed by satirical profanity as the Christian religion. Some years back the national museum Te Papa exhibited two compositions entitled “Piss Christ” and “Virgin in a Condom”. There was an outcry with people calling for government action. This was not possible, even though Te Papa is a national institution, because the laws governing freedom of expression applied. I have a strong belief that if the exhibits had been labelled “Piss Tane” and “Hei Tiki in a Condom” they would not have ‘seen the light of day.’ I doubt that this example of my ‘right to free speech’ will be published in a media pledged to preserve this right. Bryan Johnson, Omokoroa
the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, classified fluoride as a neurotoxin like other known neurotoxins such as lead and mercury. An international critique3 of the PMCSA/ RSNZ report was released on the 1st of December 2014 which pointed out its many errors. This no doubt led to the correction of the report’s most obvious mistake. Such a fundamental error highlights the fact that the Report was hurriedly drafted and little more than a piece of health establishment PR rather than an independent review of research on fluoride’s adverse health effects. 1.http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/expertadvice/commissioned-reviews/yr2014/ health-effects-of-water-fluoridation/ 2. http://www.thelancet. com/journals/laneur/article/ PIIS1474-4422%2813%2970278-3/abstract 3. http://fluoridefree.org.nz/ international-peer-review-critique/
GOVT ADMITS FLUORIDE MAKES KIDS DUMBER The Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor and the Royal Society of New Zealand admitted Thursday 15th January, that a serious blunder had been made in their report “Health effects of water fluoridation: a Review of the scientific evidence”. A new version1 is available on the Royal Society’s website where an error message now states that fluoride exposure studies found an IQ reduction of one statistical ‘standard deviation’, not one ‘IQ point’ as previously asserted. One standard deviation equates to a drop of about seven IQ points but, unbelievably, the conclusion of the first version of the report that “this is likely to be a measurement or statistical artefact of no functional significance” has remained in the revision. Why? “This is far from insignificant” says Kane Titchener, Auckland representative of Fluoride Free New Zealand. “Any loss of IQ is a concern for both parents and society at large. Most parents have no idea that their children are receiving unmeasurably high doses of fluoride through fluoridation and other sources. For example bottle fed babies receive at least 150 times more fluoride than their breast fed counterparts.” Last year, an article2 by world renowned neurodevelopmental toxicologists Philippe Grandjean and Philip Landrigan published in
8 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Feb/Mar 2015
Mary Byrne National coordinator Fluoride Free New Zealand www.fluoridefree.org.nz
TOTALITARIA COMING Congratulations on your book Totalitaria, which I have just finished reading, and I found it fascinating. A lot of what you wrote I did know and have known for years but regarding the UN you certainly helped me join up the dots – and it isn’t a pretty picture. The UN I have thought for years is an evil and corrupt organization and I did not dance for joy when NZ won a place on the Security Council, big deal. I will watch with interest now how we vote when it comes to the Middle East for so far especially when Labour were in power we were pro Palestinian but what else would you expect from Helen Clarke and Co. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she is the next head of the UN she would fit in beautifully and God help us all then. Maureen Murray, Tauranga
QUALITY OF LIFE During the past year, I have lost to malignancy a colleague, a brother and a brother-in-law. In none of these cases (continents apart) was the patient informed what the suggested
treatment could achieve in terms of quality of life. There was always the issue of possible prolongation of life, but not what kind of life. Informed consent, such as before an elective surgical procedure, is simply not there. When I asked my brother (a professional engineer) how he felt under treatment, his answer was ‘ghastly – since the start of treatment’. I asked what his expectations of treatment were. ‘I am leaving it to the experts’, he responded. As a medical professional myself, I found that strange; but then he was already under the influence of his treatment. This finding is a universal and comprises a serious flaw in the process of informed consent. In fact, it borders on the criminal. Legally, consent is a process, not an event; this at least implies that a patient may dis-
England for ever the entire Sovereignty of the country”. These simple words were translated into Maori by Henry Williams, a Maori speaker, if not scholar, whom the Maoris trusted. (But the settlers didn’t! The cession of sovereignty, which the Treaty enabled, is the very foundation of our rights and of our very existence as a modern, democratic nation (as opposed to the undemocratic, racist and feudal option that would ensue if the Waitangi Tribunal’s recommendation should be accepted by this feckless government). Article One of the Treaty (the cession of sovereignty) has been accepted by historians, politicians, judges and even Maori themselves for at least seven generations and this nonsensical and false declaration by the Tribunal to the contrary should be seen for the crude, self-interested
cuss his/her progress (or lack of it) at any stage and have the right to withdraw from treatment at any stage. F du Toit , via email
and nation-destroying fraud that it is. Even more alarming is the refusal of the appeasing and unpatriotic National government to nip it in the bud by a declaration exposing this lie and upholding the sovereignty of our 175 year old nation. Thousands of soldiers have died on the battlefield – in the Maori Wars and the two world wars – to uphold the sovereignty of New Zealand and, by failing to condemn this attack on our nation with the urgency and thoroughness that it deserves, John Key has shown yet again that he is seriously lacking in both patriotism and an understanding of our constitutional arrangements. By attacking our sovereignty, our legal system and our long held rights in this deceitful manner, the Waitangi Tribunal and its ragtag bunch of members have shown that they are the enemy of every New Zealander except, of course, the tribal elite, of which so many of the Tribunal’s members are fully paid up subscribers. New Zealand is sliding down a slippery slope towards racism and apartheid and this lie of the Waitangi Tribunal is such a serious step on that downward path that it is incumbent on every New Zealander who cares for the future of this country to understand what it means and then tell as many people as possible of the dangers that we are facing. Neither National nor Labour can be trusted on this issue and we have three years to spread the word of what is really happening to as many of our friends, relations, work colleagues, neighbours, team mates, etc, that we can. This is a war – a war for our rights, our sovereignty, our flag, our democracy – indeed for the very soul of our
WAITANGI’S BIG LIE The powers of the Waitangi Tribunal were massively, unnecessarily and unpatriotically extended by the Lange/Palmer government for no other reason than to try to buy the votes of Maori at the following election. The ensuing monster that became the toy of a series of radical Maori members of the Tribunal and their liberal white lackeys is now a threat not only to our economy (the higher taxes we all have to pay to fund the neverending and ever more expensive “Treaty settlements”) but also to our rights to formerly public areas and now even to our very sovereignty as a nation. In November this racist, unelected, and deeply compromised Tribunal issued Stage One of its enquiry into Ngapuhi’s (Northland tribe) Treaty claim, declaring that the chiefs did NOT cede sovereignty to the Crown when they signed the treaty in February, 1840. This is a lie. A very deliberate lie and a selfinterested lie from a Tribunal that seems to see its sole function as extracting as much as possible off the ordinary New Zealander in terms of tax dollars, public resources (e.g. the loss of the Urewera National Park to Tuhoe) and, by its new ruling, even sovereignty itself. The Treaty of Waitangi was a very simple document and the chiefs of Northland who signed it understood its terms very well. By Article One they “cede to the Queen of
country. Truth must prevail over the lies of the media, of the government and of the Waitangi Tribunal. Our hard won democracy must prevail over the racism and feudalism to which the tribunal is trying to revert us. A useful first step would be the abolition of this Tribunal which is steadily wrecking all that we and our ancestors have built in this country. We must nail this lie as, with none of the mainstream media exposing it, it is starting to get legs, with Grren M.P., Catherine Delahunty, on the last day of parliament in 2014, screaming in the parliamentary chamber at the Prime Minister: “Why will not John Key accept what every high school student knows – that the chiefs did not cede sovereignty at Waitangi in 1840? “ That shows how far the indoctrination of the young has gone. For further reading on Article One of the Treaty see The Great Divide, by Ian Wishart (pages 164-194), and When Two Cultures Meet, Dr. John Robinson, Pages 101-7 John McLean (abridged), Wellington
POETRY Refrain I’ve been waiting for the day When the wind is at your back When the path you put your feet on Is for once the beaten track When you stop beside the river Knowing that to rest is not to yield And smiling under a summer sun Lay down your sword and shield. Gwyn Ryan
Feb/Mar 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 9
STEYNPOST
By Mark Steyn
Hollande daze
T
he French authorities killed three murderous savages. That was the only good news on a day in which a third hostage siege began in Montpellier. The bad news started at the top, with President Hollande’s statement after the Charlie Hebdo slaughter and the Kosher grocery siege: Those who committed these acts have nothing to do with the Muslim religion. Yeah, right. I would use my standard line on these occasions – “Allahu Akbar” is Arabic for “Nothing to see here” – but it’s not quite as funny when the streets are full of cowards, phonies and opportunists waving candles and pencils and chanting “Je suis Charlie.” Because if you really were Charlie, if you really were one of the 17 Frenchmen and women slaugh-
tered in the name of Allah in little more than 48 hours, you’d utterly despise a man who could stand up in public and utter those words. The louder the perpetrators yell “Allahu Akbar” and rejoice that the Prophet has been avenged, the louder M Hollande and David Cameron and Barack Obama and John Kerry and the other A-list infidels insist there’s no Islam to see here. M le Président seems to believe he can champion France’s commitment to freedom of expression by conscripting the entire nation in his monstrous lie. Is he just pandering? There are, supposedly, six million Muslims in France, and he got 93 per cent of their vote last time round. Or is he afraid of the forces that might be unleashed if the Official Lie were
10 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Feb/Mar 2015
not wholeheartedly upheld? Stéphane Charbonnier said he’d rather die standing than live on his knees; M Hollande thinks he can get by with a furtive crouch. The polite explanation can be found in Barbara Amiel’s column in Maclean’s, which is titled “Islamists Won’t Kill Free Speech – We Will”. She covers some of my battles with the “human rights” regime in Canada, and adds a sad postscript to it. But, apropos the French President, I was struck by this passage in particular: Terror can backfire in the sense that some people finally dislike being scared and react by doing whatever terror is discouraging. This is generally a temporary response. As George Jonas pointed out in a 2013 column, human
beings find a way of rationalizing their behaviour so that they can claim they are refraining from publishing or saying something not out of fear but because they don’t wish to offend. They convert the base notion of being scared into a noble weapon of seeing someone else’s point of view. In fact, this is one of the most insidious aspects of terrorism: we wash our brains and convert our fear into understanding. That’s what The New York Times and The Globe & Mail et al are doing when they explain that they won’t show the Charlie Hebdo cartoons out of sensitivity to their Muslim readers, all three of them. They’ve persuaded themselves that they’re not acting out of fear, no, sir, but instead that they’re better people for being able to sympathize with all those poor Muslims reeling under a vicious “backlash” that never comes. But I don’t think that accounts for M Hollande, who must surely know better. As Evan Solomon and I argued on the CBC this month, France’s Muslim population is between eight per cent (says Evan) and ten per cent (say I). But the Muslim share of France’s prison population is 60 per cent. That’s about 42,000 people. Among their number was one of the Charlie Hebdo murderers, who was trained to a sufficient level to be able to pull off a terror attack far more complex and sophisticated than the Sydney coffee shop siege or the Ottawa Cenotaph killing. How few of those 42,000 would need to be willing to sign up for a month at Camp Jihad before France would descend into chaos? The kosher grocery siege was also relatively sophisticated, not least in its coordination and in the duplicitousness of the hostage-takers. After issuing the conditions necessary to prevent them killing hostages, they killed four of them anyway. Because they’re Jews, so why would you forgo that pleasure? When the death toll emerged, my initial thought was that, if it weren’t for the dozen dead on Wednesday, this would be the major news event of the week. But then I remembered: They’re Jews. And as I wrote in America Alone: Four years after 9/11, it turned out there really is an explosive “Arab street”, but it’s in Clichy-sous-Bois.
Since the beginning of this century, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They’re losing that battle... If Chirac, de Villepin and co aren’t exactly Charles Martel, the rioters aren’t doing a bad impression of the Muslim armies of 13 centuries ago: They’re seizing their opportunities, testing their foe, probing his weak spots. If burning the ‘burbs gets you more “respect”, they’ll burn ‘em again, and again. In defiance of traditional immigration patterns, these young men are less assimilated than their grandparents. And why should they be? On present demographic trends, it will be for ethnic Europeans to assimilate with them. They tested the foe again this month: They assassinated the senior editorial team of the only publication not willing to sign on to the official “No Islam to see here” line. And they were rewarded for their slaughter with the président de la république standing up in public insisting there’s “No Islam to see here”.
