Investigate, July 2007

INVESTIGATE

July 2007:

Police Corruption • Police Complaints Procedure • Alcohol and Pregnancy • Women Who Prey

Issue 78

For more information contact: H.E Perry Ltd, Phone (03) 339 0028 Internet: www.heperry.co.nz Available from all leading photographic and specialty outlets.

Volume 7, Issue 78, July 2007

FEATURES CHICKEN COMES HOME TO ROOST

26

The man Police Minister Annette King relied on for information after last month’s explosive story on police corruption turns out to be a bent cop. Worse, as IAN WISHART reports, private investigator Peter Gibbons has been using family members in Dunedin Police to arrange search warrants for his business, and in particular a lucrative commercial contract with ACC

HOW WE COMPARE

42

NOT A DROP TO DRINK

50

VIXEN OR VAMPIRE?

56

26 32

We’ve identified the problem, so what’s the solution? IAN WISHART discovers why other countries use Royal Commissions, and what they’ve achieved. COLLEEN LEWIS reveals how Victoria Police have resisted a corruption inquiry, and the damage that’s resulted there

42

The debate about how much alcohol in pregnancy is “safe” has raged for years. But as MELODY TOWNS reports, there’s new evidence that even small amounts may be causing those behavioural issues in so many of our kids

It’s a modern phenomenon – the increasing number of women becoming sex offenders. TONY RIZZO talks to the women behind the headlines, with a simple question: why?

56

50

Cover: HERALD/PRESSPIX/Martin Sykes

56

EDITORIAL AND OPINION Volume 7, issue 78, ISSN 1175-1290

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007,

FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL

The problem with Nanny State

P

rime Minister Helen Clark has just issued an edict about food in school tuck-shops. The Government wants schools to sell only healthy food to kids, because of the growing number of people turning up with Type 2 diabetes.

As a result, out go the pies, sausage rolls, chips, and soft drinks, while in come tofu burgers, lentils and mung beans.

Challenged by Newstalk ZB’s Paul Holmes about the continuing encroachment of “Nanny State” into the lives of ordinary New Zealanders, Clark hit back by saying obesity has to be paid for by taxpayers.

She’s right, of course, but in being correct she highlights the pinhead-dance that now confounds modern society.

Ever since the birth of the “Do we live in a socialist state or welfare state, governments a free country? Is the government have increasingly eroded individual freedoms and our servant, or are we merely liberties. And in virtually subjects of an authoritarian state?” every case it has been justified in the name of responsibility to taxpayers, or a similar argument.

Of course, once upon a time you were responsible to yourself and your Creator, and the intrusions of government were something the common citizen had little experience of.

The argument about being a burden to taxpayers, however, has only one logical conclusion. Inevitably, it distills to the point where all power resides in the State, because the State pays your bills. The State can decide that your right to smoke, eat, drink, play rough sport and the like is trumped by the power of the community to tell you, “No!”.

If the Prime Minister has the sovereign right to tell her subjects – you – what your children are and are not allowed to eat at school, then what stops her from making a further decree at some point about what you are allowed to feed your kids at home? The justification Clark uses – that taxpayers foot the health bill – is just as applicable to home as it is to school.

Think I’m wrong? Labour needs the support of the Greens. This latest push is a Green initiative. Now I’m not arguing against it because I think kids should not eat healthy food. Privately, I applaud the idea of healthier food being supplied.

But, putting aside my personal views on healthy eating, there is still a bigger principle at stake: the absolute

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

right of parents to decide what is good and bad for their children.

Increasingly, Nanny State feels it can tell you how to bring up your kids. This is one of my major themes in Eve’s Bite. From child discipline to child diet, or even to secretly organising an abortion for your 10 year old daughter who got statutorily raped by an older boy – Helen Clark believes she knows best and you don’t. And because she controls the collective public pursestrings, she has the power.

The debate over healthy food in schools needs to take place on two levels. One is the health side, but the other is a parental authority issue. If a parent wants to give their child a pie once a week, who is Helen Clark to veto it?

And do we live in a socialist state or a free country? Is the government our servant, or are we merely subjects of an authoritarian state?

Under Labour, the size of the public service has ballooned by 41%. Nanny State herself is growing fat.

Enough of the sermon, onto business.

In this issue we continue to hammer the government over police corruption, with the remarkable discovery that the man Prime Minister Clark and Police Minister King relied on last month as a source was, in fact, a crooked cop.

Using the false evidence of Peter Gibbons, Clark and King brutally defamed an innocent man, without even bothering to check whether they’d been fed a line.

Compounding the political shockwaves, Police National Headquarters was responsible for putting forward Gibbons’ name as a source, thereby setting the Prime Minister and Police Minister up for a fall.

And heaping disgrace upon ignominy, Peter Gibbons and his businesses are recipients of $172,000 of taxpayer funds courtesy of a lucrative private investigation contract for ACC – a relationship that our latest revelations will throw into the headlines because of allegations that Gibbons used a family member in the police force to organise search warrants that he needed for his private business interests.

Police Minister Annette King must resign.

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VOX POPULI

COMMUNIQUES STRIP SEARCHING FEMALE STUDENT

I just saw on the news tonight you had written a story about police conduct in Dunedin, I didn’t catch it all so I’m unsure of the ins and outs of it all but it just reminded me of an experience I had with the police in Dunedin when I was a student in 2000. I was arrested one night for being drunk and in the wrong place (typical student) and taken back to the station where I was strip searched and was left standing in only my knickers in front of a female and two male officers. I was then sworn at and whilst the two males who were also arrested at the same time as me were allowed to use the toilet as often as they liked I was not allowed, and when finally after five hours of protesting was finally able to – but with a male officer watching me through the window.

I left feeling humiliated and when I discussed it with a lawyer the following Monday morning was told I could take it further and make a complaint, I had grounds to do so but in my best interests of wanting diversion I should just keep my mouth shut as they were not the right people to mess with. Being only 20 at the time I accepted this despite knowing that whilst I was drunk at the time there was a reason I remembered with clarity the events of the night from the moment I step foot in the station.

I have no idea who the officers were, I did meet two of them as part of my diversion conditions as I had to meet them in person and apologise for being ‘obnoxious’ and also write them both letters of apology. I remember being obnoxious but that was after asking if I could make a phone call which I assumed was a right when you are arrested, but not being allowed to. And also not being allowed to use the toilet.

In my recollection of the night it seemed like the whole thing was very entertaining for all the officers who were in the cell area at the time, and I really felt I was being wound up again and again, one officer kept walking past with rather intimidating woman who had also been arrested and telling me if I didn’t keep my mouth shut he would put one of them in with me and I’d probably have my mouth shut for me.

I think the most disappointing thing for me was that for as long as I could remember I’d wanted to join the police force but after that night I changed my mind.

Anyway, seeing the news tonight I reminded me of this, and I just wanted to say I admire the work you do.

10, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

There are not enough people in New Zealand willing to dig deeper into some of the country’s darker secrets, and even if what you do bring to light is dismissed I believe you will still have planted a seed and people are more aware.

Name and address supplied

SURPRISED YOU CAN READ…

I read your article in the latest mag about your claims of rape by a policeman in dunedin (sic) several years ago.

What a shambles that article was. Full of hearsay and he said she said. There were no witnesses to any rape nor any complaint. Your questioning was based on shear (sic) desperation to get a story that was not there.

You must feel embarrased (sic) to publish a crap story on that because I certainly feel embarrassed for you.

Dont (sic) waste anyones (sic) time with crap storys (sic) in the future or people like me wont (sic) read your magazine any more. Im (sic) certainly not from here on.

Perhaps its (sic) time someone dug up some dirt on you.

Or just make it up for a good story like you do. Perhaps I can get the ball rolling. “Hey didnt (sic) Ian Wishart have a beastiality movie playing in his house on April the 5th 1976”? Yeah he did I better tell the media.

Would be good to see you get some of your own medicine. Ha ha.

Chris Scott

QUEENSLAND LESS CORRUPT

As an expat Kiwi heading back to Oz after visiting family and friends, I experienced the usual pangs associated with leaving them all behind. This quickly dissipated when I read your magazine en route to Australia. The article, To Serve and Protect, made me realise just how bad things had become for New Zealanders living in a country where both the Police and the government are corrupt.

People in New Zealand believe Helen Clark has put herself above the law but it would appear the New Zealand Police and key members of her government also fall into that category. Your magazine has made fifteen serious allegations. They all involve serious crimes committed by Police and politicians.

Surely any Prime Minister would want such serious allegations, made against the party she leads, vigorously and impartially investigated, without delay. In order that claims of a cover-up cannot be made that investigation

should obviously be by way of a Royal Commission.

Obviously such an enquiry would have to include the New Zealand Police. If she resists this course of action then the public will realise all the allegations are true. This begs the question – just how much do the New Zealand Police have on Prime Minister Clark?

Joel Maher, Queensland

FRESH AIR

Thank you for writing the police article in your magazine. I believe it, and I am sickened, sickened, sickened. Yet totally unsurprised.

You are a breath of fresh air. I like your guts, your common sense, and what you stand for. Keep it up. You are needed.

Best wishes to you, your family, and the magazine.

Vivienne Campbell, Wellington

BUSINESS, NOT LIFE, PARTNERS

My name is Grant Ingersoll, I am one of the sons of the late Jack Ingersoll, who was mentioned in one of your stories in the June magazine. The article was titled “To Serve and Protect”. In it you said that there were massage parlours run by, and I quote “Jack and Winnie Ingersoll” in fact their names were mentioned twice together, insinuating that they were married. My family would appreciate it if you could retract that part of the story that suggests that Jack and Winnie were married. They were never Jack and Winnie Ingersoll. Her surname is Irving.

We were unaware of the events in Dunedin and have been shocked by the revelations. We are having the story relayed to us by certain people who have read the magazine. Dad passed away on the 9th of May but we are still here and my mother is certainly not Winnie.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Grant Ingersoll, via email

THANK YOU HELEN!

Thank you, Helen Clark! If it wasn’t for your attack on the persons writing, rather than on what they wrote, I would not have bought the June Investigate this afternoon. You made me think that there had to be something in what they wrote. You were right.

I have just finished reading every article. I was alarmed and unsettled by the “To Serve & Protect” article but the enjoyment I had in the style and content of all the articles was unexpected and a delight.

This edition of Investigate must be the perfect magazine, or the closest to such that one could imagine.

Quality and class! Congratulations.

Gerald Wagg, via email

THE RISE OF ISLAMOFASCISM

Seeing those 150 or so names on the letter attacking your article on Islamic extremism brought to mind Albert Einstein’s remark when he was told that 100 Aryan scientists had signed a letter condemning his theory of relativity. “If they were right”, he said, “one would have been enough”. Quite. By calling Wahhabism “supposedly” extremist and your article “racist” the author betrays a lack of understanding, not only of Islam, but also of semantics.

The backgrounds of the majority of names on that list makes it

look to me very much like a local manifestation of what is known in Britain as the “Black-Red Alliance” – a coming together of fundamental Islam and the secular Left (politics does indeed make strange bedfellows!). So far the Leftists in this bizarre union have conceded to Islamists’ demands with the result that diehard feminists from the Socialist Workers Party are forced to wear veils and be segregated from males in alliance demos.

The Islamists, on the other hand, (according to an article in The Spectator “United in Hate”), are making no such concessions to the Leftists, having “skilfully used tools of intellectual intimidation to build an inviolate wall around Islam giving it a sacred status that brooks no criticism”. The Black-Red Alliance does however allow Leftists “to indulge in outrageous bigotry as long as it is espoused by brown people.”

As for the more well-meaning signatories, their attention should be drawn to the growing body of British left wing writers and intellectuals who are courageously speaking out about the grave threat that militant Islam poses for liberal democracy and for Western rationalism. In his book, What’s Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way, Nick Cohen analyses the way in which anti-Americanism and the doctrine that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” has driven progressive people to make excuses for an ideology that seeks theocracy at any price and regards murder as divinely ordained. He asks, “Why is it that apologists for militant Islam, which stands for everything the liberal Left is against, come from the liberal Left?”

Michael Gove points out in another Spectator article, “All hail the new anti-Islamist Intelligentsia” (27/1/07), that Martin Amis, Ian MacEwan, and Salman Rushdie have all argued that Islamism is a totalitarian ideology which seeks to deny human freedom like fascism and communism before it. Amis attacks people of liberal sympathies “stupefied by relativism” who have become apologists for a creed that is “racist, misogynist, homophobic imperialist and genocidal”. MacEwan has denounced the way in which the Left is “morally selective” in its outrage, denouncing the US with greater fervour than it ever has done for Saddam Hussein, or the Talaban (or the genocidal Islamic Regime in Sudan, he would no doubt add).

The abovementioned are writers of substance from the broad left whom liberal/left people cannot dismiss as neo-cons, Christian fundamentalists or stooges of George Bush. Their critiques of Islam demand to be taken seriously.

Now that Helen Clark seems determined to appease Islam by signing this country up to the UN’s “Alliance of Civilisations” agenda, Martin Bright’s When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries is very topical. Bright is the Political Editor of The New Statesman and is presumably of the Left himself. His pamphlet, published by the Policy Exchange think tank, is available on the Internet.

The Prime Minister would do well to read it before she leads us on such a march of folly.

There is one thing you can be fairly sure of with “The Alliance of Civilisations. If the Black-Red one and Martin Bright are anything to go by, it will be the “progressives” who’ll be making all the concessions. Wake up New Zealand!

David Lee, via email

EX-ISLAMIC RADICAL WRITES

More than a month ago I read your article on investigatemaga-

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 11

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zine.com, March 2007, about Muslims activity in NZ. I would like to greatly thank you, sir, for your article, and for your love to your country. To protect freedom, we need to sacrifice a lot.

It is so sad that political correctness has become an inseparable part of politicians in the Western countries. Politicians love their lives and incomes more than their countries. It is heart breaking.

Unfortunately, I was a radical Muslim, part of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary movement (1979) who forced the king of Iran, Shah, to depart from Iran. Long story made short, up until the second year after the Islamic Revolution we discovered that we had to blindly follow the Ayatollah and therefore had no right of say. Though still radical, we became the opposition and won the Government. The first President, Abol Hassan Banisadr, was my colleague who won the presidency with 98% of peoples vote. This win angered Ayatollah’s intimate clergy friends. They tried to kill the president. He eventually escaped to France. Some of us were killed and some escaped. I escaped to Turkey, and had time to evaluate my life and my belief and eventually to leave Islam and follow Jesus Christ. Since then I started to study about world philosophies, religions and cultures. Later we migrated to Australia. After several years, I got a job in one of the universities in Sydney, became a professor in management school for cultural studies. At the meantime, I have been involved with social and political awareness speaking out the dangers of Islam for societies. Since 2003, I have been traveling worldwide, including NZ, to spread awareness.

Unfortunately, I am on the hit list of Muslims. But I am not afraid to die for a good cause.

Once again thank you for your courage, and also for your love and care for your country. Continue to be strong.

Dr. Daniel Shayesteh, Sydney http://www.ministryblue.com/exodus.html

ALLIANCE OF CIVILISATIONS

An article in Friday’s Herald, 25 May, should send alarm bells after a secret, unofficial, non-transparent international meeting resulted in our Prime Minster declaring, “It is time for Kiwis to be ‘citizens of the world”. We are citizens of New Zealand, not a global world order.

We are told the meeting was “secret” and “closed door” with “handpicked opinion leaders” from Asian and Pacific countries. The article did not state who were these “handpicked opinion leaders” and what organisations were they representing. What international organisation was behind this “secret” meeting that would influence the cultural and religious education of Kiwi kids?

The meeting was reported to be following up an Alliance of Civilisations Statement, a UN initiative. I understand this Statement was jointly drafted by the Socialist Prime Minister of Spain and by Turkey’s Islamic Prime Minister therefore we have a statement jointly put together by Communists and Islamists, under a UN banner, potentially speaking into NZ affairs.

Was the “secret meeting” part of Socialist International and is the Prime Minster blurring her leading role in Socialist International, a global communist organisation, with her current leadership of NZ? And teaching our kids Islam is supposed to stop Islamic terrorist bombings?

J. McKeown, Kaukapakapa

BROOKE NO EVIL

Amy Brooke’s article, Which education for Barbie Dolls, highlighted the socialist connection within New Zealand education.

This is almost certainly the most important political issue in the western world today, though the vast majority of people don’t know about.

There are two educations being taught in our schools – one is Academic, the other is called Progressive. Progressive education has nothing to do with academic learning; it is about behaviour and attitude modification. I can’t say on the face of it, but socalled “skills” training as described by Amy Brooke is probably code for a modified brand of Progressive education (Progressives are forever calling apples oranges – because they need to for political acceptance, and in the spurious world of the Humanities they can easily get away with it).

Progressive education is very expensive (it requires the institutionalisation of children, plus a hefty bureaucracy to manage) and it seriously interferes with pure academic-learning. Progressive education has been incrementally advanced within educational establishment, world-over, over the last 150 years. Is it any wonder that educational costs have consistently gone up whilst academic achievement has consistently gone down? The money is not spent the way parents think it is.

Progressive education has been decisively linked to socialist organisations dating right back to around the 1830’s. The politically-failed socialists realised that if they wanted to create their utopian one-world state (the “new world order”) out of democratic nations, then they would have to get inside national education (through politically invisible government-departments) and change the common human-character through schooling. The reader may find this hard to believe, but Progressive education has been designed (covertly) to produce a psychological passivity to authority, collectivist-socialisation (dissolving individualidentity into collective-identity), consensus-based moralism and adjustment to rigid-systematisation.

The Progressives ‘utopian’ purpose is to turn the world into some kind of ‘one big happy family’ with no more wars – ultimate social-cohesion through passive-conformity and international centralised-control. To date, the Progressives (internationalist socialists) have been amazingly successful in their long road to world-wide indoctrination/conditioning through governmentschooling. The problem is they are wrong. The root of all evil is not a lack of communism or a lack of uniform mental-conditioning, but deprivation. Here-and-now deprivation and psychologically-internalised deprivation (neurosis) from early childhood leads to the core drives (material and/or emotional) that in turn lead to wars. The Progressive are only fuelling the genesis of war by creating even more deprivation through oppression.

Andrew Douglas Atkin, Wellington

GUNSHY

We write to congratulate you for ‘bearding the lion’ so neatly in the current issue of your magazine. Adjunct professor Alpers’ mobility among employers is noteworthy, as is his reliance on emotive lingo and an impressive media presence.

The questions you’ve raised were not the ‘patsy’ questions nice guy John Campbell fed him, and A/Professor Alpers, perhaps was not expecting an approach based on the raw data on which

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 13

you based your line of questioning. Well done, it goes to the nub of the matter.

Please carry on with the good work.

George Ellis, Patron and Life Member Dunedin Clay Target Club, Life Member NZ Clay Target Association, Life Member Otago Pistol Club, Firearm Advisor NZ Mountain Safety Council Chaz Forsyth Firearms Safety Instructor NZ Mountain Safety Council, Life Member NZ Deerstalkers’ Association (Otago Branch Inc), author of “Firearms In New Zealand”, Fellow of NZ Society of Gunsmiths Grant Sherriff Firearms Safety Instructor & Life Member NZ Mountain Safety Council, Fellow of NZ Society of Gunsmiths

THREE YEARS LEFT

A recent TV News item stated that 80% of America’s bee population had ‘disappeared’.

Albert Einstein once said – ‘Without bees, life on earth would cease within four years’.

The huge corporate US farming industry over produces crops in order to receive even greater government subsidies. In this obscene

WHY

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14, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

pursuit of excess profits at the taxpayer’s expense these corporations excessively and irresponsibly overuse insecticides and pesticides – hence the massive depletion of the US bee population.

As a very amateur ex bee-keeper I am aware that importation of bee products into NZ is forbidden. I am also aware that Chinese honey is being imported into NZ via Australia under the trading conditions of CER/Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Agreement.

This is possibly how the Varroa Bee Mite, presently attacking bee apiaries, got into NZ. The present Labour government refused to do anything to eradicate this virulent bee pest, although they were quite happy to spend millions of dollars in repeatedly spraying the population of Auckland in an attempt to eradicate the Painted Apple Moth!!!

The Varroa Bee Mite is now decimating Bee hives in the South Island.

In view of the horrendous situation allegedly occurring in the US of A, I can only urge our Customs and MAF to be even more diligent in their border controls.

A further severe depletion in NZ’s bee numbers will affect not only our horticultural and pastoral industries and exports, but could also threaten our very lives.

R. Jordan, Tauranga

EVE’S BITE

I applaud your book and I thank God for people like you who have the balls to write books like it. I was both horrified and riveted (severe lack of sleep over the weekend as I was up late finishing it).

Some of the commentary was gut wrenching, and a real slap in the face of my own complacency. Even my Dad, who has leaned towards social liberalism, is in agreement in entirety with your book – bloody amazing!

Alastair Goodland, Northland

AND MORE EVE’S BITE

Just to let you know we were given an early birthday present of your book Eve’s Bite and told not to wait till our birthdays at the end of the year to read it! My husband has just finished the book (I’m just starting) and was so impressed, saying it had made the most impression on him apart from the Bible, that he wants to get it in the hands of as many people as possible, including those who don’t have a Christian faith. So we’ve just bought up 20 copies of the book to lend out to people and will encourage them to buy a copy, also to lend out!

This is just to say a big thank you for a book well written.

Esther Simmons, via email Letters to the editor can be emailed to us, faxed or posted. They should not exceed 300 words, and we reserve the right to edit for space or clarity. All correspondence will be presumed for publication unless it is clearly marked to the contrary.

Address: INVESTIGATE, PO Box 302188, North Harbour, North Shore 0751, or email to: editorial@investigatemagazine.com

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SIMPLY DEVINE

MIRANDA DEVINE Ratings creep

F

ilm and television might be awash with violence, sex and vulgarity but don’t worry that the guardians charged with protecting community standards have gone to sleep. Au contraire, Hollywood censors are busy rewriting the guidelines to ensure movies which depict smoking are slapped with more draconian ratings and the Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, has said Australia may follow suit.

Thus an M-rated movie with cigarettes would be bumped up to MA15+.

It’s all very noble. You can almost smell a junk food rating looming. There could be a whole suite of new classifications for movies that depict unhealthy behaviour: N for nicotine; O for obesity – for any movie “Parents are increasingly finding starring John Goodman; A themselves walking out of for alcohol – for depictions of people enjoying alcohol; films they have discovered are S for sedentary – for depicunsuitable for their children” tions of people lying around on couches.

Health is the new puritanism. Meanwhile, Hollywood blithely continues to push the boundaries of violence, sex, profanity and plain good taste, making the job of censors increasingly complex, and adding to the progressive coarsening of daily life.

We are witnessing the acceleration of “ratings creep”, the steady erosion of film classification standards, as more and more adult content seeps down into PG and M ratings, leaving parents powerless and confused about what to allow their children to watch.

Even G ratings are not what they used to be. A 2003 revision of movie classification guidelines allowed drug use and nudity “in context”. Mild coarse language has always been allowed, as has “mild and very discreetly implied” sexual activity and drug use.

You don’t have to be a wowser or a religious fundamentalist to dislike the trend.

Parents are increasingly finding themselves walking out of films they have discovered are unsuitable for their children. You are hard-pressed finding a children’s movie tamer than an M – the third Pirates of the Caribbean film and Spider-Man 3 are the latest M-rated blockbusters.

Of 21 movies advertised yesterday at Hoyts cinemas, just one was rated G and three were PG, and all four were

16, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

being shown in Chatswood. The rest of Sydney was a ratings desert for children.

But in the same M category are movies clearly unsuitable for children that might once have been rated MA15+.

Two current M movies are The History Boys, a homoerotic tale set in a British boys’ school featuring a pedophile teacher whose students don’t mind being groped; and Georgia Rule, with the theme of child sexual abuse, scenes of oral sex and lots of swearing. Trailers for both movies would appeal to children under 15.

The Sydney film reviewer Kevin Sadlier is one of the few who openly rails against the trend, on radio 2GB. He says he has noticed a “disturbing change” over the past 18 months in the work of the federal Office of Film and Literature Classification, which is responsible for movie ratings.

Movies that once would have been rated M, he says, are being released as PG – Marie Antoinette, with a nude love scene, for example.

The F-word, once restricted to MA movies, is now commonplace in M movies with a note from the censor warning of “moderate language”.

“This indicates that the chief government censor now accepts that ‘f...’ is moderate,” says Sadlier. “Well, I can tell you, at cinema screenings I have been to it is not uncommon to see audience members get up and leave because of the use of ‘moderate’ language.”

Whether Australia’s new chief censor, Donald McDonald, the former chairman of the ABC, will have any desire to turn back the clock remains to be seen.

But a spokesman for Ruddock, who has recently taken control of the classification office’s policy, said yesterday that one of McDonald’s jobs would be to ensure classifiers at the 16-person board do not “build up an immunity … You have to constantly review [your appointments] to keep the classifiers from that [ratings] creep and not becoming immune to the violence or sex.”

The scarcity of family fare at the cinema seems odd from a commercial standpoint; a 10-year study commissioned by a US Christian group, the Dove Foundation, found G-rated films make an average eight times the profit of a movie with an R-rating (the equivalent of an Australian MA).

Perhaps the phenomenal box office for the new PGrated Shrek 3, which surprised even the studio, is due to the rarity of wholesome family fare.

Ratings creep also applies to television, where the F-word is so liberally sprinkled through prime time it has lost its ability to shock, which is a pity. A program such as Supernatural shows graphic scenes of werewolves ripping people’s hearts out of their chests. Even SBS’s sweet Inspector Rex, featuring a dog detective, has been the subject of complaints because of an episode featuring a swinger’s sex and murder scene – at 7.30pm.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority, which is responsible for television ratings, found this month that SBS had breached its code of practice by broadcasting that “incorrectly classified” episode of Inspector Rex. The sexual activity shown was “not sufficiently mild and discreet to be classified

PG”. But the toothless authority could do nothing other than note SBS had apologised.

The former director of the Office of Film and Literature Classification, Des Clark, has said trying to restrict inappropriate content in films and games is a losing battle in the digital age.

But in fact it is precisely because of the cornucopia of violence and porn available on the web that we need to carve out safe ground in which desirable standards are maintained.

Otherwise we are just frogs in boiling water, barely noticing that the debasement of language, casual violence and sexualisation of everything is having a deadening effect on our culture, not to mention our children.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 17

LAURA’S WORLD

LAURA WILSON Getting used to Nanny State

I

t is conceivable that within the next fifty years prospective parents will require a license before breeding. We add dozens of new laws that restrict and compel behaviour every year. Given this trajectory, a number of things we consider inalienable rights will become matters of the State, in the manner described by the recent Section 59 child-rearing issue.

It’s called the Nanny State, and right-wing parties attempt to paint it as a socialist entity, when in fact it is an unavoidable aspect of Western culture regardless of political leanings. Don Brash fumbled over an attempt to define exactly which “PC” laws his government would quash if granted office, because every such law protects a member of a minority. As all governments are sworn to combat discrimination, it is Would our society really devolve very hard to stomp out laws into a mafia-driven gangland if without appearing a bigot.

As I sat in rush-hour we weren’t forced to observe traffic on the Pakuranga so many laws? highway this morning I watched in shock as a large truck pulled out from behind me and into the opposing lanes (which happened to be empty) and went a good 500 meters up the queue before bumping back across the concrete median to catch the lights and disappear. The same distance took law-abiding me 20 minutes to cover.

What amused me was my own reaction at the truckie’s initiative. I was outraged, but not because of the harm he posed. I simply didn’t want him exercising a liberty I had given up. If I had to suffer, so should he.

So why did I secretly admire him? For the same reason I am ambivalent about our endless moves to increase order in our world. As order increases, my appreciation of renegade disorder heightens. And yet I would be among the first to make parental rights less automatic. It seems to me that of all areas of human entitlement, parenting is the one through which most harm can be done. What is so wrong with moving toward a society in which no child goes without a decent level of care, protection and respect?

Our current monitor of child wellbeing, CYFS, deals only with the few serious cases that come to their notice.

This is very different from the notion of having a set of guidelines for all parents to follow, including essential criteria that failure to provide would mean removal of parenting rights. As much as I loathe bureaucracy, I am

18, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

far more upset by the knowledge that thousands of children lead miserable, unloved existences often including forms of abuse that mar them for life.

Every now and then, when I’ve had enough of New Zealand’s nanny-ish ways, I take off to the East to bathe in the chaos of Asian mores. Initially I feel a surge of freedom, as if I’ve shed numerous heavy layers of winter clothing. I bask in the lack of order and the creative business practices which we call corruption, but which I find refreshing after years of being dealt with as part of a ‘system’, rather than one individual to another.

But invariably I return home after a number of months, unable to bear witnessing another child bride married off to an old man, to pay a family debt. Unable to walk past another group of oft-deformed street children begging for their livelihood and sick to my stomach every time an obscenely wealthy monarch has the street cleared of rabble so his Limo can enjoy a view unspoiled by sordid humanity.

Arriving back in NZ the overwhelming impression is one of safety. Putting aside the nonsense that we have this extremely violent society, New Zealand’s systems provide the comforting feeling that in all matters a person knows where they stand, what their rights are, and how those rights will be upheld. In contrast, Asia is survival of the fittest, with the most ruthless often ending up winner.

For a few weeks I soar in the clear skies of neatly ordered NZ, often finding myself awed at how caring our culture is. But soon the phone calls begin, whether aimed at business or person, someone is telling me I must do this or that, and pay this person for something I don’t need or want, to be allowed to simply conduct my affairs. Since returning from Asia this time I have pursued a couple of business ideas, each time stymied by the raft of restrictions including licenses, permits, health and safety clauses, import fees, lengthy application processes and the like.

It is a conundrum. For every benefit a new law ushers, we lose out on some degree of personal freedom. Would our society really devolve into a mafia-driven gangland if we weren’t forced to observe so many laws? Would Kiwis choose to be fair and good if they weren’t made to be?

