Investigate July 09

NO ONE GETS CLOSER

INVESTIGATE July 2009:

Rankin Breaks Silence FIRST INTERVIEW

Christine Rankin • Apprenticeships • The Deadliest Caveman

The Young Apprentice This could save the NZ economy

The Deadliest Caveman A special report

Issue 102

The Blame Game What’s really behind the economic collapse?

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Contents 28 FEATURES

36

28 The Rankin Interview

She wants a Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand’s social problems, and thinks the anti-smacking laws are chilling freedom of speech. IAN WISHART interviews the new Families Commission member about her baptism of fire and vision for the future

36 The Young Apprentice

In the not so distant past, apprenticeships were the engine-room of the New Zealand economy, giving work and skills to idle hands and providing employers with a critical pathway to business growth. But now apprenticeships are a politically-correct shadow of what they once were, as TREVOR LOUDON reports

44

44 Barbarians At The Gates

Many of us have blamed the economic collapse on the greed of bankers and investors, but ALAN GALLAGHER is worried a growing contempt for capitalist excesses has opened the door for a bloodless socialist takeover in the West

50 The Deadliest Caveman

50

He’s holed up in a cave on the Afghan border somewhere, but Osama bin Laden still has the power to spook Obama and increase world tensions. PHILIP SMUCKER has been in Afghanistan

56 Prince Of Persia

Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, but like that other failed state Pakistan, Iran has erupted in bloodshed in the wake of controversial presidential elections. A UPI photo team captured these images

56

18

Editorial and opinion 06 Focal Point

Volume 9, Issue 102, ISSN 1175-1290

Editorial

08 Vox-Populi

The roar of the crowd

16 Simply Devine

Miranda Devine on chk-chk-boom

18 Mark Steyn

Obama’s Ode to Arabia

26

20 Global Warning

Joe Fone on climate change

22 Eyes Right

Richard Prosser on the Greens

24 Line 1

Chris Carter on Whine-flu

26 Soapbox

Martin Hanson on Peak Oil

Lifestyle 14 Poetry

Amy Brooke’s poem of the month

66 Money

Peter Hensley on estate planning

68 Education

Amy Brooke on the NCEA

70

70 Science

The end of the world in 2012

72 Technology

Intelligent cellphones

74 Sport

Chris Forster on the Warriors

76 Health

NZ EDITION Advertising sales@investigatemagazine.com Contributing Writers: Melody Towns, Selwyn Parker, Amy Brooke, Chris Forster, Peter Hensley, Chris Carter, Mark Steyn, Chris Philpott, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, Claire Morrow, James Morrow, Len Restall, Laura Wilson, and the worldwide resources of MCTribune Group, UPI and Newscom Art Direction Design & Layout

Tel: +64 9 373 3676 Fax: +64 9 373 3667 Investigate Magazine PO Box 188, Kaukapakapa Auckland 0843, NEW ZEALAND AUSTRALIAN Editor Ian Wishart Advertising sales@investigatemagazine.com Tel/Fax: 1-800 123 983 SUBSCRIPTIONS Online: www.investigatemagazine.com

By Phone: Australia 1-800 123 983

NZ 09 373 3676

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84 Food

88 Pages

Investigate magazine Australasia is published by HATM Magazines Ltd

78 Alt.Health Toxic plastic

80 Travel

In search of Sherlock Holmes James Morrow on TV chefs Michael Morrissey’s winter reads

92 Music

Chris Philpott’s CD reviews

94 Movies

Up, Land of the Lost

84

Heidi Wishart Bozidar Jokanovic

All content in this magazine is copyright, and may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. The opinions of advertisers or contributors are not necessarily those of the magazine, and no liability is accepted.

We take no responsibility for unsolicited material sent to us. Please enclose a stamped, SAE envelope. Inquiries in the first instance should be made via email or fax.

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> focal point

Editorial

How the mighty fall

O

nce upon a time, back when I was a cadet journalist and avoiding using CFLs in areas frequented by children, infants, pets we all drove horses and carts into town, Consumer magazine or pregnant women?” was an icon: must read material from people who feared It took Consumer a month to give any kind of response, with no manufacturer or lobby group.

Deputy CEO David Naulls telling us: Indeed, my first official work experience was at Consumer maga“We have been aware of the safety issues connected with CFLs zine, under the tutelage of David Russell who had just then taken for some time and based on the current research evidence see over from the legendary Dick Smithies. no reason not to continue to recommend them. We do take the Opening the latest Consumer magazine however to browse its issue of the mercury in the bulbs seriously and have called for a major test of CFL energy saver light bulbs, I searched in vain for national recycling and disposal system to be implemented by the any mention of the toxic mercury vapours emitted when the silly government. things break. But there was nothing. Instead, the article seemed “We also think the warnings about not using standard CFLs like a throwback to the bad old days of Helen’s Nanny State, where with dimmers should be much more prominently displayed on Consumer’s Sue Chetwin was admonishing us in her “we know the bulbs’ packaging. best” tones to purchase CFL bulbs and save the planet.

“We are aware of the public concern about the risks posed by Consumer’s failure to actually run a safety test on these light bulbs accidental exposure to mercury vapour from broken or damaged is a travesty and a disservice to anyone who’d actually paid for a CFLs and are currently discussing with a third party a test of Consumer subscription. residual mercury vapour levIt’s not as if Consumer els from broken CFLs. This As a responsible, independent hasn’t been on notice for test will include a range of nearly a year, because here’s products available for sale in organization Consumer needs to be New Zealand,” Naulls told what we emailed Chetwin after that magazine’s last Investigate. better briefed than the Government ‘advertisment’ for Labour’s Well, look as hard as you CFL policy: like at the latest Consumer “As a responsible, indepen- and industry spin you’ve been given magazine, and you won’t find dent organization Consumer the scientifically proven risks needs to be better briefed than the Government and industry spin of mercury poisoning from a broken CFL bulb mentioned at all. you’ve been given.

It’s been nearly a year. It’s not actually that hard to buy a box of “Your web reference alludes to “alarmist” media stories about bulbs and smash them in a sealed room, whilst measuring the the mercury in CFLs. I presume you haven’t read the 21 page, fully mercury in the air. Instead, Consumer sweeps the most dangerreferenced, special report in Investigate this month. ous aspect of CFL lights right under the carpet, apparently hop“For Consumer to be encouraging the use of CFLs in the light ing its readers won’t notice. of emerging US safety data is a travesty.

Here’s some news: perhaps Consumer readers should be buy“I’ve attached the relevant article in PDF form, and am seeking ing the only magazine in the country with the cojones to tell it formal comment from Consumer on whether it stands by its pub- like it really is. lic statement of 30 July that consumers should migrate to CFLs Smart people read Investigate. Enough said, really. for home usage, in light of the Maine DEP and Brown University studies of 2008?

“Is Consumer’s confidence in the MfE’s advice shaken by the discovery that until Investigate drew attention to the issue, MfE was unaware of the Maine DEP or Brown University studies?

“Is Consumer aware that California, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine have now issued warnings about CFL breakages in homes, and that they recommend removal and destruction of carpets if a bulb breaks in a carpeted room, and that homeowners consider INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

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> vox populi

Communiques The roar of the crowd

THEY CALL HIM SAINT PETE NOWADAYS… Whilst waiting in a doctor’s surgery (why are they never on time?)

I browsed through the pile of magazines and picked up the May issue 2007, where an article by Mr Peter Hensley absorbed me.

I was much impressed with his foresight in predicting with such clarity the present economic downturn, whose ripple out effects we have yet to feel.

I wonder how many people have heard this voice in the wilderness? I wish to commend him on his tremendous foresight and to your magazine – which printed his article – a belated thank you.

J McGuire, Whangarei PS How come all the people best qualified to run the world are driving taxis, cutting hair or writing feature articles?

A POLITICAL SMACKDOWN John AhmedinaKey is a faithful disciple of his Iranian Master: the ‘smack’ of firm government requires total disrespect of the people’s will. He goes still further by stating in advance that he will ignore the result of the referendum.

In so doing he is already acknowledging that the referendum will result in a hefty “No” vote so he makes a point of emphasising its purely ‘consultative’ nature.

John AhmedinaKey, like Helen AhmedinaClark before him, has dictatorial powers. These were not conferred upon him by us, the people, but by the disreputable, moth-eaten thing that calls itself “parliament”. That thing has usurped the sovereignty of the people for too long. We must fumigate it.

Realising how contemptible is its claim to “sovereignty” over us, it has thrown us the absurdity of “consultative” referendums.

In Switzerland *all* referendums are, by definition, binding. Why else have them?

Yet even this weak apology for a referendum is a tiny glimmer of real democracy. Whichever way we vote, let us all fan this little flame into something much greater.

Dominic Baron, Upper Hutt

WHY THE ANTI-SMACKING LAW SHOULD BE REPEALED There are three reasons why the anti-smacking law should be repealed. First and foremost, it is Fascist and Orwellian in purpose and effect; second, it is unnecessary and therefore redundant as a measure to combat child abuse; and third, in its present incarnation it is riddled with logical problems and is self-contradictory.

The fundamental and most worrying problem with the antismacking law is that it is by its very nature Fascist and Orwellian INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

in purpose and effect. The Nazis used this method in Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s. Drive a wedge between parents and their children and you have power over both generations. Tell the young that the State is on their side, and mummy and daddy will retreat into silent compliance. This is a form of State-terror to keep the ordinary citizens contained.

The law is also totally unnecessary. If the aim of the law is to make a difference to child abuse, then, by their own admission, some at least of the supporters of the law have conceded that it is not required. It could also be argued that it is counter-productive.

First, let us deal with the canard that the revised Section 59 does not criminalize parents for using a so-called “light smack”.

Proponents of this argument justify their claim on the basis that so far there has not been a deluge of prosecutions, and therefore those parents do not end up in Court. But this is nothing to the purpose. The law explicitly says that smacking a child for the purposes of correction or discipline is a criminal offence. The fact that an individual might not be prosecuted does not change this. The use and possession of marijuana is similarly a criminal offence, but not every offender is prosecuted. This does not make it any less of a criminal offence. Its criminalization drives users underground and in fear of the State.

For example, Ann Mason, the wife of Jim Mason (no relation) who was recently convicted for hitting his son, said in a TV One Sunday documentary on 24th May that she and her husband are now taking care at home to keep all their children quiet lest any of their neighbours suspect them of child abuse. She said that they had moved house, and were now “cosseted” and trying to ensure that the public image they give is not misconstrued as being abusive.

The second defence for this claim is that the Police (ostensibly) have discretion in the law not to prosecute if the offence is regarded to be “so inconsequential that there is no public interest in proceeding with a prosecution.” But this begs the very question as to what the term “inconsequential” refers to and how it is to be interpreted by both the Police and the Courts. (It may even be that it is only the Police that are meant to decide what that term means, giving yet more power to the Police. This raises the question of whether we are turning our Police into a forerunner of our own Gestapo.)

There is also a logical problem with the term “inconsequential”.

If a parent uses a smack for the purpose of correction or discipline, then, by definition, the smack is intended to be consequential.

Accordingly, the Police would be obligated under the law to prosecute. On the other hand, if the term “inconsequential” applies to the level of physical harm inflicted, then the Police, by their

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own admission, do not need this law, and therefore the revised Section 59 is redundant.

For example, in the case of the other Mr. Mason the Police were quoted by the news media as saying that they would have prosecuted the (alleged) offender even without this law. Hence, the revised Section 59 is unnecessary in order to combat child abuse.

On the other hand, if the term “inconsequential” hangs on the psychological and emotional harm to the child, then we have a real hornet’s nest. If a parent is prosecuted for using a light smack then the question arises as to the psychological damage that such intervention by the State will have on the relationship between child and parent. If a parent is abusive then this question may be moot since it might be argued that the psychological damage has already been done, and the State should intervene to protect the child.

However, if the parent is good-enough but (arguably) imperfect, then the potential for psychological damage is both manifest and profound, and will almost certainly take years to heal.

The other logical problem with sub-section (4) of Section 59 is the term “public interest” as in the Police have discretion if “there is no public interest in proceeding with a prosecution”. What does public interest mean and how is it to be defined and by whom? It could be argued that since Parliament, which passed the revised Section 59 by an overwhelming vote of 113-8, has determined that smacking is now a criminal offence, then it follows that Parliament has determined that smacking of children is not in the public interest.

If one accepts this argument then one is logically obligated to accept the conclusion that it would be contrary to the public interest for the Police not to prosecute each and every allegation (provided, that is, there is enough evidence to warrant a prosecution).

In other words, the Police would be obligated to prosecute each and every case, and hence the clause giving the Police so-called discretion is revealed to be an empty gesture.

Another most serious worry is the question of to what extent children are being turned into informers. Are the nation’s children being taught that smacking is not okay, and they should tell on mummy and daddy if they are smacked? If so, this is a veritable minefield of psychological and emotional trauma that may take years to unravel for the victims.

But let me make my position on smacking, as opposed to the revised Section 59, as clear as I can. I am opposed to all (and I mean ALL) forms of oppression. I believe that oppression is degrading and detestable. But all forms of oppression are not equal. Some forms of oppression are more equal than others (as Major might have put it).

Fascism is worse than smacking. Big Brother (or Big Sister) is worse than the use of a light smack by a good-enough parent for the purposes of correction or discipline. The law is the ass here and it certainly ain’t no parent.

I also draw a very clear distinction between beating and smacking. Tapu Misa, in her column in the NZ Herald of 25th May, cites the story told by Jill Proudfoot of the boy whose father was fined for cruelty to the pet dog, yet the boy’s own experience of being abused by his father went untouched by the authorities. The fault here lies with the agencies of the State who already had manifest power and authority under the law to respond properly, but they failed. The law is not the ass here. If I had been in charge things would have gone very differently.

If we, as a civilization, want to make our way to a position in which the use of smacking becomes literally unthinkable (and I 10 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

believe that is a laudable aim), then the way to go is not to criminalize good-enough adult citizens in their role as parents. We (the self-appointed elites) should employ empathy, care, and teaching (of a non-condescending sort), and not terrorize otherwise well-meaning if imperfect parents for doing what our civilization expects of them, which is to raise their children to be fully-formed young adults.

Smacking will not traumatize a child whose parents are loving and respectful, but the brutality and terrorism of the State will cause untold damage to our entire civilization. The revised Section 59 should go.

Ted Mason, Registered Clinical Psychologist, Auckland

AN AUSSIE PERSPECTIVE Thanks for your book, purchased yesterday, now at page 119. Tell me how we can set up a slush fund, to send every politician in Australia and New Zealand a copy of this book. We need a sponsor.

About 20ks should do as only half of them can read.

Is there a comic/picture version to come, could help?

I have always had my doubts about “Global Warming” experts and your radio interview with Michael Smith (Brisbane 4BC) convinced me that there must be more we can do to make people aware of the garbage we are being forced to listen to.

Bruce Fleming, Queensland

WAKE UP AND SNIFF THE AIR CON Your book is fantastic. For 20 years of my life I worked for the US Government’s Antarctic Programme, made several visits to Antarctica. I am not a scientist but was trained in logistics etc.

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The specimen is called DICRODIUM ODONTOPTEROIDES !! (means fork toothed fern) Personally I feel (stuff them all bar six and we will keep them for pall bearers) including Al Bore I also loved Absolute Power, and I while I feel the Government won the election, it hasn’t even got into battle positions to dismantle the bureaucracy who are the Absolute powerholders.

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DON’T LISTEN TO OLD NICK I just finished your amazing book.Air Con and trust that it continues to hold its deservedly high rating.

I note that Nick Smith recently gave an opening address to the New Zealand Climate Change Centre Conference in Wellington.

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Thank you for your brilliant expose of this global warming fairy tale. I have been interested in weather patterns ever since my childhood as my father, for a considerable number of years, was Feilding’s official weather recorder, and I have carried on to date.

I have often been asked if I can find any pattern in the weather, and my simple answer has been “No”, although I have noted that sun spot activity does have a considerable bearing.

It was not until 1989 when I read “El Nino” that I discovered what a tremendous effect it had, not only on the Pacific Rim, but on the whole world. If Hitler had listened to his meteorologists, instead of his astrologers, the story of Europe could have been very different.

Then I got “The inconvenient Truth”, which must be one of the biggest money raising ‘cons’ the world has ever seen. When I was in the UK in May of this year, I heard that if it was screened in schools, the teachers had to explain that it contained at least 35 untruths!

It was not until I read your book that I heard about George Soros, and I followed that up by checking in Google. I think it would take a week to read what Google has to say about him!

How do you get people to listen? I have so far purchased two copies of Air Con, which are doing the rounds of my children and friends. I have written to the PM John Key and Nick Smith.

In John Key’s case he says he hasn’t time to read it, so I have suggested that he gets an impartial member of his staff to do so, and give him a precis.

Thank you for being an investigative writer who investigates!

Alan L. Mason, MNZM, via email

AIR CON I would like to commend you on a book that is long awaited and refreshingly honest, myself to a healthy critic of all this misconstrued rhetorical nonsense.

I would like to point out that this planet, as the only planet with life I might add, has its own self regulating mechanism for warming and that is the majestic hurricane, cyclone, tornado or waterspout.. These are the natural “phenomena” responsible for winding all that carbon dioxide, methane and whatever back into the sea, and will continue to do so as long as the planet keeps spinning. Have you ever watched the weather pattern after one of these events? It cools quite considerably and this happens every time.

Thank you for pointing out to the largely unwitting public this new religion, very pagan in the true sense along with all its sun worshipers and mother worshipers – what they are really empowering is the German led E.U, hell bent on world domination as always.

Mark Stead, via email

THE BAIN CASE As a middle-aged male, when I heard that Robin Bain had a full bladder on autopsy, I thought that it eliminated him from suspicion. The prosecution should have focused on that! It beggared belief that Robin could have walked from his caravan, killed 4 people, fought and had to strangle one of them (I imagine I might have wet my pants at this point), then typed a brief message on the computer for David and then shot himself, all the time with that first-thing-in-the-morning-full bladder. Someone of his generation would also more than likely have handwritten their final words. Is there a forensic pathologist out there who can tell me it is common for the suicidal to hang onto their bladders and do all these deeds?

Ken Hutchison, Tauranga 14 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

Poetry Is it poetry? Then send submissions to Poetry Editor Amy Brooke:amy@investigatemagazine.tv Consuela, my love Consuela, Consuela, Consuela, my love, Remember our valley, the clear sky above.

I remember that autumn, That fall in the south; The flight in your eyes, The fear in your mouth; Your concern, lovely bird, That I’d sicken and die, Should you wing on your way, Given freedom to fly.

I was awed by your spirit, In love with your wings; And said of your fears, “Don’t consider such things!

Your hopes must be fertile, Your nefesh set free; So be not afraid To fly far from me.”

Consuela, Consuela, Consuela, my love, Remember our valley, the clear sky above.

In response, you delivered An exquisite blow That shaped down the grain How the future might go: You wanted my child!

I was struck to the bone.

You had shattered to sharpness The starkness of stone.

You had opened a clearing Beneath the bright sky, Where I’ll not knap alone To no point ‘til I die.

A clearing for planting The hopes of the heart in, As new autumns loom For us two to part in.

Consuela, Consuela, Consuela, my love, Remember our valley, the clear sky above.

Paul Monk

Letters to the editor can be posted to: PO Box 302188, North Harbour, North Shore 0751, or emailed to: editorial@investigatemagazine.com

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 15

> simply devine

Miranda Devine

Chk-chk-boom sums up sensation

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hey may be on different planets, socially, but Australia’s her catchy phrase into “chk-chk-boom”, which looks as good as chk-chk-boom girl and Britain’s frumpy singing sensation it sounds. It helped, too, that she was pretty, and typified the gen Susan Boyle are two bookends of the same phenomenon. Y attitude of not taking anything seriously.

They share an epochal moment in the history of human She also was engaging in the increasingly popular sport of “punsocial interaction, and can be seen as symbols of the new form of king the news” – tricking the media into publishing a fake story, collective intelligence that is sweeping the world, harnessing the which made her a hero for all the bloggers forever predicting the knowledge, social contacts and computing power of up to 1.5 bil- death of the mainstream media. lion people who are connected to the internet.

It was a perfect storm, picked up by individuals who spread it The chk-chk-boom girl, 19-year-old Clare Werbeloff, aka Clare across their social contacts with impressive speed. the Kings Cross bogan, became an instant web sensation after “Fully Sick Chk-Chk-Boom” T-shirts were for sale online three claiming to be a witness to a shooting in the Cross. days after Werbeloff’s utterances. Four separate people created “There were these two wogs fighting,” she told a Channel Nine variations, using the website Zazzle.com to design and manufaccameraman filming the aftermath of a man being shot twice in ture the T-shirts in 24 hours, and place them, with photograph, the knee. for sale on its website.

“The fatter wog said to the skinnier wog: ‘Oi bro, you slept with Similarly, Susan Boyle, the 47-year-old unemployed Scottish my cousin, eh’. And the other one said: ‘Nah man, I didn’t for shit, ugly duckling who has just made the final of Britain’s Got Talent, eh’, and the other one goes: ‘I became an instant internet will call on my fully sick boys, sensation. Her rendition There are lots of explanations for last month of I Dreamed A eh’. And then they pulled out a gun and just went chk-chkDream from Les Miserables why Boyle struck such a chord, not has been viewed more boom!” Werbeloff demonstrated a pistol firing. As she than 100 million times on least, perhaps, being a neat moral admitted this week, she never YouTube. saw the shooting.

It would seem impossibly to her story which resonates in “I didn’t think anything hokey if it were the climax would come out of it,” she of a Hollywood movie. But these superficial times – that you told A Current Affair. “Aussies because the fairytale is real, love to muck around with each Boyle and her fuzzy eyeshouldn’t judge a person by other. They love jokes, and I brows so guilelessly, unfashjust thought Australia would ionably authentic, and the their appearance get it.” reaction of the audience so They more than got it. Once warm and spontaneous, the the raw footage was uploaded from Nine’s website onto YouTube, video elicits a wave of emotion. A woman who says she has “never it was unstoppable, as hundreds of thousands of people emailed been married, never been kissed” is loved by millions. links to each other and uploaded their own “video responses” There are lots of explanations for why Boyle struck such a chord, and dance mixes. not least, perhaps, being a neat moral to her story which resonates By yesterday Werbeloff’s 30-second ad lib had been seen more in these superficial times – that you shouldn’t judge a person by than 500,000 times on YouTube. The social media monitoring their appearance. service BuzzNumbers said there were more than 40,000 online Whatever the reasons, the collective intelligence of the interconversations about it – the equivalent of $200,000 in advertis- net decided Boyle and Werbeloff were the two people on the ing revenue. planet most worthy of listening to. But so far no one has figured Werbeloff had become instantly, globally famous on a scale that out how to tap into that awesome power and make much money would have been unthinkable even five years ago. But why her? out of it.

She was audacious, quick-witted, verbally dexterous, politically In a seminal 1995 article, The Power Of Us, about mass collaboincorrect and inventive. A Nine caption writer had translated ration on the internet, Robert Hof wrote in Business Week that the 16 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

“shared knowledge, social contacts, online reputations, computing power” of the then nearly 1 billion people online worldwide made them a “collective force of unprecedented power. For the first time in human history, mass co-operation across time and space is suddenly economical.” And possible.

MIT even has a Centre for Collective Intelligence, founded in 2006, whose basic research question is: “How can people and computers be connected so that – collectively – they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?”

Its researchers have explored the motivations of people who take part in “web-enabled collective intelligence systems”, such as Wikipedia, Google, or YouTube. They found three motivators:

money, love and glory. The new development, which has emerged in recent years, is that love and glory feature much more heavily in collective intelligence systems than money.

Those millions of people who spread the Boyle and Werbeloff videos around must have been motivated by love, which, MIT says, can take many forms: intrinsic enjoyment of an activity, the opportunities to socialise with others, or the feeling they are making the world a better place.