Almost three-quarters of a century ago, after the Germans took the French capital, Kern & Hammerstein wrote a valentine to the City of Lights: The Last Time I Saw Paris Her heart was warm and gay No matter how they change her I’ll remember her that way. I never much cared for the song in a World War Two context: After all, what changes? An occupying army marches in, you defeat them, they march out ...and Paris is Paris again. But Paris – and Picardy, and France – have been profoundly changed, and likely permanently. The French capital is a city of no-go zones, and Jews hunched in a freezer to avoid death, and a government gibbering the Official Lies no matter how ridiculous they sound. And there’s no easy way to get this occupation force to march out. Like Kern & Hammerstein, those of us who loved the city can only hold her in memory: No matter how they change her I’ll remember her that way. © 2014 Mark Steyn
After issuing the conditions necessary to prevent them killing hostages, they killed four of them anyway. Because they’re Jews, so why would you forgo that pleasure? Feb/Mar 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 11
RIGHT & WRONG
By David Garrett
One law for them, another law for us
F
or 20 years prior to his death in 2007, James Takamore lived in Christchurch with his pakeha partner Denise Clarke and their children. Mr Takamore – who was born in the Bay of Plenty – was Tuhoe by birth and ancestry. What has happened since his death is essentially a struggle between Maori family members – who don’t care what the deceased’s wishes were – and the legal system. A legal system which governs us all, and which we are all expected to obey. From the time he began a relationship with Ms. Clarke, James chose to have little to do with his iwi. After Mr Takamore’s death, his body was removed from a community centre in Christchurch,rapidly transported to the tribal land of his ancestors, and buried. Despite being the executor of his will, Denise Clarke has been fighting to regain his body for burial in Christchurch ever since. Ms Clarke has now doggedly pursued her fight for almost seven years. She went first to the High Court, which affirmed her rights as executor to bury her partner where she saw fit, and granted her an injunction allowing her to regain possession of James’s body. By the time she had obtained her injunction however, James had been buried by his whanau. Since the beginning of Ms Clarke’s sad quest, people have asked “what would happen if the family members were pakeha and not Maori?” In my view there is little doubt that the wishes of pakeha family members would be, if not disregarded, certainly overridden. If any pakeha did
what the Takamore whanau and hangers on did, and obstructed an executor bearing a High Court ruling in their favour, they would be promptly arrested. As with much else in modern day New Zealand, it seems to have become accepted that Maori are “special”, and not always subject to the rule of law that governs the rest of us. Speaking of a recent case where an unauthorized full autopsy was carried out at Auckland hospital mortuary, a DHB spokesmen said “The team does its best to respect family sensitivities and wishes, in particular those of Maori, who find the prospect of autopsy tough. [emphasis added]. Such an attitude is a disgrace, and an insult to New Zealanders from other cultural backgrounds. I am the father of two very much loved children. If – heaven forbid – one of them was to die in circumstances which required an autopsy, I would find the prospect very much worse
12 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Feb/Mar 2015
than “tough”. Thanks to the plethora of shows such as CSI, we all now know the brutal reality of a standard “three cavity” autopsy. The lesson from the cases seems to be if the family is Maori, their wishes will be given considerable weight, if not always given effect to, whereas if they are pakeha, their wishes will be of little account. But back to James Takamore. Following her failed first attempt to regain control of James’s body, Ms Clarke did not immediately appeal, but attempted to mediate with the whanau under the auspices of a Tuhoekaumatua. The mediation failed to reach an acceptable resolution. Ms Clarke then found herself in the Court of Appeal, defending an appeal brought by members of Mr Takamore’s whanau against the original High Court decision. The Court of Appeal confirmed the decision of the High Court, viz. that
The lesson from the cases seems to be if the family is Maori, their wishes will be given considerable weight, if not always given effect to, whereas if they are pakeha, their wishes will be of little account
Ms Clarke, as executor of James’s will, had the legal right to his body. Cue further discussions with Mr Takamore’s whanau, and further legal processes, culminating in a decision of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, the highest Court in the land. The Judges of the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the appeal by the whanau, finding that: 1) Under an ancient rule of law extending to at least Victorian times, the executor of a person’s Will had the duty – and the right – to bury the deceased’s body; and 2) that if the actions of an executor in this regard were “unreasonable”, those decisions could be reviewed by the High Court; and 3) Ms Takamore rights to decide where to bury her partner’s body were reaffirmed. So far so good. The case then went back to the High Court for orders to be made. In a Court Minute of 8 May 2014 Justice Fogarty adopted a bullish tone, saying: “…the High Court does not intend, and ultimately will not allow, the decision of the Supreme Court of New Zealand to be flouted…the Police will continue in their overall responsibility of keeping the peace in the area…The Police will retain their usual discretion and powers to act to prevent breaches of the law, particularly breaches of the peace.” His Honour continued: “I am giving the defendants [named members of the Takamore family] one calendar month from today to…cooperate with the exhumation and have a dignified role in that process.” In a most commendable display of sensitivity and reasonableness, Ms Clarke then authorized her lawyer to enter into further discussions with the whanau, and the Marae Committee who control the burial ground where MrTakamore is currently buried. There were discussions between the High Court Sheriff – who is tasked with ensuring Court orders are carried out – the marae chairman, and the local Police commander. The result of those discussions was, it appeared, that the whanau became resigned to the inevitability of Mr Takamore’s exhumation in accordance with the Court Orders, and indicated that they would no longer oppose it. At 5 am on 8 August 2014, James Takamore’s son, together with an undertaker and others, arrived at the burial ground
to exhume Mr Takamore’s body. Believing what they had been told, they did not expect opposition. Nevertheless a number of Police were present in case of any threatened breaches of the peace. Ms Clarke’s trust in the good faith of family members was sadly misplaced. At the urupa the exhumation party was met with 30-40 members of Mr Takamore’s iwi, including two of the defendants in the High Court case. They indicated that if an attempt was made to enter the urupa, they would physically prevent it. In my view, Ms Clarke had every right to expect the Police to prevent breaches of the peace by whanau members, and to have the Police facilitate the carrying out of Orders and Rulings of the Court. It appears that threats including the possible use of firearms were made, although no firearms were presented. Against a background of hostility and threats of violence, the Police advised the undertakers that their safety could not be guaranteed. Unsurprisingly, the undertakers then withdrew. There is no doubt in my mind that if the family members and others present that day were pakeha, an executor in possession of Court Rulings in her favour – including one from the highest court in the land – would have had the full co-operation of the Police, who wouldhave taken whatever steps were necessary to ensure the undertakers’ safety. Anyone issuing threats or obstructing the exhumation party would promptly have
been arrested. As it is, James Takamore remains where he is – hundreds of miles from his partner and children. Enquiries reveal that the matter has now been referred to the office of the Solicitor General for “advice on how to move forward”. In my view the answer to that is glaringly obvious: instruct the Police to do their duty; to protect MsClarke and her agents from anyone who attempts to prevent her exercising her rights – rights affirmed by the highest court in the land. The status quo now is an utter disgrace. A group of lawless thugs who happen to be Maori have been allowed to cock a snook at rulings of all three of our highest courts, including the highest of them all. A total of nine Judges in the highest courts in the land have upheld her rights. All to no avail. That outrageous disregard of the rule of law cannot be allowed to continue. The Treaty of Waitangi is cited ad nauseum by Maori claiming various benefits under it. What is conveniently often ignored is Article Three, which made Maori subjects of the British Crown, with all the rights and duties that such citizenship entailed. Surely the most fundamental of those duties is to be subject to, and to comply with, orders of our courts. In the sad case of James Takamore that is not happening. Ms Clarke continues her dogged battle to have her partner’s body returned to her and her children for burial where Mr Takamore himself wished to be laid to rest.
Feb/Mar 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 13
As the ripples from the Charlie Hebdo and Lindt Café terror attacks continue to spread, questions are being asked in cafes, workplaces and houses everywhere: could it happen in New Zealand? The best answer available so far is ‘unlikely but not impossible’. The media have focused on five kiwis known to have joined ISIS and nine more whose passports have been cancelled, but that overlooks one important factor – the influence of hate preachers within the NZ Islamic community is far wider than just 14 people, and it’s a story the daily news media have failed to tell you. IAN WISHART has the details
NEW JIHAD The struggle to keep the lid on radicalisation 14 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Feb/Mar 2015
n his seminal book on the rise of militant Islam, The Shade of Swords, scholar and journalist M J Akbar recounts how insults have been traded between Christianity and Islam since Muhammad first darkened the doorways of Jerusalem. Muhammad, he writes, has been labelled a “glutton…sex fiend..a devil… pervert…eaten by pigs”. Akbar, of course, gets away with this precisely because he is a Muslim, a scholar and a journalist, debating the issue. He was reporting what others said, not endorsing the insults. The cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo mocked Muhammad because they don’t like religion, and were milking the subject for laughs. Bile, writes Akbar of the historical conflict , has “infected” the debate between the two big faiths, and “the Muslim reply to character assassination was the death sentence”. Back in the old days, a thousand or so years ago, Christians in the occupied territories like Spain and southern France regularly insulted the Prophet, knowing they would be arrested and killed by their Muslim overlords. In Cordoba, a Catholic monk by the name of Perfectus was surrounded by a Muslim crowd and taunted into defending Jesus Christ. “It was a set up by Muslims, of course”, writes Akbar. “To deny Jesus would be to deny his own faith, but to reject Muhammad meant an invitation to a beheading. It was a capital offence.” Perfectus, says Akbar, initially tried to answer the challenge cautiously, “but suddenly something snapped and he burst into a torrent of passionate abuse,
calling Muhammad a charlatan, a sexual pervert and so on.” The crowd dragged the monk off to the local governor, who tried to be lenient, realising Perfectus had been provoked. But then the crowd started up again and Perfectus thought ‘to hell with it’, and called the prophet a child molester and every other insult he could think of. A few minutes after losing his head in the heat of the moment, he lost his head in the heat of the moment. A group of Franciscan monks in Jerusalem pulled a similar stunt in front of the Muslim governor of that city in 1391 AD, walking to the steps of the al Aqsa gold mosque and demanding to see the governor. When he came out, with his Muslim entourage, the monks called the Prophet a similar bunch of names that Perfectus had used. The crowd called for their heads, the governor gave the monks a choice “Convert to Islam or die”. “They chose death,” writes Akbar, “because by inverse logic it would ensure [eternal] damnation on the Muslims.” What we in the West would call “extreme Islam” is not some modern aberration confined to a few crackpots, as the daily media and political leaders would have the public believe. “Islam is essentially a soldier’s religion,” says Akbar, citing historian John Bagot Glubb approvingly. Every time there’s a terror attack, Islamic apologists appear on TV to reassure the wider community that “Islam is a religion of peace”. On Newstalk ZB’s Kerre McIvor morning show over the summer, one passionate Muslim insisted to McIvor that “nowhere in the Qur’an is violence advocated!” McIvor swallowed it, making the appropriate sympathetic noises to her national audience, but the statement is far from true: “When the sacred months are over, slay the unbelievers wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them,” urged Muhammad in the Qur’an, Sura 9:5 “Fight those who believe neither in God nor the Last Day, nor what has been forbidden by God and his messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, even if they are People of the Book, until they pay the tribute and have been humbled. – Sura 9:29
While it is true the Qur’an has verses urging peacefulness, those verses were written when Muhammad had virtually no power and Islam was young and weak. As Islam’s influence grew through conquest, the verses became more and more aggressive. You can pick almost any book of the Qur’an at random, and verses urging followers to violence against nonbelievers are everywhere: “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip,” says Sura 8:12, a verse authorising beheading and hand-chopping. The same chapter of the Qur’an carefully establishes that “believers are only those who, when Allah is mentioned, their hearts become fearful, and when His verses are recited to them, it increases them in faith; and upon their Lord they rely – Sura 8:2” In case the reader still doesn’t get it, the Suras go on to note that anyone opposing the spread of Islam is a candidate for the beheading alluded to in verse 8:12: “That is because they opposed Allah and His Messenger. And whoever opposes Allah and His Messenger – indeed, Allah is severe in penalty. Sura 8:13” Unbelievers who resist risk losing their heads, those who surrender can be ransomed off: “Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: Until the war lays down its burdens. – Sura 47:4” “The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, never told his supporters to fight other religions,” said Kerre McIvor’s caller. Evidently he wasn’t up to speed on Sura 8:39, which urges fighting until there is no resistance and Islam is in total control: “And fight them until there is no fitnah and [until] the religion, all of it, is for Allah. And if they cease – then indeed, Allah is Seeing of what they do.” For those who argue there is no precedent for spreading terror in the name of Islam, consider Sura 8:60: “And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom
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Allah knows. And whatever you spend in the cause of Allah will be fully repaid to you, and you will not be wronged.” Allegedly, Allah told Muhammad that a handful of committed Islamist fighters could take down a nation of unbelievers, because the latter don’t understand the fight they are in: “O Prophet, urge the believers to battle. If there are among you twenty [who are] steadfast, they will overcome two hundred. And if there are among you one hundred [who are] steadfast, they will overcome a thousand of those who have disbelieved because they are a people who do not understand. – Sura 8:65” Why then is there such a difference between what the Qur’an actually says, and what Western Muslims say it says? Part of it is undoubtedly fear of a backlash from the majority community, and part of it may also be that such messages interfere with efforts to evangelising Islam in the west as a “religion of peace”. Whatever the reason, the end result is that politicians and the public in western countries are not getting an accurate picture of the growing Islamic communities in their midst. In New Zealand, nearly all media comment about Islam is coordinated by the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand, or “FIANZ”. FIANZ promotes “Islam Awareness Week” each year and says it’s all about being open and transparent: “We need to build a distinctive New Zea-
land with one identity built on each of us being sincere in who and what we are, where we come from, what our hosting home and culture are. Openness and dialogue are important to go ahead as a nation,” says a FIANZ newsletter from 2006.
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ut it wasn’t being entirely straightforward – “Islam means peace”, FIANZ said in one Islam Awareness Week article. That’s not ‘peace’ in the western understanding of the word, however, that’s ‘peace’ in the sense of ‘no more resistance’ alluded to in the Sura above. The more accurate translation of “Islam” is “submission”, and the word “Muslims” means “those who submit”. That’s one of the core doctrines of extremists. They believe “peace” in the Islamic sense can only be established in the world once everyone has been forced to “submit” to the will of Allah and the rule of his priests. Nonetheless, in the spirit of openness that FIANZ stands for, let’s examine the situation in New Zealand. Top secret American diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show concern at the growing infiltration of extremism into NZ’s Muslim faith. “A recent influx of Arab and African immigrants is creating tensions within New Zealand’s traditionally South Asian Muslim population,” says one cable from the US Embassy in Wellington, “as well as concerns about preventing terrorist groups and Wahhabi ideology from gaining a toehold here.” The message, dated 17 October 2006, echoed concerns raised by NZ Muslims with Investigate magazine and other media several years earlier about an influx of Arabic speaking migrants bringing extremist doctrine to mosques here. In early 2007, Investigate published a highly controversial article on “Preachers of Hate” who had been touring New Zealand. One, named Bilal Philips, had been secretly filmed by a Channel 4 documentary crew in a British mosque endorsing Muhammad’s marriage to a nine year old girl as an exam-
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ple for Muslim men everywhere. “The prophet Muhammad practically outlined the rules regarding marriage prior to puberty, with his practice he clarified what is permissible and that is why we shouldn’t have any issues about an older man marrying a younger woman, which is looked down upon by this [Western] society today, but we know that Prophet Muhammad practiced it, it wasn’t abuse or exploitation, it was marriage.” Philips had also been quoted by the Washington Post as saying, “The clash of civilizations is a reality. Western culture…is an enemy of Islam.” But it gets better. An al Qa’ida explosives expert, Hampton El, aka “Dr Rashid”, testified in the court case against World Trade Centre bomber Ramzi Yousef that he and Bilal Philips had visited al Qa’ida terror hideouts and that Philips had played a key role in getting him involved. And here’s the shocker: Philips was invited to New Zealand to encourage young Muslims as a guest of FIANZ, which said afterwards: “The visit of Dr Bilal was indeed very successful and FIANZ hope to continue in the tradition of welcoming respected overseas Islamic scholars/speakers to New Zealand to further enrich our community.” “The theme for [Bilal’s] lectures was “Muslim Minorities living in Western Civilisations”, notes the FIANZ report. “There were full attendances in all the Centres he presented his lecture. His lectures were very enlightening and educational. “A recurring advice throughout his lecture is for the Muslim community in New Zealand to join together to pursue an Islamic way of life in education, housing and commerce.” The newsletter records that Philips visited the Federation’s offices to hold discussions with local Muslim leaders Hanif Ali and Sheikh Amir, as well as discussions with Muslim students at Victoria University and intensive workshops on how to spread Islam with “a group of enthusiastic brothers and sisters” at Auckland’s Avondale Islamic Centre. The Avondale Islamic Centre hit the news headlines last year after concerns that its leader, Imam Abu Abdulla Mohamed Abu Hamam, was preaching
extremism and had “potential terrorist allegiances”, according to a Herald news report. Hamam denied doing anything wrong, and told the Herald he was unsure whether he was the “Hamam” referred to in this leaked American embassy cable1: “New Zealand has approximately 50,000 Muslims, including over 10,000 Somalis, and approximately 708 indigenous Maori Muslim converts. The New Zealand Police recently provided information indicating some New Zealand Muslims have fought in Afghanistan, Bosnia and possibly Chechnya. The police are also looking at some New Zealand citizens/residents who may have traveled to the Middle East including Iraq. A specific example of such a person involves an individual known only as “Hamam”. This individual is an Afghan veteran and a surgeon from Egypt. He is currently living in Auckland on state benefits and refuses to become employed. He stays in a local Mosque and espouses anti-Western views. He is being monitored by the New Zealand Police. The EAC [a US Embassy Wellington intelligence unit] agreed that some members of New Zealand’s Muslim community may be sympathetic to terrorist organizations around the world.”
