Investigate HIS, June/July 2015

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NEW ZEALAND’S BEST NEWS MAGAZINE

GODLESS, FLAGLESS, HOMELESS

THREE ‘KEY’ ISSUES FOR NEW ZEALAND

GHOSTS OF ANZAC

CENTURY OLD WAR DIARY FROM KIWI HERO

ENGLAND’S LAST GASP

ARE BRITAIN’S DEFENCE FORCES ON THEIR LAST LEGS?

June/July 2015, $8.60

MARK STEYN AMY BROOKE & MORE

Contents June/July 2015

16

LIGHTNING YEARS

Godless, flagless, homeless. Look at what’s happened to New Zealand in the past 16 years.

IAN WISHART revisits some of the issues Investigate has covered since February 2000.

20 ETERNAL IMPOTENCE

20

Are Britain’s armed forces going over a cliff? HAL COLEBATCH argues in the affirmative

26 BLACK OR WHITE?

Freddie Gray's death adds to the US police shooting toll

26

IN HERS

GHOSTS OF ANZAC

A 100 year old war diary from a decorated Kiwi hero sheds new light on the Battle of the Somme. DOREEN LANGSFORD previews the book release

Contents

40

06 Editor

34 36

Speaks for itself, really

08 Communiques Your say

10 Steynpost Mark Steyn

14 Right & Wrong David Garrett

34 Gadgets & Mall The latest toys

42 Science

Woolly mammoth sheds light on extinctions

36 Invest

44 Bookcase

38 Tech

46 Movies

40 Online

48 Consider This

Financial health Apple MacBook Better behaviour online

Winter reads Bravetown, The D Train Amy Brooke

46

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5

EDITORIAL

By Ian Wishart

The famous final scene

W

elcome to the last issue of the print edition of Investigate magazine. It’s been a wild ride.

Heidi and I began this magazine in 1999, with the first issue in February 2000. Back in those days it cost $6.95 a copy. Today our former rivals are charging up to $11 a copy for their magazines.

We held ours to $8.60 – a rise of only $1.65 in sixteen years. Now that’s delivering value to readers!

When we were discussing the options for the print edition, we tossed up increasing the cover price, but in the modern market where people are more content to browse the web, we’d need to have priced Investigate at $15.90 a copy, and we thought that just wasn’t fair to our readers.

In its heyday, Investigate sold 13,500 copies a month, compared to Metro’s 20,000. As the internet increasingly came online, and social media dominated people’s spare time, fewer people

have been consuming print magazines to read. Metro’s average net paid sales, for example, have dropped to 8,278 copies as of the start of this year.

As magazine sales started to slide for many publishers, supermarkets and retail outlets cut back on both the range of magazines they sold, and the amount of space to display them. If you’ve been having trouble in recent years trying to find Investigate or other magazines in the shops, that’s the reason.

In contrast to our print edition, our web traffic is significant – around two million pageviews a month from New Zealand and around the world. It is not that people are no longer interested in content, it is just that their methods of consuming that content have changed.

Then you can throw into the mix advertising support. Over the years Investigate has enjoyed the support of some core clients – Thai Air, Danske Mobler, Epson, Pharma Health, Bvlgari in recent times, while in the early days you could add Nissan, Olympus and Minolta to name

It is not that people are no longer interested in content, it is just that their methods of consuming that content have changed 6 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

a few. But since the GFC advertising in print media has been harder to obtain.

Budgets were cut back, and/or redirected to online media.

We tried to halt that process with a radical redesign of Investigate into the HIS/HERS format in 2011 – a change that naturally delighted some readers and annoyed others, but the overall trend in magazine publishing could not be diverted so easily.

Existing print subscribers will get access to our full digital archives of around 100 issues since 2005. Over the next few months we will be continuing to add content right back to our very first issue.

Those of you who are not subscribers but who want to be alerted to new stories can “like” the Investigate Magazine page on Facebook, or follow us @ investigatemag on Twitter, or click on the “Follow Us” tab on our website, www. investigatemagazine.co.nz to be added to our news alerts.

For those who’ve been with us since day one, our sincere appreciation that you’ve been part of the Investigate family for so long. For those who joined along the way, thanks for seeing the light and sharing the journey. As American rock icon Bob Seger sang it, “take it calmly and serene, it’s the famous final scene”.

www.epson.co.nz/precisioncore

COMMUNIQUES

Your say – From The Archives

I think that it just shows that no matter how many good people there are in the world, you only need a few people to ruin things for everybody else.

This applies with most things that we do.

Why? Shelley Grierson, Year 10 student, Massey High

Volume 11, Issue 150, 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, 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

COVER: NEWSCOM/MAXPPP

MARCH 2000 What a breath of fresh air! After years of superficial journalism, Ian Wishart has produced real news with his breakthrough magazine Investigate which sold out the first copies. Investigative journalism is a rare commodity today.

Crimes emanating from the corporate office are significantly greater than crimes in streets. The effects are more widespread and devastating, both to the environment and people.

Robert Anderson, member of Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics

MARCH 2000 I missed your first issue, which sold out. I am particularly interested in “Constitutional Detonation”. I have been following the events in Australia for the last three years or so. Australia is in a real mess but the politicians want to go on ignoring it.

Greg Bourne, New South Wales

NOVEMBER 2001 I often stop and think about all the things that are happening in the world today, and can’t help but feel useless.

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two months since the terrorist attack on the United States – sometimes it feels like a year ago, other times it feels like only yesterday.

8 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

NOVEMBER 2001 A sigh of relief and a big ‘thanks’ to Chris Carter for his ‘a message to sickly, cringing liberals’ column. Exactly!

The liberal ‘rightness’ has hoodwinked the perceptions of the bloke in the street. The word ‘evil’ has become unpalatable and not used in our society. This severe omission pervades our entire community and we find day to day madnesses like letting some evil raving nutter back onto our streets because some namby-pamby bunch of liberals reckon that the fact that said madman murdered half a village was not his fault but his sad bad childhood.

Oh please!

Evil is evil is evil. All these psychobabble excuses have placed the world in a very dangerous position.

When Helen Clark said a few months ago something inane about no potential threat in this neck of the woods, therefore New Zealand only needs some fishing quota surveillance planes and boats or some similar rot, some of us wondered if she had heard of Indonesia.

Glenda Ross, via email

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 9

STEYNPOST

By Mark Steyn

The war on extremism

E

ven the Obammyboppers of an otherwise adoring media seem to understand his big conference on “countering violent extremism” is a bit of

a joke.

Undeterred, President Obama has unveiled the summit’s bumper sticker: “Religions Don’t Kill People. People Killed People.” It got him through to the next round in the middle-school debate-team county quarter-finals, so who knows the impact it will have on the Islamic State. I’m thrilled to discover that my tax dollars are now going to fund something called the International Center for Excellence in Countering Violent Extremism. Seriously. It’s in Abu Dhabi. But perhaps we can open a branch office in Mosul, and Derna, and Sana’a and Kandahar and Copenhagen. One is reminded of the Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. Indeed, given

the style and production values that the Islamic State have brought to Islamic snuff videos, perhaps this conference could prevail on the Oscars to introduce an Academy Award for Outstanding Excellence in the Field of Extremism.

Marie Harf, meanwhile, assures CNN that her argument is “too nuanced” for you rubes to appreciate, with its exciting plans for community-college retraining programs in al-Baghdadi and midnight basketball in Raqaa. Sure, they don’t have enough basketballs, so they have to use severed heads. But c’mon, it’s a start...

If you want the difference between the worldview that sets up an International Center for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Extremism and the real world distilled to a single Tweet, consider this contribution from senior pajama boy at Vox.com, Max Fisher: People who think Christian sectarian militias are the solution to Iraq’s

If Beirut is no longer the Paris of the east, Paris is looking a lot like the Beirut of the west – with regular, violent, murderous sectarian attacks accepted as a feature of daily life 10 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

problems could stand to read a history of the Lebanese civil war.

Richard Fernandez does a pretty good job analyzing the particular defects of this comparison, but give Mr Fisher credit: when it comes to preening, condescending analogy-deployment, at least, unlike the President, he’s come up with one that’s within living memory.

Rather than the substance of his “argument”, it’s the near perfect metaphorical selfie-stick of preening attitudinal pose I find most interesting. As it happens, being an old-school imperialist, I read a lot of history. No doubt I “could stand to read” more, as Fisher advises. Before the civil war, Beirut was known as “the Paris of the east”. Then things got worse. As worse and worser as they got, however, it was not in-your-face genocidal, with regular global broadcasts of mass beheadings and live immolations. In that sense, the salient difference between Lebanon then and ISIS now is the mainstreaming of depravity. Which is why the analogies don’t apply. We are moving into a world of horrors beyond analogy.

A lot of things have gotten worse. If Beirut is no longer the Paris of the east, Paris is looking a lot like the Beirut of the west – with regular, violent, murderous sectarian attacks accepted as a feature of daily life. In such a world, we could all “stand to read” a little more history. But in Nigeria, when you’re in the middle of history class, Boko Haram kick the door down, seize you and your fellow schoolgirls and sell you into sex slavery.

A headless statue of Christian missionary St. Patrick stands outside a church in Baza, northeastern Nigeria, after the Boko Haram militant Islamic group's assault. /KYODO

Boko Haram “could stand to read” a little history, but their very name comes from a corruption of the word “book” – as in “books are forbidden”, reading is forbidden, learning is forbidden, history is forbidden.

Well, Nigeria... Wild and crazy country, right? Oh, I don’t know. A half-century ago, it lived under English Common Law, more or less. In 1960 Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe, second Governor-General of an independent Nigeria, was the first Nigerian to be appointed to the Queen’s Privy Council. It wasn’t Surrey, but it wasn’t savagery.

Like Lebanon, Nigeria got worse, and it’s getting worser. That’s true of a lot of places. In the Middle East, once functioning states – whether dictatorial or reasonably benign – are imploding. In Yemen, the US has just abandoned its third embassy in the region. According to the President of Tunisia, one third of the population of Libya has fled to Tunisia. That’s two million people. According

to the UN, just shy of four million Syrians have fled to Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and beyond. In Iraq, Christians and other minorities are forming militias because they don’t have anywhere to flee (Syria?

Saudi Arabia?) and their menfolk are facing extermination and their women gang-rapes and slavery.

These people “could stand to read” a little history, too. But they don’t have time to read history because they’re too busy living it: the disintegration of postWorld War Two Libya; the erasure of the Anglo-French Arabian carve-up; the extinction of some of the oldest Christian communities on earth; the metastasizing of a new, very 21st-century evil combining some of the oldest barbarisms with a cutting-edge social-media search-engine optimization strategy.

These are Libyans, Syrians, Iraqis, citizens of some of the most unlovely polities of the planet. But they had lives – homes, possessions, cars, children in schools, favorite restaurants... Twelve years ago,

I drove through al-Baghdadi, now seized by the Islamic State and where 45 people were apparently burned alive by ISIS the other day. It was a dump but it had streets and stores. I bought some warm, sugary soda from the local market and had a reasonably pleasant social interaction, and then motored on down the Euphrates.

When you’re living history as opposed to reading it, the trick is knowing when to head for the exit. One of the things I appreciate about, say, Mittel Europeans of a certain age is that, when you meet them in their grand Paris apartments or rambling house on the edge of Hampstead Heath, somewhere deep inside is the memory of the 3am knock on the door or a little boy crouched under the eaves in the attic. A couple of years back, at a very agreeable cocktail party, I found myself talking to a Hungarian Jew about the last days of the war in Budapest. The jig was up but the German puppet regime had figured they might as well kill as many Jews as they could. No time for

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 11

niceties any more – for trains and camps and paperwork. There was a shortage of ammunition, so they tied the Jews together in a line, dragged them out into the Danube, and then shot the ones at each end. Everyone in between drowned.

Aware of what was happening, a family took in my friend and hid him. He now enjoys a prosperous and comfortable life in the United States, but in his core, deep down within, he remembers his teenage self living day to day and never knowing whether the next morning would be his turn to be roped out in the river.