In his 1994 book The Wisdom Of Crowds, James Surowiecki said “under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent and are often smarter than the smartest people in them”. Maybe we can also collectively be nicer. devinemiranda@hotmail.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 17

> straight talk

Mark Steyn Obama bows to Arabia

A

s recently as last summer, General Motors Corp.’s fil- condescension. In his Cairo speech, he congratulated Muslims on ing for bankruptcy would have been the biggest news story inventing algebra and quoted approvingly one of the less bloodcurof the week. But it’s not such a very great step from the dling sections of the Koran. I found myself recalling that moment unthinkable to the inevitable, and by the time it actually in the long twilight of the Habs- burg Empire when Crown Prince happened, the market barely noticed and the media were focused Rudolph and his mistress were found dead at the royal hunting on the president’s “address to the Muslim world.” lodge at Mayerling – either a double suicide or something even As it happens, these two stories are the same story – snapshots, more sinister. Happily, in the Broadway musical version, instead at home and abroad, of the hyperpower in eclipse. It’s been a long of being found dead, the star-crossed lovers emigrate to America time since anyone touted GM as the emblematic brand of America and settle down on a farm in Pennsylvania.

– what’s good for GM is good for America, etc. In fact, it’s more My old comrade Stephen Fry recently gave an amusing lecemblematic than ever: Like GM, the U.S. government spends ture at the Royal Geographical Society in London on the popular more than it makes and has airily committed itself to ever more Americanism “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade” – or, unsustainable levels of benefits. GM has about 95,000 workers if something’s bitter and hard to swallow, add sugar and sell it. That’s but provides health benefits to a million people. It’s not a busi- what the president did with Islam: He added sugar and sold it. ness enterprise, but a vast welfare plan with a tiny loss-making The speech nevertheless impressed many conservatives, including commercial sector. As GM goes, so goes America?

Rich Lowry, my esteemed editor at National Review, “esteemed ediBut who cares? Overseas, tor” being the sort of thing the coolest president in history one says before booting the Like GM, America is “too big to was giving a speech. Or, as the boss in the crotch. Rich official press release headlined thought the president sucit on the State Department fail.” So it won’t, not immediately. It ceeded in his principal task: Web site, “President Obama “Fundamentally, Obama’s Speaks To The Muslim World will linger on in a twilight existence, goal was to tell the Muslim From Cairo.” world, ‘We respect and value sclerotic and ineffectual, declining you, your religion and your Let’s pause right there: It’s interesting how easily the civilization, and only ask into a kind of societal dementia words “the Muslim world” that you don’t hate us and roll off the tongues of liberal murder us in return.’ “ secular progressives who would choke on any equivalent referBut those terms are too narrow. You don’t have to murder a guy ence to “the Christian world.” When such hyperalert policemen if he pre-emptively surrenders. You don’t even have to hate him if of the perimeter between church and state endorse the former but you’re too busy despising him. The savvier Muslim potentates have not the latter, they’re implicitly acknowledging that Islam is not no desire to be sitting in a smelly cave in the Hindu Kush sharing merely a faith, but a political project, too. a latrine with a dozen half-witted goatherds while plotting how to There is an Organization of the Islamic Conference, which blow up the Empire State Building. Nevertheless, they share key already is the largest single voting bloc at the United Nations and goals with the cave dwellers – including the wish to expand the is still adding new members. Imagine if someone proposed an boundaries of “the Muslim world” and (as in the anti-blasphemy Organization of the Christian Conference that would hold sum- push at the United Nations) to place Islam, globally, beyond critimits attended by prime ministers and presidents and vote as a cism. The non-terrorist advance of Islam is a significant challenge bloc in transnational bodies. But, of course, there is no “Christian to Western notions of liberty and pluralism. world”: Europe is largely post-Christian, and, as Mr. Obama Once Mr. Obama moved on from the more generalized Islamobizarrely asserted to a European interviewer last week, America is schmoozing to the details, the subtext – the absence of American “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” Perhaps we’re will – became explicit. He used the cover of multilateralism and eligible for membership in the OIC. moral equivalence to communicate, consistently, American weakI suppose the benign interpretation is that, as head of state of ness: “No single nation should pick and choose which nations the last superpower, Mr. Obama is indulging in a little harmless hold nuclear weapons.” Perhaps by “no single nation” he means 18 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

Audience members listen as U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Cairo on June 4, 2009.

President Obama called for a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims.” /UPI Photo/Chuck Kennedy/White House

the “global community” should pick and choose, which means the U.N. Security Council, which means the Big Five, which means that Russia and China will pursue their own murky interests and, in the absence of American leadership, Britain and France will reach their accommodations with a nuclear Iran, a nuclear North Korea and any other psycho-state minded to join them.

On the other hand, a “single nation” certainly has the right to tell another nation anything it wants if that nation happens to be the “Zionist entity”: As Hillary Rodham Clinton just instructed Israel in regard to its West Bank communities, there has to be “a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions.” No “natural growth”? You mean, if you and the missus have a kid, you’ve got to talk gran’ma into moving out? To Tel Aviv or Brooklyn or wherever?

At a stroke, the administration has endorsed the view of “the Muslim world” of those non-Muslims who find themselves within what it regards as lands belonging to Islam: The Jewish and Christian communities are free to stand still or shrink, but not to grow. Would Mr. Obama be comfortable mandating “no natural growth” to Israel’s million-and-a-half Muslims? No. But the administration has embraced commitment of “the Muslim world” to one-way multiculturalism, whereby Islam expands in the West but Christianity and Judaism shrivel remorselessly in the Middle East.

And so it goes. Like GM, America is “too big to fail.” So it won’t, not immediately. It will linger on in a twilight existence, sclerotic and ineffectual, declining into a kind of societal dementia, unable to keep pace with what’s happening and with an ever more tenuous grip on its own past but able on occasion to throw out impressive words, albeit strung together without much meaning: empower, peace, justice, prosperity – just to take one windy gust from the president’s Cairo speech.

There’s better phrase-making in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, in a coinage of Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Gelb is a sober, judicious paragon of torpidly conventional wisdom. Nevertheless, musing on American decline, he writes, “The country’s economy, infrastructure, public schools, and political system have been allowed to deteriorate. The result has been diminished economic strength, a less vital democracy, and a mediocrity of spirit.”

That last is the one to watch: A great power can survive a lot of things, but not “a mediocrity of spirit.” A wealthy nation living on the accumulated cultural capital of a glorious past can dodge its rendezvous with fate, but only for a while. That sound you heard in Cairo is the tingy ping of a hollow superpower.

Mark Steyn is the author of the New York Times best-seller America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 19

> global warning

Joe Fone

A legacy of vested interests

U

nless we announce disasters, no one will listen”, declared regardless of their ideals, their beliefs and their loyalties. Failure to Sir John Houghton, first chairman of the Intergovernmental be seen on the latest bandwagon reciting the trendy new mantra Panel on Climate Change. But ������������������������ Stephen Schneider, lead may translate into lost votes at the next election, especially when author of the IPCC, worried no one would believe them. So the voters are moved by large concerns like “saving the planet”. he advised “We need to get some broad based support to capture There is nothing bigger. Environmentalism is the new surrogate the public’s imagination... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, religion, filling the void left by the collapse of socialism and the make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of decline of Christianity in the West. It is grist for the AGW mill any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right because it allows the public to put the evil eye on a new surrogate balance is between being effective and being honest”.

Devil: CO₂ or Mankind.

Such deceitful statements coming from the IPCC should be For the politicians it is all about votes to remain in power and enough to raise serious doubts about anthropogenic global warm- it takes a brave one to swim against the tide and thumb his nose ing (AGW) even without the abundant physical evidence against at the latest fad. The media on the other hand, fan the flames of the theory. These statements should worry any self-respecting sci- fear by bombarding the uncritical masses with one side of the entist or politician who endorses the theory. They should provoke issue: the side with the more exciting story to tell. This is why intense suspicion of the true agenda of the IPCC. few if any media providers are prepared to publish more than a But they don’t. At least not for the passionately committed token number of articles sceptical of human induced climateand the unsuspecting public. change. To do so would be Why don’t they? The answer tantamount to admitting The carbon cult is fuelled largely there is nothing to worry lies in vested interests and entrenched ignorance, ��������������� eleabout. Such an admission by politicians and the media, both ments that allowed t���������� he carbon would be anathema to the cult to gain such powerful media, like Nature abhorring of whom have vested interests in traction within society. It has a vacuum. It goes against become an unstoppable force, the grain. Runs counter to seeing it advance which is ironic considering the media philosophies. Danger, glaring flaws in the theory of disaster and calamity sell. manmade global warming itself. The problems with the science are Mundane normality does not. legion, yet they go ignored by the media and politicians. Why? Because of this lack, most people might think there are few if The carbon cult is fuelled largely by politicians and the media, any contradictory stories to be had. But a quick trawl through both of whom have vested interests in seeing it advance. But it is the internet would easily disabuse them of that notion. There the politicians who are the more potentially harmful because they are myriad professional web sites and blogs highlighting the have the means to injure a country’s economy and the welfare of weaknesses of the AGW hypothesis – not to mention the many its citizens by introducing damaging legislation. Naturally such books available as well. legislation is sanitized as being in the interests of the environment, Between the politicians and the media, the scientists play piggy but this veneer of concern may be completely synthetic. The in the middle. Motivated by the promise of research grants and problem facing politicians is that they must always appear to the potential kudos that comes from being involved in the latest be fighting the good fight for the good of the public who might scientific fashion, many scientists have made careers out of trying reward them with their vote. The “good fight” of course is whatever to prove what the politicians require and what the media want happens to be the latest hobgoblin seizing the collective mind of to publish. “We ����������������������������������������������������� have a vested interest in creating panic because the fashionably frightened. Today it is manmade global warming, money will then flow to climate scientists”, says Professor John relabelled “climate change” to cope with global temperatures Christy, ����������������������������������������������������� University of Alabama�������������������������������� atmospheric scientist who also going either way, which is itself a subtle admission the theory is contributed to the IPCC. ������������������������������������� Yet the science behind human-induced fundamentally flawed. global warming is so flawed it is amazing all three parties have Politicians must always appear concerned, ready to respond managed to get away with the deception. The pro-AGW scientists to the latest fad irrespective of their personal views on an issue, and Government ministers must know, or at least suspect, that 20 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

Eventually global warming hysteria will subside, but we will leave a strange legacy to future generations to ponder

the science is broken and that AGW is a monumental scam. But they don’t care. That is why they are not affected by conflicting evidence, like global temperatures trending downward for the past decade while CO₂ emissions increased.

This fact alone should give any scientist worth his salt some pause.

But it fails even to dent their pride, let alone their confidence in repeating the AGW myth to an uncritical public. The politicians don’t care while voters are preoccupied by ‘green’ issues and “saving the planet” from plastic shopping bags and incandescent light bulbs, and the scientists don’t care while the politicians are dishing out research grants to ‘prove’ how valid the public’s concerns are.

Truth has nothing to do with it. To the politicians, it’s about power; to the AGW scientists, it’s about funding; to the media, it’s a marketable commodity and to the environmentalists, it’s a religious conviction and a need to impose socialist controls. The only people who care about the truth are the sceptics. But they don’t matter because they are heretics ruining the fun of everyone else. All four

interest groups are like symbiotic parasites feeding off each other while they also support the public’s collective subconscious need for a surrogate Devil to fear. They thrive on the madness because they have vested interests in keeping it alive.� Eventually global warming hysteria will subside, but we will leave a strange legacy to future generations to ponder. Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said, “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections... proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

Joe Fone is a bibliophile, amateur astronomer and avid reader of science, philosophy, science history and ancient history. He studied Classical Greek and ancient history under the late Dr. John L. Moffatt at his regular Sunday night ‘Advanced Classical Greek’ class in the mid eighties.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 21

> eyes right

Richard Prosser True colours

T

he Green Party have elected themselves a new Co-Leader, Rainbow Party, the haven and vehicle of Liberals, academics, and this month as I write. She’s a lawyer by training, a for- gays. So distant is the modern incarnation of the working man’s mer Maori activist, and one-time candidate, for first the Party from its blue-collar origins, that their Leader, Phil Goff McGillicuddy Serious Party, and then the Aotearoa Legalise – for whom I also have very little time – is not-so-euphemistiCannabis Party; so one more Silly Party shouldn’t make much dif- cally referred to as ‘Phil In’, by the back-room power brokers of ference. And with a background like that, her enviro-credentials the Party. Being a heterosexual man, who is actually married, to are obviously impeccable. The environmentalists will be pleased; a woman, and who has children, seems to be anathema to a Party after all, the Green Party is an environmental Party, isn’t it? in which lesbianism appears to have become almost a prerequisite So they claim, and many people appear to believe it. The real- for high office. Goff, as far as they are concerned, is only there as ity, as this writer sees it, is that the Green Party is actually a social- a placeholder, until another more suitably radical feminist type ist Party, and an extreme hard-left Red socialist Party, at that. candidate can be found.

The Green label gives them an air of respectability, and a secure The founders of the Labour Party would be turning in their electoral foundation amongst the young and idealistic of heart, graves could they see what their creation has become; yet people but it doesn’t truly reflect the philosophies or motivations of the still vote for it as if its philosophy were unchanged from the days Parliamentary wing of this ostensibly eco-minded organisation. of miners and muscle.

Politics is like that, as is much of life. Quite often the contents of National, too, have had their share of chameleonic changes what you think you’re buying over the years. The late turn out to be markedly difSir Robert Muldoon, sup Our face is changing, but it is ferent from the picture on the posed arch-Tory, was probtin. Indeed, as one commentaably the most truly socialist mostly still pale. The separatists tor remarked, near the beginPrime Minister this country ning of the US-led invasion has ever had; a man of the among us, the bitter and twisted, of Iraq (Episode Two), you people, a foot-soldier who know the world is a crazy place had seen the trenches, who those who reject part of their own when the best golfer is a black held the nation’s now largely man, the best rapper is a white unrestricted economic reins history and make-up, and who man, the Germans don’t want with an iron Governmental to go to war, and the French grip, and who ran deficits remain stuck in the past, need to are accusing the Americans of upon deficits so that ordibeing arrogant. nary New Zealanders would get over it and let go In truth, I don’t really care not have to suffer the hardwho the Green Party have for ship and privations he had their Co-Leaders. I find the whole concept of such just a wee bit known himself through the Depression. polygamist for my liking. What does concern me is that around Today, under John Key’s leadership, the ever-vocal but little a twentieth of the population – a significant twentieth, in the recognised Blue-Greens have been rewarded with the promise MMP environment – seem to know, or care, so little about the of subsidized home insulation for all, and a cycleway to be built true direction of the Watermelon Party (Green on the outside, the length of the land.

Red on the inside) that they vote for it thinking it’s one thing, So we have the curious paradox of the Green Party actually being when in fact it is very much another. a Red Party, the True-Blue Party being quite a Green Party, and They are not alone. The Labour Party, for whom I have very what should be the Red Party, wearing a Coat of Many Colours. little time, is now a very long way from what were once its essen- At the same time, the Maori Party, which, one could be forgiven tially red Union Movement roots. for assuming, should be a fairly Brown-Pink Party, is actually surFrom being the ideologically True Blue inventors of the far- prisingly Blue, at least in an economic sense. right privatisation doctrine of the 1980s which was Rogernomics, ACT’s Yellow livery may well reflect a philosophy of genuine they have now morphed into something more closely akin to a classical liberalism, though I have my doubts as to the truth of 22 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

the Blueness of their economic policies, to which subject I shall return; and Peter Dunne, perhaps the greatest political chameleon of them all, wears purple these days – though this writer is cynical enough to suggest that this might only be because all the other colours are already taken.

It may be, in fact, that the only honest party political hue of recent years was New Zealand First’s Black and White – and ironically, they and it are no more. Perhaps we do not reward honesty from politicians in this country, or maybe we just don’t like the truth in our faces – fantasy might be the more tantalizing dish.

But I question the Blue credentials of economically right-wing parties because, in my observation, the further to the right one goes, the more red-spectrum the effects of such policies become.

Just as fascism and communism are very much alike in terms of their disregard for the rights and freedoms of the individual, so fascist economics mirrors the communist model, in the way that the small and the weak are rendered helpless, and without recourse to regulation, in the face of overwhelming might.

The deregulators, the privatisationalists, the free marketers; these are the internationalists of the modern era. Hiding behind the label of Globalisation doesn’t change what they are in essence – Communists. They are the enemies of national pride, of the nation state itself. The Reds whom we thought had gone away in the 1980s weren’t hiding under the bed; they were busy selling it off to the corporates, whispering their age-old poison in the ears of a new generation of politicians, stealing sovereignty and public riches in the name of an unmandated and anti-human world-agenda dogma.

Green itself is, of course, the new Black; it is to be feted and can do no wrong. Anything with the words “Eco-something-orother” on the label can be guaranteed to attract praise, acceptance, and plenty of that other Green, ie money – which may explain its recent popularity, at least in part.

And black, whilst it can also still do no wrong, isn’t black at all, but brown, as are both red and yellow, in varying hues. White, on the other hand, is in fact a rather nondescript shade of beige – until you put it in the sun, when it too transforms to brown, via pink and red.

And that is perhaps the most pressing issue facing New Zealand in the early twenty-first century. Of all the challenges before us, the economy, the non-benign-ness of the strategic environment, the rising demand for electricity, the pressures of an aging population and an ever more stretched health system, the greatest threat to our security and stability is down to a matter of colour.

New Zealand is a white nation. There you go, I’ve said it. We are not a multicultural nation or a rainbow nation or even a bicultural nation; we’re white. Predominantly and overwhelmingly, New Zealanders in 2009 are white people. Around 70% of us are still wholly and solely of British and Caucasian European stock. We are browning as a country, to be sure; migration from India and Fiji, refugees from Africa, the steady influx of peoples of Chinese origin are all having their effect, and in parts of the North Island, namely Northland and the East Cape, the proportion of the population who are mostly Maori is at, or approaching, 50%. Auckland, we are told, is a fifth Asian, and in parts of its south, where Pacific Island communities are most prevalent, white folk are the minority.

But equally, in some areas of the South Island, such as Otago and the West Coast, better than 95% of inhabitants are honkies like me.

But whether the more radical of academia or the media’s brownskinned racists like it or not, this does not mean that ‘we’ reject

‘their’ culture. New Zealand is not bicultural by dint of accepting Maori culture alongside ‘pakeha’ culture; we are monocultural by dint of melding the two to create Kiwi culture. The hangi, the haka, the place names, the koha, the tangi, the Taniwha, and a hundred and one other things which came from Maori, are unique to this country and to the mostly white-skinned people who live here.

We accept our uniqueness and we celebrate it. In the same way, the time has come for those who are brown of skin or brown of outlook, to accept that every Maori alive today has a percentage of Pakeha blood in their whakapapa, and that Maori heritage does not give a person any entitlement to different treatment, special privileges, or a greater right to feel aggrieved, than that afforded to those who are not possessed of such lineage.

Our face is changing, but it is mostly still pale. The separatists among us, the bitter and twisted, those who reject part of their own history and make-up, and who remain stuck in the past, need to get over it and let go. It is time to move on, together, as one, as the Treaty always intended us to be.

The sooner that peoples of all colours, however long they have been here and whenever they arrived, can swallow this fact and come to terms with it, the better it will be for all our futures.

And the sooner that politicians of all hues decide to do the same, the quicker they will become of useful service to the rest of us. Some do try, admittedly, though they are in large part voices in the wilderness. Perhaps they truly believe in division, fooling themselves into thinking of it as something good by calling it ‘diversity’; or maybe they are simply cynical, feeding off mistrust and prejudice to further their own ends. But I suspect that the truth is that it will take courage to face this new reality, and most of them lack the stomach for it – they are simply too yellow.

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> line one

Chris Carter Whine flu

I

really must stop watching Parliament on television because, the benches surrounding the increasingly nervous Leader of the not unlike smoking, it clearly is very bad for your health. opposition Phil Goff. He must cringe daily as he struggles to cobble Indeed if another lurking group of busy-bodies are casting together some semblance of an effective opposition from amongst about at the moment for another “awareness” campaign to guar- folk who in civilian life would be struggling to fill in a dole form. antee them secure employment and lashings of tax payer funding, He finds himself, due to the union dominated candidate selection then may I suggest that listening or watching Parliament in session process over which he had little if any control, with probably only will lead to dark depression and eventually to a complete mental a handful of intelligent people that he can actually lead – and even breakdown and therefore deserves their most urgent attention. they are more than likely scheming night and day to fire him out Perhaps at the very least some sort of a censor’s rating system the door and swipe his job. As for the rest, it’s Mr Goff’s unenvishould be mandatory, whereby those of us of gentle disposition and able task to try and pretend that his “team” is a viable alternative modest academic achievement might be forewarned of the long at the next election to Mr Key’s better drilled and infinitely much term effects of exposure to the parliamentary abuse of our native better behaved team currently holding the cup. tongue rarely found outside of a gathering of sailors’ parrots.

Mind you in many respects despite the material that he’s forced The words puerile, ill educated, abusive and even nonsensi- to work with perhaps Mr Goff suffers from some learning diffical cannot really be thought sufficient to even part way describe culties or perhaps some underlying character fault. Fact is that the inane cacophony of sound generated during question time most Kiwis really don’t like unnecessary nastiness and especially or general debate. A listener when it comes from politimight well gather more percians who most of us don’t It’s Mr Goff’s unenviable task tinent information from carehave too much time for in fully listening to the chattering any case. to try and pretend that his “team” of a troop of baboons as tryThe devious and plainly ing to decipher from amongst underhand campaign duris a viable alternative at the next the loud prating and shrieks ing the last election to try of merriment emanating from and portray John Key as those apparently opposing a election to Mr Key’s better drilled and some sort of a rogue and a given speech, leading inevirotter was as dumb a deciinfinitely much better behaved team sion as the Labour Party tably to anything of worth being drowned in a sea of verever made. Yet such is the bal onanism. current state of intelligence within the Labour Caucus at the Facile political point scoring, along with wit more usually found moment that sleaze and grubbiness seems to rule the strategy in a pre school reserved for backward children, now appears to be sessions when it comes to “what the hell are we going to do to the cancer quickly gnawing away at any vestiges we might have unsettle the very cool and collected Prime Minister, and begin to left of our once vibrant and hard fought for democracy. Reasoned stem our haemorrhaging party support”. Well you can see it now debate, spiced with intelligent questions leading to an overall con- can’t you: not blessed with any ability to learn from their previous clusion of some merit, now appears to be completely beyond the mistakes the thicker majority of Labour’s Caucus enthusiastically bulk of our MPs currently seated in the House. cry as one, “lets get some more grub on the Nats then drip feed Certainly there are a few of our representatives who, were they it to our mates in the media and Helen’s your uncle easy as that! not surrounded by party-dominated oafs and slogan-chanters, Worked quite well with Don Brash and best of all it can never be might very well have a number of the answers that we as a country turned around against us as people expect labour Politicians to be have urgently been seeking . The system however has now unfor- right into the seven deadly sins in any case don’t they? Let’s pick tunately devolved to the point where a mere hour of listening to on Christine Rankin for starters, never was a good idea to give Parliament simply confirms that the future of our country has her the job running social welfare, not even a Labourite was too fallen firmly into the grip of brainwashed, party political hacks to damn intelligent ,and worse, is pretty good looking as well. Not whom party loyalty and of course self interest, reigns supreme. a good look for a Labour appointment, time to get our own back What a truly unruly and vapid bunch of cretins mostly inhabit and give the Nats a lot of grief.”

24 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

NZPA / Ross Setford

Couple of weeks later, Caucus meeting... How did the Rankin thing go? “Well apart from our mates at the Herald doing their best to stir things up for us, not too good actually. Bloody public don’t appear to give a toss about Rankin’s private life even after we had our useful fools ring the talk back and write screeds to The Editor, the people just seem to think that she’s smart and probably up to the job!”

Ok, next target then has just got to be Dr Richard Worth; now there’s a guy that should be a pushover to embarrass John Key! Drunken driving, lying in Parliament, false accommodation claims? “No, that and a lot more was us, actually, so naturally when we were the Government we fixed all of that and have moved on.

No this stuff Phil has got on Dr Worth he’s been holding onto for months and she’s a double banger no less. First up is a Labour party chick who reckons she’s got the goods on Mr Worth, better yet she’s an Indian lady that Richard’s said to be a bit partial to and Phil who himself has had a lot of contact with her reckons she’s a real stunner. Even better we have, sticking with the ethnic angle a Korean lady who’s had some experience with laying sexual harassment charges and the like before, is all set to pop along to the coppers and lay one on Mr Worth as well. Now if that little lot doesn’t set the ball rolling nothing will!”

And behold, thus it was for as Phil Goff dripped forth the sleaze

with all the skill of a man with advanced prostate problems, Dr Worth who already had been well in the what-name with John Key over various other misdemeanours wisely decided to hand back his keys to the executive toilet along with his outside of Cabinet job. Of course Dr Worth may well end up suing the complainants for their eye teeth if they are unable to come up with any evidence to back up their claims, and Phil Goff certainly took out the Oscar for the weeks of self righteous outrage that he managed to so masterly display.

