Investigate, February 2006 by Investigate Magazine

New Design, New Sections, PLUS: Mark Steyn...

INVESTIGATE

February 2006:

How Much Does Helen Know?

Labour donations

Fridge fire

Autism

Michael Campbell

F&P Fridge Fire

Mad Mullah

Familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s narrow escape, we have the photos

Issue 61

Autism, Asthma, Immunisation New evidence reignites debate

Tax haven billionaire who funds Labour is caught in fraud, banking scandals, & tied to Big Tobacco

Michael Campbell

Talks about the year ahead $7.95 February 2006

Volume 6, Issue 61, February 2006

FEATURES THE TYCOON & THE PM

Shipping magnate Owen Glenn was Labour’s biggest campaign donor at the last election, thanks to Helen Clark. But IAN WISHART discovers there’s a lot more to the story than the public have been told - a tale of greed, corruption and fraud

BURNING FRIDGES

AUTISM, ASTHMA & VACCINES

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Two months ago Investigate broke the story of a possible deadly fire hazard in Fisher & Paykel fridges. Now experts’ worst fears have been realised – a Fisher & Paykel fridge blaze that burned down a children’s sleepout and almost caused an Australian bush fire. JAMES MORROW has the exclusive story

So you thought the autism/vaccines link had been cleared? Think again. New evidence has emerged linking the West’s autism and asthma epidemics to childhood immunisations, as DAN OLMSTED reports

BIG BANG THEORY

PERSIAN SPAT

Surely if there was a major risk to public safety in your city you’d be told? Apparently not. MAURICE SMYTH covers the story of a massive gas leak that could have blown up Waikato Hospital and many homes in the vicinity

As if Israel didn’t have enough to worry about with a peace process hanging in the balance, MARTIN SIEFF reports on the Iranian president’s belief that the return of a mythical figure known as ‘the Mahdi’ is imminent, and how that ties in with his Armageddon theology and nuclear ambitions

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Cover: GETTY IMAGES

EDITORIAL AND OPINION Volume 6, issue 61, ISSN 1175-1290

Chief ExecutiveOfficer Heidi Wishart Group Managing Editor Ian Wishart Customer Services Debbie Marcroft NZ EDITION Advertising

Colin Gestro/Affinity Ads

Contributing Writers: Matt Thompson, Peter Hensley, Clare Swinney, Chris Carter, Laura Wilson, Ann Coulter, Tim Kerr, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, and the worldwide resources of Knight Ridder Tribune, UPI and Newscom Art Direction Design & Layout

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FOCAL POINT VOX-POPULI SIMPLY DEVINE STRAIGHT TALK EYES RIGHT DOUBLESPEAK LINE 1 TOUGH QUESTIONS

Editorial The voice of the people Miranda Devine on boys Mark Steyn on the end of the West Richard Prosser on crime Ian Wishart on Helen’s UN job Chris Carter on multiculturalism Archaeology and the Bible

Heidi Wishart Bozidar Jokanovic

Tel: +64 9 373 3676 Fax: +64 9 373 3667 Investigate Magazine PO Box 302-188, North Harbour Auckland 1310, NEW ZEALAND AUSTRALIAN EDITION Editor James Morrow Customer Services Debbie Marcroft, Sandra Flannery Advertising Jamie Benjamin Kaye Tel: +61 2 9389 7608 Tel: +61 2 9369 1091 Tel/Fax: 1-800 123 983 Investigate Magazine PO Box 602, Bondi Junction Sydney, NSW 1355, AUSTRALIA SUBSCRIPTIONS Online: www.investigatemagazine.com By Phone: Australia 1-800 123 983 New Zealand 09 373 3676 By Post: To the respective PO Boxes Current Special Prices: Save 25% NZ Edition: $72 Australian Edition: A$72 EMAIL editorial@investigatemagazine.com ian@investigatemagazine.com jmorrow@investigatemagazine.com jkaye@investigatemagazine.com sales@investigatemagazine.com debbie@investigatemagazine.com 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.

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Time to buy bling! When good kids go bad II WMDs found Cellular signal boosters Michael Campbell talks A critical take on homeopathy Herbal remedy gets medical tick Mexico’s beautiful Yucatan Seeing red Michael Morrissey’s summer books Chris Philpott’s CD reviews Shelly Horton walks the line King Kong on disc already Things that make you go ‘Ah’ Our shopping mall Adrian Neylan and Stalag 13 Where are they now?: Kajagoogoo

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FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL And now we are Six

my flight back to Dubai,” wrote our correspondent, “I was seated in the bulkhead seat and shared one magazine pocket. I placed the January issue of Investigate into the pocket and after the stop in Singapore and then Dubai both the passengers sitting next to me had read it from cover-to-cover. “The lady in the aisle seat had already swiped it after I questioned if she had it. She enquired where she could buy it and she was given the subscription details. Both her and the English guy next to me were both very impressed with the quality. A terrific independent appraisal.” Six years in publishing is a long time. When magazines can come and go in “Over the years, readers have the space of three short months, six years in pubcome to realise that’s who we are. lishing is like 2,000 ordiThey know that when Investigate nary Earth years. Six years ago, a new magpublishes a story, it’s prepared to azine burst onto the New go to court to defend it” Zealand market promising to shake things up, break new stories, and boldly go where the politically correct daren’t. Heidi and I figured that New Zealanders wanted a magazine with stories you could actually read, not just flick through as a way to pass the boredom. And Kiwis flocked to the new publication. Investigate put Barbara Sumner-Burstyn at Ground Zero when New York was attacked. Our photojournalist Shayne Kavanagh was shot at by Israeli troops in the first weeks of the Palestinian intifada, and then captured by Hamas after witnessing a crowd of Palestinians tearing apart some captured Israeli solders. The day the US invaded Afghanistan we, thanks to the assistance of Olympus cameras NZ, were the only New Zealand media organisation with a journalist actually on the front line – Kavanagh again – who was captured, again, this time by the Taliban. And this year, twice, we flew Matt Thompson and a photographer deep into rebel territory in the Philippines in search of the al Qa’ida training camps there. Today, 61 issues after that first edition hit the streets, we’re still here and growing. In fact, we’re the only NZ magazine to have set up a full operation in Australia.

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

As part of that growth process, and the growing global appeal of the magazine, you’ll see this issue marks another evolution of the publication in its lineup, design and features (Laura is merely on holiday, before you ask), and there are more developments to come this year. No magazine in New Zealand is more talked about than Investigate. Now that can be a good thing or a bad thing, but it means we’re doing our job. Good journalism is about touching lives, making a difference, challenging preconceptions and biases, and turning a blowtorch on the Government of the day, regardless of political hue, because true democracy can only function if the media do their job properly. To use a cliche, we’re passionate about New Zealand. We believe this is the best country in the world to raise kids, or enjoy life. And over the years, readers have come to realise that’s who we are. They know that when Investigate publishes a story, it’s prepared to go to court to defend it. Many people have worked for or at Investigate in various capacities over the years, and we couldn’t have done it without them. They’re people who shared the vision and the desire to make a difference. Wherever you are now, thanks. Above all else though, on this our sixth birthday, we’d like to thank every one of you out there who’s ever picked up a copy to read, or purchased an ad. A magazine exists, ultimately, to serve its community. Without a community of readers, there’s no point publishing a magazine. You may not always agree with us, but that’s OK. This is a magazine of ideas and debate. That’s what life is about. New Zealanders should be able to freely exchange ideas in a magazine, to argue points strongly. Don’t get offended, get involved. Write a letter, stand up for what you believe in. We hope you’ve enjoyed the past few years as much as we have. We’re looking forward to the next six.

�� You don’t get a strategic edge without hard work – a fact that Strategic Finance’s executive directors and senior management know. They’ve driven the company forward using their extensive knowledge and experience of commerce and property. Far from being a passive lender, Strategic’s loan management policy has created such strong results that other companies now seek their advisory and management services. When you’re looking to invest, that’s the kind of knowledge that makes you feel like you’re in safe hands. And makes you wonder why anyone would choose a company that isn’t Strategic. To find out more about Strategic Finance or to receive a copy of our investment statement call us on 0800 275 735 or visit www.strategicfinance.co.nz No person, including the directors of Strategic Finance Limited, guarantees any of the securities offered by Strategic Finance Limited. promotus INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 2832

VOX POPULI

COMMUNIQUES CALL DR PETE

Health Minister Pete Hodgson’s rejection of Wellington Coroner Garry Evan’s call for a full review of the Midwifery Service on the grounds that Evans “has a law degree” smacks of breathtaking institutional arrogance and hypocrisy. A review of Pete Hodgson’s own tertiary qualification in his role as Health Minister reveals a “Bachelor of Veterinary Science” from Massey University. It is thus comforting to know that when I need to be spayed, have my toenails clipped, or secure a new flea collar, Pete Hodgson is the man for the job. Now, about those pesky hospital waiting lists... Steve Taylor, Auckland

THE FUN OF BEING MALE

In her desire to create and live in a testosterone-less (i.e. male-less) society, Laura Wilson overlooks the natural fact that testosterone doesn’t only blow up bridges, it conceives, designs and builds them in the first place. Can’t have one without the other. Wilson’s overly simplistic peaceful society would eventually end up like the story of the utopia that was so perfect that it became boring. To solve this problem, the populace decided to choose a few new-born infants each year and maltreat them, so that they would then become neurotic and grow up to be the creative artists the society so desperately needed… Far better that we keep on keeping on, trying this, trying that, inventing this, deconstructing that, dreaming, and making mistakes – and pray that we learn to distinguish between that which is worthy, and that which isn’t, quickly enough to make sure we don’t destroy ourselves in the process. (Mind you, on present evidence, I’m prepared to concede that that’s about a 50/50 bet). Bruce Morley, Auckland

THE MISERY OF NANNY STATE

As a person sitting in China, when I read on the Newstalk ZB website that the Ministry of Consumer Affairs had produced a pamphlet to advise people about how to avoid buying dangerous toys for Christmas, I had to laugh. What else can you do? Spokesman Tony Lee was quoted as giving an example where a toy might “have strings which present a danger to certain age groups”! The New Zealand Ministry of Consumer Affairs has spent who-knows-how-much money & time on a pam-

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

phlet to advise people on how to buy safe toys for kids at Christmas. Now I am worried that some really dumb people buy really dangerous toys for their kids who in turn blow themselves up, choke themselves, maim themselves for life, cut their appendages off and/or kill themselves between Christmas and New Year. I am therefore feeling very grateful to the Consumer Affairs folk who try to keep the population safe. It’s reassuring to know New Zealand kids are safe this Christmas. I don’t mind if people can’t think for themselves or are too stupid to choose age-appropriate toys for their kids. Not my problem. It’s not a big emotional thing for me if people like to read pamphlets such as the one above to guide them with their shopping for toys. Thinking for oneself is not fashionable in these enlightened times and so we pay vast sums of taxes to let other people do it for us. I reckon it’s a good deal. The highly progressive nanny state takes good care of us. Just sit back, relax and soak up the brilliance of being a slave to things that don’t actually make much sense. It won’t hurt a bit! I can get an emotional response to being dished out this decomposed stuff as “news”. I can also find a high horse about how dumb it is. “Dumb” is not a fashionable word. It can hurt people’s feelings. We are conditioned to nod politely and skim over the surface of issues, whilst feeling good about ourselves. Scratching the surface of issues is something that only the minority do in NZ. Thinking for ourselves does not fit into the Kiwi way like it used to. Provocative? You bet! Be provoked! Let rip with some ideas about what is happening to – and in – NZ. Good or bad – get an opinion and express it (minding that it is presented in a politically correct style though eh). I tried to find the above mentioned advice on the Consumer Affairs website but I don’t know if my searching skills have gone on a Christmas holiday or the ruddy thing isn’t on the web site yet but I could not find it. I will therefore not be able to buy toys for kids today. I’ll check again later in the day – maybe they put the press release out before they posted the item on the web site. Well that figures! I did find some fabulous stuff on the site though. Really useful stuff like “safety standards for pedal bicycles…”. Now that one really caught my eye as China could use some “sensible” advice on pedals for bikes. Some of the

pedals on the bikes up here look dodgy. I might print that pamphlet off and hand it out in the busy downtown streets. I could single-handedly create a mass-laughing phenomena. I might even make the news up here: “Foreign woman created disturbance downtown today when she handed out leaflets involving cycle pedals. The woman said when interviewed that she was trying to increase the safety levels of cycle pedals in China. Officials from the local police said that after a long speaking period with the woman and a nice cup of tea, they were not taking her seriously and had better things to do than talk to her. “Everyone knows when a pedal is wobbly” said the chief of police. “This foreign woman should just get on her bike and ride and not worry people about wobbly pedals.” “The police said they were not going to charge the woman because she had not done the pamphlet handing out correctly. “She just has a lot to learn about being sensible.” said the chief. “The Chinese people know better than to read this sort of silly thing.” He added that foreigners come up with all these bright ideas but few of them are practical. He said that no further action was needed and that he hoped the woman would put more thought into how she used paper in the future.” I guess the saying “no strings attached” takes on a whole new meaning when you read “because they have strings which present a danger to certain age groups.” I just want to throw my arms up in despair – what the heck is this rot! My more sensitive side is offended that this is being presented to me as news. My other side, the side that lives in the village of black humour, just can’t stop laughing. Living in China gives one a view from the outside of NZ that

is quite entertaining. We are far too serious, too careful about all this nonsense. So caught up in money-driven inanities and very quietly here, political correctness. We talk about our number-eight wire mentality, we are proud of this label and while I believe that this still exists, if we don’t stop the rot, that piece of number-eight wire is fast becoming just a piece of wire. Up here they don’t put huge guards around holes in the footpath (shocking!) and I’ve yet to see a person fall in these holes. Common sense and instinct is still fully in use. This simply involves looking where you are walking and should you fall in a hole, I guess you pick yourself up and carry on! A liberating and refreshing way to live. A motto for life? Please let’s get some grown up people to run NZ & let the others play with their safe toys. Meanwhile I’m stuck up here unable to shop for toys because I can’t find the advice on the web site! And when I do finally get my toy buying educational pamphlet, I’ve got holes in the footpath to contend with and no advisories on web sites educating me on how to deal with this. Where’s a good nanny when you need one eh! Yours gigglingly and despairingly Glenda Ross, China

THE ENEMY WITHIN

On 13 December 1941, Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States. Berthed at Pier 88 at West 48th Street, Manhattan, was the USS Lafayette, previously the Blue Riband pride of the French Line, known as the S.S. Normandie. The US Government had interned the ship to prevent it from falling into German hands on the collapse of France in 1940.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006,

Already in situ in the US were Nazi agents who had been admitted as ‘refugees’ from Nazi Germany. On the night of 8/9 February 1942, saboteurs torched the Normandie, which had been converted to a troop carrier to ferry troops to Britain. It was almost completely loaded with war supplies for a sole, fast run to Murmansk, Russia. The ship quickly burned along its entire length, capsized on to its port side and burned to the water line. The immediate spin (‘b/s’ in those days) emanating from Washington was “that a spark from a welder’s torch had caused the fire”. Yeah. Right. Along with that, saboteurs struck war production factories, aircraft factories and so on throughout the United States. Today, do we not face a similar situation with the avowed intent of fundamentalist Islam to destroy the West – ‘infidels’because we are not of the same religion? With that in mind, I’m sorry Ian but I cannot accept your view that Ahmed Zaoui should be freed into this country. Too much is involved and our government has a duty and obligation to protect us all. Britain is now working on legislation to deport even those who preach revolution and terrorism, and we need similar laws here. As an immigrant myself, and a NZ citizen, I obey our laws and others should do likewise. We should not be ruled by edicts from suited, pencil-twiddling paper shufflers who occupy the building on the East River, New York. We can make our own laws, thank you. We need to resile from our position as signatory to the UN Protocol on Refugees; it has lost its original humane intent and is being used to circumvent humanitarian motives. It simply is no longer working. Ahmed Zaoui should be deported back to the country he came from, and all the costs incurred by the NZ taxpayer should be

charged back to the airline that brought him here. He came from a Muslim country; he should fit in better there than here. Letting him stay will, of a certainty, open the floodgates. And any agreement “to behave” or face deportation would, of a certainty, re-open the legal aid floodgates. Eric Scotson, USMC (Ret.), Hamilton

OPEN LETTER TO OSAMA

This is an Open Letter to Osama bin Laden and Ayman AlZawahiri. (Wherever You Are). Aslam-o-Alaikum! Do you know what degree of shame, abomination, misery and wretchedness is being heaped on the innocent and peace-following Muslims all over the world because of this so-called and self styled Jihad of yours? Do you know how many innocent, unsullied people are being daily butchered as a result of this professed Jihad of yours? How many children are being orphaned and women being widowed precisely for the same reason? And do you know, killing one faultless human being is like killing the entire humanity. You must definitely be knowing that you will surely be held accountable for this all bloodshed. Will you, then, be able to face your God? I challenge, no! Then, why have you become an agent of some hidden hand. Why are you taking the responsibility of the murder of entire humanity to yourself on his behest? Why are you dragging the Muslims down? Why are you demeaning Islam by presenting it as a terrorist religion? Acting like this, which religion are you rendering a great service to? Are you raising the standard of Islam high or are you (if you reflect on it) causing the heads of the followers of the path of the righteous to bow down with shame infront of the entire humanity?

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Today most of the Muslims believe that you are not a true Muslim but planted by the enemies to destroy the image of Islam. For God’s sake, take recourse to sense, and announce a CEASEFIRE at once so the inhabitants of world may be introduced to that divine aspect of the Muslims at whose hands no soul suffer, whose words and actions bear no tinge of dichotomy, whose speech, when uttered, conveys to others the message of love and protection, whose thoughts, when thought, are devoted to the well being of others. Herein lies the true success, and herein lies the victory of the true religion of Allah. S.A.Rehman, (Peace Activist), Pakistan

DIVORCING HER PARENTS

In reference to your recent article on ‘The Girl Who Wants To Divorce Her Parents’. Is this story a matter of public interest? Of course, and much more! This story brings fear and anger to everyone who has children. Any parent could potentially become inflicted with a tragedy of a similar scale. As mothers, would we get the same treatment from public officials that the parents in this story received? Would we be told that the problem is the family, and not a 14 year old engaging in group sex activities with adults? Would we be labeled as ‘oppressive’ and ‘overbearing’ if we wanted to save our children from the clutches of people obviously trying to exploit them? What do other NZ parents think about this story? Is it acceptable for their underage children to engage in sex with adults? Should you as a parent keep silent? It has taken our politicians until now to realize that lowering the drinking age to 18 was a bad idea. Imagine what would happen if parents were denied the ability to protect our children from being exploited for sex. Helen Clark’s family policies have increasingly taken away our rights as parents to adequately protect our children and to lead them to lives where they can be proud of themselves. Ms Clark may wish to deny this accusation, yet she only has to read this article to comprehend some of the carnage that her careless policies have caused. So please, honourable Prime Minister, give us parents the opportunity to be proud of our children. Don’t let your lax, inhumane policies take our children away from us, because they are worth more to us than you might think. This request comes not only from one mother, but from many mothers. The extent of these feelings would be obvious in any opinion poll, so why does the Government think it knows things better? Kay Phillips, Betty Lockton, Sue Gollett, A Hillman, Vicki Jones, Karen O’Reilly, Carol Henderson, Rosalie Johnson, Jenny Chapman, Shirley W, Fran Thomas, Freda Li, Joy Hayes, P Burrows, Glenys H, C Stadler, Rolinka Fouquet, Kim Webber, M Bawden, R Mabille, Maria B, Michelle Louie, Anne Jarvie, Dallas George, Elaine McGonigal, Megan Harvey, S Schintei, Glenice Cartwright, E Swarbrink, M McSweeney, M Moore, G Moore, A Mittermeier, D Mountain, M Wium, C Wium, G Wium, A McCarthy, all of Auckland

THE GUY FAWKES DILEMMA

I was interested to read your article under the heading of “Double Speak: A Cracker Time” in your December 2005 issue. Although I agree with most of what you say with regard to Guy Fawkes day and not wrapping our kids in cotton wool, I was sur-

12, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

prised to see that you are obviously not aware that many firemen are actually volunteers. I presume you live in the city where indeed these people are paid for their services, however, in rural areas fire stations are staffed by volunteer labour. These dedicated individuals are able, fit men and women, often self-employed, who give their time freely to fight all manner of fires and attend all manner of emergency events. It is not unusual for them to have to close their businesses to attend to emergency call outs and economically it costs them dearly. Their volunteer labour is used for road accidents, civil defence events such as attending to the aftermath of tornados and assisting during flooding caused by heavy rain, a common occurrence rurally, to name just some. They’re called out often day and night with little recognition from the community in general. To add insult to injury these dedicated people are also required to fundraise for the purchase such appliances as ‘jaws of life’ needed to extract victims of car accidents from their vehicles. I’d like to draw readers’ attention to the sacrifices these people make. Jenni Tombleson, Editor, Doubtless Bay Times

CHEAP SHOTS

Your writer Laura Wilson needs to upskill herself when it comes to research. Her comments about Mormons (Dec 2005) is an example of where a few adulterated facts have resulted in unadulterated crap. The Mormons have not practiced polygamy for over 100 years and the church currently excommunicates members for polygamy. She introduces sinister and covert overtones when she writes of “group agendas” and “amassing harems of wives to do their bidding and breeding”. This is ugly and misleading journalism. I have been around members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (nicknamed Mormons) now for 30 years and I have yet to trip over a “group agenda” nor fall into a gaggle, giggle, flock, herd, pack, or swarm of multiple wives. Maybe Laura Wilson has ulterior motives and group agendas herself in criticizing “the Mormons”. The fundamentalists among the charismatic Christian movement have long been critical of the Mormon Church. We are left to ask the question. At whose bidding does Laura write? I would be equally critical if such “mischief” was written about the Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Bahai or others. How refreshing it would be to write about the multi millions annually the Mormons give to charity and disaster relief worldwide, their promotion of marriage and family, their unequivocal stand on virtue, integrity and fidelity within relationships and their focus on the ennobling attributes of the Gospel of Christ. I subscribe to this very readable magazine therefore I hope I am only temporarily disappointed at this editorial lapse in criticizing a group I classify as contributors to our communities not takers. Tony McKenna, Hamilton

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: We’re squeezed for space with our new design layout, and as Investigate has received a huge mailbag this issue, particularly on ID, they’ll be printed next month

SIMPLY DEVINE

MIRANDA DEVINE Why boys are failing at school

ne glance at the latest HSC honour roll tells you that girls are still mightily outperforming boys, despite protestations of professors that it ain’t so. The smiling faces in the photographs that Sydney newspapers ran of the state’s top students were exclusively female. Twice as many girls (76) as boys (38) were among the 114 students proclaimed dux of their courses. Girls topped science subjects, including chemistry and physics, once considered a male domain. A couple of generations of feminism appears to have done the trick. But why did it have to be at the expense of boys? The warning bells about “A preschool near Newcastle the crisis in boys’ education have been clanging has decided to ban superhero for more than a decade. A play this year because of fears 2002 Senate inquiry found boys were falling it is making the children too that behind girls at an alarming aggressive. Since it is almost rate, with serious problems exclusively little boys who play in literacy and achievement levels leading to increased at Spider-Man and Batman, the risk of suicide, alienation Raymond Terrace Early Education and antisocial behaviour. for all the talk, little has Centre edict is a direct hit Yet changed. on boys” Adolescent psychiatrist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg says many boys regard school as “a psychological wasteland where they don’t feel safe, valued or listened to”. Now the punishment for being a boy is starting younger than ever. A preschool near Newcastle has decided to ban superhero play this year because of fears it is making the children too aggressive. Since it is almost exclusively little boys who play at Spider-Man and Batman, the Raymond Terrace Early Education Centre edict is a direct hit on boys. Batman capes, Spider-Man dolls and Ninja Turtle bags will not be tolerated, but “gentler”, girly characters such as Nemo or Elmo are still acceptable. “You may as well just cut off their balls,” said one father of sons. For a lot of boys, dramatic superhero play is an important part of their development. It is a way to feel power-

14, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

ful, to work out concepts of good and bad and learn to harness their violent impulses. It is a wondrous thing to observe, and the idea of banning it is inhuman. “What agenda is being pursued here? Is it feminism gone mad?” asks Carr-Gregg. “I would expect some boys to feel confused [about the ban]. It would introduce an element of doubt, possibly induce some shame around something that should be a perfectly normal boy thing. “Boys growing up without a male role model [will especially get] the message that the portrayal of masculinity is taboo.” The feminisation of education is not the inevitable consequence of having female teachers. In my experience, some of the best teachers of boys are women, many with sons of their own. But if you have ever seen a classroom of boys fidgeting and jiggling like baboons because they can’t bear to sit still a moment longer while their female classmates sit serenely beside them, you will know the challenges. To some teachers, young boys are a smelly nuisance to be suspended and given detention at lunchtime, which only exacerbates the problem. Regardless of the social benefits of coeducational schools, who can blame parents for whisking their boys off to single-sex education if at all possible? Carr-Gregg, who sat for two years on a Federal Government advisory committee to improve boys’ education, despairs at the lack of progress in schools as he travels around the country. Simple suggestions of the committee, such as removing fluorescent lighting from classrooms because it sparks the instinctive “fight or flight” response, particularly in boys, have been ignored. So has the suggestion that cushioned seats replace hard plastic ones, because boys have bony bottoms and find it hard to sit still for long without padding. Other recommendations included more explicitly structured learning with quizzes, rewards and praise. Instead, from the minute they enter the door of a learning institution, boys are made to feel ashamed and “naughty” about being themselves. The result is another generation of alienated, everangrier young men, and the sort of unharnessed testosterone-fuelled behaviour Sydney has been reeling from in recent times.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 15