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n the 2007 article, Investigate identified a number of extremist preachers who had been invited to New Zealand to spread the kind of Islam linked to terrorism. Hardline Islam. No compromise Islam. Those hate preachers we listed included the aforementioned Philips, but also Sheik Khalid There’s no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend Yasin, and Yahya Christians and Jews are “evil” Ibrahim. We also blew the whistle in that 2007 article on the involvement of Saudi Arabian ‘charity’ WAMY (World Assembly of Muslim Youth), which has been blacklisted as a front for terrorist funding and recruitment by the USA after documents emerged linking it to 9/11 and other terror incidents. WAMY had been running youth camps for New Zealand Muslims. The BBC obtained footage from WAMY youth camps overseas, where Muslim children were encouraged to hate Jews: “The Jews are enemies of the faithful, God and the angels. Teach our children to love taking revenge on the
Jews and the oppressors’.” At the time, FIANZ spokesman Javed Khan told Investigate he was aware WAMY had been blacklisted because of its links to Al Qa’ida, but he said WAMY sent FIANZ a letter denying the allegation so FIANZ believed them. In fact, WAMY had been named in a UN Security Council report in December 2002, entitled “Terrorism Financing: Roots and trends of Saudi terrorism financing”. That report singles out a group of Islamic ‘charities’ as funding terror and the spread of extremist Islam. The concerning news for New Zealanders wondering about a moderate Islamic community is that WAMY and two other named ‘charities’ – Al Haramain2 and the Muslim World League – have all helped bankroll FIANZ and the New Zealand Muslim community. The terror blacklist has never been lifted, and in 2012 WAMY lost its charity status in Canada because of its links to terror. US intelligence files noted in 2011 that “WAMY is listed as a Tier I NGO. Tier 1 NGOs are defined as having demonstrated sustained and active support for terrorist organizations willing to attack US persons or interests.”3 WAMY’s own publicly stated aim is global Islamic “supremacy”, to “arm the Muslim youth with full confidence in the supremacy of the Islamic system over other systems.”4 So it was a surprise to discover that – despite our 2007 revelations, WAMY is still listed as a “partner” of FIANZ in a powerpoint presentation delivered by FIANZ in 2012. WAMY’s terror links had been expressly drawn to FIANZ’s attention in 2007, but the organisation continues to maintain a relationship. Also listed as a major partner is an entity named RABITA, which is the Arabic name for the Muslim World League – Rabita al-Alam al-Islami – accused internationally of funding and recruiting terror and spreading extremist Wahhabism. Rabita is Saudi-funded. Critics, including some in New Zealand’s Muslim community, have accused FIANZ of turning a blind eye to the
growing infiltration of extremists into New Zealand. In a meeting with US diplomats, FIANZ’s Javed Khan told them there were “No ‘extremist’ activities” in the NZ Muslim community, but the Wikileaks cable reveals, “However, other community leaders dispute Khan’s assertion that there is no extremist activity, citing the presence of Saudi-funded organisations on school campuses and mosque administrations…and reports of Wahhabiinspired propaganda.” One of those leaders was Shahin Soltanian, a former president of the Auckland University Islamic Society. He left the group because of its growing radicalisation.5 “Contrary to assertions by FIANZ president Javed Khan (see ref A) that there are no extremists in New Zealand, Soltanian told Conoff that Wahhabi groups have “overtly tried to influence New Zealand’s Muslim society.” Soltanian said AUIS has sponsored speakers from Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al Haramain. Soltanian claimed these two groups receive Saudi money for their activities. AUIS’s alleged drift towards or tolerance of Wahhabi ideology made it difficult for Shias and even some Sunnis to stay with the group, and so Soltanian and other disaffected members left to form AEM. “Soltanian said the extremists’ activities are not limited to the university campus; he claims that there are extremist preachers who operate with the full
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THE MAJORITY OF ISLAMIC JURISTS AND QURANIC COMMENTATORS (MUFASIRIN) CONSIDER WAR TO BE THE REAL BASIS OF RELATIONS BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND NONMUSLIMS. THEY REGARD THE INFIDELITY [UNBELIEF] OF NON-MUSLIMS AS THE CAUSE (‘ILLAT) OF SUCH WAR
knowledge of FIANZ and the GNZ [Government of New Zealand]. After 9/11, he said the GNZ deported a few rabblerousers, but others operate without hindrance aside from casual surveillance by the Government. He also claims that while he and others are trying to counter these groups’ activities, most of the community remains silent for fear of being branded infidels. “Soltanian asserted that inaction by the government, acquiescence by Muslim groups like FIANZ, and the extremists’ strong financial backing from abroad make it difficult to counter their growing influence. He said their activities often target young Muslims.” So just how much can New Zealanders trust the country’s governing body for Muslims?
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ne of FIANZ’s big outreach programmes, receiving immense support from the daily news media, is the annual Islam Awareness Week. FIANZ operates the Islam Awareness website as a tool to evangelise to the news media and the public. On the site, under the heading, “Why is Islam often misunderstood?”, it is stated:6 “In today’s turbulent world, Islam is often on the front page – mostly for the wrong reasons. Islam means peace… The very word ‘Islam’ means peace. A fifth of the world’s population is reclaiming this peace as their chosen way of life.” It sounds great. But it’s a lie. “Islam does not mean peace. It does NOT mean peace. If you thought it did, get another think going,” says Sheik Yusuf Estes in a Youtube lecture.7 “Islam is the surrender, submission and obedience to Allah. “First of all you surrender your will to the will of almighty God. Number two you submit to his commands. Number three, you obey them to the best of your ability.”
It is true. The word Islam literally means “submission”, not “peace” as claimed by FIANZ. Why are they making false statements to New Zealanders? The Islamic Awareness website continues to mislead in other areas. Under the heading, “What does Islam say about war?”, it states: “Islam permits fighting in self-defense, in defense of one’s faith, or on the part of those whose basic rights have been violated. It lays down strict rules of combat that include prohibitions against harming civilians and against destroying crops, trees, and livestock. “War is the last resort, and is subject to the rigorous conditions laid down by the sacred law. The often misunderstood and overused term jihad literally means “struggle” and not “holy war” (a term not found anywhere in the Qur’an). Jihad, as Islamic concept, can be on a personal level – inner struggle against evil within oneself; struggle for decency and goodness on the social level; and struggle on the battlefield, if and when necessary.” Now, remember that the Islamic Awareness site is aimed at non Muslims. If you go to Muslim websites aimed at Muslims, you’ll find a very different perspective. Again, compare the NZ comments above to this from Islamic scholar Maulana Waris Mazhari, who despite not agreeing himself, admits the “majority” of Islamic scholars support the notion of aggressive jihad:8 “The issue of offensive jihad has for long been a subject of heated debate among Islamic scholars. Some scholars are of the view that Islam allows for just one form of jihad, in the sense of war – defensive jihad. Others disagree, and believe that Islam permits both defensive as well as offensive jihad, in the sense of fighting. Perhaps the latter opinion enjoys the support of the majority of the ulema. In contrast to defensive jihad, which is
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fought in response to the aggression of an enemy, offensive jihad allows for war to be waged against a non-Islamic country in the absence of that country having taken any steps to initiate fighting against Muslims. Advocates of the doctrine of offensive jihad claim that it is a necessary means to establish the supremacy of Islam and to destroy the power of infidelity. “Proponents of offensive jihad consider it to be not just legitimate but even a farze kifayah or collective duty binding on the entire Muslim ummah. They go to the extent of arguing that such offensive war is binding on an Islamic state against even those non-Islamic countries that permit Muslims to freely practice and propagate Islam. The only exception that they make in this regard is in the case of those countries that have a peace treaty with the Islamic state. Even here the most fuqaha or scholars of Muslim jurisprudence regard such treaties as only temporary and as permissible only if the Islamic state lacks the power to engage in war. Defenders of this view believe that a non-Muslim state has only three options: to accept Islam, to accept Islamic supremacy and pay the Islamic state the jizya, or to be ready to accept death. “The majority of Islamic jurists and Quranic commentators (mufasirin) consider war to be the real basis of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. They regard the infidelity [unbelief] of nonMuslims as the cause (‘illat) of such war. They believe that Muslims must engage in war with non-Muslims continuously till Islam establishes its supremacy over all other religions. Since, in actual fact, this, as Muslims believe, can only happen just before the Day of Judgment, they argue that Muslims must necessarily continue to wage war against non-Muslims till the Day of Judgment finally arrives. The opinion of Imam Shafi‘i and some other fuqaha is even more extreme in this regard—they argue that only Ahl-e Kitab or ‘People of the Book’ [Christians and Jews] can be permitted to stay alive in exchange for paying the jizya, and that all other non-Muslims must accept either Islam or death.” There is heavy irony, especially in wake of the attack on the atheist magazine Charlie Hebdo, that Islamic extremists would let Christians and Jews live but execute the atheist liberals.
Another half truth published on the IslamAwareness.co.nz website reads: “Is Islam respectful of other beliefs? “Yes. The Qur’an states unequivocally: “ ‘There is no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out clearly from falsehood…’ (Qur’an 2:256) “Freedom of conscience is an essential tenant [sic] of Islam. Truth can only be seen if it is not clouded by coercion. Protection of the rights of non-Muslims is an intrinsic part of Islamic law. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said: “ ‘He who hurts a non-Muslim citizen of a Muslim State – I am his adversary and I shall be his adversary on the Day of Judgment. “ ‘Beware on the Day of Judgment, I shall, myself, be the accuser against him who wrongs a non-Muslim citizen (of a Muslim State) or Lays on him a responsibility greater than he can bear, or deprives him of anything that belongs to him’.”
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hat FIANZ doesn’t tell its readers is that the ‘no compulsion in religion’ command came very early in Muhammad’s mission, when Islam was extremely weak with fewer than 400 supporters in the Middle East. It had no power to force people to convert. What FIANZ doesn’t disclose is that Muhammad changed the rules of the game once he gained power: you were free to become a Muslim, but like the Hotel California, once you’ve checked in you can never leave. “...The Prophet said, ‘If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him,’ “9 records the Hadith collection of the Prophet’s commands. “Allah’s Apostle: ‘During the last days there will appear some young foolish people who will say the best words but their faith will not go beyond their throats (i.e. they will have no faith) and will go out from (leave) their religion as an arrow goes out of the game. So, wherever you find them, kill them, for whoever kills them shall have reward on the Day of Resurrection’.”10 Another example of New Zealand’s moderate Islamic community aligning themselves with extremists comes from the Masjid e Umar mosque in Auckland – New Zealand’s biggest mosque – whose Facebook page promotes a Pakistani
firebrand, Muhammad Taqi Usmani. Usmani is an expert on sharia compliant finance systems, and has come to the attention of UK watchdog ShariaWatch:11 “Usmani’s book Islam and Modernism has been translated into English and relevant pages are available online here. In this book he responds to a question about whether Jihad needs to be waged in a country like the UK where Islam can freely be preached. He responds by quoting the Quran: “Killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay Jizyah after they are humbled or overpowered.” (Usmani p131) Jizyah is the subjugation tax imposed on non-Muslims under Islamic rule. He has subsequently been removed from the HSBC and Dow Jones advisory boards, but still sits on several other advisory boards and is regarded as a leading Islamic authority on SCF. It stretches credibility to assume that the other sharia advisors sitting under Taki Usmani’s chairmanship of various boards were unaware of his fundamentalist views.” Usmani is reported to be a leading figure in the Deobandi brand of Islam – a mixture of Sufism and Wahhabist doctrine. The Taliban follow the Deobandi school. Evidently the Masjid e Umar in Mt Roskill sees something to like in it as well. Another Deobandi firebrand being promoted at Masjid e Umar is Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari, who doesn’t think Muslims should have western friends. “Do not commence by greeting the Christians and Jews with Salam. If you meet one of them on a pathway, force them to walk on the side … The reason for this impermissibility of saying Salam to non-Muslims is to not show them respect.”12 Al-Kawthari is also on record saying a Muslim man is entitled to rape his wife under Islamic belief, and that adultery should be punished by death. Ironically, it appears he was banned from speaking at the radical East London Mosque last year for being, well, too radical.13 In his defence, al-Kawthari lashed out at the media, saying he was reaffirming the Qur’anic requirements, but that such laws would never be imposed in a Western country unless it allowed the introduction of sharia law:
“I have merely expressed the standard and classical Islamic viewpoint on such matters,” he said on his Facebook page last year. “These punishments are of course only implemented in a proper Islamic state and under a certain context. I do not, in any way, call for or endorse amputation in non-Islamic countries such as the UK, where people choose not to have Islamic law. Islamic legal punishments are only applicable under a proper Islamic State and, as such, I was merely discussing the subject in an academic and theoretical manner.” As his critics point out, however, sharia is already creeping into Britain and European countries where theory is slowly being replaced by reality, and at some point a culture conditioned every day to aspire to Islamic punishments will flex their muscle to get them. Otherwise, what’s the point in reaffirming those teachings in the mosques? If you no longer believe it, why preach it? The other aspect is that when New Zealand’s largest mosque endorses a preacher such as this, they are endorsing all his attitudes, such as those on women. AlKawthari has spoken very approvingly of what he saw on a visit to Yemen:14 “For women to venture out after dusk is considered to be highly offensive. Women do not even go for shopping on their own unless necessary. The men of the house are expected to do the shopping or at least accompany their womenfolk to the shops and markets. Polygamy is completely normal and an accepted practice amongst Yemenis, with many Shuyukh and scholars having sometimes up to 4 wives!” Remember, these are preachers whose sermons are promoted to New Zealand muslims, by New Zealand mosques. But it gets even better. The Voice of Islam is a New Zealand produced TV programme broadcast on Sky each week and in some countries around the world. According to its website, Voice Of Islam is part funded by FIANZ. So let’s look at some of the preachers Voice of Islam regularly broadcasts to New Zealand muslims: Abdul Hadim Quick Abdur Raheem Green Bilal Philips Yahya Ibrahim Yasir Qadhi
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Abdur Raheem Green has been a radical Islamic preacher in Britain, where he chaired a Muslim charity, the Islamic Education and Research Academy, the IERA. That charity, although denying the allegation, has been linked to young British muslims who have joined ISIS in Syria. It is currently under investigation, with Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reporting:15 “IERA is run by the extremist preacher Abdurraheem Green and its board of advisers has included Bilal Phillips, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, and the notorious extremist preacher Haitham al-Haddad. IERA is also under investigation by the Charity Commission.” Green was recently pinged in a video recording of one of his outdoor speeches in Hyde Park encouraging the crowd to manhandle a Jewish passerby:16 “Why don’t you take the Yahoudi [Jew] over there, far away so his stench doesn’t disturb us?” The extremist is also on record urging Muslims to pay no heed to the idea of democracy, calling the Western system they live in an insult to Allah. “Let us ask if democracy means that sovereignty is with the people, that the people have the right to decide what’s halal [allowable] and haram [forbidden], and it’s up to them, then no Muslim with any mustard seed’s worth of imam can agree with this.” Green is a regular preacher on the New Zealand Voice of Islam TV service. It may be that his sermons on TV here are less
inflammatory, but by endorsing him as a regular preacher Voice of Islam is sending a message that his views fit with theirs, and those of local muslims. The same goes for Bilal Philips and Yahya Ibrahim, covered earlier in this report. Abdul Hakim Quick was the subject of a New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority complaint in 2004 for suggesting homosexuals should be stoned to death. He argues on his website that he is being taken too literally, and that he was only re-stating the Qur’an. Yasir Qadhi is described in British reports as a “Holocaust denier” who promotes his denialism:17 “ ‘The Hoax of the Holocaust’, I advise you to read this book … a very good book. All of this [the Holocaust] is false propaganda … The Jews, the way they portray him [Hitler], also is not correct.” If your national Islamic federation is posting misleading statements on its website, associating with organisations linked to terrorist fundraising and turning a blind eye to extremism, how should the New Zealand public react? If the local TV service for muslims is regularly posting sermons from extremist preachers and thus lending them an air of authenticity and credibility, how should the New Zealand public react? If the country’s biggest mosque is endorsing extrem-
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ist preachers on its Facebook page, how should the New Zealand public react when local muslim leaders tell the media their community is moderate? And then there’s the elephant in the room – what has caused this radicalisation in Europe, Australia, Britain and even New Zealand – where some 40 people are on a terror watchlist? According to none other than Abdur Raheem Green, the radicalisation of young muslims is a direct result of exposing them to Western culture in their new countries. “What is the benefit for that brothers and sisters for us living here in the West? We are surrounded with evil. We are surrounded by people who are indulging in the worst type of evil. I don’t mean they’re drinking alcohol, they’re taking drugs, they’re fornicating. The worst type of evil is shirk [not being focused entirely on Allah’s will]. The worst type of evil is kufr [disbelief, not following Islamic law
to the letter]. The worst type of evil is making partners with Allah, and denying Allah and turning away from their lord and their religion. “So many brothers come from Algeria and Morocco and these places and they come thinking, and they go to the discos, and they do this and they do that, and they come and bit by bit they start seeing the reality of what it is really actually like. And so many of them, Mashallah, start practising Islam and they start practising it very strongly, which they never did in their countries, because they saw for themselves the reality of the situation. They saw for themselves what it is really like. They looked behind, you know, the make up and they saw the reality of what is behind is an ugly old bag.”