And that, folks, has been the major headline emanating from dateline Parliament! Such inconsequential matters as the economy, employment, interest rates and stuff like that have just been left to John Key and friends to sort out as best they may with little assistance from Her Majesty’s loyal opposition. This is a state of affairs that I sincerely hope will not be ongoing for very much longer as, despite our differing political preferences, it’s in everyone’s best interests for there always to be an intelligent and effective opposition in Parliament to keep the other guys honest.

I thought that National did a terrible job in opposition, but in retrospect it was perhaps as a shining light alongside the efforts so far of the rabble shuffling along behind Mr Goff’s tattered banner.

Shape up or ship out Phil, the country deserves much better.

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

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 25

> soapbox

Martin Hanson

W

hen it comes to insurance, most of us work on the principle that it is better to be safe than sorry. We insure our house and car against events that we know could happen. We pay the premium and then forget

Hubbert was ridiculed until, right on cue, the United States oil extraction peaked at the end of 1970. Despite drilling on an epic scale, oil output steadily declined ever since. Within a space of thirty years the United States has changed from the largest oil about it. exporter to the largest oil importer.

Strangely, our logic seems to desert us when it comes to the Hubbert later extended his work to the rest of the world, and really big things, like the survival of our species. Archaeologists concluded that ‘peak oil’, as it has become known, would occur know that the rise and collapse of societies has been a regular fea- by about 2000. Though he was slightly off-target – probably as a ture of human history and that in many cases it was due to the result of the oil crises of the 1970s – the output of conventional over-exploitation of resources. oil has been on a plateau since 2005.

In his book The Open Sea, Sir Alister Hardy chronicled the colEven without the benefit of Hubbert’s work, the warning siglapse of whale populations caused by over-exploitation. He warned nals have been all too obvious to those willing to look. World oil that without restraint by the fishing industry, fish stocks would col- discoveries peaked in 1964. The world’s largest supergiant field, lapse. Half a century later, Hardy’s warnings have proved to be all Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, was discovered in 1948 and though it has too prescient; all over the world, fish stocks are in serious decline. been responsible for nearly half that country’s oil output, it is now The same mistakes are being made with respect to water sup- ‘mature’ (oilspeak for well-past its prime). Since 2002 there has been plies. In many parts of the only one major discovery, a world, agriculture has grown 30 billion barrel find off the After peak, extraction slows to depend on pumping up coast of Brazil. It is in deep groundwater from deep aquiwater and will take at least down remorselessly; what is left fers. For example the Ogallala ten years to bring to maraquifer on which much of ket, and moreover, it would is harder to find and costs more the agriculture on the central be just enough to keep the plains of the United Stated world going for a year, energy to extract depends was formed at the Of the 65 largest oil-proend of the last ice age and takes ducing countries, 54 are thousands of years to refill. past their peak. In 1981 Britain became an oil exporter but in Serious though these issues are, they pale into insignificance 2005 it became an oil importer. In 1955 the world was consumwhen we consider the life-blood of industrial society – oil. If oil ing 4 billion barrels of oil per year and the average discovery was supplies were to suddenly cease, life as we know it would come around 30 billion. Today we are using about 5 barrels of oil for to an end. It is no exaggeration to say that everything we make, every barrel discovered. move, and eat depends directly or indirectly on fossil fuel.

We constantly hear that there are huge quantities still underTake food, for example. Fossil fuels are used to make and run ground. Though this is true, it is dangerously misleading because machinery, to make pesticides and fertilizers, and to transport food it fails to recognize the difference between stock and flow; it’s not from farm to supermarket; in that sense, modern agriculture is a the size of the tank that’s important, it’s the size of the tap. After system for turning oil into food. Whereas traditional farmers get peak, extraction slows down remorselessly; what is left is harder more energy from the food they grow, in modern agriculture the to find and costs more energy to extract. Whereas in Texas in 1930 energy input from fossil fuels is on average ten times greater than you could get 100 barrels of oil for every barrel spent on its extracthe energy in the food produced. tion, the figure now is about 18 and the trend continues downIf the supply of fossil fuel were unlimited, this would be no wards. Throughout the world, the pattern is the same. cause for concern, but of course supplies are finite. The impliWhat about solar energy, wind power and other forms of energy? cations of this were first explored by M. K. Hubbert, a senior The problem is not one of principle, but of timescale. The world petroleum geologist working for the Shell oil company. In 1956 generates about 2 terawatts of electric power, which is equivalent he presented evidence that the United States oil extraction (‘pro- to 2000 large conventional power stations or about a million duction’) would peak by 1970. wind turbines. To replace all the fossil-fuelled power stations with 26 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

Soapbox is an occasional column in Investigate. If you have an issue you’d like to sound off about, email 750 words to editorial@investigatemagazine.com

The wolf at the door

If we are to survive peak oil, we will have to shed many of our most cherished preconceptions. Most of all, we must abandon the notion that material level of consumption is an emblem of success

nuclear plants would require the building of one nuclear power station or 500 wind turbines every week for the next 40 years.

The key point is that as Robert Hirsch noted in a 2005 Report to the United States Department of Energy entitled: Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management, the only way of minimising the potentially disastrous effects of peak oil would be to initiate coordinated measures on a massive scale twenty years before peak.

That window of opportunity passed in the 1980s.

If we are to survive peak oil, we will have to shed many of our most cherished preconceptions. Most of all, we must abandon the notion that material level of consumption is an emblem of success. When Margaret Thatcher declared that “any man riding a bus to work at the age of 26 may count himself a failure”, she

was articulating a view more characteristic of the small boy let loose in a sweetshop than of an adult taking a judicious look at the long term. Our unwillingness to check our addiction to oil can be compared to St Augustine’s prayer: “Lord give me chastity – but not yet”.

The significance of the end of cheap oil is so enormous that our politicians, with their radar screens limited to a three-year time span, seem unable to grasp it. We continue to spend huge sums on roads, while starving the railways of funding. Without oil, it is difficult to see how aviation and the tourist industry it serves, can survive, let alone grow. The sooner we adapt our thinking and our lifestyles, the better our chances of making it into the post-oil world. As the veteran oil geologist Colin Campbell put it: “Deal with reality or reality will deal with you”.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 27

Rankin BREAKS SILENCE

SHE MAY HAVE BEEN DOWN, BUT SHE’S FAR FROM OUT For a moment there it looked grim for new Families Commissioner CHRISTINE RANKIN. Caught in the headlights of an oncoming media road train regarding her personal life and the suicide of a friend. Now, as the dust settles, she talks to IAN WISHART about the events of the past few weeks and her vision for improving families lives in New Zealand 28 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

INVESTIGATE: You’ve been through a fair few media firestorms, but this one must have taken the cake.

RANKIN: Yes, it absolutely did. It was more vicious than anything before and I tried to analyse why it had had such an effect on me and I kept thinking, well, I’m eight years older. Last time they went after me every day for something like two and a half years – and they literally did, that’s the way I lived – and I think I got used to it. Now, I’ve had a relatively quiet life for all that time and suddenly the viciousness of it hit me in a way that shocked me again! I really thought that it was over, and I’d re-established my life and rebuilt it, and suddenly out of nowhere it felt that the hatred was intense.

So yeah, it was a shock and it was harder to get used to, but it’s funny because it only takes a few weeks and you adjust back.

INVESTIGATE: Did you find it ironic that the worldview that brought us ‘free love’ and ‘just do it’ and all the rest, suddenly hammers you by putting you on a pedestal before pulling you down?

RANKIN: I do understand that people do have their views and their values, I utterly understand and accept that. But no one walks in your shoes and I don’t think you owe the nation an explanation

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 29

about why you do something – some things are just too personal.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been on any kind of pedestal, maybe for some people I have – I do have quite a large following which I think the Left hates, but actually they’ve increased that following now, and I don’t think that’s what they meant to do as they tried to destroy me, and they do all the time. I must be a threat, I must be a real threat, and in a way I guess that’s a compliment.

INVESTIGATE: Welcome to the party!

RANKIN (laughing): The terrible price you pay for that is that they will do anything, and I find that astonishing. I’ve always thought that New Zealand was a pretty decent country – I want to believe that, I love it, it’s my country – and the level that the media will now go to…Mind you, do you know a lot of journalists sent me emails and texts apologizing and saying they hated what was happening and they thought we’d reached a new low in journalism?

But also, the Left will do things that the Right have never done and I don’t believe they ever will. They don’t just step over the line, they jump over it by miles.

INVESTIGATE: Well, you look at this whole Richard Worth thing, it started off as a fairly black and white claim, but it’s now very murky – one of the people is a key Labour Party activist and was a candidate – RANKIN: I do think they will go anywhere and do anything to score points, and in a way I think it’s made them look ugly.

INVESTIGATE: It’s an application of the Culture Wars – were you ready for that when you volunteered for the Families Commission?

RANKIN: I didn’t expect a reaction like this, I just did not expect it. I’ve done an awful lot of work in the anti child abuse area, and I’ve loved it, it’s a passion. I feel very genuinely about all the things I’ve talked about and I hate to see where our country is going – that we can’t say things or we must say things in a particular way – and everyone comes out to shoot the messenger. The reality is that we’ve got big social problems in this country. I think it can be turned around, and I think we can be saved, but if we don’t do something about it we’re stuffed! That’s the reality of it.

There are courageous people who are fighting the fight, and it doesn’t mean that everything I think is right or that everything that other people think is wrong – it’s not like that for me at all – but we’ve got to talk about the real issues and we don’t, we attack the people all the time.

We’re too busy concentrating on the personality. I’ve always been astonished that a whole nation could be obsessed with whether I wore earrings or in fact what clothes I wore. Other people are allowed to wear whatever they like – as long as it’s frumpy nobody takes any notice.

What does it say about our culture? I do a lot of public speaking and I do talk about our culture and how it holds us back, and I do believe that. Especially if you’ve got conservative views, you must not stand out and be different. If you’ve got liberal views you can literally be anything you want, but if you’ve got conservative views it’s just so much harder to be accepted. And I don’t have any great desire to be accepted, I feel that I have to say what needs to be said and a lot of people won’t say it.

INVESTIGATE: There’s an argument that truth is distilled from debating all sides of an issue. Are we good at that?

RANKIN: No, absolutely not! I do believe that New Zealand has become so politically correct that most New Zealanders sit at home and talk about the truth as they see it, but they are afraid to 30 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

say that publicly. You know, what’s said at a dinner party would never be said in public. The biggest reaction I get is people coming up to me on the street and saying ‘thank you so much for saying it, thank you so much’, and I always say to people, ‘why don’t you say it with me?’, but they’re scared of something and they’re not even sure of what it is. I suppose they’re scared of being crucified, as those of us who speak out often are.

INVESTIGATE: How damaging was the anti-smacking legislation in terms of the psychological effect on the nation?

RANKIN: Huge. I think parents are afraid of how to disci-

Bev Adair, left and Christine Rankin of the For the Sake of our Children Trust join Bob McCoskrie, right of Family First NZ to call for a New Zealand wide response to child abuse, August 2007. NZPA / Nigel Marple

pline their children now, and for me the other side if you like, that doesn’t agree with me, will say that I’m ‘pro abuse’. I’m miles from that, all my work is anti that! But I’ve said, this is a smokescreen for dealing with the real issues. Look, the good parents out there agonise every day about how to bring up their children, and whether they’re doing the right thing, or giving them enough or giving them too much. And now you’ve got parents who are afraid that if they’re seen somewhere, saying something to their child or grabbing its arm, that they’re going to be reported. And they are being reported, that’s the awful thing. Little kids are coming home

at the age of five, they’ve only been at school a couple of days, and they’re telling their parents ‘you can’t smack me’.

Well, that power dynamic is quite distorted isn’t it. I truly believe a smack on the hand on the odd occasion, or a smack on the bottom, why would parents have to be frightened of being able to do that? If you can bring your kids up without that, how fantastic.

I hate any kind of violence because of what I’ve been through, but I don’t think this is violence and that’s the difference I guess – that this is an act of correction usually.

Parents are scared, because of the investigation itself – the police INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 31

coming around, interviewing the children, interviewing you, they have a lot of powers to do that before they ever charge and that’s a hugely traumatic thing for a family. I just don’t think that needs to happen.

INVESTIGATE: It undermines parents permanently, doesn’t it?

RANKIN: Absolutely, and what will the result of all this be?

Everybody talks about all the other methods – well, people use all kinds of methods and there’s the odd occasion you might need to do something else. Isn’t that your right as a parent to be able to do that? But if you step over the line the law should come down on you so hard. We don’t though, our laws are pathetic.

This government is the first to have the courage to face something that I think says everything about violence to our children in this country, and most people know it now: that is, that if you assault a child the maximum sentence is two years, but if you assault a dog it’s three years.

What message does that give the whole country about how we feel about our babies and how important they are? This government is changing that, and I think that signal alone says we’ve finally got a group of people who are taking this seriously.

INVESTIGATE: It’s often said by proponents of the anti-smacking law that there’s been no increase in prosecutions, but I think the bigger issue is not whether it would go to court but whether there would be a big increase in notifications to CYFS. Has there been an increase?

RANKIN: From what I believe, there has been. I haven’t done a lot of investigation into it myself, but Bob McCoskrie who I work quite closely with tells me that there has and that those families are traumatized. It’s quite a regular, ordinary situation now, and they are traumatized. That’s what I don’t get: you get these families who beat their babies either to death or very close to it and often there’s never been any CYFS involvement. Yet a smack on the hand outside Whitcoulls that somebody sees and is reported to police is investigated up hill and down dale.

I have people who tell me that they ring CYFS and they’re told ‘we’re too busy, we can’t get there for six weeks’, but you smack your child and they’re there the next day. What is this about?

What social agenda is that?

INVESTIGATE: Have we become too captured by ‘agendas’, where lobby groups push for legislation almost as a Trojan horse for a bigger issue?

RANKIN: I honestly don’t know, but I don’t understand this legislation. I believe that the power that we had there protected children – it might be that it wasn’t applied often enough but it was still there and it was absolutely adequate. In answer to your question, I don’t know, but I certainly don’t understand this legislation. We have huge issues, why are we not doing things that will at least send very strong signals about dealing with child abuse?

We’re third in the world, we get the bronze medal for murdering our children. We’re right up there in terms of child assault and sexual abuse – what do people think happens to those babies who don’t die?

I look at those little babies who die and I think, first of all, that they’ve been released from a life of hell. Because in every case you look at this is not an ordinarily happy situation where somebody suddenly lost control, this is a chronic life of hell for those little people. But the ones who don’t die are society’s big problem. Not everyone becomes one, but you look at every major crime that’s been committed in this country and they are kids who’ve been abused up hill and down dale. Everything that could happen to 32 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

a child has happened to them, and it affects every single person in this country but we ignore it. We think there’s nothing we can do, but there are loads of things we can do.

INVESTIGATE: But you’ve been abused and you survived?

RANKIN: When I think back to the brutal treatment I suffered at the hands of my father, you can get over the bangs and the bruises and bashes and the wounds, but I have never gotten over what he used to say to me. It becomes the programme in your head about who you are and what you are. How are we going to legislate for what we say to our children? Because that is far more damaging!

I’m not saying the beltings don’t do terrible things to you, they do, but the programme he put in my head about who I am and what I am and whether I was worth anything or not – I have fought it all my life.

INVESTIGATE: What sort of things did your father tell you?

RANKIN: He used to tell me that I was fat, and ugly, and lazy and dumb, that I’d never be anything, that I’d never amount to anything, that I was useless and a ‘little bitch’. And to be called a ‘little bitch’ in the 1960s by your father when swearing wasn’t part of family behavior, was a horrendous thing for me, absolutely horrendous thing. All that ‘dumb, ugly, useless’ stuff, that I was ruining their lives and I was this and I was that – I was a little tiny girl!

Those programmes, believe you me, they get wired into kids’ brains and I think you spend your whole life proving, at least to yourself, that those things aren’t true.

INVESTIGATE: Did you get love from your family as well?

RANKIN: Yeah, I did, I had a very loving mother. My family, my two brothers and a sister, were much older than me and they actually had a much worse time. It was an absolute nightmare and they were very affected by it. But I think that’s why none of us got into major trouble – I mean, you can look at me and say ‘she’s been married four times’, maybe that’s major trouble but it’s also understandable in some ways, I’ve taken a long time to grow up and understand what’s important.

We could have become criminals, my sister and I when we are walking down the street will often say to each other, ‘Isn’t it amazing that we’re here, still standing?’ because we could have been dead and no one would ever have known because we probably would have been buried in the back garden and just disappeared, because that’s how bad it was.

So you can’t legislate for what people say to their children, and I see people on the street saying ghastly things to their children and treating them in a terrible way. That’s going to do amazing damage over a period of time. So no, I’m very imperfect but maybe that’s what gives me the experience.

INVESTIGATE: The flip side to this is that you’ve walked the talk.

RANKIN: I sure have, and I think that’s the biggest threat to those people who have got all the theories but have never lived it. I have lived it, I’ve been through an awful lot in my life, a lot of it of my own making and I don’t blame anyone else for that – I take full responsibility for it – but I’ve learned a heck of a lot along the way, and I know what works and I know what doesn’t.

So I guess that’s what I have to offer – that mine is a real experience and it’s not some theory that they’ve developed along the way somewhere or read in some book, it’s real.

INVESTIGATE: Do you see a contradiction between governments who say on the one hand, ‘thou shalt not physically disci-

pline a child’, yet on the other they will fork out money for high voltage stun-guns or police batons to physically subdue a growing number of people for whom ‘time out’ has failed?

RANKIN: I’ve never thought about it in that extended way.

INVESTIGATE: Well, the reason I ask is that if you go back to the banning of corporal punishment in schools under the Lange administration, back then there were very few expulsions but today expulsions and suspensions have increased hugely because schools have no other way to control increasingly outrageous behavior of the kind you wouldn’t see 20 years ago. So we moved away from physical discipline and the schools can no longer cope, and now the police are saying they can’t cope, and yet the bureaucrats want to go the whole hog and outlaw physical discipline entirely.

There’s a mixed message if you like from the bureaucracy saying that parents can’t smack a child but the state retains the power to zap people.

RANKIN: It’s true, you’re absolutely right. I know that in the last nine years we’ve been living under a programme, a social agenda, a real programme of change. Most New Zealanders, because we are so laid back and we just let things happen, I don’t think understood the implications, but the implications are quite huge. I think we’re starting to see the social problems that come from that kind of liberal attitude.

You need a base in society, an infrastructure. Everybody needs some kind of rules and regulations, and standards and values and

morals. Yet, everything’s alright now, unless I’m the one doing it!

INVESTIGATE: In terms of solving NZ’s problems, what do you see as the key goals?

RANKIN: I think that if we can get our families and children right, and give the best possible base for families to be families and support them in those terms, and give our children every chance, then it’s got to be a much better society.

We can’t go on saying we want all these things, and New Zealand is going to be great, while ignoring that what’s happening in homes across the country every day and every night to those children is appalling.

Our sentencing is pathetic. You abuse a baby but you can go on and have other babies and they’ll stay in your care and CYFS will watch and see what happens – I find it all just appalling.

INVESTIGATE: The move by previous administrations to seriously wind back the Plunket service which once upon a time went into every household with kids for years – that no longer happens, have we lost that ability to pick up problems early on?

RANKIN: Yes, we have. I think Plunket was one of the connecting things that was incredibly helpful and it should be fully funded, and we should have plenty of Plunket nurses because there are so many needs out there. But we’ve also got a welfare system – and I’m not sure how to fix it – but it doesn’t do any of these social problems any good. When the Labour administration was there, and I worked for them for a couple of years, their INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 33

view was extraordinarily liberal about welfare: you could do what you like, you had a ‘right’ to a benefit, do not put any real conditions around these people. We need to be open and honest about all of those issues as well. If you have a welfare system that supports people not participating in society, and families not being strengthened, that’s just a major contribution to us going down the wrong path.

INVESTIGATE: How difficult is it going to be to reach these lost generations of kids and families?

RANKIN: I actually think we need a Commission of Inquiry, because nobody has got all the answers. We now know what the problems are, we now accept – most of us – that we’ve got some fairly major social issues, but nobody knows how to fix it and there isn’t a magic wand.

But I think that if you use your community properly we could have an impact. If you look at the Pacific Island community for example, the Church is a key part of that. Those churches can have an enormous influence on what people do or don’t do, whether it’s what they eat or giving up smoking. Why can’t we address child abuse or family violence? Why can’t we address drug abuse? The OECD and CYFS tell us that drugs and alcohol are the main reason for family violence and family breakdown.

INVESTIGATE: But again, this all comes back to the liberal 60s, it’s obviously been a fairly damaging decade.

RANKIN: Even the alcohol ads, it’s that attitude: it’s not what you’re drinking, it’s how you’re drinking. That’s probably true, but a lot of people who are alcoholics will tell you that abstinence is the only way! It’s not about ‘lessening’ it, it’s about completely taking it out of your life. And I believe it’s the same with drugs.

They had programmes in the last nine years to lessen your drugtaking, not to stop it. Well, research from across the world tells us that doesn’t work, why would we do that?

INVESTIGATE: Well, we’ve done some investigating and so has the Herald, on the fact that the drug conference in NZ at the start of the year was part funded by an outfit allied to George Soros who’s been pushing this ‘harm minimisation’ approach to drug taking that you are talking about. And Soros has been pushing for the legalization of the Afghan heroin trade, presumably because he could make some money out of it if it were legitimized. But Soros has been funding groups around the world including the Drug Foundation in NZ, who in turn have been parroting his ‘harm minimisation’ line.

RANKIN: I think that’s very dangerous, and I’ve never been able to understand why we would go down that path. I’ve talked to hugely frustrated parents who put their kids into programmes thinking it will make a huge difference, and it’s the minimization process. And of course, it doesn’t work. They can’t minimize it, it’s either stop or it’s out of control – there isn’t somewhere in between for most people.

INVESTIGATE: It’s this inability to set a standard.

RANKIN: Yeah. What is wrong with us as a country, we seem to just give everything away. As you said before, ‘everything’s alright’ – well, no it’s not, and for my life I’ve become more and more conservative as time’s gone on because I’ve lived and seen the social issues that are there. All through my social welfare days I experienced it every day. I was out in people’s homes, I was dealing with people that had major problems, and it has made me more conservative, not more liberal.

I haven’t seen any of that [liberal] process work at all. I think we’ve got to care about the people in our society and stand right 34 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

beside them and give them a vision that life can be better, and support them in that. I watched my people in Work and Income change people’s lives when they let them decide what their vision was for their life and what they wanted to achieve, and then stood beside them and did everything in their power to help them start making the steps toward whatever that dream was. And people did astonishing things, absolutely astonishing things. It is possible, it’s happened to me, it’s happened to lots of people I know.

I don’t buy into this idea, ‘we all have to be miserable together’, or ‘we shouldn’t be telling people what to do and we shouldn’t be forcing them’. Why not? Why not?

INVESTIGATE: What kind of support have you had in the past few weeks?

RANKIN: It’s been fantastic. The support has been incredible from people on the street, people I’ve never heard of before. That’s why I say I think I’ve got a new wave of supporters now. But for the family, it was difficult. Kim’s family have never been through anything like this before, they’re very private people. I think they’ve been unbelievably supportive, I just love my new family. I’ve fitted in there very well and we have a wonderful time, but I hate what I’ve put them through.

Kim’s mum is 80, and her and I have clicked immediately, but I hated watching what she went through. Because of course everyone wants for us to be able to tell our side of the story but we will never do that, it is the wrong thing to do.

So it’s very difficult, and your children go through an awful lot. I guess I’ve been a fairly controversial mother and they love me and support me, so all of that stuff has been hard to cope with. But I absolutely believe that if you give in to that – you know, I’m quite a strong woman but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel things. I do, I’m quite an emotional person – but if you give into that, what will happen to the people who don’t have the courage I have?

Because the Left, or whoever it is, then know that if they pick hard enough, put enough pressure on and go after them, go after them, they’ll crack. I can’t do that, I just can’t give in for that very reason, because I know a lot of people find it very hard to speak up. And let’s face it, we need New Zealanders to become far more passionate about this country. I encourage people to march in the streets over the things that they want. We elect a government, and they represent us – we put them there and we trust them and we must hold them to account. And if we don’t like something, we should be saying so. And if we don’t like something in numbers then show that we don’t like it. I think it’s their responsibility to respond to that. But we don’t, we’re so ‘can’t be bothered’, or we don’t want to be seen out there in case something happens to us.