STRAIGHT TALK

MARK STEYN It’s the demography, stupid

ost people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands – probably – just as in Istanbul there’s still a building called St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But it’s not a cathedral; it’s merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization “As fertility shrivels, societies get is on balance better than alternatives is to figure older – and Japan and much of the out a way to save at least Europe are set to get older than some parts of the West. One obstacle to doing any functioning societies have that is that, in the typical ever been. And we know what election campaign in your comes after old age” advanced industrial democracy, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much all parties in the rest of the West are largely about what one would call the secondary impulses of society – government health care, government day care (which Canada’s thinking of introducing), government paternity leave (which Britain’s just introduced). We’ve prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national defense, family, faith and, most basic of all, reproductive activity – ”Go forth and multiply,” because if you don’t you won’t be able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like cradle-to-grave welfare. Americans sometimes don’t understand how far gone most of the rest of the developed world is down this path: In the Canadian and most Continental cabinets, the defense ministry is somewhere an ambitious politician passes through on his way up to important jobs like the health department. I don’t think Don Rumsfeld would regard it as a promotion if he were moved to Health and Human Services. The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain

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it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion. The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths – or, at any rate, virtues – and that’s why they’re proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam. Speaking of which, if we are at war – and half the American people and significantly higher percentages in Britain, Canada and Europe don’t accept that proposition – than what exactly is the war about? We know it’s not really a “war on terror.” Nor is it, at heart, a war against Islam, or even “radical Islam.” The Muslim faith, whatever its merits for the believers, is a problematic business for the rest of us. There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it’s easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in “Palestine,” Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali. Like the environmentalists, these guys think globally but act locally. Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it’s not what this thing’s about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It’s not the HIV that kills you, it’s the pneumonia you get when your body’s too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose – as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there’s an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default That’s what the war’s about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder” – as can be seen throughout much of “the Western world” right now. The progressive agenda – lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb. Take multiculturalism. The great thing

NZ Army, 2025? Image courtesy BBC

about multiculturalism is that it doesn’t involve knowing anything about other cultures – the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It’s fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don’t want to live in anything but an advanced Western society. Yet, insofar as “globalization” is a threat, the real danger is precisely the opposite. That’s the way to look at Islamism: We fret about McDonald’s and Disney, but the big globalization success story is the way the Saudis have taken what was 80 years ago a severe but obscure and unimportant strain of Islam practiced by Bedouins of no fixed abode and successfully exported it to the heart of Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Manchester, Buffalo . . . What’s the better bet? A globalization that exports cheeseburgers and pop songs or a globalization that exports the fiercest aspects of its culture? When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it’s hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they’re running out a lot faster than the oil is. “Replacement” fertility rate – i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller – is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common? Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you’ll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada’s fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That’s to say, Spain’s population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy’s population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria’s by 36%, Estonia’s

by 52%. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer Europeans. As fertility shrivels, societies get older – and Japan and much of Europe are set to get older than any functioning societies have ever been. And we know what comes after old age. These countries are going out of business – unless they can find the will to change their ways. Is that likely? I don’t think so. The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims. In most circumstances, it would be considered appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual “hate crime” by scaremongering about a purely hypothetical one. Needless to say, there is no campaign of Islamophobic hate crimes. If anything, the West is awash in an epidemic of selfhate crimes. A commenter on Tim Blair’s Web site in Australia summed it up in a note-perfect parody of a Guardian headline: “Muslim Community Leaders Warn of Backlash from Tomorrow Morning’s Terrorist Attack.” Those community leaders have the measure of us. The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens – from terrorism to tsunamis – can be understood only as deriving from the perniciousness of Western civilization. As Jean-Francois Revel wrote, “Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.” There is, by the way, is the one point of similarity between the jihad and conventional terrorist movements like the IRA or ETA. Terror groups persist because of a lack of confidence on the part of their targets: The IRA, for example, calculated correctly that the British had the capability to smash them totally but not the will. So they knew that while they could never win militarily, they also could never be defeated. The Islamists have figured similarly. The only difference is that most terrorist wars are highly localized. We now have the first truly global terrorist insurgency because the Islamists view the whole world the way the IRA view the bogs of Fermanagh: They want it, and they’ve calculated that our entire civilization lacks the will to see them off.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 17

EYES RIGHT

RICHARD PROSSER Crime and Punishment

guyen Tuong Van went to his death recently, courtesy of the Singaporean justice system. He died, according to one report, “courageously”, clutching a rosary. Beg pardon? The man was a convicted drug trafficker, he was handcuffed and hooded, and most likely mildly sedated, as he went to the gallows. It’s not like he had any say in the matter, other than deciding, some three years ago, to commit the crime in the first place. Calling his demeanor “courageous” is bizarre, as is the reference, in some sort of attempt at glorification, to his faith; perhaps as bizarre as the entire concept of putting people to death as a punishment. I mean what are we “The seriousness of crime, and trying to achieve here? help but be bafthe severity of punishment, is a fledI can’t by supposedly ratiorelative matter. If Kenneth Boyd nal man’s continued use of had committed his two murders capital punishment as the ultimate retaliation against in New Zealand, he’d be being those who transgress our released from his seventeen laws. I’m not saying that I oppose it necessarily, or years in jail right about now, his that there are not people “debt to society” paid off” who deserve to be put to death; but I wonder, in this day and age, if we understand quite why we execute some of those who commit certain crimes. Nguyen’s case, or rather its conclusion, raises many questions, some of which can be answered very simply, and some not at all. Does his death make the world a safer place for others? Maybe; the State of Singapore contends that it will, and in legal terms, such is their prerogative. Will it act as a deterrent to Nguyen not to do it again? Well, yes, in a macabre academic sense; he most certainly won’t traffic drugs through Singapore again – but does that mean that he’s learned his lesson? Hmm. I guess there may come a time when each of us gets to ask him that ourselves; unfortunately, by then, none of us will be in any position to apply any benefit from what we may learn from the answer, to the questions posed by capital punishment in the here and now. Will it act as a deterrent to others? Almost certainly not. Any deterrent, in essence, is only effective against rational people; those who can see the consequences of their actions,

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weigh the odds, and make an informed decision. But the kinds of crimes for which the death penalty is applied, are committed by people who are not rational, or at least, temporarily not in a rational state of mind. By definition, deterrence in such cases simply cannot work. Think about it; do rational folk, in their normal way of being, go about committing murders and the like? Was it fair? Yes, I think so, at least in one sense – but in another, probably not. Nguyen knew the odds. Singapore makes no secret of the fact that it will, and does, hang drug traffickers. You pays your money and you takes your chances. He lost. That may be harsh, but it’s not unfair. On the other hand, he wasn’t bringing drugs into Singapore. He was in transit between Cambodia and Australia. The heroin which Nguyen was carrying was never going to contribute to social malaise in Singapore and, as such, it could be argued that for the Singaporeans to hang him was a little unfair. Then again, he knew their laws, and he chose to break them. Round and round in circles we go. So much for drug trafficking; but why else do we kill people? For murder, mostly, and in some jurisdictions, for certain types of sex crimes. And then there’s treason, which is a subject in itself. Gut reaction for many people, this writer included, is that murderers, rapists, and child molesters, should be strung up. But a deep breath later finds me still pondering two questions. The first is the simple matter of guilt. I categorically don’t believe that our justice system, or anyone else’s for that matter, has yet the degree of scientific or ethical understanding to determine, in certain cases, guilt or innocence, to the extent necessary to justify taking a life. Sorry, but that’s a bottom line for me. Then again, there are cases wherein guilt is unquestioned. In these cases, I find myself wondering – “why are we doing this?” Kenneth Boyd gained the dubious distinction of becoming, in December, the 1000th prisoner to be executed in the United States since the death penalty was restored in 1976. There were no balloons or streamers in the North Carolina execution chamber to mark the milestone, nor did Governor Mike Easley take a smiling handshake photo op with Boyd before he was strapped to a table and remotely injected with poison. In all honesty, I don’t believe the whole process would have been any

more surreal if he had. Kenneth Boyd was a double murderer. He killed his wife and his father-in-law, and did so in front of two of his children. His guilt was never in doubt. And so, this week, after an exhaustive legal process which has been running since Boyd’s conviction and sentence 17 years ago, North Carolina ended his life. I have to admit that I have little stomach for the concept of lethal injection. In my view this clinical, precise, disconnected form of execution is cowardly and dishonest. If we’re going to kill people, we should at least have the balls to shoot them, or chop their heads off, or, as Singapore does, hang ‘em. But what’s it achieved? Punishment? Yes, but without the possibility of rehabilitation. Deterrence? No. Murders will continue in human society for as long as humans shall exist. Revenge? Probably; but what does this say about us? Does it make us any better than the criminals against whom we seek vengeance? I would say not; and that being the case, do we really have sufficient moral justification for taking away a person’s life? Then again, what else do we do with such people? Lock them up forever, at a cost of many tens of thousands of dollars per year, allowing for the possibility of redemption, but never it’s expression in free society? Bullets are cheap by comparison, and so are ropes and chemicals. Whatever we do won’t bring back the victims of murder, and nor can children be un-raped. But so long as people are in prison, and alive, they may have the opportunity to suffer, and to learn remorse, and to see the error of their ways. And the possibility also exists that those who have been wrongly convicted may be exonerated through advancing technology. More than 100 condemned prisoners have been released from Death Row in the United States over the past ten years, as improvements in DNA and other forensic methodologies have overturned their original convictions. Castrating rapists carries the same risks as executing murderers. What if we get it wrong? Earlier this year, four men were jailed by a court in Wellington, for an alleged gang-rape which occurred in Tauranga 16 years ago. This in itself is a travesty of justice, not because of the rights or wrongs of the case, but because of the complete and utter lack of any tangible evidence. One person’s word against another’s, concerning events of a decade-anda-half ago, with no corroborating evidence, cannot by definition be proved or disproved. These men should not be in jail. Whether they did what they were accused of, or not, is not the issue. Let’s say we whip their ‘nads off, as a good many people say we should do with convicted rapists; but what if, in another ten years, their accuser turns around and says she made it all up? What then? The seriousness of crime, and the severity of punishment, is a relative matter. If Kenneth Boyd had committed his two murders in New Zealand, he’d be being released from his seventeen years in jail right about now, his “debt to society” paid off. If Nguyen Tuong Van had trafficked a pound of heroin through Christchurch Airport instead of Changi, he’d only be facing a few years on the inside, rather than eternity on the other side. Would their crimes have been any different? No, but their punishment certainly would. So how do we ensure that such punishment fits the crime in question? An eye for an eye is simple in some cases, but not in others. Take a man’s eye, and he should be entitled to one of yours, so long as it is surgically feasible, and he doesn’t mind

“An eye for an eye is simple in some cases, but not in others. Take a man’s eye, and he should be entitled to one of yours, so long as it is surgically feasible, and he doesn’t mind a lifetime of antirejection drugs. But a life for a life? I think that if we are going to go down that road, we should be honest about the fact that we are doing it because we can, and not for any other reason”

a lifetime of anti-rejection drugs. But a life for a life? I think that if we are going to go down that road, we should be honest about the fact that we are doing it because we can, and not for any other reason. Neither punishment without rehabilitation, nor ineffective deterrence, nor vengeance, are complete or honest arguments. I do think that treason should still be a capital crime. Whether it occurs in wartime or in peacetime, the deliberate betrayal of the vital or sovereign interests of one’s own liege society or nation, to an outside force or aggressor, for reasons of personal ideology or gain, should, I believe, be rewarded with death. I believe to this day that those responsible for the sale of New Zealand’s state assets should be candidates for such a charge, and treated accordingly; provided, of course, that as with murder, rape, or any other hideous transgression of the natural rules of acceptable behaviour, such charges can be adequately proven beyond any reasonable doubt. And there are others, within the financial world, parts of the food industry, and elements of Government and the machinery of the State, who are guilt of usury, mass poisoning, propagandist brainwashing, and the deliberate usurpation of democratic freedoms, who equally should swing from a rope; but under our bizarrely misaligned social constructs, such people are more likely to be lauded for their efforts, than brought before the courts. Crimes against the person or property may be atoned somewhat by restorative effort on the part of the perpetrator, and in this, the State judicial system may play a valuable role as Banker; compensating the victims of crime for their loss, and sequestrating the liberty and labour of the offender until such compensation is repaid. But does killing people to make atonement for acts of murder – or other crimes – which they themselves have committed, really achieve anything of what we like to think it might? In all honesty, I don’t believe so. And because we can find ways of justifying the use of the death penalty in certain cases, so it follows that we have the ability to choose not to use it in others.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 19

DOUBLE SPEAK

IAN WISHART

They plucked Helen’s name out of a hat

ew of us could have failed to notice the silly season news stories over the Christmas break, and one of the silliest had to be the idea of NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark as the new Secretary-General of the United Nations. Don’t get me wrong, we all know Helen has been angling for the UN’s top job ever since she lost her milk teeth, and her political track record reveals she’s the ultimate world-government can-do chick, a sort of “Lara Croft – Crypt Sister”, able to climb tall mountains at a single bound, willing to call the President of the USA a buffoon in an ever-so-diplomatic way, and fond of slinging off at magazines that dare to question her “You think the West has troubles administration. We’ve seen what Helen with the radical Islamic movement can do for New Zealand. now, just wait until a Clark-led UN Imagine what she could at the United tries to get the House of Saud to achieve Nations! Well, that’s the approve civil unions in Mecca” gist of the news stories in early January, in the wake of a news release from an international women’s lobby group, EqualityNow.org, which released a list of potential replacements for Kofi Annan. The surprise is that it’s taken so long for the news to surface here – the list was released way back in November. Maybe the PM’s spinmeisters thought it would get a bit more coverage as a diversion from the annual bevy of roadtoll stories. Can you imagine Clark and Heather Simpson and a bunch of other Rainbow Labour ring-ins at the helm of the UN? You think the West has troubles with the radical Islamic movement now, just wait until a Clarkled UN tries to get the House of Saud to approve civil unions in Mecca. But seriously, the idea of Clark at the UN would have warranted more attention, had EqualityNow’s Jessica Neuwirth not confessed to Investigate that they hadn’t compiled their list of applicants on the basis of merit, but more a process of putting names in a hat. “We haven’t spoken to people, to these women. I mean, it’s really meant to be a sampling. Nine years ago we threw out six names, now we’ve thrown out

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18 names, but there are hundreds of names. How we went about it was somewhat systematic. We’re basically looking for heads of state, former heads of state, foreign ministers and under-secretaries-general, those are the three starting points. “We’re not really singling anyone out in particular, even these 18 as a group. I think quite a number of them have no interest in serving as UN SecretaryGeneral.” Which, ironically, boosts Clark’s chances because everyone knows the job beckonses to her likes a Ring to Gollum. “Let me ask you a question,” cuts in EqualityNow’s Jessica Neuwirth during our interview. “Has Helen Clark actually expressed any interested in the position?” It’s hard not to roll all over the floor, laughing. Technically, I explain gently, the answer is ‘No’. But there’s a general belief NZ’s illustrious leader would crawl over broken glass embedded in hot coals to have a chance at the role. Even so, “Precioussss” may remain well outside Clark’s grasp. “The idea is to provoke decision makers to look around,” says Neuwirth, “and they may say ‘we don’t like any of these 18 women, but maybe there’s some other woman’, and that’s the point of the mechanism.” In other words, they’re using Helen Clark like a scarecrow – a reminder to voters on the security council that if they don’t get their act together and choose wisely, they might end up with Gollum rather than Aragorn after all. Green MP Sue Kedgley has already pointed out that for Clark to attain leadership of the UN she has to avoid an American veto, as well as securing the support of the rest of the council members. Nor is Clark part of the “buzz” that’s building over the next Kofi. Her name just isn’t even being mentioned. Instead, once again, most of the attention is again on men. EqualityNow’s main gripe is that women aren’t getting a fair shake at the headquarters of one-world government. And on paper, Clark is ideally placed to make a tilt. She needs to quit as Labour leader on a high, and give the party time to prepare for the next election under a new leader. She wants the job. This could be her only shot. Will it happen? Not a show.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 21

LINE ONE

CHRIS CARTER Ship of fools

s I remember from a somewhat incomplete education, a Bollard is a short, stumpy device that is mainly utilized as a means to tie up an inactive ship to an immovable object. That the Reserve Bank has in recent times been re-modeled pretty much to mirror the role of a cast iron bollard there can now be little doubt: with total inflexibility of either thought or purpose, this previously commercially friendly even slightly entrepreneurial organization has now swung wildly through 180 degrees with the apparent aim of buggering the country up completely. “Jesus” quoth one of “Thing is, for just how much longer my business acquaintances on the eve of can we afford to have our children’s Allan Bollard’s latfutures being determined by people est attempt to quieten our somewhat who quite plainly have absolutely no down rampant local econoidea what they are doing” my by means of applied usury, a method that all but the clinically insane are well aware simply attracts overseas financial speculation to our shores, guaranteeing a sky high Kiwi dollar that in its turn destroys our export orders and, Viagra-like, stiffens our desire to spend up large on imported goodies. Incidentally, my business acquaintance, strangely enough, is of quite a Christian persuasion and it was therefore not his desire to blaspheme, but rather, to call upon the aforementioned deity to revisit the temple and to cast out the usurers and the moneylenders that quite clearly, having recently been released from a fiscal lunatic asylum, have recently taken up residence at the Reserve Bank. But let us return for a moment to the wharf where, firmly roped to the Bollard, now lies the almost financially-bereft good ship Aotearoa, its crew slowly being decimated by continual desertions to the flash Aussie line that still is powering its way across world trade routes apparently quite happy to be down the gurgler sports-wise as long as they are making plenty in the shells and rocks department. I wonder how many of you have noticed the new crew members for the MV Aotearoa that our now panicking leadership has been importing to replace our ever dimin-

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ishing native crew? Well, put it this way, if you’d like to meet and greet some of these recent arrivals a reasonable grounding in Hindi, Mandarin, Filipino, Korean, Farsi, perhaps Arabic, you will certainly find most helpful. Oh the joys of multi-culturalism, mind you is it still P.C. to ask where the once proud and dominant New Zealand Culture fits into all of this, which I suppose on reflection is a dumb question really, in that it’s still there, it’s just that it’s moved to the Gold Coast. But I digress from the ritual rogering that the Reserve Bank is currently inflicting on what remains of our semiindigenous population as, by the application of fiscal foolhardiness not often seen outside of a pokey parlour, the crystal ball inspired fiddling with our nation’s economy by these wretches, combined of course with a wild eyed and plainly crazy Government spending billions on daft schemes and even sillier ideological whimsy, that the eventual economic sinking of our collective futures is now simply a matter of when! And when you come to think about it isn’t this all a crying shame especially when you consider the considerable blessings we enjoy in this delightful little country, that largely due to us allowing complete incompetents to mismanage what should be a fair sized gold mine, we are in immediate danger of ending up with little more than an imminent visit from an international bailiff. I seriously wonder on occasions what planet most of us are on around election time, in that, party politics completely aside, we somehow manage to elect into positions of considerable power a majority of political hopefuls, who outside of parliament would have the greatest difficulty in finding employment as a dung beetle. Yet, as every three years passes by we do it again...sometimes the faces change, but regrettably the lack of ability to forwardplan, or to apparently count past ten does not. And, so, we meander down this path towards eventual financial oblivion led by a scrofulous crew of financial morons with very few discernable talents excepting perhaps an ability to outspin a spider when it comes to telling the truth as to what’s actually at the end of this path. Actually, when you come to think about it there really could be put together quite a simple method for the selection of likely candidates who might, should they be successful at election time, end up being in charge of our fiscal future, or for that matter any of the more important Ministries of State.

Consider this, “a large corporation requires a new CEO and several senior executives to take over the running of the said corporation…top salary package perks and endless opportunities for fiddle.” OK, how are the sheep sorted from the goats in the real world? Well, pretty easy. A consultancy company puts each candidate through a rigorous system of checks, their resumés are minutely examined, they may well be psychologically profiled. The end result being that those who finally survive this mini ordeal and end up on the short list of people to be seriously considered are talented, clever and accomplished and regardless of who ends up actually getting the position as CEO we at least know they have the brains to do it. Then we have the system currently in vogue…Just gaze upon it and weep...what a collection of abject tossers, completely ignorant, in the main, of even the sum total of two plus two, and yet down in Wellington these mathematically challenged morons sit, demonstrating little talent in matters monetary apart from an inbuilt ability to pick the public’s pockets and to waste in its entirety the taxes that they have so gathered. A salient economic plan for the future? These political hacks and hackettes only ever plan for the next election, long term economics is a completely foreign concept to someone who was a union official, lawyer, school teacher, militant feminist, kindy teacher before being let loose in Parliament. And brother, when it comes to handling money, ‘loose’ most certainly is the word. It also happens to be a word that best describes our so called immigration policies which over the last ten or so years have seen Auckland, in particular, being turned from NZ’s premier city, into little more than a gathering place for central Asians who have arrived in such uncontrolled numbers that the chances of eventual assimilation into the local cultural scene is minimal at best, and a recipe for future division and inevitable unpleasantness, all of this has also been brought about by parliamentarians with a view to the future probably shared by that of a mayfly. And it might well be pointed out that this same lack of foresight has led to all sorts of other problems recently erupting in France and yes, to our Aussie mates over there in Sydney, where similar poorly planned immigration policies, combined with PC-inspired excuse making and therefore the kid-glove treatment of so called ethnic minorities who play up, has inevitably led to resentment and worse, by the long time residents, leading to riots that to anyone with a half a brain just knew were bound to occur. Anyway, back to our current financial woes and the distinct chance that things may very well get a whole lot worse before they get better. Thing is, for just how much longer can we afford to have our children’s futures being determined by people who quite plainly have absolutely no idea what they are doing. Put it this way, in a country that still can count amongst its population some very clever and talented people, is there no way that we cannot ditch the current economic incompetents and replace them with say a local version of Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew? With planning and a vision of the future he could turn our nation into the economic power house that tiny Singapore achieved in around the same time frame as NZ went from being one of the wealthiest countries in the OECD to one fast becoming one of the poorest. Hell, it can be done, we’re a smart people, we work pretty hard, we’ve outstanding natural resources; it should be just a doddle…

“Perhaps indeed the time for revolution has finally arrived here in Godzone, not one based on any sort of nastiness but one that simply involves a complete change of direction in the way that we allow ourselves to be governed”

Perhaps indeed the time for revolution has finally arrived here in Godzone, not one based on any sort of nastiness but one that simply involves a complete change of direction in the way that we allow ourselves to be governed. One thing’s for sure, if we leave our country in the hands of the incumbent dimwits for very much longer, and make absolutely no effort at all, as a people, to recognize and fix what we all know to be wrong, then, as the last of us to leave pauses to turn out the lights, we will know that we have no one to blame but ourselves, there being, just no one else left, to blame..

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 23

TOUGH QUESTIONS

IAN WISHART Archaeology and the Bible

n the lead-up to Christmas, few people would have noticed a geekish but stunningly important scientific discovery that lends further weight to the Bible’s version of history. And no, I’m not talking about the show-pony trial in Pennsylvania where a secular humanist judge let his own personal theology influence his verdict on Intelligent Design. Instead, the piece of news I’m referring to is yet another brick in the increasingly solid wall of biblical archaeology – discoveries by scientists that prove the Bible was right all along. In this case, the news relates to a debate featured several years ago in this magazine’s pages: whether or not ancient Israel was sophisticated enough for a Davidic/Solomonic kingdom to really exist. Briefly recapping, “The latest discoveries are yet more minimalists led by proof that the Old Testament has archaeologists like Dr been proven historically accurate in Israel Finkelstein argue the Old Testament everything capable of verification that is largely fiction, because after all these centuries” the Jews were simple, uneducated nomadic herdsmen at the times when King Solomon allegedly reigned, around 900BC. Finkelstein and others claim the Old Testament was not written by Moses and the Prophets, because Israel had no written language until 600BC or even later, and that the authors of the Bible simply made stories up about past events to create a fictitious history and keep their followers motivated. Finkelstein’s claims have been seized on by liberal theologians like New Zealand’s Lloyd Geering to bolster their own arguments about the “myth” of the Old Testament, and that Christianity is itself untrue because we “know” the OT on which Christianity is based has been proven wrong. Great line of reasoning – except for the inconvenient fact that it’s a load of old cobblers. And just before Christmas, a very important and equally inconvenient fact hit the headlines in international academia – the discovery that the world’s oldest version of the modern alphabet had been found during an archaeological dig in Israel. Archaeologist Ron Tappy reported that a stone bowl, dating to the 10th century BC and carrying legible alphabet symbols, had been found by one of his research

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team at a remote location in the ancient kingdom of Judah, south of Jerusalem. The inscription was discovered by chance, on the last day of the dig, when a piece that had already been examined and discarded as being of major significance was touched by the early morning sun as it lay in the dirt, and shadows formed in the grooves of letters, catching the eye of a nearby archaeologist. As a fellow archaeologist told reporters, if there’s now proof of literacy in tiny villages during the time of Solomon, imagine the kind of literacy that must have existed in Jerusalem itself. Far from being a bunch of peasant goatherds, the discovery appears to prove that a highly sophisticated and literate society must indeed have existed in ancient Israel. Just as the Bible says it did. Naturally, such a discovery in the Middle East has political ramifications. Proof of an ancient Jewish empire of Biblical scope lends more weight to Israel being a spiritual homeland for the Jews, and lessens the spiritual claim of Palestinian Arabs, whose presence in the region came around the time of the Muslim conquests in the seventh century AD, about 1,700 years after Solomon’s time. Two other discoveries announced just before Christmas add more weight to the Bible as well. One is the discovery of a massive building that appears to be King David’s palace. Initially archaeologists thought it was just an upmarket dwelling house, until they kept finding room after room and ornate structure. It is, says one, absolutely “huge”. This, again, is further proof that a substantially wealthy kingdom, rather than a few peasants in tents, existed. The other development is an inscription found at a dig on the site of the original Philistine town of Gath that appears to bear the name of “Goliath”. The Bible records that Goliath came from Gath, and the inscription has been dated to the correct time period (the time of David). More significantly from a faith perspective, however, the latest discoveries are yet more proof that the Old Testament has been proven historically accurate in everything capable of verification after all these centuries. There is not one single historical detail in the Bible that has been categorically proven incorrect, and hundreds of details previously thought erroneous have now, like the latest discovery, established the accuracy of the Bible after all.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM,September February 2005, 2006, 25

The PM The Tycoon The DirtY Money & The Tax Haven Just what was Helen Clark thinking?