Much of the world thinks it’s beyond all that stuff. Ukraine has a border with the European Union, and many of its citizens assumed that their future lay westward – eventual EU membership, and a Ukrainian flag at tedious Eurosummits listening to Brussels commissioners discoursing on beefed-up regulations on the curvature of cucumbers.

Now in southern and eastern Ukraine a little short of a million people have fled.

Like the Libyans and Syrians, they have reached that moment when you leave behind everything in your life except what’s necessary for the journey and a couple of treasured photographs.

Why should that stop at the EU border? Laura Rosen Cohen is forceful and impassioned about those Europeans who object to Netanyahu’s call for Continental Jews to leave for Israel. In the most basic sense, she is right: Jews have no future in Europe – because the actions necessary to restore normality to Jewish community life on the Continent will never be taken by its ruling elites. But incremental evil is not as instantly clarifying as ISIS riding into Benghazi and running their black flag up the pole outside City Hall.

Jews cannot safely ride the Paris metro with identifying marks of their faith, or walk the streets of Amsterdam, or send their children to school in Toulouse, or attend a bat mitzvah in Copenhagen. As much as those Nigerians and Libyans and Yemenis and Ukrainians, Europe’s Jews are living history rather than reading it. They are living through a strange, freakish coda to the final solution that, quietly and remorselessly, is finishing the job: the total extinction of Jewish life in Europe – and not at the hands of baying nationalist Aryans but a malign alliance of post-national Eutopians and Islamic imperialists. Sure, it’d be nice to read a book – maybe Obama could recommend one on the Crusades. But you’ve got to be careful: in France, in 2015, you can be beaten up for being seen with the wrong kind of book on public transportation. As Max Fisher says, we could all stand to read a little history, and the Jewish Museum in Brussels has a pretty good bookstore, but, if you swing by, try not to pick one of the days when they’re shooting visitors.

This is Europe now, 2015. What will 2016 bring, and 2020, 2025? And yet France or Denmark is all you’ve ever known; you own a house, you’ve got a business, a pension plan, savings accounts... How much of all that are you going to be able to get out with? These are the same questions the Continent’s most integrated Jews – in Germany – faced 80 years ago. Do you sell your home in a hurry and take a loss? Or maybe in a couple of years it’ll all blow over. Or maybe it won’t, and in five years the house price will be irrelevant because you’ll be scramming with a suitcase. Or maybe in ten years you won’t be able to get out at all – like the Yazidi or those Copts.

If you’re living history as opposed to

Jews have no future in Europe – because the actions necessary to restore normality to Jewish community life on the Continent will never be taken by its ruling elites

reading it in a sophomoric chatroom with metrosexual eunuch trustiefundies, these are the calculations you make – in Mosul, in Raqaa, in Sirte, in Sana’a, in Donetsk, in Malmö, Rotterdam, Paris...

In my book After America (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available for the Boko Haram warlord in your family), I write: For all the economic growth since World War Two, much of the world had gone backwards – almost the whole of West Africa, and Central Africa, and Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Bosnia. Yet none of the elite asked themselves a simple question: What’s to stop that spreading? In a world after America, the reprimitivization of the map would accelerate: The new Jew-hating Sweden… The French banlieues where the state’s writ ceased to run… Clapton, East London, where Shayna Bharuchi cut out her four-year old daughter’s heart while listening to an MP3 of the Koran…

We could all stand to read some history.

Alas...

Reprimitivized man lives in an eternal present tense, in the dystopia of the moment.

History is written by the victors, and from West Africa to the Hindu Kush the victors are illiterate.

And in the halls of power the “leader of the free world” gives exclusive interviews to favored nuancy boys in which they can backslap each other about the sophisticated rationale behind their inertia. Boko Haram hate books, so it probably wouldn’t help to carpet-bomb them with the latest Fareed Zakaria opus.

The Islamic State is destroying musical instruments, so parachuting in James Taylor is unlikely to work – because, although his cheery rendition of “You’ve Got A Friend” can light up a room, in Ramadi the room would light up him. So the global hyperpower has been reduced to convening a symposium on whether they need to open up more communitycollege scholarships at the new Center for Outstanding Achievement in Analogies of Extremism. © 2014 Mark Steyn

12 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

Available at Whitcoulls, The Warehouse, Paper Plus, Take Note and all good bookstores, or online at

www.ianwishart.com June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 13

RIGHT & WRONG

By David Garrett

Secret plea bargaining a reality in NZ

F

or a long time, elements of the American justice system have slowly been creeping into ours.

While lawyers here do not – yet – stroll around the courtroom while questioning witnesses, other much more significant changes have occurred behind the scenes – the worst of which is, in my view, an unacknowledged system of plea bargaining.

We have all see the American TV shows. In part one, the villain is banged to rights, and the prosecutors are confident of getting conviction for “murder one”. In the second part, the case somehow becomes much less certain, and tense meetings ensue between the prosecutor and the defence attorneys.

After a bit of to and fro-ing, a deal is done whereby the defendant pleads guilty to some strange lesser charge unknown to our legal system, and everyone is happy.

Or if not happy, at least grimly satisfied.

Many people are blissfully unaware that a similar system has been operating for here for at least twenty years.

Although the official line is that “plea bargaining” doesn’t exist in New Zealand it does, and here is how it works. A couple of thugs hire a taxi with the intention of – at the very least – robbing him. They have the driver take them to a secluded spot and threaten him with a hammer. They demand his money, but he is reluctant to give up the proceeds of his night’s work.

One of the robbers starts screaming “I’m gonna f…ing kill you”, and starts hitting the driver with the hammer. The driver is severely bashed and left for dead. The

thugs flee into the night with his money.

The driver fortunately survives but is permanently disabled. His assailants are quickly apprehended, with enough physical evidence – including bloodstained money in the victim’s wallet – to put them at the scene. One eventually starts talking to the police, and blames the other for instigating the attack; the other in turn blames his co-offender, and says there was never intended to be violence, just threats. Meanwhile the victim remains in a coma.

Thirty years ago the assailants would have been charged with attempted murder, together with, in the alternative, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, or wounding with intent to injure, both charges carrying significant terms of imprisonment. The case would come to trial, and the facts presented to the jury.

The prosecutor would highlight the threats to kill, the severity of the injury, and the

14 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

taxi driver’s bleak future. The defence would argue that there was only ever an intent to rob, and never an intent to kill.

The thugs’ lawyers would point to the quick arrests as evidence of no coherent plan. Each thug would blame the other.

The jury would then be instructed by the Judge on the essential elements of each charge, and the law relating to parties, under which a person does not have to actually inflict the physical damage to be guilty of the charge arising from it. A co-offender is just as guilty if he knew what was intended, and took part in the villainy anyway. A jury would then decide whether the thugs intended to kill the taxi driver, or only to rob him, and the violence which ensued arose in the heat of the moment. While they intended to seriously harm him, they did not intend to kill.

Now things are very different. For some reason, charges in the alternative

In my view, the best option is a return to the old system of laying charges in the alternative, and letting the jury decide what happened, and whether the facts justify the more or less serious charge

fell out of fashion over twenty years ago.

In a fact scenario such as the above, the Police would now probably lay a charge of attempted murder at the outset, and then effectively wait for the inevitable approaches by lawyers for the two defendants, each of whom would point to potential difficulties in obtaining a conviction for attempted murder. Both would make pious noises about sparing the victim the ordeal of giving evidence – presuming he had emerged from his coma – and the advantages to society of saving the costs of a trial.

The outcome would probably be that the attempted murder charge was dropped, and instead one of the lesser charges – wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm perhaps, a “strike” offence – would be laid instead. Given a weak prosecutor and/or an assertive lawyer, the charge might be downgraded still further to a non-strike violent offence.

The defendants would then plead guilty, and “justice” would be served.

What is wrong with the above scenario? In my view, a great deal. Firstly, the victim’s views are of no relevance to the macabre Dutch Auctions which occur daily between prosecutor and defence lawyers. While his or his family’s views might be taken into account, more often than not the first time the victim or his family finds out about the deal is in Court, when one charge is withdrawn and another laid in its place.

Secondly, the system we now have is the opposite of transparent – officially it’s not happening at all, and all the negotiations occur in closed offices. The Judge himself does not get to hear about the deal until it has been done – and if he doesn’t like it, there is very little he can do about it. This is the very opposite of the open justice which our system supposedly provides.

What should happen? In my view, the best option is a return to the old system of laying charges in the alternative, and letting the jury decide what happened, and whether the facts justify the more or less serious charge. Over the past 50 years or so, juries have been treated with less and less importance. In the days of capital punishment, we trusted “12 good men and true” with deciding not only whether an accused was guilty, but whether or not a man should be hanged, since death

was the mandatory sentence for murder.

Now it seems, we can’t trust our fellows to work out whether some unpleasant thugs intended to kill a poor victim or only to maim him.

If we must have the system of bargaining over charges which has developed, at the very least the victim should be a part of it, perhaps to the point of having the right to veto the laying of a lesser charge in substitution for a more serious one .

The informal clandestine plea bargaining system we have now must be made transparent, with it being openly acknowledged that a deal has been done between prosecution and defence

regarding the charge. Ideally, a Judge should have the ultimate power to decide what charge(s) a defendant faces. Judges should not be forced to preside over cases in which they believe a defendant has been “undercharged”, and where in his or her view, the facts justify potentially much more serious results for the defendant. The Judge after all is supposed to do justice to the man grievously injured, not rubber stamp a deal done to save taxpayers’ money – and the lawyers some effort.

References: 1. These are the facts of a real case which occurred in New Plymouth in the mid 1990’s.

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 15

THE LIGHTNING YEARS

Godless. Flagless. Homeless.

How have we come so far?

N

ew Zealand was a different country in 1999. Jenny Shipley was New Zealand’s first female prime minister, having knifed National’s Jim Bolger a year earlier and drop-kicked Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters right out of

the paddock.

But Shipley was merely shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. National had been in power since 1990.

After three terms in office they were political dog tucker. The country was in the mood for a change, and Labour’s Helen Clark was perfectly placed to surf the incoming tide.

16 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

“She wants to busy herself with what goes on in the homes of the nation in areas which families regard as their own responsibility, and I think she’s going over a very dangerous line.”

Irony, thy name is Helen, for those are Clark’s words, talking about Shipley. Yet New Zealand voters bought the line, and handed the keys and the driver’s seat to a Labour team with a change agenda of their own.

Sixteen years on, how much has New Zealand changed?

In 2000, the RNZAF still had a Skyhawk jetfighter strike wing. Although the planes themselves dated

Back in late 1999, a group of investors and journalists got together in an Auckland living room to scope out plans for a new magazine, one that specialized in hard hitting investigative journalism. As we shut the door on the print edition of Investigate, IAN WISHART looks back at the cultural shifts we’ve witnessed over that time

back to the Vietnam War era, they’d been repeatedly upgraded with state of the art avionics and weapons systems. In short, they were well capable of defending the New Zealand coastline from anything short of an aircraft carrier battle group.

Shipley’s outgoing National government had done a deal to purchase surplus US F-16s. Clark had campaigned on cancelling the F-16 deal, but when she attained power she went one step further, scrapping the strike capability entirely. There was no public mandate for the move, and no expert analysis beforehand – the move was primarily ideological: the Vietnam War protestor was now in charge and

the military represented something Clark didn’t like.

Often overlooked in the tribal political debate were the deeper implications of gutting the air force.

For the first time in a century, New Zealand would no longer have a pool of trained combat pilots to call on, because that career path had just come to an end.

At its peak, the RNZAF employed 41,000 personnel and during wartime had put huge numbers of planes into combat – more than a thousand at any one time. It was that inter-generational operational knowledge and institutional memory that was lost with the end of the Skyhawks. The ability of a core combat-experienced team to train young pilots in the June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 17

teenth century benign tolerance turned into murderous repression. But what was being repressed was an act – sodomy – not a type of person. It was only in the nineteenth century Europe that homosexuals began to identify and be identified as a distinct group in society. Homosexuality ceased to be something a person did and became something a person was.”