While we’ve got that attitude we won’t be great, we won’t succeed as a nation.

I felt like I became a professional protestor in the last couple of years. I’d never protested in my life and suddenly I was out there protesting about everything. But I do believe you’ve got to be seen standing up for what you believe in.

Our modesty thing is another thing that pulls our culture down and means we feel like we can’t make a fuss about anything, and so does the tall poppy syndrome: you must not be too successful in NZ, God help you if you make money. Well, we need to get over it. We need to grow up and get over it.

FOOTNOTE: At the time of the interview, Rankin had only been in the Families Commission role for a few days. We opted not to ask specific questions about the Commission at this point. n

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36 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

Give Me The Boy… WHY APPRENTICESHIPS MATTER TREVOR LOUDON argues strongly that a move back to traditional apprenticeships will do wonders for NZ’s economy and culture

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 37

A

recent news item should have shocked every New Zealander who cares about this country’s economic and social well-being.

“A $250 million Government job scheme is in line for a shake-up after a report showing that fewer than one in 10 agriculture, forestry and fishing apprentices completes training within five years.

“Education Minister Anne Tolley is unhappy with the findings of a Ministry of Education report, Modern Apprentices Completion Analysis, and is seeking advice on the scheme’s future. The report reveals just one-third of all modern apprentices complete their training within five years.”

Many older readers will remember the day when most non university bound young people left school to enter an apprenticeship or some form of on-the-job training.

Wages were low and conditions were sometimes tough, but the tens of thousands of carpenters, toolmakers, hairdressers, chefs, panelbeaters, seamstresses, motor mechanics, bakers and journalists turned out by the New Zealand apprenticeship system were eagerly sought after, both locally and abroad.

Many of our country’s most successful businesspeople started their careers sweeping workshop floors, cleaning paintbrushes, scrubbing pots and fetching morning teas.

Today most youngsters, not suited for the upper reaches of academia are either pushed into academic training, signed up for expensive training courses on big student loans, shunted into low paid dead end jobs, or dumped onto a benefit.

What went wrong? Why did apprenticeships die? Why does it matter?

In the early 1990s, apprenticeships were sidelined in favour of the “seamless education” approach.

Rather than complete a 3 to 5 year apprenticeship, people were instead “empowered” to train over an indefinite period of time, accumulating “unit standards” which would lead to more flexible qualifications and “prove” competence over a range of areas. This “seamless” system was backed by a student loan scheme which financed trainees into virtually any program that could gain New Zealand Qualifications Authority approval.

This approach, had four major flaws.

Firstly it created a huge and expensive bureaucracy that financially drains trainees and mentally exhausts employers.

Secondly it weakened the commitment to high quality training by both parties – trainer and trainee – that a stable, three to five year apprenticeship fosters.

Thirdly it caused most employers to reconsider their training intake and in many cases to either reduce or stop training apprentices altogether.

Fourthly it created a huge industry of private training establishments, some good, some indifferent, some diabolical. These helped to create a culture where it is almost the norm for a young person to start life with a large student loan.

By the mid 1990s apprenticeship training had almost ceased in New Zealand and has only begun a slight recovery since the introduction of the “modern apprenticeship” scheme, few years ago.

After the 1987 stock market crash apprentice numbers went into deep decline. By 1992 there were only 14,000 apprentices in New Zealand. Today, while there are tens of thousands in some form of “training”, there are only just over 6,000 actual level 3 or 4 apprentices (the equivalent of the old “Trade Cert”).

Many of these are “apprentices” in name only-low level training 38 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 39

courses given a glorified name to make the numbers look better.

Training organization officials would argue that there are more people in training than ever before. That is true, but training should be to serve a purpose not be an end in itself. Numbers do not equal quality. In reality there is still a huge shortage of skilled tradespeople in New Zealand and there are no where near enough apprentices to fill the growing gap.

Conversely, there are thousands of unemployed or under skilled young people languishing on benefits, stuck in dead end jobs or wasting their time and taxpayers money on courses of dubious value. Many of these young people, come from, or are headed to, the “underclass”.

SOCIAL COSTS, SOCIAL GAINS

New Zealand is confronting two significant and interrelated social problems.

One is the skills shortage, that is retarding growth and driving up the cost of production of many commodities, even in a time of recession and growing unemployment. Certainly, a lack of skilled tradespeople will retard any economic recovery.

The other is a slow but surely growing “underclass”, poorly educated, underemployed and trapped in poverty. Major amounts of money are being thrown at this sector and it costs us hugely in terms of crime, welfare and lost potential.

The revival of the traditional apprenticeship system would go a long towards solving both problems. It is simple, it is taxpayer friendly and it has been proven to work in the past.

But why would restoring apprenticeships help the “underclass”, or the rest of us for that matter?

Teenage years have a huge impact on later life. It is then that good work habits, goal setting, teamwork and self responsibility are learned.

Also, it is the time when criminal and anti-social behavior, drug and alcohol abuse usually start. Young people often turn to negative behaviour because they lack purpose and discipline. An apprenticeship provides purpose, discipline and hope for the future.

Apprenticeships also expose teenagers to mature mentors and confidantes who can help guide them through the wild years.

Most young people will accept guidance more readily from older tradespeople than they will from Mum or Dad. Many of our armies of fatherless young males, who fill the ranks of the “underclass” would also hugely benefit from the guidance of older male tradesmen. Many fatherless boys go through school with hardly an ounce of male discipline and guidance. It’s no wonder so many go astray. A three or four year apprenticeship under a strict male tradesman, would be the making of many of these young men.

To be completely “politically incorrect”, I would even argue that the traditionally low wages paid to apprentices are socially beneficial.

Junior apprentices have to budget every cent, the value of money is learned early. Young apprentices almost always live at home, in hostels or in private board. This means more adult supervision for longer and consequently less likelihood of a young person running off the rails.

Once, Christchurch was host to hundreds of young Maori apprentices who lived in marae based hostels. Those former “hostel boys” are now, mostly self employed or highly paid tradesmen.

They are part of the Maori “middle class”.

Those hostels were closed some years ago. Those boys’ sons and daughters aren’t becoming carpenters, diesel mechanics or hairdressers any more.

40 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

Many are on the dole, working as labourers or doing “hip hop” or basket weaving courses on student loans. Many of them are returning to the “underclass” their fathers worked so hard to escape.

A strong apprenticeship system would do more to lower drug abuse, juvenile crime and youth suicide than any number of social workers, policemen or boxing politicians.

Apprenticeship, formal or informal is a key component of building a stable, free, society.

By providing a way for older people to pass on experience it helps bind the generations. Apprenticeships are excellent for teaching respect in younger people and humility in their elders.

On a very basic level the increased earning power an apprenticeship leads to also makes young men more attractive to young women. A stable career gives a young man more chance of attracting a wife and enjoying family life.

Why have suicide rates and drug and alcohol abuse increased dramatically as apprenticeships have declined?

Restoring and expanding the apprenticeship system would give hope to thousands of disadvantaged young people. It would whittle away at the “underclass” and give many less academic young people a clear road to a better standard of living.

It would help to bring the “underclass” back into the mainstream. It would give the thousands of young people who don’t want to become doctors, lawyers or sociology lecturers a path to prosperity and social advancement.

Apprenticeships are the ultimate win-win. They are great for the young apprentice, they are good for the employer, they’re good for the economy and they’re good for “society”.

HOW DO WE DO IT?

To get people employing apprentices in large numbers, I believe we must do several things; Sideline the Unit Standards System Firstly we must sideline the “unit standards” system which is now required by NZQA in training apprentices.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly the huge complexity this brings to training, is a major disincentive to many small employers to take on apprentices.

Basically apprentices are required to demonstrate ‘competency” by ticking off hundreds of boxes every time they master a component of their trade.

A baker for instance will have to tick off weighing up a dough, mixing a dough, adding fruit to a dough, dividing a dough, rolling out the dough, tinning up the dough, proofing the dough, baking the bread, de-tinning the bread etc, etc, etc.

I even had to test my apprentices on holding a conversation with their mother-in-law and brushing their teeth!

For every little job done right you get a unit standard. Get enough unit standards and you are a qualified tradesman.This carries on through the whole trade and is a completely farcical, dispiriting, dishonest waste of time.

This system, if correctly followed produces apprentices who can do a series of tasks on command but may not necessarily understand why they are doing them, or the connection between them.

Its a good system for training monkeys, but it does little to develop the understanding of one’s trade that is the mark of a true tradesman.

Think of it this way.

Pick the All Blacks using unit standards-dropkick-tick, pass

the ball-tick, jump in the lineout-tick, tap and run-tick, bring on oranges-tick, backchat the ref-tick, apply mascara (Hurricanes only)-tick.

No need for the selectors to watch hundreds of games, compare form or make difficult judgements. Just pick the players with the most “unit standards”. What do you think of that idea Graham Henry?

Secondary teachers generally acknowledge that the “unit standards” system has increased their workload. It does the same for tradespeople-many of who are not academically inclined and have no time for meaningless “bulls**t”. Teachers have to teach regardless – it’s their whole job. Tradespeople do not have to train apprentices.

They can refuse to do so, as unfortunately many of them are.

Once apprentices simply worked with their boss and his team, did some theory homework and passed some exams. Very simple, very straightforward very cost effective. We used that system for 100 years to produced some of the finest tradespeople in the world.

Now, employers and apprentices must deal with hundreds of time consuming “unit standards” which benefit no-one but the bureaucrats paid to administer them.

The answer is to make “unit standards” voluntary and allow industries to set their own standards, exams and training procedures.

Do this and I predict that very soon, apprenticeship numbers will start to increase.

This is urgent. There is already a huge skill gap created by 20 years of under-training. The “baby boomers” who learned their trades in the ‘60s,’70s or ‘80s are now retiring or moving into management. Who is going to train the next generation on the factory floor, if we don’t start soon?

Broaden the System Secondly we should extend apprenticeships beyond the traditional trades like carpentry and hairdressing. Cadetships systems should be re-established in areas such primary teaching, journalism, nursing and established in new areas such as computing, retail, clerical work, viticulture and tourism. The potential here is endless.

Some professions such as the law, surveying and accountancy should be encouraged to return to training at least some of their staff through apprenticeships or cadetships In most of Europe young people can and do apprenticeships in almost any area.

Most European countries produce enough skilled tradespeople for their own needs and a few for “export”. Even in bad times, tradespeople and apprentices are the very last to be laid off.

Throughout Western Europe, it is the norm for non-university bound teenagers to start their working life in an apprenticeship.

Why shouldn’t we have 60% or more of our school leavers in some form of trade training?

Start Them Early Thirdly, we should allow youngsters to leave school at 15 if they have an apprenticeship to go to. Once a teenager could leave school at 15, start an apprenticeship and be qualified and earning a top wage at 19.

There has been concern lately at the numbers of young Maori leaving school with no qualifications. If most left school to enter apprenticeships, would that be so terrible? Which is more important – low grade academic qualifications or saleable skills? Which is a better ticket to a higher income – a school certificate or a trade certificate?

“Restoring and expanding the apprenticeship system would give hope to thousands of disadvantaged young people. It would whittle away at the “underclass” and give many less academic young people a clear road to a better standard of living” INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 41

Apprenticeships should be geared as much as possible to start in the mid-teens.

Reduce Government Involvement Fourthly, we should reduce government involvement in apprenticeship training as much as possible.

The 2002 budget committed an extra $41 million to “Modern Apprenticeships” over the next 4 years. In 2004 the government announced that it would pump in $9 million to produce an extra 1,000 apprentices. That was $9,000 per apprentice. No doubt it’s much higher now. If 90% fail to complete within 5 years that is hardly good value to the taxpayer.

The beauty of a sound apprenticeship system is that it is (or should be) virtually self funding. A properly run apprenticeship system should cost the taxpayer very little. In fact there should be a net gain as apprentices each pay a small amount of tax rather than taking out an interest free student loan.

Industry should be awarding its own qualifications and setting its own standards, free from government interference.

Governments love to bureaucratize and complicate things.

Industry likes to simplify. The cheaper and simpler we can make apprenticeships, the more employers will embrace them.

But why should we care? Young people are still in training, either on the job, at polytech, or in private institutions. We should care because the best and cheapest method of training is struggling, while more costly and less satisfactory options are growing.

We should care because thousands of young people are incurring huge student loans to do courses of questionable value when they should be getting paid to learn on the job. Student debt is ballooning out of control while teenagers are paying big money to earn “unit standards” in everything from scuba diving to basket weaving.

We should care because many of these courses, are little but “self esteem factories” turning out “graduates” with totally unrealistic ideas of their ability. Some time ago I spoke to an 18 year old girl who was about to start her own car wrecking yard on the recommendation of her business course mentor.

This girl and thousands like her should be starting at the bottom in an apprenticeship, not wasting time and money on stupid schemes.

We have the insane situation where thousands of bright young people are doing expensive courses or dead end jobs while hundreds of employers with huge skills to offer are either reluctant or unable to train them.

Utilise the Military Fifthly, we should expand the one area where government should play a role in apprentice training – the military. The Army, Navy and Air Force used to train hundreds of diesel mechanics, radio technicians, aircraft engineers, carpenters, chefs and sign-writers.

Some industries, such as aircraft maintenance, were built largely on ex-military staff.

The forces have the infrastructure and the skill base to turn out highly skilled people and we’re paying for it through our taxes anyway.

In the late ‘80s the Government abolished the Army cadet scheme and with it most of the army’s apprenticeship programme.

Today the military employ a tiny fraction of the apprentices they once did.

42 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

“A properly run apprenticeship system should cost the taxpayer very little. In fact there should be a net gain as apprentices each pay a small amount of tax rather than taking out an interest free student loan”

This government should immediately implement an extensive system of military apprenticeships. This would help both the military and future civilian employers.

It would also increase the pool of military trained people for any future defence emergencies.

The Army currently runs a highly successful Limited Service Volunteer scheme. This turns “at risk” youth into purposeful, employable young people. If the Army can do this, what could it achieve with several hundred apprentices in uniform?

CONCLUSION

Not training apprentices costs us all. It costs us economically, through lost production and under-utilization of training resources and personnel.

It costs us socially, through increased crime and anti-social behavior.

Most importantly it cost thousands of young individuals an

opportunity to build a better future for themselves and their children.

There are thousands of employers who would like to train more apprentices.

There are thousands of parents who would love to see their teens in trade training.

There are thousands of school leavers every year who could and should be ”doing their time”.

There are millions of taxpayers who would rather see their burden shared by thousands of apprentices than be forking out billions on student loans.

Re-invigorating the apprenticeship culture benefit all sectors of NZ society, but particularly the non-academic, but practically minded people who are currently swelling the ranks of the “underclass”.

Often, the simplest solutions are the best.

Trevor Loudon has trained several apprentices and has served on an ad hoc industry training advisory group. n INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 43

44 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

ESSAY

Barbarians at the

Gates BLAMING CAPITALISM INVITES SOCIALISM THROUGH THE DOOR ALAN GALLAGHER was so incensed by columnist Peter Hensley’s recent article on the financial crisis that, in his words, “As a retired (Australian) banker, lawyer/accountant, and one who had some community and political involvement I felt the article could not pass without comment. I did start my working life as a cadet journalist...” So, in the interests of fostering debate, here is that response: INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 45

T

he lynch mentality is alive and well. Only these days we leave the finger-pointing to the media, then follow blindly and en masse.

And heaven help those who may not side with the thundering herd.

Take for example the recently published book on climate change by Gareth Morgan and John McCrystal which attempts to give a balanced view of climate change. Except that in branding those who “believe the science of global warming is far from settled” they brand them “The Sceptics”.

According to my well-worn dictionary a sceptic is “an adherent of philosophical scepticism; given to questioning before making a decision; incredulous, critical; carping;” That very title questions motives, and brands him unworthy to take part in any meaningful dialogue. A sceptic is condemned well before being given an opportunity to partake in any debate on the underlying science, or composition of any question on which a cabal of involved persons takes the high ground, and world media snap around their heels like a pack of terriers.

Take the Y2 bug, the SARS “pandemic”, “Swine-Flu” or the China/Tibet question.

If you want to convince the world that (like Henny-Penny) “the roof is about to fall in” give the media a story and there’s a ready made audience of passionate believers eagerly awaiting to follow where they are led.

As an editor once told me, an eager cadet journalist, “good news does not sell newspapers”.

Unfortunately the trend is towards the media building ever greater catastrophes, allocating greater resources to anything that has even the vaguest chance of becoming long running headline news.

Which leads me to the greatest, and potentially the most dangerous, media beat-up in my time on this orb. What began as just another potential recession, exacerbated by ever escalating world oil prices, and spiced by a stifling of credit, is suddenly labelled “the credit crunch”, then “the financial crisis”, “the world financial crisis” and finally the “world financial meltdown”. Some commentators, with gay abandon, even labelled it a greater crisis than the 1929 Depression.

Journalists who had difficulty in spelling “Gross Domestic Product” were suddenly economic and financial experts. The BBC and CNN had solved their programming for the next several years. There was no shortage of “experts” telling us the dire consequences of stupidity.

Again the “sceptics” were banished to the back blocks. No one dare challenge the accepted wisdom, after all it was in the media – and the media had cemented jobs for the next who-could-guess.

What no-one had the temerity to point out was that everyone seemed to have a different theory. The fact that some governments, those that counted like Japan and the USA, had been inflating their currencies and pursuing slipshod economic policies seemed to be lost in the frenzy.

This is what Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary, is quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) of May 13, 2009: “But I would say there were three types of broad errors of policy and policy both here and around the world. One was that monetary policy around the world was too loose for too long. And that created this just huge boom in asset prices, money chasing risk. People trying to get a higher return. That was overwhelmingly powerful.

It was too easy, yes. In some ways less so here in the United States, but it was true globally. Real interest rates were very low for 46 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

a long period of time. Remember as the Fed started tightening earlier, our long rates in the United States started to come down-even were coming down even as the Fed was tightening over that period, and partly because monetary policy around the world was too loose, and that kind of overwhelmed the efforts of the Fed to initially tighten. Now, but you know, we all bear a responsibility for that.

I’m not trying to put it back on the world.”

To further quote the WSJ, “Mr Geithner went on to cite a lack of supervision over bank risk-taking and the slow pace of government response to the problem – both of which are now conventional wisdom. But the real news here is Mr Geithner’s concession that monetary policy was “too loose for too long”.

The Washington crowd has tried to place all of the blame for the panic on bankers, the better to absolve themselves. But as Mr Geithner notes, Fed policy flooded the world with dollars that created a boom in asset prices and inspired the credit mania.

Bankers made mistakes, but in part they were responding rationally to the subsidy for credit created by central bankers.

“We disagree with Mr Geithner on one point. He’s right that monetary policy needs to be considered in global terms, but he’s still too quick to pass the buck from the Fed to other central banks. The European Central Bank was much tighter than the Fed throughout this period. The Fed was by far the major monetary player because much of the world was on the dollar standard, with its monetary policy linked to the Fed’s. That was true of China, most of Asia and the Middle East.

“The Fed’s loose policy from 2003 to 2005 created the commodity and credit bubbles that made those countries flush with dollars. Given their low domestic propensity to consume, these countries then recycled those dollars back into dollar denominated assets, such as Treasurys and real estate related assets such as Fannie Mae securities. The Fed itself had created the surplus dollars that kept long rates low and undermined for a substantial period its belated attempts to tighten.”

We in New Zealand are aware that the Japanese too were awash with credit, evidence the large investments in New Zealand Uradashi’s- that being only a small part of the Japanese splurge.

As a sideline – New Zealanders will remember how a profligate Labour Government that stoked inflation, and pursued big

If you want to convince the world that (like HennyPenny) “the roof is about to fall in” give the media a story and there’s a ready made audience of passionate believers eagerly awaiting to follow where they are led

spending budgets, ignored the warnings of a Reserve Bank which had only one weapon, interest rates!

With that underlying background, simmering away somewhat out of view to the average Joe, when the balloon finally went up the media went on a witch hunt. Someone at the back of the room said “it’s them darn banks” and the media did the rest.

What then happens: Scene One; Brown becomes the Prime Minister of the UK and America elects its first black socialist President.

Scene Two: Almost the entire world now has socialist governments (as has New Zealand if you look closely), and more importantly the EU which is populated almost entirely by Socialists.

Scene Three: Brown, Obama, and the EU get together to solve

the “Financial Meltdown” and to their glee find a wonderful way to divert the public’s gaze-blame the banks.

Scene Four: In the meantime the USA, EU and Australia rush to justify their existences by throwing money at the problem (evidencing the fact that it’s shortage of credit that’s the problem) thus mortgaging their countries futures and potentially condemning their constituents to inflation for the next decade.

Scene Five: In diverting the blame entirely on the banks the lynch mob vanguard – the Media – take up the now rising socialist catchcry that the big bad banks, and indeed the entire financial industry, needs closer attention and much, much more regulation.

Scene Six: Both Brown and Obama offer financial assistance for the banking industry, with dire consequences for those who INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 47

refuse, and thus with the stroke of a pen effectively nationalise some banks. There is already a growing rumble from the lynch mob that the banks are naughty, untrustworthy organisations, too fragile to be left alone and should be totally nationalised.

Readers will remember that in 1947 the Australian Government under Prime Minister Chifley nationalised the banking industry only to have the legislation struck down by the Privy Council.

If the Australian Chifley Labour Goverment had been successful socialist governments everywhere (including New Zealand) would have followed suit.

And now the really scary part.

T

he South China Morning Post recently reported on the large number of Japanese turning to the Communist Party for succour. Under the banner “Political left turn in the making?” the article goes on “Feeling abandoned by employers and mainstream politicians, more Japanese are turning to the communists.”

Quoting a Mr Tabata, a 42 years old employee of a major manufacturing company based in Tokyo, possibly about to be made redundant, who last time voted for the third largest party in the Japanese Diet, the New Komeito Party, he will next time vote for the Communist Party.

According to the latest opinion polls, the Komeito Party has been overtaken by the Japanese Communist Party. “And workers are doing all they can to spread the word.”

Elsewhere there have been reports of a rush on Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.

Eulogising him, The Atlantic (April 2009) concludes that Marx “could yet become the most influential thinker of the twentyfirst century.”

This is what the critique of the book Marx’s Das Kapital: A Biography by Francis Wheen goes on to say, pen dipped with dripping vitriol. “As I write this, every newspaper informs me of frantic efforts by merchants to unload onto the consumer, at almost any price, the vast surplus of unsold commodities that have accumulated since the credit crisis began to take hold. The phrase crisis of overproduction, which I learned so many long winters ago in “agitational” meetings recurs to my mind. On other pages, I learn that the pride of American capitalism has seized up and begun to rust, and that automobiles may cease even to be made in Detroit as a consequence of insane speculation in worthless paper “derivatives”.”

Putting aside the gross inaccuracies, and the fact that the Atlantic magazine doesn’t let the facts get in way of a good story, the latter statement about “worthless paper derivatives” leads me to the reason I first began to put pen to paper, and that was to reply to the article “Gilt edged chickens too heavy to fly” by Peter Hensley, a fully fledged member of the lynch mob.

One is gobsmacked at the sheer magnitude of his rhetoric, more so because, as with the media in general, he obviously has no technical expertise in this area of banking, or experience in investment. “This essay is my take on how we were able to arrive at a point of no return” he says.

One would probably dismiss the article for what it is, except for the fact that it follows the general texture of the world press hyperbole, and therefore cannot be allowed to pass.

Cutting to the chase, there are three assertions made by Hensley which when corrected takes the very starch out of his take in my view.

Assertion One: “CDO’s and CDS’s are incredibly complex and very 48 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

involved, meaning that in the early days not many of these derivatives were created as the available expertise was limited.”

Not so! There is nothing new on this earth, and the same holds true of most derivatives. It’s all been done before. Various forms of derivatives, admittedly not called such, but performing the same functions, have been around since the early days of banking.

The Rothschilds were particularly adept at inventing new ways to finance projects, to re-finance themselves, paper backed by assignments of assets including debtors and more so in respect of international financing. Letters of credit, for example, attained prominence in the days of the Knights Templar. Whilst these are not strictly “derivatives” they follow the pattern of “moneyless” paper, and these new letters of credit could be assigned, financed against, discounted or cashed.