What have the British Virgin Islands, one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest money-laundering scandals, alleged fr aud involving a Kiwi shipping tycoon and New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark got in common? IAN WISHART has a TROPICAL tale of greed, corruption and big donations to the Labour Party

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COVER STORY

magine the irony. You’re a self-titled “popular and competent” Prime Minister, “a victim of my own success”. You have a reputation as a control freak, for attention to the kind of details that would sink lesser mortals than yourself. You know what your enemies are thinking before they even do, and you have a well-oiled publicity and protection team whose 24/7 job it is to keep your nose clear of even the slightest whiff of scandal. So imagine your surprise when you read in a national magazine that the Labour Party’s largest campaign donations at the last election came from a man whose company is the exclusive freight handling agent in Australasia for one of the world’s largest tobacco companies. It’s an embarrassing revelation for Prime Minister Helen Clark, who pioneered New Zealand’s smokefree legislation and

who – ironically – personally arranged for the businessman to become a financial friend of Labour. Even so, it’s not the only embarrassment surrounding ex-pat billionaire Owen Glenn’s crucial $500,000 donations to Labour’s touch and go reelection campaign last year. Investigate has also discovered the shipping magnate and his company were forced to pay around NZ$1.5 million to the US Government in a 1999 out-of-court settlement to avoid prosecution for fraud. But wait, as the TV commercial hucksters might say, there’s more! Investigate has also discovered a director of Glenn’s New Zealand company Vanguard Logistics is embroiled in a massive $20 million banking collapse and fraud investigation involving a separate company in the Caribbean – potentially staring down the barrel of a prosecution. Adding extra salt to the story, one of the director’s alleged associates teamed up with a murderer and an armed robber in a separate banking scandal to stage what the US Department of Justice is calling “the largest non-drugrelated money-laundering operation ever brought to justice”. So again, did Labour do any background research on its single largest campaign donor, or did the party just take the money and hope? The story of Owen Glenn’s involvement in bringing Labour back to power is an interesting one. Born in India 66 years ago, his parents returned to England soon after, before emigrating to New Zealand when Glenn was six. According to a brief biography in the NZ Herald last year, he attended Auckland’s Mt Roskill Grammar before leaving at 15, in 1955, to join Tasman Empire Airways Ltd, or TEAL, the forerunner of Air New Zealand, as a cargo handler. He left the country in 1966 to seek his fortune, and hasn’t returned to live since. He is listed, variously, as a resident of Australia and the United States. But from relatively obscure beginnings, Owen Glenn shot to comparative fame in New Zealand early last year, when he donated what is believed to be one of the largest sums of money ever in this country to a philanthropic cause: $7.5 million to the University of Auckland School of Business. In return for this generosity, the University has agreed to name its new building, currently under construction, “The Owen G. Glenn Building”. Glenn has also donated $500,000 towards establishing a marine research chair at the marine centre at Leigh, north of Auckland, and he is a familiar face on his website making various charitable donations, whether to the restoration of Australia’s historic heritage fleet of sailing vessels, or simply funding a cheerleading team in California, where he lives. Glenn was photographed with Helen Clark at a ceremony at the University of Auckland marking the occasion of his big donation, but at that time – February last year – no one else knew that Glenn was also bankrolling the Labour Party to ensure Helen Clark returned to power. As the story goes, Clark had bumped into Glenn at a Tourism New Zealand promotional dinner in Sydney on July 8, 2004. “Seriously wealthy ex-pat Owen Glenn,” wrote the Herald’s Gareth Vaughan, “[who] is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and lives in Sydney – told Prime Minister Helen Clark he was willing to give money to Labour when the two met at a tourism dinner in Sydney. But when Clark got home…bugger, she could not remember his name.” Labour Party president Mike Williams was about to go trawling through a list of the guests invited by Tourism NZ to INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 27

Prime Minister Helen Clark shakes hands with Owen Glenn (wearing the cloak) at the University of Auckland in February last year. By this time, Glenn had paid $400,000 to Labour’s campaign accounts since first meeting Clark the previous July

Photo: OTS website

see if any of the names rang a bell with Clark, but Glenn saved them the trouble, emailing the Prime Minister directly. What followed were a series of massive payments, deposited into Labour’s bank account on the ninth of each month from November, 2004, through to March, 2005. One hundred thousand dollars a month, half a million dollars in total. The last time Labour is believed to have been given that much money by a single donor was back in the late 80’s, when merchant bankers, philanthropists and tax haven entrepreneurs Michael Fay and David Richwhite were ruling the political roost. When news of the latest donations broke in June last year, Owen Glenn told the Herald he was a big fan of Clark’s governing style, and felt she “stacked up well” on the international stage. “I particularly like her stance on seeking free-trade agreements with China and the United States,” he said. So who exactly is Owen Glenn, and why would an NZ free trade deal with China and the US prompt him to become Labour’s biggest benefactor? Well, Glenn is now a shipping magnate, and free trade deals mean much more freight and more business for his global empire. Especially as he’s managed to obtain a sought after “Class A” trading licence to do business in China. But although he’s described as a “shipping magnate”, it is a little more complex than that. You see, apart from owning a 112ft motor yacht, Ubiquitous, Glenn is a shipping tycoon who doesn’t own any ships. His empire is what is known in the industry as a “non-vessel operating common carrier” – essentially, he buys space on other people’s ships or aircraft to ship freight for his customers. He’s a middleman. Although the National Business Review Rich List estimates Glenn’s wealth at $1.1 billion, we’ve been unable to verify that and it may well be less. According to a report on SealinkUSA’s website last year, Glenn’s global empire is turning over only NZ$500 million a year. But that’s turnover, not profit. As you’ll see from the figures below, it’s hard to see where Glenn is making a profit. Investigate has managed to track at least ten companies ultimately controlled by Glenn and registered in New Zealand, 28, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

although four of them have been struck off, including two on New Year’s Eve just passed: Direct Container Line (NZ) Ltd, and AFS Freight Management NZ Limited. The last recorded directorship Owen Glenn held in New Zealand was 1993 when he resigned from the local board of Direct Container Line (NZ) Ltd, although a Michael Andrew Glenn was appointed the same day and continued until his own resignation in 2002. But if Owen Glenn is a billionaire, he must be making his money somewhere else. Documents filed with the Companies Office show DCL (NZ) Ltd incurred losses of: • $109,000 in the year to December 1998 • $394,000 in the year to December 1999 • $182,000 in the year to December 2000 The company ceased to trade at the end of 2000, but wasn’t struck off until December 31, 2005.

ut even that doesn’t tell the full story. According to documents filed with the Companies Office, one of Glenn’s subsidiaries, UAC New Zealand Limited, has declared operating revenue of $39.1 million dollars from 1999 through 2004, but only declared a taxable profit for the same period of $175,000, less than the price of a two bedroom hovel. Expressed another way, on an average annual operating revenue of $7.8 million dollars, Glenn’s company could only manage an average annual profit before tax of $35,000. Admittedly, things have been “sluggish” recently in the logistics business, according to global mega-carrier TNT, which says its profit margins on logistics last year were only 1.4%. Even so, 1.4% of UAC’s $39.1 million is closer to $550,000 than $175,000. But taking Owen Glenn’s global revenues as $500 million and applying a 1.4% profit margin, you’re left with a global profit for his companies of only NZ$7 million a year. Hardly lifestyles of the rich and famous. Returning to TNT Group as a comparison, TNT’s annual turnover is around NZ$21 billion, and the group’s net profit is around $1.3 billion (the group includes more profitable divisions

than just Logistics). Overall, TNT managed to make a 6.2% profit on its turnover. Assuming this as a best-case scenario for the much smaller Owen Glenn companies, that’s a global profit of only NZ$31 million a year. The records held by the Companies Office reveal other interesting facts about the structure of Owen Glenn’s global network, such as a holding company in the British Virgin Islands tax haven that provides a no-interest, no-repayment million dollar loan each year to his other major NZ operation, Vanguard Logistics Services (NZ) Ltd. In effect, this money from a tax haven props up the NZ operation. But as revealed earlier in this article, tax havens and their resident directors can be double-edged swords. In Vanguard NZ’s case, the company has two directors according to official records: Australian Tony Holt, and Bermuda resident Peter Maxwell Dickson. It is Dickson who’s at the centre of a major fraud scandal in the northern hemisphere. “A Caribbean offshore bank closely associated with the Bermuda-based Grosvenor Group has been accused of perpetrating a US$20 million fraud against two of its clients. The allegation against Horizon Bank International Limited (HBI), which is licensed in St. Vincent & the Grenadines, was made in a civil lawsuit filed at Ontario Superior Court of Justice, in Canada,” reported the international taxhaven journal Offshore Alert just over a year ago. As a result of that first court action, nearly $12 million in funds that Horizon Bank had deposited in a proper bank, Bermuda Commercial Bank (BCB), were frozen while investigators tried to get to the bottom of who actually owned and controlled Horizon Bank. The essence of the case is that a group of shady Canadians had either gone into business with Horizon Bank’s directors, including Peter Maxwell Dickson, or at least persuaded the tax haven bank to turn a blind eye to what investigators were calling “a Ponzi fraud”. Bolstering the prosecution’s case was Bermuda Commercial Bank’s senior vice president, who blew the whistle on who controlled the HBI deposit account at her branch, according to the Offshore Alert report: “In an affidavit dated August 17, 2004 Dominique Smith, BCB’s Senior Vice President, stated that the ownership of HBI, which was formed in Antigua on April 25, 1995 and continued to St. Vincent & the Grenadines on September 14, 1999, was in dispute.” Smith then highlighted some of the documents she was holding: “Attached to her affidavit were documents from BCB’s records, including: • A letter from Grosvenor Trust Company Limited, of 33 Church Street, Hamilton, Bermuda showing that HBI was owned by the Networth Investment Trust and by the Genesis Investment Trust, with each holding a 50 per cent stake. The letter was signed by Peter M. Dickson; and • A document that was part of the continuation from Antigua to St. Vincent & the Grenadines stating that the shareholders of HBI were Grosvenor Group Holdings Limited as the “legal shareholder” and Peter Dickson as the “beneficial shareholder”. Smith also attached “various correspondence and documents pertaining to the dispute/confusion as to the beneficial

The village of Roadtown, British Virgin Islands. Somewhere on this hill is the global HQ of a freight empire – for tax purposes, at any r ate

ownership of HBI” which were produced after the controversy flared up. From Bahamas-based HBI employee Kevin Coombes, there was: • The Minutes of an Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting held on December 12th , 2001 in Hamilton, Bermuda declaring that “Mr. Peter Dickson, the ultimate beneficial owner of Grosvenor Group Holdings Limited, the sole shareholder of Horizon Bank International Limited, was appointed Chairman of the meeting”. Dickson signed the minutes as Chairman, stated Smith; • A USA Patriot Act disclosure form completed by Coombes “in his capacity as Vice President of HBI” in which he declared that “he, Kevin Coombes, is the owner of HBI”; • Another declaration from Coombes dated July 27th, 2004 in which he specified the ownership of HBI was “legal shareholder is Grosvenor Group Holdings Limited, beneficial shareholder is Peter Dickson – pending approval from the IFSA [International Financial Services Authority of St. Vincent & the Grenadines] of change of ownership from Peter Dickson to Kevin Coombes and Brian Trowbridge”; • A letter from the IFSA to Peter Dickson to “confirm that their records show Peter Dickson as the beneficial owner of HBI and that the ownership will remain so until the authority INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 29

Glenn arr anged for Sir Howard Morrison to sing at his mother’s 90th birthday party, and posted a picture on his corpor ate website. In return, Glenn is donating money to Morrison’s charity work

has given its written approval of change in beneficial ownership”.” Initially Peter Dickson denied being the beneficial owner of the tax haven bank at the centre of a $20 million fraud, but midway through last year authorities felt sufficiently convinced that they revoked HBI’s banking licence by way of an official memorandum, cc’d to Peter Dickson. Offshore Alert, meanwhile, has been doing some corroborative digging of its own, discovering: “That HBI used to maintain a now-defunct web-site at http://www. tcn.net/horizon/horizon1.html which, as of October 5, 1999, identified its principal officers and directors as Peter Maxwell-Dickson, Director; Gordon Howard, Director; and William Cooper, Managing Resident Director. “Mr. Maxwell-Dickson has served at a number of firms including Deloitte, Haskins & Sells and KPMG Peat Markwick (sic),” stated the site. “From 1986 to 1990, he was the executive vice president of the Wraxall Group of companies, a large, diverse international trading and financial services company.” “Research by Offshore Alert showed that Peter Maxwell Dickson, a 54-year-old British national, is also a director of Vanguard Global Logistics Limited, formerly known as Direct Container Line Limited [Owen Glenn’s company], of Barking, Essex, which was incorporated in England and Wales on January 18, 1982.” But Owen Glenn’s right-hand man on the Vanguard NZ board appears to hang out with a bad crowd, according to the Offshore Alert report. The “William Cooper” referred to as HBI’s managing resident director is the same William Cooper sought by the US for the world’s largest non-drugrelated money laundering prosecution, a US$240 million dollar fraud committed in association with a convicted murderer and armed robber, using an Antigua tax haven bank he’d set up.. Because of Antigua’s tax haven secrecy laws, Cooper was not handed over to US authorities despite a four year legal battle by the feds. He remains in Antigua today, still operating 30, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

in the tax haven business. And Peter Dickson’s Horizon Bank International had been set up in Antigua, by Cooper in 1995. “Offshore Alert has previously reported that Cooper was criminally indicted for money laundering at the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida on April 28, 1999 – less than five months before HBI moved from Antigua, where Cooper lives, to St. Vincent. An attempt by the U.S. authorities to extradite Cooper from Antigua failed. “Cooper has been implicated in numerous illegal activity involving offshore banks, including American International Bank, of Antigua, which closed its doors in December, 1997 when faced with a criminal investigation and insolvency. “HBI listed AIB as one of its correspondent banks on its website,” reports Offshore Alert.

ust before Christmas, the Bermuda Sun’s official gazette notices revealed that Dickson’s Grosvenor Group Holdings was due to be struck off the companies register in the tax haven a few weeks from now. Documents filed in Canada recently by Horizon Bank International’s statutory liquidator also reveal Peter Dickson could be in the gun for some of the $20 million lost in the Horizon Bank scandal, as well as facing potential legal action for breaching fiduciary duties. And remember, Peter Dickson remains listed on the NZ Companies Office website as the director of Owen Glenn’s NZ company, Vanguard Logistics. Investigate also understands Dickson may be the director of tax-haven based OTS Global Limited, which is believed to be the ultimate holding company for the OTS group worldwide, and is listed as the majority shareholder in OTS Logistics Group Ltd in New Zealand. We’re not suggesting that Glenn is aware of the scandal surrounding his appointee, but with the tax haven structure appearing to feature centrally in the OTS group, and with 177 offices in 105 countries, we believe Glenn does have a duty as chairman and CEO to be aware of matters like this, especially as they’re already in the public domain in the northern hemisphere. So if you’re beginning to think that the New Zealand Labour

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 31

Party’s biggest campaign donor associates with types from the financial fringes, take a look at our next revelation: Owen Glenn has himself faced court action by the US Government for alleged civil fraud, and had to pay around $1.5 million on behalf of his company in an out of court settlement. In 1999, investigators from the Federal Maritime Commission’s Bureau of Enforcement hauled Owen Glenn and his US-based shipping company Direct Container Line into court on three counts of violating the Shipping Act by fraud. “Respondent DCL is a tariffed and bonded non-vessel operating common carrier that furnishes transportation services worldwide,” notes a document on the Commission’s website, “including services from US ports and points to ports and points in the Far East and South America. Respondent Owen Glenn is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of DCL. “The Commission initiated two formal investigatory proceedings into the activities of these respondents.” The first investigation, commencing January 1999, “was begun to investigate allegedly unlawful activities by respondent DCL in the South American trade, specifically, allegations that DCL had misweighed and mismeasured cargoes in order to pay vessel-operating carriers less freight than what they were allegedly due, and also that DCL had not properly charged its own shippers the rates filed in its tariff. “Such conduct violates sections 10(a)(1) and 10(b)(1) of the Shipping Act of 1984.” This alone was bad enough for Owen Glenn. At stake were financial penalties, and the possible suspension of DCL’s tariff. But it got worse.

n April 29, 1999, the Bureau of Enforcement opened a second investigation, “to determine if DCL had been receiving rebates in its South American services under an arrangement set up by DCL’s principal, Mr Owen Glenn, which arrangement had allegedly been operating subsequent to October 1994.” This time, the Bureau of Enforcement were going for Glenn’s corporate jugular, saying they wanted “to determine if DCL’s tariff should be canceled or suspended, its license as an ocean transportation intermediary revoked” and whether financial penalties should be imposed. Was there hard evidence? According to the Bureau files, there was: “It would introduce evidence in support of the allegations [showing] that DCL misdeclared cargo weights and measurements on bills of lading so as to pay lower rates to two vessel-operating carriers and that its documentary evidence, such as DCL’s internal container manifest, would corroborate the fact that DCL routinely restated cargo measurements and weights for the same purpose. “Moreover, BoE states that it would introduce evidence showing that DCL’s “house” bills of lading issued to DCL’s shippers show that DCL used higher figures than those on the bills of lading tendered to the vessel-operating carriers, and that DCL concealed equipment substitution practices whereby DCL obtained larger containers than those for which it was charged.” The Bureau also elaborated on what was essentially three 32, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

years worth of secret kickback payments: “BoE asserts that it would establish that DCL entered into an arrangement with a vessel-operating carrier for the receipt of rebates and that an officer of another shipping company would testify that in 1996 it was agreed that DCL and the other company would share in the rebates from the vesseloperating carrier. “BoE asserts that it has documentary evidence to support the testimony. Moreover, BoE states that it would offer testimony of a second witness, a high-ranking sales and traffic manager of another vessel-operating carrier, such testimony showing that DCL and its officer, respondent Owen Glenn, established a rebate arrangement which covered hundreds of shipments during the period from 1994 through 1997. “This second witness, according to BoE, would testify that respondent Owen Glenn suggested the method by which the vessel-operating carrier would pay rebate amounts that had been agreed upon.” According to the BoE documents, DCL received nearly NZ$1 million in “rebates” between 1995 and 1997. A court judgement in the case records that, “After respondents recognized that BoE could submit a compelling case,” all parties agreed that it would be in their best interests to proceed to settlement negotiations, “which settlement would include possible violations by DCL with regard to a third vesseloperating carrier…and an agreement that BoE would support dismissal of Mr Owen Glenn as a respondent.” The final terms of the settlement approved by the court were simple: DCL had to pay NZ$1.5 million to the Federal Maritime Commission, in return for the case to be dropped and an agreement that the Commission would not re-open the investigation or widen it or pursue Owen Glenn. All of this may rise eyebrows among those on the receiving end of Glenn’s philanthropic largesse (recipients include not only the Labour Party, but the University of Auckland and the marine research centre at Leigh), but it is Vanguard Logistics’ boast that it is now the exclusive customs clearing and handling agent for British American Tobacco, responsible for importing and exporting hundreds of container-loads of cigarettes – especially to vulnerable communities like the Pacific Islands - that sits most uneasily for some. After all, the Prime Minister is no stranger to fraud herself, but the sight of New Zealand’s leading anti-smoking politician accepting money from those involved in shipping cigarettes is anathema to the group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH): “It’s frustrating!” complains ASH director Becky Freeman. “First we find out the government pension funds are invested with British American Tobacco, and now we find out this! It’s blood money, and they should have nothing to do with companies that associate with the tobacco industry. “I would hope now that it’s been pointed out that they will no longer accept donations from this particular source.” More likely, say cynics, is that Labour will keep taking the money, but just won’t identify the donor next time around. Documents and links relevant to the allegations made in this article have been posted on the Investigate website, www. investigatemagazine.com.

N W O D G N I N R U B E S U O H THE Last month, Investigate brought you the disturbing story of refrigerators that were, it seemed, spontaneously combusting, damaging property and terrifying owners in the process. Now, a new victim of this fridge-fire phenomenon, first documented by Investigate, has come forward. Damage estimates for this latest incident are thought to be about $12,000, but as JAMES MORROW and IAN WISHART reveal, this disasterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s toll was almost measured not in dollars, but in lives.

ore than a television, more than a washing machine, more even than a stove or oven, a refrigerator is probably the most important appliance a family can own this side of the Arctic Circle. It keeps the milk fresh, the beer chilled, and the veggies crisp. In short, unless one takes all one’s meals at restaurants or lives on a working farm compete with crops, orchards, a dairy, and an abattoir, a refrigerator is essentially an unglorified life-support system. Except, of course, when things go wrong. Then they can become deadly. In a previous edition of Investigate, we brought you the exclusive story of John Rogers, the New Zealand whitegoods technician and former authorized Fisher & Paykel service agent who blew the whistle on an alleged design flaw in some of the most popular refrigerators in Australia and N.Z. that was causing them to catch fire and quickly burn themselves down to little more than smoldering piles of molten plastic, metal, and broken glass. These “meltdowns”, as Rogers described them, were thought to be the result of the too-close placement of the evaporator and defrost elements to the internal plastic casing of the freezers, which were overheating – and in some cases, combusting. All in all, in just his small territory in West Auckland, Rogers says that he found between 15 and 20 fridge/freezers – always electronic models, as it happens – in varying stages of meltdown over just a three-month period of time. His findings were backed up by registered independent electrical inspector Bruce Gosling, who told New Zealand’s EnergySafe that the units constituted “a potential fire hazard [that] breaches NZ Electricity Regulations 1997…this model of fridge/freez-

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er needs to be modified.” Armed with this damning second opinion, Rogers blew the whistle, a move that ultimately made him and his wife close their lucrative business. As Rogers told Investigate at the time, “It got pretty ugly…they appointed another service company to take over from us, and we said we’d had enough and closed down. We didn’t want to work like that, we couldn’t work like that.” In the wake of this report, Investigate has found another case of a Fisher & Paykel fridge going up in flames – causing thousands of dollars in property damage, though luckily no deaths or injuries. And, amazingly, consumer regulatory authorities have done precious little to solve the problem. Tragedy Averted Robyn Docker, who lives on a rural property in Victoria, is one of the latest victims of this phenomenon. Docker, who shares a house with her 9 and 10 year old sons (as well as two collies and a pair of Shetland sheep dogs), nearly had Christmas stolen from her when, shortly before the holiday, the 381 litre Fisher & Paykel ActiveSmart fridge she kept in a large shed fitted out as a games room caught fire. “The fridge was always making cracking noises”, Docker recalls, which was the only suggestion that anything might possibly be amiss with the nearly two-year-old unit she bought in January of 2004. “If it had been in the house, I would have heard it all the time, but because it was out in the shed, I didn’t think about it a lot.” All that would change, the evening of 18 December 2005. At around 6:30 PM or so, her ex-husband called and wanted to speak to one of the boys, who was sitting outside the back of the house. When she went out to fetch her son to take the phone call, she noticed something was very wrong: smoke was INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 37

pouring out of the shed, and even more ominously, flames were licking at the overhanging gum trees. Had the call come much later, the trees could have caught fire and brought disaster to the main house – or to the dry paddocks nearby. “I went to see what was happening, and flames were coming up the fridge all the way to the top of the thing. I called the Fire Brigade, and got the kids and the dogs and my laptop and drove up to the top of the driveway,” says Docker. “The really scary thing is that the following Wednesday one of my sons was going to have a big sleepover in the shed. It was going to be the last day of school, and his birthday is in January, and we were going to have seven or eight kids, eight and nine year olds, out there. It could have been a really horrible tragedy.” Even without the sleepover and the terrible prospect of lost young lives, Docker is counting her blessings. “I just had a builder come out this morning who said it would cost $5,000 just to fix the trusses, the wooden beams, put in a new roof, skylight, exterior walls, that sort of thing”, she says, though as her photographs of her burned-out bar and charred fittings suggest, it will cost more than just five grand to put her games room and tool shed back together. But again, it could have been worse: “There were a lot of trees around the shed, and if I wasn’t home it might have caught on the trees and brought down the house.” “I’m looking at about $12,000 that could have been $300,000 – and maybe some lives.” 38, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

“I went to see what was happening, and flames were coming up the fridge all the way to the top of the thing. I called the Fire Brigade, and got the kids and the dogs and my laptop and drove up to the top of the driveway”