There are two twists in that passage.

The first is that the idea of either/or – being “born gay” or being born straight – is a modern invention, and does not reflect reality. The second twist is who’s saying it – Graham Willett is Australia’s leading gay historian.

B

time of military emergency has been lost.

It marked a changing of the guard, socially and politically. Although a largely academic move to the uninformed masses, the neutering of the armed forces (the Navy was reduced to fisheries patrols and the Army re-tasked as primarily an overseas aid agency) was the first muscle flexing by Labour as it prepared to change the very fabric of New Zealand society.

Some of those changes are the result of moral shifts within the West. In 1985, New Zealand – again under Labour – had become one of the first countries in the world to decriminalise same sex liaisons.

At the time, the argument went, it wasn’t about “promoting” same sex relationships, but merely ensuring people were no longer prosecuted for “behaviour going on behind closed doors”.

Critics argued it was a slippery slope, and history proved them right. These

days, many people earnestly believe, in their heart of hearts, that “people are born gay…you can’t choose who you love”. That’s what thirty years of political correctness does, it makes you think in slogans.

The truth is that “being gay” is a modern myth: “The very idea of “a homosexual” is a relatively recent development,” wrote Graham Willett in 1985. “While attraction between people of the same sex has always existed, it has been treated differently in different societies. In the ancient world there was no word for “homosexual”.

It was expected in ancient Greece that most, if not all, men would engage in both homosexual and heterosexual relationships. Each was fitted into its own carefully designed niche in each man’s life.

“In the Middle Ages the official view of homosexual acts shifted. In the late thir-

18 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

ut hang on, we’ve all seen the interviews where people claim they knew they were ‘gay’ as children, haven’t we? Well, yes, but that’s the result of decades of indoctrination to believe the either/or slogan. The slightest hint of same sex attraction and the media, school counsellors and the entertainment industry are telling you, “you’re gay, own it”.

Identity politics at its worst, lobby groups bullying the vulnerable into conformity.

Tellingly, the gay community know they’ve been pushing a myth for political reasons, but it suits them. Look at the AIDS Foundation. Its literature talks of “MSM”, which could be “Main Stream Media” but actually means “Men who have Sex with Men”, rather than homosexuality.

What we’ve seen since Investigate began is the culmination of a huge social engineering experiment to make society abandon core values by redefining those values. As David Kupelian points out in The Marketing of Evil, a reader poll in the popular teen magazine Seventeen in 1991 found only 17% of readers supported homosexuality. Taken again in 1999, after eight years of media “persuasion”, support for gay rights had tripled to 54%, a majority. What changed? Nothing but the marketing spin. And those results are replicated everywhere.

In another example, a Pew research poll in 1996 found 65% of Americans opposed to gay marriage, and only 27% in favour. Up until 2004 there was no major media push for gay marriage, so unsurprisingly the figures for and against remained relatively static – another Pew poll in February 2004 showed 63%

opposed and 30% in favour.

Then came a massive worldwide PR push for gay marriage in 2004, with New Zealand becoming one of the first countries in the world to legalise a form of civil union that was, in fact, gay marriage, and many American states holding gay marriage ceremonies until the courts ruled them out of order.

A

lthough there had been no change in the preceding eight years, the next two years saw the gay desensitization agenda working on the minds of the public like magic mushrooms: a Pew poll in 2006 found opposition to gay marriage had dropped to only 51%, a slide of 12 percentage points in just two years.

What changed? Again, nothing in substance, just a battle-weary “give themwhat-they-want-and-maybe-they’ll-shutup-and-go-away” resignation.

The crossover point when majorities switched came in 2011, and the latest Pew Research poll from 2014 has 54% in favour of gay marriage and 39% opposed.

Of Millennials – the generation born when Investigate was – an incredible 68% are in favour of gay marriage.

Reducing the issue to its essence, it is well known to gay academics that same sex attraction is little different to preferring the colour blue over red, or lamb over chicken. It’s an acquired taste, a ‘preference’ (as their own literature describes it), not an absolute. You can still survive on chicken. Many supposedly ‘gay’ men have gone on to form monogamous relationships with women they fall in love with – the key word being ‘love’.

Yet, an entire generation of high school students now think that pointing out realities like this is “hate speech”, while predators from Rainbow Youth stalk colleges and even primary schools looking for victims they can pigeon-hole as “gay” and condemn them to a life of confusion.

Again, proof that slogans work, proof that the Pied Piper is alive and kicking, and proof that the Age of Stupid is being filmed somewhere right now with 20and 30-something TV reporters as stars.

The end result, and you have to give credit for a game stunningly well-played, is that a sexual preference, a lifestyle choice, has been recast as an “identity” requiring official recognition, protection and even promotion (same sex

storybooks are now being produced for children).

On a parallel pathway is belief in God. In 1991, 29% of New Zealanders said they had no religion, 69% said they were Christian, and 2% had other faiths. In the 2013 census, 51% of New Zealanders now profess to be godless, 43% are Christian, and 6% are ‘other’.

Accompanying the civil union/gay marriage debates, however, has been far more baggage, and more insidious. That baggage is political correctness.

Political correctness is the enemy of freedom of the individual, because it cuts not just across what you are allowed to do, but even what you are allowed to think, breaking a fundamental rule of politics: “The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction,” wrote US founding father Thomas Jefferson in 1779.

For a government to truly reflect the will of the people, it cannot be allowed to shape the opinions of those people, otherwise the relationship between government and governed becomes corrupted.

When a state believes it has the power to change what people think, it has seized power for itself and its lobbyists.

And yet here we are in 2015. Our children are no longer allowed to think certain behaviours and choices are wrong, business owners no longer have the right to turn down contracts they don’t agree with.

Take the case of the ‘gay marriage’ Bert & Ernie Sesame Street cake from Ireland. The court ruled the Christian cake makers had no right to turn away the business whose moral message conflicted with their own – the judge citing ‘anti-discrimination’ laws.

Yet let’s take that argument to its logical conclusion: if a neo-Nazi wanted a cake decorated with the Swastika, and went to a Jewish bakery, should those bakers be forced by the State to make something deeply offensive to them?

Should a halal butchery be forced to sell bacon to non-Muslim customers?

If the answer to either of those questions is ‘yes’, then bring it on and brace yourself for the ensuing violence. If the answer is ‘no’, then neither should Christians be persecuted for turning away business that offends them.

Not convinced? Should a printing company run by lesbian women in Auckland

be forced to print promotional material for a male pornography publisher?

It comes back to the age of political correctness, something this magazine covered back in April 2003 when we interviewed visiting British academic Frank Ellis. He made the point, as an expert in Russian studies, that political correctness was a doctrine devised by the Soviet Union to encourage group-think.

The Soviets knew they could impose their values on their people through the language and peer pressure of PC. The Soviet empire may have started to crumble in 1989 but, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, it turns out to have morphed into a more dangerous ideological parasite whose ideas are fast becoming mainstream thought in the West.

Sixteen years on from Helen Clark’s win, what then do we now stand for?

Evidently we don’t stand for the flag, if John Key’s $23 million flag referendum is anything to go by. Are we truly so far adrift as a nation that we want to ditch our legacy and take up a piece of corporate branding just for the sake of change?

Maybe there’s hope, given that the first public meeting of the flag consultation committee attracted the full 12 member consultation panel, but only ten members of the public.

Immigration and foreign investment, too, have changed the face of New Zealand, arguably for the better but not without further weakening the sense of national identity. Around 1.5 million New Zealanders are now either migrants or children of migrants – a massive population bubble in the space of one generation.

More significantly, the massive migration has boosted housing demand, but even more importantly the government’s approach to foreign investment has allowed overseas property speculators to game the housing market, purchasing dozens of properties at a time.

This doesn’t just drive up prices, it also converts stand-alone housing stock into rental units, reducing the available housing and concentrating property ownership into the hands of landlords.

In sixteen years, what have we become?

Tenants in our own country, as John Key once famously said, or perhaps the audience awaiting the arrival of a new world order? Godless, flagless, increasingly homeless – what does the future hold?

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 19

Are Britain’s armed forces going over a cliff?

Eternal IMPOTENCE 20 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

Words by Hal G. P. Colebatch

R

ecent reports about British defence have a dire, heading-for-a-cliff feel about them.Many in the defence establishment and private think-tanks were dismayed when the Cameron Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government, despite international turbulence, cut Britain’s Army from 100,000 to 82,000 men, its smallest size since before the Napoleonic wars. But maybe Britain’s generals didn’t know when they were well off.

The Falklands, which cost hundreds of British lives and five front-line ships of the shrunken, bath-tub Royal Navy to recapture from rather poor Argentinean forces in 1982 (and then with American and Chilean help), are defended by, apart from ageing Rapier ground-to-air missiles, just four Typhoon fighters and 1,200 ground troops, including cooks and clerks. It has recently been announced that additional small packets of troops will be rotated through the islands for training purposes. A single warship makes visits. And forces must still be found for the Middle East and NATO. The operations against ISIS are a voracious consumer of equipment.

Not to mention calls to intervene against the massacres of Christians in Africa. America is reported to be already angry at Britain’s feeble contribution to the alliance.

The political future, defence-wise, gives ample ground for pessimism. Prime Minister Cameron appears to lack the elementary political nous to enter into a seat-sharing agreement with UKIP, virtually guaranteeing that at the next election the defence-minded, right-of-centre vote will, in a firstpast-the-post system, be fatally split.

Now ex-Defence Minister Sir Nick Harvey, speaking in a House of Commons debate, has said the Government is studying proposals to axe a further 22,000 troops. “There are already paper exercises going on looking at what an army of just 60,000 would look like because of the financial crunch June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 21

that the department is going to be facing.” It is only too easy to imagine what it will look like, both to Britain’s allies and adversaries and to servicemen suddenly seeking new careers that offer a future.

He claimed defence spending would drop to 1.5% or less of national income.

The agreed minimum among NATO members is 2%.

B

ritain has a population of about 65 million and the fourth-largest economy in the world, after several years of uninterrupted economic growth.

If the latest cuts go ahead, it would mean less than one person in a thousand is in the Army.

However you slice it, this would be a vast and culpable failure of the first duty of government.

By way of contrast, Britain has over 500,000 estate agents and over 200,000 hair-dressers.

Sir Nick said: “We do not hear from any of the political parties – not mine, nor anybody else’s – that defence is going to be insulated or protected from a tough comprehensive spending review later this year.”

The Daily Mail reports Britain is giving half a billion dollars to India this year, which will just about cover the cost of India’s manned space programme.

Britain has spent about $120 billion on foreign aid projects in the last four years

Falklands: A silver cross honours 23 paratroopers killed in the war /NEWSCOM

22 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

with no discernible benefit to its interests or security. Even the generally leftist and anti-defence-minded President Obama has told the UK to shape up on defence.

Meanwhile an increasingly tough-talking and tough-acting Russia has agreed to supply Argentina with 12 high-performance Sukhoi Su-24 “Fencer” supersonic, all-weather attack aircraft. They have a range of about 3,500 kilometers and laser-guided missiles.

The aircraft, which Moscow will swap for beef and wheat, would easily be able to reach the Falklands. Argentina is not going to need them against its neighbors like Paraguay, Uruguay, or even Brazil.

The only imaginable use Argentina has for them would be another attempt to seize the Falklands by military invasion.

President Putin’s visit to Argentina in July laid the groundwork for exchanging Russian military hardware for wheat, beef and other goods Moscow needs due to EU food embargoes.

Russia has been increasing its links with Argentina since 2010, when it provided Mi17 assault helicopters which are in service with the 7th Air Force Brigade.

British defence officials fear Buenos Aires would take delivery of the planes well before the deployment in 2020 of the Navy’s 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth and its F-35B fighters, leaving a “window of vulnerability”.