Assertion Two: “It was like printing money, which they did. They became modern day alchemists. They created money from nothing.”

Also not so. Money can only be created by governments, and more particularly these days, by central banks. This incorrect assertion stands shoulder to shoulder with the old chestnut that banks create credit – also untrue.

Let me give a very simple explanation. Bank A has $1000 in the kitty. It lends $100 to debtor B. In due course it sells a derivative to investor C for $100 backed with an assignment of the debt owed to it by B. The situation now stands that the bank has its $100 back and the kitty is restored to $1000, B no longer owes $100 to A but owes it to C. No new money or credit.

This simple demonstration shows the impossibility of “creating new money.” If it were possible the world economies would have collapsed many decades ago, inflation of proportions of post war Germany, and world financial markets in tatters.

Assertion Three: “These investment alchemists created their own shadow banking system. It had no rules, no central register for either the derivatives or the produce they created holding the derivatives, but it did pay huge bonuses.”

I have no idea what is inferred, and I’m sure Hensley doesn’t either when he says “the produce they created holding the derivatives”. What produce? The holder of a derivative is out of pocket for the moment and looks to a return on his money as every investor does. The creator has made a fee and as demonstrated above accountants can all breathe easily again because the double entry book system, that all financial systems depend on, retains its integrity.

Furthermore the issue and peddling of securities is governed in all major countries by legislation and rules, and an overarching regulatory body.

So why have I seen fit to awaken from my retirement torpor and reactivate all senses to spring into print?

The first is that sloppy governments caused the credit crisis, aided by a sub-prime mortgage market in the USA which finally upset the money flow.

Secondly because aided and abetted by an uninformed and alarmist press those governments were able to tiptoe away and avert the gaze of the world.

Thirdly, and more importantly, because the Socialist Internationale and socialist governments everywhere have been handed the greatest opportunity ever to spread their message.

While people struggle with a cure without knowing the problem, we are dangerously close to the Communists and the Socialists grabbing control, but more importantly achieving by default what they couldn’t achieve in decades past. n

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The

DEADLIEST

CAVEMAN For a man holed up in a cave somewhere, Osama bin Laden continues to have a surprising amount of power in Afghanistan and Pakistan, reports PHILIP SMUCKER from the frontline

K

HOST, Afghanistan – When a wave of 11 suicide bombers attacked this Afghan provincial capital in mid-May – among them several men dressed head to toe in blue burqas – panicked residents fled into their homes to avoid the street battles between the killers and local security forces. Twenty locals died in the melee.

That so many bombers could slip into town from North Waziristan in neighbouring Pakistan on a single operation testified to the rising level of violence in Afghanistan, and the U.S. military said that al-Qa’ida is playing a critical role in financing suicide bombings and other attacks on U.S. and NATO forces.

However, the relatively low death toll in the Khost assault indicated that the attackers’ preparation was deficient, at least by comparison with far more devastating suicide bombings in Iraq.

Interviews with U.S. military commanders over the past three months, U.S. radio intercepts of Arab and Chechen fighters, and confirmed captures or kills of foreign fighters inside Afghanistan indicate that Osama bin Laden’s terror network – working through Afghan and Pakistani partners – is present in almost every Afghan and Pakistani province along the two countries’ border.

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In some cases, al-Qa’ida has paid rewards of US$11,000 to the Pakistani and Afghan families of suicide bombers, many of whom are cancer patients or heroin addicts, according to U.S. military communications intercepts.

Terrorist attacks in Afghanistan are more sophisticated than they were a year ago, and roadside bombings and suicide attacks are rising fast, according to the U.S. military. Attacks are up 25 percent over the first four months of 2008, and U.S. officials expect the total to rise some 50 percent this year to 5,700 – more than 15 a day.

Al-Qa’ida isn’t operating under its own flag, however, possibly because the group learned a lesson from its experience in Iraq, where many people have turned against al-Qa’ida in Iraq’s brutal tactics, terrorism analysts said.

But al-Qa’ida’s influence is far greater than its shadowy profile suggests, for it has the wherewithal to finance suicide bombings, the skills to train foreign volunteers and, most important, the global ties, experience and strategy that Afghan and Pakistani insurgent forces lack.

Every capture or killing of foreign fighters – the U.S.-led NATO coalition said on May 28 that it had killed 34 militants in a firefight at a suspected training camp belonging to the network of Afghan insurgent leader Jalaludin Haqqani – is a reminder of alQa’ida’s backstage presence.

But the suspected Haqqani camp, in a mountainous region of Paktika province, about 160 kilometres southwest of Khost on the Pakistani border, typifies al-Qa’ida’s lower profile in Afghanistan.

Unlike in the 1990s, when bin Laden ran training camps across Afghanistan, the movement now operates out of myriad small facilities set up in compounds and homes that belong to Pashtun clans in the rugged mountains on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani frontier. The bases are sometimes mobile, and the trainers meld with Afghans in places where they find sympathetic residents, according to U.S. military briefers.

O

f greater significance, according to U.S. counterterrorism experts, is al-Qa’ida’s role in devising a regional strategy and in encouraging its regional partners to accept a “twofront-war” against U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan and the government in Pakistan. Although some Afghan insurgents object to fighting on two fronts, the strategy provides bin Laden’s network a permanent haven in the porous border region, where it can plan bigger international terrorist attacks.

U.S. terrorism experts said that al-Qa’ida’s leadership chose the senior leader of Pakistan’s Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud – who’s taken credit for the destruction of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad and the late May assault on Pakistani security forces in Lahore – as their chief ally.

Uzbek and Chechen “trigger men” from Central Asia, most of whom live in North and South Waziristan, have helped Mehsud, 34, consolidate his authority up and down the border in the past year, according to Vahid Brown, an al-Qa’ida analyst with West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. In March, the U.S. government offered a $5 million reward for Mehsud, who it says is a “key al-Qa’ida facilitator,” or ally, responsible for multiple suicide attacks.

Mehsud bullied his way into a position as insurgent leader across most of Pakistan’s federally administered tribal areas earlier this year when a new coalition of insurgent groups confirmed him as their “supreme commander.”

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An Afghan working with Western forces in Afghanistan, who asked to remain anonymous because he wasn’t authorized to speak to reporters, said he’d monitored al-Qa’ida radio traffic in a Paktika province district that’s a stronghold of the “Haqqani Network,” a Taliban affiliate directed by Sirajuddin Haqqani.

“I set up a radio scanner two months ago and I picked up Chechens and Arabs talking regularly,” he said. “At one point, we heard an Arab talking to a Chechen say: ‘Hey, the money has come in, you can attack soon.’ “ An American embedded as a trainer with the Afghan National Army confirmed similar radio traffic. “It sounds from radio chatter like they have more recruits coming in, including Arabs, Uzbeks, Turkmen and Chechen fighters,” said Army Maj. Cory Schultz, 37, of Fremont, Calif.

A leading al-Qa’ida ideologue, Abu Yahya al-Libi, who escaped from the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base in July 2005, claimed in a propaganda booklet released in mid-March that Pakistan’s army should be treated as an occupying infidel army waging offensive war on an invaded Muslim population. He told Pakistanis that it’s incumbent upon them, as “good Muslims,” to fight their own government.

Al-Libi has helped the Pakistani Taliban set up propaganda operations with FM broadcast stations that use portable Chinese transmission boxes, said Brown of the West Point counterterrorism center. “Abu Yahya al-Libi translates the network’s ideas to a popular audience” on both sides of the border, said Brian Fishman, also from the West Point centre.

Al-Libi maintains close ties to the “Tora Bora Front” in eastern Afghanistan and has been interviewed on the Web site of the front, which is the domain of Mujahid Khalis, the son of the late mujahedeen leader Younus Khalis, who welcomed bin Laden to Afghanistan from Sudan in 1996. Mujahid Khalis ran an Islamic center in Jalalabad, the biggest city in eastern Afghanistan, which became the Taliban intelligence headquarters, and it was there that bin Laden had his last dinner in Jalalabad before fleeing over the mountains to Pakistan.

Al-Qa’ida’s influence extends well beyond the border region and deep into Pakistan. Al-Qa’ida protege Mehsud is allied with Mullah “Radio” Fazlullah, whose insurgents took over the Swat district in northwest Pakistan, until, under public prodding from the Obama administration, the Pakistani army launched an operation to regain control.

In a 2007 interview with this reporter, Fazlullah endorsed alQaida’s goals in neighboring Afghanistan and around the globe: “When Muslims are under attack in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have a duty to fight back against the American ‘crusaders’ and their allies,” he said.

Other leading insurgent groups led by Jalaluddin Haqqani’s son, Sirajuddin, as well as Mullah Nazir, who operate along the Afghan-Pakistan border out of Waziristan, have been forced to agree to the new al-Qa’ida-backed strategy for the two-front war, Western terrorism analysts said.

Terrorism analysts think that bin Laden himself has likely taken refuge in North or South Waziristan, or in a large city well beyond the tribal areas. They say his larger-than-life presence remains a thorn in the side of U.S. efforts.

Both U.S. military and Afghan security officials confirmed a steady movement – by air from Dubai and other aerial hubs, by land across Iran and water from the Persian Gulf – of international jihadists from the Middle East to South Asia. Many Arabs,

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 53

“Al-Qa’ida’s influence extends well beyond the border region and deep into Pakistan. AlQa’ida protege Mehsud is allied with Mullah “Radio” Fazlullah, whose insurgents took over the Swat district in northwest Pakistan, until, under public prodding from the Obama administration, the Pakistani army launched an operation to regain control” Chechens and other foreign fighters recently completed tours fighting in Iraq, where al-Qa’ida has suffered significant setbacks.

American military commanders say they are doing what they can to flush out known Taliban and al-Qa’ida havens inside Afghanistan, but terrorism experts believe that insurgent are planning fresh attacks in conjunction with an influx of 20,000 U.S. and NATO forces this summer.

Col. John Spizser, 46, of Texas, who commands U.S. forces north of the White Mountains in eastern Afghanistan, acknowledged that one commander, Abu Ikhlas al Masri, an Egyptian al-Qa’ida member, is contributing to the intense fight against his forces in the province of Kunar, not far from the Pakistani regions of Swat and Bajaur. He said his goal was to keep “facilitators and financiers” locked in a battle near the border and keep them from further affecting the fight inside Afghanistan.

Western terrorism analysts said that al-Qa’ida has learned to operate within the limits forced by U.S. and Pakistani military operations in the rugged Pashtun hinterlands.

As a precaution against the U.S. raids, al-Qa’ida members in Waziristan rarely have tea in groups of more than three, said Afghans who travel to the region. In addition, Taliban fighters, often working with al-Qa’ida military trainers, have started to train indoors, as well as in small mud-walled compounds, where they attract only limited attention from U.S. surveillance flights and aerial drones.

Increasingly, al-Qa’ida appears to be focusing on words as much as deeds. Bin Laden’s latest denunciation, issued on June 3, the eve of President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech seeking better relations with the Muslim world, charged the president with ordering Pakistan’s crackdown in Swat. He said that Obama was following in the path of his predecessor, George W. Bush, intending “to build enmity against Muslims and increasing the number of fighters, and establishing more lasting wars.”

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FRONTLINES

Prince of Persia

The Battle For Control Of Iran

As Iran went to the polls to vote for the presidency, a team of UPI photographers captured the build-up to the crucial vote, and the bloody aftermath. What these images so clearly demonstrate is that two Irans exist; one, fundamentalist and older; the other, younger and more forward-looking. No matter how they paper over the cracks after this month’s violence, there is no escaping the obvious implication: Iran is in danger of meltdown

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 57

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei arrives to cast his vote for the presidential election

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Iranian reform leader and defeated presidential hopeful Mir-Hossein Mousavi (R) and his wife Zahra casting their votes

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think life | money

The final step Peter Hensley discusses the inevitable One foot touching the ground, that was the way Jeff wanted to go. He had often spoken about it to his friends. The subject always arose during the cup of tea session that they seemed to gather at more frequently nowadays. The venue altered, depending on the wishes of the deceased, however they enjoyed the variety of the funeral services on offer in their local town.

The mature phase of their lives had slowly crept up on them all. Jeff always enjoyed life to the full and was taking his daily walk along the track near home, when his time card was punched in for the last time.

66 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

He had been dead almost twenty minutes when Jill found him. Her level of concern had risen when she did not hear his customary “Honey, I’m back, – did you miss me” routine. He was reasonably punctual, but at times was like a stray dog, he would talk to anybody. He often had the white baiters’ on by telling stories of big catches that happened “just a day or two ago”.

It took her a couple of minutes to lock up the house, collect her jacket and cell phone before she walked briskly out of the gate.

She knew the route that Jeff took by heart, they had often walked it together. Nothing

could have prepared her for the moment when she saw him lying slumped on the ground. At once Jill knew that he would not be walking home with her. She knew that she should use the phone, however all she could do was to hold him and stare unbelievingly into Jeff’s expressionless eyes. Just then another person out walking his dog came upon them and offered assistance. The authorities were called and within minutes things were under control.

Control, that was what Jill wanted back in her life. Jeff always seemed in control and Jill had been pleased to be his life partner. They were a perfect match and had enjoyed each other’s company for the forty plus years they had been married. Although he was five years her senior, sharing had always been easy for them, from simple domestic tasks to providing for their growing family. Even from the beginning, it appeared, they had the ability to control their lives. Now it eluded her and it was the one thing she desired the most.

It did not seem all that long ago when they had started to plan and seriously save for their retirement. Their adviser had put them on the right track. She only wished that they had been referred to him years earlier. Jeff, like many of his generation had several bad experiences when they had started to save for retirement before and had attempted to sort through the maze of available products himself. Suspecting they needed some professional help she had asked around and encouraged Jeff to attend a seminar run by one of these money people to check out what was available.

She remembered the words that seemed to grab her at that presentation. “All that will be there when you get there, is what you send on ahead”. That combined with Jeff’s limited number of pay packets before their selected retirement date, meant they had some serious work to do. Once they understood what they had to achieve, they knuckled down and put the plan into action. They reduced their expenditure and chose to live more frugally. It did not make a huge amount of difference to their lifestyle, it did however have a huge impact on their bank accounts.

They quickly eliminated all their debts, including the mortgage. They ignored the advice from one book that told them to start with the debt with the highest interest rate and instead elected to start on the one with the lowest balance. Once that had been paid back, they had more funds with which to attack the next one. They were

amazed at the speed they got their finances under control. They quickly moved from a position of being unsure about retirement to one of full confidence. They did ask their adviser how much money they needed to retire, his response was blunt and straightforward. He replied; “As much as you possibly can!”

The meals that friends provided and offers of assistance were comforting, however they did not address her desire to have control back in her life. She had twice the work and half the staff. Everything seemed unfamiliar. She was not prepared for the uncertainty, the fear and confusion that Jeff had left behind. Boy, she was cranky with him. Their children shared her grief, however both had their own lives to get on with. One had travelled back from Australia for the funeral and the other lived in Auckland. They shared her grief, but they could not grieve for her. They could not come close to appreciating the chasm that had suddenly opened up in her life. The offers of help and assistance just seem to add to the confusion. Although it was all meant in good faith, it was doing the exact opposite. Her friends could not appreciate that the advice they were offering suited their own circumstances, and

did not apply to the situation that Jill now found herself in.

Jill needed some personal space and unbiased professional advice. Well meaning “friendly” comments were pushing her into making decisions about her future, which in reality did not need to be made at this point in time. Her annoyance with Jeff grew daily. How dare he leave her in this position. He had never let her down in their lifetime together, now when it seemed that Jill needed him the most, he was not there. Literally, his body had been cremated and the ashes scattered into the sea. It slowly dawned upon her that she was on her own and she did not like it.

Jill’s anger turned into sadness as the reality of losing her mate slowly reached her consciousness. The one fact that she learned was the value of having found a professional who assisted with her gaining control over her situation. This person was the only one who understood that there was a time and place for everything, and that everything took time. There was no need to rush, and that the control that Jill desperately needed back in her life, came not from making decisions but from knowing that there was no urgency to make them.

The changes that she and Jeff had imple-

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mented together meant that her financial future was reasonably secure.

Jill’s life was re-organised slowly, sadness turned into acceptance. There were many times when she reflected on the amount of planning they had done. It always seemed to happen to someone else. They had had a perfect life together, it ended all too soon and whilst she was prepared financially, she was not prepared emotionally. She knew that she had to get ready for the rest of her life. Statistics indicated that this could be as long as another thirty years and now she had a mission to undertake. She did learn that everybody had different circumstances. The choices and actions that made sense to one person could easily have a less than desirable impact on another. The fact they had elected to continue with the life insurance proved to be the correct one. It meant that it would be her choice to continue in her part time job.

The best advice she could give to newly widowed persons was to get control back in their life by getting organised. By doing this they would be better prepared and educated to make sound financial decisions.

A copy of Peter Hensley’s disclosure statement is available on request and is free of charge. © Peter J Hensley 2009.

EVE’S BITE

THE DIVINITY CODE

“…the most politically incorrect book” in New Zealand. He is absolutely right…Prepare to be surprised and shocked.

Wishart may ruffle a few feathers but his arguments are fair as his evidence proves. If you are looking for a stimulating mental challenge, or a cause to fight for, Eve’s Bite will definitely satisfy. – Wairarapa Times-Age

Wishart takes up the gauntlet laid down by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, and in fact, uses Dawkins own logic and methodology to launch a counter-attack against unbelief.

Challenging…thought provoking…compelling – keepingstock.blogspot.com

Discover the truth for yourself. Get these two books today from Whitcoulls, Borders, PaperPlus, Dymocks, Take Note, and all good independent booksellers, or online at

I’m having a cracking good read of another cracking good read – The Divinity Code by Ian Wishart, his follow-up book to Eve’s Bite which was also a cracking good read – comment on “Being Frank”

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think life | EDUCATION

A cultural shift – or collapse of standards?

Amy Brooke argues parents and children are being shortchanged by successive governments Is it not curious how year after year, decade after decade, both Labour and National governments make no attempt to sack those within the Wellington education politburo responsible for its ongoing inadequacies, misdirections, mistakes, and sheer stupidities in planning?

Take the very concept of the soft-option NCEA. Only inch by inch have annoyed teachers and critics forced the doctrinaire bureaucracy to rethink its highly inadequate provisions – e.g. to give way in recognizing credit passes instead of its original obdurate “equality of outcomes”. Only now has it agreed to exclude from schools’ percentage passes those who didn’t even sit!

But no attempt was made to distinguish those who only finally managed a certain 68 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

level after special, answers-assisted coaching – from those who achieved it first time.

It still doesn’t distinguish between those who achieve an NCEA standard ahead of their year level.

A flawed, deliberately dumbed-down concept, the NCEA was foisted off on the country, derived from the Scottish system designed to assess trade qualifications only.

It has never been adequate for a system which should foster intellectual excellence, gather all youngsters together at the same starting line, and teach each rigorously, enthusiastically and well according to his or her talents.

It is no wonder that so many school leavers are extraordinarily ignorant, semiliterate and poorly-spoken – decent, gen-

erous-spirited young New Zealanders seriously short-changed, educationally and culturally. Open-minded to the point of gullibility, untrained critically and analytically, they are a pushover for recruitment to feel-good causes such as the Greens’ near-hysterical environmentalism. It is not difficult for the under-educated to be captured by a system deliberately pushing world views largely hostile to the normal, balanced family unit, and to a society once held together by a moral code and principled beliefs.

In the education establishment heads never roll, the buck never stops. A $20 million dollar mistake in the early childhood education sector? Ah well; the usual “quality assurance processes” will no doubt be

“It is no wonder that so many school leavers are extraordinarily ignorant, semi-literate and poorly-spoken – decent, generous-spirited young New Zealanders seriously short-changed, educationally and culturally reviewed. Processes, procedures, assessments reviews… but the quality of the intellectual and cultural junk food fed to school-children who will now have to hold their own in a fiercely competitive world, lurching from economic crisis to crisis, with ferociously competent youngsters from China, India and Russia, is another matter.

When are the spurious excuses for our second-rate state schools going to be recognised for what they are? And where will we find a Minister of Education fit for the role, rather than being thrown up from the flotsam and jetsam of political parties?

National’s Anne Tolley has thrown in the towel by not requiring all schools to submit pupils for testing against one-only national standard of external examinations.

Allowing schools to choose their own tests, to continue with the same ridiculously impossible process of translating these into a result to be measured against every other pupil in the country, provides the usual potential for sleight-of-hand fakery.

The only genuine comparison is by using one standard for all. Allowing schools to fudge results, and pandering to poorlyperforming schools such as Maori schools shockingly and condescendingly not expected to achieve the same basic academic standards, while locked into a myopia of supposed ethnic specialness and superiority, continues the same endgame. Apparently, it is “destructive of a nation’s educational and moral purposes” to let some children know they are performing poorly, according to a policy paper, “Directions for Assessment in New Zealand”, released to the ministry last month. Utter bunkum, of course, but

it threatens “serious consequences if the wrong direction is chosen.”

Oh really. What about the serious consequences of the same rubbishy theories inflicted on the country’s children these past decades? If the argument is about the inexorability of consequences, what did the ministry’s oh-so-determined advisers think would be the consequences of refusing to teach children to spell; refusing to teach grammar and syntax; how and why to use commas and full stops; how to add and subtract; to genuinely learn; how to even read?

Even now it orders teachers – “not the sage on the stage…”– to withhold knowledge – to merely direct children where to find it.

Education apparatchiks are not ignorant of the fact that refraining from teaching children how to think well, ensures that others will do their thinking for them.

What a sorry state this country has come to as evidence mounts of cultural decline, the erosion of values, the denial of evident truth and the centre-staging of unreason.

Simultaneously we can note the takeover of the literary and art scenes – areas in which politically-appointed ministers of art and culture no doubt bask in the panache of their titles, and in the feeling of being rather special people, much-fêted by the closed circles of state-favoured writers with their hands out. However, the catch with government funding of the arts is that money corrupts – and so it has. The same people elect themselves onto committees to decide to whom taxpayer largesse should be dispensed and – no surprise – tend to find themselves in turn well-remembered when their own committee patronage

time arrives. As with the children’s book awards, writers are expected to adhere to both highly politicized, explicit and implicitly expected criteria which have nothing to do with excellence.

The consequences are all around us. I recall one recent prize-winning book published by a university press managed by the writer’s husband, but, in the words of a highly-respected Press reviewer, originally admitted by the writer herself to be “a load of old cobblers.” The Bone People, too, is a prime example of a book well-abandoned by most New Zealanders who tried to read it – but inevitably acclaimed in a kind of literary in-group hysteria.

And now the wannabe poets are at it, while Investigate looks to encourage real poetry which resonates with a public no longer interested in the posturing of mere performers and – not to put too fine a point on it – the inept, the pretentious and the poseurs. The true poets are very unlikely indeed to get the chance of publication they need from the latter’s closed circles. A fivevolume published poet became so incensed when I had to inform him that, unfortunately, his submission was certainly not poetry – that there was nothing whatever to distinguish it from lines of prose chopped in half – (nor was it even interesting as prose, as an Australian critic, poet himself and strategic analyst pointed out) – that he became amazingly and wonderfully abusive.

The subject is important enough to revisit. In the meantime, for more sheer incoherence, those interested can check out the website of acclaimed writer Michele Leggott, New Zealand’s Inaugural Poet Laureate, University of Auckland’s Associate Professor of English, now helping launch a six-month poster poem event. [http://jacketmagazine.com/03/leggott03.html].Heaven help us. The offerings there can arguably be regarded as very much part of the problem, the collapse of coherence and genuine cultural standards. Whatever they represent, it can be legitimately maintained that they are not poetry – not unless dishevelled, solipsistic, unfathomable and incontinent verbiage is poetry. Rather, they represent the obscurantism and chaos of post-poetry.

Somehow, for standards to survive, reality and reason must be reaffirmed. But the rot now starts very early, in our captured education system. © Amy Brooke www.amybrooke.co.nz www.summersounds..co.nz http://www.livejournal.com/users/brookeonline/

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 69

think life | SCIENCE

The end of the world?

Who’s afraid of 2012? Plenty of people, discovers Karen Youso

Did you know that Earth has an expiration date? Yes, it’s Dec. 21, 2012. That’s when life as we know it will end. Who says?

The ancient Mayans predicted it, Chinese sages wrote of it and many Christians say it’s foretold in the Bible.

Go ahead, Google 2012, search for it on YouTube and learn. Or buy The Complete Idiot’s Guide to 2012, now in bookstores.