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n other words, by seeing the huge contrast between what they believe and what the Western world offers, some Muslims forget their faith while others become even more fundamentalist. If Green is right, then the West has itself created radicalised Muslim youth by allowing them to immigrate and immerse themselves in what their preachers call an ‘evil’ culture. It is this crisis of conscience in young Muslims, says former CIA analyst Emile Nakhleh, that Saudi Arabian ‘charities’ are attempting to exploit. Where al-Haramain, WAMY and Muslim World League have sown the seeds, host countries are eventually left reaping the whirlwind. He cites the impact of Boko Haram in Nigeria: 18 “I visited those areas during my government service and witnessed the growth of Islamic activism and radicalization first hand. I spoke to dozens of Islamic activists in the region about the so-called root causes of their activism. “Saudi NGOs, including the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), and al-Haramayn, funded a plethora of projects in Nigerian villages and towns in the north and provided meals to needy Nigerian Muslims, especially during the holy month of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha. “They built mosques, Islamic educational institutions and libraries, community centers, and health clinics. Saudifunded Koranic schools taught Nigerian children to recite the Koran in Arabic
IT SHOULD BE STRESSED THAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF NEW ZEALAND MUSLIMS REMAIN HONEST HARD-WORKING FAMILY PEOPLE WHO RECOGNISE THE SAME PROBLEMS IDENTIFIED IN THIS ARTICLE BUT ARE TOO AFRAID TO SPEAK PUBLICLY IN CASE THERE’S A BACKLASH AGAINST THEM
and preached to them how to become more committed Sunni Muslims. “The word “jihad” became a central component of the discourse of proselytization. The underpinning argument was that Islam was under attack by all sorts of “infidels” and “apostates,” which demanded a “jihadist” response,” says Emile Nakhleh. All of which points to a final obvious conclusion: when the daily news media or politicians point to New Zealand’s “moderate” Muslim community, they are denying reality. From “no extremists” a decade ago, there are now around four dozen on a watchlist and possibly many others the government doesn’t know about judging by the high level of interest in extremist preachers. Nothing in New Zealand’s approach to Islam has changed, in fact we’ve become far more tolerant, but the extremism has grown regardless. The elephant in the room is FIANZ and the hate preachers who’ve been sold to New Zealand muslims as examples of good teachers. The Saudi Arabian teams we reported on eight years ago taught kids, some of whom became radicalised and some of whom have now died in Syria. Of course, it should be stressed that the vast majority of New Zealand Muslims remain honest hard-working family people who recognise the same problems identified in this article but are too afraid to speak publicly in case there’s a backlash against them. The biggest enemy of moderate Muslims, however, are national organisations and mosques who endorse extremist preachers, perhaps because they are accepting Saudi Arabian money to do so. If true, it is a good example of selling one’s soul. FOOTNOTE: We approached FIANZ president Dr Anwar Ghani for comment, but FIANZ did not respond.
References: 1. www.wikileaks.org/plusd/ cables/05WELLINGTON684_a.html 2. www.investigatemagazine.com/nov03terror.htm 3. www.wikileaks.org/gitmo/pdf/su/ us9su-000940dp.pdf 4. www.nytimes.com/2003/09/17/world/ flow-of-saudis-cash-to-hamas-is-scrutinized.html?pagewanted=2 5. www.wikileaks.org/plusd/ cables/06WELLINGTON826_a.html 6. www.islamawareness.co.nz/faq.php#22 7. www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7rJo7Bde QY&noredirect=1 8. www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/ features/articles/a_critique_of_the_doctrine_of_offensive_jihad 9. www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/ hadith/bukhari/052-sbt.php#004.052.260 10. www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religioustexts/hadith/bukhari/084-sbt. php#009.084.064 11. www.shariawatch.org.uk/articles/ whats-wrong-sharia-compliant-finance#. VLiPSCuUeSo 12. www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4178/ cardiff-university-kawthari 13. www.standforpeace.org.uk/refutingthe-east-london-mosque-elm-deniespromoting-extremism-again/ 14. www.almujab.wordpress. com/2010/01/05/reflections-of-muftiibn-adam-al-kawthari-on-tarim/ 15. www.www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11263309/ Terror-link-charities-get-British-millionsin-Gift-Aid.html 16. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/10854579/ Anti-Semitic-charity-under-investigation. html 17. www.standforpeace.org.uk/worst-ofthe-worst-britains-salafist-movementthe-night-of-power-conference-2014/ 18. www.lobelog.com/ nigerian-terrorism-causes-and-solutions/
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THE CALIPHATE
AGENDA
IDENTIFYING THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM 22 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Feb/Mar 2015
T
he recent rise of Islamic State (or IS or ISIS), a group which has declared a Caliphate (Islamic state) across parts of Syria and Iraq, has attracted a new spurt of young British citizens to fight for jihad. The United States launched military strikes against Islamic State in August, following reports that the Yazidi people, a religious minority in Iraq, were being effectively ethnically cleansed from the region. Among the atrocities, which included mass shootings, live burials and slavery, were mass forced conversions to Islam. Nasser Muthana, 20, a former medical student from Cardiff, bragged on Twitter about forcing members of the Yazidi community to convert to Islam and undergo a form of spiritual healing – days after claiming there were “hundreds of Yazidi slave women” in Syria.1 Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said in August 2014 that around 500 British citizens were now fighting for Islamic State.2 It has even been reported that there are more British Muslims fighting for Islamic State than there are serving in the British armed forces.3 Story after story emerge and point to the same
In late 2014, the British watchdog group ShariaWatch issued an extensive report on why and how young Muslims are being radicalised in the UK. In this extract from the report, ShariaWatch argues that actual terrorism is merely the tip of the iceberg poking out of the water that ordinary people can see. Within Islam itself, they claim, are many more people lending moral support to extremism Feb/Mar 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 23
conclusion – a growing number of young British citizens are immersed in Islamic extremism, so much so that they are willing to give their lives for perhaps the most brutal Islamic terrorist group yet to emerge. Other vicious groups are attracting support from British youth as well. The horrific Boko Haram, which achieved global infamy with the kidnap and “sale” of hundreds of young Nigerian girls, also has a strong British connection. The apparent “ringleader” of this group, Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, was according to reports formerly a student at a UK university.4 Such cases go back several years. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called “underwear bomber” who was convicted of attempting to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear en route
from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, was also a British student. The revelation that large numbers of young British Muslims are travelling to fight for Islamic terror groups has raised inevitable questions as to what can be “radicalising” young people on such a scale. This report argues that British universities, the extremists who are regularly permitted to preach there, the student bodies who seem intent on enabling Islamism, as well as the culture of censorship that has developed on campus to shut down anything deemed offensive to Islam, is aiding the radicalisation of young British Muslims. FUNDING
Eight universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, accepted more than £233.5 million from Saudi and Muslim
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to blow up Delta Flight 253 on the way from Amsterdam to Detroit on December 25, 2009./ NEWSCOM
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sources between 1995 and 2008.5 This is according to a report by the director of Brunel University’s Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, Professor Anthony Glees. Professor Glees wrote that external Arab and Muslim funding was the largest single source of funding to UK universities, and that the funds were being utilised to expand extremist religious thought – particularly in university Islamic societies. Professor Glees attracted controversy for warning of the influence of Islamist thought in British universities. He has also expressed concern that 70 per cent of politics lectures at the Middle Eastern Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford, were “implacably hostile” to the West and Israel. He has urged the Government to take action, but the action it has so far taken is to call for more Islamic study centres. Later, in 2011, reports revealed that the London School of Economics (above) had received financial donations from an organisation led by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the former Libyan dictator. The gift had a total value of £1.5 million, and according to the BBC, a “contract worth £2.2m to train Libyan civil servants” was also secured.6 Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, University College London, the London School of Economics, Exeter, Dundee, and City University have all received millions of pounds from Arab and Muslim donors. In 2011, the Telegraph reported:7 “Much of the money has gone to Islamic study centres: the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies received £75 million from a dozen Middle Eastern rulers, including the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia; one of the current king’s nephews, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, gave £8 million each to Cambridge and Edinburgh. Then there was the LSE’s own Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, which got £9 million from the United Arab Emirates; last November, a majority of the centre’s board was revealed to be pushing for a boycott of Israel.” “The management committees of the Islamic Studies centres at Cambridge and Edinburgh contained appointees hand-picked by Prince Alwaleed. Other universities have altered their study areas in line with their donors’ demands.” “Although much of the money is
claimed to be directed towards apolitical ends, this can often be misleading. The gift by foreign Governments of language books, for instance, can have a significant effect on what is taught; in one case, the gift of an art gallery was found to have had a direct impact on teaching and admissions policy.” Student Rights reported in 2011 that “following a Freedom of Information request dated 26th April 2011, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) revealed information regarding monetary donations received from the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, amounting to a grand total of £755,000 between 2006 – 2010.”8 ANTI-SEMITISM
Not coincidentally, given the increase in Islamist thought in UK universities, and the free reign given to Islamic hate preachers, anti-Semitism is simultaneously on the rise throughout British higher educational institutions. An All-Party Parliamentary Report in to anti-Semitism in 2006 revealed several instances of anti-Jewish sentiments, including those “expressed by academics towards Jewish students”.9 The report also stated: “The activities of certain extremist Islamist groups have long given cause for concern among local Jewish communities and on university campuses. We were given evidence that many of them have produced or distributed literature of an overtly anti-Semitic character, some of which has called for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel.” Further findings of the report included: • Leaflets with [anti-Semitic] quotes have been distributed on university campuses in Britain, causing Jewish students to feel harassed and threatened. • When left wing or pro-Palestinian discourse around the Middle East is manipulated and used as a vehicle for anti-Jewish language and themes, the anti-Semitism is harder to recognise and define and Jewish students can find themselves isolated and unsupported, or in conflict with large groups of their fellow students. • The Union of Jewish Students stated that a number of university campuses are being used as recruiting grounds by extremist groups which have a history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and behaviour.
LIKE IN THE UK, REPORTS OF EXTREMIST ANTI-SEMITIC, ANTI-DEMOCRATIC, MISOGYNIST AND HOMOPHOBIC SPEAKERS IN US UNIVERSITIES ARE FREQUENT. FURTHERMORE, ATTEMPTS AT SHUTTING DOWN CRITICISM OF ISLAM ON AMERICAN CAMPUSES HAVE ALSO OCCURRED
• Although they are banned from most campuses under the NUS No Platform policy, Hizb ut-Tahrir (which calls for a global Caliphate under sharia law) have reappeared under a number of aliases. A 2003 BBC Newsnight documentary exposed their activity at Kingston University and they have also been active at UCE Birmingham and Queen Mary, University of London amongst others. • The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) stated that relations between Jewish students and the Students’ Union at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London have been particularly strained and in the past the Israel Student Society was banned by the Union. In February 2005, the SOAS Students’ Union attempted to ban Mr Roey Gilad of the Embassy of Israel from addressing the University’s Israel Society. • In 2005 the Association of University Teachers (AUT) passed a motion boycotting two Israeli universities, Haifa and Bar Ilan. • In 2002 the University of Manchester Students’ Union proposed a motion that anti-Zionism or criticism of Israel was not anti-Semitism, and that Israeli goods should be boycotted. A leaflet from the General Union of Palestinian Students, quoting from a neo-Nazi propaganda forgery entitled ‘Prophecy of Benjamin Franklin in Regard of the Jewish Race’, was distributed amongst students queuing up to vote. Anti-Semitism (primarily advocated by Muslim and left-wing students) on campus is not a British phenomenon, but is occurring across the Western world. Hamas on Campus10 is a North American group dedicated to uncovering anti-Jewish rhetoric in universities throughout the US and Canada. A group of particular concern is the Muslim Student Asso-
ciation (MSA). An American terrorism expert, Patrick Poole, said the following: “The Muslim Student Association has been a virtual terror factory. Time after time after time again we see these terrorists, and not just fringe members, these are MSA leaders, MSA presidents, MSA national presidents, who’ve been implicated, charged, and convicted in terrorism plots”.11 Described as “a Saudi creation” in the Middle East Quarterly, the MSA has Ahmed Shama on its list of past presidents. Shama is reported to have shouted “Death to the Jews” outside an Israeli consulate in Los Angeles in 2000.12 Like in the UK, reports of extremist anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, misogynist and homophobic speakers in US universities are frequent. Furthermore, attempts at shutting down criticism of Islam on American campuses have also occurred. For example, in Berkeley in California, a motion similar to the “Islamophobia” motion in LSE (above) was passed in 2013.13 Like the LSE motion, this resolution sought to define “Islamophobia” as “the irrational fear of Islam, Muslims, or anything related to the Islamic or Arab cultures and traditions”. This is incredibly wide-reaching and effectively seeks to outlaw any negative view of any aspect of Islamic or Arab culture, including – no doubt – sharia law. Crucially, like the LSE motion, it seeks to outlaw and shut down scrutiny of ideas – a disturbing endeavour in itself, but even more so in an institution dedicated to learning. Berkeley also hosts an annual conference on “Islamophobia”. Lee Kaplan wrote of the 2014 conference: “Almost all presenters who spoke about the 34 or more “academic” papers that were discussed continually asserted that white racism and colonialism were the causes of “Islamophobia” throughout
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More recently, Bill Maher, the comedian and TV host who is a strong critic of Islam, was the subject of a 4,000 signature student petition demanding he be disinvited from speaking at Berkeley. Again, the Muslim Student Association featured largely in the protests – accusing Mr Maher of “cultural racism”.16 CONCLUSION
AYAAN HIRSI ALI, THE SOMALI-BORN FORMER DUTCH MP AND EX-MUSLIM WHO IS HUGELY CRITICAL OF HER FORMER RELIGION WAS AWARDED AN HONORARY DEGREE FROM BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY... THIS WAS WITHDRAWN FOLLOWING PROTESTS FROM MUSLIM STUDENTS AND GROUPS
America and Europe. In their view, this “Islamophobia” is driven by the media, while racism against people of color is the main cause overall behind the (supposed) persecution of Muslims. Fear of terrorism was of no legitimate concern. Discussions also centered on discrimination against women and gays, a practice deemed not to be a widespread problem in Islamic practices, but the result of ‘Islamophobia’”.14 In other universities, critics of Islam are barred. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born former Dutch MP and ex-Muslim who is hugely critical of her former religion – particularly its treatment of women – was awarded an honorary degree from Brandeis University in Massachusetts in
2014. This was withdrawn, however, following protests from Muslim students and groups, including the Muslim Student Association and the controversial Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR also objected to the screening of a film focusing on honour violence, predominantly a Muslim phenomenon where women are killed for “dishonouring” male family members – the “dishonour” usually involves sexual behaviour. According to Fox News: “CAIR convinced officials at University of Michigan to cancel a screening of the film last week, and a CAIR official confirmed a second screening was cancelled at the University of Illinois. CAIR has since made attempts to shut down additional showings.”15
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Political Islam has been growing in power and brutality, all over the world, over recent decades. It is manifested not only in the violence and terror of groups such as Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Islamic State, but in an ideology (often propagated peacefully and lawfully) that believes in a global Caliphate under strict and brutal sharia law. Such a Caliphate would treat women as sub-human, would present an enormous threat to Jews, non-Muslims and homosexuals, and would destroy free speech and democratic principles entirely. Despite protestations from primarily left-wing advocates, it is becoming increasingly clear that those who support and campaign for Islam and sharia do not do so as a result of poverty, or isolation, or “disenfranchisement”, or “marginalisation”; in fact, quite the opposite is true. To argue that proponents of political Islam are powerless or side-lined in Western society is factually inaccurate to the point of absurdity. Proponents of Islamism often dominate discourse in the media, and particularly in universities. It is perhaps more accurate in fact to argue that it is the opponents of Islamic extremism who are side-lined, silenced, harassed, and even prosecuted. Evidence reveals that the result of this has been an exodus of young British graduates leaving the UK to fight for a brutal and violent terrorist group, Islamic State. Some argue that Islamic State exists as a response to Western aggression, colonialism, or imperialism – indeed such rhetoric is common on university campuses. Western colonialism does not explain however Islamic State’s brutal kidnap and rape of Yazidi women and girls (who have never been involved in Western colonialism), nor does it explain Islamic State’s mass murder of many Muslims, and nor does it explain the stoning to death of women for adultery, or indeed the slavery and