Perhaps the answer is that while certain individuals will be good no matter what surrounds them, and certain will be bad, the majority will follow an example set. As long as this is true, then a heavily regulated society is perhaps a better friend than pleasantly chaotic free-for-all.

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STRAIGHT TALK

MARK STEYN Borders? What borders?

A

re you a fine upstanding member of the Undocumented-American community?

That’s to say, are you (if you’ll forgive the expression) an illegal immigrant?

Great news. Being illegal is now perfectly legal. Just for being one of the about 12 million people who shouldn’t be here, you can now be here indefinitely. If you were living and working in America illegally before Jan. 1, 2007, you’re now entitled to one of the new Z-1 “probationary” visas.

And your parents and spouses are entitled to one of the new Z-2 visas, and your children to the new Z-3 visas.

Don’t worry, it’s not an “amnesty.” Every politician in America opposes amnesty – if not the concept, then at least the word.

“If you’re visiting Toronto for a That’s why the visa starts weekend break from Yemen or with the letter that’s furthest away from the one Belarus, don’t be deterred by the “amnesty” begins with. fact Canada is not technically “Z” stands for zellout... hang on, zurrender or in America. Why not just head no, Zapatista, or some other down to Buffalo and apply for word way up the other the old Z-1, too?” end of the alphabet from “amnesty.” But the point is, at a stroke there will be no more illegal immigrants.

Because being illegal means you’re now legal.

Unless, of course, you came to America after Jan. 1, 2007, and thus aren’t covered by the zamnesty. But in that case why not apply for the Z-1 anyway? After all, you’re here illegally so how would U.S. Immigration know when you arrived? Especially with 12 million to 15 million or 20 million urgent applications tossed in on top of what is already a multiyear backlog. They’re won’t exactly be doing a lot of in-depth background checks, especially not for a visa category whose only entry requirement under U.S. law is that you broke U.S. law when you entered.

By the way, when I said “came to America,” if you’re visiting Toronto for a weekend break from Yemen or Belarus, don’t be deterred by the fact Canada is not technically in America. Why not just head down to Buffalo and apply for the old Z-1, too? After all, it’s not such a stretch to regard every single person on the planet as a Z1-in-waiting. This being America, pretty soon – a court decision here, a court decision there – the presumption

20, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

of every school district and hospital and welfare administrator will be that they’re obliged to treat everyone who walks in through the door as if they were a Z-1. You zee one, you’ve zeen ‘em all.

As for the notion that dumping a population the size of four midsized European Union nations into the lap of America’s arthritic “legal immigration” (please, no tittering; apparently there is still such a thing) bureaucracy will lead to tougher enforcement and rigorous scrutiny and lots of other butch-sounding stuff, well, if that were the case, there would be no problem in the first place.

You can declare that “illegal” now means “legal” very easily; to mandate that “incompetent” now means “competent” is a tougher proposition.

But, as John McCain declared, “This is what the legislative process is all about” – and in the sense that it’s a sloppily drafted bottomless pit of unintended consequences on a potentially cosmic scale whose sweeping “reforms” will inevitably require even more sweeping reforms of the reforms in a year or two, he’s quite right.

Also, as Mr. McCain says, “This is what bipartisanship is all about.”

I’m not a fan of “bipartisanship” for its own sake. This is a very divided political culture in which bipartisanship is all but nonexistent on everything else, starting with war and national security. So, when the political class is in lockstep bipartisan mode, that’s sufficiently unusual all by itself. When it’s in bipartisan mode on an issue on which the public is diametrically opposed, that looks less like bipartisanship and more like the lockstep myopia of an out-of-touch one-party state.

America is not Europe, which is being transformed by a fast-growing Muslim population profoundly alienated from the broader society. Nonetheless, fast-moving demographic shifts are always a huge challenge. Last year, National Review’s John Derbyshire noted the enrollment statistics for his school district on suburban Long Island, 1,400 miles from the southern border: High school: 17 percent Hispanic Intermediate: 28 percent Hispanic Elementary: 31 percent Hispanic Those figures would have stunned any Long Island school superintendent 40 years ago. Mr. Derbyshire’s numbers suggest that at some point not far away every school board in America will have to factor in bilingual

education programs and ever-swelling Special Ed budgets, making one of the highest cost-per-pupil/lowest scores-per-pupil education systems even more expensive and less educational.

At some point, it’s worth trying to climb over the rubble of the 2007 Z-1s and the 1986 amnesty and the 1965 immigration act, and going back to basics: What is immigration for? In the modern Western world, to question immigration in even the most cautious way is to risk being demonized as a racist. Most of us like to see ourselves as nice people, and so even to raise the subject of immigration – even illegal immigration – feels like an assault not on distant foreigners so much as on our self-image.

Yet whatever the virtuousness of immigration for the host society, a dependence on it is a sign of profound structural weakness, and, when all the self-congratulation about celebrating diversity has died down, that weakness should be understood as such.

The unspoken premise behind this bill is that the socioeconomic order in America now so depends on the vast apparatus of a giant shadow state of illegal immigrants that it can not be dismantled but only legitimized and thereby expanded. If true, that is a basic structural defect that should be addressed honestly.

Meanwhile, Washington’s reluctance to be seen enforcing its own borders is very perplexing. From the “Washington sniper” to September 11, 2001, there has been for a generation a clear national-security component to the illegal immigration issue.

To present it only as a matter of “the jobs Americans won’t do” is lazily reductive. The economists may see the vast human

“Washington’s reluctance to be seen enforcing its own borders is very perplexing. From the “Washington sniper” to September 11, 2001, there has been for a generation a clear national-security component to the illegal immigration issue. To present it only as a matter of “the jobs Americans won’t do” is lazily reductive”

tide as an army of much-needed hotel maids and farm workers and nurses and plumbers, but to assume everyone on Earth sees himself as primarily an economic entity is complacent and (post-September 11) obtusely deluded. The political class’ urge to capitulate on the integrity of the national border sends as important a message to the world about American will as their urge to capitulate on Iraq. © Mark Steyn, 2007

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EYES RIGHT

RICHARD PROSSER To serve and to protect

T

he Navy is taking delivery of the first of her seven new ships this year. Acquired under the Government’s much trumpeted “Project Protector” programme, the first ship is six months late, and over budget, but hey, this is a military procurement contract, so no surprises there; what is perhaps of more concern is the nature of the design and construction of those ships, and what it says about the purposes for which they are meant.

Canterbury, the new multi-role vessel, is intended as the replacement for her namesake Canterbury, the last retired Leander-class frigate. One might imagine that a vessel intended as a replacement for a frigate, would itself in fact be another frigate, or at least “The world is not a safe and have the capabilities of a peaceful place, and it will not frigate; but no, in the brave new fantasy world inhabited become so via the process of New by our current Government, Zealand’s elected representatives nasty big war boats, with their horrid guns and other keeping their heads firmly baby-killing weapons, are entrenched in their fundaments” no longer needed. We are getting a peace ship instead, and not a very good example of one, either.

“A Cook Straight ferry with a helicopter deck,” was how one disgruntled writer of a headline letter to the editor of the ODT described it, when the design brief was announced about five years ago. That writer was me, by the way, and I confess to being a little dismayed at how close to the truth it was.

The new Canterbury is late being delivered, partly because her bow has needed strengthening for use in the wild Southern Ocean. Beg pardon, but wasn’t an icestrengthened, Southern Ocean-capable design part of the original plan? Yes…but the roll-on, roll-off, Irish Sea ferry design on which the MRV is based, was never intended to cope with the mountainous seas of New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic territories. Unfortunately, Her Majesty’s new New Zealand ships are being built down to a price, rather than up to a specification. In real terms, what this means is that they’re being built on the cheap, to civilian standards, and to designs which in some cases actually violate the original tender specifications, including not being able to offload cargo in anything but a flat calm

22, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

sea. The upshot of this is that the new vessels will not be able to go into harm’s way, and thus cannot accurately be described as warships. What is “Harm’s Way”, you ask?

Well, being in harm’s way is when people are shooting at you. This happens in wartime. It happens occasionally in peacetime as well, as a North Korean patrol boat found out, only four years ago, when it picked a fight with a Japanese “coastguard” vessel, and got sunk for its trouble.

Being able to go into harm’s way requires a ship to be able to survive an attack, repair the damage to itself, maintain motion and control, and carry on with the war, including taking the fight back to the enemy.

To this end, purpose-built warships have what is called multi-channel redundancy built into command and control infrastructures. This is a bit like a person having several nervous systems and a second set of blood vessels; if one gets damaged, the back-up system takes over. Instead of a ship having only one control cable running from the bridge to the hydraulics which move the rudders, it has several, taking different pathways through the hull, so a hit causing damage to a critical installation doesn’t disable the entire ship. Likewise, a warship with two or four engines will have two or more shafts driving two or more screws, so that if one propeller is taken out, by one of combat’s awkward little complications (mines, torpedoes, bombs, shells, missiles, that sort of thing), the ship can still move.

But extra wires, and cables, and hydraulic lines, and propellers and shaft bearings and things, are expensive to build and buy and fit, and costly and time-consuming to maintain, so the good news, for the cheque writer, is that when you build a ship to civilian standards, you just leave ‘em out!

Of course the downside is that when Mr Enemy lobs a missile through the side of your multi-purpose peace vessel – which it wasn’t able to intercept because it never got fitted with a nasty warlike expensive anti-missile system – your only option is to abandon ship. Now this doesn’t present a problem if you’re never going to go to war (oh for a crystal ball), but probably isn’t the cleverest idea if you’re pretending to be a Navy. Navies do, after all, sometimes get called to war. Te Kaha and Te Mana have both done patrol duty in the Gulf, where mines and shore-based torpedoes and Iranian gunboats abound; and sometimes, as the USS Cole discovered in Yemen,

war comes calling, in the form of a rubber boat filled with suicidal fanatics and semtex.

The Royal Navy lost four ships as well as the chartered Atlantic Conveyor to Argentinean fire during the Falklands war. But another eleven warships which were hit – mostly by free-fall iron bombs dropped from A-4 Skyhawks – survived, because of two factors, one of them a lucky accident, the other good planning.

The lucky accident was that the Argentinean Air Force had somehow failed to reset their bomb fuse time settings from the longerdelay peacetime and exercise mode, to the short-delay wartime mode, meaning that the bombs went straight through the ships in question, exploding harmlessly in the sea below. The good planning was that the Royal Navy built ships which were equipped to go into harm’s way, with crews who were trained and equipped to patch the holes under fire, and multi-channel redundant systems which kept the ships in operation while they did so.

The Falklands campaign also showed that some of the most advanced warships of the day were highly vulnerable to attack by some of the least advanced Skyhawks of the day, but that is another story.

Perhaps I’m being a little unfair. The new Canterbury isn’t completely unarmed. She has a 25mm cannon, same as the ones on the LAVIII, and a couple of fifty-calibre machineguns, presumably for scaring the seagulls off her nice new reinforced bow.

But a 25mm cannon, while it may be more than adequate for bringing errant Chinese fishing boats to heel (so long as they don’t have a Naval escort, which we can’t guarantee they won’t have in the future), if it comes to a shooting war, we might just as well drag a few of those same LAVIIIs out to sea to form a protective line. Now why didn’t we just do that in the first place?

Oh yeah, they don’t float….unlike the M113s they replaced, but that’s also another story.

The Offshore Patrol Vessels, of which there will be two (four were mooted during the original discussions, as this writer recalls), the Otago and the Wellington, are roughly comparable, in terms of size and displacement, to the nuggety Loch-class frigates, of which the RNZN operated a fleet of six during the 1950s and 1960s (renamed Lake-class when they arrived here from Britain). But their armament, only the same as that fitted to the Canterbury, is a far cry from the four-inch gun, four 40mm cannon, two 20mm cannon, twin three-barrel anti-submarine mortars, and twin depth-charge rails, carried by the Lake-class frigates – which, incidentally, had two prop shafts to the Project Protector OPV’s one. Neither do they compare with the weapons fitted to the ubiquitous Leander-class frigates; two 4.5 inch guns, two 40mm cannon, two 20mm cannon, Sea Cat, Sea Wolf, and Exocet missiles, Mk 10 Limbo mortar, and the Ikara shiplaunched anti-submarine missile. Nor, almost without saying, are they a patch on the heat packed by an ANZAC-class frigate – based on the German MEKO-200 design, these vessels, make no mistake, are world-class warships, by anyone’s measure. They carry a five-inch gun, twin triple-mount torpedo tubes, and a Sea Sparrow VLS anti-air and anti-missile system, as well as Phalanx 20mm CIWS and a Sea Sprite helicopter. Oh, and three engines driving two shafts.

The OPVs are based on a design currently serving with those two well-known bastions of Naval might, the Irish Naval Service, and the Mauritius Coast Guard. Warfighting frigates they are not.

“What is “Harm’s Way”, you ask? Well, being in harm’s way is when people are shooting at you.

This happens in wartime. It happens occasionally in peacetime as well, as a North Korean patrol boat found out, only four years ago, when it picked a fight with a Japanese “coastguard” vessel, and got sunk for its trouble. Being able to go into harm’s way requires a ship to be able to survive an attack, repair the damage to itself, maintain motion and control, and carry on with the war, including taking the fight back to the enemy”

They will be able to carry the Navy’s Seasprite helicopter, but since we don’t have any spare Seasprites, and aren’t getting any, most of the time they obviously won’t.

The four new Inshore Patrol Vessels – based on a Philippines search and rescue design, and armed with three 50-cal machineguns – are undoubtedly an improvement on the slow and aging patrol boats which they will replace. But they are not capital ships, and can’t be counted as such in spite of the Government’s grandiose claims, any more than two scarcely-armed corvettes and a ferry, can be counted as replacements for a non-procured third (or fourth) frigate, or a non-replaced Charles Upham.

So why are we going down this obviously pacifist road? Because many in the Government are pacifists, obviously; this is perhaps an admirable sentiment for a person to hold during their high school days, or even the early years of varsity, but certainly not a viable attitude for anyone reaching adulthood, or wishing to attain public office. Ignoring reality does not mean that reality will ignore you. The world is not a safe and peaceful place, and it will not become so via the process of New Zealand’s elected representatives keeping their heads firmly entrenched in their fundaments. If our part of the world has been more or less peaceable this past half century, and it has, then we have the brutal imposition of force – or at least the threat of it – on the rest of the world, by the United States and her military, to thank for it.

If we were to get into trouble, even now, then I think Uncle Sam would still look after us, in spite of the way we have treated him. But that sentiment won’t last forever. What is of greater concern is the ongoing recruitment and retention of quality people to New Zealand’s own military; and this will not be addressed until Governments, the current one and its most likely successor together, realise and accept the reality that most people who join the military, do not do so in order to be part of some ideologically driven Peace Corps.

They join up to serve and to protect, and to do that, they need three things: enough money, proper hardware, and a Government which understands reality. At the moment, our military has none of these three.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 23

LINE ONE

CHRIS CARTER Masculine steam-venting

D

o you ever get the feeling sometimes, that so many of our laws, rules and regulations are being hung together by folk from whom the first blush of youth has long since fled!

Indeed either so old and decrepit and suffering from memory loss it appears many of these tossers are, that it is small wonder that such silly laws keep finding their way onto our nation’s statute books. For instance, as I construct this little tome, the current media breast-beating is once again being directed toward “Boy Racers”. A wonderful mediastandby usually generated on the odd occasion that a kid kills him or herself whilst driving a quick little road rocket. The journalists can simply cut and paste all the usual clichés, interview “Any half decent psychologist will the usual Parliamentary suspects and bingo, that tell you that if you repress any takes care of at least this human being long enough, that Sunday’s edition! of fact, in keepeventually, the dam will break, and ingMatter with our PC-ridden then it’s time to watch out” country, it’s about time the headline was adjusted to read: “Youth Racers” as I’ve long noticed some very quick girl peddlers amongst the teenage Turbo Terrors...

But this aside, and even as a completely unrepentant speed freak myself, I just cannot for the life of me even begin to understand the arrant stupidity and woolly thinking nonsense that flows forth from Parliament and the Traffic Plods every time this topic, once again, gets a run. So taking a sort of a round-about tack, may we begin by considering the lot of New Zealand youngsters, especially those still blessed with normal testosterone levels and who quite naturally seek the wee bit of excitement that might just possibly still exist, within this, to a healthy kid, boringly matriarchal concentration camp.

To me, it is no small wonder that an increasing number of youngsters are now beginning to very seriously kick over the traces as they seek some relief from the crashingly boring existence that our grim and wrinkled law makers have saddled these kids with by way of rules and regulations so complex and all pervading that in many respects it would have been a great kindness to simply geld these young guys and be done with it. And think about it from a young person’s point of view, whatever

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you do or wherever you go, Nanny State has rules and regulations for you to observe and to follow, to say nothing of Nana’s little helpers, the now well indoctrinated teachers who have essentially taken on Dad’s original job of steering a young bloke in the right direction as well.

For instance around the suburbs these days how often do you see young guys climbing trees or wading around in the local creek trying to catch an eel, or, maybe running an iron wheeled trolley very noisily down a local lane? Similarly, try as a kid wandering down these days with a bow and arrow or a shanghai in your hand...see how long it takes a local Mother Grundy to ring the armed offenders squad! Want to let off some crackers on Guy Fawkes Night? Well that’s nearly all over eh? Like we’ve gone from learning how dangerous crackers can be by burning our fingers and learning the hard way, to only having boring adults letting them off, to the distinct likelihood of them now being banned altogether. You take dear old rover, the dog that Dad gave you back when you were around ten for a bit of a walk, you let him off the lead to chase a ball and next thing the bloody dog catcher is demanding your name and even your birth date, and even when he’s got it he grabs poor old Rover and drags him off to the pound. Still in search of something exciting to do you head off with your mates to say Auckland’s Mt Eden Domain...be fun to tumble down the main crater wouldn’t it? Sorry sunshine, see the big notice…she’s now a sacred site, although with the herd of steers wandering around down there you’re buggered if you really know why.

What else can we do on this warm Sunday afternoon I wonder, that’s fun and doesn’t cost much and that boys like doing. Ride your bike? Bugger, haven’t got my helmet with me. Give a bit of cheek to the guy at the dairy?

Hell that’s no fun anymore probably thinks you’re a racist or something. Even giving the fingers to a passing Police car ain’t any fun anymore, they won’t chase you or probably do much more than give you the fingers back so the danger element of giving plod a bit of a wind up is out the door as well. Tell you what, only one thing left...I just can’t wait to get my driver’s license...hell, and then I can have some fun with my Mates!

Which is where, I reckon, it all begins…Starved of any real fun or even low level danger in this now semi sterilised and boringly safe urban environment, the modern

kids, or many of them in any case, just can’t wait to break out and do their thing, and, the modern, very quick set of wheels that many of these kids can now quite easily afford are proving to be, just the ticket. Any half decent psychologist will tell you that if you repress any human being long enough, that eventually, the dam will break, and then it’s time to watch out. We’ve allowed an enormous imbalance of women currently calling the shots in our schools, and in just about everything else for that matter, and trying to re-genetically-engineer young male Kiwis. Boys mustn’t fight for instance when any half decent Dad will tell you that providing boys don’t actually injure each other beyond say a split lip or a black eye, they’re simply taking part in a male pecking order rite that probably goes back to the caves.

But oh no, can’t fight can we, let’s all have a group cuddle or something equally stomach-turning to any young feller with even a small measure of male competitiveness. Add to this now institutionalised repression of the male psyche from day-care to the 5th or 6th form and is it any wonder that we now see gangs of youths wandering around the place that are now doing, as young men, what they should have got out of their systems when they were small and unlikely to do much damage to each other.

Similarly the apparent upsurge in women getting thumped by their male partners...Is it any real wonder that this is now increasingly happening when the same social engineering that’s been inflicted on boys, in a slightly different form has been inflicted on girls as well. Both sexes have been indoctrinated to believe that they are, in essence, the same, which as both parties leave the highly regulated school environment they quickly find out is not actually true. When the previously repressed natural female ability to carve up the boys with their tongues is finally released, this new affront to the young male ego, is increasingly being met with a bit of a thumping...Why? Well we’re all the same, teacher told us, so why not!

Plainly there are few simple answers as to why the modern kid is the way he or she is, apart from the fact that this doesn’t stop for a moment the morons bearing Cabinet Warrants from thinking that they do know! Me, as the father of seven kids who have yet to find themselves in court let alone behind bars, I cringe as I see and hear this collection of officials pontificating on what they should do, about the aforementioned Boy Racer phenomenon. It certainly appears that most Members of Parliament, from what they say and certainly by gazing upon their humourless exteriors, have absolutely no idea what it is that kids either want, or even more importantly, need.

Having passed all sorts of idiot laws and regulations to ensure that being a young Kiwi these days is about as exciting and challenging as a turn on the latest, officially approved play centre jungle gym, they then effect huge surprise when these terminally bored young victims, later on in life, start to very seriously play up! All of this then further compounded by Parliaments removal by stealth, of most of the authority that parents once enjoyed in the bringing up, teaching and disciplining of their own children. Thus it has been that our Government over the last decade has essentially stuffed up an entire generation. So, if we agree that repressed kids eventually are bound to break out and in this instance are doing so by driving around at high speed and to the common danger, then what can reasonably be done to sort this problem out?

“Having passed all sorts of idiot laws and regulations to ensure that being a young Kiwi these days is about as exciting and challenging as a turn on the latest, officially approved play centre jungle gym, they then effect huge surprise when these terminally bored young victims, later on in life, start to very seriously play up!”

Obviously, the usual Kiwi Government system of ordering up more and more bloodthirsty legal threats doesn’t work, because kids can read, and they know full well, that no one other than Mr and Mrs Average ever pay traffic fines anyway, like at last count, total outstanding/unpaid fines were way over a half billion dollars! So plainly huffing and puffing ain’t going to work is it? Oh and let’s not forget the jails are brim full as well so not much point in threatening jail time either! So what to do? Did a bit of a late night run with a couple of boy racers the other night and learnt a thing or two. General consensus from around thirty kids I talked to, amongst whom I might add were some owners of some truly brilliant motor cars, was...We want somewhere to legally run our cars. Not a venue run by a car club or anything like that, just a few designated roads in unpopulated industrial estates where, without being monitored, they can do their thing.

OK, a few safety issues that would need to be overcome (without going crazy), and chances are that the problem, to all intents and purposes would be over.

The alternative I guess would be to follow the course so beloved by those who enjoy making repressive and draconian threats that they know full well will never ever be followed up, or taken any real notice of, whereupon in around six months or so, we’ll be earnestly discussing exactly the same problem again. Look at it this way...Some kids love to play footy so we have big paddocks for them to play on…Similarly with net ball, soccer you name it, heaps and heaps of special amenities all over the place. Well perhaps folks it’s time to realise that we have to get with the programme as the Yanks would put it. This is the 21st Century and the modern kid’s interests have changed so tell me why not sort out some facilities for the many kids who have spent a fortune on their “sporting equipment” that just happens to be a well turned out and quick little motor car.

Just get used to it folks, a whole lot of hard working and usually pretty bright kids buy and then lavish much love, money and attention on their cars...Just give me one good reason why they shouldn’t have some places where they can meet and try them out!

Or, perhaps, like most of our MPs it would seem, we’ve simply become intolerant and miserable old bastards that are just way out of step with the times...Cheers and long live the youngsters!

Chris Carter appears in association with www.snitch.co.nz, a must-see site.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 25

KING DUPED BY BENT COP

Major Embarrassment For Police Minister

When Investigate called for a Commission of Inquiry last month, former Dunedin cop Peter Gibbons sprang to the Government’s and Howard Broad’s rescue. But now IAN WISHART reveals damning new information about Gibbons and police corruption, in another special report that now implicates the ACC corporation in Dunedin police misconduct as the shockwaves spread

T

he political fallout from Investigate’s special report on police corruption is about to get a whole lot worse, with confirmation that Police Minister Annette King and Prime Minister Helen Clark staked their own reputations on the testimony of a man who now turns out to be a corrupt cop.

When Investigate’s major story broke last month, the news media were quickly introduced to former Dunedin police officer Peter Gibbons, who told reporters the Investigate story about widespread corruption was “rubbish”, and that police commissioner Howard Broad had not watched the infamous bestiality movie referred to in the article.

Gibbons – now a Dunedin private investigator – provided information to Police Minister Annette King urging her to name a rival private investigator, Wayne Idour, as the man who brought the bestiality movie to Howard Broad’s party in the 1980s.

Gibbons’ testimony created a media firestorm and was used in a massive political offensive to defame and discredit Idour and, by implication, Investigate magazine’s call for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the NZ Police.

At the time, Investigate already had Gibbons in its sights as an alleged corrupt officer, but our inquiries had not been completed and cross-checked for accuracy. So, for a month, Investigate has stayed silent.

Now, however, we can reveal that Investigate views Peter James Gibbons as one of the more bent police officers we’ve come across, based on the evidence assembled here, an officer who not only appears to have committed perjury by lying to a judge in a court trial, but who has also been captured on audiotape justifying police corruption and privately endorsing a group of officers who chose to lie to an official inquiry. Gibbons has been accused in affidavits supplied to Investigate of behaviour including tipping off drug dealers in advance of police raids, and corruptly obtaining police search warrants from his police constable son-in-law to help him fulfill lucrative commercial contracts as a private investigator working for a major government organization.

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All video stills courtesy TV3 News

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 27

3 News went to the trouble of covertly filming whistleblower Wayne Idour. It did not bestow that ‘honour’ on any of the police named in the first article, nor did it attempt to properly investigate the substantial claims

The irony – that the government and Police National Headquarters brushed off the need for a Royal Commission by relying on the word of a bent cop – will become chillingly apparent over the next few pages. But first, a look at the substance of Gibbons’ spin campaign against Idour and Investigate.

T

he first most people really heard was National Radio’s Morning Report, when host Geoff Robinson interviewed Police Minister Annette King. Although Gibbons had been interviewed the previous day sticking up for Howard Broad, he had not gone as far publicly as the Police Minister was about to.

“Geoff, yesterday you had a man on your show who stood up for Howard Broad, who worked with him. I spoke to that man yesterday,” said King.

“He gave me the name of the person who took the film – it’s actually a film – to Howard Broad’s house. He gave me the name of the person, the same person, who played the film, and the same person is the person who’s been hawking the story around the news media.

“The person, on your show, and I’m quite sure if you were to ring him he would confirm this, is Mr Idour.

28, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

“I am told by the same man that was on your show that when Mr Idour played the film that most people walked out of the room in disgust. They didn’t want to see it, leaving Mr Idour with very few people but himself to watch it.”

That last comment alone should have been enough to sound warning bells in the ears of intelligent listeners – the idea that boozed-up police at a rugby fundraiser walked out rather than watch a porn film that included a bestiality scene with a chicken.

National Radio’s Robinson asked the Minister how Peter Gibbons had ended up sticking up for Broad.

“Mr Broad spoke with people that he’d known in Dunedin at the time to go over his memory of events,” replied King.

Acknowledging that his question might appear “cynical”, Geoff Robinson queried the sequence of events, saying, “Certainly the names [of police prepared to support Broad] were provided to us by Police HQ, which raises the question of whether there was some concerted campaign by Police –” “I doubt whether Howard Broad would be involved in some sort of concerted campaign,” interjected King.

Increasingly, however, that’s how it is looking. And if Police National HQ introduced Peter Gibbons to the Minister of

Police, then to all practical effect PNHQ set up their own Minister to take an embarrassing fall if the true facts about Gibbons ever emerged.

With Wayne Idour’s name publicly besmirched as a bestiality-purveyor by the Minister of Police on National Radio, the media went wild. Peter Gibbons appeared on radio and TV interviews, telling the same carefully-constructed story. Note how the wording is deliberately strong and rehearsed as if to underline his credibility as a witness: “Wayne Idour played that movie, Wayne Idour put it on, Wayne Idour was watching it. That’s what I categorically remember. I and another person spoke to him about it. And I remember it very, very well,” Gibbons told 3 News.

Contrast his rock-solid memory, however, with his comments on National Radio’s Checkpoint programme: “I can’t remember if it was a movie or a video, bearing in mind I can’t even remember which year it was. Wayne put that movie on, or video on, and when people saw what it was, they moved out of the room. What I can tell you Mary is myself and the Vice Captain of the team actually went and spoke to him and asked him to desist. He wanted to continue watching it and we told him he would have to watch it by himself. He

watched it by himself. The party continued in another room.”

“Police Minister Annette King stands behind Gibbons,” continued the 3 News report as it led into a video clip of King: “He told me directly, the person who brought the film to the party was Mr Idour. And Mr Idour played the film.”

It didn’t occur to many journalists that the likelihood of Wayne Idour tipping off the country’s most controversial magazine about the chicken film was nil, if he had in fact been the person who originally brought it along. After all, it was not a private screening but a party attended by about 100 men, many of them police officers.

Police Commissioner Howard Broad himself muddied the waters significantly by revealing that when he found out the movie was playing in his house, that he complained to Peter Gibbons and a fellow detective, Gordon Hunter, about it.

“I moaned about it because I just didn’t want that sort of thing being beamed onto the wall of my lounge,” Broad told the Herald.

According to Broad, and Gibbons, the party was a fundraiser for the police rugby club and the main attraction was movie reels (there were no videos in 1981) of “old Ranfurly Shield rugby games”.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 29

Top Left, Constable Andrew Henderson’s signature on letter sent regarding ACC search warrant. Top Right, Andrew Henderson’s signature on a property transfer obtained by Investigate. Lower Left, Gibbons, his daughter Melissa and son-in-law Andrew named on the property document. Lower Right, Henderson’s name and signature on search warrant notice executed on behalf of his father-in-law

One person who doesn’t buy that explanation for a nanosecond is Howard Broad’s former boss, retired Detective Sergeant Tom Lewis.

Speaking from Australia, Lewis has told Investigate that the idea of 100 police officers and their mates holding a fundraiser in 1981 by screening “old Ranfurly Shield games” on a projector is a fabrication.