You could wait for the movie; 2012 will be in theatres this fall.

Meanwhile, look clued-in with a “2012 Doomsday” T-shirt (available in infant and toddler sizes, too). Basically, our days are numbered – to less than 1,300 – because 70 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

a convergence of factors will result in the destruction of Earth: Extreme solar activity will peak just as Earth’s protective magnetic shield is weakening, and there will be an alignment of planets that happens only once every 640,000 years. To top it off, the highly complex and accurate 5,000-year Mayan calendar comes to an abrupt end on winter solstice 2012. It all adds up to bad business for our planet.

“The odds of global destruction are projected at 94 percent,” according to the Web site for the Institute for Human Continuity. It’s working to ensure the survival of the human race beyond 2012. (More about that later.)

For those rolling their eyes, or maybe rolling in the aisles, harken to the words of science.

“There’s no disaster coming,” said Lawrence Rudnick, distinguished teaching professor of astronomy at the University of Minnesota, responding to fears of killer solar flares. Scientists aren’t discussing 2012.

There’s nothing there, Rudnick said. It isn’t even interesting. “We have plenty of real issues to worry about on Earth,” he said.

It seems “The end is near!” is heard every few years. What is it about the apocalypse that we can’t stop worrying about it?

“It’s fear of death,” said Harvey Sarles, pro-

“But not all 2012 devotees are of the same mind.

New Agers, such as author and professor Jose Arguelles, predict that “the end of the world as we know it” means that there will be a universal spiritual awakening

fessor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota.

Doomsday anxiety goes way back. It’s a product of Western thought and religious tradition, he said – basically, the stories of Christianity and Islam and the focus on death and getting back to heaven.

In times of strife or pivotal calendar moments, Armageddon fears gain traction.

They’re actually very appealing and comforting to some people, Sarles added.

Indeed, cataclysm and destruction predictions fit well with some Christian interpretations of the Bible’s Book of Revelation, according to Sarles. The current financial

upheaval, natural disasters, flu epidemic – even the disappearance of honeybees – are seen as run-ups to the main 2012 event, according to some Christian Web sites. They see the four horsemen of the apocalypse closing in, and they welcome it.

The second coming of Christ is near, they believe, and they’ll soon be a pile of clothes on empty shoes after they’re Raptured.

But not all 2012 devotees are of the same mind. New Agers, such as author and professor Jose Arguelles, predict that “the end of the world as we know it” means that there will be a universal spiritual awakening. It isn’t the end of the world, they say,

but the beginning of a new and better one, which is an interpretation closer to what the Mayans believed. From troubled times will rise a new consciousness. Events surrounding 2012 are but the birth pains of a new age, the Age of Aquarius, at last.

Some scoff at the whole 2012 idea and predict a Y2K-style fizzle. Natural calamities and human strife happen all the time, and the Mayan calendar ending has no significance. It’s just a calendar, they write in their blogs and Web sites. Like any other calendar, it ran out; time to get a new one.

Meanwhile, there’s money to be made before the drop-dead date. There are books to peddle, bunkers to sell and TV shows to produce – ABC’s Wife Swap is looking for families that are preparing for 2012 for their Wife Swap 2012 Special – and a host of movies to promote. In a slick marketing move, Sony Pictures created a very realistic organization and Web site – the Institute for Human Continuity (www. instituteforhumancontinuity.org) – for its movie “2012.”

It’s fake, but you wouldn’t know it by the Web site. Besides sophisticated interactive disaster scenarios, it tells visitors that the institute has been working 30 years on preparation strategies and is now running a random lottery “to give all humans an equal shot at surviving.” Sign up now, the site urges, and since it’s one ticket per person, get the family to sign up, too. (The lottery is probably for free movie tickets.)

If you still believe that maybe this time it’s different, that 2012 really is the end, don’t be tempted to run up the credit cards or spend your 401(k) thinking you’ll be expiring instead of retiring. A safer bet for winter solstice 2012 is that autumn will end, winter will start and it’ll be cold as global cooling starts to bite.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 71

think life | TECHNOLOGY

An intelligent iPhone?

Siri lifts veil on intelligent assistant software, writes Elise Ackerman What could be one of the most significant advances in artificial intelligence in a decade is heading toward the iPhone App store this spring.

Siri, a San Jose company, announced this month that it would offer an “intelligent agent” for Apple’s iPhone that would, the company said, be able to find movie theatres, book restaurant reservations and airline flights, buy from online retail sites and even answer trivia questions like “How many calories are in a banana,” all by understanding spoken commands.

Dag Kittlaus, CEO of Siri, which 72 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

emerged from stealth mode to announce the product, says, “The future of search isn’t search. It is a conversation with someone you trust.”

Experts in artificial intelligence, or AI, say Siri will either be the first “intelligent agent” that responds to natural language – or the most recent failure in a series of spectacularly unsuccessful attempts to write software code that replicates some basic functions of the human brain.

Precursors to Siri included Apple’s “Knowledge Navigator,” touted by thenCEO John Sculley in 1987, and a project

Microsoft dubbed “Hailstorm,” which got cancelled before it was launched.

“I am skeptical of anything that uses the word ‘intelligent’ to describe itself,” says Charles Petrie, a senior research scientist at Stanford University’s Computer Science Department and a member of Stanford’s renowned artificial intelligence lab. Petrie has not had a chance to try Siri, which is currently available only to a limited number of testers associated with the company.

But the company describes an intriguing vision. Kittlaus, in a demonstration, speaks into his iPhone: “Siri, I want to see Star Trek.”

Within milliseconds, the phone displays a result that shows a nearby theatre where the movie is playing. If Kittlaus wanted, he could click on the result and Siri would buy the ticket for him. Or he could ask Siri, a Scandinavian girl’s name that means “beautiful victory,” to find a theatre closer to his home in South San Jose.

Tom Gruber, a computer scientist who began working on AI-related projects in the early 1980s, was also initially skeptical of Siri. After two decades of research, Gruber was all too aware of the limitations of machines.

But within five minutes Gruber realized that Kittlaus and his cofounder, Adam Cheyer, had cracked open “the grand opportunity.” Gruber immediately signed on as chief technology officer. What impressed him so much was Siri’s ability to offer a consumer product built on breakthroughs in machine learning, computer systems that learn from experience, as well as advances in natural language processing and in something geeks call the programmable Web – software code that lets Web sites share their data.

Siri could use the code, also known as APIs or application programming interfaces, to search for the cheapest flight to Denver on a site like Kayak.com and then add it to a Yahoo calendar. Or it could scan AllMenus.com and Yelp to find if there was a popular sushi place within four blocks of a user’s location.

Siri’s abilities are well beyond those of Google and the other major search engines, which are still primarily content-indexing systems, Gruber says.

Siri is not the first company to realize that knitting APIs together might be useful. Rearden Commerce of Foster City already offers a Web-based personal assistant for business customers that can book

“Siri will not be able to help someone choose a pet or provide relationship advice.

But it could excel at automating tedious tasks, like finding cheap airport parking or a public bathroom with a nappy-changing table travel, coordinate schedules, control costs and more.

But Norman Winarsky, a member of Siri’s board of directors, claims Siri is much more than just an integrator of Web services. Indeed, it’s the culmination of one of the government’s largest artificial-intelligence projects.

In 2003, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is most famous for sponsoring the research that led to the development of the Internet, awarded SRI International the first of several grants to develop CALO, a Cognitive Agent that Learns and Observes.

Over the next five years, DARPA invested $150 million in the project, said Winarsky, who is a vice president at SRI International. Hundreds of computer scientists and nearly three dozen universities and corporate research centers worked on parts of the CALO problem.

“I think we are going to surprise a lot of people with what’s possible now,” Kittlaus says.

Kittlaus was an entrepreneur-in-residence at SRI International when he cofounded Siri in December 2007 with Cheyer, the chief architect of CALO, and Gruber.

A former executive at Motorola and Telenor Mobile, the Scandinavian telecom giant, Kittlaus imagined putting Siri’s intelligence on the iPhone from the start. “The iPhone single-handedly changed mobile,” he says. People were ready to do all kinds of new things with their phone, provided it was easy, fun and free.

Siri’s business model is simple. As a virtual agent, Siri will ask companies to give it a cut of the transactions it brokers. Regular people won’t have to pay for the service.

“It is one of the first applications of AI that could really benefit consumers,” says Nova Spivack, chief executive of

Radar Networks, another spinout of the CALO project that is developing new Web technologies.

Spivack, who has seen a demo of Siri but not yet tried the software, says a digital assistant with artificial intelligence could perform well provided its roles are limited to certain defined areas. For example, Siri will not be able to help someone choose a pet or provide relationship advice. But it could excel at automating tedious tasks, like finding cheap airport parking or a public bathroom with a nappy-changing table.

There won’t be much room for error. Siri will need to prove that it is both reliable and secure in order to win consumers’ trust.

“It better do a really good job about getting me the reservation I wanted,” Spivack says. “If it sends me on a wild-goose chase, I will fire it, just as I would fire a real-life assistant.”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 73

feel life | SPORT

Under achievers The Warriors are in serious danger of becoming New Zealand’s biggest sporting letdowns in 2009. Rated as serious NRL title contenders back in March, columnist Chris Forster finds time is rapidly running out for this year’s model IVAN CLEARY seemed to have it all in 2009.

The quietly-spoken Australian coach had guided the Warriors to the last two playoffs, including last year’s incredible run to the semi-finals.

Even the harshest of critics across the Tasman thought this team had the best shot of going all the way to the NRL Grand Final, since Daniel Anderson’s famed team of 2002.

Leaving aside the 13-0 takedown of Newcastle – which indicates the patient 74 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

may still have a heartbeat – the mid-term report card makes grim reading.

Statistically it shows up a side that’s lost its way on attack and blown a chance to make Mt Smart a fortress against visiting teams.

The club’s biggest win prior to Newcastle was a scratchy opening round performance when they beat the Eels 26-18 at home.

They followed that up with a Stacey Jones inspired toppling of the defending champion Sea Eagles, at Manly.

But since then they managed 2 more

wins, and a gallant draw at Melbourne, in their next 10 games.

The Warriors had yet to score more than 30 points in a single match and in a bleak 6 game streak couldn’t muster more than 15 points for 80 minutes of endeavour.

Warhorse and vice-Captain Michael Luck tells it like it is.

He fronted the media calls after Round 13 plunge to the lowly Sharks in Cronulla, and wasn’t shirking the issues.

“It’s getting to a point where we’re sort

NZPA/Wayne Drought

of on death row. We can’t do that again or we’re done. Everyone’s trying – but for whatever reason the little things aren’t going our way”.

The optimism pills have worn off and Cleary needs a dramatic change in plans and fortunes to salvage the season.

So where has the plan come unstuck?

Certainly losing classy Kangaroos centre Brent Tate to a nasty knee injury three weeks into the season didn’t help.

He’s proved irreplaceable and the game

of Kiwis midfielder Jerome Ropati gradually deteriorated in Tate’s absence, to the point where he had to be dropped.

With much fanfare they’d signed up a small flotilla of Aussie imports to bolster depth in a number of key positions.

Two of the Queensland acquisitions have failed to fire. Winger and goal-kicker Denan Kemp has struggled at the end of a malfunctioning backline. Hardcore fans are wondering why they got rid of the metronomic Michael Witt, who also happened to be a pretty handy stand-off. Versatile playmaker Joel Moon’s looked out of sorts outside Stacey Jones or in the problematic centres. His options and kicking game have been way off the mark.

Hooker/halfback Nathan Fien has become yesterday’s man, and relegated to the relative obscurity of the Auckland Vulcans in his last season after being forced to find a new club.

The converted Kiwi international (and yes he was a critical part of the World Cup triumph in Brisbane) was snapped up by guru coach Wayne Bennett and will play at the St George Dragons in Sydney in 2010.

Witt was dumped unceremoniously after playing a key role in last year’s drive to within one game of the Grand Final. His super reliable goal-kicking’s been missed in the close shaves that have gone against the Warriors.

STACEY JONES’ comeback was the feelgood story of last year.

His early impact was impressive. The little general wound back the clock to defy defending premiers, Manly in week two then almost snatched victory in the remarkable 14-all draw in Melbourne.

But the opposing teams have got wise to poor old Stacey, and the tricks don’t have the same pizzazz of years gone by.

He recently knocked up 250 games for his beloved Auckland club and suddenly looks all of his 33 years. Unfairly, he’s become the media scapegoat for the Warriors woes. The nation’s biggest paper, the New Zealand Herald has launched one of its infamous editorial campaigns cloaked in sports journalism to try and get Jones dropped.

The under-performance must be exasperating for multi-millionaire boss Eric Watson, who’s got a pretty slick operation running the show out in Penrose.

His club’s profitable and still attracts 15,000 strong crowds to try and inspire their heroes out of the slump on wintry Sunday afternoons.

Wayne Scurrah is a popular and capable

CEO – and veteran captain Steve Price is a fantastic on-field leader, top club man and great role model for the thousands of budding young Warriors.

It’s nothing like the bad old days of 2000 when the club finished second to last and was on the brink of financial collapse until Watson stepped-in.

There are positives in the playing stocks too. Lance Hohaia has carried on his World Cup winning form – providing some muchneeded spark. Giant winger Manu Vatuvei is one of the game’s greatest attacking weapons and has erased memories of his horror days under the high ball. Development players like Sam Rapira, Russell Packer and Kevin Locke are making a great fist of life in the top grade and classy fullback Wade MacKinnon seems to be rediscovering his best form.

But somewhere, somehow the chemistry’s got out of kilter. The Warriors have run out of creative juice, and Cleary’s now got to mastermind his greatest feat in three seasons in charge – to avoid a forgettable Warriors season.

MONEY BILL WILLIAMS proved his star quality in his much-publicised return to Australia, as a part-time boxer and international rugby wannabe.

The rugby league pariah has a slickly managed two week itinerary and made all the right noises. Williams fronted-up to the Footie Show on Channel 9 then headed north of the border for a professional boxing debut where he smashed the living daylights out of a cowboy brawler from West Auckland.

He was the big drawcard for the Barbarians against the Wallabies – certainly far bigger than the 7 former All Blacks including Luke McAlister, Justin Marshall and Jerry Collins.

Sonny Bill was deliberately targeted by Stirling Mortlock – the great Wallabies centre – with a number of punishing tackles but showed glimpses of the sheer athletic charisma that’s helped the Sydney sporting public forgive him.

Of course the Australians and Mortlock dominated the match and Sonny Bill played no more than a bit part. But the hype paid dividends.

Graham Henry and the All Blacks were taking notes that Saturday night.

The recent injury crisis in the centres and loose forwards has proved New Zealand’s rugby stocks aren’t unlimited – and SBW’s gamble may pay dividends in the near future.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 75

feel life | HEALTH

The final frontier A new era of gene-based ‘personalized medicine’ is dawning, writes Robert S. Boyd Six years ago, scientists announced the completion of the Human Genome Project, a historic effort to decipher each of the 3 billion letters in the genetic instruction book for our species. A single anonymous male from New York – code name RP11 – provided the bulk of the DNA used for the project.

Now, many thousands more people are contributing DNA samples for a wide array of follow-on studies designed to turn the project’s findings to practical use in health care, genetics and biological research.

Researchers and doctors have opened a new era of “personalized medicine” that seeks to tailor therapies to patients based on their unique genetic makeups and medical histories.

According to the National Cancer Institute, the days are passing when most 76 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

cancer tumours were thought to be essentially the same and patients got the same drugs.

“We’re not very good at selecting therapies for individual patients,” Dr. Rick Hockett, the chief medical officer of Affymetrix, a genetics firm in Santa Clara, Calif., told a conference on personalized medicine this month in Washington. “Targeted therapy,” he said, can “improve the benefit-risk ratio for patients.”

For example, Hockett said that heart patients who took the popular anti-clotting drug Plavix had a greatly increased risk of serious problems, including death, if they had two tiny mutations in their genes.

Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York have begun to screen lung tumours for genetic abnormalities that could reveal whether a particu-

lar treatment is likely to work or should be avoided.

Last year, Dr. Richard Wilson, the director of the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University in St. Louis, compared 20,000 genes in cancer cells from a woman who died of leukemia with healthy cells also taken from her body. Wilson identified 10 mutations – or genetic mistakes – related to her cancer, including one that blocks chemotherapy drugs from getting inside the cancerous cell.

Other developments in the approaching world of personalized medicine include: • A “Personal Genome Project” led by George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, aims to recruit 100,000 people of diverse backgrounds to analyze their genomes and medical histories.

The first 10 participants already have published their personal data – including their pictures, weights and smoking and drinking habits, as well as their DNA – on the Internet for anyone to see at www.personalgenomes.org/pgp10.html.

To take part, volunteers donate hair and saliva samples for DNA analysis. So far, 13,000 people have asked to be enrolled.

For privacy, their data will be encoded by number, not by individual names.

The goal is to discover which genetic variations are related to which diseases, so that targeted therapies can be designed.

According to Church, at least 1,449 genes have been linked to potential illnesses. For instance, a gene called ApoE is associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer’s.

• The National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., has launched a “1000 Genomes Project,” which has started to collect DNA from 1,000 individuals from Africa, Asia and Europe. The goal is to provide much broader and deeper information than the original, limited Human Genome Project could.

Researchers are seeking clues to individual differences in susceptibility to disease, response to drugs and sensitivity to the environment.

“Just as astronomers see farther and more clearly into the universe with bigger telescopes, the results of the 1000 Genomes Project will give us greater resolution as we view our own genetic blueprint,” Francis Collins, the former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said in a statement explaining the plan. “We’ll be able to see more things more clearly than before, and that will be important for

understanding the genetic contributions to health and illness.”

The National Geographic Society is collecting DNA from about 300,000 people for a “Genographic Project” that traces their distant ancestries from continent to continent all the way back to their African roots.

Researchers at 10 centers around the world collect DNA samples from local populations. A team led by Spencer Wells, a genetic anthropologist and the magazine’s “explorer in residence” in Washington, will analyze the samples. In addition, anyone who wishes to can buy a $100 self-testing kit and provide a saliva sample to the Genographic project. Participants will get back reports that describe in general terms the migration of their ancestors from their original roots in Africa some 60,000 years ago.

A booming, but controversial, genetic testing industry also has sprouted, offering to analyze a person’s DNA – at a price – for possible susceptibility to cancer, Alzheimer’s and dozens of other diseases.

More than 1,000 such tests are on the market, Kathy Hudson, the director of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, told a congressional committee.

According to the Human Genome Project’s Web site, some genetic tests have “greatly improved or even saved lives,” but there are concerns that they might be used by insurance companies to deny coverage or by employers deciding whom to hire or promote.

To meet these concerns, the US Congress passed a “Genetic Information NonDiscrimination Act” last year, which is just starting to have an impact.

“The portions of it relating to health insurance just went into effect on May 21, and so will apply to next year’s (health) plan for most people,” said Susannah Baruch, of the Genetics and Public Policy Center.

The parts of the new law that relate to the use of genetic information on the job won’t take effect until Nov. 21, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission already has drafted regulations.

ON THE WEB More on personalized medicine: www.personalizedmedicinecoalition.org Personal Genome Project: http://www.personalgenomes.org 1000 Genomes Project: http://www.1000genomes.org/page.php National Geographic’s Genographic Project: https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com

“According to the Human Genome Project’s Web site, some genetic tests have “greatly improved or even saved lives,” but there are concerns that they might be used by insurance companies to deny coverage or by employers deciding whom to hire or promote

HEALTHBRIEFS WHAT’S NEXT, LOCUSTS? u SANTA FE, N.M., (UPI) – Already reeling from Swine Flu panic, Americans are being warned about an outbreak of bubonic plague in New Mexico, amid three confirmed cases of bubonic plague near Santa Fe. Paul Ettestad, the state public health veterinarian, said residents also need to be cautious with pets that are allowed outside because the county is seeing a number of bubonic plague cases involving animals, The (Santa Fe) New Mexican reported.

“Besides the human cases, we’re also having animal cases,” Ettestad said. “Those span from Taos County all the way down north-central New Mexico. I don’t suspect that plague is just in one small area, it seems to be countywide in Santa Fe.” A 54-year-old man is the third person to be confirmed with the potentially deadly infection, which has claimed the life of an 8-year-old boy. The boy’s 10-year-old sister was also infected, Ettestad said.

Symptoms of bubonic plague include swollen lymph nodes and a high fever. The bacterial disease has been known to be spread by fleas and rodents, the newspaper said.

THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS u ESSEN, Germany, (UPI) – A German boy on his way to school has become the second known person to survive a direct strike by a meteorite, scientists say.

Gerrit Blank, 14, has a 10-cm scar where he was hit on the hand by a pea-sized rock that hurtled to earth at more than 30,000 miles an hour, The Daily Telegraph of London reported this month.

“At first I saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand,” Blank told the Telegraph. “Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder.”

Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany’s Walter Hohmann Observatory, says tests indicate the rock that hit Blank was a real meteorite.

“Most don’t actually make it to ground level because they evaporate in the atmosphere,” Kortem says.

The only other known case of a human surviving a meteor strike was in the United States in 1954 when a grapefruit-sized rock crashed through the roof of a home in Alabama and struck a sleeping woman.

Living together can make you fat u CHAPEL HILL, N.C., (UPI) – Cohabitation increases your chance of getting fat, a study conducted by a U.S. nutritionist indicates.

Penny Gordon-Larsen of the University of North Carolina says there are positive health benefits to living together but remaining slim apparently isn’t one of them, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Gordon-Larsen found the risk of obesity rises the longer people live together.

“Maybe the cause of weight gain is not just age, but the pressure of shifting behaviors that result in weight gain,” she writes in a study to be published next month in the journal Obesity.

Gordon-Larsen says people who live together tend to eat meals together and watch television together instead of going to the gym or playing a sport.

Her research found couples living together for more than two years were most likely to display similar obesity patterns and physical behaviors.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 77

feel life | ALT.HEALTH

Toxic plastic?

The BPA industry seeks to polish the chemical’s image, write Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation Frustrated at media portrayals of bisphenol A as a dangerous chemical, food-packaging executives and lobbyists for the chemical makers met this month at an exclusive Washington, D.C., club where they hammered out a strategy, including showcasing a pregnant woman to talk about the chemical’s benefits.

The meeting was private, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel obtained a summary of the discussion. John Rost, chairman of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, confirmed that the meeting took place. He said the summary was incomplete and did not accurately portray all the discussions.

“It was a five-hour meeting,” he said.

But he did verify all the points in the summary.

A pregnant woman would be “the holy grail” to serve as a spokeswoman, the memo says. Attendees said they doubted they could find a scientist to serve as a spokesman for BPA. When asked why it would be hard to find a scientist to tout the chemical’s benefits, Rost told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that any studies paid for by chemical makers are discounted by the media.

“The minute industry pays for a meal or an airline ticket, that scientist is tainted as working for industry,” Rost said. “They put their reputations at risk.”

Other strategies discussed at the meeting included focusing on how BPA bans would disproportionately put minorities at risk, particularly Hispanics and AfricanAmericans who are more inclined to be poor and dependent on canned foods.

Committee members said they would try 78 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

to get stories in the media that spread the message that canned goods made without BPA would be more likely to become contaminated. BPA serves to seal food in cans, helping to keep out bacteria.

The group agreed to pay $500,000 to survey the American public about BPA safety.

Companies and organizations attending the meeting included the Coca-Cola Co., Alcoa Inc., Crown Holdings Inc., the North American Metal Packaging Alliance Inc., the Grocery Manufacturers Association, Del Monte Corp. and the American Chemistry Council, which lobbies for the chemical makers.

Richard Wiles, executive director of the activist Environmental Working Group, said he was surprised by the content of the memo.

“I mean, it seems over the top, even by industry,” Wiles said. “I’m amazed in this day and age they’d write this stuff down.”

He said the document suggests that the chemical industry can’t rely on science to sell its product.

He pointed to their agreement that fear tactics might be their best shot at keeping the chemical on store shelves.

The memo says that attendees suggested fear tactics be used, such as asking consumers, “Do you want to have access to baby food anymore?”

“This looks as bad as the tobacco or asbestos documents to me,” Wiles said.

The memo also indicates the group is concerned that whatever chemical they use to replace BPA will also have public relations problems.

“It does not matter what the next material is,” the group says in the memo. “There will be issues with it, and the committee wants to work to make people feel more comfortable with BPA and ‘BPA2’ or whatever chemical comes next.”