In the event of another Argentine attack on the Falklands the British nuclear deterrent would be useless: Britain is not going to nuke a country like Argentina.

Meanwhile Britain has been relentlessly cutting its armed forces since ever since the 1982 war. It no longer has the Harrier jump-jets which gave a good account of themselves then, and which might in a pinch be flown off small and improvised flight-decks, the long-range Vulcan bombers which cratered the Port Stanley runway and denied it to enemy forces, or the Nimrod long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft. A few years ago Britain’s force of hunter-killer nuclear submarines were found to have a defect which necessitated them being docked for repairs. Britain had no conventional submarines and had to borrow a German U-boat to guard its coast.

Once an Argentine invasion force was ashore it is very difficult to see how

the 1,200 man British garrison and four Typhoons could be relieved or reinforced – modern war, with rapid-firing, highly destructive, weapons, is more than ever a matter of re-supply. Putin could be expected to enjoy the defeat of a leading NATO member.

Nor is Obama’s America necessarily the reliable ally that Reagan’s was.

Obama has made obvious his distaste for British colonialism and even for the Anglo-American “Special relationship.”

Apart from his dutiful pronouncements as President, Obama might secretly relish Britain’s humiliation and impotence almost as much as Putin would. Further, Britain in 1982 received important if clandestine help from the right-of-centre government under General Pinochet, who was able to think in geostrategic terms and appreciated Britain’s help to the whole Western alliance (Britain under Tony Blair, gave him scurvy reward).

Chile now has a left-of-centre government which would almost certainly not act in the same way.

Tensions over the islands resurfaced after exploratory seabed drilling revealed the promise of an oil bonanza.

D

espite having no local enemies, Argentina has been making expensive efforts to upgrade its Air Force. Last October it announced it would buy 24 Saab Gripen fighters from Brazil, which has just purchased 36, but Britain squashed the deal as some of the jet’s parts are made in the UK. Air Commodore Andrew Lambert, of the UK National Defence Association, said: “The Ministry of Defence should be worried.

“It always trots out the mantra of reviewing force levels but the only real solution is to deploy a sizeable force of Typhoons, at least a squadron, to buy us time to formulate a proper reinforcement package.”

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “We regularly review force levels around the world, though we wouldn’t comment on the detail of this for obvious reasons.”

Also last August the former head of the RAF, Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, said Britain has only half the number of combat-ready air squadrons as France and must increase defence spending “immediately” to send a clear signal to opponents.

THE NUMBER OF RUSSIAN MILITARY FLIGHTS PROBING BALTIC AIRSPACE HAS ALSO TREBLED IN THE PAST YEAR, ACCORDING TO NATO

It had only seven combat-capable squadrons (due to fall to six) compared to France’s 15, and only 18 warships – 5 destroyers and 13 frigates – to France’s 24, despite the obvious fact that Britain is an island and France is not.

In a joint letter with leading historian Andrew Roberts he called on Britain to take the lead in Europe and increase spending to “implement an updated strategy which takes full account of today’s changed reality”.

Sir Michael and Mr Roberts said the country’s Armed Forces were “too small, too unbalanced, with many serious gaps”.

They called for an immediate stop to defence cuts and for Britain’s defence budget to be ring-fenced against further cuts (the foreign aid budget has been “ring-fenced” though it is hard to see how it serves comparable national interests).

“Not to do so would suggest that defence is not the first duty of government, but a lower priority than several ring-fenced social services,” they said.

“Such a commitment would send a clear signal not only to Russia, but to the rest of NATO, and our opponents elsewhere.”

Sir Michael and Mr Roberts added in the August letter: “Next month’s crucial NATO summit gives Britain’s Prime Minister the critical opportunity and

responsibility to lead NATO back to the strength needed to respond to today’s serious crises. May he succeed for the sake of all of us.”

However, in the ensuing seven months, which have also seen a Conservative Party Conference, defence spending as a portion of GDP has continued to shrink.

Britain has signed up to a NATO initiative to share billions of pounds of military hardware with other countries, potentially leaving the UK incapable of fighting its own wars.

Under the scheme, heavy weapons, aircraft and ships would be pooled in an effort to save money and promote co-operation.

But retired Air Vice Marshal Sir John Walker has warned that independent military actions such as defending the Falklands would be impossible if Britain were sharing large quantities of vital equipment.”

Meanwhile, the number of Russian military flights probing Baltic airspace has also trebled in the past year, according to NATO. Estonia says that one of its security service officers was kidnapped on the border last year and is being held in Russia.

Many defence analysts have questioned whether NATO’s eastern members could cope with a covert campaign like that

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 23

ously. Like Churchill, he is capable of rhetoric on the need for adequate defence security, but unlike Churchill is incapable of matching words with policy.

A sharp increase in Russian defence spending is “clearly worrying”, Fallon added.

“They are modernising their conventional forces, they are modernising their nuclear forces and they are testing NATO, so we need to respond.”

He went on: “There are lots of worries.

I’m worried about Putin. There’s no effective control of the border, I’m worried about his pressure on the Baltics, the way he is testing NATO, the submarines and aircraft.”

A IN NUMBERS OF DEFENCE UNITS – PLANES, TANKS, GUNS, PERSONNEL, ETC. – RUSSIAN OUTNUMBERS BRITAIN IN ALMOST EVERY CATEGORY BY AT LEAST 10 TO ONE AND IN MOST CASES MORE

used in Ukraine last year — irregular troops, cyber attack and skilful propaganda being used to exploit internal tensions with ethnic Russian minorities.

British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said: “It’s a very real and present danger. Putin was testing NATO all last year, if you look at the number of flights and the maritime activity.

“He flew two Russian bombers down the English Channel two weeks ago. We had to scramble jets very quickly to see them off. It’s the first time since the height of the Cold War that that’s happened.

“That just shows you, each time he [Mr Putin] does something like that, you need to be ready to respond.”

It also showed a yawning gap in Britain’s defence with the scrapping of the

Nimrods, which were also used for tracking intrusive Russian submarines. The Russian “Bear” nuclear-capable heavy bombers, piston-engined, are many years obsolete but do not need to be up-to-date if they can launch up-to-date missiles. There is no innocent reason why they should be flown down the English Channel.

Shortly after that, British fighters were scrambled to intercept two more “Bears” just off Cornwall. In 2014 there were more than 100 interceptions of Russian warplanes, three times more than the previous year, and plainly deliberate provocation. In a sign of this growing provocation by Putin, the Bears streaked along the fringes of UK airspace. Prime Minister Cameron however, gives no sign of taking the British defence crisis seri-

24 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

chart published in the British Daily Mail shows that in numbers of defence units – planes, tanks, guns, personnel, etc. – Russian outnumbers Britain in almost every category by at least 10 to one and in most cases more.

Meanwhile, the abominable ISIS is, according to Libyan spokesmen, preparing to re-launch large-scale piracy in the Mediterranean, an extra potential demand on the hopelessly over-stretched Royal Navy. HMS Cornwall, which previously evacuated civilians from Benghazi, has been scrapped.

It is planned to merge the Royal Marines and the Parachute Regiment, an act described by Major General Julian Thompson, who led 3 Commando Brigade in the Falklands, as “barmy.” The two units have different training and are equipped for different tasks. The merger would further weaken Britain’s capacity to respond to global events.

In a major article in the British Daily Telegraph, Con Coughlin writes: “There is something peculiar here. Already, those within the Ministry of Defence are starting to wrangle over what to cut.

But that implicitly accepts that the cuts will inevitably happen.”

None of the political parties except the still-embryonic UKIP show any interest in bringing British defence spending up to the agreed NATO minimum.

Coughlin concludes: “But what is certain is that unless there is a radical change in the way the next government funds defence, Britain’s armed forces could go from being a source of pride to a national embarrassment.”

Available at Whitcoulls, The Warehouse, Paper Plus, Take Note and all good bookstores, or online at

www.ianwishart.com

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 25

THE

45-MINUTE MYSTERYOF

FREDDIE GRAY’S

DEATH W Words by Kevin Rector

hen Freddie Gray briefly locked eyes with police at 8:39 am on a corner of an impoverished West Baltimore neighborhood two weeks ago, they seemed to recognize each other immediately. As three officers approached on bicycles along West North Avenue, the 25-year-old Gray was on the east corner of North Mount Street chatting with a friend, according to Shawn Washington, who frequents the block.

“Ay, yo, here comes Time Out,” a young man on the opposite corner yelled, using a neighborhood term for police.

Gray swore, taking off on foot as the officers began hot-stepping on their pedals to catch up. One officer jumped off his bike to chase Gray on foot, police said.

“That was the last time I seen that man moving,” said Washington, 48.

Investigators with the city police and other agencies are still trying to recreate the events of the next 45 minutes, when Gray sustained a severe and ultimately fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody.

But in its own investigation, The Baltimore Sun found that police missed the opportunity to examine some evidence that could have shed light on

26 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

events. For example, by the time police canvassed one neighborhood looking for video from security cameras, a convenience store camera pointed at a key intersection had already taped over its recordings of that morning.

The Sun also found that accounts from residents conflicted with the official version of events, including a police account that Gray’s arrest was made “without force or incident.”

City officials have released a partial timeline of the events of April 12, and investigators have focused on his stop-and-go, roundabout trip through the city in the metal cage of a police transport van. A lieutenant, a sergeant and four other officers involved in Gray’s arrest and transport have been suspended with pay pending the results of the police investigation.

Still, much of what happened to Gray on the cool, partly cloudy and breezeless morning of April 12 remains a mystery.

Officials have declined to provide 911 call recordings related to Gray’s arrest or injury, citing the open investigation, and police have declined to provide dispatch recordings that would contain any conversations between officers and dispatchers while Gray was in custody.

The timeline for when and where the van stopped remains incomplete, and no time has been provided for the van’s last stop, back on North Avenue for another pickup before its arrival at the Western District police station.

Insights into the critical minutes between Gray’s arrest and the call for paramedics can be gleaned from residents who said they observed several interactions the police had with him.

Taken collectively, they make clear that Gray’s arrest and transport were perceived as being wholly out of the ordinary – even in an area where the drug trade makes an arrest a common occurrence.

The reason Gray was chased by police remains unclear. Police have said it came in part because he ran, raising officers’ suspicions in an area known for drug dealing. A police report on the arrest states that Gray “fled unprovoked” and

that an illegal switchblade knife was later found on him but provides no other reason for the pursuit.

Neighborhood accounts vary on where Gray ran before reaching Presbury Street and being apprehended by police.

Washington said Gray dipped into “the cut” just south of West North Avenue, an alley that breaks into several directions in the center of a partially boarded-up block of rowhouses. It’s a place strewn with broken liquor bottles, and adjacent to backyards where dogs still keep watch.

Others say Gray ran straight south down Mount Street.

Deputy Commissioner Kevin Davis

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 27

said Friday that one officer on foot and two on bikes chased Gray “through several streets, several housing complexes,” before arresting him. “It’s a foot chase and it’s a long one.”

Still, the arrest occurred just one minute after the initial contact, according to the police timeline.

C

ommunity outrage over the arrest has been fueled by videos showing Gray – listed on the police report at 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds – on the ground before being dragged to the police van.

Neighborhood residents and police agree that the videos don’t show the whole story, though.

Kevin Moore, a 28-year-old friend of Gray’s from Gilmor Homes, said he rushed outside when he heard Gray was being arrested and saw him “screaming for his life” with his face planted on the ground. One officer had his knee on Gray’s neck, Moore said, and another was bending his legs backward.

“They had him folded up like he was a crab or a piece of origami,” Moore said.

“He was all bent up.”

At 8:42 am, police requested a transport van at the scene.

At that point Gray, who had asthma, asked for an inhaler, but Moore said police ignored the request.

Batts has said Gray’s trouble breathing was not given the proper attention at “one or two” of the van’s subsequent stops.