Lewis says film footage of old Ranfurly Shield matches did not exist on home movie format in 1981, and the idea that 100 cops had gathered to watch a fellow policeman’s shaky home movie of an entire game is ludicrous.

He’s told Investigate he was aware of a number of similar fundraisers, and the drawcard was usually the latest pornographic movies seized by police. Like Wayne Idour, he says they were not functions normally attended by women.

He recalls on one occasion two of his junior staff, Gordon Hunter and Jim Stacey, discussing the porn movies they’d viewed at a police rugby fundraiser, and he says that may have been the one at Howard Broad’s house.

Lewis also scoffs at former Detective Peter Gibbons’ claim that everyone left the room when the movie came on.

30, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

“Is he expecting people to believe that a hundred people suddenly crammed into Howard Broad’s kitchen, and that Broad then asked Gibbons and Gordon Hunter to tell the one person in the lounge to turn the movie off, using his prime authority as the householder, but that the person in the lounge refused and neither Howard Broad nor Peter Gibbons did anything? That’s almost an even bigger indictment on their policing and decision making ability than watching the bestiality movie in the first place!”

It is also, says Lewis, impossible to believe.

The gullible Police Minister Annette King, however, fell for it hook, line and sinker.

“Mr Gibbons is well known in Dunedin, I’m told, highly respected. He is prepared to back what he said. I think it’s now up to who people believe and I personally believe Mr Gibbons.”

King wasted no time upping the ante, either. Under the cloak of Parliamentary privilege she launched a stinging attack on the credibility of Wayne Idour and Investigate magazine: “The modus operandi of that magazine is to base a story on a half-truth, and from that to build an entire menu of fantasies.

There was a party in Dunedin in 1981. There was an objectionable pornographic film shown at it. The basis for the story came

from information provided about the party by an unknown person. Mr Wishart said that he did not identify the informant at the time, because the informant had a sick family member.

When has Mr Wishart ever given a damn about the family members of his targets?”

For the record, Investigate has withheld information about some political figures from publication because of concern for their families, nor did we conduct a major investigation into how Police Minister Annette King’s daughter crashed a ministerial vehicle containing illegal drugs. Also, for the record, the “sick” family member King refers to was dying, and the Minister knew it when she chose only to call him “sick”.

Investigate had issued a news release explaining that the man was terminally ill. For the record, Idour’s close relative died two days after Annette King’s callous attack in parliament.

“His informant was outed,” King continued in parliament, “and subsequently Wayne Idour has had to own up. That man was a former police officer in Dunedin. He is the same man who was employed by the Exclusive Brethren to dig up dirt on the Prime Minister and on Labour MPs and their families. He is a proven liar. Wayne Idour lied to TV3 about working for the Brethren, and I believe he is now lying again. I believe he is lying when he says he did not take the bestiality movie to the party. I believe he lied when he said he did not show the pornographic film. I believe he lied when he said he saw Howard Broad watching it.”

Again, for the record, Wayne Idour is arguably a “proven liar” only in regard to one event – distancing himself from the Exclusive Brethren. As a matter of historical fact, however, Idour was not hired by the Brethren but by an Auckland private investigator who did not disclose the identity of the clients to Idour until well down the path of the investigation. Nor was Idour employed to follow the Prime Minister or Peter Davis – another common error made by politicians and the media.

Peter Gibbons’ dishonesty, however, is far more serious and includes giving false testimony, on oath, to a court, as you will read shortly. The people who ultimately relied on “a proven liar” are the Minister of Police herself, and Prime Minister Helen Clark.

And it’s not as if Gibbons’ motives were not transparent to others.

“In my view Peter Gibbons has a vested interest,” Tom Lewis told Investigate. “He’s a close mate of Broad’s, and he also gets a lot of his private detective work from Dunedin Police. So it’s in Gibbons’ best interests to support the police on this.”

Gibbons’ relationship with Dunedin Police is, in literal fact, incestuous. Although Gibbons had to leave the force 10 years ago and set up in business as a private investigator, his daughter Melissa became a police officer and subsequently married another young cop named Andrew Henderson, who transferred to Dunedin.

Investigate stumbled across this relationship during a thorough search of Gibbons’ property transactions, which included a number of sales and purchases involving the AW and MA Henderson Family Trust, which Peter Gibbons is a trustee on.

Recognising it as a family trust for his daughter and son-in-law, Investigate put those documents to one side as irrelevant, until a chance comment from Dunedin man Bruce Van Essen, who’s been battling ACC, suddenly made the Henderson Family Trust centrestage again.

Van Essen had posted comments on the ACCForums website

“Broad then asked Gibbons and Gordon Hunter to tell the one person in the lounge to turn the movie off, using his prime authority as the householder, but that the person in the lounge refused and neither Howard Broad nor Peter Gibbons did anything? That’s almost an even bigger indictment on their policing and decision making ability than watching the bestiality movie in the first place!“

about Peter Gibbons’ work as a private investigator for ACC, and when we contacted him he remarked how Gibbons would execute police search warrants on the homes of ACC claimants, even though he was no longer a police officer.

“We think the warrants are really dodgy,” Van Essen remarked. “He must have a mate inside the police doing it for him. Besides which, it’s always the same cops who turn up to do the searches with Gibbons.”

“Really?” the magazine asked. “Who?” “It’s a Sergeant Kindly and a young constable named Andrew Henderson. Every time. And sometimes there’s another guy, Graeme Scott, who has now left the police force and is working for Gibbons.”

When Investigate obtained copies of the police search warrants used by Gibbons to raid homes of ACC victims and seize their property, we found a direct match between the signatures of Constable Andrew Henderson on the warrants, and the signatures of Andrew Henderson we already had on a string of property purchases with Peter Gibbons.

The fact that private investigator Peter Gibbons, whose business has a lucrative $172,000 contract with the government ACC agency, is using his son-in-law in the police to draft the search warrants he needs, appears, to Investigate, to be a massive conflict of interest, and further evidence of the need for a full Royal Commission of Inquiry into police corruption.

But it gets worse. In an affidavit provided to Investigate for review by an eminent legal entity, Van Essen discloses that the police searches were conducted outside standard police operating procedure. For example, it has been common for the police presenting the warrants to play no part in the actual searches, and instead let civilian Peter Gibbons and his private assistants search through the houses with no police supervision at all.

“The cops actually turn their backs, they don’t watch,” conINVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 31

firms Van Essen to Investigate.

Under New Zealand law private investigators working for anyone, including ACC, have no legal authority to search anyone’s house, as powers of search and seizure are tightly regulated under ancient common law and the Bill of Rights Act, as well as the Police Act itself.

Section 6 of the Police Act specifically forbids any non-sworn (civilian) person carrying out any of the powers and duties of a sworn police officer without explicit written authority from Police Commissioner Howard Broad, and that written authority must be carried by the civilian at all times and presented to householders if requested, Gibbons had no such authority from his friend, Howard Broad.

T

hree Dunedin residents have sworn affidavits about Gibbons executing search warrants in the company of Graeme Scott and Constable Andrew Henderson, along with irregularities in the search warrants. On one occasion the ACC corporation replied to a complaint by blaming the irregularity – a reference to a false declaration – on a “cut and paste” error by a police typist.

Let’s take a closer look at that “cut and paste” error.

On a search warrant dated 31 August 2006, police are authorized to search premises occupied by Bruce Van Essen at a Dunedin primary school because: “There is a reasonable ground for believing that there is (are) in any building, aircraft, ship, carriage, vehicle, box, receptacle, premises or place at Abbotsford Primary School, 72 North Taieri Road, Dunedin, the following thing(s), namely: “…documentary evidence, however, held either manually or electronically stored including computer hard drives, bank statements, invoices [etc]..”

The chances of finding a jumbo jet or a ship in the playground at Abbotsford school were remote, but having identified the kind of things the police were to seek, the warrant had to specify on what grounds, in other words, what law was suspected of being broken that justified a search.

The warrant spelt out that the grounds against Van Essen were: “…Upon or in respect of which an offence of Making a false statutory declaration using a document for pecuniary gain has been or is suspected of having been committed…

“Or which there is reasonable ground to believe will be evidence as to the commission of an offence of Making a false statutory declaration using a document for pecuniary gain…

“Or which there is a reasonable ground to believe is intended to be used for the purpose of committing an offence of [blank].”

In other words, the justification for the entire search warrant hinged on an allegation that Van Essen had made a false statutory declaration.

This was the warrant served by Gibbons’ son-in-law, Constable Andrew Henderson, who then allowed Gibbons – a civilian and private investigator working for private financial gain – to ransack Van Essen’s premises and rack-up billable hours to the government owned ACC. If anyone was using a document for pecuniary gain, it was Gibbons.

Documents obtained by Investigate and signed by Constable Henderson show the warrant was executed a week later, on 8 September 2006.

32, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

So where was this false statutory declaration to ACC that Van Essen had purportedly made, and which the search warrant was based on? It didn’t exist, and the ACC confirmed this in a series of letters earlier this year.

In a further letter dated 3 May this year, acting ACC CEO, Dr Keith McLea told Van Essen: “You raise issues about the search warrant. I understand the police typist preparing the affidavit made a ‘cut and paste’ error in good faith and failed to remove a passage from a previous search warrant template. I am satisfied that this kind of minor error would not have affected the validity of the warrant.”

Really? Try removing the clauses about a statutory declaration above, and see what kind of grounds you are left with.

Van Essen also tried to get a copy of the affidavit supposed to have been filed in support of obtaining the search warrant.

Such an affidavit would presumably have spelt out in detail the nature of the now non-existent statutory declaration. Within the police, the task of responding to the Official Information Act request seemed to bypass the official channels and land on the desk of Peter Gibbons son-in-law, Andrew Henderson, a mere constable. OIA requests are supposed to be processed by ranking officers.

“In response to your request for a copy of the affidavit supporting the application of a search warrant, this is declined… the matter is an ongoing investigation and the affidavit will not be released.”

Henderson is not the only Dunedin police officer in the frame for alleged misconduct.

Graeme Scott’s involvement may also be a breach of police regulations, and further evidence of the kind of corruption requiring a Commission of Inquiry. It is an absolute breach of police rules for any sworn police officer to be involved in private investigation work. But Investigate has obtained documents showing Detective Sergeant Scott was listed by the ACC as one of its investigators in September 2006. When Investigate called the Dunedin Central Police station and asked when Scott had left the police, the operator told us, “Detective Sergeant Scott left the police earlier this year [2007]”.

If true, that would put Scott, Gibbons, Dunedin Police and the ACC in the gun for a massive breach of police conduct.

But independent of Van Essen and the others, Investigate has discovered another case, where Gibbons allegedly impersonated a police officer, and failed to disclose he was working for the ACC. “On 6th May 1998 I received a telephone call at my former employer BNZ from my husband, to say that the police were at the house and I had better come home,” Dunedin woman Kathryn Dawe told Investigate.

“On arriving home my [then] husband had been arrested and was being taken to the Dunedin Police station for questioning in relation to a large quantity of cannabis that was located in a room attached to the garage at 159 Ashmore Street.

“The police officers I recall seeing were Detective John Ferguson, Detective Greg Dunne and another unnamed officer. They were in the garage at the property. There was a fourth person (male).

“I was inside the lounge with our then 14 month old son and recall a tall male standing by the sliding door who started asking me questions. I asked him who he was and his words were, ‘My name is Peter Gibbons. I am a police officer and we have

Peter Gibbson speaking to 3News

“The officer I was speaking to (Gibbons), I describe as a tall, white male, fairly solidly built, about 5’10”-5’11”. He had brown hair and what I remember most was his moustache. It was light brown and curled up at the edges” found a lot of drugs in your garage.’ He said he was with the Dunedin Police executing a search warrant.

“I asked to see the drugs and was told by the police officer, Peter Gibbons, that I knew what was in the garage. The officer I was speaking to (Gibbons), I describe as a tall, white male, fairly solidly built, about 5’10”-5’11”. He had brown hair and what I remember most was his moustache. It was light brown and curled up at the edges. Hair thinning on top. He was blunt to the point of rudeness,” says Dawe.

“I accepted that he was a member of the NZ police. I never asked for any identification from any of the officers and no identification was presented to me.

“Mr Gibbons asked me questions about our personal finances and was shown details of bank records, hire purchase payments, car payments, to offer him assistance with his inquiry.

“Mr Gibbons also requested the keys to my vehicle and as it was parked in the driveway he conducted a search in my vehi-

cle. Mr Gibbons also searched the lounge and kitchen areas of my home.

“Peter Gibbons gave me the search warrant under the Misuse of Drugs Act when I left the property. The warrant was executed under the Misuse of Drugs Act and the Social Security Act 1964 and issued to the Dunedin Police Station. Gibbons was fully active in the search of my property while I was at home.”

Kathryn Dawe says she told her husband’s lawyer, Anne Stevens, about the obnoxious police officer but “could only recall his name being Peter”. The lawyer rang police who initially denied that any police officer named Peter was involved in the search and that the man Dawe spoke to was Detective Greg Dunne.

“It was later revealed through the [legal] disclosure process that the person speaking to me was in fact Peter Gibbons who was at the property on the request of ACC to investigate Craig [Harris, Dawe’s then husband] for ACC related matters.”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 33

After being released from prison, Dawe then set about trying to get Gibbons’ private investigator’s licence revoked on the grounds that he had impersonated a police officer to obtain information that she would otherwise not have provided him with.

“I complained twice, possibly three times, 2001, 2002 and possibly 2003. In the end I gave up because Mr Gibbons had the support of two or three members (current and former) of the Dunedin CIB. The matter was not sent to a hearing and I was never able to verbally put my case forward.”

The complaints were made to the Registrar of Private Investigators and Security Guards in Auckland, but surprisingly no action was taken. Surprising, because the only grounds the Registrar has for avoiding a hearing, under s24 of the Private Investigators and Security Guards Act, is “if no notices of objections to the grant of the application have been filed”.

S

ection 66 of the Act specifically lays out that private investigators are not allowed to “either orally or in writing claim, suggest or imply that, by virtue of his licence, certificate of approval, occupation, or business, he has any power or authority that he does not in law have; or (b) Use or attempt to use his licence…for the purpose of exercising, claiming, suggesting or implying such a power or authority; or (c) Either orally or in writing describe or refer to himself as a detective or by any other expression or term containing the word ‘detective’; or (d) Wear any article of clothing, badge or other article that is likely to cause any member of the public to believe that the holder of the licence or certificate of approval is a member of the Police.”

When Investigate contacted the office of the Registrar of Private Investigators earlier this month, the file on Peter Gibbons was “missing”, according to office staff.

“Is that usual?” we asked.

“No, the file should be there,” the office manager confirmed.

She added that a complaint has recently been received about Gibbons.

Peter Gibbons has had a long career in the police, entering in the early 70s and perfing in 1997 for reasons we are still investigating. He is well schooled in the fine arts of giving compelling evidence in court, and training younger cops what to say and what not to say.

Gibbons told NZPA last month that he was telling the truth about Wayne Idour being the man who brought the bestiality movie along.

“I wouldn’t have said that if I wasn’t prepared to swear an affidavit or go into any court in the land and say it.”

But there’s strong evidence that Gibbons is a man who is even prepared to lie in court, making his word utterly worthless.

In 1988 an undercover police officer using the name “Brent Stace” testified in the trial of an arrested man that the suspect (who we’ll call ‘John Doe’) had been a “target” for the police operation, codenamed “Sub Rosa”, even before it began in early February 1987.

Doe was a second hand dealer who owned a car wrecking yard in Dunedin. The city was undergoing a bit of a car theft epidemic in the mid 80s, and popular wisdom within some in the police was that John Doe must have had something to do with it. In fact, as the evidence you’ll read suggests, the real mastermind was a man named Bob Wood, who just happened

34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

to be a good friend of a popular Dunedin police officer. And it was Wood that police used to help set up John Doe. Wood would offer drugs and other items to targets, and ask them to onsell them to his mate, undercover cop Brent Stace.

“I was made aware of him [John Doe] at the beginning of the operation…the police were interested in him,” Stace told the court, on oath.

“Were you made aware,” asked the suspect’s lawyer, “that he had no previous criminal convictions?”

“No,” said Stace, “because I am sure he has got one.”

“So you have seen a list of his convictions?”

“Yes,” confirmed the undercover cop.

What’s interesting is that the 37 year old suspect, John Doe, had virtually no criminal record at all, just one conviction for a minor theft at the age of 17 – twenty years earlier – for which he received a $30 fine. That offence, in 1968, was the only record listed.

“At the beginning of the operation I saw some people’s criminal history,” Stace told the Court.

“Can you recall who showed you that?” challenged the lawyer.

“Detective Sergeant Peter Gibbons, my operator. He was the operator who briefed me.”

“At that time,” continued Doe’s lawyer, “were you given the accused’s name and address as a target?”

“Yes, I was. He was disclosed to me.”

That’s the sworn testimony of “Brent Stace” – now a Christchurch businessman using his real name – back in the Dunedin District Court in 1988.

But later in the same court transcript, here’s what Gibbons had to say under cross-examination: “When Constable Stace commenced this operation did you provide him with a list of names?” asked the suspect’s lawyer.

“No.” “Did you provide him with the accused’s name?”

“No. This accused was not a target at the commencement of the operation,” answered Gibbons on oath.

“When did he become a target?”

“When he offered to sell a firearm [on March 31st].”

Two men, both police officers, both with totally contradictory stories. Both giving evidence on oath. Nor is it a matter where faulty recollection is an issue. The trial was taking place less than a year after the arrest, and both police officers had had plenty of opportunity to get their stories straight. But the younger, less experienced Brent Stace was first up on the witness stand and let slip some crucial information. His recall of seeing the suspect’s prior conviction, and being made aware the man was a target, when Gibbons briefed him right at the start in early February 1987, is in stark contrast to Gibbons’ assertion that he did no such thing.

Why is it important? Because it is one thing to do an undercover operation as a fishing expedition. It is another to carry out what’s known as “entrapment”, where you attempt to set people up.

It also, of course, casts doubt on the credibility of either Peter Gibbons, or Detective Brent Stace. One of them was lying to the court, and therefore may still be prepared to lie on oath today.

If it was Brent Stace who lied on oath, then question marks now arise over his testimony that saw nearly 80 people prosecuted. Based on the evidence you are about to read in this story

however, Investigate believes it is Peter Gibbons who lied on oath in the evidence given above.

Detective Gordon Hunter worked under Gibbons and is described in the court transcript as being “friends” with a criminal named Bob Wood.

Witness Pamela Philip was Wood’s de facto partner during this time and told the court they often met Hunter “on numerous occasions socially”.

“It was my understanding Bob Wood and Detective Hunter were friends.”

Philip testified on oath that she had been present in the Dunedin District Court in late 1986 when several criminal charges of receiving stolen property against Bob Wood were suddenly dropped.

“When it came time for [Bob] to take the stand, Gordon Hunter stood up and said the charges had been dropped.

Gordon Hunter did this personally, he was in the courtroom.”

It was at that time that the plan for Operation Sub Rosa was being hatched, and Wood would play a substantial role in it.

Police introduced Wood to their undercover detective, Brent Stace, although Stace went coy when asked in court to confirm how they met.

“Did you meet with him and any police officers directly?” questioned John Doe’s lawyer.

“I can’t answer that question,” said Stace, as the Crown lawyer stood up to object to the line of questioning.

“Did you ever meet with Detective Hunter and Mr Wood?” continued Doe’s lawyer.

“Objection!!” exclaimed the Crown lawyer again.

Regardless of how they met, it appears Detective Gordon Hunter was involved and that Wood was agreeing to help police set up a group of “targets” by introducing them to Brent Stace.

Wood’s motivation was twofold. Firstly, Gordon Hunter had dropped criminal charges that Wood was facing. And secondly, Stace’s role was to offer to purchase stolen property or drugs.

The fact that Wood was supposed to introduce Stace to targets of Operation Sub Rosa was acknowledged by Detective Sergeant Gibbons, who told the court, “Wood made introductions for Stace”.

Gibbons, as you’ve already seen, is on record as testifying on oath that John Doe was not a target until he offered to sell a gun on March 31st, eight weeks into the operation.

But look at the sworn evidence of Detective Gordon Hunter.

Hunter told the court that Brent Stace made contact with Doe right at the start: “I am aware that the undercover officer met your client [John Doe] prior to any involvement with the person you refer to as Wood.”

If Doe was not a target, as Peter Gibbons claimed on oath, why did Stace make a beeline for him, as both Stace and Hunter acknowledged on oath. Gibbons’ evidence now appears to contradict not one, but two other police officers.

Nor was this the only case of lying on oath in that trial.

In a signed statement dated 27 January 1988 and obtained

by Investigate, petty criminal Keith Kilner described a meeting at 15 Panmure Ave, Dunedin in August 1987, just after John Doe’s arrest. Kilner was meeting Bob Wood at the home of Wood’s new girlfriend, Sharee.

“This meeting with Bob Wood, which went on for about one hour, he (Bob Wood) offered me money and a way out for my

court case. I had been arrested in Christchurch on five charges of receiving stolen goods.

“I asked Bob Wood what I would have to do.

“Bob said, ‘all you have to do is drive a truck load of Holden Commodore parts from Christchurch to Dunedin and deliver them to [John Doe’s] wrecking yard in Hope St and collect the money for the parts’.

“I asked Bob Wood why he had set me up with Bret (sic) Stace, the undercover cop.

“Bob Wood told me that he had to set me up because he was working for the police and that my name (Keith Kilner) was on a hit list of people that the police wanted busted and put behind bars.”

When Kilner asked who, within the police, Wood was working for, the latter responded: “Detective Gordon Hunter”.

Wood explained he’d been working for Hunter “for a long time” because the Detective had him “cold on a lot of charges” and could have him in jail for a long time if he refused to cooperate.

“Bob Wood stated that Gordon Hunter said he would lose all the paperwork on those charges and all that he (Bob Wood) would have to do is set up these people on this CIB hit list and drive around with an undercover cop and introduce him as his friend Bret Stace from Auckland.

“Bob Wood told me that he had to get these people on this hit list and other people he knew to commit crimes and sell the goods to Bret Stace because that is what Hunter wanted. I asked Bob Wood what the hell’s all this got to do with [John Doe]?

“Bob Wood stated that [John Doe’s] name is on that CIB hit list and Gordon Hunter wants him real bad.”

According to Kilner’s statement, Wood confessed to setting Doe up on several occasions, most recently when he brought Doe a .38 revolver with a broken firing pin and asked him to fix it in his workshop, as well as four bags of cannabis. Wood wanted Doe to sell the lot to Brent Stace for cash.

“I asked Bob Wood who got the cash from the sale of the gun and the drugs,” says Kilner, and “Bob…told me that he (Wood) got all the cash.”

Kilner also asked where the gun and ammunition came from.

“Bob Wood told me that he had been given the gun and ammo by Gordon Hunter.”

In other words, Dunedin Police supplied a handgun to a criminal whose firearms licence had already been revoked, as part of a plan to entrap John Doe. Kilner began to express some major reservations with Wood’s new plan to have him drive a load of Commodore parts to John Doe’s wrecking yard, saying in his statement, “I wasn’t very happy with the way this is starting to shape up.” Kilner demanded to know the origin of the Holden parts and Wood soon admitted they had come from Commodores stolen in and around Christchurch.

“I then told Bob Wood that know (sic) way am I going to bring those hot car parts into Dunedin, you are just going to set me up again. The cops would just love that.

“Bob Wood said, ‘don’t panic, I will ring Gordon Hunter and get him over here now. That way we can get Hunter to sort out your receiving charges and we can tell Hunter about you bringing those hot Commodore parts down from Christchurch’.”

Kilner told Wood he would “have to think about this”, to INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 35

which Wood replied: “Hunter doesn’t give a s**t about what I do or what laws I break as long as I set up who he wants to arrest, and he wants to put [John Doe] out of business and behind bars…so come on, give me a hand to set up [Doe] and Hunter will pull your five receiving charges and earn yourself some real easy money.”

Investigate has spoken to another of Wood’s onetime girlfriends, and she clearly remembers both Peter Gibbons and Gordon Hunter being involved with Bob Wood.

“I had met with Peter Gibbons, yeah. Gordon Hunter mainly.

Peter Gibbons was just every now and again. Bob’s and Gordon Hunter’s relationship was close, they were good friends.”

Gibbons was officially Hunter’s boss. He was also running undercover cop Brent Stace. Hunter meanwhile, was running Wood. Wood supplied the bags of dope to John Doe to onsell to Brent Stace.

“The dope was stored in my cupboard until he grabbed it one day and did what he had to do with it,” remembers the former girlfriend.

One of the stories that has constantly come up from former members of the criminal fraternity (after being busted in the 80s most went on to live upwardly mobile respectable lives) is that Bob Wood was stealing cars on the instructions of Gordon Hunter, and splitting the profits.

36, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

“Wood had this arrangement where he got his boys to nick cars and store them in various garages around the city, and roughly once a week Hunter would check which cars,” one former associate of Wood’s told Investigate. “Those vehicles that were insured would be ‘found’ by police and returned via a tame insurance agent Hunter had in exchange for a finder’s fee of roughly 10%. Hunter and his insurance mate split the difference, while Bob Wood was then allowed to wreck and strip any of the stolen vehicles that didn’t have insurance company interest. So the cops were happy, the insurance agent was happy, and Bob was happy.”

T

here is strong speculation that the Operation SubRosa decision to target car wrecker John Doe was part of a stunt to take the heat off the ‘police’ car theft ring run by Wood.

Wood’s former girlfriend agrees.

“They thought that [John] was the big guy, but I was led to believe that Bob was the big guy. Bob was the one with the briefcase with all the master keys for all the cars, he was the one that organized which cars to steal, and he sent the goonies out to get them. They came back laughing about things like, ‘Oh, that guy was sitting in his front room reading his newspaper and we just pushed the car down the street and cranked it up.’

“Then they would just wheel them into the garage, take the dog tags as they were then, and change the number plates, engine plates, sometimes spraypaint it or change a few panels here and there, then out it would go. And it was already basically pre-sold. I think they even drove them up to Christchurch to get rid of them.”

None of which, incidentally, involved John Doe. “Then of course we were involved with the undercover police,” the girlfriend continues. “Bob initially didn’t want to tell me he was involved in an operation. He was ‘trying’ to tell me, but he wasn’t telling me. This big, big operation. So he told me to watch Scarface with Al Pacino! That’s how he saw himself!

“Anyway, Bob was skiting about that and I wasn’t to say anything to anyone. But the guy that came into our midst was Brent Stace.

“Brent came in, I already knew who he was and I was told just to act normal, that he would be mingling with us, and he would be doing everything that everybody done, like pot smoking. I wasn’t into it and I don’t think a lot of them were, but he had to carry on like that.

“Hunter and Stace took Bob to Christchurch Airport to get him out of there. When they first busted them he had to spend a night in jail, and he was offered immunity at that stage in return for squealing on everybody.”

But the number of people linking Detective Gordon Hunter to Wood and a deliberate campaign to “set up” John Doe doesn’t stop there.

A trailer was stolen from Doe’s premises by a man named Vincent Singh. The trailer was later miraculously found at Singh’s residence by Detective Gordon Hunter, but Singh was never charged. Singh stole the trailer for revenge – Hunter had earlier told him that Doe had stolen Singh’s car (Doe says Hunter was simply playing both men off against each other by lying to Singh, and certainly there’s no record of Doe ever being charged). So Singh had no particular love for John Doe, and even a kind of enmity, which is why this next piece of evidence is relevant.

Hunter left a message in August 1987 for Singh to get hold of him. This fact is not disputed, and was admitted in court.

What Hunter didn’t realize is that when Singh went to see the detective, he was carrying a hidden tape recorder which captured their conversation verbatim.

On the tape, Singh asks Hunter, “Why wasn’t I charged with it?”

“Well, that’s something that we have to work out,” says Hunter.

Sensing that the threat of prosecution may still be hanging over his head, Singh asks what Hunter wants, and Hunter begins discussing John Doe. “He’s the worst, he’d be the worst one of the whole lot…but he just hasn’t got the convictions.”

Ignoring the obvious point – that Doe may not have convictions because he may not be involved – Hunter then starts discussing what police now had on Doe: “Somehow or another he got a whole lot of bloody grass, cause we got it all in an exhibit and we got a photograph of it, same time he had sold a bloody shooter, plus a whole lot of ammunition, and it’s a real one because I bloody test-fired the bloody thing, it goes, it’s as good as the bloody rod I carry around!”

The last statement is important, because on the tape Hunter has just admitted firing the gun sold by John Doe.

Now contrast what you’ve just read with what Hunter swore on oath in court: “The subject of that conversation was a comical situation that I treated as a complete nonsense…in the course of that conversation I don’t recall saying to Singh that I had fired the gun…and I certainly have not fired any gun that relates to your client.”

Conflict of evidence? On tape Hunter says he fired it. In court, Hunter denies it.

Peter Gibbons, likewise, testified on oath that Gordon Hunter never fired the gun.

Back on the tape meanwhile, Vincent Singh treats Gordon Hunter’s claims about John Doe dealing drugs very skeptically: “As you know, most people that get around in that sort of circle know what everybody else is doing. Now, I know that [John] doesn’t deal in drugs. I’m damn sure he doesn’t!” exclaimed Singh.

“Well I’m telling you he does,” retorted Hunter. “Someone who’s running guns and selling dope –” “[John]’s not, no, [John] doesn’t deal in that stuff,” countered Singh.

“Well, what the hell’s he doing selling it?” said the police officer.

“I don’t know. He, the way I look at it, he’s been set up on that…as I said, I’ve known [John] for a while, even though we haven’t seen eye to eye, we still don’t,” said Singh. “You want to get him behind bars?”

“Yeah.”

“Right, you’re out to get him –” “He’s got to go,” said Hunter, referring to the need to put Doe’s wrecking yard out of business. “You see, the thing is, well, if you haven’t got somebody into dealing with all the stolen goods or parts of whatever, right, there’s no motive for the thief to bloody go out and do the business, is there? …I know that he’s going to make a mistake…he’s got to go.