“Would it ever occur to these people to use a safe chemical so we wouldn’t have ‘BPA2’?” Wiles said.

Rost said he and others have been increasingly frustrated with BPA’s bad image.

“We’re getting no traction and no coverage in conventional media,” Rost said.

“We’re looking for ways to get our side of the story out there.”

The committee is baffled by media accounts discounting studies paid for by chemical makers.

A growing number of studies in the past two decades have linked BPA to a host of health problems, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and hyperactivity.

Government agencies are divided on the safety of BPA, which is used to line most food and beverage cans. A group of scientists from the National Toxicology Program said last year it had “some concern” for the chemical, particularly in fetuses, newborns and small children.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has declared BPA safe, citing two studies, both of which were paid for by chemical makers.

Canada has declared BPA to be toxic and is banning it from baby bottles.

In the United States, government bodies issuing bans include Suffolk County, N.Y., the state of Minnesota and the city of Chicago.

Bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress to ban the chemical in food packaging. Other bans are being considered in several states, including Michigan, Maine, Connecticut and California.

Legislatively, the committee is focusing on Connecticut and California, the memo says.

“The members are focusing on more legislative battles and befriending people that are able to manipulate the legislative process,” the memo says. “They believe a grassroots and legislative approach is favorable because the legislators worry about how the moms will react.”

If the Connecticut bill goes through, the committee believes it will be a good opportunity to talk about the negative impact that ban will have on businesses and employment, the memo says: “How will it affect the union workers?

The committee wants to put a proposal together for the right way to deal with legislative issues in each state.”

ON THE WEB To read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s ongoing investigation and follow-up coverage, go to www.jsonline.com/chemicalfallout

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www.danskemobler.co.nz INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 79

taste life travel

Hunting Holmes A guidebook to Sherlock’s London takes the detective work out of finding signature sites, writes John Bordsen Thomas Wheeler waded into London in the ‘90s. First the 1990s, after the retired government worker from the US, got serious about travel. Wheeler and his wife became so intimately acquainted with London theatre and shopping that he began writing guidebooks and operating tours of the city and the nearby English countryside.

Then the 1890s: A childhood interest in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels and stories never abated, and Wheeler amassed a detailed knowledge of the legendary Victorian detective.

Wheeler cross-bred his files to create a guidebook on Sherlock’s world, and an updated version, The New ‘Finding Sherlock’s London’ (iUniverse, US$22.95) has just been published.

It lists more than 300 sites.

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Most of us have less of an addiction to the master detective and his friend, Dr. Watson ... but an attraction nonetheless.

Amazon.com remains fully stocked with the original Sherlock titles and hundreds of spinoffs, knockoffs and rip-offs. Countless films have been made of the investigative duo, and a new, big-budget Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. is being readied for Christmas release.

A great deal of its filming this past winter was done in London – an elementary decision, as so many cases were set there, and the metropolis retains something of the feel of crimes and clues tucked into waistcoats and fog-darkened shadows.

Going to London soon? We recently interrogated Wheeler, who offers these slice-of-Sherlock tips.

The absolute must-see The famous apartment Sherlock and Watson shared at 221-B Baker St. never existed, but Baker Street is still the best place to start, according to Wheeler.

“The Sherlock Holmes Museum, on the 200 block of Baker Street, has a sign over the door that reads 221-B. But it’s not really where the fictional place would’ve been, and the museum’s actual address is 239. But the museum has a replica of Holmes and Watson’s rooms on the second floor. The ground floor has a kind of curio shop where you can buy Sherlock Holmes items.

“Across from the museum at the Baker Street Underground station is a statue of the detective.

“Where did Holmes actually live? In my book, I consider it 31 Baker St. I came to

“Restaurants mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes adventures that are still in business include Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, at 100 Strand

that conclusion studying The Adventure of the Empty House, in which a route is given that ends up at an empty house across from their rooms.”

Best place to buy a deerstalker hat and a calabash pipe Wheeler: “Probably the museum, where the hats go for about £20. The shop also has books and everything else for sale.

“On Oxford Street is a tobacco shop that has been in business a long time. It might be where Sherlock bought his pipe tobacco or cigarettes.

He had cigarettes in some of the stories.”

Best Sherlockian place to eat “Go to the Sherlock Holmes Pub, at 10 Northumberland St. Its second floor has a restaurant with decent pub food – bangers

and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes).

And behind glass is a replica of the 221B drawing room, just as you imagined it.

There’s good beer downstairs.

“Restaurants mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes adventures that are still in business include Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, at 100 Strand – mentioned in The Adventure of the Dying Detective and The Adventure of the Illustrious Client. If you order the tableside carved roast at Simpson’s, remember to tip the carver in cash. And there’s the Criterion Grill, 224 Piccadilly, where Watson first heard of Holmes, in A Study in Scarlet. At the Criterion, ask if they still have the good value pre-theater dinner.”

Best place for Sherlock sleep You can stay at several hotels mentioned in

the stories, according to Wheeler.

“There’s The Charing Cross Hotel, which I like because it’s at the center of Sherlock’s London. It’s within walking distance of the Simpson’s-in-the-Strand – Sherlock’s favorite restaurant. And Trafalgar Square is right across the street. The Charing Cross is a nice hotel and was recently refurbished. Also, the Charing Cross Hotel was mentioned in The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plan.

“At Brook and Davies streets is Claridge’s.

It’s mentioned in several stories and is probably the only hotel in which Sherlock stayed as a guest. After he retired and moved to the Sussex countryside to become a beekeeper, he returned to London in His Last Bow during World War I as a double agent feeding false information to the Germans.

In the story, he was staying at Claridge’s. It’s INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 81

a five-star place (www.claridges.co.uk).

“Others include The Grosvenor Hotel, on Buckingham Palace Road (www.grosvenor-hotel-london.co.uk) – mentioned in The Final Problem – and The Langham Hotel (http:// london.langhamhotels.co.uk/ en), on Portland Place: The Sign of Four, A Scandal in Bohemia and The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax.

“My favorite, though, is The Royal Horseguards. You know you’re in London when you stay there (www.theroyalhorseguards.co.uk). It’s a great old hotel within a half-block of the Sherlock Holmes Pub. It’s also near the Embankment tube station, which has four underground lines. You can get anywhere quickly from there. The tube station is where London Walks offers its Holmes tour, Fridays at 2 p.m., for £7 per person. Reservations aren’t required; just show up (www.walks.com).”

Thomas Wheeler has written a guidebook on Sherlock Holmes’s world.

(Photo courtesy Thomas Wheeler/ Charlotte Observer/MCT)

IF YOU GO The Sherlock Holmes Museum, 239 Baker St., London, is open 9:30 a.m.-6 p.m. daily.

Admission: £6; £4 for 15 and younger. Details: www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk SERIOUS FAN, EXHAUSTIVE BOOK Thomas Wheeler, 78, is a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, one of the foremost associations of serious fans. In Memphis, Tenn., he is also a former First Garrideb of the Giant Rat of Sumatra organization.

(Sherlock clubs tend to acquire odd names based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings. A giant rat of Sumatra was mentioned in the story “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.” The Memphis president is similarly and obscurely titled to honor “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs.”)

Die-hard fans are indeed a serious bunch, and “The New ‘Finding Sherlock’s London’” is guilty as charged. It could easily be stocked in a bookstore’s travel aisle – or among reference guides in the mystery area. The 300-some pages list more than 300 spots from one end of London to the other.

The volume is organized in several ways. One is by story/novel according to the year in which each was set. (Got a favorite? Just look it up: Review the synopsis and literally view the scenes.) Another section groups sites by which of 80 Underground stations they’re near – a boon for time-crunched visitors to whom Holmes-Watson sites may be an easy by-the-way stop. Other groupings are by train stations and 10 London rail lines. Five walking tours are outlined, and two lists in the back tell which adventures feature 450 named characters.

The book is exhaustive, but it makes it infinitely easier for fans to find what they seek in London. As the man with the magnifying glass noted in “A Case of Identity” (1891), “The little things are infinitely the most important.”

82 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

The ‘hood that looks most like Sherlock’s turf “I’d say Craven Street, off Northumberland.

It’s where a lot of houses were never torn down, and many are Victorian. It’s one of those backstreets just east of the Sherlock Holmes Pub. This area is covered in the London Walks tour.”

Best short walk for casual fans “One I cover in my book is only six-tenths of a mile and retraces the route to 221-B Baker St., as covered in The Adventure of the Empty House. The walk starts at Cavendish Square and ends up on Baker Street at the true Holmes-Watson site. The buildings on the walk are a mix of commercial and residential. Probably more commercial these days: It’s expensive to have a home in London.

“This is in a part of London right off Oxford Street which has big stores – but you’re taking backstreets. The route is flat; this is an easy walk.”

Best add-on – for mood “Dennis Severs’ House, 18 Folgate St., in Spitalfields, is a must for seeing how Londoners lived in the 19th century. Their Monday evening tour is the most unique.

Advance booking is necessary, and the best is £12 per person. They also offer daylight tours of the house most Sundays between noon and 4 p.m. (£8 per person), and between noon and 2 p.m. the Monday following the first and third Sundays (£5 per person). No advance booking is required for the daylight tours (www.dennissevershouse.co.uk).”

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 83

taste life FOOD

It all comes down to this James Morrow looks at the two greatest food shows currently being produced, and wonders how he would rise to the challenge My heart, at least when it comes to television viewing, is torn between two lovers.

One is elegant, suave, knowing, polished and beautiful. The other is earthy, rougharound-the-edges, has a cutting tongue, and doesn’t let anyone get too up themselves. And depending on who you get your TV signal from, you may have already figured out that I am talking about what may be the two greatest, and yet two most polar opposite, food shows currently in production anywhere on the planet.

One is Britain’s fly-on-the-wall reality dinner party game show, Come Dine With Me (whose American cousin, Dinner Take All, is currently screening on TVNZ). The other is a very classy production out of Australia, Signature Dish.

For those who have not yet seen either show, here’s the short version for the Twitter generation: On Come Dine With Me, five strangers are thrown together to host a week’s worth of dinner parties, scoring each other as they go. At the end of the 84 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

week, the highest scorer wins one thousand Pounds.

Signature Dish, meanwhile, is just what it sounds like. An Australian production, each episode features different chefs making their, well, signature dishes.

And whereas the most unrestrained behaviour one sees on Signature Dish might be a mad French chef of the old school lustily breaking down a suckling pig with a meat cleaver, things are a bit more out of control on Dine. Because, for one thing, it is British, which means that really heroic quantities of really cheap alcohol introduce a wonderful element of chaos to the proceedings. And for another, in the course of filming several series of the show the producers have gotten really, really good at the art of finding the maddest people in a town and throwing them together, regardless of cooking ability.

(Don’t believe me? One recent week’s worth of debacles – I mean dinner parties – that screened in Australian house-

holds was set in the British city of Preston.

Otherwise famous for having been the scene of a major Jacobite defeat in 1715, and more recently as home to England’s biggest bus station, a week’s worth of Dine episodes shows the town is also home to a hysterically funny rich gay man who could double as Jack Nicholson’s fey younger brother; an obese West Indian carpet salesman with a terrible-twos sense of look-atme entitlement; and an inflatable blonde narcoleptic who managed to fall asleep after her starters, forcing her guests to cook her own signature dish for themselves.

Fortunately this was not terribly difficult or complicated, as she had chosen for her main course chicken fajitas, with ingredients and directions supplied by a box of Old El Paso. The mayhem was backed, as always, by sharp editing and brilliantly cutting voiceovers which must make the participants wonder why they ever bothered sending in an application.)

As great as Dine is, especially for the life-

style voyeurs among us who would rather peek behind the curtains of our equals than the rich and famous, Signature Dish harkens a return to cooking programs that were actually about, well, cooking. I’ve been recording them obsessively on the hard drive, and haven’t come across a dud yet – and, quite generously, each individual chef ’s presentation is available on the show’s excellent website, http://www.lifestylefood. com.au/shows/signature-dish/recipes/ While Dine and Dish may seem as similar, as well matched, as passionfruit and pasta, they both pose the same existential question: What dish defines you as a chef?

For both the amateurs on Dine and the pros on Dish need to answer the question, and hopefully it is a bit better than something out of a packet. And while the pros often choose a dish they have been making for years if not decades (a particular caramelised lemon tart with coconut sorbet featured on the show followed its creator from restaurant to restaurant), I suspect that for many creative home chefs, the answer is more something of a moveable feast.

Perhaps it is just my natural tendency towards mild attention deficit disorder (my editors at various publications have long lamented my tendency to get distracted by bright shiny objects other than deadlines), but if you returned to ask me what my stand-out, slap-up, impress-theneighbours feast of a meal, you might have gotten answers as different as duck confit, slow-braised beef short ribs, and a surf-andturf plate involving a veal chop, mushroom duxelle, poached West Australian marron, spinach and hollandaise sauce (it really was very, very good).

But today if you asked me that question I would have to say that my current signature dish would be an open lasagna of seafood with a lobster oil and basil cream foam.

I came up with this on a recent Saturday night, after a particularly successful morning trip to the fish markets (and a particularly annoying afternoon spent fiddling with a dicky pasta machine). The end result is something that is light and bright yet rich and luxurious at the same time; one could make it with whatever particularly appropriate seafood one had to hand, and could even luxe it up further by drizzling some salmon eggs or even caviar over the top just before serving.

What about you? What’s your signature dish? I’d love to hear about – send your ideas care of this magazine, or find me on Facebook.

OPEN SHELLFISH LASAGNA You’ll need Fresh pasta sheets – enough to cut three ten-centimetre squares per serve – either home-made or purchased 2-3 scallops per person 1-2 langoustines, cooked, meat removed and split, per person 2-3 teaspoons lobster oil (available in specialty food shops) 100ml pouring cream per person several leaves fresh basil salt and freshly-milled white pepper Method This is a very all-at-once sort of dish. First bring a pot of salted water to the boil, and in another pot warm your cream, lobster oil and basil just to a simmer to infuse. When the water is at the boil, toss in your pasta sheets, and heat a non-stick pan with just a touch of olive oil and butter. Fry your seafood and, after a minute or two, turn your scallops and langoustine tails – you want to get a good colour on them but not turn them rubbery. Meanwhile, bring the cream to a boil and, tilting to one side, froth to a light foam using an immersion blender. Assemble the dish with a layer of pasta, a layer of scallops, a layer of pasta, a layer of langoustines, and finally another layer of pasta. Top with the cream foam, season with the salt and pepper, and perhaps drizzle a bit more lobster oil over and around the plate.

Another optional touch to add both colour and flavour to this dish is to scatter some fresh rocket pesto around the plate; to make, roast off a few cloves of garlic and then blend with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a good couple of handfuls washed and drained rocket. This is great stuff to have around the house in any case as it is a great accompaniment to any number of roast or grilled meats, and is tops on any sandwich made with Turkish bread.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 85

touch life > toybox

Stylus Photo TX700W The Stylus Photo TX700W features comprehensive connectivity including WiFi (802.11b/g), Ethernet, Hi-Speed USB 2.0, PictBridge, and multi-format card reader. The TX800FW has an elegant and intuitive 7.8 inch touch panel that lights up only the buttons necessary to bring essential controls to users’ fingertips, and a large 3.5 inch colour LCD screen for easy selecting, copying, enlarging, rotating, cropping, and printing photos without a computer. The TX700W is capable of direct CD/DVD printing on compatible disks, print borderless photos on selected paper sizes, and comes with Epson PhotoEnhance software which detects faces, enhances skin tones, corrects for backlit images and colour casts, and adjusts theprinter to produce natural colours in outdoor scenes. The TX700W features Epson’s Claria Photographic Ink in six economical individual ink cartridges to create vivid, true-to-life prints with smudge, scratch and water resistance on selected Epson papers and plain paper, as well as fade resistance up to four times longer than photo lab prints on selected Epson papers. The Epson Stylus Photo TX700W is $399 RRP inc GST. www.epson.co.nz

BenQ MP724 Take presentations to a whole new level with the new BenQ MP724 data projectors. Made for middle – large meeting rooms, colors and details are delivered with crystal-clear smoothness. Plus, with its unique technology and brightness to spare at 3500 stunning ANSI lumens, MP724 is the perfect way to enhance the learning experience and make the presentation experience come alive for everyone.

The high 2800:1 contrast ratio means fine details and subtle colors differences are rendered vividly even in darkly lit scenes. True beauty comes from within. The revolutionary BrilliantColor enables higher brightness levels by boosting mid-tone colors-guaranteeing your presentations are more vibrant and precisely rendered. www.benq.com

86 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

NB200 mini-notebook The NB200 has a full sized keyboard, great storage capacity, long battery life and integrated webcam. It’s the simplest way to stay in touch with people from anywhere you travel. The NB200 range also allows you to download important data from your PC with synchronisation software, enabling you to take your digital life with you wherever you go. Weighing only 1.18 kg with a 3 cell battery, the NB 200 has a 10.1’’ widescreen LED backlight display and a full 19mm pitch keyboard (desktop standard) for easy typing. The NB200 also comes bundled with Face Recognition software offering an easy and fun way to log on. Powered by a 1.66 GHz Intel Atom Processor N280, the NB200 also has a Mobile Intel GMA 950 graphics chipset. This allows users to browse the web, e-mail, run basic applications and access movies, songs and photos. www.toshiba.com.au

TuneBase FM Belkin’s new TuneBase FM allows you to pick up a call on your iPhone while in the car, hands-free. The thoughtful design of this product lets you use it without removing your iPhone or iPod from its case. The TuneBase cradle easily repositions your iPhone horizontally to view turn-by-turn directions and videos. Newer cars include an auxiliary input jack to connect different audio sources to the car’s stereo. TuneBase FM lets you listen to music from your iPhone or iPod in your car while simultaneously charging it. Its ClearScan feature automatically searches for the clearest FM frequency.

How to Answer Calls in the Car. www.belkin.com

Nokia N97 The Nokia N97 is Nokia’s first device to feature a personalizable home screen, which can be customized with a range of widgets which bring live information directly to the device.

These widgets include key social networking destinations like Facebook and Hi5, news services like the Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters, as well as shopping and weather information. The Nokia N97 is the first device to ship with the Ovi Store, which offers easy access to applications, games, videos, podcasts, productivity tools, web and location-based services, and much more. With multiple high-speed connectivity options and 32GB of storage (up to 48GB using a microSD card) it is possible to directly download and store tens of thousands of songs on the handset.

High-quality images and video clips at 30 frames per second can be captured using the 5 megapixel camera with integrated Carl Zeiss optics. www.nokia.com

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see life / pages

Gritty kiwi stories Michael Morrissey finds much to be cheerful about in the latest NZ offerings SAY SORRY

By Ann Thompson with Fiona Craig Penguin Books, $40 Over the last twenty years the Catholic Church and the world have been shocked by the scandal of priests and brothers being guilty of sexual harassment, molestation and even rape.

Ann Thompson’s harrowing tale written in simple, direct heartfelt prose, reveals that nuns too can be horribly cruel and sexually molest. Thompson was an illegitimate child placed in the care of St Joseph’s Orphanage in Christchurch. She was later moved to Nazareth House where she stayed until she was nineteen. At both institutions she endured constant beatings, hard labour and sexual assault.

To these cruel treatments were added raggedy clothing, being barefoot, forced feedings, verbal abuse and humiliation.

Unsurprisingly, Thompson tried to commit suicide twice but failed. That she should have emerged from such a terrible and prolonged ordeal to get married to a loving husband, have four children and live a normal life, is testament to the almost superhuman endurance of the human spirit. She, of course, did not emerge without psychological scars. A psychiatrist who examined her found she had all 21 symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Here are some direct quotations of her horrendous treatment: “... she (Mother Euphrasia) would punch my head and face so hard that she burst my right eardrum ... Mother Euphrasia broke my nose not once, but five times.”

“Naked, I was laid on the bed on my stomach while my hands and feet were tied to the head of the bed. Three nuns undertook 88 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

the beating that would become the grisly evening ritual. From the age of ten until I was nineteen I was tied up most nights while they beat me with their belts, hula hoops, or whip-like canes.

My legs would be wide apart while they beat me around my buttocks and thighs.”

The “justification” for these beatings was that they were beating the devil out of her or that she was stubborn. Clearly, sexual sadism was involved in these assaults and there was nothing to justify them. Not all the nuns were cruel – Thompson fondly remembers the benign Sister Francis of Rome who was always kind to her and two Irish nuns who were friendly and always laughing.

When she had chicken pox that too was described by the nuns as the devil coming out of her. It is odd to read what resembles medieval ideas being uttered in New Zealand in the mid twentieth century. And what was the Catholic Church (until recent times) doing about these atrocities? Essentially, nothing. Pope Paul 11 was more concerned about the suffering of his bishops than the real victims. The current Pope, Benedict XV1, has apologised for the abuse and personally met with victims. Yet according to Father Tom Doyle, an indefatigable campaigner for victims of clerical abuse, who has written an epilogue to his book, the Pope has failed to punish the bishops who have allowed the abuse to occur and in some cases even been responsible for abuse themselves.

There is hope – Thompson and many others who have suffered similarly, are now banding together to take legal action. And the church has now paid up to $1 billion in compensation. A fascinating footnote reveals that a survey of 1500 priests done in 1971 indicated 20-25 per cent suffered from neurosis or alcoholism and up to 70 per cent were emotionally immature. More light needs to be shone into these dark corners.

With the curiosity of the chewing gum-spotting child, the roaming de Botton then journeys to French Guiana, location South America – and not – as the geography-wise author points out – to be confused with the numerous other Guineas on the globe, to witness the launch of a Japanese satellite from a French-run base.

The director reassures them that there is only a 0.2% chance of something going wrong and the rocket exploding with the force of a nuclear device. Here, as with the other topics the hands-on philosopher describes, such as an inspired career counsellor or the dotty contrivances of inventors, de Botton writes supremely elegant English with long well-balanced sentences reminiscent of the great nineteenth century essayists which are a joy to read in this age of brutally truncated texting and the moron-simple sentences that have increasingly become the norm in our media.

SINGULARITY

By Charlotte Grimshaw Random House, $36.99

THE PLEASURES AND SORROWS OF WORK

By Alain de Botton Hamish Hamilton, $50 William Faulkner once famously remarked: “You can’t eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours – all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.” But de Botton has a more favourable view of work and has written a most elegantly phrased book in order to give employment good press.

Early in his book, de Botton introduces a breed of men (I’m sure women have better things to do) dedicated to the meticulous art of ship spotting. He amiably compares them to children who notice the small details of life such as chewing gum squashed on the pavement. And what arouses de Botton’s vigorous curiosity is the unobtrusive way ships and planes routinely carry food and goods around the world at all times of the day and night with scant notice from a media obsessed with catastrophe. He discovered that information about this ceaseless activity is hard to come by – “Attempts to trace – let alone to witness or photograph – how warm-water fish reach our tables are liable to provoke the same suspicion which must have greeted enquiries into the slave trade in the 1780s.”

To land his fish, as it were, the author travels to the Maldives to witness the catching and killing of tuna. The clubbing to death and gutting of a large fish is not a pretty sight but like any objective yet compassionate reporter, de Botton follows the long journey of the doomed fish from the sea to the plate. Unlike the intrepid Redmond O’ Hanlon, who cheerfully joined in the catching of North Sea fish, de Botton remains content to observe which is probably all he would have been permitted to do. Less bloody are the manufacture of biscuits and just as meticulous is his attempt to comprehend not only the scale and complexity of their creation and the plurality of products but the human fact that, for so many, the existence of these factories is no journalist’s item but their very life blood.

Charlotte Grimshaw’s rise to current literary fame has been meteoric. Following her first three acclaimed novels, she has produced two brilliant collections of short stories. Opportunity won the Montana Medal for fiction in 2008 and it would not be surprising if Singularity achieves the same honour. Rather than being a formal sequel, it is another series of linked fictions existing as it were, in a parallel literary universe. Reid, the policeman who featured briefly in the title story of Opportunity is here placed in a broader canvas and emerges sympathetically. If Grimshaw continues in this vein, she could spend a potential writer’s lifetime on ever extended links, like a series of expanding fractals. My guess is she will call it a day with this collection and give us a brand new novel next time – but who knows?