As Gray screamed and word spread, residents began to pour out of nearby homes. Alethea Booze, 71, who has lived along Mount Street just north of Presbury all her life, said she was cooking in her kitchen when she heard Gray “hollering” outside. Booze had a stroke some years ago and moves slowly, but made it outside nonetheless.

A crowd had started to form, she said, and there was Gray, who used to call her “Mama” and run errands for her to the corner store, lying handcuffed on the ground.

Booze said she winced as police hoisted Gray. His legs appeared broken to her, though police have said Gray suffered no broken bones. Bystanders got more vocal.

“Call the ambulance!” Booze remembers saying as police tried to disperse the crowd.

“Police were telling everyone to leave because they didn’t want anyone taping,” Booze said. “They got real smart and nasty.”

28 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

At least three cameras mounted on the Gilmor Homes buildings overlook the location, along a low stone wall on the edge of a courtyard. Police have released some footage, but it showed little of the arrest.

In a bystander’s video, Gray is shown being pulled to the van, his feet dragging, before standing briefly on his own as he’s placed inside the van.

Police said he was upset – but also breathing and talking.

Michael Robertson, 27, said his friend – who had a record of drug arrests – ran because he “had a history with that police beating him.”

One block south and four minutes later, at 8:46 am at Mount and Baker streets, the van stopped because Gray was acting “irate,” police said. Police also have said that paperwork had to be filled out, though they have not provided more detail.

Gray was taken out of the van so officers could place leg shackles on him. Police have said he was not buckled into the van with a seat belt afterward, even though that is required by department policy.

Shouts at the scene brought Tobias Sellers and others running down the street.

Sellers, 59, who is Booze’s brother and lives on the same block, said he was

POLICE HAVE SAID THAT A PRELIMINARY REPORT ON GRAY’S AUTOPSY SHOWED HE HAD NO INJURIES EXCEPT TO HIS SPINAL CORD. NO EVIDENCE OF KICKS, PUNCHES OR OTHER BEATINGS. NO EVIDENCE OF BROKEN LIMBS

among those who started moving toward Gray, and saw police beating him. “They were taking their black batons, whatever they are, and hitting him,” Sellers said.

Police have said that a preliminary report on Gray’s autopsy showed he had no injuries except to his spinal cord. No evidence of kicks, punches or other beatings. No evidence of broken limbs.

Four cameras mounted on the Gilmor Homes buildings overlook the Mount and Baker intersection, but footage released by police has shown little of the officers’ interactions with Gray. Police have promised to release more video as it becomes available.

At 8:59 am, as the van headed toward Central Booking, the driver called for an officer to “check on” Gray.

Police said an officer did respond and had “some communication” with Gray at the intersection of Druid Hill Avenue and Dolphin Street, though they have not described that interaction in detail and have said there is no surveillance footage. Batts said officers called to the van had to “pick (Gray) up off the floor and place him on the seat,” but he declined to elaborate.

Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodri-

guez said police still need to determine what Gray’s condition was at the intersection and whether the police response during the encounter was appropriate.

The intersection near McCulloh Homes is busy at times. Nearby, the G&A Food Market sits across the street from the Union Baptist Head Start; both have security cameras trained on the street.

One of the market’s cameras points toward the intersection where police said the van stopped. Cindy Wang, 28, who works at the market, said police arrived there on Monday, April 20 – the day after Gray’s death but eight days after his arrest – to inquire about the camera’s footage.

By then it was gone.

“They were kind of late, because the camera only had a six-day record,” Wang said. “If they came the second day or third day, they could have found it.”

The camera on the Head Start building faces Druid Hill, not the intersection.

Gayle E. Headen, director of the Head Start center, said a detective arrived there on April 20 and asked to review the footage, without giving a reason. “I didn’t think anything of it,” Headen said, noting that police have been interested in the footage for drug investigations in the past.

The detective asked to watch the footage from 8:55 am to 9 am, and saw a police cruiser pass by at the 8:57 mark but no van, said Headen, who personally took the officer through the footage.

In fact, the footage shows a white van with a blue stripe down its side – like those on police vans – passing by at the 8:54:32 am mark, according to The Baltimore Sun’s review of the footage. The police cruiser, with its lights flashing, drives by about three minutes later.

During the Druid Hill and Dolphin stop, a call came through asking the van driver to return to the 1600 block of W. North Ave. – not far from the spot where Gray and police first made eye contact – to pick up another person. Such vans

are divided by a metal barrier, and the second person was loaded into the section of the van not occupied by Gray.

Police have not described any interaction with Gray at this location. They have declined to identify the second person placed in the van, saying they need to “protect the integrity” of the criminal investigation into Gray’s death, in which that person is now a witness.

A

fter the pickup, the van headed south again – but this time it was headed for the Western District police station rather than Central Booking. When Gray was taken out of the van, Rodriguez said, “he could not talk and he could not breathe.”

Beyond damage to his spinal cord, Gray had a crushed voice box.

At 9:24 am, officers called a medic to the Western District station, reporting that Gray was in “serious medical distress.” The Baltimore Fire Department said the call arrived at 9:26 am.

Paramedics responded, spent 21 minutes treating Gray at the station, and arrived at Maryland Shock Trauma Center – where Gray would fall into a coma and die a week later – at 10 am.

Of the six suspended officers – Lt. Brian Rice, Sgt. Alicia White, and Officers William Porter, Garrett Miller, Edward Nero and Caesar Goodson Jr. – five have provided statements to police officials.

Police have not said which officer has refused. The police union has defended the actions of all those involved.

State’s attorney Marilyn Mosby has since declared Gray’s death a homicide, and said his arrest was illegal. Charges have been laid against the officers involved. The driver of the police van faces a second-degree murder charge, while the other five officers were charged with crimes including manslaughter, assault, false imprisonment and misconduct in office.

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 29

Unsung heroes of

THE CITY THE DUBAI TAXI DRIVERS KNOW IT ALL

Words by Dhanusha Gokulan 30 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 31

A

city is best seen through the eyes of a taxi driver.

From the narrow alleyways that barely fit one car on Al Fahidi Street and the sprawling concrete highways and exitways on Shaikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road, to the perpetually chock-a-block streets of Mina Bazar and the perennially jam-packed SharjahDubai highway, the Dubai taxi driver knows it all.

Most Dubai cabbies speak more than four languages with fluency; they are

immune to all weather conditions, and they are perhaps the most honest citizens in the city. With the exception of a few, if prodded, cab drivers always have an interesting anecdote or two for their passengers, added with subtle music on the radio and advice on where to find the cheapest handbags and tastiest food.

But while they toil day and night and stay away from their families for years at a stretch, they are rarely appreciated.

But the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) did just that recently.

Take Pakistani national and taxi drivers

Mohammed Nasir Khan, Taimur Gul, and Shahid Ali for instance. They are three among the 10 best-performing cabbies that the RTA honoured. The drivers were recognised for their stellar efforts, their responsible performances, and their honesty. Taxi drivers have returned everything from mobile phones, money, kilos of gold, and even an infant in one case.

Dr Yousef Mohammed Al Ali, CEO of RTA Public Transport Agency, commended the persistent efforts of taxi drivers in Dubai. “Decorating taxi drivers will undoubtedly motivate them to further improve services rendered to riders of taxicabs amongst residents, visitors and tourists of Dubai. Such excellent service will also add to the happiness of taxi users; which is one of the strategic goals the RTA is seeking to achieve in keeping with the Government’s drive in this field,” he said.

The three men have spent most of their lives ‘on the streets’. Thirty-nine-year old Khan arrived in UAE at a time when there were more camels on the highways than cars.

“I was a farmer back in Peshawar, Pakistan, and when I first arrived in Abu Dhabi, UAE, I was only 19 years old. I used to grow rice and wheat back home and as part of my first job in the UAE, I was an employee of Abu Dhabi Municipality. The UAE then is nothing like the UAE now. The development here is truly spectacular,” said Khan.

Khaleej Times caught up with the’unsung heroes of the city’ to talk to them about their fine and not-so-fine moments.

MOHAMMED NASIR KHAN (39) Pakistani national and an employee of Arabian Taxi, Khan has been driving a taxi for 10 years. Khan’s work timings are from 5am to 5pm. He works seven days a week and travels to Peshawar once in two years. “I’ve always enjoyed driving.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve been able to put in so many years of service. I like driving really long distances,” said Khan.

Speaking about his experiences while working in Dubai, Khan said: “As a driver, you need to learn to stick to rules and regulations of a country. Except for minor fines, I’ve never been fined by the RTA or the Dubai Police and I’ve always driven carefully and slowly.” He added:

32 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

“I also like being pro-active with the passengers, especially tourists because sometimes they ask for the best places to buy things or best places to eat, and as taxi drivers it becomes our responsibility to take them to the right places.”

Khan speaks fluent Arabic, Pashto, English, Hindi, and Urdu. A father to seven children back in Peshawar, Khan sends home Dh2,000 every month from his earnings. “I used to grow rice and jowar back home. I am happy here, the company treats me well and my family has done well with me being here,” added Khan.

TAIMUR GUL (32) Gul began his career as a bus driver for the Royal Ascot Hotel in Deira, Dubai.

He began working as a taxi driver in Dubai in 2006. “Opportunities for taxi drivers were good back then. There was a lot of traffic and people used taxis. Now they are much more expensive compared to back then,” said Gul. His work timings are from 4am to 4pm. “The most expensive thing I’ve found in my taxi is a laptop, which I returned to the company,” said Gul. Speaking about finding places in the constantly changing infrastructure Gul said: “There are smart phone apps that guide the way. Even if I were to get lost, I just use it to find my way around places” Gul is a father of three children who live back home in Pakistan. He sends home Dh1,500 every month. “I’ve raised enough money working here. I’ve purchased land and homes in both Peshawar and Karachi and I’ve leased both the houses for rent. I miss my family sometimes, so I go to visit them once in two years.”

Gul does not choose to take his weekly off and works seven days a week.

SHAHID ALI (32) Ali also begins his work at 4am and he drives the taxi till 4pm. “I started my career as a taxi driver with Sharjah Taxi and because I wasn’t happy with the pay, I moved to Dubai Taxi,” he said. “When I started my career, there were no meters in Dubai. That was a good time because you also earned well. But there are more rules and regulations and in a way that is good, for both passengers and the taxi driver,” said Ali. As a driver, Ali said he has never

worked for ‘tips’. “I am never going to be happy doing my job if I spend time hoping for tips from the passenger. I do my work as it is required of me,” added Ali. He speaks seven languages – Urdu, Hindi, Farsi, Tagalog, English, Pashto, and Arabic. “Taxi drivers have the luxury of time. We have a lot of time on our

hands to learn the language and we meet passengers from all over the world, making learning easier,” said Ali. Ali has three children, two daughters and a boy. “I send all three of them to school. I believe that knowledge is strength and I want them to learn well and reach high positions,” added Ali.

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 33

GADGETS

Epson SureColor SC-P600

HP Pro Slate 12

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The SureColor SC-P600 is Epson's top-of-the-range A3+ photo printer and combines superb quality, high productivity and superior wireless connectivity in a compact and affordable package. The SureColor SC-P600 features Epson's new UltraChrome HD with Vivid Magenta ink to produce excellent quality prints. Ideal for amateur and semiprofessional photographers, the SureColor SC-P600 will also appeal to businesses, such as architects, real-estate agents and advertising/ design agencies, that have a regular requirement for exceptionalquality colour presentations with photographic content.

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It’s also enabled with WPA or WPA2 security and Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) to ensure network integrity and ease-of-setup.

34 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

The Canon EOS M3 delivers the performance of a DSLR and the portability of a compact camera. Enjoy great photography wherever you are. Capture photos and movies that are packed with detail, colour and atmosphere – even in low-light conditions – thanks to an APS-C sized 24.2-megapixel CMOS sensor and ISO up to 12,800. Use the award-winning ergonomic interface with intuitive touch screen to focus and shoot with a single tap, navigate menus and view images with ease. The screen tilts up through 180˚ and down by 45˚ for high-angle shooting.