Cold Reception, Quick Response So what has Fisher & Paykel’s reaction been to all this – to say nothing of the relevant regulatory authorities in Australia and New Zealand? In the case of the fire at Robyn Docker’s property, everyone who saw the damage agreed that the fridge caused the fire. After the local Fire Brigade got through putting out the flames, the crew said that it was definitely Docker’s refrigerator that caused half her shed to go up in smoke. However, because that part of her property wasn’t insured, the authorities did not send out an investigator to take a report. Photos of the damage show just how hot the fridge got, and the burned-

out blackened base of the unit that resulted – to say nothing of the damaged property and installations radiating from ground zero. And, of course, Docker saw the fire in its relatively early stages, when flames were pouring out of the casing of the unit. Fisher & Paykel, meanwhile, adopting the stance in Investigate’s earlier exposé, immediately replaced Docker’s refrigerator – the new model currently sits, still in its box, at Robyn’s property, waiting for the shed to be rebuilt – and took away the charred remains of the old one. (Indeed, it’s questionable how much forensic knowledge, if anything, could be gleaned from the remains of Docker’s previous unit, given that all that remained was “charcoal and a bit of glass – the technical representative from Fisher & Paykel just took my word for it that it was one of their fridges!”, she says). Beyond that, the whitegoods giant is keeping its cards fairly close to the vest; when confronted with Docker’s story, Brian Nowell from Fisher & Paykel’s headquarters in New Zealand simply said, “It’s early days. We treat issues like these very seriously. We’ve got the matter under investigation and if it shows the refrigerator is at fault, we’ll take appropriate action.” What that could mean remains to be seen – though the notion that an appliance that, by definition, needs to stay powered-up 24 hours a day, even when people sleep, could catch fire so dramatically is something that one would think would warrant serious concern. Following the first Investigate report, and in response to a query on the subject from National’s Katherine Rich, Associate Minister for Crown Minerals, Harry Duynhoven told Parliament that the Energy Safety Service has been aware of potential problems with Fisher & Paykel fridges catching fire as far back as four years ago. “The Energy Safety Service received a report on the potential fire hazards with certain models of Fisher & Paykel fridge/ freezers in a letter dated 11 November 2001. This report was received by a technical advisor handling the appliance issues As a result of its investigations the Energy Safety Service advised Fisher & Paykel of its concerns and Fisher & Paykel were asked to advise what action it intended to take”, Duynhoven’s staff tells Investigate. “Fisher & Paykel were contacted by phone on 5 December 2001, followed by a fax on 6 December 2001. the company responded by phone indicating the design improvements it would make to overcome this potential problem.” So far, however, fires like that which occurred in Robyn Docker’s shed suggest that whatever design changes were made may not have worked; furthermore, the electrical inspector and the appliance technician who initially brought their concerns about the refrigerator’s design to Investigate believe that Fisher & Paykel has done nothing to change the design. Australian authorities, meanwhile, are even further behind on this issue which has all the ingredients necessary for a high-profile, headline-making scandalous tragedy. When Investigate called EnergySafety Victoria, we were told that they couldn’t give any information on any problems with Fisher & Paykel fridges causing fires, but invited us to file a Freedom of Information Act request if we wanted to pursue the matter further. Meanwhile, the division of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or ACCC, which is responsible for things like product recalls, the Product Safety Policy Section, says that they have no record on file of com40, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

plaints about Fisher & Paykel fridges in their office. Indeed, according to Assistant Director Kerry Ashbolt, the recall process is really one that is largely driven by manufacturers on a voluntary basis. “We don’t have any current recalls on Fisher & Paykel products”, Ashbolt said. She went on to explain that in Australia, product recalls are almost always instituted by the manufacturers themselves; after all, she explains, they are the ones with the facilities to test their products, and the ACCC is not in the position of a research lab. However, according to her agency’s Web site (http://www.recalls.gov.au), “The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer (the Australian Government’s consumer affairs spokesman) does have the power to order a compulsory recall of a product if it will or may cause injury to a person AND where it appears that the supplier has not taken satisfactory action to prevent the goods from causing injury.” Of the 160 consumer product recalls that took place in Fiscal Year 2004/2005, however, Ashbolt couldn’t recall any that were government-initiated, though if there were any, that number would be a very small part of the total. “We can negotiate with suppliers”, offered Ashbolt, “but it’s difficult if we haven’t done the tests. It doesn’t happen very often.” Energy Safe New Zealand is awaiting formal confirmation from the Australian authorities before it takes any action, but precisely what kind of action it could take remains unclear. Because fridges are an essential item, a product recall of millions of refrigerators across the world would create havoc for consumers, as well as Fisher & Paykel. Nonetheless, NZ Consumer’s Institute director David Russell says if a recall is necessary, it must take place. “If the circumstances warrant it, if a verifiable risk exists, then the Minister of Consumer Affairs has powers under the Fair Trading Act to impose a recall if there is verifiable problem.” Given that Energy Safe now confirm that Fisher & Paykel made design changes as a result of the original alert in 2001, Russell takes that as an admission that a problem existed and says Energy Safe have a duty to investigate the latest developments. He says the level of “risk” needed to trigger a product recall is not determined by whether the problem happens regularly. “It’s not bodies in the mortuary that they’re required to wait for before they act. It is the potential for a verifiable problem to develop that is the risk, under the Act.” But what about the scale and size of a recall? “These things can be done in an orderly fashion.” Russell adds that all electrical appliances and brands carry with them some fire risk, by definition of being electrical. But he says that where the risk of fire can be shown to be enhanced by a verifiable design issue, that would be sufficient for authorities to act on in his opinion. Today Robyn Docker is left with a burned-out shed and a brand-new fridge still in its box – she’s still waiting to see if she can come to terms with Fisher & Paykel and get paid out for the damage to her property. But she’s also still got her two boys, her four dogs, and the stand of gums that could have ignited – but didn’t – which means she still has her house as well. “Don’t get me wrong,” she says. “I am just so very grateful that it wasn’t much worse.” What worries her most is whether it will happen again, and this time, whether someone will die.

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VACCINES, ASTHMA & AUTISM New evidence suggests a link

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The medical establishment keeps on dismissing the links, but as UPI’s DAN OLMSTED discovers, the evidence that childhood immunizations could be the cause of asthma and autism continues to mount

omething happened among children born in the early 1930s to bring autism to the attention of Leo Kanner, the eminent and experienced Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist who first described the disorder in a landmark 1943 paper. At the same time, a Viennese pediatrician named Hans Asperger was noticing a remarkably similar, though somewhat less severe, syndrome that came to bear his name. The first two patients – Donald T in the United States and Fritz V in Austria – were born within four months of each other in 1933. Yet supposedly these unique, impossible-to-miss children with Autism Spectrum Disorders had been around in similar numbers since the dawn of time? Experts disagree, but our first and still-tentative conclusion is that’s just plain unlikely. Scattered cases, sure. But 1 in 166, the current U.S. autism rate in children? We don’t see it. Instead, it appears more likely something happened around 1930 to set off the age of autism. Clearly, there are clues in the striking commonalities among the first U.S. families stricken with the disorder. They were college-educated; many had advanced degrees; four of the fathers in the first 11 families identified by Kanner were medical doctors – psychiatrists, to be precise. There were professors, lawyers, scientists, engineers. One mother was also a doctor, and all of them were smart, accomplished women. Some think that suggests a “geek effect,” in which gummedup genes finally find each other and generate offspring who aren’t just brainy and distracted, they’re downright autistic. Based on our own reporting, we don’t buy that -- where were all the autistic offspring of geeks before 1931, the year the oldest child ever diagnosed by Kanner was born? Coincidence or not, 1931 appears to be the first year in which U.S. vaccines contained a mercury preservative called thimerosal, and that yields an alternate hypothesis that could explain the decisive increase in cases that we think is probable. Some parents and a minority of scientists now believe thimerosal – which is about half ethyl mercury by weight – is behind most autism cases, perhaps triggering the disorder in a genetic subset of children who lack the ability to excrete it. Although it wasn’t fully understood at the time, organic mercury is a potent neurotoxin in even minute quantities; beginning in 1999 thimerosal was phased out of routine childhood immunizations, though US federal health authorities say it is safe in that form, and they stand by its continued use in flu shots for pregnant women and toddlers. An alternative to the “geek theory” is that those first 11 families back in the 1930s – especially the ones with links to the medical world – would have had had the information, income and access to take advantage of the latest health innovations and vaccinate themselves and their children. A related hypothesis has been proposed by Mark Blaxill, a director of the anti-mercury-in-medicine group SafeMinds. He suggests an association between several more of those first 11 cases and ethyl-mercury-based fungicides that came on the INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 43

market at the same time, patented by the same scientist who developed thimerosal. Case 1 in Kanner’s study – Donald T., born in 1933 – came from an area surrounded by a forest being replanted with seedlings by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Case 2’s father was a plant pathologist. Case 3’s was a forestry professor at a Southern university. Case 4’s was a mining engineer. Case 8’s was a chemist-lawyer at the U.S. Patent Office. All of them might have come in contact with mercury or other toxic compounds.

iven this intriguing though by no means conclusive set of associations, it’s possible those parents were not in fact passing on malignant mutations of the genes that made them doctors, forestry professors, plant pathologists, chemists. Rather, through their particular professions they might have exposed their children to something wholly new in commercial medical and agricultural products, something they did not know was devastatingly neurotoxic to developing brains. That might make the age of autism, in effect, the age of organic mercury. Not that it proves anything, but looking back recently through the groundbreaking book “Infantile Autism” by Bernard Rimland, something struck us that we hadn’t noticed before. This 1964 work is widely credited with single-handedly debunking the idea that “refrigerator mothers” or aloof fathers caused autism. Reviewing the rare descriptions of children with autistictype behavior prior to Kanner’s 1943 paper, Rimland noted a case that “sounds very much like autism.” That child’s father, Rimland said, “was a Ph.D.” A professor of chemistry. That’s the kind of detail that means nothing to the experts looking for incredibly complex gene interactions to explain autism, but it makes a layman’s hair stand on end. As we pressed to find more about those early cases, the trail led all the way back to Case 1 himself, and to a small town in Mississippi: Missing in Mississippi On a sweltering late August morning we climbed the stairs to a second-floor law office in a small town in Mississippi. We introduced ourselves to the brother of Donald T., the first person ever diagnosed with autism. Donald was born in 1933; he came to the attention of the medical world in 1938, when his parents took him to see the renowned child psychiatrist Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Over the next four years Kanner saw 10 more children exhibiting the same unique behavior syndrome, and in 1943 he introduced the disorder in an article titled, “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact.” While Kanner did not identify Donald by his full name, we were able to determine his identity and learned he was still alive at age 71. That’s what brought us to his brother’s office – looking for clues to the roots and rise of a devastating disorder that seemed rare when Donald was born, but now affects 1 in every 166 U.S. children.

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Donald, his brother told us, was out of town. But speaking in a courtly, deliberate manner and without any prompting on our part, he told a remarkable story: At age 12 Donald had been living with a nearby farm couple. “One February day, I think it was, they came to (town) with Don. He had a bad fever and was obviously sick.” His joints were swollen and stiff, his brother said. “My father and mother took him to all various places for examination – they went to Mayo Clinic, brought him back. He lost his appetite and was terribly emaciated. But anyway, my father was talking to a doctor (in a nearby town) he happened to run into and said, ‘It looks like Don is getting ready to die.’” The doctor said, “What you’re describing sounds like a rare case of juvenile arthritis.” Diagnosis in hand, his parents took Donald to the eminent Campbell Clinic in Memphis, where he was treated with the then-standard remedy, gold salts. “He just had a miraculous response to the medicine,” Donald’s brother said. “The pain in his joints went away.” And here’s the kicker: “When he was finally released the nervous condition he was formerly afflicted with was gone. The proclivity toward excitability and extreme nervousness had all but cleared up.” He also became “more social.” In other words, Donald got a lot better. He went on to college, joined a fraternity, worked at a bank, owns a house, drives a car, belongs to the Kiwanis and the Presbyterian Church and plays a good game of golf despite one fused knuckle left over from the arthritis attack. And now, in retirement, he travels the world. That explained why he wasn’t in town – he was off having a good time. Last stop: Italy. Favorite city: Istanbul. Because Donald did not respond to a request for an interview made through his brother, we are not identifying him at this time. Most of the rest of the first 11 children identified by Leo Kanner depended for the rest of their lives on the kindnesses of strangers: They lived in back wards or, if they were lucky, group homes or other sheltered arrangements. Donald’s brother told us Johns Hopkins researchers have been in touch every decade to check on Donald, but we’re not aware of any published accounts of Donald’s improvement following the gold-salts treatment – something his brother volunteered to us in a half hour of conversation. Regardless, the fate of the first child ever diagnosed with the disorder seems more relevant today than ever before. One reason: Some parents, under the guidance of several hundred doctors who have broken away from the medical mainstream, are trying a variety of medical interventions to treat their autistic children. These range from restrictive diets to cod-liver oil to methyl B-12 shots to the most controversial technique, called chelation (key-LAY-shun). This involves giving a child a drug -- orally, via creams or in some cases, intravenously -- that is designed to pull heavy metals, in particular mercury, from the body. The process carries risks: Last year a 5-year-old autistic child died while undergoing intravenous chelation in Pennsylvania. The theory behind it – rejected by federal health authorities and most scientists – is that in most cases autism is actually a form of mercury poisoning. The mercury in question came from some childhood immunizations, which beginning

Frederick Nijssen (8), was diagnosed with autism at 30 months, shortly after receiving his MMR immunization shot. Doctors told his parents Rob and Anita, there was no cure and years of suffering were ahead. But Rob refused to give up. After many hours spent researching autism he believes a treatment should involve treating the cause, not the symptoms. He believes autism is caused by a weakened immune system which then allows viruses and bacteria to attack the nervous system. Now, after years of trial and error in the face of medical scepticism, he believes he found a cure. He aims at building up his son's immune system by the right mixture of vitamins, minerals, probiotics and other components. He says the treatment improved his son's digestion, his moods became stable and he slept better. British scientists will begin testing Nijssen's treatment in a major medical trial to find out if it indeed could cure autism. Pictured: ROB NIJSSEN with his wife ANITA and their autistic son FREDERICK.

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around 1930 contained an ethyl-mercury preservative called thimerosal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other experts say that concern is unfounded, but they recommended in 1999 that it be phased out of childhood vaccines in the United States as a precaution. The questions raised by Donald’s improvement are both simple and potentially significant: Did the gold-salts treatment alleviate his autistic symptoms, and if so, why? Did the juvenile arthritis – an autoimmune condition – and the autism improve markedly at the same time because both were responses to a toxic exposure? Did the gold salts help pull mercury from Donald’s body, and/or reduce an inflammatory immune response in his brain? Or is it all coincidence, or a memory blurred by the passage of 59 years? Such questions, or course, are speculative, and some have criticized us for even asking them, given the assurances of the CDC and medical groups and the importance of immunizations in preventing infectious disease. But something good did seem to happen to one autistic child who was about to die: Donald T. All we’re interested in is, why? Gold salts pass a test In a striking follow-up to our research on the first child diagnosed with autism – and his improvement after treatment with gold salts – a chemistry professor says lab tests show the compound can “reverse the binding” of mercury to molecules. “This does lend support to the possible removal of mercury from biological proteins in individuals treated with gold salts,” says Boyd Haley, professor and former chemistry department chair at the University of Kentucky. The potential significance: Donald T. – Case 1 among children diagnosed with autism in the 1930s – showed marked improvement in his autistic symptoms after being treated with gold salts for an attack of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

ne theory of autism – strongly dismissed by federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups – is that the disorder is primarily caused by a mercury preservative called thimerosal that was used in vaccines beginning in the 1930s. Some parents and researchers who believe autism is, in essence, mercury poisoning are using treatments designed to remove mercury from the body or offset its neurological effects. Haley is among a minority of scientists who holds this view, and after reading about Donald’s improvement he set out to test whether gold salts have any effect on mercury. “You follow your nose in research, and when I saw that I thought, yes, this is a possibility.” Haley’s experiment was quite simple: He began with a coloured thiol-containing compound. Thiols are the class of molecules that contain a sulfhydryl group (a sulfur and hydrogen atom bound together) and, because of the affinity of mercury for sulfur, these molecules bind tightly to mercury. Thiols are found in most enzymes, and when mercury binds to them, these enzymes lose their biological activity, which is needed to maintain healthy cells, he said. Haley performed two tests involving inorganic mercury –

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“Regardless, the fate of the first child ever diagnosed with the disorder seems more relevant today than ever before. One reason: Some parents, under the guidance of several hundred doctors who have broken away from the medical mainstream, are trying a variety of medical interventions to treat their autistic children”

the type of mercury thimerosal breaks down to in the brain. Haley’s compound was designed to turn colourless when mercury binds to it. In the first test, he added the mercury, and the “optical density” measurement went from 0.23 units down to 0.11 units immediately, and down to 0.03 units in half an hour – a clear sign that the mercury had bound to the thiol. In the second test he premixed the mercury with gold salts for two minutes, then added it to the same solution. This time the optical density dropped to 0.11 but then slowly increased back up to 0.23 within about 30 minutes – “totally the opposite of the situation with mercury alone,” Haley said. “The only way this could happen would be for the gold salts to remove mercury from the thiol-containing compound.” The advocacy group SafeMinds – which opposes the use of mercury in medicines and provided Haley with the $142 prescription of gold salts to test – called the results potentially significant but cautioned against premature use of the compound to treat autistic people. “Clinicians have shown that some autistic children show strong recovery from their symptoms after biomedical treatment,” says SafeMinds’ Mark Blaxill. “So any time we discover a treatment that works in a child, we need to take it seriously. “According to his brother’s unprompted report, Donald T. recovered from autism after treatment with gold salts. We should be all over that, especially after Boyd’s work. But we need to proceed with care to make sure that this is a safe treatment.” Haley makes the same point. “Please note that I am not recommending using gold salts to treat autistics, but it would certainly be worth a project if carefully monitored by a physician in a good clinic.” Donald was given injections of the salts over a two- to threemonth period at the Campbell Clinic in Memphis at age 12 in 1947. Before Haley tested the gold salts, he told us why he thought it was worth investigating. “Nothing has a higher affinity for mercury than elemental gold. They form bonds that are very tight,” Haley explained. Devices designed to detect and filter out mercury routinely use gold, he noted – and they obviously would employ a less expensive element if gold weren’t so effective. Mercury was also used to extract gold from ore in mining operations. In the body, Haley said, gold likely is “attracted to the same places as mercury. They would probably make it to the same spot in the body. It (gold) would probably cross the blood-brain

barrier like mercury. There are reasons to think that if you put it in, it would chase mercury down because they’re very similar in their chemistry. “So you might be able to displace it with the gold. The chemistry gets complicated here, but gold does not do as much oxidative stress as does mercury. The gold isn’t nearly as toxic as the mercury. ... It could take it off the enzyme it’s inhibiting and reactivate that enzyme.” Haley said he was intrigued that the treatment may have benefited Donald when he was 12–- old for such a positive response, according to proponents of biomedical therapies. The most controversial such treatment is chelation, which uses drugs in an attempt to pull toxic metals – mercury in particular – from the body. “It doesn’t seem to work with the older kids,” Haley said. “These older kids are just lost.” But, Haley emphasized: “Don’t jump on this. Be careful. You can hurt kids.” A pretty big secret It’s a far cry from the horse-and-buggies of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to the cars and motorways of Cook County, Illinois. But thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don’t have autism. “We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we’ve taken care of over the years, and I don’t think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines,” says Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst’s medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated. The few autistic children Homefirst sees were vaccinated before their families became patients, Eisenstein says: “I can think of two or three autistic children who we’ve delivered their mother’s next baby, and we aren’t really totally taking care of that child – they have special care needs. But they bring the younger children to us. I don’t have a single case that I can think of that wasn’t vaccinated.” The autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data; the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the national rate of autism spectrum disorders at 1 in 166 – 60 per 10,000. “We do have enough of a sample,” explains Eisenstein. “The numbers are too large to not see it. We would absolutely know. We’re all family doctors. If I have a child with autism come in, there’s no communication. It’s frightening. You can’t touch them. It’s not something that anyone would miss.” No one knows what causes autism, but federal health authorities insist it isn’t childhood immunizations. Some parents and a small minority of doctors and scientists, however, assert vaccines are responsible. The UPI news team has been looking for autism in nevervaccinated U.S. children in an effort to shed light on the issue. We went to Chicago to meet with Eisenstein, and we also visited Homefirst’s office in northwest suburban Rolling Meadows. Homefirst has four other offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors.

“The autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data; the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the national rate of autism spectrum disorders at 1 in 166 – 60 per 10,000”

Eisenstein stresses his observations are not scientific. “The trouble is this is just anecdotal in a sense, because what if every autistic child goes somewhere else and (their family) never calls us or they moved out of state?” In practice, that’s unlikely to account for the pronounced absence of autism, says Eisenstein, who also has a bachelor’s degree in statistics, a master’s degree in public health and a law degree. Homefirst follows state immunization mandates, but Illinois allows religious exemptions if parents object based either on tenets of their faith or specific personal religious views. Homefirst does not exclude or discourage such families. Eisenstein, in fact, is author of the book “Don’t Vaccinate Before You Educate!” and is critical of the CDC’s vaccination policy in the 1990s, when several new immunizations were added to the schedule, including Hepatitis B as early as the day of birth. Several of the vaccines – HepB included – contained a mercury-based preservative that has since been phased out of most childhood vaccines in the United States. Medical practices with Homefirst’s approach to immunizations are rare. “Because of that, we tend to attract families that have questions about that issue,” says Dr. Paul Schattauer, who has been with Homefirst for 20 years and treats “at least” 100 children a week. Schattauer seconded Eisenstein’s observations. “All I know is in my practice I don’t see autism. There is no striking 1-in-166.” As noted earlier, we found the same phenomenon in the mostly unvaccinated Amish. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding claims the Amish “have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States.” Gerberding admits, however, studies “could and should be done” in more representative unvaccinated groups – if they could be found and their autism rate documented. Chicago is America’s prototypical “City of Big Shoulders,” to quote Carl Sandburg, and Homefirst’s mostly middle-class families seem fairly representative. A substantial number are conservative Christians who home-school their children. They are mostly white, but the Homefirst practice also includes black and Hispanic families and non-home-schooling Jews, Catholics and Muslims. They tend to be better educated, follow healthier diets and breast-feed their children much longer than the norm – half of Homefirst’s mothers are still breast-feeding at two years. Also,

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because Homefirst relies less on prescription drugs including antibiotics as a first line of treatment, these children have less exposure to other medicines, not just vaccines. Schattauer, interviewed at the Rolling Meadows office, says his caseload is too limited to draw conclusions about a possible link between vaccines and autism. “With these numbers you’d have a hard time proving or disproving anything. You can only get a feeling about it. “In no way would I be an advocate to stand up and say we need to look at vaccines, because I don’t have the science to say that, but I don’t think the science is there to say that it’s not.” Schattauer says Homefirst’s patients also have significantly less childhood asthma and juvenile diabetes compared to national rates. An office manager who has been with Homefirst for 17 years says she is aware of only one case of severe asthma in an unvaccinated child. “Sometimes you feel frustrated because you feel like you’ve got a pretty big secret,” Schattauer sighs. He argues for more research on all those disorders, independent of political or business pressures. The asthma rate among Homefirst patients is so low it was noticed by the Blue Cross group with which Homefirst is affiliated, according to Eisenstein.