barbaric treatment generally of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world, at the hands of their fellow Muslims. The battle against political Islam is failing for many reasons; most importantly because our leaders fail to see the explicitly religious motivation of groups such as Islamic State, or the religious motivation of many who seek to join their ranks. Some Western leaders are arguably complicit in the so-called “radicalisation” of young British Muslims, when they legitimise and condone anti-Western and antiIsrael thought and rhetoric. For example, at a time when anti-Semitism is growing across Europe – to the extent that even major supermarkets remove Kosher items from their shelves,17 marches take place where protestors chant “Jews to the Gas”,18 and when Jewish shops and businesses are being violently attacked19 – the left-wing Labour Party in Britain voted in Parliament to recognise the “state of Palestine”, despite it being ruled by a known terrorist organisation which is clear about its aim to murder all Jews. While giving this level of legitimacy to the murderous terrorists of Hamas, the British Left (including the Labour Party) does nothing to confront Islamism and the preaching of Islamist hate in our own educational institutions, thus sending a powerful message that the mainstream political Left is on the side of Islam. Leftdominated student unions send the same message by boycotting Israel while refusing to condemn Islamic State. The unfortunate truth is that the political Islamist narrative is becoming dominant and those who object have become pariahs – nowhere is this more evident than in higher education, both in Britain and elsewhere in the Western world. Those who seek open debate about the nature of Islamic doctrine are labelled “Islamophobic” and “racist” – such accusations can have devastating consequences for careers and reputations, and the threat of such accusations alone is usually enough to ensure self-censorship on the part of those who seek to scrutinise. Simultaneously, Islamic societies and centres in major universities are receiving vast funds from brutal Islamic states – most notably Saudi Arabia. Given the influence of Islamism on British campuses, and the silencing of detractors, it is incumbent upon our leaders to
recognise the true nature of political Islam, its threat to women, Jews, non-believers, homosexuals and democracy itself, and to do so as a matter of urgency. British journalists, lawyers, and indeed political leaders, are almost all university graduates and are therefore exposed to what is becoming a default position – that the West is a force for negativity, and that Islamists must be accommodated (or rather appeased) and free speech curtailed. Sharia Watch UK does not support the notion that those who believe in extremist Islam should be silenced. We do however argue that incitement to violence against women, Jews, homosexuals or non-believers should be prosecuted, and that such incitement should not be permitted anywhere if it crosses the threshold of criminality, including on university campuses. Furthermore, we believe that those who oppose the ideology of radical Islam should be permitted to speak openly and not be subjected to dishonest accusations of “racism” or indeed “Islamophobia”. Sharia Watch UK also believes that below the threshold of actual violence and terrorism lies a vast plane of often highly supremacist and intolerant ideas and behaviours; these ideas and behaviours must be robustly and unapologetically challenged. In the context of student radicalisation, this need to challenge ideas and behaviours is all the more pressing within the campus environment. University bodies and student leaders that seek to shut down debate, criticism and even ridicule of Islam are particularly culpable in fuelling radicalisation. There is endless debate about the “cause” of radicalisation. There is no shortage of theories placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of external actors and external factors. Perhaps the time is finally upon us to ask whether the “cause” of Islamic radicalisation is within Islam itself. FOOTNOTE: To read the entire ShariaWatch report on radicalised Islam, visit: www.shariawatch.org.uk/sites/default/files/ downloads/Learning%20Jihad.pdf
References 1. www.theguardian.com/ uk-news/2014/aug/25/ counter-terrorism-laws-warning-mi6-chief
2. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ middleeast/11051731/A-balance-betweenrights-and-security.html 3. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ defence/11049851/More-British-Muslimsfight-in-Syria-than-in-UK-Armed-Forces. html 4. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ africaandindianocean/nigeria/10836250/ British-born-Boko-Haram-ringleader-wasradicalised-at-UK-university.html 5. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ uknews/1584954/Extremism-fear-overIslam-studies-donations.html 6. www.bbc.co.uk/news/ education-15966132 7. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ africaandindianocean/libya/8360103/ Libya-and-the-LSE-Large-Arab-gifts-touniversities-lead-to-hostile-teaching.html 8. www.studentrights.org.uk/cms/rc1/wpcontent/uploads/2011/06/Saudi-SOASBriefing.pdf 9. www.antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/All-Party-ParliamentaryInquiry-into-Antisemitism-REPORT.pdf 10. www.hamasoncampus.org 11. www.hamasoncampus. org/#!multimedia/c112f 12. www.meforum.org/603/islamismscampus-club-the-muslim-students 13. www.electronicintifada.net/blogs/ nora/student-senate-uc-berkeley-passesresolution-condemning-lecturers-islamophobic-hate 14. www.frontpagemag.com/2014/leekaplan/uc-berkeley-islamophobia-conference-pseudo-scholarship-at-taxpayerexpense-2/ 15. www.foxnews.com/us/2014/04/02/ muslim-backlash-against-film-will-hurtwomen-says-honor-diaries-team/ 16. www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-mahersuc-berkeley-speaking-invitation-sparksfuror/ 17. www.theguardian.com/business/2014/ aug/17/sainsburys-removes-kosherfood-anti-israel-protesters 18. www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/ opinion/jochen-bittner-whats-behindgermanys-new-anti-semitism.html?hp& action=click&pgtype=Homepage&modu le=c-column-top-span-region&region=ccolumn-top-span-region&WT. nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=2 19. www.huffingtonpost. co.uk/2014/07/22/france-jewish-shopsriot_n_5608612.html
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PG’s TIPS A light brew, sometimes lacking substance
FORTY YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, IN FEBRUARY 1975, ACCLAIMED WRITER AND LYRICIST PELHAM GRENVILLE WODEHOUSE PASSED AWAY AT THE AGE OF 93. IN THIS ANNIVERSARY CRITIQUE OF WODEHOUSE’S BODY OF WORK, HAL COLEBATCH ARGUES THAT WHILE THE WRITER WAS ONE OF THE GREATS, HE ALSO WASTED HIS OPPORTUNITIES TO EXERCISE FREE SPEECH
P
.G. Wodehouse is not only a perennially popular author: as well as a readers’ writer, he is also a writers’ writer. I know of no critic who has been able to attack – indeed I have never found any who wished to attack – his literary craftsmanship, and his themes can only be attacked by a critic prepared to risk looking very silly indeed. Hilaire Belloc in 1939 called him “The best writer of English now alive,” and “The head of my profession.” Someone said that to criticize his work was like taking a spade to a soufflé. This, however, is not quite the whole story: occa-
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sionally in the soufflé are grains of something harder, such as the description of soap-box orators, among whom, “an Atheist was letting himself go with a good deal of vim, though handicapped by having no roof to his mouth” – there is a Grahame Greene novel in 21 words. His send-up in one of the Mr Mulliner stories of the deranged Bacon/Shakespeare conspiracy theories is deadly and, though he would never have touched so grim a subject, one could wish he had lived long enough to similarly flay the malignant idiocies of the 9/11 “truthers.” When Wodehouse was accused of collaborating with the Nazis as a result having made five broad-
casts on Berlin radio in the early part of World War II, three highly-proven anti-Nazis – George Orwell and Malcolm Muggeridge, then both of the Left, and the conservative Evelyn Waugh - were among those who came to his defence at different times, as did John Masefield, then Poet Laureate and President of the Society of Authors. British intelligence investigated the affair and found him no worse than foolish, but there was a little more to it. Wodehouse, then nearly 60 and a civil-
ian, had been taken prisoner during the German invasion of France. His defenders pointed out that the broadcasts were quite innocuous – they were light-hearted accounts of his internment experiences. Waugh suggested that, if anything, they actually helped British morale by portraying the Germans as bumbling, comic and enslaved by petty routine at a time when the Wehrmacht otherwise seemed an invincible and super-efficient juggernaut. Waugh also argued that Wodehouse had behaved bravely by letting
himself be taken prisoner – staying put, as ordered, rather than fleeing and adding to the hordes of refugees who were choking the roads needed by the Allied armies. Anyway, the Germans quickly dropped the broadcasts, apparently finding them useless. I am not judging how correct Waugh’s arguments were, but the texts of the broadcasts were published by Encounter in 1954, and it was then obvious to those who had heard of them only by repute that they had been harmless, except for the fact that they had been
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P.G. Wodehouse (1881 - 1975) English novelist and writer. From a cigarette card published 1937/ NEWSCOM
made at all. Comments such as: “If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what Lower Silesia must be like ...” could hardly be taken as pro-German. The Daily Mirror’s intensely-proLabour columnist “Cassandra” (William Connor) was one who led the attack against Wodehouse as a tactic of classwarfare, with Wodehouse identified as part of the upper class. Connor leveled libelous and preposterous charges against Wodehouse of being a Nazi propagandist (Though the aristocratic Tory Duff Cooper was also involved, possibly through believing his own propaganda.) The consensus of his defenders’ opinion was along the lines that while Wodehouse had been naïve and foolish in making the broadcasts, he had had no treasonous intent and knew nothing about either politics or war. He had little motive in venally making the broadcasts to gain early release as he would have been released in a few months when turning 60 anyway, and evidently had no inkling that they would cause any offence, let alone fury, in England. The “phoney war” had ended with the German offensive which resulted in his capture, and his own captivity had not been harsh (the civilian prisoners had
access to library books and entertainments) but he had had little if any news of events. According to his defenders, he simply had no understanding of how grim and total the war had become since he was captured. He had apparently made the broadcasts to keep his name before his American readers, and had accepted no German money. He had kept himself with the German royalties on his books. In the world of total war he was a babe toddling in a very dark and monsterfilled wood. Still, it is notable that be returned to France after his release and remained there for the rest of the war, though he could presumably have got back to England via, say, Spain – that is hardly a point in his favour and it is something his defenders have tended not to mention (What a Tom Stoppard-type play might be written about P. J. Wodehouse meeting Sartre and Beckett at a literary soiree in occupied Paris!) It is notable that Orwell, Muggeridge and Waugh, among the most accomplished literary stylists of their age, and all men of considerable moral seriousness – a constant theme in all their works is the conflict between civilization and barbarism - admired Wodehouse’s style. So did that formidable wit and intellect, Msgr. Ronald Knox. So, I note, does our own Frank Devine, himself certainly no stylistic slouch. Waugh wrote of him “delivering future ages from a captivity which may be more irksome than our own.” Among other admirers, Professor C. Northcote Parkinson, creator of Parkinson’s Law, was moved to write a complete biography of Jeeves, along with one of Horatio Hornblower. Frank Devine has made the interesting suggestion that Jeeves was inspired, not by an English valet, but by an American Negro upper servant. This may well be true, but my own suggested key to Wodehouse, to his great blunder in 1940, and perhaps to his perennial popularity, is different: I suggest that, setting aside his juvenilia and work published before 1914, Wodehouse was writing what is sometimes known today as a counter-factual: a story of what the world would have been like if some historical event had been different. The modern US writer Harry Turtledove is one who has produced a series of such stories, one set in a world where the
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Confederates won the American Civil War, for example, another about an alien invasion in the midst of World War II, and a series set in the Byzantine Empire as it might have been if Islam had never arisen. Another such series has postulated an Earth where a meteor strike never killed the dinosaurs, and some of them eventually developed intelligence and a civilization.
W
odehouse, I suggest, was writing stories, as much as Tolkien was to do, quite consistently over many years and comprising the major part of his whole canon, set in an imaginary world, “sub-creating,” again like Tolkien, an England transmogrified and idealized. This work was all one gigantic story set in a certain and distinctly-visualised imaginary world. Tolkien’s work was inspired in part by the First World War: along with his idyllic descriptions of The Shire (England) are “the arid moors of the Noman-lands” in Middle Earth which clearly echo “No Man’s Land,” and there are a number of other instances where his landscapes seem to be inspired by it, such as the Dead Marshes, like flooded trenches full of corpses, and the intensely-described desolation before the Black Gate of Mordor, far from the green and lovable Shire: “Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths which feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed to the reluctant light … a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing …” But Wodehouse’s was a very different imaginary world to that of Tolkien’s heroic adventures and battles set in a remote past. Wodehouse’s image of modern England was summed up in passages like: “The sun shone down from a sky of cornflower blue, and what one would really like would be to describe in leisurely detail the ancient battlements, the smooth green lawns, the rolling parkland, the majestic trees, the well-bred bees and the gentlemanly birds on which it shone.” There is so often sun and bird-song. Other stories begin: “Sun-
shine was gilding the grounds of Brinkley Court and the ear detected a marked twittering of birds in the ivy outside the window…”, “The day was so warm, so fair, so magically a thing of sunshine and blue skies and bird-song …”
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stories, I suggest, were consistently set in a counter-factual modern England where the First World War never occurred. Jeeves, remember, first appears in 1917, and Bertie Wooster would, in the real world, probably have been dead in a shell-crater by then, along with much of the rest of the membership of the Drones Club. Wodehouse’s stories are a sort of science-fiction. I have read by no means all of Wodehouse, but I have read a fair bit over the years, and in all the stories about young upper and upper-middle-class Englishmen, which seem to be set from 1917 on into the 1920s and 1930s, I do not recall a single mention, even in passing, of the First World War or any of its concomitants. No members of the Drones’ Club have empty sleeves or eye-patches, among these young Englishmen there is no reference to mud, shell-shock, Armistice Day, medals or absent friends. It is a consistent world in which income-tax and death-taxes have not destroyed the ability of a large class to live on inherited wealth and patronize graciousness. The frenzied sexual and other behaviour which were part of the backdrop to the 1920s and the 30s, and are a backdrop to Evelyn Waugh’s novels set in that period, are not “on stage,” and do not harmonise with Wodehouse’s world, even though it is plainly set later than the beginning of the 20th Century with cars, aeroplanes, steamships, etc. There are eccentrics in Wodehouse to be sure – practically all his characters are caricatures in a sense, though his
olkien’s Shire, which his heroes are, among other things, trying to save from war and devastation, is a bit like that, although more serious things happen to some of its people, and it is never forgotten that the Shire is a working landscape: it has fields and woods and gardens, not smooth green lawns and rolling parkland, and it is protected by guardians that its inhabitants hardly know of. In Tolkien’s Middle Earth there are “ancient battlements” to be sure, but they are still manned by grim warriors. Away in the Dead Marshes: “It was dreary and wearisome. Cold clammy winter still held sway in this forsaken country. The only green was the scum of livid weed on the greasy surface of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting weeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long forgotten summers … There was a deep silence, only scraped on its surfaces by the faint quiver of empty and desolate seed-plumes, and broken grass-blades trembling in small air-movements that they could not feel. ‘Not a bird!’ said Sam mournfully.” In Wodehouse’s England even the East End slums are happy, care-free, gay and fecund. In Young Men in Spats: “On every side, merry matrons sat calling each other names on doorsteps. Cheery cats fought among the garbage-pails. From the busy public-houses came the sound of mouth-organ and song. While, as for the children, who were present in enormous quantities, so far from crying for bread, as he had been led to expect, they were playing hop-scotch all over the pavements. The whole atmosphere, in a word, was, he tells me, more like that of Guest Night at the National Liberal Club than anything he had ever encountered.” (It is sobering to read in April, 2008, that councils in Britain are banning hopscotch and sending men to erase Stephen Fry and Hugh hoppy-games from Laurie epitomised Jeeves pavements for and Wooster for the younger “safety” reasons.) generation on TV Wodehouse’s
letters suggest he took the major ones very seriously – but not real degenerates like the Mitford women. In one or two, or even half a dozen, stories these various absences would be unremarkable, but in a canon as large as Wodehouse’s they can only be, as our Marxist friends used to say, “no coincidence.” It cannot be anything other than a deliberately-taken and explicit position. Further, Wodehouse as a chronicler of his particular version of England is not as narrow a writer as he sometimes gives the impression of being. Evelyn Waugh has pointed out that: “Of his three distinctive cycles that of Blandings is aristocratic, that of Mr Mulliner middle class, and that of Wooster an intricate combination of moneyed leisure and desperate impecuniousity.” Waugh said in the same essay, getting near my point: “For Mr Wodehouse there has been no Fall of Man, no ‘aboriginal calamity.’ His characters … are still in Eden.” Actually it is not quite Eden, and Man is quite Fallen – there are swindlers and thugs and fanatics and lunatics and poor people. As a former sportswriter he also knew the tough and dangerous world of professional boxing, and his stories which feature the boxer Battling Billson are written with an insider’s expertise. At a society wedding (the bridegroom is a crook): “Out of the church came a beauteous being, leading on his arm another, somewhat less beauteous. There was no denying the spectacular effect of Teddy Weeks. He was handsomer than ever. His sleek
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hair, gorgeously waved, shone in the sun, his eyes were large and bright; his lissome frame, garbed in faultless morning coat and trousers, was that of an Apollo. But his bride gave the impression that Teddy had married money. They paused in the doorway, and the cameramen became active and fussy.” It is a Fallen world, but a great shadow is missing. It is a picture, painted in simple, clear prose, of England as it might have been had the shots not been fired at Sarajevo.