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Gillette Fusion ProGlide Power

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June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 35

INVEST

By Larry Light

How to be financially healthy

P

aul Sullivan had a rough early life: a threadbare home, divorced parents, a lousy school and few prospects.

Today, he is a highly regarded personal finance columnist for the New York Times, has a nice salary and lives in a wealthy suburb. How did that happen?

Pluck and luck, yes, but also insights from savvy onlookers.

His path to financial well-being owes a lot to his grandfather, a retired postman who saved money and spent prudently.

The grandfather rescued Paul and his mom from their squalid apartment in a dangerous drug-dealer-infested town, installing them in a condo he bought in a nicer community.

The older man figured that Paul could win a scholarship to a local private school, and that indeed panned out. Paul thrived in the new school and got money to go to a top college. Paul lived within his means as he set forth in the adult world. He rose as a journalist and married a woman with a good job as a recruiter.

Sullivan’s story illustrates the power of good advice. While the grandfather’s buying the condo was a big help, his example and his strategic planning for education made a big difference.

Certainly, Sullivan had negative influences to overcome. Both his parents, while financially strapped, were spendthrifts. His father, in the 1980s, had a thing for Ralph Lauren Polo shirts, when other golf shirts cost one-third as much.

His mother worked part-time jobs she hated so she could buy fancy jewelry she did not need.

These life lessons are distilled in Sul-

livan’s new book, The Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of the Super Wealthy.

This is a superb, and very useful, read. In his lexicon, the “wealthy” are not necessarily the mega-bucks crowd. He defines wealthy as “having more money than you needed to do all the things you wanted.”

In other words, it’s a psychological state.

The antithesis of the wealthy is the “rich,” who may have a lot of money and possessions, but their status is precarious, and they live in fear. As Sullivan describes them: “Rich was the guy in my town who drove the red Mercedes SL500 roadster, lived in a heavily mortgaged ... home. And had a month to find a job before he – or his second wife – blew through what little savings they had.”

There are dozens of sad tales of movie stars and athletes who wasted pots of money and ended up with nothing. Sullivan serves up mini-profiles of wiser souls, such as star quarterback Roger Staubach, who triumphed with the Dallas Cowboys in the 1970s. Staubach, who had kids to support, knew that his playing days were numbered, and became an insurance salesman. He eventually had his own company, and a solid financial footing.

Among the many virtues of Sullivan’s book is that it shows how the need for financial advice – born of hard scrutiny from knowledgeable observers – is an ongoing process. Your situation changes, and so does your need for a fresh look.

The book begins with an intriguing set piece in which Sullivan visited a group called Tiger 21, made up of well-heeled folks (minimum worth: $10 million).

36 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

Every month, a panel from this club dissects the finances of a member, a brutal process Sullivan calls “tough love.” He went before the tribunal, confident they would applaud the judicious decisions he and his wife, Laura, had made.

He was wrong.

The panelists trashed key parts of the couple’s financial structure.

They found the Sullivans’ low level of life and disability insurance to be perilous.

One member recommended they sell their Florida vacation home, even though they’d lose money.

The inquiry focused on the shakiness of Paul and Laura’s industries and cast doubt on their assumptions that their incomes would keep increasing.

Sullivan left the club stunned. He didn’t realize how extravagant he had become. When Laura later picked him up at the train station, it was in their new car. He realized that they were having two bathrooms renovated.

“Why had I not thought more about the difference between what we could afford and what we needed?” he writes.

But indeed, he did think about it, eventually. And that’s good. Constant re-examination is crucial to keep your money safe, and you, too.

THE ANTITHESIS OF THE WEALTHY IS THE “RICH,” WHO MAY HAVE A LOT OF MONEY AND POSSESSIONS, BUT THEIR STATUS IS PRECARIOUS, AND THEY LIVE IN FEAR June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 37

TECH

By Troy Wolverton

An uncomfortable thinness

I

really wanted to love Apple’s new MacBook. But I just can’t.

When I heard that Apple was coming out with a computer that’s lighter than my new MacBook Air and has a sharper screen, I immediately regretted the fact that I hadn’t waited a few more months before buying my latest laptop.

After using the MacBook, however, I no longer regret my decision.

Apple’s taken its obsession with thinness a step too far for my taste. I like how thin and light the new computer is, but I don’t appreciate the trade-offs, which make the MacBook impractical and uncomfortable to use.

The MacBook represents the next step in Apple’s minimalist attitude toward computer hardware. At 2 pounds and

half an inch thick at its fattest point, it’s a featherweight. Compared to my clunky work-issued laptop and even my own MacBook Air, the new MacBook was a joy to carry around, barely noticeable in a backpack. At that weight, it also rests easy on your lap.

Despite being so light, the MacBook feels sturdy, because Apple has encased it in an aluminum enclosure similar to the ones used with its other laptops. And despite its size, the computer has a fullsized keyboard and a screen that, while it isn’t giant, is of decent size and is larger than that on the entry-level MacBook Air. Apple also packed a relatively longlasting battery into that tight space. The company says the MacBook will endure about 10 hours of active use before it

38 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

needs to be plugged in. I didn’t test that precisely, but did find that I was able to use it for much of a business day without needing to recharge it.

Besides the MacBook’s size and weight, its other standout feature is its screen, which is a high-resolution “Retina” display.

This marks the first time that Apple has put such a screen, which purports to have pixels so tiny that they can’t be distinguished by the average human eye at normal distances, in one of its consumer-oriented laptops. If you are familiar with such screens from Apple’s iPhones, iPads and other Macs, it’s just as sharp as you’d expect: Text, graphics and pictures look great on it.

But these advantages are outweighed by the MacBook’s shortcomings.

Part of the problem with the new

machine is that in its quest to make the device super-thin, Apple eliminated a bunch of ports. The only ones you’ll find on the new MacBook are a USB-C port and a headphone jack. The USB-C port also doubles as the place where you plug in your power adapter, so when you’re charging your computer, you can’t directly plug anything else into it. Unless you have some kind of adapter, you have to choose between power and accessories.

In announcing the MacBook, Apple touted the idea that owners would just rely on wireless technologies like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi instead of physical plugs. But that just simply ignores reality. There are lots of things that consumers plug into their computers that typically can’t connect wirelessly, from external hard drives to memory cards to external monitors.

What that means is that in order to plug anything into the device besides your headphones, you’re almost certainly going to have to carry around a handful of adapters, either to convert older USB devices to USB-C or to give you more than one port. At least for now, those adapters are fairly pricey. Apple, for example, is charging $80 for a dongle that will let you connect your power cord, an

What: Apple MacBook laptop computer Likes: High-resolution “Retina” display; easily portable due to its super-thin and light design; relatively long battery life; easy-to-use OS X operating system.

Dislikes: Pricey; lack of ports makes it difficult to plug in external devices; choice of USB-C for the only data port – which doubles as the power plug – means you’ll need to buy multiple adapters and dongles; extra-thin keyboard and trackpad are uncomfortable to use.

Specs: Dual-core Intel Core M processor; 8GB memory; 12-inch 2304 x 1440 pixel display.

Price: US$1,300 for model with 1.1 GHz processor and 256GB flash drive; US$1,600 for model with 1.2 GHz processor and 512GB flash drive.

Web: www.apple.com

older USB device and an external monitor to the MacBook at the same time.

The other big problem with the MacBook is an ergonomic one. In its zeal to slim down the notebook, Apple created a thinner keyboard and trackpad for the new device. Apple touts the new design as being more responsive and stable, thanks to a new mechanism it created that underlies each key.

But the result of the redesign is that the keys depress very little. If you’re a touch typist like me who is used to working on keyboards that depress a lot more, it’s easy to strike the MacBook’s keys too hard, expecting they’ll absorb the impact. I found the keyboard almost painful to use.

I had a similar experience using the touchpad, which has a similarly shallow depth. It just doesn’t have the same satisfying click I’m used too.

I also found myself mistyping a lot more than normal. I think that was because the keys are crammed much closer together than on a typical keyboard. And don’t get me started on trying to use the new arrow keys. The new up and down arrows are also positioned much closer together than normal, making it difficult to tell which one you are using unless you actually look down at them.

A final turnoff about the new MacBook is its price. At $1,300 for the base model, it costs as much as Apple’s MacBook Pro, which has a larger display and a much more powerful processor. It’s also $400 more than the entry-level MacBook Air. As much as I was lusting after the new MacBook when I first heard about it, my ardor has cooled after actually using it.

My trusty MacBook Air isn’t looking like such a bad device after all.

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 39

ONLINE

By Omar L. Gallaga

10 ways to be a better (and happier) person online

A

re you a good person? Before you answer, let me add a word to that: Are you a good person online?

You may be the exact same person in email correspondence, while sending texts and in posting to social media networks who you are “IRL” (in real life). That would make you a very genuine virtual person, but it would also make you a little unusual.

For many people, myself included, the Internet is a place to exaggerate the better parts of yourself, to hide unsightly flaws, to say the thing you’d have never thought to say in a face-to-face conversation from behind a keyboard (often much later).

But that schism, the widening space between what we are in person and who we are online, is creating problems, I believe.

Increasingly, I see people push their online personas to their limits, alienating friends and family, bullying complete strangers or just being oblivious to what their digital keystrokes convey to others.

But I think the real consequence to negativity, bad behavior and over-investment in our online personas is a lot simpler: It makes us unhappy. In the many years I’ve been watching people behave badly online, I can tell you that those most prone to short tempers and aggression online carry that tension offline.

They may say they’re just blowing off steam virtually, but that steam has a way

of building up and blowing out.

With all that in mind, I have some suggestions. These aren’t commandments; they’re not even etiquette tips. They’re just 10 things I think could make you a better person online (and a happier person offline). Five of them are things you should do more of. The other five? Things you should stop doing immediately.

40 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

1. Be more helpful. Whatever job or

hobbies you may have, you probably have some expertise. When people ask for help online, whether it’s a group email from a coworker or a desperate Facebook post from an acquaintance, think about whether you might be able to help, or at least point that person in the right direction. Sometimes, someone in dis-

tress hasn’t even thought to do a Google search to research his or her problem.

That might be all the help necessary. Be helpful when you can, and stop worrying that helping will waste your time and just lead to more questions. It’s better to be a respected expert people ask for help than to ignore calls for help.

2. Care. Care about others, care about

how you present yourself to the online world, care about the greater good.

3. Double-check shaky facts and potentially phony stories. Take it

from a journalist (please, I beg you): Quit posting too-good-to-be-true scandals, conspiracy theories and fake celebrity deaths all over social media without making sure they’re real. A Google search or a peek at excellent hoax-busting websites snopes.com or PolitiFact Texas will likely reveal that Southwest Airlines is not really giving away thousands of free tickets on Facebook.

4. Ask questions and be curious.

Whether it’s in email or in a video chat, being more engaged in what others have to say than what comes out of your own mouth (or typing fingers) is a good way to be a better listener, a better friend, a better online citizen and a better conversation starter. Got a question that won’t leave your brain? Put it out there and be prepared to be surprised. And don’t get discouraged if you don’t get an answer right away. Some people haven’t read Item No. 1 on this list yet.

5. Treat people online like people, not screen names. That means play-

ing nice, being respectful, responding to people’s messages instead of ignoring them, and never antagonizing people in ways you could never imagine yourself acting to someone’s face. If you make a mistake and offend someone, be quick with a sincere apology. And watch your tone. What sounds fine in your head may come across much differently as text.