“I

n the alternative-medicine network which Homefirst is part of, there are virtually no cases of childhood asthma, in contrast to the overall Blue Cross rate of childhood asthma which is approximately 10 percent,” he said. “At first I thought it was because they (Homefirst’s children) were breast-fed, but even among the breastfed we’ve had asthma. We have virtually no asthma if you’re breast-fed and not vaccinated.” Because the diagnosis of asthma is based on emergency-room visits and hospital admissions, Eisenstein explains, Homefirst’s low rate is hard to dispute. “It’s quantifiable – the definition is not reliant on the doctor’s perception of asthma.” Several studies have found a risk of asthma from vaccination; others have not. Studies that include never-vaccinated children generally find little or no asthma in that group. Last year Florida pediatrician Dr. Jeff Bradstreet noted there is virtually no autism in home-schooling families who decline to vaccinate for religious reasons – lending credence to Eisenstein’s observations. “It’s largely non-existent,” says Bradstreet, who treats children with autism from around the country. “It’s an extremely rare event.” Bradstreet has a son whose autism he attributes to a vaccine reaction at 15 months. His daughter has been home-schooled, he describes himself as a “Christian family physician,” and he knows many of the leaders in the home-school movement. “There was this whole subculture of folks who went into home-schooling so they would never have to vaccinate their kids. There’s this whole cadre who were never vaccinated for religious reasons.” In that subset, he says, “unless they were massively exposed to mercury through lots of amalgams (mercury dental fillings in the mother) and/or big-time fish eating, I’ve not had a single case.” 48, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

“Several studies have found a risk of asthma from vaccination; others have not. Studies that include never-vaccinated children generally find little or no asthma in that group. Last year Florida pediatrician Dr. Jeff Bradstreet noted there is virtually no autism in home-schooling families who decline to vaccinate for religious reasons – lending credence to Eisenstein’s observations”

Federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups emphatically dismiss any link between autism and vaccines, including the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. In 2004 a panel of the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, claimed there was no evidence of such a link, and funding should henceforth go to “promising” research. Thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent ethyl mercury by weight, was phased out of most U.S. childhood immunizations beginning in 1999, but the CDC recommends flu shots for pregnant women and last year began recommending them for children 6 to 23 months old. Most of those shots contain thimerosal. Thimerosal-preserved vaccines are currently being injected into millions of children in developing countries around the world. “My mandate ... is to make sure at the end of the day that 100,000,000 are immunized ... this year, next year and for many years to come ... and that will have to be with thimerosalcontaining vaccines,” said John Clements of the World Health Organization at a June 2000 meeting called by the CDC. That meeting was held to review data that thimerosal might be linked with autism and other neurological problems. But in 2004 the Institute of Medicine panel said evidence against a link is so strong that health authorities, “whether in the United States or other countries, should not include autism as a potential risk” when formulating immunization policies. But where is the simple, straightforward study of autism in never-vaccinated children? Based on our admittedly anecdotal and limited reporting among the Amish, the home-schooled and now Chicago’s Homefirst, that may prove to be a significant omission. IN NEW ZEALAND: From what we could ascertain from vaccine data sheets on a Ministry of Health affiliated website (www.immune.org.nz) and the Immunisation Awareness Society (www.ias.org.nz), thimerosal remains an ingredient in the infant HIB vaccine, the Fluarix flu vaccine and the Hepatitis B vaccine. Although the Ministry of Health site downplays the danger of thimerosal based on the Institute of Medicine report referred to in the main article, it would appear the IOM report may be flawed. This ongoing investigation into the roots and rise of autism welcomes comment. E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 49

BIG BANG THEORY How Waikato Hospital almost went ‘boom’ A hobby abseiler, whose resourcefulness saved the dairy industry millions of dollars, was the unsung hero who beat the clock to thwart New Zealand’s own potential “9/11”. MAURICE SMYTH reports that a deadly gas leak emergency, withheld from the media, could have blown out one entire wall of Waikato Hospital, averted by a glance from Lady Luck and the cool head of a former Dargaville dairy farmer 50, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 51

Photography: Oliver Lee

wo years ago, John Halliday took two calls within an hour in his Cambridge office from hospital executives going spare. Pressurised natural gas was bubbling up through toilets in a high rise block and, although it wasn't known at the time, in houses on an adjacent street. He kept the line open until he parked on the site – and realised he was staring horror in the face. Natural Gas brass were already there and gave him a hurried briefing, turning their backs on a strong gas smell from a manhole. Halliday was used to emergencies. His low-profile Extreme Group dealt with them in an atlas of countries. "I knew we were in deep trouble. If anyone had gone into a hospital toilet for a smoke, they would have blown out one side of the building – exposing wards, theatres, whatever – and many lives would have been lost". Theatre work was in progress and the hospital relied heavily on its gas supply. Evacuation was not an option but time was a deadly enemy. Protectively-suited men slithered through sewers to take readings and note gas bubble movements and, by a process of elimination, they homed in on a telltale high pressure hiss. A gas supply line had accidentally drilled through a concrete sewer with an inside glaze – no match for the powerful nose drill, causing a break. It was immediately below a hospital access road which bore heavy traffic. "Such roads move under the weight of big trucks and the movement had transferred down to where mud had sealed 50mm holes through each side of the sewer, which eventually shifted. Fast gas was seeking height to release itself". While a large excavator was laying bare the source, Halliday was harried by problems he could have done without. Rubberneckers had to be moved. Administrators impeded his work with questions, one asking "How much will all this cost?" "I asked him if he wanted a budget meeting or a solution. He went away. A doctor whose car was parked over a manhole insisted on driving home. We escorted him to a safer place, jacked up his car and slid it out of the way". Hospital visitors wanting to go home were asked for their keys while their cars were pushed to where they could safely be started. The gas pipe was pancake-clamped and the job handed over to the gas company. The work took two tense days, affecting only a few labs and sterilisation units for 12 hours. It all began with the thrill a man got from the controlled bounce of an abseil down rock faces. It came in handy 26 years ago when an engineer from a local diary company asked him if he could abseil into a large milkpowder spray dryer and seal cracks within a 10-day time frame. He didn't believe it been done before and called the then Labour Department in Whangarei who asked him to write an operational and safety procedure, which they approved. He did the job within a week. The story got about. 52, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

He addressed a conference of dairy company engineers in the Waikato, a life-changing decision. The Dargaville farm was replaced by another in Tirau which in turn was sold when the Edgecumbe earthquake soaked up his time – he had a payroll of 15 on engineer repair work, and he set up a business, working on the extremes of life. Overseas work flowed in – putting microwave dishes on tall towers in Macau, followed by contracts in Vietnam and Timor. "It was a volatile environment and we needed to ensure the security of our people". He figured others did too and so began a new business to which the faint-hearted need not apply, first appearing in the news last May when former Hawkes Bay French Foreign Legionnaire Brian Hamish Sands pleaded to be released from the clutches of the New Forces of the Ivory Coast. "We were up to do it. We had the manpower, the resources and the contacts", he said, dropping names such as Alain Lobognon, Communications Secretary and Major

Ouattara Morou, North-East Commander. It didn't happen because Foreign Affairs didn't sign off and beyond that, he wouldn't comment. He moved on, seeking ”unsolvable problems" where they lay, using home-contracted personnel with Foreign Legion, SAS and prison warden experience .... tough, disciplined men who use accumulated leave to hold down two jobs, one for twice the money their day job pays, providing for their families' future. It takes them to far-flung corners – Afghanistan, Sudan, Chad, French Guiana, Cambodia, and Colombia. The mantra is – mistakes have no place here. Since 9/ll in New York, and fuelled by Bali and London, new contracts have seen a new office block in the front garden replacing a corner room. At present, Halliday has four top operators training others overseas but he won't say in what. Others work in famine relief security, the protection of corporate high fliers, surveillance, use of sidearms, high speed

protection. They are fluent in French, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish – Kiwis all. The rich and famous need bodyguards while they're here, but do they carry sidearms? "I can't answer that". All inquiries are micro-checked and, at the slightest hint of hesitation or side-stepping, flagged away. In-house information is shared purely on a need-to-know basis.....but Halliday is hard to stop when he hits his straps. "Multi-nationals accept that governments are slow to move – too many regulations, too many bureaucrats protecting their asses, so they come to people like us. Education has been dumbed down. Students are taught by people who've never had life experience away from the whiteboard or computer." The lazy, he predicts, will stay in the wake of the best bluecollar workers who can now sell their time for six-figure fees on the world market, steadily closing the money gap on surgeons and lawyers. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 53

WORLDBRIEF

D MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT A hair trigger and a Messiah complex

As if Israel didn’t have enough to worry about with a peace process hanging in the balance, now, MARTIN SIEFF writes, there’s a mad mullah convinced that Allah wants him to nuke the Jews WASHINGTON

he most dangerous strategic nuclear arms race in the world today is the one between Israel and Iran – far more complex than almost anyone realizes and vastly more dangerous. Ironically, the number of weapons involved on both sides are miniscule, not only by the standards of the U.S-Soviet/Russian Cold War nuclear balance, but also even compared with the much more limited strategic nuclear stand-offs centering around North Korea or India and Pakistan today. But that does not really matter: Far more important is the fact that the margin for error or miscalculation on either side is vastly smaller than in any other potential nuclear conflict in the world. And the danger that either party may react catastrophically to the fear that the other will attempt a devastating preemptive first strike is consequently far greater. Israel today has a far greater proportion of its population protected by state-of-the-art ballistic missile defense systems than any other country in the world. But since Israel is so small and since such a disproportionately large part of its population is vulnerably concentrated in a single thermonuclear kill zone in and around Tel Aviv, that speaks less to the Jewish State’s undoubted military and technological strengths than to its geographic and demographic vulnerabilities. As Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and an influential adviser to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told UPI recently, 70 percent of Israel’s total population and 80 percent of its infrastructure is concentrated in the Tel Aviv region. No other modern industrial nation has its population and key infrastructure so densely packed into such a small area, he noted. Ironically less than 60 years after the founding of the state in 1948 the Zionist dream, far from creating a state where large numbers of Jews were safer and more secure than anywhere else in the world, has created one where millions of them are now at more immediate risk of nuclear incineration than anywhere else in the world. The reason for this is not merely Iran’s relentless drive to acquire its own nuclear weapons and the delivery systems to carry them. It is the extreme rhetoric and truly unpredictable behavior of the new government in Tehran.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 57

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. He has questioned the historic veracity of the Holocaust, the genocidal mass killing of six million European Jews by the Nazis through World War II. And at the same time, he has embarked on the systematic purging of the Iranian government and armed forces of more moderate officials. He is also obsessed with the return of ‘the Mahdi’, an Imam who disappeared in the 10th century and who, according to Shia Islamic belief, is due to return soon as a messianic apocalyptic leader whose seven year reign ushers in Armageddon. “Our revolution’s main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi,” Ahmadinejad told imams in a rousing sppech in November. “Therefore, Iran should become a powerful, developed and model Islamic society.” The Iranian leader’s recent address to the United Nations also contained numerous coded and not so coded references to the return of the Mahdi. The combination of Israel’s physical vulnerability with Iran’s political extremism has, therefore, produced a balance of terror that is now on a hair-trigger alert. No one knows for sure if Iran yet has any nuclear weapons of its own. The best available assessments suggest it is not yet in a position to make them and won’t have them for a few years yet, but no one knows for sure. And there is also the very real possibility that the CIA cannot confirm but cannot rule out either that Iran may have acquired at least four nuclear warheads some years ago illegally from stocks decommissioned and inadequately guarded following the disintegration of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. There is no doubt that Iran already has nuclear-capable delivery systems capable of inflicting a first strike that could kill millions of Israelis, perhaps over the half the population in a single attack. Its Shehab-3 intermediate range missile has been successfully tested and is being continually upgraded. It is certainly reliable. Also, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has confirmed that under the previous regime of President Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine quietly sold 12 nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran. They are far slower than the Shehab ballistic missiles but their computer-guided, ground-hugging unpredictable flight paths could make them far more dififcult to intercept and shoot down. To guard against these threats, Israel has already developed or bought a formidable BMD (ballistic missile defence) arsenal. Its Arrow system anti-ballistic missile interceptor, co-built with Boeing, is the most advanced system of its kind in the world and was recently successfully tested against a simulated Shehab-3 attack. Israel also has acquired many batteries of the Patriot PAC-3 system from the United States. Ironically, early Patriots got a raw deal in the press after they performed very impressively in defending Tel Aviv from Iraqilaunched SCUD missile attacks in the 1991 Gulf War. Some U.S. analysts believe that this was encouraged by Israel to try and get more funding for the Arrow. But there is no doubt that for close-in ABM defense the Patriot remains the best interception system by far in the world. The Israelis are also aided by the limited amount of air space they have to defend. Still, like the Americans and the Soviets before them in the 58, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

There is no doubt that Iran already has nuclear-capable delivery systems capable of inflicting a first strike that could kill millions of Israelis, perhaps over the half the population in a single attack. Its Shehab-3 intermediate range missile has been successfully tested and is being continually upgraded. It is certainly reliable

1950s and ‘60s, the Israelis have come to the conclusion that no defense succeeds better than deterrence. As long as their own nuclear facilities -- the Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert and Zacharias air force base south of Tel Aviv -- are limited in number and clearly known to their enemies, and since their main population is so concentrated and vulnerable, recent Israeli governments have recognized their need for a secure, survivable second-strike capability to guarantee a devastating response to any first strike, and they have deployed one. It exists in the form of three German-built and supplied diesel-engineered submarines, or U-boats, that carry nuclearcapable cruise missiles. Israel seeks to ensure that at least one of these vessels is on patrol at all times. Indeed, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government had been seeking to broaden and deepen this second-strike force by acquiring two more submarines to add to it. The concept has impressed giant India so much that it has adopted it too as a second-strike deterrent against neighboring Pakistan. In India’s case, the submarines are French-built Scorpenes. Will it be enough? Against any rational national government, the answer would be certainly “yes.” But with Ahmadinejad, the jury for obvious reasons is still out. Ironically the Israelis and their strong friends in the Bush administration could yet prove to be their own worst enemies. For if there is one scenario where even previously rational national leaders, let alone extreme ones, might be tempted to press their nuclear launch buttons, it is when they are convinced that they are going to be attacked anyway and have therefore nothing to lose. Judged from this perspective, Israel’s previous exercises carrying out mock air attacks against a scale model of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor in the Negev desert, and the tough moves of the Bush administration to confront Iran on the nuclear issue, clearly run the risk of provoking the very thermonuclear nightmare they are meant to prevent: They could convince the government in Tehran that it is under imminent threat of U.S. or Israeli attack and thereby panic it into launching any nuclear weapons it already has. In that case, Israel’s ultimate line of defense would be its Arrows and its Patriots. There is no doubt that operationally they will work well: The as-yet-untested question is whether they will work flawlessly with only seconds to spare and no margin for error whatsoever. The lives of millions will be on the line.

ZUMA

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 59

thinkLIFE money

Time to buy bling

Diamonds might be a girl’s best friend, but Peter Hensley says it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye on the gold they’re set in, either

ong time readers of this column appreciate that I have been bearish (negative) on world share markets for more than several years. During this time my private practice clients have both warmed to and welcomed the conservative income approach to investing their funds as an alternative to the growth styled managed fund approach. Compounding interest income may be boring and predictable, but it works. It is also a very real and practical alternative when one takes into account the overvalued nature of most international share markets. When constructing an investment portfolio, investors are encouraged to always include an allocation to growth styled assets. Having said that, many portfolios we manage have no growth exposure. There’s generally one of two reasons for this, (1) clients do not want any growth assets or (2) they cannot afford it as their immediate need for maximising income outweighs their need for growth. Growth assets are typically equities (shares) and speciality assets. Speciality assets (art, collectables, stamps etc) are a

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legitimate asset sector, however they are also more widely known as belonging to the bigger fool category. This is best explained by buying an asset and then waiting for a bigger fool than you to come along and pay you more than you paid. Gold is a growth asset and sits firmly in the speculative sector. It does not produce income and is not suitable for an investor seeking to maximise their income from their portfolio. It is however a bit unfair to place it in the speciality sector. Gold is a store of wealth and has been used for many generations and centuries. In 1971 Nixon unlinked the US dollar from gold and nowadays it is rumoured that there are about 5 billion ounces of gold in the world. That is a value of USD$2.5 trillion, which is a small fraction of world currency. A rough calculation suggests that gold would need to be about USD$4,000 to be able to cover the paper value of money. This is fanciful because no sensible government would ever dream of (re-) linking their currency to gold. Gold is priced daily on the open market and pricing is readily available in a variety of currencies. There are various ways to buy gold as an investment. 1. Gold coins. 2. Physical gold. 3. Gold ETF (exchange traded fund). 4. Listed shares of companies that deal in gold. Gold coins, typically minted by governments, are available from recognised dealers. Coins have the following names, American Eagles, Canadian Mapleleafs, Australian Nuggets, each of these have varying sub categories depending upon the actual amount of gold included in the coins. The pricing of gold coins will differ (be higher) than the equivalent weight of actual gold and coins in their original mint

packaging will be worth even more still to a collector. The Perth Mint operates an online ordering system for those who are keen to purchase gold coins. Visit www. perthmint.com.au. All dealings through the Perth Mint are guaranteed, backed and underwritten by the West Australian Government. Physical gold is available for purchase under two systems (again from the Perth Mint): • Allocated (segregated) Coins or Bars – You own title to specific coins and/or bars, which are placed in a physical form in the PMCP (Perth Mint Certificate Program) storage facility. You pay the quoted precious metal cost, fabrication charges and storage fees at the time of your purchase. Storage fees are based on the purchase value of your precious metal. Annual storage fees are collected every three years in arrears, with one year’s storage payable at time of purchase. • Unallocated (unsegregated) Bullion – You have title to precious metal deposited in a metal account. You pay only the precious metal cost at the time of purchase. No storage fees apply to this option. Minimum account sizes apply, AUD$10,000 for Australian and New Zealand residents with subsequent transactions being a minimum of AUD$5,000. The mint charges a transaction fee of 2% on the buy and 1% when you sell it back to them. With the above certificate program, investors are able to drop in to the Perth Mint and collect their gold on presentation of their certificate. The Perth Mint Certificate program also extends to silver and platinum. Gold ETF on the Australian Share Market Buying Gold Warrants (ASX code is

ZAUWBA) on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) is one step short of owning physical gold. Investors buy these through any stock broker. The price of the warrant is designed to track the price of price of gold in Australian dollars. The unit price for the warrant is 1/100th of a troy ounce of gold. One small, almost minor matter is that on the 31st of December each year the Perth Mint deducts a management fee based upon the total holding of the investors’ gold warrants. This roughly works out to 1 warrant for every 1,000 held. A small price to pay for gaining access to paperless gold. Potential investors should note that the warrants are similar to the certificate system in that on presentation the mint will exchange the warrant for gold and or cash at the prevailing market price. The warrants are also backed and guaranteed by the West Australian Government. The other minor matter that investors need to be aware of is that under the terms of the investment statement the warrants do have an expiry date of 31st December 2013. One would expect them to extend this date, however under the ASIC rules when they registered the prospectus they were obliged to set a date and the maximum was 10 years. Another method to gain exposure to gold is to buy shares in market-listed companies that mine, manufacture or explore for gold. Shares in these companies typically track the price of gold, however they have been known to lag behind for months at a time and yet at other times have been known to get ahead of the underlying price of gold. Some companies pay a dividend and are serious players in the market and buying shares in these makes good common sense. At the other end of the scale, buying shares in gold explorers could be considered purely speculative. There are two gold associated companies on the New Zealand stock exchange (Oceana Gold & Heritage Gold) and the Australian stock exchange offers a wide selection of companies from the serious players to the widely speculative. Oceana Gold Limited (OGD) is one of the Top 5 ASX listed gold producers with a mix of production, development and exploration projects located in New Zealand. OGD’s main projects are the Macraes Goldfield, the Reefton

Goldfield and the Sams Creek Project. OGD is listed on NZX and ASX which means that investors can buy shares on either exchange. Approximate price was NZD$0.72 in late December 05. Heritage Gold (HGD) continues to focus on exploration, which increases its earnings potential but also the risks should it not find any significant deposits. Until investors know either way, the shares are likely to continue trading in their narrow band. Approximate share price was NZD$0.05 in late December 05. Newcrest, (ASX code NCM) arose from the 1990 merger between two major listed mining houses, BHP Gold Mines Ltd and Newmont Australia Ltd. Goldman Sachs JB Were rate Newcrest as the first Australian gold company that could be considered truly world class. It has a low cash structure, long life mines and a history of exploration discovery at a very low finding cost. Approximate share price in late December 05 was AUD$23.00. Lihir Gold Limited (ASX code is LHG) is the owner and developer of one of the world’s premier gold mines, located on Lihir Island in the New Ireland province of Papua New Guinea. Lihir Gold boasts one of the world’s largest gold resources and ranks among the top gold producers in the world. IRG Research reports: With gold hitting a 16 year-high recently, it is a surprise that LHG cannot turn a profit. It continues to suffer from poor ore quality and high costs, which it is trying to address. LHG is sitting on some promising fields but short-term prospects are not good. There is some hope further out, however, and this is being reflected in a share price that has stabilised after a period of lengthy decline. Approximate share price in late December 05 was AUD$2.15. AngloGold Ashanti Ltd (ASX code is AGG) is a global gold company with 20 operations on four continents, a substantial project pipeline and an extensive, worldwide exploration program. The new company is listed on the New York, Johannesburg, Ghanaian, London and Australian stock exchanges, as well as Paris and Brussels. It is a very impressive company with a history of paying a regular dividend. Approximate share price in late December 05 was AUD$13.00. Imdex Limited is an Australian publicly listed, (ASX code is IMD) drilling products and services company, dedicated to

becoming a significant global player in supplying Drilling Products and Services to the Mining, Oil and Gas, Water well, Horizontal Directional Drilling and Civil industries. It has recently restructured itself to become the industries major supplier of drilling equipment. It is well placed to take advantage of the potential within the sector. Approximate share price in late December 05 was AUD$0.30. Leviathan Resources is an Australian gold mining and exploration company, (ASX code is LVR). The Company’s main asset is the Stawell Gold Mine, which has been operating continuously for over 20 years. Leviathan also holds exploration tenements running northwest and south of Stawell, within the Stawell corridor, and north of Bendigo and southwest of Ballarat, within the Ballarat Bendigo corridor. Recent reports (October 05) from their Stawell mine suggest that a significant deposit could be further developed. Approximate share price in late December 05 was AUD$0.90. A1 Minerals Ltd (ASX code is AAM) floated on the ASX in 1999 and since then has been working hard to achieve the projections set out in the prospectus. Management has recently concluded negotiations to acquire three high-grade historical prospects within the Brightstar project footprint. AAM is confident these acquisitions will add further significant upside to the project. Currently, the company has $1.2M cash on hand and indications show the Brightstar project has the ability to generate early cash flows. Approximate share price in late December 05 was AUD$0.27. Investors interested in speculating in gold have a wide selection to choose from. Choices range from actual gold (in various forms) to almost actual gold, to proven gold operators and then speculative gold miners. Should the price of gold advance and it does enter into a true bull market, investors need to remember that they will need an exit strategy. If you are prepared to buy into the market, you have to be prepared to sell either your shares or gold bullion or both, knowing that you will not be able to pick the top of the market. In this speculative sector remember to only invest what you can afford to lose and be prepared to sell when it is still going up. Disclaimer, Peter Hensley and entities associated with him hold some of the investments highlighted in this article.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 61

thinkLIFE education

Moral development or political correctness? Are kids behaving badly, or are we failing – as parents and educators – to understand how to get the best from them? Educationalist Dr Len Restall explains

ave we as a society lost the plot in seeking after political correctness above the stages we go through towards moral development? Have we avoided as parents or teachers using appropriate sanctions to control behaviour or have we relied upon expecting children to do what they are not matured enough to do? An article by John Rosemund, recently in the ‘ThinkLife’ section of this magazine argues that parents and teachers are to blame for children breaking boundaries and behaving badly. I support this view because there has been an emphasis and reliance placed upon aspects of ‘Instrumental Conditioning’, such as positive reinforcement proposed by Thorndike and later Skinner, as means of training behaviour. This had encouraged teachers to use behaviour modification techniques to control behaviour, with limited success, if the reports and statistics of misbehaviour mean anything. Teachers have been swamped with these behaviour theories during their training, and have often relied upon them to work to solve an increasingly major problem. Sure, they have some merit. But they also have their limitations like most things. What are some of the contrasting things

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that are working against such theories? I suggest that there are a number of factors such as ’political correctness’ and ‘human rights’ that prevent a ‘spade being called a spade’ and prevent appropriate sanctions to control behaviour. Sanctions do not always need to be punitive, but must include punitive measures when appropriate, to the right amount and at the right time. Unfortunately this has been the problem with corporal punishment. Are there distinct progressive stages in which we go through towards the development of morality? Without turning this opinion into a theoretical discourse, there are a number of interesting factors to consider. Human development generally proceeds from the simple to the complex. Some theorists such as Piaget have identified stages in intellectual development where progress moves from the concrete stage of thinking to abstract reasoning. We may assume that all people are at the same stage of development. How many times would a parent or teacher hypothesise a future possibility requiring abstract reasoning, and find that it is not acted upon by the child or older person for that matter. The ‘here’ and ‘now’ can be understood by all, but the future possibil-

ities are limited to those who have moved into the abstract reasoning zone. There are distinct phases of development that can be found within moral development: each having its own form of sanctions. They are progressive from the simple to more complex and generally are not bypassed before having reached development at an earlier phase. There are 3 principal phases identified beyond an anomy (without law) stage of development at birth: anomy, heteronomy, socionomy and autonomy. The various sanctions that control behaviour for each phase are: anomy - pain and pleasure; heteronomy – fear of punishment, hope for reward; sociology - social praise or blame; autonomy – self praise or blame. Each phase can be identified as being successive from an earlier one. As a parent you will want your child or children to develop autonomy but this can be reached best by understanding the earlier stages. Notice that each phase has a pleasant sanction as well as an unpleasant one, such as pain or pleasure. The child will usually stop something because of pain, or continue if there is pleasure. How many of us will not want to be caught speeding because of he social stig-

“

In one study I found that every case of acute behaviour problems leading to expulsion or suspension from school was related to a mismatch problem between the teaching style and the preferred learning style of the student. The behaviour in such a case could have possibly been averted if the more appropriate learning style had been practiced

”

ma attached to being named in the newspaper – truly an indication of a socionomous stage of development. There is a strong Biblical mandate for the use of discipline to control behaviour, including that of a child. The acceptance of Biblical precedent is implied through the prayer offered each day during the sitting of Parliament and whether one accepts it or not is still there. The Bible has existed longer than Parliament and is still the basis for many of our laws and principles of sound good behaviour. Smacking is an acceptable sanction, given at the right time and in the right amount. Unfortunately, these two requirements are often the cause of wanting to be rid of them completely. The Bible does not emphasise the riddance of behaviour sanctions but rather to maintain them, otherwise we can virtually �� ‘�� destroy the child,��’� (Proverbs 22:16). Denial of the acceptance of the Bible does not permit a person to break other laws based upon the Bible precepts, neither does it apply in child care responsibility. It is not wrong to speak of punishment or smacking as if this is a barbaric practice of old, gone-by days of the past, but is realistic. On the other hand it is just one side of the answer to behaviour problems. Many school behaviour problems result from sheer frustration. In one study I found that every case of acute behaviour problems leading to expulsion or suspension from school was related to a mismatch problem between the teaching style and the preferred learning style of the student. The behaviour in such a case could have possibly been averted if the more appropriate learning style had been practiced. Now you can put this into worthwhile practice – what stage of development is your child or children at, and what is the best sanction to use to aid his or her development? Just try it and see it work .