“I know he’s, well, he’s the rat in the trap. Like, you [Singh] haven’t been arrested in this operation and all the rest of it.”

“Yeah,” agreed Singh.

“He’s the rat that’s in the trap…and I’ll get him when he does something wrong, that’s the long and the short of it.”

Hunter then refers back to the fact he has not charged Singh with stealing the trailer, and how the “balance sheet” needs adjustment.

“Now, if I do the business [and] whoever I’m doing the business with gets the result I always pay my way. At the moment, the old balance sheet’s a wee bit round the wrong way as far as you and I are concerned,” Hunter warned Singh.

“Because you know that I’ve enough for you to be in Paparoa [prison], but what you don’t know is why.”

Hunter invited Singh to get back in contact the following week with any ideas on how Singh could help nail John Doe. “I’ll come to wherever you are, and we’ll have a yarn and I’ll write stuff down.”

“Yeah.”

“And at the end of the day you’ll get your reward, then that will be the end of it,” said Hunter.

“Right, and you can see the man behind bars that you want to see behind bars,” replied Singh.

“That’s what the job is, isn’t it,” said Hunter.

The contents of the tape are damning when placed against INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 37

Excerpts from one of the affidavits Investigate has obtained for review by an eminent legal person

Hunter’s willingness to lie on oath himself. For example, Hunter tried to tell the court that Singh was volunteering to plant drugs on John Doe: “The man was making references to having drugs planted on this man [Doe] and I would never have anything to do with that type of conduct.”

“Are you saying Detective that this man Singh approached you and made references as to how he would plant drugs on [Doe] with police connivance?” asked Doe’s lawyer.

“That is what I say is nonsense,” confirmed Hunter on oath.

“Mr Singh came in and talked about how he would plant drugs on Mr [Doe]?” continued Doe’s lawyer, who of course had heard the secret tape recording and knew there was nothing of the kind on it.

“That is the type of nonsense that was being said,” agreed Detective Gordon Hunter.

So now there appear to be at least two “respected” Dunedin police officers who didn’t bat an eyelid about committing perjury in court.

“Were you aware that Mr Singh had some kind of recording device when he spoke to you?” asked Doe’s lawyer, probably 38, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

with a wry smile.

“No, certainly not!” exclaimed Hunter.

Hunter was also questioned about the claims that he himself had supplied the cannabis to Bob Wood so that Wood could set up John Doe to sell it on Wood’ behalf to undercover cop Brent Stace.

“What would you do,” asked Doe’s lawyer, “if you heard that a police officer had supplied drugs to a civilian or a criminal person for whatever reason, a brother officer had supplied cannabis to a member of the public?”

“Depending on the amount of the drug would depend on the section [of the Act] I charged the police officer when we went to the charge room after I arrested him.”

“What about a police officer supplying a revolver to a member of the public?”

“The same rule would apply,” confirmed Hunter righteously.

Possession of a pistol is an imprisonable offence and to supply that would make that person liable for conviction.”

Yet here are two police officers, Gordon Hunter running Bob Wood, and Peter Gibbons running Brent Stace. Wood miraculously obtains a gun and four bags of cannabis from some-

where, asks John Doe to fix the gun and sell it and the drugs on his behalf to Stace, the agent being run by Peter Gibbons. The court record clearly shows that Wood and Stace were working as a tag team, and the hidden tape recording and witness statements clearly show Gordon Hunter wanted to nail John Doe. Detective Brent Stace confirmed on oath he’d been asked

by Peter Gibbons to target John Doe right at the beginning of the operation, while Peter Gibbons – in Investigate’s view – committed the worst form of lying possible: perjury in front of a judge. Forget lying to TV3 about the Exclusive Brethren – Wayne Idour’s supposed crime. Lying on oath in court is the ultimate taboo, the sign of a person whose word can never be trusted on any occasion.

And Peter Gibbons, readers will recall, is the Dunedin private investigator who urged Police Minister Annette King to wrongly name rival Dunedin private investigator Wayne Idour as the man who brought a bestiality movie to Police Commissioner Howard Broad’s party.

Investigate is aware of threats that as many as 40 former and current Dunedin police officers “are prepared to swear affidavits” contradicting what the magazine has published and that Idour was the source of the bestiality movie.

Given what Investigate has now uncovered involving the willingness of police to lie on oath, any affidavits sworn by any current or former Dunedin police are probably worthless in the public eye.

And just to reinforce the lack of police credibility on any of this now, Investigate is releasing portions of a taped conversation between Peter Gibbons and former undercover officer Peter Williamson, whose story later featured in the book Stoned on Duty by Bruce Ansley.

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he two men were discussing an internal inquiry into the police undercover programme by senior police officer Bruce Scott in 1993. As the man tasked with training undercover cops in the South Island, Peter Gibbons could be considered an expert on the topic.

On the subject of lying to cover your backside, Detective Senior Sergeant Peter Gibbons is heard justifying the actions of police officers who lied to an official inquiry: “What you have to then accept is that when those guys got interviewed, their jobs, or they would have perceived their jobs and so on were at stake, so they would not tell the truth when they got interviewed by Scott.”

On the subject of stealing official documents, Gibbons admits on tape trying to induce a Police National Headquarters worker to send him an advance copy of the Scott report, even though PNHQ had expressly forbidden Gibbons from seeing it: “I rung Helen, because Helen has done wee jobs for me for years, and I thought I’d slip a copy through the back door and get a look at this thing you see, so I rang Helen and said, ‘Look, don’t tell anyone, just get me this report and send one down to me’. Well, she must have been ferreting around and someone must have seen her and she got the big handsmack and got told, ‘he is not to get that report!’

“So she was told, you do not send that down to Gibbons!”

Further on in the tape, undercover agent Williamson criticizes a senior police figure: “I suspect he’s not an honest man, I suspect he is manipulat-

ing this inquiry in the interests of the department.”

“Well that’s what they’re all going to do,” admits Peter Gibbons, “that’s what you have to accept.”

“I call that corruption, that’s what,” protests Peter Williamson.

“Well,” continues Gibbons, “the bottom line is this, and I would say that no matter who runs it…that’s always going to be the end result: the department will look after the department first.”

“Well I consider people, undercover agents, more important than the department,” counters Williamson. “I’m not so naïve as to think that the department can run without any form of corruption Peter, I’m not so naïve as to think that, but when the casualties of that corruption are directly related to cops f***ing up then, I’m, I cannot sit back and accept it unfortunately.”

Then follows a priceless line from Peter Gibbons: “…I’m ingrained into the system and can’t see it from an outside perspective, but the bottom line as I see it is the department is always going to whitewash the department.”

Classic. “The department is always going to whitewash the department”. And this from the man who last month told Police Minister Annette King there was no need for an inquiry into Dunedin Police and Investigate’s “laughable” allegations: “The general public shouldn’t be asked to believe that sort of stuff. The call should not be for an inquiry into police conduct in the Dunedin CIB in the 1980s because you get some [person] saying that.”

So that’s Peter Gibbons’ view.

On the other hand, Investigate has been collecting affidavits of its own on behalf of an eminent legal figure who will review our evidence in favour of a Commission of Inquiry. One of those affidavits is from a contractor who worked on a home belonging to the sister of Peter Gibbons when she lived at 17 Slant Street in Carey’s Bay, just north of Dunedin in the early 1980s. Other residents of the house included Peter Gibbons’ brother.

“I became aware very quickly that drugs were a feature in this house,” says our witness in a sworn affidavit, “as the occupants offered me marijuana and speed called Benzedrine. I declined the offer. I still remember the smell of the house and it stunk of marijuana. They mainly smoked joints. I noticed that their eyes were dilated most of the time.

“There was a flurry of activity and cleaning one day when I went out there in the morning…[Peter Gibbons’ sister] said that her brother, Peter Gibbons, had phoned to say the Police were going to raid the house for drugs. The Police subsequently came and searched the house…the afternoon of the same day that Peter Gibbons phoned, and the Police did not find any of the drugs. “[Peter Gibbons’ sister] stated to me on several occasions that Peter Gibbons would phone her and pre-warn her if the Police were going to raid the house for drugs. She told me that Peter Gibbons saved their arse on a number of occasions. “[The siblings] made comments that it was helpful having a brother on the Police force to keep them out of trouble.”

Remember, this is the same Peter Gibbons running Operation Sub Rosa, and the same Peter Gibbons being relied on by Police National Headquarters and Prime Minister Helen Clark to discredit Investigate’s story last month and our call for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the police.

It is worth noting that Gibbons’ brother Tony was a pro-marijuana reform advocate.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 39

The affidavit continues: “I saw Peter Gibbons brother on a number of occasions deal drugs to people outside and inside of the house. They would arrive at the house and I saw money and drugs change hands.

I also dropped Peter Gibbons’ brother into town one day, he told me that he was going to sell marijuana to people who were attending a function.”

The magazine has confirmed that the house at 17 Slant St was indeed a drug house, and a former associate of the Gibbons family has also noted that on the one occasion police arrested and charged Peter Gibbons’ sister on drugs offences some years later, an error in the paperwork resulted in the charges being withdrawn. The same associate, now a respected citizen, also recalls Tony Gibbons discussing Benzedrine, the early form of speed mentioned by our first informant.

A

mong others we spoke to was another underworld figure, now a businessman, who is prepared to testify to a Royal Commission of Inquiry that police “shorted” drugs seized as evidence, criminal slang for a procedure where corrupt cops seize drugs and either don’t enter it into the record at all, or otherwise remove a quantity of drugs from the deal bags before they are submitted and weighed as evidential exhibits.

The drugs are then sold by underworld figures like Bob Wood, controlled by police, with profits split between police and the drug dealer.

“I wasn’t any angel myself back then,” the businessman, Michael*, told Investigate, “but there were the likes of people being busted for marijuana, and like I went up to court myself – I got caught with 13 ounces and I got charged with 10. There was a lot of that going on.”

Who was the arresting officer?

“It was a cop called Peter Gibbons,” Michael said.

What happened to the missing three ounces of dope?

“It was put back out for supply,” says Jack*, another former drug dealer turned businessman who saw a large amount of his seized marijuana vanish without trace between arrest and the typing up of the charge sheet. “The cops had their networks, people they used, and they made a fortune from seizing drugs and reselling them.”

“They had their hands out all the time,” Michael confirmed to Investigate. “I know people who were pulled up with heaps and heaps of drugs but they just left them alone if you fixed them up.

“They’d take all your money, or drugs, whatever, then say ‘don’t let us see you out here again’, but you’d never be charged.

That happened to me quite a lot. I got picked up a few times with amounts of pot on me and they’d just take the weed and say ‘I won’t see you again tonight’.”

According to Michael, senior Dunedin Police were running a protection racket where drug dealers would be left alone provided they paid substantial money to certain police officers.

“There was people getting paid under the table. [Name deleted] was a bit of a drug dealer back then but the cops never went around to see him. I was working in with him as well and we never got touched hardly, then this Peter Gibbons would come in.

“I was probably making three or four thousand dollars a 40, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

week selling drugs and stuff like that, and because they weren’t getting anything out of it they were coming around and just ripping people off,” recalls Michael.

Furious at being set up during Operation Sub Rosa, John Doe went to the trouble of doing a little research on Gordon Hunter.

He hired his own private investigator, who did an asset search and found the detective owned substantially more property and assets than his meager police salary would appear to support.

“Hunter and Gibbons also had accounts at the same bank in South Dunedin, where I banked. One of the staff members there showed me printouts one day. On the statements I saw, Hunter was taking in thousands of dollars a week. The bank executive made the comment to me that Hunter’s incomings far exceeded an ordinary detective’s wages,” says Doe. Which tallies with information provided to us by Bob Wood’s former girlfriend, who has also sworn an affidavit.

“I remember I had to go away and drop money off to Gordon Hunter, but I don’t remember why. I had to take money out of an account and give it to Gordon Hunter in cash. It was $1500.

I had to meet him, in one of the D cars. He came and met me at Lookout Point, and I was to just park there and sit and wait by the Fire Station, and I can’t remember if I was the one to get out of my car or not. I was given all these instructions, do this, do that, do this, do that. And I had to do it in cash, out of the Westpac branch in South Dunedin. It was a lot of money. It was to be gotten in littler bills, not hundreds. It was a big wad of money.”

To give Hunter the benefit of the doubt, perhaps there was an innocent explanation for the city’s top car thief paying a police officer $1,500 in small bills at a remote location. But it’s hard to think what kind of explanation that might be.

Nor is it the only question mark hanging over Hunter’s conduct. When a central city jewelry store was raided in a smash and grab in the late seventies, a friend of the jeweler’s saw Detective Hunter bend down and scoop up rings that had been scattered on the pavement. The raiders made off with around $90,000 worth of jewelry, but although some was later recovered and some of the offenders caught, mysteriously Gordon Hunter did not return the rings he’d picked up.

The jeweler, who’d been advised by his friend of Hunter’s actions, was later stunned when a local criminal offered to “return” the items for a substantial reward.

For the record, standard police procedure at the time was to cordon off crime scenes, impose a police scene guard, and wait for the police photographer to arrive and photograph the rings where they’d fallen on the pavement, for evidential purposes.

Additionally, where some of the rings may have been clutched in an offender’s hand, there was always the possibility of fingerprints. Gordon Hunter’s actions precluded that.

But it wasn’t just Hunter.

“They all had their fingers in the pie,” says Michael. “They’re all pretty well off. They were worse than what we were, they were absolute backstabbing pricks.”

Michael also recalls the police earning cash from insurance companies for retrieving stolen vehicles.

“Sometimes they were like bounty hunters. I stole a motorcycle one time and you’d think it was a Rolls Royce I’d actually pinched. They had cops out for it everywhere, and they were looking for the reward.

“Something went missing, the freezing works got their export

“I personally believe Mr Gibbons,” Police Minister Annette King chimed in, before deliberately vilifying an innocent Wayne Idour” meat pinched, there was a joker in there doing that, but they ended up getting onto that but the cops ended up taking all the meat home. None of the meat got returned, but they ended up getting something for catching him.”

While admittedly some of these events date back to the eighties and nineties, the evidence and affidavits compiled by Investigate for independent review suggest the corruption was widespread, and part of the overall Dunedin Police culture.

Many of the junior staff at the time are in more senior positions nationwide today and, as one ex-Christchurch officer told Investigate, “Leopards don’t change their spots”.

There is one final mystery Investigate has been able to solve – the identity of the police officer who was obtaining hardcore pornographic movies for the police rugby functions. The officer was a good friend of Peter Gibbons and a member of the police rugby club, which may be why Gibbons was prepared to lie about Wayne Idour supplying movies.

“I know that [the police officer] was going up to [a drug dealer]’s place and getting blue movies and stuff like that. Very early 80s.I was working with [a drug dealer] at the time,” says Michael, and [the police officer] used to turn up and I thought, ‘this is a bit odd, this is a bit weird’ because here was some cop dropping off movies and picking up new movies, and they were all banned ones.”

For the sake of the officer’s family and children, Investigate chooses not to name him. He is named, however, in the documents prepared for independent legal review.

Of course, Gibbons’ claim already had credibility running against it. As previously pointed out, if Idour were truly the source of the bestiality movie he had nothing to gain and everything to lose by mentioning the incident to Investigate.

Yet Peter Gibbons was insistent to the point of overacting: “Wayne Idour played that movie, Wayne Idour put it on, Wayne Idour was watching it. That’s what I categorically remember. I and another person spoke to him about it. And I remember it very, very well,” Gibbons told 3 News.

“I personally believe Mr Gibbons,” Police Minister Annette King chimed in, before deliberately vilifying an innocent Wayne Idour.

Like an episode of the cartoon show Roadrunner, however, the ground has fallen away beneath Gibbons with these latest revelations, and with them the credibility of the Government’s opposition to a Commission of Inquiry.

Howard Broad’s chickens have well and truly come home to roost.

Anyone wanting to add further information to our investigation can email our international email address: confidential@ investigatemagazine.tv INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 41

ESSAY

So, if the previous story is the ‘problem’, what’s the ‘solution’? IAN WISHART and COLLEEN LEWIS analyse international best practice on combating police corruption, and find NZ woefully inadequate

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ou’ve heard the slogans so often you can probably repeat them in your dreams: “we live in a clean, green country”, “New Zealanders are tolerant people”, “New Zealand is the least corrupt country in the world”, “Investigate is a scurrilous magazine”, “Ian Wishart is a muckraker” – OK, I threw those last two in just to make sure you were paying attention! But my point is a valid one: we are a country governed largely by PR spin and cleverly pitched slogans designed to create a visceral, kneejerk reaction and take the heat out of any criticism.

Slogan No. 2, however, “New Zealanders are tolerant people”, is the dangerous one. That’s the mantra that successive governments resort to when they want to dull down any opposition to dodgy behaviour. Like a silent dog-whistle, we all instinctively recognize the subliminal command to retreat into our kennels, lick our wounds and learn to love the dodgy.

Once upon a time, the news media were immune to the dog whistle, but not any longer. Instead of using the Investigate revelations of police corruption as a starting point for their own inquiries, not one mainstream media outlet lifted a finger to do their own homework. Not one.

42, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

Instead, the Christchurch Press, Radio Live, TV3 and others fell over themselves to toe the government line and obsequiously publish hit-and-run hatchet jobs on Investigate and one of our sources, Wayne Idour.

Former Dunedin cop Peter Gibbons, whose name was given to the news media by Police National Headquarters, leapt to the defence of both Commissioner Howard Broad and the Dunedin police. And not one mainstream media outlet lifted a finger to question his motives, or research his background. Not one.

Journalism has changed since I entered the profession a quar-

Watching the DETECTIVES

How NZ’s police Complaints Procedure Stacks Up Internationally

ter century ago. Gone are the hardened, skeptical and tough senior journo’s I remember from my youth, the ones who hung out in pubs with cops and crims, who cultivated sources across a spectrum of society and who knew when the information they were being fed was crap, and when it was gold.

Instead, today’s crop of news reporters (not journalists) have largely graduated from a string of tertiary courses spilling out wannabes who’ve been trained by largely liberal-left tutors and who are more at home processing press releases than actually hunting out real stories.

I’ve recounted this anecdote in one of my previous books, but it is worth repeating. At the height of the Winebox legal fight, Newstalk ZB news ran a story quoting Treasurer Bill Birch rubbishing the court decision on the Winebox. It wasn’t his opinion I had a problem with, but the facts quoted by Birch were bogus and the radio reporter who interviewed him should have known it and should have challenged the minister.

I rang ZB news and spoke to the journalist concerned, pointing out the major factual errors. He told me it wasn’t his job as a journalist to challenge what a Minister said, it was just his job INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 43

to report it. Even if it was bogus.

I was stunned. With media scrutiny like that, it is no wonder that New Zealand is slipping further and further into a corruption quagmire. Many of my fellow “reporters” couldn’t report their way out of dead-end street, let alone do anything investigative.

Then there are those with agendas of their own, like Martin van Beynen of the Christchurch Press, who laid into Investigate in a full page feature over the police corruption story with all the venom he could muster. Van Beynen conveniently chose not to disclose to his readers, however, that his brother is Ray van Beynen, a very senior ranked police officer at Police National Headquarters (albeit currently on assignment overseas).

The irony is that one of the Press’ own journalists has been quietly beavering away on police corruption of the kind that van Beynen claims doesn’t exist.

There are journalists who frankly get away with errors and conspiracy theories the likes of which Investigate never could.

Like North & South’s Deborah Coddington’s interview this month with Police Minister Annette King.

Coddington raises the fact that the Investigate article was published just four days after the Privy Council quashed David Bain’s convictions.

“Do you think it was just a coincidence the Wishart story came out in the same week or do you suspect publication was timed to coincide…giving Karam an opportunity to criticize the Dunedin Police?” she asks King.

“I’m sure it wasn’t a coincidence,” agrees King, conspiratorially.

Like, hello? Coddington knows about magazine production schedules which make it impossible to turn around a story and have it in the shops four days later. She knows Investigate has no control over when a court 18,000 kilometres away releases its decisions. But she publishes utter tripe regardless. Instead of investigating police corruption, North & South magazine (winner along with TV3 of the socialist party-backed ‘Media Peace Awards’) goes down the easy route of a soft interview with the hapless Minister of Police.

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es, police might be standing accused of raping women, snorting cocaine, fabricating evidence, fitting people up on criminal charges to discredit them and taking bribes, but instead North & South asks patsy questions like, “So how’s Broad feeling now? Still bruised?”, “How has this affected morale?”, or the classic Girls’ Own pearler, “Four major portfolios must put you under immense pressure…how do you cope?”

With major investigative work like this, it’s easy to see why North & South scooped the pool at the annual NZ media awards (Disclosure – Investigate does not enter these awards and therefore has no ‘sour grapes’ in critiquing N&S): because, in the mainstream media, readers and viewers generally get a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedlebeyondhelp.

When it comes to sorting out police and establishment corruption, however, the New Zealand public deserve better from their news media.

Investigate was called “scurrilous”, “odious”, “delusional” and “muckraking” for daring to suggest the NZ Police might be corrupt. Let’s look at how other media internationally tackle similar stories: 44, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

“Policeman charged with bribery and corruption” – reported the Sydney Morning Herald on May 23. Why? “A NSW police officer has been charged with bribery and corruption relating to his dealings with a female private investigator, who has also been charged…Police identified a 47 year old senior constable who allegedly provided information to the woman in return for payment…”

Two days earlier, the Associated Press reported the resignation of Hungary’s Minister of Justice “following the surfacing of multiple allegations of police corruption, including the high profile case involving the alleged rape of a woman by five on duty police officers”. Earlier in May another Hungarian cop was found guilty of “pocketing more than $2,000 while supervising an investigation of an attempted robbery at a bank.”

The Hungarian incidents have also resulted in the dismissal of the nation’s Police Commissioner and the Budapest police chief. The story, incidentally, was highlighted by the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Law, which clearly doesn’t see the media coverage as “muckraking” or “scurrilous”.

In New Haven, Connecticut, this month, authorities called a public meeting to reassure people after the head of the city’s narcotics unit was busted for stealing money from crime scenes and taking cash from criminals. He faces up to 15 years in jail.

It is also alleged he and some of his unit hung out with prostitutes and other seedy characters.

“Police Chief Francisco Ortiz…said this investigation proves the department “won’t accept anything less than absolute integrity.” The investigation of White was the result of an eightmonth covert investigation. Mertz said the FBI was tipped off to the allegations of theft and bribery by someone in the department,” reported the New Haven Independent.

But if you make an allegation like that in New Zealand, the media shrug.

In most functioning Western democracies, allegations are investigated. Not here. And an overly tolerant news media let the police and government virtually get away with murder on a weekly basis.

Police watching bestiality movies and hardcore porn? Surely they’re just being lads, and it was twenty something years ago, after all, go the media apologists like ZB’s Kerre Woodham.

Join the dots. Look at the police culture of group sex, rape (even of policewomen) and hardcore porn, then translate that across a police failure to prosecute or properly investigate many sexual violation complaints during that time. Look at how their activities often spilled over into special arrangements with brothels and organized crime. Now look at where those cops are now – senior commissioned officers at the helm of an organization in serious trouble.

And who is tasked to police the police? The Police Complaints Authority, Justice Lowell Goddard. On its website, the PCA says its job is to “investigate and resolve complaints concerning misconduct or neglect of duty by, or concerning the practices, policies or procedures of, the Police.”

Further, it says “The Authority has in addition been funded to provide an independent investigate capability separate from the Police, this enabling it to undertake investigations into matters which in its opinion require independent investigation.”

Oh really?

With a resident population of four million people (a further

one million NZers have fled overseas already), and a police force of nearly 11,000 staff, New Zealand compares in size to Queensland and Victoria in Australia, and even the New South Wales experience is relevant (see Colleen Lewis’ article in the sidebar). Yet the PCA in New Zealand employs only 15 people, and has a budget of only $2 million with which to “investigate” police. It has no independent powers of search and seizure, no ability to kick down doors and haul corrupt cops in for questioning while their homes and offices are checked. The PCA is totally reliant for any of that on the goodwill of the very police force it is “investigating”.

In most cases, the bulk of “investigations” are done by the police themselves, and in some of those cases Investigate has been told from within the police force of officers who are good friends of the subject of the complaint, being appointed to head the “investigation” on behalf of the PCA. Then there’s the corruption inherent in the complaints process. As a result of last month’s article, the magazine has been inundated with documentation from serving and former police revealing how police bosses condone “discreditation campaigns” against anyone, police or civilian, who complains about corrupt cops. Civilian complainants sometimes find themselves arrested on trumped up charges so that any testimony they give is tainted by the blow to their credibility. Investigate has seen letters from the Police Complaints Authority refusing to take seriously such complainants.

Bad cops are happy to lie on oath, and drag in other cor-

rupt cops to support them with similar perjured testimony.

That’s exactly the threat that’s been made over our Dunedin revelations, that a string of cops are prepared to get up and lie.

Additionally, some of our witnesses have begun receiving more sinister anonymous threats – which is exactly the reason the magazine refuses to name many of them.

This is corruption, pure and simple, of the kind ordinarily recognized anywhere else in the western world. But in New Zealand, it is “tolerated” by the news media who are too gutless to challenge it.

Christchurch Press columnist Simon Cunliffe is a good example of the wimpish state of the national press. In his column of May 18, he described Investigate’s detailed coverage as “hyperbole…smearing insinuations…dependence on selfinterested sources”. Short of having done a real investigation into our story himself, how the heck would he know whether it was “hyperbole” and mere “insinuation”? Name a source in any news story that is not self-interested. Most are, whether it was Peter Gibbons lying like a flatfish, or a politician trying to score points, or a company looking for positive spin about a new product release. News is about agendas. But too many journalists begin and end their shallow “reporting” by focusing only on motive. They forget that an innocent person has a genuine motive for seeking justice. They forget that a guilty police force has equally strong motives to cover-up their crimes. The New Zealand media, collectively, pay far too much credence to authority figures like government ministers and civil servants.

THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE

force the government’s hand, there would never have been the Wood inquiry into policing.

Despite assurances over a number of years from police ministers and police commissioners that a commission of inquiry into Queensland or NSW police was not necessary, both inquiries exposed systemic police corruption, abuse of police powers, inefficient and inappropriate work practices and, in the case of Queensland, a less-than-arm’s-length relationship between the police and the government.

In Victoria we are being told there is no need for a commission of inquiry into Victoria Police. Apparently they are too expensive and do not result in enough people being charged.

Yes, they are expensive, but so too is police corruption, abuse of police power and inappropriate and inefficient work practices. And while commissions of inquiry do not always result in many people being charged, that is not their purpose.

Commissions of inquiry into police act like bolts of lightning that, for a period of time, open up a police organisation and expose its underbelly. This is what happened in Queensland, NSW and more recently in Western Australia, and each inquiry recommended the establishment of an independent and appropriately resourced body to assist in the detection and prevention of police corruption, misconduct and abuse of power.

Victoria has not had a police commission of inquiry for 30 years. This may help to explain why it does not have a dedicated organisation with the compulsion powers needed to investigate organised crime and corruption. It may also help to explain why Victoria spends so little money on independent, reactive and proactive anti-corruption strategies.

Police and politicians say there’s no need for a royal commission. History says otherwise, writes Colleen Lewis

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remiers, police ministers and police commissioners in Australia have one thing in common: they rarely support calls for commissions of inquiry into police.

History shows that governments will resist establishing an independent inquiry for as long as it is politically possible to do so. And from their perspective there is a logic to this resistance – commissions of inquiry remove the levers of control from governments, and the consequences can be politically harmful.

Former Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen is alleged to have said that you don’t establish a commission of inquiry unless you know the outcome. If he had not been “out of town” when allegations of corruption were broadcast nationally on the Four Corners program “The Moonlight State”, there would never have been a Fitzgerald inquiry.

And if independent MP John Hatton had not persisted for 17 years to raise matters of police corruption in the NSW Parliament, and to eventually garner the numbers needed to

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 45

A comparison of specialised, independent anti-corruption institutions in Australia’s three most populated states, NSW, Queensland and Victoria, reveals that governments, Liberal and Labor, have lacked the political will to seriously tackle police accountability and corruption issues in this state.

NSW, with a population of 6.6 million, employs more than 17,500 people in its police service. It has a Crimes Commission with a staff of 103 and a budget of $12 million to assist in the investigation of serious drug and organised crime matters.

It finances an Independent Commission Against Corruption with a staff of 112 and a budget of $16.5 million to, among other things, investigate allegations of corruption or misconduct by all public servants including elected politicians but excluding police.

NSW also has an ombudsman’s office, with a budget of $10.8 million and a staff of more than 135 that investigates or monitors complaints against police and other public servants. As a result of a Wood royal commission recommendation, the Government also established the Police Integrity Commission to investigate alleged or suspected serious misconduct and corruption by police. It does so with a budget of $15 million and a staff of 94. The NSW Government commits more than $54 million a year to specialist organised crime and public sector and police accountability institutions.

Queensland, with a population of 3.7 million, has a police service that employs 11,500 people. It has an ombudsman’s office with a staff of 42 and a budget of $5.5 million to investigate complaints against public servants (excluding politicians and police) and a Crime and Misconduct Commission with a staff of 280 and a budget of more than $25 million to, among other things, investigate alleged or suspected organised crime and investigate, monitor or review complaints made about public servants, including police and politicians. Overall, Queensland commits $30.5 million a year to these specialist investigative and accountability institutions.

In sharp and alarming contrast, Victoria, with a population of 4.9 million and a police force of 12,800, has no dedicated body with the necessary compulsion powers to adequately investigate organised crime, corruption and defective policing practices. It recently had to ask the Australian Crime Commission

if it could use its compulsion powers to help investigate the underworld killings.

This is not good enough. Victoria, like NSW and Queensland, should have its own independent body with sufficient compulsion powers and an appropriate mechanism to ensure that those powers are used properly.

Victoria has an ombudsman and deputy ombudsman (police complaints), who for many years has been the same person.

Their mandate is not to investigate organised crime.