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s far as the Second World War goes, Hitler is mentioned in one story written in the 1930’s, Buried Treasure, but only in passing in regard to his undeveloped moustache, moustaches being the real interest of the story. Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts are sent up quite savagely and effectively as Roderick Spode’s Black Shorts, “swanking around in footer bags.” (It was one of the earlier attacks on Fascism in Britain. Coming from Wodehouse, and considering who his readers were, this attack may have been more effective than if it had come from a more habitually political or obviously left-wing writer). Much later, in the Cold War and the Space-Age, there is a mention somewhere of the Sputnik. The first Russian Revolution is mentioned in The Clicking of Cuthbert, but it is a very long way away – too far away to be taken seriously, and it is assumed the Russian Revolutionaries are as keen golfers as the most Wodehousean Englishman. And Wodehouse appears, apart from of course the Berlin broadcasts, to have made no
literary use of his experiences in World War II – most writers would consider such experiences priceless capital. When Wodehouse’s languid heroes are threatened by formidable rivals in love or other competitors – tough, capable, potentially or actually violent men – these tend to be explorers, big-game hunters and the like, not soldiers: “I like a man to be a clean, strong, upstanding Englishman who can look his gnu in the face and put an ounce of lead in it.” – His gnu, not his Hun. His stories of English rural and village life hardly even seem to mention those normal fixtures of such stories, “The Major” and “The Colonel.” Apart from a child’s sailor-suit with the cap-tally “HMS See-Sik” I can recall no references to a Navy or Air Force. In fact, when we have here is a sort of saga (Wodehouse warned: “Except for the tendency to write articles about the Modern Girl and allow his side-whiskers to grow, there in nothing an author today has to guard himself against more carefully than the Saga habit.”) of alternate history. One gets the impression that none of his characters, such as Lord Emsworth, have had any “toughening” experiences. They are not in the Territorial Army as men of their class would tend to be (and which has provided material for innumerable comic writers). Nor are they pacifists or utterers of pacifist sentiments. The very consciousness of past or future war – and this in the 20s and 30s – simply has no part in their world. In a time of manifestos, Wodehouse uttered none. Wodehouse’s comedy is utterly different to that of his great admirer Waugh: they are at opposite ends of the comic spectrum in regard to darkness and light. The first page of Waugh’s first great comic novel, Decline and Fall, sets out what could be a very typical Wodehousean situation – members “sonorous of name and title” of the Bollinger Club gathering at their old University college for a “Beano” – but before that first page is finished one knows one is in a far darker world than any that Wodehouse ever created. And when World War II came Waugh, though at nearly 36 more than a decade older than most junior officers, instantly threw up his writing career, moved Heaven and Earth to get into the Army and undertook Commando and parachute training.
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It may be that both Tolkien and Wodehouse sought escape or consolation from the horrors of what the 20th Century had done to England by creating imaginary worlds where things were different, but Tolkien, who had been a soldier in the First World War, remained engaged with the real world as well – and he would never have made broadcasts on Berlin Radio. What either Wodehouse or Waugh would make of Britain today – when the papers carry not one or two but a continuing stream of stories of adults being kicked to death by gangs of drunk and drugged teenagers (the former Archbishop of Canterbury says they form gangs to “fend off unfriendly adults”), including a blind man, Colin Greenwood, who refused to carry a white stick because it was a magnet for such attacks, while a local council prohibits skull-and-crossbones flags being flown at infant’s pirates’ parties because the neighbors may be intimidated, and another prevented a garden gnome from wearing a policeman’s helmet, where on projected trends births within marriages are already a minority in some areas, and Muslim parents protest against pro-homosexual story-books being forced on their 6-yearold children by government schools, I do not know. Somehow I suspect that of the writers mentioned here, Tolkien would have been the one to deal with it. Yet Wodehouse, I think, was doing more than merely offering escapism: his stories were, obliquely, a comment on that world which they refused to engage. Wodehouse did, however, write one war-story, a rather significant one for the purposes of this essay. He had begun his career as an author before World War I, at a time when there was a great vogue of (then) “counter-factual” stories about future wars with Germany and German invasions of England, following the model of the 19th Century The Battle of Dorking. William Le Queux was mass-producing such works, and Kipling was encouraging young men to join rifle clubs, and warning of raids and invasions to come in poems like “The Dykes” and “The Islanders.” In Voices Prophesying War, I. F. Clarke has pointed out that Wodehouse sent this genre up with the 1909 spoof counter-factual, The Swoop! Or How Clarence Saved England. It was probably the only comic
story among those grim and horrific warnings. He opened it after the fashion of the propagandists of the day by addressing a letter to his readers from The BombProof Shelter, London W: “It is necessary that England should be roused to a sense of her peril, and only by setting down without flinching the probable results of an invasion can this be done. This story, I may mention, has been written and published purely from a feeling of patriotism and duty. Mr Alston Rivers’ sensitive soul will be jarred to its foundations if it is a financial success. So will mine.”
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he story has Wodehouse’s typical technique of refusing any engagement with tragic or even serious subjects. The news of the German landing is conveyed with British phlegm in the small print of the Stop-Press: “Fry not out, 104. Surrey 147 for 8. A German army landed in Essex this afternoon. Loamshire handicap: Spring Chicken, 1; Salome, 2; Yip-i-addy, 3. Seven ran.” With the genre of counter-factual invasion stories becoming definitely overcrowded, it was appropriate that it further: “No fewer than eight other hostile armies had, by some remarkable coincidence, hit on that identical moment for launching their long-prepared blow.” The golf-courses of Southern England were over-run with improbable invaders from places like Switzerland and Monaco, but these failed to distract the inhabitants from their golf and generally leisurely and idyllic life. Clarke comments: “The book was not a success. After a heavy diet of war stories and appeals to join the Territorials, the public was not likely to be amused by such frivolity.” Further, of course, the “invasion paranoia” was more than paranoia pure and simple, and denial and mockery was not the whole answer: Britain would shortly be in real peril, if not exactly in terms the counterfactual novelists foresaw. The First World War could have been lost in several ways (What if a few German shells had landed differently at Jutland?). I am not quite as unqualified a literary admirer of Wodehouse’s work as were some of the literary giants of his time, largely because I think he failed to do his great talent justice by the extent of his evasion of serious issues. I recognize him as a superb stylist, and have roared with
laughter at many such gems as “Gussie Presents the Prizes,” and “Goodbye to all cats.” It would normally be absurdly po-faced, priggish and presumptuous to advise that a great comic writer should be more serious, but one may venture to do so in this case, perhaps, and with trepidation, simply because Wodehouse gives us so much evidence that he was capable of greater themes. As it is, I find reading too much of him at once cloying (well, that is my own fault, I should know by now that he is best taken by me in small doses – a short story is the ideal length). And better too much Wodehouse any day than even a little Harold Pinter or Ken Loach! I do find his almost unfailing habit of undercutting the too-infrequent moments when he engages in important things irritating. One would actually mind this less in a lesser writer. The most beautiful and airy literary balloon should sometimes have some ballast available. It is not unreasonable to expect some responsibility from a man of great literary gifts living in dire times. But that quibble having been quibbled, what a writer Wodehouse remains! What gems abound! And no one else could have written them. (“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the hotel at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.”) When we consider Chesterton’s observation that “I know when a thing is meant to uplift the human spirit and when it is meant to depress it,” we know which side Wodehouse is on and can thank and salute him for it. It seems likely that Wodehouse’s absolute rejection of the fact of war and totalitarianism in the 20th Century in his literary work had some connection to his being unable to cope with it sensibly when it caught up with him. Though he does not seem to have been an active pacifist, he was a victim of the pacifist frame of mind. In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings there is a character very like him in the merry Tom Bombadil: the evil Ring has no power over him, but he does not understand its importance and cannot be trusted to behave sensibly in dealing with it. This does not excuse Wodehouse’s German broadcasts – he was no fool and he had, in a sense,
a duty to understand the vile nature of the Nazi regime and understand that no co-operation with it was morally acceptable – but it does perhaps explain them. Wodehouse mentally rejected the Age of the Totalitarian State and its concomitants, and whatever may be said against that position, it was a less dishonourable one than that taken by many writers of welcoming it. His ridiculing of Spode’s “Black Shorts” fascist movement is one of those passages which show what he could do when he dealt with serious subjects. Whether Wodehouse chose to write the way he did, or whether he was one of those authors who could not write any other way, is impossible to say. Perhaps a psychologist would explain Wodehouse’s way of dealing with the 20th Century as a huge exercise in denial. If so, it was one which found enormous resonance and popularity. In the end, and in a peculiar way, Wodehouse’s great counter-factual saga of England – if that is what it is – can touch the imagination and even the heart. The vision he evokes, not only of sunniness and gentleness, but of order, certainty and even good manners are among the things we could do worse than aim at now.
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INVEST
By Carolyn Bigda
Invest in satisfaction
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f you’re pulling together your budget for 2015 or have made “spend less” one of your New Year’s resolutions, consider this tip: Rather than simply cut back on dinners out or trips to the mall, think instead about how to spend more meaningfully. Jonathan Clements, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal Sunday, makes that point in his book, Jonathan Clements Money Guide 2015, a road map of sorts for managing your money in the year ahead. He says that to make our dollars really count, we should look back at how we spent our discretionary money in 2014. Then ask the question, were those expenditures satisfying? If the answer is no, you know where to start tightening your budget. A good way to get started is to look at a year-end credit card summary, which some banks provide. The summary gives you an overview of how much you spent in certain categories throughout the year,
say, transportation and groceries. You can also sign up for services such as Mint.com or Xero, which aggregate online financial accounts and track spending in real time. You can also look at past purchases and calculate how much you’ve spent, on average, in any one area. Research shows that experiences tend to be more gratifying than possessions, and Clements suspects that will be the case for most people when they think about their purchases in 2014. “What made you most happy was, probably, going out to dinner with friends or taking a vacation with the family,” he said. “It won’t be the new refrigerator.” In my case, I got a new refrigerator in late December. “I still really like it,” I said. “Wait a month,” Clements said. That’s because, eventually, things start to lose their lustre: A new car will one day need repairs. A new refrigerator gets dirty and cramped. Our memory
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of experiences, on the other hand, tends to grow fonder over time. “The broken-down car just sits in the driveway, taunting you,” Clements said. Once you’ve gotten your priorities set, you can make spending decisions that give you more bang for the buck and free up dollars for other goals, such as paying off debt or building up savings. Jessica Flaherty, 30, graduated from law school in 2009 with more than $100,000 in student loan debt. She works in the nonprofit sector and isn’t making the high salary she expected to earn when she was in school. To chip away at her sizable debt load, she doesn’t buy as many new clothes and other items. But some things were just too important to cut. “I kept the day-to-day things, like getting coffee,” Flaherty said. “I can’t make good coffee myself. I’ve tried, and no one wants to work with me if I haven’t been caffeinated.” She also allows herself to go out with co-workers for a sandwich once a week. “I didn’t want to miss that social aspect at work,” she said. “That was important to me.” In 2012, Kelsey Folmar decided that she and husband, Kendan, should pay off his remaining $17,000 in student loan debt. Using Mint.com to scour their finances, she discovered they had spending leaks, including convenience store purchases, which alone averaged $130 per month. After plugging those leaks – and renting a room in a family member’s home for only $400 per month for nearly a year – the couple, both 27, paid off the debt last April. But all the while, they allowed themselves some indulgences. “We had a budget for going out to eat,” Kelsey said. “It’s just something my husband and I have always enjoyed. It was the one thing we splurged on.”
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GADGETS
Ricoh Theta M15 Epson Expression Photo XP-950
The Expression Photo XP-950 puts professional-quality photo printing right at your fingertips. This wide-format all-in-one features 6-color inks and an innovative, fold-over scan lid that holds originals in place. Quickly produce stunning borderless photos up to 11” x 17” or print 4” x 6” photos in as fast as 11 seconds.1 Featuring the ultimate in wireless printing2, the XP-950 makes it easier than ever to print from your iPad®, iPhone®, tablet or smartphone3, whether in your home or out and about. No matter what you choose to print, you’re ready with a dedicated photo tray, specialty paper support4 and CD/DVD printing.
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What is RICOH THETA? Special camera that shoots 360-degree photos that you can view in any direction. The fish-eye lenses on each side of the compact body capture images of just over 180 degrees, which are stitched together inside the camera body. RICOH THETA’s unique technology enables smooth 360-degree viewing. Incredible that a camera this small can shoot such amazing spherical images. You can capture your complete surroundings with the simple press of the shutter button. RICOH THETA will automatically adjust the image orientation so that you don’t have to worry about how you’re holding the camera.
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DJI’s most advanced technology comes together in an easy to use, allin-one flying platform that empowers you to create the unforgettable. Get a full, unrestricted 360⁰ view of the world below and create images like never before. Shoot up to 4K video and capture 12 megapixel photos with the Inspire 1 camera. The lens consists of 9 seperate elements, including an aspherical element, for extreme clarity, while Adobe DNG RAW support gives you the power to make every shot a masterpiece. Take complete control of your camera and flight system with a comprehensive mobile app. Everything from manual camera controls to flight telemetry and even auto takeoff and landing are just a tap away.
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Amazon Echo is designed around your voice. It’s always on — just ask for information, music, news, weather, and more. Echo begins working as soon as it detects the wake word. You can pick “Alexa” or “Amazon” as your wake word. Echo is also an expertly tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive sound. Echo uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud, where we leverage the power of Amazon Web Services to recognize and respond to your request. Plus, Echo is Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream other popular music services like Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora from your phone or tablet.
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The state-of-the-art shaving system cuts hairs up to 30% closer. By collecting hair in the optimal cutting position, the newly designed blades shave closer and more comfortably. Each shaving head independently moves in 8 directions to follow your face’s every curve. This superior contouring helps capture up to 20% more hair in a single pass. AquaTec technology lets you shave whichever way you prefer. Enjoy a comfortable dry shave, or a refreshing wet shave with shaving gel or foam.
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This is a beautiful watch that celebrates the timeless and elegant nautical spirit, capturing the essence of a summer by the ocean. Perfect for those who know that the right accessory makes all the difference. The ultra-thin (6mm) Daniel Wellington watch is suitable for every occasion. Whether you are attending a formal event, playing a game of tennis or enjoying a sunny day at the country club – Daniel Wellington makes for a beautiful companion. Not only that, but with interchangeable straps you will have a unique timepiece for every day of the week.
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Sugoi Zap Jacket
Our modern lives force us outdoors to commute and train in the dark, making it essential to be visible at night. The Zap Collection keeps you ultra-visible in low light conditions. At SUGOI, we specialize in apparel that allows you to perform when the elements don’t cooperate, including darkness. Thanks to our Zap Collection, you don’t have to worry about staying safe as the days turn into nights. This season we are excited about Zap – a new, incredibly visible fabric that creates explosive illumination. Zap comprises the base fabric for entire garments, no longer restricted to small hits of reflectivity allowing the entire apparel to become a source of visibility. With the Zap Bike Jacket, SUGOI opens the door to a new era of visual technology.
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Nightcap
Nightcap by Original Penguin is a spicy, woody, aromatic scent that seamlessly aligns with the Penguin guy’s laid back yet socially active, fashion forward lifestyle. Opening with a burst of juniper, bergamot, spearmint, and melon, the scent infuses into a blend of patchouli, fir, and lavender and is finely wrapped with a dry down of sandalwood, musk, and vanilla. Original Penguin may have made its mark in the 1950s, but it continues to live on today.