And here are five things you should avoid: 1. Stop complaining so much, and keep your outrage in check. Last

year, I wrote about the “Internet outrage factory,” an increasingly common tendency for Internet mobs to overreact

IN THE MANY YEARS I’VE BEEN WATCHING PEOPLE BEHAVE BADLY ONLINE, I CAN TELL YOU THAT THOSE MOST PRONE TO SHORT TEMPERS AND AGGRESSION ONLINE CARRY THAT TENSION OFFLINE

to news stories and minor scandals. The problem is, many of these items turn out to be hoaxes or misunderstandings when all the facts come to light. Stop jumping on those angry bandwagons and, while you’re at it, stop trying to publicly shame businesses that make an honest mistake or that you aren’t dazzled by. Sharing information about a scam or nightmare customer service experience is one thing, but using social media as a bully pulpit to get something you want is shady at best. Accept that sometimes people and businesses make mistakes and they can be resolved without getting the public at large involved. Being a continually swirling vortex of hostile negativity doesn’t make you edgy and interesting, it makes you whiny and exhausting.

2. Don’t send messages between midnight and 6 a.m. If you work a night

shift, that’s different, but in most cases, sending long, rambling emails or a string of texts in the wee hours is a bad idea.

You’re probably not at your most lucid, and the people who see your message will wonder if you stayed up all night, blearyeyed and sleep-deprived, working on your screed. It’s not a good look.

3. Don’t start none, won’t be none.

We all know people online who instigate battles in comment sections and can never shut up whenever a controversial topic comes up. That’s called trolling. Don’t be that person. Before you engage with trolls, political loud mouths and agitators, ask yourself beforehand if it’s worth the time and potential trouble. And don’t create problems where they don’t need to exist: Ask people permission before you post images of them online (especially if kids

are in photos or videos), and please don’t assume that everybody wants to be livestreamed via new online video apps. Never post or forward private messages unless you’re a whistleblower taking down an evil empire. Be respectful of the privacy of those around you.

4. Silence all jerks. Speaking of trolls

and loud mouths, if someone is stressing you out and it’s edging toward harassment, don’t take it. Either block and report that person, or, if it’s someone you have to deal with in real life (say a relative or coworker), try to mute them on social media channels or filter their messages so you don’t have to see them.

You’ll have less stress in your life.

5. Resist the urge to be an instant responder. Technology gives us the

tools to be in constant, frequent contact.

But you don’t owe anybody an instant response in any nonemergency situation.

If somebody sends you a message that makes you angry, take an hour before you respond. In general, never post anything online in a state of anger, especially anger directed at an individual.

There are lots more, such as, “Stop giving everyone parenting advice they never asked for,” and, “Don’t engage with vague, passive-aggressive, attention-seeking posts,” but we’ve run out of space, and this to-do/to-don’t list is long enough. Let’s be better out there.

Looking over this list, I see that a lot of these lessons are ones my kids were taught in daycare and kindergarten. In the vast digital playgrounds of our online spaces, it can be easy to forget that we’re supposed to be acting like grown-ups.

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 41

SCIENCE

By Eryn Brown

Woolly mammoth genome could shed light on extinctions

42 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

I

n what may be a first for a long-extinct non-human animal-and certainly for an extinct creature of such staturescientists have assembled the complete genome of the woolly mammoth, gaining insight into why the last surviving population of the great beasts, marooned on an Arctic island off the coast of Russia, may have disappeared.

The international team, led by researchers at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, reported their findings in the journal Current Biology.

Study co-author Eleftheria Palkopoulou said that recent successes in the tricky business of sequencing ancient DNA, including samples from early hominids like Neanderthals and Denisovans, inspired her team to try it out with woolly mammoths from Wrangel Island.

The animals are particularly interesting to paleobiologists because they were among the last surviving members of their species. Carbon dating has shown that mammoths on Wrangel Island managed to hang on until 4,000 years ago – 6,000 years after their relatives had vanished from mainland Siberia.

Palkopoulou and her colleagues wanted to see if the Wrangel Island mammoths, final members of a group on the brink of extinction, had diminished diversity in their DNA-a factor that might have contributed to their demise.

To figure that out, the team first had to find woolly mammoth bits well-preserved enough to sequence. Eventually they chose soft tissue from a juvenile male that lived in northeastern Siberia around 44,800 years ago and a molar from a Wrangel Island male mammoth that lived about 4,300 years ago.

Using the genome of a modern African savanna elephant as a reference point,

CARBON DATING HAS SHOWN THAT MAMMOTHS ON WRANGEL ISLAND MANAGED TO HANG ON UNTIL 4,000 YEARS AGO – 6,000 YEARS AFTER THEIR RELATIVES HAD VANISHED FROM MAINLAND SIBERIA

the group then analyzed the mammoth DNA. Mammal genomes have two copies of every DNA molecule, one contributed from an animal’s mother and another from its father. By comparing the two DNA copies in each mammoth and noting when they were identical and when they weren’t, Palkopoulou and her colleagues were able to estimate how closely related the mammoths’ parents would have been – an indication of the genetic diversity in the Wrangel Island and older Siberian populations. They were also able to estimate the two populations’ sizes.

“From a single individual you can get information about the entire population,” Palkopoulou said.

The Wrangel Island mammoth had long stretches of DNA with no variation between the mother’s and the father’s contributions, a sign that the animal’s parents were probably related and that the isolated population of mammoths was small. (The older Siberian mammoth’s DNA had more genetic variation.) The data also pointed to two major population declines in mammoth history: one that occurred 250,000 to 300,000 years ago and another that took place around 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age. The analysis could help scientists understand why species die out, and if genetic factors have to do with it, Palkopoulou said. Generally, scientists believe that lower genetic diversity lessens a population’s chances of survival.

“Your genome is like your tool kit for getting out of trouble,” said Ian Barnes, an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum in London. “If you as a species have lots of different tools available, it means some individuals will die when the environment changes or a disease arrives, but there will probably be others that will be resistant and will pass those genes on to the next generation. If you don’t have the diversity, it’s a challenge.”

Barnes, who has worked with Palkopoulou but was not involved in this research, cautioned that this paper did not show that low genetic diversity is always a predictor of species fragility, and that scientists will have to figure out what to make of it when studying endangered animals.

Humans, for instance, are not endangered, and we are not particularly genetically diverse, he said.

June/July 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 43

BOOKCASE

By Peter M. Gianotti & John Reinan

The truth about Reagan Reagan: The Life

By H.W. Brands Doubleday, $35

Ronald Reagan upended his critics and unsettled his idolaters. He also has thwarted a third group: his biographers.

The outline of the 40th president’s remarkable story is generally well known.

Compiling the details, the dates, the references, and providing a lucid beginningto-end tale is the easy part. Many authors have done that. Getting to know what made Reagan what he was is a lot harder.

H.W. Brands, a respected historian and University of Texas educator, has written persuasively about presidents from Ulysses S. Grant to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He’s the latest author for whom the inner Reagan has proved elusive.

Brands does chronicle plenty and offers

a lumbering, supportive chronology. You learn about the “rootless” childhood and the “indifferent” student. He describes the radio announcer who “spun a good yarn,” facts notwithstanding.

He shows you an optimistic young man who revered FDR, and whose family benefitted from the New Deal – though, later, the candidate would build “a political career bashing what Roosevelt had created.

Here, too, is the aspiring actor who “loved the camera”; a performer comfortable in his roles, on TV with The General Electric Theater and Death Valley Days, and as leader of the Screen Actors Guild.

“He discovered he liked the politics of the film industry,” Brands writes.

Reagan’s position would lead him to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Reagan enjoyed the “openly political stage. ... And he was good at it. ... He could feel the room and sense its mood.” But, after discussing the committee’s work and the blacklist, Brands concludes, “Creative work suffered when fear ruled. But the risk was worth taking, for the good of the country.

By now, you may start thinking that Brands is a bit too sympathetic. That forgiving, friendly point of view shades his writing about Reagan’s decision-making

and actions before, during and after the White House. And it undermines Brands’ valuable spadework, from documents to interviews. The result suggests more Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. on JFK than Robert A. Caro on LBJ. Reagan’s story needs insight and perspective, analysis and context. His record as California governor and as the pivotal president in the second half of the 20th century can withstand the scrutiny and the fallout.

Brands is better when focusing on Reagan’s skills as the most effective voice for conservatism beginning in the 1960s, specifically his televised speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential race. “People could disagree with Reagan, but rarely did they find him disagreeable,” Brands notes.

Reagan would easily win the GOP gubernatorial primary and the 1966 general election. He’d be re-elected in 1970.

Reagan could speak as an ideologue, but he ran the state as a pragmatic politician. He opposed abortion, for example, but also relaxed abortion laws. “Reagan’s pragmatism was a reflection of his ambition,” Brands writes.

That would carry over to the presidency. Reagan stressed tax cuts but also

REAGAN ENJOYED THE “OPENLY POLITICAL STAGE. ... AND HE WAS GOOD AT IT. ... HE COULD FEEL THE ROOM AND SENSE ITS MOOD 44 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

agreed to raise taxes; he assailed communism, yet dealt with Soviet leaders; he’d nominate Robert Bork to the Supreme Court but be content with Anthony Kennedy. “He took what he could get,” Brands explains, “never holding practical results hostage to ideological purity.”

Reagan understood the role of the president, mastered the media, kept his image intact, resonated with voters and was rewarded by them. The 1980 and 1984 contests were brilliant examples of political strategy, advertising and the devastating one-liner. Candidates still ask voters, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Brands’ then-this-happened account of Reagan’s two presidential terms is highlighted by his discussion of the give-andtake between the president and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last leader.

His narrative comes alive describing their relationship. Brands rightly says Gorbachev was “Moscow’s gift” to the president. “Perhaps the demise of the Soviet Union was predestined. ... Yet the timing of the demise depended on someone willing to acknowledge the undeniable.”

Similarly, Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker was a “gift” from his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. Volcker curbed inflation, leading to economic growth at “just the right time for Reagan.” Reagan’s overall economic policy and its ongoing impact merit more examination, as do the intricacies of the disastrous IranContra affair.

Brands concludes with the expected: He equates Reagan with FDR, as rightleft bookends. He adds that “in certain respects, Reagan’s accomplishment was greater.” Brands will need a sharper, more searching volume to show that, and to give Reagan his due.

Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese-American Internment During World War II

By Richard Reeves Henry Hold and Co., $32

“How could this have happened here?”

That’s the question Richard Reeves asked himself every time he drove by a faded sign in the desolate high desert between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The sign marked the site of the Manzanar War Relocation Center, one of 10

FAMILIES WERE ROUNDED UP AND HERDED ONTO TRAINS BOUND FOR HASTILY BUILT PRISON CAMPS… concentration camps where more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were locked up during World War II. As a group, these first- and second-generation Americans were fiercely patriotic and committed to the “American way.”

They were successful farmers, businesspeople, students and community leaders.

But in time of war, their racial connection to an enemy trumped their rights as citizens.

Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese-American Internment During World War II tells their tale with energy, compassion and moral outrage. Reeves, a veteran journalist, answers his own question with meticulous care – documenting the decisions made in Washington by the world’s most powerful men, and how those decisions affected the lives of ordinary Americans whose only crime was to be of Japanese descent.

Within 10 weeks of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, all Japanese living on the West Coast and in the Pacific Northwest were ordered out. The given reason: They were a threat to security, potential saboteurs whose loyalty would lie with Japan rather than America. Families were rounded up and herded onto trains bound for hastily built prison camps in some of the bleakest corners of the nation.

Among those sent to the camps were the actors George Takei and Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, as well as Norm Mineta, a member of Congress and a cabinet secretary under two presidents.

Few Caucasians emerge with honor from the tale. John J. McCloy, the quintessential Eastern Establishment power broker, dismissed the U.S. Constitution as “a scrap of paper.” Earl Warren’s name would become synonymous with civil rights for African-Americans as chief

justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but in 1942, as attorney general of California, he enthusiastically supported the imprisonment of American citizens of Japanese descent.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt kept a low profile on the issue, letting others whip up emotion in favor of internment, then signing off on it after public and official sentiment had made it inevitable.

As the United States wrestles once again with its never-ending questions of assimilation and immigration, Reeves reminds us that our nation has always been formed by “the almost blind faith of each wave of immigrants – including the ones we put behind barbed wire.”