The ombudsman investigates complaints against Victoria’s appointed public servants, including the police. To undertake its accountability role it receives a budget of $3.3 million, which allows it to employ 27 people. About five of those people are engaged in overseeing the police. Such meagre resources mean the ombudsman’s office has to be highly selective about what it does. This is not a criticism of the ombudsman’s office but rather a criticism of those who for many decades have been responsible for its powers and resources.

The recent suggestion from various authorities that you can address this problem by giving the Ombudsman’s office a few extra people and a few more dollars is inadequate.

Much more than that is needed.

Victoria Police has been criticised for its investigation of Melbourne’s underworld killings, there has been serious corruption in the drug squad, it is alleged that confidential police files have been consulted for political purposes, and Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon has had to apologise to the people of Victoria for unknowingly misleading them about the accessing of those files. Apparently she was given incorrect information by certain police.

And the Melbourne Age revealed allegations that police investigations into child sex abuse claims were not conducted appropriately.

Exactly what else has to happen before the Bracks Government supports the call for a royal commission into Victoria Police?

Instead of concentrating on motive and drawing credibility extrapolations from that, the media should instead sniff around the story itself. What is important is whether it is true, not who is saying it. Trying to destroy a police corruption story by dismissing the informants as “criminals” is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. In a police corruption story your witnesses are highly unlikely to be nuns. But the fact some are criminals doesn’t make the story untrue.

Cunliffe, whilst acknowledging that Investigate’s specific allegations of corruption were “precise”, nonetheless ignores the substance of the article with the question: “Have we really reached the stage in New Zealand where we are ready to condemn people who have otherwise led honest, hard-working, exemplary public lives?”

The obvious answer to the question clearly eludes him: Perhaps they just haven’t been caught yet.

North & South’s curmudgeon-at-large Warwick Roger talks of a “muckraking Investigate editor”. He’s not the first to use the epithet, which was originally put in play by Labour’s ninth floor spinmeisters as part of their shoot-the-messenger campaign, but like the faithful establishment hound that he is Roger is responding to those dog-whistles I mentioned at the beginning of this essay. He doesn’t, however, actually understand what ‘muckraker’ means.

For the sake of avoiding confusion, the term “muckraker” was coined in its modern sense by US President Theodore Roosevelt who, in a 1906 speech, embraced that form of journalism as essential to democracy: “There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice,

46, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

Associate Professor Colleen Lewis is head of criminal justice and criminology studies at Monash University and the author of Complaints Against Police: the Politics of Reform and a co-editor of Civilian Oversight of Policing: Governance, Democracy and Human Rights. Her column first appeared in the Melbourne Age newspaper, and she kindly agreed to let us reprint it here because of its relevance to the current debate.

Colleen.Lewis@arts.monash.edu.au

whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.”

Other contemporary journalists to be called “muckrakers” are Seymour Hersh, who uncovered the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War; the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who wrote about the Watergate scandal every week for three years while the rest of the media hoed into them; the Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Kwitny; and bestselling author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

So if Investigate is a “muckraking” publication, so be it. We stand alongside Time magazine, the Washington Post, Wall St Journal and others likewise accused. Muckraking is only necessary when state agencies are not doing their job.

It was “muckraking” across the Tasman by ABC’s Four Corners that uncovered the widespread corruption in Queensland, forcing a Commission of Inquiry 20 years ago last month.

So how do the Aussies handle police complaints compared to New Zealand?

Like New Zealand, the Australian state of Victoria is strenuously resisting efforts to launch a Commission of Inquiry into police corruption there, with police and politicians and the mainstream media at pains to reassure the public there is no problem. Again, Colleen Lewis’ sidebar story has further details on this.

Queensland, NSW and WA, on the other hand, have all carried out Royal Commissions and found them extremely valuable.

Indeed, the Wood Royal Commission in NSW recognized “the need for a specific focus on corruption with an aggressive and sophisticated investigative capacity”, such responsibilities to be carried out by a suitably resourced agency entirely independent of the Police.

This was because NSW police corruption “grew out of a culture that thrived on verballing of witnesses, fabrication of evidence and bribery...the boys’ club of the NSW police force,” notes the report of a NSW parliamentary inquiry in November last year.

That report, a Ten Year Overview of the decade since anticorruption measures were introduced, endorses the Wood Commission’s view that “the system needed to accommodate three circumstances of considerable significance, namely that: 1. “Investigation of police is potentially the most difficult area of criminal investigation, for many reasons, including the following: a) police know the system, and are likely to have early warning of any interest in their activities; b) they are skilled in investigation techniques and counter-surveillance; c) they are likely to have corrupt associates willing to cover for them; d) they are not easily fazed by interview, they are experienced in giving evidence, and they are capable of lying; e) their credibility and character are readily assumed by six jurors and tribunals; f) they can exert considerable personal influence over internal informants, and internal investigators, particularly if they hold senior rank; INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 47

2. Honest police are at risk of being discredited, neutralised or diverted from their work by fabricated complaints, at the hands of those whom they have arrested, as well as at the hands of disgruntled members of the community and other police whose paths they have crossed, in promotional competition or otherwise; and 3. A formal complaints system is not a good indicator of serious misconduct and corruption within a Police Service because of the notorious under-reporting of those matters, and because in many cases there is not a conventional victim to act as a complainant.”

Sound familiar? Investigate’s files are bulging, including multipage submissions by honest cops detailing not only the corruption inside NZ Police but also the old boys network’s attempts to sideline anyone who dares to complain.

The end result of the Wood Commission was the establishment of the Police Integrity Commission, tasked with conducting its own investigations into serious police misconduct, whilst allowing police to handle minor complaints under their supervision.

The PIC has powers similar to those of the NZ Serious Fraud Office – it can compel witnesses to answer questions even if it incriminates them. Nor, in most cases, does legal professional privilege apply.

In NSW, Category 1 complaints include any that a police officer: 1. has perverted the course of justice, or may have sought or may seek to pervert the course of justice, by giving false evidence, destroying or interfering with evidence, withholding or refraining from giving evidence, fabricating evidence, or influencing another so to act; 2. has committed: a) an assault causing serious injury and which could lead to a charge of malicious wounding or inflicting grievous bodily harm; b) a property offence (where the value of the property exceeds $5000); or an offence where the maximum sentence is imprisonment for five years or more; 3. has solicited or accepted, or may solicit or accept, a benefit in return for failing to carry out their duties; 4. has interfered, or has sought or may seek to interfere, in a police investigation of an alleged offence; 5. investigating an alleged offence by a police officer, has improperly failed to carry out their duties in that investigation; or 6. is involved in the manufacture of a prohibited drug or cultivation of a prohibited plant, or the supply of such a drug or plant (where the amount is an indictable quantity).

Investigate has been given information about a number of police officers, including top brass at National Headquarters, which by definition would be classed as Category 1 complaints over in NSW. Here in New Zealand, there is currently nowhere capable of properly investigating such complaints.

In the Canadian province of Manitoba, the Law Enforcement Review Authority (LERA) is compelled to launch an investigation if a complaint is received, and the Authority can hire any person or persons it needs to conduct the investigation. By law, the local police cannot be involved in investigating the complaint without the written permission of the person making the 48, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

complaint. LERA also has the ability to obtain search warrants and kick down doors.

In Britain, similar powers have been given to the new Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC): “IPCC investigators have all the powers of police constables during investigations. The IPCC can require the police to produce or give the IPCC access to any documents or material that it calls for. It has a right of entry onto police premises,” notes an international report on the subject.

The weakness of the PCA has already been shown by its inability to properly investigate the allegations this magazine raised last month. Now that we have identified the Police Minister’s source, Peter Gibbons, as using his son-in-law in the Dunedin Police to obtain and execute dodgy search warrants for the financial benefit of Gibbons’ $172,000 ACC contract, we wonder what the Government and media excuse will be this month, when it comes to denying the need for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the NZ Police.

Questions for an agency capable of kicking down doors would include: 1. On how many occasions has Constable Andrew Henderson searched police databases for information on people being targeted by private investigator Peter Gibbons?

2. What kind of information has been provided to Gibbons

by Henderson?

3. On how many occasions has Detective Sergeant Graeme Scott accessed police databases for information on people being targeted by private investigator Peter Gibbons?

4. When did Graeme Scott commence doing investigative work of any kind for Gibbons?

5. Who else, within Dunedin Police, knew of and condoned Gibbons’ son-in-law organizing search warrants for the benefit of Gibbons?

6. How many arrests and prosecutions have resulted and succeeded as a result of Gibbons’ search warrant fishing expeditions?

7. Why does Peter Gibbons frequently visit the Balclutha Police Station?

8. How much did the Chief Executive of ACC know about irregularities in the conduct of Peter Gibbons?

Of course, that list is by no means extensive, but answering it would require search warrants to be executed on the ACC corporation, Gibbons, and Dunedin Police in the first instance.

And who, in New Zealand, has the independence and power to do that?

And one final thing, perhaps the most important of all: Minister of Police Annette King used false information from a corrupt former cop to viciously defame an innocent man.

The Minister failed to properly examine the background of her main source. As a Minister of the Crown, King has much more power than an ordinary citizen, and with that power comes extra responsibility. If the Minister of Police herself cannot get it right, what hope is there for the police force? Not only did she defame Wayne Idour under parliamentary privilege, but she stepped outside the House and used interviews in all the media to repeat that horrendously untrue claim. Now she finds her main source accused not just of lying about Idour, but of using family inside the police force to obtain search warrants as part of his private business. In Investigate’s view, Annette King must resign.

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SISTER R ESORTS • TH E AITUTAKI LAGOON R ESORT & SPA • TH E RAROTONGAN BEAC H R ESORT & SPA INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 49

50, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

DRUNK in charge The dangers of fetal alcohol syndrome The silent suicide of hope in more than half the world’s children can be linked to the ignorance of education regarding FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). Destroying lives across all of Western civilization, this is a disorder that remains primarily under the radar, and if detected is often underestimated and continues to be misdiagnosed. Melody Towns gives voice to a disorder that is destroying lives

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 51

“H

i, my name is Sally* and I have just turned 14 years old. I found out that I had FAE about one and a half to two years ago. It is not easy to live knowing that I have a problem and think that I would rather not know but know that it helps me to know because it explains why some things happen like they do…Sometimes I get really angry and I let it out because I can’t stay calm. Sometimes I feel really uneasy, which makes me mad, because I cannot control it.

I find that writing poetry helps to calm me down. The poetry is not good poetry because it is about how badly I want to kill myself.”

FAE (Fetal Alcohol Effects), is part of FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) a disease that is hardly heard of, often misdiagnosed and affecting far more people, both young and old than anyone realizes. Sally*, a blogger on NZ’s FAST (Fetal Alcohol Support Trust) website, is just one of the many who have lived under this control without having a name for it, until now.

Drinking alcohol during pregnancy causes Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Its effects range from severe brain damage, disproportioned body parts, sight and hearing problems and facial characteristics to disorders including behavioral problems, attention deficit and obsessive compulsive. Of those affected, full FAS sufferers are limited to only 10%, however the other 90% of people affected have fewer of the physical symptoms but are more at risk of developing serious secondary conditions later in life.

The FASD Centre says children with FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders) often grow up with social and emotional problems. “They may have mental illness, substance abuse problems, struggle in school, and become involved in the corrections system.”

With more American babies born with FAS than Downs Syndrome, MD and HIV combined, this is the leading cause of mental retardation in the whole of the western world.

According to kidshealth.org, “It’s estimated that each year in the United States, 1 in every 750 infants is born with a pattern of physical, developmental, and functional problems referred to as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), while another 40,000 are born with Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAE)”.

According to FAST (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Trust), there is no safe level of drinking during pregnancy as even one drink can cause damage. Research shows that alcohol consumption over a wide spectrum during pregnancy can affect the fetus, with damage varying due to the volume of alcohol digested, timing during pregnancy, blood alcohol levels, genetics and environmental factors. Children like Sally*, may have had mothers who drank during pregnancy and although they have no physical symptoms and even a high level of intelligence, still suffer from its effects. There are problems at school, and with family and friends that are often misdiagnosed due to the lack of knowledge concerning FAS. “I still remember the mixture of emotions running through me as I walked out of the Pediatric Department at Christchurch Hospital, having obtained the diagnosis of FAS/FAE for my eight year old son Steven*” said a mother on the FAST website. “ Relief that at last there was a name for what was happening in Steven’s* life; fear of the future and of the unknown; denial as I couldn’t believe that my child really had something wrong * Not their real names.

52, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

with him which would not go away, and grief at the loss of my dreams for him and maybe the loss of a “normal” family life as the average family would expect”.

Australia’s Herald Sun recently reported that one in three Australian women don’t understand that alcohol affects an unborn baby, with a similar number saying that they will drink in their next pregnancy. The national survey reports that many women of childbearing age have little or no idea that drinking during pregnancy can inflict serious long-term physical and mental damage on a child. It is little surprise then that FAS continues to remain under the radar.

The survey hopes that new guidelines will be made for drinking, with the Herald Sun reporting that “Australian guidelines now recommend no more than two standard drinks a day and no more than seven a week for pregnant women, but the US and Britain advise abstinence… Professor Elizabeth Elliott, a leading pediatrician from the University of Sydney, said the new results indicated the ‘no alcohol’ message might be the best choice.”

With FAS affecting sufferers for a lifetime this is a condition that needs to be brought to light, especially when considering that it is 100% preventable if a woman doesn’t drink during pregnancy as ADA (Division of Alcohol and Drug abuse says that it is alcohol in the bloodstream of a pregnant woman that causes FAS. ADA says that “��������������������������������� a safe amount of drinking during pregnancy has not been determined, and all major authorities agree that women should not drink at all during pregnancy.

Unfortunately, women sometimes wait until a pregnancy is confirmed before they stop drinking. By then, the embryo/ foetus has gone through several weeks of critical development, a period during which exposure to alcohol can be very damaging. Therefore, the Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse urges women who are pregnant or anticipating a pregnancy to abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages.”

The most severe problems with FAS occur when mothers drink during the first trimester of pregnancy, as this is when the child’s brain is developing. As most women don’t know they are even pregnant for the first few weeks this could be considered the time when a fetus is most at risk. However, it is during the whole pregnancy that any alcohol can affect the fetus as alcohol actually stops the connections in a baby’s brain from developing.

Even in the final months, when a woman may feel more comfortable drinking as the baby’s development is in its final stages, damage can take place as “some of the most complex developmental stages in the brain occur in the second and third trimesters, a time when the nervous system can be greatly affected by alcohol”, states kidshealth.org. “Even moderate alcohol intake, and especially periodic binge drinking, can seriously damage a developing nervous system.”

Professor Elliot says that 92 cases of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome have been diagnosed in Australia from 2001 to 2004. But with more than a third of the 1103 Australian women called in this survey alone stating that they did not know about the adverse affects of drinking on the fetus, it may not be too far fetched to suggest that there may be many more suffering than is being diagnosed.

The reported rates of FAS vary widely. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that the different rates depend on the population studied and the surveillance meth-

“With more American babies born with FAS than Downs Syndrome, MD and HIV combined, this is the leading cause of mental retardation in the whole of the western world” ods used. CDC studies show FAS rates ranging from 0.2 to 1.5 per 1,000 live births in different areas of the United States.

Other FASD’s (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders) are believed to occur approximately three times as often as FAS. FAE sufferers are frequently misdiagnosed, with many people instead being labeled as stubborn or belligerent. According to kidshealth.org, children who display only behavioral and emotional problems of FAS/FAE without any development delay or physical growth deficiencies may have trouble in their ability to succeed. With behavioral problems including hyperactivity, inability to concentrate, social withdrawal, stubbornness, impulsiveness and anxiety, extensive education is needed for teachers, parents and healthcare professionals to help these children to get through this condition.

The FASD Centre reports that, “costs of FAS alone are estimated at between one and five million dollars per child, not including incarceration. This estimate does not include costs to society, such as lack of productivity, burden on families, and poor quality of life”.

Peter Bell, FAST (Fetal Alcohol Support Trust) says, “that a very large proportion of prison inmates are FAS, being one reason that they may be difficult to rehabilitate”. Peter also suggests that if tested more than 65% of prison inmates would be suffering from FAS! The problem with FASD is that most people have no physical signs of the disorder. As a result misdiagnosis often occurs and problems are often blamed on poor parenting and other disorders such as ADHD. According to the Alcohol Healthwatch Action on Liquor, 2007, the Ministry of Education website for New Zealand reveals 12 documents relating to ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), 11 relating to ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) but none relating to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or FASD, despite all the disorders associated with FASD, requiring special educational services. Diagnosis of FASD has to be done by professionals but with so little information known about FAS by the general public, crucial diagnosis for this lifelong condition is often missed.

Symptoms to look for in a child that you think may need INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 53

assessment as listed by the FASD Centre include, but are not limited to, maternal alcohol use, sleeping, breathing and feeding problems, problems with growth and development and behavioral problems. With accurate diagnosis not only will individuals be able to cope better but also so will families, friends and entire communities.

However detecting FASD is no easy process, which is why the more awareness is raised concerning the issue, more cases will be able to be handled correctly, and therefore more people enabled to live more meaningful and productive lives. Once an assessment has been made and a child or adult is deemed needing of FASD diagnosis, ideally a team of trained professionals will be called upon to make an assessment of the specific disorder.

The team can include a Geneticist, Developmental Pediatrician, Neurologist, Dysmorphologist (physician specializing in birth defects), Education Consultants, Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Social workers, Occupational Therapists and Speech and Language Therapists.

An IQ test, a complete physical exam and an evaluation of the face are combined with occupational therapy, speech, and neurological and psychiatric evaluations to assess the severity of the specific disorder. Testing for memory problems and developmental delay, clumsiness, attention deficits and poor social skills are all part of the diagnosis. However once diagnosis does occur, a child may be eligible for various services including a targeted treatment plan to help with the long term outcomes of what this diagnosis means.

With a broad range of characteristics that may exhibit FAS/ FASD there is a lot to watch for and a lot that the public has a right to be made aware of so that they can have the abil54, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

ity to determine whether their child needs assessment. There are specific signs that may point to FASD from infanthood to adulthood. These can include but are not limited to low birth weight and slow development in infants, poor memory capability in toddlers, short attention span in grade school years, poor impulse control and inability to distinguish the difference between public and private behaviors in teenagers, to the inability to deal with daily obstacles such as money and appropriate housing in adulthood.

Early diagnosis of FASD can contribute to positive long-term outcomes. But to make a diagnosis you have to be aware of the condition and until government support is provided, FASD will continue to be misdiagnosed and its sufferers will continue to suffer.

Peter Bell of FAST (Fetal Alcohol Support Trust) says that he has been trying for years to bring the plight of FAS sufferers to the attention of politicians but to no avail. “FAST is so broke it is very close to closing down.

“This would be a major tragedy as there is nobody else to support these families who have or think they may have a FAS child. We do not need much money to survive, principally wages for an office support person to help with the filing, phone answering etc, and most importantly assistance for making applications for grants which have been our lifeblood!”

With FAST being the only support network available to people in NZ, many people indeed will continue to suffer if the already struggling organization runs out of funds.

New Zealand is just one country that desperately needs the services of an organization like FAST, to help people sufferers and families through the lifetime symptoms of FASD. The Symes Doctoral Study conducted in 2004 on New Zealand caregivers raising children with FASD not only found that 58% had reported mental health problems including serious depression, suicide attempts and panic attacks, but 93% had problems with reported lying, 75% with theft, 76% with property damage 70% with violence, 96% with anger problems and the list goes on.

Bell says FAS is very much misunderstood and is frequently misdiagnosed as ADD or ADHD, even by medical professionals. He says that the diagnosis is “critical as the treatment for these two conditions is very different”. While ADD/ADHD children will often ‘stabilize’ in their teens, FAS sufferers do not, but with the “proper help, counseling and guidance an FAS child can lead a more productive and useful life”.

FASD is a disorder that people have a right to know about.

Affecting not only individuals, but families, whole communities and even countries, this is something that cannot remain in the dark. With 41.6% of women in New Zealand reported as drinking during their pregnancies, FASD will continue to be a problem until education and government support is provided to raise awareness in every household, warns Bell.

People like Sally*, he says, deserve a chance to have the best life possible, and with a disorder like FASD that is 100% preventable, suffering with FASD should and could be wiped out, only to be remembered as something of the past. www.fast.nz.org www.kidshealth.org www.cdc.com www.fasdcentre.com http://www.well.com/user/woa/fsfas.htm

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WORLDBRIEF

VIXEN or VAMPIRE? Female sex offenders: Underreported and little understood

K

Tony Rizzo profiles the rise of a modern mystery, women who prey

ANSAS CITY, Missouri – One is a white-haired grandmother who sews and plays piano. Another attends college while raising two small children.

A third operates a business but avoids intimate relationships.

All are female sex offenders – perpetrators of perhaps the most underreported and least understood criminal behavior.

Society has been slow to recognize that women are capable of committing such crimes and even slower in trying to figure out what to do with them when they do.

And though they still represent a small percentage of convicted sex offenders, they are being arrested in greater numbers each year, possibly because more victims are willing to report their crimes, experts say.

Unlike most male offenders, many were drawn to their victims by loneliness and the need for emotional attachment.

Others got caught up in the crimes alongside husbands or boyfriends.

Yet all research cited to justify sex offender registration laws and

56, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

residency restrictions is based solely on recidivism rates for male offenders. For female offenders, there is only uncharted water.

“At present, the research and literature about this unique segment of the sex offender population remains in its infancy,” the Center for Sex Offender Management recently reported. “And there is no evidence-based guidance or other consensus about the most effective approaches to working with them.”

The extent of female sex offending is unknown. Nationwide, females make up about 6 percent of those arrested for sex crimes other than forcible rape.

But a variety of sources indicate that female offenders are more prevalent, experts say.

The proportion of females in sex offender counseling programs has nearly doubled from two years ago, the Center for Sex Offender Management reports.

And some victim surveys uncovered surprising news: As many as 63 percent of females and 27 percent of males said that women had victimized them.

There are a variety of theories about why such crime is underreported.

The stereotype of women as nurturing caregivers who don’t engage in violent or harmful behavior may be one factor. The

misperception that females cannot physically abuse unwilling males is another.

A third factor is the mindset of law enforcement officers and treatment providers who, because of wider societal stereotypes, react with disbelief or minimize the seriousness of reports.

One offender interviewed by The Kansas City Star said that although she acted alone, she had to convince investigators that her then-husband was not involved.

In one study of women who said they were the victims of sex abuse by other females when they were children or adolescents, 70 percent reported that they never told anyone, according to Julia Hislop, author of a book on female sex offenders.

Of those who did, 21 percent said they were not believed, she says.

“This is a very hidden experience. People do not come forward.”

Both male and female victims may be reluctant to report crimes involving women because of fear of how they will be perceived, the experts say.

Boys are socialized to not be victims, Hislop says. They may worry that their masculinity will be questioned, and they are often met with the reaction that they got “lucky.” Girls may be afraid that it will call into question their own sexual identity.

“It often creates a great deal of confusion for them,” she says.

The “lucky guy” reaction toward male victims often keeps them from recognizing they were harmed, experts say.

Many don’t equate the abuse with later problems with substance abuse, anger, poor self-esteem, depression and difficulty in maintaining adult relationships, says Curtis St. John, president-elect of the National Organization Against Male Sexual Victimization.

“They don’t know why they drink, why they can’t hold a job, why they’re walking around angry all the time,” says St. John, whose organization’s Web site, malesurvivor.org, provides resources to help.

Mic Hunter, a Minnesota psychologist and author of the book “Abused Boys: The Neglected Victims of Sexual Abuse,” says denial is a common reaction to trauma.

“Just because they think something didn’t hurt them doesn’t mean it didn’t.”

When dealing with victims who don’t believe they were harmed, Hunter asks if they would want their sons to have a sexual encounter with an older woman at the same age.

“They don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

Sexual abuse victims tend to suffer the same types of probINVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 57

lems whether the perpetrator was a man or a woman, says Paul Tamisiea, director of treatment and intervention services at the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault.

Usually, the victims knew their abusers.

“They were trusted adults who broke a boundary and broke trust in a sexual way. They are somebody who should care for you and not sexually abuse you.”

It took four months in prison for Lisa Morris to learn that she never wants to go back. It took years of counseling for her to learn something else.

“I know how much I hurt them and ruined their lives,” she says of her victims. “I definitely deserve the label. I’m a sex offender.”

Morris was one of 12 female offenders interviewed for this story.

Like many women, Morris committed her crime in conjunction with a male partner. She was 24 when she posed with two neighborhood teenage girls for erotic photographs taken by her husband.

It never dawned on her that it was a crime.

“I didn’t see it that way,” she says. “I was not a bit sympathetic.”

Like most of the others interviewed, Morris was required to attend counseling sessions.

Her experience was atypical in that for part of the counseling she was in an all-female group of sex offenders who met for weekly sessions. She has also participated in group therapy where she is the only female in an otherwise male group.

Though Morris says that her inclusion in the male group was beneficial, most of the women interviewed said that being in a male group was uncomfortable and not helpful.

But Julie White, who says her conviction stemmed from flirtatious behavior toward a 15-year-old boy when she was 19, says the all-female group she participated in also didn’t help address the issues that led to her being charged.

“I felt out of place. It was a bunch of middle-aged women who couldn’t get a date.”

Therapists who work with female offenders say they have very little guidance on how it should be done.

“There’s not a handbook,” says Alex Kerr, a sex offender treatment program facilitator for the Kansas Department of Corrections.

Using research based on male offenders to determine how to address women’s past behavior and prevent future crimes is flawed because thought processes and patterns of offending tend to be significantly different.

Females are not as predatory as males and less likely to be sexually attracted to minors.

“Women don’t fantasize about or prefer sex with minors,” says Donna Vandiver, assistant professor of criminal justice sciences at Illinois State University.

Women tend to embrace the emotional aspects of the relationship. Often they have low self-esteem and feel empowered by a relationship where they are in control, she says.

That is the dynamic often seen in student-teacher relationships that are commonly the subject of the most media attention, although they represent a small percentage of cases.

“I have found that many of the females with whom I work were seeking ways to fulfill their needs of love, affection or loneliness when they offended, versus what research typically indicates regarding males who sexually offend who may be seeking ways to fulfill their needs of power, control and anger,” says Kerr.

58, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

Several women interviewed reported that they were seeking that kind of emotional bond.

One, who asked that her name not be used because she was afraid of losing her job, says she felt isolated and lonely in her marriage when she developed an online relationship with a teenage girl.

“I was desperate for attention,” she says. “I’m not a pedophile.”

A significant number of female offenders commit their crimes in the company of a male, usually a husband or boyfriend.

Often he is a child molester who browbeats, abuses or manipulates her into going along with his crime, according to Vandiver.

Opal Oldham was married to a sex offender for years and didn’t know it. After he was accused of abusing a 7-year-old girl, the victim told investigators that Oldham was present during one incident. Oldham denies the allegation, but she was convicted and is now a registered offender.

She benefited from counseling by learning how to recognize the signs that a child may be an abuse victim, Oldham says. They were signs she didn’t detect while her husband was molesting the child.

“If I would have known, I’d be in prison for murder, because I would have killed him,” she says.

Treatment providers and researchers say that most female offenders seem to share at least one common experience: They were the victims of prolonged sexual, physical and emotional abuse as children and often into adulthood.

Half of the women interviewed say that they had been abused.

Kerr says that issues spawned by their abuse must be addressed before offenders can begin to understand the motivations behind their crimes.

One offender says she had never talked about being molested at age 13 until counseling after her conviction.

“I never knew what a healthy sexual relationship was,” she says.

There has never been a large-scale study of females to determine how likely they are to reoffend.

That was a factor in the release of the only Missouri woman involuntarily committed as a “sexually violent predator.”

The Missouri Court of Appeals ruled in 2003 that Angela Coffel should not have been declared a predator because of the lack of data. The few limited studies available indicate that recidivism rates are actually very low, the court noted.

All of the women interviewed indicated that the crimes they were convicted of were their only offenses. All insisted they were not pedophiles.

Morris, however, says that she didn’t know if she would have offended again if she had not been prosecuted and gone through counseling.

“I’m glad I got caught.”

Morris, like many of the women who spoke, called being on the public registry one of the biggest impediments she faced.

Many say they have difficulty finding jobs and apartments, and some have experienced harassment such as fliers about them being distributed to neighbors.

She says that every offender has her own story and offenders should not be lumped together as dangerous.

“We’re all treated the same and I don’t think that’s fair. I want people to look past my past and give me a chance.”

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 59

thinkLIFE money

“

Private research suggests that New Zealand has approximately 10,000 people who would have more than a million dollars of investable assets excluding the family home

”

The million dollar club

Peter Hensley’s advice to make a million

D

espite rising real estate values millionaire status is still a worthy target, however the goal posts have moved away from including the value of your private residence in your total.

Historical statistics suggest that the average Kiwi has gone into retirement with a debt-free home and approximately $30,000 in savings. The variable figure in the calculation is the savings amount. Over the past decade, we have seen it increase slowly to about $50,000 today. One reason it has not boomed is because wage increases have seriously lagged behind asset inflation over the same time period.

We operate in the money business and our business attracts money. Excluding the major chains, our business is likely to be in the top ten by volume in the country.

60, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

We have found that people with money are very nice to deal with and have a lot of things in common.

They all obey the first fundamental rule of wealth in that they spend less than they earn. The longer they have adhered to this basic creed, the more money they appear to have. Having a million dollars of investable assets (excluding the family home) is still a rare club and membership is still open. Industry rule of thumb is that 10% of the population control 90% of the money. Whilst no official figures exist, private research suggests that New Zealand has approximately 10,000 people who would have more than a million dollars of investable assets excluding the family home.

Spending less than one earns is eas-

ier said than done. Innovative mortgages, credit cards and attractive advertising are often more appealing to wage earners than saving money. Zero balance bank accounts, (what goes in, goes out) abound, with many consumers spending more. NZ Reserve Bank figures suggest that, as a country, our debt to income ratio has quadrupled over the past decade. Translated, that means on average we owe almost twice our annual household income.