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 63

thinkLIFE science

“

However, such devastating nonlethal effects will require us to pacify the enemy through postwar reconstruction efforts and hatred control

”

China’s new WMDs

Scientists are pushing the boundaries of ethics and military technology, writes Scott Canon

uss Middaugh has a secret. The pharmaceutical chemist knows how to preserve the potency of botulinum toxin – the stuff of botox that makes Hollywood brows wrinkle-resistant, stills muscle spasms, and could ferment a terrorist’s brew. But he is unsure whether he’ll submit to scientific journals a paper he’s written on his pathogen know-how. There is worry that research might serve as a how-to for bad guys. “Are we going to be providing material for a weapon? We have to think about that,” said Middaugh, a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Kansas. “I’m not super-concerned about that. But I don’t want to be naive either.” Although the civilized world has long rejected germ warfare, biotechnology is busting out all over with new ways of tinkering with organs and cells and even DNA. The aim of nearly all the research, most by private companies or academics, is to conjure up medical miracles unimagined a generation ago.

64, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

Those same biotechnology advances – such as Middaugh’s improved understanding of botulinum – could double for terrorists and militaries alike. Consequently, the scientific breakthroughs pose dilemmas about which research makes us safer and which makes us more vulnerable, and how to foster one without advancing the other. What’s more, experts struggle to interpret weapons treaties written with mustard gas and the plague in mind while laboratories build microscopic nanomachines and substances that toy with specific genes. Consider an article in a recent issue of Military Review, a journal published by the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth that solicits strategy from a range of international sources. In it, two members of the Chinese army fantasize about what biotechnology might bring to the battlefield: • Supersmall bullets that don’t tear at tissue, but rather target specific organs, proteins, cells or genes. • Substances so precisely genetically engi-

neered that if unleashed on a village, they would harm only one person – say, Osama bin Laden. • The so-called ethnic bullet – biological menaces tailored to kill only members of a certain clan or race. • Disease-inducing weapons whose effects might be easily reversed – but with an antidote only the weapon maker would possess. A village or city could be faced with the prospect of submission and health or resistance and death. • Genetic damage caused by remotely fired ultraviolet, radio or electromagnetic waves. • Substances that can make people hopelessly clumsy, painfully forgetful or pitifully docile. “Biotechnological weapons can cause destruction that is both more powerful and more civilized than that caused by conventional killing methods like gunpowder or nuclear weapons,” wrote Guo Ji-wei and Yang Xue-sen. “A military attack, therefore, might wound an enemy’s genes, proteins, cells, tissues and organs, causing more damage than conventional weapons could,” wrote the two men, one assigned to the Chinese Third Military Medical University and the other to Southwest Hospital in Chongqing. “However, such devastating nonlethal effects will require us to pacify the enemy through postwar reconstruction efforts and hatred control.” They argue that such biotechnology is not outlawed germ warfare, because it would not unleash random, wide-scale carnage. Rather, they said it would focus on a specific enemy or behavior. The two men suggested such gee-whiz weapons

would be more precise and humane. Among weapons and biotechnology experts, the Chinese authors’ predictions of specific breakthroughs seem fanciful for the near future. Take the ethnic weapons, for example. Geneticists find greater difference from one Frenchman to the next than between Frenchmen in general and Egyptians or Japanese. So singling out an ethnic group might simply prove too complex. Yet their general theories are not new, nor seen as wildly radical. Stanford University biologist and physicist Steven Block wrote in the late 1990s of gene therapy as a weapon. He speculated about stealth viruses that could linger in the body until called to kill. He imagined designer diseases that “instruct the cells in our body to commit suicide.” “Progress in biomedical science inevitably has a dark side,” Block wrote in his landmark treatise “Living Nightmares.” Biological weapons, he wrote, “do not require rare materials, such as enriched uranium or plutonium. They do not require rare finances: development and production are comparatively inexpensive. They do not require rare knowledge: Most of the techniques involved are straightforward, well-documented, and in the public domain. ... Inevitably, someone, somewhere, sometime seems bound to try something. “So, for better or worse,” Block wrote, “genomics will change our world.” In 2003, a National Academies of Sciences report suggested research restrictions against altering microbes to pump up their deadliness or virulence, to make them more contagious or more resistant to drugs, or to mask their detection. Yet since studying a hardier bug can teach scientists how to slay the toughest infections, researchers are tempted to push the limits. “It’s highly technical about what the definition of `more virulent’ is,” said Samuel Miller, a biochemist at the University of Washington and director of the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Diseases. “It becomes controversial.” Before the DNA sequence of the influenza strain that killed 50 million people in 1918 was made public earlier this fall, the National Scientific Advisory Board for Biosecurity first had to weigh the odds of terrorists or rogue governments exploiting the information.

Some weapons experts said they were troubled that the tone of the Chinese scientists in their Military Review article glorified biotech weaponry. “The article is really about the use of nonlethal biological weapons instead of the lethal variety,” said Christian Enemark of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at Australian National University. Both are banned by the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, he said. In fact, specialists say that with biotechnology, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, the differences between a biological weapon and a chemical weapon become blurred. The United States has for decades signed on to treaties that bar both. (Eventually unfounded suspicions that Saddam Hussein was making chemical and biological weapons – alongside a nuclear program – drove the call for the American occupation of Iraq.) A Defense Department study of compliance with international arms treaties recently suggested “serious concerns about the nature” of North Korea’s biological weapons-related activities, and similar worries that biological weapons efforts in Iran are “embedded within (its) extensive biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.” In 2004 the federal government allocated $5.6 billion to Project BioShield to gird the nation’s defenses against biological, chemical and nuclear threats. Of that,

PROS AND CONS

nearly $1 billion was earmarked for stockpiling 75 million anthrax inoculations. There have been problems, however, in finding enough vaccine. Still, critics say that even those billions are dwarfed by private research and that the U.S. military risks being left out of the mainstream of developments in biotechnology – and eventually could be unable to defend against it. The Defense Advanced Projects Agency has explored its benefits, such as armor improved by the right proteins or commandos juiced by performance-enhancing drugs. “Think of what happens when you put a baseball player on steroids,” said James Carafano, a defense analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Then imagine what soldiers could do who can stay awake for 72 hours and maintain all their mental faculties.” Controversy comes in designing new ways to hurt people. Jonathan Tucker, an arms proliferation expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, criticized the Bush administration for not tightening arms treaties more aggressively. He said the Pentagon’s desire to nurture its own budding nonlethal weapons, used for issues such as crowd control, discourage it from pressing the issue. “We should be reinforcing the norm,” Tucker said, “that this kind of thing is wrong.”

Among the ways biotechnology could be used to help troops or target enemies: • Miracles for battlefield medicine in the form of artificial skin, limb regeneration, artificial blood, boosted immunities from new vaccines, the ability to counteract shock. • Potential for performance enhancers could make soldiers stronger, give them more stamina, improve their vision, allow for better battlefield awareness and increase their abilities to concentrate while carrying lighter, more powerful weapons. • Chemical or biological weapons could be handled more safely, increasing the chances that terrorist or rogue governments might use them, especially binary weapons that only become lethal when two substances are mixed together. • Substances designed to kill only certain ethnic groups or even specific individuals. • Release of diseases with virtual on/off switches, which only the aggressor could control – perhaps with a chemical antidote. • Weapons, maybe launched with sprays of miniature bullets, maybe with gases, that attack specific organs or cells, or that trigger psychological effects. • Sleeper weapons that infect a victim with a fatal or crippling condition that isn’t apparent until long after the attack, and maybe only after the attacker activates a second stimulant. • Diseases designed to resist antibiotics or other treatments, to avoid detection by conventional medical tests, or to be especially contagious. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 65

thinkLIFE technology

Signal boosters

Happiness is: mobile broadband coverage even out the back of beyond, writes Ian Wishart

ne of the vagaries of modern technology is the way we come to depend on it, beyond its capacity in some cases to meet demand. Those of us who can still remember 1985 will remember Telecom – then part of the New Zealand Post Office leviathan – making its customers wait up to eight weeks for a phone line to be connected, or the sound quality on phone lines that was so shockingly appalling you could barely hear the other party above the static crackling and dropouts. Toll calls were charged in three minute segments at around $3 per minute, so a one hour phone call from Auckland to Wellington might cost as much as $180. Despite this, the newly-deregulated NZ economy was booming so much that even 19-year-old chalkies – the girls writing up buy and sell prices on the stockmarket boards – were buying homes freehold on the speculative profiteering of the day. Phone calls cost money, but it was a justifiable cost of doing business. Cut forward twenty years, and similar issues exist around the provision of broadband across New Zealand. Naturally, the bulk of metropolitan NZ has some kind of broadband access, but as always it is the 15% living in harder to reach places,

66, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

or stuck behind hills, or too far from the nearest broadband node, who suffer. I’m one of these. Distance from the phone exchange is not a problem, but because of Auckland’s rapid population growth Telecom is using wireless links to provide landline phones in our area, meaning there’s no copper cable to run broadband down. Solutions? Ihug offered a satellite broadband download service which was dodgy at the best of times. But then Ihug sold its satellite broadband to Bordernet, an Australian provider, and service has gone from intermittent to appalling, with signal dropouts every few seconds that play havoc with email and web-surfing. And so to mobile telephony. Vodafone’s

cellular signal is strong in our valley, but the local cellsite has not yet been upgraded to 3G so Vodafone mobile broadband isn’t an option. Telecom’s cellular signal is so weak you can only make a call by holding the cellphone out a second story window while using the speakerphone function and pointing your other arm towards the skytower. Although the laptop is equipped with Telecom’s Sierra 580 mobile broadband card, the signal is so poor there is no network coverage at all, let alone full-blown T3G EV-DO mobile broadband. And so it was with some skepticism that I stumbled across a US website offering external antenna kits for cellphones and mobile broadband cards like the Sierra 580. The site, wpsantennas.com,

“

To say that the improvement in coverage was astounding would be a severe understatement. That a chunk of plastic with a wire sticking out could provide full speed mobile broadband in areas well out of sight of a cell tower, where even cellphones don’t work, was unthinkable

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boasted of a boost in signal strength of between 6dB and 15dB by using their products. What the heck, I thought. In for a penny…I purchased two different antenna kits. The first, the ARC Freedom Antenna, was the one I was really pinning my hopes on: entirely portable, just a few inches high and – according to others who’d posted to various tech blogs around the world – it really worked! Implicit in that comment of course is the expectation that many of the other signal boosters on the market apparently don’t work. Best of all, after discounts, the ARC worked out at only around NZ$40. Option 2 was described by WPS as an RV/Truck antenna which could also be mounted on the roof of a house. All up, including the two antennae and an adapter cable for the Telecom mobile broadband card, the package shipped by courier to NZ worked out at a little over $160. The big question on arrival: would they work? Telecom’s Sierra software comes with a display that conveniently tells you what lev-

el of mobile internet coverage you are currently enjoying. At the lowest level is the bog-standard CDMA 40kbs service, about the same speed as you’ll get from a dialup modem. Then there’s 1X-RTT mobile ‘jetstream’, which offers up to 115kbs if the wind is blowing the right way. Once you’ve got the full five signal bars of 1X-RTT it might just tip over into EV-DO, the full mobile broadband with download speeds of up to 2Mb/s. Again, the scale goes from 1 to 5 bars of signal strength. On my notebook computer using the standard Sierra card, I couldn’t even register 1 bar of CDMA, let alone 1X-RTT or the unattainable EV-DO. So when I plugged in the truck antenna using the adapter cable, I wasn’t expecting a massive improvement: six times nothing is still nothing. Imagine my surprise, then, as the signal strength indicator on the screen ripped up from nothing, past 1X-RTT, to four full bars of EV-DO. The truck antenna was unwieldy, but hey, at least we were in business. Next question: would the small-

er ARC antenna have enough grunt to also provide EV-DO 3G coverage? The answer was yes, with bells on. Again, up to four bars of EV-DO, available not only anywhere in the house but also around the property and further down the road in the deepest part of the valley. To say that the improvement in coverage was astounding would be a severe understatement. That a chunk of plastic with a wire sticking out could provide full speed mobile broadband in areas well out of sight of a cell tower, where even cellphones don’t work, was unthinkable. The purchase of a couple more adapter cables, allowing the aerials to be used with a Telecom and a Vodafone mobile phone (the ARC is compatible with all mobile systems), rounds out the communications upgrade. It is a relief that even in the comms wop-wops aftermarket products can bring you into the 21st century. If Telecom are really smart, they’ll be offering the ARC antenna as an in-store option this year so you don’t have to rely on mailorder from the US.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 67

feelLIFE

sport

A swing & a prayer

Michael Campbell’s major breakthrough has him keeping elite company, writes Curtis Zupke

t would have been difficult at first glance to tell that winners of three of this year’s majors were on the driving range at Sherwood Country Club in California a few weeks back. In one corner was Tiger Woods hitting balls as the usual throng of media, tournament officials and security stood behind him, as if a secret were further revealed with every swing. One had to look harder to find Michael Campbell, at the opposite corner, practically under a tree, swinging away in front of only his coach, Jonathan Yarwood. The gap between the two players, literally and somewhat symbolically, was clear. What wasn’t so crystal was who has been smiling more this year. “I can’t remember the last six months,” says Campbell, who finished third in the Target World Challenge, a year-end exhibition hosted by Woods at Sherwood featuring the top 16 players in the world who accept the invitation. It was the most recent of several elite events Campbell has been able to play this past few months because of his remarkable breakthrough victory in the U.S.Open in June. Besides the British Open and PGA Championship, Campbell also played in the Presidents Cup and the silly season’s PGA Grand Slam of Golf.

68, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

It’s hard to believe that eight months ago 36 year old Campbell was just another struggling player trying to resurrect his career – for a third time. The turning point came at the end of 2004, when he sat down and wrote his thoughts about the upcoming year. Campbell didn’t have a lot of positive commentary. “The last thing I wrote was, `I’ve had enough of this game,’” he says. “I ripped that piece of paper up, and from that point on I changed my attitude – my life, really. People said to me what’s gone on the last six months . . . basically I just changed myself. Every thought I had, every step I took, was positive.” Part of Campbell’s resurgence stemmed from his work with Yarwood on simplifying his swing to match his stocky build. He also worked with a psychologist to remind himself what he was capable of. Campbell had 11 victories before this season. Still, it didn’t look good at the start of 2005. Campbell missed his first five cuts and qualified for the Open through a sectional qualifier the USGA held in England, in which he needed a birdie on the last hole. Campbell, who hadn’t made a cut in the Open in four years, confronted himself just before the tournament.

“The week of Pinehurst, I said enough of this . . . it’s time to go out and play some golf,” he says. “That whole week in Pinehurst I convinced myself I was good enough.” Campbell willed himself through 72 holes that added up to even-par golf, good enough for the trophy and a rare claim of coming out victorious against Woods on the back nine of a major. He became the first New Zealander to win a major since Bob Charles won the British Open in 1963. With the victory came a world of responsibility that Campbell was reminded of in a letter from Jack Nicklaus. “He said to me, `Michael, from now on you have new responsibilities. You need to promote this game around the world.’ “ That’s primarily why Campbell has wanted to play more events, although since he’s not a member of the PGA Tour, he can only play in 10 events in 2006. But perhaps few other players appreciate his position more than he does. Campbell tied for third in the 1995 British Open, but his career turned downward when he injured his left wrist and had to change his swing. He tried to play the PGA Tour in 2003 but couldn’t make a cut and returned to England. Yarwood says there was always reason to believe things would turn around. “If you’re on the inside of the golf family, you realize what esteem everyone holds Michael in,” Yarwood explains. “He’s very, very respected as a player. Even though he hadn’t won a major, he was still a winner around the world. Everyone knew, at some stage, he was going to come through. He’s designed to do what he did.” Any idea that Campbell’s Open victory was a fluke were erased the following month, when he tied for fifth in the British Open. Campbell tied for sixth in the PGA Championship and later joined Gary Player, Hale Irwin and Ernie Els as the only players to win the World Match Play Championship and U.S. Open in the same year. Woods has said it is important for the Challenge to draw more international players, and Campbell seems an ideal fit. It’s far from a major, but the tournament presents the same challenge for Campbell as he goes against the top players in the world again. “Just beating them is good enough for me,” he grins.

“

The last thing I wrote was, `I’ve had enough of this game,’” he says. “I ripped that piece of paper up, and from that point on I changed my attitude – my life, really

”

KRT

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 69

feelLIFE

health

o I was interested to read a longish column on homeopathy in a recent edition of a respectable current affairs magazine. For any non-regular readers of this space, I refer to the interesting, well-written, and yet utterly disagreeable article by Clive Stuart in last month’s Alt.Health column in Investigate. Homeopathy (to recap without resorting to name-calling) was first thought up in the late 1700s by physician Samuel Hahnemann, who thought it would be nice to have an alternative to bloodletting and purging. And indeed Hahnemann was right that the medicine of the time was deficient. Prima non nocte, as the saying goes: first do no harm. While homeopathy didn’t do much good, at the time, homeopathy couldn’t have done any worse. Later, scientists such as Louis Pasteur would develop the germ theory of disease, which is the basis for all “conventional” scientific medicine. Stuart states in his article – and it is my sense also – that homeopathy, along with all the other alternative remedies, has enjoyed a “spectacular resurgence” in recent years. There has been less contemporary enthusiasm for purging and bloodletting – except perhaps for the colonic irrigation crew, but that’s another story. Modern medicine works very nicely, despite side effects. But there is a good reason for this: No side effects; no effects at all. Homeopathic medicine is based on a number of mystical postulates such as that ”like treats like” (a.k.a. the “Law of Similars”) and the “Theory of Infinitesimals”, which states that if a very diluted amount of a substance that causes the symptoms a patient suffers is given, relief is forthcoming. Many homeopathic remedies are diluted, and diluted again, and so on and so forth until there are no remaining molecules of the original substance. The water is said to retain a mem-

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Homeo a no-go

The evidence in favour of homeopathy is still just a well-diluted drop in a bucket, says Claire Morrow ory of the substance that was once in it. Hmm. Thimbleful of gin in an ocean of tonic? Doing nothing for me. Medicines don’t exist in a vacumn; they exist in your body. The medicines don’t actually have side effects so much as your body does. Medicines are rarely clean; they affect the body systems already in place and cause them to behave differently. St Johns Wort, for example, is clinically proven to be effective in the treatment of depression. It has much the same side effects as lab-created antidepressants; according to the US-based National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, these can include “dry mouth, nausea, headache, or effects on sexual function or sleep.” Stuart also claims that there is something wrong with studies attacking homeopathy, simply because people involved with them believed from the outset that homeopathy was bogus. And at first

The water is said to retain a memory of the substance that was once in it. Hmm. Thimbleful of gin in an ocean of tonic? Doing nothing for me 70, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

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glance, his seems to be an intuitively logical complaint. But hold that thought. Do you want a drug rep who knows in the core of his being that his drug works to evaluate it? Or an extreme-naturalist Luddite, who knows it doesn’t work? Where are you going to get an impartial jury? Go get the best scientist. A true scientist, a real believer in the principles, can start with a belief that it doesn’t work and then find it does, or vice versa. A good study – the gold standard – is double blind and has a large cohort of patients who are matched for age and gender and condition and whatever else is relevant. One group gets the placebo, another gets the real drug. The patient doesn’t know what they are getting, and neither do the scientists. No one knows who gets what, and bias is averted. Doctors who know who is getting the placebo might (and in fact do) treat such patients differently. Scientists are obliged to report conflicts of interest, such as funding or other engagements that may taint the research. This doesn’t mean there must be no conflict, but it should be declared. An interesting recent example of this is Australia’s

CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet: high protein, limited carbohydrates, calorie controlled. The diet’s creators state that they are not sure if you get the same results with non-meat protein; they only tested the fleshy types. Funding came from the Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation. Does the diet work? Probably. Is it better tested and researched than most diets? Yes. Is it biased…well, that depends on how you want to look at it. The Total Wellbeing Diet was funded by a corporation who were sure it would prove their theory. They knew it worked, and then paid someone to prove it. As long as that funding is declared (and it is), it is hard to see the problem. Probably eating 300g of tofu a day on a calorie-controlled diet works as well as eating 300g of Scotch fillet. But Tofu Australia didn’t fund the diet research, so we don’t know. The large methodological study Stuart cites which is critical of homeopathy used only the best studies – essentially, it studied studies. It excluded those that seemed flawed, meaning studies that were less than perfect. It chucked a lot of studies that showed a positive result for homeopathic remedies, and also some badly designed studies that disproved it. Ultimately, it found no evidence that homeopathy works. The study’s authors may well have gone into the study expecting to find that. One has to have an hypothesis to develop a study. Maybe there was a selfserving bias. Would it have been any better if they went in certain homeopathy would work? My admittedly cursory review of the study, and the studies excluded by the original study seems to hold up the notion that the researchers did good science. We should be skeptical. I am right to be skeptical of homeopathy and Stuart is right to be skeptical of the study that dismissed it. Cold fusion was announced way back in 1989, and had to be unannounced. They were wrong. In the rush to publish, the scientists got ahead of themselves. Thanks to peer review and the scrutiny of the worldwide scientific community, the errors were quickly spotted. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The pharmaceutical industry, in particular, has come under terrific fire lately. Apparantly they want to sell their drugs, which is all very well and good, and might sometimes cut corners or mislead consumers, which is not. Well, we should be skeptical, I guess – although bear in mind that higher standards are applied to regulated medicines than just about anything else, including homeopathic “remedies”. Pharmaceuticals must be safe and effective. It might be much more expensive and only slightly better than the rival's drug, and that is where a lot of the criticism comes in, but it is safe and effective. Alas we are all human; I heard a quip on TV the other night that Viagra was the fastest approved drug in history because the FDA panel were all desperate to take it themselves. Worse, it was probably true. Dubious science is still dubious no matter where you find it. Hence the standards, the peer review, the professional witchhunting that can haunt a scientist who fudges it. Is there any evidence that would make you dismiss homeopathy? There should be. As Karl Popper tells us, if something cannot be disproven, then it is a matter of faith; not of science.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 71

feelLIFE

alt.health

“

Glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, taken together, may help reduce moderate to severe knee pain caused by osteoarthritis, the leading cause of disability in the United States, according to research presented at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting in San Diego

ZUMA

Herbal pills get the OK

We’re an active generation punishing our joints, but a new medical study says herbal remedies can help, writes Virginia Smith

t’s official: Two dietary supplements that millions of senior citizens and baby boomers around the world already swear by for creaky knees finally have some real science behind them. Glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, taken together, may help reduce moderate to severe knee pain caused by osteoarthritis, the leading cause of disability in the United States, according to research presented at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting in San Diego. Supplement makers, who sold NZ$1.1 billion worth of glucosamine/chondroitin last year in the US, have been eagerly awaiting the results of the research. It comprises the first large-scale, rigorously designed clinical trial of the popular supplements to be funded by the federal gov-

72, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006

ernment rather than private industry. Crystal S. Wright, vice president of Leiner Health Products of Carson, Calif., and supplier of 43 percent of America’s glucosamine/chondroitin store brands is, naturally, jubilant. “This study offers us another alternative and that’s what it’s really all about – alternatives in treatment.” Wright, who takes the stuff herself, embraces the study’s findings as further evidence that with scientific scrutiny, dietary supplements increasingly will be found safe and effective. Many consumers and mainstream physicians likely will agree, at least for glucosamine/chondroitin, hyped as “The Arthritis Cure” in Jason Theodosakis’ 1997 best-seller. Orthopedic surgeon Nicholas A. DiNubile, a knee specialist, insists there is no cure for arthritis. But he takes glucosamine/chondroitin for a stubborn teenage football injury and recommends it for 1,000 of his patients. The typical daily dose is 1,500 milligrams of glucosamine and 1,200 milligrams of chondroitin sulfate. DiNubile has long thought the combination can improve both pain and function in arthritic knees, calling it “a no-brainer for people to try.” A bit more cautious is rheumatologist H. Ralph Schumacher, who supervised 98 patients for the study at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Altogether, 16 research sites across the country were involved. Schumacher, too, takes glucosamine/ chondroitin – for knees battered by decades of playing basketball. But he warns it’s not the magic bullet consumers are looking for. “You can buy the combo and it might have some effect but it’s not miraculous,” he said. “It’s minor.” The NIH study, based at the University of Utah, recruited almost 1,600 osteoarthritis patients ages 40 to 80. For six

”

months, they were given either glucosamine or chondroitin, a combination of the two, 200 milligrams of the common prescription pain medication celecoxib (sold as Celebrex) or a placebo. No one knew who was getting what and no patient suffered serious side effects. The best results were reported in patients with moderate to severe pain who took the combo: almost 80 percent said they had about 20 percent less pain. “It did provide some benefit to a subset of people but they were still left with pretty significant pain,” says Schumacher, who adds exercise, good diet and weight loss to the list of strategies to combat osteoarthritis. The study showed that celecoxib also reduced knee pain, to a lesser extent, but Schumacher recommends the supplements over Celebrex, which carries warnings about possible cardiovascular and gastrointestinal-bleeding. “Less risk,” he says. One somewhat surprising study result was that 60 percent of patients given a placebo reported pain relief, twice the typical placebo rate in most clinical trials. Researchers interpret that as a measure of arthritis sufferers’ intense desire for relief. Osteoarthritis, also called degenerative joint disease, affects around eight percent of the population, more women than men and especially women over 65. More men are developing severe cases, and doing so in their 50’s as opposed to later, which may be attributed to greater participation in strenuous sports. Other risk factors include family history and obesity. The disease is caused by the progressive breakdown of cartilage, the body’s shock absorber, a slippery connective tissue that cushions the ends of bones within the joints. Osteoarthritis most often affects the hands and large weight-bearing joints, commonly knees, by limiting movement and causing pain and swelling.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, September 2005, 73

tasteLIFE

TRAVEL

Beyond the beach in Mexico

To truly travel a country, writes Alan Solomon, you must experience its heartlands

AXACA, Mexico – There’s nothing wrong with Mexico’s beach resorts. No problem with spending a week under a palapa on the water with a couple of good books, someone you like and a steady supply of icy Coronas. Been there, done it, will do it again. But 300kms north of Huatulco’s sandy bays is the marvelous city of Oaxaca. A 30-minute drive south of Progreso’s port and palm trees is the fascinating city of Merida. They beckon all who love travel beyond the beaches. The rewards? Read on. OAXACA You see it in the faces of the people on the benches in the zocalo, the central plaza. They are dark faces, expressive, lined, warm faces. They are old Zapotec women, with their roots in the hills and mountains that frame the Oaxaca Valley, who come to the city for its markets, to sell here, to buy here, to renew acquaintances. They smile easily. There is a sense of peace, a gentle quiet in the smiles. Walk through Mercado Benito Juarez or Mercado 20 de Noviembre - both absolute paradises for anyone who loves looking at edible things – and the women will offer samples of a Oaxaca favorite: fried grasshoppers, in three sizes. “I like the bigger ones,” a guide, Raul Felix, would tell me later, “but they cause diarrhea if you eat a lot. Probably 20 in a couple of tacos is OK.” “Chapulines?” says the woman. I sample a couple of smaller ones, and they’re surprisingly tart. It’s the lime. The insects are gathered, boiled, rinsed, then sauteed in olive oil with garlic, onions and a squeeze of lime juice. My only objection is the little feet get stuck in my teeth. For the peso equivalent of $7, you can enjoy crepas de chapulin at Los Danzantes, one of Oaxaca’s more elegant restaurants.