The first story in this collection, “The Yard Broom” is the longest and in some ways the most impressive, though all are of high quality. Thankfully, Grimshaw, like her father C.K. Stead, is not to be located in the braying sheep dip of the politically correct, so that means a Maori can be a bad guy, like Huru Wright, drug dealer. The main nexus in this story is how Angela relates to her lover Nathan and the seedy but perceptive Pastor Kyle. It would be all too easy to make Nathan into a sadistic brute and portray Pastor Kyle as a grubby old man, but Grimshaw avoids these cliches and thereby grants a greater depth to the characters.

Another notable aspect of Grimshaw’s stories is the lyric description of the land or cityscape – whether the balmy clime of Northland, the oddly shifting light of Auckland or the idyllic summer of Menton in the south of France A second stand out story is “Trial” which expertly reveals the at first hostile yet later burgeoning relationship between reporter Emily and depressed Professor Ford Lampton, (who might be one of Saul Bellow’s disconsolate intellectuals), who we earlier met in “The Other”.

She is skilled at dramatic confrontation as when a revenge-seeking Lisa Green “outs” undercover policeman Reid. Her almost Dostoyevskian sense of psychological turmoil is shown to advantage when Ford keeps changing his email message texts until, like the professor he is, he sensibly selects the least provocative. The not quite rounded endings of Grimshaw’s stories are perhaps a natural result of the open-ended way she handles the short story form and they also bring to mind the style of Chekhov, master of the genre. Grimshaw’s stories are always well-packed with incident, surprise and tight lyric description. She prefers economic INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 89

dialogue which is always effective yet I couldn’t help wishing for her to explore a more generous expansion of it.

Despite my admiration of Grimshaw’s stories, I have a couple of mild reservations. It seems a stretch of coincidence for policeman Reid and Professor Ford to be half brothers and on occasions, she passes over important off-stage events with almost alarming brevity – events that might have merited further exploration – though of course she may do just that in future stories. For this still relatively youthful writer, the future looks bright.

SMALLPOX, SYPHILIS AND SALVATION

By Sheryl Persson Exisle, $47.99 In the current fever of alarm about Swine flu, which thankfully looks increasingly like a damp squib, it is timely to recall some of the truly terrible diseases that have ravaged humanity and the way that medical science has met the challenge of combating them. While smallpox is the only one that has been eradicated, cures for other major diseases such as tuberculosis, syphilis, malaria do exist. Ironically, the less developed nations still have these diseases to varying degrees and the cost of medicine always remains a factor in dealing with them. Prior to the late nineteenth century, science had little grasp of what caused many of the major diseases let alone found a way to cure them. In clear sombre prose, historian Persson takes us through some of humanity’s greatest tragedies and some of its greatest triumphs.

It was Edward Jenner who pioneered the notion of vaccination that got the ball rolling back in 1796 when he produced a successful serum for smallpox. Smallpox has been one of the most terrible scourges of humanity – in the New World it reduced the indigenous population from 25 million to 1.6 million in 100 years but was finally eradicated in 1980. Curiously, stocks of the dreaded virus still remain with Russia and the USA – is this a continuation of cold war? A further review of their continued laboratory preservation will be made in 2010.

The next giant was Louis Pasteur who formerly established the germ theory of disease and discovered a vaccine for rabies. Like many pioneers, he had his critics and his rivals to contend with.

Fellow scientist Koch, a brilliant German scientist and rival Baron von Liebig challenged Pasteur’s findings. Pasteur, never one to back down from a confrontation journeyed to Berlin for a face-to-face with Liebig. The nationalistic Liebig declined to meet with the French genius. Among Pasteur’s powerful allies was Joseph Lister, who began sterilising his instruments and consequently observed a dramatic drop in post-surgical infection. In this mixed bag of success and failure, history accurately favoured the eventual victor and Pasteur received great acclamation from numerous scientific contemporaries on his 70th birthday.

Tuberculosis has probably killed more people than any other infectious disease. The estimate given here is a staggering one billion over two centuries. Albert Schatz and Selman Waksman are jointly credited with the discovery of streptomycin’s curative properties. Despite the cure, 1.7 million people still died of TB in 2007, including half a million simultaneously infected with HIV. What is striking in many cases is that the eventual cure is the result of many small steps along the way so that the lucky, though always dedicated, scientist who eventually discovers a vaccine is standing on the shoulders of equally dedicated predecessors.

The great Paul Ehrlich was the principal discoverer of Salvarsan 90 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

(later Neosalvarsan), a cure for syphilis. Alas, it had unfortunate side effects and in some cases did not work. Without in any way seeking to diminish Ehrlich’s achievement – and he also contributed vastly to the development of bacteriology, haematology and launching the age of chemotherapy – I feel the later completion of the cure for syphilis through penicillin was not told in as full a way as it was for other diseases.

Sadly, AIDS is not included among the medical success stories detailed in this account, for although the disease can be slowed enormously, and is now perhaps deceptively regarded as chronic rather than an automatically fatal disease, it cannot be cured.

Perhaps in the next decade its name will be added to the list of conquered diseases; a complete cure for diabetes is said to be expected soon. However, as long as the poverty of the African continent continues, diseases that can be cured or greatly slowed in developed countries will result in the unnecessary death of millions.

D-DAY

By Antony Beevor Viking, $65 Until reading this book, my views on D-Day and its aftermath were a trifle rose-coloured. While Saving Private Ryan had brought home that the landing was bloody, I had vaguely imagined the largeness of the invasion and the weakening of German military might – especially on the eastern front – had made the allied invasion of France something of a cake walk. It was anything but. As just one statistic will show – German losses on the eastern front averaged 1000 per division per month but in Normandy they were 2300 per division per month while allied losses were also 2000 per division per month – a bloodbath on both sides.

The D-Day invasion was a remarkable event in warfare – it involved the most ambitious and successful military deception, the largest armada in history – nearly 5000 ships – and the largest number of troops landed in one operation – a million all told.

Beevor doesn’t spare us detail about Allied muck ups – men so heavily loaded they could barely walk, men landing in water over their heads and drowning, troops bailing out at too low an altitude and landing on the ground, the sound of their bodies like “watermelons falling off the back of a truck”. The impressive bombardment from the 14-inch guns of battleships often missed their target as did salvos of rockets.

Such a composite force – dozen of nations were involved – meant trouble with unity among commanders particularly at the top. Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Tedder loathed Montgomery as did Eisenhower; Bradley distrusted the flamboyant Patton; Patton despised Montgomery – and so forth. Beevor is particularly hard on Montgomery whose caution and conceit often weighed against the success he had earlier enjoyed against Rommel in North Africa, who in this theatre of war was in charge of the Atlantic Wall designed to stop the allied invasion. As Beevor and other historians have remarked, it was odd that Hitler should have believed in the concept when he himself had gone around the Maginot line some years earlier. One of Montgomery’s major errors was not closing the gap at the battle of Falise allowing some 20,000 German troops to escape. Time and time again his method of warfare was overly cautious, a tactic which infuriated the more gung-ho Patton.

The Germans too, Beevor notes, were also divided. Rommel wanted a forward defence while and Guderian and Geyr favoured

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an armoured counter attack. Rommel was to complain bitterly about the uselessness of the Luftwaffe and Hitler, as always, resisted any overall command and coordination between the forces except that of his own – he was also inflexible in his strategy which often hindered his generals’ response. Everything was to be held to the end.

Like many of the allies, Montgomery underestimated the deadly effect of the German 88 mm gun. Thus equipped, the Mark V1 Tiger, described by Beevor as the most formidable fighting machine in the war, could take care of three Sherman tanks and also devastated the British Cromwell tank. The German light machine gun, the MG 42 was superior to the American equivalent. No wonder the Germans proved tough opponents. Often they held off vastly superior allied forces. Their soldiers were of course more battle-hardened and often better trained. At this late date, it is permissible for a contemporary historian like Beevor to emphasise the unwelcome effects of battle exhaustion which could reduce men to crying helplessness within 48 hours of being at the front. Even the tougher more fanatical German soldiers could be disabled by the unremitting shock of a heavy aerial bombardment. On occasion, the impact of concussion alone could kill. The descriptions of how the allies ingeniously coped with impenetrable hedgerows by attaching rhino horn-like prongs to the front of their tanks makes fascinating reading.

The war was mainly brutality but odd moments of humanity could occur. Beevor reports an incident when the Germans allowed a medic to bandage wounded men and take them away and another when a German soldier came and apologised for shooting at British medics. But brutality was more often the order of the day especially from Waffen-SS Panzer divisions like Das Reich. When victory was in sight, various French resistance groups made premature uprisings and paid the price in blood. Normandy civilians suffered the most – 20,000 perished. Death by friendly fire took its toll on the allied side. The Germans also deployed the “dirty trick” which the Russians used against them – the fake surrender.

Soldiers would come up waving white flag then open fire. Such tactics have been declared, without irony, as against the rules of war. Amid the swagger of large scale warfare, Beevor also includes stories of individual valour. Beevor’s admixture of solid fact and human incident keeps reader interest at high level. And there is a novelist’s touch in his description of Brigadefuhrer Ostendorff as “a heavily built genial looking thug with a shaven head.” Almost forgotten is the fact that Beevor was a novelist before he became the world-famous historian he is today.

Near the conclusion of D-Day, Beevor reprises some of the material from his excellent earlier book on the liberation of Paris which he co-wrote with his wife Artemis Cooper. When Hitler gave the order to destroy Paris to General von Choltitz, he chose not to obey it. However, the threat of Paris’s destruction prompted Eisenhower to agree to its rescue. The allies appropriately allowed the capable French General Leclerc to recapture Paris and the resultant joyous throng in the centre of that great city was estimated at one million.

There were numerous flaws in the D-Day operation but the outcome was never in doubt. Beevor, who sometimes drowns the reader in military detail at the expense of a clear overall picture, concludes that had the allied armada embarked in the great storm of June 1944, the Soviets might have reached the Atlantic coast and the post-war map of Europe drawn differently. Despite all the terrible vigour of war, it has been observed that combat is 90 per cent waiting and 10 per cent action. In that smaller sliver of time, the frequent outcome is often victory or death.

see life / music

The cat is back Chris Philpott rediscovers Cat Stevens, pans Eskimo Joe and loves Green Day Eskimo Joe Inshalla From the distant shores of Western Australia comes the latest from critically-acclaimed, award-winning rockers Eskimo Joe. Based in Perth and hitting big with two chart-topping albums in 2004’s A Song is a City and 2006’s Black Fingernails Red Wine, the group claim to have changed direction with this latest, middleeastern influenced record, named for an Arabic word that translates to “God willing”.

As singer Kav Temperley has explained, much of the album was inspired by a trip to Egypt in 2007 and from the opening bars of “Foreign Land” that influence seems clear, with a haunting intro echoing out over a dark guitar riff, before finding its way to a catchy hook (and a subtle nod to kids’ tale Jack and the Beanstalk, and its message of the risk in dream-chasing).

Sadly, however, the eastern theme is abandoned all too quickly and by the time you hit tracks like “Losing Friends Over Love” and “Sound of Your Heart” the group has reverted back to bland rock beats and uninspired, generic lyrical content which grows tiresome very fast, and undermines the few highlights.

One can’t help but feel that Inshalla simply doesn’t break new ground, constituting a huge missed opportunity for the group.

Yusuf Roadsinger To be honest, I wasn’t actually aware that Yusuf Islam – the man formerly known to the world through his stage moniker Cat Stevens and responsible for a number of all-time classic songs like “Wild World”, “Father and Son”, “Where Do The Children Play” and “Moonshadow” – was still making music, until I happened to catch him perform live on The Colbert Report a couple of weeks ago.

When a copy of Roadsinger, his latest release, landed on my desk last week I knew I had to review it.

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In fact, the first thing that struck me as I sat, listening through opening track “Welcome Home”, was how timeless Yusuf ’s sound truly is.

That track, indeed the whole album, still bears the same warm voice and the same crisp acoustic guitar that was the hallmark of his work during the 1970s. Highlight tracks like “Everytime I Dream”, “This Glass World” and the gorgeous title track sound completely at home among any of Yusuf ’s work.

Marked by subtle vocal harmonies and sly, ambiguous lyrics, Roadsinger is a journey down memory lane, reminiscent of a time when life was simpler and a man and his guitar could change the world.

Green Day 21st Century Breakdown I’ll let you in on a little secret.

Most music critics don’t like to admit that they enjoy the same songs or albums as the casual fan and arguably no group has demonstrated this as well as Green Day have with their last 2 albums.

Major music critics panned American Idiot upon its release in 2004, saying that Green Day had given up on their roots and released an album that pandered to a mainstream audience, many repeating those comments this month with the release of 21st Century Breakdown, with little understanding that the group had just decided they had something to say and went about saying it.

Breakdown is split into 3 smaller parts, subtitled Heroes and Cons, Charlatans and Saints and Horseshoes and Handgrenades, loosely following a young couple as they deal with the mess left behind by the presidency of George W Bush and the “collapse” of American society.

It would be easy to take a couple of highlight tracks out of context and without meaning, and assume the album is flawed in some way, but the truth is that Breakdown is a near perfect record, and will – I believe – be remembered as one of the best albums released not just this year, but this decade.

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see life / movies

Up rocks, but Ferrell is feral Pixar strikes it big again, writes Colin Covert UP Voices: Ed Asner and Jordan Nagai Directed by: Pete Docter Rated: PG (for some peril and action) 96 minutes Another year, another Pixar triumph. When is the infallible animation house going to release a lazy, pandering cheeseburger so we have something novel to say about it? The sublime Up suggests that the studio’s reputation for smart fun and creative integrity is nowhere near winding down.

From the title onward, Up is a stratospheric success. It’s guaranteed to lift your spirits, and not with a pushy DreamWorks-style gag reel of celebrity voices and committee-processed one-liners.

Up takes the high road. It’s the kind of work made by people who love original, risky ideas and get excited about supporting them. It’s whimsical fun, breezy and light-hearted, bouncing on buoyant charm, but soulful, too. Walt Disney decreed that in his animated features “for every laugh there must be a tear,” and so it is here. Real-life emotions make the humour ring true. It’s deftly poised between levity and gravity.

Up is the studio’s first film to be set entirely in the human world, and its hero is 78-year-old Carl Frederickson. (With Up coming on the heels of Clint Eastwood’s smash Gran Torino, we could be entering a golden age of grouchy grandpas.)

We meet Carl as a kid in the 1930s, imagining a life of daring exploits. He idolizes Charles Muntz, a high-flying explorer who vanished collecting rare animals from around the globe. Carl’s rambunctious young neighbor Ellie shares his yen for adventure, and a lovely dialogue-free montage follows their sweet relationship from contented marriage to old age.

They dream of traveling to South America’s mile-high Paradise Falls. But as life’s nuisances nibble at their vacation fund, the trip goes on hold. Carl dispenses happiness as a balloon vendor at the 94 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

city zoo, and he has a warm home life, but the grand adventure he hoped for never materializes. As he ages, Carl becomes, literally, a square. At 78, his body resembles a stack of cardboard boxes. His head is a cube, his glasses rectangular. We know this old guy like a family member and care for him deeply.

Widowed and retired, Carl retreats into his gingerbread Victorian house. But the world keeps pushing in on him. He’s the last holdout against a skyscraper development that is rising all around the perimeter of his lot. Realizing that he never fulfilled Ellie’s getaway wish, he ties his surplus helium balloons to his house and floats away toward Paradise Falls.

To his shock he discovers that he has another passenger onboard.

Eight-year-old Russell is a cheerful, well-meaning scout who has been hanging around Carl’s house in hopes of earning his Assisting the Elderly merit badge. The chubby, balloon-shaped boy’s endless chatter is annoying to Carl, but endearing to the viewers.

Drifting through lightning storms and near-collisions, they land in the high plateaus of Venezuela, the strange landscapes that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in writing The Lost World, and find artifacts from the lost explorer Charles Muntz. They discover a species of goony bird that’s half ostrich and half toucan, a pack of mutts fitted with collars that turn dog-thoughts into speech (“I have just met you and I love you”), and a menacing adversary.

The finale is a whiz-bang aerial battle between a zeppelin and canine-piloted biplanes – a literal dogfight. Amid the laughs and thrills, we never lose track of the connection growing between Russell and Carl, and the old man’s journey from grump to Gramps. The voice actors, gravelly Ed Asner and the endearingly natural Jordan Nagai, have a great rapport.

Up, Pixar’s first venture into 3D, employs the process in a way that’s apt and awe-inspiring. Up is a movie made in 3D, not a 3D movie. Rather than stabbing you in the eye with spears, writerdirector Pete Docter and his colleagues use 3D as a window into the characters’ world. Half of the film is set on a high plateau with sheer cliffs all around, and the drop-offs are vertigo-induc-

ing. The character design is vintage Disney caricature, while the textures of objects onscreen have a stunning physicality. You can feel the weave of the textiles, the smooth heft of stones. It adds depth without calling undue attention to itself.

That’s the Pixar way. While the technique is dazzling, it’s the emotions, ideas and characters that count. Up tickles you silly but leaves you with worthwhile ideas to ponder. What is the adventure of a lifetime, anyway? A daredevil series of cliffhangers in a wild, exotic land? Or could it be committing yourself heart and soul to another person, forever?

There’s more than one way to take an amazing journey, even if it takes you 78 years to figure that out.

LAND OF THE LOST Starring: Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride Directed by: Brad Silberling Rated: PG (for coarse language) 101 minutes Rowdy, trippy and surprisingly raunchy, Land of the Lost pushes sci-fi/comedy to the edge of PG-13 decorum.

It’s based on a kitschy 1970s live action children’s series created

by Sid and Marty Krofft (creators of H.R. Pufnstuf and Lidsville).

The Kroffts have spent decades denying that they made their loopy, special-effects heavy shows under the influence of recreational chemicals. The people behind this leave-your-brains-home film might make the same claim, but I’m withholding judgment until I see the lab tests.

Will Ferrell stars as Dr. Rick Marshall, a “quantum paleontologist” who dresses like a park ranger and behaves like a spoiled, immature doofus. When Matt Lauer of “The Today Show” questions his claim that our energy crisis can be solved with transdimensional portals, Rick charges the host, windmilling punches.

Demoted to teaching kiddie science classes at the La Brea Tar Pits, he’s a bitter laughingstock until science babe Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel) insists he complete his research. The likeliest gateway to an alternate reality is located in a cheesy roadside amusement park run

by Will, a macho redneck tour guide (Danny McBride).

Before you can say “wormhole,” the trio are running from angry dinosaurs, reptilian aliens and giant mosquitoes on a wild, wild planet. It’s a vast desert littered with Viking longboats, midcentury motels, pterodactyls, Cessnas and the occasional medieval catapult, the sort of stuff you might find in the Bermuda Triangle’s sink drain. Their guide is Chaka (Jorma Taccone), a missing-link teenager who chatters a nonsense language and knows which trees bear the most consciousness-altering fruit.

This isn’t the Land of the Lost you remember from childhood, but get on its antisocial wavelength and it’s fitfully laugh-outloud funny. The film seems to have been written on the fly, torn apart and roughly put back together. Director Brad Silberling chooses oddball perspectives on the action, shooting the actors as flyspecks on the horizon or running alongside them as they race from danger.

The film is so packed with toilet humour you keep looking for the product placement. Still, I give it points for its subversive, psychedelic absurdism, a choice that will annoy at least as many viewers as it attracts. It’s such a skewed, quirky misfire that I found its idiocies oddly entertaining.

Ferrell and McBride play two flavors of blowhard. Ferrell’s scientist is an ego wrapped in a lab coat, a posturing know-it-all who infuriates a super-intelligent T. rex by insisting its brain is “the size of a walnut. A walnut!” McBride plays his carny character as a cunning lummox woefully lacking in the survivalist skills he claims. Friel is a supportive, innocent sidekick with a gullible streak as wide as a landing strip. Monkey-boy Chaka nuzzles against Holly affectionately, and slyly gropes her whenever he can sneak one in.

Mainstream summertime action fantasies are about ordinary people coping with extraordinary events. “Land of the Lost” spins the innocent, family-oriented concept on its ear, with characters that are sketchy, untrustworthy or a little bit repulsive.

If that violates your childhood memories of the TV series, get over it. The film pushes against audience expectations with humor that is wrong, bad and uncomfortable. But it’s sort of awe-inspiring to see a velociraptor pack attack an ice cream truck with thrilling, kinetic immediacy, followed by a shot of one critter running around wearing the driver’s red and white striped hat. Take that, nostalgia!

Reviewed By Colin Covert ACE INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009 95

see life / dvds if it were the Holy Grail, to be completely trivial. It is code-named “Samson” but it might as well be “Maltese Falcon.”

Gilroy expertly keeps viewers guessing about who is gaming who. He repeatedly reshuffles the story with interlocking flashbacks that rewind the tale several years or a few days, revealing new information about who is manipulating whom. Are Ray and Claire really controlling the play, or are their CEOs (wonderfully played by Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti) running a deeper game? Will the ex-spies respect the notion of honor among thieves, or exchange love (or its potential) for profit? Somebody is constructing an elaborate trap for someone. But who?

Duplicitous, not desperate Colin Covert finds a mouse movie that doesn’t roar DUPLICITY Starring: Julia Roberts, Clive Own, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti Directed by: Tony Gilroy Rated: PG (for language and some sexual content) 125 minutes What’s more essential to romance: the stability of trust or the excitement of surprise and uncertainty? In Duplicity, a stylish caper-love story, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play conniving corporate security pros who keep us – and each other – guessing about where their loyalties lie.

Claire, ex-CIA, works for a consumer goods titan developing a holy-cow, game-changing new product. Ray, formerly with MI6, snoops for a rival firm intent on stealing the idea. The pair shared a night of passion and double-crossing five years earlier in Dubai, and when their paths cross in Manhattan, there’s no question that they’re spoiling for a rematch.

The duo’s spy-vs.-spy skullduggery is complicated by the fact that the onetime lovers get an adrenaline rush from mind games.

And on a deeper level they realize that no one but a consummate sneak could ever understand them. Despite numerous plot twists and labyrinthine intrigue, Duplicity remains an engaging film because of its central characters. There’s a sizzling chemistry between the stars, who are gorgeously photographed in glamorous settings from Rome to London to Zurich.

Writer/director Tony Gilroy, who mined high-stakes drama from corporate intrigue in Michael Clayton, displays a wry sense of humor this time around. He undercuts the glossy globetrotting with a droll chapter in Cleveland, of all places. In the same way, he playfully reveals the bombshell product, which is discussed as 96 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM July 2009

THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX Voices: Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Watson, Tracey Ullman, Sigourney Weaver Directed by: Sam Fell and Robert Stevenhagen Rated: G 93 minutes Flat-footed when it should be fleet, scary when it means to be exciting, and only intermittently emotionally effective, The Tale of Despereaux does a disservice to Kate DiCamillo’s well-regarded children’s book.

Matthew Broderick speaks the role of Despereaux, a soft-spoken mouse who scandalizes his peers by openly conversing with humans and reading books rather than gnawing on them. Yes, we are in a fairy world of twee bland mice.

Despereaux lives in the Kingdom of Dor, a mystical place with a soup-based economy whose doleful monarch lives in perpetual gloom. His Queen died in a soup-rodent mishap, and the grieving King has outlawed soup and rats. This rankles the rat Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman), who wants to leave the darkness of sewers and cellars for the light of the streets above.

Meanwhile, Despereaux, lacking the timidity of his fellow mice, forms a friendship with Princess Pea (Harry Potter’s Emma Watson), a flax-haired beauty with the faintly misty, spiritual expression often associated with missing contact lenses. Lumpish chambermaid Miggory Sow (Tracey Ullman) envies the Princess’s life of luxury. When Despereaux’s trespass into the world of humans is discovered, the mice exile him to dank, virulent ratworld, where he is threatened with death by cat before an arena of bloodthirsty cheese-nibblers.

Roscuro plots revenge on the King by provoking resentful Miggory to kidnap the princess. Valiant Despereaux must swing from a spool of thread, wield a needle like a swashbuckler and evade snappish mousetraps to save the day. While that may sound like vibrant adventure in summary, these episodes hang limp on the clothesline.

The personal tone of voice that distinguished the book is reduced to overexplicit narration by Sigourney Weaver, underlining every authorial insight three times in red ink. And the point – that people of all stations in life find true happiness in the love of their families – carries a different emphasis when the story is told in visual terms.

The moral of this fable seems to be that pretty girls deserve to live in castles and that coarse-featured, broad-beamed girls should be happy slopping pigs. Hans Christian Anderson’s stories were authentically grim and terrifying, but it’s not often you encounter a children’s entertainment so glum.

Reviewed by Colin Covert