Spending less than one earns (also known as saving) is a habit that once acquired is difficult to break. Many of our mature clients find it a struggle to spend money. For some, compounding their investment income (earning interest on interest) becomes a passion.

Our investment clients work out early in their career, that those who understand interest collect it, those who don’t pay it.

Compounding works just as effectively in reverse, making debt (in any form) an expensive proposition. Our practice does not accept clients who have debt. Basic math shows that it is better to pay off debt than attempt to chase investment returns in other markets.

Private equity funds are currently trying to prove the above statement incorrect as they are busily buying up public companies, leveraging them up with debt and then on-selling them to the unsuspecting public as IPO (Initial Public Offerings) bargains. The current generation has not experienced this phenomenon of credit expansion and ample liquidity previously and cannot comprehend that it will end in tears. Debt is expensive and very few individuals have the ability to harness and utilise its power.

The vast majority of our clients are incredibly modest about their accumulated wealth. They grudgingly replace their cars and most find it difficult to break the habit of a lifetime and most flatly refuse to buy a new car. They prefer to buy a wellappointed bargain priced demonstrator rather than pay full price. We know of only one person who drives a car worth several hundred thousand dollars, however his superior intellectual ability is clearly reflected in his choice of chariot.

Wealthy people’s approach to family financial situations vary only slightly, however those who have formed a habit of saving and therefore subsequently having money expect the same from their offspring. Most are prepared to assist family, but strictly limit the level of assistance. Loans to family members are common, however very few are free. They are also well documented. Experience has taught them that without the right paperwork being in place, memories tend to fade and outstanding loans are miraculously repaid. These memory recalls and lapses commonly happened just after the funeral of the benefactor when the beneficiary recalls that the outstanding loan had been repaid years before. The executor of any estate can only rely on documentary evidence and wise benefactors know this.

Wealthy people become wealthy because they follow the rules and for no other reason. They use debt sparingly and only when necessary. They prefer to see interest being credited, not debited to their account. They understand that money does not solve problems. Many people think that life would be so much simpler with money. The problems are still there, however they are different ones.

People who are struggling financially often covet things that money can buy. Wealthy people choose not to spend and for many it becomes the habit of a life time. They have similar desires of wanting to buy new things, and enjoy the option of flying at the front of the aircraft, however many elect not to.

Holidays and business class travel are typically portrayed as belonging to the lifestyle of the rich and famous. It is true that wealthy people have the option of walking into a plane and turning left, however many elect to turn right. They argue that the front of the plane arrives at the same time as the back end and why should they pay all that money when it is just as comfortable down the back.

One of our biggest hurdles as advisers is to encourage our clients to spend money. They have had a lifetime of not spending. Sometimes their lifestyle suffers so that they will be in a position to leave a legacy to the next generation.

This mix of desire (to leave a legacy) and expectation (to receive) sometimes borders on emotional blackmail. This is common in non affluent families whose main asset is the family home. Mum and dad’s lifestyle often suffers because they want to leave their children something after they have gone. Affluent individuals and families understand that one of the best legacies for the next generation is for them to learn the same skills that made their parents wealthy.

If you are not in a position to choose your parents, then you need to learn the rules. They are : spend less than you earn and set some financial goals. If you are in a position to choose your parents remember that misers are tough people to live with, however they make great ancestors.

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thinkLIFE education

When the wolf is in charge of the sheep Amy Brooke sheets home blame to the Education Minister

I

n a recent National Business Review education supplement, Roy Kelley, headmaster of King’s College, Auckland, was right on target pinpointing one of the reasons for the continuing malaise in education.

This substitute for thorough, systematic teaching has contributed to teachers’ easy options and to the widespread sub-literacy of so many young New Zealanders.

Schools wanting to impress parents that they are up-market, educationally speaking, are investing heavily to have computers installed and used in every classroom, even one available to every student. That they are useful for research, exploratory work, and simply satisfying curiosity – for magpie learning, even – is undeniable.

But they are too conveniently replacing genuine teaching, as is the overuse of setting so-called projects – for students theoretically to teach themselves.

As with much of the supposed teaching of English in schools, where the outcome has been pupils emerging with very little ability to use English well – as far as muchneeded grammar and syntax are concerned; being unable even to speak well; and with minimal knowledge of our great literary heritage of prose and poetry, computers have become a displacement activity, a way of dodging structured learning.

In the hands of too many mediocre teachers their over-use is a smoke-and-mirrors practice, avoiding actual direct teaching, and replacing that centuries-old practice of a genuinely knowledgeable teacher enthusing an interested class.

62, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

King’s College used to run laptop classes, but has discontinued them. As headmaster Kelley points out, “The issue is access to technology, not ubiquitous technology.” He adds that “If the technology leads the learning we’ve got it the wrong way around”, that “straight ‘transmission style’ learning still comes first.”

Make this man Minister of Education – he knows what he’s talking about – a qualification obviously by no means a requirement for recent Ministers of Education plucked from a motley assortment of MPs with challengeable qualifications, because someone has to do the job.

However, the results have been so obviously third-rate over these recent decades, young New Zealanders so short-changed by an education system that has become demonstrably and embarrassingly bad – in spite of all its vaunted surveys, assessments and officially endorsed findings – that it’s

more than time to give serious consideration to genuinely lateral thinking.

The responsibility for education standards and performance is overdue to be removed from our transitory parliamentarians, and the highly politicized politburo long manipulating it for its own purposes.

The result has not been quality education, accessible to our young and it is time to acknowledge that cheating our children in these areas is more than culpable.

Catch 22 is that the education establishment doesn’t actually want anyone who is obviously a genuinely well-educated, reflective, knowledgeable and capable individual to be Minister of Education.

Its cohesive, self-serving bureaucracy depends upon closing ranks – and upon basically subservient, quasi-brainwashed teachers falling into line after in-service and training days.

Hence the value of private schools,

“

King’s College used to run laptop classes, but has discontinued them.

As headmaster Kelley points out, “The issue is access to technology, not ubiquitous technology

”

though we shouldn’t take for granted that any private school is necessarily superior to state schools. For a school’s success, so much depends on the quality of the principal, and on his or her ability to attract, monitor, and inspire teaching staff. For example, at a local primary school, one of the principal’s main criteria when hiring new teachers is apparently whether they are fans of the who’s-sleeping-with-whom Coronation Street and Shortland Street soaps – and where a “syndicate leader”, the preposterous new term for the lead teacher of three, has apparently no idea what verbs and nouns are.

The same school runs annual discos for its 8 to 10 year olds, with all the usual trashy pop music from a “real!” DJ. These little girls wear off-the-shoulder, thin-strapped dresses, use make-up, and talk about their boy-friends. What a shame.

Among the schools’ greatest failures in

recent years has been letting down parents, and their charges, by endorsing the whole pop rock cult. Their proper role would have been to equip students to critically evaluate, rather than mindlessly buy into a more than dubious, superficial, drug-ridden scene advertorially hyped to lure them in and cream off their buying power. Instead, schools have made it much harder for parents. They have caved in to the pressures of a corrupt, highly cynical, commercial marketing scene. Equally, they have sold out in their acceptance of sex education classes, kowtowing to the government-backed Family Planning Association which has arguably done so much damage, prematurely awakening a precocious sexuality among even very young children. Effectively promoting early sexual activity, with all its damaging consequences to the young – it incredibly enough simultaneously bemoans the increasingly early incidence of sexually related diseases and teen suicide, averting its eyes from the damage in its wake.

Schools have ignored the fact that they should be reinforcing, rather than undermining families that still have values, i.e. the conservative majority.

It’s interesting to note what one can call the increasing rage, almost, among the rabid Left, realising that good teachers actually want to teach well, to accepted international standards – hence the increasing interest in the Cambridge exams. Moreover, it is low-income families in low decile neighbourhoods who

want more school choice, and more focus on academic subjects for their children. A mother I know, who had to leave school at 13 to take care of ill parents, wanted her son to have the choices she didn’t. I now teach him, a highly intelligent, tetraplegic young man, what he, too, never learned at school these recent years, equally shortchanged by the damaging 50s swing away from quality teaching and learning to that general dumbing down of the population by neo-Marxists. Their loathing of a perceived middle-class (their hated bourgeoisie) “capture” of education led to the pernicious solution of politicising state-monopolized education to produce an unattainable “equality of outcome”.

This debased aim, of course, most disadvantages the children who already have so little going for them.

The usual left-wing commentators are predictably ranting against the prospect of the Cambridge examinations offering better chances for bright youngsters than the academically far less demanding, more complicated and confusing NCEA option. They would rather schools were actually forbidden to offer the superior alternative, giving better chances for our young to not only access worthwhile knowledge, but to hold their own internationally. How very fascist.

Unfortunately the National Party, blundering its usual way into taking on board parents’ concerns, while arguing for primary children to be tested to see if they are actually learning even the basic elements of literacy and numeracy, is shying away from standardised national testing. However, planning to let schools pick their own choice of assessments is laying the grounds for the usual fudged outcomes, for smokescreen attacks on “league tables”, and for poor teachers and non-supportive parents to avoid accountability.

When teachers themselves are not up to scratch, as is now so often the case; when the quality of teacher trainees has long been a concern; when graduates applying for positions submit CVs so badly written that pupils would be failed for presenting them: to leave it to the schools themselves – and our education bureaucracy – to remedy years of incompetence in providing quality education is to set the wolf to take good care of the sheep. www.amybrooke.co.nz www.summersounds.co.nz http://www.livejournal.com/users/brookeonline

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 63

thinkLIFE science

The enigma

Warren Fiske interviews the Bible-believing scientist who doesn’t believe his own science work

M

arcus Ross was nine years old when he realized his two passions, dinosaurs and a fundamentalist Christian belief, were colliding.

“I recall very specifically sitting in our little playroom and thinking that the dinosaur books tell the dinosaurs are millions of years old, that the Jurassic Period was 150 million years ago,” he says.

“But when I read the Bible and went to church, no one talked about millions of years ago. The talk was about God creating everything in six days and it didn’t happen very long ago.”

So, “in a very kiddie kind of way,” Ross began pondering a riddle of religion and science that would mark his life. The answers he now offers have charged an explosive debate in universities and laboratories across the nation.

Ross, 30, is an assistant professor of geology at Liberty University, founded

64, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died May 15. He also is a young-Earth creationist who tells students he believes the planet is 6,000 years old.

He earned a doctoral degree in geosciences from the University of Rhode Island last year after completing a dissertation on mosasaurs, a marine reptile that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era 65 million years ago.

David Fastovsky, Ross’s dissertation adviser and a professor of geosciences, describes the 197-page work as “impeccable.”

But Ross doesn’t think the premise of his own work is true.

He said he never believed the timelines and wrote a dissertation he thought was fundamentally wrong. “If naturalism is true, I think my thesis is dead on,” he says.

“But I don’t think that it is.”

Ross says he hopes to bridge the oftenwarring worlds of science and religion by

establishing geological proof the Earth was created around 4000 B.C. – a date he traces back through the Old Testament.

“My goal is to incorporate the Bible as part of the data in the natural world.

That’s the biggest difference between me and my secular colleagues. They say the Bible is not data and we can’t use God to explain anything.”

Brimming with enthusiasm, Ross has never shied from publicity. He’s been quoted in The New York Times, interviewed by Christian radio stations, and featured in DVD lectures arguing why intelligent design – a belief that the universe and life can be best attributed to supernatural causes – is a better explanation than evolution for the Cambrian explosion, a fast diversification of animal life about 500 million years ago.

Search for his name on the Internet and you’ll find a vigorous debate: Should uni-

versities deny degrees to people based on their religious beliefs? Is it intellectually honest to submit a dissertation based on facts the author believes to be wrong? Is Ross seeking to cash in on his science by discrediting it?

“We believe Dr. Ross is doing a tremendous disservice to his students and the public,” Nick Matzke, a spokesman for the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit group in Oakland, Calif., that promotes the teaching of evolution, said in a telephone interview.

Michael Dini, a professor of biology education at Texas Tech University, says Ross should not have been awarded a doctorate. “Anyone who uses religious scripture or theological doctrine as a litmus test to gauge the validity of a scientific theory is no scientist,” he wrote in an email. “Is this discrimination? Yes! It’s discrimination against bad science.”

Dini, in 2003, made news by refusing to write letters of recommendation to graduate schools for students who would not offer a “scientific answer” for how the human race began. Writing recommendations “is a favour I grant only to those I respect,” he said.

Ronald Numbers, a professor of the history of science and medicine at the University of Wisconsin, claims Ross is “the latest in a growing list of creationists” who have tried over the last 40 years to get a foot hold in science.

“Their biggest goal is to be recognized as fellow scientists,” Numbers claims.

“They’re breaking all the rules when they say, ‘God did it.’”

Numbers says it’s particularly tough for a creationist to get a doctorate in geology.

“First of all, the science is hard. Secondly, the evidence overwhelms you. You can’t escape dealing with the age of the Earth if you’re a geologist.”

Ross says his infatuation with dinosaurs began in early childhood, when he would look at a picture book and listen to an accompanying record. “There was all this roaring and crashing and screeching and I just had to find out more.”

Ross was raised in Rhode Island. His father, a printing salesman, was not religious. His mother was a devout Baptist who took her children to a church that taught the seven-day creation in Genesis as historical truth.

The tension between science and Scripture tightened as Ross climbed the

“

My goal is to incorporate the Bible as part of the data in the natural world. That’s the biggest difference between me and my secular colleagues.

They say the Bible is not data and we can’t use God to explain anything

”

academic ladder in public schools and universities. “Not a day went by where I wasn’t thinking in some form about the broader creation-evolution controversy. There was never any rest from it. It was tiring.”

But he never strayed from his youthful conclusion when the conflicting ages of Earth first crossed his mind. “The dinosaur books don’t claim to be written by God,” he says. “The Bible makes that claim. So I’ll err on the side of the Bible and see what I can do about the dinosaur folks.”

And so the bearded professor with piercing dark eyes and a corny sense of humor dwells in what he calls “two paradigms,” speaking with equal expertise about geosciences and Genesis and seeking a nexus.

An hour apart at Liberty this term, he taught one class on technical geology and another on creationism.

Science tells Ross that the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago in a spectacular supernova explosion. Ross believes God created the Earth in seven days in 4004 B.C., a date many creationists reached by tracing biblical events backward.

The flood, according to Ross, occurred around 2300 B.C. and likely destroyed dinosaurs. He says the impregnation of broken fossils into rocks suggests the bones were slammed by a cataclysmic force of water.

Widely accepted methods of dating fossils may be flawed, according to Ross and other creationists. They say scientists derive dates from carbon-14 and potassium-argon testing based on an unproven assumption that the rate of decay remains constant over time.

Ross acknowledges there’s no solid evidence that the rate was once faster, but put the burden of disproof on the other side.

“Give me a reason the rate can’t change and we’ll talk about whether that reason is a good one,” he says.

Robert Bodner, a professor of geochemistry at Virginia Tech, says Ross’ argument

relies on faith, not fact. “The rate of decay is constant, just like the speed of light,” he says. “There is no reason to expect the rates of radioactive decay would change through time.”

But Bodner’s bold assertion is indeed crumbling under scientific pressure – three years ago a number of science journals published data suggesting the speed of light has not always been constant, and if light speed has changed then everything else, including radiocarbon dating, is affected.

Ross accepts Old Testament claims that Adam lived 930 years; Noah, 950; and Methuselah, the oldest man in the Bible, 969. He notes that biblical lifespans decreased after the flood. “It may be the effect of inbreeding by Noah and his family,” he says. Perhaps, he adds, a weakening of the Earth’s magnetic shield could have shortened lives.

“A lot of people think that, because you’re a creationist, your ultimate answer to everything is ‘Because God did it,’” Ross says.

“For me as a scientist, sure, that’s ultimately true. God did do it. But how did God do it? When did God do it? Did God do it directly, or did he use natural processes?” he says. “And so far from being a science stopper, which a lot of people say creationism is, it’s opening up the field to a whole bunch of questions that my secular colleagues would never even think to ask.”

Is it science or religion that Ross is truly trying to advance?

“It’s a false dichotomy to separate the two because they’re both belief systems,” he says. “Secular scientists use assumptions that are naturalistic ones. And we, as scientists, use theistic ones.”

Ross has never concealed his religious beliefs, and they did not become an issue until he began work on his master’s degree in paleontology at the South

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 65

Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

He incensed professors and fellow graduate students by identifying himself with the department in a letter to the campus newspaper, a speech and DVD lectures propounding creationism and intelligent design that were sold on the Internet.

“They thought I was trying to claim a position within the paleo department to advance my views, and nothing could be further from the truth,” says Ross, who says he merely identified himself by name, college and field of study.

“I can’t say I lost my friends,” he says.

“Most of the people who were irate at me weren’t close to me in any way. But they stirred up a hornets’ nest and I think I could easily prove that some of the professors graded me down.”

The University of Rhode Island was aware of the controversy when Ross was accepted into its doctoral program.

“He was very up-front,” says Fastovsky, Ross’s dissertation adviser. “He called me and said he was a creationist and believed in intelligent design.”

Fastovsky recalls pausing for moment, and then replying, “Well, you’re the whole ball of wax, aren’t you?”

Fastovsky had no qualms about accepting Ross into the program. “The only real question was: Could he do science for me?” he says. “Marcus came from a good graduate school and had a good topic for his doctoral dissertation. He did competent work.

“We all believe in different things,” Fastovsky adds. “The university’s job is not to mandate what we must believe.”

Fastovsky speaks of Ross with affection, and the two have stayed in touch.

“It’s safe to say we all know more about creationism than we used to,” he says with a chuckle. “Marcus exposed me to literature that I found not at all convincing.”

Fastovsky has no patience for colleagues who accuse Ross of intellectual dishonesty and say he did not deserve a doctorate.

“Marcus did the work,” he says. “His research withstood peer review regardless of any reservations he may have about it.”

Academia, however, has few landing pads for a scientist with Ross’ beliefs.

Liberty, where he has taught for two years, is among a handful of Christian colleges that teach young-Earth creationism. It’s not offered at Regent University in Virginia Beach, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. Regent does

66, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

not have a geology department.

As with most things, Ross views his budding career at Liberty as a blessing.

Although he dreams one day of conducting research, his efforts now center on teaching.

He rides to school on a red motor scooter.

His windowless office is stacked with fossils, papers, books on science, books on faith, and books on both. Students stream in and out with questions about assignments, tests and grades.

Ross, dressed in a polo shirt and Dockers, looks almost young enough to be one of them. In front of his classes, Ross can never resist making a pun.

“Today we’re going to start a lecture on geological dating, or dating a geologist,” he recently announced to students. “If

you’ve ever seen my wife, you know I’ve had good results.”

He builds up science in his geology class with technical lectures on rock formations that note widely accepted dates. He cuts it down in his creationism class, where he emphasizes the many questions of existence that science has not answered.

Although his personal views are wellknown, Ross says he does not tell students which theory to accept.

Fastovsky offers reassurance to those who worry that Ross is teaching doctrinaire science.

“Marcus understands evolution and I know because we tested the hell out of him,” he says. “So I think it’s very heartening that a person of his background is teaching at Liberty.”

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www.mistralsoftware.co.nz INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 67

thinkLIFE technology

iPhone u soon

A juicy Apple ripens, writes Jason Gertzen

T

he amazing Apple hype machine soon could help wireless carriers sell bunches of music-playing wireless phones. The world debut of the much-heralded iPhone is scheduled for June 29.

Apple, which is making the device, and AT&T, which is providing the wireless network for the iPhone, both are positioned to be the prime beneficiaries of the new high-tech product. But other companies also are likely to reap the rewards of new business as consumer attention increasingly turns to handheld portable stereos that also can make calls.

“It is probably the most anticipated phone in living memory,” said Roger

68, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

Entner, a wireless industry maven who is a senior vice president with New Yorkbased IAG Research. “Carrying around one device is very convenient.”

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive officer, confirmed rampant speculation about an iPhone earlier this year. He appeared before a major gathering of Apple aficionados and held aloft a glitzy new device that artfully meshes a mobile phone, iPod music player and Internet connection.

“IPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” Jobs declared.

Hyperbole? Possibly. Especially as rivals like Palm’s Treo series already offer up to

2Gb of memory, Windows Media Player, and a cellphone with broadband speed internet access. But, then again, this is Apple.

Consider that Jobs’ company recently marked the sale of its 100 millionth iPod, which in Apple’s words made it the “fastest-selling music player in history.”

Apple and AT&T executives have substantial aspirations for iPhone sales. Jobs set a target of selling 10 million by the end of 2008.

Wireless carriers constantly jostle for attention in a fiercely competitive industry. Links to Apple and its legions of fanatical followers could bring advantages to telco’s.

Once those prospective customers walk in the door, AT&T representatives will pitch a broad menu of ways to take tunes on the go.

“We will have a cool set of music services on many devices as well as the iPhone,” AT&T’s Rob Hyatt says.

Major shifts in the music industry have left consumers grappling for new ways to manage music collections that may include everything from vinyl records to digital tunes on computers, phones and portable devices.

“All my music is scattered around,” Hyatt says. “We are trying to let users own it across multiple places and multiple devices.”

With the majority of the population already carrying a cell phone, wireless carriers seeking growth increasingly must poach subscribers from rivals. Plus, all the competition has driven down prices for calls.

Music is emerging as an important potential solution for both problems.

A consumer who loads a phone with music is less likely to bolt for another cell phone company touting some bargain-priced deal, Hyatt argues. Phones typically cannot be transferred from one company to another, creating big hassles for a subscriber trying to transfer a music collection to a new device.

“They have a tighter and closer relationship to us and the phone,” Hyatt says. “It is harder for them to go anywhere else.”

Music-playing services also can be lucrative for the phone companies. Sales of the broader category of so-called wireless data services, which include music, have been climbing rapidly for all the carriers.

US mobile network Sprint, for example, reported earlier this month that it was bringing in US$4.6 billion a year from

these services, or about $9.25 per month from each of its customers.

A collection of more than 1.6 million songs in the Sprint Music Store; access to streaming music, video and satellite radio channels; and sponsorships of concert tours are among the music initiatives receiving a great deal of Sprint’s marketing attention.

The introduction this spring of the “Upstage,” a new Samsung phone intended for playing music, is another example of how Sprint is responding to the opportunity offered by music and the challenge posed by the coming iPhone.

“Sprint makes it easy for our customers to get their favorite music on one device they have with them at all times,” says Alana Muller, Sprint’s director of wireless data programs and marketing.

The initial versions of the iPhone will require connections with a computer to load songs. Sprint touts advantages of its service, which already has downloaded more than 15 million songs over the air to its customers’ phones.

“We truly provide wireless music wirelessly,” Muller says.

Music-oriented phones have been selling at a brisk pace, says Lewis Ward of IDC. The estimated 37 million consumers carrying them, however, represent only about 15 percent of the overall market.

Plus, only a small fraction of those actually use the phones to download music, Ward says.

Text messaging probably is the most widely used wireless data service, but it still is used by no more than half of consumers, Ward said.

“That is the most pervasive data service in the world,” he said. “The idea that mobile music is going to approach that anytime soon is extremely unlikely.”

The announced US$500 and US$600 prices of the iPhone have raised questions about whether it will appeal to a broad swath of consumers. Sprint has been noting that it offers multiple music-playing phones that can be had for less than $100 each.

Apple executives have said that the

combo device would be worth the money considering that a popular iPod Nano goes for $199 and sophisticated, featurepacked cell phones typically sell for at least $299.

Apple will bring considerable cache and an impressive product portfolio, but the iPhone prices create a formidable obstacle to selling the device in large quantities to telephone consumers, said IAG’s Entner.

“Consumers typically have never paid the full price that the cell phone even costs to manufacture,” Entner says.

Despite this factor, Entner says, the iPhone is likely to enjoy success. He also expects to see a “ruboff effect” benefiting multiple companies offering music services.

“The Apple phone is being positioned as the Rolls-Royces or Ferraris of all phones,” Entner says.

Not everyone, of course, can afford such a pricey model.

“You go to the Ferrari dealership and ogle the Ferrari,” Entner says, “but then you go buy a Pontiac.”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 69

feelLIFE

sport

NZPA / Tim Hales

Beware the boks

Sports editor Chris Forster goes big game hunting ahead of the World Cup

T

he smart money is still on the All Blacks to lift the William Webb Ellis trophy in Paris in late October. But there’s now a serious threat to their once unshakeable favouritism.

South African rugby has come flying out of the blocks in World Cup year. The Rainbow Nation has always possessed the depth, raw power and athleticism to rival New Zealand, now they’re coming of age.

Then just as it seems the Springboks can mount a serious challenge for rugby’s greatest prize, a renewed bout of race-related interference threatens to derail them.

For two of the three participating nations, this year’s Super 14 was far from super. Twenty-two elite All Blacks were

70, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

rested for the first half of the competition, and the five New Zealand franchises felt the impact. Locks James Ryan and Jason Eaton (both near certainties to make the cup squad) suffered season ending injuries. And when the front-liners did return many were either not selected or looked seriously short of a gallop.

The Blues set the pace early on then struggled later on, the Crusaders never really hit top gear and the Chiefs left their run too late.

With limited playing stocks now stretched over 4 franchises, the Australians couldn’t afford to rehab their Wallabies.

The Brumbies and the Force were competitive, but the tournament will be remembered for the alarming slide of the

Waratahs and the Reds to the bottom of the ladder.

By contrast the South Africans’ decision to play all their leading lights paid handsome dividends. The Bulls and the Sharks charged into Super rugby history, ending years of misery for the Republic’s long suffering fans. Two sell-out semifinals on home soil saw them shut out the Crusaders and the Blues to set up an historic final in Durban.

The Bulls snuck out of the gate in the dying seconds to steal the homeland’s first Super rugby title from under the snouts of the Sharks.

The result though, seemed irrelevant.

Suddenly the Africans had all the momentum four months out from the

World Cup. Yet even when a united wave of patriotism and optimism was sweeping the once divided land, political forces were trying to undermine national coach Jake White.

The Springboks coach picked an extended squad of 46 players but made the mistake of leaving out Stormers captain and flanker Luke Watson. He also happens to be the offspring of a famed anti-apartheid figure, who’s an open supporter of racially based selections. The Watson oversight didn’t go down well with South African Rugby Union boss Oregan Hoskins and his outspoken deputy Mike Stofile. So they simply added their chosen one to the list, without telling the coach and head selector.

Hoskins added fuel to the fire by accusing the long-suffering White of having a belligerent attitude. He even told the media he was prepared to sack him if he didn’t tow the line. His offsider Stofile added fuel to the fire in the Afrikaans newspaper Die Burger.

“If he (Jake White) doesn’t accept SA Rugby’s terms he should take his things and go”.

The Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile (who happens to the brother of the SARU deputy) used a budget speech to reiterate the African National Congress-led government’s policy of enforcing racial quotas.

Their motives are to empower black people, 13 years after the end of apartheid. Their timing was terrible, and conspired to overshadow the nation’s Super 14 ecstasy.

White relented and picked Watson in his refined squad of 36, then risked more censure by not picking him for the first of their two tests against England in Bloemfontein.

The near full strength Boks went on to clobber a virtual third string English outfit 56-10, running in seven tries including a brace to coloured winger Bryan Habana.

The express machine is a certainty for selection, despite his race, and is a political trump card for White as he walks the tightrope between picking the best players and appeasing his political masters .

The other overwhelming positive is the wealth of players who are in form and vying for selection.

Dynamic flanker Shalk Burger was man-of-the-match in the cakewalk over England, in his comeback test after a career-threatening injury.

Habana’s on fire, lock Matfield and halfback Fourie de Preez are arguably the best in their positions in world rugby, and enigmatic fullback Percy Montgomery is in the form of his life.

There’s no doubting the coach has extraordinary selection issues.

But he also has a depth of talent matched only by New Zealand to nurture and master, for a serious crack at rugby’s holy grail.

GRAHAM HENRY is also blessed with a rather deep pool of world class players, of many different denominations. The sage All Blacks head coach has no problems including flying Fijian wingers, Polynesian front-rowers or a Maori halfback. His dilemma is who to leave out, as highlighted by the demotion of Rico Gear to the fringe selections in the Junior All Blacks. He also gets first dibs on brilliant talent like Sitiveni Sivivatu, ahead of the winger’s homeland of Fiji.

Henry’s gamble with the game’s powerbrokers was to rest elite players during the Super 14, but that drawn-out debate won’t be resolved until the World Cup, when the All Blacks are programmed to peak.

He’s also acutely aware of the rising fortunes of his greatest Southern Hemisphere rivals.

“I think they’re a lot fitter – the South African sides – and it’s made quite a difference during the Super 14. South Africa is our biggest challenge at the Rugby World Cup, and that’s not to demean the French, the Irish or the Australians. They’ve got the man power to be a helluva good side”.

While he salutes their smothering defence, you get the feeling Henry is less

“

The Springboks coach picked an extended squad of 46 players but made the mistake of leaving out Stormers captain and flanker Luke Watson.

He also happens to be the offspring of a famed anti-apartheid figure, who’s an open supporter of racially based selections

”

impressed with their attacking abilities.

“I don’t think they’ve changed their basic style at all. Their game is based on forward dominance, a big, driving lineout.

“They’ve changed their defensive patterns, but whether that will transfer to the Springboks. I’m not so sure”.

You can expect these lines to be analysed, rehashed and repeated innumerable times over the next few months.

The acid test before the World Cup will be two Tri Nations tests between the number one and two contenders.