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There’s more to Oaxacan cuisine than insects, of course, and we’ll get back to that. This city, capital of the state of the same name, is, more than anything, a beautiful city in a beautiful place, in a valley defined by the South Sierra Madre, a valley uncursed by the wretched smog of the nation’s capital 300 miles to the northwest. The Aztecs built here first, below the crumbling Monte Alban – the city of the ancient Zapotecs. They constructed a fort in 1486. The Spanish marched in 35 years later, and by 1532 it was a colonial city. Today the population of Oaxaca (WahHA-ka) is around 250,000, but it feels smaller, in part because much of it is built low to the ground. This is earthquake country – there was a bad one in 1999 that killed at least 19 and caused significant damage – and tallness and tremors have an uneasy relationship. They paint the storefronts and homes in lively colors here, the ones that aren’t done in Spanish Colonial limestone, and that makes walking Oaxaca a visual delight, even where the streets haven’t been converted into pedestrian zones. The public buildings are handsome and, necessarily, solid. The lowness of the profile makes the great old churches seem that much more dominant. The Cathedral, begun soon after the Spanish settled in and rebuilt several times due to the quakes, is massive yet with a certain humility. On one morning, four women were singing hymns before a creche in one of the many side chapels, serenading the child in the manger; two girls happened by, stopped, and joined in – six people filling the huge church with sweetness. A more glorious building, in earthly terms: Iglesia de Santo Domingo, four blocks north. Begun in 1551 and much restored in the 1950s, the interior is a symphony in gold, its altar designed to awe; in what was its monastery, the Regional Museum of Oaxaca is far bet-

ter than it sounds and is easily the city’s best. Especially photogenic from the outside, the 17th century Basilica de Nuestro Senora de la Soledad, a few blocks west and much beloved here (its Virgin is Oaxaca’s patron saint), is nearly as fine within. Walk between the three churches, and it will be impossible to miss the crafts, some on outdoor tables, some in shops fashioned from what once were fine houses, some in shops barely big enough to have walls. These items are not the mass-produced kitsch found throughout the country in every tourist-trap’s Mercado de Artesenias. These are high-quality weavings, carefully fashioned works of tin, and, most uniquely in Oaxaca, polished black pottery and the irresistible alebrijes. Sometimes bizarre and almost always brilliantly colored, today’s alebrijes are rooted most directly to the 1930s, when an ailing Pedro Linares translated hallucinatory critters into papier-mache. That evolved into copal-wood versions, and today the best are produced by Zapotec Indians in a few villages, particularly San Martin Tilcajete just a few miles outside the city. (For real way-back roots, check out the clay antiquities at the terrific Rufino Tamayo Museum, in the city.) Visits to both San Bartolo Coyotepec and San Martin Tilcajete can be combined with tours (prices vary) of three nearby sites of another kind: the Tule Tree, Mitla and Monte Alban. The Tule Tree, a 2,000-year-old cypress with a trunk 160 feet around, may be the world’s widest tree. If you’re heading toward Mitla, stop. Otherwise, buy a postcard. Of the region’s two primary archeological sites – Mitla and Monte Alban – the latter is by far the more impressive. The site, on a flattened hilltop overlooking Oaxaca and neighboring towns, is one reason. The sprawl is another; this is a place to explore.

Mitla is interesting mainly for the detail of its walls and is worth the drive (less than an hour), but if you’re going to pick one, Monte Alban (6 miles from central Oaxaca; maybe NZ$20 round trip by taxi) is it. Then come back and eat something. Have some hot chocolate (milk or hot water) at Mercado 20 de Noviembre, with a roll for dipping. Stop at one of the outdoor joints around the zocalo and try the tlayudas, a thin fried tortilla topped with refried beans, chopped tomatoes, shredded lettuce and some chicken or beef. It’s served with a green salsa that would burn a hole through a vault – but try a little of that too. Most of all, do some mole. Pronounced moh-lay. Nothing says Oaxaca cuisine better. They’re sauces – some of dizzying complexity – which are so character-filled, the obligatory accompanying chunk of protein (chicken, pork, beef, sometimes rabbit, duck, other things) is largely irrelevant. At least one restaurant, Los Pacos, has a menu only because people expect it. “My specialty is moles,” says the chef, Espiridion Ortiz, as you’re shown the table. “I have six moles. You want to try?” We do. Out come six little bowls of mole – just mole: negro (black), rojo (red), amarillo (yellow), verde (green), chichilo (another kind) and estofado (another kind). A chicken breast arrives with rojo on one side, estofado on the other. Estofado is something of a wild card. Traditionally, Oaxacans brag about having seven of the sauces: the first five, plus coloradito (a deeper red) and manchamanteles (kind of sweet; the name has something to do with its ability to stain tablecloths). People are just starting to figure out Oaxaca. Iliana de la Vega, chef-owner of El Naranjo, one of the city’s finer restaurants, remembers when it was something of a secret. “When I was growing up in Mexico City and my parents brought us to Oaxaca to see our family,” she says, “I remember my friends saying, `Why do you go to Oaxaca? There’s nothing in Oaxaca.’ There were people even in Mexico who didn’t know how great it is. “I couldn’t tell exactly then why it was a magical thing. And now, people are discovering it. It’s surprising. It’s been here forever, you know?”

MERIDA In Merida, the zocalo is Plaza Mayor, and in all the country there may be none more lovely. It is a plaza of trees, a plaza of flowers and of benches and condenciales – white, S-shaped twin seats where, in gentler times, courting couples could get acquainted while maintaining a discrete physical separation. On Sundays, especially, this zocalo is filled with families. Children chase pigeons the way all children chase pigeons. Balloon vendors and assorted other sellers add color; musicians, playing guitars or pairing up on a marimba, add rhythms. There is another beautiful sound here. It is laughter. Also on Sundays, some streets leading into and out of Plaza Mayor become pedestrian zones lined with an assortment of food stalls (here we go again ...) that won’t be there Monday. Walk among them and eyeball the movable feast, and inevitably you’ll be invited to grab one of the plastic chairs and join in.

Which I am and I do. I point to some women at the next table – “I’ll have what they’re having” – and what the man brings is puddinglike cornmeal stuffed with chicken and topped by a dab of red sauce. “Tamal colado,” says the man who sets it before me. Nine pesos. About NZ$1.20. Wonderful. Not sampled, only because it’s served in places we didn’t get to: iguana and armadillo. “The iguana tastes like chicken,” says a guide at Chichen Itza. “Armadillo tastes like pork. Fried and with beans and with hot peppers and the tortillas, it’s very delicious.” (When it’s not Sunday, graze the Mercado Municipal. Many good things. Don’t miss salbutes – small fried tortillas topped with shredded real turkey, chopped lettuce and tomatoes, a sweet salsa, a couple of beet slivers for color and a bit of avocado. A buck will get you three.) We got to Chichen Itza. There are many

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good things about Merida, and foremost among them is its proximity to this primarily Mayan city, one of Mexicoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most visited archeological sites. The ruins â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some restored, others mere piles of rocks awaiting further processing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; are stunning despite the crowds and the phalanx of vendors selling the usual tourist junk. Everyone is drawn to two things: the ball court, complete with hoop, where the winners were killed, a reward that would seem to discourage a high shooting percentage â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but no. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was an honor to die,â&#x20AC;? says our guide. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The winner, after he dies in the games, is reborn.â&#x20AC;? And the Kukulcan Pyramid. Warning: Going up the Kukulcan Pyramid is easier than coming down. Warning II: The tour buses arrive from Merida, two hours away, about the same time (late morning) the tour buses arrive from Cancun, three hours away. (My tour, including transport but not lunch (NZ$12) or admission ($11): about $30.) Come early or late. Another ruins option, and only an hour way: Uxmal. Didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get there. The pictures are nice. Back to Merida and Plaza Mayor. If you look at all like a tourist, it is here that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll hear the plaintive cry of the Merida entrepreneur: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hamacas? Sombreros? Guayaberas?â&#x20AC;? This is the Hammock, Panama Hat and Guayabera Capital of Mexico. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re all sold in shops and peddled by vendors. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in town long enough and look around, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see local people relaxing in hammocks and shaded by those wovenpalm hats. Guayaberas? Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re comfortable lightweight shirts (the linen ones are especially spiffy) seen anywhere that catches a Caribbean breeze, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re worn outside the pants, and they usually have some embroidered trim. In Merida, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see them mostly on people who sell guayaberas. But Merida, capital of the state of Yucatan and with a population of more than 660,000, is more than food and commerce. No state in this country has had a stormier history, and much of it begins here. This Catedral, on one side of Plaza Mayor, was begun in 1561 and built in part with stones from the Mayan city that had already been in decline when

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equen was used for rope and other things the Spaniards marched in 20 years earlier. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; brought concentrated wealth to a few, Its interior can only be described as, well, um, lucky families in the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poorplain. The loveliness is from the people, est state. many of them Mayan, who pray here. The paseo is a bit of a hike from cenOn another side is whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s now a bank ter. One option, an option not found in but was, for centuries, the home of the Oaxaca: carriage rides. A one-hour buggy Montejo family. Yucatecans know the tour goes for about $14 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a good idea if Montejos as the Spanish subduers of you can find a driver who speaks English, the indigenous populace and founders which will take a little work ... of Merida. Less learned visitors know For the rest of the town, Merida, like â&#x20AC;&#x153;Montejoâ&#x20AC;? as the brand name of a decent Oaxaca, is delightfully walkable, and the local beer. plazas are part of the delight. A block On a third is the Municipal Palace, the north of the zocalo is Parque Hidalgo, a city hall, much remodeled since its 1735 mini-zocalo and gathering spot bordered opening. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a good backdrop for zocalo by a couple of veteran hotels whose respictures. taurants spill onto the sidewalks. Across On the fourth side is the Government the street from Parque Hidalgo is another Palace, a handsome, century-old state one, Parque de la Madre, with its jewelbureaucracy headquarters â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and this, box of a church, Iglesia de Jesus. for its murals, is the must-see. They are In all the parks, on most weekends and by Fernando Castro Pacheco, and they particularly on Sundays, in Merida there are shattering â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not in the manner of is music, and it is free. Orozcoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famous socio-political bludgeon You are welcome to sing along - which in Guadalajara, but just as powerful an is certain to attract some attention, very embrace of all that comprises the saga of possibly from someone eager to sell you the Yucatan. hamacas! sombreros! guayaberas! They begin on the main level, and these Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to grab a tamal. are understated. Upstairs, in what once And an icy Corona. was a ballroom but now is the Salon de la Historia, the paintings hold nothing back in their depiction of heroism, treachery, horror, bravery, exploitation and hope. Nothing youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see in Merida â&#x20AC;&#x201C; nor, I would guess, anywhere else â&#x20AC;&#x201C; better illustrates the uniqueness of Yucatecan history. A more subtle $!93 &2/- 0%2 0%23/. reminder: The Paseo de Montejo (that name 3MALL 'ROUP *OURNEY WITH 4REK!MERICA again). This broad avenue boasts century-EXICOgS 9UCATAN 0ENINSULA OFFERS HIGHLIGHTS old mansions â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some INCLUDING ANCIENT -AYAN SITES CHARMING COLONIAL now restaurants, some CITIES JUNGLES AND WATERFALLS UNSPOILT BEACHES AND banks, some muse#ARIBBEAN NIGHTLIFE 3EE IT ALL ON THIS SMALL GROUP ums (including the JOURNEY WITH 4REK!MERICA excellent Museo de 0RICE INCLUDES NIGHTS SHARE TWIN Antropologia), some ACCOMMODATION ALL TRANSPORT still used as homes, A TOUR LEADER AND ADMISSION others crumbling like TO ALL SITES !IRFARES AND MEALS abandoned Mississippi ARE ADDITIONAL plantation houses. Together, they tell of a time when the henequen industry â&#x20AC;&#x201C; hen-

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tasteLIFE

FOOD

Seeing red

Eli Jameson separates the ripe tomatoes from the hoary chestnuts

ear the word ‘tomatoes’, and what do you think of? Spaghetti piled high and swimming in marinara sauce? Garden vines hanging heavy with ripe, red fruit? Or perhaps something less pleasant – childhood memories of supermarket tomatoes as tasteless as their plastic packaging, sliced into a salad of sweaty iceberg lettuce and gloppy bottled dressing the colour of jaundice, introduced by mum in an attempt to get the kids to ‘eat healthy’? To me, tomatoes always mean one thing: summer. Regular readers of this column are familiar with my fierce dislike of the colder months, and so the arrival of abundant and cheap tomatoes in the markets is always a cause for celebration. For the foreseeable future, there will always be a truss of tomatoes, still on the vine, on

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the kitchen bench ready to go on sandwiches, be tossed into some dish or other, or simply sliced on a plate and sprinkled with sea salt and a little extra-virgin olive oil – the ultimate simple summer salad – perhaps with some basil leaves and a tornup ball of buffalo mozzarella. But what’s the story with tomatoes? Are they fruits or vegetables? Were they really once thought to be poisonous, until someone ate a bucket of them on the steps of a small-town U.S. courthouse? There are a lot of strange stories that have grown up around tomatoes, and I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I’ve fallen for some of them (the courthouse steps one, especially) myself over the years. Tomatoes, according to the invaluable Wikipedia, are fruit, at least scientifically speaking: they are the ovary, togeth-

er with the seeds, of a flowering plant. However, because tomatoes are generally served as a main dish and not as desert, they are legally classified – at least in the United States – as a vegetable. The issue even went so far as the US Supreme Court, which in the 1893 case of Nix v. Hedden declared tomatoes as vegetables because of their popular use (along with cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas), a decision which had huge tariff implications at the time. For a good time, invite a botanist and a lawyer along to your local’s next trivia night, and make sure the emcee asks the fruit-or-vegetable question. And then there is the tale of the brave Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson, who is said to have eaten of a basket of tomatoes on the steps of the Salem, New Jersey, courthouse in 1820 to turn the tide of public opinion and show that the fruit was not the least bit dangerous to anyone who didn’t suffer severe hearburn. Alas, the much-loved Johnson tale is not true: the American television network CBS popularized the story in a 1949 episode of You Are There, in which an actor playing the colonel declared to an assembled throng of two thousand souls, “What are you afraid of? Being poisoned? Well I’m not, and I’ll show you fools that these things are good to eat!” (Hmm, Dan Rather would have been 18 at the time; could an early, unreported experience as a production assistant for the show have inspired him to brazen out Memogate as CBS’s lead anchor some 55 years later?) As it turns out, tomatoes were grown and eaten in North America since at least 1710; not only were they not thought of as poisonous, but Puritans of the time even eschewed the things, fearing their alleged aphrodisiac properties! That great gourmand and man of the world Thomas Jefferson himself purchased the fruit (not yet classified a veggie by the courts) to serve at state dinners in 1806, and from 1809 onwards planted them at his estate, Monticello. Jefferson’s cousin Mary Randolph, author of the extremely influential 19th century cookbook, The Virginia Housewife, contained some seventeen tomato recipes for such exotic dishes including gazpacho and gumbo. Today, tomatoes are not only not considered dangerous, but downright healthful, especially as they are rich in the cancer-preventing antioxidant lycopene. Bloody Mary, anyone?

Chilled Tomato Soup This is one of my favourite mid-summer soups, adapted from Charlie Palmer’s excellent cookbook, Great American Food. He suggests serving with toasted croutons with warm goat cheese and basil; I think that can get in the way of the clean tomatoey goodness of the soup. But try it – you may like it. In any case, this is a great dinner party starter course for the height of summer. You’ll need: About 8 large, ripe vine-ripened or truss tomatoes; Some good extra-virgin olive oil; 1 finely chopped onion ½ cup chopped celery 1 tablespoon minced garlic Fresh basil leaves 500 ml sparkling mineral water 1 sachet 2 teaspoons Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce Good sea salt, like Maldon Fresh-ground pepper

“

What are you afraid of? Being poisoned? Well I’m not, and I’ll show you fools that these things are good to eat!

”

1. Peel, seed and chop the tomatoes; set aside. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large, heavy pan and sauté the onion, celery, garlic, and about 8 basil leaves – which should be torn in half as you toss them in. Lower the heat and continue to cook gently for about four minutes (you want the vegetables to soften but not pick up any colour), and add the tomatoes, sparkling water and sachet. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Take off heat and let rest for 30 minutes, then remove and discard the sachet. 2. Puree the mixture in a blender, working in batches if necessary, until the soup is quite smooth. Pour through a fine sieve and strain into a non-reactive bowl – giving the solids a push if need be to extract liquid. Add a couple of teaspoons of Lea & Perrins (just enough to bring out the tomato flavour; not enough to make it obvious) and your salt and pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate until icy cold – at least four hours. 3. Serve in chilled, flat soup bowls, with a spring of basil for garnish.

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seeLIFE PAGES

Blinded by science

Michael Morrissey gets caught by scientists offering big ideas with absolutely no proof… WHAT WE BELIEVE BUT CANNOT PROVE Edited by John Brockman, Free Press, $34.99

his stimulating and provoking book is in part the brain child of science writer Brockman though he acknowledges a debt to the late James Lee Byars who compiled a list of the 100 most brilliant minds in the world then rang them up “to ask the questions they had been asking themselves”. Seventy hung up on him. Brockman has had better luck – perhaps through better tactical media management – he uses his own Edge website to ask similar questions of similarly brilliant people. Among the 100 plus names – all of them scientists or philosophers (except novelist McEwan), I recognised a few of the “biggies” – Martin Rees (cosmologist), Jared Diamond (evolution-

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ary biologist and professor of geography), Steven Pinker (experimental psychologist), Freeman Dyson (physicist) and (more or less) our own Denis Dutton, philosopher, art historian and founder of the highly regarded website Art & Letters Daily. The intellectual fizz this book gives off is impressive. The wonder of it that so many heavyweight ideas have been so succinctly stated – the entries are often only a page or two long. The intriguing thing is how beliefs run in opposing directions. Martin Rees believes that intelligent life may presently be unique to our earth while Stephen Petranek (editor of Discover magazine) believes life is common throughout the universe and that we will find another Earthlike planet within a decade. (Let’s hope so.) All the scientists asked believe there is life out there though it has yet to be proved. Even the sceptical

Rees believes we will spread out among the galaxy. But how? Even if the speed of light holds as an absolute (some believe it won’t), and will make travel to far portions of the galaxy impractical or even impossible, inventor Ray Kurzweil refers to a 1988 paper that describe the engineering of wormholes which would allow nanobots to sneak through and gather information – and one day may allow humans to pass through. Susan Blackmore, who has written a great deal on consciousness, offers this brain (or mind) teaser – while observing that she seems to exist, she believes that she doesn’t – but she can’t prove it! Joseph le Doux believes animals have feelings and other states of consciousness “but neither I nor anyone else has been able to prove it”. I would have thought this was fairly easy to prove and local author Jeffrey Masson has written numerous books that predicate

this proposition as fact. Alison Gopnik, a professor of cognitive science, believes babies and young children are more conscious than adults are. In a burst of poetic expression, she writes, “for babies every wobbly step is skydiving, every game of hide-and-seek is Einstein in 1905, and every day is first love in Paris”. Yep, that’s how I remember it. Evolutionary psychologist Judith Harris believes that Neanderthals and woolly mammoths both disappeared for the same reason – modern hairless humans ate them (because being covered in hair, they were fair game). So there you go. In the long haul, some of these beliefs will be tested and found correct while some may never be able to be proved (or disproved) – which makes this world/galaxy/universe an exciting, uncertain and challenging place. This book is endlessly provocative and endlessly stimulating. And may I be permitted to add my own tuppence worth? I believe I may be the most talented writer in New Zealand but sadly I have been unable to prove it.

TREASURE ISLANDS By Pamela Stephenson, Headline, $45.00

have to admit to an initial negative bias. I don’t find Billy Connolly amusing – well nigh impenetrable accent, too slow, laughs at his own jokes, uses too many four letter words. Unfair on Pamela I know, who I vaguely remember – how long ago? – as a curvaceous and funnier-than-Billy blonde on Not the Nine O’Clock News. Also, I’m suspicious of a wife writing a biography of her own husband – wouldn’t that be ever so slightly biased? On the bright side, it seems they have a good marriage and in these times isn’t that something to celebrate? OK – now for some praise. Stephenson writes well and sympathetically about the many Pacific Islands she visits. Her book is subtitled Sailing the South Seas in the Wake of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson (note different spelling – she is not a relative). The constant counterpoint of resourceful Fanny’s journal extracts makes a nice parallel and contrast to Stephenson’s contemporary voyage. Though this is a two-edged sword – at times, Fanny’s 100-plus years older version of the same territory becomes more interesting because it is closer to the

South Seas as they originally were – in all their barbaric splendour. Plus Fanny, like any well educated nineteenth century woman, is no slouch as a stylist. At other times, nothing seems to have changed. Both travelled in relative comfort in large well-appointed yachts with captain and full crew running the show. Depending on how you look at it, both were high class tourists, leisurely travellers or amateur social anthropologists – and quite possibly a combination of all three. Scarlett, Pamela’s daughter, accompanied her on the trip, as did briefly, Billy Connolly. Either this is the most harmonious family in history or Pamela is being super discreet for nary a cross word is spoken. In my limited experience, this seems unlikely on long voyages but perhaps it was so. Much is made at the beginning of the book of Stephenson acquiring familiarity and skill with firearms in case of pirates – a fully justified fear. But disappointingly, none materialise. Similarly, a fire on board is over as quick as is starts. So where’s the drama on the high seas, I’m asking? None, it seems. Frequently, Stephenson shows herself not to be only a competent diver but a skilled naturalist writer – many of the descriptions of underwater life are superb. Alas, some are marred by gollygee-whiz comments like, “I never imagined I would find myself in the midst of such an extraordinary creature-community” – which should have been edited out. Despite these flaws, Stephenson succeeds admirably in whetting the appetite (albeit with salt) to visit many of these relatively obscure Pacific locations on some of which the locals had never before seen a European face in the flesh. Bon voyage!

POETRY NZ 31 Edited by Alister Paterson, Brick Row, $15

oetry doesn’t generally sell like J.K. Rowling, but in the big canvas of history it has played an important part – Homer, Virgil, Kalidasa, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Goethe, Wordsworth, Kipling. The unacknowledged legislators of mankind, as they have been called by no less than Shelley, provide fresh insights through original language. New Shelleys may yet be walking and writing among us – and where better to find them than in the pages of this

fine poetry magazine edited for over 10 years by Alister Paterson, himself a poet of note and skilled selector and encourager of new talent. Emerging poets featured in past issues include Kapka Kassabova, Mark Pirie, Paula Green, Tracey Slaughter and the astonishingly gifted – for one so young – Pooja Mittal. In each issue, the magazine features either a well-established poet or new star plus other contributions from local and overseas poets, making Poetry NZ, an international publication. This issue features Alistair Campbell, now our senior person of letters, 80 years-old and still going strong. As Nelson Wattie, eminent scholar, writes in an essay that accompanies a substantial selection of Campbell’s recent poetry, “The publication of Alistair Campbell’s first book of poems, Mine Eyes Dazzle in 1950 struck the tiny community of poetry readers in New Zealand with startling force.” His most famous poem “The Return” is here given a close and respectful scrutiny by Wattie who notes the strongly lyrical music of the language deployed. Another compelling essay is poet Mark Pirie’s examination of new American poetry which he finds “very much alive and kicking”. He considers some terms new to this reviewer such as “world fusion poetry”and “Slam”. Among the lineup in this issue of Poetry NZ are 21 other New Zealand poets plus additional contributors from the USA, Japan, France and Australia. Among the work I enjoyed most was the concrete poem (eg one shaped to echo the poem’s meaning) entitled “Horror” by Helen Frances and new poems from well known New Zealand poets Riemke Ensing and Richard Von Sturmer. Other poems that impressed were the Ashberylike “Ars Lona” by Arthur Kimball, an American living in Japan; the challenging “Notes towards cosmology of longing” by Ralph Luttermoser, another American living in Manhattan; and the thoughtful poem, “But it’s all in the mind” by French poet Jocelyn Thebault that introduced me to the lovely French word ordonnance which my dictionary defines as “the proper disposition of figures in a picture”. Expanding one’s vocabulary as well as one mind through poetry seems a good way to remain alert in a confused and confusing world – an excellent antidote to bureau babble and business speak – not to men-

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tion the smokescreen language of politicians. Interested readers or contributors can contact the editor at 34B Methuen Rd, Avondale, Auckland.