“We are a nation made by immigrants,” he writes, “foreigners who were needed for their labor and skills and faith – but were often hated because they were not like us until they were us.”

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MOVIES

By Roger Moore

Bravetown

T

he unspoken grief of a small, patriotic rural town that refuses to talk about its combat dead is a heavy burden to slap on a formulaic city-kid-turns-ruraldance-team-into-champs dramedy.

But that’s what the high-minded Bravetown attempts. An R-rated drama about drugs and remorse and death and kids questioning a town that’s “good for nothing but turning out future soldiers,” it’s somewhat undercut by the whole Step Up/Footloose/Glee dance showcase that got it financed.

Lucas Till is Josh, a rising, drug-abusing DJ whose one drug-bust-too-many gets him shipped off by his onetime addict mom (Maria Bello) to live with the father he never knew.

Dad is played by Tom Everett Scott, with barely a line and not one decent scene to play. That’s because Dad is a combat vet, and in Paragon, guys don’t talk about the war they fought in and families don’t talk about the sons, brothers and friends they’ve lost.

Josh Duhamel is well-cast as the psychotherapist the troubled-teen Josh is forced to visit. He’s content to watch soccer matches and eat pizza during their sessions, until the kid starts to reach out, and the therapist is obliged to try and help. Not that the kid is having it.

“You learn that at shrink community college?”

The one thing the hip mixmaster might

do to fit in is hip up the disastrous dance team, whose routines are as dated as their Avril Lavigne-laced dance track.

Mary (Kherington Payne, very good) is their control-freak captain. Even she recognizes the city boy with his mad mixes would be just the ticket to turn around their fortunes.

Mary takes Josh to a tree adorned with the medals of the town’s fallen, a romantic concept (lit by kerosene lanterns) straight out of Nicholas Sparks.

She suffered a loss, too. Her medicated, manic mother (Laura Dern, always sterling) is the only townsperson to talk about the dead. And she’s in depressed denial herself.

Till, one of the new X-Men, isn’t bad, although his character seems cut and pasted from assorted dance, music and troubled teen pictures. And there’s good support surrounding him. But whatever

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BRAVETOWN Cast: Lucas Till, Josh Duhamel, Kherington Payne, Maria Bello Directed by: Daniel Duran Running time: 113 mins Rating: R for some language, drug use and brief sexuality GG

its intent, Bravetown stumbles through a steady supply of contrivances designed to make the budget work and the storylines overlap. Relationships are abrupt, absurd legal expediencies push Josh into his dad’s town’s problems, Duhamel’s shrink is a vet with a secret, all the dance team’s contests are somehow staged on their home gym and the shattered town will be made whole at the foot of that tree of medals.

The result is an off-tone R-rated melodrama more suited to the unsophisticated PG-13 sentiments of a-kids-gotta-dance picture, or a romance novel, Nicholas Sparks without a beach.

I

n The D Train, Jack Black plays a guy who never forgot his first high school “man crush.”

Dan Landsman was the awkward lump nobody remembers. And the object of his crush? The swaggering jock, the popular and talented hunk, king of the prom.

In high school back in the ‘90s, Dan was “D-Money, D-Dogg,” but only in his mind. Even now, helping over-organize his suburban Pittsburgh high school’s 20th reunion, the balding, aging once “cool” kids don’t invite him for an aftermeeting beer. His wife (Kathryn Hahn) pouts for him. That reunion is looking like a bust.

A late-night Banana Boat commercial gives him an epiphany, a vision of Oliver Lawless, the bronzed, semi-bearded god of their high school. Oliver is in LA, a Banana Boat “success” and a “celebrity.”

If Dan can get Oliver to commit, maybe more classmates will “like” their Facebook page.

The script sends The D-Train to LA in search of the elusive Oliver. Dan lies to his boss (Jeffrey Tambor) to get their failing consulting company to cover the plane ticket. But Oliver (James Marsden, spot-on) somehow has nothing better to do than hang with Dan, dragging him to bars, serving him cocaine. And falling into bed with him.

AWK-ward. But then again, the whole movie is built around Dan’s klutzy discomfort, another Jack Black “clueless about how uncool he is” character comedy.

Dan struggles to cover up his indiscretion, tries to get Oliver to cancel and failing that, adds lies upon lies to try and keep his house of cards from collapsing.

Meanwhile, his teen son (Russell Posner) languishes, his pleas for advice about girls and sex and life falling on Dan’s deaf and Oliver-obsessed ears.

Co-writer/directors Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul cover Chuck & Buck territory, no surprise given that Chuck writer/star Mike White is a producer and supporting player here. D-Train lacks the creepy edge of Chuck, and without that, it’s just

a slow-footed farce built around improbable lies and an even more improbable “moment of weakness.”

Marsden never takes Lawless “out there” enough to make him funny. His small-fish-in-the-Hollywood-pond stuff feels more accurate than hilarious.

And Black, aging out of his irrepressible nerd-cool persona, earns our sympathy but few laughs as this clod experiencing a dark prom/reunion night of the soul.

He and the filmmakers never find a tone that works in this R-rated treatment of a PG-13 idea. Every F-bomb, every sex gag or sexual comment, feels like an overreach and Dan just another Black character hoping the cool kids shine a little light his way.

D-TRAIN LACKS THE CREEPY EDGE OF CHUCK, AND WITHOUT THAT, IT’S JUST A SLOW-FOOTED FARCE BUILT AROUND IMPROBABLE LIES AND AN EVEN MORE IMPROBABLE “MOMENT OF WEAKNESS.”

THE D TRAIN Cast: Jack Black, James Marsden, Kathryn Hahn, Jeffrey Tambor Directed by: Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul Running time: 101 mins Rating: R for strong sexual material, nudity, language and drug use GG

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CONSIDER THIS

By Amy Brooke

A different shade of red?

Tenants in our own country

A

s the British Empire advanced, colour-me in countries turned red on the world map. Even with its faults, colonialism, bringing with it the best of the civilised values of “the mother country”, challenged tribalism, barbarism, feudalism and incessant warfare – as here in New Zealand, with tribes locked into never-ending, destructive cycles of internecine butchery, and the horrors of cannibalism.

A pertinent observation, given the corruption and appalling treatment of Africans by fellow Africans of today, for example, has been that the only thing worse than colonialism is post-colonialism. Revisionist history now averts its eyes from colonisation’s actual benefits to newly-discovered countries. However, inevitably, with new markets and opportunities available, not only the principled and fair-minded set sail on voyages of discovery. Rapacious traders, the ruthless and conscienceless, came too.

The starvation of the Irish in the great potato famine, the responsibility lying at the feet of Anglo-Irish landlords, the British government, and rapacious middlemen preying on Irish tenants in their own country, is among the most shocking examples of a comparatively recent abuse of power. In fact, it was largely because of this scandalous example that New Zealand was fortunate. When this country was taken under the protection of the Crown (reluctantly, but largely because of the pressure of Maori chiefs) the interests of the native population were to be paramount.

And so the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, (in spite of today’s highly imaginative “re-interpretations” by selfserving, part-Maori radicals, vote-buying MPs and lawyers who should know better) had one primary aim – to ensure that all New Zealanders, whether Maori or colonists, were now equal under the Crown, with their property rights safeguarded. Today’s fanciful claims to the airwaves, lakes, rivers and coasts are not supported by the treaty.

Too easily forgotten is that those everywhere dedicating their lives to improve the living standards of all peoples under the British Crown established systems of justice, built schools, hospitals, railways, bridges, roads, introducing methods of farming and the discoveries and inventions of the industrial age. But because of the inevitable injustices found everywhere throughout history, references to colonialism have been used manipulatively – as Prime Minister John Key likes to do, to defend his high-handed decision to force a cash-strapped economy to pay up to (what will eventually be many times more than) a $26 million estimate to change the New Zealand flag – because he personally wants this.

Factor in the additional scores of millions of dollars which his compliant National government will support so that face-saving, costly PR will undoubtedly be poured into Key’s campaign to manipulate an antagonistic public into backing his wish to dump our flag. The costs of changing all our passports – as well as every single additional printed record

48 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM June/July 2015

and visible depiction – raises the question of the abuse of power…an example of top-down government where a determined individual imposes his/her own wishes on the country. New Zealanders’ best protest, of course, will be to refuse fall into the trap of choosing an alternative flag – i.e. to refrain from voting in the first cunningly planned poll.

Why John Key’s campaign? We have much to respect in our forebears, disparagingly lumped together as colonists.

The British version of colonisation with, on the whole, a more civilised record than that of France and other countries, sought to do away with classes. It aimed to make available for all what Matthew Arnold described as the best that has been thought and known and said in the world… The greatest thinkers throughout history would agree with his definition of culture. Many of them have said something similar.

Who would argue that this should not be a priority in schools – offering to all children, no matter what their background, the opportunity to be extended intellectually and imaginatively – to become good and wise people, in order to live positive and productive lives? But the riches of an intellectual inheritance cannot be passed down to young New Zealanders if we repudiate the past, inevitably including the best of our writers, playwrights, novelists – teaching us about human nature – our historians, biographers, and great poets – opening new worlds of empathy, understanding, and appreciation of beauty.

In New Zealand, the commercial colonisation of this country by Communist Chinese interests in particular is now well under way…

With the well-planned attack of recent decades on colonialism – our British inheritance – New Zealanders have become predominantly poorly-educated, not through their own fault, but because of our Ministry of Education. Its personnel, some well-meaning, have long been manipulated into the determined agenda of neo-Marxists, aiming to white-ant all our cultural institutions. Its highly successful attempt to thoroughly dumb down our knowledge base has resulted in only a tiny minority of New Zealanders today having had (or having) anything like Arnold’s definition of a genuine education.

Funnelling part-Maori children, too, into schools with a damagingly narrow, te reo curriculum is more than challengeable.

The determined attack on the education system is part of that on all those institutions which once served the most vulnerable in our society… alcoholics; those seeking to escape drug-taking; children and adolescents at risk from family and relations, the unborn child; abused women – with women’s refuges’ funding now under attack. The pattern of closure – Hamner’s Queen Mary Hospital, utterly valuable in rehabilitating alcoholics and drug addicts; the better-run mental institutions – sanctuaries for many ejected into a non-exist, caring “community”.

And now the (officially denied) attempt

to close down the important Salisbury School in Nelson – invoking the jargonised ephemera of a “wrap-around” system where nothing changes. At-risk girls are left with those who abuse them, while a magically transformed, genuinely efficient CYF “protects” them – from a distance – in a similar way to abused women protected by a court order only too easily ignored. For we have been undergoing a hostile form of neo-colonialism, the takeover of our country by cultural Marxists, operating within centres of power.

Similarly, the agenda of the European Commission have been implemented by the blunt tools of the restrictions on sovereignty in Britain itself, constrained by edicts from Brussels from properly guarding its borders and maintaining an independent judiciary. The UN’s New World Order performs the same function, issuing compliance edicts, originating from its most tyrannical countries, to tighten its control on the West.

In New Zealand, the commercial colonisation of this country by Communist Chinese interests in particular is now well under way, backed by investment from, and in many cases directly controlled by, members of the CCP. It is posing an extraordinarily dangerous threat. However, our maverick Prime Minister, in a close relationship with this

totalitarian, repressive regime, determinedly looks away, even blatantly denying the existence of Auckland’s housing crisis… Our land, farms, businesses, our strategic and scenic assets, our offshore islands – let alone our housing stock – are all being swallowed up, targeted by this damaging form of neo-colonialism basically assuming a gradual, but increasing over lordship over our territory.

Being culturally colonised by Marxism may be nothing to being dispossessed in our own country. Will this country once map-coloured as belonging to our home country, importantly symbolised by our New Zealand flag, eventually have the silver stars of the Southern Cross replaced by the gold stars on the red flag of Communist China? © Amy Brooke www.amybrooke.co.nz You can help us by sharing on Facebook! www.facebook.com /100daystodemocracy?ref=br_tf www.100days.co.nz www.summersounds.co.nz

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