ROAD MAP TO THE WORLD CUP FINAL

The All Blacks and the Springboks preferred route. (featuring likely opponents) NEW ZEALAND SOUTH AFRICA Win POOL C Win POOL A (v Italy, Portugal, Scotland and Romania) (v Samoa, England, Tonga and USA) QUARTERFINALS v runner-up POOL D v runner-up POOL B (France, Ireland or Argentina) (Australia or Wales) SEMIFINALS v winner of Quarterfinal 1 v winner Quarterfinal 4 (Wales, Australia or England) (France, Ireland, Scotland or Argentina) FINAL – Stade De France, Saturday, October 20, (Sunday 8 am NZ time) ALL BLACKS v SPRINGBOKS (all going well)

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 71

feelLIFE

health

It’s not the cough that carries you off…

Claire Morrow bemoans the Western disease of “allergy”

D

o you want cow or soy milk? The low fat gluten-free muffin or the nut-free one? Is your playground a nut-free zone? Not to be intolerant or anything, but it seems I can’t turn around without stumbling over someone with a food allergy or intolerance. I certainly can’t make peanut butter sandwiches for school. Is it just me or were fewer kids allergic when I was a kid?

It is, indeed, infuriating to pack a lunch excluding common allergens – the worry is that the children will share their lunches, or they will eat a peanut butter sandwich and then put their unwashed hands all over the face of an allergic child.

And as annoying as it is, they well might – that is what children do. Adults are often annoyed by the constraints of attending a “nut-free, fish-free” school, although

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invariably children cope fine and are gracious about it. We learnt at preschool that “Polly is allergic to nuts and I am allergic to eating leaves off trees and also girls”. But it is one thing to cater for a best friend with a real medical condition, quite another to have a string of “oh, no! he can’t eat....” from an endless string of parents. I was once at a party where a mother burst into hysterical shrieking when she saw someone had given her child red cordial. As her eyes welled with tears – “what kind of person would give a child red cordial!” – parents either tutted at the host or rolled their eyes at the purist. So you can see why people roll their eyes at the mention of “allergic”. Which is tricky.

A true allergy is a medical condition, mediated by the immune system. It has

nothing to do with how “strong” the immune system is, it is entirely focused on whether the immune system goes completely bats at the wrong time. The food is fine – but there is some nice harmless protein in it that causes some individuals’ immune systems to go send out little immune warriors to destroy it, considering it to be a lethal agent that must be destroyed.

In rare cases, the immune reaction will be so severe that it is fatal. An allergic reaction may immediately or some hours later cause hives or swelling or breathing difficulties, less commonly severe vomiting. Once this has occurred once, the body is “sensitized” and likely to react more to the potential allergen next time. But of course, plenty of people get hives, and not very many people die of anaphylaxis. And like the little boys “allergic to girls”, the world is full of people who think they are allergic when they are not.

And then there is food intolerance, another decidedly developed-country problem. The seemingly endless “dairy free”, “wheat free” options. The crews who subscribe to these diets, unfortunately, are a mixed bunch. The Coeliac Society requires a letter from a gastroenterologist for prospective members – too many wannabe’s trying to join because they have decided for themselves that wheat is the root of all their problems. The coeliac cannot eat gluten, it makes them sick.

Coeliac’s is diagnosed by a small bowel biopsy – it finds a reactive, ulcerated gut, again the immune system reacting badly to a harmless protein – it is a real condition and the only treatment is a life long gluten free diet and as you might imagine, many coeliacs are frustrated by the assumption that their diet is a fad.

Likewise, lactose intolerance is – in fact – prevalent. And it is a pain, but it is a pain that affects about 20% of some populations. The availability of soy and goat and rice milk, however, is largely related to vegan and lifestyle diets – these products often have much less calcium and vitamin D than their dairy equivalents, and many people who cannot tolerate cows’ milk do not tolerate soy milk well either, soy being a fairly allergenic substance. The proliferation of baby formulas in these exotic formulas is a response to market forces, not medicine. The best evidence is that a lactose sensitive baby requires a lactose free cows’ milk based formula. In fact, “dairy free” is no longer the recommendation for

the lactose intolerant. Lactose intolerance can be reliably diagnosed by a breath test – one has some lactose and breathes into a bag, the contents of the bag are analysed and a reliable diagnosis can be made. It is then recommended that the individual take lactase (the enzyme you need to process lactose), or hunt out lactose-free dairy. Radical dietary changes are thought to cause more harm than good unless they are supervised and there is a real demonstrated need.

And then there is the food-chemicals-as-drugs theory, and alas this is a mix of medicine and superstition. It is thought that some people react to chemicals in food (remember there are chemicals in everything, many occurring naturally) more than others and that this sends the body haywire. The treatment is a strict elimination diet in order to establish the offending foods – it excludes whole groups of foods. I hate the idea, I really do. But I like it a little bit better than diagnosing “allergy” by kinesiology or bach flower remedies and so on. I do not like at all the idea that food is making us ill, that all those nasty additives mess with kids, that if everyone would stick to soy beans and sesame seeds (two highly allergenic foods, by the way) we would all be just fine. There is no evidence that food causes hyperactivity, for example, although of course one can be lactose intolerant and also hyperactive. But still, in that case, I suppose one would want to treat both conditions, and a hyperactive child isn’t going to behave better if they have an upset tummy to boot.

So we have all these real ideas about diet and food and allergy, and then we have the resulting hysteria. Very few children die of anaphalaxic reaction to a food, but of course no children dying would be better. In fact, the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy does not recommend blanket bans of offending foods throughout an entire school – they feel this could lead to complacency about the more important issues of not sharing food and so on. But it is easy to see the school principal’s position too; one wants to be safe and not sued. And so that is what it comes down to, balancing safe with sane. Recent research has shown that skin prick tests are not reliable for diagnosing allergy – a third of children diagnosed with peanut allergy were in fact not allergic when fed peanut butter under medical supervision. Given the anxiety that allergy creates one should be very very careful before it is diagnosed. One should not cry wolf.

But the hideous truth is that allergies are far more prevalent today in developing countries, and there is some evidence that it is because we are too cautious. One can make a house dust mite free. Such a practice reduces eczema rates in infants, alas it makes them hypersensitive to dust mites later. Having a furry pet actually makes one less likely to be allergic. We must, of course, be very cautious when there is a real risk, but perhaps we should be less cautious when there is not. Let them eat sugar and play in the dirt and pat dogs and eat food they drop on the ground (the ten second rule). Give the immune system something to do.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 73

feelLIFE

alt.health

Less is more for cancer patients Ed Susman discovers conventional cancer therapy may bed a waste of time and money

R

esearchers suggest that by giving less therapy, cancer patients do just as well – and with less inconvenience and fewer unwanted side effects. At the 43rd annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago this month, doctors demonstrated they may be able to dramatically reduce the amount of radiation and the length of time to deliver therapies that are designed to keep cancer from returning.

“This is exciting news for our patients,” Julie Gralow, associate professor of medical oncology at the University of Washington in Seattle, told United Press International.

“For many patients who have to travel long distances for treatment, the ability to reduce time away from home from five weeks to three weeks is meaningful.”

Gralow was referring to trials performed in the United Kingdom that used three different schemes of reduced radiation dosing for women who have undergone surgery to remove early-stage breast cancer.

In the U.K. Standardization of Breast Radiotherapy (SMART) trials, researchers demonstrated that despite less radiation, outcomes were similar.

“It is likely that patients can be safely and effectively treated to a lower total dose with fewer fractions,” says John Dewar, a clinical oncologist at the University of Dundee, Scotland.

Currently, he says, the standard treatment for a woman who has had definitive breast cancer treatment is to deliver a dose of 50

74, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

Gray – units of radiation. That radiation is typically given in 25 fractions – or a dose of 2 Gray five days a week for five weeks.

“We initiated the START trials to see if we could reduce the time to undergo treatment.”

Dewar says that doctors recruited 2,236 women in START-A and divided them into three treatment groups. He says 749 women were treated with standard regimen, receiving 50 Gray over five weeks; a second group of 750 women received 41.6 Gray in 13 fractions of 3.2 Gray over a five-week course; the third group of 737 women received 39 Gray as a total dose in 13 fractions of 3 Gray over five weeks.

In START-B, researchers randomized 2,215 women. Dewar’s team assigned 1,105 women to receive the standard dose; 1,110 women were assigned to receive 40 Gray in 15 doses of 2.67 Gray over a threeweek period.

The results were all about the same, Dewar says.

“Cancer control in the breast was very effective in all groups. About 3.4 percent of the women had a relapse in the same breast after five years – less than 1 percent per year.”

There were no statistically significant differences among any of the groups in recurrence rates, he says.

“What this means is that we can deliver less radiation in lees time and still maintain very effective cancer control.”

In addition, he suggests the studies will

allow doctors to conduct further studies of fractions of radiation in doses less that 2 Gray, as well as allow doctors to adjust intensity to individualized patients.

Gralow also suggested that reduction in dose could also reduce the incidence of breast fibrosis – hardening of the breast tissue – and lymphedema – swelling in the arms.

In another study, at the meeting being attended by an estimated 32,000 oncologists and associated healthcare professionals, doctors described how they were able to reduce the course of treatment for children with neuroblastoma.

The disease that is often seen in infants and children has more than an 80 percent long-term survival, but the standard course of treatment can extend as long as 268 days and may require 71 days in the hospital to deliver treatment.

“Even though children are often very young when they are treated for neuroblastoma, science now had determined that those days of treatment, pain and isolation in hospitals have long-term impact on them,” Dr. Archie Bleyer, medical adviser to the cancer treatment center at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, Oregon, told UPI. In the study, David Baker, director of the pediatric and adolescent hematology/oncology program at Princess Margaret Hospital in Perth, Australia, and colleagues in the United States, Canada and New Zealand enrolled 362 infants younger than one and 105 children older than one with intermediate-risk neuroblastoma.

Instead of the standard nine-month treatment regimen, the doctors trimmed the regimen to 84-168 days and cut hospital time to 10-18 days – more than a three-quarters cut in hospital time.

The goal of the researchers was to achieve a long-term survival of greater than 90 percent. In fact, the three-year overall survival for the children was 96 percent. Compared to historical studies, children treated on the reduced scale had virtually identical survival.

“This is another important treatment advance – while it appears to achieve similarly high survival rates seen with other, more intensive treatments, it will be much easier on patients,” Baker says.

“We are striving to cure as many children as possible while reducing the burden of treatment and leaving them with as few long-term side effects as possible. This goes a long way to meeting that goal.”

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, JulyWORK277 2007, 75

tasteLIFE

TRAVEL

Slow and sultry in Tuscany

Take it slow: Do nothing and savour it, writes Lisa Hotchkiss

F

or the record, we decided to go to Tuscany months before Under the Tuscan Sun opened in movie theaters.

Why not go to a small Italian town and hang out for two weeks – no itineraries, no museum must-sees, no plans? Nicholas and I had both already done the manic “if it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium” kind of European vacation. But was two weeks of nothing except reading, eating, walking and writing, with a man who had just become my roommate, a recipe for romance or disaster?

76, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

On a whim I checked out a website for house rentals, and sent an e-mail asking for availability of small homes or apartments in the autumn. We got a reply that, indeed, Benincasa, a two-person apartment in Montepulciano, was available and would we like to reserve it?

Six months later we were standing in front of a 16th century palazzo, its door adorned with a bust of the original owner, Gian Gastone de Medici, last male heir of the Medici family.

Our apartment was at the top of the

three-story palazzo. The heavy wooden door welcomed us with a loud slam as we headed up a massive well-worn stone staircase to the third floor.

There were windows everywhere, views from every angle. Large wooden beams framed the main living area. Our landlord, Piergorgio, had restored the apartment a few years earlier, so we were treated to the comforts of a dishwasher, washing machine, DVD and CD player in our 400-year-old home.

The kitchen was small, but soon Nicholas

“

There were windows everywhere, views from every angle. Large wooden beams framed the main living area. Our landlord, Piergorgio, had restored the apartment a few years earlier, so we were treated to the comforts of a dishwasher, washing machine, DVD and CD player in our 400-year-old home

”

was making me very happy to be traveling with a former chef and newspaper food editor. Fresh mozzarella with olive oil and salt, espresso, duck, polenta, gnocchi – soul food by anyone’s definition.

Our bedroom was sponge-painted an ocean blue. The view looked down the hill to San Biagio, a 16th century cathedral.

Bells from the various village churches rang often.

We had arrived at our Tuscan palazzo, and now we stared at 14 days of no plans.

Spending two weeks in a foreign country

with a relatively new love sounds terribly romantic, and it was.

However, though we’d been living together at home for three months, there’s a huge difference between sharing a house and being together all day, every day, and being one another’s main conversation buddy for 14 days straight.

And there was a potential conflict.

Nicholas’ natural state is horizontal, usually on a couch, either reading or sleeping. I confess that I’m generally not good at relaxing for long periods and like to be active. An interesting contrast of styles that needed some careful blending if we were to enjoy two weeks of intense togetherness.

So we agreed to have “Nicholas time,” defined as eating, reading, playing Scrabble or cards, and napping, and “Lisa time,” which included long walks and exploring, plus a little shopping.

Every day we tried to get a balance of both. Lucky for me, Montepulciano is a hilly town, and Benincasa is at the top of the hill, so anytime we set out, we had to

trek back up the steep hill to our welcoming wooden door.

One of our favorite routines was to spend mornings at Caffe Poliziano, an almost Parisian-looking cafe with the best cappuccino and pastries in town.

While Nicholas ordered, I would make a visit to the nearby shop to purchase an International Herald Tribune.

We’d settle at a round cafe table near the window, sip our espresso and tackle the day’s crossword puzzle, as we checked out the locals and tourists passing through.

Any trip to Italy is certain to focus on eating, and traveling with a chef tilts the scale in more ways than one. With his fearless enthusiasm, Nicholas shopped at small neighborhood grocery stores and butcher shops, using an odd combination of Italian, French, Spanish and sign language to communicate.

But food is a universal language, and Nicholas filled our apartment with sumptuous smells day after day – making “Lisa hiking time” all the more necessary.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 77

“

Over the days, we walked every alleyway and staircase of Montepulciano, meeting residents and getting nods of recognition. The town had developed a warm familiarity for us – something one misses when passing quickly through to the next tourist destination

”

One day we walked along the busy main road to the Terme di Montepulciano Spa, about three miles outside of town. The area around Montepulciano is known for its thermal springs, the main draw being Chinchiano, a resort town that draws thousands to the healing waters and ancient Roman and Estruscan bath sites.

But the Terme di Montepulciano Spa is more convalescent hospital than resort – the guests were decades older than us. As a recent graduate of massage school, I wanted see what an Italian rub was like. Antonio, my masseur, led me down a hospital wing and into a sterile massage room. Lesson one: Italians are much less modest about covering themselves during a massage. None of those elaborate draping exercises we had practiced in massage school applied. Italians utilize a very small towel that barely covers one’s torso. But when in Rome…

We took two walks to distant hill towns we could see from our apartment.

Montefollonico was a six-mile hike on a mostly unpaved road through olive orchards,

78, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

vineyards and terra-cotta farmhouses.

Along the way, we sampled leftover wine grapes on the vine, selected an abandoned farmhouse as our new home-to-be and very often stopped to gaze at our surroundings, laughing giddily that we were really here.

Serendipity landed us that day at the door of La Chiusa, a famed restaurant that critics either loved or loved to hate. It was 2:30 p.m., and we were in dusty jeans and sneakers, but soon were in an almost empty dining room feasting on stuffed zucchini flowers, duck with wild fennel, rabbit and sinful desserts.

We waddled from the table up to the village proper – a near-Disney rendition of a Tuscan town – geraniums in every window box, laundry hanging outside windows, miniature Italian nonas dressed in black conversing across balconies. The sun was starting to drop, so we headed back to our little home, across rolling hills lighted by amber sunlight.

Clouds threatened another long hike,

but we managed the 12-plus miles to Montechiello without a drip. We once again found our reward as we entered the village at Osteria La Porta, a cozy eatery owned by a charming woman who offered us a ride home if we chose not to walk.

A dumbwaiter delivered plates of porcini mushroom carpaccio, Burratta mozzarella, rabbit and wonderful grilled lamb chops. Nicholas’ Panna Cotta was terrific, but my dessert, a twist on Tiramisu, was spectacular. After that meal, I insisted we skip the car ride and walk off lunch.

Over the days, we walked every alleyway and staircase of Montepulciano, meeting residents and getting nods of recognition. The town had developed a warm familiarity for us – something one misses when passing quickly through to the next tourist destination.

Because the weather turned wintry during the second week, we were forced to spend less “Lisa time” outdoors and more “Nicholas time” reading and eating. I devoured too many wonderful calories and every book I’d brought. Fortunately, previous visitors to Benincasa had left a few books, and I soon found myself savouring Frances Mayes’ “Bella Tuscany.” In it, she not only describes the area we were visiting, but the Italian approach to life – dolce far niente, the sweet to-do-nothing.

It was a perfect theme for our trip – for me, learning to appreciate doing nothing – savoring a nap and not feeling like I was missing out on something, spending hours reading and playing cards, and feeling satiated.

We spent our last night in Rome and experienced a jolt as we exited the train station. Vespas whizzed by, angry drivers honked, crowds of pedestrians poured across busy intersections. In two weeks at Montepulciano, we’d been shielded from cars and ambient noise.

We found respite in a swanky sidewalk bar/cafe at the Hotel Exedra. As we sipped our pricey water cocktails (mineral water, herbs and fruit) from martini glasses, we talked about what we had learned from this trip, about each other and ourselves.

Would we do another unplanned vacation?

Definitely, but next time bring more books.

I brought home a clearer appreciation of “Nicholas time” – enjoying the sweetness of doing nothing – and have since spent many a Sunday afternoon napping on the couch at home with a smile on my face and my Daytimer well-hidden in my briefcase.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 79

tasteLIFE

FOOD

Turkish delight

Eli Jameson is not thought a fool but rather opens his mouth and removes all doubt

W

hich is worse – trying to demonstrate some piece of esoteric knowledge to impress others, only to be found wrong, or to use that same data correctly in what turns out to be an utterly inappropriate sentence? I put it to you that the latter is far worse.

Let me set the scene. I’ve been on the road a lot lately with some newfound professional commitments, to the point where in relatively short order I’ve been let into the rarefied world of all-you-candrink airline lounges. This a situation that creates something of a chicken and egg conundrum for my various editors as they try to discern why my copy is late this particular month. A few weeks ago saw me

80, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

in a small country capital, working late with my team, and finding the only thing open at ten pm on a Tuesday night was a local Turkish joint with gourmet pretensions. “Ah”, I thought, “here’s my chance to impress the new coworkers with my knowledge of Turkish I picked up living over there a decade ago”. Emboldened by the sort of camaraderie that comes from fourteen hours locked in an office with a few other people, none of whom have had more than a can of Coke and a breath mint all day, I declared, “leave the ordering to me!”.

“Effendim!”, I called to the waiter as we sat down,“��� üç tane ��������������������� raki, lutfen!”.

And it all went downhill from there as

I let fly with a long peroration in the language of the Ottomans, ordering all manner of kebabs, dips and things on skewers.

Naturally, the very Anglo waiter simply looked at me quizzically and said, “Mate?”

It had, linguistically speaking, that same eerie feeling that comes from climbing a staircase, getting to the top, and continuing on to that phantom step leaves one’s foot coming down with a disconcerting thud. I felt like the protagonist of the old joke about the immigrant who studies day and night to learn the language and eliminate his accent, only to go into a shop to ask for “a dozen eggs, a litre of milk and a five rashers of bacon” and be told his diction is spot-on but that alas he has entered a hardware store.

Mercifully, the team was so faint with hunger that they quickly forgot the whole episode, or perhaps simply think they hallucinated it for lack of calories.

But here’s the thing: those of us who live in New Zealand and Australia tend to think of Turkish food as kebabs and pizzas, either to be picked up on the way home from work when no one feels like cooking or scarfed down sometime after midnight to absorb the depredations of a big night out. This is a shame because Turkish cuisine is, at its highest levels, one of the most elegant cuisines going.

For both better and worse the Ottomans controlled vast swathes of Africa, Europe and the Middle East at the height of their power. Although it was in many ways a dysfunctional political culture (most famously at the top) the Ottomans were for much of their rule able administrators thanks to their ability to spot talent amongst all races and religions. This syncretistic impulse is also seen in their cuisine, if one puts aside the wounds of politics and history, and Ottoman and Turkish cooking incorporates elements of everything from Eastern European to Indian to Moroccan food.

Interestingly, Ottoman culinary history – like the history of all conquerors and conquered – is not a one-way street.

If one travels to China’s far west, or stumbles upon a community of their refugees and immigrants in a Western city, one will find a people known as Uighurs who speak a language Turkic in origin and whose cuisine reflects its own historical roots in rule by sultans, emperors and communist commissars.

Turkish Braised Lamb Shanks with Roasted Plums Recipe

Cacik (Cold cucumber soup with zucchini fritters)

warm until all the fritters are cooked.

Serve hot with the çaçik on the side.

You’ll need: 500g small zucchini coarsely grated.

Sea salt.

250g equal parts of crumbled feta and grated casseri cheeses 6 scallions, minced 1/2 cup chopped fresh dill 1/4 cup fresh chopped mint 1/4 cup fresh Italian (flat leaf) parsley 3 eggs, lightly beaten 1 cup all purpose flour Freshly ground black pepper (Malabar Black Peppercorns are recommended) Oil for frying

To make çaçik: You’ll need: 1 kg plain cow’s milk yogurt (the original recipe uses thick sheep’s milk yogurt) 1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and coarsely grated 3 large cloves garlic, finely minced or passed through a garlic press 4 tbs. extra virgin olive oil 1 tbs. freshly chopped mint 1/4 tsp. dry oregano 3/4 tsp sea salt

1. Place the grated zucchini in a colander, salt lightly and mix well. Let stand for 30 minutes to draw out the excess liquid. Using paper towels, squeeze the zucchini dry and place in a bowl. Add the cheese mixture, eggs, scallions, dill, mint, parsley, flour and salt and pepper to taste. Stir mixture until you have a thick batter.

2. In a deep fryer, over mediumhigh heat, pour the oil to a depth of 1/4 inch (approx. 7 m). When the oil is hot, use a serving spoon to drop spoonfuls of the batter in the oil, being careful not to crowd the pan.

Fry, turning over once, until brown on both sides, 2 - 3 minutes per side.

With a slotted spoon transfer the fritters to paper towels to drain. Keep

1. Line a large sieve with cheesecloth (muslin), place over a bowl and spoon the yogurt onto the cheesecloth. Refrigerate overnight to drain the excess water (if using sheep’s milk yogurt, it is usually not necessary to drain as the yogurt is sufficiently thick). You should end up with 1 1/2 cup drained yogurt. Refrigerate until needed. Please note that the longer you keep the yogurt, the tangier it becomes as it still contains active cultures.

2. Salt the grated cucumber and draw excess moisture. Dry with paper towel (like the zucchini above).

3. In a bowl combine the drained yogurt, minced garlic, olive oil, salt and mint and mix well. Fold in the dried cucumber. Sprinkle the oregano on top.

You’ll need: 2 tablespoons paprika 2 tablespoons ground cumin 2 teaspoons ground cardamom 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon allspice 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 4 lamb shanks 1/4 cup olive oil 2 large onions, chopped 225g plums, cut in half 1/4 cup sugar 1 cup white wine 2 cups hot chicken stock Salt and pepper 1. Mix the paprika, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, all spice, cloves, salt and pepper in a bowl.

2. Rub the spice mix into the lamb shanks creating a spice covering that coats the lamb completely. Heat the oil over medium heat in a large dutch oven. Add the onions and begin to brown them stirring occasionally.

Add the plums that you have pitted along with the sugar and cook for a few minutes with the onions. Remove the onions and plums with a slotted spoon and add the seasoned lamb to the hot dutch oven and brown the lamb well on all sides. Add the white wine and cook down by half. Add the hot stock and return the onions and plums to the pot. Adjust the seasoning, set at a simmer, cover and cook for 1-1/2 to 2 hours or until the lamb is fork tender.

(Recipes adapted from Michael Lomanaco, Yemek-Tarifi)

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 81

seeLIFE PAGES

“

Mailer opts for the view that the vileness of the Third Reich had its origins in demonic influence. We are not talking about rolling eyeballs, levitating beds, projectile vomiting, swiveling heads or crucifixes burning flesh, but subtle and undetected intrusions of the human psyche by a diabolic mind

”

Mailer’s Magnum Opus Michael Morrissey enthuses about the possession of Hitler THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST

By Norman Mailer Little Brown, $36.99

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hat on earth (or indeed – highly pertinent in Norman’s case – Heaven and and Hell) are we to make of Norman Mailer? That one of America’s leading novelists should produce a work of considerable, even enviable, vitality at 84 is an occasion for wonder and admiration. While earlier giants such as Faulkner had accelerated their early demise by alcohol or blown their brains out (Hemingway), the nuggety little Brooklyn battler has shown us that he is not down for the count, no way. He is alive and kicking God and the Devil’s shins. And from the way Norman writes, he is often not entirely sure whether he is knocking the Divine patella or Satanic tibia. Who knows? – perhaps Norman will become the world’s oldest novelist and still be tackling the Big

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One (ie Novel) at age 100. It’s always possible that he might succeed in writing that great novel that has so far eluded his creative grasp.

The question is how great a novel is The Castle in the Forest? In its research – in the form of a large bibliography – it is impressive. In order to write about Adolf or Adi (as he is cutely dubbed) the child, Mailer has read all the great biographical classics on Hitler, the adult – from Bullock to Kershaw to Trevor-Roper with main titles asterisked – a list that curiously omits Mein Kampf but does include Milton and Heidegger. The question must be asked – is Mailer merely trying to impress us for little of this massive research material is in evidence in the text of the novel.

The novel unfashionably supposes that Hitler’s monumental evil is the result of devilish influence. Dieter (D.T. for short) who works in the SS under Heinrich Himmler is actually a devil assigned to guide young Adolf along the pathway

of evil. I warned you it wasn’t a fashionable view. A more conventional view might be located in (say) a somewhat vitriolic review of Mailer’s novel in the New Republic which concludes that “the Nazis were neither gods nor demons but finally all too human”. Mailer opts for the view that the vileness of the Third Reich had its origins in demonic influence. We are not talking about rolling eyeballs, levitating beds, projectile vomiting, swiveling heads or crucifixes burning flesh, but subtle and undetected intrusions of the human psyche by a diabolic mind.

Mailer’s Dieter, a minion of the Maestro (Satan), enters young Adolf’s consciousness via dreams, thoughts, wishes, fears.

In other words, the Devil’s influence is psychological though real nonetheless.

Mailer’s description and analysis of this subtle control is almost spooky in its accuracy. The problem from a literary point of view is that this often acute analysis is not dramatically integrated into the book. It’s

all from the sideline. So while the book is brilliant in patches, its brilliance is “added on” as it were.

No one can accuse Mailer of not tackling the Big Issues of our time. His record is extensive as it is bold. World War Two in The Naked and the Dead; Communism in Barbary Shore; President Kennedy and nuclear war in The Presidential Papers; Vietnam in Why are we in Vietnam?; the 1968 Chicago riots in Miami and the Siege of Chicago; the moon landing in Of a Fire on the Moon. In the 1000 page plus The Executioner’s Song, he examined what makes a murderer tick; in Ancient Evenings he explored the 18th dynasty of Egypt. In Harlot’s Ghost, he took on the CIA with a massive 1300 plus pages.

This was followed by 700 pages on Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin, and more recently The Gospel According to the Son which dealt with a topic already examined by George Bernard Shaw – are voices in the head of the saintly merely the mind talking to itself or divine directives? All of these weighty themes in which evil or God is so often at the centre of the enterprise might entitle Mailer to be dubbed the American Dostoyevsky, but for one important fatal flaw. In nearly all of Mailer’s work save for The Naked and the Dead and An American Dream, the essayist wins over the novelist and the trenchant analyst triumphs over the dramatist. We get raw slabs of ideas admittedly couched in richly turned phrases but devoid of novelist’s drama and interaction. This is why Dostoyevsky is the greatest novelist of all time and Mailer, his struggling bastard son, tries hard but never quite achieves the title he so sorely craves – the greatest writer of his time, the literary Champ, the Muhammad Ali of the contemporary novel.

Thus The Castle in the Forest is a heroic failure of sorts. While rich in wit and insight, it is dramatically and novelistically impoverished despite having Adolf Hitler as its subject matter. The focus is often more on beekeeper Father Alois and his grubby colleague Der Alte than young Adolf himself. Adolf, more often than not, is viewed via the diabolic lens of Dieter’s subtle influences.

Nevertheless, it must be presumed that Mailer, like so many, feels that there is a “mystery” to Hitler – how did this humbly-born fellow come to nearly conquer the world? How did he manage to “secretly”

bring about the death of six million Jews?

I myself have come to believe or accept that there is no particular mystery. That Adolf was not mad but “merely” like so many would-be world conquerors before – Stalin, Mao, Napoleon, Tamburlane, Alexander the Great – evilly ambitious on a grand scale. Or as Mailer has fictionally explored, Satanically influenced. Hitler was a powerful orator (whereas Stalin and Mao were not) and used radio more fully as a propaganda device than before; also he used the aeroplane to move rapidly around the country and therefore appear omniscient, a media god. Prior to this time (1930s), these devices had not been used to the degree that Hitler used them – but again, where’s the mystery? He had the new technology, he used it to be powerful. Is there any mystery in that?

Hitler irrationally hated the Jews and used them as a scapegoat but there have been plenty of other examples of genocide both before and since – horribly in Rwanda in 1994 when a million Hutus were slaughtered at a faster rate than the Jews were killed under Hitler’s regime – and in like manner the world did nothing.

If there is a mystery, it is in Hitler’s numerous bad military decisions – Dunkirk, attacking Russia, delaying the assault on Moscow, failing to use the new jet fighter in adequate numbers and so forth. However, if you accept German historian Joachim Fest’s persuasive argument, that there is something in the German psyche that is attracted to a great doomed tragedy, and here we may find an explanation of the “mystery:” We have plenty of evidence for Hitler’s fascination with the Ragnorak, the twilight of the gods – the ultimate destruction of civilisation, in this case brought about by a doomed war. Mailer too, believes there is a mystery – “the most mysterious human of being of the century” says Devil Dieter, prominent narrator of Hitler. If there is mystery (which I am inclined to doubt), then why not examine the childhood of the tyrannical monster? Perhaps it is here the “mystery” of his enormous evil will be revealed?