ROOM FULL OF MIRRORS: A biography of Jimi Hendrix By Charles R.Cross, Sceptre, $45

im Hendrix is the pop equivalent of a Paganini or Liszt in the twentieth century – astounding virtuosity, high audience appeal bordering on the hypnotic and, in particular, in Jimi’s case, an early burnout through living dangerously. There may be some romantics who think these virtuoso musicians just happen in a vacuum, that their natural gifts alone suffice to make them a performing genius – not so. Hendrix practised constantly. In one instance, noted by Cross, he practised on the way to a concert, played for five hours, then practised on the way home. He would go to sleep with his guitar resting on his chest; practise when he awoke. Of course, he had great natural gifts – and fingers so long they could reach around the neck of a guitar to hit high notes – but he would have never reached the degree of virtuosity he did without being willing to learn from his peers and predecessors and by constant practice and consciously bold innovation. His experimentation with a crude version of a fuzz box produced distorted notes and thickened sound; by bending strings and using feedback by overdriving the amplifier, he created sounds no one else could match. One of his early girlfriends complained Jimi was more interested in the guitar than kissing. In the history of British rock`n/roll, Cross notes, “no single performer ever enjoyed such a rapid rise to London fame as Jimi Hendrix”. When Eric Clapton saw Jim in action he declared he was “like Buddy Guy on acid”. Other leading English guitarists of the day – like Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend, Paul McCartney were dumbfounded – they had never seen or heard anything like Hendrix. Mike Bloomfield, considered New York’s leading guitarist, said of Hendrix -“he burnt me to death” In fact, Hendrix-famed tricks like playing behind his back he had learnt from watching T-Bone Walker and playing with his teeth from Alphonso Young

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– though Jimi surpassed them both in techniques, gimmicks, showmanship and fame which brought in its wake, money, drugs, and readily available women. Hendrix is the classic doomed romantic figure who had too much too soon. By combining a cocktail of drugs with alcohol, he was asking for trouble – and, unsurprisingly, the combination proved fatal at the young age of 27. One can’t help wondering if Jimi had learnt to modify his wild lifestyle what further musical explorations he would have left behind. In his greatest album, Electric Ladyland, he extended “pop” music to near symphonic proportions – I am reminded of Lizst’s symphonic poems. Wild Man of Borneo, Black Dylan – as he was variously called – Hendrix’s hectic short life left a rich and original legacy of blues-originated music which will last long after his death. Check out his extraordinarily lyric electronic distortion of “The Star-Spangled Banner” – it sounds as fresh now as it did at Woodstock back in 1969. His life and high times are warmly celebrated in this fine biography. And it all began with some classic blues albums, a one-stringed guitar and a disapproving father.

LETTER FROM AMERICA By Alistair Cooke, Penguin, $29.95

n the six years I have been writing this book column I have completed some 300 book reviews. When Alistair Cooke made his last broadcast of his world-famous radio column – just six weeks before his death – he had made 2869 broadcasts. His programme ran for 58 years and reached an audience of over 20 million – equal to Oprah Winfrey’s. Arguably, he may have been the most influential and listened-to broadcaster on world issues/prominent personalities the media has seen in the last century. Thus in the 1940's, he writes of Damon Runyon; in the 1950's about General Marshall; in the 1960s on Vietnam; in the 1970s about President Jimmy Carter; in the 1980s on cocaine; in the 90s, he looks at O.J. Simpson and post-2000, at the destruction of the World Trade Centre. When a famous person died he often took a look back over their achievement, usually with a telling anecdote rather than a career summary eg Duke

Ellington, Bing Crosby, Groucho Marx, Fred Astaire, Charlie Chaplin. The short but pithy introduction by Simon Jenkins describes Cooke as an East Coast liberal conservative; and that this persuasion was “the bias of most of his British listeners”. Also noted by Jenkins, that he “treated Britain and America as if they were two armchairs talking to each other, with `the Pond’ as the coffee table”. A striking feature of Cooke’s broadcasts was their beguiling, inviting-you-to listen beginning - the strategy was that of an intelligent fellow beginning a conversation rather than a news analyst commenting on current affairs. This is how he begins an essay called “San Francisco Earthquake”: “Sometime in the middle of the First World War – it must have been towards the end of the dreadful years of 1916, after the nightmare slaughter of the Somme – an aunt of mine whose husband was a soldier in France, announced that she didn’t believe a word of what she read in the newspapers”. This may not look extraordinary in print, but as a broadcast it has a complex and engaging structure which leaves the “bombshell” until the end of the sentence. Cooke’s point – gradually and skilfully revealed (and with patient pace) – is that often those in the middle of a disaster know little of the larger picture. He goes on to link his uncle in the trenches knowing only about dampness, lice, rats and bully beef with those caught in a second San Francisco earthquake in 1989 and makes the point that the bewildered inhabitants who had no power, television or radio knew less than people elsewhere who were watching it all on CNN. Cooke, ironically, was never a frontline reporter – he was rarely at the scene of an event but one who gave thoughtful consideration afterwards. Almost all of his broadcasts began with a particularity rather than generality, a complex rather than a simple sentence. Above all, it was his warm, confidential, fireside chat-style delivery that hooked the listener – and there were millions of them. Friend of kings, presidents, Hollywood film stars as well as noted musicians, singers and artists, one wonders what a broadcast by Cooke’s ghost looking back over Cooke’s career might have sounded like. Always snappily dressed, Cooke looks like a guy who enjoyed life – a man of intelligence, without rancour, always ready to listen – which is why we listened to him.

seeLIFE MUSIC

Out on the edge

Chris Philpott tackles the latest new releases, and washes his hands of one

COG The New Normal

I’

ve never really had any interest in Australian bands, partly because of a bad experience as a teenager (don’t ask). So when Bondi-based trio Cog’s debut album The New Normal crossed my desk, expectations were understandably not very high. Boy do I love it when I’m proven wrong! Filled with epic hard rock tracks reminiscent of early Tool material, The New Normal is an album to listen to without interruption, to fully absorb the intense and thick atmosphere, evident on standout tracks like “Real Life”, a great track dealing with the realisation of what life is, and also “Resonate and The River Song”, a bizarre narrative put to music. The only real problem could be that the music sounds quite layered which can mean too much sound. Of course this is not always a bad thing and fortunately it works to great effect on most of the songs here. Perhaps the best thing about The New Normal is that it has international appeal, mostly because it doesn’t sound like it came from anywhere near Bondi Beach, meaning it should see deserved success worldwide in the next 12 months. Cog is definitely a band to watch in 2006.

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THE STROKES First Impressions of Earth

ggggf

kay, I’ll ask: is this the missing link between The Strokes’ first and second albums? The difference – musically speaking – between 2001’s Is This It? and 2003’s Room on Fire is huge, but First Impressions of Earth seems to fill the gap quite nicely, fitting in perfectly as a step from one to the other, despite following them both.In fact, if I’m being honest I think I’ve enjoyed this album more than both their previous efforts. Combined. As far as I’m concerned The Strokes have hit the nail on the head with their third major release. First Impressions of Earth is a collection of stunning songs which shows exactly what the group is capable of, while remaining perfectly balanced between the bands pop-rock roots and their more experimental tendencies. Singer Julian Casablancas stands out on tracks like “Vision of Division”, “Fear of Sleep” and the wonderfully melodic opening track “You Only Live Once”, while the music is as tight as ever, driving the album like a finely-tuned sports car. If you are new to The Strokes, I would definitely check out First Impressions of Earth before looking into either of their previous albums. You won’t be disappointed.

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

I’

d like to think I’m fairly open-minded. So when I came across the debut album from a band called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, I had to have a listen. Unfortunately this album just doesn’t hit the spot for me. I’ll admit there are some interesting odds and ends amongst the 12 tracks presented here, but overall I think it suffers from a lack of really great songs. Even mediocre tracks are few and far between. Personally I think two things are to blame. Firstly, the music sounds way too much like a collection of parts from other albums in the genre, and anytime you start listening to a CD and the first words that come to mind are the names of other bands … well, let’s just say that’s not a good thing. Secondly, singer Alec Ounsworth sounds like Coldplay’s Chris Martin with a serious bout of the flu. I’ll leave it at that. Seriously, if you are a big fan of the American East Coast sound then Clap Your Hands Say Yeah could be for you. If you are looking for something easy to listen to on your day off, I would recommend looking elsewhere.

seeLIFE MOVIES

Capote

Lives and times Two American legends hit the big screen, reports Shelly Horton Walk The Line Released: February 2006 Rated: M

gggg**

h boy, you can tell it’s leading up to Academy Award time – roll out the red carpet and the Oscar-worthy bio-pics. Last year it was Ray Charles’ life story in Ray. This year Johnny Cash gets the treatment with Walk The Line. Now I’m not saying Jamie Foxx didn’t deserve his Oscar for playing Ray and Joaquin Phoenix is exceptional as Johnny Cash and will get a Academy nomination (if not win), but is it just me or does every musical bio-pic seem the same? They always seem so paint-by-numbers: Poor musician struggles as a child, dreams of success, achieves it, then throws it away with booze and pills before finally clawing his way back as a respected artist. It all smacks of a Hallmark movie of the week. A controversial musician these days would have a happy life, work on their music, achieve their dreams and be satisfied. But I guess that wouldn’t fit the “struggling, tormented musician” stereotype and it sure wouldn’t sell movie tickets.

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That whinge aside, Walk The Line still triumphs as a lusciously dramatic film. I��t doesn’t hurt that it tells the story of one of the great 20th century romances, nor that the music is phenomenal. �� And the chemistry between Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix simply sizzles. We meet Johnny as a young boy and learn how his mean, hard-drinking father Ray (played coldly and heartlessly by Robert Patrick) came to shape his life. Ray b�� lamed John for the death of his older brother, even spitting that God “took the wrong son.” No wonder he can write songs about pain and rejection. Joaquin Phoenix is spookily accurate and tormented as the “man in black” while �� Reese Witherspoon is perfect as perky June Carter. As a matter of fact, this is one of the few times Reese has given herself over to a role rather than just playing, well, Reese. Together they carefully reveal their love story: June was the only one who loved Johnny enough to stop him from hurting himself. Most people know Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon sing their own vocals in the movie. And they are amazingly talented to boot. But it’s more than just good

voices singing other people’s songs; some music critics say it’s almost impossible to pick the difference between Joaquin’s and Johnny’s voices. Impressive, huh? Despite a paint-by-numbers role Joaquin Phoenix has created a Picasso. Hand that man an Oscar.

Capote Released: Feb 16 2006 Rated: M

gggg**

up it’s another bio-pic. But it’s also a good one. Capote tells the story of the four years Truman Capote took to write his revered true crime masterpiece, In Cold Blood, based on the brutal murder of a family in Kansas, USA, in 1959. Capote slowly unfolds like a novel of that era to reveal a story within a story. On one hand the story of the murders is handled fascinatingly, but then the story of how Truman Capote teased and cajoled the details from the actual killers is breath taking. Truman Capote is probably best known today for his novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but Philip Seymour Hoffman brilliantly

Walk the line

captures the man behind the prose. He’s entertaining at dinner parties and a popular guest on talk shows, but he’s also a man whose small stature, large ego and thin whiney voice make him an outsider wherever he goes. One thing no-one will argue is he was a gifted storyteller. Truman Capotes sniffed out a bigger story when he heard the news of the murders but not even he could predict the impact of writing the book. He develops an irredeemable conflict: He wins the trust of one of the convicted killers and essentially falls in love with him, yet needs him to die to supply an ending for his book. “If they win this appeal,” he tells his friend Harper Lee, “I may have a complete nervous breakdown.” After they are hanged on

April 14, 1965, he tells Harper, “There wasn’t anything I could have done to save them.” She says: “Maybe, but the fact is you didn’t want to.” Philip Seymour Hoffman is brilliant because although Truman Capote is the central character in this film, he doesn’t make him likeable. This is character acting at it’s best. What a joy to see a character played with such a supreme ego who is at the same time heartless and giving. While he’s penning the novel he brags, “Sometimes when I think about how good my book will be I can’t breathe.” But perhaps Truman Capote’s epitaph sums up the toll writing “In Cold Blood” took. It says, “More tears are shed over answered dreams than unanswered ones.”

“

Joaquin Phoenix is spookily accurate and tormented as the “man in black” while �� Reese Witherspoon is perfect as perky June Carter. As a matter of fact, this is one of the few times Reese has given herself over to a role rather than just playing, well, Reese

”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 87

seeLIFE DVDs

A monster on disc

King Kong on DVD already, and how to leave home without leaving your armchair INTREPID JOURNEYS, PG, 408 minutes, 3-disc set

he concept of taking a Grey Lynn celebrity and dumping them in destinations far away, preferably far, far away, was of sufficient merit to warrant my interest, and viewers of the Intrepid Journeys documentaries on TV 1 can now get their fix on disc. The idea behind it is for said celebrity – Paul Henry is one who comes to mind – to be stripped of the usual accoutrements that a TVNZ salary package might entitle one to, and to be sent off with nary more than a packet of sandwiches into places like Tibet, where the best will in the world and all the money in your HSBC account still isn’t going to get you a freshly-brewed latte at 7am. These are places where a trip to the dairy is, as often as not, a 50km hike on the back of a donkey – the sort of places intrepid travelers and adventureseekers flock to. New Zealanders are the kind of tourists our own Tourism NZ hates – none of this $400 a night plus spending money bizzo, we excel at traveling on the mere rumour of an oily rag. Intrepid Journeys, the DVD, captures

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this, and that’s probably why it rates so highly on TV. All the favourites from the first series are here: the aforementioned Henry, “Westie” Robyn Malcolm in Vietnam while the effervescent Kerre Woodham is dispatched to neighbouring Cambodia. Marcus Lush could be Marcus Lush anywhere, and in this instance it’s Egypt; Danielle Cormack explores Syria and Jordan; Hugh Sundae has a yak about Mongolia; Jon Gadsby offers a rare look inside Myanmar; Peta Mathias does coca in Bolivia and Tim Shadbolt kicks off his dancing shoes in Borneo. It may seem glam to those of us watching, but many of the celebs found it a huge extension beyond their comfort zones. Fascinating TV.

KING KONG, THE PRODUCTION DIARIES, PG, 2-disc set

nce upon a time, with Lord of the Rings, one had to wait until the movie release on DVD to get the backstage footage. Not so with King Kong. Peter Jackson’s epic hasn’t proven to be the ultimate maneater at the US Box Office that people were expecting, but possibly that’s because many of the

“

Jackson’s release of the production diaries is a chance to see how the film will look in your lounge, thanks to 54 diary shorts from the filming of Kong in Wellington

”

people a monster three-hour SFX movie like this would appeal to are probably waiting to see it on a 70 inch screen in the comfort of their own lounge. To that end, Jackson’s release of the production diaries is a chance to see how the film will look in your lounge, thanks to 54 diary shorts from the filming of Kong in Wellington. It began as a viral webmarketing exercise for Jackson to reach fans, but Universal realized there could be a whole new market to be reached in what is effectively a monster advert for the movie. The diaries are infectious, amusing and had me hanging out to see the movie within minutes. Gotta be a good sign.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 89

touchLIFE

TOYBOX

The Optimus keyboard

Beautiful things

Bring some visual pleasure into your life

Ricoh Caplio R3 Continuing Ricoh’s leadership in speed and wide-angle lens technology, this 5.1 megapixel camera crams an impressive 7.1x optical zoom lens (28-200mm equivalent) into a slim 26mm metal body. It takes just 0.12 of a second to focus and shoot its subject and new image stabiliser technology eliminates the blurred effects associated with camera shake. Other features include continuous shooting at up to seven shots in three seconds, a 1cm macro, high quality MPEG4 video with sound and an angle correction mode for straightening skewed images. RRP: $699. Available from leading camera specialists, electronics retailers and major department stores. Consumer enquiries: 0800 474 264 or www.lacklands.co.nz

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The Optimus Keyboard is very special not only in its design, but particularly where its features are concerned. Each and every key can be re-assigned to any function; the whole keyboard is literally a puzzle block without any jagged edges, so keys can be moved around as radical as the user wishes. Any and everything can be displayed on the keys as an alphabet; plain English, Cyrillic, Russian, HTML codes – and so on to infinity, according to the company. Each separate key is implemented with an OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display that not only lights up, but also displays the function of the key being assigned to (which picture can be further customised, and there are extra buttons on the left soley for this purpose.) the OLED displays are also able to project images onto the buttons, for switching buttons, modes, functions and the like. There's even a separate Photoshop layout where everything is layed out on the keyboard itself – and there's even a custom layout for the game Quake! So far, so good; the amount of productivity the keyboard is capable of is, as of now, limitless. From Photoshop (or Photochop as it is nowadays kindly referred as) to Quake to relocating buttons that one wishes, the Optimus Keyboard certainly re-defines the concept of a computer keyboard once and for all. Another thing – was there a mention of the keyboard being wireless? Well, guess what – it is. For further information visit www.artlebedev.com (Review courtesy cyberwizardpit.net)

Nokia SU-8W wireless keyboard Write your message faster with the Nokia Wireless Keyboard, a full QWERTY keyboard that folds up and is small enough to carry with you. The Bluetooth wireless connection between the Nokia Wireless Keyboard and the compatible phone makes usage flexible and brings you one step closer to the vision of the mobile wireless office. Using the display of compatible phone, the Nokia Wireless Keyboard is easy to operate, making it the perfect addition to your mobile wireless office. Once the Wireless Keyboard is paired with your compatible phone, press the power key and the keyboard finds your mobile phone with wireless keyboard application automatically. Press the messaging key and the messaging window opens on the phone screen so you can create a new email, multimedia, or text message or view your inbox or other folders. When you are finished, fold the Wireless Keyboard closed and it automatically turns off and disconnects from the phone. So you can slip your office into your bag and be on your way.

10.2-inch overhead flip down LCD monitor with DVD player Playing a DVD or VCD movie is one thing, but have you ever considered being able to watch the day’s recorded events on the family camcorder or digital camera? Clarion has. Clarion offers users a convenient game port that can be installed virtually anywhere inside the vehicle. Clarion’s game port allows for quick & easy connection to your gaming unit, digital camera, camcorder or maybe even your video iPod. Utilizing the latest in active matrix LCD technology, the OHMD102’s 10.2 inch mobile video screen offers the most vibrant, most detailed images available today. And with the addition of off-axis viewing, you are assured optimal picture quality...no matter where you’re sitting. The product also carries a 3 Year warranty when purchased and installed by a Clarion specialist. Recommended Retail Price $1699. Consumer enquiries: 09 849 3132 or www.woodelectronics.co.nz

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 91

touchLIFE

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CATALOGUE

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The ultimate recliner You work hard, don’t you? So you deserve to go home to Stressless®, the world’s most comfortable recliner from Norway. And no matter how many words of praise we utter you will never quite obtain the whole story about how exceptionally comfortable a Stressless® recliner is. For one obvious reason! You have to try it! You simply have to sit in it to really understand and feel the fantastic support it provides — when compared to all the others. Be your own judge! Take the comfort test at your nearest Stressless® Studio soon.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2006, 93

realLIFE

DIARY OF A CABBIE

Driving living history

Sydney cabbie Adrian Neylan meets an inmate from Stalag 13

he narrow, descending driveway was bordered by a sandstone wall covered in ivy and shaded by eucalypts and wound down to a residence overlooking Parsley Bay that spoke of history, class and money. Halfway down an elderly man using a walking stick was making his way up the drive to meet me. I stopped and watched my fare as he painstakingly laboured up the incline before he took notice of me and waved me back up the drive to wait on the street. Positioning the cab across the drive for easy access I hopped out and opened the passenger door, slid the seat back and waited for him to arrive. Despite the late afternoon heat he was dressed in a full suit and carried a gift-wrapped item in his spare hand. He reminded me of my late father with his rolling gait on the walking stick. Yet unlike my father, he boarded the cab unaided. It’s an unusual feeling to be in the presence of one so old, yet still mobile and independent enough to be going to parties alone. It’s a bit like carrying royalty, or a heavily pregnant woman, and I pulled away slowly with the intention of driving as such. As we slowly wound down the Rose Bay bends he explained he’d planned on catching a bus to Bondi Junction but had decided to call a taxi instead. What a thrill seeker I thought, catching a bus at his age. ‘So how old are you mate?’, I asked. Impertinent, yes, but there’s simply no other way to frame such a question. He looked across at me: ‘How old do you think I am?’. Touché; I deserved that. ‘Well I reckon you’re in your mid-eighties’, I said. ‘You look at bit like my late father’. ‘More’, he urged. ‘Ninety?’. ‘I’m

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RAF Sterling bombers en route to Berlin, WW2

“

‘I thought I was in Holland until I knocked on a farmhouse door and found I was in Germany. Just unlucky’, he laughed ninety three’, he responded in a solid voice. ‘Gees, you’re doing alright for ninety three’, I told him. ‘What, do you swim everyday ?’. ‘No but I walk each day, he replied. ‘I used to swim at Neilson Park but I kept losing my hearing aids’, he chuckled, ‘and they’re too expensive to replace’. I’d already decided he was a widower and this confirmed it. A partner would ensure he didn’t go swimming without removing his electronic hearing aid. As we passed the Rose Bay wharf I suggested he’d remember the old flying base with the Catalina flying boats. ‘Yes, I flew in them three times to New Zealand’, he said. Something in his answer had me inquiring if he was a pilot. ‘Only during the war, I flew a Sterling, but it wasn’t much of a war for me’. ‘What happened?’, I asked. ‘Got shot down on a Berlin bombing raid in 1941,’ he said. ‘Spent the rest of the war as a POW’. ‘Why did you go down?’, I asked. ‘It was the Sterling – it could only make 12,000 feet and the flak got us. Later the Lancaster came along and that could fly at 18,000 feet. I parachuted out and wandered around the countryside for a few days. I thought I was in Holland until I knocked on a farmhouse door and found

”

I was in Germany. Just unlucky’, he laughed. He recounted this in a matter of fact tone, as old diggers do. For him it was some 60 years ago yet he still recalled the details. ‘I was in Stalag 13 at Sagan, an Air Force camp. There were 7000 prisoners there, 6000 of whom were Yanks’. ‘So are there many of your mates left from then?’, I asked. ‘Well, 4000 of us went away’, he said, ‘and only 400 returned. Now there’s only four of us left’. ‘Mate’, I said, ‘you must have some great stories. Have you ever written a book?’. ‘Well, I’ve written it all down, but the young girl who was typing it up couldn’t understand the German slang. So it never happened’. We arrived at the Eastern Suburbs Leagues Club and I hopped out to open the door. As expected he needed a helping hand under the arm to heave himself out of the seat. In fact he was feather light and needed a moment leaning back against the door frame to stabilise himself. Then using the walking stick he carefully made his way across the footpath and I stood ready to catch him, half expecting him to fall. The fragile old bugger was a real gentleman and a digger I felt privileged to carry. Another magic moment in the cab.

realLIFE

15 MINUTES

Remember Kajagoogoo?

Ian Wishart goes in search of one-hit wonders

Steve Askew

ould anything good ever come from a town named Leighton Buzzard? Well, that’s a question only fans of 80’s one-hit-wonders Kajagoogoo can answer. From a small commuter town north of London, 17 year old Nick Beggs, Stuart Neale (19), Jez Strode (21) and Steve Askew (22) bought themselves a synth and a drum machine in 1980, initially struggling as an indie band, Art Nouveau. Although Beggs and Askew handled vocals, they eventually became discouraged enough to advertise for a lead singer – enter Chris Hamill (stage name: ‘Limahl’) in 1982. The new formula worked and, rebranding themselves with a bizarre name that Beggs dreamt up and the androgynous look that epitomized the early 80’s, Kajagoogoo struck paydirt in January 1983 with a catchy little poptune, ‘Too Shy’. It topped the charts in Europe and NZ, and reached number 5 on the American Top 40. But like many bands, the taste of success was shortlived. Although their debut album White Feathers sold well, an internal split over royalties – with lead singer/ songwriter Limahl (an anagram of Chris Hamill’s surname) demanding a larger slice of a previously equally-divided pie – saw Limahl decamp. So to speak. Pop icon gone, Kajagoogoo dropped

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Nick Beggs the ‘googoo’ and tried, again, to reinvent themselves as a more mature mid-80’s rock band, but failed to get traction. They split in 1986. Limahl, through a chance meeting in Tokyo, ended up meeting music producer Giorgio Moroder who was looking for someone to perform the theme song to a new children’s movie, The Neverending Story. It was his last big hit. Although in the 80’s revival Limahl has enjoyed a new wave of interest, particularly thanks to a German reality TV show he featured in last year, these days Limahl makes a living by staging adult “80’s weekends” for ageing New Romantics and Yuppies, as his website limahl.com discloses. Also benefiting from the revival, Kajagoogoo have re-formed with only Nick, Stu and Steve from the original line-up. After fading from the public eye and the rapid riches, the trio all wed, had kids, divorced (two out of three), remarried, had more kids and got real jobs. Stuart Neale, for example, now works in the IT industry and is a father of six. Steve Askew is the exception – his marriage has lasted 25 years and he teaches music for a living, although he’s added a music production studio to his house and is working on the new Kajagoogoo album. Believe it when you hear it.

Stuart Neale

L to R: Steve, Stu, Limahl, Jez and Nick, 1983

“

After fading from the public eye and the rapid riches, the trio all wed, had kids, divorced (two out of three), remarried, had more kids and got real jobs. Stuart Neale, for example, now works in the IT industry and is a father of six

”