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Feb/Mar 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 37
TECH
By David Undercoffler
Automakers on the road to self-driving cars
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orget 80-inch televisions or WiFi-connected blenders. At the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it’s the automakers who are dominating the conversation. Brands like Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW and Toyota used the annual show to highlight the rapidly approaching selfdriving car, as well as in-car apps and
hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. “CES is a place where automakers can reach an entire new audience of consumers who are looking for what’s next,” said Costantine Samaras, a professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “Even if it’s just at the concept level, there’s a lot of spillover for technology up and down an automaker’s supply chain.”
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The concept car was exactly what Mercedes-Benz brought to this year’s event. Mercedes Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche on Monday unveiled a radical self-driving concept dubbed the F 015 Luxury in Motion. The low-slung oddity highlights what Mercedes thinks its cars could look like – and how they could function – just
15 years in the future. The large sedan holds four people, who can sit facing one another in lounge-style seating while the car drives itself. Toyota – which used last year’s CES to show off a self-driving prototype – used this year’s show to talk hydrogen. The company announced that 5,600 of its patents related to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and refueling stations will be free to any competitor that wants to use them. “The first-generation hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, launched between 2015 and 2020, will be critical, requiring a concerted effort and unconventional collaboration,” Toyota Senior Vice President Bob Carter said. Toyota will bring the hydrogen-powered Mirai sedan to the U.S. market in October. Other automakers used CES to offer a look at the near future of autonomous cars. Audi was the first automaker to get a
permit from the state of California to test self-driving cars on public roads in 2014. Like an eager 16-year-old, the automaker used this new permit to drive autonomously from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas in a prototype A7. Per current law, the car drove the 560mile journey with a specially licensed person in the driver and passenger seats. Despite driving at night and in heavy rain at speeds up to 70 mph on public roads, the trip was trouble-free, Audi said. Luxury automakers in particular will face a challenge as self-driving cars become mainstream. When they do, automakers and analysts alike expect fewer traffic jams, safety improvements and reduced greenhouse gases. But self-driving cars are likely to begin a transition from a product owned by an individual to an on-demand, subscription-based service. It’s not just high-dollar automakers with an eye on self-driving cars. During his keynote address Tuesday, Ford CEO Mark Fields made it clear that an autonomous Ford was a certainty in the future. But he said his company would take its time and make sure that the technology was approachable for everyone. Technology is hardly the only hurdle for self-driving cars. There are knotty regulatory challenges (test vehicles are currently allowed on public roads in just four states); data privacy issues, since these cars accumulate massive amounts
of information about how they’re used and where they go; and ethical issues like how to program a car to react when a collision is unavoidable. “We’re in the Wild West of autonomous vehicle law and policy,” said Samaras of Carnegie Mellon University. “The danger is a 50-states strategy where every one is different and automakers are locked into a less progressive path.” Despite transportation policy traditionally moving very slowly, Samaras says he’s optimistic that automakers’ rapid development of self-driving cars will speed up policy change. “These are surmountable challenges,” he said. Ford, meantime, is conducting 25 experiments around the globe on how transportation is evolving with technology. Fields said there’s an on-demand, minute-by-minute car-sharing program in London; a partnership with an organization in Africa that maintains a fleet of vehicles used to deliver doctors and medical care to remote villages while simultaneously mapping the area; and a cloud-based system in Atlanta that uses sensors already on many new Fords to gather data on open parking spaces. Such a discussion is exactly why Ford has been coming to CES for the last eight years, Fields said. “For us, it’s a way to showcase our innovations,” he said. “We want to be viewed as part of this community.”
AUDI WAS THE FIRST AUTOMAKER TO GET A PERMIT FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO TEST SELF-DRIVING CARS ON PUBLIC ROADS IN 2014
The self-driving concept car ‘Audi Prologue’ of car manufacturer Audi is on display at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 06 January 2015. The vehicle drove on stage by itself.
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ONLINE
By Joe Carlson
Keeping hackers out of hospitals
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he humble infusion pump: It stands sentinel in the hospital room, injecting patients with measured doses of drugs and writing information to their electronic medical records. But what if hackers and identity thieves could hijack a pump on a hospital’s information network and use it to eavesdrop on sensitive data like patient identity and billing data for the entire hospital? It is not a far-fetched scenario. Though it hasn’t happened yet, the hacking of wireless infusion pumps is considered a critical cybersecurity vulnerability in hospitals – so much so that federal authorities are focusing on the pumps as part of a wide-ranging effort to develop guidelines to prevent cyberattacks against medical devices. Pumps with Wi-Fi were selected to kick off the new effort because their individual vulnerabilities are magnified by their sheer numbers inside hospitals and clinics. “Infusion pumps are ubiquitous. At Allina, we have over 3,000 infusion pumps across the system,” said Linda Zdon, director of information security and compliance at the 12-hospital Twin Cities health system. “Almost every hospital patient at some point has an infusion pump. So it certainly strikes at an area that has a broad application for most patients, and therefore has a significant impact on health systems.” Allina is one of several Twin Cities health care players that has been working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology since the spring
to develop a type of technical analysis known as a “use case” for wireless pumps. The companies’ goal is to speed along the development of new standards to harden medical devices against cyberattacks and computer viruses. Devicemakers say they’re already hard at work improving security, but hospitals complain that the companies have been moving too slowly on a vulnerability that puts hospitals’ information systems at risk. In a Nov. 21 letter to the Food and Drug Administration, the American Hospital Association urged the federal government to “hold device manufacturers accountable for cybersecurity.” The Homeland Security Department, meanwhile, is reportedly investigating suspected cybersecurity flaws in one model of infusion pump. Patients tend to fear a malicious person would try to steal data or even scramble the dosing instructions for an individual pump. While those risks are real, security experts say they’re far less likely than a hack to gain access to a hospital’s wider
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network traffic. For one thing, attacking an individual through their pump would draw attention and close off what could be a potentially lucrative entry point to many patients’ data. Minnesota companies like Allina, Fairview Health Services and Health-
PUMPS WITH WI-FI WERE SELECTED TO KICK OFF THE NEW EFFORT BECAUSE THEIR INDIVIDUAL VULNERABILITIES ARE MAGNIFIED BY THEIR SHEER NUMBERS INSIDE HOSPITALS AND CLINICS.
Partners are playing a central role in the development of the new federal guidelines through early collaboration with researchers. The NIST project was unveiled in December in a presentation before the University of Minnesota’s Technological Leadership Institute. NIST hopes to publish this first set of recommendations as soon as next fall, and then move on to security vulnerabilities in implantable medical devices and large equipment like magnetic-resonance imaging scanners. Although it’s a common fear that talking openly about cybersecurity vulnerabilities will give hackers ideas, experts note that attackers would still need an extraordinary amount of skill and access to a device to pull off an attack. The FDA – working independently
from the NIST study – has been concerned with infusion pumps since it launched a 2010 review of software defects and related issues in response to 56,000 reports of adverse events. Separately, the FDA last fall convened its first-ever cybersecurity conference for medical devices, including infusionpump makers. That work is ongoing. Following the FDA meeting, Reuters reported that Homeland Security officials have opened investigations into suspected cybersecurity flaws in medical devices, including an infusion pump sold by Chicago-based supplier Hospira. Hospira, which is listed as the lone devicemaker company working with NIST on the infusion pump guidelines, declined to comment for this story. CareFusion, a major infusion-pump
devicemaker based in San Diego, listed several specific steps it takes to secure its devices, including working with third-party experts to test and validate product security and using strong data encryption. It remains to be seen whether the news about hacks at Sony and Target or the NIST will spur more rapid action by devicemakers. But it if doesn’t, the companies won’t be able to say they weren’t warned. After the Sony hack, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued a statement saying, “This event underscores the importance of good cybersecurity practices to rapidly detect cyber intrusions and promote resilience throughout all of our networks. Every CEO should take this opportunity to assess their company’s cybersecurity.”
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SCIENCE
By Karen Kaplan
Stem cells and ‘bad luck’ cause cancer
W
hy are some types of cancer so much more common than others? Sometimes it’s because of faulty genes inherited from one’s parents and sometimes because of behaviours like smoking a pack of cigarettes every day. But in most cases, it comes down to something else – stem cells. This is the intriguing argument made by a pair of researchers from Johns Hopkins University. In a study published in the journal Science, they found a very
high correlation between the differences in risk for 31 kinds of cancer and the frequency with which different types of stem cells made copies of themselves. Just how strong was this link? On a scale that goes from 0 (absolutely no correlation) to 1 (exact correlation), biostatistician Cristian Tomasetti and cancer geneticist Bert Vogelstein calculated that it was at least a 0.8. When it comes to cancer, that’s high. “No other environmental or inherited
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factors are known to be correlated in this way across tumor types,” Tomasetti and Vogelstein wrote. Researchers have long recognized that when cells copy themselves, they sometimes make small errors in the billions of chemical letters that make up their DNA. Many of these mistakes are inconsequential, but others can cause cells to grow out of control. That is the beginning of cancer. The odds of making a copying mistake
OVERALL, THE RESEARCHERS CALCULATED THAT 65 PER CENT OF THE VARIATION IN THE RISK OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF CANCER CAN BE EXPLAINED BY HOW OFTEN STEM CELLS COPY THEMSELVES
are believed to be the same for all cells. But some kinds of cells copy themselves much more often than others. Tomasetti and Vogelstein hypothesized that the more frequently a type of cell made copies of itself, the greater the odds that it would develop cancer. The pair focused on stem cells because of their outsized influence in the body. Stem cells can grow into many kinds of specialized cells, so if they contain damaged DNA, those mistakes can spread quickly.
The researchers combed through the scientific literature and found studies that described the frequency of stem cell division for 31 different tissue types. Then they used data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database to assess the lifetime cancer risk for each of those tissue types. When they plotted the total number of stem cell divisions against the lifetime cancer risk for each tissue, the result was 31 points clustered pretty tightly along a line. To put this notion in concrete terms, consider the skin. The outermost layer of the skin is the epidermis, and the innermost layer of the epidermis contains a few types of cells. Basal epidermal cells are the ones that copy themselves frequently, with new cells pushing older ones to the skin’s surface. Melanocytes are charged with making melanin, the pigment that protects the skin from the sun’s damaging ultraviolet rays. When sunlight hits bare skin, both basal epidermal cells and melanocytes get the same exposure to UV. But basal cell carcinoma is far more common than melanoma – about 2.8 million Americans are
diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma each year, compared with roughly 76,000 new cases of melanoma, according to the US Skin Cancer Foundation. A major reason for this discrepancy, Tomasetti and Vogelstein wrote, is that epidermal stem cells divide once every 48 days, while melanocytes divide only once every 147 days. Overall, the researchers calculated that 65 per cent of the variation in the risk of different types of cancer can be explained by how often stem cells copy themselves. The pair also determined that some cancers – including lung cancer in smokers and hepatocellular carcinoma in patients with hepatitis C – occur more frequently than their stem cell replication rate would suggest. In these cases, getting people to change their behaviour can prevent many cases of cancer, Tomasetti and Vogelstein wrote. But for most of the tumour types they analysed, a cancer diagnosis comes down to little more than “bad luck,” they wrote. There’s not much that patients can do to prevent these cancers, they added, so doctors should focus on finding them early when they are more susceptible to treatment.
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BOOKCASE
By Michael Morrissey
Off with their heads FEARING THE KYNGE By Bernard Brown Foundation Press, $22.00
I have known nominally retired Professor Brown – professor of criminal law at the University of Auckland – for an embarrassingly long time. He hasn’t aged greatly except poetically (and I mean this kindly). He is now entering a fruitful maturity at the moderately ripe age of 81. Nowadays, in the field of writing, especially poetry, 80 seems to be the new 60. He still teaches, and his mind remains honed as sharp as a brief by top criminal lawyer Peter Williams. Brown is well known to the lawyers and judges of Auckland because he has taught most of them. The list would fill the remainder of this review, so I’ll just mention a few: Winston Peters, Sir Douglas Graham, Jim McLay, Barry Brill, David Baragwanath, Sir Peter Blanchard, Dame Sian Elias, and Dame Judith Potter. Professor Brown also taught law to highly distinguished Ex-Governor General Sir Anand Sataynand. It is mentioned in his memoir that he also taught Charlotte Grimshaw and the reviewer, but we escaped the long arm of the law and became writers, a somewhat less lucrative profession than being a lawyer. I have saved the finest barrel for last – the redoubtable David Lange, our most colourful and undoubtedly our largest prime minister. There exists a book called The Wit of David Lange and I defy anyone not to read it without cracking a smile, if not guffawing. Rumour, probably spread
by Kim Dotcom, asserts that there exists a companion volume entitled The Wit of John Key. It consists of 100 blank pages. Along the course of his distinguished teaching career, Brown has turned his legally learned brain to several volumes of light verse which provide the reader with many a satiric throaty chuckle. When Brown reads them in his resonant baritone, they assume an aural gravitas that is thrilling to hear. The current volume has a more serious motif than earlier work – that of King Henry VIII’s penchant for not only bumping off several of his six wives, but also their suggested lovers, however unlikely it might be that they were actually guilty. For instance, one of the men alleged to be a lover of Anne Boleyn was actually homosexual (presumably not bi), another was her brother. “Soothsayers, trimmers and suspected traducers” also fell victim to King Henry’s paranoias and the headsman’s axe. Politics was different in sixteenth century London to the so-called dirty politics of today. Though blogs may inflict a mortal wound on one’s reputation, they will not take off your head the way a Tudor axe can and did. Before I focus in on the poems, I must praise the delightful complementary artistry of Brian Lovelock who won the New Zealand Post picture book award in 2009 for Roadworks (together with Sally Sutton). On the cover, we see the broad-shouldered king in all his wrathful splendor – a portrait image borrowed from the famous original by Hans Holbein, the Younger. Instead of looking regal, he is frowning, clearly vexed, as he stares towards us, his invisible subdued subjects, any of whom might find their head had taken a different trajectory from their body. Later, we see him being whispered to by a conspirator;
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being delighted by a portrait of Anne of Cleaves, whom he later married. Marriage to Henry was generally – to quote Thomas Hobbes – “nasty, brutish and short”, though not poor and solitary (to complete the famous quotation). Sir Thomas Wyatt, himself a poet of note, fell out of favour (extremely easy to do in Tudor times) and got the chop in 1536. Skillfully assuming his persona, Brown has him wittily state: Spoken poetry’s the safest route to ply. You can deny it left your tongue that way. Any kind of writing leaves its scraps: the King’s Bench calls it evidence. Never write all of your words upon one sheet. You’ll self destruct. Print should be avoided like the plague. It was invented to incriminate – and send us poets to the block. This is Brown at his best – superb writing. Far better than many other poets more in vogue, such as Michelle Leggot. And aesthetically and philosophically astute. Of course it is that obese ogre Henry VIII who is to blame for Wyatt’s death, not print per se. Yet he was sent to the block. Some survived Henry’s capricious wrath. Will Sommers, the court fool, who served two kings and a queen with his wit, inspired the fool in King Lear and missed out on the axe. Perhaps his wit saved him. Among those who did not escape Henry’s sporadic murderous wrath were Thomas Cromwell, his chief minister and Anne Boleyn, wife number two. Cromwell, a staunch supporter
of the king’s political machinations was eventually found guilty of treason and heresy. In other words, they rounded up the usual suspects. When Cromwell was executed, a thousand halberdiers stood guard for he was very popular with the common people. A halberd was a fearsome weapon – a pole several feet long with a battle axe blade and hook attached to its upper end. Anne Boleyn, who managed to catch the most flak of Henry’s numerous wives, was accused of adultery, treason, incest and witchcraft which adds up to a heftier and more lethal package than a dirty blog. Ms Boleyn had a wondrously wry sense of gallows humour (though it was the axe not the rope that ended her time on earth) for on the eve of her execution, she declared, “I will not keep you, I have only a little neck”. Brown’s poems show historic acuity, political wit, the cadenced snap of an Auden poem, as well as echoes of an earlier English poetic tradition going back to the aforementioned Thomas Wyatt. By not seeking to be aggressively up to date in his poetic style, Brown’s work may outlast those who use more current modes. The fashionable does not always equate to a permanent space in that firmament we call literary immortality. BAREFOOT YEARS
By Martin Edmond Bridget Williams Books Ltd, $15.00
Martin Edmond is our finest writer of non-fiction. His earlier works include The Autobiography of My Father; The Resurrection of Philip Clairmont; Dark Night: Walking with McCahon and my personal favourite (and I believe his masterpiece), the immensely learned Zone of the Marvellous, which exhaustively though pleasurably explores the notion of the antipodes in the western imagination. Barefoot Years is a more modest offering in bulk and theme because it belongs to the on-going series of small-sized BWB texts published by Bridget Williams. The three I have so far read are mini mem-
oirs that explore childhood while others (unread but soon to be) often have a more political or historical focus. These slim elegant little books rarely top 100 pages and cover a wide variety of topics including personal memoir, historical, political and ideological subjects by notable authors such as Professor Anne Salmond, Maurice Gee, Kirsty Gunn and Geoff Chapple. Edmond (son of poet Lauris Edmond), kicks off his exquisitely written memoir by asking “What’s the first thing you remember?” This question, often asked, cannot always be answered for, as he explains, though he seems to be able to recall his first memory, buried within is the ghost of another memory and within that a third “more spectral image” ... and so on. In other words, memory is a bit like a Chinese puzzle box. Edmond writes of an infinite regression of memory within memory which “discloses not a cloudy nothing but an everything, which we still cannot name”. If you consider this quote carefully, it is profound –it restates the notion that the stuff of not only matter but thought and memory are unknowable, rather than about to be clarified beyond dispute by machines or sterile academic discourse. He then quotes from that fine poet, William Carlos Williams, who said “that memory is a kind of accomplishment”. All of which adds up to a kind of intelligence and acuity of language and perception that you would be lucky to locate anywhere else – by which I mean a text. It is the opposite of a modish academic writing style which tends to dominate the analysis of anything considered difficult. The problem with academic writing is it quickly becomes conservative, ponderous, and often does what it aspires not to do – think inside the box, rather than outside it. Edmond is of course university-educated and is familiar with the frequent poverty and constriction of academic thought, but can think laterally (thank you, Mr de Bono) or outside the box. Edmond belongs to the grand tradition of the essayist who relies on originality – a carefully wrought and intelligent style that doesn’t just imitate whatever is fashionable at universities and which will be out of date before the next decade is up or when the next slithery paradigm shift occurs. After this brilliant start, Edmond reverts to the relatively more straightforward task
of invoking his childhood on the Farm House in Ohakune and other small towns on the volcanic plateau of the North Island. At the risk of appearing indulgent, I’d like to quote one of his lengthy sentences which shows off his prodigious talents – the talent of a writer who has a beautiful style that can reach out for the unusual metaphor or phrase and play with time: “Now – by which I mean then, in the 1950s – there is, on the left, the depot for the market gardens owned and operated by Chinese Maoris, specifically the Sue Joe family; their red sheds, their blue tractors, their battered paintless Bedford truck; their many fat and smiling children of different sizes and sexes, like babushka dolls unfolded out of some obscure collusion of genealogies.” Breathtakingly brilliant prose, and notice how closely objects and people are observed and notice also the warm tone of Edmond’s writing. As the story unfolds in its confident, generous and leisurely way, one is taken on a rich journey through the meticulously detailed splendours of a childhood lived on the volcanic plateau. The conclusion when he leaves his home zone is not only nostalgic, but gut-wrenching, though in a convivial way. And the author knows that the nostalgia trip has concluded its course – that he is leaving his childhood for good (or at least the memory of it): “’I’ll never be happy again’, I say melodramatically, almost luxuriously to myself; while the car turns the corner into Clyde Street and begins to labour up the hill that leads to the town: and, beyond the town, the whole wide world.” Is there a dry eye in the house? Having read a goodly amount of Edmond’s work, it becomes all but obligatory to draw the conclusion that he doesn’t have a bad word to say about anyone. This generosity of outlook is the opposite of what is so prevalent in New Zealand writing – a self righteous aggressive tone which aims to politicise what sometimes is better humanised. Thank you Martin, for all your intelligent, stimulating, fertile books – and the works to come.