Thus is Mailer’s fictional strategy.

Nonetheless, I found it is, alas, hard to care about the wicked Alois and the would-be wicked Adolf – and this, after all, is the acid test for a book – do we care? The details of beekeeping might have been fascinating in their own right if rendered by an Updike or a Roth but

here they seem like Mailer is away on an unfruitful tangent until the text mentions the bees are gassed to death. Alelluia, the reader might cry understandably thinking that here is where Adolf got his genocidal ideas from. The text undermines its own metaphor by asserting, “...I would warn the reader not to make too much of the gassing ...” Is Norman embarrassed by the straightforwardness of his own metaphor?

The denial seems either coy or forced.

Mailer is always second-guessing and contra-qualifying his own text.

Dieter, talking about the methods of Satanic usurpation, is more interesting than Alois holding forth on bees but again Mailer fails to make this potentially riveting material dramatically interesting as Dostoyevsky always does. The bees, one is compelled to suppose, are a metaphor for the German people but one that palls.

In fact – and regrettably – you can learn a lot more about the complex intertwining of good and evil from the superb Sopranos than by reading The Castle in the Forest.

Thus this grand attempt at a portrait of Hitlerian evil is a missed opportunity and no amount of essayist’s glad phrasing will make for an adequate substitute. Norman should shut up and let the characters speak for themselves – that’s what novel writing is all about. When they do speak, they only monologue about bees.

Nevertheless, in an age of increasingly misguided liberalism and confused values, veteran author Norman Mailer has the moral courage to believe that in the fight between God and Satan (who at times reminds me of a naughty child that needs a good smack or two on his red behind), God “needs” human help. In other words, even though God was, is and for all eternity been destined to win over the Devil, our job as human beings is to join in on His side as freely, gracefully and powerfully as we can – each and every one of us – all six billion plus of us – and thereby create a happy pure life on this wonderful Spaceship Earth created for our enjoyment providing we also love God and each other. With Faith and Hope added in, it may not be difficult as people think.

God throws a knock out punch and Satan goes down for the count – permanently!

His red eyes close, his brain is damaged beyond repair and it’s all over – he dies in the ring and the crowd goes wild with joy!

A big fat prayer recited to God in a humble spirit can do wonders.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 83

Alas, from time to time, evil men like Hitler distract us with false gods sated with lust for power. This novel – flawed though still powerful in parts – portrays the early life of Hitler as told by one of Satan’s lesser devils and shows the boy being tutored in the ways of evil. If the very idea that is the central motor behind this, by turns, brilliant and laboured work – a tome of astonishing vitality for an author for 84 – seems far-fetched – “merely a work of fictional invention”, readers might like to consider this astonishing passage from The Dictators by leading English war historian Richard Overy: “Two British generals at a Hitler rally in Berlin in 1934, seated in the stadium just feet behind him, watched him captivate his listeners with the familiar rising passion and jarring voice. “Then an amazing thing happened,’ continued the account: ‘ (we) both saw a blue flash of lightning come out of Hitler’s back ...We were surprised that those of us close behind Hitler had not all been struck dead.” The two men afterwards discussed whether Hitler was actually possessed at certain moments by the Devil:’ We came to the conclusion that he was”.

This passage – and it is to be noted that this account is from England’s leading military historian and not some “hollyroller” fruitcake – is quoted from a book entitled True Account by F.W Tennant p. 182-183. Thus we may reflect, as per the old saying – Is Truth Stranger than Fiction? I have come to accept that Satan can enter people without their knowing but perhaps in the more dramatic cases of visible evil, the host is a willing collaborator. Thus is raised the spectre of the Faustian pact, a situation hinted at in the passage quoted above. In The Castle in the Forest, it is Dieter, a minor devil acting on behalf of the Maestro (Satan), who does the tempting and Adolf who is successfully tempted.

Some historians consider that Hitler was insane though that is a minority view. His main medical problems were physical not mental. It is more accurate to consider him as a man who chose evil. Any dictator who orders up the cold-blooded murder of six million Jews and caused the death of additional countless millions must be considered evil, not mad. In the case of Hitler, madness is a glib excuse. Alternatively, such a view suggests that evil – i.e. mad – people are not responsible for their actions.

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Let us remember that Hitler chose evil and he paid the price – his thousand-year Reich crumbled in 12 years.

Modern psychiatry increasingly continues to tell us that morality or free will has no place and that the quick fix for such disturbances is a pill. To this degree, psychiatrists are often of the Devil’s party without realising it. Major mental disturbances such as paranoid schizophrenia and manic-depression (politically correct term: bipolar disorder) are most likely coded messages from God – patterns of inner wisdom in code. Episodes of “Mania” are like the giant fifty-foot high waves of Hawaii (where surfing began) – if you can learn to surf you get the terrific thrill of defying death and if you do it accurately you don’t get injured. Or injure anyone else.

So Mania (which has of course “afflicted” little battler Norman and let us not forget Stormin’ Norman) is really a misunderstood gift from God which one day may enable humanity to spread out to the stars and realise that glorious future that God was planned for us. As Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) says in Contact, if the colossus of the universe is noting but stars, gas rocks and the odd planet than it’s an “awful waste of space.”

Mailer can never be accused of tackling lightweight subjects – for as already noted, one of his earlier books was entitled The Gospel According to the Son which considered the important question asked

by Jesus – Is God speaking to me? Or am I hearing voices? It would seem that Mailer though Jewish – has moved closer to the Christian view in his latest work – perhaps the old slugger will convert one day?

Imagine – Norman, a veteran of six marriages, turned celibate priest! Nonetheless, Mailer’s view is more Manichean or Zoroastarian than Christian – God is not all powerful but struggles to perfect His creations as well as struggling with Demons and evil influences. To some extent, the sense of this metaphysically asserted struggle provides the missing novelist’s drama. If the Mailerian view of God as less than all powerful being is unacceptable to Christians, it is evident he does take Satan and evil seriously – very seriously indeed.

Mailer may just turn out to be America’s most important novelist in the heady realms of Ideas. Though often ignored by local reviewers who unfortu-

nately have fallen under the influence of femminazism and the rigid-minded doctrines of the politically correct who seek to reduce art’s richness to barren formulae, Mailer’s vitality of intelligence offers a rewarding though novelistically marred reading experience. No other major writer has changed his tonal voice so many times making a thesis on his work a formidable task indeed.. The way in which he has been largely ignored here is a matter of cultural shame. Unfortunately, The Castle in the Forest is a heavily flawed book though still worthy of our attention – as is much of Mailer’s locally neglected work which for several decades has continued to assault the heady realms of theodicy, eschatology, ontology and metaphysics.

When I met Mailer in late 1985, in a boxing gym in New York (where he was giving a poetry recital), I was struck by his mystical blue eyes. Hitler too, apparently had mesmeric pale blue eyes. However, Mailer’s seemed – almost cerulean, a Heavenly blue – a sign that paradise is to come? Only God knows. And though at first it seems unlikely, compared to Hitler, Norman must surely be on the side of the angels (or Cudgels as Dieter calls them) – as well as, of course, fallible humans.

Stop press: my old friend Michael O’Donogue, long time sub-editor at the Herald tells me – source New York Review of Books – that The Castle in the Forest is is only the first part of an intended trilogy.

Norman, this is your big chance for a literary TKO at age 90.

The winner of the Most Admired/ Favourite Book first published in the last 100 years was: Denys Trussell of Newton, Auckland, who chose Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert. Mr Trussell will receive three titles from the list of 21 Titles re-issued by Hachette last month. Runner-up was Mr Russell Haley of Devonport, Auckland who chose Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Mr Haley will receive two books. Third prize goes to John Bentley of Waterview, Auckland who selected Brrm! Brrm! By Clive James.

Mr Bentley will receive one.

SIX WEEKS IN THE NZ BESTSELLERS LIST!

“I have been compelled to mention this book at every social occasion I have been to recently because Eve’s Bite is so deliciously full of juicy conversation-starters...a frighteningly well-researched book...If you are looking for a stimulating mental challenge, or a cause to fight for, Eve’s Bite will definitely satisfy - Wairarapa Times Age Available today from Whitcoulls, Paperplus, Take Note, Dymocks and leading independent booksellers, or online at www.evesbite.com INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 85

seeLIFE MUSIC

Two out of three ain’t bad…

Chris Philpott finds gold amidst the rock MANIC STREET PREACHERS Send Away the Tigers

THE WATERBOYS Book of Lightning

SAM COOKE Portrait of a Legend: 1951-1964

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hile it might later be viewed as one of the biggest surprises of the year, the Manic Street Preachers return with Send Away The Tigers – a new record for the group, almost a new direction, and undoubtedly their best work since a mid-90s period that included their classic albums Everything Must Go and This is My Truth, Tell Me Yours.

There is some great guitar work here – particularly on album opener, title track “Send Away The Tigers”, as well as on later tracks like “Underdogs” and “Indian Summer” – to go with some smooth melodies courtesy of highly talented (and often underappreciated) singer James Dean Bradfield.

This is rock music written and performed exquisitely; each song simple yet crafted as well as anything else on the market.

As if that wasn’t enough, Nina Pearsson (formerly of the Cardigans) makes an appearance on the catchy first single “You Love Alone Is Not Enough”, a song which seems unremarkable at first but slowly becomes one of the highlights of the entire disc.

It’s this ‘slow boiling’ aspect that sums up Send Away the Tigers to a tee, making it – in my opinion at least – easily one of the better albums of 2007 to date.

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ou may be saying to yourself ‘who are the Waterboys?’ – and with good reason: this London-based outfit (which is actually the brainchild of singer/ songwriter Mike Scott) peaked in 1991 with a number 3 single in the UK before splitting in 1993.

Reformed in 2000 with their first album in nearly 10 years and a new rock sound, Book of Lightning is the latest album to bear the Waterboys name.

While Scott is the main songwriter, there is a plethora of different sounds and influences, due in part to the appearance of no less than nine separate musicians, as well as Canadian outfit Great Aunt Ida, to help write and record the album.

But as the saying goes, ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ and Book of Lightning is no exception – what could have been a great album, its main short-falling is a real lack of consistency and coherency, most evident on the first few tracks here.

Straight rock pieces give way to experimental arrangements and Coldplay-style piano movements, but the album never seems to find a solid footing, much less its own unique identity.

While the album may be interesting to indie and Brit-rock fans, this is probably one record worth avoiding.

ommonly referred to as one of the forefathers of soul music, influencing a huge number of artists including Bruce Springsteen, John Mayer, Rod Stewart and Aretha Franklin, it is accurate that any album of hits by Sam Cooke be referred to as the Portrait of a Legend – it truly is.

Covering the period from his early days in 1951 until his mysterious death in 1964, Portrait is jam-packed with short, but memorable tracks like “You Send Me”, “Chain Gang”, “Wonderful World” and “Bring It On Home To Me”, as well as posthumous releases like the hit “A Change Is Gonna Come”. Cooke’s gospel/soul sound is as relevant now, and his voice as smooth, as it was during a glittering career that included 29 Top 40 US singles.

It is perhaps testimony to Cooke’s amazing talent that the best compliment I can pay this record is that the songs don’t just sound great themselves, but that there are times in the 31 tracks here where I was thinking to myself ‘that sounds like the Temptations’ or ‘that could easily be Marvin Gaye’.

Perhaps the tragedy of Cooke’s early death is also his greatest legacy: he lives on through the music itself.

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seeLIFE MOVIES

Saving wretches

Ocean’s Thirteen gives the boys a mission, and Amazing Grace is a must-see on the slave trade Ocean’s Thirteen Rated: PG Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Ellen Barkin, Al Pacino, Elliott Gould Directed by: Steven Soderbergh 122 minutes

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t least Ocean’s Thirteen is back in Las Vegas.

What was up with all that flitting around Europe in the second film anyway? Outside the confines of America’s gambling fantasy land, the stalwart Ocean gang – which with this latest film is resembling more than ever a valiant band of do-gooder knights and less a crackerjack cadre of seasoned con men – seem somehow less towering, more ordinary, out of their element.

They need Las Vegas to be larger than life.

So they’re back for part 3, all duded up in their designer suits and basking in their leading-man-deigning-to-do-theensemble-thing hipness, flitting through another stylized adventure. The appeal of

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the series (can you believe it has come to a series?) always has been in the jolly bonhomie between the characters.

We like to think of all that star wattage – Pitt, Clooney, Damon, Cheadle, et. al – just jousting and kidding with each other, being “ordinary” guys, doing the buddy thing. If you ever were able to invite them all over to your house for a dinner party, it’s the way you’d want them to interact.

It doesn’t really matter, then, why they’re all together again in the smooth and silly Ocean’s Thirteen. The reason this time around: The hapless Reuben (Elliott Gould) has had a massive heart attack brought on by sour business dealings with a ruthless Vegas kingpin, Willie Bank (Al Pacino, who doesn’t just chew the scenery but eats an entire casino).

It seems that Bank and Reuben were partners on a big new hotel but that Bank double-crossed him. That’s enough to draw Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his buddies to the bedside of their mentor.

They vow to sabotage Bank’s grand opening in every way they can, from messing up his gambling machines to endangering the hotel’s coveted “five-diamond” rating.

What this all means, of course, is an excuse for the Ocean gang to unleash myriad schemes, scams, disguises, technical wizardry and an amazing ability to be in just the right place at the right time.

Each guy gets a chance to shine, among them Linus (Matt Damon) as a big-nosed seducer, Saul (Carl Reiner) as a counterfeit hotel reviewer and Turk (Scott Caan) as a food-poisoning chef.

The plot doesn’t really matter; it’s designed to just sort of wash over you like a quick but refreshing shower. The intent of the film is to simply let these guys hang out together.

Director Steven Soderbergh realizes, I think, that people don’t want to see con men actually do nasty or brutish things.

It’s like Pirates of the Caribbean in that regard: Pirates are bad people, and, of course, we don’t really want to be reminded of that in a feel-good summer blockbuster, so the storyline strives for the silly and outlandish.

Brisk and forgettable, Ocean’s Thirteen is as memorable as a Las Vegas buffet: lots of goodies at the time, but afterward no taste that stands out.

Reviewed by Donald Munro

Amazing Grace Rated: PG Starring: Romola Garai, Albert Finney, Ioan Gruffudd Directed by: Michael Apted 118 minutes

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devout man of firm conscience who mixed evangelical zeal with political savvy, William Wilberforce, shook up Britain’s parliamentary system in the late 18th century – and galvanized a good portion of the British public – with his long and determined crusade.

In Amazing Grace, that fight – against slavery, and against the shipping and trade industries in Britain that relied on slavery for their commercial well-being – is depicted in simple (but not simplistic) strokes, with the accordant powdered wigs, horse-drawn carriages, stately mansions and fancy dress of a self-respecting period drama.

Sturdily directed by Michael Apted, from a screenplay by Steven Knight,

Amazing Grace stars Ioan Gruffudd as Wilberforce, presented here as a reluctant pol who had to be swayed from the priesthood so he could fight the good fight in the corridors of power. Allied with William Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch – there’s a name!), destined to become the youngest prime minister in British history, Wilberforce lobbied, strategized and eventually out-flanked a powerful band in the Houses of Lords and Commons who supported slavery for the economic good of the land.

Wilberforce’s chief opponents, and Amazing Grace’s chief villains are the contemptuous Lord Tarlton (Ciaran Hinds) and the Duke of Clarence (Toby Jones, who played Truman Capote in the lamentably little-seen Infamous).

Albert Finney appears briefly as John Newton, a Wilberforce mentor beaten down by politics and corruption, and now living as a monk. Rufus Sewell, eyes a-shine and hair a-long, plays a nutty grassroots abolitionist, while Youssou

N’Dour, the African music star, is a freed slave whose published accounts of his ordeal helped to galvanize the anti-slavery movement.

Framed as a flashback, and a romance, Amazing Grace unfolds as an older, wearier and not altogether well Wilberforce describes his parliamentary maneuverings to a lovely lady (Romola Garai) whom he’s been set up with by friends. She’s passionate about politics and just causes, too, and as they stroll the gardens and share a divan by the fire, the film flips back to the story at hand.

Apted opts not to show the horrendous cruelty inflicted on thousands upon thousands of captive Africans, shackled and chained, making their way to the Americas in ships. Instead, he has Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists describe the inhumane conditions – in the precise, passionate language of legislators who believe that human decency is more important than money and power.

Reviewed by Steven Rea

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 89

seeLIFE DVDs only semi-suspenseful, as is the low-tech forensics probe into the origins of a bedroom blackmail photo anonymously delivered to Wilson. The film’s pulse quickens briefly when an important Russian defector’s identity is challenged by another Soviet who claims to be the same man – the newcomer is subjected to a horrifying interrogation – but nothing much comes of it. Like the film as a whole, it promises to be gravely significant but evaporates like invisible ink.

Reviewd by Colin Covert

Blood Diamond R16 ( graphic and realistic war scenes, and strong language ) 142 minutes

The spies who loved me Two totally different movie styles, but both films have merit The Good Shepherd M ( violence, sexuality and language ) 160 minutes

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t’s a rare occasion when you emerge from a sprawling three-hour movie thinking about how much they left out.

The Good Shepherd covers the early days of the CIA, from its pre-World War II origins to the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion.

When you consider the coups, assassinations and cloak-and-dagger skullduggery that occurred in those two decades, it’s hard to understand why the film contains so little excitement.

Matt Damon stars as Edward Wilson, a Yale student who meets the bluebloods who will become America’s leaders, and its spymasters, in the Skull and Bones society. Wilson has the makings of a secret agent even as an undergraduate. He’s from good stock, he’s deadly serious, he’s hard to read, and he can keep his mouth shut.

At college the inscrutable Wilson is tapped by an FBI agent (Alec Baldwin) to spy on his English professor (Michael Gambon), a kindly intellectual with numerous pro-German connections. The teacher is promptly sacked and wounded by this betrayal, but Wilson has no

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qualms. A spook is born. Damon’s tightlipped portrayal of Wilson doesn’t help matters, though it’s easy to see why De Niro wanted his star to stay clamped down. The film begins with the Cuban invasion fiasco, then opens out into a hunt for the insider who leaked the plans to Castro. Wilson is a suspect like everyone else, and De Niro wants to keep us guessing about his protagonist.

Damon, whose body temperature looks to be about 20 degrees, exhibits so little verve it’s hard to believe a senator’s daughter would flip for him, especially when Angelina Jolie is cast in the part. Like the look of the handsomely mounted film itself, Wilson is attractive but cold, clinical and hollow. The fate of his fraying marriage and the toll his secret life exacts on his wife is a large part of the film’s tension, yet it’s an implausible union from the very beginning.

Believable relationships among interesting characters are the lifeblood of a drama, and despite a superb cast (including William Hurt, John Turturro, Joe Pesci) the interactions are sterile. Even the best actors can’t do much with characters who trust no one and disclose nothing.

Nor do the intelligence schemes draw us in. The hunt for the Bay of Pigs mole is

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dward Zwick’s Blood Diamond is a message movie, loosely wrapped in action-thriller paper, and consequently it’s never difficult to see where it’s going.

Set in 1999 Sierra Leone, it’s the story of a fisherman (Djimon Hounsou) who’s found a rare diamond, and a soldier of fortune (Leonardo DiCaprio) who sees that diamond as a ticket out of an increasingly dangerous life. Around them whirls a bloody civil war, funded in part by smuggled diamonds and fought in part by child soldiers trained in brutality.

The message, underlined in title cards at the end of the film for would-be diamond purchasers: Know where your jewels come from, and insist on documentation proving that your diamond was mined in a conflict-free zone.

DiCaprio’s Danny Archer, a Zimbabweborn former mercenary, is neither a good guy nor a bad guy; rather, he’s a man who’s seen too much and has built a shell to isolate himself from the turmoil around him. He’s an odd pairing with Hounsou’s Solomon, whose family is torn from him in an early, wrenching scene. Determined to get them back, Solomon is drawn into a tentative, wary alliance with Danny.

This is, it should be noted, an extremely violent film (as befits its setting), and it contains some very disturbing scenes involving the child soldiers – among whose ranks Solomon’s young son is eventually recruited. But it succeeds well at what it sets out to do: wrapping a worthy message in a compelling story.

Reviewed by Moira Macdonald

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 93

realLIFE

LAST WORD

Alliance of Dhimmi-isation

New Zealand has just hosted an Alliance of Civilisations meeting that rejected NZ’s Christian roots. Now, British writer Melanie Phillips warns about a similar push in Britain

E

ven now, even after everything that has happened, even after the recent tough talking about defeating Islamist extremism on the battlefield of ideas and the apparent waking up to the extremism of bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain, the British government still doesn’t get it.

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This month, at a conference on Islam in London, Tony Blair launched a new initiative to promote Muslim moderation and defeat extremism. He attacked the “often crude portrayals in the media or by those who deal only in stereotypes and seek to whip up Islamophobic sentiment”, and said that the “still, small voice of rea-

son and moderation” used by the majority of Muslims should not be drowned out by “those willing to come on television and articulate extreme and violent views”.

Unfortunately for him, the “still, small voice of reason and moderation” was demonstrated that very day by a Channel Four opinion poll which revealed, inter alia,

that fully one quarter of Britain’s two million Muslims believed government agents staged the July 7 2005 human bomb attacks in London; nearly seventy per cent believed Muslims were not responsible for them; almost sixty per cent said the government has not told the whole truth about them; and more than half also felt the security services had made up evidence to convict terror suspects, with some even dismissing as fakes the ‘martyrdom’ videos left by the terrorists Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer admitting responsibility for the bombings.

“Crude media stereotypes”? Hardly.

From their own mouths, more than half of Britain’s Muslims reveal they believe in demented and paranoid theories, refuse to take responsibility for the part played by their community and its faith in Islamist terrorism, and believe instead that Britain is a giant conspiracy against them. A very small voice of reason indeed. Are such people really to be called “moderate”?

Mr Blair apparently thinks so. As he was reported saying: “The voices of extremism are no more representative of Islam than the use, in times gone by, of torture to force conversion to Christianity represents the true teaching of Christ.”

Dear oh dear. What a muddled man.

Whatever the true teachings of Christ may have been, the fact remains that in medieval times torture and numerous other forms of clerical terror designed to enforce the faith at sword-point upon heretics and unbelievers was the norm for Christianity.

Such terror wasn’t “unrepresentative” of the church; it wasn’t confined to a “few extremists”; and it certainly wasn’t got up by the media. As was demonstrated by the plight of the Jews who were routinely butchered by Christians for refusing to convert, Christianity was a savage faith until the Enlightenment separated out church and state. The problem with Islam is that it remains stuck in that prereformation state of clerical savagery; and while there are many Muslims in Britain and around the world who do not wish to live under what has been called Islamic fascism (and are indeed among its principal victims) the jihad currently dominates the Islamic world just as pre-modern Christianity was dominated by priestly violence and intimidation.

This refusal by Blair to acknowledge the scale, scope and reach of the jihad causes

“

More than half of Britain’s Muslims reveal they believe in demented and paranoid theories, refuse to take responsibility for the part played by their community and its faith in Islamist terrorism, and believe instead that Britain is a giant conspiracy against them

”

him persistently to introduce policies against extremism that merely entrench it even further, because he persistently defines extremism far too narrowly and is too quick to hail as moderate those who may be against violence but whose views are anything but moderate according to any reasonable definition of the word.

This month’s initiative designed to screen out extremism from university courses in Islam was a case in point.

It is throwing a million pounds at such courses which it has designated as ‘strategically important’ to national interests, allowing tighter official scrutiny of their syllabi. This is apparently because it believes that such courses expose students to narrow interpretations of Islam and must be reformed to combat violent extremism.

But as the national curriculum debacle has so graphically demonstrated, such initiatives almost invariably have a boomerang effect. When central government tries to shape what is taught in order to combat one vested interest or another, the new courses are invariably hijacked by those very vested interests which then become even more entrenched by government imprimatur. Thus the national curriculum was instantly captured by the very same cultural Marxists that it was aimed to confront. And

so it will be with the new Islamist courses, as has already become plain.

According to a report by the government’s designated expert on the matter, Dr Ataullah Siddiqui, many university courses focused too narrowly on the Middle East and failed to reflect the “realities” of Muslim life in multi-cultural Britain. It said that the teaching of Islam had been conducted in “complete ignorance of the Muslim community and their patterns of belief and practice” and called for a shift from courses that focus purely on an “Arab and Middle Eastern perspective to that of a plural society in Britain”.

Accordingly, it recommended that Islamic studies courses be brought up to date, look beyond Middle East, and include modern day practice in Europe and Britain, involving Islamic scholars; that all universities should employ part or full-time male and female Muslim chaplains or advisers; that Islamic studies should be linked with job opportunities such as teaching, chaplaincy and Islamic banking; that universities should offer add-on modules for all students to have the opportunity to study Islam; and that guidance should be given to all universities on Friday prayers, Ramadan and halal food.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007, 95

But this is all about making such courses more Muslim-friendly. It has nothing to do with addressing extremism. Indeed, it sidesteps completely the most important and pernicious element of many such Islamic courses – that Islam is not taught in the same way as other religions, as objective disciplines which place the religion in the context of its time, but as the literal word of God. Drummond Bone, the president of the vicechancellors’ organisation, Universities UK, sonorously intoned at the Blair meeting: “It is important that all academic disciplines follow the normal quality procedures that ensure critical intellectual rig-our and openness.”

But this is sheer humbug. The essence of the problem about so many Islamic studies courses is that they have departed from the core principles of education and turned into a form of religious indoctrination – with university lecturers being forced into this, on pain of demotion or other disciplinary measures, by professors and vice-chancellors who have been intimidated by Islamist pressure and have cravenly sold academic principles down the river. No longer universities as much as dhimmiversities.

This alarming trend is illustrated by the body running this month’s conference, the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, which appears to be run by people who believe not that Muslims should integrate into British mores but that Britain should integrate into Islam. Dhimmi Watch quotes Professor David Ford, Director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, saying this: “In the past, policy has too often focused on the question of integrating Muslims into secular society. In fact we live in a complexly religious and secular society where the expression of religious beliefs remains important to huge numbers of people…

Speakers and guests will be encouraged to consider the contribution Islamic debate has made to a host of contemporary topics including citizenship, the place of Islamic law, women and human rights.”

But of course, on all these important topics Islam stands in total contradiction to western principles of citizenship.

In addition Timothy Winter, lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge in whose Divinity faculty the Inter-Faith programme is based, said: “The question facing British society, and

96, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, July 2007

society as a whole, is not how we encourage minorities to engage with western countries, but how those countries define themselves as a collage of different religious cultures.

“We hope that this conference will enable those responsible for encouraging and building unity in communities to approach the task from that perspective.”

But British identity is not a “collage of different religious cultures”. It is a Protestant Christian culture which practises tolerance towards minorities, a very different matter indeed. With such people in our universities showing nil understanding of British or western values, what chance do we have of defending them?

As David Conway of the Centre for Social Cohesion commented: “For those for whom the government’s previous zeal for multiculturalism is at least as much to blame for the recent radicalisation of so many young British-born Muslims as its foreign policy, Mr Winter’s statement is not exactly reassuring. This is so, especially when it turns out that, under his Muslim name of Abdal Hakim Murad, this same lecturer, a convert to Islam, delivered a BBC Radio Thought for the Day broadcast in September 2003 that was made the subject of an unsuccessful complaint for ‘preaching bigotry and hatred towards Israel’ because in it he had referred to Israel as ‘the traditional enemy of the Arabs’.”

Such misgivings as to the firmness of the government’s previously announced resolve to eschew dealings with immoderate Muslims are reinforced by details of which other speakers are speaking at the conference besides the Prime Minister.

They include Shaykh Ali Gomma, Grand Mufti of Egypt. Among his ‘moderate’ credentials according to a report in the Daily Telegraph last June, was his having delivered a fatwa banning all “decorative statutes of living beings”. This fatwa reportedly led to a black-clad woman screaming “Infidels, Infidels” attacking three statutes in a Cairo museum. Its curator reportedly said that the attacker “had been listening to the mufti and was following his orders”. A spokesman from the Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo was also quoted as saying of the fatwa: “We are seeing an increase of conservative, Islamist feeling.

The Islamisation of Egyptian society is happening from the bottom up. And now

it has reached the middle classes – the doctors, the lawyers”.

Another speaker at this month’s conference was John Esposito, director of the Prince Waleed Bin Taleel Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Although not himself a Muslim, he has in the past served as a consistent apologist for many Muslims extremists, as I pointed out in a recent posting.

No less disappointing is it that the government should have turned to Dr Ataullah Siddiqui for advice on how Islam and British imams should be taught here, given reported close links between the rector of the institution where he works, the Markfield Institute of Higher Education, and the Pakistani Islamist party, Jamaat e-Islami of which the rector at Markfield is vice-president. Another ex-lecturer there is Azzam Tamimi, head of the Muslim Association of Britain, whose own version of Islam and views are very bit as extreme as those of the Muslim Council of Britain.

Furthermore, last year the Charity Commission ordered the charity that established and controls the Markfield Institute to sever all its links with two of its trustees because of their links to violent extremist Muslim organisations.

Yet this is the British government’s view of moderation, and it is to these people that it is turning to combat Islamist extremism. We are still on the fast track to cultural suicide. *Definition of ‘dhimmi’ from the Dhimmi Watch site: Dhimmis, ‘protected people,’ are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur’an’s command that they ‘feel themselves subdued’ (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, is part of the law that global jihadists are laboring to impose everywhere, ultimately on the entire human race.

The dhimmi attitude of chastened subservience has entered into Western academic study of Islam, and from there into journalism, textbooks, and the popular discourse. One must not point out the depredations of jihad and dhimmitude; to do so would offend the multiculturalist ethos that prevails everywhere today. © Melanie Phillips 2007; www.melaniephillips.com