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MOVIES
By Roger Moore & Colin Covert
Cut the sniping
A
s focused as the blurred, often random moments of unsteady steadicam shots and as coherent as co-star Wei Tang’s indecipherable Chinese accent, Michael Mann’s Blackhat is a classic January fire sale thriller. Mann’s worst film since he transitioned into the pantheon of “major directors,” the best reason Universal had for rolling it out at all must have been some misguided attempt to pander its way into Chinese favor. Is there a theme park deal we haven’t heard about that was at stake here? A hacking thriller starring Chris “Thor” Hemsworth, it would seem a can’t-miss, just from its timing. The villains might not be North Koreans, but that’s not obvious as we see a Chinese nuclear power plant cyber-hijacked into a near meltdown, and the U.S. commodities market manipulated to a near crash. Somebody’s behind both incidents. The lone Chinese investigator, Capt. Chen (Leehom Wang) insists that the
U.S. Justice Department get his former M.I.T. roommate (Hemsworth) out of prison to help crack the case. Hathaway co-authored the RAT (remote access tool) code that compromised the targets and now threatens world stability. Viola Davis, the movies’ Queen of NoNonsense, is the F.B.I. agent in charge of the ankle-braceleted Hathaway, someone trying to give the Chinese just enough cooperation to crack the case. Anything more, it is NOT said, would compromise national security. Because the Chinese have massive hacking efforts all their own. Chen has a willowy, computer-savvy sister (Wei Tang) and she falls hard for the chiseled convict hacker with a lock of hair always draped over one eye. Even that fails to generate friction in Mann’s movie, a film where the villains are unseen for the first hour, and seem designed by a political correctness committee when they do arrive. The Chinese are all stoic cops or
intrepid investigators, with Hathaway the lone American who has a clue about what’s happening, and why. It’s not that Blackhat is hard to follow. The extreme close-ups of computer info traveling down circuits, brooding shots of Hemsworth thinking, sometimes with his shirt off, the shoot-outs where agents with pistols out-shoot bad guys with automatic weapons, tell us enough. And if you’ve ever wondered what a keyboard looks like, inside, looking up at the keys as they’re struck, this is the movie for you. Davis has little to do, the Chinese players are set-dressing and Hemsworth isn’t much without his hammer. Maybe that theme park deal will materialize, and Mann taking one and making one for the team will pay off. Otherwise, Blackhat will serve no purpose other than deflating the Heat director’s reputation and the star’s chances of ever starring in anything that doesn’t involve a helmet with horns on it.
BLACKHAT Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Wei Tang, Leehom Wang Directed by: Michael Mann Running time: 133 mins Rating: R for violence and some language GG
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AMERICAN SNIPER Cast: Bradley Cooper, Kyle Gallner, Sienna Miller, Keir O’Donnell Directed by: Clint Eastwood Running time: 132 mins Rating: R for war violence, language, sexual references GGGG
C
lint Eastwood carried guns for generations onscreen. As a filmmaker he sees male heroism as a question, not an answer. Behind the camera he makes stories that focus on painful, alienated men. There were blue-collar Bostonians scarred by an abusive past in Mystic River, and views of war punishing a nation’s own soldiers in his World War II duo Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. American Sniper, Eastwood’s 37th film as a director, is his darkest, tightest, most morally ambiguous drama since he shot the western dead with Unforgiven. It is a rich study of combat violence without a moment of jingoism or propaganda. Its central focus is the psychological wounds that haunt a top U.S. marksman from the battlefields of Iraq to his Texas family home. The film is equal parts biography and war film, with its protagonist not a tightly focused portrait but a metaphor about what happens to countless veterans. It dramatizes the life of the late Chris Kyle (played by a bulked-up Bradley Cooper), the deadliest sniper in American history. Cooper, an actor known for emphatic
and memorable dialogue, delivers a deeply felt and moving performance as the strong, silent Kyle. We meet him at an aimless period in his youth. Though he was a good rifleman since childhood and a strong rodeo rider, he was directionless until two things happened. He married Taya Renae Kyle (Sienna Miller). And on Sept. 11, 2001, he decided to join the elite Navy SEAL program to defend his country. (Kyle was actually a two-year Navy enlistee by that point, but Eastwood’s film compresses history into convenient dramatic form.) Exhausting training matures Kyle from awkward, wandering galoot to one of the nation’s finest fighters. In his thinking, there are three types of people in the world. The sheep are blind to the true nature of the world. They are endangered by the wolves, and need protection from sheepdogs – the U.S. military’s warriors. But when his first armed tour begins just weeks into the second American invasion of Iraq, Kyle faces a life-anddeath crisis. On a rooftop in Nasiriya, he holds a woman and little boy on the battered town’s sidewalk in his rifle scope. If they are hostiles hiding explosives
beneath their clothing they could kill patrolling SEALs. If he shoots and he’s wrong, the fatal mistake could end his career. His decision led him to four tours in Iraq and 166 confirmed kills. Eastwood is sympathetic toward veterans, critical of what combat does to them. He powerfully stages the war’s shootouts, standoffs, the crackle of gunfire and struggles against a rival Syrianborn shooter as lethal as Kyle. The film is stunningly shot by cinematographer Tom Stern, a regular with Eastwood for a decade. The grand plan of the combat is never quite in focus, but emotional wounds are the story’s linchpin. Kyle is proud to defend his nation but never exultant. What he does touches him like a waking nightmare. When he has his first young targets in his sights, the film cuts back to his own childhood, hunting with his father. In Iraq, Kyle can’t keep his thoughts from returning home. Back in Texas he’s pulled again and again to Middle East battles. Even a testy argument with his wife during a routine drive stirs up Kyle’s anxiety about a hostile car chase. This is the face of collateral damage.
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CONSIDER THIS
By Amy Brooke
The education bureaucracy has failed New Zealanders
S
omething has gone very wrong with the mass education of children in our state schools. Parents sending their children to private, including Catholic, schools, are also among those disappointed at an over-eager compliance with the destructive zeitgeist of the age. Offering children standards of excellence, learning of real value, is now sidelined in favour of simplistic theories substituting the teaching of content with mere skills, so children can access the internet (problematic enough) – rather than be taught well by enthusiastic, knowledgeable teachers. And we have another problem here, with many teachers themselves incompetent. See Justine Ferrari, The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/ national-affairs/education). Moreover, the sheer waste of children’s precious time by prioritising infotainment, (including the trivialized, even ultimately destructive pop/rock subculture), rather than in-depth teaching, is saddening. A focus on the superficial, ultimately intellectually boring, linked to constant media emphasis on “celebrity” status, ties in with the highly damaging sexualising of children – one of the most pernicious results of the forelock-tugging in response to never-ending compliance edicts from the education bureaucracy . Parents at their wits’ end about which way to turn make considerable financial sacrifices to afford schools they presume will help to steer their children away from government educationists’ politicised priorities. In many instances it’s a
pretty vain hope. By far the majority of today’s teachers and principals are obviously ignorant of the real agenda long underpinning a fight for the control of our children. They’re not alone. Far removed geographically from the pressures of millennia of threatened invasion and the constant threat of war; never exposed to an aggressive history beating against and invading our borders; long unexposed to extreme racial and religious conflict: most New Zealanders are far less intellectually alert than Europeans can afford to be. They have had nothing like a genuine education in the history of the world; the significance of battles fought and lost; the extraordinary bravery of individuals opposing perceived evils of their times. Most will not have been made aware of the importance, even – let alone the actual date – of the signing of the Magna Carta, (June 15, 1215) which changed the face of English history, ultimately resonating across the world. In essence, New Zealanders are unaware that the battle to control a country never stops, and the most promising area for it to be fought is in our schools. Moreover, underpinning everything happening here for more than half a century has been neoMarxism. How many are aware that in the 1848 Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels railed against “bourgeois claptrap about the family and education” demanding that “we replace home education by social”. They demanded free public education so that the State, not parents, could control children.
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The spreading of the home schooling movement throughout this country is heartening. New Zealanders choosing this are not only achieving extraordinary success, but at the same time protecting their own children from some of the downright pernicious influences we are seeing more and more evident throughout our schools, including the growth in bullying. I’ve now learned of a former ERO offical who is encouraging his son to home-school his own children. The utterly inappropriate forcing of sex education – even throughout primary schools onto new entrants – has had its inevitable consequences. Children can now be at the mercy of agenda-driven teachers – some of whom themselves have behaved sexually inappropriately towards children. Others advocate killing a child in the womb as a legitimate way of coping with the consequences of sexual experimentation. Promoting homosexual propaganda and practices is encouraged. Not only parents and children, but concerned principals and teachers are also at the mercy of government-employed theorists who have apparently learned absolutely nothing from the consequences of the politicisation of education this last half-century. It is no surprise that the constantly interviewed, no doubt well-meaning former Secondary Principals Association President Patrick Walsh appears taken aback at the way young boys today treat girls, objectifying and sexualising them. “It’s a disturbing trend and it’s starting in primary schools.” Some parents, to
his consternation, regard this as normal behaviour for teenagers. Why shouldn’t they? It’s exactly what they have been taught these recent decades – that casual sexual encounters count for little, with parental values sidelined and moral values derided. Unfortunately the useless suggestion Walsh offers is for the ministry “to consult with schools and resource these”. It plays into the hands of the feel-good, think-bad educationists who conclude the schools should offer even more sex education, ignoring the role this whole damaging attack mounted against children has played in teenagers’ lives. They seem oblivious to the fact that decades now of heavily promoting sex education right throughout schools has done more to help sexualise the culture, and to destabilise our young, than even our utterly irresponsible media, long influenced by Hollywood’s attack on the conservative values of the West. As the astute Australian commentator Bill Muehlenberg points out, children are our future, and the way our children develop determines how society develops. When ideological battles are fought… ”those who can control the children will be able to determine the outcome, which is why totalitarian states always seek to get control. Some ‘free’ democratic states today seem to fare little better. Children are still being fought over with states and parents contesting who gets to educate them.” Germany is a modern Western democracy. Yet incredibly, or deliberately, the Nazi Jugendamt has never been disbanded, and the law against homeschooling still stands. The Jugendamt still has the power to snatch children away from their parents when they are considered to be “endangered”. And homeschooling families in Germany today are very much under attack. “While there may be only 300 to 500 such families in Germany today, many are considering leaving the country, since government persecution is still taking place. “A number of such cases range from Hans and Petra Schmidt, of southern Bavaria, as described by LifeSiteNews. com (July 10, 2009): www.lifesitenews. com/ldn/2009/jul/09071009.html – to the scandalous: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ news/article-2300568/Obama-administration-wants-DEPORT-home-schooling-family-Germany-fined-threatened-
A sense of moral purpose and respect for Christian values is often a motivating factor for home-schooling
prosecution-teaching-children.html A sense of moral purpose and respect for Christian values is often a motivating factor for home-schooling. Yet the EU has already sided with German authorities against successful home-schooling families. And throughout the Western world, some governments are taking an adversarial role against parents, seeking to influence, or coerce children into politicised thinking, instead of that of their parents. As elsewhere, New Zealand homeschooled children are now on the whole apparently achieving extraordinarily well academically, and I was very much interested in talking with the dedicated, highly-trained Karen Dawson, with three of her charming, talented and achieving children, who oversees one of the homeschooling groups in the Nelson area. Fifty families comprise this particular group alone. The brilliant resources and help available for parents, and the excellent possibilities for the beneficial socialising of children – and for parents meeting regularly – puts paid to any of the usual
charges of the children being deprived of socialisation. A wealth of useful information is also available on excellent, informative sites, such as the Home Education Foundation – http://hef.org.nz That more parents are rejecting the ongoing politicisation and dumbing down of education is the most encouraging challenge now offered to a deterioration in quality teaching and learning which should never have occurred in this country. © Amy Brooke You can help by sharing us on Facebook: www.facebook.com /100daystodemocracy www.amybrooke.co.nz www.100days.co.nz www.summersounds..co.nz www.livejournal.com/users/ brookeonline/
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